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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
Yeah. Yeah. Get in here close. This is good. Good.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Feel good.
Speaker 1:How is it going? How is AOPcon this
Speaker 2:time around? What's changed? Well, we've we're in a phase. Yeah. Each one of these things, like, marks a time.
Speaker 2:First of all, you guys are even more baller, more successful.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Some tendies in your pocket.
Speaker 1:I think it might have
Speaker 2:been part two of We gotta say thank you. Blew us up. You're looking biggest guest. You're looking bigger and stronger. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Hey, are you more attractive in your personal life now, randomly?
Speaker 3:Well, here's what we're actually focused on, dead hangs. Yeah. Yeah. So you came on last time. You said your dead hangs around, like, five.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. It's it's well, it's plateaued in the last couple months at $5.30.
Speaker 3:$5.30? Okay. So we the the thing is, like, people are gonna hear that. Going They're to think hanging on a bar Five
Speaker 1:minutes on, whatever.
Speaker 3:Got to go and do it. The audience has to go try to do it. We've started doing it. We're still in the
Speaker 1:Under two minutes? Between between one and two minutes.
Speaker 3:Somewhere around a minute thirty, you feel like your tenants are going to
Speaker 2:30 one thirty dead hang is respectable. Okay. Two minutes is super elite.
Speaker 3:Does feel respectable when you have the five minute number. You're looking at the time.
Speaker 2:Strength strength matters. Now, the the the thing is I don't wanna go into rabbit hole in training. The single biggest mistake people make is they try to hang every day, you need recovery. It's like anything So if you wanna mimic and get progress, you just do what I do, which is once a week, you hang as long as you can, have to be super macho, and then that's your day. So like, just say, you can do one thirty
Speaker 3:But multiple sets?
Speaker 2:Or No. No. One day a week, you do your maximum.
Speaker 3:Max. Wow.
Speaker 2:So like, let's say you could do two minutes. Okay. You try to do at least one thirty, you fight to get to one thirty, but you don't fight to get to two minutes.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 2:That's your dead hanging. And then you can basically fuck around the next day. Do whatever you want. Don't overdo it, but you could do two times one minute with a long break. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And then can you just screw around, do less and less and less? Two days before, if you had two minute dead hang, you do, like, four times fifteen seconds the day before you take off. And you do that, just keep doing that, and you're dead. What the mistake people make is they hear my ball or time. They gotta get
Speaker 1:a crown.
Speaker 2:Fuck that guy. I mean,
Speaker 3:the mistake you're making is not doing a course. There's gonna be a
Speaker 2:whole new revenue line. Gonna be whole
Speaker 3:new revenue I line of
Speaker 2:think you guys have a war for you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You're in case.
Speaker 2:Call in.
Speaker 1:The current method.
Speaker 2:So, yeah. I mean, the dead hang is a it's like and also some of it's just genetic. Like, my other metrics are elite, but that this is somehow alien territory. God given gift.
Speaker 1:What about what about breath hold underwater?
Speaker 2:I don't do that. Okay. And I'm not sure I have it. Like, I grew up swimming, and think I'm weaker at that. Like, I bet you I'd be in your guys'
Speaker 1:I I'm a dive master.
Speaker 2:I can
Speaker 1:hold my
Speaker 2:breath for three I'm just saying, I'm just yeah. So I think you'd be like I think you'd be crushing me on that honestly, but you have, like, the lung capacity of a whale.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:That's true. I mean, like Yeah. If I'm not moving,
Speaker 1:I'm not using
Speaker 2:It's any like a you know, like you're like a like a like a whale floating out there under the ocean waiting to surface. True. So True. You know, I say I'll tell you the difference. And there's this oh god.
Speaker 2:They're always minding me out there. But Mhmm. Like, okay. When we first met, it was like AI, maybe real. Okay.
Speaker 2:Then I would say, somehow, until about two weeks ago, there was like a holy fuck, this is real, but somehow it's not working, but we're not allowed to say it publicly because we'll look stupid.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then there's a lot of investor hype.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:There still is, like, investors printing Tendees. So you have the investors on one side. I think people realize it's real, but, you know, it's like, you know, you have the whole Tokenmaxxing. Yep. And people are on onto that, and then so there's a whole value lecture there.
Speaker 2:Yep. You have a political situation where, you know, people who do not understand basic economics are winning the political argument. Mhmm. So you can you can we could talk about where a Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a lot here. Let's break it let let's break it up. Let's start with the Tokenmaxxing thing. Let's start with what's what's real. How are you actually thinking about deploying AI?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, what what
Speaker 2:is your
Speaker 3:what is what is Palantir's philosophy around token consumption?
