133 – Tariffs, Healthcare Disruption, and a Quantum Leap in Tech Innovation

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Vic: Vic. How's it going? It's going well. Got a big weekend with my son's prom this weekend. Oh, awesome. That's fun. Yeah. Senior. Senior prom. Senior prom. That's, we're hosting 23 seniors for dinner.

Wow. Of course you are. Of course, my house can hold, you know, maybe 12, so it, it's not, it can't rain. Yeah. If it rains, we're in big trouble, but it'll be fun and, uh. So we'll see. You'll get to see 'em all dressed up and whatever. Oh, that's awesome, man. That'll be fun. That's exciting. Yeah. 

Marcus: I hope, hopefully it won't, it will, it will not rain.

Hopefully we've had all the rain we, yeah. We can handle. I, I think it's 

Vic: gonna stop and then just be beautiful, but that's just me, positive thinking. Well knock on wood for that for you. 

Marcus: Um, yeah, this was, uh, this was a good week, uh, on, on our end. Uh, my dad is rallying again, uh, from his latest, you know, health, health thing, but he is rallying, which is, which is [00:01:00] really good.

Um, so we're excited about that. And, um, and then you went to the, uh, G-N-P-C-A Greater Nashville Private Capital Association State of the market thing last night. Uh, yeah, that was good. 

Vic: Uh, Stuart mc Water, you know, who is the chairman of ECD for Tennessee? Yep. Interviewed, I don't know their names.

Interviewed a, a guy from Cambridge Associates who came down for it. That's And Raymond Janes Baker. 

Marcus: Yeah, 

Vic: it was good. It was state of the market and I mean, I think. As we talk about every week, the market is pretty chaotic. Yeah. Yeah. But they talked through things and it was good, more good to see everyone before and after and just catch up.

The, the content was fine, but I like catching up with everyone there. 

Marcus: Yeah. Cambridge Associates has a lot of, uh, 

Vic: data Yeah. On the market, so that, that's, uh, yeah. And they, they, uh, you know, because we're VCs, I'm our favorite. They made the point that if you stopped allocating to venture in oh nine and 10 and 11, or in 2020 and 2021, you [00:02:00] really missed the huge, like, you know, bounce back or, or market appreciation.

Right. Um, so that, I like hearing that. You gotta be in the game. Yeah. You gotta be, you gotta be in the game sort of 

Marcus: consistently Gotta be in the game. Uh, and, uh, in the, in the world, it does feel like, uh, this was not the. Most chaotic week that we've had in a minute. Yeah. Um, even though we have a lot to talk about it, it didn't feel like there was that much chaos abound and, and maybe more settling congealing of, of like, okay, we've, we've turned the world upside down.

Yeah. Now let's see if we can make sense of it and come to some, some new terms. We're gonna talk about all that. Yeah. I 

Vic: think Monday was prob, maybe was the low point. Yeah. Yeah. And then that's right. We're, 

Marcus: we're now 

Vic: coming back. 

Marcus: So hopefully that's right's. That's right. Alright, so with that, let's dig in[00:03:00] 

starting with the economy. Uh, so. We're gonna run through a series of stories to try to capture just all of the craziness that happened in tariff land this week. Right. Um, 'cause there was a lot, and, and it was really sort of focused on USA and China. I mean, those were Right. Definitely the, the headline players.

Um, I, I think every podcast that I listened to used the words trade war. So I think, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's sort of an official position on where we are. Um, but it also feels like maybe we're, we're about to wind that down and get to some productive negotiation. So, uh, the first story you've pulled together here from Wall Street Journal, fed tariffs, fears, send Dow down more than 900 points.

So Blue Chip Index head fors worst April since 1932. Yes. 

Vic: So this was on Monday. Monday. And there was of course terror fears, but also the fear that Trump would, would fire Powell Powell. Right. And. Yeah, that's what people were worried about on Monday was down 3%. 

Marcus: Yep. A little over 3%. [00:04:00] Yep. Okay, so then, uh, next tech shares drive stocks higher for a third straight session.

The NASDAQ composite is up more than 5% this week on trade deal optimism. So what happened there? 

Vic: Yeah, so this was sort of the, not bury the lead through all the different things. By Thursday night, we had three up days in a row, right. And I think it's been pretty clear that Trump is maybe not happy with the Fed, but he is not gonna make a change.

And so that sort of, maybe every president has different opinions of Fed policy, but, but everyone's much more happy that there's no major change there. And then there's hope that there'll be some kind of negotiated settlement in this trade war. I don't know that there's much data around that, but hope.

Marcus: So some of that hope stems from a sense that we're going to be, uh, deescalating the trade war. You know, Trump is [00:05:00] talking about how the 145% tariffs were, you know, probably at the upper end of, of what we, and, and also I, I think g said, you know, we're kind of stopping there. Yeah. And we'd like to come back to the table.

So there's talks of the two in the meeting before the end of this quarter. Mm-hmm. Um, and there's just a sense that everyone feels like everyone has sort of realized that this is the mutually assured destruction society. Let's not like push the entire global economy off the cliff. Um, 'cause these are, these are the two powers, right?

Like we're the big buyers, they're the big manufacturers. Right? Yeah. And, and we've got to find a path forward. There has to be a way that these two massive countries can, can continue to do trade that's functional both for our respective nations, but for the rest of the world. 

Vic: Yeah, I agree. And I'm hopeful we'll see.

I mean, there's a lot to be negotiated, but it seems like, seems like we're. At least Trump is making noises that sound like we could get to some agreement. 

Marcus: Yeah. The key points in this story here are the Trump administration considers reducing tariffs on [00:06:00] Chinese imports to deescalate trade tensions.

Tariffs could come down to roughly between 50 and 65%, which I think most people have figured out how to factor into their mm-hmm. Um, you know, economic model. Um, most of the people that I've talked to that are impacted by tariffs said they had budgeted for 60%. Right. So, so the 50 to 65, now you're in the zone.

That a hundred plus stuff was, was just non-functional. Um, a tiered approach considered 35% levies for items the US deems not a national security threat, and at least a hundred percent levies for items deemed strategic to America's interest. Uh, and then finally China signaled it was open to trade talks, but warranted, wouldn't negotiate under continued threats from the White House.

I mean, of course that, you know, why, why would they posture anything different than that? Yeah, that's right. Uh, and then. The Secretary Bessant said that the China tariffs are not sustainable, uh, alongside Trump's, uh, comments from the Oval Office. 

Vic: Yeah, and I, I choose to believe that this was coordinated. I, I think it is.

I, I would agree with you unlikely [00:07:00] that Bessant said anything without. Trump being aware of what he is gonna say. 

Marcus: Good, 

Vic: good 

Marcus: cop, bad cop here. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's what I think. That's right. That's what I think. This was good cop, bad cop. Right. Um, so totally agree. But I, I think also this gave investors some comfort as well.

That's right. That because the investors are constantly looking the best and like, Hey, are you in control here? Or, what's going on? Right. Yeah. So, so I thought that that was an important, um, you know, anecdote to point out. Uh, DHL is suspending their high value deliveries to the us, uh, amid the tariff turmoil.

So, uh, look, the Jujitsu Academy that, that I'm, I'm part of, um, our professor has a, has a clothing brand. I've been working with him on it a little bit. And there was a big, you know, shipment that came in and right at the beginning of, of, uh, the tariff talk, we hadn't even gotten quite to, to liberation day yet.

Um, and it, it was stuck in customs for like three weeks, you know, and, and there's all sorts of mad, like even post getting it out, uh, there was all sorts of madness around, okay, well. Did we pay the duty? I [00:08:00] mean, we did pay the duty, but like the manufacturer from China, you know, is saying, oh, well I don't know if I got the money from the Duty.

So it's, it's really complicated. Um, you know, these international, uh, you know, shipping processes. 

Vic: Yeah. And it is complicated. And moving it every hour makes it more complicated. Yeah. And yet we have to be able to ship things across, across country lines in some kind of efficient way. And DHL literally just shut, just stopped.

Like, we can't hold this and act like we're gonna deliver when we can't. We can't, we don't know what the process is. 

Marcus: And DHL's a very big international shipper. I think they're the biggest. Yeah. Yeah. Very big international shipper. So that's, you know, that, that's not small news. No, that's not small news at all.

Um, I mean, 

Vic: Besson said, I think he said it best that the tariff with China was an embargo. We're just not trading with China. Right. Right. Which is not. Sustainable. No. I mean, that's not gonna work. No. Not long term [00:09:00] sustainable. 

Marcus: So, um, other things, you know, knock on effects. Yeah. Of all this craziness, home sales in March fell 5.9%.

The biggest drop since 2022. I had seen, uh, this equivalent story on x, uh, the eshi mm-hmm. Uh, letter. They were pointing out, um, a, a chart from the Fed that effectively said, said the same thing. Yeah, 

Vic: yeah. And, and what makes me a little nervous is that, you know, people buy a home over a few months. So, so this is, we probably haven't reached the bottom of this like this.

All these sales have been in process for a couple months, and so I think it's, even though it's the. Biggest drop since 2022. I, I am fearful that it's not, it's sort of the beginning of the home sale effect. Oh, yeah. 

Marcus: No, listen, I, I'm seeing all sorts of, uh, you know, screenshots of different areas and just looking at how much inventory there is.

Mm-hmm. South Florida, DC Yeah. Unbelievable amounts of unsold [00:10:00] inventory. Yeah. On the market in those, in those, yeah. The South Florida condo market is, is. Terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really bad. Right? Yeah. Um, and at the same time, I don't know that this is happening everywhere, but uh, our assessor here in Nashville finally has caught up like we were behind.

And so on average, I don't know if you know this, but there's 45% increase on, uh, property taxes here in Nashville. And I, and I would imagine we're not the only Metro throat. 

