2/16/26: AOC Flops In Munich, Jeffries Brain Melts On AIPAC, AI Used For War, Obama Says Aliens Exist

24:05It was clippable. I think it resonated with the Democratic base. And you're going to have a lot of people like he probably wants to run. Newsom's obviously going to run. And there's a piece out today about how Pelosi's like mission in life now is to get Gavin Newsom elected president. But in any case, you're going to have a lot of people who have at least enough sense to see where the Democratic base is. And even if they're just normal status quo politicians, try to position themselves in that vein. And that's what Gavin is doing with his resistance to Trump politics, even as he's fighting against this wealth tax in California.

24:40So, you know, exactly what side he's going to be on at the end of the day. Chris Murphy, I'm sort of intrigued by. I want to know if he really means the things that he says. And it's very hard to say at this point because he's always been just, you know, also a standard issue Democratic politician on domestic policy and on foreign policy. So you're going to have a lot of people who are trying to pull off the Jasmine Crockett of, like, I'm going to sound like I'm a fighter. But at the end of the day, I'm just basically, you know, in line with Nancy Pelosi. I interviewed Murphy at this conference.

25:05Oh, yeah. What do you think? This is against our own interest because we've been trying to book him. He still has been unresponsive, so I'll be honest. I found out he's a very calculating guy. So he did this thing where I asked him about what does a future coalition, you're gonna have to make up, you're gonna have to compromise on some of your values. If you wanna win, that's how the Republicans won. That's how you, if you wanna win, if you wanna win the popular vote. So what do you do? And he was like, well, I've learned that we may have to compromise, but he didn't say anything except on guns.

25:35He's like, well, guns was a very important, I'm like, dude, guns is not a major cleavage issue today. right that seemed like a very selected one where oh maybe i'd be work with willing to work with somebody who disagree with me on guns i mean i didn't have enough time to follow up on abortion or any of these other like real litmus tests you know questions but that kind of showed me that like he's trying to read the room he's trying to pick the most you know non uh the most non controversial issue where he can claim like he's compromising whenever i would have asked him directly on tariffs he was just like tariffs are a tool but he had no coherent like vision even on antitrust.

26:09Everything was kind of like spit out from a white paper. Now, don't get me wrong. He's a smart guy, all right? Like, he's actually smart, well-read, much more. Read The Room much better than even Gavin in a lot of ways. He read The Room. He reads the news. He listens to the podcasts and all that. But everything just seems a little bit like three to six months out of date. Maybe that's, you know, a very unkind way of saying it. But then, like I said, I mean, not to be a love letter to Ro Khanna, but like this guy is on our show like months before any of this becomes a thing. And then that's political entrepreneurship.

26:37That's vision. right that vision is is trump saying build the wall like vision is is kind of picking up on epstein way before it becomes a thing and that's because he's on these shows right exactly yeah like that's entrepreneurship is picking something long before it becomes mainstream and then kind of picking it up and turning it in to your own thing and those are all these people i'm going to respect at a political level those are the founders as well like the true uh the the founders of new movements. Like we think about Reagan. Reagan was way out of his time whenever it came to not only entertainment aspect of politics, but also like, you know, going all in on his economic vision.

27:14I disagree with it, but he went all in in 76, long before he wins 1980. Let's think about, you know, other - I mean, Bernie, you could say. Bernie was a political entrepreneur. I mean, God, this guy was on Lou Dobbs' show railing against oligarchs and Fox Business in, you know, 2008, 2009. Like Obama, 2002. It took balls to give the speech. against the Iraq war. There was nothing in it for him. That's the reason he ends up president. So you got to put yourself out there and actually do something risky. I haven't seen any of these guys do that. You have to move not to where things are today, but where you anticipate they're going.

27:46And in any case, you know, interesting display of the 2028 contenders. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. Writings 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.

28:271968, 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. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

28:55What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul a place for real conversation each episode I sit down with people from all walks of life celebrities thinkers and everyday folks and we go deeper than the polished story we talk about what drives us what shapes us and what gives us hope we get honest about the big stuff identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers.

29:35Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

29:52This 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, to interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

30:31Isn'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 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.