Speaker 2:Well, like, we okay. We have a product that will allow you to be I mean, internally, it's called something, but externally, but really, we call it the demasturbatory, like, get off masturbation thing internally. Sure. It's like Okay. People are just, like, print, like, sitting there all day kind of like a porn addiction, and enterprises are like, okay, we knew this we believe this will create value Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we cannot have people just like some people
Speaker 1:Checking the weather with it. Yeah. Like and just rearranging deck chairs on their personal Titanic.
Speaker 2:Literally like porn. Okay. Like, people are like full on It
Speaker 1:feels it feels so Yeah.
Speaker 3:Tool shaped objects.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right. Tool shaped objects you're looking at more than you want. You hope no one notices. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're kind of before dinner. It feels productive to have every email classified with Taste.
Speaker 3:Here's what it comes down to. Like, business problems can never be I mean, sometimes they can be solved purely with money and just spending more, but very often
Speaker 2:Actually, I think it's the opposite. So just to give you a weird
Speaker 3:analogy No. And I was gonna say very very often it's more the opposite where it's about figuring out the right way to do something, and then you can use capital to fuel that process.
Speaker 2:Well, let me give you a thing that's too generous for you guys. Okay. It it it's taste plus money. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And there is no like, AI like, if you look at like, pick any issue you wanna talk about. Yep. Tokenmaxxing, what's going on with deploy codes, are other people gonna build ontologies, why are why why does our political class not understand AI, especially in Europe? Mhmm. It's like, yes.
Speaker 2:Because all these things can be scaled in a very valuable, but largely going to commodified way, but you can't scale the taste of, like, what is the business problem you wanna have to solve and need to solve? At the end of the day, whether it's in the four whether it's the Ukrainians fighting, the Israelis, commercial entities, it's there's somebody sitting there who's like, okay. But this problem is valuable. This problem isn't. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And once that value that problem is always has that problem always almost always, but not always, has attributes. So there are some problems you could solve with this. Like, I wanna write a report on GDP growth in China. Right? Okay.
Speaker 2:But if it's a problem that requires a knowledge store, like, I wanna understand the specialized way I underwrite. We're gonna have a guest here. I wanna understand the specialized way I drill for oil and gas that's both legal, ethical, and reduces the cost of production. Mhmm. I wanna change the the the supply chain of my industry, whether that's military or whether that's building boxes or whether that's cars.
Speaker 2:These things require actual, precise, ongoing processes. They are enhanced by large language models. They are not replaced by large language models. Mhmm. And then you get to security issues, like, the for us, like, the whole myth of things is just a boon because, like, yeah, we could take, any model, their model, OpenAI model Sure.
Speaker 2:OpenModel. We can identify we can now identify, vulnerabilities at, like, 10, a 100 x. Yeah. But then who patches them? Yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you patch them on prem? How do you patch them on prem so that your specialized mileage stays on prem? Like, if you're any business or Intel services, a lot of these things are very similar. Sure. Sure.
Speaker 2:Like, you're not putting your classified data in a public cloud.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Same thing if you're like, you have a special way of farming soybeans. Yeah. But you're not. So it's like, how do you have how do you so all these problems are exposed, identified, and then you always have a thing of where's the charisma, which people really underestimate. And it's it's not global.
Speaker 2:There's no global charisma now. Like so right now, the large language models are very frontier companies are super charismatic with investors. Mhmm. I'll give you some news. They're super not charismatic with enterprises and the people.
Speaker 2:Like, in a Even way enterprise? No.
Speaker 1:No. I mean, it's because I understand with the people.
Speaker 2:No. No. The enterprise people, I have a secret I have a secret. Like, company has a secret way of selling.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what my secret way of selling is? Don't even call don't don't come talk to us. There's a Frontier company. Go spend two days with them. And if you're lucky, after you're done, I'll let you in my door.
Speaker 2:They're, like, clamoring. They're, like, they're, like, hey. I'll take your bad brand, which we have a great brand in enterprise. But, like, it it's like it's like secret knowledge because the investors love this. They're like, hey, my stocks are all up.
Speaker 2:Everything's up. I mean, Palantir has done very well.
Speaker 1:We're Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I get but it's like and, you know, you guys are doing very well, imagine. Right? And it's okay. We're we're you know, we can but I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:You go down the street, you talk to a marine, talk you to a bus driver
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You talk to the person who owns the bus driving company Mhmm. They are not happy.
