All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Iran War, Oil Shock, Off Ramps, AI's Revenue Explosion and PR Nightmare
13 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. Freeberg's out saving the world, creating new potatoes, or I don't know, quinoa, maybe some Brussels sprouts. I'm not sure what he's working on at this point in his place.
Chapter 2: What is the economic fallout of the Iran War?
His personal favorite bestie, he always says that, when I'm not here, I want Brad Gerstner in the seat. Welcome back. We haven't seen you on the pod since... Your shout out to the State of the Union. Take us behind the scenes for a brief moment here, Brad, of what it's like to get a shout out from POTUS at the State of... Did you know it was coming? Did you choreograph to this thing?
Did you choreograph that or was that more spontaneous?
I honestly had no idea it was coming. And in fact, I found out after the fact that it wasn't in the speech and the president added it to the speech. So I don't even think it was a few days before going to happen. But we got an invite to the State of the Union. And, you know, listen, it's an institution. This has happened every year for 250 years. in the country. I've never been.
I thought, I did know he was going to talk about Trump accounts.
Chapter 3: What off-ramp strategies are being discussed regarding the Iran conflict?
So I figured if I'm ever going to go, that's the time to go. And I have to say, you know, I'm just a sucker for democratic institutions and democratic traditions. It was an extraordinary night. Set aside, you know, the headlines about what Democrats did or Republicans did. Just the, whether it's a Democrat president or Republican president, that this happens every year.
You have to go report on the State of the Union. So it was a special night. Did dinner ahead of time.
Chapter 4: How are AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI scaling revenue?
We're in the chamber. The chamber, as you all know, is very small. And so, you know, just to your right was the first family and Jared and Ivanka and And so, you know, we were there to observe like everybody else. And wow, it was quite a moment. And- I want to just say, you did a great job because when you sent your heart out to all of America- I took it.
I took it. I took it.
I was like- You sent it out, but you kept it at the right angle. Right, right. If you had just gone up a little bit extra and out another five degrees, you'd be a Nazi.
That would have been no bueno. Those would be some super racist Trump accounts.
Keep your protractor and your ruler out when you send your heart out. Okay. One final thing on it, Jason. You know, we're signing up over 100,000 kids a day to these Trump accounts. Fantastic. We have millions of kids who've already claimed their account.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of AI's PR challenges?
We have nearly 30 million kids in America who are eligible for at least $250. If they just go claim their account, these things are going to go live on July 4th. And what it really showed, I think the country, it accelerated after the State of the Union
Because the president really believes this is a way to get everybody in Main Street America into the game of capitalism and get them all directly owning the great companies in America. So it meant a lot to me in that regard, that it highlights the importance of the program. So I was deeply grateful to the president. for not only making sure this happens, but the shout out. It was pretty cool.
Good for you, bro. I have an interesting idea for you. I'm sure it's come up already, but with this whole discussion of UBI, somebody said to me, oh, you know, I really like these Trump accounts your friends did, the Invest America, because it's like the start of UBI. And I was like, well, that's not exactly the intention, but I get it.
And with wealth disparity going on in the country that has a lot of people concerned, what if there was a giving pledge around equities? And people could opt into it. They don't have to. But if somebody like, I don't know, Larry and Sergey or Zuckerberg said, I want to pledge 5% of my shares to go into kids' accounts over the next 20 years. What an amazing, beautiful thing that could be.
And it would be incredibly material to get whatever it is, a tenth of a share, a hundredth of a share, a thousandth of a share of whatever company. Has that come up yet as an idea? I'm sure it's obvious, right? It's come up.
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Chapter 6: What is the context behind Washington's 'Millionaire Tax'?
Stay tuned. But yes, we're going to have some banger announcements as we head toward July 4th. All right, let's talk about the war in Iran. Obviously, there are much more important issues than financial ones, life, death, the freedom of the people of Iran. But we're uniquely qualified, I think, to talk about the economic fallout, second-order effects, first-order effects.
And there has been massive volatility over the last five trading days. Just talking about Brent crude oil, and we'll key the discussion off of that. type of oil, it spiked to $84 on Friday, that was day seven of the war 119 on Monday, day 10, drop back down to 84, jump back up to 100 after three commercial ships were hit in the street on Wednesday.
Those ships, by the way, were not oil tankers, they were carrying cargo, they were flagged as Thai, Japanese and Marshall Islands. Brent crude currently at 99. When we're taping this, it'll be at something different by the time you listen to the pod, I'm sure. But it's quite a spike. And here's a second chart. This shows you the spikes over time.
I was old enough to remember the oil shock of 1978. We had to get in line at the gas station based on your license plate number. And you had to wait an hour or two to get gas. Gulf War, obviously, it hit $100 and $26. 2008, we hit kind of a peak. moment, $216 in today's dollars. That was the peak oil discussion. Demand from China went off the charts.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, we hit 115, which would be 133 in today's dollars. So This is not new, but it is significant and breaking news today. Iran's new supreme leader, Moshe Taba, says he's keeping the Strait closed as a tool to pressure the enemy.
