Afghanistan, every mention
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tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone David Sacks 76Jason Calacanis 26David Friedberg 13Chamath Palihapitiya 7Emil Michael 3Brad Gerstner 3Graham Allison 2Antonio Gracias 2Senator Eric Schmitt 1Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Afghanistan comes up
GPT-6 Hits AGI? Tech Euphoria 2.0, SF Mansion Shortage, NYC Bans AI in Schools & Venezuela Oil Deal
- ▶ 1:21:09 David Sacks You know, we're not trying to stand up an army here like we did in Afghanistan.
Rahm Emanuel: Trump's Foreign Policy, China, Europe's Decline, Immigration & DSA vs Democrats
- ▶ 1:06:43 Rahm Emanuel We fought Iraq and Afghanistan with two tax cuts.
China Outbuilds America 230-to-1. Saronic Has a Plan
- ▶ 2:47 Dino Mavrucas I personally experienced 2005, there were four SEALs trapped on a mountainside in Afghanistan, and the helicopter got shot, got shot down while going to rescue them.
World's First Trillionaire, Anthropic Fable Banned, The New Oligarchs, Iran Peace Deal
- ▶ 1:19:15 David Sacks Iraq and Afghanistan.
John Fetterman: 'I'm the Only Democrat in Congress Saying This'
- ▶ 16:16 unnamed speaker And that uncertainty, I think, is what has a lot of folks saying, I don't know if this is going to become another Iraq war or Afghanistan type situation.
Iran War, Oil Shock, Off Ramps, AI's Revenue Explosion and PR Nightmare
- ▶ 7:32 Brad Gerstner So my suspicion is that these impacts are shorter duration, but right now the market's having a little bit of post-traumatic stress, flashbacks to Afghanistan and Iraq, and wondering if we might be wandering into a quagmire.
- ▶ 26:19 David Sacks I mean, these are people who never wanted to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, would still be there after 20 years if they had their choice.
“This is Bibi’s War” - Harvard’s Graham Allison on the Influences and Endgame of the Iran War
- ▶ 3:55 Graham Allison Building a new regime, regime change, is something that we know historically doesn't work very well, at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:31 David Friedberg For some of these extremist groups to seize control and seize power, and we don't have the resources to go in and have another multi-decade Afghanistan Iraq problem. 2 times in the scene
War with Iran + Pentagon vs Anthropic with Under Secretary of War Emil Michael
- ▶ 5:31 Emil Michael In terms of boots on the ground, there's no scenario where we have some protracted boots on the ground, Afghanistan, Iraq too, like scenario.
- ▶ 16:38 Emil Michael Like if in Afghanistan, if the guy had a small gun, you had to have a small gun. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 25:05 Chamath Palihapitiya Insight that you just gave about Afghanistan to me seems so scary because the men and women that signed up for the American military, they're doing this to fight on behalf of this country.
All-In's 2026 Predictions
- ▶ 27:48 David Sacks That was the mistake of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp: Why the West is Destroying Itself, Data Empire, Skeptics, How to Win
- ▶ 38:08 David Sacks Was it a good idea to occupy Afghanistan, Iraq? 2 times in the scene
Senator Eric Schmitt: Exposing the Biggest Censorship Scandal in US History
- ▶ 47:34 Senator Eric Schmitt Who presided over the, with the disastrous withdrawal of Afghanistan, who, um, by basically on his watch, Russia invaded Ukraine.
12 Day War, Socialism Wins in NYC, Stocks All-Time High, AI Copyright, Science Corner
- ▶ 24:34 David Sacks Backfired in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and on and on.
- ▶ 33:54 Jason Calacanis And Freeburg, the major part of this paradigm shift that we're seeing here comes from an investment in energy in the United States since the Iraq war, since the Afghanistan war.
Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
- ▶ 39:48 David Sacks I mean, you look at the forever wars in the Middle East, we had interventions and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. 3 times in the scene
DOGE updates + Liberation Day Tariff Reactions with Ben Shapiro and Antonio Gracias
- ▶ 7:57 Antonio Gracias That's like, you know, there are programs for Afghans, example, the translators that came in after the war, right? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:37:35 Ben Shapiro I think that's exactly what happened with Biden, with the Afghanistan withdrawal, for example.
