How Elites Will Collapse America Like Rome: BlackRock, Trump vs Kamala & Market Crash | Whitney Webb

It's pretty clear that whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with some sort of US government debt crisis and I'm concerned about how that response is going to be regardless of which candidate wins. So for example Trump in his case when there was a major economic crisis in the form of you know the the uh what happened economically as a result of lockdown policy and and because of COVID-19 the person he and his the person that he and his administration reached out to was Larry Fink of BlackRock who uh implemented something we can get into later that some researchers have called the going direct reset which was basically a way to put money from QE directly in the hands of the private sector instead of public entities sort of like it had been done before. And um uh arguably that resulted in a massive wealth transfer and BlackRock didn't really use that money to help Main Street at all. They used it to buy shares in their own ETFs among other things. Um and then Kamala in her case her entire economic team is essentially led by Black former BlackRock executives and that was also true for the Biden ministration. So essentially BlackRock which was also played a major role in sort of developing the the bailouts in the 2008 economic crisis which was under Obama right will likely be developing the response for whatever this you know coming economic crisis is regardless of who gets in office. If we look at you know the policy actions of the people running who they turn to in a time of crisis or who is running their economic team you know that seems increasingly likely. So that is why I'm very concerned I guess I would say about BlackRock in particular because they seem to be the people that the government turns to regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in office. And you know they have sort of a history of really affecting wealth transfers during these crises at a time when you know there's supposedly developing or helping develop policy meant to bail out Main Street they end out end up sort of affecting massive bailouts for Wall Street and of course the you know the people that BlackRock are trying to generate profits and profits for ultimately. Um and the other thing that I'm really concerned about as it relates to you know a coming economic crisis is that I think we're going to see a major effort to saddle American consumers with programmable surveillance money and seizeable money and so of course a lot of people for years now have been very concerned about central bank digital currencies or CBDCs but there are also things from the issued by the private sector like stable coins for example that are just as programmable and surveillable and seizeable as CBDCs are. So I think it's very likely in the event of a major debt crisis or some sort of crisis that damages significantly regular Americans purchasing power there will be an effort to onboard Americans onto one of those two versions of programmable surveillable money. So it's possible you know if Kamala wins we can see a CBDC or something like that but in the case of Trump he's sort of come out in favor of stable coins he did that recently at a at his speech at the Bitcoin conference um earlier this year and you know stable coins are just as programmable and surveillable and seizeable as CBDCs in in theory are and I think those as people have rightly pointed out are a threat to our financial privacy and ultimately our financial freedom. So I think people should be focusing not just on CBDCs but also you know these other um I guess digital currencies that have the potential to offer those same you know Orwellian uh, functionalities to the people uh, you know, issuing them and producing them. And some of those, uh, prominent stable coins like Circle, for example, have major alliances, uh, with BlackRock, and BlackRock has a minority stake in them, and have, you know, said in their, uh, some of their SEC filings that, you know, the stable coins can be used to manipulate the price of Bitcoin, for example. All right, we we've already here in the opening minutes, we put a lot of things on the table. I want to start now piecing them together into, um, a worldview that somebody that doesn't have your depth of knowledge, where they can begin to understand how this all pieces together. So, um, me as somebody on the outside of this, I look at it, I'm way more worried about whether, um, whether Republicans or Democrats get into office based entirely on what their economic policy is. You're really the first person that's, um, been clear in saying, "No, no, no, you're looking at the wrong level of analysis. You need to understand that they're they're both going to the same people to come up with their policies." So, whatever promises you hear, uh, that's ultimately not going to matter. So, what I want to understand is if BlackRock is really where we should be paying attention, if Larry Fink is who they're both basically going to go to, or Larry Fink-affiliated entities or people, uh, what is BlackRock's agenda? What do they want? Yeah, so I think there's things that we can look at as far as BlackRock is concerned that sort of give us clues as to what their agenda may be. And the most concerning thing to me about that as it relates to people like Larry Fink is that Larry Fink is on record saying things like markets don't really like democracies because they're messy. Markets like totalitarian governments. Um, and Larry Fink is someone who's been very obsessed with risk management most of his career, and sees essentially, um, you know, free democracies, and arguably also a free market, uh, in some senses, as uh, you know as generating more risk than perhaps he would like to handle. So when you're able to sort of control and centralize both markets and governments, you're able to control the amount of risk that's there. And so maybe that's good for asset managers like Larry Fink who are obsessed with this kind of stuff, but for you know regular people ultimately it reduces the amount of freedom that we would have. So I sort of see Larry Fink as someone who's looking to centralize power and centralize wealth and obviously that has major impacts on you know regular Americans and the people that aren't necessarily in in the oligarch class or in the top 1% that would benefit from those types of policies. Whoa, okay. That is extremely direct. Okay, so you have somebody who understands this is about risk mitigation. That a democratic government is going to have a lot more volatility. I mean even as I think about America having this moral standing in the world sort of being the world's cop, but every four years we have this sort of violent whiplash from one policy direction to the other. I've often thought about how jarring that must be to other world leaders. And so for better or worse, I can actually see what you mean. If somebody is investing in the marketplace and they want to make sure that they have a predictable level of risk so that they can not completely control the outcomes, but that they can narrow the band of outcomes so that they don't have this gigantic potential downside. And the way that we get that is totalitarian top-down control. Okay. That's a very clear thesis. Now the question becomes how are they going about doing it? What are the mechanisms? Well, you know, I think this is something that's much larger than just BlackRock specifically, but in terms of looking at what BlackRock has has done in terms of like, you know, US fiscal policy, I think it's important to sort of look at their role and you know, the '08 crisis, you know, which began the policy of quantitative easing and later on they were called upon by the Trump administration to help develop COVID fiscal response, but actually it began before then. So in the fall of 2019 at Jackson Hole, and this is also should point out this is based on the very excellent research of John Titus of the YouTube channel Best Evidence. Um, essentially this document was presented by BlackRock to central bankers at Jackson Hole. It was called going about going direct is what they called it and basically the idea was to have um, you know, what was generated via quantitative easing not just go to like public sector affiliated entities, but also directly into the hands of the private sector, i.e. Wall Street, and that was essentially what was proposed and this began begins to be implemented well before COVID when the repo market goes a bit haywire at the end of 2019 and sort of continues through up until COVID was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization at which point you know, there's a lot of calls between Larry Fink and Steve Mnuchin and other top figures and the economic team of the Trump administration and then they began to basically affect this policy or really supercharge this policy and and go direct even more. So there's a lot of, you know, uh things that are happening in terms of economic policy that ultimately resulted in what we're dealing with now a um I guess debasement of US American consumer purchasing power, but a lot of this money at a at a when there were lockdowns and there was really like no uh very little economic activity going on. Uh they're being given all of this uh you know, people like BlackRock asset managers are being given all of this money and then they go oh uh and instead of helping out Main Street, they go up and buy up all the assets. They buy shares in their own ETFs, for example. And basically what happened during COVID was a massive wealth transfer and if you look at uh the statistics of it, you know, the top 1% in the United States benefited hugely during COVID, but the rest of us uh did not. Maybe some people got stimulus in that, uh but a lot of the uh consequences downstream of those policies um have resulted in this um you know, inflationary situation we're in and a lot of other um you know, economic issues that people are dealing with. And so BlackRock sort of, I would argue, uh oversaw, you know, these these wealth transfers sort of, you know, uh to the benefit of Wall Street and not Main Street and it seems like, you know, if there is another crisis coming down the pike, which it seems there is, uh BlackRock is likely to do essentially the same thing, uh whatever policy they helped design. And it really should be a point of public discussion uh why BlackRock uh has so much influence over what the Treasury Department does or what the Federal Reserve does. Uh and really, you know, um as far as US COVID fiscal policy is concerned, which by the way, even though that was started under Trump, a lot of this continued through into the Biden administration, who again, Biden's top economic people are former BlackRock executives. You know, why is this particular asset manager manager on Wall Street uh so embedded with the development of US fiscal policy, which uh at times when that fiscal policy is meant to help regular Americans, uh it has not been doing that when BlackRock is involved and really this is something that most Americans don't even know happened, you know. All right, so this is begging a really interesting question, which is the idea of going direct sounds awesome. Like if I'm an individual person uh and And going to do quantitative easing, which for anybody watching this that doesn't know that, it's printing money. Uh you're injecting money into the system. Yay. Uh which is actually terrible. I have a whole thing on that. We'll get to that later. But just for now, so there the Fed is printing money. It's putting it into the system. Now, putting it into the system via treasuries or bonds, uh that's lame because ultimately that's the people that hold those assets, they get richer. The average person does not hold those assets and therefore you're bypassing the the middle class, let's call it the average person. So, I always thought, "Oh man, that's a terrible way to do it." So, I would probably have fallen for uh let's go direct. Let's just give the people the money. So, how is it that by going direct, if I'm understanding the mechanism there where we're giving you a stimmy check, it's going directly to you, it's in your name, you get a check cut to you. How does that facilitate the wealth transfer more rapidly? Maybe I didn't explain that exactly well, but the idea of going direct isn't so much that it No, no, no, not at all. And it's also again, this is this is the work of John Titus and so I'm sort of giving it, you know, describing his work. So, I may not be doing the best job in explaining it, either. But as I understand it, it was about putting the money not just in public sector linked entities, but also to the private sector, i.e. Wall Street banks directly. So, instead of Wall Street banks trying to get some of this, you know, QE generated money or or funds or whatever, having to go to a public sector entity to obtain them, they just receive it directly. Okay. Now necessarily going to regular Americans directly. It's not going directly from you know, money creation to regular Americans, it's going instead of being just, you know, the money generated is going to these public sector entities to be distributed, it's going directly to the private sector. So, they don't have to get it from the public sector entities. It just goes straight to them. So, it facilitates So, they don't really have to do the public private partnership thing to get their hands on it anymore. They just receive it directly. They take out the