All-In Podcast: Meta's Dina Powell McCormick: The Case for Data Centers, Backlash, AI Job Boom & Meta's Future
(0:00) Dina Powell McCormick joins The Besties! (1:52) Impact of Meta's data center in Richland Parish, LA: $50K teacher checks, revitalizing a small town community (11:52) How Meta is alleviating
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All-In Podcast: Meta's Dina Powell McCormick: The Case for Data Centers, Backlash, AI Job Boom & Meta's Future
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podcast-ingeston 2026-09-18. Auto-transcribed via AssemblyAI (universal-2,en). Speakers identified by AssemblyAI Speaker Identification using the per-podcasthost/regularshints; the resulting label→name mapping is in the frontmatter. Duration: 43m. Episode page: https://allinchamathjason.libsyn.com/metas-dina-powell-mccormick-the-case-for-data-centers-backlash-ai-job-boom-metas-future. Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/allinchamathjason/AIS26_Dina_Ch.mp3?dest-id=1928300.
Show notes (from RSS)
(0:00) Dina Powell McCormick joins The Besties!
(1:52) Impact of Meta's data center in Richland Parish, LA: $50K teacher checks, revitalizing a small town community
(11:52) How Meta is alleviating data center concerns: pollution, electricity, water, noise, aesthetics; Misinformation campaigns
(19:57) America's Workforce Academy, the job growth in re-industrializing America
(26:58) Meta's recent social media settlement, new rules for teens
(35:25) Meta glasses and Zuck's AI strategy
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Transcript
Meta's Dina Powell: A trailblazing leader in government, business, and philanthropy.
Chamath Palihapitiya: A former presidential advisor to Donald Trump,
Jason Calacanis: Dean Appal McCormick joined Meta Platforms as
Chamath Palihapitiya: president and vice chairwoman.
Jason Calacanis: She'll help lead the company's massive AI
Chamath Palihapitiya: expansion, including data centers, investments and global partnerships.
Meta's Dina Powell: Paola McCormick's background is exactly where Meta's new bottlenecks are. There is a transformation in humanity coming. Nothing can stop that now with this technology, 3.5 billion people every day are on Meta. I think we all know that the next three years could be the whole game. Women are the secret sauce. How about that?
Jason Calacanis: Please welcome Deena Powell McCormick. See you.
Meta's Dina Powell: Thanks for coming out.
Chamath Palihapitiya: How are you, Dina? Thank you for being here. You know, we were just finishing up a conversation with Satya about how do we tell the story about the benefit of data centers and what they're doing to communities and why they're actually net economically positive. And I know you, so I'm gonna get right into it. Cause I know you actually have a video on this. Do you want to just start with your video? Would that be okay?
Meta's Dina Powell: That'd be great. I mean, I just want to say, so psyched to be at the All In Summit. First time to speak. And as long as this episode and panel gets way more listeners and views than Senator McCormick's did when he came on, I'll be very, very happy with that. So now we can roll the tape. No competition.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Good. We'll put it on polymarket. Let's watch the video.
Jason Calacanis: Richland Parish was the place that opportunity forgo.
David Sacks: I've grown up here my whole life, and I've seen a lot of people move away looking for work, including my son.
Meta's Dina Powell: What you were hearing a lot lately
Jason Calacanis: was, there's nothing here for us anymore.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: We knew that having a data center would give us an industry here that we haven't had before. That's a huge investment in our community.
David Sacks: We started this business simply because Meta was coming.
Meta's Dina Powell: We thought we had hit it big
David Friedberg: when we got to cater for 40 people.
Meta's Dina Powell: Now we do 400 a week. Since Meta came to town, we've hired more employees.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: A multi billion dollar capital investment like the one that Meta is making in Richland Parish is it was transformative. It's extremely exciting to attract and retain quality teachers.
Meta's Dina Powell: So when I first got the news about the bonus, it was jaw dropping. My mouth was literally wide open. We're not in it for the money.
David Friedberg: We're teachers because it's in our heart.
Meta's Dina Powell: But the bonus has been extremely helpful
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: with the investment that Meta has made in our community. Now we can do a better job of taking care of our own.
Chamath Palihapitiya: I do feel a lot of hope for the future of my students. It gives them the opportunity that they never thought that they would have.
David Sacks: And I would say one of the biggest things is people coming back home.
Meta's Dina Powell: You know, the future is happening here and happening now.
Chamath Palihapitiya: You have some folks from the video here.
David Sacks: I do.
Meta's Dina Powell: Can they? Come on out. Come on out. Sheldon and Susan. We have the superintendent from that video, the superintendent in Richland Parish.
Jason Calacanis: Thanks for joining us. Pleasure.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Hi, sir.
Jason Calacanis: Thanks for joining us.
