← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
SPLC Bombshells, Big Tech & China, a Covid Cover-Up, and Out-Of-Touch Elites, w/ Gad Saad PLUS Joe Weil
01:19:16
Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a deep dive into the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest legal battle involving its questionable actions and how it’s far-left curriculum made its way into America’s schools. Then Emily is joined by Gad Saad, author of the brand-new book “Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind” and Scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. They discuss Ryan Holiday’s recent attacks on Ivanka Trump and Elon Musk, Gad’s new book and what he’s discovered about ‘suicidal empathy’ in academia, why leftists really push for ‘compassionate’ policies, and why Gad is such a strong defender of America. Then Emily is joined by Joe Weil, CEO of Unplugged, one of this show’s sponsors. Joe offers a rare glimpse at life inside Big Tech, sharing anecdotes about his time at Apple, what was really happening there during Covid, his concerns about President Trump’s talks with China, and what Americans don’t unde...
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- [00:00]
Joe Weil
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Emily
Foreign. Welcome back to After Party everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Our guests tonight are Gad Saad, author of course Gad Saad and then Joe Weil. So we are going to get into all kinds of different topics. It's a meaty show tonight. There's a lot happening across a wide range of subjects in these news cycles. So excited to get into that with all of you. With gad, we talked talk about his book which is called Suicidal Empathy. We pre recorded our conversation with him a week ago. He's got obviously a bit a busy media schedule these days. Since we recorded there's been some quite interesting discourse about his book. If we had had him live tonight I probably would have asked even more questions based on the reactions that his book has gotten so far. But it's a very, very interesting conversation so please do stay tuned for that. Joe Weil is actually one of our sponsors. He is from he's the CEO of Unpl Plugged and the upphone which you've heard about on our show. So you hear a little bit about the upphone. Of course his like I mentioned one of our sponsors but actually he spent a long time inside Apple and so he's going to talk to us. As Trump arrives in China with Apple, outgoing CEO Tim Cook, Jensen Wang of Nvidia. We are going to have a pretty interesting discussion about surveillance. FISA is back on the table, the driver kill switch on the cars. We've got CBDC also on the table table with FISA and a huge chunk of testimony from a current CIA employee who's now acting as a whistleblower against Anthony Fauci today in the Senate. We have video of the Rand Paul whistleblower we told you about on Monday. And Joe, again, as somebody who partially left Apple over starting to see the strange censorship or instinct towards suppression and cooperation with the kind of deep state creep into that company at the time, he's going to tell us some really interesting insights from his time at Apple and his time after being at Apple. Really, really, really, really, really interesting stuff. So make sure to stay tuned for that. But first I wanted to bring you an update in the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Of course, make sure to subscribe. It helps us so much if you subscribe to the YouTube channel. That is the most helpful thing you can do to support our journalism here. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Spotify, it helps us a ton. We appreciate you so much. A reminder, my email is emilyoulmadcare media.com Many of you know that because you write to me every week and I write back to just about all of you. We answer your questions on the happy hour edition of our show, which is podcast only every Friday. You can check that out, Apple Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Now back to the Southern Poverty Law Center. There is a development in this case. Weeks after, of course, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law center on fraud charges for basically saying that it was fighting extremism, racism and hatred. But bank records showed that the Southern Poverty Law center had actually been funding, quote, unquote, informants inside of a lot of groups that are are dubbed hate groups, extremist groups. And these are the ones that really are hate groups and extremist groups. The one in the ones in question here where the SPLC had informants. These groups are nasty. We're talking neo Nazi groups. We're talking Klan groups. We're not talking about the groups that are merely conservative that the Southern Poverty Law center gave hate designations or extremist designations to over the years. Now that conversation has exploded since the indictment came out. That has been really the conservative movements and many people on the left, too few, too Few people on the left, I should say, but that has been a complaint about the SPLC for a very long time, that it was conflating objective hate extremism with much, much, much more subjective designations of conservative groups, people who simply disagreed on issues like immigration or let's say immigration. So is a pretty good example, but dei, these sorts of things. And this conversation, like I was saying, has exploded as this conversation about the informants and fraud has exploded. But the Alabama attorney general has announced that they are opening a consumer investigation into the splc, which of course is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama. So a new report also is shedding light. I'm going to get into this in one second too. Shedding light on how the Southern Poverty Law Center's curric has been integrated into school districts around the country. So let's first start with this new investigation from the Alabama ag, which the Alabama AG discussed with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, one of the SPLC's groups that has been targeted for many, many years. Let's listen to S4 here.
- [06:51]
Joe Weil
This federal indictment of SPLC pulls back the curtain on decades of corrupt activity that could be, I think, stunning in
- [07:02]
Emily
what is found out.
- [07:03]
Gad Saad
Yeah.
- [07:04]
Alabama Attorney General
And it's not surprising when it really is just a fundraising operation under the guise of something very different. But yet they are paying those organizations they wanted to be able to identify as hate groups and then fundraising off of that same information. Clearly there is a conflict there and that's what we're looking to uncover. When there's fraud occurring, when we also have oversight, generally involving charitable organizations, we want to know who they were funneling money to, what was the purpose of that money, what information they gained and how they utilize that information to raise money around the country with their donors, we think it's relevant to the powers we have to protect consumers from fraud. And we're looking forward to being able to see those documents.
- [07:49]
Emily
All right, so now you will have the powers of the state of Alabama where the SPLC was headquartered, mustered, in addition to the powers of the federal government against the splc, these fraud investigations. And one thing that has happened since the indictment was announced is a lot of folks on the left who are, you know, skeptical of Trump. Some people deeply, deeply skeptical of Trump or contemptuous of Trump have rushed to say this is just political targeting. Because, of course, people have known that the SPLC has this informance program for a really long time. But I think I, I find that actually to distasteful because if the SPLC is sending mailers and they have been big direct mail fundraisers for a long time to regular people around the country saying that they are stopping hatred and extremism. And if you look at their fundraising materials, it is to. To know what they were doing and then to look at their fundraising materials, at least based on these bank records. I do think we should be careful. I mentioned this when we first covered the SPLC story. They have not. We haven't seen their full legal defense of their informant program and of these bank records yet. And I do think there is a legal tying of those bank records to what was happening inside the groups. That it is a blank. What's the best way to put it? That that is an empty space right now that needs to be filled. That is a sort of. We need to see the bridge from point A to point B here to be conclusive in the fraud case and to know exactly what was happening with the informant's case. I still think there's some missing information. There's some missing puzzle pieces. And that's why you have courts and that's why you have investigations. But to see these bank records laid out in the indictments where you have money in what? I mean, listen, let me put this up on the screen. This was a good post from the Bits About Money website, bitsaboutmoney.com which basically is outlining. I mean, it's like, it's got to be like 10,000 words, if not more in detail from a pretty nonpartisan perspective about why these fraud allegations against the SPLC are extremely serious and almost quote, unquote, textbook. That's a word that gets used in this piece and I think rightfully so. Because again, if you are a normal person getting an SPLC mailer about stopping hatred, extremism and the like, and then you're just supposed to know that it's public information because some random place has reported it years ago, that they're also funding those organizations via this informant program. Again, we need to know more and we will. It'll come out in court, it'll come out in these investigations about what that money was being used for. I think the pattern of how they set up these bank accounts and then used the money that is documented based on the records that the DOJ put together, I think the pattern looks very bad for them. But I just encourage everyone to go to this Bits About Money post. Let me just scroll up to the title here.
