Ex-CIA Spy: The Government Is Hiding A Threat Bigger Than Iran...

The last six months of us going to war with Iran has really been an audit of American power. What do you think China is taking away from the results? >> Oh man, I I feel like China is in its second big rally. >> Nobody realizes that China's first opportunity to really learn from the United States and benefit from our errors was the war on terror. It was when we were in Afghanistan, Iraq for 21 years, >> pouring money, pouring focus, pouring policy. And during that 21 years, from 2001 to 2021, China went from being a country that made plastic widgets to having the second largest telecommunication company in the world, Huawei. They created their own indigenous fighter jets. They created their own indigenous uh internet systems. They wired their they completely skipped the part of history where you're supposed to create landlines to connect houses. They just evolved right past it. Stealing from Western >> um IP and then building their own copies of it. And not only were they able to build it all, but they also got into the export business, pushing it to Latin America, pushing it to uh Africa, pushing it across Asia, and of course even pushing it to the United States. That's why Trump had to blacklist Huawei in his first term because we were buying Chinese telecom over our own indigenous American telecom even though the Chinese telecom was a knockoff copy of ours. So China's been down this road once. They had 21 years to skip steps up the evolutionary social geopolitical ladder. And now with Iran, they're doing it again 5 years later. >> What is the exact opportunity though? Is it watch us fumble the bag? Because I thought you were going to go somewhere else in terms of okay, we run out of missiles. I've got my eye on Taiwan. This might be a good time to move. That's actually a really interesting hypothesis that they're watching something slightly different. So, the opportunity of watching us go to war. What What is that opportunity exactly? >> It's three different opportunities kind of rolled into one. So, first they get to watch us lose the court of public opinion. M >> they get to watch us say that democracy works while we shortcut democracy. They get to they get to watch us say that we're the most powerful military in the world. Nobody should trifle with us and then get outmaneuvered in the battlefield by a broke small defunct country >> while we're also trying to make friends with other small broke defunct countries like North Korea. So they get to see this embarrassment on a public stage. That's the first benefit they have. The second benefit they have is they actually get to build an alliance with Iran and with Russia because now they can both overtly and covertly support the Iranian continued persistence of conflict. They are actively helping them develop new rockets. They are actively providing them the chemical resources they need for solid state rockets which are the most dangerous type of ballistic rocket. Iran is actually making more progress towards a long range ballistic rocket now than they were before the war >> because of China. >> Because of China and Russia, China is giving them precursor chemicals, precursor uh uh resources, the actual tools they need to to go into the rocket while Russia is giving them intellectual property, design schematics, strategies, satellite and intelligence support. So, the whole reason that Iranian drones are even able to penetrate airspace in the Middle East is because of Russian intelligence and Chinese capabilities. >> Meanwhile, Trump can threaten the whole world with if you help Iran, we're going to blacklist you, too. Well, Russia's already blacklisted, so what do they care? And China, their big card is I go ahead and try to blacklist China. Like, you really think the United States can survive without China? Go ahead and try because we don't think you'll actually pull that trigger. So the second big benefit to China here is that they get to exacerbate and continue the burning of American resources against an Iranian opponent while simultaneously building alliances with Iran, building long-term commitment with Russia, and not spending any of their own military resources. They're just spending prec precursor chemicals, technology, and and resources that they can trade for oil. And then the third big benefit that China gets is as the United States continues to spend attention, resources, diplomacy, reputation on a war that we started in Iran, China's just further validated about what they want to do in Taiwan. whether they want to assassinate the Taiwanese uh prime minister, whether they want to take it by force, whether they want to shut it down with a cyber attack, whether they want to launch their own economic D-Day, China's no longer the enemy doing something for the first time because the United States, the leader of the free world, has already done every conniving trick that that China could ever hope to use. If you're not uh the US, Russia, China, Iran, and you're watching all of this happen, what do you have to lose if America loses? That's the question I think 157 countries are asking themselves. If they're pegged to the US dollar, like many countries in Latin America, the dollar is going to be their first thing that they have to hedge against. If the dollar starts to lose value, then the Panameanian currency loses money and the Argentinian Argentinian currency loses money. multiple countries in Africa and Latin America. As the dollar sinks, so will they. And as the United States sinks, the dollar will sink as well because whoever's winning is going to take a bigger share of national reserves, a bigger share of international trade, a bigger share of investment. So all those countries that are close to the American dollar, close to the American uh import exports, if they're reliant on American diplomacy, if they're reliant on American technology, they're all asking themselves, how do I split my portfolio? How much Chinese should I buy and how much American should I sell to be in a place where I can go either way? But the whole world knows that there is a shift in power right now, a shift in geopolitical and economic and military might. They just don't know how it's going to end up. And it certainly doesn't look good to the United States that we have this bombastic president making huge promises that don't seem to come to light. >> What do you think the world is watching for? So, if I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do with my portfolio of everything, who I ally myself with, where I buy things from, who's going to manufacture what, what is the thing that they're watching for that tells them now's the time I can make my decision. >> Again, I actually think there's three things that are happening, right? So, first, I think countries are asking themselves, how do I want to diversify my infrastructure for the future? How do I want to prepare for not only how I filter my water and how I deliver my electricity? Do I want to use American tech or Chinese tech? But they're also asking themselves, how do I want to structure my government? Because do I want to structure a government that is a democratic government because I want to be on the US's good side or do I want to structure a government that's a strongman government because that's how I would win the Chinese side. And the Chinese know that the Trump administration is much more of a strongman government than it is a democratic government. So the first question countries are asking themselves is how do I want to invest in my infrastructure? The second thing is how do I want to pick my conflict? >> Because this is the perfect time for any country in the world that has a beef with their neighbor. Whether it's Azerbaijan, whether it's Pakistan, India, whether it's, you know, Colombia, Venezuela, any country that wants to pick a beef with their neighbor right now, it's a good time to do it. United States is distracted. So the big peacekeeper of the world isn't going to really have much to say. And this is part of why you see Afghanistan and Pakistan at it right now. It's why you see Israel running rampant in the Middle East right now. You you have this freedom that you never had before because we're in this place where I have for a long time kind of suggested that we are seeing what World War II looks like. I was going to say you you have said here on this show we're already in the middle of World War II. Uh certainly unnerving, but yeah, it gets harder to deny that every day. it becomes very easy to start putting the pieces together and look at this stuff. Um in ter meaning you see how it could escalate in all the different conflicts. >> Um what I want to understand though there's going to be a thing where they'll look at okay the US pulls out of the Iran war they declare victory and that's how uh country watching knows America is weak. There's going to be something like that where it's going to be um when the British Empire sort of officially fell. Everybody called it the Suez Canal moment. So once they couldn't defend the Suez Canal, Egypt took back control of that, that was when we knew the British Empire is not what we used to think it was. >> This feels like the Suez Canal moment for me that we can't get control of the straight of Hormuz. The more pressure we tried to put on it, then they just started putting even more pressure on uh the uh Babel Elmandab Strait. So, it's like that didn't work. And now, as we um Bessant has come out and said, "Okay, we're going to now use economic sanctions, the likes of which nobody's ever seen before, and coupled with the naval blockade of the strait. We got it. We're going to choke them out. It's done deal." Um, how do you think that will look if we Let's run both scenarios. Scenario one, it actually works and Iran really does break under the sanctions and the blockade and then it doesn't work and Russia keeps using the Caspian Sea to send things to Iran. Iran just always has enough of what they need because we obviously the Caspian Sea is landlocked so there's no way for the US military to put a blockade in there. So we have this leak point. Um give me those two scenarios. What happens if we actually break Iran and then what happens if we clearly just lose grip? >> We there's no option one. There's no place where we break Iran. >> Really, >> I don't think that's ever going to happen. I think the only way that Iran actually ends up changing its government and becoming a whole different country is if the United States essentially gives permission to Israel and Israel backed by other Arab Gulf coasts or Gulf states all wage a full-scale war on Iran. The United States having a full-scale war with Iran is going to look almost exactly as the United States having a full-scale war with Afghanistan and the Taliban are still in power there. >> Right? A religious government is not something we have very much success defeating. We might rush, we might put them into hiding. We might run them underground. We might just create the next generation of zealots. But even if we commit all American forces into taking Iran, it's going to be like when we committed all American sources forces to taking Afghanistan. We've been down that road. We know it doesn't work for us. So I don't think option one is really even a realistic option. That this place where Iran collapses because of our action. I don't know that that's realistic. Especially >> what do you think keeps him alive? Is it the the hole in our blockade via the Caspian Sea or >> I don't think it's I don't think it's a logistic or like tactical anything. I think it is a strategic and ideological thing that keeps Iran. >> But if we're really sanctioning them to the point where so right now they have uh just under 100% inflation on um I think food. They have inflation basically sort of across the board CPI style living increase and then they have food increase and they're both extraordinarily high. Theoretically there is a point to which you could push that where you can't pay your soldiers, you can't feed all of your civilians. They I think we end up in a moral quandry because I think the world will turn against us if if literally Iranians are starving. But I can run scenarios in my head where if we can stop supplies reaching them from Russia and we can keep China at bay so that they're not able to offer material support that we could choke them out. Um it does seem a bit unlikely. What is the mechanism by which it becomes impossible? >> It's a question of what's probable. Keeping China at bay. That is an improbable notion. >> Okay. So they're going to get involved. They're going to push. >> They're already involved. They're already involved. They are closer to Iran. They are bigger than we have insight into. The the iron curtain of the current day is really American insight into