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Iran War, Oil Shock, Off Ramps, AI's Revenue Explosion and PR Nightmare

Shownote

(0:00) The Besties welcome Brad Gerstner! (3:48) Economic fallout of the Iran War, escalation scenarios, impact on midterms (19:18) Off ramp strategies, Gulf state involvement, the China angle (27:05) Anthropic and OpenAI scaling revenue faster than any...

Highlights

In this episode, the hosts welcome investor Brad Gerstner for a wide-ranging discussion spanning geopolitics, AI economics, and domestic policy—grounded in real-time developments and data-driven analysis.
00:00
Over 100,000 kids are signing up for Trump accounts daily, with millions already claiming theirs
09:39
IEA's 400-million-barrel petroleum release—activated March 11—signals the worst may be over and it's time to find an off-ramp
22:10
China doesn’t defend Iran, needs oil from Venezuela and Iran, and has high youth unemployment
37:51
Coding assistance is the breakout enterprise use case, driven by software engineer shortages
1:00:27
EA-funded 'doomer think tanks' like the Future of Life Institute spread FUD about data centers, funding negative journalism and contributing to canceled projects and $120B in lost revenue
1:16:09
A national wealth tax is expected to become part of the Democratic platform by 2028

Chapters

The Besties welcome Brad Gerstner!
00:00
Economic fallout of the Iran War, escalation scenarios, impact on midterms
03:48
Off ramp strategies, Gulf state involvement, the China angle
19:18
Anthropic and OpenAI scaling revenue faster than any company ever
27:05
AI's PR disaster, open source's future
46:11
Washington passes "Millionaire Tax," Howard Schultz bails for Miami
1:07:51

Transcript

Jason Calacanis: all right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world. Friedberg'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 h...