Speaker 1:They do
Speaker 2:not like these They're tired of people Tokenmaxxing. Yeah. They they it looks like masturbation at their this cost them money. They they're they're, like and honestly, then you have something we're not allowed to talk about in this country, likability. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Like, Palantir, we have I think we have, like, fifty, hundred million global bands. We have, like, 5,000,000 people that wake up in the morning fig literally calling me Satan. Mhmm. I didn't know I had that kind of warm hand. But, you know, it's like that's what they believe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And, like, and they really believe it. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2:What people are not allowed to really address is, like, we have fans and enemies. Yep.
Speaker 3:Yeah. These people We're polarizing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're polarizing, which means both sides. Yep. These people have one side.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:They're just it is so it's like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You and it's like it's a really
Speaker 1:Social media companies too have the same problem. Yeah. No uses them, but no one likes them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But but then they also live in a circle, and that circle's printing money.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So it's like, you know, when you look in the mirror and you just printed a lot of money, you look pretty fresh.
Speaker 3:Is part of it is is part of it that that some element of the technology, let's just say LLMs, is so magical that the companies involved, that the companies that are making and selling frontier intelligence can be bad at a bunch of other things and still grow.
Speaker 2:Well, no. No. No. They are magical at a certain kind of thing, allowing you to write, for example, code. Now that code doesn't can't be used as a knowledge store.
Speaker 2:So if you look at code in, like, three different ways, like just using Palantir as a model, we have code that's basically infrastructure. So what what are the Ukrainians using? What is the Department of War using? What do a lot of our enterprises we call that primitives. It's basically hard coded things that that understand the world.
Speaker 2:What do do? It would take millions of technical hours and an understanding of all these enterprise to do it. So it's it's much more like, how do you build a steel beam? Then you have, like, code that is written by FTEs. Okay.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of managed. It's the reason why FDs work, the secret is it's actually managed in something that we as a product. So you're writing to a code base, we're managing that, we're increasing our product. It's not just random people writing. Then you have, let's call it free code.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. That free code is, that's magical. Like, can do it very quickly, it's almost right, it doesn't have to be exact Dashboards. Dashboards, financial
Speaker 1:stuff Little flow.
Speaker 2:Probabilistic stuff where you'd have to
Speaker 1:One off analysis.
Speaker 2:It was magical. Yep. By the way, it's magical, it not only creates, and it's magical in a way I know people don't like the porn thing, but it's also addicting. It's like, you know it's not good for you, but, you know, it may lead to damage.
Speaker 1:One more dashboard.
Speaker 2:One more time. It can't hurt that much. Yeah. I know my doctor says it. I shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2:Sure. But it's like it's like that. Right? And you just keep going. And, like and if you're involved in that thing, you're also making money.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then, last not least, in certain circles, like, if you have you wanna be a researcher or you believe, essentially, it's a religion. So, like, you know, and, like, one of the things that's very charismatic, especially to people who've never had a religion, because all of a sudden, that hole in your heart that was yearning for, I don't know, I would say, you know, a a established religion, Judaism, Christianity Mhmm. Islam, is like being filled.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and all the answers are there. But it is very, very successful at doing things that a company has to do. But it is not actually solving the problem that enterprises are it is now, can solve them. That's the trick. It's not it's not binary.
Speaker 2:It's not like you can't say they're not valuing it. They're totally putting our business on steroids. Mhmm. Like, without LLMs, nobody would be talking about our ontology, about Apollo managing secure exploits, about our ability to manage an enterprise essentially, turning all these companies into FTEs. These deploy codes, we love them because now every company wants a deploy code.
Speaker 2:You know how you do that? You replatform on Palantir. Yep. And like and it actually works. It's not somebody with no taste who's never done enterprise, who has no earthly clue how these things work Yep.
Speaker 2:Who's done something else and is like just imagining they know how to do it. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Is part is part of this moment quite entertaining for you because you guys have been working on understanding businesses at a deep fundamental level, you guys have effectively been doing the work that people are promising AI could do for twenty years now, but actually doing it, finding all the really rough finding all the really rough edges and and not and and being at a point where you don't have to oversell the technology. You can sell both things. But now there's maybe here we go. We got it together.
Speaker 3:Now there's maybe
Speaker 1:Oh, it's the wrong side. That's why. Flip it around.
Speaker 2:There you go. You go. Hopefully There we got that I don't know. All this stuff wasn't recorded.
