All In Podcast Episode 214 Recap and Notes February 7 2025

February 7 2025

• Jason grifting for USAID (tongue in cheek!)

• Ray Dalio episode with Friedberg was a big hit

  • Government seems to be kind of following his recommendations

• Antonio Gracias joins the program

  • Legendary investor (Tesla, SpaceX, Uber, Athena, etc)

• DOGE vs USAID

  • JFK established it via EO in 1961

  • Programs in ~130 countries

  • Budget under Biden ~doubled from $26B to $45B

  • Insane spending

    
    
    

    
    

  • Twitter takeover

    • ~$12.5B in debt

    • Breaking even

    • Biggest turnaround in history

    • Company doing well

      

    • No one came into the office - pens had gone dry in the conference room due to unuse

    • Flowers were impeccable - 1000s of people’s worth of food being cooked everywhere and thrown into trash and not being even given to homeless

    • Fixed the woke mind virus

    • This is like a warmup for DOGE

  • First he thought democracy was turning into bureaucracy

    • Instead its becoming a kleptocracy
    • Pure corruption

  • Similar to 1941 Truman committe/commission

    • Formed due to concerns about Defense Department spending
    • Gave him credibility afterwards
    • Incredible savings - budget of ~$1M and saved like $20B+ in 1940s money

  • Clinton administration also did something similar

  • Democrats led last 2 versions of DOGE

  • DOGE just has read only access - even that is so powerful - exposing all kinds of waste

  • Media is corrupt - money went to Politico, BBC, etc

    

  • Funding jumped under Biden

    

  • BBC got like $2.7M

  • Thomson Reuters

    
    

    
    

  • Friedberg brought up government waste for like 2-3 years

  • DOGE is basically doing Zero Based Budgeting

  • When you stop the checkbook - the ones who cry the loudest are the ones committing the most amount of fraud

  • US government just keeps spending money on everything - all spending gets approved

  • People have no idea how the money flows

  • In 1973 Congress took Nixon’s power away to stop payments - that is hurting us now - Executive can’t stop payments

  • There is no controller - there is no reconciliation - whatever budget OMB specifies for a govt dept - treasury just complies

  • When Trump EO to pause foreign aid went into effect - USAID defied their orders - so they came under focus

  • Operating in other countries is imperialism - definitely the way its being done now

  • Seems clear that many human rights issues were just embellished to keep this money cycle going

  • How did Jason not figure out how to get into this grift? ;)

  • US gov runs $2T deficit every year - we’re in debt $36T

    • NYT getting paid
    • Politico getting paid
    • Bill Kristol getting paid
    • 9/10 or so Ukraine media getting paid
    • Viktor Orban opposition getting paid
    • Polish left wing opposition getting paid
    • BBC getting paid
    • WEF getting paid
    • So USAID and washington folks circling our taxpayer money back to themselves and their interests
    • $40B a year - like almost $1B a week

  • Democrats will lose folks to DOGE

  • Western societies have pendulum fight of labor vs capital

    • Dems used to be labor and Republicans used to be capital
    • Trump made Republicans pro labor
    • Dems are most sophisticated liars
      • Under Biden
      • Record high stock market
      • Record high deficits
      • Record high illegal immigration
      • Record high wage suppression
      • This is all pro capital but they presented themselves as pro labor
    • Dems will struggle to get more than 15-20% of people
    • Rahm Emanuel oped scolding Democrats
    • They wear Eat the Rich on their dress but they instead ended up feeding the rich
    • This is how socialism always ends

• Sacks

  • Crypto framework
    • Need 4 committees across House and Senate to regulate crypto (finance and commodities)
      • First time all 4 said they would support crypto
    • Securities, Commodities, Collectibles
    • Market structure - need to understand what crypto asset is what kind
    • Founders need to know what the rules of the road are
    • Hoping to get legislation passed in the next 6-12 months - maybe sooner
    • To protect consumers - its better to onshore activity instead of letting it go offshore
      • Maybe FTX being in Bahamas was a problem
    • Market structure bill will define disclosure requirements, etc
    • SEC was basically just honey potting founders to come in and talk to them but then just prosecute them - there is no fair way for the founders to comply
  • AI
    • Deepseek has validated the decision to rescind Biden EO
      • Shows that AI is not restricted to US
  • Facilities people have never had people work late on Friday nights - for DOGE folks
  • DOGE has been setup under an office setup during Obama administration

• Sovereign Wealth Fund EO

  • Usually natural resources based
    • Like Norway, Saudi, Australia, etc
  • Could use a rotating roster of legends like Bill Gross, Druckenmiller, David Tepper, etc
  • Might help define industrial policy in America
  • Scott Bessent 3-3-3 plan
    • GDP growth of 3%
    • Deficit growth of ~3%
    • 3 million barrels of oil annually
  • US (oil + natural gas + coal) has 3 times Saudi energy (oil)
    • Maybe use that as part of the fund
  • Govt is bad at capitalism
  • US social security will be bankrupt

• Trump tax plan

  

• Google down 7% 😟

  • $350B revenue with $100B profit
  • YouTube is Netflix inside Google
  • GCP is AWS inside Google
  • Their AI models are quite strong overall
  • Seems market is concerned about their announced $75B AI spend
  • Google is the best compute investor of all time
  • Started with cheap hardware 1998-2005
  • Then energy efficiency 2005-2010
  • 2010-2016 better hardware for cloud
  • 2021 - depreciation schedule to 6 years in data centers - using AI optimization on maintenance

• How AI will affect jobs

  • Drivers losing jobs due to self driving cars
  • Analysts losing jobs to Deep research AI products

• GLP1 research

  • Researchers are able to mine VA data
  • 1.2M people with diabetes who didn’t take anything, 215K who took GLP1s, 600K who took other medications
  • There seem to some interesting results
  • Anti inflammatory but muscle loss, etc - you have to increase protein diet and do weightlifting
  • Which one is it - reducing obesity leads to gene expression or it’s the drug itself?