The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1923 - Mike Baker

00:00:11.000 Speak up for horseshit, Jamie. 1.00

00:00:16.000 You're just gonna let them ban bullshit? 1.00

00:00:19.000 That could be a problem for bullshit. 1.00

00:00:23.000 Some bullshit's fun. 1.00

00:00:24.000 I think you abdicated your responsibility. 1.00

00:00:26.000 Some bullshit's fun and should just be, that's the bullshit you like. 1.00

00:00:29.000 Yes, some bullshit is fun. 1.00

00:00:30.000 Like wrestling or whatever. 1.00

00:00:31.000 Yes!

00:00:32.000 But wrestling doesn't cost people billions and billions of dollars when it doesn't go right. 0.97

00:00:38.000 Do you think that fucking guy who crashed FTX, the Binance guy, do you think he had any idea that he was going to crash his business too? 0.98

00:00:47.000 Oh. 0.99

00:00:48.000 Like collateral damage?

00:00:49.000 Yeah, I mean, they're going under.

00:00:51.000 He's lost like $15 billion over the last few days.

00:00:57.000 I would say no, he didn't see it coming. 1.00

00:00:59.000 But fucking duh! 1.00

00:01:01.000 Fucking duh! 1.00

00:01:02.000 You basically showed everybody how vulnerable this money on a hard drive is. 0.99

00:01:08.000 This, like, weird...

00:01:10.000 I'm mining.

00:01:11.000 I'm mining for coin.

00:01:12.000 Are you?

00:01:13.000 You're mining?

00:01:14.000 No, no, no.

00:01:14.000 I'm just kidding.

00:01:15.000 Wonderful idea.

00:01:16.000 It's so profitable to mine.

00:01:20.000 It was either that or cobalt.

00:01:22.000 And crypto seemed easier.

00:01:24.000 So, Jamie, you were saying that people were mad. 0.98

00:01:26.000 First of all, they were mad at Peter Zion for saying what seems to be the case is that a lot of crypto was just horseshit.

00:01:35.000 The one comment he made that I think I would go against, too, is that it has no intrinsic value because it seems that a lot of things have no intrinsic value.

00:01:44.000 Right.

00:01:45.000 Well, it doesn't have a value unless we agree it has a value.

00:01:48.000 And you can buy a lot of stuff with...

00:01:50.000 I mean, Antonopoulos, doesn't he buy everything?

00:01:52.000 Like, pays his rent, everything with Bitcoin?

00:01:54.000 Tons of stuff you could do with it.

00:01:55.000 Tons of stuff going on with it.

00:01:57.000 It has uses.

00:01:58.000 I don't know if they're all the uses everyone thought they'd be by now or what's going on with it because there's obviously a lot of confusion.

00:02:03.000 But then people were mad at you.

00:02:05.000 Well, just because I... He had to leave.

00:02:07.000 We had, you know, a flight to catch.

00:02:09.000 So they were mad that you didn't grill him.

00:02:12.000 Right. 1.00

00:02:12.000 So just let him stand up for bullshit. 1.00

00:02:14.000 Let him speak on whatever. 0.99

00:02:16.000 No, I thought they were mad because you invented crypto.

00:02:18.000 I didn't know.

00:02:19.000 I wasn't sure where this was going.

00:02:20.000 Imagine if that was Satoshi.

00:02:21.000 That'll come out later.

00:02:23.000 He's the main guy.

00:02:24.000 All his time.

00:02:26.000 All this time he's been hiding in plain sight.

00:02:28.000 That's a whole other fun story, too, that we'll never know, I don't think.

00:02:31.000 It's kind of funny, right?

00:02:32.000 It's like him and Banksy.

00:02:33.000 They're like the best escape artists ever.

00:02:36.000 And we've never seen them together.

00:02:38.000 It's like Ringo Starr and Yasser Arafat.

00:02:39.000 You never saw them photographed together, so...

00:02:42.000 I think they look different.

00:02:44.000 I think that's just one of them fun things to say before the internet came around.

00:02:48.000 Look how old you are. 0.67

00:02:49.000 Ringo Starr, Yasser Arafat. 0.99

00:02:50.000 Everybody's like, what the fuck is he saying? 0.99

00:02:53.000 Yasser Arafat. 1.00

00:02:55.000 That guy's dead.

00:02:56.000 He is dead.

00:02:57.000 He's been dead and continues to be dead.

00:02:59.000 Ringo's still alive though, right?

00:03:01.000 Yes.

00:03:01.000 He's like the last of the Beatles that's still alive other than Paul McCartney, right?

00:03:05.000 Just the two of them.

00:03:06.000 George Harrison and, God bless him, John Lennon. 0.96

00:03:09.000 Oh, that is pretty fucking close. 0.96

00:03:10.000 See? 0.97

00:03:10.000 What am I talking about? 0.97

00:03:11.000 Look at that.

00:03:12.000 That's not bad. 0.99

00:03:13.000 I was not making that shit up. 0.99

00:03:15.000 Put him in the hat. 0.99

00:03:15.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:03:16.000 Damn. 0.99

00:03:16.000 And never, ever, that's a side-by-side comparing two photos, but they were never photographed in the same room. 0.99

00:03:21.000 We still to this day don't know.

00:03:23.000 Imagine if you were a rock star, but you were also a dictator.

00:03:28.000 I mean, has any dictator ever tried to become a...

00:03:31.000 Like, if anybody could pull that off, maybe the Sultan of Brunei.

00:03:33.000 Or a terrorist, right?

00:03:34.000 Right.

00:03:35.000 That's great cover, to travel around the world as a rock star.

00:03:38.000 And also be a terrorist?

00:03:39.000 Yeah.

00:03:40.000 Or a spy.

00:03:41.000 Has there ever...

00:03:42.000 Isn't that a movie?

00:03:44.000 There was about, what's his name?

00:03:45.000 The catcher.

00:03:47.000 Not Yogi Berra, the baseball guy, who traveled as a spy.

00:03:51.000 I'm thinking of that movie that was based around the guy from the, no, [...

00:03:57.000 The guy from the gong show.

00:03:59.000 Oh yeah, Chuck Berry.

00:04:01.000 Chuck Berry.

00:04:01.000 Remember?

00:04:02.000 Yeah, Chuck Berry or Chuck Barris?

00:04:04.000 Barris.

00:04:05.000 Barris, right.

00:04:05.000 Barris is the musician.

00:04:07.000 Barris is the guy from the gong show.

00:04:09.000 There was that movie.

00:04:09.000 They did not look alike.

00:04:10.000 Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

00:04:11.000 Yeah, that was a fun movie, man.

00:04:13.000 It was a good movie.

00:04:14.000 Who played Chuck Barris?

00:04:16.000 I forget.

00:04:17.000 He was great.

00:04:18.000 I'm old enough to remember the gong show.

00:04:20.000 He was so fun.

00:04:22.000 When someone's having fun, when someone has a perpetual smile, it's an enjoyable thing to watch.

00:04:30.000 Sam Rockwell. 0.99

00:04:30.000 Sam Rockwell's fucking great. 0.99

00:04:32.000 That guy's great. 0.99

00:04:33.000 But that show, you know, it was like watching a Dean Martin concert.

00:04:36.000 Every time you tuned in The Gong Show, you just knew Chuck was half of the bag, right?

00:04:39.000 Yes.

00:04:39.000 He was having a fantastic time.

00:04:41.000 Jamie Farr was going to be one of the panelists.

00:04:43.000 Yep.

00:04:44.000 Yeah.

00:04:45.000 Jamie Farr used to be my neighbor.

00:04:47.000 No.

00:04:48.000 Yeah.

00:04:48.000 My actual neighbor.

00:04:50.000 Lived right next door to me.

00:04:51.000 Super nice guy. 0.96

00:04:54.000 Yeah, he's a fucking weirded me out. 0.90

00:04:57.000 Besides MASH and The Gong Show, I can't name one thing that Jamie Farr was in. 0.93

00:05:01.000 I don't think he did anything else.

00:05:03.000 He just played golf.

00:05:04.000 I think he made his money off of M.A.S.H. and the Gong Show and just played golf.

00:05:08.000 Cannonball Run.

00:05:09.000 Was he in that?

00:05:10.000 Yeah, both of them.

00:05:10.000 Wait a minute.

00:05:12.000 Interesting.

00:05:14.000 The poster comes up when I googled his name.

00:05:17.000 So that's what it means.

00:05:20.000 Well, Happy New Year.

00:05:21.000 Happy New Year.

00:05:22.000 So I was reading Fox News today because my friend Sean told me they were going to get rid of the IRS. I was like, what?

00:05:30.000 What is happening?

00:05:31.000 No.

00:05:32.000 He's like, yeah, they're trying to get rid of the IRS. I'm like, what?

00:05:34.000 So I go to Fox News, and they were saying that they're trying to overhaul the tax system and make it a consumption-based tax. 0.89

00:05:42.000 And the answer to the squad on the right side is, what do they call themselves, the Patriot 20 or some shit?

00:05:49.000 Oh, the Freedom Forum.

00:05:51.000 I think it's the Freedom Caucus or the Freedom Forum or something like that.

00:05:55.000 It's got to involve freedom.

00:05:57.000 Of course.

00:06:00.000 You've got to choose one from column A, and then you've got to get caucus or forum.

00:06:04.000 Patriot Act.

00:06:05.000 They're not getting rid of the IRS. All those folks who might have gotten excited about that, it's never going to happen.

00:06:11.000 They've moved to defund 87,000 agents.

00:06:16.000 Yeah, that seemed like a problem, that hiring 87,000 new people.

00:06:21.000 I don't understand. 0.97

00:06:22.000 You know, I have an accountant that handles all my shit. 0.95

00:06:24.000 I don't pay attention to that stuff. 0.87

00:06:26.000 But what I do know is that there was a lot of people saying that they weren't going to go after corporations with that.

00:06:32.000 They're going to go after, like...

00:06:34.000 You know, middle class people that maybe skimped a little here or there and fine them hard.

00:06:39.000 Yeah, they're going after small to medium-sized businesses.

00:06:42.000 I mean, the popular narrative was, we're going to hire 87,000 more.

00:06:46.000 Now look, does the IRS, do they need to update their computer systems, right?

00:06:51.000 Well, yeah, sure.

00:06:52.000 Yeah, it's the government, right?

00:06:53.000 Every computer system in the government needs to be updated to protect from cybersecurity problems.

00:06:58.000 But do they need 87,000 more agents?

00:07:01.000 No, but the narrative from the Biden administration was, you know, we're going to go after the ultra-wealthy. 0.99

00:07:07.000 Fucking no. 0.99

00:07:08.000 That's not what they're doing. 0.99

00:07:10.000 They've got 87,000 agents.

00:07:12.000 Think about how many additional personnel that is in each state, right?

00:07:15.000 In each region for the IRS. They're not going to be occupied with wealthy people all over the place.

00:07:21.000 Now, a wealthy audit can be complex, but they're coming after small, medium-sized businesses.

00:07:26.000 And that's how they imagined the amount of money they were going to have on this land grab to help fund other things that they're doing, whether it's climate change or other policies that they want to push forward.

00:07:37.000 Great. 1.00

00:07:38.000 But the problem is Congress now under Republican control, sure, they can say, nah, we're going to stop that in its tracks only until they march it across to the Senate and the Senate says, fuck you, no. 0.99

00:07:51.000 So we're still going to have 87,000 new agents. 0.99

00:07:54.000 That's not going to change.

00:07:55.000 You can't get that through Senate.

00:07:56.000 And even if they did, the president would probably veto it.

00:08:00.000 So we're looking, we're staring down a barrel in a couple of years of Of that sort of activity, where Congress will vote to do something, it'll be stopped in the Senate, or it'll be, you know, vetoed by the President's desk, and...

00:08:14.000 Fun.

00:08:14.000 Yeah, it'll be fun.

00:08:15.000 Lots of fun.

00:08:16.000 It's gonna be a great time. 0.91

00:08:17.000 Lots of horseshit and fun.

00:08:18.000 What did you think about Biden getting busted with classified documents? 0.93

00:08:24.000 Kind of hilarious.

00:08:25.000 It is one of those funny moments, right?

00:08:28.000 You know, regardless of...

00:08:30.000 A, I don't think they're going to...

00:08:31.000 They're not going to knock down the doors at the University of Pennsylvania where they found these things, right?

00:08:36.000 At some think tank that they'd set up.

00:08:39.000 And so that's not going to happen.

00:08:42.000 But...

00:08:43.000 It is kind of fun to look at and think, oh, really?

00:08:46.000 But the truth is, it happens with every administration.

00:08:49.000 Document control isn't that difficult, right?

00:08:52.000 You should be able to know which documents are secret, put them in a box over here, top secret over here, and then special code word, put them over here.

00:09:02.000 And you account for all those documents.

00:09:04.000 That's the way that you do it.

00:09:05.000 But it seems like every administration has this problem.

00:09:08.000 What do they do at the think tanks?

00:09:10.000 Oh, well, there's a lot of ruminating. 0.99

00:09:13.000 Shit-ton of ruminating. 0.93

00:09:15.000 What's nearly ten documents? 0.99

00:09:17.000 Almost ten.

00:09:18.000 It's seven.

00:09:20.000 One was incomplete.

00:09:22.000 One they hadn't finished yet.

00:09:23.000 What does that mean?

00:09:25.000 Nearly ten.

00:09:27.000 If you say nearly a million, I'll go, wow, that's pretty impressive.

00:09:32.000 You say nearly ten, I'm like, can you count? 1.00

00:09:34.000 Tell me the number, you fuckheads. 1.00

00:09:37.000 The Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. 0.99

00:09:40.000 So what happens there?

00:09:42.000 What happens at one of these things tanks?

00:09:44.000 Is it just a way where people get money?

00:09:45.000 Yes.

00:09:46.000 Yes.

00:09:46.000 You said yes so quick.

00:09:48.000 That's it.

00:09:50.000 People get grants or they get a position there.

00:09:53.000 They get the chair to sit for a year and study some particular esoteric aspect of whatever the hell it may be, global engagement.

00:10:00.000 How much money goes there?

00:10:03.000 Well, some of these get a great deal of funding.

00:10:06.000 Actually, that's an interesting point because sometimes the funding comes from unusual sources like perhaps the Chinese.

00:10:11.000 Really?

00:10:12.000 Yeah.

00:10:12.000 That might be the soonest I've ever brought up China.

00:10:15.000 Really?

00:10:15.000 One of our conversations.

00:10:16.000 So the Chinese might be funding a think tank that has classified documents in it?

00:10:21.000 Oh, sure.

00:10:21.000 Yeah.

00:10:22.000 I mean, again, I don't know.

00:10:23.000 You don't know.

00:10:23.000 I don't know yet.

00:10:24.000 But it's not outside the realm of possibility.

00:10:26.000 It's not outside the realm of possibility, and it'd be interesting to know who or where funding has come from for the Penn-Biden Center.

00:10:34.000 Maybe you're talking about that?

00:10:36.000 Ah!

00:10:36.000 Oh!

00:10:38.000 $54 million in Chinese gifts donated to UPenn, home of the Biden Center. 1.00

00:10:44.000 What the fuck, man? 1.00

00:10:47.000 $54 million in gifts! 1.00

00:10:49.000 It's just like, you know, yo-yos and shit, Xboxes, beer koozies. 1.00

00:10:54.000 What the fuck are they giving them? 0.99

00:10:56.000 Raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through 2019. Wow, so $10 million a year in donations. 1.00

00:11:03.000 Anonymous gifts, $23 million from China.

00:11:05.000 Oh, anonymous!

00:11:07.000 $23 million in anonymous gifts.

00:11:10.000 That, to me, is more interesting than the fact that he had almost 10 documents there.

00:11:14.000 Because, again, every administration does it.

00:11:16.000 It would have been amazing if Biden hadn't had classified documents sitting somewhere.

00:11:21.000 President Obama had the same issue.

00:11:23.000 Every administration.

00:11:24.000 Just because, again, it's this goat rope upon exiting and then before the new administration comes in. 0.61

00:11:32.000 It's just like this... 1.00

00:11:34.000 Funhouse of activity, trying to box up all your shit. 0.99

00:11:37.000 And so that in itself is not a surprise. 0.99

00:11:40.000 It's a surprise that, you know, with Trump, they decided to, you know, use a sledgehammer to go into Mar-a-Lago.

00:11:45.000 But that's not going to happen with Biden.

00:11:48.000 And it is, you know, it's...

00:11:50.000 It's an interesting comparison, but the Republicans thought it was an aha moment.

00:11:54.000 I don't think they're going to get anywhere with that.

00:11:55.000 I don't think people genuinely care.

00:11:57.000 But there's nearly 10 documents.

00:11:59.000 There's almost 10. And that one that's not completed yet, I think it's just missing, like, the pictures.

00:12:06.000 Everything's been written in.

00:12:07.000 What's crazy is that the documents being there are the big story, not that China gave them 50-plus million dollars.

00:12:15.000 That should be more of a story. 0.92

00:12:16.000 That's a big goddamn story, and that seems to be par for the course, right? 0.95

00:12:20.000 Well, yeah, whether it's the Clinton Foundation or Initiative or whether it's any, really, pick any think tank. 0.98

00:12:27.000 That would be a really interesting study by some intrepid, curious journalist who wanted to dig into, say, the top 12 think tanks in America, and where does the money come from?

00:12:38.000 And then compare that to what policies are they pushing out the door?

00:12:42.000 Who are they trying to influence?

00:12:43.000 Because every one of these has some agenda or some point of view.

00:12:50.000 Think tank sounds good.

00:12:51.000 I'd love to be a part of a think tank.

00:12:53.000 Doesn't that sound good?

00:12:54.000 What do you do?

00:12:55.000 Work for a think tank. 1.00

00:12:56.000 You must be smart as fuck. 1.00

00:12:58.000 I was going to say, it makes you sound intelligent. 1.00

00:12:59.000 It makes you sound like you're getting shit done. 0.98

00:13:01.000 I'm working for a think tank. 0.98

00:13:03.000 You know what I'm doing?

00:13:04.000 I'm putting out a policy paper.

00:13:06.000 Well, now.

00:13:09.000 So this Biden-Penn think tank, what did they promote?

00:13:15.000 Let's see if we can find out what $54 million from China gets you.

00:13:19.000 Yeah, maybe we can find one paper that they wrote.

00:13:22.000 Yeah.

00:13:22.000 That would be good.

00:13:24.000 You know, Huawei ain't so bad.

00:13:26.000 That's the name of the title.

00:13:27.000 That's the title of the paper.

00:13:30.000 That's my Huawei.

00:13:32.000 I was just reading about Huawei that even despite the US sanctions, despite the fact that Google won't let them use the Google Android system or the Google Play Store, they're still killing it.

00:13:47.000 They still have an enormous market share, which leads me to believe that if this didn't happen, they'd probably be the number one in the world.

00:13:54.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:13:59.000 Apple's got a nice walled garden thing going on, where it's like a buddy of mine, my friend Tony, just switched over to Apple's.

00:14:06.000 I love when I get those new blue texts from people.

00:14:08.000 I'm like, ha ha! 1.00

00:14:09.000 You went over to the dark side, you fuck. 1.00

00:14:11.000 He was one of the last holdouts of the green bubble. 1.00

00:14:15.000 But they're so good at keeping you in there because your photos all go to the iPhoto.

00:14:22.000 I use Notes for comedy.

00:14:25.000 It's the best thing.

00:14:26.000 But I also use Evernote.

00:14:27.000 You can switch Evernote in between platforms.

00:14:30.000 It's so easy to keep people because there's so many benefits to iMessage.

00:14:35.000 There's so many benefits to AirDrop.

00:14:37.000 And we're all fairly simple, right?

00:14:39.000 Once you get into a habit, you don't want to change.

00:14:42.000 It's like saying, okay, we're going to upend our computer systems at the company and go with a new product.

00:14:47.000 No, we're not.

00:14:48.000 We really want to. 0.99

00:14:49.000 So with the phones, I mean, shit, for Christmas, we got the two youngest ones, Muggsy and Sluggo. 0.99

00:14:55.000 We got iPhones for them. 0.99

00:14:57.000 Yeah.

00:14:57.000 What if you got them Android phones?

00:14:59.000 Would they freak out?

00:14:59.000 Would they get mad at you?

00:15:00.000 Yeah, they probably would have thrown them at us.

00:15:02.000 You know, just walked out. 1.00

00:15:02.000 What the fuck is this? 1.00

00:15:03.000 Just stormed out of that living room. 1.00

00:15:05.000 You know, fucking Santa. 1.00

00:15:05.000 If you had an Android phone like we have today, if you had one of those things ten years ago, you were a goddamn wizard. 1.00

00:15:11.000 Yeah. 0.81

00:15:12.000 If you had a Samsung Galaxy phone ten years ago like they have today, it would be the greatest thing ever.

00:15:19.000 Yeah.

00:15:19.000 But in ten years...

00:15:21.000 Now, it didn't take long, and honestly, you know, everything moves at this breakneck speed in technology, obviously.

00:15:26.000 But, you know, we debated for a while about the youngest one getting him a phone, right?

00:15:32.000 But now he's old enough, right?

00:15:34.000 He's 11, and he's going to sports activities and practice and everything.

00:15:38.000 So from a security perspective, you have to do it.

00:15:40.000 But the problem is locking these things down, right? 0.99

00:15:43.000 And trying to keep them from seeing shit. 1.00

00:15:46.000 You can't. 1.00

00:15:48.000 They're going to see shit. 1.00

00:15:49.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:15:50.000 I mean, I'm amazed at the shit that I see just on Instagram. 1.00

00:15:56.000 Just on Instagram, I see people getting murdered every day. 1.00

00:16:00.000 Every day.

00:16:01.000 I see shootouts every day.

00:16:04.000 I see executions every day.

00:16:06.000 I see people that get torn apart by animals.

00:16:09.000 Every day.

00:16:10.000 Man, you've got a hell of an Instagram thing going on there.

00:16:11.000 It's a wild... 1.00

00:16:12.000 My explore page is a fucking mess. 0.99

00:16:15.000 It really is. 0.99

00:16:16.000 It's horrendous.

00:16:17.000 I have problems.

00:16:18.000 Yeah, but with kids trying to...

00:16:21.000 I mean, it's like the whole TikTok debate.

00:16:22.000 Trying to say, okay, we're going to shut down TikTok in the U.S. Or we're going to somehow try to enact regulations to keep kids from accessing porn online, right?

00:16:35.000 Mm-hmm.

00:16:36.000 Okay, yeah, in theory, that's great. 0.99

00:16:39.000 Shit, if you can figure it out, but it's just not going to happen, right? 0.98

00:16:44.000 Because no matter what you do, once that kid leaves your house and all that technology is still out there, right, somebody's circumventing it, right? 0.99

00:16:50.000 Somebody's figured out some way.

00:16:52.000 And most of these kids, it's incredible how smart these kids are nowadays.

00:16:55.000 They're wizards.

