Jul 30, 2021 · 1h 17m · allin
E42: China's tech crackdown, CRISPR breakthrough, practical climate change solutions & more
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In Episode 42 of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Sacks analyze major macroeconomic and geopolitical shifts, including China's technological crackdown, evolving COVID-19 mandates, biological and clean-tech innovations, and the essential mindset driving entrepreneurial resilience.
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 99.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.4 Guest teaching 3.7 Guest disagreement 2.3 The hosts pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 33:19 Chamath rejects Jason's premise on Chinese innovation
Chamath forcefully interrupts and rejects Jason's assertion that entrepreneurs will stop building in China, arguing founders will still take the shot for a billion-dollar outcome.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 11:11 Sacks challenges Chamath on midterm election predictionsSacks directly refutes Chamath's argument that Republicans are committing political suicide over vaccines, citing specific facts about Republican leaders who actively promote vaccination.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:28 Sacks articulates the end of the Deng Xiaoping bargainSacks clearly educates the group on the historical economic bargain set by Deng Xiaoping 40 years ago and how Xi Jinping has fundamentally altered it by subordinating wealth to national interests.
The host holds their own ▶ 42:30 Chamath frames CRISPR as the AWS moment for bioChamath demonstrates deep technical domain expertise by drawing an explicit structural analogy between cloud computing abstractions and the platformization of gene editing.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COVID-19 Delta Variant & Breakthrough Infection Predictions | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The hosts review their previous predictions on the Delta variant and breakthrough infections. They agree that vaccines protect against severe outcomes while acknowledging transmission among vaccinated individuals. | |
| Vaccine Passports & Corporate Mandates (NFL, Tech, Dining) | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Sacks outlines corporate and government vaccine mandates, highlighting policies in Israel, the NFL, and major tech firms. He explains how economic and operational incentives drive these private-sector mandates. | |
| Government Worker Mandates & Restaurant Policies | 6 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Chamath and Sacks discuss dining restrictions and government worker mandates. Sacks draws a sharp line between private business rights and government mandates over state employees, pointing out political inconsistencies regarding teachers unions. | |
| Midterm Political Fallout & CDC Guidance Lag | 7 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Sacks directly pushes back against Chamath's claim that Republicans are losing the midterm elections due to vaccine hesitancy. Sacks lists Republican governors and leaders who have been vaccinated and actively support vaccination. | |
| Fraudulent Vax Cards & Booster Shot Debate | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Jason brings up FBI warnings regarding fraudulent vaccine cards, while Sacks notes promising developments in oral antiviral pills as complementary treatments. | |
| Beijing's Multi-Front Tech & Education Crackdown | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Jason details Beijing's multi-front regulatory crackdown on education, tech monopolies, and music rights, citing massive wealth destructions like Gaotu Techedu. | |
| CCP Strategy, Tech Oligarchs & Demographic Crisis | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Chamath explains Beijing's dual strategy of asserting political control over tech oligarchs in the short term and managing a massive demographic decline by 2100 in the long term. | |
| US vs. China Tech Regulation & Financial Decoupling | 8 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Sacks contrasts US and Chinese regulatory approaches across data privacy, political power centers, and financial decoupling, explaining the forced reshoring of Chinese IPOs. | |
| Foreign Investment Risk & Capital Offshoring | 6 | 5 | 6 | 5 | Jason questions why Western investors or Chinese founders would remain active in China, but Chamath forcefully disagrees, arguing local founders will still take the shot for huge upside. | |
| The End of the Deng Xiaoping Bargain & Russia Risk Parity | 8 | 7 | 3 | 3 | Sacks articulates the fundamental shift in China from Deng Xiaoping's 40-year economic bargain to Xi Jinping's rule subordinating private wealth to CCP national interest. | |
