BREAKING: 59% of Dems Would Welcome a Military Coup Against Trump

Key Takeaway

Practice “second- and third-order thinking” before forming a strong opinion on polarizing issues. Today, choose one headline that triggers you, write down your preferred outcome, then list two likely consequences if everyone acted on that preference. This habit shifts you from reacting to rhetoric toward evaluating incentives, trade-offs, and downstream effects—whether the topic is politics, AI, health care, or your own decisions.

Episode Overview

Tom Bilyeu examines political polarization, arguing that support for violence or extra-democratic solutions corrodes institutions regardless of partisan alignment. The episode also covers Iran negotiations and nuclear proliferation, AI liability and adoption, changing media and game-business models, a pending criminal case involving streamer Clavvicular, and concerns about Canada’s medical assistance in dying program.

Full Transcript

Transcript of BREAKING: 59% of Dems Would Welcome a Military Coup Against Trump from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billy Show live. Oo, we have got a full docket today because the division in America is far worse than people realize. I was shocked by a new poll that shows that 59% of Democrats would welcome a military coup against Trump. We're going to talk about what that would actually look like in real life, plus some of the other stuff that came out in that insane, completely unhinged poll. The UN General Assembly was much spicier than usual yesterday.

Trump took the stage to tout accomplishments and threatened to annihilate all of Iran right to their faces. That went about as well as you would expect. But Iran may be more ready to negotiate than they're letting on publicly. Uh and it's having a impact on oil prices. We're going to talk about that. OpenAI and Anthropic may be in big trouble as insiders warn that they have massive litigation risk and Scott Bessant just made it clear that the Trump admin is not going to save them. So, we'll see.

But at the same time, AI might actually be winning some hearts and minds. I was excited to see that Notch, the creator of the highests selling video game of all time and in my opinion the greatest video game of all time, said he was wrong about AI being bad for programming and that he's having fun with vibe coding. We'll talk more about what that means for all of computer programmers moving forward. We've also got to talk about the fact that something is seriously wrong in Canada.

Despite having a fraction of our population, more people are euthanized there than are killed by gun homicides here in the US. And it gets far more startling when you look at the per capita rates. And controversial streamer Clavvicular is facing potential life in prison after being accused of SA and the internet is on fire, debating the merits of the case in all of the sort of predictable ways that you would assume, Drew. That'll be interesting to look at. All right, we've got to talk about what is going on with everything in the um world of America.

So, right now we have division going on that is absolutely crazy. I think it is far more shocking than people realize. It's certainly much worse than I thought. We've got a new poll that shows that 59% of Democrats would actually welcome a military coup against Trump. I can't believe that that is accurate, but nonetheless went into that. uh you've got a full 31% who would be happy to see him assassinated. Let's sit with that for a second. Now, if you guys are thinking that this is just a ragebait poll by Fox News, unfortunately not.

This poll came from the Center for Strategic Politics, which is a self-described progressive group. It was commissioned by Liberal Currents, which is also a self-described leftleaning publication. They surveyed 683 Democratic voters in early September and asked them how they'd feel about all kinds of absolutely unhinged stuff. [sighs] And as long as it got Trump out of office, they were all for it. Now, if hopefully you're looking at your screen, some of these numbers are absolutely staggering. So, we had questions like, "President Donald Trump has been impeached and convicted by both houses of Congress and has been removed from office." These are like thought experiments.

And okay, cool. That one I get. If you're opposed to Trump, you're perfectly happy to see that happen. I've got no beef with that one. Uh but when you start getting into how do you feel about a military coup and you find that just under 60% of people are all for it means almost twothirds of Democrats are all for seeing a military coup on US soil to get rid of the uh the president. That that one to me I understand that people do not like Donald Trump, but I don't think people understand what actually comes with a military coup.

Our country is not going to survive this trend if it keeps going. If we keep finding the left and the right racing away from each other like this on absolutely uh terrifying issues like whether it's just a naked assassination attempt uh which had 31% people feeling good about it uh or the military coup. Understand this is exactly how countries tear themselves apart from the inside. Now, a military coup to a crazy person from where I'm sitting might sound good in a fantasy land where you hate your country's leadership and you don't want to wait for democracy to do its thing.

But in real life, what you get with a military coup is, get ready for it, a military dictatorship. The the thing that I find most maddening is right now you have a bunch of people that are afraid that Trump is really a dictator and he's just doing all this crazy stuff. And so they will celebrate China, which actually has a dictator, like a real for real. I'm in power for as long as I want. I will kill anybody that stands up to me. I will put them in a goolog.

I will disappear them. I will re-educate my billionaire class. All of that that that they're fine with. The in reality thing, as long as they think they agree with that person's politics, they're fine with that. uh but somebody who might one day become and do that they're so against it that they are willing to see a military dictatorship in the US. Now every jenta which is the name for when you get the military doing a takeover and then running the country every time you get a jenta like that they're going to say that they're saving the country but almost none of them actually give the power back.

So understand they are hoping for this thing that actually occurs in the world and so we can look at and see does it yield the results that mythically they're thinking will happen. So if you look at some of the examples in February of 2021 Myanmar's military seized power. They claimed that there was election fraud and they declared a one-year state of emergency. More than 5 years later the general who led the coup is now the country's president. he installed himself after tightly restricting elections that sidelined the party that had originally won.

The civil war that that coup triggered has killed more than 100,000 people. Okay, so the juna ends up arresting nearly 32,000 people for opposing its reign. So I'm not sure what people expect here in the US. Okay, but that's just Myanmar. If we look at Egypt, do we see anything better? Unfortunately, we do not. The army removed an elected president back in 2013. If you remember this, the Arab Spring was backed by massive street protests. So, people were like, "This is what the people want." But 6 weeks later, security forces declared a sitin at Roba Square uh being illegal and they killed at least 817 people in a single day.

The general who led the coup still runs the country. Now, almost nobody serious says that Egypt is better off now than before the coup. So whether you're talking about freedoms or you're talking about the economy, they're in a worse place than they were. Now, if we want to look at one more, let's look at Chile's military uh comes in, does a coup, promises to restore order. This is back in 1973. And then they end up keeping an iron grip on power for 17 years. More than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared and tens of thousands were imprisoned and tortured.

So if the coup thing sounds like a winning idea to you, you need only look at history to understand this does not go well. This does not become a all right everybody, let's hold hands. We finally got the bad guy out of office and now everything is going to be hunky dory. Democracy is restored. When you get people who understand that violence is a very expedient path to getting what they want, all hell breaks loose. We've got to get some context on America. America was founded on one guiding principle that men and government tend towards tyranny and that you must protect yourself from that.

You do not protect yourself from tyranny by installing military dictators who by training, by design, take things by force. Okay? So, if you're looking at what's going on in Iran and you're saying, "I hate that. We got to get this guy out of power. So, what I'm going to do is aim that military and that same mentality of I'm just going to take what I want by force when I'm not getting the answer through the democratic process that I want. I'm going to aim that at my own country." That is a level of inability to think that is startling that I will say again our country will not survive if this is the thing that we celebrate.

Whatever side of the spectrum you're on. You've got to look at your own thinking and say okay listen first of all I could be wrong. I do not represent everybody. Nobody should think just because I think it that everybody is going to fall in line. I've got to go win this at the level of ideas. And if I am not able to win this at the level of ideas, then we have a real problem. And that is precisely where we're at. We are not winning ideas at the or we're not winning over people at the level of ideas.

And now with increasingly uh with an increasing trend at least being shown on the left, but I certainly don't give anybody a pass on the right, people are more and more saying, "Nah, [ __ ] it. We're just going to take things. We're going to do this by force." The other side is illegitimate. the other side is an existential threat to our country. And so, uh, yeah, we're going to back military coups. This is so wild. So, yeah, we've got to My whole thing is I'm only ever going to be a drop in the ocean.

I understand that. But if you can hear my voice right now, understand that what we're trying to put together is a group of people that understand that nobody should want complete and total control. what you should want, as Washington, George Washington showed us, is you should want a system that protects against that. And even when he had the chance to become the king of America, he turned it down. Now, please understand, this is not me going um there's nothing to worry about with Trump or there's nothing to worry about with our the current state of our democracy.

There are plenty of things to be concerned about. But anytime you hear somebody talking about toppling the system instead of reggrounding that system on its foundational principles which has given the world the longest lasting constitution in history. So we have made the wealthiest nation, the most prosperous nation on earth, the freest nation on earth on that guiding principle. And slowly but surely, people are losing sight of that. And they are reorienting themselves to regional issues. Meaning right now, in the last 20 years, these are the problems.

and we're acting as if this very country doesn't have something that we can hearken back to which are the founding principles of what made us as successful as we have been. So boys and girls, we've really got to be laying out what are the principles that we are going to stand for. I certainly don't expect anybody to stand for uh the drum beat that Trump is putting forward, but holy hell to be going to being welcoming of a military coup that you have nearly a third of people being welcoming of an assassination.

Kids, it it is a losing strategy. We absolutely can't do this. Um and we shall monitor it because Poly Market has a 66 chance the Democrats sweep the midterms. So, it seems that they might be another political swing and then come January of next year, what would be the political rhetoric? What would be the movements? What would be some of the legislation that's passing? Um, I know we've been AI has a big been a big staple with Bernie Sanders now making a Department of AI and all this other stuff.

We'll get to that. But with Democrats and Republicans so far away and a flip happening, what do you think is some of the things that will happen after the midterms? Well, first of all, welcome back. It's wonderful to see you. Uh so that's the right question. I think we have to look at the historical trends here. So the flip almost always happens. So nobody should be getting up in arms about this. Uh I have a strong sense that post the midterms we're going to be talking a lot about uh DSA energy on the left.

Uh policies that I think are absolutely anathema to the functioning of the country. Uh but what you're not going to hear me call for is a military coup. What you're not going to hear me call for is the assassination of even the people that I most ardently opposed to. Uh I am I think that M Donny's policies are going to bring back the New York of the 70s and that was an absolute hellscape. I'm still not going to want ill to befall him as a person.

We either either the citizens of New York vote him out or they don't. And either we as the populace allow the DSA to capture the energy of either party or we don't. But yeah, wanting for violence is crazy. So, I'm fully expecting that there's going to be a flip. I don't think Trump has delivered any results that warrant giving him another uh two years. He's not able to get legislation passed. He's doing everything basically through EOS anyway. So, that's not really going to change that. So, this all of this is really about what are we going to see happening in 2028?

Who do we want to have control of the country? What are the principles that we're going to be building on top of? Is this going to be packing out the court? Making sure that one party basically can reign forever, things we've already addressed in our past and have historically avoided. I did a walkthrough of how we've gone back and forth on the Supreme Court and the number of uh judges that we put on the bench, why it ended up getting solidified at 9, all of that.

I won't do that again here, but we've lived through a lot of this. And so being able to look back at history and understand, okay, we've made these decisions for a reason. We locked in term limits for the president for a reason. We locked in a certain number of uh judges for a reason. So, um all of these things are something where we can revisit the times in the country where we've been our most high functioning and return to those instead of um what we're talking about now, which is wishing for violence.