- [11:03]
Joe Weil
It's.
- [11:04]
Emily
That's how long it is. If you're watching this, you just saw me scroll up like a mountain Basically it's called Notes on a Nonprofit indicted for Bank Fraud. It's from Patrick McKenzie, who has been the CEO of a 501C3. And this is very detailed about C3 law and exactly how serious what the SPLC is alleged to have done really is and how the evidence kind of fits into where they would be violating the law. But to an average person who's getting these mailers and wants to fight extremism and you know, it's. It's so stigmatized the United States rightfully to be bigoted and hateful because we have made so many strides against real prejudice and bigotry and hate in such a short period of time in this wonderful country full of wonderful people. And you get a mailer about that. It is serious that the SPLC at the same time was doing basically what the FBI did in the Gretchen Whitmer case and has done in other cases, basically fermenting allegedly in, you know, whether it was Charlottesville, using money, driving people, making the situation worse, creating more problems of, of hate and extremism, making these events potentially bigger, coordinating more successful, able to work allegedly that worsens the problem. That is serious fraud. And it's not on the elderly people or good natured people who are responding to these mailers to like just know that maybe the SPLC is, is driving people to Charlottesville. Are you kidding me? That. That is a very serious fraud case. And so on that note, let's take a look at some developments on the other side of this conversation about how the splc. I think this is fraudulent in and of itself. Maybe not legally, but how the SPLC was implemented in curriculum around the country. This is defending education. They're a conservative nonprofit that has audited a lot of curriculum around the country from the vantage point of cracking down on DEI and quote, unquote, wokeness. And so just yesterday they put out this giant report about how many school districts have integrated the SPLC program that is called, quote, unquote, Learning for Justice. It used to go by the monarch, her teaching tolerance. This has ended up in some ways through social and emotional learning initiatives in curriculums around the country. Total number of school districts here according to defending education, which they say is incomplete. And they will keep updating as they get more information from around the country. I saw Fox News covered this earlier today, so I imagine they'll be adding districts to that as people write in and they're able to confirm some of this information. But 189 total school districts, total number of state government entities, 30 total, total number of states, 42 plus the District of Columbia where this has been implemented, implemented over the years. And so what Parents Defending Education does, in addition to these huge, huge lists, is also give you a glimpse at some of the teaching materials here. So here's Teaching Tolerance, the COVID What this is, is exactly why. I mean, listen, this is. All right, this is the fall 2018 issue of Teaching Tolerance features an article titled what is white privilege? Really? Why talk about whiteness? This is another article that has been integrated into curriculum which claims, quote, the normalization of whiteness and the impenetrable ways it protects itself are cornerstones of the way institutions function in the United States. This is ideological progressivism being smuggled into public school classrooms and classrooms around the country under the guise of fighting hatred and bigotry and the like. This is exactly, exactly how the SPLC insinuated itself into media coverage of hatred and extremism and bigotry and smuggled into all of that coverage these seemingly neutral designations of conservative groups that disagreed on trans issues, immigration, marriage, religion, in some cases had had actual mainstream within the. The spectrum of mainstream beliefs, belief in the United States, good natured. Not always, but sometimes disagreements with the progressive left on that array of topics. They were being designated as hate groups. The SPLC was selling that as a neutral designation and the media was buying it and then selling it back to the public as a neutral designation. And all of this helped the SPLC get this curriculum into what, 189 schools around the country talking about how whiteness is a cornerstone. Let me pull this quote back up again. It's re. It's. It's worth reading. The normalization of whiteness and the impenetrable ways it protects itself. What the fuck does that even mean? Sorry. Are cornerstones of the way institutions function in the United States. Quote, recognizing white privilege as a necessary but insufficient means for confronting racism and increasing opportunities for people of color. In fact, acknowledging white privilege but taking no initiative to own it or address it can be harmful and counterproductive, not even good enough just to acknowledge white privilege. According to the SPLC's curriculum, that was integrated in what, 189 school districts around the country probably still is. And many, many, many of them not even good enough to just talk about white privilege. You actually have to. In order to not be harmful and counterproductive, you have to then take initiative to own it or address it. Here are some of their standards. Learning for justice has social justice standards in it, which is apparently a set of anchor standards and Age appropriate learning outcomes divided into four identity, identity, diversity, justice and action. Which allows educators to engage a range of anti bias, multicultural and social justice issues and focuses on both prejudice reduction and collective action. Under diversity, it says, students will express comfort with people who are both similar to and different from them. Engage respectfully with all people. I guess that sounds fine in theory, but we all know how far the theory goes. When in the hands of teachers who have left of center, to say the least, world views, students will develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society. So you're teaching students to balkanize themselves against their peers and their their classmates instead of doing the opposite. Students will express pride, confidence and healthy self esteem without denying the value and dignity of other people. What if a student did that with white pride? I think they would understandably fall under the, the hate designation. But that's because what this really is is opposition to the colorblind standard. That that was healthy, healthy in public institutions doesn't mean race is unimportant and leads to different life experiences. Nobody is saying that. But to say that it's okay for some races to have pride and other races not, there's no reason that anybody should have pride in immutable characteristics. And when you start introducing this to kids at a young age, yes, it's powerful, it's conditioning. But it's so unhealthy. It's so, so unhealthy. Students will recognize stereotypes and relate to people as individuals rather than representatives of groups. Great. Again, I think I know how that's going to be implemented. They're asked to recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice and injustice. I wonder how the, the teachers define injustice. And one of the things you can actually see some of how it's defined here through the actions which you can't go through absolutely every single one of them. But go to the defendinged.org website and you can read them for yourself. But the teachers unions and other institutions have been important in proliferating this SPLC curriculum according to Defending Education. So that is another important part of all of this. We know that that major teachers unions in this country are dominated by the political left. And so it's no surprise that a consequence of it is curriculum like this being integrated around the country. Here they're talking about the American Federation of Teachers and the like. So really, really, really, really important glimpse, I think, at how the SPLC was influential, why the SPLC was influential and exactly how it did insinuate itself into so many corners of American life of politics and culture, in this case, education. Such a powerful organization. And I can't emphasize enough how important it will be if the Trump administration just mitigates its influence through what appears to be a serious fraud case. Now, another thing I did want to bring up just very quickly is this, this is the SPLC saying basically, quote, blanche wrongly claimed it never shared informant intelligence with law enforcement despite evidence provided to prosecutors before its indictment. So basically the SPLC is saying, listen, we have helped the FBI. We've been sharing our informant material with the FBI and the DOJ for a long time. And of course there were mentions publicly of this, whispers, publicly mentions in the media of its informant program going back decades. But what's in that indictment is a pretty widespread informant program, like, more than what people realized, again, according to the bank records. And like. And so it does, I think, raise an interesting question. And I'm not sure that I trust the Department of Justice to be honest about this, but I look forward to some of the evidence coming out in trial that the FBI was maybe under Comey, maybe under Mueller, maybe under Chris Ray, relying on information was basically using the SPLC as a way to have paid informants in those groups. Entirely possible, entirely possible. And some of that may come out as well. But this is how powerful the SPLC has been from politics to the classroom. And I wanted to bring that update because we've been covering this case in, in some great detail. Listen, I'm looking forward to seeing more about this come out in court. I think there are still missing pieces of the puzzle and don't want to get ahead of the skis on it. But, but the, the evidence is, is strong that the SPLC could really be crippled by what is what comes out in this AG investigation, Alabama as we mentioned, and also through the, the legal process in court as well. This year I'm focusing on small changes, tweaks in life that can make a really big difference because they have that like effortless presence in your day to day. And this one might sound counterintuitive, but for me that actually means planning ahead so that I can truly live in the moment when I'm out enjoying a few drinks. Of course, just a few, no more than that. My simple trick for staying balanced is taking zebiotics pre alcohol before I start. Zebiotics pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle those rough, rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. 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Emily
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- [24:37]
Emily
We are going to be joined now by Gad Saad. As I mentioned, he has a new book out called Suicidal Empathy and we did pre tape this last week. There's been a lot of talk about Gad's book since then. Unfortunately I can't follow up and ask more questions about some of the controversies and the criticisms, but did have this very interesting conversation with him about the book last week and I hope you all enjoy it. Well, we are joined now by Gad Saad. He is the author of the new book Suicidal Dying to Be Kind. He's also the scholar at the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi Gadsad. Thank you for joining us.
