Trump's Peace Deal With Iran, SPLC head's 'Interesting' Love Interest, UFC Terror Plot Revealed...

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show live. We have plenty to discuss today as Trump and Vance are on a PR tour to get us excited about an MOU with mystery details. I think something very strange is afoot. We're going to dive into exactly what is likely to be really going on. The US has They have to refinance $10 trillion right as our largest buyer is sell, sell, selling and AI is gobbling up the global liquidity pool. So, what comes next? We're going to cover that. The FBI thwarted a reportedly highly coordinated plan to attack the White House during the UFC event and they are certainly making a meal out of that announcement. The SPLC has been indicted on 11 counts and apparently someone high in the organization was living with an undercover agent pretending to be a neo-Nazi, but were they Did they forget who they are? It's a pretty fascinating story. Hank Green, the author, YouTuber, calls for more tax because making the government bigger has worked so well so far and because I think he doesn't understand risk, we're going to be covering some alternate plans there and China has an AI surveillance drone that's headed to a living room wall near you because it's the size of an insect. Pretty fascinating stuff. All right, it is an utterly fascinating time to be alive and anyone would forgive you if you lose track of all the things you're trying to do. So, I want to shout out our sponsor today, Ploud. There is a QR code on the screen. It's these incredible devices that you can slap on the back of an iPhone case or you can just keep with you. They have one that you can wear on you. Uh it's incredible. AI records everything that you're doing. We'll give you reminders of all the things that you promised to do. It's incredible technology. Certainly if you have a memory like mine. So, if you guys want to get 10% off Plaud, use code impact at plaud.ai/impact and it's spelled p l a u d .ai. All right, they're dope. You guys will love them the most. All right. You guys, Trump says that the war with Iran is over, but in reality, there is no actual deal yet. This one is getting maddening. We have a supposed MOU with a 60-day promise to negotiate the actual deal, but stalling is the one thing that Iran does better than anyone else on Earth. Plus, I think it is super weird that we're not getting any real real details on what's actually in the MOU. We're being told by J.D. Vance the details are being withheld specifically at the request of Pakistan and Qatar. Here it straight from the man. >> The Pakistanis have been mediating this entire negotiation with the Iranians, and they've asked us effectively to sequence the way that we roll this out. I frankly don't understand it. We'd be happy to release the agreement today or tomorrow. We may release it as late as Friday, but you know, fundamentally in the grand scheme of things, that doesn't matter because whether it's tomorrow, whether it's Friday, people are going to see what's in this agreement very soon. Friday, of course, is the formal signing ceremony and the kickoff of these negotiations, and that's when they've asked us to delay it. We're trying to push that forward, but look, the agreement's actually very simple. It's says one, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Two, the Straits of Hormuz are open. And number three, there are all of these benefits contemplated that the Iranians can get if they behave. If they stop developing terrorism, if they stop funding terrorism, if they stop supporting the rebuilding of the nuclear arms program, they actually can get some real benefits. If they don't do any of that stuff, they don't get anything. And I think that's where a lot of the misunderstandings come from is you've got Iranian propagandists out there saying, "Well, we get all these things." And they leave out the fact that they only get those things if they fundamentally transform themselves as a country. So, the United States wins either way. >> So, right now the thing that I have a big beef with is by the US remaining silent, they're allowing the Iranians to control the narrative on this at a time where that is the absolute last thing you want to do because everybody is so suspicious of what is going to be on this MOU, and I think rightly so. I think this is largely turning into a war of propaganda. It does not feel like we are negotiating from a position of strength. Uh we can talk later about what that would look like. Right now, the thing everybody is asking themselves is if you've got a good deal, why are you hiding the details? And I think that's exactly right. I think that there's a ton of stuff leaking out um that if you were trying to save it for some big announcement to try to get a win just off the momentum of what is in the deal, um that that has already gone. So, you would try to get out ahead of all the things that are leaking. So, the fact that they're not trying to get out ahead of all the things that they're leaking, and they still send J.D. Vance on a PR press tour, tells me that the whatever is going to be on this thing is not something that will be easily spun as a win for the US. Now, of course, we can wait a couple days for the details. That really isn't the big deal, but the fact that they're withholding the details tells me that either all of this is still up in the air, which I would like to remind everybody is a very likely outcome, that nothing has actually been settled on, or that Americans are not going to like the deal. One of those two things is almost certainly true, and if we were operating from a position of strength, Iran would have to comply first before getting the rewards, but in reality, it sounds like we are so desperate to get a deal that opens the Strait of Hormuz and gets the oil flowing again, that we're happy to lead with sanctions relief first and then hope that Iran upholds her end of the bargain. Now, say what you will, there is one consistent refrain about what Iran is like from a negotiating standpoint and it is that they will drag out the clock. So, Trump has been beating the drum that time is on our side, that does not appear to be the case. It really does look like uh Iran is a champion at running the clock down and that that serves them because if they can push this off and get close to the midterms, they get put in a stronger and stronger position. So, we may have broken their military, but we certainly have not removed enough of their leverage to stop them from closing the Strait of Hormuz, which many people have noted may be a more effective weapon for them than a nuclear weapon. Just the ability that's now been tested and proven to be true that they can shut down the Strait of Hormuz with asymmetric warfare. So, right now I would say Iran is poised to get sanctions relief immediately, control over the Strait, and American willingness to authorize this mystery $300 that are supposedly outside investments to rebuild Iran. And one thing that J.D. Vance and Trump have been very clear on, whether it ends up being true or not, they have been very consistent in their messaging that Iran is not going to get a single red cent of US taxpayer dollars, that this is about the US authorizing other countries to go in and invest in Iran and build. And Trump said, as of right now, countries like, let's say the UAE, are not able to do that. They would have to go seek permission from the US. And so, what the US supposedly is promising with this is that, "Hey, we'll let them do that if they want to do it if you guys are behaving yourselves." Now, we'll see if that ends up being true because Iran complying with the terms of this mystery deal to me is just a never-ending sequence of question marks. Oh, and by the way, the nuclear deal, the thing that we are supposedly in this for, the whole purpose, that is going to be negotiated later. That's so wild. If I'm Iran, I'm just going to drag this out as long as I can to get into the midterm campaigning period, at which point I know Trump is going to be at his weakness. I then give Hezbollah the nod to hit Israel, and then when Israel takes the bait and strikes back, which they will almost certainly do, because they're included in this deal, even though the US did not get their permission, I as Iran I'm going to go, "Hey, that was a violation." And so, I'm going to back out of this. Thank you for giving me, you know, at that point 60, 90, can they drag this out to 120 days of sanctions relief, of letting me ship oil, and just rebuild my military, rebuild my stockpiles, resupply all of my proxies. Like, that is, I think, a very simple, straightforward winning scenario for the home team that has proven that they can run the clock down. So, if they can get Trump into late summer, early fall, when he's really going to be on the campaign trail for the midterms, he's really going to need things to be coming together economically, will he really have the stomach to relaunch an attack to force them back to the negotiating table, or is he going to try to just spin something in terms of rhetoric to make it seem like, "No, we're still in control. We're still winning this thing." All the while, Iran goes back to doing what they were doing under the JCPOA, which is even though we told you we weren't going to build our nuclear arsenal, we are doing exactly that. And from my read, we'll see in the fullness of time, but from my read, this is going to put a ton of money in their pocket, far more money than was put in their pocket by previous administration. So, the fact that he would bang on for as long as he did about, you know, we gave them money, we funded it, and that made this is terrible deal, and we basically have done this to ourselves. Um there is a potential that this becomes that times 10. So, it's all going to hinge on this supposed them behaving, and that things are only dolled out as they show a willingness to get in line with the terms of a mystery deal that nobody's actually laying out on paper. It's all wild. So, we'll see what ends up playing out, but I think that the waiting game is on Iran's side, not the US's. >> Let's jump back to J.D. Vance on the five, and he talks about the stipulations that are required for them to get access to that money. >> Yeah, so so just to really address a couple things, because I think you're making the same mistake, unfortunately, that a lot of the Iranian propagandists make when they talk about this, which is that they talk about the benefits to the Iranians without any of the things the Iranians would have to give up and have to change in order to get those benefits. So, you mentioned a $300 billion fund. I've got to be very clear about this. Not a single cent of American money, under any circumstance, no matter what the Iranians do, goes to Iran. Not a single cent of American money. >> other money. >> Here's Here's what this says. This says, for example, let's say that the United Arab Emirates, who have been a great ally, let's say they want to invest in a power plant in Iran, what this a deal provides is that if the Iranians have done everything we require them to do, then we will allow the United Arab Emirates to do that. They can't do that right now without American approval. So, we're fundamentally saying if the Iranians transform how they interact with the world, we will transform how the world economy interacts with Iran. But if they don't do any of that stuff, they don't get any of these benefits. So, I think all the Democrats >> Hold on for a second. So, here's the thing. All right, I'm I'll take the flip side for a second, and say, "Okay, um I have said from the beginning of time that the real win is always going to be to flip people over into thinking economically. If you want Israel-Palestine to end, you've got to get Palestine thinking about their economic future where it's like, all right, cool. We're just heads down. We're going to build industry, stop [ __ ] us up. Uh we'll show signs of good faith. All we care about is that our lives a year from now are economically better than they are today, that our kids' lives are better economically 20 years from now than they are today. That's our thing. I know you guys aren't going to trust us, but just give us a little bit of space, let us cook, and then, you know, as we earn that trust, start letting us bring more things in as we earn more trust, blah blah blah. Okay, same idea here. Dear Iran, you guys for theocratic reasons, you have ejected yourself out of the global economy. Let's plug you back in. Uh let's see you do the same things that the other Arab nations are doing. Let's see you have some sort of religious reformation where you guys are becoming more secular, you're giving your people more freedoms, you're not killing your citizens anymore. Uh we see that you're offering more freedoms. We see that you're normalizing relationships with Israel. We see that you're not pursuing a nuclear plan. We see that you're not um putting all the money in the pockets of your proxies and having them attack Israel. All of that, and hey, you guys will become 10 times wealthier than you are today because we're going to give you this increasing sanctions relief, uh and you're going to be able to just keep shipping your oil but on the open market. So, instead of having to sell it at a discount effectively only to China, now let the world compete for your oil. It's going to be amazing. If they can do that, it would be transformational. I just don't see what they see to make them believe that that's actually what's going to happen. And if you even listen to the rhetoric coming directly out of Iran's mouth, they're not saying any of those things. So, you've got the US being like, trust me, bro. Trust me. Like, these guys are going to normalize. >> Mhm. >> You've got Iran showing no signs that that's actually true. And if they could, yes, it would be incredible. And if they could, I would be all for them saying, "UAE, if you want to invest in these guys, if you trust in them, like do your thing." >> Yeah. >> Um not sending US dollars, I think it's going to be incredibly important. Otherwise, people here are rightly going to freak the [ __ ] out. Um but I just they're they're going to have to ground us in something tangible. Because man, I can't I can't believe they've convinced themselves. >> $300 billion is 300 billion reasons for them to kind of act up or you think they'll act up? >> Iran? I I really so okay, this is where I think Trump has gone wrong is he's thinking 300 billion would get me to act some kind of way. Like I would um I'll dance like a good monkey. Right? >> Mhm. >> And so this is where I go, now he's talking about Qatar, which um their people have reasons to not love Qatar's uh stance on human rights and things like that. So, you know, leave that as a an open door. But Qatar's talking about like I've seen figures as high as 19 trillion