Vic: I'm sure I'm getting that. I just don't know it yet. Yeah, 

Marcus: yeah, yeah, yeah. On average, not, so, not every single district. Yeah. But on average, 45% increase.

Yeah. Across, uh, Davidson County. Metro Nashville. Yeah. So I, and I would imagine we're not the only, you know, metropolitan area that's, that's gonna be receiving, so you get a double whammy, right? You can't sell your house and your taxes are getting a 50%, you know, increase. Yeah. 

Vic: Yeah. And we haven't even seen some of the job losses that I think are coming through the NIH into the academic medical centers and all of that stuff.

So I'm, I. Hopeful that this works out with [00:11:00] China quickly, but I think the second quarter, I still, even though we're at the beginning of it, I still think second quarter is gonna be pretty, pretty painful. 

Marcus: Yep. Yep. So that's, I mean, that this is a big deal, data point for us to continue to watch. Yeah. 'cause home 

Vic: sales mean that's where most Americans have their net worth.

Yes. Their, 

Marcus: their whole net worth. Yes. And, and you know, when the stock market shaves off $1.5 trillion in a day and you also can't sell your home. Yeah. That's a, that's a dark day for the right, you know, for the middle class. But stocks rebound as Wall Street latches onto hope for tariff easing. So we did get a rebound.

Yeah. 

Vic: Yeah. So this chart I like to end on because you can see we, we were down. For the, for the first, for Monday. It was down dramatically. Dramatically. And then we ended up, 

Marcus: yeah, that's the week, you know, today. I mean, it's been weeks that we've been doing the show, and when you look at the, the tickers at the top of, you know, uh, wsj.com Yeah.

All, all red, except for the vix. Right. This is the, this is the first day everything was green. This is the [00:12:00] first day we, in weeks that we've come in here where it is all green and the VIX is red. Yeah. Right. So that's, that's really, really positive. So that, you know, how long did it take us to do that? It is 10 minute rundown.

Yeah. On like this week. Yes. Crazy. 

Vic: Yeah. And if you were to watch the news every day, you'd, you'd be great. Yeah. You shouldn't. I think you 

Marcus: shouldn't. No, no. Just, just take a deep breath. Right, right. And once a week try to surmise what happened over the course of that week. Right. Because every it, it's a complete rollercoaster.

Yeah, that's right. From day to day, complete rollercoaster. And I do have to say like when, when Paul Kaman was on the show, he, he was talking about Trump's energy and I do think it's pretty remarkable that a guy his age has the stomach Yeah. For this kind of rollercoaster Yeah. To drive it to, you know, to push it to this level of, uh, volatility.

Vic: Yeah. I mean, he thinks he's doing really impactful changes to the world economy. I, I don't know if he is or [00:13:00] not, but, but I think he is, he has a lot of energy to, to do something. 

Marcus: It's gonna take a long time for it to all shake out. Yeah. You know? Yeah. We're, we're, we're definitely not close to, to getting an, an outcome on this.

Yeah. Uh, alright. Switching to the VC rundown. We are starting with fierce healthcare, nutrition counseling startup, nourish clinches 70 million to expand services. So, uh, this is a dietician, uh, yeah. Company. Yeah. Um, they've been, you know, pretty well known for a while now. Oh 

Vic: yeah. Yeah. This is the B round.

Yeah. It's a, it's a good company there. There's several that are sort of in this space. I, we did a guest show with, uh, nourish Rx. Ah, yes. It's a very similar name. Yes. Um, but I think we need more, I. Nutrition counseling in general. So there's plenty of market opportunity for all of them. 

Marcus: Yep. Yep. So $70 million round, uh, it's a Series B, uh, led by JP Morgan, private capital and, uh, returning investors are Thrive Capital Index Ventures, Y Combinator and others.

So, [00:14:00] um, great group around the table. Yeah. There. So, congrats to Nourish, uh, healthy this H-E-A-L-T-H-E-E, not a y at the end. Mm-hmm. Healthy Lands, $50 million to streamline benefits. Um, so this is a Health benefits nav navigation startup. Uh, their $50 million. This is in a Series B led by Key One Capital.

That's a new name for me. Yeah. Uh, previous investors, fin Capital know them. Uh, glia, I, I don't know how to say that. That's a weird name. Uh, and then Group 11, uh, was also in this one. So I, I know Fin Capital, I know Group 11. I don't know Q1. That's a new one for me. Uh, but what are they basically doing?

They're using AI to help HR departments, uh, help their employees to navigate their benefits. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah, it, it, uh, caught my attention. 'cause I was at a board meeting this week and just like at dinner the night before I was talking to the CTO, he created this for his own company. 'cause he needed to figure out, like for his wife, ah, how do we navigate benefits?

[00:15:00] Um, so I think it's a needed thing, how defensible it is, I don't know. But an AI tool just allows you to navigate, like, okay. Doesn't, doesn't 

Marcus: seem 

Vic: tremendously 

Marcus: defensible. I don't think it's 

Vic: that 

Marcus: defensible. Yeah, I would agree with that. Uh, but, uh, you know, reading the article, it, it says that they weren't even thinking about raising around and key one approached them.

Yeah. So listen. Yeah, if you can get capital like, like that, you know, that means you probably got it at great terms. So good for them. Uh, back to Fierce Healthcare, new startup superpower scores, 30 million to offer personalized health testing. So let's see, they're in the preventative health and longevity.

This like the right space. Exactly. Um, so, so is this, so what, what's the big player in, in that space right now? Uh, function. Yes. Function Health is the big player in the, the longevity personalized tests. You know, you get your, your blood tests four times a year, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. 

Vic: It's a competitor to them.

Yeah. 

Marcus: Um, and then Inside Tracker, I guess, would also be part of that group, right? Right. Okay. 

Vic: Yeah, so I, I think it's, um, I mean it's a cash pay [00:16:00] and there's a lot of people that are interested in sort of getting more information on their, all their metrics. Um, and then you can, I think you can make meaningful change.

Marcus: Yeah. And then, and then you, you get text access to a real concierge, uh, physician team. Um. I, I probably should not say this, but, uh, these guys, so they have a picture of the guys who are, uh, you know, uh, yeah, I mean, okay, fine. 

Vic: I think it's better to be 

Marcus: kind fine. Uh, they, they, they look like guys that came together at Summit at Sea and are really well connected and were able to raise 30 million.

So good for them, you know, good for them. Uh, it's, it's a, it's, it's, it's kind of like the IV space that's becoming a crowded space, but it's also a growing market. And so, you know, is there room for, for another one of these? Um, I, I'm, I'm not entirely sure. I know that you, you do have to tap into that [00:17:00] entire ecosystem, you know, the manosphere, uh, and right now, you know, Huber Man's backing function health.

Yeah. And a bunch of those other guys with backing function health. So I'm assuming they've got some influencers and some big, uh, you know, health slash Manosphere, uh, podcast. People that are signed up to help promote this. It, otherwise, I don't think you have viability in, in this space. 'cause there's not that big of a market and they all sort, everyone sort of listens to the same people.

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: So who, who they've got, but they've got somebody like that. You know, 

Vic: maybe, you know, I'm more interested in bringing solutions to kind of middle America chronic disease patients than I am optimizing a 30 5-year-old in San Francisco. But, but there is a market there. It's just not that exciting. 

Marcus: Yeah.

Yeah. I, I agree. I I mean we, we've done, and we continue to do stuff in the consumer health and wellness space, but generally speaking it's, it's novel in some meaningful way. Right? Like, I think about feno, I mean, you know, right? Yes. That's, you know, their smart brush is pretty novel, right? So, um, okay.

Overture [00:18:00] life raises 20.6 million for IVF automation. That's interesting. Uh, the word automation with IVF, so what's that? What is it? The supply chain 

Vic: IVF is going through a, a huge. Transition on all fronts to bring technology to bear. And there's a lot of ethical things around that. But, but I think it's interesting to sort of follow, keep up with, but yeah, they're bringing efficiency to kind of the, the process of how you, how you actually do it.

Um, and so they, you know, they automate the process with robotics and they have different freezing technology. Um. I don't know. I, I think it is interesting that there's, there's a whole bunch of technologies in this space, so 

Marcus: I, I mean, look, look, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's got wind at his back because President Trump is, is [00:19:00] pushing it big time.

And also, you know, generally speaking, I mean, people are very grateful for IVF when it works, but it, it, it also is pretty arduous process. Yeah. So I mean, it, it's, it's both, um, going to grow in demand, I believe, and also is a space that needs improvement. Like, like every space. But I think really been improvement.

Yeah. It's expensive. 

Vic: It is pretty, pretty difficult on the woman's body. Yes. It's hard and it's not all that successful. Yeah. And so bringing technology and automation and improving the whole process will make it better, cheaper, faster, more effective. Yep. Over time. Yep. When that comes, I'm not sure, but agree 

Marcus: what we got here.

Nashville Business Journal, uh, HCA veterans raised 10 million to launch Path Point Health. I actually didn't even see this. Yeah. Oh, grant Ledge Grant was in my fellows class. Oh, really? Yeah, 

Vic: yeah, 

Marcus: yeah. 

Vic: He's 

Marcus: the CE 

Vic: shit. What are you, what is he doing here? It's metabolic health. So, um, you know, metabolic health is sort of, oh, grant, I'm proud of you, man.

Yeah, that's awesome. [00:20:00] Yeah. I need to reach out to him. 

Marcus: That's awesome. 

Vic: Yeah. So, um, this is the space that I think is really needed and they already have, we're still working on getting it lined up. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. They already have some, um, some deals worked out. I mean, as you would expect, spinning out of HCA.

Yeah. Um, with, with, with Ascension, you know, probably your other, um, buddy from fellows I think is likely helping with that. Uh, but Great. And I think a really important metabolic health is, is. Hard, so. Oh, yeah. I 

Marcus: mean, 

Vic: Fahad was 

Marcus: also in our class. 