David Sacks: Hi, Sheldon, how are you?
Chamath Palihapitiya: Come on now.
Jason Calacanis: Good to meet.
Chamath Palihapitiya: How are you? Thank you for being here.
David Friedberg: Thanks for having us.
Chamath Palihapitiya: You want to do an introduction?
Meta's Dina Powell: Sure. What an honor. It's an honor for me to be here with Sheldon and Susan. We spent a lot of time in Louisiana. It's our largest data center investment for Meta. And I've been with them in Louisiana. And what is remarkable to me is just the leadership that, frankly, the governor has shown. So Susan is the commerce Secretary for Louisiana, the economic development secretary. And Sheldon, who I'm going to let him speak for himself, but he is such an inspirational figure there, and he is the one that realized that because of our investment, the tax surplus would go straight to teachers. And maybe you can talk just a little bit about that.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: Yeah. So it's great to be here. I just think back to my first interaction with Meta. It was in the summer of 2024, and it was at our local community college. And I just remember after the meeting, getting in my car and it's hot in Louisiana, so I turned the air on and I just sat there and I said, the game has changed. This is going to give our parish an opportunity to do something that it's never been able to do. So when the groundbreaking ceremony happened In December of 2024, I could immediately start to see the increase in our sales tax collections. There are six taxing entities in our parish. The Richland Parish school board collects 51% of the taxes for the district. So I was able to see the sales tax collections go from 5%, 10%, which is normal for a school system, to about 60 or 70%. And at that time, the number of workers at the data center site increased. Those collections peaked at about 260%. That's an increase in sales tax collections. And so we have a 1 cent and a 1 half cent sales tax that's dedicated to employee salaries. And so we're announcing the sales tax increases at our school board meetings. And we're educators so people can do the math, they start to figure out this is going to translate into a larger sales tax check which directly goes into our salaries. So In December of 2025, we gave out a 1/2 cent sales tax check. That check doubled from the previous year. So it went from roughly about $4,000 to about $8,000. But we hadn't seen a full year of spiked increases in sales tax collections that happened this past June. So our certified employees received an increase of about $40,000 in their sales tax.
Chamath Palihapitiya: They got a $40,000 check.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: They got a $50,000 check. So the check the previous year was $10,000. So if you take that December increase, in the June increase, it was a net of about $45,000 for our teachers.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Did they all. Because the reason Dean and I were talking about this panel and everyone hates data Centers. They poll negative 80 in the United States. And Tina was telling me the story and I was like, we should tell this story because it is unbelievable. Did the teachers and the community have this negative sentiment about data centers before? Were they all, we hate data centers, we don't want them here? Or was that before this wave happened and the community didn't really kind of pay much attention to it?
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: I think initially there was the unknown. And we are, we are the beginning. We're a starting point. There was no reference for us to access. We couldn't say, okay, well, when the last time? When was the last time we had a $50 billion capital investment in our
David Sacks: schools, so how do we handle that?
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: So, yeah, a few million dollars, that's huge for us. So there was anxious thoughts. I think Meta has done an excellent job of informing us and educating us, and, and that's going to have to continue to happen. Oftentimes this communication is not about the most informed person in the community. It's about the least informed person in the community. So we're working to make sure that we continue to get that positive message out about the good things that are happening. Because there are a lot of good things that are happening in our parish.
David Friedberg: Yeah, I think to the superintendent's point, Louisiana was a little bit late to the data center game, which has actually worked remarkably well to our benefit in that the META investment was the first one in the state. And because of the partnership, the way we negotiated the deal, I call it a partnership, not a negotiation, frankly, all along the community, when we first brought the idea, even prior to you knowing Superintendent, the community wasn't apprehensive because there was a great deal of unknown. Now, keep in mind this was now about 20 months ago is when we started the conversation there. So the chatter wasn't as much as it is now. But you're talking about a community that was really starved for opportunity, as you saw in the video. You know, we had lost population. The average wages in Richland parish were roughly 36, $38,000 a year prior to this investment. So the data center went to a place in Louisiana, you know, Mississippi Delta Parish that was Mississippi River Delta. Obviously it was, it was longing for this opportunity. And we got ahead of that. And I think we got ahead of that very wisely in the way we addressed both the concerns, the impact on the community, the good impact on the community and the natural resources and all the things we're hearing. Right.
David Sacks: In a weird way then all of this noise is actually somewhat beneficial in the sense that you may just want to go to Dina and say we'll just take all your data centers. I mean, I mean, quite honestly, I
David Friedberg: think our governor would actually say that.
David Sacks: Continuous change in the, in the earnings potential of normal average Americans.
