E151: WW3 risk, War with Iran?, 4.9% GDP, startup failures growing, new Speaker & more

**David Friedberg** (0:00)
What are the next steps in your interview process for your cabinet position? Secretary of Treasury, Chamath. Secretary of State, Sacks.
Cal.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:10)
Press secretary, obviously.

**David Friedberg** (0:11)
Press secretary. Oh my God, press secretary.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:14)
Can you imagine me in the press briefing room?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:17)
Whoever wins the presidency, I just want you guys to know, I would be a great secretary of sweaters. I will source incredible-

**David Sacks** (0:24)
Only cashmere.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:26)
I will redesign the outfits of the entire military industrial complex.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:31)
In Lora Piana, yes. The Navy SEALs will be in Lora Piana from head to toe. It's a new outfit for them. They're going to go whack Osama Demedne next time with Lora Piana $4,500 French shoes.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:41)
Can you imagine SEAL Team 6 wearing Lora Piana? Absolutely.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:46)
It's going to be great. It gets showing in those Apaches and the Blackhawks. You're going to want a Pashmina wrap or something.
Have you been to Afghanistan at night?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:57)
It's freezing.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:21)
With me again today, the sultan of science, the queen of quinoa, the prince of panic attacks, David Friedberg, the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya, and your crazy, angry history uncle, David Sacks is here. Welcome to the program, everybody. We got a very full docket. I guess we'll start it off with how the war and the conflict in the Middle East is going here. Sacks, you hosted a Twitter space with Vivek and Elon on preventing World War III.
What was the premise and the reason for setting up this trio to talk about World War III?

**David Sacks** (2:04)
Well, I think Vivek actually had the idea to do it. We had a couple other folks on the panel as well. We had Colonel Daniel Davis, who has a podcast called Deep Dive. He's a military expert. We had Alexander Mercuris from The Duran, which is a top geopolitics podcast.
We were talking about the risk of a series of chain reactions that could happen in the next few weeks here over what's happening in the Middle East. Elon wanted to do it because of what he said, which is that he's talking to a lot of world leaders. He's talking to a lot of different people. They tell him that the risk of some major war happening or some greater catastrophe is higher than they've ever seen.
He was quite concerned about that. I think a few things came out of it. The first is, and I think Elon took this position most strongly, we really need to end the war in Ukraine. The combination of having a war in Ukraine that involves the United States and then a war in the Middle East that could also involve the United States and Russia has troops in Syria, there's a lot of ways for this to spiral out of control. There's a lot of room for unintended consequences. His view was, look, we've just had five months of counteroffensive here. It didn't go anywhere. On net, the Ukrainians didn't take back any territory. In fact, the Russians slightly gained territory. So this war is going nowhere. It has failed. It is time for the administration to work towards a ceasefire and a resolution.
Well, the Ukrainians have not taken back.
They had a completely failed counteroffensive.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:41)
Okay, but you said the war has failed. So I'm just curious which side.

**David Sacks** (3:43)
Sorry, the counteroffensive has failed. Okay, got it. The counteroffensive started on June 4th or 5th. It's now October 26
And if you look at the map that the New York Times provided, Ukraine has not taken back any meaningful amount of territory. In fact, Russia on net has gained territory, even when it was supposed to be Ukraine on offense. So there is no prospect of Ukraine achieving its objective of evicting Russia from their territory.
So what is the point of continuing this war?

**Jason Calacanis** (4:13)
But they have defended themselves from an invasion from Putin, yeah? You would say that.

**David Sacks** (4:18)
They've ended up, what's successful about it? Several hundred thousand Ukrainians have died.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:23)
Well, no, they successfully didn't get taken over as a country when they were invaded by Russia.

**David Sacks** (4:27)
That was Russia's goal.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:29)
Okay. So when they sent the troops in there, their goal wasn't to invade?
What was their goal then?

**David Sacks** (4:36)
Honestly, you don't really understand the history of the conflict.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:39)
No, no. I mean, we've talked about history. I'm just saying the way you're framing it is that Ukraine failed. It seems to me they've also, the argument could be that they defended themselves successfully.