All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg: E107: The Twitter Files Parts 1-2: shadow banning, story suppression, interference & more

You were bloated last night. What else is new? I said not bloated my god

You really are though you look bloated listen

That's coming from you you started to look like Bert and now you're back to Ernie your face is getting round again

All I have to say is hold on a second guys. I gotta get a drink. Is it okay?

You guys got a minute for me to get a drink. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely do. I definitely do God hold on a beer

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I think I have the mocha latte from Supergotten. I also have the chocolate shake

Do you have a recommendation here for me free bird because I'm gonna put it in my coffee is mocha on a mocha

You can't go wrong. You can't go wrong. Thank you double mocha as a win just on a completely unrelated topic

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It's been a big part of my weight loss journey

It's also been a big part of me and freeberg becoming besties and creating a unified block

For all in summit 2023. So I've got two solid votes

I'll be very honest with you guys. Give me a credible plan where we can maintain the integrity

Listen to me listen to me listen to me if you if you two idiots, I'm not involved

You clearly are involved with it with this fucking grid important vote. Hold on. No, you your mouth

I'm writing this in it. I'm writing it down if you two idiots the two you have to do this together because otherwise

I'm with David and there's absolute garden you two idiots need to come up with a plan

Oh

Where we can each make

Make four million bucks each net then I'll do it four million net

Okay, great. Look at J. Cal writing that down as if he respects a contract. Okay, got this

I signed the fucking car. I signed the contract for J. Cal the negotiation begins at the point where there's a signed contract

Yeah, exactly, okay now negotiate with you

All right, everybody the show has started the four of us are still here

By some miracle, we're still going after a hundred seven episodes and it's better than ever last week. We're number 12

So mainstream media. Hmm

We'll see you in the top ten

Here we go Twitter files part one. We're not on strike despite your oppressive conditions. Yes

If I was getting five but paid five bucks for this I'd be on strike right now

Guys, not only are you getting five bucks? You're getting a bill for the production. Okay, here we go

By the way, how beautiful is it that the same reporters who couldn't stop writing?

About the oppressive working conditions that Elon Musk was supposedly creating because he simply wanted the employees to go back

To the office and work hard and if they didn't he'd give him a generous three months severance package

Yeah, those same reporters are now on strike because the Soulsburgers are running a clickbait farm over there with oppressive working conditions

The intellectual dishonesty has never been higher in the world. Yeah

Honesty yes, will the publisher of the New York Times agree that anybody who isn't happy there can have a voluntary three month severance package

Yeah, I click this link and do you want to work hard or do you want three months severance?

If the New York Times publisher did that, you know, it would happen

800 of 1200 people would take the severance

Of course

All right, here we go. Twitter files have dropped part one dropped with the legendary

award-winning

highly respected journalist Matt Taibbi if you don't know who he is he is a left-leaning journalist who worked at

Rolling Stone and did the best coverage hands down of the financial crisis and the shenanigans and he held truth to power to that group

This is important to note

The second drop was given to Barry Weiss who is a right-leaning

Independent journalist. These are both independent journalists. She previously worked at the New York Times itself now. I

Think we should work backwards

From two to one. Do you agree? Yes for sure. Let's start with the drop that just happened last night

Yes, so last night a drop happened. So

Here's what happens in

Twitter files part two. I'm gonna give a basic summary and then I'm gonna give it to sacks because he's chomping at the bit

We now have confirmation that what the right thought was happening all along, which is a secret

silencing system built into the software of

Blacklists was tagging right-wing conservative voices in the system and

These included people like Dan

Bungino is that he a pronounce it? Yes, he was tagged with being on a search blacklist

what that means is you're a fan of Dan's who is a

Former Secret Service agent who is now a right-wing conservative. I could just say conservative instead of wing a conservative

Radio host podcast host. He was not allowed to be found in search engines for some reason

Charlie Kirk who is a conservative commentator. He was tagged with do not amplify. I guess that means you can't trend into people's feeds

even if they follow you and

then

There were people who were banned from the trends blacklist including a Stanford professor

Jay

bought to

Chariah, did I get it right? Yes, Jay about a chariot. Okay. I got it right doctor at Stanford School of Medicine and he was

Not allowed on the trends blacklist because he had a dissenting opinion a Stanford

Professor had a dissenting opinion on COVID. That's turned out to be true

And this is where the danger comes in because all of these actions were taken

without any transparency and

They were taken on one side of the aisle by people inside of Twitter

Essentially covertly no ownership of who did it and they never told the people they gaslit them

They could see their own tweets

They could use the service, but they couldn't be seen even by their own fans in many cases here

Sacks when you look at that let's just start with that first piece

The shadow banning as it's called in our industry where you can participate in a community

But you can't be seen

Are any is there any circumstance under which this tool would make sense for you to deploy and then what your general take on

What has been discovered last night? Okay. Look, well, what was yes, you may start with what's been discovered here

Let me boil it down for you. This is an FTX level fraud

Except that what was stolen here was not customer funds

It was their free speech rights not just the rights of people like Jay Bonacarya and Dan Bongino to speak

But the right of the public to hear them in the way that they expected

Okay, and you had statement after statement by Twitter executives like Jack Dorsey like

Vigia Gotti like

You know YOL and others saying we do not shadow ban and then they also said we certainly this is their emphasis

Do not shadow ban on the basis of political viewpoint and what the Twitter files show is that is exactly what they were doing

They in the same way that SBF was using

FTX and customer funds is his personal piggy bank. They were using Twitter as their personal

Ideological piggy bank. They were going in to the tools and using the content moderation system

These big brother like tools that were designed to basically put their thumb on the scale of American democracy and

Suppressed viewpoints that they did not agree with and they did not like even when even when they could not

Not justify removing content based on their own rules

So there are conversations in the slack that Barry Weiss exposed where for example, Libs of tiktok

They admit in the slack that we can't suppress Libs of tiktok based on our hate policy

Libs of tiktok hasn't violated it. We're going to suppress that account. Anyway, now

It's important to note what Libs of tiktok does. This is a great talking point

Libs of tiktok

finds people who are trans

People who are you know, maybe not lgbtq and

They feature their tiktoks and they mock them on Twitter. Now. This certainly is free speech and

The argument from the safety team was by putting all of these together

You're inciting violence towards those people and they said they haven't broken a rule but collectively

They could be in some way

In some way targeting those people. Is there anything fair Friedberg to that statement?

