10/15/25: Israel Threatens Ceasefire, Trump Blackmails Argentina Voters, Voters Turn On Data Centers

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar | October 15, 2025

Episode Title: Israel Threatens Ceasefire, Trump Blackmails Argentina Voters, Voters Turn On Data Centers
Date: October 15, 2025
Hosts: Krystal Ball & Saagar Enjeti
Co-host: Ryan Grimm

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Overview

This episode dives deep into a series of pressing topics, from the fragility of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and U.S. foreign policy, to the controversial $20 billion bailout to Argentina and Donald Trump’s direct meddling, to the grassroots resistance against AI-driven data center expansion and its massive impacts on everyday Americans. As always, Krystal, Saagar, and guest Ryan Grimm provide a fast-paced, unvarnished look at how the levers of power—from Washington to Silicon Valley—are being pulled, and who’s left holding the bill.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Israel-Hamas Ceasefire: Precarious Ground (06:14–31:56)

Israel's Threat to Halt Aid

• Saagar explains the latest twist in the ceasefire deal: Israel threatened to cut aid to Gaza, citing delays in the return of hostages’ bodies.
  • “Israel threatened yesterday telling the United Nations it plans to halve aid into Gaza amid a partial return of slain hostages' bodies.” (06:11)
• Ryan Grimm breaks down that devastation and war make the return of remains complex for both sides, with both Hamas and Israel accusing each other of violating ceasefire terms.
  • “Mediators clearly understood... in a war zone which is covered in rubble, it’s going to take some time to find not just these 28 bodies, but the tens of thousands of bodies of Palestinians who are also under the rubble.” (08:03)
• Israel briefly backed off, restoring aid to the agreed 600 trucks due to international pressure.

Weapon Disarmament & Trump’s Stance

• Trump’s public comments reveal a tough stance on Hamas disarmament, though his claims on speaking with Hamas are dubious.
  • “We have told them we want disarm and they will disarm. And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly. And perhaps violently. But they will disarm. Do you understand me?” — Donald Trump (12:54)
• Ryan points out Trump's inconsistencies and critiques the practicality of his threats, asking who "we" really refers to (“us, like the American troops are going to go into Gaza?”) (28:20).

Law and Order Vacuum in Gaza

• Krystal and Saagar highlight the post-war governance vacuum: who will enforce justice and maintain day-to-day order?
• Trump shocks by tacitly endorsing Hamas executions of so-called “gangs.”
  • “You know, they did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs... And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you.” — Donald Trump (15:03)
• Ryan reads from a rare Saudi TV interview with Sheikh Houni Al Mughni, head of Gaza’s tribal affairs, which paints the executions as necessary “field justice” due to collapsed institutions.
  • “There are no functioning courts, no police, no judiciary right now. What exists is field justice.” — Sheikh Houni Al Mughni (18:49)

Israeli Destruction of Gaza Infrastructure

• The show details IDF’s destruction of civilian infrastructure, including sewage plants built by international donors, underlining the depth of the crisis and environmental impact.
  • “...Raw sewage is just going to have to be pumped into the Mediterranean... so for no military purpose whatsoever... they effectuated a situation where raw sewage is going to be pumped into the Mediterranean at a large scale and then float up onto Israeli beaches.” — Ryan Grimm (30:09)

Harrowing Account From Flotilla Journalist

• Noavi Shogshinal gives a jarring account of abuse while in Israeli detention.
  • “We were taken through multiple levels of administration and the first of many strip searches. At least one woman has reported being physically penetrated by guards who laughed at her pain...” (32:42)
• Discussion highlights the lack of recourse even for American and Jewish detainees.

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2. Trump’s Argentina Bailout: Blackmail and Cronyism (37:58–51:32)

The $20 Billion Bailout and Its Terms

• Argentina’s struggling libertarian president Javier Milei is publicly given U.S. support. Trump’s rationale is “helping a great philosophy take over a great country.”
  • “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina...”—Donald Trump, indicating the bailout is conditional on Milei’s political survival (40:18)
• Saagar and Ryan shred the bailout as rank hypocrisy—preaching free market while practicing crony socialism, comparing Milei’s model to Israel’s U.S.-backed system.
  • “Argentina has figured out the Israeli model, where you can claim rugged and individual capitalism and the savior of your economy, as long as you always have the fallback of a bailout from the United States of America.” — Saagar (39:15)

Who Really Benefits?

• Ryan Grimm exposes that Secretary Scott Besant (Treasury) is bailing out a currency-trading friend, Rob Citrone, who bet heavily on Milei’s success and was facing gigantic losses.
  • “He got the economics wrong, but he got the politics right. And in this era, it’s more important to have the politics right than it is to actually be right.” — Ryan Grimm (47:52)
• U.S. farmers, especially soy producers, lose out as Argentina undercuts them with U.S.-enabled exports to China—a direct blow to the America First agenda.

Tech, Crypto, and U.S. Policy Collusion

• The discussion ends on speculation about Silicon Valley and crypto investors profiting from the backroom deals around Milei’s policies.

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3. The Data Center Backlash: Energy, AI, and Populism (53:52–76:52)

Grassroots Uproar Over Data Centers

• A bipartisan wave of local opposition is mounting as data centers, driven by AI demand, consume huge volumes of electricity and drive up household power bills.
  • “Whoever wants to grab it by the horns and rip, you’re ready to roll. Nobody wants to pay 267% more for electricity bill for AI pornography...” — Saagar (55:32)
• They highlight Virginia and Oregon, where data centers now consume 40% and 33% of the states’ electricity respectively.

Tax Breaks and Utility Price Hikes

• Ryan details the regulated utility price structure: as data centers drive up demand, companies lobby for tax breaks and pass costs onto residents.
  • “Instead they want tax breaks. And by and large that’s entirely what they’re getting. They’re not paying anything.” — Ryan (57:31)
• Job promises are mostly illusory; bulk of the profit flows back to Silicon Valley.

AI Porn Push: Sam Altman’s OpenAI Announcement

• Saagar reacts with visceral alarm to Sam Altman’s announcement that ChatGPT will soon allow personalized erotica for verified adults:
  • “If you wanted to design something that was going to destroy America, you would start with something which is a quasi useful technology... and then...you would make sure that every teenager...is using that technology, and once they’re using it, you say, hey, by the way, you know, you can also use it for pornography purposes.” — Saagar (62:56)
• Arguments fly about the social cost: addiction, critical thinking decay, youth mental health, increased energy burden due to AI porn’s immense processing needs.

The Larger Societal Risk

• The hosts draw parallels to the opioid crisis, gambling, and digital addiction—emphasizing the “socialized cost” of these new technologies.
  • “The socialized cost of degenerate behavior is one that all of us have to deal with.” — Saagar (68:46)
• They highlight the lack of any regulatory pushback, warning that “the White House doesn’t care. No state and local politician has come out with a forceful demand yet.” (76:08)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Israeli use of starvation as a tactic:
  • “Israel’s gotten a little bit too comfortable explicitly using the starvation of a civilian population for its military and political ends. That is a war crime.” — Ryan Grimm (10:48)
• On U.S. cronyism in Argentina:
  • “This is about enriching his cabal of buddies, right?...We’re subsidizing both Argentina and China so that...your hedge fund buddy can get bailed out of his stupid trade.” — Ryan Grimm (44:47)
• On AI Porn and Energy Use:
  • “What would you design to destroy the American male more so than something like ChatGPT, which is to decrease social interaction, to increase time on platform, then personalize AI pornography...” — Saagar (64:53)
  • “A typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households. The largest data center under development will consume 2 million households’ worth of electricity.” — Saagar (73:52)
• On data centers and governance:
  • “Do we govern ourselves? Are we a democracy that wants to chart our own course? Or are we just governed by these AI overlords and they just tell us what we have to eat and how much we have to pay to eat it?” — Ryan Grimm (76:36)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |-------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 06:14–31:56 | Israel-Hamas ceasefire, hostages, infrastructure, journalism | | 37:58–51:32 | Trump/Milei/Argentina bailout and U.S. farm/crypto cronyism | | 53:52–56:48 | Data center political backlash—Virginia, Oregon, grassroots | | 62:56–68:46 | Sam Altman/AI porn, social and energy fallout | | 73:51–76:52 | AI data center energy demand, public protest, policy vacuum |

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Conclusion

This episode is a whirlwind tour of global and local power struggles. From Gaza’s fragile peace and the unaccountable violence of occupation and resistance, to the open cronyism of American foreign policy, to the silent energy crisis fueling the world’s AI revolution, the hosts repeatedly ask: who pays the price, who reaps the benefits, and what kind of society are we building? Their analysis is sharp, irreverent, and nothing is off the table.