Vic: That's what I, what happened? That mean, that's what I mean, right?

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I I wasn't sure you were gonna Oh, he is in the article. Yeah. Article. Yeah. 

Marcus: Dude, look, if it's innovation happening at Ascension, it's, Fahad has got his hand on it. We can always say that. Yeah. 

Vic: Yeah. So it's a good example of the Nashville ecosystem. Oh, that's amazing, dude. 

Marcus: That's so great.

Okay. Uh, I don't, I don't wanna make this podcast boring while I'm gushing over this, but I'm really, I'm really happy for him. That's, that's fantastic. You know, because he was, he was [00:21:00] a good operator. He was the CO at Tristar. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never, I don't know him, but I, I know what his, what his role was.

Marcus: Good dude. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: I'm glad you pulled that story in. Alright, gonna, Axios Pro Biolink raises a hundred million dollars series C for glucose monitoring device. This is a big week in VC funding. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of deals here. So, uh, biolink is a developer of wearable glucose monitoring devices. Um, they're, they're going up against some, some giants here.

Yeah. Dexcom is the, is the. Is the big dog in this space. Right? Right. Uh, so a hundred million dollars series C. It's not, actually not that much capital. So I'm interested in, in uh oh. But, but, so let's see here. The ceo, 

Vic: EO, what was at Dexcom? Yeah, 

Marcus: right. Okay. The client comment on when he expects FDA clearance, there's 

Vic: some reason he thinks he's building a better device.

Yeah. 

Marcus: He's in San 

Vic: Diego, same place as Dexcom. Right. So I wasn't aware we needed another continuous glucose monitoring device, but, but maybe we do. I mean, I, it's not clear to me what the different feature set is, but it's interesting. It's, it's pretty in the picture [00:22:00] here. Yes. It's, um, it's prettier 

Marcus: than the, than the Dexcom one, that's for sure.

Yeah. 

Vic: No, it's, I think it's the graphically designed mock, but yes, it's true. Yeah. But I'm, 

Marcus: but I'm sure that that. Yeah. That's part of like their product design is, they don't wanna make it prettier. Alright. Wall Street Journal. Uh, so we're now into policy. We're, we're off vc. Okay. That was, that was a good haul.

Yeah. Uh, into policy. Trump's FDA sends a bullish signal to biotech. The new commissioner, Marty McCarey vows to back innovation might ease fears stoked by HHS, chief Kennedy. Of course. I mean, we've talked about how Marty's a real guy. Mm-hmm. And you know, kind of like Bestin, you know, offsets Trump. Yeah.

Right. For the investors. I think McCarey is gonna gonna offset, uh, RFK Jr. Yes. No question about it. No question about it. 

Vic: Yeah. And I talked to a friend of the pod. I can't, I don't know if I can give his name. You cannot. You cannot. But, uh, but he's, he's talking to him and he's, he's assembling a really good team Yes.

Around him too. So he's strong and then he is bringing a good team. Yes. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think the Fed, I mean the, the FDA upgrading and, and [00:23:00] I. Kind of streamlining the process. It is, could, could 

Marcus: be great dude. Honestly, like I, I know CMS is massively important and, and quite frankly, I, I wouldn't put Oz in the massively controversial category in terms of a pick.

I mean, you know, I mean, I, yeah. I, he, you know, I he's a 

Vic: doctor. I mean, he's gonna be reasonably friendly to providers. Exactly. Exactly. 

Marcus: You know, and he, and he is smart and he is knowledgeable, and he is, and he is, been engaged in the healthcare industry for a very, very long time. So I, I wouldn't put, uh, but.

But he's not the same as Macari. No. No, he's not. And also I, I would say the, the FDA really is quietly the, the agency that I believe needs the most focus because of ai. Yeah. Like the FDA has got to figure out how is going to redo. I mean, it's just like venture, right? Like, like we have to figure out how we're gonna leverage AI differently to be able to process all these new deals that are gonna be flowing as the capital, you know, cost to launch a new company, go through the [00:24:00] floor, right?

So we have to figure that out. And the FDA, you know, they had a backlog of thousands of, of submissions that they couldn't process. And their, and their ruling for how they were, um, assessing AI was the medical device, you know, right law from the seventies. So they have a lot of really important work to do, and I think they got the right guy.

They got the right guy. 

Vic: Yeah. And we should lead this as a country, right. Not wait for some other country to figure, figure it out. Yep. And yes, they're the right guy and I think it's, it's positive. 

Marcus: Yeah. I, I agree. I agree. Uh, okay. Oh man, I, I'd, so X XX Vic is where I see all the crazy stuff. Yes. Uh, so, uh, I can't even remember who the handle was, but they were like, I cannot believe what I just read on covid.gov.

And of course, you know, clicked it right. And then this page comes up and then, and then there was the [00:25:00] actual White House tweet on X that said, definitely don't click on covid.gov. First of all, the White House. Wait, the white, I 

Vic: didn't see that. 

Marcus: The White House said, do not click on it. Have you seen the White House social Accounts, Vic?

Vic: No, I don't, I don't follow them. Maybe I need to 

Marcus: full on troll, full on troll accounts. But they're trolling 

Vic: their own website? 

Marcus: No, no. Like everything there, there is, there is a Gen Z person running the White House socials. Okay. And they have been given a green light to go full, just do whatever, full troll, full hardcore troll it, you know, does not, we're we're, we're not trying to, uh, there's no, 

Vic: uh, institutional, 

Marcus: um, 

Vic: no proper communication.

Marcus: No. Yeah. No. And that's not exaggeration. Like it is, uh, it's, it's shocking. It's [00:26:00] shocking. I mean, I don't think there is another country in the world today that is trolling. Like Yeah. Our White House account is trolling. I don't think there's a single one. 

Vic: I'm not shocked about that. What I'm surprised by is, so they put out the covid.gov?

Yes. Yes. And then they are posting. Troll, like bad things against it. Their own, their own site. They, they're 

Marcus: not posting bad things against it. This site is a troll, this covid.gov, which then redirects to White house.gov/lab league. True organs. Origins of COVID-19. Like this page. 

Vic: Yeah. So people there are listening.

It's comedy. It is, it is comedy. It's comedy or, or it's, or it's depressing depending on how you look at it. I mean, it's dark comedy star. Yeah, it's dark comedy, it's lab leak. And then you have like a, a, um, you know, airbrushed image of Trump looking younger and slimmer than he looks sort of marching [00:27:00] into solve all the problems of the world.

Um, 

Marcus: he's six, he's 6, 4, 2, 20, you know. I No, that, that, that was a joke. That was a joke. You're, you're not up on the X humor. You're not up on humor. The X humor. I'm on X humor. No, no, no, no, no. 

Vic: So anyway, um, and then they go through the lab leak, uh, stuff. Which is, which is not new. 

Marcus: No, it's not new, but it's never been officially, um, uh, recognized.

Yeah. By, by the United States government. Yeah. So, so, uh, so, okay. A couple things. Yeah. One, I think landing on this is where, this is the origin of COVID-19. Um, in a definitive way, it's probably not the worst thing for our government to be doing. Now, pre the presentation is always a different thing with Yeah.

With Donald Trump, right? Right. So, so do not take the the what and and the how as the same thing. Yeah. I'm talking about the what, um, landing on some final analysis that says this is what it is, especially as [00:28:00] more and more people. Five. We're 

Vic: five years later. We're five years later. Yes. I think there's a.

Pretty clear consensus that it was, you know, I would say unintentionally escaped from a lab. Yes. A leak is kind of a funny word to use, but Yeah. But, but that's the word people have been using. That's right. Yeah. And the way that I've seen the science, it would be very difficult for this to evolve in a na in a natural evolution kind of process.

Yeah. So I think that's not that controversial, the style, like everything Trump does is, is the how, the how is, 

Marcus: is is something else. And I mean, you know, it's, you know, one of the really interesting things about this Trump two is, um, I mean, we're just talking about Commissioner McCarey, right? Yeah. I mean, like.

They ha they have a set look. I mean, whatever you think about Elon Musk, he's still, you know, by, by many accounts, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation, right? And especially [00:29:00] when it comes to technical entrepreneurs, he, he has assembled an incredible group of people. And I, I would say the design of the, of all the new White House stuff is really, really strong.

Like the, like the, the visual language? Yeah. Yeah. It, I, I think it's super well designed. Um, but then, you know, you scroll down and there's like this picture of Fauci hold, you know, holding his, you know, this, this is where it's like this, is this the Onion, right? Like, is this the onion or is this the White House website?

Right. You know what I mean? Like, so it, it's a trolling website. For for sure, you know? Yes. Uh, you know, Andrew Cuomo failure. Like, why, why is that? Why is this even, even that has nothing to do with, why is, is that even necessary on a page that's talking about the true origins of Covid to 19? Right. That's clearly just like we're taking a pot shot.

That's, that's all we're doing here. So anyway, I just thought, uh, it, it, it was both blending something that was probably good and needed, [00:30:00] which was a final analysis to say, Hey, this is where we are. This is where this came from, but wrapped in this very well designed dark comedic troll page. Like, you know, yeah.

What, and that, and that's kind of what we're going to have to expect from the, from, from our White House. 

Vic: Yeah. And I think it's related to what your comments were about the White House x, uh, posts. There's no, uh, respect or no sort of proper. Uh, there's a certain way that I, I'm used to our federal government behaving.

It's out and that is gone out. And, I mean, Fauci made a bunch of mistakes. There's no reason to like throw him into the bus. Now he's off, he's, he's exited the stage. He's not around anymore. He is retired. I think it'd be much better for most of America, [00:31:00] honestly, for Trump to say, this is what happened, and let's move on.

