2026 Will Be Truly Insane | Ep.044 Lemonade Stand 🍋

20:27Like a fifth of the country. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy number of people. It's massive. So, you know, their stories line up with those time periods. I mean, that's what people were doing.

20:36Atrioc:Yeah. It's also worth pointing out with the Elon Musk comment that you said earlier, where in February he was saying we shouldn't do regime change. A couple months later, in May of 2025, is when elections happened again in Venezuela. Maduro lost, but then just didn't give up power and use the military to crack down. So there was a shift this past year where it was just so blatant that he had ignored all democratic process. I think that kicked off a lot of people's justification of this type of thing in the U.S.'s side. Yeah.

21:04Aiden:the the other thing that was common across the the two that live in venezuela especially but uh they were talking about the current status of waiting and feeling nervous right now like nobody is out in the streets celebrating and there's still like a huge police presence out

21:19Atrioc:dude that's the thing it's the same regime nobody feels safe enough to go out and like be excited

21:26Aiden:about anything because it's the regime is still in charge no one knows what the u.s is like next action really is there's a feeling of like insecurity like people are hopeful and happy maduro is gone yeah but not like not confident in like what the next steps will be um and uh i i asked them too because because it's so blatantly from a u.s perspective right it a large portion of this is blatantly about the oil and i was like how do you feel about the idea of us doing this because of a resource like us you know taking something that is venezuela's or like the at least the narrative that we're there we're doing that right and for the friend that lived in the dr he he was interesting he was he was pretty extreme about it where he said uh we that is a small price to pay for like for freedom or the potential of freedom down the line and also argued that he thinks the current government basically stole the oil so there used to be like american companies involved in Venezuelan oil production, right?

22:29Aiden:And instead of like, when they nationalized everything, they didn't like buy the companies out or something like that. They just took the oil back and like regained control of it. And then because of that, it created an environment where nobody wanted to provide help or investment from outside of the country down the line because they're like, well, they could just take it over again. Why would I put any investment into it? And he called Maduro a thief for doing that. And so he was pretty aggressive in his stance. For the other two, they were less in the camp of like, this is a price and more in the camp of if they both said they fully, this is crazy, they both said this, the two that live in Crockett.

23:12Aiden:They both said they fully trust Trump and the U.S. government to make the right decisions regarding the resource in the future and think that Venezuela will see the appropriate benefit, but acknowledge that that isn't a sure thing and that they are basically hoping for the best. And that the tradeoff or the gamble of where they're at is like, it's worth the chance. That was the constant thing between all of them. And I asked also, was there any hope from your perspective of this changing by just the work of Venezuelans that live in the country or what you could do on their own and without foreign intervention of any kind?

23:54Aiden:And they all said no. They all said no, because after the last election, the last election really destroyed the last of the hope that they all had. for change coming on its own. And they all mentioned, they all mentioned being like an unarmed populace against a government that have all of the power and they've not allowed them to like use the electoral system to create any change. And they can't speak out the government because over the past decade, they've gotten increasingly hardcore about cracking down on anyone speaking out against the current regime. And that's the reason the two of them, so my friend that lives in the DR, his gamertags knocked.

24:33Aiden:And he was like, you can post my interview. You can, so I'm going to redo it with him. So we can like share his perspective on everything. Okay. But the other two wanted to remain completely anonymous, the two that live in the country. And it's because they, like any inkling of you getting political and speaking out against the current regime right now can mean you just get taken and jailed. And you can be jailed for a maximum of 30 years for speaking out against the current regime. The other thing that I asked them was from an American perspective or from a global perspective, right? It's not just about the morality of doing this.

25:05Aiden:It's about the consequences. So when you look at a situation like Libya, where we removed, we killed Gaddafi, and then the vacuum of power that was left in the place, you could argue in many ways left Libya in a worse situation. Gaddafi, famously shitty guy. Same thing with Saddam Hussein, right? Horrific record of human rights. But the consequences of taking over or removing that person from power ended up having a lot of consequences for those people. And Noct said, he was so funny. He said, he laughed and he said, it fucking sucks. We're between the wall and the sword. It's like, we have to get freedom at some point or maybe we end up like North Korea and would rather take any other option and have to take any window of opportunity that we get to be free from this regime.

26:04Atrioc:This is super interesting. This is very interesting.

26:06Aiden:It was some of the most insane shit, man. It was the quote about Panama. So one of the guys said, the average American should consider what happened in Panama. I feel that our case is very similar to theirs. Where would Panama be today if the US hadn't intervened in that country? It would probably be another Cuba. So I prefer to take the risk and be a free country rather than continue with this type of government where there is no prosperity. That's why 8 million Venezuelans have emigrated to all parts of the world.

26:37Aiden:And I wanted to ask too, how does this regime impact your life personally? Like how does it actually affect you? The really common things was the escalation in restrictions around free speech and expression, how like that's gotten significantly worse over time. And it was like a tiptoeing thing of like, first they started like getting rid of, or like attacking certain news stations. You couldn't say these types of things. And then all the way to a more recent law passed in like 2023, where they like outright outlawed criticism of the current regime, even though it says in the constitution, they're supposed to have freedom of speech.

27:15Aiden:And that's the law that allows them to lock you up for like 20 to 30 years.

27:19Atrioc:Well, if you don't allow the constitution to have free speech, then it doesn't count anyway. It doesn't count anyway.

27:24Aiden:They figured out a loophole. And they said that has been a build where that's gotten like significantly worse over time. And then a general economic disaster where you're realistically looking at a salary of between 100, I think they said 150 and 300 US dollars a month if you have like a normal job. And then if you're lucky and you're college educated, you might be able to land a job that pays you like 500 to 1 ,000 US dollars a month, but you need some sort of government connection to be able to land that job. My one friend said, quote, you could be fucking Stephen Hawking, but if you don't have a connection, it doesn't matter.

28:06Aiden:And I also wanted them to break down what this remaining support looks like for Maduro, because from what I've heard, there's no huge demonstrations in the streets begging for Maduro to be given back either, right? And I was like, if you could take your best guess at what the percentage breakdown is in the country right now, for the two that live there, what would it be from your neighbors? And they both said between like 85 and 75 % of people want the regime gone, Maduro out, and then the remaining 15 to 25 that support Maduro are very likely to be people that work or tie, their work is tied to the government somehow.

28:47Aiden:They're part of that party. They directly benefit from the current regime being in charge still. And those are the people they said that are like the holdouts.

28:57Aiden:And then the other things or other problems, they mentioned a lot of issues with like power going out, internet going out, issues with like water and gas, and then very specifically gas lines. So I put this in the Discord. My friend sent me the calendar for like the days that you're allowed to fill up your car with gas. There's like a cap on the amount of gas that you can get at the fixed like national price. And it's based off of your like license plate number. So you can only go and fill up like one day a week and then you get your like allotted max amount of gas that you can take. And they said there's these ever since COVID, there's been these massive gas lines to fill your car.

29:33Aiden:So my one friend said what him and his family do when they need gas or they have that day coming up is they go park the car at like 11 p.m. in the gas line. Someone sleeps overnight in the car and then they get filled up at between like 7 and 9 a.m. the next morning. uh and that's like what it takes to get gas so this calendar is saying based on your license

29:57Atrioc:plate number here is the day that you get to go to the gas station yeah that's wild yeah it's pretty crazy uh also wild for the country with the literal most oil reserves in the entire world entire world like uh and then the yeah which to be clear like you have to refine the oil which is what the u.s was doing before they were instrumental in that so that's partially why the u.s sanctions were so destructive is because suddenly this fountain of money that they had couldn't be used.

30:26Aiden:One of the last things I ask them all, because I see a lot of narratives about Venezuela because I think it gets turned into a very left-right issue within the context of young political Americans talking online, right? And people will talk a lot about US sanctions being one of the major reasons the country is in the current place that it is in. The sanctions have made things so much worse than anything the Maduro regime has done. I asked them all point blank. Like, what do you, what do you guys think of that? Like, if I was to tell you, like U S sanctions are doing the majority of the damage here or significant part of this.

