AI vs Humans: Math, Physics, KGB Psyops, UAPs | Shaun Maguire, Sequoia

[00:00] The thesis was very simple. One, Vlad is incredible. He's created a hundred billion dollar company. [00:05] This is a math genius. [00:08] and I saw him learn how to be a charismatic person. He's still compounding. He's still improving. When you have people that smart that have a very differentiated approach, it's like, yes, we would love to give you money and see what you do, and they've done amazing things. We're talking about invisibility cloaks, but Palmer Luckey was saying that aliens and UAPs don't come from the future because the physics don't work out. They come from the past. Do you believe in UAPs? My odds that they visited Earth went from basically zero, [00:38] more than 10%, an order of magnitude of yes. [00:41] Everything is an offshoot of the Cold War. Almost everything we're seeing were psyops [00:46] started by the KGB. The ops are not necessarily still being run by the KGB, but they started the op, they created the playbook. I've had so many death threats. I've had hundreds of death threats and like probably a dozen semi-credible death threats. If we stop speaking, then the West is lost. Democracy does not function if people are afraid to speak. We invested $800 million into the X-TIC private. As we wrap up, I just have one question. Does that have payload? [01:23] You invested into Harmonic. And I really believe in giving proper credit on things. It's just something that's very, very important to me. What was the process like for you? Why did you invest into it?

[01:31] Um, and, and so, so I did it with Andrew and we were co-sponsors, but Andrew was really the primary person. [01:38] Andrew invested in Robinhood and so he knew Vlad from Robinhood and I knew Vlad [01:46] from math but not as well um i had actually helped [01:51] So Vlad, [01:52] Vlad reached out to Andrew. [01:54] on the harmonic investment. Vlad had reached out to me probably six to nine months earlier because I have a PhD in mathematical physics. He's one of my [02:02] He wanted my advice on the project and to tell me about it before it became a company. [02:09] And it ended up leading to [02:12] I had a [02:13] Thank you. [02:14] mentor at Caltech, this guy, Sergei Gukov, who was a legendary string theorist. And Sergei had [02:21] probably like three years prior had told me he thinks that all of physics is going to happen with AI at some point. [02:27] And he was trying to figure out what does he do with the belief that there's just massive change coming to math and physics. [02:35] So when Vlad and I talked about it, I told him you should talk to Sergei. Like, Sergei's really smart. And Sergei ended up consulting for the company and then [02:42] I sent in a couple other people [02:44] to Harmonic early on before they even knew it was going to become a company. It was really kind of like a Vlad research project. [02:51] and [02:53] And then when it became a company, Vlad messaged Andrew and said, "We're fundraising." And so Andrew and I teamed up and [03:00] the [03:01] The thesis was very simple. One, Vlad is incredible.

[03:06] He's... [03:07] You create a $100 billion company [03:10] And again, like [03:11] I've known Vlad for a long time. This is a math genius who... [03:17] You know, I don't know if you would agree with this, but to me it was... [03:20] And I was too. We were both kind of autistic, backward. [03:23] doing math PhDs. [03:25] And I saw him [03:27] learn how to be [03:28] a normal, like charismatic person. [03:31] And then now in the last year, if you see these Robin Hood videos of him in Europe with these crazy dapper, I tell you, man, this guy's slope, he's still compounding, he's still improving. [03:42] But so, like, Vlad is a math genius. And also, if you know the history of Robin Hood, you know, it's something like, [03:47] I started off [03:49] doing infrastructure for high frequency trading, [03:52] And then it became like Cash Cats where they were doing this... [03:56] you know, like other project and then it became Robin Hood and then they scaled Robin Hood. [04:00] Vlad is just a consistent learner and compounder and I just think unbelievably highly of Vlad. [04:06] And then, um, [04:09] They had a very [04:10] differentiated a strategy in AI, and their view was that almost all of the big breakthroughs in AI have come from reinforcement learning. [04:20] You know, and [04:21] I would say [04:23] Like the... [04:25] when they started the company called two years ago, [04:28] RL hadn't yet really made it into transformer architecture in a major way. It wasn't [04:36] like it wasn't a huge part of say training GPT-4. I don't definitely not GPT-3 or