- [25:14]
Gad Saad
Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be with you.
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Emily
Now, as I mentioned, the book is called Suicidal Empathy. So a great place to begin actually is by wading into the controversy swirling around Daily stoic Ryan Holiday, who has been all over the Internet and social media as we're talking because he recently did a video criticizing Ivanka Trump for expressing on Diary of a CEO her. Her inspiration, inspiration that she draws from Marcus Aurelius and Meditations. And Ryan Holiday, in response, was criticized for not being very stoic. So people are digging up old Ryan Holiday clips and one of them happened to fit the theme of your book quite well, Gad said. Let's take a listen here to Ryan Holiday talking about what he sees as right wing attacks on empathy on the Daily show last October.
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Ryan Holiday
I think Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan and he said, you know, empathy is gonna cause the destruction of Western civilization. That is a profoundly stupid thing to say and think. I mean, to say that Elon Musk is not smart is like saying he's not rich, he's clearly very smart. But that is what is so scary about it, that you could be so brilliant, so gift you could have been so successful, and then social media can still break your brain, right? And it did. It did. This is a guy who went from reading Soviet rocket manuals to figure out the aeronautics business to following like Cat Turd7 on Twitter and Russian bots, from whom he now gets his information and his worldview. And that is, I think, a tale as old as time you become successful, you. You think that you're smart, and that is when you start to get real dumb. Because as the Stoics say, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know.
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Emily
All right, so this is a very typical glimpse at elite liberal conventional wisdom about the new argument. It's not a new argument, but I should say, the new kind of conservative movement against empathy and its weaponization by the left. Gad, you responded. Let's put F2 up on the screen so folks can see what you said. Dear Ryan Holiday, neither Elon Musk nor myself purporting that empathy is bad. In my forthcoming book, I provide a detailed evolutionary and psychiatric explanation of how adaptive empathy is an evolutionarily selected virtue, but suicidal empathy is the dysregulation of that rational virtue. Given your take on stoicism, you might want to read my book. Rather than spewing orgiastic misconceptions, those are fighting words Gad said, can you take us to that?
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Gad Saad
I was trying to be nice there. That's not even fighting. That's me. That's me being cajolic.
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Joe Weil
But go ahead.
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Emily
No, no, I read the book and I would love to hear you talk a bit about the psychiatric element of this, because that is definitely what I think conventional wisdom on the left is conveniently not dealing with in your argument.
- [28:15]
Gad Saad
Right. So look, empathy, as I explained in that tweet, is a perfectly rational from an evolutionary calculus perspective in that we are a social species. Part of being a social species is for you and I, if we're going to have a meaningful interaction, for me to put myself in your mind and vice versa. That's called, by the way, cognitive empathy or theory of mind. For example, autistic children. The way that we diagnose them as being autistic is that we give them a theory of mind test, which they fail. So the problem arises when adaptive empathy starts misfiring. And it can misfire in several ways. It can misfire by becoming hyperactive. It can misfire by being invoked in the wrong situations toward the wrong targets. And so let me draw an analogy here from psychiatry. If I were to go around and scan the environment for environmental threats, that's perfectly rational from an evolutionary perspective. So if I were to see you at a party, Emily, and I noticed that prior to you shaking my hands, you're incessantly sneezing into your hands. And I noticed that, that I will very discreetly, so that I don't offend you, after I've shaken your hand, go to the bathroom and wash my hands. I noticed a threat and I attenuated it, I mitigated it. But someone who suffers from ocd, germ contamination, OCD is stuck in the hyper firing of this otherwise adaptive mechanism. They're stuck in an infinite loop, washing their hands for eight hours a day in scalding hot water until the skin off their hands is falling off. So Aristotle, since Ryan Holiday, likes to reference the ancient Greeks, Aristotle explained to us more than 2,000 years ago in his Nicomachean ethics about the golden mean, that too little of something is not good, too much of something is not good, and much of life is trying to identify that sweet spot. So no empathy makes you a psychopath. Too much empathy towards the wrong targets makes you a suicidally empathetic schmuck.
- [30:28]
Emily
And when we look at and drill down to some specific examples, I actually just want to stay with Elon for one moment. The now famous or infamous image of him with the chainsaw. Javier Milei at CPAC is really interesting because Elon comes in after the conservative movement, spends decades talking about cutting the size of government dramatically, and he goes up on stage with the chainsaw. And I don't know what he would say, but I bet there are a whole lot of, you know, kind of professional Republicans here in Washington who would say, listen, there are people at VA's around the country losing their jobs. Politics, optics of it probably weren't great for Doge in the long term. But, Gad, I just wanted, now that we have about a year of separation, and I know you know, Elon Musk a bit, what do you make of images like that just around Doge with, again, a year in the rearview mirror and this. This view, suicidal empathy.
- [31:24]
Gad Saad
Look, we are both persuaded through our cognitive system and through our affective system. So, for example, if I want to sell you a mutual fund, I will develop an advertisement that caters to your cognitive system. I want you to think about why you should buy my mutual fund. So I'll tell you, here are the seven reasons why you should purchase my fund. If I want to sell you a perfume, I don't tell you, here are what Harvard physiologists think about the science of olfaction. Instead, I will try to trigger your affective system. I'll show you a beautiful girl with flowing, luxuriant hair on a horse, and I'll just give a brand name called mister. Why am I using this example? Because imagery matters. Because oftentimes it caters to our affective system. So when Elon shows up, up with that chainsaw, he is maybe being a bit over the top, but he is trying to demonstrate the fact with one image, what he could describe with many more words, that there's a lot of fat. Whether it be when he took over EK or Twitter, whether it be in government, there is a lot of fat. And I agree with him, smaller government is better. And so he's gonna cut out the fat. Now for the people who are unhinged and who are suicidally empathetic, they will become. Become hyperbolic. And, you know, they're so afraid of his chainsaw. But the reality is he's sharing a very simple message. The government is too big, it has too much corruption, it misspends all of our taxpayer money. Let's try to cut the fat and the corruption.
