The Exchanges

Q What's an example of that, that they're building for you?

A Uh, so, you know, my phone, I can pull up an app that I, if you give me any company name, I'll be able to tell you who my team last met it, how we rated it, I'll give you, uh, data on what's happening with their hiring, uh, how many vouched employees they have, how good do we think their engineering team is based on their history, their academic profiles, et cetera, all this information's at my fingertips. Uh, if we get business plan submissions, we have an AI system that'll summarize it for me, so I get a very quick read on the company, a quick summarization of the quality of the Team and a very quick analysis of the competitive dynamics and the other companies I should consider alongside them. So these are just small examples of the things we do.

AI assessment note: “we have an AI system that'll summarize it for me, so I get a very quick read”

Q to that is, you know, put federal troops like Trump is, but what the Democrats should realize, in my view, is like, is that Why is the country letting him do that? Which we, which I don't think is constitutional or the right, uh, right solution because they're so frustrated with what's going on and just citing statistics, you know, going out there and saying, well, the statistics are down.

A Yeah. It's doesn't match people's reality. People are smart. And, you know, I think this is really a stupid strategy by the Democrats. If Trump says I'm going to send in the national guard Because you guys haven't done the job that the obvious kung fu move to redirect that energy and say, yes, here are the five places. These are hotspots where we need those troops. If you can put these troops on these five corners on Turk street on six street, that's where we need them. And, uh, how long can we get them for, uh, before you move them to the next hotspots that would totally just take away what is an obvious play by the Republican party to make the Democrats fall for the trap. Of we're pro-crime, we don't care about people's safety, which by the way is the sh, it's just so dumb.

AI assessment note: “It's doesn't match people's reality. People are smart. And, you know, I think this”

Q They just don't respect any of our IP, do they?

A Well, I think right now they, they are okay amongst, so if I have a patent and I file and launch a product, I don't see immediate copies because it's in their interest to have a patent system right now for the reason you're raising. So we, um, changed the patent laws in the US in 2011, I think, the American Invents Act, where it's first to file. It used to be first to invent. And all the patent litigation we had was all about whose lab notebook said January fifth versus January fourth on this invention. That was the case. Not did you file it in a reasonable time, but did you invent it first? Now it's first to file. So there's no question about it. We don't care who invented it first. It's just who got into the patent office. As a consequence of that, our biotech companies and big companies like Lilly, Pfizer, et cetera, we file as soon as we can, because we don't get beat on first to file. What does that do? A patent exposes the invention to the world. China's getting very good at patent hacking. So what they do is they look at that chemical structure. They work backwards, sometimes driven by AI. Algorithms define chemical structures that will behave similarly, but are outside the patent scope, and they go fast. So they're really quite a derivative biotech market, but that is also hurting biotech valuations in a significant way.

AI assessment note: “China's getting very good at patent hacking.”

Q No, no, believe me, I don't, I don't see the need to. I'm an unpaid part-time advisor to the government. So, uh, but, uh, but we are in this high-tech competition with China. They obviously care about AI too. They're trying to race ahead. How do you, uh, I understand that you recently made a trip there. How do you, um, handicap this, this, this competition?

A Well, you and I just Talked about this as part of your, as your incredibly important work in the White House. Um, I had thought that China and the United States were competing at the peer level in AI, and that the good work that you have done and your predecessors did to restrict chips were slowing them down. They're really doing something more different than I thought. They're not pursuing crazy AGI strategies. Partly because of the hardware limitations that you've put in place, but partly because the depth of their capital markets don't exist. They can't raise, based on a wing and a prey, or a hundred million dollars, or a memory equivalent, to build the data centers. They just can't do it. And so the result is they're very focused on taking AI and applying it to everything. And so the concern I have is that while we're pursuing AGI, which is incredibly interesting and we should talk about, and all of us will be affected by this, We better also be competing with the Chinese in day-to-day stuff. Consumer apps. This is something you understand very well Chamath. Consumer apps, robots, and so forth and so on. I saw all the Shanghai robotics companies, and these guys are attempting to do in robots what they've successfully done with electric vehicles, right? And their work ethic's incredible. They're well-funded. It's not the crazy valuations. That we have in America.

AI assessment note: “they're very focused on taking AI and applying it to everything.”

Q After we've depleted them. So you're investing in this drone technology, and then do you think Optimus and humanoid robots are the next, you know, volley in this, um, new warfare?

