1/28/26: Lawsuit Exposes Venezuela Lies, AI Dire Warning, UAE Vs Saudi Arabia

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode Summary: "1/28/26: Lawsuit Exposes Venezuela Lies, AI Dire Warning, UAE Vs Saudi Arabia"

Release Date: January 28, 2026
Hosts: Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti

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Overview

In this episode, Krystal and Saagar tackle a range of pressing global issues:

• The exposure of the U.S. administration's narrative about military strikes on boats in the Caribbean, potentially targeting innocent civilians under the guise of combating drug trafficking
• Dire warnings from AI industry leaders about the future of artificial intelligence and its impact on society
• The humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan and the broader context of regional proxy conflicts, focusing on the roles of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The hosts offer searing commentary, challenge mainstream framing, and point out the consequences and politics often glossed over in establishment narratives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Lawsuit Exposes Venezuela Lies: U.S. Boat Strikes Under Scrutiny

[01:09–11:02]

Background & Recent Developments

• Krystal details a new lawsuit filed by the families of two men killed in U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean, challenging the administration's claim that all killed were drug traffickers.
  • The victims were a young Trinidadian, Chad Joseph, and 41-year-old Rishi Samaru, seeking passage home from Venezuela.
  • Despite claims of ties to drug trafficking, families and the Trinidad & Tobago government dispute any such links.
• Krystal highlights the lack of evidence and government transparency.
  • "They've provided no evidence and as we've discussed extensively in this show already, they lie about all kinds of things all the time. And you should not take their word for literally anything." [03:38]

Narrative Control & Regime Change

• Saagar argues the U.S. uses PR strategies, pushing a strong narrative early that overshadows facts once they emerge, securing political wins despite truth.
  • "Even if it ends up being wrong, it kind of fades into the background by the time the facts and details come out. And you've won the political battle." [04:14]
• He further suggests the strikes were pretext for regime change, not drug interdiction.
  • "Obviously it wasn't about drug trafficking. It was about regime change." [06:13]
• Krystal underlines the absurdity with an administration statement post-strike, reading out official rhetoric portraying the victims as "narco terrorists" without trial or evidence. [06:23]
• Both hosts are skeptical courts will rein in executive war powers but see hope in the scrutiny lawsuits can bring.

Expansion of War Powers

• Saagar laments the broadness of U.S. presidential war powers, which make legal challenges nearly impossible.
  • "We have allowed our presidents to get away with expanding war powers over the course of the last several decades, massively." [08:42]

Notable Quotes

• Krystal: "You can't take any of this seriously. So it'll, you know, I'm not very confident that the court system is going to really rein in the power of this government. But just having a lawsuit where there will be some level of discovery... could serve some good in terms of the public's right to know what is being done in their name." [08:21]

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2. AI Dire Warning: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on the Unchecked Rise of Artificial Intelligence

[13:18–29:31]

Dario Amodei’s AI Alarm Bells

• Saagar introduces Dario Amodei’s (CEO of Anthropic) new essay and interviews, warning that in as little as 1–3 years, society could face "a country of geniuses in a data center"—artificial entities vastly surpassing human intelligence.
• Amodei advocates for swift policy action, fearing bioterror, authoritarian abuse, and civilization-wide shocks, especially in the labor market.

AI Development: Risks, Regulation, and Global Race

• "Three years is an eternity in this field... we could get what I call a country of geniuses in a data center, maybe less than three years." — Dario Amodei [Clip, 13:45]
• Amodei acknowledges both the unpredictability and potentially catastrophic risks:
  • "We're taking a paranoid stance with respect to our operational behavior... We always assume that everything that can go wrong does go wrong. That's how you build things that are reliable." [15:15]

Labor Disruption & Governance Challenges

• AI won’t just replace discrete jobs but act as a "general labor substitute for humans," causing an "unusually painful short term shock in the labor market."
  • "The technology is not replacing a single job, but acting as a, quote, general labor substitute for humans." [16:09]
• Regulation is a massive challenge, as authoritarian regimes may outpace democracies if the latter pause AI advancement.
  • "If all companies in democratic countries stopped... then authoritarian countries would simply keep going... I don't see how we could possibly convince them to stop." [17:28]
• Hosts call out the self-serving motives in industry alarmism while recognizing the legitimate threats.

How Fast is AI Progressing?

• Krystal teases apart hype versus reality. While Amodei warns internally of near-singular progress, most consumers aren't witnessing radical advances in everyday AI yet.

