#2234 - Marc Andreessen

21:45You know, like, for example, I think military commanders in the field are going to have base AI battlefield assistance that are going to advise the most strategy tactics. Yes. Right, how to win conflicts. And then it'll start to work its way up. And then they'll be doing, you know, we're planning. And then if you're a general, if you're, you know, a sergeant or a colonel or a general, it's going to just mean you perform better. Yeah. And so maybe there's like, you know, the human, the sort of man machine kind of symbiotic relationship. And you could imagine that happening more in the policy process in the political process.

22:09And there's also AI controlled jets, which are far superior. They did, Mike Baker was telling us about that. They did these simulated dog fights and the AI controlled jets one 100 % of the time. Yeah. Over humans. Yeah. And there's a bunch of reasons for that. And part of it is just simply the speed of processing and so forth. But another big thing is if you don't have a human in the plane, you don't have the, they say the spam on the can, you don't have the, you don't have the human body in the plane. You don't have to keep a human being alive, which means you can be a lot faster and you can move a lot more quickly.

22:38G forces. Much higher. G forces. Yeah. And then there's no option for someone to go crazy. They're so, yes, that's also right. Yes, exactly. There's no human element, you know, which is a real element. I think we're going to, it's going to be common to have like mock five drone, you know, jet drones within a few years. And, you know, there'll be a fraction of the size of the current, you know, manned planes, which means you can have like a lot more of them. And so you kind of want to imagine, you know, a thousand of these things coming over the horizon right at you. It really changes, it's actually I think it'd be very interesting.

23:12It really changes the fundamental equation of war in the following sense. Fundamentally in the past, the people who won wars, the people who had the most men in the most material. Right. So you just needed the most soldiers and you needed the most equipment. And in this drone world that we're talking about, it's going to be the people with the most money and the best technology. Yeah. Right. So for example, small states, you know, small advanced states, like Singapore will be able to punch way above their weight and then kind of large sort of economically or technologically backward states that normally would have won will no lose.

23:40And so it's going to be a re -calibration. And then it has the good news is you're not putting soldiers at risk, right? So you'll have a lot less death. The bad news arguably is it'll be easier to get into conflicts because you're not putting soldiers at risk. So there's going to have to be a re -calibration of like when you actually like lean in an attack. I'm sure you're aware of all this UAP disclosure jazz that you see on television. The more I look into it, the more I think at least a percentage of it, a healthy percentage of it is bullshit. And there's probably some government projects where they've developed some very sophisticated propulsion systems that they've applied to drones and that that's what these people are seeing.

24:23And this is one of the reasons why they continually have sightings over secured military spaces like out in the eastern seaboard. Like there's areas over Virginia where they continually see them in San Diego. They see them off the coast of San Diego. Where there's a place where you would test stuff like that. Well, so of course we know that that was the case for a very long time. For sure from the 50s through the 80s because the development of stealth was highly classified. And the SR -71 was brand new at one point. And so you had these like alien, you know, you pay attention to that stuff. Of course, 100%.

24:55Yeah. And then by the way, we're not the only ones. And so my speculation would be that some of the military -based stuff is the Chinese doing something similar. And we got a glimpse into that with the balloon. Well, that was a goofy though. We got shut down, but still the fact that the Chinese are flying surveillance balloons over American territory. And they were able to slip through our early warning systems and just like, you know, later above military bases and like, you know, take lots of, you know, imagery and do whatever scans they do. And like literally nothing was happening. And we didn't even know they were there most of the time.

25:25And so like, you know, that's like a tip of the ice. It feels like a tip of the iceberg kind of thing where if they were doing that, there were probably other things going on. Well, I've read that someone had commented that similar things had happened during the Trump administration. But they didn't tell Trump because they didn't wanted him to shoot them down. Interesting. Interesting. I, for the record, I'm pro shooting them down. Yeah, I think you should probably shoot them down and take pictures and shit. They're not, but there's not even people up there. Fucking shoot them down. Yeah, yeah.

25:49What's the problem? Yeah, absolutely. Do you think there are any of those that are not of this world? I've died. I don't think there's any way to know from the outside. Have you ever like pondered it late at night sitting on your porch staring up at the sky? Of course, of course. Well, you know, raised, you know, raised, and number one is, is there not a minute if it is, you know, did it recently get here? Have they been here for a long time? You know, did they arrive 5 ,000 years ago? Tucker, thanks. There are demons and angels. You know, I mean, demons and angels, are demons and angels real?

26:20It's like, you know, literally, you know, probably not, but like certainly they're metaphorically real. And are there some of shades of gray between literal and metaphorical? Well, the actions are certainly demonic and angelic, right? Actions of human beings, mass things that happen in the world are uplifting or horrific. Evil people doing evil things are possessed. I mean, they're possessed by something. Right. Like something is going on. Right. And like, you know, what's the dividing line between, you know, an actual supernatural force and some sort of psychological, sociological thing that's so overwhelming that it just takes control of people and drives in the crazy.

26:51Like, you might as well call that a demon. Yeah, it's fascinating because like, when you think about it from theological term, like, when you think of it from a religious perspective, you know, people would apply what would a demon do, what would angels do, what is a, what is the will of God and what is like the evils of the worst aspects of humanity, you would, you know, you could apply them to so many things in the world, but we're very reluctant to say that something is demonic. Even though it's clearly demonic, like clearly in action, like this is what a demon would do. A demon would possess people to gun down children, you know, and, you know, use drones to shoot down a wedding party.

27:38A demon would do that. Right. Exactly. So a friend of mine is a religious scholar, he teaches a Catholic university and he's a religious history scholar and he says that medieval people would have had a, medieval people were psychologically better prepared for the era ahead of us with AI and robots and drones everywhere than we are. Because medieval people took it for granted that they lived in a world with higher powers, higher spirits, angels, demons, all kinds of supernatural entities. And it was just assumed to be true and in the world we're heading into, you know, that we're arguably already in, you know, there are going to be these, you know, new forces, these new entities running around doing things.

28:14And, you know, we're going to just, we're going to struggle and we're going to, you know, we're going to catastrophize, we're going to conclude, you know, like, AI is the end of the world. Yeah. The Medievals would have said, oh, it's just another spirit, like, you know, it's just another kind of entity. Yeah, it's better, it's better than humans and some things, but so are angels. And so we're going to have to like, change our mentality. We're almost going to have to become a little bit more, medieval, we're going to have to open up our minds to the kinds of entities that we're dealing with. Wow.

28:35Yeah. Which also could help us actually deal with people. Like it may be, maybe, maybe there's an explanatory way to think about human behavior here that seems less rational, but might actually be more rational. Well, you expressed yourself very brilliantly in describing the current state of woke ideology as a religion. Yeah. That's right. And that the way you described it was brilliant, because you were saying that it has all the elements, excommunication, adherence to a very strict doctrine, all these different aspects of it, saying things that you, everyone knows to be illogical and nonsensical, but you must repeat it.

29:10You know, these things are indicative of people that are in cults or people that are a part of like a very, like a serious, fundamental religion. Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, the big difference between woke and the traditional religions is, well, it has no concept of redemption. Right. No concept of forgiveness. Right. Which is a very evil religion. You do not want that. Yeah. It's also, it's, well, it's ill -conceived, right? Because it's like immature. It's an immature religion. Yes. Absolutely. It's inherently totalitarian. It has to be because it can permanently destroy people. Yeah. woke also understands something that the Greeks understood, which is that being ostracized and being put to death are the same thing.

29:48And so when the Greeks sent somebody like Socrates to death, they gave them the option of just leaving. But the problem was. Really? Yes. Socrates could have just walked out and left. No kidding. But the reason that was considered equivalent sentences is because at that time, if you were not a citizen of a particular city, you would get killed in the next city. You'd be identified as the enemy, presentively, and killed. And so there was no way to survive without being part of your community. Wow. And that's what the wokes figured out is you can do the same thing. If you're able to like, you know, nail somebody on, you know, on charges of having done something, you know, unacceptably horrible, then you make them toxic and all of a sudden they can, you know, they can't have, you know, for you know, people, you know, they lose friends, they lose family, but they lose, they can't get work, you know, before you know it, like they're, you know, living, you know, severely diminished damaged lives.

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33:39But like on the edge where you're not quite sure, although say enough real things that make sense and talk about their own anxieties and personal issues with stuff, and then say fucking ridiculous shit. And it's fascinating. A better works. It does work. That's what's so terrifying. It's like all the outcasts of Twitter, all the people that were like, I can't take this. A few of them will come back, which is wonderful. A love when they come back. I'm gone. I'm gonna go to Blue Sky, I fuck you people. Like a bunch of them went to Threads for a while. Like Stephen King, he went to Threads. Camera right back.

34:10They all come right back. They can't. The marketplace of ideas, like okay, you could go to like a fruit stand in the middle of the fucking desert and that's a marketplace or you can go to the farmer's market where everybody's there. Like where are you gonna go? That's right. You're gonna go to the farmer's market. That's right. Tons of people, it's a lot of fun. Yes. A lot of activity. Yes. That fruit stands, fucking barren and deserted. There's no one there. There's very few choices. Yeah, yeah. It was not fun. And it's win -win. Well it's win -win. I win -win now to back on Twitter because it's good for them because they want to proselytize.

34:38And so they need an audience. Yes. They need an audience. So they win. Yes. And then we win because it's really, really fun to duck on them. But it's also weird for them to not want any pushback at all. Like it isn't the whole thing supposed to be about an exchange of ideas. Like if you have a controversial idea and someone disagrees with it, don't you want to hear that position? I know I do. I want to hear it. Even if I vehemently disagree with it, I want to hear it. I want to know where, how do you, how's your brain work? How are you coming to these conclusions? What makes you think this way?

35:10Who are you? What do you like? I want to go on Instagram. I want to look at your pictures. I want to see what you're up to. What are you doing? You know? What do you do with your free time? You know, what are you complaining about? Yeah. I want to, it's like, it's a fascinating education on human psychology. And to watch people express themselves publicly and then also be attacked publicly by strangers which never happens in the real world. Right. Like at scale. The way it happens on social media. And I think it's an amazing time for people to examine ideas. If you can handle it. Yeah. My favorite term is marketplace of idea.

35:46Yeah. You could have a marketplace of ideas. It's just going to be one idea. So blue sky is a marketplace of idea. Sure. Yeah. Access the marketplace of ideas. That final S makes a lot of difference. Yeah. But the thing about X is it really is diverse. There's, I follow tons of like kooky leftist progressive nutbags that like have bizarre takes on everything. And they were 100 % convinced that Kamala Harris is going to sweep all the swing states including Iowa. They were all in and I was like, this is wild. Yeah. Like, is that going to happen? Are they right? Like, this is crazy. But it's, they were 100 % convinced.

36:25And it's, it's fascinating to see all these different kinds of people to see the Charlie Kirk's and, you know, the full on left -wing cooks and see them all together. So you need that. Yeah. Well, look, so one of the ways I think to think about this is all new information is heretical by definition. Right. So any time anybody has a new idea, it's a threat to the existing power structure. So all new ideas start as heresies. And so if you don't have an environment that can tolerate heresies, you're not going to have new ideas. And you're going to end up with complete stagnation. Right. If you stagnation, you're going to be straight into decline.

36:59Yeah. Right. And I think this is the, the, the, the aberrant nature. This is the timeline split. I think that I think the last decade has just been like a really weird aberrant time where things have not been working like they should. And, and, you know, in 2015, Twitter called itself the free speech wing of the free speech party. Right. And Elon, Elon has not, like, like, change, Elon has restored it. Right. Ready. But he brought it back to something that everybody thought was completely normal 10 years ago. Yeah. And I think I hope this last 10 years increasingly is just going to feel like a bad dream.

37:26Like I can't believe we tolerated the level of repression, right. And anger and, you know, emotional incontinence and, you know, cancellation campaigns. Emotional incontinence is a great term. Yes. There has been a lot. That's really what it's like. Emotional incontinence. You just diarrhea in your emotions. Just spraying rage in all directions. And so I, you know, I'm very, at the moment, at least, very optimistic that there's a cultural change happening here that's even more profound than the, than the, than the political change. I have a lot of respect and also sympathy for Jack Dorsey. I like him a lot as a human being.

37:56I think he's a brilliant guy. And I think he had very good intentions. But he was a part of a very large corporation. And he had an idea for a Wild West Twitter. He wanted to have two versions of Twitter. He wanted to have the Twitter that was pre -Elon where there's moderation. And you, you know, you can't dead name someone and all that jazz. And then he wanted to have an additional Twitter that was essentially what X is now. Yeah. And he just didn't have the ability to push that through with the, the board and the executives and all the people that, you know, were fully on board with woke ideology.

38:31Yeah. So the experience that people like Jack have had running these companies in the last decade has been, and I don't mean to let them off for their decisions, but just the, the lived experiences they say of what these people's lives have been like is just daily pounding. Just every single day, it's like meteor strikes coming down from the sky exploding around you, beginning attack from every conceivable direction, being called just incredibly horrible things, being attacked from many different directions. He's already left blue sky. Well, yeah. So, so that's it. So, Ernie and Jack is the Jack then created blue sky, which is kind of exactly the opposite of any way where he thought it.

39:03You know, by the way, you know, the new, the new name for it, of course, is blue cry. Yeah. I didn't know that. Exactly. Yeah. But he's also got, you know, looked to his credit, he's still trying. And so he's got Noster, you know, which is another, another, is called Noster, NOSTR. Oh, okay. It's his kind of new, it's actually his third. He's going to keep swinging. He's going to keep swinging. Look at full credit, full credit. He's going to keep swinging. By the way, full credit, he supported Elon, you know, they mixed up a little bit, but by and large, he's been very supportive and was very supportive at a key time.

39:27Well, I also found it fascinating that when there was any sort of a right wing branch of that stuff like GAB or any of these, they would immediately be infiltrated by bots as well, like my friends that troll on blue sky. But these are Nazis. Like, these are Nazi bots. These are people that would just spew horrible hate. And then GAB would be labeled, oh, this is where the Nazis go. This is a right wing psychopath social media app. Yeah. And I think, frankly, I think you get the same thing if you start out. If I think if you start out over at political on either side, I think that's what you end up with.

40:00Yes. And so I just, like that doesn't seem to be an effective route to market. It seems like you have to start from beginning as a general purpose service, but you need to have some sense of the actual card rails you're going to have around. By the way, every social media service, internet service that ever works, there's always some content and pictures and restrictions because you can't have some porn, you can't have some violence, you can't have terrorist recruitment. And even the first amendment, there's like a dozen carve outs, the Supreme Court has ruled on over time that are things like that that you can just like say.

40:29Right. I can't say, let's go join ISIS and let's go attack Washington. Like it's literally not allowed. So there's always some controls, but you need to have like a spine of steel. If you're going to hold back the censorship pressure. And there's basically a sub -stack company I'm involved doing very well. Smaller than Twitter, but doing extremely well. Fantastic. And they've done a great job, I think, of holding the line on this list. And then obviously, and it's an amazing resource. There's so many brilliant people on Substack. That's right. I love Substack. I get a large percentage of my news from Substack.

41:01That's right. It's really good and it's so valuable and it's such a great place for people who are independent journalists and physicians and scientists to publish their ideas and actually get paid for it by the people who subscribe to it. I think it's fantastic. And there's lots of people on the far left and the far right. Yes. So you actually have the full spray. When a far left person gets upset, somebody working in the near times that mad because they're not far left enough, they quit and they start to suspect. And Substack welcomes them in. Yes. Which is why they don't evolve into a gap or something like that.

41:32Because it really is a platform. It really does welcome all kinds of people. Well, it's also very difficult to subvert in that same way because Substack is essays. Right. You're reading people's essays and papers on things. And like these are long -form things that are very well in a lot of cases. Very well researched. And it's not the kind of thing you just shit post on. Right. You know, there are comments, but it's just like they don't hold the weight that the actual article holds. Right. So my partners, my partners at work, they've observed that I tend to be able to inflame situations from time to time.

42:05But I tend to be provocative and get people really upset. And so the rule they've asked me to comply with is I'm allowed to write essays, for example, in Substack. And I'm allowed to go on long -form podcasts, but I'm not allowed to post. Really? Right. Exactly. What your rules. It's the rule. It's the rule. Not by the way, I struggle against the rules because I can't help myself from time to time. Why do you want you to have rules? Because otherwise, I inflame people too much. I drive people too crazy. You do that purpose? Sometimes. I mean, sometimes you have to. Sometimes it's unintentional.

42:36Did you ever hear about when the entire country of India was mad at me? No. Oh, I spent one night with the entire country of India basically wanted to kill me. It was like, it was incredible. Oh, my goodness. I happened. I mean, I was in a Twitter debate with somebody. Back when I was just posting for the Twitter and it was a debate about economics and the topic of colonialism came up. And I made a comment in a long thread about, you know, click colonialism. And it turns out the Indians are still extremely sensitive about the topic of colonialism. I did not understand the mindset and the historical orientation.

43:09And I tripped the line. And I stayed up all night and I went hyper viral in every time zone in India every hour. There would be like an entirely new activation. Wow. And I was like, I was like, front page headlight news, top of the hour TV news, like all the way across India. Wow. Yes, it was like a, I do not recommend this as an experience. By the way, I learned how many incredible Indian American friends I have because they all rallied to my, you know, my side, you know, said he's not, you know, Marx not literally calling for the recolonization of India. Like, no, it's not a problem. The language barrier as well, right?

43:40A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. And then just, my, my, my, my, my, my, my historical context. Americans have a different, we Americans experience history differently than almost everybody else. The history for us is just like stuff that happened the past that doesn't matter anymore. But a lot of other people around the world experience history is something that really still matter, like really matters to their life today. Yes. They just, they, they, they live in history more than we live at deeper understanding of kind of how they got to where they were and the things that happened to their parents and grandparents and, right, and ancestors.

44:06And so there's just it's just, it's just, you know, I don't know if it's, you know, better or worse, it's just a different way of experiencing reality. Yeah. Anyway, I recommend learning that lesson not by enraging a billion people. I experienced a small version of that recently because I said we shouldn't be using long -range missiles on Russia. Okay. And the Ukrainians, like, and Ukrainian bots, a bunch of people came after me because I was saying, like, the Biden administration was like, fuck these people. And then I think some people misconstrued that as fuck the Ukrainian people, which I absolutely was not saying.

44:35I see. I was saying, fuck whoever in the last days of the presidency's decide to escalate this war because it appears that that's what they've done. It appears that they're leaving Trump of giant mass at the very least. Right. So good news is I am allowed to go on podcasts. I am. I'm. And the theory, it's your set bringing up though because it's your subject thing. It's because it's basically, Mark, you need to explain yourself in long form. Yes. You can't just say a thing. Exactly. You're your example. You can't just say a thing and have people extrapolate from it. Right. So extrapolate. It's not their fault because you haven't, it's your fault because you haven't explained it.

45:09Right. Right. And so if you write something long form or if you go talk for three hours, at least the context will be there. And then if they want to get mad at you, that's fine. But you can point everybody to the transcript and it's clear that that's not what you meant. Do you also think while you're writing how things could be misconstrued, so let me like do a really good job of being very clear about this. 100%. Yeah. You kind of have to. Yeah. Yeah. Like Jimmy Corsetti on the other day and he is an expert in ancient history and ancient civilizations and we had these fascinating subjects and one of them that came up was the Nazis and their fascination with the occult.