31:00Aiden:And, uh, uh, one living in Crocus said, this is completely false. The sanctions are directed at specific government officials, not the country as a whole. Venezuela has been selling oil to whomever it wanted for a long time until a few months ago when the situation became critical. The rulers have the luxury of importing whatever they want anywhere in the world, from luxury cars to clothing and other luxury goods, while the people are suffering from shortages. The sanctions are a terrible excuse for the government's mismanagement. Dude, I'm glad you said that. I agree with that so hard. No other country under sanctions has found it hard to sell oil.

31:32The oil is such a commodity worldwide. You found a way to sell it.

31:37Atrioc:China is openly partnered with them. China will buy your oil. Yeah. Yeah.

31:43Aiden:And then the other, Noct living in the DR said, he almost like stopped me from answering the question and he said it's a complete lie just a lie to cover up what they're doing it's mostly to do like the worst effects mostly have to do with inflation it was going to explode at some point and then he said of course the US sanctions didn't help and then the last person who lives in Caracas said something similar which is that the sanctions don't help but are not nearly the cause nor the core reason for anything that is going on. There's a deep level of corruption, man. I saw a great story. This is from journalists in Venezuela who had to hide because they were, again, under that law about to be arrested.

32:26Maduro announced, hey, everyone who's poor is struggling. We're going to do this clap program where everybody gets Venezuelan homegrown delicious food delivered to your door or whatever. And so he announced that and he's going to fund it with oil money. Well, he puts in charge of it this guy named Alex Saab, who's the guy whose expertise is smuggling oil out of the country. That's the only thing he knows how to do. so that guy basically siphons off the entire clap program money to himself takes a tiny fraction of it doesn't grow it in venezuela goes to mexico buys the cheapest possible goods he can many of which have like lead in the milk poison lumpy you know disgusting then distributes that then bans any social media posts showing how bad it is like that that's the level of corruption they're doing i 100 get it yeah but i do i mean i thought i don't know if you have more you want to say on this but i do want to like bring up the discussion i think it's worth having because i've never disagreed that like if you're from a Venezuelan POV, fuck Maduro, you'll take any help you can get.

33:19But from a US POV, I still think this has all the signs of being, you look back on it and it was stupid. Like from our POV, this is a smart idea or a stupid idea. That's my worry. I want to kind of round out this idea in a sec with that actually.

33:33Aiden:So the last thing I want to mention and this is because i didn't read this anywhere uh else is my one friend in caracas said there's internal speculation at the way the whole thing played out to people basically like theorizing about the uh rodriguez who like remains in power she was the vp that like stepped up into the role so people are suspecting that because she was gone she said in venezuela i'd heard this as well, this part, is that because she was gone in Russia at the time of the attack, that she was like the person who had intentionally coordinated for the timing or this to be the case, like was their insider informant.

34:14Aiden:He said that there's kind of an internal battle within the Maduro government that people know about between her and Diosdado Cabello, who's the minister of the interior of justice and peace and that he is like low key maduro's right hand man internally and within the maduro government there's sort of like two factions of people who are behind him and the influence that he has and then the people that are behind her and the influence that she has and that she was hoping there's speculation within venezuela that she was hoping that he would be killed in the raid and that she would have like a clearer path to like uncontested power after maduro is gone this is a problem in another country and now and you're like we're running it this is now your problem that you are inheriting as a nation yeah like okay if there's power struggles and factionalism that could divide you know what i'm saying like that now the pressure builds to do more intervention do more right exactly that's what i'm saying that's that's my biggest worry on this and the intervention doesn't seem that solid right now like even these people who are happy about it don't really understand what the next steps or the u.s is like next actions are and this kind of how i wanted to tie this together right is i think from an american like political perspective when people talk about these things online and they pick their political side or whatever is that uh they there's this weird idea that you need to like if you're anti-American imperialism that you need to somehow get in the camp of validating Maduro and saying that it wasn't that bad there.

35:55Aiden:I talked to all these guys. It's fucking bad. For it to be so bad, the one thing they universally agree on is that whatever chance there is at gaining freedom, the current situation is so untenable that we need to take whatever we can get to get out of this spot and we're willing to take the risk to do so that's what they all agree on and i think you can i feel like it is okay to have like a multi-faceted opinion of i don't think i'm still anti-interventionist i think there's a broader ethical problem of like if you have the power to do well by people like should you use it or whatever i in the camp i am still in the camp of i do not think the u.s should have unilaterally made this decision and and taken this action because of the risks that it has represented through other similar situations and risks that we've taken in the past right that's where i fall but from a venezuelan pov it doesn't mean that maduro is like a good guy and everything was like secretly cia information as to like why why it's all been a cover up the entire time and venezuela's perfectly fine no things are fucked up dude and if I want people to understand that you can have complex, nuanced opinions about these things.

37:11Aiden:There doesn't just have to be a good guy on one side and a bad guy on the other side. Shit is complicated. And if you just talk, that's why I wanted to talk to people who fucking live there, man, and fucking live this shit. And ask them what they think the benefits and the risks are. And you can still have a complicated feeling and opinion about all this. Do you get what I fucking mean? Yeah, I get you, bro. No, it's happening in Iran right now where it's like there's big protests against the Ayatollah. And there's people who are like not, you know, I'm talking to people who have family in Iran.

37:46And the people are telling me like, well, it's probably a CIA color revolution. And I'm like, bro, the currency has evaporated. People are fucking upset there. They have been deeply upset for the idea that anyone protesting there is part of a, you know, it's like when people say on the flip side, when they're like, any protest against Trump that's funded by Soros. it's the same kind of thing it's like you just straw man any i don't know it does frustrate me i'm glad you said that but okay can we pull this this article up because i you know i want to bring it back a little bit because i i still think you know maduro being gone does not this is after maduro being gone fear grips caracas a new wave of pressure is unleashing venezuela there's no evidence that i'm seeing right now that maduro being gone has changed anything about the regime's total control yeah or like this person's quality of life or i understand that well so so so counterpoint

38:31Atrioc:right it the argument would be yeah that now that we've proven we'll just sneak in there and kidnap your president you need to align with american values which probably the number one value is we want your oil but even then there's i think there's enough outrage about the idea of like this completely authoritarian dictator that that they would have to meet somewhere in the middle between where they have been four five ten fifteen years and let's say what american democratic systems would be. That's the counter argument, right? It's like, it's not like we did not go in, kidnap Maduro and leave.

39:07Atrioc:The idea is like, it's a message saying, we'll do it again. It's Donald Trump in the office. Who fucking knows what happened, right? And like she, Rodriguez is now president going, they might kidnap me randomly, you know? But it sounds like, can you pull this map? What it sounds like to me is that the real implicit threat is, hey, we're going to set up at these gigantic oil fields, which are far from the city. we're going to get all our shit back with Exxon and Chevron and just don't get in the way of the oil. Just keep things running. If you've got a repressed journalist on it, it does not feel like, hey, we're going to really try to build this country up.

39:44Aiden:That's my feeling is like at this current time, there's nothing telling me that the stick that Trump has is going to be used to bring in a new wave of human rights in the country. It's to get the oil access back and you can keep doing what you want to do. We just need the oil. Just don't get in our way. And that's the vibe I get. Yeah. And that makes me feel shitty too because it's like even the most hopeful version of how this ends up, the hopes that these people I'm fucking interviewing have, like that's not going to play out. and I want them to be happy and live fruitful lives and for my one friend not to be able to go home again.

40:29Aiden:You know, he was talking about how if you leave the country for more than a year, if you've been gone for more than a year and then come back, you're automatically under suspicion and of like higher likelihood to be like questioned or imprisoned when you attempt to return. And that's the reason that, one of the reasons that he hasn't gone back is because he's fearful of being detained upon coming back. And this increases in likelihood, like the more like publicly political you are, which he isn't. But he said he doesn't want to take the risk. And he hasn't seen his family in seven years. Oh my God.

41:03Aiden:What an awful situation. Jesus. And it's like, imagine that it's like this happens and you have this glimmer of hope and then it's just nothing changes. I don't know what'll happen, right? But it's the predictions episode and we have to put something together. Yeah.