A It's going to be a long time before humanoid robots, which is what we see in the movies all day, right? It'll be a very long time before we see that. Uh, what you're going to see is very, very fast mobility solutions, right? It's an air-based solutions and also hypersonics, also things underwater. There's a lot of that going on. It's a different domain. Um, if you look at the, um, the Maguro and some other boats that the Ukrainians used, They have essentially used USVs to destroy the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. This was crucial for them because they needed to be able to export the grain from Odessa around, and it's like six percent or 10% of their economy. It's a very big deal, and they did that with drones.

AI assessment note: “It's going to be a long time before humanoid robots”

Q the morning or some crazy event happens in the world? God forbid a terrorist attack or a hack or something. And now we've all got to wake up at three in the morning and decide, do we trade or not? Was that the resistance to this? And then how do you Justify it like, hey, it's gonna be worth the fact that none of us are ever gonna sleep again.

A Yeah. So, so I think, first of all, I've been at, I started at NASDAQ in 1993, and back in the nineties, we had a vision to go to 24 seven markets, and we just couldn't achieve it both technologically, it wasn't, the technology wasn't there to do it, but also, regulatory. And, and part of, a big part of that was that resistance from the industry, saying, I like to be able to finish my day and go home. And actually, we need those points in the day. I mean, the market open and the market close will continue to exist in a world of 24 five markets. But you'll have, like, a US trading day, and you'll have non-US trading day. And so, and we already, our systems turn on at four, and they turn off at eight o'clock at night. Four in the morning, eight o'clock. Trading occurs during that entire period of time, but the official trading days of the United States are nine 34. I don't anticipate that changing, because we have to have those moments for, like, the navs to be set for mutual funds and things like that. But having, allowing the entire world to trade these securities, I mean, we have the Nasdaq itself, we have the top seven companies in the world listed on Nasdaq. So those companies are global. Investors have global interests. The Nasdaq 100 is one of the most traded products in the world. The futures trade, 24 or five, so why shouldn't the underlying? So that's how we look at tho…

AI assessment note: “a big part of that was that resistance from the industry, saying, I like”

Q opportunity. China has roughly three million factories. US has 250,000. The assumption is they've got cheap labor. Looks like they've got automation. Things are very different on the ground than what folks read about. As we try and compete, what industries are going to be first from a manufacturing perspective that we can actually compete successfully? And do we need trade tariffs in order to succeed? On the competitive landscape.

A So I, I think there's two really important points. One is, there's industries that we have to reshore, specifically in defense. We have to produce submarines and ships and munitions. Uh, we have to produce things like rare earth magnets and drones. We just have to do it. Um, the tariffs really help, and this trade policy is really important, because you've got to understand that, yes, China is more competitive than us, but the CCP also nationally subsidizes the cost of energy, the cost of raw material, and because we've kind of degraded this capacity, like, not having nuclear in the US, like, we can't compete on those raw inputs. So it'll start with our most critical industries first, but I think as AI goes through manufacturing, you'll create millions of jobs, and that will allow us to reshore more commercial volume, not just in defense, and I think that's the most important thing.

AI assessment note: “The tariffs really help, and this trade policy is really important”

Q And it's starting to think about, okay, how do I want to be positioned for the next five years? What are big open-ended growth opportunities? And here comes two companies, one lever to crypto, right? And the other lever to AI. So I don't think it's a surprise. To me, these things are intertwined.

A You're a hundred percent on because here's the thing. The average profit margin of the S and P four 93 is drum roll, please. 12%. The average growth of the S&P four 93 is, drum roll please, single digits. So to your point, why would you be long any of these 493 companies that may turn around and one day just get decapitated by something you don't even know, that's getting cooked up by a couple of kids in a garage using OpenAI or Grok or what have you. It just makes a lot more sense when you find investable companies in the big themes of the future to at a minimum hedge. Right? Be less long the past, and frankly, make some bets about the future. And I think that that's where you're seeing these IPOs just absolutely rip. What is a better comparison, in my opinion, are the companies that are truly levered to the future themes of AI and crypto versus any of these IPOs that have happened of companies that are not. And I think what you see is there's a dispersion there as well, and they are being treated almost as similarly, Jason, as the S and P four 93. It's like, yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's fine. They get some reasonable gains, but if you're levered to any of those two, two trends, you're off to the races because it's just so disruptive. People don't want to be bag holding these old legacy companies.

AI assessment note: “if you're levered to any of those two, two trends, you're off to the races”

Q So you were always into it. Is, is that what you wanted to do to work in aeronautical engineering or as a pilot or what were you thinking of doing?

