Investing in Us’ Dmitri Mehlhorn: “Tech and America’s $30bn election year”

Yo, technology. What is it all about? If Trump gets back into office, he's never leading. I don't see any way that the Constitution's prohibition on a third presidential term is actually enforceable with this man and his crowd taking office. It's, they are what they are. They're very sluggish, very criminal. So, I think the consequences of them getting back into office are catastrophic in a way that we're still only beginning to deal with.

哟，技术。这到底是怎么回事？如果特朗普再次当选总统，他不会真的像领袖那样领导国家。我不觉得宪法对总统第三任期的禁止在他和他的团队上任后会真正起作用。他们就那样，非常迟钝，非常犯罪。所以，我认为他们重新上台的后果将是灾难性的，我们现在才开始应对这种情况。

Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley of Weekly. This batch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech. I'm your host Danny Forza. And man, after my little speed bump last week, we've got a good one for you this week. So, longtime listeners may recall that some years ago we had on Dimitri Melhorn, who was the founder of an organization called Investing in Us, which is a totally fascinating group. So, it was set up right after Donald Trump was elected in 2016. And Dimitri set it up with Reed Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire. Dimitri is a political strategist. They got together. And the idea was to put hundreds of millions of dollars of Hoffman's dollars into political startups that could help Democrat causes. And Dimitri is kind of the point man running this whole operation.

大家好，欢迎收听《Danny的每周山谷》。本期节目带你走进幕后，了解科技界顶尖人物的内心世界。我是主持人Danny Forza。老天，在我上周的小插曲之后，这周我们准备了一个精彩的节目。长期听众可能还记得，几年前我们曾邀请过Dimitri Melhorn，他是一个名为“投资于我们”的组织的创始人，这是一个非常有趣的群体。该组织是在2016年唐纳德·特朗普当选后成立的，Dimitri和LinkedIn亿万富翁Reed Hoffman一起创办了这个组织。Dimitri是一位政治策略家，他们聚在一起，目的是将Hoffman的数亿美元资金投入到能帮助民主党事业的政治初创公司中。Dimitri是整个操作的核心人物。

The whole point of this operation was to get Donald Trump out of the White House and to keep him out. So, they invested in advocacy organizations, startup media companies, electoral strategy groups, voter outreach groups, like dozens and dozens and dozens of companies. You get the idea. Many of them using technology, using AI to target swing voters to get the word out, etc. In any event, I want to have money because, well, it's 2024. And somehow we're entering America's wild election season where it is.

这次行动的整个目的就是把唐纳德·特朗普赶出白宫，并且不让他再回去。所以，他们投入了大量资金在一些倡导组织、初创媒体公司、选举战略团体、选民外联群体等地方。就像几十家公司一样。你懂的。他们中的许多人使用科技和人工智能来瞄准摇摆选民，传播消息等等。不管怎样，我想要有钱，因为，现在是2024年。不知怎么的，我们正进入美国狂野的选举季。

Yeah, we're here. It's going to be Trump versus Biden. Again, only this time we have the onslaught of AI technologies that make it super easy to fake audio, video, pictures, and do it on a mass scale and effectively almost for free. Anyhow, scary times for democracy, for America, for democracies around the world, there's going to be something like 70 elections this year across the globe, something like, north of 2 billion people are going to be affected by elections this year. And they're all finding those kind of same forces. And Dimitri is really right at the forefront of this intersection of using tech and tech millions to influence elections.

是的，我们在这里。今年又将是特朗普对阵拜登。不同的是，这次我们面临着AI技术的大规模入侵，这些技术使得伪造音频、视频、图片变得极其容易，而且几乎无成本地大规模进行。总之，这对民主、对美国、对全世界的民主国家而言都是令人担忧的时刻。今年全球将有大约70次选举，影响到超过20亿人。每个国家都在面对类似的压力。德米特里（Dimitri）正站在使用科技和技术巨头影响选举的风口浪尖。

So, given we are where we are, I thought we'd have them on to give us a rundown of how 2024 is shaping up why it's going to come down to like the thinnest of margins. What we should be worried about, what we shouldn't be worried about and how the rise of AI fits into the political scene. Trust me, you are going to enjoy this. You're going to get a lot out of it. I promise you. So, I'm now going to hand you over to my conversation with Dimitri Melhorn up investing in us. Enjoy.

所以，鉴于目前的情况，我认为让他们来给我们讲解一下2024年的形势如何发展，以及为什么结果会非常接近是很有价值的。我们应该关注什么，不应该担心什么，还有人工智能的崛起如何融入政治场景中。相信我，你会喜欢这个讨论的，也会从中获得很多收获。我保证。所以，现在我将把时间交给我和Dimitri Melhorn关于我们投资的对话。请享受。

You were on the pod a few years ago. Much has changed since then. It's now 2024, which is insane. When I spoke with you last, was it before or after election day? I believe those after election day. Got it. So, it was during that weird interregnum before January 6th. Got it. Okay, cool. Yeah. So, totally. It was almost exactly four years ago, right? We're three and three and some anyway. And we're at this weird place where Trump with 91 felony charges is the nominee, unless some kind of legal boulder falls out of the sky and squashes him. That's not going to happen. Like he's the nominee unless he shuffles off this mortal coil. Do you think that's the bottom line? I do not see a way for him to not be the nominee. The Republican Party is too broken. I mean, it's not 0%. The betting markets, I think, give Governor Haley, like, I don't know, a 1 in 20 chance or something. But that might include some mortality issues. And it also possibly includes the possibility of a Captain Quig moment, where he just breaks under all the pressure.

几年前你参加过我们的播客节目。自那以后发生了很多变化。现在已经是2024年了，真是不可思议。上次我和你谈话的时候，是在选举日之前还是之后？我记得是在选举日之后。明白了，所以那是在1月6日之前的那个奇怪的过渡期。明白。好，酷。是的，确实是。那几乎是四年前的事情了，对吧？我们大约是三年多一点的时间。我们现在处于一个奇怪的境地，特朗普面临91项重罪指控，但他仍然是提名人，除非有某种法律上的“大锤”从天而降把他击倒。但这不太可能发生。除非他离开人世，否则他就是提名人选。你认为这是最终结论吗？我看不到他不会成为提名人的可能性。共和党已经太分裂了。当然也不是完全没有机会。博彩市场，我想，给了海莉州长大约1/20的机会，但那可能包括一些生死问题。这也可能包括一种“奎格上尉时刻”，即他在压力下崩溃的可能性。

I mean, I guess, yeah, it'd be great. So, before we kind of dive in for those who weren't listening all those years ago, can you just briefly describe who you are and what you do? My name is Dimitri Melhorn. And since Donald Trump was elected, I have viewed it as my full-time responsibility to reduce his odds of a second term. And in that, I formed a group we call ourselves investing in us with my friend, Reid Hoffman, and a bunch of other folks to try to invest in civil society in such a way as to resist Trumpism.

我的意思是，我想，是的，这会很棒。那么，在我们开始之前，为了那些多年来没有关注的人，你能不能简短地介绍一下你自己和你在做什么？ 我叫迪米特里·梅尔霍恩。自从特朗普当选以来，我把降低他连任的几率视为我的全职责任。为了实现这个目标，我和我的朋友里德·霍夫曼以及其他一些人组建了一个叫做“投资于我们”的组织，旨在通过投资于公民社会来抵制特朗普主义。

And when you say invest in civil society, and obviously, Reid is a technologist, et cetera, is that via the form of things like voter registration apps and things like this, to kind of try to stack the deck as much in your favor as possible? Well, that last little line sort of changes characterization, I would say, unstacking the deck. Unstacking. You know, like registering more people in a structural democracy does seem like unstacking the deck. So, the broad outline of our approach is to take anything we know from scale entrepreneurialism and scale venture capital and apply that to the job of reducing the odds of a Trump reelect. Now, when we first did that work together from early 2017 onwards, the focus was on helping the Democratic Party ecosystem improve its efficacy. Right. So Democrats in 2016 spent a lot of money on things that didn't help and maybe even hurt. Obviously, they did a lot of things right, but a lot of things wrong.