what's happening in China. It's just it's it's way outside of what we have control over. If we underestimated Iran, just imagine how much we're underestimating China. >> Yeah. >> With their wealth, with their power, with their reach, with their influence. So, so China has every reason in the world to not only help Iran now, but ramp up help to Iran in the future because Iran is a giant thorn in the side of the United States. Iran is a giant thorn in the side of all of the Gulf Coast states or all the the the GCC countries because any of those GCC countries that's backing the United States is also feeling threatened by Iran. the perfect chance for China to say, "Hey guys, do you really think the United States can be your long-term solution to security? Or do you think you want to partner more with China? Maybe we should get some of your oil? Maybe we should get some of your tech. Maybe you would like some of our engineers. And all you have to do is distance yourself from the United States." >> So, China has every strategic reason to support Iran, and Iran knows that. Russia has every strategic reason to support Iran, and Iran knows that as well. And the Iranian people have spent the last 70 years under oppression. That's a generation and a half has come up only knowing the current normal. So even though people love to say like, "Oh, look at these pictures of Iran in the 1950s and the 1960s when you know before the fall of the sha >> like yeah that existed but those people are 80 years old now. They're not war fighters." And the age that is a war fighter right now doesn't really believe that war is an option. And they for sure they don't >> internal war >> internal conflict mounting an uprising creating a resistance. We can't even imagine it. But what they've lived through is walking down the street and seeing a person in plain clothes pull out a gun and shoot down another person in plain clothes and then walk away. Like because that's the the security forces in Iran live and hide in everyday life. So they have no sense of public trust. In the United States, we still believe we could actually like meet in a person's house and plan the downfall of the government and we would be safe. We might even believe that we have privacy laws that protect us having that meeting. >> We might believe. Yeah. >> But that's not what they think in Iran. The Iran conundrum every day that it survives just empowers Iran and degrades the United States. And that makes all of our adversaries ensure that this will continue. We'll get back to the show in a second, but right now, let's talk about something that keeps me up at night. People impersonate me. Fake emails and fake texts go out to my team all the time, pretending to be me. 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Okay, so scenario number two, uh, we end up losing in a way where anybody watching this with interest goes, yeah, America can spin this however they want, but this really was their Suez Canal moment. They're not the empire that we thought they were. They're not the empire that they thought they were for sure. And now you're living in a world where call it 90% of the world's beefs could have previously been stopped by the US just saying don't do that. Uh now that won't work anymore. Now we actually have to fight every fight if we want to stop somebody from doing something that may be economic but we still have to exert like a level of force that we previously wouldn't have been able to. And we're seeing now the cracks in that. Who wins? Who loses in that scenario? >> I want to answer it two ways. The first way I want to answer it is what if our Suez Canal moment was Afghanistan? O, >> not Iran because we haven't had much success since the downfall of Afghanistan outside of the illegal rendering of the president of Venezuela, >> right? We haven't really done much to succeed anywhere else. We didn't shut down drug cartels. We haven't cut off fentinol. We haven't degraded Chinese power. We haven't prevented Ukraine from falling to Russia yet. If anything, Russia's back on the offensive, more fighting in the last 5 months than happened in the previous four years. So we're not really showing a lot of success in anything since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001. So perhaps our Suez Canal moment has already happened. But the second way to answer that is if the Suez Canal moment is happening now, we're going to see a reaction from the world that's not that different than the reaction that we've seen in the last four years. Allies don't believe in the United States coming to help them anymore. questions about our ambiguous policies like our ambiguous policy about Taiwan. Those questions are now no longer people no longer assume that that ambiguity is strategic ambiguity. They now believe it's political CYA ambiguity so that we can kind of choose what we do. We can decide later on. People are not rushing to invest in the United States. People are not rushing to gain access to the United States. We've had an immigration crackdown that makes people feel like they're not welcome here. We've had a crackdown on uh American uh freedoms, American transparency, American uh the justice system. Even Americans are predominantly growing dissatisfied with the United States. We have the largest exodus of wealth that we've ever seen. We have uh persistent issues in our labor market with inflation, with uh with job openings, and on top of it, you layer in AI. So, a giant technological disruption. In addition to a self-imposed military disruption that's on the tail end of a political disruption that that has been going on since we haven't been able to hold a president for longer than four years to me that says multipolar world. China's going to take its place. How does this play out? Is it China makes a move on Taiwan, it forces the issue, and now the US either um makes a move or they completely back off and retreat to their hemisphere um or something else? This the step-by-step order of how things are going to play out is difficult to predict. There are certain anchor points that seem like they have to happen. The brinksmanship is going to happen in Iran. Will China help Iran or will China not help Iran in the face of economic D-Day as dictated by Donald Trump? Because Donald Trump is saying anybody who helps Iran is cut off completely. >> China's already said, "We're going to be dismissive of that. We will not acknowledge your sanctions at all." Literally on camera. >> So now, now that means that China is learning from situations like what happened in Greenland when Greenland didn't back down from all of Trump's threats. when Mexico didn't back down from all of Trump's threats, when Canada didn't back down from all of Trump's threats. Trump has been successful only in as much as he makes a threat and people break. But when he makes a threat and people stand up and resist, what we found is that often times the White House changes their policy drastically, leaves no explanation. So now China's just doing the same thing. So, if economic D-Day isn't really following uh they don't really follow through with it, then that brinksmanship that's coming from China is sending them a message that they can exacerbate this. So, we're going to see brinksmanship in Iran. We're already seeing it. We should expect to see brinksmanship in Taiwan. Whether that is full-on military brinksmanship, whether that's diplomatic brinksmanship, whether that's policy brinksmanship, China doesn't want to go to war. They understand from watching us that war is expensive. War costs lives. It costs reputation. There's a small boost to the economy and a wartime economy, but not a long-term benefit from it. So, China wants to avoid allout war. But does that mean they will avoid a skirmish? Not necessarily. Does that mean they'll they won't use naval resources? Not necessarily. They might like a small controlled uh military action similar to what the United States did in Iran, but they're not going to carry out a fullscale invasion. I've never suggested that. I don't think it'll happen. It'll be more like what happened in in Hong Kong when they changed the policy and then had police action that was violent. So, we should expect to see something in Taiwan. We should also absolutely expect to see something between Russia and Ukraine. The fact that Russia and Ukraine is not top of mind to people right now to me is not only mindblowing, but it's indicative of the lesson that China is learning right now in the world. It was a complete violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The entire Western world promised support. There was a flood of modern-day technology and the orchestration of a counterattack, a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 that surprised the world. People thought Ukraine was going to win. PE, some people still think Ukraine is going to win. I think they've got a shot. Don't you? If they have a shot, it is a fleeting shot. And I mean to negotiate, I don't think they're going to win a military conflict. But with what they've been doing with the drones hurting the actual infrastructure of Russia feels like and maybe I'm just in a algorithmic bubble and so I'm not seeing everything cuz I am surprised to hear you say that Russia is now back on the offensive. My read has been that Ukraine is on the offensive. >> They're both on the I mean they're both claiming the offensive. >> The big difference is questions of corruption have finally become mainstream inside Ukraine. >> Really? And that was something that I I when we talked three years ago, I was like, Ukraine's a corrupt country. Not a democracy. It's not a fight for the defense of democracy in Ukraine. It is a corrupt [ __ ] satellite country of Russia. People didn't believe it until about two years later when all the corruption and the loss of trillions of US dollars became transparent to people. >> So, how or why are they fighting so hard? Because you're not going to get a country that doesn't believe in itself to put up the resistance to Russia that they're putting up. We're not saying Ukraine doesn't believe in itself, >> but you said they're a satellite country of Russia. >> Yeah. Like they they are a country that modeled itself off of Russia. Like their corruption is Russian corruption. Their culture is Russian culture >> by design, not affiliation. >> Correct. Got it. Correct. They wanted to be part of NATO, >> but they still wanted to be able to steal money from, you know, in the back door. So now what you have is Zillinsky facing off against his own former defense minister who's accusing Zalinsky of no longer being fit to lead and demanding elections in the middle of a wartime scenario. And Zalinsky is saying that I would love to not be president but I have to be president because the country needs me and and Fedorov saying you shouldn't be the leader. This country has been going through incredible corruption. We've lost more resources in this war under your inner circle because you guys have been stealing money and pilfering from the Ukrainian people. And no matter how this war ends up, you're going to be living up living large on some island somewhere as the hero of Ukraine. It's like no, we need to change this whole foundation. And of course, Russia wants to see that internal political debate inside Ukraine. And the Western world is wondering, is Ukraine more democratic now than it was before or is it just another dictatorship? They've been accused of uh of human rights violations because they made it impossible for people for men of fighting age to leave. As much as Russia is accused of terrorist acts attacking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, Ukraine's targets in Russia are predominantly civilian targets. oil refineries, logistical supply hubs, airports. They're military tools that use those airports and military tools that use the electric grid and and military tools that use the oil. But the whole reason that Ukraine's attacking the oil capability of Russia is to hit them economically. And so when Russia attacks the energy grid, attacks dormitories, attacks uh heating supply centers and exchanges in Russ in Ukraine, Ukraine says that that's a violation, but they're both doing the same thing, which makes this whole thing a mess for the criminal court when it's all done. You said you were mind-blown that people aren't paying attention to it. Uh, as somebody who covers this routinely, um, I'm surprised to hear you say that you're surprised that people aren't paying attention just because it doesn't seem to have the implications that the US Iran war has. So, what are we missing? If we look at it, we are certainly aware of it, but we're not giving it the credence that we give to US versus Iran. What we're missing is that Russia's success or failure in Ukraine becomes the springboard for American success