The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1862 - Mike Baker

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! 0.99

00:00:11.000 So Mike, how fucked are we? 1.00

00:00:14.000 Oh, um, well, I'd say we're fucked. 1.00

00:00:20.000 Um... 0.99

00:00:23.000 Yeah, I mean, it depends on where you want to start.

00:00:25.000 There's so many interesting things, right?

00:00:27.000 I will say, right off the bat, I didn't have monkeypox on my bingo card.

00:00:33.000 It doesn't seem to be that big of an issue.

00:00:36.000 Even when people get it, they don't die, they just get blisters, and then it heals up, and then they're good.

00:00:40.000 Yeah, and then they're fine.

00:00:41.000 It's not good, but it's not.

00:00:43.000 It's not good. 0.99

00:00:44.000 And it also can be avoided if you don't have a lot of unprotected gay sex. 1.00

00:00:48.000 Yeah, unfortunately, I said the other, what, a month ago, I made the mistake of saying, yeah, just don't have a lot of unprotected, random sex at a rave, or don't fuck monkeys. 1.00

00:01:00.000 And apparently people took offense at that. 1.00

00:01:03.000 I don't think anybody's fucking monkeys. 0.99

00:01:05.000 There probably are. 0.99

00:01:06.000 There's probably one guy out there.

00:01:07.000 There was one guy.

00:01:08.000 But I don't think that's what's causing it.

00:01:10.000 Patient Zero.

00:01:11.000 That's just the name of it, right?

00:01:13.000 Yeah, it is.

00:01:14.000 But to tell you what kind of world we live in, now what they want to do is change the name because they think the name is...

00:01:20.000 Is what?

00:01:21.000 It's offensive to gay people in some strange way. 0.57

00:01:24.000 They want to call it like a number, like, you know, ATX-124. 0.57

00:01:28.000 Yeah.

00:01:29.000 Some nonsense.

00:01:31.000 It's already monkeypox.

00:01:32.000 It's monkeypox.

00:01:33.000 Everybody's going to know it as monkeypox.

00:01:34.000 Remember when COVID was the Wuhan flu?

00:01:37.000 Yeah.

00:01:37.000 Yeah, for a while.

00:01:38.000 No, that's not good either.

00:01:38.000 It wasn't good.

00:01:39.000 No, you couldn't do that.

00:01:41.000 Why is it okay to have chickenpox, but you can't have monkeypox?

00:01:44.000 Yeah, what's up with that?

00:01:46.000 Nobody cares about the chickens anymore.

00:01:47.000 Right.

00:01:48.000 No, it's...

00:01:50.000 It is interesting that one of the primary concerns right now is, aside obviously from dealing with the actual issue, is that we've got to change the name.

00:01:59.000 And I honestly, God couldn't figure out why that would be offensive to anybody but monkeys.

00:02:04.000 I don't think...

00:02:05.000 It doesn't make any sense. 0.99

00:02:07.000 I think it's just the name has already become synonymous with people having unprotected gay sex. 0.97

00:02:13.000 And so they just want to reduce it to a disease. 0.98

00:02:16.000 Yeah.

00:02:16.000 Yeah, that's fair enough.

00:02:18.000 I mean, it is what it is.

00:02:20.000 It's like, out of all the things that we could be worried about, it's not at the top of the list, folks.

00:02:24.000 You can avoid it, and if you get it, you're gonna be okay.

00:02:27.000 You're not gonna die.

00:02:28.000 I don't believe anyone has died from it, which is crazy that it gets the kind of press it gets.

00:02:33.000 Yeah, I guess the number of cases caught people by surprise, right?

00:02:37.000 I don't know where they are now.

00:02:38.000 The last piece of news I read about it was 10,000 cases, I think, in the U.S. That's because gay dudes put in work. 1.00

00:02:45.000 Yeah. 0.92

00:02:47.000 They're prolific.

00:02:49.000 Yeah. 0.89

00:02:49.000 If you don't have to convince some woman to have sex with you, and you're just talking about a room full of dudes... 0.89

00:02:54.000 It's amazing how much gets done. 0.65

00:02:56.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:02:56.000 It's like, if I had a pair of tits, I'd never leave the house. 1.00

00:02:59.000 So... 1.00

00:03:01.000 I don't think I... Okay, I should take that back.

00:03:03.000 Yeah, take that back.

00:03:05.000 Sorry about that.

00:03:06.000 I think you'd still leave the house.

00:03:08.000 I think you'd get accustomed to them after a while.

00:03:10.000 Yeah, you probably would.

00:03:11.000 You probably would.

00:03:12.000 But yeah, I didn't see monkeypox and we got...

00:03:15.000 But you're right.

00:03:16.000 We got other things to deal with.

00:03:17.000 We got China's lobbing missiles over Taiwan.

00:03:20.000 Yeah, that was wild.

00:03:22.000 So that's one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about. 0.99

00:03:24.000 Like, why the fuck would Nancy Pelosi... 1.00

00:03:28.000 Go to Taiwan and then go to the DMZ. Are they trying to kill her? 1.00

00:03:36.000 I think what caught a lot of people by surprise was just how public the trip became.

00:03:41.000 It was obviously a press stunt.

00:03:44.000 Yes.

00:03:44.000 Although there was this – we don't know who leaked it.

00:03:47.000 We're not sure.

00:03:48.000 I mean from her office and from other places, we don't know who really started talking about this because there have been a number of delegations obviously going back and forth.

00:03:57.000 We just had another one in Taiwan.

00:03:59.000 Got almost no press.

00:04:00.000 Right.

00:04:01.000 But it really doesn't matter who would leak it because – As soon as Pelosi's staff decided they're going to start talking to their Taiwanese counterparts about arranging a trip like this, from that very first conversation, Chinese intel already knows about it,

00:04:17.000 right?

00:04:18.000 They've picked up on it.

00:04:19.000 So they're already aware.

00:04:20.000 But anyway, so whether the Chinese regime decided to leak it and make a big issue of it because they're getting very shirty about Taiwan at this point, it's anybody's guess.

00:04:32.000 But I think...

00:04:33.000 Once it became a public issue and a spectacle, she had to go.

00:04:39.000 She couldn't back down.

00:04:41.000 So that was inevitable.

00:04:43.000 And did it accomplish much?

00:04:47.000 Eh.

00:04:48.000 It's fine.

00:04:49.000 We've got an obligation.

00:04:51.000 We've got the one China policy and we've got the You know, unofficial recognition of Taiwan.

00:04:57.000 And I don't think anybody in any administration going back to the beginning of that policy ever really understood what it all means.

00:05:04.000 It's very complicated.

00:05:05.000 It's messy.

00:05:06.000 Everybody's preferred, every administration's preferred not to talk about it, really, because it's kind of like the Middle East.

00:05:11.000 Nobody ever thinks it's going to sort itself out properly.

00:05:15.000 So, but, you know, I never thought I'd say this.

00:05:18.000 To Pelosi's credit, she's been hanging in there as a supporter of Taiwan for, you know, most of her time.

00:05:25.000 And whether that's because she's making a lot of cash over there on deals, I don't know. 1.00

00:05:29.000 Well, she brought over her son. 1.00

00:05:30.000 Yeah.

00:05:31.000 Who is in the mining business.

00:05:33.000 She would have brought her husband, but he was busy with that DOI charge, which is not a funny thing.

00:05:40.000 Hopefully he gets help.

00:05:43.000 Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that sympathy for Paul Pelosi.

00:05:47.000 No sympathy. 0.97

00:05:48.000 I mean, I guess they released a video that showed how fucked up he was, which people were very concerned with him getting released. 0.94

00:05:57.000 They just kind of dropped the case, and now apparently it's back on again. 0.90

00:06:01.000 Yeah.

00:06:01.000 It's hard to believe that there could be two standards of justice.

00:06:05.000 Crazy.

00:06:05.000 I would have never believed that.

00:06:07.000 I thought everyone was accountable.

00:06:10.000 We're all treated equally under the law.

00:06:13.000 So what you're saying though is that the moment they started talking about doing it, China was aware of it.

00:06:20.000 Yes.

00:06:21.000 So is that because of moles?

00:06:22.000 Is that because of spies?

00:06:24.000 Is that- It's because Taiwan, while an independent nation, right, except from China's perspective, nothing happens on that island without the Chinese regime knowing about it,

00:06:41.000 whether it's the Ministry of State Security or whether it's the PLA's intel operations.

00:06:49.000 They know everything that's going on.

00:06:50.000 They hoover up everything.

00:06:52.000 And that's just on the Taiwan issue.

00:06:54.000 We can talk about what they're doing lately and the rest of the world.

00:06:59.000 But the amount of resource that the Chinese machine puts into, not just under Xi but previously, puts into monitoring and understanding What's happening in Taiwan, and importantly, what the U.S. is doing in relation to Taiwan,

00:07:15.000 is very impressive.

00:07:19.000 Because at some point, and it may happen sooner rather than later, China's been pretty clear about, look, by 2050...

00:07:26.000 Taiwan's coming back.

00:07:27.000 It's going to be part of China, and there's no two ways about it. 0.99

00:07:31.000 But now people are talking about, well, that could be four years from now.

00:07:35.000 They've accelerated the timetable, and that's causing a lot of concern.

00:07:40.000 There's been a very big buildup of the Chinese military, obviously, and we've talked a little bit about that in the past.

00:07:46.000 Also, just their aggressive behavior.

00:07:48.000 So as their military has been growing, so has their sort of willingness to be aggressive about it and to put themselves out there, which didn't used to be the case, in part because I don't think they felt emboldened enough yet due to the strength of their navy in particular.

00:08:02.000 They've got the largest navy in the world.

00:08:04.000 So, you know, they're not just doing it to do it.

00:08:10.000 There's a reason for it.

00:08:11.000 And the reason for it is to prepare for the eventual day when they decide the time is right to bring Taiwan back into the fold. 0.97

00:08:18.000 And that's going to be a very messy day from our perspective because, you know, what are we going to do about it?

00:08:24.000 Are we going to war with China to defend Taiwan?

00:08:28.000 What are the two perspectives?

00:08:30.000 Is there one perspective where some advisers are saying we have to let it happen to avoid the inevitable mass bloodshed because it's going to happen no matter what?

00:08:42.000 And then the other perspective is if we let them do that, We're sending the worst message possible, so we need to defeat this at all costs.

00:08:50.000 Yeah, that's very eloquent, actually, that you've defined the two tracks, right?

00:08:55.000 There's really nothing in between.

00:08:57.000 There's no middle ground.

00:08:59.000 Although you could argue, and this is what China's been watching also, is what's been happening in Russia and Ukraine.

00:09:07.000 So the idea that we've drawn a red line, we're not putting boots on the ground, but we're going to do everything up to that to help support the Ukraine in their efforts against Russia.

00:09:19.000 China looks at that and they think, okay, is that where this would go?

00:09:23.000 Once we send our Navy across the strait there and start dropping troops on the island, You know, where is the U.S. in all of this?

00:09:34.000 And they have to base their strategy, their forward planning on sort of the knowns, right?

00:09:43.000 And one of the knowns is how we're dealing with Ukraine.

00:09:45.000 We do not want to get into a shooting war with Russia.

00:09:47.000 Well, China's going to have to look at that and go, well, we assume they definitely don't want to get into a shooting war with us, right?

00:09:55.000 Then they just – that's how they start to calculate what that strategy looks like and what the potential then risks and damage could be from being sanctioned further in certain areas, in having arms resupplied to Taiwan during the course of an invasion essentially.

00:10:14.000 So there's a lot that goes into it but – I mean, look, it's interesting because we miscalculated the Russia situation, right?

00:10:22.000 We figured out that Russia was building up to an invasion, but just about everybody said, yeah, it'll take them three or four days, and they'll roll into Kiev, and it'll be over.

00:10:30.000 So we got that pretty wrong.

00:10:32.000 So now we have to worry about how good are our estimates of, you know, the Chinese PLA, the People's Liberation Army, and their capabilities, and the Navy, and how...

00:10:43.000 How good are they?

00:10:43.000 And then we have to worry about Taiwan and say, what's Taiwan's will to fight look like?

00:10:48.000 Does it look like the Ukrainians? 1.00

00:10:51.000 Two different cultures, so...

00:10:53.000 Well, that was a statement of the obvious, wasn't it?

00:10:55.000 Yeah, but it's a perilous time.

00:10:59.000 It's very disturbing when you're sitting here, you feel helpless, you read the news, and you're trying to pay attention to what's going on, and you're like, Jesus, how does this end well?

00:11:08.000 Like, what's the best case scenario?

00:11:11.000 Yeah.

00:11:12.000 Well, look, we thought – because, again, we didn't have – going back to using Russia as a case study, you know, and obviously that war is going on and it's horrific and, you know, there's a lot of tragedy there.

00:11:24.000 But using it as a case study for what could happen in China and the potential there – We didn't get Putin's plans and intentions right at all.

00:11:34.000 Once this thing dragged on beyond what he expected, then there was a lot of speculation.

00:11:39.000 Okay, maybe this is a negotiated settlement.

00:11:41.000 So what does that look like?

00:11:44.000 But they've just come out, the defense minister and Others have just come out and said, there's no negotiation to be done here.

00:11:51.000 We don't view this as a – we're not going to settle this through negotiation.

00:11:55.000 They were very clear.

00:11:56.000 They made a very clear statement.

00:11:58.000 So they're in it apparently to win but what does that mean?

00:12:05.000 Are they just – are they going to be happy securing that eastern side of the country in the south and does that mean they want to take Odessa – I mean further beyond into Odessa and – Again, nobody really knows.

00:12:19.000 And we could talk about how, you know, what does that mean?

00:12:22.000 Was that an intelligence failure?

00:12:23.000 Was it just because we were focused elsewhere, spending 20-plus years on the Middle East, counterterrorism?

00:12:30.000 And so does that mean that we were unable to, because we didn't have the resources focused on the area, to assess what was going to happen with a land war in Europe?

00:12:39.000 And so what does that mean in terms of our ability to assess what the Chinese regime is going to do and what their military capabilities are?

00:12:47.000 It is a big concern, but how it ends, again, that's all speculation, but it's going to be messy either way.

00:12:55.000 Now, what do you make of the people that say that this is provoked by NATO constantly pushing the boundaries and pushing weapons up to the border of Russia?

00:13:07.000 Yeah, I get that argument.

00:13:09.000 I mean, Putin has been very clear.

00:13:10.000 And one thing I don't think we ever do very well is we don't really take despots or dictators at their word, right?

00:13:17.000 So when they say something, it's kind of like with Xi in China, right?

00:13:20.000 He's a dictator.

00:13:21.000 They're going into a...

00:13:23.000 They're going to a Congress soon where he'll probably get a third term.

00:13:28.000 They've never had that happen there.

00:13:29.000 So he's cementing himself as being there forever.

00:13:31.000 But we've always, I guess my point is, we've never really been good at just saying, okay, that's what they're saying, so maybe we should factor that into our analysis as to what could happen.

00:13:40.000 And Putin was clear for all these years, saying, you know, I want to rebuild the Soviet Union in some fashion, right?

00:13:47.000 And the collapse of the Soviet Union, including losing Ukraine.

00:13:50.000 And Ukraine is... 0.58

00:13:52.000 They're coming up on their Independence Day.

00:13:56.000 What is that?

00:13:57.000 The 24th of August is Ukraine Independence Day.

00:14:00.000 That's tomorrow.

00:14:01.000 And they became independent in 91. Got out from the Soviet Union.

00:14:09.000 So Putin's been very upfront about how he wants to rebuild the Soviet Union in some capacity.

00:14:14.000 So yes, I get the argument that says if we've been pushing NATO for years, right, and trying to strengthen NATO and trying to get them to pay their fair share and trying to do all these things to bolster NATO, particularly along the border with Russia,

00:14:30.000 he's going to look at that as an existential threat in a way, right?

00:14:33.000 And we should have probably...

00:14:37.000 We've paid more attention to that, but I think that's a little bit too late for Putin, but I think what we should do is use that again and look at what she's been saying, and look at what they say during their congresses, look at their five-year plans,

00:14:56.000 Being a little bit more aware that he probably means what he says.

00:15:00.000 So when they talk about Taiwan, they mean that.

00:15:02.000 When they talk about getting to the top of the food chain in a variety of areas, whether it's pharmaceuticals, technology, telecommunications, shipping, oil and gas, that's what they're going to do, which is why they've been so intent over the years to hoover up or steal every bit of intellectual property and intelligence that they can.

00:15:25.000 Because that's how they're meeting those goals.

00:15:29.000 There's also some talk about them buying U.S. farmland.

00:15:33.000 Someone just brought this up to me the other day.

00:15:35.000 They just bought an enormous farm somewhere in the middle of America, and their number one priority is feeding China. 0.53

00:15:42.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:43.000 They've been doing all sorts of things.

00:15:44.000 We could literally...

00:15:47.000 We could literally sit here all day long talking about what they've been up to.

00:15:50.000 But you're right.

00:15:53.000 The Bureau had a great report not that long ago.

00:15:59.000 It was a culmination of years of investigation.

00:16:02.000 And One of the interesting things that they were doing was looking at the financial side of things.

00:16:09.000 Rather than kind of thinking of individual counterintelligence operations, they started looking at Chinese companies, whether they were state-owned or whether they were just, you know, Theoretically private, but they had two or three cutouts between them and the state.

00:16:24.000 And they were looking at their deals and they're saying, well, why would they do this?

00:16:28.000 And if it's a private company that's out there to make money and to become successful or be successful, to grow, why would they be making deals that seem not profitable?

00:16:40.000 What's the point of that exercise?

00:16:43.000 And so Aside from just acquiring assets, and China's over the years has acquired a massive amount of property and other assets here in the U.S. and around the world, is the idea that it's a very clever part of their investigation from a bureau perspective is to say,

00:17:03.000 all right, let's look at a Chinese company like ZTE or Huawei.

00:17:09.000 And let's try to understand why would they possibly be giving away their products basically at dirt cheap prices?

00:17:17.000 Why would they be interested in acquiring land in a particular area?

00:17:21.000 Why would they want to work with a particular regional telecoms provider here in the U.S.? And when you do that, their activity becomes pretty clear.

00:17:32.000 Even to people who are skeptics, it becomes pretty obvious that, I mean, look, just Huawei alone Over the years, I mean, going back to 2000 and before that, Huawei as a telecoms company started in 87,

00:17:48.000 and they're now the largest producer of telecoms gear in the world.

00:17:53.000 They do all the plumbing, right?

00:17:54.000 They do the antennas, they do the routers, they do the servers.

00:17:58.000 You look at a cell tower now, anywhere in the Midwest or out west, anywhere, and it's likely got Huawei or ZTE or other Chinese components on that cell tower.

00:18:10.000 And one of the reports that the Bureau came out with after a lengthy investigation is fascinating.

00:18:19.000 I'm pretty sure you've seen this report.

00:18:23.000 Look at the I-25 corridor.

00:18:26.000 It goes up Wyoming, Colorado, that area along the border of Nebraska.

00:18:33.000 They did a deal with a regional telecoms provider out there, Vero, I think it was.

00:18:39.000 And they now have their – over the years, they've put their equipment, Huawei has – Onto these cell towers that go up and down this corridor.

00:18:49.000 Well, the other thing that's up and down this corridor are a variety of military bases and an enormous number of ICBM sites are a nuke program, right?

00:19:02.000 So the idea that China was just, you know, willingly giving it vastly discounted prices I think we're good to go.

00:19:29.000 And how smart they are at long-term targeting and understanding, I want to know about this, that's where the information is, I'm going to get access to it, and I don't care whether it takes me 10, 20, 30 years.

00:19:41.000 So we're having this conversation, and you're explaining this to me.

00:19:44.000 I would imagine that if I was a person in a position of power in government, I would want to stop this from happening.

00:19:51.000 So how did it ever happen?

00:19:56.000 It wasn't really noticed.

00:19:58.000 It's been a thing for a handful of years.

00:20:02.000 When you think about it, if you think about Huawei's been doing this for...

00:20:05.000 I mean, look, we can talk about what they did up in Canada, too, to one of the world's biggest companies up in Canada in telecoms roughly the same time.

00:20:14.000 But anyway...

00:20:17.000 A couple of years ago, we're in 2022 now. 0.98

00:20:20.000 So a couple of years ago, when they released this information, when they finished their investigation, and they looked and they said, this is bullshit, right? 0.92

00:20:28.000 Because one of the things about this equipment that's sitting on these cell towers is people will say, well, who cares? 0.91

00:20:34.000 It's telecoms.

00:20:35.000 It's my mobile phone.

00:20:36.000 I don't care if the Chinese regime listens into my mobile phone.

00:20:39.000 Well, the PLA's third department and their First Technical Reconnaissance Bureau and other parts of the Chinese machine that hoovers up all this information that's related to our national security interests.

00:20:51.000 They're not just going after commercial cell phone signals.

00:20:56.000 This part of this investigation was to break down this equipment and try to understand, okay, wait a minute, could this be going after the DOD spectrum, the bandwidth that the military would use?

00:21:06.000 And if so, what does that mean?

00:21:08.000 Could they intercept communications?

00:21:10.000 Yes, according to the investigation.

00:21:12.000 And could they interfere with our communications?

00:21:14.000 So not just hoover up data packets that are going across this, but also Imagine if we're trying to send communications.

00:21:22.000 Things get really hot.

00:21:23.000 They go after Taiwan. 0.99

00:21:24.000 Suddenly we're going on high alert.

00:21:26.000 They could either intercept or block, jam—I'm having a senior moment—communications, trying to get through on those capabilities.

00:21:40.000 And so it's a big deal.

00:21:44.000 But once the investigation came out, then people did start to pay attention.

00:21:49.000 But this is how slow the US government can be.

00:21:56.000 In 2019 and 2020, basically what happened was, to oversimplify this, was once it became clear what was going on and what the Chinese regime was doing, using Chinese telecoms providers to do this.

00:22:13.000 The U.S. government said, okay, that's it.

00:22:15.000 We've got to take all this gear off these cell towers.

00:22:17.000 These are regional providers in these areas because what the Chinese were very smart about was looking at our military bases, seeing how many of them were out in the rural parts of America, identifying who the regional providers are and saying, we can sell you this gear for nothing.

00:22:30.000 How about that?

00:22:31.000 And over the years, the regional providers are like, great.

00:22:34.000 Fine.

00:22:34.000 Because they're not thinking, you got some guy running some regional telecoms company.

00:22:38.000 He's not a counterintelligence specialist.

00:22:40.000 He's just working on his bottom line.

00:22:41.000 He's just working on his bottom line.

00:22:42.000 He said, this is a great deal.

00:22:44.000 So they load up all these towers.

00:22:46.000 So anyway, the US government said, you got to take all this gear off. 0.98

00:22:49.000 You've got to remove all this shit, and we're going to have to replace it with trusted gear. 0.97

00:22:53.000 And by the way, Huawei is on a trade list, as is ZTE and others at this point. 0.97

00:23:00.000 So we can't, going forward, companies aren't using their gear, but you've got all this stuff sitting up there anyway, right?

00:23:08.000 And every time you need to do an update, One of the weaknesses on some of this gear is you've got to basically hit it with new software, with an update.

00:23:17.000 And anytime you do that, that's a pathway perhaps for them to do something else.

00:23:22.000 And so they said, take all this gear off.

00:23:24.000 We're going to allocate, as US government, we're going to allocate just shy of $2 billion to do this.

00:23:34.000 None of the gears moved.

00:23:35.000 This was 2020. Two years later, none of the gears been moved because all the companies, they said, okay, shit, we'll make a list of all the stuff that's got to come off of there. 0.95

00:23:45.000 And they did. 0.52

00:23:46.000 And you're talking about You know, 20-some-odd thousand pieces of equipment that need to be pulled off of cell towers that, you know, are compromising or potentially compromising U.S. national interests.

00:23:58.000 And they said, well, we can't do this for $1.9 billion.

00:24:03.000 It's going to cost us twice that at least, which means it'll cost us probably three times that.

00:24:07.000 And so nothing's been done.

00:24:10.000 None of the gear has been removed.

00:24:13.000 Now the US government's saying, well, okay, maybe we can partially reimburse you.

00:24:17.000 Well, you're talking about companies that, as you point out, are trying to improve their bottom line.

00:24:21.000 They're trying to make money.

00:24:22.000 So they're going to get partially reimbursed for taking this gear off, right?

00:24:27.000 Because the US government is so slow.

00:24:31.000 The Commerce Department started an investigation in 2021. They still haven't finished it about the same issue.

00:24:37.000 So I don't want to sound cynical, But, A, I'm very happy that the Bureau, through some very good investigative efforts, has highlighted this, and it's important to be talking about this.

00:24:51.000 Thank God we're getting better at talking about it.

00:24:56.000 Nothing's been done.

00:24:58.000 So the same problem exists.

00:25:00.000 So it's kind of like when you go in and you talk.

00:25:02.000 I remember 15 years ago, I would go in and I would give a talk on Chinese espionage. 1.00

00:25:06.000 That's how long I've been kicking this horse in the ass. 0.99

00:25:09.000 And people would just roll their eyes. 1.00

00:25:11.000 And it still kind of happens because they'll look and they'll go, you know, that's bullshit. 1.00

00:25:15.000 You're being xenophobic. 1.00

00:25:17.000 Or, well, we do it too.

00:25:18.000 That's always one of my favorite arguments.

00:25:19.000 People say, well, the U.S. does it too. 1.00

00:25:21.000 And, well, what the fuck? 0.99

00:25:24.000 What kind of argument is that? 0.99

00:25:26.000 Right?

