Neurosurgeon argues Waymo's 100M-mile data proves autonomous vehicles are a public health imperative

you. And and [laughter] next we are joined by John from Scrub Capital. John is a practicing neurosurgeon, health system leader, multi-time co-founder,

CMO,

welcome to the show

and more. Welcome to the stream. How are you guys?

We're fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Can you get us up to speed on uh some of the writing that you've been doing, some of the some some of your uh your overall thinking on where how America is misunderstanding self-driving cars, what we need to change, uh the actual message, the status quo, and then the message that we need to get out.

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. So, look, up until right around now, we've been thinking about autonomous vehicles as a tech moonshot. You know, cool tech story. take shots at it, like it, whatever side you're on. But, but what I'm trying to say, and now others are joining, too, is this is a public health urgency now

because what happened is Whimo put out data at 100 million miles.

This is about a month or two ago. You can go download and analyze it yourself. They put out all the raw data.

And what I found was astonishing. We're facing, guys, the possibility that if we play our cards right now, going forward, we could eliminate traffic deaths as a leading cause of death in the United States.

That's crazy. Wait, it's the leading cause. I thought it was cancer.

As a leading cause is a leading cause. Yeah. It's huge, though. Isn't tens of thousands of people?

Yeah. 40,000 a year. And for children and young adults, it's the number two cause of death in the United States. And it's the number one worldwide for children. Also, I mean, not all life is precious, obviously, but it also must be uh a a cause of death of young people. Um because it's so random when it happens. It's not it's not something where, you know, oh, someone's lived their full life and then they've passed away. Uh

yeah, that's right. It does tend to bias towards younger people, healthier prime of life. It's not like it's this tends to be the sick and elderly. That's for sure.

So, but uh I'm I'm totally with you. I buy it hook, line, and sinker. I'm I'm a believer. But uh also it seems like it's going fine because like Google has a trillion dollars of cash flow and they're going to do this and Whimo is rolling out. Like what do we really need to change? It seems like everything's going well,

right? So look, we we have a regulatory capture problem right now, guys. And that's I was so glad to come on TVPN.

You could look at coverage in the Washington Post, coverage in the Boston Globe.

City councils and other moneyed forces have politicians ears and they're working against this. And and I think, you know, it's we got to work to liberate this and get the message out that this is this is not a risk story. This is a safety story, you know, from my perspective now looking at this from a medical lens. And

you know, I haven't even scratched the surface and I'm sure I'm going to get all flamed on Twitter now and everything else. Plainted bar in a lot of places is is is what's opposing this as well. And and and I won't impute motive, but people can use their imaginations.

Okay. So, what's what's happening in what's happening in California that allows me to every other week I log on. I see that Whimo's map is expanding. California,

it seems like it's going

historically has been I don't know. I would I would I would imagine that uh this would be a tougher environment than other states that are less population dense.

Yeah. Jordy, what's interesting about this is this doesn't respect traditional political tribes or left coast, right coast, whatever. It actually it cuts jagged across typical tribes often. So like you could have far-left people where they love bikes but love that Whimos are safer. So it's like great. But then there's a group over there that doesn't want any vehicles. So Whimos are a problem.

Then you might have libertarians that say, you know, technology acceleration, let's go, let's go, let's go. But then well wait, are the vehicles surveilling me? Survey. So

you know this this is not traditional tribes. And I think what's we're seeing now is the data is moving people further and further along in this story tribe independent. And to get to your question, Jordan D, I think a lot of these companies are based or sorry, Whimo certainly is based in California and there's there's a West Coast, you know, heaviness to this. And to be fair, Tesla's now, you know, also demoing this in Austin right now with human drivers still. Mhm. Do you have any other reads on uh how this might break from a regulation perspective? It feels like, you know, we could be coming up on a seat belts and car scenario where, you know, self-driving technology is a requirement for all the OEMs and they have to either white label it from Whimo, white label it from Tesla. It needs to be available more widely. Uh Tesla and Whimo, I don't think that's in their business model. I don't think they necessarily want to put it in every Toyota and Honda, but there, you know, you're making a

Rolls-Royce Ghost.

