Can you imagine if in the year 2000 Washington DC had said oh my god Google is so powerful That we're not going to allow any other country in the world to have access to this Google machine that might give them answers to questions Unless Google comes to Washington and gets federal approval before it launches into any of these countries That's what we were doing in AI and I think we've ripped the chains off of that And I think now we're going to allow our companies to go compete win Hey Bill, it's great to see you. It's been a while it has been a while It's been I think three weeks since we did a podcast You know honestly and thanks as an aside to Hundreds if not thousands of listeners who are like you know remind us that they love the pod It is hard to get it scheduled Part of the reason it's been hard as I've been on the road.
I've been in LA I've been in Washington DC and then I spent 10 days in the Middle East and I think about what's happened Bill over that period of time We've basically landed the plane on tariffs We've had these huge deals announced in the Middle East the reconciliation bill is on track to passing and We have some talks of a ceasefire in Ukraine the market which was down 20% for the year has now bounced 20% in the last 20 trading days so maybe Today we could just unpack this fury of activity that's occurred over the last three weeks That sounds great. So you were at the big event the one that everyone's talking about in the Middle East Why don't you if you would you know give the listeners? I think at first just kind of what did it feel like what was what was different this time you've been there before But but frame what happened you know just at first from You know, what did this look like and then I'd be interested in your takeaways.
Well, I have to say the whole orientation if you just think about it toward the Middle East over the last few years Has been kind of about control You know, we had syphias that was blocking all these deals in the Middle East We had the Biden diffusion rule That remember that in the final weeks of the Biden administration they passed a rule known as the diffusion rule Really created this complicated regulatory framework for selling Advanced chips and models and it broadly restricted the ability of the US to sell chips to like a hundred countries around the world And so I think that you know, we it felt like a massive 180 shift from what I would call the Washington approach of control and preventing diffusion of American technologies to much more of a Silicon Valley approach to partnership and openness and that was the language that I heard.
You know, I was I was happy to be part of an AI delegation with a lot of CEOs who were over there Helping to craft these deals But you know and getting to ride shotgun on some meetings with with David sacks You know, who is obviously leading the AI initiatives for the administration and I have to say it It just was incredibly well received in re odd and doha and Abu Dhabi and there was a spirit of partnership in every one of those places And you saw the fruits of that major announcements of investments in the United States and major deals getting each struck about You know, AI data centers etc that are opening in that part of the world That's amazing.
Oh, of all those things which one surprised you the most It's a really big change. I mean you can't underscore Enough what it means, you know like the Trump administration just repealed the Biden diffusion rule and may have 25 Right, and so it it literally is fresh off of that and if you would have told me that in the first five months of this year We would have gotten a trillion dollar deal signed with Saudi in terms of their investment in the United States Another trillion dollars with Qatar another trillion dollars with the UAE Those are all investments into the United States and then let me give you a Sense of the scale of magnitude of the deal that was announced In in Abu Dhabi.
So in a in Abu Dhabi they announced a five gigawatt US AI, you know, it's a UAE US AI campus It's an incredible Campus it's in collaboration with Nvidia and open AI and and Oracle And think of it as almost like a global stargate so to put that perspective five gigs every gig is about 500,000 GPUs So that's about two and a half million GPUs worth of compute power to power the AI initiatives out of The UAE around the world.
And so if you would have told me that that would have come together in this short appeared at time I wouldn't have believed it how our Latinx played an incredibly important role Scott Bessett was there with the president of course David Sacks helping to put those deals together. You had CEOs, you know, you're asking how it looked and felt you know, you had pretty much every major CEO Elon's saying Correct jensen Huang was there etc And they were putting these deals together. So it there's just a feeling of the of the art of the deal what is possible Partnership in acceleration.
如果你告诉我这一切会在这么短的时间内完成,我真的不敢相信。然而,我们的拉丁裔社区发挥了非常重要的作用。Scott Bessett 和 David Sacks 帮助促成了这些协议。你想知道这看起来和感觉如何,在场的几乎所有重要CEO,比如Elon Musk和Jensen Huang等,都会告诉你他们在促成这些交易时的参与。所以,这种合作让人感受到了一种对交易艺术的可能性和加速发展的期望。
As opposed to the deceleration You know and the control that that I think you and I have felt over the last few years and frankly you and I have been worried about Right this idea that the US was going to somehow you know shut down Our AI and not allow the rest of the world to have access to our AI I think we not only thought that was bad policy from an economic perspective But also just dangerous for the world.
It was basically going to allow for this Huawei Belt and Road Where Chinese full stack technologies would would would move into the Middle East And I've read I've read that was basically underway prior to this big event Literally underway In Saudi alone Huawei's market share has gone up a lot over the last few years Right it's not as though the these countries don't have They don't have the ability to do nothing and they Felt a little frankly betrayed by the United States.
I think over the course of the last few years here. They are I mean takes out a Arabia as an example You know they've been our ally for 92 years these are not new relationships And all of a sudden we have this technology that we're telling everybody in the world is existential to your national development And yet at the same time we're saying but we're not going to give you our best technologies.
And so while I was in Saudi I had the opportunity to travel with His excellency the the the minister of technology Al-Sawaha And I got to go to you know incubation labs and see what was happening there See the data centers on the ground You know they have a huge AI project there called humane that they launched in partnership with folks like Nvidia and Grock.
And so there's just an incredible level of enthusiasm And investment that's going on because they know how important AI is and I think frankly the US was on the verge Right if if we had continued down the path that we were on one year from now This would have been largely they would have made commitments to build on Chinese AI stacks because they couldn't afford To do nothing and so I think the timing of this change was critical.
You could tell just the appreciation for the spirit of partnership I saw that in every every capital that you're asking your question. Yeah. What do you think the competitive? I mean, I have an answer, but I'm going to ask it naively first. What do you think the competitive advantages of These national data centers in the Middle East?
Yeah, I mean first, you know you and I talk about it all the time a primitive to To AI is power and they have cheap power And you know eventually the price of producing tokens We're effectively converting electrons right they're cheap energy and by the way It's both solar and nuclear and and and natural gas some of the largest natural gas fields in the world.
Those things are being converted into intelligence and to say more broadly You know for the last 50 years this part of the world has been powering the industrial age by exporting oil I think they're viewed to the future is they want to power the the age of AI Through the production of tokens and the export of tokens and You know and that's just converting you know this power into tokens.
And so that I believe is a critical element, but here's the other thing But wait, let me let me poke it down I want to poke it down a little bit because I've been Just out of curiosity thinking about maybe trying to break down in my mind the percentage of Cost you know if you're out buying a token on the open market.