00:16:56.000 Yeah.

00:16:56.000 Well, they just banned TikTok in India.

00:17:00.000 Which I thought was really fascinating.

00:17:02.000 I'm like, wow, India's more on the ball than America. 1.00

00:17:05.000 Yeah.

00:17:05.000 Well, they may—I forget what their version of TikTok is, but that might be also sort of a nationalistic play.

00:17:12.000 There may be a business element to that as well, where they're looking to drive more of their consumers.

00:17:16.000 It's massive, obviously, a massive market.

00:17:18.000 So they may be looking to drive more of their consumers to their version, right?

00:17:22.000 It's like China. 0.97

00:17:23.000 China's got its own version.

00:17:24.000 Bike dance. 1.00

00:17:25.000 Yeah.

00:17:25.000 What is it called?

00:17:27.000 And, you know, so I don't know that the Indian government was just being, you know, thoughtful about its younger folks.

00:17:36.000 Interesting.

00:17:36.000 Let's see what it says.

00:17:39.000 It says they actually banned it in summer of 2020 with 59 other apps originally.

00:17:43.000 And this is what happened after that.

00:17:44.000 I was reading that right now to see if I could get you.

00:17:46.000 Oh, I thought it was really recent.

00:17:47.000 Well, no, so this article is from, like, today or whatever.

00:17:50.000 Why India banned TikTok and what the U.S. can learn from it as pressure mounts for Biden to follow suit.

00:17:56.000 Pressure!

00:17:57.000 I haven't even seen any of this pressure.

00:17:59.000 So, like, in 2020, they originally did it.

00:18:02.000 It says, after a geopolitical dispute with China, India banned the app entirely, citing a law that allows the government to block websites and apps in the interest of the country's sovereignty and integrity.

00:18:13.000 Hmm.

00:18:15.000 All right.

00:18:16.000 Yeah.

00:18:16.000 It didn't stop the short-form video content.

00:18:19.000 The content was just going elsewhere.

00:18:22.000 It just moved, yeah.

00:18:22.000 Yeah, well, it goes to Snapchat, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, which would be fine.

00:18:27.000 But at least Instagram is controlled by Meta, which is a United States company, and so is YouTube.

00:18:34.000 Just the creepy thing is the data.

00:18:37.000 And their policy.

00:18:39.000 When you agree to sign up for TikTok and you read the use policy, you're like, whoa!

00:18:46.000 Which nobody does.

00:18:46.000 You did that.

00:18:47.000 You read that. 1.00

00:18:48.000 And it's like, people say, what the fuck? 0.99

00:18:50.000 It actually says that? 0.99

00:18:51.000 And I'm sure you drove a lot of people to that user agreement.

00:18:54.000 It's probably the first time anybody's ever read a user agreement, right? 0.78

00:18:56.000 I couldn't fucking believe it when I was reading it.

00:18:59.000 I was like, wait a minute, they have access to other computers that aren't even on TikTok? 0.97

00:19:04.000 They can share with government?

00:19:05.000 Yeah.

00:19:06.000 Right?

00:19:06.000 And that is the thing.

00:19:08.000 Look, people say, well, fuck, Google, all sorts of platforms gather all sorts of information unless you opt out. 0.97

00:19:14.000 And even when you opt out, There's still accessible information there. 0.98

00:19:19.000 But the big point here is it's a Chinese state-sponsored entity, right?

00:19:27.000 And if the government wants something, that company is going to provide it. 0.97

00:19:31.000 And the idea that the U.S. reps would say, no, it's not the case, is just horseshit. 0.75

00:19:37.000 There would never be a moment where a Chinese company... 1.00

00:19:56.000 I think most people aren't even aware of the fact that the Chinese government completely controls all business.

00:20:04.000 You really can't have a major corporation without some sort of interaction with the Chinese government.

00:20:09.000 Yeah.

00:20:10.000 There's a couple of truths there.

00:20:13.000 There's no rule of law really to speak of in China.

00:20:15.000 There's no recourse for companies outside of China that are operating there.

00:20:19.000 And anything you take there, I'll give you an example.

00:20:23.000 Actually, this is very interesting.

00:20:25.000 Well, maybe it's not interesting to everybody, but the end of this past year, so I think it was mid-November or so, the Department of Justice released some information.

00:20:36.000 It had been a fairly long-standing case that the FBI had been involved in and DOJ and others about a Chinese intelligence officer.

00:20:45.000 Now, the interesting thing about this case, This individual, Yang Zhengzu, was the first Chinese intelligence officer to be extradited to the U.S.,

00:21:01.000 And the story behind this guy is fascinating.

00:21:04.000 He was a fairly senior.

00:21:06.000 He's like a deputy director within the Ministry of State Security there in China.

00:21:09.000 So a career intelligence officer.

00:21:12.000 And he'd had about 20 years of experience.

00:21:16.000 He started 10 years ago or so targeting specifically U.S. aviation companies, both on the private and the defense side in government.

00:21:27.000 And he went after – it's just one example of – and he was now sentenced to 20 years in prison just at the end of the past year.

00:21:34.000 So as an example, if you look at what he did, it's a perfect case study of how the Chinese intelligence works to gather up information, right, to steal – excuse me – economic intelligence. 0.94

00:21:48.000 So hold on.

00:21:51.000 I remember that clip where Marco Rubio reached for his water.

00:21:55.000 I don't remember that clip.

00:21:57.000 I don't follow CNN or C-SPAN like you follow.

00:22:02.000 You follow like I follow UFC. Remember when he reached for the water?

00:22:07.000 It's fantastic, I know.

00:22:09.000 What are you doing?

00:22:10.000 Here he goes.

00:22:11.000 Here you go.

00:22:15.000 The world is a better place when America is the strongest nation on earth.

00:22:19.000 But we can't remain powerful if we don't have an economy that can afford it.

00:22:24.000 In the short time that I've been here in Washington, nothing has frustrated me more than false choices like the one the president laid out tonight.

00:22:34.000 The choice isn't just between big governments.

00:22:36.000 Whoever told them you should do that, don't do it. 1.00

00:22:38.000 First of all, drink out of a goddamn man-sized bottle of water. 1.00

00:22:41.000 What's up with that little bitch-ass-sized bottle of water? 1.00

00:22:43.000 Somebody took off an airplane. 1.00

00:22:45.000 Yeah, that's ridiculous. 0.98

00:22:47.000 That's from a little kid's little kindergarten table. 0.96

00:22:49.000 And that's all that people talked about after this rebuttal.

00:22:51.000 Of course.

00:22:52.000 We're petty.

00:22:53.000 I know.

00:22:53.000 But anyway, so he targets US aviation interests.

00:22:59.000 And as an example, he was using everything.

00:23:02.000 He was using aliases.

00:23:03.000 He was using cover businesses.

00:23:06.000 He was targeting universities.

00:23:09.000 He started looking at identifying targets within U.S. aviation and, as an example, found a guy in GE Aviation.

00:23:17.000 And what he would do is he would just say, look, you know, can you come to China and make a presentation at the university about something completely innocuous, right?

00:23:24.000 It's not classified by any means or whatever.

00:23:26.000 But, oh, you know, you're so important and you're so smart.

00:23:29.000 We'd love you to come over and present to our university.

00:23:33.000 We'll pay your travel and a stipend.

00:23:35.000 So they do that.

00:23:37.000 So he starts doing this around 2013. About 2017, they get this one GE aviation employee to travel to China and give a presentation.

00:23:47.000 And by this time, luckily, the FBI had tweaked on this guy and figured out there was something wrong with him.

00:23:57.000 In cooperation with the company, the FBI started posing as him, right?

00:24:02.000 Because Jew's not having face-to-face meetings with this guy.

00:24:04.000 He's doing this all online.

00:24:06.000 So they start posing as this guy.

00:24:08.000 After a year of just sort of random, non-threatening contact with this aviation employee, He starts asking them for specific details, right, of their engine technology.

00:24:22.000 GE's got some incredible engine technology.

00:24:25.000 And so the guy with the cooperation of the FBI sends a document, right?

00:24:30.000 And on the document, part of it, it just says, you know, you're not allowed to disclose this outside company.

00:24:35.000 It's proprietary data.

00:24:36.000 Well, what does that do?

00:24:37.000 Well, the reason why they released that is because they wanted to set the hook on this guy and this Chinese intel officer.

00:24:43.000 And so he gets this and he goes, ah.

00:24:46.000 It's working.

00:24:47.000 He thinks I got this guy now.

00:24:48.000 I've tasked him with something that's actually interesting and important.

00:24:51.000 He knows he's breaking a rule.

00:24:53.000 He's given me this document.

00:24:55.000 So now he accelerates the tasking a little bit and he gets the guy to say, look, how about during one of your trips over to Europe, you know, we meet.

00:25:04.000 So this is where Jules made his mistake.

00:25:07.000 He goes to Belgium and gets arrested there, right?

00:25:12.000 And it took a while, but he was finally extradited to the U.S. and finally charged.

00:25:17.000 But he was doing other things.

00:25:18.000 He was handling – he was the handler for a kid working as a student, came over here as a student visa in Chicago, gave him targets, said here are some individuals, again within aviation industry, said I want you to start looking at them and maybe some of them are interesting and we might want to start developing some of these targets.

00:25:36.000 Running this kid, you know, who's living and working and studying in Chicago.

00:25:40.000 And the targets were all of Chinese or Taiwanese descent, which is typical, right? 1.00

00:25:45.000 They kind of hone in on that, you know.

00:25:48.000 And so eventually that kid got wrapped up.

00:25:52.000 Once we started to figure out what was going on with Zhu, then obviously started to unravel his network.

00:25:57.000 But this kid was also doing the same thing, was targeting under the direction of Zhu and the Chinese intel.

00:26:02.000 Other things he did, I know I disappeared down the rabbit hole here, but to the point we made earlier in terms of operating in China, he was also targeting other countries.

00:26:12.000 So he went after a French aviation company that had a facility in China.

00:26:15.000 What does that mean?

00:26:16.000 Well, that means that every employee, every local employee, It's probably going to respond.

00:26:21.000 If Xi knocks on the door and says, I need your assistance, you're going to have to be my asset, they're probably going to say yes because they're operating there in China.

00:26:28.000 Now they're working for a foreign company.

00:26:31.000 Does that really matter when the Chinese regime knocks on your door?

00:26:34.000 So they did and what they did was with the cooperation of this internal asset, they were able to place malware on a visiting Frenchman's computer with the hope of taking it back to France and then affecting their entire system.

00:26:49.000 So anyway, long story short, I guess, the point of that exercise is the aggressiveness, right?

00:26:56.000 The ability.

00:26:57.000 You think about the years that they spend going after targets.

00:27:01.000 And yet we want to believe somehow TikTok is...

00:27:04.000 You know, that they're not gonna touch that.

00:27:06.000 Well, it's a lot of data there, but we're not gonna go after TikTok data.

00:27:09.000 What kind of data do you think they're really accumulating?

00:27:11.000 The thing that's disturbed me is that this discussion that they're getting biometric data, they're getting facial recognition data and fingerprint data from both, you know, fingerprint readers from Android phones and biometric facial data from iPhone,

00:27:28.000 you know, the face opening thing. 0.97

00:27:30.000 What are they doing with all that shit? 0.99

00:27:33.000 Well, some of it isn't of much use to them in the present time, right? 1.00

00:27:37.000 But they don't care.

00:27:37.000 So their ability because of their resources and their motivation is to just hoover up everything.

00:27:45.000 And maybe there's no use for that biometric data right now, but maybe there will be, right?

00:27:50.000 So maybe they're collecting all of this and they're thinking, okay, at some point we're going to develop a technology whereby we can use this for a reason.

00:27:57.000 You know, maybe we can remotely You know, using facial recognition, unlock access, who knows?

00:28:04.000 Just coming up with that.

00:28:05.000 But the point at 30,000 feet is they don't really care.

00:28:10.000 They hoover it all up and then they look at it at some point and they say, okay, well, this can be used by Huawei or this could be used over here or MSS or the State Security Service could use this.

00:28:24.000 They'll figure out a use for it and if it doesn't have a use, fine.

00:28:27.000 It doesn't matter, right?

00:28:28.000 They put it in a box and marked maybe, you know, check back later and maybe they will have a use for it.

00:28:33.000 It sounds like it's – I mean we tend to not think in those terms.

00:28:37.000 Everything we do tends to be targeted, right?

00:28:40.000 So we'll say, oh, this is our requirement.

00:28:42.000 Let's go do that.

00:28:44.000 You know, the Chinese are – you know, they're looking 30 years, 40 years, 50 years down the road. 1.00

00:28:51.000 And so they've got a different approach to information collection, which is why a lot of companies get caught unawares because they think, I'm not doing shit. 0.68

00:28:59.000 I'm just making a widget.

00:29:01.000 Why would they be interested in me?

00:29:03.000 So whatever. 0.98

00:29:06.000 But I realize people are saying, oh, God, he's fucking banging on about China again. 0.97

00:29:11.000 But if you think about it, We're all occupied with Russia and Ukraine right now, but China's the bigger issue, right, in the long term. 0.96

00:29:21.000 And we just need to be able to multitask and, yeah, we got to worry about Russia-Ukraine conflict and does that get out of control or just, you know, where is it going?

00:29:29.000 I guess that's a bigger question.

00:29:31.000 Where do you think it's going?

00:29:33.000 Yeah.

00:29:35.000 I don't think anybody's got a plan in Washington right now or NATO. I don't think anybody knows.

00:29:40.000 I think they're all being basically reactive as opposed to, you know, what's the end game here?

00:29:46.000 What is the final way that we wrap this up?

00:29:49.000 And, I mean, look, we've spent—the U.S. has spent— I don't know, as of the end of 2022. And that's almost a full year because it started in February.

00:30:00.000 So almost in a full year, the U.S. spent about $50 billion in assistance.

00:30:06.000 And about half of that is military aid, right?

00:30:08.000 In a variety of forms, right?

00:30:10.000 The high motor systems all the way to protective body armor, right?

00:30:14.000 So it's all over the map in training.

00:30:18.000 If you compare that, $50 billion in aid to—and so what's that?

00:30:24.000 About $25 billion in military aid.

00:30:27.000 If you compare that to the previous year or the year before, we were probably spending—on the Ukraine, we were probably spending $250, $270 million in military assistance.

00:30:39.000 That's it, right?

00:30:40.000 So that ramp up is incredible.

00:30:43.000 And then that doesn't include what the EU's put into it, what the UK's put into it, and everything else.

00:30:47.000 How do you back out of that?

00:30:49.000 How do you say, okay, now we're putting a Patriot missile battery in there?

00:30:55.000 And France and we have agreed.

00:30:58.000 I think we're looking towards more advanced armored technology.

00:31:02.000 We're going to give them tanks that they've been hankering for.

00:31:04.000 Hankering?

00:31:06.000 I said hankering.

00:31:08.000 And so that might be a Ukrainian word.

00:31:13.000 I don't know.

00:31:14.000 I have no idea where it's going to wrap up.

00:31:18.000 Putin's not going to give up Crimea.

00:31:20.000 So what does that mean?

00:31:21.000 Well, you've got to create some middle ground then where it's not going to be a complete victory for the Ukraine.

00:31:27.000 And that's going to make a lot of people unhappy who are just standing around waving Ukraine flags, right?

00:31:33.000 So where do you go from there?

00:31:35.000 I don't know.

00:31:36.000 Hopefully there's some serious negotiations happening off the radar screen, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence to that effect.

00:31:43.000 And Putin doesn't seem to show any interest in it.

00:31:46.000 And he's been able so far to tamp down on the dissidents at home.

00:31:50.000 And really, much like with China, the only thing Putin would really fear is losing power.

00:31:54.000 And he loses power if he loses the population.

00:31:56.000 And so far, that really hasn't happened.

00:31:59.000 There's been protests.

00:32:01.000 And people unhappy with the...

00:32:03.000 Sorry, that was my...

00:32:04.000 That's your phone.

00:32:04.000 That was my sports alert.

00:32:06.000 You get a...

00:32:07.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:32:08.000 Whenever there's something big happening in the world of sports.

00:32:11.000 And so anyway, to answer your question in a very lengthy, rambling way...

00:32:17.000 Who knows where it goes?

00:32:18.000 But it would be nice if we had more open discussion about it, at least in Washington, and open with our NATO allies about what's going to happen.

00:32:27.000 We can't keep up, I don't think, the same pace of support.

00:32:32.000 It seems unreasonable to think that we can, but...

00:32:37.000 Has there been any discussion as to how long we do this for?

00:32:43.000 Not really.

00:32:44.000 I think there's...

00:32:48.000 There's a general sense – because everybody's got ADD – there's a general sense of fatigue to some degree in some circles.

00:32:54.000 But saying you want to know where it's going isn't saying that you're in support of Putin and that's part of the problem.

00:33:01.000 In today's world, if you say, well, so where is this all going? 1.00

00:33:05.000 People say, well, fuck you. 1.00

00:33:06.000 You're a Putin puppet. 1.00

00:33:07.000 Well, no. 1.00

00:33:08.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:33:08.000 I just want to know what's happening. 1.00

00:33:10.000 So – Yeah, it's weird like that, isn't it?

00:33:12.000 I mean, it's so strange that you're either with them or against them, and you can't just be going, what are we doing?

00:33:19.000 Is it not working?

00:33:21.000 Lift the top. 0.57

00:33:22.000 You gotta lift the top. 0.98

00:33:24.000 Fucking hell. 0.99

00:33:24.000 Do you not know how to work a cigar lighter? 0.99

00:33:26.000 Can they teach you that in the CIA? It's technical nowadays.

00:33:30.000 Look at this.

00:33:30.000 It's not really.

00:33:30.000 It's really fucking easy.

00:33:32.000 I look like a fucking monkey fucking a football here with your lighter. 1.00

00:33:35.000 Do you know how to do it? 1.00

00:33:36.000 No!

00:33:37.000 No, look at this.

00:33:37.000 Lift the top.

00:33:38.000 I'm trying to lift the top, but it's like a... 0.99

00:33:40.000 Give me that fucking thing. 0.99

00:33:41.000 Oh no, I'm going to figure this out. 1.00

00:33:42.000 You're not going to figure it out.

00:33:43.000 I'm going to spend the next two hours trying to figure this out.

00:33:45.000 I think you're on the wrong side.

00:33:46.000 Flip it over. 0.99

00:33:47.000 Oh, for fuck's sake. 0.99

00:33:48.000 Jesus Christ. 1.00

00:33:49.000 There you go.

00:33:50.000 Look at that.

00:33:50.000 I'm trying to open the bottom.

00:33:53.000 I'm not paying any attention.

00:33:54.000 I understand.

00:33:55.000 And besides the fact, I use a Zippo.

00:33:57.000 Oh.

00:33:58.000 Remember the Zippos? 0.99

00:33:59.000 The ones that leave that nice smell.

00:34:00.000 Yes!

00:34:01.000 That gasoline smell.

00:34:02.000 And I got a couple of Bic lighters, too.

00:34:04.000 And you know the nice thing about them? 0.99

00:34:06.000 I don't have to fuck with the top. 1.00

00:34:07.000 That's true. 0.99

00:34:09.000 But anyway, that was...

00:34:11.000 There you go.

00:34:12.000 That was mildly embarrassing, but I'm too old to be embarrassed about anything anymore.

00:34:18.000 So, I mean, the worst case scenario is this breaks out in a nuclear war, right?

00:34:23.000 The top lifts up.

00:34:25.000 Yeah.

00:34:26.000 That's the worst case scenario, right?

00:34:28.000 Yeah.

00:34:28.000 If you look at...

00:34:29.000 I mean...

00:34:30.000 Maybe this is a good time to say, okay, 2023, here we are.

00:34:33.000 What should we pay attention to?

00:34:35.000 What are we going to look at?

00:34:35.000 With Russia-Ukraine, you're right.

00:34:37.000 If suddenly Russia decides...

00:34:41.000 I'm going with an unconventional weapon, right?

00:34:44.000 It's time to break out, you know, the nuke.

00:34:48.000 And let's see what that does to the community of nations.

00:34:54.000 So there's that potential in terms of how does this escalate.

00:34:57.000 Something happens in terms of NATO and it drags NATO into it.

00:35:00.000 That's the way this thing escalates.

00:35:02.000 A cyber security attack in the region, maybe initially targeted at Ukraine, but then somehow it goes off into NATO allies, creates a major issue, shuts down power systems in Poland and the surrounding region.

00:35:18.000 So there's ways that this thing could escalate, get a little bit out of control.

00:35:26.000 Maybe, as we talked about, maybe there's increasing protest movement in Russia.

00:35:32.000 Maybe.

00:35:32.000 And that threatens Putin's regime, and that makes him decide to do something a little bit more drastic.

00:35:37.000 What is the general consensus from the Russian people?

00:35:41.000 They have a lockdown on the media in Russia, right?

00:35:44.000 They do.

00:35:44.000 And even on the internet, right?

00:35:46.000 Yeah, they do.

00:35:47.000 And they've been very successful.

00:35:50.000 It's not like the old days.

00:35:52.000 And during the Cold War, you could put a complete blanket over it, right?

00:35:55.000 And that was it.

00:35:56.000 There was no way for them to get news.

00:35:58.000 They're not completely shut off, right?

00:36:00.000 So they know what the hell's going on.

00:36:02.000 Russian people, the population in general, they're very...

00:36:07.000 Switched on, pragmatic.

00:36:08.000 They suffer well, and that's part of the problem.

00:36:10.000 They suffer well.

00:36:11.000 But my friends from Russia have always told me that nobody believes the media. 0.98

00:36:15.000 That, you know, it's kind of like a nod and a wink as to what the media tells you and that people kind of know that they bullshit you. 0.98

00:36:21.000 Right. 0.61

00:36:21.000 There's a much more open... 0.61

00:36:23.000 The reaction to the media is much more open.

00:36:26.000 In the United States, if you're one of those people that listens to MSNBC, you're all in.

00:36:31.000 You're all in with Rachel Maddow.

00:36:33.000 She's gone now, right? 1.00

00:36:34.000 Whoever the fuck is over there now. 1.00

00:36:35.000 You're all in with those people. 1.00

00:36:37.000 If you're on Fox News, you're all in with those people.

00:36:39.000 Right, right.

00:36:40.000 Now, the Russian general population's always had kind of a dry, very sarcastic sense of humor towards information in general, right, and what they're being told by the authorities, and that includes the media.

00:36:53.000 So, you know, he can't control the population the way they used to but they still – you know, it's still a dictatorship and so he's still got significant state control and the state media is still very good as is the security apparatus at controlling the message.

00:37:09.000 So they're very good at that, right?

00:37:11.000 And so that's kind of balanced against and they're constantly in this battle against, you know, increasing technology and its ability to spread information that's outside the bubble.

00:37:23.000 And so, yeah, I mean, there's dissent.

00:37:26.000 There's a feeling of dissatisfaction.

