Jun 20, 2020 · 1h 18m · allin
E4: Politicizing the pandemic, Police reform, Twitter vs Facebook with David Sacks & David Friedberg
Jason Calacanis · 20m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 20m spoken David Sacks · 16m spoken David Friedberg · 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 Episode 4 of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg analyze the COVID-19 pandemic response, police reform proposals, tech platform censorship, and early political predictions for the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
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 6.7 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 3.7 The hosts pushing back 3.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 22:53 Friedberg challenges online vigilante praise
Friedberg forcefully interrupts the group's celebration of social media sleuths by revealing that an innocent police officer had his life ruined first due to false online doxxing.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 15:31 Jason presses Sacks on lockdown motivesJason aggressively challenges Sacks with the cynical premise that the political left intentionally prolonged lockdowns to crash the economy and harm Trump's reelection.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:02 Friedberg reframes aerosol transmission dynamicsFriedberg educates the panel on viral protein degradation outdoors and explains why sitting six feet apart in enclosed indoor spaces offers no protection against aerosolized particles.
The host holds their own ▶ 1:03:41 Friedberg demonstrates deep technical expertise on vaccine logisticsFriedberg demonstrates deep industry expertise by walking through the technical mechanics of parallel manufacturing, downstream processing, and spike protein epitope targeting.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Quarantine Habits & Individual Risk Profiles | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Sacks shares his modified risk assessment based on demographic age brackets and personal activity changes while the hosts engage in light ribbing. | |
| Outdoor vs. Indoor Transmission & COVID-19 Aerosol Science | 8 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Friedberg delivers a detailed scientific breakdown of viral protein degradation outdoors and aerosol transmission indoors, rejecting the six-foot indoor distancing rule as ineffective. | |
| Wearable Tech & Early COVID-19 Symptom Tracking | 6 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Chamath and Friedberg discuss biometric tracking like the Oura ring for early symptom detection before Sacks highlights international examples of successful public health mask mandates. | |
| Debating Lockdowns, Mask Mandates & Economic Impacts | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Jason pushes Sacks on cynical motives behind prolonged lockdowns while Friedberg offers a psychological perspective on post-hoc political rationalization. | |
| Ending Lockdowns, Mandatory Masks & Criminal Liability | 6 | 3 | 4 | 4 | Chamath argues that future lockdowns are politically impossible and advocates for mandatory mask fines and criminal liability for intentional exposure. | |
| Viral Videos, Online Mob Justice, and Cancel Culture | 6 | 7 | 5 | 4 | Friedberg counters Chamath and Jason's praise of internet crowd-sourcing by pointing out a case where online vigilantes ruined an innocent police officer's life. | |
| Police Militarization & Reimagining Law Enforcement | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Chamath criticizes the militarization of local police departments receiving surplus armored vehicles and advocates ending qualified immunity. | |
| Gun Rights, Threat Perception, and the Rayshard Brooks Case | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Friedberg questions if police escalation stems fundamentally from second amendment gun prevalence while Jason and Chamath detail the Rayshard Brooks shooting escalation. | |
| Rethinking Emergency Response & Police Union Power | 8 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Sacks analyzes how police unions insulate officers from accountability and thwart reform, supported by research shared by Bill Gurley. | |
| Platform Censorship, Fact-Checking, and Demographics | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Friedberg rejects platform fact-checking and WHO authority while Chamath contrasts the user demographics and content controversies of Twitter versus Facebook. | |
| Big Tech Strategy, Silicon Valley Politics, and Free Speech | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Chamath explains Big Tech's neutral regulatory game theory while Sacks and Friedberg defend classical enlightenment principles of free speech against modern comfort culture. | |
| John Bolton's Tell-All Memoir & White House Revelations | 6 | 3 | 5 | 4 | Sacks critiques foreign policy neocon John Bolton and analyzes the political dysfunction behind his appointment and tell-all White House memoir. | |
| COVID-19 Vaccine Development, Efficacy, and Logistics | 9 | 7 | 2 | 3 | Friedberg provides a comprehensive masterclass on parallel vaccine manufacturing, spike protein target biology, and realistic Q4 deployment timelines. | |
| 2020 Presidential Election Predictions | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Friedberg presents a counter-consensus argument predicting a Trump victory based on voter desire for an agent of change who effectively projects external blame. | |
| Biden's Winning Strategy and the Oprah Winfrey VP Proposal | 6 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Jason proposes pre-announcing a cabinet brain trust while Chamath passionately pitches Oprah Winfrey as an unbeatable vice-presidential running mate. | |
| Evaluating VP Demographics and Celebrity Candidate Vulnerabilities | 7 | 5 | 4 | 3 | Sacks uses a pig-wrestling metaphor to explain why Hollywood celebrities possess glass jaws when subjected to ruthless political campaigns. |
Statements from this episode (33)
Sacks: COVID fatality rate for healthy under-50s is 50x lower than over-60s
“The fatality rate for say relatively healthy people under 50 without risk factors is, you know, 50 times lower than say, you know, someone under over 60 or someone who has risk factors.”
