
Episode 4701: Antitrust Slams Largest US Landlord, OpenAI Bombs, and DC Crime Wave Brought to a Grinding Halt...
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Steve Bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. You're just not going to free shot all these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything.
Joe Allen
In the world to stop that, but.
Steve Bannon
You'Re not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
Gary Marcus
And where do people like that go to share the big lie? MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Steve Bannon
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
Joe Allen
War ROOM here's your host, Stephen K. Band. Good evening. It is Tuesday, August 12th, in the year of our Lord 2025. I am Joe Allen, sitting in for Stephen K. Bannon, who against his deepest spirit and genetic constitution, is not working tonight. Well, I bet he's probably working somewhere. I don't know anyone who works harder than Steve Bannon, except for me. Tonight we're going to talk about antitrust suits against the largest tenant in the large, largest land, largest landlord in the United States, greystar, who has been colluding with their competitors in order to drive up rents on Americans. Americans work damn hard for their pay, and it is atrocious what these corporations are doing to siphon all that money out of their paychecks and into their vast coffers. We're also going to be talking to Gary Marcus, the NYU professor and nemesis of Sam Altman of OpenAI, here to break down the flop that was GPT5 from a very expert and somewhat biting perspective. Following, we will discuss the supposed militarization of Washington D.C. i've been here for a few days. Maybe I'm in the wrong place. I need to find out where all of these soldiers are and where they're kicking indoors. Because it's pretty calm and peaceful, other than the few straggling homeless. They need to get out to the East End a little bit further. And we will close out with a little talk about AI and prayer. Specifically the psychotics who are praying to artificial intelligence as if it were Jesus. So I'd like to bring in Gail Slater, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the US Department of Justice. Gail, thank you very much for being with us this evening.
Gail Slater
Thank you, Joe. It's a thrill to be here and to finally meet you in person, albeit remotely.
Joe Allen
Yeah, I wish you could be here with me. But, you know, next time maybe. Maybe. Coffee Soon. So, Gail, this suit against greystar, we're at the settlement phase. If you could just walk the audience through what the offense was, what the likely settlement will be, and where we go from here. Can we look forward to better conditions for renters in the U.S. you bet.
Gail Slater
You bet. So let's start with why rent is so important. Rental prices are so important to so many Americans. And then we'll get into greystar. So we, we know that millennials rent more than they own. They're having a hard time getting onto the property ladder. And we also know that millennial Americans spend about a third of their monthly income on rent alone. So this is a really important issue, not just for young people, but for all re Star, as you said, their biggest landlord in the country. And we think they have almost a million units under management. That's a lot of properties. It's a lot of rental income. And so what the DOJ has done over time is investigated and litigated against not just gracetar, but a bunch of other large landlords, as well as a company named RealPage. And what we discovered during the investigation was that RealPage and other landlords were working together to pull competitively sensitive data. And for them, that's rental prices in local markets throughout the country. And they were running that data through RealPages software, using algorithms. And prices on rental properties were going up, they weren't going down. And we think the prices were certainly higher than they would have been had this conduct not been engaged in. So fast forward to last week. We entered into a settlement with Greystar, and Greystar has agreed not to use RealPages software anymore. They've agreed not to engage in what we call digital collusion to set the prices at levels higher than they would be for all Americans who are renting from them, particularly from young millennials, for all the reasons that we care about that for. And we're very, very happy about the settlement. It's a very effective way of settling the litigation without incurring costs for taxpayers and costly litigation that we might eventually on appeal, five years from now and so on. So it's a. It's a good settlement. They're not going to use the software anymore. And we're hoping to see that pass through in the form of, like, real price competition between these landlords going forward.
Joe Allen
I'm curious. We hear a lot about BlackRock and other major corporations and investment houses that are buying up all this property and jacking up the rents. How widespread is this algorithmic or digital collusion?
Gail Slater
Sure. So Leaving blackrock aside, we've, we've, we've, we've scoped out that there's at least more than one landlord involved. And then of course RealPage was the sort of hub in the hub and spoke that this data was being fed through. We're still working with some other landlords. That's confidential for now. There was a smaller settlement earlier this year with a smaller landlord. But this first step with greystar, this proposed settlement is we think a really concrete step in the right direction and hopefully will get us to a global resolution with everyone involved. We think it's really good government and it's going to give relief to consumers today rather than five years from now.
