SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody, it's an all-new show today with me and Molly Wood. What else are we going to cover? Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of four counts. And we're going to do a dramatic reading of some of her text messages and talk about the fraud that everybody's talking about and how many years she's going to do. And we're going to cover how even socialists are admitting that Amazon is one of the best places for people to work or they've ever worked.

SPEAKER_01: And we're going to discuss that balance between capitalism, socialism, and what a great job Amazon is doing in making conditions better for employees and that balance between what socialists, democratic socialists, communists want and what capitalism is providing. Finally, we'll discuss Biden's new sanctions against China

SPEAKER_02: and the implications on decoupling our two economies which have spent three, four, five decades now intertwining themselves. It's a great show. Let's get to work.

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SPEAKER_09: There's only one story today. Let's be honest. We got a long rundown and a lot of potential items to talk about, but I know that everybody's here for the one thing, and that thing is Elizabeth Holmes.

SPEAKER_10: Oh, boy. Dang. So first, the facts, then the impressions. It's a lot to get to here. There was a lot to get. So she was found guilty on four counts of fraud, which many people were surprised by. She could serve up to 20 years in prison. Jason, did you think this was going to happen at all? I'm actually going to jump ahead. Did you think there would be any guilty verdict? Because the deliberations took forever. The jury was hung on several of these counts. But four guilty verdicts, some related to investors. Were you surprised or not surprised?

SPEAKER_12: Okay. I was absolutely sure she was guilty.

SPEAKER_02: Now, that means, and I was sure she was guilty years ago, like even before this stuff broke, because the back channel in Silicon Valley from investors I know who met with her was they laughed her out of the room because they would say, hey, as part of diligence, can we see the technology to say, no, it's proprietary? And they said, yeah, well, we're VCs. This is like, we're going to be on your board of directors. Like, you can show us. That's how this works. She's like, no, I can't show you, but you can invest. And so, you know, people like, I think, Bill Morris, who was at Google Ventures, kind of laughed her out of the room. Other people, and he's been public about that. So we knew it was a fraud. And we, or at least that she was like strange and that it might not be there there. So I knew she was guilty. So then it just came down to, can a jury convict her? Is there enough evidence? And are these prosecutors good at their jobs? I would say the prosecutors are terrible at their jobs because when I talked to people who were covering the case, none of them talked to VCs who passed on investing. They only talked to the investors who lost money. Now, the investors who lost money is why she got the four guilties, guilty of wire fraud, because she presented information that was not true and then took their money. So she lied, she committed securities fraud, I guess, and this wire fraud is basically lying about the state of your company, the material facts of the company, and then taking people's money.

SPEAKER_17: So that's what I believe she's guilty of or was found guilty of.

SPEAKER_02: So, but it only takes a couple of people to, you know, create a hung jury, right? Or it only takes one, I guess, technically.

SPEAKER_17: So I was, I think I said I was like 60 or 70% sure she would be guilty of something. So I think I got it exactly right.

SPEAKER_10: I think it's the type of guilty I do find very interesting because that was the question all along is like, there always seemed to be something weird. And you talk to investors, you know, I have even had the opportunity to talk to investors who passed who were like, something was not right there from the get go. Or even if they had put in a tiny bit of money and then tried to get information later, it was like, all right, that's not normal. What is interesting, though, is that they found her guilty of conspiring to the three counts of wire fraud and then conspiring to defraud investors, but not they were split on whether she intended to defraud investors all along, which I think is the kind of that was like the dinner table argument is like, did she was it sort of an accidental Ponzi scheme where they got in over their heads, the technology wasn't working, they got on the hamster wheel of trying to continue to continue to raise money to get it working versus it being a fraud from day one, right, which it clearly wasn't like there was definitely some true.

SPEAKER_24: No, her situation, she believed her, but she believed her both. Yeah, she was delusional.

SPEAKER_01: And this is the fake it till you make it delusions of grandeur, you know, have big, crazy, audacious goals, which is, to be totally honest, a trait you're looking for in founders, you want them to be a bit delusional.

SPEAKER_02: You want to believe that you can change the world against all odds. So that's like a checkbox for investors. Yeah, this person is delusional. And what if they actually succeed? You want somebody who's crazy enough to try the crazy, audacious idea, whether it's going to Mars or creating a search engine that indexes the world's information or connects 2 billion people on the planet. All of those crazy ideas, Google, Facebook, SpaceX, you know, have come to fruition and, you know, push a button and go from point A to point B in any city in the world, Uber, Lyft, etc.

SPEAKER_29: Amazon, get anything you want within two days. Like these are crazy, audacious ideas that now we consider de rigueur, you know, obvious, and she was going down that path. But the difference is, you know, she dropped out of school in, you know, the realm of biology where you kind of need a science degree. Like if you're making an app, do you really need a science degree? No, but if you're delivering books, do you need a science degree? No, but that was a bit of a tell.

SPEAKER_02: And then the fact is, I think she did get, I think it's probably accurate that she did get over her skis and she was delusional and believed she could do it, but she didn't have the ethics, moral compass or humility to learn from the mistakes. So, you know, the difference between her and another person without audacious goals is a person with audacious goals who hits a roadblock says, okay, I can't get the books there in, you know, two days, but we can get them there in five days and we can't have every single skew in the world.

SPEAKER_17: That's going to take a decade, but let's start working on it and let's see, maybe we can get it to two day delivery. Maybe we get it to two day delivery in major cities and we'll just keep grinding until we get there, right? Instead, when she hit those roadblocks, she just doubled down that and, you know, basically that's where the lie came in. So that actually might be the jury getting it right, which is this wasn't a conspiracy for day one.

SPEAKER_10: Yeah. Yep. I mean, that's what I find really interesting. But I think this is a very nuanced outcome and a nuanced verdict that is, that feels to me to be ultimately accurate because anybody who talks to founders can see how this could happen. The red flags, of course, from the beginning were, and look, I'm taking this straight from your book, right? Right. Not only would this lady not provide monthly updates, I believe Jason is a big fan of you don't invest if you don't provide, you know, monthly, if you're not willing to give monthly updates, her investors who had put in, you know, in one case, let's see, about a hundred million dollars from the family office of former education secretary Betsy DeVos. She wouldn't tell them anything for a period of years. This gets to, though, so let's talk about who they decided that she defrauded, and I see a conspicuous lack of Silicon Valley venture capital firms here, despite the constant insistence that this is a Silicon Valley story.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that's a great narrative, yeah, it's a great narrative to say, so look, this is what Silicon Valley creates is this type of fraud, I think you have to pause for a second and say, this fraud is one in 10,000, right, this level of fraud, a Madoff level fraud, a Theranos level fraud.

SPEAKER_43: And then you have things that feel like this, that are in the delusional carry, you know, category, which is Adam Neumann, from we were new and exactly, like, exactly who I was thinking of Adam Neumann, a fraud, or delusional?

SPEAKER_02: Where do you see on that spectrum? Well, I had a we work office, it was pretty fantastic. It was pretty revolutionary at the time, you didn't have to sign a long lease.