41:18Atrioc:that is uh i was gonna hear your prediction okay what uh at the risk of sounding callous how do we turn this into a prediction i mean i think one that i was debating which i think is interesting is does the u.s either force a new democratic election to say the regime has to elect somebody or do military troops enter venezuela because i think the easy thing right now is for the trump administration to go we're in and we're out oil's gonna flow again and uh and we've you know we've stopped the dictator blah blah blah and that that's that's an outcome i guess and another would be like they're still not playing ball so we're going to send in just a few troops and then six months after just a few more right and that's happened in the past so like yeah so okay i don't know that's a prediction my prediction is uh no troops sent in the current government stays they

42:08Aiden:live under the stick we get access to oil but nothing changes that's my i think that's the Most likely. I have a similar prediction, except that the oil is much, much more difficult. They realize how expensive it is. Yeah. Companies don't want to invest as much as they want. There's a risk that at any moment it could get seized again. Or there's a problem where things backsliding. And I think there's going to be like guerrilla groups attacking the production of oil that make it impossible. So my prediction is going to be, I think it's a bust. That's my guess. I do. Okay. Corollary prediction. I did want to ask you guys about because in the press conference, there were Trump was asked, Rubio was asked so what about uh what about Cuba what about Colombia and for Colombia Trump said you better watch his ass and for Cuba Rubio said if I was a politician in Cuba I'd be pretty rude right now oh my god so the idea is like is this is this phase one do you guys is there a prediction here that oh is this phase one on a uh a lat am I mean look he did say Don Rowe doctrine why don't we roll this in there's another there's a card in here it says Greenland on it okay let's bring it up so why don't we why don't we just roll this kind of into into one prediction do we do we kidnap another leader do we think the u.s is substantially intervenes in another country like like this year like it's something on this level where like we attempt to like take over greenland or or arrest like the president of cuba or something like that do we think that's

43:32Atrioc:going to happen yes you think we will i dude i would have said i'm right us you don't have to agree we could we could okay let's see how we feel about it okay go ahead my case okay i you know from from the beginning of trump i said there's a there's a risk on on greenland because he talks about it in a more concrete way in recent days steven miller and trump have both been out there saying verbatim we have the right and the ability to use military force on greenland to make

44:05Aiden:it part of america steven miller hops on cnn he starts slanging dick says that we're says that

44:11Atrioc:we're gonna do it his wife's making jokes about it on twitter so how do the how does rights work i so you can just have the right to something what exactly qualifies here's the question i actually wasn't they asked steven miller can you rule out that u.s is going to take greenland by force He says, quote, Greenland should be part of the U.S. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The U.S. is the real power of NATO. Nobody's going to fight the U.S. militarily over Greenland. And he goes on. And they're being so specific. And at some point, you have to be like, when someone tells you exactly what they're going to do over and over, you have to take their word at it.

44:46I am of the opinion, as crazy as it sounds, because this is the biggest thing on our list. We have a lot of things. if this happened that is the end of nato that is a like a military kind of standoff between europe and america i mean it is a crazy thing and i think it is it's shocking to say but i feel like it's

45:05Atrioc:more than 50 which is do you mean greenland specifically or any country that we sort of like take another leadership or if i'm saying any country i feel like i take those odds any day but greenland specifically i think it's over 50 so i would take that i'm going to say this for year which is a here's what i said let's put that as one of our predictions because i would love for that to be wrong and we donate to charity right each we're going to come up with 10 predictions today each one we get wrong at the end of the year we'll donate 5 000 to charity per each one and i will feel great about losing this one i would love to feel great i would love to lose i agree oh this is i mean you know this is a truly crazy thing this would be a while yeah but but i just can't like they're not even being like a maybe everyone in the administration is now saying like we deserve greenland we have the right to it it is in our sphere of influence and they're adding the they're like russia and china national security threat like if they're setting all the ground to do it so i can't be like well it's not gonna i mean it's gonna be crazy that's that i feel like i'd be foolish to say no i mean look the legitimate the likelihood went way up after we kidnapped the president of Venezuela.

46:10Atrioc:To be clear, we are not at war with Venezuela and we sent troops in and just took the president. So I don't know. That's my honest, we're doing this early. I guess I'm glad, but this is the scariest thing to me because there's like this US, NATO, Europe friendship alliance that obviously has been a little strained under Trump, but it's like, has kind of underpinned the security apparatus of the world post-World War II. I feel like this is the, this happens at the end of that in a concrete way. I don't know. It's crazy. It's like.

46:42Aiden:Yeah. I mean, I kind of agree with you. With this, it's not just this. It's a bunch of events over the past few years, right? But it does, I've been having this feeling of we're spiraling towards a new world order that is primarily enforced by like these three powers, like acts of aggression. And you can say that it was always that way or something, but I think there's a clear escalation in the past two to three years. I mean, you can just look at how different even Iraq was to this, where, even if it's pretense, right? The US went and had everyone agree, except for France, who stood out, but they had this coalition, they had this ostensible reason, which was WMDs, they had to sell to the public, they had to go to Congress, Congress approved it.

47:28This time, we just got rid of, we got rid of the Congress part, we got rid of the allies part, and we got rid of the pretense.

47:33Aiden:Yeah, and now Stephen Miller just swags out on CNN. Like I was just saying that, yeah, we can do it. So I don't know. I'm going to shuffle these up and go to a different one because we talked a lot about geopolitics and I want to get a different prediction. Maybe we'll get the faker one. We'd love that one. Oh my God. Okay. Is it lighter? Is it lighter? See, counter-strike two markets. Well, well, boys, we want to throw down five K on this. Let me, I hate to be the two-time expert. I hate to be the two-time expert. uh okay okay i'm gonna wait this is gonna go down uh 100 this is the lemonade stand official because what ended up happening what the cs market like exploded as as in down it exploded down um and then there was a rebound also as i predicted yeah but then it just the rebound leveled out again and we're just back in this gully where it sat for like the past couple months and i do not think anything is going to significantly change that within the next year.

48:35Aiden:I don't think this market is going to increase a bunch. I think it's basically going to stay at the bottom of this gully for the rest of the year.

48:43Atrioc:Do we want to peg it to something and just say your CSGO portfolio is down by the end of the year? Ooh, like if we just look at literally mine. Which is funny because that way if it goes down, you also have to pay$5 ,000 in charity and we just pick you while you're down. Okay, that's great. If it goes up, I'll have to pay $5 ,000. That's fine. I'll sell it with a knife. I'll sell it with a knife. I'll sell it with a knife for charity. All right. Yeah, I'm saying it'll go down. All right. All right, we've got three. Are we in agreement? Because I think we had two or three on Venezuela. Our prediction is US troops are not going to enter Venezuela, boots on the ground, but the current regime does not change.

49:16Aiden:And we back out on the oil as well. Is that what you're saying? I think that's the broad prediction.

49:21Atrioc:Okay. That's the broad one. The oil stuff is TBD. Okay. Okay.

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50:47Atrioc:Valid through 4A. Wall supplies last. Selection varies by location. Soil offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Okay, next topic card, right? We can, some long or short, all right? Just a broad topic. 2026, you got any predictions around China? Do you have anything on China? I think they're good. You think they're good?

51:07Aiden:I think that they make, I think they will send me a Xiaomi SUV. Dude, God willing. God willing. We're planning to visit China this year. That's as part of our Patreon goal. Ooh, do we get arrested?

51:19Atrioc:Do we get arrested on our China trip? Here's my prediction. Which as a reminder is in about two months.

51:23Aiden:when we get there the border security is going to search Atriac's phone and they're going to see all of the videos he's made about how Taiwan is its own independent nation and he's never going to come back that's what's going to happen put that one down okay yes or no then one question for China is the big one of the year people have been saying with this Venezuela thing and with this Don Roe doctrine in the new order that perhaps China will finally or get off the pot, the move on Taiwan. Oh, God. Is there a yes or no on that? My prediction, I'll vote for no. I think it's probably not going to happen this year just because you can always take the bet against it.

52:03They just don't seem to be. I'm going to go now as well. But I would be no. Okay. Let's just say no. Let's say China will not. China will not make a military move on Taiwan this year. Again, in my heart of hearts, you got to trust people when they say things, they're going to do something eventually because they say it every year. Xi Jinping's opening address this year was we will reunify Taiwan. But he's done that a lot of years in a row.

