In conversation with Sheryl Sandberg, plus open-source AI gene editing explained

David Sachs had a last minute board meeting, so he will not be joining us.

I'll be David Sachs.

Please do your best impression.

Can you imagine?

Hi, Jason. Hello, sister.

How are you? Jason, do you know what I'm about to do? I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Tell me.

Do you remember Fake Chamath?

Of course, yes. Do we have a login?

Do you know who that is? Of course, right? Oh, you're going to reveal who Fake Chamath is? I'm revealing.

Oh, wow. It's a big reveal. I mean, if we- I got to get- Later. I want that handle. I would like to get that handle.

And give it to somebody.

I can hand it to you, whoever you want.

Well, trust me, there's a lot of people who would love to have the fake Chamath handle.

Well, how do I get it? Do I ask the, can I ask.

Linda at Twitter for it?

Yeah.

You know, we might know somebody at.

Twitter who can reach out to Linda. Maybe you can help me.

I am so credible as the person who deserves that password. Of all the people who've suffered spending time with Chamath, you're at the top of that list. If anybody has the right to mock Chamath, I mean, you've had to watch his growth over 20 years. You've had to suffer.

I raised him. I raised Shamoth, and he raised me right back.

Right.

We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man David S.

And instead, we opened sources to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

Love you, guys.

Queen of Kinwah. All right, welcome back to the program, everybody. One of the guests we've always dreamed about having on the show is considered one of the great business operators of all time in Silicon Valley. For the past 20 years, Sheryl Sandberg was a key, some might say the key, piece in building the two largest advertising and technology companies in the world, Google and Facebook. Paradoxically, they don't go by those names anymore, Alphabet and Meta. When she joined Google in 2001, it had 20 million in revenue. They were private. and when she left in 2008, they had $22 billion in revenue. When she joined Facebook in 2008, it was at $270 million in revenue. When she left, it was at $117 billion. Market caps of those two companies have grown $100 billion and $950 billion during her tenure, and today both are worth over $3 trillion combined and are the number four and number seven market cap companies in the world. However, to our crew, she will always be bestie Dave Goldberg's dream girl, as he once described it to me. He told me he pursued her relentlessly until she finally gave in, dated, and then married him and started a beautiful family together. Dave Goldberg passed away nine years ago this week in 2015. In an alternate universe on a different timeline, Goldie would have been one of the four people on this panel because he was the most wise, funny, Supermensch of the entire 10 person core poker group, the original poker group. In fact, he was twice the man of any of us, which given the low benchmark we've set, isn't that difficult. We can get at least three shows worth the wisdom from our current guest. But that's not why she's joining us today. She made a documentary and we're here to talk about that. And we'll have some time for business talk at the end, which is going to be a very hard pivot given the nature of the doc. The doc she co-produced is called Screams Before Silence. I watched it on the flight back from New York. I had to take three breaks, and it took a lot of tissues, if I'm being honest. It is one of the most difficult hours of viewing I've ever had in my life. It is focused on the sexual violence committed by Hamas during and after the October 7th attacks, and which, tragically, in all likelihood continues today. with the hostages who are still somewhere in Gaza. The documentary also takes on claims in our polluted, journalistic, conspiracy filled media landscape that claim none of this happens. She traveled to Israel to conduct interviews for it. And outside of comforting the victims, she spends less than 90 seconds speaking in it herself. The stories, of course, speak for themselves. Now, this isn't a disclaimer, but some context about this podcast for those of you who are here for the first time. might be helpful. We realize we're wading into a conflict that is thousands of years old, and it's shrouded in pain and suffering with a foundation on the most deeply held religious beliefs humanity has ever formed. When we do podcasts like this and have guests, we'll be championed by one side and derided by the other. But as you know, we don't shy away from the hard discussions on this podcast. We go all in on them. Equal time will always be given, and we welcome all sides on these difficult discussions. It goes without saying, that we're not here to be your expert or final authority. We're here to have a first principle discussion and to personally learn alongside each other in good faith. In good faith. This is a really important concept because it's hard to have these discussions in good faith today. So with that, I'll welcome to the All In podcast, our bestie, Sheryl Sandberg.

Well, saying two things you just said that Dave would have been on this podcast, I've thought that actually. And calling me a bestie, because I've been friends with all of you for so long, means a lot to me. Jason, you dedicated your book to Dave. That meant everything to me. David Freiberg and I have been traveling around together to conferences, sitting in the backseat of cars, and Chamath, it's a really special moment to be here with you. We lost Dave nine years ago yesterday. We were at our dear friend Phil Joch's 50th birthday party. It happened suddenly. I was in shock. Everyone was in shock. Chamath sprung into action. took care of every logistical thing you could have possibly needed. But then he did something, you did something, Shamath, even more important, which is you showed up for my children. Not just for the days and weeks, but for the months and years afterwards. And one of the many things you did is you taught them to play poker. Because what you said is if Dave were alive, he would have taught them to play poker. And last night on the ninth anniversary of his loss, my kids were in that room playing poker. And that is very much to your credit, Shamath. And I will always Always be grateful for that and grateful, Jason, to David and all of us for Dave. So the world lost something really big when we lost Dave. And I think a lot of people know a lot of the things we lost. I lost an amazing husband and father to my children. You all lost a best friend. The world lost a lot of wisdom. But there's actually one thing that the world also lost that we've never shared. And I'm prepared To reveal right now, right here, right now. Because last night, Rob Goldberg, Dave's brother and I decided- We decided it was time to share. People may have known there was a fake Chamath Twitter handle. I built Facebook, Rock the Angel World, and now on the Warriors. My motto, don't be a d bag, that's my job. And people have questioned who this was. I mean, some people think it was Jason Calcanis, some people think it was- An obvious choice. All right, I gotta say, some people think it was Chamath himself.

But you know what?

The number one choice, yeah.

The number one choice. Yeah.

Dave was fake Chamath.

Now, he didn't write all the tweets himself. I know all of you helped him, but he wrote a bunch of them and he used to literally lie in bed next to me, write something, and just big Bella. Remember Dave's big laugh? He would laugh out loud. God. And there are so many things the world lost, but can you guys imagine the field day Dave, AKA fake chamath, would be having with this podcast.

Oh, my God.

Field day. Field day.

Field day.

This is a great one. All he'd have to do is just take excerpts from the show and put them on.

I mean, it's one of the great things about the, the great challenge. I remember workshopping some tweets here with Dave, with Goldie, and the, the, the big laugh we would have. And David Lee from the Warriors was involved in this michigan. I mean, we just had, like, a whole group who lived to write these tweets. And sometimes Chamath's tweets were so insane and deranged that we couldn't top them. So basically, we tried to come up, like this one from fake Chamath. Pinterest is the new hot company. This is a great one. Pinterest is a new hot company in the valley. I don't understand why a site for girls with cats is worth 300 million. Now that's something that would be a benign tweet from Real Chomar. Here's a great one from October 29, 2011. A lot of demand for me to appear in commercials like others, but I am holding out for Cartier. Mercedes is beneath me. I mean, this predated all, Laura Piana. Laura Piana, yeah.