That they targeted them by collecting their let's say views that are I'm asking this question for discussion purposes

I'm not giving my check out. Hold on. I want Friedberg. Why can't I finish I'm gonna go back to you spoke for two minutes

That's why Friedberg you turned down moderating today sacks. You could have everybody else

Get to speak as long as they want I get interrupted. You got two minutes. Let me just finish the SPF

Let me just finish the SPF analogy. Okay, and then you can the filibuster continues

Then you can both sides this issue. Don't worry sacks while you're speaking

Listen up one or two words on you and then yeah, why did people like gaudy and you'll well deny that they were engaged in shadow banning

Even though that's clearly what they were doing because they knew that they had an obligation

To be stewards of the public trust. They were custodians of public trust. They knew they were violating that trust

The same way that SPF had a duty to be custodians of his customers funds

They did not implement their own policy that they said they were implementing

Why because they were suppressing accounts that personally offended them that personally they disagreed with and they wanted to deprive the public of the

Right to hear okay, so the way they're justifying this hold on the way that the media is today justifying it is

They're pointing to obscure provisions in the terms of use around spam accounts things like that saying

Oh, well the terms of use show that they had the right to do this. This is like the margin account

Okay, they did not have the right to use these tools in this way

Okay, the Jay Balacharya was not posting spam

Tell me we're just a stamper professor doesn't doesn't yes, and he's a radio

It has been proven correct completely. He was opposed to lockdowns. That was the Great Barrington Declaration

And they suppressed it. What is the justification for now? You have to answer my question then sacks since you want to talk so much

Hold on sacks. I want you to answer the question then since you are so

Interesting talking hold on. I want him to answer one question then it's going to you free bird sacks should lives of tiktok be able to collect

trans people

Living their life making tiktoks put them into a group feed

mock them and

If those people experience

Harassment because of it. Is that something that Twitter should allow? I'm asking you this without giving my opinion

I'm curious your opinion specifically for the lives of tiktok since you opened that door and you wanted to bring up that very thorny issue go

Listen, so on lives of tiktok

My understanding of that account is that they only take videos that have already been made public by another account

They're all public

They're all in the public domain and then they repost them sometimes they make a snarky comment

But usually they just let them stand on their own that is not a violation of free speech now the way that I think these Twitter executives have

Interpreted is that they live in such a bubble and they live in it with such privilege and entitlement that they think that when their point of view

Gets criticized or challenged that that in and of itself is harassment

That's not that is public debate and they want to make themselves and their points of view

Immune to public debate and the way that they do that is that they claim that any criticism is harassment. It's not

If in aggregate final final follow-up if an aggregate those people report being harassed and they have evidence of being harassed

What should Twitter do listen if somebody is harassed I'm fine with taking that down

But being publicly criticized or simply retweeted is not harassment. Okay harassment needs to be targeted

And it needs to be more than just public criticism or even a snarky comment here or there and so you don't consider a

not you know a

daily feed of trans people being

Mocked you don't consider that target harassment got it. Don't listen to me about it listen to Twitter's own

Slack files about it. They knew that the account that lives of ticked on was not violating the rules

Yet they suppressed that they suspended it six times. They knew they were on shaky ground. They wanted to do it

Anyway, why because they know people are racing harassment. That's why they did it

But it is a thorny freedom of speech issue. I agree with you. I think I think sax has

Articulated a vision for the product he wanted Twitter to be but I don't think that's necessarily the product

That they wanted to create

It's not that Twitter set out at the time or stated clearly that they were going to be the harbinger of truth and the free speech

Platform for all I think they were really clear and they have been in their behavior and as you know demonstrated through this stuff

That came out which to me feels a lot like a we already knew all this stuff

This is a bit of a nothing burger that they were curating and they were

Editing and they were editorializing other people's content and the ranking of content in the same way that many other internet

Platforms do to create what they believe to be their best user experience for the users that they want to appeal to and I'll say like

There's been this long debate

And it goes back 20 years at this point on how Google does ranking, right?

I mean you guys may remember Jeremy Stoppelman went to DC and he complained about how Google was using his content

And he wasn't being ranked high enough as Google's own content that was being shoved in the wrong place

And there's a guy who ran kind of he was a spokesperson for the SEO of the search engine optimization

rules

At Google and it was always the secret at Google

How did the search results get ranked and I can tell you it's not just a pure algorithm that there was a lot of manual intervention

A lot of manual work in fact the manual work gets to be to the point that they said there's so much stuff that we know is

The best content and the best

Form of content for the user experience that they ranked it all the way at the top and they called it the one box

It's the stuff that sits above the primary search results

And that editorialization ultimately led to a product that they intended to make because they believed it was a better user

Experience for the users that they wanted to service and I don't think that that this is any different than what's happened at Twitter

Twitter is not a government agency. They're not a free speech. They're not the internet

They're a product and the product managers and the people that run that that product team

Ultimately made some editorial decisions that said this is the content. We do want to show and this is the content

We don't want to show and they certainly did wrap up

You know a bunch of rules that had a lot of leeway for what they could or couldn't do or they gave themselves a lot of different

Excuses on how to do it. I don't agree with it. It's not the product. I want it's not the product. I think should exist

I think Elon also saw that and clearly he stepped in and said I want to make a product that is a

Different product than what is being created today

So none of this feels to me like these guys were the guardians of the internet and they came along and they were distrustful

They did exactly whatever they did what a lot of other companies have done and exactly what they set out to do and they

Editorialized a product for a certain user group and by the way, they never blocked. They never edited people's tweets

They changed how people's results were showing up in rankings

They showed how viral they would get in the trend box. Those were in-app features and in-app services

This was not about taking someone's tweet and changing it and people may feel shamed and they may feel

You know upset about the fact that they were

D-ranked or they were kind of quote shadow banned but ultimately

That's the product they chose to make and people have the choice and the option of going elsewhere

And I don't agree with it and it's not the product

I want and it's not a product I want to use and I certainly don't feel happy seeing it

So you want to see you know products in you want free work to summarize it

You want to see the free market do its job?

Chamath you worked at Facebook Facebook seems to have done I would say an excellent job with content moderation

I think in large part correct me if I'm wrong because of the real names policy

But you tell us what you think, you know when you look at this and the 15-year history of social media and moderation. I

Think moderation is incredibly difficult and typically what happens is

early on in a company's life cycle and I I'm going to guess that

Twitter and YouTube were very similar to what we did at Facebook and it's very similar to probably what tiktok had to do in the early days

which is

You have this massive tidal wave of usage and so you're always on a little bit of a hamster wheel

And so you build these very basic tools and you uncover problems along the way and so I I think it's important to

Humanize the people that are at Twitter because I'm not sure that there are these super nefarious actors per se

I do think that they were conflicted

I do think that they made some very corrupting decisions, but I don't think that they were these evil actors

Okay, I think that they were folks who

against the tidal wave of usage

built some brittle tools built on top of them built on top of it some more and tried to find a way of coping and as scale

increased

They didn't have an opportunity to take a step back and reset and I think that that's true for all of these companies

And so you're just seeing it out in the light

What's happening at Twitter?

But don't for a second think that any other company behaved any differently Google Facebook Twitter bite dance and tiktok

They're all the same. They're all dealing with this problem, and they're all probably trying to do a

Decent job of it as best as they know how so what do we do from here is the question, okay?

