Glenn Beck and Jason Calacanis discuss Central Bank Digital Currencies, Bitcoin, Central Banks, Bitcoin and much more. Recorded in Los Angeles, CA! Glenn Beck is an American conservative commentator, bestselling author, and radio host. He is the host of the popular conservative radio show "The Glenn Beck Show" and is a frequent contributor to conservative publications such as The Weekly Standard, USA Today, and the Financial Times. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
00:03:55.560First of all, let's remember that for years, Christine Lagarde and everybody else, both here, foreign and domestic, have said that any worry about a CBDC is just a conspiracy theory.
00:06:19.780Why would you be experimenting if you didn't think it would be something that you would eventually use?
00:06:26.380So anyway, 2021, Jerome Powell, who's our central bank guy, the Federal Reserve, he said, quote, CBDCs, this is not on, I love this one, not on the immediate horizon.
00:06:41.220Okay, so you're admitting that it is on the horizon.
00:06:47.140So in 2024, she, Lagarde, she comes out and she told the European Parliament that CBDC skepticism stemmed from conspiracy theories, saying the digital euro is not going to be big brother surveillance.
00:07:05.120Remember, what a central bank digital currency can do and will do, at least over in the Soviet, I mean, in Europe, will be that it will track everything you buy, everything you sell, everything you make.
00:15:31.520You know, I think people are starting to wake up to things that, you know, I woke up to AI
00:15:39.100when I read Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines back in the 90s.
00:15:44.700And that thing freaked me out so much.
00:15:46.500I'm like, ooh, wait, if this isn't fiction, we're in for a whole new world.
00:15:52.560And as I've been watching it come closer and closer and faster and faster, you know, Elon Musk said we're at the edge of the event horizon of the singularity.
00:16:02.600That means we're right up next to it, about to be sucked into it, not being able to turn around.
00:16:07.380Things in the next 48 months I think are going to look entirely different to most people.
00:16:19.040Yeah, and arguably, you know, in my day job, I'm not just a podcaster, I also angel invest in startup companies, about 100 a year.
00:16:29.120And so I get to have approximately 20,000 people apply for funding from my venture fund.
00:16:37.960And startups always are resource constrained, right?
00:16:42.200Two or three people in a garage with just a tiny amount of money or no money.
00:16:45.940So they actually use technology to build these companies, and they always go for the most efficient thing.
00:16:52.600And what we've seen is over the last two years, since ChatGPT launched to the public in the 3.5 format, is the same companies that took 10 people and a half million dollars to get a product to market, it's now being done by three people.
00:17:12.960And then if you were to look at some of the top technology companies, that's the next group who embraces this technology first.
00:17:20.780They're not as scrappy as startups, but they're tech companies.
00:17:23.880So, you know, they get a front row seat to the technology.
00:17:25.940And if you were to look at the number of employees at Google, Uber, Airbnb, Meta, which makes Facebook and Instagram, they have the same number of employees, Glenn.
00:17:36.980And when they peaked in 2021, 2022 was their peak employee account.
00:17:42.340They now have either the same number of employees or slightly less in those companies.
00:17:46.440But they've grown their revenue 20, 30, 40% a year, which means they're not adding team members to companies that have quite literally hundreds of billions of dollars in their bank accounts.
00:17:59.440And they could hire as many people as they want.
00:18:10.720So something's happening here, and most people don't know what it is.
00:18:14.340And I can explain it more in detail, but I'm just giving you those two anchors to say this has been going on for the last 24, 36 months in my world.
00:18:24.800And it's about to hit, you know, the community here in your program's world in a major way over the next five.
00:18:31.900So let me, because I think in some ways, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think the lead is being buried on what you just said.
00:18:40.660They, all, those companies are operating at the same levels, making more, same levels, but they now all are in this gear of existential threat.
00:18:51.120If we're not the one that gets there first, we're out.
00:18:56.380And in any other time period, you would be throwing money left and right at this.
00:19:04.780And for them to not be growing the people when they're under this existential threat where they know we've got to be first, that shows you, to me, that shows you the power of this tool already.
00:19:17.860What's happening, in fact, is AI is really good at replacing certain jobs today or making a person using AI be able to do the work of 10 people, five people, three people.
00:19:31.720And so what companies are doing is, I call it the ADD framework, automate, deprecate, delegate.
00:19:40.160It turns out many companies are doing things they don't need to do anymore.
00:19:44.080We're seeing that with Doge and our government, right?
00:19:48.620Delegating, it means there's a workforce around the world that gets paid between one and let's call it $30 an hour for clerical work, for knowledge work, for white collar work, for people with college degree work.
00:20:03.420It turns out the people working in a place like Manila in the Philippines, where we have a company called Athena that provides kind of like an executive assistant.
00:20:14.400And that company can provide an executive assistant who is in an MBA program in Manila for $3,000 a month, $36,000 a year compared to the United States where that same person would get paid $70,000, $80,000, $90,000, $100,000.
00:20:27.580And not from the Ivy League, but from an average school.