Free brand, you got this next one.

Give us a story.

There is a Laura Piana one in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Reason number 756 to go to Vegas, no sales tax on Laura Piana. This was in 2012, by the way. Very precious. If you dress like me, I won't initially think you are a d-bag.

And there's no way Dave knew what Laura Piana was. There's no way Dave wrote this.

Someone else wrote this one for sure. Absolutely.

Who was ahead of the time on Laura Piana at that time? Very good. I mean, it's just incredible. People think the Laura Piana thing is like recent history.

It was 12 years ago. I mean, this is when-- get-- I.

Mean, Cheryl, before we get started here.

It'S such a-- wait, Cheryl should read that last one. That's really good. All right, Cheryl, you get the last one. My newest investment is so good, jet time. You can random video chat with other people who are also on their private jet. G 55 to Hawker. Yeah, Dave. So good. Dave loved this group of friends and he loved being fake Chamath. Yeah, loved it.

Anyway, the secret's out. The secret's out. My guess is that Twitter handle is about to get popular again.

It's going to get pretty popular. And I will just say, as much as Dave loved being fake Chamath, He could, it's like half the amount Chamath loves being at Chamath. So let's just keep that in mind here, folks. Oh my God, I haven't cried and laughed so hard in five minutes as I did just now. I mean, actually in some ways, Cheryl, you're our fifth bestie as well. You're always welcome to come on the pod. And I just also for a little bit of housekeeping here, when guests come on this podcast, We don't pre vet questions. No questions are off limits and nobody gets to strike or do anything nonsensical with the product. Everybody comes here to work.

We're not journalists. We're not journalists. We're not traditional journalists. We're friends talking, trying to understand stuff. And just to be clear, I know a lot of commentary comes back, well, why didn't you say this or ask this? And, you know, I think we're just.

When we have guests on, we just want to talk with them like we would in a living room and have a conversation. So, right. which means no gotcha journalism. Although I'll ask a tough question once in a while that may get me in a little bit of trouble. But David Freeberg, you set this all up. And I know you and Cheryl have been talking about these important issues. And of course, we're gonna have all sides on so you don't have to email me and say, what about this side? What about that side? All sides are welcome to come on the pod. But Freeberg, why don't you kick us off here? We're gonna talk about this important film. and a lot of the debates going on about this horrific attack on October 7th and then what's going on in Gaza today. But then we also are going to try to make that hard pivot to business and get some of Cheryl's insights on what's happening in the world today of business. So, Freeberg, why don't you kick us off?

Well, I just want to zoom out because I think Cheryl, we had, I believe, a couple of conversations after October 7th. amongst other folks, I've heard that there's been a lot of disappointment that institutions, organizations, ideologies that have been supported by folks like yourself, or maybe you can speak, I don't want to put words in your mouth, suddenly emerged to be something quite different when threads of antisemitism started to emerge and folks began to deny certain things based on their ideology about the oppressor oppressed concept being applied to Israel and Palestine. And maybe you can tell us a little bit about the surprise and journey that you've been through since October 7th with respect to some of the groups that you've supported that suddenly seem quite different than what maybe we all thought they were.

Look, it's a great question because, I.

Mean, sorry, and that's the conversation Cheryl and I have been having that led to saying, hey, why don't you come on the show this week and let's talk about this and other topics, particularly given the timing with the release of the film.

It's a great question. I mean, if you had told me on October 6th, the following is going to happen. Terrorists are going to parachute into Israel. They are going to kill 1,200 people. They are going to sexually brutalize, brutalize and rape multiple women and men. I would have said, you,'re crazy. Then if you would have told me that people were going to deny the reports were going to start coming out, people were going to say, I'm a first responder. I saw naked bodies. I saw women bloodied, legs spread. But then people were going to deny that this happened. I would have said you were crazy. And then if you had told me that what we would be doing on college campuses is not protesting sexual violence as a tool of war by the hands of Hamas, Hamas, misogynistic, homophobic terrorists who are right now holding not just Israelis, but Americans hostage. Yet we would be protesting and college kids would be screaming, we are Hamas. I would have said you were crazy. And that's hit me hard. And for me as a woman, as a very outspoken feminist, it's all hard, but the part that has hit me the hardest is the denial of the sexual violence. That has just been horrible. And so the reports were coming out in November, I wrote an op-ed. And what my op-ed said was, no matter what you believe should happen in the Middle East, I believe in a two-state solution. No matter what flag you're flying, march you're going to, you can all be united on one thing, which is sexual violence should never be used as a tool of war. Then I did a video that went pretty viral, but people are denying it and they're attacking articles and attacking reports. And so I went to Israel and I sat down myself with a video crew. This was generously financed by this great philanthropist, Joey Low and his wife. And I sat down there and I asked people, what did you see with your own eyes? We sat down with a released hostage who told her story. And this is because people are actually denying or ignoring this. And that is a horrible place for us to be and truly shocking, truly shocking.

Let's double click into that word denial. So it's a very heightened moment. Everybody is taking sides. Everybody's trying to interpret what they think is the right point of view, whether it's in that moment or historically in the arc of how Israel and Palestine have been in conflict. Where does that aspect of denial come from? Have you spent time trying to unpack, like, how do you start to get to a place where you say, clearly people were killed, But then when it goes into war crimes and sexual violence, we're actually gonna stop it there because it basically pulls our cause back. So we can't agree that that actually happened. How does that happen? Why is that happening?

I mean, you're framing exactly right, Shamath. That's exactly what happened. So, I mean, you all talk about this a lot, but there's huge polarization. What does that mean? Polarization means I have a view that is so firmly entrenched that I see the word as black and white, everything has to fit into my view and my narrative. And when it doesn't fit, I don't know what to do, so I reject it. And that's, I think, what's happening. That there are people out there who believe that October 7th was resistance. I want to be clear, I'm not that person. I do not believe that. I'm horrified by what's happening in Gaza. Every life lost is too much. I want two states living peacefully beside each other. I really want that. But let's say you think October 7th was resistance. Then all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, mass rape, genital mutilation of men and women, women and men, women tied to trees, naked, bloody, legs spread. That doesn't fit your narrative. So what can you do? You can wow, think maybe the world isn't so black and white. Maybe I have to rethink my narrative. or you can say this didn't happen. And I think it is a travesty and a tragedy that anyone could say that. And I wanna be clear, Jason, you started this by saying you always have positions, you always give people room for two sides, and that's fantastic. I think there are not just two sides, multiple sides to the Middle East story, multiple sides to the history, multiple sides of what's been going on. There are not two sides on this. This is sexual violence. There is one side, one side, and we are against it. And that's relatively new in the world. To take you back, quick history lesson, which you all know, but I'd love for all your viewers to know. For a long time, the history of mankind, women's bodies were part of war. You got the village, you got the gold, you got the women. And it was only 30 years ago, after the mass rapes of the DRC, Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia, that people said, No, rape is not a tool of war. We will prosecute it as a war crime and a crime against humanity. And the feminist groups were the ones who made that happen. The civil rights groups, the human rights groups, they've held since then in this moment, if our politics drive us to give that up, think about what we give up. Because as we're doing this podcast right now, there are hostages in Gaza that we know are being sexually assaulted There are women in Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, around the world who are being sexually assaulted right now, right now. And we can't let that go. This is the one place we need to be united.