52:23Aiden:know feels like it's just feels like more of a 2028 thing. You know, don't you get that? He's waiting for an election. Uh, yeah. Okay. Uh, prediction for I'm changing cause I wrote Chinese TSA

52:36Atrioc:does an atrial cavity search. I will change it to you. Make it a two parter. Make it a two part.

52:40Aiden:If either thing happens, the prediction either one will go to charity. Okay. Um, here I'm, I'm gonna do a reshuffle here. Cause I already know the next one. I want it to be random. Boom. Give me AI markets i want to talk about m oh that was actually the next one let's just do that that was actually the next one oh and then i moved it ai markets okay i'm gonna say a little counter

53:01Atrioc:point shocker i don't think the ai bubble is gonna pop okay no i'm interested but here here's some reasons why i think that and i actually have been listening to a lot of different figures across tech talk about this yeah i think there's a general consensus that there is one a weird monetary bubble of ai and tech companies feeding money to each other right these little circle jerk type things. I think there's definitely the idea that a lot of companies are overvalued and there's a lot of VC money that's overvaluing things. For example, one of the executives, Mira Murati from OpenAI, she leaves, she says, I'm going to start my own AI company and immediately raises a billion dollars in capital or like has a billion dollar valuation.

53:36No product, no. Yeah.

53:37Atrioc:Right. And so there's clearly signs of a bubble. And I would argue that we are seeing the, I don't know, shimmer of a bubble around LLMs, which is that the average person listening, even if you're not technically inclined you have seen ai chat bots jammed into fucking everything right microsoft is trying to get you to use ai in in word or whatever did you see microsoft office renamed themselves to microsoft copilot assistant 365 or whatever yeah as this just happened they're changing the name of the office 365 to cope just crazy that's like the one of the most impactful softwares of all time desperate yeah microsoft office is just an unbelievable money printer for decades now and they're so you know they're trying to jam it everything most people's experience of customer service across any company has gotten worse um in general there's just this feeling of like companies aren't making money so a couple counterpoints to this general argument i'll see you guys think one with large oh and then a critical thing is many ai researchers and ai companies including people like demis hasabas who leads deep mind and ilia suits cover who are two of the most, the people you really trust, right?

54:45Atrioc:They're not just salesmen. Both of them are like, we are seeing diminishing returns. This idea of we just spend more money every year on CapEx for AI, it's not getting the same amount of return. You're not going to see exponential change or growth anymore. And we need to kind of do a couple of years of fundamental research to really build intelligence. These things aren't getting smarter in the ways that we need. So all that's very valid. But in terms of like the bubble popping, the main companies that are benefiting from this right now are the mag seven giant tech companies, right? And they are not only profitable, they're more profitable than ever, right?

55:18Atrioc:This is not like the 2000 tech bubble or even the 2008 housing bubble where people were buying houses they couldn't afford. Google stock price is higher than ever, and they are making more money than ever. Same with Microsoft, same with meta. So all of the, I mean, Nvidia is kind of their own thing, obviously, but obviously making a shit ton of money. So even if let's say the bubble pops and the world collectively goes, the AI build out is not worth it. Those companies are fine. And they've said as much. Demis did an interview like a few weeks ago where he's basically like, look, we're in a position where if the hype around LLMs dies down, we have all of the Google products, right?

55:54Atrioc:Like we can enhance them with AI. And if you think about all the places where people are really benefiting from AI, for example, Microsoft, I hear almost nobody talk positively about Microsoft's AI products. Even if all of those fail they will just keep being microsoft and make a billion fucking dollars prediction google will collapse in 60 days no google is i i think they're such a strong push and then a couple other very quick things um robotics is continuing to accelerate look really exciting science and medicine is accelerating and looking really really exciting self-driving cars is going to be a huge deal and i could think we'll continue to be really really successful so even if you hate chatbots.

56:34Atrioc:And in particular, I think one of the stupidest things is image generation and video generation song generation, like meta meta Instagram reels is just full of AI slot. Now it's ridiculous. So I don't think anybody's stoked about that, but I think the broader ecosystem, both the company revenues and the amount of products that are still really advancing in ways that are meaningful to people, including coding is just continuing to be fucking incredible. and even chatbots, there's an argument that the reason it feels so shitty to use these AI products that everybody's jamming on you is because right now they're just slapping them on top of their existing products.

57:10Atrioc:Once there's deeper integration, that's more specialized for fields. That's actually going to be impactful. So I'm not going to sit here and say with 100 % certain that the bubble will not pop, but I actually think the odds are more that it will not pop. I think you might see certain companies fail of like vc stop funding individual companies that clearly didn't deserve a billion dollars or specifically meta who is not looking very good i don't think in terms of their ai products are fucking slop like it's just it's slop products and so they might pop i got a 26 year old in charge that people don't seem to like yeah and you know lacun just laughed who was like the longtime researcher and he's on the way talk some shit he was like the guy now in charge of meta AI is inexperienced, doesn't know research.

57:51Aiden:Wait, sorry, he's talking shit on the kid that got bought out of that company, right? He's like a, I don't know how old he is, like 50 something, 60 something. Yeah. He's like a 30 year AI researcher with deep, deep knowledge and they put him under a 26 year old with no real -

58:04Atrioc:Yeah, if you pull this up. Quick story, because it's funny, a little drama. Meta for a long time had Jan LeCun, who is this phenomenally influential, he won the Turing Award. Yeah, 65 years old. 65 and he's done all this research for AI. is one of the godfathers of AI. He's been in charge of Meta. Meta wants to accelerate. So they bring in Andrew. Oh my God, what's his last name? I'm blanking. His name's not Andrew. You just threw me off. I knew his name and then you just said Andrew. Scale AI leader. Alexander Wang. Alexander, there we go. Alexander Wang. So Alexander Wang, who leads Scale AI, was acquired by Meta.

58:38Atrioc:And the idea was like, here's this young upstart who's crushing it. Alexander Wang is going to lead everything. Puts Alexander Wang, this 26-year-old, who by the way, his entire, he didn't do research. They just labeled data. He's 29. 29 now. I think he was, well, he was younger. He's like 27 when they got it. Word of God. It was like a really insane. And yeah, you're saying he didn't do research. His company. Labeled data. Labeled data. Which is. Which is useful, but not. Yeah, it's not. It's not foundational. So Mark Zuckerberg hired this guy for tens of what? 16 billion. I forget what they paid for scale AI.

59:09Atrioc:And brought him in and put him above Yan Lacoon. Who, there's criticism about Yan, to be clear. But Yan finally just left. yeah like a few weeks ago people have been leaving people have been leaving and he basically now that he's out is just talking shit about alexander and saying this kid is inexperienced he does not know what he's doing he doesn't know the research side of things he doesn't know how to prep things for research so just talking tons of shit i think meta is not looking real good but broadly as a market i don't think it's going to collapse in the way that people are fantasizing about because there's many unlikable things about ai that are really shoved in your face what do you

59:44Aiden:think i pitch something here yeah i agree with i agree with i think pretty much everything you said i want to toss another variable in okay that assures me that i think it will not okay damn all right uh trump uh the the fed chair is going to change this year and they're going to they're going to lower the rates and i do not think in the first year of rock bottom interest rates are we going to experience a stock market crash i think i think i think the gravy train is going to keep going for a little bit.

1:00:14Atrioc:We could peg this to something. The average mag seven stock price is higher at the end of 2026 than at the beginning. Well, let me, let me talk through your points real quick. Cause I think it's really interesting. And I had a take on this too. Overall, I do agree with almost everything you said, especially a line you had in the middle about robotics and energy. One of my themes I was going to say is like, this is the year of the real in that. I think we're seeing a shift from, um, a lot of investment in the digital side to a lot investment in the energy side yes commodity side and the production side like that of course is seeing like a huge boom to to support this You mentioned things about revenues.

