On today's show, Steve and Peter are joined by Matt Meckstroth and Rachel Bovard, co-founders of the Save America Coalition, a group dedicated to fighting for President Trump's agenda in the midterms.
00:01:08.000The MAGA movement and the coalition around President Trump.
00:01:11.000We're going to have the Maha guys on tonight at five o'clock to talk about this.
00:01:14.000Because we kick off really the beginning of the midterm elections essentially kicks off today.
00:01:19.000And we want to talk about their coalition and their motivation.
00:01:23.000You run one of the, you're organized, help organize one of the biggest coalitions out there of people that are very focused on elections, the fairness of elections and make sure that elections don't get stolen in the future.
00:01:35.000What are the number one concerns of your coalition members right now?
00:01:38.000Our number one concern right now is that really nothing of substance has changed from 2020 to now.
00:02:04.000And people will, through us, help them understand registration, validation, tabulation and reporting.
00:02:11.000And it's important that we motivate from the bottom up because, to be honest, Steve, we need to see, hopefully, some more bold, decisive action from the top down.
00:02:26.000Well, here's the thing, you know, there's all this debate now.
00:02:29.000I mean, the Save America Act is basically ground to a halt.
00:02:33.000Now, Rachel Bovard, I'll make sure we put this up.
00:02:36.000Rachel Bovard's got, as she always does, she's got a very sophisticated piece in The Federalist today about kind of a workaround of the, maybe workaround's too hard a word, about the filibuster.
00:02:49.000Because right now, none of the Save America Act is going to be voted on, implemented.
00:02:53.000And President Trump is coming out with, he says, a nationwide executive order.
00:02:56.000I know they're working on it over the White House.
00:02:58.000Obviously, that's going to be challenging courts right away.
00:04:07.000I want people, because this is how serious, this is why, you know, Sam Faddis was out of the country and wrote this thing about the American Tet.
00:04:14.000We've gone to the American Tet offensive up in Minneapolis.
00:04:18.000I asked him, I said, hey, I know you're on vacation, but I need you up here.
00:05:27.000AI efficiencies are in fact replacing jobs and people are worried that longer term we will see their job go away because of AI.
00:05:35.000What's the plan at the White House to counter those AI efficiencies and how serious of an issue are you looking at this?
00:05:42.000It's a massive issue and it's right on the president's desk and on his radar.
00:05:49.000I think the one that's been most publicized is the effect on electricity prices and the president has already taken action.
00:05:57.000We're going to be taking a lot more, but there's water issues.
00:06:00.000There's the loss of agricultural land and obviously there's going to be major structural shifts in the labor market.
00:06:10.000The issue for the United States of America is to balance the need to be at the leading edge and the leader in artificial intelligence, not just for economic reasons, but for national security reasons because this will be one of the most dangerous weapons of war we've ever seen.
00:06:30.000We so we have to lead China and others on this, but at the same time we have to be mindful of the impacts across this nation.
00:06:41.000And so we're going to have to deal with that.
00:06:43.000And so there's just a lot of thought a lot of action on this.
00:06:46.000So stay tuned. But I'm telling you, President Trump is aware of all four dimensions of the problem.
00:06:53.000Yeah, because he's balancing on the one hand wanting and needing to be the number one global power on A.I. beating China.
00:07:01.000And that means a build out of data centers. But on the other side, he's battling people like Senator Bernie Sanders and Richard Blumenthal, who are criticizing rapid data center build out, saying all of these data center build out that needs to stop.
00:07:15.000I mean, you can't exactly stop if you're looking to be number one on the global stage in terms of A.I.
00:07:20.000What needs to happen, Maria, is that all of these data center builders, meta on down, need to pay for all all of the costs, emphasize on that.
00:07:33.000They need to pay not only pay for the electricity that they're using on the grid, but they have to pay for the resiliency that they're affecting as well.
00:07:44.000They need to pay for the water. So there's activity action here going forward where we force them to internalize the costs.
00:07:54.000You can't be a Luddite like Bernie. I mean, Bernie's one of the great Luddites.
