Will The Peace Last? | Lemonade Stand 🍋

32:25None of this has anything to do with the West Bank. The West Bank's not mentioned at all. The settlements in the West Bank aren't mentioned at all. Like there's a whole nother section of this issue that even if everything in this agreement was fulfilled perfectly, right? It's not like Israel-Palestine as the issue is like solved, right? Palestinian liberation. The worst. So it all feels so precarious. That was what I walked away with. It feels confusing, precarious, and I'm happy that the violence is over in the short term. but is this something that is followed through with? So that's what I want to say is like, obviously I've been a bit of a critic of Donald Trump for a lot of episodes and a lot of big A clips.

33:13But if this held, let's say through a full year of next year, it would only be because he has to keep his attention on this thing. Oh, it would require Donald Trump to actually continually think about this, put pressure on it. If he turns his attention and gays somewhere else and stops caring, this will fall apart. That's Tony's job. So if he did it, I would actually say that is more than Obama did and could be earned. Like, I wouldn't mind him getting the peace prize for that. This is going to take significant focus. Imagine Tony Blair gets the Nobel Peace Prize next year. That would be fucking crazy.

33:46Oh, that's so funny. So what you're saying, I think a critique I've seen pop up a lot is Trump has this way of doing business. Yeah. Is he announces a change that he sees himself as involved in. And to his credit, he is involved here, right? and then he makes it very grandiose he's like the war is over it's one of the great moments in civilization he said he ended 3 000 years of uh of war in the middle east yeah he's like but he has a history of doing one of doing something or saying something like that and then kind of moving on and going to the next issue or the next toy without and leaving the follow through and the details to others.

34:30Right. And I think with a situation like this, that seems like an approach that isn't going to be sustainable. That's my opinion. Yeah. I mean, we don't know. I agree with you. I have, it seems tenuous. It seems like there's a lot of things that could break it. Any, any small action, even by an individual actor,

34:54could domino effect, could escalate. I mean, anything could cause someone to feel like they don't need to do their up end of the bargain and then escalate and then goes back and like it. Okay, so I have a question that falls up on this. I feel like you guys follow this more deeply than I do. So I would like to think I somewhat represent the average person who is, I think it's safe to say the average person also doesn't like what Israel's been doing and is not happy about what Israel's been doing and thinks this is a shitty situation and that Israel shouldn't be supported with the way they've handled this.

35:22Why is the USA the only one still left supporting them? Do you guys understand? Like every other, because it's like you said, it was in the past couple of months. It went from other countries being like, we really don't want this to like full on Palestinian statehood. This is a genocide. I mean, it's a major ramp up. And this is like France and Germany, right? And like, what is happening in the US that we are so steadfast with this? I don't get it. Hi. So my girlfriend also asked me this question, and I'm a 20-year-old podcaster. I'll give it my best shot. And before I answer this, please, it's just...

35:56Just relax. I'm just... Just relax. My understanding is that Israel has spent a long, long time like crafting support within America and the American government. And they are trying... Like they need like one big party to exist as they are now, like in the safe or like stable fashion that they are. And then in the US's interest, this is a country in the Middle East that's like a relatively unstable region for US relations and has other threats like Iran. So it's important to have a deeply tied US ally in the region in order to like combat that potential threat. That's my very loose understanding is there's a mutually beneficial arrangement here and like deep historical political ties between the two countries now that are hard to just snap a road.

36:57Because you can see, I would say, especially this year and past two years, a huge disparity in the level of like political support for Israel in like the political establishment versus the support for Israel from the average citizen right now. right that's what's deviating like around the world yeah i want to give the same caveat uh but older podcaster but same thing uh but i want to talk about it so so my understanding is that uh yeah have you ever seen that old clip of joe biden from like literally 40 years ago where he's like early term senator and he's like if israel did not exist in the middle east america would have to invent in israel for its interest like you see that quote general idea is that it's like an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.

37:41And because of the conflict there, because we did a previous episode where I kind of showed the trade routes that go through the Middle East and the abundance of oil, is that America needed a strategic military intelligence ally. The same way that Russia got really deeply in bed with Syria and the same way that China is getting close ties with Iran. You just need, as one of the big bros, you need a little bro in that region to make sure that your interests are protected. And that's how it worked. But then the tail began to wag the dog over the past decades as Israel used focused political pressure.

38:17And they have political lobbies in America to sort of, instead of becoming the thing of America's interest, America became sort of subservient to Israel's interest. And they flipped it, which has been kind of going on until no, really this Qatar bombing, this Qatar bombing is like the first time I've seen a big shift where it felt like even in the Trump administration, they were set, even like Tucker Carlson was like, this is not like Netanyahu was playing us like a fool. And so they flipped on that, that front is my understanding. From a pure geopolitical standpoint, I feel like that is what's been happening was Israel was kind of flipping the relationship to their benefit.

38:53And then now after Qatar, Trump kind of, yeah, it's like the left politically, I mean, not even the establishment, The left outside of the political establishment has been obviously extremely vocally critical. And then it feels like recently, even politicians who are elected are starting to be like, eh, not a fan of this. You know, just such a massive departure. The actions they've taken and also the level of media that you have to display them, right? There's so many cascading little things that have shaped opinion outside of, in a way that could never exist before. I think also one interesting point I saw come up is Netanyahu was meeting with, I think it was like a Christian religious group in the US.

39:37and he was talking about how they could maintain support from Americans. And he was talking about like moderating TikTok or moderating American platforms, like censorship on American media platforms to help shape people's view of Israel. And I think when you're a Tucker Carlson, right? you hear that and i you know not a tucker carlson fan well but he don't say wow but even like tucker is somebody that hears that and is like foreign government influencing my free speech and media consumption yeah for their benefit for their benefit i don't fuck with that so i think this this past two years is this israel has taken a bunch of actions and said a bunch of things where people are like revisiting the like cultural or like historical idea of their country's support for them.