middleman, I guess, from their perspective. Okay, and what is that mechanism? So, I understand when the Fed is buying bonds, that's very clear. It's an easy way to get things into the system. But, if they're just giving the money to the banks, how is that explained or recognized on a uh P&L? Like, I don't understand how that makes its way. Yeah, um to describe the to describe the exact mechanism, again, I would refer you to John Titus or his work, his article on going direct on the Solari Report, uh which you can view for free. Um it's very well documented and describes all of that in detail, and he is uh you know, I'm just sort of pointing out his research cuz I think it's very important as it relates to BlackRock and what their impact on COVID fiscal uh policy responses. Uh but, again, uh for those very in-depth uh you know, uh explanations of what the mechanisms are and how going direct has happened, I would uh definitely encourage you to either have him on or or read his work because it's it's forensic, very detailed, uh and he makes just a completely airtight case uh for for what happened uh as it relates to BlackRock and going direct and COVID fiscal response. Got it. Um okay, so I will make my best guess right now, but if I am if going direct means that I'm giving I'm the Fed and I'm giving money directly to banks, banks still, even if they want to do fractional reserves, uh they are going to have to get the money into somebody's hands somewhere. Now, you mentioned earlier that they were buying their own ETFs. So, uh but it's my understanding the banks don't have ETFs. A company like BlackRock obviously would have ETFs. They they do. Yeah. Would would somewhere in the the going direct philosophy is money ending up getting sent directly to BlackRock, or they borrowing money from the banks who are getting it directly from the Fed? Well, in BlackRock's case, there was a funding facility set up. There were several set up during COVID. But what there were a couple of them, I think two, that were essentially given to BlackRock to manage. And again, this is a policy that BlackRock wrote well before COVID about what the Fed should do during the next downturn. And then the Fed implements that plan exactly well before COVID-19. And then when COVID-19 happens, they sort of supercharge the policy and then develop these funding facilities allegedly for bailing out Main Street as a result of lockdown policy. And then BlackRock is directly managing a lot of those funds. Ooh. Okay, so um I'm going to lay out my understanding of BlackRock, how they work, tie that to what I've just heard you say. This is all very distressing. Okay, so here's my understanding of the way that BlackRock works. BlackRock says, "Hey boys and girls, invest your money with us. And we are going to do things like ESG investing. So we're going to because when when you, dear person, investing your 401k with us, you actually will get voting rights in some of these companies that you now own things in. But what we're going to do is we're going to aggregate all of those rights, and we're going to go in on your behalf. And we're going to push for ESG's an easy one. Uh and so there they themselves, it's not like they had the money and they're investing their own money. They're actually aggregating the capital of people that are investing with them. And they're then aggregating their voting rights. Cool, that was already distressing enough. Now, what I hear you saying is that through this going direct policy, the Fed is going, "Hey BlackRock, you guys know how to invest money. So, as a way to get this stimulus into the economy in a way that will really stimulate Main Street, we're going to give it to you. You guys will know where to invest that money. You'll know how to aggregate the voting shares and really be able to do something wonderful for this country." Um now, if BlackRock were doing something wonderful for this country, we'd be in great shape. But, if BlackRock is doing something that isn't wonderful, we're now in a really bad spot. Did Do I have the gist of this correct? Yeah, I would say that's fair. And I think now it's perhaps different than in times past where you have, you know, in the case of Trump, Larry Fink used to be, um, you know, Trump's personal money manager. And, you know, Trump is on record saying that, uh, Larry Fink made him, uh, a very large amount of money as a result of that partnership. And then in the case of Biden and Kamala, you have, you know, basically their economic policy, Bidenomics or what will become Kamalanomics or whatever, um, you know, essentially being designed by former BlackRock executives as well. Um, so, you know, if this is what they did during COVID, and we can look at, you know, the other things that that BlackRock has done as it relates to US fiscal policy in the past, it seems like that what we That's what we can expect regardless of who wins in November, uh, if the next 4 years brings us some sort of economic crisis, which it seems likely that there will be some sort of economic event. Um, you know, you have people like the former Speaker of the House, uh, you know, Paul Ryan saying that it's very likely the next president is going to deal with the US government debt crisis, for example. So, you know, this isn't something I'm just speculating on. There's like major uh, politicians that say we should very much expect a major some sort of economic crisis to come on the scene over the next, you know, 4 to 5 years. Uh, and with, you know, either, uh, with Trump having a policy record of putting BlackRock at the helm when there is a economic crisis and then Kamala and Biden you know having BlackRock run their economic policy you know either way this is an entity that we should be looking at and scrutinizing because it's very likely they will be developing the fiscal response once again to whatever that crisis is. And they don't have our best interests at heart. Yeah. Um all right. So if you had to look at the outcome of the system that's being used right now which again even for my own sake just to recap a crisis happens there there's a debate to be had as to whether there should be a response or not but right now the MO is a crisis happens the Fed steps in to stabilize the market the way given previous administrations have handled this the way that they have started now getting that money into the hands of quote unquote Main Street is by using BlackRock to quote unquote know how to best direct that money and they are again just judging it by the outputs of the system what they're actually doing is facilitating a massive wealth transfer from the average American it's actually broader than that but we'll just keep it simple the average American to the what people call the elites that word is sort of getting weird um Yeah sure a lot of those words have gotten weird recently but yes the the 1% of the 1% to go back to sort of Occupy Wall Street lingo or something like that the very top. 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How are they doing this in plain sight? What exactly do you mean by that? Like how is Black How did BlackRock get away with that during COVID? How did they get away with it during COVID? How is it that um I think your expectation would be that when the next crisis happens, uh that it's going to happen again. Yeah, well, I think when a crisis is happening, uh people tend to have emotional responses and tend to be coming from a a place of fear, uh and that tends to uh prevent people from thinking critically or calmly or rationally about situations or about policies. And so, a lot of um you know, during COVID, obviously, a lot of focus was on COVID-19 itself, on the biosecurity situation, not just so much on the financial situation. Uh But for example, if there was a you know, a major crisis going forward that would greatly impact Americans ability to engage in economic activity or have their purchasing power, you know, close to wiped out or something. I think you would see a lot of people really beg for any policy response. Solve this crisis now, we need something and not really have people think about what is the best policy response um to this kind of crisis. People aren't going to think calmly and bring everything to the table and there isn't it's very unlikely there will be some sort of calm open public debate about it. Generally what happens is that the government says people are scared and emotional. They clamor for some sort of solution from the government and the government offers some sort of solution. And you know, like with COVID-19, BlackRock anticipated the next downturn about a month before the repo market started going haywire and presented to central bankers, this is the policy policy you should implement during the next downturn and it's very possible that BlackRock is working on policy papers you know, for central bankers or other people in um you know, the US government about what policy should be implemented if you know, this type of crisis happens or that type of crisis happens. It seems like they seem to be designing the policies I guess and they've you know, had you know, in the Biden administration over the past four years, you know, they've been leading his former BlackRock executives have been leading his economic team bringing us to where we are now and likely what will influencing what will happen over the next couple years whenever or up until this crisis emerges. So it seems um you know, very likely that they'll be you know, dominating you know, fiscal response again and then people because they're not really aware of how this is developed or really you know, there's just not a lot of media coverage about you know, for example, the role of BlackRock in uh Biden administration or in you know on Kamala's economic team specifically. Uh I've seen very little coverage if any of that uh recently. Maybe a few blips here and there of when those people are appointed but nothing uh significant beyond that. And then of course there was very little scrutiny um of US COVID fiscal response um I think as well um and it's just sort of written off as uh this is what the government had to do to respond to the crisis in a lot of situations but I don't think that's necessarily true because again um you know that uh fiscal response uh began well before uh you know COVID was declared a a pandemic by the World Health Organization preceding that by like several months, right? So um I don't know. I I think it's um uh a complicated situation. It's complicated to anticipate what will exactly happen but again history and tends to repeat itself in these cases and the fact that you have BlackRock so embedded with the Democrats specifically and also have this historical precedent with uh Trump when he was in office this last time. It seems very likely that they'll be doing this again. So I guess my role in this is to try and generate awareness so we can have a discussion before that time of crisis when people are emotional and afraid and concerned about their money um about whether we should be having BlackRock uh at the helm of this when the next crisis emerges. I would say no. Yeah. Okay, so let's ask the obvious question. Who should be in charge in that moment? Who who do we put in charge of fiscal policy? In times of crisis or otherwise? I don't necessarily have the best uh answer to that I guess because I think our uh current system uh specifically as it relates to you know the US Treasury Department has consistently been a revolving door for the last several decades with Wall Street um and like you know like Goldman Sachs for example has had very significant uh treasure or uh former Goldman Sachs executives have held very prominent roles at the Treasury when crises have emerged. So, as an example, you have one of the top guys at Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin, being a key figure in the Clinton administration's economic policy as Treasury Secretary and help helping engineer the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which creates, you know, arguably the 2008 financial crisis when George W. Bush's Secretary Treasury at the time the crisis happens is Henry Paulson, another former top guy from Goldman Sachs that allegedly told members of Congress if they didn't bail out the banks that martial law may be declared in the United States. For example, and then when the COVID fiscal response happened, Steve Mnuchin is a former top Goldman and Sachs executive as well. So, you and as far as, you know, the big parties, Democrat and Republican, they tend to appoint people to Treasury that come from the these top Wall Street banks that have a history of predatory and arguably criminal behavior. And so, you know, I think there needs to be a much larger um structural change, I guess, uh to prevent that type of revolving door policy if we're going to see any sort of meaningful fiscal response to a crisis that actually does take, uh you know, the needs of regular Americans into account because historically that is not what has happened. Um and the people that come to Treasury tend to have the best interest of Wall Street at heart and not the best interest of regular Americans at heart. And I think again that's sort of a phenomenon that's not exclusive to Treasury, either. You have this type of revolving door phenomenon in really most aspects, if not all, um of the US government where you sort of have regulatory capture um uh you know, of the people supposedly regulating those industries. The The industries themselves tend to have put their top people, at