It's Been 500 Days | Ep. 065 Lemonade Stand 🍋

17:44Aiden:So like the slush fund canned officially as of today, the stipulation of immunity ongoing still. And - I guess one thing I'll say is like, the precedent Trump has set is that the previous rules and norms when you go into office don't matter. So I don't know how he puts so much stock in this piece of paper that says, I can never be investigated by the, like if he loses power, theoretically someone can run the same playbook he does to dismantle that. I'm not, it all, you know, one of the greatest things of his second, not the greatest in a good way, but like the most impactful of his second term is how many things relied on just everyone kind of following a norm or agreeing to.

18:27Like if he just ignores them. what do you mean what do you mean i guess what i'm saying is like he he has been able to do a lot of things that it's like air bud rules you know what i'm saying no one ever said you couldn't

18:38Atrioc:ah it's just like i'm just gonna throw some stuff out there yeah i'm just gonna do things also to be clear it's not just air bud rules it's like he releases 300 dogs onto the court at once yeah there's so many dogs people are like rules for each one of these dogs for this dude i think it's

18:52Aiden:that but also sometimes some of the rule books do explicitly say you can't let the dog out and he's like ah fucking let the thing he's letting so many dogs there's too many dogs and there's cats like there's just shit going into the gymnasium all the time

19:06Atrioc:so even when they catch one of the dogs and they're like look here's a piece of paper that says you can't be here there's like 20 more dogs already when steve bannon said flood the zone he also meant in air but that's where he got it yo speaking of trump's dogs let's talk about his kids oh it's the best kids okay they said these are his dogs but he didn't go to his son's wedding so not that close of a dog I guess it's it as this is being pulled up this slush fund thing that we talked about is notable in that one it's one of the most just insanely egregious forms of conflict of interest ever but also of the stories i believe that we're going to talk about this is the only one where there's been some kind of reckoning where like the republican senators were willing to push back against trump and say this is too far that's what it requires like any any of these if you talk about the only way to stop it currently with the way things are set up and the way they have the boats is to have republicans flip and so they did on this one yeah he's threatened to so that's like that's mildly encouraging that's that's one win and now let's hit you with like six fails no no no i i like i mean i see what you're saying i do think that as his polling drops and people feel more emboldened to take a stand here and there it does put a limiter on him in a way he didn't have before the reason i picked this topic which is trump's family is because thinking back on the last 500 days obviously there are many things that everyone or almost everyone's upset about that I could talk about.

20:24But this is the area where I feel like I'm, I'm asymptotically more angry than other people. His family somehow makes me more, cause it feels, I think the nepo-ness of it or the corruption of it bothers me. So I wanted to look into specifically his two sons, Don Jr. and Eric. And, uh, and when you look at how their net worth and financial situation has changed in just 500 days, it is unprecedented in any presidential family history. They have gone from being moderately wealthy, you know, millionaires to near billionaires combined. They're over a billion. And so in again, 500 days and Reagan in 2021, after January 6th, Don jr was doing cameos for 500 bucks.

21:10And now he is on the Forbes list of billionaires, largely through abusing the connections that he has through his father. And there's many ways I can go through this. I mean, you know, people have talked about, they've made massive investments in drone companies, which then the Pentagon buys a bunch of drones from their companies and make a bunch of money. We can talk about world liberty financial, which is the single largest financial aspect of this, which is that they own or are heavy investors in a stable coin called USD one. And it wasn't doing that well. It wasn't a very successful stable coin company compared to the other stable coin examples.

21:44And then the UAE mysteriously put$2 billion into world Liberty financial. And then two weeks later, they get a clearance to buy chips. They weren't allowed to buy before. And it was like just a weird coincidence that they just happened to pick this stable coin and then happened to get this huge release they wouldn't have before, which again was blocked because there was a chance they might sell those ships to the Chinese, which there's reports they're doing that's happened. So like it's a, you know, there's a clear systemic corruption there. But I picked, I picked, by the way, this is a good, this is a good piece of reporting.

22:18I just want to point out that people analyzed the UAE deal to try and find out, is there any reason they would have made this? And there really is no financial reason, which under, it's like similar to like, it reminds me of you guys know a Kawhi Leonard aspiration fake tree. It's like, you can't find any reason they're gonna pay Kawhi Leonard as much money to plant trees. And so obviously there's another reason for it. And I think this is what tracks to that. But I wanted to go into a more recent example. This just happened. This is Vulcan Elements. And this kind of, I think this story crystallizes what's happening over and over and over again this first 500 days.

22:54So Vulcan Elements is a company that refines rare earth metals in America. Now we've done episodes before about how important that is because China controls the whole rare earth supply chain. And everyone's like, fuck, we have to get out from under their thumb on this. You know, magnets and jets and everything goes through China. And so Vulcan Elements is one of the hundreds of companies that have popped up to try and help fill this demand because there's a lot of urgency. And Vulcan Elements recently won a massive Pentagon deal. Okay, they got a huge amount, they multiple millions of dollars and they can finally expand.

23:29And when you look into how Vulcan Elements got chosen over hundreds of other companies, it comes back to this guy, Peter Navarro. They gave him a$620 million loan and a contract to buy what they make. So they basically funded the company and gave it a client, which is like instant success. And it was only founded two years ago. Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding, Vulcan was the only one initiated by a top aide to the president. Who was that top aide? It was a guy named Peter Navarro. Peter Navarro seen here on Triggered, Don Jr.'s podcast, talking about how he's my boy, my good friend.

24:09Okay. These guys are close friends. Peter Navarro was an advisor to the president who constantly mentions rare earth metals. I think I have a clip from Triggered.

24:19Aiden:What a banger name, huh? China has revealed itself with this rare earth issue as a country which is using the weaponization of their manufacturing. No, here it looks really interesting. Their supply chains to exert pressure, not just on the United States, but to every other country. So look, Peter Navarro rants about it on here. They're talking about it. then all of a sudden, of the hundreds of companies, the one that Don Jr. is heavily, heavily invested in suddenly is fast-tracked through the Pentagon. Now, you can talk to, let's see if we can get the insiders here. They say that he had no involvement in the record-setting deal, but look, Peter Navarro comes in and asks them to move at an unusually rapid pace.

25:07The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks. The call came from the White House, we have to get this done. So this one company gets forced through, and all of a sudden, it's generationally more valuable than it was before. And Don Jr. owns a massive percentage of it, making him more fabulously wealthy overnight. And you can find examples like this over and over again with drones, with rare earth, with crypto, with any sort of tech where the government's big pot of money is spent on something that's strategically important. It goes to a company that Don Jr.

25:40or Eric has invested in before it happens. So following the trail here, it's like they can say no this is not a part of the the process every time but when it happens again again it seems like there has to be a connection uh and so i ended with this quote on january 8th of this year the new york times interviewed trump and they asked him why so many more of his family members are involved financially in white house and government and pentagon dealings in his second term than in his first term and he said in his first term he found out that nobody cared and i'm allowed to i prohibited them from doing business in my first term and i got no credit for it i didn't have to do that and it's really unfair to them it's really unfair to his family it's unfair to his family that they can't get involved in all these deals of government money and now since nobody cared he can do it yeah i was literally hoping you'd pull this

26:40it is kind of fucking why that just sums up nobody cared and i'm allowed to is like this sentence that describes the second term more than anything else to me okay here's my beef right

26:50Aiden:what's your beef you i it's like we we get up tight about this and i understand why somebody might be upset but i feel like the the animosity towards this type of corruption is so one-sided Like in 2015, Malia Obama was selling F-35s back to the government. And nobody said a word. In the schoolyard. In the schoolyard. And so it's like, do we pick and choose who to blame? No, it's funny. So on a more real level of your example, you actually sent me a great graph on this. People have talked about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and his dealings in Europe using his connections with his family. And there is some shadiness there and it's worth looking into.