dollars of investments being made in the US. Uh now, if you put that together, Trump's mental model, this is me mind reading, but I think everyone will be pretty comfortable with this. Trump's mental model of 300 billion dollars gets you to go, "Oh yeah, like in what way would you like me to dance? How high would you like me to jump?" Uh Qatar's going to expect the same thing. "I would like you to jump this high. I would like you to do these things." Um so you don't get 19 trillion dollars for free. You don't get 19 trillion dollars. It's so absurd. But like even if somehow magically we were to believe that over some 50-year period we're going to get 19 trillion dollars of investment from Qatar. Um that's going to come with a whole lot of stipulations. That's Trump's mentality. >> Mhm. >> That's the Western mentality largely, but when you look at a theocratic regime that if we can believe like okay, reports are that 42,000 um civilians were killed by Iran during the protest uprising. Cut that in half. Cut it by 75%. It's still an insane amount of your own people to kill. So, you've got people who will literally just put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and shoot you. Uh which we can model out with China, which is the nicest of the groups of people that killed their own people en masse. >> Mhm. >> And then we're like, "Okay, yeah, we should probably stop doing this. Let's think economically." They still rule with an iron fist. So, I am not expecting that Iran having the ability to get to 300 billion dollars in investments from surrounding areas gets them to stop being a theocratic regime. The only thing that stops them from being a theocratic regime is that the will of the people rises up so hard and so fast that they have no ability to stop them. And given that it's an unarmed populace, I don't see that happening. So, um while I there are historical examples where a government legitimately does more or less step aside um non-violently, it almost never happens. You almost always have to kill them. So, um yeah, I don't think the odds are that the 300 billion it I don't think it will work if it is offered first, and then there's an expectation that okay, I just gave you 10 billion. Now let's see if you're good, and then I'll give you 10 billion more. I don't think that will work at all um because as we've seen with like Palestine, they build military installations with the money. They don't build roads, houses, schools. Um it's all much more survival of the regime oriented. >> Mhm. >> And as history man, the more I read about history, the more I realize that a population is just so easy to psychologically control. You oftentimes don't even have to bring out the guns. You just lie to them over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Uh for instance, the US ran a brilliant campaign which when they occupied Japan, they wanted to be able to leverage the emperor as like an emissary of God to say, "What we're doing with the US is the right thing." So that the Japanese would get in line and they did. It's crazy. They could have been like, "War criminal, uh you're going to be executed or exiled or you have to renounce your throne or whatever." Uh but instead they were like, "No, no, no. Keep your position because we're going to need to puppeteer you every now and then." Like we need your people to get on board with this. Um and it worked. And it worked really well, by the way. Japan is a wonderland. But it is wild how easy we are to manipulate. It's really wild, man. Uh so yes, I would expect that to play out far more um that you're going to get a psychological campaign running on the Iranian people to make them hate the West. Um to show we are strong and we survived all of this and we're going to see you guys to the other side of this. And endless propaganda aimed at young kids. Um and you'll get another generation that's like, "Yeah, this is what I want." >> Um one thing that we haven't talked about with this deal is that it's contingent on Lebanon and Israel playing fair. There's reports that Israel won't like see the land that they took. There's reports that Israel has been iced out of the negotiation table. What's kind of your read on the how long this agreement would hold up looking through the lens of Israel, Lebanon, and Hezbollah? >> Um so Lebanon unfortunately is probably a hostage in all of this. And this is really a question of Iran via the proxy of Hezbollah going after Israel, and I think there it's completely untenable. So, it will just be a question of what is their motivation? So, does Iran want to poke at Israel because they are so religiously offended and just pride, but the religious thing I think is just such a wild accelerant. Are they so offended that Israel is occupying territory in Lebanon that they just cannot help themselves but launch an attack, at which point Israel will strike back, and then they just are basically taking the excuse to be like, "Yeah, we tried, but you know, [ __ ] them. They just like wouldn't they wouldn't leave." >> Yeah. >> And so, um, you know, we can't control Hezbollah. That'll be their official message. And so, we told Israel that if they struck back, and they may even say if they're I think they have to well, we don't [ __ ] know what the MOU actually says. My gut is it's going to say that Israel needs to back out of Lebanon. Uh, and so, that's going to be a major sticking point. And so, if I'm Iran and I take a somewhat cynical read of the whole thing, I go, Iran is using that as the um, Trump card that they will play whenever they want to say, "See, Israel, you don't have Israel on a leash. Um, they're the bad guys. We're never going to tell Hezbollah that they have to back off when they're being occupied by this foreign invader who's trying to run the greater Israel project." They know that the West is completely turned on Israel. Uh, and so, they'll be like, "Yep, Israel bad, us good, you guys [ __ ] this up, and now we're going to go back to doing our thing, and we know two things. One, you're not going to attack us during midterms. Two, you're almost certainly going to lose in the midterms, even just historically, you're >> You're lose. Forget that you've stepped on your own dick and caused a complete [ __ ] mess. Just you always lose. I mean, it's like such a small handful of times that a president's been able to actually keep the Congress and the Senate. So, uh you're going to be impeached. You probably won't be convicted cuz you probably won't lose the Senate, but you're going to lose the house. Uh you'll be impeached. You're not going to be able to get any legislation through. So, you're going to be even more inert than you are now in terms of being able to stop us. Uh and so >> didn't need approval to go into a war this time. So, he didn't need Congress. He signed up the house. So, him losing the midterms, I don't know if that necessarily would cut off his ability to fight in Iran. >> Totally. But, now think about what he's learned by what he just did. So, he knows, "Huh, bombing them didn't work." And so, now the only algorithm Trump could be running in his brain is I'll have to be even more escalatory. And so, he certainly can, like from an EO perspective, start another 60-day clock and see if Congress can basically stop him. >> Yeah. >> Uh they won't be able to stop him from doing immediate short-term strikes like he has done so far. They'll certainly try, but Trump will now know that if he's actually going to get control of the strait, he's got to go all the way. And what does And all the way, and it's just nothing but endless question marks in terms of how many lives would be lost. The US does not have the stomach for that. And so, he right now, he has leverage in a more, um like economic sense of Iran really is in this weakened position that if Trump could drag this out and if Trump really didn't want to get a deal done ASAP. Because remember, you don't have deaths happening on a daily basis right now. >> Mhm. >> So, from that perspective, Trump shouldn't have urgency. So, the urgency that Trump feels is economic on our side. It's all of our allies, maybe mostly even China, being like, "Hey, [ __ ] I haven't sent any um like military vessels over there to like escort my ships through out of courtesy. I'm giving you time to get this done. But we are on a real ticking clock from a strategic petroleum reserve perspective. You're not going to [ __ ] that up. I'm just telling you right now." And so, I'm not going to shoot any missiles at you, but I am going to bring some really big aggressive ships and make sure that my oil gets out. You can do what the [ __ ] you want with everybody else's oil, but I'm getting mine. Remember, 90% of Iranian oil is Chinese. Now, I'm mind reading here. I don't know that that's true, but Trump tipped his hand a little bit when he said, "Um Xi has been a real gentleman and hasn't sent over any uh warships." Which tells you that conversation has been had. So, clearly, it's come up. And so, at that point, you know we're on a Trump is on a ticking clock from the rest of the world perspective. So, even if Congress can't shut him down, there's just there isn't the escalatory path that you he wants you to believe that there is. And if he starts releasing money and sanctions, they're going to build themselves a war chest so that they can survive an economic battle that lasts for a long time. This is basically like um take a filmmaker who maybe they only do a movie once every five years, but when they do that movie, they make $20 million. And so, it's like, yeah, don't act like you're going to make $20 million a year, but $20 is a lot for an individual and the however many billions they end up getting flooded back into their system. And if they can run oil for 90 days, 120 days while they stall for time, holy [ __ ] like they can clock a lot of dollars because it basically is all that pent-up demand goes out. People refill their strategic petroleum reserves. So, like yeah, they can count on being able to stockpile a ton of [ __ ] money. So, we get put in a weaker position because now Iran has rebuilt the reserves and they can once again withstand a real long protracted economic war. So, from that perspective, I think that if Trump gives up the leverage that he has now, that it becomes a non-starter. Because what what is he going to do? Like rebomb the same things again? Or is he going to escalate to civilian infrastructure? It's just it's not a good position. >> And he finally take Karg Island, right? That was the thing that we talked about. Um So, in general, there's not a lot of confidence that this deal would go through. There is a lot of if and asterisks and the whole Hezbollah situation I think is really going to throw rocks in this. Um if we were to kind of call this out 90 days from now, do you think that MOU gets signed, they come to the table, and things do get resolved? Cuz as much as Iran is quote-unquote winning or in a position of strength or however you want to frame it, they did come to the table, they did sign the agreement allegedly. So, they also are in the need of wanting to make a deal, too. So, could this be the 10% possibility that this does work out and then >> Sure. I I can't see the future. It's entirely possible that something wonderful comes out of all this and no one will celebrate harder than me if that really ends up being the case. I would love to forgive all of Iran's past sins and just let them move into the 21st century and be a contributing member to the economy. That would be absolutely incredible. I would love to see that. Uh however, this is what I think is going to play out. The MOU is hyper vague. It has been watered down and worded in such a loose way that everybody is going to be able to say to their people, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look, this is what it really means." Okay, so the Iranians are going to go back and say this means that the US are a bunch of [ __ ] and we [ __ ] slapped them around and then Trump is going to say this means that we're the big boss, we're totally in control, they're going to behave and we're going to let money flow in if they behave and that's it. And then we're going to go into a negotiating period which is going to fall apart around Hezbollah and Israel. Then they back out and now they're like calling our bluff and they'll drag us into, call it, somewhere between mid to late August and middle of October knowing that, okay, now Trump is under maximal pressure in terms of the midterms. They will be all the while doing anything they can in stealth to rebuild their military. At the point that they back out of the agreement, they will just full on build their military, maybe nuclear, yes maybe no, but they're probably far more interested in rebuilding whatever stock piles were hurt in terms of their ability to attack Israel and other Gulf nations. Pouring more energy back into their ballistic program. I'm sure they were traumatized they weren't able to strike the European bases, showing people that they could reach like all the way to Paris. So, a little bit tune up here, get these kids, you know, in line properly by showing them just how far we can get our ballistic missiles to go. Like, and if they, I mean, dude, they could, let's say that that all plays out the way that I'm saying. Now you're in a position where you've officially pulled out of the agreement, there's no more 60-90 days, [ __ ] that. You're talking like until you're willing to bomb me, I'm just going to keep going. Now imagine Trump tries to escalate. Bro, the unless he gets a big win, which he will not, then you're in a position where Republicans are guaranteed to be dead in 2028, Democrats take over which is precisely what they're hoping for. Democrats aren't going to touch this. They're going to be like, "Hey, like who are we to judge everybody's culture? Like let them do their thing." And so they're going to leave them alone. Uh and then if anybody says, "But what about nuclear weapons?" We're going to say, "Well, [ __ ] Trump ruined that. Like we tried. He like blew that for all of us. And so the best we can do is try to have a stalemate like we do with North Korea. Uh and now Iran is furiously building bombs and ballistic missile program and be uh reinvigorating their status as the bully of the Middle East. And it's just like and then we will turn our attention back to China where it should have been in the first place." And on the game goes. >> Nice. Um according to the chat, 77% of the chat says that this is not a good deal. 22 23% said yes, it is a good deal. Um >> That sounds about right. >> So in other news, there was a massive um according to the FBI plan to have an attack during the White House UFC event. Um there was five or six co-conspirators across three different states, California, Nebraska, Ohio. Um and a 19-year-old Ohio man was arrested for the terror plot after his wife or I'm sorry, his