least these days, you know, into those major regulatory positions through this revolving door phenomena. So, I think we need to find a meaningful way to stop that before we can expect that um you know, major government fiscal response would be designed with the interest of regular Americans of heart with Main Street at heart and not Wall Street at heart. Okay, the question becomes how do we do that? So, walk me through just so that we're not talking abstract stuff, we're really bringing it down to earth. What are the interests of Main Street or the average American? Well, I think regular Americans would like to stop having their money stolen from them or being misused on things where it's basically being sent to enrich multinational corporations particularly in the war industry where you have a lot of you know, there's been a lot said over the past several years, decades really about the military industrial complex and how a lot of the wars that US empire goes to start in other countries generates a lot I'm going to stop you I'm going to stop you really fast just because you know this stuff so well that you'll fractal into 10 more extremely valid issues, but I want to start with you just said regular Americans want to stop their money being stolen from them. I will say I don't think the average American realizes that their money's being stolen. Whenever I bring that up, I feel like I'm screaming into the void. So, how exactly are Americans dollars being stolen from them? Okay, I would say it's going to things that are not actually building necessary infrastructure or proving Americans needs. So, money's being taken from from them via tax and just misspent. Yeah, I think taxpayer money has been has been people taxpayer wealth and the money brought in through taxes has been misused and essentially stolen for a very long time. If you look at the work of Catherine Austin Fitts and Mark Skidmore, for example, they um noted that like 21 trillion dollars of US taxpayer money essentially was stolen and they can't really explain what happened to it. So, you know, that alone is very significant. let me ask is taxation in and of itself theft? Um I mean, I I think under the current system because I you know, if if anyone's familiar with my work and my books, for example, I sort of argue that our government has been overtaken by this network of organized crime and intelligence agencies that have essentially fused their operations and did so in the immediate post-World War II era and I think find financing their operations when they're at the helm is not good and and that the fact that our money is is being taken from us ostensibly to provide services to us and if you believe in the development agenda abroad, the rest of the world, but we know if you look into it that that's not actually what is happening. This money is being used to benefit this particular group that has taken control of our institutions and is very corrupt. I think in that case, yes, it's not it's not good at all. In an ideal system, you know, perhaps I'd have a different opinion, but that's not the system we have as it is right now. So, I think, you know, in this situation, we need to really look at how our taxpayer money is being spent and a lot of it is spent on um weapons. A lot of the of it is being sent to other countries with no, you know, stipulations on how that money is used, no oversight. An insane amount of money was spent on quote-unquote nation-building during the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, with really nothing to show for it. And arguably, and some people have really effectively argued that it was really a money laundering operation at the end of the day. A way to sort of take taxpayer money and then have it you know, go to the hands of these contractors and other entities and it ends up elsewhere with nothing to show for it in in these particular um situations. And I think there's plenty of waste and plenty of examples also in the US domestically where contractors have been given taxpayer money to do things and they don't actually do the things that they're supposed to do and there's really very little accountability for those things when they happen because a lot of people aren't really aware or really follow up on where their taxpayer money is going and there's a lot of trust that I think people have placed in congressional representatives that they're going to do that due diligence for them. But most people in Congress are multi-millionaires who are funded by billionaires and multi-millionaires and tend to have the interests of those people at heart and not exactly you know, the regular Americans who are in a very different economic situation situation than them at heart. And so I think also you know, over the past several decades we've also had the situation of you know, outsourcing our our industry you know, to other countries beginning during or really not exactly sure where to pinpoint it, but you know, several decades ago and that has also obviously had a major impact on on the United States as well. And I think there's a major effort from the Silicon Valley crowd oligarchs of which fund both parties to sort of um onboard I guess you could say the American people into sort of this new system that's coming into place where it's sort of very focused on or this basic I guess sort of this coming together of digital IDs, digital wallets, UBI, um a lot of these things are sort of being uh slowly developed and um sort of like uh promoted to people, uh but um I think ultimately, you know, um you would only have that type of situation where UBI is necessary. I just want to make sure that we we go point by point right now. Okay, so all of that makes sense to me, um but I want to go back cuz when I think about what the interests of the average American are, it's I want to be able to um take care of my family. I want things to come in at a reasonable cost. I want to be able to save for the future. I want to leave something for my kids, and I want to make sure that my kids have a better future than I have. I feel like if you have that for the vast majority of any nation, I literally think it's completely agnostic. I think that's just what humans crave. Um if if you have that for people, you will have a healthy, thriving society. Um assuming we're in agreement with all of that, even if you're BlackRock and you're super greedy, it does not make sense to hollow out the middle class because eventually, as history teaches us, they come for you. And when they come for you, they come with pitchforks and guillotines, and it it's not a good look. So, what is it about this moment where the elite are so deranged that they are, from where I'm sitting, playing with fire? Do they just think that we're so stupid that we'll never rebel? Are they counting on this time will be different cuz they have more control? I don't I don't understand why they would do this. Yeah, it's hard to know exactly why, but I think it's important to say that I um at least in my opinion, I think where the powers that be, however you want to define that, um, are taking people is essentially leading us to some sort of two-tier society where there is really no need for a middle class and it's really more accurately accurately described as like a neo-feudal, uh, style society where you have a large underclass managed by sort of this more elite group, uh, that would do the managing and I think it really falls under, um, what some people have referred to as technocracy, a sort of this idea of more of like a scientific, uh, dictatorship. Um, and there's actually this prominent, um, figure from the Club of Rome, a named Dennis Meadows, and the Club of Rome is, uh, an entity that, uh, has a very intertwined history with groups that have become infamous over the past several years like the World Economic Forum, for example. Um, but Dennis Meadows essentially said something to the effect that, you know, for the good of people and the planet in the economy, in in his words, um, that it was going to be necessary to either reduce the world's population so that people could be have freedom and use resources the way they want or that, uh, there would have to be a scientific tater dictatorship, uh, imposed on 8 billion or 7 billion people in order to to ensure uh, accurate allocation of resources and all of this stuff by a a educated technocratic scientific elite. And there are some thinkers in Silicon Valley like Eric Schmidt, for example, who wrote a book on AI with Henry Kissinger, that essentially say that there's going to be this sort of future brought to us by AI, um, where there will be the class of people that understand how AI works, that program and maintain it, and then there will be this underclass, really, they don't say underclass, but I I would say that, of people who AI acts upon, who can't understand what AI is doing to them and eventually because of their dependence on AI, um, will become cognitively diminished, uh, uh, and mentally unable, essentially, to make decisions from their for their for themselves without AI's help. Um, and there's a lot of other indications I would argue whether it's UBI, which again is going to be for, uh, not I don't think, you know, the top oligarchs in Silicon Valley like Bill Gates and and Reid Hoffman and and Peter Thiel are going to be receiving UBI. I think it's intended to be for, um, other people that aren't necessarily in that economic tier. Um, I think it's very likely you're going to see, if these people succeed in their designs, you're really more of a two-tier society without any sort of need for a middle class. Um, and so I think that's part of why, um, it's been happening and I think, you know, as to why they might be playing with fire, um, I think perhaps they're confident that they have a lot more, um, that there's it's much easier to manipulate people now than perhaps in times past. Uh, for example, um, there was a 2014 research study, uh, that was funded by the US Air Force that was about, um, try using social studying how to use social media to control people like drones, uh, which I think is a very disturbing research proposal in and of itself, but basically basically this idea that you could use social media networks by tailoring what information people see and don't see down to the individual based on data mined about them off of the internet and then analyzed by by, um, various algorithms to basically, you know, essentially mind control people in, you know, in the world world, uh, in the words, I guess, of that Air Force, uh, proposal. And, you know, other militaries around the world have spent millions upon millions of dollars over the past decade plus, uh, researching how to manipulate people, um, on social media platforms. Uh, so I think it's very possible, um, that they think they they can manage it, uh, since a lot of, you know, discourse has become increasingly online, um, and that, you know, they can really alter how people perceive reality to unprecedented degrees. And another thing that's brought up in this book um, by Schmidt and Kissinger talks about, you know, eventually people won't be able to know uh, what's real and what's not. Um, you know, either pointing to things like AI deep fakes and things like that. Um, but you know, uh, what if these deep fakes are wielded by the state to manipulate people? And what if we're led to believe that things happened when they didn't happen? Um, you know, this can be uh, the a lot of the fearmongering about deep fakes is when it's in the hands of, you know, a an alleged cybercriminal or someone like that. But you know, uh, there's states around the world that have an arsenal of these digital weapons that are uh, meant to manipulate us in in our our perception of reality and what's real. And if you can, you know, use AI or other means to control how people perceive reality, you can control their behavior and a lot of other things. So, I think um, uh, I think they're confident in that and obviously there's probably other things um, that I'm leaving out, but that's you know, sort of what comes to mind at least at first for me when uh, in in regards to that question. Is that all? Huh. Uh, one of my notes is, this is dark. Uh, this is very dark. Let me so that I can get a barometer on your worldview, let me ask you uh, which of the following scenarios would be better? Um, AI comes into existence, it has what from our perspective is god-like intellect, it really does know uh, where best to allocate resources to people to maximize human flourishing. Um, but you have to completely submit to the algorithm. Okay? So, human flourishing maximized, yay! But you have no autonomy, you do what the algorithm tells you to do. Or the sort of messiness of the human experience, freedom first, you have every right to make stupid and self-destructive decisions. But you don't get to take advantage, obviously, of the algorithm's brilliance. Which of those two would be better? Um yeah, I am definitely human first uh in in that when when you put it like in in these two uh you know, specific situations. Um I think um it's kind of dangerous for all of us to or all of us a lot of us to outsource our creative ability to AI, have AI create for us uh because essentially when you're um not performing those activities yourselves, it sort of um falls under if you don't use it, you lose it paradigm. So, like a lot of us don't really do mental math anymore because we all most people have a calculator in their smartphone, for example. And so, you know, you don't use that