All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Bernie Sanders: Stop All AI, China's EUV Breakthrough, Inflation Down, Golden Age in 2026?
19 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What are Bernie Sanders' views on AI and data centers?
All right, everybody. Welcome back to your favorite podcast, the number one podcast, in fact, in the entire universe, the all in podcast with your besties. We're all here. It's the original quartet. Everybody loves when the core four are here and we have a docket for you today. Guys, we got to start out with Bernie Sanders. I know this is becoming a bit repetitive, but AI is the topic.
We reached a new level of retardation this week that we cannot avoid. Bernie Sanders has a major decel pitch, a moratorium on new AI data centers. Here's his argument. Number one, the billionaires are pushing AI because they want more money and power. Number two, it's going to be massive unemployment. And he cites Gates, Stario, Elon, saying that AI would replace most jobs. Number three,
He has an interesting point, actually. AI is harmful to kids because it decreases social interaction. Actually, we kind of agree with that one, I think, across the board.
Chapter 2: How is AI sentiment influenced by special interests?
But here's his pitch, Sax.
Speak for yourself.
You want your kids using these chatbots?
No, I've talked to my kids about it. Oh, okay. We'll get into it. We can get into it, but I've talked to them about it. Look, if you actually look at the data, if you look at what kids are doing, it's so much more interactive and engaging for them to talk to their friends on Snap or to watch videos on TikTok. Those things are super engaging.
Whereas doing research on an AI chatbot is just, it's way less engaging. And you see this in the data. So I'm not saying there's not an issue there. You want to pay attention to the way that these technologies are shaping the minds of young kids. But I think people get a little bit confused. What they're really talking about is social media.
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Chapter 3: Are we entering a 'Golden Age' economically?
And then they attribute all the ills of social media over to these new AI chat apps. And they are a little different. You know, when I asked my kids, like, How much do you use these things? Are they addictive? They said, no, they're more just really useful. It's like Google. It's like I couldn't do school without it.
Yeah, there's two pieces here. One, using AI to be smarter and to learn stuff and ask questions. Absolutely fantastic. Phenomenal. I think we'll all agree on that. There is, and I don't know if this is actually what he was referencing, but there's character AI in a long tail of spicy chats where people, we talked about getting one-shotted and these parasocial relationships.
That's, I think, what he's referring to, but maybe I'm reading it wrong. But let's get into it here. His pitch is, is that we need to slow down so that, quote, democracy can catch up and that Congress should put a moratorium on new data centers. That's his solution. He got roasted, obviously, on social media for this. It's the most absurd, I think, solution to what are valid concerns.
Friend of the pod, Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, he I guess, supported a bit. And then he replied to me and says his concerns are not as acute and that he just wants to make sure we use renewable energy, which I guess is, you know, a fine position to have. Polymarket put up a little market here. AI data center moratorium passed before 2027. Yeah, we'll see if that comes true or not.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of China's breakthrough in AI lithography?
But hey, Saks, you are our SGE. Saks, our SGE, this is your time to shine. You have framed the AI debate as we can't lose to China. Bernie framed it as not letting the billionaire class get more power and money by eliminating American jobs. And last week on this very program, Tucker framed it as what are Americans going to get out of this, right?
That was the framing, you know, as of December of 2025. So here's your chance, Sax. Why should Americans who have some concerns about losing their jobs care about beating China? Why should they care about that, Sax?
Why should they care about beating China? Because AI is a profound technology. It's going to have huge economic and national security implications. And the thing that Bernie gets wrong is that he can't stop the progress. I mean, he can't stop China from making progress. We can stop progress in the U.S., but it's not going to stop China from advancing these technologies.
A lot of this is just math. And just because we stopped doesn't mean China's going to stop. So this would be the biggest own goal ever if we took our leadership in the AI race and just handed it to China. But look, I appreciate Bernie's honesty in a way, because he is actually telling the truth about what he wants. And I remember just a week ago,
When President Trump signed an executive order to advance a national AI framework, a lot of critics and a lot of Democrats were saying this was a violation of states' rights and we need to support the states in regulating AI.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of China's advancements in AI for the US?
And here Bernie is acknowledging that this is not about states' rights because he's saying that there needs to be a moratorium on new data centers, even if the states want them. So he doesn't support states' rights either. He just wants all the progress to stop. And I think this is really the truth of the matter is that all this talk about states' rights or affordability, it's all a red herring.
And what's really going on is there's a large and growing contingent of people who just want all the progress to stop. But again, we can't stop China from making progress. So all they would be doing is ceding leadership of this AI race to China. What people like Bernie really want is they want the U.S. to become like Europe. Europe has half the share of global GDP that they had 30 years ago.
And that's because of their hostility towards innovation and technological progress. And that's kind of where Bernie wants us to be is he wants us to go down the path of Europe. And the reason he says is because God forbid someone gets rich. Well, Look, capitalism sometimes results in the unequal distribution of wealth, but socialism always results in the equal distribution of poverty and misery.
And if the U.S. stops developing AI, if we hand this leadership to other countries, it'll make the United States poor, it'll make the American people poor, and it will cede our leadership globally. We will not be the preeminent power in the world anymore. Okay. So I'll stop there.
No, no, it's great. Thank you, SGE. David Sachs of Greenberg. There seems to be a couple of conversations. Unfortunately, we weren't here last week, but we had a really nice visit from our pal Tucker. And we talked about this. He seemed to think there was a bit of a communication problem. with selling to the public the value of these technologies. Do you agree with that?
And what do you think is going on here in terms of the cross conversations? One group wants to de-sell, has some concerns, environmental, job displacement, et cetera. And then is there an issue where the China, beating China doesn't resonate with the American populace you've been harping on about the rise of socialism for four plus years on this very podcast?