Friedberg: Contact tracing analysis showed 97% of COVID-19 transmission occurred indoors
“There was a good analysis done that showed in tracing cases where they actually found the origin of where transmission occurred, 97% occurred indoors.”
Friedberg: Six-foot indoor social distancing rule is 'bullshit'
“I don't believe in the six foot thing. I think it's bullshit. Like, if you're six foot away from someone in a room, people are coughing, and that room gets filled with those particles over a one-hour period, it doesn't matter if you're fucking six feet away or…”
Friedberg: UCSF developed an algorithm with Oura to predict COVID-19
“UCSF ran this beta with them, and they developed this algorithm that they think is pretty predictive.”
Calacanis: Distributing health wearables nationwide would track COVID-19 cheaper than stimulus
“If we just sent every single person in America an aura ring or one of these thermometers and said, just take your temperature all the day, we would know where the outbreaks were. And that would be a lot less expensive than a lot of the stimulus we're doing to …”
Sacks: Mask wearing allowed the Czech Republic to control COVID-19
“You take a Western European nation like Czech Republic, they had a huge COVID outbreak. It spiked just like the rest of Europe. They went all in on mask wearing, and they've completely controlled the virus. It's knocked out.”
Sacks: U.S. lockdowns were unnecessary if universal mask policies were adopted
“I do think that the lockdowns went on too long. They, I mean, with, I think with twenty-twenty hindsight, we would say that the lockdowns weren't necessary if we had just gone all in on a mass policy.”
Friedberg: COVID-19 lockdowns were unreasonable in extent and ultimately wasted
“I certainly, you know thought that the lockdowns were unreasonable in the extent, but then the problem was they weren't followed, so they were all for waste.”
Chamath: Populations will not comply with future COVID-19 lockdowns
“We're gonna be in this sort of start and stop mode now for the foreseeable future. But it's just not possible to ask people now to go back into any form of quarantine or shelter in place. I just don't think they'll do it.”
Chamath: Intentionally refusing masks and infecting others should carry criminal liability
“You have to be criminally culpable at some level if you go out of your way to not wear a mask and infect somebody.”
Friedberg: Innocent police officer was falsely doxed in viral Maryland cyclist incident
“In that story, there was another guy who was identified first, and he was a police officer. And then people went after him, and he basically had his life ruined within those first 24 hours, and he wasn't the guy.”
Chamath: Arming local police forces like the military makes no sense
“We, look, we have been we've been arming our police force mistakenly like our military. And we've been doing it for, you know, decades now, and it makes no sense.”
Chamath: Qualified immunity for police officers should be ended
“At a minimum, let's like, look, I, I'm a huge fan of ending qualified immunity. I think that doesn't make any sense.”
Chamath: US laws and union contracts protect police use of force
“The unions have basically written contracts that protect their use of force. The law is written in a way that protects their use of force.”
Calacanis: US police training is low hundreds of hours versus thousands abroad
“I think the training in the United States is in the low hundreds of hours. In other countries, it's thousands of hours.”