The reason somebody needs to do something about this is

Summarized really elegantly in this J. Bhattacharya tweet

So please Nick just throw it up here so that we can just talk about this

This is why I think that this issue is important

Critically, this is a perfect tweet still trying to process my emotions on learning that Twitter blacklisted me

Okay, who cares about that? Here's what matters the thought that will keep me up tonight

censorship of scientific discussion

Permitted policies like school closures and a generation of children were hurt now. Just think about that in a nutshell

What was J. Bhattacharya to do? Maybe he was supposed to go on tiktok and try to sound the alarm bells through a tiktok

Maybe he was supposed to go on YouTube and create a video

maybe he was supposed to go on Facebook and

You know post into a Facebook group or do a newsfeed post

The the problem is that and the odds are reasonably likely that a lot of these companies had very similar policies in this example

around COVID misinformation because it was the CDC and

You know governmental organizations directing, you know

information and rules

Reaching out to all of these companies, right? So we're just seeing an insight into Twitter

But the point is it happened everywhere the implication of suppressing information like this is that a credible individual like that

Can't spark a public debate and in not being able to spark the debate

you have this

building up of errors in the system and

Then who gets hurt in this example, which is true is like you couldn't even talk about school closures and masking

Upfront and early in the system if you had scientists actually debate it

Maybe what would have happened is we would have kept the schools open and you would have had less learning loss

And you'd have less depression and less

Over-prescription of you know Ritalin and Adderall because those are all factual things we can measure today

So I think the important thing to take away from all of this is we've got

confirmatory evidence that

Whether they're you know these folks under a tidal wave of pressure made some really bad decisions and

The implications are pretty broad reaching and

Now I do think governments have to step in and create better guardrails. So this kind of stuff doesn't happen

I don't buy the whole it's a you know private company. They can do what they want. I think that that is

Too naive of an expectation for how important these three companies literally are

To how Americans consume and process information to make decisions incredibly well said sack your reaction to your besties

I largely agree with what Jamal said, but let's go back to what free berks

I think what free berks point of view is is really what you're hearing now from the mainstream media today

Which is oh nothing to see here

You know that they told us all along what was happening

This was just content moderation. They had the right to do this. You're making a big deal over nothing

No, that's not true go back and look at the media coverage starting in 2018

Article after article said that this idea of shadow banning was a right-wing conspiracy theory

That's what they said furthermore Jack Dorsey denied that shadow banning was happening including at a congressional hearing

I believe under oath so either he lied or he was lied to by his subordinates. I actually believe that the latter is

Possible I think I don't think it's true with SBF

It might be true with Jack because he's so checked out furthermore you had people again like Vigia Gotti

Again tweeting and repeatedly stating we do not shadow ban

We certainly don't shadow ban on the basis of political viewpoint. So these people were denying exactly

What their critics were saying they were accusing their critics of being conspiracy theorists now that the thing is proven

The mountain of evidence has dropped. They're saying. Oh, well, this is old news. This was known a long time

ago. No, it was not known a long time ago

It was disputed by you and now finally it's proven and you're trying to say it's not a big deal

It is a big deal. It's a violation of the public trust and if you are so proud of your content moderation policies

Why didn't you admit what you were doing in the first place?

That's why you feel good that Elon's running this business now

I mean like the things that you're concerned about as a user as someone who cares about

the public's access

to knowledge

To opinions to free speech

This has got to be a good change, right? Like this has come to light. It's clearly going to get resolved

Everyone's going to move forward. I mean, do you think that there's penalties needed for the people that work there?

Or like what what's the anger because because no one like I think look I think we got I think we basically got extremely lucky

Yeah, that Elon Musk happened to care about free speech and decided to do something about it and actually had the means to do something

About it. He's just about the only billionaire who has that level of means who actually cared enough to take on this battle

But are you saying that this is a hard reserve for other platforms?

I think he deserves praise for that

but

I mean unless Elon can buy every single tech company, which he clearly can't I think you guys are right

This is happening a lot of other tech companies. We're about to rewrite the government

The United States government is going to make an attempt

To rewrite section 230

I think that what this does is put a very fine point

On a comment that Elon actually tweeted out and nick if you could find that, please

That's a very good tweet where he said going forward

You will be able to see if you were shadow banned

You were able to see if you were debusted

Why and be able to appeal and I think that that concept

To be very honest with you should be enshrined in law

And I think that should be part of the section 230 rewrite and all of these media companies and all of these social media companies

Should be subject to it and the reason is because it ties a lot of these concepts together and says look

You can build a service. You're a private company make as much money as you want

But we're going to have some connective tissue back to the fundamental underpinnings of the constitution

Which is the framework under which we all live and we're going to transparently allow you to understand it

And I think that's really reasonable make that a legal expectation of all these organizations and by the way

Transparency the companies the companies will love it because I think it's super hard for you to be in these companies

And they probably are like take this responsibility off my plate. It's just very simple

This is a there's really four problems that occurred here number one. There was no transparency

The people who were shadow banned taken out of search, etc

They did not know if they were told and it was clear to users

We could have a discussion about was that a fair judgment or not in the cases

We've seen so far from barry weiss's reporting in the twitter files part. Do

It's very clear that these were not justifiable number two

These were not evenly enforced. It's very clear that one side

We because we don't have one example of a person on the left

Being censored when we if we do then we could put

Balls and strikes together and we could say how many people on one side versus how many people on the other

It's pretty clear what happened here because these all occurred with a group of people working at twitter

Which is 96 or 97% left leaning the statistics are clear

number three

The shadow banning and the search banning and I think this is something we talked about previously chamath

It feels very underhanded. This was your point

If we're going to block people they should be blocked

And they should know why the fourth piece of this which is absolutely infuriating

And this is a discussion that myself sacks and and um

Elon have had many times about this moderation and i'm not speaking out of school now because he's now very public with his position

And you know his position he came to on his own. It's it's not like

This is sacks and I you know coming up these positions. This is why elon bought the business

If you really want to intellectually uh test your thinking on this and i am a moderate who's left leaning

I can tell you there's a simple way for anybody who is debating the validity of the concerns here

Imagine rachel maddo or ezra kline or whoever your favorite left leaning pundit is

Was shadow banned by a group of right-wing moderators who were acting covertly and without any transparency

How would you feel if maddo reporting on

You know, uh all the russian

Coordination with trump's campaign did this or ezra kline with whatever topics he covers and you will very quickly find yourself

infuriated

And you should then intellectually as we say on this program steel manning if you argue the other side

It's infuriating for either side to experience this and that is what the 230 change needs to be chamath. You're exactly correct

If you make a an action it should be listed on the person's profile page and on the tweet

And if you click on the question mark, you should see when the action was taken

By who you know, which department maybe maybe not the person so they they get person attacked

And then what the resolution to it is this has been banned because it's targeted harassment

This can be resolved in this way

Then everybody's behavior would steer towards whatever the stated purpose of that social network is

You can get better behavior by making the rules clear by making the rules unclear and making it unfair

You create this insane situation go ahead chamath

And that's why i'm infuriated about it

I think you have to take it one step further to really do justice to why this should be important to everybody

And I do think this school example. It really matters to me like

We have like I don't know now. We know what the counterfactual is which which is that we have

I mean we've relegated our children to a bunch of years

Of really complicated relearning and learning that they never had to go through because of all the learning laws they gave them

but

What if j. Bhattacharya who's I mean like you can't be you know, have a higher sort of role in society in terms of

You know population credentials

I mean

Imagine if if you know, there was a platform where he could have actually said this and that you know

People would have clamored and said, you know what you and Fauci need to get to the bottom of this

Or where legislators could have seen it and said, you know what before we make a decision like this

Maybe hey Fauci go talk to Jay because he's a stand for proff. He's probably not an idiot. Why does he think that?

