10/28/25: Trump War On Venezuela, US Aircraft Crashes, AI Replaces Thousands Of Jobs

25:28In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years.

26:05I'll teach you sons of a** to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go to the next part here. This is about just, you know, by the way, if anybody's wondering about our capacity for regime change and how excellent our military is now at the moment. We had two horrible crashes in the South China Sea with the president was asked about recently, which highlights our lack of military readiness. Let's take a listen. Have you been raised on the incident on the Nimitz?

26:45both a fighter jet and a helicopter. I've heard of that, yeah. Do you know what happened there? They're going to let me know pretty soon. I think they should be able to find out. It could be bad fuel. I mean, it's possible it's bad fuel. Very unusual that that would happen. You don't think there was a valve way or anything? No, I don't. Security threat. No, they think it might be bad fuel. We're going to find out. So the president said there it could be bad fuel, and there's a lot of questions here after this incident. Let's put this up here on the screen. Welcome to the A Building. I'm Hans Charles.

27:14I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was out of breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

27:57This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I'm Bowen Yang and I'm Matt Rogers during this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games we've been joined by some of our friends Hi Bowen, hi Matt Hey Elmo Hey Matt, hey Bowen Hi Cookie Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

29:07And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years, right, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a** to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

29:46U.S. Navy helicopter and a U.S. fighter jet both crashed in separate incidents in the South China Sea. So both happened on October 26, two days ago. A Seahawk helicopter went down at 2.45 p.m., quote, while conducting routine operations from the USS Nimitz. The helicopter was assigned to a helicopter maritime strike squadron. Search and Rescue said that they rescued all three crew members, so thank God that that happened. But following the incident, an F-A-18 Super Hornet assigned to a different strike fighter squadron also crashed in the waters of the South China Sea. Both of the crew members successfully ejected, and they were safely recovered.

30:25Now, the Nimitz, as one of literally the largest aircraft carriers in the world and is supposed to be one of the pride and joys of the U.S. Navy, and it's supposed to be decommissioned, by the way, I think next year. But the point remains is that this is supposed to be like a forward deployment of a great projecting power of the United States military, and you have two separate crashes. And now they're saying bad fuel. How does that happen? The reason I'm sticking with this is that there have been a number of incidents that I always try to highlight whenever we're trying to pour trillions of dollars more into our defense budget is at the basic level, like the actual functional level, we're falling apart at the seams.

31:06So we have awesome technology, the B-2 bomber, Operation Midnight Hammer. But from what I know, we barely had the fuel infrastructure to refuel the bombers. Like the stuff that actually makes them all tick and all the logistics in the background is highly inefficient, rolled up, destroyed by private equity, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, all of these monopolies. There's been no competition in the sector. It's highly inefficient. It costs unbelievable amounts of money. It's like hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight hour to keep these things up there. By the way, we've also been circling Venezuela for some reason more recently.

31:46So I just wanted to highlight this story just to show you all there's no cakewalk in the United States military. In fact, despite the trillion dollars that we spend now per year, it's probably never been less efficient at the actual functional level of all of this high-priced technology. And what did we all notice with the Houthis is that a very small force with no real organization, no nation state or anything effectively was able to conduct all of these operations without being stopped despite almost a billion dollars or more worth of missiles that were fired at them. So everyone just keep that in mind, the asymmetric threat that we have witnessed now from China, from Russia, from Ukraine and others just shows you how – I mean Ukraine is a perfect example.

32:29You have this massive Russian military supposedly all technologically advanced and the Ukrainians just come in with these drones and are able to screw them up. It's not hard, right? And we've seen that happen against us. China apparently has all kinds of experiments going on on the battlefield. So just a flag for anyone. There's a lot of people out there like we have the world's best military. We certainly have a great military, but it is not all that is sometimes cracked up to be. And these are always what I point to. Yeah. I mean, there's two pieces here. There's like, OK, well, what the hell actually happened?

32:57Number one. And number two, Seth Harp, who wrote Fort Bragg Cartel and who's an incredible journalist, tracks military readiness. This is kind of his beat. He said 17 Army helicopter crashes in 2024. The midair collision over the Potomac this January. Three fighter jets that simply fell into the Red Sea in April and May. That was with regard to the Houthis. Another whole helicopter crew lost last month. And now this, unmitigated chaos and incompetence in U.S. military aviation. Yeah, he's right. That pretty much sums it up. He's absolutely right. And there's been numbers of these safety incidents all the time.