Chamath: Americans will move to cities matching their police reform ideals
“I don't think it's going to be universally across the country. But I do think that, you know, people will then again self-select and want to live in places where, you know, sort of like the laws match their ideals. And this is going to be an area of tremendous…”
Sacks: Police and public employee unions hold excessive power, blocking reform
“I think, yeah, I think the police unions have too much power. All the public employee unions do. I think, you know, just like the teachers unions have thwarted school choice and education reform, I think we're seeing the police unions thwart a lot of sensible …”
Sacks: Research shows unionized police departments face more excessive force complaints
“You know, I, our friend Bill Gurley has been tweeting a lot of great research that around police departments that are unionized, there's a lot more complaints against them. There's a lot more examples of the use of force and unwarranted use of force.”
Friedberg rejects the WHO as a trusted scientific source
“Yeah, and by the way, the World Health Organization, I've had an issue with since well before COVID just from another life, they I won't get into it, but they've said some stuff publicly that that was just flat out fucking wrong, scientifically, and invalid, a…”
Sacks: Fact-checking targeted politicians is biased soft censorship
“Yeah. I mean, call me old fashioned, but I'm very much in favor of free speech and I'm against censorship and you know, fact checking your politicians you don't like is, is a, is basically bias. It's soft censorship. I mean, they're being very selective in who…”
Chamath: Facebook attracts middle America while Twitter serves rich coasts
“I think basically that Facebook is, is becoming middle America and Twitter is becoming sort of the coasts. And, you know, Facebook is basically a product of middle America plus kind of like countries outside the United States and, you know, Twitter's about, yo…”
Chamath: Big tech companies will face regulation, taxes, and potential breakups
“These companies are going to get regulated and they're going to get overtaxed and they're going to get kind of slowed down at a minimum and broken up at the maximum.”
Chamath: Top five tech firms maintain 'no position' to protect market cap
“All big five tech companies have said, our position is no position. And the reason is because that's the only thing they can do to keep that market cap and to hold on to the economic vibrancy of their businesses for longer.”
Sacks: Facebook board wanted to oust Peter Thiel for supporting Trump
“I do remember the time when Peter supported Trump during the election, and the rest of the board wanted to run him off the board”
Friedberg: Society is shifting from championing free speech to prioritizing comfort
“We are starting to shift towards valuing comfort over over freedom of expression. And that's just kind of the big change that's occurring.”
Friedberg: Staged release of COVID-19 vaccines will likely start in Q4 2020
“So there's gonna, I think there's gonna be a staged release of vaccines that'll probably believe it or not, start in Q four of this year.”
Friedberg: 30% of U.S. children are not vaccinated against measles
“30% of people, kids now aren't getting vaccinated for measles which is crazy, and now there's measles outbreaks happening in the U.S., which is just, you know, mind-boggling.”
Chamath: Trump has 75% chance of losing 2020 election, odds will narrow
“Right now I think it's sort of, 75, 25 he loses. I think that's going to get closer to 55, 45 as the date comes close.”
Friedberg: Trump has a 70% chance of winning the 2020 election
“I still think Trump's going to win. I'd say 70% chance Trump wins.”
Friedberg: Voters in economic pain seek an agent of change like Trump
“But the more people are feeling pain, the more they're looking for an agent of change. And I think Trump against Biden is still going to be that agent of change.”
Sacks: High chance Biden's VP pick becomes president within two years
“There's a very high chance that this VP pick will become the president, given Biden's age and everything going on in the world. And we've just seen crisis after crisis this year. I think there's gonna be more shoes to drop. And this person that we don't even k…”
Friedberg: Urban Black female VP candidates won't win rural voters
“I mean, I'm not going to make it a choice here, but I think the challenge he's going to face is finding a black woman who can appeal to the blue collar and rural vote. In these areas where he needs to kind of win some win some folks over. And so he's going to …”
Sacks: Celebrities make tough political picks because they have glass jaws
“You know, most of these celebrities don't like having to get beat up, you know, they're used to being very popular, and that's why they tend to be, I think, tough picks Politically, is they don't, they tend to have a glass jaw.”