00:25:26.000 I mean, so...

00:25:29.000 So let them?

00:25:29.000 So just let them spy.

00:25:30.000 Just let them! 0.99

00:25:31.000 Yeah, it'll be fine.

00:25:32.000 We'll just all do it.

00:25:34.000 And so anyway, that's one of the more interesting parts of this. 0.98

00:25:39.000 But I mean, the shit that they're doing, they did the same thing up in Canada back in 2000. They infiltrated a company called... 0.94

00:25:49.000 Nortel.

00:25:50.000 And Nortel was one of the largest companies in the world.

00:25:54.000 Super successful, right?

00:25:55.000 Based out of, I forget where, Ottawa, maybe, in Canada. 0.98

00:25:59.000 And Nortel went bankrupt, in part because they had some bullshit business decisions made. 0.99

00:26:08.000 But in part because Huawei and others out of China just started hoovering up and stealing all their shit, getting everything. 0.99

00:26:17.000 I mean, look, this problem... 0.91

00:26:19.000 I know I sound like I'm rambling, but you can go back 10 years ago and in one estimate, a legit estimate of the cost to us, right, from economic espionage and the theft of intellectual property by not just China,

00:26:36.000 but Russia, Iran, North Korea, any bad actor, the theft, the cost of that in one year, at that time, 10 years ago, was $500 billion.

00:26:47.000 In terms of blueprints and technical information.

00:26:50.000 And then you factor in lost jobs, right? 0.96

00:26:54.000 Because when they're stealing information to advance themselves, what they're also doing is kicking us in the ass and we're losing jobs, right? 0.77

00:27:03.000 And we're losing and companies are shutting down or not making money. 0.87

00:27:06.000 So it's a problem.

00:27:09.000 I know I bang on about it a lot.

00:27:11.000 It seems like it's worth banging on about it.

00:27:15.000 Yeah.

00:27:16.000 This Nortel company, so what did they steal from them?

00:27:20.000 They took a lot of proprietary software.

00:27:25.000 Nortel at the time, they were doing all sorts of things that were groundbreaking, right?

00:27:29.000 They were coming up with touchscreen technology before Apple did, right?

00:27:32.000 They were doing all sorts of things.

00:27:38.000 At a certain point, they just couldn't compete, because all the information about their plans and intentions for business operations, for bids, for everything, were now in the hands of Chinese state-owned or favored companies.

00:27:53.000 And how were they doing this?

00:27:54.000 Were they doing this through their routers?

00:27:56.000 What were they doing?

00:27:57.000 They infiltrated a lot of basically malware that they laid onto their systems internally.

00:28:03.000 They also had some old-school kind of help, right?

00:28:07.000 There's a lot of layers to espionage, right?

00:28:09.000 There's a lot of layers, particularly economic espionage.

00:28:11.000 So we all like to think about the cybers part of it now, and that's true. 0.60

00:28:16.000 But You know, Chinese in particular also rely on human intelligence, right?

00:28:21.000 So co-opties or recruits that they can get.

00:28:23.000 And they had a number of very highly regarded and thought of engineers and developers and innovators and working within Nortel who were from China.

00:28:38.000 And that's a prime target for Chinese intel, right?

00:28:41.000 They'll always look to kind of...

00:28:44.000 Play off of that connection to the motherland, whether it's first or second or third generation.

00:28:48.000 So they basically just started...

00:28:52.000 Nortel just started being unable to compete because they were just...

00:28:56.000 And at the same time, oddly enough, Huawei was doing better and better and better.

00:29:01.000 And as Nortel was getting crushed, Huawei was building up their innovation centers, hiring more engineers, including a bunch from Nortel.

00:29:14.000 Interestingly.

00:29:15.000 So I guess the point to the story there is it's been going on a long damn time.

00:29:21.000 And we tend to think of it as like just something when, I mean the previous administration, Trump administration, you know, they talked a lot about China, China, China.

00:29:29.000 And that's a good thing, right?

00:29:31.000 The more we talk about this, it's not going to change their behavior, but if nothing else, maybe it makes businesses, companies more aware.

00:29:38.000 I think one thing that needs to happen is that The government has to do a better job of explaining the case because, again, I've seen this for years now where people just kind of go, yeah, okay, fine.

00:29:52.000 You're talking about Chinese espionage and they're stealing our information.

00:29:56.000 They don't really know what it means necessarily or they just don't imagine it's that big a deal.

00:30:02.000 So, or they don't see the evidence.

00:30:04.000 And I guess maybe that's part of the biggest problem is because of what it is, because you gather some of this, you can't talk about sources and methods.

00:30:11.000 You don't just throw everything out there on the table and say, look, here's the evidence that Huawei or the third department of the PLA or whoever is doing all this activity.

00:30:21.000 This is what it's costing us.

00:30:22.000 This is how we know.

00:30:24.000 You can't do that in intelligence operations.

00:30:27.000 But I think we need to figure out a way to make an exception to that in this case, because that's what will get people on side.

00:30:35.000 That's what will get people to be believers in all this, is if you give them more evidence.

00:30:40.000 It's like UFOs.

00:30:41.000 If somebody actually talked about it, gave you a piece of evidence, and you go, okay, yeah, maybe so.

00:30:48.000 It's a tough line to walk.

00:30:50.000 The Bureau's getting better at it, but I think we need to be more transparent in explaining how we know some of these things, to the degree that we can, and there will be limitations, but we don't do enough of it.

00:31:02.000 But the more we talk about it, again, it's not going to change the Chinese regime's behavior, because this is how they envisioned, and it's worked so far, getting to the top of the food chain.

00:31:12.000 But we got to do something.

00:31:14.000 So has there been a company in the United States that's been infiltrated the way Nortel was?

00:31:19.000 Oh, sure.

00:31:20.000 I mean, whether you talk about...

00:31:22.000 Well, not...

00:31:22.000 I mean, Nortel was an interesting case because now it's bankrupt.

00:31:26.000 Interestingly enough, it went into bankruptcy.

00:31:27.000 They sold all their gear as part of an effort to raise funds, right?

00:31:31.000 So they sold all this gear.

00:31:32.000 A lot of it, who knows?

00:31:34.000 Filled with malware.

00:31:35.000 It's going to go to some other companies.

00:31:37.000 Hey, we got a deal.

00:31:38.000 Yeah, terrific.

00:31:38.000 Look at this.

00:31:39.000 And then all of a sudden, China just picks up a new signal.

00:31:41.000 Oh, look.

00:31:42.000 But yeah, whether it's Google...

00:31:44.000 Yeah, GE. I mean, recent cases, GE, whether it's – there's no – when you look at what do they go after?

00:32:00.000 I guess part of it you could look at when they talk about every five-year plan and they talk about where it's most important.

00:32:06.000 You could probably correlate that to then where their real collection efforts are going to be, right?

00:32:11.000 Is it going to be in oil and gas?

00:32:12.000 Is it going to be in shipping?

00:32:16.000 Is it wherever it's going to be?

00:32:17.000 And you can pretty much assume then you're going to see an increase in cyber shenanigans in those sectors.

00:32:25.000 But they've gone after pretty much anything.

00:32:30.000 All the various cases.

00:32:32.000 They went after a small company years ago.

00:32:36.000 I'm trying to remember.

00:32:38.000 It was in Salt Lake City, Utah.

00:32:41.000 I think it was called Ibon or something.

00:32:44.000 On the face of it, it was just a company that Worked in the entertainment, not the entertainment, in the hospitality business, right?

00:32:54.000 And you think, well, why would they hack into a business that does hospitality work and hotel chains?

00:33:00.000 Well, because what do you have at hotel chains?

00:33:03.000 You have conferences and you have, you know, gatherings of business people and everything.

00:33:07.000 And so what they were doing was they figured out how to get through IBON and then get into the communications of you're sitting in a conference room, right?

00:33:16.000 You're listening to some speaker up there talk about Whatever it is, laser technology, it doesn't really matter. 0.97

00:33:25.000 And you're bored, so you say, well, shit, I forgot to call Bob. 0.98

00:33:30.000 I'll send him an email. 0.98

00:33:31.000 Well, they had managed to figure out if we get into IBON and we get into the way that they had connected with the various hospitality groups to help handle communications, right, for, you know, conferences and events, so they could pick up all that email traffic.

00:33:46.000 So next thing you know, you got, you know, somebody emailing their boss back home talking about something proprietary.

00:33:54.000 And It sounds odd, but it's very effective.

00:33:57.000 So I guess my point being is whether it's that, whether it's going after a pigment formula for creating a new type of pigment at DuPont, they don't care.

00:34:08.000 They'll just go after this stuff and then they'll feed it to their businesses. 0.96

00:34:13.000 And Huawei is a good example.

00:34:14.000 People say, well, I mean, because Huawei's got a lot of employees here in the States.

00:34:20.000 And they've said for decades, we have no connection.

00:34:23.000 We're not involved with the Chinese government.

00:34:27.000 We don't do any of this.

00:34:28.000 All our telecoms gear has been checked out by the FCC. If the Chinese regime goes to Huawei and says, we want your cooperation on something, they'll provide that cooperation.

00:34:40.000 100%.

00:34:41.000 100%.

00:34:41.000 They have to.

00:34:42.000 Yeah.

00:34:42.000 It's not like they push back and go, nah, it's okay.

00:34:45.000 We don't want to do that.

00:34:47.000 We want to play by the book.

00:34:48.000 I remember when the Huawei stuff was going on, there were some tech sites that were very dubious about it, and they were saying that Trump is overstepping, and this is a terrible idea, there's nothing wrong with Huawei.

00:35:00.000 And I remember reading this, and they're coming from a tech perspective.

00:35:03.000 They're just saying, like, this is innovative gear, and they make great stuff.

00:35:08.000 But it's bizarre that they don't get informed before they make these articles, because these articles can shift public opinion, particularly amongst people who follow that stuff.

00:35:18.000 They would say, well, this is an overstep.

00:35:20.000 Like, why are we doing this?

00:35:21.000 This is xenophobic.

00:35:22.000 This is more Trump.

00:35:23.000 This is why we don't like him.

00:35:25.000 Yeah.

00:35:25.000 And that's a big part of the pushback is, well, you're being xenophobic, and you think...

00:35:31.000 No.

00:35:32.000 I think people are smart enough to differentiate between the wonderful Chinese culture and the people and the regime, right?

00:35:40.000 The regime is not about advancing the liberties and freedoms of the Chinese people.

00:35:47.000 The Chinese regime is all about staying in power. 0.89

00:35:50.000 That's what they care about. 0.99

00:35:52.000 And so I don't understand, I mean, I guess, but, you know, I just think, fuck off with that xenophobic argument because it's not... 0.97

00:36:00.000 I do see that when they say it's overreaching, I think that goes back to this idea that we're not being transparent enough about explaining how we know some of this. 0.97

00:36:10.000 And that's why I keep saying, to the degree possible, I think that would solve part of this issue and get more companies on side.

00:36:15.000 The Bureau's gotten a lot better and other parts of the government have gotten a lot better at going out to businesses and saying, these are the problems.

00:36:21.000 This is what you may be seeing in the future.

00:36:23.000 This is what they're trying to accomplish.

00:36:26.000 And trying to help.

00:36:27.000 But a lot of these companies are either just too focused on shareholder reports and they've got a good internal security system, they think.

00:36:38.000 Or they look at it and they say, I don't want to really go out there and report that we've been hit by a...

00:36:47.000 You know, a ransomware or whatever, because what's that going to do to the bottom line or the stock value?

00:36:53.000 So a lot of companies, it's like crime.

00:36:56.000 A lot of it's underreported. 1.00

00:36:58.000 But, yeah, it's a – again, I know people listen to this and they go, oh, what the fuck? 0.99

00:37:04.000 It's Mike banging on about the Chinese again. 0.99

00:37:07.000 But it's not just the Chinese.

00:37:08.000 It's the Russians. 0.99

00:37:09.000 But the Chinese are the major perpetrators. 1.00

00:37:11.000 And what it costs this country...

00:37:14.000 It's hard to quantify at times, right?

00:37:16.000 You try to figure out...

00:37:17.000 Because part of it's a soft science of, okay, well, how much damage did that do to a particular sector, to a company?

00:37:22.000 How many jobs weren't then created?

00:37:26.000 What wasn't innovated on our side that we could have?

00:37:30.000 But, you know, look, they're doing everything.

00:37:34.000 They've been caught...

00:37:35.000 In the recent past, they've been caught out in the middle of agricultural land trying to dig up modified seeds, right?

00:37:42.000 I mean, that's pretty old school.

00:37:44.000 Send a co-opty or, you know, some asset out to a field in Nebraska to dig up some modified seeds to send back to China so they can take a look at what's going on.

00:37:56.000 Their efforts are, you know, from an intelligence perspective, you got to admire them in a way.

00:38:01.000 They're very They're well-resourced.

00:38:03.000 They're aggressive.

00:38:04.000 They work hard at it.

00:38:05.000 It's kind of fascinating because the disturbing conclusion that one can make is that the only way for us to be able to compete with the Chinese in the way they do it is if we do it that way. 1.00

00:38:17.000 So if we become...

00:38:18.000 You've got to flip it upside down.

00:38:19.000 Is if we become...

00:38:21.000 You've got to flip the top.

00:38:22.000 Oh, yeah.

00:38:23.000 Look at that.

00:38:24.000 Smart CIA. Looks like a monkey fucking a football over here. 1.00

00:38:29.000 But it's this thing where they have a complete integration between their businesses and their government. 0.99

00:38:37.000 So their government would never allow them, if we sent American gear over there that hoovers up all their intellectual data, they would never allow that.

00:38:47.000 Exactly.

00:38:48.000 There's no level playing field.

00:38:49.000 There's a few realities.

00:38:51.000 There's no rule of law in China.

00:38:52.000 There's no level playing field.

00:38:53.000 If you go over to set up a manufacturing facility, you have to assume everything's going to be compromised.

00:39:00.000 You're proprietary information.

00:39:02.000 You're coding your software.

00:39:05.000 Yeah, they don't extend to us the same open society concept, right?

00:39:12.000 I mean, terrorism.

00:39:13.000 Terrorists have used that against us for years and years and years and years, right?

00:39:17.000 That's the fact that we have a free and open society and we relish it.

00:39:20.000 And we should, right?

00:39:21.000 That's a great thing.

00:39:23.000 People who don't have our interests at heart are going to take advantage of that at some point, and they have over the years.

00:39:29.000 So, I think with...

00:39:31.000 I mean, you look at China and something simple such as electric vehicles.

00:39:39.000 By the way, I walked into a rental car place the other day, a couple weeks ago, and the guy said, I just rented some bog-standard sedan, because I was only there for like two days.

00:39:50.000 The guy says, Hey, I can give you a deal on a Tesla.

00:39:54.000 Well, I've never driven a Tesla before.

00:39:56.000 So I thought, okay, I guess.

00:40:00.000 So it was a simple, whatever it was, a Model 3, I guess they call it.

00:40:04.000 So he says, hey, there you go.

00:40:07.000 And he gave me the little thingy, the little card or whatever it is to go out.

00:40:12.000 And he says, it's parked out there in space 407. So I walk out there.

00:40:18.000 And I realized as I'm standing there with my little roller board bag that I don't know how to get into this car.

00:40:25.000 I don't know how to unlock it.

00:40:28.000 And so I'm looking and I'm walking around and I'm trying to figure this out.

00:40:30.000 I've got the little card and then I look inside and that big screen in there lights up and it says tap the car. 0.99

00:40:39.000 So, like a fucking moron, I'm out there tapping the car with this card, right? 0.98

00:40:44.000 I can't figure out, because I don't know that it's that little part by the window, right, with this little thing there. 1.00

00:40:49.000 I'm being very technical.

00:40:51.000 So I stand out there for about 10 minutes trying to open the car, and I can't.

00:40:55.000 So I go back into the little center there, and I said, um, I don't know how to do this.

00:40:59.000 So the guy walks out with me, and he shows me how to open it.

00:41:03.000 I get in the car, and he walks away. 0.99

00:41:05.000 Now I don't know how to start the fucker. 0.98

00:41:07.000 So I sat in the car in this rental car center and I googled how to start a Tesla and had to watch a little video, right? 1.00

00:41:18.000 Like an idiot.

00:41:19.000 And my takeaway, long story short, I've already made it long, but my takeaway from driving the Tesla for two days was I think if you're a technology person, I think it's great. 1.00

00:41:30.000 People love it.

00:41:31.000 I'm not, clearly.

00:41:34.000 But to me, there was no driving experience.

00:41:36.000 There's no sound.

00:41:37.000 There's no feel.

00:41:38.000 It was like driving a golf cart.

00:41:41.000 And so, I'm not saying I'm against electric vehicles, but...

00:41:45.000 Oh, I know where I was going with this.

00:41:47.000 But the Chinese, when you think about it, they control 85%, 90% of the processing of minerals that go into an electric vehicle battery.

00:41:59.000 And so when you think about that, it's not that they have all those within China, but they control the processing of it because they're smart and because they looked at this years ago and because part of their five-year plan at a certain point was we're going to advance the ball in green technology.

00:42:14.000 That's we're going to focus.

00:42:14.000 Well, what does that mean?

00:42:15.000 That means we're going to lock this down and we're also going to steal information related to this, but we're going to do everything we can to get ourselves further up that chain.

00:42:24.000 So whether you're talking about lithium or cobalt or copper or whatever, In that battery, you know, we are way behind the curve.

00:42:33.000 We got a real problem.

00:42:34.000 So we imagine somehow we're going to develop, you know, this green world where we're all driving electric vehicles.

00:42:41.000 And the reality is China's already set themselves up in a very strong way to kind of dominate that industry.

00:42:48.000 It's fascinating.

00:42:49.000 I like it because it shows, again, it shows The targeting aspects of intelligence and the thought process that goes into gathering information, developing a strategy, working towards it, prioritizing your collection, all these things.

00:43:02.000 But, yeah, anyway, I wasn't, I'm not saying I wasn't a fan of Tesla.

00:43:07.000 I like, you know, Musk and the company and all that, but I just, I like to hear a noise when I'm driving.

00:43:14.000 That's just me.

00:43:15.000 Yeah, well, I have cars that make a noise.

00:43:18.000 But I drove the Tesla today. 0.99

00:43:20.000 It's a fucking rocket ship. 0.99

00:43:22.000 It's the craziest car I've ever driven in my life. 1.00

00:43:24.000 The Model S Plaid.

00:43:26.000 It goes 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds.

00:43:29.000 The acceleration is impossible.

00:43:32.000 It doesn't even make sense.

00:43:33.000 It seems like you're in another time period.

00:43:36.000 You're around these things.

00:43:37.000 They're all horses. 1.00

00:43:38.000 And you're in a fucking Corvette. 1.00

00:43:41.000 I mean, it doesn't even make sense how fast it is. 1.00

00:43:43.000 And also how quiet it is.

00:43:45.000 The quiet part bothered me.

00:43:47.000 Maybe that was what it was.

00:43:48.000 I just wasn't, you know, what do I know?

00:43:49.000 But, you know, it's...

00:43:51.000 Listen to music.

00:43:52.000 Yeah.

00:43:52.000 Yeah, I could have done that.

00:43:53.000 They make a new challenger.

00:43:55.000 They just started releasing the promos on it.

00:44:00.000 And it's a challenger... 1.00

00:44:01.000 Look at Jamie on the fucking... 1.00

00:44:03.000 Wow. 0.99

00:44:04.000 It's a charger actually, a charger Daytona.

00:44:07.000 Is that a four-door or a two-door?

00:44:09.000 It's a two-door charger?

00:44:10.000 I was gonna bring it up because I just heard the sound of it yesterday.

00:44:13.000 Yeah, it's bizarre.

00:44:13.000 It's a fake sound.

00:44:14.000 Let's play it.

00:44:15.000 Wait.

00:44:15.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:16.000 Listen, it's gonna hurt your feelings.

00:44:19.000 Let's see.

00:44:23.000 This is the sound it's gonna make. 0.98

00:44:30.000 Looks fucking dope though. 0.99

00:44:32.000 Give it that. 1.00

00:44:33.000 God damn it, I'm gonna buy one. 0.99

00:44:36.000 So it's very similar in many ways. 0.99

00:44:39.000 What is that?

00:44:41.000 The back.

00:44:42.000 I don't know.

00:44:43.000 That's the sound? 0.98

00:44:44.000 It looks fucking great. 0.98

00:44:46.000 I thought it was going to play like the growl. 0.99

00:44:48.000 Yeah, it does.

00:44:48.000 There's other videos, Jamie, because I did listen to the actual growl while they were revving it.

00:44:53.000 I don't know why they're not revving it that way.

00:44:54.000 So it's just set up to mimic, basically, the sound of an engine.

00:45:00.000 Yeah, sort of.

00:45:01.000 Is that it right there?

00:45:02.000 I'm just checking to see if there's something else that could be here.

00:45:05.000 Welcome back to Daytona.

00:45:08.000 I do not think it has that.

00:45:11.000 No, but I know it's available.

00:45:14.000 Each headline says it has it.

00:45:17.000 You definitely have it.

00:45:21.000 Bro.

00:45:23.000 That is amazing.

00:45:28.000 That's the sound.

00:45:30.000 That is sick.

00:45:33.000 What?

00:45:42.000 It might have been that.

00:45:43.000 Not sure how I feel about that.

00:45:44.000 Oh, there you go.

00:45:45.000 The clear roof and everything, that's insane!

00:45:51.000 It's fake.

00:45:52.000 Yeah.

00:45:52.000 It's like a...

00:45:53.000 It's a fake sound.

00:45:54.000 At least Porsche, when they have the Taycan, the electric one, it makes Jetson noises.

00:45:59.000 Have you heard that?

00:46:01.000 No.

00:46:03.000 See, I would like that.

00:46:04.000 I think that would be more entertaining than trying to mimic the actual sound of an engine.

00:46:08.000 Because you're lying to people.

00:46:10.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:11.000 You're lying to people.

00:46:14.000 Yeah, but it is...

00:46:19.000 But the Tesla, I am fascinated by the battery composition.

00:46:28.000 So listen to it when it takes off.

00:46:35.000 No, it'll show you more.

00:46:38.000 You get to hear it from, like, inside the car. 0.99

00:46:41.000 That looks fucking sick. 0.97

00:46:43.000 That car is supposed to be incredible to drive because it has, like, Porsche dynamics in terms of, like, steering and handling and everything like that. 0.99

00:46:51.000 But it also...

00:46:51.000 You hear that?

00:46:52.000 Yeah.

00:46:53.000 Yeah.

00:46:53.000 But it...

00:46:54.000 Okay.

00:46:56.000 Okay, I could live with that.

00:46:58.000 Yeah.

00:47:01.000 Listen, that's not bad.

00:47:07.000 That does look nice.

00:47:09.000 It's incredible.

00:47:10.000 But that is, to me, indicative of what I would like an electronic, futuristic car to sound like. 0.99

00:47:17.000 I don't want them to pretend it's a muscle car when it's a fucking electric car. 0.99

00:47:21.000 That's just horseshit. 1.00

00:47:21.000 You know what? 1.00

00:47:22.000 Get a muscle car.

00:47:23.000 Dorks are going to buy that thing. 1.00

00:47:25.000 Well, that's why I say, again, I guess, I'm too far down the road to appreciate the technology behind it.

00:47:33.000 But I am fascinated by the composition of the battery.

00:47:37.000 What that means in the future, if what we're trying to do is transition to all electric vehicles, where these minerals are located around the world, what that looks like in terms of who controls that process, but also just the simple stuff of, like, you know, I know we're talking about this for environmental reasons,

00:47:53.000 but...

00:47:54.000 You know what?

00:47:55.000 If what we're going to do is control more of this here in the U.S., I don't think a lot of people are going to get behind the idea of like, okay, let's do more mining in the U.S. Right.

00:48:03.000 I mean, that's...

00:48:04.000 Oil and gas looks like a clean energy process compared to the process of mining for the most part.

00:48:11.000 It gets ugly.

00:48:12.000 Yeah, it gets really ugly.

00:48:13.000 We got...

00:48:15.000 What do we got?

00:48:15.000 Cobalt.

00:48:16.000 You got, I forget, I remember one time that cobalt in a battery, in an EV battery, there's a few kilograms of it.

00:48:23.000 And there's more cobalt in the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, than anywhere else in the world.

00:48:33.000 So if, and again, China controls a lot of the processing, you know, 80 plus percent of this.

00:48:39.000 So if what we're saying is, okay, we want to do more cobalt mining, as just an example, in the US. There's a lot of cobalt in Idaho, believe it or not, which I don't know if you know this, but I'm in Idaho now.

00:48:51.000 And most of that's on state forest land.

00:48:56.000 Ugh.

00:48:57.000 Nobody's going to say, yeah, let's start digging up forest lands to get more cobalt.

00:49:02.000 So I don't know that we've actually thought this through completely from an environmental perspective.

00:49:08.000 We all like the idea. 0.98

00:49:08.000 I do think there's a lot of people out there who think that the energy for an electric vehicle comes from the battery itself, as opposed to maybe you've got to charge that son of a bitch up. 0.98

00:49:18.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.98

00:49:18.000 Which is unfortunate. 0.98

00:49:19.000 Yeah.

00:49:20.000 I mean, if we had nuclear power to power electric vehicles and we could figure out a way to mine cleanly, but those are euphemisms.

00:49:30.000 That's jumbo shrimp right there. 0.97

00:49:31.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:49:35.000 Yeah, I just don't think it's...

