E115: The AI Search Wars: Google vs. Microsoft, Nordstream report, State of the Union

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:00)
I had this thing with my oldest son where, I don't know if it's all kids, but he's 13 He doesn't know how to answer the phone, not to save his life.
He picks up the phone, huh? Hello. And so I said, listen, from now on, when you call me, I expect a certain way that you pick up the phone, and that's going to be practiced for how you interact with anybody else, and vice versa as well. If I call you, you have to pick up the phone, and if you don't, I'm hanging up right away. So yesterday, he calls me, and I'm like, Chamath speaking. It's like, hello, Chamath speaking. Dad.
He calls back, hello, Chamath speaking.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:44)
Dad, hung up again.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:49)
We did this three more fucking times, and then finally I said, when will you get it through your head? Can you please just answer like if I say, hello, Chamath speaking, hey, dad, it's your son or hey, dad, it's b****. And it's unbelievable. And he's like, well, none of my friends pick up the phone like this. And I'm like, oh my God, like, don't they think they need to have verbal communication skills?
It's unbelievable. And then when I call him, he picked up the phone.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:14)
Oh, what?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:16)
Not even hello.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:17)
Huh?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:19)
What is that? It's like a grunt.

**David Sacks** (1:20)
It's minimal effort. It's like the minimum number of syllables.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:25)
It's embarrassing. Are you kids like this? Or is it just my kid?

**David Sacks** (1:28)
Actually, I don't think I've heard him pick up the phone. I need to test that.
J Cal was on Twitter calling me out for not denouncing the Chinese balloon is strong enough language. Although I don't think he understood the language I was using. Did you understand what the word errant means? What did you think it meant?

**Jason Calacanis** (2:01)
I, you know, I do understand the word errant. Yeah, it generally means straying off course.
Yeah, and traveling in search of adventure, at least according to Merriam-Webster. So I just thought maybe you're being a little, but I know you're a dove. So, but it was a little doveish thinking they were just off course. I think you'd think they were off course, or they were doing it deliberately. You buy that it was off course.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:26)
Genuflect, go, Genuflect, Jacob, go, go, go, go.

**David Sacks** (2:29)
So I knew Jacob would have to join in this nationwide panic over this balloon.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:35)
I have no panic over it.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:37)
It had a Minolta camera touch to it.

**David Sacks** (2:43)
Jacob, I got some really bad news for you. There are these things called spy satellites, and they can see everything.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:50)
I want to know, it's obvious people, they've been sending these balloons over here for a while. I just thought you're framing as it was errant, as in like, of course. Do you think it was, I'm sincerely asking, do you think it was errant, it was an accident?

**David Sacks** (3:02)
It's such a harebrained scheme to send a balloon flying over American territory that the Occam's razor explanation here is that they somehow lost control over it. And these things are not steerable. So like my guess is that it probably wasn't deliberate just because of how stupid a plan it would be and how like obvious it would be.
But it could be. I don't really know. What I do know is that the whole nation got in a lather and a tizzy and started hyperventilating about this balloon.
And it just shows how reflexively hawkish the media is. It's like, hey, can we just wrap up this war in Ukraine before we start another war with an even more formidable superpower?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:47)
The balloon got more intention than us blowing up Nordstream.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:51)
Okay, well, hold on. I'm ready to jump into it.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:53)
No, what I would say about that is the media insight is the valid one. I was just responding to the errant, and I was curious if you actually thought it was an accident. I don't think it's an accident. I don't think there are accidents.

**David Sacks** (4:02)
Well, I think it clearly was off course and problematic. So, you know, I don't know about the intentionality of it. I think it very well could have been intentional, but I tend to think, because it's such a stupid harebrained scheme, like, I almost give them the benefit of the doubt, not because they're not capable of spying. I'm sure they're spying on us. Obviously, they're spying on us.