H-1B Shakeup, Kimmel Apology, Autism Causes, California Hate Speech Law

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the AllIn Podcast. We're back. We're back. We got the original crew here. It's a tight foursome. With me again. He's returned from, I believe, the UAE and MENA, the one, the only, your chairman, your dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya. He puts the dick in Dictator. That's what they all say. How are you doing?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:25)
Good. You?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:27)
So you went and you got that, what's that beautiful airman that we all take to the region?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:31)
Emirates First Class, yeah.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:33)
Oh, Emirates First Class, with a cabin.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:35)
It's insane.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:36)
With the wine. Take everybody in, because I do business class for 14 dimes round trip.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:41)
Emirates is unbelievable. But the problem is there's like literally a thousand movies, a thousand, so you have to like favorite out 30 or 40 of them. There was like 95 different menu choices. I had probably 8,000 calories.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:56)
Oh, really? And that was just the wine. I take it. Yeah.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:59)
By the way, the wine is incredible. The wine list, like 1996 Montrose. And I was like, is this an air? I never seen an airline wine list. It was pretty strong.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:10)
Did you bring your sommelier, Josh? Was he in the cabin next to you in his own?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:14)
I didn't need it. I didn't need it.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:15)
I like that. I like that. And of course, you're a sultan of science. You got a great docket for him. It's kind of like the Super Bowl for sultan fans this week, isn't it?

**David Friedberg** (1:24)
I hope I deliver, bro.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:26)
Well, Trump cured autism and you're going to comment on it. It's a pretty big deal. It's a pretty big deal.
And then, of course, the one, the only, he puts the bizarre in czar. David Sacks calling in from his.

**David Sacks** (2:00)
You got that backwards. It's as you put the czar in bizarre, not the bizarre in czar.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:05)
Yeah. I'm playing with it. I'm workshopping. I've been trying both ways. But yes. And you're calling in, you're echoing, which is great.

**David Sacks** (2:14)
I'm on the road.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:15)
You're on the road between meetings?

**David Sacks** (2:18)
Yeah, basically.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:19)
Exactly.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:20)
Are you in a motorcade?

**David Sacks** (2:21)
No. No.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:22)
Okay. Listen. The topic of the week, H-1B visas are being overhauled.
Trump administration announced a new $100,000 fee for all future H-1B applications. It's a one-time fee. There's been a little confusion about it and the details, but that's how they do things in the 47th. There's some excitement, a big announcement, and then we figure out the details. Letnick originally said it would be $100,000 a year, but then the White House clarified it will be a one-time fee. This is a huge jump. The current fee is nothing. It's like $2,000 to $5,000 that you pay to the government. You might pay a lawyer, double that or triple that to do the work for you if you're a big corporation. But this hits on a lot of the Trump campaign promises, tougher on immigration, looking out for US workers. We've talked before here about the abuse in the H-1B system. I'll give some of my personal insights in that after maybe I throw to you, Chamath. Before I do, they had an interesting polymarket. Will courts block Trump's 100K H-1B by September 30? A 3% chance of that happening. So it looks like everybody's kind of aligned with this program. All right, Sacks, I know you're on the road, but your fans demand to hear your take on this. What's your take?

**David Sacks** (3:41)
I think it's a good idea to have this 100K fee. And I'll tell you the reason why is because right now there's something like five times as many H-1B applications as there are slots. So I think they grant about 85,000 H-1Bs a year and many more apply for it. And as a result, they have a lottery where they just kind of, I guess, they randomly choose who the winners are going to be. And if you look over the past decade, roughly half the H-1Bs go to these IT consulting firms. And the average salary is like $65,000 a year. So it kind of puts the lie to this idea that you hear that H-1Bs are for like high skilled engineers, AI researchers, things like that. That's not in practice what happens. In practice, what happens is you have this lottery and a huge chunk of them end up going to low end IT jobs. And I think by putting this $100,000 fee on it, you encourage the applications to go to the actual higher skilled, higher paid jobs, where there's actually a shortage of Americans. And you encourage US companies to try to fill those jobs with Americans first. And so I think, you know, putting aside some of the details, I think the big picture here is that they're using market forces to put some scarcity around the H1B application. And I think what that's going to do is encourage applicants to actually be these higher paid, higher skilled jobs that the program is supposed to be for, instead of these lower end IT job shops.