1:00:50My one concern, and I don't know, nobody fucking knows when a bubble's going to pop. I think a lot of people are noticing that this feels bubbly. There's like a little bit over excess. But we don't know. It could go on for fucking ever. I don't know. What I want to say is at the heart, the deep, disgusting, dark heart of this thing is OpenAI. The problem is OpenAI doesn't have the money. Google has the money. Media has the money. Meta has the money. Microsoft has the money. OpenAI has no fucking money. and they've made trillions in promises. And so that, if it were to fail, if there were to be a problem, if there would be a rot that spreads and causes a short-term dot-com style bubble, but still long-term AI buildup, which is what I believe, it's going to come from OpenAI.

1:01:29I don't know if it'll happen, but I think that was one thing I didn't think was mentioned. Again, all these circular things come back, like Oracle has the big buildup. They're making real money, but that real money comes back to OpenAI's demand. It's giving them$500 billion to build something.

1:01:42Atrioc:Yeah, so that's a fair point. I think you could say, So again, the argument of Google or Microsoft making this money underneath the AI craze doesn't apply to OpenAI and Anthropic. These are the two most notable labs. And that's, I think, an argument. But I still feel even if OpenAI ends up struggling this year, I think the broader ecosystem of AI is going to keep accelerating dramatically. And that would be, again, a single point of failure, but not a system-wide collapse. I don't think they're underpinning the whole broader market. I guess it's the big question. If you really look at the web of connections, a lot of things come back to OpenAI, and the amount of money is staggering.

1:02:19So I don't know.

1:02:20Atrioc:But that's what I would have said until this year, where now Google is building these massive data centers, where Microsoft's building data, or Meta's building data centers, right? They're not, I don't think, the linchpin in the way they were three years ago. And I think if you just suddenly pulled OpenAI out of the market, people would flood to these other chatbots. Companies would keep building. I don't think...

1:02:41Aiden:I'm naive, but I'm completely on the same page as you. I kind of got the idea that OpenAI is just not as important of a figure in the space anymore for what they have to offer. Because people can turn to so many... The infrastructure that they're building just exists under so many other companies now. From a consumer POV, sure, they'll switch. What I'm saying is more financially, a lot like, for example, Oracle stock doubled on the announcement they're going to be building a lot of data centers. They have 500 billion new things. All that money is a promise from OpenAI. If OpenAI admits, hey, we can't pay these bills.

1:03:14We have a lot of these bills. Then not only does their financial value plummet, but the financial value of many, many, many other entities that have all been baked on this demand, including NVIDIA, including who have all baked on this data center demand from OpenAI. I think it takes a hit. That is - A hit, but other - I don't think it's - If everybody else is performing well,

1:03:36Aiden:like if a company like Google is still in good shape with all of these promises of like the AI technology that they're working on. Isn't there a large incentive for one of these other players like Google to just buy open AI and it's, or what it has on the way down? Yeah, but for pennies on the dot. This is what happened to the dot-com is what I'm saying. Like, I guess what we're talking about is like, the internet did not lose users or slow down at all during the dot-com. It grew every single year, but the financial stuff got way ahead. I still feel like that could have happened here with, especially with open AI.

1:04:05Now, I don't know. Now, one more thing I want to say though, because you mentioned data centers, is like we're planning for this massive data center build out, but they're already right now hitting the constraints of energy. We have two data centers in Santa Clara that they built out or they're building out and they can't turn on. They don't have the energy for it. And so I think we're going to realize, oh, we threw a ton of money at data center building out and we have not begun the larger, slower, and more difficult process of acquiring the rare earth metals and the energy to get this shit going.

1:04:33And that's going to take more years. And I think, again, Wall Street, price is for perfection. They want the price for like everything going smoothly up into the right. And I think it's going to be more jagged. So I don't know. I'm not saying bubble burst, but I am saying, uh, you know, soon, maybe not this year, but this stuff becomes real. Like this is like a, I think the numbers don't add up to reality and they will have to, it will have to map out.

1:04:54Aiden:So, so what's it, we have to come to a prediction here. I think I'm down to go with this prediction. But first of all, it's charity. And it's like, I think overall, I agree with what you're saying, but I, I just wanted to note. Yeah.

1:05:03Atrioc:And I would agree data center build out is probably the constraint that might hit, right? Because if that, if there is something major that stops data center growth from happening in the way people are expecting that halts everything. But you know, for example, Microsoft was going to purchase additional data center stuff and held out. So I listened to Sotny Nadella interview where he talked about like, we just were happy with the amount we're building out. We're building out a crazy amount of data centers. We're still going crazy. We're just not going as crazy as some of the other folks. And I think if you pull one or two players out of this system and they're plucked out, even though that would hit Oracle and NVIDIA somewhat hard because they're selling the shovels here, the other tech companies would almost certainly step in.

1:05:42Atrioc:Maybe not. We'll find out. I don't know either. I think it's a fair prediction. I just, yeah, with the amount of leaders that I've listened to taking them at their word and taking the general analysis of the ecosystem, I think there is less fragility now than there was a year or two ago. And I could be totally wrong. So mag seven prices, if you pull this up, Perry, mag seven prices by the end of 2026 are higher on average than they were at the beginning. I think that's a safe bet. Hey, if it crashes, so be it. I'm like, you got to imagine even if like, you know, I'd be a little worried on Tesla here, but I think, yeah, I think Google, these are, these are not all built equal.

1:06:26Atrioc:I don't think, but that's why I'm saying average. Yeah, I guess fair. Cool. Okay, we have a two-parter. You guys have any predictions on, we've done this before, Russia, Ukraine.

1:06:39Aiden:I actually do have a prediction this time. Okay, throw it at me. Okay, I think, because we predicted this on the test episode we did last year, the second test episode we did. You were so naive. And you both were so fucking stupid. And who was right? But Eamon Gaiman. Eamon Gaiman. I have to rewatch this episode because I feel like you were not,

1:06:59Atrioc:You're like reframing history. Nope. You're also implying we were very confident. It was like, Ukraine is for sure.

1:07:06Aiden:And I said, you dumb idiots. I don't think you did this.

1:07:11Atrioc:But I think - You almost walked out. You said, I'm not doing this podcast.

1:07:14Aiden:You guys have no idea what you're talking about with Ukraine. My general impression of the war in Ukraine is that as we have removed support from the American side, the situation grows more and more dire for the Ukrainians. And Europe is in a situation where their only real piece of leverage to get Russia to negotiate on anything is their ability to actually enter the conflict and provide actual troops or military force in a way that they seem unwilling to do. And I think they will continue to be unwilling to do. And I think this means my bold prediction this year is that the war will come to an end, but with none of the territorial concessions that Ukraine, or sorry, the opposite of concessions, Ukraine will have to concede all of the territory that Russia is asking for.

1:08:11Aiden:That is my unfortunate prediction because I think it's going to run out of, we're entering an era where I have no faith in like the US like taking a stance or like backing one side of the conflict anymore. And I don't think -

1:08:25Atrioc:You don't think we'll kidnap Putin?

1:08:26Aiden:I don't think we'll do that. And I don't think Russia will back down. And I don't think Europe will play the one card that they need to, that seems to be necessary to get Russia to like move the needle at all. And I'm not saying that, I'm not here to tell you, Aiming Gaming is not here to tell you that would be worth it. I'm not, this is just what I think is going to happen. I think the war is going to come to an end and it's going to be, Ukraine is not going to get what they want.

1:08:54Atrioc:I would hope it's clear at this point that these are not wishes on our part. One of our predictions is US takes Greenland. I don't think you need to preface it too hard. Yeah, yeah. I got nothing on this. I want to talk about Russia real quick. Yeah. In that I think you might be right in that after the fucking slog and horrible aspect of this war, Russia might eke out the Donbass and a few areas they've taken. Yeah. They might call it there and Putin will declare it as a win. And what I do want to say, if you like zoom out a bit on Russia, and I'm hearing this from voices inside Russia who are posting like anonymously on telegram, but you're seeing them translated, including a billionaire.

1:09:34This has been a disaster, like economically, politically, and because Russia has focused all of its attention and resources on this endless multi-year war, all of their overseas network has slowly but surely been knocked out, including Assad in Syria, including their connections in Venezuela. Again, Russia just, away from the mic, this is funny, Russia just loaned a lot of money to Venezuela that is now almost certainly not getting paid back. It was like to Maduro was part of the thing. Or they've given weapons that is like, probably might end up seized or in the hands of Ukrainians at the end of the day.

