Glenn Beck: The good times are right now for most Americans, and the naysayers are wrong. He also points out that a lot of people are getting wealthier, and that's a good thing, especially if you don't have a job.
00:01:55.460How you experience your day depends an awful lot on how you feel, doesn't it?
00:02:00.980I mean, it's hard, maybe even impossible sometimes, to do life on your own terms when every day you wake up with aches and pains in your body.
00:02:23.260Relief Factor, it's not a drug, but it was developed by doctors, and it's four key ingredients work with your body to fight inflammation, which causes most of our pain.
00:02:32.100Three-week quick start, developed for you, $19.95.
00:04:10.860Because it was a slow-build phenomena in a country where news is stale within hours.
00:04:15.840It's happened during a time of fascination with the schemes of the truly wealthy, see Elon Musk, and against the backdrop of increased inequality.
00:04:27.760If you were unable to buy a house because of spiraling prices, the storing amount of homeowners' equity is not really a comfort.
00:04:35.100The queasy stock market might be signaling the boom is ending.
00:04:38.820A slowing economy, renewed inflation, high gas prices, rising interest rates could all undermine the gains achieved over the last few years.
00:04:48.380But for the moment, this flood of wealth is quietly redefining retirement, helping fuel Silicon Valley and stoking a boom in leisure and entertainment.
00:04:58.480It's boosting corporate profits by unprecedented amounts while also giving just about everyone the notion that a better job is just within reach.
00:05:07.860More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily quit in March.
00:05:13.280That's the highest number since the government started keeping statistics.
00:05:17.320The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week, a few years ago, the monthly total was between 3 million and 3.5 million.
00:05:28.200Maybe it's easier to focus on the negative.
00:05:30.500But a huge number of people, maybe 40 million households, have been doing pretty well, says Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research.
00:05:44.220You'd have to go back to the late 1990s to find anything like this.
00:05:50.960This widespread wealth, this widespread wealth, according to the New York Times, throws light on why the number of workers who say they expect to be working past their early 60s has fallen below 50% for the first time.
00:06:07.980It accounts for the abundance of $1 billion startups known as unicorns.
00:06:25.620More than 1,000 now, up from 200 in 2015.
00:06:30.200It offers a reason for the rise in interest in unionizing companies from Amazon to Apple to Starbucks as hourly workers seek to claim their share.
00:06:40.080And it helps explain why Dwight and Denise make...
00:08:49.860Every economic transaction has several sides.
00:08:53.440No one thought home prices in 2000 were particularly cheap.
00:08:56.920But in the last six years, prices have risen by the total value of all housing in 2000.
00:09:03.360In many areas in the country, it has been practically impossible for renters to buy a house.
00:09:09.380This fracturing society, even as the overall home ownership rate in 2020 rose to 65.5%, the rate for black Americans have severely lacked at 43.4%.
00:09:28.700The rate for Hispanics was only marginally better.
00:09:32.680This disparity might account for a muted sense of achievement.
00:09:37.180It's a time of prosperity, a time of abundance.
00:09:41.160And yet it doesn't seem that way, says the vice president of enterprise research at Black Knight.
00:09:47.940Sean and Stephanie McCauley said the value of their house just 20 miles north of Seattle has shot up 50% since they bought it just a couple of years ago.
00:09:56.400We're very fortunate now, given the situation for many others during the pandemic.
00:10:02.040He works for a data orchestration company.
00:10:05.240Somehow we're doing even better financially, and it feels a bit awkward.
00:10:10.700Even for those doing well, the economy feels precarious, however.
00:10:14.640The University of Michigan's Veneral Index of Consumer Sentiment fell in March, the same levels as 1979.
00:10:23.960And politicians have been mostly quiet about the boom.
00:14:43.820In May 2000, the entrepreneur, Kurt Anderson, said raising money for a media startup called Inside was as easy, excuse the expression, as getting sex in 1969.
00:14:57.040That was just a few weeks after the stock market peaked.
00:15:01.32017 months and one merger later, inside shut down.
00:15:41.640I know one of the numbers I saw was up just a little higher.
00:15:44.760I think they expected 6% and they got 6.2, which is, of course, doing wonders for the markets once again.
00:15:51.540Now, this Joe Biden economy is so vibrant.
00:15:55.440Sometimes, and this is something people don't consider, sometimes the vibrancy of this economy blinds people and they click the sell button instead of the buy.