00:49:37.000 And again, I'm not against it.

00:49:38.000 Let's make a greener, cleaner world, but let's do everything all at the same time.

00:49:43.000 But it seems like it's greener in terms of people's impressions of what's going on because you're not getting the exhaust fumes.

00:49:51.000 But it's not necessarily greener net for the world when you think about the environmental impact and exactly what's involved in taking the stuff out of the ground and also how you're powering it.

00:50:05.000 Yeah.

00:50:06.000 When we think about who leads the world in sort of the cleanest form of oil and gas exploration and drilling, for example, and we say, okay, well, we want to get away from oil and gas here and fossil fuels here in the US,

00:50:21.000 so we're going to start making it more difficult to pursue that.

00:50:28.000 But we're okay with the idea that other nations aren't going to change their habits and their practices, which are not as environmentally friendly.

00:50:36.000 And so, I mean, there's a lot of layers to this.

00:50:39.000 Again, it doesn't mean...

00:50:40.000 I'm just saying we need to be a little bit more pragmatic, but I do think...

00:50:44.000 Yeah, I think part of the problem is people feel righteous about it.

00:50:46.000 Yes.

00:50:47.000 And if those minerals are mined in Congo or you're getting lithium from Chile or Argentina or wherever, Australia...

00:50:54.000 Fine, because I don't have to look at it.

00:50:56.000 But what is the environmental impact there?

00:50:59.000 How can we ignore that?

00:51:01.000 I would hate for green energy to become an oxymoron, because it seems like it's one of those things that people love to say, green energy.

00:51:11.000 But what does that really mean? 0.91

00:51:13.000 And if you think about the amount of cars in this country alone that are actually electric vehicles with low emissions that are powered by coal plants, Which is kind of fucking wild. 0.92

00:51:25.000 Yeah.

00:51:26.000 Because that's a real thing in many parts of this country.

00:51:29.000 Yeah, I don't know where people think that...

00:51:31.000 I mean, again, I'm not saying everybody thinks this way, but I think there are a lot of people that just somehow imagine that battery is just self-charging.

00:51:39.000 Well, I think a lot of people just like the idea of doing the right thing from their perspective.

00:51:45.000 Like, how much can I do?

00:51:45.000 Well, if I drive a Tesla or if I drive, you know, one of them electric hummers, at least I'm not releasing exhaust fumes.

00:51:53.000 Yeah.

00:51:54.000 We've got, uh, I got a, I got a big truck.

00:51:57.000 I got a big GMC truck.

00:51:58.000 I got a Suburban.

00:51:59.000 I got a 91 Wagoneer.

00:52:01.000 I got a Range Rover.

00:52:04.000 Uh, I got a little MGB. I'm just kicking the shit out of the fossil fuels at my house. 0.99

00:52:10.000 I don't have any EVs yet. 0.97

00:52:12.000 I've heard that there's potential technologies that can extract carbon from the air and that some people are looking at carbon as a potential resource, that you could actually extract the carbon from the air and that carbon could be valuable.

00:52:27.000 It sounds crazy.

00:52:29.000 It sounds like dilatheum crystals from Star Trek, but it's a great idea.

00:52:33.000 But if we're putting it out there, doesn't it make sense that we could suck it out?

00:52:36.000 Yeah.

00:52:37.000 It's an interesting idea.

00:52:39.000 I'm nowhere near smart enough to ponder it beyond saying it's an interesting idea.

00:52:44.000 I do think that...

00:52:47.000 I mean, again, I'll wrap up the, you know, it's the Bash China Hour, but I do think that when we're talking about where we're five to ten years from now, and, you know, 0.97

00:53:03.000 the U.S. government just passed this Chips and Science Act because we're aware of the fact that we don't produce enough semiconductors, enough chips here in the States.

00:53:12.000 Most of it being done over in Taiwan, right?

00:53:14.000 I mean, 90%, basically, of the sophisticated semiconductor product is produced in Taiwan.

00:53:23.000 And so, yeah, okay, fine.

00:53:25.000 Pass the Chips and Science Act, invest some more money in doing that here.

00:53:31.000 I just don't know that we're going to be able to do anything about the minerals required for the EV part because I just don't see, once people realize that it means you're going to start digging up more earth in these not good-looking mining operations.

00:53:47.000 I don't know that they're going to be on board with that.

00:53:49.000 So I'm not sure where that goes in terms of U.S. independence in that industry.

00:53:56.000 But there's a lot of things we, you know, fine, let's invest in.

00:54:00.000 But I just think that that idea that somehow we're going to shut down fossil fuels in the very near short term in favor of this, no.

00:54:09.000 How about we continue with the fossil fuels that we have?

00:54:12.000 You know, natural gas, great.

00:54:13.000 We should be doing more of that.

00:54:15.000 But we can do these other things as well.

00:54:17.000 We can pursue all these other things at the same time.

00:54:19.000 But we're always in this weird argument where it's like, it's all this or it's all that.

00:54:25.000 And just, no, just multitask and maybe eventually we'll get to that green future that everybody's banging on about.

00:54:32.000 I think people need to see the horrific consequences of mining.

00:54:36.000 I just don't think they quite understand it.

00:54:38.000 And this is coming from someone who has an electric car who loves it.

00:54:41.000 I get it.

00:54:42.000 But it's just what you're talking about is not clean at all.

00:54:48.000 And we're talking about doing this for every car in the country?

00:54:52.000 And I don't even believe we even have enough minerals to power X amount of hundreds of millions of cars.

00:55:00.000 No, I don't know what the mineral reserves are now around the world.

00:55:06.000 You know, in terms of rare earth minerals, China's hit the jackpot, right, in terms of just where they're located.

00:55:11.000 So they've got, when it's rare earth minerals, but I mean, you know, you can't, you don't put cobalt and lithium and copper in that category.

00:55:18.000 But again, they've got the hands on the processing.

00:55:23.000 Yeah, it is fascinating.

00:55:25.000 I just think that whether we're talking about their efforts to gather intelligence, whether we're talking about their buildup of their military, whether we're talking about sort of their focus, I just think that there needs to be more of an awareness of...

00:55:43.000 Where we are in relation to China and what that's going to look like in 5, 10, 15 years.

00:55:49.000 And I don't know that we've, you know, bang on about something else that's interesting.

00:55:53.000 We spent so much time focused on the Middle East and counterterrorism that I think we legitimately degraded our ability to worry about other parts of the world and Russia and China being the two key ones.

00:56:08.000 So I think we're trying to recalibrate, but that takes time.

00:56:12.000 When you're talking about retooling your intelligence community to now move away from this idea that, you know, it's all counterterrorism all the time and, you know, we got to get back to the kind of the old school intel concerns.

00:56:25.000 It takes time to do that.

00:56:28.000 It takes time to recruit new officers.

00:56:30.000 It takes time to find those Mandarin speakers.

00:56:33.000 It takes time to get the analysts who have all that experience.

00:56:36.000 A lot of them have retired over the years, right?

00:56:38.000 So that's a ship you don't turn around on a dime.

00:56:43.000 So I think it's...

00:56:45.000 It's going to be interesting where we go, but circling back, I mean, you look at Russia, and I don't know where that mess is going to end up, but I think we better be paying real close attention to what it means for our abilities to better assess What's going to happen with China, 0.98

00:57:03.000 particularly vis-a-vis Taiwan?

00:57:04.000 And I just said vis-a-vis.

00:57:06.000 I can't believe it.

00:57:06.000 I've got to write down, never say vis-a-vis again.

00:57:09.000 We have to be...

00:57:10.000 If they're doing that, they have to also be careful that they don't degrade the intelligence on...

00:57:17.000 Foreign extremists and terrorists and old school, the things that we've been worried about this whole time.

00:57:25.000 It's not like you want to ignore that.

00:57:27.000 No, and I think that recent hit on Sawari...

00:57:34.000 In Afghanistan, I think that shows that we can do that.

00:57:36.000 We can multitask, again.

00:57:41.000 But you're right.

00:57:42.000 You don't want to take your eye off the ball.

00:57:43.000 We're all tired of terrorism.

00:57:44.000 We're all tired of the war on terror.

00:57:47.000 But the extremists aren't.

00:57:48.000 They're still pretty energized.

00:57:49.000 They're still pretty interested in, can we turn Afghanistan into a training ground again for our interests to attack the US and its allies?

00:57:59.000 Yes, extremists are still very interested in doing that.

00:58:01.000 So we have to stay focused in that arena, but we can't afford to put so much of our resource in that area.

00:58:09.000 We've got to understand where our primary concerns are.

00:58:13.000 And certainly at the top of that list, look, it hasn't changed in Years, right?

00:58:18.000 I mean, you ask, you know, somebody in Washington DC within the military or intel community over all these years, what are your top concerns?

00:58:25.000 And it's always going to be China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.

00:58:30.000 And so China's always been up there.

00:58:33.000 But the reality is we took our eye off the ball.

00:58:35.000 We focused elsewhere.

00:58:36.000 And that degraded our ability, I'd argue, to do what we need to do.

00:58:41.000 And part of that is giving the White House whatever administration's in charge, giving them the best intelligence you can.

00:58:47.000 And to do that, you need the collection capabilities.

00:58:51.000 That's the human...

00:58:52.000 We do very well on technical collection, right?

00:58:55.000 Nobody does it better than we do, I'd argue.

00:58:58.000 But a lot of times, your most important intelligence comes from a human, a source, right?

00:59:04.000 And that's tough to do.

00:59:07.000 And then, like I said, you need the analysts who are capable and experienced enough to put together something that makes sense and allows the U.S. then to forward plan.

00:59:17.000 But I guarantee you, you know, it's an accelerated timeline on Taiwan And we better understand what that means.

00:59:25.000 And I don't know that we're paying a lot of attention right now.

00:59:29.000 What's the best case scenario?

00:59:31.000 Like, how could this play out well?

00:59:35.000 They don't do anything in our lifetime, and they leave it to our kids to worry about.

00:59:40.000 Because I don't know what else...

00:59:42.000 Look, I think they're going to do something.

00:59:44.000 I don't think Xi's going to step down until he's got Taiwan back in the fold.

00:59:48.000 I think that's something that he...

00:59:51.000 Probably desperately wants to accomplish on his watch.

00:59:54.000 So how much more time does he have?

00:59:57.000 He set himself up as president for life, basically, king for life.

01:00:02.000 And so I think it's...

01:00:07.000 It's an inevitable conflict that I don't know that we've really thought through because we don't understand how the Chinese military is capable of integrating all their various elements. 0.91

01:00:18.000 China hasn't been at war for a long time in real terms.

01:00:22.000 We saw Russia engage in Afghanistan a couple decades ago, whatever.

01:00:29.000 We had a sense of what that was going to look like.

01:00:32.000 We still got it wrong, the assessment.

01:00:35.000 We got it wrong.

01:00:35.000 We got their logistics capabilities wrong.

01:00:37.000 We got their communications capabilities wrong.

01:00:39.000 We got wrong about what sort of information was being fed to Putin and how he was basing his assessments.

01:00:47.000 So there was a lot of mistakes that we're hopefully learning from.

01:00:50.000 What did we get wrong?

01:00:52.000 Part of the problem we have or had and still have is, you know, Putin's increasingly small circle of key advisors, right?

01:01:02.000 And so understanding who he's paying attention to and what he's...

01:01:08.000 The advice that he's being given and how that then, you know, formulates his actions.

01:01:13.000 And so I think we had a real problem in assessing his plans and intentions, his motivations.

01:01:18.000 And that's always a tough lift from Intel perspective, right?

01:01:22.000 Unless you've got an asset who's right next to him, you know, a key advisor, or you're just, you know, tapping into his internal communications.

01:01:30.000 So that was one of the things we got wrong.

01:01:32.000 And then we got, we didn't assess really very well Look, they got everything wrong.

01:01:40.000 They couldn't figure out their supply lines, right?

01:01:42.000 Their communications were awful.

01:01:44.000 Their command and control was terrible, which is why they've lost so many generals.

01:01:47.000 So they've had a series of problems.

01:01:51.000 It's even a harder lift to assess China's capabilities right now because, again, in part they haven't been at war for a long time and there's more to it, right?

01:02:05.000 How are they going to integrate all their various military elements?

01:02:08.000 How are they going to use cyber, you know, for this effort if they move on Taiwan?

01:02:14.000 And, you know, I don't want to say we're unprepared because we're not.

01:02:17.000 We always game these things out and we've got lots of scenarios.

01:02:20.000 But I will say that there's kind of a rush on to make sure that we're up to speed.

01:02:27.000 Because again, we had our resources focused elsewhere.

01:02:32.000 Again, to your most important question, which is how does it all end?

01:02:36.000 Nobody really knows.

01:02:37.000 I mean, if they moved next year, do we think the Biden administration would go to war with China?

01:02:44.000 Or would they say, okay, we're going to supply Taiwan.

01:02:49.000 We're not going to put any boots on the ground.

01:02:51.000 We're not going to get in direct conflict with China.

01:02:54.000 And we'll sanction China. 0.98

01:02:56.000 Well, That's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

01:03:00.000 We can sanction Russia from here until Sunday because we're not really that intertwined.

01:03:04.000 We're very intertwined with China right now from an economic perspective.

01:03:14.000 Yeah.

01:03:14.000 There's a lot of questions here as to what could happen.

01:03:17.000 And look, the Chinese, they're doing the same thing on their side of the table.

01:03:20.000 They're trying to figure out, what are we going to do?

01:03:23.000 That whole Make America First thing received a lot of pushback from people, particularly on the left, because they looked at it in terms of that's a nationalistic, xenophobic, problematic perspective.

01:03:36.000 I think a lot of people's eyes got woken up, a lot of people's eyes got opened up during the pandemic when we realized how much what we need just in terms of medication and electronics and chips, how much of it was being produced overseas and how little of what we make here is required.

01:03:56.000 I mean, we don't make enough here to run the country.

01:03:59.000 We don't have the manufacturing capabilities that we would need to be completely independent.

01:04:05.000 We're not independent.

01:04:07.000 We need this stuff.

01:04:08.000 And that can be changed.

01:04:10.000 But that's going to take a long time.

01:04:12.000 It's going to take a long time.

01:04:13.000 It's going to take a lot of resources.

01:04:15.000 It's going to have to get people on board.

01:04:17.000 There's a lot of...

01:04:19.000 There's so many areas we should be investing money into instead of $80 billion into the IRS. I just pulled that one out of my ass, but I thought I was thinking about money that the US government invests and I just remembered that they're pumping $80 billion into the IRS. God. 0.97

01:04:56.000 They have fudged a little here and there, and they're going to bring those folks down.

01:05:01.000 Right.

01:05:01.000 And it's interesting because when they first rolled this out, much like a lot of things that the current administration does, and again, they've done some good things.

01:05:11.000 They've done some odd things.

01:05:15.000 Their messaging always seems to be off, right?

01:05:17.000 So they're always kind of batting clean up.

01:05:19.000 They'll do something, and the next thing you know, John Kirby or somebody's got to roll out and explain.

01:05:23.000 That's not what we meant.

01:05:24.000 This is what we meant.

01:05:25.000 So when they rolled out the fact that there was $80 billion in there to pump into the IRS, and there's 87,000 new agents, They had really no message, right? 0.99

01:05:37.000 And so immediately people were just losing their shit. 0.99

01:05:40.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:05:41.000 And then because the Democrats, when that happens, they are very good at then circling the wagons and coming up with a narrative, right?

01:05:49.000 And disseminating that out and making sure that everybody pushes that same talking point.

01:05:53.000 And then they stick to that talking point.

01:05:55.000 So the talking point then became, after a few days of terrible optics on this, was, well...

01:06:01.000 The IRS has been underfunded for, you know, years, decades.

01:06:05.000 And because of that, we haven't been able to go after the billionaires because we haven't been able to hire all those, you know, really clever agents who can do those sophisticated investigations of the billionaires.

01:06:18.000 And so this is all about refunding the IRS because it's been underfunded.

01:06:23.000 We're going to improve the technology and we're going to be able to go after those billionaires finally because we'll have enough people.

01:06:34.000 Okay.

01:06:35.000 I'm not buying that.

01:06:36.000 Why do you think they did it?

01:06:37.000 Why do you think they decided to ramp up and hire 87,000 new IRS agents to tune of $80 billion?

01:06:46.000 Yeah.

01:06:47.000 Because they want to raise money.

01:06:49.000 But how much can they raise?

01:06:50.000 Well, they're claiming they're going to get $200 billion over a period of time out of this increased effort.

01:06:55.000 So they're going to make money.

01:06:56.000 Eventually, the government will make money.

01:06:58.000 From who, though?

01:06:59.000 Well, they argue nobody other than wealthy people, just wealthy people.

01:07:03.000 So wealthy people that have been cheating?

01:07:05.000 Yes.

01:07:06.000 That's their argument is basically there's so much money sloshing around out there that the wealthy people haven't been paying their taxes and they've been cheating and hiding it that we need all these new agents because that's where the money is.

01:07:18.000 Is there an argument there?

01:07:21.000 You know what, is there an argument that you could probably That's a good question.

01:07:28.000 Not being a wealthy person, I don't know.

01:07:31.000 I made an assumption earlier that I really shouldn't have, that the wealthy people are paying their fair share of taxes.

01:07:38.000 I think a lot of them are.

01:07:39.000 I think corporations get a bad name.

01:07:42.000 Look, I mean, corporations, people say, well, look, the oil and gas company, this one paid no taxes.

01:07:47.000 Well, the previous year, they suffered a $35 billion loss because they were exploring and reinvesting money into the company or whatever.

01:07:56.000 It's more complicated than just saying people aren't paying their fair share, but look, are people with a lot of money willing to spend some of that on accountants to make sure that they don't pay any more tax than absolutely necessary?

01:08:08.000 Sure.

01:08:08.000 If I had a lot of money, that's exactly what I'd do.

01:08:11.000 I would pay what I'm supposed to pay, but I wouldn't pay a penny more.

01:08:13.000 Right.

01:08:14.000 Yeah, that's what people make arguments when they're allowed these tax loopholes.

01:08:18.000 They use them because they're there.

01:08:19.000 Yes, yeah.

01:08:20.000 And they're legal.

01:08:21.000 So are they going to go after people that have overseas accounts that are illegal?

01:08:27.000 How are they going to get all that money?

01:08:29.000 Well, and I'm sure that that'll be a part of it, yeah.

01:08:32.000 If I'm housing money offshore and I'm not doing it in a way that's allowed, then those investigations can be very complicated.

01:08:42.000 And so, you know, asset tracing in general is a difficult process.

01:08:48.000 And when you're talking about someone with, you know, a couple billion dollars and several dozen entities spread around the world, Then, yes, it can be a complicated process, and I have no doubt that you need auditors who are, you know, financially savvy and sophisticated enough to do that.

01:09:06.000 I always thought the IRS had those people because that's what they were doing, right?

01:09:16.000 Theoretically, you're filing your forms.

01:09:18.000 You're doing the thing you're supposed to do.

01:09:22.000 It's overly complicated.

01:09:26.000 I guess what I would say is instead of hiring 87,000 new agents, spending $80 billion on this process, Maybe they could have simplified the tax code and come up with something better.

01:09:40.000 I'm not clever enough to figure out what that would be, but maybe that was an option that they could have thought of.

01:09:45.000 But I think the optic is also good.

01:09:47.000 We're going after the billionaire.

01:09:48.000 That's an easy argument.

01:09:50.000 That's an easy argument to make. 1.00

01:09:51.000 And everyone's going, yeah, fuck the billionaire. 1.00

01:09:52.000 Fuck the man. 1.00

01:09:53.000 He's screwing us over. 1.00

01:09:56.000 And then that helps to lead to today's environment where a lot of people are jealous or envious or can't stand the fact that someone's got a lot of money.

01:10:03.000 I mean, Well, they feel like the system's rigged.

01:10:06.000 They don't feel like the person has a lot of money because they had an amazing product, and even though they paid their fair share, they did something that's extraordinary, so they receive extraordinary compensation.

01:10:17.000 That's not the narrative that people hear.

01:10:20.000 You know, the narrative that people hear is, you know, you work your ass off, you work your tail to the bone, you can barely make ends meet, and the reason for that is someone's out there stealing more than they deserve.

01:10:29.000 Right.

01:10:29.000 Keeping you down.

01:10:30.000 Not that you provide exactly the amount of resources that are worthy of the compensation that you receive.

01:10:36.000 Yeah.

01:10:37.000 Nobody wants to hear that message.

01:10:38.000 No.

01:10:39.000 No.

01:10:39.000 That's not satisfying.

01:10:41.000 That's what scares me is that there's so many people in this country that if they said, we are going to just redistribute wealth in this country in a way that makes it equal for everyone, so there's no way that anyone is poor in this country.

01:10:57.000 We're just going to take the money from other people.

01:11:01.000 Who's going to do that?

01:11:02.000 But people would sign up for that. 0.99

01:11:04.000 If we said that, if they said that and they made it some sort of a way, if they framed it in a way that's going to change the country and make it a better place, the thing that they don't understand is these greedy fucks that are out there They're sucking up all that money. 0.99

01:11:19.000 They're sucking up all that money because that's what they signed up for. 0.98

01:11:23.000 And in the process of doing that, that's how amazing things get made. 0.99

01:11:27.000 Because these people that are these greedy fucks, they are willing to work 16-hour days and put together these companies that achieve extraordinary amounts of money. 0.97

01:11:40.000 They achieve extraordinary amounts of success. 0.98

01:11:42.000 And they employ people, and they create spin-off companies, and they create inventions and patents.

01:11:50.000 So, yeah, I've always been a firm believer, and maybe part of it's naive, because, yes, there are some people out there screwing the system, and there are some people that are undeserving of the massive wealth that they have because it kind of fell in their lap or whatever.

01:12:03.000 Who knows? 0.99

01:12:05.000 I don't really give a shit. 0.99

01:12:07.000 My theory has always been... 0.99

01:12:09.000 All I want to do is work as hard as I can.

01:12:11.000 I'd like to do as well as I can.

01:12:12.000 And that's it.

01:12:14.000 I just want to provide for my kids.

01:12:16.000 And I've always really held the belief that if you work a little bit harder...

01:12:20.000 I tell my three knuckleheads this all the time.

01:12:23.000 If you work a little bit harder, you can do exponentially better.

01:12:26.000 You can achieve success.

01:12:28.000 But you've got to work harder.

01:12:31.000 And...

01:12:32.000 That doesn't imply that people who aren't doing well aren't working hard.

01:12:36.000 A lot of people are.

01:12:37.000 They're working hard.

01:12:38.000 Yeah.

01:12:39.000 But you have to think hard, too.

01:12:41.000 I had a science teacher in high school that was a dork, but he had this one thing that stuck with me forever.

01:12:46.000 He was a really weird guy.

01:12:48.000 But he said, you cannot get by in this world by just working hard.

01:12:52.000 You have to think hard.

01:12:53.000 And thinking hard is more important.

01:12:54.000 Because you have to choose which path that you're on.

01:12:57.000 And you have to think very carefully.

01:12:59.000 Because to back up and start again is far more difficult than to choose a correct path in the first place.

01:13:06.000 And there's so many people in this country that feel entitled, and they feel like the government owes them something, and they don't understand where resources are coming from.

01:13:13.000 They don't understand, like, this whole capitalism game that we're in.

01:13:16.000 They just think that it's rigged because they don't have it.

01:13:19.000 And it's almost always particularly people that are at the beginning of this journey, right?

01:13:23.000 You're starting off, you make $50,000 a year, and you find out someone's worth $50 billion, and you're like, well, that can't be fair.

01:13:29.000 Yeah.

01:13:30.000 But fair is not really what it's about.

01:13:32.000 You're playing a game, and you can choose to play the game as a waiter, where you have a very limited amount of money that you're ever going to make.

01:13:39.000 You have good days and bad days, but this is the cap.

01:13:43.000 Or you can choose the CEO route, where you can have a company, and you will get bonuses, and they will be disgustingly extraordinary.

01:13:52.000 Yeah.

01:13:53.000 Yeah, and you know what?

01:13:54.000 I'll tell you.

01:13:55.000 I've got a business, right?

01:13:57.000 It's a consulting firm.

01:13:58.000 Can I say the name of it?

01:13:59.000 Yeah.

01:14:00.000 It's called Portman Square Group.

01:14:02.000 And I've been doing this.

01:14:03.000 It was under a different name, and then we were able to do a management buyout.

01:14:08.000 So it's Portman Square Group, where it's an intelligence and security services firm.

01:14:12.000 The point being is it's our business, right?

01:14:15.000 My wife and I own it.

01:14:17.000 She's got a crisis communications firm, and so we merged that with all my businesses.

01:14:22.000 Point being is, you know, when people hear that, I've had these conversations with people.

01:14:28.000 They go, oh, you got your own firm.

01:14:30.000 You got your own company.

01:14:31.000 You must be just, you know, rolling in debt.

01:14:33.000 I worry about making payroll, right?

01:14:35.000 All the time.

01:14:35.000 That's my primary concern is I want to make payroll.

01:14:37.000 I've had people working for me for a decade and a half or more.

01:14:43.000 Those people are raising their kids.

01:14:46.000 They're building a life and have built a life.

01:14:49.000 And my responsibility is to make sure that they have that.

01:14:52.000 There have been times when I haven't taken anything to make sure I can make payroll.

01:14:57.000 And I worry about it.

01:14:58.000 I wake up at 2 in the morning worrying about something.

01:15:01.000 So it never ends.