00:37:28.000 But, you know, Putin's been—he's been very good in the past at finding the bogeyman, right?

00:37:34.000 Whenever he's threatened of pointing to some outside force, you know, usually us, and saying, look what they're doing to us, and kind of rallying the troops, getting everyone to, yeah, you know, the motherland.

00:37:48.000 So— You know, I wouldn't...

00:37:50.000 It's like hoping that the Mullahs...

00:37:54.000 It's like hoping the Iranian regime topples under the weight of this current protest.

00:37:58.000 I wouldn't, you know, hold on a lot of hope.

00:38:00.000 I wouldn't put a lot of money on it. 0.93

00:38:02.000 The Iranian regime, what they're doing scares the shit out of me. 1.00

00:38:05.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:38:05.000 It's really scary. 0.99

00:38:06.000 They just tortured and murdered a karate champion for protesting.

00:38:11.000 Yeah, rappers disappeared now.

00:38:13.000 I mean, they really don't care.

00:38:14.000 They've killed...

00:38:15.000 Depends on the estimates you read, but, you know...

00:38:18.000 450, 500 people on the street during protests, much less all the people who have just disappeared, and they're sitting held in prison somewhere.

00:38:26.000 But everyone over here is so distracted by Ukraine and Russia that we rarely talk about Iran.

00:38:33.000 Well, yeah, that's a great point.

00:38:37.000 We're very sort of singular in our attention, right?

00:38:40.000 And so it's like, again, we can't multitask.

00:38:43.000 So we should be worried about Iran. 1.00

00:38:44.000 I mean, really, where are the big flashpoints?

00:38:47.000 Russia, Ukraine obviously is one.

00:38:49.000 Iran, because what's going to happen if Iran – here's a thought, right? 1.00

00:38:54.000 If you think about the breakout potential for Iran to develop a nuke, a weapon – Some estimates now are about a week, one week, right, to develop enough enriched uranium.

00:39:09.000 You've got to enrich it.

00:39:11.000 Trevor Burrus A week from right now?

00:39:12.000 Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

00:39:13.000 They're basically saying, look, if they make that decision, they need, what, 25 kilograms of enriched uranium at like 90 percent.

00:39:20.000 That's weapons grade.

00:39:21.000 So they could do that within a week is a number of estimates, legitimate estimates.

00:39:27.000 They could – and that's for one.

00:39:29.000 And okay, so is there value in that?

00:39:31.000 Well, from their perspective perhaps.

00:39:33.000 They could do three weapons in maybe a month's time.

00:39:36.000 So that breakout that we used to talk about in terms of year, years, at least many months now is shrunk.

00:39:46.000 And so the idea is as a flashpoint, people say, well, why should we still be worried about Iran?

00:39:51.000 Well, because – You know, there's a high likelihood That if the Israelis get the sense that that's where they're heading, that they're going to – then they may take action, right?

00:40:07.000 Kinetic action to stop it.

00:40:08.000 They've done it in Iraq. 0.94

00:40:09.000 They did it in Syria. 0.65

00:40:10.000 Gone after these capabilities.

00:40:13.000 And that could obviously cause a flash there that spreads out of control, right?

00:40:18.000 And draws us into it.

00:40:19.000 So there's reasons why because people – sometimes people say, why do I care about Taiwan?

00:40:24.000 Why do I care about Iran? 0.99

00:40:24.000 What do I – It's because of the potential for a problem that we can't get our hands around, that we can't control. 0.99

00:40:32.000 And so with Iran, it's largely comes down to this issue of, you know, what is their breakout?

00:40:38.000 Now, aside from just enriching uranium, they got to come up with the weaponization of it all, right?

00:40:43.000 And that could take longer, right?

00:40:44.000 That could take months and months, right?

00:40:48.000 It's a heavy lift to figure out what their plans and intentions are.

00:40:52.000 And we kind of backed out of this Biden administration was clear that they wanted to get back into the nuke agreement from 2015. It was like, yeah, we got to do everything we can.

00:41:01.000 And so they started those talks when they got in and now they've kind of shut them down basically because the Iranians made some demands that weren't realistic. 0.87

00:41:09.000 And also, yeah, the protests, right? 0.98

00:41:12.000 And also, they're selling fucking weapons to Russia, right? 0.98

00:41:16.000 So, you know, Russia's turned to Iran and North Korea to resupply their hardware and get gear that they can't get, drones in particular from Iran. 0.99

00:41:26.000 So do we really want to be talking a nuke deal with Iran at this moment? 0.57

00:41:32.000 Probably not.

00:41:33.000 Whether it's pragmatic or not, but certainly from a political perspective, I don't think the Biden administration wants that heat. 0.98

00:41:39.000 So there's a lot of shit happening that's very interesting. 0.98

00:41:42.000 We haven't even touched on Harry and Meghan yet. 0.99

00:41:44.000 God.

00:41:48.000 That's the big distraction.

00:41:49.000 That's the big distraction right there.

00:41:51.000 There's a war room, apparently, in England, where they're trying to figure out what to do.

00:41:55.000 Oh, really?

00:41:56.000 I heard they...

00:41:57.000 Did you hear about that?

00:41:58.000 No.

00:41:58.000 Yes.

00:42:00.000 There's a war room.

00:42:02.000 The Royals.

00:42:03.000 The Royal War Room.

00:42:05.000 They're about to go to war!

00:42:08.000 Well, the wanker is, you know, he's put out this book, Spare, or whatever it's called. 0.87

00:42:15.000 I guess everybody falls down one side or the other. 0.65

00:42:17.000 Do you support Harry and Meghan?

00:42:19.000 Do you not?

00:42:20.000 You know, here it is.

00:42:21.000 Royal set up a war room to discuss Prince Harry's memoir.

00:42:26.000 A war room!

00:42:28.000 I do like that.

00:42:30.000 Yeah, what? 1.00

00:42:31.000 A fucking war room? 1.00

00:42:32.000 Full disclosure, I do think Harry's a wanker. 1.00

00:42:36.000 Well, he seems to be. 1.00

00:42:39.000 And it seems like that lady is a temptress. 1.00

00:42:43.000 She's a siren. 0.98

00:42:44.000 She's lured him into the rocks.

00:42:46.000 I haven't heard that term in a while. 0.54

00:42:47.000 She's a harlot almost. 1.00

00:42:49.000 A harlot's bad, right? 0.96

00:42:51.000 She's just powerful. 0.99

00:42:53.000 Actually, that's a good point.

00:42:54.000 Harlot and tempstress.

00:42:55.000 Yeah, I think harlots are.

00:42:56.000 Comparing melons to apples. 1.00

00:42:58.000 The definition of a harlot is a prostitute. 1.00

00:43:01.000 Yeah, that's a whore. 1.00

00:43:02.000 I take that back. 1.00

00:43:03.000 It's a whore. 1.00

00:43:04.000 It's a whore. 1.00

00:43:07.000 I don't think she's that. 1.00

00:43:09.000 No.

00:43:10.000 Wasn't there some speculation that she was on Epstein's yacht at one point in time?

00:43:15.000 There was like photos with her and Prince Andrew way back in the day when she was like in her early 20s.

00:43:20.000 Wow.

00:43:21.000 No, I haven't heard that one.

00:43:23.000 No.

00:43:24.000 No. 1.00

00:43:25.000 That whole fucking thing. 1.00

00:43:26.000 That thing. 1.00

00:43:27.000 But yeah, the war room, I guess it makes sense.

00:43:30.000 Look, these people are in a, you know, under a microscope and, you know, they got to figure out what their messaging is from moment to moment with him.

00:43:37.000 And, you know, they probably don't like the idea that this is all playing out in public.

00:43:41.000 But he's just kind of fucking lost the plot, right? 0.88

00:43:43.000 Now he's come out. 1.00

00:43:44.000 I mean, the book is like he's talking about his dick and he's talking about Afghans that he killed while he was there on duty. 0.99

00:43:52.000 There's actually something funny. 0.99

00:43:55.000 Somebody sent me, I don't know if it's true because I haven't had time to look into it, but somebody sent me that some Taliban commander is now trolling Harry over his talk about the Afghans that he killed.

00:44:08.000 And I gotta look it up.

00:44:09.000 What has he said about the Afghans he killed?

00:44:11.000 This is while he was a pilot?

00:44:13.000 Yeah, this is while he was over there on duty.

00:44:15.000 I don't know to what degree.

00:44:16.000 I, again, full disclosure, haven't read the book.

00:44:19.000 Taliban leader responds to Prince Harry's reported claim in spare that he killed 25 fighters in Afghanistan.

00:44:25.000 I mean, who does that?

00:44:26.000 Who talks?

00:44:26.000 I mean, again.

00:44:27.000 Very strange.

00:44:28.000 It's very strange.

00:44:29.000 But it's also very strange that he was, I mean, essentially infiltrated by a very ambitious actress.

00:44:35.000 You know, I mean, she used to be on Deal or No Deal. 1.00

00:44:37.000 Was he infiltrated?

00:44:38.000 She was one of the Deal or No Deal ladies. 1.00

00:44:40.000 Is that technically the way it works?

00:44:41.000 Is he infiltrated or was she infiltrated?

00:44:43.000 Well, it depends on who's getting pegged.

00:44:46.000 It depends on the methods.

00:44:49.000 And now we've...

00:44:50.000 And now...

00:44:50.000 Yeah, look, she was on Deal or No Deal.

00:44:53.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:44:54.000 Yeah, with the briefcases.

00:44:54.000 She didn't like being objectified on Deal.

00:44:57.000 Did you think it was an executive position, ma'am?

00:44:59.000 Yeah.

00:45:00.000 You're one of the hot ladies holding up a suitcase. 1.00

00:45:03.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:45:03.000 For a fucking... 1.00

00:45:04.000 I mean, it's a game show. 1.00

00:45:07.000 How are you objectified?

00:45:08.000 I forgot about that show.

00:45:09.000 That's literally the show.

00:45:11.000 Wow.

00:45:13.000 Yeah.

00:45:14.000 Well, you don't get this sort of analysis just anywhere on the Harry and Meghan situation.

00:45:20.000 Nobody's talked about Peggy before, as far as it goes.

00:45:22.000 Well, that's just pure speculation.

00:45:25.000 I put it out there.

00:45:25.000 I think it's important to note that there's speculation.

00:45:27.000 And I apologize.

00:45:27.000 Yeah.

00:45:28.000 I apologize for that speculation.

00:45:30.000 It's just a joke.

00:45:31.000 But I mean, again, why did he... 0.97

00:45:33.000 Well, I know why he felt the need to talk about some of this shit in his book is because otherwise no one's paying him money for this, right? 0.97

00:45:38.000 Right. 0.98

00:45:38.000 He's got to come up with it. 0.98

00:45:39.000 He's got to disclose some wild shit if you want to sell a book. 0.99

00:45:41.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:45:43.000 And if you want to talk about killing 25 bad guys.

00:45:47.000 It's not going to sit well with the people that he was serving with.

00:45:52.000 Yeah, that's...

00:45:54.000 Anyway, I guess, you know what?

00:45:58.000 Is it unusual that they let a prince fight in active combat?

00:46:06.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, it is and it isn't.

00:46:08.000 It used to be more common because there used to be more conflict and it was the British Empire and, you know, off you'd go.

00:46:13.000 And they wanted to tick that box, right?

00:46:15.000 They wanted to get that so they could wear the ribbons and, you know.

00:46:18.000 And, you know, there was a sense of, you know, if we're going to be in charge, we need to show that we've actually taken part in these campaigns.

00:46:27.000 And so, no, look, God bless them for serving.

00:46:30.000 I think it's great.

00:46:31.000 I just, you know, I think that part of it, you know, you can't deny it.

00:46:33.000 Fine, great.

00:46:34.000 I think that's admirable.

00:46:37.000 It's just everything else.

00:46:38.000 It's just kind of bizarre.

00:46:40.000 And I admit to being a bit of a royalist.

00:46:43.000 I still have my British citizenship.

00:46:47.000 You know, one day we'll retire to a small Cotswolds village and solve murders for a living.

00:46:53.000 You know, that'll be my job.

00:46:55.000 With a pipe?

00:46:56.000 With a pipe?

00:46:57.000 Sitting in your study?

00:46:58.000 Yes.

00:46:59.000 People will knock on the door.

00:47:00.000 I'll bring me a new case, you know.

00:47:01.000 Like Daniel Craig in those Knives Out movies?

00:47:04.000 Yeah, I think.

00:47:04.000 Or, you know, maybe like Poirot.

00:47:07.000 I'm thinking more, you know.

00:47:08.000 Who?

00:47:08.000 Yeah.

00:47:09.000 Hercule Poirot, you know. 0.99

00:47:10.000 Who the fuck's that? 1.00

00:47:11.000 A Belgian detective. 1.00

00:47:12.000 Do you know who that is?

00:47:14.000 Boy, that's obscure.

00:47:16.000 You're in Marco Rubio drinking water territory now.

00:47:19.000 There's only like three famous Belgians, and Poirot's definitely one of them.

00:47:23.000 He was a fictitious character of Agatha Christie's.

00:47:25.000 The only Belgian that I'm aware of is the giant lady who's the Minister of Health. 1.00

00:47:30.000 Do you know about her?

00:47:31.000 Yeah, but she almost never comes up in the list of famous Belgians. 1.00

00:47:34.000 Well, she should.

00:47:35.000 That lady's enormous. 1.00

00:47:38.000 He's a fictional character.

00:47:39.000 He's a fictional Belgian detective created by British writer Agatha Christie.

00:47:43.000 Oh, I didn't know about that.

00:47:45.000 One of Christie's most famous and long-running characters, appearing in 33 novels, two plays, and more than 50 short stories.

00:47:51.000 Yeah.

00:47:51.000 Between 1920 and 1975. How old are you?

00:47:54.000 Oh, well, I was born in 1915, so this was right in my sweet spot.

00:47:59.000 But that character, David Suchet, he played the character Poirot for like 25 years on TV. Really?

00:48:05.000 Do you know about this?

00:48:07.000 No, Jamie doesn't know about this.

00:48:08.000 I've heard of some of these stories, but I've never watched them, like Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile.

00:48:12.000 I've heard of that.

00:48:12.000 Yeah, there you go.

00:48:13.000 Okay.

00:48:14.000 Yeah.

00:48:14.000 No!

00:48:16.000 Anyway, but yes, that will be one day when people see whatever happened to Baker.

00:48:20.000 He'll be living in a small cottage in a small English countryside village.

00:48:23.000 How much time do you think you got left?

00:48:25.000 Oh, God.

00:48:26.000 Would you really want to do that?

00:48:27.000 Do you ever think about that?

00:48:28.000 Sure.

00:48:29.000 I mean, do you do the math and you think, what do you do?

00:48:31.000 Yeah.

00:48:31.000 I think you really do it when you have kids.

00:48:34.000 I just think it's a smart thing to do anyway, just to think about if you enjoy what you're doing. 0.99

00:48:39.000 I just hope I live long enough to figure out your fucking lighter. 0.97

00:48:43.000 But I think it's... 0.99

00:48:45.000 I do think about it.

00:48:46.000 And I think about it because I got young kids now.

00:48:48.000 And... 0.98

00:48:50.000 You know, I want to live, you know, I want every fucking year I can get. 0.98

00:48:53.000 And I know some people say, well, go when I'm 80, that's fine. 0.97

00:48:57.000 And I think, no, I want to squeeze every bit of life out of this thing.

00:49:00.000 And, um...

00:49:02.000 But I do.

00:49:03.000 I do the math all the time.

00:49:04.000 When I'm however old, my youngest kid will be this old.

00:49:09.000 You have adult children, too.

00:49:11.000 I do.

00:49:11.000 I have a daughter.

00:49:12.000 You've got two groups.

00:49:15.000 I do.

00:49:16.000 Two groups.

00:49:17.000 Not at the same time.

00:49:18.000 I legitimately got divorced and remarried, so it's not two families.

00:49:23.000 Which would be much more interesting, I suppose, at the end of the day to talk about.

00:49:27.000 My daughter's almost 30. Talk about stress.

00:49:29.000 Those people.

00:49:30.000 How do they do that?

00:49:31.000 Yeah.

00:49:32.000 I don't think they realize they're doing it until they're doing it and then they're just like, ah.

00:49:35.000 Yeah.

00:49:35.000 Life is complicated enough.

00:49:37.000 I'm always amazed at, like, because I have had a handful of friends who have been What's the word I'm looking for?

00:49:44.000 Fidelity is a problem for them.

00:49:45.000 And so they have this – and usually they have stressful jobs.

00:49:49.000 And then this whole other thing where they're balancing their wife and they're balancing two or three additional relationships. 1.00

00:49:57.000 I'm thinking, how the fuck do you have time or energy or the ability not to – you just – Fuck! 1.00

00:50:05.000 I don't know how people compartmentalize. 1.00

00:50:06.000 I think it's just a distraction.

00:50:09.000 I think the people that do that, they generally are very stressed out, overworked.

00:50:15.000 They're usually working insane long hours and they make poor choices because they're just looking for constant distractions.

00:50:21.000 And also, they're probably excitement junkies.

00:50:25.000 They're probably not getting enough through their work, or their work grinds on them and they need something to jazz things up.

00:50:30.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:50:31.000 It's like when I talk to people, they say, all right, I'm going to take up skydiving.

00:50:35.000 And I'm thinking, is somebody paying you to jump out of that plane?

00:50:37.000 Because unless you're getting paid for it, I'm just like, I don't know.

00:50:42.000 It was fun, but...

00:50:45.000 It's time to move on.

00:50:46.000 I'm not interested in that.

00:50:47.000 I'm not interested in things that can accidentally kill you that give you just a quick little jolt of adrenaline.

00:50:53.000 It is true, but I take your point.

00:50:55.000 I guess part of it is that you just look at it and you go...

00:51:00.000 I knew one guy in particular years ago who just had this juggling act going on constantly. 1.00

00:51:06.000 I'm just thinking, what the fuck? 1.00

00:51:07.000 It's an addiction. 1.00

00:51:08.000 It's an addiction like gambling, like anything else.

00:51:11.000 They get addicted to the thrill of pulling it off.

00:51:14.000 Yeah.

00:51:15.000 Life's too short.

00:51:16.000 Keep it uncomplicated.

00:51:18.000 100% interfere with whatever you're really trying to do.

00:51:21.000 Whatever your actual work is, it'll 100% interfere with that and fuck it up. 1.00

00:51:25.000 I always tell people that, you know, concentrate on stupid shit. 1.00

00:51:29.000 Like if you concentrate on like... 1.00

00:51:31.000 People that get mad at you on social media and stuff like that.

00:51:35.000 Let's say if your mind, let's call it units.

00:51:38.000 You have 100 units of information, of bandwidth that you can utilize.

00:51:45.000 Anytime you allocate any of those units to other things, now you have less units for the things that you care about.

00:51:53.000 Yeah.

00:51:54.000 I've apparently given away most of my bandwidth to lyrics from early 80s alternative rock songs.

00:52:00.000 No, that's just data.

00:52:02.000 That's just data.

00:52:03.000 It's still taking up space.

00:52:04.000 It's in there, but it's not...

00:52:05.000 I mean, I've got a lot of that. 0.99

00:52:07.000 I've got a lot of stupid information floating around in my head, for sure. 0.99

00:52:11.000 I have obscure jujitsu fighter records bouncing around in my head. 0.99

00:52:16.000 But I think that so many people don't think about their mind as like if it was your money. 1.00

00:52:22.000 If you had a certain amount of money and this is all the money you're ever going to have, how much money are you going to donate to stupid shit? 1.00

00:52:29.000 How much money are you going to allocate to dumb things that don't help you at all and only ruin your life? 0.99

00:52:35.000 Yeah, I guess there's a sense of, you know, the way I think about it is I just want to have an uncomplicated life, right? 0.90

00:52:48.000 I've been very fortunate from work.

00:52:51.000 I've certainly been very fortunate in relationship, right?

00:52:55.000 I mean, I'm married to the greatest person on the planet.

00:53:00.000 That's what I want.

00:53:01.000 I just want that uncomplicated life.

00:53:03.000 Yeah, but you used to work for the intelligence agencies.

00:53:06.000 You used to work for the CIA. How the fuck is that uncomplicated? 0.97

00:53:09.000 It's one of the most complicated things a person could ever be involved in. 0.97

00:53:13.000 International relations and Cyber espionage.

00:53:17.000 That was done by the smart people.

00:53:20.000 Yeah, but still, you're aware of it all.

00:53:22.000 You have to process all that.

00:53:23.000 You're aware of it, but I think if you...

00:53:25.000 It was kind of like looking at that world also.

00:53:28.000 I was always amazed at some of the people...

00:53:30.000 And again, I had a great time.

00:53:31.000 It was a great organization.

00:53:32.000 I loved the work, respected my colleagues.

00:53:36.000 Why'd you get out?

00:53:38.000 Because my daughter was getting older, and I needed to be home.

00:53:41.000 Because at that point, it was just me and her.

00:53:44.000 And it was time to figure something else out.

00:53:48.000 And so, yeah, but I just think there was something about that job on the operations side that I found just very easy, right, to compartmentalize.

00:54:00.000 Some people found it very difficult in the terms of the sort of like, I don't know whether they were thinking of moral quandary in terms of what we were doing.

00:54:06.000 And I don't know if this is, you know, I just never thought, you know, just tell me what the objective is, right?

00:54:11.000 Give that information to me.

00:54:13.000 You know, let's point ourselves in the right direction and just do it.

00:54:15.000 Now let's move on to the next task.

00:54:17.000 So I tend to be very simplistic when it comes to that, and I think that helped with the business. 0.95

00:54:23.000 I never sat around, you know, staring at my fucking navel, wondering, you know, where I fit in in terms of the big machine of the intelligence community. 0.95

00:54:31.000 Well, that makes for a good company, man. 0.99

00:54:33.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:54:34.000 A good operative.

00:54:35.000 Yeah.

00:54:35.000 I think it's – if you just simplify things down that way – and no one ever accused me of being a really big, deep thinker, right?

00:54:42.000 So I'm good with that.

00:54:45.000 But as a matter of fact, this leads us into a very interesting subject, which is – How the CIA killed Kennedy?

00:54:53.000 No, I'm about to spend 10 seconds promoting a book that's about to be released.

00:54:58.000 Oh.

00:54:58.000 Oh, I know.

00:54:59.000 I know this is shameful, but I thought I'm going to get it in here and then get out of it and we can go back to more interesting things.

00:55:04.000 But on the 18th of January, Scribd, S-C-R-I-B-D, is going to be releasing a book called Company Rules.

00:55:13.000 It's my first venture into books.

00:55:15.000 It's an audio book, so it's an easy listen.

00:55:18.000 But the idea is it has nothing to do with the agency, right?

00:55:22.000 Did you read it?

00:55:23.000 I did.

00:55:24.000 I narrated it.

00:55:24.000 That's good.

00:55:25.000 I used a fake voice.