30:54I do want to talk a little bit about where the Democratic leadership is today, because talk about not reading the room. I am astonished that Hakeem Jeffries did this interview. He went on with Joy Reid and Wajahad Ali. And Waj asked him some difficult questions, in particular about ICE and about AIPAC. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this exchange on ICE in particular. Just today, it came out that ICE is using$38 billion to convert warehouses into camps. I'm going to call them concentration camps. Your colleague, Representative Raskin, went to one just yesterday in Maryland and said there were 60 people, 60 people cramped like sardines in one room who only had access to one toilet.

31:3965 % of people taken by ICE had no convictions. That's from the Cato Institute, a right-wing institute. ICE has killed eight people this year alone that we know of. Two of them, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Priddy. The latest polls came out this week, AP polls. Over 60 % of Americans now disapprove of ICE. That means in three weeks, it's gone from 30 % to 60%. Now, if I may, I'm going to be a bit blunt here. Leaders lead. And what we've seen is people are impressionable. If you lead on something, people will follow. It seems the wind is behind your back for the first time ever. ICE has a history, CPP has a history of terrorizing Black and Brown communities.

32:17People are asking themselves, why are we, our taxpayer dollars, paying for masked, lawless men to terrorize our communities, kidnap people, take children, and kill Americans? So I ask you, and I'm going to do a follow-up to Joy, because I want an answer to this. You said you want to rein in ICE. I'm saying, I'm talking about the long term now, why not lead and say abolish ICE? Because what you're telling us is you want our taxpayer dollars to pay for a lawless mass armed agency to continue terrorizing our cities. And I'm trying to figure out how you, as a leader, can be telling Americans that their taxpayer dollars should be going twice.

32:53I don't understand anything that you just said. I spoke English. I don't understand anything that you've just said to me when I've made clear that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not brutalize or kill them. That's the whole reason we're in this fight right now. That's the whole reason the DHS is getting ready to shut down. That's the whole reason why - Abolish ICE. You agree with me, Joy? Abolish ICE. That is, listen, I'm going to use the language that I want to use. You can use the language that you want to use. I don't understand anything you're saying.

33:29And I mean, what Waj is saying there, that is the overwhelming perspective of the Democratic base by the polls, like overwhelming perspective. And you know what? I would respect it more, frankly, Sagar, if Hakeem Jeffries just came out and said, look, no, I think we need ICE. Here's why. We need immigration enforcement. I believe it should be done differently. That's why we're doing X and Y and Z. But no, I don't think we should. But the fact he tries to not say anything or pretend like he doesn't understand the question is just so utterly embarrassing and disgraceful and is emblematic of why him and Chuck Schumer have absolutely lost the trust of the Democratic base and why they don't have influence to push the party any longer in the direction where they want to take it.

34:09Yeah, I was very confused by that answer. I don't understand what you just said. I mean, I think he may have been prickly and reacting to the extremely long-winded political speech slash question that he was being given. But don't be a freaking baby. This is the other thing. This is the thing about politicians. Deal with it. Don't be a baby. And they're such, like, and that's the thing with the Democrats, to your point, like, they're such baby. They're so afraid to go on somewhere where it's going to be confrontational and someone's going to be mad at them and someone's going to ask them a hard question like shout out to a list of slotkin for wanting to come on here you know yeah and again shout out to roe who goes on anywhere with anyone anytime and gets all kinds of shit in the hard questions all the time like don't be such a baby it's okay for people to disagree with you and argue with you like have a world view and be willing to be willing to stand stand what he should have said is i'm not going to fall for republican trap and give them the same weapon that they got on defund the police i am horrified by like why am I able to give a better answer?

35:01I'm horrified by ICE taxics. I won't fund it. That's why I'm standing up to President Trump right now and you're talking out here on a podcast. Boom, done, okay? End of story. We're going to make sure that none of this ever happens again and that when we win the Congress, every one of them will be dragged here before us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't even believe any of that. I'm able to give a coherent answer. I don't know. But he knows. He knows. I mean, first of all, just on the political talent level, there's just nothing there. And I hate the way he talks and does all this arm thing.

35:29It's so irritating. Somebody clearly told him, like, oh, this is the way to communicate your points more effectively. But they know that they are not in sync with where the Democratic base is. So they want to play hide the ball about what they actually think. And it comes across here, too, when Waj asked him about, hey, so how about you don't take AIPAC money anymore? How about you commit to that? Let's take a listen to that. APEC now has spent$2 million attacking a moderate-leaning Democrat, Tom Malinowski, a Democrat, in the special House election in New Jersey 11th District. And we got a progressive Latina, Representative Mejia, who won, who, by the way, says abolish ICE.