[04:44] CROC 1. [04:47] and [04:48] these guys had this view that [04:51] Math is unique where [04:54] You can [04:55] Like... [04:56] structure [04:58] you can structure the problem to where you're training in a way that's [05:02] perfectly suited for reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning is basically when you have like the AI [05:08] competing [05:10] playing a game or competing with itself where there's a very clear reward function, very clear [05:15] like goal and they decided to there's this mathematical programming language called lean where you can formalize proofs and you know that if like a lean [05:28] computer program compiles and the proof is correct. [05:31] and they decided to create the biggest lean product [05:36] training data source. [05:38] Um, [05:39] And then when you have that reinforcement learning [05:43] for math problems is like trivial. It basically comes for free. [05:47] And so they were going to just focus on math with lean [05:50] and RL. [05:52] And then you get this very fast kind of exponential... [05:56] feedback loop going. And so anyways, it's like, it's a very differentiated approach compared to [06:02] the other big foundation model companies that were going for full general purpose, you know, like kind of all token or all text stuff. [06:12] input, all character input possible. These guys are focused on math and RL.

[06:17] And I think it works really well like the harmonic the harmonic [06:21] math results or [06:22] unbelievable for the dollars. Like I would say they're at the cutting edge with the other big labs in math and you see it in like [06:33] IMO, their ability to solve IMO problems, for example, [06:36] but they did it with [06:38] spending almost no money. [06:41] And so anyways, it's like bet on Vlad and then we really liked the [06:45] differentiated approach of just [06:47] Like, [06:48] RL math. [06:50] Do you think they're going to solve... [06:52] Time travel? [06:53] Why not? [06:58] I'm just I'm really I'm bullish on the whole category. I just I [07:03] If you back up, it's like... [07:07] you know, [07:09] in the [07:11] like industrial revolution [07:15] Like, do you want to invest in factories? [07:18] And, you know, [07:20] It's like maybe the... [07:23] early, you know, maybe the this is like later than the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, like the call it's like second Industrial Revolution. But like. [07:32] investing in a microwave factory and a refrigerator factory and an oven factory like [07:37] They all made tons of money and were all great businesses for 50 plus years. [07:44] I just think this is I think AI is such a mega trend.

[07:48] that [07:49] Like, [07:51] I think there will be companies that are the biggest, but I think there's going to be like a hundred companies that... [07:59] figure out their own factory for something very useful and are still like a meaningful company and so when you have a [08:06] a founder as good as Vlad, that's been so passionate about math his entire life. And for the sort of Vlad is a co-founder of Tudor, who's also a genius and incredible. So I'm sorry to not talk about Tudor until now. But like when you have people that smart, that have accomplished that much, [08:21] that have a very differentiated approach. It's like, yes, we would love to give you money and see what you do. And they've done amazing things. Andrew invested in Robinhood. And so he knew Vlad from Robinhood. And I knew Vlad [08:34] From math, but not as well. Because you are... [08:38] Thank you. [08:39] A math geek a physics geek a space geek. I just thought of this But when we had Palmer on we were talking about time travel - I'm just so stuck on this time travel thing I think it's fascinating. I'll say this um [08:52] I wrote, I wrote, so I used to do a physics blog when I was doing my PhD. [08:57] And believe it or not, some of these physics blog posts got lots of views. A couple of them got over a million. What? Yeah. [09:04] views, some [09:05] multiple millions. And I wrote one post called [09:11] I think the title was... [09:13] like [09:14] hacking nature loopholes in the laws of physics.

[09:19] And I was a hacker as a kid. [09:21] And [09:23] I approach everything with this [09:26] like mental model of like trying to find the edge cases, trying to find [09:30] the weird, like where the definitions are not properly understood. And I'll just say, I have never [09:36] come across something, a concept in physics that [09:41] If you think about it deeply, you can't find [09:44] like a loophole in our current understanding [09:48] And this is like a... [09:51] This is level one. Level two is that kind of throughout history, everything that we thought was [09:57] the end of physics or like a relatively complete theory. We ended up learning [10:02] there's something that's 100 times richer and deeper underneath it. [10:08] you know, like the most famous examples being going from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics or from Newtonian physics to [10:14] special relativity than general relativity. [10:16] you know, and now we [10:18] We know that these are not complete theories and we need deeper physics, but [10:23] you know, like for the speed of light. [10:26] This is a controversial thing in physics. [10:29] But not all physicists would agree with this. [10:32] For me, it seems very... We haven't been able to do these experiments, but for me, it seems very clear that we can do it. So, like, a lot of people don't even know what the... Like, they don't even know what the speed of light, what the definition is. You know, speed of light... [10:46] like the simplest way we call it, you know, the,