27:32but when you add it all up, it's in the tens of millions. I think I don't remember. It's like 10 million. It was like five.

27:39Atrioc:It's 20. Okay. It's 20. So let me rephrase that. Sorry. It depends. Okay. So with the Hunter Biden thing, the house Republicans like made this big argument against him, right? And they're like, we think Hunter Biden was basically getting all these business dealings because his dad was vice president and maybe Joe Biden was aware of this and was giving favors in return, but that part's unconfirmed. And it was basically he was getting like$50 ,000 a month being on some random boards. And their accusation is he made over$20 million from foreign business deals. So at the worst from the Republican argument is Hunter Biden made$20 million and Joe Biden might have been a part of it, but we have no proof.

28:17Yeah, absolutely. And so the gravity showed.

28:20Atrioc:Just Trump coin alone scammed our poor friend Ludwig out of 97 % of his money. they made hundreds of millions of dollars just from people off of that yeah yeah i think it was each was like hundreds of millions but that's like okay the other the other thing i looked into just because we're talking we're talking about comparisons i'm like what is another comparison do you guys i get angry just thinking about it my my my ass tote is also like what you said okay the teapot dome scandal you remember that shit no god that fucking sucked in 1922 you remember how interior secretary albert f fall gave land oil rights to private companies without competitive bidding in exchange for bribes that fuck yeah i remember that i was pissed off i was pissed and i'm pissed now i don't i don't remember that i'm young and energetic and i have a whole life ahead of me i had just turned 45 and i was like this teapot dome thing is pissing me off i remember the towers falling i remember uh albert fall making and to be clear the total gifts and bribes he got was about nine million dollars in today's dollars and that is quote regarded as one of the greatest and most sensational scandals in the history of american politics by historian robert churney so in this is one of the biggest scandals ever and it's in 1922 and it's nine million dollars in today's money of bribes for a private company yeah they are eclipsing that by like a thousand no so i guess about 100 500 was all of hunter biden's plotted and then they were like, okay, let's go bigger.

29:53Let's go Nancy Pelosi's husband, which is considered to be, he has probably some insider access. And so they took everything he's made. Let's assume every single trade he's ever done is corrupt since 1974 or whatever, every trade in his life. Okay. So that was, that was like, I don't know, 80 million, whatever it was. It was, it was a much bigger number than the Hunter Biden number. And then they plotted what the Trump family has made off of crypto and these dealings in this one year. And you couldn't see them on the graph anymore. It was such a tiny sliver. I mean, a billion versus a million is so astronomically bigger.

30:27I think the example they have, the amount they've made in these 500 days is two times greater than the profit of Starbucks in the same time. I mean, it's going to like four or five people who are in his family. It's an astronomical level of difference, and it's coming so fast. I have a counterargument. Maybe they're just better than us. Maybe they're very talented businessmen. You know what? I'll give you that. Maybe they're the greatest businessmen of all time. Why are they so much greater when he's in office? Why are they seemingly bad at being great businessmen when he's not in office? And then they certainly just hit their fucking stride right when he gets into power.

31:01That's the weird part.

31:02Aiden:Late bloomers. Well, because they weren't swagging out in the first term. Maybe their dad inspired them. You know what I'm saying? It's like, dad's working hard.

31:12Atrioc:Dad works so hard. I need to work hard too. He's so old and he works so hard still. Success isn't linear. We have a lot of books about this. You got to work hard and then suddenly you succeed. yeah maybe you're right okay maybe i'm like when my youtube channel went from like a 500 views a video to 500 000 in one week yeah it's like it blew up early 2019 that was when your father ran youtube right yeah but those are coincidences and i worked really hard really hard but also hillary's emails hillary's let's move on no well let's let's never move on from that because that's the biggest scandal of all time do you have do you have more here no that was basically i i mean you know broadly i think his kids are very openly and nakedly abusing their access to the president to make a lot of money and it's that's frustrating

31:59Aiden:okay i think it's almost more frustrating than trump to me i don't know why i'm not that there's not that i think this is necessarily defensible but i do there's like something more vague about these uh there there's more ambiguity in investing in a company that is like producing an output or a service that the government is using to accomplish something. Not saying there's nothing wrong here. No, I just want to push back a little bit in that it's like all of the companies they're investing in are companies that only make their money from government contracts. It's not like they're thriving businesses that then do a government deal.

32:35It's like they're getting the funding to build the factories that don't exist yet, and then they're getting purchase orders from the government. So it's kind of a direct transfer of taxpayer money to them using strategic goals like rare earths and drones, which are important, but are these really the best companies for those jobs or are they the ones most connected to Trump's family? I would say almost certainly not.

32:59Atrioc:This episode of Lemonade Stand is sponsored by Anthropic. Now we've all been using this for a while. There's lots of different uses of Anthropic, but right now I think one of the most interesting ones is Claude Code, which is either a standalone app or you could use it within Claude.ai. And this is incredibly helpful for building little applications that you can use for whatever you want, even aside from the more professional element that many people are using it for. We have examples just with us three. A couple weeks ago for this show, I used Claude to put together our little custom country website.

33:29Atrioc:You did something? Or was it you? It was me. Oh, you did something? You know, one of my friends, Hera, is a professional gamer who's a young man. He's in his 20s. He doesn't know anything other than playing Age of Empires for the last 20 years of his life. He's about as old as the game is. And he put together a streamer tournament and made a website that tracks everyone's viewership and their rating and their data. And he did that with Claude. And like, he absolutely could not have done that two years ago. It wasn't, and he put it together. It was pretty cool.

33:54Aiden:I use it to practice the podcast. I have Claude pretend to be two other people that like me.

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34:16Aiden:Claude.ai slash lemonade. I'll put the podcast out if you guys want to listen to it. Don't encourage him, Claude or viewers.

34:24Atrioc:Today's episode is sponsored by Fora, a travel agency built for people who love to plan travel and help others plan as well.

34:31Aiden:Doug, say you were the one planning a trip for us. We all got to go somewhere. Who would be the hardest one to make plans for?

34:41Atrioc:It takes a little while. to think of it. Who would need the most insistence? And for audio listeners, there was a dramatic squeak of my chair as it turned inward towards a certain person. It could be any one of us. Any one of us? It could be any one of us.

34:54Aiden:It could be. We have all our own unique quirks. And say, Doug, if you wanted to put your travel planning experience to the test, perhaps get better at it, perhaps offer it as a service to people like Brandon who can't help themselves.

35:06Atrioc:This is true.

35:07Aiden:Maybe I'll be the ultimate final boss of becoming a travel agent. Yeah.

35:11Atrioc:Brandon will be on the test.

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35:52Atrioc:your true work pants not currently i'm the toughest one here wearing them right now chat

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36:47Aiden:You have never left your home. When you approach somebody who is like a diehard Trump supporter, right? They find like the ambiguity and they play in that to like rationalize why it's okay. Like when you bring things like this up, right? Yeah. One thing that blows my mind and what I wanted to segue into is Trump coin specifically. Okay. because I feel like it's like so much of a joke that people don't, I don't think people like realize the gravity of it, like the size that it was at. And to be fair, our friend did buy it in a stock trading competition that we all participated in. That's true. Ludwig is the world's biggest supporter of Trump coin.

37:23And I think he believed it's going to bounce back.