SPEAKER_13: You have a real product that worked and not fake boxes and Walgreens. So that's one big difference. That's the big difference. And then did he go off the rails?

SPEAKER_44: Was he smoking pot on private jets? Was he not a good steward of capital?

SPEAKER_02: Was he buying wave machines? Was he double dealing and, you know, reselling the IP of the trademark to his own company, buying real estate, flipping it? So there was all these ethical violations that he was doing, but at the core, there was a real business, right?

SPEAKER_46: So there's a spectrum between somebody who is completely honest, upstanding, and then there's fraud, and then there's like this whole thing in between.

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SPEAKER_46: And the whole thing in between, which now, Molly, that you're joining me on this adventure to be a managing director at Launcher Investment Company, one of the things we have to continually vet for when we're reviewing a deck is a founder, typically a young, naive founder, will say, here are our customers. And they'll use the word customers. So when you say the word customer, I would assume, you would assume, a normal person would assume, somebody who's paying you for a product or service and using it.

SPEAKER_02: And they'll put 10 logos, right? And that's like the logo slide. It's supposed to get induced investors into investing in a company.

SPEAKER_17: Well, what if out of those 10 logos, three are paying, four are on free trials, and, you know, the other three, you know, we've had an email exchange with and you're calling them all customers.

SPEAKER_02: Well, now you're lying. And is it a big lie? I would say yes. But, you know, they would say, well, you know, the people who are on the free trials are using the product. And other people give you 30 days free. So, yeah, they're customers, we got their credit card, and we will charge them next month. So now you're getting into this, like, you know, nuanced debate, are you lying or not? And I just tell people, own your metrics, own the reality, because we all know the reality is going to be hit or miss in the early days of a startup. So you put one slide, paying customers, another slide, customers on free trials, and then pipeline. These are potential customers, customers in discussion, people we're talking to. And founders are like, okay, yeah, I can split that into three slides. And I'm like, don't make me a detective. Don't make me into Columbo to where I have to figure out the truth. Just tell the truth from day one. And that's something where fake it till you make it, bend the truth, present the best image. Founders get desperate to raise capital, to not fail, and they're acting out of fear. So I have a little bit of empathy for a founder who is scared of failure and who does a little bit of massaging or spinning. I still don't think they should do it, to be clear, but I understand what's happening.

SPEAKER_18: They're scared. They're scared of failure.

SPEAKER_09: And that is the weight of the world. They might have employees, they have investors that they don't want to let down. Like, that's all so understandable.

SPEAKER_10: And you can see how some of this would start to spin. And then you can see where it had to stop and where it crossed over into, I mean, fake boxes and literally lying to consumers and lying to investors and refusing. But it was clear, and this is what has driven me crazy, even for, I mean, when I was covering this as a journalist, I still was like, this is not a Silicon Valley. Like, it's just this constant insistence that it was a Silicon Valley story and that it's like all about the excesses. And you see that in every single lead today.

Jason Calacanis: And I'm like, the first big round she got after Threshold was from Rupert Murdoch.

SPEAKER_44: Yeah, it's a bit of a, it's Rupert Murdoch known for his incredibly savvy technology investments that he's made over the years, especially in biotech, you know, and life sciences. Like, I mean, he is a Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_43: He's one of us. Let me tell you. I mean, I see him all the time walking up and down University Avenue at Copa Cafe or whatever.

SPEAKER_29: Like, he's not like walking around Santo Road or, you know, in South Park, you know, meeting with app developers.

SPEAKER_64: It's just not what he's doing. He's, you know, he's in Monaco or in New York City, right? Like, this just, it's a bit crazy.

SPEAKER_02: But, you know, then the other issue that becomes a bit of a lens here is she's a female founder. And so I'm curious your thoughts on that, because, you know, the press, if you look at the two groups of people, and I don't want to make this beat up the press time, but, you know, we're both former journalists and we're doing random acts of journalism here on the show. But, you know, when you're a journalist and you kind of laud somebody and you put them on the cover of magazines like they did with Adam Newman and like they did with her. Yeah. Who promoted, just as a thought experiment, who promoted Elizabeth Holmes more?

SPEAKER_17: The Silicon Valley venture industrial complex, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, whoever, they had nothing to do with her. Nope. And then the press, she's on the cover of Fast Company, Inc., like every major publication. So, you know, when the press is like, oh, it's your fault.

SPEAKER_69: I'm kind of like, or did you have any part in this? Is it really my fault?

SPEAKER_72: Because I'm pretty sure that you have helped create a celebrity obsessed culture all across America that led to like a TV guy becoming president two times.

SPEAKER_10: And, you know, yeah, no, 100%.

Jason Calacanis: And it is amazing to see them all in lockstep now talking about how this is a Silicon Valley story.

SPEAKER_10: I'm like, this is a celebrity culture story. And 100% related to the fact that this woman is irresistibly attractive. And you said it, not me. Absolutely knew how to market that 100%.

SPEAKER_02: So she was leveraging the fact that she was attractive, which, you know, is a tough conversation to people have to have people to have. But when I was in the magazine business,

SPEAKER_21: But so is Adam Neumann. Like, it's not just be I want to be 100% clear here. America likes pretty people.

SPEAKER_44: Newsflash. And not a shock. Right. That is not controversial to say. Not controversial. There's a reason why you and I are broadcasters who have big audiences.

SPEAKER_79: I'm just saying, you know, look at us. I mean, look at us. It's exhausting sometimes. It is. It is.

SPEAKER_81: But with the two of them who are like taller, better looking versions of us, literally, I'm literally blushing right now.

SPEAKER_85: This is terrible. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, yeah.

SPEAKER_44: There is a thing with there is actually like studies that have been made about height and CEOs.

SPEAKER_02: Yes. CEOs are over five foot 11 or six foot and I'm five, eight and a half on a good day. Like your correlation with being CEO goes up. Putting all that aside, I was in the star chamber, my own magazine and other magazines and with other editors of magazines. And they would do photo shoots and then decide who gets the cover. And I can tell you that if you were an obese person, if you were an ugly person, if you were aesthetically not pleasing, you were not getting the cover of a magazine, period, full stop. Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_00: And so one time we put somebody on the cover who was large in Silicon Valley Reporter. And I had this like big internal base. I was like, you can't like literally one of my editors is like, this person is too fat and too ugly to be on the cover of a magazine. And, you know, I was like, they said it so bluntly. I know.

SPEAKER_63: People were trying to outvote me and I was like, but he's also the most successful person. We're going to put him on the cover anyway. And it was like a big internal debate.

SPEAKER_43: Um, and I'm not giving myself any points for doing it, but I do think that that's like another layer on this, which I mean, when you and I came into the industry, how many female CEOs were there of note in technology?

SPEAKER_22: Kim Polisi. Mm hmm. Meg Whitman. Meg Whitman back then.

SPEAKER_90: That's right. Totally. It was like, yeah. Xerox. That awesome Xerox woman.

SPEAKER_91: Yeah. Who was the woman from HP? No, that was Meg.

SPEAKER_92: Carly Fiorina. Carly Fiorina.