33:32In the Persian Gulf, there was an incident recently, which actually, you know, a couple of guys were killed. Just to highlight that Yemen thing, this is just from a couple months ago, put A-10, please, up on the screen. Second U.S. fighter jet falls overboard from the Truman aircraft carrier. Just the second time in eight days a U.S. fighter jet was lost to the Red Sea. Let's see. Here, I can look it up. 18 Super Hornet. So my ballpark is like$60 ,000,$70 million. What is it? What's it say? Yeah, I'm going to guess like$70 million. Yep. All right. There you go. Between$60 and$70 million. Between$60 and$70 million.

34:05There you go. I swear I didn't have it in front of me. Yeah. And by the way, that's a cheap one. Just so you're all aware. That's a cheap one. 60 to 70 million dollars so that's 140 million that just slid into the sea what do they say there was like rough seas or something i'm like something tells me that in world war ii whenever we were fighting the japanese with limited radar uh and it was one of the great sea forces that the world had ever seen that they also had rough seas and it didn't happen all that often just my you know personal thought so it's one of those where when i look at this i just see it and it's not on the service members it's really not it's on the higher ups And it's on the design.

34:42It's on the structural design of all of these monopolies, of focusing on the wrong thing, of being excited by flashy technology and not on the guns and the bullets and the ability to just function at a very basic level. And to the extent Russia has found success on the battlefield in Ukraine, it's because they operate more like a World War I military than any modern military. They need men, they need ammunition, and they need shit at home that produces ammunition. That's all you need. And you can actually be quite successful. So, yeah, and oil, by the way, to sell to other people. And that's it.

35:17You know, we don't need AI or data centers or any of that stuff. It's nice. It's definitely nice to have. But it's not going to win in the long run. And so you can see all the signs here for catastrophic failure if something ever popped off. Who knows? I mean, we've outsourced all of our capacity. Of course. Military industrial complex. It's a bunch of monopolies. I mean, knowing people who work in the space, you know, on the government side, they talk about how if you want to get like, you know, Lockheed or Boeing on the phone or like you can't. You can't like they think they're so far above the you know, the government, the people they're supposed to be interfacing with.

35:52They're completely unaccountable. And the cost overruns are insane. This is a big part of the reason why the Pentagon fails every audit and looks like not even close. So all of this money that we're spending in defense and, you know, and have pathetic instances like this and, you know, all sorts of problems rives around the entire complex. It's bad, yeah. And that's why, you know, they want to overthrow Venezuela. Like, maybe, maybe. It also could be a total disaster. You know, it really could be. And that's one of the, of course, where - Right back to our whole democracy building. Democracy building.

36:28We're going to collapse the regime. We're not going to put any boots on the ground. It's going to be so easy. Mission accomplished. 100-hour plan. USAID will magically just install this leader, and it'll all work out for the best, right? That's what always happens in this story. We learn nothing. We learn nothing. We deserve what we get, I guess. All right. So you guys will recall back in 2022, Palestinian-American prominent journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by IDF soldiers. Now, in the wake of this, of course, the IDF said, oh, we had nothing to do with it. And there were other, you know, Palestinian fighters in the area.

37:02But don't worry, we're going to conduct our own investigation. And the Palestinians also conducted their own investigation and found, and by the way, New York Times and journalistic outlets also conducted their investigation, came to the conclusion pretty clear that, you know, Shireen, who was wearing a press vest and her photographer is also wearing a press vest, that they were directly targeted by the IDF. There were no, you know, Palestinian resistance fighters in the area whatsoever. The only people that were firing was this, you know, they were able to pinpoint a specific IDF soldier who ultimately killed her.

37:34It was horrific. I mean, just absolutely horrific story. And our government felt some pressure to do an investigation because of her American citizenship and because of how incredibly prominent this was. Emily has talked a lot about how covering the story and realizing how blatantly the Israelis were lying was a big part of her evolution and changing the way that she was thinking about our relationship to Israel. So, you know, it's and I know Emily is not the only one. So that's part of why this was an incredibly important story, not to mention just an American journalist being targeted, murdered by the IDF.