[10:49] Like the speed that... [10:52] photons move or massless particles move in the vacuum. [10:57] Most people don't think about what is the vacuum, though. And in quantum mechanics, like the vacuum... [11:03] It's not what your intuition says. Like your intuition says that vacuum is empty. [11:07] in [11:08] quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not empty. The vacuum is filled with [11:12] energy and with what we call virtual particles. These are [11:15] particles that get created for very short durations and then they go away like you get [11:21] electrons and positrons will get created out of nothing. And then they'll recombine and become energy again. But anyways, the [11:29] Empty space is not empty in quantum mechanics. It's filled with energy and [11:35] we can [11:37] We know we do lots of experiments where we can [11:40] disturb the vacuum. [11:42] There's this thing called the Casimir effect where if you take two [11:46] mirrors are any two conductive plates, and you put them very close together, [11:49] then [11:50] You actually... [11:51] weaken the [11:54] Vacuum, what I mean by that is [11:57] Like the reason why the plates have to be conductive is because then [12:03] You're putting basically like a boundary condition and electric fields in between. Like they have to have the same, like the same basically... [12:12] same like energy at the, [12:15] on the boundaries and the when you do this,

[12:20] You're actually like restricting, you're making it harder for vacuum particles to get created in between the two conductive plates than outside. [12:27] And so you actually have fewer vacuum particles getting created in between the mirrors than [12:32] outside. And what this does is actually it creates a pressure [12:36] Because you have more of these random particles getting created outside than between. [12:41] Every time, like, they kind of the particles will randomly collide with these plates, and more collisions are happening outside than inside. So it's pushing the plates together. [12:50] It's actually an incredibly strong effect. It goes like one over the distance to the fourth power. So like the shorter the distance. [12:59] between these connective plates, the [13:01] strength of the Kazimierz Effect is [13:03] it's increasing like the fourth power of the [13:07] Distance? [13:08] Whereas gravity or electromagnetism, [13:11] only scale like the distance squared. So this is, this force has become incredibly strong in very short distances. [13:17] and [13:19] Um, like... [13:21] Mm-hmm. [13:22] This shows up in when you design chips. You have to take into account the Casimir effect. You can make things stick to walls via this effect. [13:31] But [13:33] In theory, because the vacuum has less particles in between these connective plates, it actually means that light should travel a little bit [13:42] Faster. It's not much. It's like... [13:45] 10 to the minus 35 meters per second faster it's like it's like a joke it's like comically um small

[13:52] change, but it is a change and [13:56] And I think it just illustrates that most people, like when they think about something, they don't actually have much depth. [14:04] in terms of their understanding of the definitions. The same is true with the second law of thermodynamics, where the second law of thermodynamics is-- it's a statement about averages. It's not an absolute statement. I could go through any law of physics and explain some of the loopholes. [14:21] And for me, the takeaway from this is just like, we should all have this extreme humility. Like we don't actually understand anything. [14:28] And so on something like time travel, [14:31] Like, [14:32] Anyone that rules it out, I think is a fool. [14:34] Like an absolute fool. [14:36] Um, [14:37] And so it doesn't mean I can tell you [14:39] like the exact mechanism today. [14:42] But I've learned to have a lot of humility around... [14:46] what we know, which is [14:47] Like I think rounds to zero. [14:50] in the space of all. [14:52] you know, potential knowledge. Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the U.S. Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines [15:22] protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust and use Brex.