45:45And so you had to like clearly say, listen, fuck Hitler. Okay. Can I be really clear? It's fuck Hitler. Fuck the Nazis. Okay. I have not in any way. Okay. Now that we're clear, let's talk about where the swastika came from. Fuck Hitler. Did I say fuck Hitler? Let me say to you. Fuck Hitler. But the swastika is his ancient symbol and he's like talking about like why did the Nazis have this fascination with the occult and with ancient civilizations? And so we got into it, but it was like one of those things where it's like, all right, we're hitting the third rail. Everybody get your rubber boots on.

46:14Yeah. You know, let's, let's save everybody here. Yeah. I've got a friend in the entertainment business who is quite left -wing but really likes World War II documentaries. Oh. And so he'll be like, yeah, I saw this great documentary last night about Hitler and I'm like, I bet you did.

46:32You can't even have the copy of Mein Kampf in your house. Oh, a student, this is actually one of the Stanford Crazy stories. A student at Stanford was reported to the disciplinary board, the, the, the civil, whatever, disciplinary board for reading a copy of Mein Kampf in the quad. Oh my god. That's so crazy. Which is a book that's been, you know, assigned for - You can buy right now in Amazon. 80 years. Yeah. To college kids to like, understand who his people were and like, how to not do that again. Yeah. That, that kid was like nearly brought up in Charters and nearly expelled. So like, wow.

47:00That's, that's, yes, this, this is the world that I, that I hope that we're leaving. Well, it's just an awful way to look at things. It's, it's so awful to think that if you read about someone horrible, you support them. Yeah. That's right. It's just so crazy. Like, well, how are we going to study history? Yeah. Right. And how are we going to prevent that was happening again? Right. If we can't, if we can't wrap our heads around why the happen the first time. Especially something like the Nazis. Like, how are we going to learn like what happened? Clearly, 1920s Germany was very different than 1945 Germany.

47:34What the fuck happened in 25 years? So what we're essentially talking about is the year 1999 America versus 2024 America. Imagine a shift of that magnitude. So crazy. Yeah. There's a holocaust in 2024 and in 1999 everybody's just hanging out. Yep. That's right. Well, you should probably study that. You should probably not reprimand someone for reading a book on this. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Exactly. Look, the German people went along with it, right? And so how did that happen? How did that happen? Right. And how many, you know, did they, yeah, it was their active agreement. Was it right? Right.

48:05Was it right? Was it right? Was it right? Was it right? Was there, you know, what, what are the steps where things go horribly wrong? No, that's right. And how could we recognize those? Because those steps have taken place multiple times in history and recorded history. We know about them. So like if we see them happening today, maybe we should stop it and nip it at the bud. What better way than to read about when it already happened? What are my observations about? People talking about current events is we know conclusively the prayer areas all had horrible moral problems, disasters, you know, catastrophes, wars and all kinds.

48:34They made all kinds of horrible mistakes. But we are completely certain that in our time we figured it all out. Right. Right. We're 100 % convinced that we have it all dialed in. And the one thing I know for sure is people 50 years from now we're going to look back on us and they're going to say, oh my god, those people were awful. 100%. Right. It's just, but like in one way. Right. In what way are we horrible? I mean, certainly a lot of the way we treat each other is horrible, especially with the amount of information that we have available. But it is fascinating also that if you, you know, I visited Athens last year, last year, and I got to tour the ruins and I was like, oh, I wonder when it all went south.

49:07Like when did they, when did they know this had fallen apart? Like when, when was it in the peak of everything? They probably thought, hey, we have the most amazing sophisticated civilization that's available on earth. And we will maintain this. This is how we will be the center of intellectual discourse and the home of democracy. This is us. And then no. Now there's like shitty apartment buildings next to the Parthenon. You're like, what happened? Something horribly happened. And we don't want to think that could ever happen to us today. We want to think we're American motherfucker. We're going to keep this bitch rolling forever.

49:44Leonard Schindert, free bird. Let's go. Second amendment. Come on. And we're going to, we think that it's just, this is, this is the future. America is the shining star of the world and we're going to carry this on. But probably not like historically, I mean, what is the longest running dominant civilization ever? The Romans existed for what, a couple thousand years. Like how long did the Greeks run? How long did the Egyptians, the Egyptians might be the longest running, especially if you like, take into account the possibility of alternative history timelines where they will, you know, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, they have kings that go back 30 ,000 years.

50:24Here it is. Egypt and Mesopotamia, there it is. One estimate measuring the time of the first pharaohs, the use of hieroglyph writing to the native religion was replaced by Christianity, ancient Egyptian civilization endured for about 3 ,500 years. No, I bet it was more than that. Well, the argument is, just things just really didn't really change. Like, changes we understand, historical change, the kind that we understand where things actually change, the people who live changes really kicked off with the Greeks. And so that was sort of the default status. Right. Civilization for a long time. The Greeks kicked off change as we understand it and then, and then, and then the Romans.

50:59Do you know about the fish ponds? Fish ponds. The fish, the Cicero's fish ponds. No. So the Roman Empire, you know, ran for, you know, in it's sort of, Roman Republican Empire in it's sort of helped, which you consider as dynamic face, is sort of vital phase ran for a few, you know, a few hundred years, maybe 400 years total, something like that. And towards the end, as it was sort of falling or stagnating and increasingly starting to fall apart, Brennan Mine says, when the Rose got dangerous, and nobody could quite explain why. Right. Which sounds familiar, by the way. Um, Cicero was, you know, one of the great, one of the great Roman statesmen and he wrote these letters that we have.

51:33And in the letters, he sends these letters to all of his aristocratic friends. And the theme in the letters is, basically, all of the actual, competent, capable citizens of Rome are out in the countryside at their villas, uh, perfecting their fish ponds. Right. They pulling into themselves. They built themselves their own protected environments. Right. Right. Where they control everything. Yeah. And they're completely focused on ornamentation. They're completely focused on their clothes and on their, you know, lifestyles. Kardashians. They were Kardashians. Except sure. I don't know if the Kardashians have fish ponds, but if they did, they would be spectacular fish ponds.

52:06They would be amazing fish ponds. No doubt they would be the most amazing fish ponds we have ever seen. Um, and so you kept railing is like, stop with the fish ponds. Like, stop working in the fit. Like, get back out here, rejoin the Senate. Like get back involved in the system. Let's keep this thing from caving in. Yeah. And I think, yeah, look, as I said, you know, the significance, I think of, you know, Trump actually talked about this in the campaign, you know, his version of this talking in the campaign, campaign trails. He's like, look, I could be off on a resort. I own all these golf golf club.

52:31I have many things I could be doing in my life course. And he's 78 years old. He probably would like to do that. Exactly. Right. And he's, you know, surrounded. He's family loves him. And like, you know, grandkids and like the whole thing. And he's like, look, I'm not doing it because like I need, I need to do this. And it's interesting because, you know, he doesn't use, you know, he's not referencing Cicero and he says that, but it's, it's that spirit. Right. And like, Cicero talked about where, you know, when times get tough, do the people who are in a position to actually make positive change actually step up or not.

52:56Right. And I think we've had a pretty long stretcher where that hasn't been the case. And I think maybe with Trump and then I think also with Elon, I think, yes, because he owns the other guy, right? He, for sure, could be a coalition, right? It's not just him. It's Vivek, Ram Swamy, which is another guy, by the way, who could be kicking on a beach somewhere. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. It's a shit. Very successful guy. And young and handsome. Yeah. You can do whatever you want. You can do anything. Yeah. He's decided to go all in. And then, of course, you have Tulsi Gabbard and, you know, you have JD Vance, so I think it's brilliant.

53:24You have all these brilliant people that are together, which is very hopeful. This is what we didn't see out of the Biden Harris campaign. You know, what we saw from Harris and Waltz, you have Waltz, this guy who's, it seems like he's a compulsive liar. At the very least, he's lied multiple times about fairly insignificant things. You know, like whether or not he was a head coach or an assistant coach. And the lies have always elevated him socially, right? All the lies about his military service or at least implying that he served in a different prospect, in a different aspect. And then there was Tiananmen Square.

54:02There's everything enhances his virtue. This is not what anybody wants. You want the opposite. You know, you want a guy like JD Vance who served in the Marines and, you know, went to Yale, comes from a single mother with addiction problems, rose from hard work and dedication to become who he is now. Like, that's the kind of guy that I like. That's what we all would like. Like, okay, that looks like a leader to me. Yeah. Well, the Romans had this concept that took very seriously. They called virtue, right? And like, did you, did you, there's a whole way of ranking, by the way, the Roman Versus.

54:29And if you read them today, you just like want to burst out crying because you're just like, oh my God, I can't believe what we're missing. But like, yes, people with virtue, people with virtue is not just that they think that they're good people or that they tell everybody they're good people. They actually act on it and actually step up. Well, this is what's missing from today's secular society, right? Like we don't have like a doctrine that encourages that sort of thinking and behavior and rewards it publicly, which religion does. You know, what true Christianity, you know, not subverted fucking giant arena Christianity where the guy's flying private jets and has Rolls Royces and shit.

55:06But actual like real Christian people. Right. Well, the Roman, the Roman's had gods. I mean, they're virtues at gods. Yeah. And so they like it was actually wrapped, it was, it was your point. It was like encoded into their religion. It was wrapped up in their religion. They knew exactly what was expected of them. They knew exactly what their ancestors expected of them. They knew exactly what their gods expected of them. I've recently read Meditations again a couple of months ago. I would listen to it in the sauna. But it's, it's brilliant. And it's, it's amazing that this guy, Marcus Aurelius, was thinking like this so many years ago.

55:36And it's so, it's so valid today. And it applies so well to modern life. It's so, so strange. Yeah. You know, how brilliant this person was while he was running this incredible empire that he could write about human psychology and the value of forgiveness and, you know, being true to yourself and constantly being truthful everywhere and everything you do. And all these virtues and all these, the stoicism that he espoused, it's, it's so valuable today. It's really remarkable that this person who was a leader, what was it, 2000 years ago, that his words still ring true today. Yeah. You probably know he didn't write it for public consumption.

56:20Right. Yeah. It was, you have more amazing. He's private notebook. Which is why it's so good probably. Yeah. Because he probably wrote a fair, a sub -stack. You'd like, well, people are going to hate on this. Let me, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, let me preemptively attack the people in the comments or, right, so do them. But he's like, he's like, he's, he's lecturing himself like he's telling himself how to act. Right. Like, you know, he's very, this very deep, these are very deep important. My favorite, my favorite part of the, of the meditations is, there's a section where it's something like, yeah, you're going to wake up this morning and everybody's going to hit you and everybody's going to lie to you and everybody's going to make dumb decisions and you're going to be incredibly frustrated and you're not going to get an incredible credit for anything.

56:55And you have to get up anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's all, yes, yes, that's all true. Right. And you still have to get up and do your job. And of course, he's saying that to himself as the leader of Rome. To himself exactly. And what's in there is just like, wow, his life was not, you know, he's just like, again, it's, it's actually, you don't like to see you. It's just like you're going to get pounded. Like, if you're in these positions, you're going to get pounded every day. Yeah. It's incredible. And if you're operating out of a, out of a true sense of virtue, if you're operating out of a true sense of like exercising your responsibilities, you, you, you get up and do it anyway.

57:25It's amazing how much it resonates. It really is. What's amazing how much so many ancient writings resonate. You know, there's so much valuable information just like in Sunsou's The Art of War. Or in book of five rings. You know, there's so many ancient books that you read and you go, first of all, I love reading them because I tried to imagine what, you know, what is this life like in, like, if you want to take like me a Motomusashi 1400, when did you live? Me a Motomusashi who's like 14, 20s or something like that. What's that like? Like what is your life like? What is the, what is the, what is the view of the world when you, you don't really have detailed maps or you don't have any photographs.

58:12You don't have any idea what the fuck is going on in Europe unless you go there. Like what is, what is your version of the world like? And then to see someone's words written down and you read them and try to just imagine yourself in their perspective and their mindset. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, look, I think if you're somebody like that or somebody like Marcus Riles, you just have this incredible sense of responsibility. Yeah, like the one thing you do have is a sense of purpose. Like you know exactly what you're here, you know exactly what your role is. You know exactly how you're supposed to behave.

58:40You know exactly how you're supposed to basically gain glory. How you're supposed to honor your ancestors. Like it's, it's just all, you know, exactly where you are in the community. Right. Right. You know, right. You have this like incredible sense of groundedness and rootedness. And of course there's huge downsides to that, which is it really cuts up your ability to run off and, you know, you know, go on American Idol, right? Like there's like a lot of things you can't do, right? But like, yeah, you know, you know what you're supposed to do. And you either do it or you don't do it. And these days to have people like that, we need people who choose to be that way.

59:11Right. Which is a, which is a, you know, which is arguably harder, right? Given all the choices that they actually choose to live that way. Well, not only that, giving all the distractions that people face every day that keeps them from sitting down and writing a journal like that. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. You know, I mean, back then there's not a lot of different things to entertain you with. Correct. Yes. You had to be maybe a little bit more serious because you couldn't, you couldn't have as much fun. My favorite, no, my other favorite, no, my, my other favorite, meditation's Marcus Raleigh's thing is, uh, it's something like be the rocks on the shore, at which the, at which the waves beat.

59:42Right. Like, yes, like, yes, your job is to stand there like the rocks do. And just the surf just like keeps coming and keeps coming and your job is just like stand there and take it. Imagine when it was like I get dressing the people back then too, just yelling out into these groups or speaking in front of all the leaders. Like, yeah. Yep. And all everyone's plotting to kill you. There is also a lot of that going. Yeah. Everyone's. I mean, how many times they try to kill Hitler? Like everybody's trying to kill you. If you're, if you're running things, yeah, all your generals are probably secretly wanting to become the king.

1:00:15Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. All these serpers are waiting in the wings. That's easy. Lots, you know, today, today, most of the keling's happened metaphorically. Most, although every now and then, yeah, it takes a lot of time. Alternative timeline. Yes. Yes. Exactly. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Um, how fearful were you, uh, leading up to the election that it wouldn't go into the new timeline? It was so weird because all the experts said it was 5050 razor, you know, razor sharp, you know, it's this tiny little thing, 80 ,000 votes in eight counties. Yeah. And, you know, um, and then number one, then it wasn't, which means we can take all those experts and just dismiss them forever going forward because they clearly have clearly have clearly have no clue.

1:00:53So it's another set of people we don't have to listen to. Um, but I had this really interesting conversation that kept nagging at me with a, a senior Democrat who's on his way out of, of, of, of, of politics. Um, and he said, and the summer, I said how, how certain is everybody, what's your view? And, and this person said, a Trump's going to win with 100 % certainty. Really. Um, Mr. Democrat, um, and from a sort of purple state. Uh, right. So, uh, you know, not New York or California, but like a state with, you know, sort of, maybe I was on a broader cross section of people. And this person basically said, yeah, look, said, look, all you have to do is fly anywhere in the country into any purple and mark place and go into a second or third tier, you know, size city and take a new birth for 30 minutes.

1:01:34You know, land at the airport, take a new birth drive around for 30 minutes, come back and just ask the driver, like, how's it going and who are they voting for? And basically 100 % of the time the answer is going to be Trump. Uh, because people are just, where people were just like completely fed up. They were just completely fed up. And then there was the, you know, Kamala enthusiasm, which this person said, you know, the Kamala enthusiasm is like highly focused in New York and California, which don't matter from an electoral standpoint, right? So they're not going to decide anything. But that is huge when it comes to media.

1:02:01Oh, sure. Of course. But that's, that's the thing. This, the self -reinforcing nature of the bubble. And this is what it's actually so interested with these media bubbles is like the people in these media bubbles are not breaking out. Like, they, they, they, they, they, they're getting deeper into the sort of collective psychosis that they indulge in. And part of it was getting excited about a candidate for which there was very little popular support for once you got outside of these, you know, heavily blue states. Yeah. And so it, and it's in a lot of ways, it's the most, you know, obvious explanation of the world, which is just people just fundamentally did not like the direction the country was going in.

1:02:27And they were just fed up with it. There's also this very bizarre arrogance of people that were certain that Kamala Harris was going to win. I'm sure you've seen the viral video of this lady who's a political analyst who talks about going to the liquor store and buying a bottle of champagne. Oh, right. That's not that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't want to show it to the poor lady. You're ready to do this. She's probably living in hell right now. But I'm blue sky. Yeah. She's probably on blue sky. She might be on that. Well, she was on X. I think she deleted her profile. Yeah. But the poor lady, I mean, she, but she was being very arrogant and she laughed and mocked this man and said, you do realize you wasted your vote, right?

1:03:04That's right. That's right. That's right. And she laughed, which makes her hard to feel sorry for. That's right. And it's like, you were, you were ready to mock this man. But in her eyes, it was all about reproductive freedom. And she thought that that was under attack, under the Trump administration. And that women were going to stand up. And they're going to stop that. Because in her echo chamber, that was the case. Everybody was universally, they all agreed. We're universally on board with this idea that Trump is evil. We got to get rid of them. And women are going to vote. And this is going to be fun.

1:03:32But like, who are you hanging out with, lady? You know, you could hang out with a bunch of people to think baseball is awesome. And then, you know, you're running to someone from another country like, what the fuck is baseball? Like, you got to realize there's a lot of people out there. Yeah. And people really don't like being talked down to. They really don't. And they don't like you mocking the fact that, first of all, nobody wasted their vote. Like, that's not how it goes. Like, you don't waste your vote if you vote different in the other side wins. That's not how the other side won. That's just how it is.

1:03:59Like, wasting the vote is a crazy way to look at it. Because I think also people look at things like tribal games. You know, like, you know, in Texas, it's a huge football state. And people love football. And it's always we this, we that when you play South Carolina, we this, we that. It's like people love to be a part of a team that's winning. And they apply that, especially if they're not in the sports, to other things. I think it's just a warm mentality. It's a tribal, warm mentality that's been sort of subverted in the human mind and applied to other things. It could be like Microsoft versus Apple.

1:04:36You know, it could be Android versus Apple, you know, iOS. It's weird how people get so tribal and then connect their own personal identity to other people agreeing with these ideas that they believe. Yeah. Yeah. I know for two, two thoughts. One is the Democrats for a long time are the big tent party. So the Democrats for the coalition of people who had very different points of view on things. And of course, you know, famously, it's all the different identity groups. And it's all the different economic and unions and all these things. And Republicans were like the party of like rigidity. And just for whatever set of a lot of the woke stuff had a lot to do with it.

1:05:10It flipped to where at least today Trump's Republican party is the big tent party. Yeah. To your point on having all these new people. And many of whom are former Democrats. And a lot of them. And the Democrats have decided to try to isolate out anybody who disagrees on any issue and demand right lockstep conformity through the cancellation process. And so that that's a very interesting inversion that happened kind of without anybody saying anything about it. But it did happen. And then I think the other the other inversion was the economic conversion, which is remember the criticism of the Republican party for a long time was it was the party of trickle -down economics.

1:05:39Yeah. Remember the idea was the rich people are going to get all the money. Reagan attacks those Reagan administration. And then basically if poor people get any money, it's going to because the rich people like trickle trickle some day. Right. I think that inverted to where the Democrats, especially in the last four years, became the trickle -down party, which was we're going to tax and we're going to collect all the money give it to the government and then we're going to let the government hand it out. Right. But they did it under the guise of tax the rich. They did it with this Robinhood mentality.

1:06:02At least they express that. Of course that's how it starts. But then you end up a $35 trillion federal debt. You end up with this giant annual deficit. And then you end up with all this money being handed out, right? Hand out in all these grants and all these things like just this there's like shower of money coming from the government. But of course, if the government is giving you money, it also means the government can take money away. Right. If you're making somebody dependent on you because you're giving the money, then you're in a tremendous position to power because you can make their life horrible by pulling the money away.

