E34: Wuhan lab leak theory, India's "traceability" law, Coinbase's fact check, Big Tech's Hollywood takeover

From 2021 onward, the prior era of highly globalized, just‑in‑time supply chains will not return; instead, there will be a sustained global shift toward onshoring and resiliency, creating new business opportunities whose aggregate market value will reach into the trillions of dollars over the coming years.

“this is the most important macro investing theme that I've seen in my lifetime, which is that globalization as we know it is over. And what you just said is what I really believe, which is that you have to onshore and you have to move to a place where you value resiliency over just in time. And if you look at the businesses that get that need to get built in order to enable resiliency, you will see trillions of dollars of opportunity” View on YouTube

Within roughly 90 days of this May 31, 2021 episode, the U.S. government will already know that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan lab, and after the 90‑day review period it will begin concrete policy moves to become more economically independent from China (e.g., reshoring or diversification initiatives framed explicitly as reducing dependence on China).

“My gut tells me that our government already knows this, has known it for some time. The 90 day window that they've given the Chinese to kind of give us an answer as to what happened here is window dressing. And then we're going to start the process of becoming more independent from China” View on YouTube

For approximately the ten years following this May 2021 episode (through about 2031), the streaming/media market will be characterized by intense competition among many separate subscription services, requiring consumers to pick and choose among multiple fragmented providers to access desired content rather than relying on a single or simple bundled offering.

“and it's going to be a nasty battle for the next ten years where you and where you want content, you're going to have to go pick and choose who do you want to buy content from” View on YouTube

Over the coming years, the cost of producing video and entertainment content will continue to decline, leading to structurally lower margins across the professional content industry and making most individual pieces of content effectively commoditized in economic terms.

“the point of all of that is that content costs are going to continue to go down, which means the economics are going to go down. The margins are not that good. Um, and so it's all just a commodity that almost doesn't matter” View on YouTube

From roughly 2021 onward, major Hollywood studios and their content libraries acquired by large technology companies (e.g., Amazon, Apple, Google) will remain under big-tech ownership permanently, rather than being bought and sold every decade, and big tech will ultimately acquire and retain most of the remaining major Hollywood content libraries.

“we're reaching an end state of digital convergence, where the, um, where, where content and the digital distribution are now reaching their kind of final state. And so I don't expect these studios, once they're owned by big Tech, to ever go anywhere. And I don't think they're going to be trading again every ten years. I think this is the end state. Um, Amazon wants this library for their streaming service. And I think that big tech is going to gobble up the rest of these libraries, and that's where they're going to stay.” View on YouTube

Over time following 2021, large technology companies will acquire and control the majority of major Hollywood studios and their content output (i.e., "big tech will eat Hollywood").

“Yeah. I mean, I think I think I think big tech is going to eat Hollywood.” View on YouTube

People younger than the speakers’ generation (i.e., current kids/teens as of 2021 and later cohorts) will, as they age, not care about traditional movies and tentpole film releases in the way prior generations did, leading to a long-term decline in cultural centrality of movies and Monday-morning "water cooler" discussions about them.

“I just think like it was our generation was the last one that actually even cared about movies, that cared about these tentpole productions, that cared about water cooler type conversations on a Monday morning.” View on YouTube

Within the speakers’ lifetimes (i.e., over the coming decades from 2021), technology and business models will be developed that allow content creators, social media personalities, and influencers to own their own distribution and directly monetize their audience relationships, rather than relying on centralized platforms.

“the thing that I think content creators haven't yet realized, and social media personalities and influencers haven't yet realized, is how can I own my own distribution and monetize my relationship. That feature of the web will get figured out in our lifetime.” View on YouTube

Within roughly 10–20 years from 2021, a new generation (today’s teens and upcoming 20‑somethings) will develop ways for large creators (e.g., Charli D’Amelio–scale influencers) to communicate with and monetize their audiences without relying on intermediary platforms like TikTok, making intermediary-controlled access to followers obsolete for top creators.

“What I'm saying is there are going to be people who are teenagers today, right? Or kids who will be teenagers in a decade, 20 somethings who will figure this out, for whom the idea that if you're a Charli D'Amelio, right, your TikTok's top biggest star with 120 odd million followers, that to go through an intermediary to talk to your people will not in the future make any sense.” View on YouTube

A significant number of large social media and platform-native creators will, in the future, build their audience on major centralized platforms and then spin out to their own independent, direct-to-fan distribution and monetization channels (analogous to journalists leaving legacy media for Substack).

“It's no different than building a name on the New York Times and then starting your own Substack. It's going to happen.” View on YouTube

At some future point (within roughly the coming decades from 2021), the problem of enabling creators to own distribution and monetize their reputation/value will be solved via crypto/blockchain-based systems that put a measure of individual reputation and social value "on chain" and tie it to payments and stored value.

“I think this solution will get figured out through the crypto community. And the reason is because that is, by definition, to your point, Jason, fundamentally distributed and tied to a payment and a store of value, because that's what effectively this is. It's like where is the value of somebody's reputation? And right now we don't have a way of measuring it. And you can you can put that on chain in some way. I don't claim to know how, but I think.” View on YouTube

As of mid-2021, big tech companies are near the late stage ("August") of their period of uncontested supremacy, implying that within the next several years their dominance will begin to wane due to regulatory, competitive, and technological pressures.

“I'll go out on a limb and say, um, we're we're we're in the sort of the, the August of their, um, supremacy.” View on YouTube

For the then-upcoming Biden tax legislation (2021–2022): (1) U.S. federal capital gains tax rates will not be increased; (2) the U.S. federal corporate tax rate will be raised to 25% but not to 28%; and (3) U.S. tax law will be changed to significantly tighten IP-related tax loopholes, making it effectively impossible for American companies to shift intellectual property to low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland or to execute tax inversions for the purpose of reducing U.S. tax liability.

“They're not going to at best, they're going to get the cap gains. Uh, sorry, no movement on cap gains. They don't think it can happen at all. So that's not going to move. Oh, good. Uh, number one, number two is that corporate will go to 25 but not to 28. And then number three they're going to really tighten the IP loophole, um, which will prevent American companies from shipping IP to places like Ireland to not pay tax. They're going to make it impossible to do things like inversions, all this kind of stuff, and then scope that down.” View on YouTube