American Optimist
@AmOptimistShow • 15,321 subscribers
Official Account of @JTLonsdale's American Optimist podcast 🎙📺 NEW EPISODES: https://t.co/bQnaq8kHE8
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EPISODE 156: Coleman Hughes Takes on America's Most Contentious Debate Joe Lonsdale sits down with Coleman Hughes to discuss his new University of Austin (UATX) course: "The Legacy of Slavery" (00:00) Episode intro (01:40) Teaching the Legacy of Slavery (06:20) Coleman's journey from Columbia to UATX (08:30) Dr. King vs Derrick Bell (11:20) Racial disparities by IQ and salary (13:00) Thomas Sowell & the Real History of Slavery (19:00) America's Founding Hypocrisy (24:00) Will the Left cancel Dr. King? (26:20) Understanding the 1619 Project (30:25) Breakdown of the black family (37:20) Is America wealthy because of slavery? (43:50) Are you worried about woke AI? (45:40) Three solutions for racial progress
American Optimist689,249 views • 5 days ago
EPISODE 149: The Small Business Succession Crisis & New Possibilities in the AI Age Joe Lonsdale sits down with Will Fry, Founder & CEO American Operator. (00:00) Episode intro (01:25) Will’s entrepreneurial journey (04:15) The small business succession crisis (06:40) American Operator’s approach vs. private equity (08:35) "We're creating millionaires on Main Street" (11:55) Does AI mean boom or bust for small business (15:55) Forget law school? Buy a small business instead? (21:20) AI use cases for small business (23:00) Why many SMBs shut down instead of sell (26:00) How the operate-to-own model works (33:50) Optimism for Main Street America
American Optimist2,436,408 views • 1 month ago
![Marc Andreessen: if you're the parents of a smart kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you think you're going to get them into a top university in this country, you're fooling yourself... What level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years? Marc: Nobody wants to talk about, but I've started to talk about the intersection of DEI and immigration that has really warped our perceptions on high skilled immigration over the last 50 years. You look at the foreign enrollment rates at the top universities, which went from 2 or 3 or 4 percent 50 years ago or whatever to 27% or 30% or 50%... Joe: Columbia's over half. Marc: 70% or whatever it is. And so there's been this massive transformation in who gets educated. And then there's been this massive transformation of who gets admitted through affirmative action, as we now know it, DEI. This goes straight to the political divide in the country, which is, if you're parents of a kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you've got a smart kid and you think you're going to get them into, you know, a top university in this country, like you're fooling yourself. There is this really fundamental question which is, what level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years? And how long can we have this story to everybody in the Midwest and in the South that says, sorry, because of historical oppression, your kids are SOL.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1943758894263660670/amplify_video_thumb/1943758267760427008/img/JvH7lV-HctkWnxx1.jpg)
Marc Andreessen: if you're the parents of a smart kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you think you're going to get them into a top university in this country, you're fooling yourself... What level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years? Marc: Nobody wants to talk about, but I've started to talk about the intersection of DEI and immigration that has really warped our perceptions on high skilled immigration over the last 50 years. You look at the foreign enrollment rates at the top universities, which went from 2 or 3 or 4 percent 50 years ago or whatever to 27% or 30% or 50%... Joe: Columbia's over half. Marc: 70% or whatever it is. And so there's been this massive transformation in who gets educated. And then there's been this massive transformation of who gets admitted through affirmative action, as we now know it, DEI. This goes straight to the political divide in the country, which is, if you're parents of a kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you've got a smart kid and you think you're going to get them into, you know, a top university in this country, like you're fooling yourself. There is this really fundamental question which is, what level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years? And how long can we have this story to everybody in the Midwest and in the South that says, sorry, because of historical oppression, your kids are SOL.