or failure in Iran, Chinese success or failure against Taiwan, and essentially what the next 50 years of military conflict looks like worldwide. If Ukraine defeats an overwhelmingly powerful force that is well regarded around the world as being corrupt, violent, uh, anti-freedom, uh, oppressive. If Ukraine can win, that gives hope worldwide that the little guy can still win, that democratic principles win out, that that just cause defeats villain. That's hope. And and hope is what created our country, right? The hope that a small ragtag group of revolutionaries could take down the largest superpower in the world at the time during the Revolutionary War. That's what happened in the United States. That became the story of a century. Everybody believed in the United States and the United States, the American dream and the vision. So if Ukraine wins, that becomes part of what rallies Taiwan and part of what, you know, makes people believe in the just cause of the United States and democracy over places like uh like Iran. But if Russia wins, if if people give up on Ukraine, that's essentially analogous to people giving up on the democratic dream. And it's supercharges the idea of a strongman government. So now all of those governments that are teetering in Latin America, Central America, Africa, uh, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, all those governments that are teetering right now between are we democratic, are we strongman, are we dictatorship, are we fair election, they're all going to fall in line with whatever the predominant promise is of the world. We just have so much successful strongman activity right now. Netanyahu, corrupt politician, strongman leader. Zalinski, corrupt politician, strongman leader. Trump, corrupt politician, strong man leader. Uh Xiinping, corrupt politician. We don't know because China keeps saying that they're attacking corruption and Xiinping is above all that. >> So now they're the only country in the world that we actually believe from a consistent media point may not that they're not corrupt. believe that the the strong man leader is doing what he believes is best for the country. >> Because I'm uh obsessed with Chinese history, especially recent history, and understanding everything they went through with Mao and the reforms that coming out of it and how you're seeing almost a a U-turn background towards Mao on behalf of Xi Jinping. Um, I'm way less likely to believe that the guy putting people in concentration camps and the guy purging people in his own military, uh, and the guy making Jack Ma disappear and get re-educated, uh, that he's not corrupt. Uh and certainly I don't buy that he is accurate in what is good for his country because anybody that believes hey I see things so clearly um that I can just run this all by fiat. The very thing that I think America proved and I do want to talk later about whether America has any remaining moral authority but um the very thing that made America the richest nation on earth was we were the only government that understood that man tends towards tyranny. And so we have to build a system that protects us from the men who may start out with good intentions but inevitably begin to believe, well, I know what's best, so I'm just going to do this really bad thing, but it's all for the sake of the country. Uh, and that impulse, that knowing that that's what people do is the very thing that we have to protect against. Man, sometimes I feel like I'm out of step with the world and it is so shocking to me. Um, but when I look at Xihinping, all I see is the glaring flaw of authoritarianism that when it breaks, it breaks so devastatingly that you you just can't do it. It it would be the way that I feel looking at China is the way that I would feel if there was an F1 driver who stood on the back of his car and like had Harley bars and no helmet and was just driving the car. And if he's out front, I'm still like, "Guys, if somebody nicks one of his tires or the wind, you know, hits the spoiler just wrong, this guy's dead." >> Now, layer in American ideology on top of that. And what if he doesn't get nicked? What if he becomes the one that crosses the finish line for the first time ever in an F1 racer? >> And in many ways, they have. >> And that's what I'm saying. like >> I don't think you're I don't I would never dream of saying that you're out of step with the truth. >> My question is how many Americans do you think are paying the kind of attention that you're paying? How many Americans are using the rubric you're using? And that's just Americans. How many Zimbabweans? How many Thai? How many Japanese? How many Vietnamese? How many Mexican or Uruguayan? How many of them do you think are as attentive and analytical as you are? >> And now all of a sudden you start to realize that China doesn't make the headlines for corruption. >> China makes the headlines for the new giant modern-day torpedo submarine that they created, the brand new aircraft carrier that they launched, the well the negotiation that they're trying to close between uh Palestine and Israel. That's what people talk about when they talk about China. They don't talk about Xiinping's political issues. They talk about American political issues and Israeli political issues and Putin's political issues. They don't talk about They talk about the economic concerns, but they talk about the economic concerns and they can't resist also talking about how they're still growing at almost 5%. >> Yeah. So, in a world of bad news, the best news stories are coming from China, from a state controlled media agency and a very controlled narrative. I'm not saying for a second that I believe Xiinping isn't corrupt. >> Sure. >> But what I'm saying is the messaging has been so shaped and sculpted that when it reaches us, what reaches us is pretty heavily sculpted in a favorable fashion compared to what we're reading about our own domestic policies. And that's for me that's going to be more successful in today's world than the alternative. The alternative being mass misinformation, disinformation and political unrest. So that's why does China take the approach that they take? And of course Xiinping is turning the whole country back towards Mao. Xiinping is a princling, meaning he is the descendant of one of Mao's inner circles. That's what the entire CCP is built on is this idea that princlings from the original families were the ones that were groomed to take power. So who do you think they're grooming to take power next is the same sort of ideology. But what's really [ __ ] up, man, is if it works, if they cross the finish line with monkey bars on an F1 racer, that's going to become the new dream for the future. >> The American dream. >> Yeah. >> The red dream. I I am old enough to remember when the world was basically having a debate whether we were going to be communist or we were going to be democratic and uh democracy ended up winning and it was a great time. Man, the '9s were special. The '8s were special. It was really incredible. I had never thought that we're now reasking that question >> and that we are once again the the world is once again sitting on the sidelines watching the two behemoths go headtohead and it is a larger question of who am I going to emulate or who am I going to um try to flatter by mimicking. >> Yeah. >> And that is deeply distressing. Okay. Okay. >> The reason just one last thought or one additional thought. The the reason that communism lost to democracy in 1991 because in the 80s it was still an open question. >> Yeah. >> Was because of the fall of the Berlin Wall because in an arms race where everybody was racing to grow their military capability, grow their space-based resources, etc. One person got outpaced. But they were largely operating in vacuums alone. That's not the kind of race we're in right now. We're not in a a tech race. We're not in a military race. Not like it was in the 80s. Now we're in this race for long-term resource access. We're not just trying to build different weapons behind closed doors. We're actively creating weapons and giving them to other active conflict countries to test them in the field to actually test their success and to show the opponent exactly what we've been developing. Whereas the Cold War was all about not showing anybody what you've been developing. So we're even seeing kind of the evolution of cold war conflict, which is why no one's calling what's happening between the United States and China a cold war. It's not cold. If anything, it's warm, it's hot, it's it's a secret war, not a cold war. We'll get back to the show in a moment, but first, let's talk about the thing your business just can't survive without. I go live three days a week at 7 a.m. and every morning you guys, you incredible people out there, show up. You're there. You're ready. And if my connection drops in the middle of that live stream, that moment is gone forever. You do not get a second take when it comes to live content. And I know a lot of you are in the same position. Whether you're running live events, processing transactions, or managing a remote team, your business depends on staying connected. Not sometimes, every time. That's why I trust AT&T Business. They're built for business owners who can't afford downtime. 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The system is real and it promotes calm energy, elevated mood, and sharper focus, all while doing the long-term cellular work. Get 20% off at peaklife.com/impact. Peak is spelled piqu.com/impact. And now, let's get back to the show. the very fact that it's easy to explain what China is doing and very hard to explain what the [ __ ] the US is doing. Uh not that this is better, but that it's just clearer, it's simpler. Um there's so much energy for the Chinese model even here in the US. Now taking your new framework of saying everybody's on the sidelines watching this and which one of these is going to win for the first time. I'm like oh my god. Like there are going to be a lot of people that are going to choose the Chinese model. So walk me through how that's going to play out. So when we were going up against Russia, it was not in my hemisphere. And so that's what the Cuban missile crisis was about. It wasn't like Russia wasn't doing that kind of thing other places. It just wasn't 90 miles off the coast of Florida. And so the second it was, it became all the way to like we we're really both going to shoot these nukes at each other. So um this is getting very very very real. How will that play out now? China is a long way away. It feels like a lot of what we did in South America, Venezuela in particular, was to boot China out of our hemisphere. Is that going to be the play where we're going to try to strongarm everybody in our hemisphere to get on board with us and we're going to react violently if China is trying to be anywhere in our hemisphere? >> So, I don't think it's going to be a geographical battle at all. I think it's going to be an economic battle because the United States I can only hope that our US government has landed on this conclusion as well that our big vulnerability is not military. Our big vulnerability is not geographical. It's not defense-based. It's economics. That's our big vulnerability. We have globalized our economy and we have made the whole world reliant on American technology. But we have over spent our economic poker chips, which is why Europe is already cutting itself off of American technology. China cut itself off of American technology four years ago, stopped using American social media, created its own. Stop offering American software, created its own. So the so China separated itself already and showed the world as a test case, you don't have to belong to American tech. Because if you belong to American tech, it's like every Apple user out there. If you subscribe to Apple, they've got you in a in a vice. >> You need to have their phone. You need to have their computer. You need to you want every upgrade. You need every upgrade. And if you try to switch, switching costs kick in. And now you might lose all your photos because how are you going to get those photos from Apple to Google and there's only one other option out there. And you've been told as an Apple user for decades that everybody else is less secure. That's what China's playing for right now. China recognizes that if the United States loses enough reputation, enough faith in fairness and democracy and economic edge or industrial uh technological edge than all of the other countries of the world that are economically depressed because they were reliant on the dollar. They're going to look for a cheaper technical alternative and China's ready. alternatives to health care and medical technology, alternatives to surveillance technology and policing technology, the number one manufacturer and seller of