[15:52] So Palmer Luckey had a good take on this. And by the way, the first time I met Palmer was arguing about quantum computing. Really? Yeah. I mean, he is fascinating. He's a smart guy. So smart. His argument, well, and that was in 2000, like, [16:10] 14 or something so quantiquity was not very popular back then well, I [16:14] So his take on this is, I don't even know how we got to this. Oh, we were talking about invisibility cloaks, but what we were talking about was, [16:23] Palmer Luckey was saying that [16:25] Aliens and UAPs don't come from the future because the physics don't work out. They come from the past. Do you believe in UAPs? [16:34] So I've gone very deep in this topic. I got interested in this... [16:39] It's one of the things where like, [16:41] As a kid, of course, I was interested in the topic, but I didn't have any bearings. I would say seven years ago, I got quite interested in the topic. [16:49] I... [16:51] Um... [16:53] Over the course of about a year, my... [16:56] prior on like what is the probability that [17:00] Like UAPs have [17:04] visited Earth at any point in the last 100 years. And UAP could be like, [17:10] beings from the past, it could be [17:12] you know, like aliens from some far away galaxy where they just traveled a great distance, like whatever the definition is. [17:19] Like my odds that they visited Earth went from

[17:23] like basically zero from like less than 1%. [17:25] to [17:26] you know, [17:28] more than 10%. [17:31] So I'm within like an order of magnitude of yes. [17:34] Um... [17:35] And so my odds are definitely greater than 10%. [17:39] And I've done a lot, a lot of research into this. [17:43] But it's just one of these things where I can't say anything definitive at all. And for what it's worth, you know, like Elon's statements that he hasn't seen any evidence like that... [17:54] weights me down. Of all the things that like weight my probability estimates down in the last four years, like that's probably the number one thing that [18:03] you know, lowers my confidence. [18:05] But you're... [18:07] You're saying it's not a no. No, I think it's a greater than... Definitely greater than 10% chance, which... [18:12] Again, that means it's within an order of magnitude of yes. [18:42] All right, so we're going to go into a little rapid fire uncensored for X. [18:48] content great give me your hottest take right now there's you know not much going on in the world so i'm just curious

[18:54] So I would say one take is that [18:57] Almost everything we're seeing right now [19:02] in the world was started by it was like everything is an offshoot of the cold war almost everything we're seeing [19:09] were PSYOPs started by the KGB. [19:12] that [19:14] like the ops are not necessarily still being run by the KGB, but they started the op, they created the playbook, [19:20] and either in some cases they are still running it or the GRU [19:25] And then in a lot of cases, it's other countries figured out what the Soviets did, and they're running that up. I have an incredible story. If you want me to [19:35] you know, tell it's not the quick take. We can come back to it or I can tell you now. No, I want to know the story. [19:40] So I [19:41] I've been... I've really just been trying to understand, like, the history of... [19:46] KGB's most successful operations and what they consider to be their most successful operations. Obviously a tricky subject and I'm lucky that I used to have security clearance and so I [19:56] And I worked in some of these areas, and so I... [19:59] I have some grounding where I actually I know [20:03] like classified versions of what's reality and what's not in certain domains. And that gives you more bearings to [20:10] kind of jump off research points. So there's a guy, Jan Pachepa, who's probably the most [20:19] the most senior [20:21] Soviet bloc defector ever. He was head of the Romanian intelligence services. And

[20:28] he defected to America [20:30] you know, [20:31] worked at the CIA for a while and [20:35] He wrote a few books. [20:37] And [20:38] Like he in one of his books. [20:41] He talks about [20:43] like what he considered it [20:45] as of the late 80s to be the most successful KGB op ever. [20:49] which was [20:51] the framing or defamation of Pope Pius XII. So this guy Pope Pius XII, he was the-- [20:59] He was the pope during World War II. He was the pope from 1939 to into the 50s. [21:04] And Pope Pius XII, this is like extremely documented, was hardcore anti-Hitler. And it was actually very risky for a pope to take a side in the war, including he leaked the Nazi... [21:20] war plans for the invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg to the Allies, which was really [21:25] risky because [21:27] If the Nazis would have won and learned that, then [21:30] the church took a side and why would they, you know, a historical approach would be neutral. Anyways, I could give you 10 examples of him being hardcore anti-Hitler. [21:40] He was... [21:43] Very like he was a huge humanitarian for the Jews and I could give you ten examples of him doing a [21:48] Like, [21:49] unbelievably generous and risky things to save and protect Jews during the war. [21:55] And then after the war ended, [21:57] one of the top Soviet