40:36And they're like, wait a second, I don't like this. And that's, and so they're kind of paying the price for their own actions here outside of the, you know, the moral implications. Yeah. And you know, on a moral front too, it's like, you know, October 7th is a horrible attack, but I don't know how many people died, 2 ,500 or something. I don't know. I'm actually doing it. It was like, it's like a little over a thousand, I think. But so if your immediate retaliation or whatever for defense, okay, you get that. But if it's two years later and you've killed or starved 68 ,000 people, it becomes more and more, it just becomes more and more apparent, very obvious to the rest of the world that this is not an act of defense.

41:15It is not, you know what I'm saying? It's so clearly beyond that. And so, and I think they were willing to put up with that until it became so isolating economically. I think now that like, I think a lot of deals were getting cut off with major European union countries and things that made them very dependent on America. And then America flipped. And once Trump flipped, that's it. They have nobody left to work. A friend mentioned like there's, there's little things that add up over time to like, you know, Netanyahu flying on his plane. He doesn't get the, he has to do like a weird route that takes longer to get to the UN now.

41:51now. Or like I'm an Israeli citizen. And like, when I travel abroad, I have to lie about where I'm from because everybody hates me. Like, and I, I'm, I think little frictions that are the result of this conflict existing add up over time. The inconveniences have to be addressed at some point because they, they affect, you know, Israel has to, Israel has to reconcile with like all of the reactions of the world around them and how that affects like not just their government but their citizens i like the idea of netanyahu stopping a genocide because he wants no layovers it's just i can't i can't that two extra hours you know it's funny i didn't mention it two of the most prominent people who nominated trump and said he should have won the peace prize netanyahu and putin putin putin said he deserved it for his work in gaza wait no way about trump said donald trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

42:47That can't be true. I don't believe it. Says Donald Trump. Let's fact check. Putin praises Trump's peace efforts as really doing a lot to resolve global crises. Maybe he said it after he didn't win and said, well... Sorry. He did not officially nominate, but both Netanyahu and Putin both expressed support for him being an advocate for peace. If that's your advocacy group... Which is awesome, right? Like you're both of them are doing war together. Yeah, they're active. Like the two people causing the most war and destruction outside Sudan, I guess. That's even like the thing. It's like I get what you're saying or not with you.

43:26I get the idea that you communicated, which is that America needs some sort of like base of some kind of safety that in this giant region where there are antagonistic countries like Iran. But then if the base you've set up pisses everybody off all the time, that's not actually helpful. like that makes everything worse man i think that's what they figured out i think i mean trump was probably the last took him the you know he got there the last possible second but i think that is what it's again it's like the bombing i ran before doing the peace deal type of thing it's like you know at some point proactively doing all this violence anyway uh one one thought i want to close this out on is if you are interested in hearing more about this like i encourage you to read more i encourage you to look out more than like just listening to the show i thought reading through the full 20 point plan was particularly helpful.

44:16So if you have some time, just look it up, like just Google it full 20 point plan. And, uh, I, I think it's very illuminating of what like the goals are at least. And it gives you a framework of how successful this is as it plays out. Uh, yeah, I want to, I want to add on to that. So you can just on Wikipedia, it's just Gaza peace plan is the thing. And then it has the 20 points listed there. It's, it's a pretty quick read. This is not, you know, tons of pages. Yeah. Um, and then the second is an article, uh, that I think is phenomenal. And this is, if you're somebody like me who has tried to follow this conflict, but feels like, holy shit, there's so much going on.

44:54It is so hard to parse what's going on. What's exaggerated. Uh, there Isaac Saul is, uh, the lead of a pub publication called tangle where he like puts out daily newsletters. I think it's phenomenal. It was turned, I was turned onto it by a friend. So he made an article called, I think I'm leaving Zionism or Zionism is leaving me. So he's an American Jew that then went to Israel as birthright and spent, I think, like a decade living in Israel and is now back here. Longtime staunch supporter of Israel. And then he basically talks about his reckoning and frustration with this over time and how he has now basically views this as a legitimate genocide and goes into detailed explanations of why you could classify it as that.

45:30This is by far the best thing I've read and it's very much like tries to understand both sides. So if, if you want to hear more from somebody who's really participated in both sides of this excellent article, highly recommend. One thing I really do want to learn more about, and I didn't have time to read more about it, but it's the internal political situation of Israel. Cause my understanding is that Netanyahu is like part of a farther right group within Israel who also was being investigated. Uh, you know, that he, he was able to declare like emergency powers for this conflict that allowed him to extend his term as leader of Israel and avoid persecution for things that he'd done from the past.

46:09So I don't fully understand that line. And I don't understand the other factions within Israel who are trying to do different things and what they are, their chances of winning or, I don't know that. I tried to follow that actually a bit more because I think my understanding on that was really foggy as well. What I found out is he is struggling a bit politically within Israel. Like, he isn't well-liked by a lot of people, but it's not for, it's because of those corruption reasons rather than... Rather than the genocide. Rather than the genocide. Like, nobody's like, most people in Israel are not like, he's committing these, like, human rights atrocities, and this is why I don't like him.

46:49They like him for different reasons. And there was I mean, I don't have it pulled up right now. I was going through some public polling in Israel and how they view the war and how they view Palestinians in general or how Palestinians are being treated in the war. And it's pretty heavy-handed in one direction of they think it's fine that it's this way. Not literally everybody, of course. But I think with stuff like this, you can read, read, read. There's more and more to learn about it. There's something I want to learn more about. Well, interesting. You know what else is a war? The trade war. Let's go to a lighter war that doesn't involve a lot of guns.