SPEAKER_00: Yes. Yeah. So like, there was just like short list. And so if you were a journalist, or you were running a tech conference, you were like, okay, got to have Marissa Mayer. Or you called them all.

SPEAKER_02: Exactly. And now, one of the great things about our industry, as a girl dad, I'm pretty stoked about, is we now have a

SPEAKER_00: large enough female founders to have one be a fraud. That's the way I interpret this. We have a large enough sample. Like if you only have 10, you know, female CEOs or 100, like, what's the chances of a one in 10, I call this a one in 10,000 fraud. Your chances of a one in 10,000 fraud, if there are only 100 or 1000 female CEOs is very low. But when you start trending towards 10,000, it's inevitable.

SPEAKER_10: Right. And this is a minor departure, but not entirely, because that also led to a narrative around Elizabeth Holmes. There has been sort of an act. Like, I know a number of female founders who are like, yeah, we're basically all on a group text being like, when are we going to get the takedown piece? Wow. So there was also the narrative around Elizabeth Holmes initially.

SPEAKER_95: Yes. I'm just like, is she getting tougher treatment because she's a female founder? Because when a female founder does something wrong- What do you think?

SPEAKER_98: I'm curious. Double click on that. Do female founders get it harder from the press and social media when they make mistake?

SPEAKER_95: I mean, female founders get it harder from life. So that includes social media and the press, right? Like there's no question.

SPEAKER_10: They rate it. These are just, this is just facts. Like they're, they get less money overall. And then when they do something wrong, they do get harsher scrutiny. I think there's no question about that. And certainly then they just get their asses kicked on social media all the time.

SPEAKER_89: I think instructive for this point. And I agree with you is the away founder, the luggage.

SPEAKER_01: That's exactly who I was thinking of. Yeah. Corey. She basically, you know, gave a stern talking to in Slack and Slack is, you know, not the ideal medium.

SPEAKER_43: But, uh, she said like, listen, your customer support, it's the holidays.

SPEAKER_00: Everybody's working. Everybody's doing double shifts. This is when we make our money. If you want a job, show up for work when we need you, which is the holidays and you better bring it. And she, you know, kind of like admonish slash gave what she thought was an inspirational speech. I'm not saying I've given these in the past, but now that we work together, you may hear some day. I may see some things.

SPEAKER_103: You may hear some day when the standard is not being hit by our producers. When I go, what the hell's going on here?

SPEAKER_00: I told you guys to read the stories to each other before I read them or Molly reads them. Read them out loud to each other. So you find any, you know, big, you know, uh, problems.

SPEAKER_02: And I, I looked at what she did and like, they diverged us this big takedown piece. And I'm like, if a man did that, they would be inspirational.

SPEAKER_66: They would be holding people accountable.

SPEAKER_107: More importantly, it would not even be news. It wouldn't be news.

Jason Calacanis: Because they knew it all the time. Of course. I was like, wow, I've worked for a lot of editors who have sent way meaner notes than that. And to be clear, those were not nice, right? It does not sound like she was a great boss. That is not news, nor is that unusual in the world of business. Yeah. Unless it happens to be a woman CEO.

SPEAKER_10: So that was, that was actually the moment when I got the note from the couple of female founders that I know who were just like, we're all waiting for that same piece to come out about us. We're all waiting.

SPEAKER_112: Oh, yes. Oh, about like Mollywood is difficult or Kara Swisher's difficult or whoever's difficult. Yeah. Sure. 2021 was a huge year for IPOs.

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SPEAKER_98: You know what the thing is, that's also it's like you're picking to come work for a company.

SPEAKER_00: If you if you pick to go work for that company and that leader is not to your liking, like they're too hot or they're too cold. Then you can like Goldilocks, you can pick the porridge you want. You can pick the, you know, the, the bed you want to sit in the chair you want to sit in and you find you're just right. Bezos and the culture of Amazon is not for everybody.

SPEAKER_29: And the Amazon story that came out in the New York Times, I don't know if you remember that one where they're like, oh my God, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. I was literally tortured. It was like human rights violations at Amazon. And it was like, except that everybody else is loyal to Bezos for decades and they leave and they come back as boomerang employees.

SPEAKER_02: And so it's really just a mismatch between the intensity level you want at work and, you know, the company's culture.

SPEAKER_44: So don't go work at Netflix if you don't want to re Netflix makes you reapply for your job basically every January. For some people that's panic inducing. Right.

SPEAKER_10: For other people, it's super inspiring. They want to work with a team people. I've deaf. I heard people, you know, I have a friend who worked at Uber, had a legitimately pretty awful experience there as a woman of color, ended up leaving and has said to me many times over the years that the thing she misses most about working for Uber was working for a place where you demanded a team all the time.

SPEAKER_134: Right. She's like, I loved that. I loved that. Right. And to be clear. And that the standards were insanely high.

SPEAKER_137: And to be clear. And that the standards were insanely high. Unfortunately, she also weirdly couldn't get a promotion there.

SPEAKER_81: Yeah. And so also, you know, and to your point, and, which I like your, and. It's all about the ends. It's all about the ends.

SPEAKER_02: It's all about the ends. And that doesn't forgive sexual harassment at work or any kind of harassment. Totally. Or any bias.

SPEAKER_00: Like that's a separate issue. There's just intensity at work. And I look at the stuff with, and I tried to get her to come, Steph, Corey, if you want

SPEAKER_98: to come on the pod and you don't want me to interview, have Molly interview.

SPEAKER_29: Yeah. This is one of the reasons I was stoked about you coming here. It's like, some people don't want to interview with me. Um, because whatever, you know, my reputation, uh, you know, my, my, my culture or whatever, my tone.

SPEAKER_00: But I think Steph, if you want to do an interview with Molly, I would love to hear you guys talk about this because I think it's such a real issue. And then she got ousted. And I was like, she's like the heart and soul of the company is the founder. Like, who is on the board of this company? Like, if she wants to give an inspirational speech and tell people to suck it up and work

SPEAKER_139: twice as hard or don't work at the company, it's her prerogative. You don't have to work at the company.

SPEAKER_90: Right. And the idea that that's a leak, like that's a thing that should be, I don't know. Yeah. It was yucky. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10: And then nobody puts their name on, let's move on. I do think we should get back to having a little more fun with the Elizabeth Holmes story though, because despite all of the actual business facts of it, which are real and very meaty and worth discussing and lots of money and whatever. I mean, this is just right up there with WeWork in terms of like, you can't get enough of this crap.

SPEAKER_147: And the responses that you got to the tweet asking for the name of her autobiography. Yeah. Just lay some of those on us.

SPEAKER_149: Oh, okay. So I have a device I use on Twitter.

SPEAKER_29: I'll give it to all the social media optimizers out there and managers, which is I like to do a contest, either a caption contest. So I did a caption contest the other day with Jeff Bezos. He did like a seventies disco picture of himself living his best life.

SPEAKER_43: That got a lot of great captions. Some of them a little dank, but I said, tell me what Elizabeth Holmes will title her autobiography's bonus for dankness. For those of you who don't know what dankness is, it's kind of like darkness in a Reddit term.

