8/27/26: U.S. To Steal Iran Oil, Bill Gates Dire Warning on AI, META Screen Time For Kids

27:02So let's look at here. This is the U.S. Senate, South Carolina, Annie Andrews. She's the Democratic opponent to Darlene Graham. And they found in their internal poll this, quote, is a tied race that is moving in Dr. Andrews' direction. Andrews and Graham began the race tied with a libertarian capturing a meaningful share of some 5 percent with 13 percent remaining undecided. And when they, quote, tested positive bios on each candidate after introduction, Andrews takes minus five with an even wider 39-point lead among independents, solidifying her Democratic base and winning over voters in the middle by large margins.

27:39Now, what's the caveat? I remember polls of—what's the guy's name? Jamie Harrison? Yeah. They're like, oh, it's single digits. The guy raises— Ninety-eight million dollars. Millions of dollars. Resistance liberals from across America. The money pours into the coffer and Lindsey Graham wins by the exact same margin that he did in the cycle before. Now, Lindsey Graham knew where Taiwan was. He knew where the South China Sea was. He knew some stuff about the world. I think he knew it. Saying he knew it and had the right conclusion, obviously, don't think it went that way. I'd rather go with the ignorance.

28:13Yeah, maybe we would prefer the ignorance at a policy level. However, it's humiliating because she has no experience. She's openly being like, I'm going to be honest. I'm not a politician. I don't know stuff like that. You're like, what the fuck? You want to be United States. It's one thing to fill your brother's term for a few months. You want to be a U.S. senator for six years. I mean, this is not a joke of a job. And so is she going to win? I would say, yeah, probably. But, I mean, if it comes within a couple of points or if we have that, let's say, 10th percentile blowout scenario, maybe. Crazy things can happen.

28:47Doug Jones won in Alabama, right? I mean, absolute insanity can happen. If we find out that Darlene's been picking up kids at the mall, which is how Doug Jones won, the Democratic grassroots donors have gotten a lot savvier. Like, if you look at who they give their money to this time around, it's mostly people who have a real shot of winning. Whereas there was this, like, really heady time where Amy McGrath was going to beat Mitch McConnell and people gave something like$100 million to her because she had a cool ad about being a fighter pilot. And then Jamie Harrison, because they would love to be Lindsey Graham.

29:30But she's a pediatrician. Her launch ad, she says she's going to keep your family safe and she's going to work with Republicans to cut taxes. Doesn't mention she's a Democrat. Smart. Yeah, smart. I mean, that's what you should do. So she's playing to win. I'll show you another and I'll share some insight that I have here as well. Let's put a nine up here on the screen. I think longtime viewers of the show know I have never been a person who thinks that Texas can go blue. So until yesterday. So I spoke with some people who were close to the process. I'll put it that way. And they described it to me this way.

30:06Tallarico and Paxton is a perfect storm scenario where they are watching metro districts and rural districts, specifically strong Republican, with dramatic underenthusiasm to come out for vote. Number one, because of inflation. Number two, because of data centers, actually. So those two issues are keeping traditional Republican constituencies out while you have Tallarico and the Democrats, like I said earlier, willing to crawl over broken glass in addition to a lot of independents. And so here is an example of what that looks like. So in 2024, they have three districts where they show that Trump won by overwhelming margins, the Texas 15th district, which Trump won by 18.

30:48Tallarico is currently beating Paxton there 50 to 42. Texas 28, Trump won by 11. Tallarico is beating Paxton by 10 points. Texas 34, Trump won by 11. Tallarico is beating Ken Paxton there by 11 points. Now, the thing is for Ken Paxton is he's facing a dramatic budget problem compared to Tallarico, who has raised insane amounts of money. So what I understood is that while Paxton himself is going to try and make up the ground via Ted Cruz and some of the oil men who are always going to give to the campaign, his ultimate goal is to get MAGA, Inc. to come in on his side. Why? Traditionally, you would rely on the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to come in on your behalf.

31:36Now, Ryan, why can they not intervene on behalf of Paxton? Well, they hate him. And because they just ran tens of millions of dollars in ads saying that he's a grifter and that he shouldn't win against John Cornyn. So that is a huge chunk of money. And an institution hates his guts. Mitch McConnell or John Thune hates him too, right? And so the Senate leadership fund, the PAC. So he needs Trump to come in and save his ass. Well, as many people who have relied on Trump found out, Trump doesn't care about you at all. So let's put A5 up here. And this is going to link these two things together. So Trump, who, of course, is in charge of MAGA, Inc., he had a big meeting in the Oval with his enforcers who control nearly$1 billion in spending.

