China Is Playing Chess. America Is Playing Candyland.

Summary

Podcast Summary

American Power

Episode: "China Is Playing Chess. America Is Playing Candyland."
Date: May 20, 2026
Hosts: Nat Towsen (A), Chad Scott (B), Mr. Global / Matt Randolph (C)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the recent Trump-Xi Jinping summit in China, exploring what was at stake, the outcomes for US-China relations, impacts on Taiwan, energy reserves, rare earth minerals, and broader geopolitical strategy. The team critically assesses America’s approach versus China's long-term planning, highlighting the superficiality of US “deal-making” and the real structural shifts happening beneath the headlines. The last segment lightens up, as each host shares a "least worst" story of their week.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump-Xi Summit: The 4 B’s and Missed Substance (01:00–11:00)

• The “Four Bs” Trump Sought:
  • Beans (soybeans/agriculture)
  • Boeing (aircraft sales)
  • Boards (investment/trade boards)
  • Beef (meat exports)

“These were just kind of surface level headline deals. … what we ended up getting is very surface level policies that don't really move the needle on the things that are meaningful.”
— Chad Scott (B), 02:34

• Optics vs. Substance:
  US efforts were focused on symbolic “wins” for headlines, while China controlled the narrative, especially on Taiwan.

“It’s all optics and rhetoric. … Instead of the messaging being what it should have been… we just want peace in the region … they [the US] left rhetorical space. By not calling that out … essentially, China created a change to the narrative, and the US has not pushed back.”
— (A)/(B), 07:05

• Taiwan Tension:
  Xi’s warning about US intervention in Taiwan was met with silence, which the hosts see as a dangerous lack of pushback from the US, possibly emboldening China.

• US Priorities vs. Chinese Leverage:
  The US missed opportunities to counter China's growing influence in Taiwan through the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) party and failed to secure meaningful changes.

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2. Energy & Oil: China’s Strategic Stockpile (11:00–20:00)

• China’s Stockpiles:
  • Over a billion barrels in its strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs).
  • Not currently worried about Iran or Middle Eastern energy disruptions.

“If you just look out a month, six weeks from now when SPRs all over the world are basically empty and China's going to be sitting there with over a billion barrels ... it's checkmate.”
— Matt Randolph (C), 13:51

• Quality of Iranian Oil:
  China's refineries perfectly match Iran’s medium-grade oil, a unique strategic advantage.

• Trade “Deals” Are Just Restorations:
  Trump’s “successes” (e.g., Boeing aircraft sales) amount to restoring pre-trade war status, not new achievements.

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3. Surface-Level Deals and Political Optics (18:00–22:00)

• Boeing Aircraft
  • “New” 200 jet sale is actually delayed fulfillment of an old promise.

“So now Trump comes in term two and says, oh, I got him to buy 200 more jets. No, dude … they're just buying the 200 you negotiated like eight years ago.”
— Chad Scott (B), 17:58

• Farmland & China:
  Trump reverses previous “America First” rhetoric, now welcoming Chinese farmland purchases, despite years of GOP outrage about foreign land ownership.

“He just completely flipped on it, literally live on air …”
— Matt Randolph (C), 21:49

• Human Rights Avoidance:
  Neither side addressed human rights abuses, likely due to mutual vulnerabilities.

“We’re not going to talk about that. We'll just both be cool with each other's collective human rights violations and not talk about it whatsoever.”
— Chad Scott (B), 26:24

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4. Energy Strategy: Why China’s Winning (31:00–36:00)

• China’s “Energy Maximalism”:
  China is simultaneously scaling up wind, solar, coal, and other sources at an unprecedented pace. This “just build everything” approach is about redundancy and self-sufficiency, not transitioning away from older sources.

“They are just full on, you know, all energy in portfolio … wind, solar, geothermal, but also coal … they are building everything.”
— Matt Randolph (C), 31:33

• Strategic Backup:
  China backs renewables with coal and batteries for reliability (“backing it up six ways”).
• Rare Earths Dominance:
  China controls 60%+ of global rare earth processing, critical for electronics and modern weapons.

“Not only do they have a lot of the minerals, they're the ones that other countries ship the minerals to, to turn into the things we need.”
— Chad Scott (B), 36:21

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5. Chips, AI, and Long Game vs. Short Game (39:11–46:50)

• Who Is Playing Chess?
  • China is compared to a strategic chess player, while the US is “playing Candyland,” responding reactively rather than thoughtfully.

“Often we hear people say Donald Trump is playing chess ... No. I think China’s playing chess and we’re playing Candyland.”
— Matt Randolph (C), 38:35

• US Chip Surrender:
  Trump lifted restrictions on advanced Nvidia chips, giving China a potential leap. The hosts note China’s probable strategy: buy and reverse-engineer.

• Demographics:
  China’s one-child policy is an Achilles’ heel; an aging and soon-shrinking workforce may limit future growth, though AI could be a partial solution.

“Their demographics are going to kill them eventually … I don't think they'll ever pass the US in nominal GDP.”
— Chad Scott (B), 42:47

• But AI Comes With a Catch:
  Replacing humans with robots/AI doesn’t create new consumers, risking future economic stagnation.

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6. The AI “Bubble” and America’s Structural Blind Spots (50:59–61:45)

• Generative AI = Dotcom Bubble?
  Heavy US investment in AI looks like hype to the hosts.

“This so-called AI boom is like the dot-com bubble. … when that promise doesn’t come to fruition … that’s when a crash comes because people are like, this isn’t what we thought it would be.”
— Chad Scott (B), 54:49–55:09

• Energy and AI Arms Race:
  AI’s hunger for computing power only amplifies the value of China’s energy investments, not necessarily America’s AI hype.

• AI & Social Dislocation:
  The hosts worry about AI eroding human relationships and mass disconnection (“your kids asking AI for advice instead of talking to you”).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump & Optics:
  “He loves these, like, you know, manly head of state … he wants to be one of them, you know, so he keeps over and over again getting into these faulty … it barely feels like a negotiation.”
  — Nat Towsen (A), 20:15

• Trade “Victories” as Illusions:
  “It’s just the surface level, oh, look at what I did. And he can tweet about it.”
  — Chad Scott (B), 19:10

• Rare Earths Leverage:
  “We have a huge amount of reserves … we just aren’t mining them. … When not only are our phones and our electric vehicles, but our weapons rely on a Chinese-made commodity … that’s a huge problem.”
  — Chad Scott (B), 36:21

• On Chess vs. Candyland:
  “I think China’s playing chess and we’re playing Candyland.”
  — Matt Randolph (C), 38:35

• China as the ‘Boy Scouts’:
  “When I think of China, I think of the Boy Scouts. … they have a strategy long term, looking out fifty, a hundred years and they’re just doing everything.”
  — Matt Randolph (C), 38:35

• Demographics as Destiny:
  “No country on earth ever has survived halving your population. Ever.”
  — Chad Scott (B), 42:52

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Trump-Xi Summit & Taiwan Rhetoric: 01:00–09:57
• Energy Markets & China’s Stockpiles: 11:48–16:20
• Superficial Deals & Boeing Example: 17:58–19:10
• Farmland/China Hypocrisy: 21:18–22:08
• Human Rights Discussion: 24:26–29:12
• China Energy Strategy/Redundancy: 31:12–36:21
• Rare Earths, Chips, & Tech Control: 36:21–41:28
• Demographic Problems as China’s Weakness: 42:47–46:30
• AI Bubble & US Economic Myopia: 54:49–57:03

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"Least Worst" Segment: Positive Stories (62:16–74:00)

Matt:

• St. Louis Cardinals’ manager buying tickets for shirtless fans; a moment of lighthearted local flair.
  (62:22–64:39)

Chad:

• Mexico moves towards universal healthcare—120 million people to be covered, reflecting positive social trends and highlighting the US lag in such policies.
  (64:52–69:23)

Nat:

• Claire Valdez, Congressional candidate in Queens, released a highly detailed, labor-centered climate policy, rare for a federal campaign and a sign of concrete progressive agenda-setting.
  (70:44–73:50)

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Tone & Language

The conversation mixes expert analysis with a sardonic, sometimes comedic take. The hosts use colloquial language, self-deprecating jokes ("playing Candyland," "Trump gave whatever concessions he gave, likely chips, like I said, or farmland or something"), and cultural references to make complex geopolitical maneuvers accessible but never dumbed down. The rapid back-and-forth keeps insights sharp and the mood lively despite the sometimes grim implications.