当你说要投资于公民社会时，很显然，Reid 是一个技术专家等人，是否通过类似选民登记应用程序这样的形式来尽可能地为自己创造有利条件呢？嗯，我觉得最后那句话稍微改变了一下这个描述，我们更愿意说是"拆除不公"。拆除不公的意思是，通过在结构性民主中登记更多的人确实像是在拆除不公。所以，我们的方法大致是将我们从规模创业和风险投资中学到的一切应用于减少特朗普再次当选的几率。 我们从2017年初开始共同做这个工作，当时的重点是帮助民主党生态系统提高其效率。对，2016年民主党在很多没有帮助甚至可能有害的事情上花了很多钱。显然，他们做对了很多事情，但也做错了很多事情。

And so, our experience looking at the history was that it takes once a party loses the White House, it typically takes them eight years to learn enough on the outside and scale enough on the outside to retake the White House. So, you see whether it's Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, like it's outsiders consistently who come in with a new set of tactics to win. And usually it takes about eight years out of power for that to form. Our goal was to use venture capital to accelerate that process and help the Democratic Party oust Trump after four years. We thought that might be enough, but coming to find out, we faced the same threat. And now it's eight years later, almost. So the question is, what can we do with the things we learned, some of the unexplored avenues to try to make sure that Trump doesn't get back into the White House?

我的经验告诉我，一旦一个政党失去白宫的控制权，通常需要八年时间在外部学习并发展壮大，才能重新夺回白宫。无论是吉米·卡特、乔治·W·布什、巴拉克·奥巴马，还是比尔·克林顿，他们都是外来者，带着新策略取胜。而通常需要大约八年的外部磨炼才能形成这些策略。我们的目标是利用风险投资来加速这一过程，帮助民主党在特朗普执政四年后将其赶下台。起初我们认为四年的时间可能足够，但后来发现我们仍旧面临着同样的威胁。如今，已经过去了将近八年。那么问题是，我们如何利用已经学到的经验和一些尚未探索的途径，确保特朗普不会重返白宫？

Before we get into the nitty gritty of that, can you give a sense of kind of what you have done in terms of like companies or organizations, you have backed how much money you have put to work, things that have kind of, you know, you guys have helped to kind of bring to life? So a lot of the organizations that are going to be absolutely critical to determining this election, it will be a very, very close election. And a lot of the organizations that will be critical to determining the outcome of that election are organizations that did not exist in 2016. Right. So that's always kind of a healthy indicator of like how much of your, you know, stock market is filled with companies that didn't exist that long ago.

在我们深入探讨之前，你能简要介绍一下你们在公司或组织方面的投入吗？比如你们资助了哪些公司或组织，投入了多少资金，以及你们帮助实现了哪些项目？很多在这次选举中起关键作用的组织在2016年是不存在的。选举会非常接近。这也表明，很多对选举结果至关重要的组织是新出现的。类似于股市，很多公司也是最近才出现的，这通常是一个健康的指标。

This particular portfolio of investments is very new, a lot of new energy, a lot of new ideas. And an example of one that we were supportive of over a period of time, and it's very easy to talk about is an organization called PushBlack. PushBlack. One word, pushBlack. Okay. All right. So PushBlack is a media company. And it is a media company that serves Black American audiences. Okay. With content that they like, primarily over various messenger platforms, like on Facebook Messenger. And the number of human beings who have said affirmatively, I would like more of this content is in the many millions of human beings who said I want more. And the content, I don't know if this is still true, but at one point, their most widely consumed piece of content was a long read on the history of Okra.

这个投资组合特别新，充满了新的活力和创意。举个例子，有一家名为PushBlack的公司，我们在一段时间内一直支持它，谈论起它来很容易。PushBlack，这是一个词，pushBlack。好的。PushBlack是一家媒体公司，专为美国黑人观众提供服务。它通过各种消息平台（例如Facebook Messenger）向观众提供他们喜欢的内容。表示想要更多这种内容的人数已经达到数百万。而且，虽然不确定现在是否依然如此，但有段时间他们最受欢迎的内容是关于秋葵历史的一个长篇阅读。

And their most successful product, if I'm recalling correctly, was something about today in Black history. And so it was content that reached Black audiences where they were. Right. And this content transitions naturally into election content when everybody's paying attention to the election, right? After Labor Day. Right. And at that point, it provides its members with tools to find your own poll locations, send your friends their poll locations. You know, here's a social pressure message you can send to your friends, etc. And PushBlack is a media company organization, but it is also year-round organizing in Black communities. Like the cost of year-round organizing physically in-person human all over the battleground states is so extraordinarily high. But the cost of this, it's not cheap, but it is so much less expensive. And it is just probably 10 times as effective at mobilizing Black turnout as pre-existing organizations.

他们最成功的产品，如果我没记错的话，是关于今天的黑人历史之类的内容。这些内容能够触及黑人群体的所在之地。对吧？这些内容在大选期间自然会过渡到与选举相关的内容，对吧？大选之后的劳动节，大家都在关注大选了。在那时，它会向成员们提供工具，让他们找到自己的投票地点，并将投票地点发送给朋友。比如，这里有一个可以发送给朋友的社会压力信息等等。PushBlack 是一家媒体公司组织，但它也是全年在黑人社区中进行组织工作的。虽然全年在人口密集的战场州进行面对面的人力组织工作成本非常高昂，但这样的形式虽然不便宜，但成本却低得多。而且在调动黑人投票率方面，它的效果可能是现有组织的十倍。

And it's the sort of thing that you find. And so our approach, we started in 2017 with the House of Delegates elections. We monitored all 100 races in Virginia for the Virginia House of Delegates and invested in them, because we wanted to see what happened in actual elections. We had a hypothesis that we had to look at actual elections, not leading indicators like polling, because those were two painted and suspect. So 2017 we invested, and then in 2018 we invested and monitored across the 100 closest battleground races for Congress.

这就是你会发现的那种情况。因此，我们的做法是从2017年的众议院选举开始的。我们监控了弗吉尼亚州众议院的所有100场比赛，并进行投资，因为我们想看看实际选举中会发生什么。我们有一个假设，那就是我们必须关注实际选举，而不是像民调这样的前期指标，因为它们太具有主观性且可疑。所以，我们在2017年进行了投资，接着在2018年我们继续投资并监控了最接近的100场国会竞选战场。

So it was 2017 was kind of the control group. Let's analyze what happens in real time. That is a clever way of thinking about it, but we actually had a control and a treatment in each cycle. So 2017 was the first cycle. So there were 100 races and the treatments varied across races. And there were more than 100 precincts. There were all kinds of candidates and there were all kinds of learnings that were tested. And we learned a lot.

所以2017年可以看作是一个对照组。我们来分析一下实时发生的情况。这是一个聪明的思维方式，但实际上我们每个周期都有一个对照组和一个实验组。2017年是第一个周期。所以有100场竞选，并且每个竞选的实验条件都不同。还涵盖了超过100个选区。有各种各样的候选人，也测试了各种各样的学习方法。我们从中学到了很多。

The things that seemed to work best in that environment, and look, it's a weird environment. It's an off-off cycle that turn out parameters are bizarre. But things that worked there, you tried to scale the very best tactics and ideas in the 2018 congressional battlegrounds, which are much higher turnout elections with much higher spending, and therefore much higher salience. So in those elections, you can start to get a sense of what are the things that really work at scale and can work in a sort of high-stakes election.

在那种环境中，似乎效果最好的方法是——听着，那是个很奇怪的环境。它是一个非主流的环境，结果参数也很离奇。但是在那里的有效方法，你试图在2018年国会选举的战场上进行更大规模的推广。这些选举的投票率更高、花费更多，因此关注度也更高。所以在这些选举中，你可以开始了解哪些方法在大规模上真正有效，并能在这种重大的选举中发挥作用。

Now, some of the ideas that really were promising in 2018 never fully scaled in 2020 because they were in person. And 2020 had COVID. Right, of course, of course. Yeah. Right. But in any event, a lot of those ideas, and those ideas probably would have spun off into whatever. Some of them would have lived on, some of them might not have. But with Trump re-emerging as a threat, and with that becoming increasingly clear for years now, we are now back in the effort of trying to help them scale and work together and really influence this next presidential outcome.

现在，一些在2018年非常有前景的想法，在2020年因为需要线下进行而没有彻底推广开来。2020年碰上了新冠疫情，对吧，当然了。当然了。但无论如何，很多这样的想法——那些想法可能会发展成其他什么东西。一些会继续存在，一些可能不会。但随着特朗普重新成为威胁，而且这一点近几年越来越明显，我们现在又在努力帮助这些想法进行推广，并共同合作，真正影响下一次的总统选举。

And so are we talking dozens of companies and organizations you guys have backed or helped get off the ground? Are there some kind of headline figures you could give just to give people a sense? Yeah. So it is far more than dozens. Early on, it was a little bit almost like sort of angel investing, just sprinkling those around. Yeah. Yeah. Organizations that we are actively raising money for now at scale, it's probably a dozen that we're actively raising money for, consistent with our strategy.