A Yeah. I mean, so kind of interesting start to the story. I mean, I, um, I started my day job, which is shift for, you know, it's a, it's pretty large, large fintech now when I was 16. And I was just like most, you know, as you know, entrepreneurs, you're, you're burning yourself out, waking up on the keyboard. And, you know, I said, I need a hobby in life. Uh, so I picked up my passion for flying and I, I, I basically had parallel careers, you know, in aviation and in, and in business. And I started flying Air shows in, ah, in 2010 and 20 11, and I was flying with a bunch of really talented ex-military, even current military pilots, and they were like, you know, you could fly in the, you know, in the Air National Guard or the reserves, and, um, and I found out, well, wow, that's amazing, you can fly fighter jets part-time and serve the country. You need a college degree. I never had one because I, I started my business at 16, so that's actually why I went back to, why I went back to school, went to Emory-Riddle, because it's a, I mean, it's an aviation school, Uh, I think he graduates, um, more Air Force pilots every year than the Air Force Academy. But anyway, that, that's ultimately why I, I got my degree. But my, my pursuits kind of in parallel of, of business and aviation has existed, you know, really since I was a teenager.

AI assessment note: “I picked up my passion for flying and I, I basically had parallel careers”

Q Let's go through that. So you met Elon. Did you get involved as an investor in SpaceX along the way? How did the inspiration for mission come to be?

A In, uh, I did hear that, you know, SpaceX was doing another one of its secondary rounds and I was connected through You know, I think it was Citi, and I went up speaking to the CFO at, ah, at SpaceX, and he's like, no, look, the, you know, funding round is closed, and, um, you know, we're kind of pretty selective on, on who we let in. I was like, okay, great. Well, hey, you know, back in 2008, I actually got the, ah, the first offer to pilot the first Dragon spacecraft, which is wild to think about, like, 2008. And, um, even if I can't be an investor, you know, at some point or another, I'd love to have an opportunity. And he was like, well, can't be an investor now, but we could talk about, ah, a human spaceflight mission. And I had no idea I was going to have an opportunity to be the first. I assumed there was a lot of people in front and, um, man, it was, ah, what a privilege to be able to do that, um, be part of mission design and select a crew of inspiring individuals and raise a quarter of a billion dollars for St. Jude. And it was just a successful mission. It helped open the door for a lot of other commercial missions to come. So awesome experience.

AI assessment note: “can't be an investor now, but we could talk about, ah, a human spaceflight mission.”

Q from twenty five billion a year down to nineteen billion a year. Were you part of the conversation on building this budget? And then I'll highlight some of the features of this budget here in a moment, but did, did you have conversations with the administration as this was being put together and some of these proposals were being considered? I mean, how, how deep have you gone in this?

A No, you know, when you're a nominee, you're actually kept in the dark on a lot of things. Um, you do get briefed on everything that's going on with every center, you know, every major program, things that senators could ask you about from a, um, from like a one-on-one perspective, but you're not given access to sensitive information. You almost need some deniability when you're talking to senators on that. Or else your nominations can get held up really big time. So I wasn't aware. I honestly, uh, I was voted out of committee, you know, uh, the commerce committee by, um, you know, Senator Cruz and, and, you know, 18 other, it was 19 senators in total. And the next day the skinny budget came out. And if that skinny budget had come out, uh, you know, again, a day or two earlier, I would, I would never have made it out of committee because obviously as, as I think is playing out right now, both sides of the aisle are not happy about the, you know, the budget.

AI assessment note: “No, you know, when you're a nominee, you're actually kept in the dark”

Q How did you start driving? How old were you? Because, um, I didn't realize yesterday I go into the suite that we have, and they say this kid is 18 years old as a driver. I had no idea that kids that young were driving. How old were you when you started? And at what point did you start to become competitive?

A So it's a bit like with, with every sport that you have to start very, very young. Yeah. I started, I was six. Started go-karting, I was six. And then racing 10 years old. Now they start racing when they're eight years old. So Antonelli, who was on pole position yesterday, the eighteen-year-old, he started racing, he was eight. He was in my go-karting team when he was 12, so I know him very, very well, and he is a generational talent, but it's very early for him, because he's only 18, and he, he took over the car of the greatest of all time. Lewis Hamilton left Ferrari, left Mercedes to go to Ferrari, and Antonelli Took this car from Lewis Hamilton. That is insane pressure.