It's tied to power And I'll tell you what I discovered, but but I was just really talking with AI and a few friends So if anyone in the audience has better numbers let me know But what I what what I've seen is cooling in power might be 20% of cogs Which depending on your gross margin on your hosting let's say maybe powers 15% of cogs or I don't know and then that would equate to maybe 10% of revenues so if you had Let's say a two to one power advantage you might pick up five percentage points of operating margin something like that or be able to price five percent lower I'm just trying to frame that advantage I throw a few other things in there number one, right? You just have the issue of latency, right? So This part of the world needs Local data centers so whether it's for Africa whether it's for Europe whether it's for The Middle East itself whether it's for India and so I think there's just proximity It's it's an important consideration here And then of course the cost of labor and they're building and investing in these robotic futures for their building Very futuristic data centers.
So I you know, I think for a long time the US has viewed for example This part of the world as perhaps a bit of an industrial powerhouse when it comes to oil But not very technologically advanced and I would I would tell you listening to shake tech noon You know in the UAE And their commitment it they are they are as technology forward as anything here in Silicon Valley Right paying at g 42 etc and all three of these countries Are going to invest aggressively at a level that really no other sovereign on a global basis is investing at To ensure that this set that this part of the world becomes a center for technology and AI and I think it's critical that the US was their partner in in that regard And so you know sacks I saw tweeted when we got back Something that I thought was important. He said you know this this AI Acceleration partnership is not just a single deal It's a new framework for advancing American AI both at home and abroad You know and pers positioning the US tech stack to be the partner of choice in this region for decades to come and And I think that's right.
You know, this wasn't just a one-off deal I think a lot of people who are hearing about these deals thought Oh, maybe Trump went over there worked as art of the deal and got a deal done with the Saudis or the Qataris But no, I think this is a framework that the world can depend upon That in fact they are going to have access to these technologies. Let me give you let me give you a comparison bill Can you imagine if in the year 2000 Washington DC had said oh my god google is so powerful That we're not going to allow any other country in the world to have access to this google machine Give them answers to questions unless google comes to Washington and gets federal approval Before it launches in any of these any of these countries I mean it would have it would have prevented google from ever becoming the global powerhouse that it has become which has been so Adventages to the United States hard power soft power economic power And so that's what we were doing in AI and I think we've ripped the Ripped the the chains off of that and I think now we're going to allow our companies to go compete and win.
Well and to frame that a little more um, I just Put on ex earlier today article in the Wall Street Journal that just came out that was talking about How far behind Europe is and broadly speaking in terms of of business culture and tech and The article goes into a lot of detail about how complex regulations have have limited or stifled innovation both on the labor side and on the technology side and The policies that were being considered let's say three months ago To me all were mere images of the ones that are listed out in this article So I think we were a hundred percent on a path towards Building a wall around America not building a wall around China and If we had continued on that path I think I would have predicted had we continue around that path That you know if you look at the internet error there really was The rest of the world using americans internet and then China built their own internet correct
I think we were headed towards a path where we were going to have a wall around america And there was going to be america AI and then China AI was going to have the rest of the world the opposite of the internet And it didn't go and I think had we continued on that path or if we go back towards that path because I don't think this is over I mean, I think some of the rhetoric coming out of the hill and valley conference was more consistent with the wall around america But but it's a great sign that we're not you know holistically committed to that strategy
Well, I think I think you said it incredibly well It would be a disaster for this country If we embarked on a path that was the opposite of what we did in the age of the internet The united states was the greatest beneficiary from the internet boom of the last 20 years The AI boom is going to be even bigger than the internet boom And we need to follow the pattern and the protocol and approach that is made The united states a global leader in technology We do not want to be copying europe We do not want to be in the situation that China was in the age of internet And so I think this was a major and important first step in that direction
But you're right bill. I saw a headline this morning that said Trump's rush for a ideas Deals in the gulf opened up a rift with china hawks in the administration And you know that there's still these you know effective altruist types Who are these decelerationists in silicon valley who don't want to see the diffusion of any of this AI So it's creating this weird coalition of folks who have resisted the diffusion of American technology
And I am I am firmly in the camp that we are not only safer We are more prosperous when the world runs on the American AI stack and I thought last week was I was Celebratory because it was planting a major flag in this incredibly important part of the world with with world class allies who have Who have major resources and desire and commitment and passion to invest with america in this
You know, I also think you know one of the side benefits bill This has been a part of the world that has been unstable for a long time Right we still have issues in Iran in fact. I think we're you know perhaps on the precipice Of a major fork in the road with Iran where they they're signed that the nuclear non-proliferation Deal on the table or you know, we could have a hot war situation with Iran But I would say I expect that the presidents lifting of the sanctions on Syria probably gives way To the Saudis signing the Abraham Accords and other positive developments in this part of the world
So I don't think it was just a business deal had we alienated this part of the world in terms of business I think it would have been a major setback for American diplomacy in this part of the world I think it was a good day for American businesses this is going to be an a ton of business for companies like Nvidia companies like AMD Folks who are suppliers to those companies. I think it's important for companies Like open AI that want to build out capability there you know a major development
You know two things I would mention on the end of this that relate to You know global AI the global AI race. Let's just call it that First this hill in Valley conference, which I watched a little bit online. I didn't go you weren't there where you I wasn't I wasn't but I one of my one of my partners was there and I went last year and you know There's a lot of good that comes out of that conference. All right. There may be but the tone on the AI tone I would say was the opposite of everything we just talked about
你知道,我想在结束之前提到两件事,都是关于全球AI竞赛的。我们就称它为全球AI竞赛吧。首先是Hill and Valley会议,我在网上观看了一些内容。我没去,你也没去,对吧?我确实没去,但是我的一个合作伙伴去了,我去年倒是去过。你知道,这个会议还是有很多好东西产生的。不过,会议上关于AI的调子,我觉得和我们刚才讨论的一切完全相反。
In fact There's a there's an interesting right up on it where This one blogger titled welcome to the China hawk industrial complex So so I'm not I'm not trying to pour cold water on everything we just talked about I'm just saying there's still there is there's a large group of people in our community who have invested in Either software that they sell to the military or now products and services they sell to the military that I think Need to be China hawks in order to justify the Business they're in and in order to root for their companies
And I will tell you after spending 25 years Invent your capital. There's just this instinctive thing. It's like defending your children once you invest in something You just start to adopt the the mouthpiece for it and make a lot of arguments that are central to that company success And I think that's happening now that we have a large number of VCs in the military space
Well, I don't know. I wear a big investors in andrall You know, we're big investors and bite-dance. I have an intellectual capacity To you know to understand these investments for what they are and these partnerships for what they are But most importantly, I think Everybody has to figure out what's best for team America right? We need to put America first when it comes to thinking about our global diplomacy Rather than what's best for my investment maybe in a bite dance or what's best for my investment in andrall. But I do I do think there is a valid Disagreement here, right? And I've had this debate with Josh Wolf You know, who's a good friend and Josh is much more skeptical when it comes to China And and open and free trade on on issues of American AI I would say than I am. I think he has some thoughtful arguments on the issue But you know on some things we can just agree to disagree as it pertains to the Middle East.