那么，我们说的是你们支持或帮助起步的公司和组织有几十个吗？你能提供一些重要的数据作为参考吗？ 是的，远不止几十个。一开始有点像是天使投资，四处撒网。 是的，目前我们大规模募资的组织大概有十几个，这与我们的战略一致。

And there's another two or three dozen that are not solely focused on our strategy, but we endorse because they're good for other reasons, right? So if someone is focused on long-term anti-fascism and they want to give money to, for example, Greg Lucanioff at fire, we would say that's not directly consistent with what we're doing, but that's important right now to do. And so there's several dozens that we endorse, and there's probably about a dozen that we or major investors in and actively trying to help them close their rounds.

还有另外二三十个项目，它们并非完全专注于我们的战略，但我们还是支持这些项目，因为它们有其他的好处，对吧？比如，如果有人专注于长期的反法西斯斗争，并且想要捐钱给例如火（FIRE）组织的Greg Lucanioff，我们会说这与我们正在做的事情不完全一致，但这是当下很重要的事情。所以我们支持数十个这样的项目，我们还大概有十来个项目是我们或主要投资者积极参与并帮助它们完成融资的。

And this runs the gamut presumably from things like push black, which is like a media startup, so to speak, or voter registration apps, or using AI to understand trends and how you target people, is it kind of that, is it just a broad sweep of just doing a whole suite of attempts to try to kind of, as you say, unstack the deck? So broadly, you're understanding what I'm saying, but there are two things that are important to emphasize. One is we are partisan.

这段话运行内容很广泛，假设从类似于媒体创业公司的 Push Black，到选民注册应用程序，或使用人工智能来理解趋势和如何定位人群，这是一种广泛的努力，尝试通过一系列方法来，正如你所说，重新调整局面。总体上，你理解我的意思，但有两个重要的点需要强调。首先，我们是有党派立场的。

Yeah. We have become partisan Democrats since roughly December of 2016, right? As long as the Democrats are the party of fighting against what Trump represents, we are partisan Democrats, right? So the civil society portfolio that we invest in includes super PACs, as well as 501c4 entities. So for example, one of the super PACs that we believe absolutely needs money is a super PAC called Future Forward USA. And this is a entity that was founded and organized without us.

好. 我们从大约2016年12月以来就逐渐成为了坚定的民主党支持者，对吧？只要民主党继续反对特朗普所代表的东西，我们就会继续支持民主党，对吧？所以我们投资的民间社会项目中包括超级政治行动委员会（super PACs）和501(c)(4)组织。例如，我们认为一个绝对需要资金的超级政治行动委员会是"未来前进美国"（Future Forward USA）。这是一个在没有我们参与的情况下成立和组织的实体。

It was entirely out of open philanthropy and that crowd. And so they did what they did in 2020 without us. And they are critical. And we are actively encouraging people to give money to them. That's a super PAC and that's disclosed. And why are they, why are they so critical? What makes them the special snowflake? So let's step back and talk about the election. How much do you feel like you understand about how the election will be decided? That's exactly where I was going to go.

这完全是出于公开慈善和那群人自发的行动。所以他们在2020年做了他们该做的事情，没有我们的参与。他们是至关重要的。我们正在积极鼓励人们给他们捐钱。这是一个超级政治行动委员会，这个是公开的。那为什么他们如此重要？是什么让他们如此特别呢？让我们退一步来谈谈选举。你觉得你有多了解这次选举将如何决定？这正是我想要谈的。

But just before we go there, just for our overseas listeners who don't understand what a super PAC is, basically, because America, you can buy our election rules mean that you can create these nonprofits that channel money to certain causes or candidates. It's a way around from just a candidate getting directly millions and millions and millions of dollars. But it's effectively the same thing. It's just a kind of a vehicle, is that fair? Just a few months.

但在我们继续之前，先为海外听众解释一下什么是超级政治行动委员会（super PAC）。基本上在美国，因为选举法规，你可以通过创建这些非营利组织来把钱输送给某些事业或候选人。这是为了绕开候选人直接收到巨额捐款的一种方式，但实际上效果是一样的。它就是一种工具，对吧？

Yeah. I mean, it's for your listeners in Europe and England and Britain and so forth, it's so hard to imagine. But we have a particular campaign finance system where if you raise money in disclosed amounts with a cap, they call these hard dollars in part because they're hard to raise, but they're hard in other ways too. Hard dollars, you can't give somebody more than I think it's $6,600 in a federal race. And you can use hard dollars for all kinds of things, for get out the vote, for privileged ads, etc. And then there's super PAC dollars where if someone discloses they're giving a bunch of money to this thing and this thing promises not to coordinate with you as a candidate, they can spend infinite on you. And so this combination of things is out there. So many, many millions, tens of millions, like some of these super PAC hundreds of millions. Yeah. They were in this in this election cycle, by which I mean total political expenditures in 2023 and 2024 across the United States of America, federal, state and local both parties, this two year political cycle will probably $30 billion will be spent. You're kidding me. Nope. That's got to be a record. I mean, I know that includes a kind of super. No, it is a record. Yeah. It includes a lot includes a lot of things, includes local and but yeah, it is a record and like but it was probably about $20 billion last time. This includes that still massive increase. I mean, it's it's a big increase. It's a big increase, which gets to the point. And I don't know if the thing is a then of course, B, which is, it's going to be a very, very close election. And my understanding and this is like super basic, I am not a political reporter. So you please correct me. But it's it could effectively come down. If you look at America, you have the you know, the blue states, the red states and there's a kind of potentially purple states and those purple states could come down to ultimately a very small handful of counties and precincts when we're talking about a national election with maybe 150 million voters you're talking about, maybe 50 or 100 or 200,000 people that will decide this election. That may be a fast, I'll wait a look at it. That's way. I have heard people talk about that before, but please explain what what is what awaits us this year.

是的，我的意思是，对于你们在欧洲、英格兰和英国的听众来说，这很难想象。但我们有一个特殊的竞选资金系统，如果你筹集了有披露金额并有上限的资金，他们称这些为“硬钱”，部分原因是它们很难筹集，但也在其他方面很难。硬钱在联邦竞选中每人不能超过$6,600。你可以用硬钱做很多事情，比如动员选民、做特权广告等等。 然后还有超级政治行动委员会（Super PAC）资金，如果某人披露他们向这个组织捐赠了一大笔钱，并且这个组织承诺不与你作为候选人进行协调，他们可以为你无限制地花钱。这种组合正是存在的现象。很多很多的资金，数以千万计，像一些超级政治行动委员会的资金甚至达到数亿美元。 是的，在这个选举周期，我指的是2023和2024年在整个美利坚合众国的联邦、州和地方的两党政治支出，这两年的政治周期可能会花费300亿美元。 你在开玩笑吧？ 没有。这肯定是个纪录。我知道这包括各种超级支出。 不，这的确是一个纪录。是的，它包括很多东西，包括地方的，但确实是一个纪录。上一次大概是200亿美元。这仍然是一个巨大的增长。我是说，这确实是一个大幅增加。 这说明了一个问题，我不知道是否可以这么说，A，然后当然是B，这将是一场非常非常接近的选举。我的理解，这是非常基础的，我不是政治记者，所以请纠正我。但它可能实际上归结于，如果你观察美国，有蓝州、红州，还有一些可能的紫州。那些紫州最终可能会归结为一个非常小的县和选区数量，当我们谈论一个可能有1.5亿选民的全国性选举时，可能只有五万、一十万或者二十万人会决定这次选举。 也许这是一个快的方式来看待它。我听过有人谈论这个，但请解释一下，今年我们将面对什么。

What you just described is almost exactly right. The only thing you got wrong is a trivial detail. The precinct never matters. Like I could lose this precinct. But if I win the precinct's next store by more than I'd expected, the net, you know, it's the number of voters. But voting behaviors in this country are incredibly hardwired. Very few votes are available, meaning that they might actually change in some way. Right. So there's not that many people who might or might not turn out. And there are plenty, but not that many. And there's not that many people who might vote for either major party candidate. There's some and it matters, but not that many. The two major political parties, their assets are not identical, but they're equivalent. Right. So the two parties have incredible resources, including financial resources, mutual instruction, or mutually. Yeah, totally. So because of that, like, what will happen in 2024 is largely predictable. 90% of the votes that will be cast in 2024 will be the same people doing the same things they did in 2020. It's prebaked. Most of it 90%. So because of that, you can know with near certainty what the swing states might be. And it's not a list longer than seven. You can make it smaller than seven, but you can say seven. Right. You can't say eight.