American Optimist5,188,054 views • 10 months ago
EPISODE 147: The New Era of Software Abundance Joe Lonsdale visits Scott Wu & Russell Kaplan at Cognition HQ 00:00 Episode intro 01:35 Why technical talent & execution matters in AI 06:10 Do young people have an edge in the AI era? 08:26 Cognition's rapid growth 11:55 The new era of software abundance 14:30 Cognition engineers don't type code anymore 19:20 "Never sleep while Devin is idling" 21:25 The case for AI disinflation 23:50 How Devin generates 12X productivity gains 28:25 Cognition for government / taking on complex, broken systems 36:40 The AI race / competition with Anthropic 39:00 Forward deployed engineers? 43:40 How fast are LLMs improving? 47:10 The AI-led small business explosion
American Optimist834,355 views • 2 months ago
NEW: Joe Lonsdale shocks CNBC on AI regulation debate: Andrew Ross Sorkin: Is there ultimately going to be an FDA for AI models? Joe: The FDA has killed millions of people... Andrew: Killed?? Joe: Massive bureaucracy makes it cost 10 or 100X more than it should... there's tons of these new drugs you could be developing to save lives that we're just not able to do... China would love for us to have a massive regulatory bureaucracy for AI and let them get ahead. Andrew Ross Sorkin: We're all trying to figure out what this could look like. Is there ultimately going to be an FDA for AI models? Is that a good thing or a bad thing for somebody who's thinking the way you do? Joe: Listen, the FDA has killed millions of people. Let's be totally clear, right? Andrew: Killed?? Joe: It's literally led to the deaths of millions of people, Andrew... There's all these new therapies, especially now, by the way, with AI that we could be developing... Andrew: It's also hopefully saved some lives... Joe: I mean the trade off is probably 100 to 1. There's a very famous story from 60 years ago where they caught some stuff that was killing people in Europe and saved them here. They've used that as an excuse to make this massive bureaucracy that makes it cost 10 or 100 times more to do drugs than it should, which means there's tons of these new drugs you could be developing to save lives that we're just not able to do. I would be investing billions more to save lives, but I can't. So the equivalent is terrifying to me. The government is bad at these things. The bureaucrats are bad at these things. Now there's a there's another argument here, which is that you have things like Mythos and OpenAI's new technology that's really, really good at hacking into everything. And you probably don't want like, that new technology going to the bad guys right away. So there has to be some sort of trade off, some sort of framework. We have to be really careful not to make the mistakes the FDA has made. Andrew: So what would you do? What do you think that should look like? Joe: There probably should be some national agreement on regulation on new powerful models. It should be as small and as narrow as possible. It should not have the same bureaucracy. You should make sure the government from the start, has metrics on the speed at which it has to go and the transparency, because you're gonna have cronyism, you're gonna have the big guys capture it. You're going to slow it down. Pharma loves the FDA against biotech. It makes it too expensive for us to build our own pharma companies. We have to sell to them. This is what the big guys want. Google and Microsoft and OpenAI and the rest of them, they want to create rules to make it so they can... Andrew: They've all been calling for it. I mean, you remember Sam Altman, Dario, others early on said, "Regulate us; you need to regulate us. Please, regulate us." The question is was that a genuine call for action or do you think that was a "We think Washington's never going to do this. So we'll say it, and get some nice PR points." Joe: If you are the leader in the space and you have tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, you want there to be really complicated regulation with people you can hire who go in and out of your company, who work there because you know you're going to be able to control it and influence it. ...And by the way, China has pre-IND (Investigational New Drug process) and IND of 30 and 60 days about right now. We have 200 and 500 days. And so we've completely delayed anything we do. We've handed more than a third now of our biotech sector to China in the last six years because we're so slow. We definitely don't want to do that on the AI side. That would be a disaster. China would love for us to do a massive regulatory bureaucracy for AI and let them get ahead. We cannot allow that to happen. Squawk Box
American Optimist191,900 views • 29 days ago
EPISODE 150: How AI Is Transforming Diligence, Decision-Making & the Future of Investing Joe Lonsdale sits down with John Melas-Kyriazi, co-founder & CEO of Standard Metrics (00:00) Episode intro (02:10) Academia to investor and founder (08:00) The pain point that led to Standard Metrics (12:10) How AI is transforming diligence, data collection & VC (14:20) AI as a technical copilot (17:10) AI analyst vs Human in the loop (19:20) Parsing pitch decks and new AI tools (23:10) How AI search is changing marketing (28:30) Powerful new capabilities and workflows (33:47) How quickly is everything changing?