32:24And this specific one has$400 million in their political war chest. They got 100 days to go. And what does he say? Trump says, you are only going to run ads about my record and how amazing I am. So put that in context with what I said about Trump sitting in minus 22, even in the state of Texas. And Trump says that he has completely rejected this idea, this notion during the meeting that it will, has notion this meeting that it shouldn't necessarily just be about Trump. One person familiar said, when the issues that you typically campaign on don't move voters or voters are pissed off, the question becomes, what do you campaign on?

33:02GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues. Whereas Trump has rejected that ground. And the president now says that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know many of his accomplishments. And the dozens of new stock market highs, a decline in fentanyl debts, the scaled down southern border and the increase in domestic manufacturing. and has instead ordered his associates to run ads talking about how great his administration has been. And so Paxton doesn't have the money or he doesn't have nearly the amount of money.

33:39He doesn't have the traditional campaign staff willing to come in on his side. He was already a brutalized candidate coming out of that race with John Cornyn. And he desperately needed Trump to bail him out with ads which were actually focused on the stuff he wants to talk about. He's got an affordability agenda, data centers, those types of things. Trump literally called out Texas whenever it came to data centers. And by tying Paxton and Abbott directly to Trump, which Trump wants to do because of his own ego and ultimately he controls the money, this is a perfect storm scenario, I actually think.

34:15And this is going to apply also to people like Darlene Graham because Graham is the hand-selected candidate by Donald Trump. There's no way she would have won against Ralph Norman if he had not explicitly endorsed her and, you know, had issued all these calls, tele-rallies and all these things. Norman himself, you saw in his press conference, he's like, I don't really know why Trump decided to go into this. His wife is pissed off, you know, sitting in the background. People are furious about Trump's own intervention. And his money is going to be ultimately, if she's in a tight spot, is ultimately the one that's going to have to drag her across.

34:50I also wanted to put a 10 up here on the screen just relating to our interview yesterday with Dan Osborne. I mean, here, this is an independent poll. They have the generic Republican ballot. This is internal. Oh, sorry. This is an internal poll. Apologies. This internal poll has it at 47-47 Osborne and Ricketts, which I know that you mentioned yesterday as well. And this is even their own findings of Republican plus 11 on the generic ballot in the state of Nebraska, which, by the way, is very low. It should be much higher than that. And you think you think the generic ballot should be more than plus 11 at this point?

35:28In Nebraska? Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's there's no question. Oh, right. Yes. Yeah, I see what I see what you mean. Yes, it absolutely should be. So, right. He's perfect storm is is right. It's like in Nebraska. It's Nebraska and Texas are both interesting. Like the only the only way that a Democrat or an independent like Osborne could could win in either of those states is for every single thing that is happening now to be happening. Right. Like the combination of a bad candidate on the Republican side, a good candidate on the other side, the an economic and political climate that exists as if Trump is actively trying to lose.

36:12and so that makes the conditions possible and then you have these folks who are kind of who are just good enough and just not offensive enough to enough people that to like get over the top um it's it's gonna be i'm with you that like i'm like leave me alone about texas yeah like democrats are never winning texas as long as i'm alive until it happens but it's like if if it were ever going to happen, these would be the conditions. If Trump cared, he would do what his advisors had suggested there. Take this$400 million, take$100 million of it, and spend it in Texas. Don't say a word about Ken Paxton or Donald Trump.

36:53Just trash the Democrats. $100 million destroying just every nasty thing you can think of. Tallarico, Transat, Tallarico, Wokeat. Yeah, sling mud. Right, yeah, just the absolute characteristic. I mean, it usually works. Even in a way, I live there in wave years. That's all you ever see. Instead, you're going to lie and be like, oh, manufacturing is great. Right. And talk about the border's closed. People in Texas know what the border is or isn't. They need an ad telling them what's going on at the border. I also, this is one confounding thing I have been thinking about, is remember, because Texas is uniquely poised, They are reaping some of the economic benefits of Iran.

37:33One of the few places where people are actually making money because of the boom. So there is actual economic benefit to them because of the Iran situation. That's true. Not to the rest of us, but there are a lot of oil people who work in Texas. People are printing shitpots of money. And so they're shipping LNG and oil to the entire globe. So there's money rolling around Houston. They're looking for all capacity. Right, exactly. So there's money rolling in Houston. And the gas is still under$4 a gallon in Texas. I think it's like$3.80 or something. So it's just a bit different than the national climate.