你刚才描述的内容几乎完全正确。你唯一搞错的只是一个小细节。选区其实无关紧要。比如我可以在这个选区输掉选票，但如果我在隔壁的选区赢得比预期更多的选票，那么总的来说，结果取决于选民的数量。但是，这个国家的投票行为非常固化。可变动的选票很少，真正可能发生改变的选票并不多。对，不会有太多不确定的选民可能出现。确实有一些，但不多。而可能会投票给主要政党候选人的选民也不多。虽然有一些，这很重要，但数量不多。两大主要政党的资源虽然不完全相同，但却是对等的。所以，两党都有巨大的资源，包括财务资源和互相协调的策略。因此，可以说2024年会发生什么在很大程度上是可以预测的。2024年投出的选票有90%将会是那些在2020年做同样选择的人。这基本是确定的，因此你几乎可以确定哪些是摇摆州，数量不会超过七个，甚至可以少于七个，但可以说有七个。对，不能说有八个。

And so if a state outside of those seven is genuinely going to go in a way that we don't currently predict, it is only because the election has tilted dramatically for some. Right. It's Michigan, Wisconsin. Yeah. So the way to think about it is which were the closest by popular vote margin between the two parties. Right. Okay. So the closest three were within a single point. And that's Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. The next two were within two points. And that's Pennsylvania, North Carolina. Okay. And then the next two were within three points. And that's Nevada and Michigan. Got you. So that's it. Now, other things can matter in other ways, but that's it. The ones that are next closest, like the second district in Nebraska or whatever are quite a bit not as close. And so within those seven states, there were 42 million eligible voters in 2020. It'll be about that actually in 2024 as well. And in 2020, there were 31 million votes cast. So relatively high turnout. Yep. And the 31 million, slightly less than half a million went to third parties. And 15.4 million went to Biden and 15.2 million went to Trump. And because of that, Biden beat Trump in those states, six one. Okay. Trump beat Clinton four years earlier in those states, six one the other way. So it was a wipe out because of these very small shifts in numbers. If you had switched 50,000 votes, and instead of having them vote one way, have them vote the other, I don't remember exactly 50. It may have been 100, but I think it was even 50. That is enough to flip both 2016 and 2020. And 2020, there were almost 160 million vote casts. So this is very much a very small number of people who will be deciding everything for everybody. Right. That's crazy.

好的，我试着把它翻译成易读的中文： 所以，如果出现这七个州之外的其他州发生我们未预测到的选举结果，那一定是选举中出现了大幅度的倾斜。对，这里说的就是密歇根州、威斯康星州这些。我们可以这么想，哪几个州是两党得票最接近的。对，最接近的三个州双方得票差距在一个百分点之内，就是亚利桑那州、乔治亚州和威斯康星州。接下来两个州的差距在两个百分点之内，分别是宾夕法尼亚州和北卡罗来纳州。再接下来两个州的差距在三个百分点之内，分别是内华达州和密歇根州。明白了，这就是情况。其他因素也可能会有所影响，但基本上就是这七个州了。而接下来比较接近的，比如内布拉斯加州的第二选区什么的，差距其实还是挺大的。 在这七个州，2020年有4200万合资格选民。2024年也差不多这个数目。2020年，投票人数约为3100万，投票率相对较高。其中稍少于50万人投了第三方，1540万投给了拜登，1520万投给了特朗普。因此，拜登在这几个州中以6比1胜出。而四年前的选举中，特朗普在这些州中以6比1击败了希拉里。这都是因为选票中的一些很小的变化。如果将5万张选票转为另一方的票数，两次选举结果都会逆转。我不记得确切数目，可能是10万，但我认为哪怕只有5万张。2020年，总共有将近1.6亿张选票，这么少的人数就决定了整个结果。对，这真是令人感到疯狂。

So this leads perfectly into, you know, it's a tech podcast. So how do you, we haven't even uttered the words artificial intelligence, which has got to be a record given what's happened happening over the past year. That's right. I know. Right. Look at it. So how do you attack that when the margins are so fine? And I imagine both parties probably have a list of those those voters in question who have flip flopped. You know, like, how should we, as kind of, you know, Joe publicly thinking about like, what that looks like, what technology can and can't do? Like, how are you thinking about this? Because it does feel like, I mean, it's just, it feels like it's going to be a coin flip unless something dramatic happens. Yeah, it's a coin flip.

那么，这正好引出了一个问题，你知道的，这是一个科技播客。所以我们怎么……我们还没提到“人工智能”这个词，这在过去一年发生的事情中简直是个纪录。没错。我知道，对吧。看看吧。那么在利润空间如此微小的情况下，你如何应对呢？我想双方可能都有一份那些易变选民的清单。你知道，像我们这种普通公众，该怎么考虑这件事，技术能做什么，不能做什么？你怎么看？因为感觉上，除非发生什么大的变化，否则这简直像是掷硬币一样难以预测。对，简直是掷硬币。

So for Joe public, just some numbers in case they're useful. So out of the 42 million eligible, there are probably two to three million variable turnout targets on the Democratic side, meaning people who would vote Biden against Trump, may or may not show up. And then on the Republican side, there's probably about a half a million of those people, maybe a million. I mean, say a million just to be really expansive. So there, you're talking about four million turnout targets. And then there's probably something like four million, maybe five swing voters in the middle. Okay. And the swing voters in the middle are incredibly valuable because each of them counts for two.

所以对于普通大众来说，这里有一些数字，看看是否有用。在4200万符合投票资格的人中，可能有两到三百万是民主党这边的变量投票目标，这些人会在拜登和特朗普之间选择拜登，但他们不一定会出来投票。而在共和党这边，大概有五十万到一百万这样的选民，咱们就说一百万吧，为了尽量扩大估计。所以，我们在讨论的是有四百万的变量投票目标。然后大概还有四百万到五百万的摇摆选民。这些中间的摇摆选民非常有价值，因为他们每个人的票数相当于两个。

Because one side's gain, if you gain someone, you also take a vote away from the other side. Exactly. If someone was going in there, thinking they were going to vote for Trump and change their mind and votes for Biden, I've now cost him a vote and gotten Biden to vote. Right. So it's two. All of the plays are these very small numbers of people who are potentially influence fewer than 10 million out of America's 320 million. And you think about what are the different ways that technology and media can reach these people. And then something interesting happens, the political parties don't really know that much about these people. You're like, I'm sure the parties know who they are. But the parties have been pivoting very dramatically in terms of who stands for what. And so the edge cases that really matter tend to lie orthogonal to orthogonal to where the data are.

因为一方的得益意味着另一方的损失，如果你争取到一个人，你就从另一方那里拿走了一张票。完全正确。如果有人原本打算投特朗普的票，但改变了主意去投拜登的票，我不仅让特朗普少了一票，还给拜登增加了一票。对，所以这是两票的变化。所有的操作都是针对那些可能受到影响的少数人，不超过三千万的美国人。在考虑技术和媒体可以如何影响这些人时，会发生一些有趣的事情。政党实际上对这些人了解并不多。你可能会以为政党肯定知道这些人是谁，但政党在代表什么问题上已经发生了非常大的转变，因此真正起作用的边缘案例往往与数据的位置完全不相干。

Right. Like, I don't know that much about this Gen Z person who moved from here to there. Are they really going to vote or which way, you know, because the parties themselves are kind of moving the goalposts of it. Exactly. Like a lot. It's one thing that's really interesting is a lot of older white voters who have voted Republican their whole lives were kind of Reagan Republicans and are a little bit turned off by this. And so some like one of the reasons Biden won. And one of the reasons he could very well win again is that if you move that cohort by like a half a point margin, that's a huge number of votes. Yeah. Yeah. But then in terms of how technologists and how technology thinks about things, there's different, you know, first of all, there's financial aggregators like act blue that help you allocate resources hard dollars to candidates, which is the privileged form of money, as I mentioned, and is the most useful.