38:07So in any case, Zateo was able to speak to a whistleblower a while back who at the time remained anonymous, who said, I was the guy who led the investigation on the American side to this. We concluded with a high level of certainty that it was IDF, that she was directly targeted, that they did know that she was pressed. And yet my superior said, nope, we're going to take that conclusion out of our report. And we're going to say, couldn't say, don't know. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Mehdi interviewing Colonel Gabovics. He's the whistleblower's initially anonymous, now coming forward publicly to talk about his experience and this cover up of the murder of an American journalist.

38:53What was the assessment you submit to General Michael Fenzel, the U.S. security coordinator, when you come back from Janine? And what does he say in response? So our initial assessment, I would have given the assessment probably about on the 19th or 20th after looking through everything in detail. And I passed this to both Ambassador Nides and Lieutenant General Fenzel that my findings were beyond reasonable doubt that this was an intentional killing of Srinabakhla. This is on the 19th or 20th of May, 2022. Yes. This is within 10 days of her killing. Yes. You, on behalf of the United States government, are saying that beyond reasonable doubt, that's a legal standard in a criminal court.

39:28Yes, it is. She was intentionally killed. Correct. Not accidentally, not crossfire, not collateral damage. Correct. What does he say? So he said at that point in time that he had heard from General Fuchs the day that the incident happened. This is an Israeli general? An Israeli general. He was the central command commander. That General Fuchs came and told him that it was very possibly that an Israeli shoulder had killed him, or had killed her, sorry, but that it was an accident, that it was a matter of tragic circumstances. But that was the story that he stuck to. He said, General Fuchs told me this, so I believe it was not intentional.

40:00So the U.S. general takes the word of a foreign general over his own officer who he sent to investigate. That is correct. How did you feel about that? I felt very disappointed and upset about that. And I continued to try to convince him throughout for the next two years, honestly, as we continue to work on the investigation for it. Wild stuff. So the American investigator comes up, evaluates the evidence, says, beyond a reasonable doubt, they murdered her. It was intentional. They knew she was pressed. And his superior says, but I talked to this Israeli general. He says it's an accident. So that's what we're going with.

40:37That's what we're going with. We're putting that over your investigation, what you have to say. And keep in mind, this is supposed to be an independent investigation separate and apart from the Israelis. Yes. But it is not. At the end of the day, they just, instead of looking at their own evidence that our government compiled, they go with the word of this Israeli general. We can put the New York Times tear sheet up on the screen. They wrote up this story, too. They said U.S. assessment of Israeli shooting of journalists divided American officials. I love how it's a nameless journalist. Yeah, a nameless journalist.

41:08Very lame headline. In any case, if you read this report, they lay out the reasons why Colonel Gabovic thought that this shooting was deliberate. Number one, records of Israeli military radio traffic that morning before the shooting showed that the soldiers were aware of journalists in the area and there had been no gunfire coming from the journalist direction that might make the Israeli soldiers likely to shoot toward them in self-defense. There was an Israeli military vehicle down the road from Ms. Abu Akleh that morning. A sniper watching the road from inside the vehicle would have been able to see the journalist clearly.

41:42when he visited the scene of the shooting hours after it occurred. He said his colleagues wearing blue vests, similar to Ms. Abu Akhle's navy blue protective vest marked press, positioned themselves where she had fallen. They were visible to him from where the shooter's vehicle had been. He said the precision of the shots hitting Ms. Abu Akhle's head and a carob tree near her did not suggest an uncontrolled spray of gunfire. That together with the fact the shooter fired first at Ms. Abu Akhle's producer, then at her, then at a passerby who tried to help, indicated to him the shooting was deliberate.

42:14Quote, for the shooting to be accidental, the most absurd thing in the world would have had to happen, he said. The individual popped out of the truck, just was randomly shooting, and happened to have really well-aimed shots and never looked down the scope, which would not have happened. So that was the actual evidence on the scene. Again, New York Times and other outlets did investigations at the time, came to very similar conclusions, backed up what the Palestinians said about the incident. And yet, Sagar, they, and this was under the Biden administration, they heard from this Israeli general.

42:45They don't want to screw up their relationship with the Israelis. They were afraid of the Israelis pulling their cooperation and support for whatever intelligence-sharing and gathering operations that they were conducting together. So they just went with the lie instead. What I think is so important about the story is that, number one, it happened under the Biden administration, and two, this happened before October 7th, just to show everybody how dominating the relationship and the influence was even in that environment and to the level to which the Biden administration abandoned a citizen of the United States of America on the word of Israel.