AI assessment note: “I started, I was six. Started go-karting, I was six. And then racing 10 years”

Q Senator, is there a hard line that you'll have that if we don't Get this deficit level to X, because that's the focus, that's the objective, that's the primary objective, rather, at this point in time in this republic. That you'll say I'm a no vote, and have you been that declarative about your position on this?

A I've been pretty upfront. You know, the first goal of this Republican budget reconciliation should be don't add to the deficit, because that would be the first goal. Beyond that, what I've always said is I want a commitment to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic level spending and a process To achieve and maintain it. I mean, I'm, I'm reasonably open. Yeah, I, I, I recognize we have to get the votes. So I always say, I don't have a hard number, but what I've done is I've laid out these options, and right now the hard number accepted by and expected by a lot of senators, enough to not pass this until we achieve it, is 6.5 trillion dollars in spending in 2026. And I, I can, you know, walk through how you get to that point, but, uh, that's kind of the number. Right now we're expected to spend about 7.3 trillion next year. So that implies about 800 eight trillion dollars investment reduction rather than 1.5 trillion that the house has in their meager, uh, house reconciliation bill. So it's a pretty big delta.

AI assessment note: “I don't have a hard number, but what I've done is I've laid out”

Q and forever wars, and, uh, he gave big credit to a, quote, new generation of leaders, including MBS, for building better societies. Ben, what do you think here? What was your take on the trip? Is this the best Trump? Of all the versions of Trump, this did seem to me to be the best version. He seemed really comfortable with This category of leader in this region in particular.

A Oh, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that, right? I mean, he likes MBS. He obviously likes the Emir of Qatar. He likes the folks in UAE. We've known that for a while, and he's really signaling a shift away from the Obama-Biden policy toward a lot of these places where Biden liked to say the word democracy and then immediately divide off from Saudi Arabia on the basis of that and chide MBS. And all this kind of stuff, and then try to cut a deal with Iran, for example, at the same exact time, which of course pisses off the Saudis. Trump is going over there, and he's in deal-making mode, and you can see he's in deal-making mode, and his entire sort of approach to the Middle East is what he said in the speech, commerce above chaos, right? Let's do some business here. And he understands that there are a lot of people in KSA, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and also in Qatar, UAE as well, who are really looking to do business, and I think there are a bunch of strategic aspects of this that are really good. One of them, obviously, is driving these places Away from China. And the more business ties you have with places like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, the further away they're going to get from China. I think you do have to be careful with Qatar in particular, which has some divided priorities, shall we say. When it comes to terrorism, obviously Qatar, the case they will ma…

AI assessment note: “Oh, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that, right?”

Q its infrastructure advantage, something that Google's invested in to its core from the beginning. Can you Tell me a little bit about where you view Google's infrastructure advantage playing out in the AI competitive landscape today. How does it translate into cost, speed, product, quality, and where do you guys think about investing the seventy billion of capex this year in the chip layer, in the networking, the data center?

A We can unpack both, right, like, where our CapEx is going, but on your first part, right, like, one of the ways, you know, we look at the Pareto frontier of performance and cost. Google literally is on the Pareto frontier, so we deliver the best models at the most cost-effective price point, right, like, you know, and our Flash series of models are a real workhorse in the industry, right, and And part of why we are able to do that, uh, is because, you know, we train and serve our models on our infrastructure, including TPUs, right? And we are in our seventh generation of TPUs, and, uh, we built our first version in 2017. Um, I remember talking about it at Google I.O. Probably people didn't pay attention to it because, like, you know, why are you building a specific machine learning X-rated chip? Uh, look, it plays out everywhere. To your earlier question on cost per query in search, The reason we feel comfortable we can serve it at that scale is because we are constantly innovating through each generation, including chips which are really, really good at inference, right? And Ironwood, which is our latest in our TPU series, a single part of Ironwood is over 40 exaflops, right? And, and so the scale of these things are incredible, and, and we have thought about it all the way from subsea cables The scale at which we do infrastructure is unparalleled, and I, I've always viewed th…

AI assessment note: “we deliver the best models at the most cost-effective price point”

Q hundred, over a 100,000 employees, 4500 locations, and an over two hundred billion dollar annual budget. So really an incredible, um, department to oversee. But before we get into the USDA and talk a little bit about some of the work you're doing and have been doing, maybe we can talk a little bit about your background. Did you grow up on a farm? How did you get into agriculture?