47:31But, you know, who knows where we're going to leave. The thing is, it could get some guns involved eventually. That's why I'm wearing my goats. Do not. That can't be our lemonade stand curse. That cannot be this week's curse. If we eliminate stand curse World War III, Aiden, you bite your fucking tongue. I'm wearing this as a message of peace to Xi Jinping, all right? I'm wearing my Xi shirt. Wow. to bring the American Xi Jinping. Inside of you, there are three Gs. Yes, yes, there are. And the trade war has escalated. And I want to give an update on, you know, a real line has been, I would say, crossed in the trade war recently that is leading to massive movements on both sides.

48:10So I brought this special top secret container of rare earth metals that I shipped in from China, which is the only place where no you can't look at it i can't look at the minerals no you can't look at it i'll show you there we all know that there's been a trade war between the united states and china pretty much kicked off by the united states they were the ones that first put on the tariffs and have been trying to uh reshore manufacturing from china and they've also been doing restrictions on um ai chips and data center chips and you know top top uh level technology stuff to prevent it from getting the chinese hands okay so that was that was the impetus, but it's been sort of at a standstill.

48:50They've had negotiations, but nothing's really changed. Recently, China, like a few days ago, China announced what is a massive, massive escalation in this war, which is a restriction of rare earth metals to everyone else in the world. You know, I'm going to get into it. So this is a rare earth bombshell. Now, if you don't know, a little context, China accounts for half of the global rare earth mining and 90 % plus of processing, which means essentially in, in effect, if you make anything that use rare earth metals, you will be working with China. It will be going through. Yeah. I have a question.

49:23Yeah. They're called rare earth minerals. Are they rare? We're going to get to that. Thank you for setting that up, but you do it in three slides. Okay. All right. Yeah. Let's get it again. Set me up again. Let's get it again. Uh, the United States, for example, we have one rare earth mine in California, mountain Valley, and no rare earth processing. So this is how the United States gets rare earth minerals from its own California. They mine it out of the ground. They get big lumps of dirt and rock and they ship it to China who then processes it and then ships it back. That is how we do it. And that's how most countries do it.

49:55Yeah, sure. They're called rare earth minerals. No. Is it actually rare? Okay. Look at this graph. You can see very easily that China is dominant in global output of rare earth minerals, United States. And this is after refining, right? Yeah. okay so this is 70 of the actual usable stuff yes okay yes yes yes uh okay so there are a number of rare earth minerals actually 12 that china put import or export restrictions on but i want to talk specifically about these seven uh they have absolute leverage absolute dominance over these these minerals we basically cannot build things that use them so this right here doug is samarium okay do you know what samarium is used for uh that's right nuclear reactors electronics magnets okay this is gadolinium you can't eat them okay did you just lick it this is used for data storage again nuclear reactors mri uh high frequency uh contrast agents and of course defense like sonar and sensors this is terbium it's used for fuel cells um led lights smartphones tv screens again requires china this is dysprosium and they have 99 market share in this dysprosium used for electric vehicles for wind turbines for again nuclear reactors ev transition it's it's critical for dv transition for any country and you cannot do it without dysprosium and you can't do that without china so they put one of these in my car that's right they just they stick it in there and the start it turns on like the yeah reactor and back to the future this is loot to shim i don't even know loot etium lutetium medical imaging catalyst high electronics e-trium leds superconductors medical ceramics i can see why this one is worth a lot this is a cool looking mineral and of course finally we have the one everyone's trying to get into scandium okay this is for creating light uh aircraft like like light high tech aircraft uh it's used for again fuel cells 3d printing a lot of high tech stuff okay strategic takeaway yeah you want to raise your hand is they're called rare earth minerals but i don't understand why so many people are trying to get into scandium but not the others that's a great question first of all all of these rocks are not what i said they were just rocks from around the town oh dude wait what's the one i licked I'm sick of you too.

52:22Can I say, can I, can I, can I derail for a second? I'm sick of you too making long winded presentations that where you rug pulled. Little bait and switches. Uh, yeah, this is just a box full of rocks. Just fully believed him. Yeah, no, I did. I did. Yeah. However, however, I'm going to think about how you would have gotten all of this. Trying to get these is actually very difficult. Uh, you can only get them in like, uh, school level sizes because China will not export them to you via Amazon. To prove my point about how China won't export this, here's a box of rare earth minerals. Yeah, but all the things I said were correct.

52:55So obviously this has thrown Western companies and basically anyone who's not in China into chaos. This is what a rare earth mine looks like. And these are the elements. Okay, so again, these are actual elements that are fundamental to the earth around us. China has restricted the world from using these elements without their permission and then recently added five more. So now there are 12 elements that essentially China has declared sovereignty over, which means, I wanna explain, I read through the Moffcom announcement. If you wanna make anything that uses these and has even 0.01 % from a Chinese source, which they pretty much all do, you must send an application to the Chinese government, get it approved.

53:41You cannot resell what you make to another country without proof from China. They're not just selling you the rare earth. They are selling you the right to use it in anything. And anything you make with it, you cannot sell to someone else. They have declared total authority over these minerals they have 90 % control over. They've like trademarked rocks. So it's a pretty big line in the sand. Like it's got people freaking out. Now, where did they learn how to do this specific plan and idea? Let me show you an example. So this is ultraviolet technology developed in San Diego. and it happens to be used at ASML in the Netherlands to make their gigantic lithography machines that are used to make gyps.

54:22Because they use this tiny part from San Diego in this massive machine, America has said, you cannot export to anyone else in the world because you have a point, you know, you have a 1 % American product in it. And so we will ban you from selling it to any of these countries in red and we will make you get approval for any of the countries in blue. All right, in yellow, I'm sorry. This is the exact model that China is now rolling out for their dominance of rare earths. It is between America and high-end tech and China and rare earths, and they are both restricting how anyone else in the country, in the world, acts based on their original input.