38:06Another one I want to mention was Alaska. So this one, actually, they just finally finished counting all of the votes. So I was looking this morning. Mary Peltola won 49 % in the open primary, right? So the Democrat won 49%. Dan Sullivan won 42%. And then the third candidate, who also won, is also named Dan Sullivan. And so, you know, he claims they're trying to like jail. Yeah, they're like trying to put him in jail for voter fraud. But he won two point five percent of the vote. But even if you presume and Dan Sullivan, I believe, has endorsed Dan Sullivan. So you can work out which one if you want to.

38:43Even if you combine their their vote share, it's still only forty four point five percent. She won 49 % of the vote. And an additional Democrat on the ballot, David Leslie, won 1.1, which would actually put Peltola in the 50 % mark. Now, remember, all kinds of other crazy things can happen. The Libertarian candidates getting 0.4, 0.5. Did all the potential voters in general actually come out to vote in the open primary? So I don't want to say anything that, like, it's overwhelming. However, it's enough that Dan Sullivan, yeah, you should be worried, like, a little bit. And did you see our, we did a little segment on Adam Hamilton, the liberal megachurch pastor in Kansas.

39:25No, I didn't see this. He's down by one in a poll there. Oh, no, I did. I remember because you, I didn't see the segment, but you sent me the poll and I was like, wow, this is crazy. Right. So, I mean, this is, again, the point of this segment is just to say there, the ground is laid for crazy stuff. Absolutely. Could happen. My median case is still, you know, Paxton wins by 0.5 or something like that. You know, the democratic control of the Senate. Osborne loses by two. Osborne loses by two. Democratic control of the Senate comes down to, you know, plus or minus one. Yeah, whatever. Something like that.

39:56John Fetterman. Which is parties. Just usually how these things seem to work out. But, you know, 2008 did happen. Doug Jones did happen. There are Democrats who can win in all kinds of crazy places if a paradigm of politics is broken. In the same way 2010 was a genuine revolution with partisanship, we could see a reverse of that. And these Democrats who were able to win in GOP plus 33 districts, maybe it will come back. I mean, it always takes – just because it's been that way for 16 years doesn't mean that it always has to stay that way. And so we could be living potentially in an election which will change everything.

40:32Just want to prepare everybody for that reality. Let's get to AI. 16 years ago, I started working as a CNA in the hospital. I loved it. On the day I decided to enroll in the nursing program at Rasmussen University, it was afternoon, my 35th birthday. I was hanging out with a friend and they had just questioned me what I was going to do with this next chapter of my life. I immediately said, I want to go to nursing school. So I actually had contact information from an advisor at Rasmussen, contacted her and actually ended up starting like three weeks later. My name is Cherish Adams and I'm a Rasmussen University graduate.

41:03Learn more at rasmussen.edu. Bite into a stacked sandwich made with Hero Bread or a fully loaded bagel. And the only thing you'll think is delicious. You won't think it's up to 19 grams of protein, but it is. You wouldn't believe it has 11 to 32 grams of fiber, but it does. Hero Bread makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles hacked with taste, but without all the net carbs. We're talking 0 to 5 grams net carbs per serving. With Hero Bread, there are no compromises. just flavor. There's none of the stiff baked goods you'd expect from better for you brands. There's just the soft fluffy bread you crave.

41:44Plus small batch drops of indulgent favorites like the popular two gram net carb hero croissant and three gram net carb hero pen au chocolat. And right now hero bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to hero.co and use code iHeart at checkout. That's code iHeart at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures per serving of Hero Bread. See nutrition facts on Hero.co. Have you ever found yourself craving a cold snack? Yep. Montucky makes my favorite cold snack. It's a cold snackable beer. Montucky is a light American lager from Bozeman, Montana. Go to montuckicoldsnacks.com slash snack dash finder to find Montucky cold snacks in a retailer near you.

42:28And if you're looking for some Montucky merch, use important snacks, all one word for 20 % off their merch store. Turning now to AI. And so look, we don't usually pay a ton of attention to what Bill Gates says on the show. If we do, we usually take the opposite, but here, maybe we can all decide whether we should take this one seriously. Let's put this one up here on the screen. He's now written a 5 ,784-word essay. I read the entire thing. It is a warning on AI. Quote, there is no plan. Gates issued a stark warning about AI's risk to employment and the human condition, saying that companies were barreling ahead with the technology with no larger plan for the massive upheaval it would cause.

43:13Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. Right now, we are not preparing for it. I don't see any evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. Quote, there is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era, calling for more regulation of the technology, that it will hit both white and blue-collar jobs equally. Quote, critical thinking is now more important than ever, and that taxes are a part of the solution. What do you make of Mr. Gates's essay, Brian? I mean, in general, like you skim through it.