| Forced Delistings, TikTok Carve-Out & US Security Concerns | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 | The hosts discuss the implications of Chinese tech nationalization, including TikTok's need for an American cap table and Zoom's engineering data risks. | |
| CRISPR In Vivo Breakthrough & Biology's AWS Moment | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Jason presents the clinical breakthrough of in vivo CRISPR gene editing, and Chamath frames it as the platformization and AWS moment for biotechnology. | |
| mRNA Expansion, Transhumanism & Form Energy Battery Innovation | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Sacks ponders the societal divide between biotechnology adopters and Luddites, while Chamath highlights Form Energy's long-duration iron battery innovation. | |
| Population Demographics & Market-Based Climate Solutions | 7 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Chamath highlights the severe economic risks of declining birth rates, while Sacks advocates for market-based tradable carbon permit schemes over Green New Deal mandates. | |
| Carbon Offsets, Superconductors & Innovation vs. Regulation | 8 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Chamath explains the physics and material science challenges of carbon capture and emphasizes room-temperature superconductors as the ultimate game-changer for energy. | |
| Immigrant Founders & the Entrepreneurial Mindset | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Chamath points out that leading superconductor innovators are all immigrants eager to build in the US, prompting Sacks to share an anecdote on entrepreneurial resilience. | |
| Quentin Tarantino's Career and Uncompromising Artistic Voice | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Jason and Sacks praise Quentin Tarantino's career resilience and refusal to self-censor, drawing parallels between independent filmmaking and startup building. | |
| The Disastrous Harvard Speech and Boston Trip Story | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | Chamath recounts a funny story about losing $550,000 playing Chinese poker on a flight to a Harvard speech where his anti-MBA comments made students walk out. | |
| Robinhood IPO and Retail Investing Dynamics | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Jason discusses Robinhood's public debut, defending retail investor participation and financial literacy against critics. |
Statements from this episode (30)
Sacks contracted COVID-19 from another vaccinated person
“I got it. I was vaccinated. I got it from someone who was vaccinated.”
Sacks: COVID-19 vaccines provide spectrum of protection, but vaccinated people transmit Delta
“Delta variant has slipped the vaccine. It still prevents the most serious cases. Generally speaking, we need to see it as a spectrum of protection rather than completely binary. But yeah, absolutely. You can get it and pass it on if you're vaccinated.”
Palihapitiya: Republicans will not win back the House in 2022 midterms
“I think that the Republicans were probably trending to basically win back the house. And now I don't think that's the case.”
Sacks: Gavin Newsom exempted teachers from vaccine mandate out of political weakness
“California, Said if you're a state employee, you gotta get vaccinated. But the one group they singled out were the teachers, because, you know, Gavin Newsom has no guts to stand up the teachers union whatsoever.”
Sacks: Every Republican governor is vaccinated and supports COVID-19 vaccines
“Every single Republican governor, every single one has been vaccinated and has supported the vaccine.”
Sacks: Tamiflu is completely effective at preventing flu deaths if taken early
“Like no one should ever die of the flu because Tamiflu is like completely effective at stopping it provided you take Tamiflu early.”
Calacanis: SoftBank selling Uber stake to cover Didi losses
“SoftBank is clearing a bunch of its Uber position to cover their losses in DD.”
Calacanis: Gaotu founder Larry Chen lost 99% of net worth
“Larry Chan, who is a Chinese education entrepreneur. He was worth fifteen billion in January. Now he's lost 99% of his net worth.”
Calacanis: Tencent lost $100 billion market cap in three days
“Tencent lost a hundred billion in market cap in three days earlier this week as China cracked down on what they call the monopoly in music rights.”
Palihapitiya: China's population will shrink to 700 million by 2100
“By the end of 2100, China's population will shrink from 1.2000000000 people down to about seven hundred million people.”
Palihapitiya: China will begin nationalizing its technology sector
“I think that what we're starting to see is the beginning of nationalizations. And I think it's going to start in technology universe, because those are the critical assets that the Chinese need to own for the future.”