Joe Allen
You know, I think one of the really heartening aspects of the Trump administration is this push towards antitrust legislation and enforcement. Josh Hawley has been a strong advocate of this, many others within that camp. So Google right now is, it's imminent, correct, that the settlement will be announced in their antitrust case. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Gail Slater
Yeah, for sure. So this is another case where we've had a bipartisan consensus around antitrust, tough antitrust enforcement for quite some time now. This was a case involving Google search engine, which of course is a household name. It's a verb. We think that Google's had about 90% of the online search market for a couple of decades now. In the first Trump administration stepped in and actually sued Google in October of 2020. So right before he left office under our century old monopolization laws. And the accusation, the allegation in that complaint was that Google had monopolized online search in a couple of different ways. And we can get into that if you like. That case went to litigation under the last administration and now we've come out the other side of that litigation. A judge in D.C. found them liable. Indeed they were a monopoly and they had monopolized online search. And then under my tenure and with the blessing of President Trump who put me in office and announced at the time of my nomination that it was with an eye to holding the line on big tech and I trust enforcement. So earlier this year we brought the Google case forward to what we call the remedies phase. And so that involved a multi week trial just to focus on remedies. Given that the judge found Google liable of monopolization last year, what would be an effective remedy to that conduct? And so we put a couple of different options out there for the judge. It's obviously his decision at the end of the day. Google has for Many years paid companies like Apple, like the cell phone carriers, to be the default search engine on Apple's phones in particular. And that's, that's a big chunk of the market. And they paid Apple billions of dollars every year for that contract. We said, you know, these contracts are problematic because they're closing off competitors from reaching consumers in the search market. And we proposed some other remedies around data sharing so that the data that other companies, other search engines need to reach scale in this market could be freed up and used to compete with Google to innovate. Google, all of that good stuff that we love to see in our free markets, that was not really taking place for several decades. And we also proposed in our remedies, again, it's the judge's decision that, that Google divest its Chrome browser. And that matters because the Chrome browser, for those of you familiar with Google's products, is very tightly integrated with search. And we estimate that about a third of all searches Americans engage in every day run through that browser. And so Chrome browser divestiture was one of the remedies we put forward. The judge in D.C. is, we think, fine tuning his opinion as you and I talk. And we're expecting a decision from him any day now. And we think that matters a lot. A As I said, this was a bipartisan case, not only bipartisan at the federal level, between the previous Trump administration, the last administration, and today, it was also joined and signed onto by 49 different states. That's a really big number, making it a landmark decision in our world. And we think it's going to be a really, really important decision for antitrust enforcement going forward. It will send a strong signal that we are serious about robust antitrust enforcement under President Trump's watch.
Joe Allen
It's amazing, Gail. Teddy Roosevelt would be very, very proud. This problem of information monopolization. The search engine is still one of the, if not the most used method to gain information, whether it be news, whether it be research, whether it be just simply where you're going to shop. So I think that this, this practice of the pushing out the competitors, and especially when you look at the bias in Google's algorithms and the way in which it's being gamed at this point to push search results up in the order. I really think that this is important for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason is the vast impact that these corporations have on our lives. Now, I won't rope you in to our opinions on the digitization of all culture, but this impact has shaped reality. It shaped Politics, it shaped economics. And for any one corporation to have most or all of the control is completely unacceptable. And I think it's really heartening to see actual solutions moving forward to divest them of this power and hopefully bring other companies up. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Brave or DuckDuckGo, but at least you know that there are options. There's some diversity in the field of information, that people can actually have some chance of making their own decisions instead of having just one funnel of reality pushed into their, their brains and the information pushed in. So before we go, we've only got a couple minutes left. I'm wondering, is there, are there any other cases moving forward in this push towards antitrust action that we should know about?
Gail Slater
So we have a bunch of cases. The ones that are most interesting, I think, to add the War Room Posse, I expect, are the Google case. We also are looking at the ways in which we can use the antitrust tools, the scalpel, not the sledgehammer. It's law enforcement. It's not regulation to foster competition in health care markets. And this is another pocketbook issue that President Trump was elected to carry forward and democratize the economy around. And we can play a role in that. We have executive orders from the White House that are tasking us with looking into drug pricing, also the PBMs, the pharmacy benefit managers. And so we're obviously keeping a close eye on those executive orders and thinking about the ways in which we can comply with them, working with sister agencies across the Trump administration. And it's a very, very important pocketbook market for all Americans, not just for the War Room Posse, but in particular for working class Americans. Same as with our rental cases. The, you know, our health care budget is not quite as big as our rental budget budget on a monthly basis, but it's, it's a pretty big chunk of it.
Joe Allen
So, Gail, I got to say, from the bottom of my heart, we really appreciate all the fighting you've done. We know you've taken a lot of heat. Where can the War Room Posse find you and how can we support you going forward? Because we know this fight is not easy. It's uphill the entire way.
Gail Slater
We're up against some trillion dollar companies. They never said it was going to be easy. So all the support we can get from the War Room Posse is much appreciated as it is from you too, Joe. So I can be found at aag. So, Slater, that's my official account at the doj. Thanks so much for that. And my personal account Is Gayle A. Slater. But the, the real work is being done under the official account and so encourage everybody to follow us there. And thank you so much again for having me on.
Joe Allen
Yeah, Gail, thank you very much for being on and again thank you very much for your tireless fight. All right, we'll be right back after the break with Gary Marcus.
Steve Bannon
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Gail Slater
Voice Family.