1:10:10Like this has been a bad, like Russia has slowly but surely let a ton of things slip. Inflation is still high there. they've burnt through all their gold reserves in their central bank like it is it is bad and the consequences will continue to be felt whether or not they putin can find what he calls a win here now i think the ideal world will be ukraine gives no ground this has been been unlawfully invaded but in the reality is even if russia gets what they call a win it's there is no win here their entire overseas network is falling apart their connections in iran are falling apart like uh i

1:10:44Aiden:I did watch a really interesting video. This was from like a few weeks ago. I think it was BBC did like on the street interviews in Moscow with just like normal Russian people. And it was like, what do you hope for the coming year? Like, what's your hope for Russia and hope for yourselves? And they get a ton of people who just say they want the war to be over. And if they don't say it in explicit terms, they're like, would really love for there to be peace. Yeah, peace isn't an anti-Pudin thing. People don't want to like dive into the details, but they all, almost every single person in the video is like, I really hope the war is just done.

1:11:23Aiden:And I think it's a reminder. It's same thing with like Venezuela. Same thing with, I think the average American perspective on us removing Maduro and choosing to intervene there. The average person perspective of anybody who lives in these places is so drastically different from like the geopolitical game that their leaders play. I mean, everybody wants stability and peace. Well, like every average person. So I don't know if there's a prediction there, except my long-term prediction is that Russia is about to have an incredibly rough five years. I mean, I think it's gonna be bad. I think they've created deep, deep costs that are only beginning to feel the payment of that are gonna make life in Russia really bad.

1:12:04Now, I, at the beginning of last year, I'll just fully admit, I would have bet 100 % that war ended by the end of the year. I was dead wrong. I don't know. This is like a real slog. What changed for you with that opinion? I mean, obviously it just kept going.

1:12:19Atrioc:But is there a reason that you substantially feel different about this next year? That you're like, oh, it just needed another 12 months. No, that's what I'm saying is I don't know if it ends this year. I can't possibly.

1:12:30Aiden:I need to reread the thing that somebody sent me. But they did this like little media analysis for me and then also talked a lot about like Russian sentiment behind the war and Russian outlook on like, a collective Russian outlook on persisting and Russians getting through times of suffering and all this. And I'm summarizing it really poorly, but their message changed a little bit of my POV because from my understanding, I agree with the things that you're saying that the situation in Russia is also bad because of how long that they have been in this conflict and it will continue to be bad after it's over for a while, also because of that.

1:13:08Aiden:But they have the ability to just outlast the other party that is increasingly on this island. And because of our government and the governments of Europe, I feel like time is going to be out for Ukraine faster. Like that's where my feeling comes from. Yeah, Ukraine is a smaller country with fewer people and less money. And like, and U S has pulled support and Europe is having trouble scrounging together the money because to increase their military spending requires them to cut some of the social state's spending, which is like horror. They take on debt and it's being a problem in Europe. And so, but you know, Europe is trying to do a defense build out.

1:13:46There's a world, you know, I don't know. I, I, some things I don't, this one, I really feel a question mark on. I am less confident than I ever have been on whether this ends this year or not. So you guys can, we can say it ends

1:13:56Aiden:this year and that's the, that's the, no, we can, you could, what, where, where do you kind of land?

1:14:00Atrioc:like if you had to tie break this because i land on that i am deeply unqualified to say oh i'm incredibly unqualified i know but it's like i even compared to the lack of qualification for every subject we cover i i really at no point have even watched the bbc documentary so i mean we get just for to throw it out there for fun we could say ukraine war ends but man i don't know well we could do that and then if we're wrong money goes to charity you know i'm saying what's It would be nice for the war to end. But if all three of us are like, we have no fucking idea on this one.

1:14:35Aiden:We should do the option that we don't have to double up on the bad thing. Does that make sense? So we want the Ukraine war. Wait, fuck. We want it to end, but on good terms. Yeah, the terms matter. Because it's also bad if it ends in a certain way. Shit.

1:14:50Atrioc:Is there another third party angle that we can, that it's a little more distinct. It's not just war ending or not.

1:14:57Aiden:What if one of the predictions was like Putin just chills out? What if Putin just gets real chill? A real losing prediction.

1:15:06Atrioc:Okay, war ends in 2026. We're putting it. All right, let's do it. Ukraine war ends 2026. Okay, we've got six out of 10 predictions. We might need to move a little bit faster. Quick, easy one for you. Taylor Swift gets married this year. Taylor Swift gets married this year? Isn't that a yes?

1:15:20Aiden:Oh, they're breaking up.

1:15:22Atrioc:And it's in Europe. That's my prediction. I'll go with you. You get two votes, right? You outvote me. You outvote me.

1:15:30Aiden:You heard it here first. They're breaking a table. Wait, there's no fucking way she gets married in Europe. I'm sorry. No, they're going to do some sort of like... Travis Kelsey is going to eat a piece of chocolate and die. You watch the yard and you get... It's got to be an all-American thing.

1:15:45Atrioc:No, because they're going to... Jeff Bezos goes and gets married. He rents out Venice, right? I think if they're like, what's the most amazing destination? They're going to make it a thing, right? They want it to be an event. You're going to go to Minnesota? No, no, no. They're not going to go to Kansas City and get married. They're going to run themselves on the flag. They're not going to go to Los Angeles. They're going to rent out an entire venue. You're the expert on this one all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, this is where I can get it. 26. In Europe. Okay, cool. It's so funny if they get married, but not in Europe.

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1:17:45Atrioc:So there's two angles that I thought would be interesting. quick update on self-driving cars and where we're at there are three major players right now at least in america there are chinese companies that are also doing this but they're not being allowed outside of china right now so hard to measure you got waymo you got tesla and you got zoeks new player on the market zoeks zoeks is silly uh zoeks vehicle i can i can show they look like a ladybug uh if you pull my screen up perry look at zoeks um so zoeks is the smallest but their whole thing is from the get-go they are making driverless cars that don't have a passenger you know seat to take over there's no wheel it's just there this is running right now live in uh vegas and in san francisco that being said there are 50 of them total it is free it is owned by amazon and they're basically right now trying to prove like yes we can do this you're not going to die if you get into a zoox mobile right so they're by far the smallest but they're they're really pushing for the like our our you know vibes is driverless from the get-go the next one you got is cyber cab by or cyber taxi um by tesla so tesla still got people in these uh yes so there's two products by tesla one of which we covered earlier this year that's robo taxi so robo taxi if it's loads up tesla's i'm changing my mind about the ai bubble popping tesla's website website sorry the two products are cyber taxi and robo tax cyber cab cyber tax jesus aiden keep up aiden don't correct me i'm the expert on this sorry when we're talking about sorry we're talking about taylor swift um okay so robo taxi is tesla's existing cars out on the road trying to do what waymo is doing where the car is driving around on its own this is currently in Austin in San Francisco.

1:19:33Atrioc:We talked about it this year, how they launched this finally, but they still have a passing, like a guy, a safety driver in the car driving it. So they need humans to supervise it. You actually have to get a permit in both of these states in order to have a car on the road without a driver. Tesla does not have this. Their big gamble though, as we talked about earlier this year, is Cyber Cab, where that's a car that is from the get-go meant for this. According to Elon Musk, it's going to come out in a couple months. he's never been wrong on timelines that could be a funny one of whether we think cyber cab will actually launch this year could be does cyber cab serve a single customer this year um but they have twofold so one is robo taxi which is existing teslas next is this new product line they are doing okay so you know they have about 1500 cars on the road at least in california is what they've registered um is what we're aware of they don't give a ton of data about what's going on but again, they're sort of testing the waters.

1:20:27Atrioc:The third and by far the most successful is Waymo. And also Waymo safety stuff is incredible. Waymo is crushing. They are fully driverless. It is a, I believe a Jaguar, right? That has been retrofitted with all this stuff. And as we talked about a bunch in the past, they're doing great. Not only are they doing great, they have a lot of data that shows just how safe their cars are. Some of the safety stuff that they have is like, it's like 10 times less crashes than a human driver. I just want to remind people that even though this is going to introduce a lot of chaos in our society about people getting laid off and all that, it's not a strict good.