Wall Street Journal on Thursday quoted a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute saying that reopening the Strait will require ground troops polymarked. 27% chance that US forces enter Iran by the end of March and 57% by the end of the year. So the sharps over a poly market, believe we will have boots on the ground. Let me stop there.
Brad, your thoughts on what happens when oil hits this kind of number. And we have this uncertainty of Hey, this could last, you know, two more weeks, or it could last six months, it could last a year. Nobody seems to know. And how it resolves, we just had a really interesting talk with Graham Allison, how it resolves is also a major unknown. Your thoughts?
So first is, obviously, there are huge direct costs as oil prices go up, right? Oil is a component of a lot of consumer consumption. you know, and enterprise products, and it also hurts consumer confidence, enterprise confidence. Goldman Sachs is out today with some analysis, where they updated kind of the economic knock on effects, right?
So they raised their PC inflation forecast from 2.1 to 2.9, right for the year.
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Chapter 7: How does the millionaire tax impact wealthy individuals like Howard Schultz?
So that's a huge jump, right in terms of their expected you know, PC inflation core PC, which excludes oil, okay, is they forecasted up from 2.2 to 2.4. So they're saying even if you excluded the direct price of oil, the knock on effects is going to cause a little more inflation, they lower their GDP forecast by 30 basis points for the year.
And they also expect higher unemployment as a result of this for the year. All of that is weighing on the sentiment in the market. Remember, just a few months ago, the S&P peaked at 24 times. Now we're at 21 times. But I think the market may be getting a little bit wrong, right? The Trump doctrine, you know, I tweeted about this last week.
I think the Trump doctrine is far more pragmatic than the neocon doctrine. I think Trump has a very limited set of goals. He wants to destroy and degrade threats to America's national security interests. He doesn't want to spread democracy. So my suspicion is that these impacts are shorter duration.
But right now, the market's having a little bit of post-traumatic stress, flashbacks to Afghanistan and Iraq, and wondering if we might be wandering into a quagmire. All right. And just, he may not, in terms of the doctrine, he has said he wants to see the people rise up there. So it might be splitting hairs, but I think he might actually be for regime change.
He says he wants the regime to change. All else being equal, I don't think he minds if the people bring it to themselves. The question is whether the U.S. is going to, you know, put boots on the ground and try to spread Madisonian democracy like the Cheney doctrine was. And I think this is very different. Chamath, your take on the economic impact and
you know, and any other things you'd like to add about the war in Iran?
I think the most important thing that I saw this week was, I think President Trump was asked about the war, and he said the war would be over very soon. What did the market do? The market literally took oil from 120 a barrel to 90 a barrel, almost in, you know, nanoseconds. I think that that sort of tells you what everybody thinks.
To the extent that the market really didn't believe it, oil would not have budged. And if anything, it would have faded those comments and you probably would have seen oil stay at around 120 or even go slightly higher. So the fact that there was this reflexive move I think is a belief by a lot of the sharps that there is no path to a sustained conflict.
There's going to be a lot of chest bumping from the Iranians, obviously, because they need to save face and they will want to set up whoever comes next to have the most successful chance of governing. So my perspective is that was a trial balloon. I think it validated what everybody thought, which is that this is going to be a short run thing. I agree with that.
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Chapter 8: What are the potential consequences of AI on job security?
And I think that all of this, Venezuela and Iran together, is all about China.
Let me just say one thing as to that, Chamath, because I think the point is absolutely spot on, right? Probably the single greatest takeaway for us from an investment perspective at the start of this war was that the Chinese, right, didn't take up arms on behalf of Iran, aren't defending Iran, and they didn't cancel the summit with the president.
Because they need him. They need the oil. 20% of their entire domestic consumption is oil from Venezuela and Iran. 20%, but it's not 20% because it's literally 100% of anything that's feedstock, anything that's transport, cars, buses, planes. They are in an enormous world of hurt.
Now, they have a strategic petroleum reserve as well, and it's quite robust, but it's not robust enough to sustain five or six months of this. It's not that robust. So at the end of the day, who is going to be hurting the most? It is China. And so if you play this game theory out, the reason he kept it is because now he needs to summit even more. Could you imagine if the president canceled?
That would be a disaster for the Chinese. So the fact that it's still on the books, if I was Xi, I'd be like, how do I negotiate and help find the off ramp? How do I end up fixing this faster? All right. Remember, you have 25% unemployment of young men inside of China. 25% today. What do you think it goes to in five months with no oil? That's the unemployment rate you should be focused on, Jason.
Oh, the China issue is a separate one. It's not separate. No, no. That was separate from my point is my point. I was bringing up a different point.
Yeah, your kitchen sink didn't include the Chinese.
I get that. I'm just adding to your kitchen sink. I didn't have a kitchen sink. I have four very salient points. All right, Sax, I'll give you the final word here.
Well, look, that was a bit of a broadside, J. Cal, where you kind of did kitchen sink it. But look, here's the part I'll agree with you about, which is it doesn't take a political genius to understand that long wars are unpopular. It will hurt the Republicans in the midterms or 28 if this does turn into a long war. Fortunately, I think the president understands that.
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