Or maybe let's convene, you know an actual group of 20 or 30 scientists

And the fact that this one

Version of thinking about things was deemed so heterodoxical. It is just such a good example

They shut down an important conversation

You know that the decision was so wrong

And the damage was so severe

So we know what happened by suppressing that speech

And that's one example

Well, it's in in my in my estimation

It is the silver bullet example that cleans through all of this other stuff because you know, I don't really care if Rachel Maddow as your client

Who the hell cares?

This is important stuff because it affects everybody irrespective of your political persuasion and what editorial you want to read

Tramath, what if the investigation into the Catholic church and the abuses that occurred there?

So we said, oh this person it needs to be shut down

And then children are molested for another decade

By the way, we have an example of that. Sinead O'Connor came out on SNL

You can look it up for if you're under 40 years old and said fight the real enemy

She ripped up a picture of the Pope because of the scandals there

She was excommunicated. She was cancelled at that time one of the first people to be cancelled because she spoke truth to power

What if somebody an investigative journalist at the New York Times the Boston globes are in the movie spotlight?

Those are the people who broke the story of the Catholic church if somebody came in and the Catholic church put pressure on a social network

He said, hey, you can't put this stuff up here. You can't have this discussion. Here's here's another example

Sinead, why are we shutting down discussions in America?

Remember the Vietnam papers?

Well, because because jay cow the media the media does not value transparency anymore

If you go back and look at the way the media portrays itself like in the movie the post which is about the

revelations about the Catholic church where you go back to all the president's men what the media

Surprised and what they congratulate themselves on was first of all transparency and exposing the lies of powerful people

Well, that is exactly what has happened here

The lies of the powerful group of people who were running twitter policy and suppressing one side of the debate

Has been exposed and the media is treating it with a yawn like there's nothing to see here

Why because they were complicit in this they were complicit

In suppressing the views of people like jay bowdoch area

They were complicit in choosing the views of Fauci and the elite on covet

And so they have no interest now in bringing just on in making in making what's happened here at twitter fully transparent

I have to own it. I think by the way just a just a quick correction there

I think sacks when you said the post

Washington post watergate spotlight exactly. I haven't been thinking about spotlight. Sorry. It was may have been spotlight

It's probably okay, but like but the post is another example that that movie was about another event like this

Which could have been easily suppressed in today's world much harder there

Which was a pentagon papers and in that world, you know

There was an immense amount of pressure that the government put on the Washington post

But then they said you know what we're going with it and they still published it

And it created a ground swall of support to really re-examine the vietnam war and it had a huge impact

But could you imagine this time around which is like hey guys? There's going to be some kind of misinformation

You know these pentagon papers are not real. It's it's coming from the russians suppress it

And nobody could be so much easier now to run this play what journalists need to realize

Is that today's conspiracy theories are tomorrow's Pulitzer prizes

Onto you sacks not in the current media environment

They work for these corporations and they don't get rewarded for telling the truth. Oh no, they're going for Pulitzer's trust me

They are but what they need to do is stop thinking short term and think long term any time there's a conspiracy theory

You must give it some validity and say is there any truth here?

Because it could in fact be a scandal that's being covered up

They're involved in the cover up right now. They're involved in the cover up right now

This is a cover up. I agree. I'm in agreement with you

Let's bring the first batch of twitter files into the conversation the one that matai be exposed

What he did was confirm that a completely true story by the new york post about hunter biden

That came out a month before the election was suppressed by twitter executives

including at the behest of

You know of fbi agents and former security state officials

So this has now been exposed. There was no legitimate basis for suppressing that story

It was true. It was a respected publication. They did it anyway. This is election interference

You know the same people who pride themselves

on strengthening democracy

Are engaged in this wide-scale censorship of one side of the political debate

Including of true stories before an election and then they puff out their chest and say we're protecting democracy

They're not protecting democracy. They're interfering with democracy. They're interfering with the public's right to know

And then we look at a country like china and we say we're so much better than them because they've got this problem over there

Where the state and big tech are colluding to create a big brother-like system. Well, what is this?

What are these tools that have been exposed?

This is a big brother-like system. Okay. Yeah, but just you have to I know you want to make it like an equivalency

It's less than a one percent equivalency because in our society

We can have moments like this and we can have investigations. So just to put it in perspective

Look, I take I don't think we're equivalent. But what I'm saying is that this is very much like a big brother's social credit system

Yes, it should be an alarm bell should be going off

This should be an alarm and if Elon didn't decide

Just we had this one

Idiosyncratic billionaire who believes in free speech if he didn't decide to take this on we would never have known this stuff

Okay, tell me what happened in between these two things. There is an attorney

at

A twitter and I don't know the details of this

Right. Okay. So this is interesting. I do not work for the twitter corporation

I do not speak for the twitter corporation sacks does not work for the twitter corporation and does not speak for it

But there was in between these two drops something that happened. Yes

So basically what was discovered and this is all just publicly reported is that a former FBI lawyer named Jim Baker

Had now become deputy general counsel

Um at twitter

And this guy Jim Baker is like the zealot of the whole russian collusion hoax. He was involved

In the um in the fiza warrants that were that the fbi applied to the fiza courts that had all the errors and emissions

He was involved in the alpha bank hoax. He was the guy that that perkins

Hoey lawyer sussman was feeding this like phony

uh phony scam too

And he I don't think he was officially sanctioned, but basically he was asked to leave the fbi and then lo and behold

Where does he land at twitter?

And he is involved in their content moderation policies. I think what it shows is how deeply intertwined

Our big tech companies have become with the security state

Now how did this get exposed? Well

Barry weiss was basically

putting forward

document requests for this for the latest batch of twitter files and she wasn't getting anything back

And she's like what's going on here

And the guy who's giving her the files is his name is jim

And she's like well wait like wait jim jim who and she finds out wait jim baker wait that jim baker

that in new york post had a long story about this guy and

So it was discovered that the guy who was curating the twitter files

Was this former operative of the fbi who was involved in the russian collusion hoax and then was involved in their

Their blacklist decisions

So in any event once this came out

twitter fired him

and then you know

Barry apparently received all these files that are now the the second batch of the twitter files and just to be clear

That's not james baker if you're you know thinking it's the

former

Reagan cabinet member not james baker

This is jim baker who's a different person right but a lot of people are wondering. Well, how could this have been missed?