ability, eventually you lose it. So, what happens if AI becomes, you know, um the main generator of creative content and people forget how to make art because they haven't done it in so long and things like that. Um I think it's possible. I know there's uh people I've talking to um who I think are very intelligent that argue for sort of a middle scenario between the two you pointed out. I personally tend to fall in a more sort of like I I prefer for the analog uh future to a purely digital future uh personally. But, I think there's a way to do it where we don't really have uh this situation where the AI algorithm is running our lives and we don't have any agency anymore. Um I think that's very dangerous and I think also there's been a lot of hype um about AI and its ability to reach that sort of god-like level. I think it's very possible that you could have that essentially faked by some entity and they could claim that, which has happened in the past. Uh you had a Google engineer or perhaps ex-Google engineer a few years ago um attempt to say that a chatbot that he was working with was sentient uh and it was not. So, there's the possibility that someone could come out with that story and if it was widely adopted and enough people said it was, it could be believed to be so, and when it actually be that. And in that type of scenario, I think that's dangerous because it sort of gives this Wizard of Oz functionality, for example, to the government. We made this policy, you hate it, and we but the computer said so, so that's why we did it. You know, it's the computer's fault, it's not our fault. It's a way to sort of offshore responsibility onto the algorithm and away from other people at the top. And I don't really think that's the way to go personally. But I'm not trying to say like eliminate AI and don't use it. I personally am not into it, but I have a lot of friends that are. And so I'm not trying to be like that negative about it in that sense, but I also think this whole idea that we should surrender ourselves to the algorithm cuz it's so much more intelligent than us, which is sort of implicit in that Eric Schmidt-Kissinger book. Um, yeah, I definitely don't agree with that at all because I think humans should not surrender their agency. And I think it's sort of um in that scenario I sort of just laid out if it's overhyped and it's claimed that it reached that, you know, people could surrender their agency to something that isn't actually possessing this god-like superintelligence. Um, and but have just been told it is. And I think, you know, that that potentially could be very dangerous. Yeah. So I'm definitely a techno-optimist. There's no doubt about that, but I fully acknowledge all of the risk there. Okay, before we totally go over to the future and where all this stuff is going, I want to re-anchor back around debt. So I'm one of the people that is extremely worried about an economic event. We don't have to call it collapse, but certainly I look at the debt and I say this is just completely unsustainable. You cannot add a trillion dollars of debt every 100 days. That's ridiculous. And the fact that the are acting like we can do this forever is uh every alarm bell I have is going off. Uh I don't know how to get people to take this seriously, but I would love to know um do you think the debt is a real problem? Uh and is it something that people should really stop and address? Yeah, I think that is a very real and and serious issue and the amount of debt the US government has accrued I think is a testament to the poor fiscal management um of the US government um and not just the executive branch, but Congress as well. Um and it's been going on for a very very um you know, very long time and not a lot has been done about it and really, you know, in the post-9/11 era the amount of debt that um you know, the US government has taken on has just absolutely ballooned when you compare it to previous decades and I think a lot of that has to do with the foreign wars that the US government has engaged in. Including ones that aren't formally declared um in in this sort of effort to expand uh you know, the the military empire abroad and sort of maintain that hegemony and dominance and historically a lot of that uh was also into directly related to dollar hegemony. The petrodollar system, which now we know uh has essentially been on the way out, um but a colleague of mine Mark Goodwin uh put out a book a few years ago about this idea of the Bitcoin dollar system and this idea that the US government would sort of use Bitcoin uh and create the system that's like an analog to the petrodollar system uh where because most people um you know, uh when Bitcoin is purchased usually it's done with, you know, by buying dollars first um in order to purchase Bitcoin for example um and um in in that type of um situation you'd be just like in the case of, you know, the petrodollar where uh you know, the price of oil is in it's priced in dollars, you're generating artificial demand for dollars to buy some sort of energy commodity or energy asset and Bitcoin sort of is an energy asset at the end of the day. It's moving essentially attempting to create the same system but instead of with oil with Bitcoin and most of the Bitcoin holdings in the world are concentrated in the United States and the US government itself is one of the biggest holders of Bitcoin in the world. So I think there's sort of this effort there to do that and this was actually implicit in Trump's speech that he gave at the Bitcoin conference a few months ago sort of saying that's what he sort of saw utility in Bitcoin for in a sense. And but I think also that has a lot of causes a lot of complications when it relates to the ethos of Bitcoin which was originally about stopping irresponsible central bank policy and fiscal policy. The idea that you would um yoke Bitcoin to the US dollar instead of using it to challenge the US dollar or challenge fiat or challenge debt-based currency or a debt-based monetary system. Obviously if you join you know the US dollar to Bitcoin having Bitcoin be a challenge to those things essentially kind of has to stop and really in that situation you could have Bitcoin enable that type of irresponsible fiscal policy because you could I mean you would have essentially be using it as a sink for hyperinflation at the end of the day. It is a really interesting frame to think of Bitcoin as a sink for hyperinflation of the US dollar but I don't know that a lot of people are going to understand what that means. So if you had to say that same thing but from a different angle how would you explain to somebody how one why is the hyperinflation going to come about and two how is it Bitcoin that becomes the sink for that to stop that from becoming a runaway problem? So essentially if you were to like hyperinflate the dollar in this type of system, obviously the price of Bitcoin would appreciate as price in US dollars, but it's not uh but Bitcoin itself isn't subject to inflation. So, the people that hold Bitcoin in that case would really benefit in that type of scenario, but people that hold, you know, dollars uh for example um would not necessarily, but there's also this effort to sort of resolve this uh that aspect of it by bringing stablecoins into the equation, which are um you know, digital dollars, but they're kind of gobbling up US Treasuries um and uh you know, are buying sort of like nation-state level amount of US government debt and servicing the debt at the same time. So, sort of this the Bitcoin-dollar system, as I understand it. And again, this is Mark Goodwin's work. So, again, he can probably explain it a lot better than me in the the detailed mechanisms and all of that. Um but as I understand it, you would have to have sort of these dollar stablecoins uh in in the mix as well um as a way to sort of absorb uh government debt. And even, you know, these things may not be enough to absorb all of the debt that we have. And so, there's these uh efforts uh right now, this idea of real-world asset tokenization. There's this push into uh tokenizing what is referred to as natural capital or aspects I guess major uh like even entire ecosystems essentially and tokenizing them and using that as sort of like uh you know, a store of wealth, of finite supply. Um So, there's this one uh effort for example that's seeking to tokenize each hectare of the Amazon rainforest, and there's 750 million hectares. So, there's a finite supply of this digital asset security that's tied to each hectare of the rainforest. So, then you have something else that you know, uh can could in in theory be used as a as a sink for this stuff, too, because when it's of a finite supply, it's in you know, it's not subject to inflation. And so you can sort of mitigate the impacts of inflation by having this anti-inflationary thing because of its finite supply as a sink, you know, for the thing that you're creating more of in the case of in the case of dollars. Um Okay, that that is really really interesting. I want to walk people through that in my words. Let me know if I go astray. In fact, one thing I'm going to lay out how I think the dollar hyper inflates, but if you think I get that wrong, please definitely challenge my thinking. So here's what I'm taking away from this. You right now because of the debt going up like crazy, we are already in a position where the US government is going to spend more just on the interest in the debt than they spend on military spending. Next year, it's projected to be more than Medicare, Medicaid, all of our social programs. And so what's going to end up happening is they will inevitably find themselves in a position where they're going to have to lower rates in order to be able to make good on that debt or default. Defaulting I think would be way worse. And so what they'll end up doing is printing money. Now the problem is printing money in my words. In my words, printing money is straight theft. They are making more of the money so that they can socialize effectively the losses. The losses. Yeah. Exactly. So everybody has to deal with the losses, but then they can funnel that money into making good on the debt that they've accrued. Okay, so to do that, then you're going to get into this just death spiral of hyper inflating the dollar cuz you have to keep printing more of it in order to service the debt and deal with all your obligations so that you don't default. So that will effectively drive the the worth of the dollar closer and closer to zero. Uh every um global reserve currency has had this problem. Even if you look at the um British pound, it's lost something like 98% of its value over the last 150 years or something. It's absolutely insane. Uh so, this is the nature of currencies and what you need in order to avoid getting clobbered by that, if you're paying attention, is you need an asset that you can go into that you can store uh the value of your money. That's why they call it a store of value. Uh that cannot be inflated. And the one that has a lot of cultural attention and energy right now is Bitcoin. That's certainly why I have invested in Bitcoin. I do not trust the government not to just keep printing and printing and printing. But what you're saying is, "Hey, there's this process called tokenization that we can use to assign ownership to every physical thing of value, such as the Amazon rainforest. And if you own a given hectare of uh the Amazon rainforest, you know that they aren't going to be making any more of it. So, you have something that is a finite supply. You're able to put your value into that. And as long as people value that uh part of the rainforest, you are good. You have a a companion uh store of wealth to Bitcoin or whatever. But the side part of this is that in order to ensure the integrity of the hectare on which the each unit of token is based, you must surveil the forest. And so, there's this whole idea of now creating the internet of forests, putting sensors on every tree and every hectare of the Amazon in order to ensure that uh you know, no one's messing with it. And this may also at some point include, you know, the indigenous people that live there because, you know, if one hectare has an indigenous tribe and less trees, right, as compared to another hectare that isn't inhabited, which one is more valuable in the eyes of investors, particularly if there's this um effort to impose like a carbon market, a global carbon market, which some people like Mark Carney and other prominent, you know, central bankers and other bankers have discussed at length as a alleged solution, um you know, to environmental issues in the world. Um you know, I think that is something that should be talked about um as well. And also um the idea is to also use satellite surveillance. And so this particular uh effort to tokenize the Amazon specifically is teamed up with a satellite company um called Satellogic. And Satellogic, the chair of the board is Steve Mnuchin, the former Treasury Secretary. And also on the board is a man named Howard Lutnick, who was recently named to be co-chair of Trump's transition team. And he's the head long-time head of Cantor Fitzgerald, uh which is one of the main uh dealers of US Treasuries and also a very intimately connected to the stablecoin Tether, uh which is also invested in Satellogic. Um So it would it'll be interesting to see exactly uh what goes on there as it relates to the satellite firm, which is also, you know, in previous reporting I did with uh Mark Goodwin, who I mentioned earlier