And I'd welcome Josh's Josh's view on this. I'm not sure what they are But I think it's unquestionable the US is better off Having American AI in partnership with all of our allies in the Middle East if we can't be in partnership with our allies Like India like the Middle East, etc. Then what are we doing? Yeah, right? I totally agree with that. I will agree to disagree on the other thing I do think that once people start back in this stuff in a big way that it's going to be naturally would take on that point of view We talk a little bit about the Middle East maybe you know the other big news is that But I did want to finish with one thing.
Sure It appears the markets reacted positively Specifically to the Middle East talks and and events correct Is that correct? I mean, you know the the Sunday That you know before the Middle East so like the day before the Middle East visit began You had Scott Bessett who had concluded the Chinese negotiations in Switzerland and I think that was the bigger catalyst, right? So we had this huge bounce back in the markets these two converging events You know, you had the walking back of tariffs on China and Bessett said you know our goal is not to decouple from China Especially in non-strategic goods, right? And remember with China almost everything is non-strategic goods But to open markets and restore balance we will he said in his tweet We will continue trading with China especially in non-strategic goods and at lower tariff levels.
At the same time we're focused on reshoring critical industries like medicine chips and steel to protect National security interests So remember when we talked bill three weeks ago I was very vocal in saying there was there were two paths being presented to this administration There's what I described as the nuclear Navarro path which was High structural tariffs on everybody in the world generate two trillion of tariff revenue and get rid of the internal revenue service Right that was door one which the markets abhorred right? That's what sent the markets down 20% Because we knew two trillion dollars in tariffs is probably a 600 to 700 basis point headwind to GDP And door two was what I described as the Bessent or the Hassett approach Which was more consistent with the fair trade argument the president had previous outlined Which was to reshore critical industries to have some tariffs on the rest of the world But to be modest in the scope of the overall economy and so it looks like and I think what the market was reacting to Was that the president has has has leaned in the direction of the fair trade the Bessent approach To China and to rest of world on tariffs and away from the Navarro approach.
In fact, we haven't seen much in Navarro in the last three weeks and who's been in the lead lead chair on everything Who was on the talk shows again this weekend? It was Scott Bessent and so I think the when the tariff started you and I talked about the fact that that chaos is very difficult both for investors But also for executives like committing to hiring programs committing to catbacks all these things and there's no doubt that that Bessent brings a Notion of calmness, you know to the table almost every time he talks. He just talks in a calm way Uh But he's in the president the president said every time you go on television the market goes up I think the president agrees with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so so that's that's all good and just To Because this I think I think the markets appropriately recognize that the China tariff agreement is the biggest one in the most Infortia you know more than any others so as I understand it We're in a 90-day suspension on drastic tariffs.
We have a 30% import on Chinese still though so if you're if you're importing 80% of your you know cogs from China that's still a big deal It's split. I've been told 10% tariff and 20% this odd fentanyl tariff and I guess the second part leaves open the door that if China agrees To something on fentanyl precursors that immediately drops to 10 that's my interpretation Do you I don't know if you know more than I do well?
So what I would say is going into this year Our tariffs on China were 15% okay Okay, and so my you know, but look at the tweet that the bestent sent He said especially in non-strategic goods and at lower tariff levels So there is the possibility that on certain non-strategic goods you could actually have be back to 15% or maybe even lower bill as you suggested But I think on the strategic believe textiles Home home goods correct toys would off it in that right backyard umbrellas
Yes, all the stuff that people want to buy on Amazon You know that is non-strategic but when it comes to steel and aluminum and chips and items that we consider Very strategic certain medicines Solar panels might be a borderline issue right. They've said on those They're going to be higher tariffs. So maybe those stay at 30% bill when you blended all out I had my team rerun the math
So remember I came on here on Liberation Day and I held up the list of tariffs that That we're on the poster board that Trump showed and I said if you just had all those up It comes up to 800 billion dollars in tariffs Right we have 3.3 trillion dollars of goods that are imported every year into the country from abroad And so 8.8 trillion dollars or 8.8 800 billion dollars of tariffs is pretty substantial
It now I had them rerun the math today and if you put China at 30% on strategic at 15% on non-strategic And though in the rest of the world roughly at 10% you come up with about 300 billion in tariffs Okay, I just told you that last year tariffs were 77 billion So that's still a 4x increase in tariff revenue Right to the United States But it's 300 billion on a 28 trillion dollar economy
So I think what the market was saying is okay 300 billion half of that will show up as increased prices and taxes on consumers and on businesses Half of it will get eaten by the the producer of the product in China in India wherever You know, that's not that big a headwind to the US economy And that's why I think you've seen the markets bounce now remember we're just back to where we started the year
The markets were down 20% now they're up 20% And so I think this is about Giving a a path and giving some Definition around the path forward the flight path forward and if you take these two things together Okay We went to the Middle East and we landed the plane did a bunch of deals got trillions of dollars of investment into the United States
We unlocked hundreds of billions of exports to the Middle East Then then you landed the plane on tariffs those two things together bill Are a very positive orientation Toward the world right again, so you know you were saying this is still not a settled in issue within the administration on on the diffusion of technology But these two things together are not an isolationist approach to the world
Right these two things together are still Somebody asked me on CNBC. I think in March. I was saying there are these two doors that we could two paths we could follow And they said well, what do you think Trump is and I said at the end of the day he wrote a book called the art of the deal Right this guy is he wants fair trade, but he's a deal maker on tariffs and on AI diffusion
He's been a deal maker and I think both of those things are positives for the economy And that's why you've seen the market bounce back the way it has Certainly has Oh, by the way one one other thing I wanted to mention Discus we didn't mention it, but I know there was a lot of concern Among some of the companies that use strategic inputs the rare earth issues
Yes. Yes. Those were The those restrictions were removed as part of this first 90 day pause Yeah, I think that's going to be a critical question. You know remember we still have We're not it's a 90 day pause so it could come back if things you know where to Go off the rails and remember we still have a ban on
The export of h20 so there are no chips Currently being sold by Nvidia into China. Yeah, right. We have a complete ban on AI chips into China I think I think jensen was on the social media again in the past two days Expressing dismay about that and even he came up with some math that he would have sold 15 billion next year
And he said it would have created three billion in US tax revenue that the US won't man I mean, I think I think if you forecast out two or three years They were on track to be a 50 billion dollar business I think in China and if you just apply a normal margin and tax rate to that You know that's billions and billions of dollars lost to the US Treasury The Chinese consumers Would have would have effectively been paying. It's probably another 10 billion dollars of profits to Nvidia that were lost That they are they would have otherwise plowed into research and development to keep America at the forefront of chip technology.
