The Deep State has been running things for a very long time, and now it s time to take matters into our own hands. Matthew Colon is here to talk to us about how the Deep State is running things, and why it s been doing so for as long as we can remember. He s also going to talk about why the deep state doesn t like Donald Trump, and how they conspired to ensure that a theory that never had legs from the get-go was spread everywhere. Plus, Elon Musk went out the other night, and he ain t even had a shave! Join the conversation by using the hashtag on and , and find out what he s up to on . And don t forget to Like, Subscribe and Subscribe to our new podcast, RUMBLE, wherever you get your news and information. We re on all of the social medias, if you search for us, you ll be the first to know who we re talking to. You re not going to want to miss this one. We ll be available on all major podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Pocketcasts, and The Huffington Post, so make sure to check them out! Subscribe, Share and Shout Out! and spread the word to your friends about what we re doing on all the great stuff we're talking about! - including TikTok, Tik Tok, TikTok and TikTok! Timestamps: 0:00 - What's up? 6:30 - What s up? 6:20 - What do you think of Elon Musk's Shoutout? 8:00:00 | What szn? 9:15 - What is up with Elon Musk? 11: What s going to happen next? 13:00 15:00 + What s the deal with Elon's Shrinking? 16:30 17:40 - Is he enjoying it? 18:30 | Is he not losing himself? 19:15 21:15 | What does he have a shave? 22:30 Is he losing himself in Paris? 26:40 27:30 What s he getting a shave ? 33: Is he getting mashed? 35:00 Is he going to get mashed by the other half? 36:00 Does he like it there? 37:00 Do you like it?
00:00:10.000And that's the only reason he won that election.
00:00:12.000Otherwise, how could Donald Trump win an election?
00:00:15.000It's not like people are so disillusioned with democracy and career politicians.
00:00:20.000And the obvious financial corruption that's rife in Washington, that someone that used populist rhetoric and had charisma would overcome a plain-as-day career politician and out-and-out cynic like Hillary Clinton, must have been that the Russians were involved.
00:00:36.000So finally we've got proof that it was because of Russian cyber hacking that Donald Trump even won the election.
00:00:44.000So I guess he shouldn't have... Oh no, sorry, it's the opposite.
00:00:47.000Russia weren't involved at all and the mainstream media and the Democrat Party and the FBI conspired to ensure that a theory, a story that never had legs from the get-go was spread everywhere.
00:01:03.000Let us know in the chat and the comments right now how you feel about what you gotta call deep state duplicity.
00:01:12.000However you feel about Donald Trump, how do you feel about the systems that generate the possibility for new types of populist leaders to emerge?
00:01:23.000I know a lot of you love Donald Trump and I know a lot of you don't like Donald Trump and we believe that it's the system itself that needs to change and that's the kind of conversation we want to have with you and guess what?
00:01:33.000We can't have that conversation with you on YouTube because YouTube censors the kind of information that we'll be talking about on Rumble, so there's a link in the description.
00:01:41.000You click on that, after our 15-20 minutes, we'll be available exclusively on Rumble.
00:01:45.000And thank God we are, because I'll be talking to Matthew Colony, who's going to talk to us about how the Deep State has been running things for time!
00:02:20.000So look, we're going to be talking about that.
00:02:22.000We're going to be talking about the FBI running with this steel dossier funded by the Clinton campaign.
00:02:28.000Hillary Clinton personally signing that off.
00:02:31.000We're going to be talking about how 1.3 million people have access to your most private data and the government spent $18 billion a year preventing you from seeing any of it.
00:02:42.000So if you want to learn about that, Hate speech?
00:02:47.000Attacking the deep state and global corporatism and the total hollowing out of American democracy in order to create a globalist new order where none but the most powerful have any sway over process at all, where simple things like asking water companies to stop polluting the water that they use, where things like making energy companies responsible and ending their subsidies We're things like asking big tech to stop bundling and selling your data.
00:03:12.000We're getting the mainstream media to be honest with you.
00:03:15.000Where all of these things seem impossible now.
00:03:17.000Where the impossibility of ordinary people reaching out in love to one another is daily doubled down on by a hate-generating mainstream media.
00:03:25.000But if you want to change all that stuff, join us.
00:03:27.000That's what we're interested in doing.