Let's move on. As opposed to like, do all this like, like, I don't know, throw raw meat at the extremes and pick fights. There's no reason to pick a fight. He won, he's in the White House. He did. Doesn't need to do that. Yeah. But, but yes. That's not his style. So, 

Marcus: yeah. So I mean, the unofficial trolling policy of White House Communications, you know, e even down to the press secretary, you know what I mean?

Is, is just, uh. So something I have no desire to get used to. Yeah. Uh, moving to HFMA Congressional Republican signal on Medicaid cuts. So I, I, I love. Look, I'm on the board. I'm very biased. Um, but I, I have really grown to love, uh, the analysis that HFMA is doing in this time. I just think they're so on top of it right now and, um, and really clearly spelling out, uh, the, the, the categories where, where the money is going to be, you know, pulled from the size of the money.

[00:32:00] So you can start to really understand what the impact, particularly to health systems is going to be. Um, and so, you know, they're, they've, they've sort of an analyzed what the, what the most favored areas of GOP um, Medicaid's savings are. Right. Uh, the top category is a reducing in the federal match for a CA enrollees.

We, you know, Emily's been talking about this for a while. Yeah. Um, $626 billion is projected to be saved in that, um, 109 billion in, in work requirements. Um, and then another 22 billion in repealing the managed care rule. Uh, there, there've been a lot of, uh, discussions at the house where, you know, key members of the, of the GOP are not for, um, reducing, uh, kind of core Medicaid and access to Medicaid.

'cause they know there's no way they'd be able to explain that to their constituents. Um, and so I, I think it's going to be these types of, uh. These types of more systemic changes that are gonna be [00:33:00] acceptable for passage in the house. 

Vic: Yeah. And they're on leave right now with, they're coming back next week.

Yeah. I think the plan is to try to get some, some bill by Memorial Day. So this is all gonna come to a head in the next month to two months. This article I think is really helpful. It, it doesn't really talk about the supplemental payments. 

Marcus: No, it doesn't cover that. 

Vic: Which is another concern. That's a big one.

But, but, but it's also a very complex topic that's hard to put in a article because who knows what, what they're gonna do. Right. And so, um, yeah, I mean, in summary, if people that are listening, it's, you know, 800, 700, 800 billion over 10 years in mostly on the enrollees Yeah. Work, work requirements. Yeah. You know, no match for.

Federal taxes, that kind of stuff. 

Marcus: That's a lot of money coming outta the system. Yeah, that's right. You know, when, when, [00:34:00] when we've talked about, I mean, let's, let's, let's measure it up. 4 trillion. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: You're pulling out 

Vic: 800 billion. Well, it's 800 billion over 10 years, so 80 billion. Okay, but still that's billion dollars.

That's a chunk. Yeah, 

Marcus: that's a chunk, you know, wall Street Journal, RFK, junior Unveils plan to phase out artificial food dies. Uh, I think this was universally sort of applauded. 

Vic: Yeah, this is, this is needed and it's, there's a bunch of states that are thinking about it. It's much better to do it at the nationwide level.

Totally. So that our food, CPG companies can just. Change. Change and all the fear, uncertainty, and doubt around can they find the materials? Can they do this? I don't buy because they're producing it for Canada and Europe. So they have the recipes already. They just need to turn it on. And this gives all the companies the cover, [00:35:00] just the, okay, now you have to do that and there's no disadvantage.

'cause someone makes it in California and someone else makes it in Texas. That's ridiculous. 

Marcus: So, no, look, I mean, thi this is the part of, uh, RFKs agenda that's easy. That is, it's, it's easy and it's gonna be celebrated. And I think the longer he can stay focused on, um, on reigning in big food. His popularity will, will continue to be very high.

You know, if, if, if that's where he, he, he sticks. Um, and, and you know, so far he hasn't jumped on the whole vaccine thing, you know? Yeah. He has not been focused on that. He's been focused on, on the food. I mean, he is been talking 

Vic: about autism, but he's done it in a, in a way that is much more science based.

Yes. And we're gonna have, I forget if it was 12 or 15 Research institute look into things. Yeah. And whatever they come up with, they come up with, which is, which I think we should do. 

Marcus: Yes. Yes. So I, I think focus on food and you'll, [00:36:00] you'll be celebrated. Yes. Okay. For sure. Uh, okay. NPR in a reversal, the Trump administration restores funding for women's health study.

I mean, this, I think had to be a byproduct of, of moving too quickly. You know, there are certain things, like I look, I, it's so obvious. I mean, they had a big EO that went out this week around, you know, restoring merit, blah, blah, blah. It was like, you know, it is like they're trying to just kill DEI as much as they can.

Um, and, and everyone saw it. Everyone sees it. I mean, you know, I saw it back when the SCOTUS did the affirmative action decision, right. So it, I, I'm, I'm like, I'm numb to that now. I don't, I'm like, fine, whatever. You're gonna do what you're gonna do. But like the women's health stuff, I mean, it's half the population what are doing.

Right? Right. What are you doing? It's, it's already ridiculously underfunded. Yeah. Like, 

Vic: yes. And so it is great that they've restored it. Maybe it shouldn't have been cut in the first place, but, but. At least it's restored. 

Marcus: Yeah. I, I don't, I don't understand how, on one hand you're like fighting for women's equality in sports, you know, [00:37:00] with all the transgender stuff, but then like you're stripping women's health studies of their, their funding.

It's like, don't try, don't try to apply logic to it. I, I know. I, I was just telling somebody else that today, and here I am trying to apply logic to it. Right. This, this is stupid. Uh, healthcare finance news.com, Arkansas governor signs bill banning PBMs from owning phar pharmacies. That's a, 

Vic: so cvs that's a big one.

That's a big one. CVS OPT may not Well, but, but Optum doesn't operate pharmacies, I don't think. No. Specialty 

Marcus: pharmacies. Specialty pharmacies, yeah. Especially, 

Vic: yeah. So they cannot operate pharmacies in Arkansas. So there's 35 CVSs in Arkansas Wow. That are gonna have to close. Wow. And. I think I'm okay with the rule, but, but it's, it's gonna cause some challenges in those communities where, where they're closing stores.

And so, I don't know. It's, uh, it's a controversial, there are people on [00:38:00] both sides of this. I have portfolio companies celebrating it and portfolio companies nervous about it, but it's a, it's a big thing. And then I think several states that, um, are also looking at following 

Marcus: it. I mean, it does, it does feel like, um, the, the PBMs are, are under sustained attack at this point.

Like, I, like, I think there's enough enemies of the, of the PBM industry. Yeah. That, um, they're gonna continue to be assailed until there's some serious reform. I mean, it's everyone from Mark Cuban to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it's, it's a pretty broad group at this point, um, going after them.

And, uh, 

Vic: yeah. I, I, I mean, I would say the horses left the barn 10 years ago. Like the PBM business model was [00:39:00] used to hollow out retail pharmacy. And that has damaged our retail pharmacy. Clearly platforms, all of them are, are struggling, all of them. And, but that, it's already happened. That's already happened.

It's already happened. That's 20 years ago. It's, 

Marcus: yeah. I think we're gonna talk about R aid a little bit, right? Yeah. Right. So there's a, 

Vic: I mean, changing it now is mean, I guess it's good to close the barn door, but the horse is already gone. Yeah. And like you can't really make the business model work again.

Yeah. But so. I don't know. Okay. You got another story here. This is just Axio saying there's several states that are also following it. Okay. 

Marcus: Uh, we're gonna keep moving. Yeah. Wall Street Journal Judge Rules. Google operates illegal ad Monopoly, so, uh, it is really looking like Google and Meta are gonna have to sell YouTube and Instagram.

I haven't heard YouTube. They're talking about Double Click, but I, which, which is the ad [00:40:00] business. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know, man. Like, I, I think they're gonna keep going on Google. 'cause YouTube is the real asset, like double click's kind of embedded. It's like a B2B thing. Okay, that's fine. Yeah. YouTube's bigger than Netflix.

As a standalone company. Right. It's bigger than Netflix. Yeah. Uh, and then, and then, you know, Instagram, did you see where, where Kevin Strom, uh, came out and, and added commentary and said that, you know, after Zuckerberg acquired Instagram, he tried to starve it. 

Vic: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but he couldn't 

Marcus: stop it.

'cause Instagram was just, the interface was just so powerful. Like it just grew to what it is today. Right. Which is probably the most valuable Meta 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: Meta 

Vic: app. Yeah. Um, I mean, I think these are different things. So Google has two, it has lost two court cases. This story, in the next one, it has been deemed by the court to operate in a legal ad monopoly.

And then the next one, which, 

Marcus: which, which by the way, we just [00:41:00] have to say it's so crazy how, how long it takes. Sort of the regulatory and, and and judicial environment to catch up with these things. Yeah. Versus the technology environment because they're finally, they finally got Google in their cross airs.

Meanwhile, like OpenAI is eating Google's lunch. Yeah, yeah. Like, like in re in, in real life, in actual market share an actual dominance of SEO, an actual, like that's, they're already about to be hollowed out. Right. Right. The monopoly's getting eaten out by the market right now. Yeah. Not by, but, but they're getting the double whammy now with these antitrust.

Yeah. So I 

Vic: had not heard, and I am not sure that spinning off YouTube is, is gonna be the remedy that, 

Marcus: that that's, that's more industry conjecture. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm throwing in. I think they're gonna be forced to sell double click. 

Vic: And I, and I think, who, [00:42:00] who cares? I mean, it's not a big, it's not a big piece.

Well, I, well I think that's 

Marcus: my point is like, double click is not meaningful. 

Vic: That's what the court found them using unfairly. I don't think it's meaningful. Well, the remedies are not meaningful. So then go to the next story. Oh, I mean, met Instagram is meaningful. Oh yeah. That's a whole different topic.

Yeah. But just on Google. And then the next story is they also were found to, you know, have a monopoly in search. Yep. And the government has asked, 

Marcus: which they don't now because chat GPT is eating their, their lunch. But go ahead. I mean, they don't, they today they don't, 

Vic: they don't. If you judge the market as any normal human would judge the market.