- [32:58]
Emily
And it's interesting to me because you write about immigration in the book, you also mentioned Doge in the book, but on the immigration point, it seems to Me, if you were having this conversation in a vacuum with someone on the left about Lake and Riley, for example, they might be inclined to agree with you and say, you're right. People who want to close the border are being suicidally empathetic. We need workers in this country. Our birth rate is declining. The Lake and Riley example is just an exception. This is an anecdote. It is suicidal empathy for the U.S. have you found that? Because your argument is basically that this is a problem that is mostly on the left, but isn't it really something that it's kind of easy, it's a pitfall for everybody ideologically to fall into.
- [33:44]
Gad Saad
Not quite, though, because we know that the Democrats are called the party of empathy. Right. So it's not that human minds could not be parasitized by people on both sides of the political aisle. But as I explained in my earlier book, in the Parasitic Mind, when I talk about how our cognitive system could be parasitized and suicidal empathy is about how our affective system could be parasitized, I argue that the specific parasitic ideas that I am discussing are those on the left. Not because people on the right can't be parasitized, but all of those bad ideas come from academia, and academia is almost exclusively populated by leftists. So I'm not implying that people on the right don't have the architecture of the mind that allows them to also have a hijacking of their brain. But the specific bad ideas that I'm talking about are very much in the ecosystem of the left.
- [34:43]
Emily
I think a lot of Republicans believe that what started giving them The Edge around 2024, both on immigration and on trans issues, which you address in the book as well, is these anecdotes of Lake and Riley, which is. Is part of a broader pattern. Absolutely. I'm not dismissing it as an anecdote at all whatsoever. I think it was important because it was broadly representative of a real trend. But Also let's put F3 up on the screen. This is our friend here at After Party, Katie Pavlich, just looking at a CNN headline about a Trump administration investigation into Smith College for investigating. They're investigating Smith College for admitting trans students. And so the headline in cnn, the the post on X was in the Trump administration's latest move to limit trans rights. The Department of Education has launched a Title 9 investigation into Smith College and all women's college in Western Mass for trans women. Katie says let's rewrite this. In the Trump administration's latest move to protect women's rights, the Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Smith College and all women's college in Western Mass. For admitting men. Very easy to rewrite that from an anti suicidal empathic perspective. Gad. But I wonder in these cases where you have a Lake and Riley versus the left's image of, you know, the, the poor asylum seeker or you have a Riley Gaines versus Aaliyah Thomas, why is it that some case studies win out in the mind of the leftist? Is it because they fit a preexisting narrative? What is it?
- [36:17]
Gad Saad
Well, because remember when I said that suicidal empathy involves the hyper firing of the empathy module, invoking it in the wrong circumstances and toward the wrong targets. So when you are in the mind of the suicidally empathetic, the empathy that is owed to thousand of actual women is much lesser than the empathy owed to that one woman with a nine inch penis. She is deserving of a lot more empathy. That's exactly how the mechanism of suicidal empathy happens. Now I should mention, and I'm not doing this to sort of pat myself on the back, in 2014 I went to Wellesley College, another altogether women's school. And I went in there and after I came out of that exchange, I was standing on top of the mountain before anybody knew about trans rights and all that stuff, warning people. And let me tell you why. It's not because I'm a prophet. It's because I've been a professor now for 32 years and my main area of research is to try to apply evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to study human behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular. And it may or may not surprise you, Emily, to know that the great majority of my social science colleagues were outraged by the fact that I was taking on this project because to them biology might matter for the mosquito, the zebra and your dog. But surely, Professor Saad, you don't think that biology matters to human beings. And if you think it matters for human being, surely you don't think that it matters matters above the neck, meaning to explain the human mind. And so that's. So the Parasitic Mind is a book that I may have published in 2020, but it's the trajectory of having spent three plus decades in the ecosystem of lunacy called academia. So none of this trans stuff surprises me. I went in front of the Canadian Senate in 2017 and exactly predicted, predicted that Lia Thomas and similar folks would be coming down the pipeline. The pipeline. And yet people scoffed and mocked me. It looks like I was right.
- [38:30]
Emily
No question about that. Now you also argue there's A class element to this. So you quote Thomas Sowell in The book, his 1995 book the Vision of the Anointed, with which folks should absolutely go check out. You say he explained how the intelligentsia espouse policies that make them feel virtuous in their unlimited compassion while being fully decoupled from the negative consequences of said policies, which in many instances are born by those whom they are supposed to help, Eg Mart or marginalized communities. What solo identified more than 30 years ago has been expanded to include the associated concepts of moral licensing, luxury beliefs and performative allyship. I'll add, just as we're talking about immigration, it wasn't until Republican governors in Texas and Florida started busing more and more migrants to places like Washington D.C. and New York City that honestly, people who are just kind of normal center left folks in New York who I know started to think much, much more about flip side of the suicidal empathy or of the the empathy coin that the media had been selling them. So Gad, I think a lot of people understand this in the context of blue cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles, but can you help us see a little bit why there's a, a real element of, of classism to suicidal empathy as well?
- [39:45]
Gad Saad
Because it's. If I am a suicidally empathetic person that lives behind the high walls of the Vatican, I'm referring here to the Pope. With all due respect, respect to all of my Catholic friends, it's nice for me to have tears in my eyes and pontificate about how peacefully and beautifully Christianity and Islam can coexist. And even though there are thousands of fellow Christians that are being massacred as he uttered those words in Nigeria. Not only in Nigeria, but let's just take Nigeria. So therefore I could project to the world how kind I am while I stroke my luxuriant hair care and admire myself in the mirror of moral preening. But I always know that I can go back to the safety of my gated armed community or my Vatican walls. That's the ideal situation. I express to the world my virtue, my compassion, my infinite tolerance, my suicidal empathy while bearing none of the costs. And if I may very briefly, if you grant me the opportunity to explain a constant thank you, a concept from evolutionary biology. The peacock's tail, which is a very big, burdensome tail, could not have evolved for its survival advantage because it actually reduces the peacock's survivability. It makes it more conspicuous to predators. It makes it less likely that he can take flight and avoid predators. It actually has evolved because it confers reproductive advantage to the peah hands. It's basically saying, despite the fact that I'm carrying this burdensome tail, shouldn't you be choosing me as a mate? So therefore, it's an honest signal of the peacock's quality. Now, why am I saying all this? Because an honest signal has to have a cost associated to it. Otherwise all the virtue signaling scammers can mimic it with no cost. So it's specifically because it is a costly signal, because it is handicapping that it has evolved as an honest signal. Well, when the Pope sits behind the Vatican walls and says Christians and Muslims are beautiful friends, he is not adhering to the costly signaling that we know from evolutionary biology because he is bearing zero costs for his virtue.