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Summary

The hosts conclude that the recent US-China summit was a shallow exercise in optics, with China advancing its substantive, long-game interests—especially in energy, rare earth minerals, and future technologies—while the US leadership remains distracted by headlines and tactical ego. Looming demographic crises, the hype vs. reality of AI, and the enduring power of real assets (like energy and resources) are all discussed as critical axes of 21st-century power. The episode closes with each host offering a "least worst" story, injecting a note of optimism into an otherwise sobering analysis.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Town, Stand up comedian, speech writer, many other forms of writer, and most relevant to this current sentence podcast host. I'm joined as always by my panel of experts. Our expert on policy and the military, Chad Scott.

[B]

Thanks, Nat. I'm doing great. Thanks. Good to be here. Looking good, looking tan.

[A]

I got a little bit of sun and my face is telling on me. And of course, our expert on all things energy, whether it be oil, renewables, energy markets, you know him as Mr. Global, Matt Randolph. How are you doing, Matt?

[C]

Good, Nat. As far as your face telling on you, welcome to my world. That is literally my life.

[A]

I know I'm lucky I have that Italian olive undertone to protect me from my bad sunscreen habits. Kids use sunscreen. Even if you don't get sunburned, it can still hurt you. So that brings us to today's recording, which is totally unrelated to what I just said. It is Monday, May 18. We are recording this in the evening. So as we are recording, Trump has just had his massive summit in China. He met with President Xi Jinping and they. This is probably going to be his, his biggest meeting of the year. A lot of anticipation led up to this. I was hoping you could explain to me, Chad, what was on the table in these, in this summit.

[B]

A lot of this meeting was based around kind of a, it's a, it's an interesting letter framework where the Trump administration for the United States was looking for what was being called the four Bs, which is the, they were looking for beans, which is soybeans. It's more of a broader agriculture scenario. They wanted to buy, have China buy more aircraft, which is Boeing, so more Boeing jet sales. He wanted to have the, the boards, which is the Board of Investment and a board of trade. And then also the, the final B is, shoot, why am I spacing on it?

[C]

Beans, Boeing boards, boats and hoes.

[A]

That is what I would have guessed as a joke.

[B]

Yeah. Beef.

[A]

Sorry, I honestly didn't want to cut you off, but I was shocked when you said the first one was beans.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Don't ask me. When I was five years old. What the four bees was that would have been in there.

[B]

Yeah. Beef. Beef, yeah. That's my bad beef. And the Monday. The Monday. But so, yeah, basically that's what Trump was going in for. He wanted to get deals on these. And to be honest, these were just kind of surface level headline deals. And I get why he wanted, he needed easy wins. Things are just not going Great for Trump across the, the geopolitical landscape, whether it's domestically or internationally. So he was not going to go in looking for these, these sweeping policy changes. And unfortunately that's what we ended up getting is very surface level policies that don't really move the needle on the things that are meaningful. Sure, at the meeting we had a lot of smiles and a lot of glad handing and it was very cordial and they had a lot of nice things to say back and forth. But the, the core differences we have, the fundamental issues between the United States and China really didn't get sorted out. I'm talking things like the, the Taiwan issue that was a huge miss for the United States. I mean, Xi Jinping came out opening, his opening sentence was basically as long as the US and I'm paraphrasing the US Stays out of the Taiwan business, our relationship is good. As long as the US doesn't meddle with Taiwan, this is going to be, we're not going to have any conflict. And a lot of people were taking that as a warning and I'm looking at it more of, as a, a preview of what is to come, unfortunately, where I think Taiwan is going to become more of a soft power target for China as well as an asymmetric gray zone. And what I mean by that soft power is they're going to leverage their larger economy, they're going to leverage the, the media environment with the, the pro China party, which is called the, the Kuomintang Party, the KMT Party, and who is actually gaining popularity in Taiwan. And so I think the US Missed an opportunity to counter that narrative.

[A]

What would we have been able to, to achieve in that for regarding the Taiwan situation? Like what kind of wins were there potentially?

[B]

Well, when it comes to China, it's always a rhetorical game with us. They, I mean, we saw that it's, it's optics. We saw that when Xi Jinping was in that slightly taller chair than Trump. I mean, mean, I think Trump is actually 4 inches taller than Xi Ping. But in every photo, every, we don't know.

[A]

Trump has not been photographed without shoes on in decades, so we had to guess. But he's an optics guy himself.

[B]

But he's, I, I officially Trump is 62. Given his kids are pretty tall, I kind of assume he's, but his wife's, his, his wives have been tall as well. Nonetheless, I, I do know Xi Jinping is shorter, so he shouldn't by any measure be taller in photos at all. There's a lot of heel going on with both of those men, probably. But it's all optics and rhetoric. And when Xi Jinping came out and said there could be conflict if the US Steps in on Taiwan, and the United States said nothing, and basically Rubio, Trump said nothing. And Rubio had to come out and say the status quo will remain. And that status quo is we do not support. They call it do not support Taiwan independence. It's a very neutral statement. It means that we don't pick a side. But what the Chinese want is for us to oppose it. They want us to change the verbiage to say oppose. That moves us fundamentally into Beijing's territory. And because Donald Trump didn't address this, the. The. It makes the Taiwanese, the Japanese very nervous. Because what we see now is, instead of the messaging being what it should have been, which is we stand with our ally in Taiwan, and it doesn't even have to be that direct. It could have been something to the effect of, we just want peace in the region, but understand that the geopolitical landscape is that when a larger country attacks a smaller country who has a large backing from a powerful nation, has a. Has a highly technical capability in defending itself, they can win. And we can say a prime example is Russia and Ukraine. It wouldn't have had to been a direct hit on China. We could have just kind of said, hey, we still support Ukraine, we still support Taiwan. And if you want an example of how this is not going to go well for you, China, just look at Russia and Ukraine or, but it's quite

[A]

honest, sort of left rhetorical space. By not calling that out, by not confirming, by not pushing back on, essentially, China created a change to the narrative, and the US Is not pushed back on that, leaving space, at least rhetorically, for a. A lack of response. Like. Like it's sort of. Sort of, well, not promising, but leaving, you know, leaving ambiguity where we could potentially not respond with the.

[B]

And, yeah, exactly. Right, yeah. And that ambiguity, but didn't help on the way home, when Trump was asked about it, when he was asked about Taiwan, he said things like, I'm not going to fly 9,500 miles to fight a war. That may be the internal policy of the United States, but we don't. And, and the irony aside of the fact that we're fighting a war that was completely unnecessary in Iran, I feel that a Taiwan war would be more necessary given the strategic requirement, necessity of what they provide. But I.

[A]

We certainly don't seem to have been against fighting unnecessary wars thousands of miles away in the past.

[B]

Well, that's, that's the irony of what Trump said. It was like, I, I just really believe that Trump is fond, it's the same thing with Putin. He's very fond of this notion that him and Xi Jinping are together in the pomp and circumstance and they're the most powerful men in the world and they can. And he responds to that. And I think the Chinese leveraged that, that idea. This, this, let's just play to his ego. And again, I don't know what was said in the back rooms. No one does. There was no, there's no, there was no joint statement released. The readouts were wildly different between the two. The US didn't even talk about Taiwan, whereas the Chinese led with Taiwan.

[A]

So along with, in the press after the. Yeah, after the summit, it's in the,

[B]

in the actual readouts that come out like the diplomatic readouts that they.

[A]

Oh, yes, like the government readouts, but not during the summit. You're talking about the, the reporting coming afterward or reporting to, making the information

[B]

just kind of, just kind of broadly. I will say this, though, and then we can kind of talk about the eaches, if you want, whether it was the, the oil deals, the, the chips deals, whatever. But I, I think this was one of those meetings where it was kind of where it wasn't as bad as I had worried it was going to be, but it wasn't as good as I had expected it to be. I thought there would be a lot more substance. I thought there'd be a lot more meat and goodness to come out of it. But given the fact that Trump loves to shoot from the hip and content, can ruin things with his own ideas, the fact that he did not, that's a good thing. So it, just. Because it was just a very surface level meeting with, without a lot of, without a lot of meat to it, and a lot of things were missed. Even if some of the headline items sound really good, like the trade deals,

[A]

I mean, Trump loves a victory. That sounds good on paper. Substance is not usually the concern. Right. So if you're trying to placate Trump, I think giving him a list of bullet points to brag about, like you said, that's the pomp and circumstance. Make him feel important guy loves a strong man. But also it's this, you know, easily digestible headline wins versus, like structural and long term wins that are actually going to help the American people. It seems like he's pretty easily placated. He likes to do that anyway. So if you hand him a bunch of sort of ways to say we won or we got what we wanted. The guy loves to brag about getting a deal. And that's how you, that's how you get. What you want is you, you give him headlines that make it look like he got a deal, or at least he thinks so.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And I, and I had this, I have a question for, for Matt on this because I was just kind of thinking about it leading up to this, this meeting between the two, all of the administration, whether it was Trump himself, Rubio, Scott Besant who actually led this summit, which is very weird. Usually that doesn't happen. They all talked about Iran being the primary focus and there was extraordinarily little on Iran coming out of this. And I have to wonder is, is it because China is in a place right now where they don't have to worry about the energy coming out of the Middle east because they have their own, Their stockpiles are so good or they have it so good they don't really need it, or are they just kind of hiding and kind of bluffing and they're really in a place where this could get bad for them eventually. But right now it's not necessarily so. They were just kind of playing it off as like, oh, Iran. It's your. This is an American problem. I, my read is, I think eventually it'll become a Chinese problem, but right now they, they may not. What do you, I mean, is that, am I reading that right? Are they just way over prepared?

