Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1661 Scott Adams： Let's Follow the Bunny and Predict What Happens With Ukraine, & Other Fun

00:00:00.000 Good morning everybody and congratulations on arriving at the best place in the world at the

00:00:11.720 best time. Even if you're watching this recorded, it is the best time still. I don't know how that

00:00:17.820 works but I didn't take a lot of physics in high school. However, one thing I do know and every

00:00:24.560 scientist will agree. The simultaneous sip will make your day better and all you need is a cup or

00:00:30.760 mug or a glass, a tank or Chelsea Stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with

00:00:35.860 your favorite beverage. I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine

00:00:43.260 hit of the day. It's the thing that makes everything better except Ukraine and it happens now. Go. 1.00

00:00:50.120 So, I'm seeing a disturbing note on locals. Does somebody already drank their coffee prematurely?

00:01:03.040 We'll have to talk about that. Yeah. Unauthorized sipping. No, actually, you're always authorized

00:01:11.080 to sip without me but don't oversip. If you oversip, there will be nothing in your vessel. It's a

00:01:18.760 problem. All right. The most important story of the day. This comes from the Omicron Olympics.

00:01:23.880 There was a Finland skier who suffered a frozen penis. That's right. He was a Finnish skier. He

00:01:35.840 suffered a frozen penis. You might say he was finished. Now, what was not included in the story

00:01:44.140 is what you should do if you're the first person to come across someone who has a frozen penis?

00:01:51.400 So, let's say it's up to you to do first aid and you're the first person on the scene. Now,

00:01:58.360 you're going to have to find some way to warm the penis of the person who needs the first aid. 0.99

00:02:06.340 some kind of warm, I don't know, place or cavity. Some place that you know would be nice and warm.

00:02:17.780 Now, here's my advice. If you're the first person on the scene to treat somebody with a frozen penis,

00:02:26.040 you should immediately say, I'll go get help. That's why you should say, I'll go get help.

00:02:32.500 Because you don't want to be the first person on the scene when there's only one way to treat it,

00:02:36.980 if you know what I mean. If you know what I mean. Wink, wink.

00:02:41.200 Well, I went into my local grocery store yesterday. Of course, masks in California are now

00:02:49.040 optional for adults in most situations, unless it's a medical or senior care or something.

00:02:56.120 And I walked right into my grocery store with my maskless face, as I have for weeks, but now it's

00:03:03.400 legal. Guess how many people in California, Northern California, wore a mask optionally?

00:03:15.240 How many customers, not talking about the staff, the staff were mostly in masks,

00:03:19.500 masks. But how many do you think wore a mask? Didn't need to. The answer is 80 to 90 percent.

00:03:29.960 It took me a long time to find even one other person without a mask. Obviously Republican.

00:03:38.380 I hate to say that the maskless people were obviously Republican, because, you know, that

00:03:44.340 that imagined some stereotype. But if I may, the maskless people were obviously Republican.

00:03:53.740 Don't ask me how I know what a Republican looks like. But you know what a Republican looks like.

00:04:00.480 You kind of do. You kind of do. You know you do. And they were the only maskless ones.

00:04:07.380 Well, Truth Social Platform is getting closer to launching. I guess the beta is up.

00:04:12.900 But this is President Trump's new social media platform. And I asked myself, well, what could

00:04:20.740 go wrong? Well, you know, what could go wrong with this? How could it go wrong? And then I saw

00:04:28.840 a tweet from Dean Obadiah. He often appears on CNN. And he's sort of a designated pit bull to

00:04:39.420 go after Republicans and Trump. And here's what Dean Obadiah says in his tweet. The FBI needs to thank

00:04:47.720 Trump for helping gather the personal information of white nationalists and other right-wing terrorists

00:04:53.500 with his new social media platform at Truth Social. Are you going to sign up? I think he talked

00:05:12.580 me out of it. I don't know. This is a pretty good reason not to do it. Honestly. I mean, I wanted

00:05:23.300 to succeed. And I'm very spring-loaded to sign up. I already have the app downloaded. I'm just,

00:05:30.720 you know, waiting for it to go live. I have beta invitations. I just haven't used any.