37:25Aiden:But I think when you ask people about, like a lot of what you outline here, who are Trump supporters, they're like, oh, like they're just doing business and they're doing the right thing. And I can kind of - Is that what they sound like? Yeah, and they sort of dance while they do it. Oh, I don't know why they sound like that. I'm doing a SpongeBob thing. You have some crazy Trump supporting relatives, bro. I don't know. I think Trump coin specifically drives me fucking insane. You guys might remember Trump coin was announced by Trump on Twitter a few days before he started in office in 2025. and immediately this coin takes off and has a ton of traction.

38:09Aiden:Because like one of the most - I don't actually remember because I just remember this moment so vividly not to, because I was reading so much financial news and financial sub stacks and stuff going into this. And I remember they were all praising how Trump was going to be, not all, but a lot of them were like, he's going to be more fiscally responsible. He's going to be the guy to get us off this Biden-Harris nightmare. and you know some of these are visual podcasts and like the moment he did this their whole you could just tell the wind came out of the sails because like it was like the whole energy got evaporated because he's immediately before coming off is doing a huge meme coin scale and they all know that meme coin like these guys know so it's just a funny it's a very vivid moment for me because i was like wait a minute you guys are fucking wrong so the president the soon-to-be president of the united states announces his official meme coin on a website called get trump memes.com which is still up right now dude the ai trump looking shred is also crazy

39:09Atrioc:he's just so much celebrate our win and have fun signed digitally by donald trump and you guys

39:18Aiden:might remember the highlights like there was a promise of like some of the like 200 of the top investors were going to be invited to a private reception with the president. Yeah. And like the top 25 holders would get special VIP white house tours that Trump would be present at. And after like upon the announcement, there's a huge traction in the coin. It does like become one of the highest valued overall coins in the world in the top 100. And then upon the announcement of things like the VIP tour jumps another like 50 % in value. and uh even uh i remember going so far to announce an nft associated with the project called the trump diamond hand that would earn you reward points of some kind uh and and i think what's insane about this to me is there's no even if you're a die hard crypto guy who like truly believes in this like decentralized future and the power of these technologies like some of these things have applications like uh i don't know like monero has a it has a purpose a heinous one dealing and human trafficking yes you bring up monero like you're paid to promote it you bring it up all the time oh whoops looks like i stumbled into a bit of human trafficking and I'd see that, oh, never mind.

40:43Aiden:No, kick that in. No, I'm digging the hole. Do not cut that out. That's the opening soundbite. No, but I think there's this vague idea that like crypto could have some sort of utility, right? But it's well understood by this point, by the time this coin is announced, that you're basically pumping, dumping a speculative asset. You are trying to get in and get out in time to like get lucky and make some money. purely for that i feel like it's almost universally understood that that is the case at this point when you buy a fucking shib coin that you are trying to find a ludwig to hold the bag yeah exactly but literally yeah and i think even for the boat like even for the hardcore crypto believers they aren't looking at shib as the future it's like no i'm trying to fucking speculate and like gamble and like get some money out of this so it's the fact that he did this is so blatantly for money yeah you know whether it was money that goes directly to him i'm sure trump's not the guy at the computer launching the fucking coin i understand that but it's under his name for people associated with him who are directly directly tied to him including his family yeah So the, and this is Baron Trump is deeply involved in this.

41:59I heard he's has a net worth at 18 of 150 million entirely through. It's better than us. Crypto, crypto. There's a quote from Trump where he's like, he's talented. Baron's got four of these wallets. I don't even know what a crypto wallet is.

42:13Atrioc:It's so, man, it's so awesome. I just realized, you know, like you can't, you can't, there's a limit to how much you can like pay for someone's campaign. All right. Yeah. And, but I guess if you make a meme coin, you can just say, I'll meet with the top 200 investors. You just buy access to Trump. That's so cool that as long as it's a meme coin. So Trump stable coin. Yeah, you just dump it in and it's like an investment. The FT. Are you upset that Ludwig put a thousand dollars into Trump coin and lost 95 % of it?

42:40Aiden:I think it's not that that would upsets me. It's the idea that the FT reported shortly after the coin launched, like within the first 18 days that they had made 300 net. they had net$350 million from the coin within that first period of it launching, which is insane. And it's$350, 300, 350 whole dollars, $350 million of what I see as the most indefensible money imaginable. Like it is, there's no secret like utility of the Trump coin. now it's a pump and dump coin that we all know what it is and he made a bunch of money on it how could you possibly rationalize not that i it's like for me i think the meme coin is so tacky and classless for a president coming back and all this do i get that but it's the most similar to like selling merch so i don't it's like almost like this is a dumb product for really

43:44Atrioc:dumb fans to lose money on it to me it's like sports gambling or something where it's like have fun i mean it literally says have fun quote donald trump it sounds to me it's like equivalent which is like look we all know this is gambling good luck i mean it's it's it's it's awful but he's it's it's not as it's not as like hidden behind oh this is real business as some of these

44:06Aiden:other ones no i think that's what i think is crazy is like the fact that it's not hidden and people still are like it's fine that the president is doing no i think it's because Because the other ones have this ambiguity. If you're like, if you want to have the cognitive dissonance, it's kind of easy to. But on this one, it's like, I feel like it's difficult. It's like, dude, it was literally designed to make money from the end user while giving you nothing. Wait, this segues well though, because, okay, counterpoint. So we were supposed to come up with possible things we think are, or what of the 500 days, what do we think was the best?

44:40Or like, was there any part you liked or anything that you thought he did right or was on the right track or whatever? I mean, that was kind of an open-ended prompt, but we wanted to look into it to have some semblance of not just showing one side here. And I want to be honest with you. I don't think he intended this, but one of the best effects of the first 500 days of Trump directly caused by him is that I think he has kind of put a bullet in the entire crypto meme dream.

45:07Atrioc:I don't think that we can give him credit for a thing he clearly tried to not do and then caused it. I don't think we can give him kudos for that, dude. Well, I'm going to do it. I'm going to give him kudos. Okay. Because through - Okay, so we're going to list what do we think, some of the things he ended up doing well and yours has killing crypto accidentally. He has, I mean, crypto, Bitcoin is tanking today. He has basically, if you look, if you flashback crypto right before he got inaugurated and now, him removing the SEC's ability to investigate crypto, him making it so that you cannot, you basically can get away with any crime with crypto, launching his own meme coin, all of this kind of ironically shoved every sane investor away from it.

45:47It became, it pushed it more to the fringe. It made it less safe. And in a way directly, I mean, it's like one other thing you credit for is like a lot of the weird far right populist parties in Europe are losing some traction because of it. He's done more. He Carney would not have won in Canada. Had it not been for Trump. Can't steal mine.

46:08Aiden:Can't steal mine.

46:12Do you have more to say on that? That's his thing, bro. He's had some unintentional effects. And then there was one thing I want to say that he did do. Apparently, he pushed for this, or it was one of the close things, that I think was, on the whole, good. The elimination of the penny. The penny is gone. It saves the mint$80 million a year. We don't even use the damn penny anymore. And I think Trump specifically said, like, we don't need the penny. He, like, pushed it. So kind of even Stevens. yeah that's my point what i'm trying to say is that take the good with the bad all right as

46:48Atrioc:long as you have one that is look i i suggested doing this uh not only because i'm a big trumper but also because a publication i really enjoy called tangle basically did a piece that he fucking hates trump basically and he's like a very like tries to be very moderate um and then did a giant piece about his corruption and then he did a follow-up i believe a week ago now which is like what has trump done well and prefaced it with like i think he's just dog shit in all these ways but for the for the point of trying to even acknowledge good things that are happening let me do that okay and so that's why i brought it up and i got me the pennies one although it's like if i were to get broad i would say like the way i don't like the broad tariff thing but i think the way he has engaged with China via tariffs has ended a like head in the sand 40 years that we've had where we completely ignored it and I think if we had done I think he said it in the worst possible way that's a problem I think it's execution on all everything but I think the idea there of like we need to re-industrialize America and there should be I think there is truth to that and if no one was going to do it maybe there's something to that but that I'm stretching because I really don't like how he executed it yeah from Tangle concurrently from April 2025 to April 2026, the U S total trade deficit fell 14%.