mom called the authorities because she was worried about >> That is a 45-year-old man. >> He's 19 and he looks >> That is the craziest [ __ ] For anybody who's not looking at their screen, that is wild. I can't believe that. >> at 19, I might commit terror attacks, too. >> Bro, you would be forgiven for doing so. >> [laughter] >> That That is wild. He really got a bum deal. >> We got the Friday funnies on a Wednesday. >> [laughter] >> At 19. >> You need that. >> Uh yeah, this is wild, man. This So I'm going to be honest and this is pure emotion. I have nothing to back this up. So this is just a glimpse into uh the way my internet addled brain is working at this moment. But they're going too hard on the PR of this. Like, look, maybe as the details come out, we find out that this really was a big deal. Um, but I just have a really hard time believing that this 19-year-old kid who folded real fast on his friends, um, they're talking about like a couple dozen people involved in this, that they were actually going to be able to pull off a drone attack meant to drive people to other, um, locations where snipers would be waiting and they would take them out. I just thought, hold on a second. During the UFC 250 on the White House lawn, you don't think every building around there has a sniper on top of it from, uh, US Secret Service? Now, those kids don't exactly have a sterling reputation right now, but I don't know. It just felt a little bit weird. So, maybe, hey, listen, as the details come out, maybe it really is just like, oh, wow, great job, guys. Or maybe this is more of a mountain out of a molehill, and these guys were all talking [ __ ] online, and is it really something? And I feel there's a name for the clause where it's like they had to take it this isn't the words, but it's close, validated action. It's like, okay, you really did a thing, you weren't just [ __ ] talking. Um, and so if this ends up being like a 4chan group of people just [ __ ] being 19 and stupid, um, then I'm like, okay, this was a distraction. This is trying to make it seem like these guys like, you know, really protecting the homeland. Uh, that feels like more populist, like trying to whip people up into a frenzy. Um, so, yeah, the only thing that would have made me more suspicious if this was like a Muslim plot to get us all. So, I don't know. My there's some distant spidey sense I have going off that there's maybe less to this than we're being asked to believe. But I don't know. I just feel like it's >> News coverage, it's about 10 minutes, so I'm not going to play the whole thing here. They do talk about that the suspects felt that they were disenfranchised, they didn't feel like the country was going in the wrong direction, and if they could do this attack, it can spark the revolution. >> I'm sure. And look at 19, we all think a lot of dumb things. So, um that's where I'm like, we really need to figure out if this is actually people that were planning to carry out an attack, which is not crazy to think in the US right now. I think there's plenty of people that feel that way. But there's something about how big of a deal they're making this just feels weird. So, but again, that's pure emotion. I am not at No word coming out of my mouth is based on fact. It is just based on emotion. So, we'll need to see what plays out. I will obviously immediately update um my thinking as we get actual real details on this. >> Um Eric, can you sign in this? >> That's That's where I'm at right now. >> Yeah. Um It It did seem a bit on the nose that to your point, like I feel like we're the greatest military in the world, right? And everybody talks about that, and then this is the home of the president. I feel like they would have those security deals in place. This is not a rally in the middle of Pennsylvania somewhere, like you know, so to fact that they were just that hubris and thought that they could just take over they could fight the Secret Service and the Army and the Marines in the middle of DC, that's literally a fortress and a maze, like I don't think they planned that out right, but who knows? >> Well, they certainly got caught. So, and thank God for that. And the other part of this that's interesting that I have complete I probably shouldn't be conflicted on this, but if I'm honest, I am. A mom ratting out her kid, like, oh God. There's something about that that I really hate. Thank God she did. Like, assume for a second that it's real. Thank God she did because you can't let your kid go do something like that. The loss of life, just the insane tragedy, but that one's brutal. Like, that's one of those necessary things that you have to do that I just hate from top to bottom. Um so, yeah. I mean, obviously shame on the kid for putting his parent in that kind of position, but Jesus. That that is rough. >> All right, let's talk about this US debt because the US has to refinance $10 trillion. >> Yeah. >> Or five Elon Musks in order to uh >> Is that how we we do uh our accounting? He is a a weight of measure now at this point. >> If he was a country, he'll be in the top 15. And I feel like people need to realize that. Like that's wild. >> That is crazy. Uh >> But US debt >> Obviously there there's plenty to say about um actually understanding that, which is my upcoming deep dive, Are Trillionaires Proof That Something Is Broken? Um so yeah, definitely check that one out. I think it's pretty interesting. Okay, what's going on with this though? The US government needing to refinance. So they've got to refinance close to $10 trillion in debt over the next 12 months. So roughly a third of everything we owe. And if we can't find buyers, money printer go burr, baby. You turn that [ __ ] on and you let it run all through the night. And all of that's happening right as we've got to contend with the fact that the biggest foreign buyer of US debt is in the middle of an economic meltdown that's causing them to sell like crazy. My beloved Japan holds 1.2 trillion dollars. Literally one Elon Musk uh in US Treasuries. So that's more than any other country on Earth. They started doing that as a way to get uh a return on their own money during a 30-plus year overreaction to their economic bubble bursting in '89-'90, depending on who you talk to. Unlike the rest of the world that uses debt to power through a crisis like we did after 2008, the average Japanese citizen and corporation, they have just focused relentlessly on paying down their debt. It is a fascinating reminder that when you stimulate economy with money, all you're really trying to do is change the psychology of people. A depression is largely a psychological phenomena, as is euphoria, bull runs, all of that. It's about psychology. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't mechanisms, physics to the money, but the physics to the money plug into the human brain. And if you don't understand that, you'll be very confused as to what's going on in Japan that's now echoing all over the global economy. Because try as they might, Japan has not been able to stimulate their economy with cheap money. You pour cheap money into the US economy, you will get inflation like crazy. We see it all the time. But they've been doing it in Japan for 30 years, and it hasn't worked. It's crazy. But Japan still needs to get a return on their money so they can cover their pension obligations, insurance obligations. So, you've got a very risk-averse country that needs to take some risk to get a return because they've driven their own returns in their country to effectively zero. So, how do you do that? And Japan ended up buying US Treasuries as a way to do it, which is great because there was a delta, right? They're effectively at zero, the US is call it 3 or 4% a little bit higher now. And so it's like, great. This is wonderful. Now, this is also great for the global economy, the fact that they've been doing that. You could go to Japan, you could get money on the cheap, you could deploy it into higher risk elements of the US stock market, and really get paid back. And so people have been doing that for a very long time. Now, for 30 years, Japan was happy with that deal. They were happy to be the world's ATM. They kept their rates effectively at zero to avoid deepening the economic crisis that's been going on for a very long time in Japan. Somewhere along the way, they just became okay with the fact that they're not growing. Which is crazy, but nonetheless true. But changes in the global economy have made that position impossible for them to keep doing any longer. And it's coming at a very bad time. So, this is really largely an echo of COVID. So, the whole world just starts printing money like crazy, gets inflation. That causes all of their exported goods to be more expensive. That means that Japan is now importing that inflation. They've tried to hold it off as long as they could, but they can't anymore. And so, now they're unable to defend their own currency. And so, they're having to raise rates. And that's how all of this is beginning. So, the Bank of Japan has just raised rates to 1%. It's the highest since 1995. And Japanese investors just posted their biggest sell-off of US bonds in almost 4 years. Their own government bonds are finally actually paying something out. And so, now all the money is going home instead of being spread around the globe. Now, to complicate all of this, you've also got right as the US has to refinance $10 trillion, right as your biggest buyer is selling, you're in a position where AI is just sucking up the global liquidity. So, you've got the SpaceX obviously IPO, which drank deeply of global liquidity. You've got Amazon, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Meta, all of them spending insane amounts of money on AI infrastructure. 600, 700 billion dollars just this year. Okay? So, nearly every dollar of cash that they generate is just going into AI infrastructure. All with, by the way, remember, if Michael Burry's right, you've got this looming crisis of their putting on their books that the chips for the AI infrastructure build-out last 5 to 6 years, when in reality, historically, that would be 2 to 3 years. And that that is possible that that discrepancy is intentionally being deployed as an accounting trick to hide like north of a hundred billion dollars in losses that become invisible once you make that change. So, that gets very scary. Now, Morgan Stanley says the AI infrastructure build out could pull 1.5 trillion dollars out of global debt markets in the next few years. Yikes, given that right now we have to refinance such an insane amount. So, these companies are super desperate for capital. They would of course love to borrow more and more yen, but they're not going to be able to because Japan is cranking up that number. So, you run the math, America needs 10 trillion dollars, its largest lender is leaving, AI is hoovering up everything that's left, but someone still has to buy the US debt. So, the only question is the price. And are we going to just do it by jacking up our interest rates, which obviously would be devastating to other parts of the economy, or do we money printer go burr, which makes people more likely to riot with pitchforks? And it's important to explain why they want to riot with pitchforks because they will be confused. And they will think it is because Elon has stolen their money. But the reality is that what's actually happening is printing money is theft of purchasing power. And because it's theft of purchasing power instead of the actual dollars, people can't see it. They look in the bank account, it's the same number of dollars. It just buys less stuff. And so they can feel it. They know that things are getting worse, but they can't figure out why. And that one little fact makes this game work. And it allows the government to go, "All right, well, no one's going to buy our debt. We're still not going to cut expenses. We're still not going to cut expenses. We're just going to take the money via an invisible tax. And then guess what people like Hank Green are going to scream. We need more tax. Got to have more tax, man. But that will never solve the problem as long as every dollar of tax that you bring in, you spend a dollar 58. So, it will remain forever broken because we deficit spend. We collect more in tax than anybody else, but because we spend more than anybody else, we're in a bad position. The key is not to get more money. The key is to spend less money. It's wild. It's wild. And trying to get people to understand that is proving to be very difficult. Very difficult. Shocking. It's sho- I'm actually shocked. This is shocking. >> Um speaking of the Hank Green uh tweet, let's jump into that. Anyway, let's go. >> Capital gains should be taxed like ordinary income. >> Which was him retweeting "Anyway, capital gains should be taxed like ordinary income." Well, Hank, you can keep trying, but at some point I hope you go, "Why isn't this working? Is there maybe something I don't understand?" So, the bad news is that this new push is being echoed in Washington to tax your investment gains like a paycheck, which is what they're talking about, okay? So, there's a thing called capital gains. It's very different than your paycheck. So, capital gains is about, "Hey, you took a big risk, and so we're going to tax you less for that because we want to make sure that people are incentivized to take a risk so that you keep innovating because that's how the world works. Innovation makes everybody's life better. If you didn't have innovation, let this one sink in. If you didn't have innovation, your entire life would be one episode of Alone. Now, if you've never seen Alone, which should be required viewing, it should literally be taught in schools, just staying alive, just getting enough food to eat and enough shelter to not freeze to death, would be next to impossible. All right. Now, the push in Washington is being driven by Senator Ed Markey, and he's calling it the Equal Tax Act. It would strip the lower capital gains rate from anyone earning over a million dollars, taxing those gains as ordinary income up to 37% at the federal level, by the way, cuz it'll be different at state level, and it's part of a wave. Like we already pointed out, you've got people like Hank Green that are tweeting about it as well, and I'll even be willing to extend the grace to say they actually think that this is going to work. That they don't realize that we have a spending problem, and so they just think, "Well, we've got a gap, we need to make it up, let's just collect more in tax." Places like California and Washington state have already put wealth taxes uh on the 2026 ballot, or at least are headed that way. I'm really hoping it doesn't make it in California, but the pitch is always the same. Stop rewarding wealth accumulation over work. Tax the rich like the rest of us. But people proposing that aren't thinking about the knock-on effect