[C]

So what I saw was the schoolyard bully getting stood up to and laying down like a. That's what I saw. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been talking about China for years. It's a huge part of their platform. China hate. China's the boogeyman. China's the villain. We were literally attacking Chinese people in the streets during COVID We were supposed to hate China. We've been ordered to hate China. That's the message you go over there

[A]

that people forget about too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He was mad over there. Yeah. That's what he called. Yeah. Trump goes, China, you know, like this. The demonization of the.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Entire country. Sorry, go ahead. I just want to point out that

[C]

I think, I just mean he goes over there and, and Gigi Ping basically says, I'm going to do whatever I want with Taiwan and there ain't jack you're going to do about it. And Trump says nothing and just lays down like the. And China knows who Trump is. And by the time Donald Trump got home, he was willing to Give him all the damn farmland and everything else. Like he completely flipped on China after what, a one hour meeting with their leader. He's been talking shit about their country for years and he comes home and suddenly he's half Chinese. Like it's, it's literally the schoolyard bully. Someone standing up to the bully and you find out the bullies, nothing but a giant wuss. I don't know how else to describe it. As far as the oil goes, China has over a billion barrels of oil and their strategic reserves and they're going to be fine. They're not worried about Iran one bit. Now they may be worried about some manufacturing and, and shipping delays, you know, but they're not going to help with Iran. They're just not.

[B]

Do you see a problem with them possibly having the rest of the world being squeezed? Because it's not, maybe it's not just oil, but like, you know, better than all of us. Oil's in everything, like everything. Plastics, cosmetics. So when a country can't sell their goods because they're, and they, that means they can't buy Chinese goods, do you think they're going to be a, an eventual tertiary problem? Knock on problem to that, yeah.

[C]

I think if you just look out a month, six weeks from now when SPRs all over the world are basically empty and China's going to be sitting there with over a billion barrels in theirs, it, I mean it's checkmate. It's literally checkmate. Like they can charge whatever they want for their oil at that point. And, and just to be clear, China doesn't buy Iranian oil because they're good friends with Iran. Iranian oil is perfect for China's refineries. It doesn't have to be. Well, so oil, you know, there's different types of oil, different grades, different weights. And here in the United States, we.

[A]

Canola?

[C]

Yeah. Vegetable, of course. Extra virgin.

[A]

Virgin, yeah, yeah. So I know about oil.

[C]

So like here in the United States we have to blend a lot. You know, we blend our oils before we refine them. So we take our oil and we mix it with heavy oil that we import from wherever and we kind of mix up this recipe or this soup and that's how we refine. You don't have to do that with Iranian oil. You don't have to blend, you don't have to buy oil from more sources to make sure you have the right recipe. Like with that Iranian oil, you run it, it's good to go, you don't have to do nothing.

[A]

And that's the and that just so happens from how. It's the weight and grade of it.

[C]

It's. That oil would be perfect for our refineries too. Like, if we wanted to import oil I. From Iran.

[A]

They just happen to be sitting on perfect oil, is what you're saying.

[C]

Yeah. You know, they have light and heavy oil. Well, right. Iran has this middle. You know, they call it medium grade.

[B]

It's.

[C]

It's like if you blended the two oils we use, it would be Iranian oil. And that's the right.

[A]

I think the one.

[C]

Yeah, it's just right. It's. It's kind of like the Kool Aid. You don't have to put sugar in. Like, it's just good right out of the package. That's why they buy so much Iranian oil. But as far as an oil deal, the only thing Donald Trump is trying to do is get them to start buying the oil they used to buy from us already. This isn't some new thing. Like, every time Trump comes into office, he starts a trade war with them. They immediately stop buying lng. They immediately reduce their oil imports from America by like 80, 90%. He's just trying to get them to start buying what they used to buy. This isn't some groundbreaking deal. Like, he's just trying to restore what we had on January 19th of 2020.

[A]

Classic Trump negotiation strategy. The classic Trump pretending to solve it and claiming, you gotta win.

[C]

Yeah, he broke.

[B]

Yeah, it's the same thing he did with the Boeing thing, like the Boeing jets. So he comes home and he has this headline, 200 Boeing jets were purchased by our promise to be purchased. Let's. Let's clarify that all of these deals are promises that China could easily just pull back on and say, the, the geopolitical landscape, the diplomatic friendliness we have has soured. We're not doing that. And they have done that before. And to be fair, the US has done it before, too. So this is a lot of words, but when it came to the Boeing thing, they promised to buy 200 jets, which is a big. Much less than the administration had thought. Originally, they thought it was going to be 500. It was going to match that European deal. That was when they bought airbus, they bought 500. This was Xi Jinping saying, we'll buy your jets, but this is us throwing you a bone. Here's 200. We'll come to find out that in the first Trump administration, he did a deal where there was 300 Boeing aircraft that were going to be, that China promised to purchase, that they purchased 100. And then the first, the first Trump administration tariff war, the trade war started and China said, we're not buying any more of these Boeing aircraft. So only 100 of the 300 were purchased. So now Trump comes in term two and says, oh, I got him to buy 200 more jets. No, dude, you just let. They're just buying the 200. You negotiated like eight years ago.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And so there. So it wasn't even a new deal, theoretically.

[A]

Assuming they actually do assume.

[B]

Well, and here's the thing. Boeing said, well, these will be fulfilled in the2030s. Who knows what happens when that, when that comes around. And so what ends up happening is Trump comes home with a headline that says Boeing selling 200 aircraft to China. Those 200 were already sold. They turned them off. And now Trump gave whatever concessions he gave likely chips, like I said, or farmland or something, as Matt was saying. And because of that, now we have a deal that we basically re litigated, renegotiated that it was the same deal and we gave more to China just to get the old deal from years ago. And that's like, you're exactly right on this.

[A]

So we've acquiesced twice because this is two rounds of negotiations.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, he made a deal to get those 300 and then, and then another deal, another deal to get a new and heavy air quotes 200, which is actually still part of the original deal had it been fulfilled and even that we. Remains to be. It has not been fulfilled, of course. Remains to be. Succeed.

[B]

Yeah, so.

[A]

So he's had to acquiesce twice in order to not even get this deal.

[B]

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And it's, it's that classic Trump headline seeking tactic. It's just the surface level, oh, look at what I did. And he can tweet about it.

[A]

And it was the deal, baby. Yeah.

[B]

And it's, it's kind of this, it's the same thing with Iran. They are grasping so hard to this. At the very beginning, Xi Jinping said, what was the Chinese and global status quo for the strait of hormones. We want it to be free and open for everyone. Trump took that statement and said, look, the Chinese are now saying that they want it open just like the Americans do. They're going to help us get it open. And China's like, hold on, whoa, we just said we wanted it open. You're now saying we're going to help. Nobody's coming to help. We're about to start fighting with them again. So yeah, it's, it's, it's all smoke and mirrors for Trump. It's all headlines. And this whole summit was basically, and I think that was the plan. They, I think they knew they were going in with no substance. Unfortunately, China end up getting some, some things that give him the upper hand in some other areas.

[A]

So happens every time he goes to meet with some strong man like he, he loves a strong leader with a lot of pop and circumstance. And I feel like every time he goes in excited to hang out with his buddy and sits down with someone who knows that about him and uses it to exploit him. I mean, Putin being the obvious example, but I feel like that is like, time and time again is like, if you are, if you are a head of state who Trump thinks is handsome or something, you can get his. I mean, and I'm, by the way, I'm not being like, homophobic, but I'm just saying, like, he likes these, like, you know, like, manly head of state. He's not, he's not doing this for Angela Merkel, right? Like, no, he's doing that. He's doing this for, for Putin, for that type Putin horse. He loves that, he loves that kind of stuff, though. He loves those guys. So if you, I, and I think wants to be one of them, you know, so he keeps over and over again getting into these faulty. I was going to, I was going to say negotiations, but it barely feels like a negotiation. Matt, I was hoping you could explain the farmland issue for me a little bit better. What exactly did we give up there?