00:55:26.000 I sounded like Gru from Despicable Me. 1.00

00:55:29.000 I just used that voice for the fucker. 0.99

00:55:31.000 And so it has nothing to do with agency. 1.00

00:55:34.000 It's about business life.

00:55:35.000 But what happened was I got out.

00:55:37.000 People were like, why are you leaving?

00:55:38.000 And what the hell are you going to do?

00:55:40.000 And as it turns out, over the years, it occurred to me that a lot of what I was doing in business were just some ideas that had kind of settled with me from the agency days.

00:55:50.000 So that's where the company rules comes up.

00:55:52.000 But frankly, there's no book of company rules.

00:55:55.000 Look at that.

00:55:55.000 Company rules.

00:55:57.000 New from Mike Baker.

00:55:59.000 So what's in there?

00:56:01.000 So there's basically nine rules.

00:56:03.000 I couldn't come up with a tenth.

00:56:04.000 I wasn't smart enough to come up with a tenth.

00:56:06.000 So there's nine basic rules.

00:56:08.000 You start out from define your mission.

00:56:11.000 That's pretty much the first one.

00:56:13.000 It's kind of like what we talked about.

00:56:14.000 So in business, it's not just saying, okay, our mission is make money.

00:56:18.000 So you've got to define your mission, then you've got to clarify, you've got to explain it to your personnel.

00:56:23.000 I'm a big believer in, once you do that, hire smart people, get the hell out of the way.

00:56:27.000 And that's worked out very well, but there's other principles in there.

00:56:31.000 How do you make a decision with imperfect information?

00:56:34.000 That's one thing that the agency, you're not really realizing it at the time, but you realize when you're in there and then you leave that, you know what the agency is very good at is teaching people To just get off the X, make a decision.

00:56:47.000 What do you mean by how do you make a decision with imperfect information?

00:56:50.000 Give me an example.

00:56:51.000 Yeah, if you wait around, like if you've...

00:56:55.000 If you wait around for all the data to come in, let's take with business, before an investment, somebody else is going to come in and take that opportunity.

00:57:04.000 You've got to be able to say...

00:57:06.000 It's not like the movies. 0.97

00:57:07.000 It's not like a Tom Clancy movie where you've got all the fucking details that you want before you go in on the target. 0.95

00:57:12.000 You're not looking through walls and you don't have a... 0.87

00:57:14.000 An asset sitting in there telling you exactly where the target's going to be.

00:57:18.000 You don't know if there's 12 people over there and there's one person at the door.

00:57:21.000 That never happens.

00:57:22.000 You never know everything, right?

00:57:23.000 And if you wait for everything to show up, it's never going to happen.

00:57:27.000 But if you wait, then something bad's going to happen.

00:57:29.000 And it's the same in business, which is basically – so these ideas that I eventually – and again, anybody who worked for the agency, I'm sure they got their own ideas.

00:57:38.000 They're going to look and go, well, those aren't my ideas or my principles or my rules.

00:57:42.000 I have these.

00:57:43.000 But these are the ones that I took away, and I used them to build a business.

00:57:47.000 And so all the examples are basically business-oriented, right?

00:57:51.000 So this is not a book about my time in the CIA, and I don't think I'd ever write one of those because there's enough of that out there, and I don't think anybody needs more of that.

00:58:00.000 But I just found this was interesting because nobody really expected me to be able to build a business and keep it breathing.

00:58:05.000 For as long as I have, because I really had no business experience.

00:58:10.000 And part of it is there's an element of luck.

00:58:12.000 You know, I never worked in an operation where there wasn't some element of luck.

00:58:16.000 And it's been the same with business, you know, just in terms of, you know, good fortune or whatever you want to call it.

00:58:20.000 So anyway, there's these principles.

00:58:23.000 And it comes out on the 18th and Scribd is the Netflix of books, as they say.

00:58:27.000 What made you decide to do this?

00:58:30.000 I had thought about it and talked about it.

00:58:33.000 Years ago.

00:58:34.000 Years ago.

00:58:35.000 And then like everything else, you know, you set the idea aside because you get wrapped up in everything else that's going on.

00:58:41.000 And I never did.

00:58:42.000 And then finally, I work with a great guy, Kenny Slotnick over at AGI Entertainment.

00:58:49.000 And he's worked with me for years on TV shit and other things, and he's always been a great friend.

00:58:54.000 But he finally said, you know, you told me about that idea that one time.

00:58:58.000 I mentioned it to Scribd, and they were very interested.

00:59:01.000 And again, it's an easy thing.

00:59:02.000 It's the sort of thing you can dial up as an audiobook.

00:59:04.000 You can listen to it on a two-hour road trip and Bob's your uncle.

00:59:07.000 And if you take away one idea, I think that's a great thing, right? 0.99

00:59:10.000 I mean, because, you know, there's a lot of shit out there where you don't really learn anything. 0.79

00:59:14.000 I'm just hoping people take away one thing, and they're good. 0.96

00:59:18.000 So did you write it because you feel like you have some unique insight, or did you write it just purely as a financial venture?

00:59:24.000 Oh, no.

00:59:25.000 No, there's no real...

00:59:28.000 In the scheme of things, it took me a lot longer.

00:59:31.000 It's not long.

00:59:32.000 It's like 15,000 words. 0.99

00:59:35.000 But that was like fucking... 0.99

00:59:36.000 I'm pulling teeth, right, to get to 15,000 words. 0.98

00:59:39.000 And for me anyway, I'm sure that other people will look and go, that's like an opening sentence.

00:59:45.000 And no, so from a financial point of view, no, I didn't do it that way.

00:59:49.000 I did it because I genuinely am still surprised that I've been able to keep a business moving, right?

00:59:57.000 And I've got some of the people that have worked with me have been with me now for...

01:00:01.000 17 years, right?

01:00:03.000 And they've had kids and they've raised their families with the company and they've done...

01:00:06.000 And, you know, that's probably more rewarding than anything else I've done, in a sense, aside from my family.

01:00:13.000 And so, I guess I just wanted to put it on paper.

01:00:16.000 And then there's also that idea that...

01:00:19.000 This sounds stupid, but it's the same reason I like to do TV shows, like the Black Files of Classified series, because at some point, my kids, you know, can sit down when they're older and they can watch it, or they can read this or listen to it, and they got something, right? 0.83

01:00:33.000 You know, anyway, that's... 0.98

01:00:35.000 Man's search for meaning.

01:00:37.000 Man's search...

01:00:39.000 It never ends.

01:00:41.000 It never ends.

01:00:43.000 Anyway, that's...

01:00:45.000 Yeah, now I've gotten that out of the way.

01:00:47.000 They did send...

01:00:50.000 To Jamie, the 60-second audio excerpt.

01:00:52.000 I said, no, I'm not going to sit here and listen to myself read.

01:00:56.000 Oh, we should definitely listen to you read.

01:00:57.000 No, we don't want to do that.

01:00:58.000 What is it about?

01:00:59.000 No, it's about, it's sort of the, no, we don't want to do that.

01:01:02.000 It's the opening.

01:01:03.000 It would just be weird to sit here and listen.

01:01:05.000 I would like to get weird.

01:01:07.000 It'd be like Jamie's saying when we watch one of your interviews on the screen, and we're sitting here watching, and you're watching yourself talk.

01:01:14.000 I'm used to that.

01:01:15.000 I'm used to that kind of weird, though.

01:01:17.000 Yeah.

01:01:18.000 Yeah.

01:01:19.000 I like how you're squirming, though, a little bit.

01:01:20.000 Yeah.

01:01:23.000 It was an interesting experience, but anyway, it's been a good one, and hopefully people find something entertaining in it.

01:01:31.000 I think the thing that people are weirded out by when it comes to intelligence agencies in this day and age is that they kind of act autonomously.

01:01:38.000 They kind of act outside of what we think of as the government.

01:01:44.000 We think of the government has been a bunch of people that get elected, and those people do the rule of the people, but the people that are in the intelligence agencies, they're there forever.

01:01:55.000 And that's the term, the deep state, that everybody's so concerned with.

01:02:00.000 That's a common phrase that's been brought up over the last You know, decade or so, where people are very concerned about the deep state.

01:02:08.000 There's a government that has its own rules and its own ability to enact things that are outside of elected officials and the will of the people.

01:02:19.000 Yeah.

01:02:20.000 And I can see why people think that way, having been behind the curtain for all that time.

01:02:29.000 I guess there's two parts to this.

01:02:31.000 One is never say never, right?

01:02:32.000 I mean you never want to discount the idea that the intel community or law enforcement or whoever could essentially develop a mind of its own, work separate from whatever government administration that people think they've elected into office.

01:02:50.000 So never say that couldn't happen because you always want to be wary of that.

01:02:54.000 I've spent enough time overseas in places where that happens, right?

01:02:58.000 And worse than that is where, you know, a dictator comes in, he goes out, wholesale cleaning, and then the new guy brings in all his people, right?

01:03:08.000 And they're just basically doing the will.

01:03:10.000 Now, in a way, that's more transparent, right?

01:03:12.000 Because you know what you're getting, right?

01:03:14.000 You're getting that guy's intel service or that guy's law enforcement.

01:03:19.000 But having worked behind the curtain, at least the time that I was there, the agency was uniquely apolitical.

01:03:27.000 The people that I traveled around the world with, the people that I met, worked with in various parts, we never talked about politics.

01:03:35.000 It was just not an issue.

01:03:36.000 We never discussed that.

01:03:37.000 Do you think that changed during Trump?

01:03:39.000 I think it was probably even before Trump.

01:03:42.000 I think it's just been a process where, and I have no idea why, maybe in part because No, I don't know.

01:03:51.000 I was going to say because it's become a little more transitory.

01:03:53.000 You know, in the old days, whatever the old days are, you know, through the Cold War and whatever, 70s and early 80s, people would join and, you know, the idea was, I'm here for good.

01:04:03.000 I'm going to retire.

01:04:04.000 Right.

01:04:04.000 And now it's, you know, somewhat of a stepping stone to other things.

01:04:08.000 And so people move through these organizations on their way to somewhere else.

01:04:13.000 And maybe that creates, you know...

01:04:18.000 Some of this.

01:04:19.000 But I don't want to say it couldn't happen.

01:04:23.000 I just want to say, yeah, it's something you have to be always aware of.

01:04:27.000 I think that there have been individuals in various offices who got too close or too comfortable with political access.

01:04:35.000 Like with the CIA, you always want your director.

01:04:37.000 To have a good line of communication with the president.

01:04:42.000 It used to be more important when the director had a seat at the table, right?

01:04:46.000 Now they're pushed below the DNI. So the DNI is the guy that talks and the agency director doesn't have the same access that they used to have.

01:04:54.000 When did that change? 0.97

01:04:55.000 After 9-11, you know, when they recreated the, you know, Homeland Security became the buzzword and, you know, how do we reorganize because, you know, clearly it was a fucking knee-jerk reaction to 9-11 was the idea was, oh, something happened, we fucked up,

01:05:10.000 so now let's reorganize the entire thing, right?

01:05:13.000 And so they tossed a baby out of the 30th floor and it wasn't an actual baby.

01:05:19.000 People are going to be like making notes.

01:05:21.000 They get it.

01:05:22.000 Baby with the bathwater. 1.00

01:05:23.000 Find a baby.

01:05:25.000 And so then they created this DNI position and they kind of...

01:05:29.000 What does DNI stand for?

01:05:31.000 Director of National Intelligence.

01:05:33.000 And so then they subjugated the CIA director below that.

01:05:36.000 But the point being is you want that access.

01:05:38.000 Well, you know, if it gets too cozy...

01:05:41.000 Or if the person in charge, whether it's the agency or the FBI or whoever, becomes too much of a political animal, now you've got a problem, right?

01:05:49.000 And that's when bad things can happen.

01:05:52.000 But the career people that I dealt with, that I met with over the years, and the people that I still know, the career people, they, you know, for the most part, they just want to do the job, right?

01:06:01.000 And I know people are going to say, well, of course, that's what you're going to say, and I say that all the time. 0.99

01:06:04.000 But fuck it, it's what I saw. 1.00

01:06:07.000 I'm not blowing smoke up anybody's ass, but... 1.00

01:06:10.000 When you see shit like Tucker Carlson on Fox News saying that the CIA killed Kennedy, what do you think of that? 0.99

01:06:22.000 How did he phrase it? 1.00

01:06:23.000 Never say never.

01:06:26.000 So they talked to someone who knew.

01:06:28.000 I have the quote here.

01:06:30.000 Because they have withheld some of the files in the Kennedy assassination.

01:06:34.000 Why would they do that?

01:06:36.000 So not long after Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on camera in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, a lot of Americans started to have some questions about the Kennedy assassination.

01:06:47.000 It was, you'd have to admit, a pretty extraordinary sequence of events.

01:06:51.000 A lone gunman murders the president of the United States, and then, less than 48 hours later, that lone gunman is himself murdered by another lone gunman.

01:07:00.000 What are the odds of that?

01:07:02.000 It's one thing if you get struck by lightning, rare but possible.

01:07:06.000 But if every member of your family also gets struck by lightning all on different days, you might begin to suspect these are not entirely natural events.

01:07:15.000 But oh, replied the U.S. government, they are.

01:07:17.000 This bizarre chain of killings was all entirely natural.

01:07:21.000 So less than a year after the JFK assassination, the Johnson White House released something called the Warren Commission Report.

01:07:28.000 And the report concluded that while their motives remained unclear, both Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby had acted alone.

01:07:34.000 No one helped them.

01:07:35.000 There was no conspiracy of any kind.

01:07:38.000 Case closed.

01:07:38.000 Time to move on.

01:07:40.000 And many Americans did move on.

01:07:42.000 At the time, they had no idea how shoddy and corrupt the Warren Commission was.

01:07:46.000 It would be nearly 50 years before the CIA admitted under duress that in fact it had withheld information from investigators about its relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald.

01:07:57.000 But even then, at the time, before that was known, the government's explanation didn't seem entirely plausible, and some people started asking obvious questions about it.

01:08:06.000 It was at that point, as Americans started to doubt the official story, that the term conspiracy theory entered our lexicon.

01:08:13.000 As Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith points out in his book on the subject, the term conspiracy theory did not exist as a phrase in everyday American conversation before 1964. In 1964, the year the Warren Commission issued its report, the New York Times published five stories in which conspiracy theory appeared.

01:08:32.000 Now, today, of course, the term conspiracy theory appears in pretty much every New York Times story about American politics.

01:08:38.000 It's wielded, now as then, as a weapon against anyone who asks questions the government doesn't feel like answering.

01:08:46.000 But despite 60 years of name-calling, those questions have not disappeared.

01:08:49.000 In fact, they have multiplied with time.

01:08:51.000 And here's one of them.

01:08:52.000 In April of 1964, a psychiatrist called Louis Joylyn West visited Jack Ruby in his isolation cell in a Dallas jail.

01:09:00.000 MKUltra.

01:09:01.000 According to West's written assessment, he found that Jack Ruby was, quote, technically insane and in need of immediate psychiatric hospitalization.

01:09:10.000 Those are conclusions that, puzzlingly, no one who had spoken to Jack Ruby previously had reached.

01:09:15.000 Ruby had seemed perfectly sane to the people who knew him.

01:09:18.000 Louis Joylyn West pronounced him crazy.

01:09:21.000 But what West did not say was that he was working for the CIA at the time.

01:09:27.000 Louis Joyland West was a contract psychiatrist for the spy agency.

01:09:30.000 He was also an expert on mind control and a prominent player in the now infamous MKUltra program in which the CIA gave powerful psychiatric drugs to Americans without their knowledge.

01:09:40.000 So of all the psychiatrists in the world, what in the world was this guy doing in Jack Ruby's prison cell?

01:09:49.000 The media did not seem interested in finding out.

01:09:51.000 In fact, the New York Times, in an extensive 1999 obituary of West, never mentioned the fact that he had worked for the CIA, much less his time in Jack Ruby's cell, which seems relevant.

01:10:04.000 So you can see why non-crazy people would wonder about what really happened.

01:10:08.000 And of course, many have wondered.

01:10:09.000 In 1976, long forgotten, the House of Representatives impaneled a special committee to reinvestigate the JFK assassination.

01:10:18.000 Their bipartisan conclusion?

01:10:20.000 Jack Kennedy was almost certainly murdered as the result of a conspiracy.

01:10:24.000 But the question is, a conspiracy by whom?

01:10:28.000 Well, the obvious suspect would be the CIA. Why else would the agency withhold critical evidence from investigators?

01:10:34.000 Is there a benign explanation for that?

01:10:37.000 For maintaining this level of secrecy for this many years?

01:10:41.000 Not that we're aware of.

01:10:43.000 And it is illegal.

01:10:44.000 In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, and that act mandated full disclosure of all documents by 2017, 54 years after JFK was killed.

01:10:58.000 The last administration promised to comply fully with that law, but under intense pressure from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, withheld in the end thousands of pages of CIA documents.

01:11:10.000 Today, this afternoon, the Biden administration did exactly the same thing.

01:11:14.000 That would be thousands of pages of documents after nearly 60 years, after the death of every single person involved.

01:11:24.000 But we still can't see them.

01:11:26.000 Clearly, it's not to protect any person.

01:11:28.000 They're all dead.

01:11:29.000 It's to protect an institution.

01:11:31.000 But why?

01:11:33.000 Well, today we decided to find out We spoke to someone who had access to these still-hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained.

01:11:42.000 We asked this person directly, did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American president?

01:11:49.000 And here's the reply we received verbatim.

01:11:52.000 Quote, the answer is yes.

01:11:54.000 I believe they were involved.

01:11:56.000 It's a whole different country from what we thought it was.

01:11:59.000 It's all fake.

01:12:02.000 It's hard to imagine a more jarring response than that.

01:12:04.000 Again, this is not a, quote, conspiracy theorist that we spoke to.

01:12:08.000 Not even close.

01:12:09.000 This is someone with direct knowledge of the information that once again is being withheld from the American public.

01:12:16.000 And the answer we received was unequivocal.

01:12:18.000 Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.

01:12:24.000 What do you think of that?

01:12:27.000 I'd like to know who the source is.

01:12:30.000 I mean when you say, I believe, right?

01:12:34.000 And supposedly he's got access to the documents.

01:12:36.000 His comment is, I believe.

01:12:39.000 That might be a tell.

01:12:41.000 He talks about, you know, it was all fake.

01:12:45.000 Sounds a little bit like a conspiracy theorist, even though Tucker says he's not one.

01:12:48.000 So, you know, without knowing who this source is and why he's got access to this and how they managed to find him, I'm skeptical about everything anyway.

01:12:58.000 Doesn't mean that there couldn't be some connection, right?

01:13:01.000 Again, never say never.

01:13:02.000 I don't know.

01:13:03.000 But, look, Oswald, you know, there was...

01:13:08.000 When you say, well, why would the agency not want papers released?

01:13:12.000 You know, my mind immediately goes to, well, maybe because there's something related to Oswald's dealings with the Russians, right?

01:13:18.000 I mean, Oswald lived in St. Pete.

01:13:19.000 He traveled down at one point down to Mexico to meet with the Russians.

01:13:22.000 He was desperate to try to prove his worth to the Russians, right? 0.96

01:13:25.000 And that was part of his motivation, part of what he was doing.

01:13:31.000 So, I don't know.

01:13:32.000 I'm just saying, I tend not to be the sort of person that would watch that and go, oh my god, it's true. 0.99

01:13:39.000 My thought is, well, who the fuck is the source? 0.99

01:13:42.000 Right. 0.99

01:13:42.000 And so, unless, you know, the guy is willing to out himself, and at this stage, if, you know, given what Tucker said, hey, everybody's dead. 0.99

01:13:53.000 Fine.

01:13:53.000 Come forward.

01:13:54.000 If you've got information like that, then maybe it's incumbent upon you to come out and talk about it. 0.99

01:14:02.000 And if that's the case and it turns out to be true, then yeah, fuck. 0.96

01:14:06.000 Yeah, I thought it was weird that he put that on television and just said a source who had direct information. 0.98

01:14:13.000 Direct access to these documents.

01:14:14.000 Still has deep knowledge of what's in there.

01:14:17.000 All right.

01:14:17.000 It's a little bit...

01:14:18.000 It's a little weird.

01:14:19.000 It's a little weird.

01:14:20.000 He's given this source incredible credibility.

01:14:23.000 And then there's nothing there, right?

01:14:24.000 It's, I believe that this is what happened.

01:14:28.000 Okay.

01:14:28.000 Well, theoretically, you've got access to the documents, so how about you give us something more than that?

01:14:31.000 So, again, I look at it with a grain of salt, but I understand why.

01:14:36.000 Look, I've told you this before.

01:14:39.000 I tend to be more inclined to think that there was a conspiracy around Martin Luther King than there was around Kennedy.

01:14:45.000 Yeah, you've talked about that.

01:14:47.000 Go into that.

01:14:48.000 Because when you were investigating that, it seemed like...

01:14:52.000 What's the gentleman who killed Martin Luther King again?

01:14:57.000 What's his name again?

01:14:58.000 Oh, uh... 1.00

01:14:59.000 Fuck, I'm drawing a complete blank now. 1.00

01:15:02.000 It's a product of age. 1.00

01:15:05.000 It's why I can't open your fucking cigar lighter. 1.00

01:15:07.000 Too many words. 1.00

01:15:08.000 Too many words.

01:15:08.000 So many words.

01:15:09.000 You get so many names stuck in your head.

01:15:12.000 I've even sat down with the guy's brother.

01:15:14.000 I almost want to say John Wilkes-Pruth.

01:15:16.000 James Earl Ray.

01:15:17.000 James Earl Ray, that's right.

01:15:19.000 Yeah, I sat down with his brother.

01:15:20.000 So...

01:15:20.000 God, I can't believe you.

01:15:21.000 See, this is what happens when advancing age.

01:15:23.000 You sat down with his brother?

01:15:24.000 Yeah, and talked to him.

01:15:26.000 What does his brother think?

01:15:27.000 His brother's convinced that he was set up.

01:15:32.000 Set up, but he did pull the trigger.

01:15:34.000 Did pull the trigger, yeah.

01:15:35.000 There's two things there.

01:15:36.000 It's like, okay, did he kill him?

01:15:38.000 Well, yeah.

01:15:39.000 Did he pull the trigger?

01:15:40.000 Yes.

01:15:41.000 But, you know, my feeling with him is that...

01:15:46.000 It doesn't add up.

01:15:47.000 What he was before, and then what he was leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King, and then what he was shortly thereafter, making his way to Europe.

01:15:56.000 This guy was a failed petty criminal.

01:16:03.000 He couldn't even be a petty criminal successfully.

01:16:05.000 He was in and out of prison.

01:16:06.000 It was nothing going on for him.

01:16:08.000 And his ability then to turn himself into an apparently A more successful individual, right?

01:16:18.000 Leading up to that, going off the grid, he disappeared for a period of time.

01:16:22.000 And then he ends up in Europe where he's arrested afterwards.