of disincentivizing the risk that builds wealth in the first place. So, one thing that you can look at, by the way, if you want to understand why is there such an insane disparity between Europe being able to conquer the rest of the world and the rest of the world? Like, why weren't the Native Americans the ones that ended up conquering the world? Why didn't Africa conquer the world? And why didn't South America, for that uh uh example? So, the reason is largely geography. And so, when you've got a certain type of geography, you're able to uh be a really good Minecraft player IRL. Now, anybody that's ever played Minecraft, you realize what you're trying to do very rapidly is build a farm and start having a surplus of things. That is just a video game trying to mimic real life, but we've gotten so far from having to deal with our own food that we forget real life is Minecraft. That you've got to be able to gather more resources than you need. If you're not able to do that, you cannot grow the population. So what you do is you innovate. One of the biggest innovations that we all take for granted, we think it's just oh, this is how life is. One of the biggest innovations in the world was agriculture. When you do it well, you can grow your population. When you're evil like the [ __ ] Red Army in Russia and you kill your talented farmers, everybody starves to death. So what you want to do is make sure that you build up the surplus so that you have this wealth so that you can do what with that wealth? Do what with that wealth, everybody? You fund innovation. That's right. So you start funding innovation and Europe just innovates, innovates, innovates. Now sadly for all of us, one of the things that always gets innovated first is warfare. So you get Europe, they master uh agriculture also in mastering agriculture and being lucky enough to have geographically um large enough animals that have a certain type of um innate wiring. So like cows cluster together when they're scared. Buffalo run and stampede. They'll kill each other, they'll kill you. So they become next to impossible to tame. Same with zebras. Zebras will [ __ ] kick a lion to death, that's real. Uh they will bite and never let go, that's real. And so there's Henry. And so trying to domesticate a zebra, hard pass. Domesticating horses, you can do that. Domesticating cows, you can do that. So luck of the draw. So now you get agriculture going, you're able to build a surplus, you bring all the animals in close, uh they pass you smallpox, kills a ton of people over time, but you build up an immunity. So now you're innovating on weaponry, you build up an immunity to some of Earth's most brutal diseases, and then you head over, if you're the conquistadors, you head over to South America, you just [ __ ] kill everybody cuz you've got steel and they do not. Shout out to I forget the Jared Diamond, think the guy that wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, I believe is the name of the book. So, uh you just take everybody over with a super small number of people because they're using stones and like um [ __ ] there was some mineral that they used for the blades, but anyway, it's easy just [ __ ] smash them. So, uh that's because essentially from a cultural standpoint you've got 5,000 literally years of innovation that allows you to go and conquer. So, being able to build a surplus being able to build a surplus is a good thing. Being able to fund innovation is a good thing. It's very hard. It's extremely risky. And so, as a nation, we have been swaddled in success for so long that we forget that innovation requires people to take an extraordinary amount of risk. And so, we have to be very, very careful about how we proceed. Now, I think Daniel Priestley, uh who actually responded to Hank Green, has a really banging response to this. So, this is me quoting uh Daniel Priestley. I don't know if you can pull this up. It's in the comments on my algorithm anyway, pops up first cuz it knows I think that uh Daniel Priestley is amazing. Uh but this is me quoting Daniel Priestley. Should there be an incentive to take a risk? Should there be a recognition that inflation ate part of the capital? There are capital gains that are purely passive and there are very active capital gains, too. E.g., a person buys a house, does nothing to it, and sells it for a 100K more in the future, that equals passive gain. Or, a person buys a terrible rundown house and then spends 100 hours renovating it into something livable and makes $100,000 when they sell it. Do we appreciate that this form of making money is inherently more risky? Do we want to incentivize the risk taking? If a person gets taxed on a gain at a high rate, why would they realize the gain? Why not just hold on and leave capital tied up rather than moving it into new parts of the economy? Now, pausing there, this is exactly what's happening in Japan is you've got a position where they don't have an incentive to invest in high-risk new companies. So, all of the banks end up investing in what turn into zombie companies. So, the zombie companies, rather than competing with each other to stay um relevant in order to continue to make enough money to be profitable to grow, what they do instead is they say, "Hey, dear employee, you're going to be employed here for life because we know all we have to do is create enough money to pay the interest on our debt, which is very, very low. And then we can stay in business." Now, the problem is that calcifies the talent pool, so they're not moving, they're not taking what they learn from one company to another, so that calcifies. A new startup company isn't able to get the money because they're a higher risk than the already known zombie company. And so, the employees aren't going anywhere, so you have no movement of talent. The money's not going into higher risk uh things like we see in Silicon Valley with all these startups, and so you don't innovate and you create this insanely fragile economy. Whereas in the US, like if you think of the Silicon Valley model, employees are moving all the time from company to company to company, which means that the companies have to compete to keep them, which is better for their wages, uh which is actually growing wages. Until recently, wages had not grown in Japan for 30 years. Really think about that. Imagine you did not get a raise. Not Not a 2% raise, not a 5% raise. You did not get a raise for 30 years. Very different. I think people feel some type of way about that. Okay, so if you want to get that innovation, which is the very thing that allows a country to stabilize its population, grow its population, protect itself from other people, um be the most economically dominant place on Earth, which is where everybody is always going to want to live. So, if you want to do that kind of stuff because it makes your life better, you must innovate. To innovate, you have to be able to accumulate wealth. And so, when we have this obsession with tearing that wealth down because a different thing is broken in the economy, which we are confused about, we run the risk of breaking the entire engine of prosperity. The The literal thing that gives us prosperity is the thing that people keep attacking. It is crazy. And I get it. It has taken me a very long time to cobble together an understanding of the actual underlying mechanisms of the economy. So, I understand the vast majority of humanity is not going to do it, but ooh boy, uh do we run the risk of breaking something? So, what I would encourage everybody to do is say, "Does America have something that is uniquely profound?" And I think the answer is yes, obviously. Uh we make more money per person than anywhere else in the world. Far more than China. Our way of life is the place that people from all over the world want to get to. China, in mimicking us, pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but they did it expressly by mimicking us, and then, if you're going to be a little uncharitable, stealing our innovations. But, nobody can take away from them that they have really become extraordinary at manufacturing. But, it's still mimicking the same model. The same model that now people are trying to destroy here. So, that's where I get worried. And what I like about Daniel's response is he's showing that there is a deft way to go in and do this. If people just literally insist on blinding themselves to the fact that we do not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, but if people just absolutely have to tax, which I don't even know why I spend airtime on this. It's [ __ ] stupid. All we should be doing is cutting expenses. But, if you're going to insist on doing that, then there are smart ways to do it and there are dumb ways to do it. And people just blanket, "I'll just go get the [ __ ] money. These guys are too rich. [ __ ] them." Why are they too rich? Why are they too rich? Why is the richest guy on Earth a trillionaire instead of being worth a couple hundred thousand dollars? Why isn't that the astronomical sum? It isn't the astronomical sum because of deficit spending and money printing, which just causes that number to be different cuz by the way, eventually trillionaires are going to be a joke. I forget what company uh country, Zimbabwe or something, had like a trillion-dollar note. Because it's just like a trillion. [ __ ] Doesn't mean anything. So, keep in mind, whether it's a million, a billion, a trillion, a hundred thousand, whatever, uh that doesn't matter. You're getting hung up on the wrong thing. What you should be asking is, "Okay, wait, it used to be that a hundred thousand dollars was an unimaginable amount of money. Then it was a million dollars was an unimaginable amount of money. And then it was a billion dollars was an unimaginable. And now it's a trillion. And it will just keep going. Why? Are people actually accumulating more money? This The moment we're living in now is like the Gilded Age. So, this has happened before. It's not good, by the way. You don't want the K-shaped economy, but you don't get rid of the K-shaped economy by doing the kinds of taxes that people are talking about. So, the way that you get rid of the K-shaped economy is re-empowering workers, bringing manufacturing back, uh breaking up monopolies. We can go down that path. There are very real things you can do. Uh we're just not doing them. And this tax isn't one of them, and it won't solve the problem. But it could make everybody poorer. That's true. >> Um Scott Galloway had a good argument on this, where he says, "Right now we're taxing labor, we're taxing sweat, and we're letting go of equity." So he said, "In a perfect world, we would flip that. So on salary income taxes, those would drop across the board, and then it would get replaced and with the capital of financialization of taxes. >> Is it >> The only thing he could possibly be saying to not be a [ __ ] would be something along the lines of we need to close the loophole that allows people to What do they call it? Um earn >> borrow against their >> borrow, die. It's something like that. But yeah, where you're borrowing money against your equity. And then you die, and you never paid it back, and then there's a step change in the basis for the person that's inheriting it, and so the debt never really gets paid. Uh uh so, yeah, if he's saying that, like, I'm cool. Let's do that. But already, right now today, if somebody sells their shares, they're going to pay tax. So that's all very real. >> Mhm. >> So it's only a question of have we created some weird thing where we allow people to borrow money that they never have to pay back. And from what I can tell, it's more of a myth that people think happens, but in reality, people really do sell their shares, and they really do pay off their debt. So um I I'll have to look up the exact stat on that, but at one point I did a cursory look at that to see, okay, wait, people talk about it all the time, but does it actually happen? It doesn't seem that actually happens that much. It is a theoretical loophole, so by all means close it. Um but I don't think it's actually playing out the way the people think it's playing out. The thing they don't like is that on paper, these guys are worth like this insane amount of money. And keep in mind, how did we get out of the Gilded Age? A big thing was we broke up the [ __ ] monopolies. And the SEC didn't even exist. So, now you really had people being taken advantage of in the stock market. They're getting taken advantage of today, but it's so much easier to become knowledgeable about things now than it was. So, um and then also we back then we just desperately needed labor reforms. The reforms that we need now are stop sending jobs to China. Stop sending jobs to China. You've got to I know people hate the tariffs because they came from Trump and they are a tax, but they do incentivize companies to go, "Oh yeah, it's not cheaper to go elsewhere. So, I'm going to stay here." And so, it's like you have to do that. Like if I can get everybody to accept, you must get your jobs to be [ __ ] here in the country, what method would you like to use for that? So, I'm open. It doesn't need to be tariffs, but tariffs would certainly work, but we have to deploy them and not then as Congress refuse to go, "Yeah, you know what? We done [ __ ] up with this whole globalization thing. We got to bring jobs back home and this is one way to do it." >> Um let's bring it back to the tax for a second. What would be the ideal tax fix? Like how can we solve the dissident that's happening with taxes right now cuz we have that classic quote, "A teacher get taxed at a higher rate than a billionaire." And you know, that that's the same talking points that we've heard every election cycle, but if it was up to you, how would you like clean up our tax situation? >> Uh okay, step number one, I would balance the budget because we really don't have a problem with the amount of money that we collect. It's an obscene it's a literal obscene amount of money. Mhm. Our government is too big. Governments are terrible. They're Assume they're evil and you're going to be way closer to the truth. But the God, what is a really um it the government is exactly like body fat. If you have none, you die. And if you have too much, you die. And it is way easier to have too much than to have too little. Like you really really got to work to have too little body fat. But getting too much body fat is like the default course. If everything if people aren't forced to go do something to stop them from eating calories, uh they will overeat. Like it's just I mean, you look at the US population. So, uh very easy global population's headed in the same way. So, that would be number one. We've got to just have an inherent distrust of the size of government. We've got to look at the budgets that we have as somebody who is morbidly obese. That you don't have to tell me anything else. Just