Why are the feminist groups finding themselves aligning more with Hamas than they are with this core, what seems to be and should be a core ideology?

So look, we can't paint them all with one brush. There are feminist groups that have spoken out on this that have said, you.

Know.

Now did it, the new NARAL did it. They said, we are against the sexual violence, care did it. There are groups that have done it no matter what else they're working on. A bunch of them have said to me privately, I know you're right. Of course sexual violence isn't okay and of course this happened, but I can't speak out because all my employees are gonna get upset. I can't speak out because the young people, and that makes me really sad.

But explain that. What does that mean? Young people will be upset to know that both things happen.

You've got to be able to hold two thoughts at the same time. Again, not my thought, but if you believe October 7th is resistant, you can still believe sexual violence happened. The fact that a group of feminists, none I'm particularly close to, have actually signed letters saying, this didn't happen is crazy. Absolutely crazy. I mean, look, I'm gonna read this. The UN special representative on sexual violence, Pramila Patel, traveled to Israel, and here is what she wrote. She said, I witnessed in Israel were scenes of unspeakable violence perpetrated with shocking brutality. Catalog of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture, and other horrors, including sexual violence. That's the UN. They're not exactly a pro-Israel group.

Cheryl, let me ask, 'cause I think it's important to note some people will counter and say, look at this article from Grayzone. Grayzone said Western media concocts evidence that the UN report on October 7 sex crimes failed to deliver for March 7. They said Western media promoted a UN report as proof Hamas sexually assaulted Israelis, yet the report's authors admitted they couldn't Locate a single victim suggested Israeli officials staged a rape scene and denounced inaccurate forensic interpretations. I just want to give you an opportunity to respond to Grey Zone's article, because I think a lot of folks have pointed to that article and the articles that that organization has put out as being representative of an alternative view that the sexual violence may maybe didn't happen as evidenced in your film.

Maybe you can address it, give you a chance to do that.

Yeah.

Well, the key thing you said there is Where are the, they're asking, where are the victims? Well, let me tell you where the victims are. They're dead. They're dead. That is why we called this film, sorry, Screams Before Silence. I have a story in this film, this woman, Tali, I went with her to the trailer where she hid. She was at the Nova Film Festival. She's a nurse. She hid in a trailer. I walked in with her to that trailer the first time she'd been in there, and you could see her body, like, shake, and she, This didn't make the final cut of the film, but she picked up a black sweater. And I think she might have been wearing that sweater. I was afraid to ask her, but she was like shaking. She hid in that trailer for, I don't know, five, six, seven hours. And she heard, sometimes she would hear a little scream, like, Ah, someone's pointing a gun at you in a shot. But sometimes she would hear a scream over and over and over. Stop, stop. And then for like long period, like 15 minutes, and then a shot. And then when she got out of that trailer, there were naked bodies where she heard those screams. The victims are dead. Most of them are dead. There is exactly one person who has an escaped to a released hostage. Her name is Amit Sasanah. She gave a video interview. You all saw it. We have the only video interview in this documentary. And she tells her story very clearly. She was held hostage for months. She was chained to a bed. And as she said it, her captor forced him to commit a sexual act on her. This woman is so brave. And she told me she's speaking out because there are still hostages there, but she is the only living witness who'd speak out. We think there are a few more who are in deep trauma, but there were 1,200 people killed. And at least dozens of them were sexually brutalized, assaulted. And that is why they're not speaking out.

Just as a follow up, what is the social and political motivation of a group like Grey Zone and other appointed deniers? What are they trying to accomplish by denying?

They're trying to accomplish their narrative that October 7th was justified resistance. Because even they understand that it is.

Not- It taints it, because the sexual violence taints it in a way, right? As opposed to just being soldiers killing soldiers. The sexual violence aspect of it paints the valor of the resistance. Is that a fair way to summarize it?

Yes, even they don't believe. And it's interesting, Hamas has been proudly talking about who they killed, but even they deny the sexual violence. That wouldn't happen. It's against our religion. The sexual violence doesn't fit the narrative. But I wanna be clear, the sexual violence was multiple locations. systematic meets the definition of a war crime, a crime against humanity, and was part of the plan.

If there was no sexual violence, would it be fair to call it a resistance?

I would not call it a resistance.

One of the things that happened after the Holocaust was there was still a small cohort of people that denied that it ever happened. And I think that there was, to use the word systematic again, A systematic effort to document, right? There's pictures, there's museums, there's memorials. You can think what you want of World War II or Jews in general, but you can't deny that that happened. And the documentation of it is pretty unambiguous or completely unambiguous. When you spent time there, is there an effort to start doing this? And here's where I'm getting to, which is kind of a morbid question, but there is a moment in this documentary where this woman who was the doctrine, the morgue, I guess, is talking about all of these bodies. And unfortunately, where my mind went to, but I think it's the kind of the right thought is I hope that there was rape kits done, even if it's posthumously, because that's the trail of evidence that allows one to know squarely inside of a box this is the totality of what happened as a learning lesson for everybody, including not just the people that disagree, but the people that agree, and then to reinforce some of these basic rights that we thought we've all signed up for.

I mean, it is such an important question. There were not rape kits done, 1200 people killed in one day. I don't, anyone was, people, their bodies were burned, people were trying to identify them. I've actually looked into this a bunch, and in a lot of sexual violence in war situations, there are no rape kits. So that's actually, sometimes they're used, but often In chaos, there is none. There are very few pictures. There are some, and I saw them in this documentary, and they are sorry, they are naked women with nails in their groin. Like, I'm sorry, I saw these pictures. But what's interesting about it is the people who are the first responders are taught not to take pictures, particularly of gruesome things. They don't have the victims, the victims, you know, rights. Victims rights.

Yeah.

But the man I interviewed, he said 24 hours in, he thought to himself, no one's going to believe this. I got to take pictures. And against the training he had, he took the pictures and he showed me on his phone. He was like, I took this. And another guy from Zaka, they're a first responder group that goes in. This is an unheard of situation. I mean, I said to him, you've been processing, sorry, maybe that's not the right word, you've been, I guess, processing dead bodies all over the world. How many times in your experience are they naked? And he just looked at me and said, Never. They're never naked. And what meets the legal criteria for proving crimes against humanity are eyewitnesses. And what's important about the documentary that we did, but also important about the efforts Israel is doing. Israel is doing that documentation, not Israel the country, a woman in Israel named Kochav Levy, who's fantastic. She is from a private university with private funding doing that documentation, which at this point are mostly considered of interviews, but there are hundreds of them. And look, I hope people watch in the documentary, I go into a field with this guy, Rami. I'm sure you guys remember this. 'Cause he's huge, right? He stands like this tall over me, private citizen, this guy is the biggest hero I've ever met in my life. Sirens go off, he gets into his car, takes his gun, and drives to where- Incredible bravery. Rescued hundreds of people himself, himself. But he got to a field and I stood in those trees and he said, These trees, he thinks about 30 women were there and raped or sexually brutalized. When he saw them, they were naked, tied to trees, legs spread bloodied, like bloodied in the regions, you would be bloody if you were raped. And what he said in the film is, I got there, I covered their bodies so no one else would see. He didn't take pictures. I wish he had. But, well, I guess, I don't know. Do I wish he had? I don't know.