It's absolutely wild. So, that I think JD Vance didn't convince you when he had the video. Um give us another chance. give us another couple years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past 2 years. I did not know you were going to play that. But yeah, so that clip is an absolute banger. Give us another chance is the weakest way to say that. He tried to uh correct himself in the speech. But yeah, listen, at this point I get anybody who's like, "Nah, hard pass.

I've already seen it. You guys had two years. You didn't do anything with it." The number of things that Trump was like, "I'm never going to do that." And then he did that. I get why people are frustrated. Um, so yeah, that I have no beef with you. All of this has to exist at the level of hey, we said we were going to get these results. Did we? And so if something doesn't yield the results that you were expecting, then I understand why people are going to go for change.

So on that front, yeah, that should not spiral anybody out of control. Now, um, I'll take this on a candidate by candidate basis. If the candidates are worse, I'm not going to vote simply to have something different if I think that different is worse. It needs to be different and better. But I certainly can't make a blanket statement of, oh, I hope all Republicans win, uh, or I hope all Democrats win. It's really got to be what is that person standing for? What are they likely to vote for?

What is the platform that they're running on? Uh, but yeah, anyway, I I am fully expecting that they're going to lose the House and the Senate. I am fully expecting that there's going to be real energy pushing towards the Democrat party for 2028. Looking at the candidates that are popular, I'm mortified. I cannot believe Kla Harris is still the number one Democrat. That is the craziest [ __ ] I've ever heard in my life. Dude, she had a shot to put anything intelligent forward and she was unable to.

She triggered my earliest like, whoa, this is now what I would identify as DSA energy. Completely socialist. uh spiraling towards communism. That that is like her whole shtick. Nuome is an absolute menace. Uh I don't know nearly enough about the Paramount deal done, you know, at the final hour. Well, he just backed off, right? Did he actually turn back? Yeah, it was looking bad and he was one of the backwards voice back rooms voices that was able to get it over saying like we really got to do this.

He was just worried about Paramount leaving like leaving that the dang land. But interesting. Did Paramount officially back off? Ryan, I'm expecting you to know. Did Paramount officially back off of leaving? Like, hey, if you let this go through, we'll stay. Yeah. Now, the theories of like why is kind of still up in the air? They don't understand why, but they they back like it's a part of the deal is they can't leave California now and they have to make 30 films every year, I think, were two of the constraints.

Yeah. Look, shout out to Newsome on that, man. Because the for somebody that's lived in California for as long as I have, over 30 years, for someone who came here specifically for the film industry, it has been insane to watch it get hollowed out. So, for him to at least be like, "All right, all right. All right. If you guys are going to stay here and actually create jobs, cool. I'll let this go through. Fine. I'm yay." Like, we I would like to see the film industry stay here because I know what it was like when that was the bread and butter.

First of all, American soft power critical uh that we'd be telling good stories and then second, I just want to see it revitalized. Man, LA used to really be rad and we have lost a lot of that cultural mojo. So anyway, that would be cool. I would love to see it, but alas, uh I don't know. I I think this consolidation is bad. I don't want us to fractal too bad. But that's consolidation that you're opposed to, not Paramount staying here. Yes. Okay. So you could say I'm very sad to see these things coming together and I would imagine you don't love that it's under a right-leaning group.

That that is that's that's where the wind blows. Next election cycle if the Democrats power them a bunch of stuff, they're going to be voting for the Democrats. Also true. Yeah. So I'm not worried less about that. But after seeing the Disney Fox deal go through and there's fundamentally less films now being released after Disney absorbed them, I think the same thing's going to happen. Warner Brothers is going to drive all the film releases. Paramount's going to then turn their studio off and then a year and a half from now it's going to then so the total net new movies coming out will be less.

It already happened with Paramount actually when Ellison took over Paramount. Paramount's output got lower and a lot more of the films became action war type films. And so that's I think why they made that 30 uh movie deal. It's just like both of these companies need to at least make 15 or something is my theory. And I want to say Warner Brothers has like 20 already on the slate. It's like Paramount can still do its bare minimum and then just absorb their sleep. But yeah, now I'll give you a different picture of where I think this is going.

I think these large conglomerates are going to become increasingly less important and it's all dude some of the stuff coming out of AI is so crazy. So just this morning, one of our developers was like, "Hey, I created this new thing that I want to show you inside of Kaizen." It was so, look, they're temp assets, but they were so compelling that I was like, "Holy [ __ ] this is one guy working with AI being like, okay, I needed to do this and that." Like, you still have to the the person using the tool still has to be awesome, which is my favorite thing about the current state of AI in in weak hands, it gives weaker results.

In strong hands, it gives dope results. But you're going to see filmmakers just make the realest [ __ ] ever. You're gonna do it. Ryan's gonna do it. We've got Brian. Shout out. You guys are going to be making I'm going to be doing it. We're going to be making stuff with AI that we would not otherwise be able to make. It gets better and better by the day and therefore there are fewer barriers between your imagination and the people that you're trying to communicate with.

This is all going to fracture massively and all of distribution is effectively going to look like YouTube. In fact, all of distribution will essentially be YouTube. And so people are going to create amazing things, get it distributed easily. there will be far fewer gatekeepers and it will really just be about who can garner attention. And so the Paramount merger is really about can they be effective marketers. If they can be effective marketers and get people on board and excited about what they're doing, they can cut through the noise, get people to pay attention, then it'll work.

But the reality is that that feels like a battle for an old model to me versus where things are actually going to go. uh and don't think in threeyear time horizons, think in 10 years, 15 years. It is going to be so different that I don't even think people fully understand. So anyway, me as and we'll get more into this when we start talking about Notch and what his sort of turnaround on AI, but you're going to see the public will get more and more behind it as they realize, oh, this didn't eliminate my job.

This gave me the ability to do something without having to convince somebody else. Now I just have to actually be good at the thing, but I don't have to raise the capital. I don't have to convince anybody. Uh I don't have technical challenges standing between me and the outcome. I just have to be good at storytelling. Uh so that that is going to be, I think, a boon. Now, it'll take time. We'll have to get through all the AI slop first. Uh but on the other side of that, I think is going to be something pretty extraordinary.

Nice. All right, we're going to jump over to the UN, but first Yeah. Before we do that, shout out to our sponsor, Taylor Brands. So, you guys know I teach entrepreneurs. It's one of the core things that I do and they have made starting a business so much easier. I'm really excited to be partnered with these guys. If you've ever been thinking about starting a company, you know, one of the hardest things that kills momentum in the early days is just getting your company set up.

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If you need licensing, permits, bookkeeping, business banking, all that stuff, they can help get you set up. So, check them out. All right. Now, the UN. The UN. This was wild. If you guys didn't treat yourself to watching the full uh Trump speech, it is a doozy. He treated the UN General Assembly basically as a roast of other nations. I am not celebrating this. It It was just wild. So, he took the stage to tout accomplishments, right? You would expect that. But also use that time to blast Mexico, Cuba, UNESCO, and Iran.

Uh he was uh in in rare form. So his cherry on top for Iran was his classic, do I make a deal or do I, and this is, if not an exact quote, is so very close. Do I drive them to hell before they have a chance to blow anyone else up? Let's take a look at the clip. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world.

Let's go. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope they're in the future greatness or generations? But I dude, it it really does get wild when you think like if you see the wide shot right about now, the Iranian delegation is like, "All right, we're the [ __ ] out." They they get up, they walk out, as did Cuba when he was uh trashing them.

And it the irony is certainly not lost on me, though. it obviously we can have a far more nuanced conversation about this but it is not lost on me that the guy that is dropping musive bombs on their country um is murdering their leadership I mean just I know it's war and it gets like a weird pass but uh murdering their leadership is then like can you imagine these guys might get weapons and murder people that would be wild so listen I'm being cheeky I understand I am definitely I wish we had not done this the way that we did.

I think we needed to do this 20 years ago or not at all. Uh but it is the irony of of the way that countries are structured is when you're the country that everybody has to make good with for them to survive. Uh you can do things that if another country is doing it, you suddenly look at them as scants. Now remember, Iran sees themselves as the heroes. Iran sees themselves as doing God's work. And if they've got to kill 10,000 of their own citizens or whatever the number fluctuates.

Some people say it's 5,000, some people say it's 100,000. Whatever the real number is, they admit that they shot their own civilians. And to them, it's like, listen, we're doing God's work. If these guys are going to try to stop God, we got to shoot him. And so it it's the same. You've got Trump. Now, I happen to be more on the camp of America stands for something that I would far more like to see spread around the world. However, uh it's very similar like we're he doesn't say doing God's work, but you know, we're doing the right thing.

We can't let these guys terrorize anybody else, which by the way, I would agree with. But nonetheless, uh we are going in and doing the very thing that we're saying that they're going to do if we were to allow them to get a nuclear um umbrella. Now, it's very easy to make a moral case for why yes, America and no Iran, but it's I think a little too cute to pretend like one cannot see the hypocrisy here. Yeah. And especially in the United Nations where there's nations at war, there's nations that we're in conflict with, there's nations that are actively suing other nations for war crime.

So it's everybody's in the same room, everybody's kind of doing this big thing. So and and he certainly is not afraid just to say it to their face. Now, of course, political theater, they get up, they walk out only to basically walk out and go down the street and have a meeting with um I think it was Kushner or Wickoff again. But it is I mean these these are wild times. This is what it looks like when you're reordering the entire globe. And then Trump also goes on to address the midterms and the threat that they're waiting for.

This was interesting. So let me set this up really fast. So uh later in the speech, Trump goes on to talk about um exactly what role the midterms play in his thinking. And I was surprised because at the end of this, as you're going to hear, the audience actually claps. So there were a lot of times where he says some really bombastic stuff and there crickets nothing. But in this moment when he talks about I'm not going to let the midterm stop me. I'm not running away.

It got applause. Let's listen. But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide and I'll be here for two and a half years. The Republican party is running and I'll be helping them. But I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran.

It doesn't even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The cowards and traitors. Thank you. It's clear there's support. People obviously Well, not obviously, but there's clearly support for Iran not getting a nuclear weapon. It's not something that everybody wants to see for sure. Now, this is a hotly debated thing. There are plenty of people here in America that think that we have no right to stop them from pursuing a nuclear program. There are people here in America uh that think, well, hold on a second.

We have nukes. Israel has nukes supposedly. There are many other countries that have. What right do we have to go in and bomb people uh kill their civilians, kill their military leadership to try to stop them from doing something that we've already done? And this to me is if if I were an alien looking at this, one of the things that I would find most fascinating to get an answer to is what does it look like on the other side of this? What does it look like?

Does Iran ultimately get a nuclear weapon? What do they do with that? Do they actually go and bully people? Um, are they a do they represent a not unique moral evil, but do they represent something that is very easy morally to stack in a hierarchy? Or did America long ago give up any sort of moral centering that makes their behavior justifiable? And this is one of those things that will play out in the fullness of time. And either the US is going to um finally get a deal done with Iran either before or after doing additional damage to the country and or they end up not being able to back down Iran.

Iran continues with their nuclear program and is ultimately successful in building up because the the concern is really twofold. one that they'll build a conventional ballistic missile program that makes it impossible to go in and stop them because they can blow up anybody from the GCC nations all the way to actually hitting London, Paris, so on and so forth. That would put them in a that would put the world in a very different position because now you strike Fort and they're like, "All right, word." And then they hit Paris, they hit London, um they hit GCC nations and they're like, "You want to keep playing?" And so then of course people are going to be even less likely to move.