36:07My question for you, if you're looking for accountability, if you're looking for change, shouldn't Democrats stop taking money from APEC that has spent so much money against Democrats? Well, listen, everyone's going to have to make their individual decision. My view as it relates to Democratic incumbents, first of all, is that I will continue to stand by every single one of them, whether that's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the one hand or the most conservative moderate Democrat on the other who's sitting in the Trump district and at all points in between. Right. That's that's what I'm going to do as House Democratic leader.

36:43Now, in terms of how people individually fundraise, I'm proud of the fact that my average contribution amongst the millions of dollars that I've been working hard to raise for my own re-election that I used to help elect Democrats in other parts of the country is$27 per contributor. contributor. That's my average contribution. That's probably the lowest in the Congress. And so now everyone is going to raise money from their own constituents in different ways, and their own constituents are going to have a variety of different perspectives on a variety of different issues. But make no mistake, there's a big difference between Democrats and Republicans, and we're seeing that right now.

37:27Will you stop taking money from APEC? I'm going to continue to raise money in the same way that I've been raising it, where the average contribution from millions of people across the country is$27 per contributor. So the answer there, of course, is yes, I'm going to continue to pay money for Maybach. And look, this is the guy who wouldn't endorse Zoran Mamdani. I know he's a New Yorker and Zoran was a Democratic nominee up until the very last minute. And, you know, it had to be drag kicking and screaming to it. and there is such a gulf between where he and Schumer are and where the party is at this point.

38:04And he knows it, but he does not have anything approaching the political skill to be able to pull off massaging that vast gulf. The only but to that is he still seems to hold power. So for example, remember that Zoran back off backing a primary challenger to him, which I gotta be honest, I still don't get it. It's one of those, it was one of the most mystifying decisions I have seen yet from an insurgent politician who had his own base of support. By the way, Zoran can never be president, right? This is it for you, bro. If you don't do a good job, you're dead. You will never be anybody again, right?

38:39The highest office in the land that you can ascend to is the New York governor. Like, if now is the time, right? To actually do something, to change things. And instead, he's like, well, I want to play the game. I don't get it. I think that was the calculus, though, was like, I have to pick my battles. And I also disagreed with the decision. But I think that was the view was like, I have to pick my battles up against all of these other forces. I can't be at war with the leader of the Democrats in the House as well. Very powerful, influential, I'm sure, in New York City in ways that we probably don't have total exposure to.

39:11So I think that was the decision there. But you're absolutely right. The other question is, you're going to have a whole wave of new Democrats coming into House. Very likely you're going to have, I think, Democratic incumbents who lose in against insurgent primary challengers. You have a whole series of primary challenges going on right now in open seats or in Trump seats where you've got a lot of wind in the sails of the Zoran or AOC or Bernie-style candidates. And so what are they going to do when they decide who they're picking for leader, especially if it's a narrow margin and he can't afford to lose that many of them?

39:43That's great. Yeah, look, lay down your marker because all evidence seems to suggest that they're not going to do anything and they'll probably vote for it. But we'll see. We'll see. Maybe some of them will actually stick to their word. OK, let's get to Anthropic. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated, and Black America is 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.

40:16It 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. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:21shapes us and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Fake when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:54This 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, writer, 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.

42:33Isn'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. So some major developments in the AI world, in particular a fight between Anthropic and the Pentagon. But first wanted to bring you a little bit of this interview between the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amidai, and Ross Douthat of The New York Times, where he is talking about whether or not he thinks the AI that Anthropic has created or grown or developed, however you want to say it, whether or not it is conscious.

43:19Let's take a listen to that. Suppose you have a model that assigns itself a 72 % chance of being conscious. Would you believe it? Yeah, this is one of these really hard to answer questions. Yes, but it's very important. As much as every question you've asked me before this, as devilish a sociotechnical problem as it had been, you know, at least, you know, we at least understand the factual basis of how to answer these questions. This is something rather different. We've taken a generally precautionary approach here. We don't know if the models are conscious. We're not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be conscious.