David Friedberg: Yeah. The governor just signed an executive order a few months ago creating a framework for us under which we will engage with large load users. Right. And the privilege that it gives us now is we get to be choosy. Right. We have a sales tax exemption which is critical to be able to land an investment of this size and this scale. But now we get to really court who our partners are going to be. And the governor claims it all the time that Meta really was the prototype for us and it set a very high standard and that's now the standard we're going to follow. We are not one of those states who is saying no. We are one of those states that are saying yes and yeah.
Jason Calacanis: So maybe you could help us with. It's pretty clear the economic case for building and growing and creating jobs. Take us through the list of valid concerns communities have. One of them is pollution. I'm not sure if this is running off of gas or if it's all solar and renewables, increased electricity cost, water, closed loop versus non closed loop noise, pollution and aesthetics. These buildings are awfully ugly, typically as created. Did any of those apply? Did you get any of that feedback from the community?
David Sacks: Our journalist?
Jason Calacanis: What's that?
David Sacks: Our journalist?
Jason Calacanis: No, no, actually not journalism. Actually what it is is, it's facts, Sachs. These are the facts of the people. Hold on, I'll finish. These are the facts that community members have valid concerns about. There are people who have had data centers put next to them that are polluting that are creating noise and there are valid water concerns and there are communities where their electricity went up. So I'm asking a serious question based on facts. I'm wondering if any of those apply to you.
David Friedberg: Yeah, Gina, you said this was going to be easy. No, no, no. Yeah, clearly, you know, we're all people, right? We all hear, we all have the same concerns. Again, some of it was that we got very lucky with the timing of all this because those issues were addressed before they became in the public forum of issues. You know, number one, this was farmland. This was agricultural land. And early on in the conversations with the meta team, they made a decision to use a more expensive but more efficient system that actually uses less water than was being used on that land when it was being farmed. Right. It's not a statistic you hear very often. The second piece about the energy, clearly we're hearing it across the board, but there are two really critical components to this. Number one is that Louisiana has abundant natural gas. We have about 32,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in Louisiana today. If we don't add another mile, so we have access to natural gas everywhere. But in the relationship that Meda created with Entergy, the energy provider there from day one before this was an executive order from the president or even the governor. Meda paid for its own generation. It paid for grid resilience, it paid for grid upgrades. It paid for storm costs. Louisiana has storm assessments when we have hurricanes. It happens every now and then. It's paying for storm costs in a state where they didn't operate right when these hurricanes hit. So it's actually taking burdens off of the Louisiana consumer. So all those issues were issues and they were addressed with the original negotiated deal. And I will say it's really why it's become the prototype for how we move forward with others.
David Sacks: This is a question for you. You used to be the deputy National Security Advisor, so answer this. Maybe with just a bit of that hat on. I mean, Jason brings up valid concerns. But then there's this data that is so clear for you, but also for others. I mean, you just heard from Satya. Why is this misinformation campaign winning so soundly in America? What has happened? What is going on?
Chamath Palihapitiya: Sure.
Meta's Dina Powell: Well, I think first the questions that Jason raised are really legitimate questions. And I think we start with a premise that if a community doesn't want one of our data centers, they get to choose, they get to decide, but that we actually have to up front and way more aggressively explain what our Investment and partnership means. And we have a compact, a compact that Susan and Sheldon are describing. First, not just pay for your own electricity, make sure that you're working to drive electricity costs down. The second is the water issue. It's very real in farmland and rural communities. But there's absolutely now new technology, in fact, AI driven technology that makes you able to actually increase water consumption. The third is the teachers. I'll be very honest, this was not our idea. This actually happened because this law allows or in fact manages that every extra dollar of tax surplus goes directly to the teachers. And the superintendent was telling me things that just are so remarkable. Used to have a hard time recruiting teachers. Now his phone is ringing off the hook throughout Louisiana. Teachers wanting to come there. And this may end up being the best school district in the entire state. And now we have taken that learning and we're investing in teachers and first responders. And you saw, of course, the economic development impact for small businesses. That's our compact. Everywhere we go, Meta makes sure that we do those things. But to answer your question, Chamath, I don't think that our industry has done a good job communicating. Just flat out. We have to do a better job. But before you can communicate anything, you've actually got to be meaningful and have real impact. And so we've started with the premise that we want to be the best actor and the best partner possible. And now having, frankly, the impact that we see in Louisiana, we're very proud of the impact you're having in Texas and Ohio. But I think we have to tell these stories more. And I know you're alluding to. Where is this information coming from? You know, I was just with Chairman Cotton and Vice Chairman Mark Warner and the Intelligence Committees, you know, they do believe they have evidence that our adversaries are trying to gin this up. I can't comment on that. But what I can tell you is if you wanted to stop America right now, what would you do? This is exactly what you would try to do if you were any of our adversaries. You would want us to stop building data centers in the United States so that we could, you know, we would not be on a path to being AI dominant in the world. This is what you would do. So whether they're doing it or not, this is definitely an approach you would take. And I actually said to them, very respectfully, these are great jobs. And the communities that want the jobs, want the teacher bonuses, want these investments should be allowed to have them. And those that don't should opt out. But we certainly don't want our companies, my company, and our peers to start thinking about building data centers.