对，没错。我对那个从这里搬到那边的Z世代年轻人了解不多。不知道他们到底会不会去投票，或者投哪一边的票，毕竟各政党自己也在不断调整目标。比如，有趣的是，很多一直以来都是共和党选民的老一辈白人，有些是里根时期的共和党人，现在对现状有点反感。这也是拜登赢得选举的原因之一，而且他有可能再次获胜。如果能让这部分选民转变支持率哪怕只有半个百分点，那也是巨大的投票数。 关于科技和科技从业者对选举的影响，情况也各不相同。首先，有像ActBlue这样的金融汇总平台，可以帮助分配资金给候选人，这种资金形式是最优先的，也是最有用的。

And then there's various forms of civil society organizations that do good work. For example, I mentioned to you push black, which is primarily a turnout operation. There are also versions of that that are more about persuasion. So for example, there is an organization called Galvanize. And the word gal is capitalized because it's about white women. It's just liberal group that was like, Hey guys, you know, a lot of important groups here. We're not trying to minimize it anybody. But white women just did vote for Trump. So let's talk about it. Right. And they were in the field when Justice Kavanaugh had his hearings and the Christine Blasey Ford stuff. And so they got this intense exposure to the cross pressures facing, especially white women without college degrees and the pressures they face to conform to the men in their lives and their expectations, but also, you know, how they feel about the parties and where they're going.

然后，有各种形式的民间社会组织在做着有益的工作。例如，我提到过Push Black，它主要是一个投票动员机构。还有一些版本更加注重说服工作。例如，有一个名为Galvanize的组织。这个词中的“gal”是大写的，因为它专注于白人女性。这个自由派组织认为，有很多重要的群体，我们不试图忽视任何人，但是白人女性的确投票给了特朗普，所以我们应该讨论这个问题。就在卡瓦诺法官听证会和克里斯汀·布莱西·福特事件期间，他们活跃在现场，因此他们对尤其是非学历白人女性所面临的各种压力有了深入了解。这些压力包括她们在生活中的男性及其期望中所需要的顺从，但也涉及她们对政党的感受及其走向。

And it turns out this is a group of people where if you engage with them in a way that helps them feel more empowered and connected, they vote more often with their initial instincts, which are more Democrat. And then you can layer on some partisan messaging onto that. And so you just get a lot of net Democratic votes from an organization that's primarily a 501c for entity empowering women. But if you're a 501c for entity, which is you can give large amounts, but they're not disclosed. So it has certain advantages. If the main purpose is to empower women and as a part of it, you're also spending political dollars on Democrats who are pro women in certain cases. That is another way you can do this that is incredibly powerful, right?

结果表明，这是一群人，如果你以一种让他们感到更有权力和更有联系的方式与他们互动，他们更倾向于按照自己的初始直觉投票，而这些初始直觉更偏向民主党。然后你可以在此基础上加入一些党派信息。因此，你可以从一个主要是501c4类型的组织中获得大量净民主党选票，这个组织的目的是赋权女性。但如果你是一个501c4类型的组织，虽然你可以捐赠大额资金，但这些资金不需要公开披露，这就提供了某些优势。如果赋权女性是主要目标，而作为其中的一部分，你也在某些情况下为支持女性的民主党人花费政治资金，这是另一种非常有力的方式，对吧？

And that's a way of taking existing rules and norms and applying them to venture capital framework, right? Are you worried? And I know what we connected recently pre Christmas about it all kind of the year that awaits us and just stepping back. I mean, we're talking about America, but this is a global thing of whatever it is. 70 democracies you're going to vote this year. I mean, democracy's small d because Russia is in there. And I'm sure Putin's going to only have 98% of the vote this year down here for him. Been a rough year for him. But it's something like 2 billion people, which is basically us, India, and then a bunch of other countries are going to be voting this year. And at the same time, as you have AI tools that make it really easy to clone people's voice to clone people's images to make fake videos, we just saw all this Taylor Swift stuff. It does feel like there's a kind of this big morass of technological tools that are kind of really breaking out just as we approach this very critical year. Is that something you're even worried about? If so, how are you thinking about that? Are you doing anything to prepare for that?

这就是一种将现有规则和规范应用到风险投资框架中的方法，对吧？你担心吗？我记得我们上次在圣诞节前就这一切联系过，讨论了即将到来的一年。虽然我们在谈论美国，但这其实是一个全球性的话题。今年大约有70个民主国家要举行选举。而当我们谈论“民主”时，字母是小写的，因为俄罗斯也在其中，我相信普京今年的投票率也会只有98%。对他来说，这一年并不顺利。差不多有20亿人要参加投票，这基本上包括我们、印度和一堆其他国家。 与此同时，我们看到AI工具的发展，使得克隆人声、克隆人像、制作假视频变得非常容易。最近的泰勒·斯威夫特事件就是一个例子。感觉正当我们迎来这个关键的一年的时候，有很多科技工具正在迅猛发展，可能会带来混乱。你对此担忧吗？如果是，你是怎么考虑的？你在做什么准备吗？

When we think about again, just this kind of the quality of the information ecosystem, especially as we get, you know, as you talk about those 50,000 people, a finely targeted video of Biden falling over or having a Mitch McConnell moment where he just like stops talking and seems to freeze or something, that could be like, oh, well, he's too old. He gets a bag of cash that says like from Hunter on it. Correct. Whatever. Right. And like you can see that something like that, like, you know, pinpoint place to the people that need to see it, that could be, I mean, this is obviously a terrible scenario. But you know, I don't know if that's how and if you guys are thinking about that. Yeah, it's a it's a huge problem. And there are a lot of groups that are thinking about it. The way in which we think about it is consistent with our investment framework, which is that we are fighting for the Enlightenment era to survive the political era. And so we are trying to get humanism and scientific reason and the rule of law to be kind of sustainable and enduring. And part of that, especially the scientific reason part is what's true. You know, it's true.

当我们再次考虑信息生态系统的质量时，尤其是涉及到那5万人时，你提到的拜登摔倒的视频或他像米奇·麦康奈尔那样突然停顿并似乎冻结的瞬间，这类精准投放的视频可能会影响人们的看法，比如认为他太老了。如果他收到了写有“来自亨特”的现金袋子，那就更糟了。这些场景显然是非常糟糕的，但你能设想一下它们对特定人群的精准投放可能产生的影响吗？这确实是一个很大的问题，很多团体都在关注这一点。我们处理这个问题的方式与我们的投资框架是一致的，也就是争取让启蒙时代的理念能在现代政治环境中得以延续。我们努力让人文主义、科学理性和法治能够持久，特别是科学理性的部分也就是追求真相。

And we've had photographs for a couple centuries now and they have been great. And in the last couple hundred years, I mean, this does coincide with a massive leap forward in human prosperity and enlightenment. Last couple hundred years, we have had artifacts that we all agreed were representations of truth. That was great for humans and that period is over. So now that we no longer have that period and so we no longer can all agree, Jay Rosen is a professor of journalism at New York University and he talks about how the real damage is not that you're going to persuade people of things that are false. The real damage is that you will be unable to persuade people of things that are true. Right. Like a misinformation bomb. So now you don't trust anything. Exactly. But also what kind what is the category error and is it an entirely new kind of error? Or is it just tactically more dangerous? And this is not a new kind of error. We have had misinformation of this type for a long time. So for example, we've had the fake moon landings, we've had the protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were invented in the subculture that is now generating misinformation today in St. Petersburg.

我们已经有照片存在几个世纪了，并且它们一直很棒。在过去几百年间，这确实与人类繁荣和启蒙的巨大飞跃相吻合。在过去的几百年里，我们有了一些被公认为真实代表的物品。那段时间对人类来说是非常棒的，但那个时期已经结束了。所以现在我们不再处于那个时期，因此我们不再能够达成共识。 纽约大学的新闻学教授杰·罗森（Jay Rosen）谈到，真正的损害并不是你会说服人们相信虚假的事情，而是你将无法说服人们相信真实的事情。这就像一个错误信息炸弹一样，所以现在你什么都不信任了。没错。但这种错误的类别是什么？它是一种全新的错误类型吗？或者它只是战术上更危险？这种并不是一种新类型的错误。我们很长时间以来就有这种类型的错误信息。例如，我们有假登月事件，还有《锡安长老会纪要》，它们都出自现在在圣彼得堡制造错误信息的亚文化群体。

Those are the same culture a century later did protocols of the Elders of Zion. So there have been plenty of efforts to create misinformation with Vladimir Putin is only the latest of a long list of these people, not just in Russia, but all over the world who've created misinformation. Many people have believed it. And so we are going to need to restore our trust and our faith in a few rock bottom institutions that we all agree are real. And in the United States, for better or worse, one of the institutions that really matters is our courts.