Yeah. You're making like a health-based case and maybe at a certain point there needs to be, you know, a requirement. How do you how do you think about that?

Yeah. I mean, so right like airbags we all remember that that you know, they started as kind of like a luxury thing on the high end, you know, S-Class Mercedes and then worked their way down. I think we're going to progressively see this with progressively more more and more automation. So right now like the automatic braking is in there and almost everybody has that but it's going to start to filter down and Jordy and John I think insurance industry pressure is going to push this too. Okay,

we're eventually when the data gets stronger and stronger and I think we're about a couple of weeks away from Google's next sorry Whimo's next data dump because just following their usual trend I think we're a couple weeks away from probably 125 million miles. I think that this data is going to start to push rate differential over time and that that's going to kind of get people moving.

Yeah, it's funny. Uh [laughter] if you were expecting a debate, you're not going to get one because I agree with everything you're saying here. Um but uh you did go to the New York Times to write this essay. Uh did you get push back from the New York Times readership? Uh was there a was that a conscious choice? I I'm just trying to understand like who is who is the current what what is the current shape of the of the anti-self-driving car uh constituency look like because I'm starting to understand the anti- uh you know AI data center constituency and I get that like it's it's ugly in your backyard or if you if your if your power rates go up like that makes sense there's a trade-off there but who's who's not happy what was the reaction to the New York Times piece

yeah so the New York Times was interesting and I'll tell you there was a very famous magazine that I pitched this to and they weren't interested because they were writing their own. Okay. Um, and this one definitely got got a lot more traction, but so

the the the team there was the crack editors obviously and the factchecking is incredible. I mean, I knew it was good, but I mean every word, every statistic check twice it seems. And I think I don't know if that's just cuz this is a super, you know, high impact story or because it's what we do, but

when I was watching they they actually shut down the message board when it got to about 2400 messages. They might have been tired of moderating it

and I saw, you know, really these again these jagged splits where I guess it's um sort of obliquely cutting across groups. And I I'm having trouble now. I understand there's some data coming out that it actually tends to cut across tech literacy.

So more so than like left, right, libertarian, not it's it's how tech literate you are. And that that's going to get progressively interesting, I think.

Yeah. What do you think about the job displacement narrative around self-driving cars that does feel like, you know, there are people whose jobs is to drive around. Some of them will be potentially displaced. It certainly has an effect on the the taxi cab market. self-driving cars in other contexts are still seems like it's pretty far away, but uh how how do you think about balancing the the economic effects, the employment effects with the you know the the health benefits effectively?

Yeah. So, we we this is a critical question. I want to make sure that's clear, right? This isn't just willy-nilly let's go put these everywhere tomorrow. The call is for this to be done smartly starting like yesterday, right? And let's make this a national priority. And the job question's critical and and and I don't want to ever be glib about it. I wrote a whole kind of mini thesis and there wasn't room for it in the piece and I'm certainly not a labor expert, but what I think is a couple things. One, we're already facing a labor shortage in a lot of markets as you know, not a surplus. And we have supply chain and value chain breaking because of this. So I think what I'm looking here is we have a chance if we do this right with upskilling and other things and I know upskilling gets panned a lot of the time but I think we need to be thinking about moving people from operator to manager supervising fleets of vehicles and we could have a truck driver managing a fleet of 10 autonomous rigs. You know from a command center who by the way now goes to sleep in his own bed rather than or hers and rather than staring in a white line for 11 straight hours in a dangerous environment. I think that's a waste of human potential. Now, I want to be clear. Their jobs are super important right now. They're keeping the country alive. So, nobody here that I'm saying that their job is a waste of human potential. I'm saying if we just then don't figure out what to do with their jobs because this is happening whether we like it or not.

We need to think about how to use that incredible expertise

and apply it smartly. And then, you know, I'd like to say um in 1981 was the peak cigarette manufacturer. 650 billion cigarettes were manufactured in 1981. Now we're down to 125 billion cigarettes a year. And we none of us heard about an epidemic of job displacement because of cigarettes being dropped by 85%.