Jason Calacanis: But it's so easy to debunk these issues. The water one is the one that just confounding that. Confounding that that narrative keeps staying alive. I think you did an amazing job.
David Sacks: There's a clip on X of this woman with this bottle of dirty water that she trucks around, and you're just like, so there's. There's.
Chamath Palihapitiya: There's no what? You know what I love? I love that it's a federated republic that the founders designed. And some states are going to win, Some states are going to be idiots, and they're going to lose. And, you know, you guys are going to have this incredible economic advantage.
David Friedberg: Yeah. I do want to add to Dena's point as well. Just as the teachers are calling Sheldon to consider going to his parish to teach. The minute that got announced that y' all were giving $50,000 bonuses, I can't tell you how many leaders of rural parishes in Louisiana called me and said, secretary, do y' all have any who are considering our parish? Please bring one here. So the global narrative is not happening in Louisiana. I frankly, I don't believe it's happening everywhere, the way the propaganda says, calling
Chamath Palihapitiya: you from across the country, like other things, states saying, is this real? How did this work? And starting to kind of lean in and see if they can participate.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: So, historically, one of the challenges we've had as a rural school system is that our best and our brightest will. They'll do exceptionally well in school. They may even go to our local universities. But when they leave, I have a good idea in my head that they're not coming back to Richland Parish because we can't offer jobs that attract them. So they leave and they go to other states and they go to other cities. And now we're able to write our own narrative that if you want to leave and go, you can, but you don't have to. We have opportunity here for you here in Richland Parish. You have the ability to stay here to raise your family. And I think it's changing the narrative in our parish.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Well, Dina, I know you've got another video for us to watch also on how do we get more workers to come and participate in this growing economy. While we watch that, why don't we thank Susan and Sheldon for joining us? Thank you both for being here.
Meta's Dina Powell: Thank you so much.
Jason Calacanis: Thank you so much.
Meta's Dina Powell: Thank you very much.
David Sacks: Yeah, that was great. Fantastic. Thank you Sheldon. Pleasure. Thank you.
Jason Calacanis: Thank you so much. Appreciate you very much. Appreciate it you coming out. Thank you so much. I've always wanted to do something big. I know that this is the program that I need to be in in order to discover that in order for
David Sacks: a lot of technology to advance, we need the infrastructure. Meta is blessing these guys with the
Meta's Dina Powell: opportunity to be a part of that.
David Sacks: To help lay foundation for the future. You can come into the program with no prior experience.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: After you finish your four weeks here,
David Sacks: be able to go into the workforce.
David Friedberg: I'm grateful for this opportunity.
Meta's Dina Powell: I'm excited to actually get to do the work.
David Sacks: To have a group of students who
Meta's Dina Powell: are taking the opportunity serious and are doing it with passion, that means everything.
David Sacks: Once they're able to finish our course, there's so many different paths that they can take.
Jason Calacanis: The more that we learn and establish this workforce, the more we can impact future generations.
David Friedberg: I feel like it will change the world. I'm ready to work.
Chamath Palihapitiya: You were telling me a story about like a posting for fiber optic technician. Can you just tell that story? Because I think it's incredible.
Meta's Dina Powell: Sure. So even in our site in Louisiana, one of the issues is that we just can't find enough workers. And you really need a set of obviously welders and pipe fitters and construction workers, electricians. But there's something that every data center site really needs, fiber technicians. The people that just actually lay and cut the fiber. And we just could not find enough people. And so we just made a curriculum and we partnered with a few people, CBRE and others, and we realized that this program just didn't exist. So we decided if you can do it for fiber technicians, why not go beyond. It's a five week fast track training program where you get all of your safety training, you get designated something called job site ready so you can get the job. We at Meta guarantee you a job if you graduate on one of our data center sites and you have that certification with you whether you want to stay at our site or elsewhere. And the missing piece is that while there are, as David Sachs has said over and over again, there are 500,000 open jobs for these roles over the next couple of years. But there is this gap between people actually getting those jobs. And it's because it turns out if you're a waitress or you're an Uber driver, or you are a home health care worker, you live paycheck to paycheck. You cannot afford to take that time off unpaid. The training is weirdly very expensive. OSHA training and things like that. And what if you do that and you don't get a job? So we launched America's Workforce Academy. We launched it, I don't know, four months ago, 40,000Americans applied. We've graduated 250 people and we have a 90% retention rate. So people that are getting into these contractor jobs on our data center sites, you can see they've learned a new trade. They've left behind a job that wasn't as fulfilling. And of course, every company that's hiring them is just thrilled. It's also something that's interesting, David, that you and I talked about, which is we have partners across the board in this program. We didn't put Meta in the name because we are so excited to be working with other companies that are interested in recruiting these workers as well. But we're working with the unions. Sean McGarvey, the head of the trades, NABTU, is a friend and we made a great partnership with him. Some of those workers are on union sites, some are non union. But an interesting voice that has emerged in this debate is the unions. The union leadership now is saying we want to be anti the anti data center backlash. These are our jobs. These are for our people. And so they actually put out, even before the midterms, a note saying they are only going to support candidates that support data centers.