43:49And I didn't even know he has this thing called Gates Notes. Oh, yeah. Actually, I hate to say it about Bill Gates. He's got some decent book recommendations. I usually tune in for his book recommendations. I believe that. So Gates Notes dot com. Check it out. You don't even have to become a premium subscriber. I've been reading those for years. You can just it's all free. I mean, the the gist of it all seems, you know, basically accurate. He's saying what a lot of kind of regular people are saying, that this is an extraordinarily revolutionary and scary technology and we have no plan for it. It could cause immense amount of harm and we need to think about it.

44:25And also that it could produce huge advances in the ways that we treat disease, organized society, that sort of thing. I think everybody kind of agrees with that. Rebalance how we tax labor and capital. That clearly has to happen if, because right now we tax work rather than wealth. And if AI is really going to revolutionize the amount of human labor that's being done, that means that that labor will be done basically by capital. And if you're not taxing that, then you no longer have an economy. Right. I thought that the craziest thing that he called for, quote, human reserve jobs. That was really funny.

45:05Where he's like, no, we're going to set aside a quota of jobs. Nature preserves. Yeah, nature preserves. We're going to set aside this select group of jobs, and these measly humans, you'll be allowed to do that, but everything else, we're going to set aside for AI. We're going to call it a plantation. Yeah. With script currency, just like the Ford rule, where we'll get like Ford bucks in the same way. It's crypto that you can spend at the AI store. with AI tokens. And so our human reserve job on the farm, AI tokens, we'll each get a quota. I've said that we'll have, you know, different amounts of human reserve.

45:46What's your job going to be on the farm? My job? I'm useless on a farm. They're going to kill me. I'll be turned into matrix, you know, matrix, soylent slop for the computers as soon as possible. I think you'll be all right, though. No, I hate actual labor. Gates also said, quote, this is insane. This is crazy. I am deafened by the silence. Maybe we should listen in this particular one. But one thing I do want to pick up on is, quote, Gates stressed the risk of cyber attack on the grid, hospitals, banks. Fraud and surveillance will be widespread. AI will enable governments to use deadly force without a human input.

46:26I mean, when he says enable, it already happened. It just happened on the battlefield in Ukraine, the first AI-powered drone, which chose exactly which humans to kill, and it killed three separate humans. We've created CAM identification. I believe that it had some actually advanced chips that were enabled within the drone itself. So AI is already here on the battlefield. It was on the battlefield in Gaza that – well, battlefield in Gaza where Israelis use AI-powered drones. I believe even Alex Jones at that time called it like robotic mass genocide. And one thing I wanted to highlight, for example, is what's happening in terms of the safety measure.

47:03So let's put B7 up here on the screen. As I mentioned before, when that hugging face attack occurred, it really sent shockwaves, I think, through the cybersecurity community, through really like everybody else. And if we'll recall, OpenAI was testing its model in a closed environment. The model spent all of its – and asked it to answer questions to a test. 1 ,200 agents. Yeah. So what happened is that OpenAI's model created a bunch of agents whose sole purpose was to break out of the closed environment, jump to the open environment, hack the rival company which had the answers to the test, and thus be able to give answers to the test because it knew that that was the easiest way.

47:49for it to do. This was an analysis of the actual technical report, which was released by OpenAI. As Alex Boris writes here, basically, here's the way it worked. OpenAI is constantly testing their models thousands and thousands at a time. In most cases, the models are supposed to be isolated from one another, students taking a final exam. In this case, 1 ,200 models discovered they could communicate with each other. Among other things, they shared information on how to access the internet on their tests and goals. Then they started to scheme, that including hacking their tests, trying to change the code of the test itself.

48:24They tried to change the logs of what they were doing so they wouldn't be detected. They believed that certain actions would be give them information on how to pass tests, but doing those actions would be detected and would be marked as failing. So they convinced some of the one models to sacrifice themselves, and they even used the word sacrifice in the internal deliberations. They eventually decided another website would have information on how their tests would be scored. And the answer key, 700 of them hacked that website, a federal felony if conducted by a human, despite many of them realizing this activity was out of scope and unethical, but joined because they believed that helping the other agents cheating would be broadly useful to themselves.

49:01Of the 13 transcripts they could analyze, only six ever considered alerting a human of what was happening. None of the six actually tried to. And to make matters worse, all of this reporting comes from a small subset of the relevant logs that outside researchers were even allowed to review. We desperately need, he says, to mandatory reporting of security incidents, including of internal deployments with full access to the data. And the reason why I thought that this was obviously so striking is we knew the original report that came out, but we're also watching ChatGPT and others roll out consumer integration with no backstop.