Want more? Visit breakingpoints.com for full, uncut member episodes.

Transcript

[Sagar]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Krystal]

Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Ryan Grimm]

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[Sagar]

Through every mission hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.

[Krystal]

Independent Media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Sagar]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Krystal]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to breakingpoints.com but become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Sagar]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning everybody. Happy Wednesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro Show People Live for the pound.

[Ryan Grimm]

The Wednesday.

[Sagar]

The Wednesday Bro Show. The rare Wednesday Bro Show. But thank you very much for having me. Ryan. Always a pleasure on my with Emily in particular who allowed me to swap with her. Shout out to Emily. All right, this is the tough part of It. I don't know how you guys do this. You gotta set up all this winging all of this. All right, all right, all right. I'm gonna try and do this. So we're gonna start off with Israel. Ryan is gonna give us a lot of updates. There's some crazy stuff going on. Israel originally threatening to halt half of the aid going into Gaza, accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire. Hamas accusing them of violating the ceasefire. There's still quite a bit going on behind the scenes and implementation of that as it is precarious and still, you know, obviously could any moment with Donald Trump kind of weighing in on Israel's side, but also making a very revealing comment about Hamas and about law and order inside of Gaza, which Ryan is going to fully flesh things out for us. The president of our Argentina, Javier Milei, was in Washington yesterday to secure his bailout. Donald Trump justifying to the cameras why he deserves a $20 billion bailout. You'll be shocked to learn the answer. We're gonna talk about data centers, something we have been tracking here very closely. At breaking points, there is a continuing grassroots campaign across the entire nation, including my home state of Virginia, where data centers consume some 40% of the electricity produced in the entire state. A lot of grassroots local people organizing against data centers, and all of it for what purpose? For artificial intelligence. Leading to Sam Altman's landmark decision yesterday where he announced that pornography, personalized pornography, will soon be made available on ChatGPT. So you can assume what I'm gonna say about that. We're gonna talk about the Pentagon. Ryan and I, we need to go off on this. I have just been. I have felt so angry about it because my first job in Washington was covering the Pentagon. Ryan, I know you've covered the Pentagon as well. The Pentagon is just making up outright lies to ban all journalists basically from the building, trying to require them to sign some bullshit pledge. So we're gonna go through point by point and tell you why every single thing that they're saying is a complete and a total lie and has basically made it so that there's even less transparency where there already was very little, even when you were able to get anything from them. At the Pentagon at a time of $1 trillion that we spend on the defense budget, people getting drone struck or whatever in the middle of the Caribbean, there is quite literally only one reporter who will be at the Pentagon as of today from One America News. So great. Okay, we're gonna talk about Maine. Janet Mills, the sitting governor, jumping into the race. If elected as a Democrat. She would be the oldest freshman senator in United this is the United States and this is in the United States Senate.

[Ryan Grimm]

Age record in the Senate is impressive.

[Sagar]

That's very impressive. So Ryan and I are going to discuss that hot campaign, how Chuck Schumer is already jumping in seemingly on her side. And then finally, Pakistan. This is a Ryan Grimm special. So I'm gonna turn it over to him and he's gonna tell us some of the details where dropsite appears to have uncovered. I'll let you say it.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Pakistan over the last several days has massacred hundreds, maybe even more than that, of pro Palestine protesters coinciding with Shabazz Sharif, the Pakistan prime minister, going to Egypt to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. We'll talk about that in the way that we may be getting another India Pakistan war pretty soon. And then we'll finish off by talking about little Bari Weiss over at job site. We looked into her investigation into her attempt to basically deny the famine that's underway by looking into the cases of a bunch of sick children there. And we'll tell you what we found there. But Sagar, you nailed it. You cruised right through that.

[Sagar]

Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you very much. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing supporting the show. BreakingPoints.com if you are able to become a member, you can join the AMAs and you can of course watch the show an hour early. If you can't afford it, no worries, just please go ahead and hit subscribe on YouTube to the channel. If you're listening to this as a podcast, please send your favorite episode to a friend, your favorite segment, whatever, anything. It really helps people find the show or give us a five star rating. So let's go ahead and start with Israel. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Israel threatened yesterday telling the United nations it plans to have aid into Gaza amid a partial return of slain hostages bodies. So let's go and put a 2 up on the screen. This is all amid a big fight between Israel and Hamas over the technicalities of the phase one return of the hostage deal. But much of this pertains to the actual bodies of the hostages who were killed while they were held in Hamas captivity. Now, part of the Hamas explanation is that the devastation in Gaza complicates the retrieval of all remains. I should note that as of this morning, Israel did back off of their threat to restrict aid into Gaza, deciding that some 600 aid trucks will be allowed to enter today restoring the full volume that was agreed to at the beginning of the ceasefire. But I think, Ryan, what I'm hopefully you can help break down for us is the precarity through which Israel and through which this ceasefire deal could quite easily collapse and how there are serious elements in the Israeli government who would want nothing less than to have this ceasefire completely collapse. They have their hostages back now, the living ones. They never particularly cared at least this particular government about those hostages and they would love nothing more than to torpedo it and to resume the war.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, the Ben GVIR and Smotrich fact of the government are looking for every avenue in that they can to try to disrupt this and make a fool out of Trump who has said that the war is over. We have a ceasefire and we're going to make sure the ceasefire stops. While I'm talking, you can put up a 2B. Abdelkader for drop site provided us this footage. This is four of the deceased hostages being taken to the Red cross. There are 28 that are to be turned over in the agreement. And if I remember, I'll put it in the notes to this show. You can read the agreement for yourself. It's very short. It says that once Israel moves back behind the line, that they've agreed to, which they've done that within 72 hours, all the bodies in the possession of Hamas and other resistance factions, because it wasn't just Hamas that had them, will be turned over, you know, to the Red Cross and to Israel, while information about the known or likely whereabouts of the rest of them will also be turned over. So there's an entire process, because the mediators clearly understood, because they're not idiots, that in a, in a war zone which is covered in rubble, you know, north to south, it's going to be, it's going to take some time to find not just these 28 bodies, but the tens of thousands of bodies of Palestinians who are also under the rubble. If you think about it, if the, you know, Hamas, it does appear like Hamas killed six hostages. It was five or six hostages in the tunnel to prevent them from being captured in this, like, horrifying situation almost a year ago, I think, at this point. Otherwise, according to Israeli media reports, the way that a significant number of the hostages were killed was through Israeli airstrikes. And so therefore, where are those bodies? Those bodies are deep in tunnels and they're, and they're under rubble. 972 in particular reported that Israel discovered that as a byproduct of its 2,000 pound bombs they could basically suck all the oxygen out of the tunnels within like a 500 or 1000 meter period. And they know for a fact that they killed some hostages that way. So how do you find those? Immediately? Mediators understood this is going to take some time. And so for Israel to immediately kind of renege on the agreement and say, okay, we're now cutting aid. And to go directly to cutting aid, I think was a bit too much. And that's why they're going, you know, they're saying, okay, we're, we're going to allow the 600 trucks in because Israel, it seems like Israel's gotten a little bit too comfortable explicitly using the starvation of a civilian population for its military and political ends. That is a war crime. Like, Since World War II, everyone has agreed collective punishment is a war crime. You can't do it. And so even in the beginning of the war, Israel was reluctant to say that the starvation of the population was being used as a weapon of war because you just couldn't say that out loud. Now they don't. Now they're not. Now they're just saying it. We didn't get all of our bodies yet. You're only getting 300 trucks. And pressure came back on Israel. You can't actually do that. And now you have your hostages back. So the political calculus is a little bit different now that they have their, now that they have their hostages back. Now the other fight that is unfolding here is about the state of Hamas's arms going forward. And there's some indications from Hamas actually, that they're now offering to give up heavy weapons, which should be, you know, rockets, which is actually a huge victory for, especially for the people that live around the envelope. But also, you know, those rockets went pretty far. It also is a signal that they're backing off of offensive strikes, you know, into Israel as a part of this. They, they say they want to keep their small arms, and small arms are not a threat to an Israeli or to Israel unless they're inside Gaza, you know, Right. You're, you know, you're not. A guy with a gun in Dar El Bala is not a threat to somebody in Tel Aviv. Unless that person from Tel Aviv gets in a tank and comes into Darbala, then they're in trouble. So let's roll. President Trump talking about this question of Hamas disarmament.