David Sacks: How much balance,
Meta's Dina Powell: big change.
David Sacks: How much balance sheet capital does it take to get this thing off the ground? And do you see the other majors, the big eight, kind of joining forces and having this new educational track kind of become a de facto standard in America?
Meta's Dina Powell: You know, all of us are working on this. In fact, I just talked to Ruth Porat at Google. She's done an incredible job on workforce and she's actually brought together, we're going to join this alliance. Larry Fink at blackrock has joined the alliance. She's bringing together other companies. You know, we might, you know, might compete on models and products, but we don't want to compete on people. We as an industry, I think, are doing this part well where we're really working together because anybody that gets trained to work on a metadata center site can certainly go to a Google site or a Microsoft site. And so this is a place where we've really come together.
David Sacks: How do you, how do you expand the capacity? So there's 40,000 that applied, but you up picked 400. That's 39,600.
Meta's Dina Powell: Yeah. And we started four months ago. And now we're literally getting calls from Mary Barra at gm. I'd like A thousand employees. You know, once you have the curriculum and the certification and the partners to deliver it, you can do these everywhere. We're doing them in community colleges, VFW halls. In that particular program, you actually have to have a site that's kind of like a model data center so that you can show how to train the fiber technicians. But we're working with the association of Builders and Contractors. They have, you know, thousands and thousands of places across the country where they operate.
David Sacks: Why is it so expensive? Outside of you guys basically backstopping this to get something like job site ready and OSHA awareness, I mean, this should seem like you go online.
Meta's Dina Powell: And I think the thing that we unlocked is that we actually pay during the training what you would get if you are already in the job. It used to be that there's a very low fee or an apprentice fee for so long that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the full payment of the job. And so we do that from the beginning. And then, of course, these jobs, I mean, David and I have been in Pittsburgh with some of these workers, and, you know, these are jobs. Welders make 100, $120,000 a year in Pittsburgh. That is meaningful, great work. And I think the unlock that we're very proud of with this program is that there just wasn't a clear and fast path to getting on the job site and to having a guaranteed job.
Jason Calacanis: It's great that you have these jobs because with AI progressing so quickly, these developers are going to need something to do, and so I think they can segue into electrician jobs. I'm kidding, obviously, but absolutely fantastic work on the data centers. Fully support it. Great job on the meta glasses. Amazing.
Meta's Dina Powell: Where are your metaglasses, Jason? I gave you such a.
Jason Calacanis: They're right here on the bag, right in my backpack. No, they're actually super impressive. This effort is truly impressive. But you said you wanted me to do a fastball or two and you. You didn't want it to be.
Chamath Palihapitiya: She didn't say that, J.C. she literally
Jason Calacanis: asked me for at least one. One fastball.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Jcal fastball.
Jason Calacanis: You do? Okay, so we'll just keep it all softballs.
David Sacks: Before you ask a question. Please, please come back. Yes, go ahead, Jason. No, no, no.
Jason Calacanis: We can just go.
Meta's Dina Powell: We'll go.
Jason Calacanis: Softballs. The boys prefer softball.
David Friedberg: I mean, it's only kidding.
Jason Calacanis: We. We have meta here and. And you just paid the largest settlement, second only to the tobacco industry and just ahead of BP oil, two of the biggest disasters this country ever faced. And this one is particularly tough.
Meta's Dina Powell: And they wonder why they call him fake news.
Jason Calacanis: No, I.
Meta's Dina Powell: Numbers are wrong.
Jason Calacanis: Tina, I'm happy to talk about the meta glasses if you prefer.
Meta's Dina Powell: I'm so glad, actually, seriously, go read your effective altruism. I'm actually really glad you asked about it.