54:56So ask me a question. Ask me a question. Doug. Rare earth mineral name, is it? Great question, Doug. That's a really wise question. So rare earths are a bit of a misnomer. They're not that rare. In fact, every single day, you will see a new announcement from some countries saying, oh we discovered millions of tons of rare earth minerals Kazakhstan found 20 million tons even China just found another 20 million I looked like barely any but they're really heavy they're really heavy uh Sweden you might talk about this Aiden said they found the largest deposit of rare earth metals in in Europe and then right after that Norway said no oh we found the largest deposit of earth metals.

55:39And I was thinking, are these the same deposit? You guys are right next to each other, but no, they are a 15 day walk apart. Okay. There's Aiden right there saying, wow. So every country does it. Wyoming has said they just found a massive, everyone does it all the time. And, and the comments in all these videos were like, oh, well get fucked China. Now we have our own, but the truth of the matter is they've never been rare. They exist in huge quantities all over the world. The hard part is refining them. Okay. And countries that do manufacturing like Germany are realizing how risky it is because they use this stuff all the time and now have to go apply to China for everything.

56:15And if it has any defense impact, China automatically denies on principle. That's what they said. So yeah. And the initial concern with why a lot of these countries didn't want to refine them in the first place or develop the supply chain to do so was environmental, right? Yeah, it's two part. One part is environmental. This is, this stuff is pretty rough on the environment you have to get massive quantities of essentially dirt and then you filter them through with like uh very uh dangerous chemicals that often seep into groundwater and then that brings out the tiny trace amounts of the rare earth metals that you then refine enough to have enough to use so it's like it's really raping the environment i don't know the better word it's like bad it's like really bad like every area that does this has problems with like rivers getting tons of toxic chemicals in them.

57:02The land looks completely ravaged, but like this is how you get rare earth minerals. And you just need to find a mine that is far enough from human activity to do it because it is required for literally all the latest tech and defense stuff. That's how it works now, okay? And so most people just offshore, they're refining to China. They just like, they don't look at it, but they get the dirt and they send it there. And it's now become concerning, not only to Germany, but all of Europe. Europe's entire manufacturing base is dependent on this and China can cut it off at will. Now, I want to say that China is not currently threatening to just cut it off.

57:36They're basically saying, you apply to us. We're going to approve pretty much everything. If it has anything to do with defense, we're going to say no on principle. If it has anything to do with high-tech AI stuff, we're going to say no if you're touching America. That's sort of what they've said. And it's put everyone at high level. That guy looks like he's going to go burn down the Navi's tree. it looks like he's about to pop a blood vessel i can't getting some scandium he looked upset that there's any trees left near the rare earth minerals so in response to this high-tech threat the you know we talked about this before america closing its grip on uh on high-end ai chips has caused you know things to slip through their fingers as in china is now full speed ahead trying to get outside of a building their own ai chips this is exactly what's happening in reverse with China.

58:23They have chosen this moment to draw the line and make their stand, but they are sowing the seeds of their own undoing because everyone is working full speed now because they know the risk. So France, which has huge nuclear power capabilities and a depository of rare earths, is investing a ton in making their own rare earth refining plants. Australia has seen that their president, Albanese, our prime minister, came out and said, this is our greatest opportunity. We're going to do a trillion dollar deal with America. We have a ton of rare earths. We have the ability to work on it. This could be a huge growth industry for Australia.

58:54That would probably be huge for Australia too because their mining sector is so gigantic and it's sort of a drag in the sense that they are so reliant on that sector for economic growth. So if you could develop the supply chain a little more and add on to that, long run for Australia, that probably has to be so... Exactly. So the big thing, it goes back to the book we read, breakneck is that this stuff is hard and it requires a lot of expertise. All that expertise is located in China. You can't just one-off throw money at it. You really have to build up this process knowledge of doing it a lot for a long time.

59:29And if you try to just half-heartedly do it or throw a factory here and there, not only will you not be good at it, but you will be uncompetitive compared to China who can do it at a bigger scale and cheaper. And in the past, every time someone's tried to set up a competing rare earth production facility, China just lowers the prices, undercuts them, makes them non-economical, and they go out of business. So this has been a multi, almost a decade-long plan to set up this total control of rare earths that they are now putting into play as a way to punch back in the trade war, which they have a right to do because they're being attacked and they're trying to like, but it's what's happening.

1:00:04So real quick, it sounds like because so much of the world sends their rare earth minerals to China for refinement, that in theory, a country like Australia could set up a just ton of refinement plants for example in the desert because they have so much open space right so in theory countries that are willing to i don't know designate a lot of land that doesn't need to be like that environmentally maintained it could in theory get very successful in theory of course like there's nothing unique about china that makes them able to do this but they have just done it so consistently for so long and have such a dominance that it's hard to break in but that's why this move is big because before this move everyone that tried to do it was like guys this is important.

1:00:43China has too much time to do it. Everyone's like, yeah, okay. But then when push came to shove and it wasn't profitable, they were like, yeah, well you lose. But now it's like seen as a strategic threat. So governments are willing to prop up companies that aren't yet profitable to make sure that the rarest supply chain works outside of China. It probably helps that all of these countries are interested in doing this around the same time as well, right? A wave of them doing it at once rather than one country trying to break in on its own. Yes. It's kind becoming public everyone is now realizing at once what a threat this is what what risk because they cannot have their own fighter jet program they can't have their own high you know there's a lot of high-end ev program they can't do that anymore without china's approval and they can cut it off and to be clear also semiconductors which power ai which is powering our entire stock market and economy 100 like yeah it's everything i mean it's the same thing that like china and russia and a lot of those red countries are realizing about segment semiconductors which is that american cut off at any moment okay and so they have to get out of that thumb um so what does this mean it means number one that stupid fucking aiden is going to win our slot competition for sure i was about to tell you guys i don't know if you've checked the metals company that shit has broken ten dollars yeah i bought this at one yeah 948 percent gain this year and it's because companies like the metals company and i'm not talking about just like literally 150 different companies that are in the rare earth space are all skyrocketing because everyone around the world in the past five days has realized all at once we need our own rare earth minerals and money is flowing from governments into this.