- [42:09]
Emily
Interesting. And you write, and this maybe gets us back into the science of. Of how we get to exactly the point you were just explaining. This implies that the ability to empathize can be developed using a wide range of creative tools, including via the use of art, movies, and literature. Professional schools recognize the importance of empathy and accordingly seek to educate their graduates on its value, including in medicine, law, education, and business. What's interesting to me about that is it would probably explain why, as Charles Murray documented in 2012, this process and coming apart, this process of socioeconomic sorting that the United States has undergone in recent decades, where people now in higher concentration live based on their socioeconomic status, highly densely packed super zips, densely packed with the ultra rich, the upper middle class and the like tend to now be blue areas, even deep blue areas like the suburbs here in Washington, D.C. suburbs of New York, suburbs of Los Angeles, even Chicago. Is that. Am I right? Am I wrong? Am I pulling at the right thread there?
- [43:15]
Gad Saad
Gad, about which part, just so I know which part to answer, about the links between socioeconomic class and empathy, just
- [43:24]
Emily
how you're going through. Yeah, no, absolutely. As you're saying that if you are being, if your empathy is being developed in the academy, places that have more college graduates in the professional space might be overpopulated with the suicidally empathetic.
- [43:43]
Gad Saad
Yes. So, I mean, the way I will answer that is to go to behavioral genetics. So typically when we're trying to understand how much of a particular phenomenon is due to your genes versus your environment. So, for example, my previous book, Prior to Suicidal Empathy was a book on happiness. And it might interest your listeners and viewers to know that about 50% of individual differences in happiness, happiness scores come from our genes, but 50% are up for grabs, meaning that some of us start off with A sunny disposition. Some of us start off with a more sullen disposition, but depending on the life trajectories that we choose, depending on the decisions that we make, we can get ahead of someone who had a sunnier disposition to start off with. I think the similar principle applies for empathy. Some of us are born with a greater endowment for empathy. And you know this. If you have multiple children, you know that there are individual differences between them. Person child A seems to be a lot more empathetic than child B. But to your point, that of what I mentioned in the book about, you know, you can become more empathetic by interacting with the arts. By reading, for example, reading fiction actually improves your empathy. Why? Because you are now putting yourself in the minds of many of the protagonists and antagonists in that literary narrative. And so there is a why. So even if you started off being very poorly on poor scoring, poorly on empathy, it is something that you can hopefully improve on. And the best place where I see this, a place that frustrates me when I don't run into empathetic people, is precisely the bedside manners of physicians. Right? I mean, when I have to go for even just to do my. My yearly blood work and my blood pressure, I'm in a complete panic. I'd rather face ISIS because I'm so afraid of how abrupt most of those physicians are.
- [45:39]
Helena Rosenblatt
Boy,
- [45:42]
Gad Saad
they should be in a seminar on empathy, given that this is probably the most intimate context when we feel the most vulnerable. We don't want somebody to be chatgpting us. We want somebody that exhibits a bit of empathy.
- [45:57]
Emily
Right. I. I wanted to get your reaction to this conversation. It was a. The whole podcast was really interesting, but the conversation here is between Ezra Klein and Helena Rosenblatt, who has a new book on kind of the history of liberalism. The word liberalism, the concept liberalism, as it emerged really, as Helena argues. I was just on a panel with her, actually, and she laid this thesis out after the French Revolution. They start talking, and Ezra picks up on a really interesting point about how the root of the word liberalism is in freedom, and how some of what that meant was the freedom to pursue virtue in earlier iterations of. Of liberalism. Of course, we're talking lowercase l, liberalism. And this is kind of what we were just discussing is. Is cultivating empathy, but cultivating also discernment and responsibility as a member of a community. So let's take a listen to the clip. This is Ezra's podcast for the next New York Times.
- [46:53]
Helena Rosenblatt
I think this is quite important, and it's something Threaded through your book, you write at some point that this idea of being a liberal, which comes way before liberalism is a political philosophy, is designed by and for the free, wealthy and well connected men who are in a position to give and receive benefits in ancient Rome and some other things that emerge as the book goes on. One thing it makes clear is that if today your problem with liberalism and liberals is you find them to be a bunch of smug, condescending elites, that problem goes way back, that's always been braided into the issue here. And that there was like it was a set of virtues that was associated with like the noble born and set them apart in a way that would make them the ideal citizens. And that feels to me actually like a quite profound tension at the heart of. Yes, the project.
- [47:47]
Emily
Yeah, absolutely. You know, they don't even always live up to the ideal.
- [47:52]
Helena Rosenblatt
Sure don't.
- [47:55]
Emily
But they had that ideal and they talked about it and they designed an educational system, a liberal arts education that was supposed to cultivate these virtues, this liberality in elite boys. But there was a lot expected of the elite as well. Now we live in a meritocratic society and one of the. A meritocratic liberal society, at least in theory. And one of the wonderful things about that is we have an education system that was designed at this point in 2026 for everyone, not just elite boys. You are able to take advantage of what used to be considered a wonderful experience preparing you to serve as a good citizen. That is the education system, K through 12, college, particularly college. And nobody really even thinks about it that way. Gad, it's now thought of really as a ticket to the middle class, which it's not really even that anymore, but also as kind of a transaction between you and the university. You go there, you drink for a few years, and then by the time you graduate, you'll be ready to maybe enter the working world. That concept, even now as we have it, you know, they were talking about Tocqueville and how Toville looked at the American version of liberalism as a contrast with European versions of liberalism we really take for granted, it seems to me now that we have these opportunities in front of us to cultivate discernment.
- [49:26]
Gad Saad
Right. I would, I would argue that even a greater thing that Americans take for granted. And I say that not, not as a Canadian, but as someone who was not born, born into the anomalous reality of the United States. And what I mean by anomalous in the most positive sense, I mean there's a reason why it's The Canadian who is the scholar at the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American Freedom. Because I actually have internalized the ethos of what the American spirit is. It's not just being born within certain boundaries that makes you an American. Now to your point about taking things for granted. One of the reasons why many of the staunchest defenders of the American experience are usually immigrants who have sampled from the wide buffet of societies out there who can then come to America and say, be careful. Don't think that the liberties that you have here are just some natural default value. That's why, by the way, Ronald Reagan, if you remember the famous quote when he said, I, I'm paraphrasing it, I don't remember the exact quote, but he said, you know, every generation there will be new miscreants who are trying to bring down the, you know, the freedoms that you take for granted. And you have to, every generation, fight for them. So it's Ayaan Hirsi Ali that protects American freedoms. It's Gad Saad that protects American freedoms. Because the typical American thinks that that's just the way around the, that's how it is everywhere around the world. Whereas if you look at the entire a human experience, America is a very small bleep. That's why I love America so much.
- [51:01]
Emily
Oh, Gad Said, author of Suicidal Empathy and of course, as he just mentioned, scholar at the Declaration of Independence center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. Thank you God for your time.
- [51:12]
Gad Saad
Thank you so much for having me. Cheers.
- [51:14]
Emily
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Emily
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- [53:34]
Emily
Well, I'm happy to be joined now by Joe Weil. He is the CEO of Unplugged, which of course you've heard about on our program and doubtless other programs. So, Joe, thanks for being with us today. Today.
- [53:46]
Joe Weil
Thank you, Emily. I'm super happy to be here.
