Trump’s Super Intelligence Summit, AI Safety Accord, GDP Beats, Midterm Predictions

Key Takeaway

For any high-stakes AI use at work, create a simple evidence trail today: document what the system does, map it to the relevant policy and risks, and save proof of how it was reviewed. The episode’s practical governance lesson is that responsible adoption is not just a principle—it requires traceability, risk mapping, and auditable evidence. This makes it easier to answer questions from leaders, customers, auditors, or regulators without slowing experimentation to a halt.

Episode Overview

The hosts discuss a White House summit that reportedly brought leading AI companies together around a voluntary safety accord built on internal controls, external audits, and board oversight. They debate AI’s geopolitical and cybersecurity implications, the need for data-center and energy infrastructure, public fears about jobs, economic indicators, and midterm-election outlooks. The episode closes with a discussion of media coverage of an alleged attempted aircraft attack.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Trump’s Super Intelligence Summit, AI Safety Accord, GDP Beats, Midterm Predictions from All-In Podcast. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Another huge shout out to starlink. How good do I sound right now? It's actually great flawless Shocking. It's amazing. Nick show this behind the scenes shot of what it took to get us going Starlink is bananas That's amazing Do you guys want to know something about the starlink network that I think is just kind of coming out now? Basically the starlink network because it's putting out radio waves and it can pick up radio waves and you've got so many of them You've basically got a phased array telescope looking down on the earth And you can pick up what would otherwise be Stealth aircraft from above so there's a ufo detector you're saying it's a stealth airplane detector It's basically a starlink.

It could be a ufo detector, but the starlink network basically becomes this incredible Radar system that sits above the earth to look down on things that would normally be stealth from the surface of the earth So does this mean we don't have to do a science corner today because you just did it? Great to see you. So as one of the architects of bretton woods 2.0 sax is on a high he's coming in hot All right, everybody welcome back to this week in ai sorry, uh all in podcast and we've got a ton of News to get to on the docket I mean, it's just the every week is ai on top of ai you have a show Called this week in ai and you cover nothing about ai no No, we cover ai but thank you for the plug this week in ai.ai sign up for the news this weekend super intelligence i'm going to change the name this week in Chat dj is we have four super intelligences here Four super intelligences here to super intelligence the weeks to intelligently discuss The news.

Yes, and uh, what a week it was We were sitting here just a couple of weeks ago or sitting in los angeles I should say and there was a bit of a chaotic moment. Hey, should we be should we be? auditing or De-selling with all this ai and three weeks later President trump held a super intelligent summit in dc many of uh, the besties were there and And uh, or three or four I should say on tuesday President trump convened the biggest names in ai elon jensen za dario sundar satya yada yada yada all the way down the line And everybody from the government as well.

I could ramble on about this, but sax I have I have a feeling you were instrumental in setting this up. So maybe i'll just hand it off to you Tell us how this went down so quickly And then what the outcome is of this? super intelligence summit Well, the reason it happened so quickly is because president trump convened all of these people to the white house And I think he's the only person who could get all the ceos of all these companies in one room I mean, these are the leading companies in the world across data centers across chips hyperscalers and then obviously frontier models And many of them frankly don't like each other.

They have disputes with one another We all know this they may have lawsuits with one another all of that didn't matter because president trump called them to the white house For this conversation And i've called it the bretton woods of super intelligence This was the first gathering of really all the critical players across the entire stack of the industry And I think we had a really good Open and honest conversation about both the opportunities and the rest of super intelligence And as a result of that meeting i'd say during the meeting We worked out this agreement that has come to be known as the white house accord on super intelligence That was then signed by the six major frontier model companies And I think we'll now apply a new rigor a new set of controls on the development of super intelligence so that The public can be more confident that this will be done safely And if I could just highlight a few of the the key features So first of all the companies who are developing these products acknowledge that they are responsible.

They have to be the responsible actors, let's not deflect it onto to someone else or Anthropomorphize the models or talk about the united nations these companies accept responsibility number one number two They agree To have internal controls and to have those internal controls verified by an internal team that does that But we don't just leave it to quote unquote self-policing it starts there But then you have external auditors who will then validate and verify That the internal controls are working and these companies will set up An independent committee of the board to then receive those reports and as gavin baker pointed out this morning You know when the board receives a report from an external auditor, you can't disregard that it's not optional The board has a massive fiduciary duty to then act on that.

Otherwise their dno policy can get canceled, right? So now the board is going to receive the report of the external auditor and they have to make sure As a board that they're overseeing they're providing oversight to make sure that the frontier development is happening safely And then finally sitting behind all of that you still have the ftc and the sec which have the Ability and the responsibility to enforce the public commitments Of these companies so although this agreement was entered into voluntarily The governance that follows from it is not voluntary.

It is now Day factory Because it's an audit because and d and o for people who may be not familiar with the directors and officers That's the liability insurance insurance that that board of directors has in case something goes wrong So this is got teeth to it. Yes, even though it was voluntary. Yes, it has a deep deep hooks into the board of directors That's right And just one final point on this is that again this white house accord on superintelligence It was convened by the president.

It was as a result of that discussion in that conversation We got the major companies to sign it and I think everyone in the room There's basically a consensus around it and these controls can now be implemented basically immediately or very very quickly And it doesn't require new legislation it certainly doesn't require some new international agreement that's never going to happen So this is something that can be done right away I think it's a credit to the president and I think this should in large part I think address many of the concerns that the public has about the safe development of superintelligence and and I think there's a lot of democrats right now who don't want to give the president credit around this because they want to Keep using it as a campaign issue But the reality is that I think the president dealt with it swiftly and sensibly and practically This is way more practical than trying to declare a pause On frontier development that china would never go along with or creating some dmv for models That again would slow us down to the point where china just wins So this is very practical and it's immediate and the president deserves credit even though the democrats won't give it to him But i'll notice that even jacob coxson Where you know in a way you could say that whistleblower quote unquote The so-called yeah rage quit after six weeks who is working with the pr firm for the yes Yeah, so I would say fake whistleblower because he was working with the pr firm the whole time even though he said he wasn't official Whistleblower the artificial whistleblower, but look even he said that he was happy to read this.

He was giving credit to the president. So maybe Everybody else should I mean even the most cynical person chamath looking at this would say great first step, right? like if you just wanted the Global un united nations of ai this would be a great precursor to that a first step where everybody's opting in to be regulated To regulate themselves as we discussed on this very podcast with the mpaa analogy and here we are three weeks later Take us behind the scenes. There was one notable addition to the group of ai executives dario from anthropic Is obviously very anti-trump he has never shown up for these things the organization is 96% anti Trump left-leaning etc, but he participated So, how did dario wind up participating in this?

How did he wind up doing dinner one-on-one with the president take us to the palace intrigue here? Dario was a conscientious objector. He did not want to participate in any of this And now he was front and center I can tell you what I heard and I just think it speaks to How conscientious and gracious the president is I think there was like a couple of previous events He noticed that dario Wasn't invited and actually just called and said, you know This was an oversight and they invited him to dinner and I think that's how it started and they had dinner I think two nights before that was widely reported And then he stayed and he was at the dinner.

So I think it's just A very smart strategic thing to do. It was also a very Conscientious and and very polite thing to do as well just to make sure that this is a broad coalition of people that were included and I think that's That's sort of been the general pattern that the president has exhibited. Let me maybe give you a couple of other Things that happened at the luncheon that had an impact on me The first was it sounds like a very simple statement, but the gravity of it Kind of has built in my mind as I thought about it.

He says whoever wins super intelligence wins and then he just stopped talking That was the first line of his prepared remarks and then he said it again and when you think about it, he's completely right there is no world in which you're going to Have this multinational corpus of people trying to allocate wins and losses on this thing This is on the order of the industrial revolution In fact sacks had some really nice comments at the luncheon Which framed it as even bigger than the industrial revolution?

