Join Marty and Matt as they discuss Bitcoin's halving in value, Bitcoin's impact on the stock market, and much more. Recorded in Los Angeles, CA! Don't miss it! Subscribe to our new bi-weekly newsletter, The Bitcoin Report, where you'll get the latest Bitcoin news and discuss everything else going on in the world of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code: "stackingsats" to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse you download the app. Learn more about your ad choices. Review, rate, and/or review in Apple Podcasts! Have a question or suggestion for the next episode? hl=en We'd like to hear from you, the listeners! E-mail us your thoughts and suggestions on topics you d like us to cover in future episodes. Timestamps: 0:00 - Bitcoin s halving? 3:30 - Does Bitcoin have intrinsic value? 4:00 - What's the best way to make money with Bitcoin? 5:15 - What is the best piece of advice Bitcoin can give you? 6:20 - Why Bitcoin is better than gold? 7:00- Why Bitcoin isn't a real currency? 8:30- Bitcoin is not a real cryptocurrency? 9:40 - Bitcoin is more valuable than gold 10:15- Is Bitcoin better than other cryptocurrencies? 11:40- What are you going to do with your money? 12:40 13: What is your favorite piece of art? 15:15 16:20 17: Is Bitcoin a rock star? 17 - Who are you would like to be a rockstar? 18:30 19:00 | What kind of rockstar rockstar band? 21:30 | What s your favorite rock star ? 22:40 | Can you be a terrorist? 23: What's your favorite country? 26:00 +16:00 / 16:30 +17: What do you think you would you dream of? 27:30 & 17: What are your favorite pop culture icon? 25:40 + +7: What s a good rock star / 8:00 & 7:30) 26,000 / 8,000/8) 27,000 +7,000,000?
00:01:24.000So, Jamie, you were saying that people were mad.
00:01:26.000First of all, they were mad at Peter Zion for saying what seems to be the case is that a lot of crypto was just horseshit.
00:01:35.000The one comment he made that I think I would go against, too, is that it has no intrinsic value because it seems that a lot of things have no intrinsic value.
00:01:58.000I don't know if they're all the uses everyone thought they'd be by now or what's going on with it because there's obviously a lot of confusion.
00:07:12.000Think about how many additional personnel that is in each state, right?
00:07:15.000In each region for the IRS. They're not going to be occupied with wealthy people all over the place.
00:07:21.000Now, a wealthy audit can be complex, but they're coming after small, medium-sized businesses.
00:07:26.000And that's how they imagined the amount of money they were going to have on this land grab to help fund other things that they're doing, whether it's climate change or other policies that they want to push forward.
00:07:38.000But the problem is Congress now under Republican control, sure, they can say, nah, we're going to stop that in its tracks only until they march it across to the Senate and the Senate says, fuck you, no.
00:07:51.000So we're still going to have 87,000 new agents.
00:07:56.000And even if they did, the president would probably veto it.
00:08:00.000So we're looking, we're staring down a barrel in a couple of years of Of that sort of activity, where Congress will vote to do something, it'll be stopped in the Senate, or it'll be, you know, vetoed by the President's desk, and...
00:08:43.000It is kind of fun to look at and think, oh, really?
00:08:46.000But the truth is, it happens with every administration.
00:08:49.000Document control isn't that difficult, right?
00:08:52.000You should be able to know which documents are secret, put them in a box over here, top secret over here, and then special code word, put them over here.
00:09:02.000And you account for all those documents.
00:12:16.000That's a big goddamn story, and that seems to be par for the course, right?
00:12:20.000Well, yeah, whether it's the Clinton Foundation or Initiative or whether it's any, really, pick any think tank.
00:12:27.000That would be a really interesting study by some intrepid, curious journalist who wanted to dig into, say, the top 12 think tanks in America, and where does the money come from?
00:12:38.000And then compare that to what policies are they pushing out the door?
00:13:32.000I was just reading about Huawei that even despite the US sanctions, despite the fact that Google won't let them use the Google Android system or the Google Play Store, they're still killing it.
00:13:47.000They still have an enormous market share, which leads me to believe that if this didn't happen, they'd probably be the number one in the world.
00:16:21.000I mean, it's like the whole TikTok debate.
00:16:22.000Trying to say, okay, we're going to shut down TikTok in the U.S. Or we're going to somehow try to enact regulations to keep kids from accessing porn online, right?
00:16:39.000Shit, if you can figure it out, but it's just not going to happen, right?
00:16:44.000Because no matter what you do, once that kid leaves your house and all that technology is still out there, right, somebody's circumventing it, right?
00:17:57.000I haven't even seen any of this pressure.
00:17:59.000So, like, in 2020, they originally did it.
00:18:02.000It says, after a geopolitical dispute with China, India banned the app entirely, citing a law that allows the government to block websites and apps in the interest of the country's sovereignty and integrity.
00:20:25.000Well, maybe it's not interesting to everybody, but the end of this past year, so I think it was mid-November or so, the Department of Justice released some information.
00:20:36.000It had been a fairly long-standing case that the FBI had been involved in and DOJ and others about a Chinese intelligence officer.
00:20:45.000Now, the interesting thing about this case, This individual, Yang Zhengzu, was the first Chinese intelligence officer to be extradited to the U.S.,
00:21:01.000And the story behind this guy is fascinating.
00:21:12.000And he'd had about 20 years of experience.
00:21:16.000He started 10 years ago or so targeting specifically U.S. aviation companies, both on the private and the defense side in government.
00:21:27.000And he went after – it's just one example of – and he was now sentenced to 20 years in prison just at the end of the past year.
00:21:34.000So as an example, if you look at what he did, it's a perfect case study of how the Chinese intelligence works to gather up information, right, to steal – excuse me – economic intelligence.
00:22:15.000The world is a better place when America is the strongest nation on earth.
00:22:19.000But we can't remain powerful if we don't have an economy that can afford it.
00:22:24.000In the short time that I've been here in Washington, nothing has frustrated me more than false choices like the one the president laid out tonight.
00:22:34.000The choice isn't just between big governments.
00:22:36.000Whoever told them you should do that, don't do it.
00:22:38.000First of all, drink out of a goddamn man-sized bottle of water.
00:22:41.000What's up with that little bitch-ass-sized bottle of water?
00:23:09.000He started looking at identifying targets within U.S. aviation and, as an example, found a guy in GE Aviation.
00:23:17.000And what he would do is he would just say, look, you know, can you come to China and make a presentation at the university about something completely innocuous, right?
00:23:24.000It's not classified by any means or whatever.
00:23:26.000But, oh, you know, you're so important and you're so smart.
00:23:29.000We'd love you to come over and present to our university.
00:24:08.000After a year of just sort of random, non-threatening contact with this aviation employee, He starts asking them for specific details, right, of their engine technology.
00:24:22.000GE's got some incredible engine technology.
00:24:25.000And so the guy with the cooperation of the FBI sends a document, right?
00:24:30.000And on the document, part of it, it just says, you know, you're not allowed to disclose this outside company.
00:24:55.000So now he accelerates the tasking a little bit and he gets the guy to say, look, how about during one of your trips over to Europe, you know, we meet.
00:25:04.000So this is where Jules made his mistake.
00:25:07.000He goes to Belgium and gets arrested there, right?
00:25:12.000And it took a while, but he was finally extradited to the U.S. and finally charged.
00:25:18.000He was handling – he was the handler for a kid working as a student, came over here as a student visa in Chicago, gave him targets, said here are some individuals, again within aviation industry, said I want you to start looking at them and maybe some of them are interesting and we might want to start developing some of these targets.
00:25:36.000Running this kid, you know, who's living and working and studying in Chicago.
00:25:40.000And the targets were all of Chinese or Taiwanese descent, which is typical, right?
00:25:45.000They kind of hone in on that, you know.