00:03:28.000But first, Elon Musk went out the other night.
00:04:32.000Well, I'm not suggesting that Elon Musk was anything other than on the level.
00:04:36.000So the main news that we're talking about on the show today is the Durham report.
00:04:42.000The whole Russiagate thing was just basically made up.
00:04:45.000Now we can deal with that because we've been telling you for a long time, and you've been telling us, let us know in the comments in the chat if you were surprised by this stuff, that the deep state and global corporations are involved in managing narratives, manipulating power.
00:04:59.000So when stuff like this happens, it doesn't bother me, of course, naturally.
00:05:03.000But how is it for people that are invested in the mainstream media?
00:05:08.000That believe that by voting for this party over that party you're doing something meaningful.
00:05:13.000That it actually represents something to them.
00:05:20.000That's why there's new legislation being passed in all of the Five Eyes countries.
00:05:24.000Those are the anglophonic nation who Edward Snowden revealed share the data of their partners with one another to get round domestic spying laws.
00:05:33.000You're not supposed to spy on your own domestic population.
00:05:35.000As Snowden revealed, your government does spy on you and one of the techniques is stockpiling that data and then like New Zealand will spy on the English people, the English people will spy on the Australian people and it's like a little circle jerk wife swap of espionage and it sickens me and it's gotta stop and that's why I'm talking to Matthew Connolly later about deep state power, but we can only do that exclusively on Rumble.
00:06:00.000And because free speech is so important to us, why would we deny it to you?
00:06:04.000If you're not with us on Locals already, join us there now.
00:07:13.000Because what he's done there is he's simply got, I described how to do it in a recent episode because in the last one, the last title sequence, I mean show the last title sequence.
00:07:21.000That's actually very clever what he's done there because there's literally not, there's nothing you can say about it.
00:07:25.000There is, I can say that that was a starting point, that was a starting point.
00:07:29.000Now employ your expertise, pull up the previous thing that you had before, show us what you had last time.
00:08:46.000Potentially fantastic assets some people pointing out that our item about this week in history showed in the photo We showed the first ever McDonald's advert and it showcased a man called Willard Scott who if you're American you care about There's some stuff here about Pfizer vaccines and all sorts of stuff.
00:09:09.000Before we leave the item for each, which is brilliant, and Gareth, please pick a few comments of your own.
00:09:14.000Have a look at what Jack did previously that led me to give him the opportunity to create that meta ironic and sarcastic piece of graphics that you've just seen.
00:09:23.000It's the very sort of thing we've come to expect from Gen Z, but this is his previous effort.
00:10:03.000We will get RFK back on because we have made this decision.
00:10:06.000We are going to showcase and platform RFK because I think that he will alter the debate.
00:10:13.000I'm sure that a democratic party that Stymies and ultimately negates the popularity of Bernie Sanders through the internal party mechanics.
00:10:22.000He's going to give pretty short shrift to a guy that's saying he's going to disband the CIA.
00:10:27.000That JFK was a CIA asset that they then went on to murder.
00:10:34.000The pandemic, I'm not going to say what he said about the pandemic.
00:10:38.000Antony Fauci, I'm not going to say what he said about Antony Fauci.
00:10:41.000They are going to shut that guy down hard.
00:10:43.000But the fact is, is with independent media, he is going to have a voice.
00:10:47.000And because the stuff he's talking about, it's the very things that we care about.
00:10:58.000Like, because Marianne believes that as, like, you know, we always talk about the necessity for significant systemic change.
00:11:05.000That's why later in the week when we talk to former MI5 operative Ami Mashon, I raise with her the possibility of disbanding MI5, FBI, CIA.
00:11:14.000She, of course, will say that there's good people in those organizations, such as there are great people in the police force, teaching professions, national health or medical professions.
00:11:23.000But they, within their institutions, it's difficult to succeed because the institutions all become corralled either to minimising expenditure or servicing the needs of powerful establishment elites.
00:11:35.000Either that or they just don't do the work, as is the case with this Trump case that Dimes found out.
00:11:41.000Did you do even the rudimentary checks?
00:11:43.000Yes, not rudimentary ones, no, we didn't do those.
00:11:46.000We just went on and just sort of promulgated this story throughout the mainstream media with our allies over at CNN, without checking if it was remotely true.