tell me how much the government is spending and I know whether you have a problem or not based on the size of your population. We have a problem. You can compare 10 years ago, our budgets were like half what they are. Well, that's crazy. Has things gotten better in the last 10 years? I would say definitively not. We've certainly gotten more divided in the last 10 years. So, this is this is a bad direction. Simply spending more money is a terrible terrible terrible [ __ ] strategy. Okay, so we've got to shrink the size of government. We've got to be spending less money. So, I'm going to means test the [ __ ] out of every handout. If you're able-bodied, you're going to [ __ ] work. That's just that. Uh and that holds true for old people and young people. I see old people are like, "Yo, just tax them young [ __ ] more. We got to keep our uh our you know, things the way they are." >> Social Security going. >> It's like, "Nope. If you're able-bodied and you're 70, you're going to work. So, I get it. That's not going to be popular. But nonetheless, I uh stand firmly behind that because we have [ __ ] young people. Let's stop immediately doing that. All right. The next thing I'm going to do, if we really like just Oh, and by the way, for any cuz I actually get asked this. For anybody that wants to know what my default answer is to how you reduce the budget, I think Rand Paul uh has a very simple solution. It's a 6% decline for I don't think it's too many years. It might be 6 years. Uh 6% decline for roughly 6 years across everything blindly. Everything gets cut by 6%. Um that way nobody is playing favorites. Now, if people want to get rid of things, I'm all for that cuz I have a feeling that there are just some really dumb things we spend money on. But at least contracting, contracting, contracting uh at an exponential rate will force people to get real serious about where that department's dollars are being allocated, which I think is a very, very, very good idea. Okay. Uh now, from a like actual how do we tax people so that everybody feels good about it? One, I will remind everybody the bottom 50% of earners 50% of people in the US effectively pay no tax. It's 3%, but we'll just round that to zero. So, you're already in a position where only the top 50% of earners pay anything at all. So, now it becomes a question of do we take something that's more akin to the model in um the Nordic countries, where it's just a blanket tax. Now, they still do the um the uh graduating tax, which I cannot progressive tax. Thank you. Uh but one thing you could do is just everybody pays 20%. Period. Doesn't If you make a dollar, you pay 20 cents. Uh if you make Again, this is income. If you make $20 million, then you're going to pay your 20% of that. So, um yeah, that sounds fine to me. So, doing something like that, at least everybody knows we all pay the same percentage. Um easy peasy. And now, because the rate is low enough, cuz already uh capital gains is more than 20%. So, you'd be in a pretty good spot. There'd be nowhere to hide. If people want to And then close the loan loophole. So, if people want to um have the money, they're going to pay tax on it. But they're only going to pay tax on income, because taxing wealth is civilizational suicide. That's why everybody stops doing it. Something like 16 countries tried it, only three still have it. It's a terrible [ __ ] idea. >> It's interesting that like everybody wants to tax income, but wealth is like untouched. So, it incentivizes you to become wealthy and not become income-driven. Well, the vast majority of people like get their income. >> It it always starts as income. That's the thing. Like so much Like if you were to tax my wealth, you're now taxing something I've already paid tax on. So, it is so offensive to me that the government's like, "You don't know what to do with that money. Let us take it." Even though they are morbidly obese and clearly do not know what to do with the money. So, that's where it's like, "Listen, you had your bite of the apple, okay? So, now I've been able to accumulate more than I need in any one moment. It is the very aggregation of capital that allows people to do things that are riskier. And so, what have I done with my dollars? I've created companies. So, I've created jobs. Like the people in this room with me, you guys are my high-risk expenditures. You are the thing that I spend that money on. So, uh hopefully, you guys feel pretty good about that. Like it is money that this company would not exist had I not been able to do that. I wouldn't have had the startup capital to get it off the ground. So, that's where it's like yeah. Um people fail to understand risk and reward, they fail to understand innovation, but doing something that was flat across the board, fantastic. But, if you're going to accumulate wealth, it is going to happen originally, you got paid to do something and that money was taxed. Unless you are literally a banker who is being quite literally given fake money made out of thin air and then you get to charge interest on that. That's where the the like evil magic trick happens. But, for the average person, it's always going to start I mean, it may be started as income that got taxed, that became your parents wealth, that got handed on to you, sure. But, it started as money that was already taxed. >> Copy. All right, we got some super chats. Yes, we do. First up from Marusha Dark, "Prediction the 2030s to 40s will see authoritarian nationalism in Europe and maybe the USA to deal with UBI, remigration and low IQ. Post 2040s will see ASI led drone war between a plurality of the US and Chinese models and proxies." >> Well, they're unfortunately not wrong about AI making kill decisions. It actually just happened for the first time in Russia and Ukraine where a completely autonomous, so not one being piloted by a human chasing you down and blowing you up via remote control it is a completely autonomous drone that's now killing human soldiers. So, yeah, it's a dystopian glimpse into the future, but it may be all too accurate. >> Marusha Dark again, thank you for the 40 total, says tag Drew on Discord with the tweet, "Trump might be trying to track Iran's uranium back to Obama and Hillary via U1, which would prove treason, well-timed with charges against Newsom and Tulsi's new intel on Obama. >> Yeah, that that stuff is going to continue to get weird. Uh we'll see where it leads. I'm not going to get out over my skis. He has so much political motivation to want them to be bad guys that I do not trust that he could possibly see this accurately, uh nor even if he could see it accurately that he would represent it accurately. So, I just can't see how he doesn't understand his political opposition sees him as a criminal. And so, he should be way suspicious of seeing himself as a criminal, or we all have to accept they're all [ __ ] criminals, which is way too likely. So, yeah, I would just I don't understand these people wielding this kind of sword as if they're never going to be out of power. It's so dumb. >> And last super chat for now comes from Mr. Limitless. Not sure if it's true, but Japan's net debt is only 77% lower than both the US and the UK. The government stays solvent by acting like a giant hedge fund, borrowing cheaply at home to amass massive foreign assets, 192% of its GDP. >> Uh I think that's a really bad read on Japan. So, first of all, I'd have to look into that 77% number. You are officially the first person I've ever heard say that. Um even if Celestia's assume that it's true, it doesn't change the position that Japan is in in terms of having complete economic stagnation. They have uh an ungodly They have more zombie companies than anybody else in the world. There's an official measure for what makes it a zombie company, so that's not just like people making that up. Uh and so, they've got an economy that is based on we can make the loan payments. So, we can make the interest payments on our loans. >> Uh Sorry. >> Go ahead. >> I was going to I fact-checked that if you want. >> Oh, please. >> Context. Uh mostly true with the caveat that figures come from a specific legitimate way of accounting. The claim hinges on the difference between gross and net debt. Japan remains the world's most indebted nation at 230% of GDP when measured by gross debt. >> that's the headline number you usually see. The IMF's net debt figure for Japan has been in roughly the 130 to 155 range in recent years. And that 77% figure is on the aggressive end, but is defensible under broader asset netting. It's not a made-up number, and that comes from uh Voronoi by Visual Capitalist. That's the source. >> Okay. So, my gut instinct Thank you for that, by the way. That's huge. I love that you just did a live fact-check. Keep doing that. Um so, my instinct on that is if you were to compare all the countries that we say, "Oh, like the US, that we have a 123 debt-to-GDP ratio." That that number compares to Japan's 230. That those are being calculated in the same way. That nobody's pulling a fast one and judging one against gross and one against net. So, as long as you're comparing everybody apples to apples, then you can get a sense of where people are relative to each other. And um Japan remains this very weird outlier for the reasons that I was explaining earlier. They literally cannot, well, until recently, spark inflation in their country. And so, it's really interesting. This is why it's so important to understand the difference between crisis-led deflation and innovation-led deflation. What they have is crisis-led deflation. It is people being paranoid, refusing to spend money because they are so sure that that bad thing could happen again, and they don't ever want to get burned like that. Utterly fascinating. Uh so, yeah. My read on Japan in this moment is that look at the zombie companies. Look at the fact that they put themselves in a situation where they just have ceased to be dynamic from a corporation perspective. And for anybody that's young, if you're hearing me talk, you might not realize what Japan used to be, man. Japan in the '80s was the apex predator economically. Like, nobody was close. Not the US, not China, not Russia. Nobody. Japan was the apex predator. They were a sight to behold. It was unlike anything anybody'd ever seen. And so, the US had to come in and [ __ ] them up. We literally had to stop their economic rise with like economic games. We just became protectionist, [ __ ] them up, stopped giving them the access to our economy, uh and caused their bubble to ultimately burst. Uh and then the bursting of that bubble was so psychologically traumatic to the Japanese that it it's literally knocked them back way harder than two atomic bombs ever could. Which is wild. Like I said, death and destruction doesn't [ __ ] people up. Bad economies [ __ ] people up. It's so crazy. That's so crazy. Think about the Brits. Germany, the Nazis, bombing them every night, night after night after night after night. Does it tear them apart? Nope, brings them closer together. The economy takes a hit in the '70s, and they almost have a civil war. So, A-O. It's the economy, stupid. >> Um Arthur Laffer kind of said something similar about our national debt, where if we remove like debt to corporate, the interior US debt, it's a lot lower than what is foreign nationals, what is on the balance sheets and things like that. So, in different places [clears throat] it has been flowing out about a debt jubilee, about forgiving some of that debt in order to kind of balance the budget. Do you have What are the kind of the pushback to those arguments? I think some people even said Kevin Warsh like said it. I don't know if he's going to act on that from a Fed capacity, but >> From a debt forgiveness standpoint? >> Yeah, debt forgiveness for like interior of the national debt. So, the corporate debt that is owned by the US, they might get defaulted on or the individual taxpayers in the US who own US debt, they might get some type of rebate, you screwed, whatever like that. But, you know, our international standing, we have to kind of keep those honor those agreements so it doesn't cause mass defaults and like withdrawal, but what is >> I I want you to imagine I have a harem. >> Mhm. >> And I'm married to 13 women. >> Mhm. >> And two of them fall into a certain category. And so I slap the [ __ ] out of those two. The other 11, you guys are fine. Hey, hey, hey. I Why are you acting flinchy? I don't slap you. You're not in that category. You're fine. Chill the [ __ ] out. Do you think I just increased the morale of my harem or decreased it? >> Did your financial situation change? >> Um the >> like that's what the harem women would come like am I is my house getting smaller? I'm still I'm still getting the champagne every night, right? >> Okay, so let's Let's like that that >> [laughter] >> I feel like that's what the reaction of the harem would be. Am I tripping? We need a woman in the chat. >> No, no, no, hold on. I don't care what the [ __ ] chat says. >> [laughter] >> That was the realest [ __ ] I've ever heard in my life. That is exactly what will happen. So, you get two, they're pissed. And now they're going to create problems for everybody else. Now, where you really get the issue is when I try to bring on the 14th part of the harem and they're like, "Ooh, I heard that you slap. Do you slap? Yes. Not you, girl. I only slap the bad ones. What are you talking about?" And so now everybody's like, "I'm going to be a part of a harem that doesn't slap. That's just That's I just have a hard and fast rule. I'm good. You guys are fine." So, listen. >> Mhm. >> Uh to torture this analogy to death, I'll I'll stop. But, uh if you look at Ray Dalio and his breakdown of how you do a um a deleveraging well, part of it is debt forgiveness. And so there is a way to do debt forgiveness well, but I want to be very clear. When Ray calls it a beautiful deleveraging, he gives a nice name to something that is extremely traumatic. And when a country defaults, you tell the rest of the world that your money's not safe here. And so, people back out. So, it doesn't matter who we end up defaulting on, we're defaulting on somebody, and that's going to have consequences. Now, it doesn't There are ways to do it that you don't completely implode your country. But, there's a reason that Ray says you have four levers, you have to pull them all, and you have to pull them in the right balance at the right time, constantly literally somebody there day and night, like pulling the little bit of lever here and there and everywhere, where you're giving some through money printing, you're taking some through austerity, you're forgiving some debts, you're charging more taxes. It's like you're ah like trying to do all of this like work to try to balance it all out, but it ends up being a very, very traumatic event that will set you back for sure. It means that you have a