SPEAKER_150: So user Aaron. It's really thick weed is what it is. It's just really thick moist weed.

SPEAKER_152: Oh, right. Yeah. So dank weed is like very strong. And also darkness. Yeah. And then the department.

SPEAKER_155: If you're gonna smoke a dank weed. Yeah. Don't do that before the pod, Molly.

SPEAKER_13: Or that could be, that could be like something we do as a device on the pod. I mean, you know, there's a lot more startups now than there used to be in that department. Okay. Anyway, stay on target. On target. On target. Rogue one.

SPEAKER_160: The blood sacrifice. Not bad. Okay. The blood sacrifice.

SPEAKER_162: See, I always like people who have a great starting point, but I like to workshop these.

SPEAKER_05: The blood sacrifice colon. You have to have the subhead here. The blood sacrifice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a good start. Blood truth.

Jason Calacanis: The story of an honest American worker. Getting there. Getting there, getting there. Got a subtitle.

SPEAKER_46: Got a subtitle. Not a good subtitle, but blood truth isn't bad. Yeah. In cold blood.

SPEAKER_45: Boom. That is great.

SPEAKER_46: Now, see what's great about.

SPEAKER_126: Simple. And, you know, we're talking about the famous book by. John Kerry you. No. Oh, no, you're right. In cold blood. Truman Cote. Oh, which by the way, shout out Philip Seymour Hoffman. And Bennett Miller, who I knew in New York. What a great film.

SPEAKER_98: In cold blood. A great book and also the great Truman Capote film. So in cold blood, you got to make a pun or a play on words here. Yeah. In cold blood. In bold blood.

SPEAKER_22: In something blood. So you got to like kind of get. You got it right. You got to take it a step further. You got to punch it up. Right.

SPEAKER_136: With the workshop. Already taken.

SPEAKER_13: It's taken. Yeah. Bold blood might be interesting.

SPEAKER_170: Bold blood. Now we're getting to some dank here coming up next.

SPEAKER_172: Yeah. So anyway, so now you're, you see how you workshop these things in the writer's room. The prick of life.

SPEAKER_173: Okay. I'm like a 14 year old boy.

SPEAKER_175: That made me laugh. So. Go back to the beauty. Exactly.

SPEAKER_10: I'm just a child. Oh, this is good though. Out for blood. The truth behind my time at Theranos. Okay.

SPEAKER_179: So now this is a well. Lee. That's like a real one.

SPEAKER_13: That's like a real. This is a person who works in editorial. That's good. Yeah. It's got a little bit of Silicon Valley stuff that I'm not into, but.

SPEAKER_182: Let's see. It's just like fancy for the description.

SPEAKER_184: Ah, an expose of how the venture capital fake it to you make a culture snowballed into a web of lies. Deception, despair in Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_66: So this person probably works in copy editing or the publishing business.

SPEAKER_02: It's not bad. That's not bad. Print ready.

SPEAKER_126: Out for blood is great. What was the Sylvester Stallone movie Rambo and something blood. I think it was like first blood.

SPEAKER_188: First blood.

SPEAKER_126: First. First blood. See, now you can make a good play. There was first blood. Um, the truth behind my time at Theranos. So that's like the truth behind is, you know, is like a standard device. A bloody mess.

SPEAKER_172: Arjun. See, that's a good starting point too. Bloody mess. Bloody mess.

SPEAKER_74: This next one, I think is very likely given that everybody is because as soon as like they get attacked, they become the victim blood in the water, the persecution of an American

SPEAKER_10: innovator.

SPEAKER_43: See, that's good because blood in the water is like, you know, I didn't deserve the shark attack. Like I had a little. Don't really. And you guys all sharks came after me. That's so good. That's good.

SPEAKER_09: That's the, it's the victim's take as opposed to out for blood. The truth behind my time. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_89: We considered reading some of the Balwani and Holmes.

SPEAKER_79: This was like for just inside baseball. I was like, we should maybe do a dramatic reading again of Balwani and Holmes. Oh, we have them. Okay. He took out the really, because it turns out.

SPEAKER_198: I just want to say like, I didn't know that those were so racy when I suggested we do

SPEAKER_112: a dramatic reading because some of them were like, you are the sunshine of my life. My whole world. I mean, it was like cringe worthy.

SPEAKER_32: Crazy.

SPEAKER_22: Yeah.

SPEAKER_74: I will say my boyfriend did not think it was very funny last night when I texted him. Good night. Loving you infinite. I thought it was hysterical. I'm like, this is amazing. I'm adopting all of this. I will say, just before we get to the actual tweets where they talk about their year.

SPEAKER_10: So they introduced all these tweets between them, or I'm sorry, texts between them, because one of her claims was that she was in this abusive relationship with this older man and that he was really controlling her. And then that was a reason why some of these things happened. So all of these texts then got introduced into the record to show like, oh, it seems like you guys texted each other all the time about how you were each other's universe and God's light and you love each other infinite. Yeah. But I'm not going to lie. Like I read that and I was like, this is not a healthy relation. That is not healthy.

David Friedberg: Well, also, I mean, it was love bombing and it was creepy. He was dating her when she was very young and he, I see 10 or 15 years older than her. So she was like 31 and he was 50 when they first started this. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_98: So, you know, listen, I don't want to make a judgment on true love and like age differences.

SPEAKER_00: And I don't know exactly when this started, but the Svengali defense, you know, like when you read the text and you look at the nature of the relationship, there was something in his pumping her up to do this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_43: But I mean, it's a very hard thing to read into somebody's relationship via text and understand it. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

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SPEAKER_43: But before we get to that, shout out to Chloe Fineman, who I tried to get on this week and start us before she went to SNL. And then I got to hang out at SNL just randomly last year. And I hung out with her a lot. And she is hilarious and super funny.

SPEAKER_17: And her Elizabeth Holmes, we were going back and forth doing Elizabeth Holmes. And it's just extraordinary.

SPEAKER_29: Really? Yeah. Like literally, I hung out with Chloe when I had my little stint at SNL for a week. So before we- I try not to talk about it because it gets reblogged, but putting it outside.

SPEAKER_74: Yeah. So before we start getting into the tweets, because we are going to do a dramatic reading.

SPEAKER_214: We are going to do it.

SPEAKER_74: Okay. But of the less loving you infinite, please. Yes, that could get very weird. Like that's not acceptable. We do though, Chloe Fineman needs to be our level set. She's the baseline. Okay. Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_95: And then you're obviously going to be home.

SPEAKER_216: Okay. Any time you create something new, there should be questions.

SPEAKER_217: What higher purpose is there than changing the world? This is the nanotainer. I developed it on a Bunsen burner in my high school chemistry lab when I was about 14. I was on about two hours of sleep. But my chief aim is to live in a world where no one has to say goodbye too soon. First, they call you crazy.

SPEAKER_216: Then they challenge you. And then you go on and change the world. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_220: I am so uncomfortable right now. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_10: This is going to be hard. Get your crazy eyes on.

SPEAKER_32: There you go. There you go. Now we're talking. I like the breathing. The breathing is so upsetting.

