We're At War Now? | Ep. 052 Lemonade Stand 🍋

20:36Atrioc:and my trans wife are listening to the new york times daily podcast this morning okay wow you guys are and the journalist there said that khamenei made every person in the iranian command designate three to four layers of succession so that even if we kill them it just keeps going And that has helped the fact that currently there's no power vacuum, apparently.

20:56Aiden:Okay. That's what I heard. I had a thought about this because in Venezuela, right? This operation, it's we replace, we effectively like replace the leader and then put a bunch of new pressure on whoever this leader is in charge without changing the underlying like fabric of the government or like regime that's in place, right? It's we didn't say a lot of things can still play out there, but it's basically the same government was somebody who is more malleable to us interests because of what we've done that's what it looks like so far yeah feels like something similar here and it reminded me a bit of the video you did recently on action against cartels in mexico and south america where we've had this approach for a long time that we're gonna come at this guy at the top like decapitate the organization but nothing has significantly shifted or changed yeah in fact the violence that affects people day to day has gotten worse over time as we've continued to do this.

21:56Aiden:And I think the other argument that gets flown around is that you're going to help or liberate the people who live there under that regime. But it doesn't feel like anything about what is playing out is necessarily gonna like free the iranian people that uh are are under the thumb of said yeah i want to talk about that because i do think you know i've said i think the ayatollah was a horrendous leader i think the crackdown they did on protest was was brutal i mean if i'm gonna be somebody who stands up for like i mean they reportedly killed thousands of yeah if i'm like a person who's like i think what happened to alex pretty is fucking horrendous then i have to be somebody who thinks 15 000 protesters being killed by the state.

22:42However, that being said, I saw a really great breakdown of every single time in human history, there has been an attempt to do regime change by air power only. It has a 0 % success rate. Not like sometimes, not like rarely, zero. It has never happened. You cannot change the regime from the air. All it seems to do every single time is actually entrench the current administration of the thing, because it goes from the average person in Tehran being like, I really don't like the Ayatollah and the regime, to bombs dropping, and they cement. It suddenly becomes this new outside enemy. And so I am skeptical that even that, which I think is a thin veneer of an excuse.

23:26I do not think this is done for the -

23:27Aiden:I don't think it's done for that reason at all. of saving the Iranian people. We, you know, because by that logic, we would be in Sudan. We would be, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, we would be so many more places. We would be so many more places. This place clearly has a geostrategic interest.

23:43So, yeah, I think the idea that it's going to change the regime is skeptical, which means they may need boots on the ground. And that has been like a hard line that Trump has been avoiding. Like, you know, that we would not send American troops to actually have boots on the ground. Like that, then the comparisons to Iraq becomes so incredibly on the nose that it's hard to, so I don't know. I guess, like I can see the larger movement that is happening probably within the Pentagon, not Trump himself, of like trying to gain leverage over resources for a coming struggle over a great power rival China.

24:22I can see the calculus behind that. But the details, especially of this action, seem very haphazard, messy, unplanned, chaotic. And it's not like we don't have any recent examples or a long history of examples of meddling in the Middle East, getting bad consequences, like doing something where you think this outcome will be easy. Even Obama. I mean, Obama had Libya and - Gaddafi. Gaddafi. And he presented it as like, this will be relatively easy and quick. and then thousands more died, huge blowback, chaos in the country in Libya. It's like this is not... If you don't look into it, Libya's fine.

25:06If you don't look into it. Amen. Yeah, sounds based. So yeah, it's just funny. It's not funny, but I think it's funny. I think it's funny that Trump...

25:19Aiden:Okay, could I take... There's another aspect that I wanted to bring up, and it's a lot of similarities to Venezuela and the interviews that I had done from the interviews that I have seen done with people who live there. And I think there's this thing that still frustrates me about these topics right now is that because there is, I think there is a thing I see in discussion online where people feel very obligated to like pick, because they feel like they have to pick a side, they have to find a way to rationalize the acceptance of one of the parties like fully. And in this case, I see a lot of people pushing back against the idea that Iranian people would be happy.

26:11Aiden:And I'm not just talking about diaspora, who I think even in my conversation with the Venezuelan people that I was talking to, one of them doesn't live in Venezuela anymore. And he was the most gung ho about. Gambling the consequences of an American intervention, they were all down for it, but he was by far the most like like. like the sacrifices are worth it out of the three people that I spoke to. And he's the one who doesn't live there anymore. Right. And so ignoring, and it's not to say that the diaspora wouldn't have like their own like valid reasons for having opinions about a topic like this.

26:50Aiden:But if I were to just focus on the people who are living under the regime, but also would face the consequences of these strikes, and there is still this similar wave of happiness at any hope of change. And that doesn't mean that this is going to be any different at this time. It doesn't mean the U.S. is going in with good intentions. It's just the idea that it should be understandable that if you're the person under the pressure of a regime like this, where you're unarmed, you're unable to fight back, you're unable to create the change for yourself, you feel like you've been like locked in this hell of a government for decades and you find you have no way out.

27:31Aiden:It makes sense that a lot of those people would be excited about any possible opportunity of that changing, no matter the odds or the intention of that thing being successful. And Iranians don't feel like universally the same about this topic. There are people who don't want in Iran that don't want the U.S. intervention. But from what I can see, the majority of people are excited at the prospect of a change happening. And I think what's frustrating is like the people seem to have to, they feel like they need to go hand in hand with this idea of like denying that that happiness might exist at the same time as like saying the US doing this is bad.

28:16Aiden:It's like it can be both things. I can understand why an Iranian would want any chance to escape the circumstances that they're in while also saying that I don't think this is going to work. The U.S. shouldn't be doing this. I think this is unethical for so many reasons. It's like you can have these complex opinions about something like this. Yeah, I mean, just to clarify, 100 percent. I have two sources in Iran that I've been working with on the presentation I did for Big A. They were there through the protests. both of them are i actually had an argument i was talking with them because it's like they are deeply in support of this because they don't see another option and i don't blame them i get a hundred percent from that pov it makes sense and i think but from an american pov

29:02Atrioc:you know what i'm saying let's let's make the american pov imagine that during the protests you know the last month or whatever that the united states government had shot and killed 15 ,000 Americans, would you support Kim Jong Il bombing Washington, D.C.? Right. Or swooping in and kidnapping the president. Yeah, or swooping in and kidnapping Trump. You know what I'm saying? I would kind of be cool if North Korea took Trump. See, it's interesting that you say that.

29:30Aiden:It's interesting that you say that, right? I think it's funny enough. It's like, in a way, I would say, no, I wouldn't initially support that because I want a chance for like, we need to fight back in like, we need to fight back against the regime in place now that is choosing to kill thousands of protesters and like the society's collapsing around us. but if me and you wanted to fight back and then we spent the next you know four decades trying and then we could and everything we've done has failed then i might be down kim jong-un then i might and i might not be so here's space too right so like and yeah anyway people you know for example people in america a lot of them are very upset with trump if putin flew a jet in and kidnapped trump and pulled him out there would be people celebrating people right now like before he did 15 000 kills right here people celebrate right now i because i hate trump because i hate trump i don't want putin to do that exactly but then imagine phase two is that putin starts uh putting russian oil companies and seizing the oil or the resources of america and shipping it off and you know there's bombing and major do you know what i'm saying the next phase is you'd be like wow you might start to your initial enthusiasm at this leader you've hated being gone would fade quickly as you realize the new the point was not to liberate you the point was to get something yeah i would there's there's just this cross section of like circumstances and desperation and like my life and the people around me's life has gotten so bad so do i want to be picky and choosy about what happens still and iran there's a disagreement about this within iran from iranian people like i i think i the when we talked about this with venezuela i think something that frustrated me is there's these little fucking worms in the in the comments who are who are just they they think that even ignore they it feels like this is what it feels like it feels like even acknowledging that an iranian living in iran could be happy about this is somehow a sign off for imperialism.

31:39Aiden:It's like, no, it's just, it's just explaining what's happening. That's, yeah, I agree with you. I agree. Uh, yeah, it, it is a, I mean, that's just the internet discourse. It's frustrating.

31:50Atrioc:One quick thing is like, what is Iran doing back? Cause they are fighting back. This is not Venezuela where we, we're, you know, we poof the president and then the country just like keeps going kind of. So they've been doing all these missile attacks, but most of the missile attacks, like there's, there's no missiles going to the U S which would, I think substantially change the calculus here. But what they are doing is sending a fuckload of missiles. If you pull this up, Perry, it's basically all the Gulf states. So Iran is on one side of the Strait of Hormuz. And then on the other side is the UAE, is Saudi Arabia, is Kuwait.

