AI, Middle East, China, Tariffs, Recon Bill, Invest America | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner
Episode publishedPodcast: BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and...BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley
Transcript preview
Preview only
Can you imagine if in the year February, Washington DC had said, oh my god. Google is so powerful that we're not gonna allow any other country in the world to have access to this Google machine that might give them answers to questions unless Google comes to Washington and gets federal approval before it launches in any of these any of these countries. That's what we were doing in AI, and I think Hey, Bill. It's great to see you. It's been a while. It
has been a while. It's been, I think, three weeks since we did a podcast.
You know, honestly and thanks as an aside to hundreds, if not thousands of listeners who are like, you know, remind us that they love the pod. It is hard to get it scheduled. Part of the reason it's been hard is I've been on the road. I've been l in LA. I've been in Washington, DC, and then I spent ten days in The Middle East. And I think about what's happened, Bill, over that period of time. We basically landed the plane on tariffs. We've had these huge deals announced in The Middle East. The reconciliation bill is on track to passing, and we have some talks of a ceasefire in Ukraine. The mar
That sounds great. So you were at the big event, the one that everyone's talking about in The Middle East. Why don't you, if you would, you know, give the listeners I think at first, just kind of what did it feel like? What was what was different this time you've been there before? But but frame what happened, you know, just at first from, you know, what did this look like? And then I'd be interested in your takeaways. Well,
I I I have to say the whole orientation, if you just think about it, toward The Middle East over the last few years has been kind of about control. You know, we had CFIUS that was blocking all these deals in The Middle East. We had the Biden diffusion rule, that remember that in the final weeks of the Biden administration, they passed a rule known as the diffusion rule that really created this complicated regulatory framework for selling advanced chips and models. And it it broadly restricted the ability of The US to sell chips to, like, a hundred countries around the world. And so I think tha
That's amazing. Of of all those things, which one surprised you the most?
It's a really big change. I mean, you can't underscore enough what it means. You know, like, the Trump administration just repealed the Biden diffusion rule in May of twenty five. Right? And so it it it it literally is fresh off of that. And if you would have told me that in the first five months of this year, we would have gotten a trillion dollar deal signed with Saudi in terms of their investment in The United States, another trillion dollars with Qatar, another trillion dollars with The UAE. Those are all investments into The United States. And then let me give you a a a sense of the scale
In
US technology. Correct. Jensen Huang was there, etcetera. And they were putting these deals together. So it there were just a feeling of the of of the art of the deal, what is possible, partnership and acceleration, as opposed to the deceleration, you know, and the control that that I think you and I have felt over the last few years. And frankly, you and I have been worried about. Yep. Right? This idea that The US was going to somehow, you know, shut down our AI and not allow the rest of the world to have access to our AI. I think we we not only thought that was bad policy from an economic pe
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.