Steve Bannon
Are you on Getter yet?
Unknown
No.
Sam Altman
What are you waiting for?
Unknown
It's free, it's uncensored and it's where.
Gary Marcus
All the biggest voices in conservative media are speaking out.
Steve Bannon
Download the Getter app right now. It's totally free. It's where I put up exclusively all of my content 24 hours a day. You want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking?
Unknown
Go to Getter.
Sam Altman
That's right. You can follow all of your favorites.
Unknown
Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack pos and so many more.
Gary Marcus
Download the Getter app now.
Gail Slater
Sign up for free and be part of the movement.
Sam Altman
I mean, I think OpenAI is probably going to head towards surveillance. You can imagine two business models for Open Air. One would be if they could actually build AGI soon, maybe they could make a lot of money with that. Real AGI would be worth trillions of dollars. But the things that they've actually delivered don't work that reliably. And that has limited their commercial utility. They have a lot of private data. People treat it as a therapist and they now want to build apparently like a necklace or something that records you 24 7. Like that's like 1984 independent.
Unknown
My kid will never grow up, will never ever be smarter than an AI. That will never happen. You know, kid born a few years ago, they had a brief period of time. My kid never will be smarter. GPT5 is a major upgrade over GPT4 and a significant step along our path to AGI.
Joe Allen
And so where do you think we are on this AGI path then?
Unknown
What do you, what's your personal definition of AGI? And then I'll answer.
Joe Allen
Oh, that's a good question. Well, what is your personal definition of AGI?
Unknown
I have many which. So I think it's not a super useful term. I think the point of all of this is it doesn't really matter and it's just this continuing exponential of model capability.
Joe Allen
All right, we're back. That was Sam Altman promising a digital deity for everyone. Everyone has a super genius in their pocket PhD level. Well, last week GPT5 launched and the reception was disappointed, to say the least. It may have the capabilities of a PhD, but only if the PhD is incapable of arranging, exchanging information in a cogent manner and occasionally hallucinating presidents or facts. Out of nowhere now, no one, I think has called out Sam Altman for his over promising more than the NYU professor of Cognitive Science, Gary Marcus. Gary has a lot of different views than most of us here at the war room. He certainly doesn't share our politics, but he is an excellent resource for information and I think an excellent resource for arguments against the use of AI in every aspect of our lives, from education to medicine to the military. At least in its current form, if it's an extremely flawed technology, it should not be pushed down the throats of students, doctors and soldiers. Gary Marcus, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate your fight, sir.
Sam Altman
Thank you very much for having me. And I couldn't agree more with what you just said. And I'm glad you said the last little piece of it, which is maybe some future technology would merit being used across the board for everything that we do. The problem is the current technology just does not deliver on its promises. And so you don't want, for example, a hallucination machine to be teaching your kids.
Joe Allen
Yeah, this problem of hallucinations. Now we'll get to that in a moment. I really want to talk about the quantified aspects of the hallucinations which seem to be reduced in the new model. But more than anything, I just want to allow you to take your victory lap on this GPT5 launch. Obviously they may not have said GPT5 will be artificial General intelligence just for the audience's benefit. They've heard this a million times. But right now, today, the definition of AGI most agree on is an AI system that is able to do anything a human worker could do. And clearly it was nothing of the sort, but they were teasing it and they have all these influencers who are constantly pushing this idea that the next model is going to be this artificial general or artificial godlike intelligence. Gary, take your victory lap. Sir, you've called this from the beginning that it was not, not going to happen. What is your take on it?
Sam Altman
I did and it's true. I called it. I warned about these hallucinations, these kind of weird errors all the way back in the year 2001. And I've consistently said these people are over promising what this particular technology can do. And I've really been vilified by it. I mean, I think they have, you know, they have an emoji@OpenAI for me because they dislike me so much and they kept spouting that, you know, these systems were going to do all this amazing stuff. They basically did like a three year long marketing campaign to try to convince people that this thing was going to be amazing. And I kept saying, no, it's not going to be amazing, it'll be cool, but it's not going to be so much better than these other models. This idea of scaling that you can just make the models better and better by adding more data is not going to get us where they want to go. And you know, nobody really took me very seriously until last week. And then when they dropped it, even in the first few minutes of the live stream, I think Sam said it's PhD level and people were ready to shocked and amazed. There's a manifold market you can see and Everybody was thinking OpenAI has got this, they're going to be dominant, they're going to have, you know, the best models. And you look at it and like over the course of the hour everybody kind of realizes it's not really what they're promising, is it? And then people went home for the next several days and tried the system and as you say, the dominant reaction was disappointment. And there are people that really dislike what I've had to say. Posting things On Twitter. Like, I really, really hate to say this, but Gary Marcus was right. It went so far that people called it Gary Marcus Day. Like, this is not a good outcome for OpenAI when they do their big, splashy presentation of what's supposed to be their most amazing thing, and then people end up calling that Gary Marcus Day when I'm their big nemesis. I mean. So, yes, I think I can take a victory lap if we want to be honest about it.