00:05:36.100 Somebody says, don't be afraid. But let me ask you this. If you know that Trump supporters are

00:05:46.680 literally being tracked and rounded up, do you want yourself on that list? It's actually a real

00:05:53.860 question. I think that this Dean Obadiah guy did actually a tremendous job of, you know, pissing in

00:06:02.720 the punch bowl. I mean, that's actually, that is a scary, scary tweet. Honestly. They have your stuff

00:06:11.920 already? Yeah, that's probably true. For people like me, yes. Well, so yeah, that's going to be a

00:06:22.860 problem. Now, obviously, other alternative platforms have not been huge successes or as big as they could

00:06:32.200 have been. But this might, because I think you can't ignore Trump. Am I wrong? You could maybe

00:06:41.560 not use an alternative, you know, to Twitter or something. But it's hard to ignore Trump if he

00:06:47.380 becomes the main story in the elections. See, you kind of almost have to have an account. And so I asked

00:06:53.600 myself, wouldn't the press have to have an account just to track him? You think so, right? Like, if you

00:07:01.760 are a member of the press, you'd almost have to join, even if you didn't use it every day, just to look at

00:07:07.180 stuff that people talk about. Yeah. So we'll see how this goes. Maybe you'll get a little bit of

00:07:14.600 people on the left. So Lieutenant Texas's Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he's got this idea for

00:07:22.620 blocking tenure in public universities and colleges in an attempt to stop the teaching of critical race

00:07:31.120 theory. And I asked myself, can you do that with legislation? Can you tell an entity, even if it's a

00:07:41.620 public school, can you tell a public university or college to not have tenure?

00:07:51.420 I'm seeing people say, yes, I suppose you can make a law about anything as long as the law is

00:07:59.100 constitutional. But this feels like this feels like a weird overreach, doesn't it? It feels like an

00:08:05.800 overreach coming from the Republicans. Because I feel like the Republican Party should be more

00:08:11.920 about, you know, leave, leave everybody alone and let them work it out. But this, this would be sort

00:08:18.220 of a direct meddling in the way they do business. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I get that it

00:08:24.920 might work. I get that it might work. But I don't know that this is a way to do it. Exactly. What do you

00:08:31.900 think of it? I don't, I don't think we should have tenure. So, you know, I'm against tenure. But I

00:08:39.880 don't know that, I don't know that the government is the way to do it to get rid of tenure. You know,

00:08:46.040 it's, but here's a interesting question, if I do say so myself. Wouldn't you say that the education of

00:08:53.920 our youth is so connected to homeland security that you can't afford to do it wrong? Right? Would

00:09:01.760 you all agree with that? We can't afford to educate our kids wrong? Because it's just the

00:09:07.020 entire, you know, security of the country in the future depends on it. So in that case,

00:09:13.420 could the government say, you know, we have to fix the biggest problem, which is teachers unions

00:09:18.600 and tenure? So could the government say, in order to fix education, we're going to get rid of teachers 0.83

00:09:27.060 unions and tenure? Could they do that? Would that pass all constitutional tests? I don't know. I don't

00:09:38.040 know if it would. It feels like it might. I don't see an obvious problem with it. But I think that

00:09:47.240 would be the way to go after improving the schools is to just directly say, there are two problems with

00:09:54.760 schools that make them anti-competitive. It's tenure, and it's the school, it's the school, I'm sorry,

00:10:02.500 the teachers unions. And so just get rid of them. There's no reason not to do that, right? I mean,

00:10:10.580 in terms of constitutionally, you could do it. Well, I don't know. If Dan Patrick can actually do this

00:10:17.400 tenure thing in Texas, it does open up a question about using that technique more often. I just don't

00:10:25.460 know if that's a good idea for Republicans. Well, we have a story, I think this was on CNN,

00:10:31.640 a professor of African and Latin American studies, who had been a professor at George Washington

00:10:37.220 University for a long time, taking advantage of her background. She wrote extensively about Africa

00:10:43.580 and Latin America. And so that was sort of her thing. She was an expert on that. And of course,

00:10:50.680 it probably helped that she was identifying as African and Latin American. Turns out she was none 0.99

00:10:57.860 of those things. She was just a white woman who had pretended all of her life to be a black and slash 1.00

00:11:06.940 Latina. Now, this is not the first time we've heard this story, is it? Am I right? We've heard a few

00:11:16.320 stories of white people trying to pass as black. Why is it that nobody tries to pass as white anymore?

00:11:26.040 Now, people have said this before, but this story gives me an opportunity to say it again.

00:11:31.020 There's only one thing you need to know about this fucking country.

00:11:38.420 That people will pretend to be black for financial advantage. That's it. If you wanted to unpack 1.00

00:11:44.940 everything else you need to know about the United States, you could just tell them that one fact,

00:11:51.740 and if you uncoiled that, it would tell you everything about the United States. It's just the one fact.

00:11:56.960 That pretending to be a disadvantaged racial minority is a huge economic benefit. 1.00

00:12:08.100 I'm not wrong. Pretending to be the most disadvantaged minority would guaranteed, guaranteed, 1.00

00:12:17.360 be a huge economic benefit for you, if you played it right. Doesn't work the other way, does it?

00:12:24.220 Are you hearing any stories recently about the black person passing as white to get a job?