A So yes, I grew up, uh, in a really small town in Texas. We, uh, were not farmers or ranchers per se in Texas. I grew up on a small farm. We raised animals. We bailed hay. But my family, my mom's side of the family, Uh, my grandmother, they had a big row crop farm in Minnesota. So I spent every summer, um, on that farm, corn, wheat, soy, uh, pretty much everything you could consider and think of. So that was my row crop, um, which has actually been very, very helpful because coming from Texas and being more of a cattle raiser and being in cattle more, which is what I'm in in Texas, uh, it's really great to have sort of both sides of the house and, and I'm very appreciative to that. But yes, grew up in a very small town. Uh, we didn't have much. I was raised by a single mom, but we did have the land. And, uh, and on that land, we raised our animals. Again, we built our hay. I barrel raised every Friday night. I grew up in four H and FFA, went to Texas A&M on an agriculture scholarship, uh, studied soil science and meats and, and feeds and feeding, and, and really dove way into agriculture. Knowing I would go to law school, um, I really had a heart for understanding Policy and the people, but thought I would really stay in ag, um, for the rest of my life. And obviously sometimes the, the path diverts and changes, but, um, even over the, you know, the 20 years since I last worked 1…

AI assessment note: “I grew up on a small farm. We raised animals. We bailed hay.”

Q And how do we feel that it's gone to India? It's not coming to America. I think we knew it wasn't coming to America.

A Well, India has one massive advantage over China, which is that it has one fifth the labor cost of China, which has one fifth the labor cost of America. So India is a natural place for a lot of this next generation labor to end up. Plus, they have a very educated workforce. Plus, they have a young workforce. In many ways, you could say that it's, it's China circa, 2003. I mean, you have to remember, right? Like China from 2006, I think to like 2012, their GDP grew at like 10% a year. I mean, can you imagine what that must have been like when a country that big is growing that fast? So India is going to have that moment over the next 20 or 30 years. I, I, the only reason I scoffed at what you said.

AI assessment note: “India is a natural place for a lot of this next generation labor to end up.”

Q artificial constraint that's created by the zoning paradigm, and it's not clear how you unlock that. You know, maybe is it up to private citizens to sort of, like, have regime change at the local level? Um, but how do we sort of unclog that part of it to marry up with this kind of stuff? Because it would be great if you could just build up in many places.

A Yeah, well, I, I think there are a lot of things where you can look around and find What's interesting that some, what's something that's interesting that's being done somewhere? So I lived in Greenwich, Connecticut for a while. Maybe the richest suburb in America. There's a ton of multifamily there. Very expensive, very nice multifamily. There's some affordable housing, but Greenwich is not all 10 acres and a horse farm. The state of Connecticut has put in a, I guess it's a law, that every municipality has to allocate 10% of vacant land to multifamily, and if the zoning board won't give you a hearing, you as a developer, you as a non-profit for housing, can go over the top and go to Hartford, And then Hartford will give you the authority. Well, no, no town wants the state doing on their behalf, so now the towns negotiate.

AI assessment note: “The state of Connecticut has put in a law that every municipality has to allocate 10%”

Q but here's, here's the thing in China and Indonesia and all these other countries, they are just over the environment as they make things. I think tariffs are very reasonable on that case. Like it's not fair to make it more expensive for us because we're doing it well. And then we outsource it for them to destroy things, right? So, so there are some things there where it doesn't.

A And what I would say is the other, the other side of the, of the tariff knife is that if there are markets though, where you're making something that's fundamentally innovative, where you are, but one maker, the problematic part of where tariffs really affect the U S consumer is then the price of that product of which there are no competitive alternatives. Can go very, very high. And that's inflationary. And I think that that slows down consumption. And then if, if that consumption is not just of something that's a nice to have, but a must have, then it becomes problematic. And so you could see where tariffs could impact certain industries. For example, if there are innovative drugs, I think that that's problematic. If there are innovative technologies of which there's only one vendor, that's problematic. So all of those, Need to get sorted out. But on balance in commodity markets, like look at autos. Autos is a perfect example. There are so many purveyors and providers of autos. There's OEMs all around the world. And so to have a compensatory system Doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing where it's a tit for tat tariff, but in other markets where if you need, for example, a specific piece of equipment from ASML to build a chip, and now all of a sudden that that machine is 25% more expensive or 30% more expensive and they pass that cost downstream, it becomes very speculative …

AI assessment note: “Doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing where it's a tit for tat tariff”

Q the intestines, so tells your brain, don't be hungry, but it also has other effects like secreting insulin, getting cells to make insulin, And as a result, GLP one is what's called a hormone. It's a regulator of all these different cells to do things when our intestines are full of food. Is that an accurate way of kind of describing what a GLP, what the GLP one protein is?