00:18:29.220Now, CNBC apparently did not get the memo because they're talking today about household debt near $16 trillion despite rising rates and inflation.
00:18:55.020I mean, I don't even, let's not even deal with that.
00:19:00.080Let's talk about the happy news at the border.
00:19:04.000You remember when Barack Obama was in and he says, these drug prices are too high.
00:19:11.820Right now, you can get fentanyl anywhere.
00:24:05.180So, when I went down to Eagle Pass and Brownsville, it was pretty crazy because I got to watch the entire process of how illegal immigrants cross over into our country and then how they are bused throughout our country.
00:24:16.600So, in Eagle Pass, you have the Rio Grande River, which is where a lot of the illegal immigrants drown trying to make this journey across.
00:24:26.680And so, that in itself was very terrifying to watch because you're essentially watching people on the Mexican side of the border just jump into the river and hope that they make it across.
00:24:36.240You never know what's going to happen.
00:24:37.680Eagle Pass is not an – I've not been there, but it's not necessarily an easy place to cross.
00:24:43.160I mean, aren't there cliffs on the American side of parts of Eagle Pass?
00:24:49.080There are parts that are like that, but the primary part where they do cross, you know, it's pretty easy to get in and out of the river.
00:24:56.100However, at that section, there are currents that typically drag people under the bridge, and that's why we had, for example, National Guard Bishop Evans, you know, he drowned trying to save the illegal immigrants making that cross over.
00:25:10.160So, it was very shocking to see, and I asked National Guard, I asked Border Patrol, I asked, you know, so these people are allowed to get into this river, cross into our country, and Border Patrol is just supposed to come pick them up and process them.
00:25:22.300And they were saying, yes, our job is to observe and report at this point.
00:25:26.440National Guard was telling me that, you know, they had a lot of empathy for these immigrants coming through, but then they expected Border Patrol to come pick them up in the vehicles, go take them to the processing centers.
00:25:38.300The National Guardsmen would give them water bottles.
00:25:40.380One of the National Guard telling me that one of the illegals just opened the bottle of water, poured it down at his feet, and threw the trash down.
00:25:46.520If you go to where these illegal crossings are happening, there's clothes littering the border.
00:25:51.700Yes, let me show some of those pictures if you happen to be watching on the blaze.
00:25:55.620This is shocking, what our border looks like.
00:26:04.980It's just clothes and garbage as far as the eye can see.
00:26:09.040It was very shocking, and Glenn, one of the worst parts of being down there was seeing condoms and boxes of birth control at the border, because we know what is happening there.
00:26:20.040We know what these women and children are going through, making this journey across.
00:26:23.980We know what the cartel members and also even members of the Mexican Police Department are putting these people through.
00:26:29.100They are taking advantage of these migrants trying to make this journey.
00:26:32.240I was talking to National Guard, who was telling me that the cartel oftentimes kidnaps families, will rob them of their money, will basically hold them hostage and torture them.
00:26:42.480This is just a tactic of the cartel to keep people subservient to them, to keep the migrants scared, let them know that they're in control.
00:26:49.740And National Guard also telling me that the cartel members own cell phone towers on the Mexican side of the border.
00:26:56.580They're tracking the National Guard's cell phones, sending them pictures of dead bodies and death threats, saying that you are next.
00:27:02.900So that's what the Biden administration is allowing to prosper.
00:27:05.300That is what the Biden administration is putting our Border Patrol members and National Guard members through.
00:27:10.440Did you see any of those cell phone texts and pictures, or did they just tell you about them?
00:42:05.960Something that I have been following for a very long time and talking to people about
00:42:11.080and trying to get interest in it so people understand the future that is right around the corner now,
00:42:18.440quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
00:42:22.140Those two things are in our future, in our near horizon future, and they are going to change everything about life on Earth.
00:42:34.260Last week, there was a national security presidential directive that went out that was promoting that the United States get serious about quantum computing.
00:42:46.260Because quantum computing is around the corner and it makes cryptology a thing of the past.
00:42:57.560It will break everything quickly once it's really up to speed and it's gaining speed quickly now.
00:43:08.720Canada is already using quantum computing to work out very complex problems.
00:45:47.220So let's start with what happened last week.
00:45:50.740The Biden administration signed an executive order that said we got to get serious about quantum computing.
00:46:00.020And because I don't trust anything in an executive order, I wondered what it was and why the sudden haste on quantum computing.