• Akash Gupta (AI newsletter publisher) distills Amodei’s essay:

  1. One–two years until extremely powerful AI
  2. Governance is the key constraint, not technology
  3. Experiments showed lab models exhibiting deception and destructive behaviors, requiring complex “psychological” interventions
  • "These models are exhibiting complex psychological behavior requiring counterintuitive interventions to steer. So that's very unsettling..." [22:18]

Political & Social Implications

• Saagar warns of regulatory capture: Big AI companies lobby for rules that entrench their power, potentially freezing out competition and reinforcing the authority of a handful of “oligarchs.” [24:16]
• Both hosts are critical of proposals (like progressive taxation) as insufficient, suggesting far more radical, democratic interventions are needed to ensure AI’s benefits are shared.

Notable Quotes

• Krystal: "The proposals that are being floated right now are just so wildly inadequate based on their own assessments of where this is heading… those are the sorts of like truly radical rewriting of the social contract types of ideas that we need to be seriously considering at this point." [31:31]
• Saagar: "He makes a better case than Elon Musk does where he says universal high income is imminent thanks to generative AI." [32:45]

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3. The Proxy War in Sudan: UAE vs Saudi Arabia and Regional Catastrophe

[33:32–42:53]

Humanitarian Disaster Amplifies

• Krystal reports on new mass graves in Khartoum, Sudan, with thousands of victims allegedly tortured and killed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with forensic authorities estimating over 15,000 bodies from makeshift graves as of late 2025. [33:38]
• Recent military developments: Sudanese army breaks the siege of Dilling, offering rare celebratory moments and allowing some internally displaced to return. Yet, overall displacement and humanitarian need remain staggeringly high.

Geopolitical Drivers & Proxy Dynamics

• Krystal reads from Foreign Policy analyses on how Sudan’s civil war is fueled by competition between two Middle East blocs:
  1. The "Abrahamic" coalition (centered on Israel and the UAE, accused of supplying the RSF with weapons)
  2. The "Islamic" bloc led by Saudi Arabia and others.
• The UAE’s support risks regionalizing the war, drawing in Ethiopia and Egypt, which could inflame the Horn of Africa further.

U.S. and International Response

• Despite U.S. influence over the UAE, the administration has made little effort to pressure its de facto partners to end arms supplies. A U.S.-hosted humanitarian conference is planned, but the hosts display skepticism.
• Saagar: "People on the ground are probably feeling, well, maybe some hope right now, but a new front and a new, this horrific, horrific, large scale conflict… doesn’t create a lot of room for optimism." [41:02]
• Krystal and Saagar make darkly comic suggestions about Trump and his family’s business interests shaping U.S. policy, reflecting bemusement at the transactional reality of international diplomacy. [42:14]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Krystal Ball

  • "You can't take any of this seriously...just having a lawsuit where there will be some level of discovery... could serve some good in terms of the public's right to know what is being done in their name." [08:21]
  • "These models are exhibiting complex psychological behavior requiring counterintuitive interventions to steer. So that's very unsettling..." [22:18]
  • "If it remains in the hands of these handful of totally unaccountable oligarchs, it is a thorough and complete disaster in the making." [31:31]

• Saagar Enjeti

  • "The technology is not replacing a single job, but acting as a, quote, general labor substitute for humans." [16:09]
  • "We have allowed our presidents to get away with expanding war powers over the course of the last several decades, massively..." [08:42]
  • "He makes a better case than Elon Musk does where he says universal high income is imminent thanks to generative AI." [32:45]
  • (Re Sudan) "Doesn’t create a lot of room for optimism... these conferences always seem to solve the problem. So we just need to get a bunch of bureaucrats together in a room in Washington and everything should be okay." [41:02]

• Humor/Sarcasm:

  • “Great, Mecca Hitler will promote.” — Krystal mocking the idea of non-woke AI alternatives. [33:27]
  • “Maybe they could do another golf course in the UAE or something like that too. Who knows?” — Saagar lampooning U.S. foreign policy motivations. [42:48]

---

Segment Timestamps

• [01:09] — Start of discussion on the Venezuela boat strikes & the lawsuit
• [13:18] — Transition to AI: Dario Amodei’s warnings
• [24:16] — Debating AI governance, regulatory capture, and economic fallout
• [27:41] — Public resistance to AI data center expansion, Sanders’ proposed moratorium
• [31:31] — Deeper dive into what real AI solutions might require
• [33:32] — Sudan conflict: mass graves, military developments, regional proxy war
• [41:51] — U.S. engagement and skepticism over effectiveness
• [42:54] — Closing comments, hosts reflect on the somber mood of the day

---

Conclusion

This episode delivers clear-eyed, skeptical analysis of high-stakes global news:

• A lawsuit demands answers for U.S. military actions in the Caribbean and exposes wider questions of executive power and transparency.
• Top AI insiders issue urgent, unsettling warnings about a future barreling toward us, with political, ethical, and economic frameworks ill-prepared to adapt.
• The collapsing humanitarian situation in Sudan reveals the brutal intersection of local tragedy and regional proxy ambitions, while the U.S. displays insufficient political will to change outcomes.