Now keep in mind even before this every president up to and including the first round that Trump had didn't move on Iran militarily. So everybody was already afraid of what the consequences were going to be. Either they felt that we gave up any moral stance that we didn't have a right to do that or that it would trigger some sort of cascade like what we're living through now. So you've got all of that already looming even before they had the full capability to stop anybody from actually shutting them down.

So what does it look like if they actually have that ability and they can strike London, they can strike Paris, they can strike uh other places in Europe at will? Obviously at that point people are going to be way way way less likely to try to do some sort of limited incursion. Now, if they were to actually strike Europe, then you could see something becoming just full escalation. Europe gets on board and it's like, "All right, we really do have to shut these guys down." But that that would be rough if they're able to continue to build out their ballistic missile program.

So, in the fullness of time, we're going to see what ends up happening here. But, um, I think anybody that looks at the US and says, "Yeah, we just have no right. We shouldn't be doing this. Let them develop whatever they want." the odds that there are second and third order consequences there that are far more destabilizing to the world even than what we're seeing now is extreme. So they were enthusiastically touting the fact that they have ballistic missiles that could reach um Europe and you can imagine that left unfettered that they would continue to make that capability even greater.

Um, so yeah, this is one unfortunately that's not going to be clean because when we're having the conversation at the level of let's say ought and we're not making contact with what actually will happen. What are the human tendencies towards violence, towards aggression, towards expansionism? And so we live in a world where people have been certainly for everybody's lifetime that's alive right now. We've been living in a world where the US kept everybody in check. And so if you were a friend of the US, you basically didn't want to spend the money to overdevelop.

So your militaries were kept pretty chill. So think of Japan, which didn't develop at all for um very specific reasons. Germany, who developed, but not a lot, though they're now reversing course on that. And so the people that were friends, they were chill because we were protecting them. And then the people that weren't chill, we kept in check by either sanctioning them or doing some sort of limited military incursion or by by trying to coup their government uh with CIA type powers. So the world which has been incredibly peaceful by historical standards, incredibly prosperous by historical standards by any measure quite frankly.

Uh and now that we're coming out of that, you have to expect a reversion to the historical mean of countries being far more violent, far more expansionary. And so we're when we have this debate, we've got to make contact with that reality. And so one of the questions that I rarely see come up in these debates, especially when people are talking about Israel Palestine, is okay, what does it look like when the other side is able to um build up their military in an unfettered fashion?

Like what do you actually think it's going to play out? Stretch that out 10, 20, 30 years. What does it really look like? Do they just become peaceful or do they do we get another aggressive player on the field? And then I'm just curious to hear what people's argument is that yes, they're going to become militaristic. Yes, they're going to build up their military and rightly so. They've been uh persecuted and held back for so long and that's just the natural consequence. And yes, now you're going to have to find diplomatic solutions.

Some people may say exactly that. Um so at least then we're having the conversation at where people are have to lay out what their base assumptions are about what the future looks like instead of just banging our head against the trees and never seeing the forest. Um, so I think that would be a far more productive debate and we're going to be forced into confronting that reality as our continued involvement in in Iran plays out towards a final conclusion. What do you say to the people that have that opposite viewpoint that say once a country gets a nuke, America leaves them alone?

I'm thinking of North Korea, um, Pakistan, like there's certain countries that have had nuclear capabilities that the nuke has become the deterrent. So if some people are saying if Iran had a nuke this entire time, we wouldn't even been in there. We wouldn't. That's almost certainly true. Yeah. So keep in mind until Trump, we didn't move and they didn't have a nuke. So the odds that we dramatically extend the I'm not going after you because you have a nuke is extremely high. And so now if the conversation stops there and then we go, yeah, like of see they should it was wrong of us to go into Iran.

Even Tom is saying that like either this needed to be 20 years ago or not at all. So why would he not want them to have a nuke? That's where I'm like, yes, now pick up the conversation there. So pick up the conversation at Iran now has a nuke. What do they do? And if people have the base assumption that they're essentially going to try to be the regional hegeimon in uh the Middle East and that they are going to try to build a caliphate in the Middle East and now they're let's say they're economically strong.

uh they're able to get a tithe or whatever from everybody in the Middle East that's trying to ship through the straight of Hermuz and they can choke it off whenever they want and they get all of the um the agreements that they need because like the US they can force the issue. What does that world look like? And are we as a globe are we better off if Iran has a nuclear weapon? And if you think yes, we're in a better position with Iran in control of the Middle East.

Um, and then you're going to look at this and say they should rush to getting a nuke. If you look at that and go the last thing you want is a theocratic regime that's willing to kill its own people to have a nuclear weapon and now be able to run the table on the Middle East, which by the way will immediately be um several countries because they've already said they would, coming to the US and saying, "Okay, we now need to have our own nukes as well." And so now you get additional nuclear proliferation.

And so you've got, you know, whatever uh 70 80 year history of countries not using nuclear weapons. And do you now go into an era where the use of nuclear weapons becomes way more likely because you have now two nuclear armed states assuming that Israel is nuclear armed. They obviously use strategic ambiguity. But if you've got Iran nuclear armed, Israel nuclear armed, you've got another essentially uh Pakistan and India problem where they share not share a border, but they're so close to each other and they [ __ ] hate each other.

Uh both getting ready to unleash. And so is that a better world or a worse world? And so a lot of this comes down to uh okay, you're looking at a country that has said a big part of why we exist is to get rid of Israel. You've got two theocracies that are now both think that they're doing God's will and in exactly equal and opposite measures. Now, I think it'll play out in the way that it's playing out in Russia, Ukraine. Like, if you had if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, would Russia have invaded?

Let's assume that they wouldn't have. So, there's that level of deterrence, which is exactly what the GCC nations will say. You got to give us nukes so that they won't mess with us. Um, but even when you have that unbalanced side, you see restraint from Russia because they know the rest of the world is going to have beef. And so as people model that out is going to determine how they feel about whether we just blanket want to leave Iran alone to get a nuclear weapon.

So like I think that that is not a world that we want. We don't want additional proliferation. We certainly don't want another theocratic regime to have nuclear weapons. And so, um, given the limited nature of the incursion so far, it's like, yes, I think that you're better off if you can stop them from getting that nuclear umbrella. But it comes down to that base assumption. Yeah, we have another comment in the chat. Um, I want to highlight that talks about that Trump just like Bush doesn't have any credible evidence for the reason for this war.

Similar to the weapons of mass destruction, we're talking about the precursor to they had a nuke. they were two weeks away and Israel was the reason that they were two was the intelligence. We found out later in after everything kind of happened that intelligence was old. We decimated their bombs 6 months ago for the 3-day war and then wasn't it wasn't decimated. It was rebuilt but it wasn't rebuilt at the capacity in which we assumed it was. We know all of that's untrue. So I don't know if they just aren't paying attention or if they are intentionally like obfuscating things.

So the two week the two weeks away, forget the two weeks. Call it call it a year, two years, whatever. But Iran, their own administration has admitted we were building a nuclear program. We want nuclear weapons and we could not keep it a secret. Okay, I've played that clip on this show multiple times. Uh second of all they keep saying over and over and over that it is our right to develop a nuclear program and we will never stop. I think it was uh Argoti or however you say his name.

I think he has said that directly. So these are people who are just saying the thing out loud. We're going to develop a nuclear program. Nobody has the right to stop us. So we have been stying the uh Iranian regime from building a nuclear. We the call it the greater West Mhm. have been styming them for a long time going back to stuckset uh which was god when was that like early 2000s. So um they've been trying to build a nuclear program which we know because there's no reason to develop anything over like 9% or something uh enriched and they've gone all the way to 60%.

There there is no use for that other than a weapons program. So it's like they're doing all of the things including saying we want it, we're going to have it and we've already enriched up to 60 plus%. So like that's known and established. Nobody should be saying they weren't developing a nuclear program. What do you mean? Like that to me is just like I I don't even know what people are talking about. Now if you want to say they have a right to a nuclear program, that's a totally different argument and sure is a worthwhile debate to have.

But to say that they weren't doing one is ridiculous. Also, the Trump administration, I think they have been terrible at messaging why they did this war, which is why I think that their motives were a very, very, very far way from being pure. But the argument for they did a thing that I would want them to do, even though they did it for the wrong reasons, would go something like this. Iran was building a traditional um ballistic missile program that was going to allow them to stop anybody from coming in and stopping them from building a nuclear program.

So they were going to use underground traditional ballistic missiles that can reach Europe and obviously the GCC as a way to build a nuclear weapons program and then they were going to stockpile themselves like crazy. And so you need I if you believe you need to interrupt that then you had to take action. So the justification for the war, even though I don't think this was the real reason that Trump did it, I think it was like a oh, and we also have um that really is there.

And so you can have the argument about whether you think the Trump administration did this for the right reason, but very clearly given how much they've been able to styy us, they really were building that program. It really is underground. It really is getting harder to um dictate their behavior on the nuclear front. And so the the twoe thing is just like that's a headline that's to get people to feel a sense of urgency. It's like a classic sales approach, but it doesn't mean that it negates the underlying truth of they're building weapons.

It's just hard to get people to act when you go it's probably somewhere between a year and 3 years. People be like, nah, like [ __ ] it. Leave it alone. And it's like if you really believe this because we understand the ballistic missile capabilities, we understand how they could get to the point where we can't stop them. Plus, I Israel, I US want to stop them when it's far easier. Yeah, I've got to move years ahead of time. So, you you're going to have a harder time selling that.

But for the sophisticated among us, who I hope everybody listening right now is that level of sophisticated, just do the thought experiment. Okay? If they were on a path that would make it harder and harder to stop them, where's your line? Is there a point at which, okay, if they bury enough weapons? If they have a weapon that can reach within, you know, whatever 2,000 miles of mainland Europe, like just tell me what your line is. And if they say, I have no line, cool, I know your thinking.

I know where you're at. If they say they have a line, we just move too soon. Okay, at least I understand your thinking. I think it's probably wrongheaded. Now, if you want to say, "Well, Trump is a [ __ ] and I [ __ ] hate him and I can't have this guy in office because even though those reasons are real, he did it. He did the right thing for the wrong reason." It's like, "Okay, we can quabble over quibble over that." Um, but to me, I would much rather have the conversation of, "But did he do the right thing?" Wrong reasons or not, did he do the right thing?

Then I would want to center on because you can have that argument and say, "No, because it's immoral, because it was so early, it is the wrong thing." Okay, you've got a moral framework. It's like I can understand your argument having at least internal consistency. Then I know what we actually disagree about, but right now everybody zooms in on, well, the messaging of this was [ __ ] and it was. And uh he did it for the wrong reasons. Yeah, he probably did. It was a mix of things.

I think he was being honest about wanting to stop them from having nuclear weapons, but I think he was using a sales tactic. Um, I think he probably was um certainly positioned by Israel. I don't think he would ever dance to anybody's tune, but positioned by Israel. They're going to frame their intel in a way that makes it seem way more urgent. You got to move now, yada yada. But at the end of the day, his motives were muddy. I think a lot of this can be understood by recognizing the entire you the the entire global economy is making one bet on AI and you need to transform oil money into AI investments in the west obviously if you're the US and so you're thinking who's stopping me and instability in that region not being able to get the whole region focused on economics is one of the big things and so I'm going to come in and stop Iran.