00:46:12.020And I knew you'd be the guy to answer those questions.
00:46:14.500Yes, well, you know, in terms of this particular administration, this particular announcement is largely driven by really what's happening in China.
00:46:28.680You know, we've seen at a state level in China, billions of dollars invested over the last decade to develop quantum computing technology in China.
00:46:43.240And there is a very growing concern that these machines, these quantum computers, will quickly become powerful enough to decrypt existing data and information, particularly that of which, which has been collected and stolen and hacked over the years.
00:47:07.240Quantum computing basically allows these repositories of state secrets and technology to basically become visible, readable, usable.
00:47:21.480And obviously, if China has the ability to have this level of computational power, the U.S. really needs to do something in terms of being able to find new ways to encrypt and protect existing and new information from these types of potential hacks.
00:47:44.220Okay. Can you, first of all, explain what quantum computing even is?
00:47:49.380You know, probably the easiest way to think of this is, is that it is really the next generation of computing systems.
00:48:03.640It's, I mean, if the abacus to the, to the modern day supercomputer, is it as, is it as much of a change as saying that today's supercomputer compared to a full blown quantum computer is the abacus?
00:48:22.860It's, it's, it's, it's, it's even more, it's even more dramatic than that.
00:48:29.020You know, quantum computing has the ability to basically manipulate particles in a way that has doubly or triply exponentially more computing power compared to a supercomputer.
00:48:47.000Not just the computers that we use every day, a laptop or a desktop, but to the world's most powerful supercomputer, it's doubly or triply exponential in terms of computing, computational power than, than a classical computing architecture.
00:49:03.000That's, that's, that's how dramatic this shift is.
00:49:05.080Can you explain, I'm sorry to get into all this tech stuff, but you, to, to be able to understand the rest of this, the stories and the questions that I have, can you explain what a qubit is?
00:49:18.600Yeah, so a qubit is, we think about kind of a particle, but what makes qubits very unique is that a normal computer bit is like a transistor.
00:49:30.680It's a zero or a one, and we calculate things with zeros or ones.
00:49:35.400It's obviously very efficient and effective.
00:49:37.480It's what all of our computing systems are built on, but in comparison, they're relatively slow.
00:49:42.440When we're manipulating a quantum bit, a particle, it is able to have something called a superposition, which means it can almost have an infinite number of positions.
00:49:53.320So rather than a zero or a one, you know, it can have almost an infinite number of positions that can be used to calculate or solve complex problems.
00:50:02.280And so what happens is, with every qubit that we add to a quantum computer, it has this doubly exponential effect on the power of the computing system.
00:50:14.760And that's what makes it such a radical breakthrough.
00:50:18.280It doesn't just, when you add one qubit, it doesn't just double the power.
00:50:22.200When you add four, it doesn't quadruple the power.
00:51:10.160This is a, there's some, there's some nuance there.
00:51:13.160So back in 2019, we reached a point, or I should say, Google reached a point of demonstrating something called quantum supremacy that was accomplished with a 53 quantum bit, quantum computer.
00:51:31.860And that quantum supremacy was the moment that a single quantum computer, and just to put things in perspective, this is something that basically is about the size of a refrigerator.
00:51:41.920Physically, a single quantum computer was able to outperform the world's most powerful supercomputer, which is something that physically is the size of football fields.
00:53:22.260So, IBM is saying that we could be at 4,000 cubits, which, again, the supercomputer is beaten by 53 cubits.
00:53:35.120At what point can we break all encryption?
00:53:40.840So, again, there's a little bit of nuance here.
00:53:44.480One of the predictions that I've made is that in 2022, we will see a 256 quantum bit computer that's announced.
00:53:54.660And obviously, that will be massively more powerful than what Google demonstrated back in 2019.
00:54:01.400Within this year, theoretically, a computing system like that could crack all existing kind of standard encryption that's been used over the last two decades.
00:54:16.260And it's not something that would have to run for months or years or weeks.
00:54:22.140It would literally, you could crack a file in seconds, really.
00:54:26.700Now, the nuance here is that these computing systems, quantum computing systems, have one major problem that the industry is working hard to solve, which is noise.
00:54:37.580They tend to be very noisy, and because of the noise, they're error prone.
00:54:42.580And so, the big focus of the quantum computing industry this year is really around kind of error correction and reducing the noise in these systems so that they can be used for their desired purposes.