1:06:29You can also control their ideology that way. 100%. Yeah. You own them. It's actually a form. It's on the spectrum to a form of domination. Right. This should make us very uncomfortable. And so maybe that would be fine if the debt, if the debt in the deficit and out of control and inflation, get out of control, but it did. And then at that point, it's like, okay, like this new kind of sort of tax and spend driven trickled on economics is clearly not sustainable is not going to work. So the way the Trump administration is going to approach the economy, they want less regulation. They want tariffs and less regulation.

1:07:03And they want more, more reliance on US energy. Right. They want to drill more, more natural gas, more fracking, more drilling for oil. And then allow companies to work without regulations, inhibiting their performance. This will boost the economy. You'll have more productivity. You have more American manufacturing. You have more things happening. Yeah. So the two headline things you hear from them whenever they talk about this, the headline things are number one growth. You just need faster growth. But by the way, it's the only way to resolve the long -term fiscal situation. It's the only way to resolve the debt.

1:07:39There's only two ways to do it. You can inflate your way out of it and end up in 1930s Germany with hyperinflation. That's one track you can get on, which is a very bad track and you don't want to go there. Or you can grow faster. Because if you grow faster, then your economy can catch up to the debt. And you can pay down the debt as you grow. And so they want to go for a higher rate of growth. And then the other thing is they want America to win. And my partner Ben and I were able to spend time with Trump this summer. And that was like his, like Adam, and think he kept going back, which is like, look, America has to win.

1:08:05And specifically what that means is America has to win in business and in technology and in industry generally globally. Like our companies should be the ones that win these broad, we should win global markets. Like our companies should be the global states. How can anybody be against that? I happen to think that makes sense. Yes. I know. I mean, obviously you're a well -spot man and I am as well. But it's like, how could you not want that? Yes. By the way, if you are in favor of a high level of social support, if you want there to be lots of welfare programs and food assistance programs, all these things, I would argue you also want that because it's the growth that will pay for all the social programs.

1:08:42Right. Like that's how you square the circle. That's how you actually have your cake and eat it too, which is like first, your economy just generates a fountain of money through growth and economic success. And then you can pay for whatever programs you want. I actually don't personally like, I'm totally fine. Like set up all the programs you want, all the social spending you want, all the sation that you want. And as long as it's easy to pay for because you're growing so fast, then everybody wins. Yeah. I mean, I've always said, if I knew that I paid more taxes, people in the world in this country would live better.

1:09:10I would do it. Right. Of course. I just don't believe that they're good at spending it. That's the thing, right? It's like, if you're putting in this, if you've generated 35 trillion of debt, and these are the results, yeah. No. Like this, this is not the deal. And this is my friend that I talked about earlier. That was the point he made. It's just like, look, the deal has been broken. Like this is not the deal anybody signed up for. This is not how it's supposed to work. Everybody knows it. And when you were talking about giving people social programs and giving them benefits, and then you could take that away at any moment.

1:09:40Yes, this was one of the big fears that people had about letting illegal immigrants into the country and moving them to swing states, which clearly happened, and also giving them a bunch of benefits, which clearly happened. Money, food stamps, housing, all that happened. Stuff that wasn't available to veterans, stuff that wasn't available to homeless people, wasn't available to the very poor of this country. All of a sudden, people came here illegally, got those things. Right. That's right. And the thought was, if you gave these people these things, and you gave them a way better life, look, if I was living in a third world country with a family, and I knew that I could come to America, and I could get a job, an actual job, and make money, and my family's going to definitely eat, I'll vote for whoever the fuck you want me to vote for.

1:10:24I don't care. My life is infinitely better than it was in this totalitarian shithole that I was in until I walked here. I'll do whatever you want. Like I just want my family to survive, and I think everything's going to, it's so much better than where I was if I'm in some war -torn part of the world. It's so much better here. Right. I don't care if the Democrats win or the Republicans. I'm in America. Right. And if the Republicans didn't give me any money, and they want to get me out, they want to deport me. Right. But this nice lady, she gave me an EBT card, right? Right. And I'm staying at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and I can get a flight somewhere else where I want to go there.

1:11:01Right. Oh, this is wonderful. Right. So that's how it starts, and there is a lot of that going on. But I will say one of the things that's interesting is it doesn't necessarily stick that way. And the sort of evidence for that is the rapid, the sort of dramatic ramp up in the Hispanic vote for Trump. Well, Hispanic people generally are very hard workers. So this gets the thing. So I'll just a quick story in this. So after the, the night after the 2016 election, literally everybody I knew was just like completely traumatized. Like we were all just like completely freaked out. Everybody was shocked.

1:11:29You were freaked out? Yeah, it was completely freaked out. Everybody was freaked out. Like I didn't expect them to win the nomination. I didn't expect them to win the race. And then the media is on like full historical blast. And it's the end of the world. And he's a Russian spy. All this crazy stuff that we know not to be true. It's just like, it's just like fall on. So a group of us, a group of us went out to dinner at a restaurant in Pellow, also. And the atmosphere was like a funeral. I mean, everybody in the restaurant was just like, to spawn it and like, ready to split their wrists. And so we're sitting there eating and like the food doesn't taste good.

1:11:55It's just like, can't taste the food. He can't taste the drinks. Like everybody's just depressed. Wow. And it gets this thing of like, my god, I can't believe that Trump, this that, you know, so you see, you know, racist anti -Hispanic and all this stuff. And it was, it was one of those moments where the young waiter who's, you know, Hispanic young man in his 20s, one of those rare moments where he broke into the conversation at the table. Right. But it was in context. It was like, oh, thank god. Because like we're just, we're just depressing ourselves to death. So like, thank god he's going to say something.

1:12:23And he said, you know, I think you guys are looking at all wrong. He is like, my father thinks Trump is fantastic. And my father came here as an immigrant. Whatever, 30 years ago, built a life here. Became a citizen, bought into the system, and pays taxes like raised a family. Moan is long with a mega hat on. He thinks this guy, he thinks this guy is great. He thinks this guy is fantastic. And he voted for him. And he just has, and, and, and, and, and, and then, you know, you know, you for this before. But then it's like, and the thing that, the thing that this guy said, the thing my father thinks is, is terrible, is if other people are able to come here, they're able to cut in line.

1:12:51They, you know, they didn't have to go through the process. They didn't have to prove anything. They're not bought into the system, right? They're able to jump in. And then they, you know, they don't, and then they're not buying into the system. And, you know, part of it, maybe they're not being accepted, but also part of it is they're not buying in. They're not, they're, you know, they're not, they're not assimilating. They're not becoming part of the, you know, of what makes America America. And, you know, in some cases, and by the way, in some cases, you know, the criminals are coming across, and terrorists are coming across, and gangs.

1:13:14And it's like, my father's not in favor of any of that. Right? My father wants to be part of a, of a great society of a great America, not some dysfunctional, you know, basically just disaster zone. And I remember the group of us, it was my first glimmer of like, okay, I did, like, completely rethink my whole sense of like how the world works. Because that's one conversation. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was, it was weird, because it was like, so, so what happened with me is like, I grew up in rural Wisconsin, which is now like, completely Trump country. And so from like, zero to 18, like, I completely understood the mentality, and I was always like, explaining to my friends of like, no, no, like this is, you know, this is like a different place and people think differently.

1:13:46And then somehow between the ages of like 18 and 40 or whatever, I just like, forgot. And I became a Californian. Right? I became a fully assimilated Californian. And I was just like, well, of course, the Californians are much more sophisticated in advance than, right? I think people, you know, where I came from. And so of course, of course, of course, everybody in California has it figured out. And of course, California is going to leave the country and of course, in all this thinking, right? And and and Trump was, for me, Trump was the, Trump's 2016 was the wake up call of like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, like that's just like, completely that is such an impoverished world view of how this country works and how people think.

1:14:16That it doesn't explain what, because you have to explain what happened. And then you have to like, if you have what some sense to be able to predict what's next, which is what I'm supposed to be doing for a living, you know, it's for the best thing it's supposed to be. Okay, I got to rebuild my entire model of the world for like how, how this all works and how this whole system, how this country works. But it was that conversation that, that kick started it for me. So what was the process of altering your perspective or at least opening it up? Yeah, so for me, it was, it primarily was reading.

1:14:43And so I started actually read my way back in history. And I went, I actually went all the way back. I tried to read of like, where the origins of like, left wing thought came from and then communism and how to that evolve. And you know, liberal democracy and then also right wing thought and like, you know, everybody's calling everybody fascist now. So like what was fascism? Right. Is that what this is? Right? How did, how did the Germans do with it? You know, so all of those questions. And then, you know, kind of converging on in the last 80 years, like how is that? You know, either stabilized or not stabilized.

1:15:09And so I did that. But the other thing is I just started talking to a lot more people. And I just stopped assuming that because I read it in the New York Times that it was true. And, you know, and by the way, and then of course, what unfolded in the years, you know, kind of sense was, you know, the whole, I followed the whole russicate thing like super closely, like I read everything. And I read all the reports. What did you think initially? Did you think it was true? Of course, it's like just overwhelming consensus from the entire expert class that of course, he's a Russian spy. I sat on stage.

1:15:32I went to Hillary's first post election loss speech, which he gave it Stanford. The very first one. And I sat, we know that people organizing it. So we sat literally like 15 feet from Hillary in her first appearance. And you know, the whole thing is fraught with this like incredible tension because and the russicate stuff is in full full blown display. And I go there and I'm like, all right, this is going to be to me. And you know, in the audience, the Stanford audience. And so it's all 100 % Hillary Clinton supporters. Right. And I'm sitting there and I'm on my best behavior because I'm with my wife and I have to like not, you know, I have to not act out.

1:16:02And Hillary gets up there and she says, Trump is only president today because Vladimir Putin hacked Facebook and made him the president. Right? And I'm sitting in the audience and I'm like on the Facebook board. And I'm like, that's not, like that's not true. And like, I know for an absolute fact that that's not true, right? And so that got me thinking. And then the russicate stuff unspooled. And I was like, the whole, the the the the the the the the the the doggies deal dossier and like all this stuff comes out. What was the accusations about Facebook? But how did she think that Russia hacked Facebook and made Trump the president?

1:16:32Yeah. So it's this whole thing with this. Just remember this whole thing camera channel, and so it's this whole thing that there was this basically there was this data. There was this theory, which by the way, it's like completely, it is like a completely fake thing like this didn't that. So there was this date. There was this there was this data set on user behavior that in theory, there's academic. There was a theory that you could sort of impute him in behavior from this data set. And then you could use it to predict what people would do and how they would react to different kinds of messages.

1:16:56And it was like this like magical breakthrough and basically thought control. And then there was this company called Cambridge Analytica in the UK that figured out a way to do this. And then it was this like new kind of literally like mine control, like you know, by far like the most powerful meme weapon of all time for getting people to go the way that the way that you want. And it was this data breach of face. The whole thing was weird because Facebook had been criticized for a decade leading up to 2016 that it kept all the data closed. So the criticism was Facebook never less than the data.

1:17:23It doesn't share the data. And the criticism for years was Facebook is the roach material data and the virtuous thing for it to do is to actually free the data and let everybody else have access to the data. And then in 2016 let flipped 180 degrees. And it was Facebook is the most evil company of all time because it let Cambridge Analytica get access to this data. And then Russia ran basically a psychological operation in the American citizens using this data. Why did Facebook push back? They did early on. They do today in their way. But they're trying to run a business. They're trying to get to the next quarter.

1:17:52They're trying to keep the employee base and everybody copacetic. They're trying not to get just completely destroyed by the politicians. They're getting slammed every single day on every conceivable issue you can imagine. And it's actually very interesting. When you're in these companies like these big issues are big issues, but you're also literally trying to like make the quarter. You're trying to ship your products. You're trying to close your sales. You're trying to keep your employees from quitting. You have these responsibilities. You have practical concern and responsibilities. And so sometimes these companies get kind of wedged because they can't do the things that they would do if they were just in damage control mode.

1:18:25And then they, right. And then they, you know, then they, and maybe the message doesn't get out. But so what was the bigger shift? The waiter or the Hillary speech? Oh, it was the waiter. I mean, the waiter was the much bigger shift because it was listening to a normal, it was listening to a person with their feet on the ground actually explaining the way the world worked. Whereas with Hillary, it was, it was coped, right? It was, it was delusion. It was, it was amazing, by the way. She then sped the next hour and a half. When I, when I'm in a place where I don't know if I'm gonna control myself, I bring a little note pad along because I can work out my demons like on.

1:18:53Draw dicks. No, dicks. Exactly so that I don't say anything, right? Like super bad. So I brought my little note pad along. In second, my little pet, little fisher, a space pen, right? I pulled out. And I started making a list of all of the people and organizations that she blamed for her defeat that were not named Hillary Clinton. And I got to 20. My favorite was Netflix, by the way. Netflix. She blamed Netflix. What did Netflix do? Netflix aired anti -cletan documentaries. It was a mean facts. Well, this is particularly funny because the CEO of Netflix is a famous Democrat. A super Democrat, a minister.

1:19:27Well, not actually dead, but also specifically read, read Hastings and his wife are very enthusiastic left wingers. But I mean, it was just this litany of, you know, basically excuses and complaints, right? With no sense of like responsibility, personal response and responsibility at all, you know, just like pure grievance. And so it was the negative lesson of like, okay, like whatever that is is not the path. Like did she blame Comey? Oh, yeah, oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah, she absolutely hated that guy. Yeah, no question. That was a wild one. 100%. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, that was super weird.

1:19:58Yeah, you know, I don't think she was completely wrong. I don't understand that one. Honestly, if they didn't want Trump to win, I don't get that one. Well, she's, we know she's guilty, but we're not gonna charge her. Right. It's a weird, it's crazy. Is it weird message to say? It's almost as weird as the Biden one, where we don't think he's competent to stand trial for the documents that he had that were classified. Exactly. But he can, what, have his finger on the button? If fuck are you talking about? Exactly. We know he's guilty, but we never convicted him because the jury would say that he's a senior old man.

1:20:27Which is crazy because he's still running for president at the time. He's running for reelection. Well, then remember everybody at the time said the media had the prosecutor was lying, right? Because if we, if that point, he sharp his attack. He sharp his attack. Right. Exactly. My favorite is Joe Scarborough. Yes. This is the best Biden intellectually, the best whatever he's seen. Like, dude. Yes. And then meanwhile, he had to go to Mar -a -Lago and kiss the ring. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. My favorite was the, remember the, about earlier this year was the invention of the term cheap fake. Cheap fake.

1:20:58Yes. Because everybody's worried about the AI deep fake, which really didn't, and there was really nothing, nothing happened to that. And so the cheap fake we learned is a video that just simply shows you something. Right. It's claimed to be out of context, but it actually turns out that it's actually just telling you the truth. It didn't Nancy Pelosi start using that one? Cheap fake? Yeah, exactly. Because the theory was it was going to be clips out of context. Yeah. But it turned out there were clips in context. Have you seen, there's a gentleman who made a video here. I'll send it to you, Jamie, because I sent it to Duncan.

1:21:26It's pretty fucking crazy of what AI is capable of now by, um, come on. Oh, my phone updated. You son of a bitch. Come on. Don't make me go to a fucking Android, because I will. This guy did this insane video where it's all completely AI, and everything he did, including his voice. It's here. I'll send it to you, Jamie. It's 100 % AI generated. And it's so hard to believe because it's so good. And it really puts you in this when you're talking about cheap fake, I just sent it to Jim, cheap fakes and deep fakes. Let's put the headphones on to watch this because it's so crazy. We're at that moment where you cannot tell.

1:22:16And let's look at this one because it's pretty extraordinary. This is the best version that I've seen so far. This is completely AI. And labs to speak like me. One of our companies, like, in any text. And it will sound like me. Then I trained, hey, Jen, with a video of mine. I input the audio file to generate a video based on my text. The video you are watching right now is the result. 100 % generated in AI. What do you think of that? Guys, I know this might sound crazy, but this. How crazy is that? Oh, that's your company. That's him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the AI generate. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

1:22:56That's right. So it's two companies. One of them is the voices ours. And then that's another great company called agent that did the visuals. But yeah, no, that's right. That's not. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is part of the first internet. I've said first internet election. Probably the first internet election will be the one that has this kind of thing. Actually, in it where people get tricked. Why didn't they do that with common hairs? Well, they've done an amazing job. They've really knocked it out of the park with a solid speech. They didn't. Just have her say it on the internet. Yes. Just have a bunch of viral videos of her speaking so eloquently and perfectly.

1:23:24One would think exactly. That's the fear of the future, right? Yeah, yeah. And so I think that's going to be the kind that's going to be the kind of thing that's going to happen in terms of like the dirty trick side. I think that, you know, that will be a part of it, right? There's always some way to try to try to game these things. Just have the most brilliant writers formulate, you know, get AI to do it. Like you're saying, AI has all these solutions to things that are super logical. And well, there's no like we're thinking in it. So I've, you know, cut all the fat out. So I think we have a theory on how to fix this.

1:23:50And the theory basically is we're going to have to switch our sense of what's real from basically just trying to eyeball it and figure out whether it's real to only taking seriously the things that we know are real. And the way that we would know things are real is we'll have them registered on a blockchain. Right? And so I think the way this is going to work in the future is every politician will have an account on a block on a blockchain service, like a crypto, a crypto service. And then every politician, whenever they say anything in public, whenever they're you know, would be going to have people around them with cameras all the time, whenever they put out a statement, they're going to cryptographically sign it on the blockchain so that it can be validated that it is actually content from them.

1:24:24And then I think we're just going to have to reach an understanding that we're just going to have to write off everything else that we see. Wow. Which frankly is a good idea anyway, because there just is a lot of noise, you know, in the environment. There's a lot of that. How would you integrate that with social media, though, because one of the issues is these low information voters that are getting information, either from clickbait headlines on these websites where they don't even read the actual paragraph with Mike, which might be completely different than the headline itself. The headline is just inflammatory.

1:24:52And then viral videos like how would you. So the thing is, so that's already happening even pre AI. Right. And so I would say that's a pre existing problem. And so like we can't, you know, we can't. And by the way, that's been happening for a long time. New newspaper has been scandal sheets forever. If you go back hundreds of, if you go back hundreds of years to the first newspapers, they were running all kinds of scrolls. The first newspaper was a scandal sheet of the Vatican. They're like in your 1500. It was all these like terrible rumors about like the Pope and the bishops and all these the Cardinals and all the first news papers.

1:25:21That was the very first newspaper was in the Vatican. And then the American, all the American colonial newspapers were like that. And then in the revolutionary era, it was all crazy rumors in in you end, though, and people accusing each other of there was a famous election in 1800, which was Jefferson versus Adams that we think of as these like super upstanding, you know, upright people. And they're just like smearing the crap out of each other in their respective newspapers, right? Cause they would actually own newspapers in those days. And then they just attack each other. The more things change Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin, you know, printed newspapers before he became a, became when a government and he created 15 different sock puppets.

1:25:55He created 15 different pseudonyms. He was a suit or a non. And then he would basically have them argue with each other in his newspaper without telling people that it was all him. Oh, Ben. So he had all these different personalities. And so like we've been in a world of like information warfare for a very long time. We've been in a world of click sensationalist, you know, nightly news. If it was a if it bleeds, it leads, you know, sensationalist stuff for a long time. We've been in the world of like, yeah, propaganda for a long time. So, so that, you know, that, that you're not going to, that you're never going to make that go away.