Jason Calacanis: Yeah, well, let me finish the question. You may not be. So I'm going to lean in now, so to speak. The real, I think, challenge a lot of us have with Facebook as an organization, and these are amazing, the videos are super inspiring and well produced, but you guys really did damage, significant damage to children. You knew that these products were too addicting. And the philosophy of the company from the beginning, when Chamath was there, hey, move fast, break things. Let's go super fast. My sincere question is how has the culture changed inside of Facebook? And you're making a new series of potentially more addicting products with character based AI companions with Muse as a product. So I'm curious what's changed in the organization and what did you learn from that? Record setting. Fine. And something that is you could have done a lot better on.
Meta's Dina Powell: Well, I totally disagree with basically every single premise in your question.
Jason Calacanis: I'm not getting that. $17 billion settlement says otherwise.
Meta's Dina Powell: Do I get to speak or are you done with your 10 minute question? Okay, I totally disagree with the premise of that.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: I see.
Meta's Dina Powell: I've only been there eight months. I was on the board for a year. And I can tell you, because I work with these people every day, they are really, really focused on ensuring that parents are empowered, teens are supported. And I couldn't be actually more proud of the agreement that we just made. We made it. With 52 bipartisan attorneys general across the United States and the territories, we are now setting industry standards. We agreed that if your state signed on with us, that children under 18, not 16, can only be on our platform for two hours a day. The app shuts off after that, and it completely shuts off at night. There are no notifications during the school day at all of any kind. And frankly, parents have way more supervision now. Many, many ways that they can decide what their kids are on, how long they're on and what they're seeing. And I think that we're proud of that because if others in our peer group joined, this could be pretty historic and game changing. And Jason, I'm a mom of 16, six daughters, so this is really personal to me. I watch them grow up in this, in this generation, and I feel that, you know, we really can actually find a way to come Together. The reason your numbers were wrong on the settlement is because we actually agreed to give an additional $5 billion and to go down to only one hour of use on our platform if YouTube, TikTok and Snap. Join us because as we know,
David Friedberg: as
Meta's Dina Powell: we know, people leave one set of apps and go to another. But wouldn't it be pretty amazing in America if children under 18 could only be on apps for an hour a day?
David Sacks: Yes.
Meta's Dina Powell: Shut off at night. And I don't. I just think that's 100% yes. Thank you.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Do you think it should be universal chamath or do you think it should be controlled by the parent? Like give the parent basic.
David Sacks: I think it is controlled.
Chamath Palihapitiya: What's your view?
Meta's Dina Powell: Well, it is. Meaning? Meaning obviously a parent can override it, but our app actually just does turn off.
Chamath Palihapitiya: I see.
Meta's Dina Powell: Obviously a parent. It's funny. I was in Texas this weekend at the Texas Ohio State game, my alma mater, and it was really funny. I had so many people come up to me and say, you know, this turning off, because it's literally happening, turning off Instagram is hurting college recruiting, football recruiting. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? In Texas we put all of our kids videos on Instagram and they get recruited. So it is interesting. I said, well, we live in America. That's up to you if you can dec as a parent, if you want to do more. But it does actually shut off and a parent has to override that.
David Sacks: I think it's incredible. I remember just being with my kids at the dinner table and my son was trying to show me something and he had hit the limit, just turned off and there's nothing. And I was like, this is fantastic.
Jason Calacanis: And what do you think the reason
Chamath Palihapitiya: you're like, leave it off.
David Sacks: What's that?
Chamath Palihapitiya: You're like, just leave it off. You don't care.
David Sacks: The reason is as a parent, it's whack a mole because the content is syndicated across all these platforms. And that's why what you're saying is so right. When my son, when my kids, my five kids go to school, they interact with YouTube as their primary outside of school mechanism because so much of the school content and educational content is there. So even if you shut off shorts in Instagram, they pop up over here. So it is this whack a mole problem for parents and it's a full time job to manage it. And so if there is effectively like a labeling and a decision on governance by these companies, it's deeply helpful for all of us that have jobs are trying to live a life and raise kids normally so they don't become zombies.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Zach, you're very active managing your kids mobile phone usage.
Jason Calacanis: Yeah. How many do you have?
David Sacks: Look, I think the new defaults probably are better. I mean just thinking about my kids usage. Yeah, it'd be nice if it turned off after an hour or two. So yeah, look, I think that's an improvement. I do have to sort of defend Meta because I do think that there was a little bit of a ridiculous pile on where, you know, the company's getting sued by adults who are blaming the use of this completely voluntary product. No one's forcing you to use any of these social network products. And then something goes wrong in their life that has many causes. And then they're suing Meta and winning big judgments. And then the state AGs get in on the actual. And all the trial lawyers. And the trial lawyers. The trial lawyers got half the money, I thought. Yeah. So let's acknowledge that there is a little bit of a shakedown going on here as well. I mean let's face it, that is kind of how the American court system works. But look, I think that they have reached a resolution that I think is net beneficial. And I like the new defaults. And ultimately this is about parental control. Parents should choose what you know and what apps their kids use and for how long. It should not be the government doing that. It should be the parents. Dina, can you. And we should just make it as easy as possible for the parents to do it. And in my view, the only reason to do these new defaults is because of the whack a mole problem. It is sometimes difficult for the parents to like figure out.