So I think that we could we could still see as part of the negotiation over the next 90 days I would not be terribly surprised to see Nvidia allowed to sell some form of deprecated chip into China And I know again different people have different opinions on that My opinion and I think you share this is China already has frontier AI Huawei is already there. We have demonstrable evidence of that and their models are already there Arguably their open source models might even be in front of the United States at this point in time And so there's no keeping China from frontier AI.
So the better question is are we better off competing against them? Right are we better off selling to those countries Those companies keeping companies like bite dance and tenson et cetera in the kuda ecosystem Rather than allowing all of that data all of those profits to flow right into the Huawei ecosystem and benefit the Chinese AI stack I think listen I think that's a closer call than selling chips to the Middle East. But if you when push comes to shove I would sell chips into China Because I think it's a net benefit to the United States And we've talked about that in the past yes and and and and there are many many many people who now believes that You know restricting our technology into China just gives them more and more incentive to implement their own technology faster And to invest behind it which has been happening.
Well, I mean if you look at you look at auto's autos robotics, et cetera I mean, there's plenty there's plenty of evidence about that No, another I would say the third big thing that that's happened since you and I were last on I can't believe by the way You step away for like 15 days It you know and all of this stuff happens. It's really crazy. Yeah, I like time has has new data every day.
But the other big one here is underway is the reconciliation bill and as a reminder to folks We have to pass a budget for the United States the reconciliation bill It's a special type of legislation in the Congress designed to expedite right budget related laws And the way it does this bill is it basically suspends the filibuster. So so long as you're complying with these budget rules in the Senate Known as the bird rules which is the only things that can go in to this package have to be related to the budget But if that is the case then you only have to get to 50 votes in the Senate Rather than the 60 votes otherwise required to be filibuster proof.
So you basically take all of these smaller pieces of legislation that might have otherwise touched the tax code or the budget And you roll them up into this huge package called a reconciliation bill. Now the reconciliation bill it started in with a draft in the House The Senate will then review that draft and the White House is weighing in on it. So it's you know the expected timeline I think the president was at the At you know spoke to the House caucus today. But it's expected to be passed out of the House this week Then the Senate will weigh in on it for two to three weeks It will amend some of the language in it it will add things it will subtract things etc It'll send it back to the House at the end of June.
And then the president is expected to sign it into law somewhere at the end of the month or around the first or second of July. So maybe we can break down a little bit what's in the in the package bill I think the biggest thing is it's the extension of the Trump tax cuts right And so remember when those tax cuts were passed in 2017 They they only had a 10 year life So they're set to expire in about a year unless they're extended And so that would be a major like a three trillion four trillion dollar increase to taxes At the end of this year unless they're extended so the first thing they do is just extend those tax cuts For another five to ten years whatever they agree on in the reconciliation package.
But then you have all these additional tax cuts that he talked about on the campaign trail No tax on tips No tax on overtime No taxes on so security The immediate expensive of capital investment. This is huge for business So if you're buying capital equipment if you're buying plants or equipment or software even You will be able to immediately expense those items from a tax perspective not a tiny one It's incorrect That those are two separate things but yes. a tax perspective and so all of these things get pulled together in this bill And there are a lot of there's a lot of debate and questions out there as to what does this mean You know like you add those things up that's probably a four or five hundred billion dollar annual stimulus To the economy
But wait, I know I know a lot of people talked about this But they got to put a cap on this tax on tips thing because it's going to leave a loophole that Everybody and their brother will walk through so it needs to just be some cap that won't hit I think it's diminimous tips. I think it's diminimous tips Because I think you just read redefine your consulting company as all tips correct correct So yes, I think they already have that in there. They've done a lot of work on this
So remember the two people in the house that are relevant here you have the speaker Mike Johnson you have Jason Smith the chairman of the ways and means committee obviously everybody's relevant But those are the two leaders in the Senate its Senate its leader Thune and it's It's Mike Crapos the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and then in the House or in the White House You have Kevin Hassett and Scott Besson so the six of them think of them as the big six They're putting together this package.
They each have a list of their priorities And then they get together and negotiate those priorities We don't even know exactly what's going to be in the House bill yet let alone what's going to survive in the Senate But we certainly have the contours of what's going to be in it And you know, I saw this morning that the council of economic advisors, which of course is in the White House Is saying yes, although this will increase our spending our cbos scoring because the taxes cost money the tax cuts cost money It also will lead to much higher economic growth than we would have otherwise had and so that's a normal argument That you see out of of those who support tax cuts and we're used to
Well, of course, we're you know higher taxes lower economic growth lower taxes higher economic growth I think I'm firmly in that camp, but I do worry That you know, we had just had a 2.2 trillion dollar deficit You know, we have a 38 trillion dollar debt We all got excited about Elon and Doge being able to cut a lot of costs out of government But I suspect when you look at this package right and again, I'm just saying Based upon how the congressional budget office will score it and this is kind of arcane scoring But it will probably increase the deficit and at best it would reduce it by 100 or 200 billion dollars Depending upon what where our economic growth comes in
bill right? Obviously if you have higher economic growth You have higher tax revenues and so there's a huge benefit to drive higher economic growth for the country But there are no big areas where we're taking out 500 billion or 700 billion or a trillion dollars And I think that when you look at the tariff revenue a couple things a couple nuances here We talked about the tariff revenue being 300 billion dollars. They don't count that in the budget Okay, so think of that as as part of your cash flow But it's not really in your in your P&L for the year And so that's just one of these esoteric Washington things You know, it is money to the federal government to the US Treasury
But it's not included as part of our budget scoring. I think another thing is the Doge cuts Those are real there are bunch of real cuts coming you know coming to fruition I don't know what those will total maybe a hundred billion dollars But they're not going to be counted in the budget bill unless there's an article of recision So the White House basically has to get Congress to agree to rescind the monies And so that hasn't happened yet. So those cuts are not also not added into the budget the budget math that we're seeing
But people should not get their hopes up that they're going to wake up next year and that our budget deficit is going to magically be You know cut by 50%. I don't see that in the cards. You know one thing I would reiterate just because it would be such an amazing scenario There was a moment in time in the past six months where Trump mentioned potentially Discussing with China and Russia cutting all of our military budgets in half. If that were to happen I think it's the biggest thing you possibly deliver as president if things calm down in the middle least. If Ukraine Russia can be taking care of maybe that gets on the table and that could be a big cut. That would meet this agenda.