Chamath Palihapitiya: I mean, it's so Hannibal Lecter. Like, I feel like Clarice, have the lambs stop crying? Seriously? Who is this man you seek? Clarice? Clarice.

SPEAKER_228: Clarice.

SPEAKER_43: I was watching Red Dragon, by the way. So amazing. The guy from Secession played Hannibal Lecter first in Manhattan. Oh yeah, Brian Cox. Brian Cox played Hannibal Lecter.

SPEAKER_29: It is such a great Hannibal Lecter before the other amazing Hannibal Lecter. But it's like a younger Hannibal Lecter who's like less refined. But my God, is that like that original Manhunter is a perfect film. Perfect.

SPEAKER_43: But creepy as like, do not watch it alone. Lock the doors because it is demented, but it really gets into the profiler's mindset. I'll leave it at that.

SPEAKER_14: But the original, original Manhunter, which came out decades before. Okay, here we go. So are we really doing this?

SPEAKER_10: We'll do a few of these are, this is sort of like the weird, like, they're together, but like the business thing is getting a little rough. And then, oh God, here we go.

SPEAKER_238: Okay.

SPEAKER_10: For context, we might not make it through all these. For context, these are from late December 2014. They're on the cusp of the new year.

SPEAKER_240: And they're talking about how 2015 is going to be their year.

SPEAKER_244: This is our year. We can never forget this. Tiger. I know.

SPEAKER_245: I'm focused on it. We will execute this year. I know.

SPEAKER_246: I'm focused on it too. And our kids never forget who we are. And our kids never forget who we are.

SPEAKER_112: What does that last line even mean? And for our kids never forget who we are.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, the grammar is crazy. I guess this is in the age before Grammarly. So I can forgive a little bit.

SPEAKER_250: For the sake of our kids, like, state. I mean. Wow. I mean, this shows the delusion.

SPEAKER_128: I mean, it does show the delusion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Which kind of like feeds into her defense that she was doing this for noble pursuit, which I think in her deranged mind, she was. Yep.

SPEAKER_255: She thought she was on the right side of history.

SPEAKER_10: By later in 2015, it is clear in some ways that they already know is fallen apart. Oh no. And Sonny is texting her and he's like, we need to commit to each other and get out of this hell so we can live in paradise.

SPEAKER_240: We both have.

SPEAKER_258: I have literally been meditating on this exact same whole time I was running was thinking.

SPEAKER_260: Oh wow. So she went running and was thinking this whole thing. Just thinking how the hell do we get out of this morass that we are and we are doomed.

SPEAKER_263: I just like the, the way they speak. It shows them. I think they should have gotten off.

SPEAKER_01: Now that I read these acts, I kind of feel like they should have gone for a mental illness defense. If they had gone and she was a sociopath or something.

SPEAKER_05: I think if she had, you know, what's the, what's the criminal defense of like you're crazy that people go for? Insanity defense?

SPEAKER_90: It's an, it's like, that's the shorthand, but it's like a, it's not, it's a competency phrase.

SPEAKER_02: I think if they're going to appeal this, they should go straight into these texts and she should go for the insanity defense.

SPEAKER_95: Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_10: I don't know that they show that she was insane, but I, if I had been on that jury, these texts and the level of like love bombing contained in them would have raised some flags for me around the, the, the relationship and the potential for manipulation. It's just that it feels sort of mutual at some point, except there's one exchange where he's like, ah, infinity and God's light and whatever.

SPEAKER_00: And she, she writes back just a smiley face and goes, you know, I mean, you know, I feel like I want to hear a dramatic reading of the loved ones, not for us to do it, but I want to have Chloe.

SPEAKER_269: Yeah, and so I, I got a DM Chloe and ask her to do an SNL skit of, but she's definitely going to do it. She's got to do those love texts.

SPEAKER_29: I think they should do a dramatic reading of the love texts. And then I don't know who get, who they get to do his side, but yeah.

SPEAKER_43: Wow. I mean, it's just so great.

SPEAKER_276: It's something.

SPEAKER_10: And then before we move on, there are like at least maybe one and a half other news stories we're going to talk about for just a second today. But we are going to leave you with this really profound tweet from Twitter user Keaton Inglis, who points out, you can take Elizabeth's freedom, but you will never take her Forbes 30 under 30.

SPEAKER_280: Oh, my Lord. God, the 30 under 30, the bane of my existence. I was hanging out that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_64: I had somebody working for me who was like, my dream is to get to 30 under 30. And I was like, you need bigger dreams.

SPEAKER_284: We need to really work on your dreams.

SPEAKER_29: Right. They give that to they literally splinter that into like 500 categories.

SPEAKER_02: Now, 30 under 30 in mobile at location apps, 30 under 30 in, you know, mobile gaming, casual gaming apps, mobile real time strategy apps. It's just a grip folks to get you to do an inbound link and send SEO juice to Forbes.

David Friedberg: I mean, it's genius on the Forbes side, but it doesn't really do anything for you.

SPEAKER_214: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: So I like to listen to people who I disagree with. And one of the podcasts I subscribe to and I'll listen to every third or fourth episode is this machine kills. It's like a really far left podcast. And it's a bunch of like really wacky socialists who know nothing about business, but they do feel very strongly about socialism. And, you know, they're anti corporate. And so I learned a lot about their position. And I just happened to come up that they did a little preview of their Patreon. I think maybe they do the half shows or on Patreon half shows are available free kind of model. So there's this machine kills and there's another publication, another podcast. That's also anti tech. And I'll listen to these because as I said, it's really good to understand people's position if they disagree with you. And sometimes they actually have some really good positions for me to hear. Um, but this one I thought was particularly, um, compelling because they had to make an admission. Jason, I think is his name. Um, and he is a real hardcore socialist and they have this socialist publication Jacobian or something that they all talk about or write for.

SPEAKER_126: Anyway. Oh, Jacobin. Yeah. Jacobin. Is that it? I'm just fascinated by socialists slash communists. Cause there there's like social, there's democratic socialists like Bernie who just want a lot of benefits.

SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I disagree with a lot of that stuff, but I understand where they're coming from. And then there's like socialist, socialists.

SPEAKER_126: Like we need to make Amazon a company that's controlled by the state or the workers or something. So anyway, listen to this minute and 37 clip. This is a long clip, but I want everybody to hear it. And then Molly, I want you to respond to it.

SPEAKER_291: Not me. We'll see on the other side of one minute and 37 seconds.

SPEAKER_292: I just want to also say that I think you were really dead on here, David as well, where you were talking about how for like a lot of people, a job at an Amazon warehouse is a really good job. It's the best job that some people can have because they do pay, you know, a $15 minimum wage. They do provide benefits like healthcare, a 401k. Uh, the warehouses are air conditioned, right? Like all of the, you know, things that a lot of other jobs and especially jobs in that sector don't tend to, tend to have. But you're right. Like they, they dangled that, right? They dangled that as a, as this kind of promise of lowering the floor of expectation, right? This is the best you can expect. And it calls it, it makes us as leftists, um, have to hold two facts in our mind at the same time. One is that Amazon is a terrible global empire of exploitation and extraction fact. Another fact though, is that for a lot of people, especially immigrants who work in Amazon warehouses in the U S and Europe and Australia, um, this is the best job they've ever had, right? This is, and, and they, and, and they are thankful rightfully so to have that job. Our, our project as leftists is to try to resolve that contradiction, to resolve that dialectic of, on one hand, criticizing, uh, Amazon rules. While on the other hand, recognizing that people are not lying when they say they're very thankful for their job at Amazon.