Speaker 3:I I trailed off, but No, I understand. But is part of it entertaining to you that it feels like, you know, Palantir has always been, in some ways, not had competitors because there's nobody with Alex Karp running a company that is does what Palantir does besides Palantir. But at the same time, there's been tens of billions of dollars deployed now to effectively do what Palantir does, but just selling the intelligence part, not selling all the underlying kind of infrastructure that
Speaker 2:you're doing two things. They're selling they're trying to sell the intelligence part, and they're trying to pretend if you just hire a bunch of people and let them run around their FTEs. Now the the very cool thing is when you've been in your basement doing your thing and everyone kind of use it as the freak show, it it's really interesting and and and and great to have adoption. The pretty ironic thing is half the people adopting now don't even know they're copying. But now, the copying thing, it helps and hurts.
Speaker 2:Where it hurts is, in the beginning, it puts clutter in the market.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's there's no doubt about it. Where it helps and we saw this with defense tech, honestly. So in defense tech, we were the only people. We were the first people, despite what I love these, honestly, other podcasters. They're interviewing people who are parroting things I said twenty years ago.
Speaker 2:They don't know it. And it's like, oh, that's so insightful. It's like, yeah, of course it's insightful. Karp said it twenty five years ago. And, like but it's it's a but so that kind of that part is super weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But and, like but but it's but what really happens when we see it is, like, it expands the market. Mhmm. So, like, in defense tech, we would not be doing this well in just purely in government unless there weren't 50 companies that were doing similar things. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because then the people are like, okay. First of all You
Speaker 3:view it as, like, off balance sheet sales resources where
Speaker 2:other people are basically Well, it's off well, no. That that's the largely it's they do two things. They increase the size of the market because, de facto, nobody wants to find an underwriting market where there's only one person. Sure. So, like, if you're the one person, the percentage of the defense budget you can get is much smaller.
Speaker 2:And two, they set up a comparator. It's like, you know, you may not like the freak show. Okay. If you like, but have you noticed the people who are serious buy it? And then then it changed and then, three, it changes the standard.
Speaker 2:Now, what you're seeing now is, like, that times a 100 x. Yeah. And it does change, like, recruiting, retention, and, like, how you build a company. And we're we're we're always thinking you have to think about how to being dyslexic, huge advantage there, because, like, you you don't have a playbook, and now that you need you need things to shift, and we're doing that. The the the central thing, though, that is just cannot be developed, even if you understood the playbook, a lot of these things are like appear like it's like, you know, LM code appears like Palantir code, but isn't for a deployed thing.
Speaker 2:Appears like Palantir. It isn't ontology. You could theoretically copy parts of it, but they're essentially structures that are built deep into organizations that we own. And by the way, take you three years. And in three years, we're in a completely different world.
Speaker 2:But there is this magical thing called taste. Like, in the end of the day, the reason why you guys have done so well, it's of course, there's aptitude and diligence and showing up and all those things. Yeah, but you have to be able to differentiate between two people who are in business, one of whom is saying something that sounds weird that is insightful, one of whom is parroting something that sounds weird, and that's all they're doing. Yep. And a lot of people, very few people, can do that.
Speaker 2:And you see the same thing. Like, the enterprises that succeed, there is a taste arbiter. And at Palantir, we have taste arbiter. We have taste in every product, taste in every deployment, taste in every casting. Who puts the people there?
Speaker 2:How do you put them there? How do you organize the thing? Our ontology then does that technically. How do you manage the whole org with taste? Who should be in charge?
Speaker 2:What data sets should come in? What what are where do the ways in which you protect? What is what should you push into the public crowd? What should be on prem? What what should I mean, leaving aside the law and, like, wars, war ethics, what do you wanna protect?
Speaker 2:What should you protect? What should you not protect? Because, quite frankly, you want that to be out there so you can get more data. All those things are arbited by taste, and then you have to have the credibility of having taste. That's a real problem for a lot of these places, because they don't have they're popular with their friends.
Speaker 2:They don't they really don't understand how unpopular they are in enterprise. Like, they think it's like, oh, yeah. It's like the way I think I have a problem with, like, professors at Columbia. It's like, no. It's a real problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, they think I'm Satan. And, you know, it's like, I I think, you know, we grew up in the same community. Let's talk about Heidegger. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're like, they don't wanna talk about Heidegger. So it's like it's like yeah. And so that's just a it's a weird thing. It's gonna be a super the one thing I would say for anyone listening, if you're listening to this and you're chillaxing and not active I'm not saying you have to agree with me politically or anything. Yep.
Speaker 2:There the like, partly because of this dynamic, and it very self inflicted because I I I tell you, I can't name names. I called many of the titans of this world and and, like, started this six months ago, like, couple days, were going to be You
Speaker 3:call them every couple days?
Speaker 2:Like, some of them are like, yeah, we're gonna be mean, you know, it's like, honestly, they're like the batch. They they find me very entertaining. Like, I'm not sure. Like, so they call because yeah. It's like, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh, yeah. This is gonna be entertaining. You're gonna pick up. Yeah. So any case For sure.