01:16:26.000 You know, the guy was never on a plane.

01:16:28.000 Now he's flying to Europe, right?

01:16:30.000 He never had any money to speak of.

01:16:32.000 He's buying a car in cash.

01:16:34.000 I mean, there's things that...

01:16:35.000 That seem very odd, and not to mention just the general atmosphere, mood, context of the time.

01:16:44.000 I have no idea what organizations might be involved, but I'm more inclined to think that to me is something where I think there was a lot more to the story.

01:16:53.000 I'm not saying again, I'm not saying that there isn't more to the Kennedy assassination.

01:16:57.000 I think it'd be great to find out the whole story.

01:17:02.000 But, you know, you compare the two and for some reason I just find the King issue more disconcerting.

01:17:09.000 What was the official story about his motivation to kill Martin Luther King Jr.? 0.94

01:17:16.000 He was just a racist. 0.96

01:17:18.000 That's it. 0.77

01:17:19.000 Yeah, basically. 0.96

01:17:20.000 Highly motivated racist. 0.65

01:17:22.000 Highly motivated racist who decided somehow he was going to engage in this activity.

01:17:32.000 Look, you know, there was plenty of information about where King was at the time, right?

01:17:35.000 He was on the news. 0.98

01:17:36.000 I mean, shit, the evening news before the day he was killed showed him standing outside at the Lorraine Motel, outside his room on the balcony. 0.99

01:17:44.000 So, you know, he had... 0.99

01:17:47.000 If you just look at that and say, okay, well, he had information, he had access, he had the ability to gather that information, just like Oswald did with Kennedy, right?

01:17:58.000 And, you know, Oswald...

01:18:00.000 You know, again, his connection to the Russians, the Soviets at the time, very interesting.

01:18:05.000 But, you know, I'm not the sort of person to say absolutely not.

01:18:11.000 Right?

01:18:12.000 That there was some involvement.

01:18:14.000 I'm just saying, you know, I haven't seen the credible sourcing yet.

01:18:18.000 And that, to me, with what Tucker did is, you know, you can't say I've got a credible source.

01:18:22.000 It'd be like if I wrote an intel report.

01:18:24.000 You know, I told the agency I'm working on something, you know, back in the old days, and right down, I got this great source.

01:18:29.000 He's got access to this, you know, the foreign ministry of this country. 1.00

01:18:33.000 And then I give him shit. 0.99

01:18:34.000 There's no insight. 1.00

01:18:35.000 No name.

01:18:36.000 I just say, he believes that this is what they're going to do.

01:18:39.000 Well, the response would be from just an operational perspective.

01:18:42.000 Why does he believe it?

01:18:43.000 Who told him?

01:18:44.000 What would be the motivation that the CIA would have to kill Kennedy?

01:18:48.000 I mean, part of it was supposedly that Kennedy was interested in disbanding the CIA, right?

01:18:54.000 Yeah, again, and that had happened, you know, if you think about it in recent terms, right?

01:19:00.000 The CIA or OSS was disbanded at the end of World War II, right?

01:19:05.000 So, you know, there was precedent for it.

01:19:08.000 It's not unusual that there's that talk in Washington on occasion.

01:19:11.000 I mean, after the fall of the Soviet Union, there were very credible people in Washington, D.C. talking about getting rid of the CIA because we got a peace dividend now, right?

01:19:19.000 We don't have to worry about the Soviet Union anymore.

01:19:21.000 Do we really need this?

01:19:22.000 And these were credible people inside of the politics and the government.

01:19:29.000 So that cycle seems to – every now and then there's this regularity of like the agency.

01:19:36.000 Let's put it up on a pedestal and fire a rocket at it.

01:19:39.000 What's important about keeping the CIA around?

01:19:46.000 Well, it's not a benign world, right?

01:19:49.000 There is nothing benign about the way this world works.

01:19:51.000 And we'd love to think it's a community of nations, but it's not, right?

01:19:54.000 So if we want to fly blind without any insight into what countries that are hostile to our interests, and there are a number of them, Are doing, then I guess, yeah, you could get rid of the agency.

01:20:07.000 The agency's primary function is information, is intelligence, right?

01:20:12.000 And you gather that intelligence to understand the plans and intentions of others, right?

01:20:18.000 Whether it's the Russians or North Koreans, the Iranians, the Chinese, whatever.

01:20:22.000 And they are incredibly aggressive at doing it, right? 1.00

01:20:27.000 So we could be very self-righteous and pat ourselves on the back and say, hey, fuck it. 1.00

01:20:31.000 Let's disband the CIA. Why do we need it? 1.00

01:20:35.000 It doesn't sound like it's a very good activity, and I think we'd feel better about ourselves if we did.

01:20:42.000 Nobody else is going to do that.

01:20:44.000 It's not like this.

01:20:46.000 Again, the Chinese aren't going to say, oh, you're right. 0.81

01:20:49.000 Obama had an agreement with Xi back in the day to cease and desist on the shenanigans, economic espionage and cyber shenanigans, and of course they didn't.

01:21:01.000 In fact, they're more aggressive now and in more of a sophisticated manner than they were even a few years ago.

01:21:06.000 So I guess it comes down to protecting our own national security interests. 0.99

01:21:12.000 And if people don't give a shit about that, then fine. 0.98

01:21:16.000 Have an open discussion about it. 0.99

01:21:18.000 But I guarantee you, you know, we'll get hosed, you know, nine ways to Sunday if we do that, because you've got to have insight.

01:21:26.000 It's how you develop your longer-term strategies, and it's how you inform the administration, whichever administration, as to where the next threats are coming from.

01:21:36.000 Hopefully, you're anticipating those threats and you're not reacting.

01:21:39.000 So, yeah, but again, you know, it's that sort of thing.

01:21:42.000 Look, obviously, I've got a particular point of view.

01:21:45.000 Right.

01:21:45.000 People expect that.

01:21:47.000 But I'm just here to tell you, you know, it's not that sort of world where we can say, let's shut it down, and I'll bet things will work out fine. 0.99

01:21:57.000 There's a lot of actors out there who'd like to fuck us over. 0.98

01:22:01.000 So that's just, you know, I can't, I don't know what other eloquent way to say it. 0.99

01:22:06.000 I should have used that line in the book.

01:22:08.000 What we're worried about with other countries is them infiltrating our education system, infiltrating businesses, sabotaging us with some long plan. 1.00

01:22:19.000 Do you think that United States intelligence agencies utilize the same sort of strategy with other countries?

01:22:25.000 Sure.

01:22:25.000 Yeah?

01:22:26.000 Yeah, and we better hope we're better at it, right?

01:22:29.000 We better hope we're the best there is at it, right?

01:22:33.000 So the answer is, yeah, there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to gathering information, right?

01:22:41.000 It's not like, you know, yes, technology changes at how you can, you know, signals, intercepts, and all the things that you can do in cyberspace, but...

01:22:51.000 Ultimately, what are they looking to do?

01:22:53.000 What's Chinese intel apparatus looking to do?

01:22:57.000 Well, they're looking to provide any information to the Chinese regime that will allow them to get to and firmly sit atop the food chain, the global ladder of success. 0.71

01:23:10.000 And at the same time, they're looking to – as part of that, they're looking to hoover up this information that will help their companies succeed in a shorter fashion, bypass all that heavy cost of research and development and just go straight to the product or whatever it may be.

01:23:26.000 They're looking to – look, they dominate – I mean, I don't know how many different ways we can go into this.

01:23:30.000 They dominate the world's global supply of rare earth minerals, right?

01:23:35.000 Now, that's not the same as – you know, most people have no – I mean, rare earth minerals are not like cobalt or lithium or copper or whatever sits in you.

01:23:43.000 But they dominate that too, right?

01:23:45.000 Well, they have been busy, yeah, trying to snap up as much of that as possible.

01:23:51.000 If you look at cobalt, I mean, the vast majority of cobalt is mined in Congo.

01:23:57.000 You look at copper, it's Chile, China, Peru, lithium is wherever, Australia, I think, China.

01:24:10.000 There's – but the rare earth minerals and rare earth minerals are found in everything from smartphones to aerospace industry, guidance systems for missiles.

01:24:19.000 That's a good one.

01:24:22.000 Electronics, medicine.

01:24:24.000 You pick anything.

01:24:25.000 Nuclear power.

01:24:27.000 So what minerals are you discussing when you're talking about rare earth minerals?

01:24:30.000 Yeah.

01:24:31.000 I'm not smart enough to tell you but I know that there's a list of rare earth minerals that are almost unpronounceable as far as I'm concerned.

01:24:42.000 But there's only a certain quantity, and if you look at where those exist, the vast majority exists in China, and they're mining actively.

01:24:52.000 They're mining all of that because, again, these particular minerals are used in a variety of products that are critical both to security purposes and defense purposes and also just success.

01:25:04.000 But that's separate from people sometimes talk about like, well, we want to go electric.

01:25:08.000 We want to build more batteries.

01:25:09.000 And the minerals that are used in batteries are not the same thing.

01:25:12.000 We're not talking about rare earth minerals there.

01:25:14.000 We're talking about nickel and other things there.

01:25:19.000 But anyway, the point being is that whether it's the Chinese or whether it's the Russians, whether it's the Iranians, whether it's North Koreans, You know, or look south of our border, right?

01:25:32.000 Latin America has gone through a sea change recently.

01:25:35.000 And, you know, Lula being back in Brazil is just one example of the number of governments who have gone from, you know, right or rightish to left or social democrat.

01:25:50.000 And so they may not have our best interests at heart either.

01:25:53.000 And so anyway, I'm not a buyer of the idea that we can be altruistic and just shut down our efforts to keep ourselves as informed as possible about where the next threat comes from.

01:26:06.000 We have to be able to do that.

01:26:07.000 And so when people say, well, you know, we can't criticize China for doing this because we do it too.

01:26:12.000 Yeah, you're right. 0.99

01:26:14.000 Fucking A. Relatively speaking, they put in the same amount of resources and money or more than we do in these endeavors? 0.98

01:26:23.000 I would argue they put in more resource.

01:26:28.000 That's different from defense spending.

01:26:30.000 But when you talk about intelligence operations, I mean, again, you look at Huawei.

01:26:39.000 I mean, we've talked about Huawei before.

01:26:41.000 And...

01:26:44.000 There was a case towards the end of this past year also, again, where we've picked up two Chinese intel agents who were busy trying to bribe what they thought was an asset who could give them information about the government's position,

01:27:00.000 prosecution of Huawei.

01:27:02.000 It turns out it was an informant working for the FBI, thank goodness.

01:27:07.000 But they were just – these guys simply working to find assets who could tell them, what is the US government, what's the DOJ doing to prosecute Huawei?

01:27:21.000 I mean that's – now do you think we can operate in China in the same way?

01:27:25.000 Well, no.

01:27:25.000 It's a much more restrictive environment.

01:27:27.000 So we have to be more clever, more creative in the way that we gather information about China's intel and plans and intentions than they do.

01:27:35.000 Isn't there also a difference in the way they've infiltrated the universities and the education system in the United States versus what we have over there?

01:27:42.000 Yeah.

01:27:43.000 Yeah.

01:27:43.000 The university system here is a really good – It's a trolling ground for them.

01:27:49.000 And it's been that way for decades.

01:27:51.000 And look, there's this case that I mentioned where they just sentenced this fellow we extradited.

01:27:57.000 He was using the university system.

01:28:02.000 Going out and finding both private sector employees and also people in academics, right, who were engaged in business related to aviation or whatever, to entice them.

01:28:12.000 And again, it tends to follow a pattern, right?

01:28:15.000 If you're a Chinese American or a Taiwanese American and you're approached by someone who spends time buttering you up and telling you how smart you are and we sure could use you to come over to China to give a presentation, You might want to think about that.

01:28:28.000 There's a reason for it.

01:28:30.000 And yet, you know, they're very good at what they do.

01:28:33.000 Look, this guy, Zhu, when he would take somebody over or he would have somebody come over to give a presentation...

01:28:41.000 The Ministry of State Security under the guise of academics or whatever would take these people out to dinner.

01:28:46.000 Meanwhile, they'd bang up his hotel room, copy his laptop, do everything that you would imagine they would do.

01:28:51.000 That's what they do.

01:28:54.000 And again, I don't...

01:28:56.000 I know people are going to disagree with this and they're always going to argue about this, but I don't – and maybe that's because I'm simple.

01:29:02.000 I never viewed it as a moral equivalency between their operations and our operations.

01:29:08.000 We have firewalls.

01:29:09.000 We have limits.

01:29:09.000 We have things that we can't do, right?

01:29:12.000 And they don't.

01:29:13.000 If it works, it works, right?

01:29:15.000 And if they think it's got potential to work as an operation, then they'll do it.

01:29:19.000 Same with the Russians and others. 0.98

01:29:21.000 I think the real fear over here is the only way we can compete with them is to do what they do with our people.

01:29:28.000 Yeah, I mean, you could argue that one of the things that we do is try to harden our defenses, right?

01:29:34.000 Part of that is making people aware of it. 0.91

01:29:37.000 And, you know, FBA, you know, they've been taking a kick in the ass for a while now because of, you know, the potential for I'm playing politics, but the Bureau has done some things really very well. 0.91

01:29:49.000 One of them is in this counterintelligence area, right? 0.88

01:29:51.000 They spend a lot of time talking or trying to talk to private sector companies about how do you improve your security posture against these threats.

01:29:58.000 And that was not something they did before.

01:30:00.000 So it's a relatively new initiative.

01:30:02.000 They go out and they talk and they try to share best practices.

01:30:04.000 It's not necessarily a two-way conversation, right?

01:30:06.000 It's not like the company is getting inside information from the Bureau about investigations or whatever.

01:30:11.000 But they're trying.

01:30:13.000 And the reason for that is the same reason why you, you know, from a technical perspective, you harden your IT systems.

01:30:20.000 It's because you got to arm everybody.

01:30:23.000 Our critical infrastructure is owned in the U.S. 80% by private companies.

01:30:31.000 80%, right?

01:30:32.000 So we can talk about, you know, trying to improve our security posture because our infrastructure, again, that's it, right?

01:30:39.000 When you talk about these things, like I said, you know, Where's the potential for conflict in 2023?

01:30:43.000 Russia, Ukraine, China.

01:30:45.000 Well, an attack on US infrastructure.

01:30:47.000 That's right up there at the very top.

01:30:50.000 And so, you know, you have to do what you can.

01:30:54.000 But when 80% of the critical infrastructure is owned by private companies, you have to work with the private companies.

01:30:58.000 You have to go out and create a dialogue, create an awareness.

01:31:01.000 And that's always been a problem in the past.

01:31:03.000 So they're trying to do that.

01:31:05.000 And then yes, we try to be better at collecting information on what the hostile nation-states are doing against us.

01:31:16.000 But that's where I draw a line.

01:31:18.000 I'm always willing to say, okay, maybe there was something there.

01:31:21.000 I haven't seen evidence to say absolutely not, so maybe there was a conspiracy.

01:31:25.000 Maybe all those things.

01:31:26.000 That's fine. 1.00

01:31:27.000 But I always draw a line at saying, fuck you. 1.00

01:31:29.000 We need the intel community. 1.00

01:31:31.000 We need them to be apolitical.

01:31:33.000 It should always be the case.

01:31:36.000 But we need them to be out there and aggressive and proactive in defending national security interests.

01:31:42.000 And, you know, I'm not going to shift off that line. 0.90

01:31:46.000 Well, one of the things that a lot of people get scared of when it comes to overstepping boundaries is some of the shit that we hear, like with the FBI, like the governor of Michigan thing. 0.98

01:31:57.000 Oh, yeah. 0.98

01:31:58.000 Yeah.

01:31:58.000 Where there was 14 people involved and 12 of them Involved in this kidnapping plot, 12 of them were FBI informants.

01:32:09.000 That seems kind of crazy. 0.99

01:32:12.000 Yeah, entrapment, that's a different fucking bucket there. 0.98

01:32:18.000 Is that just a function of them trying to get something done? 0.98

01:32:22.000 And you give people autonomy, you let them make their own decisions, and then they do something that...

01:32:29.000 A lot of people would feel like is entrapment. 0.96

01:32:31.000 And these guys who got arrested who were doing long bids, you know, one of them was saying that it was all just fantasy, he's an idiot, he wasn't really interested in it at all, but they organized it, they instigated it, they designed it. 0.95

01:32:43.000 Kept calling about it. 0.59

01:32:44.000 Yeah.

01:32:46.000 Yeah, I mean, I think the way that you avoid problems typically is by having your frontline managers being very experienced in asking questions and stress testing every potential operation and activity or investigation.

01:33:06.000 And, you know, I can't speak to that one because I wasn't in the bureau and don't know.

01:33:11.000 But, you know, I do know that if you don't have management at pretty much every level of the organization, whatever organization it is, That stress tests these things and says,

01:33:27.000 okay, why do you think this?

01:33:29.000 Why is that important?

01:33:29.000 Who told you this?

01:33:30.000 What is the purpose?

01:33:33.000 Then, yeah, it's got the potential to spin out of control.

01:33:35.000 And part of it then becomes, okay, you've got some smart prosecuting attorney out there and thinks, hey, this is going to be great, right?

01:33:41.000 This is high profile.

01:33:43.000 You know, look at that.

01:33:44.000 And so then they run with it.

01:33:45.000 And, you know, every investigation needs to be built on a very sound foundation, right?

01:33:52.000 If you start an investigation with an idea like, you know, I bet these guys might be interested in it, you've got to have evidence at the very bottom.

01:34:00.000 Otherwise, it's just sitting on this pile of sand, right?

01:34:02.000 So I think that's, you know, sometimes where these things go awry because there's such a desire to You know, develop that opportunity or that case that people forget to say, well, how did this even get started?

01:34:17.000 You know, what was the first piece of evidence or what was the first thread?

01:34:21.000 Let's go back to that and look.

01:34:23.000 Right.

01:34:24.000 Was it the idea of the two people that are being prosecuted or was it the idea of the 12 people that instigated it?

01:34:29.000 Yeah.

01:34:29.000 I mean, you can argue about it.

01:34:31.000 It's no different.

01:34:32.000 It's whether it's that sort of thing or...

01:34:34.000 It's going back to Sam Bankman-Freed.

01:34:37.000 If somebody, early on, it just said, let's go back and do due diligence from the ground up, right?

01:34:44.000 Look, you know, for all your information and security needs, Portman Square Group, that's pretty good.

01:34:50.000 We have people that do nothing but fraud investigations and due diligence.

01:34:54.000 And I will say...

01:34:58.000 Maybe once or twice, but over years now, going on a couple of decades, there have never done a major fraud investigation where the due diligence on that entity or people or opportunity was done properly at the beginning.

01:35:14.000 It just doesn't happen.

01:35:16.000 If you do the due diligence properly at the beginning and then occasionally you revisit that because people change and you're always going back and looking at the current status of events and the company's You know, structure and abilities and, you know, is what they say they do what they do.

01:35:30.000 If you do that due diligence at the outset, you don't end up with a Bernie Madoff or a Sam Bankman-Fried, right?

01:35:36.000 But all these frauds at this level, particularly those, It's driven by, I don't want to necessarily say greed, but the fear of missing the boat, right?

01:35:47.000 So it gets to a certain point, a little momentum, and nobody asks the questions.

01:35:53.000 Nobody would go back and says, well, wait a minute, let's go back to the beginning.

01:35:56.000 You know, why is this successful?

01:35:58.000 Who is this person?

01:35:59.000 What does this company do?

01:36:00.000 Are all they doing is just wash trades?

01:36:02.000 What are they doing?

01:36:04.000 How is the success built at the very beginning?

01:36:07.000 But people don't do that because they get excited.

01:36:10.000 And again, there's this fear that I'm going to miss the boat.

01:36:12.000 And so the next thing you know, you've got Shaq and all these other people out there promoting it.

01:36:16.000 And then people say, well, if they're promoting it, it's good.

01:36:18.000 That's all the due diligence I need.

01:36:20.000 Tom Brady says it's good.

01:36:21.000 Let's go.

01:36:21.000 That is a problem.

01:36:22.000 Yeah, and I should point out that I have passed up on doing things like that.

01:36:27.000 Things with crypto, things with NFTs.

01:36:32.000 Right away I was like, uh-uh.

01:36:34.000 I don't believe in it. 0.97

01:36:36.000 I think there's a lot of potential for horseshit here.

01:36:39.000 And when it comes to something like FTX, you're dealing with crypto, right?

01:36:44.000 Which is...

01:36:46.000 Relatively unregulated, right?

01:36:48.000 At least to a certain extent.

01:36:50.000 Yeah.

01:36:50.000 How would one even investigate that?

01:36:52.000 And if you got to the point where it got to, like, FTX, where...

01:36:56.000 I mean, it looks so legit, right?

01:36:59.000 They put their name on arenas.

01:37:03.000 They had the FTX Arena in Miami.

01:37:05.000 They have huge superstars doing ads for them.

01:37:09.000 There's billions and billions of dollars in assets.

01:37:13.000 And then you have this origin story of this genius wizard kid who figures all this out. 0.91

01:37:23.000 I mean, it should have raised some red flags and they found that they were just doing amphetamines and fucking each other in an apartment in the Bahamas.

01:37:31.000 What are the odds that that's 100% legit? 0.92

01:37:33.000 Wow, I'm surprised.

01:37:34.000 Yeah, that they're in this polyamorous love fest in a $40 million penthouse apartment. 0.99

01:37:41.000 That's not a fucking word we heard 15, 20 years ago, polyamorous. 0.98

01:37:44.000 Yeah, where did that come from? 0.99

01:37:47.000 Somebody came up with it.

01:37:50.000 How would one even...

01:37:53.000 Okay, let's say once that ball is rolling.

01:37:57.000 You got all these investors, you got all this money rolled in, and there's a major point here.

01:38:03.000 They were the number two contributor to the Democratic Party, which is an enormous amount of money.

01:38:07.000 And there was this one conspiracy theory.

01:38:09.000 What was it on Michael Savage's webpage?

01:38:13.000 There's this one conspiracy theory that the United States government donates money to Ukraine.

01:38:19.000 Ukraine buys stake in FTX. FTX donates money to the Democratic Party.

01:38:25.000 And that there's this direct chain.

01:38:27.000 Now, he removed that, right?

01:38:31.000 It's a conspiracy theory, unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

01:38:35.000 But when you've got that kind of money moving around, like billions went to Al made a research group and they don't understand, and he was saying, I have no knowledge of this, and you got money that's just flying all over the place and billions are missing.

01:38:51.000 Where is it going?

01:38:52.000 And how would one even step in And sort of try to get an assessment of that?

01:38:58.000 And in doing so, would you fuck up the whole thing and would all those people lose out on billions of dollars of legitimate money that they've invested?

01:39:07.000 Millions and millions of creditors, right?

01:39:08.000 Well, if it's built on sand, they're going to lose anyway at some point.

