Antonio Gracias: DOGE updates, Voter fraud arrests, Finding 'Big Balls' | All-In Live from Miami
28:39 Share

Where's Antonio Gracias? Bring him up. How bad is it? How messed up is our government? So if Twitter was like the JV league, this is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. How is he able to find big balls? Where do they show up? Do they just apply out of the blue? I mean, where do these guys come from? You found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote? Yes, this is actually true. Every vote that is cast illegally in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen.

So Antonio, we know you're very busy because you decided, like a couple of our other friends, to take a second job working in our government for 100 or so days. You can give him a round of applause for that.

You know, Trump is a unique individual in all the world. There's maybe polarizing in some ways, but one thing that's not polarizing is Doge. I think everybody wants to see waste, fraud and abuse and controlled spending in government. Maybe there's some questions about how fast it's going, but we all know you and Elon like to go, you know, at a brisk pace.

You laid back and you joined a little later in the process like a stat you joined maybe what 15 20 days ago I've been there for eight weeks eight weeks. Okay, so yeah, 60 60 days and you went public with it Maybe a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I was in Woodlawn, Maryland for the first four weeks. So you didn't know I was there. Yes, so so how

How bad is it? How messed up is our government? How insane are the processes? You're a process guy. We both worked on the Twitter acquisition and the transfer there and did all the zero-based budgeting. I mean, maybe compare and contrast it to that, which was maybe one of the most horrific corporate entities I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, it was tough. And now that was being run. It was tough. Yeah.

Well, let me start by thanking you guys. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's great to be down here and see everybody. And let me also say that it's an honor to serve America. Like, whatever I am doing, I am grateful to be able to do it. I'm grateful to my partners for allowing me to do it and my clients for supporting it. And it truly is an honor to be there. There's many great people in the government trying to help. So let me just start with that. Okay. Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah.

This is sacrifice, right? You're taking time out of your day job. It's definitely sacrifice, but it really, I feel very grateful that I have the capacity and 30 years of training in the operations that I can be useful. You know, that feels very, I feel gratitude. Yeah, how bad is it? So if

Twitter was like the JV league. This is like the NBA. It's the most complex thing I've ever seen. I have in our office in DC, I have mapped now as an example, the entire system of basically from the border to the benefits programs. It's about a 40 foot board and it looks like a bus. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible like spaghetti gram stuff. And yeah, I've never seen anything so complex in my life. So the answer to your question is,

It's worse than I thought much much worse than we saw at Twitter now X and America Americans and all of you we deserve better. Okay, if we were to you And I'm sure Shabbat has some questions in Freeburg But if we were to look at one dollar spent by our government waste fraud abuse How many pennies of the dollar is it if you had to just based on what you've seen so far? I

a range here's what's that's if you go into any company any company guys ever seen that is not like super well run it probably is like easy cut 15 easy easy easy um this is where the 15 this is where the the trillion dollar number came from 15 of seven billion dollars

I think if we had the political will, you'd easily get that 15%, no problem. Not without any problem at all, and without cutting the core entitlement programs. So it's definitely there. The question is, do people want to do it or not? And remember, every dollar we take, we are taking from an NGO or a Beltway consultant. It's actually that people are screaming about this because we're taking money from them.

And it is, whatever you read in the news media, I gotta tell you, it isn't true. I mean, the cots, I think it's 88% of the people that have left the government have taken packages. The packages are very lucrative. There's sort of nine months or so of severance and they're voluntary. So yeah, I tell you, and I also say the people that work in government who are good, there's lots of good people in the government that I have met and appointed this at all this stuff, they deserve better.

okay imagine trying to be a civil servant you want to do the right thing you're working there because you care about america and you're in this like massive bureaucratic morass with all this stuff on top of you and man i've seen like i've seen oig reports where they people have reported the oig like sex trafficking and they turn it in and nothing happens

like literally nothing happens okay so that's very frustrating and they stick it out they keep going and they keep working hard for america so i think it's it's not just about the cost cuts about the culture like the culture change of allowing allowing good people who are in the government to understand that someone's listening

that when they want to make improvement change or when they find fraud, waste and abuse, they can do it and there's an avenue now to do it. I think that's actually going to be one of the most important lasting thing we leave is this idea that your voice matters in the government, that there are good people in the government and when they want to do the right thing, there's a way to do it. And you got people coming back to work in the office.