00:12:33.520 That's not happening anywhere. Not in the United States. Nobody's pretending to be white to get a 0.93

00:12:39.300 job. That wouldn't work. So it's easy to get lost in the detail. You know, who's teaching CRT and who's

00:12:48.740 kneeling for the national anthem? And what are cops doing to minority people, etc.? And those are all

00:12:55.300 important, you know, interesting questions. But if you wanted to just summarize the whole thing,

00:13:01.220 if you wanted just one story or one fact that would tell you everything you needed to know about the

00:13:07.200 rest, it's that pretending to be a disadvantaged minority is the best economic plan you could ever have. 0.99

00:13:14.540 And nobody disagrees with that, which is weird. You know, if I said that and other people said,

00:13:22.220 Scott, oh, you're crazy. You're crazy, Scott. That will never work. Well, of course it works. It

00:13:29.160 works really well. It works great. Everybody who's ever tried it says it works. There are very few

00:13:34.600 things that work as well as that, actually. Anyway. Apparently, I saw a tweet by Ian Miles Chung saying that

00:13:44.720 the Ottawa police are going after local businesses that supported the truckers. There's a coffee shop

00:13:51.580 that served coffee to the truckers, and the officials are closing them down for serving coffee to the

00:13:58.400 truckers. Now, I'm no military strategist. But let me just put this out there. If it turns out that

00:14:11.060 Putin invades Ukraine, and if it turns out that the cover or the the diversion of that allows President

00:14:19.580 Xi and Xi and China to attack Taiwan, I think that would be the time to make a move for the United States to 0.96

00:14:27.700 invade Canada and try to free their citizens. Because I do see a cry for help, if you know what I mean. Now, I don't

00:14:36.140 know how much stinger missile, you know, anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry Canada has. They probably have a

00:14:44.680 little, but no, no Second Amendment, right? So I feel like we could maybe not control the entire of

00:14:52.900 Canada, because most of it is just, you know, snow and a moose here and there. But there's this little

00:15:00.960 this little corner of Canada where pretty much 90% of all the population lives is sort of the valuable

00:15:07.060 part. We could just take over that. Just take over the populated part. Leave the rest, you know, for

00:15:15.280 the mice, the meese. What's the plural of moose? Mises? The meese. The mooses? Mooses. I need a fact check on

00:15:29.500 this. Is moose plural as well as singular? Well, I'll be damned. Did you know that? That moose is

00:15:38.720 both singular and plural. So you could say, look at that moose. Or you could say, look at all those

00:15:44.800 moose. Hey, there's moose in the backyard. Just one? Oh, hundreds. Moose. Well, if we didn't have

00:15:55.960 enough reason to attack Canada, we should at least attack for the benefit of giving them 0.99

00:16:02.700 proper plural words. Because apparently Canada doesn't have a plural for moose. And I think

00:16:11.680 they need one. So if we could just bring them a plural for moose and freedom, but not coffee.

00:16:19.180 Not coffee. If you bring coffee to anybody in Canada, you could be closed down. But I think

00:16:24.380 we can invade. I think we can give them a plural for moose. And I think we could have a beer with

00:16:31.200 them. And it would probably be the least violent war of all times. Something tells me the Canadians 0.98

00:16:38.380 would just sort of welcome you in, you know. Like if the American army appeared on the border,

00:16:44.020 the Canadians would be like, hey, come on in and have a beer. And the Americans would be like,

00:16:49.200 what? Yeah, come on in and have a beer. And we'd be like, okay. And we'd sort of conquer

00:16:56.020 Canada, but nobody would really know what happened. It would be more like a conceptual

00:17:01.180 thing. We'd end up partying because we like Canadians. So we'd end up partying and drinking

00:17:08.880 beer and complaining about the lack of a plural for moose. And then we'd go home. But I think we

00:17:16.420 could bring some freedom while we're there. So just think about it. 60 Minutes had a program

00:17:23.560 about the alleged secret sonic or maybe microwave weapon that has been scrambling the brains of

00:17:29.940 people all over the globe. And I ask you, why is 60 Minutes doing a story on that now?

00:17:36.880 Why would 60 Minutes do a story on the secret sonic weapon now? What would be happening now

00:17:45.300 that would make that a story? Because it's a little bit sort of maybe anti-Russian, isn't

00:17:51.860 it? Is that a coincidence? Now, I don't know if the story ever tried to pin the blame on anybody.

00:17:59.280 But remember originally, when we talked about it, the speculation was it was some kind of Russian

00:18:06.120 weapon? There's no evidence of that whatsoever. And I think it's a ridiculous hypothesis. But

00:18:13.780 I wonder, is it a coincidence that this vaguely but not really proven Russian connection to a thing

00:18:21.080 that may not even exist in reality at all, is it a coincidence that it happened right now,

00:18:27.260 just when Russia is poised to attack? It doesn't feel like it. Does it feel like a coincidence to you?