00:25:48.000And so eventually that kid got wrapped up.
00:25:52.000Once we started to figure out what was going on with Zhu, then obviously started to unravel his network.
00:25:57.000But this kid was also doing the same thing, was targeting under the direction of Zhu and the Chinese intel.
00:26:02.000Other things he did, I know I disappeared down the rabbit hole here, but to the point we made earlier in terms of operating in China, he was also targeting other countries.
00:26:12.000So he went after a French aviation company that had a facility in China.
00:26:16.000Well, that means that every employee, every local employee, It's probably going to respond.
00:26:21.000If Xi knocks on the door and says, I need your assistance, you're going to have to be my asset, they're probably going to say yes because they're operating there in China.
00:26:28.000Now they're working for a foreign company.
00:26:31.000Does that really matter when the Chinese regime knocks on your door?
00:26:34.000So they did and what they did was with the cooperation of this internal asset, they were able to place malware on a visiting Frenchman's computer with the hope of taking it back to France and then affecting their entire system.
00:26:49.000So anyway, long story short, I guess, the point of that exercise is the aggressiveness, right?
00:26:57.000You think about the years that they spend going after targets.
00:27:01.000And yet we want to believe somehow TikTok is...
00:27:04.000You know, that they're not gonna touch that.
00:27:06.000Well, it's a lot of data there, but we're not gonna go after TikTok data.
00:27:09.000What kind of data do you think they're really accumulating?
00:27:11.000The thing that's disturbed me is that this discussion that they're getting biometric data, they're getting facial recognition data and fingerprint data from both, you know, fingerprint readers from Android phones and biometric facial data from iPhone,
00:27:37.000So their ability because of their resources and their motivation is to just hoover up everything.
00:27:45.000And maybe there's no use for that biometric data right now, but maybe there will be, right?
00:27:50.000So maybe they're collecting all of this and they're thinking, okay, at some point we're going to develop a technology whereby we can use this for a reason.
00:27:57.000You know, maybe we can remotely You know, using facial recognition, unlock access, who knows?
00:28:05.000But the point at 30,000 feet is they don't really care.
00:28:10.000They hoover it all up and then they look at it at some point and they say, okay, well, this can be used by Huawei or this could be used over here or MSS or the State Security Service could use this.
00:28:24.000They'll figure out a use for it and if it doesn't have a use, fine.
00:28:44.000You know, the Chinese are – you know, they're looking 30 years, 40 years, 50 years down the road.
00:28:51.000And so they've got a different approach to information collection, which is why a lot of companies get caught unawares because they think, I'm not doing shit.
00:29:06.000But I realize people are saying, oh, God, he's fucking banging on about China again.
00:29:11.000But if you think about it, We're all occupied with Russia and Ukraine right now, but China's the bigger issue, right, in the long term.
00:29:21.000And we just need to be able to multitask and, yeah, we got to worry about Russia-Ukraine conflict and does that get out of control or just, you know, where is it going?
00:29:35.000I don't think anybody's got a plan in Washington right now or NATO. I don't think anybody knows.
00:29:40.000I think they're all being basically reactive as opposed to, you know, what's the end game here?
00:29:46.000What is the final way that we wrap this up?
00:29:49.000And, I mean, look, we've spent—the U.S. has spent— I don't know, as of the end of 2022. And that's almost a full year because it started in February.
00:30:00.000So almost in a full year, the U.S. spent about $50 billion in assistance.
00:30:06.000And about half of that is military aid, right?
00:30:27.000If you compare that to the previous year or the year before, we were probably spending—on the Ukraine, we were probably spending $250, $270 million in military assistance.
00:32:18.000But it would be nice if we had more open discussion about it, at least in Washington, and open with our NATO allies about what's going to happen.
00:32:27.000We can't keep up, I don't think, the same pace of support.
00:32:32.000It seems unreasonable to think that we can, but...
00:32:37.000Has there been any discussion as to how long we do this for?
00:35:02.000A cyber security attack in the region, maybe initially targeted at Ukraine, but then somehow it goes off into NATO allies, creates a major issue, shuts down power systems in Poland and the surrounding region.
00:35:18.000So there's ways that this thing could escalate, get a little bit out of control.
00:35:26.000Maybe, as we talked about, maybe there's increasing protest movement in Russia.
00:36:40.000Now, the Russian general population's always had kind of a dry, very sarcastic sense of humor towards information in general, right, and what they're being told by the authorities, and that includes the media.
00:36:53.000So, you know, he can't control the population the way they used to but they still – you know, it's still a dictatorship and so he's still got significant state control and the state media is still very good as is the security apparatus at controlling the message.
00:37:11.000And so that's kind of balanced against and they're constantly in this battle against, you know, increasing technology and its ability to spread information that's outside the bubble.
00:37:23.000And so, yeah, I mean, there's dissent.
00:37:28.000But, you know, Putin's been—he's been very good in the past at finding the bogeyman, right?
00:37:34.000Whenever he's threatened of pointing to some outside force, you know, usually us, and saying, look what they're doing to us, and kind of rallying the troops, getting everyone to, yeah, you know, the motherland.
00:38:15.000Depends on the estimates you read, but, you know...
00:38:18.000450, 500 people on the street during protests, much less all the people who have just disappeared, and they're sitting held in prison somewhere.
00:38:26.000But everyone over here is so distracted by Ukraine and Russia that we rarely talk about Iran.
00:38:49.000Iran, because what's going to happen if Iran – here's a thought, right?
00:38:54.000If you think about the breakout potential for Iran to develop a nuke, a weapon – Some estimates now are about a week, one week, right, to develop enough enriched uranium.
00:39:33.000They could do three weapons in maybe a month's time.
00:39:36.000So that breakout that we used to talk about in terms of year, years, at least many months now is shrunk.
00:39:46.000And so the idea is as a flashpoint, people say, well, why should we still be worried about Iran?
00:39:51.000Well, because – You know, there's a high likelihood That if the Israelis get the sense that that's where they're heading, that they're going to – then they may take action, right?
00:40:44.000That could take months and months, right?
00:40:48.000It's a heavy lift to figure out what their plans and intentions are.
00:40:52.000And we kind of backed out of this Biden administration was clear that they wanted to get back into the nuke agreement from 2015. It was like, yeah, we got to do everything we can.
00:41:01.000And so they started those talks when they got in and now they've kind of shut them down basically because the Iranians made some demands that weren't realistic.
00:41:12.000And also, they're selling fucking weapons to Russia, right?
00:41:16.000So, you know, Russia's turned to Iran and North Korea to resupply their hardware and get gear that they can't get, drones in particular from Iran.
00:41:26.000So do we really want to be talking a nuke deal with Iran at this moment?
00:43:27.000But yeah, the war room, I guess it makes sense.
00:43:30.000Look, these people are in a, you know, under a microscope and, you know, they got to figure out what their messaging is from moment to moment with him.
00:43:37.000And, you know, they probably don't like the idea that this is all playing out in public.
00:43:41.000But he's just kind of fucking lost the plot, right?
00:43:55.000Somebody sent me, I don't know if it's true because I haven't had time to look into it, but somebody sent me that some Taliban commander is now trolling Harry over his talk about the Afghans that he killed.
00:45:33.000Well, I know why he felt the need to talk about some of this shit in his book is because otherwise no one's paying him money for this, right?
00:45:58.000Is it unusual that they let a prince fight in active combat?
00:46:06.000Yeah, I mean, you know, it is and it isn't.
00:46:08.000It used to be more common because there used to be more conflict and it was the British Empire and, you know, off you'd go.
00:46:13.000And they wanted to tick that box, right?
00:46:15.000They wanted to get that so they could wear the ribbons and, you know.
00:46:18.000And, you know, there was a sense of, you know, if we're going to be in charge, we need to show that we've actually taken part in these campaigns.