A Yeah, that was perfect. I would just step back one step though and say, there's a broad, there's like a super family of these things. And this is going to come up later in the, when we talk about the drugs, which we call incretins. And this was derived from a, uh, even earlier on your chart here in the seventies, they observed that if you Give someone nutrients intravenously, meaning it bypasses the GI system, that you have a higher spike in glucose than if you give it Via the GI tract. So that's a curiosity, right? Which is why is that the GI tract was doing something and they call that the incretin effect. And later we found out that there's a whole family, a super family really of these hormones signaling tools that are telling your body when you're fed to do different things. That makes a lot of sense because to survive as humans, feeding is like one of the top three essential processes next to breathing and other things. And so there's a lot of redundancy, but also Uh, different hormones for different chores, and GLP- one was the first one that was made into a drug.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, that was perfect. I would just step back one step though and say”

Q No, wait, I have a question. Yeah, let's leave politics. Mark, very, very pointed question. Why did you sell the Mavs at this moment?

A So I sold three quarters of them, not the whole thing. I still own 27.7%, um, for a couple of reasons. One, when I first bought in in 2000, I, I was the tech guy in the NBA. I was the media guy, you know, broadcast.com just sold it. Um, HD net just created the very first ever high definition television network. I had every edge in every angle. Now fast forward, 24 years later, um, in order to sustain growth, to be able to compete with the new collective bargaining agreement, you have to have other sources of revenue. And so you see other teams and all sports for that matter, You know, talking about casinos, talking about creating, doing real estate. That's just not me. I wasn't going to put up two billion dollars to, you know, to get an education on building. So that was one, that's part one. Part two is my kids are now 1518, and 21. And over the next 10 years, that's a lot of pressure on them to have to take over the team or deal with The trust, you know, God forbid something happens to me, deal with the trust fund issues, and so by selling three quarters of it, I took all that pressure off of them, because you, you guys see the hate. I mean, Jason could tell you all day long about Jimmy Dolan, you know.

AI assessment note: “I sold three quarters of them, not the whole thing, for a couple of reasons.”

Q Right. And then you ran it, you moved it to New York and you ran the business for a couple of years and obviously things took off. The, the business grew. Was churning group like active at this, this time? Like, were they helpful or was it you building the business and, and they were just kind of quiet financial sponsors? How, how did that, how did that phase go?

A So when they, when they purchased us, uh, they basically gave the money. We did, we weren't great at business. The first thing we did, we went out and hired Erica Nargini as CEO. So she really helped expand the business side of what we were doing. Uh, and we exploded, but churning to answer your question, they weren't involved at all. Um, I think they really, I mean, slightly here or there, if we had a question, I think the biggest thing they did is probably credibility. Like I was probably seen as, uh, and still am at times, like a wild card, like you don't know what you're dealing with and you put the churn and name on it. It's like, oh, these guys are legit. They're real. And maybe helped us get Into meetings and doors, but they weren't in the day-to-day operations at all. Probably, I would say, the best thing they did is they stayed out of our way.

AI assessment note: “churning to answer your question, they weren't involved at all.”

Q in Afghanistan, you need to evolve, you know, to be a perfect democracy like the one we have here. I think we all agree that's unrealistic and insane, um, and not practical. But what about the free countries of the world uniting together to stop dictators from invading other free countries? Is that noble? Is that a good use of power and a good framework for America to evolve to?

A No, I don't think so. Uh, I think that what the United States should do is worry about its own national interest. Uh, in some cases that's going to involve align ourselves with a dictator. Uh, if we're fighting World War II all over again, it's December eighth, 1941. You surely would be in favor of a lying with Adolf, not with Adolf Hitler, with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union against Uh, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Sometimes you have to make those kind of compromises. Uh, as I said before, I love liberal democracy. I have no problem aligned with liberal democracy, but when you begin to think in the terms that you're thinking, you end up, uh, with an impulse to do social engineering around the world, and that gets you in all sorts of problems.

AI assessment note: “No, I don't think so. Uh, I think that what the United States should do”

Q interesting, I mean, you and Jeff, I think, arrive at similar conclusions about Ukraine, uh, but different ones on China, right? Because Jeff is an economist and I think sees the world in fundamentally positive some ways based on the potential for trade economics, basically. Whereas you see the world as more of a zero sum game based on the balance of power. Why don't you just explain that difference?

