JD Vance | All-In Summit 2024

**Friedberg** (0:00)
Hey everybody, Friedberg here. What you're about to hear is a discussion from our All-In Summit Record in LA on September 9th. We're going to publish some of the best conversations once a week. If you want to see all the talks, subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/atall-in and follow us on X at the All-In Pod. This speaker is not on the program.

**Jason** (0:20)
Not on the program, but I did notice there was a little bit of security here today. A little extra security.

**Friedberg** (0:26)
This is your Sacks red meat moment.

**Jason** (0:29)
Yes. A little red meat for Sacks. Please welcome me in joining vice presidential candidate, JD Vance.
Welcome.

**Friedberg** (1:10)
So Sacks is going to introduce you.

**JD Vance** (1:11)
Welcome to Lionsden.

**Friedberg** (1:13)
Who's here with us, Sacks?

**David Sacks** (1:15)
Well, do we actually need a big introduction here? But I'll give a few.

**JD Vance** (1:19)
Those of you who are really bad at context clues, I'm JD Vance. I'm running for vice president.

**Chamath** (1:25)
And normally, he's beside his wife Usha, but now you get. That's right.

**JD Vance** (1:30)
She's at like the Tar Pits or whatever.

**Chamath** (1:31)
Yeah.

**JD Vance** (1:32)
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We brought our three kids out here. So she wanted to take and see some fossil stuff. So they'll have fun.

**David Sacks** (1:39)
I'll say a couple of things about JD because he's a friend. I think what I think really made me want to support JD for Senate and also for the VP position is that I think he represents two, you could almost say contradictions. Back in 2003, when JD graduated from high school, this was after the Twin Towers had come down and we had gotten involved in the Iraq War. He was gung-ho to go fight America's enemies and he enlisted in the Marine Corps and went off to serve in the Middle East. Eventually, he came to realize that that war was a mistake. I thought that that really represents one of the traits that we really want in a vice president or someone next to the president, which is that he had the patriotism and the courage to go serve America, but also the wisdom to realize when America shouldn't get involved in a war. So I want to just...
The other, like I said, almost contradiction that JD represents is that he had worked in the tech industry, he had been a venture capitalist. He had been in rooms like this, and he understands what it takes to make America a more innovative place. At the same time, he comes from a part of the Midwest Appalachia, that's a very poor part of the country and did not grow up in a privileged environment at all. He still remembers those people and he represents those people. I think his ability to understand both parts of the country makes him, I'd say, a pretty unique political figure. So with that, let me stop and do you want to react to any of that?

**JD Vance** (3:26)
Well, first of all, thanks all for having me. I've been a big fan of the pod for a while, I think my first appearance, so it's good to be with you. The only thing I'll say to that, David, is I do think there is a deep connection between the poverty that I saw growing up and the fact that our entire economy is just less innovative than we pretend that it is.
I know Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowell and other folks have talked about this, but if you look at the real innovation in the American economy, it's been in the world of software. If you look at where the economy has been most stagnant, it's been in basically the heavily regulated parts of the economy, which is where 90 percent of the people that I represent in the Senate, and 80 percent of the people that I hope to represent as their vice president, actually make their living, run their business, and go to work every single day. I think that when I think about tech, one of the things I'd like us to do is broaden the aperture a little bit and think about innovation, not just in software, but innovation in transportation and logistics, and innovation in energy, and the whole suite of things, because unless our economy is actually technologically innovative, then the stagnant economy is fundamentally the worst thing. I think a lot of actually America's pathologies right now, stem from the fact that we feel like we live in a very zero-sum country, because in some ways we do. When the economy is growing four, five, six percent a year, then Democrats can get what they want, Republicans can get what they want, and it all makes sense. If the economy is growing between zero and one percent a year, then I think it makes the whole society and our political system much, much more insane. And I think that's kind of a subtext of what's been going on in this country for the last 30 years.