Jason Calacanis: I'm glad we're having this discussion. I think the issue for me has been the industry got very addicted to gamification and designing products to be addicting. Increasing time spent on app was in fact internally what Facebook was focused on. The challenge is, you know, you can be too good at something. And I think Facebook, along with YouTube and their algorithm, we're just too good at addicting people to it, whether they're adults or kids. And I will commend you, even if it was late as an organization in doing the right thing now and then leading the other organizations to do the right thing.
David Sacks: Let me build on what you're saying with a statement. And we Satya talked about this. I think Jensen will talk about it, Elon will talk about it. But we are. You're going to hear this word rsi over and over, over, over. The next 18 months. Recursive self improvement, which is this idea that if you define a function, a reward function for an AI and let it go, it's gonna self improve. So to your point, Jason, anything, whether it's, you know, World of Warcraft or Angry Birds or whatever app, you put it into an RSI loop and you add the reward function. Being time, all these apps will proliferate. Microsoft Word will keep you there for nine hours if it can't. So if unless companies make a decision like you guys to say here's a threshold and beyond this threshold, we're just gonna turn it off, it's gonna be kind of turtles all the way.
Jason Calacanis: Yeah, this was my point is how does it inform product decisions going forward? You got this incredible new product, Muse. You're in the mix on the bots, but again, I think the leadership and challenging the other organizations is what I will give you kudos for.
David Sacks: You know, I don't want to speculate.
Chamath Palihapitiya: I want to talk about this addiction thing as it relates to the product that we all tried on backstage. We all put on a meta glass and I'd never, I've never had the product before. What is the repeated use case of that product, do you think? Like, what is it that gets people? Because, you know. Yeah, the glasses. Sorry. Yeah. So like I remember when Google had the goggles and then Apple had VR and everyone's had an effort at putting something on your face and none of them have stickiness. They're all like really interesting novelty experiences and then your usage tapers off and you kind of put it in the drawer and it's like a cool tech relic.
Meta's Dina Powell: Well, they're very stylish.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Yeah.
Meta's Dina Powell: These are the Kylie Jenners. No, actually we are so excited about this as a product. The engineers have been working on this for 10 years. You make a couple good point that if people don't look good in them and they're not stylish, they're not going to put them on. But you know, billions of people wear glasses, whether they're to see or obviously sunglasses. And we're really excited about the features. You can obviously listen to music. The only way I listen to all in every week is wearing my meta glasses as I'm walking or working out. They actually have the incredible speaker and so your phone calls are perfect. And now we have a couple of features we're really excited about. Conversation, focus. So when Chamath is, you know, at dinner with his beautiful wife and he actually wants to hear her, if he looks at her all the noise, it goes away except her voice, which is pretty cool. And then translation, that's great. Translation as well.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Can I do the opposite when I'm Shamath.
Jason Calacanis: It's interesting, Dina. It's interesting you bring this up, Dina.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Great.
Jason Calacanis: Shamatha, I talk to. I'd like more of that. Shamath was just telling me he got the new Apple AirPods 5 specifically because of wife canceling.
David Sacks: I want the opposite feature.
Jason Calacanis: You can actually tune in.
David Sacks: But I'm going to tell you why you're wrong and I'm right.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: Okay, thanks.
David Sacks: By the way, with these products, you're damned if you're doing damned if you don't, in the sense that if you design it poorly, no one's gonna want to use it. If you design it really well and it's a big success, a bunch of trial lawyers are gonna say it was addictive and then you get sued for that.
Chamath Palihapitiya: So true.
David Sacks: Dina, can you. I'm sorry, I just wanted to move to AI for a second before.
Chamath Palihapitiya: No, I want to finish on this. So like. So, but, but. But it has this kind of recurrent use case built into it at this point is that I really want to
Meta's Dina Powell: understand if this the reason so many people are working. I mean, all of our peers are working on wearables. Because I do think people want to be part of the world. They actually don't want to be holding boxes, walking around. They actually really want to be able to talk to their family, take a picture, take a video, listen to music and be hands free. We have Oakley's that are really, really cool for extreme sports. So the use cases are just everyday life. And I think you're going to show a video. The thing that surprised us was one use case that we hadn't anticipated and that blind veterans. Actually somebody was joking with me. They said, how are you getting blind people to wear glasses? That doesn't make sense to me, but can we show this video? It is such an honor to be here. We're in Austin, Texas, at a VFW hall where Metamates are sitting down with amazing men and women who've served our country and who lost their eyesight. They have just been telling us they feel like they're getting their independence back. And we're so proud to be giving them meta glasses. I took them to church.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: They have the scriptures on the screen in front.