Yes. The way they define the market in the court case they used, you know, search engines. Right, right. And they they do. Right. And then 

Marcus: it's the same way they, they defined supermarket, right? Yes. With the Right, exactly. 

Vic: Yeah. And then they are asking for Google to [00:43:00] be forced to spin off Chrome as a remedy.

That's a big deal. That's a big deal. That is a big deal. And that's a really big deal. My question that I want to talk about is, so the most likely buyer is open ai. Yeah, dude, of course. And I don't think there is a buyer. I cannot imagine a buyer of Chrome that would charge me to use Chrome. No, no, that's not possible.

No. I mean, we have DuckDuckGo, we have these things and they don't work. They don't work. 'cause people don't want to pay for the browser. No. And so there's no one that would buy it unless they're gonna use it for some mono ballistic like advantage. So, so what's the point? Like what, so, so 

Marcus: Vic, I think this is why the, so the industry people are coming up with a logical.

Idea, but not one that's practical for the core system. Right. So, so spinning off YouTube would solve, that's logical. All these things that's logical 

Vic: and be [00:44:00] logical and functional. That's logical, right? That's not what 

Marcus: they're gonna do That would you spin it off? You have a new competitor to Netflix. It's in a completely different category.

Yeah. It definitely impairs their, their enterprise value. Like significantly. Yes. 

Vic: And then okay now, and it impairs their search and their ad and everything, everything else 

Marcus: and Exactly. It actually meaningfully impairs, but it has, 

Vic: mu has revenue and can be a company it own, it's a own business. That's the 

Marcus: point.

Chrome. It, it doesn't have to be acquired. It literally can run against Netflix 

Vic: Chrome. I mean, you could sell it to OpenAI, you could sell it to Amazon, but, but these places are gonna subsidize the use of the browser for their own course of advantage. Of course. Which is the whole thing we're trying to get away from.

It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why that's beneficial. And then they pull in the duck, duck go guy who in my mind has a. Agenda failed business or a struggling business, and he claims that Chrome should be worth 50 billion and Okay. But he's [00:45:00] clearly biased with an agenda. I mean, he wants to claim that because then it makes fact that go worth value something.

Right? That's not zero. The whole thing is, is crazy. Dude, what's your, what's your issue with DuckDuckGo? I like duck, duck, duck, duck. Go. It's fine. I mean, but, but no one's gonna, not many people, unless you're really serious about privacy, is willing to pay for it. They 

Marcus: don't sell the browser. They sell a VPN.

They, they sell a VPN, the browser's free. 

Vic: Okay. I don't know. I haven't looked into it, but yeah, I don't care about private Stop with, stop with the duck, duck go. Hate for a second, dude. I mean, like, okay. I, I, I don't 

Marcus: think duck, duck go can buy Chrome. Definitely not open. No. Your, your point of, so like the business 

Vic: model is challenge.

Marcus: I mean, listen, it's either gonna go to. Microsoft Meta, Amazon, or OpenAI. Right. Right. I mean, it's one of those four companies. Yeah. Right. X can't buy it. X doesn't have enough money to buy it. So it's one of those four [00:46:00] companies that could buy it or, or some 

Vic: Chinese company or something else. Sure, sure, sure.

Or that or that. Yeah. And so the government's picking, I don't know, one of those four companies to advantage over Google. They just, it's like a waste of time. Yeah. And effort. I don't know why they're doing it 

Marcus: again. Logic. Alright. New York Times a startling admission from a GOP Senator in quotes, we are all afraid.

This is Lisa Murkowski, the longtime senator from Alaska. She's independent. She was not maga she survived the primary out there. Mm-hmm. So she does have some, you know, political power, um, but she is still with the, and she 

Vic: got attacked and so she also is. You know, survived and attacked. Yes, 

Marcus: yes, yes. Um, and I, I mean, I think what she's doing here is she is coming out, she's admitting that she's afraid.

Um, but she's saying, you know, we have to stand out, uh, stand up, um, you [00:47:00] know, for, for real conservative, real Republican values. Um, so I mean, obviously incredibly brave, um, thing for her to do. And, uh, and an important thing to say that, that, you know, she is afraid of the leadership in her part, in her own party.

Vic: Yes. And I think, I've never seen this before. Like a lot of things were in new territory and it's not okay. Like the way our government works, she is supposed to all the centers and, and Congress people are supposed to represent their own district. And if they are afraid of retaliation, by definition, someone is trying to encourage them to consider things that are not representing their own district.

That's what, that's what it means to be afraid of retaliation. Now, whether they stand up to it or they don't stand up to [00:48:00] it, I don't think that's good for democracy and that, I mean, this is not surprising, but it's pretty surprising that it's a center, a US senator saying that out loud publicly. 

Marcus: So I, I would go to a different place and I would say MAGA is very powerful on social and they can direct many people, um, to, uh, at a minimum people and bots, uh, uh, to, to troll.

Call, email, send mail, um, and. Intimidate people. Um, I, I think that that's, you know, look, that doesn't seem to be very controversial at, at this point. No. You know, that, that, that, I 

Vic: mean, I think anyone can do that. Well, no, well, no is true that Bagga is doing it. I think well, 

Marcus: well, anyone can do it, but no one can do it like them [00:49:00] right now.

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: Yeah. The, the two most influential people in the MAGA movement both have their own social media platforms that they own. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. And they, you can't say that they're really good at it. Anybody else in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Yeah. So they, those, those are powerful, powerful tools that they have at their disposal.

Right. And of course, like they're tools, they can, they literally control the distribution. Yeah. They don't just have accounts on them with a lot of followers. Right. They, they control the platforms. Right. Yeah. So that, that was my read. My read was not like, Hey, we want you to do something that's not in the best interest of your constituents.

When I see the word afraid, I, I take that at like, no, no, no, no. Actually afraid Actually in fear. I mean, you, I mean, why would, why would to Mike Pence in the airport. Yeah. You know, like, that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking. Yeah. You know, 

Vic: it's, it's bad either way. I mean, I, I don't [00:50:00] know where we go from here, but this was a, this was a thing just to bring up and talk about 'cause it's, it's a problem because it's happening.

Yeah. It's happening and it's problem, it's part of what's happening 

Marcus: in America right now. Yes. Right. It's part of what happened, what's happening in America. Alright. Uh, moving to payers, uh, ance Health Execs seek to ease Wall Street's concerns about elevated MA costs. 

Vic: Yeah. So it's interesting. Last week, United Health Group missed earnings and yes, we were surprised about that.

I think a lot of people were surprised about that. And I made the assumption that it was gonna be really difficult across all payers. But then Ance came out and beat earnings. And we have a couple other stories as well. Several payers have come out, you know, beating or meeting expectations. Yep. So there, there's something else going on.

I don't know exactly what it is, but Ance [00:51:00] was very clear that they, you know, they, they met their earnings. They also, you know, didn't have the same kind of medical loss ratio growth. So, um, they performed well. And that's just new 'cause 'cause UnitedHealth Group has been a, a really strong performer for decades and something else is happening there now.

It may be a. A temporary thing, something. I mean, UnitedHealth Group is very complex, so it's hard to see from the outside. Yeah. Um, but, but that's just a change in my thought process from last week, which is why, I mean, it's interesting to cover anyway, but, but that kind of dichotomy between the two was striking.

Marcus: Ance appears to be a, uh, a very well managed company. Yes. Um, and, and, you know, and so and so is United. So they, they are, they're going to have, um, strong responses to, to these [00:52:00] things. You know, I, I, I think in the case of, of United, um,

it, it was almost impossible for them to not have the quarter they had after the year they had. Mm-hmm. And I hate to sort of simplify it that way. Yeah. But when an organization is. Impacted in the way that they're organ, like, like they're, they're not robots, man. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: You know what I mean? They're not robots.

They're, they're people and they just basically had 12 months of trauma 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: At the end of the day. So, I don't know. I mean, to me, I just kind of chalked up that quarter to Yeah. What happens when you have 12 months of, of, of like really, really serious sustained trauma? Well, you probably miss a quarter, right.

You probably, you probably, you probably miss a quarter, you know? Yeah. Um, and uh, and I think El Vance's response here is measured, you know? 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. 

Marcus: [00:53:00] Centene, CEO London weighs in on state of Medicaid cuts enhanced a CA subsidies on the hill. 

Vic: Yeah. So they, that's fine. I mean, he's weighing in, she, sorry.

She's weighing in. Um, but they also, they hit their earnings and they, you know, affirm guidance. They're, they're sort of, they're much more of a. Medicaid government. Yeah, they're Medicaid player side. Um, so they didn't really address all the changes and so she is lobbying and maybe hoping that there won't be a lot of changes, but Yeah.

But I think there, 

Marcus: I mean, I mean the MLR is 87.5. It's not awesome, but it's also not like Yeah, it's not, it's not in the nineties. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, given all the changes that we've got going on, uh, last year they took their big knock on redeterminations, but I think they took their medicine quickly.

Yeah. So they're not really dealing with that anymore, so 

Vic: Yeah. So we'll see what happens with Medicaid. Yeah. As far as changes going forward. Yes. But, but they had a good [00:54:00] quarter. Yeah. 

Marcus: Yeah. Um, Molina reports mixed. Q1 says Medicaid rates are increasing. The California based insurers results were good enough.

One analyst said Yeah, so there's another mostly, uh, another mostly 

Vic: Medicaid player and Yeah, same. They, they, they were fine. And so, um, we now are seeing, I think. Several payers. We don't have, uh, Humana and Cigna yet. But, but, but I, I agree. It's more likely that, uh, an interim thing at UHG than a system-wide thing.