43:18And by the way, these are United States colonels and generals, generally not the most liberal folks, right? These are people who are probably just wanting to do their jobs. They're Office of Security Coordination. They're given the task, investigate the shooting. They take this job seriously. They conduct their examination. They say that the shooting AF was intentional based upon their findings. And then they are outwardly shunned inside of the administration, shunted aside, and the report itself comes out and parrots the Israeli line. I mean even by the way, what's so crazy is that the FBI declined to investigate because according to the colonel, it had been requested not to do so by Israel.

43:57So they said, even though current protocol apparently would have been that the FBI had to open its own investigation, that the Israelis had not been requested to do so because they didn't want real law enforcement people to come in and they wanted to leave it as ambiguous as possible. They say it eventually did open up its investigation, but three years later has, quote, not released any findings nor said when it might do so. In the immediate aftermath, they assign this team, which again is not even a real investigative agency, to trajectory. This is not what they do generally. And even these guys overcome all those obstacles.

44:32They take the job seriously. And they're like, yeah, Israel, they did it. And not only did they do it, it was intentional. And then so it's basically like in a movie. When you want something to remain covered up, you don't give it to the proper investigating agency. You give it to somebody who is incompetent. But then the incompetent agency has people – or not incompetent, but it's not their specialty. and then they take the job seriously and they uncover the truth and they're like, oh my God, now what do we do? That's quite literally what happened. Like it's one of the most classic tales of government corruption.

45:03It's shocking. It is shocking. And it's also, I mean, it's also worth saying, you know, now after two plus years of a genocide, how many members of the press have been murdered by Israel? Right. Like, and it's so many and so frequent that you don't, you can't have this level of public pressure and public scrutiny. You know, at this time when they murdered Shireen, they were still, you know, trying to uphold this view in the world. Oh, we would never do that. I mean, you remember in the beginning phases of their assault on Gaza. Oh, we would never attack a hospital. We would never attack a mosque.

45:37We would never attack the press. Now they just do whatever the hell they want because they've gotten away with it. And so, you know, I think what's important about digging into this is, number one, it's an American and it's a member of the press. So understanding what happened in our government's own complicity is extremely vital in the public interest. But it's also such a roadmap of how Israel was able to get to this place where they operate with just total and complete impunity. Because you did have a situation here where there was enough pressure that the government felt like, OK, well, at least we have to do something.

46:07And that was important because if that didn't happen, then we would never have this moment now where we've got a whistleblower coming forward who's exposing these inner workings of how this all goes down. But if you want to know how they got away with mass starvation and turning all of Gaza into complete and total rubble and targeting innocent civilians, killing tens of thousands of children at the very least and largest population of child amputees, if you want to know how we got to the point where they could get away with it, it's step by step by step. Through all of these actions where there's complete impunity, where we just take their word, where we follow their lead, where we do their dirty work, where they cover up for their murder of our own citizen.

46:48That's how you get to a place where they can act with such total and complete impunity and absolutely no accountability. Yeah, absolutely. Let's, by the way, not forget how the Biden administration played this at the time. Here was their initial response. We have been very clear and consistent about first condemning the tragic killing of Shireen, but also when both the U.S.'s report as well as the IDF's report last summer went public, we have spoken consistently about the need and the call for accountability in this case, and we continue to do so. However, as is consistent from the IDF's finding, as well as the finding of the U.S.

47:35security coordinator, is that this was not intentional. It was a tragic, due to very tragic circumstances. So, yes, we continue to seek accountability for Shireen. Let me finish. And that is one of the ways in which we are doing so, in ensuring that when it comes to rules of engagement, we're working on those issues in concert and in partnership with our Israeli counterparts to ensure that civilians and journalists and members of the media are not put in harm's way. So, well, how did that hold up, right? How did that accountability go? By the way, that dude, Vedant Patel, who, for the record, does not look like me.

48:17is currently employed at a public affairs firm here in Washington and is doing quite well, which also does work for the Israelis. Yeah, SKDK, which is probably the best known democratic PR shop and works for the Israelis. So I guess he ended up exactly where he is meant to end up. We have a few other updates I wanted to bring you guys with regard to what's going on in Gaza right now. I can put B4 up on the screen. This is a good piece of reporting. Sky News revealing that Israel's backing four different anti-Hamas militias operating behind the quote-unquote yellow line. That's the ceasefire boundary for IDF troops.