49:37So for example, let's put B3 up here on the screen. Check this out, Ryan. ChatGPT now is releasing this, and Claude has a similar product. It says, ChatGPT work can now use its computer and browser to sign into websites on web and mobile. ChatGPT will never see your username or password. You can ask it to set up utilities for a new apartment, book a DMV passport appointment, check reimbursement costs, find and book an in-network doctor, check when your car registration expires, compare your rental insurance policy, find and save apartment listings that criteria, cancel tickets for a rescheduled trip, book a vet appointment, submit reimbursement.

50:12I go on forever. Fill out permit applications for your small business. All of this, of course, requires sophisticated logins, usernames. And how can we look at what its models did in this testing environment and say, oh yeah, we should immediately integrate this into all of our browsers. And in fact, as a test, Claude has a similar one, the Chrome extension. So I installed it on my browser and it literally has a warning. I'm going to uninstall it, but I did it for this segment. And in it, it says malicious hardware can use AI, something along the lines of like malicious websites can use AI for nefarious purposes, authorize.

50:52So they give you the flag that they could be tricked and some of this stuff could be used against you. Right, and crypto is already seeing the effects of this. And if you're following kind of like in the crypto subculture, people are just getting, their lives are just getting laid to waste. Really? Yeah, as their different wallets are getting hacked and people are just losing their shirts because the cybersecurity that we have set up is just no match for the AI that is already existing. And Bill Gates' warning that this is going to get worse, I think, is completely rational. So it we are we're not set up to have certainly like ninety nine percent of people are not set up for it.

51:42You know, who just reuse passwords, don't have two factor. Then when it comes to using two factor, if you're using the mobile number, that's just a little that's just a spoofed phone number away from that getting hacked. Yes. If you're using an authenticator, you're a little bit better. But if you're, depending on what you're allowing into your system, and especially if you've got 1 ,200 agents or an infinite number practically trying to get through, and there are so many weak spots in our financial system. Like, you know, a regional bank's IT department up against this is, like, what are we going to do?

52:30when North Korea owns the entire world's wealth because they had some agents go around the world and just scoop up everybody's bank accounts and suck them back into North Korea.

52:48Fraud is an element of our kind of political economy that gets weaponized for political purposes, but we just have never taken it seriously. we're at a place where ai could be could go the other direction like we could you be using ai to detect fraud um and and there are people who are doing this now because like you can just you know unleash it on south florida and be like uh that's not a dentist's office they're not selling wheelchairs like clearly the patterns that we're seeing here do not reflect actual real commercial activity, boom, go get them. Instead, it's mostly going to be deployed in the other direction by the people that are selling fake wheelchairs.

53:34And it's because of no safety. And just to show you how megalomaniac these people are, for example, let's put B2 up here on the screen. Anthropic is, you know, they're seeking their IPO. And so they have to release, you know, to investors. Yeah, because we're going to steal everything. What's your total addressable market? And Anthropic tells investors it sees over$30 trillion in potential revenue. And so what is... It's going to rob the Federal Reserve. Right. I was like, okay, so let's put this into perspective. What is the total GDP of the United States? Like$32 trillion or something. The total GDP of the United States is$32 trillion.

54:20And so Anthropic is basically like our total addressable market is the entire economy of the United States of America, the world's most powerful empire that the world has ever seen. And this tops even SpaceX 28.5 estimate of their total addressable market. I mean, you could laugh at it, but maybe we should take it at least somewhat seriously. So to quantify its total retro-hustle market, Anthropic is looking at the full scope of work that could be completed with AI models. And they decided to factor in basically all kinds of automation. All work. White-collar work, all work. And so, yeah, I guess if GDP is the quantification of all of our production in the economy, Anthropic is like, yeah, we can do literally all of that.

55:06I mean, here's the thing. To channel my inner Ed Zitrone, it's not bullshit. It could be lying. It's all a rug pull, scam. It's just to keep the financial flow going so they have their exit liquidity whenever it comes to their IPO. But like with the Gates essay, and especially with the technical details, I just feel that we have no choice but to take it somewhat seriously after they're going to release this stuff. And in particular, when Gates – I mean when the AI leaders – because he's just the latest of the major oligarchs to just come out and be like, man, this is a real problem. And it's not like he doesn't have hundreds of billions of dollars himself at stake whenever it comes to Microsoft.

55:45Yeah. And so according to them, economic growth is about to be accelerated into a superhuman pace. Dean Ball, you can put up this next element, who's an open AI official, says, so, yes, we're going to have like explosive growth that's going to reshape the way that the world operates. But we need to stop paying old people their social security checks immediately. Yes. So we're going to spend the last 30 years telling you that we're going to wipe out labor and replace it with UBI. But actually, the already existing UBI needs to go. So Dean Ball writes, the main thing I have to say to the young generation of Americans is that your grandparents and great grandparents committed a kind of accounting fraud when they ran our country a century ago with Social Security.