Yeah, that justification like confuses me a little bit because I think the region was more stable before we were there. Now, mind you, you can talk about Iran's intentions. You can talk about what they were doing underground. You could talk about what they would have done if they did have these things, but what I don't think is true is to say that the region wasn't instable and then we came and stabilized it. Okay, let's talk about this from the level of um God, this was in Texas, Ryan.

It was uh a religious cult leader who ended up the branch devidians David Caresh. Okay, we got there. Uh so David Caresh, right? Has uh the story. What? SORRY, I DON'T I DON'T KNOW WHO what Oh my god. This is where we realize how old I am. Okay. Uh holy [ __ ] I can look it up though. W I'm legitimately beside myself a shock right now. Okay. So, uh you've got these guys that are the branch devidians. They're building a compound. They've got all kinds of weapons.

Uh they've got kids. The cult leader is like sleeping with the kids and like all this crazy [ __ ] Wake up. Is this the Waco story? I got it. Okay. I didn't know the guy's name. I just wake up. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I don't wake up. Now, that is a pretty good analogy for what's happening right now because all hell broke loose and basically only bad things came of it. But what you had was a bad situation that needed to be addressed and the way that we addressed it ended up creating a cluster [ __ ] So separating the it did need to be addressed and so now we can go over whether how should it have been addressed.

Can we speedrun the speedrun is uh they hunker down and uh the government FBI I think they show up armed to the [ __ ] teeth like guns, tanks, everything. And um they end up like throwing a smoke grenade inside or something and it catches something on fire. But like people were getting shot and killed. It was [ __ ] crazy. And so if the branch devidians had just gone, oh word, yep, cool. Come on in. Like do what you're going to do. Take our guns.

Arrest us. Shame on us. I shouldn't have been sleeping with the underage kids and all that. Like it was [ __ ] bad. Um that isn't what happened. They were like, "Nope, we're not coming out. We've got guns." And so there was like some back and forth shooting and all that, but what the US did escalated so ferociously that way, way more people died than needed to die. And I I think like all of the kids or most of the kids end up burning to death in the house.

I mean just like horrific. So you need to do something but your intervention becomes a bigger problem. So they destabilize the situation but the situation was already unstable. And so now the question where the debate I think is far more interesting is okay you have a situation in Iran that you need to deal with already base assumption. And some people are going to disagree with that, but that would be what I would put forward. You've got a country that is a theocratic regime that is promising to kill another group in the region that is building up weapons such that they can back down Europe by striking them with ballistic missiles.

They are marching towards getting a nuclear weapon which will cause proliferation. Okay. So, that's a a situation that I will call already unstable, but it isn't the sort of open things are blowing up, bombs are flying everywhere kind of unstable. So, debating how to address that threat is a great question, and I'm certainly not putting forward that the way that we did it was the right way. I'm just saying uh calling the situation before we moved in stable is a bit of a cheek. And then anybody saying we've handled it perfectly would also be ridiculous.

So, how do you address already unstable situations? That's the debate that we have to have. Gotcha. Um, you mentioned it earlier. After Trump's speech, they did end up having deliberations with the Iranian officials. They sat together for about 3 hours. Um, so after nearly 7 months of war, this was the biggest diplomatic opening yet. This is a tweet from Mario Norfall. Trump says the meeting in New York was very good and very productive with another round expected soon. The contrast is extraordinary. Iran arrived in New York demanding concessions before deescalation.

Trump derived warning that his choice was essentially a deal or devastating military actions. Arab governments were still scrambling to bring the two sides together. Then they actually talked. Something has changed. So we'll be hopeful on that side. Poly market only gives it a 7% chance that a deal gets done in 2026 though. So yeah, that that seems pretty bang on. More months of war going. Um something has changed. I think they end that piece uh with something that probably isn't true. I the only thing that's changing is how much economic suffering is Iran willing to endure and so we could say that okay the thing that changed is uh we have finally through the anaconda strategy that Bessant laid out we have now put enough pressure on them that they're willing to try to negotiate but I don't think a deal is going to come from this so Iran is they're very good if if our long history of trying to negotiate with Iran on can be believed.

They are very good at coming to the table and making it seem like they're willing to talk as a method of buying time. And the nothing um if they can get any sort of sanctions loosened, they have nothing to lose by buying time, which is why their big ask is move remove the blockade so that we can start selling oil again and then we're fine because we can continue to pay for things and we're not worried about anything internally. we can take a lot of suffering.

We will definitely outlast you. Uh their whole stated goal is to get to the 2028 election or 27 election for a 28 takeover. Uh they fully expect the Republicans to be out and to get back to something that's more Biden uh or Obama style leniency and they'll run the table. will try to put restrictions on their, you know, IAEA or whatever the name of the um uh nuclear agency was and they just ignored them and they kept building a program and the group was saying, "Hey, these guys are uh not following the guidelines, but what are you going to do?

You going to reinvade?" So, they know that if they can get the Republicans out of office, no universe in which the Democrats would go in and invade Iran not going to happen. So that's their plan. So is it more likely them buying time than them really being like uh you know please sir we would really like to come to an agreement. It's like they've been saying that every day like that's the what Trump will ask you to believe is that behind the scenes are constantly saying let's come to a deal.

Yeah. And then every negotiator is like that's what they do. They say we want a deal but in reality they just want to buy time. We shall keep monitoring the situation. Um I think we got a super chat right? Uh yes we do. We have one super chat. James Whitmer says given the fact that we are headed for empire collapse, it might be helpful to talk about what empire collapse looks like for the lower middle class American and small businesses. Okay. Uh so what that ultimately is going to look like because this will be really an economic collapse is going to be that the dollar starts getting weaker and weaker which means that your life gets more and more expensive because right now the US has been masking its absolute fiscal uh recklessness by importing a bunch of things that were cheap.

So globalism worked at the surface level because it got you a bunch of cheap stuff from China. It hollowed out a large portion of the middle class, but it also made a bunch of other people wealthier. So, um, from a what you're able to buy perspective, globalism certainly made things very, very cheap. Uh, that goes away. And so, the dollar is going to start getting weaker and weaker, which makes imports more and more expensive. So, now you're going to have to focus on your hemisphere. You're going to have to focus on the US.

And so, you're going to have some really brutal years. But on the other side of that, if you're smart, you can be a much smaller global power. But if you're playing your cards right, you can begin growing again on the backs of the thing that made America so powerful, which is that we have an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, if we have so much cultural rot, which is my big fear, that we both lose our empire, the dollar weakens, and we go to DSA style um socialism, then you will suffer the fate of the UK.

The UK went from being the biggest by a country mile, most important by a country mile, uh dominant country, wealthiest country on earth by a country mile. And now they essentially don't matter on the global stage at all. their people are getting poorer by the day and have been for 80 years. It it is a catastrophe for the UK. Uh so that is basically what you would expect to happen here in the US. Now it doesn't mean that it's like uh the road if you've read that book.

It isn't going to be people eating each other on the streets or any sort of apocalyptic wasteland. Uh but it is you stagnate as a country. You're not growing. you regulate everything into oblivion. Depending on how fast socialism takes over, you just become inert. Now, I think that the US has a lot of push back on that because we have a lot of entrepreneurial people. Uh we have a lot of um still that historical legacy of like don't tread on me, let me create what I'm here to create, let me try to innovate.

And I don't think that goes away overnight. Um, so it' be a nice slow steady decline for a hundred years that sees us, you know, uh, getting worse by the day, call it for a hundred years until we're like, hey, can you believe America once used to be the most powerful country on earth? It will just play out like that. And so, who will take our place? It could be a bunch of regional hegeimons. It could be that China gets out from under its fiscal crisis or its um its economic crisis and takes over the role and just leans into all the things of building an empire and we all find ourselves dancing to China's tune in the way that we're the world currently dances to the US's tune.

Um but it's certainly not good for the middle class. Now period put all that aside new chapter. Um AI could make all of that analysis completely irrelevant. And so that remains like a big series of question marks. I'll stop there for now. We'll certainly talk more about AI later, but yeah, we're gonna talk about AI now. I have it pulled up. Um, so Anthropic and OpenAI both delayed their IPOs. They're both calling for government daddy to save them. Um, I think the cat's out the bag now.

Like the safety thing isn't really necessarily hitting as hard, but I don't know what's your algorithm telling you. How's it looking on your side? Yeah, I think the reality is that you are always going to be able to count on people to be afraid and that that fear is going to have a massive impact on what people will go for. Never underestimate the power of fear. Now, Drew is a high information person. So, unfortunately to him, I think it looks like the world is really turning in a way that I don't think we can count on yet.

But getting specific, OpenAI Ananthropic may be in big trouble as you've got Alex Karp once again warning that the AI industry has massive litigation risk and Scott Bessant coming in to back up that notion, making it clear that the Trump administration is not going to save them. Now, some people will say that Palanteer CEO Alex Karp is an insider because they do so much in AI and that is certainly how I mean it when I refer to him as an insider. Other people will note that he is in some ways very competitive against the companies uh like OpenAI Anthropic.

So take his analysis with a grain of salt. But Alex Karp is making trouble basically for the AI industry as a whole right now. He's pointing out what I think is pretty obvious. Uh and he went on CNBC talking about this poking a hole in the AI safety debate trying to get people to understand that this was never really about just regulation although that is a huge part of it. It's also about them wanting to dodge lawsuits. Let's take a listen. Lab in specific, a sitting employee came out.

Right below that, you have Alex Karp, assuming that it's the right clip. Start with Alex. Yeah, start with the Alex Karp one. Then we'll get to our man best people who think the way we do. Uh that's why you can't work with the military. That's why you can take the IP from businesses and put in your model. that that model would require severe liability protection. And there's only one institution that can do that, the US government. And then that's before you get to the danger. So what was really happening is the investors loved when he was migrating all the value of everyone else's business to their business cuz they're investors.

They don't realize it's like it's like every mark. They don't realize they're the mark because now you first you migrate all the IP to your business and then because you need uncapped you need capped liability both visa v the business and visa v the dangers you've got to migrate the business to the government it has to be nationalized so it's actually now can people actually count on Trump uh the Trump administration to nationalize them I think the answer is absolutely not now would Trump prop up the frontier models in some way knowing him by taking huge shares uh in the company on behalf of the American people, which I think is a terrible idea.

But nonetheless, could I see him doing that? Yes, absolutely. But is he going to protect these guys from litigation prior to that? Absolutely not. So, that's really where this is going to play out is you're going to see an increased push for uh take shares in our company like we're going to IPO and you guys should be one of the buyers. It'll be something like that or pre in fact, that's what they would do. We're going to give you shares preIPO so that when we IPO, you're going to be able to say we got a huge win for the American people.

Oh god, as I sit here and think about this. Uh, I could definitely see that playing out. Now, Treasury Tech Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant um certainly agrees with Alex Karp on the fact that no one should be protecting the AI companies from litigation risk because the shest way to make sure that these guys actually make sure that their product is safe is for them to be on the hook for liability if it isn't safe. And I'll just remind everybody that ultimately right now what we need is we need these companies to be um looking at their own safety initiatives recognizing that a big part of the hugging face incident was them with a poor testing setup that actually gave the agents access to the internet and they were instructed to go hack the [ __ ] out of things.