Our neo-China hawk friends wouldn't like it, but I would like it quite a bit. I think the defense department budget goes up by about a hundred and fifty billion dollars as part of this package and it's about a trillion dollars for the year. And so you know, I don't again Part of the reason we have this challenge is that you know you have You have a lot of members of the house and a lot of members of the Senate and you know, it's just very difficult to Cut our way You know out of this problem and so I do think that and you know freedberg had a good rant on this on the all-in pod I give him a lot of credit for continuing to beat this drum.
I've long supported a balanced budget amendment. I think we have to come up with some structural changes Right that will allow us to get this under control. I would love to believe that we're going to grow our economy at four or five percent per year instead of two percent per year because that would grow our way out of the problem. So but I think that that would be aggressive to forecast that kind of growth. We haven't seen that kind of growth in in a while.
One day to point. It's kind of interesting I listened to that same episode and and the team at all-in was talking about potentially monetizing the balance sheet right. The question is are there assets That exist on the United States balance sheet that could be turned into offsets for the For the deficit and One of the things that obviously comes up is land, you know living here in Texas, you know many people probably don't know this. The university system here was don't was granted as a gift years ago 2.1 million acres in the uh in the Permian Basin and wow and that spits off. I believe I could I could have this number wrong But like $894 million a year.
Now the US has way more than 2.1 million acres, but That is an example I guess of an endowment-like situation where land is monetized and creates cash flow. So yeah, so maybe there is something to that well I would say I would say one thing I was I was happy to hear the president say over the course of last couple weeks. He said if we do do anything like that that rather than putting that money in a in a sovereign wealth fund.
We're just going to use it to pay down the debt and you know So now it sounds like the sovereign wealth fund is on the back burner, which I think is a good idea to put it on the back burner. And I do think that we ought to have a task force in this country Specifically coming up with ideas for how we achieve deficit reduction and debt reduction and monetizing the balance sheet should be one of the things on The list to be discussed Along with other mechanisms to allow us to have permanent you know cuts things like the defense stuff that you're talking about bill.
I think everything has to be on the table. We have to come up with a plan that over a reasonable period of time. Let's go at 10 years Even like a family, you know, you put them on a path you start small and you work your way over a longer period of time Toward deficit reduction, but I think it is morally unacceptable to saddle our kids With what will be over 50 trillion dollars in debt that we you know We effectively increased our quality of living during our lifetimes And it will only hurt theirs because we're saddling them with that big pile of debt.
We got to get about to Wittling away at that debt and hopefully we can get it done in the next couple years. Hot topic always on on in Silicon Valley is carried interest on the table here I think I mean the president has come out in support of of eliminating in support is a port of eliminating carried interest as well as you heard him come out in support of Raising taxes on the highest earners. I don't know the last I heard neither of those provisions Um are in the house version of the reconciliation bill they may get at it in the Senate.
But I think those are are fairly controversial remember Republicans generally in the house in Senate they're against tariffs and they're against higher taxes and they're against all taxes You know all forms of higher taxes whether on all these different brackets And you know, I heard somebody come out and say you know, maybe it was Philippe on the all-impot He was saying in New York all in he pays 57% in taxes, which is I think what I pay in the state of California There is a tipping point right people are familiar with the laugh or curve at some point taxes go up to a point Where your tax revenues actually go down Right and so I would argue that at 57% all in for the highest earners You're getting to that point where you disincentivize additional work Right and and you know, we may not be there yet and you know You may be able to increase that tax bracket even more
But I would love to think that our country could come up with more creative solutions to solving our debt and and fiscal crisis than just raising taxes it seems like the easy way out And I think there's a better way in fact I I'm happy to report That you know, one of the things that got included in the house version of reconciliation bill Was invest America and you know one of the purposes of taxes on high earners is is redistribution And I think there's a much better way to achieve redistribution and that's by getting everybody in the game From birth. So there was a it was a huge breakthrough bill that we got invest America included in the house version of the bill
Well, congratulations, Brett. I I will tell you you know, I've talked to people that have you know pivoted later in life and dedicate themselves to philanthropy and the the number one Thing I hear from all of them is how heart things are and how slow things move and so for you to To tilt at this and get it included So quickly and and DC time this is ultra quick is a huge accomplishment. So Thanks for that. We're not we're not done yet I would say I would say this maybe just a little behind the scenes on it bill because listen This is all new to me and I learned a lot as most people know I started invest America The not for profit about two and a half years ago. The idea was very simple That we needed to attack the wealth gap we needed everybody to feel like they were part of the system And the way to do that was through the magic of compounding.
So it's a thousand dollars Every child born in America there are three point seven million kids born a year would get a thousand dollars in a seed investment account in the S&P 500 It would act like a 401k from birth and then companies and parents and you know in others Church groups whatever could add to those accounts such that by the age of 18 you could have about $50,000 in that account at age 30 you could have about $150,000 in the account you couldn't take the money out you couldn't trade it It would really just be that 401k from birth And I will tell you and you've heard me talk about this on the show It had such high product market fit bipartisan From the left to the right I thought to myself maybe this could actually happen
So I was in Washington two weeks ago. I was at the White House I was on the on Capitol Hill meeting with the speaker meeting with Jason Smith They had a ways of means and my friends Ted Cruz and and and Mike Crapo and and others over in the over in the Senate I have to say I was actually surprised That by the time I landed in the Middle East I heard it had been included now of course They they tinker with it, right? One of the one of the things I learned is you lose ball control So the the name of this was invest America in the house version of the bill They renamed it the maga account which stood for money account for growth and advancement
But as you and I both know Maga account the minds of many is is deeply polarizing So we'll see what happens. I think when it goes to the Senate it may very well get amended and renamed back to invest America accounts I imagine some changes will occur there they'll agree on Ultimately what the rules are around distribution of this but the great news is this whatever you call it Whatever you call this at the end of the day If we do this and we launch us in 2026 a thousand bucks for every kid born in America We get every kid from rural Texas to rural Indiana to inner city Trenton to the east side of LA You get them into the game They can open up their phone and see that they own a little bit of Berkshire Hathaway They own a little bit of Microsoft a little bit of Apple They feel like they have a shot at the American dream.