32:24Atrioc:And these are traditionally allies of the US. So this map by Bloomberg has basically, this is how many US troops are stationed in this area. and basically across from the ocean across from iran every uh iran excuse me every country basically has a ton of u.s station troops and so iran has been shooting missiles back and hitting a bunch of them i don't know if you guys saw this dubai which is the world's busiest airport is shut down right now yeah because a missile hit a bunch right yeah or sorry i think it was a drone that came down um uh yeah so these are countries that you know strongly depend on their reputation as being a tourist hub and a safe haven in this area right like and if that collapses this is like a big big big deal to them and they are super pissed so the gulf states have collectively said man there were some like vicious quotes about they like return to your senses this is insane there's already been this tension between iran and the gulf states for a while part of that is the religious side of the sunni versus shia but part of it is the feeling of iran is sponsoring terror

33:29Aiden:in their region yeah i actually think but then you have like i mean these are all monarchies

33:32Atrioc:it's not like this is you know the people are rising up against iran can regular joe doug explain the sunni versus shia break yeah when jesus christ died should paul be the successor or should all the disciples collectively decide on who the successor to Jesus Christ is?

33:53Aiden:He's so Doug. He's so Doug. Average Doug's so wide. This is what me and my trans wife study. He's a complicated person that people don't understand. We study theology. We study other theology. We want to have a balanced view on our Christian faith. Between that and the cowboys, you have a full day. I think those are the last part that we didn't really touch on. Is this outside of this, outside of the greater kind of military goals that you, I think there's a Middle Eastern dynamic at play where Iran is the regional enemy of a lot of these other more American aligned states and their potential oil exports in this strait are what is at threat.

34:35Aiden:So there is a support or at least a abstinence, abstainment on their end of a conflict like this because they want the security of that strait for their own interests. And they're already within this American sphere of influence. Right.

34:56Atrioc:They're, I don't know, stoked is probably not the right word. Like you don't want, you know, I, you know what? I'll actually say it. I'm not qualified to speak on what the Gulf states in the Middle East want. But yeah, I mean, they're, you know, this tension has been high for a while. They're not stoked, right? That was the opposite. They're angry. Well, I mean, yes. but from what I was reading about this specifically, there's already been tensions. They were two days before the strikes trying to get Iran to like agree to nuclear terms because they're saying Israel is going to strike soon. It's like apparently two days and then the US and Israel just go in anyway and they were essentially too late.

35:28Atrioc:They've been trying to get this to calm down. But Iran kind of lashing out at everybody and for example, having things hit the Dubai airport feels like a bad PR move. It doesn't feel very targeted. Maybe you're just going to piss off the entire region. And it's like the point is like they have military capabilities still. They're being bombed badly, but they can act right now. And it feels like what they're doing in response is pissing off the entire region.

35:56Aiden:This is actually a good question because I don't know the answer. I also. There's two Gulf state perspectives here from my understanding is there's the version of in the long run, you do not want to have Iran to have so much influence over this space that your country relies on so heavily. Right. Right. But on the other hand, any conflict with Iran introduces this blockade on the strait that doesn't allow you to sell oil in the short term. So you don't really want that either. Yeah. You want some, ideally, some sort of diplomatic solution that makes sure you never stop selling oil at all, but ultimately provides the protection of the whole straight and the interests of the straight from your perspective.

36:42Aiden:And so there's I think there's a conflict of long term versus short term goals for these states that I don't really have the answer to. I don't know how they feel about it. I don't know what the reaction is to this happening. Well, the reaction is they're pissed. They've already put out statements. I mean, everybody that's been struck by an Iranian missile, all the nations, all the GCC, the Gulf State something, they. Gulf Cooperation Council. Yeah, that's what it is. Gulf Cooperation Council. They're condemning it. They're against it. I mean, I saw someone say that Trump might get bailed out because Iran has struck so many countries in its near region that they might help him.

37:23I think France is thinking of getting involved because some of their assets got hit. Like, because they struck so broadly and indiscriminately in the range they could hit. Yeah, it's not all military bases.

37:34Atrioc:They've hit a bunch of other stuff. Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

38:17Aiden:I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building.

38:34Atrioc:But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America, actually.

39:09Aiden:Well, you know what would have cleaned up this whole operation if the Department of War had access to Claude? It's funny as they did. Yeah, they did have access to Claude. This was used. Claude was still being used. After you go quick primer, a bunch of AI conflict, Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, the Pentagon signed deals with all three, but they've been using Claude for the Department of War for all their actions, including Venezuela and including what happened in Iran. And the leader of Claude, Dario Amidai, said, we have two red lines that you can't cross if you're going to use our product in the department of war you can't use it for autonomous weapons you can bring mine up perry and you can't use it for mass surveillance domestic mass surveillance on american citizens and those are our two airlines outside of that we'll do everything and i just want to be so clear that they were already working with the pentagon they were willing they were like pretty flexible even on the definition of autonomous weapons if you really look into it it was like pretty flexible they just had to have a human at the wheel to press the final button.

40:18And the Pentagon would not agree to these two deals. So Claude held firm and they were kicked out of the Pentagon contract and Trump declared them a woke radical left company. And they are attempting to put the Defense Production Act and cut them off from the supply chain. So nobody who works with the US government can work with Anthropic, which means they would have to lose their access to Google and Amazon and all the big tech companies So pretty big, like government choice. That's, that's sort of caught up to today. Until recently, OpenAI signed a deal with the Pentagon to kind of step into that gap that was left behind.

40:57And I think that brings us to what's going on right now. Sam Altman received a lot of flack for this. And I think we were going to discuss like the merits and the whatever of, is that, am I caught up? Is there anything else I want to say? Yeah.

41:08Atrioc:So what I would like to do in this conversation at the risk of people, assuming that these points are my points in the YouTube comments is to let's make an argument for why or try to understand the argument for why OpenAI did this or why there might be merit in the idea of a private tech company saying that to the Department of War, to the United States military, hey, you can use our stuff for anything as long as it's legal. So looking into this substantially, it seems as though the specific language... Can you pause for one second? I just want to just direct to cam one thing doug has been like a he's like the first person on this podcast to even introduce me to dario amadai's uh work his his writings about ai for peace we can even i assume we're well hopefully they're okay with it like we were pitched open ai as a sponsor and i turned it down and said we would love anthropic the most and that was months ago all right so you're coming at this respect of you were just generally trying to understand this because I know the comments are going to go crazy on it.

42:10And I just want that to be understood clearly. I think we're all pretty much, whatever. I would like to hear this because I think, here's what I'll say. From a PR and marketing standpoint, just on a straight level, this is a huge fuck up from Sam.

42:25Atrioc:Yes. This has been clearly a ton of blowback. I've seen uninstalls. I uninstall ChatGPT. Yeah. I unsubscribe. And I don't usually do that. I'm not really a big, I think most boycotts fail. They're mostly, but this like was like easy enough for me to do and i felt strongly about uh the two red lines that they they held firm on that i unsubscribed and so um clearly they've seen blowback however there's been a ton of writing by sam allman that i have not read yet he did a lot he did a long they've done publishing and maybe he has a better argument than i don't understand i would i would like to hear the best faith interpretation of why right okay right um i i mean i'll spoil it i unsubscribed from chat gpt this morning and i pay 200 a month i've done that for over a year and i have been a hardcore user of chat gpt and open ai for a long time so i'm i'm super not a fan of this but i think there's two interesting angles to this whole thing uh one is what specifically is different between what anthropic was doing and what open ai just did so again to make this clear anthropic said hey we're happy with you to keep using our models in your military but we have these two things that we don't want you to do.

43:35Atrioc:And then the department of war said no. And they've, there's this big blow up and then Sam Altman swoops in like literally the next day and, and does the same contract basically. And so Sam Altman has been saying and open AI has been saying repeatedly, we have the same red lines. Initially that was set and it looked like Sam was like coming. They were all in the night, right? Everybody's like, wow, the tech companies are all together.

43:56Aiden:That's kind of what I thought was I saw that announcement come out and I I thought, oh, is this the second domino in the rest of these large companies taking a step in the same direction? Because they're getting pressure internally from employees. Yeah.