Joe Allen
Well, so this issue of hallucinations, this is a real problem. It's not a problem if you're playing with AI. It's not a problem if you want to go back and check everything that this machine is feeding to you, which in some ways makes the entire process kind of comical to begin with. But if you have students who come to rely on this for all the answers of the truths to the truths of the world, if you have doctors who come to rely on this for diagnostics or therapies, it's a major, major problem. But the internal benchmarks at OpenAI showed a drastic reduction in hallucinations. Something like 5x for some parameters, something like 10x for others. I'm curious what your opinion is on that. Is the problem of hallucinations being dealt with by these companies, even 1% hallucination, is this a problem that really makes the technology not worth incorporating into major institutions in the U.S.
Sam Altman
Well, I mean, it does depend on the context, but even 1%, as you're kind of pointing out there, can be pretty serious. I mean, imagine using a technology like that in driverless cars. You know, if 1% of the time it makes up a vehicle that's not there or something like that, then that couldn't be fatal. So it really depends on what you're looking at. But for many domains, including education, 1% hallucination can still be pretty bad. Bad. And I'm not sure that we should actually accept that number. I mean, lots of people have already documented hallucinations. There's something we call Goodhart's Law, which is about benchmarks. You have some measurement, and people, after they know about that thing, start to teach to that test. That's what Good Heart's Law means. And so people are training to the benchmarks, trying to make those benchmarks look good. And often what happens in the real world is those benchmarks aren't representative anymore. So it's one thing for somebody to say, hey, here's this benchmark, and they're only 2% wrong or 1% wrong or something like that. And then you have to see in the real world. And also when it's 1%, there's something insidious happens, which is people stop paying attention. So somebody sent me. Well, first of all, you mentioned the presidents, right? So there's something circulating where AI was inventing presidents and what years they were born, misspelling their names. And then I replicated it last night with Canadian prime ministers. Somebody got mad at me. They're like, oh, they're not very good at generating images. You haven't done the right parameters. And so they proudly did a better version of US presidents from, I think it was GPT5 with thinking mode turned on. And they're like, look, I nailed it. They didn't actually use those words, but obviously they were trying to kind of show that they were smarter than me because they were able to get the system to perform right? And then I looked at it carefully, and it said that Bill Clinton was president from, I think it was 1981 to 1999. So that had him overlapping at the same time as Reagan and George H.W. bush. That can't happen in the real world. The system were actually smart. It would just look up the information on Wikipedia and not make it up, not hallucinate. Clinton was in office in 1981. He was probably too young even to be president then. And of course, Reagan was in office. So this guy looked at his own thing and didn't realize that it was still problematic. So these hallucinations can be really subtle and insidious. And if you have in a teaching context where the students themselves don't know the right answer, they're going to miss a bunch of that. And people start to have what I call the looks good to me reaction, which is what the guy I'm describing now had, which is he looked at it, it seemed good. He thought it was better. I mean, it was better than the first thing, and he just assumed it was right because it was right about some things. But a bunch of errors slipped in. And that's what we've seen over and over and over with these large language models, is they get a bunch of stuff right and a bunch of stuff wrong, and you never know what. You can't really trust them on their own. And that has not changed in years and years of working on this.
Joe Allen
You know, I am oftentimes asked, what do I fear most about these technologies, whether it's AI or genetic engineering, whatnot. A lot of people are really concerned about the singularity, right? This exponential increase in capabilities, this explosion of intelligence that could take over humans. Certainly something to keep an eye on, without a doubt. But I worry that the inverse singularity is our real problem, where human intelligence decreases and decreases until it's finally a precipitous drop. And all these kind of flawed, wonky technologies appear dazzling to our stupefied eyes. Gary, we've got to go to a break. We'll bring you back on the other side. War room posse, stick around. We're going to be talking about the federal moves here in Washington D.C. against crime. And when we come back, I want to ask Gary about his long term vision of where AI goes. This is something that I think people really need to focus on even more than these launches of products or any sort of bizarre story you hear about an AI blackmailing an engineer. But we'll get to that when we come back. Stay tuned.
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Joe Allen
Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban. And we're back with Gary Marcus. Gary, I want to get to the big picture of all of this. We can look at the current GP, the current state of GPT5 and say this is a silly machine. It has a lot of important and useful capabilities, but ultimately it's flawed. And certainly it's not artificial general intelligence. I'm wondering from your perspective, you talk a lot about the potential of neurosymbolic AI. We don't have to go into the technicalities of it quite yet, but other methods, other approaches, besides just scraping vast amounts of literature of language data and then shoving it into a massive algorithmic process, the large language model, do you believe that that approach is basically at a dead end, at a wall, but there are possibilities for other approaches. So big picture is your skepticism that AGI, artificial general intelligence, or even superintelligence aren't possible, won't happen, or is your perspective that current methods are not going to get us there and maybe others will and maybe others should?