[Donald Trump]

We have told them we want disarm and they will disarm. And if they don't disarm, we will disarm them and it'll happen quickly. And perhaps violently. But they will disarm. Do you understand me?

[Noavi Shogshinal]

Yes.

[Donald Trump]

You say, because you always, everyone says, oh well, they won't disarm, they will disarm. And I spoke to Hamas and I said, you're going to disarm, right? Yes sir, we're going to disarm. That's what they told me. They will disarm or we will disarm them.

[Sagar]

Got it.

[Donald Trump]

Okay.

[Sagar]

What is the deadline you're going to put on that? You say quickly, sir, sir, you said.

[Krystal]

Quickly, but what is the deadline you're.

[Ryan Grimm]

Going to put on that?

[Donald Trump]

A reasonable third time. Pretty sure, pretty quickly. A reasonable period of time.

[Sagar]

A reasonable period of time.

[Ryan Grimm]

But a reporter later followed up and was like, hold on a second, sir, I think you just said that you spoke to Hamas. That would be huge news if true. He's like, well I didn't speak to Hamas. He's like a very senior Hamas person. Spoke to somebody senior in our administration.

[Sagar]

AKA Steve Wyckoff, right?

[Donald Trump]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

And this is, this is what they, this is what they relayed. Now the, the question of arms also goes to law and order in Gaza. And unless you have any thoughts on that, we could roll him talking about the gangs.

[Sagar]

Well, just to set it up, it is an interesting question now about the post governance of Gaza because the United States has committed to some sort of coalitional provisional authority which will govern. Hamas will have to give up its weapons but it'll be allowed to enter the political process. But in the interim, because it is not under occupation, who is administering day to day justice, if you will. And immediately what's been coming out from the Gaza Strip are Im actually of Hamas or at least Hamas militants committing executions. And those executions there's been a lot that's been thrown about. Some pro Israelis have been saying that oh actually this is Hamas executing quote unquote collaborators. Hamas is like no, these are criminals, people who were hoarding food, who were stealing and were looting in the middle of this. And Trump it appears actually is endorsing these executions saying yeah, he's like they're taking care of some troublemakers. I don't have a problem with it to be honest with you. Let's take a listen.

[Donald Trump]

You know, they did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs. And they did take them out and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn't bother me much to be honest with you. That's okay. That's a couple of very bad gangs. You know, it's no different than other countries.

[Sagar]

Didn't bother me much, to be honest with you. So what do we know about these guys, Ryan? Because the pro Israel side is adamantly saying this is Hamas, who is executing people who collaborated with the idf. This shows their barbarism, et cetera. The President of the United States seems to believe that it is criminal gangs, perhaps that's backed up by intelligence. But it does highlight kind of the issue of who is going to administer like day to day law and order inside of the Gaza Strip in particular, because the Israelis never wanted to do it. And now that they're gone and it's no longer like an anarchist war zone, something is going to fill in and step up that vacuum.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, and so the Ministry of Interior yesterday put out a statement that was kind of putting on record what had been circulating inside of Gaza, which is that, look, if they, the statement says, look, if you participated with these gangs, either Israeli backed or otherwise, that were looting aid, that were causing chaos, turn yourself in and we have a week long period of amnesty. It ends October 19th and it's time to reintegrate into Palestinian society. Now when you get, are you going to get a little slap on the wrist? They're going to shoot your leg? I don't know what this kind of amnesty actually means. And this will require some new reporting. It might just mean you come in, you say who you are, who your family is, you say what you did and you promise you're not going to do it again. And it's a process of truth and reconciliation moving forward. They said if you committed bloodshed, if you killed someone, you're not eligible for this. You have to submit yourself to real justice. So what they say with the folks there, that they were offered amnesty, some of them refused, and there was then a gun battle, they lost a gun battle, and then they were executed there. Now here's what's, here's what's wild. And here's an interview you wouldn't see on any American television program. I'm gonna read some of this to you and get your reaction to it because I think, as you'll see, Hamas actually, I think has a lot more similarities with probably the American right. I think you're gonna hear some of this and be like, yeah, okay, this kind of tracks with my political philosophy. Little more than a squishy liberal like me who is like, what about due process? What about confronting your accuser? So this is an interview on a Saudi television program which is hostile to Hamas. Like Saudis, they wish Hamas did not exist. And so they invited on from Nusrit a guy named Sheikh Houni Al Mugni, who is his official title. He's the head of the Supreme Committee for Palestinian Tribal Affairs. But he's understood in Gaza to be a strong representative of civil society. Like he's one of these guys that's just very well respected around the kind of Gaza civil community. So the interviewer, and you can find this clip, it's in Arabic though, but it's on dropsite. I'll read some of it here. The interviewer is constantly pressing him to try to condemn Hamas. And condemn because like, like they're executing people in cold blood, like in public, on video.

[Sagar]

Saudis, famously are very against that.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, Saudis. Boy, I didn't even think of that. But that's hilarious. And so he starts out by saying this. These events didn't come out of thin air or from rumors. They're based on facts. This misguided group collaborated with the enemy and committed shameful acts, murder, theft, looting. These people have existed since the first truce. They've been doing this for a long time. During that period, they killed many people, robbed and terrorized others. No one could tolerate what they did. Now, after the situation has stabilized and the ceasefire has taken hold, the security forces are working to restore safety and stability among the people. This deviant group, which practiced all forms of violence and looting, had to be held accountable. The families of those involved renounced them under tribal law and asked them to surrender to the authorities. Those who turned themselves in were punished according to their crimes. Those who resisted arrest, the police had to use force against them, leading to deaths and injuries. These people are rejected by everyone, by the public and by the tribes. The host says, but should it be handled this way? Less than 24 hours after the ceasefire in Gaza, they've executed publicly without any legal process or accountability. And he says, my sister, please understand, there are no functioning courts, no police, no judiciary right now. What exists is field justice. Tell me, when a 10 year old boy goes out to bring home a little flower for his siblings because his father was martyred and someone attacks him, steals the flower and kills him in the street, who will hold those killers accountable? These people have to be rooted out. They're a corrupt element that doesn't belong to our society. And the host says she's still looking for something. She's like, give me something here. But surely you've also heard of excesses by Hamas members themselves. Al Mughni says if there are violations by Hamas members, there are authorities who can stop and punish them. But who holds Hamas accountable? She asks. Anyone can report misconduct to the higher authorities. They will investigate and punish. Hamas has leadership and internal accountability. Yesterday, for instance, a journalist was stopped at a checkpoint and shot in the leg. Those who did that will be held accountable as well. And, she says, were the tribal leaders informed or consulted before Hamas carried out these executions? Al Mughni says, we stand with them completely, heart and soul. We support and back every measure they've taken. If you knew the extent of the corruption these people spread, you wouldn't believe it then. She says, but how did Hamas determine so quickly who was guilty of collaboration or treason? And he says, because these were the very people stealing and looting the aid trucks, robbing everything that was meant for the people. For six months, not a single aid package reached ordinary citizens. Because of them, they stole and resold the food. They are killers, criminals, thieves. And they had to be punished for what they did to their own people. And then last one, and then we can. Because you get the point, she says. Still, there are fears this could damage social cohesion after two years of war and bombardment. Al Mughni says no, those carrying out these acts of violence are Israel's agents, people created and supported by Israel. Hamas police gave them chances, 1, 2, 3, to surrender. Those who refused and kept spreading chaos had to be punished. The people themselves demanded it. It goes on from there, with her continuing to press him like, come on, this, like, this looks terrible. This can't be how we're going to do this. And him saying, no, it had to be done. Towards the end of it, he's like, no, we would have preferred a little bit more actually. He's like, they were. He's like, this was the moderate, yes approach to these guys.