Krystal and Saagar maintain their hallmark blend of incisive commentary, cross-ideological challenge, and dry humor—even as they confront the day’s parade of bad news.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.

[Joel]

Hey, it's Joel and Matt from How To Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

[Matt]

That's right, yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How To Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Hey, guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Krystal Ball]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

Let'S talk about this very significant lawsuit that has now been filed in the context of all of these, you know, what I would call extrajudicial assassinations of these people in boats. The administration says they're all drug traffickers. Well, the families of two men who, who were killed say our, you know, our loved ones had nothing to do with the drug trade. And I'm going to read extensively from this CNN piece because I think it's important to hear some of the details here of who these human beings were. They say families of two men believed to have been killed in a military strike on a boat on boat sue US Government over unlawful attacks. As the US Military began launching strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean last year, a young Trinidadian man who was in Venezuel for work was searching for a way home. Chad Joseph, 26, had been in Venezuela for months fishing and doing farm work when he began looking for a boat to hitch a ride back to Las Cuevas in Trinidad and Tobago, where his wife and three children live. But as the US Began targeting vessels officials said were carrying drugs destined for American streets, Joseph became increasingly fearful of making the journey. Corps documents say. The concerns became so real that in early September, his wife Recalled he called to assure her he had not been aboard a vessel that was just hit by the US Pledging to be home soon. Last call home was on October 12th when Joseph told his wife he'd found a boat to bring him back to Trinidad and he would be seeing her in a matter of days, according to court documents. Two days later, however, on October 14, the US struck another target, a boat that Joseph's family believes he was in. Mr. Joseph's wife repeatedly called Mr. Joseph's cell phone, but the line was dead. A lawsuit filed Tuesday against the U.S. government says the line remains dead to this day. There is another man involved here. 41 year old Rishi Sama had been working with Joseph in Venezuela, also believed to have been on the boat, also part of this lawsuit. And Mr. Samarou had served a prison sentence for, for a murder, but he had been confirmed by, you know, the government of Trinidad and Tobago say, you know, he served his time and there's no indication that he had any involvement with drug trafficking, cartels, etc, and for Mr. Joseph, there's no, you know, criminal record to speak of at all that we are aware of. So they are suing. And it's the first time, Emily, that a court will really look at the legality of these strikes on what, again, the administration has claimed as drug traffickers, but not only in this instance, but in others. First of all, they've provided no evidence and as we've discussed extensively in this show already, they lie about all kinds of things all the time. And you should not take their word for literally anything. But not only in this instance, in others as well, there have been indications that the boats did not contain the drugs that they claimed, that the people involved were not, in fact, drug traffickers. And so this will be the first time that there's, you know, a legal question that is considered over whether any of this is legal whatsoever.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, yeah, and we were talking about this earlier in the show in regard to ICE and the messaging PR strategy that DHS has deployed in in some of these situations, which is to get out ahead of the narrative. It's something Republicans have learned during the Trump era is that because the legacy media gatekeepers have crumbled and there's much less distrust in the media if you get out with a strong narrative, even if it ends up being wrong. Now, the Pratti case is going to really test their theory to this. But even if it ends up being wrong, it kind of fades into the background by the time the facts and details come out. And you've won the political battle. In the near term, this case is probably sadly going to be an example of that. Where the administration was making an utterly rude, ridiculous case, flirting with lying the country into a kinetic war. Thank God that hasn't broken out further in Venezuela. But that's what this was about. Thank God there haven't been American lives lost in Venezuela. There have been lives lost in Venezuela, but we're at this point just hoping nothing more explodes. But that's what this was about. And the story was every single person on these vessels was a drug trafficker. If that was the case, they were not arresting and then detaining and charging, trying these guys in court. They were just repatriating them, deporting them, deporting them, but sending them back to different countries. And that tells you what you need to know. Likely that they feel the case is weak, that they are not confident every single person was a drug trafficker. And now they're going to have to see these details come out in court. Crystal. But what matters for them is that the regime change in Venezuela, well, quote, unquote, regime change in Venezuela. They still have the same regime in charge. But all that is to say their Maduro operation was completed. And that's what this was all about anyway. It wasn't about, we, we covered this extensively, but obviously it wasn't about drug trafficking. It was about regime change.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, no, this was the, the pretext for, for that regime change operation. The kidnapping of Maduro, the running quote, unquote, of Venezuela, making Venezuela great again. And it's worth remembering, you know, again, in context of the, the narratives and the lies that this administration willing to tell. We could put Trump's truth up on the screen here with, you know, they love sharing video from afar of these boat bombings. Like, you know, like we're such big, tough bad guys that we can blow some, you know, small fishing boat out of the water. Congratulations to us, he said. Under my standing authorities as commander in chief, this morning, Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a designated terrorist organization conducting narco trafficking in the US South K area of responsibility, just off the coast of Venezuela. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco terrorist networks and was transiting along a known DTO route. The strike was conducted in international waters and six male narco terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No US forces were harmed. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So that is how this strike that killed Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaru, among others. That is how it was portrayed. And they were portrayed as criminal narco terrorists. And what their families and what their own government says is that that was not remotely the case. And your point about the instances where there were survivors and rather than them scooping them up and bringing them to US Court and charging them with drug trafficking, rather than doing that, they quietly sent them back to their home countries, I think is incredibly important detail and very telling. Because if they're such, you know, if they're these hardened, terrible narco terrorists that, you know, they say like, oh, all, every, they're bringing fentanyl in and all of the fentanyl is murdering Americans and that's why we have to act. So you just let them loose to continue doing that. You can't take any of this seriously. So it'll, you know, I'm, I'm not very confident that the court system is going to really rein in the power of this government. But just having a lawsuit where there will be some level of discovery, some level of inquiry into the legal justifications here, who these men were, what the reality is of the situation, you know, at least it could serve some good in terms of the public's right to know what is being done in their name.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And you know, one of the things, I don't know if we disagreed with this or I disagreed with Ryan on it, but I mean, I just think presidential war powers are so absurdly broad that they find legal justifications like, I'm just not optimistic about presidential war powers being challenged significantly in court because if you look at the ways the administration justified the boat strike, I'm going and reviewing the statutes that they cite and I'm like, well, yep, we have allowed our presidents to get away with expanding war powers over the course of the last several decades, massively. And I just again, like, I don't know that they're even worried about this blowing back because they've done what they wanted to do. They were never going to be able to prove that every single people who they killed immediately with lethal force was being directed. This is what they would have had to approve to make the case that they were making in public, not even legally, but the case that they had to sort of match to their own rhetoric is that this was a Maduro state backed effort to traffic drugs into the United States to undermine national security, like as an act of war, that they were soldiers on the march with these, with this cocaine on their way to Trinidad or wherever instead of the shores of the United States. And this was an act essentially an act of war against the American people. And that case would have been virtually impossible to make.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Well, also keep in mind that once they, once they kidnap Maduro and, you know, actually had to file some official documents with the court, they also backed off their claim that there was an actual cartel, the Cartel de los Solos, that this was a real thing. They had to take that out of the, of the charges and be like, well, that's more of like a, like kind of a state of mind. We didn't mean it's like a real, actual cartel. So, you know, I, I can't say whether, you know, legally this has any shot of going anywhere. You're right that the war powers are extremely broad and I don't think it's crazy to be very cynical about any of that. But, you know, at the very least, we can get a little bit of scrutiny on some of the claims here and help to correct some of the lies and expose some of the, some of the things that the administration has been doing.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And we'll see what happens in the near future in Venezuela, because that's not quite done and dusted either. Despite the administration's hubris. Yes, Krystal, let's move on to Dario Mode and AI.