A Okay. Uh, it is very important to emphasize, as David was saying, that Jeff and I agree on all sorts of issues, including Ukraine and Israel, Palestine, But we disagree fundamentally as he just made clear on China. And let me explain to you why I think that's the case. And then Jeff can tell you why he thinks I'm wrong. Uh, it has to do with security, whether you privilege security or survival or whether you privilege prosperity and economists. And I would imagine most of you in the audience really care greatly about maximizing prosperity for someone like me, who's a realist. What I care about is maximizing the state's prospects of survival. And when you live in an anarchic system, and in IR speak, that means there's no higher authority. There's no night watchman that could come down and rescue if you get into trouble. And this is the international system. There's no higher authority. In that anarchic world, the best way to survive is to be really powerful. As we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, you want to be the biggest and baddest dude on the block. And that's simply because it's the best way to survive. If you're really powerful, Nobody fools around with you. The United States is a regional hegemon. It's the only regional hegemon on the planet. We dominate the Western Hemisphere, and what China has begun to do as it's got increasingly powerful econ…

AI assessment note: “it has to do with security, whether you privilege security or survival or whether you privilege prosperity”

Q don't know if they're going to buy the stock. Can we get an adult in the room who's done this before? And they found Eric Schmidt who had run Novell and they brought him in as this, you know, third part of the triangle. And then eventually he wound up leaving, et cetera. What were your thoughts on Silicon Valley in that transition time and Eric Schmidt's role at Google?

A Well, Eric Schmidt came into Google through his relationship with John Doerr, and John Doerr, as a mentor to Larry and Sergey and investor in Google, had suggested that they bring in a professional manager that can help them successfully scale the business. And John had this relationship with Eric and Larry and Sergey started to socialize with Eric, and it was a very long process. And they ultimately respected Eric because of his technical capabilities and technical background, which was quite distinct from the other candidates that they had met during this process, but it was necessary. They were first time. They'd never worked anywhere. They'd never had a job. They had never had experience. I think similarly, uh, Sheryl Sandberg as a partner to Zuck, Ultimately helped him level up and obviously Chamath and others prior to that. But these first time founders that haven't had any sort of work experience and have no concept of kind of organizational dynamics and the challenges that will arise as you try and build and scale a team to execute a mission, typically need to have some degree of counseling, mentorship, and support. And so bringing in that degree of experience with someone who's ready and willing to partner with the founders, Meaning not necessarily direct them, but partner with them and help them learn as Eric did, and then ultimately handed the reins back to Larry. An…

AI assessment note: “Eric Schmidt came into Google through his relationship with John Doerr”

Q Got it. So you're an investor in it, and you donated to it. Actually, let's start there. What's up with that corporate structure? How do we make sense of that? Something's a non-profit, you donated to it, and then you invested in it, and everybody's making money and selling in secondary at a hundred billion. How does that work in the world?

A So, um, so it's, it's a five one C three is the governor thing. That's what started. And, you know, when, you know, kind of Elon and Sam were starting this and said, look, we need, you know, philanthropic support and we're, we're trying to make sure that there's like open access to AI, which is going to be an instrumental technology. And we've got some great technologists who want to come do this. We started as a, as a, you know, kind of as a five or one C three for doing it. That, that, that persists as far as I know till today. Then, you know, one of Sam Altman's, you know, pieces of genius was that he kind of said, look, we're going to need scale capital, and I'm trying to go out to raise, and the commercial round was six hundred million, I'm trying to raise six hundred million philanthropy, and it's not working, right? So, so I have this idea, which is the five one C three, which is doing this kind of research mission of, you know, AGI for humanity, is also producing commercial benefits, and we can create initially an LP, which has a Uh, kind of a, a, a revenue right on the commercial things that investors can invest in. And, you know, um, you know, Reed, it'd be really helpful if you led this, um, because, you know, and I was like, well, but you don't have a go-to-market plan, you don't have a product plan, you don't have a business plan.

AI assessment note: “we can create initially an LP, which has a Uh, kind of a, a, a revenue right”

Q What's the most impactful advice you've been given and how has it shaped your careers?