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[Krystal]

Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Krystal]

Whoa, this thing moves.

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[Sagar]

The reason why I think this is we were talking in our preparatory call and it reminded me of some stories from Afghanistan in the 1990s and actually later on after the US occupation, where in the 90s. Now, I'm not gonna say entirely, but one of the ways that the Taliban was able to win over the civilian population is it's not a secret that widespread rape, and in particular the rape of small boys, acha bazi, is a practice in Afghanistan that goes back centuries and it was being practiced in particular at that time of the warlords. Well, the Taliban, because it believed in a strict interpretation of Sharia law, equally applied that across the board and executed many of the people who are participating in the practice. And some of the villagers who were like, well, you know, I don't love my wife being shrouded in a burqa or my daughter not being able to school, but my sons are not a victim of being ritually raped, Right? And so they were able actually to gain quite a bit of popularity through that. Basically the exertion of law and order, not just on the bachabazi practice, Even the, the solicitation rape of women was something that unfortunately, you know, along with tribals, you know, culture and all that and no central body of law and order. One of the ways, again, that they were able to exert some of their control was by this type of coming in and exerting, like, absolute punishment on criminality, from rape to stealing to many of these other types of crimes. And so you could exactly see here, first of all, how Hamas was able to remain in power for some, what, 17 years, right, in Gaza in the first place? Actually, no, it was more than that. So 2005. 2005, yeah. Almost 19, 20 years that it was able to remain in power. But also the central problem of how is somebody going to govern this place, right? Because right now, Israel has to withdraw to some sort of line of control. Nobody really, what, 10%, something like that. And it's not exactly clear at this time. Eventually somebody's going to have to do that. So if you want them to disarm, then there has to be something in its place. This is exactly what happened in the occupation of Iraq. This exact same story, right? We came in, we overthrew Saddam, we pursued stupidly this policy of, quote de ba', at, the 50 dumbest thing ever. The dumb worst, genuinely. The only big mistake that's secondary to the invasion in the first place, took away the weapons, confiscated them, created a power vacuum which sheikhs and tribal warlords and all these other people were able to move in. And it created a complete sectarian breakdown and a literal civil war that killed hundreds of US Troops, not to mention, who even knows, millions, probably of Iraqis, either killed or wounded in the interim. This is the exact scenario we're staring down. Because if we want Hamas to give up all their weapons, which, yeah, okay, but then somebody's gotta have some weapons. Somebody's gotta have some level of control. Who's it gonna be? The uae? The United States? Saudi? Does the UAE really want to put itself in the place of, you know, prosecuting victims of crime? I mean, the United Arab Emirates is not a big nation. It's really not even Saudi Arabia. These are not professional militaries with counterinsurgency experience. So this is the nightmare that awaits whatever occupying force that will eventually come into Gaza. And that's the big question. That's why we highlighted this, because this is the story now, who's gonna control this stuff? Trump actually seems to be okay with it. He's like, yeah, I was okay with it, to be honest with you. It's like, well, if you are, then you all also kind of tacitly are acknowledging or recognizing some sort of level of Hamas political and political control of Gaza, you have to be able to fill that vacuum. If you don't, which he also says at the same time they'll disarm. It can collapse into chaos immediately.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. It shows that it has to be a political solution. Because if Israel with its endlessly supplied army in two years can't debilitate this armed force, the Emiratis are going to do it, like the Indonesians. Like, who are you going to. And Trump's claim that we're going to go in there and violently disarm Hamas. We are. Who do you mean? We, buddy, like us. Like the American troops are going to go into Gaza and try to disarm those guys when Israel had two years and couldn't do it. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. So what you could see is what Hamas is floating here, like, okay, look, rockets, like heavy weapons that can be used for offensive projection. We will get rid of those. We need a police force, rename it. I mean, it's already. They're not Hamas. It's a police force. Hamas is the overall government. Okay. This is the police force. And then they have also said if there's a technocratic Palestinian run government, that government is the one that is armed. Like they said, we recognize the kind of sovereign monopoly on violence that a government has. You give us a government, we're done. We're a national liberation movement. The nation's liberated, we're finished. Here's the weapons. Those guys, some of them 15, 16 years old at this point because of the two years of slaughter, they're gonna first of all put them in high school and college, but then people can, you know, move over into the actual army. So, yeah, there's a path forward for this. Whether or not, and it seems like Trump sees it, but whether or not.

[Sagar]

Like, yeah, how will that come about? That's exactly the question.

[Ryan Grimm]

And so on the way out, and I know you guys talked about this yesterday, but just incredible story over the weekend from Yunus to Rawi and Yaniv Kogan, it drops out, you can put up a 8. And IDF actually claims to be looking into this. And because they claim they're looking into it, it's picking up some other coverage around the world. The BBC covered it, Times of Israel covered it. Israeli soldiers basically burned everything that they could on their way out of Gaza City, including the biggest sewage treatment plant in Gaza, which was built with basically German funding. We've been in touch with the German company, the German investment groups. Like this is serious amounts of money that European countries put into this sewage treatment plant. The Canada well down in southern Gaza was burned about a year ago, which we reported on too. Obviously it's called the Canada well because Canada paid for it. So Israel's going in here and burning all of this infrastructure that European and other foreign governments, you know, invested in and paid for. And the result is that unless something dramatic happens, raw sewage is just going to have to be pumped into the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean runs its current runs in a counterclockwise fashion. So picture the Mediterranean, you know where Gaza is, you know where the rest of Israel is. So for no military purpose whatsoever, only to act out some bizarre sadist impulses, they effectuated a situation where raw sewage is going to be pumped into the Mediterranean at a large scale and then float up onto Israeli beaches. Like, what are you guys doing?

[Sagar]

Sick. Sick indeed.

[Ryan Grimm]

Real quickly, before we move on, I did want to talk about our second correspondent who was on the most recent flotilla. So there was the Global Samud flotilla and then there was a flotilla right behind it. The main ship was the Conscience and we had a correspondent on there, Noah Avishug Schnall, who was just released a couple days ago from Israeli detention and was treated utterly horrifically. Wanted to just roll a little bit that this is her, just show you a clip of her final dispatch for drop site from the Conscience and then show you what she looked like after she got out of Israeli detention.

[Noavi Shogshinal]

Hi, I'm Noavi Shogshinal giving another update from the ship the Conscience, part of the Freedom Flotilla coalition for dropsite news. The brutality began immediately. We were taken through multiple levels of administration and the first of many strip searches. At least one woman has reported being physically penetrated by guards who laughed at her pain. Many flotilla members reported watching their valuables being looted by guards during bag searches. All of us had our hands violently shoved towards the ground and arms held in stress positions behind us, many with zip ties and were led through processing and sorted into groups of men and women, then blindfolded. Several of the 150 total flotilla members, including me, were targeted for extreme brutality throughout imprisonment. I was kicked out during the American's turn with the judge for translating the events into English. Any flotilla member who upset the Israeli guards was subjected to twisted and tightened handcuffs and some received beatings. I was hung from the metal shackles on my wrists and ankles and beaten in the stomach, back, face, ear and skull by a group of men and women guards, one of whom sat on my neck and face blocking my airways during the Evening. The men were tormented by guards with attack dogs and guns. The women were threatened with pepper spray. Our cell was awoken with threats of rape.