But you understand why.

But he said, I saw this with my own eyes. And what you saw in the film is this huge man who's so brave, fought terrorists himself, crying because he didn't get there early enough to save those women. But the good news is while the victims were killed, the good news is the first responders are alive. And their testimony, which is eyewitness testimony, meets the criteria of any international or global court. Absolutely, crimes can be proven by eyewitnesses for sure.

Sure. What is the response in Israel? How do you judge what Netanyahu is doing both in reaction to the events, but then in reaction to these specific aspects of the events? What are they doing that's different or what would you wish they were doing differently? Or can you just give us a sense of how people are processing this aspect?

I mean, look, we need peace. We need two sides and two leaders that are committed to peace, like long-term peace. And there's a lot going wrong, you know? But on this aspect, you violate, someone said it in the film, you violate a woman, you violate a country. There's a reason sexual violence is used as a war crime. There's a reason it was used in the DRC and Bosnia, and it's being used in Ukraine today because, and I can see it in your reaction.

I mean, it's to humiliate a people, right? It's to humiliate a country.

You humiliate, look at the three of you. You all don't cry a lot. This is traumatic because you all have mothers and daughters. You can feel what happens to a country. And that's why this was done. This was not an accident. This was on purpose. And unfortunately, it works. Sexual violence.

I think, for us to have a path towards peace, there has to be a degree, despite the pain being felt, a degree of empathy for the other side's desires, the other side's pain, the other side's feeling that they were enacting a resistance against an oppression. How does one side embrace that aspect having gone through this? How do we get to a point that a people can say, I have empathy for the resistance after feeling this sort of pain? And this is the age-old story of war, eye for an eye, it never ends, it always goes on. what's the right path here to hear the other side, to hear the kids on campuses, to hear the people in Palestine, to hear the world saying, we feel free Palestine after going through this?

Well, I can tell you what I believe. I believe we need peace. I believe we need two states. I believe that those states need to be run by peaceful leaders who want prosperity for the other side. Look, I believe we should be able to look at anyone, anywhere in the world, but certainly the Palestinian people living in Gaza and say, any death is too much. One death is too much. No innocent lives should be killed. No women, no children, no innocent lives should be killed. But I think also as part of that path to peace, there needs to be forgiveness, but there needs to be a clear, clear articulation of what is not acceptable ever. And the sexual violence is not acceptable ever.

If you were Netanyahu, what would you do differently? I'm sorry for cutting you off.

No, no, I mean, I don't have an answer to peace in the Middle East. I don't. I mean, I wish I did, but I do have a very strong view that we are not gonna get to peace when we are apologizing or denying crimes against humanity and crime mass rape of women. But that is not the path to peace. The path to peace is not saying this didn't happen. The path to peace is saying this happened. No matter what side of the fence you're on, no matter what side of the world you're on, if you're the far right, the far left, anywhere in the world, we're not gonna let this happen again, and we're gonna get to peace to make sure. Denial is not gonna get us there.

Why is the other side captivated so much of the youth in the United States? You're very close to Harvard. Maybe tell us what's gone on at Harvard over the last few years. How did we end up in this place? where so much of the youth is so sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and not as moved as you are by the trauma experienced on the other side.

I mean, y'all are, I would throw that question right back to you. I know you've talked about narratives and oppressor and oppressed. And again, polarization is where you can only have one view and you cannot tolerate anything that doesn't fit one view. And I don't know of anything that's that clear and that simple. I mean, I'll throw that right back to you. You all have been articulate on this.

And I think have a lot to say. Well, I mean, this, you said it earlier, Cheryl, this tolerance for ambiguity, this ability, the cognitive dissonance to be able to hold in your head that the people of Gaza are suffering, perhaps, I guess the other side would say, you know, they would, they would start down this what about ISM? It's not my position, but What about what Netanyahu is doing? What about aid to people suffering Gaza? You've addressed that. You don't believe anybody should suffer. But I just want to talk a little bit about this conspiracy theory that it didn't happen. Also in the documentary, the savagery, you chose not to show the graphic photos that you saw. and that you're clearly traumatized by. And a lot of us New Yorkers had a similar experience with 9/11 and watching that up close. It is what terrorists do. Terrorists do these things to cause massive trauma, to make it impossible to de-escalate. That is the sadism, that is the pure evil of this brand of terrorism, is to make it impossible for the good people of the world to unwind or de-escalate. And it's I think part of the process is accepting what happened and coming to some truth. And the truth can be there are people dying unnecessarily in Gaza, there are people starving in Gaza, there are children who are not getting food and water. All of those can be true. And this horrific sexual sadism and violence that occurred is also true. And in the document- that was awesome.

I couldn't have said that better. That was exactly right, Jason. that is exactly the point and the path. Sorry, please continue. That was just a pause.

No, I mean, I'm trying to make sense of this. And I come to it with humility, you know, this podcast hits a certain notes with people and, oh, how can people in Silicon Valley or whatever discuss these topics? Listen, we're all discussing them. We're all trying to make sense of a very confusing world. But you made two choices in the documentary. One was to leave yourself out of it largely. you're role in the documentary is, you know, to hug people and to cry alongside them and to witness this stuff. You talk for, I think, 90 seconds in the whole documentary. I think this was a, an important decision you made. Um, and then you made a decision, which I'm not sure if I agree with, which is to not show the photos. I am of the belief that people should see what happened on 9/11 as a New Yorker who witnessed it and my brothers in the fire department. And I had PTSD from it. I think people have to see these things. You chose not to, out of respect for the family, should put a note at the end. Explain this choice, because I know you must have struggled with it. And there are photos that you've seen of women with their breasts cut off. I hate, I don't want to say these things. I know it's very traumatic, but I believe people have to understand what's in these photos that you saw. Nails in women's private parts, breasts that have been cut off. This is undeniable. If you want to deny the rapes happened or whatever, you cannot deny the photos that you saw. You chose not to put them in. I understand that decision, respect for the family. Is there not a, take us into that decision, because maybe there are, so maybe you need to, and the woman who chose to do the interview with you, she's so brave. She said, I had to do this because I wanted to combat the denialism. And I don't know who the gray zone is, you know, the, the, and I don't know why people are giving it a ton of attention, but they, you know, they are, considered the first line of the Wikipedia page is it's a fringe website. So I'll just leave it at that. I don't know if it is or if it isn't, but that's the first line on the Wikipedia page. Is there not a case to be made for making a second version of the documentary that shows exactly these things so people can stop denying it? Because then they, you would have to come to the place that these, that the people who are one sided created fake images. Is that, Is that where we're getting to in this conspiracy filled world that the dozens of people you interviewed are part of a grand conspiracy and the photos are doctored? So just talk about that decision. You must have had an important meeting about that.

