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All In Podcast Episode 189 Recap and Notes July 26 2024

July 26 2024



  • Nostracanis was right
  • Jason moved to Austin
    • Have a horse ranch now
  • Wiz rejects Google’s offer
    • Why?
    • Think they can grow it bigger
    • OR they think it won’t close in the current regulatory environment
    • AT&T SnowFlake incident potentially affected this outcome?
    • Google Cloud revenue growing quite a lot
      • Tracking almost same as AWS
    • Google has lot of cash and free cash flow is growing well - so they’re probably thinking they can grow Cloud business by buying Wiz
    • Peter Thiel - in a fast growing business acquisition - “either the buyer pays too much, or the seller sells way too early”
    • Wiz doing so well - they could realize a Palo Alto Networks style outcome in a few years
  • Crowdstrike outage
    • Software update caused machines to get bricked
    • Lots of flights grounded coz their companies were using this
    • Elon said he’s removing it from all his companies
  • Magnificent 7 sell off?
  • UBI experiment results
    • No real benefits on physical or mental health
    • This shows people just get used to spending at the new level
    • So its more that change in income that drives happiness, not just absolute income
    • Humans want to improve their condition
    • In a UBI world no one will be satisfied, thresholds will just go up
    • In some ways Covid situation was a giant UBI experiment anyway
    • Chamath benefited from welfare (in Canada)
    • Brad Gerstner’s idea of Invest America might be better - retirement account for every child in America - when they turn 65, etc - so they are still incentivized to work in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc
  • Battle for Rupert Murdoch’s TV/News empire
    • He wants to preserve it as a conservative political force
    • This might be in everyone’s best interests because they are the only conservative catering cable news channel - at least when they started out - if they become liberal now, they will be just 1 of the others and lose market share
    • Fox is anyway in a problem with their populism vs neoconservatism
    • This is about being picked
    • They all have enough from the 21st century Fox deal
    • Just sell to a business entity and give the kids the money - don’t harm their harmony
  • Joe Biden steps aside from presidential race
    • Nostracanis predicted this
    • Donors and party leadership played a big role according to reports
    • Kamala Harris is the new candidate
    • She is the 90% favorite to get democratic nomination
    • Not clear what she stands for - TBD where she’s at
    • People are being exposed to the electoral process - its not a direct democracy
    • Harris has higher upside than Biden because she can campaign
    • Biden himself said lord almighty will have to take him out of the race
    • Then all of a sudden he’s out
    • Kamala’s best path to victory is to win Pennsylvania
    • So her VP pick could be Gov Josh Shapiro
    • Mark Kelly is another candidate from Arizona
    • Roy Cooper is also being rumored
  • Josh Shapiro as VP candidate and antisemitism
    • Friedberg reports some big company board didn’t appoint a Jewish chair because of purported optics
    • The protesters have now won - have intimidated people into eschewing Jewish leadership
    • Like a cancel culture against Jews
    • There is a large arab/muslim population in Michigan - they are against administration’s support of Israel
    • This is why Harris wasn’t fully forthcoming during Netanyahu’s visit
    • Michigan is important in the election to hold the blue wall
    • Similar concerns happened when JFK ran for president as a catholic
  • Sacks vs PG
    • Zenefits controversy rehash
    • Every accusation is a confession
  • China’s nuclear buildout
    • US has 1TW vs China 3TW electricity production capacity
    • By 2050 US will be 2TW, China will be 9TW
    • China is 7-9c/KWH, is 17c or so
    • China has more industrial production, its cheaper to power it, its cheaper to accelerate
    • 4 generations of nuclear power reactors
      • Gen 4 is safer - can’t have nuclear meltdown
    • Shandong province reactor - Dec 2023 started functioning - finally working - with pebble bed reactor design - uses Helium - test was successful where they simulated a failure - nothing bad happened - so this is exciting
    • This design was proposed in the 1940s
    • US should go full on nuclear - else will be left behind

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