01:15:02.000 To your point, you work 60-hour days.

01:15:03.000 I argue you never turn off.

01:15:05.000 If we go on a...

01:15:07.000 You know, on a holiday somewhere, I'm constantly worried about something.

01:15:10.000 And that's just what you do.

01:15:12.000 But I did it and I left the government to do this because I wanted to have possibly unlimited possibilities, right?

01:15:22.000 I didn't want a ceiling.

01:15:24.000 I didn't want a cap.

01:15:25.000 And I knew working for the government, I always knew what I was going to make, no matter how well I was doing.

01:15:30.000 And so, you know, I do personally kind of take exception sometimes when people, you know, piss on, you know, people who are doing well, because I don't sometimes think they see the amount of work that, particularly small, you know, medium-sized companies, what people put into that,

01:15:46.000 right?

01:15:47.000 And the amount of effort they put into it as owners and proprietors of these things.

01:15:51.000 And you've got to work your ass off, but you're doing it in the hopes that Maybe there isn't a cap.

01:15:59.000 Maybe there isn't a ceiling.

01:16:00.000 You don't know where you're going to go.

01:16:03.000 And not knowing where you're going to go, I think, is pretty exciting.

01:16:05.000 It's a real challenge.

01:16:06.000 It's interesting.

01:16:07.000 But I don't know where I was going with that.

01:16:10.000 It's uncomfortable.

01:16:13.000 If you're going to start a business, the unexpected, the unknown, it looms over everything.

01:16:21.000 There's a reason why those guys all have heart attacks.

01:16:24.000 I've had one.

01:16:25.000 There you go.

01:16:27.000 That's exactly what it is.

01:16:28.000 It's not fun.

01:16:30.000 I mean, I can't imagine running an enormous corporation.

01:16:32.000 I mean, I'm very fortunate that we run this podcast with kind of a skeleton group.

01:16:37.000 Because that's...

01:16:39.000 It's a quality skeleton group, though. 1.00

01:16:40.000 Jamie's the fucking... 1.00

01:16:41.000 He's the goat. 1.00

01:16:43.000 If it wasn't for him, I'd have like four other people doing his fucking job, and it would be annoying. 0.99

01:16:47.000 Did you see what he did when he pulled up that Dodge Charger? 0.99

01:16:49.000 He's always psychic.

01:16:51.000 He's on top of it.

01:16:51.000 He's psychic.

01:16:52.000 Oh, I'm going to try to test him on something.

01:16:54.000 Okay.

01:16:54.000 Jamie, there was a graphic, and I saw it at one point, that showed what I was talking about with Huawei, with the I-25 corridor, and it showed where the regional telecoms provider is located that they've cornered the market on,

01:17:11.000 this Chinese company has, and where our ICBM sites are.

01:17:15.000 Oof.

01:17:15.000 And it was, I forget who had the best.

01:17:19.000 There it is.

01:17:20.000 Look at that.

01:17:21.000 So everything that's in red is the regional telecoms, the U.S. regional telecoms provider.

01:17:26.000 And all their towers are outfitted with Huawei and ZTE and other Chinese telecom gear.

01:17:34.000 Up and down that corridor, which connects Wyoming and Colorado and then has these arteries running off into Nebraska.

01:17:40.000 And all those dots are ICBM facilities.

01:17:44.000 That is wild.

01:17:45.000 If you just think that there was some randomness to the fact that, you know, this Chinese company was busy working with Vial to establish this.

01:17:57.000 Yeah, anyway.

01:17:58.000 I thought that was a good graphic.

01:18:00.000 Yeah, of particular concern was Huawei routinely selling cheap equipment to rural providers in cases that appeared to be unprofitable for Huawei, but which placed its equipment near military assets.

01:18:12.000 Yeah.

01:18:13.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:18:14.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:18:15.000 I know. 0.99

01:18:16.000 So there you- But I mean, is there a way to circumvent this or to prevent this without the military and the United States government being completely integrated with companies?

01:18:29.000 It's a really good question.

01:18:30.000 That's our fear, right?

01:18:31.000 Our fear is that we, to beat them or to stop them, we become them.

01:18:34.000 Yeah, it's a really good question.

01:18:35.000 And it's important.

01:18:36.000 We've got a firewall.

01:18:37.000 People don't, I think, they're obviously the skeptics and people who, you know, think it's the one world government or whatever.

01:18:43.000 But, yeah, one of our...

01:18:46.000 The strengths and weaknesses is sort of this firewall between the U.S. government, military, and the way that we support private business, right?

01:18:57.000 And by that, I mean the Chinese regime or Russia, even France, a lot of countries in the EU even— Their remit for the Intel operations there in that country is to help support their private sector, right?

01:19:12.000 So intelligence that's collected can be disseminated to those companies, sometimes favored companies within that country to help their development, their growth, securing additional, you know, contracts, beating foreign competition, whatever it is.

01:19:29.000 And we've always had this firewall.

01:19:31.000 It says, well, we don't want to do that because favoring one company over another is going to screw up the idea of the free markets and capitalism and all the rest of it.

01:19:38.000 So you can argue it's a strength.

01:19:40.000 You can argue it's a weakness.

01:19:42.000 But you're right.

01:19:43.000 I mean, how do we get around that?

01:19:44.000 Well, in part, we get around it by bringing...

01:19:48.000 Our capabilities, you know, up to speed, doing more on our own, rehousing a lot of the manufacturing back here in the U.S. And so these are the things that we've talked about and that, you know, this administration, previous administrations have tried to do, but it's difficult, right?

01:20:03.000 It's tough.

01:20:04.000 It's costly.

01:20:05.000 It's, you know, it's not an easy process.

01:20:08.000 It takes time.

01:20:09.000 And sometimes it seems like we're not making any progress at all.

01:20:13.000 So, I don't know.

01:20:17.000 What do you think the administration has done well? 0.97

01:20:19.000 You said they've done some stupid things, but they've done some things well. 0.95

01:20:23.000 Well, politically, they've played a pretty good game politically recently. 0.99

01:20:28.000 I think the Chips and Science Act is not bad.

01:20:30.000 I know people saying, well, why would we subsidize companies that are making money here in the US that are making lots of money?

01:20:36.000 Why would we give them subsidies?

01:20:38.000 Well, for the very reasons we talked about, you got to do that.

01:20:41.000 That's a smart move.

01:20:44.000 Yeah, you could argue putting a cap on Medicare costs, out-of-pocket costs, I think that seems like the sort of thing you can get behind.

01:20:53.000 I mean, I think that's a good move.

01:20:58.000 I think they've been hijacked by the climate change activists and parties, so I put that in the negative corner.

01:21:05.000 I think, fine, you want to talk about it, you want to focus on doing some things, great.

01:21:09.000 But I think the focus on that is a little bit insane at this point.

01:21:14.000 I think one of the things on the negative column is the way they've dealt with the oil and gas industry.

01:21:18.000 And we've seen that.

01:21:19.000 I mean, Germany right now is trying to figure out how to get away from Russia as a gas provider.

01:21:24.000 You know what?

01:21:25.000 You know who could have helped them do this and helped us at the same time?

01:21:29.000 It would have been us.

01:21:30.000 If we hadn't layered on additional regulation as soon as Biden came in and he was very clear about going to war with the fossil fuel industry, you know what?

01:21:38.000 Fine.

01:21:39.000 I can't.

01:21:40.000 You can do things- Haven't they walked that back though?

01:21:42.000 Well, I don't think in a meaningful way.

01:21:47.000 I think they're talking out of both sides of their mouth.

01:21:49.000 I think they haven't eased up on regulations for the oil and gas industry.

01:21:54.000 So, no.

01:21:56.000 These companies, they don't make investments based on the next six months, right?

01:22:02.000 They make investments on a fairly long timeline.

01:22:06.000 So, when Biden, during his campaign a couple of years ago, talked about he's putting an end to the fossil fuel industry, they pay attention, and that kind of directs where they're going.

01:22:18.000 And by the way, I'm not lobbying for the oil and gas industry, but I am lobbying for the idea that you can do all of these various energy initiatives at the same time.

01:22:31.000 They invest a shit ton of money in new technologies, in clean energy.

01:22:36.000 You look at a company like BP and they're out there saying we're going to make the non-carbon part of our operations our primary revenue earner in the next whatever, 10, 15 years.

01:22:49.000 So they're putting a lot of money into it because they realize that's a market.

01:22:52.000 They're doing it for capitalistic reasons because they want to make money down the road.

01:22:55.000 But I guess my point is they're investing in it.

01:22:59.000 I think we just should be smarter.

01:23:01.000 Is part of the problem this political narrative that if you want votes from people on the left, you have to say you're green, you support clean energy, and that the climate crisis is going to kill us all?

01:23:16.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:23:17.000 There's these narratives that people will...

01:23:22.000 I've talked to people that talk about climate change, and we had Steve Coonan.

01:23:28.000 Steve Coonan, who is a physicist, who wrote a book called Unsettled.

01:23:34.000 And it's all about how the climate change is settled, you know, the climate science is settled.

01:23:38.000 He's like, it's not.

01:23:39.000 And he went over long-term graphs that show that what we're looking at is...

01:23:46.000 Our lifetime, the lifetime of the people before us, and this measurable increase in climate change.

01:23:52.000 And he's like, but if you go a thousand years, which is really what you're supposed to do when you're looking at the world, because there's been these ups and downs that have always existed, and they're very similar.

01:24:04.000 Although we are having an impact with our carbon footprint, no doubt, but these changes, in terms of the temperature of the earth, They've always existed.

01:24:15.000 The Sahara Desert used to be vast green. 0.66

01:24:19.000 I mean, it would be a fucking tropical jungle 15,000 years ago or whatever it was. 0.72

01:24:24.000 And these things are just an inevitable part of the cycle of Earth. 0.98

01:24:28.000 We have to factor that in.

01:24:29.000 We can't ignore the fact that human beings are impacting climate in a negative way with our carbon footprint and with our particulates that we pump into the air.

01:24:38.000 That, in places like, what was it that we looked at?

01:24:44.000 Was it South Dakota?

01:24:45.000 No, Nebraska?

01:24:46.000 Indiana.

01:24:47.000 Indiana, right?

01:24:48.000 Indiana has multiple coal plants in this one area that are so bad. 1.00

01:24:53.000 Like, people's cars are covered with a thin layer of soot every day, and they're breathing in this shit. 0.96

01:24:58.000 So you have a disproportionate amount of people with cardiorespiratory issues and allergies and reactions to the particulates in the area. 0.96

01:25:06.000 And then people say, well, how do you fix that?

01:25:08.000 Well, nuclear.

01:25:10.000 Clean nuclear. 0.99

01:25:11.000 And to do nuclear-powered plants that are far more sophisticated than the ones in Fukushima with only one step-removed backup plan, that if that fails, they're fucked, which is what they are. 1.00

01:25:23.000 They're fucked. 1.00

01:25:23.000 Right. 1.00

01:25:24.000 But you're talking about old technology and that nuclear in general, if it's engineered correctly to modern standards, is the best version of clean energy that we're capable of producing.

01:25:38.000 But everybody's terrified of it.

01:25:40.000 Because nuclear, politically, if you say nuclear power, everybody's like, oh, you're going to kill us all.

01:25:45.000 Well, everybody thinks immediately of the China Syndrome.

01:25:48.000 Yes.

01:25:48.000 You know, one of those things.

01:25:49.000 Chernobyl, Three Mile Island.

01:25:51.000 Right. 1.00

01:25:51.000 Fuck this. 1.00

01:25:52.000 So I think it's... 1.00

01:25:53.000 But yeah, I mean, look, we've been making progress.

01:25:55.000 Think about what London looked like in, you know, pre-World War II with the coal, you know, that was burning and the fact that, you know, they literally...

01:26:01.000 You know, you couldn't see, you know, 10 feet in front of you because the air was so bad.

01:26:06.000 China, to this day, still has this problem.

01:26:08.000 You go to some of these cities in China and, I mean, nobody's building coal factory or coal plants faster than China, right?

01:26:14.000 Again, not to get back on this, but, you know, when you talk about the world and where the world's going and you talk about climate change and you talk about, you know, environmental concerns, yeah, I mean, The reality is we can do these things.

01:26:28.000 We can make a change.

01:26:29.000 We can try to make differences.

01:26:31.000 I agree that there's no doubt we contribute to the problem.

01:26:36.000 I think it's a little presumptuous to say that we're going to cool the earth in 30 years or whatever.

01:26:42.000 I mean, we're going to stop this climate change from happening.

01:26:44.000 Okay, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't make...

01:26:47.000 Good faith efforts in areas that you can from a technology perspective.

01:26:51.000 But I think if China, if India aren't going to make any meaningful changes, and they're not, then overall, we just have to be pragmatic about what it means in terms of We're going to do our part,

01:27:08.000 and that's great, and we always do, but we also have to be realistic and understand what that means in terms of our national security interests.

01:27:15.000 And isn't also part of the problem is that these discussions, like what we're having right now, we're an hour and a half, 20 minutes into this conversation.

01:27:23.000 These are long, drawn-out discussions where there's a lot of nuance to it.

01:27:28.000 There's a lot of things to discuss.

01:27:29.000 But politically, when people are getting elected, When they're discussing these things in terms of trying to run for office and trying to push a narrative that people are going to accept and be enthusiastic about for voting, these things don't get discussed in this way.

01:27:45.000 So most people don't hear these conversations unless they're listening to podcasts or unless they're listening to some long YouTube dissertation on it.

01:27:54.000 So most people, they just have this narrative in their head.

01:27:58.000 I've talked to so many people, particularly on the left, That are, you know, climate change is going to kill my children.

01:28:04.000 We need to do something now.

01:28:06.000 And they don't have all the information at their disposal.

01:28:09.000 They just have a narrative.

01:28:10.000 Right.

01:28:10.000 We live in this soundbite culture, right?

01:28:12.000 We've all got attention deficit disorder.

01:28:15.000 And it's all very tough to sit and watch a documentary or watch an actual newscast that starts and puts everything in context.

01:28:24.000 People just don't have the time or they don't have the interest or they don't have the ability to sit still long enough to do it.

01:28:30.000 But you're right, yeah.

01:28:31.000 I mean, everyone's got like a shallow sort of level of knowledge about a lot of things, and a lot of that knowledge comes from social media.

01:28:42.000 I mean, I don't know how many...

01:28:43.000 I mean, good God.

01:28:46.000 Twitter's a great example of that.

01:28:48.000 When there's an issue, when Pelosi goes to Taiwan, suddenly I had no idea we had so many experts on Taiwan and the politics of Taiwan and what that meant.

01:28:59.000 Or, you know, Monkey Box.

01:29:01.000 Everyone's an expert on Monkey Box.

01:29:02.000 So people don't just say their opinion anymore.

01:29:06.000 They say it as if it's fact.

01:29:08.000 And so they're convinced of that, but they're convinced of it without having a body of Effort of evidence that they've got.

01:29:17.000 A real comprehensive review of all the pros and cons.

01:29:20.000 Yeah, because that takes time and everyone's busy, you know, putting food on the table or, you know...

01:29:25.000 And there's so many issues to think about like this.

01:29:27.000 It's not just that one.

01:29:28.000 There's so many different things going on simultaneously.

01:29:31.000 But it is...

01:29:32.000 I don't know how we get to a good spot when...

01:29:38.000 When you're right, when both sides, you know, when the Republicans or the Democrats, when the right, when the left, when they talk in these sort of very narrow terms, when they can motivate their base through just a very thin layer of information,

01:29:57.000 when they just throw a narrative out there and people say, yeah, that's it.

01:30:00.000 That's what I believe in, too.

01:30:02.000 And everybody is very siloed.

01:30:05.000 So I don't know how you get away from that.

01:30:07.000 Because that would imply that you'd need to change somehow, you know, human nature. 0.87

01:30:13.000 And human nature right now is just, you know, I look at, shit, you look at kids nowadays, and including my kids, and, you know, you try to engage them in a conversation about something of substance. 0.94

01:30:26.000 And... 0.96

01:30:27.000 You just see it's hard for them to sit still long enough to really go through it because they're so used to just changing topics or changing...

01:30:37.000 I don't know what it is.

01:30:40.000 TikTok mindset.

01:30:41.000 It's a TikTok mindset.

01:30:42.000 They're just constantly inundated with new information, new stimulus, and that's what they're accustomed to.

01:30:50.000 This is a complete left turn.

01:30:53.000 My wife and I took the three knuckleheads to Europe for the month of July this summer.

01:31:00.000 We thought we were going to immerse them in some history and culture and everything.

01:31:04.000 So I went through this whole thing.

01:31:06.000 I planned this little trip out.

01:31:08.000 We started off in a little village in the Cotswolds in the UK. I love the Cotswolds.

01:31:16.000 I imagine someday I'm going to retire, move there, and just investigate the occasional murder in some quaint English village.

01:31:24.000 That'll be my life.

01:31:25.000 That's your move?

01:31:26.000 That'll be my move.

01:31:27.000 It's going to be a CBS drama series?

01:31:31.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:31:33.000 Me and Angela Lansbury.

01:31:35.000 It's going to be great.

01:31:38.000 Murder, She Wrote, European Edition.

01:31:40.000 That's right.

01:31:41.000 I'll talk like Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins.

01:31:44.000 So I rented this little cottage in this tiny little village, and I thought, you know, we'll take the boys for hikes in the countryside, and we'll tour around.

01:31:54.000 We'll look at some castles and some sites and everything.

01:31:58.000 Now, mind you, all three of them liked the outdoors, and so the hikes were great.

01:32:02.000 They loved that part of it.

01:32:04.000 But it was pretty clear after the first day or so that the quaintness of an English village wasn't really for them. 1.00

01:32:10.000 They were like, all right, what the fuck? 0.99

01:32:13.000 And all three of them were like, after the first couple hours, they said, the Wi-Fi sucks in this cottage. 0.99

01:32:18.000 LAUGHTER I was like, there's no Wi-Fi, what are you talking about?

01:32:22.000 And I said, let's go out and look at another church.

01:32:25.000 I'll take you for a pub lunch, it'll be fun.

01:32:29.000 But it was fine.

01:32:30.000 So then we moved from there, went to London, but anyway, ended up in Paris at one point. 0.98

01:32:36.000 And we marched their asses all over Paris, showing them all the sights. 0.55

01:32:43.000 And including we took them to the Louvre, to the museum for like six hours, which I'm sure for these kids, right? 0.96

01:32:49.000 What are they, 15 and 13 and 11?

01:32:52.000 It was kind of torture, right?

01:32:53.000 At a certain point.

01:32:55.000 And after they looked at the sort of the Egyptian antiquities, the mummies and some of the, you know, medieval swords and things, I think that was pretty much all they were done.

01:33:06.000 By the way, you go in to look at the Mona Lisa and the Louvre.

01:33:10.000 I don't know if you've ever been there.

01:33:11.000 No.

01:33:12.000 It's, you walk in, it's a massive, massive room, right?

01:33:16.000 It's the Mona Lisa.

01:33:18.000 And there, far into this room, you can barely see it, is the Mona Lisa hanging on a wall.

01:33:23.000 How close do they let you get?

01:33:25.000 Well, you could probably get within maybe 10 feet of it, if you could get there.

01:33:32.000 But the problem is, this is what you're looking at.

01:33:35.000 You've got an entire room full of all of these people.

01:33:38.000 You can barely get there.

01:33:39.000 And it's a crush.

01:33:40.000 And every single one of those individuals is taking a picture of this.

01:33:45.000 Of the Mona Lisa.

01:33:47.000 And so everybody, they're holding their cameras up.

01:33:49.000 So I made a point of walking the boys and said, we're going to go see the Mona Lisa.

01:33:53.000 And they were like, what's up with the Mona Lisa?

01:33:54.000 I said, we should be, we're here, we're going to go see it.

01:33:56.000 We walked in and my oldest boy, Scooter, like he walks in, looks at it.

01:34:01.000 We must have been, we were at the far end of this room.

01:34:03.000 You could barely see this thing.

01:34:04.000 He held up his camera or his phone, took a picture like this and said, okay, what are we going to do now?

01:34:10.000 We turned around and we walked out. 0.98

01:34:11.000 So we're walking their asses down to the Notre Dame. 0.60

01:34:15.000 This is when I knew that we probably, our kids had attention deficit disorder at this point, or just didn't have the patience. 0.92

01:34:22.000 Bored. 0.99

01:34:22.000 They're fucking bored. 0.99

01:34:23.000 They're fucking bored. 1.00

01:34:23.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:34:24.000 So we're walking along, and Em and I are up ahead, and we're talking to Scooter, and the two younger ones, Sluggo and Muxy, are back behind us. 0.98

01:34:32.000 They're dragging their asses a little bit, right? 0.94

01:34:34.000 It's a hot day in Paris. 0.99

01:34:36.000 But I can hear them talking to each other.

01:34:39.000 And I hear Muggsy say, where are we going?

01:34:43.000 We're walking to Notre Dame. 1.00

01:34:45.000 And Sluggo says, I think it's a fucking church. 0.99

01:34:52.000 And I looked at my wife and I said, well, I kind of think we're done. 0.99

01:34:56.000 So the point of this story is that evening, after we finished walking around, the sun was going down.

01:35:01.000 And Paris is pretty special.

01:35:03.000 But the sun's going down.

01:35:04.000 We're walking back.

01:35:05.000 Most people have gotten off the streets.

01:35:07.000 All the tourists are gone.

01:35:08.000 And we walk by this place, Maxime's.

01:35:11.000 And Maxime's is kind of a burlesque place, old school kind of burlesque place.

01:35:16.000 So again, my wife and I walking up ahead, three boys are back there somewhere.

01:35:20.000 And the oldest one, tall enough to look over the kind of the curtains in the front of Maxime's, realizes it's a burlesque show.

01:35:29.000 And so I got these great pictures.

01:35:32.000 I turned around and And there they are down there.

01:35:34.000 They stopped, right?

01:35:36.000 And Scooter's got Muggsy on his shoulders because he's not tall enough to look over the thing. 0.94

01:35:40.000 And Sluggo's hanging from this railing.

01:35:44.000 And they're staring.

01:35:46.000 And they were captivated, right? 0.96

01:35:49.000 French titties, right? 0.82

01:35:50.000 And then... 0.92

01:35:51.000 And my wife looks at me and says, are you going to stop him?

01:35:54.000 I said, no, I'm going to video this.

01:35:57.000 So I just took pictures.

01:35:59.000 And so anyway, afterwards, I asked the oldest one after this month of travel.

01:36:04.000 We finished up in Greece.

01:36:06.000 I said, what was the best part of the trip? 0.95

01:36:08.000 He said, French titties. 0.73

01:36:11.000 He's 15! 0.95

01:36:12.000 He's 15!

01:36:13.000 What do you expect?

01:36:14.000 Yeah, I couldn't argue with him.

01:36:16.000 And that's history.

01:36:17.000 Yeah, if somebody tried to drag me around when I was 15, I would have been just as bored.

01:36:22.000 I think that's more fascinating for people with perspective and a longer life.

01:36:25.000 And you get to look back and go, you know, this was thousands of years ago.

01:36:29.000 These people built this.

01:36:31.000 It's pretty crazy that we can go walk around it today.

01:36:33.000 That's how my kids felt at the Vatican.

01:36:37.000 I was beyond fascinated. 0.99

01:36:40.000 But my kids were fucking bored out of their mind. 0.99

01:36:42.000 Never been to the Vatican. 1.00

01:36:43.000 It's insane.

01:36:44.000 When did you go?

01:36:46.000 We went...

01:36:48.000 Well, we're in Rome again this summer.

01:36:51.000 We didn't go to the Vatican this time, though.

01:36:53.000 But we went, I guess, before the pandemic, so it was three years ago?

01:36:58.000 Maybe four.

01:36:59.000 It might have been four years ago.

01:37:01.000 But the sheer amount of artwork, even for kids, it's unbelievable. 0.95

01:37:10.000 Like, it's a museum for people that have attention deficit, because there's fucking every- there's so much. 0.97

01:37:15.000 It's really like they're hoarders. 0.98

01:37:17.000 Are you saying the Catholic Church has money?

01:37:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:37:20.000 I think the IRS should investigate those motherfuckers. 1.00

01:37:24.000 That's what I think. 1.00

01:37:26.000 I think it's been a lot of thought. 1.00

01:37:28.000 The idea that those fucking people don't pay taxes is bonkers to me. 1.00

01:37:32.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

01:37:32.000 The idea that they've accumulated the kind of wealth they've accumulated, and then they've set up this thing called the Vatican, which is essentially a country, Yeah. 1.00

01:37:42.000 Inside of a city that's a hundred plus, it's like a hundred plus acres.

01:37:47.000 And they have no extradition.

01:37:50.000 So if someone's a, you know, a confirmed sex offender from another country, they hoard them over there and they can do whatever they want.

01:37:59.000 I mean, that's literally the history of the country.

01:38:01.000 I mean, it sounds like a horrible thing to say. 0.99

01:38:04.000 If you said, hey, there's this one religion that's synonymous with raping kids. 0.99

01:38:12.000 And they don't pay taxes. 0.99

01:38:13.000 He'd be like, what?

01:38:15.000 Yeah, not only that, like the people that have been the Pope, that are the head of this, have actually moved people from other organizations where they were accused of molesting children to new places where unsuspecting kids, like Ratzinger,

01:38:30.000 before he was removed. 0.97

01:38:32.000 That fucking guy took one particular priest that was accused of molesting children and moved him to a new place where he molested 100 deaf kids. 1.00

01:38:43.000 That's real. 1.00

01:38:44.000 I mean, this is all documented stuff.