1:02:23Atriac actually took this presentation from my personal hard drive from nine months ago. You planned this? Why did you invest in TMC? He saw a Vice documentary. Deadass. I watched, I went. Wait, is this one about undersea mining? this isn't even the god damn it yeah i went back even the right reason i went back and found the video of the one i watched it's like a 10 minute like msnbc piece about the company or something and it just really stuck with me because i saw follow-up articles and and then when we did the draft i was like i can only think of one company that i've actually researched and then i just picked it and because in my head it was like energy electric cars minerals yeah surely that And then, and, and you just backed me up and it fucking did.

1:03:12All right. This, this has become the most important thing in the world this year for almost every developed economy. And so it's happening. So in response, you know, we talked about the follow-up where Trump, but you can take that off the screen. Trump is doing a hundred percent tariffs on China because of this escalation. And now he's counter escalating and he walked it back a bit after the market reacted poorly. And there's going to be a meeting in South Korea between Xi and Trump, uh, in a few weeks where they hopefully talk this down from the ledge because it's now getting insane. But I wonder what you guys think because I actually think China may have played their hand too early on this one.

1:03:45It feels like... They had this dominance and they might still have it for years to come. They will have it for years to come. But this is, because they're even walking it back. China's like, hey guys, we're going to approve almost everything. First thing they said really was tough. Now they're like, don't worry. Unless your American defense will be fine. But everyone is not reacting with panic. I know we have this show, but it feels awkward as the guy who played Counter-Strike for five hours last night to step up to the plate and be like, China played their hand too.

1:04:19It's hard for me. it's hard for me to say. I think that's fair, but you have read, you read the book, Breakneck, and you seem to come to the conclusion that America's attempt to restrict China's AI stuff is kind of backfiring. Is that where you're at or no? I think, yeah, it backfires no matter what, right? It doesn't matter when they make this play. Maybe there's a more critical moment, you could argue, where the short term benefits you in some sort of higher stakes conflict. like say we were actually at war or something right and then you play these cards because the stakes are so high maybe there's a more opportune moment but regardless of when you do it across all of these issues as soon as you make a move like this that is heard so widely everybody is going to react and start developing the tools to like combat the leverage that they have over you it It doesn't matter when it's a leverage.

1:05:19Well, that's what I'm saying. The longer you wait, the more your dominance entrenches and the more you can have that leverage unsaid. Use it when you actually need it. I guess what I would ask is how much more entrenched do they need to be? If you gave them five more years, 10 more years, I don't really know the answer to that question, but it seems like from what you were walking through, their strategic position is as powerful as it basically could be. I think that's a fair point. I mean, they think so. As in, like, this is not an ad hoc plan. This didn't just come together. They have been planning for this.

1:05:56In fact, there's one mineral, one element, helium, that America had a dominance on. America was like the primary exporter of helium. And China needed a lot of helium. And before, I think years ago, they were thinking about pulling this trigger in 2020. and they realized that America could counterstop helium, you know, and they planned for this. They said, we're going to completely get off the dependence of American helium over the next few years. And they did. And now there is no, you know. And they can have birthday parties all they want. Yeah, exactly. Xi Jinping wanted to have this huge balloon birthday party and he was worried that Trump could cut him off.

1:06:30But now he can't. I have a question about the helium. I don't. Forgive me. Yeah, I might not know this one. isn't helium really common why is it so isn't helium the next most common one or i don't it's like a limited amount i don't know if i don't know yeah i have this limited amount of helium the sun be making helium but i know that sounds silly it's like maybe we just can't get it bro maybe we just can't get it i i don't know enough about this topic to know like how we could like collect i used fake i don't understand how elements truly work on a fundamental level i just know that they're naturally occurring and china says they own 12 yeah no so there's a finite amount of helium on earth it's not it's not a thing you just have an infinite amount of shouldn't we just go to the sun and get it i'll scoop it up should we just be scooping it up at this time i'm asking chad gbt sometimes sometimes on the show sometimes on the show i have to let my inner child run wild and ask the questions like shouldn't we just go explain israel palestine gaza yeah we can scoop up i think this juxtaposition is important because it means if you're listening to the show it's like you should go into the you shouldn't just be listening to this show nah you're good because in my head it's like helium the sun be making that a lot of it no hold on i'm gonna push back what are you suggesting specifically that we go to the sun okay the sun doesn't deliver it here the sun disperses it stop saying the sun be making it that's true though that's true you know that's how it works right the sun is 150 million kilometers away yeah but it's gonna make it to us surely and then you can scoop it up i feel like the sunny scene where he's talking about stars i don't know about stars to dispute it like i know for look i if i know anything i know for a fact that the sun be making it That part is correct.

1:08:30Julian from the sun does not reach Earth in usable form. That can't be true. That can't be true. Well, Chad, you can't trust AI. Come on. Okay. So anything else you wanted to wrap this up? I want to say this is just beginning, it feels like. This is like, this has gotten everybody, both in China and in the rest of the world, on high alert as to this trade war being, you know, it feels like it goes like a, it's like a heartbeat or something trending down. It gets a little better and then something happens and it gets worse. The tensions are clearly deteriorating between these two countries over time.

1:09:05Well, if I were to reach back into the Israel-Palestine section we just did, right? I was talking about how all of these things that you do add up into these little layers of friction that compound on each other over time for citizens of your country, right? Or maybe for your government's ability to take action. And I think here, right, The beginning of this trade war, as it continues to play out, as these things pass over time, they affect our lives individually in little inconvenient ways that add up and add up and add up over time that put pressure on presumably the American government to make a decision of whether or not they can continue to hold strong or if they need to cave in order to make the political base happy.