He went through the numbers and it's bigger than the industrial revolution and like three or four other things all added up together This thing is still bigger the railroads the canals and the electrical grid combined the pyramids in the great wall That was in the wall street journal last week when you think about it that way It's very important that we win and so he started by setting the stage that way He had a couple of other specific things which was it's really important that the extremely positive use cases That exist out of ai and now si Are demonstrated and he said you have a responsibility to lead with the benefits And then he said you also have a responsibility to impact The local communities in which you operate and he pointed at meta as an example of a company doing really good things With teacher bonuses and hospitals and we heard about that from dina at the all in summit And he said you need to continue to do these things But meanwhile, we have to have the checks and balances to trust and verify after the luncheon.

I had to fly to orlando Because we at 8090 have a long-term partnership with Ernst and young and I was speaking to their 3400 partners and one of the things that bernson young and 8090 Were doing was building an entire audit infrastructure for superintelligence And what's so cool is that we had been building it for ey as our first customer But on the heels of this I think we're going to be able to take that infrastructure and roll it out to everybody as sac said because everybody's going to Need it and there's really three things that you're going to need in an age of superintelligence so that Boards are protected Ceos have visibility and all of the other Compliance infrastructure and governance infrastructure of a company like dno insurance and all these other things are kept in place Which is end-to-end traceability, right which is to say when you deploy superintelligence you need to know what's going on You need to map it To the policies so that you understand what the risks are all companies have standard operating procedures But you need to know exactly when you're deploying superintelligence how that builds on top of your standard operating procedures So you need to map policies to risk and then the third is you need to have auditable evidence Which is your way of showing all of your downstream ecosystem.

Here's what i've done So if anybody taps you on the shoulder, whether it's a lawyer whether it's an auditor when it's a regulator Whether it's in a lawsuit whether it's a customer. Hey, how did this happen? You can present something. So these are like very practical same things And you can expect folks like ui now to deploy this broadly and quickly To all of the companies that they work with and this is just one extra step But if you think about how fast this happened, this is like three weeks And you have this solution where the alternative was Hit the pause on trillions of dollars of gdp so that we could sort this out in a multinational body The alternative was crazy.

So I think what happened was historic and important Was there any pushback on the doomerism narrative takes behind the scenes jensen was really powerful He said something to the effect of alarmism without solutions is unproductive Hmm, which I thought was helpful grounding, but he said alarmism with solutions It's helpful. Everybody had the same Perspective in the room to be honest. Was that directed at dario that comment? It was just generally said but I think you know if we had to guess Did dario respond after that I mean Susie and I were sitting right across from so it's very fun just to watch his reactions in general So, please unpack it what was his reaction to that comment?

I'd be like he listened got who moderated the discussion sax. How was this moderate? Were you the moderator? I noticed I didn't get an invite the world's greatest moderator wasn't there but trump's a pretty good moderator himself Oh, no, the president moderates it the president actually actively moderated. Oh, yeah. No, no No, he gave an example of his moderation. I would like to take some notes here Well first when I got there, you know, this is in the east room of the white house I believe and through the back of the east room you get to the where this new corridor to the ballroom's going to be And so we did a quick tour out there and he showed us what they're building and it's really amazing And I predict that this is the new ballroom and the new east wing Where did you have to wear hats and go into the construction zone?

You're on the yeah, we walked we walked out there and um, I mean the cranes were out there Foundation they are making record progress. You know, the thing is like seven stories So the ballroom itself is two stories, but it goes five stories down Oh, wow, so there's all sorts of stuff that they're building. They're bowling alley. No, no for the military. There's There's like all sorts of vaults that they want but in any event And he's gonna have it done in like a year under budget and on schedule.

By the way when it's done I predict that It'll be so nice that All future presidents will really want to use it and it's things that the white house has needed for a long time They're going to look back and say why did they? him such a hard time doing this. So it's just a distraction too by the fact that we had a builder in the White House who just enjoys doing it. It's so good at it. I mean, why wouldn't you take advantage of those skills?

All in annual dinner party there. We'll have an all-in gala. Yeah, anyway, it's going to be a big upgrade. So anyway, he took us on a little tour of that, and then he presided over the conversation. First, he gave some remarks, and he spoke to the whole group, and then he started calling on people to give their opinion. So he always moderates these things. What was the most challenging? Did you have a challenging moment where you kind of went at somebody, a follow-up question, anything like that?

Well, he kind of asked people what they think, and there's a follow-up. Then we had a breakout session of the six frontier model companies in the Roosevelt Room, I believe. That's where we kind of hammered out the accord. Although, it had already... When you're hammering out that accord, are you literally there typing it in Google Docs? And who's responsible for this typo? There was a typo in the tweeted version that became... Yeah, I don't want to say who's responsible for that. But if that's the only thing people can find to object to, that's not so bad.

Was Satya in Microsoft Word, and he just was typing too fast? Yeah, I don't know. But basically, what happened is, Zuck and Jensen talked through some of the high-level principles in the main luncheon. Then Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, actually had a copy, and he read the whole thing. Then we discussed it, and there was general agreement and accord with it. Then we did the breakout session, and there was some wordsmithing. Not much, though, to be honest. Everyone was just good with it. Now, the White House had a statement that had been circulated to the groups in advance that was a couple of paragraphs.

But frankly, this other statement had more meat on the bone. The original statement had the statement of responsibility, and it had the creation of a working group to discuss safety issues on an ongoing basis and share best practices. But the new part were the internal controls, the external audits, and the committee of the board. I think it's been publicly reported now, so I'm not really giving anything away, that Zuckerberg and then Jensen, I think, had come forward with that idea, and everyone was good with it.

Any notable moments where somebody was like, hey, I need a comma here, or I want to put an end here, I want to add something to this? Any notable edits? Like I said, people were generally good with it. They read it, and everyone's like, yes. Which part do you think has the most teeth and will be the most effective at making things more secure? The external audits. Who's going to do an external audit then, I guess? Is it going to be an Ernst & Young type thing, PricewaterhouseCoopers, or KPMG?

It might be they should be professional auditors, not these NGOs. That's my view. You're going to see EY in short order here announce something. And Friedberg, when you look at this in terms of the speed and velocity it happened, and you're, I guess, on the President's Science and Technology Council now, maybe you could speak to how quickly this is all occurring and what the impact might be in terms of America's competitiveness. Because you've had concerns, hey, maybe slowing down here means China catches up. So maybe you could talk a little bit to your prediction, if any, of the alignment here of all of the companies.

Also of note, just for the audience, people are like, Sam Altman's not there. His partner, Greg, was there. So Sam was doing, I guess, the launch of some new products they had. But OpenAI was, obviously, represented. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think the impact this will have on maybe the American public and their view of AI? I mean, look, I think we always assumed in the sci-fi novels that we would be in an era of having robot wars. And I think we failed to recognize that the software came first, and we are actually having the AI wars.

And there's a war that I think we're in the middle of right now, where there's kind of one side that wants to centralize, control, manage, regulate, whatever the term of the day might be, the technology. And there's another side that I think is cognizant of the reality of the technology, which is that it is effectively ubiquitous. We talked about this in the past, due to open-source, open-weight models proliferating, the fact that you can run models on small, local machines, that you don't need large clusters to do things, and that we're seeing model after model come out now that are not under the jurisdiction of some centralized system or agency.

Therefore, it becomes very hard and practically impossible to actually regulate the development of the software. That's the truth. It is what it is. You may not like it, but it is what it is. And those two sides are going to continue to fight. I think that the risks will rise. And as that happens, I'm going to make two predictions to your question. The first one is that I think we will see a massive rise in defense systems. There is no turning off the open-source, open-weight models, or shutting down all the data centers or centralizing command and control.