just catastrophic problem. So, it isn't as simple as, "Oh, yeah, it's fine. It's no big deal. Forgive that." You may have to, but I want to make sure everybody recognizes you may have to chop an arm off to save your whole body from gangrene. You still just lost a [ __ ] arm. >> Yeah. It's a good point. Uh all right, so moving along, the Southern Poverty Law Center uh right now they're labeled as employee two, but people are thinking it was one of their heads funneled 1.2 million to a lover in a neo-Nazi group, again labeled as like assailant three. They aren't identifying specific people. These are assumptions of who they think the people is, just allegedly court documents, don't want to get sued. Um but, the pair had a joint bank account. And so, somebody who was saying they were trying to promote equity and civil rights was sleeping with a neo-Nazi. All right, listen. This one you could really give like a fast run and just be like, "No, [ __ ] these guys. The Southern Southern Poverty Law Center, they're bad guys. Like they're just um in bed with the enemy and the the fun meme of it all is uh I guess when they said [ __ ] fascist, they really meant it." So, that is funny. Uh but the it is entirely possible that what we find out through all of this is that this was just an undercover agent that they were um running a strategy of infiltrating these groups so that they could weaken them from the inside, that they could get information and all of that. Now, I think that that's an overly charitable read. Um I think that as more and more comes out about the Southern Poverty Law Center, I think that we're going to find that this is just a pure activist group that has an agenda that understands the power of keeping um the races at each other's throats, that that's very good for their business, and that if it actually went away that they'd be in trouble. And so, show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome, and you're put in a position where it's like, "Well, maybe if those groups actually are doing well and we find people that do believe, but we give them money to give us some intel, but they really are believers and they really are pushing the agenda, um that you can sleep at night telling yourself a good cover story about the fact that no, no, no, I'm really trying to stop this, but in reality you're just giving it more and more money." Much like the way that I feel about Trump giving Iran money to be good boys and girls. It's like, "Well, what are they doing with that money?" And so, are we just emboldening a group, empowering a group that's going to go do bad things because we're just not being honest about the fact that when you flood them with money, whether you're trying to get something good out of it, you're still making the organization economically more viable. And so, pretending that you're not is a bad idea, especially when the outside world can't tell the difference between like a fake rally that your supposedly good undercover agent funded and just a real come and convert rally. >> Yeah. >> Uh and so I think that's where the incentives are just going to be way too misaligned here. >> Yeah. Um I'm trying really hard not to You just left the joke on the table. I was trying to be the bigger person. >> I'll be I want to hear it. It's funny. >> She was coming. I don't know if she was converting. >> Ew. >> Uh okay, so yeah, okay, so this This kind of reminds me of like the whole nonprofit criticism that happened around the USA and the DOJ time. And we started to see some of the effects that there are organizations that have the most beautiful mission statement and they want to do they want to save the world, but then they spend 75% of their budget on administrative costs, 10% on travel and private jets, and then 15% actually gets to the people. And when they get to the people, 10% of that ends up getting funneled off to the managers of that people's organization, the shelter, whatever like that. So is this just kind of a continuation of that where they might have had a good idea, they thought they found somebody on the inside they could convert, and it's just another realization that sometimes these nonprofits can break bad in that way, or is it this situation specifically is a bit more nefarious? I don't know if you're going into the whole conspiracy theory that the left is fanning these flames in order to keep this thing a problem, or is it just another nonprofit doing bad accounting and a terrible manager? >> Well, I think that it would be a mistake to think that this is a perversion of the left. This may be their particular flavor of a perversion of the human mind, but everybody with an agenda is going to want to see the thing that makes their agenda alive in people's minds that that keeps going, right? So if you're on the right, then you want a Muslim attack or you want the left to do something like this to be Tim Walls is your wet dream, you know, that he's just supporting the Somali community as he rubs you blind. Like, you love that [ __ ] And then if you're on the left, oh bro, like you love that racism. You want to see that go as long as possible. Like, [ __ ] yeah, cuz now that we can say like [ __ ] a fascist, punch him in the face, all that. Like, we're the ones fighting against it. If it just legitimately goes away, then oh, we need a new rally cry, we need a new way to get people excited about our team. So, that's where people have to be very, very careful to when the other side does it and you hate it, don't confuse yourself that when your team does it, you [ __ ] love it. >> Yeah. >> So, it's like be very, very careful with that. So, when I look at this, what I see is organizations have a impulse to grow. And so, I go to a wild distrust of NGOs. >> Mhm. >> So, I used to have a default belief that NGOs were like literally just good people and that's what NGO meant. It was three letters that somehow meant you're a good person and they were just out there doing good things. And then as I really started to think about why for-profit companies are the way, the reason goes like this. A for-profit company for all of its faults and it will try to use its money to its advantage, but a nonprofit will do exactly the same. They just get it from taxpayers. But, when you have a for-profit company, they have to create something of value that people actually want. Otherwise, people stop buying it, that company goes out of business. So, they have this great equalizer of people going, "Yeah, [ __ ] you. I don't like your product." Or a new thing comes on that's just like, "We're better than you." and the whole world switches almost overnight. Poof, they're out of business. Think how fast the iPhone put BlackBerry just out of [ __ ] business. Crazy. So, that impulse or that weakness where it's like you always have to be competitive and they've always got to be making something better and innovating and all that. And we know my obsession with innovation which everybody should be obsessed with. And so, a nonprofit does not have that pressure. They have a totally different pressure. They have a narrative pressure to tell you if you fund us, you're a good person. If you fund us, we're aligned with your agenda. And so, that is a very different economic model, but it's still an economic model. They still have to remain solvent, but they do it by begging for money. And so, that's where I'm like, hold on a second. Like people act like corporations bad, NGOs good. That's completely nonsensical. An NGO is just getting money via a different means from corporations. Either the people get wealthy inside of the corporation or the government collects a tax. Either way, they beg for it from the wealthy people, they get it from the government via NGO vehicles. And then they go push an agenda. And so, it And to your point, because they have such an impulse to grow that the vast majority of the money goes to administrative and doesn't end up helping the people anyway. So, you have this double whammy of this is all a joke. So, it's like if there's really something of value there, build a company around it. And if there's not something of value there, then it really needs to be handled by the family, ideally churches if you just can't swing it. Uh and then, but churches obviously have a very similar impulse to grow. Look at the Catholic Church. But at least they have God over their shoulder being like, "Hey, what the fuck?" So, there's at least some mildly intervening thing there. But once you get to the government, it gets it just completely unhinged. But we no longer have a cultural belief in the West at large and in America where we say, um the individual is responsible for themselves, the family is responsible for any individual that breaks bad. If you don't have family, turn to the church. >> Yeah. >> And so, we don't have that sequence anymore. Now, we have the sequence of, uh, rich people owe you, the government needs to take all their money, and then you get your money rightfully from the government who confiscated it from the evil wealthy people. That's literally the algorithm running in a distressingly large percent of the population. >> Mhm. Crazy. Crazy times we're in. Um, in other news, the UK has just announced a ban on under 16-year-olds. This is on the heels of Austri- Australia announcing a similar ban earlier this year. It seems like the West is now turning on social media in a, like, very different way. Um, you had a different read about, kind of, this is just a backdoor to the verification of it all. Um, so, I definitely want to make sure we cover this today. Um, and also, can I grab that charger? >> Yes. So, if you look at what the UK has been doing, so, the UK puts more people in prison for, um, things they say on social media than any country, including China, including Russia. It is insane. And by the way, it's not by a little margin, it's by a lot. So, the fact that I think the number is 30 people a day, it's so crazy. So, you can go to prison for a retweet. There have been cases where the people that tweeted about a rapist got more time than the rapist. It's wild. So, these guys obviously have an agenda. I think, um, my I'll speed run my agenda. It is, um, your economy has stalled, so, you're bringing in cheap labor migrants. Uh, those cheap labor labor migrants become a blocking vote, so, you have to cater to them, and that's exactly how you stay in power. And so, they now can't have people talking openly about this stuff, which is why, um, the thing that people were mad about when the guy attempted to behead the Irish person, uh, that what the left in the in the UK was complaining about was the fact that people were able to see the video. That's [ __ ] insane. So, when you look at you've got this government that's locking up 30 people a day based on things that they say online. And what they're leveraging is safety for the kids. Now, the safety for the kids thing is real. We have a real thing to face with social media and kids. But, the fact that they left Blue Sky open, which is the most left-leaning platform on planet Earth, certainly tells you that they're not worried about social media, they're worried about the message on social media and what you have access to. That is the craziest [ __ ] I've ever heard of in my life that they're like, "Oh, it's social media. Social media is a real problem. We're going to leave some of them open because they've got the right message." That's just [ __ ] crazy. So, anyway, if you read this as they just want to get your biometrics so that they can figure out who you are and tie that to your phone so they know exactly what social media you in particular are browsing so you're now no longer anonymous. So, they're going to everybody's going to use the safety of the children to get the level of control that they want. You hopefully will not be surprised that I think it's parents' responsibility to keep their kids safe online, not the government. And so, while I think it is a very good idea that they should do things that specifically are aimed at kids to keep them off and that parents should also be doing the same, that they should draw the line that if it also sweeps up adults and continues to strip away their freedoms, it's a hard pass. >> Friend of the show, Lyn Alden, had the best tweet in this about this in my opinion. Call me crazy, but I think parents should determine what their teenagers do online rather than the government. And the government that shouldn't use system level ID checks to identify and monitor everything. >> Preach. Preach. Yeah, Lynn Alden coming in clutch per usual. >> Yeah. Um, this is gaining steam though. Like I said, two out of the three Western empires have already done it. So, it's >> There's more, man. It's something like 13 countries now have put forward bills like the UK. >> Yeah. It's crazy. So, I feel like the US is Do you think this is something that, you know, AOC, some people on the left are cooking up? >> I wouldn't be surprised. So, right now we have um, similar pushes, not by AOC, but there's um, I forget who. At one point I pulled this. Um, but there is uh, a faction in the government that's pushing for a very similar level of monitoring the internet. Um, and what's crazy to me and and I pulled a bunch of links on this is that um, California for instance has an initiative to get um, gay businesses more um, state dollars. And so, they're trying to award contracts to businesses that are gay. But the number of steps that they make you go through to prove that you're gay, including um, showing ID. So, you have to show ID to prove that you're gay, but you don't have to show ID to vote. It's wild. Not only that, it's illegal. >> it like a rainbow flag on your license? >> No, but they want to know who you are so that they can then go do all these crazy checks. He's got it pulled up if you're looking at your phone. I forget how many bullet points. It's like 13, 14 bullet points of things you have to do to prove that you're gay. So, it's like you don't have to prove you're a citizen and that you're eligible to vote, but you do have to like prove that you're gay. It's wild. So, uh, and there's a whole bunch of other things. >> how crazy is that? You have to vouch for your friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, my friend for real. For real, for real. Uh, they're gay as the day is long. So, uh, it's just it's so silly. It is blatant that if you want to know if you've got the right person, if the person is legitimately old enough to buy alcohol, uh, whatever, a citizen, that you should require ID. It's crazy talk that we don't. >> Wild. Um Okay, and then in AI future tech news, um okay, this is just ridiculous. I want to cover this really quick. Have you seen the new Snap AR glasses? >> I have. Um it's one of those like people are really resistant to this technology. So, am I super surprised that their stock dropped because you look at that and you go, "Those don't look cool. No