- [53:48]
Emily
I said doubtless, but I think I meant to say no doubt on countless other programs because Unplugged and the up phone is ubiquitous and a lot of people are talking about it. So Joe, I wanted to start. We have some news to get to just with the trip to China on the radar. But if you could start by telling us a bit because it's relevant here about how you ended up with Unplugged, a little bit of your background, that'd be great. Great.
- [54:13]
Joe Weil
Sure. Thanks, Emily. Yeah, I was happily at Apple for a long time. I had a really fun job designing and creating new products at Apple. I got to work with great people on big scale products that everyone uses. And around Covid time actually, really when the first Trump administration, but then big time during COVID things really started changing and a company that had been really apolitical for most of my tenure there suddenly got very politicized and actually a lot of the stuff we see in the news today around Covid and China and censorship and all that stuff started becoming like front and center at work. And as I was increasing in My concern about these issues and wondering kind of what was I contributing to for my kids future as I was supporting a company that was, I thought, taking the world in a really dangerous direction. More and more I saw my now partner Eric on another podcast talking about a new phone platform he was building.
- [55:11]
Emily
Building.
- [55:11]
Joe Weil
Eric is not a technology guy. He's the founder of Blackwater and his sort of military background.
- [55:17]
Emily
Erik Prince.
- [55:18]
Joe Weil
Erik Prince, that's right. And their goal and what they were doing was to build a phone that instead of being designed to make money off customer data, was designed to protect customer data. And that to me is a very important clarion call. And it's really representative of, I think, a big pivot we need to really be thinking about as a culture culture because we're really living in two countries right now. We're in the United States with all these constitutional rights and we're on iPhones and Google phones where we don't really have the rights we think. So yeah. That's how I ended up connecting with Eric. I reached out to him blindly on the Internet. A few days later we were having dinner and somehow he convinced me to leave my dream job at Apple despite this huge family and having already done the startup thing a long time ago. But here we are and it was absolutely the right thing to do.
- [56:09]
Emily
So I want to get back to that in just one moment because I have some questions about the phone. But let's talk about this pivot that you were just discussing. The President. He is, as we speak, en route to China with Tim Cook, with Jensen Wang, with all kinds of CEOs. But just if we focus on Cook and Wang in particular, he obviously cut that deal on the Nvidia chips, those H20 chips with China, allowing them to be to be sold to China. 15%, I think, comes back to the U.S. i forget the particulars of the deal, but there were a lot of surveillance hawks that were and China hawks that were a bit perplexed about that decision from the Trump administration. There has been some reporting to the extent that Trump is considering a $1 trillion deal for US factories to be cut with China. Reuters. I think we even have this tear sheet is reporting or is opining on how likely it is to see, quote, Chinese cars on US Roads is a matter of time, is a matter of when, not if. According to this recent Reuters headline, those BYD cars, Chinese cars could be coming to our roads, which are already going to become more and more politicized for the surveillance state ahead of the kill switch implementation. We'll see if Republicans are actually able to stop that. But tell us, you know, what's on the line from your vantage point having been at Apple, now at an anti surveillance tech company, what's on the line as the President looks to make a deal? Maybe that has great foreign policy ramifications, maybe we get closer to world peace, I don't know. We'll see. But could be a deal that involves more Chinese surveillance on or Chinese surveillance potential on US soil, whether it's factories or cars.
- [57:55]
Joe Weil
Yeah, I mean these are really important topics and my big concern is just looking at what's happened over the last 25 years. We should really pause and reflect on the choices we make when we prioritize short term convenience and short term profit and the impact that can have on both civil liberties, our culture and our national security. So I'm super concerned about the current thrust. I also just wonder from an optics perspective. I personally, I'm a very like Teddy Roosevelt, go get them American type person. So I love, in some cases, I love Trump's bravado. In this case case it's a little weird to me to him be like, for him to be like rolling up with the boys. And many of them are more China's boys than our boys. You know, I think if I were Xi, seeing Trump roll up with Tim Cook and a bunch of other CEOs who seriously pedal and push China first policy in the United States, I'd be delighted to see Trump coming with that group. So I think there's a little bit of, I think there can be a little bit of confusion we have about, about like what an American company is and what interests it's protecting and defending. So you know, that said, there's a lot of dynamics I'm not aware of and big world problems to solve. However, I think we're seeing really clearly what's at stake and you know, we, we just live through it. This is one of the things that's a little bizarre for me is we can talk about the surveillance state and this dystopian prospect and what about the future? As if we didn't just live through Covid when we saw firsthand the interrelationship between the big tech companies whose products we live in and a one party, the Democrat party and the Biden administration. Incidentally, I'm not of the opinion that our tech companies should be aligned with any administration. Right. That's the whole point of our system of government is it's designed from the ground up with our amendments, our Bill of Rights to the design of the post office, the whole system is designed to prevent the government from having access to our private information. And the system we're living in now is the exact opposite. It's in fact very much like how China works where there's like a central system, a central government, Eye of Sauron that can see everything except here at the top of the pyramid. It's an advertising system system and the government is one of the largest purchasers of that data. So here it's strangely commercialized, but it's just as dangerous. And again, we just lived through it
- [60:33]
Emily
with COVID and nobody will close the loophole. I mean, Ron Wyden has been trying to close that loophole for a very long time with very little luck. And on that point, I'm really glad you brought this up because a lot of my friends on the right. One of the things I started to hear is the TikTok debate was really raging when that was still under Chinese ownership, was that, listen, our social media companies during the Biden administration, whether it was Meta or others, were doing this as well. They were trying to manipulate the discourse via cooperation between the federal government. We saw this through the Twitter files and so what's the big deal? Well, just on this point about Chinese cars, byd, kill switch, I mean, actually what's such a threat is when you have the confluence of two world powers, particularly really or potentially in your own country. And I guess I'm just curious if you have thoughts on that because the kill switch thing hasn't happened yet. It's being implemented in cars unless it gets stopped, that basically we don't know whether the government will have access to it. Supposed to just go to the manufacturer, as far as I'm concerned, to monitor drunk driving or as far as I, I remember from reporting on this at the time. And people don't believe that. They don't believe that that's just going to go to the government. And if BYD were to hit American streets, Chinese cars were to hit American streets, I don't think believe that it would stay with even our government that it might be in the hands of another government. So just thinking about the car thing, as somebody who's in the space with phones, what are your thoughts on how that could transpire?