Look, we didn't really have a choice. I agree with you. I think the world seeing this would probably be necessary at some point. I do think the deniers will deny. They'll say, oh, you can doctor any photo. So you're gonna have to believe the person who took them anyway. We didn't have that choice. These photos are held by people who have taken a vow as part of their work as first responders of processing and getting bodies ready for burial that they won't show them. It also, you know, we've made this freely available on YouTube, so anyone can watch it, no firewalls, you know, anyone can watch this thing if you're over. 18, they wouldn't meet YouTube standards, so that would be taken down. I mean, we can't show them right now for those two reasons. But I think over time, the world may have to see some of them. But I also wanna go back to what Chamath said, because there are photos, there are clear photos, and there are clear witnesses. But Rami's story, he took no photos, and he will tell you why he took no photos. He covered those bodies so no one would see. Yeah, it's traumatic. It's traumatic. And that's why Israel is documenting this, or not Israel actually, I shouldn't say it, someone in Israel is documenting this. But again, no matter what else you believe, I love the way you said it, Jason, you can absolutely believe, I absolutely believe, that every single person, particularly the private citizens, not the terrorists in Gaza, should live in peace and harmony. They should, of course, Of course, get aid, but they shouldn't need aid because they should have a thriving economy and a state that's their own. That doesn't mean sexual violence didn't happen because it is clear it did. And the denial is crazy. I was in France, I took some of the witnesses to different parliaments, including in the French parliament. Maurice Levy hosted this beautiful lunch for us. And there were all the people who work in civil society. And this woman stood up at this lunch and she stood up and she said, I'm French, I'm not Jewish. I run a nonprofit that works on sexual violence and conflict. I've done this work for 30 years. No one's ever questioned my work ever until now. And she said, I think it's antisemitism. You look at that New York Times article, and I know there's different views of the New York Times. I'm not defending the paper, but that article written by Jeff Gellesman. and others. He has covered sexual violence for decades. He won a Pulitzer for his coverage of this in Somalia. A Pulitzer. I did a search, no one's ever questioned it before. Something is going on here, and it is a combination of narratives and polarization and antisemitism, which is getting us to.

A place where we lose- Let's explore that for a second. So when you see the videos, what you see are young people, but you see a lot of young women. And many of the leaders of these movements on campuses now, the spokespeople are women. The leadership seems mostly to be women. Do you have a reaction to that? Do you have a thought on that when you see these folks and that they should be closer to this realization maybe than A man could theoretically overlook it or try to block it out, but it's actually the leadership of these organizations tend to be mostly women-led and they're basically like, let's keep going and it's about this resistance. How do you react to that when you see that?

It really depends what I see. Like when I see someone peacefully protesting and saying free Palestine.

Sure, why not?

That's good. I want free Palestine. When I see people protesting and saying, you know, we need peace on all sides, we need a ceasefire, of course we need, we need a permanent ceasefire that last, I'm for that. Ready? When I see people saying the rapes didn't happen, that's unacceptable. You know, you saw a student at Columbia, I saw it in video, I'm sure you did too, screaming at a Jewish kid, go back to Poland.

Right, I saw that.

Or October 7th is going to happen to you over and over. That's not okay. And so it really depends what they're saying. But again, I'm hoping people watch this documentary so they can see it for their own eyes. I'm hoping people wake up and realize that they are capable of holding two thoughts at the same time. They just are.

What's gonna happen at Harvard? What's gonna happen at the Ivy Leagues?

I don't know what's gonna happen at any of these schools, but I'll tell you, I'm a parent of college age kids. I've got a kid who was in college for a year. I've got a kid going off this year in the fall. Colleges have a responsibility to keep our kids safe, full stop, and protect them from hate, full stop. And they have the ability to do this. They have the ability to do this. It's up to them.

Do you think Columbia has done a good job?

Well, if you were president of Harvard, what would you have done differently, Sheila?

I'm not close enough. It's all merging together in my mind. I don't know exactly which protest has happened at which square. But here's what I would do. I would have very clear rules, which by the way, all the schools have. It's a question of enforcing them. The schools that are letting this happen are not enforcing their own rules. Schools are actually, I think, look, free and open dialogue is important. College is the place you should go to talk about the issues from all sides, to have thoughtful conversations, to have deep conversations, even maybe to have angry conversations. But I went to Berkeley.

I went to Berkeley, it wasn't lunch without a protest. I mean, that's like the daily thing you do there. You go grab a sandwich and you.

Go protest, you go back to class. That was great. And I bet you had thoughtful conversations, 'cause that's what's made you, you. Look at your views, David, you're able to articulate multiple complex views. And I bet some of that was from Berkeley, where you probably sat with your fellow students and talked to them, right? That's not what's happening.

I think things are very different. Yeah, I think things are very different. These colleges have rules.

Some of the colleges, most colleges have a rule that you can't protest in the president's office. There are colleges where the faculty and administration, when people are protesting in the president's office, they're serving them food. There are colleges that say, you're not.

Allowed to protest here, go outside. But if you feel deep down in your heart that it's a matter of life or death, Don't you feel justified that having an encampment, setting up a tent, living there, showing that that degree of conviction is necessary because you're saving lives versus, Hey, I think something is a good idea. Let me go protest for an hour during lunch and then I'll leave. It's never going to move the needle. The question I'm asking as a young person is, how do I move the needle? And there's not a lot of ways that people feel empowered to move the needle. So it seems rational to me to some degree that they want to go into these encampments and they want to do something strong. and show their conviction. But again, I think that there's a question on how much truth is anyone willing to see? How much are folks willing to embrace the other side? How much are they willing to listen? I see very little listening, very little dialogue going on because then you put up a list of demands that are unmeetable and you deny anyone to have a conversation and you deny listening to the other side and you take this hardened view that doesn't allow for progress. And I think it's the hardened views on all sides that's limiting progress entirely. Unfortunately, the youth have been subsumed by this. And it's really frustrating to see because I worry about what that means.

I think it's not necessarily the youth, meaning I think you're seeing it in some very specific places that cater to a very specific kind of youth. You see them at Columbia, Harvard. There are these specific Berkeley, UCLA that are bastions of privileged kids for the most part. These are extremely elite institutions that typically allow in kids that have been coached their entire lives to get into those schools. And I think that they're coming there with a lack of fulfillment. And it reminds me at some level of how people reacted to Occupy Wall Street, meaning there were a whole bunch of young people there that probably didn't even know what the whole Occupy Wall Street movement was about.

Well, they said themselves, Chomsky, it was a platform for whatever your grievance was. That was their stated mission.

Yeah.

And I think what they found a decade and a half ago or so was community in this weird way.

Yes.

Right?

The physical interaction of other people where you had this intimacy around a thing. I'm not condoning Occupy Wall Street just like I'm not condoning what's happening on campuses, but I think psychologically what kids are looking for is that level of attachment. And to your point, David, something that they can feel strongly about. And I think they end up getting to the age of 18 and 19, not having felt strongly about anything, because they were working on playing nine sports and 14 instruments and all this other bull to go to these schools. And then they get there and they feel a little empty. And sometimes negative things can fill the void.