00:18:33.480 I mean, it could be. Coincidences do happen, right? Well, I just put that out there. But the bottom line

00:18:39.660 was there seemed to be a thousand incidents that have been reported, but they don't have any idea

00:18:46.240 what the, you know, what the cause is, basically. It's a whole story that says we don't know what

00:18:50.900 the story is. There's just something or not.

00:18:53.660 So as Jack Posobiec reports, Kamala Harris is doing a tremendous job, starting off in her assignment

00:19:06.000 to be the lead on this Ukraine business. And if you want to hear some inspiring words,

00:19:13.800 this is what our own Vice President Harris said when she was asked,

00:19:18.620 Will sanctions deter Putin? So Jack Posobiec was tweeting about this. And Kamala Harris said,

00:19:25.680 and I quote, and if anybody here needs to be inspired, if you're feeling down a little bit,

00:19:34.560 I want you to listen to the inspirational words of our Vice President, and watch how this makes you

00:19:39.860 feel. I think it'll pick you up a little bit. And so Vice President Harris said when asked,

00:19:44.840 will sanctions deter Putin? She said, within the context, then, of the fact that that window is

00:19:53.120 still opening, although open, although it is absolutely narrowing, but within the context of

00:19:59.780 a diplomatic path still being open. I'm sorry, a tear came to my eye. I've never been so inspired.

00:20:09.720 It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Well, so Putin is apparently doing some kind of a

00:20:21.720 reality TV show right now, in which his Security Council is meeting with him to decide the fate of

00:20:30.860 Ukraine. And it's televised. Now, I haven't seen the feed. I've only seen the reports of it.

00:20:38.420 Is anybody watching that? I don't know if it's easy to watch with the translations and what.

00:20:45.300 Yeah, I think in real time, Putin is videotaping a live session of his Security Council. Now,

00:20:51.820 of course, it's all fake, right? Because everybody knows to say what Putin wants him to say. But

00:20:58.440 we may be finding out the future of Europe with a reality TV show. That could actually be in real life,

00:21:10.000 like no exaggeration. It's a reality TV show, and it will determine the fate of Europe. Now,

00:21:17.880 it's not a real reality show because we already know the outcome. All right. I saw this great article

00:21:25.580 on also CNN by Matthew Schmidt as we're trying to figure out what might Putin do and why might he do

00:21:34.060 it. The why is the interesting part. Because I guess maybe there's so many reasons that why doesn't

00:21:41.080 make sense because it's really a bag of good reasons that are all individually good and collectively

00:21:45.960 even better. But let's see what we can learn that we didn't already know. So this is from Matthew

00:21:53.220 Shred. He says, first of all, there are a lot of Ukrainians living in Russia. A lot of Ukrainians 0.86

00:22:00.080 live in Russia. People have Ukrainian background, I guess. How happy would Ukrainians living in Russia 1.00

00:22:08.800 be if Russia turns its guns on Ukrainians? Their relatives. It's a civil war among people who know

00:22:17.960 each other. That feels like the least popular thing anybody could do. Could you imagine, you know,

00:22:25.820 the president of the United States attacking Florida? Well, everybody has a friend in Florida.

00:22:32.280 Is there anybody here who doesn't have a friend in Florida or a family member? In the comments,

00:22:38.240 tell me, how many of you have at least a friend or a family member in Florida, just to pick a random

00:22:43.660 state? A lot, right? How many Russians have a friend in Ukraine? I don't know. I don't know,

00:22:53.460 but it's a lot, right? I remember when Kim Jong-un was threatening to nuke the United States and some

00:23:04.540 smart people were saying he won't nuke his friend. What's his friend? Not Trump. Basketball player.

00:23:15.340 Who's the basketball player who's friends with Rodman? Yeah. And so somebody said, he's not going to nuke his

00:23:21.380 friend, Dennis Rodman. And you think about that, and that's actually a pretty good reason. It's actually a pretty good

00:23:29.840 reason. That, you know, even if Kim Jong-un had some wild, crazy plans, would he nuke his friend?

00:23:39.000 The guy he invites over all the time? I don't know. It's actually a perfectly good question. I don't know

00:23:46.480 that he would. Would you? Would you nuke your friend? It's pretty hard to do.

00:23:52.520 So that's a factor that, you know, Putin has some domestic stuff he has to worry about.

00:24:01.660 The other thing is, as Matthew Schmidt points out, Ukraine might have way more effective weapons than 0.60

00:24:07.260 the Russians think. Who told you that? That's what I've been saying for a number of days. Now, 0.92

00:24:13.860 I don't know that Ukraine has much more effective weapons. What I know is that nobody knows. I don't

00:24:22.840 think Putin knows. For example, Putin wouldn't know how many anti-tank missiles they have, and

00:24:29.880 he wouldn't know how many stingers they have, right? And he wouldn't know where they are,

00:24:34.460 necessarily. He might know some of that, but he's not going to know the bigger picture.