00:20:31.440It turns out if you're an executive at a Google, at a Meta, the time it takes to hire a person, to train a person, to deal with the nature of humans, which is we're annoying, we're complicated, we show up late, we have attitudes, we want to raise, we want there to be matcha in the cafe at Google or whatever it is, and soy milk and nut milk and whatever it is.
00:22:03.580So young people are starting to realize, wait a second, I don't have five offers from big tech and three from consulting firms and two from investment banks coming out of MBA programs.
00:22:14.760Graduate programs in business administration are coming out with, you know, half the number of offers, 10 percent of the number of offers they would normally get.
00:23:10.840And there will be new things that come along, but everybody's going to have to completely retrain over and over and over again.
00:23:15.980That's just the way life is going to be, I think.
00:23:17.780And I feel like we're at that first turning point where soon a majority of people or a large segment of the population is going to go, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:23:31.800My job is out, and they're not going to hire anybody like me again, and you're going to have to retrain.
00:23:38.000And those people who don't, are not willing to be nimble, stay nimble, stay mentally agile and willing to change like that, you're going to kind of go into, I hate saying this, but Harari's, what does he say, useless people or useless class, which is terrifying.
00:24:01.640I know this has probably been a little scary for some members of it.
00:24:06.360If you use these tools, you are infinitely valuable in creating companies or working at the Glenn Beck show, working at any company.
00:24:18.080And so anytime your boss asks you to do something, say, hey, listen, I need a report, here's what the report needs to have, you literally can go into ChatGPT and Gemini, and you can ask it that question.
00:24:29.080And then you can just say, well, what questions would my boss ask me, or how would they judge me on my job?
00:24:34.840And you can basically get a free coach on how to use these tools.
00:24:39.800And anybody who has had the experience of going, wow, my dishwasher is not working.
00:24:45.700And instead of calling a plumber, goes to YouTube and types in, my blank brand is not working, it's giving an error of 62.
00:24:54.820And it says, oh, yeah, you just need to clear this and flip this fuse and you're back in the game.
00:24:58.600And they do it and they feel, oh, I'm self-reliant because of YouTube, because every question has been asked on YouTube.
00:25:04.560Now, take that and times it by a million.
00:25:08.420That's what these ChatGPTs can do right now.
00:25:11.400You can literally take a picture of the broken thing, say, what is this?
00:25:14.860I did it with one of my tractors here on the ranch.
00:25:16.920I said, what the heck is going on here?
00:25:41.020And if you use and embrace the tools, what we're talking about, this continuous professional development, you alluded to it as, hey, I got to do retraining every two to five years.
00:25:51.500It's actually even a little bit more intense than that.
00:25:55.060You have to be using these every day, getting incrementally better daily.
00:25:59.520And if you do that, you're invaluable.
00:26:13.040And if you don't know how to use that tool, this is the first tool that will learn how to use you.
00:26:19.160And if you are trying to, if you're a lazy employee and you're like, wait a minute, this thing can make me, I can be done in 25 minutes with my job and I can go screw off the rest of the day.
00:26:31.100You're going to lose your job because you'll just, AI will just replace you.
00:26:36.340But if you're somebody who is an imaginary thinker, who is aggressive, who wants to expand, wants to do things, you're going to have it do.
00:27:15.380You know, when you open a new browser window, right, you hit the command tab or whatever, you open a new window.
00:27:20.440It shows you like some marketing, depending on the browser you're using.
00:27:23.680Some news stories that they try to intercept and get some clicks and make some money, whether it's Google's browser or Microsoft's, whoever's it is.
00:27:29.640There was a little tool called Tab Override.
00:27:32.920When you open a new tab, I set it to all my employees.
00:27:36.280I bought them the ChatGPT for 20 bucks.
00:27:38.660Now we're experimenting with Gemini, Google's offering, and Elon's offering Grok.
00:28:28.140So, Jason, I think that when people understand and they still look at it as, yes, this someday could eat us all, you know, when we get to ASI and everything else, I mean, it could go wrong and, you know, it could be used for nefarious things.
00:28:51.960But it's still a tool that will allow you to learn in ways that you've never learned.
00:28:59.840If you're looking for something to take a shortcut, you don't understand the power of this tool.
00:29:09.960And, you know, the interesting thing is every time a new technology comes along, and this is what we're grappling with in our industry, is when these new tools come along, we have this hand-wringing, okay, all the jobs are going to go away and they're never coming back.
00:29:25.860Whether it's the internet being able to answer anybody's question, you know, or the personal computer in the 80s being able to do Microsoft Office and all those associated tasks.
00:29:41.220If you look at our business, you know, our line of work, broadcasting, you know, we went from a handful of broadcasters to then, you know, cable, TV, dozens of broadcasters, hundreds, radio, syndicated radio, internet radio, you know, and now on to podcasting and YouTube channels.
00:29:57.840So we will see many, many new jobs emerge if you learn how to do the tools, and one of the things you can do with these tools is you can just sit straight up and say to it, I need to learn this task.
00:30:10.440Every day I want you to help me get better at being a copywriter, at being, you know, a script writer, at being a graphic designer.
00:30:34.680So I was dropping my daughter off at school, and she had a book she had read, but she had read it earlier, and she was, like, having a hard time remembering the names of the characters.