[C]

Well, I don't know that we gave up anything, but, you know, the Republican Party's been screaming about China owning land in the United States for years. And he comes back from China and in that interview with, Was it Hannity, he's like, well, you know, if we don't sell China farmland, it's going to hurt our farmers. Like, he, he just completely flipped on it, literally live on air, you know, so I don't know that there's actually a land deal. It was just shocking to see him completely flip on that, you know, and

[A]

he's not pandering to the sort of populist anti globalist MAGA base there by doing that anymore. I mean, it used to be very much like, we're not going to do, you know, we're not going to let any of these, these international concerns. You know, I mean, it was always. But I feel like he used to at least pander to these sort of like, anti globalist fears.

[C]

He's kind of done with all that now.

[A]

I think that's very first. No, I mean, I, we talked about this earlier in the podcast, but that's very first Trump administration, like, he was so non interventionist in a lot of ways that I think one of the first things we ever talked about on the show was like, what happened. The one thing you could say for him in the first administration was that he seemed to avoid military action at all cost. And, you know, my calculation was, you know, were there people in the military resisting him in the past who he's superseded here, Whatever's changed, his strategy being this sort of like, you know, catering towards the, you know, obviously anti immigrant, anti globalist, you know, side of the far right base. That was a huge strategy of his and now he seems to have completely abandoned it. And I don't, you know, I, I don't know what that says about his base these days, but it's interesting to see he's really tacked in a different direction.

[C]

Yeah, I just think he doesn't think he needs them anymore. And once he doesn't need you anymore, you. You sort of see the, the real Donald Trump, you know.

[A]

Oh, yeah, like we've said it before. I think I said it on Find out. He doesn't care about anyone.

[C]

No, he doesn't.

[A]

He does every time. He pulls the rug on every supporter. He never will stop.

[C]

That's what I, I said today. Like this Thomas Massie election. I was like, it's wild that this guy might lose an election because he had sex with an adult. Like, if you think about it, that's like, you know, he was the guy that was fashioned. Well, no, I'm saying like he was exposing the Epstein list and now all they're talking about is how he might have, you know, had some sort of tryst or whatever with, I don't know, Bobert or somebody. And it's like they're all outraged. I'm like, oh my God, not an adult. You know, I mean, what a republic going to do.

[A]

Two consenting adults. That's.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy.

[A]

Neither one of them was sold into sex trafficking. That's unethical. I mean, no, I mean, it's all selection. Yeah. But the cognitive dissonance, as Matt is saying, is, is ridiculous. For them to try to pull any of the like, family first morality war bullshit that they used to pull is like, guys, we've seen the, we've seen the cute letters that they wrote each other about doing child sex crimes. It's not like it Might have happened. It might. It's like we saw the scrapbook about it happening. Like, you're not the moral party anymore. Not that they ever work.

[B]

No.

[A]

But that, that's faux morality. That faux moralism is, is so weak these days.

[B]

And it's, it's really. It's really kind of frustrating because it used to be there was one area when it came to China that we would. The. You would see the Democrats and the Republicans come together, and it was being forceful against China on human rights. And we. There was nothing other than just a blurb about the Uyghurs and the treatment of the Uyghurs in China. And I truly believe that the reason that the Trump administration didn't bring up the human rights thing, One, because that's just an uncomfortable thing Trump never talks about, even when it comes to, like, Russia. But two, I would truly believe, given our current atmosphere and our current situation with ICE and Homeland Security and all that stuff, China could have thrown it right back in our face and said, you're not in a position to try and discuss with us human rights, given what you're doing to the minority populations in your own country. Now, I'll caveat that where I will say that. And they are absolutely right, and they could have done that. I will say that what China is doing is probably an order of magnitude worse. They're trying a complete cultural destruction with the Uyghurs destroying, like, all of their churches and, and erasing them from history, essentially. So I don't think it's. It's completely morally equivalent, but there, there's a valid point there. We used.

[A]

I think they're both above the threshold of human rights abuses, though. I mean, like, I agree that you're right. The absolute, like, full cultural erasure. Genocide. Yeah, not only genocide, but, like, you're talking about, like, a full erasure of history. Like, we are not at that level yet in most cases. But, but I don't, but we, I don't know either of those are both beyond the threshold of human rights abuses. Yeah, I don't know that you're. I don't. I don't think that you are defending China by any means to criticize the US on human rights abuses.

[B]

No, they absolutely would have been within their right to criticize what is happening in the US right now with, with ICE and the detentions and all of that 100, the deportations to Africa, things like that. And that's why I think the Trump administration and China just said, we're not going to talk about that we'll just both be cool with each other's collective human rights violations and not talk about it whatsoever. And that's hugely unfortunate because it is a, a problem. It is, it is this ooze that is crawling across the world where these massive despots are doing these things. And it used to be the US Would at least feign trying to stop that from happening, whether both Republican and Democrat, whether it was when in the, the George W. Bush who was the compassionate conservative kind of thing, or not George W. Bush, but George H.W. bush, the compassionate conservative type. Clinton administration, Obama now under Trump. It's just like, ah, you do human rights violations in Russia, you do it in China, we do it in America. Let's not talk about it. And it hurts. Everyone around the world has just come.

[A]

I will say, Chad, we have, you know, not the most. I agree with you. They used to at least pay lip service to it. But yeah, you know, even in, I mean, I remember, you know, Clinton had a big summit with China, a trade summit, and that was right at the heart of like the Free Tibet movement. And China was marching in and destroying churches and doing a very similar thing of like, you know, imprisoning spiritual leaders and trying to erase a culture. And I remember, you know, I was young, but I was involved in that. And I remember, oh good, the Democrats are going to, the president's going to meet with China. That'll sort that out. They'll get to tell that to stop doing that. You know, I was young and naive, but like, I'm mentioning that specific issue because it was one of my first personal exposures to the idea of like, oh, there's a lot of factors at play here. Like, we got a good trade deal with China and we didn't really turn the screws on them when it came to human rights abuses in Tibet. And so I, I agree that it definitely, the discourse around it used to be different, but I do think we've kind of played this game for a while of like a lot of countries that are economically not relevant, economically essential to us, essential to our economy, such as China, the Chinese labor force. We have a sort of relative way of looking at their human rights violations. We still need their sweatshops. We're still building stuff there. So we're not like, yeah, we, we, we pay a lot of lip service to human rights violations. But they were building iPhones under Democrats too. So, you know, I mean, I mean Obama tried, Obama tried to get Steve Jobs to build, about to build the iPhones domestically but the point being, like, we kind of have negotiated with how much we are willing to tolerate and I think it's a step in the wrong direction to not bring it up at all.

[B]

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's fascinating because actually it's kind of to turn everything on its head. It's not been government that's been forcing, it's been the, the people and corporations. It's like the, the disconnect, the, the decoupling or whatever you want to call it from China has become companies. Like I do believe Apple has moved to like Indonesia or India or something, which to be fair, don't necessarily have their, they have their own, but own human rights issues. But it's just, yeah, it's fascinating and I'm just frustrated that no one brought it up and, but we all knew that Trump wasn't going to be the human rights guy. What we got were these. And I wanted to ask Matt about this because maybe it would help in the, whatever the, the, the energy world of diversification when it came to EVs, because China's the leader in that he wants to do. Trump came out of this meeting with this Board of Creation and this Board of Trade. Do you, have you heard anything about. I think it's just a bunch of like, nonsense, but I just kind of want to get your idea. And if it's going to be anything worth the salt, that's baloney.

[A]

Baloney.

[C]

I say

[A]

beans, bologna, beef. Yeah, There you go.

[B]

5th B. Bologna.

[C]

Not the good bologna either. That really bad stuff you had when you were a kid.

[A]

Not bologna. You're talking the mother country. You're talking about processed American.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, because, Yeah, I just, it's like everything, it's like the Board of Peace. It just seems like this Trump slaps his name on a building and there's just gonna be no follow through because you have to have the diplomats to actually do those things. And when you, Even if he creates the board, so what Trump gets to decide. He's going to say, I disagree. And so. Yeah, I just didn't think. I, I heard China was thinking maybe it could be a route to get Chinese EVs into the US market. But with Elon Musk being there, he was never going to allow that to happen.

[C]

Yeah, that'll never happen. That'll never happen.

[A]

Well, but maybe we could broaden that a little bit. Matt, could you tell us. Because I understand that China's transition to renewables and you know, build. Building EVs but also building up their rail. I understand it's been pretty aggressive in recent decades. Could you talk a little bit about where, where China's, what we're trying to energy development is at right now.