44:00but, you know, we're open to the idea that it could be. And so we've taken certain measures to, you know, to make sure that if we hypothesize that the models did have some morally relevant experience, I don't know if I want to use the word conscious, that they do, you know, that they have a good experience. So the first thing we did, I think this was, you know, six months ago or so, is we gave the models basically an I quit this job button, where they can just press the I quit this job button and then they have to stop doing whatever the task is. They very infrequently press that button. I think it's usually around, you know, sorting through child sexualization material or like, you know, discussing something with, you know, a lot of gore, blood and guts or something.

44:47And, you know, similar to humans, the models will just say, no, I don't want to do this. How do you sustain mastery in an environment where most humans experience AI as if it is a peer and a potentially superior peer? So the thing I was going to say is that actually I wonder if there's a kind of an elegant way to satisfy all three, including the last two. Again, this is me dreaming in machines of loving grace mode, right? This is this mode I go into where I'm like, man, I see all these problems. I, you know, if we could solve it, is there an elegant way? This is not me saying there are no problems here.

45:29You know, that's not how I think. But, you know, if we think about making the constitution of the AI so that the AI has a sophisticated understanding of its relationship to human beings, and it induces psychologically healthy behavior in the humans, a psychologically healthy relationship between the AI and the humans. And I think something that could grow out of that psychologically healthy, not psychologically unhealthy relationship is some understanding of the relationship between human and machine. And perhaps that relationship could be the idea that, you know, these models, when you interact with them, when you talk to them, they're really helpful.

46:13They want the best for you. They want you to listen to them, but they don't want to take away your freedom and your agency and take over your life. So that was him reflecting on, he's written these two major essays. One of them was like the sort of utopian vision of what AI could be. And that's what they're referring to there, the machines of love and grace. And then he's more recently penned an essay that is spelling out some of the deep concerns and potential problems with the direction of AI. So in any case, he's sort of dreaming there of, oh, what if the AI is like actually great for humanity?

46:47Well, it doesn't seem to be the products that we have currently. I don't know. The entire thing is creepy. And what it gets to is the scale and the lack of control democratically that we all have. And I think that's what really scares me the most. We were kind of talking about this with our own AI use. I'm not against technology. I think technology is good. I do think that a lot of the way that they are currently selling it, their valuations, the data centers, the social costs, the social disruption, the fact that we have no regulation. And in fact, we're kind of just like let it ride. We're betting our whole U.S.

47:17economy on it. That's the stuff I really object to. It's not the technology in and of itself, right? And I do think, though, fundamentally, that if you're going to have such transformative change, the worst way to go about it is the way that we usually do, which is you allow it to happen. You let it be prioritized. And then from there, you get mass social dysfunction. and we just kind of have to like have an emergency figure it out, period. And when something like this is so easily foreseen, we should be able to put in safeguards or have questions or try to guide it in exactly the way that we want it to, which is the Chinese model.

47:47That's what the Chinese, the Chinese very early on from the internet, they're like, we're not having open internet, period, because we think that it will lead to this, this, and this. They were correct. Now, look, it's anti-democratic, but they were like, we will use it as a social force to shape our population. TikTok, you can't just like scroll TikTok over there. They have time controls, video games. Like they have government incentive specifically to type behavior. Now I think we can do some of that while also balancing what makes us great, freedom, First Amendment and all of that. There's an easy way through regulation, through shaping, through incentive.

48:17And instead we're currently shaping things in the worst possible direction. I think your point is the most important one, which is that like however you feel about Dario or Sam Altman or Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, this cast of characters, in a sense, it doesn't really matter what Dario Amadei has to say. The problem is that we, the problem is that one person has so much control that we have to hope that this is someone who is going to have not only the good intentions, but the foresight to understand how to deploy these things. The problem at its core is that we should not have just an an Ayn Randian libertarian approach to this incredibly powerful and transformative technology.

49:02And I know there are a lot of people on the left that are in the camp of basically like, this is all just sort of hype and a hoax. And even the doomerism is a sort of roundabout hype mechanism of, oh my God, it's so powerful. That's why we're so nervous. And it gets a lot of headlines. And look, there's no doubt that there is something to that. But I think we do have to grapple with the reality that even in its current form, it will be relatively transformative in terms of the labor force. Now, in its current form, is it going to replace all the white-collar jobs, blah, blah, blah? No, it's not going to do that.