Sam Altman
I think current methods really are at a kind of impasse. They're making progress in some ways, so the graphics always get better and stuff like that, but they're reaching the same obstacles over and over again. So they continue to have problems with hallucinations and so forth. I don't think that's a logical problem. I think it's a problem with how we're going about things. Because sometimes in the history of science, scientists are just wrong. And eventually there's self correction. The field as a whole realizes that they're stuck and they try something else. So everybody thought that genes were made of proteins early in the 20th century, and they were wrong. And eventually they figured out that they were made of this weird sticky acid that we now know as DNA. So, you know, for 20 years people pursued the wrong path. And I think to some extent that's true.
Joe Allen
Now.
Sam Altman
I don't really think large light and which models will disappear, but we will come up with much better techniques. We need some major innovations and rethinking going back to the drawing board, we'll keep these current tools, but we will invent other tools. We'll need a broader set of tools eventually. Yeah, I do think we'll get to artificial intelligence. You know, humans are a kind of general purpose intelligence, biologically built. Someday we'll have machines like that. We have to get past, I think, these kind of fixed ideas that people are stuck with right now. But we will. I don't know if it will take 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, but I think it will probably happen this century.
Joe Allen
This is a really tough topic because granted, if we have 10 years or 50 years, or to prepare for a system that would be able to replace all intellectual work and assuming that robotics keep pace, all blue collar work, all physical labor. Gary, what will we do?
Sam Altman
I don't know. I mean, a century from now, I really don't know what life will be like. I think that, you know, robots are not that good right now. So blue collar work like carpentry and plumbing and things like that, those are no danger whatsoever in the next 20 years, maybe in the next hundred they are. You know, robots will get better. When robots can do all our plumbing and carpentry, that'd be a major advance compared to where we are now. We might actually have a kind of life of leisure. Then we have a lot of economic questions about, you know, who gets the wealth and how is it distributed. Prices might come down, but people might have very meager amounts of money because there's not a lot that they can do that actually commands income. Maybe some arts and things like that. We don't really know. We do need to start preparing for changes in society, maybe not quite as fast as Silicon Valley would lead you to believe. I think Silicon Valley hypes these things so they can drive up valuations and, you know, get, get more money for the things that they're doing. They try to instill a sense of fear that's maybe not realistic compared to now, but sure, 50 years from now, things will be pretty different.
Joe Allen
You know, from my own perspective, just the desire, especially the immediate desire that we are going to replace all of you and your labor will be worth nothing. You'll have no negotiating power whatsoever. In five years, in 10 years, maybe your biological form will be irrelevant and should be either cast aside or perhaps uploaded and preserved in a data center. These are the sorts of thoughts that if I told you that this was my fantasy, you would say, joe, you are. You are a psychopath. You should be locked up. But for these guys, it simply, as you say, drives up investment. Knowing that mentality, and I mean, I.
Sam Altman
Think Elon Musk, as I say, Elon Musk all but said the other day, basically, please, that, you know, we might have an economy that's a thousand times bigger, but people might not be part of the picture. You know, I don't think you and I, even though our politics may differ, really want that kind of world where there's a bigger economy, but there's no human beings left, you know, having meaningful lives or maybe even having lives at all. It was really scary when Peter Thiel, you know, hesitated when he was asked. But they'll still be people. People are still important, right? And he kind of hesitated. And I don't want that world. I want a world where humans still have an important place in how things go.
Joe Allen
Yeah, the Peter Thiel issue is very, very important. Because so many people on the right look up to him as an icon, not only as an entrepreneur, but a philosopher. That hesitation, while granted, Peter Thiel seems to be hesitating in thinking up what he's going to say on the fly with almost anything that he says. But a ready answer would have just been, yeah, I want humans to go on. Yeah, I think humans are better than robots. And it didn't seem too sincere. Before we go, I just want you to let the audience know, where can they follow you? And I'm very curious, too. What are you going to be doing in the near future? What projects should we be looking out for from Gary Marcus?
Sam Altman
Well, in the short term, you can follow me on my substack, Marcus on AI. There's my net piece, had 150,000 readers that just came out. You can follow me on Twitter. And there's my recent book, Taming Silicon Valley. So those are all ways to follow me. And there might be an exciting new project, but I can't talk about it just yet.
Joe Allen
All right, well, keep us posted. Thank you very much, Gary, for coming on. Again, I think that these sorts of conversations should be happening all over the place. People from the political left, the political right, people from the futurist camp, people from the Luddite camp. If we can't talk about it, we're going to fight about it. And if we're arguing about it, who knows how bad it could get? It could come to blows. Not you and me, of course.
Sam Altman
If I can just say one more thing. Our politics.
Joe Allen
Yes, sir.
Sam Altman
Our politics differ, but I think that on these issues, we very much are aligned. Thanks a lot.
Joe Allen
Yes, sir. Thank you. All right, Denver, if you could throw in that cold open for Mike Howell.