I'll tell you so. We've been pilloried often in the press for subscription where I started. And here are the facts. When I got there, just like at Twitter, the parking lot was empty. And I'm talking about stadium-sized parking. OK? Empty. The office was empty. There was no one in the corporate office, the headquarters office in Woodland, Maryland. And then because we follow our process of mapping from end to end the system, we went to visit a couple offices. I went to one myself. The one that I went to, there were about 20 people in the waiting room.

There were seven people in the windows. Of the seven people, three had their shades half down. Those people were taking phone calls because during COVID, they turned everyone into phone operators. What we learned is they were still running on COVID operations.

So we have now, through our efforts and efforts of the interim administrator, brought everyone back to the office and back to the offices in the field. We haven't closed one field office, not one since we've been there. Everything you're reading about service levels is not true. What I saw, imagine how frustrating that is if you're waiting in the waiting room, you see seven windows that are 25 open and three of the people are taking phone calls and you're waiting. I mean, talk about customer service. So look, like in all the companies that we all run, we always talk about

using incentives to shape the outcome you want and I think you keep insisting which I think is right that civil servants by and large want the right things to happen that's why they chose to go and work for the government so what is the incentive we need to change is it a compensation incentive is it like what like what is it look I think that people that work in the government it's a normal distribution everything right it's two and a half million people the government plus contractors

And some people are great, some people aren't great, and a lot of people in the middle. And the people in the middle react to the incentives as you point out. I think the most important thing here is transparency of the metrics because these folks aren't there for the money. Mainly they're very good because we're making money somewhere else.

The incentives we should create are transparency and some basic metrics. They know how they're doing. You know, we were, as an example, at Social Security, we were criticized for the web setup time. Well, turns out web setup time has been better since we got there than after Imagine. We have engineers. And we've now published the metrics on the website publicly so people can see it. So the engineering team now manage the website, can see, you know, that they're doing a good job or not doing a good job. And the public can see if they're doing a good job or not doing a good job. I don't think it's... Financial incentives are always useful.

But this is not just about money. Like, for example, if you look at Singapore, the Singaporean approach from Lee Kuan Yew was, let's create a government that is extremely empowered, but let's also make it quite small. Let's make them more compensated. And let's try to find sort of an elite cadre of folks. Is that approach possible in the United States? Or should we even think that we should try something like that?

I mean Singapore is a unique experiment world. It's also a place where you might end up getting caned if you drop chewing gum on the ground. So in America we have a different level of, I would say, of freedom and rights.

you know, we should strive for a civil service that is professional, well compensated, and mission-oriented. And that mission orientation is serving the United States. And I think that gets back to, look, there are very good people that want the right thing, serve their country, that's why they're there. And it's, I wouldn't make it, I wouldn't make it about the money. I would make it about the mission. And we'll get the, we get, there are very good people that are there on mission. I've met them. They are the ones pointing all this stuff out to us. Right. Yeah. Can you talk about, um,

You guys went on Fox the other day with the Doge team. Big Balls. And Big Balls was there. We were talking about this backstage. All of those guys were like 12 years old. What is it about the role, the opportunity, the way it was presented

that attracted this group of what were incredibly well-spoken, highly intelligent, clearly extraordinarily motivated individuals. It's the sort of caliber of talent that all of us aspire to hire and first of all find, hire,

And then they're on the mission. Is it Elon's inspiration and the reach he has that made this happen? Is this a particular moment in American history? Because I was looking at that table and I was thinking about like the founding fathers and the age of the founding fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. They were all super young. And I was like, man, this is an opportunity to kind of rewrite how government operates in America today. But I was just struck by the age and the talent and how that came together and kind of where do they show up? Do they just apply out of the blue? And you guys...

You guys have recruiters out there? I mean, where do these guys come from? So we have a recruiting team, actually. They're great. Barish and Emily do the recruiting. And I'll tell you, I just want to stop for a second and say this.

This is extraordinary. These people are extraordinary, all of them. The young people you saw at the table are extraordinary. They're amazing engineers. I mean, they're like any one of us would be. They're 10x engineers. We would all be thrilled to have our companies. Elon, obviously, is an extraordinary leader, so they come for him. But I think they're really motivated by the mission.

They're motivated by the idea that this is a moment where they can actually make an extraordinary difference to the country. And that is a flywheel that brings more people, right? So they bring their friends and you recruit other people in. And there are extraordinary, extraordinary people there, man. So you saw the people at the table. In that particular interview, I didn't say a word. I literally...

It wasn't the company. I actually didn't say anything. It was you and the other guy. Yeah, I didn't say anything. And the reason I didn't say anything was because I didn't need to. These guys are extraordinary. And one of the young men there spoke about this, Ethan. He's in my son's class at Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard with two classes left to come do this.