Marcus: Yeah. I, I, I think we're gonna have to really watch, um, Centene and Molina in particular, very, very closely. Um, these, these, they're not, yeah, it's not correct to say they're pure play government, but you know, I mean, they're 80 plus, 80% plus. Right. You know, um, that's, that's their book of business. And, uh, you know, these changes, these, these cuts that we just talked about that are coming down from, from the GOP, it's like, how much does it actually impact MLR?

That's, that, you know, how, [00:55:00] how much does that impact administrative costs? And then how much does it impact MLR? Uh, and I'm, I'm not entirely sure about that, you know, based on, it's like. Work clearances and, you know, matching on the A A CA market. I'm like, does that really impact MLR in a meaningful way or does that just pinch the providers downstream of the payer?

And 

Vic: I don't think anyone knows. My guess is that it does because it's gonna pull people off coverage Yeah. Who don't need coverage. Yeah. Right. So if you're healthy Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. All the tax subsidies or Right. It's, it's 

Marcus: gonna change the census. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. That's right. Yeah.

No, that, that's, that's a, that's a, that important point. Uh, HCA healthcare beats profit estimates on strong demand for medical care. 

Vic: Yeah. So, HCA delivered, they came out this morning, um, I was kind of worried about their performance, but they're [00:56:00] good operators. Yeah. They, they delivered. Yeah. So they're. They, they continue to, they have headwinds, but, but they, they, it's HCA, right?

It's HCA, 

Marcus: uh, flu volumes, payer battles. Policy uncertainty takes center stage during Q ch S's Q1 earnings. Yeah. C hs also 

Vic: met their earnings. Good for them. Uh, yeah. So they, they, you know, they're holding on. 

Marcus: Yeah. They offloaded that, uh, that yeah, that health system ascension. Right. I'm that I'm sure getting that it done helped.

Yes. Helped quite a bit. Uh, Rite Aid prepares to sell itself in pieces for second bankruptcy. They just got out of bankruptcy last year. Right. 

Vic: Yeah. I don't understand why you need two bankruptcies. It's just over my head, but, but yes, they're gonna, I guess they're gonna go into bankruptcy again. 

Marcus: No, it was just in September of last year.

I know that they've emerged out of bankruptcy. The way I 

Vic: understand it, you agree with your creditors while you're in the protection of chapter 11, and then you come out and can [00:57:00] operate and. Something happened, but I don't know what happened, but something 

Marcus: the, the pro performer didn't land. 

Vic: Yeah. Or they were, I mean, they were supposed 

Marcus: to sell something, didn't whatever they supposed to hit didn't happen.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I kind of think about it like a bridge round in vc. Okay, you know, we need a little bit more cash. Here's, you know, here, here's what we're gonna do. Okay. We give 'em the bridge and then they miss that too, right. I mean, it happens all the time. Yeah. Happens all the time into pharma.

Merck cuts 2025 outlook on tariffs and charges. CEO feels confident in company's current inventory and manufacturing strategy. 

Vic: Yeah. So, so they are, you know, as we get into pharma, there's much more issues around tariffs. Yeah. That, that's where they're, um, 

Marcus: but their, but their first quarter net income increased, uh, driven by Keytruda sales reaching, uh, a little over 5 billion, um, up from 4.76 billion year over year.

So, you know, their, their flagship stuff is still selling very, very well. But, but it's, [00:58:00] it's more the outlook. It the outlook. It's more the outlook. Outlook. 

Vic: And it's hard to know if they are hedging, hedging hed, or really concerned. I don't know that it matters. But, but, 

Marcus: but you probably have to hedge, right?

I mean, I don't think, I don't think you can. 

Vic: Yeah. Unlike the H-C-A-C-H-S, all these US based companies, they don't have as much exposure. Not that they have no exposure to tariffs, but they have period. No, it's not the same. Right. 

Marcus: It's it's not, it's not core to their top line. Right. Right. Not core to the top line.

Uh, Roche to invest 50 billion in the US manufacturing r and d as tariffs loom, the company said it would export more medicines from the us Then it imports. Once it's new manufacturing, plant becomes operational. So Roche joining j and j in the Yeah, that's right. In the US investment game. 

Vic: That's right. So that's the, that's the way to.

Try to offset the terrorists. I 

Marcus: mean, look it, which is good. Look, you got j and j, you got Eli Lilly, Novartis, and now Roche. I mean, Trump is gonna be able to say, look at all this Yeah. Investment that I've spurred in the first a hundred days. I [00:59:00] mean, fair play. Fair play. Uh, what I mean, that's a, that's over a hundred billion.

It's, it's, it's actually 150 billion between those four 50 billion with Roche. 23 billion with Novartis, 55 billion with j and j and 27 billion with Eli Lil, it's 150 billion. And 

Vic: these are good jobs. I mean, it's manufacturing, but it's manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. Yeah. It's a pretty good job. But, but the, there's gonna be a timing issue for the Trump administration.

I think. You can't, you can't build the manufacturing plant and hire people. As quickly as you can lay off people. So it's gonna be a, but narrative wise, narrative wise is gonna, narrative wise, 

Marcus: that's, those are four really strong data points. Especially they all happened in the first a hundred days of his Yeah.

That was term. 

Vic: And, and I think as a direct, none of these companies were gonna do it otherwise. 

Marcus: There's no way you could, there's no way you can say these were not a direct result of, of his act, of [01:00:00] his actions. That's right. No way. So yeah, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's, we, we were talking about the ledger of like how effective he is been.

I think this is one area. Yeah. R and d spending from pharma is one area where you can definitely stay. Yeah. And tac 

Vic: too. There's, there's, uh, yeah. Yeah. Video. I can't quote it, but, uh, if it is doing something in Houston, yeah. It's like 50 billion or some big number like that. 

Marcus: That's, you know, uh, and, and then there is some foreign direct investment.

At least we know, you know, the Saudis have, have, have, yeah. At least working on, yeah. Yeah. Uh, the shingles vaccine appears to lower dementia risk. 

Vic: Yeah. So I put this in the kind of the, the, you know, the more. About health and us Yeah. Thing. Um, I got the shingles vaccine because I've had shingles and it is rough.

You had shingles. How old were you when you got shingles? Have I known you when you had it? It, it was on my wedding day. Okay. So I didn't know you yet. Shingles, you didn't know me. Um, but it, it's really painful and terrible. You got shingles on your fricking wedding day? Yes. My [01:01:00] parents were very stressful at my wedding.

Nothing to do with my wife, but my parents. Yeah, yeah. But they stressed you out. Yeah. And you got the shingles from that. Yeah. So honeymoon was not as fun as it could have been. No way. 

Marcus: Did you get a second honeymoon? Did you make up for it? 

Vic: I mean, I've had several trips, but we'd have, didn't have an actual second honeymoon, but, uh, that, that 

Marcus: breaks my heart for you, man.

Vic: Yeah. But, but it was, uh, it was enough that I remember it now and so I got the shingles vaccine when I could, and now I think it is giving me protection against Alzheimer's, which is I. Not why I got it, but, uh, but good. And so there's a study in JAMA that we will link to. This is the, the journal story. Uh, it was a study in Australia.

Hmm. 

Marcus: And, and what age do they recommend you start getting shingles? Is it 45 or 50? I think it's 50 50. I think it's 50. I'm not sure. 

Vic: Okay. 

Marcus: Yeah, I, I know my doc hasn't talked to me about it and I'm not 50 yet, so. 

Vic: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But I think you should get it. And then it's also, uh, I've heard some people have like ear trouble with shingles.

Like you get [01:02:00] shingles, then it goes into their inner ear. One one. I heard one person lost here in inner ear. But anyway, shingles is bad. Yeah. And, and so this is the link to the, this is, this is the actual study to the, because a lot of our audience would prefer the actual study. Yep. Yep. Okay. 

Marcus: Great. Alright.

Moving to, uh, our AI rundown. So starting with the AP X open AI workers ask California and Delaware AGS to block the for-profit conversion of the Chad GPT Maker. I don't think that's gonna work. What. Which part? Well, I don't think Delaware is gonna do anything controversial right now because they're losing their ass in, in, uh, corporation fees.

Yeah. Right. So I don't think that's gonna work. Uh, maybe that, maybe California does it, but I cannot see Delaware doing it right now. Yeah. They're, they're too spooked. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's something to follow because many of open AI's fundraising rounds, the last two or three mm-hmm. Require them to turn into a for-profit, I think mainly this year or the, [01:03:00] or they, the, they claw the money back.

Hmm. Interesting. And it's one thing when Elon Musk and, uh, Zuckerberg write letters Yeah. Because they are competitors. Yeah. Right. But, but these people have no, no reason to bother. They 

Marcus: just No, they do. No, they, they work there. They, they know things and they're, and they're worried. I mean, yeah. Yeah. They're former employees.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's not quite whistle blowing, but it's, it's in the universe, you know what I mean? It's not quite whistle blowing, but it's in the universe. 

Vic: Well, I think that they actually believe that OpenAI originally was meant to create artificial general intelligence for mankind, and that moving to a for-profit inherently would, would realign the, of course, [01:04:00] governance structure.

Of course. That's the whole reason they're doing it. Of course. And so it, yeah, it's a whistleblower, I guess, or, or it's a, they're trying to, to stop this transition. I don't know if it'll work or not, but it's something to follow because I don't think it works. 

Marcus: I don't think it works. I, you know, uh. Newsom is trying to show the, the strength of, of, of California's economy.

Yeah. I think he would prefer to have open AI as a for-profit company. Yeah. That, that adds to his bolstering economy. And Delaware can't do it because they can't afford to lose any more business to Texas. Yeah. So I think basically this doesn't happen, but, you know, interesting, interesting story. Alright, moving over to VentureBeat, A new open source text to speech model called DIA has arrived to challenge 11 Labs open AI and more.

Who makes this one? 

Vic: So this is interesting because two people Okay. Raised no money and they built this text to speech model themselves in, [01:05:00] I guess a couple months. And now it, it is as good as these other models. So I just wanted to bring it up just, just to show that the, the acceleration of like using the existing tools to build new tools, I mean.