00:07:59.000But what you have to do is make sure the American people are not hurt.
00:08:05.000And the loss of farmlands, no small thing either.
00:08:08.000Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, she's been a really bright light on so many crises that we've had, dealing with egg prices, dealing with beef prices, dealing with A.I.
00:08:18.000But I just want to assure people that we're on it. We also feel your pain, America.
00:08:23.000We understand the ravages that inflation took on you because of Joe Biden's irresponsibility.
00:08:31.000But we are addressing that with economic policies that ultimately will make wages rise faster than the inflation rate.
00:08:38.000The cost, who's paying for it, also the agriculture land, that's a huge issue in Texas, and water from West Texas to Arizona, aquifers, all of it.
00:08:50.000Brendan Steinhauser, I want to address, you're from the Alliance, and I want to make sure everybody, because you're building, helping to build a social movement.
00:08:58.000I want to get to the data centers and all that, but over the last 10 days, the nine days that shook the world in February, that we now realize the warnings of many of us, you included, about, hey, there's got to be some guardrails here.
00:09:13.000Not just the guardrails for children, not just the guardrails for content creators, all the kind of four C's we talked about, but there's a deeper issue going on.
00:09:22.000And now the most sophisticated people in artificial intelligence, including many of the people that oversaw the safety provisions internally to the companies, are saying there's something going on here, that this thing is quickly getting out of control because it's developing faster than even the developers thought.
00:09:42.000Can you walk us through that, the nine days in February that shook the world?
00:09:45.000Absolutely, Steve, and it's good to be back with you.
00:09:49.000The trend lines that we're seeing are picking up very fast.
00:09:53.000And so a lot of us have been talking about this for a few years now, but what we're seeing even in the last 30 days, in the last nine days, as you're citing, is everything is changing much more rapidly.
00:10:04.000So you're seeing software engineers and people that run software companies talking about how they are essentially being replaced right now.
00:10:11.000And they're putting out warning shots saying this is going to happen to all white collar work.
00:10:16.000Mustafa Suleiman, the head of AI for Microsoft, said that he thinks that white collar jobs could be automated within 12 to 18 months.
00:10:24.000Now, we may or may not buy that timeline, but they are sounding the alarm.
00:10:28.000These are the people building the technology.
00:10:32.000People fleeing that company, leaving that company, saying they're not taking safety seriously.
00:10:37.000They're not taking security seriously.
00:10:39.000And so some folks who've left OpenAI and Anthropic, one of the other companies, have said the world is in peril.
00:10:47.000They're literally going to go do something else with their lives because they're so concerned that we're on the wrong path here.
00:10:53.000We've had questions, obviously, about the finance side of this, about whether there's an AI bubble or this circular financing that's creating all these potential problems in the economy.
00:11:03.000So it's that combined with regular Americans.
00:11:07.000I mean, I go and talk to people on the road all the time, and they are concerned about their jobs.
00:11:13.000They're seeing more and more people talk about this.
00:11:15.000And then their friends who work in tech, their friends that work as software engineers or tech sales, are seeing this happening to them right now.
00:11:22.000So the problem is that white-collar work and then eventually blue-collar work is at great peril right now.
00:11:28.000And so the administration and Congress have to act right now to get this right to protect American workers.
00:11:34.000You know, they've eviscerated a trillion dollars of value in software companies the other day.
00:11:40.000And it's ironic that the software engineers were the ones that kind of worked on this and did it.
00:11:45.000But when you say 12 to 18 months, I've actually talked to some people thinking come in there.
00:11:51.000It's administrative, managerial, and tech, and particularly at the low level, entry level, all the way up to the highest level, where they would probably need some people with some wisdom or guidance that can make decisions.
00:12:03.000But that this evisceration, particularly of tech workers, has gone far more rapidly than they thought.
00:12:09.000As we warned that, hey, once this thing picks up steam, you have no idea how quickly it can build on itself.
00:12:15.000And I'm hearing that, hey, what used to take, what they could concentrate for four minutes, now they can concentrate for four hours.