There are 197 countries on Earth. They each have sovereignty. There's energy everywhere. They're all connected to the internet. Data centers will exist all over the world. So the attempt to try and centralize and manage the control of the software, I think, is a fool's errand. But I do think that it's going to mandate, because the risks will rise, an increased amount of defense. And so I think companies like Palo Alto Networks, I think the investment in this space, what I heard in D.C. this week was some Fortune 50 CEOs are very worried about cyber defense.

That means they're going to start to make this their number one priority to address at the board level. That means the budgets for cyber defense are going to go through the roof. Now, let me ask you a question. When you have to do cyber defense in an era of AI, are you going to use old-school software or are you going to use AI? Obviously. You're going to use AI. And because of that, because cyber defense is going to need to grow, the U.S. is going to need to provide competitive AI for cyber defense.

It is a classic arms race scenario. And so the U.S. cannot simply step back and pause and turn off AI. It is already everywhere in the world. Therefore, the risks are rising. Therefore, we need to increase our investment in AI to maintain our cyber defense capabilities, both at the enterprise level and at the government level and potentially even at the civilian consumer level. So I think that the cyber defense necessity actually mandates that we continue to build out data centers to support it. The second prediction I'll make is I think 12 to 18 months from now, we're going to shift away from this conversation about managing models, regulating models, controlling models, estimating models, scoring models, all this sort of stuff that's going on.

Because like we mentioned last week, every 11 days we're seeing new models get published now. It is unbelievable. And this week, Google released their new model that also seems to be more performant than any other model. And every couple days, we're seeing a new one come out. So the model control systems are not going to solve any problems. What I think is going to end up happening, and this is a prediction no one may like, but I do think we're going to end up in a world where governments are going to regulate data center access and usage.

They're going to say the data centers are here, but in order to maintain defense capabilities, we are going to decide who gets allocated a certain number of GPUs, certain amount of inference, a certain number of chips, a certain number of servers. Because at the end of the day, one of the key metrics of cyber defense is going to be how many machines do you have allocated to defend your systems against how many machines are coming after your systems. And it is, again, a classic arms race scenario.

Assuming model convergence, and even if models have slight advantages over others, it seems to be the case that we will maintain pacing. And if we're maintaining pacing, then the number of machines allocated to a specific task is going to be a key measure of how well it performs in that task relative to another set of machines doing the same task. You're just going to need to allocate more machines to it. So if you're going to allocate more machines to it, you're going to end up having the government say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we need the U.S.

financial services system to get X percent of the GPUs in America. We need to make sure that Y percent go to defense. We need to make sure that Z percent... You're saying it's all going to get nationalized and allocated top down? I think that's where the regulators are going to end up having to play a role. You can kind of think about data centers becoming the utility, which is the clouds, the Neo clouds. Effectively, the government will end up saying, wait a second, we're not allocating enough to JP Morgan.

We're not allocating enough to the financial services system. And ultimately, the number of machines that are being allocated... It's an opportunity to sell into the government. Now, Google and Amazon Web Services, Crusoe, whoever, can just sell more servers. And the government then can say, hey, it is now SAC's national security that we build more data centers, and we're going to clear the road for it based on that alone. So it's inevitable. Here's the part that I agree with. Blocking a data center if we need it, that'd be like blocking tanks being built during World War II, right?

Yeah, here's the part I agree with. It's not just about the capability of the model. It's about how much compute you have to run it. And we want to have more compute than our adversaries. And if we continue with this anti-data center crusade, we're going to be at a severe disadvantage. We already know that the precursor for data centers is power generation. And China's doubling their grid every decade. And we've been flat for about 25 years. That's a huge problem. Now, I went back and looked.

Throughout the course of the 20th century, the United States was on a pace to double its electrical grid every decade. That's what we did. We actually grew power generation enormously. And those were in the days when America was a great industrial empire and basically dominated the world in manufacturing and industry. We did not have a problem doing this. We found ways to do it. Obviously, the power generation plants, the power plants were being built somewhere. And they found places to put them where they didn't encounter too much NIMBY opposition.

They figured out a way to do it. Think about that. Every decade of the 20th century until starting around the 1970s, when it slowed a bit, they were doubling the grid every decade. The 70s, it started slowing, but the growth continued. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that basically we flatlined. Why is that? Because of deindustrialization, globalization. We shipped all those manufacturing jobs overseas. And then people went to work in offices, so we didn't need as much power. Efficiency played a little bit of a part in it as well.

But we kind of lost that muscle of how do we basically keep doubling our power grid every decade? We have to get that back. And again, this anti-data center witch hunt that I'm seeing going on, it's so misguided. Look, data centers have been around for a long time. Data centers serve the internet. They serve all the mobile applications on your phone. They serve now AI, but they serve all the uses of computers that we use. And to blame them for any specific application, this seems totally misguided.

If you have concerns about things like surveillance or privacy, by all means, strengthen the privacy laws. I'm all in favor of that, but just trying to ban the data center seems insane. Sachs, what everybody wants to know, you have been pretty critical of the Anthropic Computer Corporation and specifically Dario and the leadership there. He was at the event. You guys met, I think, perhaps for the first time. Tell us about Dario's participation there. And did you guys talk a little bit about your criticism of him specifically, of the organization specifically, and all of this doomerism and effective altruism and all this, or did it not come up?

No, I mean, look, I think that Dario was a good sport. It's true. That's the first time I met him in person. I talked to him on the phone before, but look, he was a good sport throughout the event. It was not adversarial or hostile. Obviously, he has his own views and he represented them, but fundamentally, everybody got on the same page and signed this. Did you shake hands with Dario? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He joked, he said, oh, my nemesis, you know, he sort of joked.

Oh, really? Yeah, so that's kind of funny. Yeah. Did you invite him on the pod? I forgot to invite him on the pod, but he's welcome anytime. Do you have his phone number? And are you going to invite him on the pod? The world wants to know. If you want me to. But look, I think it's good that he talked to the president and had to do with the president. I think the president should talk to all the major players in the space. He should hear the full spectrum of views.

And I trust the president's going to, you know, arrive at the right policy and solution. So I think it's good for him to hear Dario. I mean, look, I think. Any insight into what happened at that dinner? What was President Trump's view of Dario? He said he's an interesting guy. There were some interesting quotes. And he dragged him from the back of the group in the presser and threw him out front. I saw you were right behind him. Zuck was right behind him. You guys had a little chuckle at the president pushing him forward.

Oh, we weren't. No, we weren't. We actually, I forgot exactly what. No one was making fun of Dario. No, no, no, no. I wasn't implying that. I mean, the fact that Trump grabbed him from the back and said, you have to speak. I think that was kind of a cute moment. It was an affectionate. I started as an affectionate moment that he wanted Dario to be part of the group and speak on behalf of the group. I started as the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. He gave him a pat on the back.

Exactly. Yeah. And look, I think, listen, Dario is a very special person. I didn't, you know, fully appreciate it till we're all in that room together. There's obviously a wide spectrum of views in that room. There's different levels. That's a good word. Yeah. There's, there's an autism spectrum. There's a, there's a spectrum of autism spectrum in that room. You felt very comfortable. Well, I mean, you guys call me the rain man, but I mean, you're a man light function. I don't mean this as an insult, but you know, Dario is sort of the Dustin Hoffman in that room.

And then Tom Brown's like the Tom Cruise character. He's trying to like translate them. They weren't wearing the same suit or anything, but it's an interesting China, Russia, meet my mutants. Okay. I'm forming like the X-Men here. Okay. These are brainiacs. They're a little bit weird on the margins, but they're getting done for America. You certainly must have had an, an interesting time there. Tell us a little bit more of the palace entry. What was president Trump's vibe? He seemed, he was incredibly engaged and excited.