Listen, he's an fbi ex fbi guys don't want to be found

I mean they they this is some people call it

You know the permanent wash and establishments some people call it the deep state the administration's come and go

The people who work in wash and stay there forever and they can simply effectuate policy by outlasting everybody else

And clandestinely implementing what they believe and they've become a constituency of their own that exercises power

Like a praetorian guard in washington

So in any event this guy is an expert at bowl weeviling himself into the bureaucracy great

Praetorian guard bowlie. You're on fire. I got a second

So hold on. So when they finally hold on a second when they finally rooted when they finally rooted

This this mole out of the fbi. He believals himself into another powerful bureaucracy. What is that word Twitter?

We've all believe all

Like borrows

Like borrows like that

so

He digs his way into the twitter bureaucracy to the point where he isn't even found and then somehow

He has put himself in the position

To be intermediating the twitter files. Can you believe this?

So once it was discovered

A unit of the imperial roman army that served as personal barty guards and intelligence agents the praetorian guard

Okay, got it. Well, you understand what happened is is that the praetorian guard originated because they were to defend the life of the emperor

And then what happened that then they became so powerful that

That whoever bribed the praetorians would become emperor

And then finally the last step is that the praetorians themselves would pick the emperor

And whoever basically led the praetorian guard would be the next emperor

At any event, I mean, we're not we're not at that point yet

But the point is look the point is that these security state officials have power that they should not have

Okay, that's the bottom line. They should not be

involved in our elections in this way

They should be completely non-partisan and non-political. They should just do their jobs as law enforcement officials

But we know from the hunter-biden story that a very important piece of this

Was the pre-bunking that the fbi went to facebook and twitter and social networks and said be on the lookout

For a story about hunter-biden. It is russian disinformation

And they primed these social networks to suppress that story when it came out

That was something that never should have done and they knew they knew the story was not fake

The new is not russian disinformation because they had the laptop in their possession since 2019. Well, okay, that has not

the providence of the

laptop is still being reviewed in fairness and there's

Hold on and there is an investigation going on of hunter-biden

You also have to put the context in here and please let me finish

There is a context here of there was massive election

Interference going on both sides of the aisle republicans democrats all wanted to see the russian interference and the ukrainian interference

And trumps encouraging the ukraine and the republicans the russians to interfere in elections

Everybody was on high alert and that happened to drop

Uh, like it was announced 30 days before and it dropped 10 days before the election

So everybody was on high alert and I agree. It was not done. That's why that's why that's why it was the perfect

It should have been done. It should have been done properly

They should have said they should have come out public and say we don't know the providence of this

We could be hacked. It might not be hacked jason. They knew

They knew let's wait and see we have to reserve judgment. No, listen, let me tell you what happened

Let me just tell you what happened. Okay, so they make sure you source this. I will so

Look, it's all in the new york post. Okay. They've done. Oh, great. No, it nobody has refuted it

Nobody has refuted it. It's a super far. What happened. No, let me just get let me just get this on the record here

so from the post

The fbi was given the laptop in 2019 by the lap store

Or store owner those guys have forensics. They have cyber experts. They knew the laptop was real

We know it's real now

Nobody questions that in fact the fbi has admitted that the laptop was real and that the the hunter bind files are real

Nobody disputes that okay, but what they did before the election is they use this excuse

Of russian disinformation to discredit the story before it even came out

But they had no business getting involved in the story that way. They simply didn't they should have stayed out of it completely

I don't I don't understand how you can possibly justify that

Yeah, I mean, I think we do have to look at the context of that time period when hillary's emails were hacked and we had a

That's why it was a perfect excuse

Well, I didn't finish the sentence and we had a president

Which you will agree our presidents and presidential candidates should not be encouraging foreign powers to hack their

Uh, their adversaries you agree with that. This is the election. Do you agree with that answer my question?

Do you agree that presidential presidents?

Answer the question. Why do you have to know what you're doing personally attack me?

No, I'm not personally attack me. Just answer the question should this is your election denial of for 2016

You're still wrapped up on this. You can't let it again. You personally attack me. You don't answer the question

That's fine. We'll move on

You can't be intellectually honest. That's fine. The audience knows you're not being intellectually honest

You know what you're talking about if you could answer the simple question should

Presidents encourage foreign powers to hack their adversaries then you would be being intellectually dishonest. I am absolutely

Disappointed that you will not answer that simple question. It's an obvious. Yes. It's an obvious. Yes. We don't want people doing it

Of course, but I don't really believe that happened. I don't really believe that happens because you know Trump's gonna win the primary

Let's keep going

Uh, China honestly, I don't wait. Listen. I don't I've said so many times in this show that he's not my candidate

I don't know what you're talking about. You're going all the way back

Listen, you're going all the way all second what you're doing right now is like delusional

You're going back to some throwaway comment. He made it a rally in 2016. It's got nothing

Absolutely nothing to do with the story and the fact you're even bringing it up is like pure tds

And I don't know what wasted any time talking about it now instead of answering a question

That's your technique. I want to finish is to call me names

Instead of answering the question. I want to un-muddy the waters

I want to make one more point about another technique that I'm muddy in the water. So I'm not muddy in the water

You are I don't know answering the question. Let's move on. Let's move on. I want to make one final point

Okay, I'll make a final point. There was a letter. Listen. There was a letter with the hunter biden thing

This is 2020 elections adjacent. We're not going back two elections ago. I want to talk about the most recent one

Okay, fine. You had clapper you had comey at 50 of these security state officials

They write a letter saying that the hunter biden story has all the

Hallmarks of russian disinformation they claim that it was russian disinformation when it wasn't they knew it wasn't

And it was the same story that the fbi was telling twitter and it was the same story that these twitter executives were indulging in

Even though they all knew or had reasons to know it wasn't true

And they suppressed the new york post story. Anyway, I don't know why you're bringing up this trump stuff

It has nothing to do with the real issue here the real hold on a second

The real issue is this does social media have the right to suppress

True stories put out by our media before the month before an election

Yes, or no

I'll I'll do you just send that I will answer your question

Yes or no, and you will not answer mine because you're being intellectually dishonest. Yes

We should know we should not suppress new stories if it was and I will argue both sides if it was snowed in

If it was the pentagon papers if it's hunter biden's laptop taking out the sex stuff, which we both agree on

or if it is

russia and

ukraine where your presidential candidate at the time

Trump

asked

Solensky to find dirt on biden before the election and he asked the russians to hack hillary's email

And they did that and they released it 10 days before the election

That is facts that happened and that is that's not what this was

You said you would let me speak

And you will let me you're muddy in the waters. No stop interrupting me and stop insulting me

I will say my part. You said yours and then we will move on

the fact is

Trump

encouraged

Hacking of other candidates and he did it twice in a four-year period back-to-back elections

We need to be on high alert when you have a republican candidate trump doing something so

absolutely

treasonous

This is why it's a perfect cover story. This is why it was a perfect cover story is because

But you would address the treasonous behavior. Let's move on. I don't think it was a perfect phone call

I think it was there were lots of shenanigans. There were lots of shenanigans. Okay. I'm not defending. Hold on