Unknown
Today, we're formally declaring a public safety emergency. This is an emergency. This is a tragic emergency. And it's embarrassing for me to be up here. You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like being up here talking about. About how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was. The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on earth. Much higher. This is much higher. The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years. And the number of carjackings has more than tripled.
At your direction this morning, We've mobilized the D.C. national Guard. It'll be operationalized by the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, through the D.C. guard, you will see them flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week at your direction as well, sir. There are other units. We are prepared to bring in other National Guard units, other specialized units. They will be strong.
Joe Allen
Wild times. War room Posse. I want to bring in Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project. Mike, can you tell us a little bit about what's happening here in D.C. i'm walking around the streets. Everything seems basically normal, but a lot is moving. What's going on, man?
Unknown
So President Trump has basically invoked his Authority under the D.C. home Rule act, which allows him to take over the police for a period of up to 30 days. And so he's begun that process. I will say, on the ground things, you're right, aren't much different. He's called up the National Guard, which I think amounts to some 800 of the total 2700 DC National Guardsmen, of which 1 to 200 will be on the street sometime. So relatively small number. I mean, D.C. has over 3,000 cops. So you do the math. A very small federal presence as of now, we're going to need a much larger federal presence moving forward. And so I hope, hope that by him opening this door, the administration fully walks through it and does what needs to be done in Washington D.C. furthermore, when that 30 days expires, Congress can extend it. And so we should be planning for a long and sustained, very visible, very large presidents in Washington D.C. ultimately, it'll be up to the Trump administration of whether this is just a rhetorical type announcement for political purposes or they're going to see it through. And I hope they see it through for the long haul.
Joe Allen
So D.C. has always had a major crime problem. And I'm curious then, from your perspective, is this really necessary? Is the federalization of the police force really going to be required to get this under control?
Unknown
Absolutely. I mean, the optimal thing would be overturning or passing a new thing to override the Home Rule act, which completely takes away, you know, any ability of, quote, unquote, self government government in D.C. the practical reality is D.C. isn't ready or capable of self government right now. The way it operates is basically through moneyed interest, vying for control of the city council or the mayor's office, where they then compete with, you know, the political machinery from the Democrats on the other end. So we aren't seeing, like, a political process play out in Washington, D.C. over the decades where home rule has been in place. But it clearly does not work. It's. It's a level of acceptable corruption and Then deteriorating, just conditions elsewhere. It's getting people killed. It is a ugly city now. You have just vagrancy and quality of life kind of crimes throughout. And particularly after Black Lives Matter where the policy aim was basically to legalize criminal activity amongst, you know, preferred demographic groups, the things have gotten just worse in D.C. where just everyday crime is allowed and particularly with some of the youth, youth violence, predominantly African American males, almost exclusively African American young males. A rampant rise in carjacking because people under that age cap of 18 can basically get away with it and re release. So it's a lot of left wing fever dreams turning into an apocalyptic situation in D.C. over the last few years.
Joe Allen
Yeah, I've known a number of people to be mugged here. Like I say as I walk the streets, it looks like regular old DC and that is a beautiful city. But clearly a lot of this is not under control and there's no effort being made to keep it under control. Mike, if you could please let us know where we can follow you. Tell us where we can find your organization.
Unknown
Absolutely. So I'm on XHL tweets, president of the oversight project which is at itsyourgov and we're gonna stay on top. D.C. is, you know, right where we work at it. If we need to litigate, we'll litigate. Investigate. We'll investigate. We want to make sure the Trump administration has enough room to actually see through a full scale return to safety and order in Washington D.C.
Joe Allen
Mike Howell, thank you very much.
Unknown
Thanks for having me.
Joe Allen
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Steve Bannon
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Joe Allen
War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. All right, welcome back, War Room posse. Be sure to go to Birch goal Birch Gold. Sorry, Philip Kirkpatrick birchgold.com Bannon or text Bannon to 989898 for a free copy of the ultimate guide for gold in the Trump era, that is birchgold.com Bannon you're going to want to have some kind of hard metal around when the fiat currency collapses, the Bitcoin don't go through and all of your vegetables have withered. You're gonna need gold coins to buy them from your neighbors. That's birchgold.com Bannon or text Bannon to 989898 all right, I want to bring in Wade Miller, senior advisor at the center for Renewing America. He's got a great article up at the site, a policy brief on the Census Bureau defrauding American voters. Wade Miller, thank you very much for joining us.
Gary Marcus
Thanks for having me on.
Joe Allen
Tell us about this differential privacy algorithm and what the Census Bureau is doing to keep Americans from hanging onto our birthright. Sure.
