E106: SBF's media strategy, FTX culpability, ChatGPT, SaaS slowdown & more

**David Friedberg** (0:00)
I'm now recording.

**David Sacks** (0:02)
Jesus, you look terrible.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:03)
What's going on? Did you sleep last night?

**David Friedberg** (0:04)
Do I look tired?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:05)
You do look a little tired.

**David Sacks** (0:06)
You look unshaven.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:07)
Yeah.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:08)
What happened last night?

**David Friedberg** (0:09)
I had a holiday party at my house last night from my office and-

**David Sacks** (0:12)
You look destroyed.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:13)
Yeah. What's going on? I mean, did you drink?

**David Friedberg** (0:15)
I did drink, yeah.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:16)
What does vodka and oat milk taste like?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:19)
He had a White Russian.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:22)
A White Russian, Big Lebowski style with oat milk. He's like, I want a White Russian with oat milk. Oh my God.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:28)
Actually, my White Russian is made with oat milk.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:30)
And please compliment that with a huge punch in the face.

**David Friedberg** (0:34)
Give me five minutes. I'm going to go shave and...

**David Sacks** (0:36)
It's called the hair of the dog.

**David Friedberg** (0:37)
Yeah.

**David Sacks** (0:38)
You got a little Bloody Mary.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:40)
You banana bug. Banana man.

**David Friedberg** (0:42)
Should I go get a beer? I might get a beer just to beat this hangover.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:46)
Yeah, go get a.

**David Friedberg** (1:03)
All right.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:05)
Listen, we have to start with scam, bank run, fraud. I mean, Sam Beckford Fried.
I get that wrong sometimes. He was interviewed by Andrew Worsork in the suit at Dealbook, who gave him softball after softball. Then the next day, he was on Good Morning America.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:24)
You're being really passive aggressive right now.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:25)
A little bit.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:26)
You're throwing a little shit over there. A little chippy.

**David Sacks** (1:30)
He's sticking the knife in.
He's sticking the knife in. But J. Cal's got a point. He's got a point.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:34)
A little bit.

**David Sacks** (1:35)
A little bit.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:37)
Anyway, the New York Times continues to embarrass themselves by handling Sam Bankman fraud with kid gloves.
George Stephanopoulos, my Greek brother Stephanopoulos the Spartan, came in and absolutely fricassade and filleted Sam Bankman Fried on Good Morning America. Very important to note that Good Morning America, the segment was between holiday cocktails and the cast of The White Lotus. And Andrew R. Strickland was at the Dealbook Finance Conference.

**David Sacks** (2:07)
But you know, that that that Stephanopoulos interview was two hours, but they reduced it down to 10 minutes. So there were probably a lot of sort of cordial conversation banter and then softball questions.
And then he does stick the knife in and does the fricassade, but he cuts out all the other stuff. So he just gets it down to the 10 minutes.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:28)
What Stephanopoulos did to him was extraordinary in that he said over and over again, in the FTX terms of service, you cannot touch the user accounts, but you at Alameda were taking them and you were loaning them out. I don't know who is advising Sam Bankman Fried at this point, but why he is talking so much. He was also on a two hour Twitter spaces after all this.
At this point, Sacks, what do you think is going on here in the mind of Sam Bankman Fried and also the media, which seems to have a very variable way of dealing with this obvious fraud and crime?

**David Sacks** (3:11)
Right. Okay. Well, you know, I can speculate about SBF. I think if there is a strategy here, it is this, he is basically copping to criminal negligence in order to avoid the more serious charges of fraud. And I think, again, if there's a strategy here, it is he saw himself being defined as Bernie Madoff 2 in the press.
And if that image, which may well be true, cemented around him, then prosecutors would never stop. They would never accept a plea that basically gave him anything less than a Madoff-like sentence, which would be, you know, decades in prison, maybe a life sentence. So, he is out there doing what lawyers would tell you never to do, which is basically incriminate yourself, create more of a record. But he's doing it to change the public perception, maybe muddy up the public perception, get people thinking that, okay, he, you know, that he's admitting he did something wrong, but it wasn't deliberate, it wasn't fraudulent. It was just basically carelessness or sloppiness. And if he succeeds in muddying the waters enough, then maybe the prosecutors will give him a plea deal that allows him to have his life back at some point. I think that would be the crazy like a fox explanation of what's happening.