这些文化在一个世纪后形成了《锡安长老的议定书》。一直以来都有很多人试图制造虚假信息，弗拉基米尔·普京只是这些人中的最新一位，而不仅仅是在俄罗斯，这种情况在全世界都存在。许多人对此深信不疑。因此，我们需要重新建立对一些基础机构的信任和信心，大家都认同这些机构是真实的。在美国，无论好坏，有一个非常重要的机构就是我们的法院。

In normal times, our litigiousness is a pain in the neck. But in this moment, it may be useful that people have spent many, many generations acculturating to the idea that the truth can be found in the courts. That's where disputes are resolved. And so I believe that one of the things that will emerge in the United States is that the courts will be arbiters of truth in ways that will matter for the United States elections. And that in the United States, at least that people will have a general suspicion of things that have not been validated by the courts.

在正常情况下，我们的好讼习惯让人头疼。但在这个时候，人们花了许多代人去适应通过法院寻找真相的理念，这可能会派上用场。那是解决争端的地方。因此，我相信在美国，法院将成为真相的仲裁者，这对美国的选举将很重要。在美国，至少，人们会普遍怀疑那些未经法院验证的事情。

And therefore, these last minute deep fakes about President Biden or whatever, I don't think people believe them, but we'll see. Is there anything you can do technologically or that you guys have invested in or are looking at kind of like not necessarily that deep fake example, but just generally trying to kind of maintain or improve the information hygiene? Yeah. So a few things. One, after doing a lot of research and diligence in the space of fighting misinformation, it turns out one of the only things you can do is promote good information.

因此，对于那些关于拜登总统的最后时刻的深度伪造视频或其他类似的东西，我认为人们不会相信，但我们拭目以待。您是否有在技术上采取措施，或者投资或者研究什么，不一定针对深度伪造，而是普遍上维护或改善信息的准确性？是的，有几点。首先，在对抗错误信息的领域做了大量研究和认真调查后，发现你唯一能够做的事情之一就是推广可靠的信息。

So for example, one of the entities we've invested in is called good info. It's run by a woman named Tara McGowan. They run properties called career news. They are explicitly political, but they're political in a very factual way. I don't know if you've if you've read What's Our Problem by Tim Urban. No. It's a great book. He talks about how you can be right or left and you can also be like hybrid or low brain. And so you can say like this is a political, left to center political news organization.

所以例如，我们投资的一家公司叫做Good Info。它由一位名叫Tara McGowan的女性管理。他们运营一些名为Career News的媒体。他们明确带有政治色彩，但他们的政治观点非常基于事实。我不知道你是否读过Tim Urban的《What's Our Problem》。没有吗？这是一本很棒的书。他谈到了你可以是左派或右派，也可以是混合型或低智识型。你可以说这是一个左派偏中心的政治新闻组织。

And also we are only going to trade natural facts. Right. And so that is a thing that we've invested in that is reaching low information voters or eligible low information voters in the swing states, right? What's the preferred delivery mechanism? Is it Facebook? Is it TikTok? Is it what is it these days? It varies. TikTok is obviously where young people are. Yeah. And I have not really fully gotten my head around how to think about that given all the other issues around TikTok.

我们也只会传递自然事实，对吧。因此，我们投资了一个能够接触到摇摆州低信息选民或有投票资格的低信息选民的项目。那么，首选的传递机制是什么？是Facebook吗？是TikTok吗？现如今是什么呢？情况各不相同。显然，TikTok是年轻人聚集的平台。是的，考虑到围绕TikTok的各种问题，我还没有完全理清思路。

So the entities that we've invested in have been much more. They use Facebook. They'll sometimes use other social media platforms. Some of them used to use Twitter, although it's not really that useful anymore. Instagram also, obviously, none of the entities that we've invested in have been TikTok first, but we're sort of actively exploring that now. And how are you feeling right now? This is end of January. So we're 10 months from Showtime. Look, I'd rather be us than them. Basically, it's tie ball game entering the fourth quarter.

我们投资的企业在很多方面都有所发展。他们会使用Facebook，有时也会使用其他社交媒体平台。有些企业以前会用Twitter，但现在已经不太有用了。当然，他们也用Instagram。不过，我们投资的企业中，没有哪一家是优先使用TikTok的，但我们现在正在积极探索这个平台。 你现在感觉怎么样？现在是1月底，离大日子还有10个月。看，我宁愿是我们面对这个情况，而不是他们。基本上，这就像是第四节开始时的平局比赛。

And there are a lot of reasons to believe that this fourth quarter this year, this last year of Biden's presidency, will be a year where Americans start to feel better about the economy, where Americans are reminded of the things that they hate most about Trump, where Americans see how much Trump has decompensated. And where elites start to realize exactly how significant it would be if we handed power to that man for another four years. So I think that combination of things makes it favorable for the good guys to win.

今年的第四季度，拜登总统任期的最后一年，有很多理由让人相信这将是美国人对经济感觉好转的一年。这段时间里，美国人会被提醒他们最讨厌特朗普的哪些方面，同时也会看到特朗普在这段时间内有多大的退步。而精英们也将开始真正意识到，如果让特朗普再掌权四年，会有多么严重的影响。所以，我认为这些因素结合在一起，对正义的一方是有利的。

On the other hand, it's the same combination of things that makes it catastrophic if we don't. So how do you feel? You know, I don't know. The expected value is not changing that, although. It's composition is altering. And do you have a sense of what just again, stepping back on the technological side of things, you know, Reed is pumping a lot of money into all of this. And I have heard him talk on various podcasts and panels and stuff about, you know, how AI is just a different thing, kind of like the internet, like the ground is shifting beneath our feet.

另一方面，正是这些事情的组合使得如果我们不这样做，后果将是灾难性的。所以，你感觉如何？实际上，我也不知道。尽管预期值没有变化，但其构成正在改变。你知道，从技术方面来看，Reed在这些方面投入了大量资金。我听他说过几次，无论是在播客还是在各种讨论会上，他谈到AI时表示，它和互联网一样，是一种完全不同的事物，就像我们脚下的地面在不断变化。

I gather you don't seem particularly like, okay, this is going to be an earthquake for democracy that we're going to have to figure out in the way that the internet was. But is that right? I mean, how are you thinking about it? Yeah. So first of all, if there's any daylight between me and Reed on the importance and significance of AI, which I'm not sure there's there's much, but if there is, I'm even more extreme than he is in terms of how important it is.

我觉得你的意思好像是，你不太认为这会像互联网那样，会对民主带来巨大冲击，需要我们去解决。但这是对的吗？你怎么想的呢？是这样的，首先，如果我和里德在对人工智能重要性和意义的看法上有任何分歧——我不确定是否真的有，但如果有的话，我对它的重要性看得比他还要严重。

The issue that I am just tackling is how much will it matter for the decision making epistemology of America in these elections this year? Right. That's like the narrow focus. It's absolutely a big deal after that. But it is such a big deal that it's not even really worth thinking about because like a year from now, we'll know if that's a world where Donald Trump is back in office or not. And I definitely am in the camp that former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, she says that if Trump gets back into office, he's never leading. I don't see any way that the Constitution's prohibition on a third presidential term is actually enforceable with this man and his crowd taking office. They are what they are. They're very thuggish, very criminal. So I think the consequences of them getting back into office are catastrophic in a way that we're still only beginning to deal with. I mean, obviously you're very close to Reed, but stepping back and looking at the kind of the tech ecosystem, the other kind of big fish, if you will, the other billionaires, tech billionaires, is this kind of an all hands to the pump type moment or do you have a sense of kind of that sense of danger you have? Do you feel like that is something other people acknowledge and are like, oh, yeah, we got to figure out we're throwing a bunch of money over here and investing over there at blah, blah, blah, blah.