So
From where you sit, what's the actual disconnect in these multiple conversations that are going on concurrently and seemingly coming to a head here at the end of 2025?
Well, if you ask any of the politicians that are making these proclamations about the, quote, tech barons and try and actually talk to them about what is the AI technology delivering, what is it not delivering, you kind of typically hit a wall pretty quickly. It's very hard for folks to articulate what is actually happening.
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Chapter 6: How does the economic situation affect job markets?
Peter Thiel said this best. He's like, look at all the money that's going into AI. There's really only one company that's making any money and that's Nvidia. Like at this point, the jury's still out. We don't even know what AI is. It's sort of like when the internet was happening, Everyone thought these fiber optic switch companies were going to make all the money. Turns out that was wrong.
It was the end applications that made all the money. And they competed in many different markets from Google to Amazon to Uber. You can go down the list of all the beneficiaries of the core infrastructure technology of the internet that was built out. So what is really going on? Well, AI is the new lightning rod.
for fear and for divisiveness that ultimately breeds compliance and control, which is where these politicians are trying to drive the populace and the voting conditions in the United States. And that's what's going on right now. There's a lot of fear about, oh, putting this data center in my town is gonna do X or Y or Z with no real conversation about the truth of that matter.
There's a lot of fear about wealth creation being aggregated in the hand of a few when, as we saw with the internet, it benefited the many. And that fear mongering is a very similar tactic that we've seen in the prior generations, where policies were misstated, fear was used, and then voting control allowed folks to come to power that were looking for power.
So I think it's just the lightning rod at the moment.
Okay, Chamath, what's your take on this big picture? What's going on here? I think it's important to understand that politicians have an incredible sense of self-preservation. So the question is, why would Bernie Sanders think he would not look totally foolish in putting that video out? And the reason it went viral is not because it sounded so crazy.
It was that to some faction and percentage of people, it sounded rational and reasonable. And the problem that highlights is that we have a huge perception issue in AI. We have a handful of companies. All the PR that you see from those handful of companies is a bunch of circular deal-making, a bunch of capital that flows from one to the other.
It causes these stocks to go up of which a small percentage of people benefit. And at the tail end of it, it's accompanied by a completely different set of articles that everybody also reads about this sort of Damocles that's about to fall on their head, whether it's electricity prices or whether it's their jobs or whether it's the jobs of their children or the quality of their education.
So we have a big perception problem. So the question at hand is how do we fix it? How do we get back to the place where a video talking about stopping all progress would seem as laughable as it should be?
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Chapter 7: What are the recent economic indicators telling us about inflation?
And then beating China, respectfully, is important. SACs, super important. I can intellectually agree with you on that. But if you lose your job and your kids can't get a job, that's, that's, that's existentially. Yes. It's not, my child needs a job next year.
They're graduating from school with a hundred thousand dollars in debt and my energy bills going up and my grocery bills are going up and they haven't come down. That's what Americans are experiencing. And yeah, maybe giving, uh, I think you also made an interesting point there too, about the libraries.
The war with China is existential because if we can keep it on the battlefield of AI and intellectual and economic prowess, we have a very good chance of winning. If it devolves and all of a sudden becomes a different kind of battle, that's bad for everybody, especially our children and our children's children. So we need to win the current game on the field.
But in order to do that, we need to change these misperceptions. We need to start showing tactical artifacts that show that this is a dividend that can benefit everybody. And we need to start now. I'm just putting it out there. We have so much cash on the balance sheets of these companies. Wall Street values it at zero.
If you look at the enterprise value of any of these companies and you do a sum of the parts, nobody cares about that cash. So we need to start using that cash more effectively.
What's the equivalent of the library metaphor here for you, Jamath? Do you have any ideas?
I'm not going to front run what's being worked on, except to say that the leaders of these companies have gotten the message.
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Chapter 8: How does the discussion about moving to Texas reflect broader trends?
They are working on... A whole host of solutions. And again, we're fighting misperception, which is a complicated battle, but it's winnable. And I think you're going to start to see stuff in the new year.
Yeah, I would say education is at the top of that list. Sax, your thoughts here as we wrap on this first topic?
I'm not sure whether to address the particular hoaxes or the fact that there's a larger effort here to try and discredit AI and get AI development to stop entirely. Let's talk about some of these particular hoaxes.
So on the job loss claim, I feel like I do this every week now, but there's a new study from Vanguard where they analyze job growth and wage growth in occupations that are highly exposed to AI automation versus all occupations. And they find that both job growth and wage growth is higher, not lower, in the occupations that are exposed to AI.
So if you look at job growth in occupations exposed to AI, it's 1.7% compared to 0.8% for other For wage growth, it's 3.8% versus 0.7% for other.
So what you see here is something, maybe it's counterintuitive, but it makes sense to me, which is as you make workers more productive, the value of their labor increases, not decreases, and they end up getting paid more and you want to hire more of them. So this is a huge narrative violation. Again, this is coming from Vanguard, and it's showing that AI productivity is good for workers.
This follows on the heels of that study from Yale Budget Lab, which I talked about in a previous show, that it said there's no discernible disruption to the job market based on 33 months of data after the launch of ChatGPT. Now, I understand that you can make predictions as to the future that this state's going to change, that there will be AI job loss.
But what I'm saying is that if you look at the data so far, there is no AI job loss. Quite the opposite. It's job growth and job gains. By the way, We have a 2% tailwind to GDP growth right now that's coming from this AI boom, this CapEx boom that's happening. And so this is, I think, a very good thing for the US economy. Now, why do people want to sabotage it?
There's a really interesting article in Semaphore recently that described how AI critics were funding journalism fellowships at major publications like NBC News, Bloomberg, Time, The Verge, LA Times, which by the way, I mean, I track these things are relentlessly negative about AI.
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