for Bitcoin Magazine, you know, they've been involved in sort of this effort to create a carbon market in Latin America that was built on the Bitcoin blockchain specifically, which is something that I think a lot of, you know, at least older school Bitcoiners uh who are not really into the idea of carbon markets or any of these things uh would be, you know, quite against um But uh I I think it's um something that should definitely be talked about, the idea of um you know, using satellite surveillance to back all of this stuff up, especially with a company like Satellogic that has, you know, the people I mentioned on the board, uh but also are, you know, vying for US intelligence and military contracts. And the people that created that company are long-time contractors for DARPA and the NSA and US intelligence. So you're going to have this satellite firm, you know, surveilling large swaths of Latin America. Um, you know, if these efforts, one of which is called Green Plus and the other one called One Amazon, go through, you'll essentially have a company that's tied to, you know, uh, for important people that are, as it relates to the US government, you know, former officials, and, you know, also people that have historically been US government intelligence contractors, you know, surveilling your environment from the sky without a national government really having any say in the matter. Think that's quite, um, quite problematic. And also Tether is behaving rather, you know, making some interesting choices for a stablecoin issuer, I think, as well. They've started investing, for example, in brain machine interfaces, you know, brain chips and that sort of thing. And have also, you know, onboarded the FBI and Secret Service onto their platform, and have been, you know, shutting down people's wallets on behalf of, you know, the Treasury's OFAC um, and entities like that. So, you know, I think, you know, some of these stablecoin issuers, the prominent ones anyway, are sort of anticipating this kind of system that that I discussed earlier and are sort of embedding embedding themselves with powerful actors that I think ultimately mitigate their ability to be what some people have argued are human rights tools. You know, some people have said that about stablecoins in the past, but if you're onboarding, you know, one particular government which very much has a political agenda as it relates to Latin America and other parts of the world onto your stablecoin and are freezing, you know, and taking people's money essentially at the behest of that government, and also getting, you know, invested with people that are, at least in the case of a future Trump administration, are likely to have some political connections there as well, you know, I think that's pretty significant. Yeah, I think that's very fair to say. Um, let me ask, do you think that the tokenization of the natural world um, helps or hinders with this what you called the neo-feudal, or I've heard you refer to it as like a a new form of slavery where we have these two very divergent classes? Cuz when you first started describing it, uh, it sounded kind of awesome. And then by the end, I thought, uh-oh, like maybe this actually creates something really terrible. Well, okay, let let's take the case of, you know, um, the the Green Plus program, which claims to sort of tokenize and and turn into carbon credits protected areas uh, throughout Latin America. So, in those cases, the carbon credits aren't given to the locals or the local governments to trade and make money off of and put back into their communities. It's going through third parties that are not based in those countries. And the money for the people there go into a particular fund that isn't managed by any people that live there. It's managed by, um, well, they haven't really been open about it, but a guy from one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, Locked In, is ostensibly the head of it. And they would decide when there would be certain allotments of that money, and that money has can only be spent on projects that this particular group running Green Plus, that again isn't based in Latin America, approves of. So, in that case, you're sort of choosing how the money can be spent. You're framing it publicly as for the benefit of the environment and for the benefit of these local people, but in reality, you're deciding what they can and can't fund. Uh, and, you know, some of the the stuff that, you know, they their partners and whatever are tied to a lot of the same, uh, you know, foreign oligarchs, uh, like the Rockefeller Foundation or the Gates Foundation or entities, you know, like that, that go back to some of these, you know, very, um, you know, wealthy families. Ultimately, it's initiatives run by NGOs that those organizations fund, which ultimately doesn't necessarily work in the best interest of these local people who are, you know, uh, always to surrender these protected areas, supposedly to protect them by generating carbon credits, but the carbon credits are going to be traded by people abroad, and the decisions about how that money is spent is being made by people who are abroad, not about the locals. So, it's it's sort of seems to me like a way to, you know, frame a project that's going to make certain people a lot of money uh, under very different terms than what is actually going to happen. It seems more likely to disenfranchise rather than empower locals, uh, but is being framed sort of as a planetary necessity, uh, because of the whole, uh, you know, climate change thing, right? So, um, we have to act now to do this stuff, and so there's, you know, this pressure being placed through that rhetoric on people to comply with these types of things. Uh, particularly in Latin America is a big focus of that now. Um, but I think, uh, you know, as as it's been, you know, played out in practice, that really isn't the case. And the particular group, uh, that I mentioned earlier that's doing this in the Amazon, which is called One Amazon, uh, entered into contractual agreements, uh, with this indigenous community called the Shuar, I believe, that live in the Amazon, and it was framed to them as being great, and then they actually went and like read the contract after they signed it, and realized that it dramatically favored One Amazon over their interests, and then voted to cancel the agreement. Right? So, these guys kind of have a history, uh, at least these actors that I've mentioned, of sort of going in and framing their stuff, making a sales pitch to locals that it's going to be great for them, and then when it's not in practice, the locals are trying to get out of it. So, that should really tell you a lot about what's going on here, I think. Okay, um, do you by any chance know the, uh, cosine theorem? No. It's very interesting. I'm just beginning to explore it, but one of what I'm trying to figure out is the thing you're talking about, is it the necessary outcome? So, when I think about the take Africa and the natural resources that they have, and does that have to be a point of exploitation, or could that be a point where they're able to grow their industries from the ground up? So, for instance, if you're just selling off uh your cobalt or whatever, yeah, you're going to be in a really bad position because you're going to get effectively taken advantage of. The real money is in building the products, the batteries, whatever, that are downstream of mining that element. Uh if, however, you build the industry in your own country, and you say that we're a tremendous source of cobalt, or in the example of what we're talking about, you have this Amazon rainforest, um is it necessary, just just a fact of the way the economic system is set up, that you will end up getting exploited if you do this, or if they were smart, could they put in legislation that says, "Okay, we're actually going to assign a value to all of these different items, the rainforest, the whatever, whatever." And now, according to the Coase if I'm saying that correctly, theorem, it says basically the reason that we end up with these imbalances where like people pollute into a river, and now you have a company that's able to make a ton of money because they can force us all to pay a cost for the pollution, um but they get to reap all the benefits. If instead, you assign an owner to the river, now all of a sudden, the owner of that river knows exactly how much damage is being done, and they can go to the company and say, "You owe me this much money because you were injuring this asset that I own that has a cost." So, it becomes this It's basically a statement of without clear um, rights, then people get away with things like the tragedy of the commons, where they're able to uh push their pollution downstream and reap economic benefits from it. So, as I was hearing you say the story, that was what came to mind was like, "Well, hold on a second. If you actually assign a value to this stuff, uh to the rainforest, just to stick with one example, now suddenly the rainforest has clear property rights. And if the property rights are clear, as long as those people have not signed a stupid deal, as long as the property rights are clear and I'm going to use a terrible word right now, just I don't have a better word in this moment. Uh but if they are clear and just, now all of a sudden it's like we should be able to get into a position where um the local people or whomever uh are able to capture an accurate amount of value, to know who is uh deleteriously impacting their um their ownership. Uh and so, if the Coasean theory is correct, that that may actually have a positive benefit. Now, I'm I am barely beginning to understand uh this theorem, so for anybody that knows it better, by all means drop something in the comments about what I'm not understanding. Uh very early in the journey of uh getting knowledgeable about that. But, anyway, do to really be succinct with the question, do you think it is a fundamental nature of our economic system that that will become a point of exploitation or could that, if structured correctly, be a boon for any uh local region that has a natural asset? Yeah, so I think um a lot of the powers that are affecting sort of this natural capital agenda right now are inherently predatory institutions. Um and so, I think their interest is in exploiting, which has been historically what has happened to Latin America in the colonial and post-colonial era. Um and I think this perhaps may be a more creative way of um sort of dressing up uh the same game to make it look different. What is the game? Well, I think what the goal here is is to sort of financialize and monetize what previously have been the global commons. Um so for example, there was this effort that was spearheaded by a Rockefeller Foundation connected group called the uh Intrinsic Its Exchange Group. Uh and they partnered with the New York Stock Exchange to create this new uh asset class and asset vehicle called the Natural Asset Corporation. And basically how these NACs um are are said to work, at least as as far as the you know, architects of it have said, is that, you know, this group goes and identifies a natural asset that nobody owns and then they sort of have an ICO and sell shares in that and then work on generating profit uh you know, for their shareholders and then allegedly will use that money to uh towards conserving the asset and all of that. But conserving the asset, for example, could mean not letting anyone or any locals go near it. And these Natural Asset Corporations could go and uh I don't know uh claim on a lake in Chile, for example, and say no one can use it. But what if a bunch of local people uh fish in it and aren't necessarily damaging the lake uh but you know, at least in Chile and Argentina and maybe other uh Latin American countries, water, even if it's uh you know, a lake or a river that touches a privately owned property, that's, you know, part of the commons. So, um the Intrinsic Exchange Group uh frames this natural um asset corporation as creating a whole new asset class that dwarfs the existing asset classes we use today and they referred to that as nature's economy, and as the opportunity in unlocking nature's economy. So, really it's a way to create this huge um in my opinion, massive asset class that will allow them to continue really what is the Wall Street casino, allow it to continue, allow them to continue their bad behavior into the new era, but are just going to be sort of taking ownership of natural features, um and you know, making these corporations around them, um and then using them really essentially however they like, um because in theory, you know, you could have a natural asset corporation and through all these carbon markets and all these other mechanisms that are being created. You can buy offsets or or other things to sort of justify whatever you want to do to any sort of land you take ownership of a um ownership of and sort of frame, you know, this whole system as benefiting the environment, but really I don't really think it is that because a lot of these uh natural capital things um have been developed by um you know, JP Morgan or you know, people like Mark Carney who was you know, a former banker of the head of the Bank of England, head of the Bank of Canada, um and also helped cover up the HSBC uh drug cartel money laundering scandal among other things. And these are the kind of people that are sort of designing um these supposedly sustainable development um systems, but a lot of