electric vehicles worldwide, alternates in telecommunication. And the only reason that Panama isn't using China right now is because Trump said that if they do, he's going to take away American support to Panama. So they'll use 30% 28% 15% Chinese tech as they continue to kind of turn up the dial of of having a backup option in case America does collapse. And the problem for the United States is that every time 1 10 15 countries changes their amount of imports 5%. The collective economic input is huge because they're not reducing their reliance on the United States for a $7 trinket. They're reducing their reliance on the United States for a $5,000 technical tool and they're putting that $5,000 into something else. And if they buy and run B, then they don't even have demand for the US dollar. So the vulnerability United States is facing right now is is an economic vulnerability. And the Chinese understand that they've already proven over the war against terror that they can build a competitor to all Chinese to all American tech. Now they just have to build a market that wants it more than they want American tech. >> When you look at China, how strong do you really think they are? And I'll ask it on two dimensions. Militarily, their ability to project power beyond just the South China Sea. And then economically, >> I believe that China is just as precarious in their economic position as the United States is. >> We're not in a good economic position. Neither are they. Both countries are massively in debt. The two countries leading in national debt right now are both the United States and China. And we are both bleeding our national debt because we are literally racing to build technology and militaries for a future potential conflict between each other. So while it's easy to point fingers at the real estate market in China, we got a [ __ ] up real estate market here. And where it's easy to point at the overspending in China, we got overspending here. And it's easy to point at the at the fiscal irresponsibility of China. We have the same thing happening here. So, we really are two like mirrors looking at each other. Militarily, the advantage that the United States has is that we can project our military force all over the world and we're experienced in executing conflict around the world. If we execute according to what we know to be effective, Iran's a good example of us executing outside of what we knew to be effective. We intentionally pursued a limited war, a limited conflict, and we didn't hit our goals. But Maduro is an example of another limited conflict where we did arguably hit our goals. The big difference is that China doesn't want to project global military power. They want to project immediate regional power. The South China Seas is all they care about. And arguably they have the dominant position in the South China Seas. Even if the United States and China did go to war, nobody's imagining Chinese vessels attacking the United States. Everybody's envisioning American warships off the coast of China. And if that happens, Chinese hypersonic missiles get launched from the mainland and re hell on American ships in the South China Sea. And when one hypersonic missile makes successful successful contact with one aircraft carrier, you lose an aircraft carrier. But if that hypersonic missile gets shot down, you launch another one. China wants conflict off of its coast because that's where it's powerful. >> Sure. The United States never wants conflict off of its coast, which is why it projects. >> Okay. So, precarious economies on both sides. I will give you that. I think most people think China's economy is stronger than it really is. >> Agreed. >> Uh declining, but to your earlier point, they're still clocking in. It's below expectation, but they're still clocking in at 4.5%, which is dramatically better than where we're at. Now, some of the estimates I've seen say that the 4.5 is grossly overstated, but I'd still say at a minimum they're growing faster than we are, even if they're growing at a declining rate. >> Um, also as the manufacturer of the world, they're us right before and really right after World War II where we can manufacture everything. People were coming to us for everything. Now the world's starting to globalize away from them or deglobalize away from them. But uh that's still the part of their economy that's still working. It's a very small part shockingly of their total economy when you really look at it by the numbers. Exporting stuff is relatively small for them as a percentage of total GDP. Uh but still that is working. That gives them power over people namely the US that are trying to get things like drones from them having complete control. Um, on the military side, you're saying, "Okay, they're spending, they're growing, they're not trying to project power, they're trying to draw us into something close." Um, is the only conflict you see there, cuz obviously the US, Jesus, do I pray that they're not so stupid that we would just out of nowhere preemptively be like, "We don't like what you're doing in Iran." And so we roll up on their shores. I can't fathom it. Even with Trump, I just cannot fathom that. But what I can fathom is that Taiwan forces our hand. Or the one I haven't heard anybody really talk about is Japan. And China has said explicitly, we are not, and if you don't know the history between Japan and China, homie, look that one up. The Chinese [ __ ] hate the Japanese because of the rape of Nank King and I'm sure a whole host of atrocities. Um, so when Japan was imperialist, they went after China in a big way. just I'll leave it at that for people that don't know much about it, but they've said explicitly, we're not going to let Japan become the Israel of Asia. And I was like, damn. Uh, so that is a quick scathing indictment of both Israel and Japan. So, yeah, how do you see that playing? For those of you who don't know what's happening in Japan, and I know you are not one of those that don't know, Japan is abandoning its commitment to not create an offensive military force. >> Yeah, >> they are actively creating their own central intelligence agency. They have uh the current prime minister uh melted the parliament four months ago and had a whole new parliament built. Japan is restructuring towards an offensive military and intention uh intelligence capability that is domestic and driven by domestic interests. Everybody should kind of take note of that >> because that means the world order coming out of World War II where Germany and Japan were forbidden from having offensive military capabilities and became heavily dependent on the United States for their nuclear and military umbrella. Both of those countries now in 2026, the German chancellor said that Germany will grow the largest military in all of Europe and they will become the leader of NATO. >> Every time they've done that, the [ __ ] gets wild, kids. So strap in. >> And Japan has said the same thing. We are no longer going to be yolked under the American umbrella. We are going to create our own offensive capability. We are actively building our own central intelligence service. So the sign that the United States has lost influence in Asia and lost influence in Germany is empirical as much as it is contextual. How much have we really lost? Maybe that's up for debate. But for sure, we are not living in the same postw World War II times that we used to live in. China China doesn't want a conflict. And I'll I'll emphasize and I'll start there. They don't want a conflict because they don't want to run the risk of possibly doing poorly, being seen as less powerful than they really are. They watch the paper tiger effect that happened on Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine. They watch the paper tiger of what happened in Iran when the United States invaded Iran. So, they don't want that. And that goes back to SunSu, art of war stuff. You don't want a conflict if you don't have to have a conflict. And I think what they are testing right now is whether or not they can move in some sort of aggressive way against Taiwan to bring Taiwan into the fold to cut off Taiwan's promise of one day being a free and independent sovereign nation. And this idea that somehow they will be an ally to the United States off the coast of China. China's just trying to squash that. Japan is going to do whatever Japan is going to do. And you're right, China does not want to see Japan militarize or become a powerful independent nation. But having just come from that country, culturally, Japan's going to need 50 years >> to actually change the mindset of its own people. We're talking about a We're talking about people who for the last 70 years have been yolked into being America's like pet kicking like creating American economic value, following American policies. Like they are the farthest thing from a fighting people that I have seen in a long time. The only country I've ever seen as passive and reserved and nervous about their own future is when I've when I've supported Portugal, >> former Soviet. >> Portugal. >> Yeah. Former Soviet tiny little country. But in both cases, think about the histories. Portugal, they explored the world first. Portugal, the Portuguese had colonies all over the world. Now they're just this tiny little country that nobody talks about that makes wine. The Japanese were the people that created the kamicazi pilots. They were not just an atrocious empire in the early 1900s, but they had hundreds of years before that where they were the the samuris. They were the shinobi. They were >> the only ones that could stop the Mongol invasion. That one's crazy. >> And and the Japanese raped Chinese and Koreans just to clean the bloodlines. Jesus, >> the chi the [ __ ] Japanese slaughtered Korean tigers systematically because they knew the tiger was a cultural symbol of of power for the Koreans. So like the Japanese come from a rich foundation of violent imperial projected power and now they sit silently on a subway listening to their own devices hushing you if you make too much noise. I don't think China's worried about them being a threat for the next five generations or the next three generations, the next 50 years. So, China knows if they can squash anything that happens in Taiwan and cut off the East from the United States, they'll just win by having the Japanese buy Chinese telecom. The same way that Russia tried to win Europe by having Europe reliant on Russian energy. Damn, that is uh I've spent a fair amount of time doing very novice style approach to research on Japan, but enough that I've really gotten a sense of the truth of the meme that said Japan any other time in history and it shows them as like samurai [ __ ] swords wielding heads being lpped off and Japan now and it's like Hello Kitty. >> Uh yeah, it's wild. they what what culturally happened because I think a lot of people think oh it was the bomb and that just sort of tightened them up. The reality is that they were so imperialistic and so out over their skis that when and this was something I wanted to ask you about China when Japan actually struck the US it was a moment of decline it was a moment of desperation so they don't have many resources so they were reliant on um the US the Netherlands maybe the UK I can't remember who uh but the US and Netherlands for sure they were getting all their oil and then uh this was during World War II two, they realized, uh-oh, they just signed a deal with um Germany, and now they're pushing into China. This is all one big war. We can't have it. So, we're going to cut them off from their oil supply. That's why they attacked. >> Cuz they were like, "Okay, we've only got about 6 or nine months of fuel left. If we don't move now, then we're in trouble." Now, they knew that it was a very high-risisk endeavor to attack the US. We all know how it went. But by the time they got to that point, there were already people in Japan that were food insecure in the extreme. Some would say some people were starving. Um, they had trained the whole nation to expect that you're going to need to embody that same kamicazi spirit so that we're going to have one sort of big final bloody battle to the death. And so the Japanese by the time they do Pearl Harbor, they've already given up on the future. There's no sense of like I as a Japanese person look into the future and see me raising kids and all that. All I see is we're going to fight to the death. And so there's this book called Embracing Defeat and it talked about why for Japan when the bombs dropped there were and the total surrender was announced. There was a sense of relief >> of okay, we don't have to keep doing this. And what I found interesting in that story is that oh this wasn't Japan at the height of its powers and that's why it moved on the US. This was Japan that had just been cut off from oil