one's going to buy >> and they're so heavy it's giving him cauliflower ear. This is not >> It gives cauliflower ear? >> Like look at his ear like his ear is like tangled up in the cord. >> Let me tell you right now, my ears can handle it. My ears can handle like another 15 lb. I'll just tell you that right now. That's a small ear problem. But yes. >> know. Meta did Meta did it better for a third of the cost. I I don't get Snap. And Snap built me out during the pandemic. That was my like scalp stock. I made so much money on Snap. So, it's like they're close to my heart, but right now like I don't see the future. I don't know where they're going. I don't know what's going to happen like >> The Meta ones are getting cooler. I would say they're still not cool enough. Um >> As in culturally or like >> In terms of actual >> Just what they do. >> Okay. >> So, the form factor is getting close. The the like frames are just a little too thick. So, like when I tried them on to show my wife, my wife was not turned on. So, um the dryness factor went up, not down, which is always the wrong direction. So, on that side like it's they've still got to push it. It's got to get a little bit cooler. But also from what it can do, it's not there yet. Once it's really giving you an overlay on the entire world, then it's like everyone's going to shut the [ __ ] up because it will just be so cool. In terms of like you look at a building, it gives you information about the building. You look at a person, it's like you saw them last at this time. This is their name. You know, like pulls up their contact, all that kind of stuff so you've got information. It will just be so high utility that people will go for it. But when you're in this in between land of it doesn't quite look cool and it doesn't do enough, that's where people are going to dip out. And so I don't think that these guys are wrong that you're going to need some always-on functionality. And so it's either going to skip the glasses phase and go straight to contacts or the glasses phase is going to get light enough, uh visually appealing enough, and feature set cool enough that of course you're just going to wear. It's going to be your phone. It's going to be your everything. And I mean it'll just be It will be the thing that's always on. So, um that seems self-evidently the future, but stock markets are so near-term that and so emotionally reactive that you're going to see stuff like this. But yeah, this isn't cool yet. >> Um the interesting thing about that is that there is this push that I've been hearing from a lot of people, not just Snap, that there is going to be a post-smartphone future. There is going to be a time where we no longer have iPhones, we no longer have cell phones. Everything is in our brain, connected, something of that nature. Um And we don't necessarily have to talk about timelines, but you just think that that's like a natural national a natural inevitability of the technology. Like we're eventually just going to stop using it. >> You will you'll never stop using something that has the functionality of a smartphone, but the form factor of the smartphone is going to change. >> Yes. >> And that's what So, kids today won't even understand that statement. But to remind everybody this isn't a phone, man. The [ __ ] that hung on your wall that was a phone, right? So if people understand that, that we took that thing with a [ __ ] cord that hung on your wall, and first we made it cordless >> Yeah. >> and then we made it like a total brick that you could carry around, and then it became a smartphone, and actually has all kinds of other [ __ ] Like the the last thing I use my phone for isn't actual phone call. Like in a week, do I even do a single phone call? Uh not on average, no way. My phone calls are done on my computer via like Google Meets. So, >> it that's like almost a weird way to parse the world. It's what will the form factor become that allows you to um see information quickly and easily um communicate with other people, record things, take photos. Like those that's going to be the functionality. And so, will you want an always-on version or not? Once you get to yes, I want an always-on version, well then the thing right in front of your eyes is going to be that. So, how many form factors are there that are always right over your eyes? Glasses, contacts. So, until you're just neural linked and you're jacked right in, it's like that's really it. So, I think people that are talking about this form factor is never going to catch on, that's nonsensical. Um that we're not there yet is self-evident. >> Yeah. Um and this is also on the back of like Apple Vision Pro, they released those, they were you had a pair. Um it was cool for until it wasn't anymore and then now we have these that are kind of cool until they weren't anymore, the Facebook Ray-Bans. Again, the price point I think makes those a bit more viable right now in the short term, that's why they're more viable. >> The thing that everybody has to So, the Apple Vision Pro is a great example of you put it on, it completely boggles your mind. Um like they had this dinosaur thing and literally you feel like the dinosaur is going to step on you. It was so cool, man. Like so cool. But, you can still the fidelity is not quite there, you're very aware of like the resolution. Also, if your wife is sitting next to you, she can't share in it, so then you've got to take it off and let her look. And so, there it disconnects you from sharing that experience, which is not necessarily the end of the world, but it's part of a problem. But, the real thing is it's just so heavy and the quality is just low enough that it doesn't feel like a good trade-off once the novelty has worn off. But if if I could wear glasses like I'm wearing now and have the functionality of the the big Vision Pro headset, dude, I'd wear them all the time. It is so engaging, especially if the fidelity was literally like I couldn't see a difference. And so, whether I'm looking at you through the glasses or I'm looking at you without the glasses, you are 100% the same to me. Now it's like it would just be it would recognize based on where I look, I'm no longer looking at the image, I'm looking at you, so it switches. So, if you interrupted me now, I could just talk to you. So, it's like those kind of when the technology gets there and is it 5 years? Is it 50 years? I don't know. But when the technology gets there, it it will be so thrilling that we will adopt it wholesale. Now, there's always second and third-order consequences of well, what happens when there's like no difference between my fantasy life and my real life. And I start not being able to remember like, wait, [ __ ] did I actually see that? Or was that one of the things that my AI coughed up for me? Like it already will happen on Lisa and I will watch 30 seconds of a reel before it gives away the fact that it's AI. So, it's like my brain is processing, oh, I've actually seen this dog do this thing. And then up, nope, that's fake. And then your brain's like, okay, do I need to unwind that because that wasn't actually a real memory? Right? So, um that will get weird. But nonetheless, this is the direction of travel for the technology. >> I also feel like there's an interesting video about this on the on the Apple headset. Eddie Burback did a video about like it's almost like these products, while cool in concept, like you're saying there, down the line going to be better cuz they almost don't have a purpose now. Mhm. kind of just like you said, it's the novelty of it. It's oh, I can tap into this world right now. Not that I want to use it every day. >> Yeah, very true. The The thing that I think will give it immediate um usability will be information and directions. So, if it's light enough, it's on your face, you don't even think about it, uh and you're driving and it's just like turn here, turn there. Obviously, that'd be great. Um but also, one thing I have long fantasized about as a student of history is just be like um hey Claude, show me this block from 200 years ago. And it just renders it perfectly, it overlays, and it is exactly what it would look like 100 years ago. Or pull data, show me the actual businesses, storefronts, and all that, which moving forward will have a street-level view record of all of that, which you can Gaussian splat, make it look completely real like I'm actually standing there. Back up a year, back up 2 years. That will be certainly for history buffs a level of engaging that is hard to comprehend. And so, again, you put in then just also the high utility of you start approaching me, I know exactly who you are, what you're about. Or if I can be super nerdy for a second, um every time I go into a TCG shop, I've got to pick up the card that I'm interested in, look it up on TCGplayer, find out what the market rate is right now. Whereas, if I could just pick up the card and it insta shows me, and I don't have to go through any of that ass-ache, oh my god, that'd be so much faster, so much better. There'll be a million things like that where the AI is just giving you context on the different things you're looking at, if you want it. >> Tony Stark style. >> Yes. >> Kind of reminds me of the story where Pokémon Go was just a AR surveillance um play the entire time. >> Yeah. >> I was and I was definitely in the park trying to catch a Pikachu, and this whole time I was training drone warfare technology. >> My mom gave hundreds of hours of data to them. >> That's what I mean. [laughter] Yeah, I definitely contributed to that. >> of people that know that that's happening and are still out there collecting all that information. >> Me. >> Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. There's something for people that Like, are you a hardcore collector? >> Uh yeah, but not of like Pokémon cards. >> Fair. But like the the thing of collecting is an emotionally resonant thing for you. I'm hardcore. Like collecting in and of itself is a joy for me. Like absolutely [ __ ] love it. And so, yeah, for collectors, people that have that bug, Pokémon Go was insanely brilliant. Just insane. So cool. Like, yeah. Yeah, it's cool. >> And now in tech that's not as cool, um China has unveiled a micro drone the size of a mosquito. The device weighs less than .3 g and imitates insect flight. Its wings beat up to 500 times per second. It can carry a miniature sensor for reconnaissance and surveillance. In theory, such devices could be used for covert information gathering in cities and inside buildings, places where conventional drones cannot operate. They're also They're almost invisible to the naked eye and difficult to detect. The downsides are so obvious, extreme short battery life due to its tiny size and high sensitivity to wind. >> Help! >> Yeah. Dude, banger. G, was that you? That was perfect. >> Wait until they put the bio lab stuff into the stinger and it starts stinging people. >> you dare. >> My first thought is just >> [laughter] >> Yeah, if you can catch it. But now imagine that [ __ ] thing has AI and like if you think an actual fly is hard to kill, wait till you're going after one of those with like the most sophisticated AI for navigation ever. >> It's like analyzing your movement like >> Oh my >> 30 seconds before you move your arm, it knows it's coming. >> Dude, this is like imagine China, which is perfectly comfortable to surveil literally everything. And now you've got a swarm of bugs. You kill the first one, nine more show up. And by the way, by killing it, it sends back a report that you killed it, which is a ding on your credit score. So, >> [laughter] >> you're better off just letting it record you. Th- This is a level of surveillance totality that is excruciatingly terrifying. I really like I hate this. >> Um it's one of those things though, right? Like it's it was an inevit- inevitability. >> Yes. >> Um especially with drones, too. Drones were cool. It was "Oh, you can take pictures and you can make really cool film shots and it can drop bombs." It was made for the dropping bombs part. I love the coolness and the >> been optimized for the dropping bombs. >> what I mean? So, I feel like this was You know what I mean? You said if there's a technology that can get you an advantage, you will develop it. So, I'll be surprised if America doesn't have a version of this in some capacity. >> We probably already do. We're just not telling anybody. >> Don't we have like the heart attack gun already or something? >> I think we do. >> that a is that a meme? I I've always >> Well, so Trump literally said that we can basically give you migraines, make you nauseous, drop you to the floor with um the whatever microwave energy weapons. So, um is there also >> There was that dude in Cuba that they sent who died from like some some mysterious gun like that, too, that there's no bullet, there's no things. It's like a frequency thing and he just dropped dead. >> So crazy. That's what happens when your body's a biological electric system. It's like disrupt it, they're [ __ ] >> Uh okay, in big back news, um Pizza Hut >> So, big [laughter] back news. >> Pizza So, for $2.7 billion, are you Pizza Hut guy? Did you used to hit the Hut? >> Dude, hard. Hard, hard, hard. That like that red roof is so nostalgic for me. They've changed it a little bit, but yeah, hardcore. Lisa and I get completely entranced by like the reels that show AI from like the 1980s and they always include Pizza Hut. And so, yeah, I love Pizza Hut. I don't eat it anymore. >> Was that like your number one like takeout pizza place? Well, there's Papa John's and Domino's. >> Well, no, cuz I didn't grow up in that age. So, for me it was more Charlie's Pizza. Shout out to the long-dead Charlie's Pizza. But, then I went through a phase after Charlie's died where it was Pizza >> Got you. >> and that like really crispy deep dish >> Oh my god. >> Yeah, I used to go hard on that. >> What's your pizza rankings Ryan? >> Ooh. Little Caesars >> Little Caesars >> That's number one. >> It's the cheapest like you most >> this a cost to value? There we go. >> Yeah, yeah, and it's like if I want fast food pizza, I'm going to go to Little Caesars, get a giant large and get a bunch of garlic knots if I'm really feeling deep dish. >> to cost you $7. >> Exactly and then Pizza Hut and then Papa John even though you know and then Domino's. I think that's my ranking. >> Domino's is that low? I I went through a phase not that many years ago where I was about that Domino's life. That was my every weekend. >> Well, I'm I'm spoiled. Jersey best pizza in the world. We had a bunch of like old New York chains that couldn't afford Manhattan anymore moved to the suburbs so we always had like pizzerias. >> Oh, okay. >> Um but if we did have to do takeout, it would be Domino's uh for us. But um it's getting sold to private equity. So some people are now saying that >> Load it up with debt, let it die. >> Yeah, it's