01:39:11.000 So, you know, it's always better to expose and create transparency, I would argue, when you're talking about something like this.

01:39:17.000 A couple of things.

01:39:18.000 First of all, if a company that you're looking at investing in suddenly names an arena, gets a corporate jet, buys a yacht, has associated real estate, offshore,

01:39:34.000 whatever it is, you might want to look at this thing.

01:39:37.000 Now, how do you do that?

01:39:39.000 I don't want to oversimplify it because a lot of folks in my industry and information and security industry will, you know, try to make things sound very complicated.

01:39:47.000 It's not.

01:39:48.000 You ask questions, right?

01:39:49.000 You start by saying, I want to know who these people are, right?

01:39:55.000 You start investigating the people, the company structure.

01:39:59.000 You start looking at, you know, how do these companies relate to each other?

01:40:03.000 I mean, what do the trades look like?

01:40:08.000 What are they holding?

01:40:09.000 What are the assets that they're holding?

01:40:11.000 In what names?

01:40:12.000 What are the entities?

01:40:13.000 What associated entities are there?

01:40:15.000 What are their activities?

01:40:16.000 It wouldn't have taken much to figure out that Sam Bankman-Fried was basically just banging colleagues and doing whatever drugs they were doing.

01:40:26.000 I don't even know what drugs...

01:40:27.000 A lot of amphetamines, apparently.

01:40:28.000 A lot of amphetamines?

01:40:29.000 Yeah.

01:40:30.000 That's what the lady, Caroline Ellison... 1.00

01:40:33.000 Got to keep awake, I guess, if you're doing that much banging.

01:40:36.000 I guess.

01:40:36.000 Yeah.

01:40:37.000 So it's the due diligence part.

01:40:41.000 Again, I don't want to oversimplify this, but I think I am because it's...

01:40:45.000 It's the easiest thing you can do to avoid getting wrapped up into a fraud or investing in something that goes south.

01:40:54.000 So how does one do this and where does one start?

01:40:58.000 So like when FTX, say if you're an outsider and FTX has emerged, how long has FTX even been around? 0.86

01:41:05.000 Shit, when did he start? 0.86

01:41:06.000 In 2017? 0.99

01:41:10.000 When did he start?

01:41:11.000 May 2019. Yeah, 2019. That's it?

01:41:13.000 Yeah.

01:41:14.000 Yeah.

01:41:14.000 That's wild.

01:41:15.000 Yeah.

01:41:16.000 He hadn't been around long.

01:41:17.000 And they don't even have Bitcoin, right?

01:41:19.000 They weren't even...

01:41:20.000 Is that correct, Jamie?

01:41:23.000 Without speaking from 100% knowledge, I believe this was all about trading some coin they made and share like a stock.

01:41:29.000 It was almost equivalent to a stock.

01:41:30.000 Yeah.

01:41:31.000 He basically made his money...

01:41:33.000 What they call wash trades, in part, right?

01:41:36.000 Which, all that means is, if you look at a transaction, the buyer and seller are the same person.

01:41:42.000 That's a problem.

01:41:43.000 Now, the reason why it's not a problem in crypto is because it's unregulated.

01:41:47.000 You can't do a wash trade in the financial industry.

01:41:50.000 You haven't been able to do that.

01:41:52.000 What would that be?

01:41:53.000 In 80 some odd years, right?

01:41:56.000 Wasn't part of the problem that he was calling for some sort of regulation and that's where Binance had an issue with it?

01:42:02.000 Am I wrong about that, Jamie?

01:42:04.000 You're a crypto guy.

01:42:05.000 Help us out here.

01:42:06.000 A lot of this was saying his donations were to help get influence in regulations and anything that was going to be happening with Congress and crypto because it's obviously on its way.

01:42:15.000 Right.

01:42:15.000 So he wanted to have a stake in that.

01:42:18.000 Exactly.

01:42:18.000 So he wanted to accumulate an enormous amount of money, an enormous amount of influence, and protect his money.

01:42:23.000 Right.

01:42:23.000 He's looking for plans and intentions of Capitol Hill, basically.

01:42:25.000 I mean, from an Intel perspective, he's looking to see where are they going to go with this so that I can either You know, somehow block that effort or create an effort that's more advantageous to him.

01:42:37.000 It seems like it was effective, at least in its intention, because like Maxine Waters is like, you know, well, he doesn't really want to come in and testify.

01:42:46.000 Sam's a good guy.

01:42:47.000 They brought him in.

01:42:48.000 The White House brought him in to talk about the pandemic, apparently.

01:42:52.000 What?

01:42:52.000 This is general information.

01:42:54.000 They said they're asking about crypto. 0.98

01:42:55.000 If you're going to fucking ask someone about the pandemic, would it be that guy on the right? 0.99

01:42:59.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:43:00.000 I mean, I would love to see a conversation between the guy on the left, Biden, and the guy on the right.

01:43:05.000 The guy on the left is making up words, the guy on the right is on amphetamines.

01:43:09.000 Come on, man.

01:43:10.000 Come on, man.

01:43:11.000 Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre conceded that four meetings may have also covered general information about crypto.

01:43:21.000 Between senior Biden officials were about the pandemic. 0.99

01:43:26.000 Like, what could that fucking young kid doing speed fucking his neighbors? 0.99

01:43:31.000 Well, look, here's the thing. 1.00

01:43:33.000 A, nobody in the White House really understands crypto to begin with, right?

01:43:36.000 It's...

01:43:37.000 Seems like very few people understand crypto, really.

01:43:40.000 But just in terms of looking at this guy's situation, it's like with Bernie Madoff.

01:43:46.000 If you had gone and if someone had taken the time early days with Madoff, said, I'm going to go visit some basics.

01:43:52.000 I'm going to go look where his accountant sits.

01:43:54.000 Oh, really? 0.99

01:43:55.000 He's sitting in a fucking small office in a strip mall? 0.99

01:43:57.000 And yet this guy's supposed to be king of the world at this point? 0.99

01:44:00.000 Well, how about these guys?

01:44:01.000 Do you know what they were using?

01:44:04.000 QuickBooks.

01:44:04.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:44:05.000 They were using QuickBooks. 1.00

01:44:07.000 The shit that, like, a guy uses if he has a fucking small bookstore. 1.00

01:44:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:44:12.000 They were using that. 1.00

01:44:13.000 You just, I mean, you compile information, and maybe one or two pieces of it, like, okay, you look at the guy and go, this guy doesn't look like a rocket scientist, and, you know, his lifestyle, you look at lifestyle issues, maybe they're bizarre, but you compile as much information about the entire apparatus as possible,

01:44:30.000 And I would argue that anybody in their right mind, if they had taken the time to do significant due diligence, would have stepped back and said, oh, no, not doing this guy.

01:44:38.000 You know, I don't care how many celebrities he's got put in there.

01:44:41.000 And, you know, and he was going after celebrities for a reason, just like your name over an arena.

01:44:46.000 Right. 0.99

01:44:47.000 Because it gives you fucking credibility. 0.99

01:44:49.000 The same reason why he's donating so much money. 0.99

01:44:50.000 Yes. 0.98

01:44:51.000 And the donations, anybody who thinks he wasn't doing that to exert leverage or to gather information, again, naive, ignorant, whatever. 0.95

01:45:02.000 Well, his mother was a big-time Democratic operative too, right? 0.96

01:45:05.000 Yeah.

01:45:05.000 So that was probably part of his connection.

01:45:09.000 Yeah, it's a shame because a lot of people were hurt, whether they claw that money back or not.

01:45:15.000 Millions of people.

01:45:16.000 Yeah, and some of the folks in the Democratic Party are saying, well, we're going to give some money back, but- How?

01:45:23.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:45:23.000 Where's the money?

01:45:24.000 Where's it coming from?

01:45:26.000 If the money's all nonsense, which is what a lot of crypto is, once it collapses, it's nonsense.

01:45:31.000 There's no legitimate assets, right?

01:45:33.000 Right.

01:45:33.000 And then you have to also ask yourself, and I think some of the- There's some coverage.

01:45:38.000 I think there's going to be more talking about the nature of trading.

01:45:41.000 Again, wash trades are illegal in the financial industry for a reason, right? 0.92

01:45:46.000 Explain wash trades again. 0.98

01:45:51.000 It's like with my book.

01:45:53.000 You might have heard about my book, Company Rules.

01:45:55.000 I heard about it.

01:45:55.000 It's being released on the 18th of January on Scribd.

01:45:58.000 How does this have to do with anything?

01:45:59.000 I'm going to tell you.

01:46:01.000 If I really was desperate and I said, I really want my book to become a bestseller, well, one of the things I could do is I could set up a bunch of fake accounts on Amazon or wherever.

01:46:15.000 And then I could put money into all those different accounts.

01:46:18.000 And then I could start buying up my book.

01:46:20.000 I know someone who did that.

01:46:21.000 You did.

01:46:23.000 In a sense, that's a wash tray.

01:46:24.000 Is that illegal?

01:46:24.000 You're on both sides.

01:46:26.000 It's illegal in the financial industry.

01:46:28.000 But see, you remember, crypto is – what is it?

01:46:31.000 It's not a currency.

01:46:32.000 It's a piece of property.

01:46:36.000 So they haven't decided.

01:46:39.000 They're still trying to figure it out, which, again, I would argue is one of the reasons why – You know, SPF was putting money into politics.

01:46:45.000 You know, if you can get ahead of the game, I'll tell you as an example, there's a reason why I'm telling this story.

01:46:53.000 Early days of Iraq, I'm talking like 2003, 2004, 2005, my company had, you know, a lot of people there because we were supporting security operations for a lot of the infrastructure companies, you know, and so they're out there trying to rebuild Parts of the country,

01:47:10.000 they're doing things.

01:47:11.000 Well, they've got to have security, and they've got to have people handling a variety of problems with them.

01:47:16.000 So we had gotten out there very early.

01:47:18.000 We were out there in early 2003, right, at the very beginning.

01:47:22.000 And it didn't take long.

01:47:26.000 You know, at first, there were several months where it was relatively peaceful. 0.99

01:47:29.000 Shit started to hit the fan out there in about September of 2003, right? 0.98

01:47:32.000 Really started going south, and then it started getting violent. 0.99

01:47:40.000 Ballooned, right?

01:47:40.000 Suddenly, you couldn't swing at that cat without hitting another security company.

01:47:43.000 They just popped up out of nowhere.

01:47:44.000 You know, you'd be out there and say, who are you guys with?

01:47:47.000 And they'd say some company you'd never heard of, right?

01:47:50.000 And just put together because people saw opportunity.

01:47:52.000 I'm going to get some government contracts, right?

01:47:53.000 I'm going to work for these companies.

01:47:55.000 I'm going to do this.

01:47:55.000 And they were pulling people who had no business being out in a hostile environment, right, and providing security.

01:48:02.000 So then they started having problems.

01:48:04.000 There were all sorts of issues.

01:48:06.000 We started thinking, okay, this has got to get regulated, right?

01:48:10.000 State Department and Pentagon, they're going to come in and they're going to say, no, we've got to regulate the private security industry that's operating out here.

01:48:17.000 We know we need it.

01:48:19.000 But it's just unregulated.

01:48:20.000 So as part of that, once we realized that was going to happen, we got together with some of the more reputable security firms that are operating out there and said, let's form an association, right?

01:48:31.000 So that we can get ahead of the curve, right?

01:48:33.000 And we can help define what the regulations are for these security companies that are out there operating.

01:48:37.000 It's in our best interest, right?

01:48:39.000 And I would argue it's no different than what SBF was doing, you know, kind of spreading the cash around.

01:48:46.000 So that he could understand where the regulations were going to come from, and he could get ahead of the curve.

01:48:50.000 And, you know, so, hey, from an intel perspective, you know, bravo.

01:48:56.000 That's the right intuition.

01:48:58.000 But, again...

01:48:59.000 But he didn't recognize his vulnerabilities. 1.00

01:49:01.000 Didn't recognize his vulnerabilities because he believed his own bullshit, right? 0.99

01:49:04.000 And, you know, he's not a rocket scientist, unlike people thought. 1.00

01:49:07.000 Well, also, he's on amphetamines.

01:49:10.000 Which leads people to make rash, impulsive decisions and, you know, you get hyper-confident.

01:49:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:49:17.000 So I think he's, you know, it's...

01:49:20.000 The amazing thing is, if you've been involved in fraud investigations for as long as we have, there was no surprise at the point where it happened.

01:49:29.000 Now, you know, it would have been...

01:49:35.000 I guess, man, I'm probably the wrong person to talk about this because I've never been a real believer in crypto, right? 0.93

01:49:41.000 In part because, as you can see from the fucking cigar lighter, I'm a fairly simple person, right?

01:49:45.000 So the likelihood that I'm going to understand crypto like Jamie does is zero. 0.98

01:49:50.000 Even Jamie barely understands it.

01:49:52.000 I don't want to claim that I understand it fully.

01:49:54.000 I get what people are saying, but, you know, I don't...

01:49:57.000 I'm still watching.

01:50:00.000 Jamie vests a little and watches from afar.

01:50:03.000 But the allure of it is, is decentralized currency.

01:50:11.000 So you don't have to rely on the Federal Reserve and interest rates getting jacked up and all this stuff that people think fucks with fiat currency.

01:50:20.000 They say, well, if we have decentralized currency, And then, you know, we allow it to flourish and, you know, you give the people power to trade and invest and then you get to this point.

01:50:32.000 But what they were dealing with, this is where it gets really weird, right?

01:50:36.000 They were dealing with not just crypto, but also with tokens. 0.99

01:50:39.000 Now, what are the fuck? 0.99

01:50:40.000 That's where it all went south, right? 1.00

01:50:42.000 Is that Binance guy?

01:50:44.000 Yeah, even I was looking...

01:50:45.000 There's a story now about Tom Brady's involvement, because you asked me about that the other day.

01:50:49.000 It says that he was a celebrity endorser, and he was given...

01:50:53.000 I don't know if he put money in, and an exchange was given back 110,000 shares or tokens, and those are now devalued to zero or...

01:51:02.000 I don't know.

01:51:03.000 I don't know what they're worth.

01:51:04.000 And isn't that, that was a strategy of the Binance guy to tank it, right?

01:51:08.000 Like he decided to unload all of his tokens, right?

01:51:12.000 Because he had an interest in FTX. He unloaded all of his tokens.

01:51:16.000 They didn't really have the capital to cover that. 0.99

01:51:19.000 And then everybody went, oh my god, it's a fucking Ponzi scheme. 0.95

01:51:23.000 And then, like Madoff, after 2008, when people wanted to withdraw their money... 0.99

01:51:28.000 Right, you can't.

01:51:28.000 You can't.

01:51:29.000 People are calling.

01:51:29.000 Right.

01:51:30.000 They're saying, okay, that's it.

01:51:31.000 And then you say, okay, now you've got to use other funds to pay that off, and the next thing you know, you're in a hole you can't get out of.

01:51:37.000 Is the allure that the people that got in early...

01:51:40.000 Go ahead, go ahead, put it up.

01:51:42.000 Adblocker popped.

01:51:43.000 Oh.

01:51:43.000 Is the allure that the people that did get in early and did invest and then pulled their money out, they did make money.

01:51:49.000 So some people made enormous profits, and there was a financial institute, I'll say, Binance is bleeding assets, 12 billion gone in less than 60 days.

01:52:00.000 Well, duh, buddy. 0.98

01:52:02.000 I don't know why he didn't see this coming, why he tanks FTX and he doesn't realize that people are going to look at the whole industry and go, holy shit, this is all nuts. 0.99

01:52:09.000 We're good to go. 0.80

01:52:27.000 In the wake of the collapse of rival FTX, investors have been pulling their crypto in recent weeks, and despite the assurance from CEO Shangpeng Zhao that the situation is stabilized, outflows are accelerating.

01:52:41.000 Customers withdrew a net $360 million on Friday, according to...

01:52:46.000 I mean, rightfully so.

01:52:48.000 Right.

01:52:49.000 According to data from crypto data firm...

01:52:52.000 Imagine being a crypto data firm.

01:52:55.000 Jesus Christ.

01:53:03.000 Yeah.

01:53:10.000 Yeah.

01:53:32.000 So they're just hemorrhaging money.

01:53:37.000 I mean, first of all- And confidence.

01:53:39.000 I'm glad they went with CZ because I was enjoying listening to you pronounce- It was a rough one.

01:53:44.000 Yeah, that's a tough one.

01:53:46.000 That's a tough one.

01:53:47.000 They also use a similar thing as FTX. They have a coin called the Binance Coin, BNB, and another one which is based off the US dollar, and those have also lost a bunch of value.

01:53:59.000 What does that mean, though?

01:54:00.000 And you have to think about the value, too, in terms of what is actual value, right?

01:54:04.000 Because Forbes also, and they're not the only ones, but there's been some study about what's the level of trade going on in that business that is, again, going back to the same phrase, wash trades.

01:54:18.000 So basically just...

01:54:19.000 You know, meaningless trades, right?

01:54:21.000 The whole purpose of doing the wash trades is to up the volume of trading, right?

01:54:25.000 Which, you know, your hope is that will generate an increase in value, right?

01:54:29.000 So, you know, a lot of what SBF was doing, as an example, was just, you know, selling low and Sorry, selling and then buying, or buying and then selling at a little bit of a higher price.

01:54:41.000 Sorry, I got that mixed backwards.

01:54:42.000 So he was doing this just to jack up his own assets, the assets of the company.

01:54:47.000 And if you think about, I mean, if Forbes is anywhere near correct, and some of the other estimates are anywhere near correct, and 50% of all the activity in crypto trade is basically just that, right?

01:54:58.000 Again, buyer and seller on the same, or on both sides of the transaction.

01:55:02.000 That's what they're saying.

01:55:03.000 And again, what do I know?

01:55:05.000 I'm the wrong person to talk about this.

01:55:06.000 I'm talking about it from the perspective of someone who's been involved in fraud investigations for a long time.

01:55:11.000 And I guess I go back to the same story, which is...

01:55:14.000 God, just a little bit of due diligence can save people a lot of heartache and loss.

01:55:20.000 And we see that no matter how big – Fortune 50 companies, large investment firms, large banking institutions, right?

01:55:27.000 Sometimes they just don't do it.

01:55:29.000 They don't do the due diligence because – hey, look.

01:55:32.000 20 years ago, I worked with this guy.

01:55:34.000 He was at some other institution.

01:55:35.000 He's a great guy.

01:55:36.000 Let's just – For whatever reason, due diligence costs almost, in the scheme of things, compared to a fraud investigation, costs almost nothing.

01:55:44.000 And everybody can do it.

01:55:47.000 It's not just like you have to go out to a company.

01:55:50.000 You don't have to be a big firm or a consulting firm or whatever to do it.

01:55:53.000 People can do their own due diligence because there's so much information online nowadays.

01:55:58.000 But at some point, you also want to dig a little bit deeper.

01:56:01.000 You probably want to go out and actually talk to people, find out what their experience is.

01:56:05.000 We've seen deals overseas where people have invested in large companies and have just gotten massive holes shot in their books because they failed to just do the simple things, go out there and actually investigate the business and see whether the books they're seeing are the actual books.

01:56:20.000 So it's, you know, I can't say it often enough.

01:56:23.000 You know, two things people can do to protect their businesses.

01:56:26.000 One is do proper due diligence ahead of a key hire, an investment, any sort of venture.

01:56:34.000 And then the other is buy a crosscut shredder.

01:56:36.000 And don't put information in the bins and, you know, companies like mine pick it up.

01:56:42.000 So these companies that, these places like Binance and FTX, what's the future of those things?

01:56:52.000 I mean, at one point in time, just very recently, they were enormous power structures.

01:56:59.000 They had incredible resources.

01:57:02.000 And now it's kind of evaporated, or at least the confidence in it is rapidly evaporating.

01:57:08.000 So what's the future of these things?

01:57:10.000 Well, I think they missed the boat in a way, right?

01:57:14.000 Decentralized is not the same as unregulated, right?

01:57:18.000 And I think the reluctance, anytime you talked about regulation over the past couple of years, right?

01:57:24.000 People would just like, whether they were libertarians or crypto enthusiasts or whatever, go, ah!

01:57:29.000 Right.

01:57:30.000 They don't want to get the government involved.

01:57:31.000 They don't want to get the government.

01:57:32.000 But there's certain reasons to have some regulation, right?

01:57:35.000 And this is a good example of how you can prevent...

01:57:40.000 Not all the time.

01:57:42.000 Some people...

01:57:42.000 Occasionally, there's going to be someone who's actually really sophisticated and smart, and they're going to sneak through.

01:57:48.000 But some regulation, by definition, is not a bad thing.

01:57:53.000 Just by saying the word, it doesn't mean that you're saying, I want to turn it over to the government, leave the government in charge of it all.

01:57:59.000 No, but you're looking to try to create an environment that protects investors.

01:58:05.000 But in the Bernie Madoff situation, he was regulated.

01:58:08.000 Yeah.

01:58:09.000 And he's an example of someone who...

01:58:12.000 Was very well motivated to do what he was doing.

01:58:17.000 Was sufficiently experienced and credible enough that, again, he got through because the same thing that we talked about.

01:58:26.000 You know, just a failure to do due diligence.

01:58:29.000 And greed.

01:58:30.000 Because people were making enormous profits.

01:58:33.000 The return on their investment was very high. 0.98

01:58:35.000 And people, even in the early days of Bernie Madoff, were calling bullshit. 0.92

01:58:39.000 They were saying that this doesn't seem to make sense. 0.96

01:58:41.000 There were people out there who were kind of screaming into the wind talking about it.

01:58:46.000 And there were people that were doing this about FTX as well, right?

01:58:49.000 Yeah.

01:58:50.000 Less so. 0.99

01:58:51.000 Because they would get drowned out by the, you know, no regulation, you know, bullshit, you don't understand crypto. 1.00

01:58:57.000 Mm-hmm. 0.99

01:58:59.000 You know, people that were calling bullshit on SBF, I think, were doing it in part just because of appearance, right, and sort of lack of understanding.

01:59:09.000 You know, the lack of information, lack of transparency should be another indicator, just like buying a corporate jet or I'd love to name an arena after Portman Square Group, but I don't think that's going to happen.

01:59:21.000 But if you had an enormous corporation like Staples Center, isn't there a value in naming an arena after your company?

01:59:29.000 Yeah, that's different than a small company.

01:59:34.000 Crypto exchange.

01:59:35.000 Well, is it small if it's worth billions and billions of dollars?

01:59:38.000 I mean, it doesn't seem that small.

01:59:40.000 I don't know if it's...

01:59:40.000 I mean, again, it's relative value.

01:59:43.000 Is it really worth billions and billions of dollars, or is it...

01:59:45.000 Well, obviously not.

01:59:46.000 We'll find out now.

01:59:47.000 But, I mean, if you think about the fact that they were that profitable inside of three years, if they really did start in 2019, by 2022, the fucking end of the year, the house of cards had already fallen down.