Gary Marcus
So in an ideal situation, the census collects the data and then you have that raw data and then that's what informs all of the decision making. But in 2020, a whole bunch of Obama bureaucrats that were still left over at the Census Bureau created this differential privacy algorithm. And so their excuse for it is it protect privacy. And I understand this in some applications, when it comes to some characteristic data, we can have a conversation about how to protect some of this information. But when it comes to population and when it comes to citizenship status, those are two key elements to understanding apportionment fairly and understanding redistricting fairly. And unfortunately, what happens is, is they run this algorithm. And so you have this clean data at the state level, and then all the way down to the block level, and then you do differential privacy. And what it does is the state level data remains accurate if the counting was accurate, and that's a whole nother topic that we had historic levels of miscount in the 2020 census process. But let's just assume that the counting is correct. At the state level, the data stays the same. But at every other level, you have movement of the data, and this includes population data, it includes citizenship data. So, and this is a really important thing, because even if the Trump administration is successful in asking the citizenship data or the citizenship question on the census, if you don't figure out or fix or reform the differential privacy algorithm, it can move that data around in a manner that makes it so that when it comes to the redistricting process, you're not getting as much utility out of it, because you don't actually know where they're at to account for them. And so then, therefore, you can't create districts that have equal amounts of citizens in them. You'll have some districts that have a lot of illegals and other districts that have very few illegals in them. Even if you know the total number in that state, you can't fix it in the redistricting as easily. So it's a big problem. And there's a lot of other problems with the Census. Important note, the Census Bureau admits that they did a really bad job in 2020, and that's not even getting into the differential privacy problem. And this is another key point. Only a handful of select bureaucrats at the Census have clearance and access to what's known as the Tiger File, which is the raw data. No one else in the federal government, other federal agencies don't have it. And there's been a lot of independent studies that show that this movement of the population, the scrambling of the data, is depriving some areas of population and overestimating the population of many other areas. And it just so happens to be negatively impacting mostly rural areas and positively impacting mostly urban areas. So, so what does this mean? Well, when it comes to maps, rural areas, just as a nonpartisan, objective fact, rural areas tend to vote more for Republicans and cities tend to vote more for Democrats. Well, if the cities have more population, because of differential privacy and then also counting illegals on top of that, then you basically have a situation where these cities have out matched amounts of political power that then gives them more representation than they're supposed to have and deprives rural areas of their power. If you fix all this not as a partisan issue, just as an objective, neutral observation, all of this will help the right and it will not help the left. And by the way, all of the errors in the 2020 census, they all just so happen to help the left. None of them went broke in our direction in terms of allowing the right or conservatives to have more representation in Congress. Congress, all of the mistakes helped the left and that's just from the counting. Now we have differential privacy counting of illegal aliens in the redistricting. All of these things happen in 2020. If you do that entire process over fairly, which I think that the Trump administration is going to do by republishing the 2020 Census, then I think that you're going to see a seismic shift in the potentially the electoral college and certainly in the redistricting process. That's going to benefit the riot versus the left, but it will be a fairer representation of actual voters and citizens.
Joe Allen
Fantastic work, Wade. Can you tell us where can we find the center for Renewing America? Where can we follow you and where should people go to understand the details of this? Direct them to their article. To the article please, sir. Sure.
Gary Marcus
So at center for Renewing America, our website is americarenewing.com that's americarenewing.com and you can just search for census in that little search tab at the top. And then my ex account is wademillerusmc.
Joe Allen
Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate you coming on. Mike Lindell. I'm worn out. This has been a long, long, grinding journey and I need to lay my head down on something soft. Where can I get a the best night's sleep in the whole wide world?
Unknown
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Joe Allen
Thank you very much, Mike. Hey, Mike, can I get a free pillow and some slippers? I'm worn out, dude. Yeah, it's bad.
Unknown
Right on.
Joe Allen
All right, send them on over. We'll be here at the studio.
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Podcast Summary: Bannon's War Room - Episode 4701
Title: Antitrust Slams Largest US Landlord, OpenAI Bombs, and DC Crime Wave Brought to a Grinding Halt
Host: WarRoom.org
Release Date: August 13, 2025
In Episode 4701 of Bannon's War Room, the host, Joe Allen, delves into pressing national issues affecting Americans today. The episode focuses on three major topics: the Department of Justice’s antitrust actions against Greystar, the disappointing launch of OpenAI's GPT-5, and the escalating crime wave in Washington D.C. The discussion is enriched with expert insights and firsthand accounts, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of these critical matters.
Guest: Gail Slater, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the US Department of Justice
Joe Allen opens the episode by addressing the recent antitrust lawsuit against Greystar, the largest landlord in the United States. Greystar is accused of colluding with competitors to artificially inflate rental prices, adversely affecting hardworking Americans, particularly millennials who spend a significant portion of their income on rent.
Key Points Discussed:
Impact on Renters: Gail Slater emphasizes the importance of fair rental prices, noting that millennials, who predominantly rent, allocate about a third of their monthly income to housing.
Collusion Mechanism: Slater explains how Greystar and other landlords used RealPage software to manipulate rental data, ensuring prices remained high across various markets. This digital collusion prevented genuine competition, keeping rents elevated.