SPEAKER_108: All right, Molly, what's your reaction to that? Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a, this is interesting.

SPEAKER_10: Cause this is sort of, we talked about this a little bit with web three yesterday. This idea that like, why did it have to become a religion? Because now this conversation has to be so partisan in sort of the purest, not the, the Democrat versus Republican, but the either. Like you're only for, or you're only against. And there's no, and there's no middle ground. And this to me is a conversation about exactly that. And it's funny. Cause right after our show yesterday, I went and read the new editor in chief of wired put out as sort of like manifesto for what wired should be. And it talked all about how we've gotten. So binary as a culture, everything has to be either this or this.

Jason Calacanis: And I was like, that's what I was saying yesterday. But I didn't think of using that smart sounding word binary because we have like literally lost the use of the word and in our society. And so everything that this guy said on this podcast is 100% true. And this is why extremists only destroy and never create. Because if you don't, if you can't hold two ideas in your head at the same time, then you are doomed to fail. You are doomed to never hear any truth. Like both of these things are 100% true. If you came from a place where only horrific jobs were available, or you live in a place where no jobs are available that pay this amount of money. Working at Amazon can be the great, greatest job you've ever had. Absolutely. And Amazon should probably treat his workers better in warehouses. Right. Not even should probably, right? Like should, like they ran that guy out for trying to organize and then smeared him as incoherent. And then basically had to admit that everything he said was true.

SPEAKER_10: Like there's some bad stuff that they do from a worker perspective and have put a lot of small businesses out of business because they can't compete. And have put in warehouses and fulfillment centers in places that have big job droughts and they pay better than anybody else.

SPEAKER_269: And if you put out of business, some of these small mom and pop stores, consumers get a better deal.

SPEAKER_43: Because it's inefficient to have like a bunch of local stores selling Amazon basic cables or, you know, moisturizing cream or batteries. And it would be better for society for the environment if they came from a central warehouse and they were cheaper. And that is just the hard thing for people also to get their heads around.

SPEAKER_36: And Amazon takes data from its third party sellers and uses it to create competing products and, and, and, and, and, and.

SPEAKER_304: And they deny it, but it's probably true. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_300: Right. And all of those things can be true. And you can want things to be better without needing them to disappear from the face of the planet.

SPEAKER_305: Yes.

SPEAKER_13: Yes. Yes. And Amazon pays more than mom and pops. And they'll pay for your college education now. And as they can, because they got gigantic and they didn't always start that way. Right. I mean, and they're more efficient and they use robots.

SPEAKER_43: All, all, all, all. And I, what I like about this is I felt like this was a great moment for like, um, capitalism in this negotiation between capitalism and socialism. Um, between, you know, entrepreneurs, you know, seeking efficiency, wealth, uh, opportunity, et cetera, innovation, um, and, and reaping those rewards and socialists who are trying to defend, you know, people they perceive as not having agency, which I don't think is true, but putting that aside, I think their intention is correct. They want to defend people who they feel are helpless or, you know, are under the gun. Um, even though we have record low unemployment and 11 million unfilled jobs and whatever, putting that all aside.

SPEAKER_02: I thought it was like a good recognition for them because I believe what we're in the middle of is a great renegotiation. If equities drive people to become phenomenally wealthy, well, then we should let people participate more in equities. And so one of the things we talked about on all in is this freedom dividend, where what if we gave everybody $2,000 when they were born into a 401k of just an index fund. Vanguard of the NASDAQ and the whatever, you know, just a perfect index of the stock market. And they couldn't touch it until they were in college and they could take, you know, half of it for college. And then the other half was retirement. That would be unbelievable. And you know, what it would do is it would put more money into equities and we put them into American companies. So that gives us an advantage over foreign country companies. So we make this American index of the best American companies. Now, the only problem with that is those, you know, the Bezos of the world and other folks would become more wealthy because you would have more automatic buying of their stocks.

SPEAKER_46: But at least everybody would be in on the game.

SPEAKER_126: And I think getting more people in on the game and letting them get equities and getting rid of accreditation rules and just making it a test or something or even gifting people some free shares in companies as like part of their being born in this great country is the great balance. Because then people would learn about equities. Right. And that's what you're seeing here.

SPEAKER_74: I think it's sort of, I think fundamentally it's a false equivalency to say that we're having a conversation about unregulated capitalism or socialism and nothing in between.

SPEAKER_10: Right. Like we know that any organism that grows out of control kills you. That's the fundamental, that's what, that's cancer. Right. Or like a small tree that gets too big tears out your foundation.

SPEAKER_134: Like you can't have, right, you can't have organisms that grow unchecked.

SPEAKER_10: Right. Because they eat everything around them. Or eventually they get so big that they topple over because competition comes along. Like, clearly, as I said to you when we had ramen, I believe in capitalism or I wouldn't be here. Right. But I also think you can want, and I think you can want capitalism to function better, to have more stakeholders who benefit from it. Yeah. And to have reasonable rules so that it doesn't trample over everything in its path without being a socialist.

SPEAKER_01: I also think there's a chess game going on.

SPEAKER_43: This is what I know from behind the scenes, just based on, you know, knowing a lot of the principles. Behind the scenes, there's like a really high level chess match. And in poker, there's a concept called leveling. But leveling is, is you and I are playing poker. And we both know that, you know, this certain betting pattern is indicative of having a very strong hand.

SPEAKER_01: So then I know you know that you've been playing poker a long time and you've both seen each other do it. So now I'm going to do it knowing you know that, but I'm going to do it knowing you know that and having a weekend. Or I'm going to do it knowing you know that, knowing that I probably have a weak hand, but I, in fact, have a strong hand.

SPEAKER_43: And this leveling where you're trying to understand how the person perceives you or the rules of the game is what's happening. So I think Amazon knows Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes, Elizabeth Warren, the other Elizabeth I'm very fond of. You know, yeah. Anyway, they know that they're, you know, really upset about the stuff and they want a minimum wage. So if you were going to level Bernie Sanders on a $15 minimum wage federally, how would you do that?

SPEAKER_17: Well, you just give everybody $15 an hour before he was able to pass this legislation.

SPEAKER_36: Which to be clear is still a sub living wage in most cities in America.

SPEAKER_43: But not all. In some cities, it's a great wage.

SPEAKER_98: And you would give people benefits. And well, I mean, listen, there has to be some entry level jobs in the world, right?

SPEAKER_126: Like there's gotta be some first, you know, at a high school or, you know, GED. There has to be some entry level jobs.

SPEAKER_02: If these are the entry level jobs and they're $15 an hour. And they're $15 an hour. That's great. And you have two people in a household doing it. Or maybe you have two parents and, you know, one of age child and the of age child has no work, but they work at a factory and they can contribute a little bit.