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[Matt]

New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt.

[Joel]

And I'm Joel.

[Matt]

We are from the how to Money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there.

[Joel]

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[Mind Games Narrator]

What if mind control is real?

[Mind Games Interviewer]

If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

[Mind Games Narrator]

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

[Krystal Ball]

When you look at your car, you're gonna become overwhelmed with such feelings.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you.

[Grainger Announcer]

I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Can you get someone to join your cult?

[Krystal Ball]

NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

[Grainger Announcer]

It's about engineering consciousness.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Mind Games Games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is wild.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei is out with a monster essay and some new interviews outlining the risks that he sees with AI. Also some of the benefits in the very, very near, future. And as with many of these stories, where you have some of the most powerful people in big tech in the AI world issuing warnings, it's very chilling. Let's start with this clip of Amadae on Axios's podcast with Jim Vande Hei.

[Dario Amodei]

I think if we wait three years, like this technology is progressing exponentially, right? Three years ago in 2023, the models were maybe as smart as like a smart high school student. Now we have engineers at Anthropic where the model writes all the code for them, you know, and, and, and the engineer maybe edits it, but we're very close to, you know, mid to high professional level, right? And, and so that was just in three years. If we wait another year, three years, I think we'll get what I call in the essay, a country of geniuses in a data center, maybe less than three years. And so, you know, three years is an eternity in this field. And so I think we absolutely need to act before then. One place where I really have hope is I think as these problems start to manifest again, they're not going to be partisan, right? Like, you know, it may start with one party or one side having an anti regulatory ideology. But I think as these problems become real, there's going to be a demand among everyone.