Speaker 2:I've been telling them for six months Yeah. Six we're gonna be nationalized.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You talked about this.
Speaker 2:We're going to be nationalized. They're like, why would anyone nationalize? Never happened in America. It's never why would anyone nationalize us? We're so likable.
Speaker 2:We're creating so much value. Like, okay. I'm not gonna debate that. I know how likable I am. I'm I'm not gonna tell you how likable you are.
Speaker 2:But I am telling you, and you know the momentum on this is on the side of people in national life. And we don't get our act together and figure out ways we can say, hey, look, there are problems here we're going to deal with. These things are not going to yes, they are going to create opportunities. You have to talk openly about how these things are valuable because we have adversaries. You can't just say these things.
Speaker 2:All that stuff. So the primary risk, honestly, to Palantir and to a lot of these other countries is and then it's going to be nationalized. Before national, it's gonna be regulated by people who don't understand this. And now, they'll tell you in private, I'm working on this, I'm da da da, and this and this, lobbyists. It's like, not gonna work.
Speaker 2:So, like, that's something, like, if you're listening to this and you're like, look, you know, you don't have to agree with me on all my proclamations. I got a lot of by the way, there's some people who think, I'm saying we should have a draft. Too lazy to read. I'm just saying we should like, in a world where everything is changing, everything is changing, don't we have to find some communal structure to remember we're American? You idea don't like of, like, we all do a week in the park?
Speaker 2:Great. Come up with some other idea. Wait. We can have no idea. You know?
Speaker 2:And, like and then they're like, well, I'm saying I I do not wanna draft, just to be explicit. They're like, oh, that's pro war. No. Honestly, you know what? Most of our wars are fought because no working class person is making a decision.
Speaker 2:You start making sure everyone is involved in everything. I'll see you have a few wars we fight. It's actually the anti war position. But any case, disagree with everything. If you're we have on the right and on the left people, people who have no earthly clue what they're talking about, right and left.
Speaker 2:All they're talking about is how much they hate us. And those of us who are sensible in the middle, you know, too many of us are chill waxing. Like, oh, like, nationalization. It can't happen. America would never do Sleepwalking.
Speaker 2:Sleepwalking into and you guys have tendies to protect now. You guys should be on the front line of this. Like, you got full oh, I'm sorry. I have a I have a full on, very impressive corporate leader coming on. Yes.
Speaker 2:So I gotta I gotta turn it down.
Speaker 3:Question. Last question if we have time. How are your conversations going with Fortune 500 CEOs around headcount planning? There's been so many layoffs this last year that people were saying, hey, we're getting so much out of AI, we're able to cut back here or there. People inside tech often know, like, these maybe there's just reduction because there needs to be a reduction or got bloated.
Speaker 3:Maybe they do need to fund some A and Or is
Speaker 1:it declining business model? Getting out of queue,
Speaker 3:that's all But how are those conversations going? What does it look like?
Speaker 2:By the way, I talk to Fortune 500 companies. I talk to unions. I talk to soldiers. I talk to fire. If you upscale somebody, they're more valuable.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:And, like, all these whether it's people working on batteries, people driving trucks, people corporate leaders. And again, this is where I think we have to be very careful to be more disciplined on the corporate side. Like, if you run around saying AI allowed you to fire two thirds of your workforce, and you did it because maybe your competitor's kicking your ass
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That could that is a really like, you might as well just go sign up for Bernie Bernie Sanders' manifest. Sure. And part of the thing is they really believe that can't happen, so they're free riding on the fact that it could. Like, we have and and it just cannot work anymore. These things are very, very explosive.
Speaker 2:The American people sense that there is something dangerous here. And when people are playing with that fire, it's like it's a they assume the fire won't burn their hands. That's not the world we're in. That fire is going to consume us. And what we see again, the war fighting example is just the most neutral, not for everybody, but, like, the soldiers at the bottom have gotten much more valuable.
Speaker 2:And I don't even just mean the special operators, which, obviously, they're in a different league. But, like, every the people doing a lot of the operations now are doing our product. They're high school, vocationally trained. You see this everywhere. The modern The enterprise is going to have, like, have a true like, very, very, very smart person coming on, and it's like, you're gonna have a very smart executive.
Speaker 2:He's much better at hiding it than I would be if I were him, but that's you can talk to him about that. But and and then very talented, creative people with taste all up and down the stack. Any case, I think this is time for me to I
Speaker 1:think this is time.
Speaker 2:Do we
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Great to catch up.
Speaker 1:Always fun.