这个问题我正在处理是：今年的选举中，这对美国的决策学将有多大影响？对，这是一个狭窄的聚焦点。在此之后显然是个大事。但这事大到几乎不值得现在去想，因为一年后我们就会知道，是否会出现川普重返白宫的局面。我坚决站在怀俄明州前代表利兹·切尼的立场上，她说如果川普重新掌权，他就不会离开。我看不出宪法对第三个总统任期的禁止在他和他的支持者掌权的情况下有任何可执行性。他们就是那样，非常暴力，非常犯罪。所以我认为他们重返白宫的后果是灾难性的，而我们仍然刚刚开始应对此问题。显然，你与里德非常亲近，但从旁观者的角度看科技生态系统，其他主要人物，科技亿万富翁们，这是一个需要大家齐心协力的时刻，还是你感觉你那种紧迫感是其他人也认同的，就像“哦，是的，我们必须搞清楚，把大量资金投入这儿、投资那儿，等等”。

Do you have like, what is happening on the ground? This is hard to substantiate, but I have a sense that things are moving, that people are starting to realize what's happening. There had been a lot of hope that we would not be in this situation. And certainly I hope that I have believed for a while that those hopes were not realistic. And after, I mean, after New Hampshire, there was still a chance, but after New Hampshire, look, it's going to be Trump versus Biden. When Nikki Haley lost by double digits to Trump in their primary. Yeah, if she'd come close, I mean, look, maybe she baits him into some sort of a moment that breaks him, I don't know. But like, people are starting to realize that it's Trump versus Biden in that context. I think there's going to be an all hands moment. I certainly hope so, because the thing is, is that smart investments in the kind of portfolio that we're talking about can absolutely make a difference. There are minds that can be changed. This is a thing that we can know. And even in a presidential year, when changed minds are at a premium in terms of changed voting behaviors, like you can still find them. And so I do hope people get off the sidelines. And I'm feeling like that's starting to happen.

你了解一下现在的实际情况吗？虽然很难证实，但我感觉事情在开始变化，人们开始意识到发生了什么。我们本来抱有很大的希望，不会陷入这种局面。我一直认为这些希望不太现实。在新罕布什尔州之后，事情还有转机，但新罕布什尔州之后，看起来就是特朗普对决拜登了。当尼基·黑利在初选中大比分输给特朗普，如果她能接近一点，也许可以刺激他出现破绽，但事实是，人们开始意识到这是特朗普对决拜登的局面了。我认为会出现一个全员参与的时刻。我真心希望是这样，因为我们讨论的这种投资策略确实可以产生影响。有些人是可以改变主意的，这是可以确定的。即使在总统大选年，改变投票行为的几率很小，但你仍然能找到这些机会。所以我希望人们能积极参与，这种感觉已经开始显现了。

You mentioned that the decision making epistemology of people, we know that you can actually with, I don't know, giving people access to good information or different information can actually move people from Trump to Biden or Biden to Trump. It's always like this mythical voter, that I don't know anybody in my life, but I also live on the West Coast in a little liberal bubble. But like the idea that someone would switch from one side to the other when they're so far, very far apart seems almost like fantastical. Like, no, that's not, I mean, I'm sure it's happening somewhere, but I don't, you know, it's like it's hard to imagine. I guess my question is when you are investing in dozens of organizations that are working in all these different facets of the information ecosystem, getting the vote out, getting new media, all this stuff, doesn't matter. Yeah, for sure it does. It's a great, it's a great point. But the swing voters that I mentioned call it 4 million in the seven battleground states. These people are so-called partisan bystanders. And what that mostly means is that they think both parties are horrible.

你提到人们决策的认知方式。我们知道，通过给予人们良好的信息或不同的信息，确实可以让一些人从支持特朗普转向支持拜登，或者反过来。这种所谓的“神秘选民”，虽然在现实中我们不见得遇到，但就像我住在美国西海岸的一个小小的自由主义泡沫中，几乎很难想象有人会在两个立场相差如此悬殊的候选人之间摇摆不定。我知道肯定是有这样的事情发生的，但就是难以想象。我想问的是，当你在投资数十个在信息生态系统中不同领域工作的组织，比如拉票、新媒体等等，是否真的有意义？当然有意义，这是个很好的观点。我提到的摇摆选民，大约有400万，分布在七个关键州。这些人所谓的“党派旁观者”，主要是认为两个党派都很糟糕。

So they will agree with your liberal bubble about how bad the Republicans are. They will just also think the same about you Democrats are also shit. Also, holy shit. Have you seen this thing? Right. That thing they've done. And so they're like, both of these options are terrible, but I have a civic duty to show up and pick one. Right. And again, of necessity, these are people who don't really follow things the way that partisans do. They have a sense of things. They're, if you have not already made up your mind about which way you're going to vote in Trump versus Biden, you are going to take your damn time. You are clearly going to wait until you have to. So you're talking about September, October decisions when everybody's paying attention. So there'll be a new kind of salience. And there are things you can invest in now that will absolutely matter. Right. So just as an example, we'll just give you an example, Danny. Gen Z in cities. Okay. So by that, I mean the most dense quartile of census tracts in the seven battleground states, voters aged 18 to 27.

所以他们会同意你的自由泡沫里关于共和党有多糟糕的观点。但他们也会认为你们民主党同样烂。天哪，你看到这件事了吗？对，就是他们干的这事。所以他们会觉得，这两个选项都很糟糕，但我有公民的责任去投票选一个。再说一次，这些人肯定不是像党派支持者那样密切关注事情的人。他们有一定的感觉，如果你还没决定在特朗普和拜登之间选谁，那你肯定会拖到最后时刻才做决定。所以大概是九月、十月，当所有人都在关注的时候才会做决定。到时候会有新的关注点出现。现在有一些你可以投资的东西到时会绝对有影响力。比如说，丹尼，我给你举个例子，城市里的Z世代。我指的是七个战场州中人口最密集的四分之一选区，18到27岁的选民。

Gen Z in cities in swing. They will turn out probably 25 to 30 points less than everybody else. Kids these days. I know, right? Well, the kids all days, right? I know. So, but the other thing about them is even though they fucking they grump about everything, they're not super excited about Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or whatever, like they don't like the centrism that dominates national democratic brand dating back forever. But they vote Democrat because what they don't like is the sort of rural fascism that the Republican Party has become. I mean, the Republican Party is very much about anti city grievance.

Z世代在市区摇摆。他们的投票率可能会比其他人低25到30个百分点。现在的孩子们啊。我知道，对吧？嗯，其实一直以来的孩子们都是这样，对吗？我知道。不过，关于他们的另一件事是，尽管他们总是抱怨这抱怨那，但他们对乔·拜登或希拉里·克林顿之类的人并不热情，也不喜欢长期以来主导全国民主党品牌的中间路线。不过，他们还是会投票给民主党，因为他们更不喜欢的是共和党变成的那种农村法西斯主义。我是说，共和党现在非常反对城市。

And as a result, it stakes very strong claims to a lot of things that urban Gen Z feels strongly about, right? So guns and abortion, the environment, democracy. There are things you can do now that can significantly increase turnout among urban Gen Z. And it's like what we talked about before with push black. It's not directly political. It's like, help these people form social bonds with each other. So they're most more likely to come out when the early vote festivals come along. Right. So there are things that can matter. The numbers are so 50,000 votes was enough last time in the time before. Right. There are plenty of things that we can do that we know will move far more than that. The problem is the other side is doing things too. Right. Yep.

因此，它对许多都市Z世代（即青少年和20多岁年轻人）关心的事务提出了非常强烈的主张，对吧？比如持枪权和堕胎、环境、民主。这些现在可以做的事情能够显著增加都市Z世代的投票率。这就像我们之前谈到的与推黑（Push Black）有关的内容。这并不是直接政治性的，而是帮助这些人彼此建立社会联系。这样一来，当提前投票活动开始时，他们更有可能出来投票。对，某些措施确实有显著效果。上次50,000票就足够了，上上次也是。我们可以做很多事情来推动远超这个数字的改变。问题在于，对方也在采取行动。对吧？没错。

So before I let you go, I'm going to ask you to reveal like the deep dark secrets of the Democratic Party. So Joe Biden is old. It's a secret. No one knows. Trump is old. Let's just say Biden has a moment three months from now. And it's like, oh no, he's fallen or he's had a heart attack or whatever. Who's on the sideline? Is it Gavin Newsom? Well, it sort of depends on when it happens. I mean, the most obvious natural succession would be the vice president. Yep. And vice president Harris has the same kinds of popularity problems that Biden does, not related to age, but related to the sort of socialism versus democracy thing. And she's a woman and she's black. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that helps with some constituencies, but it hurts with others. And it's hard to know exactly what would happen. If I could snap my fingers and make something good happen, obviously that would be great, depending on when it happens. I don't know. But remember, like Joe Biden is from a very long-lived family. And so is Donald Trump. And they both have very high end health care. Yeah. So there is an edge case that we don't have one or the other of them. But the most likely thing is that's what we're facing. Yeah.