48:05Atrioc:So if that's important to you, which to me it's not, uh, but if that is like, you know, he has to some degree of success dropped trade deficits and that's across the whole world, not just with, uh, not just with China. Um, you know, one thing I think he did well is the Trump accounts. I liked the Trump account thing. We talked about a little while ago with the birth, basically every kid who gets born gets a$1 ,000 account. And then he's trying to get all these businessmen to, uh, like invest into it and, you know, use this as kind of use his like a chummy relationship with people. Yeah. Okay. I just want to say, so I watched the announcement of the Trump accounts and I remember I did it live on stream and I was like, you know what?

48:42I can't really see the problem here because Michael Dell's putting his own money up as one of the biggest investors and it's going to kids. and it's like, this is great. I mean, but flash forward and Dell just got a massive$10 billion government contract and Dell stock is up like, like 4X. I mean, like, and it's entirely from the government connection. So it just feels like even on this simple thing, there's like a quid pro quo level of corruption where Dell gives a little bit the Trump accounts and then gets a lot back. I don't know. So I agree with you that like, I think the kids getting the money, that seems like a win, but.

49:19Atrioc:Yeah, I think like what I got looking into it and from tangles like a lot of the wins that you'd be like yeah that's good like crime is reducing medicare they're continuing to argue uh for like negotiate for better prices with some of the things but these were all programs and trends that were happening before he got elected um he made money from that intel investment that i think was unethical and uh and illegal border crossings are down although overall it has been a fucking shit show with not increasing legal immigration and obviously everything with ICE just being done in a horrific way. So I literally, this is all I got, really trying to give like an earnest, sincere look at it.

50:01Atrioc:And all of these have caveats, man. It's not good. I thought about that one too.

50:05Aiden:Like I feel like the, like for his supporters especially, they'll note like immigration at the border specifically. And I want, but I feel the same way about that as I do with like China, where like there's some aspect of this system is broken and not working and you're doing something to like try and approach the issue but it's not working in the way that i don't i don't agree with any of the approach at all and that was my frustration when i was going through this is like i don't think that there's anything other than the like accidental outcomes other than I think just the base, I think there's base things that benefit individual people.

50:48Aiden:Like, I think there's like little things like no tax on tips that I'm sure like individual people are happy for. But I don't think it's like a broadly good policy. I mean, they're good ideas, so it's like, yeah. Yeah, but like my, but other than that, like even if like there's a addressing of some sort of issue or thing in the past, it's almost, it's not the way that I want or support going about it. and now uh i i think the only thing i was like okay this is like a really net good that i feel like was countries countries almost like unionizing globally you know like the mid-tier countries of the world are like we all need to like gather our strength as a block in order to combat the like two great powers in the world and like how they influence us and i think that's like a really positive outcome that i don't think would have arrived without this happening uh but is it and then it but then it like begs the question is like is all the trade-off and like strife like worth that worth that outcome probably fucking not like i don't want to be here we can't like post this based on the reverse rule where like that doesn't make and there's a there's a difference

52:02Atrioc:between like hey we as america are going to unwind the american empire and influence and we're gonna and this is how we're going to do it and we're going to work with you and be constructive and try to make this as painless as possible like a breakup versus a breakup where you just start throwing plates and knives at your partner and they're like i need to leave this is very different

52:22Aiden:i think it's like it's like the like having immigration raids at the home depot down the street and being like i wanted more asylum judges like i i wanted i i wanted you to do that yeah and not that i thought this guy was specifically to do it to invade greenland and being like well no i just wanted europe to spend a little bit more on defense it's like that's not that's not it's ridiculous so it feels weird to be like yeah i think that's my problem like as i was like trying to find things and like going through the exercise of this i was like i i think it's good that europe's doing that but it's like it could have just we could we surely could have gotten that there another a different way yeah no i legitimately think it's the worst i mean you know i'm not as old as you say it's the worst term of a president in my lifetime and it's not close after doing this exercise I could not find enough upside to and it's only been 500 days it's really crazy so last last thing and then we'll move on because we have a lot more stories actually at least a good amount stories is there anything what are you worried about for the next 500 days what's your

53:24Atrioc:everything else okay we've

53:26Aiden:been talking about for the last year and I'll give I'll give the biggest one because I think in this sea of the 500 days obviously there's way more than the financial corruption There's like these new violations of like civil rights and like consolidation of power, a this real like all of these things are awful in their own right. But what scares me the most is the idea that elections are being messed with to a degree that they don't have their integrity anymore. Yeah, I agree. And so if there's a removal of my mechanism to like remove the people from power in the safe way that we ideally want to keep, that's what I'm the most worried about.

54:15Yes, you're so impactful, man. I've been buoyed with some hope seeing the continued cratering poll numbers and seeing a lot of that. But if something weird happens around this midterm, I'm going to be much more upset. But we've talked about this before. I think that's the main.

54:30Atrioc:Yeah. I think for me, it is the breakdown of... You mentioned that the middle powers uniting is good. I think there's many great things about that. There's a lot of problems with the American empire over the last 80 years, what, 85 now. But it is worth acknowledging that there's been a historic level of peace over the world over the last 85 years. There's no great powers who have openly been at war. And so has it been perfect? No, of course not. Am I worried about a world where America suddenly becomes this like totally chaotic attack? Everybody instigate anything all the time. Just feels like the likelihood of World War three does actually go up a lot.

55:16Atrioc:And that is pretty fucking concerning, to be honest.

55:20Aiden:Like, I mean, there's like this rise in like nuclear armament. Right.

55:24Atrioc:Because like if you're a dude, you know, Ukraine, right? They gave up nukes. voluntarily right to russia because they're like okay cool we trust that the world system will protect us and then we gave up the nukes and then they're fucked and so every country is going to justify i'll be going i got to take care of my own and that's just gonna lead to a cascade of horrible things ah man it's real sad probably probably maybe this was going to happen in some form regardless but it's like the way it's happening the way it's happening is truly chaotic breakdown with yeah i agree and it's truly sad to go to talk to people from other countries and realize just how little respect, like how sad people are about Americans and like our country now, you know?

56:04Atrioc:And I know, I know we have lots of European like hate watchers and we've talked about this, but no, but like legitimately, you know, you used to go to a foreign country. And for the most part, you know, growing up, people would be like, Oh cool. You're American. There's like a, to some degree, a sense of like happiness or excitement towards that. And it's like a real sense of shame. And it's just, uh, it's a bummer. Yeah. By the way, you, I mean, you know, you could extrapolate that for a longer period of time. But based on the polling, because I've seen the charts of the polling on that, like foreign citizens attitudes towards America, you can localize that entirely almost to Donald Trump's second term.

56:39Like it literally craters. In fact, there's a great chart that shows attitudes towards China versus the US. And it's literally China is flat down here. America's flat up here. And in this term, it is crossed for the first time ever. And that, I mean, the amount of damage done so quickly is shocking, man. It's shocking. But you know what else is shocking?

57:01Aiden:What, my Nordic fact of the week? There's nothing shocking about you having another Nordic fact of the week.

57:08Atrioc:Let's get to the important stuff. What happened in Sweden this week? What local municipality has a new policy around shoveling snow, Aiden?