I think it's a game changer for the country And so the president weighed in here with uh with the speaker of the house said he would like to see it in the bill That's what eventually broke the log jamming and got it in there and so we're working really closely and and I hope by the end of the day I really deeply deeply would love to see this be something that unites the country Right this disproportionately benefits the 60 to 70% of people who are left out and left behind Right and and those are folks it doesn't matter the color of their skin It doesn't matter where they live there are poor folks everywhere people who will never have a shot at an account that compounds This is an absolute game changer for those people and it unlocks their human potential I think you know, I know why I have a ton of democratic friends in the senate and the house who support this.
I think if we If everybody reaches across the aisle in the spill spirit a bipartisanship You know, we we can get it done in even a bigger Unified fashion, but either way We're thrilled it's in the house version. We hope the senate We'll take it up which we expect that they will and and we hope it's in the final version of the reconciliation bill Be game changer for the country Awesome congratulations Thanks brother.
Well, you know a couple speed round topics then One is our good friend Kathleen McCormick, you know that chancellor in in the state of Delaware Bill who overturned the the Elon pay package. Yes, right she she caused this Firestorm in Delaware that literally is going to potentially bankrupt the state with every company in the state of Delaware Now heading for the exits because they don't want to be a part of You know this capricious decision making by the Delaware court of chance or he and I know that you have some updated thoughts based on some stuff you've been reading.
Yeah, well, I I was made aware of something that I want to share with all the readers and I would think we're gonna put a A pointer in the in the show notes and I'd encourage him to go read it So there's a professor at Stanford named Joe grunt fest who I've known for many decades now and Joe is a former Commissioner at the SEC. He was appointed by Reagan He is the Creator of the Stanford directors college, which I think most people consider to be the number one directors college in the world.
This is where if you're an independent director you go and you learn how to be a better director He's considered to be one of the most knowledgeable People on the planet when it comes to corporate governance and air anytime I've ever had an issue And and there've been been some that I've really needed help on I've always called Joe And he's had me speak at some of his classes. He's just a wonderful individual He recently and I mean may 14th recently Published a piece of research that I think is just super interesting and that everyone needs to understand and what he highlights is That the award multiples and and apparently there's a thing when in business litigation where the judge can decide what multiple of the standard hourly rate a Lawyer should or is able to get and which is initially in concept I don't know that anyone else gets awards as a multiple, but I'm sure a lawyer wrote it and the base rates pretty high right.
So anyway What he found was he compared a bunch of Delaware judgments with a bunch of judgments in the felt and the federal courts And he looked at he looked at a bunch of different breaking but but one of the breaks was you know, what's the frequency of awards Seven times or higher and what are the frequency of awards ten times or higher And what he found is in Delaware Seven times or higher is 23 times more likely than in a federal court and ten times or higher is 57 times or higher than in a federal court.
You know, basically if you would you'd say there might be a tale of scenarios where a judgment deserves some kind of outlandish You know result some level of fraud or whatever but but what he's showing is there's an activist mentality in the Delaware courts That they're that they're giving out these super high payouts at a much more frequent and you know 23 times and 57 times more than at the federal level and so I The the big eye opener to me is first of all I would tell everyone to go read this But if you're sitting on a board of a Delaware court and you're not aware that this and this is new This is these are all cases between 2009 and 2024.
If you're not aware that this is going on that the rewards they're being paid out to lawyers You know for cases in Delaware are increasing at this level and are being paid out much more frequently at very high payouts You need to be aware of this to me. This is you know more damning than just the one Tesla thing It says that Delaware Delaware was known as a place where you had you know We talked earlier about terraced in chaos and calmness Delaware was a place that was supposed to be business calm where you didn't expect. chaos, right? This shows that chaos is being built into the system and it's a recent It's a recent development one more thing that I want to highlight it turns out that in the 20 cases where you have this This super high multiplier 55% of the cases are just two of the judges and There's something else that that I learned in reading this which I didn't know But the chancellor Who is one of the two gets to pick who the cases are assigned to and so The chancellor's creating these super high multiples and then the chancellor's in charge of handing cases.
And and she could hand them to herself or to this other judge Who's also doing the same thing and so I I just I think eyes wide open. I mean I read this and I think you know any company that I'm involved with I'm going to encourage to leave Because this is radically different than why I was told we were supposed to go to Delaware and Built these awards go to who they go to the lawyers and they go to whoever the plaintiffs are well get this I mean you know we've talked about this So I don't need to like pound the table on it But in the Tesla case the plaintiff had nine shares Like the plaintiff made zero money on a relative basis right right and the lawyers made 380 million or 345 or something like that and yeah, you had you had a plaintiff that Didn't get any recovery like like why should we have Laws any any law in this country because Pagga works this way in California Where a lawyer gets to come in and make a huge like shouldn't a shouldn't a lawyer fee be a Small percentage of the plaintiff fee Why why should it be 99% of of the fee makes no sense.
I mean, I think the significance here is that what you're arguing is What tends to happen is people heard about the Elon case they treated as a one-off They may not have made any changes and what you're saying is that this was not a one-off in the state of Delaware This is a structural problem that is emerged in the state of Delaware Which was the state that everybody went to incorporated in because they thought it had the most predictability And now you have a study that shows not only does it not have the most predictability It actually has the greatest risk of long tail Adverse outcomes to you know to the company that are highly unpredictable Correct, and I would encourage it will put the link in there not all tweeted out after we post the podcast.
But I would encourage everyone to go read that and following on that and trying to keep with what you just said about speed round last week, you know the two states people say you should consider other than Delaware or Texas and Nevada well last week Texas state legislature passed a bill senate bill 29 trying to improve Texas's position if you will in this competition with Nevada on where you should go to and I just wanted to mention a couple things that they put in there to To hopefully you know make Texas better which would make everyone better if they choose to incorporate there The the first thing was they codified the business judgment rule there in some of these states You can hop around the business judgment rule this put a hard line and said no you're not supposed to you can't hop around The business judgment rule and people that know what that means that's a that's a positive for businesses.
The second thing they did was the lint they put a limit on opportunistic legal claims Some of that has to do with with the multiple point that we talked about but the big thing they did was in You can in your corporate docs put up put a minimum threshold of up to 3% on what's needed to bring a derivative action So you can basically say In order to bring a derivative action you need 3% of the shareholders outstanding So this Tesla situation where you basically You know just called around and found someone that held nine shares which is just Like ridiculous at face value right did someone brought a whole case on a plane if with nine shares makes No effincense whatsoever and this gets rid of that and so I think that's huge.