What I was gonna say is I think the, the answer lies in what you're, in what we're saying. David, you started out by saying, how are we gonna get to progress? Well, screaming at each other is not gonna get to progress. I don't have an answer for peace in the Middle East, but universities play roles in getting there. Thoughtful, hard conversations. Let's look at the real history. Let's look at who the leadership could be. Let's look at what kind of leaders we need on both sides. Let's look at what the international community could be doing. Those answers could come out of universities. Some of those college students, if they weren't reading five things they don't understand, could help us get there. And I think these protests are getting in the way of the thoughtful dialogue. And I honestly think part of what happens with cancel culture, I don't want to listen to another view on all sides. Really, why don't you say, I want to listen. My friend Adam Grant wrote a great book called Think Again. I wish everyone in the whole world would read that damn book. Think Again, think again, means you might not be right about everything. Think again means you need to listen to the other side. We're never going to get there without that kind of thoughtful dialogue.

Well, yeah, that's exactly where I wanted to go with the Cheryl, which is if you steal a man, if you look at their perspective and you look at the beauty of feminism and femininity, and you wrote a book, Lean In, and you are an expert on this. Having compassion for people who are suffering is absolutely beautiful. It is the best of humanity, and I think it's the best of femininity and women, is that they have this incredible gift of empathy that as men, maybe we are so far behind. And so it does not surprise me that women lead these organizations when they see suffering. And if you see children suffering, women are in a unique position in their life experience to understand the value of children, of family, and of suffering. you know, I can understand an impressionable young person seeing the videos coming out of Gaza of a baby dying in a bombing and collateral damage and being devastated and saying, you know what? I have to fight for these poor children. It is completely noble in their mind. In fact, it might be noble. I mean, it's to fight for peace. And so, you know, I can understand their, their positions, and I don't, actually disagree with them. But then you start looking at the reality of getting the hostages back. And if this was an American situation, and we actually have a corollary 9/11, we didn't go to Afghanistan to get hostages. We went there to get retribution. So if America went there to eliminate this threat, and we also took out another country just for good measure that wasn't even involved in it. You know, it's such a complex issue and we're in the fog of war. I think everybody pausing for a second here and just remember how confusing it was after 9/11, how confusing it was. And we had to figure out, wait a second, these were Saudis. These were this radical group, the splinter group. It takes a while to figure out what's going on here. I do think on these campuses they should allow them to protest, but there's outside agitators. That seems to me to be completely unacceptable to have 40, 50, 6 year old lifetime agitators on these campuses. Allow these kids to protest, but to chase Jewish kids around the campus and then surround them and threaten them in 2024? I mean, I agree. I can't understand what's happening and how How could an administration, Cheryl, allow students to threaten other students and not immediately snap a snap decision?

It's a decision.

You just said it.

It's a decision.

It is a decision.

Absolutely expelled. If a Jewish set of Jewish students surrounded a Palestinian student, an Islamic student, a Muslim, and chanted at them about what happened October 7th and made them feel threatened, expelled them as well. There's just some basic rules of the game they're not enforcing. It's absolutely infuriating, but I just want to make sure I steal them on that other side. And you did, I think, very eloquently say you also agree with the suffering in Palestine needs to end.

I know we're out of time. Can I say one thing? I really want to say 10 things.

Cheryl, as much as you like. You have time.

I really want to thank you all for this because two things happened in the last hour with you. One is that you were really passionate against this sexual assault and really clear. And as much as we need women to believe this, we need male and male leaders. And so your voices, like I could feel the passion on this and I'm really grateful because that gives me hope. Like, I am, it's such a dark moment. It's such a dark moment for democracy. It's such a dark moment for Jews. It's such a dark moment for women. but this really gave me hope. And the second is your tears for Dave. Thanks. It's been nine years. A lot of we've moved on. You have friends. I have a wonderful life that I'm so grateful for. But the world still lost a really, really, really special person. And I can see how much that means.

I knew this, but There are very few things as you grow older that you realize in life that matters. And friends are, that's it. It's just friends.

You know, at the end of the day, Chamath, we're family and your friends.

That's all you have.

I think about Dave frequently. And I just think at the end of your life, what you have is but a collection of memories. and the memories we have with Dave, the laughter, the joy, the- Fake Chamath. Fake Chamath, yeah. He just, his wit, his insights, you know, we would be sitting at that poker table and it was like we're all like 15, 16 year olds and we got this big brother who's 20. And, you know, we'd be bickering and laughing, whatever. He'd come in and say, hey guys.

How about this and this?

So Chamath and I would be jawing at each other. He'd say, hey guys, let's calm it down a little bit. Thank you. Unless have a good time, whatever.

Thank you guys so much. I have to go to my meeting. Thanks, Cheryl. This was, this was like- Cheryl, we didn't get to- Cheryl, we didn't get.

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Change any paragraph of the Lean In.

Book, what would you do?

Well, save all this for the summer.

Big hug. Thank you, Cheryl. Thank you for watching.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Wow, I need to take a deep breath here, Chamath Friedberg. This was super emotional for me. I didn't know if I could do it, I'll be honest. I have so many emotions, Chamath, about Dave. I have so many feelings about this situation.

When I watched the documentary. I thought the most important thing is there are these, you said it, Jason, in the fog of war, there are things that happened that are just wholly unacceptable. I remember when I was getting older and I was curious, why did my family not go back to Sri Lanka? And what do the Tamils, which is a small minority, Hindu minority in majority Buddhist population. Why did they feel so out of sorts? And we were part of the Buddhist majority. And when you insert yourself into that struggle and understand where they're coming from, it's jarring because you have to really like re-underwrite, okay, what are we fighting for? What are they fighting for? And the most important thing that I got to is what is allowed? Because then you would see things. And the unfortunate part of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka's history was in the final parts of the war that ended it, there were some incredible atrocities that were committed. And, you know, the United Nations and international court system tried to find justice for the Tamil minority population in what happened in those final hours of that war. I don't think that they did for, for, for the most part, but it's just to show you that these things leave deep wounds that frankly can be reopened in a moment. So it's very important that I think these things are, and I hate to say it so unemotionally, but documented.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

For those that don't even understand the Holocaust, if you go to the Holocaust Museum, if you're lucky enough to do it in Israel, I would encourage you to do it, but even in Washington. you know the totality of what happened. There's certain places that document these important moments in history. And if this is one of those moments to the Israeli people, I just encourage them, please make sure that you minimize the miss and disinformation. As complicated as that may be to do, it is incredibly important so that.

You can create- and doing so does not dissolve empathy for the other sides. Got it. Or for the other side's motivations or objectives. Having empathy for the circumstances that happen here is the equivalent of having empathy for the plight of the Palestinian people and what they're dealing with today following October 7th. And I think that we need to recognize that both things can be true. We can have empathy for both sides.

Yeah.