00:46:27.000And so, no, look, God bless them for serving.
00:52:07.000I've got a lot of stupid information floating around in my head, for sure.
00:52:11.000I have obscure jujitsu fighter records bouncing around in my head.
00:52:16.000But I think that so many people don't think about their mind as like if it was your money.
00:52:22.000If you had a certain amount of money and this is all the money you're ever going to have, how much money are you going to donate to stupid shit?
00:52:29.000How much money are you going to allocate to dumb things that don't help you at all and only ruin your life?
00:52:35.000Yeah, I guess there's a sense of, you know, the way I think about it is I just want to have an uncomplicated life, right?
00:53:38.000Because my daughter was getting older, and I needed to be home.
00:53:41.000Because at that point, it was just me and her.
00:53:44.000And it was time to figure something else out.
00:53:48.000And so, yeah, but I just think there was something about that job on the operations side that I found just very easy, right, to compartmentalize.
00:54:00.000Some people found it very difficult in the terms of the sort of like, I don't know whether they were thinking of moral quandary in terms of what we were doing.
00:54:06.000And I don't know if this is, you know, I just never thought, you know, just tell me what the objective is, right?
00:54:17.000So I tend to be very simplistic when it comes to that, and I think that helped with the business.
00:54:23.000I never sat around, you know, staring at my fucking navel, wondering, you know, where I fit in in terms of the big machine of the intelligence community.
00:54:31.000Well, that makes for a good company, man.
00:55:37.000People were like, why are you leaving?
00:55:38.000And what the hell are you going to do?
00:55:40.000And as it turns out, over the years, it occurred to me that a lot of what I was doing in business were just some ideas that had kind of settled with me from the agency days.
00:55:50.000So that's where the company rules comes up.
00:55:52.000But frankly, there's no book of company rules.
00:56:13.000It's kind of like what we talked about.
00:56:14.000So in business, it's not just saying, okay, our mission is make money.
00:56:18.000So you've got to define your mission, then you've got to clarify, you've got to explain it to your personnel.
00:56:23.000I'm a big believer in, once you do that, hire smart people, get the hell out of the way.
00:56:27.000And that's worked out very well, but there's other principles in there.
00:56:31.000How do you make a decision with imperfect information?
00:56:34.000That's one thing that the agency, you're not really realizing it at the time, but you realize when you're in there and then you leave that, you know what the agency is very good at is teaching people To just get off the X, make a decision.
00:56:47.000What do you mean by how do you make a decision with imperfect information?
00:56:51.000Yeah, if you wait around, like if you've...
00:56:55.000If you wait around for all the data to come in, let's take with business, before an investment, somebody else is going to come in and take that opportunity.
00:57:23.000And if you wait for everything to show up, it's never going to happen.
00:57:27.000But if you wait, then something bad's going to happen.
00:57:29.000And it's the same in business, which is basically – so these ideas that I eventually – and again, anybody who worked for the agency, I'm sure they got their own ideas.
00:57:38.000They're going to look and go, well, those aren't my ideas or my principles or my rules.
00:57:43.000But these are the ones that I took away, and I used them to build a business.
00:57:47.000And so all the examples are basically business-oriented, right?
00:57:51.000So this is not a book about my time in the CIA, and I don't think I'd ever write one of those because there's enough of that out there, and I don't think anybody needs more of that.
00:58:00.000But I just found this was interesting because nobody really expected me to be able to build a business and keep it breathing.
00:58:05.000For as long as I have, because I really had no business experience.
00:58:10.000And part of it is there's an element of luck.
00:58:12.000You know, I never worked in an operation where there wasn't some element of luck.
00:58:16.000And it's been the same with business, you know, just in terms of, you know, good fortune or whatever you want to call it.
01:00:03.000And they've had kids and they've raised their families with the company and they've done...
01:00:06.000And, you know, that's probably more rewarding than anything else I've done, in a sense, aside from my family.
01:00:13.000And so, I guess I just wanted to put it on paper.
01:00:16.000And then there's also that idea that...
01:00:19.000This sounds stupid, but it's the same reason I like to do TV shows, like the Black Files of Classified series, because at some point, my kids, you know, can sit down when they're older and they can watch it, or they can read this or listen to it, and they got something, right?
01:01:07.000It'd be like Jamie's saying when we watch one of your interviews on the screen, and we're sitting here watching, and you're watching yourself talk.
01:01:23.000It was an interesting experience, but anyway, it's been a good one, and hopefully people find something entertaining in it.
01:01:31.000I think the thing that people are weirded out by when it comes to intelligence agencies in this day and age is that they kind of act autonomously.
01:01:38.000They kind of act outside of what we think of as the government.
01:01:44.000We think of the government has been a bunch of people that get elected, and those people do the rule of the people, but the people that are in the intelligence agencies, they're there forever.
01:01:55.000And that's the term, the deep state, that everybody's so concerned with.
01:02:00.000That's a common phrase that's been brought up over the last You know, decade or so, where people are very concerned about the deep state.
01:02:08.000There's a government that has its own rules and its own ability to enact things that are outside of elected officials and the will of the people.
01:02:32.000I mean you never want to discount the idea that the intel community or law enforcement or whoever could essentially develop a mind of its own, work separate from whatever government administration that people think they've elected into office.
01:02:50.000So never say that couldn't happen because you always want to be wary of that.
01:02:54.000I've spent enough time overseas in places where that happens, right?
01:02:58.000And worse than that is where, you know, a dictator comes in, he goes out, wholesale cleaning, and then the new guy brings in all his people, right?
01:03:08.000And they're just basically doing the will.
01:03:10.000Now, in a way, that's more transparent, right?
01:03:12.000Because you know what you're getting, right?
01:03:14.000You're getting that guy's intel service or that guy's law enforcement.
01:03:19.000But having worked behind the curtain, at least the time that I was there, the agency was uniquely apolitical.
01:03:27.000The people that I traveled around the world with, the people that I met, worked with in various parts, we never talked about politics.
01:03:37.000Do you think that changed during Trump?
01:03:39.000I think it was probably even before Trump.
01:03:42.000I think it's just been a process where, and I have no idea why, maybe in part because No, I don't know.
01:03:51.000I was going to say because it's become a little more transitory.
01:03:53.000You know, in the old days, whatever the old days are, you know, through the Cold War and whatever, 70s and early 80s, people would join and, you know, the idea was, I'm here for good.
01:04:19.000But I don't want to say it couldn't happen.
01:04:23.000I just want to say, yeah, it's something you have to be always aware of.
01:04:27.000I think that there have been individuals in various offices who got too close or too comfortable with political access.
01:04:35.000Like with the CIA, you always want your director.
01:04:37.000To have a good line of communication with the president.
01:04:42.000It used to be more important when the director had a seat at the table, right?
01:04:46.000Now they're pushed below the DNI. So the DNI is the guy that talks and the agency director doesn't have the same access that they used to have.
01:04:55.000After 9-11, you know, when they recreated the, you know, Homeland Security became the buzzword and, you know, how do we reorganize because, you know, clearly it was a fucking knee-jerk reaction to 9-11 was the idea was, oh, something happened, we fucked up,
01:05:10.000so now let's reorganize the entire thing, right?
01:05:13.000And so they tossed a baby out of the 30th floor and it wasn't an actual baby.
01:05:19.000People are going to be like making notes.
01:05:33.000And so then they subjugated the CIA director below that.
01:05:36.000But the point being is you want that access.
01:05:38.000Well, you know, if it gets too cozy...
01:05:41.000Or if the person in charge, whether it's the agency or the FBI or whoever, becomes too much of a political animal, now you've got a problem, right?
01:05:49.000And that's when bad things can happen.