49:37Is it going to create a lot of upheaval? Yes, I think we already are at that stage where a lot of entry-level positions are going to be transformed. The way work is done is going to be transformed. There's certainly going to be a significant amount of tumult in the way that obviously there was during the Industrial Revolution and even with the advent of the internet. There was a significant amount of tumult in the labor market and, you know, having to change skills and all of that. And, you know, ultimately a decision was also made during that time to decimate our blue-collar workforce. That is the direction they're certainly trying to go in with the white-collar workforce.

50:10But yeah, at its core, the problem is applying a sort of pure free market capitalist approach approach to this incredibly powerful technology, which is going to lead to mass consolidation of wealth and place all of our fates in the hands of these individuals. On the consciousness question, you know, I don't, there's, there is no, there are a lot of theories about what consciousness even is, right? So then to be able to even say, you know, consciousness is a, is a, like a light switch that turns on and off. I don't think that's the way most people think about it. So in some ways, I also think that this conversation about whether or not the models are conscious is a little bit of a distraction from the core questions of how they're going to be deployed, who's going to have ownership, who's going to have input on the decision making here.

50:59Let's go ahead and get to this core story, though, that I wanted to cover, which is let's put E2 up on the screen, speaking of the way that this technology will be deployed. So we now have reporting for the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon used Anthropics Claude in the Maduro, Venezuela raid. Use of the model through a contract with Palantir highlights the growing role of AI in the Pentagon. Now, again, it's important to remember Anthropics position themselves as like the safe and the responsible AI choice. And then you find out, oh, and they have a contract with Palantir. and apparently someone within Anthropic inquired about whether or not, I think inquired with Palantir about whether or not Claude was used in the Venezuela raid.

51:44This upset the Pentagon very much and has led to now this conflict between Anthropic and the Department of War. Specifically, the Wall Street Journal here says Anthropic's AI tool, Claude, was using the U.S. military's operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, highlighting how AI models are gaining traction in the Pentagon. The mission to capture Madora and his wife included bombing several sites in Caracas last month. Anthropics usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons, or conduct surveillance. And they go on to say that Claude was not just used in the planning phase, that it was actually used directly in the operation.

52:22So let's put the next piece up on the screen. So somebody at Anthropic inquires, hey, you know, did Claude get used in this operation? This has now led to this clash with the Pentagon. And they say here, this is from Reuters, exclusive Pentagon clashes with Anthropic over military AI use, according to sources. After extensive talks under a contract worth up to$200 million, the U.S. Department of Defense and Anthropic are at a standstill, according to six people familiar. The company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump administration.

52:54A spokesperson for the Defense Department, which the Trump administration renamed the Department of War, did not immediately respond. Anthropic said its AI is extensively used for national security missions by U.S. government, and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue this work. So they go on to say this comes at a delicate time for the company, blah, blah, blah. But in any case, you've got this Anthropic wants to set out, okay, here's what we are going to allow Claude to be used for. And the Department of War is like, we have access to this product.

53:25We're going to use it however we want to use it. And if you have a problem with that, then we're going to go to XAI or we're going to go to OpenAI or we're going to go to one of your competitors. And you can see yourself to the door. Not only are you not getting this$200 billion contract, but we're going to, they're contemplating banning all of their contractors from using Claude in their systems as well. It's scary. I mean, at the same time, I mean, this is a long history, right, of transformative U.S. technology companies that get entwired with the Pentagon. Many of them come directly out of that.

53:56I mean, the internet comes out of DARPA, right? Yeah, I mean, it does. Some theories about AI and all of that are that this is all like kind of cutouts of all of that, which very well may be possible. But I do think it highlights like the fundamental problem around this technology. And of course, like bigger societal questions like monopolies on use of force. The bigger issue is that as these products get refined for military use throughout all of our history with the internet, it eventually gets democratized to everybody else. And that's when it becomes very dangerous. So when you're talking about physical technology like weapons, ammunitions, things that can be easily export controlled, that's one thing.