And by the way, humans have a way of making decisions, which I think is pretty predictable, which is once you have a point of view, there are things that you believe are facts, and then there's all this other stuff that you have degrees in which you believe that are essentially conjecture. The most important thing in really important debates is to move something from that gray zone into the box of facts, so to speak. And that is the only way that causes people to re-underwrite , their principal views. It doesn't matter what topic we're talking about. So the more that we're able to document and actually make these things unambiguous, I think it actually has a really important role to play in how these young people view what it is that they're a part of. I'm totally pro-protesting. I'm totally in support of, you know, standing up for the things that you believe in. I'm not in support of overlooking atrocities.

I mean, it's well said, Shamath. And, you know, the response, I can tell you to, you know, this, this episode and the response I got for just tweeting, you know, hey, this is important documentary to watch is, you know, the what about, about is the other side and documenting what's happening in Gaza. And, you know, we, we have this search for truth right now, which is very difficult because institutions have a lot of self-inflicted wounds. We live in an age of conspiracy theory, you know, and, and there are reports of crisis actors, you know, in Gaza creating fake deaths and fake videos. So, you know, now you have one side saying, oh, the, the people of Palestine or Hamas are, the numbers aren't correct of the number of people died. The, the suffering is not correct. These images aren't correct. the fog of war is going to be thick for a while here, folks, and it's going to take us a while. And Shabnam's exactly right. You got to document this. You got to get to some ground truth. You got to get to some common facts so we can all objectively look at those common facts. And, you know, listen, it's a shame David Sachs couldn't make it today, but it would have really is really missed here because, you know, we have that same thing with the, the, the war in Ukraine. And it's very hard for us in this current media landscape where we're quoting from news sources and anonymous Twitter accounts, fake videos. It's going to get worse with AI. It's going to be harder and harder to find the truth. And this is where your own personal morality, ethics, and I'm not sure who brought this up during our talk, because I'm emotionally spent, I got to be honest. It's a little hard for me to collect myself here, but man, you have to have some basic moral principles here. Children. women, rape, sexual assault, we all can agree on this. You said this in the week after October 7th, Freeberg, you had a very powerful moment on the show that you don't want to have to decide between October 7th being horrific and children dying in Gaza being horrific. And you don't want to have to be painted with one side or the other. You want to believe as a moral person that all suffering needs to end. And we collectively, as a species in 2024 on this planet, can work together to just agree that certain things should never happen and to try to resolve these horrible conflicts. I'm so spent right now. And it was just very difficult for me to watch that documentary. I don't know where we go from here, gentlemen. I'm fine ending the show here. or taking a 10 minute break and then maybe doing one or two new stories.

Take a break, we'll come back. Let's take five, 10 minutes.

All right, everybody, welcome back to the program. Yep, it's not easy to do a pivot here, but we collected ourselves, took a deep breath, and you've all been asking for a science corner and So there's a really important story that Freeberg has been educating us about on the group chat. There's a startup that just open sourced an AI gene editor. Yes, you heard that right. Open source gene editor powered by AI. It's called Profluent Bio, am I correct?

Profluent Bio. Yeah, Berkeley based startup, Profluent Bio. Great.

Have we talked about CRISPR and gene editing before on the show or no? I think we have mentioned it. It would be good as a primer for you to just explain from first.

Principles what is CRISPR, why it's important.

And then get into this.

So there's debate around who discovered CRISPR-Cas systems first and found their application.

But generally- which side are you on? The Jennifer Doudna side or the MIT? I'm an open source guy, which is.

Why I'm excited about this topic today. Cause I don't give a shit. I think things that are in nature are in nature. And I don't think you should be able to pat, I don't think you.

Should be able to patent stuff that you discover in nature. So let's step back for a second for a break. Explain what CRISPR is to somebody who's, heard the term, but doesn't actually know in your unique ability to explain science.

Yeah, so to CRISPR CAS. CRISPR CAS, CRISPR CAS CAS proteins, CAS proteins, are proteins that can go in to a cell and they have what's called a guide RNA, little piece of RNA attached to them that allows that protein to find its way to a specific point in DNA in that cell, in the nucleus of that cell. And when that protein hits that specific location, it cuts it like scissors. And so the protein finds the part of the DNA it's looking to cut, attaches itself, cuts the DNA, and a cut is made. And so this capability was discovered actually in bacteria, and it was an evolved system that bacteria developed to actually protect themselves from viruses. So the CRISPR-Cas complex emerged through evolution where bacteria started to figure out that they could cut up viral DNA. So they made these proteins, these proteins would attach to viral DNA and destroy the viruses that came into the bacteria cells. So scientists, arguably from Harvard, from Berkeley, and from other places around the world, in the early 2010s started to do research and identified ways that we could leverage these proteins that we were discovering in nature to do targeted DNA editing in human cells and plant cells and other cells. So rather than them just being used as a defense mechanism by bacteria, that we could harness these proteins and make them useful to go in and do specific gene editing. Now, why would we want to do gene editing? Gene editing, if done precisely enough and efficiently enough, would allow us to go in and fix genetic diseases in humans, for example. It would allow us to take T cells and reprogram them to go and attack cancer cells back in the human body. It would allow us, in the case of agriculture, which I'm very close to and what I work on every day, to figure out ways to make specific changes to the genes of a plant to make that plant grow in higher yield or change itself to be disease resistant or drought resistant or other features. that might be helpful to agriculture and to humanity. So gene editing became this amazing toolkit that emerged around 2012, 2013, and just blew up on the market. And the main original foundational patents, which are now mostly held after a lot of litigation by the Broad Institute, which is, you know, there's this kind of joint patent arrangement with the Broad and MIT and Harvard are being used in medical applications, are being used in agriculture applications, they're being used in all these different But they're patented. There's royalties, there's fees, all this stuff. And in the years that followed, many other cast proteins started to get discovered. All these different types of proteins were discovered. And the reason you want to use different proteins is you want to improve the efficiency. So how frequently or how good are these proteins at editing the cell and eliminate off target effects, meaning the protein isn't making cuts or making changes to other parts of the DNA that you don't want it to. So there's been the search underway for the last decade for new Cas proteins and developing new Cas proteins, and dozens have been discovered. People are trying to patent them. People are trying to make them do special things. They can only change one letter. All these different tools are emerging. So we went from having absolutely no ability to do gene editing just over a decade ago to suddenly having all of these different tools that could do gene editing really efficiently. really cheaply, really, really affordably, really scalably, and more precisely. So this company, ProFluent, they actually used an AI model, what they call a protein language model, to create and train an entirely new library of Cas proteins that do not exist in nature today. So they basically took 26 terabases, 26 trillion letters of assembled genomes and metagenomes. This is from other from various species and start to simulate new Cas proteins that could be useful to replace the ones that are on the market today or improvements on what's in the market today. And they found one that they called OpenCRISPR1 and they made it publicly available under an open source license. So any startup, any research lab, any individual, any scientist can use this particular Cas protein to go in and make edits without having to deal with patents and IP and claims on who owns what that they found in nature. And this particular protein that they identified is 400 mutations away from anything that they've seen in nature. So basically the AI model started to learn what sequence of DNA generated what structure of protein that was really good at being a gene editor. And they started to discover and iterate on building new ones. And the AI started to predict, hey, this would be a good gene editor. This would be a good gene editor. And they came up with dozens of new gene editing molecules that don't exist in nature today. They identified one that they then sequenced, they created it, they put it in a lab, they tested it, and it turned out to be much better than Cas9.