And I just want to say, listen, you don't have to be a fan of president Trump or a Republican to appreciate what happened here and compare it to when Biden excluded Elon from the EV summit, you need to as the President United States be bipartisan, and include everybody in these things. We're all part of the same team. It's called Team America. And I thought this was a great juxtaposition of that you had a lot of people who are extremely critical of the administration who were there to make America stronger to make America win the AI race, the super intelligence race.

Most people have said this at this point. So this is sort of beating a dead horse. But he's a generational political athlete. I mean, I don't think we've seen anybody like him. And so he's extremely comfortable around all kinds of people with all kinds of differing views, and he's conscientious. And so when he notices things are not right, he sets them right, he talks to as many people. And I think you have to be really impressed with that, like this is a, an incredible pattern that I hope outlives him, which is this idea that when you have very complicated problems, when you use industry, to be a sounding board, and then you sit with industry in real time, and then you craft these accords in real time.

And when that industry represents the entire political spectrum, as you said, Jason, some who are with you, and some who are against you, and some who are in the middle, that is the right way to govern, in my opinion, because you have the best chance of doing something that's sustainable. And that's realistic. And that comes back to this point that is getting lost, which is whoever wins superintelligence wins. And I think if we just keep that in mind, this is the pattern that hopefully outlives the president, which is that whenever you run into any other thorny issue, and I would say this to whoever's going to be president 28 and beyond, Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter.

Get the smartest people from that industry in a room, make sure that that's filled with both people that support you as well as may not necessarily support you and then hash it out in the room and force a set of realistic principles that everybody can then build a business around that is very smart politics and governance. I just wanted to go back to something you said before, because I was having this conversation with Phil Deutsch. This is about the data center thing. He made this point to me, which I think is really important.

When you look at the impact that the Iran war had on the price of oil, the most interesting takeaway was actually how little the price of oil moved during all of these blockages in our moons. Because what really happened was there was a lot of supply and generation shifting that occurred, right? We were able to shape in real time Jason how to generate energy. And the real takeaway from my perspective is that the generation of electrons is actually the critical thing, not necessarily the generation of energy as we've classically thought about it.

Now, why that's important is the data center now becomes the critical symbol of national security. Because the ability to generate electrons, and then the ability to make sure that we can compute the resources that we need to run our economy is going to start from those things. And so domestic energy production, I think, also is this hugely important thing that is going to move from a domestic policy issue to a national security issue. And that's why I think the data center thing and sort of why I disagree with Freeberg, I understand where he's coming from, because this is why the data center will get so much scrutiny.

But I also think the opposite will happen, which is more of the sacks idea of the free market, because it is so critical, similar to how we responded after the Persian Gulf War, and how we responded after the global war on terror, what do we do, we doubled and tripled down on that gas and domestic oil production. Similarly, I think the domestic production of electrons become so critical, because the data center becomes this national security infrastructure. That's so important. Yeah, there was this great video from years ago, where Milton Friedman was at a law school.

And he was asked a question by this kid about when do we have a responsibility to act to save someone's life? And can the government mandate that I do that? And doesn't that take away my freedom in a free society? And the way the kid asked it, Milton Friedman responded by saying, Hey, you started out talking about your responsibility in society. And by the end of it, you were telling me about what government needs to do. And he's like, I would argue that those two things are not the same.

And that the point you should take note of is that you don't need government to solve your problems, when society is giving you a clear signal of what the right and wrong thing is to do that people collectively can and will solve their problems, take their actions, choose the right path, do the right things. And businesses can and will respond accordingly. When the market is telling them something when society is telling them something, they don't need the government to be responsible for executing the actions and taking regulation on to its shoulders for them.

And I think we saw that this week with Nvidia's launch and open AI was very declarative about how they're being more precautionary before they release models. But this morning, Google also launched synth ID. And synth ID is a system for watermarking proteins that are produced with AI. So the sequence, the DNA sequence that codes for the protein will actually now have a watermark in it. And it's being broadly adopted. And the protein itself, the three dimensional construct of the protein will actually have an embedded watermark in it as well.

This is actually a pretty amazing technology that Google developed for creating watermarking and defense systems in AI bio. And I think we are starting to see the market respond actively to what society is saying, and not need these government people to come in and take over. And in the process, put everything at risk. By the way, I saw that clip. It was going viral as well. I thought that it was the young guy. I watched it. Yeah, he was a law school kid. The young guy was articulate Milton Friedman was unbelievably articulate as always.

But Jake, what was what was your view? I'm curious what's your view? Just seeing it happen real time? What were you thinking? Yeah, I was actually ironically invited to come down to the White House for the first time my friend Joe Jebbia who launched America.gov this week, which was a spectacular launch. We're making the American government as efficient as private industry is the co founder of Airbnb and an incredible design. He went to RISD with his partners. And so just shout out to him if you haven't seen America.gov it's stunningly gorgeous.

I spoke on a panel with Brooke Rollins and Sean Sankar at the event. It was an incredible event. The whole cabinet showed up the President signed the EO. Yeah. And even guys like Andrew Ross Orkin gave this like standing monologue on why it was so incredible for America to see this. It was not partisan at all. It was just upgrade America's technology infrastructure for the citizens and it was fantastic. Yeah. So by the way, sorry, Jacob, I'm sorry to interrupt you. But I just want to give a shout out to Joe because he did that work with his own money.

People think that this was like a big government investment. Joe was not aware of that. Well, Joe and others put up personal funds and gave up their personal time despite their success in their private careers to step in and do this work for America. And I just think it was an incredible rallying cry for all of these technologists to get together and build something great together for America. And it was a really beautiful day. It was great to be there. You know, it's fine from the outside.

It was incredible. Just awesome to see the power of all these American industry together. Not a critique, but an end to add to it. I think the next piece of this puzzle is to start to include Americans in this the bottom half of the K shaped recovery. Where's the teacher? Where's the teenager going into college and all of this? Where's the, you know, American tool belt worker, the plumber, etc. You know, it looks from the outside, I think, from to a lot of Americans that this is still a bit scary.

So there's more work to do there. I was on a flight on Delta, and the flight attendants asked me what I did. And I was talking to them. And they said, I'm so scared of this AI stuff. I'm so glad I'm retiring, because I don't want to lose my job, etc. Americans are still petrified of this technology. They still think they're losing their jobs, they still think it's dangerous. So I thought this was like a great first step. But there's more work to do to pull Americans back off that ledge.

And we need to and I think this is where the president or the next president could have a really major impact is to start forcing American companies to not just thinking about how they make more money, how they get more green lights for their data centers, how they get less regulation and more free markets. But how does this impact education? How does this lower the cost of education? How does this build more homes? How does this help healthcare? How did people get more healthcare? You know, at a lower price that none of that was addressed.

That doesn't mean I'm giving any criticism of this event. But that's the next piece. The next time President Trump brings together this many powerful people, they should talk about the American public, not just the data centers. So a couple things he did ask for people to do just that, and actually showcase some of these things. And he was very specific. He did that. And he also said, you need to show direct positive impact in the local communities in which you do business. He was very direct.

That was super blunt. And one of the first few things he said, I wanted to build on your other thing, by the way, that did not come across at all. The real critique from the public that I think is valid here is it looks like we're just helping. I want to talk to you guys. That is something the billionaires and the companies I don't mean to sound like Bernie Sanders, they need to address this themselves. It would be great if they started saying like Facebook did with the with the free tool belt stuff and the training, we need to see more of that.

And I think housing, education, healthcare is where Americans will start to appreciate this. I told you that right after the White House luncheon, I flew to Orlando because the two day off site for all their partners. Okay, but listen to this. I'm not going to say this person's name. But this person is a very well known democratic person. They were on stage, and they have this whole riff about doomerism. And they're so cavalier about it. They actually included the people in the room as part of the claim that they're all going to be out of jobs.