[C]

Yeah. And honestly, I wouldn't even call it a transition. They are just full on, you know, all energy in portfolio where they are building everything. Right. More wind, more solar, geothermal, but also coal. China does not have a large reserves of oil and natural gas. I mean they have some, but certainly not enough for the size and scope of their population and economy. So they're just all in on energy and because they understand that how big energy is going to be in the future.

[B]

When you say reserves, you mean not strategic reserves. You mean like actual can't pull it out of the ground reserves?

[A]

That's what you mean, what, sitting on oil? Not like.

[C]

Okay, yeah. And, and that's a reason that they have over a billion barrels in their strategic reserve is because they don't have a ton that they can drill for. They just don't. And even if they did, it's not. The geology isn't great. There's a lot of fault lines and seismic activity in China. You go over there and drill a well and you might kick off the worst earthquake the country's ever seen. It's just they do produce some, but

[A]

not anywhere near due to national like, like natural geographic features. Yeah, right. Like that's just what China is geographically, geologically.

[C]

Yeah. So they have, you know, so they're just building everything that they can. Right. That's sort of, I mean coal isn't artificial, but you know, wind, solar, all that stuff just gangbusters more than the rest of the world combined. So I wouldn't really call it a transition as, as much as they're just all out. They, you know, it's the manufacturing epicenter of the world is Asia.

[A]

Like that's not a slow fade, you're saying. Like it's a, it's a smash cut to the next shot in the movie. Like they are on to renewables now.

[C]

Yeah, well, Asia is 40% of the global GDP and Asia is like I said, the epicenter of manufacturing economy. And they are recognizing how much energy they're going to need in the future. And they're building every kind that's. That's possible. That's really what they're doing.

[A]

And this is a political calculation, right? I mean this is not only that, this is not only literal power in terms of, you know, energy, electric, oil or you know, what, however we're generating, generating electricity but you know, as recent months have reminded us very clearly, oil reserves, energy reserves around the world are a very complicated interrelated network of power structures. Right. So the more China does this, the more power they wield to be independent of that. And also, I mean, I don't know if this is the goal, but also to be, you know, a generator provider of energy. I don't, I don't know if China's going to export any of this, but I literally don't know. But I would have to imagine that being energy independent gives them a lot of global political power or, you know, moving towards generating more of their own energy in all these different ways. Possessing more is a major political move.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And they're building a lot of redundancy into their system as well. So you know, they, they build just, I don't even know how many wind turbines they, I knew at one time it's just an enormous number. But like when they build a massive wind farm, they'll build a co fired plant to back it up and they have battery to back it up. Like it's just every redundancy is in place. It's almost like they're just preparing for anything that could possibly happen. And the Iran war is a perfect example of China's energy strategy and why it's such a good one.

[A]

Right.

[C]

They're sitting on over a billion barrels of oil that they can. They immediately cut off exports within I think two weeks of the Iran war starting. They're like, we're not going to export any more of our oil. It's ours. Good luck. And this has been, they've been preparing basically for this kind of a moment for decades and it's going to work out well for them. When I see people online talking about how, how much damage we're going to do to China with this Iran war, I'm like, you people have no idea what you're talking about. Like there's one country in the world that is ultimately prepared for this and it's China. China's going to be fine.

[A]

And that's due to their ability to produce energy.

[C]

Yeah,

[A]

well, also the billion, billion barrels of oil. But you know, they, I mean if

[C]

you just look at all their renewable energy, I haven't done the math on how many million barrels of oil it takes off of their plate that they would need to burn every day, but it's an enormous amount. Like they have all that oil and they don't have to use near as much of it as they would be obviously without all the renewable Energy like they've, they've got it figured out. Like they're doing energy like I would do energy. That's how they're doing it. Like they know what they're doing.

[B]

They have other, what's interesting is they have other levers that are incredibly powerful as well to pull. I mean, we look at another miss by the US we came away from the Xi Trump summit without any discussion that was meaningful on rare earth minerals. This is a country that controls approximately 60% of the global processing capacity. For everything we need. In all electronics, they have roughly 85% of the global processing capacity. So not only do they have a lot of the minerals, they're the ones that other countries ship the minerals to, to turn into the things we need. And we saw this when the initial, the initial trade war took place earlier in the second Trump administration last year when Trump started throwing that 145% tariff on Beijing. And Beijing's like, fine, we ain't buying your soybeans. And you don't get any more of these rare. We don't get, you don't get any rare earth minerals from us. And Trump immediately was like, nope, never mind, cut that off. He backed out. He, he taco the all, always the taco. But for good reason. This time it wasn't. He, he, he just really miscalculated what China has. The interesting thing though is the United States, we have a huge amount of reserves of rare rare earth minerals. We just aren't mining them. And that's a problem is if we want to catch up to China or even cut into their, their kind of their first mover advantage or they're just global advantage. We have to, it's going to take us years to build that capacity. But I'm sure Matt could speak more to that. I just know that when not only are our phones and our electric vehicles, but our weapons rely on a Chinese made commodity that we pull out of the ground. That's a huge problem. And they know that. And now they watch us wasting weapons on a foolish war in Iran and they love that. They're like, well these guys are definitely going to need our rare earth minerals to rebuild their smart bombs and things. And they're going to leverage that probably at the next meeting right before the midterms. So I don't know. You got any thoughts on that, Matt? Because I do know that that rare earth thing is very spooky to me.

[C]

Yeah, China has an enormous amount of competitive advantages on us that China is. When I think of China, I think of the Boy Scouts. They're just always prepared. Like they're, they're lined up, they have a strategy long term, looking out fifty hundred years and they're just doing everything exactly like I feel like often we hear people say Donald Trump is playing chess and everyone else is playing checkers. That's what I think China is. I think China's playing chess and we're playing Candyland. I don't know, but I was playing

[A]

Go Trump is playing Candyland. If we want to get specific, everything

[C]

China does is with a purpose and with intent and part of a strategy. And everything we do is we're flying by the seat of our pants. What are we angry about today? What's in the news? Like who, who can be the villain today? Like China's lined out, man, and they're coming for us. I'm telling you, economically, they're coming for us.

[B]

Well, and what's interesting is, is I think that this, this chip, a big part of this was the one area where the US still is leading by a fairly significant margin, I would say is in, in high end computing, AI development, quantum computing. And that is something that the Chinese want access to. They're roughly 18 months behind us, some say 24 months. Just depends. That was a largely a policy interesting of the Biden administration. They did a great job of restricting high end Nvidia chips from going to China. Exactly. Now Trump left this meeting, it's telling China you can have the H20 chip, which is a downgraded version of the H200. And all of us were like, okay, that's a pretty old chip. That's one of the high end, kind of like chat GPT ish 3 nanometer chips. Like they can buy those. But then he said, surprisingly, you can have the second most powerful chip that we make in this country, the H200. And weirdly, China kind of played coy and was like, we probably won't buy it. What China's going to do is not what Trump thinks they're going to do. Trump thinks, oh, they're going to buy a bunch of Nvidia chips and we're going to get them hooked on our stuff. No, they're going to buy like 10 of them. They're going to research them, reverse engineer them and try to figure out how to make them. There's some problems with that because there is trade controls on the ultraviolet lithography machines out of the Netherlands. But nonetheless we where. Whereas Biden said, absolutely not, China does not get this technology because it is absolutely. It is a national security technology. Trump left the meeting openly. It wasn't even a secret. It was just like, yep, you can have it. Go ahead and have the second most powerful chip that we make in this country. You don't get the first most powerful. Sorry, but that just kind of blew my mind that.

[A]

Yeah, another meeting. We'll have another meeting next year.

[B]

Yeah. And that's the thing is so, it's

[A]

just so many more things.

[B]

Well, it's like they, I worried that we gave they if there was going to be winners and losers. China came away the strategic winner out of this meeting unfortunately is when it comes to the, the end game of what we're looking for now, I, I will say this. There is one area where I think China strategically made an extraordinarily and probably fatal mistake and it wasn't in the summit. And it goes back to the, I mean the one China policy back in the 80s. Their demographics are going to kill them eventually. Yeah, they have their, their. You're looking at a country that's population is going to be a half the size of what it is right now in the year 2050.

[A]

I'm sorry, you mean the one child rule?

[B]

Yeah, the one child policy. Yeah, the one child rule.

[A]

One China policy.

[B]

Oh, sorry, the one child. Yeah, sorry, no one China policy. Vastly different. Not that.

[A]

Yes, that's.

[B]

Yeah, one child policy. Thanks. So, yeah, the one child policy and then they eventually changed it to the two child policy. But just people just don't have children there anymore and so their demographics will. It won't happen.

[A]

The shrinking generation, that's not necessarily generating wealth for the retiring generation.