was already having economic trouble because they'd overextended themselves by being so imperialistic. And now their whole society sees nothing in the future and that's when we make the move. Now when I look at China and I see that they're actually economically on the decline because I was always looking at this through the lens of Thusidities trap >> which is rising power in China, declining power in the US, peak danger. But it might be something slightly different, which is you've got this nation that has used being on this upward trajectory suddenly finds itself with a massive demographic problem coupled with a massive economic problem. And now they don't really see their way back out of the economic problem, especially as we begin delobizing. And so now it's like, uh-oh, we're on a limited time frame here while we still have the power. Now, given that America is softening as well, the calculus starts to get very complicated. But if it's true that the powers are actually more likely to attack when they're on the decline, which is exactly what Germany did in World War I, exactly what Imperial Japan did, uh you could say is exactly what the US did in Iran, you have a declining power that's like, uh-oh, we've got a limited window where we've got to push the advantage. So then the question becomes, does that actually increase the likelihood that something happens in Taiwan that is kinetic? >> The idea that China is in an economic decline, that's only true if you compare their current productivity GDP against their recent GDP or their goals of GDP. I don't know that they would say they're in a decline, especially not compared to everybody else in the world that's got growing at less than 2%. So, does the Chinese government, do the Chinese people believe that they're in a decline? Or do they believe that they're in a a hiccup, a moment of stagnation? Maybe they even externalize their problems on us and they're like, "Oh, the United States has caused all this war and conflict and COVID created this issue now where people don't trust Chinese uh manufacturing because they think that we were, you know, taking advantage of all the supply chains." But do they believe that they're in an actual moment of decline? You have to believe you're in decline if you're going to take a desperate act to prevent the decline. >> Second, >> does China believe that the world is delobalizing? Or does China believe that COVID was a was a spontaneous change in economics and that it's just a matter of time? >> Such a great way to say that's [ __ ] but sure. was was just a matter of time before all the diversified and expensive decoupling consolidates back to single source supply chains again. Do you really want to go and have one supply chain from China and one supply chain from Vietnam or are you willing to save that 20% and just get your supply from China? Again, that is a very Chinese systematic again SunSu way of thinking about it. Time is the greatest leveler of all time. So if you want them to come back to you, all you have to do is continue to be present. It's how prostitution works. It's how espionage works. You're always available until their time changes. And China could very well be thinking that. And then on top of all of that, we talk about their their demographic issue. To us, it's a demographic issue. Is it a demographic issue to them? Do the Chinese believe that the widespread loss of their oldest generations is going to impact them negatively for the next thousand years? Or do they believe that it's going to be a very difficult transition for the next 25 years? But then after that, they're not going to be focused on being a manufacturing country anymore. They're focused on being a high techch manufacturing country. They need fewer skilled people to increase the per capita GDP to make them a first world superpower. And they're never going to have that as long as they're carrying 1.6 billion people. So if we let 300 million people just age out, die without any kind of state sponsored medical anything, who's going to police it anyways? They don't even have the infrastructure in the hinterlands of China to take care of those people anyway. There's still people in China with arched There are people in Japan that can't stand upright that are pushing carts at a 90 degree angle because they spent their whole life in a rice field. So of course they exist in China. Are those parents are those people? Are those children? Are those the people that they're really worried about shaping next the next generation's GDP? China watched as millions of people died in a cultural revolution. Why do we think that they're not willing to just watch again as as two generations of of oxygenarians just fade away and the per capita GDP of the country literally rises overnight? Well, so that's a certainly a very dark picture. Um it hinges on one thing that brings us to the most important technology the world has ever encountered which is AI. Right now you can look at the world. If you've got declining demographics as China does, as the US does, as Japan does, South Korea does, um your answer is immigration or AI. Those are your two options. Um Japan is now starting to run into uh immigration issues for the first time basically ever. And they're certainly hyperallergic to that. So you're seeing a response very early in ways that you're only just now seeing in Europe where they got way farther down the path. So that's very interesting. Uh US obviously it ran and will I think go back to running their own immigration experiment should the um right get uh out of office and the left come back in. Uh certainly with the DSA energy. But back to AI, AI gives you a chance where you don't have declining overall GDP even if you're still willing to let the, you know, hundreds of millions of people just phase out and not worry about the fact that you have a much smaller uh set of females of childbearing age. So, one of the questions I don't think Americans are being honest about because we're now turning hard against AI. like the sentiment in both Republicans and Democrats is falling so fast it's terrifying. And that is to me crazy that we're just like abdicating uh the pursuit of the most important technology the world has ever seen. So when you look at China, how important is AI to them? Are they going to pursue it in a way that we're just going to give up on here in the US? Oh, >> I don't even think that's my opinion. That's well documented that they are full speed ahead in AI. They are taking off the ethical concerns that we have. All they care about is being able to have a technology that can massively increase their productivity, perform consistently and outpace American technology. The cover of The Economist last week, maybe last week, maybe two weeks ago, was a cover celebrating Chinese AI development. Because here's what's fascinating. Not only is the United States anti- or ambiguously committed to AI. >> China has already paired AI with robotics. The two go hand in hand. The collegiate governments across the GCC countries, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, they're all pushing their investments into AI. Where they used to push their investments into American real estate, >> American weapons development, now they're pushing it into AI, which means all of that G Coast money, all of that GCC money is going to Chinese development and Chinese support to develop AI capabilities in the Middle East. >> Do you have is there any reporting on that? I haven't seen the percentage of because I would say a big part of the reason we went to war with Iran was to make sure that we could secure the GCC investments in AI. Um this is the first time I'm hearing anybody put forward that a lot of those dollars are now going to China. >> Yeah. So one of the best places that I would look at is is the edge uh what is it called? The Edge conglomerate. It's the military conglomerate of the UAE. UAE which just broke from OPEC. The UAE that's increasingly independent. the UAE that just cut off all ties to Iran, which is a big step because people don't realize most of UAE's food comes from Iran. >> Wow. >> So, they're finding their food from somewhere else. And I don't know where that is, but >> Edge is a fantastic example of how the UAE's consolidated all of its high-tech military infrastructure into one organization. That one organization is investing heavily in AI development from across the world. It's not just the United States. So I agree the United States may be trying to secure investment and I don't know what the specific breakdown is as it is now. I am sure that breakdown exists somewhere. Somebody's done a study who I don't know but somebody's done a study to see how much of the technology that's being purchased and invested in the Middle East is coming from China versus the United States. My point with all of that is China at the current rate they will outpace us in AI. If the >> based on what? just based on their willingness to invest, develop, grow, apply, their risk tolerance for applying AI, their lack of political debate about AI replacing jobs or anything else to their to to my admittedly dark, but I still think uh ethnically accurate interpretation. If people die, people die all the time in China and it gets under reportported because they just don't have reporting systems for it like they do in the United States. But if you're a Chinese person in Beijing where your parents are also in Beijing and you don't really like taking care of them or maybe you put them on private insurance, you're not having kids on purpose. The last thing you're concerned about is a village full of uneducated, broke, poverty-stricken people 10 like 2,000 miles away. >> That's the last thing you're concerned about. And the Chinese government isn't concerned about them either because the Chinese government's like, "Let them [ __ ] go. We have we have batteries and renewable energy that we can plug into a robot on a tractor and replace the whole farm." That's you can see how China's putting it all together in a way that the United States is putting it all together in a peacemeal way. We we see renewable energy as separate from electric vehicles, separate from robotics, separate from AI. China's like no, they are all the next step to replacing people who are a net drain on the national revenue, replacing them with a net productive uh capacity on the GDP national ledger. It's sad, dude. But I in my time in China, they are wildly pragmatic. If you think the Japanese are pragmatic, the Chinese are 10x. >> Yeah. Um, that is more the face I was making is just like that's so ruthlessly efficient. Uh, yeah. Watching what they're doing with energy versus what we're doing with energy is crazy. Just today on my live show, uh the three of us were yelling about because that's my whole beef is this is crazy to me that the US has overregulated energy production. We should be letting the best and the brightest people innovate on energy. Supply their own energy. Let Microsoft spin up Three-Mile Island. Let people do nuclear. Let companies generate their own energy. Make them responsible for their own energy. Fine, whatever. But like let them improve this system. It's crazy to me that we're just letting China run away with it. Um, that is excruciatingly disheartening. >> Does that sound like a country in decline? >> The US? >> No. The now >> Oh. Oh. Oh. China. Yeah. So, I think China has economic woes to be sure. I think China has belief in themselves though and that's going to count for a lot. >> Um, but before we get to that, I want to understand what are the consequences if China gets to AGI before we do? So advanced general intelligence or artificial general intelligence is so far away. I'm not I'm not convinced that it's something that's imminent. When anybody gets to AGI, the real question is going to be what were the what were the things that we did immediately before breaking that barrier to help us protect systems, processes, governance after that event. What we're doing right now isn't even close to being able to hem what's going to happen with advanced general intell or with artificial general intelligence. When it happens, it's going to be literally what did we do the three months before we broke that sound barrier. If China gets there first and if China sets the standard for what the barriers are, I mean, you're talking about a complete unknown for sure. It would be based on completely different ideological goals, economic goals, political goals, sociological goals than what would happen if the United States did it or any other western country would do it. Because it's not going to be how it's not going to be founded in democracy. It's not going to be founded in support to populations. It's not going to be based in the the advancement of humankind. It's going to be based in the optimized maximum utility of