00:12:23.000Next week, it's going to be four weeks.
00:12:25.000The week after that, it's going to be four months.
00:12:28.000This is accelerating at an accelerating rate and scaring the absolute people that have been the biggest kind of apostles about this, that they're actually frightened right now.
00:12:38.000And you can see this in the stock market.
00:12:40.000You can see it's going through, particularly software it hit last week, $1 trillion in value ripped from these software companies.
00:12:47.000A lot of whom are saying, well, we're trying to do, you know, AI agents and you're still going to have humans.
00:13:30.000And I have to say, too, one of the other things I've witnessed just in the last couple of weeks is how some of these CEOs, again, especially Dario Amadei, the head of Anthropic, Elon Musk, the head of XAI, they're going out there and basically telling the world what's about to happen.
00:13:44.000And I don't know if it's a guilt complex or they're trying to do a CYA or it's something else, but they are basically putting it out there saying what we are doing is going to replace you.
00:13:53.000It's going to replace white-collar workers and blue-collar workers.
00:13:56.000There's really no escape from this unless we do take some pretty drastic measures in terms of looking at this topic more seriously, studying this, figuring out where we're going, how do we get this right to make AI go well for humanity?
00:14:09.000Because if we don't, then it could be too late.
00:14:11.000And all of a sudden, not only are we out of a job, in which case we lose our work, our income, our human dignity, but then this thing becomes so advanced that we lose control of AI completely.
00:14:21.000And that's where people really worry about these loss of control scenarios leading to AI just being the successor species to human beings.
00:16:26.000Brennan Steinhauser, you know, and we'll come on later in the week.
00:16:30.000I'll get the group back together to talk about you got to get this Utah legislation.
00:16:34.000You've got Ron DeSantis digging his heels in in Florida because he's not seen at the federal regulatory level regulation level coming together.
00:16:46.000But has what happened in the last in those nine days in February now raises up to the situation that the Secretary of War or DHS or somebody at a cabinet level needs to immediately go in and then come back to the president, the commander in chief and say, hey, here's exactly what's going on in these frontier labs.
00:17:08.000I want to I'm sure there's, you know, talk for these frontier labs, but should now would your recommendation be that the president actually ought to deputize somebody to kind of get their hands around it?
00:17:20.000So they then send out a message to the American people that were on top of this.
00:17:23.000Also, what's happened in these labs over the last week should absolutely have us banned one million percent.
00:17:31.000Any more shipment of advanced chips to China, any more of the Chinese students coming over here to these great universities to learn all the Chinese nationals have to leave the labs, have to leave the companies in the United States.
00:17:44.000If the big threat here is to have China get on and get control of this, then we have to go to the 100 percent as close as we can get to 100 percent probability that they have no access to American technology, training, education or capital.
00:17:59.000At the same time, the frontier labs, somebody's got to go in the frontier labs.
00:18:03.000I've warned about this, right, that somebody's got to go in there and actually find out what's happening and report back to the president, sir.
00:18:10.000Absolutely. So I'll start with the second point quickly and say we have to choke off the supply of advanced chips to China.
00:18:18.000We have to pass legislation like the CHIP Security Act that Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas has been championing.
00:18:24.000There's another House bill moving to the House Foreign Affairs Committee now, hopefully to the full House, the AI Overwatch Act.
00:18:31.000Those are a couple of pieces of legislation that are similar and that they're trying to restrict access to chips from China.
00:18:37.000That's critical in this effort. Going back to your first point, though.
00:18:40.000Yes, I think the president needs to have someone who is focused on national security, who says we have to have transparency and accountability.
00:18:48.000We need the federal government to have oversight on the frontier labs.
00:18:53.000We need to have eyes on this on these frontier models, which are potentially building artificial general intelligence or super intelligence.
00:19:01.000That is the path we're on. And right now there's no access. There's no transparency.
00:19:05.000There's no accountability. And so we we definitely need someone at that level to do that.
00:19:09.000And there is a bill there as well by Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri.
00:19:12.000He's championing the AI Risk Evaluation Act, which would do just that.