it involves a debt politics um as it relates to uh you know, global South economies, this idea in the sustainable development goals of having sustainable debt levels and all of this stuff, um and how debt is an important part of financing the sustainable development goals, and how a lot of these ideas of financializing nature, they say it'll give nature monetary value, but it also allows nature to be turned into financial instruments um that you know, in the hands of these, you know, uh predatory financial institutions could just essentially become fodder for their for their casino at the end of the day. And I think that's um not really a good thing. So, I think we should look at the history of these institutions and not necessarily, you know, believe at face value what they say of, you know, this is good for the environment and whatever. I don't really think that's necessarily the case if you look at, you know, groups like the Nature Conservancy, for example, that are sort of a pioneer in this field. They've been intimately connected with Wall Street for a very, very long time. Henry Paulson, who I mentioned earlier, the former Goldman Sachs guy that was head of the Treasury Department when the '08 '07, '08 crash started was chairman of the Nature Conservancy for a long time. And they're very they've a lot of involvement with JP Morgan people. They're pioneering this whole idea of the debt-for-nature swap. On that, if countries implement plans that the Nature Conservancy designs for land management, for example, they'll be able to restructure part of their debt and all of this. It's sort of, I would argue, a way to use the huge debt load that Latin America has been saddled with relationships with entities like the IMF and the World Bank, a way to sort of offer them an out, quote-unquote, but it's not necessarily an out. It's sort of a way into this this new game, I guess you could say. And so, I'm sort of um uh concerned about it in that sense. And I'm also concerned that um you know, his uh a lot of these same entities, too, you know, if you're going to turn like the natural world into into a commodity, you know, a lot of these banks that are involved, like JP Morgan, for example, um I have a track record of manipulating commodities and engaging in a lot of, uh you know, financial criminality that they've never really been held accountable for aside from, you know, maybe some multi-million dollar fines, but when you look at, you know, how much money these banks have, I mean, it really those fines are nothing to them, especially when, you know, the financial criminality being prosecuted creates a, you know, profits 10 times the amount of the fine. I mean, it it was worth it for them at the end of the day. They have no incentive to change their behavior. So, I think for us to believe that they're all all of a sudden altruistically concerned about uh people in the global south and and the planet and the environment, I think is honestly kind of naive of us. And I think we should uh consider that perhaps this is a um there's different motives at work here. All right, I want to drill into this idea of organized crime, intelligence agencies getting together, financial uh criminal activity. Um help me understand what's going on. Where does the um the conjoining of organized crime and politics sit exactly, uh and what do intelligence agencies have to do with it? Yeah, so um I wrote a whole book about this called One Nation Under Blackmail. It's divided into two volumes. So, originally the story uh I started writing the book trying to make sense of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal uh because uh I I was reporting on that at the time of his arrest in 2019. Um and uh was trying to figure out what was going on there because I realized very quickly that Epstein obviously had a lot of support behind him in order to be able to do what he was doing and not really face any meaningful consequences. And so, I started looking sort of at this this network behind him and his affiliations and focused a lot of my work uh not so much on Epstein after his first arrest in in 2007 or so, uh but really what he was doing in the '90s and the '80s and the '70s. And um in going back far enough, uh I, you know, sort of fleshed out what became volume one of the book, uh which is sort of tracing this particular network in that he inhabited uh back to these events that happened in uh first in World War II and then later the immediate post World War II era. Uh and in World War II I guess you could say it started with something called Operation Underworld, which is where I believe the Office of Naval Intelligence made a covert alliance with organized crime, specifically the National Crime Syndicate. So, the National Crime Syndicate was really a combination of Charles Lucky Luciano of the Italian Mafia and Meyer Lansky of the Jewish mob. They sort of came together and created what they called the National Crime Syndicate and Murder Inc. and all of this years prior and in New York City specifically made major inroads in essentially taking over the Democratic Party. Luciano in particular and they did this by taking over the unions in New York first, which was the historical base of the Democratic Party. And and then, you know, a few threatening you know, threats were made to certain choice people in order for them to secure sort of I guess control over that particular party in New York City. And obviously it seems like this model was replicated and expanded in other mob hotspots throughout the country with people allied with these two particular figures. So, those particular figures teamed up with the Office of Naval Intelligence in World War II ostensibly to protect US docks from would-be German saboteurs and things like that. And so, um essentially that you can That's This is a documented thing and so I use that point, but from that point on you see all these other affiliations of um the intelligence complex as it was developing because the CIA, for example, was created in the late '40s after World War II, but you see a lot of overlap with organized crime there, too. Like a lot of people from the National Crime Syndicate, for example, were used as CIA assassins abroad, among other things. And you have a lot of um uh it's sort of uh this symbiotic relationship it seemed sort of developed between um these organized crime figures and then uh you know what would become the modern US intelligence apparatus. And so you see sort of the CIA after its formation uh sort of getting into what had traditionally been mob rackets like drug trafficking, arms trafficking for example. And also things like sex blackmail which is something that the mob had perfected previously and the CIA and of course other intelligence agencies as well uh went on to uh you know used to their benefit uh for a very long time. And I think honestly why they would develop this relationship makes sense when you look at the fact that a lot of the people in the early CIA and its precursor in World War II uh the Office of Strategic Services uh were very intimately connected to Wall Street. So uh very much uh interested in in markets and new markets and specifically protected markets which I guess you could argue was sort of uh racket ultimately is at the end of the day. Um so I think um that's sort of where it really started and I think this particular um uh alliance as I point out in my book and I just uh have a lot of detail and go over a lot of different uh scandals and administrations is something that has been a pretty consistent theme um in US history uh from that point on and I think it's um it very much uh has influenced uh where we are today in very significant ways. All right. Um what does Jeffrey Epstein reveal about the um inner workings of the elites basically, the global elites coming together um leveraging like you talked about uh sex blackmail. Um what does it reveal about that underworld that's just out of sight from the average person. Yeah, I think uh what it reveals is that the way we think power operates or the way we've been taught power operates in the United States and really around the world is very different than how it actually works. A lot of it is about behind door deal making and it's about markets. It's creating markets and sometimes um you know, it's about generating artificial or fake demand for the products of those markets maybe if no one wants them or you know, allowing the state to engage in clandestine or illegal illicit markets and so they're participating in making all the money but you know, no one else is involved in those rackets because it's otherwise illegal and I think a lot of it um uh you know, I think we've sort of been fed a fairy tale version of American history for those that are interested in in looking into you know, there's lots of authors over the years. You know, I'm only really following in their footsteps that have pointed out that there a lot of times there's been deeper things going on to events that maybe when we learn about certain major events in American history in schools perhaps there's a lot more you know, they've been able to show and I hope to show it I have hope to show in my book too that there have been these other corollaries going on as well that explain a lot more effectively you know, what we have experienced in the past hundred or so years of American history and what it means for the now and I think as far as it relates to Jeffrey Epstein. I think the sex blackmail and sex trafficking thing is really one of the one of several things that he was involved with doing and I think keeping the focus on those specifically has intentionally distracted from other things he was involved in like currency speculation. It seems like he was involved in sort of financial hitman activity and and sort of collapsing and pumping foreign currencies around the world. He was involved in uh you know efforts to um uh manipulate the tax system, setting up major nonprofits in ways that would uh were you know in this gray area of legal and not legal. In the 1980s, he claimed to be uh hiding and finding uh uh looted money, i.e. stolen money, for the most powerful people in the world. So, that obviously refers to someone who is very intimately aware of the shadow banking system. uh money laundering uh where um you know financial criminals would hide their assets. Um people that worked with him in the 1980s have alleged that he had a relationship with BCCI uh which is a very controversial bank of that era that later sort of collapsed in the early 1990s. Uh but wasn't only um a bank that worked for uh that had intelligence agencies and uh drug cartels and all sorts of other people um as clients, but it was also according to the US Senate report on BCCI uh was a sex trafficking prepubescent children to elites of the United Arab Emirates. And that was never properly investigated either. So, there is a lot of uh very brazen criminality that goes on in the upper echelons of power, and I think we've been led to believe um that it doesn't. And a lot of that is because um these powerful people have a lot of money uh to pump into public relations and have also for really long time uh tried to manipulate um the information people see and don't see, and I think that continues now um into the modern era. Um and I think you know, there hasn't really been a lot of scrutiny about these other aspects um of what Epstein was up to. And there also hasn't been really any scrutiny at all of the person who we know is his main patron, which is Leslie Wexner. Uh I believe who I believe is still the richest man in Ohio um and a major retail billionaire in the United States. Um and sort of the framing we've been given is that well, Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison and so this type of activity now stops, you know, I don't necessarily think that's true. I think um you know, as I've labored to show in my work on the Epstein case that Epstein was not an anomaly um and was really if if anything really middle management um uh for this particular uh network I'm referring to that has, you know, for a long time in connection with intelligence agencies um and and in and other intelligence agencies and other groups engaged in things uh like illegal arms trafficking, illegal technology transfer to ostensibly US adversary states, um and and all sorts of other uh scandalous things that have, you know, uh been pushed under under the rug for a very long time. But if you go and look for uh the sources, including, you know, from congressional records and things that are completely irrefutable, um it's it's very clear that this type of criminality um has gone on for for a very, very long time. And um I think more people need to be aware of it, so we're, you know, a little more aware of what we're actually dealing with as it relates, you know, to to the government and some of these other institutions. What mental paradigm do you use to make sense of all of this? Is this will to power? Is this humans are just animals and they can't transcend their urges, and so uh governments and shadow agencies leverage people's sexual deviancy to get control of them? Like what mental model because you're you talk about a part of the world I just have I have no interface with. And so it makes me feel like I'm sort of skimming across the surface of the matrix. Um what mental model do you use to make this all make sense? Um you know, as far as it relates to humans, I think honestly what it says more than anything else is that most humans are good people, but