01:59:58.000 Yeah, and it's given, like, whatever, $30 million, the democratic causes and... 0.97

02:00:02.000 The number two donor next to George Soros, which is fucking terrifying.

02:00:07.000 That guy, how old is George Soros? 0.97

02:00:08.000 It's a good question.

02:00:09.000 Yeah.

02:00:10.000 He's like a vampire.

02:00:11.000 I had a conversation with the governor of Texas about him, about with Greg Abbott, where he was explaining to me what George Soros does. 0.96

02:00:17.000 And it's fucking terrifying that he donates money to a very progressive, very leftist Whether it's a DA or whatever politician, and then funds someone who's even further left than them to go against them and just keeps moving it along. 0.68

02:00:34.000 So he's playing like a global game and that he enjoys doing it. 0.98

02:00:39.000 Yeah, he enjoys doing it, but it's telling, right?

02:00:44.000 He understood early on where you wanted to seize power, right?

02:00:49.000 And we sometimes think, oh, I'm going to...

02:00:53.000 A senator, that's the pinnacle of success.

02:00:55.000 Well, it's not really.

02:00:57.000 It's the DAs and it's the state-level politicians.

02:01:01.000 That's where real change occurs and where things can happen. 1.00

02:01:05.000 And before you know it, it's like, what the fuck? 0.99

02:01:07.000 Or real corrosion. 0.99

02:01:09.000 Or real corrosion.

02:01:09.000 That's what's scary is it seems like he funds corrosion.

02:01:13.000 It's like he wants these cities to fall apart.

02:01:15.000 He wants crime to flourish.

02:01:18.000 It's almost like he's an evil person in a Batman movie.

02:01:22.000 You know what I'm saying?

02:01:23.000 Well, I mean, he made his real fortune by almost busting the Bank of England, right?

02:01:28.000 So he's not, yeah, this guy is not, you know, he's not out there for truth and justice.

02:01:34.000 And he's got to be deep into his 80s.

02:01:36.000 All right, it's 92. 92!

02:01:38.000 So you've got to wonder, like, what keeps that guy fucking motivated? 0.89

02:01:42.000 Do we have a picture of him, a recent picture of him? 0.97

02:01:43.000 He got married in 2013, too.

02:01:46.000 Nice! 0.94

02:01:47.000 She is in love with him.

02:01:49.000 Nice! 0.94

02:01:50.000 Look at her, slim and young and full of vigor.

02:01:53.000 Wow.

02:01:54.000 Do you think he drinks her blood to stay young?

02:01:58.000 Is that what's going on here?

02:01:59.000 I don't think he's staying young.

02:02:01.000 If he doesn't...

02:02:01.000 It's not working.

02:02:02.000 It's not working at all.

02:02:04.000 It's kind of wild.

02:02:05.000 She's cute. 0.95

02:02:06.000 Wow.

02:02:06.000 Married for third time.

02:02:08.000 Look at him.

02:02:09.000 Man.

02:02:10.000 But just what a wild thing to do with your money.

02:02:13.000 I mean, it kind of makes sense.

02:02:15.000 He fires back.

02:02:18.000 What does it say?

02:02:19.000 Which one are you looking at?

02:02:20.000 Reid Hoffman, George Soros, backed media firm to combat disinformation.

02:02:24.000 Oh! 0.60

02:02:25.000 Combat disinformation.

02:02:27.000 These stories could be from any time of the year.

02:02:30.000 Billionaire backed new media firm to combat disinformation.

02:02:34.000 What disinformation, sir?

02:02:37.000 How much money did he put in there?

02:02:38.000 Here's good.

02:02:39.000 Why it matters.

02:02:40.000 Good Information Inc., that's the name of the company, aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information.

02:02:50.000 As a part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies.

02:02:55.000 There you go.

02:02:56.000 Oh my god.

02:02:57.000 If you can influence on the local level.

02:02:59.000 Look at this.

02:03:00.000 The company's called Acronym.

02:03:03.000 How hilarious is that?

02:03:04.000 Acronym for Acronym?

02:03:06.000 Isn't that hilarious?

02:03:07.000 A former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called Acronym.

02:03:11.000 An acronym invested in for-profit companies that built media and technology solutions for progressive causes.

02:03:19.000 It ran one of the largest digital campaigns to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election, totaling $100 million.

02:03:26.000 One of the companies it's invested in called Shadow made headlines last year for contributing to the delayed reporting of the Iowa caucus results.

02:03:35.000 Wow.

02:03:38.000 It's all very weird.

02:03:40.000 It's like, I mean, this guy's obviously been involved in politics at a very high level for decades and decades, and it seems like it's like his fun little game he plays.

02:03:50.000 If you had all that money, though, wouldn't you do something about the bags under your eyes?

02:03:53.000 I mean, that was a lot of He can get that lady with the bags under his eyes? 1.00

02:03:57.000 Why does he give a fuck? 1.00

02:03:58.000 Yeah, I guess that's a good point. 0.99

02:04:00.000 I mean, you would think that if you had that much money, you're 92 years old, you just want to go fly fishing and sit on the deck and drink coffee and talk to your grandchildren and just enjoy your life.

02:04:09.000 But he apparently does not want to do that.

02:04:12.000 He likes being the puppet master.

02:04:13.000 That's what's wild.

02:04:14.000 Yeah, he likes pulling strings and he likes having that influence and...

02:04:18.000 That impact, and I guess, you know, what the hell, I mean, it's...

02:04:21.000 But he's uniquely public about it.

02:04:23.000 That's what's fascinating.

02:04:24.000 He's like, this is all known information.

02:04:26.000 Right.

02:04:26.000 That this guy is involved in all these different things that he has his hands in.

02:04:30.000 Yeah, and you could argue that's, I mean, at least there's some transparency there as opposed to, you know, dark money going into campaigns and other things, and, you know, so it's, but it is, at 92, I had no idea he was 92. Good God.

02:04:43.000 You gotta wonder, like, What's his endgame? 0.99

02:04:47.000 Like, when does he wrap this fucking project up? 0.99

02:04:50.000 Well, I think it is an indication, though. 0.99

02:04:52.000 It is smart.

02:04:53.000 And I think...

02:04:54.000 I don't know that it's going to change anything.

02:04:57.000 I don't know where I'm going with this.

02:04:58.000 But I think there was an awareness over the past couple of years, maybe because of the pandemic and people sitting at home and reading more news and watching what's happening in their local community because they're not traveling.

02:05:07.000 Yeah.

02:05:08.000 Of the importance of knowing who your city council is or knowing who your, you know, state congressman is or, you know, whatever, the head of the PTA, whatever it might be, and being aware of the importance of that because we all, again, we were so focused and people almost,

02:05:25.000 you know, okay, fine, maybe I'll go out and vote for a U.S. congressman or a senator, but I'm not going to, you know, take the time to go out for local elections.

02:05:32.000 Right. 0.96

02:05:33.000 And honestly, God, you know, if you want to bitch and moan, then, you know, you're... 1.00

02:05:37.000 Obligation on the other side of that is you got to take part.

02:05:41.000 Well, I don't think people realize the implications that it had on their actual lives, what politicians, what rules they could and couldn't enact until the pandemic, until they shut down businesses, shut down restaurants, mandated certain things,

02:05:56.000 mandated vaccines for children in schools.

02:05:58.000 When you saw politicians doing things like that, that's when people started freaking out. 0.99

02:06:02.000 Like, Jesus, I didn't know you guys had that kind of fucking power. 0.99

02:06:04.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

02:06:05.000 No, I think that's why we learned a shit ton about schooling, right?

02:06:09.000 As an example, right?

02:06:10.000 I know that's kind of one of those conversations that's been taking place for quite a bit and it's nothing new, but I mean, just from a personal perspective, you know, we started looking at, you know, not just the curriculum, but just the quality of the education itself, right?

02:06:23.000 And the process that's involved.

02:06:26.000 Well, I got to sit in.

02:06:28.000 Go ahead.

02:06:28.000 Oh, I was going to say, our kids, you know, not our kids, but we as parents, we're not well suited to homeschooling.

02:06:34.000 That was just never going to happen.

02:06:37.000 You've got to be really motivated and really organized to homeschool correctly.

02:06:43.000 You've got to know math.

02:06:44.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:06:45.000 I don't fucking know math. 0.99

02:06:46.000 Even my 11-year-old, at the time he was, what, 9 and 10 years old? 0.99

02:06:50.000 Yeah.

02:06:50.000 And he knew, you know, after the first couple of efforts from getting me to help him with his math, I'm like, you gotta ask your mom.

02:06:58.000 I became basically, what did I do?

02:07:00.000 I was like the PE instructor and the lunch lady.

02:07:02.000 That was my two jobs.

02:07:04.000 I sat in my daughter's room while she was on Zoom classes once, and I was like, oh my god. 0.96

02:07:08.000 This is so fucking boring, and this teacher is so unmotivated. 0.94

02:07:12.000 And this was a private school. 0.99

02:07:14.000 This is something we're paying for. 0.99

02:07:15.000 I was like, this is a fucking travesty, because these kids are just getting beaten down by boredom. 1.00

02:07:20.000 And when they finally can shut their laptop, they're like, fuck. 1.00

02:07:24.000 And then they can't even go outside, and they can't meet with their friends. 1.00

02:07:27.000 I was like, this is a goddamn disaster. 0.99

02:07:28.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:07:29.000 We were lucky in that, I mean, because of where we were.

02:07:31.000 Yes.

02:07:31.000 I mean, God, I don't know how we would have done it if we'd been living in an apartment in New York City or something.

02:07:35.000 Right, when everyone's scared to go outside. 1.00

02:07:37.000 Oh, shit. 1.00

02:07:37.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:07:38.000 But at least our kids could, you know, they could go outside and they could go up in the foothills and they could mountain bike and they could, you know.

02:07:43.000 So we were fortunate in that regard, but it was just a... 1.00

02:07:47.000 It was a shit show. 0.99

02:07:49.000 We finally put the two youngest into private school. 1.00

02:07:52.000 We moved them out of the public schools because it just wasn't happening, right?

02:07:55.000 And so we put them in a local Catholic school.

02:07:58.000 My wife is Catholic.

02:08:01.000 I'm not.

02:08:02.000 And so we put them in there.

02:08:05.000 And it was helpful in the sense that they were open.

02:08:09.000 Right.

02:08:09.000 But both of them, by the time they got in there, right, they had no grounding in Catholic Church or, you know, mass.

02:08:16.000 And they did a regular mass every Tuesday.

02:08:19.000 And I don't know if I told this story or not, but the middle boy, Sluggo, who's incredibly funny...

02:08:25.000 But he would go into Mass, and they were standing, and they were sitting, and they were standing, and they were sitting.

02:08:29.000 It goes on for an hour, right?

02:08:31.000 And they have this priest who's a great guy, but it would just—he just came banging on. 1.00

02:08:36.000 Holy shit. 0.99

02:08:37.000 Anyway, one day, he legitimately—I think it was every Tuesday was the Mass. 0.99

02:08:41.000 He legitimately just went over, right?

02:08:43.000 His legs locked up.

02:08:44.000 He passed out, right?

02:08:45.000 Boom! 0.99

02:08:46.000 Just went out.

02:08:47.000 So next thing you know, they're calling us.

02:08:49.000 They get him away.

02:08:50.000 He'd take him to the nurse's office and call us and say, well, you got to come pick him up because, you know, he's fainted.

02:08:56.000 And so we can't keep him at school for the day.

02:08:57.000 You got to come get him.

02:08:58.000 Right.

02:08:59.000 Okay.

02:09:00.000 Next Tuesday comes around.

02:09:02.000 I get a call.

02:09:03.000 He faints again.

02:09:04.000 It's a good move. 1.00

02:09:05.000 And I go, oh, fuck. 1.00

02:09:06.000 Third Tuesday. 1.00

02:09:08.000 Little son of a bitch faints again. 1.00

02:09:10.000 And I go in, I say, do you think? 1.00

02:09:13.000 Do you think maybe he's faking it?

02:09:16.000 And my boy Sluggo was standing next to me, and it was like, clearly I broke the guy code. 0.98

02:09:20.000 Because he's looking at me like, you've got to be shitting me. 0.88

02:09:22.000 You're going to call me out on this? 0.99

02:09:24.000 And one of the ladies was like, oh, no, no, it's legitimate. 0.99

02:09:30.000 Anyway, so he became known as the mass fainter.

02:09:35.000 And eventually, once the schools opened up again, we pulled them out of school.

02:09:38.000 It was a great school, but we pulled them out, put them back in public school where they knew most of their friends and everything were there.

02:09:43.000 But it was an awareness almost immediately that we were not suited to homeschooling. 0.94

02:09:51.000 Because we're fucking busy anyway, right? 0.93

02:09:53.000 And that's great if you've got nothing to do other than homeschool your kid. 1.00

02:09:58.000 But imagine if you're like a single mom or a single dad and you have to do this shit. 0.99

02:10:02.000 And you're supposed to be working, too. 0.99

02:10:03.000 And on top of that, you can't afford a laptop, right?

02:10:05.000 Or you don't have Wi-Fi in your home. 0.93

02:10:07.000 People in certain sectors just got fucked over, right?

02:10:12.000 And people talk about the kids dropping out of school, disappearing in part because they were going to private schools. 0.99

02:10:17.000 But I think a lot of kids just of a certain category is probably just like, fuck it. 0.99

02:10:21.000 I don't need to go to school. 0.99

02:10:23.000 Well, it certainly opened people's eyes to the importance of, like, who are your local politicians?

02:10:29.000 Who is the mayor?

02:10:30.000 Who is the governor?

02:10:32.000 Who's enacting rules?

02:10:34.000 Because the rules were different all over the country.

02:10:36.000 I mean, I remember when they opened up things in Texas, people were freaking out.

02:10:40.000 Everyone's gonna die!

02:10:41.000 And nothing happened.

02:10:43.000 When did you move to Texas?

02:10:45.000 May of...

02:10:45.000 Well, I started looking in May of 2020. I started looking early because I just had this feeling.

02:10:51.000 I was like, I don't like where this is going. 0.99

02:10:53.000 These motherfuckers said two weeks to flatten the curve. 1.00

02:10:56.000 And it just seems like they're enjoying putting the lockdown on people. 0.99

02:11:01.000 And once people have power over telling people what they can and can't do, and then they also...

02:11:08.000 If they...

02:11:10.000 Choose to turn it around and open things up.

02:11:13.000 Now they're responsible for whatever decisions they make.

02:11:16.000 So they're going to hedge their bets and they're going to be cautious, even if it greatly financially hurts the people that they're ruling and governing.

02:11:25.000 Right.

02:11:26.000 It means you've got to put your head above the wall, make a decision, and now you're a target if you made the wrong decision, which is why a lot of shit never ever gets done because nobody wants to take the risk of making a decision one way or the other. 0.92

02:11:36.000 Right. 0.55

02:11:36.000 So it's more that than a conspiracy. 0.55

02:11:39.000 I didn't buy that it was a conspiracy.

02:11:40.000 Like, there's a lot of people that thought this was a conspiracy to crush America.

02:11:43.000 And I'm like, it's just natural human nature.

02:11:46.000 In the beginning, it was a normal inclination to shut things down.

02:11:50.000 Everybody felt that it was the right thing to do.

02:11:52.000 Flatten the curve and all that jazz and stop the spread.

02:11:55.000 Everybody was freaked out because it was scary because it was a new thing.

02:11:58.000 And so it made sense.

02:12:00.000 But then once it stopped making sense and we got more data on it, like I have a friend, a good friend who's a doctor, and his initial concern was seriously cautious.

02:12:10.000 And then as he started looking at the data, he goes, The understanding of this is that it's about twice as bad as the flu.

02:12:16.000 He goes, this reaction that we're having, the way we're treating this is absolutely wrong.

02:12:20.000 And he did it like sort of an about-face, confronted with new information.

02:12:26.000 It became a bit of a religion, in a way.

02:12:28.000 It was a little bit of a cult-following.

02:12:32.000 As to how righteous can I be?

02:12:33.000 I'm going to be the most righteous, right?

02:12:35.000 I'm going to follow it to a T rather than saying, look, I'm going to look at, you know, it's science theoretically is you stress test everything, right?

02:12:41.000 You question everything and you always look for alternative answers and theories and you test them, right?

02:12:47.000 That's what you're supposed to do.

02:12:49.000 And I think it became one of those things where, much like, you know, when you question, okay, what are we doing in Ukraine?

02:12:55.000 What's the endgame? 1.00

02:12:56.000 Suddenly it's, ah, you're a fucking Russian puppet. 1.00

02:12:58.000 Well, no, I'm just asking you, you know, what's the endgame? 1.00

02:13:01.000 And so...

02:13:02.000 You have to be able to ask that when you're dealing with something that's that enormous.

02:13:05.000 But we're moving into a world where...

02:13:10.000 Yeah, it's strange.

02:13:13.000 You can't ask the obvious questions, right?

02:13:16.000 Again, it's like with SPF. You ask questions, hey, you know, why are you investing?

02:13:20.000 You know, obviously you don't understand crypto.

02:13:23.000 Or, you know, Tom Brady did, so I'm doing it.

02:13:25.000 It's a strange environment that we live in.

02:13:28.000 It makes it more difficult, I think, now for people to, at a time when information's at your fingertips, it makes it more difficult for people to ask logical questions, right? 0.98

02:13:37.000 Because they're afraid of getting kicked in the ass, you know, by someone who views you as a threat to their particular belief system. 0.96

02:13:43.000 That's a big problem with social media, right? 0.99

02:13:45.000 There's so many people with opinions now.

02:13:47.000 And then if you're cautious and, you know, especially during the pandemic, it's way less pushback.

02:13:54.000 And if you're one of those people that's like, you know what?

02:13:57.000 I think we're doing this the wrong way, and I think we need to open up.

02:13:59.000 People were freaking the fuck out.

02:14:01.000 Yeah.

02:14:01.000 We had an interesting debate in Idaho, and it worked out.

02:14:06.000 We were in a good position, like I said.

02:14:09.000 I think we were very fortunate to be out there and go through the whole process at that point.

02:14:13.000 But I don't know.

02:14:16.000 I have a feeling that we're not...

02:14:18.000 You know, people are already talking about, well, what's the next pandemic?

02:14:21.000 And what's that going to look like?

02:14:22.000 And I don't know that we are very good as a society of learning lessons.

02:14:28.000 So the next pandemic, and there'll be another one, right?

02:14:30.000 I mean, it's not...

02:14:31.000 There always have been.

02:14:32.000 There always have been.

02:14:32.000 And so wherever that one comes from, I don't know that we're going to...

02:14:38.000 Look back, right?

02:14:39.000 And think, okay, it's like with Afghanistan, right? 0.92

02:14:43.000 If I can spend all that time chasing the Soviets out of Afghanistan, we knew what they went through. 0.72

02:14:47.000 We saw the papers from the Kremlin.

02:14:49.000 We knew what the Soviet leadership had been trying to do and how difficult it had been in all those various areas, right?

02:14:54.000 And then what do you do?

02:14:56.000 Shortly thereafter, we're in there for 20 years, going through the same problems.

02:14:59.000 So I don't know that we're going to—it's a weird example—but I don't know that we're going to, next pandemic, look and say, okay, Let's review again how we reacted to the COVID. Okay, what should we do differently?

02:15:09.000 I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be very reluctant to take the same advice from the same people.

02:15:18.000 I think from the same people, but people tend to, maybe this is very cynical, but people like to take instruction, right?

02:15:26.000 Well, particularly if it's more dangerous.

02:15:28.000 Yeah.

02:15:28.000 If another pandemic rolls around and the new disease is more dangerous.

02:15:32.000 Yeah.

02:15:33.000 With more fear and more anxiety.

02:15:35.000 Because there's a bunch of people that just have a certain level of anxiety anyway.

02:15:39.000 Yeah, boy, that's a truth.

02:15:40.000 You know?

02:15:41.000 And then when something major comes along that really rocks them and scares the shit out of them, it's amazing how quickly they comply.

02:15:48.000 Well, some people were very comfortable in there, right?

02:15:51.000 I mean, some people found that whole isolation thing to be very comforting in an odd way.

02:15:56.000 And, you know, they were reluctant to give up on it.

02:15:58.000 Some people haven't.

02:16:00.000 Some people still don't want to go to an office.

02:16:02.000 Yeah, I get that.

02:16:04.000 I'm paying rent on places that are maybe 20% occupied.

02:16:08.000 Because everybody wants to work remotely?

02:16:10.000 People love working remotely.

02:16:11.000 Do you think that there is productive working remotely, or is it based on the individual?

02:16:16.000 Are some people more productive?

02:16:18.000 As remote workers and some people just need to be in an office environment in order to get things done?

02:16:24.000 Yeah, I think it's a combination of the person and their abilities, right?

02:16:28.000 And their discipline.

02:16:31.000 And I think it's also the structure of the company they work for, right?

02:16:36.000 Certain companies, I think, do very well in having their people remote.

02:16:42.000 Others don't.

02:16:43.000 And I think some people individually respond very well to it.

02:16:46.000 And others, it's a disaster.

02:16:48.000 And your productivity drops significantly.

02:16:52.000 But I think there's, you know, look, we're a consulting firm.

02:16:55.000 So, you know, my argument's always it's better to have everybody together.

02:16:58.000 Right?

02:16:58.000 You got to kind of bounce ideas off of each other.

02:17:01.000 Talk, help, collaborate.

02:17:02.000 It's better when you're in the room.

02:17:03.000 Yeah, you got to be in the room.

02:17:04.000 And so we're doing what a lot of people are doing.

02:17:06.000 We're trying to say, okay, how about, you know, three days in, two days out?

02:17:10.000 But I know major companies, Fortune 100, Fortune 50 companies that are having a hard time, you know, getting pushback when they say, how about three days in and two days home?

02:17:19.000 Employees are saying, no, two days in and three days home.

02:17:22.000 Isn't that wild?

02:17:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:17:24.000 It's really wild because this is a completely new thing.

02:17:27.000 I mean, I get their perspective that they don't want to commute and, you know, they don't want to deal with all the office bullshit and you want to be able to work with your pajamas on. 0.53

02:17:36.000 Which is nice.

02:17:37.000 But that's – it's amazing how quickly things change, how that becomes the norm.

02:17:43.000 Yeah.

02:17:43.000 I think what's going to change that, what's going to – is just sort of the state of the economy, right?

02:17:51.000 The employment picture is changing.

02:17:59.000 Individuals had a lot more leverage.

02:18:01.000 Hey, here are my demands.

02:18:04.000 Put up with them or I'll go somewhere else.

02:18:06.000 Well, now people are getting laid off and the employment isn't what it was.

02:18:10.000 The market's not the way it is.

02:18:12.000 It's more of a whatever you call it, a buyer-seller market.

02:18:17.000 I don't even know from an employer standpoint.

