Aug 29, 2025 · 1h 31m · allin
Trump Takes On the Fed, US-Intel Deal, Why Bankruptcies Are Up, OpenAI's Longevity Breakthrough
Jason Calacanis · 26m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 19m spoken David Friedberg · 19m spoken David Sacks · 14m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg debate Federal Reserve independence, government equity stakes in tech companies, rising corporate bankruptcies, and a breakthrough AI-driven longevity discovery from OpenAI and Retro Biosciences. They also share event announcements for the All-In Summit, discuss global startup expansion in Saudi Arabia, and reflect on personal anecdotes and macroeconomic trends.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 1.3 Guest disagreement 2.6 The hosts pushing back 2.7
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 34:37 Sacks accuses Jason of defending Powell and defusing Fed accountability
Sacks aggressively confronts Jason, accusing him of defusing Powell's accountability and defending political Fed behavior.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 30:15 Jason pushes back against Sacks' single-man narrative of PowellJason refuses Sacks' framing that Powell acts unilaterally, insisting on the voting structure of the Fed and citing dissenting votes.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:15:30 Friedberg explains OpenAI protein modeling for Yamanaka factorsFriedberg educates the room on how fine-tuned LLMs trained on protein sequences generated novel proteins 50x more effective than natural OSKM factors.
The host holds their own ▶ 19:02 Friedberg demonstrates yield curve mechanics against easy rate cutsFriedberg uses technical bond market expertise to explain how artificial short-term rate cuts can trigger long-term yield spikes and economic instability.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome Back and All-In Summit Announcement | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Jason and Friedberg joke about summit sponsors and Friedberg's awkward attempt at an ad read. The dynamic is purely playful banter and event housekeeping. | |
| Jason's Brooklyn Childhood and Party Memories | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The co-hosts share personal anecdotes about childhood birthday parties and early political awakenings. The conversation is lighthearted social banter without debate or expertise display. | |
| On Running Showcase, Name Drops, and Ben Stiller Banter | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Chamath shares shoe recommendations while Jason plugs his startup program expanding to Riyadh. Sacks offers brief sarcastic banter regarding Ben Stiller. | |
| President Trump Fires Fed Governor Lisa Cook | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason sets up the topic detailing the historical context of Trump attempting to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and her subsequent lawsuit. The segment is an introductory news monologue. | |
| Chamath's First Principles Critique of the Federal Reserve | 7 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Chamath argues forcefully that the Fed is inherently partisan and proposes replacing its rate-setting functions with market oracles on blockchain. Jason questions whether removing governors amounts to political weaponization. | |
| Friedberg Defends Fed Independence and 14-Year Terms | 8 | 1 | 2 | 4 | Friedberg defends Fed independence, warning that aggressive short-term rate cuts could spur inflation and spike long-term 30-year bond yields. He argues 14-year terms are crucial for long-term economic stability. | |
| Sacks Details Powell's Political Decisions and Inflation Bubble | 7 | 1 | 4 | 3 | Sacks argues Jay Powell delayed rate hikes in 2021 purely to secure his renomination from Biden, driving an asset bubble. Chamath agrees on the severity of the subsequent tightening shock. | |
| Free Market Rate-Setting Debate and Elizabeth Warren's Letter | 7 | 3 | 6 | 6 | Jason challenges Sacks by pointing out the Fed's balanced multi-member voting structure rather than single-man rule. Sacks fires back by reading Elizabeth Warren's letter to prove political pressure on Powell prior to elections. | |
| Debate Over Fed Independence and Interest Rate Cuts | 7 | 2 | 7 | 7 | Sacks accuses Jason of shilling for the Fed while Jason highlights dissenting votes to disprove single-handed political control. Chamath insists free-market SOFR rates superiorly price real-time risk. | |
| Intel Stake Deal and Government Equity Models | 8 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Chamath and Sacks support taking government equity over free grants, citing Chinese industrial policy and historical TARP missteps. Friedberg proposes routing equity gains into Social Security, while Jason criticizes Trump's public bullying style. | |
| Grover Norquist Op-Ed and Capping Government Spending | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Jason highlights Grover Norquist's op-ed favoring Colorado's population-plus-inflation spending cap model. The rest of the panel finds the concept largely uncontroversial. | |
| Corporate Bankruptcies and Commercial Real Estate Debt Crisis | 8 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Chamath explains how ZERP inflated zombie companies that are now running out of cash reserves. Sacks provides a detailed walkthrough of the $2.2T commercial real estate refinancing crisis and equity gaps. | |
| OpenAI's Longevity Breakthrough and Cellular Rejuvenation | 9 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Friedberg delivers a masterclass on cellular rejuvenation, explaining how OpenAI fine-tuned a model on protein sequences to optimize Yamanaka factors 50x over baseline. The co-hosts engage in a fascinated technical discussion. | |
| RFK Jr., Vaccine Policies, and Public Health Perception | 5 | 1 | 4 | 3 | Sacks and Chamath tease Jason for blindly following CDC recommendations during COVID. The panel discusses RFK Jr.'s vaccine policy adjustments and public skepticism toward health bureaucracies. | |
| Federal Reserve Interest Rates and Political Influences | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | The episode ends with light banter about social clubs, wine pricing hacks at the Lynx Club, and final jokes about Fed policy before wrapping up. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Sacks: Gen Z is becoming super conservative due to wokeness backlash
“I mean, if you look at the polling, this generation of kids are like super conservative because it's a big reaction to wokeness being shoved down their throats.”
