Chamath's Pricey Poker Device - Molly Bloom on All In Podcast
#Chamath
2/ #broligarchs weighing in to explain that the new standard for running the largest and most powerful law enforcement agency in the united states is now "innocent until proven guilty"
it's possible #TomHoman didn't even commit a crime here, esp. if he didn't direct any contracts once in office, but even more broadly because #SCOTUS has more or less legalized #bribery in the united states (9-0 decision IIRC - look it up)
but it says a lot about Jason Calacanis and the other "besties" in the nerd reich that the think the kind of person who would accept $50k in cash from people under the impression they were paying a bribe should run law enforcement.
https://x.com/Jason/status/1969515386971251144
#jasonCalacanis #AllInPodcast #Chamath #tomHoman #uspol #uspoiitics
billionaire #broligarch, legendary SPAC fraudster, and co-host of The All-In Podcast with David Sacks #Chamath makes video explaining how easy and cheap it is to buy favours from the Trump administration and complaining the Democrats wouldn't even return his phone calls despite all the money he gave them.
I kind of feel like this video should be turned into a democratic campaign ad.
On the last Friday of September 2023, #Elon #Musk dropped in about an hour late to a dinner party at the Silicon Valley mansion of the technology investor #Chamath #Palihapitiya.
Musk’s visit was meant to be discreet -- Still skittish about getting involved publicly in politics, he told the guests he had to be careful about supporting anyone in the Republican nomination fight.
And yet here he was
— joined by Claire Boucher, the singer known as #Grimes and the mother of three of his children
— at a $50,000-a-head dinner in honor of the presidential candidate #Vivek #Ramaswamy, who was running as an entrepreneur who would shake up the status quo.
As the night wore on, Musk held forth on the patio on a variety of topics, according to four people with knowledge of the conversation:
his visit that week to the U.S.-Mexico border;
the war in Ukraine;
his frustrations with government regulations hindering his rocket company, SpaceX;
and Mr. Ramaswamy’s highest priority, the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy.
Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge.
He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers
Wouldn’t it be great, Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government?
Just give him the passwords, he said jocularly, and he would make the government fit and trim.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
incredible things are happening over on that other app in the aftermath of #Trump's assertion that #Ukraine invaded itself
(see alt-text if you don't know the players here)
https://x.com/Jason/status/1893370262822764991
#DavidSacks #Chamath #JasonCalacanis #Putin #VladimirPutin #Russia #uspol #eupol
when people try to tell you that #DavidSacks and #Chamath are financial experts who should be trusted with the global financial system, remind them that #BenieMadoff’s investors lost less money than people who invested in Chamath’s SPACs.
#ChamathPalihapitiya #uspol #DOGE #broligarchy #broligarchs #nerdReich #SPAC #economics #finance #stockmarket
How JD Vance’s path to being Trump’s VP pick wound through Silicon Valley
Following a brief period of work in corporate law after he graduated Yale, Vance moved to San Francisco and got a job at #Peter #Thiel’s Mithril Capital venture firm in 2015.
After Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller in 2016 and brought him to national prominence, Vance joined the venture capital firm Revolution, founded by the former AOL CEO #Steve #Case.
Vance remained a part of the tech VC world after returning to Ohio and leaving Revolution in early 2020.
He received financial backing from Thiel to co-found the venture firm Narya Capital
– which, like Thiel’s enterprises, was named after an object from The Lord of The Rings, this time a ring of power made for elves.
Other prominent investors in Narya included #Eric #Schmidt, the former Google CEO,and #Marc #Andreessen, a venture capitalist, who announced his own support for #Trump this past week.
The stated goal of Vance’s firm was to invest in early-stage startups in cities that Silicon Valley tended to overlook.
Narya Capital in 2021 led a group of conservative investors,
including Thiel,
to put money into #Rumble, the video streaming platform that positions itself as
a less-moderated and more rightwing friendly version of YouTube.
Vance’s co-founder at Narya, #Colin #Greenspon, touted the investment as a challenge to big tech’s hold on online services
– a frequent conservative talking point during the backlash to content moderation around the pandemic and 2020 presidential election.