57:17Aiden:Meta, I guess, meta got hacked. We can do the North Factory of the Week, but I did want to talk about this because it's related to world leaders in that I believe Obama, a previous U.S. president who. Heard that guy's corrupt. Heard he's corrupt. He made a lot of money in office because he sold the book. I don't know what his slush fund was like, but he is an Instagram account. There was a massive meta hack that just happened, and I want to walk you through it real quick because I think it is actually pretty funny. So Meta dissolved a lot of their trust and safety system in terms of moving fast and breaking things, getting a little quicker.

57:59And they've also been all in on AI. And so the Meta AI support assistant was attached to the customer service aspect of Instagram. And it turns out you could just go to any account, ask the Meta AI support assistant, say, hey, I forgot my password, can you get me in? it would say okay uh i need to make sure you're in the right location so you could just spoof your ip to be in the location that that person normally is in like they're your same region right then it would be like all right well i need to see a live photo to make sure it's really you but you could use ai to take a photo of obama for example and make the mouth move make the face and then all after that it would go okay fine then what's your new email and then you give it a new email and then it would send a code to that you would use the code then you have access to the account your past two factor.

58:45And so they were using that to get access to like literally hundreds of celebrity accounts and handles. And you might've fixed it relatively quickly, but we don't know the fallout of everything that's been leaked. Is it just, I mean, this is brand new. This happened, I think yesterday. So, uh, I thought that was a really, really funny result.

59:02Aiden:Like a higher stakes version of the Tinder thing we talked about. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I just think it's a funny example of AI and security in a different way. And I do think using the meta AI to create the video that breaks the meta AI is a funny recursive loop. Yeah. But yeah, that's it. It's just a little story. I just wanted to show that up. What's the Nordic fun fact of the week then? I'm sorry. No, I didn't. Hold on. I was making that up. I don't have anything. You don't have a Nordic? Nothing. You don't have a Nordic fact of the week, bro. This show can't continue. They just fucking drank beers this week.

59:38This show's bedrock is the Nordic fact of the week.

59:41Aiden:Surely their healthcare was bad. Was it good again? Their healthcare performing well? Relatively. It's crazy. Some problems. Because we've done 100 episodes. I don't know how many episodes we've done. not done a hundred wait no it's not a hundred we've got a year 180 episodes and in 179 of them

59:59Atrioc:that's so confidently i second guessed myself and i was like are there a hundred weeks in a year and then i realized no no there are not on episode 212 in these past 211 episodes aiden has come to every episode unprompted with a nordic fun fact of the week then we establish a new segment about it and it lasts one week. Oh, no. Okay, let's be fair. The instant something becomes your job, it's not that fun. I don't play video games that much anymore. All right. We made it his job. We made it his job. He doesn't have a Swedish snow snuffling permit fact or something. It's crazy. We're going to ruin all the fun of him moving there.

1:00:34Aiden:Well, I do. Sorry. I guess I do have fucking something. Oh, yeah. I guess I do. Now I'm excited that it's a segment. In the vein of middle powers. Okay. Cooperating. Okay. And the man who made the big speech that we talked about a while ago, carney carnster uh canada and sweden okay two great nations have recently made an agreement or rather canadian uh prime minister or the canadian government making a deal with sab the big uh defense company in sweden that they would be buying a surveillance planes from sweden and also reconsidering a deal to buy a bunch of f-35 jets from the US, instead redirecting that purchase to that company in Sweden to buy fighter jets from them.

1:01:20Aiden:And also, being the grounds for where that Swedish company will produce or build some of those planes in the future. Basically, Canada has said for a while that they're too reliant on the US when it comes to defense, at least starting last year.

1:01:37Atrioc:What happened last year? What happened in the past 500 days? I don't know what could have changed their mind. and to go to Canada and say you should be the 51st day is crazy. I feel so long ago. We don't even talk about that. That would be so crazy for either president. It's so wild. He gets away with it. Yeah. Perry's scrolling through some of these planes. They're buying some planes, non F-35.

1:02:02Aiden:But I think this is an example from what I can see of this partnership or this change. Do the Swedish ones send you a bunch of parts and you have to build them? yourself.

1:02:17Aiden:Me going to IK to buy my fighter. They have other companies there, man. They have spotify. But,

1:02:27Atrioc:uh, made out of thin cardboard. It looks like a Swedish fish. I think Canada,

1:02:32Aiden:similar to NATO. A lot of, uh, the countries, European countries in NATO, not meeting their base commitment of spending a certain amount of their GDP on their military. Canada was in the same boat, not meeting that 2 % threshold that they're supposed to meet while simultaneously admitting that a lot of their defense spending and defense strategy has been too reliant on the US for so long. And this is them pivoting away to a different company and partner to strengthen ties there, like in defense and also economically in order to diversify away from the US, a direct result of those conversations and that speech that we saw last year.

1:03:11Aiden:So I just thought this was interesting. Like it's an example of these things like progressing and not just like a headline that you saw at some point. No, this is happening all over Europe countries, European countries specifically. I mean, like Germany's really leaning into this as their exports slow down and their manufacturing's in trouble. They're kind of pivoting to a pure defense, not pure defense, but a heavy defense industry. A lot of their companies are doing quite well and they're selling to other Europeans. They're building tanks and missiles and planes and anyway, as everyone knows from history, a militarized Germany is a

1:03:44Atrioc:good sign for just as long as they sell the weapons to other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Third time's John. Third time is Hey, look, my German ancestors had a great track record up until those two times.

1:03:59Aiden:If you exclude, if you exclude those two times, I thought it was a three strike. And then also What are we talking about here? Knock somebody for two times. If you take away the two times and you also don't go much before that, if you don't read about any of the before stuff. If you start in 1910 and ignore two times. What, no, dude, Germans were great before that.

1:04:21Atrioc:They got Prussia. They were fine. They were whooping some ass. They were whooping. That's always what you want. We got the German. We got the Celts. We got the barbarians. Yes, sir. They're barbarian as fuck, bro. Remember that scene in Gladiator when the Germans fight the Romans in the... Yeah, we were badass. We were fucking badass. That was literally my grandparents in that movie. That was fucking sick. Good shit, bro. You got... I would love...

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1:05:45Aiden:I would love an update about the Samsung strike.

1:05:48Atrioc:Oh, yes. All right. So there's not a ton here, but I did think this was an interesting thing worth following up on. So last week we talked about how Samsung's workers who work in their chip division had agreed. The labor union had gotten Samsung to agree. We're going to give you basically 10%. I believe that's the number, but giant percentage of the, not even giant, big percentage of the profit of Samsung this year is going to go to bonuses for you guys. And what that turned into, 340 ,000 on average per person in the semiconductor vision. And that's dollars for somebody in South Korea where it's a lot cheaper than the US.

1:06:23Atrioc:So that's crazy money. And then I steel man it and I was like, okay, well the argument would be like, maybe that money should be more broadly spread out. So there were some Bloomberg articles this week that I read about this where there is in fact now a bunch of division and resentment, not only sort of broadly in Korea, but in Samsung itself, because in other units, they're like, what the fuck we're being excluded from this generational amount of money. Like in Samsung HR or Samsung, like washing machines and the chip guys got like a new Ferrari. 60 % of the workforce in of the Korean workforce is in the semiconductor division.

1:07:00Atrioc:Everybody else in the company is getting a$4 ,000 bonus, which is 1%. Dude.

1:07:05Aiden:Wait, I should have Aiden knows a guy this. I know somebody that works at like Samsung corporate in the US. I wonder what the vibes are like. What the vibes are like.