44:08Atrioc:Right. So there was a brief moment where it seemed like, whoa, all of a sudden Anthropic is like pushing back against the military about their use of AI. And OpenAI is coming in as their biggest competitor and saying, we're not going to do it either. And then the next day, OpenAI, like, it was such a bad look. It's a horrific look. On Thursday, it was like, he's stepping up. He's putting his money where his mouth is. he's joining anthropic i thought google should join in and if all the ai companies agree that that was a red line it's gonna be badass and then to sign the deal with the pentagon the next day yeah a funny one pair if you pull this up like one of the reasons he keeps talking about why they did this so fast the main reason this is from sam altman the main reason for the rush was an attempt to de-escalate matters at a time where it felt like things could get extremely hot and it made me think imagine that behind the scenes brandon you and your wife have been having issues and then you mentioned to me you're like uh we're getting a divorce and i'm like i want to diffuse the situation i start dating your wife i mean that's i it's not i wouldn't use the word diffuse personally yeah it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like it's diffusing that hard but i you know um okay so if you look at open ai's agree like statements about this on paper it appears that open AI has done the exact same thing as anthropic.

45:28Atrioc:They have said, here are three red lines that guide our work with the department of war. Again, this is open AI. The people who swooped in and took the wife, um, number one, no use of open AI technology for master domestic surveillance to no using it for direct autonomous weapon systems. And there's a third one that wasn't there with anthropic, which is that it can't be used for high stakes automated decisions, which is sort of nebulous. So on the surface, open AI has come out and there are other, there are other people, if you pull this down so I can pull up other stuff, there are other people in the policy department of open AI who are saying explicitly, look, we have the same red lines.

46:06Atrioc:We have the same red lines. We are showing them repeatedly. So the question is sort of, do you trust open AI to stick to these red lines? And why did they even get approval when supposedly they're doing the same thing. So the last 24 hours, Sam Altman's been doing damage control. And even in their main post, they updated it at the top. This is updated yesterday. Throughout our discussions, we've made it clear that we need to, that our tools are not going to be used for X, Y, and Z. Here's the new language in our contract, consistent with applicable laws, including the fourth amendment. It shall not be used for domestic surveillance.

46:41Atrioc:It may not be used for these things. So open AI is repeatedly, and they have multiple people on their team trying to say over and over, we're following the same things that that dario did and so then the question is why the fuck did this blow up with anthropic and not open ai so essentially people are speculating because we don't have the contract you mentioned the the sort of leaks so some of the criticism if you pull this back down perry i can say this stuff about the leaks you mean yeah just go ahead with the leaks So the leaks basically make it clear that the open AI contract is just a lot softer than the one Anthropic was demanding, which is basically saying that like you, it's from the point of open AI, you, the Pentagon, have to follow all the laws of the United States.

47:26And you have to follow your own directives and then point to some directives like directives against ultimate surveillance. The problem is the Pentagon has the capability to change those whenever they want. Yeah. While Anthropic was saying, we don't care what your rules are. We won't let our product be used for these two things. We will stop that.

47:43Atrioc:A different way to phrase this is Anthropic said, we have these two values that we care about. We don't want you using it. Open AI has said, we have these two values we care about, but as long as it's legal, it's okay. Yeah. So it's a slight difference where Open AI has stated, look, as long as it's legal, it's cool, but look, it has to be legal. But that's slightly different. On top of that, Sarah Shoker, who previously led OpenAI's geopolitics team. There's a lot of modifying words that are in the sentences that the OpenAI spokespeople are giving. The use of the word unconstrained. They're saying you can't use unconstrained surveillance or personal data.

48:19Atrioc:The use of the word generalized or open-ended. That's not complete prohibition. There's a law expert, Jessica Tillman. It's like weasel words. Yeah, wrote, there's a tension at the heart of this agreement with OpenAI and the government. If the safety stacks, if the safety of OpenAI blocks a lawful use, which provision is in control? Does the military then get to take over the, to put this differently, OpenAI is saying, hey, internally, as part of their damage control, we're going to have all of these safety measures to make sure this stuff isn't used. But if they've signed a contract that says the government can use it for whatever they want, as long as it's lawful, the government can come in and just say, you need to shut those down because what we're doing still follows the law.

48:57Atrioc:And then there's many people who have been making the argument that Trump and Hegseth, this is from the New York Times, Maureen Dowd, have have shown contempt for the law when it gets in the way of their whims. And some of this is from James O'Donnell and MIT Technology Review. An assumption that federal agencies won't break the law is little assurance to anyone who remembers these surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden. And so I think there's a strong argument. There's a great Dario interview that was a few weeks ago before all this blow up where he was talking about how theoretically, perfectly legally right now, you could, you know, public spaces are free to record.

49:34You're allowed to record public spaces. But prior to the development of AI, there's no way you could record all that and have any meaningful use of their, it's just too much data. You couldn't possibly sift through it. But because of AI, he's like, well, theoretically, you could record every public space, track every conversation and everything, tag it. AI would collate it and give you a perfect map of everyone saying you could find opposition, political opponent, you could do everything. And he's like, that would be technically legal under the Constitution, but it would be a mockery of the Fourth Amendment.

50:02And so that's the type of thing where if he's taking a stand, it means something because he's saying that even if it were legal, technically, I would not feel comfortable doing it. And so that's the area where... And that leads to the next part, which is the hard thing.

50:15Atrioc:Aiden, this is where you're going to shine. The question, and I think the bigger philosophical question that is worth asking, is if we go on the assumption that these AI technologies are an incredibly powerful new weapon, which most people would agree with, it literally was just used as part of the Iran invasion. It's being used by the government constantly. It's becoming more powerful. Do you agree with that? Imagine it is like a nuclear weapon. Ben Thompson wrote about this in Strachery and basically says, imagine this hypothetical. If nukes were developed by a private company and not the government, and then that private company sought to dictate terms to the U.S.

50:55Atrioc:military about how and when the nukes could be used, the U.S. would be in a position to destroy that company or take over control. that essentially there are some technologies that are so fundamentally powerful that are so fundamentally related to a government's ability to dictate power in the world that they cannot be in control by a private entity.

51:19Aiden:This is low key the plot of Civil War, the Marvel movie. This is low key. That's the most super shit you could have said in that moment of all time. I know. The discussion's done. Feel free to kick me off the pod. Feel free to kick me off. Feel free to kill me. Lock me up because my fucking Zoomer mind can only contextualize things through Marvel movies and Super Smash Bros. ballet. I think the Strait of Hormuz reminds me of iCarly in a way. Yeah, that's true. It is kind of, it's like when Freddy was thinking about leaving the show, right?

51:53Atrioc:Do you want Jerry Jones to have total ownership of the Cowboys or should the government take control?

51:59Aiden:I know I've derailed. I know I've derailed, but this is a good no no so yeah and i think this is a good example i think this is the more

52:04Atrioc:interesting conversation here which is i i it's real fucking easy to look at our current administration and what they're doing and going i don't want our tech companies to be supporting with no limits uh this particular administration doing whatever they want with this ai particularly when they've shown a willingness to abandon the law repeatedly and actually multiple administrations do this as snowden showed right and then the question is do we want unelected ceos to have control and decision making over technologies that increasingly are going to become maybe as powerful as nukes i i like what has happened yeah there's one imagine it's not nukes imagine it's you're a you're a hobbyist drone company right okay and i make cool drones you can take photography with and then you find out that your drones are being purchased by the military and used to kill people yeah you should have the right to say i don't want to sell you my drones for that purpose That's if it's not a nuclear technology.

52:58If it's a regular technology, the idea that the government should be able to punish that company, destroy them financially, try to isolate them from their... It's an American company because they...

53:08Aiden:You're Captain America. Because they don't want it to be used for war. It's crazy. But the second thing is that if it is a fundamental technology, the specifics of the red lines matter because these red lines are not meaningfully constraining the ability of the US military to use this to defend itself or for war like if you say that we need master domestic surveillance or we're going to fall behind china or we need autonomous drones we're gonna fall by china you better make that case pretty strongly american public because i don't think like that's these are not things that you need to have the the power over like it's not like it's like if the nuke company said you couldn't use it to nuke chicago you can use it for military but you can't nuke chicago and it's like we need all purposes we need we need every okay i will make the counter argument if you

53:57Atrioc:i think it's it's so easy in this context in that example because of the current government is pretty unlikable to the average person but in the case of national security the idea that the u.s and i want to be really clear as a reminder here the democratically elected representatives should be able to decide what to do with america's most powerful technology that is the question ultimately i love i mean i love is a strong word i strongly like dario amide in general and really like what is what i i you want him to kiss him i desire that's the fan fiction he's been writing dude he's got he's drawing little doodles of you and dario yeah but it's just imagine this scenario

54:35Aiden:is is different dario and it's iron man you know what what is sam altman is if he's the company

54:41Atrioc:that comes up with agi and we're like okay he should be the one to be in control of it i think it is i think it is a little worrying to imagine that tech ceos have control of this increasingly powerful extremely potent technology and that the democratically elected government ultimately can't use it for the what it determines to be as national security here's here's the here's my my

55:04Aiden:actual analysis okay the aidens any aidens 28 almost 29 year old analysis the greatest thing before an analysis to say that you're almost i'm 28 and a half and keep in mind keep in mind if i go back three pages in this notebook it's about throwing smokes on mirage but there's no there's no simple answer of like this example or analogy needs to be the fixed framework for these things when the stakes are so high i think the idealistic scenario is you have like a government and institutions that you have a deep enough trust in to do the correct thing that their regulations of and decisions over all of these things are trusted enough that when they step in and they are and they are like oh I uh we do want to like nationalize or control this asset because of the danger it represents the bulk of your society is lock and step with that decision because they believe in the institutions they are a part of.