1:09:51right and this is the same thing i i i don't i need enough time to to play out and see what how is this going to affect me in my day-to-day life because it surely will with enough time passing well the immediate thing is the tariffs so again the way it immediately affects people is that trump in response to this said 100 tariffs on everything from china yeah starting november 1st and like for normal people you might have ordered 12 000 mugs right right and the average again speaking as like the kind of every man on the podcast i have a hundred thousand dollars in mugs arriving in a few weeks and i might be fucked because what am i going to do when the when they're like hey come get your mugs at the border and give it anyway i so this is this is problematic um and then i you might have already said this when i was researching whether we can go to the sun is so there's this apex summit so trump and g are meeting on october 31st in two weeks so in theory this is saber rattling from both sides where they will then go meet in person in south korea at this yearly summit and then they will both go oh we've come to an agreement because they've already done that like five times this year right they keep doing this up and down heartbeat like you said so in theory this all goes away and it was just a whole bunch of dick swinging but it's concerning it's that's the last part yeah i have a big question for you so maybe you go ahead okay i'll say is that you know i was re i was researching for this last night and i ended up on a real rabbit hole on what Taiwan has been saying about all this, which is very interesting because they're kind of caught between the two.

1:11:21Again, they make chips. They can't export because America says so. And they import rare earths that China says you can't make things with it. They go to America. Like there's, they're, they're really caught between two worlds. And Taiwan is extremely afraid that at this meeting, there is going to be a deal. We kind of talked about this before. There's going to be a deal where Taiwan is used as a bargaining chip to get rid of these rare earths. Like America is going to withdraw support from Taiwan, maybe not publicly, but like ease back from any protection as a way to get out of this rare earth thing and a de-escalation and tariffs and a normalization.

1:11:56And that is like on Taiwanese news. They are talking about this pretty regularly. It is something that is like worried. And that's an interesting angle going into this because it feels like China's ultimate goal is not dominance and rare earths. It is to reunify China and Taiwan. and that is they're willing to throw some things around to get that um and so i don't know that's interesting yeah i don't know if that was your question or what but you almost exactly my question we had touched on the idea of the u.s and china positioning themselves to actually get along and kind of not deal with these disputes anymore where does that stand but i think this is the exact answer and again i don't know this is just what's speculated in taiwan of course they're going to say that in taiwan it's like very fresh and relevant to them but there's some there's some credibility to it, especially given recent actions.

1:12:40So again, like a Taiwanese leader wasn't able to land in America recently. Like, uh, yeah, like they were going to have a meeting and they blocked it. They say, just keep going just as a way to simmering tensions with China. And then obviously, uh, Trump blocked the sale of some arms to Taiwan that were supposed to be sold. So it's like, clearly something's being discussed and this could be a part of it. what else going on? Well, I figured we could pivot to something light. Okay. I could give you my life. You damn, bro. I could give you my 10 minute explainer on the Sudan civil war. Dude, this episode's been so dark.

1:13:16Okay, hold on. Is that good? Is that or AI erotica? Okay, which is that's lighthearted. You could write and you could have Chad Gbt write erotica about the Sudan war. I won't do that. Doug, I'll tell you things I won't do. It won't be that. I think, you know what, actually, I think this deserves maybe a little more airtime in the future. I've been following up and maybe just to preview, I had a really good call with someone who's been living in Sudan, still lives in Sudan for 20 years. And we had talked about the war on Patreon and I just did like preliminary research, reading articles of what's going on and then talked to him for an hour.

1:13:56Very enlightening. uh i think it's a massive conflict that a lot of people either forget about or flat out don't know about i i've stressed this every time i brought up it's not a these wars are not a competition but this this scale at which the sudan civil war is unfolding at and the number of people who have died either a famine or directly from the war is just at a scale that i was so far beyond me so I'm putting together some things on my end to like bring it up on the show, explain it as best I can and talking to people who actually live there so I want a little preview for the future. Why don't we talk about something light?

1:14:41Let's talk a little AI erotica. Yeah, so in important news

1:14:52sex is fun. Sex is fun. Is this going to be, is this like Sora erotica? Kind of. I mean, this isn't so like the actual story itself is, is interesting, but not incredibly impactful. If you pull us up Perry. So Sam Altman, head of open AI said, Chad TPT is going to soon allow erotica for adult users. So the, the main point of this is not really about being able to write cool porn. It's more that there is a general question about how restrictive these AI models should be. And as most people are aware, especially recently chat to bt and sora the hot new video model right are both incredibly restrictive as they currently stand when chat to bt 5 came out one of the big criticisms is it stopped feeling like a kind of personal type of friend and became a much more like clinical objective person and they've talked about how that was essentially to avoid the challenges they were having like people being told to commit suicide by character ai or you know these other things where people become really deeply emotionally dependent on this thing to an unhealthy degree.

1:15:54So they essentially, there's a pendulum that is swinging where they release a product and it's either way too overly restrictive or not restrictive enough. Case in point, last week, they released Sora or two weeks ago, they released Sora, tons of copyrighted content out the gate, and then they swung it way back and everybody's pissed off because it barely makes anything without getting upset at you. I can't make my full Spongebob episodes anymore. Yeah, people are actually saying that. That's what on the Sora Reddit. They're like, I made last week I made Spongebob. It was fucking great. Now I can't fucking say I'm all going to tell yourself.

1:16:24I hate you. Yeah, that's on ironically what is being said. Okay, and this is a response to that. Yeah, so he is basically acknowledging in the last few months, we have been too much on the side of censorship over control. It's not going to help you. It's not going to personalize. We are aware of this. We're swinging it back and we're going to pair that with more verification of age. So if you verify that you're an adult, we're going to allow you to make sexual content, which if it's not abundantly clear already, this is going to be an absolutely enormous use case for ChatGPT and for all these AI companies, right?