Big Ball is an example. He's great. I work with an engineer named Aram. He's great. And I've got to tell you, there's a whole other strata of people you didn't see there who are kind of in their 30s. I think my buddy Josh is working on the college stuff and a few other things. This guy was a senior executive at KKR and left his job to come do this. And there's

In the innumerable number of people like this, it's an extraordinary group. I feel honored to be part of it. I feel honored to work with them. It really is amazing. Can I tell you an answer to this? Yeah, but I just want, like, do you think that this, because these guys aren't going to work in the government forever. They're coming in, they're building something, they're activating, and they're moving on back to their private life, like the founding fathers did at the start of the American government.

Is that a better model for how government should operate rather than have career employees, career politicians, but treat it more like civil service where everyone has some role that they should play at some point like they do in Israel where you have to go to the army for a few years and everyone is required. Same in Singapore, actually, where everyone kind of has to go spend their time in the government, contribute, participate, etc.

but it doesn't become a mechanism where there's an incentive to grow it and get more money flowing through it because that's how I individually as a politician or employee long-term would benefit from the government.

I think it's a great point. It's a great point about Singapore, actually. I should have brought that up when Jamal asked the question. I think that we're proving there's two types of people in government today. There's careers, they call them, and politicals. I think there should be a third type, which is what you're talking about. People that are doing public service for a short duration, shorter duration, whether it's me, 130 as a SGE, or it's a couple of years as an engineer or something. I think a culture of this in America would be great for America. And great not just for what it does to the government, but how it binds us as a people.

Right? Serving your country, going there, seeing how hard it is, seeing the way it works, understanding really from the inside what's going on. Listen, I had no idea. It's like, what part of the government did you work in for your two-year service or your 18 months, right? This would be a great thing for America and a great thing for our society because that cultural public service, I think, would bring us closer together. Shamath, you were going to say something about the town? I had a... I mean, without saying too much, but you can guess. So...

All of us have known Elon for a really long time. I also worked for another person that's of that same stature for a long time. And he's much shorter, much shorter. And one of, I say that a very good friend of his came to see me recently for lunch. And he asked me this exact same question about Elon. He said, like, it was kind of like, as just like, like, that's the question that they were grappling with. How is he able to find big balls?

and so many big balls. I actually can tell you. I've seen him find big balls. Yeah, it's a serious strategy though. What he does is he responds to emails or tweets. Twitter, people will say like, I have a solution to this.

We should do that and then I've been CC on messages where he sends them to the right person He has people to vet them and see if this idea actually works And I think he's like very opportunistic and doesn't prejudge where you went to school what your credentials is It's almost the opposite the less credentials you are he has a predisposition to think you're more right Have you solved the problem by the way? This is a this is a Peter Thiel, but but my answer to this was I

There's a lot of people that can be responsive in email. I think there's a handful of people that are real northern stars for technical talent. But he's the only one that when you walk in the room, he says, here's this mission. And it is so generally otherworldly. Nobody else can really say that. It is a flywheel, as you said, that is extremely unique. The fact that you can direct that entropy to the United States government, I think is a blessing. Now the question is, how do we follow up and make it

Because to your point, I saw those kids on that interview and any of my five kids, if they had done what they did, I would have been so proud. I was so impressed with these kids. Very impressive. And you're like, you're proud to be an American watching these kids. You saw Elon's face nodding while they were speaking with a grin ear to ear. He was proud.

He is proud. I think it's important for maybe people to sit back and say, this has all been done in 100 days from a cold start. It's not like you brought in people, you brought in people who are like, I know the lay of the land here. It was like, we're going to figure this out from first principles, do zero-based budgeting, whatever it is, look at the data and see where it leads us

And I think one of the disturbing things about the data and most controversial issues in America today is the border. And why did Biden let so many people through the border? It was kind of a question if it was even happening. Should we trust these border encounter numbers? It doesn't seem real.