I'm not defending anything trump did. Okay. I don't feel the need. Okay. I never defended it

But here but the deal is that you're letting your tds

I don't justify. He's crazy. You're letting you're you're allowing this russian disinformation to be a cover story

No, I said I don't think post should have been blocked

You're you're you're mischievous. I'm not even bringing this up

It was the context under which the the reason I'm bringing it. I agree that the context made it a great cover story

That's your interpretation. The the context also is everybody was on high alert

Waiting for a hack to drop and in fact a hack dropped 10 days before you have those not a hundred

Okay, we found out subsequently was a hack

That's why they're giving me time. It's my point. They knew at the point

Twitter and facebook did not know twitter and facebook didn't know that's the point

They don't know hold on a second. No, no, no, no, no. Tai Ebi in that you go back to the twitter files the first drop

Jim baker. Hold on a second Jim baker and vijayagati said

Okay, that there were a lot of internal questions about whether

That that hunter-bind story could be justified under the hacked

policy, okay

And there were many legitimate questions raised internally about whether they could maintain that party line

And the emerging view is that they could no longer maintain that line and still gaudi and jim baker said no

We will maintain the idea that this was hacked information

until proven otherwise

Even though it was not hacked. It was a new york post story

Okay, let's move on. We're agreed to disagree. Let's move on. Why are you bringing up all this like irrelevant stuff?

The audience and the other besties want us to move on so let's move on

China ends most zero covid rules and iran might be abolishing its morality police news broke

Uh in the past week on wednesday china's health authorities overhauled its zero covid policy and announced a 10 point national plan

that scrapped most health code tracking and

Also, they're rolling back their mass testing and this allowed many

positive cases to just simply quarantine at home like we were doing

I guess a year ago now and uh, they're limiting some of these lockdowns

this all comes from a fox con letter

which

We don't know the cost causation here does does it don't does it we don't know

That's why I just said we don't know cause and correlation here give give us some perspective here chamois

well

I just think it's kind of ridiculous to assume that

The second largest economy in the world

pivots

Based on one letter from one ceo. So I know that that's how the western describe the letter, please. Yeah

Well, apparently what happened was terry guo

Who's colloquially known as uncle terry who's a ceo fox con wrote a letter that essentially said, you know

If we don't figure out a way to get out of these pandas this this lockdown process

We're going to lose

You know our leadership in the global supply chain

And apparently that jolted the central planning commission to realize that they needed to

You know get out of these locked up. I think it's something different, which is I think this has been part and parcel

of a very focused and dedicated

plan

by g

Phase one was to consolidate power phase two was to get through november

And to basically get reappointed for life and dispel any other

You know rivals that he actually had

And now phase three is just to reopen the economy again. So this guy can basically sit on top of

The second largest economy in the world. So I think this is sort of a natural

flow of things

The other part of it, which I think is being under reported

is

I think that the way in which they did it was less responsive in my opinion to a letter from uncle terry

But was more responsive to the fact that there are people on the ground and I think that these guys are getting

Very sophisticated in understanding how to give the chinese people some part of what they want

So that they're roughly happy enough to keep moving forward

And i'm not going to morally judge whether it's right or wrong

But it's just a comment on what the gameplay and the game theory seems to be coming from the leadership of china

So it's it's I think this is it's it's it's good for the chinese people

And the real question is what will it mean for the us economy if these guys get their

Get their economy going again. We talked about this previously, but

This is a good example

of the

autocrat not necessarily being absolute

in in their authority and

the sense that I think we get at this point coming out of china is that there was enough dissent

From the populace on the lockdown and the experience of the lockdowns and we can all go online and see the videos of

Steel bars being put on doors to keep people in their apartment buildings and people screaming and buildings being on fire

People can't escape the buildings

How much of that was true or not and and riots in the street and people fighting with the covet testers

How much of it is true or not? We don't really know

But it certainly seems to indicate that there was enough dissent and enough unrest

That in order to stay in power

The ccp had to take action and they had to shift their position and shift their tone

And I think it's a really important moment to observe

that sometimes the ccp

and you know

Perhaps even we can extend this into other

autocratic regimes that we think are absolute in their authority and they're in power and their power

Perhaps are necessarily influenced by the people that they are there to govern and that they are

You know ruling over and that

While we don't think about these places as democracies

Perhaps they're not entirely

the traditionally defined autocracy

That there is the an influence that the people can have and maybe we see the same change happening in Iran

with young people and a population that's more modern that's growing and swelling and size that doesn't want to accept some of the

traditional norms and the traditional

Laws and you know, maybe that will kind of start to resonate around the world

That the internet is starting to do what everyone hoped and wanted it to do

Which is the democratization of information the democratization of seeing other people's conditions and seeing what the rest of the world is and is like

Gives the populace the ability

To rise up and to say this is what we want because we know that there are better things out there

And these autocratic regimes have to start to shift slightly and over time. Maybe that has a real impact

Here's a specific statistic and chart for everybody

The demographics of uh, iran are incredibly

Um

Notable if you look at this chart

For those of you listening

It just shows

People by age and how many what percentage of the population they are or actually the world numbers of the population as you can see

It's basically like a pair

You have very few old people and you've have a lot of people in their 20s and younger

And so young people are adjacent. It's really

40s and 30s. It's really okay. So 40s 30s

Uh, you you don't have the geriatric population that you see in other countries like japan

Um, and so the demographics of iran are extremely

weighted towards younger people

millennials gen Xers and younger

And uh, they have vpns virtual private networks. They can see everything happening

in the free world

Versus let's say closed societies and so I think that's what gives me a lot of hope

Is that these countries are going to have to evolve because young people are seeing how the rest of the world lives

And I think that's a big part of the change termoth. What are you with?

About iran specifically

I think demographic change and then china and demographic change slash protests

I've said this before and i've been tweeting about this for years

But people so poorly understand demographics. Everybody thinks that we have a surplus of people and we don't

And we need to have a positive birth rate in order to kind of

Continue to support the expansion of the world and gdp and we need that and right now we're not in that situation

If you look at a country by country basis, a lot of these countries

um are facing that

in a pretty cataclysmic way the most

Sensitive country to this is china. I mean their population get current course and speed. I think the last number is it's going to have

By 2100 there'll be about 600 million people in china

Which is unbelievably disruptive in a very negative way for them, right?

Because you will have a lot of people who are entering the workforce having to support

An entire cohort of people above them in terms of age right who are retired etc

So the state's going to have to get much much more actively involved over the next 50 years in china

And then you look at other countries like nigeria or india who are in uh, you know

At the beginning of what could be a multi decade boom

Because you have 20 year olds that will be entering the workforce

You know, they'll effectively work for less than their older counterparts, right?