going to get it's about to die. The quality is going to change and all these other things. >> Obviously. >> I feel like we had we didn't really have the private equity conversation. I know I don't actually know your take on it. Is it like private equity they're the vultures of capital like of of >> that they're vultures and look, you you want those kind of things to exist because you give people the ability to exit their company and there's in fact did I pull it? Is there a Blizzard thing in there? I I'm almost certain in the document there is. Pull that up. I thought this was a fascinating response. So um people were reaching out. So one of the guys that helped make Blizzard, guy named Sandy Petersen, designer of Doom, Quake, Call of Cthulhu, Age of Empires um people are hitting him up saying how do we save Blizzard? And he said we don't need to save Blizzard. And companies come and go. If they make bad games, they die. Let them die. And it's like yeah, if PE buys these companies and they don't know how to run them and they're basically just strip mining them for parts or they're trying to load them up with debt or whatever, uh then let them die. Like if it's not a good business model and they're not able to bring value, then these things die. And so, you want places where there is a chance to exit your company. That's very important for building that dynamic ecosystem I was talking about earlier that Japan lacks. You need there to be exits. If people can't exit, why would they take the risk? Why would they innovate? They do this cuz they're like, "Oh, wait, the social contract is I can be as selfish as I want, get as rich as I want. I just have to make something of value." Cool. I'll make something of value, but I need to know someone's going to buy it. Because listen, here's one confusion people have. There's no money in operations. You'll be able to point to companies where the CEO has like OnlyFans where you can pull out so much cash because they're so profitable, but the vast majority of companies, the following statement is true for. There's no money in operations. If you want to get rich, you have to sell. I, for the first several years of Quest, I lived like a pauper. My employees looked so wealthy compared to me in comparison. I was worth hundreds of millions of dollars and I was My wife and I had one car between us. It was a Ford Focus with a leaky exhaust. Like it it would start rattling like crazy at freeway speeds and my employees used to make fun of me. I used to have to bum rides off my employees and I was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So, the reality is you're not making a lot of personal money when you're building a company. You need that exit. And of course, that's when we ended up getting wealthy was we actually sold the company. So, you need things like PE to exist. Now, if I were to advise PE, I would say learn how to run a [ __ ] company. Don't just saddle these things with debt, strip mine them, and call it a win. And be so like nakedly a portfolio company that it's basically Hunger Games for your portfolio. That to me is dumb, but our man Sandy Petersen is correct. If Blizzard goes down a dumb-ass route and they start making games that focus more on pushing an agenda instead of being a dope-ass game, then people will stop buying it. They will attract the wrong kind of talent and they'll death spiral and they are meant to die. And instead, you've got to hope that you have or not hope, you've got to build a scenario where startups can happen. We want to make sure that we have an economic environment that incentivizes startups to be a thing. And so, it's almost always young people and they come in with like a [ __ ] the old guard mentality and they get their rise and they do something that was totally unexpected and so fresh and so exciting and you're just like, "Holy [ __ ] this is incredible." That company skyrockets. Then those dumbasses do the worst thing in the world that you can do and they age. And they end up getting stodgy and thinking about the money and they don't want to take a risk anymore and they've got kids and they've got a mortgage and then they do the dumb thing that old people tend to do and then the next young group comes and eats their [ __ ] lunch. And that has been the way of America from time immemorial. And so, I don't think we should be fearful of PE even if they're doing dumb [ __ ] then Pizza Hut was meant to die. I don't think we should worry about Blizzard. If they're doing dumb [ __ ] Blizzard was meant to die. What we want to make sure is that young people are incentivized to go do this hard thing and to pour their guts into something that they love and care about on the off chance that maybe just maybe one of these things [ __ ] hits. And that is and maybe if we start getting people to look at it like that, like make it dynamic for these young entrepreneurs to come in and just be the mavericks and the punk rock kids and to whether it's innovating with banks or it's innovating with game companies like [ __ ] let them come in and shoot their shot. The vast majority of them will fail. But every now and then man, you get something where you're just like in awe of what they've created. That's how you stay energetic as a culture as a society is like that just those young bloods man. And listen, I want to compete against them. I want to believe that somehow I can buck the foolish trend of all old people. But if I can't, I deserve to have my company die. It just is what it is. >> Obsession and backrooms, good example of that. >> Very good. In fact, I saw your note in the >> Young people led, yeah. >> Yeah. Now keep going. Tell us about it. What is it? >> Oh, just like young people led and it fired up the you know, everyone's passion about film again. 400 million in the box office across two movies and that's just domestically. Don't even touch internationally. Both made for less than 20 million dollars when all these companies like to play it so safe with we need to make movies for everybody. We're going to make it 250 million and then they don't make the cost and they're like, well, I guess it was bad. It's like, no, you played it safe. You let new people try new [ __ ] >> Yeah, that's how I felt about the He-Man movie. Nobody asked for that. >> Yeah. >> Like was He-Man even that big? Like I'm not trying to like I'm not yeah, I'm not trying to like be but it's one of those things like maybe during the Superman the superhero cycle but like in 2026 a He-Man movie was like top of the slate. >> cuz Barbie did so well and Mattel's like, let's make movies for everything we own. And it's like that's not what people wanted. The reason people liked Barbie is cuz you had a fresh voice on a big blockbuster. That's the trick. But >> Well said. No, no, no, don't don't shrug that away. I want to hear more of that energy. Like literally hearing you talk about movies gets me excited. Like I want to hear that. I want to hear people I'm so hungry to be surrounded by people that are [ __ ] out of their minds enthusiastic by games, by manga, by anime, movies. Like it's just it that that the era that I grew up in, that had so much cultural importance and energy and excitement, and it's just all being diffused across so many different things, largely just shorts and uh uh but like it does make me sad. I went down a very deep rabbit hole about, okay, someone somewhere is developing the next Harry Potter. Who is it? Like, what's the likely candidate? And Claude was like, "Sorry, bro. That age is over." Like, it literally was like >> bro. >> literally. >> [laughter] >> And it walked me through all of the thing the the things that have to come together for an IP like that to spread as wide as it did. And it's like the necessary environment doesn't exist because now culture is so fractured that you get these really deep fandoms, but they're super niche and very small. And so now you can have something that's massive. Like, take a Dungeon Crawler Carl. >> Oh, I love those. >> But is it anywhere anything even remotely like Harry Potter? No. And so that's where it's like, damn. And that's really reoriented my thinking on Kaizen is like, all right, this is probably not going to be like there's no such thing as a generation-defining IP anymore. Like, those days just are over. Now, the good news is it just focuses you relentlessly on make a game that is fun as hell to play and knows exactly who it's trying to be for and just [ __ ] be that. Uh so, that's a good reminder. >> Yeah. >> All right, we have some super chats. >> Yes, we do. >> First up comes from Chaos Ballads. The beautiful deleveraging sounds like the automobile in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where each wheel has its own steering wheel. Drive right, we ride into the sunset. Drive wrong, we crash and burn and die. >> That's really good. What a deep cut reference. Um yes. You're correct. Very well said. And thank you for the extremely generous super chat to uh say something cool. >> Truth, Devin? >> Super chat. >> [laughter] >> Have you read Intellectuals and Society by T. Sowell? I think the reason people don't think through cause and effect is because they know people don't judge them by the results like an engineer. I just trust soft sciences, too. >> All right. I want to stick a like finger in a wound really fast. Do you know who T. Sowell is? >> Me? >> Yeah. >> I'm going to be honest, no. >> Yeah. >> I mean, I maybe if I saw the full name. Let me check. Thomas Sowell. >> Yeah, it's Thomas Sowell. Uh so >> No, I don't. >> Thomas Sowell. What? You're young. You're young. I was thinking about this today as I fiendishly research Japan and economics and all that. It just takes time, man, to accumulate enough knowledge across enough topics to be able to pull it all together. Uh it is the one gift of age. But Thomas Sowell is incredible. What a phenomenal thinker he is. Um I have not read all of uh Intellectuals and Society, though I am very familiar with uh the broad swag ideas. Um I think the reason that people don't think through cause and effect is because they know people don't judge them by the results. Um I don't even think they have a concept of cause and effect. That is the bad news. I think that people are so confused because they're an emotional machine. I think they confuse emotion with cause and effect. So, the [snorts] only cause and effect they have a sense of is that thing made me feel this way, and people confuse with feeling something for truth. That's the real like deep underground problem, even for intellectuals. Most intellectuals don't even realize that they're caught up in it, and even if they do, they can still get caught up in it, which is the wild part about being a human. >> [cough] [clears throat] >> Next up from Chaos Ballads. A Ferengi could easily wear those glasses. Please Google image for context. And this is funny because I know what a Ferengi is, but I didn't know who Thomas Sowell was. >> [laughter] >> All right, what's Okay. >> Ferengis are from Star Trek. >> he's got it. He's good. I feel a kinship with this guy. >> [laughter] >> That's amazing. >> And last super chat for now, or I guess last super chat of the day. Truth Devin, a lot of psych have a replication crisis. I understand Candace Owens saying science is becoming a faith religion because people don't question a lot of science claims and treat it as objective truth and not map out the cause and effect. >> Yes, so uh truth, very well said. I do think though that Candace is up against something different and she's using a maybe related, but only tangentially thing, which is that a lot of the social sciences will do a study like um if you're holding a warm drink, you are more likely to feel warmly about a person that you meet. If you're holding a cold drink, you are more likely to have a negative response to that person. Okay, replication crisis, couldn't be replicated. So, all kinds of stuff like that, left, right, and center. Now, the thing that I think that Candace is conflating by saying that science is becoming a religion of faith is that there's very little that's actual, quote unquote, science. Science is trying to get to cause and effect, but the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of our lives are at the layer of interpretation. So, it is this thing happened at the level of physics, but we just don't interface with it at the level of physics. We interface with it at the level of this thing happened and is it good or bad? And so, because we spend virtually all of our time there, um it doesn't matter what actually happened anymore. It just matters how we respond to it. So, for instance, when I say money has physics, and then I can point to Japan and be like, but they're not responding to stimulatory money the way that the US does. Does that mean that money doesn't have physics? No. It just means that part of the physics is that the way that we um deal with the money movements, printing it, getting it out into the economy plugs into the human brain. And so the human brain, which is highly contextual, very difficult to predict, tied to genetics, tied to generations of culture, all of that is part of the equation. And so just one for oneing the prediction of the outcome of economics therefore becomes impossible. And so we slide into the realm of interpretation. Now, if we go, all right, tons of humility, impossible for me to just one for one where this goes, however, I can give you big broad strokes and let's walk through the cause and effect of the parts that we know. Then, when you say, "Ah, this is all [ __ ] This is just an act of faith." It's like, "Nope. You're hand-waving away something where it's like, we can actually ground ourselves, dramatically increase the predictive validity of our belief system by just always trying to map cause and effect, knowing that part of the cause and effect is essentially a very unpredictable black box." So, um that I would say, again, going back to uh predictive validity, is a way where you can sanity check your read on your interpretation. So, okay, I'm not at literal operational mathematics of how the universe works right now. Um I'm at the layer of interpretation, but you can discern enough patterns in that interpretation to actually build a belief system that has reasonably high predictive validity. We'll call it anything that's meaningfully above chance. Um and so that's where I think Candace is hand-waving so that she can run emotionally satisfying conspiracy theories. She won't recognize it as that, but the number of times that I've heard her say something akin to uh I know this isn't true because I feel it isn't true. She literally just says it. So, yeah, that's my read on that. All right. Any other super chats? >> That was it for the super chats. >> Cool. With that, all right, everybody, that wraps up Wednesday. Love you guys so much. We will see you on Friday. Until then, be legendary. Take care. Peace.