they're also very trusting. And they've been too trusting in people who we have enough information on the books by now uh to know that a lot of the people with extreme amounts of power in our world today are not trustworthy at all, but we continue trusting them. And I think you know, that's very problematic and I think the fact that these a lot of these actors are very historically have done very dark things. I think a lot of people prefer not to think about it and and prefer to sort of have a block on it and just not interact with it at all and continue living their lives that are completely divorced from that world. But unfortunately, that world is having now more than ever an increased effect on our actual livelihoods and potentially seeking to lead us into sort of this new neo-feudal you know, paradigm that I mentioned earlier. And so I think people need to be a lot less trusting of these particular people and of the you know, the fronts or the politicians that are you know, rolled out to sell these agendas to us and that we need to rely more on the people in our communities, our friend groups and our families that we know are good and build resilient local communities with them because you know, if you like yourself and myself are concerned about a you know, an economic crisis coming down the road, it's very unlikely if you look at historical precedent that the government is going to actually do anything to save you or that Wall Street will do anything to save you. It's much more likely um that you'll be in a better spot to face that crisis if you build uh some something local that can provide resilience for you and your family and your friends and your community in the face of that crisis. So I think you know, we we a lot of times you know, Americans and other countries as well are sort of told that as long as we get the right guy in the White House, he'll magically fix everything or all we need to do to ensure our country goes in the right direction is vote once every four years. Um I think it should be clear to people now more than ever that that is really very mistaken. Um especially now that we have two people uh running for office in the main parties that have both been in power before, that have been in the executive branch before, and we've seen what they've done. And I think people should focus a lot more on policy agendas rather than just rhetoric because at the end of the day most politicians, when they campaign, it's a sales pitch, and a lot of those people don't keep their promises once they get into office, and that's true of both Trump and the Biden-Kamala crowd. And I think people uh need to take more individual responsibility uh for their lives and stop waiting for some sort of savior to magically get in the White House uh to make everything better. So, I think we've been led to believe again by being very trusting that we don't have any agency uh to make things better. I think we absolutely do, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them, and there's power in numbers. And if people would organize on the local level, it starting with making sure your friends and family are taken care of because i- i- in in especially if you anticipate things are just going to get very crazy, which seems increasingly likely, whether it's in an economic sense or a social sense, uh making sure you have some sort of stability or network to fall back on I think is is a very very very important. Okay. So, if we know that people are being too trusting, and if we know that this stuff is happening right before us, what specifically do we need to be vigilant for, vote against, whatever, however you want to think about it, um that if we remain blind to will lead to this new slave class? So, I think we should focus on specific policy agendas that are meant to take us there. And I think the cornerstone of those is the effort to create an all-encompassing digital ID that will determine what you can and can't access in your life. I would argue and you know, I wrote reports of at the time during COVID-19 and others did as well that sort of the vaccine passport was a trial run for this digital ID vision that's you know, being implemented essentially globally and you know, going to be rolled out over the next 2 years or so at the global level um and you know, the idea of having um a lot of the surveillance sucked up on you being linked to the digital ID having it determine having having your medical records in there having your telecom in there your social media account really all of your aspects of life in this centralized digital ID is very problematic um especially uh if we saw during COVID, you know, if you didn't have the right if you didn't get the vaccine for example, you weren't allowed into places restricted your freedom digital ID has the ability to restrict not just your freedom of movement but really your access to everything including information based on the blueprints that are out there by the public private partnerships and associations that are developing it like ID 2020 for example. And there's the the whole idea of linking this intimately with a digital wallet that again would have some sort of programmable surveillable and seezable currency where you know, which again as I said earlier has major implications for financial freedom and financial privacy. I think we need to focus a lot on those in particular because a lot of consciousness was generated about those policy agendas during the COVID era and the risks risks of them and you know, unfortunately, we're in a situation now globally where you have people both on the left and the right marketing these policy agendas under very different metrics that they think their base will be most receptive to. So in the case of you know, Donald Trump, for example, he's calling for a biometric entry-exit system as a way to tackle illegal immigration. A campaign lawyer of his uh went on a podcast a few months ago saying that biometric uh facial recognition uh would be a way to uh stomp out the voter ID or the voter fraud issue and and, you know, institute voter ID. And you can support voter ID, but why can't we just have physical driver's license or the type of, you know, IDs people have always had? Why does it have to be, you know, a a biometric facial recognition thing? And unfortunately, um Trump's vice uh vice presidential candidate, uh J.D. Vance, is very intimately connected to a a man named Peter Thiel, uh who funds a lot of companies that are, for example, building the virtual border wall or um uh building uh facial recognition systems that are being sent to law enforcement, uh some of which brag about, you know, having it been used to send people that were at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, to prison, um among other things. And um uh it's very likely that these type of policies would also be implemented, um you know, if Kamala wins, for example, too, but going to be sold under different uh metrics as well to her base, uh but a lot of the same backers behind her, like Reid Hoffman, for example, uh envision the same type of policy um coming to fruition. And um I think we should focus on on stopping those policy agendas in particular. And it's important to keep in mind, too, as far as programmable surveillable seasonal money goes, as I said earlier, it's not just CBDCs, uh this can also be that same regime can be implemented with stable coins. And I think um uh if we focus on these policy agendas, which are central to this larger agenda, and say we don't want these things, and we plan at, you know, with our friends and family who are like-minded, how we're going to opt out of those systems, I think that could be really powerful um and affect and affect real change. Okay. Uh so, I want to get to how we opt out, but first I want to better understand um do you think the government has too much power right now? Uh yeah, I absolutely do. Um I mean, there's so many aspects of that. I don't even know what is the best detail to drill down on. Um but I guess I would say that um on when Bill Barr was Attorney General under Trump, he implemented a program called Deep, which created this framework for the DOJ to begin pre-crime prosecutions. And this whole idea um that you can prosecute people or arrest them for social media posts. And that's happened a few times in the US since then. Uh but also more recently in the UK, you have that same policy being rolled out um there as well, where people are being handed down 20-month prison sentences for social media posts and things like that. And that's very problematic. And so, uh around that same time that Bill Barr did that, uh after the El Paso Walmart shooting, Trump called on social media platforms uh to profile their users and try and pick out uh ma- potential shooters before they could act. So, sort of calling on tech giants to develop some sort of pre-crime uh functionality. And even though that didn't end up happening, that's very problematic. Um maybe you could argue that Trump did it because it was a crisis and that was his response, but that's not good and that's very bad for freedom and it's very Orwellian. And uh it's this is policy that is also, you know, being promoted by aspects of of the Democrats in the United States and also like as I mentioned, labor in Britain with Keir Starmer ascending people to prison for social media posts. Um and there's actually this broader effort that involves um you know, US intelligence agencies and and the FBI and the Secret Service, uh Britain and Israeli intelligence as well. It's housed at the World Economic Forum. It's called the partnership against cyber crime. Um and they're attempting uh to label uh speech as a form of cyber crime. So, if you publish alleged misinformation online, you could be considered a cybercriminal under sort some of the policy papers uh that they have published in the past, which I think is very concerning. And they're arguing that digital ID should be a requisite for internet access also because that way everything you uh read and consume online and everything you post online would be tied to your government-issued uh digital ID. So, that's really creating a framework for unprecedented surveillance of our online lives and online activity. And then when you add the whole um push into pre-crime that has been going on for a very long time and both parties have advanced, then it doesn't really matter if you have done something wrong or not. If the algorithm determines that you may commit a crime in the future because of what you've posted or said or how you've reacted um online, you know, that leads us into a very, very, very uh dark and problematic place. And uh there really isn't a lot of um understanding or or consensus about these issues, uh but a lot of it has comes down to again us being so trusting with thinking that the data that we uh put out online isn't going to be used against us or isn't going to be misused uh by some of these entities who access it. And that includes, you know, government contractors uh like Palantir, for example, uh which gets a lot of contracts regardless of who's in office. Um and uh you know, they have profiled people on behalf of the CIA, regular Americans, based on their online activity for decades now. Um and there's really not a lot of discussion about it. Um and I think um I don't know, people should be uh aware of this stuff and aware of what the government's doing um and uh look for things that we can do uh to opt out of these systems as much as possible. All right, talk to me about that. How do we weaken the government's power over us? Well, I think at this point a lot of it has to do with Silicon Valley and our dependence on products of certain Silicon Valley behemoths. So, a lot of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley also double as military and intelligence contractors and give our data quite freely to them when they should not. And again, if we become so dependent on a suite of products, all of which, you know, all if all of those companies have these same ties, you know, for example, maybe we can use some Google and some Microsoft products, whatever, but if they're all intelligence military contractors at the end of the day and we can't live our lives without them, um then we can be manipulated to do things to maintain access to those products in ways that might be very damaging to human freedom, among other things. So, I think it's important to look for open source or or different alternatives and look for companies or operating systems or whatever that don't have those types of relationships with the military and intelligence communities. I think people should also consider spending less time online and maybe a little more time offline, remembering what it's like to hang out with real people and build community in the real world because I think specifically in the COVID era when a lot of us were forced to be online a lot more than before because of lockdowns and other things that may have been a little easier to have forgotten what that's like um at the end of the day, but I think if you can be as self-sufficient as possible, not in of course, you know, from the tech perspective that's hard because not everyone can develop their own software, but there are things you can use that you know, if you're upset about Google censorship or something like that on YouTube, but you're continuing to use Google products all the time, you're not really providing an incentive for the company need change and you're freely giving it, giving your data up to