1:26:26But isn't it funny that we don't think of the past like that? Oh, yeah. We just assume the in virtuous and we assume they had it all figured out. Yeah. That very much is not true. There's all kinds of crazy, crazy banana stuff. My favorite is in the Vietnam War. What was the, the Gulf of Tonkhen? They're to kicked off the sort of big escalation. If you're like, we know, no, for a fact, it didn't happen. Right. With the whole thing, just didn't happen. And now there's this big debate about like, did they know it didn't happen? Or did they fake it? But like, so there's always been stuff like that in history.

1:26:52So that we can't fix. And AI will be a new way to do that kind of thing. But what we can do is we can reorient people and say, okay, now you're going to have to like take seriously this stuff is real. And if you want to actually know what's happening, the stuff is real. And we can prove that it's real. And if it's not, it's entertainment. And you can choose to believe it or not. Right. But you, but you should not rely on it. And look, it's not going to be perfect. And it's going to take time. But there is, there is a way to address this. Okay. So that would be the solution to deepfakes, the blockchain.

1:27:18Yeah, you flip it. You flip it. Yeah. That's logical. Yeah. That actually does make sense. That actually kind of gives me hope. I do generally have hope. Even though I let look at the pessimistic side of things, I'm generally optimistic. Yeah. Because my real feeling about human beings is most people are good. I genuinely believe there's far more good people in the world than bad people. There's far more people that just want to live a good life and have a good time and enjoy themselves. Then there are people who are tyrants. Yeah. I'm super optimistic. I'm incredibly optimistic. And I was optimistic already with flashes of pessimism, but like I'm really optimistic and especially now.

1:27:54So I think this is going to be, we have the real, we have the real potential here for golden age. We really do. We really do. Yeah. The capabilities that we have and the people that we, I mean, look in my day job, I meet these young, you know, I meet these 22 girls every day that are just like the smartest people in the world, the smartest people I've ever met. I think they're getting better by the way as time passes, by the time the 22, they just know a lot more. They have so much more access to information than we did. Yeah. There's so much better train capable and ready to go, fire it up and they know each other, they're able to connect online and they're already in communities and they know how to help each other.

1:28:26And so like, yeah, the productive and inventive creative aspect, particularly of this country is just like there's never been anything like it in the world. I think there's also the real potential for a shift in perspective, a positive patriotic shift in perspective that can happen in this country. And if you think about what happened with the woke ideology, how it swept so quickly over the country and changed so many aspects of the way we deal with things socially, it happened so radically and so quickly and such a large change that people are susceptible to change. It's possible to enact change and a positive change in a good direction where people are optimistic about the future, which you are and I am.

1:29:12I mean, I think that's probably contagious. Yeah, that's right. I really do think that. It's not, it's not for its viral, right? It was Evan Hafer who said that thing about psychology the other day. It was one of, is a friend of mine who was a former Special Forces guy. He said that psychology is more contagious than the flu. Right. Right. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. I think that's right. So one of the interesting things is going to happen right now. We talked a lot about Trump's victory and Republicans, but there's now a civil war that's kicked off inside the Democratic Party, which is very interesting because they lost so badly, right?

1:29:45So the fact that they lost the White House and they lost the popular vote and they lost the Congress and they lost the Senate and they lost the Supreme Court. Right. This time it's undeniable that the current path that they've been on is not working. It's here, being an exclusionary party and kicking people out for wrong think. Like it's not, they're not going to win elections. They're not just kicking people out. They're borrowing people from making it to the primaries, which is very undemocrat. That's right. Exactly. We're starting with Bernie and Bernie and then right, continuing. So Donna Rice's book, she documented that.

1:30:13Right. And so, like, I would say the smart Democrats know that this is not a viable path. You can't have a political party that doesn't win. It doesn't make it's not, it's not useful. And so there's going to, there's a civil war that's underway inside that party that's kicking off right now, where they're going to have to recalibrate. Just like what they want their future to be. And it's going to be a big decision. And the same thing happened, by the way, when Reagan beat Carter really badly in 80 and then had a landslide in 84, it then took Democrats 12 years to get to Bill Clinton and actually win again.

1:30:45And so they have this cautionary tale of they went too far in the 60s and 70s and it took them 12 years to recover. And so if you talk to the like really smart Democrats right now, they're like, look, this can't be 12 years. That's crazy. We have to do this a lot faster, but we have to reorient. And we have to get back to common sense. We have to get back to normal. We have to get back to sensible. We have to get back to moderate. We were actually playing Bill Clinton debating during the elections of what year was that, Jamie? I forget which one he first ran. What year did he first run? Oh, 92.

1:31:1792. So it was the 92. And I'm like, I vote for that guy. Yeah, exactly. It was awesome. Also, we played a clip of Hillary Clinton where she sounded more maga than anybody who's maga today. She was talking about the penalties that illegal immigrants should face. They should pay a stiff fine because they came into this country illegally. And if they're a criminal, they should be jailed or kicked out of the country without question. Like all this was like so maga. I like this is so wild to hear from Hillary in 2008. Yep. That's right. And Hillary and Joe Biden and Diane Feinstein and all these people wanted to build a wall.

1:31:50Uh -huh. Diane Feinstein, our center in California, if I'm very, you know, very left -wing, she was down in the border like the photo ops in front of the wall that was being built, like trying to take credit for it. Crazy. Yeah, yeah. Like 18 years ago. Yeah. And so, yeah, so another reason for optimism is I think that they're going to be able to pull their way back. Like I think they're going to be able, I think getting losing this bad is very motivating to be able to pull your way back and become more normal. And I think again, that would be like, I mean, how great would it be if you had two parties that actually had like sense of normal normal normal policies?

1:32:19I mean, imagine Clinton was running up against Trump. Yes, exactly. Like, he was so good. We played that speech that he gave after sister, sister soldier. It said a bunch of like very anti -white things about white people. And he gave this like super eloquent, but yet compassionate speech about this where he's very charitable about her position as being a young person and not having the best perspective on things. It was fucking brilliant. Yeah. It was brilliant. And like, that's the guy. Like that's a president. No, by modern standards, of course, he was a fascist. Yeah. Well, that's the weird thing about fascism, right?

1:32:54Because fascism by definition is almost always applied to right wing to talitarian governments. But it's really kind of just adherence to the state and enforcing a doctrine and enforcing people to think and behave a very specific, which is what the left wing does. And then you talk about like being pro -war. Well, who's more pro -war right now? Trump or the Biden administration? Clearly Trump is less pro -war. Clearly Trump wants to end the wars. Clearly Biden just allowed Ukraine to use long -range missiles into Russia. Like this is, I don't know what's going on in terms of negotiations. I hear all kinds of different things.

1:33:31But if you looked at one side that is pushing for these wars and it seems to be all in on it. And the other side that's not. The fucking polar shift is so dramatic. That's right. It's really weird. The free speech thing, which was always a tenant of the left wing party, it was like, you know, I mean, it was doctrine. Like free speech is necessary. It's the foundation of our ability to discuss and find out what's right and what's wrong. Right. You have to be. I mean, the ADL used to let fucking Nazi's speak. They used to let them march. They would defend their right to do it. Right. Yeah, because you needed to air out the idea to be sure why it was wrong.

1:34:12Exactly. Yeah. So look, it was not that long ago when you had Democrats that were very much in favor of many of these extremely sensible positions. Super recent. It was pretty recent. Yeah. But again, reason for after, I don't know if they're going to pull it off. They might go crazy or like they might just go right off the cliff. Like it's certainly possible. But like it is also possible that they'll drag it back and it might happen quite quickly. And I'm hopeful enough to understand. I am as well. I think the temperature of society, like the mindset of society is so clearly moving away from that madness that they're going to have to course correct, which is just logical.

1:34:44There's no way they're going to keep doing it the same way or double down. It's just not going to, it's like they're going to go the way that MSNBC. They're going to become ridiculous. Yeah. That's right. So they have to, which is good for everyone, for everyone. So one of my theories is you can separate the concepts of the United States and America. And you can be very optimistic about America and have all kinds of issues with the United States, but still be positive about America. And the difference is the United States is the formal system of the government and the politics and all the stuff we get mad about in America is the people.

1:35:15Right. And so you can be incredible, as I am incredibly bullish about the people. And then it's just a question of whether, an America part. And that's just a question whether you can get the United States part kind of lined up to at least not prevent good things from happening and ideally help good things. Well, one of the things that you think about this administration, at least what they're proposing, that would move us in that direction as opposed to the way things were going. There's a lot of things. I mean, I think you got to start with the doge. The Department of Government Efficiency. Yeah.

1:35:41That, you know, a lot of it is hilarious. So it just winds up being doge. Doge. Doge. Doge. Dogecoin forever. The university speaks. Yeah. It's just so, so many things are just so on the nose. You're like, it's a simulation real. Yes. And it has to be real. Yes, exactly, exactly. And Elon is programming it in the back room late at night in between playing. We certainly got a good position in the game in tweeting exactly. He's the number one Diablo player in the world right now. He just got number one, which means fucking bananas. How do you have the time to do that? Which means he could be the guy steering the simulation.

1:36:12Yeah. Yeah. So look, this goes back to talking about before, like it just, it is time to carve this government back in size and scope. It's time to take it overall. You know, you can talk about distribution of taxes, but it's time to take the overall tax load down. It's time to take the spending down. It's time to get the government out of the position of deciding who gets money. It's time to unleash economic growth. Elon, explain that there's more agencies than there have been years of the United States. Correct. Yeah. 450 federal agencies and two new ones a year. And then my favorite twist is we have this thing called independent federal agencies.

1:36:42So like for example, this thing called the consumer finance protection bureau CFPB, which is the, it's sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency that she gets to control. And it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants, right? And if you read the Constitution, like there is no such thing as independent agency, and yet there it is. What does her agency do? Whatever she wants. What does it do though? We basically terrorized financial, terrorized financial institutions prevent, prevent, prevent, prevent new competition, new startups that want to compete with the big banks.

1:37:10Really? Oh yeah, how so? Just like terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new, financial services and - Can you give me an example? Well, you know, debanking. This is where a lot of the debanking comes from is these agencies. So debanking is when you as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system. Like they did the Kanye. Exactly. Like they did the Kanye, my partner, Ben's father has been debanked. Really? We had an employee who - For what? For having the wrong politics. For saying unacceptable things. Under current banking regulations under - Okay, here's a great thing.

1:37:40Under current banking regulations, after all the reforms of the last 20 years, there's now a category called a politically exposed person. PEP. And if you were a PEP, you were required by financial regulators to kick them off of your back. Why? But what if you're politically on the left? That's fine. No. Because they're not politically exposed. So no one on the left gets debanked? I have not heard of a single list. It's a bit of a left getting debanked. Can you tell me what the person that you know did, what they said that got them debanked? Oh, well, David Hurwitz is a right -wing. You know, he's pro -trop.

1:38:10I mean, he said all kinds of things. You know, he's been very anti -Islamic terrorism. He's been very worried about immigration and all these things. And they debanked him for the - Yeah. They debanked him. So you get kicked out of your bank account. You get kicked out of the - You can't do credit card transactions. By the way, you can't run - Who is that legal? Well, exactly. So this is the thing. And so - And then you go on this thing of like, well, there's no - This is where the government and the companies get intertwined. Back to your fascism point, which is - There's no - There's a constitutional amendment that says the government can't restrict your speech.

1:38:37But there's no constitutional amendment that says the government can't debank you. Right? And so they - If they can't do the one thing, they do the other thing. And then they don't have to debank you. They just have to put pressure on the private company banks to do it. And then the private company banks do it. Because they're expected to. But the government gets to say we didn't do it. It was the private company that did it. And of course, Jafian Morgan can decide who they want to have as customers. Of course, right? Is there a private company? Right. And so it's this - It's this sleight of hand that happens.

1:39:01So it's basically it's a privatized sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens the same thing that we do to Iran. Whoa. Just kick you out of the financial system. And so this has been happening to all the crypto entrepreneurs in the last four years. This has been happening a lot of the Fintech entrepreneurs. Anybody trying to start any kind of new banking service? Because they're trying to protect the big banks. And then this has been happening, by the way, also in legal fields of economic activity that they don't like. And so a lot of this started about 15 years ago with this thing called Operation Showpoint, where they decided to - As marijuana started to become legal, as prostitution started to become legal, and then guns, which there's always a fight about.

1:39:38Under the Obama administration, they started to debank legal marijuana businesses, as escort businesses, and then gun shops, just like your gun manufacturers, and just like you're done, you're out of the banking system. And so if you're running a medical marijuana dispensary in 2012, like you guess what? You're doing your business all in cash, because you literally can't get a bank account. You can't get a visa terminal. You can't process transactions. You can't do payroll. You can't do direct deposit. You can't get insurance. Like none of that stuff is - You've been sanctioned. None of that stuff is available.

1:40:08And then this administration extended that concept to apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and then just generally political opponents. Yeah, so that's been like super -prenitious. I wasn't aware of that. Oh, 100%. So Operation Showpoint 1 .0 was 15 years ago against the pop and the guns. Showpoint 2 .0 is primarily against their political enemies, and then to their disfavored tech startups. And it's hit the tech world. We've had like 30 founders debanked in the last 40 years. Real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been a big recurring pattern. 30. This is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump.

1:40:42It's like we just can't live in this world. We can't live in a world where somebody starts a company that's a completely legal thing. And then they literally like get sanctioned. Right, and embargoed by the United States government through a completely unaccountable. No, by the way, no due process. None of this is written down. There's no rules. There's no court. There is no decision process. There is no appeal. Who do you appeal to? Right? Like who do you go to to get your bank account back? Right? You know, and then there's the, and then there's, and then there's, there's also the civil asset forfeiture side of it, which is right the other side.

1:41:15And that doesn't happen to us, but that happens to people in a lot of places. Now, we get arrested and all of a sudden, you know, the state takes their money. Yeah. So that happens to people that get pulled over and they have a large amount of cash in some states. Right. Or, you know, there'll be, there'll be, you know, well publicized examples of like, you know, there's like, you know, there'll be some investigation into like, you know, safe deposit boxes. And the next thing, you know, the, the feds of C's, all the contents of the state deposit. Right. Safe deposit boxes and that, that stuff never gets returned.

1:41:39And so it's, it's this, and this is when, you know, this is when Trump says the deep state, you know, I, like the way we would describe it is, it's, it's administrative power. It's, it's political power being administered not through legislation. Right? So there's no defined law that covers this. It's not through regulation. Right? There's nothing you can, you can't go sue a regulator to fix this. It's not through any kind of court judgment. It's just raw power. It's just raw administrative power. It's the government or politicians just deciding that things are going to be a certain way. And then they just apply pressure until they get it.

1:42:08So what happens to those 30 tech people that you know start to go into a different field, like try to do something different and try to try to try to get, you know, complete upending of your life, complete upending of your life and try to try to, yeah, try to change your, try to get out of the, try to get away from the I have or on try to get out of whatever zone got you into this and keep applying for new bank accounts at different banks and hope that at some point a bank will say, you know, okay, you know, it's okay. We've checked it. It's now all right. Whoa. But there's no. So what do they do with their money?

1:42:38Like what happens? You, I mean, you go to cash. I mean, you go to cash. You can't have a, yeah, do you mean? So where do you put it under your mattress?

1:42:48Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That is so insane. Yeah. So if someone has $30 million in the bank and they get debanked. Diamonds, arts, you know, do you, I don't know, go overseas somewhere. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah. And just like it just happens. And again, it's really really important. There's no fingerprints. Like there's no, right. There's no person who has no stick above the strings. Yeah, exactly. Right. It just happened. And we can trace it back because we understand exactly, you know, we know that we know the politicians involved and we know how the agencies work and we know how the pressure is applied.

1:43:20And we know that the banks get phone calls and so forth. And so we can loosely, like we understand the flow of power as it happens. But when you're on the receiving end of this, your specific instance of it, like you can't trace it back. So these, what are the instances? Like what is the company? What are they trying to do? And how do they run a foul? Well, all the crypto startups in the last, basically, four years. So remember the crypto thing got like really, you know, sort of everybody got excited and like, kind of tease them, like all that stuff. Right. And then just like stopped. Yeah. And the reason it stopped is because basically every crypto founder, every crypto startup, they either got debanked personally and forced out of the industry.

1:43:55Or their company got debanked and so it couldn't keep operating. Or they got prosecuted, charged. Or they got threatened with being charged. This is a fun twist. This is a fun little twist. So the SEC sort of has been trying to kill the crypto industry under under Biden. And this has been a big issue issue for us because we're the biggest crypto crypto startup investor. The SEC can, they can investigate you. They can subpoena you. They can prosecute you. They can do all these things. But they don't have to do any of those things to really damage you. All they have to do is they issue what's called a world's notice.

1:44:27And the world's notice is a notification that you may be charged at some point in the future. Well, you're like on notice that you might be doing something wrong and they might be coming after you at some point in the future. Oh my god. Okay. Terrifying. Yes. The eye of Soron is on you. Now trying to be a company with a world's notice doing business with anybody else. Oh my god. Right. Try to try to work with a big company. Try to get access to a bank. Try to try to do anything. So that's when they support DEI initiatives. Well, then the SEC under Biden became a, the SEC under Biden became a direct application of exactly.

1:44:58So DEI, they started, they did a lot with that. And then ESG, all the ESG stuff. And ESG is a very valuable concept. And they pile all kinds of new requirements into that. So through that, through this process, the SEC could basically just simply dictate what companies do. With no accountability at all. Like there's no, you know, there's no overs. There's no over there. Hearings where they get yelled at, but like nothing changed. Nothing ever happened in a hearing that ever changed anything. Wow. It's just the raw application of power. Right. And so this is your friends. This is happened to. Oh, yeah, for sure.

1:45:27Yeah. Like I said, we had an employee who got debanked because he had crypto in his job title. He was doing crypto policy for us and his bank booted him because he. That's it. Because they did it. They did a screen across. It's what they told us is they did a screen across their customer base. And anyone would crypto because because anybody with crypto became a politically exposed person. Because wow. Because crypto was was politically controversial. Right. That's so. You hear that sometimes it's like compliance. These terms compliance. Yeah. Reputation management. Yeah. Um, tone at the top. Yeah.

1:45:59They have these lovely sounding terms that make it sound like everybody's going to be an outstanding citizen. But what they're all code for is destroy the enemy. Like bring the hammer of God and the bank and the government or whoever. Or the or the social media. Bring it down and just like crush the individual. Wow. With no due process. And look, there's an argument in the long run that this is all unconstitutional because the Constitution gives us all the right to do process. And this is government pressure and there's no right. So like there's probably a Supreme court case in five years that's going to find retroactively that this was all illegal.

1:46:27But in the moment when you're the guy who's benty banked. I mean, number one. And then also the potential that if you do challenge them in court and lose the repalcussions to be even heavier. Exactly. Yeah. 100%. And why is it really worth your effort? Yeah. Is it worth the risk? That's right. Especially if you've already had your life upended. You ready to do it again? Yeah. That's right. When you barely built yourself back up. Yeah. So this is and I think this is an important context where like when Elon and Vivek talk about like reducing regulation. You know, there's two ways of thinking about reducing regulation.

1:46:54It's like, oh my God, the water in there are going to get dirty and the food's going to get poisoned. Right. Now some of those regulations I think are very important. But the other way to think about it is examples like this, which is just raw government power being applied to ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives. Are just trying to do something legitimate and they're just on the wrong side of something that people in power have decided. Well, there's something that isn't illegal, but they don't want to be done like crypto or having the wrong political points of view. Well, the trucker, you know, the other great examples, the trucker strike up in Canada, was an even more direct version of this because your you had truckers physically showing up.