tools. And that then makes the question like if that's what it's based in, will it ever become self-aware? And if it does become self-aware, then it's just a tool. How will it react? Then this is it's funny that you mentioned this because just before we we started talking on camera, I was telling you about a book that I've been reading from the 1980s, a book called Hyperion. Hyperion, for anybody who's not a super sci-fi nerd, uh Hyperion was a book from the 1980s that won a whole slew of sci-fi awards that is still very well regarded and virtually unknown as a mainstream book. >> When I started reading it, I started reading it because I wanted to explore um the discipline that goes into creating a world. It's a very detailed I mean, you create a world in the video game all the time, but it's something that I don't do very often. What turned the corner for me when I was reading the book because it was it's work to read a book that's worldbuilding. But what turned the corner was when they introduced AI. A book from the 1980s introduced AI as a very real a very real question concern worry that we're talking about right now. It introduced this idea of AGI in the 1980s in a sci-fi story about what would humanity look like in an age beyond AGI. And that's for me that's what's so powerful, what makes that book such a great book. But it also is part of what makes us have such strong dissenting points of view in our country right now about artificial intelligence. We're worried about AGI. We haven't even given ourselves permission to generate AI at the pace that we could. >> The thing I want to understand, so I have a very strong opinion that America needs to win that race >> that the thing that we need to watch out for above all else is humanity's tendency towards tyranny. Uh it's the one variable that China has not protected itself against. >> Um and so I am terrified of a world on like if we're worried about um artificial intelligence as a whole bunch of question marks and we don't even know. Uh you don't need to look that far because a authoritarian leader with all the power in the universe. I mean this would be like a magic device if it really artificial general intelligence is scary because it will get into a self-recursive improving loop. Um and the theory is at that point then it will it's you know a hop skip and a jump to artificial super intelligence. Once you get to artificial super intelligence then it's like okay are we a pet >> of uh ASI? Are we uh does it have such a different value system that it doesn't have any beef? it's perfectly happy to be a tool for us to use and it just doesn't care. Doubt it. Um, so that's where I'm like, okay, hold on. We've got just one thing to deal with right now, which is we've got these two systems, one of which has killed in not too distant memory 45 million people. Uh, if your read is anywhere near accurate, it's perfectly happy to let hundreds of millions of people die if that's what it takes to just revamp the economy. Um, I don't want them winning the race. If they were to win the AI race, are there consequences? And if so, what? It's this is this is what makes it so hard to answer in any confidence. We can we can speculate for sure, but you're 100% right that the Chinese government that's in power right now is a government that let 45 million people die in the 70s, >> 50 years ago. >> Yeah. This is not ancient history. And and here we are debating whether or not they'd be willing to let hundreds of millions of people die between now and 2050. Doesn't seem like a stretch to think that with that in a hundred years they would let it happen twice and larger than before and find a way to blame us for it. Find a way to blame some kind of external factor for it. Right? But the idea that artificial general intelligence getting into a recursive loop of self-improvement would somehow be better if it happened for the United States than if it happened for China. That's the part where I don't know that there's enough evidence to suggest what better actually is. Because in the United States, it would most likely be economic. It would almost guaranteed be used for military purposes. Hopefully, it would be used for some kind of efficiency to our in our energy infrastructure and our and our technology uh our technology advantage in the marketplace. But those are all the same places that would be used in China as well. >> But if I told you that they were about to build a super soldier, would you say, "Ah, cool. Let them." Or would you say, "Yeah, we got to build our own super soldier." Well, >> I would say that for any country, though. But here's what's fascinating. The United States has always been an imperial power always trying to project its power abroad. China has largely not just during the time of Mao but even before that even under Shi uh uh Shanghai was largely a regional insular power trying to maintain >> while China was pretty uh acquisitive in terms of trying to rule as large of a portion of the world as they could in their time. So when so when was that time period? >> Jesus. The years I wouldn't know. >> But but it wasn't a it wasn't a centralized government that was trying to do it. >> True. Right. It was a weird sort of barbarian fifom competing kingdom sort of world which is exactly what happened in Europe and with the Native Americans here in the United States. When you actually compare governments to governments, would China just basically use AGI to essentially make itself into a super police state and a super powerful defensive shell with a capability of basically projecting economic and political threats worldwide? Or would it also create a military capability so that it could invade the United States? guaranteed the United States would weaponize it so that it could invade China, but we'd never invade China. It would all be cyber. My whole thing is I'm worried about cyber warfare. And if um if we got it, then we would certainly use it. We would say we're using it for good purposes, but we would certainly use it to uh see anything we wanted to see, control anything we needed to control. But the same will be done against us. To me, this is an arms race. It's best understood as the race to nuclear. And just like with nuclear weapons, it's the proliferation that stops the use because you have mutually assured assured destruction. Now, I don't think it would work like that with AI. I think that they would literally try to deploy the AI as fast and furious as they could >> and you need an AI that's going to stop those attacks and it becomes like spy versus spy with the AI versus the AI. That's my instinct on where this plays out, which is why you can't just let like if I'm China, I'm like, I cannot let the US have this and me not have it, right? And if we're the US, we can't let them have it and us not have it. I'm perfectly happy to live in a world where they're doing their thing and they're growing it as fast as they can and they're making it more efficient and yep, great. Got it. I totally understand. My advice to every country would be to get your own AI. Do not let anybody else control your access to literal intelligence. The thing that I'm reacting against is the US has been prosperous for so long. They have completely lost sight of the fact that one day somebody else could be slapping you around telling you what to do and it is going to be absolutely cold comfort that you felt America had it coming or whatever weird [ __ ] thing it is that they think. It's like bro we've got to be all over this. And just like we had the Manhattan project to make sure that we got nuclear weapons first. uh we need to make sure that we are in pursuit of this technology first of all because when used for positive things it is going to be the single most transformative technology ever. They're already now doing it's one cancer it's just melanoma but they're filing for a patent for the ability to do um mRNA vaccines based on the actual tumor that you have and getting your own body's immune system to recognize it and go attack it. Now, that wasn't going to happen without AI. And if you want to talk about supercharging that and getting it to work with all the other cancers, you're going to need AI. And the fact that AI can fold proteins so it can create novel proteins and figure out drugs and I mean, there's just so many things and people are but it's going to increase energy costs. Yeah. because your dumbass overregulated the energy industry and didn't allow there to be continued innovation there like China has done where their access to energy is almost a vertical line because they're putting so much effort into whether it's coal whether it's uh solar whether it's nuclear like they're just to your point to them energy AI technological superiority cost of living it's all one thing and man in the We've just got our heads screwed on backwards. It's crazy. >> The original question you had was what happens when somebody breaks through AGI? And and that's why I it's it's not going to be limited. It's a recursive loop. So there might be a cyber attack that starts an AGI war, assuming that we're in a race to AGI now, which would be great to say that we're in a race to AGI now. It does certainly seem like we are racing with our shoelaces tied to together and China's racing with two separate shoes. But >> if we're in an AGI race, an AI race with AGI as the finish line, >> that way we don't even have to worry about super intelligence. >> If that's the race that we're in, once AGI exists, it's not going to be long before it says cyber warfare is the easiest first step, but you still need boots on the ground. They may not need to be human boots. Right now it gets to the point that China has robots and electric vehicles and renewable energy it can put on those electric vehicles. Now you have automated tanks, automated uh howitzers, automated logistical supply lines, automated boats that deliver new weapons, automated everything that's powered by the sun, powered by the wind, powered by remote charging stations that just float in the sky. Who knows what? >> But the thing is new technologies are born on the back of military use. That's that's where our AI came from. It all derived from military use cases. Chinese is going to be doing the same thing. So whatever breakthrough happens with AGI is going to happen militarily first. And only from the successes of the military experimentation will secondary use cases be identified. So invasion doesn't mean human invasion. Invasion can literally mean what we're seeing in Ukraine right now, just armies of drones. Drones that are designed to do who knows what. I mean, a drone can fly in, a hand a battalion of drones can fly in and do all the hard dirty work, provide all the the uh area command and control and uh and uh set the perimeter and just wait until a human being, five or 10 human beings come in, then a series of robots can come in and create a pre-fabricated command center and everything. So human beings literally just walk in, sit behind computer terminals, and now they're in control of a thousand square miles. All done because AGI participated in drone, land combat, naval combat, sea combat, satellite surveillance, cyber warfare. It's not one or the other. It's all of the above. That's exactly how AI is trying to be rolled out into our conflict now. War planning, mission planning, actual munitions on delivery, etc. So, I appreciate your point on cyber warfare, but to think that invasion isn't going to be something that's part of the equation in the future. I think China doesn't want to send a million men on a ship to the United States. But if they had an option to one day in the not tooistant future send automated boats across the Pacific, they would have a harder time imagining what would spur that, but there would certainly be the capability if we continue down the path. So there's no denying that. >> Do you have a hard time in picturing it if the United States remains a superpower? >> I do. I I agree. As long as there's parody, there's deterrence. But if China actually reaches AGI first, it means that they monetized AI first. It means that they've they've far superseded our economic superiority long before they've ever long before they would ever send forces to the United States. >> It's interesting if I think if they got to AGI first and then quickly got to I know you're trying to avoid the ASI thing, but I think that they're almost one in the same phenomena. >> Okay. uh that the first thing I do is go, "Hey guys, I've got it." And um here's the list of demands. Stop doing this. Start doing that. Be that. And if you acquies, then all is well. Okay, you didn't do the first thing. So now I'm going to show you the blatant power of this. Boom. Your entire power grid just shut down. Whatever. >> Uh turn it back on so you guys can see. We really can do it. Stop [ __ ] around. Get in line. I'm way more worried about that than I am like the Terminator bots rolling up because controlling people is hard. And so the more enemies you make by rolling up and trying to like shoot things, uh, the bigger problem you create for yourself if you just let them know, look, we can choke you guys out at any time. There's no point. Why would we want to do that? Let's just get in line. I have a feeling it' be something more like that. >> It's interesting. It's a very western mindset. The whole idea that they would announce their capability, make a threat, wait for acquiescence, demonstrate that they have the ability. >> You think they would >> look at what they did in Hong Kong. China, China operates completely different than the United States. They create a capability. They don't tell anybody they have that capability. They deploy that capability because they get the element of surprise by deploying the capability, not by announcing the capability. So, they deployed their legal capability in Hong Kong. They deployed their police capability in Hong Kong. It was all there so that when the time came to take control of Hong Kong, it was literally a snap of the fingers and there were thousands of of police following legal orders, beating riers in the streets. So, what's more likely to me is that they would have AGI. They wouldn't tell anybody about it. They would use that AGI selectively to test their capability in the United States. Shut down power grids. Don't warn the United States. Shut down the grid. >> Turn the grid back on. Okay, now we know we can do that. Can we attack the the water supply? Can we attack uh energy uh um renewable energies? Can we attack major industry uh tech industries in California? Can we target just a single company? Can we shut down Salesforce but keep Google running? And if they can do all of that, now they know they have that power. So then they just launch that power, shut everything down, and then the United States is saying, "Somebody come help us." And then the Chinese are there. Hey, we just happen to have drones, robots, and boats that can bring you food, water, and and portable gas, energy, whatever. We can help you. Just like we were the first ones to create the COVID vaccine, we can be the first ones to deliver you a solution to your massive, unexplainable, unfixable uh grid shutdown. It doesn't have to be like, hey, we're sable rattle, saber rattle, sable rattle. Here come ships across the ocean with guns and flags and trumpets. That's an American thing, right? Here's the president saying, "We're going to send uh naval war a naval carrier group to Iran. I'm telling you now we're doing it. Now every day in the news, you're seeing new satellite images on its way." That's a very American way of carrying out conflict. >> Yeah. Well said. That's I think a very good point. Um, okay. So, in this crazy world, the only thing that's going to get somebody into the position that they want is self-belief. They believe that they can do it. they believe that they have the mandate whether it's the mandate from heaven to be the middle kingdom as China believes about itself or once when America believed that we were the shining uh citadel on a hill and we were the place that had the moral authority and we were righteous >> God's grace >> yes I don't think America America certainly is fractured maybe there are some people like me maybe there's a bunch of us that still believe in America that um you know are willing to work hard to try to be the best and you know really do something in the world. But I think that a lot of people have lost faith in America, do not have the will to stand up for America, don't have the will to reunite people, any of that. Um when you look at the will in China versus the will in America, um do you see that there's something consequential there that's going to be deterministic in this coming conflict between two great powers? Even the question I think under underestimates the way the Chinese think. I don't think they think about the will. Like they're not worried about the will of the Chinese people. Their job is to do this other thing. Like my job is to manufacture widgets. >> But are they doing it because they're afraid or are they doing it because they really believe like holy hell like we've really done something. We China. >> Absolutely they believe that because you So I'm 46 years old. If I was a 46-y old Chinese man, then that means from the day I was born until today, I have seen the fastest growth in China of all time. >> Seen the fastest growth of anybody. >> Yeah. >> Ever of all time. >> Yeah. Like I went from I went from possibly still having a dirt floor to being the second largest economy in the world in my lifetime. And I'm still prime production age. >> Yeah. So, do I even have an idea that somehow we're like on the decline? No. It's like we're still skyrocketing, guys. We we're being uh there's some hiccups because of AI and technology. There's some hiccups because of these crazy ass white people on the other side of the ocean who are always starting wars. Like, there's some hiccups, but but man, like I am part of the of the greatest generation. >> Yeah. >> We still believe that the greatest generation's already passed. >> But what I'm saying about they they may not think about it, but they have it. They have the will. They have self-belief. >> And I think what America and Europe is struggling from is they've lost the belief. >> And so you've got China believes in itself. Islam believes in itself. And now you're getting this like sort of crazy disruption in the West because we don't believe in ourselves. We're trying to go head-to-head with Iran. We're certainly losing that battle. Uh Europe is trying to sort of stand up for itself and say, "Wait, we do have a culture and it does deserve to be protected." But they really can't get people excited about that. And so they keep inviting people into their country or not kicking people out of their country who have no interest in assimilating whatsoever. Uh and so that strikes me as like if you were going to say what's the biggest problem, I'd be like that. >> I would agree with that. I would agree with that because you're and I I I'm not gonna name names, but when you say that there are certainly people who believe in the United States, I believe most Americans would say, "I believe in the United States." But then the next thing you would have to ask them is, "How are you dividing your resources to show that belief?" And all those Americans who bought guns because they were afraid somebody might try to steal from them during COVID, which was a huge spike in Americans, they actually have a belief that they're investing in that goes contrary to the belief of long-term American stability. And all those people who started moving some of their investments into foreign stocks or moving some of their investments into foreign property. All those people who bought a second passport or those people who pursued a second passport by exercising their Irish descent, their Italian descent, their Spanish descent, their Canadian descent. Like there's a lot of people out there, tens of thousands of Americans who are still living in the United States who would probably say I believe in the United States. But I'm hedging my bets. I'm making sure that if I'm wrong, then I'm I'm good to go. And that is a very different belief in America than I think what we're talking about when we talk about an innate faith that the Chinese might have for themselves. They like you don't hear about Chinese millionaires trying to leave China. You hear about British millionaires leaving the UK, but you don't really hear about a lot of migration of super wealthy. >> A little unfair just because China will capital control the [ __ ] out of you. they will jackmaw you until the end of time. But um certainly I do think that China has from the person who saw themselves come up from a dirt floor to one of the most spectacular highrises on planet earth is going to think yeah this is pretty special. >> They probably to a large degree think that the well the authoritarianism is working so I don't exactly have a real big beef. Um so I don't begrudge on that. I certainly understand all of that. I'm maybe talking about something slightly different, which is um so I certainly got a gun during CO because [ __ ] was actually getting weird. Uh a photo of my house was put on the internet that said um I can't remember if it said eat the rich or burn the rich. I think it was burn the rich. So I'm literally looking out at LA on fire, seeing my house as the photo where people are saying that. Uh yeah. So in that moment, good sense prevailed and I was like, I'm going to make sure that I'm protected. My whole thing is that there is a massive divide in the country and some people actively hate their own country. >> And that to me is when I look at the anti- AI sentiment, when I look at the anti- they'll call it billionaire, I'll call it anti- entrepreneur sentiment. Uh, when I look at the fact that people outright say that, and I'm talking people with American accents, that we've got to take down empire, they don't say the empire, we we're in the belly of empire, we got to take empire down. Like, that's how they look at America. That they want to hang the American flag upside down. That they want to get rid of borders. That they want to um bring in migrants illegally, legally, doesn't matter. make sure that they have the right to vote, abolish the Senate, get it just to be a pure um number of people who vote style democracy. That's where I'm like, uh oh, like this is when you have a country that's in that kind of internal peril. You are at a very weak point. I won't say that we haven't been here before. We had an actual civil war, and we're not in actual civil war right now. Maybe cold, but we're certainly not hot. So, America's gone through worse. But yo, in my lifetime, this is different. This is a very different texture, >> which is a just a fantastic juiposition about a Chinese person who is your age and where they stand right now. >> It's uh you know, I was I was mentioning to you earlier that one of our first conversations ever, I think it was three years ago, >> the thumbnail was war is coming. And now here we are in 2026 and there's war in Israel, there's war in Ukraine, there's war in Iran. Yeah, we're talking about when there will be war over Taiwan. >> People thought I was just fear-mongering, but yeah, >> a second conversation that we had maybe six months after that, the thumbnail was get out of the United States by 2030. And now here we are having a conversation about active people. And here's what's so fascinating is there are people inside the United States who believe they're actually helping the United States >> by doing all the things that you just said by talking about dissolving the empire and letting in migrants migrants limits uh legal or illegal and robbing from the rich and dissolving us the Senate like those people think they're helping the United States. So if this is the change that we've seen in just three years of conversations between us >> Yeah. What's the next seven years going to look like? >> And what's the next 25 years going to look like? And I ideally everything moves at a faster pace. So we shouldn't be facing 25 years of disarray, but it 25 years of disarray is going to get concentrated into potentially five or seven years of disarray. >> Jesus. >> I've been saying this for a long time. I know we talk about it offline, too. It's not unamerican to think about what you can do to take care of yourself, your family, your legacy, your wealth. That doesn't make you unamerican. That makes you responsible. What you could say good sense prevails. >> Yeah. >> But the problem is there are always going to be people out there who say that if you are preparing for something else, then you're not a true American. >> Yeah. And I get that and I think there's a reasonable argument to be made. But um my core thesis is if you have people that are that divided, you're not going to be able to generate the forward momentum to go up against Iran, Russia, China, like you're just not going to be able to defeat it. And so when I think back to uh even World War II, the very first thing that Church Hill had to do was he had to get everybody to believe in England. He had to get everybody to unite to say we are going to stand up and that's who we are. We're not the people that back down. And it was giving people a sense of a reminder of what their national identity was. And we would have to do that. And I really don't want to see us have to go all the way to somebody having guns pointed at us before we do it. Um but we really do have to decide what we stand for, what we're willing to fight for, what we are trying to build and create. We have to start thinking long term. We