Mark Cuban: Love/Hate Relationship with Trump, Why He's Backing Kamala Harris
- ▶ 22:26 David Sacks He inherited Syria and Afghanistan, and he wanted to get out, and the generals didn't let him.
OpenAI's $150B conversion, Meta's AR glasses, Blue-collar boom, Risk of nuclear war
- ▶ 1:23:57 David Friedberg You guys remember those from Afghanistan and the damage that those bunker buster bombs caused?
Deep State, Hegemony & U.S. Foreign Policy: John Mearsheimer vs. Jeffrey Sachs | All-In Summit
- ▶ 11:09 John Mearsheimer Think Iraq, Afghanistan, so forth and so on.
- ▶ 12:42 Jeffrey Sachs You would think that the State Department, if they were interested in state building, would ask him one day, one moment, something about Afghanistan.
- ▶ 13:49 Jason Calacanis So it's one thing to, you know, tell, uh, people in Afghanistan, you need to evolve, you know, to be a perfect democracy like the one we have here.
Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz
- ▶ 1:31:56 David Sacks Moreover, he has many public statements saying that he was, um, deployed to Operation Enduring Freedom, which I think was Afghanistan, and he simply wasn't.
Kamala surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escalation, Ackman postpones IPO
- ▶ 56:50 David Friedberg It's like the Russians and the Americans trying to chase the Taliban in Afghanistan forever. 2 times in the scene
Trump assassination attempt, Secret Service failure, Inside the RNC, VC liquidity problem
- ▶ 33:55 David Sacks It's just like the Afghanistan withdrawal. 2 times in the scene
Presidential Debate Reaction, Biden Hot Swap?, Tech unemployment, OpenAI considers for-profit & more
- ▶ 23:36 David Sacks A line that I hadn't heard him say before is that, Joe, you never fired anyone, you know, and he was specifically talking about the Afghanistan withdrawal, but just more generally, when have you ever fired anyone for getting anything wrong?
- ▶ 53:58 Jason Calacanis This is after they've done tours in Afghanistan and, you know, speaking many different foreign languages.
GPT-4o launches, Glue demo, Ohalo breakthrough, Druck's Argentina bet, did Google kill Perplexity?
- ▶ 59:00 Jason Calacanis If you think about, you know, geopolitically what's going on in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, those places have tens of millions of people.
Sheryl Sandberg, plus open-source AI gene editing explained
- ▶ 48:35 Jason Calacanis And if this was an American situation, and we actually have a corollary, nine-eleven, we, we didn't go to Afghanistan to get hostages.
In conversation with Dean Phillips
- ▶ 34:12 Dean Phillips And Afghanistan was another example of that.
Jared Kushner: Israel-Hamas War, paths forward, macro picture, AI
- ▶ 1:29:18 Jared Kushner And I think it was right after, you know, the embarrassment of what happened with our withdrawal in Afghanistan, where they thought that we had a weak, uh, America that was going to come and do much to it.
E151: WW3 risk, War with Iran?, 4.9% GDP, startup failures growing, new Speaker & more
- ▶ 0:55 unnamed speaker Have you been to Afghanistan at night?
E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps
- ▶ 9:22 Jason Calacanis And if you look at the American response to nine, 11, you know, going into Afghanistan and dismantling Al Qaeda, a noble mission, and we didn't have any more terrorist attacks on America or very, we thwarted most terrorist attacks. 3 times in the scene
E148: McCarthy ousted, border chaos, Cruise's robotaxi "accident" & more
- ▶ 37:33 Jason Calacanis Afghanistan, people who supported us, Afghanis who supported us during the war. 2 times in the scene
In conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy
- ▶ 31:06 David Sacks We tried to turn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq into Madisonian democracies.
E134: Ukraine counteroffensive, China tensions, COVID Patient Zero, RFK Jr reaction & more
- ▶ 26:39 Brad Gerstner Afghanistan.
E132: SEC goes after crypto giants, Sequoia splits, LIV/PGA, Messi's deal + LIVE Q&A!
- ▶ 7:04 Jason Calacanis He was there and there are people from Afghanistan, China, all over the world coming in.