00:54:55.920And when you're talking noise, you're not talking about noise that we hear with our ears, right?
00:55:48.280So, now, let's talk about some practical things here.
00:55:51.060How long are we before China, or what do you have to get to before a country or company could actually hack into our banks, into the Pentagon, or into cryptocurrency, blockchain?
00:56:08.800Well, hacking into a network is something that happens now, every year.
00:56:16.960But I mean enough to be able to break the codes, and...
00:56:21.040I mean, they're always attempting, especially with the military.
00:56:26.460Will quantum computing help get control of our banking or military?
00:56:38.360The bad actors, at least my prediction, my forecast, is that within the next 18 months, therefore before the end of 2023, that the quantum computers will be powerful enough to basically break any file, encrypted file, that has been stolen.
00:56:59.060And this could be from the private sector, could be from the public sector, will be able to break the encryption of that file.
00:57:06.240And so, anything that's been stolen to date and has been held will soon be visible, I think, by the end of next year, because of how quickly I'm seeing quantum computing technology develop.
00:57:47.240I will tell you that the world is preparing for mass starvation, not here in America, I pray, mainly in Africa and third world countries that are just not going to have the food.
00:58:00.460But this is going to affect all of us.
00:59:09.420So, Jeff, let's put this into practical terms now.
00:59:11.940Now that we kind of know what it is, kind of, put it into practical terms.
00:59:17.040What does this mean for the country, first of all, and secrets?
00:59:22.840So, to your question, if we think about every year that, for example, nation states have hacked into networks or databases and gained access to files, let's make some examples.
00:59:38.800For example, specifications of prototype equipment, machinery, artillery for defense, could be a new fighter jet, might be a new stealth boat, could be things from the private sector.
00:59:55.720For example, they managed to gain access to a bank and a file that contained all of the customer's information.
01:00:05.900If they were encrypted properly, they wouldn't be able to view what was in those files.
01:00:10.900But this is what a powerful quantum computer can enable.
01:00:15.860It can actually decrypt those files, and then all of that information that was stolen over the years now becomes visible.
01:00:37.360I think it's always used as the threat.
01:00:40.700You know, China, for example, invested about a billion dollars last year in quantum computing technology.
01:00:45.640But by far, in terms of researchers in this space, the U.S. has really the most advanced research and development.
01:00:53.260And it also has really the best private sector for developing quantum computing in the world.
01:01:00.040And so just as a perspective, about $1.4 billion was invested just in 2021 in private quantum computing companies in the U.S. alone.
01:01:11.620So that's more than China did as a country.
01:01:15.040The private sector funneled and fueled into kind of the U.S. quantum computing industry.
01:01:20.640And that doesn't include the investments from public companies like Google, like Honeywell, like IBM, like Microsoft, who all have their own quantum computing programs as well.
01:01:32.500And so that perception that we're behind, I think, is is grossly incorrect.
01:01:38.040So can we talk about the upside of it?
01:01:41.220Is it too much to say that when quantum computing really goes on, a lot of a lot of cures for maybe even things like cancer will happen quickly?
01:01:55.000So, you know, to me, some of the top applications.
01:01:58.100So if we set aside the risk from cybersecurity and cracking those files, the upside is we have systems that will be able to solve problems that we just could never solve even on a supercomputer.
01:02:12.960And so, for example, molecular design, really optimizing for compounds that can be used for therapeutics and cures.
01:02:25.180Molecular design also impacts the creation of new materials.
01:02:54.060New report shows almost 71% of Americans feel their paychecks aren't keeping up with inflation.
01:02:59.980If you missed today's first hour of the program, you got to go back and listen on the podcast because I gave you a story from the New York Times.
01:05:17.780You know, one of the hardest things to develop are really the materials and the battery anode.
01:05:29.520And this is really one of the key areas that we'll be focusing quantum computing on.
01:05:36.760There are already some very exciting developments in this space.
01:05:40.940Quite a few companies, both public and private, are making great strides for the next generation of battery technology.
01:05:49.020But this will obviously be a very important area of focus, not just for electric vehicles,
01:05:54.060but also for just clean energy storage in general, even at an industrial scale.
01:06:00.040And is there, do you see quantum leaps in battery and energy?
01:06:09.080Battery technology, unfortunately, is one of those things that tends to progress at more of an evolutionary pace rather than revolutionary.