00:11:55.000Also, from the mainstream media, we're going to be talking to our friend Charlie Langton, who you might remember from his, is it May the 4th or May 20th?
00:12:04.000The one where you're allowed to smoke marijuana and stuff in America.
00:12:08.000Yeah, I think it's April 20th, I think.
00:12:09.000He did a very amusing report for Fox News.
00:12:14.000And sometimes we like to talk to mainstream reporters to see what sort of stuff they do and say, hey, listen, we're going to leave.
00:12:20.000If you're on YouTube, remember in a minute, we're going to be talking to Matthew Connolly about the deep state, about the 1.3 million Americans who have access to your top secret information.
00:12:30.000They can spy on you, but they spend billions preventing you knowing what they're doing.
00:13:34.000Well, then we... Because I'm blaming you.
00:13:35.000No, I mean, it's just, it wasn't showing this, it was just talking about marijuana and just like, you know, some of the legal stuff that's going on with marijuana at the moment.
00:13:44.000They took Rachel Maddow saying you can get a vaccine, you won't spread it.
00:14:40.000But the people on 4-20, the day that they, apparently they smoked marijuana out in the open, we went to the west side of Detroit, which is kind of an area of Detroit that's a, you know, it's a little poverty area, that type of thing.
00:16:49.000So I think that the media can I think it reflects culture in a way that, if I did this, I could never do the pot story on the weed bus five years ago.
00:17:02.000I probably couldn't do it three years ago.
00:17:04.000I did it last year, but this year it evolves.
00:17:08.000I think we have—listen, mainstream media is entertainment.
00:17:13.000In my view, it's got to be an element of entertainment, 50 percent, 60 percent, whatever the story is.
00:17:20.000Obviously, on a triple murder on the east side of Detroit, it's not going to be as ha-ha entertaining.
00:17:26.000But there still has to be an element of where we want people to relate to it.
00:17:30.000So, you know, we can do a hate piece, and I do think sometimes media types tend to maybe over Serious the story doesn't need to be.
00:17:41.000Tell the story as if you know it, as if it can relate to anybody out there.
00:18:41.000When there is so much partisanship with CNN and MSNBC saying Fox is the worst thing in the world,
00:18:46.000with Fox saying that they're snowflakes and they're like, you know, full of crap and stuff.
00:18:50.000How do you feel the media is gonna have to evolve and adapt?
00:18:53.000Do you think it will be by becoming more partisan?
00:18:56.000How do you feel it relates to stories like the one that I mentioned,
00:18:59.000like with the FBI and the mainstream media collaborating to create the Russiagate story,
00:19:03.000and also the media becoming part of the story as through the aforementioned Dominion thing?
00:19:10.000But I think, I think with the Dominion, I think with Fox, I think that if I'm a conservative person and I love Donald Trump and I want to see him run again, I'm going to listen to Fox.
00:19:25.000If I am, if I love Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, I'm going to watch MSNBC and I'm going to hate Fox.
00:19:31.000And I think that we're often, we peg ourselves, if I want to be a good conservative, I'm going to watch and do everything that the Fox people say.
00:20:45.000Yeah, it's interesting when you have a story like CNN giving Trump that town hall and then going into a sort of orgy of coruscation and self-exhoration.
00:20:57.000After is an interesting litmus test for where the media finds itself.
00:21:32.000I think the creation of communities that share views while continuing to recognize we all have stuff in common with one another is important.
00:21:39.000I think that's an interesting distinction you've drawn there about local news.
00:21:43.000Feels like you are part of that community somewhat.
00:21:45.000I think I can make an argument that, you know, Donald Trump, for example, whether you love him or hate him, he's great for viewing.
00:21:51.000And I think that the fact that CNN is—and I watch CNN, I watch MSNBC, I watch Fox, I watch them all on the network.
00:21:58.000But I think that when they're going to—they're not going to end at Trump.
00:22:52.000People came out to the polls, people tend to vote when they're mad, and they did.
00:22:55.000And as a result, at least here in Michigan, Republicans lost every single race, all of the major statewide races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, etc.
00:23:04.000So I do think the media, though, Again, on the network level, I think that they're looking for things that are lightning rods, whether they get people to mad one way or another.