So then there'll be an incentive then to bring work on shore into those countries

And so it's going to have huge impacts because then you have rising gdp

You'll have rising expectations of living quality. You'll have rising expectations of how

Governments treat those people. So it's all kind of positive in general, but the world needs more people

Let's just be clear, especially in western countries. We are going to be not we're not as badly off as china

But we're not far behind. Yeah, here's a quick view of china in japan

Yeah, the same kind of I don't know what they exactly call these charts are kind of like vertical histograms, but

You do start and again, you know data is hard to come by in some countries, but you know, china is starting to get top heavy

When compared to iran and then if you look at japan

quite stunning

there's just no young people left and

They live very uh, too much older ages in japan

It's this longevity is one of their great strengths as a population as a country and so these demographics can't be fought

You're going to have a constricting economy in japan

And their place in the world is going to be very very different

Okay, where do we want to go to next? You know, I asked my opinion on on

I usually you just talk so go ahead. I didn't want to I didn't know I just talk

No, I usually have to fight to give my opinion. Oh, here we go

Listen, have your agent call my agent. We'll talk about it. Okay. Uh, we'll talk about it

I have a slightly different view of what's happening in china, uh, jason, which is

You know, I think that the people there need to stop harassing the ccp

You see the chinese communist party. They're the elites. They've set things up for the benefit of the people

They're not engaged in shadow banning. They're just you know, they have a system there to you know to engage in censorship

To prevent abuse and harm. Yeah, right. That's the system. They've set up, right?

And the people just need to understand that that when they say things like

You know, when they oppose things like covet lockdowns like jay baratria did they need to understand that that is engaging in abuse

and harm

You see exactly. Yes. And you know what they they've provided reeducation camps for citizens who need

You know to um, maybe rethink their positions on freedom and their wages the hours they work

And they're and their social conditions. You're you're absolutely correct. China really has built a perfect model for a society

Yeah, well well said sacks

Right now we can move forward. Let's go now. We're going for it. We are finally. We're in agreement by the way

You know, that's going to get clipped out and go viral

You understand, right?

According to according to our elites according to our elites like yoel roth or taylor lorenz to criticize them

is a form of harassment

You understand that right so therefore what the people in china are doing specifically by opposing lockdowns

You know, they're taking the jay baratria point of view. They're engaging in harm and abuse

And harassment of their betters of their elites disagreement

Why won't they just submit to the social credit system that has been set up for them?

For their benefit it's for their benefit. Why question it. Yeah, just accept accept your fate and work hard

For the good of the people great great points. Let's move forward. Shall we talk about sales?

I think it's actually a pretty it's a it's pretty good satire. I agree

All right, I think we have to talk about ftx. I I don't know if you saw and I

The people covering for spf

It continues to be an absolute joke the number of interviews that spf is doing is absurd

But the people carrying water for him is is is even more offensive

I mean, if you're a criminal trying to cover up your crime, okay, we get it

You're trying to cover up and stay out of jail

But kevin oliri

who

Calls himself mr. Wonderful

Was on cmbc trying to defend the fact

That he was given

This is stunning by the way

15 fucking million dollars to be a spokesperson for ftx. So the grift

Not only went to the press

politicians

But now commentators on cmbc

15 million dollars to put that in context. I mean you're talking what an elite nba player gets from nike

This does not exist in the world

Uh, you know kevin oliri might get you know 50 to 200 k for speaking gigs

But nobody gets 15 million dollars to show

Here's a 75 second clip that I don't know if you've all have seen

but is

unbelievably stunning see on the other side of 75 seconds

If you're a defense attorney that represents someone that you know is guilty, you got to say, yeah, well, they're innocent

But you may know they're guilty

You may know they're guilty if you find someone if you watch someone kill someone. Yeah, they're innocent

I don't think there's only the murder of my money in this case. Okay. It's it's murder of of ftx's money

Everybody's look joe

If you because it was you money that you got I don't I don't think you should be singing the blues right now at all

Oh, yes, I'm singing the blues. Why because you're 15 million didn't pan out that you that's a lot of money

Paid spokesperson. It's a lot of money. You didn't have to do much for that. That's that's found money. That's a different decision

That's a different discussion. I

You know, you can make that decision on your own, but I'm going to this point on money

That if you want to say he's guilty before he's tried. I just don't understand it

But it may end up possibly 15 for reputation on everything else. That's the problem. That's why I stay on this pursuit

I'm very transparent about it. I've disclosed everything. I know about it

I will find out more information if I make the credit committee. I will act as a fiduciary for everybody involved

I will testify. I am an advocate for this industry and this changes nothing

Just look at the numbers that came out of circle today. I'm an investor there, too

You've got the I lost it all on ftx and we have a fantastic print on circle the promise of crypto remains

This will not change it

Pretty crazy 15 million bucks any thoughts on the continuing sbf saga sacks

Well, I don't know why we should care so much about him. I mean kevin learo, but um

But look, it's indicative, right? It's indicative of all these guys that got money from this guy. Who is he?

Who is he? He's on shark tank. He's one of what he's on shark tank and he's a contributor cmbc

Who's on multiple times a week the point is like you've got

The grift I'm just trying to point out 15 million dollars to a cmbc commentator is just an extraordinary payoff

I've never heard of anything like that. I don't I don't think it's fair to pick on kevin oliri per se

Because there is a bunch of those guys that took money from him, you know a bunch of athletes did

Probably a bunch of movie stars hats republicans democrats. Yeah, like everybody got paid by this guy

Okay, just like in the just like in the twitter example

I think it's important in this case to generalize

Is because the generalized thing is the real problem. Look if you want to focus on the crux of this

You have a concept in law that sax knows better than the rest of us called fraudulent conveyance

And we have example after example

Where it does not matter whether it was in the bernie madeoff example or for example jason

We talked about it the guy in la that lost all the money client funds playing poker

Yep, you have to give the money back

Especially if it was fraudulently conveyed to you explain can you explain this in detail for a second?

So the audience understands well on my understanding which is very basic

And I think david can probably do a much better job is the following which is

if you get money

some way

But it comes from somebody who fraud fraudulently acquired that money

You have to give the money back. So in this example what it would mean

Is if that they can show that that $15 million that this guy got

Came from sbf basically rating the piggy bank

of user accounts

He's going to have to pay the money back just like for example in the madeoff fraud

the

The the folks that went to find the money were able to go back to folks that actually redeemed even the beginning early ones and said

I understand that you didn't know any better. But this was fraudulently conveyed to you

So we need the money back and they got the money back

In that case if they had put a million in and it grew to three million

They got their million principal back

But the two million in gains which were ill gotten had to be returned returned returned exactly as I understand it

Based on just what I've read that there's a 90 day rule around contributions meaning that

If I think this has to do with the bankruptcy that that if he donated money within 90 days

Then that can be unwound

so

Yeah, but I do think it creates potentially a powerful incentive here

by politicians and various political groups

For him not to be convicted of fraud for him to be able to plead this out into some sort of negligence

Because they don't have to give the money back. They keep the bag. What an incredible insight

Well, this is what I think so interesting about the kevin oliri thing. It's not about kevin oliri

but it's about the fact that the money was spread around so widely and into such like deep trenches of

the regulatory society

Into the blood influencers

Yeah, and basically I think the guy like cemented

this the he thought that like which which I think by the way is a really interesting product of