01:38:47.000 Yeah, no, they spent a long time just covering up.

01:38:51.000 Covering up and moving people around and never punishing people for it.

01:38:55.000 And just accepting it as part of whatever it is that the Catholic Church is about, which is madness. 0.61

01:39:02.000 I mean, if it was any other organization that was synonymous with molesting kids, it would be the subject of international debate.

01:39:12.000 They would close them down.

01:39:14.000 They would shut them down.

01:39:14.000 They found out how much wealth they had acquired and what they're doing with it.

01:39:19.000 It's pretty stunning that it's just sort of legacied in.

01:39:23.000 Well, I guess it's like everything else, right?

01:39:25.000 It's very layered, so you have the people who are a part of the religion who are disgusted by that, and then you've got people who somehow are able to kind of look the other way and find an accommodation with it in the sense of,

01:39:41.000 okay, well, I'm still a devout Catholic, and despite all the flaws in the structure of this operation, Yeah, I don't get it.

01:39:50.000 Yeah, that's most people.

01:39:51.000 Most people that are Catholic are good people, and they subscribe to the best aspects of the religion.

01:39:58.000 Be a good person, follow the good book, and go to church because it's a great structure for ethics and morals, and then they hear about the stuff that they don't want to hear about.

01:40:10.000 They get angry.

01:40:12.000 That's one area we haven't, at the end of the day, not that this is apropos of absolutely anything, but And I'm sure everybody was curious about my religious beliefs.

01:40:21.000 But I do feel like I kind of dropped the ball on providing some kind of religious platform for the kids.

01:40:32.000 And I don't know what that would have been.

01:40:35.000 But I do think that there's, in a sense, it's nice to have something bigger than yourself, whatever that is, right?

01:40:40.000 And the community that that used to provide.

01:40:42.000 And I think part of the problem in today's world, I think, is people don't have enough community, whether it's their neighborhood, their church, whatever it is.

01:40:50.000 But having said that, Sunday would roll around and I'd be like, yeah, I'd go mow the lawn or something.

01:40:57.000 And it never became a part of what we do.

01:41:00.000 I think it's historical in terms of human beings.

01:41:04.000 Human beings have always had some sort of a structure of belief system that they subscribe to.

01:41:10.000 This has always been the case with tribes, with large communities of people.

01:41:16.000 There's always a belief system that they use that's beneficial to the greater good of the community.

01:41:25.000 Yeah, I think if you just...

01:41:27.000 Maybe because I was lazy and I didn't invest time in figuring that out in terms of what to do with the kids.

01:41:36.000 I think I just landed on some spot that said, look, try to do the best you can.

01:41:40.000 Live the best way you can.

01:41:43.000 And you're kind of playing the odds.

01:41:45.000 If there is something bigger out there and I finish up tomorrow and get hit by a bus or whatever...

01:41:53.000 Then, you know, I've played the odds.

01:41:54.000 I try to be a good person, and if there is something bigger, then great, right?

01:42:00.000 I don't know.

01:42:01.000 It's a pretty rudimentary way of looking at life.

01:42:04.000 But I would like to think there's something other than just, you know, you die and you're done.

01:42:08.000 Yeah.

01:42:08.000 Well, that's the greater picture.

01:42:10.000 But just in terms of, like, a moral scaffolding and just in terms of having some sort of structure, a way that people genuinely agree will be better for everybody.

01:42:22.000 That's one of the good things that a church provides, if it's a good church and it's a good religion.

01:42:27.000 It provides people with a structure.

01:42:29.000 It gives people peace.

01:42:30.000 It makes people feel better.

01:42:31.000 And it brings people together to worship together.

01:42:33.000 And they leave there, hopefully, with a better feeling of community.

01:42:38.000 Yeah.

01:42:39.000 And I think for a structure for kids, too, I think there's something to be said about that, about the community of a church.

01:42:48.000 And again, sort of that idea that there's a bigger something.

01:42:54.000 Yeah.

01:42:56.000 The problem I always had with organized religion was when a religion would say, and we have a lock on it.

01:43:03.000 I don't think that's actually how it works.

01:43:08.000 I don't know if one religion has a lock on the truth.

01:43:12.000 Well, I think we have religions in this country.

01:43:15.000 We have religions for secular people, and that's like, I mean, Marc Andreessen had a very good rant about what woke is.

01:43:23.000 That woke is these people that believe in the progressive movement, they treat it as a religion.

01:43:29.000 There's excommunication, there's punishment, there's rules that you can't question, there's things and guidelines that must be followed or you'll be punished.

01:43:44.000 Yeah, you could argue climate change is a religion.

01:43:46.000 I guess you could argue any...

01:43:48.000 A lot of things.

01:43:50.000 Political ideologies.

01:43:52.000 We treat them like religions in the absence of religions. 0.99

01:43:55.000 I think it's almost like a default way that human beings look at things.

01:43:59.000 Not to dive into a minefield here, but I was surprised that they overturned Roe. 0.88

01:44:08.000 I will say, maybe I was stupid and wasn't paying attention, but I thought we'd kind of moved on, and I don't know.

01:44:17.000 What do you think that was about? 0.97

01:44:20.000 Why do you think that took place?

01:44:23.000 Well, I mean, clearly because we ended up with more conservative judges on there than not.

01:44:28.000 I think they were just trying to return the issue to the states. 0.82

01:44:33.000 I don't know how you have—and I'm in a state, Idaho, where the state legislature was going to put some crazy ass rules in place. 0.92

01:44:47.000 I don't know whether it was a trigger law or not, but basically saying almost no cases could be considered allowable for abortion.

01:44:56.000 I just, again, I'm sort of that mindset that says, you know, reasonable people could have come up with a reasonable solution, which said, you know, do you want to abort it at, you know, nine months in one day?

01:45:07.000 No, probably not.

01:45:09.000 But do you want to leave it there to be, you know, good options for a woman to make that decision on her own?

01:45:17.000 Well, yeah. 0.98

01:45:17.000 So, I mean, find a fucking middle ground here. 0.98

01:45:21.000 But I have been surprised by the number of states. 0.98

01:45:24.000 Again, I'm clearly not paying attention.

01:45:26.000 Well, Texas has brought it down to six weeks, which is crazy.

01:45:29.000 It's like your period's late, and then it's too late.

01:45:33.000 Yeah, you just don't know.

01:45:34.000 Yeah, you don't know.

01:45:36.000 For a while, I always thought I was reading the tea leaves pretty well in terms of any administration and where things were going from a policy perspective.

01:45:46.000 I mentioned it to my wife.

01:45:47.000 I said, boy, I didn't read that one well.

01:45:50.000 I just didn't see that coming.

01:45:51.000 It's also in terms of people that were on the fence that were, you know, kind of like leaning Republican because of the way the country's going economically and all the different things that have been put in place by this administration that people disagreed with that they think is damaging to the economy and damaging to the overall quality of life. 0.99

01:46:10.000 And so they were like on the fence and then that comes along and we go, oh, well, this comes with that shit. 0.99

01:46:15.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:46:15.000 Well, fuck that. 1.00

01:46:16.000 Right. 1.00

01:46:16.000 And I think that's going to be the thing. 1.00

01:46:18.000 And it's always been that topic that's kicked the Republicans and the conservatives in the ass, right? 0.98

01:46:24.000 But they can't let it go, right? 0.99

01:46:25.000 Yeah.

01:46:26.000 And I get it.

01:46:27.000 Okay, you're going to have a segment.

01:46:28.000 There's a sliver there of devout religious people who just say, absolutely, in no circumstances. 1.00

01:46:34.000 And I'm thinking, well, okay, well then, what the fuck? 0.98

01:46:38.000 But they're also, I don't know. 0.99

01:46:40.000 It's, like I said, it's a minefield.

01:46:41.000 I guess I shouldn't have brought it up, but it's...

01:46:43.000 It was surprising. 1.00

01:46:45.000 I do think it's going to kick the Republicans in the ass. 0.99

01:46:48.000 They'll probably take the House, but probably not as big a margin as they thought, because I think it will cause people to think. 0.99

01:46:54.000 No, I think it most certainly will.

01:46:56.000 And there's also talk about going after contraception.

01:47:00.000 There's people that want to take it to the next level, which is really wild in terms of preventing pregnancy, preventing pregnancy with the Plan B pill, preventing pregnancy even with condoms.

01:47:13.000 There's people out there that you get far enough out.

01:47:16.000 They get outlaw condoms.

01:47:17.000 They think sex should be for procreation. 0.76

01:47:19.000 They think that abstinence is something you could actually teach people.

01:47:22.000 Wow.

01:47:22.000 Which is hilarious.

01:47:23.000 Wow.

01:47:23.000 That's like getting a semi-drunk person and telling them no more drinks.

01:47:28.000 Yeah.

01:47:29.000 Can you imagine if sex was only for procreation?

01:47:31.000 It's crazy to think. 1.00

01:47:32.000 So you look at somebody who's got two kids and you think, you poor son of a bitch. 1.00

01:47:36.000 What are you going to do about the porn industry? 1.00

01:47:37.000 You going to outlaw that?

01:47:39.000 I mean, that's the dirty little dark secret of America and most of the world.

01:47:45.000 It's a giant industry that people want to pretend doesn't exist that is, I mean, consumed by what percentage of the population?

01:47:55.000 Some enormous percentage.

01:47:56.000 Either it's like a small percentage that's consuming an enormous amount of it.

01:48:01.000 They're on 24-7, yeah.

01:48:03.000 I don't think it's been investigated, but the sheer amount of traffic that's really...

01:48:08.000 Okay, what is the percentage of internet traffic that is pornography?

01:48:12.000 Let's look at that.

01:48:14.000 Because the actual data, I think the actual, like, when you look at the gigabytes and terabytes of data that's just porn, that's on the internet, I think it's...

01:48:26.000 1,000 megabytes.

01:48:28.000 Yeah.

01:48:28.000 It's like 70...

01:48:29.000 Or 1,000 gigabytes.

01:48:29.000 I think it's like 70 million pages of data is a terabyte.

01:48:34.000 So let's see what it says.

01:48:35.000 Internet pornography by the numbers.

01:48:36.000 A significant threat.

01:48:38.000 How much of the internet consists of porn?

01:48:40.000 Click on that one.

01:48:43.000 Website and mobile searches, 13 to 20%.

01:48:46.000 30% of internet content is porn.

01:48:49.000 Is it true that 70% of internet traffic is...

01:48:52.000 No.

01:48:53.000 What is that?

01:48:54.000 70% is consumed.

01:48:55.000 I heard it.

01:48:55.000 Yeah.

01:48:56.000 Okay, so we seem to be about a third or so of internet traffic is porn.

01:49:01.000 Somewhere around 30%.

01:49:02.000 Okay.

01:49:03.000 Porn sites get more visitors each month than...

01:49:06.000 That's 2013, though.

01:49:07.000 Okay, now let's break this down by a third of it is porn.

01:49:11.000 Now let's break it down by types of porn.

01:49:14.000 No, I'm kidding.

01:49:14.000 Yeah, right?

01:49:15.000 How much is babysitter porn? 0.95

01:49:17.000 We don't want to go there. 0.99

01:49:18.000 How much is stepmom and babysitter porn?

01:49:21.000 Internet pornography, it says 35% there.

01:49:24.000 What does it say?

01:49:26.000 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography.

01:49:30.000 That is incredible.

01:49:31.000 40 million American people regularly visit porn sites.

01:49:35.000 What is regular?

01:49:36.000 About 200,000 Americans are classified as porn addicts.

01:49:40.000 34% of internet users have experienced unwanted exposure.

01:49:44.000 Wait a minute.

01:49:44.000 Every day, I've got to disagree with it.

01:49:47.000 That can't be an accurate number.

01:49:48.000 Every day, 37 porn videos are created in the U.S. It can't be just, what, 37?

01:49:54.000 That's it?

01:49:55.000 That can't be right.

01:49:56.000 37 pornographic videos are created in the United States every day.

01:50:00.000 2.5 billion emails containing porn are sent or received.

01:50:04.000 Wow.

01:50:04.000 Who the hell's doing that?

01:50:05.000 68 million search queries are related to pornography.

01:50:09.000 But they don't really look.

01:50:12.000 I'm just curious.

01:50:13.000 I'm searching.

01:50:14.000 I'm doing research.

01:50:15.000 25% of total searches is porn.

01:50:19.000 116,000 queries related to child pornography.

01:50:22.000 These numbers are a little screwy.

01:50:24.000 Can you bring it down just a little bit, Jamie?

01:50:27.000 Okay, every second.

01:50:29.000 Okay, every second.

01:50:32.000 Every second, 28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet.

01:50:40.000 Every second, $3,000 is being spent on pornography.

01:50:43.000 That's cheap.

01:50:45.000 Who's spending money on porn, though, now?

01:50:48.000 Only 372 people.

01:50:50.000 Look at this.

01:50:51.000 Every second, only 372 people are typing the word adult.

01:50:56.000 That seems low.

01:50:58.000 That's a lot though.

01:50:59.000 One third of porn viewers are women.

01:51:01.000 Really?

01:51:01.000 Or do they identify as women?

01:51:03.000 One third of porn viewers are women.

01:51:06.000 How online pornography affects Americans.

01:51:08.000 Is it one third are double X chromosome?

01:51:12.000 Or one third...

01:51:13.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:51:14.000 Because what percentage of those people are identifying as women with male genitalia?

01:51:20.000 Yeah.

01:51:21.000 It's got to be a number. 0.94

01:51:24.000 Or looking at women with male genitalia. 0.98

01:51:25.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:51:26.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:51:28.000 But that...

01:51:31.000 You know, that's the...

01:51:33.000 I mean, if they want to outlaw contraception, how far away...

01:51:39.000 That's the craziest thing I've heard.

01:51:39.000 Yeah.

01:51:40.000 It's not a small amount of people that want that.

01:51:44.000 There's a lot of people that think that sex should be for procreation only. 0.99

01:51:48.000 And, you know, interestingly enough, none of those people, anybody wants to fuck. 0.99

01:51:52.000 No. 0.99

01:51:52.000 It's kind of crazy. 0.99

01:51:53.000 No, nor could they.

01:51:56.000 Yeah, that's a crazy thought because if you say, okay, if you're in a state that wants to essentially ban all abortions, and then they also want to ban contraception, okay,

01:52:11.000 so...

01:52:12.000 They want religion. 0.97

01:52:13.000 In terms of your responsibility for taking care of all those additional children, how does that work?

01:52:21.000 I don't know.

01:52:22.000 That's what jail's for.

01:52:26.000 Cages.

01:52:26.000 That's what cages along the border are for.

01:52:29.000 Oh, God.

01:52:32.000 It's weird, our way of looking at things.

01:52:37.000 So blind.

01:52:39.000 Yeah.

01:52:41.000 Again, I don't think maybe I'm romanticizing some past era.

01:52:46.000 I guess I am because maybe there was never a time when reasonable people found common ground and you could compromise and And find policies and create legislation that, you know, could take the best from both sides and there you go.

01:53:00.000 So maybe that actually never happened.

01:53:03.000 You know, it's a little bit like the idea you think about, we're going to have the family over for Thanksgiving and everyone's going to get along and it's going to look like a Norman Rockwell painting and it doesn't happen.

01:53:13.000 You know, everyone's pissing and moaning and arguing with each other.

01:53:15.000 So, I think, but the older you get maybe, you know, the more you think, well, back in the day we used to compromise.

01:53:20.000 You know, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would sit in the back room and, you know, have a drink and get some good piece of legislation done.

01:53:27.000 I don't know.

01:53:28.000 That seems like a thing of the past.

01:53:31.000 And I think part of that you could attribute to Donald Trump.

01:53:35.000 Like, the polarization in this country has never been more extreme.

01:53:38.000 Yeah.

01:53:39.000 I 100% agreed.

01:53:40.000 But he's coming back.

01:53:42.000 And I don't know if you remember this.

01:53:44.000 I think it was pre-pandemic.

01:53:48.000 Maybe it was pre-pandemic when we made a bet.

01:53:52.000 I think I bet you $1,000 that said Trump was not going to run again.

01:53:58.000 You owe me $1,000.

01:54:00.000 He's going to run.

01:54:02.000 They're trying to stop it from happening.

01:54:03.000 I'm probably going to lose that.

01:54:05.000 Why did you want to bet that?

01:54:07.000 Why would you think he wouldn't run again?

01:54:08.000 Because I was being optimistic and thinking that we'd move on and we'd find different candidates. 1.00

01:54:18.000 I guess because I was a fucking idiot. 1.00

01:54:21.000 There's a large swath of this country that thinks the election was stolen, which people need to understand, that has always been the way a large swath of Americans, both on the left and the right, have felt about elections. 1.00

01:54:35.000 There was a documentary on HBO. God, what was it called?

01:54:41.000 I forget, but it was all about voting machines and how hackable voting machines were.

01:54:46.000 This is the Diebold machines that disproportionately contributed to the Republican Party, this company, this corporation that did this, and they made these machines.

01:54:55.000 Hacking Democracy was the name of the documentary.

01:54:57.000 And they proved in this documentary that they can affect these machines with third party input.

01:55:02.000 So it wasn't just a matter of one person voting, the other person collecting it, that a third person could come in and manipulate the numbers, and that they had access to these machines in that way, that these machines were actually set up for third party input.

01:55:14.000 And this is terrifying to me because they said, oh my god, the Republicans are going to steal the election.

01:55:19.000 And that was the thought process behind it.

01:55:22.000 And now it's, oh my god, the Democrats have stolen the election.

01:55:25.000 They felt like John Kerry got robbed when he ran against George Bush.

01:55:31.000 Al Gore.

01:55:32.000 Al Gore got robbed.

01:55:33.000 There's always been this section of the country that's very dangerous.

01:55:39.000 It's dangerous, A, if it's accurate, right?

01:55:41.000 But it's also dangerous if it's a narrative.

01:55:44.000 If people don't believe that we live in a democracy, so when someone does win, even if they win legitimately, which, you know, would be great.

01:55:53.000 That's best case scenario.

01:55:54.000 But people don't want to believe.

01:55:56.000 They're always going to say that.

01:55:58.000 That was the case in 2016 when Trump won.

01:56:00.000 Well, I was going to say, yeah, Hillary Clinton, that's a good example. 0.99

01:56:02.000 She spent the next several years arguing that she had won.

01:56:06.000 But you're right.

01:56:08.000 Trump, because of his demeanor, the way that he interacts with people, and his social media usage, we'd never really seen that before. 0.99

01:56:16.000 Also, the way he's ramped up dumb people. 0.99

01:56:19.000 The really dumb people that all they do is just fucking rah-rah, and they don't look at this in terms of what kind of an impact does this have? 1.00

01:56:29.000 You can't just think of your side, and I want our side to win, because it's supposed to be one side. 1.00

01:56:35.000 It's supposed to be the United States of America.

01:56:37.000 We're a community.

01:56:38.000 We're a group of people.

01:56:41.000 We're all bound together, and we do get together in times of great conflict, like post 9-11.

01:56:48.000 I would say that 9-11 was a horrible thing, but one thing that came out of it that I found inspiring was how many American flags were on people's cars immediately afterwards.

01:56:58.000 It's like people on the right and on the left, it was like one of the rare times in the world where people joined together in this country and said, hey, we are faced with a threat from outside and we need to all...

01:57:12.000 Yeah.

01:57:13.000 Group together because this could happen anywhere and everywhere and this is the time to be patriotic.

01:57:19.000 We hadn't really seen that since World War II. Right.

01:57:22.000 I mean, with the exception of the Japanese-American interns, they didn't actually probably feel the same way, but we hadn't seen that.

01:57:32.000 And I think it was an interesting lesson for a lot of people.

01:57:40.000 But it wasn't really learned, right?

01:57:42.000 It was a moment in time.

01:57:44.000 And we don't tend to...

01:57:45.000 It's like a lot of things we do.

01:57:46.000 We don't tend to learn from anything in any particular moment.

01:57:50.000 We're impacted by it on an emotive level.

01:57:52.000 We think, okay, great.

01:57:53.000 But no one's looking back and saying, okay, you know, here's what we need to do in order to be one country, in order to be...

01:57:58.000 You know, focused on what does it mean, you know, to move the needle as one people, right?

01:58:06.000 It just doesn't happen.

01:58:07.000 So, and I think you're right.

01:58:09.000 Trump was, you know, because of the nature of the beast, it just was part of it.

01:58:15.000 I mean, you look at the reaction to the Mar-a-Lago raid. 0.98

01:58:20.000 And the immediate reaction of, like, the Department of Justice and the Bureau are, you know, are fucking us over. 0.97

01:58:29.000 It's the same thing.

01:58:30.000 If you lose your faith in the systems, right, whether it's law enforcement or it's justice or whatever in the country, just like with the political system, it is a very dangerous thing.

01:58:42.000 And you can always argue that, okay, you know, Are they having problems?

01:58:46.000 Can they do better?

01:58:47.000 Do they need to adjust?

01:58:48.000 Was this a mistake?

01:58:49.000 Whatever.

01:58:49.000 But that's different than losing faith in the system.

01:58:53.000 Right.

01:58:54.000 And that's one of the things that bad actors from other countries are promoting.

01:58:58.000 And that's one of the weird things about these troll farms and these social media campaigns that they do via bots and via hired actors.

01:59:08.000 Like, they're making people more frustrated and argue more about this by design.

01:59:16.000 Yeah, because, again, nobody scratches the surface.

01:59:18.000 They read something.

01:59:19.000 It's like what you were saying before.

01:59:20.000 They read something, and that's it.

01:59:22.000 That's their narrative.

01:59:23.000 Yes, I believe that, and it's a fact.

01:59:26.000 It's not just something I've read, and I'm not going to try to figure out who actually posted that or who put it down.

01:59:31.000 So – and Russia is a great example of that.

01:59:34.000 Russia does that better than China even.

01:59:36.000 China is engaged in it and China is working hard to influence US public opinion about policies that relate to China or what they view as things of – in their interest.

01:59:47.000 But Russia at the end of the day is – they're at the top of the heap of – State-sponsored operations trying to influence what's going on here in the U.S. And it's effective. 0.76

01:59:59.000 Very effective.

02:00:00.000 And it's interesting because Elon Musk is a fairly polarizing character as well, and his desire to figure out how many bots there are on Twitter before he purchases it We're good to go.

02:00:46.000 Yeah, and they are very sophisticated.

02:00:48.000 They're very good at it.

02:00:50.000 And whether they're trying to foment racism, oh, it's a fundamentally racist country, so let's work on that.

02:00:59.000 If you're listing out things as a foreign nation that doesn't have our best interests at heart, if you're Russia, you're saying, here's what I want to do, yeah, you're going to look to create dissatisfaction Within the country for a variety of things. 0.95

02:01:15.000 Your way of life, the quality of your life, the belief in the justice system, whatever it might be.

02:01:21.000 Oh, yeah, the political system's screwed because it's all rigged.

02:01:25.000 Those are the things that you do.

02:01:27.000 And again, we don't...

02:01:29.000 We're not very good at it.

02:01:30.000 We talked about it, you know, coming out of 2016 and, you know, over the past handful of years.

02:01:36.000 But again, it's not a substantive discussion, right? 0.96

02:01:41.000 And shit that gets investigated, people, you know, they'll get all up in arms on Capitol Hill and politicians will insist on an investigation. 0.98

02:01:48.000 But, you know, Washington, D.C. is, yeah, it's a place where investigations go to die. 0.99

02:01:53.000 Nothing ever happens, right?

02:01:54.000 Nothing ever results from these things.

02:01:56.000 What do you think The raid, was that justified?

02:02:05.000 Well, I'll caveat this by saying it's speculation because I haven't seen the affidavit.

02:02:11.000 Not many people have.

02:02:15.000 But then I'll start by saying It's yet another self-inflicted wound by Trump.

02:02:24.000 He didn't need to end up like that.

02:02:28.000 The departure from the White House was fairly chaotic, as you can imagine.

02:02:32.000 That's just the nature of what they were doing.

02:02:34.000 There wasn't the level of organization.

02:02:38.000 It wasn't a very buttoned-up administration, in part because they had a lot of churn in personnel and all this.

02:02:47.000 You can argue that every administration has some back and forth with the National Archives over what is and isn't presidential record, what they can keep as their own personal material and what has to be held by the government.

02:02:58.000 Why would they keep it?

02:02:58.000 What would be a reason?

02:03:00.000 Well, I mean, if they consider it personal correspondence or they consider it information that Is not classified and is just material that one day can end up in a presidential library or they can use to write a book when they finish up and they want to make a few hundred million dollars on a book,

02:03:23.000 then fine.

02:03:25.000 But there's always typically some back and forth that goes on about, okay, what is and what isn't and what can we get?

02:03:31.000 But, you know, that requires a process, right?

02:03:34.000 And that requires, you know, there's protocols involved for saying what you can take with you, right?

02:03:40.000 And so if they had done that, if they'd done the right thing, they wouldn't have ended up in this situation.

02:03:46.000 And what they did was they, once again, you know, Trump is able to, like, suck all the oxygen out of the room, right?

02:03:54.000 And it's one of those things that I think was just unnecessary.

02:03:58.000 Was the raid justified?

02:04:02.000 I don't know because I don't know what the specific documents were that they really had a Jones about.

02:04:08.000 They had been negotiating this for some time, right?

02:04:10.000 They'd been talking to them and going back and forth and they discussed what they had and how is it stored and all the rest of it.