Calacanis: Founder University expanding to Riyadh in November with Sanabil
“We just sort of soft launched that we're going to be bringing Founder University. It's one of the things I do in my day job is invest in startups. So we created this Founder University. We do it here in the United States. But we had a lot of interest to bring …”
Calacanis: Trump is the first US president to fire a Fed governor
“The first time in US history that a president has fired a Fed governor.”
Chamath: Federal Reserve appointees are partisan, not independent
“I think that the Fed is no different than any other appointee to a part of the government, which is that they are partisan.”
Chamath: US presidents should be allowed to remove Federal Reserve governors
“I think it's very reasonable to say that any sitting president should be allowed to remove a Fed governor if he believes it's not aligned with the wishes of the electorate and the voters and the plan that was voted in.”
Chamath: SOFR is a better rate mechanism than the Fed funds rate
“I think SOFR is a much better rate mechanism than the Fed funds rate at this point.”
Chamath: US Commerce Department is publishing GDP data to the blockchain
“Today the commerce department did something that was pretty exceptional. They said, we're going to start publishing data to the blockchain. All the GDP data is now going into a blockchain.”
Friedberg: Dropping short-term rates will spike 30-year bond yields via inflation
“The problem is, as a lot of economists have talked about, and as we've seen in the bond market, is that that could Really push up the long end of the curve, because if you suddenly start to flood the market with capital in the short term by dropping rates toda…”
Sacks: Trump's pressure on the Fed is not lawfare
“Well, this isn't lawfare. This is the president pushing back on, I think, a Fed that's been overly political.”
Sacks: Powell maintained transitory inflation narrative to secure his Biden renomination
“So in other words, he went along with this whole transitory narrative to get renominated by Biden. And then a week later on November 30th, he said it was time to retire the word transitory.”
Sacks: Powell's delayed rate hikes caused 2021 bubble, 2022 crash
“And it caused an asset bubble in twenty-twenty-one, it caused the nine percent inflation that we had the following year, and it caused the crash that we saw in twenty-twenty-two and 23.”
Sacks: Powell initiated 50-bps rate cut after Elizabeth Warren demanded it
“Powell started the rate cutting cycle last fall with a 50 basis point cut right before the election shortly after Elizabeth Warren sent him a letter demanding a cut.”
Calacanis: Federal Reserve will cut interest rates 25 basis points in September
“They're going to cut 25, obviously, in September.”
Sacks: Single-threading US chip supply chain on Taiwan is a major national security risk
“And it resulted in chip manufacturing being offshored and it all ended up on the island of Taiwan. And that's a huge national security issue for the United States, because now our whole supply chain for this critical resource is single threaded on Taiwan.”
Friedberg: Direct government capital, regulation, or buying signals market failure
“It is an indication that the free market has failed in some way if the government is stepping in to either provide unique regulatory unlock, or the government is providing capital, or the government is basically stepping in to be the biggest or primary buyer o…”
Chamath: Foreign capital commitments from US tariff deals exceed $1 trillion
“If you add that all up, we've exceeded a trillion dollars of inbound capital on the investment side.”
Friedberg: New government income streams trigger pre-emptive spending over debt reduction
“Anytime we create a new income stream at the federal government, or we have some sort of growing asset that you mark up on the book, someone tends to invest ahead of the curve on that, meaning someone takes that and they're like, oh great, I can spend more now…”
Sacks: US government should only take equity during unavoidable bailouts
“I think it makes sense in situations where the government was going to do a bailout anyway, because there's a national security priority or some other kind of priority. That the government's determined we have to do. You want to get equity for it.”
Calacanis: Colorado caps state budget growth by population and inflation
“In Colorado, a Democrat state, they have limited the size of the budget to be based upon the population And inflation. So they have been returning money to taxpayers and lowering their state interest rate.”
Chamath: Post-ZIRP corporate bankruptcies will increase as market constraints lift
“So if you put these two things together, I think you're going to see more, not less bankruptcies, but I think the outcome is probably positive in that you clean out a bunch of businesses that were taking up time and resources.”
Sacks: $2.2T in commercial real estate debt matures before 2028
“And there's 2.2 trillion of debt, CRE debt that's maturing before 2028.”
Sacks: One third of San Francisco commercial real estate is vacant
“Like a third of the real estate in San Francisco is basically vacant.”
Friedberg: OpenAI and Retro Biosciences created 50x more effective rejuvenation proteins
“They actually got these new proteins to be 50 times more effective than the OSK and M proteins and basically rejuvenation or cellular Reset.”
Friedberg: First cellular rejuvenation drug approval is 7 to 12 years away
“Just knowing the clinical path there, I would say we're probably somewhere between seven and 12 years.”
Friedberg: Fine-tuned smaller AI models will dominate over monolithic massive models
“That we're going to have these fine-tuned smaller models for specific applications rather than have one massive AI model that does everything for everyone in every context. People are going to take these base models, tune them, and they're going to be far less…”