1:47:28And it was something like step one was they take away your driver's license. Which by the way, right, it's just somebody pressing a button on a keyboard. No more driver's license. And step two is they take away your insurance. And step three is they take away your kids. Right. And so like that was their version of this. And that was a very specific take away your kid. That was the threat at the end to the truckers and the Canada trucker strike. Because the trucker strike in Canada where I was going to jam up these cities because it was the farmers where the truckers were very serious. They wanted to they were doing a nonviolent protest, but they wanted to stall the cities to be able to exert political pressure back back on the government.

1:48:01Right. And the government was like, we'll tolerate it for a little while. Then we'll take your trucker license, then we'll take your insurance, then we'll take your kids. And how do they say they would take their kids? Because it's administrative, it's administrative power like you can't you can't, right. The theory of it, you can't let these aren't good parents if they're sitting in a truck in the middle of Calgary preventing, you know, goods and services from reaching people, right. Putting people's lives at risk. Wow. You know, it's, you know, child, child, child seizure. Now, I don't know if they actually see, see any kids, but it's just an example of there is an agency in the Canadian government, just like in the US government that if they want to, they can take your kids.

1:48:31Well, they were doing debanking there with people who donated to the trucker convoir, which is even crazier. That's right. Not even people who were there, people who were opposed to the mandates that Trudeau's administration was imposing on people. And so they donated to these truckers, and then they got their bank accounts taken away, which is really crazy. And so, and I think, exactly, and I think that, I think the right way to think about this is when we think about totalitarianism, we think about, literally, world war two, you know, we think about Nazis and jackboots with like tanks and guns and, you know, beating people up and killing people like that.

1:49:04That's our mental, and that's, you might call it that hard to tellitarianism, right. That's like very clearly like violent to tell turners. But there's this other version you might call soft to tellitarianism, which is just rules and power, exercised arbitrarily, that just simply suppresses everything. Right. And this is to speech control and debaking and all these other things that we've been talking about. And that is, you know, the good news is they're not coming up and like beating you up in the middle of the night. The bad news is like you are under their complete control, and they can do whatever they want to you that doesn't involve physical violence, which basically includes the entire aspect of, you know, every aspect of how you actually conduct your life and support your family and get an income and everything else.

1:49:41And most people aren't even aware of it. Yeah, that's right. And then, you know, look, these are, these are individual one off things. Most people don't have a voice. It's very hard to organize, you know, organize around these things. And then by the way, if there's an organization that organizes to try to get these stories out, yet then itself can get deep, it's suppressed and debanked. Well, it happened during the COVID lockdowns, right. So the lockdown protests, all got suppressed. Right. So you went, you know, so it's like, so the lockdown went from two weeks to cross the curve to two months to two years.

1:50:05Right. Right. Which is like, okay, what the hell? Right. And then there were these protests that were, there were these protests that were forming out, nonviolent protests that were forming out to protest lockdowns. And you know, you could argue the issue different ways, but people have a legitimate right to protest for that, just like they do for anything else. And the next thing you know is all the, the lockdown protests got censored, like just like, boom, gone. Right. And so at that point, like the normal process of being able to read, try to get redress from your government, right. For, for, you know, for, to force your rights to literally, for example, see your family all of a sudden, like you can't even organize a protest.

1:50:36Do you, I'm not sure you were of what happened with the FTX crisis, because one of the things that happened with the FTX thing was it was revealed that they were, I think they were the number two donor to the Democratic party. Do you think that that is sort of a preemptive measure to avoid any of this debanking and, you know, be financially invested in these people so they're not going to come after you? Yeah, that was his, it was explicitly his strategy. That was Sam's, yeah, Sam's approach Sam's approach is just pay everybody. So, so Sam's approach was just I have $8 billion of customer funds that I can use for whatever I want.

1:51:13Right. Which is the crime. Right. And then a big part of what he used, some of it he used to like hang out with celebrities and get Tom and Jazelda endorse FTX and the Larry David commercial and all this stuff. Right. But a lot of that, well, something like $150 million of that money went to basically just pay politicians. And a lot of that money was paid to politicians with no compliance at all with all the, you know, campaign finance regulations that the rest of us all have to comply with. And so the money was just shotgun of the door. How come they don't have to comply? Well, it was a leak.

1:51:39I mean, it was a leak because he was breaking a law. I mean, it was to be clear, he was, he was illegal. Now a very funny thing happened, which is when he was indicted by the US government, they didn't, they ended up not charging him on campaign finance fraud. And because they have to give all the money back. Well, so there's two theories on it. The thing that they said was their extradition agreement with Bermuda Bermuda threatened to not extra die him if they charged him on that charge, which is like super weird because you're the United States of America. You can probably get the guy. Number two, did he really want to stay in a prison in Bermuda?

1:52:10Right. And so that was all weird. And then, and then look, the other there's no evidence for this. But the other theory is, yeah, the whoever are the powers that be that decide these things in DC decided to not open it. It's, it's like the upstein client list, like there are certain boxes. Yeah, that are better not to open at least the campaign finance thing. Wouldn't they have to pay it back? So then there's this like panic. The minute one of these scandals breaks like that, there's these panic rush all of a sudden politicians discover philanthropic causes they can donate the money to. Right.

1:52:37And then, and then yeah, in the fullness of time, the trustees might come call out the money back. So yeah, there's a, you know, it'll it'll play out however it does. But it is, it is interesting. It is a great example of it was the shotgun, I'm money into the system under like basically just like nakedly breaking the law. And then it now look, he's in prison. The other argument is he's in prison. He's in prison already, like whatever it just would have been, you know, in other sentence. But like he did break the law. And he was not actually charged on that. And that prosecution has not happened and probably sitting here today never will.

1:53:05What's really fascinating about him is that he was right. And if they didn't come after him, he would have gotten all that money to those people. He would it seems like it kind of turned around. Right. He didn't get him off the hook though. It didn't know. Well, he did something. He still did something illegal. He did. Yeah. Did he know it was illegal? He is in prison. I think it's really hard to get inside that guy's head. Yeah, I don't know that I can represent his mental state. He'd be a fascinating podcast guest. If he was out, he flopped a very hardly very hard at trial. Yeah. So he had an explanation, but the jury didn't buy it.

1:53:44What was his explanation? You know, he was, you know, it was all the money was all being invested. And he was going to give it all back. And it was all this. And you know, just like all these complicated theories around all this effective altruism and this and that and the other thing. And the prosecution is just like it was the customer's money. It wasn't your money. Right. Clearly. Yeah. And so I like, I don't know. Like, yeah. Well, there's also amphetamines involved, which definitely tend to skew your judgment. I mean, him and that lady were like sort of proponents of amphetamine use. And they were taken.

1:54:13There was some anti -parkets in St. Louis. They were taking that has a side effect of reducing your risk. Oh, dopamine agonist. Yeah, one of those. Yeah. Like reequip. Yeah, something like that. They were here. You have these patches. He was taking these patches. That makes you do wild shit. That also makes people gamble. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. Yeah, there was a guy who won a lawsuit from Galaxos Smith Klein because he took reequip and became a gay sex and gambling addict. Yeah, I think they paid him the equivalent of like 500 plus thousand American dollars. I believe it was in Ireland. Yeah.

1:54:44Yeah. Dopamine agonists are weird. They do strange things to people. If that happened to me, I would definitely sue. That's crazy that those guys were taking those things. At least Sam Sam was. Oh boy, what a wild fella. Yeah, M. Sam confirmed. He wears an M. Sam patch. What's an M. Sam patch? He's supposed to use the depression medication. Oh, his supposed use of the depression medication had kicked up some rumors. So what is that's the stuff? That's the park. It's in St. Louis. Yeah. Is that a dopamine agonist? Does it say I'm not sure. Yeah. See, put dopamine agonist. Yeah, Parkinson's. There we go.

1:55:25Yeah, interesting. It's like related. If it's not that, it's like a related. Interesting. How does it work? Does it say how it works? Commonly used to depression. How's it work though?

1:55:41Okay. It's an M. A. O. inhibitor. Interesting. Used to treat mental depression adults. This medicine is a monoamion oxated inhibitor. That's a different one. That's a different one. That's a different one. That's a different one. That's a different one. It could be the same. Oh, yeah, that's a sledge.

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1:57:23It's a sledge. So crazy, what a wild boy. Yeah, are you following the series that now emerging around ozemic and psychological changes that ozemic causes? No, but I did read that it makes your heart shrink. Well, there's some theory to that, which is very concerning, but there's, Fuck yeah, it is. There's a fair amount of evidence that it resolves alcohol addiction, certain forms of drug addiction, and gambling addictions. And the current theory is that what it does is it basically, it essentially increases your self control, your self discipline, and it reduces cravings. Wow. And there's a theory that this is very positive.

1:57:57Let's say this is true, which is what they think right now. We'll see, but that's what they think. So the theory that it's positive is the theory that, you know, if we were all like more responsible in our lives, we'd all be more successful in society, we'd go better. Yeah. Counterargument would be like, responsible is only part of living, and it's only part of what makes a society work, and we also need risk taking, and we need creativity, and we need impulsiveness, right? And we need variety. Yes. And maybe we're all gonna get into a channel. Right. Right. And maybe we're not gonna like where that just by itself ends up.

1:58:25Yeah, you can have everybody discipline. You have to have wild fuckers out there. That's right. You have to have your jelly rolls of the world. Yeah. You have to have your crazy people. They're fun. Yeah. They make things more interesting. Yeah, that's right. So it's essentially discipline in, you know, a pill form or an injectable form. Yeah. And it's one very helpful, right? I've been prescribing increasingly, starting to prescribe it to alcoholics, and apparently it's working quite well. That's crazy. Well, that brings me to eye -bagane, which is the one thing that has like the most success for people with addictions.

1:58:54And it's illegal in this country. People go down to Mexico and go to these eye -bagane retreats. It's apparently, I haven't done it, but it's apparently this insane, introspective journey that's very uncomfortable. And it lasts about 24 hours. It's not something that's addictive in any way, shape or form. Almost everyone says it's a very uncomfortable experience, but you gain unbelievable insight into what is wrong with you that makes you want to pick up heroin? Like what's going on in there that you're trying to escape? Like what is this penit recognizes that pathway and puts a chemical stop there?

1:59:26It actually stops people from having addictive cravings and rewire so they think about things. Particularly beneficial to veterans. A lot of veterans who have just seen way too much and come over and they're all fucked up and they don't have any way to straighten their brain out. And they've had tremendous benefits using that. I wonder with particularly with these ozampics and wake of the and all these different types of weight loss, diabetic drugs. I wonder if there's a way to mitigate these side effects because when I've talked to people that think that my friend Brigham, Brigham Bueller, who runs weights too well, he's concerned about side effects of it, but he's also, he looks at people that are just morbidly obese and he's like, these people, they need some fucking help.

2:00:21They've gone down this terrible road. Yes, they shouldn't have done it. Yes, okay, we all agree to that. Don't eat pie all day. But if you've gotten to 500 pounds, you're probably, you're in a bad state and you could probably use some help and maybe that could get them back on track. And maybe there's a way with maybe strength training because one of the things is they lose a large percentage of muscle mass and bone density. Maybe that could be mitigated with strength training. Maybe it's one of those things like, if you were going to get on a ozampic, you must lift weights three times a week, which is that might be it.

2:00:53I mean, if it's just losing tissue, there's certainly that's relatively easy to fix. That's right. And by the way, there's a ton of R &D going into these drugs right now, so there's going to be more versions of these things. I'm hopeful that we could develop something where no one can ever be obese again. That would be really interesting. I mean, maybe this is just the first steps of this, right? And then like these are crude versions of what will ultimately be a very comprehensive way of addressing an issue like that. So the other thing I'd say, so I've been down in Florida the last couple weeks working on some of the stuff happening down there.

2:01:24And one of the things I learned is that the RFK, the RFK is really in charge of health for the country from here, like he's really in charge, working with the president. And he, you know, for all the controversy around some of his positions, like he's, you know, this whole, like he's very serious about this. And a lot of people, including a lot of the most qualified people I know in the field are like, yes, it is long overdue that we look at the food system. And we look at all these, all just whatever to your point, the horrible track that we've been on for 40 years is just a complete catastrophe.

2:01:56And I think it's a, this is concept and psychology called common knowledge, which is it's like, it's something that everybody knows, but yet nobody states out loud. And so it's like known, but then it all of a sudden, there's a tipping point and all of a sudden it's not only known, but it's like obvious, all of a sudden everybody agrees on it. Yes. And this feels like one of those moments where it's like nutrition, behavioral, you know, exercise, like the path that people are on to become obese, like no, like this actually needs to be addressed. Yes. This is actually a profound issue. And it's, we're on the road to hell and like it has to get fixed.

2:02:24And maybe it gets fixed chemically and maybe it gets fixed behavior late or other things. Maybe the culture has to change, but like it has to get fixed. And I'm actually, I've been very encouraged that, like I think this is not going to be a very big focus here. And not just by the government, but I think also in the culture. I agree. And I'm very encouraged as well. And I think as we were talking before about a sort of a shift in perspective of the country, I think a shift in perspective of the country towards that being something that you should strive towards, I think that's coming to. I think that's happening right now.

2:02:53One of the happiest moments for me is when I run into someone and they said they were inspired to get fit and healthy from listening to me talking about the benefits of it. And I've talked to so many people that are lost. 100 pounds, 150 pounds. They're exercising regularly. They eat healthy. It's fantastic. It's one of my favorite things when I run into people that are fans of the podcast. So one of my theories on this is that part of this, what happened is something very specific happened during COVID, which is the public health people by and large looked very unhealthy. Yes. They didn't look good.

2:03:28Right. And so you've got these people standing up there telling everybody how they've got, I like do all the lockdowns in the masks and like all that stuff. Yeah, Bill Gates should get jacked. That would be very helpful. He's got a lot of money. It would be extremely helpful. Get a trainer when he writes the book and goes in the press to her to talk about public health about the rest of us should get a trainer. That would be great. By the way, be great for him and his family and society. You'll be very reassuring. Bill Gates had a six pack. I'd listen to him more. That I think would be absolutely fantastic.

2:03:58And so like it's just this thing. It's just like, well, of course. Like the people who are telling us all how to live and eat ought to be healthy. Right. And if they're not like clearly, that's where RFK comes and plays. 100 % he looks fantastic. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, super talented. Yeah, it's just like, wow. Yeah, we're taking pictures. I'm like, dude, jack. We're gonna put my arm on him. Like you're fucking jack, dude. Yeah, it sucks out all the time. It golds gym, Adventist. There we go. Jeans on. Awesome. Works out with jeans on. That's old school. I don't get that. That's amazing. That seems where it seems like it gets in the way your squats unless you're like, like origin jeans.

2:04:31Especially. So it's got a lot of stretchy fabric to it. You know, you have to give stretchy jeans, but even then, like put some shorts on. I'm fucking weirdo. Like what are you doing, man? No, it's like it's like, that's like prison Euro credibility. That's like, it's fantastic. It is a little, it is a little street cranny. Oh, it's cool. You know, we're in Tim Belans. Yes. Tim Belans and a pair of jeans and doing your squats. It's kind of crazy. Exactly. But the promotion of health is like, I don't know how anybody could be against that. Do you want more energy? Do you want more vitality in your life?

2:05:00Well, you should be healthier. It's like your body's race car. And you could choose, if you work hard enough to jack up the horsepower, you can make better breaks. You can have a better fuel injection system. Like the whole thing can work way better. I go, I have to do his work at it. And that is your vehicle for propelling you through this life. It'll give you more energy for creativity, more energy for your family, more energy for your hobbies, your recreations, time with your friends. You literally have more energy as a human, which is what we all like. Nobody likes waking up and feeling like shit.

2:05:29I mean, everybody's been hungover who's had a few drinks and you wake up at the morning, like, what am I doing? I don't want to do this again. Why did I do this to myself? And then you can't wait for the day where you feel better. Like you drink your electrolytes, you get your sleep, you do whatever the fuck you can. And you're like, I'll be over this soon. Go, ho, your head. Oh, and you know, everybody likes having more energy. It's better for you. And we could promote that as a society. And this RFK junior appointment is a really big step in that direction that we've really never had before.

2:06:02That's right. You have to go back to like literally his uncle, like JFK had a program like this in like 1962. Yeah. In a long time. Well, Michelle Obama did for a bit, right? A little bit, although that was like vegetarian, you know, getting into like vegetarian school. Oh, was she saying vegetarian? I don't know if she was vegetarian, but like, well, Eric Adams, you know, the government of New York, is trying to push vegetarian school lunches. Oh, it's like new. That's not right. No, that's not right. It's so dumb. I can't wait until they can figure out that plants really can think and feel. Right?

2:06:29Because they're really close. They're really close to proven that. I mean, they've demonstrated intelligence and allocation of resources through mycelium. There's a lot of stuff that we know now about plants that we didn't know then. I think they're all conscious. I think everything's conscious. Yeah. I think we need audio recordings of the screams. Yeah. And you know the lawn is just like Armageddon. You know, the thing you play audio recordings of caterpillars eating leaves and it changes the flavor profile of all the plants around it. Awesome. Oh, yeah. They've done this because there's a phenomenon when giraffes, if giraffes are eating, if they are upwind and they're eating leaves as the wind comes down and gets to the other occasion trees.

2:07:08The occasion trees will come up with this phytochemical. They produce a phytochemical that's disgusting to the giraffes and the giraffes will literally starve because they won't eat those trees. And they do this somehow and other through communication. It's like they're preventing war. They're being attacked by mammals. And they're like, we have to stop the attack and nature is provided them with this mechanism to do that, which is really crazy. It's amazing. So back to the Josh for a moment. So one of the reasons why everybody became unhealthy is because the government directly put itself into the food system and specifically high -factor of scorn syrup.

2:07:41Right, high -factor of scorn syrup was an artifact of government agriculture subsidies. The country was growing. Which was good during World War II because we needed food at one time. Yeah. Right, but by the 1970s, we were massively overproducing, specifically we were massively overproducing corn. And the corn lobby, the sort of agriculture lobby became very powerful. And we have this government agency. One of the 450 government agencies is the USDA. And the USDA has a dual mandate. It's to promote US agriculture, specifically things like corn. And it's also to advise us on what we should eat and they also do the food pyramid.

2:08:12And that's why the food pyramid is upside down. For all those decades, where we're supposed to eat carbs and not protein and fat, was because literally that's the agency that's responsible for promoting agriculture. And then that agency inserted itself through laws, regulations, and this kind of administrative pressure. And basically you said, thou shalt use high -factor of scorn syrup because it is a byproduct of corn as opposed to sugar. Right. And as we now know, that was absolutely poisonous decision. Like that was like literal poison, absolutely a ruinous decision. Just an absolute terrible idea.

2:08:44Well, Casey Means was on here and she was explaining the very mechanism by which high -fructose corn syrup encourages overconsumption. And then it's essentially like, it's an evolutionary thing that like where bears would eat like a bunch of berries to get fat for the winter. It's like these high -fructose corn syrup encourages you to over consume. Yeah, we were not supposed to be eating this. Like this was not supposed to happen. Would not have happened drinking it. 100%. Yeah, 100%. And so, but this would not have happened, have the government not made it happen. And so it traces directly back to a government decision to do that.

2:09:17Now, they didn't, of course, they didn't understand the consequences, but that's kind of the point, which is they interfered without understanding the consequences. And so that's the kind of thing where you look at it. And you're just like, all right, like in then you're 40 years later and you're still doing it. Right. And then at some point, you know what the consequences are. And then at some point, there's a question of whether they're being covered up. Right. And it's just like, okay, at some point this has to stop. Right. And literally they just need to stop. Like they just need to stop. So that's the reason core.