[21:59] Goals like as they would take over a country usually the rigged elections Immediately after rigged election they would go try to take out the Catholic Church leadership in that country and [22:10] because the Catholic Church was a [22:13] parallel power structure. So imagine they rig an election in Estonia. [22:19] And imagine then like two weeks later, the head of the church in Estonia says, "The Soviets just rigged our election. We need to do another election. The Catholic Church is going to... [22:32] you know, we're going to run the election, like show up, we're going to do it on Sunday, come to the church, you know, over the country, we're going to be running polling stations and like vote for your candidate. [22:43] It's an independent way to kind of undermine the Soviet power. And so what they did in basically every country, they would rig the election and then immediately frame the... [22:55] religious leadership, usually Catholics. And [22:59] I'll like a lot of people that meant tying them to the Nazis so they would take [23:04] religious figures that were not Nazis and say, because in 1945, if you said that the bishop in [23:13] from Croatia or in Estonia or whatever, had secret ties to Hitler and was secretly a Nazi, and you put out propaganda or disinformation on this, you would very quickly destroy their reputation and then run a sham trial, put them in jail or house arrest. And then you kind of create chaos in that local.

[23:33] church and you have a couple spies of your own and they move up in the chaos. This was the playbook for [23:40] the Soviets in the early days of post-World War II. [23:45] And after they did this in a couple of countries, [23:48] Pope Pius XII says, [23:50] He passed an edict [23:52] or... [23:53] I don't, I actually don't, it was later a pope did this exactly, but he basically took on the communists in a pretty hardcore way. And so he became like an extreme threat to the communists. And he, and so basically the Soviets, I'm sorry, I'm using communists and Soviets interchangeably. The Soviets basically [24:13] tried to frame him in 1945 and started calling him Hitler's Pope. [24:18] in quotes, and it didn't stick, it didn't work, because during the war, Pope Pius XII had been incredibly outspoken on the radio and like, [24:27] you know, in media. And so people knew that like, no, this is not Hitler's Pope. He was anti-Hitler. They saw it with their own eyes, heard it with their own ears. So people kind of like laughed it off. [24:37] But the KGB ran a 20-year operation to try to frame this guy. [24:42] And it was only in the mid 60s when they were successful. So they literally ran a 20 year operation to try to frame Pope Pius XII. [24:52] You know, it ended up being once he died, he wasn't there to defend himself. [24:56] And there's something very profound that people don't understand, but [25:00] Now, when you go into the mid-60s, [25:02] There was a new generation

[25:04] that [25:05] wasn't kind of like alive, you know, so anyone under the age of 30 was like less than 10 during the war. And so they didn't have that life experience of hearing Pope Pius XII, [25:16] talk about Hitler, talk about the war, talk about, you know, Jews, talk about morality, right and wrong. And [25:23] So it made it much easier to frame because you had this blank canvas in people's minds. [25:28] So [25:29] And they ran a very sophisticated operation of Famim where they basically got three Romanian priests to... [25:36] get permission to go to the Vatican archives to just under the cover of doing research. But their mission was to find any secret correspondences between [25:46] Pope Pius XII and Hitler. Because if you can find, you always want to wrap a lie in some small truths. If you can find any secret correspondence, but like of course every world leader had secret back channels with [25:57] Hitler, that's just what you do during wars, diplomacy. [26:01] But so they found some of these secret communications on, it could be on the weather, it could be on anything. But when you show that there were these secret communications [26:08] Communications, there was a secret back channel between Hitler and Pope Pius XII. [26:13] And then, and those are real, and anyone that had access to the Vatican archives could go verify that these were real secret communications. And then you put in with those secret communications on the weather, and I don't remember what they were, but on something mundane, you then put in lies like... [26:30] A secret letter where he had said, Pope Pai Sultan, I don't know exactly how they framed him on this part, but saying things like,