[B]

It's not generating wealth. Retiring. They're not going to be able to support themselves. It will lead to an economic collapse because they just are going to age out of their economic. It's not going to be this decade. But eventually in. By 2050, no country on earth ever has survived halfing your population. Ever. You know, I think the only one that you could conceivably say survived was the Ireland during the Potato famine. Outside of that, that is a fatal. Until then, China will be a very powerful and increasing foe. But I, I give kind of an unpopular opinion that because of China's crashing demographics, I don't think they'll ever pass the US in nominal gdp. I think that they have one of the worst immigration models on earth. They don't allow people, they're extra, I mean, and they're extraordinarily racist. They just don't allow people to immigrate into their country and a lot of it has to do with the free flow of ideas that the CCP and I think eventually that, and feel free to push back. I, I'm all for the, the, the, the debate here, but I think that that is, it is a baked in flaw that they created. And not only that, the preference for boys created something like for every six girls there's only five boys in that. Or sorry, yeah, or flip that. For every six boys there's only five girls. That creates a cultural problem. They've created familial problems where they don't. Because you can only have one child, you don't have this familial bond where you have cousins and uncles and things like that. And that's going to be a problem. So yeah, I just, I don't want to paint this doom and gloom picture for the United States versus China because they do have their own structural problems that are, I think are going to eventually in 15, 20 years going to be a catastrophic problem for them.

[C]

Yeah, but that also makes the chip thing that much more important. Yeah, the demographic thing makes the chip thing that much more important because the one thing that could save them would be artificial intelligence. I don't know if you know this, but you don't need all those workers when you're an AI powerhouse. And that's why I think the chip thing is magnified by their, their massive demographic problem which you're completely right about. I wasn't thinking about that earlier but yeah, that, that makes the chip thing even in my mind.

[B]

And, and I think you're right. They, they want to have that domestic capability to produce chips. My only thought on the, the AI thing in Japan's doing the same thing. Big tech powerhouse they're trying to under Taiwan has worse demographics than China, Japan has on par. These are all countries that are very high functioning societies that aren't having children. Where the only thing that I think of though not the only thing because. But one of the things I think of is when you build robots and you build AI, they're not consumers. That's a, that's a problem that those countries are going to run into. You may be able to replace the worker, but what does that worker do at the end of the day? He goes to the movies, he goes to the restaurants, he goes to the grocery store, he buys the cars. At the end of the day those robots, if they get powered down, they just sit there. They don't go and buy the service goods. And I think eventually that's going to be a Problem for China, Japan, Taiwan, they, they will, they can kick the can down the road a decade or two by using robots and AI. But eventually if you don't have people, that's robots don't give a crap about the devil wears brought it to well

[A]

and you're already seeing that in like for example American owned social media platforms, right? This sort of simulated reality wherein you know, look at meta, look at Facebook. You know, Instagram is still largely popular in some ways as it was before. Facebook has a massive number of daily active users that are bots and the bots don't click ads at this point. They are simulating a user base to some degree and it's like they're closing the loop on it because you know, the investor numbers need to reflect a growing number of people using the platform, a growing number of clicks, growing number, number of daily active users, likes all these metrics. But that has to collapse because again those people aren't clicking ads and even if they are, you know, in some sketchy way, people in quotes, they're not clicking through to a purchase, they're not going to the point of sale and purchasing anything. So I mean, I think you see this in a number of cases where it's like, oh well, we can just save on the bottom line with AI. But you're right, it doesn't create consumers, it doesn't fund consumer. You know, I feel like we're so obsessed with saving costs instead of increasing wealth and wages that it's like this short term imagination, oh look, the economy is doing better because we cut costs and you know, it doesn't matter if no one can afford to buy anything. You know, I feel like so often be like, well what are we supposed to just give everyone money? Becomes the way of simplifying it in the, in the, you know, national conversation. But every time we do that, people go out and spend it. Like there's a reason we do economic stimulus checks. You know, there's, I'm not saying that's the best way of handling it, but like, yeah, there's a reason we gave people a bunch of money during COVID There's a reason George W. Bush did it when things were, I mean for his approval ratings. But like people go out and spend money and help the economy even if it's a temporary boost in the case of a one time stimulus check. But it's like we are careening and like you said with China, like they're not going to create consumer wealth in a shrinking generation, but neither, neither are we and we're funded. We're basing a lot of our economy around that as well. Right now we also ask you something about AI energy, if it's okay, unless you have a follow up on that.

[B]

I was just going to say real quick, the United States is not without its own demographic problems either. And we're. But ours are self created. Yeah, we, we are not having as many children, but our cheat code has always been immigration. The fact that we are the most immigrated to country in the world means that we had this amazing base of population moving in. Whether it was skilled or unskilled workers, doesn't matter. They were always coming in. There were human beings that were wanting, were aspirational for education, jobs. They wanted to. I mean, look at the CEOs of some of the biggest companies on earth were immigrants into the United States. That was our cheat code. And the fact that we can't pay

[A]

our workers more, let's just bring in some people who will take less money was kind of the workaround.

[B]

Well, that's a while. And that's what it really. And but to be fair, they likely were experiencing a better life here even at that suppressed wage in the US Than they were where they were coming from otherwise.

[A]

Potentially for sure. Yeah. I mean also a lot of people escaping political violence and there's all sorts of reasons that people migrate, but we are also paying people. You know, I mean the ideal solution, you know, the ideal situation is, wow, the country you're sending that money back to is worth so much more there. Yeah, you have a better life here. A lot of migrants and immigrants don't actually have that experience. But like we were, we do rely pretty heavily on an immigrant workforce that's willing to, you know, whether or not it's better from where they came from. They're willing to take jobs that Americans aren't.

[B]

Yeah. And my concern is that Trump has shut that pipe off as much as we. As much as immigration is such a lightning rod topic. Trump has actually been effective. And that for me, I don't like that effective. A lot of MAGA and Republicans will say, yeah, that's great, it's effective, keep them out. I'm like, no, that's bad. We need people because our American families are not as big as they used to be. And that's going to be an economic problem for us if we continue to keep people out of our country. Because like I said, you can grow a population in two ways. Have more children. We ain't doing that. Bring more in from other countries and now we're trying to stop that with a passion. And that's, that's kind of the. That's where I'll close out on. On that diatribe.

[A]

Sorry. Oh, we could just make contraception illegal.

[B]

Well, yeah, sorry.

[A]

Too real. Yeah, they want to.

[B]

You joke. That's.

[A]

I do not joke. I know. Next step after making abortion illegal. There's 100% they're coming for contraception. I want to be very clear.

[B]

Yeah, I'm concerned. That's the reason as demographics, they're wanting to force babies in the. So.

[A]

But, oh, I mean, that's one of the reasons they want to control women and everything that they do with their bodies. They want to keep people in poverty, they want to, you know, keep people from being able to afford a better life and, you know, turn women into baby factories. There's all sorts of reasons, but they're absolutely doing that. Next. The question I was going to ask was, I've been told a lot recently that AI is the next industrial revolution, that if we don't go all in and invest in AI, America's going to get left behind. I have yet to see a profit model that makes that make any sense to me other than a lot of people have invested in this technology that doesn't generate a profit outside of subscription. Like, I don't see people buying AI generated media, for example. Now, in terms of like medical sequencing, you know, protein sequencing, coding, like, I see a lot of valid applications there. But this huge investment in generative AI, I have been told, is like, get in or get left behind on a global scale. And now we're talking about what China's been doing over the years. It's not a transition, it's a. It's like a. It's a night and day. It's like a. They flip the switch on. We are all in on energy now. Kind of a maximalist approach. Like you were saying, it's not like a completely clean energy. It's a. Like, let's build as much as we can simultaneously. From my perspective, that seems like the arms race that makes. That's way more relevant right now. And I'm. I'm not arguing so much as I'm asking. I keep being. And it seems that a lot of people in government believe that if we don't, you know, outpace China in terms of generative AI, we're going to be completely left behind in the global economy. This, to me looks like a massive bubble. And it's not unrelated to the fact that it's a Massive bubble that's burning through, through energy at a faster rate than ever, which only makes energy more valuable. So the crazy thing to me, like, to me, AI looks like NFTs were three or four years ago where I was told like, this is the future and no one even remembers what I'm talking about now. Some crypto nonsense. I mean, yeah, people still invest in cryptocurrency, but even that we were told, oh, that's gonna, that's gonna replace dollars. Of course it's not, of course it's not gonna replace fiat currency or whatever, you know, like all this stuff is insane. I'm not insane, but it's like, it's hype. And so I, I feel like we are seeing at such a federal level this idea that like, oh, we have to, we have to like, you know, become an AI country. Shouldn't we become an energy generating country? Shouldn't every country, like, I'm not shocked that the Americans are getting tricked by this, but like, shouldn't every country be doing what China's doing right now? What am I missing?