2:09:41And they need to stop forcing the food companies to do this. They just need to stop. And so this goes back to like the regulatory reform thing, which is like there's just like tremendous amount of this that may have been good intention at one point. Yeah. But sitting here today, we're living with these horrible down -shore consequences and unless somebody steps in with a hammer, none of this is going to happen. And they also, it's going to change. The insane amount of money that's involved because R .J. Reynolds, these tobacco companies, when they were getting sanctioned, they were getting in trouble, they decided, well, let's buy all these food companies.

2:10:09Right. And so now these same companies that lied about whether or not cigarettes are addictive and cause cancer, the alley -same companies are pushing super unhealthy food on people, or at least selling super unhealthy food people, which I think you should be allowed to buy. I think you should be allowed to buy whatever the fuck you want. I'm all for that. But I do think we should be much more aware of what's actually going on like you're saying and why this stuff is in there in the first place. Right. And then you get in these other more delicate questions, but it's like, okay, food assistance programs for like low income people, low income children, it's like, okay, should they be?

2:10:45Do we want little kids who have no control over this to end up on the receiving end of this food production pipeline? Right. They'd for with government money and being 300 pounds by the time they're 18. Right. And cheaper than other food. And cheaper than other foods because they're subsidized. Right. Because they're subsidized. And so, and you just, you have this very perverse outcome where you have these government officials who have been standing up there for 40 years saying, we're protecting you, we're protecting you and what's been happening as they've been poisoning us. Yeah. And so, like, stuff like it just needs to stop.

2:11:11And that's where you need something like the dos. So, and somebody like President Trump. What would they be able to do to mitigate a lot of these issues? Like, how would they, if you want to, would you make it illegal to put high fructose current service and as an ingredient, or would you simply stop subsidizing? Like, and what would be, how would that work within the government? Like, how would you apply something like that? Yeah, I think there's three things you can do two of which involve direct action and then third is maybe even the most important. So, one is you can just stop doing things that are harmful.

2:11:44You can stop doing things, the government can stop subsidizing bad things. That's an example. Like, give me a parallel thing. If you want to clean up the universities, you need to stop feeding them student loans, right? So, right. The government should stop paying for things that are clearly harmful. So, that's one. And then two is look, there may be a role for additional protections or prohibitions. And so, for example, maybe you let people freely buy all the Oreos they want, but maybe you can't get them with food assistance programs. So, kids who have no control over it or are not being poisoned.

2:12:12And so, you know, you maybe do that, but I always think that the third thing is culture. Like, there's always a temptation with these discussions because the government's so powerful to talk about what the government does or doesn't do. And I think so much of this has to do with the culture. It's actually upstream or downstream from politics, which is like, what is the cultural tone of the country? What's the value system? What are the role models? Right? What are people being inspired to do? Also, what form of shaming is an effect? Like, what are we not going to tolerate? Take the perverse fat studies.

2:12:44Like, are we going to glorify obesity? Right? No. And that's not necessarily a legal judgment or a court case, but it's a cultural statement. And it's not that the government plays or should control the culture, but our leaders certainly play a big role in that. Yeah. And so, both in and outside of government, so for our leaders to step up at a moment like this and basically say, yeah, no, this is not the kind of culture we're going to have, it's not the kind of society we're going to have, it's not what kids should be looking up to, I think, I think is just as powerful as the actual government actions.

2:13:14It's interesting you say the kind of shaming, because I don't want to shame anybody for being fat, but boy, does that work? Maybe you should shaming work. Fat shaming works. Maybe you should shame parents if their kids are fat. Yeah. Right? And maybe there's so many people that are ignorant as to what exactly is going on. Of course. And that's absolutely required. And they're being fed bullshit. 100%. And yes. But again, it's also cultural, which is just like, okay, is the media thing. Like is the media educating people on this? And if the mainstream media is not doing it right, are there, should there be new media sources that are?

2:13:43Who get in which source, and then therefore which sources the media get respect? Right? So we have this giant collective culture question that we get to, we all get to ask an answer. And particularly those of us in a position to be able to send messages that a lot of people hear. So that will help. That will help move the needle. But what specifically can RFK junior do once he actually gets in? I mean, there's, oh, yeah, it's a secretary of HHS. He has very broad, you know, I would say, a very broad ability to look at this holistically inside the government. What kind of pushback is there going to be against that?

2:14:15Like that seems like a wild amount of money is going to be lost. Yeah. So there's the work that the cabinet secretary is like he will be doing formally. And then there's the work that the doge and the president will be doing kind of in parallel with that. And, you know, there will be some convergence between those. And, you know, there's the, we'll see, there's the potential here for quite dramatic action on a lot of these fronts. Could you imagine if you're running an agency and you have to have a meeting with Vivek and Elon? Yes. And you got to open your books. Yes. Yes. It's like office space where they brought in the bobs for consulting.

2:14:49It's like what you do here. Exactly. That's exactly what it's like. Is there a meme like that? Is there a meme like that? I think there's a meme where they take those guys and they put Elon and Vivek's heads on them. Yes. Yeah. So there was another key timelines flip that happened in Silicon Valley about two years ago. Actually, two and a half years ago, when Elon was actually right before he took over Twitter where he got in an email fight with the CEO Twitter at the time, who's actually a guy who's a friend of mine who's a really good guy. But literally this guy had just been promoted from engineering to run the company.

2:15:19And then like a month later, he ends up trying to deal with the Elon situation. So kind of got a little bit sandbagged on it. But yes. Yes. Of course he said, Elon Musk says he rewatched office space to prepare for Doge. Of course he did. Of course he did. Fucking psycho. Yeah. Exactly. God, we're so lucky that guys around. Exactly. So there was this moment in the Twitter takeover where Elon sends his email and he says, in the line is, what did you get done this week? Whoa. What did you get done this week? And in the context of Silicon Valley companies, that was a provocative statement because a lot of Silicon Valley companies take months or years to do anything.

2:15:59But imagine that statement being applied to the government. Oh my God. Right. Like the level of accelerated, like, okay, what are the problems, how are we going to fix them and what have you gotten done this week? Yeah. You think debanking upended some lives? Yes. So yes. What have you done this week? And by the way, when Elon rests, it's actually interesting. A guy just tweeted or posted or is he did what it's like to work for Elon at his AI company, XAI. And he said, Elon came in last week and he said, Elon spent 18 hours at the office and in five minute chunks. And it was, every five, each person had a five minutes being explained to Elon what they were doing.

2:16:32Wow. And he did that for five times whatever, right? Oh, 18 hours. Jesus Christ. And so think about what that meant. Every employee had an opportunity to tell the big boss what they were working on. Every employee had an opportunity to be recognized for their effort. Every employee had an opportunity to get live feedback from the big boss who had a comprehensive overview of everything as to what they should be doing. Whoa. And there's no place to hide. Right. I think about different it is for a company to be run that way. Right. And even, again, the valley companies generally are quite well run by business standards.

2:17:05And even that, that's the level of intensity that most valley companies are already been close to. Now imagine that applied to government. To government. And there's just, and again, this is the kind of thing. There's no law that, like there's no reason it can't be done. There's no law that prevents that. There's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't do that. It's a choice. How the government has run is a choice on the part of the executive branch of the president for how it's going to get run. And there's no reason why the government can't literally be run this way. And here's what's crazy.

2:17:31The pushback against even the concept of this by leftists. So leftists defending bureaucratic bloat and big government is wild to watch. Which they really shouldn't be doing, which is a weird thing to have wedged themselves into. My hope is they'll figure out how weird this is. Do you think it's just an ideological thing? Like the right wants this, so we oppose it? I think the left thinks they control the government. Like I think 50 years ago they would have been on the other side of this issue. Like, like, like, no Chomsky 50 years ago, of course. They would have been on the other side of this.

2:18:02You would have viewed government power as an extension of like the state and big business intertwined. And you have these, just a term, manufacturing of consent whereas government and business are conspiring against you. Yeah. So he would have been on the other side of this. But I think today's leftists think they control the government, which in many ways they do. Well, so Washington DC, the Washington DC voted 94 % for Kamala. 6 % for Trump. Right? And so, okay, so two data points. That is data point number one. Data point number two, four of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country are suburbs of Washington DC.

2:18:31Wow. Lobbiest. Lobbiest. They call it Beltway Bandits. Yeah. That's a crazy job. It's the actual term. And these aren't people working for the government. These are people making money from government. Right. These are people sponging off the government. And so like, yeah, to the extent that Democrats have wedged themselves into a position where they're defending this, they really shouldn't. They should really rethink this. They should figure out how to get back to the correct mentality on this that they used to have. No, if there's less government bloat, then there's less tax dollars. You don't need as much money to fund these things.

2:19:07That's right. There's like people can be taxed less. There can be more allegation of these funds towards the social programs that we all want. Most federal workers never came back to work. Really? Yeah, they work from home. Most. Most. Yeah, like very large percentage. Something like half just literally just never came back. Whoa. They still, by the way, still drop paycheck. They're still on their jobs. But literally they're not in the office. Or in some cases, they have an agreement where there's one agency. I might won't name, but there's one agency where there's there were the. There's OK. Here's another great thing.

2:19:38There are agencies of the federal government whose workforces are both civil servants. Full civil service protections and unionized. Entirely paid for by the taxpayer, but they both have civil service protections, which by the way are totally made up. There's no concept in the constitution of like civil service protections. It's just like totally made up thing. And they're unionized. And then there's a particular agency that I know of where the union agreement, the union negotiated the return of the office from COVID and the agreement was, you have to be in the office one day a month. Whoa. And actually what the pattern now is what they do is the employees come in on the last day of the month and the first day of the following month.

2:20:10So they only have to be there for two days. For two months out of 60 days. That's crazy. As a consequence, many of them have actually left the area, right? Because they get their government paycheck, which is calibrated for living there. And then they go live someplace nice, you know, someplace nice, but you know, they go live in the Ozarks or something where it's cost -living is cheaper and they have a bigger house. And you know, in theory, they're working from home, but like, you know, like is it actually happening? So and this is, again, this is the does. One of the things that the do the does they've already announced, the thing they've said is you can work from home just not for the federal government.

2:20:42Right. Yeah. And so when people are talking about like, is the do is going to be able to do anything. Like it's just, okay, there's 50 % of the federal workforce. Right. And it's, you know, and as, you know, as a taxpayer, how do you feel about that? And, you know, to your point on paying taxes, like if those people are in the office and they're dynamos of activity and they're making the country better. Right. Fair enough. Of course. But if they're kicking it at home, right? Maybe not. Yeah, maybe not. And that's the how much oversight has there been on whether or not they've been kicking it. Excellent question.

2:21:10Yeah. Now it turns out there are way there are actually there are ways to figure this out. So for example, for many, for many jobs where you have to log in to be able to get access like the email, you can actually check in like often you have VPNs to get into the corporate network. You can actually audit and you can see who's been working. And then there's a, do you know about mouse wigglers? Yes. Yeah. Programs. No, actually physical. Oh, they're physical mouse wigglers now. Yeah, physical mouse wigglers. And so it's a physical device that holds your mouse and then on an intermittently wiggles it.

2:21:43And a friend of mine who runs a big tech company, he just had like a nagging feeling in the back of his head that maybe all of his remote workers weren't pulling their way. And so he actually wrote himself on a week on algorithm to inspect all the mouse movements of all employees for a week. And then he bought all 50 like mouse wigglers from China that you can buy. And he fingerprinted them all. And he found that he had like a whole bunch of employees who were using mouse wigglers. Right. And so how many federal employees are using mouse wigglers? Right. So how crazy is that? That's how they can measure whether or not you're active, whether your mouse is moving.

2:22:16Yeah. Like what are they? What are they seeing? Just just a pattern of movement of the mouse. That's it. Well, the mouse, the mouse wigglers moving in a way that you can fingerprint. So is this like, do you agree to a certain amount of disclosure of your personal information while you're working? Like how do you get access to mouse wiggles? Oh, so it's very common. So in corporate environments, it's very common that your company issued computer has some kind of software on it that lets the company control the software and gives them and gives a company some level of visibility to what you're doing.

2:22:44And that doesn't mean that doesn't mean they're washing literally washing you. But it means that they have the ability to kind of reach in and be able to be able to see, you know, how much is the computer on? Wow. He's the mouse moving. And so that's actually a reasonably common thing. I heard the most ridiculous argument against this. What are you going to do with all those employees that get fired? Like, what are you going to do with all those people who are stealing hubcaps? They're making a living stealing. What are you going to do if you make hubcaps stealing illegal? Like, what are you talking about?

2:23:09They're essentially stealing tax dollars. If they really are doing something that's totally useless and they're wasting enormous amounts of money on this every year, the argument that, what are you going to do if those people can't do that anymore is really crazy? Yeah. Well, the answer is they can do something productive. Yeah. And people are more than capable. You don't have to infantilize someone to say, like, this is the only thing they're capable of doing. They work for the government for 20 years. This is all they can do. Yeah. And then, by the way, there's multiple knock on a positive knock on effects.

2:23:40If you can cut government spending, there's multiple knock on effects. So one is if you cut the spending, you can cut the taxes and you can just, the private economy then just simply has more money because it hasn't been taken. And so if there's less public spend, there will be more private spend. Right. Right. Because the money reallocates. And so there might be just as much demand in the economy. It's just coming from people choosing to buy things instead of the government forcing it. So that's number one. Number two, you can bring down government debt, which means you can bring down government interest.

2:24:04And the government today, the federal government today pays more in interest than we pay for the Department of Defense. Right. But how much of that is salary? No, that's just interest on the debt. Right. That's just interest on the old debt. Okay. We pay like 1 .2 billion a year right now. I think is the latest number, which is just interest on debt. It's not paying for any good or service. It's just interest on debt. But again, what percentage of that is the? What of the GDP? Well, so the total government spending is on the order of seven trillion. Interest payments are like 1 .2 trillion, something like that.

2:24:331 .2 trillion. I think that's the current number. Do as 800 billion a year. So 1 .2 trillion. Just off the top. Yeah, just off the top. And again, nobody's benefiting from that. It's just interest payments. That's bananas. Total GDP is like I don't have any rent. I don't know. It's it's it's I don't know. It's 20, 30, 40 trillion. It's you know, it's much larger than that. But like still, it's enough. This is a lot of money. And any and the total accumulated debt is 35 trillion. And and grow the total accumulated debt is 35 trillion. And it adds another trillion of accumulated debt every 100 days.

2:25:04Yes. Oh my god, it hurts my head. There's a congressman actually. Thomas Massey. You should have so he's the one guy in Washington who talks about this. And he's an MIT he's a liberty. He's one of the only libertarians. And he's a he's an MIT engineer. And he actually designed himself the a pocket lap help in calculator of the of the government debt. And he wears it every day. And watch it walk around with this. Walks with the walks of the little scrolling LED display. Oh my god. On on his lapel. And it literally counts. It counts the debt. And it's accurate. It's pulling data from the US Treasury.

2:25:34And it's actually an accurate count. And so it's like 34 trillion, 35 trillion, 36 trillion. Here's the kicker at the current pace at the compounding. It'll cross the debt will cross 100 trillion in the foreseeable future. So he's already working on the redesign. Because he needs a bigger device with a bigger screen to be able to just play the bigger number. How much anxiety do you get standing around him looking at that? That's his goal. He wants because otherwise the status quo in Washington has just let this happen. Oh, right. And so anyway. So another way you benefit is reduction of interest.

2:26:01And then another way you benefit is reduction of interest rates. If you bring down the amount of debt in the economy, you bring down interest rates. And then everybody else who buys things when you go to buy for a house, your mortgage is cheaper. Right. So everybody who buys anybody who ever borrows money in the real economy, then therefore is better off. Right. This is the argument against it being only good for wealthy people. It's good for everybody. Right. Yeah, it's good for anybody who ever gets car loan, home loan, small business loan. You want to bring down interest rates. But this fundamental discussion of it, like the argument, particularly from the left, is that all these tax cuts, deregulation, all this, all this is going to do is make Trump supporters and Trump's people wealthier.

2:26:41And it's going to ruin the middle class and ruin the lower, everyone else is going to suffer. So just observationally, almost all the rich people in our society are for common. Right. Yeah, the democratic party. So the, so the Democrat Republican, it's a, it's what they call it's a political scientist called top plus bottom versus middle is the configuration. So the democratic party is the top and the bottom versus the middle. So the top is what you might call the sort of upper middle class coastal elites. So it's everybody who wants to the fancy schools. It's everybody with the fancy jobs. It's for sure me, I guess your grandfather didn't.

2:27:12Yeah. Right. But it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like high net worth, high income people with primarily knowledge working jobs. So some professor, reporter, programmer, right, database expert, author, author, lawyer, you know, accountant banker, like all this sort of, you know, quote, delete jobs. And I'll know the elite degrees, by the way, who I went to the top schools and got like, you know, the, the, the elite degrees. So, so that's the top. And then the bottom is what you call the clientele underclass. Right. So it's, and it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the minority groups.

2:27:47Right. And so it's the assembly of, you know, low income African Americans, low income Latinos, you know, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, all these immigrants, recent immigrants and so forth. Right. And so that's the democratic coalition that they explicitly program against. And then Republicans in our era, Republicans are in the, it's the, it's the middle class, lower middle class, you know, it's all the people who don't have the fancy degrees and that are doing all the actual work that's basically making the country run. Right. So it's, it's everybody from the small business owner of the restaurant tour, you know, the talk drivers, truck drivers, you farmers, you know, all the way, you know, garbage men and janitor, it's like everybody who goes to work, 95 has a job probably, probably either small business or a physical job, you know, you know, it's sort of say labor like real labor, like actual labor, calluses on the hands, right, right, kinds of stuff.

2:28:32So kind of the so -called real economy, which is why right through Republicans are concentrated in the center and the south, because that's where all those things are. And then Democrats are concentrated in New York and California. And on the coast, which is where all this symbolic, you know, creative intellectual jobs are. And so, so, so, so, so the, so the weird thing that's happened is, the progress, liberalism, progressivism started speaking for the working man, right, like 100 years ago, it spoke for the working man. And now what's happened is there's been a complete reorientation where the working man has separated out.

2:29:00And then, and then you saw that in this most recent election, where the unions, the union leadership still for the most part, endorse Kamala, but the rank and file voted majority for Trump in a lot of cases. And the, the, the data point that I remember is the teamsters voted 70 % for Trump. What do you think the motivation of all these wealthy people to vote for Kamala Harris was, because they feel great, because they're saving the world? Yeah, it's amazing. To be in charge and control society and decide how everything works and decide who's good and who's bad. And like, your elite, you get to be the elite, you get to make the elite decisions.

2:29:35If you want to be in that group, you have to, you got it, you got to do this. And you feel good about yourself, because you feel like what you're doing is on behalf of your, you feel like what you're doing is on behalf of your clientele and your clients. It's reinforced by the echo chamber. You live in, yeah. And it's just, it's why the, if you read, if you read the media on your times, it's just, it's either how, your times only has two articles anymore. It's either how evil are Republicans or how innocent and helpless are, you know, poor agree minorities or, you know, identity groups. Right.

2:30:01And so the oppositional force. And then, but we're the party of good with the capital. Because we're taking care of all these poor, marginalized people. And so it's a very compelling, you feel great about yourself, right? It's just, it's just amazing. And then by the way, it just so happens that the economy is wired up in a way where you're going to pay a ton of money for not working very hard. Right. And then you're completely isolated away from the lived experience of just normal people, which is the state that I found myself in, where it would never even occur to you to talk to garbage man or to a somebody, you know, running a restaurant or whatever because, it's just like you're not affected by the rising crime rates because you live in a safe neighborhood.