48:54So, you know, they talk about how these groups operate within less than 700 meters from Israeli positions. They coordinate logistics, supply deliveries with the IDF through the Karim Shalom crossing. Sky found similar coordination. Northern Gaza militias receiving aid in vehicles via Israeli and Palestinian Authority channels and possible Gulf backing, including ties to UAE-linked forces in Yemen. So, you know, at least one of these gangs was linked to actual terrorists. We can put the B5 up on the screen. This is kind of crazy. Washington Post publishing this propaganda from one of those gangs about how, you know, the life on the Israeli side of the yellow line is so great and how, you know, speaking for all Palestinians that, They all just want to reject Hamas, but they're kept under Hamas's brutal thumb.

49:45So just publishing this total propaganda from a gang leader, something the Wall Street Journal had also done, by the way. And then you've got the White House amplifying it as well. So major PSYOP going on here. And then one other thing I wanted to note, this is on the positive side, could put B6 up on the screen, Glamour magazine naming Miss Rachel as their Women of the Year. Very much deserved. Shout out to Miss Rachel. Yeah, shout out to Miss Rachel. So, yeah, I mean, I've been, I don't know. The whole thing between Venezuela, between this, I just don't know if the press is cut out for this because at every turn, what we see is they, I think I described it like as a chessboard and that they report each individual move without reporting whether it's going to checkmate or not, like the overall scenario.

50:34Yeah, what's happened before? What is this building toward? Is there a plan? Is it building towards anything? Exactly. So like on Venezuela, right? You can only – a reasonable person watches that commercial and is like, oh my god, like this is happening. And it's happening for this, this, and this reason. Even in the New York Times headline, there were like journalists. It's like what kind? An American one? Palestinian one? Not that you particularly care, right? You know, what does that mean? What does that demonstrate? You know, they just write it up as straight fact. They don't even give any personal context.

51:03And of course, it's not like anybody really cares like in the broader environment. Same with this whole ceasefire created two Gazas and my Gaza is ready for peace. I'm like, who are you? Do you give any context of who that person is? It's like, I mean, people think I'm joking. Like this is literally how Iraq and all of that played out. Chalabi and those people were literally publishing op-eds in the Washington Post. The entire surge strategy was all dictated in the opinion pages of Washington. I'm not joking. Like this is all part of the apparatus where things are meant to be sent to one another.

51:38And maybe it's forgivable the first time it happens, but it's happened over and over. I mean first of all, it's happened throughout modern history. But in particular in this moment, like if you lived through Iraq, like you have to be – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Afghanistan. If you lived through those, how can you possibly just disregard the blinders? It's like I just don't understand how it all works. What do you think was with Israel? What do you think was the turning point that led people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker, you know, Charlie Kirk was starting to ask questions. Because previously they were, you know, pro-Israel.

52:16Most of these people, certainly Marjorie Taylor Greene was. Tucker just sort of like, you know, standard issue conservative line. What do you think caused the flip? Two things. Number one, just like sheer barbarity. too, is the level of control because I think there's something deeply American about we control our own destiny. And so to see politicians so overtly subsume themselves to a foreign political cause is just disgusting to me personally and I think as to a lot of them. That latter part is a huge, huge reason why a lot of people are willing to speak out of against it. But you can't really underestimate the sheer barbarity of it as well.

52:53I'm not going to say that the U.S. has not been complicit in a lot of barbaric acts throughout the world. But it's really one thing to like fund it, to go to extraordinary lengths here at home, to quash dissent over. It's just too much, right? It's one of those where the level of propaganda for a war, which at the end of the day did not really matter to America. And if anything, it would have been better for us if it had ended a long, long time ago. That was just, it was a jump point for a lot lot of people. And then the traditional talking points just all become BS, right? Like beacon of Western civilization.