And I'm standing there backstage. And I'm like, What are you talking about? Hmm. It's not rooted in details. It's not rooted in data. It's not rooted in fact, this is a very well known person very grounded theoretically in what the data should show. Shame in name. But what you realize, well, I mean, I'll say to you, but maybe we bloop it up. And I was like, What the what is going on? And so to your point, Jason, it is very partisan. And I said this last time on the pod, there's an incredibly important incentive for folks that are not in the power structure today, ie Democrats, to take up the doomerism call to action, because it is a very straightforward way to whip up fear, and to then catalyze that to power in the midterms, and then in 28.

So you're going to see when you vote for sure. Yeah, when I went on stage, the first thing I did was I was like, she's wrong. And that's not true. And in fact, everything tells us all the data up until now, that there will be more jobs and more to do. And I said, the people in this room will be making more money in the next four years and five years than less money, there will be more work to be done more judgment, more taste to be imposed.

And so I have a real issue with this narrative, because I think it's just fundamentally wrong. And it does not come from a place of data driven fact, it comes from a decision that the political calculus is the doomerism is a way to foment distrust, and displeasure. And then to use that at the polls. And I understand that as a political tactic, but I think it's important to call it out. This is why I say we're in the AI wars. I mean, this is the actual war, there won't be a robot war.

It's this battle right now about who's actually going to have the technology and the progress and who's not well, who's going to benefit from freeberg who's going to benefit from it? Right? rich people or poor people, middle class, people don't know what open source is. No one knows what an open weight model means. No one understands any of this stuff. And they're looking at the rich guys at the White House. And I agree with you, Jay cow. I think the public perception and the public narrative on this thing is I don't get it.

I see a bunch of wealthy people kind of hanging out with the President at lunch, making a bunch of decisions that I don't have a voice around. I don't even know what's going on. I don't even know what they're doing. And then I turn on the news, I turn on the TV, I look at my Instagram, and everything's about the end of tomorrow. And so I'm all about shutting it down. No problem. This is why I think it's important to have the conversation that we're having about why does open source and open weight AI benefit everyone because there's no company that's charging you a toll for this digital technology.

It's just like the internet, we maintained an open internet, it was a huge fight, people forget the fight that we had for the internet. When the internet was first starting out, there were all these efforts to privatize the internet to create gatekeepers. There were these efforts by all the telcos that they were going to be the gatekeeper to the internet and charge you different amounts of money to access different websites. You weren't going to be able to just go to Yahoo or AOL if you didn't pay a fee to your telco to be allowed to access Yahoo or AOL.

And we made it illegal. And we made it an open internet. And I think the same is happening right now with AI people don't see the fight the war that's going on. But there is a contingent of people that to Jamal's point, recognize the political value of regulatory control and capture. And they are fighting to create gates and to create systems of control and ultimately new power this is where like you saw we're fighting we are fighting the other side is actually fighting for openness with AI and it's well organized like it like when you go to these places and you realize that these extremely successful people are being deployed with very tightly scripted talking points that all point to do merism, you realize that this is like extremely designed.

And then you know, the rest of us who are working in this arena, and actually can see that there are more positive benefits than negative, and that there are more people making more money than before, up and down the income spectrum. We're not as organized as they are. That's what I will say for sure. And I think that the positive message of superintelligence and the economic upside is not nearly as well trafficked as the downside doomer message because that goes from top to bottom in an extremely organized repetitive way.

And that's why Jason, the flight attendant has the talking point. So they are winning. And by the way, the talking point was given to them by Dario, the talking point was given to them by Elon when he said we're not going to need to have a job. Those talking points were handed out now they're being reversed still work to be done. I think next time best piece of advice, save three seed sacks, bring a Sal Khan bring somebody representing like teachers, bring somebody representing healthcare, bring somebody thoughtful, non business person who could represent other constituents in this save a seat at the table for people who, you know, the every man and woman of America can relate to says, Hey, yeah, this maybe this will help my kid, you know, when I get a personal tutor for them, like Sal Khan would be the perfect example of Khan Academy.

So actually got any final thoughts here? Well, I mean, I kind of wanted to broaden out this conversation to the economy as a whole, because I do think that the dumerism is affecting people's perception of the economy. Yeah, bringing it up. Yeah. And I think that actually, there's been a tremendous amount of economic data in just last week or two showing that the economy is much stronger than people are giving it credit for. I mean, yes, I know that diesel prices are too high, and rates are high.

But those are the only two variables that you ever hear about. Let's look at some of the other numbers that have just come out, because I think it's pretty extraordinary. So first of all, q2 GDP was revised up to 2.2% up from 1.5%. So that's basically a 50% increase. Economists had expected no revision q1 was also revised up to 2.5% from 2.1%. And if you look at the q3 growth, it's tracking well above that the Atlanta Fed GDP now is showing around 3.7%. As of late last week, August payrolls just came out plus 162,000.

The consensus was only 55,000 is a beat of about 107,000 jobs. June and July were also revised up by combined 55,000. So unemployment is still near record lows at 4.1%, even though labor participation rose point 2% to 61.6%. So good news on the jobs front, good news on the GDP front, the economy is running hot. And then there was also some good news on inflation. We saw that core PCE just came in at 3.0% versus 3.3% expected. So inflation is still a bit too high, but actually it is cooling and beating expectations.

And then finally, you look at manufacturing, we're seeing a huge wave of re industrialization in this country. A couple of the measures are the Chicago PMI, and then ISM manufacturing, they both are well into expansion territory and beating forecasts. Just one last point, let's talk about poverty for a second, because I want to address the idea that this is just a case-shape recovery. So if you look at US household income is now at record high, the median household income in 2025 dollars is almost $90,000. And after tax household income is growing again in the second Trump term, it's averaged 3.1% a year.

In Trump 47, it was 3.9% in Trump 45. And it was minus 1.2% in Biden's term as a four year average. So we're seeing that after tax household incomes have risen by 3.1% just in 2025. And the poverty rate in the US has fallen to its lowest level in history, 10.2%. So you know, the poverty rate, the child poverty rate, these are all at historic lows, the average households, real income, after inflation after taxes, is increasing for the first time in years. So there is a lot of strong economic data out there.

And I think that this is why if you know, if I was to guess, I actually think that the Republicans are going to do better in the midterms than some of these polls are predicting, because I think the press around the economy has been very negative. But I think people are starting to feel that the economy is accelerating. And that was actually a headline in the Wall Street Journal just the last couple of days, that the economy is accelerating right now. So again, you've got this AI boom, or SI boom, you've got the, the infrastructure build out that, again, the Wall Street Journal said is bigger than the railroads, the canals, and the electric grid combined.

And all these things are basically fueling strong growth in the economy. And again, I would just dispute the K shape narrative, because the poor are benefiting and the average household are benefiting as well. They don't feel that way. But I guess, I get the sentiment. I agree with you. The sentiment has not caught up with the economic reality, but I think it will. We've got a rate problem in the last 30 days or so, right? We've seen short term rates on treasuries climb by 60 basis points.

That's a pretty consequential climb. I think we haven't seen a short term yield this high since going back to 2002. And so this massive increase in rates is obviously going to impact people's ability to refinance their home, buy a new car, purchase things on credit, and that's the majority of Americans fall under that umbrella. And I think there's also kind of an economic challenge ahead with the rate problem. And I would argue, as I always do, that the rate problem is fundamentally rooted in the federal government and the insane spending.

And if you look at the impact that this rate is going to have on banks, I worked with chat GPT, my, my trusted analyst, my financial analyst in my office here, to help kind of figure out what's the impact of these rates actually going to be on banks and what the impairment would be. There's 4295 banks that have positive equity that report FDIC their balance sheets every month based on the actual reported balance sheet of these banks. About 95 banks are going to see an impairment of more than 20% of their equity in the last 30 days or so.