1:16:56There's gonna be so much AI porn and AI erotica and all this stuff, right? And so far, nobody's really known how to navigate it. But what they're suggesting is, okay, if we allow adults to verify that they are adults, then it's okay. We're also gonna be stricter around trying to find kids and try to gate how the AIs will actually act with them and not make them this sort of like friend. You mentioned that tweet, though. It's like I found this tweet to be so insane because we talked about maybe a week or two ago, we pulled up the Sora blog and we showed like their mission statement and how we're going to be safe and our number one priority is creativity and not.

1:17:35And, you know, made the case on that episode was that like that sounds good until there's a profit motive or there's something else that you need to do. And this post basically just says like, we made it very restrictive to be sure we were careful with mental health issues. We realized this made it less useful or enjoyable to people who have no mental health problems. But given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right. And now that we've been, we basically say now we've solved the mental health problem, but they haven't. They're just going to bring it back because people are mostly upset.

1:18:04It's not, the idea that they've mitigated it or have new tools is crazy. It's just going to be, they've just realized that the competition is heating up. grok you know elon musk is tweeting about ai erotica all day every day yeah and grok is coming you know for part of their lunch and they just want to head that off so i i don't know i i i can see the other side of this i mean so these these models are being updated all the time having safeguards in place to make sure to be able to pick up on the idea of okay somebody is now talking about suicide in a way that clearly relates to them you can train the models to learn how to identify this stuff better.

1:18:38So they've been fine tuning this and doing this work. Like you can update models substantially after the core foundation is in place. So if you take him at his word, they have behind the scenes, may they started really restrictive and they've tested internally and shown, okay, we feel confident that this is actually not going to do weird things to mentally vulnerable people. I don't think it's, it needs to be as cynical as what you're saying. It, it might be. Are you confident that it's not going to do that to mentally vulnerable people? I think it'll be better than it was and it'll still be bad and it's going to be an ongoing pendulum forever because everything is that's like that's what the internet is that's what video games that's what everything is I I sort of agree with that part of it where I think all of the internet and all of technology is sort of preying on people vulnerability everybody's going to find a way to abuse the new thing you have to make adjustments sometimes you overcompensate for the abuse and then people find out how to abuse that new thing I mean this is this is how you know, hacking and it is how everything works, right?

1:19:35With scams is like, it's this never ending battle between things like banks and hackers or your fucking, you know, aim bots in CS go and valve trying to push back against aim bots. And so it's always changing behind the seeds. You just don't see it. I'm not saying you're, you're wrong, but I absolutely could see a world where they just are improving it. I don't know. I mean, I just, I have a hard time not seeing this, you know it feels like there's a new announcement every week and if you read it through the lens of we are going to do whatever is most profitable for us to get the money we need to pay for all the things we've promised then it makes sense but everything else it feels very but this isn't i mean do you think it's i would ask do you think this is preying on anybody's vulnerability in like a really a new way like i would argue if we're talking about the use of it for sexual content then is that any different than the way people are treating this as like their boyfriend or girlfriend like their emotional or like romantic confidant already these are lumped together it's going to do both of those things right what they're really saying is here is we have we have sterile sterilized the chat gbt we have made it bland and lack of personality and extremely restrictive on what it will is willing to do we are going to pull back on that in a variety of ways and that's going to include it you can be more parasocial with it it's going to include sexual stuff the sexual stuff that's probably for money like i'll concede on that i want to make a j-o-i yeah i i read this far more as we are we are allowing this to become a personalized thing that feels like a friend again and take on the weird mental health challenges around that rather than we're trying to to lock in on porn and here's here's another way just real quick of what you said of like they're trying to make money like yes but also that is that's hand in hand with make a better product like this is what they're describing as a product that i as a normal person will enjoy more i'm fucking sick of current chad gbt it's it's not fun to use anymore and feels overly restrictive so if from their perspective of how do we make a better product this will do that it's just whether they are actually mitigating the mental health or saying they are yeah i just feel like this is them waving a white flag on even trying to stop that this is them realizing that like the cost of customer satisfaction is not worth them trying to protect people from the most dangerous aspects of what this can do.

1:21:56They're saying, fuck it. But like they should never try. Like they should just be overly restrictive forever. I'm reading this as them saying, we're making another attempt to allow it to do these things. And we think it'll be better this time. I feel like they should keep trying. Well, but are they? What I'm saying is like this post would be written exactly the same if they were giving up on that fight and just go. That is, yeah, that's true. That's true. We just don't know. We don't know. But I just, I have a hard time trusting him because I don't think he's earned it. I don't know. I don't think the actions of open AI have been anything deeper than trying to maximize their own

1:22:36power in the AI ecosystem and profit, which it's fine to do for a company, but they keep putting out these posts where it's like aiming for a higher, yeah it's very aspirational aspirational but i don't i don't think it's what they're doing i i hear you and i and i can very much understand that perspective i think part of why i lean the other direction is because i have watched as this company over the past three years has made my life better every couple months as these models have improved and just continue to do bafflingly impressive things like last week i used their new coding model codex to program this chess app where I had every chess piece controlled by an actual Twitch chatter.

1:23:16So it's 32 individual people on the board yelling at each other, telling me what to do. It was fucking awesome. And one of the more complex apps I've done and almost, it was like 90 % vibe coded and it did it phenomenally well. And it couldn't have done that six months ago. So I'm like seeing these progressions of, wow, this is really, or the way it helps me like practice a new language or something. yeah i mean i use it too but i those those features are were fully capable within the what you might call safe version that like it not acting like a friend i find to be like i was kind of annoyed when it was a very sycophantic you know you're so fucking great uh bringing that back feels like a cave to people that really wanted that thing and i i don't know i'm i found it to be useful for like if it's something that's on wikipedia chat to be incredible to talk you can like talk to wikipedia it's fucking awesome but uh the idea that it needs to be your boyfriend and girlfriend and giving you erotica sounds like dangerous and it's something they don't care anymore because they're on a full speed mission because they've made now 1.3 trillion dollars in promises for money they don't yet have and they need money that is true i definitely definitely acknowledge that that is a yeah absolutely factor i would like to believe it's both i would like to They want money and they're genuinely making it better.