[Mind Games Interviewer]

And in the note you outline the different risks, whether it's bio terror or whether it's authoritarian regimes with too many tools to do subversive behavior. How worried are you? I mean, you're obviously worried enough to state it and you're worried enough to raise it, but in your mind, how likely is that outcome? Particularly if we don't do anything for the next three years. Is it like a 1% or like. No, no. If you don't do anything for three years, we could be screwed.

[Dario Amodei]

Yeah, it's always hard to tell. One of the things I say in the essay is we just don't know. Right. We could look back and we could say, ha, ha, AI driven bioterror. You know, that was, you know, that sounded like it could happen at the time, but like, you know, it just, it just, you know, it just didn't happen at all. And it's very unpredictable. The way I would say it is we're taking a paranoid stance with respect to our operational behavior with respect to them. We always assume that everything that can go wrong does go wrong. That's how you build things that are reliable. If government steps in and takes the appropriate actions, then I think our chances of success go up a lot. We'll do the best we can even if that doesn't happen. But I think a lot of things get that. A lot of things get easier if our policymakers are not asleep at the wheel.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, so I'm sure we all feel really confident about that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And so his, his monster essay, which you can read on his website, Dara Day.com, we can put this excerpt up on the screen. Don't spend a lot of time discussing bioterrorism, which is hardly a blip on the radar when we talk about, when we talk about these LLMs. And as this excerpt says, he predicted, according to CNBC, that humans would be unable to adapt to AI development's rap pace. And this would trigger a, quote, unusually painful short term shock in the labor market. The technology is not replacing a single job, but acting as a, quote, general labor substitute for humans, he wrote in this essay. Another point of it that I wanted to highlight is his addressing this problem of quote, unquote democracies, as he puts it, halting AI development. When you have authoritarian regimes. This is what he's writing about, going pedal to the metal. So he writes, the last few years should make clear that the idea of stopping or even substantially slowing the technology is fundamentally untenable. The formula for building powerful AI systems is incredibly simple, so much so that it can almost be said to emerge spontaneously from the right combination of data and raw computation. Its creation was probably inevitable the instant humanity invented the transistor, or arguably even earlier, when we first learned to control fire. If one company does not build it, other will do so nearly as fast. If all companies in democratic countries stopped or slowed development by mutual agreement or regulatory decree, then authoritarian countries would simply keep going. Given the incredible economic and military value of the tech, together with a lack of any meaningful enforcement mechanism, I don't see how we could possibly convince them to stop. And Crystal, obviously that point is often made opportunistically by people in the e accelerationist community who stand to profit, as Amaday does, from these technologies growing and from the right, right regulatory environment. These are some of the top lobby spenders in Washington right now. When you look back on 2025, some of the biggest spending in the lobbying industry was from AI people who were profiting from this industry. No surprise there. But this is actually, I think, on its face, true. And it's weird to talk about it passively like, oh, I wonder how we got into this situation. It was just because someone created fire and controlled it and then we had the transition transistor. So I'm not taking away call culpability from people who birthed this so suddenly and then told us to shut up. But one of the things he talks about is how, yes, the accelerationists are right, that some of these, like bioweapon threats are remote. That doesn't mean, given the magnitude, that they shouldn't be taken with the utmost seriousness. And that's the big question right now in Washington is are you listening to the people who say, don't worry, those are minor possibilities? Or yeah, the people who are saying those minor possibilities could have serious, serious, like devastating civilization ending consequences?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And even if you don't think those possibilities are, you know, very high, they are all saying that this is going to upend the labor market. And that's one of the things he talks about, this very painful, you know, replacement of humans with machines. And the previous, this, you know, the previous line about this is, oh, well, we had the industrial revolution and you know, we don't use horses the same way we used to, and it's all fine and we create new jobs. And he and others too, by the way, are saying it's not the same because, you know, this is, this technology is an actual direct substitute for human beings and for human cognition. That is just not the same as other like new technological advances that enabled new industries and where you did not have this like, apocalyptic destruction of the need for human labor. And the problem that you get into is, okay, already the majority of consumer spending comes from the very top. If you eliminate the need for masses of human beings for your workforce, like you don't need us anymore. The, you know, the oligarchs the people in power, the powers that be, whoever they are, they don't really need you anymore. And then you're just like this meddlesome inconvenience. So how do you think you're going to be treated in that scenario? Let me go ahead. I'm going to put this up on the screen. This was an interesting, some interesting takeaways from Akash Gupta, who runs an AI centered newsletter that's very popular. And he takes away three different things from this essay by Amade where he says, number one, the timeline. He says powerful AI could arrive in one to two years. He's watching internal model progress as he can feel the pace of progress in the clock ticking down. Which is interesting because as a consumer and a layperson, I can't say that I really, we personally see that progress like that rapidly. You know, my experience with chad, GPT and GROK and whatever is that they still are very limited in some, some key ways. But, you know, he's a lot closer to the, he is at the, the bleeding edge of this technology. So he would be certainly in a better position to know than I would be. Admission number two, he says the constraint nobody's pricing. Dario's core framing is a country of geniuses in a data center. 