54:35But here we're talking about code. We're talking about models, models that can be exported, used in various different places. So if you have this get developed up like a suite of technology, let's say for Claude, for Palantir, what's going to stop Israel or, you know, Azerbaijan or any Armenia, like North Korea, any of these, China, like all of these other countries from utilizing the same tech. And that's when we get into very sticky situations. Like here, we have a democratic input. We can vote. We can have some sort of like Congress oversight. But what happens, like what we do with our current fighter jets, are we going to start licensing this to the UAE for their use in Darfur or in Sudan, right?

55:15Like you can easily foresee this type of thing exploding across the world. And we already have seen the use case in Gaza. You know, this was AI, the AI fueled target generation, you know, the theory and some of the reporting backs up Palantir deeply involved here, but not only Palantir. And we see the way that AI coupled with, you know, human beings and the, you know, extensive, highly sophisticated weapons that we've developed, how those two things put together can lead to just mass carnage and horror. So it's, you know, anyone should be deeply concerned about this. One more thing, just to the point of where the AI models are today, you can put E5 up on the screen here.

55:57You know, one of the lines that people look for AI to potentially cross as it moves towards an artificial general intelligence, which some say that's already achieved, or super intelligence is, OK, is it not just regurgitating what humans have inputted into it? Is it actually able to innovate and push scientific frontiers forward? And so this was a significant result. You had OpenAI's GPT 5.2 was able to derive a new result in theoretical physics, releasing the result in a preprint with human researchers from a variety of universities. Shows that a gluon interaction many physicists expected would not occur can arise under specific conditions.

56:43I don't know what that means, really. But in any case, this is a genuinely new result in theoretical physics that is being published alongside, essentially GPT gets a byline alongside these human researchers. And so it's one indication that we're now passing through the place of, OK, it's just able to regurgitate previous human thought into now it's pushing fields forward. I know in mathematics as well, there's been some of these models have been able to solve complex mathematics computations that, you know, the best humans in the world struggled or were unable to solve. So we are in that place now.

57:21Keep paying attention. You know, I balance between hype, Doomer, and that it's all nothing. So I think that's probably the right place to be because I'm not even sure the people who are most intimately familiar with these things really know. Oh, I know. I talked to them. Yeah, they don't know. You know, they're like half of it. They're like, dude, they're lying for their own valuations. Oh, dude, they're actually telling the truth. But then you see scary stuff. Half of these guys are resigning all the time. They're always like, I'm open letter. I'm resigning because this technology is dangerous.

57:49And you're like, yeah, man, I'm going into the right poetry. Right. Dude, what's happening here? Like, is this for real? What's what's going on? Nobody knows. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to aliens. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have 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.

58:27and 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. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

59:04What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul a place for real conversation Each episode I sit down with people from all walks of life celebrities thinkers and everyday folks And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us what shapes us and what gives us hope We get honest about the big stuff identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore loss that changes you purpose when success isn't enough peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers.

59:44Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00:01This 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, to interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

1:00:39Isn'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 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. very interesting moment former president barack obama doing an interview with brian tyler cowan very casually lets slip aliens exist they're real let's take a listen are aliens real uh they're real but i haven't seen them and and and uh they're not being kept in uh what is it area 51 there's no underground uh facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they they hit it from the president of the United States.

1:01:30What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president? Where are the aliens? Where are the aliens? That was it, by the way, in terms of that discussion. No offense, Brian, but you gotta be asking some follow-ups there whenever the president literally says aliens are real. Now, he's clarified his position after a couple days. Went very viral. Let's put this next one up here on the screen. He says, I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention, let me clarify. He got his call. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good that there's life out there.

1:02:03But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low. And I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really? Exclamation mark. Here's the thing, guys. Now, if you're not a UFO freak like me, you wouldn't know that this is the second time that Obama has actually kind of let slip something. He knows a little something about this topic. Let me remind you all of a topic that he, a conversation that he had back in 2021, where he made another very interesting comment on this subject. Let's take a listen.

1:02:36The truth is that when I came into office, I asked, right? I was like, all right, is there the lab somewhere where we're keeping the alien specimens in space?

1:02:49And, you know, they did a little bit of research and the answer was no.

1:02:58But what is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are. We can't explain how they moved, their trajectory. country, they did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that we're, people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today. There you go. Look, put it together. He says, I saw no evidence that they have made contact with us. That's, that's not the same thing as if you can surmise that China, Russia, the United States are not behind something that's flying around in the sky at instantaneous speed, what else are you supposed to deduce?