01:05:52.000But the career people that I dealt with, that I met with over the years, and the people that I still know, the career people, they, you know, for the most part, they just want to do the job, right?
01:06:01.000And I know people are going to say, well, of course, that's what you're going to say, and I say that all the time.
01:06:36.000So not long after Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on camera in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, a lot of Americans started to have some questions about the Kennedy assassination.
01:06:47.000It was, you'd have to admit, a pretty extraordinary sequence of events.
01:06:51.000A lone gunman murders the president of the United States, and then, less than 48 hours later, that lone gunman is himself murdered by another lone gunman.
01:07:02.000It's one thing if you get struck by lightning, rare but possible.
01:07:06.000But if every member of your family also gets struck by lightning all on different days, you might begin to suspect these are not entirely natural events.
01:07:15.000But oh, replied the U.S. government, they are.
01:07:17.000This bizarre chain of killings was all entirely natural.
01:07:21.000So less than a year after the JFK assassination, the Johnson White House released something called the Warren Commission Report.
01:07:28.000And the report concluded that while their motives remained unclear, both Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby had acted alone.
01:07:42.000At the time, they had no idea how shoddy and corrupt the Warren Commission was.
01:07:46.000It would be nearly 50 years before the CIA admitted under duress that in fact it had withheld information from investigators about its relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald.
01:07:57.000But even then, at the time, before that was known, the government's explanation didn't seem entirely plausible, and some people started asking obvious questions about it.
01:08:06.000It was at that point, as Americans started to doubt the official story, that the term conspiracy theory entered our lexicon.
01:08:13.000As Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith points out in his book on the subject, the term conspiracy theory did not exist as a phrase in everyday American conversation before 1964. In 1964, the year the Warren Commission issued its report, the New York Times published five stories in which conspiracy theory appeared.
01:08:32.000Now, today, of course, the term conspiracy theory appears in pretty much every New York Times story about American politics.
01:08:38.000It's wielded, now as then, as a weapon against anyone who asks questions the government doesn't feel like answering.
01:08:46.000But despite 60 years of name-calling, those questions have not disappeared.
01:08:49.000In fact, they have multiplied with time.
01:09:01.000According to West's written assessment, he found that Jack Ruby was, quote, technically insane and in need of immediate psychiatric hospitalization.
01:09:10.000Those are conclusions that, puzzlingly, no one who had spoken to Jack Ruby previously had reached.
01:09:15.000Ruby had seemed perfectly sane to the people who knew him.
01:09:18.000Louis Joylyn West pronounced him crazy.
01:09:21.000But what West did not say was that he was working for the CIA at the time.
01:09:27.000Louis Joyland West was a contract psychiatrist for the spy agency.
01:09:30.000He was also an expert on mind control and a prominent player in the now infamous MKUltra program in which the CIA gave powerful psychiatric drugs to Americans without their knowledge.
01:09:40.000So of all the psychiatrists in the world, what in the world was this guy doing in Jack Ruby's prison cell?
01:09:49.000The media did not seem interested in finding out.
01:09:51.000In fact, the New York Times, in an extensive 1999 obituary of West, never mentioned the fact that he had worked for the CIA, much less his time in Jack Ruby's cell, which seems relevant.
01:10:04.000So you can see why non-crazy people would wonder about what really happened.
01:10:44.000In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, and that act mandated full disclosure of all documents by 2017, 54 years after JFK was killed.
01:10:58.000The last administration promised to comply fully with that law, but under intense pressure from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, withheld in the end thousands of pages of CIA documents.
01:11:10.000Today, this afternoon, the Biden administration did exactly the same thing.
01:11:14.000That would be thousands of pages of documents after nearly 60 years, after the death of every single person involved.
01:11:33.000Well, today we decided to find out We spoke to someone who had access to these still-hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained.
01:11:42.000We asked this person directly, did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American president?
01:11:49.000And here's the reply we received verbatim.
01:12:41.000He talks about, you know, it was all fake.
01:12:45.000Sounds a little bit like a conspiracy theorist, even though Tucker says he's not one.
01:12:48.000So, you know, without knowing who this source is and why he's got access to this and how they managed to find him, I'm skeptical about everything anyway.
01:12:58.000Doesn't mean that there couldn't be some connection, right?
01:13:42.000And so, unless, you know, the guy is willing to out himself, and at this stage, if, you know, given what Tucker said, hey, everybody's dead.
01:15:47.000What he was before, and then what he was leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King, and then what he was shortly thereafter, making his way to Europe.
01:16:35.000That seem very odd, and not to mention just the general atmosphere, mood, context of the time.
01:16:44.000I have no idea what organizations might be involved, but I'm more inclined to think that to me is something where I think there was a lot more to the story.
01:16:53.000I'm not saying again, I'm not saying that there isn't more to the Kennedy assassination.
01:16:57.000I think it'd be great to find out the whole story.
01:17:02.000But, you know, you compare the two and for some reason I just find the King issue more disconcerting.
01:17:09.000What was the official story about his motivation to kill Martin Luther King Jr.?
01:17:36.000I mean, shit, the evening news before the day he was killed showed him standing outside at the Lorraine Motel, outside his room on the balcony.
01:17:47.000If you just look at that and say, okay, well, he had information, he had access, he had the ability to gather that information, just like Oswald did with Kennedy, right?
01:18:44.000What would be the motivation that the CIA would have to kill Kennedy?
01:18:48.000I mean, part of it was supposedly that Kennedy was interested in disbanding the CIA, right?
01:18:54.000Yeah, again, and that had happened, you know, if you think about it in recent terms, right?
01:19:00.000The CIA or OSS was disbanded at the end of World War II, right?
01:19:05.000So, you know, there was precedent for it.
01:19:08.000It's not unusual that there's that talk in Washington on occasion.
01:19:11.000I mean, after the fall of the Soviet Union, there were very credible people in Washington, D.C. talking about getting rid of the CIA because we got a peace dividend now, right?
01:19:19.000We don't have to worry about the Soviet Union anymore.
01:19:49.000There is nothing benign about the way this world works.
01:19:51.000And we'd love to think it's a community of nations, but it's not, right?
01:19:54.000So if we want to fly blind without any insight into what countries that are hostile to our interests, and there are a number of them, Are doing, then I guess, yeah, you could get rid of the agency.
01:20:07.000The agency's primary function is information, is intelligence, right?
01:20:12.000And you gather that intelligence to understand the plans and intentions of others, right?
01:20:18.000Whether it's the Russians or North Koreans, the Iranians, the Chinese, whatever.
01:20:22.000And they are incredibly aggressive at doing it, right?
01:20:27.000So we could be very self-righteous and pat ourselves on the back and say, hey, fuck it.
01:20:31.000Let's disband the CIA. Why do we need it?
01:20:35.000It doesn't sound like it's a very good activity, and I think we'd feel better about ourselves if we did.
01:20:46.000Again, the Chinese aren't going to say, oh, you're right.
01:20:49.000Obama had an agreement with Xi back in the day to cease and desist on the shenanigans, economic espionage and cyber shenanigans, and of course they didn't.
01:21:01.000In fact, they're more aggressive now and in more of a sophisticated manner than they were even a few years ago.
01:21:06.000So I guess it comes down to protecting our own national security interests.
01:21:12.000And if people don't give a shit about that, then fine.
01:21:18.000But I guarantee you, you know, we'll get hosed, you know, nine ways to Sunday if we do that, because you've got to have insight.
01:21:26.000It's how you develop your longer-term strategies, and it's how you inform the administration, whichever administration, as to where the next threats are coming from.
01:21:36.000Hopefully, you're anticipating those threats and you're not reacting.
01:21:39.000So, yeah, but again, you know, it's that sort of thing.
01:21:42.000Look, obviously, I've got a particular point of view.