00:24:38.520 So, um, and so the technology and the training are way different than anything Russia has ever

00:24:46.460 encountered with their modern army. So Russia has never moved against anybody who had this kind of

00:24:52.360 weaponry. What's going to happen? When was the last time the Russian army took, got a, like a serious

00:24:59.820 bloody nose? Like somebody actually made them retreat? I don't know, maybe never? And well, I mean,

00:25:07.640 since World War II or something. Uh, well, Afghanistan was sort of a low, slow bleed. I'm talking about 1.00

00:25:15.140 an actual army moving in and just getting its ass kicked and having to retreat, like on the

00:25:22.380 battlefield, like not even being able to go forward. That could actually happen. I think the Ukraine, 0.96

00:25:29.240 Ukrainians might have enough weaponry to, you know, block an armored, armored movement. I don't know. 0.97

00:25:36.500 We'll see. So Putin has to deal with the fact that there's a huge unknown about the level of

00:25:42.400 resistance. And, uh, here's, here's the big question for me. Do you think it's profitable?

00:25:53.960 Do you think that Putin has judged that, that if things go the way he wants them to go,

00:25:59.740 that Russia will make more money or be worth more? And here's my question. If we can come up with a

00:26:10.580 economic forecast for climate change, think about how complicated that is. Coming up with an economic

00:26:17.700 forecast for climate change. Now, of course, I always say that that's basically impossible. Too many

00:26:23.540 variables, you know, too long a timeframe, but we still do it. And we do it for persuasion purposes,

00:26:30.860 don't we? It's not exactly to know what's going to happen. It's more because it's persuasive to put

00:26:37.060 a price tag on things. Why is there no price tag on this war? Not for the United States and not for

00:26:43.940 NATO, because we sort of have to do what we have to do. But it's an optional war for Putin,

00:26:50.020 isn't it? It's an optional war. So why isn't somebody said, if you do this, you'll lose this

00:26:56.780 amount of money? Because there'll be sanctions put on, so you can calculate that. Now, you can't

00:27:02.860 calculate anything accurately, but again, does it matter? We still do it for climate change. We do

00:27:09.640 inaccurate predictions for lots of things, because it at least tells you what the scary parts look like,

00:27:15.960 potentially. So wouldn't you like to see our economists say, all right, let's do the pluses

00:27:22.900 and the minuses here. So Putin's going to spend X amount of money directly on the military. So you

00:27:28.940 could probably estimate that, don't you think? You know, because we've got the satellites, so we've

00:27:34.120 got some rough estimate of what wars cost. So I think we could put a number on that. Then you could say,

00:27:40.880 what will happen with the sanctions? You could put a number on that. It might be a range, but it'd still

00:27:46.380 be a number. What would happen with Russia's future sales of gas, especially? Well, you could probably

00:27:58.740 put a number on that because of, let's say, fewer pipelines in case they get closed down, etc.

00:28:05.180 Now, you could also, you'd also have to put, I think, a value on Ukraine as an asset. So it's not just his

00:28:13.520 expenses. You know, what's it cost to keep the army running? You know, how much did you lose from your oil

00:28:18.460 sales? It's not just that. He's also acquiring an asset. So you'd have to take the entire value of Ukraine,

00:28:25.120 right, and add it to Russia. Now, I don't know, what's the value of the entire GDP of Ukraine? I don't know.

00:28:34.240 Let's say it's a trillion dollars. Who knows? Let's say it's a trillion dollars. He gets a trillion

00:28:41.800 dollars, right? If you don't own Ukraine, and then you do, you gained a trillion dollars. But is it an

00:28:49.720 asset that is cash positive or cash negative? It's a valuable asset, but does it produce more cash

00:28:58.740 than it uses? Because it's going to be expensive to hold it. An occupying army is really expensive,

00:29:05.080 right? So why don't we produce that number? Because there are two possibilities I can think of that,

00:29:13.700 you know, are likely to come out of that. One possibility is that it's wildly unprofitable.