Meta's Dina Powell: I've never been able to read that, but I asked meta and it read
David Sacks: it word for word.
Meta's Dina Powell: For me, seeing these extraordinary stories, service men and women, all we've been Saying is, thank you, thank you. We don't have America without all of them. And as a big surprise, we are about to introduce them to Chris Stapleton.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: I just want to come by and
Chamath Palihapitiya: say thank you for all your service.
Dina Powell McCormick - #1 - 1: So grateful for you.
David Sacks: Chris Stapleton's the best.
Meta's Dina Powell: He came and joined us. It was actually on 911 just a couple days ago. And what we learned is that a group of blind veterans from the organization that that supports them came and actually worked with the Meta engineers and designed specific features. And it just turns out, obviously, the glasses can see for you and read to you. One of the gentlemen I was sitting next to put the glasses on, and he said, hey, Meta, call John. And I was sitting there. I couldn't hear obviously what he was hearing, and he just started sobbing. And I said, is everything okay, sir? He said, that's the first time I've ever called my son on my own. So we're seeing these kinds of use cases, of course, that we're incredibly proud
Chamath Palihapitiya: of, I guess AI. AI creates the unlock for the glass form factor. That makes a lot of sense.
David Sacks: Is that the form factor that you think kind of gets AI in a prevalent way for most people in the world? Is the glasses form factor or is there something else you think?
Meta's Dina Powell: I'm sure there will be many products. I mean, I think what I have learned from our team is that, you know, glasses are a thing. People wear glasses, and it's something that, you know, many, many people, they're affordable and people, obviously, we really worked hard, was very focused, not just on the design, but the weight of it. So it takes a lot to put the technology in here and to still keep it stylish.
David Sacks: And I think you're a minority owner of Ray Ban.
Chamath Palihapitiya: No.
David Sacks: Or of Luxotic. Of the Broad.
Meta's Dina Powell: They're our partner. Yeah, we have an exclusive with.
Jason Calacanis: I think that's why people should reconsider these, you know, as a product category, because I've had them since Google Glass. And the battery never worked. They were too bulky. You look like a dork in them. And now the battery works. And because you can control them, you know, not with Siri, which is still kind of broken, but this actually works. And when you're with your kids and you want to take videos, when you're skiing or you want to take pictures, it actually, you know, putting a phone between you is much more intrusive. So I think this actually brings you into the real world. And the translation feature is also very slick. So when you go to Japan or you go somewhere in their talking to you in another language, it can actually translate. Or if you see a sign, boom. Just instant translation without taking your phone out. It's time for people to reconsider these specifically for those reasons.
Meta's Dina Powell: You've used them a long time, though, so you really know.
David Friedberg: Yeah.
Jason Calacanis: The batteries, the battery problem, the fidelity, just. They didn't work. And now it does. Yeah.
David Sacks: So, Dina, just talking about the Dario's essay this weekend. There was a report, but it was unverified, that Zuck said something to the effect of. Of we need to go as fast as we can. I don't know if that was kind of misinformation. No, no, it was like a report that just hit Twitter at the same time that Dario's or X, when Dario's hang out. But just taking a step back broadly, how did you process that essay and the call for regulation or how are you guys thinking about this?
Meta's Dina Powell: Well, first, I really agree with a lot of what Satya said. I mean, the premise, the starting point, is that safety is paramount. And that is something that Mark talks about all the time. I watch daily how he and Alex Wang and Nat Friedman, who run our lab think about it. And a whole team of people exist to think about the safety of the models. And I think that there are very legitimate questions around that. I think the difference is that Mark just has a very different view. And I think that view is based on 20 years, a business model of empowering and connecting people, and that 3.6 billion people are on our platform every single day. 200 million small business owners operate their business every single day. And so his belief is that the more you distribute this technology, the more people that have superintelligence and are able to reach their potential, are able to have access to education and healthcare that they could have never imagined before. Learning that they could have never achieved before before, is not only better for each of those individuals, but it's better for society as a whole. So he fundamentally just believes when he wrote in his piece, the future is for everyone, that the democratization of artificial intelligence will actually lead to a more stable society. That is just a fundamental belief that he has. And I think that the thing that he thinks about is, so then what is his role? What is our role? And I think we were extremely proud to have the very first American open source model just a few weeks ago.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Well, Dina, you've got a lot on your plate. We really appreciate you taking the time to come and join us today. We covered a lot. It was awesome. Thank you for being here.
Meta's Dina Powell: Thank you guys so much.
David Sacks: Thank you so much.
Chamath Palihapitiya: Thank you.