And there's a lack of trust in the government. One side is saying, hey, we let all these people in. There's 15, 20 million extra people here in order to vote Democratic. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me since the Republicans have become the working party. But putting all that aside, you started looking at this and we had a discussion privately about, hey, are these people signing up to vote? Because that would be an indicator that this

you know, theory that people were streaming across the border in order to vote, you found some people who were illegal immigrants who registered to vote? This is confounding. Yes, this is actually true. So we have sampled a handful of states

And in those handful of states, we found people registered to vote and we have found people who actually voted. And this is all being done by sampling, okay? So we are sampling DHS data and then have to go to the voter rolls, check the voter rolls, and then check the, give that to HSI, Homeless Rear Investigations, who goes and checks the voter record by subpoena and the voter and the cards you sign when you vote. We had already

three arrests here in Florida actually and one indictment. And is that publicly known? Yes, we posted it. The DOJ posted it. But the media has not covered it. I haven't seen much about it. So you're saying these are three individuals...

who illegally secured or no legally secured a social security the legally secured social security numbers um through the through the process we talked about last time asylum or some special program or whatever and they were given uh you know they give an associate number by by filing a 765 and getting with our station and they registered to vote and they actually voted in 2020 and or 2024. three have been arrested I just want to say this carefully three have been arrested

and one has been indicted. The one we indicted, I want to just stop on this guy for a minute. He's an Iraqi national. He voted in 2020 in New York. He went to prison for shooting somebody, shot some guy's hand off.

has charged, if I remember correctly, $60,000 or $70,000 of benefits through Medicaid, and we think is now in Iraq because he's active on his Facebook page, and the IP address is from Iraq. And credit to our friends at HSI, our partners at HSI, and to DOJ for tracking this down. I've got to tell you guys, it's difficult, laborious work. It really is. But think about that a minute.

the tip of the iceberg, Antonio, do you think? Or did you guys do a lot of mining and a lot of digging to come up with those four? How big of a magnitude of a problem do you think this is? What's your intuition tell you honestly right now about whether there's massive voter fraud or not? Great question. And I want to be careful I answer it. I'm going to leave the data. So I'm not leaving the data and I'm entering the area of my opinion, which is what you're asking me. My opinion is, actually let me step back and tell you what we did a second and then tell you my opinion.

We are sampling by hand. So when you say data mining, we're not mining. We're actually like pick and shovel going into like by hand. This is not mechanized. There's no AI being applied. We're using SQL queries. You're literally pulling one by one. We're literally snapping a name out of the work authorization database, DHS, checking that against a voter roll, and have to go run it down to the state. Super laborious. So with that in mind, my opinion is that this is the tip of the iceberg.

How big the iceberg is, I don't know. And I don't want to speculate because I think it would be not the right thing to do at this moment. I think we'll have more data over time. But for sure, if we can sample out of a database,

And it takes an engineer about a day to find 20-ish cases. So what DOJ asked for was 10 to 20 cases per state. Just to give you a sense of what's happening, it takes an engineer about a day to find 10 to 20 cases per state in sampling. That gives you an idea of how many there are, right? That's going on. Are you shocked that people don't care about this more?

I'm sure, I think people really do care. Should we care more? Yes, I want to separate the questions. I think people care more. My guess is everyone here cares a lot, okay? A lot about this. I think for some reason the news media doesn't care more. Now, should you care? Yes. You know, there's this idea like, it's always a little bit fraud, it's pervasive, it's not a big deal. Wrong. Here's the reality. Every vote that is cast illegally in America nullifies the vote of an American citizen.

It is your constitutional right to vote in America. And if we don't have a zero-defect system, we are violating your constitutional rights

And I will tell you, you deserve, the American public deserves, that we strive for a zero-defect system. We make medical devices in America with a zero-defect system. We shouldn't make votes with a zero-defect system. If we don't strive for a zero-defect system, we will get a lot more fraud. This is why the real idea is so important. We should strive for this. And it doesn't matter if it's one vote. It's easily solved with the last 15 states that don't require voter ID to simply do that. And that would pretty much end this debate, I think. I mean, I...

Well, I want to tell you, there are states that do require ID. I think real ID will solve it because one of the things that our engineers are building, and it was already there, but they're cleaning up and making it work properly, is a thing called SAVE. There's a database called SAVE that is available to the states. In the Biden administration, they raised the price from, I think, about $1 an API call to $3 and change the API call, and all the states stopped using it. SAVE is a database that has the actual citizenship data for the entire country, okay?

We're cleaning up now and making the actual UI much better. If the states have real ID and they use SAVE, you'll solve this problem. And I cannot understand why a state would not do this. Whose decision would it be to just change the cost of that API? So great question, Chamath. The Secretary of Homeland Security, I want to thank her, Secretary Noem, has just signed a memo, a policy memo, to make it free.