00:29:18.700 Wouldn't you like to know that? And wouldn't you like to remind Putin of that? And wouldn't you

00:29:25.980 like his oligarchs, who do have some control over things, allegedly? I don't know exactly how that

00:29:33.140 works. But you think the oligarchs need to be a little bit happy for Putin to be safe? Would you

00:29:39.360 buy that? Even though Putin is strongly in control, don't you think he sort of needs to keep the

00:29:45.260 oligarchs on his side so they don't gang up against him? I think so. So suppose the West came up with an 0.97

00:29:53.560 economic projection. It said the GDP of Russia will lose X trillions of dollars, and you oligarchs

00:30:04.600 are likely to see your fortunes go down by 20%. Now, some oligarchs will make money, some won't,

00:30:11.920 right? Because it's never even. But suppose you said to the oligarchs, well, this looks like a 20 to

00:30:17.700 50% hit to your assets and your income, and there's no upside. Because that might be the case. Or

00:30:28.160 it could go grossly the other way. You could do the economic analysis and find out that it's a

00:30:35.640 no-brainer. That Putin really, really comes out ahead if he gets Ukraine. In which case, war is

00:30:42.500 guaranteed. Now, I tweeted yesterday a map, and this is a few years old, but I think it still worked,

00:30:48.620 a map of all the pipelines from Russia that cross through Ukraine. I kind of had this simple idea

00:30:57.040 in my mind that there were one or two pipelines. It turns out Ukraine is just crisscrossed with

00:31:04.680 pipelines. Ukraine is practically a pipeline itself. There's so many Russian pipelines in

00:31:11.280 different, you know, cobweb ways through the country to get to different places. So once you see the map

00:31:17.280 that Russia is completely dependent on Ukraine as its distribution, once you see that map,

00:31:25.840 you know Putin's going to take Ukraine. Until I saw the map, I actually thought he wouldn't do it.

00:31:34.100 And then I saw the map, I was like, oh, that's way too big of a strategic risk to have your pipelines

00:31:39.960 in other people's country. There's no way he's going to put up with that. In the long run, 0.98

00:31:44.960 for business purposes, which are also strategic, oh, yeah, on locals, somebody's publishing the map

00:31:52.520 right now. So if you get a chance, Google that. Once you see the map of the pipelines, you know that

00:31:59.340 Putin's going to take Ukraine. Because for purely business reasons, you can't have your competitors

00:32:06.960 or enemies control that much of your distribution. You just can't do that. So I think from an economic

00:32:14.760 perspective, this is a no-brainer for Putin. And he could put a trillion dollars into this and come

00:32:19.660 out ahead. What do you think? If I put a price tag on it of a trillion dollars, do you think he comes

00:32:26.440 out ahead? Because I think he does. I think he does. Without running any numbers, I think he would

00:32:34.200 make more than a trillion dollars in the long term. But he would also protect himself from an extreme

00:32:40.080 downside, which is the pipelines get attacked and destroyed.

00:32:47.480 Yeah, Ukraine is also a breadbasket, and that's going to matter as well, right? 0.99

00:32:52.400 So at this point, if you follow the money,

00:32:56.260 it does seem to me that it's inevitable

00:32:59.420 that Russia will have to control Ukraine one way or another,

00:33:03.520 either indirectly or directly. And then I asked this question. Which military and or

00:33:12.360 other kinds of businesses would gain if there's an attack? So if Russia attacks, we expect energy

00:33:21.420 prices to spike. And although there won't be more energy produced, you know, quickly in the short run,

00:33:27.580 all the energy that's there, the companies that produced it, get to charge more for doing the

00:33:34.980 same job. So they make a windfall profit for anybody who's competing with Russia as an energy

00:33:42.060 source. What about the companies that make the big tankers that carry the natural gas? Well, if the

00:33:48.800 pipelines from Russia are at risk, there's going to have to be a lot of shipping in in the short run,

00:33:54.980 shipping in of gas, probably American gas and from other places. The LPGA, yeah. And who makes

00:34:03.220 who makes a profit from that? Are you concerned that there are gigantic energy companies that would

00:34:11.240 make a huge profit if war breaks out? Because don't those gigantic energy companies have a lot of

00:34:17.240 influence on the government? Because lobbyists? It's starting to look, I'm not I'm not going to say

00:34:24.780 this as a fact. It's looking like we're inviting them in. And what would it look like if Biden really

00:34:32.720 wanted them to attack? Suppose he wanted it. What would that look like? Well, it would look like this.

00:34:41.160 The first thing you do is assign Vice President Harris to the job of preventing it. Am I right?

00:34:46.780 If you're Russia and you see that Harris has been assigned to prevent war, what would you think

00:34:53.760 about the United States' interest in avoiding war? I'm not joking. You would think they're not serious

00:35:01.200 about it. Am I right? Because you could think of a lot of people you could send to do this job

00:35:07.400 that Russia would take seriously. But this is the only one they would. So it's almost as if we're

00:35:14.200 signaling to them we want you to invade. Here's another hint. Why do we insist on applying the

00:35:21.900 sanctions after invasion? When Ukraine itself is saying, could you put those sanctions on now

00:35:29.480 and maybe it will deter them? And we say, no, no, no, it's after the invasion we'll put them on

00:35:36.440 when it's too late. Doesn't that sound a lot like maybe we want them to invade? Because if you have the