00:19:16.000And it would give that authority to the federal government to say, I think, I think the legislator.
00:19:21.000Yeah, I think the legislative part of this is fine. But I think this is a national security issue.
00:19:26.000It has to be addressed right away. This is not coming from the Max Tegmarks or the Brendan Steinhausers or the Mark Beals or the Jason Van Baks.
00:19:34.000All the people we have on the working on this professionally every day.
00:19:37.000This is coming from people in the industry. This is coming from the top people in the industry.
00:19:41.000A lot of these people are just saying, you know what, this thing's so far gone.
00:19:45.000I'm going to go, you know, do pottery because I'm not so sure where humanity is going to go.
00:19:50.000And I've I've worked on the safety issues. I'm going to go garden.
00:19:54.000That should be a major flair to the American people that something is up here.
00:19:59.000And we just not we just don't have our hands around it.
00:20:02.000Brendan, where do people go? You're the alliance.
00:20:04.000You're trying to form a massive social movement here. Where do people go?
00:20:08.000You can follow us on social media channels at Secure AI now at Secure AI now.
00:20:15.000And then our website is Secure AI now dot org.
00:20:30.000We've got a this is pretty shocking. Let's go ahead and play.
00:20:33.000This is about this, the radical transgender ideology.
00:20:36.000President Trump, as much as President Trump and everybody that's been on here for years has has fought this.
00:20:42.000The Terry Shillings of the world, the Christian Post people, Brandon Showalter, all the great efforts.
00:20:48.000Let's just see what's happening here. Let's go and play it.
00:20:51.000At least nine people are dead and two dozen others hurt after separate shootings at a school and a home in a remote part of British Columbia.
00:20:59.000Canadian police confirming that at least six people were found dead inside the school while another died on the way to the hospital.
00:21:06.000The only suspect, a woman, was found dead inside the school from a self-inflicted injury.
00:21:13.000Two other victims were found dead at a nearby home believed to be connected with the shooter.
00:21:18.000The shooting is Canada's deadliest in nearly six years.
00:21:22.000The investigation into the motive continues.
00:21:25.000So a suspect is identified as an 18 year old female by the name of Jessie.
00:21:30.000We have a history of police attendance at the family residence.
00:21:36.000Some of those calls are, were, pardon me, related to mental health issues.
00:21:42.000So it is believed the victims of that residence and the suspect are family members.
00:21:47.000Can you say what parents, siblings, what relationship that is?
00:21:52.000Yes, the female adult victim is the mother of the suspect and the youth male is the brother of the suspect or step brother.
00:25:51.920Once we talk about it and we get to the funding of it, which our government is doing, both sides, it's a bipartisan Community Safer Act that is doing this.
00:26:02.920This is the school psychologists in the school system.
00:26:06.920We have to be able to talk about this.
00:31:07.920Talk to Philip, Patrick, and the team.
00:31:10.920What I want to do, this thing is so shocking, and that video with the kids, something like Children of the Damned or Village of the Damned.
00:31:18.920I want people to get as much information as possible here, Sheila.
00:32:16.920And again, our articles will really show you what is going on here.
00:32:22.920It's the structural system within the education system, and so it's not about just labeling everybody mentally ill.
00:32:31.920It's taking care of children before they get to psychiatry.
00:32:35.920And so we want to help, and we urge you to go to ablechild.org, read our articles, black box suicide warnings, and increased risk of suicide and homicide from these cocktails of drugs.
00:32:55.920Look, this guy looks like a blocking back, and he, I think, murdered his wife in cold blood, shot three of his six daughters, I think, and then killed himself.
00:33:35.920Rabbi Willicki, you know, we have Kurt Mills on a lot.
00:33:38.920I always like to balance it with your thinking.
00:33:40.920I'm hearing now that there's a framework, and Captain Fanel is going to be here because we're shipping more hardware and assets into the Middle East, I think, at any time.
00:33:49.920I actually think if you take the ground troops out, it's bigger than the buildup to the Gulf War.