01:21:47.000But I'm just here to tell you, you know, it's not that sort of world where we can say, let's shut it down, and I'll bet things will work out fine.
01:21:57.000There's a lot of actors out there who'd like to fuck us over.
01:22:01.000So that's just, you know, I can't, I don't know what other eloquent way to say it.
01:22:06.000I should have used that line in the book.
01:22:08.000What we're worried about with other countries is them infiltrating our education system, infiltrating businesses, sabotaging us with some long plan.
01:22:19.000Do you think that United States intelligence agencies utilize the same sort of strategy with other countries?
01:22:26.000Yeah, and we better hope we're better at it, right?
01:22:29.000We better hope we're the best there is at it, right?
01:22:33.000So the answer is, yeah, there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to gathering information, right?
01:22:41.000It's not like, you know, yes, technology changes at how you can, you know, signals, intercepts, and all the things that you can do in cyberspace, but...
01:22:51.000Ultimately, what are they looking to do?
01:22:53.000What's Chinese intel apparatus looking to do?
01:22:57.000Well, they're looking to provide any information to the Chinese regime that will allow them to get to and firmly sit atop the food chain, the global ladder of success.
01:23:10.000And at the same time, they're looking to – as part of that, they're looking to hoover up this information that will help their companies succeed in a shorter fashion, bypass all that heavy cost of research and development and just go straight to the product or whatever it may be.
01:23:26.000They're looking to – look, they dominate – I mean, I don't know how many different ways we can go into this.
01:23:30.000They dominate the world's global supply of rare earth minerals, right?
01:23:35.000Now, that's not the same as – you know, most people have no – I mean, rare earth minerals are not like cobalt or lithium or copper or whatever sits in you.
01:23:45.000Well, they have been busy, yeah, trying to snap up as much of that as possible.
01:23:51.000If you look at cobalt, I mean, the vast majority of cobalt is mined in Congo.
01:23:57.000You look at copper, it's Chile, China, Peru, lithium is wherever, Australia, I think, China.
01:24:10.000There's – but the rare earth minerals and rare earth minerals are found in everything from smartphones to aerospace industry, guidance systems for missiles.
01:24:31.000I'm not smart enough to tell you but I know that there's a list of rare earth minerals that are almost unpronounceable as far as I'm concerned.
01:24:42.000But there's only a certain quantity, and if you look at where those exist, the vast majority exists in China, and they're mining actively.
01:24:52.000They're mining all of that because, again, these particular minerals are used in a variety of products that are critical both to security purposes and defense purposes and also just success.
01:25:04.000But that's separate from people sometimes talk about like, well, we want to go electric.
01:25:09.000And the minerals that are used in batteries are not the same thing.
01:25:12.000We're not talking about rare earth minerals there.
01:25:14.000We're talking about nickel and other things there.
01:25:19.000But anyway, the point being is that whether it's the Chinese or whether it's the Russians, whether it's the Iranians, whether it's North Koreans, You know, or look south of our border, right?
01:25:32.000Latin America has gone through a sea change recently.
01:25:35.000And, you know, Lula being back in Brazil is just one example of the number of governments who have gone from, you know, right or rightish to left or social democrat.
01:25:50.000And so they may not have our best interests at heart either.
01:25:53.000And so anyway, I'm not a buyer of the idea that we can be altruistic and just shut down our efforts to keep ourselves as informed as possible about where the next threat comes from.
01:26:44.000There was a case towards the end of this past year also, again, where we've picked up two Chinese intel agents who were busy trying to bribe what they thought was an asset who could give them information about the government's position,
01:27:02.000It turns out it was an informant working for the FBI, thank goodness.
01:27:07.000But they were just – these guys simply working to find assets who could tell them, what is the US government, what's the DOJ doing to prosecute Huawei?
01:27:21.000I mean that's – now do you think we can operate in China in the same way?
01:27:25.000It's a much more restrictive environment.
01:27:27.000So we have to be more clever, more creative in the way that we gather information about China's intel and plans and intentions than they do.
01:27:35.000Isn't there also a difference in the way they've infiltrated the universities and the education system in the United States versus what we have over there?
01:28:02.000Going out and finding both private sector employees and also people in academics, right, who were engaged in business related to aviation or whatever, to entice them.
01:28:12.000And again, it tends to follow a pattern, right?
01:28:15.000If you're a Chinese American or a Taiwanese American and you're approached by someone who spends time buttering you up and telling you how smart you are and we sure could use you to come over to China to give a presentation, You might want to think about that.
01:28:56.000I know people are going to disagree with this and they're always going to argue about this, but I don't – and maybe that's because I'm simple.
01:29:02.000I never viewed it as a moral equivalency between their operations and our operations.
01:29:21.000I think the real fear over here is the only way we can compete with them is to do what they do with our people.
01:29:28.000Yeah, I mean, you could argue that one of the things that we do is try to harden our defenses, right?
01:29:34.000Part of that is making people aware of it.
01:29:37.000And, you know, FBA, you know, they've been taking a kick in the ass for a while now because of, you know, the potential for I'm playing politics, but the Bureau has done some things really very well.
01:29:49.000One of them is in this counterintelligence area, right?
01:29:51.000They spend a lot of time talking or trying to talk to private sector companies about how do you improve your security posture against these threats.
01:29:58.000And that was not something they did before.
01:31:36.000But we need them to be out there and aggressive and proactive in defending national security interests.
01:31:42.000And, you know, I'm not going to shift off that line.
01:31:46.000Well, one of the things that a lot of people get scared of when it comes to overstepping boundaries is some of the shit that we hear, like with the FBI, like the governor of Michigan thing.
01:32:12.000Yeah, entrapment, that's a different fucking bucket there.
01:32:18.000Is that just a function of them trying to get something done?
01:32:22.000And you give people autonomy, you let them make their own decisions, and then they do something that...
01:32:29.000A lot of people would feel like is entrapment.
01:32:31.000And these guys who got arrested who were doing long bids, you know, one of them was saying that it was all just fantasy, he's an idiot, he wasn't really interested in it at all, but they organized it, they instigated it, they designed it.
01:32:46.000Yeah, I mean, I think the way that you avoid problems typically is by having your frontline managers being very experienced in asking questions and stress testing every potential operation and activity or investigation.
01:33:06.000And, you know, I can't speak to that one because I wasn't in the bureau and don't know.
01:33:11.000But, you know, I do know that if you don't have management at pretty much every level of the organization, whatever organization it is, That stress tests these things and says,
01:33:45.000And, you know, every investigation needs to be built on a very sound foundation, right?
01:33:52.000If you start an investigation with an idea like, you know, I bet these guys might be interested in it, you've got to have evidence at the very bottom.
01:34:00.000Otherwise, it's just sitting on this pile of sand, right?
01:34:02.000So I think that's, you know, sometimes where these things go awry because there's such a desire to You know, develop that opportunity or that case that people forget to say, well, how did this even get started?
01:34:17.000You know, what was the first piece of evidence or what was the first thread?
01:34:58.000Maybe once or twice, but over years now, going on a couple of decades, there have never done a major fraud investigation where the due diligence on that entity or people or opportunity was done properly at the beginning.
01:35:16.000If you do the due diligence properly at the beginning and then occasionally you revisit that because people change and you're always going back and looking at the current status of events and the company's You know, structure and abilities and, you know, is what they say they do what they do.
01:35:30.000If you do that due diligence at the outset, you don't end up with a Bernie Madoff or a Sam Bankman-Fried, right?
01:35:36.000But all these frauds at this level, particularly those, It's driven by, I don't want to necessarily say greed, but the fear of missing the boat, right?
01:35:47.000So it gets to a certain point, a little momentum, and nobody asks the questions.
01:35:53.000Nobody would go back and says, well, wait a minute, let's go back to the beginning.
01:37:05.000They have huge superstars doing ads for them.