E130: DeSantis's Twitter Spaces, debt ceiling, Nvidia rips, state of VC, startup failure & more
- ▶ 40:32 David Sacks And we did that in Afghanistan.
- ▶ 48:55 David Sacks Whereas basically we declare a war on terrorism in response to nine, 11, and they use that authorization to go into Afghanistan, which I think was understandable.
In conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- ▶ 28:23 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Um, and we drove two million refugees with the Iraq war in its aftermath, Syria and Yemen and, you know, Pakistan and Afghanistan, two million refugees in Europe, destabilized democracy in Europe.
E120: Banking crisis and the great VC reset
- ▶ 1:26:04 David Sacks I know the spending run rate of this war is actually greater than what we did in Afghanistan and Afghanistan ended up being a. 20 year multi-trillion dollar operation that just flushed all that money down the drain. 4 times in the scene
E97: SPAC updates, public/private market overview, Putin's end game & more
- ▶ 46:02 David Friedberg Coming out of coming out of the financial crisis in 2008, 2009, Obama recommitted to Afghanistan and sent 17,000 troops to Afghanistan in early 2009. 4 times in the scene
E96: Adobe acquires Figma for $20B, TPB SPAC, FedEx CEO's recession warning, macro picture & more
- ▶ 1:13:39 David Sacks Cold War rules meaning covertly, like we did in Afghanistan.
- ▶ 1:25:21 Chamath Palihapitiya And, you know, in the 19 eighties, when Russia was at war with Afghanistan, there were these, uh, bodies that were sent home to Russia and these mothers got very, very upset and they protested.
E95: Winter is Coming, Europe's energy crisis, Kim Kardashian's new PE firm & more
- ▶ 42:18 David Sacks We never talk about Afghanistan anymore.
- ▶ 45:43 David Friedberg What did the United States do to Afghanistan? 2 times in the scene
E92: Adam Neumann's second act, a16z's $350M bet, housing policy, Inflation Reduction Act & more
- ▶ 51:02 David Sacks Is just stable, and it'll settle into forever war status, kind of like, like Afghanistan, these conflicts in the Middle East that's went on forever.
#AIS: Glenn Greenwald & Matt Taibbi discuss the new political divide, moderated by David Sacks
- ▶ 19:02 David Sacks One was these, you know, foreign wars, these interventions that we've had in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, that were disasters. 2 times in the scene
#AIS: Antonio Garcia Martinez & Glenn Greenwald debate Ukraine, moderated by David Sacks
- ▶ 0:58 David Sacks Um, many of you probably are not old enough to remember when the U S got into Iraq or Afghanistan.
- ▶ 17:07 David Sacks Well, I mean, look, what I've said is that I'm willing to arm Ukraine under Cold War rules, i.e. the way that we armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
- ▶ 19:25 Glenn Greenwald This is exactly what has repeated itself every time we've gone to war in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria.
E76.5: Food shortage, China's grand plan, inflation, French election plus an All-In Summit preview
- ▶ 31:00 David Sacks It's what got us into Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya.
E74: Market update, inverted yield curve, immigration, new SPAC rules, $FB smears TikTok and more
- ▶ 4:40 Jason Calacanis He couldn't get us out of Afghanistan. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:29:16 David Sacks Syria, Afghanistan. 2 times in the scene
E73: Late-stage VC markdowns and mistakes, market strategy, Ukraine/Russia update with Brad Gerstner
- ▶ 55:26 David Sacks Is for Russia to bleed out as, as long as possible in Ukraine for the US to fund an insurgency a la Afghanistan, where, you know, these fighters in eastern Ukraine are sort of like the Mujahideen. 3 times in the scene
E72: Impact of sanctions, deglobalization, food shortage risks, macroeconomic outlook and more
- ▶ 59:48 David Sacks Uh, Afghanistan.
E71: Russia/Ukraine deep dive: escalation, risk factors, financial fallout, exit ramps and more
- ▶ 4:23 David Sacks And, um, you know, it's too bad in a way we didn't have that kind of leadership among our allies and say Afghanistan, you know, we had, uh, this guy Ghani who got in the first helicopter out of there when the, when the trouble started.