Settlement Details: Greystar has agreed to cease using RealPage’s software and has committed to eliminating unfair pricing practices. Slater highlights this settlement as a significant step towards restoring competitive pricing in the rental market.
Notable Quote:
“If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.” – Steve Bannon [00:34]
The conversation shifts to broader antitrust initiatives, with a particular focus on the Google case. Gail Slater outlines the Department of Justice’s efforts to curb Google's dominance in the online search market.
Key Points Discussed:
Google's Monopoly: Slater details how Google has controlled approximately 90% of the online search market for decades, stifling competition and innovation.
Remedies Proposed: The DOJ has proposed remedies including the divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser and data-sharing protocols to ensure fair competition. These measures aim to dismantle Google's monopolistic practices and promote a healthier market environment.
Bipartisan Support: Slater underscores the bipartisan consensus supporting robust antitrust enforcement, highlighting the collaboration between federal agencies and 49 states in pursuing these cases.
Notable Quote:
“Google has, it's a household name. It's a verb.” – Gail Slater [07:15]
Guests: Gary Marcus, NYU Professor and AI Critic; Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
The episode transitions to the tech sector, focusing on the underwhelming launch of OpenAI’s GPT-5. Gary Marcus critiques the model's performance, highlighting significant issues despite claims of advanced capabilities.
Key Points Discussed:
GPT-5’s Shortcomings: Marcus points out that GPT-5, despite its potential, fails to perform reliably, exhibiting issues like inaccuracies and "hallucinations" where the AI generates incorrect information.
Sam Altman's Defense: In a revealing exchange, Altman acknowledges the flaws in GPT-5, defending the need for continued innovation while admitting that current models are not yet suitable for critical applications in education, medicine, or the military.
The Hallucination Problem: The discussion delves into the dangers of AI hallucinations, emphasizing the risks of relying on flawed AI systems in high-stakes environments. Altman warns that even a 1% error rate can have severe consequences, such as in driverless cars or medical diagnostics.
Notable Quotes:
“Even 1%, as you're kind of pointing out there, can be pretty serious.” – Sam Altman [24:05]
“Gary Marcus was right. It went so far that people called it Gary Marcus Day.” – Sam Altman [27:06]
Guest: Mike Howell, President of the Oversight Project
Addressing public safety concerns, Joe Allen brings in Mike Howell to discuss the escalating crime rates in Washington D.C. The segment highlights the administration’s response to rising violent crimes and property thefts.
Key Points Discussed:
Crime Statistics: Howell reveals alarming statistics, noting that Washington D.C. now experiences higher murder rates than cities like Bogotá or Mexico City.
Federal Intervention: In response to the crisis, President Trump has invoked authority under the D.C. Home Rule Act to deploy the National Guard, aiming to restore order and reduce crime.
Long-Term Solutions: Howell emphasizes the need for sustained federal presence and comprehensive strategies to address the root causes of crime, including social and economic factors.
Notable Quote:
“Black Lives Matter where the policy aim was basically to legalize criminal activity amongst, you know, preferred demographic groups.” – Mike Howell [40:16]
Guest: Wade Miller, Senior Advisor at the Center for Renewing America
In a subsequent segment, Wade Miller discusses issues surrounding the 2020 Census, particularly the implementation of differential privacy algorithms that may skew population and citizenship data.
Key Points Discussed:
Differential Privacy Impact: Miller explains how the Census Bureau’s use of differential privacy distorts data at granular levels, leading to inaccurate representations in redistricting and apportionment.
Political Ramifications: The manipulated data disproportionately affects rural areas, which tend to support Republican candidates, while inflating urban populations that favor Democrats. This imbalance undermines fair political representation.
Call for Reform: Miller advocates for republishing the 2020 Census data to ensure accurate and unbiased information, which would benefit fairer representation and electoral processes.
Notable Quote:
“All of the errors in the 2020 census, they all just so happen to help the left.” – Wade Miller [46:42]
Episode 4701 of Bannon's War Room offers a deep dive into significant national issues, from antitrust actions reshaping the rental and tech industries to the challenges posed by flawed AI advancements and rising crime in the nation’s capital. Through expert interviews and incisive discussions, the podcast underscores the ongoing struggles and the efforts to address them, providing listeners with valuable insights into the forces shaping contemporary America.
Notable Moments and Quotes:
Steve Bannon's Opening Statement:
“This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people.” [00:02]
Joe Allen on Antitrust Efforts:
“This was a bipartisan case, not only bipartisan at the federal level... making it a landmark decision in our world.” [07:15]
Gary Marcus on AI's Future:
“These hallucinations can be really subtle and insidious.” [23:02]
Sam Altman's Reflections:
“I really don't know what life will be like... It was really scary when Peter Thiel, you know, hesitated when he was asked.” [34:14]
Stay Informed:
For more in-depth analyses and updates on these topics, tune into future episodes of Bannon's War Room and follow the featured experts on their respective platforms.