1:21:02Atrioc:One of the amazing goods that is going to happen from this as it continues is a massive reduction in the amount of death and human suffering and damage from car crashes. These things are way, way better than human drivers on average. So with all that said waymo has a couple thousand they're in six cities right now they're going to expand to 12 new ones pretty soon and they're laying the groundwork for 12 more including in tokyo and in london so they are starting to expand outside of the u.s as well they did i think the number off the top of my head is uh 14 million i believe yeah 14 million rides this year and they're trying to get to 52 million next year a million a month so they are doing incredibly well waymo a million a week.

1:21:44Atrioc:Sorry, a million a week. Yes, a million a week. So that's their goal. So they tripled from 2024 to 2025. They're trying to, you know, roughly triple again, triple to 4X. So they're doing incredibly. Again, the caveat, while it's easy to just go, well, Waymo wins. That's the end of the conversation. These things are much more expensive than a Tesla. We don't know exactly how much it costs, but they're made entirely by Google Waymo. They're made for this. They're made with way more hardware on it. So the estimation is it's like a hundred K plus to make one of these cars. Whereas a Tesla, you know, Tesla is making them for like 20 K or whatever the actual production costs are.

1:22:22Atrioc:So Tesla is betting that if they can get out there and just get their fleet approved instantly, every Tesla on the road goes and this thing just skyrockets instantly. Waymo can't, uh, let's say expand in the same way. So with all that being said, really, really interesting race to see between these three. Uh, what is going to be particularly funny is seeing what happens with Tesla because it's just very wacky and Elon says crazy things all the time. Elon Musk in 2024, Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin. This is not a far off mythical situation. It's in five, six months away.

1:22:54Didn't happen. It did not happen. Said we'd be on Mars in 25. Didn't happen. I believe half the population in the US will be covered by Tesla's robot taxi by the end of the year. He said in January. Of last year? Which is like immediately insane. Well, hold on.

1:23:07Atrioc:Is most of the country in Austin and San Francisco? I haven't checked recently. However, that being said, I agree with everything. I heard they're fleeing. Most of the fucking liberals. I heard they're fleeing from California to Austin. Those are the two places people live. All right, I have a potential prediction. Do we think that Tesla actually releases Cyber Cab, the fully designed for driverless car? They release it this year, and a human being is able to pay for, come on, you guys don't want to believe. I'm Mark Baum in the room. Zero. I don't believe in it at all. However, I think the takeaway from your theme there was like, this is a year of self-driving.

1:23:42And I fully agree with you, man. I think I heard someone describe it as, you know, in the early days of the mobile, like 3G, 4G build-out, there would be some cities that had it and there was more. And then these nodes started to change consumer behavior really quickly. And it took off like, it's like a vertical hockey stick. It feels like the mobile build-out, but for self-driving in that everywhere that gets Waymo, people really like it. Yeah. The people promote these to other word of mouth. They like using them. They think the cost is worth it in their range of wanting to do it. It's only going to get, I mean, not only going to get cheaper, but like right now it's actually more expensive than it could be at scale.

1:24:21And they're hitting a lot of major cities at once this year. Like you said, I think the word of mouth spreads. I think more cities start to feel like, oh, we're behind. We have to move up on our regulations. I am with you. I have the same thing in mind. I think it's the year of cell driving. I think it's going to be a massive buildup. I don't know who wins, but it does feel like way to me, like light years ahead.

1:24:41Atrioc:Yeah. So quick, quick counter. Cause I, I looked into this a little bit. It's hard to know how Tesla is doing because they don't release much information there. They literally don't have PR of any kind. Their only PR or marketing is Elon Musk tweeting randomly. Right. So, and he just says like false things all the time. So I looked though, cause you have an iOS app to download for the robo taxi with Tesla and the reviews are actually very good and so the the general themes people are like this is basically as good as a waymo maybe it feels like slightly a little more shaky but all of the reviews are like this is better than an uber or a lift it's convenient it's fast it feels safer um the argument is whether it's as good as waymo but whether it's better than the status quo everybody's like yes there's a few bad reviews where like it took way too long to show up and and that's growing pains i think that'll probably go away.

1:25:31Atrioc:And then one of the interesting things that I'm, oh, it's fucking so cheap. Apparently it's like 20 % of a Waymo cost. So already right now, if you try to buy a Waymo or sorry, an Uber or Lyft, it's whatever price. Waymo is cheaper than that. They're potentially subsidizing it somewhat. Is that your, my understanding for Tesla is they are subsidizing. It's way cheaper than the, like they have a human driver in there. There's no, there's no way they're making any money on. Correct. Yeah. Correct. The Tesla one. I think the Waymo one is around cost, but I thought it was in most areas a little more expensive still than the uber maybe i'm wrong i think the yeah i guess it probably depends the main point though tesla is offering it for way cheaper and again the reason they might be able to do that sustainably long term is because the cars are cheaper right again they are making a piece of hardware that just has less stuff in it and so in theory if they can get to market this year and get these things out driverless and expand rapidly and they can just undercut waymo even if people like waymo more but it's like well it's 70 only 70 % of the price to go with Tesla.

1:26:29Atrioc:That is a legitimate potential strategy for them. So that's super interesting. This year Waymo's going to win for sure. You guys don't want to bet on CyberCab? Come on. We're just such a adventure. I want to bet on like pro self-driving. I don't know. What should the prediction actually be? Alright, here's what I'm going to propose because none of us think CyberCab is going to treat people. Oh my God, I fucking blanked. Oh. The prediction is do we think Tesla will get the permit to do driverless vehicles in 2026? it's pretty likely. Yeah, I think they will. Okay. I mean, we could do the Cyber Cab thing.

1:27:02We all agree. We don't think it's going to do it. Cyber Cab does not drive by the end of the year. That's our prediction. Okay. Yeah.

1:27:06Aiden:Wait, wait, wait. To be clear, the thing that's driving right now is the Robo Taxi.

1:27:10Atrioc:Robo Taxi, which is basically

1:27:11Aiden:their Model Y. Just different than the Cyber Cab. Cyber Cab requires them to build the new car and make a production model, which is why it can take too long.

1:27:18Atrioc:Yeah. They're slow. Okay, wait. Cyber Cab doesn't even come out at all. I guess that's the same thing. I think it doesn't come out. I think it is not public.

1:27:27Aiden:Let's say, I would say cyber cab is not publicly available.

1:27:29Atrioc:Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. If he does one test somewhere, it's not the same thing. Yeah. Okay. Really quick rapid fire one. That's related. A lot of hype right now around humanoid robots. Okay. One, one company released a new humanoid robot. You can actually buy. And I remember I showed this to you and the only catch it's like in your home, operating and doing stuff. The only catch is that you have to pay for a human being on the other side to wear a VR headset and control it. So it's like a weird robot indentured servant of that guy trying to get the glass out of the dishwasher is so funny. It's like so inconvenient.

1:28:05You have a human who could just grab it.

1:28:06Atrioc:So it's like paying for a really, really inefficient maid that's more expensive. So that's the option was in 2025. Do we feel like a humanoid robot will be purchasable for like by a customer that isn't controlled by a human at the end? Purchasable. I mean, maybe, but isn't controlled by a person though. that somebody even puts it out there like a company even says okay no child there are no humanoid robots put on sale in 2026 which is like there's some there's some edge cases on this but that's fine we'll put it out I think we can we can go with the spirit of this again definitely no human operator let's say in general there isn't a human monitor the entire time that needs to be on the ready pretty safe prediction to be honest but there's a lot of hype around it Okay, on the subject of self-driving and some things we're doing, renewables.

1:28:58Renewables. Predictions for renewables around 2026.

1:29:01Aiden:Okay, so, and this is maybe a nice positive note to end on. So renewables generated more electricity than coal for the first time in 2025. Right. Yeah. That's fucking big. So a good sign of us on the right path, right? Largely due to like huge advancements in wind and solar, specifically in China. What about clean coal? So it's actually clean coal is rolled into renewables. I don't know if you know that.

