The Exchanges

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 Yeah, Swarm has been a really great success for, for them, and I think for the world. Um, but what I was going to ask you is, Walk us through the evolution of the space market. Why you decided, of all the companies, you have the capital base to kind of put your money anywhere. Why did you pick that? Why did you pick that business? Why now?

A Rockets are really cool, and they're really hard. I had, I'm, as you know, I'm a pilot, and I know lots about jets, and I had assumed that rockets were as mature as jet engines. They're not. It is an art and a science. These things are very hard to do. The amounts of Power. I mean, in our case, the rocket is four million pounds of thrust. Um, you have to hold the thing down to test it, and you can't even hold it with metal things. You have to have other things to hold it down as well. There's so much force, otherwise it will take off. Um, another interesting thing about rockets is that a rough number is that two percent of the weight of the rocket is the payload, 18% is roughly the rocket, and 80% is the propellant. And my reaction as a new person is, you're telling me you can't do any better And the physicists say after 60 years of physics, that's the best we can do to get out of the gravitation of, of the earth. And so I think rockets are interesting and they're challenging. There's always an opportunity for competition. Um, in relativity spaces area, it's essentially a LEO, a LEO competitor. So low earth orbit, satellites, that sort of thing. The order book is full. We just have to launch the rocket.

AI assessment note: “I think rockets are interesting and they're challenging. There's always an opportunity for competition.”

Q Is there something that, um, the American, you know, bigger companies need to be doing in open source so that we can actually combat this?

A Well, a number of the large companies have said that they want to be leaders in open source as well. Um, Sam Altman indicated that the smallest version of the O three model would be released, uh, I believe open weights and they have done so. And he told me anyway, that this model is much smaller than the intended to the 26. It's much easier to train and it will fit or can fit on your phone. So one path is to say that We'll have these supercomputers doing AGI, which will always be incredibly expensive and so forth, but we also have to watch to make sure that the proliferation of these models for handheld devices is under American control, whether it's OpenAI or Meta or Gemini or what have you.

AI assessment note: “make sure that the proliferation of these models for handheld devices is under American control”

Q on AI. There's all this stuff you're doing now in drones and warfare, in rocketry. It all converges, quite honestly, because in the, in the next five or 10 years, these things will all come to pass. What is the, like, how do you view the world? Like, what is the role of America? What is your role as a, as a capitalist, as a technologist, as like a statesman?

A I want America to win. I am here because the American dream, the people who invested in me, in my case, Berkeley, and so forth, people took a chance on me. I want the next generation to have that. I also want you all to remember, I was just in, in, uh, as part of the World War II surrender ceremony in Honolulu, and they talked about fighting tyranny, right? We forget that our ancestors, our great-grandparents, or whatever, Fought the great war to keep liberalism and democracy alive. I want us to do that. How do we do that as Americans? We use our strengths. What are our strengths? We're chaotic, confusing, loud, you know, but we're clever. We allocate capital smartly. We have very deep financial markets. We have this enormous industrial base of universities and entrepreneurs, which are represented here. We should celebrate this. We should stoke it. We should make it go faster and faster. I spent lots of time in Europe because of the Ukraine stuff. They are so envious of us. When you're in Asia, they are envious of us. Don't screw it up, guys. That's what I want to work on.

AI assessment note: “I want America to win.”

Q Is it, is it, is it a reflection of something going on? There's a rise of Mamdani getting elected in New York. Some of the historic values of the West seem to be, you know, kind of under a, a, a state of transformation right now.

A One metric of the success of a society is its ability to reproduce. And so I think this is a legitimate concern of the West. It's much worse in Asia. The, um, the Chinese number is about one point oh for two parents. In Korea, it's now down to .78 for two. So it's really important to recognize that we as humans are collectively choosing to depopulate and the numbers are staggering, right? And imagine a situation where instead of having growth, you have shrinkage. And furthermore, they're getting older, and so as a business, all of a sudden, your revenue is declining, and there's nothing you can do, because you can't innovate with fewer and fewer customers. So if you just put it in a business context, ignoring the moral issues, which are all very real, it's just bad, right? So we have to solve that problem. I happen to be in favor, broadly, of immigration, because I think immigration helps us solve that problem, but as a global mechanism, we have to address that. Um, in any case, from my perspective, You're going to have these issues, but America is organized around the concept of American exceptionalism, and as long as we understand that the way we make progress is we invest in the right people, in the right businesses, we have a, a strong capital market, we invest in the infrastructure that they need, um, we'll be fine. That is my actual opinion.

AI assessment note: “One metric of the success of a society is its ability to reproduce.”