00:33:54.920I'm hearing now that there is a framework for, there's a framework for a deal that the Persians in their own negotiating method now have a framework of a framework of a framework.
00:34:07.920Yeah, welcome to the Persian negotiating table.
00:34:10.920You know, there's no such thing as negotiating successfully with Persians.
00:34:14.920When you walk into the room, you've lost.
00:34:16.920But what's been agreed upon, according to the reports, foreign minister of Iran, Abbas al-Ragchi, gave a statement really just a few hours ago saying that they've made progress and that each side is going to work towards putting together a draft to be negotiated later, but guiding principles were worked out.
00:34:40.920And he specifically told the Iranian media that, quote, progress does not mean that an agreement will be reached soon, but the path has started.
00:34:49.920And this is consistent with what I've been saying is their strategy.
00:34:54.920Their strategy is to drag this out as long as possible.
00:34:58.920The longer it takes, you know, the better they have.
00:35:01.920They just want to keep kicking the can down the road.
00:35:03.920And and ultimately their goal is the survival of the regime.
00:35:07.920Look, I just want to make sure President Trump wants, I think, a total eradication of their nuclear program.
00:35:14.920I think they've said that's not possible.
00:35:16.920The Israelis want a broader context of that ballistic missiles, everything.
00:35:20.920Just make it so we can understand it where there's all these different things.
00:35:24.920And I realize there's people in Israel that want regime change and they've asked permission in the United States that they have to to go to loan.
00:35:31.920Just set take a minute and set the framework what's going on, because they're giving us diplomatic speak and we're still we're sending a second carrier strike group over there to provide some muscle.
00:35:43.920So where do you think this all is right now?
00:35:46.920Well, that's a great that's a great way to frame the question, Steve, because the different players here really do have very different agendas, even people who are on the same side, ostensibly, meaning like the United States and Israel are, of course, coordinating.
00:35:57.920But they don't have the same agenda. And it's very important for both Americans and Israelis to remember that, that we don't have identical interests.
00:36:05.920The United States, of course, does not want Iran to have a nuclear program.
00:36:11.920And a lot of what they had was devastated during the 12 day war.
00:36:15.920And Trump has kind of shifted back to talking, you know, to making these conversations about that.
00:36:21.920But the truth is, from Israel's perspective and even before the riots that led to all this erupted, you know, back, whatever it is, a little more than a month ago, a month and a half ago, even before those erupted, Israel had been talking a great deal about the fact that Iran had very quickly, very successfully rebuilt a lot of its ballistic missile program.
00:36:41.920The ballistic missile program in Iran, from an Israeli perspective, is talked about more as an existential threat to Israel.
00:36:48.920That's more of a pressing issue for Israelis than the nuclear program ever since the 12 day war, because the nuclear program is kind of like it was damaged and it's, you know, it's, you know, let's see what they could do with it.
00:36:58.920And we also know that we have more of the backing of the rest of the world who also cares about Iran not getting a nuke.
00:37:04.920But when it comes to the ballistic missiles, that's the real existential threat.
00:37:07.920That's what caused so much damage to Israel during the 12 day war.
00:37:10.920And that's what and that's what's worrisome about about it to the future.
00:37:13.920So if the United States comes up with some kind of deal with the Iranians that has to do with the nuclear but doesn't deal with the ballistic missile threat, the Israelis have already been saying over the last week or two.
00:37:23.920They've been saying it here and there in statements, but they mean it that Israel is not going to feel bound by that agreement.
00:37:28.920We still have existential threats to our country that we're going to have to deal with.
00:37:32.920You know, and, you know, so that's something also to keep in mind.
00:37:37.920And here's where things get a little dicey in terms of what, you know, what Trump, what Trump is doing, because when he made that statement, help is on the way.
00:37:45.920And whether that was a wise statement to make or not is not is neither here nor there.
00:37:50.920The Iranian people took it very seriously and went out to the streets in much greater force.
00:37:55.920And it is undoubtable that many more Iranians were killed because of that boldness, because they really felt that they had a back, that someone was coming, you know, you know, coming to help them out in their attempts to bring down the regime.