[Ryan Grimm]

Wow. Yeah. So if just because I think it's just impossible to believe those two videos that we just showed you are eight days apart. So just, you just scroll this video.

[Sagar]

Back, see how, how she looks, you.

[Ryan Grimm]

Know, and, and then the eight days ago, that's after being on a ship, you know, for not fun, kind of, kind of beats you up. So it's, you know, hopefully she'll be back pretty soon. We've only been able to be in touch with her a little bit through email. She sent that video. She sent that video. And she's actually born in la, so, you know, she's American as well. She's of Jewish, of Yemeni descent. I wonder if like the fact that she's Jewish like angered them more because her treatment was worse than a lot of the other activists got.

[Sagar]

And a US citizen and she was.

[Ryan Grimm]

On the, she was on this non activist boat. They were like, we don't want any activists. So the one she was on, it was just journalists and medics. Wow. That's it. She's a photojournalist, a great photojournalist. Look her, look her stuff up. And so I don't, I don't know if it's that, it's the Yemeni. The fact that she has. Of Yemeni descent, like they felt like they could.

[Sagar]

I just think it was a betray, you know, they feel betrayed and so they wanted to treat her badly. And I know that the US Consulate and the US Embassy won't issue, won't.

[Ryan Grimm]

Do anything and she was in the. She was in. This was all happening while the ceasefire is getting agreed to. And I think there was probably some taking the anger out. The fact that they're being forced to do this ceasefire on the people that they had in their detention, really sick, sick.

[Sagar]

Well, thank you for the update, Ryan, and in particular for explaining some of the post war Gaza stuff.

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[Krystal]

Ugh. Come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Krystal]

Whoa, this thing moves.

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[Sagar]

Argentina which oh man, there's just so much to say here. Javier Milei got a king's welcome yesterday at the White House. He appeared in a joint meeting with the President in the Cabinet Room, where he was treated to all of the pomp and circumstance. A reporter comes in and asks Trump, what's the benefit in the United States bailing out Argentina? Here's what Trump had to say.

[Ryan Grimm]

What's the benefit for United States in helping this way?

[Donald Trump]

Argentina just helping a great philosophy take over a great country. Argentina is one of the most beautiful countries that I've ever seen and we want to see it succeed. Very simple. I mean, we don't have to do it. It's not going to make a big difference for our country, but it will in terms of South America. If Argentina does well, you're going to have arguments.

[Sagar]

Okay, so it's a great philosophy over the country, Ryan. If it's a great philosophy and that philosophy is about making money and in particular, it's about saving the economy. Then why do we need to bail out said philosophy for $20 billion? Can anybody riddle me that? What's up with that?

[Ryan Grimm]

I think socialism in Argentina, with an endless financial backstop from the United States would also probably be pretty great for.

[Sagar]

Well, that's called the Israeli model. The Israeli model is you can free health care and you can literally pay a significant portion of your population to not work and to study the Torah, as long as the United States government provides you an endless blank check to allow you to do whatever you want. Argentina has figured out the Israeli model, where you can claim rigid and individual capitalism and the savior of your economy, as long as you always have the fallback of a bailout from the United States of America.

[Ryan Grimm]

Argentina is going to have to go occupy Venezuela.

[Sagar]

Oh, there, yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like that's part of the deal.

[Sagar]

Well, Argentina, they're going to be our.

[Ryan Grimm]

Aircraft carrier in South America.

[Sagar]

Argentinian occupation, of course, in no way fits with their history, isn't that right? I just pissed off a whole lot of people down in South America, didn't I? In particular, though, what I liked here was Trump also making it explicit that if Milei loses the election. So this is an existential question now for the Argentinian people. If he loses, he will stop bailing out Argentina. Let's take a listen.

[Donald Trump]

If the President doesn't win, I know the person that he'd be running against. I believe probably we probably have the person. A person is extremely far left and a philosophy that got Argentina into this problem in the first place. So we would not be generous with Argentina if that happened. If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.

[Sagar]

So if he loses, we will not be as generous. Now, this entire thing, I know we've covered it in the past, but it is just still so crazy. And I actually don't think that the White House press corps is pressing Trump enough on this is in what world? In the middle of a government shutdown where you're slashing different program. Fine. Some of the programs, fine. Yeah. I have no issue with it. Would like it to go through Congress and all of that, you know, the process. But fine, we could talk about that. But in what world are you going to do that and also live in this environment where the healthcare premiums are about to go up? It's complicated, as we discussed yesterday. But how can you say that while also bailing out Argentina for $20 billion? It just, it doesn't fit at all. Except if it's about being Trump's friend. Let's put this up here on the screen. Milei vowed to fix Argentina's economy. Then came a new crisis. Quote, President Javier Milei slashed inflation and spending, but it wasn't enough to stave off in economic. President Trump has offered him a lifeline. Quote, milei has surfed a major wave of optimism and that, you know, out of control inflation slashed a bloated budget. Quote, even his painful fixes made life harder for people. His popularity was built on the hopes that he may finally succeed where his predecessors had stumbled, which is pulling Argentina out of crisis. But he now finds himself in an economic meltdown so severe that investors panic. Selled the peso, ditched Argentine assets, fueled panic over a default on the nation's Enorm international loans, prompting Trump to throw his ally a $20 billion bailout. The US treasury said it was, quote, ready to do what is needed to stop markets from derailing Mr. Milei's agenda. Secretary Scott Besant says that President Milei is restoring economic stability after decades of Argentine mismanagement. So in order to help Javier Milei economic philosophy, we have to bail out Javier Millay. It doesn't. It doesn't square.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. Well, let me. Let me help square it. Yeah. It's not about bailing out Argent.

[Sagar]

Okay, all right. That's a bit.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's about bailing out Scott Bessant's friends. Guys, ready to just have your. Just be like, are you effing kidding me? So, as you may have heard, Scott Besant used to work for George Soros.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

Now you might be like, that doesn't sound possible because I've been told he's the devil. He's responsible for everything wrong that goes on in this world. How is it possible that George Soros deputy is treasury secretary under Donald Trump? Sorry, that that's so confusing to you. It's a fact. Besant's colleague at that time was Rob Citrone at this hedge fund. Rob Citrone, Besant and Soros all went in together on some massive trades. Together. Citrone. We talked about it last week on this recent podcast. He talked about how he made like a billion dollars for Soros and Besson on this yen trade that they pulled off.

[Sagar]

It's very famous. One of the most famous trades in history.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And so. So this guy helped make Besant fantastically rich on this yen trade that he did within Soros. George Soros. Yes, the George Soros. Besant went long on Milei. He was like, oh, not Besant. Sorry. Well, Besant too, but yeah, Citrone. Citrone, who's still a hedge fund guy. Besant, now ex hedge fund guy, but probably not X. He bets heavily that Argentina is going to surge because of Milei's genius, that chainsaw is going to yield profits for Citrone. Turns out that wasn't happening. So now Citrone is staring down massive losses. Luckily for Citrone, the guy he helped get rich under Soros is now the Treasury Secretary. And so Bessen is coming in, giving a whole bunch of money to Argentina to bail out his friend. The fact that Argentina gets a bailout, they're collateral, what would you call it? Not collateral damage. They're collateral victors. The collateral damage are the American farmers, because Milei immediately uses this lifeline that the US Gives him to cut all their export taxes on soybeans. China comes in, buys up all of our A ton of Argentina's soybeans. Instead of buying American soybeans, Americans can't sell their soybeans because Donald Trump is in a trade war with our biggest soybean buyer, China. So, yeah, that's actually how it squares. Because if you're like, wow, I didn't know Trump was so passionate about the virtues of libertarianism in Argentina. It's like, no, he's not. This is about enriching his cabal of buddies, right?