02:04:16.000 And they'd gotten 15 or so boxes earlier.

02:04:21.000 Why they didn't just do that all in one effort and say, okay, we have more documents.

02:04:26.000 Maybe it was taking the archives a while to understand what was and wasn't in the materials that were returned.

02:04:32.000 Do you have suspicions that it was a political maneuver?

02:04:38.000 That the design was to cast more bad light on Trump and eliminate him from the 2024 elections or try to figure out a way to diminish his appeal?

02:04:50.000 Yeah, I mean, I think there's politics in the sense that a lot of folks up on Capitol Hill who took delight in it and found it to be a really good piece of entertainment.

02:05:03.000 But if you say politics from the FBI's perspective, from the Department of Justice's perspective, I mean, I know a number of guys that work for the Bureau, and I know them to be really solid people.

02:05:21.000 They're street guys.

02:05:22.000 They're investigators.

02:05:23.000 They do their job.

02:05:25.000 They're very, very good.

02:05:26.000 I don't know anybody senior in the DOJ or at the Bureau, so I don't know...

02:05:32.000 How politicized they are and whether that played into it or not.

02:05:36.000 But, you know, people that are actually engaged in the search, you know, that show up at Mar-a-Lago, they're doing their job, right?

02:05:46.000 And they've been told this is what we have to do.

02:05:48.000 You know, I think that it was such an extraordinary step and so unprecedented Maybe I'll be proven wrong once they release the affidavit and we all find out what was sitting there.

02:06:03.000 But I can't hope but think that they had a reason why they said, no, we can't just keep dragging along here because we're not getting the responses we need.

02:06:11.000 So we do need to go in.

02:06:12.000 We need to knock on the door and say, look, we've got to...

02:06:16.000 I do suspect that they could have approached it differently and not had the presence they had and everything, but who knows?

02:06:25.000 Again, this is the problem we live in in this world today.

02:06:30.000 Immediately after that took place, there were people on the left and people on the right who were absolutely sure they had exactly the information to make a decision about what this meant and why it was done or why it shouldn't have been done.

02:06:43.000 And that's part of our problem.

02:06:45.000 You know, the unsatisfying answer is you got to wait and find out what exactly occurred to see whether it was justified or not.

02:06:53.000 But nobody wants to hear that, right?

02:06:55.000 It's like after a terrorism incident.

02:06:57.000 Everybody wants an answer immediately.

02:06:58.000 Well, it's an investigation and things take time.

02:07:01.000 You know, all I can say is the folks I know at the Bureau are really quality people.

02:07:06.000 But do people at the top of an organization Are they more politicized?

02:07:11.000 Well, sure, there's a tendency for that to happen, right?

02:07:13.000 Because that's, you know, they've been around a long time, they're at that position because, you know, they work closely with, you know, politicos or whatever, but, I don't know, it doesn't really answer your question.

02:07:24.000 I've just spent a lot of time talking in circles, but...

02:07:26.000 It's so confusing for someone like me that's like going, well, what's going on here?

02:07:31.000 Is there more than meets the eye?

02:07:33.000 Or is this like clearly an example of him doing something that is 100% forbidden, but he feels like he can do it because he's Donald Trump and he feels like the rules don't apply to him?

02:07:43.000 I mean, that's what the fear is, right?

02:07:46.000 Yeah.

02:07:47.000 Well, I think he's certainly always pushed the envelope.

02:07:50.000 I don't think it's any—nobody can really argue the fact that he's kind of used his own playbook all along.

02:07:57.000 And you can't just say—and then people—he's saying things like, well, I declassified the documents.

02:08:02.000 They're all declassified.

02:08:04.000 You can't just click your heels and say, these documents are declassified.

02:08:07.000 There's a process that takes place. 0.99

02:08:09.000 Otherwise, it's a complete fucking goat rope. 0.98

02:08:11.000 Nobody knows what's classified, what's not. 0.97

02:08:13.000 You can't just, in your presidential head, say, okay, I'm declassifying everything related to whatever this was.

02:08:21.000 Does a president have the ability to declassify things?

02:08:23.000 Sure.

02:08:24.000 Unilaterally.

02:08:25.000 Unilaterally.

02:08:26.000 So he could declassify documents and then conceivably store these documents?

02:08:31.000 Yeah, but there's a process for that, right?

02:08:33.000 Did he not go through the process?

02:08:36.000 Based on what has been reported so far, but again, without the affidavit, without the specific details, who knows?

02:08:42.000 But if there's documentation that's not cataloged and marked as declassified, again, it has to show that.

02:08:50.000 If you've got a document that's top secret, code word, and you look at it and it's marked top secret, code word, then You know, you have to assume it's still classified, right?

02:09:03.000 And there's a mere fact of him saying, oh, no, you know, last year I declassified that.

02:09:09.000 That doesn't hold water.

02:09:10.000 You can't, you know, he has to follow protocol.

02:09:13.000 And that's where I think he slips up is he doesn't necessarily believe that applies to him or he's just not, you know, it's just not the nature of...

02:09:20.000 He's not compliant.

02:09:21.000 Yeah.

02:09:21.000 So, and then he's, isn't he suing now to get documents back?

02:09:26.000 Yes.

02:09:26.000 Yeah, he is, and also to have information not released.

02:09:32.000 I think part of this problem, again, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before with the transparency of the U.S. government.

02:09:40.000 When they talked about this in this little conference room in DOJ, wherever they talked about it, and they said, we're thinking about conducting a raid, and the Bureau doesn't like to use the word raid, or DOJ doesn't like to use the word raid, but when they said, we're talking about doing a raid on the home of the former president,

02:10:00.000 They probably should, once again, from a messaging perspective, step back and thought to themselves, okay, what does that mean?

02:10:06.000 How are we going to justify this?

02:10:09.000 Not that they have to, but they should have known what a firestorm it was going to create.

02:10:14.000 And so they should have had that completely buttoned up and ready to go the moment they were going to do it and be as transparent within the limitations of what they can do, of what they were doing and why they were doing it.

02:10:28.000 Because if they don't, they create all that open space, right? 0.94

02:10:31.000 And that's where everyone jumps in and starts declaring what exactly happened without knowing what the fuck happened. 0.99

02:10:37.000 And then you get all this misinformation and disinformation and it's another fucking goat rope. 0.99

02:10:42.000 So it's a process that I think the Attorney General probably should have handled better because he had to authorize it. 0.98

02:10:53.000 They also had to go in. 0.99

02:10:54.000 If the White House says they didn't know anything about it, That's where I'm going to call bullshit. 0.97

02:10:59.000 The White House saying we had no idea that the AG was authorized to search the former president's home. 0.88

02:11:05.000 Yeah, probably that's not the case.

02:11:08.000 You have to assume they got to walk in, sit down and say, sir, we got a little something we got to talk to you about.

02:11:14.000 Just let you know this is coming down the pike. 0.86

02:11:17.000 So how does that play out, you think?

02:11:20.000 Is it nothing?

02:11:21.000 Is it all much ado about nothing and will it not impact him or will it be a significant factor?

02:11:27.000 Yeah, I think I'm going to lose that $1,000 to you because I think he's going to run again.

02:11:31.000 I don't think it's going to stop him from running.

02:11:34.000 I think they'll realize this.

02:11:39.000 The hard left is saying, oh, he's got the world's most dangerous secrets held at Mar-a-Lago, right?

02:11:46.000 And the right is saying, eh, he declassified it all.

02:11:49.000 There's nothing there.

02:11:50.000 And the truth is, like it typically is, is somewhere probably in the middle.

02:11:54.000 And in the middle, they're probably going to realize they don't have anything to indict him on.

02:11:57.000 It's going to be like all these other things that they were kind of going after.

02:12:03.000 So I'll be cutting you a check if you take a check.

02:12:05.000 I could Venmo you or PayPal.

02:12:08.000 Yeah, we'll do that.

02:12:09.000 I do those things nowadays.

02:12:12.000 So for someone like me who's on the outside just trying to pay attention to as little as I can and still talk about it, it's very confusing.

02:12:23.000 Yeah, it is.

02:12:25.000 It's odd. 0.96

02:12:26.000 It's fucking odd, if you think about it. 0.95

02:12:29.000 I mean, we could end up with Biden and Trump running again in 2024. I don't think Biden's gonna run. 0.98

02:12:34.000 I don't think it's possible.

02:12:35.000 I think he's so deteriorated.

02:12:37.000 I think he's gotten to this point where, you know, we're only two years in and he's already completely fallen apart where he can't form sentences anymore.

02:12:46.000 I can't imagine they're gonna look at him as a viable candidate in 2024. I mean, a large percentage of the Democrats don't want him to run.

02:12:54.000 Yeah, that seems to be the case for sure.

02:12:56.000 And no one's excited about Kamala Harris.

02:12:58.000 They got that lady tucked away somewhere. 1.00

02:12:59.000 Oh, God.

02:13:00.000 I don't know what she's doing.

02:13:01.000 I really don't know what her job is anymore.

02:13:02.000 But you're right.

02:13:05.000 The problem is he's going to have to make that call, right?

02:13:07.000 So he's got to make that decision to say, I'm not running in 2024. Therefore, he clears the decks.

02:13:12.000 And then you get this mad scramble of a couple dozen people chasing him because I think you're right.

02:13:20.000 I think?

02:13:34.000 Really?

02:13:35.000 Yeah.

02:13:35.000 He's even older than Biden.

02:13:37.000 I know, but he's entertaining.

02:13:40.000 And you're just going to get a host of characters coming in because I don't think they're going to say, fine, we'll clear the decks for Harris.

02:13:48.000 So I agree with you 100% on that one.

02:13:52.000 It doesn't look good.

02:13:54.000 There's no real exciting options.

02:13:57.000 330 plus million people.

02:13:59.000 I forget what the population of the US is nowadays, but 330 plus million people.

02:14:03.000 And these are the options we get.

02:14:05.000 Nobody wants to do that job.

02:14:06.000 It's a terrible job.

02:14:07.000 Well, plus you also get the primaries, and they vote for the hard edge.

02:14:12.000 So you get that person who says, I'm all for clean energy, climate change is the number one problem, vote for me.

02:14:20.000 And then you get the people on the far right that say, I'm all about banning abortion and contraception and porn.

02:14:25.000 And so the hard right, maybe the conservatives on the hard right vote for them.

02:14:30.000 And that's what happens in the primaries.

02:14:32.000 Yeah, unfortunately, because you get the registered people that are voting.

02:14:35.000 You get that self-selection that just fucks us over.

02:14:39.000 You know what we haven't talked about is the fact that the Russians and the Ukrainians are lobbing missiles at each other near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

02:14:50.000 Yeah.

02:14:51.000 We talked about nuclear power.

02:14:53.000 Yeah.

02:14:54.000 But, yeah, that's a crazy situation right there. 0.98

02:14:58.000 And there's just so much interesting shit happening in the world, right? 0.97

02:15:01.000 I mean, this is... 0.97

02:15:02.000 It is a fascinating time if you think about what we're living through right now.

02:15:06.000 It's just people are so scared they can't be fascinated.

02:15:09.000 It would be nice if we knew how this plays out.

02:15:12.000 We don't have to worry.

02:15:13.000 Let's just watch it play out because there's only one way it can go.

02:15:17.000 But it can go so many different ways and worst case scenario is nuclear war.

02:15:22.000 That's what people are terrified of, hypersonic weapons.

02:15:24.000 People are terrified of one world government.

02:15:28.000 I mean, it's this Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum talk, and they're like, Jesus Christ, who is that guy? 0.99

02:15:34.000 What the fuck is going on over there? 0.95

02:15:36.000 You'll have nothing, and you'll be happy? 0.99

02:15:38.000 Like, what?

02:15:39.000 Yeah.

02:15:40.000 Well, I mean, the hypersonics thing, the Chinese military has developed a pretty capable hypersonic weapon.

02:15:50.000 Do we?

02:15:51.000 We have been testing, right?

02:15:54.000 And it's all about glide vehicles, and it's a fascinating field.

02:16:02.000 We need to be putting, I think, more resource into it.

02:16:05.000 When you say glide vehicles, what do you mean by that?

02:16:07.000 Well, imagine a missile carries a A hypersonic glide vehicle on its back goes up into orbit and then basically just lets this thing go.

02:16:19.000 And the thing about the next generation of hypersonic, because ICBMs are hypersonic.

02:16:26.000 I mean, that just means over Mach 5 in terms of speed.

02:16:30.000 But they have a planned trajectory, and you can predict that.

02:16:33.000 But a hypersonic glide vehicle is traveling above Mach 5 and also is maneuverable.

02:16:42.000 And that makes it...

02:16:43.000 That's very difficult to defend against.

02:16:46.000 Because you can't predict its trajectory.

02:16:47.000 You can't predict its trajectory and also just the timing and the speed with which it's moving and the uncertainty of its flight path.

02:16:54.000 And so, yeah, the Chinese are...

02:16:57.000 They've been spending a...

02:17:02.000 I've got an ungodly amount on their research and also efforts to, once again, steal information.

02:17:07.000 We've been developing, we've been working hard to do that.

02:17:10.000 But other areas, you know, you talk about quantum computing.

02:17:15.000 That's an area where we've got to get ahead of the game.

02:17:19.000 Whoever, Russia, China, the U.S., yeah, Russia, China, the U.S., it's always the top three, are feverishly working to develop quantum computing.

02:17:31.000 And that's great, and everybody thinks, okay, yay, we'll get to that point.

02:17:36.000 And that just means when you're there, the speed, the capabilities of quantum computers surpass sort of the classical computing thing.

02:17:47.000 The problem there is, and it's great for the future of, yeah.

02:17:53.000 AI and a variety of, you know, science is terrific.

02:17:58.000 But what it also means is you can defeat, in a very simple way, and I'm going to oversimplify this, but quantum computing, once it's developed sufficiently, once you're post-quantum, then you can defeat the cryptography that's on sort of the classical computer systems,

02:18:16.000 right?

02:18:16.000 That handle The cryptography that's basically protecting our national security communications, our military communications, the financial transactions on the internet, right, that we all rely on.

02:18:31.000 So part of it is, yeah, it's great for future development of science and technology, but there's this real concern over, you know, if, again, a nation that doesn't have our best interests at heart develop this and get kind of in the lead on this.

02:18:45.000 Then, suddenly, they can defeat the cryptographic capabilities of our communications systems.

02:18:54.000 And that's a real problem.

02:18:56.000 So, I guess what I'm saying is there's some areas that we need to be focused on putting more money into.

02:19:02.000 And so, every time I read that we're putting $80 billion in the IRS or $370 billion into subsidies for green energy, Just wondering, okay, I understand why it's appealing to some people, but maybe it's not in our best interest.

02:19:18.000 And this quantum computer thing, we have those though, right?

02:19:25.000 Yeah.

02:19:25.000 We, Japan, Germany, a variety of places, again, Russia, China, we've been developing and working on quantum computing, but You know, it's not where it needs to be yet, right?

02:19:40.000 So it's still in the development stages, right?

02:19:44.000 It's still in sort of the nascent stages of where it's going to go.

02:19:48.000 And so if you think about it, we could be, I think they were talking about like 2030 or so, right?

02:19:55.000 It would be sort of that moment in time when we're at whatever they call it.

02:19:59.000 I'm obviously not a tech guy, but quantum supremacy or something.

02:20:05.000 Yeah.

02:20:07.000 So we're busy now.

02:20:08.000 The US government is actually focused on this.

02:20:09.000 They're trying to say, okay, we need to improve all our systems so that they are capable of defeating what that means down the road at that point.

02:20:21.000 So I guess what I'm saying in not a very eloquent way is there are a lot of areas for concern that the US government needs to be focused on.

02:20:33.000 And I just hope that, you know, this administration and the next one, whoever they are, maybe, understand.

02:20:41.000 It just seems our timelines are accelerated, right, for concerns that we...

02:20:48.000 We maybe had no vision on, even five or ten years ago.

02:20:54.000 And the world, it strikes me, it's a little bit more of a dangerous place right now.

02:21:01.000 And so I think we need to kind of get back to it.

02:21:05.000 I agree with what you said before, which is every time you talk about U.S. first or Patriotism.

02:21:13.000 Patriotism, US focus.

02:21:14.000 You get a whole segment of society that looks at that here in the US and goes, you're being nationalistic.

02:21:18.000 So that's the wrong thing to do.

02:21:22.000 But in response to what's happening in the world, it's really the only logical way to look at it, isn't it?

02:21:26.000 It's how everybody else with any resource is looking at it.

02:21:29.000 Right.

02:21:29.000 And if we're going to compete with them.

02:21:31.000 But that's why it gets scary.

02:21:32.000 It's like, what is the solution?

02:21:34.000 Is it complete integration of the government and businesses the way China does it?

02:21:38.000 Is it something different?

02:21:39.000 And with the widespread distribution of quantum computing, what does that look like in 10 years, 15, 20 years?

02:21:46.000 If cryptography no longer exists, if there's no Passwords don't mean anything anymore and all intellectual property is available to anybody and everyone.

02:21:55.000 That's weird.

02:21:57.000 Then it's a utopia because we'll all hold hands and it'll be a community of nations.

02:22:02.000 Or we're all involved in one world digital currency that's controlled by the state.

02:22:07.000 Are you invested in crypto?

02:22:09.000 I got a little bit.

02:22:10.000 But I'm confused about the future of that, too.

02:22:14.000 I mean, this whole idea of decentralized currency was very attractive to people.

02:22:19.000 But now the government is talking about a centralized digital currency that they control.

02:22:24.000 And what comes with that, of course, is some sort of social policy that regulates and distributes what access you have to it based on your social credit score.

02:22:39.000 And that's terrifying.

02:22:41.000 That's what China has. 0.90

02:22:42.000 That's what I was going to say.

02:22:42.000 Yeah, that's what a nation like China is focused on.

02:22:50.000 I would have assumed that once they start talking about government regulation of cryptocurrency, that the whole shift, everybody's focus would go elsewhere, right?

02:23:02.000 Because it completely takes away the attractiveness of that space.

02:23:07.000 And the whole value of it was...

02:23:10.000 I always imagine was essentially, I'm oversimplifying, but the lack of government regulation and dependency.

02:23:19.000 So, yeah, I don't know where it's going to go.

02:23:24.000 I'm an old school kind of investor.

02:23:28.000 I should be embarrassed to say I don't have any crypto in my investment portfolio, but I don't have much of an investment portfolio.

02:23:37.000 Well, there's a lot of people that invested in crypto that lost a shit ton of money when it all kind of fell apart recently, too.

02:23:42.000 That's the thing.

02:23:42.000 When things get weird, people want to dump it.

02:23:45.000 They get panicky, and there's long-haul investors in crypto that say there's ups and downs, and this is just part of the process.

02:23:54.000 But a lot of people say, no, they're hamstringing cryptocurrencies, and they know what they're doing.

02:23:58.000 And they're doing it because it is a threat.

02:24:01.000 Because if the government no longer controls currency, if currency is decentralized, and there's a finite amount of Bitcoin, and it's valuable at this level, and people can use it to buy goods and services, The government no longer controls it.

02:24:15.000 That's terrifying for people.

02:24:16.000 Yeah.

02:24:17.000 Yeah.

02:24:17.000 I think it's—you know, the big government concern has been, for all this time, has been that it's, you know, used by criminal elements, right?

02:24:27.000 And, you know, there was—yes, that was true to some degree.

02:24:32.000 But it seems like the horse has left the barn, so it's more of a—you know, it's gained more traction than, you know— I would have thought.

02:24:42.000 But then again, I look down and I think, fine, I should have bought Walmart.

02:24:47.000 But I don't know.

02:24:50.000 I think that with the currency the way it is, Look, China has been looking to supplant the dollar or to replace the dollar as the global currency.

02:25:05.000 They've had that argument for a long time.

02:25:07.000 I don't think the dollar is going anywhere, but I do think that the more that the government looks to control Alternative currencies, the less attractive those currencies become,

02:25:23.000 and the more likely it is that the focus shifts elsewhere, and there becomes then another attractive investment at the nascent level at the beginning.

02:25:32.000 So, who knows?

02:25:34.000 But, yeah.

02:25:36.000 This is bizarre push to connect climate change to heart attacks.

02:25:40.000 Have you seen that?

02:25:40.000 Yeah.

02:25:41.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:25:41.000 How dumb do they think we are? 1.00

02:25:44.000 Pretty dumb. 1.00

02:25:45.000 I mean, how much of an increase of climate change do you really need to get the massive jump in heart attacks that people have experienced? 0.99

02:25:53.000 I mean, it was a cover of ABC. There was an ABC article about it that was trying to connect it, and it was met with almost universal disdain.

02:26:03.000 People are like, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.90

02:26:05.000 Like, that's not the only option. 0.99

02:26:08.000 There's probably other stuff that might have went on over the last couple years.

02:26:12.000 You guys remember those things?

02:26:13.000 Yeah.

02:26:14.000 Half the time, I think—and that's the problem with media nowadays. 0.84

02:26:19.000 I mean, look, you look at most sites that are supposedly media, news-focused, and it just seems like it's just a slew of shit that's there just to get your clicks and your likes and to bait you into clicking on it. 0.98

02:26:36.000 And most of the shit that's out there is just that, right? 0.98

02:26:39.000 I mean, there's very few solid news sources anymore. 0.99

02:26:42.000 Well, the good thing about that is that independent news sources are rising because of that, because people have lost all faith and trust.

02:26:49.000 And, I mean, you're seeing the impact on CNN. I mean, they fired everybody now.

02:26:52.000 Yeah.

02:26:53.000 They fired Stelter, supposedly Don Lemon and Jim Acosta are on the chopping block as well, and they're trying to make it an objective source of journalism now. 0.96

02:27:01.000 The fucking cover of CNN had a positive story on me the other day. 0.97

02:27:04.000 I was like, this is hilarious. 1.00

02:27:06.000 Did they?

02:27:06.000 What'd they say?

02:27:07.000 It was about the abortion debate that I had with Seth Dillon, who's the Babylon Bee guy.

02:27:12.000 Yeah.

02:27:14.000 Okay.

02:27:14.000 Where, you know, he was saying that rape victims should be forced to carry babies.

02:27:18.000 I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. 1.00

02:27:20.000 And his thought was that two wrongs don't make a right. 1.00

02:27:23.000 And, you know, he's an evangelical Christian.

02:27:25.000 Yeah.

02:27:26.000 He has a very rigid perspective on life begins at conception.

02:27:32.000 And, you know, I'm like, but what if it's the day of conception?

02:27:35.000 What if it's a rape victim?

02:27:36.000 Day of conception. 0.63

02:27:37.000 You think that child who got raped should be forced to carry that baby? 0.99

02:27:40.000 And that's the way things get real fucking squirrely. 0.99

02:27:43.000 And he said yes. 0.97

02:27:44.000 Yes.

02:27:45.000 He said two wrongs don't make a right. 0.99

02:27:46.000 Fucking hell. 0.99

02:27:47.000 Yeah, that it's murder. 0.99

02:27:49.000 I mean, that's the hardcore evangelical perspective of conception.

02:27:54.000 Yeah.

02:27:55.000 I think in part I didn't realize what an effort had been underway for years by that segment of society to influence state houses in anticipation of one day having the Supreme Court return the question to the states.

02:28:14.000 So that was a massively coordinated and funded effort To try to get to that point.

02:28:22.000 And that completely happened, at least for me, off the radar.

02:28:25.000 I just didn't see it.

02:28:25.000 Do you think that's a political decision or is that a position based on their religious ideology, that life truly does begin at the point of conception that they're doing something that's ultimately just?

02:28:37.000 Well, I mean, I'm sure.

02:28:40.000 Yeah, I think it's both.

02:28:41.000 But I think there's a lot of people out there who firmly believe, you know, on the religious side of it.

02:28:45.000 And then there's, you know, there's, I don't, I don't know.

02:28:50.000 It's one of those, there's no winning that discussion, right?

02:28:54.000 Right. 1.00

02:28:56.000 Again, it falls in the category of, fuck it. 1.00

02:28:59.000 Don't hurt people. 1.00

02:29:00.000 You do what you're going to do.

02:29:01.000 I'll do what I do.

02:29:02.000 You don't need to celebrate me.

02:29:04.000 I don't need to celebrate you. 1.00

02:29:05.000 Just get on with your fucking life. 0.99

02:29:08.000 But that requires, I think, for it to happen, that requires, again, reasonable people making reasonable policies that people can live under. 1.00

02:29:17.000 That doesn't seem to happen because one side wants it all their way and one side wants it their way and everybody's throwing hand grenades at each other.

02:29:24.000 So I don't know how you walk it back.

02:29:27.000 What do you make about Fauci stepping down?

02:29:30.000 Yeah, it's probably about time.

02:29:32.000 I didn't realize he was as old as he is.

02:29:34.000 Yeah, he's 80-something years old.

02:29:36.000 Yeah, I didn't realize that, but hopefully he's put enough away for retirement.

02:29:41.000 Hopefully not.

02:29:44.000 What is he going to do?

02:29:44.000 He's going to keep working?

02:29:45.000 He's going to start an OnlyFans.

02:29:48.000 Yeah.

02:29:48.000 That's what I'm hoping.

02:29:49.000 Yeah.

02:29:50.000 Well, you know, 35% of the internet is porn, so...

02:29:54.000 People would pay.

02:29:55.000 See Fauci in his underwear.

02:29:57.000 Yeah.

02:29:57.000 Well, you know, it's funny because I think the CDC is going through a shakeup right now, right?