00:23:14.000And I think the Republicans now have to take a little bit of a step back and say, what issue is really going to get our party, the conservative party, to really go out there and vote?
00:23:26.000And I don't think it's happening so much on the local level, although Donald Trump's going to be in Michigan in about another month, I think it is.
00:23:43.000Use your legal skills and your love of recreational and medical marijuana to get the best damn Donald Trump interview that the world has seen.
00:23:51.000Charlie, thank you so much for giving us those insights and for sharing your time with us.
00:24:11.000Listen, we've got a fantastic conversation coming up.
00:24:13.000We're going to be speaking with Matthew Connolly about the influence and nefarious insidious power of the deep state.
00:24:19.000The way that they are able to assert and exert power and control in a manner that you may not have even speculated on before, unless you are a well-versed and well-read viewer of our channel.
00:24:31.000Before that, Oh yeah, well, Putin has put his nuclear forces on high alert.
00:24:38.000In other news, we're probably all going to be dead soon.
00:24:41.000And what's the thing that we were pairing it with?
00:24:43.000Oh yeah, when CNN put Trump on there for that town hall, and it became once again a culturally bifurcating issue, One area that struck us as significant here on Stay Free was Trump's refusal to, in a trite manner, say, oh, I support Ukraine or Russia, which sort of amount to, you know, sort of a new... Who do you want to win?
00:25:09.000Like, it just comes down to a new form of patriotism, carrying the message, whatever.
00:25:14.000You know, and really, I can't help but think that Trump's point that what's required is a diplomatic and peaceful solution is one worth investigating.
00:25:47.000Talk to you about the story that's broken today that the FBI didn't, it seems like, at least practice due diligence before promulgating the Russiagate allegations that dogged Trump throughout his presidency.
00:26:03.000Tell me, how does this fit into your broader understanding of deep state espionage agencies such as the FBI and CIA, please?
00:26:12.000Yeah, well, Russell, you know, if you were paying attention, you know, people who are tracking like FBI disclosures over the last few decades, you would find that time and again, they've had to admit agents, you know, at best misbehaving.
00:26:28.000Uh, and making mistakes, as they like to call them, when it comes to the surveillance of U.S.
00:26:33.000I mean, you go back almost a quarter of a century ago, the FBI disclosed dozens and dozens of instances in which FBI agents had gathered more information than they were entitled to.
00:26:44.000There was a study, another example, they found that FBI headquarters, when they ordered surveillance, more than half the time, they were exceeding the legal limits, right?
00:26:55.000So this has happened over and over and over again.
00:26:58.000And to me, like, the scandalous thing is what isn't illegal?
00:27:01.000I mean, the fact that, you know, these kinds of things have happened continuously for decades now, and yet no one has held to account.
00:27:09.000If this is an institutional problem, as you describe, and each time we learn of the FBI paying Twitter to censor information, or the CIA being involved in coups that ultimately lead to greater conflagration, Is there an argument, as Robert F. Kennedy suggests, for disbanding the CIA in particular?
00:27:35.000Are these institutions salvageable or do they have, at essence, a kind of, I don't know, if not negligence, a kind of hypocrisy?
00:27:44.000Is it impossible for them to function in order to protect a population?
00:27:48.000Well, you know, it is hard to imagine a world, you know, without the FBI, without the CIA.
00:27:54.000But I like to remind people that in the United States, these are relatively recent inventions.
00:27:59.000You know, going back, you know, before World War One, there was no Central Intelligence Agency.
00:28:04.000There was no Federal Bureau of Investigation.
00:28:09.000For the first 150 years of our history, we didn't have intelligence agencies.
00:28:13.000The only time that the U.S., you know, after the first You know, period, the revolution in the early republic.
00:28:18.000After that point, the only time the U.S.
00:28:20.000employed, you know, large numbers of spies and intercepted communications was during wartime.
00:28:26.000And after wars ended, they dismantled this apparatus.
00:28:29.000So it's not impossible to imagine that in the future, we won't necessarily have to have 18 different intelligence agencies.
00:28:37.000Like, to me, that's the aberration, the way that this system has just grown completely out of control.
00:28:43.000Matthew, since the Patriot Act, no American has any privacy.
00:28:49.000It's possible for them to store your data and look at it at will.