1:03:56What else could it possibly be? Is it always gonna be, oh, it's a weather balloon. It's a weather balloon again. Is it CBP? You know, screw it. Has CBP always been a bunch of retards with space lasers? I don't think so. Could be. All right. Could be. I'm very open to that. No, no, no. Shooting at party balloons. Oh, all the way back in 2005? Like, come on. off the coast of Mexico? Like, you can, everything is always phrased very specifically. He says, well, I saw no evidence. We haven't made any contact. Well, that's not what he said, actually, in terms of rediduction. Same thing there. Well, if we know that things are flying around in the sky and they can't be explained, then what is it?

1:04:33Now, look, you know, yeah, you can't just outwardly say, oh, we have absolute confirmation. Remember that UFO report from a few years ago when they're like, have concluded that it is, they said something, but they're like, can't rule out, but can't rule in aliens. And then the press ran with it, and they were like, well, Pentagon says not aliens. It's like, no, what they said is they have no idea what's going on. That's not the same thing. You can use logical deduction to say, well, it's unexplained by human science. I mean, what are we doing here? That's my take. I know that you're skeptical.

1:05:03Just saying. Yeah, I continue to have my skepticism. I mean, it was an interesting comment. I wish there'd been a follow-up because by the time you have several days later and the ability to clean up the comments and think about what, The thing that he tweeted is basically what I believe, which is, yeah, I mean, the universe is so large. It would be sort of silly to think that we were the only, this was the only place where you could have some sort of life. But the odds that there's been contact, that there's these, you know, things flying around and that's aliens. I just, I'm going to need, I'm going to need a lot more than we have.

1:05:35versus, you know, I think in probably more likely and plausible explanation is that this is human technology that we or other countries are testing that the government very much doesn't want us to know about and have full knowledge of what's going on. I hear you on that one. I still remain very skeptical of that explanation. For example, my friend Jeremy Corbell, he just released a new video. Let's put it up here on the screen so I can show it to all of you. It was released by the Daily Mail. This is a new UFO footage released by Jeremy from Syria, which was shot by a Reaper drone in Sueda province back in 2021.

1:06:12Quote, the drone's camera watched as the object appears to be hovering, flying at normal speed before accelerating to near light speed and vanishing from view. This is from an MQ-9 Reaper drone and was obtained from a source inside the U.S. intelligence community. You can literally see it right there in front. By the way, Pentagon has stated that there's no proof, like I said, of UFOs. I have not seen any debunking or any explanation. This follows also Jeremy's release of the Mosel orb, which previously we had seen the video here on our own screen. So I'm asking people to keep an open mind. We do have video.

1:06:48We don't have any idea what it all is. I mean, to your discussion and question about you know the theory if you're not a believer that's fine i understand that you know obviously it's true that it would be ludicrous to think that you know we're the only place in the world where life happened to evolve that's ridiculous then but then what is it is it the fermi paradox where if they were if there is life out there and we were to have confirmation you have to evolve at the exact same time which is very unlikely and then be able to make contact considering light speed travel and all that seems very unlikely.

1:07:22But you know what I actually think people should read? It's science fiction, I'm putting out there, but it was one of my favorite books I read this year in my newborns. It's Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. He's a guy who wrote The Martian. It was one of the most plausible first contact theories. I won't ruin the book, for how a first contact might actually happen. And it opened my mind where I'm like, maybe it's more plausible than I originally thought. Like, look, science fiction - Your mind was already pretty open, soccer. It was very open. But, I mean, that's always been the biggest skeptic.

1:07:54And then I read that and I go, this is an extremely plausible scenario under which first contact would be able to be made. So just open your mind. You know, it's certainly possible. ScienceFi is predicted a lot here in the future. So there you go. There's your alien segment. All right. Thank you so much for watching, guys. We appreciate it. It'll be Emily on tomorrow. I'm going to be on the Andrew Schultz show in New York City talking about Jeffrey Epstein, but I'll be back on the Thursday show with Crystal. So I'll see you all then.

1:08:341969, 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 Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by Black people because of what happened in Alabama?

1:09:10This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks Black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul.

1:09:43Honest conversations about identity, Loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.