The crypto ecosystem and the model that's so many kind of crypto businesses have engaged in over the years

Which is if you can fester the belief then there is a business if you cannot fester the belief

There is no business that there isn't a fundamental productivity driver

It's about building a belief system and you can buy a belief system if you can take money that people have given you

You can embed it in influencers and celebrities

And politicians and regulators and if you give it to enough of these people and you give enough of it to them

Maybe that belief system solidifies and your thing becomes real

Which is a classic rift technique by the way in the grifters. Oh, tell us all about it jakel. Yeah. Yeah

You have this uh, the master. No, no, it's the patina and it's this uh, you know, you look like you're incredibly rich

You know, you're you're going to fancy restaurants. You're wearing an expensive suit

You're getting in a sports car and then you own some palazzo whatever

And then some other rich person comes and you get them to invest in something and then you have scone with the money

But they see all the accoutrements you check all the boxes your parents were stanford you went to mit

And you are donating large sums of money and you got this big table at the club and you got a penthouse

Everybody starts to feel well

Might is right. You got the wealth there might be how would you guys?

Like how would you guys feel about honestly honestly? No backing the ceo

Of a growth stage company that you put your firm's money into

Who lives in a hundred and thirty million dollar house and has not yet exited the business?

Yeah, absolute alarm bells everywhere. Never done. This is why I'm not a fan. I never would do it

Let me let me ask you guys a question

Or huge secondary sales. Yeah, let me ask you guys a question

Do you think that a billion dollars of dark money could stop a red wave just asking for a friend?

A billion dollars and dark money was over-weighted to democrat sacks. No, honestly. Do you think it's over-weighted the money?

Yes, his mother was a huge democratic bundler

Yeah, and and moreover the the specific politicians he needed to influence there. Yes, there were some republicans

But by and large it was the sec

Are you the first person to make this claim? I want to say did you hear it here first on the olive pod?

Much credit. David sacks. David sacks making the declaration that I think we on the red wave was stopped because of well

Let me ask you. Let me ask a follow-up question. What do you think would have more impact?

on our election

Enormous amounts of dark money going to democrats or

extensive shadow banning

conservative influencers

Yeah, which one do you think would have a bigger impact?

And in the 50-50 country where I mean the scales are like balance where these elections are just a few thousand votes

Yeah, what do you think the result is going to be if we actually have a level playing field?

We get rid of this swindlers dark money. Yeah, that's an interesting question. Let me add a thing to that

Um, what would have a bigger impact this uh

super great episode. By the way, I think this is great except for when you guys had your fight like or

Taking away a woman's right to choose after 50 years of giving it to them

Which would have a bigger impact on the red wave. That did have a big impact, but I think we're gonna move past that

I think we're gonna move past that. Yeah. All right. Great. Yeah

Great great great strategic sacks. What do you think about the cinema christian cinema kirsten cinema flipping to independent?

Do you think that's a big deal or I think I think it's really interesting

I think it's actually a very shrewd move on her part. Oh

She's got her first of all. I think she's great. You know, yeah, just tell us tell us about her sex

No, he well, she's she's she is the center from a arizona

Formerly democrat now independent who is in the mold of you know, john mccain who is a former senator from arizona

Sort of this maverick independent and she does not count out to her party orthodoxy

and when biden

Wanted to pass three and a half trillion of build back better spending

She along with mansion opposed it and I think saved the administration

From this gigantic boondoggle that would have been inflation much much worse now mansion got all the credit

But she was equally responsible for putting a hold on that and then as a result

They only did the 750 billion inflation reduction act. So she's willing to buck her own party now as a result of that

I think they were planning on she was going to get primaried that the progressive wing of the party was planning on primarying her

and by moving to an independent in a sense she preempts that

Because what she's now saying is she's now sort of like, you know, uh, bernie sanders is an independent or this guy, uh,

angus king from from main they still caucus

With the democrats, but they're independence and the end and the democrats don't run

Uh candidates against them because they know

That if they do you'll have a republican or democrat and independent

And the democrats and the independence will split the vote and the republican will win

So basically she's now daring

The democrats. Hey, if you want to run a candidate against me, I'm not going to sit around and get primaried by them

You go ahead and run somebody but then we're both going to lose to the republican. That's what's smart about it

I think she's daring Schumer to run somebody against her. It's also interesting. She's she's the only

Member of congress I've read that's non-theist, uh, which is kind of like atheist

She doesn't talk about god or doesn't believe in god and I think she's the first openly bisexual member of congress

She's a maverick

Certainly sacks, do you think she held up on making this decision till after that georgia senate runoff election

Finished and do you think that it influenced the decision? I don't know, but I think that the

consideration for her is yeah, well imagine if she doesn't make this move now, okay?

And then in two years, well, I guess really next year she gets primaried

Okay, and then what if she loses the primary? It's going to be very hard for her to run as an independent at that point

It'll look like sour grapes or loser, right? But if she goes independent now

She's saying listen, I'm running as an independent no matter what the question you have to make is what the democratic party

Is whether to support me or basically tank this election and throw it will we see more of this purple approach?

I was just gonna ask you what does this mean for Joe Manchin?

Well, I don't think Joe Manchin has this problem and I'll tell you why because

West Virginia unlike Arizona is like a plus 22 red state

Joe Manchin is the only politician in that state

Who could win that seat for the Democrats when Joe Manchin retires that seat is going Republican

And Schumer knows this the Democrats know this they think they're lucky stars every day that they got Joe Manchin

Because otherwise that would be a Republican seat and so look all this stuff about how the progressives were upset with Manchin

And all that bad publicity he got that may be, you know, the sort of progressive wing is going to say that publicly

But the smart Democrats know that they're very lucky to have a politician like Joe Manchin

To have a politician like Joe Manchin on their side of the aisle. I gotta ask a question to you Chamath. Why

do Democrats

Why why are they

It seems to be so anti moderate Democrats. Why are they so

resistant to

The concept of a moderate Democrat when obviously moderate Democrats seem to have an advantage in these elections

Well, no, I think David described it well, which is that in many of the seats

This is both true for Republicans and for Democrats. You're not really competing in a general election

You're competing in a primary and if you win a primary, you're probably going to win

So like, you know, if you're in Mississippi, for example, you just have to win the Republican primary

Nothing else matters and then you're just going to skate to victory

And so the real question is who votes in those are different oftentimes in who votes in the general

And this is why you get this dispersion that's happening where folks

Seem to be getting more and more extreme. It's reflecting the sound bites that those primary voters want to hear

And this is the big problem that we have and that's why like if you have

A bunch of this, you know, rank choice voting or, you know, these other kinds of methods

It starts to clean that up so that you move people

More into the moderate middle

But that's why that's why you have this crazy stuff happening. All right, everybody

This has been another amazing episode of the all-in podcast for the dictator the Sultan of science and David Sacks

I am Jay Cal. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye

Oh

He should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just

It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow

What you're about be what you're be

We need to get

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