Yeah.

So, let's do this right starting today. And I don't know if you're going to go there, but if we don't, we're going to be importing Chinese technology. They have no less than seven companies pursuing full stack autonomous vehicles right now.

Makes sense. And uh I'm

trying to think if I can name more than seven American uh autonomy companies. Whimo, Tesla, KA AI, Ghost is not doing well. There's a couple that are not doing okay anymore, but uh it is it is back. Quasers company.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Applied intuition. Um

um I wanted while we have you, I wanted your quick take on uh peptides. We're seeing

an explosion of demand. You're an investor in uh in in a bunch of different health and medical companies. I'm curious how you've viewed this category. It's uh it feels tough to invest in for a lot of reasons. regulatory. A lot of these um therapies are not actually proven by any type of uh real studies, but I'm curious if you got a hot take for us.

Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's a hot take, but look, so first of all, disclosure, we're investors in Life Force. Um certainly check out Life Force. Um but

so, um I've joked and others have that remember this old book Prozac Nation. I think the new I I want I wish I had time to write peptide nation like that one of us need let's do it together we need to make time for that but this is where we're going and the data is getting stronger and stronger in pockets as a physician I got to say I'm not giving anybody medical advice right now talk to your own doctor but me and Chrissy Far and you can Google this we surveyed 135 clinicians who are active in health span on what they do themselves not what they do for their patients, what they take themselves. And something like 15 or 20% of them are on more than one injectable, including peptide, of course, TRT, and other things. And I I think

I like doctor per personally. [laughter]

There's I think you can't get me in the clinic if he's over 10% body fat. He's got to be dried out. He's got to be dice.

Dried out.

Yeah, he's got to be solid separation. Monster. It's got to be stringy. Is it okay if he's cutting and bulking or does it just when he's cutting?

I typically only go in for the checkin when he's on a cut, when he's in fighting form, kind of stage ready.

You want when you're making your appointment, you almost need to know where are they?

Exactly. Exactly. Miss me when you're bulking. I want to see you

want to see the striation.

Ready to go to the Arnold to the Arnold Classic. I want you stage ready. I want you dry.

Yeah. Because because bodybuilders are the epitome of hell.

Yes. Yes. Exactly.

Oh, yeah. Bonnie's looking great.

Yeah. She's ready. You are looking great.

Anyway, this is fantastic. Uh, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

Yeah, we're we're with you. I think I think it's I think it's a good reframing. There's so much uh

I like it a lot.

Uh so much investment happening in in AI broadly and it it is interesting that and and how much the government is doing to try to uh break down walls to to support.

It is funny. There's all this there's all this uh there's all this debate about like will AI cure cancer? Will AI save lives? like is that just lip service from the big AI companies? And it's like, well, this one could literally save 40,000 lives a year. Like, that's that's good. That's more than many cancers. That's a ton. It's there's no reason why we shouldn't do that. And then and then we should celebrate it as AI saving lives. Like that would be great.

It's more than homicide and plane crashes combined every year. Yeah. And what if I could leave one thing I would say to

look this is not something that oh my god Whimo started on this and Tesla started on this you know six months ago and it looks great this has been 15 years of deliberate work at Whimo and I don't work for Whimo I want to be clear I'm not invested in Whimo unless it's through a mutual fund at Alphabet and directly or whatever but this this has been handled for 15 years with the rigor of what I would say is most analogous to a medical device

totally

not an app not a not like a wearable, an actually regulated medical device. So, what I want to say to people is that this is a moment now

that's ready for safe and effective acceleration.

Yeah, it's been so it's been incredibly high stakes. Like, there have been multiple I'm pretty sure multiple artificial intelligence self-driving companies where they've where they've had a terrible accident and it's basically destroyed the entire company. And so the entire industry has moved slowly but in this case it's good because there is human life on the line. I would call it deliberate movement and I completely agree with you.

Time this this do this right and this will be remembered as one of the historic top three moments of American exceptionalism if we if we don't let it slip out of our hands.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

Great to meet you.

Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk.

We'll have you back on soon. Thanks a lot, John.

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