56:09Aiden:But we are at this time where everything is so polarized and a lot of people have lost faith in these institutions or the institutions have deservably lost credit through their actions over the last decades or we believe these institutions are so corrupt that we're no, like eventually you have to be the soldier who refuses orders, right? Anthropic is drawing that line in the sand. like if you if I'm if I'm a part of the military and I'm given a mission or a goal and I'm a patriot and I believe in the country and I love my country I don't mean the U.S. specifically I mean like a broad just a hypothetical country right but eventually I have some sort of moral compass that and my the my boss or my country is asking me to do something I don't believe in anymore I don't think that is the correct thing anymore you have to stand up and push back against it and there's no fixed framework here that just says whether this is okay or isn't okay because of the uncertainty of the stakes of the situation and i i ultimately think anthropic is drawing a line that i think is appropriate because i don't have faith in the apparatus yeah right now to make the right call that's a great point but i i wish i i ideally the goal of government would to have the trust of the society to be able to make that decision.

57:34Aiden:That's like the ideal scenario.

57:36Atrioc:Yeah, no, that's a great point. I, you know, there's many people in the, uh, either right wing tech, for example, Palmer lucky. We don't need to get into his argument. We're basically just saying that over and over the government, the military should be, should be the one to decide it. And that is one of the key points that Sam Altman keeps coming back to as he is doing damage control right now. Like on these Twitter AMAs, he keeps saying, I just firmly believe that the democratically elected military should have primary say of how this stuff should be used and not a private tech CEO. And I think you're right that it is different in the time where we see the laws being bent repeatedly by a government that we've lost trust in.

58:14We're talking specifically about like if this was more nebulous, but everyone involved is so specific about what red lines we're talking about. So it's just tough to make the case that like they need the capability for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons.

58:29Atrioc:I mean, that's why it just keeps going up to the philosophical ones. Yeah, the philosophical ones. Like they've used an example multiple times in these groups where they're like, what if there's a missile coming out of America and we need to decide quickly? And we're going to have to get approval from a CEO of a tech company before the military does something. But like Dario and I thought I'd come out and said, first of all, for anything related to that, we are everything. We're 100 % green light. That's not what that's not our red line and we would never get in our way and we would give full access.

58:57And it's so it's just like it's tough to when you try to expand it, it seems like you're trying to obfuscate. And in Sam Altman's case, what is frustrating for me as someone who was a GATGPT paying customer and has now canceled, it's like. So it's very obvious that there is a financial benefit to you that is being ignored.

59:17Atrioc:Yes. Not only is there the obvious financial benefit of open AI is now going to get money from the government, right? I forget if it's 200 or 300 million dollars. I think 300. The Anthropic had a contract with the government. It's actually not that like death. It's not that much of a death knell for them to lose. They were at like 9 billion in revenue last year. So in theory, Anthropic is going to be OK. And right now, Claude is blowing up and Chachapiti is losing all these subscriptions, right? But here's another one that I was thinking about. Our administration, bless their hearts, loves to pick individual companies and be corrupt.

59:50Atrioc:Yeah. And so if you are open AI, where there's many reports that they're starting to have some existential worries about finances, right? And you embed yourself in the United States military, and you cozy up and you show super willingness to work with Hegseth and Trump and all this stuff, right? in two years if they do go bankrupt the united states cannot let them die this is like if you consider it from his perspective many people have been saying open ai is increasingly looking weak and vulnerable this is the most brilliant self preservation tactic ever the government becoming dependent on your ai models is not going to let

1:00:29Aiden:you die the end the intel strat it's kind of the intel strat right no but like way way more there's

1:00:36Atrioc:a difference between the u.s government being like we need intel to make chips for us please make a factory and our military doesn't function if your code turns off if your servers turn off that is crazy different right so i see i i do see how from a purely calculus perspective how that could work for sam altman i do think it's funny though that that argument is tied with with with Rubio going out there and saying we had to strike because Israel was going to strike as like two things that are like fundamentally designed to be off-putting to the public you're trying to convince. The idea that you're going to tell the public, we have to do this deal because we might go bankrupt and we need a government bailout.

1:01:14It's like, you know, it's like these things would make people even more angry than they already are at these companies because it is so anti the interest of the consumer. As the public, we don't care if Sam Altman can't make a profitable business. And we certainly don't want him to embed in the Pentagon so that we can one day bail them out if they're, you know, yeah, but I understand that that is probably a smart move on his part, if he thinks that's existential. But on the flip side, I don't think he expected how many unsubscribes Chad JBT would get from this. Like he clearly is panicking a little bit over, you know, there was like a 235 % increase in uninstalls.

1:01:52They lost the number one spot on the app store and that is like a big source of open ai revenue which they need to grow so if their revenue falls but they have this embedded in the government thing they might have traded one risk for another and who knows if it'll work out fair fair which brings us well i'll just you know i'll

1:02:11Atrioc:just give my again my conclusion to be clear i think this fucking sucked and is a huge bummer and would have been an opportunity for the ai companies to show that they're going to like really put hard lines on these more moral concepts and put accountability to a government that people don't trust as you were saying and that didn't happen and that's super super fucking disappointing to me and i'm gonna try to act with my wallet and so we acting with your wallet is a

1:02:36Aiden:huge thing uh we did a remote interview with scott galloway who is leading this resistant unsubscribe movement right now which is primarily about how consumers forget that their spending power is one of the primary ways to like wield influence. And if you take your money away from these companies in mass, it's a way to put a lot of pressure on them. And I think this links well into what we're talking about. We ask him a handful of questions related to this topic right now, as well as a few other things. So we'll get into that interview.

1:03:07Atrioc:It starts a little slow, but then we start talking about condoms. So don't worry, it gets going.

1:03:11Aiden:Oh yeah, we'll get to the condom part. All right, perfect. Hey, Scott, thanks. Welcome to the Lonaestand. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. You know, we have a little bit of a history, you and I, in that I took your Section 4 brand strategy class when I was at NVIDIA, and now I'm a podcaster, so I don't think it actually worked too well for me. It actually declined in his career. You know, I think it was a super smart move to leave NVIDIA. They haven't done very well, so well done. Yeah, now that I think about that. I'm thinking about that. What a genius plan. I'm with you guys.

1:03:48Anyway, there's a lot of things we want to talk to you about, but I think the prime opener is your resistant unsubscribe movement because there's been such a galvanizing of it around what's going on with OpenAI and the Pentagon. I don't know if you have any thoughts on how that's added kerosene to what you've been pushing for. Yeah, it's – well, first off, when you have – let me back up. The U.S. market has experienced multiple expansion since 2008. And it's almost impossible to be wrong when you're a stock in the midst of a market multiple expansion. So since 2000 when the BRICS were kind of in vogue and then they become very out of vogue, if you're a stock in Latin America, you could double your earnings.

1:04:35and your stock was probably going to go down over 10 years because they experienced massive multiple contraction as capital fled from almost every market into the U.S. And if you look at what's happened in the last 12 months in the U.S., while it feels good to be up 14 % on a dollar-adjusted basis, we're the 21st best-performing market out of 23, which means we're the third worst. And I think, and I will get to the point, I think one of the reasons our market is underperforming is that our multiples are traditionally greater or richer P multiples, a function of a few things, risk-aggressive culture, incredible IP, university research, great entrepreneurs, but also incredibly deep pools of capital because people are confident when they invest in a company, they're going to understand the rules by which that company plays under.