01:37:09.000There's billions and billions of dollars in assets.
01:37:13.000And then you have this origin story of this genius wizard kid who figures all this out.
01:37:23.000I mean, it should have raised some red flags and they found that they were just doing amphetamines and fucking each other in an apartment in the Bahamas.
01:37:31.000What are the odds that that's 100% legit?
01:38:31.000It's a conspiracy theory, unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.
01:38:35.000But when you've got that kind of money moving around, like billions went to Al made a research group and they don't understand, and he was saying, I have no knowledge of this, and you got money that's just flying all over the place and billions are missing.
01:38:52.000And how would one even step in And sort of try to get an assessment of that?
01:38:58.000And in doing so, would you fuck up the whole thing and would all those people lose out on billions of dollars of legitimate money that they've invested?
01:39:07.000Millions and millions of creditors, right?
01:39:08.000Well, if it's built on sand, they're going to lose anyway at some point.
01:39:11.000So, you know, it's always better to expose and create transparency, I would argue, when you're talking about something like this.
01:39:18.000First of all, if a company that you're looking at investing in suddenly names an arena, gets a corporate jet, buys a yacht, has associated real estate, offshore,
01:39:34.000whatever it is, you might want to look at this thing.
01:39:39.000I don't want to oversimplify it because a lot of folks in my industry and information and security industry will, you know, try to make things sound very complicated.
01:40:16.000It wouldn't have taken much to figure out that Sam Bankman-Fried was basically just banging colleagues and doing whatever drugs they were doing.
01:42:06.000A lot of this was saying his donations were to help get influence in regulations and anything that was going to be happening with Congress and crypto because it's obviously on its way.
01:42:23.000He's looking for plans and intentions of Capitol Hill, basically.
01:42:25.000I mean, from an Intel perspective, he's looking to see where are they going to go with this so that I can either You know, somehow block that effort or create an effort that's more advantageous to him.
01:42:37.000It seems like it was effective, at least in its intention, because like Maxine Waters is like, you know, well, he doesn't really want to come in and testify.
01:44:13.000You just, I mean, you compile information, and maybe one or two pieces of it, like, okay, you look at the guy and go, this guy doesn't look like a rocket scientist, and, you know, his lifestyle, you look at lifestyle issues, maybe they're bizarre, but you compile as much information about the entire apparatus as possible,
01:44:30.000And I would argue that anybody in their right mind, if they had taken the time to do significant due diligence, would have stepped back and said, oh, no, not doing this guy.
01:44:38.000You know, I don't care how many celebrities he's got put in there.
01:44:41.000And, you know, and he was going after celebrities for a reason, just like your name over an arena.
01:46:01.000If I really was desperate and I said, I really want my book to become a bestseller, well, one of the things I could do is I could set up a bunch of fake accounts on Amazon or wherever.
01:46:15.000And then I could put money into all those different accounts.
01:46:18.000And then I could start buying up my book.
01:46:39.000They're still trying to figure it out, which, again, I would argue is one of the reasons why – You know, SPF was putting money into politics.
01:46:45.000You know, if you can get ahead of the game, I'll tell you as an example, there's a reason why I'm telling this story.
01:46:53.000Early days of Iraq, I'm talking like 2003, 2004, 2005, my company had, you know, a lot of people there because we were supporting security operations for a lot of the infrastructure companies, you know, and so they're out there trying to rebuild Parts of the country,
01:48:06.000We started thinking, okay, this has got to get regulated, right?
01:48:10.000State Department and Pentagon, they're going to come in and they're going to say, no, we've got to regulate the private security industry that's operating out here.
01:48:20.000So as part of that, once we realized that was going to happen, we got together with some of the more reputable security firms that are operating out there and said, let's form an association, right?
01:48:31.000So that we can get ahead of the curve, right?
01:48:33.000And we can help define what the regulations are for these security companies that are out there operating.
01:49:20.000The amazing thing is, if you've been involved in fraud investigations for as long as we have, there was no surprise at the point where it happened.
01:50:00.000Jamie vests a little and watches from afar.
01:50:03.000But the allure of it is, is decentralized currency.
01:50:11.000So you don't have to rely on the Federal Reserve and interest rates getting jacked up and all this stuff that people think fucks with fiat currency.
01:50:20.000They say, well, if we have decentralized currency, And then, you know, we allow it to flourish and, you know, you give the people power to trade and invest and then you get to this point.
01:50:32.000But what they were dealing with, this is where it gets really weird, right?
01:50:36.000They were dealing with not just crypto, but also with tokens.
01:51:31.000And then you say, okay, now you've got to use other funds to pay that off, and the next thing you know, you're in a hole you can't get out of.
01:51:37.000Is the allure that the people that got in early...
01:51:43.000Is the allure that the people that did get in early and did invest and then pulled their money out, they did make money.
01:51:49.000So some people made enormous profits, and there was a financial institute, I'll say, Binance is bleeding assets, 12 billion gone in less than 60 days.
01:52:02.000I don't know why he didn't see this coming, why he tanks FTX and he doesn't realize that people are going to look at the whole industry and go, holy shit, this is all nuts.
01:52:27.000In the wake of the collapse of rival FTX, investors have been pulling their crypto in recent weeks, and despite the assurance from CEO Shangpeng Zhao that the situation is stabilized, outflows are accelerating.
01:52:41.000Customers withdrew a net $360 million on Friday, according to...
01:53:47.000They also use a similar thing as FTX. They have a coin called the Binance Coin, BNB, and another one which is based off the US dollar, and those have also lost a bunch of value.
01:54:00.000And you have to think about the value, too, in terms of what is actual value, right?
01:54:04.000Because Forbes also, and they're not the only ones, but there's been some study about what's the level of trade going on in that business that is, again, going back to the same phrase, wash trades.
01:54:21.000The whole purpose of doing the wash trades is to up the volume of trading, right?
01:54:25.000Which, you know, your hope is that will generate an increase in value, right?
01:54:29.000So, you know, a lot of what SBF was doing, as an example, was just, you know, selling low and Sorry, selling and then buying, or buying and then selling at a little bit of a higher price.
01:54:42.000So he was doing this just to jack up his own assets, the assets of the company.
01:54:47.000And if you think about, I mean, if Forbes is anywhere near correct, and some of the other estimates are anywhere near correct, and 50% of all the activity in crypto trade is basically just that, right?
01:54:58.000Again, buyer and seller on the same, or on both sides of the transaction.
01:55:36.000Let's just – For whatever reason, due diligence costs almost, in the scheme of things, compared to a fraud investigation, costs almost nothing.
01:55:47.000It's not just like you have to go out to a company.
01:55:50.000You don't have to be a big firm or a consulting firm or whatever to do it.
01:55:53.000People can do their own due diligence because there's so much information online nowadays.
01:55:58.000But at some point, you also want to dig a little bit deeper.
01:56:01.000You probably want to go out and actually talk to people, find out what their experience is.
01:56:05.000We've seen deals overseas where people have invested in large companies and have just gotten massive holes shot in their books because they failed to just do the simple things, go out there and actually investigate the business and see whether the books they're seeing are the actual books.
01:56:20.000So it's, you know, I can't say it often enough.
01:56:23.000You know, two things people can do to protect their businesses.
01:56:26.000One is do proper due diligence ahead of a key hire, an investment, any sort of venture.
01:56:34.000And then the other is buy a crosscut shredder.
01:56:36.000And don't put information in the bins and, you know, companies like mine pick it up.
01:56:42.000So these companies that, these places like Binance and FTX, what's the future of those things?
01:56:52.000I mean, at one point in time, just very recently, they were enormous power structures.
01:57:42.000Occasionally, there's going to be someone who's actually really sophisticated and smart, and they're going to sneak through.
01:57:48.000But some regulation, by definition, is not a bad thing.