1:24:35There's going to be a lot of, there's going to be a lot of Harry Potter fan fiction writers that are out of a fucking job. Think about that. Think about that. What happens when you don't need a real human being to write about how Sonic fucks tales. What, how is the industry going to absorb these seven people? You watch out in the next jobs report. You'll see it. You'll see it. You'll be sorry. the worst part is since the government shut down it's just be one big category of erotica we won't know if it's sonic and tails fucking we won't know it's halo master chief fucking mario not while it's shut down there's there's a team and they're all furloughed right now oh our government the strategic uh initiative

1:25:26you do uh i mean interesting story i i i i yeah we'll see how it plays out i would actually be curious this is a comment farming i i really sincerely am curious for people in the audience what your take on this is uh presumably a lot of you engage with ai tools in some way i'm more talking about chat gbt right the ones you're using with on a daily basis for helpful things not, you know, meta AI jamming random shit in your feed, right? If you are a chat user, do you find the at least option for it to be more personalized, to be more human, and potentially erotica going all to that height? Does that sound appealing to you?

1:26:02Is that something that you want? Or do you feel like I'm fine with this not even being an option for the sake of safety? I would be curious what people's use cases. Do you guys know the story of VHS and Betamax? Have you heard that? I don't think so. Yeah. Did you grow up with VHS tapes? You watched? So VHS was a standard and there was a better standard called Betamax that was headed by Sony, which at the time was like one of the biggest tech companies in the world. It was like one of the most powerful tech companies in the world and well-beloved by the American people. And people thought Betamax was going to win.

1:26:29There was a better technology. It was better for movies. It ran better. And the story goes that VHS won because these early Betamax players and VHS players were very expensive and VHS had porn. So the early adopters were people that were like, I'm going to spend a lot of money to get a VHS player so I can watch porn. and Betamax was banning porn. And that allowed VHS to become the standard early and then eventually take off, even if it was the worst format. And that apparently repeated with HD DVD and Blu-ray where Blu-ray, Sony learned their lesson, made sure porn was allowed and Blu-ray players were bought.

1:26:58So I think there's an idea on the Elon Musk side that I am Grok, I am behind open AI and I'm gonna lean all in on erotica because that will give me early adopters that make Grok better than JGPT. And this is Sam Altman trying to head that off by saying, oh, we're going to have porn too. Don't you worry about that. And there's a bit of like a business case there. And I wonder if there's, you know, I feel like there's a connection to Elon Musk here on Sam Allman's side where this is so clearly a response to what he has been constantly hammering home. And now we're in like this weird porn race because they don't want to be the guy that doesn't have porn in this.

1:27:34I don't know. That's a good point. That's a good point. In a weird way, Gooning is holding up the entire S &P.

1:27:44and wow that's time isn't it time for the great wacky world oh thank you thank you for joining us on lemonade stand uh if you want to check out that frequently asked questions uh about our vox media partnership and the ads in the future you can check that out on our patreon for free you can watch that for free if you want any of the extra content we do we do extra shows every week you can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand uh we're planning our trip to china for early next year hit the 10 000 patrons we're going to china we have a pretty cool guest i'll keep it a secret now lined up uh thanks uh people at box and uh and uh we also are doing we talk about japan or no oh yeah i'm down yeah we're going to japan uh doug's going to japan on vacation and we were like let's ruin doug's vacation let's follow him and make it work let's making work while he's there.

1:28:33Guys, I need some time here. Oh, we'll go with you. We'll go. We're going to Japan. That's the thing, Doug. You don't have to worry. We'll leave the podcast to you. You never have to leave our side ever. But we're going to have a few guest episodes in Japan where we're going to get to talk about the political and economic situation unfolding in Japan right now, which I think are going to be really good. So you have a lot. I'd say you have a lot to look forward to right now. Yeah, we're pretty excited about the coming weeks. And we're going to do a Patreon episode this week where I jam an entire lemon in my asshole.

1:28:58Yes, and then we're going to the sun. Wait, wait. The new lemon party. fact check from last week because i do want it's in the comments but i was off by a factor of 10 it is not one trillion dollars on snap a year it is a hundred billion and i the well what i realized is i got that wrong i was pretty embarrassed by that because i i went i saw a number by chat gpt and google gemini's thing i was like i don't want to trust these numbers let me go to the actual source i went to the actual source i found the government website looked it up saw the document i was like cool i know this with a hundred percent confidence and i fucking got it wrong and i did the math because it was 100 ,000 millions and then I multiple anyway so it 100 billion a year on snap tariffs at the same time is closer to 200 billion so I mean while we're at it the points remain but do want to correct that number because that was pretty off I also I totally forgot about this I also had a correction from last week I'd said that there was a quota on like green card transitions to citizens and that whole block that people experience off their H1 B's it's not you're stuck on your green card it's actually worse than that you're stuck on your H1B.

1:30:02There's a limited amount of green cards that can be given out to each nationality per year. So you can be stuck on your H1B for decades potentially if you're Indian. So I just wanted to correct that really quickly. It was a small thing I saw pop up. But the important thing is even though we got it wrong about those things, our broad point was still correct and that's all that matters. And that's all that matters. And in fact, the small details, they don't matter at all. I mean, the sun do be making helium, I think. Right, right. We don't need to. And now that I think about it, never correct me again.

1:30:31Small details. Watch your tone. Getting to the sun. Yeah. Thanks for watching. Thanks everybody. Bye.