[Sagar]

And the thing is, to underscore what you said, is that in September 2025, Argentina suspended export taxes on all goods, including soy, corn, meat and poultry. That's through October, to set an export volume that it is reached. China then books a massive portion of Argentinian soy at the exact same time that China refuses to buy any soy from the United States. So you have the soybean farmers in America who are getting screwed over by the tariffs in particular, because China is retaliating, saying, we're not gonna buy any soybeans. But at the same time, Argentina says, oh, we'll sell you this soybean. Hey, listen, we need money, all right? We need money right now. And then the United states gives a $20 billion to the country which is at the same time selling the $20 billion or the billions of dollars of soybeans to China. So not only is it a shit deal, we also are not getting anything out of it. At the very least, it's like, hey, man, you're gonna have to buy some soybeans or something. You gotta stop selling soybeans. Something's gotta square here. Like, we gotta get something out of this deal. So even so, in the most strategic area, which has had its highest pain point for the US Soybean farmer. We are doubly screwing them. And that was actually the point of a soybean farmer who recently went viral. We played him here on the show. He's like, so I'm getting zero and Argentina gets a $20 billion bailout. And the best part, Ryan, if you can remind the audience, is Scott Bessant is aware of all of this. We know from his text messages. Because you showed everybody his text messages.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Brooke Rollins, who's the Agriculture Secretary, texted, it looks like Scott Bessant and jg, who I love to think is Jeffrey Goldberg, but. But it's probably Jameson Greer, the US Trade Representative, and says, hey, Scott, really unfortunate, really unfortunate here. Just, just FYI, China just bought enormous amounts of soybeans after you announced this bailout for Argentina because Argentina was able to cut their export tariffs because we're subsidizing both Argentina and China so that she didn't mention, so that your hedge fund buddy can get bailed out of his stupid trade. And also, like, we talk about this financial system, these geniuses, as if it's some meritocracy. They saw this chainsaw wielding maniac and were like, that's where we're putting our money. That's a moron that should lose his money, not get bailed out by his friend.

[Sagar]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

He got the economics wrong, but he got the politics right. And in this era, it's more important to have the politics right than it is to actually be right.

[Sagar]

Yeah. And I think what is so. What's so crazy about it is the China angle. The fact that we're just giving a blank check to a guy because Trump likes him for, for basically no reason other than vibes. Right. Like, he came to the White House and just did his, like, high energy show. It's like, dude, you failed, like at the end of the. And listen, it's comp. You know, the defenders are like, well, decades of. Yeah, they're right. Okay. I mean, Argentina's been a mess for what, since the 70s? Like, it's just never had stable governance or stable economy. It's like the proof case for why bitcoin and other, like, other cryptocurrencies need to exist because of the mess that they have down there. So I'm not saying it's all entirely his fault, but the point remains that the philosophy was built entirely on slashing and on, you know, sovereignty. And what you ended up needing is a complete bailout from the United States. At the same time, when you're not even really giving us anything. So it's probably one of the most direct violations of any, like, America first agenda.

[Ryan Grimm]

And it's explicitly saying you're doing it to boost his party in the October 26th midterms and that if they don't elect the right coalition, you're going to take the money back. Like, all right.

[Noavi Shogshinal]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's like, again, we're in this moment. Like, what is the point of investigative journalists if they just say it out loud?

[Sagar]

Yeah, they say it out loud. Say it out loud.

[Ryan Grimm]

They're just making us obsolete.

[Sagar]

Well, my suspicion is that Argentina has long been a hotbed for crypto and a lot of venture capitalist guys really loved Javier Milei. Oh, for sure. And so I personally think that there's some sketchy stuff going on. Yes. With Milei because, I mean, you know, he was courted. I mean, Elon. Right. The entire kind of tech. Right. Ecosystem suckered up to Javier Miller. I think they saw big bucks to be made down there with the leveraged debt and with everything. So my personal suspicion is that those people are also making a buck out of this somewhere or had an investment which would have gone to zero based on some sort of leverage bet with the Argentinian peso that if it did go to zero, it would screw over their fine. I cannot prove that. I'm just saying that's my personal suspicion.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. I think this. I think this crew sees in Central America and Argentina areas where capital slash crypto can actually completely triumph over the state and just. Just have sovereignty.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, trying to do it on Honduras.

[Sagar]

I'll tell you, I'm a bitcoin guy. Some of the OG proof cases of bitcoin is Argentina is that people had. No. Because the currency is constantly.

[Ryan Grimm]

They use dollars.

[Sagar]

Deflating. Exactly. Is like deflating or inflating or any of that. Booking a real estate transaction in Argentinian peso is a fool's errand. Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

30 day clause.

[Sagar]

Exactly. They're like, who knows what the price is going to be? And so some of the original, like real deals for current for on houses or real estate were settled on bitcoin because they were like. Well, at the very least, like, yes, it's fluctuating. Fluctuating. But it's subject to a different market than whatever the hell is going on down here. So I mean, look, I understand that.

[Ryan Grimm]

In particular, Argentina needs.

[Sagar]

With the way their economy is run.

[Ryan Grimm]

Argentina needs a constitutional convention. Their system is incapable of.

[Sagar]

I wish I knew more about it. I need to go down there. I need to go down. I do love Argentina.

[Ryan Grimm]

They have like eight. They have like eight factions that all have veto like choke points and nothing can. Nothing can get done. It's a disastrous system. All right, well, and it's almost. No, it's.

[Sagar]

I need to go investigate for myself in particular, want to go down in December whenever it's summer down there. And then also need to go down to Patagonia. Okay, let's go over to the data.

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[Noavi Shogshinal]

Yup.

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[Krystal]

Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Sagar]

Whoa.

[Krystal]

This thing moves.

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[Sagar]

Turning out of data centers. There is some grassroots political energy against the rising data centers across the entire nation, which is sucking up up electricity and driving up power bills. Let's put this up here on the screen. This is from Dave Weigel over at Semaphore. He writes, quote, as electricity bills rise, candidates in both parties blame data centers. And he in particular, he highlights a few local incidents which kind of show you where the major grassroots energy is. And this is entirely bipartisan. So for example, this was a Friday night dueling candidates for a board of Supervisors seat in a suburban county in Gainesville, Virginia. And this was in the middle of a debate. A candidate, Patrick Harders, who is the Republican, says, I think we should personally block all future data centers. His Democratic opponent then agrees the, quote, the crushing and overwhelming weight of data centers is a crisis with massive companies, quote, having us as residents pay for their energy. As electricity bills rise, a growing number of U.S. candidates in both parties are pointing to high energy costs of data centers booming thanks to tech companies, AI investments. And here in Virginia, or where we live in Virginia, which is where we have off elections in 2025, it's actually becoming a live issue. And they point specifically to how the more establishment like candidates like the current governor Glenn Youngkin, has called data centers, quote, an immense opportunities for localities across the commonwealth and actually vetoed a bill. It was a May veto of a regulatory bill which would have tried to look at data center energy demand. But now there is actually a fight in the gubernatorial election where the Republican candidate, who is the GOP nominee is sticking with him on the issue. But Abigail Spanberger, the more establishment CIA, literally, literally CIA. It's not a joke, actual CIA, which I guess is a good representative for Northern Virginia. And what they say, what she said is on the issue issue is she's kind of wishy washy and tried to make it more about building power, but she's actually facing some grassroots from the Democratic Party. So one senator, local state senator said, quote, my advice to Abigail has been look at where the citizens of Virginia are on data centers. And she specifically says there are a lot of people willing to be single issue, split ticket voters based on this. The Republican candidate sidestepped the issue. But this just demonstrates how the data center issue, I've seen the city of Tucson just rose up against one. There's this in the state of Virginia. They point actually to Faz Shakir, the former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, who has been funding or helping efforts across the nation to rise up against data centers. This in my opinion is the sleeper populist issue across the entire nation. Whoever wants to grab it by the horns and rip, you're ready to roll. Nobody wants to pay 267% more for electricity bill for AI pornography, which I'll get to here in a little bit.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes. And like the way this works is that the data centers come in, they don't bring their own energy supply with them. Like that could be the solution to this. Hey, you want to build a data center, you are a multi trillion dollar company. Go figure out how to power it. Go build a solar farm somewhere, Go build a gas station.