[C]

They can't afford it. I mean, that's expensive. I, I've heard a lot of people wonder about this profit model for AI. I, I haven't heard a single thing yet that convinced me that it was profitable. Now I will admit I don't know that much about it, but when you talk about countries and energy, it's, it's extremely expensive. You know, it's extreme. And so what's going to happen is the rich countries are going to go to the poor company countries and they're going to build their energy for them so they can make money on it. That's what's going to happen largely in Africa. Right? But yeah, that's, that's how that's going to work. Corporations are going to take over all that all over the world.

[A]

Aren't we a rich country? Shouldn't we be building renewables or not?

[C]

I don't know why we keep saying we're so rich. We're like almost $40 trillion in debt

[A]

because our billionaires are president. He told me we were rich.

[C]

I'm just saying, like where I come from, that's not rich, that's poor. Where I come from, just because we live on a credit card doesn't make us rich. We're keeping up with the Joneses, but there aren't any Joneses to keep up with. I don't know why we're doing that. But we're not rich. We say we are, but we're not.

[A]

But we keep refinancing to build an extra wing on the mansion. Yeah, we keep another loan.

[C]

Probably got the materials at the buy here, pay here place too. But because our credit's about shot for being honest.

[B]

Well, I'm concerned that the AI, this, this so called AI boom is like the dot com bubble.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

The tech eventually will stabilize and be arguably a benefit. I say that not knowing the future. I mean back when we were originally building the Internet, we argued this is going to be a benefit.

[A]

Is it?

[B]

I'm not sure. Social media is kind of ruining a lot of stuff. But I think from the collective we can all say it's probably a small net benefit there over the net negative to have the Internet. What I'm concerned about is when we look at things like the, the, Whether it's anthropic, OpenAI, Google's Gemini, Microsoft, you have this and, and there's, that's just the big, the big ones. There's, there's hundreds of these AI subset companies and it's starting to look like the, the Netscape and the Yahoos and all of this where if you just throw AI, the name the word AI into your business model, you're going to get money and it's going to just keep growing and growing and then suddenly everyone's like, okay, so what we've created this, this situation where we have, let's be honest, they're large language models and they're very good at what they do. But when the generative AI concept doesn't come around anytime soon because I just don't think when you think of generative AI, you think of, it's like a human deterring test. It's like a human to human. We all can tell now when something's AI and when that, when that promise doesn't come to fruition in a couple years and people are like the, the we're like, yo, what's going on with this generative AI? I thought I was going to be able to have everything from someone be my business partner, that's a computer to I'm a lonely Chinese male because I, the one child policy. I was hoping I could have a virtual wife. And it's not filling, fulfilling, it's, it's prophecy. That's when a crash comes because people are like this isn't what we thought it would be. AI is here with us forever. Just like the Internet's here with us forever. I just think that we have, we have exploded so high so fast that it's like the dot com bubble. There will be a crash eventually.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Of course, the Internet has a massive benefit and is here forever. We are just past the face. Look at us. Business. Adding.com to a noun was automatic investor money. Right? And now it's. You're right, it's just a different thing. Just add AI and that's automatic investor money. Of course there will be a use that survives. But you know, it's like I just said, no, I've never seen anyone pay any money for anything AI generated. Like in terms of media, I'm sure, I'm sure in terms of code and things like that. But like no one is paying money to watch an AI generated movie. Even if it gets. I mean, you're talking about artificial intelligence girlfriend for lonely men. That might be one of the only things I can imagine people paying for. We make all that stuff. You can make movies, you watch movies that people make. Also, don't talk to an AI chat bot. If you're lonely. It's going to destroy your brain. I'm saying this directly to the camera, directly to the listener. It is bad for you. That is not real. That is not a real person. It is going to hurt you. It's agreeing with you anyway. Alexis Ohanian. That's not your mother. You're using AI to create a video where you don't have one. The guy, the guy who founded Reddit is losing his mind to AI now. It's driving me crazy. I think we should do a whole.

[C]

I would respectfully agree that we can all spot AI because I'm pretty sure,

[A]

I think it's getting.

[B]

Yeah, eventually it's going to be impossible.

[A]

Well, I think, I think a better thing is still enough people can detect it that no one is willing to purchase it. And because I definitely know people who get tricked, I've been tricked like once or twice. You know, you're scrolling, you move quick and you. Wait a minute. That image wasn't a video. It was a low res, you know, AI. But like, not everyone has learned to recognize that something that's taking way too long to complete a sentence or four sentences to say one thing. I just did that I sound like I was talking about, like, say that again.

[C]

When your mom sends you a video of a cow jumping on a trampoline, she's like, look what they trained this cow to do. Like, that's AI Mom. That's. That's not.

[A]

You gotta. I look again to the listeners. I'm looking right into the camera again. You gotta talk to any, anyone in your life who's four seconds older than you. This is a dementia box. You have to talk them out of using it. The people who use Chat GPT regularly to write essays can no longer write essays after three months. Your parents decaying brains are not as good as the college students they did that study on. You have to get them off ChatGPT.

[B]

Start melting your brains much. What's scarier to me is the replacement theory of AI. Like where one thing that concerns me is so my son, he's. He's 17. He has, he has a phone like high schoolers have. That phone obviously can tap into Chat GPT, Claude, whatever, there's apps. At what point does that become my replacement? Where he's like, I don't need to go talk to my dad about this problem. I'm just going to ask AI. And that's a. I think that's a real problem we are going to have to deal with where this disassociation problem becomes even worse because they. Humans can be replaced, not just workers. Not just workers in like the coders, that's. But actual family members. The actual relationships get destroyed. I don't need to go find a girl because I can watch porn and then talk to this AI thing. And I think that's a. Those are all things that we're going to have to reconcile with in the future. That. And that's a. That's a big fear of mine. And you're talking about not being able to detect it. We, we laugh at the old people that can't do that. It was similar to the old people back in the day when we could. They couldn't figure out how to set up their DirecTV and we had to go do it for them and things like that. It was. But now we're getting to a point where they're so good, the machines are becoming so good that anyone can replace anyone.

[A]

And maybe we recognize it in some places. But you ever call customer service and you're like, yeah, there you go. Maybe not sure if this person's real. They might just sound fake. They might be. It's getting, you know, a lot of customer service, a lot of chat bot. Obviously if it's text, it's getting automated, but it's moving into voice gen stuff now too. Like we say it's easy to notice. But I've had a couple moments over the phone while distracted where I said hey, am I talking to a robot right now? And wasn't sure. I think we should do a longer episode on this and some of the energy implications of it, both in terms of. Oh, yeah, electrical energy. But, like, is this a power? Not just energy, but power. Like, is this. Is this a. A battlefield of coming years? Because I think we're talking about the weaponization.

[B]

That's a whole energy and weaponization of AI Yeah, that should be an episode. That'll be solid.

[A]

All right, well, you heard it here, folks. We're going to come back and discuss AI In a future episode. Both its impacts on global military and power structures and also its impact on the energy crisis and energy generation around the world. But before we do that and before we sign off, I do want to go to our final segment of the show where we like to stop doomsaying or try to be a little bit more optimistic and talk about the least worst story we heard all week. Do either you guys have a story you'd like to discuss?

[C]

I got one.

[A]

Yeah, go for it. What was the least worst part of your week?

[C]

So the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals is buying tickets for the fans who show up without a shirt and sit in that. I believe it's the. I can't remember if it's right field or left field, but they have a section there where it's all these shirtless. So if you're, you know, if you're a St. Louis shows up. Yeah,

[A]

technicality.

[C]

Yeah. Like, you can literally just look at that section and start counting cortisol levels, I think. So that gives, you know, people something to look forward to because there's going to be a lot more great big hairy bellies in the stands there where the St. Louis Cardinals play. I think it's great. I think.

[A]

Do you think this is sort of like a. You know, how they do the thunder sticks to stop people at basketball, you know, distract the players. It's sort of like, these are. These are pretty. I'm gonna assume these aren't tan men. Just my guess that's a stereotype. But, you know, it gets cold. I'm just gonna say that's a big sunlight reflector right before. Right behind the field goal kicker's eyes. You know, I'm saying you get those guys to go shirtless at the right moment and just get the angle of the sun. There's. They're missing a close field goal on that one.

[C]

We're talking about baseball, Nat. We're talking about.

[A]

I already forgot what we're talking about. You're right.

[B]

Not the Arizona Cardinals.

[A]

I was thinking the Arizona Cardinals. My joke didn't make sense. All right, let's take it again. Okay. You're going out for. You're catching a fly ball. You're leaning right over the edge of the section. You can't quite see it. You're losing it in the sun. Oh, no. 20 shirtless men glistening with sweat. That'll be a great direct glare into your eye.