01:57:53.000Just by saying the word, it doesn't mean that you're saying, I want to turn it over to the government, leave the government in charge of it all.
01:57:59.000No, but you're looking to try to create an environment that protects investors.
01:58:05.000But in the Bernie Madoff situation, he was regulated.
01:58:59.000You know, people that were calling bullshit on SBF, I think, were doing it in part just because of appearance, right, and sort of lack of understanding.
01:59:09.000You know, the lack of information, lack of transparency should be another indicator, just like buying a corporate jet or I'd love to name an arena after Portman Square Group, but I don't think that's going to happen.
01:59:21.000But if you had an enormous corporation like Staples Center, isn't there a value in naming an arena after your company?
01:59:29.000Yeah, that's different than a small company.
01:59:47.000But, I mean, if you think about the fact that they were that profitable inside of three years, if they really did start in 2019, by 2022, the fucking end of the year, the house of cards had already fallen down.
01:59:58.000Yeah, and it's given, like, whatever, $30 million, the democratic causes and...
02:00:02.000The number two donor next to George Soros, which is fucking terrifying.
02:00:11.000I had a conversation with the governor of Texas about him, about with Greg Abbott, where he was explaining to me what George Soros does.
02:00:17.000And it's fucking terrifying that he donates money to a very progressive, very leftist Whether it's a DA or whatever politician, and then funds someone who's even further left than them to go against them and just keeps moving it along.
02:00:34.000So he's playing like a global game and that he enjoys doing it.
02:00:39.000Yeah, he enjoys doing it, but it's telling, right?
02:00:44.000He understood early on where you wanted to seize power, right?
02:00:49.000And we sometimes think, oh, I'm going to...
02:00:53.000A senator, that's the pinnacle of success.
02:02:40.000Good Information Inc., that's the name of the company, aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information.
02:02:50.000As a part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies.
02:03:07.000A former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called Acronym.
02:03:11.000An acronym invested in for-profit companies that built media and technology solutions for progressive causes.
02:03:19.000It ran one of the largest digital campaigns to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election, totaling $100 million.
02:03:26.000One of the companies it's invested in called Shadow made headlines last year for contributing to the delayed reporting of the Iowa caucus results.
02:03:40.000It's like, I mean, this guy's obviously been involved in politics at a very high level for decades and decades, and it seems like it's like his fun little game he plays.
02:03:50.000If you had all that money, though, wouldn't you do something about the bags under your eyes?
02:03:53.000I mean, that was a lot of He can get that lady with the bags under his eyes?
02:04:00.000I mean, you would think that if you had that much money, you're 92 years old, you just want to go fly fishing and sit on the deck and drink coffee and talk to your grandchildren and just enjoy your life.
02:04:09.000But he apparently does not want to do that.
02:04:26.000That this guy is involved in all these different things that he has his hands in.
02:04:30.000Yeah, and you could argue that's, I mean, at least there's some transparency there as opposed to, you know, dark money going into campaigns and other things, and, you know, so it's, but it is, at 92, I had no idea he was 92. Good God.
02:04:43.000You gotta wonder, like, What's his endgame?
02:04:47.000Like, when does he wrap this fucking project up?
02:04:50.000Well, I think it is an indication, though.
02:04:54.000I don't know that it's going to change anything.
02:04:57.000I don't know where I'm going with this.
02:04:58.000But I think there was an awareness over the past couple of years, maybe because of the pandemic and people sitting at home and reading more news and watching what's happening in their local community because they're not traveling.
02:05:08.000Of the importance of knowing who your city council is or knowing who your, you know, state congressman is or, you know, whatever, the head of the PTA, whatever it might be, and being aware of the importance of that because we all, again, we were so focused and people almost,
02:05:25.000you know, okay, fine, maybe I'll go out and vote for a U.S. congressman or a senator, but I'm not going to, you know, take the time to go out for local elections.
02:05:33.000And honestly, God, you know, if you want to bitch and moan, then, you know, you're...
02:05:37.000Obligation on the other side of that is you got to take part.
02:05:41.000Well, I don't think people realize the implications that it had on their actual lives, what politicians, what rules they could and couldn't enact until the pandemic, until they shut down businesses, shut down restaurants, mandated certain things,
02:05:56.000mandated vaccines for children in schools.
02:05:58.000When you saw politicians doing things like that, that's when people started freaking out.
02:06:02.000Like, Jesus, I didn't know you guys had that kind of fucking power.
02:06:10.000I know that's kind of one of those conversations that's been taking place for quite a bit and it's nothing new, but I mean, just from a personal perspective, you know, we started looking at, you know, not just the curriculum, but just the quality of the education itself, right?
02:07:38.000But at least our kids could, you know, they could go outside and they could go up in the foothills and they could mountain bike and they could, you know.
02:07:43.000So we were fortunate in that regard, but it was just a...
02:09:24.000And one of the ladies was like, oh, no, no, it's legitimate.
02:09:30.000Anyway, so he became known as the mass fainter.
02:09:35.000And eventually, once the schools opened up again, we pulled them out of school.
02:09:38.000It was a great school, but we pulled them out, put them back in public school where they knew most of their friends and everything were there.
02:09:43.000But it was an awareness almost immediately that we were not suited to homeschooling.
02:11:10.000Choose to turn it around and open things up.
02:11:13.000Now they're responsible for whatever decisions they make.
02:11:16.000So they're going to hedge their bets and they're going to be cautious, even if it greatly financially hurts the people that they're ruling and governing.
02:11:26.000It means you've got to put your head above the wall, make a decision, and now you're a target if you made the wrong decision, which is why a lot of shit never ever gets done because nobody wants to take the risk of making a decision one way or the other.
02:12:00.000But then once it stopped making sense and we got more data on it, like I have a friend, a good friend who's a doctor, and his initial concern was seriously cautious.
02:12:10.000And then as he started looking at the data, he goes, The understanding of this is that it's about twice as bad as the flu.
02:12:16.000He goes, this reaction that we're having, the way we're treating this is absolutely wrong.
02:12:20.000And he did it like sort of an about-face, confronted with new information.
02:12:26.000It became a bit of a religion, in a way.
02:12:28.000It was a little bit of a cult-following.
02:12:33.000I'm going to be the most righteous, right?
02:12:35.000I'm going to follow it to a T rather than saying, look, I'm going to look at, you know, it's science theoretically is you stress test everything, right?
02:12:41.000You question everything and you always look for alternative answers and theories and you test them, right?
02:13:13.000You can't ask the obvious questions, right?
02:13:16.000Again, it's like with SPF. You ask questions, hey, you know, why are you investing?
02:13:20.000You know, obviously you don't understand crypto.
02:13:23.000Or, you know, Tom Brady did, so I'm doing it.
02:13:25.000It's a strange environment that we live in.
02:13:28.000It makes it more difficult, I think, now for people to, at a time when information's at your fingertips, it makes it more difficult for people to ask logical questions, right?
02:13:37.000Because they're afraid of getting kicked in the ass, you know, by someone who views you as a threat to their particular belief system.
02:13:43.000That's a big problem with social media, right?
02:13:45.000There's so many people with opinions now.
02:13:47.000And then if you're cautious and, you know, especially during the pandemic, it's way less pushback.
02:13:54.000And if you're one of those people that's like, you know what?
02:13:57.000I think we're doing this the wrong way, and I think we need to open up.
02:14:56.000Shortly thereafter, we're in there for 20 years, going through the same problems.
02:14:59.000So I don't know that we're going to—it's a weird example—but I don't know that we're going to, next pandemic, look and say, okay, Let's review again how we reacted to the COVID. Okay, what should we do differently?
02:15:09.000I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be very reluctant to take the same advice from the same people.
02:15:18.000I think from the same people, but people tend to, maybe this is very cynical, but people like to take instruction, right?