Which is the main one you use. So they use an AI model to find a new guide RNA.

To find a new Cas protein. So the guide RNA is just RNA that's like the key. Think about a CRISPR Cas system has two components. One is the Cas protein. That's the giant protein that goes in and cuts DNA. And attached to it is what's called a guide RNA. That guide RNA is the specific letters and those specific letters are like a key and a lock. They go attached to a particular part of the DNA, and then that giant protein cuts in that exact spot. And so what they, what everyone's been working on is new proteins, and they've been trying to find new cast proteins that aren't going to go do off target cutting, that aren't going to make mistakes, that are going to be perfect at making the exact cut you want to make. So everyone's always trying to improve the efficiency and reduce the off target effects of these systems. And so what they did is they tried to create a new protein that doesn't exist. by learning from all of these other Cas proteins that exist in nature today and identifying the three dimensional structure of them and allow the model to predict a Cas protein that might actually be better than anything that's found in nature.

So it works around every single existing pattern.

Well, that's going to be tested in the courts later, I'm sure, but they open sourced it. So they, they're not claiming any IP on it. They're not making any claims on it.

With the patent office. And they're saying, look, it's free and available. I'm on the same page as you. If this is, this, this was occurring billions of years ago. And it just took us billions of years to actually observe it occurring naturally in nature. It's absolutely ridiculous that a patent would be granted on that. Now the implementation of that in a commercial use case, that's fine.

Be able to patent. Yeah, this is happening, I guess, in the psychedelic space with psilocybin, MDMA and some of those. That's such a leap. No, no, I'm just saying there are drug companies now that are realizing the efficacy at Johns Hopkins, Stanford, where they're doing these, and then they're trying to figure out how do we take something that's occurring naturally psilocybin in mushrooms, refer to colloquially as magic mushrooms. And then how do we get our, how do we bear hug this so that we can patent it? How can we own the implementation of it, as you're saying? And so it's fascinating to me taking nature and trying to patent nature.

There's a simple truth to all this, which is every single life sciences lab on earth is using this technology today. It has absolutely revolutionized life sciences. It has changed everything. It has reset the trajectory of human health, of agriculture, and of industrial biotechnology. Those are the three major markets where gene editing is useful. It is changing everything. And so it is already a ubiquitous tool. We basically created software engineering for DNA for life with this capability. And so this system that these guys just published on, I think is a really wonderful manifestation of how AI is allowing us to open source and create improved tools And it's really important for humanity. And so I think it's just great to see happen.

Okay, two questions for my baby brother with the science brain. Number one, the LLMs here, how maybe you could speak to the efficacy of LLMs when applied to this vertical, because it's a constrained data set, I believe, so it feels to me analogous to code. whereas like human language, images, videos, you know, building an LLM around them, you have like pretty large corpus. It seems to me code is constrained, a video game's constrained, and of course, maybe gene editing is constrained. I'll let you answer that and the LLM component here. And then maybe you could speak to what this will do to the startup community being able to leverage this open source tool. Have startups started to pop up around this yet? Is there a.org? com kind of equivalent here where you have wordpress.org open source version of WordPress, wordpress.com, the hosted paid version. And are we gonna see a bunch of.com versions of this and different startups? Take it whichever way you like, the two questions.

I'm not super familiar. I've met the profluent guys a couple times. I'm not super familiar with what their business models going to be, but I hate that startups are worried or feel encumbered by the patent landscape associated with CRISPR-Cas systems and that they can't build novel products and move humanity forward.

Okay. So it's a blocker for humanity.

I'm hopeful that we do see more of these open source like tools become available and ubiquitous. It's almost the equivalent of having Linux, where everyone can now, you know, as an operating system or HTML being, you know, standard code. I don't know if you remember to use before HTML5, a lot of people were using macro media flash. Oh, for sure. It was a huge blocker.

Yeah.

It was a huge blocker.

So you had to pay the license.

Fee to create flash content, and then you had to, I don't know if they sold consumer plugins. Well, yeah, and they were rug pulled, right?

They could change their mind after the fact.

And they were trying to make money on both And so in order to.

Show- Microsoft did ActiveX to try to be a blocker and own the open source market.

In order to put multimedia on the internet, you used to have to pay license fees. And then HTML5 basically created multimedia capabilities native to the HTML, which is open sourced, and so everyone could do it. And I think that it's really important that we see that happening with gene editing. I think all the applications of gene editing should be patentable and protectable. But the core tools are so powerful and important that I think it's very difficult and hard to see how we are accelerating humanity's progress by keeping these things at bay. And it's really great to see open source tools like this hit the market.

Okay.

And I think it's really important to, and I think it's really amazing to, Tell me about the AI, AI create them. Yeah.

Tell me about the LLM side here, the large language model being built around this data. How, how what's the efficacy of that gonna be like? And is my analogy of a constrained data set, meaning it'll be able to perform at a higher level like we see with code and then co-pilots for code?

Well, they created their own LLM. They call it a protein language model. So they took all of this genome data that is generally very publicly available. There's a lot of this stuff published in open genome databases. you can download it, ingest it, and use it for whatever purposes you want as a life sciences researcher. So they took 26 trillion base pairs of data and basically used that to train their model. And then using that trained model, they then started to run inference on it to say, come up with CAST systems that are novel, that could theoretically have efficacy greater than what we see in nature with the natural CAST systems. And then the model started to output all of these novel proteins. Then they started to test them and they found that this one worked really, really well after testing in the lab. So actually here's a great image. So here you can see basically in training the model, so it's a little bit technically complicated what they did in the steps to generate this system, but ultimately the system yielded something that they could then create, put in a lab environment, and in the lab environment test how well it worked. And what they showed was that it actually worked better than Cas9, which is the primary gene editing protein used today. So, you know, pretty powerful set of steps and all unlocked by, again, freely available data and building their own model and now ultimately open sourcing the best output of it.

So, okay, amazing job. If you missed any of those graphics, you're listening to the podcast, go to YouTube. All in podcast if you want to see those graphics. All right, gentlemen, this has been another amazing episode of the All in podcast for your sultan of science, David Freiberg, the chairman dictator, and David Sachs, who couldn't make it today. I am the world's greatest moderator, resting power, Dave Goldberg, Goldie. We love you. We miss you. And we'll see you all next time on the All in podcast.

Love you, boys. Have a best day, We'll let your winners ride.

Rainman David Sasson. And instead we open source it to.

The fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you Westies, Queen of Kinaw.

What your winners ride?

What your winners ride? Besties are bad.

That is my dog taking it out of your driveway.

Oh, man.

My abadasher will meet me.

At Bliss. We should all just get a room.

And just have one big, huge orgy.

Cuz they're all this useless. It's like this, like sexual tension, but they just need to release somehow.

We need to get merch. These are back.