1:07:12Atrioc:Yeah, even that, because this would go to the Korean workers. So, okay, so here's some interesting quotes. Samsung Electronics is one company, said Lee Ho Seo, head of a smaller union made up mostly of workers in Samsung's finished product of the business division known as digital experience. We cooperated with each other and overcame crises when there was a crisis, but now the strong results have been achieved saying that only the division where the performance occurred should get them bonuses makes no sense at all. Another one said anonymously that the gaping compensation divide had killed motivation for workers who don't make memory chips and on top of that they're the memory unit i looked in they were unprofitable during entire periods of samsung's history and other divisions of samsung had to funnel money over to this division to keep it alive and now that division is going gangbusters and only those employees are going crazy right like including from the the galaxy smartphones is like allowed them to keep building factories for chips and whatnot this is why all the money should stay in the ceo's hands It gets too complicated when you try to distribute it amongst the poors.

1:08:17You just keep it in the executive class. You consolidate.

1:08:19Aiden:It stays safe. Everyone's like, well, that guy's rich. He's going to keep billions. They don't know the difference between four or five or something. It might slowly, in small parts, make it sway down. It'll trickle down.

1:08:32Atrioc:This is a genuinely interesting thing. If the CEO buys a bunch of jets from Ikea Sweden, yeah. You've seen this kind of resentment from people I know in SF, where it's all the... Yeah, if you're in Anthropic... The Anthropic OpenAI. Or OpenAI, you're going to be... You're going to get$20 million in a couple months.

1:08:49Aiden:Yeah, is there truth to that where I've heard in the Valley, like people feel like they just coin flipped the wrong companies or startups to work at. And it's like, you happen to work at one. Like we're both good engineers. I work at this one, you work at that one. And your lives are dramatically different.

1:09:08Atrioc:It's tens of millions of dollars. And that's, I think... So there are also quotes like from a taxi driver. It's basically the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Somebody who's worked and lived as a taxi driver for 30 years. So now the South Korea presidential policy chief is suggesting using AI tax revenues to essentially create a sovereign wealth fund in Korea. But it's interesting you have, you know, within Samsung now there's this divide. And then in Korea, somebody who's because, again, what's worth remembering is Samsung is one of the most sought out companies in Korea. this is the equivalent of giving i don't this is the equivalent of giving a giant bonus to people at open ai or something like that where it's like you are these are people who already went to the best schools in korea and have the best opportunities and get to work at fucking samsung where they're paid really well and you're minting them as millionaires so obviously you want to see this spread out to some degree more but it's this really bizarre thing happening right now if you're a taxi like you'd be so pissed at this right i can't think of any similar analogous situation in the united states no we don't we don't do it like that it's terrible but here's the thing it's kind of tough so it's because you could take this a lot of different directions i do think you could tax samsung with a less loopholes corporate tax and spend that on the public right but it's for me it's like this is a step in the right direction so i hate to shit on it too much it's like no i think it's great like your profit sharing with the employees of the division that did really well.

1:10:31That's, that's better than, you know, at all going to executive bonuses. So it, I don't know, I can understand the frustration, but it's also like compared to what other companies normally do.

1:10:40Atrioc:This is kind of good. I love, I love where the trend is going and I want to hit it to a broader question, which is, is this moment in AI development, a good opportunity to create a sort of sovereign wealth fund? And coincidentally, I believe yesterday, Bernie, Bernie said he's putting a bill to the floor that the U S government should take control of 50 % of these AI companies. And the idea would be this is, you know, the profits from this would then flow to some sort of like public. I don't think there's a clear policy of how the money is distributed, but you know, as a reminder, like Finland and democratic Saudi Arabia have sovereign wealth in Norway, but maybe Finland has one.

1:11:18Atrioc:I thought it was Finland. Oh, you're right. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I mixed them up. Yeah, Norway, not Finland. And then Alaska, we have a state in America that has like a sovereign wealth from from oil where people get UBI, which we forget about. And it's like incredibly successful as a program, helps lift people out of poverty. And so the idea of you like potentially creating a sovereign wealth fund from this, treating this as though we hit the jackpot with oil and other countries doing this, what do you think? Or conversely, do you think the CEO should get it all?

1:11:53Aiden:I think that's my real opinion. Now I'll steal, man, what the opposite would be. Uh, no, I saw this headline and I was thinking about it. Um, so there was a, there was something a little further back where Canada made an announcement about creating a sovereign wealth fund in the vein of Norway in order to support local investment in Canada. And that was, that's one of the goals of that fund. Uh, I'm not against nationalization of companies. I think I'm very pro that compared to most people. I think in this specific situation, my confidence in it wavered a bit because as far as I understand, if you want a successful sovereign wealth fund, a lot of that, like you're trying to diversify away from your own economy and its like shortcomings.

1:12:47Aiden:Now in the US, the economy is so large and so diverse. Maybe that doesn't matter. But in like Canada's case, to replicate the Norway sovereign wealth fund and then have the majority of that fund's investment go into local companies sort of defeats the mechanism of that sovereign wealth fund's success. That's why Norway does it. They don't want to be so reliant on their oil. They want to diversify money away from that industry. So is creating a fund where we invest primarily in an American industry a good thing? Do these things matter at all in this conversation? I was kind of asking myself those questions without coming to an answer.

1:13:28Aiden:I don't know if I would vote like,

1:13:33Aiden:like if, if you can nationalize these companies, like you kill all the willingness. I do kill all the willingness to continue developing those products. I'll be the econ brain of it. Cause I, I saw this. I don't know the exact details of Bernie specific thing. I like Bernie a lot. So maybe I'll look into it, but pull it up. The thing that spooks me, and I was against Trump when he did it with Intel, is I don't like the government picking winners and losers, especially this early in an industry like AI. So if we take 50 % of the biggest AI companies and now they become directly tied to the fortunes of the American government and American people, there's a strong incentive to make sure that those are the ones that succeed and that we all profit off of it.

1:14:16Again, I'm just a bigger fan of closing loopholes and you just tax all corporations at a certain amount and we all benefit no matter. They all compete. Right. And then we get 25 % or whatever. We just always get it. I like that a lot more than like the government taking shares and stakes in these companies. And it creates a lot of weird distorted incentives that I'm generally against. And I was against it when Trump did it with Intel. And I'm against it, I think, based on this. I've looked at it a little bit more. I obviously agree that, uh, especially with all the money flowing into AI, it's creating a real divergence in outcomes.

1:14:49People who are not in the AI industry are getting, uh, just even as like businesses, even small businesses are not getting any investment dollars. They're not getting any money. It's all going every amount of CapEx in America is going to this one industry and it's creating a huge K shaped diversions. So I agree with that. I just think taxes usually solve this. I think we've, I think we've given up on taxes as a concept because people has invaded taxes for so long.

1:15:11Atrioc:Okay. Let me, let me start two things your way. One, basically this appears to be it. It's just the bill proposes that, that the government would take 50 % stock on, uh, on the two companies, like just direct ownership. Um, so two, two, two, like entropic and open AI. Yes. Um, yeah, it just says the large, it just says the large AI ones. Um, I, I mean, I tend to, I tend to agree. Um, and then one, it's like the industry is so young, but there's two things that I think are interesting one these companies are unprofitable they burn through billions of dollars every single quarter and so it's not like i don't even know where the money would come from it would have to be from the stock market but even then when these and crag i'm wrong these are going to ipo soon right and people can invest but it's not like the entire company goes up for sale um no just a percentage even if it was a trillion dollars and america got half of that and then sold that that's like this one-time windfall and i would rather see something that's like a sustainable thing long term, although I guess if we hold ownership of it forever, that would be the idea.