So giving them a way to access the internet which is foolish on uh humans part while telling them to go hack something is what created the problem. And so if you want companies to make sure that something is safe you need only expect them to adhere to laws that are already on the books. And so the way that the AI companies are talking is as if there aren't already consumer protections that insist on products being safe. And so we really do need to as we navigate this um very complex field, we need to remind ourselves that the US has a history of navigating this delineation between okay over here on this side we have pure safety but regulation that stifles all innovation and over here we have innovation that is careful not to cross over into some uh dangerous scenario that could really create problems for people.

And we have walked that line better than any other country, which is why we have outpaced Europe for decade after decade in terms of growth. And the only country that sweats us and beats us on a growth uh scale is China. And the reason that China's been able to do it is they're way less cautious than we are. And they had a much much lower starting point. So when you look at that, the two countries that are focused the most on innovation are growing the most.

And the countries that are most focused on regulation do not. And so that's really going to be the decision that we have to make. And to hold people accountable in that high innovation scenario, you've got to make sure that they're held accountable to the laws that already exist that protect people from this kind of stuff rather than becoming Europe and stifling innovation. All right. So anyway, let's hear from Scott Bessent who's going to speak to exactly that. Imagine these labs came out or one lab in specific a sitting employee came out said there's a 10% chance of an extinction level event but then the labs also said uh take the liability off of our hands and we will not do that.

I I am in agreement with the MIT professor who leads the AI AI lab up there, Daniel Huddenlocker, that it is humans who are responsible, not the AI, the hugging face incident, the that is responsibility of the open AI management, not a bunch of agents. So uh what the president was saying is that we cannot the say oh you uh we absolve you of responsibility and the government's going to take responsibility. These labs need to take responsibility for themselves. They can slow down anytime they want to.

Imagine these lab. Yeah. So that is the exact right approach. We have laws. These guys need to adhere to those laws. If they're looking into the future and they see something with these models that is legitimately dangerous, then they should absolutely slow down. They should not just go guns ablazing uh no matter what, taking every risk in the world, like every company before them, they should be thinking about, okay, what are the risk levels here? And are we comfortable with it, knowing that we're going to be liable on the back end?

And so again, this is something we talked about previously, but you've got this uh same thing that played out in the region of vaccines, right? And one of the things that we have to revisit is whether we want to give companies that kind of get out of jail free card. Uh there's going to be no consequences. Do we think that that led to something good in the vaccine industry? And if you have a base assumption that yes, it did, then you're going to say the government should step in here and regulate this technology is so important.

Uh, and if you don't and you're like, hold on, these companies need to be accountable to the people that are using their product and getting hurt by it. Uh, and so we've got to remove that. Then you're going to think, all right, hey, there's already laws on the books. These guys just need to be held accountable. Two, uh, very different based assumptions, but easy to put on the table and say, I agree this way or that way. Yeah. How do you think this all plays out?

Cuz it seems like they're asking for help. They're not getting that help now. The IPOs are delayed. Are they going to be is this just a historic uh re redoing of the railroad industry and all these other industries that we talked about previously of they just laid the groundwork and some new upstart like Deepseek or Kimmy or whatever. It's it's next to impossible to know how it will actually play out. But I can lay some breadcrumbs like if this is true then you're likely to see this.

If that ends up being true you're likely to see this. So if in 2028 Democrats take power and a candidate like Kla Harris comes into power that is very socialistminded uh you're going to see a return to Biden era approach to this where they said to Mark Andre directly don't even bother investing in any more AI companies. The government's going to be in control of that. Uh we are going to have two or three companies that we oversee completely and that'll be that. It'll be a naked grab for power because if you look at the way that the left responded to COVID, it was very aggressively uh sensorial.

They wanted control of all social media so they could control essentially what people thought. And AI is the new way that people think and so they are for sure going to grab a hold of that and make sure that the AI can't be saying things that is not approved messaging. That's my nightmare scenario. But that is certainly where I think that we're going on that side. I think that they will regulate the industry to death in an effort to keep everybody safe. That'll certainly be the messaging.

But again, I really think it's about power and I think it's about that's going to be the the voting block that they will build will look something like this. Um the world has gotten too expensive because billionaires are evil and we're going to from the top down. We're just going to force it. Kla Harris literally said these things uh when she was running that they were looking at grocery stores. This is when I noped out of Kla Harris. we're looking at grocery stores. We're going to drive the cost down there.

That's when I understood she didn't understand the economy that she was going to break the engine of prosperity. So, that'll be the safety block that they build. We're going to take care of AI for you. We're going to control it. It's not going to say crazy things. Um, it is going to it's not going to take your job. We're going to make sure that workers are protected. And so, that'll be the thing. China is not making any of these mistakes. I think the US you've got uh like 32% of people have a favorable view of AI.

If that's not literally correct, it's very close. Uh in China it's 85% or 84%. And so the disparity between the way the two countries look at AI is crazy. So that is what's likely to directionally play out. If we elect someone like Kla Harris, you're going to see that become an element of control. You're going to see innovation slowed down. There's going to be uh a regulatory moat put around. You're going to have these gigantic companies that build AI, but they build it in a way that the government deems to be okay way in a way that the government can control.

You're going to not have uh open- source or openweight models. the flip. If somehow someway a Marco Rubio or a JD Vance gets elected, then you're going to see a continuation of what we have now, which is going to be either uh unfortunately the they invest in these companies as a way to provide some uh asurances that we don't lose to China. So that if we go through that sort of trough of despair that I've described before where the debt outpaces the revenues, you can expect the government to sort of step in in that fashion, funnel deals to them, that kind of thing to make sure that they stay afloat.

Um, but open source will exist and so you'll continue to get innovation and so that would be the one that I'd be far far less afraid of. Now you can insert the debate about artificial super intelligence. Obviously, the control scenario, the safety scenario is going to be far less likely that the US creates artificial super intelligence, but it does absolutely nothing to stop China from developing artificial super intelligence. So, that risk is effectively not mitigated at all. Uh, and that really becomes the the flip side of that coin is if you've got the US pursuing it as fast as they can, if you're worried about ASI, they're certainly not going to stop the US from contributing to that problem.

So, um, that'll be a big debate. Yeah, it's it's interesting because this was supposed to be the, you know, $2 trillion IPO season and all these other things and now it's just crickets and well, also they've sucked so much money out of the economy. So, uh, as you've got interest rates rising, that's part of this. You've got, we haven't talked about this in a while, you've got Japan unwinding the yen carry trade that's sucking liquidity out of the entire system. So, people are already fretting about where is this debt coming from?

There's no way this is all highquality debt that's going into AI, which puts them at even greater risk. And so when you start looking at the inflation caused by energy, when you look at the Fed tightening, when you look at the Japan carry trade unwinding, when you look at the economy softening and people spending less, you don't have to look any farther than what's going on at Walmart to see that that's really true. So, as you start looking at all of that, it's like uh this gets pretty um questionable at best.

And so, for them to push forward to do an IPO, they've got to know where that money is going to come from. And right now, they're like, "Yeah, I'm not so sure." So, we've got a sort of dual track. We want to build hype with all the fear to do what I call uh fear as the the proof of power. So, you build the hype by saying, "Look how dangerous it is." Uh and so if that catches hold, maybe you can get the average everyday person uh to go.

But you would need uh basically capital to largely rotate out of something else. And so is it going to rotate out of gold? Is it going to rotate out of crypto? Is it going to rotate out of uh SpaceX AI? But it's got to come from somewhere. And I don't think right now anybody sees an obvious target. Yeah. And just as you have claimed that uh the Kobishi letter just talked about the 10-year note he yield rising five to 5.05% it highest level since July of 2027.

You know I think we're recently at 5.02. So it's not like this is skyrocketing by any means but it's certainly still moving in the wrong direction. Mortgage rates pushing 7.5 is the thing I definitely want to highlight. That's that's still historically low. Like that's not a crazy number. But you have a very weird thing breaking in the economy, which is young people uh are just not able to compete successfully for homes. And so the average age going up to 40, I believe, uh of a first-time home buyer is a very very very bad signal.

Um so yeah, it's interesting. We're going to be looking at this in hour three today. Has the world actually got less affordable? Uh I think it's a very powerful question that we're going to be exploring in depth. So certainly stay tuned for that today. Um it it's a mixed bag. It's not a clear story. So um yeah, we'll we'll it it's moving in the wrong direction. We are not at panic stages. It's indicating something that is not ideal. Uh you have a compression between the 2-year and the 10-year rates which tell you that basically the 2-year says I don't trust the Fed to do the right thing.

Uh, so the rates rising there are basically like, yeah, these guys are going to do near-term stuff that like I'm I think is stupid and so you're going to have to pay me more to get in here. Uh, but the 10-year is like my forecast of long-term demand. And the 10-year actually isn't rising very high as we see. So when you see compression there, that's a pretty clear signal that people think the Fed is doing [ __ ] and that the economy is weak and going to get weaker.

Yeah. All right, we have to jump over to some gaming news. Um, I found this absolutely hilarious that Microsoft is now filing a patent for ads that would interrupt games after boss fights, cutscenes, quest, and multiple player rounds. U, I'll be so mad if I'm in the middle of playing a video game and it stops and an ad plays. I might check out. It's already diabolical that they do that on Netflix, like midmov climax, stop, pause, four minutes of ads and then they get you back into the movie.

If they do that, if they come for the video games, I don't know. That might be it for me. I love this so much. You love it. Oh my god. There's no way you love ads, bro. I hope they run so many ads. I hope they charge uh an absolute fortune to opt out of the ads cuz remember, I'm a game developer and Kaizen is not going to do any of that [ __ ] And so I am going to sell against this so hard if these guys actually go through with this which would be so shocking as people will be I rateate but hey if they want to do it but here's ultimately this comes down to a cultural battle.

So AAA games as of right now today, you can expect this to change over time with AI, but AAA games right now are ridiculously expensive. And so they tried doing live service games where it's like, "All right, cool. Hey, we'll give it to you for free. We're just going to let you buy things that you want." And people hate that. They consider it so predatory that they're up in arms. So everyone's like, "Okay, well after multiple failures trying to pursue another live service thing, we the AAA game developers are going to acknowledge we don't understand how to make a live service game work in this uh cultural climate." So, okay, cool.

We're not going to do that. But we also know that people don't want $100 games and we know that they don't want us doing microtransactions. So what the [ __ ] are you leaving us? So we want to give you guys these really expensive games. But we've got to do we've got to have some way to continue. Get ready for the phrase everybody hates. We've got to have a way to build shareholder value because this is exactly how we continue to scale this company. And it doesn't do us any good to own all these game studios if they are not adding to our shareholder value because that's what drives the price of these things which makes our company more valuable which gives us the ability to gain and retain employees which gives us the ability to uh get money into the company.

And so sorry guys there's got to be some way for us to do this. And it is it is just a look at Minecraft. It's the highest selling game of all time, but it doesn't do like revenue numbers like Fortnite because Fortnite really in many ways gave us the beast that is live service because they really found a way to get kids excited about that next drop, the change in the game. they can just keep developing, keep developing, keep developing, keep the game relevant for year on year on year by doing things that necessitate that a single player can give them more money.