can't be thinking in election cycles. We've got to be quite literally teaching our children like this is what it means to be American. And right now we're a long way from a unified message. I won't say that there aren't people that are doing it, but I will say that we're a long way from a unified message. And that is very distressing. If I think through the lens of history, I'm I am not able to come up with an example of when we unified that wasn't at the receiving end of an enemy. >> Yeah. >> 9/11 brought us together. I think the assassination of JFK brought us together. >> Yeah. >> World War II brought us together. And our enemies have learned that as long as you don't provoke the dragon, the dragon essentially just has indigestion on its own all the time. >> So it would be a significant departure from our historical evidence for the United States to find a way to unify and do it quickly enough to overcome the advantage that some of these authoritarian countries already have. Yeah, I'm going to take my shot on the live. I've really started forcing myself to talk about, okay, what are the unifying ideas? What should we be excited about? How should we be thinking? What should we be telling kids? It's a drop in a very large ocean, but I will certainly keep trying. We'll see what comes of it. Now, that's my sort of bit of optimism. You have recently shown some optimism with your book. What are you hoping that people will use it for? Because you've gone I've moved away from personal development. >> Uh I really enjoyed it while I was doing it, but found that >> it's um well, I mean part of it just I said what I had to say. >> Uh and then some of it though was that getting people to actually make change is very very hard. It's much easier to aim at kids and just not let them get into bad ruts in the first place. But what do you want people to take away from the book? >> So, I have a new book coming out September 8th. It's called Outsmart Everyone. And the goal, >> very bold title, my friend. Very bold. >> But the goal of the book is basically to deliver on the title. I want anyone who reads that book to be able to outsmart everyone else around them because where my experience at CIA, where my experience as an entrepreneur, where my experience as the first millionaire in my family line, >> congratulations, man. >> Thanks, man. But where my experience has pointed me is that you can't save everyone. And the idea that you can help everyone is an idealistic and beautiful idea that I grew up with in the 80s and 90s, but it is a completely artificial unsubstantiated promise. You can't help everyone. >> Not only do you have the people who don't want to be helped, you have the people who can't be helped. And you have the people who will work against any help you try to give them actively just because it's help. And I literally can point to people in my family who fit all those definitions. >> Yeah. >> And I'm also learning as a especially now that I am in a position where I mean I just signed paperwork this morning for a half million line of credit to myself. >> Whoa. Which is unbelievable to me. It's unbelievable that I have the assets that a bank would offer me that in the first place. I am now in a position where I don't even have to ask for a loan. I can just literally take money from myself that's given to me that paying an an interest rate. So, I'm paying an interest rate for the expense of borrowing money, but I don't actually have a monthly payment. I don't actually owe anybody anything. Like, that's a that this is something I've never experienced in my life. And this is common for wealthy people where the rest of us are stuck taking a $60,000 $60,000 car loan nowadays isn't even crazy to think about. >> That's wild. >> 20 years ago it was a $60,000 car loan at 8% interest where you have to pay every month or else risk the forfeite of your car. I am outside of that forever. >> My children, as long as I protect my assets, my children are outside of that cycle forever. What I'm learning is that I need to help the people who are the most motivated to help themselves because those are the ones that shape the future for their country, for their family, for their industry. Helping everybody, to your exact point, trying to get everybody everybody to improve or optimize themselves is a losing battle. What I need to do is find the 3% that will never give up trying. And that's why I wrote outsmart everyone. >> And so given the boldness of the title, like if you were going to TLDDR for people, how do you actually outsmart everyone? Like there's a core concept in the book that I think is very interesting at a high level, but make it real for people, which is okay, you're in a world, there's so much information. Most of this information is either spin, uh it's fake, so it's just literally AI. So, it's hard to figure out what's real, what's not real. Uh, there's miss uh information. I'll never grant you mal information. That one it's just for the record. MAL is something that's true but inconvenient. So, I I will not acquies to MAL. But, uh certainly misinformation, disinformation, all of that stuff is real. Uh and so part of the promise of the book is you can actually turn that um just actual massive cacophony of information and actually make it knowledge. But how like what what is that transition that you're walking people through? >> So TLDDR CIA teaches us that there's a national security triangle that we use to identify priorities for national security. And those priorities for national security, they align one to one with priorities for our individual lives. Influence, power, security. >> It's the same three things that drive an individual are the same three things that keep a country safe. So the question becomes, how do you maximize your power, maximize your influence, and maximize your security? The way that CIA teaches us to do that is through a through a flywheel, another triangle that's about information, consuming information and testing it with experience and then from that experience creating knowledge. Knowledge being distinctly different than information because knowledge has gone through the test of experience and everybody's experience is different. So everyone's knowledge based on the same information is also different. But then with that knowledge, you go out and collect new information that you test with experience and you create new knowledge. And the person who can go through that flywheel the fastest is the person who will outsmart everyone else. And what's and what's the most powerful piece of this for me is that CIA also taught me that because of the way the brain works, we all want to be outsmarted. We want someone else to do all the mental lifting, all the heavy thinking, all the planning and engineering, and we just want the icing. What we don't want is to feel like we've been outsmarted. >> That's [ __ ] interesting. >> So, outsmart everyone teaches you how to outsmart everyone and how to do it in a way that they never realize they've been outsmarted, which just makes them love you. >> That's wild. uh a little distressing but very useful that humans are wired like that. Give an example from the book of a just banger that you walk people through of like okay take this thing you turn it into this you think about like that and then deploy it like this to get an outcome. My favorite section of the book I teach a concept that CIA taught me called two questions and a confirmation. Two questions in a confirmation is something that we use in the field of intelligence to collect as much sensitive information from a target as possible without ever exposing the target to to sensitive information about ourselves. But what I've learned is that in the civilian world, especially in business and entrepreneurism, you can do the same thing with a sales prospect, with a client, with a competitor, and you can suck up massive amounts of information, whether it's marketing data or competitive data or or getting them to believe in a sales promise to get them to close the sale, using the same two questions in a confirmation. And this is how it works. I ask you a question, an open-ended question about anything, and I let you answer that open-ended question in whatever way fits your preferences. I don't try to lead you on. I don't try to guide you. I don't try to prime you. I just ask a question because what's going to happen is an open-ended question will invite you to talk about your answer. So, just for those of you who don't know what an open-ended versus a close-ended question is, a close-ended question is something that you can answer with a sentence or a single word, right? >> Did you like dinner? Yes, that's a close-ended question. How was the movie? Fine. That's a close-ended question. >> An open-ended question is, what did you think of that movie? How do you like mystery movies? Something that invites people to talk. They have to explain their answer. Now, I've asked one question, open-ended question. You've given me a response that is relevant to you and all new information to me. So now I only have to ask another open-ended question based on some part of your response. So I'll ask you a second open-ended question which you will respond to again with an explanation of new information. At that point in time, you would think that in a normal conversation, I should start talking about myself or I should stop asking questions because it's going to feel like an interrogation. What I'm going to do instead is I'm just going to confirm and repeat back to you something you already said which makes you feel heard, makes you feel valid, validated, makes you feel like I'm really listening to you. And after I make my confirming statement, I'm going to ask another question and I'm going to ask another one after that and I'm going to confirm your response after that. And what that creates is this relationship between us where I'm in control of the entire conversation >> and you're giving me so so much information about yourself that you don't even realize you're doing it. And I'm collecting information about you and simultaneously making you feel good about it because you feel confirmed, validated, listened to, and because I'm sitting here asking you all these questions and letting you just talk, you like being around me. Isn't that wild? >> So, two questions in a confirmation is something that I've been teaching for years. There's a I have a a centmillionaire client in Orlando that I taught this to their sales team and they spiked their sales. I have still have people from his sales team that write me to say, "I can't believe how easy this thing works." Sales people that come off the street with no sales background and they literally watch like a 15-minute video from me and then they go and they make their first phone call and that's all they do for the whole phone call and they close a sale. they'll close a deal, right? I've had I have people that I I've taught who are anywhere from medical professionals to coaching professionals to psychologists. I've I just taught this at a uh with a sensitive client in Denver who's involved in the grid, energy grid, >> and I taught them this methodology for their consultants who consult on the energy grid. And their consultants were like mind-blown because one of the hardest things is for a in an energy world is to be able to bridge the gap between the person who provides the energy and the person who actually provides the infrastructure for the energy is all it takes is two questions and a confirmation and they're like I can't believe it's this simple to get a client to listen to me to buy what I'm trying to get them to buy to to close a deal to close them on a multi-year contract. I've been using this my whole life because I know it works if it can make someone turn coat against their country. It can certainly work to get someone to hand over their credit card. >> Very, very well said. Where can people get the book? >> You can find Outsmart everyone online at all uh online book sellers. You'll find it at Barnes & Noble. You'll find it at Amazon. You'll find it in the UK at all of the major UK sellers. And if you want to go to the website uh for the book itself, you go to outsmart everyonespy.com. All the details are going to be in the description of the video. >> I love it, man. I really cherish sitting across from you and talking about this stuff. So, thank you as always for taking the time. I appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me, sir. >> You got it. All right, everybody. If you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. I think America's gone too far in privatizing everything. Election campaigns are something that should be funded 100% by government money and private donations should be banned. Not even possible. Set it up in such a way that you guarantee you can't buy your