00:28:52.000One of the things that you cover in your book is the number of people that have access to information.
00:28:57.000I think you said up to 1.3 million people.
00:29:02.000I wonder if this kind of legislation and this kind of intrusion enforces the idea that the state has a degree of authority that infantilises a population.
00:29:16.000As you've just said, that typically these are the kind of measures that would be deployed in a war, then rescinded subsequently.
00:29:23.000The fact that they are ubiquitously applied suggests that there is a permanent state ...of paternalism and I'd like you to just explain to us a little more how since the Patriot Act the American population have been universally spied on and also about this how the recent attempts to review that legislation are being delayed under the auspices of protecting us from American drug cartels and stuff.
00:29:53.000Yeah, well, you know, there are people who would say the reason why we have the Patriot Act, you know, the reason why we have 18 different intelligence agencies and so on, you know, it's because that's the only way we can protect American lives, right?
00:30:05.000That it's our national security that's at stake.
00:30:07.000You know, but when you look back, those moments, periods, long periods, you know, when the United States was at peace, you know, in fact, you know, for a time where the world's only superpower I'm talking about the 1990s.
00:30:20.000Even then, you know, these intelligence agencies, especially the National Security Agency, were pushing to expand their surveillance powers, right?
00:30:28.000So it almost doesn't matter, you know, what kind of threats supposedly, you know, threatened the country.
00:30:34.000It seems like no matter what is happening in that outside world, inside our government, there are people who are constantly pushing to expand their ability to spy on the American people.
00:30:46.000Back in 1984, The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, this is the part of the government that sets the rules for everyone else.
00:30:55.000They're the ones at the OLC who get to decide what's legal and what isn't.
00:30:58.000They wrote an opinion according to which American surveillance agencies like the NSA, they can intercept our communications when they go abroad, right?
00:31:07.000So when American, you know, phone calls or emails or what have you, when they go through foreign data centers, all of that is fair game.
00:31:15.000And that is a giant legal loophole that allows, at least in principle, you know, the NSA and all these other agencies to systematically spy on American communications.
00:31:25.000You know, the funny part to me, first of all, it's the fact that it was written in 1984.
00:31:49.000One of the other revelations of Snowden was the collaboration between what are known as the Five Eyes countries, which I suppose suggests that ultimately this is a global problem, whilst there's no doubt that America has avowed enmity towards Russia and China and other countries that might challenge them for unipolar There is elsewhere a kind of what appears to be the deep state apparatus that undergirds global corporatism with neither party being willing to meaningfully amend these institutions and the legislation that we've even so far discussed which allows intrusion and breach of privacy of an unprecedented level
00:32:36.000What is there to be hopeful for in the conventional political space?
00:32:41.000No one talks about releasing Julian Assange.
00:32:43.000No one talks about releasing, to any serious degree, the files surrounding the murder of JFK.
00:32:51.000And this is all presumably because if we had the type of transparency to which we are entitled, we would conclude that these agencies primarily function in order to control the American population rather than protect them.
00:33:04.000So what is the political solution for a problem of the nature that's outlined in your writing?
00:33:11.000Yeah, well, you know, the theory behind the Five Eyes, and I think there's a lot of evidence to support it, is that what they're doing, basically, the Britain, British government, together with the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, each one of them can act, you know, outside their national boundaries in ways that they're not legally allowed to within those boundaries and against their own citizens.
00:33:32.000So the theory is that, you know, they could each spy on each other's citizens.
00:33:37.000I don't know for a fact, you know, that that's happening right now.
00:33:40.000But the fact is, you know, every government, including the U.S.
00:33:43.000government, does do these very operations when they're working abroad.
00:33:49.000And there's almost no limit, right, to how much and in what ways they will spy on the citizens of other states.
00:33:56.000So that means, you know, that no matter where you live, you're fair game, you know, for dozens of different intelligence agencies, many of them now equipped with the most powerful tools available from the private sector, right?
00:34:07.000Like the Pegasus software allows them to break into your iPhones and even turn smartphones into surveillance devices, right?
00:34:14.000So even like relatively small countries can now purchase this kind of technology off the shelf.
00:34:38.000So to the extent that people are blithely unaware of how governments can spy on them, this only is to their benefit and empowers them further.