53:25You're like, really? Like, you know, you're always talking about how great you are compared to your Middle Eastern neighbors. I'm like, you look the same to me. Sorry. You know, if you want to look at Barbera, if anything, you know, at this point, you know what I mean? Right. That's what I'm saying. It's like, oh, the Saudis are such backward folks. They cut people's heads off. I'm like, wow, that would be crazy, wouldn't it? You know, it's, or they're like, oh, the Middle Eastern cultures, you know, fetishize rape. I'm like, oh yeah, that's something you definitely never would do in a prison and then your own civilization would bust you out of the jail fort, right?

53:54So it's like when those things start to fall apart, it's too much for us. Yeah. That's just me. By the way, one of the rabbis who is prominent in spreading the mass rape hoax arrested for pedophilia in Texas. Allegedly. But actually arrested. Yeah. You know, I think as far as I can tell, wasn't able to flee the country. Well, for now. As far as we can tell. If it gets out on bail, we'll see. We'll keep an eye on that. Yeah, everybody monitor those flights to Tel Aviv Tell me if you see him. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

54:27had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should.

55:10And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, We are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

55:54This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

56:32Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches. Come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

56:56Turning now to the economy, the AI revolution in the job force continues. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. This is a tweet from Senator Bernie Sanders. Quote, stop hiring humans. A new billboard says, the era of AI employees is here. Billboards across the country promoting the replacement of millions of jobs with AI and robotics. Great idea. One simple question. How will those displaced workers survive when there are no jobs or income for them? This is increasingly the question that many companies and young people are going to have to answer. Let's put this up here on the screen.

57:29It backs up much of what I have been saying now is that, quote, more big companies bet they can still grow without hiring. Quote, it is the corporate gamble of the moment. Can you run a company, increase sales, and juice profits without adding people? American employers are increasingly making the calculation that can keep the size teams flat or shrink them through layoffs without harming their business. Part of that thinking is that AI will be used to pick up the slack and automate more processes. Companies are hesitant to make any moves in an economy that is still uncertain. J.P. Morgan's chief financial officer told investors recently The bank has now, quote, a very strong bias against having the reflective response to hire more people for any given need.

58:11Multiple other companies last week had sales rose even without adding employees. Financial services companies like Goldman Sachs said that the firm will constrain headcount growth through the end of the year and reduce roles that will be more efficient with AI. Walmart, the nation's private employer, said it would keep headcount roughly flat over the next three years even as sales grow. So multiple other companies that they list now say that they will be reducing their headcount because of AI and the ROI of AI is increasing, apparently on their conference call mentions of chief financial service officers.

58:43By the way, just this morning, huge news out of a couple of major companies. I believe we have one of them on Amazon. Do we have that? No, we don't. Okay, so this morning Amazon is announcing 30 ,000 corporate employees will be cut from the company. 14 ,000 immediately. 10 % of the entire white-collar workforce will be axed from the company. By the way, another huge piece of news, arguably, in my opinion, more important, UPS will now cut 48 ,000 jobs in management and operations. That is some disclosed. It would cut 20 ,000 positions previously. Shares, by the way, are up 12 % in pre-market trading.

59:22So the fact that UPS is going to fire 48 ,000 management and operations people, shows that, and by the way, that the stock goes up, that actually might be the most AI firing of all time. Because now is the time when you don't fire people, because we're going into Christmas season, November and December. That's usually when they surge temporary hiring. They may actually still do that just for the average packers, shippers, delivery people, et cetera. But the management and operations, They're probably just trying to automate all of those procedures. I mean, it's grim out here. You're cutting 10 % of people at Amazon.

59:58Again, November, December, the busiest months at the whole company, some 14 % or 10 % of your entire workforce before Christmas. Now you have UPS here being 48 ,000 people. You have the open acknowledgement. I've talked here about how AI is just like more Excel corporate sludge 90 % of the time. is you no longer have to have a guy who takes minutes for a meeting. It summarizes your stuff. It can help you put PowerPoints together. It can check your commas, your periods, and your footnotes and automate them. That's usually the grunt work that most 22-year-olds get hired in the white-collar workforce.

1:00:35And now all of those are slowly starting to erode. So if you're a new hire out there and you took some$50 ,000,$60 ,000 in debt, you're screwed. You're screwed. It's really, it's dark. It is. It's dark. It is. And I mean, and it's here, right? This is not coming. It's here. You're going to see it through two different modes. One is these, you know, big layoffs like we're seeing with Amazon and UPS. Both of them are, you know, important industry leaders, both within their space and also nationally. Other countries are going, I mean, other companies are going to see that and follow suit. Amazon also, we covered last week, New York Times got their hands on internal documents showing that they're planning to get rid of 600 ,000 blue-collar workers over the coming years.