American Optimist283,369 views • 1 month ago
EPISODE 151: The Myth of Michael Milken Joe Lonsdale talks with Richard Sandler -- Michael Milken's long-time lawyer -- about his powerful new book: "Witness to a Prosecution: The Myth of Michael Milken" (00:00) Episode intro (01:35) Richard's career & Michael Milken's legacy (06:25) Why write this book? (08:00) How Michael Milken transformed finance (14:00) Why did they go after Michael? (19:30) Using RICO to bring down Drexel (22:30) Prosecutorial abuse & the power of government (26:30) Why did Michael agree to a plea deal? (33:25) Trump grants Michael a full pardon (35:00) Lessons on government power, media influence & Michael's resilience
American Optimist221,582 views • 1 month ago
EPISODE 153: Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar on Heretics, AI Weapons & Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy Joe Lonsdale sits down with Shyam Sankar to discuss PLTR lore, protecting heretics, and his new book "Mobilize" (00:00) Episode intro (01:45) Mud hut in India to life in America (05:25) Employee #13 at Palantir (09:45) How Shyam created Forward Deployed Engineers (13:05) What are Shyam-isms? (14:55) Business discipline & learning to say no (19:20) The crisis of the American industrial base (24:00) Some heretics must be protected (29:00) The factory is the weapon (34:00) Magical AI weapons (43:00) Optimism for America's future
American Optimist126,922 views • 26 days ago
EPISODE 142: Understanding the AI Wave Joe Lonsdale sits down with 8VC Partners Alex Kolicich & Jack Moshkovich Why is AI fundamentally disruptive? What does it mean for large software incumbents? Will LLMs become commodities? And are we entering a bubble, or just getting started? (00:00) Episode intro (01:40) Smart enterprise thesis (04:00) Did enterprise software dramatically boost productivity? (08:30) Understanding the AI wave (11:45) Will LLMs become commodities? (17:10) OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Meta vs Grok (20:30) Frontier models vs enterprise incumbents (25:27) What did Palantir get right? (32:30) AI case studies/new possibilities (43:00) The most surprising aspect of the AI wave (46:12) Are we entering a bubble? Or just getting started? (52:40) Biggest concern with AI (58:00) Biggest reason for optimism
American Optimist416,550 views • 3 months ago
🚨NEW: Joe Lonsdale on Tesla terrorism: "That's how authoritarians react, that's how the left reacts... they've tried to bully me, they try to scare my friends from speaking up. Thank goodness Elon Musk is someone who is going to double down and go harder because that's what a real leader does when people try to threaten them." On DOGE's effectiveness: "He's uncovering grift for millions of people.... we've caught departments with nine stories of fancy offices, buying champagne, giving their friends cash with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service... you have a lot of people who, their money faucet - their free money - is being turned off and they're angry, and Elon is the hate figure they're responding to go after." On intimidation tactics: "For the last 10 years I've been speaking up, I've been getting a lot of protests myself... our job as leaders is to role model to those around us, even if they attack you, we're going to fight for our civilization."