And those reports start to come out on October 30. So the thing I worry a lot about is on October 30, we're going to kind of see all these financial reports coming out from all the banks, all the lending institutions. And there's about 95 of them that are going to say, hey, we've got more than 20% impairment charge on our equity, that's going to be a massive kind of shock. And then what are the implications of that? And that's where we're going to start to wake up to the fact that the rate problem isn't just a purchasing problem for consumers, but it may actually have a bit of a rippling effect here in the economy, starting with the financial institutions.

So they publish their next monthly reports on the September 30, ending period on October 30. And unfortunately, it coincides right with the election cycle. So there's going to be all this noise about, hey, how bad are things looking? While we're trying to go through this election? So sacks, I don't know, like, you know, if there's any view on how we fix the rate problem, but it's pretty nasty. And it's gonna look, I mean, I can see it up front that we have two issues in the economy that are negative.

We have diesel prices and rates, but then I went on to lay out the case for why there's so much other positive economic news that's not really being covered. Look, if you compare rates to the nominal growth rate of the economy, and those two things are highly correlated over time, you can see the economy is running really hot right now. And that is part of the reason why rates are going up is because you have to compensate people for a real return. And you've got inflation in the threes, and then you've got GDP growth at 3.7%.

Then rates are going to be high as well. Look, I think this all comes back to price of diesel, because that obviously has a lot to do with not just people's price at the pump, but also diesels and industrial input, and the transportation costs get baked into all these goods. I think if we can just solve that problem, then gas prices come down, inflation comes down, we can get rate cuts on that basis. So I think that's the last piece here. I think the economy is already doing again, very well.

2.5% in Q2, 3.7 in Q3. But if we just get that last piece, I'm not saying there's not a little bit of work to do there. I think the economy will take off like a rocket. Yeah, I think the conditions are right. You're right. I think the federal spending problem is still persisting, though. It's almost like pouring acid on everything. Like you've got all this great stuff growing. And then you just have all this federal spending, which as you and I both know, is like negative productivity spending.

And it's creating fake employment, and it's doing all sorts of bad things. But, man, if we don't get spending, you know, as Scott Besson has talked about, to 3% deficit as a percent of GDP, these rates are only going to get worse. And that could basically just shoot us in the foot. It's almost like, you know, we all agree about spending as a long term problem. And it's a bipartisan problem, we have to fix it. I would just say that, look, I would say about six months ago, people said that if we get a spike in gas prices, we're going to have 1970 style stagflation.

That has not happened. Instead, we're seeing a super hot economy. And yet gas prices are a little high. But by the way, during the Obama presidency, we had over 300 days of Brent crude over $100 a barrel. So people forget that we've had the economy do well over large stretches of time with gas prices at these levels. It's just the diesel prices are a little bit high. And that has to do with refineries. Frankly, it'd be good if Zelensky stopped hitting Russian refineries. That hasn't helped the problem.

But look, it's so we just have that one, that one issue. And I think we can resolve it. There was a report this week, I think it was in the Guardian, which is not a pro Trump publication saying that more oil got out of Hormuz this week than since the beginning of the war. So I think we need to kind of wrap up that issue, gas prices come down. And then I think that means inflation will come down, it's already coming down more than expected. But then we can get a rate cut.

I think actually right now, no one's pricing in the potential for rate cuts here. It's all rate increases. So you know, if we could get some relief there, get rate cuts. I mean, again, the economy is going to rock it even more. We have two tricky auctions that are coming up. And I think Treasury will be able to navigate those. Well, just because I think Scott has such a good handle on how to do this, and frankly, how to do the job. But once we get past those two auctions, I'm leaning more in the sacks camp, I kind of tend to agree with you, there's going to be some growing evidence about what to do, based on what happens from Europe as well.

I don't know if you guys have been tracking this, but France is going through a really complicated budget negotiation right now. And they're about to shrink the budget by probably 50 $75 billion, which you can imagine in France, that's like ground zero for it's a one way ratchet that GDP going through the roof. And so when the French start to make cuts, and it's what Fribourg has been saying, it's why were they forced to capitulate because of long rates. So that's happened. Andy Burnham, who, you know, bumbled his way into the Prime Ministership of the UK presented his policy platform yesterday for an hour.

It's truly insane. What he's saying. This is an extremely muscular form of socialism that he intends to impose on the United Kingdom. And then to remerge back into Europe. And so he's going to try to undo Brexit, he's going to try to double and triple the size of government. Not a mention of growth, like how do you grow the private economy? Insane. So what you're going to see from both of those two places over the next year, is, I think, going to tell us what we're going to have to do in the United States.

But I tend to think that we're going to see a little bit more growth than that is expected. I tend to think we're going to probably see a little bit more revision. And I think that people are sleeping on the fact that we are not nearly as dependent on oil the way that we used to be. And so even though we used to breathlessly look at Brent crude and WTI and all this stuff, I don't think it matters nearly as much as it used to. And I think that's crazy, because like the paradigm of rates and the paradigm of currencies and the petrodollar, all these intermingled things that you strive the global economy are now getting rewired in ways that I don't think anybody fully understands.

And that's very good for the United States. So I think like the one problem is we we do have gas prices at the pump are up 50% since the Iran war started. And that hurts the everyday consumer significantly, it may not drive the GDP numbers down super aggressively because of the industrial but the actual cost of living for the average person. Can I say something? Yeah, I've looked at those numbers, the prices and they're terrible. And I feel bad for people that have to bear that cost.

But I think it's also important to say that is not an input issue. That is a refining issue. For decades and decades, we turned off the refining infrastructure that the United States could have used. Okay. And so we now need a sack said, the Russians, the Chinese, we need as much refining capacity as possible to take all of this oil and to get it into usable forms. So I hear you. But I think it's also important to acknowledge where the constraint is not the oil. Yeah, I constraint is it over decades and decades of jump in for a second.

I hate to, you know, put a little rain on this Hopi and parade here. But two important charts as we go into the midterms. Here is Trump's well, in my core belief is not enough has changed. And so the American people involved the first chart now. If we look at just since Trump's been in office, I think the challenge is nothing's changed. If you look at unemployment hasn't changed, it's about the same. And then if you look at inflation, it's still sustained at that high threes, sometimes dipping into four, sometimes as low as 3.2, but never into the twos.

And GDP is, you know, something that the American people just don't feel. And if you look at this chart, these are Trump's biggest strengths. So you have to ask yourself, how did this administration go from an incredibly positive feeling when Trump 2.0 came out to having just a net negative on immigration trade, the economy and inflation and people's perception is their own reality. And the perception right now is that Trump and this administration cares about foreign wars, and it cares about industry much more than it cares about the average American.

And that is the exact opposite of what Trump promised his own constituents. And this what you see here in these results is he's lost all those independents he won with the promise of Trump 2.0. And he's obviously never going to win over Democrats, and he's starting to lose his base. And the base, you know, now fleeing and saying, Hey, you promised us you were going to deport 20 million people, something I don't agree with. But that didn't happen. So now he's losing all those core positions, the things that were supposed to be a shrinks.

And that's where you have to wonder, what is going on in this administration that they just can't even talk about the issues that the American people care about? And obviously, the war just destroyed this administration's popularity with the own bait with their own base, they're going to get shellacked in the midterms, according to all polls. And of course, Trump, if anybody's going to pull a rabbit ahead, it would be Trump, because he has beaten the polls before. But this is not looking good, gentlemen. And you could spin sacks the last couple of quarters.

But can I respond to this? Absolutely. I wish it was different. I wish he had 2% inflation right now. Yeah. What is your prediction? What do you think? I just look at poly market, honestly, and pull up the poly market here, I think it's about 70-80% that the Democrats sweep both. By the way, over the next week, the four of us are going to have a squad on poly market where we're going to make all of our predictions. And then the audience can kind of follow along and see how we all do on our predictions, which will be kind of interesting.