1:05:21And when governments start intervening and saying, oh, Intel, you're a winner. I'm betting on you. Oh, Anthropic, you're a loser. The world's largest customer in the US government is going to go after you and persecute you, capital leaves that market because they don't know. The risk of regulatory punitive behavior goes up. So I think this is just terrible for the markets. I also think it sort of reveals Sam Altman is, you know, he doesn't acquit himself well. He said he wasn't going to porn, said he wasn't going to have advertising. You know, he's gone back on both those things. And I think actually, Dario, I don't know if you saw the interview on CBS, is sort of starched his hat white and is setting up sort of a good cop, bad cop situation.

1:06:07Aiden:I'm wondering from what you just described, like if people become increasingly wary of investing in American companies because of the actions that are being taken or specifically American AI companies, do you, is there, is there really another market or place where that money is going to start to move to right now? because it doesn't or is this just mean a lack of investment broadly like if i'm an investor who has enough money to uh look at these american ai companies am i fleeing to some other ai market because i'm not going to go and invest in china which has like stricter capital controls or something like that i think it's already happening um so our earnings the the earnings are not down but you're seeing basically a contraction, I think the U.S.

1:07:03is becoming less investable is the bottom line. And that is if I invested in the private markets in Anthropic and I woke up and I found out that the world's largest customers decided they don't like the company, I think I'm less likely to invest in U.S. companies. So I think it doesn't happen overnight, but I think Americans take for granted how strong a magnet for capital, the rule of laws and systemic laws that, I mean, if you're under all and you want to apply Silicon Valley ethos and technology to making weapons to kill people, you're allowed to do that. And the defense department can buy them or not buy them.

1:07:40If you're Palantir and you want to go to work with the Israeli government, as long as it clears security clearances and help Israel track down terrorists, you're allowed to do that. And so is any other company. So a set of rules that everyone has to play by such that investors know who they're waking up next to I think is hugely impactful. So I think these types of one-off decisions feel much more like an autocracy. And my experience, I'm an investor in a couple of Chinese companies and I'm an investor in a couple of companies in the Gulf. These are autocracies, but they generally speaking have pretty strong respect for universal systemic guidelines that apply equally to all companies because they want to attract capital to their markets.

1:08:24So I think this is just a – I think we're all going to be less wealthy in the U.S. if they continue to decide that these companies can be the subject of political retribution. I mean there's a lot to unpack there. There's two directions we could go. I mean, it brings me to talking about what's going on with Paramount and the U.S. government. But also, you talked about starching his hat white. Isn't there an argument to be made that this has been a huge win for Anthropic and Claude? I mean, they hit number one on the App Store. Like, this may not hurt their business in any measurable way, given the word of mouth spread.

1:09:00I think there's, I've been saying for a year there was a commercial opportunity for a company to stand up and say, demonizing immigrants, shooting mothers in the face, killing ICU nurses, taking care of veterans. We're not down with this. We think the values that made this company amazing. I thought the opportunity was for Nike to put out a very elegant commercial talking about how many immigrants have become US citizens and won gold medals for us. And that was my advice to the CEO of the company. They did not take that advice. It ends up that Dario has become kind of the hero we didn't know we needed.

1:09:35And I think that over the short term, he's going to pay a pretty severe price. And over the medium and the long term, it's going to be a great move for them. I think people are, and part of the resistant unsubscribe movement is to send a signal to consumers that the most radical act in a capitalist society is non-participation, specifically to withhold your spending. If you look at the greatest political action in terms of the size of the action and the crispness in the last 50 years, it was in Q1 of 2020, when we literally flushed trillions of dollars into the market and came up with new regulations, new laws, new guidelines.

1:10:07And it wasn't because, in my view, tens of thousands of people were dying from COVID. It was because GDP crashed 31%. So I think that people are ready to, and this is where I'm headed with the resistant unsubscribe movement, I'm going to encourage people to really give Anthropic a hard look for their paid and unpaid usage of an AI and send a strong message to OpenAI, which is now the largest funder or contributor to the Trump administration that we are noticing and we will vote with our dollars. What do you think makes this different? Because in the past, I would say a lot of boycotts are a lot of social media talk and buzz, but no real concrete action.

1:10:48But it does feel like this is making it like the movement of Claude on the App Store. The words I'm hearing from people in my life, people are canceling their open AI subscriptions. I guess I'm wondering why you felt you got so much traction for this resistance to subscribe and for what's happening with OpenAI in general. What makes it different? Well, I think you're being generous. The two objectives were, one, to send a signal to consumers that they had a weapon hiding in plain sight. And I think we have achieved that. We've had a lot of people talk about a ton of media coverage. The second was incentives.

1:11:17And what I mean by that is, unfortunately, all the incentives for big tech CEOs have been pointed one way. Come to the White House. Give it to my campaign. Pay for me to tear down the East Wing. Don't say anything about what's going on, even if you disagree with it. And I'll figure out a way for you to not be subject to tariffs. Or, you know, you'll stay out of my crosshairs, right? And the general, and I hear from a lot of these guys, the general strategy has been I have, or excuse, I have an obligation to shareholders. I've just got to stay out of his way and wait him out. And I think the worm has turned.

1:11:49And I think that Dario correctly has sensed that there's a commercial opportunity to be seen as the good guy that is willing to stand up and say, I've had it. Now, in terms of having become sort of a minor student in protest, the majority of economic strikes do not work. The most famous one is the Alabama bus strike, excuse me, Montgomery bus strike. Now, what people get wrong about that is they attribute the success to the cinematic moment where a courageous woman refused to give up her seat. What actually happened was a young Reverend Martin Luther King organized an 11-month-long carpooling effort with thousands of carpools.

1:12:28It was costing the municipal bus system a quarter of a million dollars a month in rider fares. And then after 11 months, they acquiesced and decided to desegregate the bus system. So the ones that work, whether it's South Africa or the Disney movement, are usually sustained and take a while. The majority are not successful, so I'm trying to learn from the ones that are successful. But it's a build, it's a slow build, and it's usually economic.

1:12:53Aiden:What's the example you gave, the Disney movement? Well, Disney basically canceled Kimmel. And the general belief was that they did it under pressure from the FTC chairman that Trump had weaponized to say, I don't like this show, which is anti-Trump. So we're going to – we want you to take Kimmel off the air. And what happened was there was kind of a consumer boycott where people started unsubscribing from Disney+. And what is interesting is when they actually put Kimmel back on the air, the level of unsubscribes was waning. but some of the public shaming and a real problem in terms of morale with their own customer base, they decided to put them back on the air.

1:13:35So there are examples of when and where it works, but there's a lot more that are more cinematic than they are effective.

1:13:42Atrioc:I'm curious how you identify the services and companies that you feel like particularly should be targeted in this protest movement that you're organizing. Because so many, particularly large tech companies have so much overlapping stuff ultimately while i like anthropic there are also concerns about stuff that they do i think you can kind of levy that at basically any tech company so i'm curious how i think it's very easy for the average person to go whatever i'll just use the things that are easy for me and i'm not going to personally go in and figure out the corporate back background of every single one of these how do you distinguish that and pick which ones should like rise above the crop it's a really good question it's probably the correct question.

1:14:20And that is, so far, what I did was I took all of big tech and I put all of the links to make it easy to unsubscribe. And I said, you decide if you think Uber is better or worse than Lyft. You describe or you decide which streaming media platforms you're comfortable with. You decide which LLM you're down with or not down with. And a lot of it was, look, you can save some money here. AT &T is providing infrastructure for ICE and communications technology. When I went on to unsubscribe from AT &T and switch to Noble Mobile, I found that I had four contracts with AT &T, three of which were for iPads and Blackberries that have been in landfills for 10 years.

1:14:57I don't think people realize how much money, how easy it is these companies make it automated such that that money comes out of your account every month. So one of the features I liked about the initial stage of the movement was that I don't want to too much be an arbiter of what you should or should not do when you unsubscribe, when you resubscribe. I'm not going to tell a single mother to cancel Amazon Prime and Netflix because she needs cheap calories and cheap entertainment for her family. So I put up all of the subscription unsubscribe links for subscriptions for big tech, most of whom I believe are enabling or quite frankly staying quiet.

1:15:31And then what I call the blast zone, and that is companies directly working with ICE, whether it's Hilton or I think it was Enterprise Rent-A-Car or AT &T. And then you decide. Now, Now, what I'm thinking about doing, quite frankly, is taking on, I don't know, the unfair, pretentious role of being an arbiter and saying, all right, in March, we're going to focus on unsubscribing from OpenAI, who seems to show, in my opinion, fairly aggressive behavior around supporting an administration's policies that you may or may not agree with. But I've struggled with not wanting to be the arbiter, if you will, and just give people the option and let them know they have a weapon hiding in plain sight.