- [61:59]
Joe Weil
My thoughts are that this issue applies across technologies. In the late 70s, there was a Supreme Court case called Smith vs. Maryland which established what we call third party data doctrine. So basically, if data is deemed to be willingly given to a third party, like your car manufacturer or your bank or Or Apple or Google or whatever, then it has no constitutional rights. So this idea that like, oh, it's okay, the data will only go to the car company, it's like, according to what promise, what guarantee? And that's, I think the prospect with the cars reflects what's happening with our phones and our toasters and everything right now. I'll also just add, personally, I had an experience the other day here that gave me, I felt like a real maybe sort of prophetic moment. I was taking my oldest son to his church group on Friday night. It's like 6:30 and I take my wife's Tesla, which I love by the way. She has this Model Y, I drive this big truck, she has this Model Y. It's amazing. I love the self driving. And I'm getting my son to this thing, he has this appointment and I'm late and she texts me and she goes, the car said you just went 85 miles an hour. And then she proceeded to break my chops like turning on the seat heater when I was turning it off. And I was like, okay, I don't like this like interactive car where my wife like, this is not good. So that for me was a little bit of a moment because it had this uncanny valley experience. I really mean it, I love the car. It's, I would say arguably the best car I've ever had. And it doesn't cost a lot of money. And that moment totally pierced this veil and I was like, I hate this car now. Like it's not my car, I don't control this car. Something else is happening. So when it comes to, I just read this as like a sort of personal version of this sort of stack of issues when it comes to data control, sovereignty, I think we should, we should be extremely suspicious of these promises of privacy and security. And you're right, when China's involved, I mean to me it's a real kind of mirror moment. Just having been through Covid, just having had again, it wasn't only a party of ours that had access to all this commercial data. It was a party of ours that was largely reflecting Chinese interests at that time. So I mean separate topic but like a major issue was the conspiracy theory that Covid was from China and that was off limits on more than just just social media platforms. That was a tech wide issue.
- [64:40]
Emily
And Joe, can we pause on that because there's breaking news on this front actually that I was going to ask you about. This is going to be S3. This is a whistleblower who is a current CIA employee that as the deadline to prosecute Fauci for perjury lapsed just this week, Rand Paul said, all right, we are bringing this CIA employee to testify as to how Anthony Fauci allegedly influenced the CIA to avoid to have this like, neutral stance about COVID origins instead of just saying lab leak. So let's take a listen here. I want to get your reaction on the back end to what we heard in the Senate from this whistleblower just today. But your conclusion is that changing from the scientific consensus of it being from
- [65:24]
Alabama Attorney General
a lab to a neutral position by
- [65:26]
Emily
the CIA was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci.
- [65:29]
Gad Saad
It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci's injecting himself into the ic. And to go to the second part of your question about what happened, particularly during the 90 day study, we have documentation that shows that as of August 12th, the CIA was considering calling this a lab leak. August 12th of 2021. And then that changed on August 17th of 2021. And unfortunately, because the CIA would not provide a US documentation that we asked for, we can't. We have no idea why that changed. And that that's.
- [66:06]
Joe Weil
And they weren't alone because we know
- [66:07]
Emily
the FBI was coming to the same
- [66:09]
Joe Weil
conclusion that it was lab leak as
- [66:11]
Emily
well as the FBI. Yeah. And so this is coming actually just within, I think a day since the news broke that Tulsi Gabbard over at ODNI is like auditing 120 bio labs that have been funded by taxpayers for a really long time. So you can see kind of a picture emerg of Fauci and the government kind of wanting the public to not get some insight into what was happening in these labs. What's your reaction, Joe?
- [66:44]
Joe Weil
When I see that, it really gives me. It makes my sort of hair stand on end. And I get goosebumps because I was inside Apple at this, during all of this, and. And I witnessed a really intense and surprising internal policy focus around Covid origins, which I know sounds crazy because what does that have to do with. I know. So I would say there were like two elements that really drove this. Everything that was just described was on the heels, you know, about a year earlier, there had been this massive racial recovery reckoning, and that racial reckoning reset the standards of what we could talk about at work and what work was about. And fixing the racial problems in the world became a major, serious, persistent topic. And that had downstream policy results around who you could hire and all that kind of stuff. What was very interesting to me though, Is as these new tools or approaches to political information at work became normalized, the next piece of data that entered that system was Covid coming from China and from a lab is a racist conspiracy theory that's supporting white supremacy. Which I know sounds insane, but that was like a real topic. Like we need to keep that, we need to keep this lie off the platform. People shouldn't hear this, it's not true, it's racist. We're supporting Trump. Trump. If we say it was like very bizarre. And of course I was like, but wait, it did come from a lab in China. What are we talking about? And so when I see that, one of the things that makes me wonder is, all right, it wasn't just like the IC that was being co opted or captured. Yeah, there were all of these centers of American power that really control our daily lives, whether it's what apps we can get access to to or what information we can see. And this was a very, very real topic. Like, I mean like I'd be in meetings, being with leadership of the company, being educated about how Covid wasn't from a lab. And really. So this, you know, this topic I think is, is interesting to me because it just makes me really wonder, like, all right, if there's elements of our government that are so captured by a foreign power that they're now entangled, intent on either, by the way, either they're captured by foreign power or they're trying to hide our working with China to develop the virus. Whatever the intent was, this really showed
- [69:30]
Gad Saad
up
- [69:32]
Joe Weil
at the tech companies. Now of course we also saw that one level lower at the social media apps and who could say what. So I just personally am aware that like just as that testimony was describing, as things were changing in the ic, they were changing on the tech platforms, meaning the operating systems and then also the applications we use. So to me this is really important because it's very similar to the car question. Right. A lot of these issues are really much more about the water we're swimming in. We don't realize that we're reliant on a very small number of companies for most of what we do. And those companies tend to all have like very consistent perspectives. And during COVID we saw them all line up on one side, side. And for me, the really big eye opening experience here and the big sort of moment the shoe dropped was when the debate on these issues got totally shut down. Because as you recall, anyone who was saying the COVID lab origin from China, from Wuhan, was getting taken off of the meta platforms and then Twitter and then everything else. And there was basically one platform left called Parlor where people with, you know, countercultural ideas could express those concepts. And right after January 6, that app was removed from Apple and then Google and then Amazon Web services. So on one day, three companies decided no more debate about this stuff. And that for me was a very consequential moment because these topics about the origin of COVID or was there, were there problems in the election or whatever, just things we should be able to debate. We lost the ability to debate them on the Internet. So yeah, so it's very concerning to me and it makes me wonder what forces are involved in the concert or the sort of the joining of intelligence agencies perspective and those of the tech companies that we live on on. So to me this is adjacent to privacy. This is a very big concern is are we living in environments digitally? Are we spending our time, Are we living on platforms digitally where we are allowed to express ourselves, have diversity of perspective? Or are we living on platforms where when something becomes unpopular with a ruling party, we lose our ability to communicate? And my concern is we have the answer. It just happened. What I'm describing was a few years ago. This isn't like ancient history. We have our answer. And my concern is we are marching right back into the same situation. You know, it could be a debt crisis, it could be anything. Pardon me.
- [72:19]
Emily
No, no, I think that's actually really important. I want to turn back domestically and talk more about the phone actually, because I think there's been this raising of awareness after Covid with a certain sector of the public. Not enough people I think realize exactly what you're laying out. And the Twitter files showed the FBI's relationship with some of the tech companies and the like. So there's a lot going on that people aren't seeing on a day to day basis. But for example, if we just take Pfizer 702 which is in the process, there's a 45 day extension that Republicans voted for that lapses on June 12th. Chip Roy, just today I think was saying they're going quote unquote gloves off to try to have a either reform or killing of 702 and Pfizer and to block a CBDC central bank digital currency. I think we have a sort of Lawrence Boebert, the Freedom Caucus is basically showing signs of life is what I'm trying to say here. Let's see this from Lauren Boebert. This is F1.