- ▶ 16:40 David Friedberg Meaning, like, are we setting ourselves up for another Iraq, Afghanistan situation where we rush into a war and we don't have an exit strategy?
- ▶ 25:30 David Sacks And so we did things like arm the Mujahideen, you know, rebels in Afghanistan with Stinger missiles.
- ▶ 50:08 David Sacks Cringe, because regime change was the justification for the Iraq war, for Afghanistan, for Libya, for Syria, and every single one of those things has been a disaster.
E66: $FB's big drop, Rogan/Spotify mess, Xi/Putin meetup & supply chain issues with Ryan Petersen
- ▶ 1:35:48 David Sacks Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, they were huge mistakes, and now on top of it, we're talking about Ukraine.
E65: VC markup dynamics, Russia/US tensions over Ukraine, Altos Labs raises $3B, Stripe mafia & more
- ▶ 30:07 David Sacks We just got out of Afghanistan, and now they want us back in another war. 3 times in the scene
E64: Antitrust standards & enforcement, tech repricing, lab leak obfuscation, E63 reactions & more
- ▶ 17:09 David Sacks Um, you know, the, the goals of nation building Afghanistan for 20 years, our invasion of, uh, Libya. 3 times in the scene
E63: Insurrection indictments, human rights in the US and abroad, groundbreaking MS study and more
- ▶ 36:49 David Sacks Jason, we've gone blundering around the Middle East for 20 years now in Afghanistan. 3 times in the scene
Balaji Srinivasan: role of decentralization, China/US breakdown & more
- ▶ 24:48 David Sacks They did Belt and Road while we did nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, right? 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 34:59 David Sacks Yeah, so, you know, if you look at kind of the, the history of the West's interaction with the rest of the world, and let's talk about colonialism, and whether, whether you're talking about colonialism over the last few hundred years, or… 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 46:46 Balaji Srinivasan Afghanistan, huge defeat, two trillion dollars.
E47: Facebook's week from hell, Ellen Pao on sexism in Elizabeth Holmes coverage, Newsom wins & more
- ▶ 1:05:23 David Sacks It was the final debacle of our Afghanistan involvement. 3 times in the scene
E46: False Ivermectin narratives, regulatory grift, wartime mentality in solving issues & more
- ▶ 41:13 David Sacks So when Afghanistan happened, you know, we spent two trillion dollars, 2500 American casualties, 40,000 wounded. 4 times in the scene
E44: USA's Afghanistan embarrassment, China's new algo laws, future of robots + Italy recap!
- ▶ 12:07 Jason Calacanis The United States started the process of leaving Afghanistan after a 20 year war, uh, in which I think it's pretty safe to say that was an unwinnable war. 12 times in the scene
- ▶ 25:53 David Sacks He was appointed by Congress about 13 years ago to look into what was really happening in Afghanistan and to report on quote, quote unquote, lessons learned from the Afghan war. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 36:43 David Sacks China is going to Afghanistan right now and cutting deals with the Taliban to build a highway so they can get to the rare earth minerals, which, uh, Afghanistan is rich in, and they're going to use the super highway. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 58:06 David Friedberg I mean, imagine if the US government instead of, you know, having some folks go to Congress and say, I want a trillion dollars and spend 25 years in Afghanistan.
- ▶ 58:58 David Sacks But here's the problem is I think what Afghanistan is specifically the military industrial complex shows is how good these special interests get at extracting money from the system while providing so little value. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:10:39 David Sacks You got defense contractors in Afghanistan who are just looting, looting the Pentagon and the federal budget because it's in their interest.
E29: Coinbase goes public, direct listings vs. IPOs, unions & more with Bestie Guestie Brad Gerstner
- ▶ 50:31 Chamath Palihapitiya There's a bunch of things happening in government that I just want to get your guys's reaction to one, which was the crazy summary that somebody did about the reaction to Biden pulling out of Afghanistan. 5 times in the scene
E11: Election Night Special featuring Phil Hellmuth, Bill Gurley, Brad Gerstner & more!
- ▶ 1:57:41 Brad Gerstner Who fought, who fought in Afghanistan, and who goes on Fox News every damn night, right, and has a conversation that leaves Republicans saying, oh, that guy's pretty smart.