American Optimist1,319,595 views • 1 year ago
EPISODE 148: Flying Cars Have Arrived! Joe Lonsdale goes deep into the new age of aviation with JoeBen Bevirt, Founder & CEO of Joby Aviation 00:00 Episode Intro 01:50 What sets $JOBY aircraft apart 04:50 Key partnerships with Toyota & NVIDIA 06:50 Closing in on FAA Type Certification 08:00 Air Taxis coming to 12 states this year! 13:35 Autonomous flight is the future 20:00 Hydrogen aircraft for the Pentagon 24:10 Why AI is a game changer / Our scientists are 10X more productive 28:15 Expansion in Ohio & Global Competition with China 34:40 Addressing critics / future vision 35:50 Making air travel ubiquitous
American Optimist121,880 views • 2 months ago
EPISODE 146: AI, Culture, and Attention as Currency Joe Lonsdale welcomes Jake Paul & GEOFF WOO to Austin 00:00 Episode intro 02:20 On stage with President Trump 06:00 Attention is the most valuable currency 08:00 The origins of Anti Fund and backing OpenAI, Anduril, Ramp, and others 09:10 Betr + Polymarket and the future of prediction markets 14:58 Launching Sora with OpenAI 16:14 Are you worried about AI slop? 19:10 How AI is changing culture; revival of in-person events 21:20 Who should become a creator? 24:30 Fighters as cultural icons 31:30 How to win the culture
American Optimist144,409 views • 2 months ago
🚨EPISODE 144: Moon Bases, Nuclear Power in Space & Returning NASA to Greatness Joe Lonsdale sits down with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman Jared Isaacman Can we beat China back to the Moon? When will we reach Mars? And how close are we to making nuclear propulsion, space colonies, and other sci-fi futures a reality? 00:00 Episode intro 01:30 Top Gun as a service 07:40 Founding a billion-dollar payments company 09:30 Pioneering private spaceflight 12:00 What happened to NASA? 14:40 Getting back to the Moon by 2028 20:47 Jared announces new plans for Artemis 25:15 Building the space economy 27:50 Nuclear power in space 29:00 Sci-fi futures becoming reality
American Optimist163,957 views • 3 months ago
Did Joe Lonsdale predict Trump's plan in Iran? Right before the invasion, he joined Patrick Bet-David and explained how he would handle Iran... Patrick Bet-David: You hear the two arguments: I think they're going to do a surgical mission the way they did Venezuela, and it's going to be clean... And then the other side is like, how do we know that for a fact? Joe Lonsdale: If I were in charge, I'd be very Roman about it. And I don't know, maybe this is not appropriate, but I'd be very Roman. So you know what the Romans would do — you wipe out the leadership class... and you say, 'Okay, you guys are now in charge. We're going to make a deal, or we're going to kill all of you too.' ...Here's what's going to happen, here's how your public is going to work... And if you don't do that, then we'll kill you all in six months too... But I don't think we should be occupying ourselves. That's bullshit. I think Iraq was terribly run... But should these guys, who have acted like they've had, who've brought terrorism around the region, who've tried to kill Trump, who've killed so many people, should they be allowed to get away with that? No way. I wouldn't let them get away with it.
American Optimist137,661 views • 3 months ago
EPISODE 154: Pax Silica vs G7; AI and the New Global Order Joe Lonsdale talks supply chains, the bull case for AI, and diplomacy reimagined with Under Secretary of State Jacob S. Helberg Jacob Helberg (00:00) Episode intro (02:30) Historic deal with the Philippines (05:25) Jacob's background (07:30) Why is Europe falling behind? (13:00) The asymmetric power of tech (15:35) Jacob responds to AI doomers & skeptics (19:15) China, AI, and Diverging Growth (21:45) What is Pax Silica? (23:45) AI and the new global order (29:30) Is China pushing back? (31:45) Optimism for the future
American Optimist25,959 views • 15 days ago
EPISODE 139: Make Government Beautiful and Functional Again Joe Lonsdale sits down with Joe Gebbia First, he digitized the federal retirement process, cutting it down from six months to mere days. Now, as America's Chief Design Officer, he’s set his sights even higher: modernizing the nation’s 27,000 .gov websites and delivering an Airbnb-like experience. (00:00) Episode intro (01:15) Lifelong Democrat to Trump White House (07:50) Text from Elon / Joining DOGE (10:20) “The Mine” & fixing federal retirement (13:50) “What if we did it in a week?” (21:45) What happened to DOGE? (23:30) Becoming America’s Chief Design Officer (26:45) Inside the Oval Office with Pres. Trump (31:00) Fixing 27,000 .gov websites (34:00) Making America beautiful & functional again
American Optimist171,009 views • 4 months ago