[C]

When there's a hairy armpit in some outfielder's face fighting over a ball that's just over the fence, that's going to be the best picture ever.

[B]

You're going to get the sweaty belly.

[A]

Home plate. Thanks. You bring in some green relief pitcher. He's. He's nervous out there. All of a sudden, there's 30 shirtless men right behind the battery. There's no way he's finding the strikes, though.

[C]

I wonder if that applies to women, too.

[B]

You're gonna have. Yes. I was gonna say you're gonna have some progressive team out there. Just.

[A]

I was gonna say this apply to pants. Like, you show up naked. You'd be like, I'm not wearing a shirt. Let me in. Technically.

[B]

And he's got one bat.

[A]

You got. You got to have a Cardinals hat on, though.

[C]

Yeah, I will be wearing a shirt. If I go. I'm just saying because.

[A]

Okay, we got it.

[B]

You got money, no shirt.

[A]

Oh, look who can afford to wear a shirt to the baseball game. Rub it in my face. Chad, what's your least worst part of your week?

[B]

Well, as per usual, mine's not as good as Matt's, but it's still. I think it's still a really great story. Mexico, they're moving towards universal healthcare. And that is quite surprising because they're. You would think it was that a country like Mexico would have affordability issues with trying to make universal healthcare work. But they are figuring it out. Just like many European countries do, just like many, many countries that are much smaller and less. Less builders of. Of gdp, less spenders on healthcare than the US And I just wonder why the US Cannot do this. But we are slowly being surrounded by countries that are prioritizing its people in a way that 120 million people now will have, which is Mexico's population, will have access to health care where. Where they didn't previously. And I think that the. All these countries recognizing that. If you were Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of. Of Mexico, who I'm a big fan of, believes that that's another thing for Mexico. Got a woman prep. I'll digress. Got a woman president before the U.S. but I digress. The. The. The fact that we are in a Place where countries that are objectively poorer than us can provide for their people better than we are. That's, that's frustrating. But I'm still calling it a good news story because those 120 million Mexicans are going to have, have health care in their country. And that's, that's a, I think that's a way, the way of the future. Eventually we are all going to get, have to get there because as we just talked about this be part of the AI us. What are we going to do when not all of us can have a job because AI takes them all? But yeah, so good news, great job for the Mexican people and I'm happy that that's something that they're working, working through and can get those people massively

[A]

good news for 120 million people. And if we have to look at, through our selfish United States of America perspective, the argument of it's just not possible here. Well, we're not like Europe. Our populations distribute like all these things. Those arguments diminish the more different countries, and I literally mean more different as in the more diversity of countries that is capable of adopting, you know, okay, well Cuba is different from France, but they, they can, you know, well, they, their education rates are high for another, you know, all these things that we say aren't possible that other countries manage to do, especially universal health care. I think the broader diversity of other countries that succeed in doing so, you know, ultimately and primarily that's a good news because it's good for the people and it's good for people to survive. Second and third order consequence, it will hopefully be good for people living in North America to survive longer as we try to chip away at this essentially just a propaganda ideology that it, that we can't possibly, you know, cut out the middleman and run healthcare the way most of most of the modern world does. So if having our, you know, our next door neighbors who, who you know, Americans generally look down on culturally. I mean, not every American is racist against Mexico, but America has a long tradition of being bigoted towards Mexico and seeing them as the like, you know, the criminal country next door that we have to protect ourselves from, well, all of a sudden they're taking care of their people better than we are. You know, hopefully that helps us move in that direction as well. Yeah, I believe at my distant shred of optimism.

[B]

Well, I'm optimistic too because I truly believe the more countries and the more people doing, the more good for the masses of the people, specifically in things like health care and education. Stuff like that. It pulls the, the US in that direction. They're almost dragging us like we drag a lot of countries across the finish line economically. They can drag us across the finish line socially so that we can, we can have those, those things that are like objectively we should be doing. So when Mexico can do it, Americans are going to be like, hey, especially Mexican Americans who have ties to Mexico. They can see that and go, hey, why are, how can they do it? And we can, how can Canada do it? How can like all these other countries do it? And we can't. And we have.

[A]

Imagine being a first generation Mexican immigrant who fought for citizenship here. And then Mexico gets universal healthcare. Yeah.

[B]

But I'm hoping that helps us out in our, it should, in our attempt that like health care is a human right type movement type. So that was my news.

[C]

Do you think we'll still be able to go down there and get our, our teeth and our, and our titties and our tummy tucks for 20 of

[B]

the cost, the three T's?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you think that I got the three B's.

[A]

The first two are BBL and then the last one is baloney and titties. Yeah. As being.

[C]

No, there's probably a clinic called Teeth, Titties and Tummy Tucks. Let's be hon honest. There's probably a place in Mexico the

[A]

result of the exchange rate. So I think you're probably, I mean I know a lot of people go to Costa Rica because getting dental work done there is cheaper, including the cost of the flight from America. So it's like, yeah, you might as well go chill in Costa Rica and pay less money, have a vacation, then go to Dr. Hunter down the block or whatever.

[B]

There's a reverse immigration discussion to be had there too. Like the people just can't afford. Like if you're a chronic illness person,

[A]

right, like what age are you at you, do you need more? Maybe you go down there or you're younger and you need consistent care. But yeah, I mean you do see, you do see people trying to, I mean this happens more. But like some affluent people make the calculation of living in a, you know, a European social democracy would help them after a certain age because they have a chronic problem that, you know, they literally just look at it as an investment.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And you know, it's different if it's, who can afford to move to Europe. If it's a neighboring country on the landmass, it is a little bit of a different situation. Well, I want to tell you about What I'm excited about this week. You guys want to hear about it?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Yeah, go for it. All right, so this is, this is not a, this is about a political campaign, but I want to be clear. This is not a candidate I've worked with or because I write for politicians sometimes, and I also campaign and I volunteer in my life as a private citizen, but this is not someone I'm involved with. But it's a race I've been looking at and following. Claire Valdez is running for Congress in Queens, New York. And she, last week, I thought this was really cool, dropped her climate policy, which not all people running for Congress have an automatic climate versus energy policy or have been explicit about. And it's one of the most thought out, explicit, detailed policies a campaign has put out regarding the climate that I've ever seen. And I wanted to point it out, it's @ClaireValdez for Congress.com if you want to read about it. And again, this isn't an endorsement, but I was so excited to see that people are actually talking about this because one of the things that they, the things they talk about in this policy are freezing electrical rates, tough AI regulation. And one thing that we've talked about, which is federal power utility, we've talked about publicly owned power utilities, but she proposes freezing electric rates to deliver immediate relief and then building a federal public power authority and creating national clean energy standards. And it's really, I've seen a lot of that in the municipal level because I think, you know, ideally we can pass these things in New York State or the state level, but I haven't seen a lot of people calling for these things on a federal level. And I am drastically oversimplifying. There are a lot about making AI data centers pay their fair share and about building climate resilience for the future. And I'm, I'm naming topics, but they get really into detail about specifically what that means and what percentage do these data centers have to pay and all that stuff. So all of which is to say it's really, I don't know, refreshing to see a candidate not afraid to talk about these things, but not only unafraid to talk about it, but she's not doing the general hand waving of like, well, we, we do need to preserve business, but we also need to look out for the community around the data set. This sort of like fence sitting thing that a lot of people do. And then they ultimately, of course, favor the businesses. It's interesting to see someone, and it's no surprise she's you know, endorsed by Zorin Mamdani who was very specific in his economic policies. But it's really interesting to see I don't think I've seen this specific a climate platform for especially for a congressional candidate. So.

[B]

So what she's what she running for for Congress. She's so like a federal Congress.

[A]

Yes, she's a state. She is currently an assembly member running for federal Congress. Maybe she want to talk to us. Maybe she does. Cut that out. Cut that out. But. Or enter in the part where I say which show she's going to appear on. But yeah, it's a really labor driven it's a really labor driven, egalitarian, detail oriented climate platform. So again, not an endorsement but it's really cool to see people even running on that and getting it into the conversation. And I highly recommend just reading it if you're if that's the kind of thing that's interesting to you. So that is the least worst part of my week.

[B]

Cool. Very cool.

[C]

Fantastic.

[B]

Good stories.

[A]

Well, it's great talking to you guys. We are going to come back next week where we will be discussing either AI Claire Valdez's climate platform or the hidden 6th B. I couldn't remember how many we covered bellies. 7th B. The fifth beetle, George Martin will be will join us next week. I forgot my sign off. Well, this has been American Power. We will join you all again next week. For Chad Scott and Matt Randolph, I'm Nat Townsend and remember power corrupts but American power corrupts Americanly.