But I don't, Jamal, I am not an expert on polling. But I do think starting with the people actually betting money and 63% chance the Democrats take the Senate 93%. They take the House and if you put those together, there's a chance they sweep both. You know, who knows with these polls, I do think I would look at poly market first. And if you could zoom in there, the chances they take both is that what now sweep 64% that they sweep. So okay, let me tell you what I think is wrong with this analysis.

Okay, so okay, look, so so look, I made this mistake in 2022. Like I was sure there was going to be a red wave in 2022. This is when Biden was president. And this was his midterms. Okay. Now, and it ended up being like a red trickle. I mean, it was very disappointing to Republicans that you know, they made gains, but it was not a shellacking. So what was the mistake that I made? It was that I was only looking at perception. And I wasn't looking enough at reality.

And I wasn't balancing the reality. So for example, Biden's polling was in the 30s. He was very low back then. And inflation was 9%. But if you looked at GDP growth and unemployment, those numbers are actually pretty strong. So you know, there was a lot of talking down the economy based on one variable, which was inflation, it was too high. And it was a problem. But there were other variables that were actually quite good. So the reality that people were feeling wasn't as bad as you know, this like super hyperbolic view that again, all the pollsters have an incentive to kind of exaggerate the stuff and all the political operatives always freak out good for ratings.

But yes, it's good for ratings. But the reality is the American people look, they went red, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't the massive wave that everyone was expecting was more like a red trickle. I think here, I don't think we're going to get a blue wave. I think we might get like a blue spritz. I mean, listen, I think that listen, Biden wishes that back in 2022. I'm saying that back in 2022 Biden would have wished for the economy that Trump has now. Okay.

Yes, we have 3% inflation. It's not 9% like Biden had. Yes, gas prices are a little bit high. But GDP growth is great. It's accelerating. unemployment is great. Labor participation is great. Poverty, the poverty line is great. I think the republicans are going to surprise people. Okay, and keep the Senate. And I think you know, most people think the republicans lose the house. I guess that's probably consensus, but it's not going to be this gigantic wave. I think it'll be narrow if the democrats win. And I think it'll be a real headache for Hakeem Jeffries to keep all of these DSA democrats in line.

If you remember when Kevin McCarthy had the house, he had a very thin majority, and he lost his speakership because he couldn't quite keep the Freedom Caucus in line. I think Hakeem Jeffries is gonna have very similar problems if the democrats take the house. So look, I even noticed Mark Halpern's been predicting a blue tsunami for last month, but he's starting to hedge that. So I think the pro democrat pro blue sentiment peaked, I think about two weeks ago. And since then, it's been very positive economic numbers for the President.

The republicans need to go out there and tell that story. You know, can't have all this Doomer stuff. We got to turn this around. I think we just neutralized this whole AI safety issue at the White House. So I think that the next month, actually, if they get a war, what do you think the situation would be? Well, look, I mean, you know, again, I said that the one missing piece here is diesel prices. So you get the price of diesel down, and that'll be the last remaining unlock on inflation that will bring rates down.

And the economy is going to hit, you know, 5% GDP growth. So without the war, you think the republicans could have swept or there's ways of solving that problem with diesel? I mean, and look, in the last week, I mean, this is the news report. Okay. You know, I don't know the reality of what's happening in Hormuz. But according to all the publications, they just got a record amount of oil out of Hormuz. So they're doing night shipping with the lights off kind of situation. Yeah, interesting.

So if we can just wrap that, look, I'm in favor of wrapping it up. Don't get me wrong. But I think the President says indicate he'll do that. He doesn't want to be pressured into doing it before the election. You said that very clearly tomorrow, anything's going to happen here prediction for the election. We're a month out from the numbers that I'm looking at. The Senate, I think is very much a toss up, but I think can remain republican. And I think the democrats are going to have a slim majority in the house.

Okay, same as sex. And I think the, the way that the president can seal the deal, so to speak, is I think you have to focus on the economic gains, and you have to dispel the Doomer narrative. And I think if you can stay focused on that for the next month, I think the republicans have a pretty decent shot. Now the other side is also true. If you can distract people and focus on the one or two things that are still problematic, like gas prices, and continue to reinforce the Doomer narrative, you have a chance to overachieve if you're the democrats.

So I think this is how it's going to come down, Jason, can you focus on a few issues like gas prices? Or do you look at a broad based look at the economy that's on one side? And do you look at superintelligence as a constructive force of GDP growth? Or do you buy the Boomer narrative? And I think what we're going to see is who is better organised, and who gets that message out the cleanest. And whoever does that, for sure wins the house. Yeah, I think the Doomerism, Freiburg is like, not a huge winning issue.

All I have to say is Trump promised not to start a war. He did. He promised to solve inflation. He didn't. The end, and I think the Democrats sweep, what's your take on what's going to happen, Freiburg? You have any insights? Yeah, I think the more important question is what happens between 26 and 28. Go ahead, take that one. That was my follow up. I mean, what do you think happens between 26 and 28? You know, whether we split sweep either way? Yeah, I think that those are kind of like, a consequence.

And it's not just split or sweep. I think what happens between 26 and 28 is how far left do the Democrats go? And how much does that get hardened? And then how much do the Republicans splinter into this kind of populist thing? And do the populists kind of fuse? And then we end up in this kind of socialist takeover of America. The America first movement, I think you're referring to. I actually don't know if that's even like, you know, remember there was a tea party, like there's a whole bunch of manifestations of these social emotions, these kind of public emotions, they all kind of like fuse into different words and different parties and different groups.

You know, who knows where it goes? It's certainly unlikely that the first manifestation is the one that sticks and holds and becomes the biggest one. I mean, look, I would argue the tea party was sort of seeded MAGA years later. Yes, of course. Yeah. But this kind of populist movement does not like if you look at the first derivative of it, it's still positive. Like the populist sentiment is still growing in America. And that's what I really care about the most because I do think that that's where individual liberties get destroyed.

As you know, populism effectively mandates a bigger kind of government to solve our individual problems. And I worry that we've got some looming crises, looming crisis number one being social justice. And I worry that we've got social security looming crisis number two being where rates are, and the impact that's going to have an affordability looming crisis number three being that this idea of an asset tax is actually going to solve any problems where the truth is, like I've said in the past, if you took 100% of the net wealth of all the billionaires in the United States as a tax, a one-time tax and took 100% of their net worth, it would fund one year of the federal government.

All the billionaires money combined is one year of federal government spending. It doesn't really move the needle to do an asset tax, that there's a fundamental restructuring of how we tax and how we spend that's going to be necessary. You either need to tax the middle class, which is where 160 trillion of America's 183 trillion dollars net worth sits, or you've got to cut spending massively, or you've got to completely restructure these entitlement programs, all of which are deeply unpopular. All three of those paths are deeply unpopular.

So when something deeply unpopular starts to kind of be the only path, what happens? And that's what I worry most about. And I think that's all going to kind of come to a head between 26 and 28. I think it's going to frame the political calculus going into 28. It's going to be fascinating. And we'll be here for it. I don't know if you guys had time when you were busy here. But there was a hijacking that occurred slash terrorist attack, I think is the only way to describe it fly Dubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

David had 174 passengers on board. And Omani co pilot apparently stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane. In a 911 style attack. Passengers bravely subdued him. And there were off duty pilots on the plane. miraculously, I mean, what are the chances and they somehow during this terrorist trying to down the plane Friedberg were able to not only remove him but get these off duty pilots into the cockpit level the plane and land it safely. One of the most amazing acts of bravery with this co pilot who fought off the terrorist, and then three or four passengers were able to get into that cockpit, drag the this terrorist out.

And yeah, land the plane, your thoughts, Friedberg? Well, I mean, the eyewitness accounts came out pretty fast and furious, because these guys had internet access as soon as they were able to land in Saudi Arabia. And they started to provide their reports. But what really I thought was the most striking aspect of all of this, despite the what I thought was incredible heroism, and bravery, and just a true kind of showing of human spirit was how the media covered it. And I was deeply saddened. Because I remember 911.