1:29:29Aiden:It's like 88 % clean coal. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm looking at the chart. If you take the clean coal out, it looks pretty. In all seriousness, renewables surpass coal worldwide for electricity generation for the first time in 2025. That is what I'm reading. And overall, about 40%, like 35 % to 40%, depending on where you read right now. I think these are also early predictions because a lot of data still needs to come out about 2025. 35 % to 40 % of electricity globally is being generated by renewables. So I want to take an optimistic guess and say that for 2026, it is going to be over 50 % of all electricity is going to be generated by renewable energy.

1:30:22Aiden:Wow. Because the improvements are, we're taking like really big jumps within the last really like two to five years. And the costs of wind and solar are continuing to decrease. The costs of batteries are continuing to decrease. Batteries have gotten over 90 % cheaper across the last decade. And for the first time, a lot of like climate projection reports, I think we talked about this earlier in the year, are reporting that instead of expected warming over the next like 80 years being like 3.5 to 4 degrees Celsius on average, it's dropping, they've pulled that prediction down to like 2.8%, 2.8 degrees, which to be clear is still pretty bad.

1:31:12Aiden:There's still like, there are still some pretty damning climate reports coming out. 2024 was the hottest year on record and likely the hottest in the last 125 ,000 years from the Yale article that I read. And - Okay. I want to say I hope that you're right, but I want to consciously object. There's one, and I wonder if your objection has anything to do this. In general, the amount of investment from countries around the world going into renewable energy is substantially increasing, with countries like China leading the charge. However, one large nation invested less last year. If you can take a guess.

1:31:57Atrioc:USA.

1:31:59Aiden:USA. Well, hold on, hold on. USA.

1:32:02Atrioc:I heard that we just got a giant, giant country full of renewable energy.

1:32:07Aiden:Oh, that's the thing. They have the cleanest oil. It's renewable because every time you run out, you can go to a different country.

1:32:14Atrioc:Yeah, see, I might have agreed with you on this, except the U.S. just went and took over the biggest oil reserves.

1:32:21Aiden:100%. And I'm not here to tell you that climate change is solved. I'm not telling you that there are no problems to overcome. I'm not telling you that the nation, the world is not going to continue warming, but the substantial gains in a global sense are still happening and seem to be increasing. And I want to take a hopeful prediction and say that 50 % or more of electricity around the world in 2026 will be generated. No, it's got to be exactly 50. It has to be.

1:32:49Atrioc:Hit the coin on the edge. No, I'm on board with it. I think it's, I mean, it sounds like you disagree. I think this is unrealistic. realistic but i let you want us to die i'm down for the idea of putting an optimistic prediction in there because i would love for this to be true and i think there's a there's a good chance wait hold on where what are we basing it off of is there's like you know a yale study or we're

1:33:10Aiden:just gonna say this is not a projection i'm just making this raw guess some from where we're at right now depending on what you read uh it it seems to be between like like we're about like 38 percent of electricity 12 is a huge jump in one year but we've already made big leaps in the previous years i want to be optimistic hmm all right pull up this grab i need it this is china right china which is the one country i think really investing in renewables they're building out nuclear wind solar they're still at like 50 percent coal in 2040 and america has openly announced they're like going petro state they're like we're going back to gas we're going back to natural gas, oil, American dominance.

1:33:53We're going to use geopolitical power. We're getting shit out of the ground. So while I agree the long-term trend of renewables is good, a big jump in this year, I disagree. I'm voicing objections, even though I'll join you for this because of charity.

1:34:07Aiden:I'm making a crazy leap. Okay. Let's say 45. Let's say 45. I want to remain optimistic. Okay. I just looked something up. Yeah. Let's say 45. Oh, yeah. I'm down to go with you, but I think it's crazy. I mean, I think... The leap from 2021 to now is pretty insane, I will say. Because it's gone from like 10 % or less to the 40, almost 40 that we're at right now. So I'd love to say 40. Yeah, let's do it.

1:34:37Atrioc:Bug it. Full cowardly of a prediction.

1:34:40Aiden:Fine, let's say 50. Let's say 70.

1:34:43Atrioc:Let's say 50 and pitch... Going from 40 to 45 is not exciting. Well, that would still be good. That would be a positive direction. I'm done. Okay. World is 40%. Or you can do 46 and be a little dicey.

1:34:54Aiden:But that is, and why don't we round this out with one more beautiful prediction, one more card in there, and it's, will Faker win Worlds in 2026? Will he do it again? And Doug, I need you to hear me out on this, Doug. Something I can talk about.

1:35:07Atrioc:Okay. So I loved Dota in high school. I have not played League of Legends. Is Faker... We're going to keep our opinions to ourselves, and you're going to make the call. You're going to make the call. Will Faker win Worlds in 2026? The Lemonade Stand official charity call.

1:35:24Aiden:Do you actually not know who Faker is?

1:35:26Atrioc:I do know who Faker is. I don't follow League, though. Not knowing who Faker is would have ended the show. Yeah. But I know of him in the way that I know about Sabrina Carpenter, which is I try not to let it into my life in any way. Both world champions. Truly. Two goats. Two goats just peaking now. 11th bonus prediction is Ludwig joins T1 and wins Worlds with Faker. that's charity free money. I like that. That's a bonus one. That doesn't count. Sure, I will say Faker wins Worlds. Which Juno position do you think Faker would like the most? Ladies and gentlemen, we have our now 11 predictions for 2026.

1:36:05Atrioc:If we get any of these wrong at the end of the year, we are going to donate$5 ,000 to charity. U.S. troops do not enter Venezuela, but the current regime doesn't change either. This one is maybe slightly hard to define, but we will use our best, our honest spirit. to determine a number two u.s takes greenland i know aiden's excited about that number three aiden's cs2 portfolio goes down i know aiden's excited about that number four china does not annex taiwan right number five the mag seven prices are higher on average by the end of 2026 number six ukraine war ends in 2026 seven taylor swift gets married in 2026 in europe in europe in europe that one's i'm gonna get that one and i'm gonna gloat for like four months a big win 8.

1:36:47Atrioc:CyberCab is not publicly available, despite, again, Elon's insistence that that is launching soon. 9. There are no humanoid robots put on sale in 2026. Again, despite many companies hyping that up as the next big AI thing. 10. The world is 45 % renewable energy by the end of 2026. 11. Faker wins worlds. I'm excited. 2026.

1:37:08Aiden:And, hey, if you have any recommendations of where to donate that$50 ,000 to, you let us know in the comments. Hey,

1:37:17Atrioc:uh, that is so awesome of you chatting with folks in Venezuela. And that makes this conversation really so much more interesting and fantastic. I appreciate that.

1:37:26Aiden:I am really excited for this year. I have a self commitment that I'm going to try to do at least one interview like that every week, every week, every week. Oh my God. I have it. I've already have the next two weeks scheduled out. And if you want to enjoy a little more of lemonade stand, you can head over to the Patreon, patreon.com slash lemonade stand, where we put out an extra hour of the show every week. we put out a book club episode once a month and I will be, for those who are willing to let me post them, I will be posting some of those interviews this year. So. Yeah, hell yeah. I will say we didn't get to finish every single prediction here on this episode.

1:37:57So we'll probably do that in the Patreon if you want to check out our thoughts on like Mom Donnie's first year and a couple other things. We'll probably do that on Bitcoin. We'll have that on the Patreon. Check it out. That was a fun episode. I mean, scary for the future, but fun and interesting.

1:38:12Aiden:So Faker's not going to win. God, I have a Faker tattoo and I kind of hope he does. He's going to kill League. He's won so many times. People are going to be... That's a good... Hold on.

1:38:22Atrioc:Do we want him to win or not? I can't tell what you guys want.

1:38:25Aiden:My genuine prediction, if we can amend it at the last second, is Faker will not win Worlds this year.

1:38:30Atrioc:Okay, that's funnier because you want him to win. Faker will not win Worlds. And that way, every time he loses, Aiden and I are celebrating. That's a better prediction. Guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for watching, everybody. See you next time.

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