02:30:01.000 Because they're actually trying internally to understand where they made mistakes.

02:30:05.000 And a lot of their mistakes were pretty evident, but they, you know...

02:30:11.000 At least it seems as if they're trying to make some adjustments internally for the next time.

02:30:16.000 They probably have to for survival purposes.

02:30:17.000 Yeah, that's true.

02:30:19.000 But we'll have another pandemic.

02:30:21.000 But I will say this.

02:30:24.000 The number of people that I still see walking around outside, outside, on their own, by themselves, wearing a mask.

02:30:29.000 Today, I saw it today. 1.00

02:30:31.000 Some poor guy who looked like he never thought about his health for a moment in his life, except for putting that fucking mask on. 1.00

02:30:39.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:30:39.000 It's like having a condom and putting it on after you get AIDS. Well, you're not going to be on condoms anymore, I guess. 1.00

02:30:45.000 No.

02:30:45.000 You won't be able to find them in a store.

02:30:47.000 I don't think anybody's going to go for that.

02:30:49.000 Yeah.

02:30:49.000 That's a long sell.

02:30:51.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:30:52.000 I mean, we would literally have to be at some sort of a fucking religious domination of our culture to accept that. 0.98

02:31:01.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:31:01.000 We're not giving up sex. 0.99

02:31:03.000 I'll say that much.

02:31:04.000 That's a red line.

02:31:06.000 I mean, just condoms are the most innocuous of all of them.

02:31:10.000 You're literally just putting a cap on it so it feels good and sort of, and you kind of stop pregnancy. 1.00

02:31:17.000 It's just the whole thing is so goddamn dumb. 1.00

02:31:19.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:31:22.000 I'm really surprised I hadn't heard that before.

02:31:24.000 Again, because maybe I wasn't paying attention to the contraception industry.

02:31:28.000 Yeah, it's a significant part of that group believes that contraception also is an issue.

02:31:37.000 All right.

02:31:37.000 Well, that's—see, again, you get into that part, and then you could actually see a point where the Republicans don't actually take the House in November.

02:31:46.000 If they just keep—if there's enough of that going on, because you have all the independents, you have all the—like you pointed out, the people that— They're inclined to vote Republican because they like policies that are there. 0.98

02:31:56.000 But then they see this and they think, just stay the fuck out of my kitchen. 0.97

02:31:59.000 Do the things you're supposed to do. 0.99

02:32:02.000 Treaties and security and foreign policy and everything else, just stay the fuck out of it. 0.83

02:32:09.000 But isn't that a part of any system?

02:32:11.000 The systems always want to grow and increase their amount of power.

02:32:17.000 Yeah.

02:32:18.000 And that makes it easier for them if they have more power.

02:32:21.000 They can implement all of their policies and all the things they want to do that may be unpopular if they have more control.

02:32:27.000 Yeah.

02:32:28.000 Well, and that's how we end up where we are, right?

02:32:30.000 Because we've created a system that allows politicians to stay in office, right?

02:32:35.000 An existing congressperson or senator has enormous advantages over someone who's trying to challenge him for that seat.

02:32:41.000 And so, that's just, that's what it is. 0.96

02:32:44.000 I mean, how do I stay in office for, you know, 46 fucking years? 0.97

02:32:49.000 But, yeah, we'll get away from that. 0.98

02:32:50.000 You know, we...

02:32:53.000 We also didn't talk about the whacking of that oligarch's daughter in Russia.

02:33:03.000 Yesterday?

02:33:03.000 Yeah, just outside of Moscow.

02:33:05.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

02:33:07.000 And it was supposed to be the oligarch himself, but he got in a different vehicle, right?

02:33:12.000 Wasn't that the...

02:33:13.000 Yeah, it was.

02:33:15.000 And he's not really even oligarch, I guess is the wrong way to put it.

02:33:18.000 They call him Putin's brain.

02:33:19.000 Yeah, he's an ultra-nationalist.

02:33:23.000 And he's more of a commentator, right?

02:33:26.000 He's sort of a media face at this point.

02:33:30.000 But he was attending an event.

02:33:33.000 I think he was giving a speech.

02:33:34.000 His daughter was also there.

02:33:39.000 Maybe the thought was they were going to get a both.

02:33:41.000 Maybe the thought was they were going to get the dad.

02:33:43.000 And the daughter, she's like a commentator, right?

02:33:46.000 Yeah, she is.

02:33:47.000 Daria Dugan.

02:33:49.000 She was a commentator.

02:33:50.000 Was a commentator.

02:33:52.000 Now she's blown to bits. 0.99

02:33:53.000 So they had two cars there at this event.

02:33:56.000 She got in one, drove off, and then the thing detonated a dozen miles outside of Moscow, basically.

02:34:06.000 And of course, the Russian government immediately blamed the Ukrainians.

02:34:10.000 And a lot of them are calling for targeting of Ukrainian personalities now in Kyiv.

02:34:18.000 So it just ramps up an already awful situation.

02:34:23.000 Do you imagine a scenario where Putin uses nukes?

02:34:30.000 That's the ultimate fear, right?

02:34:32.000 Well, the ultimate fear is that he takes over all of what was once the Soviet Union.

02:34:37.000 Yeah.

02:34:38.000 Well, I think if you had asked that question a year ago, I would have said, no, he's not going to do it.

02:34:42.000 But now we've been so bad at kind of predicting his activities that...

02:34:54.000 Maybe he would see that he could keep it a limited encounter.

02:35:01.000 We tend to think of a nuke as Hiroshima or Nagasaki and it doesn't necessarily have to be like that.

02:35:11.000 A smaller payload.

02:35:13.000 And maybe he feels like he could keep it regionally contained.

02:35:18.000 So I wouldn't say it's off the table.

02:35:21.000 It probably isn't off the table from his perspective, from his mindset.

02:35:24.000 If he gets pushed into a corner.

02:35:26.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:35:27.000 And if he...

02:35:29.000 I mean, look, if the fight is taken to Russia, right, inside Russia, and they've had a number of incidents already, right?

02:35:38.000 And there have been a number of incidents in Crimea.

02:35:43.000 And before this, I guarantee you, before February, whenever they started the invasion, February 24th, Putin, you know, probably imagined that would never happen.

02:35:52.000 He imagined he was going to be in Kiev in five days.

02:35:56.000 So, I think the more that may happen, if the Ukrainian military decides, look, what we've got to do is use these drones capabilities that we have and, you know, some of the other weapons we've got to start launching attacks.

02:36:07.000 And the U.S. has been trying to, you know, trying to manage that ever since we got involved in this, right?

02:36:13.000 And by saying, you know, these can't be used, you know, to launch attacks inside of Russia.

02:36:18.000 Because they don't want that to expand, and that could be one of those things that could then set him off.

02:36:23.000 So something like this, this assassination, whether she was the intended target or it was going to be her dad, that's the sort of thing that escalates, right?

02:36:35.000 And it removes the ability, if there was one, to have any sort of negotiated settlement.

02:36:41.000 But look, we're $10 billion in terms of aid that we've dropped on to Ukraine, really legitimately since Biden's been in office.

02:36:56.000 They just approved a $775 million additional assistance package, mostly munitions and hardware.

02:37:04.000 And that's the 18th or 19th package of aid that we've put into Ukraine since this started.

02:37:20.000 The Congress or the Senate approved a $40 billion aid package in May, so they haven't gotten anywhere near contributing all that to it yet.

02:37:30.000 But you have to ask yourself, where is this going?

02:37:35.000 What are we doing?

02:37:37.000 Are we just going to continue sort of a proxy situation?

02:37:40.000 What's the alternative?

02:37:41.000 Do nothing?

02:37:42.000 Well, if we didn't do anything, if we hadn't been providing all this, There's no way the Ukrainians could still be in the fight. 1.00

02:37:48.000 I mean, no matter how strong their will is, and everybody respects the fact that they've had this enormous courage and will for this battle, but the reality is they need the hardware.

02:37:59.000 Look, they've lost.

02:38:01.000 It depends on the estimates, but some of the estimates are they're losing 100 soldiers a day.

02:38:08.000 We're at the six-month mark of this.

02:38:11.000 Today is like 180th day, 181st day of the invasion.

02:38:16.000 And Well, sort of the figures are hard to pin down because both sides are, you know, in the business of not giving that information out and they're also in the business of exaggerating how much the other side has suffered.

02:38:31.000 You know, estimates are, you know, maybe the Russians have lost 15,000 to 18,000 and the Ukrainians are probably somewhere, you know, around that, again, if you figure 100. So it'd be 18,000 if they're losing 100 a day.

02:38:46.000 So you've got this going on and you've got the US and NATO just pushing more weapons and money in there and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

02:38:57.000 Russia doesn't seem inclined and they've said they won't negotiate.

02:39:01.000 Zelensky doesn't seem inclined to push for a negotiated settlement.

02:39:07.000 So, you know, I don't know where that goes.

02:39:09.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:39:10.000 And we have to be a little bit clearer about this, right? 0.68

02:39:14.000 Because obviously, Afghanistan was one of those just ridiculous case studies. 0.92

02:39:20.000 We kept talking about how we're creating the stable Afghan government.

02:39:28.000 The US government knew deep down that the Afghan military couldn't stand up on its own.

02:39:35.000 And yet, for years and years and years and years, we kept this going.

02:39:38.000 And we never really did a particularly good job of explaining to the American public Why we're doing it other than, well, terrorism.

02:39:47.000 Terrorism.

02:39:47.000 We can't allow them to use it as a base for attacking us again like 9-11.

02:39:53.000 You know, so 20 years down the road and all those lives and everything else, we're back to where we started, basically.

02:39:59.000 Taliban's back in charge and, you know, nothing's really changed.

02:40:03.000 And so with this Ukraine-Russia thing, you know, we don't want to get in a shooting war with Russia.

02:40:09.000 Do we really want to keep just pumping endless amounts of money into Ukraine?

02:40:14.000 Where's the money coming from?

02:40:15.000 Well, we're printing it up.

02:40:17.000 I don't know.

02:40:21.000 It's money we're not spending on other things, on shoring up our telecoms and getting Chinese gear off of cell towers. 0.81

02:40:30.000 It's not money we're spending on quantum computing.

02:40:33.000 It's not money we're spending on I'm hoping that behind the scenes,

02:40:49.000 we've got some very aggressive effort to get the two sides to sit down.

02:40:55.000 Do you think that's the case?

02:40:57.000 Probably not, because the Russians aren't willing, and probably Zelensky feels, at least at this point, that he's got a lot of runway left in terms of getting aid and assistance from NATO and from the U.S. They're,

02:41:15.000 you know, but at a certain point, it starts looking like World War I, right?

02:41:18.000 Little tiny, tiny incremental steps, you know, on the battlefield and very little being done and, you know, potential for famine, even though they've released some of the grain shipments.

02:41:29.000 So it just looks a lot like...

02:41:33.000 When we were dragging the boys through London, I took them to the Imperial War Museum.

02:41:39.000 If anybody's so inclined, they should definitely go to the Imperial War Museum in London.

02:41:43.000 And I took the boys to the World War I exhibit.

02:41:46.000 It's fantastic.

02:41:47.000 It's an incredible thing.

02:41:49.000 But then you're standing there and you're reading all this about a land war in Europe, right?

02:41:54.000 And lack of progress and people being killed and famine being created because there was no agriculture going on and no ability to move food and grain. 0.99

02:42:06.000 You realize, what the fuck? 0.97

02:42:09.000 It's 100 years on and we're doing the same thing again. 1.00

02:42:13.000 It was a little depressing.

02:42:14.000 It was kind of a depressing moment.

02:42:16.000 But with far more capability of destruction.

02:42:20.000 Yes.

02:42:21.000 Yeah.

02:42:22.000 And that's why the consequences are so much greater.

02:42:23.000 That's why this is so disturbing to people because if it goes sideways, it goes sideways for the world.

02:42:30.000 Yeah.

02:42:31.000 Right.

02:42:31.000 Exactly.

02:42:32.000 And that's, which is, yes, that's exactly it.

02:42:35.000 So if it, you know, we were in a world war, but it was in a bizarre kind of way it was contained.

02:42:40.000 The world's much smaller now.

02:42:42.000 Yeah.

02:42:42.000 Much smaller.

02:42:43.000 Technology being what it is, the potential for major problems.

02:42:48.000 Yeah, so, but again, I guess I think it's down to, maybe it's the same theme, transparency on the part of the US government.

02:42:55.000 We have to do a better job of explaining maybe what our point to this exercise is, rather than just, the immediate effect was this mode of, yeah, I stand with Ukraine, right?

02:43:06.000 Well, what does that mean?

02:43:08.000 And we all imagined that, you know, maybe there was going to be a quick end to it, one side or the other.

02:43:14.000 That's clearly not happening.

02:43:15.000 So I guess my point in talking about the numbers, the sheer amount of money, and it's not just the money, it's just what are we trying to accomplish here, and that's part of the problem.

02:43:27.000 I will say Putin completely miscalculated, because I think part of his issue was he wanted to show cracks in NATO, and obviously he didn't do that.

02:43:35.000 Now we've expanded NATO as a result of his actions, so he got just the wrong result there.

02:43:43.000 There's also a problem in getting to the Russian people themselves because the propaganda that they receive is so thorough and their access to the information is so limited in terms of the Russian propaganda.

02:43:55.000 I've talked to people who have relatives in Russia and they think that the Ukrainians are a bunch of Nazis and that we have to go over there to liberate them.

02:44:04.000 That's the propaganda that the surface readers of Russia are getting.

02:44:12.000 Yeah, it's a complicated issue.

02:44:16.000 It's uncomfortable for people to talk about, you know, a lot of aspects of this, right? 0.98

02:44:22.000 Ukraine was, you know, we didn't give a shit, I'll be honest, we didn't give a shit about Ukraine, right, before this happened. 0.99

02:44:28.000 We thought it was corrupt. 1.00

02:44:29.000 We thought it was corrupt.

02:44:30.000 And you know what?

02:44:31.000 It was.

02:44:32.000 Yeah.

02:44:32.000 Yeah, and had a lot of problems.

02:44:34.000 But you can't, if you say that out loud now, People are going, what the fuck? 1.00

02:44:39.000 Are you unpatriotic? 1.00

02:44:40.000 You don't stand with Ukraine? 0.92

02:44:42.000 And it's like everything else, right?

02:44:44.000 It's like those easy fixes.

02:44:46.000 There's a few Ukrainian flags outside of homes in our neighborhoods, you know, where we are.

02:44:52.000 I think, like, okay, you're not Ukrainian, but if it makes you feel good, great.

02:44:56.000 But, you know, do you really...

02:44:59.000 We're very quick to jump on things that make us feel righteous.

02:45:03.000 And so, yeah, it's uncomfortable to say, but Ukraine was a place that, as far as we were concerned, it was corrupt, right? 0.60

02:45:10.000 And there were problems there that wasn't going to join NATO anyway.

02:45:13.000 We weren't going to admit it into NATO. Why is that?

02:45:17.000 Well, in part because there was this...

02:45:21.000 There's a concern about admitting a country like Ukraine into NATO and what that impact would have on Putin's mindset in Russia, right?

02:45:29.000 Part of it was they hadn't met certain, you know, the standards or protocols that are in place for NATO membership.

02:45:38.000 And so...

02:45:39.000 What was missing?

02:45:42.000 Transparency in government.

02:45:43.000 Corruption was an issue.

02:45:47.000 So I think If you say that now, people just look at it and go, well, you're not on the right side of this argument.

02:45:58.000 Well, there's nothing wrong with pointing out the flaws, and you can still support Ukraine in this action that the Russians have caused. 0.96

02:46:09.000 You can have a more complex argument than just it's either right or it's wrong.

02:46:17.000 But again, we're in that world where it's all right or it's all wrong.

02:46:20.000 It's all this or it's all that.

02:46:23.000 You're bumming me out, Mike.

02:46:24.000 I don't mean to bum you out.

02:46:26.000 I was hoping you had clear, concise solutions that the powers that be would listen to and go, hey, that Mike Baker guy, he's on to something.

02:46:33.000 Sure.

02:46:33.000 Well, no, I think more transparency.

02:46:36.000 I think being more realistic about what our foreign policy interests are.

02:46:42.000 Those are things, but that's difficult to do, right?

02:46:44.000 It's a very popular thing to...

02:46:48.000 You know, this is one of the few bipartisan issues that you've got is to grant more aid to Ukraine.

02:46:55.000 It's one of the few things that people on Capitol Hill seem to agree about.

02:46:58.000 There's only a handful of voices that are saying, you know, what's it all about and where is it going?

02:47:04.000 I'm not saying don't.

02:47:06.000 I'm just saying let's have a discussion about it, you know, openly that talks about what our national interests are there and what we're trying to accomplish.

02:47:16.000 And, you know, much like with Afghanistan, even with Iraq and, you know, going all the way back to Vietnam and others.

02:47:22.000 I mean, we've never really done it.

02:47:23.000 So, again, it's, you know, it's wishful thinking that we would.

02:47:26.000 You know, there's this narrative that's historically accurate that all empires eventually collapse.

02:47:35.000 Yeah.

02:47:36.000 And that's what's terrifying to people here.

02:47:38.000 Like, what does that look like?

02:47:39.000 Does that mean we become under the control of another empire?

02:47:43.000 Does it mean we're under the whim of China and all our ideas about freedom and what we hold dear about the United States are gone forever? 0.67

02:47:51.000 And that this experiment in self-government ultimately proved to be a failure.

02:47:55.000 It lasted a few hundred years, but was overcome by all the powers that be, all the things that we've talked about so far, and the fact that the very foundation that It was established under is not taken seriously or not thought of as so significant and important,

02:48:17.000 whether it's freedom of speech, whether it's, you know, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, all these things that people want to change and erode and shift based on their own political ideology.

02:48:27.000 They don't understand that this is immensely important.

02:48:30.000 Now you're bumming me out.

02:48:32.000 Right?

02:48:33.000 Because where does it go?

02:48:34.000 If China exists right now, if we live at the same time that an entire country of over a billion people is controlled by a totalitarian dictatorship, which is essentially what the CCP is.

02:48:48.000 I mean, they have ultimate control over what's expressed.

02:48:52.000 They'll lock people up for dissent. 0.93

02:48:55.000 They'll take people that are billionaire heads of corporations and step out of line and they disappear them. 0.70

02:49:03.000 Yeah.

02:49:04.000 Does that happen here?

02:49:06.000 Well, there's a lot of people that talk about how, you know, but they've always been, you know, a segment of society that's talked about how democracy is failing and capitalism is a failing system.

02:49:15.000 What's the alternative?

02:49:16.000 Yeah, I don't think there is an alternative.

02:49:20.000 I think we allowed ourselves to get soft.

02:49:22.000 We talked about this, you know, a while back, which is, you know, part of it is human nature, right?

02:49:28.000 As a parent, I want life to be easier for my kids, right?

02:49:31.000 My parents wanted it to be easier for me.

02:49:33.000 Their parents, I'm sure, wanted it to be easier for them.

02:49:35.000 And eventually, you get the diminishing returns because...

02:49:37.000 You know, we're not hunting, gathering, looking for fresh water. 0.97

02:49:40.000 We're just, you know, sitting, staring at our phones and nobody's doing shit, right? 0.82

02:49:43.000 So it's, you could argue that, and we've, you know, so we've created a soft society. 0.90

02:49:50.000 We have an inability to say difficult things to each other without getting completely wound up, right?

02:49:56.000 I mean, words are violence. 0.98

02:49:57.000 No, they're fucking not. 0.96

02:49:59.000 But a free flow of ideas and exchange is a very difficult thing to do nowadays. 0.98

02:50:06.000 People are afraid to say what they really think because, oh my god.

02:50:10.000 Well, they could lose their jobs, unfortunately.

02:50:11.000 They could lose their jobs, yeah.

02:50:12.000 My daughter went to university at the end of the whole process.

02:50:16.000 It was not an inexpensive university.

02:50:18.000 She was very honest about it.

02:50:19.000 She said, I just kept my mouth shut during most of the debates and conversations in class.

02:50:24.000 She's sort of a center-right.

02:50:27.000 She's more of a centrist, but she's center-right in the political scheme of things. 1.00

02:50:31.000 Which is extremely unpopular with young people.

02:50:34.000 Yeah.

02:50:34.000 And so there was no upside for her, whether it was with students or with professors, to say anything.

02:50:40.000 But you get that.

02:50:41.000 I guess the point there is you get this inability to talk and to reason.

02:50:47.000 And so you end up...

02:50:49.000 Right now, it does seem like...

02:50:53.000 Yeah, we do.

02:50:54.000 I don't know.

02:50:55.000 I tend to think that the country's very resilient.

02:50:58.000 I'm not one of those people that thinks democracy's on the brink, right?

02:51:01.000 I didn't think that January 6th is going to mean the end of democracy. 0.90

02:51:05.000 I think it was a horseshit show, right?

02:51:07.000 It was not good, but I don't think it meant that, oh my God, democracy's on the brink. 0.95

02:51:14.000 No, it isn't.

02:51:14.000 If you think that, then I don't think you understand how resilient it is here in this country.

02:51:20.000 But...

02:51:22.000 I don't know.

02:51:22.000 Maybe we don't have enough people invested in the game.

02:51:25.000 Maybe we need mandatory service for folks coming out of high school.

02:51:32.000 Maybe you could defer that for after college, but maybe everybody needs to put some skin in the game, a couple of years of community service or military time.

02:51:39.000 Yeah, that's what a lot of people thought, that one of the things that separates us from countries like Israel, beside the fact they're in constant actual military conflict with their neighbor.

02:51:48.000 Is that they have this sort of mandatory military service, sort of like South Korea does.

02:51:54.000 We don't want that in this country because we want people to have the ability to choose whatever they want.

02:51:58.000 But I think because people don't exactly understand the consequences of not looking at ourselves as a sovereign state, not looking at ourselves as a community of people that are all banded together,

02:52:14.000 that we do have this sort of Ignorant denial of our role in the world or of not just our role in the world of the world in general how the other players in this game look at us right and I think also an understanding of how The country works,

02:52:34.000 or how it's laid out, right?

02:52:36.000 Maybe not how it always works, but how it's supposed to, you know, work according to the framework, right?

02:52:41.000 And, you know, it's not to sound like Wilford Brimley, but, you know, in school, you used to take civics courses, right?

02:52:48.000 And that was mandatory.

02:52:49.000 You had to know, you had a government course, right?

02:52:51.000 You had to know how things were supposedly working.

02:52:54.000 And I think that's an element of that, too.

02:52:57.000 We need to Maybe we need to spend a little less time on people's feelings and following their passions in schooling and just get back to some basics.

02:53:07.000 Do the things that will help kids advance, but give them a framework of understanding as to how things work.

02:53:15.000 Social sciences, fine.

02:53:17.000 Civics, great.

02:53:20.000 Economics, right?

02:53:21.000 I mean, teach some things that really, I don't know, prepare the kids.

02:53:25.000 I don't know where I was going with that other than I see a list of courses, potential courses, that, you know, particularly my oldest boy can take in high school, now that he's in high school.

02:53:37.000 And I go, well, you know, I mean, how about...

02:53:40.000 It's all over the map, right? 1.00

02:53:42.000 It's just shit that you think, I guess maybe that's... 0.99

02:53:45.000 Maybe that's entertaining, but maybe some more focus on basic instruction and education. 0.99

02:53:52.000 Ultimately, what is school preparing people for?

02:53:54.000 Is it preparing people to integrate into the world?

02:53:57.000 Is it educating people?

02:53:59.000 Is it just for their own edification and to expand their knowledge base?

02:54:04.000 Or is it supposed to help them become a functional part of society?

02:54:10.000 What is the role of education?

02:54:13.000 Yeah, I think it's to become a functioning part of society.

02:54:16.000 I think it's to allow you to be a provider, to, you know, take care of yourself, to be a responsible citizen.

02:54:23.000 And, yeah, but now it does seem a lot of it's for, you know, sort of just self-realization and following passion and doing all these things that, you know, anyway, I disappeared down in some educational discussion rabbit hole,

02:54:41.000 but Are you concerned at all about the integration of technology into human beings?

02:54:47.000 One of the things that's coming up now that a lot of people are discussing are these technologies that are rising right now.

02:54:56.000 There's Neuralink and there's a few other ones and Elon Musk is actually just invested in some competitor to Neuralink.

02:55:03.000 They're all working towards this integration of technology and human beings.

02:55:08.000 But when we're talking about the problems with technology and the problems with the fact that a lot of our technology is compromised, and that if we do that to human bodies, if we really do all connect to the internet via some sort of cyborg device,

02:55:27.000 What's to stop that from being compromised?

02:55:31.000 That's an extension of where we are right now.

02:55:34.000 It's a great question.

02:55:38.000 We actually covered some of this.

02:55:40.000 I haven't even gotten all this way down the road and I didn't plug Black Files Declassified on Discovery and Science Channel.

02:55:46.000 In the second season, we did some work on this.

02:55:49.000 I went to UCLA robotics program, went to Madison, Wisconsin, looked at some of this.

02:55:57.000 I think it's fascinating.

02:55:58.000 It doesn't necessarily worry me from...

02:56:00.000 I know there's discussions about the morality issues of linking machine and human and all that, but I do think from a security perspective, like you pointed out, I think there's some concern there.

02:56:19.000 Research and development being what it is, I've been super impressed with what I've seen, anyway, from what some of the research labs are doing in this field.

02:56:35.000 It is a It's an amazing area, but what they're not doing, because they're scientists, they're engineers, they're not counterintelligence concerns.