00:34:47.000How come so many people got access and security clearance?
00:34:55.000Yeah, well, because, you know, there's so much classified information that you couldn't run this government without giving, you know, over a million people access to top secret information.
00:35:05.000So to give an example, back in 2012, the U.S.
00:35:07.000government itself issued an estimate as to how many times government officials were classifying information secret, so nobody would be allowed to see it for decades to come.
00:35:21.000Three times every second, some government official is deciding something had to be classified secret, right?
00:35:27.000So just imagine, you know, how would you even run, you know, the American military, these 18 different intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, the FBI, and all the rest of it, if you didn't have lots and lots of employees who had access to this information?
00:35:39.000And also all of their many consultants, right?
00:35:41.000So many hundreds of thousands of these people are not actually government employees.
00:35:45.000They're consultants working for the government, in some cases earning more than they used to, Back when they still worked for government, when they got these clearances.
00:35:55.000And that includes people like Jack Teixeira, the airman first class, who is found to be sharing secrets with his friends on Discord.
00:36:04.000So all kinds of people now have access to all kinds of information.
00:36:08.000And yet billions are being spent to prevent ordinary people gaining access to this information.
00:36:15.000So again, what kind of relationship does this suggest that actually exists between the state and the population that they govern?
00:36:25.000If they have access to all of our information and our access to their information is significantly impaired, how can we begin to meaningfully change the world, have a fairer world without Meaningfully addressing and amending institutes that don't tend to be affected by the cycles of transition within ordinary electoral democracy.
00:36:50.000Well, Russell, you know, every person who's run successfully for president of the United States has promised that they would bring a new day of transparency and accountability, and that includes Donald Trump.
00:37:01.000You know, Donald Trump, back in 2015, 2016, he promised he was going to release all the JFK files, but he didn't do it.
00:37:09.000It tells you something, the fact that these people, once they become president, If they didn't already, they fall in love with secrecy.
00:37:15.000It's one of the few ways that presidents can be completely unaccountable.
00:37:19.000Because Trump was right when he said basically presidents are sovereign over secrecy.
00:37:23.000What they decide is national security information is information nobody else is legally entitled to see, unless they have that so-called need to know.
00:38:42.000Well, if the next president actually did, you know, get elected on that platform and really did manage to dismantle this vast secrecy complex, it would be like nothing that's ever happened before in American history.
00:39:03.000And here's a man who so believed in transparency that when he gave an interview to Playboy magazine, he confessed that he sometimes felt lust in his heart, and he felt guilty about having these feelings that weren't about his wife, Rosalyn.
00:39:18.000OK, so this is the kind of man we're talking about.
00:39:32.000We can enumerate and count the number of classified documents.
00:39:35.000There was even more secrecy than before.
00:39:37.000And by the end of it, he was complaining, you know, about how so much information that was top secret and sensitive was available to far too many people.
00:39:45.000They wanted to create their own presidential secrecy stamp.
00:39:49.000You know what they were going to call it, Russell?
00:40:04.000They are unable to fulfill their earnest, heartfelt impressions once they are within these institutions.
00:40:11.000In a sense, it's an invitation to end the mudslinging and personal invective and condemnation of the individuals within that system.
00:40:20.000And to recognise that it's institutional change that is required, that whether it's someone like Donald Trump or RFK or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, that ultimately, once they're within that system, they will behave like people within that system, almost like an environmental thing, like it was a river or a rainforest.
00:40:37.000You might say, when I'm in the rainforest, I'm going to wear UGG boots and a heavy woolen shawl, but once you get in there, you're going to be trying to avoid the tree frogs and you're going to be there in a pair of swimming trunks.
00:40:55.000And, you know, the founders are right about this.
00:40:57.000You know, Jefferson and Adams, they'd write to each other, as soon as someone's in power, all of a sudden they believe they can do no wrong.
00:41:05.000No matter what they do, they're doing it for the right reasons.
00:41:07.000The only way you can hold people in check is to pit power against power.
00:41:12.000The only way you're going to bring a president to account and have them give up this sovereign control, this royal system of secrecy, is by getting the courts and Congress to start using their power.
00:41:23.000Okay, well I don't know enough to argue with you about that, because you're a professor at Columbia, and I'm the bloke out for getting Sarah Marshall.