1:16:11Atrioc:And then the other is what do you think of a proposal that has come up a lot, which is a value added tax on tokens, which is instead of taxing a company's profit, you tax every time that AI models are generating something for like as part of a business transaction, you know, whatever Microsoft or insert SAS company here or insert person who's using chat GPT for their own stuff, that a piece of that transaction just instantly goes to the government. It's an interesting idea. I do think, again, I just worry right now at this moment. By the way, I probably should think this through more because I want to have something I suggest that I want to advocate for instead of being against.

1:16:48But when I hear that, I'm worried because I, for example, know a guy who's doing a startup in the nuclear energy space that involves AI. And he told me off the record that all the companies, even the startups in America and in these areas, even in these critical industries like nuclear are using Chinese models because the cost per token is way cheaper. And so if you make it so that American models have a tax on each token that makes it more expensive, then everything is going to switch to Kimmy and DeepSeek and, and all the data goes to the Chinese companies. And so that's my concern is that, uh, that might be prohibitively expensive.

1:17:26Again, I'm not like the ad companies need to succeed at all costs. I'm just thinking of like, if you want this industry to be something and you want it to be America, I guess I don't know why kicking out loopholes, getting taxes, spending on people is like, that was a great system that has worked in the past. We've like abandoned it.

1:17:45Aiden:I think I agree with you. I want to preface this. It's like, I don't think I really understand the full consequences of nationalizing a company or even buying like 50 % of a company and in an industry that's developing and changing so much. I can't really like weigh that. I don't know either. But it did make me think of a conversation I had about co-ops a while ago, where a business that I think we're all familiar with was a co-op initially. And I talked to some people that work there. And now I ask this, is it still around? Three million more dollars in my pocket. And I remember a thought that I got from somebody about the work discrepancy within that company and how co-ops, like the thought from somebody was co-ops work really well for companies that have an established straightforward business model.

1:18:41Aiden:So if you're just like, if we were like a utility and we had to like supply. You do one thing, you do it well, you do the same thing overnight. And we do that over and over indefinitely because it's probably not going to change. That environment works really well for a co-op. But when you have a company that's like not established, growing, demands a bunch of extra work, it's not necessarily clear what direction it's going in. You often need some sort of technological or innovation at the company. the co-op structure, uh, which is not necessarily nationalization, um, begins to fall apart because of the discrepancies between the amount that people are willing to do and what is necessary to continue innovating and developing the product.

1:19:27Aiden:So I feel like there's something here and that if you take something like nationalizing Saudi Arabia's oil or Norway's oil, it's like the prop, the value proposition is very straightforward right now. You know, there'll be a time when like oils demand ends in the, you know, far off future still, but it makes sense. But this is a technology that is still like developing and people don't really know what the end point is or how it's going to be effectively monetized. And so many things about it need to be changed. I think about a company that we toured last week and how it like how they're on the cutting edge of something, but they don't really know where this is all going to end up yet.

1:20:07Aiden:Right. and I think with that all in mind the risks of taking that over from the government's perspective and just trying to force a winner upon something where we don't even really know it's going to end up seem like it might not work I want to look more into it because I you know I think as far as I can tell the bill is not

1:20:26Atrioc:actually out he's just saying he's going to be introducing something soon and it's just says quote from him on X give the public a 50 % ownership stake in the largest AI companies So that's where the idea is at right now.

1:20:38Aiden:And if there also, I want to say that I think if there's enough, like if there's enough willpower within the government to work, like say you wanted to like fully buy out one of the big AI companies, have that be the public AI company that gets a ton of investment and like attention put towards it. Well, the government has built a bunch of extraordinary, successful, innovative scientific achievements in the past. Like you could, you could develop the winner and have that. The Manhattan Project. Yes. And there were no... Yeah. Yeah. No, that's cool. I want to follow up on this. I think we should learn more when he puts the bill out.

1:21:18That'd be interesting to find out. Yeah. I have a question for you guys, and it's related to... We're doing a whole segment on Game 7? I want to talk... No, not necessarily Game 7, but I do want to talk about basketball real quick, and you don't need to be a basketball fan to enjoy this section, all right? This is what I want to talk about. You're going to seal my... There was a really highly profile, interesting series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs recently. Went to game seven, really exciting. And one thing that has been remarked upon both in the media and by me now is that the vibe was quite angry at one team, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

1:21:53And there was a lot of like vitriol against their lead player, Shay Gildish-Alexander, for flopping is the idea. He's exaggerating contact to draw fouls. again, you don't need to know the specifics. But the analysis that I saw said that this is kind of a rising trend in sports discussion. People are getting, instead of being like, this is my team and that's your team and I like this team and I like this team, people are kind of uniting in hatred against certain players and the refs. It's like the way that sports media landscape is changing. And I think it's undercutting the vibe of the game and the competition because people's wins are discredited and their losses are amplified.

1:22:36And so a solution was proposed by David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA. And he said, what if we had, like they have now in tennis and some others, and I think hockey, this Hawkeye AI system that automatically scans the court, tracks the players and calls fouls.

1:22:57Aiden:Okay, this is, sorry, you said David Stern. This is now, this is right now. Did I say David Stern? I thought you were going on like a history thing. Adam Silver. I'm sorry. Okay. David Stern. I'm fucking old. No, Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA now, said Hawkeye, AI, NBA scanning. Obviously, the refs would do some parts still, but for like things that are guaranteed like on the line or whatever, they would just be instant. And I always want to know what you it's like. It's like a philosophical question about what you guys think about computer vision refs, AI refs.

1:23:28Atrioc:i think if you took the word ai out of this and said should we have some sort of like digital checking and you're not just going off of a person standing there making the decision and almost everybody would say yes am i crazy i say yes instantly and i don't even care you put the stupid word ai in it it's like i find it to be something i beg for when i watch every every person faster i unless maybe i'm wrong because i've never been a diehard like sports fan of a good team but every sports fan ever has experienced the feeling that a game was robbed because of poor refereeing refereeing right refereeing you know maybe this is less common in soccer but no absolutely it's more it's an insane thing the incident came out of my mouth like basketball football everything right like like i can think of visceral moments where i mean literally perry and i grew up in like one of the most there's like big scandal where the sacramento kings didn't anyway we don't have to get into it but you know giant refereeing scandal which is like that was a real deeply personal to sacramento and like ruined our entire sports career and and trajectory what is the what is the counter is that we like the human mistakes of referees like well i think there's the idea

1:24:40Aiden:that the ai won't be good enough or doesn't understand like the human nuance of the game and won't be able to call it correctly but i think human is checking right there's no way

1:24:51Atrioc:they're going to just send it and say, chat should be T make the call, right? No, they either would be a human to check the output. And I just want to say, so I was looking into this baseball has done this recently with the, you know, whether it's a ball or strike system and the players can just tap their helmet to challenge whatever the umpire says in the field. And it instantly goes to the AI analysis. Yeah. And if they're correct, they just, they get their challenge back. And it apparently, according to baseball fans, I know it has sped up the game and made it more watchable and entertaining.

1:25:20and their ratings are up. Tennis has done this for things when they go on the line. Like sports are trying this and it seems to be successful. So I just think it's weird because referees have a lot of, the referee union has a lot of power in basketball and there's like a hesitancy to this. But I think from my POV, it feels like it would speed up the game and be better. So I just wanted to know if there was like, maybe it's open to the fan. I'd love to hear if there's a counter argument that I'm missing, but I kind of want this bad.