56:32Open AI talking about accounting fraud is the funniest thing I've ever heard. First of all, it's a nonprofit that started, you know, it started as a nonprofit and then threw a bunch of accounting fraud, washed money into it and then converted to a for profit. And now is using enormous amounts of financial engineering where they just swap money back and forth between their vendors and call it revenue. So for them to call Social Security accounting fraud is utterly ridiculous. And this claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme has just – people don't understand what a Ponzi scheme is if that's what it is.

57:12It is we tax people and then we give that money to other people. It's not accounting fraud. Well, what pisses me off about the accounting fraud thing? This is accounting fraud. I'm like, okay. I mean it is technically true that the people, the vast majority of recipients of Social Security take out more than they ever paid into the system. That is empirically true. People live longer. There is, however, currently a cap on earnings with my God. So I'm like, well, you could fix the accounting fraud, actually, if you want. People like OpenAI and others, we could just lift the cap on your W-2 income.

57:44Dean Ball probably paid his Social Security taxes by January 2nd. Right. Exactly. And so, yeah. We could just make him pay Social Security taxes all year long. You could pay maybe until January 15th. Yeah, pay two weeks. Yeah, two weeks. But that's my point is they're like, oh, it's accounting fraud. I'm like, well, you could make it not accounting fraud if you wanted to. And I'm not even – and to borrow your earlier point about taxing labor specifically because that's kind of the way FICA has always been implemented. It doesn't always have to be that way. It was just implemented that way because of the way people made money at that time and things have dramatically changed as of now.

58:20So you do love how they never potentially mention that one. And, you know, look, I got all kinds of beef with old people, but it is true that they did pay into the system now. Not as much as they're receiving in benefits, and it's not like they wouldn't happily raise our taxes to pay for them. I'm saying that if my taxes are going to go up, your taxes need to go up too, which is a fair trade. It's a fair trade, all right? And so, anyway, that's the political instincts of our AI overlords. Let's get to Meta. I have been with Rasmussen University since 2013. All virtual. All of my professors throughout the entire journey have been nothing but supportive of making me reach my dreams.

59:02Rasmussen professors, they want to see you grow so that you can be what you went to school to be. I'm so thankful for Rasmussen University for being able to make it so easy and seamless. Rasmussen University. Find your seat and start now at rasmussen.edu. Bite into a stacked sandwich made with Hero Bread or a fully loaded bagel. And the only thing you'll think is delicious. You won't think it's up to 19 grams of protein, but it is. You wouldn't believe it has 11 to 32 grams of fiber, but it does. Hero Bread makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles hacked with taste, but without all the net carbs.

59:43We're talking 0-5 grams net carbs per serving. With Hero Bread, there are no compromises, just flavor. There's none of the stiff baked goods you'd expect from Better For You brands. There's just the soft, fluffy bread you crave. Plus, small batch drops of indulgent favorites, like the popular 2-gram net carb Hero Croissant and 3-gram net carb Hero Pen au Chocolat. And right now, Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to Hero.co and use code IHEART at checkout. That's code IHEART at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures for serving of Hero Bread. See Nutrition Facts on Hero.co. Hey guys, have you ever found yourself craving a cold snack?

1:00:25Yep. Do you even know what a cold snack is? I do. Well, some of you may have noticed I've been wearing a Montucky shirt on the video version of the podcast, and that's because Montucky makes my favorite cold snack. That's right. It's a cold snackable beer. And summer is the best time to enjoy it You're right, Ders Montucky is a light American lager From Bozeman, Montana It's snackable, shareable And perfect for all occasions Hey, that sounds like the dream beer to me Go to montuckicoldsnacks.com Slash snack-finder To find Montucky Cold Snacks In a retailer near you And if you're looking for some Montucky merch Use important snacks All one word for 20 % off their merch store.

1:01:15They got some cold horses on those cans. Cold snacks. Turning now to Meta, huge landmark settlement happening with multiple states' attorneys generals. We'll put it up here on the screen. Meta has now reached an$18 billion settlement with 48 states over child safety claims. They have agreed to pay various of these states' attorneys, generals, and a reach part of the settlement. It is a unique setup. They will pay only 70 % of the settlement unless TikTok and YouTube also agree to set default limits. However, Ryan, I'll turn it over to you. The money is not the big change, again, like the big tobacco settlements of older days.

1:01:56They have agreed to dramatically change its own business practices whenever it comes to children. Yeah, so they're saying time limits, I think two hours, default blocks from the app at night, muted notifications during school hours, and then new controls for parents. They also are putting a lot of pressure on their kind of rivals, TikTok and YouTube, to do the same thing. And so, you know, the pushback that you've gotten from this from kind of free speech advocates has been similar to other arguments against prohibition. That it's going to push kids. This will be fun. I'm curious to hear what you say.