- [73:16]
Lauren Boebert
Now I've heard it said before that if you Think that just because we have this fourth Amendment right and if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried. Well that's just like saying I don't need my First Amendment right to free speech because I have nothing to say. This is very important to protect our constitutional rights. Rights Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter expanding the investigation into how the Biden administration spied on me and other members of Congress, including demands for records from my bank, my private bank that was subpoenaed. The Biden DOJ was treating us like criminals with no evidence. It's time to stop the Deep State's unconstitutional constitutional spying on the American people. And that's why we're fighting for real reforms on fisa.
- [74:10]
Emily
So Joe, I could see that was like getting you animated as we were watching it. I have, I have my phone right here, the UP phone right here. And I think a lot of people see what's happening with Republicans and then they look at, you know, maybe the fact, as you mentioned Erik Prince's involvement, I think General Michael Flynn is on people who have worked with the government before. You come from Apple and they look at this, they're like Republicans are flip flopping on 702 and now these like deep state Republicans are going to try and sell me a phone. How, how does UP really protect people? How do you guys, how do you focus on that given the government right now has surveillance powers like 702 that Republicans seem intent on preserving where they can? I mean we're leaving a footprint, a digital footprint constantly with our, our iPhones. So what they tell me about why people should trust that?
- [75:02]
Joe Weil
Yeah, so I mean, I think, well, first of all, no one should trust without verifying. So no one should take my word for it. There are ways to discover the truth about these things yourselves and it's very important to do that. So we do a lot of third party auditing and we want everyone to sort of look under the hood and reach their own conclusions. Um, the, you know, I see that this 702 issue and of course it's concerning but I, boy, it really what worries me is not FISA as bad as it is, but I feel like we're ignoring the lion that's chasing us because of the pebble in her shoe. And there is, are much larger topics at play here. Of course the government should not have the FISA capability. I'm, I'm very concerned about, about this. The much, much, much bigger issue is we are living in ubiquitous technical surveillance in which data about all of us can be purchased and is purchased by the government constantly, both for investigations into individuals, but also for social profiling. January 6, of course, was a big example of this. Commercial data was used to figure out who to arrest. So the Google. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's. It's. It. And also, banks surrendered all the information. So it's. We. We tend to think, you know, I think a lot of us think about this issue as if we're watching, like an episode of Law and Order, and we're like, oh, the detective has their eye on the person and they need to get a judge to get the record to prove where they were. But fisa, you know, allows them to get around that. It's unfortunately so much worse than that. Like. Like, we're worried about a back door being open, when in fact the front door and the garage and the front windows are totally open. So, yeah, the Arctic Frost thing, which was also a big revelation recently. It's a similar type of story where we keep getting surprised that the government's not following Fourth Amendment protocol properly. We should probably reset our perspective to align with reality, because it's. Again, what we're hearing is about are the very small examples of data that required warrants. The whole thing we're not seeing is data that doesn't require warrants, which includes where you had breakfast, where you sleep at night, who you call. All of that can be easily obtained without warrants. So, I mean, certainly wiretapping and, like, listening to someone's call requires a warrant. So when it comes to this much bigger issue of data harvesting for the purpose of advertising and the civil liberties and individual safety issues that can come from that, this is where we really, really focus. So we've designed a phone with a unique technology in it. We call it the dmz. It's like a layer in every app that runs in the phone where we insert ourselves into the process of the application and prevent the app from exporting any identifiable information about where you are, are, what cell network you're on, the identifying characteristics of your device, all the things that are used to fingerprint us. Because what we don't realize is the apps on our phone, they're not free. They each represent a business trying to monetize as efficiently as possible. Where we are, what we do, what our preferences are, who we're around. All of that can be discerned very easily. And here's what we've discovered.
- [78:28]
Helena Rosenblatt
Which is what?
- [78:29]
Emily
Wild.
- [78:30]
Joe Weil
Even if you turn a VPN on. Right. Awesome. It hides your IP address, your app does not. The apps on your phone don't need your IP address to figure out where you are. This was a big discovery when we rolled this technology up, because we can literally see on the phone every file that each app is trying to export. So that gets back to your first question. Why trust us? Don't trust us. The feature is designed so that every customer can see every file. So literally everything is inspectable. Every call, a call to a server. This is happening millions of times a day from every phone. Every single call can be inspected on the device. And again, don't take our word for it, because really that's the problem is like, assuming that something's safe and then just because it's convenient has put us in this place. So our objective here is to reset the standards. We think we have the best product to do this. If we simply help move the needle and reset the standards of other big companies, great, that's also successful us. But the real underlying issue here is not whether you have our phone or not, which, again, ours is the best in this space. Check it out. Unplugged.com but the real issue, the really important issue is we cannot move forward as a civilization when our rights, our privacy, our information are basically for sale. And that's the current status quo. We don't really notice it so much until we have these weird moments. You know, like, you ever go to a party, Emily, and like, the next day, like, Instagram suggests a friend that you met physically at the party that you never exchange digital information with.
- [80:02]
Emily
I'm not invited to parties, Joe.
- [80:03]
Joe Weil
You're not invited. Okay, me neither. But I.
- [80:06]
Emily
That has exactly happened.
- [80:07]
Joe Weil
I actually have had this happen. I'm also, like, completely lame. I'm just like a homebody. But, like, I, like, literally was shown people from my church that I might want to be friends with. And I'm like, how the hell does Instagram know that I go to church with these people? This is completely, completely weird. It's not just weird. That actually indicates something much bigger. And this was, by the way, the insight that Eric had at the beginning of the company was he was using this technology to target our enemies. Like, when you see, you know, the Iranian generals getting destroyed or ISIS, all of its phones, 100% of the targeting is phones. And he realized, like, wait, we're carrying these targeting vectors around. All of this information ICE using to construct a pattern of life on an adversary, a high value target. This could apply to anyone in the United States, and it does. So this was really the sort of inciting incident was realizing, wow, the battle lines in this new sort of gray third world war. We're in cold war. We're in have actually moved into consumer technology and the stuff that feels really convenient and safe is actually representing a whole different system that we don't understand. We're pawns in. We're not. We're not the buyers of these products. We're the product of this system and our safety and our privacy is not a priority of it.
- [81:20]
Emily
Joe, this has been so, so interesting. I really appreciate it. You can check out the up phone from unplugged@unplugged.com Emily that is unplugged.com Emily and Joe just appreciate, you know, I mentioned at the top, like I have my upphone right here. I've had plenty of questions about it and I'm so glad that you stopped by the show to help us understand it a bit more and share your experiences, Apple and inside of this world right now as you watch the craziness unfold around us. So thank you, Joe.
- [81:50]
Joe Weil
Thank you, Emily. Take care.
- [81:52]
Emily
Well, that does it for us on tonight's edition of Afterparty. Thank you so much for joining the fun tonight. We appreciate it. Please subscribe if you haven't yet. It helps us so much to subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Email me emily.com by tomorrow afternoon if you want your question to be included in this week's edition of Happy Hour. That's the Friday edition of Afterparty that you just get on the audio side over on Apple or Spotify wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. We'll be back here with more soon.
- [82:32]
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- [82:34]
Joe Weil
Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card.
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Joe Weil
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Emily
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Joe Weil
The math demands it.
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Emily
Get the Venmo debit card.
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Joe Weil
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