00:41:46.000I'll be directing something called the Center for the Study of Existential Risk over at Cambridge.
00:41:51.000And so I'm not giving up my Columbia job.
00:41:54.000I'm still going to be an historian here.
00:41:55.000But for the next, you know, who knows how long, as long as it takes, perhaps, I'll be defending the world against super volcanoes and killer asteroids and AI insurrections.
00:42:27.000I was really interested in, obviously we mentioned Julian Assange and we were talking about RFK and his position is that he would pardon Assange and obviously that's a very popular opinion, but like the growing number of whistleblowers that have been charged under the Espionage Act, The way you talk about the bulk collection of data and the kind of surveillance and how it's just multiplying year upon year, what do you see for the, you mentioned Jack Teixeira as well, how do you see the kind of future of whistleblowing and the way in which the whistleblowers will be kind of shut down and the espionage app will be used against them?
00:43:00.000Do you see the amount of people, I mean I know Obama and Trump used it way more than had been used in the past, Do you think that this is just going to kind of keep growing exponentially until we have prisons full of whistleblowers?
00:43:15.000Under Obama, they prosecuted more people for leaking classified information under the Espionage Act than every administration combined up until that point.
00:43:24.000And one reason why that's now possible is because using electronic record systems, they can track more easily that people had access to particular kinds of records.
00:43:34.000So, it's now, like, technologically possible, you know, to begin more systematically identifying the people who are leaking information for their own secret reasons, in some cases.
00:43:43.000So, you know, I'm worried about the Assange case.
00:43:46.000Like, whatever you think of Julian Assange, in the last months of the Trump administration, they've decided to add to this indictment, you know, account for having violated the Espionage Act merely for releasing those Classified documents online.
00:44:02.000OK, so what's important about that is that this would be the first time that somebody has been prosecuted, you know, just for sharing what the government considers classified information.
00:44:14.000Now, if Assange is eventually brought to trial and is convicted for that, that's going to be an incredibly important and potentially dangerous precedent, because there are a lot of people out there, including perhaps you and me, you know, who share information the government thinks is classified.
00:44:26.000Could we also be prosecuted under the Espionage Act?
00:44:29.000If you actually read the black letter text of that law, it seems like there are hundreds of millions of people who could be locked up in American jails.
00:45:01.000I was just going to say, that's one reason why it's exciting for me because, you know, what you learn over the years, decades, you know, studying government information and the secrets that governments keep, is a lot of times that information is truly dangerous.
00:45:14.000Like, it really could get people killed.
00:45:16.000Maybe not every last human being on the planet, but as long as that's possible, people who care about the future of humanity, we have to care about government secrecy as well.
00:45:30.000Oh, well, it's like gallows humor, you know.
00:45:32.000I tell my students on the first day, I teach a class at History of the End of the World, and I say, like, if you can't laugh at things like pandemics and nuclear war, then this may not be the right class for you.
00:45:43.000And I say that in all sincerity, because the only way that I personally can study these horrible subjects like this is if I maintain a sense of humor.
00:45:53.000It's a little bit like that classic film, you know, the Manchurian Kennedy.
00:45:56.000Always with a sense of humor, comrade.
00:46:16.000So, you know, I spent years studying this stuff because when I first started out as a historian, I wanted to understand how France carried out this murderous war in North Africa.
00:46:25.000You know, anywhere from half a million to a million people in the end were killed in the course of Algeria's fight for independence.
00:46:32.000I spent months like looking at You know, propaganda files in government.
00:46:37.000And, you know, it's one of these things, it's a little bit like pornography, right, as the Supreme Court said, is you know it when you see it.
00:46:44.000But, you know, having seen it from the inside, you can see how it is, you know, even 60 years ago, that's what I'm talking about now, 60 years ago, governments were hiring like Madison Avenue firms to advise them on how they could carry out like counterinsurgency operations and make it appealing to the American public.
00:47:00.000And so you can only imagine now what's possible now that they're using things like ChatGPT to create this information.
00:47:07.000They're going to be able to do it now on an industrial scale.
00:47:10.000They'll be able to populate infinite numbers of websites with infinite amounts of false content.
00:47:15.000So yeah, it's just going to get worse.