00:38:08.920And there's a lot of chatter coming out of Iran.
00:38:11.920And I pay close attention to whatever seeps out of Iran through through social media and stuff that gets translated into Hebrew.
00:38:17.920There's a lot of material that comes out.
00:38:19.920There's a big Persian community in Israel that is that also, you know, brings forward a lot of that information.
00:38:25.920There's a real sense of of betrayal by Trump.
00:38:28.920Now, again, whether that's justified or not or whether Trump made the right move is neither here nor there.
00:38:32.920And if in the end of the day there aren't strikes, there's going to be this perception in in in certain quarters in the Middle East and also from the Iranian regime, who's been taunting Trump, saying that he's chicken and that he failed and that his real goal is to bring down the regime and he failed to do so.
00:38:49.920So Trump's perception on the stage in the Middle East is also at stake here.
00:38:55.920Again, I'm not so sure it was wise for him to say help is on the way, but he did it.
00:39:00.920Scott Besson's destroying their currency was, I think, what drove people into the streets.
00:39:05.920Hang on for a second, Rabbi. Do I have Captain Fennell?
00:39:07.920Oh, I don't. OK, I was going to have Captain Fennell.
00:39:10.920Captain Fennell is going to talk about we're not going to be able to do it today, so we're going to have to do it some other time.
00:39:15.920I've run out of time. Captain Fennell is going to talk about, Rabbi, you know, having been over there with a carrier battle group or two carrier battle groups in North Arabian Sea, I know the amount of force that a strike group can get.
00:39:27.920We've got a second large strike group there right now.
00:39:32.920Other assets are flowing into the region.
00:39:34.920There's all discussion about some of our Arab allies, people like UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia giving us overflight rights.
00:39:44.920There's concern in the Gulf Emirates about those ballistic missiles, about taking out their oil and gas reserves.
00:39:50.920I've heard in talking to people there, some people are afraid they could knock it down for five to seven years.
00:39:56.920There's reports out right now that the Persians are actually going through pretty sophisticated operations in the Straits of Hormuz.
00:40:03.920Now, why they would want to I guess their threat is that, hey, we'll shut down UAE and Qatar forever by blocking it.
00:40:11.920But of course, the Chinese Communist Party's oil has got to go through there.
00:40:14.920What is, as you see it, the military situation right now?
00:40:17.920Because the United States, President Trump is going to have a lot of options, right?
00:40:29.920It's viewed in the region as I mean, for those who are anti Iran, the negotiations are viewed as basically a waste of time.
00:40:40.920But we understand why President Trump wants to go down that route and reach the end point of them so that he can turn around and say, OK, I tried everything.
00:40:50.920That's the way people are interpreting it.
00:40:51.920I'm not I'm not advocating for one side or another on that point.
00:40:54.920I'm just saying that is how it's being interpreted in Middle Eastern media that negotiating is really not going to lead anywhere.
00:41:01.920But, you know, when we look at the behavior of the Iranian regime, I think this is a very important point for your audience to understand.
00:41:08.920All of this muscle flexing and like having military drills in the Straits of Hormuz, which they closed today for those drills and displaying coffins of American military brass at a public demonstration last week.
00:41:20.920And and, you know, trash talking Trump, which looks on the surface to be counterproductive.
00:41:52.920But in the end of the day, the regime can only fall if the Iranian people bring it down.
00:41:56.920You can create conditions that make that easier, but you cannot obliterate a regime.
00:42:01.920And I think the regime is counting on Trump not wanting a prolonged conflict and also not being willing or not being able politically to absorb any US casualties at all.
00:42:11.920And therefore, they don't really need to beat the American army.
00:42:14.920They just need to survive and weather the storm of American attacks enough and possibly even slip slip a missile or a drone through to some American base in the region and kill a few American servicemen.
00:42:26.920And there will be a hue and cry in the US for, you know, for, you know, for Trump to stop this entire thing and get out of there.
00:42:53.920And then you have, like what I said, the Israelis are looking at this purely from our own security perspective and saying, we want to deal with the proxies.
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