Yeah, why is there a charge anyway? It doesn't make any sense to me. Yes. That's the right thing to do. Secretary of the United States is free. Your parents. I know your dad is an immigrant. My parents are both immigrants. Both immigrants. Two immigrants sitting here. My mother came here last to speak English. Yeah. So, to be clear... Pick me, pick me. Me too. You're an immigrant, also an immigrant, seventh generation. Which one of these doesn't fit? I don't know. Who's not? Is it? Oh, Jason. Who do you think? Seventh generation. I'm the all-in presidential candidate by default. I'm...

I don't know. You're from Mount Olympus, though. Yes. Yeah. And the five points. But how should immigration work in this country? You know, we've talked about it on our pod, the point based system, et cetera. We still want immigration. We need high skilled immigration. We talked to President Trump about that. He said he was committed to giving people green cards who have diplomas. And this is a little out of your league.

purview, but just how does Antonio Grasso's feel about immigration? You know, deporting people, you know, deporting people with maybe less due process than maybe some of us are comfortable with. What do you think we should be doing here as a country?

There's a lot in that question. Yes. So look, I'm an enormous fan of immigration. I mean, you will not find a guy who's more pro-immigration than I am because my parents are immigrants. They came here with nothing and built a life. And I am the American dream. And I'm so grateful this country was done for my family. You won't find it. I am so grateful this country was done for my family. It has been great for us, okay? And for all of you. The reality is that we need... Thank you. Yeah.

American GDP is simply the function of number of people working, time productivity.

We have 7 million job openings roughly in America. We need people to work. This is the reality. The system should very simply be there's a skilled immigration group and we figure out what that should be, what jobs you want. And by the way, America is the best place to live in the world. We all know that. I believe that. If we make this easy, they will come. No problem. And I think there's broadening in that. We also need labor. We do. Our farmers need labor. We need

labor in the food industry, restaurants, etc. I think there should be both high-end skilled immigration and there should be a very sensible program for unskilled labor, a work permit program. We've got that H-2A program. There is an H-2A program. I will tell you, these programs, I've mapped the entire system now, they go from DHS to State Department to labor. They're very disconnected and they're hard to manage.

So, we are going to work on this. One of the things we're going to work on and hopefully leave behind is both a sensible answer to the illegal problem and a sensible answer to the legal problem. It's very important the team work on this. I think this is super important for Trump's administration because there seems to be a bit of a, I don't want to call it a civil war, but...

heated debate internally between people like yourself and Elon and others who believe immigration is critical and then other people who just want to lock the border and deport 20 million people. I'll call this Steve Banninkamp. He's not in the administration, clearly. Locking the borders. I want to be clear on this something. I don't believe in open borders. Yeah.

When a country opens its border, this country cedes its sovereignty. Yes, you have to close it. You have to have a border that is controlled. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have legal immigration. It should be a proper process where people can come in that are great for the country and they believe in our values. And they should have a chance to become citizens if they believe in our values and support our country. I really hope that you guys work this out and can have a positive influence like you've had with Doge on the administration and really work on this one, which is sensible, kind,

you know, empathetic immigration because you're all immigrants. I mean, the values I set for our team, let's tell you, the Valor Execution values are focus, intensity, and discipline. I added a fourth value here to our team for our team, compassion. Yes. Antonio, I just want, and I want anyone else to join me in saying, look, you're a successful, wealthy, incredibly handsome man. That's the best part. But, uh,

Like, I know the work you're doing super hard. We talked backstage about how hard it's been. I just want to honestly say, as an American, thank you for the work you're doing. And well done. Thank you, bro. All right. Thanks to my friend, Antonio Gracias, for joining us. And thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in for that important discussion about Doge. If you want to come to our next event, it's the All In Summit in Los Angeles. Fourth year for All In Summit. Go to allin.com slash events to apply.

A very special thanks to our new partner, OKX, the New Money app. OKX was the sponsor of the McLaren F1 team, which won the race in Miami. Thanks to Heider and his team, an amazing partner and an amazing team. We really enjoyed spending time with you. And OKX launched their new crypto exchange here in the US. If you love All In, go check it out.

Go check them out. And a special thanks to our friends at Circle. They're the team behind USDC. Yes, your favorite stablecoin in the world. USDC is a fully backed digital dollar, redeemable one for one for USD. It's built for speed, safety, and scale. They just announced the Circle Payments Network. This is enterprise-grade infrastructure that bridges the gap between the digital economy and outdated financial reality.

Go check out USDC for all your stablecoin needs. And special thanks to my friends, including Shane over at Polymarket, Google Cloud, Solana, and BVNK. We couldn't have done it without y'all. Thank you so much. Brain Man, David Sack. And it said, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S. I'm the queen of kids.

Besties are back.