00:35:42.840 option of preventing it and you don't do it while you have the option, that kind of means you want

00:35:50.980 them to invade. Am I going too far with that? Here's another one. Don't negotiate with Russia 0.99

00:35:59.260 seriously. When you've heard of the back and forth between Russia and the United States, does it sound

00:36:05.480 like we did that seriously? Because it doesn't to me. We should have at least said, you know,

00:36:12.360 your security concerns are valid. How can we work together so that we're less afraid of you and

00:36:19.980 you're less afraid of us? But I don't even think the conversation happened. Now it could be that

00:36:25.720 there's so much distrust it was a waste of time, maybe. But if you're putting together the hints,

00:36:33.240 Harris is in charge of stopping the war, which looks like we're not trying. We're going to apply

00:36:39.380 the sanctions after invasion, which looks like we're not trying to avoid it. We're not even

00:36:46.600 negotiating seriously, in my opinion. I think you'd have to be in the room to know for sure. But it

00:36:51.680 doesn't look serious. Nobody's even suggested any kind of accommodation for anything. And then we're

00:37:00.920 actively creating these alternative channels for delivering gas to Europe, aren't we?

00:37:08.340 To me, it looks like we want them to invade so that we can essentially clamp down on Russia as a 0.98

00:37:15.000 provider of energy. And how much does the United States love Ukraine as an independent country?

00:37:23.040 I feel like Ukraine is just an expensive pain in the ass. And would we be worse off if Russia owned 1.00

00:37:30.740 the whole thing outright? I mean, I'm not saying I want that to happen. But if you're doing the cold

00:37:36.500 calculations of war, you have to ask yourself, does it make any difference? Now, part of the reason I

00:37:43.720 understand strategically is that Russia doesn't want missiles and missile defense that's right on their

00:37:48.800 doorstep. But does any of that stuff matter anymore? Can't Russia destroy us and we can destroy them 0.99

00:37:56.580 if we wanted to? There's nothing anybody can do to stop any of that, is there? So I'm not even sure

00:38:01.800 that any of that missiles on the doorstep made any difference, really. You don't want Russia to be 0.98

00:38:09.880 desperate. That's true. All right. Colonel Jack Jacobs was on a show. I don't know which new show it was.

00:38:22.380 But he was saying that suppose you were Russia and you just wanted to make a trillion dollars

00:38:27.660 without working. How would you do it? You would buy stock and a bunch of energy companies just on the

00:38:35.100 stock market. And then you would threaten war with Ukraine. And then the value of those stock

00:38:40.560 energy companies would go up and then you sell it. And then you say, oh, we're pulling back.

00:38:47.100 And then the energy prices go down. But you've already sold. So you buy them again. And then you

00:38:53.020 threaten again. And then the energy prices go up. And you sell it again. And you can short the Dow

00:39:00.920 and go long. Long means buying and short means you make money if it goes down. You could actually,

00:39:09.340 if you were Russia, you could actually invest in the stock market and then make it move the way you want

00:39:14.680 by where you put your army. So Russia could have extracted a trillion dollars out of our system 0.57

00:39:21.200 just by threatening. They may have already paid for the war.

00:39:25.780 That's right. There's no evidence that they did this, by the way. But if they did this,

00:39:34.700 if they invested before they moved their military assets, in other words, having insider information,

00:39:40.960 because only they knew what they were going to do, they may have already paid for the war.

00:39:44.720 They may have made a trillion dollars in stock gains already. Paid for the war. Possible.

00:39:50.780 I mean, it's unlikely, but it's weird that it's possible. All right.

00:40:01.700 And that is what I wanted to say today. So given the follow the money scenario,

00:40:10.260 and given that we haven't done an economic cost, and by the way, this is more evidence that we want

00:40:16.400 them to attack. If we didn't want them to attack, don't you think the United States would have

00:40:22.100 created a financial estimate of how expensive it would be? Because it's obvious, isn't it?

00:40:30.460 I mean, I don't think we've ever done it for any other war, but as soon as I say it, 0.83

00:40:34.860 it's kind of obvious, isn't it? Am I wrong? Am I wrong that that's just an obvious play?

00:40:39.940 Just do the math. Tell Russia how expensive it's going to be.

00:40:47.580 Now, I'm seeing some people say that the money doesn't matter, and that there are other issues.

00:40:54.760 But I would argue this. If the other issue is national defense, the money makes more difference

00:41:01.480 than anything. You know, being profitable is definitely the thing that keeps you the safest.