Sacks: China shut down pipeline of 34 scheduled US tech IPOs
“There are 34 IPOs of major China Chinese tech companies that were scheduled to IPO in U S markets, and they have sort of shut that pipeline down.”
Sacks: The US and China look set to decouple financial markets
“And that is why I think you're seeing, you know, giant ripple effects now because I mean, to Chamath's point about decoupling, we now it looks like are going to be decoupling our financial markets.”
Sacks: Chinese billionaires will move capital overseas via Bitcoin and assets
“If you were a Chinese billionaire looking at this landscape, your priority has got to be to get some wealth outside the country beyond the control of the CCP. You're gonna be buying Bitcoin. You're gonna be trying to get your money overseas.”
Calacanis: China's economy will spiral down following tech crackdown
“Actually, I think this is going to be like a spiraling down of their economy. I don't think it's going to spiral up.”
Palihapitiya: Investment risk in China is now closer to Russia than US
“I would refine what I'm saying by saying it's a distribution of risk where it's closer to Russia now than it is to the United States.”
Palihapitiya: ByteDance must carve out TikTok to protect its equity value
“No, but I do think that TikTok needs to get carved out of ByteDance and it needs to have a completely American cap table, but that shouldn't be a government edict. That should be something that the ByteDance investors and board are scrambling to do right now b…”
Palihapitiya: ByteDance lost half its market value in Chinese tech crackdown
“ByteDance should be a half a trillion dollar company. It probably is a couple hundred billion dollar company now, which means that it probably lost half of its market value.”
Sacks: Data collected by US firms in China belongs to the CCP
“You know, we know now that any data that by dance has belongs to the Chinese government. This isn't just a tick tock issue. It's any company, any US company that's doing business in China.”
Palihapitiya: CRISPR enables the 'AWSification' of biology into programming
“We're seeing this platformization, this AWSification of a biological tool chain with things like CRISPR and all of the other modalities that need to stack on top of it so that the next person can view it as a programming problem.”
Palihapitiya: Human trial is CRISPR's first major practical validation
“This is an enormously important breakthrough because it validated a lot of what CRISPR was beyond a lot of theoretical innovation that that up until now was basically what it was known for. And a lot of investment had gone into companies that were trying to do…”
Sacks: Climate change will be solved by clean energy, not reducing consumption
“And I think that's ultimately how we're going to solve this problem of climate change. We're not going to do it through reducing human consumption. Like we're gonna have to go back to the stone age. If you don't want to emit carbon, It's about moving to clean …”
Palihapitiya: The world will move toward carbon tariffs on imported goods
“The big thing that none of these folks have gotten to yet, but I think if you look at the laws in Europe, they're going there is the idea of a carbon tariff. And I think these carbon taxes, if they actually exist properly will look like a tariff. What does tha…”
Chamath: Retailers have net-zero strategies, but CPG companies lag far behind
“Every single major big box retailer has basically declared a net zero emission strategy in the next five to 10 years. Not a single company On the CPG side has actually any plans to do anything meaningful anywhere near 2030, 2045, 20 50.”
Chamath: Carbon capture technologies are inefficient, expensive, and unproven
“The problem with carbon capture and other other things and negative emission technologies is that they're extremely expensive, they're very inefficient, they require an enormous amount of energy themselves, and it's not clear that they work.”
Palihapitiya: Room-temperature superconductors will arrive within 20 to 30 years
“People have been innovating in bringing that up to room temperature. In that breakthrough, which I think you will see in the next 20 to 30 years, it's just a complete sea change of how we think about this whole problem.”
Palihapitiya: All four top US superconductor researchers surveyed are foreign-born immigrants
“I did a survey of the superconductor space as an example. And here's what I found of the of the four folks that I found Who are all each individually doing things in superconductors that I think are incredible. They're all immigrants. Every single one were not…”
Palihapitiya: MBAs are basically worthless; people should build things instead
“I think an MBA is basically worthless, it's not a good use of your time, I think you should be out building things.”