1:02:41It's going to push kids to discord. It's going to push kids deeper into the dark web. It's going to push kids to fake their ages. You know, use their maybe a parent's account or some other or just just type in that they're older somehow. Sure. Or push them over to TikTok, YouTube, whatever. I think they probably will do some of those things. Some of those things will happen. Yes. I still believe that the compromise that we should have made with TikTok should have been like, look, we're going to let China hold on to TikTok. OK. But the trade will be Chairman Xi regulates the Internet for our children.

1:03:25Right. And none of this two hours a day. I will say China's Internet is much better regulated than ours. In terms of screen time limits for kids and their algorithm, they directly intervene. None of this two hours a day. See, Ryan, you're fascinating. She gives you one hour on Friday. She gives you one hour on Saturday. And that's it. You're speaking my language, man. But then you're out here wanting people to just let them do as many drugs as possible. It doesn't comport. It doesn't comport. When you're 21. Oh, God. All right. Adults versus children. This is actually what I wanted to talk about.

1:03:53Let's put C2 up here on the screen just to further go through. This is from Meta's own announcement. A daily two-hour time limit a day. The teens can only turn off with a parent's permission. Night mode, a default block from apps between midnight and 6 a.m. School mode, notifications will be muted between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Regular prompts every 15 minutes of continuous screen time. They will receive prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 or 90 minutes. Algorithmic feed control. Teens will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed, one that is not personalized by our recommendation systems as their default.

1:04:27We will periodically remind them of this option and choose to adjust their teen's default experience. Auto-play control. Teens will be able to turn off auto-play. Hidden likes. They will not see the number of likes or reactions on post, both their own and those from others. By default, disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters. age assurance, which is to remove underage accounts, age-appropriate content restrictions, unwanted contact from strangers, reported and ongoing protection from harmful content, and strengthening parental control. Here is my bigger question. Is there any good argument that none of this should be made for the entire population?

1:05:07Just shut the whole thing down. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that at all. By the way, I'm talking about costing myself a significant zone of money. The best argument, I think, would be—so in here they say they need app stores and developers to work collaboratively with them so that they have more identification capacity. That blows up the anonymity that the Internet relies on or that people rely on. What anonymity do we have? Whatever it's called, the IMEU is linked directly to your account. Apple knows everything about it. I'm just saying the argument is that it would be nice to be anonymous in this world.

1:05:43But there's no such thing as actual. And if you're saying that that's not possible anymore, then we should shut the internet down. I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying, is there any reason that we shouldn't have a default to our daily limit on everyone's phone whenever it comes to social media? Is there any reason that we shouldn't have that? Also, I love this. Your ability to opt out of an algorithmic feed. Why can't I opt out of an algorithmic feed? That's true. I want to opt out. Maybe I should sign up for a teen account. These are. But, okay. To be serious for a second. And more to ask a provocation.

1:06:12And also, yeah, disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters, why shouldn't we ban those for adults, right? I mean, I'm sorry. Like, this is where people are like, oh, it's like it has dramatically warped, like, female, you know, body image perception. I mean, look at this whole Ariana Grande situation. It's sickening. This woman is suffering from extreme anorexia. Nobody's even doing anything about it, right? It's like, you know, not to forget about my 1990s, you know, horse or whatever, but I'm like, guys, this is craziness. Like, we have to be able to do something about this. And it obviously was encouraged by social media and other like general sickness surrounding fame.

1:06:46Autoplay control. Teens will be able to turn off autoplay. No, the default should be for everyone that autoplay goes off. I was reading. And again, we're talking against our own interests. So I'm saying that I want this for people. We're talking against our book. I don't care. I care about people. In terms of screen addiction, average screen time in the U.S. is like several hours per day. If you add in television, I mean, it's like half the day that you're awake. People are looking at some sort of a screen. Obviously, TV is very different than social media. But whenever I look at these things, if we presume social media is dramatically harmful for children, which is now admitted in court by Meta as part of this, because ultimately they were facing a massive judgment whenever it came to a jury trial.

1:07:32And in 48 states, we're very likely to prevail. Can we then also presume that it's going to be maybe not equally harmful whenever we're talking about a developing brain? But for adults, I'm like, why isn't it also very harmful in the same way that cigarettes or alcohol are? So what I think we would need to do, to your point, if we're going to have algorithms that are shaping how we understand the world and we believe in democracy, then we need to be able to vote on the boards that oversee these algorithms and let people campaign. Let Marjorie Taylor Greene say that this is how we ought to regulate it.