A Early on, I got two good pieces of advice. One was from Mike Savino, who's here somewhere, uh, speaking tomorrow. There it is. Um, and he said, uh, the piece of advice his dad gave him was look to the left and come in an hour before that guy, and then look to the right and come in and stay an hour later than that guy. Just basically the hard work stuff. And I had gotten that from my mom as well, who worked three or four jobs to put us through school. My dad, who worked really hard. And so the hard work ethic, I think, was the key to a lot of my success because I just decided I'm just going to outwork everybody because I was coming not from Harvard or Stanford, but from Bayridge, Brooklyn, uh, and, you know, going to night school at Fordham. So I, I had to use hustle. There was no connections. There was no network. I just had to literally kill what I ate. And then after I sold my first company, I was at Ted at the billionaire's dinner with my book agent, John Brockman. And, uh, I had still had a chip on my shoulder, but I had sold my company and he, uh, said, Hey Schmuck, you made it. You don't, you stop fighting with everybody. And I was like, okay, I'll stop fighting with everybody.

AI assessment note: “the piece of advice his dad gave him was look to the left”

Q you're talking about socially, which is now what happens to that girl? What happens to her family? Is she going to kill herself? Is she going to become a reality TV star? I don't know. I mean, we're in uncharted territory. No human in evolution did not anticipate a billion people, a million people, Understanding one person's or digesting one person's most candid, worst, embarrassing, or thrilling moment, did it?

A No, that's right. We, we evolved for small group interactions with a lot of gossip, um, and when you, you know, so when kids are talking in small groups and someone says something stupid and others make fun of them, people laugh and then you move on. But when you put kids on a stage where potentially millions of people could be laughing at them, and they could be the internet topic of the day and it might last for the whole week, um, a lot of those kids are considering suicide because when you are being shamed and it seems like you're out, Um, a lot of kids will think of killing themselves, because that's a way to relieve the pain. Um, so, however, and the thing is, look, almost all of us as adults, we see this stuff. We, you know, if you've, if you post stuff on social media, and then you read the comments, and then, you know, you're, you can be upset by the comments. Imagine if you were 12 or 13.

AI assessment note: “No, that's right. We, we evolved for small group interactions with a lot of gossip”

Q and conservatism should look, looks like? Because a lot of people in our public audience, a lot of people I talk to, they're confused now about the terms because so much of traditional liberalism feels illiberal because of your point about far left behavior. Traditional conservatism feels illiberal because of far right behavior. What is the difference between the two and kind of help us bring balance to the force?

A So I'll answer your question as a, as a psychologist, which is, um, one of the amazing discoveries in psychology since the eighties is that, is that almost everything about our personality is partly heritable, and if you have an identical twin separated at birth, you never met, but if you're very much on the left, your twin probably is too. Something about our brains make us predisposed to the right or the left. And it goes back to openness to experience and conscientiousness, a few personality traits, but basically there's a, there's a liberal or progressive sentiment that says, it's captured by this Robert F. Kennedy quote, some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not? So progressives historically are the people who look at existing institutions and say, you know, why do we, you know, why don't we change this? Like, why don't we have some other thing, uh, which might be more just? So progressives are always pushing for progress, for change. Um, but then the, the, um, the wisdom of the right is to say, you know what? We may not understand our institutions, but if we just go changing them willy nilly, it's gonna be a disaster because we don't understand what we're doing. In fact, I opened our conversation with that. That's actually a conservative, one thing I learned from reading the conservative intellectuals, uh, going back to …

AI assessment note: “a good liberal democracy is one in which you have some people pushing for change”

Q I mean, make it a short story. Brie Berg, you got a book that transformed your life?

A I put it in the, um, Summit gift bag, I think, last year. Oh. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Suzuki, which is basically a, uh, compilation of the Dharma lectures by the founder of the SF, uh, Zen Buddhism Institute. And, um, like the whole, all the lectures are all about, like, sitting Zen, like Buddhist meditation, sitting Zen meditation. But the thinking Is so broadly applicable around how the human brain has a tendency to always seek, uh, things that it, uh, this continuing drive of desire. And if you can let go of that drive of desire, like much of your perception of reality changes. And the second is like dualistic thinking, where you think about everything as one or the other, everything in the universe, everything that we think about is like in or out this or good or bad. And I think, um, for me, Changing one's point of view on those two aspects of how the human brain kind of natively associates the universe within which we live, uh, can have a huge impact in, in decisions and, um, emotion and, and so on in life. So, uh, it's a very important book for me. And you could read it a million times and always get something new out of it. It's just a copy of his, uh, lectures.

AI assessment note: “Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Suzuki, which is basically a, uh, compilation”