It was also around this time that Thiel, who heavily backed Trump financially during the 2016 campaign, brought Vance to first talk with Trump during a secretive meeting at Mar-a-Lago in February of 2021, according to the New York Times.
Vance’s long association with Thiel also proved lucrative during his run for senator in 2022.
Thiel put a staggering $15m into Vance’s campaign and, according to the Washington Post, helped court Trump’s endorsement, leading to Vance winning a tightly contested Republican primary race and then the senate election.
Although Thiel has pledged in recent years to stay out of donations to the 2024 election,
Vance has since flexed his other Silicon Valley connections to ingratiate himself to Trump.
The Ohio senator introduced #David #Sacks, a prominent venture capitalist, to Donald Trump Jr in March, the New York Times reported,
and attended Sacks’ pro-Trump fundraiser in June, co-sponsored by #Chamath #Palihapitiya, Sacks’ co-host on the popular podcast All In.
The event, which cost as much as $300,000 to attend, was held at Sacks’s San Francisco mansion and featured the investor thanking Vance for his help making the fundraiser happen.
During an informal conversation at the dinner, Sacks and Palihapitiya told Trump to nominate Vance as his VP choice.
Sacks spoke at the Republican national convention Monday.
In the days prior, he had also called Trump to advocate for Vance as the VP pick,
as had #Elon #Musk and #Tucker #Carlson, the ex-Fox News host, according to Axios.
Thiel also expressed his support for Vance in private calls with Trump, the New York Times reported.
When Trump confirmed Vance would be his running mate, Sacks and Musk posted fawning celebrations on Twitter
– with Musk saying the ticket “resounds with victory”.
Many of Vance’s wealthy tech elite and venture capitalist supporters now appear to be preparing to offer even more tangible support.
Investors including Musk, Andreessen and Thiel’s co-founder in #Palantir, #Joe #Lonsdale, are all reportedly planning to donate huge sums of money to back the Trump and Vance campaign
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/19/jd-vance-trump-vp-pick-silicon-valley?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The payoff from Thiel’s early gamble in Trump is a lesson that has not passed others by.
As with their other obsession, #crypto, the best time to have invested in Trump was 2016,
and the second best time is today.
We already have a word for what we’re watching now:
it’s #oligarchy.
And we’ve already seen how this plays out.
In Putin’s Russia, political and commercial interests are one and the same.
Thiel is betting
– again
– on the same phenomenon in America.
Betting that he will be first among a new breed of tech bro oligarchs
– a new super-class of #broligarchs.
In Trump’s America, there will be hard choices for everyone, including the billionaires. --
Though it may be less hard for them.
Vance has said he wants to #deregulate crypto and
unshackle AI.
He’s said he’d #dismantle Biden’s attempts to place safeguards around AI development.
And while he has it in for the #legacy #monopolies of Google and Facebook
– the platforms that his ideological bedfellows in the “new right” see as part of the “censorship industrial complex” suffocating rightwing speech
– Silicon Valley is betting on a gloves-off, regulation-free, pro-business #goldrush.
Another Peter Thiel acolyte was on stage at the Republican National Convention last week,
electrifying the crowd:
#Hulk #Hogan.
Hogan is less well known as one of Thiel’s longterm bets, though in some ways he’s even more instructive than Vance.
In 2007, the online magazine #Gawker outed Thiel and ran a series of unflattering articles about him.
It took him years, but he ultimately got his revenge, covertly funding Hulk Hogan to the tune of $10m to sue the publication for invasion of privacy and forcing it into #bankruptcy.
On stage at the RNC, the wrestler, a permatanned orange, ripped off his shirt for the man who increasingly looks like he’ll be America’s next president.
Or, if JD Vance, is correct, the man who will prove to be the #Caesar he says America needs.
A man who he has already urged to fire the nation’s civil servants to
💥 “replace them with our people”,
to defy the courts and rule his own way.
Or, to put this in simple terms:
to foment a #coup.
Thiel knows what every investor knows. That a crisis is an opportunity.
And that if Trump succeeds in tearing up the federal administration,
there is not only billions to be made in the ensuing market #turmoil but that a new breed of oligarchs,
close to Caesar’s throne, will be the first to share the spoils.
And chief among them will be Thiel.