Otherwise, they have to do Fortnite 1, Fortnite 2, Fortnite 3. But the the thing that I always find amusing is people want these games developed forever, but they don't want to have to keep paying for them. And so, they'll celebrate a game like um No Man's Sky, which gangster gangster. Hello Games, I believe, is the company behind No Man's Sky. Shout out to you guys. Unbelievable. A 10-year run of free updates. Absolutely incredible. But that becomes a very hard to maintain thing because if you get into a stretch where people aren't like the game isn't spreading to any more people and now you've got this expectation that people have that you're going to keep developing, keep developing, then that can sort of die on the vine.

And so, uh, this is why you have only a handful of strategies that you can use. One is that you produce a game that you, you know, maybe one once a year or every couple of years you just recharge for it. Um, or you do a live service or you do DLC's. But there there's not infinite number of ways to do this because employees insist on getting paid. And as long as employees insist on getting paid, companies have, especially if it's an online game, they have insane ongoing costs.

And so they've they've got to get money for that. So, uh, anyway, again, there's a small handful of ways to do this. I'm going to market against people doing the one that people are going to absolutely [ __ ] despise, but for somebody that can't afford a game, it's like if you get a game for free, but you've got to watch some commercials, but you get it for free, it's not a terrible trade. Culturally, people may hate it, but if you don't have 80 bucks, and it's the difference between either you show me some ads after the boss fight or in between rounds, or I don't get to play, diabolical, man.

I I can't I still can't get it. If it it is terrible, though. There was just a study that said there's more toy sales in adults than there are for kids. And I think that this that's wild. This is the continuation of that. Like we are not we're we're trying to hold on to our childhood at the cost of other people's childhood. If uh I disagree with that take. I think that it Let me make my case and then slam it down if you think that I'm crazy.

So I think it goes like this. Uh, I went to D23, which is um Disney's like Comic-Con, so it's all their big announcements and all that stuff. And I was there on a weekday, but it was it was a holiday, so um you wouldn't expect that to have stopped kids from being there. And I'm going to say less than 5% were kids. Like, it was shocking. I was beside myself with shock. I had no clue that it was I knew like the Disney adult thing was a thing, but I had no idea it was that much of a thing.

Uh so that for sure there is this element of whatever you're nostalgic for as a kid like it implants something in your brain and the way the human mind works you have a huge emotional response to that thing even as you get older and so there are for sure properties that I'm still really emotionally resonant with even though they're like kids programming so I get that that's a human thing you're going to see that but kids now are raised on totally different IP that nobody knows how to aggregate so there are going to be kids for instance that Skibbidity toilet It was just like the thing that was like the big thing when they were 12.

They loved it, thought it was awesome. It's super niche and anybody that makes t-shirts as a reference to that will make them feel like they're in on something and so they're going to be uh doing that. But we're raising kids now algorithmically, not IP. So, it's a very different thing. It isn't just like, oh, our generation is stopping kids from having uh their childhood. It's just that when you engage with short form, it's a totally different dopamine loop. It's a totally different relationship to the IP and the IP is so fragmented and scattered.

It's not like Disney where you've got a hundred years of like, you know, what do they have 50 IP? Kids today will have 50 IP in a year. So it it's just the magnitude is so different and so their relationship to things will be very different. But that's not sustainable if D23 like that. It's not those companies are just going to cease to exist. Yeah. They're just gonna die. It won't be like that. So my my first um it won't be like it is today in the future.

My first realization about AI is this is going to disagregate capital in a way that people do not understand. We have my generation had a shared experience growing up. Like you might have been like the radical freak who was into the cure, but I knew who The Cure was and I liked some of their songs. I didn't have any of their albums, but you weren't like an alien to me that was listening to something I'd never heard of. That was nigh impossible. Not impossible, but not impossible.

Now it's like, dude, the the number of YouTubers I can find that have eight million subscribers on a topic I didn't even know existed is like, whoa. So, that is a fragmentation that we're not used to because it used to be like what the uh finale of MASH had like 130 million viewers or something. It might have been 70 million, but it was a lot. Yeah. You're not going to get that now. So it it's just everything is fragmented. That will make it very hard for companies to grow large.

And so what you'll see is just a sea of much smaller companies. And so while my fantasy would be that Kaizen basically becomes a juggernaut like Minecraft, the more likely scenario is I peel off a small fraction of the player base who's like, "Oh yeah, I get it. DNA on Minecraft, but a totally different experience. And I prefer it, but it's not going to be that like core thing because that was Odd Generations core thing. It's not this generation's core thing. Mhm. MASH had 106 million to answer your question.

And then also, I looked up Minecraft revenue because I was curious. Off the game alone, they make 350 million a year off the franchise, like including microtransactions stuff. A billion. Damn. Which is crazy for like what 14-year-old game. That's wild. Now, bad news perhaps is that uh Fortnite does like 3 to 5 billion. They do. So, they don't disclose. I pulled that up to 4 to6 billion and then Roblox, which is their main competitor, 4.89, which was disclosed. Yeah. So, those three are still the titans of the game for sure.

But like the difference between one and four is a lot. Like a lot a lot. So, uh, micro microtransactions, which people hate, especially when it's aimed at kids, uh, is the juggernaut, much to my dismay. And by the way, uh, Minecraft still lets in, like they have a a leaky bucket over here on the side that does still sell things that could be construed as gambling to kids. So, like, if you were going to shave that off as well, Minecraft's billion probably drops uh, noticeably. Yeah.

Significantly. and Notch, the famous creator of Minecraft, is starting to get into vibe coding. So, yeah, I think this might be the turn of the the tide right here. I would admit I am enjoying vibe coding. I may have been a teensy tiny bit wrong. There is going to be this inflection point where a lot of people say, "Okay, maybe I was wrong about AI. Massively embrace it." And then this future that you just laid out kind of happens with the proliferation of these little companies and niche community projects, whether it's games, whether it's videos, whether it's YouTube creators, whatever it may be.

There are two futures before us. Future number one, artificial super intelligence happens and it's sinister and it wipes us all out or the vast majority of humanity embraces AI. That's it. There there will be smaller groups that are like what I call the um new Amish, but they'll be small. And if you're thinking in a 10-year time horizon, I get why you think it's going to be way more fragmented than that. That there are going to be tons of people that opt out. Now, imagine 50 years in the future.

You've raised multiple generations. That from day one, AI is just a part of their life. They expect to have a conversation with the coffee pot and tell it, "Hey, make my favorite coffee. Do it exactly like you did it yesterday." Uh, that's it. They expect the coffee pot to warn them when they walk by, "Hey, don't forget to order more." or they expect the coffee pot just to order more of the little pods that you put in. So, they will not be weird about AI. So, just like as a parent, let me tell you, the first time I logged into Fortnite, I thought that the game was broken.

I thought something was wrong cuz there was so much music playing on top of each other. I was like, there's no way it's designed to be like this. It's not possible. Like, I' i've done something wrong. I've logged in in a weird way. Uh, no, it's really designed like that and kids just grow up with it. So, same with algorithms. Uh, if you grew up with reals, your whole approach to life is going to be different than if you grew up the way that I grew up, where it was like you had to wait for a show to come on.

And if you didn't watch it live while it was there, you just didn't see it. Uh, that was it. And getting caught in bad traffic meant that you were never going to see a thing uh that you really wanted to see that day because your parents took you on some stupid trip and you weren't back in time to see the thing. So, it that's very, very different. But it's not like kids today are going to go backwards. So, we embrace technology. It's a one-way street. Uh, and anyone generation will squabble over it, but over time, it's it's just a guaranteed we're going in that direction.

Period. Full stop. So, people are going to embrace AI. It is very interesting to see people like Notch uh coders who were very against it because what they thought was uh one, it's just going to be slop. It's not going to be very good. And in the beginning when they probably formed their opinion, it probably was slop and it wasn't good. And they saw people getting brain rot because they were just outsourcing all their thinking to something that gave them trash as an output. And they were just like, "Okay, fine.

I'll accept this." Because they didn't want to do the hard work to make it good. Now, what they're realizing is, "Oh, hold on a second. If I maintain my sovereignty and I'm not giving it the ability to think for me, I'm using it as a tool to create something that nobody else is going to be able to create because they don't have my mind. And so just like a chainsaw in my hands is not going to give you some incredible carving the way that a chainsaw in the hands of a practiced and skilled uh artist could give you, they're two totally different things.

Same tool, but the outcome is wildly different. That's where AI is now. So I expect a lot of programmers to go, "Holy [ __ ] this allows me to be way more bold in what I try to do. I still have to be good at that thing. I still have to know how to approach this, but I can now pull off things that I couldn't have pulled off and I don't have to build a team. So, this is far less expensive. I really want people to have that experience because it is thrilling.

Now, when somebody has that experience, if they go, boy, do I really hope that AI stays here. I get it. That it's a very comforting thing to be like, okay, cool. It's in a stage now where I'm necessary that you could give somebody the same AI and they will not get the same results that I get because I've trained myself. I've pushed it more. uh I have unique insights, unique desires, all that stuff. You can give somebody all the AI in the world, they will not be able to build Kaizen because Kaizen is literally thousands of decisions that I have made based on what I find interesting, based on player feedback I've gotten, etc., etc.

And so that's going to be a oneofone game. Now, once it comes out, somebody can replicate it much faster. That is for sure. But I at least have my window where I can make something that is truly unique. Now, super intelligence is a very different thing, but I'll set that aside for now. Yeah, we'll keep uh monitoring it. Um, in other news, live streamer Clavvicular has reportedly been charged with rape, drugging a person for sex, and providing alcohol to a minor in Massachusetts. And not supposedly, he's been charged.

Like, nobody is denying this. So, if you guys don't know uh who Clavvicular is, his real name is Braden Peters. Uh, he is a streamer. He's very large. There's been some huge internet debate about whether he's a top five streamer or not. I'm not even going to get into that. But he is certainly a very large streamer who's become somewhat infamous in um the right-leaning circles, the sort of new face of um bro culture, if you will. And so already a very controversial figure, not somebody that everybody shines on.

Uh but the allegations against him are very serious. Now, what ends up um blowing this up to something bigger is that people are debating the merits of the case. But just to lay out exactly what's going on, uh his name is Braden Peters. He's been charged in Massachusetts with rape, drugging a person for sexual intercourse. And by the way, the drug is alcohol. That may make you feel differently or not. Um and procuring alcohol for somebody under 21. The complaint was filed September 8th in Orleans District Court on Cape Cod.

It was issued by summons rather than an arrest warrant, and he's due for arraignment on October 14th. Now, the charges actually go back to May 23rd of 2025. According to Chatham uh and their police report, there was a 17-year-old girl, and it's going to become relevant, but 16 is the age of consent in Massachusetts. This is why this is not a statutory rape claim. This is something different, but you've got a 17-year-old girl that he'd met on Instagram. Uh, she told investigators that Peters arranged an Uber to bring her to his family home, that his mother and grandmother were both in the house.