I remember the shock and the anger and the stories coming out during that day. I remember the media, the news channels were my source of truth. And I watched it all day. And then yesterday, this happened. And so here's an example. This is the New York Times cover the day after 911 hijacked jets destroy twin towers and notice this and hit Pentagon in day of terror. And it really was a day of terror. It was a truly tragic event in human history. Regardless of your political or social beliefs, then or now, the loss of life, in this case, the loss of life in conflict that followed the loss of life in conflicts around October 7, and that followed that is all tragic.

And it's all terror. And it's all awful. And the reporting yesterday on this event, which I found to be kind of emotionally distressing was almost like a strange casting of the experience as being one of a fight between two buddies that weren't getting along in the pilot got into a Yeah, got into the original reporting. Yes. The first one was New York Times come came out and said it was an altercation. And then the journal called it a struggle. The BBC called it a fight between pilots.

Sky News called it a brawl between pilots. AFP called it, you know, said they were fighting even CNN said it was a altercation. And there were direct eyewitness reports coming out at this time, about this guy tried to take over the plane and crash it. And this was clearly a terror event. And we've stopped using this word terror, for some reason, because when we use terror, it doesn't allow us to politicize and create sides of a story, and a long form narrative that I believe so much of the media is trying to portray.

And I'm not going to try and say what their narrative is, and who's trying to do it. But here's the next day on the New York Times website. So this is the day after when all the facts of the case have come out, what happened, this is the front page of the New York Times today, a day after with all of the witnesses with all of the journalism that would allow you to validate multiply witnesses on what happened on this flight that investigators seek to establish a motive.

The story is that the guy tried to crash a plane full of passengers, he took over the plane and he tried to do it. Number one bullet point 737 sustained the enormous stress. Number two, investigators seek to answer the motive. And in bullet point number three, Israeli politicians use the attack to try to score points in this month's election. And so I just kind of lost faith yesterday and today, and how the media is kind of characterizing facts on the ground that there is human tragedy, that there is terror, and that from their view from their writing, this ends up becoming a place to kind of sell, I think, unfortunately, a narrative that is all too popular is what's going to sell them.

And they don't want to lose people by saying the wrong thing. And they want to say what they think is right. And I don't know who the individuals are behind all of it. But I just found it to be pretty shocking for me that 25 years ago to today, how much has changed in the landscape of the people that we trust that we call journalists to tell us the truth of what's going on. And to try and recharacterize such horrific events, because it doesn't quite conform to a specific narrative that they've been trying to sell for some time.

So I was deeply upset about the whole thing. I wanted to bring it up. Yeah, I mean, reasonably upset. Two different. And I do think a big, big shout out to the pilot. Unbelievable. If you read the reports, he wouldn't go to the bathroom because he had suspicions that his co pilot was going to do something. He called for an emergency urinary bag and he stayed in the cockpit to pee in his urinary bag. That's when the guy tried to kill him. He fought the guy off.

He was, while he was stabbed and bleeding out to death, heroically opened up the cockpit door and screamed for passengers to come and help. And then several heroic souls stepped up and saved the day and saved 170 some odd lives. That's the story. It's a story of terror. It's a story of human heroism. I don't care where these people are from. I don't care what religion anyone is. I don't care what political interests anyone might have. This is the story that needs to be told. And it is being kind of bullshit recast by the media about Israeli politicians trying to score points is what the New York Times is trying to sell on their cover page today, as opposed to the story of what really took place here.

And then the New York Times, you know, got so much shit over it that they started, Jake, you can cover this, but. Yeah, yeah. And the New York Times communications account says, based on the early tweet, which was, there was an altercation. Quote, our headlines and live coverage contain all the facts we're able to confirm as we confirm them. Unlike activists and partisans, we don't publish speculation or unverified information. Here's a gift link to follow along to our reporting, yada, yada. So I guess two topics there, Sax.

You have the real-time issue, which is certainly very different than 9-11. And that was an attack where people took credit pretty quickly, if my memory serves me correctly, and in this case, we're left to wonder, lone wolf, coordinated attack, et cetera. But certainly strange the next day's coverage, I think, at a minimum, that they can't call this a terrorist attack, a little bit odd. Your thoughts, Sax? Well, I think we can probably infer what the motive here was. I mean, it was terrorism. This was a Dubai airline, but I think all the passengers were Israeli.

Yeah. One other detail I thought was interesting was that when the pilot yelled for help, I guess, then a few of the passengers stormed the cockpit, the terrorist was yanked out of there by an Israeli plumber. Love it. Yeah. I don't think that's like CIA plumber. I think that was, I think it was like a real plumber. Yeah, this guy has- Those Israelis are tough, I got to say. They're quite tough. The bravery to jump in the cockpit like that, and then I just, I mean, the fortuitous, and I guess conspiracy theorists, are now losing their minds, but to be able to have two pilots who were able there and get this landed, absolutely fantastic, and so glad people's lives have been saved.

I'll save the false flag nonsense and whatever for a conspiracy show. Somebody else can handle that issue. Chamath, listen, we've said a lot here about it. Glad everybody's safe. Any final thoughts as we wrap? A Omani national stabbed an Indian pilot and then tried to down a plane full of Israelis. That is what happened. And any attempt to try to cover up any of those facts is cowardly. I've worked in Israel. I've had some incredible memories there. I think at some point, we all just need to take a step back and realize what happened October 7th was horrible.

What's happened in Palestine, also horrible. But you cannot now see these kinds of things and look past them because you care more about a narrative than what the facts are. Those were 150, 170 earnest, normal people, living lives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, kids. They didn't deserve to get plunged into the ground and die. So I think this idea that you can now whitewash what happens, enough is enough. And I think we need to find a way to actually tell the truth for what things are. So I was really, really, really disappointed in how the media handled it.

And I think it's dangerous. And I think it's yet another demonstration that these people have absolutely no moral authority left in society. They're just pathetic, putrid. And by the way, they're coordinated. When you see the words, the same words over and over, altercation, altercation, altercation, it's very powerful. It means that it starts from one place. And I think that if you believe that you are reading this stuff and you're getting the facts, you're just not. And so at some point- Well, it implies that one guy did something wrong to the other guy and they got in a fight.

That's not what happened. That's what it implies. I'm trying to have the most charitable interpretation here. Why? To steel man it. So in the moment, if you didn't know what happened, but then after it happened, you would just very easily be able to say it was a potential terrorist attack. There was live footage coming from the airplane. Of course. But how do you describe it as a suicidal? That's my point. In the moment, you could give them a, hey, you don't know what's happening. You want to be cautious here if it's a suicide, if it is an actual fight, or if it's a terrorist attack.

Okay, fine. I could have a little bit of room there to be like, okay. But then after it, how could you not say this is an apparent terrorist attack or a mentally ill person? Those are the two possibilities here. Period, full stop. And then you really have to get into what is the motivation here? Look, I think the moral principle here is that all attacks on civilians are wrong. And that's what this was. And it was pretty clearly an act of terrorism. And regardless of who's doing it, that's the thing we have to denounce.

Is even when there's a military conflict taking place, attacks on civilians are wrong. And that's a war crime. And there's a lot of that happening. So it's not the only case. But all of that needs to stop. All right, that's your All In episode 291 for October 2nd, 2026. We'll see you all next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Savage. We'll let your winners ride. And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

I'm Queen of Kinwani. I'm going all in. We'll let your winners ride. Besties are gone. I hope they're dead. That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway. Sucks. We're gonna go. Oh, man. Oh, man. My avatars will meet me at Woodson. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow. What the B. We need to get merch. Besties are gone. I'm going all in.

Go deeper

• All All-In Podcast episode guides