1:16:14But we are thinking about evolving to a more specific recommendation. We'll still leave the side up in terms of all the different companies. But it's a judgment call, and I don't take it lightly. And I respect people who say, look, I don't need you to be the arbiter of who's good and who's bad. I'm just going to say, look, I think that Anthropic, for the purposes of if you, like me, believe that some of the behavior of ICE really does not align with American values, that it appears to me that Anthropic is taking a stand and OpenAI is enabling it and to bring attention to that issue.

1:16:49Atrioc:If I could offer a steel man to kind of get your thoughts against. So one argument for, let's say, a company like YouTube, which we are, you know, you're probably watching this on right now, viewer. Yep. I think it'd be easy, particularly after the Biden era, for a company to, or at least tempting in a self-serving way, to say, we're not going to get involved with politics. The United States people decided via democracy what the administration would be, and we're going to respect that. and it's become much more easy to be apolitical. I'm just curious, like, what is the argument against that? For the average, let's say, you know, moderate person who's sort of going, well, I don't like what Trump's doing, but ultimately he'll be voted out in X years or at least the people should decide.

1:17:32Atrioc:Yeah, how would a company navigate? How would the average person think about that? So I've been on seven public company boards, and whenever the issue of politics comes up, I basically, my advice is stay away from it. Don't make political statements. don't take political positions sell I was on the board of Panera urban outfitters I'm like sell your cob salad sandwich and and you know chenille pillows to anybody who wants them and just stay out of politics and I still feel like mostly that is the right move but politics have weaponized business and I think when the Pentagon decides oh we're not going to buy your products because we don't like the way you're behaving and it has nothing to do with the law, then I think essentially the Trump administration has dragged companies and to a certain extent consumers into politics.

1:18:21But it's up to you. If you decide, I love that OpenAI is pro-Trump and is doing this and I'm going to subscribe twice, that is your prerogative. But I think there's a lot of people out there who are very anxious about what's going on here, myself included, And I've decided action absorbs anxiety and I want to do more than just sit on my keyboard or heck her into a mic and try and create a campaign that gave people the option and made it easy for them to unsubscribe. And basically tell them, you know, you don't realize how powerful a weapon you have with your consumer spend. T-Mobile was projected to sign up 990 ,000 subscribers in Q1.

1:19:02They signed up 962. They missed by 30 ,000 and they lost 13 billion in market cap. And the only time Trump has backed away from discussions like annex in Greenland or Chinese tariffs, which threw the small and medium-sized business market into a bit of a tizzy, is when the bond market or the S &P has fallen. He doesn't seem moved by protests or even the Supreme Court sometimes are definitely not a co-equal branch of the government. He could give a shit what Congress thinks, whether it's declaring war or tariffs. So what I'm saying is, look, you make the decisions you want. These are my views. but be cognizant of the fact that you have a very serious bazooka in your wallet and that these companies control 40 % of the S &P.

1:19:46The president listens to these CEOs and to the markets and that this is arguably the weapon that's been hiding in plain sight. But the strategy you're talking about is the one that companies have largely adopted and that is just stay out of his way. I get text messages from these guys and they're all dudes. I know most of them saying, oh, I hate myself and I hate being here and I'm at the White House and oh, this is awful. I'm like, well, we hate you too. And crying to people privately does nobody any fucking good. It's like all these former Congress people who go on Bill Maher after they've stepped down and all of a sudden they start talking real talk.

1:20:20It's like, well, okay. You being very forthright about your views on issues doesn't do us a lot of good once you're out of power. You're out of power. Yeah. Yeah. It's useless.

1:20:29Atrioc:When you say they hate being there, are you saying it's like tech leaders going to Washington or Congress people being there having to, what part of that are they struggling with? Tech CEOs being show ponied at the White House, texting podcasters that they hate themselves. And the podcaster writing back, I hate you too. And what you're saying to me does nobody any good. Yeah. Have you followed all in at all that podcast? I don't, I see occasionally, I see occasionally clips of it on TikTok, but I don't listen to it. Yeah, I followed it a lot because it was very tech and business focused a couple of years ago.

1:21:04Atrioc:And I've sort of moved out of that particular space. But David Sachs is one of their co-hosts in the White House running AI policy. And they just have this nonstop interview series with everybody in the White House doing like little showcases for all the tech CEOs. It's become pretty masturbatory, if you will. Yeah. Well, it's basically – I mean so Pivot is – Pivot used to be considered sort of the left version of all – and an all-in was considered the right version. But I find – my understanding is that now that David Sachs is part of the administration, that it's sort of full-time – I don't know.

1:21:43I don't want to call it propaganda, but it's very, very right-leaning. Yeah.

1:21:47Atrioc:He's basically doing PR for the White House on every episode. It feels like a paid podcast that's kind of the front-facing podcast. And maybe those guys believe, but one of the guys is supposed to be the Democrat. And he reminds me of, I forget what her name was, Meghan McCain. Basically, The View used to bring on a screechy, stupid Republican to kind of make their points for them. And I feel like the Democratic, whenever I've seen that, I feel like the Democratic viewpoint is so poorly made. It just kind of makes the Republican or the White House point four of them. You mentioned - That's my role on this show.

1:22:23To make the other two's points seem really strong.

1:22:26Atrioc:Yeah, I come in and just kind of spout some shit that I read off Twitter, and then they get to look great and smart. You should see what people say about me when they're talking about Kara. Literally, our comments are, oh my God, I love Kara. Kara's a genius. Scott's around Kara's a genius. Scott, we carry the real burden here. We make the people around us look great. what would you two be without me and scott i'm not wearing it i don't know destitute you said a phrase that stuck with me you said uh anxiety absorbs action or action absorbs anxiety yeah and that that stuck out to me because that is what i'm hearing from not just people our age people younger in our audience where they just feel this incredible sense of anxiety of of no ability to have a control over their future or what's happening they don't feel like they have what's the word for it?

1:23:14Agency. They don't feel like they have agency. And so I wonder if that's part of why this is getting some traction. Like, I just think people are, maybe you disagree. I'd love to hear it. You know, you can speak to these people directly, but that's what they feel. I guess the sense I get is that they feel they have, it's a clouded future and they don't have a lot of agency over where it goes. Yeah. What do I do? I had my, what I call my last straw moment when When Secretary Noem described Alex Preddy, an ICU nurse, as a domestic terrorist and that he was there brandishing a weapon with intent of massacring federal agents, I just thought, fuck it.

1:23:46That's it. I want to do more than just bark into my fucking podcast mic. And I got my team together and said, how do we do this? I think I know the soft tissue. I think I understand the markets. And it just, quite frankly, feels really good to do something with other people. And I'll use a raw and cringey example. I coach a lot of young men and about six weeks ago this young man I've been coaching who struggles a little bit with depression and anxiety called me and he was so freaked out and so upset and he said I had sex with a woman who was unprotected I think I have an STD and I don't know what to do and I'm like brother every man who has had sex has had unprotected sex I'm like it always starts with a condom and every man who has ever had sex has been worried the next day that he caught an STD.

1:24:36And every man is experiencing anxiety you're experiencing. And this is what you do. Right now, you're calling. There are clinics all over the city's end. You're going to make an appointment. And the moment you make an appointment, you're going to feel better. And the moment you go in, you're going to feel much better. And when you find out what's going on, and you're going to find out that almost everything can be cleared up with antibiotics, the only thing you're going to regret is how fucking upset you were. Action absorbs anxiety. Hang up with me right now. Make an appointment, find out what's going on.

1:25:06And you're all quiet. I realize it's a cringy example, but the point is when you don't, when something's bothering you, hands down, you take action, right? You figure out what's going on. You get to the bottom of it and at least you feel like you're addressing it. And this for me has been, you know, I struggle. I struggle with anger and depression, and I've always been able to disassociate from politics. And just lately, I find myself increasingly rattled and upset about what's going on in the US. And I find just for my own mental health, it feels great to do things with other people. And people are sending me all these screenshots.

1:25:46And it just feels really good. And if it helps, great. If it doesn't, you know, the way I see it is my people in my generation, you guys are younger than me. But if you're a white heterosexual male born in the 60s, basically what America has done for you is giving you unparalleled prosperity with the lowest taxes in history. I've never been called to serve. I've had unbelievable typhoon-like winds in my sails. I was raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary. I now have my own fucking plane. And I'm not humble. I'm a fucking monster. I have tremendous grit and character. I work hard.