She says the two went to his bedroom and live streamed on Twitch while drinking vodka, and she felt pressured to drink. She told police that he had sex with her that night while she was too intoxicated to consent. and then again the next morning. Now, whether it was consensual in the morning or she sort of woke up to him uh already in motion, that's unclear at this time. So, that'll have to come out. Now, the accuser's name has been redacted in the criminal case, but a source told CNN uh that her name is Alexandra Mendoza, which now is just going everywhere, by the way.

So, I'm certainly not breaking news or saying something that wasn't very publicly known at this point online. Um, she's an influencer and this is where people start to get debatey, if you will, because she had already sued Peters in civil court in Florida in April. And that suit uh alleges sexual battery from that same night, but it didn't come out that those allegations weren't made until later. So, it separately claims that during a Miami live stream back in November that he had injected her with some like fat dissolving substance.

I think it's called Aqua Licks. I'd never heard of it. Um, that isn't FDA approved. She went to the police in June of 2026. Now, Peter denies the allegation certainly as put forward on X. He said that she's after his money uh and that he also posted a video of her saying that he was super nice. uh plus a letter he says that she wrote thanking him for his help and they had live streamed after the incident happened and she had said nice things publicly after that had it happened and so this is where all of the debate is raging.

So she tries to sue him that doesn't go through then she goes and makes the criminal complaint. So that's where people are saying that hey this is somebody that may have impure motives here. So, all of this, man, this is where everybody needs to be real careful thinking that they know what happened. Um, just because she said nice things afterwards doesn't mean that something illegal didn't transpire before. So, this is one where all of the facts in the case need to come out. Um, they found probable cause to pursue him, so keep that in mind.

This is a criminal investigation. Uh, but just because they found probable cause does not mean that he is guilty. Uh so there's a lot of facts that are going to have to come out. We'll see if this goes all the way to trial or not. The police have tried to contact Peters, by the way. Uh they were not able to reach him, but he has not been quiet. He's been popping off online about this. Um so we will certainly see, but obviously this is a very serious crime.

The consequences are very serious up to uh life in prison. So we'll see what actually comes of this. But boy oh boy uh am am am am am I missing the days where women were told to be very careful. Uh and certainly men, godamn man." Uh one, if this is somebody coming after him for something that he did wrong, straight to jail. That [ __ ] just zero tolerance policy. uh if this is somebody coming after him because he supposedly cost her an advertiser by saying something bad about her uh and she feels shunned and is now trying to hurt him for that.

You got to be careful, man. You got to be careful. Yeah. God, this is such a crazy age for guys to be doing so much of this [ __ ] on camera. [ __ ] It It's interesting, too, because there is that level of um uh what's the thing that Lisa's channel covers? Um when you coercion cohortion yes it's one of those things where she's on camera it's during a stream she consented to the stream she came on the stream after that so if he's this bad person monster why would he do that but then now with this additional nuance um of cases recently with coercion yeah it's called coercive control so okay well now uh setting she's 17 so for at at the time of the incident so for me that's a totally different bucket somebody's underage that's just a night and day thing.

So, uh for me, if he's doing any sort of manipulative tactics that are illegal, a thousand% that that is zero tolerance. Uh lock him up, whatever the penalty is for whatever he gets convicted of,000%. Give it to him all day long. Uh coercive control on an adult I feel very differently about than my wife. So, this is one where we've got to make a decision. Is somebody an adult at 18 or not? If they are an adult, then they are responsible for their own decisions. And I do not buy into coercive control at all, unless that person legitimately like if they've kidnapped your kid or some [ __ ] like that.

Yes, obviously something like that. I do not count coercive control. If like uh let's say that they have your livelihood in their hands, okay, at that point, should they be able to get you to have sex with them? No. Hard pass. No way. Like I get it. That's hardship. a,000%. There are laws to protect against that already. Take them to [ __ ] task on that all day. Get yours, man. That's illegal and it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But I do not want to live in a world where we go, "Oh man, like they're not responsible for their actions.

They got put in a really difficult situation." That's [ __ ] crazy. In fact, we have to play. Did I pull the Sunny Hon thing? If I didn't [ __ ] find it because this is the most outrageous [ __ ] I've ever heard in my life. a guy kills, boils, and uh supposedly he himself eats some, but also gives some to feed the homeless. You've got to hear this [ __ ] yourself. This is people arguing that that person is not responsible for their actions.

[ __ ] you in all capital letters. So, we we have got to [ __ ] decide at what point is a person an adult and they are responsible for themselves. If it's not 18, cool. I'm open to the debate. But we got to pick a [ __ ] number and say at this point that person is responsible for themselves. And at that point, if you have sex with somebody and then later have buyer remorse, hard pass. That is not rape. You should a,000%, no matter what the situation, if you're an adult and they do not have a gun to your head or anything like that, there's not already some law on the books, just say no.

Like, what the [ __ ] This is crazy. We We will as a society derange so hard if we say that adults are not responsible for their actions. That is wild. And by the way, if we're going to make this about um men over women, Jesus Christ, I'm back to this is the same argument. Are you really saying that an adult woman is not capable of thinking for herself and pushing back? Like that's crazy, man. Because dude, that that is so disempowering for women. I cannot believe that women are like, "Yeah, exactly.

I I can't I can get psychologically overpowered." That is so wild. That's wild. Here's a thing. All right. The insanity defense has been around in Massachusetts for 182 years. So, I think it's well established. And I thought absolutely that she was not criminally responsible uh by reason of of insanity. And the reason I felt that I I I feel so strongly about this hold out juror is because I was a hold out juror in a case in the Daniel Rakowitz case. I don't know if people remember it.

The butcher of Tomkins Square Park. It was in 19 The guy who ate the victims. Yes. He was on that jury. You're going to need to explain more. Yes, I was. And when I brought up heard this story before, it was before I went to law school. I would have never and when I brought it up at the Hot Topics meeting, I don't think everyone believed me. And then my producer looked it up and I'm in the New York Times and apparently several jurors questioned afterwards said one hold out juror was principally responsible preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.

That was me. And it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic. Of course, he was in a psycho psychosis. He did not mean to kill her. And once he killed her, he panicked. He he chopped up her body parts. Boiled her body parts. Tried to commit the perfect crime and then fed her. Hold on. Pause. Pause. He tried to commit the perfect crime. That is not somebody who's like in the grips of psychosis. They can think through, okay, what do I need to do?

I got to get rid of the body. Okay, I'm going to chop this up, which would take so much time and energy. And then through all of that, I still think this is a dope idea. And then, by the way, feeds them that body to homeless people after apparently eating some himself. That is so like insane to me that somebody would go, "No, no, no. They're not they're not criminally responsible." It it's what she said that was like he had remorse, so then he tried to commit the perfect crime.

So there is this line between what is psychosis and what is remorse. And just because you feel bad about something doesn't mean you're no longer guilty of it or you're not criminally responsible for it. Correct. That's a weird line. What on earth are we talking about? This this is so strange to me. So the debate on clavvicular needs to be separated from the broader idea of coercive control of adults. Adults. Adults. Because on kids, yes, that's why they're not adults, man. You can like [ __ ] with their psychology.

You can like trick them. All kinds of bad things because they just do not understand the world. Their brain isn't developed enough. Like that one a thousand%. But when you get to adults, man, like at what point I don't want anyone to look at my decisions and be like, somebody [snorts] tricked him. Are you joking? I don't what? It's like I do the things in my life because I think that they are the right choices and if I do something illegal, then I should go to jail for that.

Like that is crazy that people want to abdicate that responsibility and be like, "Well, that person coercively controlled me." That's so nuts. I don't understand the impulse, man. That that is saying I'm not capable of thinking for myself. And if you're not capable of thinking for yourself, then should you be allowed to vote? Like you're saying that I can be manipulated easily. It's like that that one is wild to me. I do not understand this. It's wild. Um, all right. Then we got to jump over to Canada where state administered death is now more common in Canada than gun homicides in the US.

Um, which is like wild stat. I did not know it was that I I feel like they just approved it, too. Let's not something that's been happening for like years and years and years. Like, yep. It's just crazy. It's trending in the wrong direction. All right. Something is seriously wrong in Canada. Seriously wrong. Despite having a fraction of our population, more people are euthanized there than are killed by gun homicides here in the US. And worse, if you put it on a per capita basis, the numbers are even crazier.

The maid, as it's known, Mid, medical assistance in dying. The made kill rate is roughly nine times the US gun homicide rate in the US and about three times the total US gun death rate even when you include suicides. Something is very very wrong with a culture that supposedly has universal healthcare but seems to be cutting costs by reminding already scared by the way or suffering people that they can just nope out of life alltogether. made now accounts for 5.1% of all deaths in Canada. All deaths.

That's one in 20. When it was legalized in 2016, it was sold as like, okay, this is going to be like a really narrow option for a select group of people who are already terminally ill and we just want to help them die with dignity. But in 2021, Ottawa dropped a requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable. So, these are people that are just like having a bad time of it right now. Those cases are currently still just a small slice at at about 4% of the total, but they are rapidly moving in the wrong direction, having grown by 17% in 2024 alone.

There was a recent case, it's making the headlines literally right now where a woman diagnosed with cancer ends up receiving a brochure from the government on assisted suicide before she had even seen an oncologist. Let's look at that. Um, you have something that many Canadian patients of course do not have. Most overwhelmingly, you have American citizenship in the ability to come here to the United States. Now for people who don't know what maid is, it's medical medic medical medically assist medical assistance in dying. Is that what it stands for?

Yes. That is the the correct term for their euthanasia program. So So you started getting literature or getting literature about that because your prognosis was supposedly so grim. I I hadn't even seen an oncologist yet before I got that pamphlet. To be honest, it took 9 months to even get to a place where I was diagnosed. And then I was told in the emergency room, hey, it looks like you have metastatic cancer. At that point, it was stage 4 A. And as I'm waiting for even the first call from the oncology team, uh I I get this pamphlet in the mail basically telling me that I can go and kill myself.

And yeah, that was it was very disturbing. At that point, you realize what a dystopian situation it is because nobody's going to tell you how long you're going to be waiting for treatment. Nobody could tell me. They told me actually that I was fasttracked. Uh, which was ridiculous because then my referral for treatment was lost. Dude, that is wild. So, uh, the even worse news is that Canada plans to get even more aggressive starting March 17th of next year. people whose only condition is mental illness become eligible for state assisted suicide.

I mean, listen, I look, it's a way to reduce weight times for national healthcare. Is it the way that I would suggest? Definitely not. This is one of those things when I think about the socialism debate that we've got to be honest about. The reality is that there are trade-offs. So, I've seen other interviews with that same woman and she said, "Look, yes, it is possible that you come to America and you can be under the weight of medical debt and end up going bankrupt because of your medical debt." But she's like, "At least you're alive." In Canada, like she said, she had to wait 9 months.

You can imagine how the cancer is growing in that time period. And then also, she was like, "No one in Canada has given me a path to living. They basically left me to die and were not offering any treatments. I come to America and now they're offering me treatments and she's up doing hikes and things. Now, she may still die in the US and she's very open and honest about that. But the fact that she at least has a shot, that the system is trying to do something for her, that we have more innovative techniques that we're able to see patients way faster for all of the complaints that people rightly have about the way that our system is set up.

racing to match Canada or Europe and not look at what the actual trade-offs are is stupid. There is a reason that America has done the the initial setup of the country because we've got plenty of ways that this is slowly metastasizing in the wrong direction. But the way that things were set up to maximize freedom, to maximize choice, to give people options, to allow companies to innovate, to um use free markets as a way to ensure that the product gets better than it will if it's under governmental control.