[Sagar]

Well that should be the requirement. The requirement needs to be if you're going to build it, you have to pay for it it and not just in terms of driving up electricity price. You have to prove to the county or to whatever the locality or the state that in exchange for coming here, you will build a power source that will at the very least power. Now in my opinion it shouldn't even be that. It should be. You need to build power source that also give back to the community. But we, we can cross that bridge a little bit later.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. Instead they want tax breaks.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

And they, and they want giveaways, which.

[Sagar]

Is what they're getting. And by and large that's entirely what they're getting. They're not paying anything.

[Ryan Grimm]

And the way your power bill works in general is that the utility goes to the regulator. And because it's the most highly regulated thing in the country, the utility goes to the regulator and says look, here's the demand that we are facing currently. Here's the demand that we are projecting out over the next 10 years. Here's the supply of power that we're projecting out over the next 10 years. Supply and demand. And here is the price that we need to charge the ratepayers in order to make our mandated by law like 3%, 5%, whatever their profit is by law. So therefore the two factors that go into what the regulators tell the utilities they can charge you is the amount of supply and the amount of demand. The big beautiful bill took something like 10%. Roughly maybe 10% is a conservative estimate of future power production over the next like 10 years, like offline. So 10% less supply coming in. And it also supercharged the AI boom and everything else. So these data centers, like you said, 40% eating up 40% in Virginia.

[Sagar]

Yes. 33% in the state of Oregon. That's where I'm like Oregon, wake up. Where are you guys? You're a Democrat run state. Theoretically, you shouldn't be wanting 33% of all power generation to be going to data centers, which they're probably. I have no proof of this, but I just off the top of my head, Oregon's here. Northern California is here. Why are Northern California companies, which are technology, building a data center in Oregon? My guess is something to do with regulation and, or tax break. It has to be right. Why else are we sucking up 33% of power? Do something about it. You know, you're gonna, you're screwing, you're a small state, you can't afford for one third of all your power to go to a single, you know, a single industry. It's nuts.

[Ryan Grimm]

And it takes. Takes. If you wanted to build a gas turbine, Trump wants to do fossil fuels. If you want to do a gas turbine, it would take at least seven years to get it online. If you started right now, Nuclear Power Plant 10, it's about 15. I mean, the most hopeful case, solar, you can get up in like two years, you know, wind like two years. And just getting it in the pipeline actually changes those two kind of graph lines because now your projected supply is higher in the future, so the amount that they can ask the regulators to be able to charge you is less. So even if the power is not online yet, your price still goes down, assuming that it's going to come. So that's why Trump taking all of this clean energy offline is driving up prices like right now, especially as the supply crunch is heading. Yeah, all four.

[Sagar]

It's so important.

[Ryan Grimm]

A little bit of AI porn.

[Sagar]

Yes. So let's get to that now. And I haven't been more worried about this than anything in a long. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it to be announced like this. Let's put it up here on the screen. Long winded, proud announcement from Sam Altman. I'll read it in full. We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realized this made it less useful and enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems. But given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right. Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools to, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases. In a few weeks, we plan to roll out a new version of ChatGPT which will allow people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about one of the original models. If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it. But only if you want it. Not because we are quote usage maximum in December as we roll out age gating more fully as part of our quote treat adult users like adults principle, we will allow even more like erotica for verified adults. Okay, let me sit with this because he says we have to be careful with mental health issues. Now that we have put into place some restrictions, we are going to allow and say chatgpt to act more like a friend and particular like your girlfriend. And that's why it won't do anything for mental health issues. Right? Ryan famously, people who want ChatGPT to talk to them like their girlfriend and produce personalized pornography have nothing going on in terms of their and that definitely won't do anything about their mental state. And then second, just the casual nature of of personalized erotica for verified adults. Combine that with Sora, okay? AI porn. It's here. We all knew it was coming, but this is what we're all paying this extra money for to this data center to crunch all of the GPU power source so that literal like so that teenagers and others can be sitting around producing personalized AI porn. Also this if you wanted to say, like if you wanted to design something that was going to destroy America, you would start with something which is a quasi useful technology and you would get.

[Ryan Grimm]

Everybody on it, a better Google search.

[Sagar]

Better Google search and you would get everybody on it and you say this and that, but you can't do certain things right. And then what you would do is you would make sure that every teenager and young person is using that technology. And once they're using the technology, you say, hey, by the way, you know, you can also use it for pornography purposes. And so now all of a sudden you have a vast surveillance machine which you use for your finances, for your Google search, and to produce your highly personalized disgusting sexual fetishes. And it creates the greatest blackmail machine known to mankind. That's number one. Number two is what would you design to deracinate and to destroy the American male more so than something like ChatGPT, which is to decrease social interaction, to increase time on platform, then personalize AI pornography and at the same time roll up billions and billions of dollars in profit and use that profit to make sure that you lobby against any social force that tries to restrict this type of Technology in the hands of, of children, of teenagers and of young people. And to make sure that the time on platform is maximized to win. This is what it looks like. We had a theory we talked about with Crystal yesterday. AGI. The theory was is AI would win by producing artificial general intelligence. What if AI wins by just taking over your entire life? All right, they don't have to create AGI if they can poison your mind with pornography and they can poison your mind with it, I'm sure you can be able to game in ChatGPT. And by the way, the best part is you all already know where this is going. ChatGPT has already said they're floating the ability to put ads in the feed. So while you're designing your perfect girlfriend, who will talk to you and who you will continue to stare at, you'll just get a few ads, an ad read here or there.

[Ryan Grimm]

Girlfriend does that.

[Sagar]

One or two. Yeah, you know, and soon there's going to even be an AI robot or some sort of like, device or something like that, which you can use to enact more of your AI fantasy out on. I mean, this is out of a movie, but it's not. It's. This is real life. Like, this is actually happening. I cannot think of a single like. And what really gets me, I don't see a single lawmaker doing anything about this. I don't see a single lawmaker even reacting to this proud announcement. Man, we're doing porn.

[Ryan Grimm]

We're doing such a layup too.

[Sagar]

Yeah, no. How about no. How about actually, no, we're not actually doing it. It's not happening. It's actually not happening. And I love how they frame it as like, treat adults like adults. I'm like, well, how was that worked out with all of these other extractive industries, Porn, weed, video games, all these other things. I just, I genuinely. This is the stuff that makes me turn me into like a conspiracy theorist. I'm like, maybe this is part of the plan, man. This is the plan. I can't think of another thing that would be better designed to neuter the entire country and to make you as addicted as humanly possible. Soon there's gonna be gambling in there. You know, it's gonna be like a video game. Literally your entire life is gonna be ready player one, and you're gonna be living in a fucking trailer. And Sam Altman apparently drives like a multi million dollar car and he's gonna be rolling around with children's blood.

[Ryan Grimm]

Being with a nonprofit salary.

[Sagar]

Yeah, nonprofit salary. Rolling around as A multi billionaire getting transfusions of blood to live to the age 250, that's what's going to happen.

[Ryan Grimm]

And then on top of that, it destroys critical thinking skills. Of course, there's plenty of studies, plus your own intuition. If you drove around this world before Waze and Google Maps, you had a better sense of direction. You could get around better. And studies are definitive on this question that once people start using this assisted driving like, go left here, go right here, your sense of direction diminishes. Overall, the exact same thing is going to happen to your general ability to think. The more you outsource the work of thinking through these chatbots, the less you're going to be able to think. So on the one hand, we've been wondering, when is this superhuman AI going to become smarter than average people? Actually, maybe it doesn't have to because we're just going to keep getting stupider and stupider. We're making it easier for them to win the race because we're going backwards. I'm trying to think in a show where we should be having both sides here. What's the, the case?