It’s not a stretch to see how #Palantir, his data-mining company
– that under the Conservatives got its teeth into the NHS
– will profile and surveil and target Caesar’s enemies.
And Thiel’s track record in winning, in successfully betting on the longest of odds, on biding his time, is maybe the most chilling of all the factors in a fortnight that has started to feel like the start of a run on the bank.
Biden’s debate disaster,
Trump’s victorious assassination survival,
and now Silicon Valley’s ascension to the presidential ticket.
The broligarchs have made their move
– and the rest of us need to understand exactly what that means.
#tech #elite #Sandberg #Page #Bezos #Peter #Thiel #tech #bro #Vance #Elon #Musk #Marc #Andreessen #Ben #Horowitz #Winklevoss #Chamath #Palihapitiya #David #Sacks #Palantir #Vance #Mithril #Capital #Narya #Capital
Tech broligarchs are lining up to court Trump. And Vance is one more link in the chain
Less than a month after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016,
he invited the cream of Silicon Valley's #tech #elite to a meeting at his transition team’s headquarters at Trump Tower.
It was an awkward affair.
Facebook’s Sheryl #Sandberg, Google’s Larry #Page and Amazon’s Jeff #Bezos had facial expressions that ranged from a semi-rictus grin to full tech-mogul-in-a-hostage-situation.
But then, in a sense they were. There was a new sheriff in town – and none of them had seen him coming.
But one person was in his element. Seated next to Trump, uncomplicatedly beaming, was a South African-born tech entrepreneur whose early investment in Facebook had made him billions.
And if this past week marked an inflection point, and there are many reasons to believe it did,
the seeds of it were planted in the summer of 2016.
This was when Trump was the outside candidate. The man no respectable west coast tech entrepreneur or east coast business elite wanted to touch.
Last week marked a decisive end to that era.
A week in which Donald Trump not only appointed a #tech #bro to be his second in command, choosing Senator JD #Vance to be his VP,
but in which he received the benediction of the tech bro-in-chief, #Elon #Musk.
Musk has said he will donate
💥 $45m a month to Trump’s campaign,
💥though his ongoing endorsement on X,
the platform he bought and owns, is worth countless millions more.
But it’s some lesser-known figures in Silicon Valley who last week boarded the Trump bandwagon who are perhaps even more telling.
#Marc #Andreessen and #Ben #Horowitz, who own one of the most storied and influential venture capital (VC) firms in Silicon Valley,
have declared they’re all in for Trump alongside a host of lesser-known but important names who have either followed suit or who beat them to the punch,
including the #Winklevoss twins and investors and podcast hosts #Chamath #Palihapitiya and #David #Sacks.
Back in 2016, Peter Thiel was the voice in the wilderness. And in that meeting in Trump Tower, it was Thiel’s hand that Trump picked up and stroked.
(And whose data mining firm, #Palantir, picked up billions of dollars in contracts from Trump’s Department of Defense, and, most controversially, Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, where it profiled and surveilled migrants.)
The principle that underpins Silicon Valley investing is to bet early and bet big.
It worked for Thiel with Facebook. It worked for Thiel with Trump. And last week another of his bets paid off, though few could ever have predicted how spectacularly.
Because JD #Vance, the new potential VP, is Thiel’s creature.
He is a man Thiel moulded in his own image through lavish investments in his business and political careers.
Thiel gave Vance a job at his VC firm, #Mithril #Capital, backed him to start his own venture fund, #Narya #Capital, then later invested $15m in his successful run for the senate.
Max Chafkin, Thiel’s biographer, describes Vance as his “extension”.
Even billionaires have to do spon-con.
https://gurupanguji.com/2024/01/30/even-billionaires-have-to-do-spon-con/
This article from the #FT
#financialtimes is making the rounds at Twitter, because folks are busting #chamath on his alleged use of leverage and being margin called on it.
What is also funny is that the comments in this article are almost one-sidedly heavily critical of him.
Even #elonmusk gets a roughly 50-50 mix of supporters/detractors in the comments section.
Imagine a governer of California that personally holds 1,000,000 BTC...
https://decrypt.co/55490/bitcoin-advocate-chamath-palihapitiya-is-running-for-california-governor?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sm
#chamath
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