1:01:19With those, because Amazon has such extraordinary churn, they're just planning as people leave, because they can no longer take the physical stress and burden of working in an Amazon warehouse or as an Amazon delivery driver, as those people leave, they're just not going to be replaced. And I think we're going to see a lot of that, too. And that's what these companies who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, That's what they're indicating is, oh, you know, Susie left. Normally we'd hire to replace Susie. Now we're just not going to. We're just going to allow that sort of churn to lower our overall headcount and sub in AI to make our existing workforce, you know, pick up all the slack for the workers that no longer are here.

1:01:58And yes, of course, all the incentives, all of the Wall Street incentives are to move in that direction. So, I mean, I really appreciate Bernie. God bless him. Like, he must have the most incredible genetics because men has not slowed down, still extremely sharp, still absolutely with it in terms of the threats that is facing the American workforce, really the global workforce at this point. And here's the other thing. Let's put C4 up on the screen and then we can get Sagar's pullout from this. But Wall Street Journal also had a piece about the economy that's great for parents, lousy for their grown-up kids.

1:02:31So, you know, if you're someone who was able to get your college education was relatively inexpensive and you, you know, at that point in time, you could just get a job out of college, stable career, climb your way up the ladder. Housing was a lot less expensive. Health care was a lot less expensive. Now you have assets. You know, now you're in the stock market. You're 401k. All those sorts of things are doing good. And meanwhile, your kids who did, you know, trying to follow the same track, go to college, take on the debt, come out of college, and there's nothing for them. The unemployment rate for new college grads is going up and up and up.

1:03:10Now, partly it's because people are worried about a recession and all the tariff insanity and everything that's going on. And partly it is because of AI. And put C3 up on the screen. This was the piece that Sagar highlighted in particular. This chart is this is really, really dire stuff, you know, in terms of the fulfillment of the population, in terms of the stability of the society as well. You only have 11 percent of 18 to 29 year olds who have confidence that they will be able to buy a home. But all of these numbers are actually really bad. So you only have just over 25 % who say they can keep up with expenses.

1:03:50By the way, numbers are not all that much better. For those who are 30 and older, there you're under 35%. Maybe that's like 33 % who are confident they can just keep up with their expenses. For 18 to 29, you have under 20 % who think they can buy a car. under also under 20 percent, maybe that's around 16 percent who say they could pay an unexpected medical expense. You have under 25 percent who are confident they could find a good job. 15 percent say that they're confident they could have enough savings for retirement. And I've been reading this book by Peter Turchin about when societies like collapse.

1:04:28And his analysis is that the two major factors that lead to sort of like societal breakdown and revolution are decline in material living standards. And in the U.S. context, he looks at the decline in life expectancy, which is undeniable. And there's this mass disparity, too, between the wealthy and the poor, et cetera, but that we're going backwards in terms of life expectancy. And the other thing is what he calls overproduction of elites. So if you have a large cohort that are going to college, doing the thing, getting their law degrees or getting their MBAs, thinking that they're going to be able to ascend, not into like the top echelon, but into some level of like, I'm going to have a house and have a basic stable life.

1:05:09And the society is failing to deliver that. Those are actually, we think about like the, you know, the working class revolution. Those are the people who traditionally become the radicals and the revolutionaries actually. I'm really glad you said that. Would be elites. Oh man, I wish we had more time. I could go on forever. But you are absolutely correct. Something I've always said in some of my arguments with a lot of Marxists and socialists, one of the things that annoys me is they're always like the working class will rise up. I'm like, what do you tell me about the Russian revolution? And they're like, oh, well, it was a people's revolution.

1:05:39I'm like, no, it actually was a revolution of the elites. If you read any true biography or history of the Russian revolution of Bolshevism and specifically of Marxist Leninism, you will discover that the peasant population of Russia was the most supportive of the czar. The reason that the czar fell was because he lost the entire support of the political echelon from everyone from the royals to the middle tier to the, you know, the bourgeoisie, those were the people that rose up against the czar and toppled them. The way that the Bolsheviks were able to take power is basically have a bunch of highly educated, you know, former members of the echelon or the gentry class who come in.