They did it with no money and then they just put on how you pay for, for 

Marcus: free. Well, now Google helped them. Uhhuh. Yeah. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. So we, we gotta, we gotta dig in here. So, uh, one of the two founders is named Toby Kim, and he credited Google for giving him and his collaborator access to Google's, uh, TPUs.

That's their tensor processing unit. That's their proprietary, uh, yep. You know, CHIP that they use for A GPU basically, um, through for training DIA through Google's research cloud. So they leverage Google's resources Yeah. To build the frontier model. Right. So it, so like, I mean, it's, yes, it's no money, but they found an ally.

Yeah. Who, who handled that part for them. And you know, [01:06:00] that that's, that's a really interesting way that, um, AI cloud providers can play. This arms race, right? Like they don't need to actually do the work. They can just let smart people leverage their resources to build competitive products to the core, you know, frontier models.

That that's gonna make it really, really, uh, hard to stop the open source part of, of, uh, LLMs. And that's very good. Yeah. I still don't think these, these models just don't have brand or distribution at the end of the day. But we don't need that. What we need op, we need comparable open source alternatives as innovators, right.

Yeah, as, as venture capitalists that we can embed inside of our companies where the licenses are free and clear for total commercial use, not llama. And then, and quite frankly, not deep seek where in the US we're gonna end up having all these issues for embedding a Chinese model in our E Even if, even if we download it and it's [01:07:00] open source and we cut it off from all the original deep seek servers, it doesn't matter.

Like it's, it's a Chinese asset. At the end of the day, we, we need more American open source models that are not llama both for the license issue, but also for the quality of the damn model. It's just not, you know, llama's not good enough right now. 

Vic: Yeah, I agree completely. And what's interesting is that these two founders didn't like, um, the quality of notebook lms, uh, podcast, automated podcast thing.

Yeah. Because it's generic. It's generic. It's generic. It's generic. It's okay, but it's not great. It's, it's a good 

Marcus: parlor trick. 

Vic: Yeah. Right. And. You know, everyone's picking on Google for being a monopolist, but to their credit, they, they allowed these two founders to, to create a replacement for Notebook lm, which is their product for free.

They made the transformer, they made the transformer, and they gave 

Marcus: [01:08:00] it away. So, so like what they made Kubernetes, like the number of things that Google has made and given away Android. Yeah. Yes. I mean, the number of things that fricking Chrome. Chrome, it's chromium, it's open source. I use this browser. It is brave.

It's not Chrome. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: It's based on the chromium code base. 

Vic: Yes. So it is, it's healthy for the whole ecosystem. Yes. So, yes, that's the only point. Okay. 

Marcus: Yeah, I mean, I, I guess earlier when we were talking about Google, I didn't, I didn't stand up for them in so far as like I'm much more. I'm happy to see meta broken up than Google.

Yeah. I like Google. Uh, and I, you know, 

Vic: I, I'm the same way. I, I think Instagram should be spun off. Totally. Totally. And I'll be all in favor of that. Totally. 

Marcus: Yeah. And, and, and look, I, I think if you're going to attack Google as a monopoly, I would just say YouTube is the right place to do it. You know? [01:09:00] Um, it, it's, it's, it's a standalone, it, it immediately becomes the number one streaming service 

Vic: in the world.

Yeah. Immediately. And it would 

Marcus: be 

Vic: probably 

Marcus: net positive for Google shareholders. I think it would, I think it would because YouTube would be able to just totally focus on just dominating that space. Right. All the Google shareholders would have their ownership in YouTube. Right, right. And Google would be able to totally focus on what it needs to do to offend, to be an 'cause.

Google needs, it needs to evolve from search to ai. Yeah. It needs, Google needs to be an AI company at this point. Yeah. A full on AI company. Right. Um, and so that would be how I would position it. But I like Google. They've done a lot of of good things and you know, they're just on the wrong side of Elon.

Yeah. Honestly, that's, that's what I think is happening. They're on the wrong side of Elon. Yeah. Uh, okay. The Verge, IGN and CNET owner Ziff Davis sues open ai. Okay. So this is, 

Vic: um, another thing that I'm following that you're gonna say is not gonna matter. I think it just is something to follow. Yeah, 

Marcus: yeah, yeah.

No, no, it's, look, it, it is something to follow. Um, Z Davis has a, has a [01:10:00] lot 

Vic: of websites. Websites. Oh yeah. A lot of content. Oh, dude. They're like the og, 

Marcus: right? Right. I mean, cnet, that's, that's og, yeah, that's tech tv, man. I mean, that's like, 

Vic: but the net that 

Marcus: you want cnet, that's, that's old school, man. Yeah.

That's like, you know, back when you and I met Right. CNET was really popular. Right? Uh, okay. TechCrunch, oh God, we were laughing at this. Yeah. Earlier Columbia students suspended over interview cheating tool raises 5.3 million to cheat on everything. 

Vic: Yeah, so, so these two, two guys were Columbia University students and they created a way to have an kind of an in-row little side window open Yep.

So that they could cheat on their coding test for job, job searches. Yep. Um, and they got [01:11:00] caught and I think kicked out of Columbia or suspended, I guess maybe not kicked out. And so they have now launched, they moved to San Francisco, launched clearly, and the tagline is Cheat on everything. And they're using this technology to help everyone cheat on their interviews or cheat on wherever, which, I don't know, I guess it's the American way, but it also just feels like another thing that's, you know, our.

Are societies going the wrong direction? I dunno. 

Marcus: I, I mean, I mean, but, but there, but there's a real question about this, right? Like, is it, you know, should we be focused on tests anymore? Like, that's, that's a and that's a real question. Yeah. Should we be focused on tests anymore? We're fricking two years away from a GI Vic, right?

Vic: Yeah, I think that's right. That's the question. Is, is this, uh, spell check? Yes. I cannot spell right. [01:12:00] I mean, I think I'm dyslexic. It doesn't matter. I wasn't diagnosis dyslexia when I was growing up. Yeah. I can't spell How's your signature? My signature is terrible. Right, right, right. And I forever in, in school got negative marks on spelling.

And then now I, I, I don't worry about spelling. Like I, I read an email. There's six words that are spelled wrong. They're all highlighted. They're all highlighted. Right click correct them and move on. And I think they would argue that the AI is the, the next calculator, the next spell check, the next tool for sort of helping humans focus on what they're good at.

Marcus: And, and, and by the way, what kind of world have we given these 21 year olds to like, get excited about? Yeah, I mean, good, good for them. Raise money to troll all of us, like, cheat on everything. Great. I mean, it's a good tagline. I mean, it's clear. It's a great tagline. Yeah, it's a great tagline. And, and look, I, I, I just, [01:13:00] you know, you talk about like, like the, what direction we're going in.

I, again, full disclosure, college dropout went to UVA. Mm-hmm. You know, just did hip hop smoked weed? Yeah. Didn't, you know, I've wrote about it in my book. Right, right. I've been talking about this for a long time, so, you know, but like when I dropped out. Yeah. That actually was detrimental because the college degree was actually very valuable.

Yeah. In 93. Okay. Like what we're, what we're running into right now between this reorienting of the world, this new world order, the changing world order that we're entering plus ai, like this is gonna make the GFC look like, you know, a brownout Yes, 

Vic: that's 

Marcus: right. In terms of the value of these degrees.

Yeah. You know, and so, I don't know, man, I don't know. I, I, 

Vic: listen, I have [01:14:00] one son is a sophomore in college, one who's about to go to college and there is no replacement for it, but it's clearly not. Working. It's expiring. It's expiring. 

Marcus: Yeah. It's not expiring insofar as its role of, uh, maturing these young people socially.

Yeah. Right. Move away, getting them outta the house. 

Vic: Interact with other people. Yes. Live on your own, but in a, you know, reasonably controlled place where That's right. Like I know there's food available for my son at Tulane. That's right. He's not gonna starve. That's right. Where if I send him New Orleans by himself, there's a decent chance he wouldn't have be able to find food.

Exactly. Yeah. So 

Marcus: there's all these like societal, safe bubble lessons you can learn over the course of the four years. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, um, have some responsibilities where it's literally on you to get them done. Mm-hmm. If you don't get them done, you can't blame mom or dad. Right. You can't blame the teachers.

'cause this institution's been here for a hundred plus years, so, you know, [01:15:00] like they ain't gonna change. Yeah. You either, you either you sink or swim. So there's all of those things about it that are good, but the actual information you're learning. Okay. And the value of the degree, those two things. Let's, let's separate the, you know Yeah.

Those two things. So then you ask yourself, is there a cheaper way to do those first things we talked about? I think there is, you know what I mean? Yeah. Because, because you're paying for the knowledge and the credential. The other things are amenities. Right. But that's not the core value. When Harvard tells you you're gonna pay, you know, a half a million dollars, right?

Yeah. Over the course of the four years that your, that your kid is going there. 

Vic: Yeah. That, that's right. And when I say it's not, there's not a good replacement. There's an implied value in the price and there's an attraction of, um, like-minded students from around the world. Sure. That show up there. Sure.

And if you don't have [01:16:00] that center of gravity or that thing, there's nothing to pull everyone to. New Orleans, Boston, Nashville, wherever around a, uh, anything, a common thing. And so I don't think college and university is, I. I think it is expiring, but I don't know what the next thing is. 

Marcus: Yeah, I think it's an incredible opportunity for, for, um, innovation and entrepreneurship, you know, um, Balaji with his network, um, yeah.

You know, state stuff. He, he, he created like some network state fellowship, um, where he is offering like, uh, a hundred K grants or whatever to people to like, just come live and build a network state. And in that case, he's paying you. Yeah, right. You're not paying him. Right. So I'm like, couldn't we like, organize some space and, you know, some learning tracks and some outcomes and, you know, on the, on the other side, you come out with some IPU, you know, I can think of a bullet point list.