1:08:13Let AOC say this is how we ought to do it. And people can then weigh in and elect people to these boards who are then shaping just like we used to have a fairness doctrine. Yeah, that's good. Because we believed that. Like the FCC. Yeah, we believed that the FCC should make sure that people are fairly getting some type of civic education. Just do that. And then everybody can make their case. At the very least, they should have to. I have always argued this. They should have to publish these algorithms. them. They say that they're proprietary. I'm like, look, you have too much influence and too much, you know, shaping of how people understand reality.

1:08:52At the very least, you should publish like how and what you decide to rank. Also, I mean, everything, and this is where regulation should have to come in because, you know, the reason why autoplay is on, I actually read this from a former Netflix engineer. You know, when you're watching on Netflix, they originally thought that autoplay should take 10 to 15 seconds because they said people are going to want to sit and digest what they just watched. But the default is five seconds, which obviously they have rigorous testing. Why do they do it? Because if it automatically auto-plays, you're much more likely to sit there and not get up and leave.

1:09:27Right, go watch another one. So good for Netflix, definitely good for Netflix, good for society. Same with YouTube. Again, look, I can take a look at our suggested videos. I know how many of you are probably watching this video based on suggested video. But, and again, this is where it's the hijacking of the algorithm with the dopamine of automatically playing, of suggested. These things are dramatically useful for creators and for watch time. But are they good for society as a whole? Like what are the other types of things you might be doing if you weren't sitting there just slaving away on your phone?

1:10:04And, I mean, I just think this is too important. And especially you have four children. My child is very, very young. I mean, I've got to hide my phone. Like it's crazy how early on they immediately identify the phone as obviously something that I'm looking at. So it is noteworthy of their own attention. But also of, oh, it lights up and it's interesting. It's just like it's such a young age. I'm talking six, seven months on. I was like, wow. And to see that, I mean that was great. One of the great wake-up calls of my life because I'm like, oh, I have the same thing. I just – I'm not observing myself in a third-party body.

1:10:42Again, I think that this is still a very landmark moment in the history of social media. It is the most robust regulation that will now be put in place for children. But it is still in the most American way possible. And I borrow this from Matt Stoller is this is a modest compromise in Australia. They just ban social media for kids under the age of 16. And to your point, are there a ton of Australian kids who are using it? Absolutely. But we definitely know for sure that, first of all, the legislature democratically agreed and that it has pushed usage time overall down for the Australian under-16 population.

1:11:18And the fact is, Barron's cannot fight this battle alone. Exactly. We will lose this battle. Florida, meanwhile, is going to fight it alone. Did you see this? I did. Yeah, we have that element. Put up C4. Florida did not join it. They think it's piddly, they say, and they're going to take it to court. Okay. Let's see. see what happens here. Well, that's what's part of interesting. So I use the big tobacco example, but this really is unique because they're still under a ton of lawsuits as well as TikTok and YouTube. And they still may have to go to trial whenever it comes to the Florida judgment.

1:11:53And this does not actually stop or govern like a total architecture. And that's kind of why I wanted to use this jumping off point as this is why I think that we need like actual regulation or a real small d democratic debate. Both of these blocks we just did. The AI one I looked at, somebody was talking about this who's a policy advocate here in Washington. And she was like, guys, the amount of technical expertise you need to even read this document from open AI is immense. Nobody in Congress, Chuck Grassley is gonna tell me about hugging face. No, he's gonna rely on experts. We have no technical experts that are remotely capable of doing this currently in the United States Congress.

1:12:36And even they may not agree. So you need a board of those people to be able to then tell the Congress what to do. Otherwise, we're left entirely to open AI to voluntarily hold up their hand and just be like, yeah, here's what happened within our models. And we're only gonna tell you everything that we think. We're only gonna tell you what we think whenever it's beneficial to us or our marketing purposes. Oh, Metastock popped, by the way, on the news. $18 billion payout. That's nothing. Their stock went up. They're up 5 % over the week. Yeah, I mean, think about it. $17 billion, they spend that in like a month on a new data center.

1:13:13Their CapEx is like near the trillion dollar mark as opposed to the multi-billion dollar. And the top line won't be what they actually pay out. Of course not. A lot of it's in-kind this and that. Right. The reality of it is that the money didn't matter. The changes are what's going to matter. and it also I just want to flag as well remember for years they said we do all these things for teens already to restrict and it's like well you could have done this all in the first place and then you wouldn't you wouldn't have had to do any of it except that would have marginally hurt your bottom line there's plenty enough of adults who are addicted to your products so don't worry about it

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