[26:38] You know, like... [26:40] you know, I support you or, you know, you can put in whatever you want. [26:44] And then you can put in fake photographs later on as the technology gets better. And they created a play called The Diplomat, which [26:51] Basically was a giant KGB operation. [26:54] which ran in Paris and Berlin and then on Broadway and became this incredibly popular play. And they were so successful at framing Pope Pius XII that... [27:06] Most people alive today, like, you know, between the age of [27:11] 60 to 80 I don't know the exact age range like they basically all think that this guy was a Nazi and [27:15] because that is what became the narrative. [27:18] And I was on Wikipedia maybe a month ago or so to see how they described him. And they still today call him like a controversial figure with alleged Nazi ties. [27:29] And, and [27:31] Like this guy [27:32] Pope Isaac XII was... [27:35] the opposite. He was hardcore anti-Hitler and hardcore anti-communism. [27:40] But this framing of him was it undermined the Catholic Church deeply and effectively, which [27:48] created an opportunity for basically KGB assets to fill power vacuums. [27:55] And it weakened the church in terms of its credibility [27:58] you know, in [27:59] like all these countries where the Soviets were operating. And it created a rift. It actually created a rift [28:05] between Catholics and Jews.

[28:08] And just so the KGB, one of their tactics was to just create division in all of their [28:14] kind of enemy countries. And I'm giving you this as a specific example. [28:20] But... [28:21] I could literally go through 100 examples of KGB operations [28:25] that are happening right now, like a pretty big scale. And they're usually designed to either divide [28:33] The West. [28:34] I'd say they're in like three or four categories. One is divide the West psychologically so that we hate each other and we're less effective. [28:42] two [28:43] to back separatist groups [28:45] to be a rival and bog down the government, whether that was FARC in Colombia or the Palestinian movement, which the KGB was a very, very, very extremely deep backer of, like literally created the PFLP. This is extremely well documented. [29:01] Um, [29:02] You know or [29:04] Another is like to capture institutions or capture like an existing newspaper or capture [29:11] you know, like a UN body or whatever so that you can then use that institution kind of for your own purposes. [29:18] And then the fourth is to basically... [29:22] make good people look bad and bad people look good. [29:26] You know, like try to paint Elon as a Nazi when he's not. [29:30] And I go through many examples of this. [29:34] And so, [29:36] Like, I just, my hottest take, [29:38] is that everything we are seeing right now is literally just an offshoot of KGB tactics that were set in motion

[29:45] starting [29:46] I was saying, [29:47] Starting in like the 1930s. So like the KGB, we know that the KGB infiltrated Cambridge University starting in the 1930s. There's this thing called the Cambridge Five, where it's like five known very high level British intelligence officers that... [30:01] had been turned as spies while they were undergrads at Cambridge University. Like the Soviets went in and infiltrated Cambridge in the 1930s because they knew that Cambridge was the biggest pipeline, Oxford and Cambridge were the biggest pipeline to [30:12] British Intelligent Services, MI5, MI6, [30:14] And if you can turn these kids like when they're young, before they have counter espionage training and all these things, like they're going to go and do a lot of damage. And I can just, it's crazy to know that all of this is happening and people just don't see it. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets. And it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. [30:44] or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S&P 500, so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Publix lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. [31:14] They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com/sourcery.

[31:25] Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. [31:29] Damn, and I thought Scientology was bad. [31:33] No comment. [31:38] So how do you make out the current situation of Venezuela versus New York City being taken over by a socialist leader? Yeah. Yeah. [31:48] I mean, look... [31:50] I feel like we're living in the upside down world. [31:52] world. You know, Venezuela for me, [31:56] Thank you. [31:57] So I've never been to Venezuela, but I've been to almost every, I've been to most of the surrounding countries. I've been to over 100 countries. I've traveled almost all of Latin America. [32:04] I have many, many friends. I probably have a dozen decently close Venezuelan friends. [32:10] and [32:12] I think it was an incredible liberation moment. If you have been following the history of Venezuela, people there the last 25 years have been bad. It's been really, really bad. People are starving. [32:26] You know, people that speak up against the government are kidnapped, killed, tortured, disappeared. [32:31] Um, like... [32:33] This is a communist regime that was working with all of America's biggest enemies. [32:38] It's really crazy to me to... [32:41] have this moment where i would say 95 plus the venezuelans are thrilled [32:48] and then to have a lot of Western media [32:50] turning it into this [32:52] negative event. [32:54] Um...

