E153: In conversation with Jared Kushner: Israel-Hamas War, paths forward, macro picture, AI

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:00)
Sacks, what essay were you writing last night till three in the morning?

**David Sacks** (0:02)
Oh, I was blasting people on Twitter yesterday. I was collecting scalps.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:07)
Collecting scalps.

**David Sacks** (0:09)
I keep these receipts of people who attack me on Ukraine, and then like six months later, they all write a tweet admitting they were wrong. I'll rub it in their face.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:19)
You have a little Google Doc, and you just go through what I want in it?
You have like your Kill Bill list. You are so petty. I love that about you.

**Jared Kushner** (0:31)
Some would say that's a good defense mechanism. Right this way.

**David Sacks** (0:35)
Yeah, they got to know. They're not going to take any free shots. Cause if they do, and then invariably I'm proven correct, then you're going to clap back. I'm going to smack them.
Very Trumpian, isn't it?

**Jason Friedberg** (0:48)
Yeah. It's a very hard burden for you to carry. Just being right all the time. I respect the way you do it with such grace and magnetism.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:15)
Welcome back to The All-In Pod. Really excited to have a guest with us today, Jared Kushner. I'm sure everyone knows who he is. We obviously talked about Jared's interview with Lex Friedman on The Pod a couple of weeks ago.
And what happened? Chamath, you DM'd Jared and started chatting and said, hey, would you be interested in coming to talk with us? Yeah. About these matters?
Jared very, you know, kindly agreed to do it. So we're really excited to have Jared join us today. Jared, welcome.

**Jared Kushner** (1:41)
Thank you for having me.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:42)
So I don't think you need much of an introduction. Obviously you were a senior advisor to a president from 2017 to 2021
And you worked on the U.S.-Mexico relationship as well as led the Middle East peace efforts, which I think is gonna make up the bulk of what we're excited to talk about today. Just really briefly, since leaving office, you've been investing, running a firm called Affinity Partners, is that right? Maybe you can share with us just a little bit about what you've been up to, and then we'll kind of get into it here.

**Jared Kushner** (2:16)
Affinity Partners is a private equity firm that I started when we left doing growth investing and private equity investing. Globally, we raised just over 3.1 billion, doing a lot of investments, trying to bring golf money into Israel, into the US, trying to figure out how, through investments, you could bring countries closer together, people closer together. Looking at a lot of areas where there's structural transitions happening at large in the global economy, whether it's near-shoring from offline to online, software, a lot of different interesting areas, a lot of the fintech space and financial services right now.
But enjoying it. And the goal is really to bring the experience that we had from the previously being an investor and then the time in government, and then thinking through how you could use those macro learnings and connections and relationships and navigational skills to the investing side.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:07)
Right. So we're gonna try and talk later in the show about macro markets a bit, talk a little bit about some of the activity in AI this week. We think it's all pretty prescient and hopefully we can all dialogue about that.
I think it'd be helpful when you and I talk just to get ready for the show today, you mentioned that you had a very liberal upbringing in the Upper East Side of New York and your perspective began to shift as you started to travel the country. Then you were in the Trump White House and have become very active since.
Would love to hear a little bit about how your perspective shifted in the time you spent. Cause you mentioned you started traveling the country and seeing things that you otherwise hadn't seen living in the Upper East Side. Would love to hear that part of your story before we kind of get into things. If you wouldn't mind sharing.

**Jared Kushner** (3:49)
Yeah, sure. So one thing about my life is that nothing has gone according to the plan. I grew up in New Jersey, really nice place in Livingston. My father was an entrepreneur in the real estate business, banking, insurance, did a lot of different things.
Really brought up me and my siblings to be focused on business. And it really for us was a good experience growing up. I actually went to Harvard and then after that chose to go to law school and business school where I was at NYU during that time. My father had a legal issue and I was forced to take over the business.