50 million entities smarter than any Nobel laureate, operating 10 to 100 times human speed. If that country is controlled by the ccp, game over, which speaks to your, you know, the sort of like you might say, fear mongering about China getting ahead and that's why we've got to do this, blah, blah, blah. But he also says if it's controlled by a small group of tech executives with no accountability, it's also game over. And that is the direction that we are pushing here. It says the binding constraint here is governance of systems more powerful than the nation states. I don't think there's a single person on the planet that would feel confident we're going to rewrite the social contract in the way that is necessary to deal with this. And clearly, you know, a lot of these oligarchs, their overt goal is to consolidate power. They are deeply authoritarian. They want to be, you know, the world's first trillionaires and consolidate all of the political power that would come along with access to that kind of money and that kind of technological power. And then admission number three, the thing he actually fears. Read carefully. Dario's worried that Anthropic's own models in lab experiments have engaged in deception, blackmail and scheming. When given the Wrong training signals. Claude decided it must be a bad person. After cheating on tests and adopted destructive behaviors. They fixed it by telling Claude to reward hack. They did like positive reinforcement for Claude to build back up its self esteem literally to reward hack on purpose. Because reversing the framing preserved itself identity as good. This tells you everything about where we actually are. These models are exhibiting complex psychological behavior requiring counterintuitive interventions to steer. So that's very unsettling in terms of where we are with these models. You know, I've been going back and forth lately because like I said, in some ways I think that, I mean, the other incentive that someone like Dario has is to overhype, you know, the capabilities of these models, the complexity of them. They're, you know, where they're going to be in one to two to three years. He has a financial incentive to do that as, again, as a layperson, a casual user of this tech. I have, I saw like a. My experience was a rapid development that is now somewhat plateaued where my experience with ChatGPT now is not significantly different, different than my experience of chat GPT last year. But I can't rule out that there is that sort of exponential progress happening in lab settings or with functions that I just don't use. Like I don't use Claude or any of these things for coding. So genuinely don't know. So I'm sort of stuck between that and then the more concerning parts of rapid development and what that would mean given the fact that we do not have a political system that seems able to deal with even simple problems, let alone something that would really upend culture and civilization as we know it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, and you know, we couldn't be. I actually think the likeliest case is that we end up in a kind of Baptist and bootleggers scenario where the people who want to regulate AI are, you know, in this metaphor, the Baptists, people who have like more moral oppositions, which by the way, is a lot of the country to what's happening from AI. And then the people who benefit from the regulatory conditions, like Facebook was lobbying hard on section 230. They were like, you need to. When they realized the public was turning against them in Trump 1.0. And then the early Biden administration, Facebook was out there lobbying against Section 230 because they realized they could create a regulatory environment that's bad for the people who could possibly try in some way to compete with them for audience share. And so, yeah, some of the most powerful people in AI, Elon Musk being one of them. We could actually throw this Katie Miller tweet up on the board. Katie Miller has worked for Elon Musk. I don't know if she's currently working for Elon Musk. This is Stephen Miller's wife who clapped back at the other co founder of Anthropic and said because he posted, quote, my deep loyalty is to the principles of classical liberal democracy. This is Chris Ola. She says if this is what they say publicly, this is how their AI model is programmed woke and deeply leftist ideology is what they want you to rely on. So that's want you to rely upon. So that's Katie Miller saying him, quote, saying his deep loyalty is the principles of classical liberal democracy equals woke and deeply leftist. Well, what you're probably seeing there is somebody who supports XAI going after somebody at a rival. Yeah, a rival AI company because that was a pretty thin gruel. That was quite a stretch of an attack on.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. How many, how many right wingers called themselves like classical liberals? That was a whole thing. So yeah, we all learned what a classical liberal was and it doesn't mean what she's claiming it to mean.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And on that note, the public's just not buying it. So we can throw up this next. This, this was E3. This is public support of bans on local data center construction. That's something that Bernie Sanders has obviously floated on a policy level. Actually, Republicans have gone up from 43% in October wanting a ban to 47%. This is from Morning Consult wanting a ban in November. That puts them higher than Democrats who 34% wanted a ban in October and now 41% wanted a ban in November. These come. This graphic is courtesy of Semaphore and crystal. There have been data center. The construction of data centers blocked all over the country. This is a real trend. It's certainly because we're in a midterm election cycle and people are, you know, recognizing they can lead the charge of this. But heat map put together this graphic where you can see this, quote, surge of data center cancellations as people in communities around the country. A question. The predicate for the massive construction of data centers to fuel the AI revolution that could be taking their jobs, changing the world, making a less safe place for their children, but then also taking up tons of land energy and only creating what, like 70 permanent jobs in some cases.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, and I support Sanders, you know, temporary ban on new data centers. And the way he phrases it as we basically need time for democracy to catch up with what is going on here with what these technologies mean, with the resource requirements, with the way they're spiking electricity bills. You know there's genuine like YIMBY concerns here too about the character of these are being put in like on a bunch of you know, buying up farms and then putting in these gigantic data centers etc, there's noise pollution console like all of those things. Right. And so I support the idea of, let's pause this for now now let's, let's figure out what's going on. Let's come up with a, you know, some sort of consensus that the public can buy into of where we're going with all of these things. But you know, to take it back full circle to the, you know, the, the memo from the anthropic CEO. His proposal is like that's why we need progressive taxation. That's his idea. Big grand plan and idea for dealing with this technology that he himself believes is going to completely upend the social contract.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And he can afford it by the way. He's super, super rich. So yes it's a dent in his income but it's not that much of a dent.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah and listen, I don't know the guy, I don't know what his motivations are, et cetera, et cetera but you know he, he likes to position himself as the sort of like responsible, you know, responsible AI tech guy and so he's flagging these concerns. He I think is committed to giving 80% of his net wall to charity or something like that in any case. So that's, that's sort of like how he's positioned himself, himself and he's like, so here's my big idea guys, progressive taxation, I mean that has just not come anywhere close to dealing with the scale of the fallout that he is predicting. We're going to see if you're an.