00:41:06.840 just being profitable. But could there be other things such as national pride or that sort of

00:41:14.980 thing? Yes, but I'll bet they don't overcome the economic things. You know, the reason that

00:41:20.500 follow the money is so predictive is because it always works. You know, if follow the money didn't

00:41:29.360 always work, it wouldn't be the most common thing that people say, right? Well, I suppose it could be,

00:41:35.440 but, you know, it does work. And I believe that, and as I've often said, follow the money works even if

00:41:42.480 the people who are making the decisions aren't thinking that way. People automatically go where

00:41:49.680 the money goes, even if their brain is saying, well, I'm doing this for national pride or some other

00:41:55.300 reason. They still go where the money goes. And it's not a coincidence. Money is just too powerful.

00:42:02.560 It just drags you wherever it is. Boo the cat. I'm taking her into the vet again. She's not doing

00:42:10.360 well. But so this week, I'll take her in again. Have I noticed tons of ads for green technology? Not

00:42:18.300 really. But I'll look for it. Did you see the UN Gulf Stream that arrived in Ottawa and then flew to

00:42:27.260 Washington, D.C.? Well, I don't know what you're implying by that. I saw a story about that, but I

00:42:32.600 didn't know what the implication was supposed to be. All right. And that, ladies and gentlemen,

00:42:39.960 is all I have to say about the news today.

00:42:41.840 How does the fear frame filter work on Ukraine? Well, if I were going to try to stop

00:42:54.060 a war, I would be using fear persuasion to scare the Russian soldiers themselves because they don't

00:43:03.640 know what kind of a killing field they're walking into. So you want to lower the morale of the Russian

00:43:10.140 troops, which you don't imagine would be that high to begin with, because they're attacking

00:43:14.920 other Russians, basically. You know, the Ukraine-Russia thing is such a brother-cousin situation that

00:43:21.740 they've... How could you have good... Let me ask you this. If a civil war broke out in the United

00:43:28.020 States, and again, I'll just pick a state, and, you know, let's say Florida was the breakaway

00:43:33.540 state. How much morale would U.S. troops have to go in and shoot Floridians? Am I right? Like,

00:43:42.360 you're a soldier in the U.S. Army, and you've been ordered to go shoot citizens in Florida. Are you

00:43:48.320 going to do it? Even if they're a breakaway revolutionary state, are you going to do it?

00:43:54.200 I don't think so. So I think that Putin has a real morale problem, and I think you can make

00:44:00.540 it worse by using fear persuasion to, first of all, tell the Russian soldiers if you can

00:44:07.200 get to them. And by the way, can you get to them? Do you suspect that even though Russia 0.57

00:44:13.080 controls information, you know, aggressively, do you suspect that the average soldier just

00:44:19.380 can't get information from the outside world? Because maybe they can't. Maybe they can't.

00:44:26.600 Well, if they can, it seems like we could get to them. I would imagine there's some way

00:44:32.940 to do it. But they should have images in their heads of just being mowed down when they cross

00:44:40.620 the border. They should think of it like the Normandy landing, like it's just going to be 0.97

00:44:46.420 bullets. The air will be thick with bullets from Ukrainian guns. And they should think about 1.00

00:44:54.560 that long and hard. And they should think that even if they survived, all they got to do

00:44:59.100 was kill their own cousins. Right? All right. The bad news is you might get killed or disabled 0.98

00:45:05.440 for life. But that's if you fail. If you're successful, you get to kill people you didn't

00:45:12.420 want to kill who are basically your family members. I can't imagine that morale would be

00:45:18.980 any lower. But if we could lower us some more, that might be useful. Yeah, Russian soldiers are 0.98

00:45:27.280 not allowed to have smartphones. I would assume that's the case. But it doesn't mean they don't

00:45:30.900 know anybody who has one. There's got to be information coming in from other sources.

00:45:37.100 Maybe not well enough to change anything. Wouldn't a Ukraine invasion help China? 0.97

00:45:42.600 Would it? China is very anti-war. Because it's just never good for business. I feel as if

00:45:52.560 China would be opposed to that war. Although you can imagine it would give them cover for 0.57

00:45:58.920 Taiwan. It would keep us busy. You know, keep two armies. It would make a lot of military

00:46:05.260 poorer, I guess. Because they'd spend a lot of money there. Yeah, I mean, I feel as though

00:46:11.100 China's policy of non-involvement in this stuff is kind of brilliant. It's kind of brilliant.

00:46:24.080 Maybe Putin is really standing up to China. I don't see that happening.

00:46:31.380 Get off the weed. Yeah, the Belt and Road. Right. China needs to be friends with everybody

00:46:37.540 to build out their Belt and Road. So China's take over the world strategy is commerce, to 0.86

00:46:42.820 make everybody dependent on them for commerce, which is a good strategy. All right, that's

00:46:48.040 all I've got left. I will say goodbye to you on YouTube, and I'll talk to you later.

00:46:53.140 Thanks for coming.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 21, 2022

Episode 1661 Scott Adams： Let's Follow the Bunny and Predict What Happens With Ukraine, & Other Fun

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