2:30:40Right. And you've got to, you know, you're against the wall in the border, but you got to wall run your house. Right. Right. And so you just, you're in this bubble. And then you only ever talk to people who agree with you. Right. And then the media is constantly reinforcing it. And then you get ostracized if you disagree. And that's, and that's the wedge. Like that's the way it worked. Like, look, for a long time, it were for 40, 50, 60 years. It worked as a way to gain and hold political power. It's just, it's just gotten wedged in kind of this corner where it can no longer win. And so therefore it, it has to get re -examined.

2:31:09So for you, when you had this shift of thinking, you talked to the waiter and then the Hillary Clinton speech and they're like, how long is it before you start publicly expressing these things? And like how much of the reluctance is there? So from 2016, 17 to 2020, I was just like trying to figure out what the hell was going on. And then COVID hit. And then I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on with COVID. And now our business, you know, went crazy or business caved in and had all kinds of crazy horrible things happening. And we, you know, we have all these companies. We have hundreds of companies who are responsible for our startups.

2:31:39And so we're working with them to try to keep them afloat, to get the money and everything. But really, it was, I mean, really the big thing was the Biden administration, just like flat out, try to kill us. Like they just came like straight at us and they came straight at our founders. And so and they tried to kill crypto and they were on their way to try to kill AI. I mean, they were horrible. Like they were, what was the motivation to kill AI? Because it's because they want, they want control. I mean, they want control. They want to control, they want to control in the same way they can. So they recognize the potential of it.

2:32:09They want to head it off of the path. They want to control, they want to put it in a headlock. They don't necessarily want to stop it, but they want to make sure that they control it in the same way that they control social media in the same way that they control the press. So how are they trying to do that? So I mean, so it's the is the thing about it is the same dynamics that cause censorship to happen on social media. We're also going to happen in AI. And so there's a couple steps. So one is you just want a small number of companies that do AI because you want to be able to put them in a headlock and control them.

2:32:34So you basically want to give, you basically want to have a government, you want to bless a small set of large companies with a cartel instead of a regulatory structure where those companies are intertwined with the government. And then you want to prevent startups from being able to enter that cartel. How would they do that? That's a threat to the control. So it's a concept called regulatory capture. And so the way it went, and this is this has happened many times for hundreds of years. This is like a very well established kind of thing in economics and politics. So if it is, if suppose you're a big bang, suppose you're a Jamie Diamond, you run JP Morgan Chase, like what's like the biggest possible threat of what you could possibly face?

2:33:09It's that there's some disruptive change that comes along that upends your entire business. You know, your codec, you know, your codec, you're making a ton of money on an analog film and then digital cameras come along and you get destroyed. And in your obituaries, like you're the idiot, you know, who blockbuster video, blockbuster video. Like that's the caution that you tell. Those are the ghost stories that those guys tell around the campfire at night. Right. They're just absolutely terrifying. Right. And like business schools teach you like that's the one thing you do not want to do. And so there's two ways to try to deal with that.

2:33:37One is you could try to invent the future before it happens to you. But that's hard because you're running a big company and you know, these startups are out there doing all these crazy things and can you really do that? And it's hard and frisky and dangerous. The other thing you can do is you can go to the government and you can basically say, okay, we're going to, we would like to propose basically a trade, which is we would like the government to put up a wall of regulation. Right. We would like the government to put in place rules, right, that are potentially thousands of pages long. Right.

2:34:02And in fact, the more the better. Right. We want a very, very, very high bar for regulation for what's required to be in this business. Because I'm a big company. I can afford 10 ,000 lawyers and compliance people, right? I voluntarily put myself under basically the government thumb. But in return, the government has erected this wall of regulation such that the next startup comes along and just literally the next company comes along and just literally can't function. And by the way, this is literally what happened in banking. So pre 2008, pre the financial crisis, there were many different banks in the country, big, big, medium, small and lots of new bank startups every year that would, people would just start banks, entrepreneurial banks of many, many different kinds.

2:34:43After the financial crisis, we have this problem called the two big -to -fail banks, right? The banks were too big. And so there was this legislation called Dodd -Frank, which was regulatory reform for banking, which was going to fix the two big -to -fail banking problem. They implemented that in 2011. I call that the big bank protection act of 2011. It was marketed as it was going to solve the problem of the two big -to -fail banks. What it actually did was it made them much larger. So those banks are, those two big -to -fail banks, the same ones we bailed out are now much larger than they were before.

2:35:09The banking industry has concentrated into those banks. All the mid -sized banks are being shaken out. And you know, they're periodically, they'll go under, like we have a bank in Silicon Valley, it's called Silicon Valley Bank, right? And you know, it went under. And this has been happening all across the economy. And then since Dodd -Frank, the number of new banks created in the United States has dropped to zero. Whoa! And so the banking system is being centralized basically into 10 big banks. They actually have a term. They have a great term called G -Sib, globally significant, something something bank.

2:35:39And so there's like 10 G -Sibs. And then basically what's going to happen is those are going to consolidate basically into the three big banks. And if you get D -bank by one of the big three, you're done. You're absolutely done. Oh my god. But think about it from the other side. If you're the Treasury Secretary and you want your political enemy D -bank, it's just a phone call, right? Which is what has been happening, which was happening under the prior regime. Wow. Right? And again, at that zero, zero new banks. Yeah, zero. Literally it was like cardiac arrest. It was like that's it for new bank sharders.

2:36:13And we've had companies that have tried to start new banks. And it's essentially impossible. Because you have to comply with the wall of regulation. You need to go higher, you're 10 ,000 compliance people and your lawyers. But you can't afford to do that because you're not big enough yet. So you can't function like you can't exist. Like it's not all, it's ruled. It's my definition is ruled out. You can't do it. It's not financially viable. Wow. Right. So that happened in banking. That's what they've been doing in social media. It's been the same. It's been this, and by the way, this has happened in many other industries.

2:36:41By the way, this is happening. The food industry is greatly consolidated. That's a lot of what's happening in that industry as well. And it's the inner twining of government and the company, right? Because at that point, it's like, okay, is this a private company? Yes. Like it's still a private company. It has a stock price. It has a CEO. Does the CEO have to do everything that the relevant cabinet secretary tells them to do? Yes, he does. Why does he have to do that? Because if not, it's going to be investigations, the subpoenas and prosecutions, and protological examinations for the rest of his life.

2:37:11Wow. Everything. So it's essentially what we accuse the CCP of doing in China. It's the... So if you combine banking and social media, and now AI, you have basically privatized social credit score. Right? Is where you end up with this, right? And this goes back to the trucker's truck thing. You don't have to threaten to take away some buddies. Kids, you just like... You threaten to take away their insurance. You know, threaten to take away their insurance. It's not government insurance has been taken away. The same thing has happened in the insurance industry. It's consolidated down to a small handful of companies.

2:37:40They're super regulated. If the government doesn't want you to have insurance, you're not going to have insurance. And there's no constitutional right to insurance. So there's no appeal press. We're back to the banking thing. And so that happened in banking. That's been happening in internet and social media generally. It's been happening in many other sectors. And then it's happening specifically in AI. And what you have in AI is you have a set of CEOs of some of the big AI companies that want this to happen. Because again, their big threat is that we're going to fund a startup that's going to eat their lunch.

2:38:09Right? It's going to really screw them up. And so they're like, look, if we could just take the position we have and lock it in with government protection, the trade is we'll do whatever the government wants. And if you assume the government is controlled by people who want you to censor and punish and cancel their political opponents, that's going to come right along with it. And so that's why when these AI systems come out, like nine times out of 10, they're tremendously politically biased. You can do this today. You just go on, you go on any of these systems today and you just like ask, you just started asking like really basic questions.

2:38:37Gemini's the best example of that, right? When they had the multiracial, or the black Nazis. The black Nazis. Yeah. Once again, we're back to the black Nazis. Yes. So it turns, according to Gemini, to Hitler had an excellent DEI policy. Yeah. Now in reality, he did not. And it's important to understand that in reality, he did not. But yeah, Gemini happily threw up black Nazis because it's, because it's, they programmed it to be biased. They programmed it in a political direction. This is Guy David Rosado who's been doing these analyses on the social media side, where he shows the incidents rates of the rise of like all of the woke, like language, like in the media.

2:39:13And there's similar studies that have come out for the AI, where there's, there's studies that have been done that basically show the political orientation of the LMs because you can ask them questions and they'll, they'll tell you. And they're just like nine out of 10 of them are like tremendously biased. And then there's a handful that aren't. And then there's tremendous pressure. This is one of the threats from the government is, is the government basically going to force our startups to come in and compliance, not just with their trade rules, but also with all of their, right, base, base, essentially, a censorship regime on AI.

2:39:40That's exactly like the censorship regime that we had on social media. Wow, that's terrifying. Yeah, exactly. And yes, and, and, and this is my belief in what I've been trying to tell people in Washington, which is if you thought social media censorship was bad, this has the potential to be a thousand times worse. And the reason is social media is important, but at the end of the day, it's, you know, it's quote, just people talking to each other. AI is going to be the control layer on everything, right? So AI is going to be the control layer on how your kids learn at school. It's going to be the control layer on who gets loans.

2:40:09It's going to be the control layer on does your house open when you come to the front door. It's going to be the control layer on everything, right? And so if that gets wired into the political system, the way that the banks did and the way that social media did, like we are in for a very bad future. And that's a big thing that we've been trying to prevent, is to keep that from happening. And, and, and, and the Biden administration was explicitly on that path. Like they were very clearly going for that. And it was, it was just like crystal clear, that's where it was headed. And do you feel like with a second administration, they'd be even more emboldened to acting that direction?

2:40:39Yes. 100%. Another Biden administration for sure. And then there was, there was an open question around Kamala. And the open question there was just she wouldn't, as you know, she wouldn't declare if her issues positions were the same as Biden's, or if they were different. Right. And so, and, you know, you could imagine a Kamala administration that had a very different approach, but she refused to clarify any of her positions. Right. And so we, we had to assume that they would be the same as Biden's, which I think is the default case. Now, is this a closeted sort of a perspective in Silicon Valley?

2:41:11Do people hide these thoughts that this administration would be bad for business? I mean, much less now than this do. I mean, look, you know, you, you know, you, you, you, you, you, learn really broke a lot of it. You wanted to do two things that really opened a lot of this up. One is he, he bought Twitter, which really gave us a place to talk about this stuff, all of us. But then also he, he himself, of course, started to actually express himself. And so he gave a lot of the rest of us, it's a permission structure. Yeah. To be able to say these things and then look at it's, you know, it's like a cascade where people are like, okay, apparently you can now talk about things.

2:41:40Okay, I have some things to say. Yeah. Well, then look, also just, they went too far. They tightened the screws. I mean, they, they, they really came out. Heart. And so, you know, in the heart of they come at us, like we didn't predict, when Biden won, like we didn't think it would have negative effects in our business. We thought, yeah, probably taxes will grow up, but like, we'll just keep doing business. But then they did all these things, right? And it took a couple of years to figure out that this was not like a temporary thing. Like this was like a concerted campaign. And that they were really coming.

2:42:06What agency specifically is involved in doing that? Oh, I mean, it's, they have alphabet soup, but like SEC, SEC, Tready Kilkripto, very specifically, FTC, you know, was thoroughly weaponized. There's something called the CFTC, which is the other part of the crypto puzzle, commodities futures. Crypto, there's crypto that's a security. There's some forms of crypto that are security in the SEC regulates. There's other kinds of crypto that are commodity that the CFTC regulates. Is the CFPB I mentioned earlier. So the consumer finance protection bureau, right, decided that they were also going to regulate AI.

2:42:41Which they just volunteered for. And then, you know, the FAA killed the drone industry years ago. The reason why we don't have, the reason why the Chinese are winning in the drone were the drone worsens, because the FAA basically made drones illegal in the US years ago. So like the FAA has been a big problem. You know, the, what is it? Also, the FAA. When you say made drones illegal, but you can still buy drones. Like what, what have they done? So legally, you cannot fly a drone in the US that is beyond line of sight, if you don't have a pilot's license. Wow. Which means if you're a US drone manufacturer, you have to build a system that enforces that regulation.

2:43:16So you, but if you're a handy cap, your ability. Yes. So either the, either the US drone needs to either not fly beyond line of sight, which is not very useful, right? Right. Or it needs to somehow validate, it only have customers that have pilots, have pilots licenses. China, there's no such restriction. And the Chinese, we have, because we run a more open economy, the Chinese drones you can just buy in the US and use however you want. Technically, as the user of the drone, you're out of compliance with the law, but they ignore that part. They just punish the American drone makers. Wow. And that's why, that's why Chinese on the drone market.

2:43:48And that's why 90 % of the drones used by the US military and by US police are Chinese made drones. Which again, that sounds like a terrible security risk is a very bad idea because every Chinese drone is both a potential surveillance platform and a potential weapon. Oh, crime any. Yes. Well, I've seen the advancements in Chinese drones in particular. The choreographed dances that they do in the sky where they had, do you see the dragon one? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You can find that Jamie. Chinese dragon drone displays like one of the largest ones they ever did. It's unbelievable how much more advanced they are.

2:44:26Yeah. And I will tell you, the Biden administration had zero interest in addressing this. Like, or worse than zero. Like just, I would say, absolute contempt for the idea of a US drone industry. Yeah. So let's watch this thing. See you can go full screen on that. Like this is just a grid in the sky. Look at this. They're flying up together. They did one that was at night, Jamie, because they were all lit up. This video is just a little bit scary. I can skip ahead. So imagine those were guns. Jesus Christ. Coming at you. Right. Well, we get to see some of that in Ukraine. Yeah. 100%. Absolutely.

2:44:56We see those suicide drones. Like look at this. That is that dragon in the sky is drones that are all lit up. I mean, that is unbelievable. Yeah. It even has a puff of fire coming out of its mouth. Yeah. That's incredible. If they send that at a football stadium during a game with grenades on those drones. Oh my god. It's carnage. Dude, don't even put that out there. Don't put that voodoo on me, Ricky Bobby. Sorry. Look at that heart in the sky with a heartbeat. Correct. This is insane. Correct. Yes. It's so incredible. They had a little one like that that played over the M &M concert at when I was at Coda at the circuits of the Americas here.

2:45:34They had this giant M &M concert. There's like 100 ,000 people there. And then afterwards they had like drones in the sky that did little dances. Chinese drones. I bet. I bet they were. They weren't like this though. They didn't didn't. Wasn't at that level. I mean, that's unbelievable. Enjoy the show while you can. That's crazy. Yeah. That's a Chinese thing only. Yeah. Why don't you look? Do you do? He runs in these soldiers in the field. You it's very common soldiers. Just soldiers normal normal grouch soldiers in the field carry drones in their backpacks because they want to be able to see what's around the building or up in the roof.

2:46:03Yeah. And these are Chinese drones. And every single one of them can be taken over by China and used for whatever they want. Oh my god. Anytime they want. Is the Trump administration on this? They're very there. Where I don't know what they'll do. Yeah, it's somewhere in the priority order of the things that they're dealing. But they are yes, they are well aware of this. And well, it's the kind it's the kind of thing I would hope that would get some attention. Yeah. Well, this is the British respect to the UAP thing. Because if that's what we're seeing, we're seeing super sophisticated Chinese drones that operate on some novel propulsion system.

2:46:32That's not good. Yeah. And that could be because they put ridiculous regulations on drone manufacturers in America. Yeah, that's right. And they got way ahead of us. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we did these are bad. These are bad. So you're just opening my eyes to this. I always had this rose colored glasses view of our society versus the Chinese society. Our society is more open. So people can innovate and come up with new startups and all these crazy ideas because there's so much freedom in America. They don't have to deal with the government being involved in every business. Silly me. Well, silly me.

2:47:08I was wrong. So this is my argument. This is my argument I make geopolitically in DC, which is our to if you imagine that the 21st century is going to be let's say a contest between the US and China. The same way that in the 20th century, it was the US versus the Soviet Union. And like contest competition, Cold War, maybe hot war. Yeah, like that's that's the the basic fundamental kind of geopolitical puzzle of the 21st century. Then you want to think very clearly about the strengths and weaknesses of both yourselves and about the other side. And then as you think about how to beat the other guy, is the answer to become more like them or more like yourself?

2:47:39Maxine Waters made that argument when it comes to social digital scores and cryptocurrency and a centralized digital currency. She was talking about that like in order to compete with China, we have to come up with a centralized digital currency, which in my view is exactly the wrong thing. Yes, I heard that. I was like, that's a terrible idea. It's exactly the wrong thing. You're going to be like China to compete with China. It's exactly the wrong thing. It's exactly the wrong thing. You don't want that because because as you know, the China system has its problems. Like they terrorize their own population directly.

2:48:07They do impose the social credit score. Right. They do all this stuff. And then by the way, here's something we have going for us, which is the Chinese system has turned on capitalism. Xi Jinping is not a capitalist. And there is a broad base crackdown on private business in China. Trying to invest one of the leading investors in China, he said every single Chinese tech founder has either left China or wants to leave China. And they're all trying to get their money out and they're all trying to get their families out. Because it's now too dangerous to run a tech company in China because the government might just snatch you, like literally physically snatch you at any point.

2:48:38Yeah. And you may or may not come back. And then every Chinese CEO has a political officer of the Chinese Communist Party sitting down the hall who can come in and override your decisions anytime he wants to. Oh. And by the way, and drag you into training. Oh. This is a great thing. Okay. So you're sitting here. You're the CEO of a company with 50 billion revenue and 100 ,000 employees. And this guy from the CCP comes in and pulls you and you sit in the conference room down the hall for seven hours, getting grilled on how well you understand Marx. Right. So like that actually happens, right? It's a political officer.

2:49:07And that's the kind of thing that happened in the Soviet Union. And that's the kind of thing that happens in China. So you'd rather be a CEO in the US than in China for sure. As long as the US system actually stays open, where you can actually get all the benefits of all the power of all these incredibly smart people building companies and building products. But and that's why this administration freaked us out somewhere. Right. Because it felt like they were trying to become way more like China. So it was not nearly as aware as I should have been about all these things you're saying. I didn't know this.

2:49:35I did know about the banks and I certainly didn't know that they were cracking down on AI the same way they cracked down on social media. The air thing was very alarming. We had meetings this spring that were the most alarming meetings I've ever been in, where they were taking us through their plans. And it was like what kind of can you talk about it? Basically just full government, full government control. Like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated controlled by the government. They told us they told us they just said don't even start, don't even start startups.

2:49:59Like don't even bother. Like there's just no way. There's no way that they can succeed. There's no way that we're going to permit that to happen. Yeah. They said this is already over. It's going to be two or three companies. And we're just going to we're going to control them. And that's that. Like this is already finished. Oh my god. Now when you leave a meeting like that, what do you do? You go and do our strontal Trump.

2:50:22Oh my god. And again, like I'll just tell you like, you know, like because I'm going to get a lot of, you know, the flag I'm going to get for this is, you know, he's just a crazy whatever right winger. But like I was a Democrat. I was like a demo. I was a, I supported Bill Clinton in 92. I supported Clinton in 96. I supported Gore who I knew very well in 2000. I knew John Kerry. I supported him in 04. I supported Obama. I supported Hillary in 16. Like I was like a Democrat in good standing. And then, um, they you know completely out in the cocktail circuit now. Like you love to hang out with people.