[Sagar]

The case. It's the same libertarian case. Well, frankly, no offense, Ryan, it's the same case you've been making about drugs is let people do. Let people do what they want. All right? People are adults.

[Ryan Grimm]

But that is, but that's only the case as a libertarian would say, you know, you're, you're like, right to swing your arm ends at my nose.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

And if, if this is driving up everybody's energy costs, it's going to create rolling blackouts.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

And, yeah. Then when I say, well, it's gonna destroy everybody's life. Goes back to the drug.

[Sagar]

That's my thing about drugging. Everyone's like, oh, I have a right to do what I want. Really? You have the right to drive high on weed. You have the right to shoot heroin in the street.

[Ryan Grimm]

I'm with you on that. It needs to be heavily regulated.

[Sagar]

Yeah, but, yeah, but it all ends at legalized weed. And then after that, the conversation ends, right? And, oh, it turns out, oops. Ohio, new study shows that 40% of all car crashes involved excessive amounts of THC in the system to cause impairment. 40% of fatal car crashes had people with excessive amounts of THC to cause impairment. And you know what? Most of the replies I got to that was, is, I drive fine. High on weed. Allow my tangent.

[Ryan Grimm]

A lot of people drive fine.

[Sagar]

Does anybody defend drunk driving? Not even the drunks. Nobody has the Balls to say, actually, Maybe in the 90s they used to, but in the age of Uber, and nobody has the balls to say, actually, I'm a good drunk driver, you know, I proudly drive drunk. It's only weed. Only weed is the only drug where people are going, what's the issue? The only thing you're gonna see is people slowing down at a red light. Well, it didn't work out for the 40% of people who died in a failed car crash, did it? Okay. And so this is the same thing, and I'm glad you made that point. The socialized cost of degenerate behavior is one that all of us have to deal with. When we allow mass sports betting, we are de facto creating a financial system which screws over all of us through credit markets. Through credit. So everything. Right. Also, the amount of social services needed to deal with the rise of gambling addicts, the amount of domestic violence, the highest suicide rate of literally any addiction that's out there. That's drugs, that's gambling, video games. That's another one we talked a lot about with the Discord or TikTok addiction, critical thinking. I mean, what is the mass social cost of an entire generation that loses the ability to critically think and to hold an attention span for more than 10 minutes? And now you add AI pornography and I mean, think. It just anyone can imagine. Ryan, you and I have been 13, 14 years old before. Probably we're social out. I could speak for myself. I don't know about you, but anybody involved in this job probably was at some point of that. What if this AI shit was around then? Talk to me as a friend. I'm having trouble at school. It's, you know, listen, it sucks, but part of it is it forces you to actually be like, okay, well, I gotta figure this out, you know, gotta live my life. But this gives you an exit option.

[Ryan Grimm]

Everyone in middle school struggles, right?

[Sagar]

Exactly.

[Ryan Grimm]

Everyone developing into your. Into your personhood, of course.

[Sagar]

And it can take a long time, right? And this is no shot at anybody who is out there. But I'm saying, hey, maybe a little bit of friction that forces you to actually socialize or go do something, figure out who you are. That's probably a good thing, but this is the exit option. And I mean, the Internet already kind of was that way, the Gen1 Internet, but this is taking it to a whole new level. And I think that's what's so scary about it. And so that's just the social cost. I don't know if you're a parent out there. Please keep your kids away from this stuff, please. That's all we can say because the politicians, the regulators, they're doing nothing about it. There is a phone free movement right now with schools, which I think is amazing. I know Denmark is looking at banning school phones in school, but for every Denmark, there's, I don't know, there's so many school administrators and others and you're just like, oh yeah, it's just the fact of life and parents defend it.

[Ryan Grimm]

I don't know.

[Sagar]

I mean, read the Jonathan Haidt book and do what you can. I don't know what else to say. But it's hard to swim against the tide. It's very hard. In a world where something like 50% of people, 50% of children, I think it's like under age of 12 have access to an iPad, like their own iPad. Not good.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, the libertarian argument, I get it's a thing that's been around, but I don't actually understand how that argument leads you to conclude that actually it'll also be good for us. Yes, I get that. Okay. You just love freedom no matter what the costs. I'm trying to think of any possible way that unleashing AI porn on top of of all the gambling that we've got going on, everything else reducing the amount of power supply that we have, at the same time jacking up everybody's electricity bills and how that leads to a better country.

[Sagar]

Well, let's double click even more on the energy risk. So let's put this up here on the screen. There's a study after study and all this stuff is starting to come out and actually credit some mainstream media people are actually waking up. So for example, they highlight this more recent case. Google recently courted the township of Franklin, Indiana where it would construct a giant campus to house computer hardware that powers its business. But the company needed to rezone 450 acres of Indianapolis suburb. Residents, quote, were not having it, mainly because they thought the facility would consume huge amounts of water and electricity while delivering few local benefits. A lawyer representing Google confirmed at a September meeting the company was pulling its data center proposal and cheers erupted from sign waving residents. This is now a trend which is happening across the country and almost all of it comes back to electricity. Because what they point to exactly is that the computing power, a typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households. The largest data center under development will consume 2 million households worth of electricity. That's according to the International Energy Agency. They quote, also suck up billions of Gallons of water for systems to keep all of that computer hardware cool.

[Nyx Ad Voice]

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[Sagar]

Then you also have McKinsey out with a new study. Can we put C4, please? Up there on the screen here is the same thing. There's actually this new McKinsey study which looks specifically at driving power demand across the country and they cite the exact same statistics where what they do is they look through the growing amount of power demand forecasted relative to data center and they find the exact same thing, that across the nation, the single most driving force of power usage will all come from data center construction across the nation. Now, as a, you know, to split the difference here, you have two options. One of the reasons why there is no. One of the reasons why there's no controversy over data centers in China is they have a shit ton of electricity. So that, that would be great. I would love to live in that country.

[Ryan Grimm]

I not people are going to comply if they're.

[Sagar]

Yeah, nobody. If the power bill is low, no one cares. That's the ideal.

[Ryan Grimm]

They don't even block the view.

[Sagar]

Yeah, whatever. All right, Build them in the middle of nowhere. Go for it. Everybody's got no power. As long as you're not stealing anybody's land, we're cool. Here's the issue, as you just described, with the build back or whatever, the obbb, not only cutting solar and wind, which, look, I have a lot of problems with solar and wind, but if you're not going to back it up with new oil refineries, new LNG plants, new nuclear power reactors, then the interim state is where we are right now, where everybody just has to pay.

[Nyx Ad Voice]

Okay.

[Sagar]

And it's still going to take a decade or so to get there. So the data center construction is going to go like this, whereas the new power demand is basically flat and eventually goes up a little bit in 10 years. What's going to happen 10 years from now? So then the other is what we have proposed here is like, okay, you want to build it, fine. You have to prove, prove to the county, to the state and everyone that you are not only going to have enough power that you're going to build to supply yourself because the profits are so great. Right. And you're already investing all these billions, then you're going to have to do that. In my opinion. You also have to be able to supply the rest of the grid to make sure that not only are you powering yourself, you're also helping out the community and providing some said benefits. But instead what's happening is like Virginia and the rest of these state localities they get fooled into. Oh, there's going to be some jobs. What jobs? Few jobs. The vast majority of the profit is going to Silicon Valley, into Google stock. Maybe you get to clean the data center as a janitor.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right?

[Sagar]

Okay. That's basically where we are. So I'm worried about it. I'm worried about it, Ryan. I think it could be one of the central, one of the central political issues of our time. And the White House doesn't care. No state and local politician has come out with a forceful demand yet. And I just don't get it. I'm like, why are you people so asleep at the wheel?

[Ryan Grimm]

And I think it also stands in for who governs us.

[Sagar]

Yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

Do we govern ourselves? Are we a democracy that wants to chart our own course? Or are we just governed by these AI overlords and they just tell us what we have to eat and how much we have to pay to eat it?

[Sagar]

I think we know the answer to.

[Ryan Grimm]

That, at least now.

[Sagar]

Currently.

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