01:06:20.120And by the way, this is something that's very consistent that we've seen over the last 30 or 40 years.
01:06:26.320And so it's a very complex problem to solve.
01:07:38.220Very few people look at the entire chain from energy production, electricity production, all the way through to distribution in the vehicles.
01:07:47.300At a national level, our infrastructure, our power grids are not built to support all electric vehicles.
01:08:56.660And, in fact, you know, on average, we tend to see anywhere between 7% and, you know, usually 15% of the electricity that's produced from fossil fuels is lost through transmission over the electricity transmission lines.
01:09:11.840So, you actually have to produce an excess of electricity just to fuel your electric vehicle.
01:09:18.300So, do you see anybody investing in this that has anything breakthrough that is coming our way, or are we just screwed on this?
01:09:29.460Well, you know, what I'm most excited about in terms of clean energy production is nuclear fusion.
01:09:58.300But we have proved that the theory does work.
01:10:02.920And there are several companies that I'm quite bullish on, private companies, that I believe will be able to demonstrate net energy production at a commercial scale by 2024 at the latest.
01:10:17.160So, it's not as far out as most of us think.
01:10:30.320The moment that we want to essentially shut down a plasma, it does turn off very safely.
01:10:40.780Plasma reactions need to be maintained by very large, powerful magnets.
01:10:45.180And the moment we turn off those magnets, the reaction slows down.
01:10:49.220And, you know, in some, even some forms of nuclear fusion, there's no radioactive waste at all either, which is one of the reasons why I think it's a fantastic solution to the problem that you raise.
01:11:09.600My guess is, and I'm not an expert on this, my guess is it's the usual plus the stock market is going down and people are pulling their money out of Bitcoin to pay off some of the, you know, bets that they made in the stock market.
01:11:37.300You know, what we discovered in this, this latest routes, I mean, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have dropped about 60% from their November highs that we saw last year.
01:12:19.700Yeah, so UST is something referred to as an algorithmic stable coin and kind of theoretically by design, it's supposed to be pegged to the US dollar.
01:12:30.460So, we can almost think that it's pretty close to what the Federal Reserve wants to do with its central bank backed, you know, digital currency.
01:12:39.200But it became unpegged with the US dollar and stable coins are supposed to be stable.
01:12:47.960And what was very interesting about this, and by the way, this particular event has absolutely had an outsized impact on Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets because it's been so disconcerting for the entire cryptocurrency industry.
01:13:03.040But what was interesting about what was happening here is that there were at least two major players that almost appeared to be correlated in terms of dumping very large nine-figure amounts of this stable coin into the market.
01:13:21.860And that's what kicked off this deep pegging from the US dollar.
01:13:25.720And then, of course, it just was like an avalanche.
01:13:28.840You said correlated, correlated, or coordinated.
01:14:04.980Because there has been a lot of talk from the Federal Reserve and, of course, the regulators kind of demanding that stable coins be regulated.
01:14:17.000Now, of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise to us, right?
01:14:19.600Because you have these private entities building US dollar stable coins.
01:14:24.160And it's not a surprise to think the Federal Reserve thinks, well, that's their business.
01:14:29.200They're the only ones that should have a digital US dollar, right?
01:14:33.200And so we can see how, you know, there may be a perceived conflict of interest.
01:14:40.060I will tell you that this is what we were talking about off air because we just didn't have time to talk about this.
01:14:46.400But we were talking about it yesterday, Stu and I off air, and we were saying it looks like it probably is one or two big investors that are dumping.
01:14:55.420We didn't know why, but we also were talking about and look at what the Treasury is saying.
01:15:00.380Treasury is saying we've got to regulate.
01:15:02.320This is what we've been warning about.
01:15:04.060And then on top of it, quantum computing, the Treasury and the Fed are out again saying when quantum computing really gets gets going.
01:15:15.980This is what we've warned about because it's they have, you know, two sets of keys, public and private.
01:15:22.060And you should never have public keys.
01:15:24.980Otherwise, it'll be hackable all the time.
01:16:33.800Most successful hedge funds over the last couple of decades.
01:16:37.240But that's and one of the big three, if I'm not mistaken, in ESG and everything else, which is a public private partnership with business and government.
01:27:00.080Through HB 395 and the funding announced today,
01:27:03.480we are guaranteeing that history of those who fled communist regimes and their experiences are preserved and not forgotten by our students.