1:26:24It wouldn't have happened to me in Paraguay. It wouldn't have happened to me even in Canada, much less I'd probably been in jail in China. So I have a debt. And I think any man my age who's registered the blessings I've registered has a debt to America. And I think this is our moment. And if you look at other moments in American history, whether it's civil wars, world wars, depressions, plagues, we have gotten through much darker moments because Americans have risen to the moment. And I want to be able to say, I have a very strong sense of my own mortality. At the end, I want to be able to answer the question, dad, what did you do in the war?

1:27:03And this isn't a huge commitment, but it's something. And quite frankly, it's more than I've done in a long time. So I want to be part of the resistance. I want to be part of the rebel force. And I want to say, I did more than show all this virtue and keyboard courage that I actually risk public failure. I spent some time, I spent some money and tried to do something? Because I think all of us are going to be asked. I generally believe people are going to look back on this period as a pretty ugly period in American history. And I think we should all be ready to answer, what did you do?

1:27:36Atrioc:That's a great answer. If I'm reading this correct, Trump started his term with a condom, but now it's off and we all need to go to the clinic. Yes. We need to make appointments. We got to make appointments. No, sincerely though, that's a great answer. We're the antibiotics. I appreciate that perspective.

1:27:51Aiden:I'm wondering, my introduction to you was the TED Talk that came out about two years ago now. And where you talk about this shift in society in the U.S., opportunity and wealth shifting away from young people and towards older people. Uh, and at the end of that, you list a number of things in different areas that, you know, that we could seek as long-term solutions to this problem in the U S. And I was wondering a couple of years out from that, uh, do you, do you still feel hopeful about the U S turning around the situation for young people? Because we talk to our young viewers a lot and they do have this fear of the future.

1:28:43Aiden:And I'm wondering, since you made something like that, do you see things changing and with the action that you're choosing to take now, is this like a step in changing that course? I hope so. I mean, the resistant unsubscribe movement is more trying to send a signal to the present vis-a-vis the markets and big tech. What you're talking about, my TED Talk in 2024 was called The War on the Young. And basically the way you could describe our government is a bunch of old people vote in even older people who vote themselves more money. And Washington has become a cross between the golden girls and the land of the dead and effectively an old people vote.

1:29:23So you have every year the greatest transfer in wealth from young people who are 24 % less wealthy. People under the age of 40 are 24 % less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. To the wealthiest generation,$1.2 trillion in the form of Social Security, to the wealthiest cohort in the history of the planet. And the average 70-year-old is 72 % wealthier than they were 40 years ago. Our tax code is essentially just a giant transfer of wealth from the young to the old. Two biggest tax deductions, mortgage interest rate and capital gains. Who owns homes and stocks? People my age. Who rents and makes their money from salary?

1:29:58People your age. We have decided that our tax code is meant to tilt and transfer capital from earners to owners, which is from the young to the old. So what do you know? 60 % of 30-year-olds just have a kid. Now it's 27%. It's because they don't like kids? No, it's because they can't afford them. So in sum, our tax code over the last 40 years going from 400 pages to 4 ,000, those 3 ,600 pages are basically there to fuck young people. The only – one of two forms of debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy is student loan debt. So you come out of – you go to college. Your parents think college is the answer.

1:30:36You're not cut out for college. Two-thirds of kids never end up with a traditional liberal arts degree. But an isolated pantsuit with a college logo behind you says, always invest in yourself. Here, sign here so we can continue to rape and molest young people and charge them$72 ,000 a year for a mediocre degree. and a kid comes out, sophomore year decides to drop out, but they have 50, 60 grand in debt, which is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. If there is any form of debt that should be forgivable, shouldn't it be student loan debt? No, but we want to indenture a bunch of young people. We're seeing rising student loan defaults, like massively rising student loan defaults across the board.

1:31:16I think something has broken in this system that is not allowing people to make the payments on things.

1:31:22Aiden:I'm actually curious where you stand on the importance of like post-secondary education now, as, as people realize the value proposition isn't really the same as it used to be, because in that same presentation, you're talking about how you'd like, I, this like 2.3 GPA student would like got into, still got into Berkeley after UCLA, still had all these opportunities that I was able to forge for myself, but this value proposition has clearly changed. So where do you stand on kind of the importance of college and young people's lives now? College has never been more valuable. It's just not a very good value.

1:31:58Now, what do I mean by that? If you had a drug that you could take for four years, every day you took it for four years, and by taking that drug for four years, it made you twice as likely to get married, twice as likely to stay married, half as likely to be obese, one third less likely to kill yourself, 40 % less likely to kill someone else is the only way you'll ever probably be elected president. You'll make twice as much as your friend who just got a high school degree. Would you want to hoard that drug? Would you want to make it just too inaccessible and too expensive? That is higher education.

1:32:37The problem is my industry has figured out a way through a rejectionist LVMH-like structure where the admissions rate at UCLA goes from 74 % to 9 % such that we have the pricing power to raise our prices faster than inflation. And we make the mistake of believing that academics such as myself are more noble than the rest of us. Every morning we wake up and ask ourselves the same question, how do I increase my compensation while decreasing my accountability? I know, let's figure out a way to become LVMH and sequester artificially the supply of freshman seats such that I can raise cost faster than inflation.

1:33:12Dartmouth has an$8 billion endowment. They let in something like 1 ,100 kids a year with a good Starbucks service in the middle of fucking nowhere. They could let in 11 ,000 and not sacrifice any quality. But no, they've decided they're Birkenbads, not public servants, which means in my view, if you have an endowment over a billion dollars and you are not growing your freshman class size faster than population growth, you should lose your tax-free status because you are in a luxury brand now. You're no longer a public servant. You're a hedge fund offering classes. So my industry is guilty of a lot of this.

1:33:44Now, not everyone. There are a lot of universities doing God's work. ASU, actually, the University of California is trying to expand the number of seats. The Cal State's. You got both of us covered there. You could have said any other fucking school. Are you guys UC and Cal State? He's UC and I'm ASU. That's crazy you said that. University of Washington, baby.

1:34:04Atrioc:And then he's a wannabe UC who didn't get in. So you're a hedge fund. Shut up, Doug. You shamed him. Shamed him. I used to row against the Huskies. Anyways, by the way, they used to kick our ass. They have a great vote. But ASU, Michael Crow there, he said, why wouldn't I want to graduate 200 ,000 kids a year? And I get it. Harvard doesn't have to let in everyone, but should it let in 5 % of its applicants when it's sitting on an endowment that's the GDP of Costa Rica? Like, come on, guys. What's the point? It's like, this is what happens in my university at NYU. you. The dean stands up and says, we rejected 91 % of our applicants this year.

1:34:39And you know what we do as faculty? We applaud, which in my mind is tantamount to the head of a homeless shelter bragging that he or she turned away nine and 10 people that showed up last night. We're public servants. And I have an obligation because I was unremarkable. I barely got into college. I had to appeal. I got 1130 on the SAT. I had a 3.1 GPA. I spent five years making bongs out of household items and learning every line from Planet of the Apes. Awesome. Graduated a 2.27 GPA. And Berkeley let me into business school. And you think, okay, that's weird. Well, and here's a flex when I'm going to make it.

1:35:19In the last seven years, I've given 20 million bucks to back to the University of California. So guess what? It's worked out for all of us. You know who doesn't need college? The top 1%. They have amazing educations, contacts, summer camp for EQ, incredible athletics through their sports leagues and kids. I think it's great they go to school. I'm sending my kid to college. But who needs college is unremarkable kids who might be remarkable and no institution can be the arbiter of greatness. And an 18-year-old, so the whole fucking shooting match is, okay, maybe you don't have your shit together.

1:35:54Go to SMC. And if you can show, you can get your shit together and then you can transfer into UC Irvine or you can go to a good trade school. Instead, we've said, no, let's identify a super class of the children of rich people or the freakishly remarkable, and let's try and turn them into billionaires. We have fallen out of love with the unremarkable. And the United States, and I'm a product of this, used to love the unremarkable. It used to say, maybe there's a shot that someday you'll be remarkable. I always brag, I'm a product of big government. I got assisted lunch, Pell Grants, my mother accessed family planning, otherwise we would have been impoverished.