EPISODE 138: Joe Lonsdale goes inside the Pentagon with Uber legend-turned-Department of War CTO: Under Secretary of War Emil Michael Can he bring startup speed to the Dept of War? Why redefine the critical technologies list from 14 to six? And how is he investing R&D dollars to bolster the defense industrial base? (00:00) Episode intro (01:40) It's time for disruption (04:20) What did you learn in your first threat briefing? (06:30) Can you bring Uber speed to the Dept of War? (08:45) Redefining the Critical Technologies List (13:30) Hypersonics and Golden Dome (18:00) "Commercial first" approach and changing the culture (23:00) How to recruit the best talent into government (28:45) Optimism for the future
American Optimist148,692 views • 4 months ago
EPISODE 141: Are AI hackers unstoppable? Joe Lonsdale sits down with cybersecurity legend Kevin Mandia What's it like getting hacked by Russia or China? How sophisticated are AI agents becoming? And what's he building to stay ahead of the bad guys? (0:00) Episode intro (1:30) Kevin's journey into cyber; early attacks from Russia & China (5:02) The evolution of cyber espionage and crime (8:09) Founding Mandiant; why Fortune 500 CEOs call Kevin (13:30) What is it like getting hacked by Russia? (21:30) AI hackers are here; Kevin's warning (27:00) Protecting critical infrastructure; AI for cyber defense (31:30) Engineers vs AI agents (36:40) Optimism for the future
American Optimist114,946 views • 3 months ago
🚨NEW: Peter Thiel with Joe Lonsdale on tariffs, trade policy, and China. "You need a very drastic reset with China. In theory, you need to reset with other people, but what we really need to get them to do is also reset things with China." Full episode drops next week! JOE: We've been talking about China on and off for over 20 years, and their imbalances. This week the President declared trade war on them, effectively, with 125% tariffs as of now; it'll probably change in the next few days. What do you think of the trade and tariff policy? What's gonna happen? Bond yields sold off more than I expected. The yields went higher than I expected so far. What's going on? PETER: I'm hesitant to comment since obviously it's a very, very fluid situation, but something like the sort of reset that they're talking about now seems where we're going, where you need a very drastic reset with China. In theory you need to reset with other people, but what we really need to get them to do is also reset things with China. I think the rough numbers are that about a quarter of the US trade deficit is bilaterally with China, but another quarter is indirectly with China. So China is sort of half the problem... And then China is the geopolitical rival. So there's a way in which people in Mercedes in Germany are selling cars to the US. We might want to have those pretty well paying jobs in the US and, and not in Germany. And there are all kinds of sort of mercantilist policies that at the margins Germany engages in. But, you know, it's probably not gonna repurpose the Mercedes factory to build tanks to invade the US or something like this. Whereas this sort of dual use problem is the problem with China. ...There are ways the economic relationship with China is fairly efficient.... if people are working for a dollar and a half an hour in a Foxconn factory, we don't really want to get those jobs in Wisconsin. But it is this geopolitical rivalry where... you have to somehow factor in that the economists never are able to factor in properly with China. I'm not sure I would call this the optimistic plan, but the reset in trade that seems desirable to me would be that we radically changed the relationship with China and we sort of induce a lot of other countries to radically change their relationship with China. And that's how we, you know, maybe that's how we build a stronger western alliance of the free world. JOE: Well there's going to be some interesting negotiations in the next few months. Did you think that we could bring, maybe using AI, some more advanced manufacturing here that was in China? Is that a real thing the next decade to do a bunch more here, thanks to our more efficiencies and productivity? PETER: There's probably always a decent amount of things like that. You have to always be extremely granular on how expensive the robots are, how expensive the equipment is, because in some sense, manufacturing has been getting steadily more automated for 250 years. And you've had the machines that make the machines. The machines that make the machines are getting sort of smarter and more complicated. And there are ways in which AI is a quantum leap. There's a way in which it's just, you know, a natural continuation of this, you know, two century long process. I think there are some parts that can be moved to the US with AI. Maybe also if you change some of the environmental rules and some of the other anti-industrial policies we have in the US. But then if parts of this are moved to other emerging market countries. Vietnam is a communist country. It has bad mercantilist policies, but it's not planning to take over the world. And so at the margins, if we can move things from China to Vietnam, that's a big win.
American Optimist316,973 views • 1 year ago