1:25:46Aiden:Yeah, I'm kind of in the camp of if you're a big sports fan, what your practical pushback to this is. And then also imagine the world where the AI is literally perfect at calling the game, like 99.99 % effective at calling basketball now. Are you still against it for some other reason? Because in my head, it's like cars. As soon as it averages out better than the humans, I prefer it in this case. Yeah. yeah and i'm not super pressed about nba ref unemployment this is i'll talk to it well no

1:26:24Atrioc:which is like if if if this replaces refereeing you would presumably get an increase in interest in the sport as you saw with baseball which will overall increase the investment and interest and job like more jobs be creative if the sport is more popular like i i have a hard time seeing what the argument against this and the last aspect of this which really kind of drives it home for me is that the unfortunate reality of sports in 2026 is that gambling has become a much, much bigger industry than it ever was before. It's always been an undercurrent. It's Sacramento Kings example, definitely. But like in the past few years, it has just 100X'd in the amount of money flowing around in gambling.

1:27:01And of course, there is a massive incentive, especially because we've gone from like just betting on the winner of the game to betting on how many rebounds one player will get or how many points. Like point shaving has so much more money you can make. And so the incentives on every ref to just do small things that can have a massive financial impact are real. They're just real. And so taking it out of their hands is not only like, I think a good viewing experience, but maybe the smart thing to do to reduce the impact of a human over a financial decision that's becoming more and more. I don't think the gambling is a good thing, but it's happening.

1:27:33So yeah, I don't know. I just want to bring some, I guess we're mostly in agreement. So it's not as a debate like I thought it might be, but I want to hear what, what the audience thinks. Cause I, I'm, I'm a, I've watched a lot of NBA this year and I found it to be the most frustrating part is the refs and the, and the slowing down to the pace of the game. Is this done with soccer? Do you know right now? I only know. I only know baseball tennis and I think hockey is doing it as well. I mean,

1:27:55Aiden:everything to do with like even adding cameras to the review process of sports that's been integrated over time is, I feel like I don't know anybody that doesn't like that. And this feels like just the next evolution of it. Well, I have a juicy little basketball tidbit. You got a basketball segue? I kind of lobbed it up. I didn't know if you had. And you might remember, listener, you might remember I have a friend who was dribbling his ball in a terminal in China. And that basketball he was dribbling, what brand was it? Li Ning. Li Ning. So I thought this was pretty fascinating. As a lot of people know, the way that athletes, at least superstar athletes, make a lot, maybe most of their money, is through their endorsement contracts, like their shoe deals and athletic wear, all those types of things.

1:28:47Aiden:Steph Curry, notable figure for having a deal with Under Armour and bringing it to a point of popularity through his own superstardom. He's seen as one of the great oversights or snubs by the other athletic brands. Like Nike, yeah. They got his name wrong or something in the pitch, apparently. Yeah. And his contract or it came up or he ended it with Under Armour, I believe a year or two ago. And he had a 13 year partnership with Under Armour that had gone really, really well. But then he effectively entered free agency within this world of sportswear endorsements, especially shoes. he recently i think it was today signed a 10 or sorry yesterday signed a 10 year 400 million dollar deal with lee ning steph curry like 37 yeah he's not gonna be in the league bro he's doing 10 years yeah but roger federer makes shoes and he's he's retired you know you're right you're right i think the the value of steph curry uh they see it this chinese company recognizes it which we became a little more familiar with while we were there.

1:29:59Aiden:And this deal is expected. He not only gets to produce like shoes through this, but it's also a golf wear brand. Cause Steph Curry has gotten like really into golf in recent years and he's actually very good. At least, you know, as far as a casual golf player goes, he won like some celebrity tournament a couple of years ago. He just keeps winning. He just keeps winning. How's he do it? It's annoying. But I thought this was kind of interesting. Cause I don't, can you pause it? I want to jump in. because I think it's fascinating, the growth of Lean Inge. And do we not have, okay. So this is an analysis I saw on Twitter of the number of mentions of Chinese footwear brands on the Reddit subreddit, Running Shoe Geeks.

1:30:43And if you go back to 2023 and 2022, essentially no mentions. And in the past few years, even in these Western audiences, hyper niche audiences of people like looking for the best quality stuff, it is spiking. and uh this trend is the same across basketball shoes and all the other like major enthusiast footwear subreddits and so you're seeing kind of this invasion at the same time you're seeing the implosion of nike stock which is just getting crushed so i think this is like a big like uh you know i hate you guys hate the book but when everyone knows that everyone knows type moment where steph curry a massive superstar kind of breaks that ice and signs a deal outside of the big Western brands.

1:31:26Aiden:I think he's expected to be the gateway for this brand in the U S market because they have such a limited American presence as it stands. Right. I think it's interesting because we went to that one store. It was Antiguan. Yeah. And we all bought some stuff. We thought it was cool. It's this brand that within China surpassed Nike last year and same

1:31:46Atrioc:vibe, same selling the same type of stuff, but now they're actually more basically Nike competitor directly.

1:31:51Aiden:And I think it's, what's cool about that is having worn it back at home. Most people are like, Oh, what is that? You know? And, uh, this is like this giant American athlete that is their means of like promoting this brand in the U S leaning.

1:32:07Atrioc:Well, I have a question. So for you guys' knowledge, is this, are these brands like better? You know, the everyone knows what everyone knows thing kind of implies like this has been around and that suddenly this big wave of change is happening is it just new players entering the market or is there some reason this would disrupt so my understanding about leaning specifically versus nike is that uh the big thing you have to factor in is cost so the quality is as good for a lower so they are selling lower is that's the okay that's the idea interesting is the idea is that they have like the prices for established brands like nike and adidas have gotten higher and higher specifically nike nike is the one that's like really being eaten into here right because they have kind of fallen behind and one thing that nike did specifically is that they wanted to switch to an online direct-to-consumer format of like selling their shoes when they did that they lost a ton of retail space at all these shoe stores they didn't think it mattered but it turns out that did matter because a lot of people find their first shoe there or they so they they like they did like the disney thing where they they cater only to the disney adult who already they love and you lose the new flood of consumers and so they're now panicking and backtracking but it's created this opening for a lot of competitors specifically chinese ones to really swoop in and it's just it's an interesting i mean even in even

1:33:20Aiden:in like running shoes right there's been companies like on yeah that have like really popped off in recent years that like are eating into their market on the running hoka what's that like new zealand or what was that hoka's french french yeah but i mean there's like it's not just chinese like a lot of companies are are breaking this established like triopoly of running shoes i think

1:33:40Atrioc:it'd be particularly interesting if these also are definitively better, you know, because that's happening in EVs, right? It's like, these are some of just the best cars. Like when we were there in China, it was like, these are better than the cars we are driving or seeing in America. And I would assume with running shoes, there's a cap, but I don't know. And I run all the time. I've never noticed the difference between the shoes. So I doubt at some point, I'm going to try a Chinese shoe and be like, whoa, they cracked the code. So at that point, I think even in EVs, like you could say the porsche take hand is like maybe even a better driving experience than yeah but it's it's one fourth the cost so it's like that is where the real like holy shit moment comes from yeah no actually that's a fair point that's a point

1:34:23Atrioc:folks aiden you you made a noise like you're gonna say something and now you've been looking directly at the camera without changing your face grimacing i have them all in suspense right now you've got us in the palm of your hand but you might lose it if you don't you have to bring it home ladies and gentlemen prepare yourself for the final words of lemonade

1:34:41Aiden:stand if you want to see my palm you can see it on the patreon that was terrible

1:34:49Atrioc:replaced by cheaper chinese cheaper chinese aid and dude yeah you need

1:34:53Aiden:leaning you need leaning you know patreon.com slash lemonade stand if you want an extra hour of the show every week how about that how about that Send us out on Patreon.com. That's Lemonade Stand. We need a new Patreon goal to travel somewhere or something. We'll figure that out. We got to come up with a new plan. Thanks, guys, for watching. That was another week of news. Appreciate you. See you next week. See you all next week. Goodbye.