02:18:20.000 And I think that's going to be the thing that changes people. 0.98

02:18:24.000 And they're going to realize, yeah, I better get my ass back in the office. 0.94

02:18:27.000 And maybe I don't have all that leverage that I thought I did before. 0.77

02:18:31.000 But we're not there yet.

02:18:33.000 We're still dealing with it.

02:18:34.000 But I mean, I get it.

02:18:37.000 I mean, everybody wants a quality of life. 1.00

02:18:38.000 And if you don't have to spend all your time on a commute, I mean, fuck it. 0.99

02:18:42.000 That's why we moved to Idaho. 0.99

02:18:43.000 I was spending three hours a day.

02:18:46.000 Commuting from the place we lived before went out there was in Fairfield County in Connecticut, New Canaan.

02:18:50.000 Ugh.

02:18:51.000 I know.

02:18:52.000 Tony, right?

02:18:53.000 Very posh.

02:18:53.000 It is posh, but Jesus Christ, that commute is rough.

02:18:56.000 It's rough.

02:18:57.000 You jump on the Metro North. 1.00

02:18:58.000 There's so many fucking people on those clogged highways. 0.99

02:19:01.000 Well, I never drove. 1.00

02:19:02.000 I took the Metro North.

02:19:03.000 Oh, okay.

02:19:04.000 So it took an hour and a half there and back?

02:19:05.000 An hour and a half there and back.

02:19:07.000 By the time you actually walked into where our offices were in the time, it was Times Square.

02:19:14.000 But the Metro North Rail had the last bar car in America.

02:19:18.000 So at least at the end of the day, you'd go in, you'd meet your friends, you'd sit, you'd have a couple of drinks.

02:19:22.000 What time was it open? 0.99

02:19:23.000 Oh, shit. 0.99

02:19:24.000 I think it was like... 1.00

02:19:26.000 Don't hold me to this, but maybe 4 o'clock they'd open the bar.

02:19:28.000 4 p.m.

02:19:29.000 they'd open the bar?

02:19:29.000 Oh, yeah.

02:19:30.000 So if you showed up at 6.30 and you were stressed or 7 o'clock, you'd jump on the 705 to get back to New Canaan.

02:19:36.000 You could knock back three gin and tonics.

02:19:38.000 Scotch on the rocks.

02:19:38.000 Yeah, Scotch.

02:19:39.000 Get home.

02:19:40.000 I was always amazed.

02:19:41.000 There it is.

02:19:42.000 Yeah, look at that.

02:19:43.000 Yeah.

02:19:44.000 So these people are just drinking on their way home. 1.00

02:19:46.000 Look at that son of a bitch. 1.00

02:19:47.000 In the previous picture, the guy in the fleece smiling in the background, he's hammered. 1.00

02:19:51.000 He's just like, look at that mobs.

02:19:53.000 But still, it's a rough way to live.

02:19:57.000 Three days, or three hours rather, at 24 just spent commuting.

02:20:01.000 Look at everybody's cheers.

02:20:02.000 You're going to find me in one of those photos at some point.

02:20:04.000 Bet it created a lot of alcoholics.

02:20:06.000 Well, you know, you'd see some guys that could knock back four or five drinks in the course of the train trip.

02:20:11.000 And then they'd walk out, get their car, and drive home.

02:20:14.000 I think, really?

02:20:15.000 I was always amazed that New Canaan police didn't have a permanent setup out there outside the train station.

02:20:21.000 But it was nice, and we got a lot of business done there.

02:20:27.000 Anyway, the point being is it was three hours every day.

02:20:30.000 So we moved to Idaho and I cut my commute down to about five minutes at best, even when there's traffic.

02:20:37.000 And that's a quality of life.

02:20:39.000 So I get it when I hear it from folks that work for us.

02:20:43.000 That makes sense, but there has to be a balance because if you go too far one way, you're not making the revenue to pay their salaries and they're out of a job.

02:20:52.000 Well, it goes back to what we were talking about before.

02:20:54.000 What do you really want to do with your life?

02:20:56.000 What do you really want to do with your time?

02:20:58.000 And how much time do you really have left?

02:21:00.000 And I think so many people are a product of momentum.

02:21:03.000 They're caught up in whatever they're doing, and they just keep doing it, and then they don't like it, but this is what they're doing.

02:21:09.000 And they don't really have the time.

02:21:11.000 And that's one of the things that the pandemic did afford a lot of people.

02:21:13.000 It afforded people the time to reassess and reevaluate what they're doing with their life.

02:21:17.000 A lot of people changed occupations.

02:21:19.000 A lot of people reluctantly did because their businesses went under.

02:21:22.000 A lot of people, they had a chance to say, hey, you know what I realized?

02:21:27.000 I've been putting all this money and time into this company, and now this company doesn't even fucking exist anymore. 0.60

02:21:31.000 And the rug was pulled out from under me.

02:21:33.000 What do I really want to do, and how do I pursue that?

02:21:36.000 Yeah, and I think that's a natural reaction.

02:21:41.000 Yeah, I mean, we ran flat, no earnings, right?

02:21:44.000 But we didn't during that whole pandemic, but we didn't let anybody off, right?

02:21:48.000 I mean, I could have made money if I'd laid people off, but I don't think that's the right.

02:21:52.000 It's not like I'm running a commune or anything, but I don't think that's the right way to live, right?

02:21:57.000 So we just kept everybody on and just dealt with the fact that there was nothing going down to the bottom line.

02:22:03.000 Fine.

02:22:03.000 You know, what do I care at the end of the day?

02:22:05.000 These people are feeding their families and yadda yadda yadda. 1.00

02:22:07.000 I sound like fucking Mother Teresa. 1.00

02:22:10.000 Anyway... 0.99

02:22:10.000 No, you sound like you're a good boss. 0.99

02:22:12.000 Yeah.

02:22:12.000 But it was...

02:22:12.000 So it worked out from our perspective.

02:22:14.000 We kept everybody on and we were fortunate in that regard.

02:22:17.000 But I think everybody's trying to assess.

02:22:22.000 You know, we're a small business.

02:22:24.000 But even the biggest companies that we deal with, some of the largest in the world...

02:22:28.000 They're spending an incredible amount of time trying to sort this out, trying to figure out how do we motivate this new mindset within the workforce, right?

02:22:37.000 And it's a generational thing, right?

02:22:39.000 Because the older personnel are like, I'm back in the office.

02:22:42.000 And for the most part, it's not completely true, but for the most part, it's the younger staff.

02:22:50.000 And there's also a problem with entitlement.

02:22:52.000 There's a lot of younger people that have been sort of given this philosophy and this mindset that you're entitled to a certain amount of compensation.

02:23:02.000 You're entitled to work.

02:23:04.000 You're entitled to all this.

02:23:06.000 It's not necessarily that you're providing a service for this company and this company benefits from having you in there.

02:23:12.000 You're entitled to things without any consideration whatsoever as to how this affects the bottom line of this company that you work for.

02:23:20.000 They're not thinking I think that's true.

02:23:30.000 But I think also one thing I've realized recently, maybe because it's this weird world that we came out of the pandemic and this new idea amongst the workforce to some degree, is We need to be more transparent about the business, right?

02:23:45.000 They can't be expected to understand the strains and stresses of running a business if they don't understand some of the basics, right?

02:23:53.000 And so sharing sort of top-line financials, explaining, you know, look, this is what we need to break even every month, right?

02:24:00.000 This is what we're making.

02:24:01.000 Here, look at this.

02:24:02.000 It's up and down, you know?

02:24:03.000 And so, you know, we're not like this cash cow that every time you turn around and ask for a pay rise, we're going to be able to give it to you.

02:24:09.000 You know, maybe we find other ways of doing it.

02:24:11.000 You know, we came up with an admittedly stolen idea from a company that we work for as a client, or they're a client, and they do a mandatory rest and recovery break, right?

02:24:22.000 Like a week off, in addition to all the other time off.

02:24:24.000 They say, you've got to put your phones away, we're not going to contact you, you get this extra week, and you know what?

02:24:30.000 And so we've implemented that in a way to try to find other, when we don't have the cash at the bottom line, to keep people incentivized, right?

02:24:37.000 But you're constantly looking for those things.

02:24:39.000 And then sometimes it's a little discouraging because you don't get the feeling that anybody, not anybody, but some folks don't appreciate it.

02:24:46.000 Right.

02:24:47.000 And then they're going to expect that time off.

02:24:49.000 And why do I work?

02:24:50.000 You know, in Europe, they get months off.

02:24:52.000 They get months off.

02:24:52.000 Oh, my God.

02:24:53.000 Yeah.

02:24:54.000 Well, I think about it.

02:24:55.000 I mean, you know, maternity leave now is basically, you know, we do three months.

02:24:59.000 And I had a question about paternity leave.

02:25:02.000 Not that long ago, but I was like, paternity leave?

02:25:06.000 It took me a second to realize you're talking about, okay, take time off as the father.

02:25:09.000 Yes.

02:25:10.000 Isn't that wild?

02:25:11.000 That, to me, is wild.

02:25:12.000 It's very wild.

02:25:13.000 I know.

02:25:14.000 I know a guy who works for a company, they get a lot of time off paternity leave, and they're also required to give that person a raise if other people within his group get a raise as well.

02:25:27.000 So if you get, and I'm talking a long time, I don't want to say the number because I'm not sure, but it's more than six months. 0.98

02:25:33.000 Holy shit. 0.98

02:25:35.000 Yes. 0.99

02:25:35.000 So what happens? 0.99

02:25:36.000 So you get all this time off.

02:25:38.000 Now, what if you take all this time off and you knock your wife up again?

02:25:43.000 Well then...

02:25:44.000 Which may well happen.

02:25:45.000 Which may well happen.

02:25:46.000 During the course of six months.

02:25:47.000 Yeah.

02:25:48.000 I mean, if you're fortunate.

02:25:49.000 I think it's more than six months.

02:25:51.000 I think it's something like 18 months.

02:25:52.000 I'll tell you, the honest truth is...

02:25:53.000 Paid.

02:25:54.000 I don't see how...

02:25:55.000 I mean, my reaction was paternity leave. 1.00

02:25:58.000 I mean, unless you're a dude with, like, fucking milk-producing breasts, that baby doesn't want anything to do with you, right? 1.00

02:26:04.000 You got no purpose in life. 1.00

02:26:06.000 Being at home, you're probably just going to irritate your wife.

02:26:09.000 Well, you're supposed to be there helping.

02:26:10.000 You're supposed to help.

02:26:11.000 How many...

02:26:11.000 Okay.

02:26:12.000 How many husbands are going to be like, here's what I'm going to do to that. 0.93

02:26:15.000 I'm going to vacuum the house.

02:26:16.000 I'm going to fold the laundry.

02:26:18.000 I'm going to make dinner.

02:26:19.000 Well, my favorite was when Pete Buttigieg took paternity leave.

02:26:23.000 Him and his husband took paternity leave. 0.97

02:26:26.000 Didn't one of them have fake breasts? 1.00

02:26:29.000 Yeah, look at this. 0.94

02:26:29.000 I'm doing 18-month maternity leave, and this is why it's awesome. 0.94

02:26:33.000 So grateful that Canada now offers 18-month maternity leave option.

02:26:38.000 Would you take a longer mat to leave if you could make it work?

02:26:42.000 So this is the thing, like, now you have a baby and the company is just paying for you to live.

02:26:47.000 Which, I mean, maternity is different.

02:26:50.000 What I was talking about is paternity.

02:26:52.000 Yeah, that's actually what I thought I clicked on.

02:26:53.000 There's one that says they have a 12 to 18 month paternal leave.

02:26:57.000 Paternal. 0.59

02:26:58.000 Parental.

02:26:58.000 Okay, so now they're referring to it as like parental life.

02:27:01.000 But paternity is the father, and that's where it gets bonkers.

02:27:05.000 Yeah, I mean, again, we'll probably end up doing like, okay, you can take a couple of weeks or whatever.

02:27:12.000 I mean, again, I'm not buying the idea that you're going to be at home running the household while your wife relaxes and recovers and enjoys the baby.

02:27:23.000 Maybe I'm wrong about this. 0.80

02:27:24.000 Well, listen, a couple weeks, or even a month, whatever it is, whatever reasonable number sounds right, but when you get to 18 months paternity leave, if that is really happening, that seems fucking insane.

02:27:35.000 And it also seems like if someone was, like, the type of person that likes to game a system, like, you just keep knocking up your wife and you just keep getting free money.

02:27:45.000 In a year and a half, like, she's, I mean, that's Irish twins, right?

02:27:49.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:27:49.000 In a year and a half, she's six months pregnant with the next one.

02:27:53.000 And then, you know, so you go back to work for three months?

02:27:56.000 Is that what you do?

02:27:57.000 U.S. is the only country with Papua New Guinea that doesn't have federally mandated maternity leave.

02:28:03.000 Well, Papua New Guinea also has cannibalism.

02:28:05.000 Well, yes, that's what I brought it up.

02:28:07.000 No federally mandated policy to give mothers paid time off.

02:28:11.000 Well, I certainly think that mothers should get paid time off. 1.00

02:28:14.000 U.S. is one of only 15 that does not offer paternity leave.

02:28:18.000 Of the top 41 richest countries.

02:28:20.000 I mean, companies do.

02:28:21.000 So what they're saying here is federal law.

02:28:23.000 So federal law is not in tune with this to offer it.

02:28:27.000 I'm sure they will.

02:28:29.000 And there, by signing a measure that grants federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave.

02:28:33.000 Look, you know, again, you know, we're doing, what, three months maternity leave.

02:28:38.000 I'm sure we'll end up settling on something for paternity leave.

02:28:42.000 I remember, you know, our UK employees would get, God, I think it was like eight months, I mean, off.

02:28:49.000 And you had to hold their job, you know, which was great because our employees were terrific and we wanted to have them back, but you had to hold their position open.

02:28:57.000 And You know, when you're a small company, that's a stress, right?

02:29:03.000 Especially if you're barely getting by.

02:29:05.000 Yeah, so it's tricky.

02:29:08.000 I just remember when my kids were babies, I really served no purpose, right?

02:29:14.000 I mean, it was not like the baby actually would wake up and say, where's dad?

02:29:18.000 I mean, it was fun, don't get me wrong.

02:29:20.000 And they were great little kids, right?

02:29:22.000 They want their mom.

02:29:23.000 They want their mom, yeah. 0.99

02:29:25.000 And...

02:29:26.000 But the idea is that you're supposed to help the mom and that the company's supposed to be able to sustain this.

02:29:31.000 And thank God I did.

02:29:32.000 I was quite the helper.

02:29:33.000 I'm a very tidy person.

02:29:35.000 I bet you are.

02:29:35.000 Yeah, I am.

02:29:36.000 I'm a very tidy person.

02:29:37.000 I know it doesn't look like that when I leave here.

02:29:38.000 There's like cigar ash everywhere.

02:29:40.000 Well, it's like everybody else when they leave here.

02:29:43.000 It's normal.

02:29:44.000 You know what I thought about the other... 0.93

02:29:45.000 This is going to sound stupid, but I forget what triggered it. 0.57

02:29:48.000 Something you said just a short while ago. 0.92

02:29:52.000 I was thinking about, oh, I know what it was, where you talked about your place in life and all that.

02:29:57.000 And I was thinking, I think one of the things that I've failed on with the kids is, and this is going to sound odd, is church, is religion.

02:30:10.000 And, you know, I'm not agnostic.

02:30:13.000 I'm not an atheist by any means.

02:30:14.000 You know, I think there's something higher up there.

02:30:16.000 I don't mean that I fail to take the kids to a certain organized church every Sunday, but we haven't really done that.

02:30:24.000 I talk about that with my wife.

02:30:27.000 And, you know, now that our kids are older, it's like every other family.

02:30:30.000 When you say, come on, kids, we're going to go to church on Sunday.

02:30:32.000 They're like, seriously?

02:30:34.000 You know, I got practice, or I got to do this, or I got to do that.

02:30:38.000 Or I'm on my switch, or whatever.

02:30:40.000 But I feel like I may have dropped the ball in giving them a sense of something bigger, right?

02:30:47.000 And I don't, again, I don't know whether that's, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're church, or England, or Catholic, or whatever, Presbyterian.

02:30:53.000 I'm just thinking, and...

02:30:56.000 It's interesting, and I don't know why I was focused on that.

02:30:59.000 I've been thinking about that for a while, and I've been, you know, looking at my kids and thinking, did I really, did I screw up?

02:31:03.000 Because I tend to be somewhat, not cynical, but my problem with organized religion is that idea that, you know, a particular religion has a lock on the truth, right?

02:31:13.000 And that's always kind of bothered me, right?

02:31:15.000 And I think a lot of religions do a lot of good.

02:31:17.000 They try, and I think it's important for people to think about something bigger, right?

02:31:23.000 And Whatever that thing may be, God bless him, go with whatever.

02:31:27.000 But I think because I'd always had this thing about, necessarily about organized religion, that I may have gone too far in the other direction and just not worried about it. 0.94

02:31:36.000 And now as my kids are getting older, I'm thinking, you know, maybe I fucked up and should have given them at least the chance to think about it.

02:31:44.000 I think there's a benefit to structure. 0.59

02:31:46.000 There's a benefit to that kind of structure, and there's a benefit to having what I would call a moral scaffolding.

02:31:53.000 And, you know, this sense of a higher purpose, whether or not you believe all of it.

02:31:58.000 There's something to it, and it's always existed in human civilization.

02:32:04.000 It's always existed in cultures.

02:32:06.000 It's a way that people keep people together and give people a sense of purpose.

02:32:10.000 I mean, some of the most disciplined people that I know are very religious.

02:32:13.000 It's really fascinating, particularly fighters.

02:32:16.000 Like a lot of the Islamic fighters out of Dagestan, they're some of the most dominant fighters and some of the most religious fighters.

02:32:23.000 So devout.

02:32:24.000 Because they don't have the distractions that a lot of the hedonists do.

02:32:27.000 You know, they're not party—like the guys at Khabib Nurmagomedov's camp are some of the most dominant fighters.

02:32:33.000 They wear their hair all exactly the same way.

02:32:37.000 They practice.

02:32:38.000 All they care about is like family, religion, training.

02:32:43.000 They don't chase girls. 0.99

02:32:45.000 They don't drink.

02:32:46.000 They're just training constantly, like insanely dedicated to their craft.

02:32:54.000 And they're the most dominant.

02:32:55.000 Is there an element there where they don't have...

02:32:57.000 It's also because they're coming out of something where they don't have much, perhaps?

02:33:02.000 Sure.

02:33:02.000 And so that drives them...

02:33:03.000 But even when they do have much, they...

02:33:05.000 Like, Khabib is very wealthy.

02:33:07.000 Yeah.

02:33:07.000 And he drives a Toyota truck.

02:33:09.000 I mean, he lives in the same house.

02:33:11.000 I mean, it's like he's very devout in his beliefs and the way he's raising other fighters.

02:33:17.000 And now he just got out.

02:33:18.000 I think he's decided to retire completely from mixed martial arts coaching and everything.

02:33:23.000 Very religious.

02:33:25.000 And there's something to – I mean, some people say, I don't want that in my life.

02:33:29.000 I don't want that kind of control over me.

02:33:31.000 And I get it.

02:33:31.000 I get that too.

02:33:33.000 But I also think there is some sort of a benefit to having structure.

02:33:37.000 And there's a benefit to having purpose and there's a benefit to having rituals and things that everyone does together.

02:33:43.000 There's like a bonding that comes with that.

02:33:46.000 It can't be denied.

02:33:48.000 And I know that some people say, well, no, religion is a tool of control and religion is a tool.

02:33:53.000 It's also self-control.

02:33:55.000 There's a lot of discipline and a lot of structure that benefits people.

02:34:02.000 Yeah.

02:34:05.000 I think for me part is also just the idea that it, you know, hopefully it drives you to think about some of those issues and some of the bigger picture concerns.

02:34:17.000 We went to a local, what is it, United Methodist Church the other day on Sunday, just my wife and I because we couldn't get the kids to unass the sofa.

02:34:28.000 So we went and they actually – they had a little – the guy, nice guy, Duane, had a sermon about the Bible and sort of the way that it's viewed and how it's used in various ways in terms of interpretation,

02:34:45.000 right?

02:34:46.000 But they did say one thing, which was, you know, the whole point of the Bible is it's ambiguous, it's diverse, right?

02:34:52.000 It's a collection of books, essentially, over a long period of time, and it's not intended to be like a manual.

02:35:03.000 And so that was the first time I'd really heard that about the Bible, where it's not an instruction manual or a how-to manual.

02:35:09.000 It's more of a way to pursue, in a sense, don't ask, what does it mean?

02:35:16.000 Just kind of ask, what am I looking for?

02:35:19.000 And I think that question about what am I looking for, I think for kids, maybe because to your point about community, maybe there's some value there.

02:35:28.000 And I guess never say never.

02:35:29.000 The kids can always end up being interested in religion for whatever reason down the road.

02:35:35.000 I think my own personal concerns of organized religion kind of shut that door when they were early on.

02:35:43.000 And for some reason lately I've been thinking about that and thinking, you know, eh, what do I know? 0.99

02:35:50.000 People are like, what the fuck? 0.99

02:35:51.000 He's having an existential crisis in the middle of the show. 1.00

02:35:54.000 Yeah.

02:35:54.000 Well, I think everybody has existential crises from time to time, and if not, you're probably not really analyzing things deeply.

02:36:03.000 Yeah.

02:36:04.000 Yeah.

02:36:04.000 That's a nice way to put it.

02:36:08.000 And on that note.

02:36:09.000 Yeah.

02:36:11.000 Oh, God.

02:36:11.000 All right, Mike Baker.

02:36:12.000 Hey.

02:36:13.000 What time is it?

02:36:14.000 It's always good to see you, my friend.

02:36:15.000 Look at that.

02:36:16.000 So your book is available, the audio book is available right now, Company Rules, or Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the CIA. I know.

02:36:23.000 I know.

02:36:24.000 And again, it's not an agency book.

02:36:25.000 It's a book about business.

02:36:27.000 And you can read it free for 60 days.

02:36:29.000 You can read it free for 60 days.

02:36:30.000 Jamie, do you have that link that we could throw up there that people could go to?

02:36:33.000 Oh, look at that.

02:36:34.000 You can read it.

02:36:35.000 TryScribd.com slash Baker.

02:36:37.000 Yeah, Try.Scribd.com slash Baker.

02:36:39.000 You get 60 days free.

02:36:40.000 And Scribd is spelled S-C-R-I-B-D. Exactly.

02:36:44.000 And you'll get steak knives and a set of soft luggage.

02:36:46.000 Nice.

02:36:46.000 Yeah, timeshare.

02:36:48.000 All right, Mike Baker.

02:36:49.000 Thank you, Mr. Rogan.

02:36:49.000 Good to see you, my friend.

02:36:50.000 Good to see you, man.

02:36:50.000 Take it easy.

02:36:51.000 Take care.

02:36:51.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - January 11, 2023

Joe Rogan Experience #1923 - Mike Baker

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