02:15:26.000Well, particularly if it's more dangerous.
02:17:04.000And so we're doing what a lot of people are doing.
02:17:06.000We're trying to say, okay, how about, you know, three days in, two days out?
02:17:10.000But I know major companies, Fortune 100, Fortune 50 companies that are having a hard time, you know, getting pushback when they say, how about three days in and two days home?
02:17:19.000Employees are saying, no, two days in and three days home.
02:17:24.000It's really wild because this is a completely new thing.
02:17:27.000I mean, I get their perspective that they don't want to commute and, you know, they don't want to deal with all the office bullshit and you want to be able to work with your pajamas on.
02:20:39.000So I get it when I hear it from folks that work for us.
02:20:43.000That makes sense, but there has to be a balance because if you go too far one way, you're not making the revenue to pay their salaries and they're out of a job.
02:20:52.000Well, it goes back to what we were talking about before.
02:20:54.000What do you really want to do with your life?
02:20:56.000What do you really want to do with your time?
02:20:58.000And how much time do you really have left?
02:21:00.000And I think so many people are a product of momentum.
02:21:03.000They're caught up in whatever they're doing, and they just keep doing it, and then they don't like it, but this is what they're doing.
02:22:24.000But even the biggest companies that we deal with, some of the largest in the world...
02:22:28.000They're spending an incredible amount of time trying to sort this out, trying to figure out how do we motivate this new mindset within the workforce, right?
02:22:39.000Because the older personnel are like, I'm back in the office.
02:22:42.000And for the most part, it's not completely true, but for the most part, it's the younger staff.
02:22:50.000And there's also a problem with entitlement.
02:22:52.000There's a lot of younger people that have been sort of given this philosophy and this mindset that you're entitled to a certain amount of compensation.
02:23:06.000It's not necessarily that you're providing a service for this company and this company benefits from having you in there.
02:23:12.000You're entitled to things without any consideration whatsoever as to how this affects the bottom line of this company that you work for.
02:23:20.000They're not thinking I think that's true.
02:23:30.000But I think also one thing I've realized recently, maybe because it's this weird world that we came out of the pandemic and this new idea amongst the workforce to some degree, is We need to be more transparent about the business, right?
02:23:45.000They can't be expected to understand the strains and stresses of running a business if they don't understand some of the basics, right?
02:23:53.000And so sharing sort of top-line financials, explaining, you know, look, this is what we need to break even every month, right?
02:24:03.000And so, you know, we're not like this cash cow that every time you turn around and ask for a pay rise, we're going to be able to give it to you.
02:24:09.000You know, maybe we find other ways of doing it.
02:24:11.000You know, we came up with an admittedly stolen idea from a company that we work for as a client, or they're a client, and they do a mandatory rest and recovery break, right?
02:24:22.000Like a week off, in addition to all the other time off.
02:24:24.000They say, you've got to put your phones away, we're not going to contact you, you get this extra week, and you know what?
02:24:30.000And so we've implemented that in a way to try to find other, when we don't have the cash at the bottom line, to keep people incentivized, right?
02:24:37.000But you're constantly looking for those things.
02:24:39.000And then sometimes it's a little discouraging because you don't get the feeling that anybody, not anybody, but some folks don't appreciate it.
02:25:14.000I know a guy who works for a company, they get a lot of time off paternity leave, and they're also required to give that person a raise if other people within his group get a raise as well.
02:25:27.000So if you get, and I'm talking a long time, I don't want to say the number because I'm not sure, but it's more than six months.
02:26:58.000Okay, so now they're referring to it as like parental life.
02:27:01.000But paternity is the father, and that's where it gets bonkers.
02:27:05.000Yeah, I mean, again, we'll probably end up doing like, okay, you can take a couple of weeks or whatever.
02:27:12.000I mean, again, I'm not buying the idea that you're going to be at home running the household while your wife relaxes and recovers and enjoys the baby.
02:27:24.000Well, listen, a couple weeks, or even a month, whatever it is, whatever reasonable number sounds right, but when you get to 18 months paternity leave, if that is really happening, that seems fucking insane.
02:27:35.000And it also seems like if someone was, like, the type of person that likes to game a system, like, you just keep knocking up your wife and you just keep getting free money.
02:27:45.000In a year and a half, like, she's, I mean, that's Irish twins, right?
02:28:29.000And there, by signing a measure that grants federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
02:28:33.000Look, you know, again, you know, we're doing, what, three months maternity leave.
02:28:38.000I'm sure we'll end up settling on something for paternity leave.
02:28:42.000I remember, you know, our UK employees would get, God, I think it was like eight months, I mean, off.
02:28:49.000And you had to hold their job, you know, which was great because our employees were terrific and we wanted to have them back, but you had to hold their position open.
02:28:57.000And You know, when you're a small company, that's a stress, right?
02:29:03.000Especially if you're barely getting by.
02:29:44.000You know what I thought about the other...
02:29:45.000This is going to sound stupid, but I forget what triggered it.
02:29:48.000Something you said just a short while ago.
02:29:52.000I was thinking about, oh, I know what it was, where you talked about your place in life and all that.
02:29:57.000And I was thinking, I think one of the things that I've failed on with the kids is, and this is going to sound odd, is church, is religion.
02:30:40.000But I feel like I may have dropped the ball in giving them a sense of something bigger, right?
02:30:47.000And I don't, again, I don't know whether that's, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're church, or England, or Catholic, or whatever, Presbyterian.
02:30:56.000It's interesting, and I don't know why I was focused on that.
02:30:59.000I've been thinking about that for a while, and I've been, you know, looking at my kids and thinking, did I really, did I screw up?
02:31:03.000Because I tend to be somewhat, not cynical, but my problem with organized religion is that idea that, you know, a particular religion has a lock on the truth, right?
02:31:13.000And that's always kind of bothered me, right?
02:31:15.000And I think a lot of religions do a lot of good.
02:31:17.000They try, and I think it's important for people to think about something bigger, right?
02:31:23.000And Whatever that thing may be, God bless him, go with whatever.
02:31:27.000But I think because I'd always had this thing about, necessarily about organized religion, that I may have gone too far in the other direction and just not worried about it.
02:31:36.000And now as my kids are getting older, I'm thinking, you know, maybe I fucked up and should have given them at least the chance to think about it.
02:31:44.000I think there's a benefit to structure.
02:31:46.000There's a benefit to that kind of structure, and there's a benefit to having what I would call a moral scaffolding.
02:31:53.000And, you know, this sense of a higher purpose, whether or not you believe all of it.
02:31:58.000There's something to it, and it's always existed in human civilization.
02:34:05.000I think for me part is also just the idea that it, you know, hopefully it drives you to think about some of those issues and some of the bigger picture concerns.
02:34:17.000We went to a local, what is it, United Methodist Church the other day on Sunday, just my wife and I because we couldn't get the kids to unass the sofa.
02:34:28.000So we went and they actually – they had a little – the guy, nice guy, Duane, had a sermon about the Bible and sort of the way that it's viewed and how it's used in various ways in terms of interpretation,
02:34:46.000But they did say one thing, which was, you know, the whole point of the Bible is it's ambiguous, it's diverse, right?
02:34:52.000It's a collection of books, essentially, over a long period of time, and it's not intended to be like a manual.
02:35:03.000And so that was the first time I'd really heard that about the Bible, where it's not an instruction manual or a how-to manual.
02:35:09.000It's more of a way to pursue, in a sense, don't ask, what does it mean?
02:35:16.000Just kind of ask, what am I looking for?
02:35:19.000And I think that question about what am I looking for, I think for kids, maybe because to your point about community, maybe there's some value there.
02:36:16.000So your book is available, the audio book is available right now, Company Rules, or Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the CIA. I know.