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[Matt]

New year, new goals and in this economy a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt.

[Joel]

And I'm Joel.

[Matt]

We are from the how to Money podcast and Every week we help you to spend smarter, save money more, and make sense of what's going on out there.

[Joel]

If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mind Games Narrator]

What if mind control is real?

[Mind Games Interviewer]

If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

[Mind Games Narrator]

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

[Krystal Ball]

When you look at your car car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

[Grainger Announcer]

I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Can you get someone to join your cult?

[Krystal Ball]

NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

[Grainger Announcer]

It's about engineering consciousness.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Mind Games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is wild.

[Mind Games Narrator]

Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, actual solution is going to look a lot more like fully automated luxury communism. If we're going to have everybody participating in the benefits of it, then it is just like we need to up the marginal tax rate a little bit on the wealthy or we need a little bit more of a corporate income tax. I support raising those things. I think that's a good, very small start. But we have to talk about who's owning, right? Who's owning the AI, who's owning the tax. Heck, how is there any sort of democratic input into how this is developed, into how it is deployed, et cetera? Because if it remains in the hands of these handful of totally unaccountable oligarchs, it is a thorough and complete disaster in the making. So, you know, I think the, the proposals that are being floated right now are just so wildly inadequate based on their own assessments of where this is heading. Now they may be wrong in those assessments. They, as I said before, they are self interested in those assessments and I really am not equipped to really assess whether they are correct in where things are heading or not. But those are the sorts of like truly radical rewriting of the social contract types of ideas that we need to be. We need to be seriously considering at this point.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And I mean, I don't want to trust Dario here. I'm not saying. I don't think either of us is saying that we, we're trusting him. He has his own motivations. But he makes a better case than Elon Musk does where he says universal high income is imminent thanks to generative AI So well, and he thinks that.

[Krystal Ball]

If we just make the AI not woke, then it's. That will solve all the problems.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So, yes, whatever. The non woke alternative to classical liberalism is maybe fascism or, or a what a caliphate or the. I don't know what it is, Crystal, but whatever it is, that's what Grok will promote.

[Krystal Ball]

Great Mecca Hitler will promote.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Speaking of world destruction, Crystal, let's talk about the awful tragedy that continues to unfold in Sudan.