SPEAKER_98: You know, yeah, it's not going to work in San Francisco, but it's certainly going to work in Mississippi, you know, or Atlanta or outside of Atlanta.

SPEAKER_43: So what's interesting about that leveling wise is they just neutralize their whole debate. So now what is Bernie Sanders? You know, what is their next thing? They're like, well, we need free college. Everybody should get a free education. My Bernie Sanders is much better than my Elizabeth Warren.

SPEAKER_184: And the one percent.

SPEAKER_135: I like how it gets like just a little Russian once in a while, too. Like gets a little Russian.

SPEAKER_337: Like, you know, you don't, Jason, you don't need the border seat. Freudian.

SPEAKER_338: You don't need. Exactly. Well, Bernie. I think Bernie spent a lot of time in Russia. I'm just saying, I'm not saying he's a communist, but I think he's closer to communism than anybody else in our government. I'll just leave it. Maybe not. Maybe excluding Trump.

SPEAKER_269: But what was very interesting is like his next thing was college.

SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, Amazon gave everybody college, started paying for everybody's associate degrees, which is exactly what he asked for people as a starting point, right? Like we're not going to pay for four year degrees, but we'll start with associates degrees and city college, whatever. So that's the leveling chess match that's going on.

SPEAKER_43: Well, you have to give Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren credit for upping the ante and poking them and saying like, we need a living wage because then it gave them the ability to level them and to dunk on them, which then got the mission accomplished.

Jason Calacanis: But also to assume that that has like solved answered the question also assumes that Amazon is the only company in America, which is not yet the case.

SPEAKER_74: And I still I have hope that we'll get to more like three competing companies in this country in the next like 50 years.

SPEAKER_137: Well, Walmart's still crushing them in person.

Jason Calacanis: Amazon has the scale to do it. Right. You know, Amazon has the scale to do it. Walmart might have the scale to do it.

SPEAKER_10: It's this kind of remarkable thing where Amazon can do the thing that no other business can afford to do, thereby continuing to put those businesses out of business and take their, you know, it's like Amazon wins on both ends. Yep. Which doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't raise the federal minimum wage, which has been raised in however many years, which is politics and unrelated.

SPEAKER_01: What's good about it though is if the, if the private sector does it on their own, that's an example of basically regulating and policing yourself, which is really what you want ideally is that you don't have to have the government intervene.

SPEAKER_02: And really the enemy in all this is the fast food industry decades they fought to keep the minimum wage low, and they use the threat of automation. You know, like, if you guys, you know, raise the minimum wage, we're just gonna put kiosks and you're not gonna be able to order McDonald's and that's exactly what McDonald's actually paid through on that threat. They now are putting the I don't know what percentage of it is maybe one of our producers can look it up.

SPEAKER_126: But some amazing percentage of McDonald's orders are coming in through mobile phones now. And they're lowering the number of cashiers and they're putting kiosks in so you can order on your phone. I understand I don't read at McDonald's, but you can order on your phone, I understand. And you can order at the kiosk. And they're just gonna lower the number of cashiers to where the line becomes so painful, that the two minutes to download the app and register is less painful than being online.

SPEAKER_95: Totally.

SPEAKER_10: Well, the thing I always tell my son too, who has always been experimenting with communism, and as an intellectual exercise, we've had a lot of conversations about communism at my house, because that's what the kids are doing these days. But and is always railing about Amazon is like, look, and this get back gets back to the celebrity culture idea. Amazon is the one that we all talk about, because Jeff Bezos is like, famous and Amazon is really big. But the company, you know, you know who has like, way lower pay and way worse warehouse conditions than Amazon? Tyson. Yeah. Right?

Jason Calacanis: Like, you don't talk about the communist kids are not talking about the meatpacking industry. No. They're not talking about some of the most appalling jobs in America. The people who work at Fritos, like went on strike because they were like, Oh, yeah, we have to work this thing called a suicide shift, which is like 60 hours in a row. Crazy. I mean, there are just like, truly appalling working conditions across America, that that frankly, like if Bernie and Elizabeth want those to change, and I think that they do, they should stop talking about Amazon.

SPEAKER_10: And talk about those, like put a camera in one of those factories for a day, like have the new what was what's that famous book about the meatpacking industry? Oh, yeah. The jungle.

SPEAKER_353: Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_10: Jungle or something like that. Yeah. I mean, because that's what we're really talking about. And the fact that in some places, those, those dominate the, I like hit my mic, I got so worked up about it.

SPEAKER_313: Upton Sinclair, the jungle. Upton Sinclair, the jungle.

SPEAKER_10: Exactly. Like, that's all still happening. So honestly, Amazon is a head fake. And every time that Amazon gets Bernie and Elizabeth, and you and I to talk about Amazon instead of Tyson. Yep.

SPEAKER_359: Or McDonald's. Yeah, exactly. Or McDonald's.

SPEAKER_32: Exactly.

SPEAKER_269: All right. So anyway, shout out to the, I look forward to being invited to being on this machine kills when they invite me on.

SPEAKER_00: All right. Speaking of terrible conditions, let's segue to China and the Biden administration has imposed sanction on Chinese companies and government entities for human rights abuses against the Uyghurs.

SPEAKER_43: Finally, the US government has said something. Xinjiang is an area that's about twice as large as Texas has about 25 million people in it. There are many cities in China, people who don't know, with 25 million people or more, which is really crazy when you think about it. And about half of those 25 million are Uyghurs, which is spelled U-Y-G-H-U-R-S, but pronounced Uyghurs, which is a Muslim minority.

SPEAKER_365: And they, according to the China human rights defenders, 660,000 rural residents of Uyghur backgrounds may have been taken away from their homes and detained in re-education camps. If you see these re-education camps at Amnesty International or any newspaper, the videos of them, these are basically prison camps. These are, you know, you are rare to compare anything to the Holocaust, except a lot of my friends who are Jewish compare this to the Holocaust because it is starting to hit that scale. While another 1.3 million may have been forced to attend mandatory day or evening re-education sessions and locations in the villages and town centers.

SPEAKER_369: Estimated 100,000 Uyghurs may be working in forced labor camps, according to Australian Strategic Policy Institute, according to NBC News.

SPEAKER_365: Quote, U.S. intelligence has established that Beijing has set up a high tech surveillance system across Xi Zhang that uses biometric facial recognition as collected DNA samples from all residents ages 12 to 65 as part of a systematic effort.

SPEAKER_95: There have been reports of forced sterilization, like the whole, it is, it is, it is an ongoing human rights abuse.

SPEAKER_10: There was an Atlantic cover article by a guy who had been arrested, a Uyghur man in China who had managed to escape with his family, but only after he and his family had been arrested a couple times. It's one of the most harrowing things you will read and you will not be able to believe that it's happening in the world today. And it is, and all of this has led to a lot of awkward conversations because the United States government has recently imposed sanctions against, on Chinese companies and government entities for human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Some companies have faced blowback for continuing to do work. Walmart got in trouble with China because Walmart removed products from some stores that have been produced potentially with this forced labor in Xinjiang. And it's, it's, and nevertheless, right, up to and including the United States government, everybody still wants to do business with China. And everybody has, has looked the other way for a long time as the story has continued to get louder and louder and louder.