it, and it's a contractor with these aspects of the US military and and things like that, or at least historically has been. I believe they still do have contracts, but really um you know uh Silicon Valley and and the military and intelligence really have fused operations in a lot of significant ways, and you can argue also that a lot of um you know intelligence agencies had early involvement in some of the biggest Silicon Valley companies as well. Um you know, there's an alleged CIA involvement with the origins of Google, Oracle, and some other significant companies as well. And then of course you have the involvement of of people like um Jeffrey Epstein with Microsoft in the 1990s, and um some other things that haven't really been, you know, reported on significantly, but probably should be. Um so I think, you know, that's one way we could opt out uh and not be so dependent on particular companies that have those ties. But I think also like uh there's a lot of other ways to be resilient, learning a skill that other people don't have that might be useful in a time of crisis, uh building a store of knowledge because if internet censorship gets worse, uh if you have offline uh knowledge that will be useful to you in a time of crisis stored on hard drives when you can't access the internet, that seems like it might be helpful. Uh learning to grow your food or in in investing in someone in your community that can grow food uh and will grow food for you. Um you know, all sorts There There's a lot of different things uh that that people can do uh to try and make themselves more self-sufficient because the more dependent we are either on these companies or on the government, we do have less agency in those cases, and I think we really need to remember that we do have agency. We've been outsourcing it. We've been giving it away to other people who don't have our best interests at heart, and we as a society need to learn to take that back as much as possible. All right, when people tell me I need to start thinking about making my own food, Then I'm like, "Whoa, we are planning for a catastrophe here at this point." So, uh in a near-term timeline, let's say the next 3 to 5 years, how bad do you expect it to get on a scale of I can keep going to the grocery store to I better have my own farm? And how far are you going in your own life to plan for wherever you think we are going to be on that spectrum? Well, I feel a little weird making these kind of predictions because obviously no one knows exactly what's going to happen. Um but I think it's better to be over prepared than under prepared. That's just my personal opinion. And I know not everyone feels that way, but at the very least, you know, um as someone that lives in South America, like I've talked to a decent amount of people from Argentina that lived through the economic collapse there in 2001. And a lot of what I've heard is that mental preparedness is very, very important. So, maybe you don't have the resources uh to really prep or prepare for some sort of major crisis, but you can think through at least what you would do and have some sort of plan if things do get bad. Uh because when people don't have any sort of plan at all or any sort of framework with how to deal with any significant crisis, uh they panic and people tend to make poor decisions when they are in fear and panicking, right? So, I think um there's a lot of There's a whole spectrum of, you know, how much you could prepare or how little. And really regardless of your economic means, there's something everyone could do to be a little more prepared. But at the end of the day, whatever crisis comes, however bad it is, the solution from the government or uh you know, its private sector partners is going to be increased surveillance and increased control uh over our lives. And if you do not want that, uh it's it you should become as as as self-sufficient as you possibly can with you and your community because it's very likely that whatever the next crisis is, the solution that will be offered is going to come with a lot of caveats to it. Whether it's, you know, programmable surveillable money that you'll be onboarded to to not lose all the access to the dollars that were previously in your banking account or any other, you know, number of things. Oh, we have to regulate the internet because of cybercrime. Now you need a digital ID to access the internet and stuff like that. You know, there's a lot of things that could potentially happen and a lot of solutions we could potentially be sold. But at the end of the day, if you look at what's happened in the post-9/11 era with nearly every crisis, it's usually more control for them, less freedom for us. And I think we need to be vigilant about that and think about how um in the face of any crisis that comes forward, how can we be more sufficient and not so dependent on, you know, maybe a solution that the government would offer but would come with us being forced to surrender more of our freedom. Um and, you know, more of our actual security because a lot of times when we've been offered that, you know, that trade-off, we haven't really received increased security. It hasn't increased regular American wealth. It hasn't benefited the little person, but it has, you know, benefited, you know, the surveillance panopticon and a lot of other of these things that have been, you know, built out in the post-9/11 era. And so I think um you know, maybe it will get really bad. Maybe it will be a little less bad, more of a blip. Who knows? It seems like it's gearing up, at least economically, to be quite bad, but these guys too have a lot of ways of rigging markets, rigging market responses. So I think they'll try and mitigate or have it play out however they think it will benefit them the most once that crisis emerges, right? But um Let me ask, do you think that I mean, it could get really bad and uh uh again prefer to be over prepared. So like in my own personal life, uh I'm gearing up to be food self-sufficient and have some sort of uh you know form of uh of off-grid power. Uh where I live I also there was a storm a few weeks ago and I lost power for 13 days. Uh so you know, sometimes stuff like that can happen and so even if it's not a major economic crisis or some other you know government produced crisis, you know, it's always good uh to be prepared. And in this sort of landscape uh that's developing, I think the more self-sufficient you are, the more you will have agency and be in more control of your life. Uh and I think that really could benefit everybody personally. Now this may just be the sort of arrogance that seeps into you when you were born and raised in America, but I think of South America is being less governmentally stable than the US. Um would you say that you have more or less freedom in South America than we have here in the US? Well, it's interesting because really a lot of South American governments um have been unstable at times, but a lot of that it has um I you could arguably trace back um to really uh you know, perhaps US government involvement historically in the continent. Uh Latin America and Central America were subjected to a ton of coups uh sponsored by US intelligence. Um and there's a lot of US intelligence and US government manipulation of national governments down here uh that have tended to cause problems that sometimes uh seethe and then explode a decade later or something. Um so you know, it's very complicated to really try and explain some more uh governments are more stable than others perhaps. Uh you know, I live in Chile which is it which is traditionally viewed as one of the more stable governments in South America, but it was also subjected to a very you know totalitarian dictatorship that was backed by US intelligence, you know, for a very long time. Um and you know, a lot of complications have also come down wind of that and there's also political division here just like there is in the United States. And I think you know, regardless of who is president of Chile, they tend to it's really about at least at this point balancing either you know, is the US going to dominate their administration or is China? You know, it's really not so much about what am I going to do in charge of my sovereign nation? It's balancing the interests of two competing global superpowers um at the end of the day. As far as it goes to normal life here, I definitely like it. It's different than the US. I feel like I do have a lot of freedom, but you know, it things can be really complicated. The COVID response here was much more draconian and freedom limiting than a lot of places in the US and a lot of the things that I've been talking about today are really global issues and it's really something that's being foisted on the global population and I don't really think there's any government in the world that isn't on board with some of these policy agendas at least in some way. Um I know Chile certainly is, but as far as you know, uh money goes, you know, for someone on on the income I make, Chile is a lot more affordable. I have two young kids, health care, babysitting, school costs, all of that is much more affordable here than if I was in the US. Actually, if I was in the US instead of here because of a health issue with my with my two-year-old, I probably would be saddled with decades of medical debt if I was in the US and here thankfully I'm not. So you know, I have my reasons for being here, but I don't think it's necessarily what everyone should do. Like if you want to prepare for whatever's coming in the US or another country, it's a very individual decision, but I really recommend doing a lot of research. Um and if you plan to go to another country, please visit it before you decide to move there cuz there I have met people that have not really done that and have regretted it. Um but really, you know, I think at the end of the day, what's really important is to have people you you know and care about and can trust when things get crazy around you. Like that network, whether you're in the US or South America or really anywhere, is likely to be, you know, the most important thing to keep, you know, yourself in a better situation if things get really, you know, rocky externally. All right, let me see if I can get a barometer for just how dark you think the future is going to be. Do you think that whatever calamity crisis befalls us in the future, will it be just a thing that happened that people take advantage of, meaning the government is a power grab, or will it be an engineered crisis that they ensure we encounter so that they can grab more power? Mhm. Um it's really hard to say, but I think, you know, as far as the economy goes, it's a mathematical inevitability that this debt monstrosity will hit a wall at some point, right? So something has to happen there. There has to be some sort of major change to for the US government to get out of that problem. And there's a lot of other issues that have been going on in the economy for some time and that's why you've had people after 08, you know, looking at the numbers and being like economic collapse this year and it didn't happen because all these other, you know, all these, I mean, when you have powerful people in finance and also in the government, you know, able to make markets behave certain ways, you can sort of kick the can down the road longer than it normally would if they weren't doing those things. So, I think at some point there is going to be some sort of event that happens, and I think the goal, as I said earlier, is to at least make people scared enough that they're that they would acquiesce to this advent of programmable surveillable money, whether it's a stable coin or a CBDC, and be like, "Yeah, I'll take that because I the alternative is too bad, like losing all of my money and purchasing power or something like that." But, you know, that the way that sort of phenomenon could play out could be a short-term thing or a protracted crisis. It's honestly really hard to know. But, if you're like me and you have a red line of no programmable surveillable seizable money for me, thank you, it's very important to think about how you would avoid that if that type of crisis comes out and that's offered to you as the only alternative to losing all of your wealth. Whitney, this has been amazing. I cannot thank you enough for your time. Where can people follow along with you? Um so, my website is unlimitedhangout.com. You can find all my stuff there. You can support my work there, and I would please encourage you to sign up for my newsletter there because I've had a lot of manipulation of past interviews and content by bots and other things. When you search my name in YouTube, it's all interviews I haven't given and people clipping up out of context things I've said. Yes, it's very unfortunate. Um but, if you want access to what I'm actually saying and the content I'm actually producing and all of that, I would encourage you to go directly to the source, to my website, unlimitedhangout.com. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Everybody out there, if you have not already, please be sure to subscribe, and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you liked this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. We are being naive not at least publicly entertaining the possibility that our antagonists abroad would take advantage of our famous lack of security. And you're going to see why we have to talk about genocide. Somebody has to open these topics if we are