02:56:45.000 So you don't have that follow-on part that says, well, what does that mean?

02:56:49.000 And the ethicists are out there looking at the morality issues.

02:56:53.000 But I don't know that from a CI perspective that anybody's been out there staring at this and wondering, well, if China is controlling communications, telecoms from their position right now,

02:57:11.000 Once this goes further, what does that enable them to do?

02:57:16.000 I don't know.

02:57:18.000 But it's a fascinating area.

02:57:20.000 It's just typically the security aspects or the counterintelligence aspects of anything tend to be a trailing issue.

02:57:29.000 But you've got to think that other countries are looking at that in a different way.

02:57:35.000 Well, China is, definitely.

02:57:36.000 China is.

02:57:38.000 They've got the advantage of being a dictatorship, right?

02:57:42.000 So they don't sit around and worry about the ethics of things.

02:57:45.000 They don't worry about the morals of things.

02:57:46.000 They don't worry about civil liberties, right?

02:57:49.000 And I'm glad that we do in the West.

02:57:52.000 I think that's great.

02:57:53.000 That's the way it should be.

02:57:54.000 But we just need to be aware that they don't and what that means and why they are so focused on this.

02:58:01.000 I mean, again, they're focused on artificial intelligences, similar to their focus on other, you know, key technologies that they want to control.

02:58:10.000 So, yeah, we just, again, it's one of those things where you don't want to sit around and You know, see some sort of conspiracy or a security threat behind every corner.

02:58:24.000 That one seems like it's not a corner.

02:58:27.000 It's like a giant gate that's right in front of our face.

02:58:30.000 I mean, if we all do integrate, and you're talking about quantum computers and their ability to eliminate all of the safety nets of cryptography, what's to stop that from happening with human beings?

02:58:46.000 Yeah.

02:58:46.000 And again, I don't think it's an area that's really been fully or not even fully.

02:58:51.000 I don't think it's been an area that's been explored because we tend to race into things, right, from a development perspective.

02:58:59.000 It's like a pharmaceutical company.

02:59:00.000 A pharmaceutical company, you know, all they want to do is have a free flow of information, right, to share that information within, you know, the scientific community to get where they want to go, right?

02:59:13.000 And, you know, then you've got somebody typically in a pharma company that's the chief of security.

02:59:19.000 It's like, you can't do that, right?

02:59:21.000 Because this information is not only as valuable to the company, but it's ours.

02:59:25.000 It's proprietary information.

02:59:26.000 We've spent billions of dollars on it, developing it.

02:59:28.000 You know, you can't just take your laptop home or take it to, you know, on a trip to Europe with you and assume that all that information on there is secured.

02:59:37.000 So you're butting up heads all the time against free flow of information and security.

02:59:44.000 And you're always trying to find sort of that fine point on the line that gives you maximum access to information for the people that are innovating and then locking it down to the point that you can on the security side.

03:00:01.000 But it's a tough thing to do.

03:00:02.000 Which inhibits the ability to have new technology.

03:00:08.000 Yes.

03:00:08.000 And inhibits innovation.

03:00:10.000 Right.

03:00:10.000 Well, that's the view from the scientific side.

03:00:13.000 That's the view from the academic side, right?

03:00:15.000 That's what happens.

03:00:19.000 You know, and going back to that same dead horse that I've been kicking, the, you know, the Chinese Intel, you know, whichever department it is there that may be out there looking around, they understand that and they've been working the academic community, you know, for decades, you know,

03:00:34.000 and because they understand they play on that, right?

03:00:36.000 They understand that.

03:00:37.000 These folks don't think that way.

03:00:39.000 They don't think from a security perspective.

03:00:40.000 So I don't want to say they're easy pickings, but they've worked the academic environment very hard over the years in terms of getting access to information.

03:00:50.000 And how have they done that?

03:00:53.000 Co-opting individuals.

03:00:55.000 Maybe it could be something as simple as identifying, look, I'm interested in material science.

03:01:01.000 So I see at a university here in the U.S., maybe I identify a professor who's doing some particularly interesting research.

03:01:10.000 Maybe I develop a scenario where he's approached by someone, it seems very innocuous, and they're just looking to get a Some insight into a paper that he's written or whatever.

03:01:21.000 So he provides, you know, some material.

03:01:23.000 It's not classified, but he provides that material.

03:01:26.000 Now, okay, now what has he done?

03:01:28.000 He's kind of accepted your tasking, right?

03:01:31.000 Now you kind of co-opt him a little bit more.

03:01:32.000 Maybe you offer him a grant, right, you know, to do some research on something.

03:01:37.000 Maybe offer him a trip to...

03:01:40.000 Northwestern Technical University in China to come and talk to some of their people in a seminar.

03:01:47.000 You're looking to develop individuals who have access to information that you want, and it can be done in a variety of ways.

03:01:57.000 And then they do a tremendous amount of just open source trolling.

03:02:01.000 They're at every major scientific seminar, convention, discussion, panel session, just trolling around.

03:02:09.000 They're gathering up information, but they're also looking for potential contacts.

03:02:13.000 And again, you know, it's...

03:02:16.000 It sounds old school.

03:02:18.000 It doesn't sound as high tech as getting online and hacking into Raytheon or whomever, but it's part of the tools that you've got in your kit bag, and so it's an important part, and it's worked very well for them over the years.

03:02:34.000 So, anyway, it's...

03:02:36.000 But again, what's been happening, we've been trying to be more proactive, or the Bureau in particular has, and other members of the community and the intelligence community going out to institutions and saying, these are the problems you could be facing, right?

03:02:50.000 These are the things you should be aware of.

03:02:53.000 You know, if you're approached in this fashion, it would be great if you wouldn't mind telling us, right?

03:02:59.000 So, you know, it's, again, I seem like I've spent a lot of time banging on this subject.

03:03:06.000 Seems like something to bang on.

03:03:07.000 It's something to bang on, and it's an enormous cost to us and to our allies.

03:03:11.000 And I think, again, the more that we talk about it, the better off we are.

03:03:17.000 Even though, as a cynic, it's...

03:03:19.000 I mean, 2015, I think it was, Xi and Obama had this meeting, and...

03:03:25.000 There was this big fanfare about China agreed not to engage in cyber espionage or cyber shenanigans of any sort, not to engage in economic espionage.

03:03:35.000 And they touted it, and the media was like, wow, look at this.

03:03:38.000 They've agreed to do this. 1.00

03:03:39.000 Bullshit. 1.00

03:03:40.000 They haven't stopped. 1.00

03:03:42.000 In fact, they've accelerated.

03:03:44.000 All people have to do is Google Latest Chinese espionage acts, right?

03:03:51.000 And you get this long list of indictments and charges that the U.S. has been able to make.

03:03:59.000 They've got an insane number of counterintelligence investigations going on at the Bureau.

03:04:06.000 The Bureau is stretched thin, right?

03:04:09.000 And most of them against the China target.

03:04:13.000 So, you know, I don't want to sound like a one-trick pony, but I think I have.

03:04:18.000 I think it's a good trick.

03:04:20.000 Well, it's certainly something that people need to think about because I don't know where this goes.

03:04:25.000 If China's successful with this operation, what does that look like?

03:04:31.000 Yeah.

03:04:33.000 It looks like they're firmly convinced they're going to be at the top of the food chain, right?

03:04:38.000 And again, I know people roll their eyes when they hear talk like that, and they think, well, it's a community of nations.

03:04:43.000 You know, there's room for everyone up top.

03:04:45.000 And that's not the way they view it, right?

03:04:50.000 We tend to mirror our values on other nations, right?

03:04:52.000 They don't.

03:04:54.000 And so there's no misunderstanding on their part.

03:04:59.000 And so if this Congress takes place and Xi is given a third term, and all indications are he will, they'll just continue this march.

03:05:08.000 And they'll just continue building up their military.

03:05:13.000 They look at the Pacific region as basically their rightful property.

03:05:22.000 They certainly, again, we talked about Taiwan.

03:05:24.000 So I think we just need to be aware of what the dangers are in the world.

03:05:28.000 You know, don't sit in a foxhole worried about them.

03:05:31.000 You know, that'd be silly. 0.97

03:05:32.000 But if you think about what the past few years have looked like, you know, people have been just kicked in the ass constantly, whether it's the pandemic or it's the Russia-Ukraine battle, whether it's, you know, increased tensions with China, whether it's, you know, a recession. 0.91

03:05:44.000 I don't know if it's a recession or not, but if it's a recession, Yeah. 0.73

03:05:49.000 It's been a weird few years.

03:05:52.000 But I think it'll get better.

03:05:53.000 You do?

03:05:54.000 I'm an optimist.

03:05:55.000 Oh, boy.

03:05:57.000 Every time I walk out of here, I always feel like all I did was like- That's why we bring you in here.

03:06:02.000 I don't think about it as much as you do.

03:06:04.000 I need to know, especially with your background, what your perspective of worst case scenario is.

03:06:10.000 I do think it's important to be optimistic, though.

03:06:14.000 I've been following your tour and kept trying to figure out a way to get to one of your shows.

03:06:27.000 It hasn't worked out with my schedule, but do you have any more coming up?

03:06:30.000 Yeah, yeah, I got a bunch.

03:06:31.000 I'm always somewhere.

03:06:33.000 Well, we're always somewhere.

03:06:35.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm always touring.

03:06:36.000 I'll fill you in, find something.

03:06:38.000 I want to get out to Idaho anyway.

03:06:40.000 You got to.

03:06:40.000 You did that one show.

03:06:41.000 Yeah, I love it up there. 0.96

03:06:42.000 They still fucking talk about it. 0.96

03:06:43.000 It's fun up there, man. 0.99

03:06:44.000 Idaho's a...

03:06:46.000 I mean, I don't want to talk about it too much because I don't want to ruin it, but Boise's an amazing place.

03:06:50.000 It really is.

03:06:52.000 You should see the construction.

03:06:53.000 You can't swing at that cat without hitting a crane.

03:06:55.000 Well, people are leaving California like it's on fire.

03:06:58.000 Parts of it are.

03:06:59.000 Parts of it are.

03:07:00.000 By the way, I don't know why you'd swing at that cat.

03:07:03.000 I got two of them.

03:07:04.000 I never would do that to them.

03:07:06.000 But, yeah, it's a fantastic town.

03:07:09.000 I will say this.

03:07:10.000 We're coming up on the best fly fishing time of year.

03:07:13.000 September.

03:07:14.000 Yeah.

03:07:14.000 Up there in Idaho.

03:07:15.000 So if you've got any time on your calendar...

03:07:20.000 No, my calendar of September is filled with hunting.

03:07:23.000 Okay, yeah.

03:07:23.000 I was going to say, well, you come up there, you get both things done.

03:07:27.000 Yeah.

03:07:28.000 It's hard to get one done.

03:07:30.000 Yeah.

03:07:31.000 It's hard for me to escape, you know?

03:07:34.000 When you go on the road, when you do the tour, I don't mean to take over asking questions, but I'm just curious.

03:07:40.000 Please do.

03:07:41.000 What's the best part of doing that?

03:07:43.000 What do you enjoy the most?

03:07:45.000 People laughing.

03:07:46.000 I enjoy the fact that it works, that the people can come out, have a good time, forget about their problems for a little while, all laugh together, and all laugh together as a group.

03:07:56.000 It's very, you know, that's a cliche that laughter is healing, but it really is.

03:08:01.000 It's like a medicine.

03:08:02.000 It's a medicine for me.

03:08:03.000 I can sit in a comedy club and watch one of my friends on stage, make me laugh.

03:08:06.000 I love it.

03:08:07.000 I still love it.

03:08:09.000 It's a drug.

03:08:10.000 It's a perspective enhancer.

03:08:13.000 It shifts the way people think about life.

03:08:15.000 You get out of there, you have a good time, and you get out of there with a big smile on your face, and you have fun.

03:08:21.000 And that's what I like about it the most, that you can provide a moment of fun.

03:08:26.000 Is it more difficult to do now than it was 10 years ago?

03:08:29.000 It's easier in some ways.

03:08:31.000 You get more criticism, but people are excited about it more.

03:08:34.000 It's like people want it.

03:08:36.000 You know, it's like we've taken away all the wild, fun movies.

03:08:40.000 You can't have a fun comedy movie anymore because they're controversial and people are terrified of controversy.

03:08:47.000 They're terrified of criticism.

03:08:48.000 They're terrified of being attacked and canceled and this and that.

03:08:52.000 And also these people have these jobs that are dependent upon, you know, providing the studios with these films that don't get attacked so that they can profit off of them.

03:09:03.000 And they worry about it.

03:09:05.000 And so comedy, stand-up comedy is one of the rare places that's pretty autonomous.

03:09:09.000 You just need a building with a microphone and there's a lot of them out there.

03:09:14.000 Do you ever come up with something, though, or write it down and think, no, I can't do that?

03:09:18.000 It's not funny.

03:09:19.000 If it's not funny, then I don't do it.

03:09:21.000 But if it's funny, if it works, it makes people laugh.

03:09:24.000 This idea that it's supposed to...

03:09:25.000 You know, we accept fiction in all sorts of forms of media, whether it's literature or film, where something happens that's horrible and we don't think that it's a real thing that's taking place.

03:09:37.000 But when someone says something on stage, even if it's satire, even if it's like there's certain subjects that they think you're not supposed to cover.

03:09:45.000 There's things you're not supposed to say regardless of whether or not they make people laugh.

03:09:50.000 And that's where the rubber hits the road with stand-up.

03:09:53.000 That's the big pushback.

03:09:56.000 In that sense, stand-up is very exciting right now because people are very happy that there is still an outlet where people can just say funny things just to make people laugh.

03:10:06.000 These aren't statements.

03:10:07.000 They're not affidavits.

03:10:10.000 They're not declarations of your real true feelings on things.

03:10:15.000 They're just funny things to say.

03:10:17.000 And that is still alive and well.

03:10:19.000 It's a very American art form.

03:10:23.000 It takes a long time to develop the skills to be able to do that.

03:10:26.000 It takes a long time to gather up an audience that accepts you and knows that that's what you do and wants to come see you.

03:10:33.000 And I feel very, very fortunate that I have that. 0.99

03:10:37.000 Well, you got the fucking audience, that's for sure. 0.99

03:10:39.000 So I keep doing it, and there's a lot of us. 0.97

03:10:41.000 That's why building a club out here, that's why there's a big movement of comics that recognize the significance of this art form, and it's kind of under attack.

03:10:53.000 But under attack is a weird way to say it.

03:10:54.000 It's under criticism, but everything's under criticism.

03:10:56.000 There's more of an ability to criticize now than ever before.

03:10:59.000 Well, yeah, more people...

03:11:02.000 Or self-editing, right?

03:11:04.000 Yeah.

03:11:04.000 I mean, at the workplace, in school.

03:11:06.000 You kind of have to, though.

03:11:07.000 Yeah.

03:11:08.000 No, you do.

03:11:10.000 But again, it's a shame, right?

03:11:12.000 Because we've gotten to that point where you can't just...

03:11:16.000 I mean, I've got friends that are all over the political spectrum, and we have some of the greatest conversations, and we're completely on opposite sides of things, right?

03:11:26.000 And it gets a little loud sometimes.

03:11:29.000 But at the end of the day, we're great friends, right?

03:11:32.000 And we're all good with it.

03:11:34.000 That's what's missing in this country, the ability to have differing opinions and still find common ground.

03:11:40.000 Most people are good people.

03:11:42.000 Most people, the vast majority of us are good people, but we're so divided and scared, and we look at each other with differing opinions as being the enemy, and I think that's crazy.

03:11:52.000 Differing opinions are something to be considered and put into your own value system and try to decide, is this person right?

03:12:00.000 Are they wrong?

03:12:00.000 Why do I feel the way I feel?

03:12:02.000 Why do they feel the way they feel?

03:12:03.000 Why are we so divided?

03:12:05.000 What are our common beliefs?

03:12:08.000 What's our common ground?

03:12:09.000 But people aren't doing that right now.

03:12:11.000 They're so polarized.

03:12:13.000 Well, everything's very siloed, right?

03:12:15.000 So you sit and you read.

03:12:19.000 I talk to folks about this.

03:12:21.000 They'll say, well, what should I read?

03:12:23.000 Or what should I watch?

03:12:25.000 Or what should I listen to?

03:12:26.000 And the answer is whatever you get your hands on, right?

03:12:29.000 I mean, just read a wide variety of things, right?

03:12:33.000 Don't just sit and read and your one source of news is this or it's all in this silo.

03:12:39.000 I know I'm going to agree with it.

03:12:41.000 And if you're not uncomfortable sometimes with things that you're watching or you're reading, then you're part of the problem as far as I'm concerned.

03:12:49.000 Yeah.

03:12:50.000 You could argue, okay, it's important.

03:12:51.000 If I really feel strongly about something, fine.

03:12:55.000 I get it.

03:12:56.000 You want to be sort of that—I feel like I'm part of a community because now I belong to this group that all feel strongly about something, right?

03:13:05.000 It's like knowing what the enemy thinks, too.

03:13:07.000 You should get out and understand what the other side is saying and what they think.

03:13:10.000 Because maybe it'll make your argument for your own perspective a little bit better, right?

03:13:14.000 Because now you understand what the other side's thinking.

03:13:16.000 If you don't, you're just going to sound like a douche nozzle.

03:13:21.000 Agreed.

03:13:23.000 That's about it, Mike.

03:13:25.000 Let's wrap it up.

03:13:25.000 I think we solved a lot of problems.

03:13:27.000 We did.

03:13:27.000 We fixed everything.

03:13:28.000 You always do.

03:13:29.000 And I'm an optimist.

03:13:30.000 Things are going to get better, Joe.

03:13:32.000 I hope they do.

03:13:33.000 Well, you know, sometimes when confronted with problems, people find solutions.

03:13:37.000 Maybe that's the silver lining of all this, is that people are going to be forced to look at these problems that we've created for ourselves and realize that maybe some of us are on the wrong path.

03:13:47.000 And maybe this attitude that we have, this polarized attitude, is ultimately bad for everybody.

03:13:53.000 Bad for your children, my children, the world in general and that we all need to like try to understand each other a little bit better and find out why we have these rigid belief systems and also recognize that there's a problem with human nature that we have these These tribal identities that we attach ourselves to.

03:14:15.000 And that many of us, we just have adopted these predetermined patterns of behavior that aren't necessarily beneficial to either or.

03:14:24.000 So you're saying people might become more self-aware?

03:14:27.000 I'm hoping.

03:14:29.000 That's my hope.

03:14:30.000 It's not going to happen.

03:14:31.000 Some of us, I think.

03:14:32.000 I think some of us are becoming more self-aware. 0.99

03:14:35.000 And also, I think there's a movement where people are kind of tired of this shit. 0.99

03:14:39.000 They're tired of the polarization in this country. 0.99

03:14:41.000 And they do realize that most people are good people.

03:14:44.000 And they have to logically and rationally come to those conclusions.

03:14:50.000 And recognize why people have their own belief systems and what caused them, whether it's regional or whether it's political.

03:14:59.000 What's caused them to find these patterns that they've accepted as their own, that they've adopted?

03:15:06.000 Yeah.

03:15:06.000 I think if that were to happen, if people were to step back a little bit and think about what they're saying, if they would be just, again, a little more self-aware, but I do think it also requires some change in the narrative from on high,

03:15:24.000 right?

03:15:24.000 It requires some change in the narrative from...

03:15:27.000 The politicians, that's where I'm really cynical.

03:15:30.000 I don't see that because there's too much self-interest, right?

03:15:33.000 But if everybody just would chill the fuck out a little bit and just realize that words aren't violence, differing opinions aren't violent, It doesn't hurt to hear a different opinion.

03:15:47.000 You can choose to accept it or not. 0.98

03:15:49.000 You don't have to fucking argue about it. 0.97

03:15:52.000 Then maybe we get to that point where there's a little bit more time spent somewhere in the middle ground. 0.97

03:15:58.000 I think it should be celebrated.

03:16:00.000 I think those kind of open discussions should be celebrated.

03:16:03.000 I think we should recognize the value of them.

03:16:07.000 It's an important part of any sort of civilization, is to have open debate and discussions.

03:16:12.000 And it's really simple.

03:16:14.000 It's a simple solution to silence people.

03:16:16.000 But ultimately, it's bad for everyone.

03:16:18.000 It's bad even when people are saying things you're diametrically opposed to.

03:16:23.000 The right that they have to say that is very important to you.

03:16:27.000 Oh, yeah, because if you try to shut down that, yeah.

03:16:30.000 Then they shut you down.

03:16:31.000 They'll shut you down, and you're never going to be pure enough for the mob.

03:16:35.000 Exactly.

03:16:35.000 So, anyway, I think this has been a very good therapy session.

03:16:38.000 I think we nailed it.

03:16:39.000 Finishing on a positive note.

03:16:41.000 Your show.

03:16:42.000 Tell people about your show.

03:16:43.000 Yeah, Black Files Declassified, going into a third season.

03:16:47.000 We don't have a production date yet.

03:16:49.000 We don't have a production date yet, but we're standing by waiting.

03:16:52.000 It's on Discovery.

03:16:52.000 Discovery, of course, merged with Warner, and so now it's Warner Discovery, and anytime something like that happens, they then spend the next six to eight months waiting for the dust to settle before they move on and do anything.

03:17:05.000 But they've been terrific about the show, and so we're hoping to get started again in the fall.

03:17:11.000 There's no shortage of subjects for you to cover.

03:17:13.000 Oh my god, yeah.

03:17:14.000 And there's some good ones that they've mapped out early on until while we're waiting for the green light.

03:17:19.000 I have to ask you about UFOs before we leave.

03:17:21.000 Oh yeah.

03:17:22.000 Do you know anything new?

03:17:23.000 Do you ever have any thought that these things are drones?

03:17:27.000 That they're either something that the United States has developed or other countries have developed and it's some sort of a black, declassified, black file?

03:17:36.000 Is that what you call them?

03:17:36.000 Yeah, black files, yeah.

03:17:38.000 I... What we've seen so far, and we've done some episodes on ATIP, on the Advanced Threat Program, on UAPs, the Pentagon's effort to try to catalog these things.

03:17:53.000 Most of them come down to fairly logical explanations, but there have been some cases, and they just, you know, they produced this report the Pentagon did last year, which was a little bit unsatisfying for most people who were hoping to see a little bit more detail.

03:18:12.000 I'm not sure why they thought that would happen, but, you know, I think that I don't deny that there's other stuff out there.

03:18:23.000 There's life out there.

03:18:24.000 I'm sure of that, right?

03:18:26.000 Have they come here and visited?

03:18:29.000 I don't know.

03:18:30.000 But most of the things we've looked at, you can argue, have been Project Aurora or some other classified program around some type of air platform.

03:18:44.000 Probably unmanned, right?

03:18:45.000 A number of them unmanned.

03:18:47.000 Some manned.

03:18:48.000 Because then you don't have to worry about the biological limitations of a human being traveling at extraordinary speeds.

03:18:54.000 Which is the problem.

03:18:55.000 And material science is lagging behind.

03:18:57.000 Our desire to get a manned hypersonic vehicle, for instance, right?

03:19:01.000 And it's just not there yet.

03:19:03.000 So, you know, that's why the hypersonics that are being developed are unmanned, and that makes perfect sense.

03:19:09.000 Because we're turning to goo.

03:19:11.000 You're turning to goo.

03:19:14.000 We're just not there.

03:19:15.000 But I think that there have been some cases.

03:19:17.000 We've talked about one that stands out.

03:19:19.000 There's a couple of things that...

03:19:20.000 In this arena, one would be Commander Fravor's sightings.

03:19:26.000 I have not seen any logical explanation for that yet.

03:19:30.000 And multiple eyes on target, clearly something there.

03:19:35.000 Insane rates of speed that don't make any sense.

03:19:37.000 No sign of visible propulsion.

03:19:39.000 No visible propulsion.

03:19:41.000 And Fravor, just an enormously experienced individual.

03:19:44.000 And again, multiple eyes on that target.

03:19:47.000 Video evidence.

03:19:49.000 When people say, what do you believe and what do you don't believe, that's one of those things that I think is, for me, is one of the really big mysteries, right?

03:19:58.000 That's the one that I would point to of all the various sightings that have been out there, the Phoenix Lights and everything else, I think can be explained logically.

03:20:07.000 And then the other thing, and this is going to sound like I've taken a complete left turn, but if we're talking about things in this world, would be the Martin Luther King assassination.

03:20:17.000 Yeah, you bring that up often.

03:20:19.000 I do.

03:20:19.000 That is a left turn, but that one you researched and you believe that there was a conspiracy.

03:20:25.000 There was definitely more to it, yeah.

03:20:26.000 There's definitely something there.

03:20:27.000 We haven't found that out yet.

03:20:29.000 We haven't figured it out, but I'll never shift off of that.

03:20:32.000 There was something there, and it was...

03:20:36.000 It was a concerted effort.

03:20:38.000 But those are the two things, I think, that, to me, really stand out in all the various investigations we've done over the handful of years we've been doing it.

03:20:48.000 Anyway, but thanks for asking about the show.

03:20:50.000 I appreciate that.

03:20:50.000 My pleasure, Mike.

03:20:51.000 Thanks for being here.

03:20:52.000 It's always good to talk to you, even though it bums me out for a few hours afterwards.

03:20:56.000 Go get a good workout.

03:20:58.000 Yeah, I will.

03:20:59.000 I think I have to.

03:21:00.000 All right.

03:21:01.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 24, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1862 - Mike Baker

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