There's a reason that that was chosen. It wasn't, which I know is the popular narrative now, it wasn't chosen just so that people get could get wealthy. It was trying to bank on one very simple idea, which is that to win in the marketplace and get wealthy, if that's what you want to do, is to offer a superior product. So, even Steve Keane talks about this, who's not a big fan of capitalism, but he says one of the things that people misunderstand about capitalism is that the reason that it works is you can compete on multiple dimensions.

You're not just trying to make something cheaper. You're trying to make something differentiated. You're trying to compete on uh the value proposition of the item. This is literally how I got wealthy. We did not make a protein bar that was cheaper. We made a protein bar that was better. It was actually more expensive, but it was better. And so, we competed on the innovation that we had created. And so by creating this opportunity where I could try something my partners and I certainly did not do this by myself where we could go and create something that was different that was better leave us to take all the risk do all the crazy ass innovation that we had to do from product design um manufacturing design doing something radically different with marketing approach all of it.

Let us take the risk of none of that working and us spending our own money. But if it works that then we can reap the rewards of getting wealthy off of building something that has massive equity and value in the company. And so people got a thing that they wanted which is exactly why they bought it. The same is true for healthare. And if I heard people talking about health care from the place of listen, we are creating a system that is not serving people as well as it could be and we've got to rectify the things about it that are broken which is basically uh the government guaranteeing that people are going to get paid.

So that you're going to get all kinds of abuses in the system. So I think uh Mark Cuban has the closest thing there of actually going in and identifying where the system is broken and addressing the actual parts of the system that are broken rather than saying what we need to do is ape systems that are nobody goes broke but you're losing way more people than you need. You're dragging the system on way more than you could. You're drawing immigrants into the system that aren't contributing because they can get something for free.

All of those things end up breaking those systems in ways that I don't think people are being realistic here in the US. We need to address the problems with our system, but it isn't what people are asking us to ape. And then the whole idea of making assisted suicide um widely available. To be honest, I'm all for I think people should be able to commit suicide if that's what they want. I don't think there should be uh nobody should get to tell somebody what they do with their own body in my opinion uh when it comes to that.

So, if somebody wants to nope out, by all means, but you've got to look at how are you presenting it? How is it being incentivized? And now, are we creating a bigger problem for ourselves? I don't need I don't think that we need to facilitate it. And so, by facilitating it, you make it worse. Just don't make it criminal would be my take on the situation. What do you mean by facilitate? Like, don't offer it. Don't give Yeah. If the person hasn't even gone to see a oncologist yet and you have something in the system that autot triggers a pamphlet about suicide because they've been diagnosed with cancer, that's wild [ __ ] If you're trying to broaden the number of people that qualify for it so that it's down to just, oh, you've had a bad day, like that's insane to me.

Especially if the results that you're getting are people take you up on it. So, yeah, I don't I don't get it. Yeah. Wild work. Uh, okay. We got some super chats. Yes, we do. First up comes from Houston Niner who says, "Tom, ask the audience, do you wish Trump left Iran alone and leave it to the next administration, yes or no?" And then Drew ran a poll. Let's go. What are the results? The results of the poll are, thumb roll, please. I am stalling as it loads.

54. So, should we leave Iran? Um, options were leave it to the next president. Uh, options were get out, no, send them to hell, or number three, kick the can. Okay. Um, 7% said they want to kick the can. 39% said no. Send him the hell. And 54% said they want to get out. There it is. The audience has spoken. Um, I would be very interested to see if we can Somebody said double it to hell. But what's that? Somebody said double it and give it to the next person.

Those are hilarious. Um, but yeah. Sorry. You said you you wouldn't have liked it to be send them to. I was just, you know, quoting our those are his words in in fairness. Uh so yeah, I get it. But um that's interesting. Yeah. Uh nothing about that seems super shocking to be honest. Tally for life says the alignment problem can't even be solved with humans. People disagree about everything. It's silly to think we will be able to align the AI. Align to whom exactly? Each side will have its own thinking machines.

Dune. Yeah. So here's where I think people are going wrong with that. So, I agree with you in terms of getting it to have your exact same morality, but I think that you will find that um getting it to preserve human life uh should be a pretty easy one. And just like we have things that we consider to be illegal weapons, if you've got a country that's trying to develop a super intelligence that does not have certain clauses in the morality, then you could, you know, call that illicit weapons grade uh violation in the same way that we say that people are violating uh weapons ordinances.

So, um yeah, on that one, it's like yes, you can make an argument that you'll have some theocratic regimes that are going to try to make something that's like kill all the infidels. Sure. But to throw your hands up at that problem and say, "Well, that means that we should just shut all of AI down is crazy." Uh, or to say that there's no way for humans to align it because humans can't be aligned. Humans are dangerous. There is no doubt. But there are there are very large things that we can agree on or that at least each nation can bake into and say all right if your AI doesn't follow these things um which you know it's not going to be the three laws of robotics but something very similar to that uh the preservation of human life you know along those lines will be things that we can bake into this stuff.

Big Digglers says Michael Every along with Brent Johnson are a good counterbalance to Luke Groman and Lynn Alden and articulate the case for US strength. Role of the Euro dollar and mechanics etc. PS. Where's Marushia Dark? Bro slacken. Oh damn. Yeah, we haven't heard from him. You can find Marushia Dark over on the Discord which I'll drop in the chat now. Let's go. Uh so that's Michael Evy is now being brought up enough that he's actually starting to uh make my memory here. Um, so yeah, keep those reminders coming.

I'll have to look into him. Brent Johnson, that's another one we've heard a couple times now. Yep. Chaos Ballads. Two questions. Tom, have you considered the possibility that lobbyists would have fought Harris's more radical terms to death? And two, do you think Harris would have been uh belligerent with her abilities as Trump is now? No, she's not as belligerent as Trump. So on the Democrat side, remember, you're not technically running against Kla Harris. you're running against the pallet bureau in the same way I think the Democrats pick candidates that they can control.

This is why they didn't like Bernie Sanders. So, um that is also more scary. So, you're going to get the Pallet Bureau putting forward um Biden or Harris because they will say the right things. So, obviously a more socialist direction and they will be controllable because forgive me but they're not that bright. And so you're not getting somebody that's going to be forceful, but you're getting an invisible blob behind the scenes. I don't know exactly who they are, what they're saying, what they stand for, um, until they're actually putting something out.

Trump at least says crazy [ __ ] Like he lets you know where he's headed. Um, it's wild, but nonetheless, you he's saying the quiet part out loud constantly. Um, so I know who I'm electing. Anyway, that is what I would be very worried about. Remember, they call themselves the Pallet Bureau. That's not me being cheeky. They actually refer to themselves, the Biden administration behind the scenes referred to themselves as the Pot Bureau, which is the name of the small elite group that runs communist countries.

And that's it for super chats. Uh, you missed one. Oh, which one? Uh, tally for life. AI is being built by 20 to 30 year old engineers. Zero life experience in Silicon Valley. What moral wisdom are they encoding? Dummy level mistakes like connecting sandbox to the internet hugging face. That's real crux of doom. Okay, so real crux of doom would be super intelligence. So first of all, we're it does not appear that we are anywhere near super intelligence. So we need to keep that front and center.

Now I'm worried about super intelligence. Uh and so we do need to be thoughtful about that. And the bit of regulation that I would like to see is some definition of the kind of AI that we don't want the random company to be able to pursue. I think that that would be a meaningful addition to all of this. Um the 20 to 30year thing, okay, listen, there's no doubt young people lack a certain level of experience. However, you can certainly find people to bring into the company that are able to think in a moral framework.

And also when you're dealing with um somebody's starting to get up over 30, 35, like they've had a lot of encounters with life. Uh but by all means create a counter uh or a a group of elders that you bring in and they help talk about it that there's nothing stopping them from doing it. And if they believe that that is far more likely to help them make something that they're not going to get sued for, then they will absolutely do it. Now, keep in mind the thing that troubles me a lot more is that you've got um what is it?

Ethical altruism, EA. You've got those guys. That's your um Sam Bankman Freeds of the World who are currently having a huge influence on this. I'm way more worried about that regardless of age uh than I am worried about them just being young. Um so, I think yeah, young people have a problem with pattern recognition. They may have a problem projecting like what our second and third order consequences are going to be, but I'd rather have a really smart young person on there uh than somebody who's made it to old age and just hasn't figured [ __ ] out.

So, also keep that in mind. Cool. Cool. We got some super chats. Yes, we do. Is the cans says trusts? I have seen fourth gen person no assets 70 million in multiple trusts. All things paid by trust still on SSI Medicare healthcare assistance. Trusts are written to continue to other family members. Trust private to Yes, there are always going to be anecdotes of people that actually managed to pass it on for four generations, but that is aggressively the exception and not the rule. Um, and the fact that money doesn't save anybody, that is for sure from like psychological problems.

Absolutely. I think that when people are given too much, growing up rich may actually be a bit of a curse in terms of that person growing up to be stable, focused, disciplined. Um, I don't have enough data in front of me, but certainly anecdotally, uh, that stereotype I think is a stereotype for a reason. People just don't have to figure things out for themselves. They are not put to the same pressures that other people are put to. But poverty destroys almost everybody that it touches, probably at a much more higher and distressing rate than wealth does.

So when I say that wealth is a a curse, it's not nearly as bad as poverty, which is a far worse curse. Um, but yeah, wealth is not a get out of psychological jail free card at all. Dun by LA says, "The issue is that the underlying assets grow exponentially while the loan is a fixed cost. The underlying asset doubles or 10 times and no taxes. when the taxable event happens, they take out another loan. Yeah. So, we we debated that for quite some time. Totally understand uh people's concern with that.

Uh there are a lot of gotchas to just trying to get rid of that, but there are certainly ways uh that you could do that. So, that basically, hey, if you want to access that capital, you either have to pay tax on a loan or you have to sell an asset, whatever the case. Uh but you can't just roll loans forever. Um, I won't be able to just free uh spitball the right answer there, but there is an easy enough answer to get to. Watch out for overly complexifying the tax code as it will just give people more places to hide.

And that's it for super chats. Beautiful. All right. Well, that was awesome. Thank you guys so much today. Another shout out to Taylor Brands. If you guys are at all thinking about becoming wealthy yourselves and starting a company, which I highly encourage, uh, make sure you check out Taylor Brands. They make launching a company so much easier than it has ever been to the point where I'm jealous. Where were these guys when I was starting my companies previously? But they allow you to get your LLC set up, take care of so many of like the boring um sort of painfully difficult things you have to do at the beginning to make your company a legal entity.

They make all of that pain go away. If you're at all thinking about starting a business, do it the easy way. Work with Taylor Brands. They've got a link in our description. Just click that. Go to Taylor Brands today. Get set up. And then if once you're set up with Taylor Brands, if you actually want to know how to leverage AI in your company, I'm doing another free AI master class Thursday, October 8th at 1 p.m. Pacific. The link is also in the description. Make sure you sign up today.

And I will see you guys there. There have been so many advancements in AI. You're not going to want to miss this one. All right, everybody. We will see you on Friday. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

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