在放你走之前，我想请你揭示一下民主党的深层秘密。乔·拜登年龄大这是一个秘密，没人知道。实际上特朗普也年纪很大。假设拜登在三个月后出现意外，比如摔倒或者心脏病发作，谁会接替他的位置？是加文·纽瑟姆吗？ 嗯，这在很大程度上取决于何时发生。最明显的自然接替者应该是副总统，对吧？副总统哈里斯和拜登面临着类似的人气问题，这些问题与年龄无关，而是与社会主义与民主的争议有关。再者，她是一个黑人女性，这在某些选民中有优势，但在其他选民中可能是劣势。所以，很难说具体会发生什么。 如果我能打个响指就让一切顺利发生，那当然不错，但具体情况还要取决于何时发生。不过请记住，乔·拜登来自一个长寿的家庭，唐纳德·特朗普也是如此。他们都享有极高水平的医疗护理。所以，尽管有极端情况，但我们最有可能面对的就是目前这样的现实。

So kind of the race is set. And also the other thing about age, I mean, one of the arguments that we have made that Reid has made also is that if you look at Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway had its highest ever quarterly dividend when he turned 83. And the value of his net worth grew by something like 10x over the subsequent 10 years. Right. And there are certain field diplomacy and finance are among them where age is not a bug, but a feature it. If you use your age appropriately to cement your values and your frameworks for looking at the world through a bunch of people that you've mentored an organization and that you're the head of, this is actually a pretty good case. Whereas if you if age is, who knows, Trump comes off as an alpha and obviously Biden, he moves in more of a shuffle. But Trump is de-compensating. When you say de-compensating, what do you mean? I mean, like he said, his Merry Christmas, it's not even tweet anymore, his truth. Social. Yeah, so his truths.

比赛基本上已经定了。另外关于年龄的问题，我们也有提出一种观点，里德（Reid）也提到过：看看沃伦·巴菲特（Warren Buffett），当他83岁时，伯克希尔·哈撒韦（Berkshire Hathaway）创下了历史最高的季度股息。而且在接下来的十年里，他的净资产价值增长了大约10倍。在某些领域，比如外交和金融，年龄不是缺点，而是优点。如果你善于利用自己的年龄，通过指导一批人并领导一个组织来巩固你的价值观和世界观框架，这其实是一个很好的例子。而如果年龄是个未知数，比如说特朗普给人的感觉是一个主导者，而显然拜登的行动要慢一些。但特朗普正在失去控制力。你说的失去控制力是什么意思？我的意思是，比如他现在的“圣诞快乐”都不再是在推特上说，而是在他的社交平台Truth Social发布的真相。

Like on Christmas, his truth was Merry Christmas and May the haters all rotten hell. You know, I mean, he's like, he's showing up, he's like, like he was found by a jury to have inserted his fingers into a woman against her will that is defined as rape and he keeps calling attention to it. He shows up. Right. He can't contain himself, right? So. So what you need to do, this is like no charge for this advice. Thank you. No problem. This is free. Invest in some one of these longevity startups. Want to get one of these God pills? Exactly. I like Brian. Crumble, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. And we're all good. Hey, Danny, just in case we don't talk again, I want to leave you with one little thought experiment. Please. We funded some groups like Protect Democracy in Bassen that in turn sponsored what they called the Transition Integrity Project, which was a war-grained scenario, you know, Red vs Blue, it's kind of a contested election. What do you do? And kind of everybody walked out of that being like, wow, Red has all the all the cards. Right. So, you know, in the same spirit, we're trying to elevate people's awareness of what's coming. And I want people to think about if Trump gets into office again, he's sworn in January 20th of 2025. Okay. January 6th of 2026. Okay. He declares Patriot and Victor's Day. And he has a military parade with all of the armed forces there and all of the people that he's appointed, as he's promised to, as Heritage Foundation is helping him do, you know, several levels down, not just the cabinet. This actually doesn't sound this doesn't sound outlandish so far, which is terrifying. Thus far, right? I'm just saying like, very straightforwardly things he's promised to do, right? And so he has a victory day parade on January 6th, 2026, like all of this is entirely predictable. And then the people that are leading these various agencies have been recruited from the leadership of the militia organizations. And they've been pardoned. They've been very clear that they're going to pardon people and put them in leadership positions. And so the militias that were there on January 6th of the original Patriot's Day will be back there. Proud boys, etc. All of them. So you imagine they'll be there and you have all of these armed forces there, you know, the prison guards and all these others.

就像在圣诞节，他的真实想法是“圣诞快乐，愿那些恨我的人都下地狱。”你懂我的意思，他就像是迫不及待地要宣扬自己的行为。他出现在公众场合，正如陪审团认定他曾在未经允许的情况下把手指插入一名女性体内，这被定义为强奸，而他却不停地对此事引起注意。他出现了，对吧？他无法克制自己，对吧？ 所以你需要做的是——这条建议免费，没问题，不客气——投资一些长寿初创企业，想要得到一些“神药”。对，我喜欢布莱恩·克兰布尔，是的，我们一切都很好。 嘿，丹尼，以防我们以后再也没有机会交谈，我想给你留下一个小小的思维实验。我们资助了一些像保护民主之类的团体，他们反过来资助了一个叫做转型完整计划的项目，这是一个战争游戏场景，红队对蓝队，一场有争议的选举。这该怎么办呢？大家走出这场实验时感觉红队掌控了一切。所以，我们试图提高人们对即将到来的事情的意识。 我希望人们思考，如果特朗普再次上任，他将在2025年1月20日宣誓就职。然后到2026年1月6日，他宣布爱国者和胜利者日，并举行一场包含全部武装部队的军事阅兵，还有他任命的所有人，就像他承诺的那样，遗产基金会帮他把这些人安排到了不只是内阁的多个层级。到目前为止，这并不显得荒谬，这很可怕，就是这样，对吧？我只是说他承诺做的事情，然后在2026年1月6日举行胜利日阅兵，这一切都是完全可预见的。 然后那些领导这些机构的人将从民兵组织的领导层中招募，而这些人都被赦免了。他们明确表示会赦免这些人并将他们任命为领导职务。所以1月6日参加过最初爱国者日的那些民兵将会再次出现，骄傲男孩等所有人都会再回来。你可以想象他们会在那里，加上所有这些武装部队，监狱看守等等。

And the House and Senate will have the House sergeant at arms. What if someone brings a noose? Again, just things that have happened already and they break in. And when someone gets threatened, like what do we do? Like we are on the cusp of handing that kind of power to that man in that movement. I do think, you know, when when it was that last month, when he was referring to people as vermin, which was like straight from mine comp. And at a certain point, you're gonna have to be, he has a little bit like, okay, well, if the person is telling you who they are, then you have to believe them. It's, you know, yeah, he has promised to send federal troops into American cities over the objections of their mayors and governors to root out vermin. Seems pretty straightforward. Pretty clear. God, I'm not happy note. 2024. God help us. That's right. And that is all the time we have.

国会众议院和参议院将有众议院警卫负责安保。如果有人带来了绞索怎么办？这些事情以前已经发生过了，他们冲进去。有人受到威胁时，我们该怎么办？我们正处在把这种权力交到那个人和他的运动手中的边缘。我确实认为，当上个月他把人称为‘害虫’时，那简直就像是从《我的奋斗》里抄出来的一样。在某个点上，你得意识到，如果一个人告诉你他们是什么样的人，你就得相信他。他已经承诺要派联邦军队到美国各个城市，尽管这些城市的市长和州长反对，他要清除‘害虫’。显而易见。哎呀，这不是一个让人高兴的话题。2024年，天佑我们。对，这就是我们所有的时间了。

I want to thank Demetri for taking the time. I want to thank you all for listening, for the ratings, for the reviews, for telling your friends and neighbors about this very fine podcast. And hopefully we'll see, you know, the world doesn't fall apart this year. I didn't come out of the conversation feeling great about our prospects, but we shall see. We live in hope. Anyhow, thank you for listening. You can find me in the times I'll be writing this weekend. You can find me online at the times.co.uk. And I will be back next week with more podcast goodness for your listening years. Until then, have a fabulous week. And we'll talk to you very soon. Bye-bye.

我想感谢德米特里抽出时间。我还要感谢大家的收听、评分和评论，以及感谢你们把如此精彩的播客推荐给朋友和邻居。希望今年世界不会崩溃。虽然这次谈话让我对前景不太乐观，但我们拭目以待。我们怀抱希望。总之，谢谢大家的收听。您可以在这个周末看到我在《泰晤士报》的文章，也可以在 times.co.uk 上找到我。下周我会带来更多精彩的播客内容供你们收听。在那之前，祝你们有一个美好的一周。我们很快再聊。再见。