Here's some [01:17:00] IP you own. You're gonna get jacked. You're gonna learn how to, how to, how to totally shop for yourself and, and how to cook. You know, you're gonna learn how to, how to date and how to, you know, meet somebody in, in real life and you're gonna walk out with like your first business. The business could fail, but like you will have totally built a, a business, right?

And, and you pay. I don't know, 20 grand a year. 

Vic: Right? You don't have all this debt for, for all 

Marcus: that. 

Vic: Yeah. I mean, and Palantir, you see Palantir saying that you can come outta high school to Palantir and they'll hire you and and they teach you everything. They'll teach you everything. Sure. Yeah. 

Marcus: Why? Of course.

So anyway, I mean, I, I, I think, and I love these kids' faces, right. You know, good. Like, like, like, like, like good for them, man. I mean, like, I, if this is the path that Gen Z takes, I'm totally cool with it because the world we have set up for them is a fricking joke. Yeah, it is a joke. So like, good for them.

Cheat on everything. That was a diatribe man, but whatever. Uh, alright. [01:18:00] TechCrunch, Chinese AI startup, Manis, this is your favorite. Yeah. You love them. I can't even get into the app. Uh, reportedly gets funded from Benchmark at a $500 million valuation. 

Vic: Yeah. $75 million. 500. And it's interesting, that benchmark, which is a, you know, one of the.

One of the oldest and well, best known, it's Bill Gurley, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is investing in a Chinese company? 

Marcus: Well, it's not interesting because Bill Gurley is, I, he's he's pretty pro China man. I mean, yeah. Like have you listened to BG two? Yeah. Yeah. He, he's, he's not like that fond of this whole Right. China thing that we're doing right now.

Vic: Yeah. And Manis is great. I mean, uh, it is the first agent that, that I think really works. So 

Marcus: that's a look, I, I, I think it's a big deal. Yeah. I think it's a big deal. I'm, I'm waiting for, I, I, I've kind of decided at this point, uh, my world is inside of Google Workspace. Yeah, right. You know, that's the reality.

My world is [01:19:00] inside of Google Workspace. It's where my email is, it's where all my docs are. I've been organizing stuff. There it is where all my assets are for well over a decade, both on Jumpstart and personally. Yeah. I'm just. Waiting for I, I, I'm waiting for Gini, Gemini. Gemini 

Vic: 2.5 is badass. Yes, exactly.

I mean, it just doesn that they don't have the packaged into an agent 

Marcus: yet. Exactly. I'm just waiting for them to get their agent act together. And then also, I'm looking at things like Claude that are integrating with, with Google Workspace. Right. Like, but I, I've just kind of decided if data is how you're going to make this thing, it's gotta integrate with Google Workspace, because that is where all my data is.

That's where I, well, 

Vic: Manus integrates with Google Workspace. It does, yeah. 

Marcus: I have it connected. Oh really? Yeah. Is it, it pulls your emails and your docs and all that kind of stuff? Um, not emails, but the docs. Yeah. See you got, I mean, the e yeah, the emails is like, 

Vic: I mean, I, you know, we've talked about this, the interface to email Slack, [01:20:00] Assan, I mean, there's like five interfaces I need Sure.

Are the hardest part. But, but I think, um, Google doesn't allow integration. Deeply into docs, I think, on purpose. Yeah. So you can't get an API into 

Marcus: that. Yeah. Unless you're Google. Yeah. But now every app you open with Google, it's like let Gemini talk to your stuff. Right. Right. You know? Which is, which is great.

I mean, it's great. Distribution is still Yeah. A superpower. Yeah. And there's, it is still a superpower. There's 

Vic: Microsoft distribution and Google distribution in America, 

Marcus: basically. Those are the two. Yes, that's right. Um, okay. New York Times, China has an army of robots on its side in the tariff war.

Enormous investments in factory equipment and artificial intelligence are given China and Edge and car manufacturing and other industries. No duh. 

Vic: Yeah. So for a long time I have, and everyone has been pointing to China's demographic problem and That's right. They don't have enough people, but. [01:21:00] They are getting really strong with it's old logic.

I don't know if they need it. 

Marcus: Isn't that old logic? Yeah. It's old. It's old thinking logic. That that was where the first principle was. The foundational unit of productivity is a human being. 

Vic: Yes. And that 

Marcus: is not, and that is no longer the truth. That is not the 

Vic: first principle anymore. That's not the first principle anymore.

Marcus: Right? Yes. So like, I'm tired of people talking about the birth rates are gonna like decline society. I'm like, what do you mean? Well, what is it? Are we gonna have a GI and robots taking over all the jobs? Like what, which one is it? We, which one is it? 

Vic: Yeah. I mean, so we we're gonna have next week, uh, Ben Lidle, um, on a, as a guest host, he's, he's great.

He did Silver Sneakers. Yeah. CEO of Anthem. He makes the claim that, um, the birth rate reduction sort of is one of the factors driving the robotics and AI growth. Sure. It's all intertwined, but, but. That's the new verdict. 

Marcus: Well, birth rate reduction plus increased diagnosis of autism, plus increased mental health issues plus, you [01:22:00] know what I mean?

Yeah. Like it's, it's a, it's myriad factors, right? It's myriad factors. Yeah. Like we, we just are, we just are going to have less productive humans. 

Vic: Yeah. And so China is, I think they're ahead of us more prepared them than we gave them 

Marcus: credit for. Right? Yes. More prepared than we gave them credit for. Uh, alright.

Final story. Wall Street Journal in a first scientists sent quantum messages a record distance over a traditional network. Breakthrough brings down the cost of quantum communication and integrates it into, this is important existing infrastructure. They were able to achieve quantum communication across 158 miles using existing fiber optic cables.

So they didn't need all the like, expensive cryogenic cooling, uh, to move these, uh, these qubits across fiber optic networks. 

Vic: Yeah, 

Marcus: the 

Vic: big deal. This was like a, I mean, there were a lot of stories this week that were interesting. This is the one that, that I think is just, you know, really changes the game.[01:23:00] 

Again. Again. Uh, quantum computers are quickly coming into reality. Coming real. They're becoming real. I mean, it was six months ago we were talking about the first Chips. Chips, 

Marcus: yes. 

Vic: And now not only are they using Quantum to send messages, but as you pointed out it, it's integrated into the existing infrastructure.

Yeah. Which just dramatically changes, uh, sort of adoption. Yes. Obviously. 

Marcus: Yeah. And, and so this article was really, really important. So I'm real, I'm really appreciative that you found it. A few things. One, not needing the super expensive, crazy looking cryo machine that looks like it's outta metropolis.

Right, right. Okay. So that's, that's one that's like. Mind blowing. Right. To me, that's the equivalent of like deep seek, right? Yeah. Being done without an a single Nvidia chip. 

Vic: Yeah. Okay. 

Marcus: Where 

Vic: now all of a sudden you can 

Marcus: do this anywhere, right? Yeah. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, [01:24:00] uh, everything I've been reading about Quantum has all been focused on the, these crazy looking metropolis computers crunching everything.

Not, not communication, not transporting, uh, you know, package of information in a, in a quantum package, right? Yeah. Which they call a photon, right? 

Vic: Yeah. Like sort of a process. Like a process. The information. 

Marcus: Yeah. Yeah. Like, like that's, that's not what I've been reading about. Right. I've been reading about just we're gonna use these quantum computers to, to destroy cryptography.

Yeah. Right. Where in fact, this is actually talking about. Quantum encryption. This is talking about a next level of encryption capability for data across our existing fiber optic networks. 

Vic: Yes. Which would be dramatically, exponentially safer and cheaper and faster. 

Marcus: So everything about this article got me super excited about Quantum, right?

Because it feels like it's [01:25:00] not going to be, uh, this, this kind of like Microsoft only game. I mean, it, it was Toshiba. Um, these, these are researchers at Toshiba who, who pulled this off, right? This is, I mean, when was the last time you heard the name Toshiba? Yeah. I didn't know they were still around. Yeah, right.

You know, so, so that, that, like, this is really, really, really an exciting development. And I hope it's not just like this thing that gets put into a drawer goes way somewhere. Well 

Vic: mean they published it in nature and I would expect that other people will try to replicate it. Yeah. And it's, it's a big deal.

I mean, they're talking about like. 18 to 24 months. So everything is just happening very quickly. It's, it's, it's all, it's all 

Marcus: just compressing, right? It's all compressing. Right. And then, and then, you know, also, uh, because of, because of the difference of qubits versus bits, um, I think you're also getting a lot more information across Yeah.

Across these, you know, these, these fiber optic cables. 

Vic: Yeah. Which then increases the overall capacity of everything. [01:26:00] Right. So you can put Netflix times a hundred. Do like, like that's, yeah. I don't know even how to use all that capacity, but Yeah. But, but you know, we can figure it out. We can figure it out.

Yeah. Par 

Marcus: Parkinson's law, we will figure it out. Right. You know what I mean? We'll expand anything to the, to the time and space we're given. Right. So, 

Vic: yeah. And there's a lot of healthcare applications that need significant speed and, you know. No low latency and data. Yeah. So that could be good. We might be doing surgeries from a distance.

Yep. Which we haven't been able to do because of the latency issues. Yeah. 

Marcus: So, man, what a time to be alive, man. Exciting. Exciting. A lot. A time to be alive. Lots going 

Vic: on. A lot of scary stuff in the news, but also exciting stuff in the news. 

Marcus: What a time to be alive. It's crazy. Uh, happy to be going through it with you.

Yeah. Um, sad. I'm gonna miss the episode with, uh, with Ben next week, so, um, I expect you'll crush it. Yeah. Yes. Uh, and uh, other than [01:27:00] that, I will see you next week, my friend. 

Yeah.