So so so so basically you're flying the Texas flag and saying not only is is Delaware more capricious than we otherwise thought more Activist than we otherwise thought but that in fact it's leading to new laws in states like Texas and Nevada that are going the further distance to try to encourage Companies to come there and they're giving them predictability not in the courtroom But they're giving them predictability in the code Yes, and and there's a few more quick things you can in in your documents You can make it very clear that the new Texas business courts are the only place that you'll have to appear You can wave jury trials. There's some limitations on on book and record request if you've ever been Deposed sometimes they grab everything and this will limit that too So there's other little things but those first two things are the big things and and you know I'm I'm really trying to look after everybody and and all the starter up south they're all the venture-back companies.
You know if if if Nevada wants to raise the bar and and wants to send us some information I'd be glad to share that as well I think the important thing is to get out of Delaware Well, the truth is Bill after this case I will bet you That inertia kicked in and 90 plus percent of companies and lawyers and you know Went back to incorporating the state of Delaware because that's just a way that momentum and inertia world And I think that it's important that you continue to beat the drum that people understand and you know We're gonna we're gonna put a link to this study that people understand that this was not And I think the onus the burden is on the state of Delaware like we're not trying to unfairly attack the state of Delaware But the onus and burden is on the state of Delaware to explain and make the case as to how they're going to change their system To provide the predictability and the protection that people thought they were getting that clearly they're not getting there.
Maybe to continue on bill in in the speed round here There's been a ton of momentum Recently in in crypto and you you set me a paper that was recently written Yes You know in this regard Why don't you tell us about it and then I want to talk for a second about the genius act and the stablecoin legislation That took a major step forward last night. I was told to read something and I'm holding it right here There's a there's a member of the SEC Hescker Pierce who all the the crypto people love dearly because she's been very outspoken in her support of crypto She's actually the longest serving member of the SEC at this point time But but she put out a paper on May 8th called a creative and cooperative balancing act and I was surprised You know, and it's not that long. It won't you go read it's five pages But she makes a very strong argument that there's a that the crypto and blockchain specifically Maybe a better mechanism for tracking securities including the securization of companies.
She goes on to to say that you know, you can have regulatory capture that can unfairly protect people Those that regulatory capture may lead to market fragility because you end up with a single player or just two players And she even suggests maybe there should be a regulatory sandbox which would mean Let some people play around with this before you jump on top of them and kill them I've been this huge dl proponent and I and I do believe That you know the number of public companies she also brings that up the number of public companies is way down from its peak That could relate to regulation But I also think it relates to inefficiency in our markets and our IPO process So I haven't I haven't been a big crypto bull, but I'm gonna pay attention to this. This is interesting to me.
Well, I mean in that regard I think it may be time for you to revisit your crypto bullishness barisness thesis. Yes, because the genius bill The genius act as it's called which is pretty historic legislation which effectively Crossed a hurdle in the Senate last night that I think now puts it on a fast track To being signed into law. It was led by my friend senator bill haggardy in the Senate He's just done an unbelievable job You know waging this battle to basically say you know we've been persecuting Now for the last four years everybody involved in crypto and rather than doing that Why don't we just bring it under the federal regulatory auspices and whatever we need in terms of protections Put the protections in the place and then allow this innovation to occur in the United States.
So in the case of stable coins We know that this could be the next generation of Of of of of money management right of of of financial transfers of updating the rails on which our financial system Has been billed over the course of last 40 years and it was beginning to develop in other parts of the country or other parts of the world Because we had not developed a system That people felt comfortable innovating in so what is it. what is the legislation requires number one It requires specific reserve backing so it requires stable coin issues to maintain Reserves equal to the value of their issued tokens Number two it provides regulatory oversight.
So now you can't have this patchwork of people You know attacking folks who are trying to innovate in this area. It gives them real certainty as As it regards there puts in place a bunch of consumer protections But fundamentally it allows This innovation to occur because it provides certainty and predictability as to the form of regulation I give a lot of credit to mark and Ben and Chris Dixon And in Dreson, you know, I've spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill working on invest American other things and every time I'm there. I see those guys on Capitol Hill working hard On this on the genius act.
I think this is a significant step forward for a financial system It's a significant step forward for crypto But really we ought not think about this as right as crypto in the form of speculation This is really about something that's fundamental To innovating in how money transfers in the world in fact I heard somebody say That in five to ten years Stable-coring issuers will become the biggest holders of US debt on the planet because they have to own that debt to back Right the stable coins the tokens that they're issuing and so think about this bill People today pay ridiculous fees to move money around yes, right between businesses.
I was having this conversation Over dinner the other night with John Collison He's super bullish on this they're getting Into this fast growing part of their business at strike because the reality is if you have two businesses Maybe one in Mexico right small business that's it a scuba business Providing some tourism attraction and you have somebody in the United States who wants to purchase that Rather than having to do you know jump through a bunch of hoops and pay a bunch of fees to a bunch of intermediaries You can just issue stable coins back and forth You can provide seamless providers in the middle of that so it reduces the overall tax burden on the economy Probably leads to higher growth because we're reducing that friction and moves us into the 21st century.
I think that this is just the start you know You mentioned something else the tokenization of IPOs. I think you're going to see the tokenization of of stocks maybe of real assets So a lot of the promises honestly that we heard about bill in 2019 and 2020 in crypto They got me so excited But then they all stalled out and frankly they stalled out because again the Compre-ciousness of regulators They just wanted to attack and shut this down rather than coming up with a regulatory framework That was safe for innovation to occur in we're all in the middle of this AI super cycle But if we look at the way that money is transferred on the internet not much has changed in 25 30 years I think this is a massive breakthrough That is super important and I think it's going to lead to a lot of unlocks a lot of business opportunities And I it's going to be good for consumers.
So credit goes to all the people who have been working on this for for so long Okay, we have a couple more on the list But one I want to ask you about was all this open source development in China Tell me a little bit about what you see in terms of open source there versus some of the activities you see going on here. Yeah I'll put an article in the show notes the one that really caught my eye was there's an article That was about by do and so by do is scheduled to release the latest version of their model in June 30th They pre-announced it for one reason or another and they've switched to open source and When they talked to Robin Lee who who's been the long time Bytey founder met him back in 2005 21 years ago He had originally been a proponent of closed models.