2:50:53So there's now this is actually true. There's now two kinds of dinner parties. And so looking for they they fractured. They've fractured cleanly in half. There's the ones where every person there believes every single thing that was in the New York Times that day. Which by the way, it's often very different than whatever was in the New York Times six months ago. But everybody has fully updated their views for that day. And that's what they talk about at the dinner party. And I have no longer invited to those. Nor do I want to go to them. And then, and then there's the other kind, which is, you know, David Sacks and like all these guys.

2:51:21And all these people and, you know, just this growing universe. You know, it's a microcosm of what's happening more broadly in the culture, which is like, Hey, let's actually get together and talk about things. I have right, but it's so much more comforting when it's you guys and not the my pillow guy. I mean, I mean, it's like no disrespect, Mike, to the my pillow guy. But you know what I'm saying? Like I want people that are smarter than me to be saying these things. That's what helps. It helps when you say, well, this person actually knows what they're talking about. They're very well informed and they understand the repercussions.

2:51:48They understand what like what's been coming their way. And there's people like yourself that could speak about these, the plans that you're laying out what they were trying to do with AI is fucking terrifying. That should terrify everybody where you have bureaucrats are now in control of potentially the most the biggest ancient of change in the history of the human race. Yeah, that's right. Potentially. And you're going to let what? The people that can't even balance the budget. People that don't know what the fuck is going on. That's that sounds insane. And look, my hope, my I think I think under Clinton and Gore, I think that they they dealt with this very different.

2:52:23I mean, look, they dealt with the internet very differently than than the current crop or dealing with these technologies. Well, it was very different. It was very different, but also they were much more, Clinton and Gore in particular were much more understanding that you could add. So these used to be this thing I called the deal with the capital D. And the deal was you could be, and this is what I was, you could be a tech founder, you could start a private company, you could create a tech product. Everybody loved you. It was great. Glowing press coverage. The whole thing. You take the company public.

2:52:46It employs a lot of people. It creates a lot of jobs. You make a lot of money. At some point you cash out and then you donate all the money to charity. And everybody thinks you're a hero. Right. It's just great. Right. And this is how it ran for a very long time. And this was the deal. This was, you know, the deal. This was Clinton and Gore with 100 % in support of that. They were 100 % pro capitalism in this way and 100 % protect. And they actually did a lot to foster this kind of environment. And basically what happened is the last 15 years or so, the Democrats culminating in this administration basically broke every part of that deal for people in my world.

2:53:17Like every single part of that was shattered. Right. Where just like technology became presentively evil. Right. And like, you know, if you were a business person, you were presentively a bad person. And then technology was presentively had bad effects. And dot dot dot. And then they were going to regulate you and try to kill you and quash you. And then the kicker was philanthropy became evil. And this is a real culture change in the last five years that I hope we'll reverse now. Which is philanthropy now is a dirty word on the left. Because it's the private person choosing to give away the money as opposed to the government choosing a way to give the money.

2:53:45So I'll give you the ultimate case to here's where I radicalized on this topic. So you'll recall some years back, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, you know, they have a ton of money in Facebook stock. They created a nonprofit entity called Chan Zuckerberg initiative, which the original mission was to literally cure all disease. And this could be like, you know, $200 billion going to cure all disease, right. So like big deal. They said they committed to doing it 99 % of their assets to this to this new foundation. They got brutally attacked from the left. And the attack was they're only doing it to save money on taxes.

2:54:17Now basic mathematics. You don't give away 99 % of your money to save money on taxes, right. But it was a vicious attack. It was like a very, very aggressive attack. And the fundamental reason for the attack was how dare they treat that money like it's their own. How dare they decide where it goes instead tax rates for billionaires should go to 90 something percent. The government should take the money and the government should allocate it. And that would be the morally proper and correct thing to do. What do you think is the root of that kind of thinking? Utopian, this is a utopian collectivism.

2:54:49You know, it's the socialism that works. Socialism. Yeah, it's the core idea of socialism. Like the core idea is this is sort of it is a radical egalitarianism. Everybody should be exactly the same. All outcomes should be exactly the same. Everything should be completely fair at all. And some root of it has to be in envy. Of course. Yeah, envy resentment. Yeah. Nietzsche had this great term. They called resentiment. And it's like turbocharged resentment. And so the way he described it as resentiment is envy resentment and bitterness that is so intense that it causes an inversion of values. And the things that used to be good become bad and the things that used to be bad become good.

2:55:25Ooh, right. And that's how you land or be becomes bad. You're philanthropy becomes bad because it should be the state operating on behalf of the people as a whole who are handing out the money not the individual. I was not aware of that blowback. I would have loved to read some of those comments. Yeah. I wouldn't like to go to their page and see what else they come at. I'll give you another example. Here's another radicalizing moment. So my friend Cheryl Sandberg, who I worked with very closely for a long time at Facebook, and by the way, Democrat, you know, liberal, and by the way, endorse Kamala, like very much not on the same page as me on these things.

2:55:54She actually worked in the Clinton administration, you know, died in the World Democrats. She wrote this book called Lean In about 12 years ago. It's this sort of feminist manifesto and it basically said lean in. Lean in. So lean in. Lean in. And the thesis of lean in was that women in their lives and careers could quote, unquote, lean in. She said what she observed in a lot of meetings was the men were leaning into the table and sitting like in front and then the women were leaning back and waiting to be called on. She said the women should lean in. It became a metaphor for her for women should lean in on their careers.

2:56:22They should aggressively advocate for themselves to get raises and promotions. Like men do. They should basically, women should basically become more aggressive in the workplace and then therefore perform better. And so it was like, it was a manifesto to women basically saying, be more confident, be more assertive, be more aggressive, be more successful. And I read the draft of the book when she was writing it and I said, well, you know, you realize you've written a right wing manifesto.

2:56:46Right. And she looks at me like I've lost my mind right. Because she's a lifelong life -long lefty. She's like, what do you mean? And I'm like, this book is a statement that women have agency. Right. This book is a statement that the things that women choose to do will lead to better results. That's what people believe on the right. On the left, what people believe is that women are only always in ever victims. Wow. And then if a woman doesn't succeed in a career, it's because she's being discriminated against. And so I said, I predicted when this book comes out, the right wingers are going to think it's great and you're going to get it.

2:57:13Like the left is going to come at you. Because you're violating the fundamental principle of the left, which is anybody who does less well as a victim, which in that case, it succeeds. Exactly what happened. The reviews were all by women. And they tore into her like in every major publication. They just like completely ripped her in their like, how dare this rich and title woman be telling us, you know, these would be telling women that they're not victims and that they're, you know, that they have all this agency because every this is denial of sexism, right? It's denial of oppression. Wow. Because imagine if a man wrote a book like that for men, right?

2:57:44That was patriarchy, right? That's yeah, that's what I mean. Well, but I mean, it's but men wouldn't attack it. All right. Exactly, right. It would be a guide book. Yeah, that's just how you kick ass and get ahead. Yeah, we call it self -help. Lean in, bro. You're leaning. Just call it lean in, bro. Exactly, right. Wow, that's crazy. She's gonna attack for that. So again, it's this inversion. It's the inversion, which is like advocating on your own behalf and choosing to do things that make you more successful. What was her reaction to that? Well, I would say she was, I don't want to speak for her, but she was not not pleased.

2:58:15I mean, she was. Well, also was she shocked? Or if I should say that you were correct? Did you have a follow -up conversation with her? What did she say? We talked about it a lot. Yeah. God damn it. Mark, how did you see that one coming? So she was in the, but the answer is she was, her world view of how these things worked was from a different, it was from the Clinton Gorg era, in which you could, in which you could say it was like that. They could talk like that. Yes. And by the time the book came out, it was already into the second Obama term heading it, right? And then the book stuff started, and then at that point you could no longer say things like that.

2:58:44Wow. And everything got classified through this very hard edge, right? Us versus them. Right, oppressor versus oppressed. Oh, you know, kind of mindset. And so it's such a contrast to what we hoped would happen when Obama would be president. That's right. My thought was, okay. Look, there's still some racism, but clearly, if you're the baddest motherfucker, you can get ahead. Like you can win the country will vote for you. That's not what happened. Yeah. No. And you can win again. You win twice. You win twice. And, and be like, I've always said, up until I've lost a lot of respect for him from some of the things that he said during this election cycle, because I think they got desperate, and they just resorted to actual lies.

2:59:23And I thought this is crazy to see him lying, especially the very fine people hoax. And we played the video back and forth of what Obama said, he said, and what he actually said. And it's pretty shocking, because he's very explicit. You know, he's saying not white nationalist, not neo -nazis, they should be condemned. He says that very clearly. That's not what I'm talking about. Talk about people who are protesting that taking down this statue. Right. And when you see a guy like Obama do that, it's such a bummer, because he was the guy for me that was like our best spokesman. He was like, here's a guy that came from a single family, a single parent household.

2:59:58He wasn't some rich and titled kid who was given everything in life. He's his brilliant speaker. He's like, he's handsome. He represents what we're hoping for. We're hoping for a colorblind society just treats people in the merit of who they are, and anyone can achieve. And look, here he is. He made it. And then all sudden identity politics goes through the fucking roof. And victim mentality becomes a thing that people choose to side with. It just gets real weird for a long time. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And look at the guy said, I hope they can find their way back. So, but this lady's still on team Kamala.

3:00:33Oh yeah. She got a few lessons out of that, but not all of them. Well, no, this is the, if you're, you know, if you've been a lifelong Democrat, this is if you've been a lifelong Democrat, and if that's, you know, if that is in this corridor, a lot of people's value systems, then it's a real challenge, you know, it's my parents. When your movement, their all in goes in direction. Well, yeah. And there's, you know, right? And you can choose, you can choose to follow, you can choose to follow into the, you know, the craziest version of it, or you can choose to say, you know what? Like, I'm still not going to switch sides, but at least I'm going to advocate for my team to come back.

3:01:03This is Richie Torres. This guy is a congressman in, in, in Queens, I think, or the Bronx. He's actually, he actually started out. Everybody thought he was going to be a far lefty, because he's gay. He's black. He's Latino. He was like, he was like, at least associated with the squad early on. And he's like one of the guys in the Democratic Party who has now stood up. He's been doing this in public for the last two weeks saying, clearly, we have to get back to sense. Like we have to get back to common sense. We have to get back to moderation. Yeah. We have to have law enforcement. We have to have, you know, we can't have crime in the streets.

3:01:31We have to have a border. You know, we have to get, we have to get, Democrats have to get back to moderation in sense. And so he's hoping to lead the party. That's great. I think he's, we support him. And I think he's like a really, I think he's a very impressive guy. So there are people like, and he's young and very energetic. And, you know, I think he has a, you know, very bright future. That's the kind of person who could lead the party. Well, the big Nietzschean shift was when Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala and everybody cheered. If there's not a better example than that, please tell me what it is.

3:01:59Because that one was fucking nuts. Like Dick Cheney was always the hard right. Like during the Bush administration, all the lefties looked at him like that was Satan. Yeah, that's right. He was the profiteer. That's right. He was the manipulator. He was the guy pulling the strings. He was the CEO of Hal Burton. That came, the whole thing was so crazy. And to see, oh, Dick Cheney just endorsed Kamala and everybody's like, yay! Look, Dick Cheney's on our side. What the fuck are you guys talking about? This is the best shift of it, right? Yeah, that's right. All of a sudden, we're all, all of a sudden, we're all Neocons.

3:02:37All of a sudden, as you said, all of a sudden, we're pro -war. It's like, wait, wait, you know, because like, as you know, like the number, you know, yeah, the number of times he used to be the anti -war party. Yes. They were the anti -war party for a very long time. Yes. Yes. And, yeah. Except back when they were trying to keep slavery and I, part of the problem, that was a different. They wouldn't realize that. That was a different era. But, you know, coming out of Vietnam, they were definitely the anti -war party for like, you know, 30 years. But isn't that a shift as well? Yeah, like what?

3:03:01But the shift of the Republicans from back in the day being Abraham Lincoln, and trying to get rid of slavery, and the Democrats fighting to keep it. Like, there's these weird ideological swings, they happen, and, you know, we're still attached to the idea of being a Democrat, as like being a Clinton Democrat. We're in this weird sort of denial of what the ideology actually stands for, versus how we think of ourselves when we say, I'm a Democrat. I'm a good person. You know, I support civil rights, women's rights, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, down the line, I'm a Democrat. And if you go against that, well, now you're against all these things that you know to be inherently important for society.

3:03:43Yeah, that's right. They gotcha. Yeah, that's right. They got you. They wrote you into some crazy thing where you're supporting war. And then there's the big faction, right? There's the big free Palestine versus support Israel. Because the left always supported Israel. Yeah, 100%. And then all of a sudden, there's just free Palestine movement, which divides the left even further. Yeah. There's a book written some years back by the Sky Norman Pothor, it's in the, it's written, it's a wire juice liberal. Right, and he was a right wing. He was a right wing. Or like in the 60s, 70s, 80s. And he's like, he's basically, he's like, basically, he had this thesis that like these Jewish liberal voters in the US, like basically are voting against ultimately, they're voting for the wrong team.

3:04:23Because what they don't understand basically is that this is sort of a path number one to anti -Semitism, which is what's happened. But number two, basically, you're never going to have long -term support for Israel from the left because Israel, the basic concept of Israel violates the, you know, the idea, that Israel is like literally a religious ethno state. Right. And that's like inherently a right wing idea, not a left wing idea. Right. Like the left doesn't have room for that. And a military superpower. And a military right and is able to, right, is able to, right, is able to, and it's run by a former Special Forces operator.

3:04:49They're very, yes, very, yes, very capable, very capable soldier in his stuff. He's a fucking assassin. Exactly. And so, you know, he argued, I don't know, this is like whatever, 20 years ago, he's like, this is headed in a wrong direction. And, but, you know, the argument was ignored at the time. And then, you know, at least a lot of my Jewish friends after October 7th, you know, they were completely horrified, you know, to find out. For example, the DEI was actually anti -Jewish, right, which is what everybody learned with the scandals at the universities. Right. And it's like, you know, there's two ways of looking at that.

3:05:15One is, oh my God, the DEI is anti -Jewish. Therefore, we need to add Jews to the DEI scorecard, right? Well, when we saw the heads of Harvard, and was it, what was it, Yale? No, it was Harvard MIT in Columbia. Yeah. That was, that's right. That was just so in everyone's face and so bananas. Well, and then we saw that, you have right, exactly. And then we saw is that this, this same sort of radicalized left had actually slated. It's not just anti -Semitism and not just anti -Israel, but also pro, I mean, ultimately pro -terrorist pro -Homos. Yeah. You know, the new acronym, or LGBTH. No. Right.

3:05:49But there's a bunch of other stuff in there now. There's Q, there's two spirit. I know, but you gotta get H in there now for a Hamas. Oh, boy, really? Yeah, of course, of course. Of course. And so, like, yeah! I bring it up just as an, not to take a position. Just as an example of, it's the kind of realignment. Yeah. A lot of Jewish Americans now are having to kind of rethink fundamental questions about political structure and alliances, and who they should be part of, and who they shouldn't be part of. So, I think to your point, I think like the whole country is going through, I think we're going through the first, like, profound political realignment probably since the 1960s, which is when everything shifted between Johnson and Nixon in the South.

3:06:25I think we're going through, like, the most profound version of that right now. And I think it's something like the multi -ethnic working -class coalition, you know, they came together around Trump. You know, basically, again, against this sort of super -exaggerated elite plus underclass, you know, kind of structured the Democrats to build for themselves. And it just turns out there's just a lot more people in the middle. And so, I think, but by the way, including a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, you know, like vote for Trump as way up, Hispanic vote for Trump as way up, but you need to vote for Trump as way up.

3:06:53Way up, gay vote is like all of the identity groups that Democrats rely on all these years are union vote is for Trump. I'm sure you've seen the map, the electoral map of California, 2024 and 2020. Yes. In contrast, it's a crazy red wave that's going through across the whole, the most of the state is red now. Those of us on the coast are going to get pushed into the ocean. Yes. Well, I think, you know, maybe the other way, what you were talking about, the hopeful way that the Democrats will wake up and come up with a more reasonable, I mean, there's obviously clear cultural pushback on all these crazy or crazy issues.

3:07:29I mean, like the giant pushback from women about biological men competing against women. I mean, this is a giant one where women are like, listen, we created Title IX for a reason. Like we want women sports to be for women. You can't have them for mentally ill men that think that they can be able to just decide they're a woman in competing against women, which is what it is in a lot of places. You don't even have to get tested. There's not like some sort of a hormone protocol. It's just like, it's just what your identity is. Which is just nuts. And that's one of the things that I think a lot of people on the left are having a really hard time justifying.

3:08:05Yeah. Right. Because how can you deny a victim group? Right. You can't. I mean, in the full version of that, in the extreme version, that ideology, you cannot deny any of it. You cannot deny a victim claim. Well, it also comes with this weird caveat where you have to deny the existence of perverts. Right. Because a pervert, all they have to do is say I identify as a woman, throw on a wig, and then you can go hang around the women's room and no one could say anything. Well, you've, you've emboldened and empowered one of the worst groups in society that we've always protected women from. And you have to pretend they don't exist if you just want to base it solely on identity, especially like a self -described identity.

3:08:44He just decide. And then that's it. And, you know, I mean, there's states that have that now with prisoners that all prisoner has to do is identify with being a woman and you are now housed in women's prisons. California has 47 of them when the last time I looked at it. And there's hundreds that are waiting, unlike a waiting list to try to get in. So you have women who, you know, especially if you're someone who's dealing with if you've ever been raped or sexually abused, and now you have to share space with a man who might be a fucking pervert. And some of these men even have some crimes that are along those lines that they're in jail for.

3:09:25Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, Canada is the worst at it. There's a bunch of different examples of these type of people getting in to female prisons. And it's just it's insanity. And I think the left rejects that too for the most part. There's the sensible version of the left that is like, hey, yeah, I'm pro gay rights. Yeah, I'm pro women's rights. I'm pro civil rights. I'm pro choice. I'm pro this. I'm anti -warmo. But also, you can't let psychos just put on a fucking dress and hang out in women's rooms just because we want to be kind. That's nuts. So there has to be some, and then there's legitimate trans women.

3:09:59So like, how do you make the distinct? Well, clearly we have to have a fucking conversation. And if you don't allow that conversation to take place, like if you go to blue sky and you type in, there are only two genders. You're banned. Yeah, you're in there too. Right there. People've done it. There's a bunch of people who've done it. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun. They have like, they've created a little sock puppet account. They say some shit that should have been a reasonable thing to say just 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you make me hopeful, Mark. You do. You do. Because you lay things out in like a really well thought out way that is not hyperbolic and you're making a lot of sense.

3:10:33So I'm glad we talked. I feel better. Good. I think the world does too. I really do. I mean, I've talked to a lot of people, even people that are Democrats. I say I feel better than Trump one. Every day, it feels better. It just like, it feels like just things are opening up. It's the Obama campaign. It's hope and change. Yeah, hope and change. Never. It's hope you change. This is kind of actually hope and change. Yeah. This is actually yet. It feels like oxygen return. Yes. Well, thank you very much, Mark. I really appreciate you. Tell everybody there's a substack. How to find your social media.

3:11:05Oh, I'm on, I'm on, I'm on X under P. Marquet. I'm on a substack. Google me. All right. Ask for aplexity. All right. Ask Chad G. PT and it will deny that. No. It will happily tell you that I exist. At least last, at least last time I checked. So what about Wikipedia? Yeah, we don't know. We don't know if that's a Catherine. No, it's going to always pledge, Mark. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. Bye everybody.