1:36:36I built all of my companies on taxpayer-supported technology, specifically DARPA and the internet. Immigrants built all of my companies. And the reason I'm here talking to you guys, all the pillars upon which my awesomeness exists is under attack right now. Everything's being attacked. So the Scott Galloway born 40 years later, I'd be lucky if I'd... I'd be lucky... I'm a talented guy. I'd be the second best salesman at the local Subaru dealership making a decent living. I wouldn't be flying fucking private to the Vanity Fair Oscars show. So I have a debt. And if most people, especially white heterosexual males of my generation, really reverse engineer their success, they're going to find a lot of things were not their fault.

1:37:25And what's so obnoxious about a lot of men my age, especially in technology, especially some of the people you referenced earlier in this program, is they just think they're so fucking awesome. And they don't want to credit the country. They don't want to credit social programs, investments other people have made in their future, Cal State, UC, infrastructure, rule of law, government investments and technology, immigrants. Instead, they just think it's all them, that they're successful despite the US. Well, go up the Western seaboard. I'm really running now. You get to Seattle, all the multi-trillion dollar companies stop.

1:37:56You got to go to Lululemon in Vancouver. You go all the way down, it stops in San Diego and you got to go 6 ,000 kilometers Mercado Libra, there's nothing more obnoxious than these fucking douchebags shitposting America, which is the very reason they're billionaires, not the second, the number two salesperson at Kia of Santa Monica. Anyways, that was a rant. I love it. I mean, yeah, you're hitting on a vein that is very common in our podcast, which is just feeling there's a bit of a generational struggle or a generational, you don't want to make it out to be a war, but it feels like it just feels the deck is stacked.

1:38:34And it's so it's interesting to hear you say that because the exact opposite is what I'm hearing from younger people, from their parents, which is that, you know, you just need to do what I did. You just need to go show up with a resume printed out, hand it in. And, you know, like things are clearly different. Even for me, I talked to people who are 10 years younger than me. I graduated in the tech market in 2014. It was a booming time. It was easy to find a job. People that are graduating Berkeley now with computer science degrees, trying to, trying to get into the market. It's way harder. It is just absolutely harder.

1:39:04And when you pretend that it isn't, it becomes, um, either demoralizing or angry and anger inducing for them. Yeah.

1:39:14Atrioc:Well, just to respect your time, Scott, we got like one minute left, but yeah, final note. When I got out of business school, I was, I got offered a job at a hundred thousand. I bought a home in San Francisco in Potrero Hill for$280 ,000, 2.8 times salary. This year, the graduates of Haas will make$200 ,000, big money. The average home costs$2.1 million. So it's gone from$2.8 to$10.1. Why? Because homeowners have done the same thing that graduates of university have done. They have weaponized the housing code, and they have made it harder and harder to build housing. Once you own a home, you become very concerned with traffic, and you start making it impossible to build new homes.

1:39:51So what are young people? The primary means of getting ahead and building wealth and finding a mate, education and housing. And the incumbents, my generation, have decided, I know, let's make it really hard to get a degree or getting housing permits such that my assets go up in value. You have never seen a generation that is more selfish than the U.S. baby boomer generation. We thank everyone paid it forward before us, whether it was storming the beaches in Normandy or paying 60 % tax rates in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Now we're like, fuck you, I got mine, you get yours. Well, guess what? They're coming for us.

1:40:26All this bullshit notion that young people are entitled. No, they're entitled to be enraged. It is bullshit the theft that has gone on of old people robbing from young people. It needs to stop. Guy Galloway, thank you for coming on our show. Appreciate it. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks, guys. Have a good one. Great to meet you, Scott. That was fun. That was fun. A little interview with Scotty G. I've been, you know, I'm very familiar with that guy. Other than just taking his class, I used to read. He had a book, The Algebra of Happiness, that was very, very formative for me in the early days of COVID.

1:41:01We were all stuck at home when I was at NVIDIA. And I is what motivated me to start doing more YouTube videos about. I started the first marketing Monday after reading that book. Oh, interesting. It was interesting.

1:41:10Aiden:I did have a question. So one of the first questions that we asked or that I had asked him was about this idea of investment in AI in the US being shaky because of the things that are playing out right now. And I wanted to ask you both something and something I was trying to get out with him. Where do you think that investment will be redirected? Because the AI hype is still there. And that's why I have a hard time imagining a market better than the US's AI market, even with this big shakeup right now. I don't know if you got this across in the interview well, but what he's saying is factually true, which is that the US stock market as a whole has been dramatically underperforming.

1:41:50Uh, LATAM, uh, Japan. Yeah. Europe, like all of these other stock markets, all these big stock changes have on a adjusted basis the past year done better. Like us is up 14%, but they're up 20, 25.

1:42:04Aiden:That isn't necessarily driven by AI companies in those places. It's just those markets broadly. I think I would push back on the idea that people are taking their AI money from America and putting it somewhere else because they can't really. Yeah. The Chinese ones are not investable in that way. And there's nobody else. It's US and China and AI. So I guess that's a fair counterpoint. I don't know. I was just curious because it seems like it's too hot of a thing to like just stop investing in. Right. So if you were taking your money out, my first thought was like, where is that being redirected?

1:42:36Aiden:But maybe it's just to other companies. I think it's just quite the safety. After what happened with Iran, gold is back up to all-time highs. People have been buying some bonds. I think people are just getting out of these – the idea that you could put$300 billion of investor money into something like Anthropoc, and then maybe the government just blows it up. Yeah. That scares people, and so they move money to something else. I don't think they're going to AI. What did you think – I mean, he was right. It was a little goofy. Maybe it was a little cringy, his example with the condom thing. I actually think he has something there in that like action, just action is what relieves anxiety basically.

1:43:16Like even doing something in the direction of giving yourself an answer

1:43:21Aiden:just removes a lot of the tension and anxiety around anything.

1:43:24Atrioc:I don't know. If society broadly is feeling upset about affordability or something, go bomb Iran.

1:43:30Aiden:Take action. Take action. Take action. Do something. Do a workout. Send the boys out. What do you want me to do? I bombed Iran. We've tried everything. That's just Trump. I tried every possible thing. I started a war in the Middle East. I killed protesters. Me and Heg said, we take a couple darts, we throw them at a globe, we see which ideas stink. Move fast and break things. Love the Silicon Valley mantra. We move fast,

1:43:58Atrioc:we break an Ayatollah.

1:43:59Aiden:I am curious, because I enjoyed that discussion. Maybe it's also off the back of I have seen a lot of him speaking, but I would be very interested in having him on for 90 minutes on an actual episode and talking to him about just some other stuff.

1:44:19Atrioc:I don't think we're cool enough for that.

1:44:20Aiden:We'll get there. We could, what? He's on the same network. He shouted at both of our schools, so we're. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and then he made an offhand comment about the Huskies. My team is like, oh, he doesn't like me.

1:44:32Atrioc:yeah well i guess like maybe i should we shouldn't say where he was but yeah i know it'd be great i mean i just he watching him watching his ted talk is what got me into my uh boomer hating phase like and he's just and he got into that again at the end and i just i continue i mean we're we're gonna do it's always good to get a nice boomer age trader yeah i do i love seeing a boomer flip i'm trying to flip as many boomers as i can bro we gotta we need them in the war and he's i mean he's like that he's 61 he is gen x right is he he's born in 64 isn't the last year boomer maybe he's the very oldest anyway on the on this sort of inside but you know i think we are planning on doing a episode focusing on this more of just how lopsided society is in terms of how it's focusing and the more i've learned about it the more i've just been baffled also i googled scott galloway age and it's showing me pictures i'm shirtless for some reason maybe join the Join the Patreon.

1:45:27Atrioc:We're going to take a deep dive. Doing the Putin thing where you got to be sure it wasn't a bear to look. Oh my God, he was checked.

1:45:33Aiden:Maybe this is just because this is the day after. But one thing I thought is we didn't summarize. He didn't ask us to plug this either, but his resistant unsubscribe movement, resistantunsubscribe.com if you want to see a summary of it. But it's this idea of unsubscribing from a variety of tech companies to put pressure on them primarily because of their associations and willingness to work with DHS or ICE at this current time. And I think it's, if you're interested in that, I don't know if he summarized that through the questions that we had asked, but I think it's worth checking out. But if you enjoyed that interview, give us some thoughts.

1:46:15Aiden:We're playing around with these mid-episode interviews still. And if you want to join us for an additional 60 minutes every week, you can check out patreon.com slash lemonade stand. This week we're going to be doing a tier list on all of Scott Galloway's shirtless photos. Shirtless pictures. Dude, he's jacked. It's probably several hours straight of just looking at this. Yeah. So that's... Pay up.

1:46:41Atrioc:Thanks guys for watching. Thanks, everybody. See you next week. Appreciate you. Bye.