[32:56] and in the case in new york like obviously i've made my comments about mom danny [33:00] I love New York. I'm wishing him the best. But [33:05] Like, I think the thing that describes [33:08] The state [33:10] like Momdani, the best. [33:12] is that when Elon did this alleged Nazi salute, it was the front page of the New York Times, and it was all over the media, when it's very clear that Elon is not a Nazi, like an anti-Semite, and when Zoran does the exact same salute, no one covers it, when he has a much more questionable history in terms of his opinion of... [33:32] of Jews. And I just like, there is so much power in choosing what stories you tell. And then when you do tell a story, choosing how you tell it. And so like the way that we've told the Venezuela story, the way we haven't told the Mamdani story around like the things, his support for at least five terrorists in history and his, you know, support for [33:55] Communism, not just socialism, communism. Yeah. And then now we're seeing it in Iran where [34:01] the media is barely talking about like a [34:04] incredible revolution that's in progress that hopefully is successful where [34:10] Like a... [34:11] radical, tyrannical, theocratic regime has been subjugating the people for [34:18] 40 [34:19] you know, six, [34:21] plus years, [34:23] like in what was once like one of the great empires in the world. Like it's,

[34:28] And it's barely being reported. I just... [34:33] the editorial decisions [34:36] are very powerful in shaping people's worldview. And I have lived through this firsthand. [34:58] Because you're quite outspoken about this on X and some other sensitive... [35:03] Topics, this is a personal no Who would have thought are you at all? I? [35:10] ever worried about your safety. Extremely. [35:12] I've had so many death threats. I've had... [35:15] I've had-- [35:16] hundreds of death threats and like [35:19] probably a dozen semi-credible death threats. And I've had... [35:24] Thank you. [35:25] You know, like many more than that, people go so far as like create... [35:30] like burner Gmail accounts or phone numbers to, you know, [35:36] send me hate mail and stuff and I've [35:39] And I know they're burner accounts, I've sent the IPs to... [35:44] you know, friends and [35:45] Um... [35:47] But look, I... [35:49] I'll also say, look, I was friends with Charlie Kirk. [35:52] I was very lucky to be friends with Charlie. I actually spent a meaningful amount of time with Charlie like the year he was killed. I saw him [35:58] twice the month he died. And

[36:00] It's like that was very... [36:02] close to home and I'm nothing like Charlie. He was [36:08] like at least an order of magnitude more outspoken and more prolific and more important. [36:13] than me, [36:14] But... [36:15] Like to have a friend, [36:17] Bye. [36:18] killed for being outspoken like yeah I'm really really [36:22] worried about it. [36:24] And I, you know, but I think if we stop speaking, then the West is lost. Like that is, that is the goal of the enemies of the West is to get people to stop talking. [36:35] democracy does not function if [36:38] People are afraid to speak. [36:40] Yeah, it's pretty impactful. X has become a very... [36:44] very powerful [36:45] We invested $800 million into the Xtick private, and I codelad that investment. [36:52] and [36:53] I [36:54] like [36:55] A big part of it is because I... [36:57] thought eventually [36:59] I believe in Elon and thought he'd figure out how to turn it into a really good return. But a giant part of it was... [37:06] knowledge that [37:08] I mean, for me, when X, when, prior when Twitter banned President Trump while he was sitting president, [37:14] like before the facts had really come out on [37:17] you know, [37:19] on [37:20] There's such a-- I mean, it's a controversial student say this, but before the facts had really come out on January 6, and the whole surrounding-- [37:26] topic, like the fact that a sitting president was banned from a giant social network, for me, that was a

[37:32] a watershed moment that [37:34] just [37:35] Like, again, I was just explaining, talking about some of these KGB [37:39] tactics like that's a classic KGB [37:42] tactic and democracy doesn't function if if [37:46] people can't get their opinions across and [37:50] Um, [37:52] you know, like if the sensors control the airwaves. [37:54] Mm. [37:55] As we wrap up, I just have one question. [37:59] Does that have payload? No. No, we're safe. No explosives in there. Okay. Yeah, that was made by Mock, a drone company. And it was a nice gift from Ethan. Thank you, Ethan. [38:10] but you're safe. Okay. But if you want a live one, we can go visit, you know, Mock or Neros or any of those companies. I would love to. Let's go. Let's go right now. It's not far from your house. No. Well, thank you so much, Sean. Thank you, Molly. You're the best. You're crushing it. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe [38:40] on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.