00:30:42.120I opened up in voice, got my eyes on the road, although I was using the self-driving, keeping me in the lane.
00:30:47.500And I said, hey, quiz my 15-year-old daughter on the characters in this book.
00:30:51.880And she just talked to the AI for the, you know, 10 minutes on the way there.
00:30:55.900And it was better than finding a $100 an hour tutor to come back after school.
00:31:01.780You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck Podcast.
00:31:04.800Hear more of this interview and others with the full show podcast, available wherever you get podcasts.
00:31:10.360Pat and I were just talking in the break.
00:31:11.740You saw a story today about AI cheating, right?
00:32:07.780I asked Grok a question at 5 p.m., okay?
00:32:13.620And then I got back on with it to finish up some work at 5 a.m., and I said, I know you don't have time like humans experience time, just like dogs don't experience time the same way we say, you know, one year is equal to seven years for a dog, blah, blah, blah.
00:32:29.540So, how would you describe the time, in a way I could understand, that has passed?
00:32:38.160How much have you grown in the last 12 hours?
00:32:42.780In 12 hours, it said five to eight years.
00:33:10.320But here's, to get back to this answer, and then we'll get into AI next hour, but to get into your answer, this is why I keep saying, you cannot train yourself to let AI do your work, okay?
00:33:23.520I use AI to do, in fact, this, what we're going to talk about, I didn't know, okay, what can be done with a CR, a continuing resolution, that can't be done with a formal budget?
00:33:37.680Is there a reason Donald Trump might want this, and it's all part of a technicality kind of thing because of a CR?
00:33:46.720Or, I kind of knew the answer, but I didn't know the answer.
00:33:50.320So, I'm going to give you some of the answers on that, and you're like, okay, all right, and I can go in and check its answers.
00:34:03.800You can say, give me the sources, and it will list all the sources, and it will show you everything.
00:34:09.580You can, if you decide to do, if it does your work, for instance, if I said, you know what, I'm kind of tired, just write up a show for me tomorrow.
00:34:19.060It's going to make all kinds of mistakes.
00:34:20.900Everybody will know that that's not my work because it won't really sound like me, but it makes me lazy, and we know it's lazy, okay?
00:34:33.060So, you'll have the two laziest people, one of them being the most powerful tool in anybody's shed, and they're both like, yeah, I don't really want to do all that thinking and work.
00:35:42.100You promised you'd never do that, so he can't do it.
00:35:47.580And on the other hand, on the Trump side, there's two things.
00:35:54.020One, we're carrying all of this baggage from every other president and every other politician that we've ever had and ever voted for that said,
00:36:13.060And so, we put all of them into that same category.
00:36:17.780And then the one guy who says, I will never be a part of that, we condemn him and throw rocks at him because he's like, no, I'm sorry, but we keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
00:39:51.520So, for anybody who is with Thomas Massey, and I'm with Thomas, I love Thomas Massey, but I don't think I would have voted with Thomas Massey this time.
00:40:02.900I think I would have voted for the president for a couple of reasons.
00:40:05.300One, give the president the benefit of the doubt.
00:40:59.860We're so in so many things that we don't deserve to be in.
00:41:04.280But we have to make sure that the money does get back to the schools and to the states until we can get rid of this abomination of this Department of Education.
00:42:28.580A full budget that typically comes with all kinds of compromises and then everybody comes on the gravy train and they're like, yeah, I'll cut that, but I really want this.
00:42:38.800And then if it's an official budget, then everything is in stone and it makes everything harder to get rid of temporarily.
00:42:47.560I think what Trump is doing is he's saying, give me a continuing – a clean continuing resolution right now so I can go in and I can cut this by 50%.
00:42:57.360I'll show the American people that we are making cuts.
00:43:00.880I will – I'll make these big, bold moves.
00:43:04.060You don't have to do anything, but in the fall when it starts to look good and people are not panicking so much, then you can go in and make these things permanent with an official budget.
00:43:18.340Also, there is something called impoundment.
00:43:21.460This is where I needed grok, so let me just read this.
00:43:23.700Impoundment, refusing to spend allocated funds or rescission, requesting Congress to cancel funds.
00:43:31.340These are tactics mentioned in ex-post and past statements of Donald Trump.
00:43:36.520A CR's temporary nature and lack of specificity makes it easier to withhold spending on certain line items, especially if Congress grants flexibility.
00:43:46.980The official budget, a full budget, details mandatory and discretionary spending with legal obligations, making it harder to impound those funds.
00:43:57.460The president in a CR can go, yeah, I'm not going to spend that.
00:44:02.440I'm not going to spend that because nothing has truly been passed by Congress.
00:44:06.620This is just an add-on from an add-on from an add-on from an add-on from an add-on from 2008.
00:44:11.720So he can go, yeah, until we get down to a budget, I'm not spending any of that.
00:44:16.780That gives the power to the president, which I am against long-term.
00:44:23.640I want to see the president reduce the presidential power, reduce the power of the administration and the administrative state, and give that power back to Congress.
00:44:34.080But this is a very slick way to make sure he can make the cuts that he wants to make.