Jason Calacanis: And you see this kind of ongoing hypocrisy about the relationship with China in, in the government and with private companies.

SPEAKER_43: Yep. And if you look at, I mean, just to give people an idea, I don't know if you saw the Uyghurs being loaded into trains.

SPEAKER_365: Uh, but these, this series of photos, which I just pulled up here, if you're watching on the YouTube video, they're basically bound, head shaved, blindfolded, and getting onto trains.

SPEAKER_126: And these videos, um, you know, that got released, um, are, you know, just more evidence and there's tons of satellite videos.

SPEAKER_98: And this is, you know, if you think about what we've pursued as a strategy, it's been engagement.

SPEAKER_126: And I, uh, having worked at Amnesty International and caring very deeply about human rights, have always believed that like engagement is fine, but you have to make it clear where the lines are in terms of human rights and that we wanna see change.

SPEAKER_43: So the Guardian, uh, released this footage, shout out to the Guardian for being brave to do this. Uh, really disturbing.

SPEAKER_01: And the, you know, the challenge is Molly, um, there is a group of people who philosophically believe that, uh, if we engage with China and this has been going on for decades with the West, not just the United States, but the West has believed engagement will lead them towards democracy, human rights, and will keep us from going to war with each other. Well, we haven't gone to war with each other, so that's a checkbox that's good. Yeah. But China has since Hong Kong and now with the Uyghurs, I think that emboldened because nobody's put their foot down. And the same thing is true of Saudi Arabia with MBS. If the West does not say, does not condemn these issues, um, then autocrats, dictators, communists, whatever, uh, are going to basically take it as far as they can.

SPEAKER_43: You have to put your foot down and say, this is not acceptable. And then the question becomes, what does that look like though?

SPEAKER_10: What does it look like for the Biden administration too? Because you know that behind the scenes, Apple, Intel, right? Hollywood, all of Hollywood, the NBA, like you look at how private industry has caved to China over and over and over because they need this market. Like, you know that they're in these rooms saying to the administration, like, just, can you, can you go as far as you can with the sanctions, but not like too far?

SPEAKER_43: Or at a certain point we say it's not worth it. And I think that's the moment we're at. Because if you look at it, I think now the NBA, um, has a player, Ennis Cantor, who has now renamed himself Ennis Cantor Freedom. And, um, I DM with him recently and I've been retweeting his stuff. He basically said like, listen, I'm just going to go and he's, you know, his, his, uh, employment by the NBA is not certain. He's not like a top 50 player. He's a top 200 player or 150 player. Um, he, uh, has been very vocal and he has not been ostracized now. Whereas Daryl Morey, um, who did say, you know, very innocuously, we, I support Hong Kong, um, you know, was admonished and, you know, I, I am reticent to pick out specific people to say, you know, LeBron James or Tim Cook or any other folks are supportive of human rights violations.

SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of those people think engagement with China is going to lead to change. I don't agree with them. I think we have to put our foot down. And now China's basically said, you know what?

SPEAKER_43: We're going on our own anyway. We're not going to let you invest in these companies. All the IPOs are going to be in Hong Kong. We're not going to let Jack Ma be a national hero. So they have become insular.

SPEAKER_126: So now I think actually it's reversing. Everybody is going to offshore, um, and reduce their dependency on China.

SPEAKER_17: Uh, whether it's Apple, uh, whether it's Tesla, whether it's any of these companies, you're going to see a disengagement process start. I think that's what's happening right now because it's very hard to disengage.

SPEAKER_126: It's very hard to disengage after 30 or 40 years of Apple being there or the NBA spending 20 years with Yao Ming and other folks trying to build this relationship. But if China doesn't want the relationship with the West anymore, now the great decoupling happens.

SPEAKER_17: And Japan is paying to Japan is subsidizing factories leaving China or subsidizing companies to do that. And I think what we're seeing is the great uncoupling and it's going to be messy, but I don't want to put, you know, Tim Cook under too hard of a microscope here.

SPEAKER_126: I want to give him time to get out of China basically and become less dependent on it.

SPEAKER_384: Yeah.

SPEAKER_10: Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's still, it's going to be interesting to see how much reputational pressure will increase on these companies because they have started to see more reputational damage. Um, there were of course some angry tweets about Tesla just this week opening a factory in Xinjiang, which is not good timing, right? Not a good look. Um, but most likely I, I hate to say, like, I think that when you're talking about a global market this big appeasement would be likely to continue had China itself to your point, not started to take steps to make doing business there way harder. It's like over the years, people got, people got convinced that China was just like a capitalist country, a free market that you could just go in and sell into. Yep. And then China was like, yeah, we disappeared Jack Ma for a little while. And then he came back and he said what we wanted him to say. And we pulled an IPO and we will do it again. And so you may be right that we'll decouple, but I'm sorry to report.

SPEAKER_135: I think it'll be because of business reasons, not reputational reasons. And that is, that's, that's shameful.

SPEAKER_269: Yeah, I, you know, it's, I am torn on this. I am with you that we should, you know, not do business with countries that have these extreme human right violations.

SPEAKER_43: And then of course, everybody does me too, ism like, or what about ism? Like, well, what about like, you know, George Floyd? And it's like, okay, that that's a horrible murder, you know, that occurred and that occurred, there was a murder that occurred and that person's going to jail.

SPEAKER_00: And a million Uyghurs is a different scale.

SPEAKER_394: Like our government is not doing a million George Floyds in, you know, or that some people might say, well, we do have a million George Floyd situations.

SPEAKER_10: We literally, we cannot even conceive of secret police coming into our homes, dragging us out of our beds, torturing us for a while and then sending us back home to say what I mean, it's a whole different scale.

SPEAKER_43: I cannot even see, you can't compare these things. But I think this is going to be like something to watch, especially with Taiwan. But I actually am very hopeful because the virtue signaling crowd, it seemed to correlate that like some of the biggest virtue signalers like the NBA and Hollywood and Silicon Valley are now finding themselves like being called out.

SPEAKER_02: Right. And I think that's actually kind of a good thing that, you know, Tim Cook, LeBron James and Hollywood, Disney changing the ending of films and not having a Chinese, you know, bad guy in a film, like, because your film's not going to play in China or changing the ending of films. Like, it's crazy. Like, and what's the point of being Americans and being rich and powerful and leaders in the world if you have to bend the knee. I know.

Jason Calacanis: To communists. What's going on here? China literally managed to censor American movies with market pressure. Like China was just like, we're such a big market that you will censor yourself.

SPEAKER_240: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Think about that level of power.

SPEAKER_379: Like, literally, Disney is bending the knee to communists. Like, it's pathetic.

SPEAKER_05: I hate to cut this short because I can talk about China all day long. It's a great discussion. We'll be talking about it and monitoring the situation. Uh, so we will see you all next time. Let me see you get started. Bye bye. Bye.