He had spoken out publicly against that and people like well, why are you going open now? And it turns out you know deep seek led to Quinn led to jami has a as their own model as well They've all gone open source. And so this will be the fourth Deep pocket funded Model in China that are all open source and when you consider I mean, this is a competitive dynamic right that leads to that and when you consider that We it's already been proven here in the US that different models can help improve other models having four simultaneous models out there all open source I think is pretty damn interesting and Will be tough to keep up with and I don't know what america should do about it. I mean, I guess I would love it if everyone open AI and anthropic and Google Followed suit and chase meta But I don't see that happening yet and so just from a country versus country standpoint Boy, I think that's powerful for innovation for speed for speed of innovation.
他曾公开反对过这类事情,很多人不理解为什么他现在要改变立场。而事实证明,Deep Seek、Quinn 和 Jami 都推出了自己的开源模型。因此,这将是中国推出的第四个由资本支持的开源模型。要知道,这是一个竞争激烈的动态,因为在美国已经证明,多个模型可以相互促进提升。四个同时存在的开源模型确实非常有趣,让人难以跟上。我不知道美国应该如何应对这一现象。我当然希望 OpenAI、Anthropic 和 Google 能跟随 Meta 的脚步,但目前还没有看到这种迹象。从国家间的竞争来看,我认为这对创新速度有很强的推动作用。
Yeah, I think it's super interesting I mean, you know, I do think you're going to see the open AI open source model. I mean sam's talked about it Many times. I think you're going to see that in the next 30 days or so certainly by the end of summer But I would guess sooner rather than later He's indicated he wants it to be even more open that he wants to be the leading open source model in the US. You and I both read about some of the Challenges may be going on at At met I have no idea if any of those things are true But there's but there's definitely been some blowback about llama four In terms of you know, it's capability So it does it it appears that everybody in China is dedicated to open source and in the US I certainly hope that we have a open source model that leads the world I suspect that we're going to see more of these out of our leading labs.
Elon has also said that they're going to open source a model So I think this is one where we have to stay tuned But the early leadership here probably does go to China Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if the people with proprietary models will use these to train them because they're available And and for everyone that that wants to outlaw deep seek Guess what you're playing whack-a-mall because there's four not one Bill one thing I wanted to ask you about you know, feel free to comment on it or not I saw some attacks that I thought were someone unfair on on you around manus You know because I you know, I know I've talked with you about a bit about manus in the background associated with that So would you share with us a little bit you know your perspectives on on manus and maybe benchmarks decisions too?
Yes, yeah, so yeah, I was surprised a bunch of people came after me on on the socials as they say And um and they implied a bunch of deep Seated planning and and whatnot and and I think Part of it just comes from I think in not being a China hawk people accuse you of being a scene afile And and there's a lot of room in between those things But one thing I think these people don't know is that I'm no longer a GP on the new funds at benchmark, which means I'm not involved in new investment decisions So I didn't I wasn't part of the decision to invest in manus and I you know found out about it after the fact I'm obviously a big LP at benchmarking I'm a GP and the older funds and and I believe benchmarks So I do support the firm but but but some of the theories involved scenarios that just didn't happen.
But but after the fact I went deep on it and I think there are a few things that it would just be good for people to understand About manus. So first of all they've only operated on us models. They're a wrapper company. They don't have a Foundational model and and they've only operated on top of us models So they've actually never operated on top of deep seek or any of the other models We were just talking about The second thing is they have offices around the world. They're in Singapore. They're in Japan. They're in the US. Third, they host all of these on us hosting services And so they're not they're not actually operating any of their customers workloads in China at all at all and the data is all Resident on those US hosting companies servers and so there's no customer data in China either.
And so I think people rush to judgment. I've already spoken about why I think they rush to judgment I think I think I think there's a China hawk tilt among a lot of these people But but things aren't always as they seem and so you know the company has some leading agentech technology I think they have some leading browserless, you know, headless browser technology And they've got a long list of customers that are excited about what they're doing But I just think it's important for people to understand the facts.
Well, I think another thing is you know, I saw stat the other day I think 50% of researchers AI researchers in the United States of America are Chinese Right like we there is a danger here like what what bothered bothers me about this is I think there's a real danger here in a drift Right that is very xenophobic Right very anti-China that is not Healthy for our own relationship in terms of desirability to work in America if you are if you have a Chinese background.
I think American investors should be free to invest You know in companies Like Manus it can weigh into their decision making everybody's free to choose not to invest in a company like Manus But I think attacking firms Simply because they're investing in this without full information about what it's about I don't know it struck me is as You know jumping the gun a bit and I just think like you said there's a lot of daylight Between being a xenophile and You know being a China hawk and I think that People are entitled to having differences of opinion about the best way forward for team America.
You know jensen Wang thinks the United States should be engaged in competing in China And I've said you know for a long time the number one thing we could do Would be to open up our border for skilled immigration from China Is wide as we possibly can I have a recruiting recruiting the best in the brightest. I've talked about an AI visa For our Chinese researchers and their families so they feel comfortable and safe And and and desired to stay in the United States.
I don't see people attacking Elon for having Tesla and China or Tim Cook for having Apple and China right The US has benefited greatly from having our companies compete in China In fact if you ask me what's more desirable is to have China open back up to our markets I would love to see our internet companies allowed in China. I would love to see our AI companies allowed in China. I would love to see you know So that form of reciprocity right in a perfect world I'd love to see tariffs come down on both sides and competition allowed more vigorously on both sides.
But either either way I saw that I wanted to I wanted to give you the By the way and I mean what you just what you basically just outline was hey We should be doing with China would just happen in the Middle East right and try and get Try and get our differences on the table try and get the things that matter to us on the table But app on the other side of that get everything else in a point of collaborate.
Right listen I don't think we should be naive China we are in a great power struggle with China. There's no doubt about that There is you know, there are things that we're going to compete like hell on Things that we're going to disagree on drink things where we're going to be strategic adversaries on and things where we say We're not going to give it to you and you're not going to give it to us. That's fine But you know listen.
I'm on the side of sky best. He said we're not decoupling from China right so so like we need to figure out Where we want to engage and on that plane field we ought to be all in on non strategic trading with China We ought to be all in and we ought to find ways to reduce tariffs and to find more ways Certainly to recruit their best and brightest not only here to be educated, but here to stay and and and help us build great technology.
I've been wearing this altimeter hat for over an hour and you haven't come in wrong I did obviously did this just for you You know team altimeter today. I love seeing it love seeing it Well, thanks and good seeing you and and I look forward to seeing you in person next time. All right man. Take care All right, take care As a reminder to everybody just our opinions not investment advice.