1:06:15And that's part of the reason that they target the so-called kulaks at the very beginning in order to subjugate the peasant population. But the point remains, not just in the Russian context, even in the French Revolution, if you look at any true violent overthrow, it's these people specifically. This is why I look at Zoron as a consequence of all of this. Republicans are always dunking on. They're like, oh, you have white middle class people. I go, yeah, but you got to understand, if you're 25 years old or 27 and you move to New York, the prototypical profile is somebody who has like$50 ,000 to$70 ,000 or whatever, maybe some more in student debt, was promised a job in X, Y, and Z, in white collar workforce and when the cost of living is where it is to have a basic life from health insurance to cost of living to rent, et cetera, it is so untenable that it leads you to believe that the absolute basics of your needs will ever be met.

1:07:08So what do you do? You know, you're going to cause, you're going to back some radical shit. I think that this is a lot of the case for a lot of Trump people as well. So the point remains that if you do not serve and solve a point For where everyone still believes in upward mobility and specifically for these older people. If you have no faith that your children will have a better life than you, which by the way, you know, in that article, that's what it's all about. You shouldn't have any faith that they're going to have a better life than you. And I do feel for a lot of them because there's a term called Henry where it's like high income, not rich yet, which is basically what a lot of these people are.

1:07:46They did everything the right way. You know, they have a good job or whatever. You know, they have a house. et cetera. And their belief was is that their children will do better. So they don't have enough money to like bail their kids out entirely. Right. They can help them. They can help them, but there's a big difference between being able to buy your kid a house. And then let's say like put your kid through college, right? That's like a literally a multimillion dollar difference in assets. So the point is, is that they don't have enough money to do too much about it, but they have just enough to float them for a couple of years.

1:08:15That level of precarity is also going to lead you down a very radical, radical path. So yes, all of the ingredients are here if we want them. And I mean, look, I always say, I think something's going to break, but at the same time, I just, I don't know, you know, the S and P 500 is all time high today. So what do I know? Yeah. Well, and I don't even think people are looking for their kids to do better than them at this point. It's just like, can they achieve like this, the same level of just basics to build, get a house, raise a family, have health insurance. And that's increasingly what is feeling impossible in, you know, those numbers of how young people feel about their own economic situation.

1:08:51And that's the other thing. Can you really tell them they're wrong? No, of course not. They're absolutely. Of course not. I mean, the competition, you know, just to get into college and then you come out of college and AI is taking all the jobs. And you, I think you already, even before AI had this issue and declining material circumstances and parents feeling like their kids aren't going to be able to achieve what they were and all this stress. I mean, that's what leads to like the varsity blues situation where people are so desperate. Oh, my God, I've got to do whatever I can make sure my kid gets some sort of an elite slot.

1:09:22And, you know, so you already had that. And now you have AI coming in and decimating the type of jobs that typically would go to new college grads or new law school grads even. And, yeah, it's it's a big problem. Last thing, you know, everyone is says, oh, well, it's better because it was inefficient. There's a lot of social benefits. When I was a very, very young journalist, was I truly adding so much to the conversation? No, even though I definitely thought that I was. But what was I learning? I was learning the craft. I was around other people who taught me the basic building blocks that allow you to progress into a career.

1:09:58So let me defend grunt work. Somebody – first of all, grunt work is good for you because it teaches you discipline, attention to detail, and gives you the basics so that you can accomplish your tasks and sit around and kind of absorb. information and institutional knowledge from other people around you to build a network, which allows you to rise up either through the company or through your industry or figure out that that's not what you want to do. So you can go and do something else. If you don't even get that opportunity, then you get nothing. And that's what's so deeply frustrating, I think, for a lot of people.

1:10:29I really, if you're 22 years old and you're just graduating college, I truly, truly feel for you because, you know, you were just old, you're just old enough where So the old system existed, so you were able to take out the debt. You probably still believed in the dream at that time, and now you're just smashing into reality. And it's going to be a tough climb out.

1:11:031969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lamumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.

1:11:45Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway. We are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking to your kids about the dangers of vaping can be hard. Getting them to listen to hot gossip is easy. So here's some drama you could share with your kid. Dude, did you hear about Cassie and Jake? No, but did you hear that vaping can cause irreversible lung damage and nicotine affects brain development? Nuh-uh.

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