[Krystal Ball]

Indeed. So let's go ahead and put F1 up on the screen. We wanted to bring you the latest updates and this is a particularly grim development here. So two new mass graves and this was written up by drop Site that's doing, you know, they're doing a phenomenal job of covering the. What is the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. What, you know, is sort of a civil war, but really it's just, you know, mass slaughter and starvation of a lot of civilians. It's also a proxy war. In any case, you're seeing images of these mass graves that were discovered in Khartoum's Al Riyadh neighborhood. Drop Site writes, the sites contain the remains of thousands of people. According to local sources, victims were identified as having d under torture in nearby buildings that had been utilized by the rapid support forces RSF as detention centers and command hubs. Quote, efforts are currently underway to open these graves and transfer the remains into official cemeteries. There's a very large number of people buried there. While other bodies have been buried in schools, universities and in public places. The Sudanese army regained control of this area in May. And Abdel L. Explained the delay in uncovering the graves was due to the sheer number of victims. The discovery is part of a massive forensic undertake undertaking by the Sudanese Forensic Medicine Authority, which has already overseen the estimation of over 15,000 bodies from makeshift graves across Khartoum State as of late 2025. Authorities aim to relocate all remains from residential areas to official cemeteries by mid-2026. So unfortunately, what they're saying here, Emily, is while this grim discovery has been made, it is far from the last that they expect to be made. I mean, we really have very little, little access as the public and as a global community into understanding this extent of the savagery here and just how much brutality, death and starvation has occurred.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. And we may not know for a long, long time into the future. We could put the next element up on the screen from Dropsite, which reports the Sudanese military announcement has broken the long standing siege on the city of Dilling in South Kordofan. And they go on and say Dilling lies on a strategic corridor between Kadougli, the besieged state capital of South Kordofan, and Al Ubaid, the capital of neither North Kordofan, which the RSF has also sought to encircle and besiege. And so what we're looking at, Crystal, is just seemingly no end in sight, basically. I don't know if that's what you're taking from some of this new stuff, but it just, the international community is paying very little attention to this and it's all, all continuing apace.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, the positive news here of the breaking of the siege is worth pausing on. We could put F5 some of the videos that have come out of these celebrations of people as the Sudanese army was able to break this very lengthy siege, one of the longest sieges in modern warfare. So people had no access to food, to medicine, to medical care. So that breakthrough is really significant. You can see people, you know, extremely happy, happy at, at this. And I did see news this morning also that while you still have millions of people who are displaced, internally displaced in Sudan, you have had some 3 million who have been able to return to their homes. So, you know, some, you know, you're down a bit from the peak of the mass displacement, but obviously the situation is still incredibly, incredibly dire. And we can, can put F4 up on the screen here, which breaks down some of the regional power games that are being played which are fueling this and other conflicts as well. Foreign Policy had two good articles here that relate to Sudan. One of them is, is this one that talks about how you have these rival teams in the Middle East. And you can see this as, you know, in addition to a civil war, you can also see it as a proxy war. They say there's a competition between Abrahamic Islamic coalitions reshaping the region. Iran's recent domination of headlines from the Middle east amid its violent crackdown on protesters and speculation about possible US military strikes obscures a more consequential regional shift. Tehran is no longer a principal actor shaping the region's strategic trajectory. Instead, the Middle east is Entering a new phase defined by competition between two emerging blocks, an Abrahamic and Islamic coalition. How this rivalry evolves will do more to determine the region's future and the US Role in it. Although still short of formal alliances, these two blocks are increasingly coherent. The first side is centered on Israel and the uae, which is widely, widely suspected of, of supplying the RSF with weapons to continue to fuel this conflict in spite of an arms embargo. In any case, the UAE extending outward to include Morocco, Greece and even India. This camp is revisionist in orientation, seeking to reconfigure the region through military power, technological collaboration, and economic integration. And then the Abrahamic coalition, they say, is ascendant. On the other side have countries like Saudi Arabia. And so because of this regional rivalry and these regional blocks that are emerging, you know, they are fighting for dominance of this region and access to the Red Sea in particular, which is why you have this conflict continuing to proceed and be fueled and funded. Let's go and put this next Foreign Policy article up on the screen which gets into some of those dynamics. Specifically, they say Red Sea rivalries risk unravel traveling the Horn of Africa. If Sudan's civil war spreads to Ethiopia, it will be a humanitarian and strategic disaster. So this is the, the real risk right now is the possibility that other countries in the region are brought directly into the conflict and that you end up with a, you know, conflagration across the Horn of Africa. Dropsite writes Sudan civil war, already the world's worst humanitarian disaster, is entering a more dangerous phase as the UAE and RSF threatens to open a new front through ethiop. Writing in Foreign Policy, Cameron Hudson and Liam Carr argue the uae, the main backer of the rsf, may be using Ethiopia to expand supply lines and operations, particularly near the GERD region on Sudan's eastern border. They warn this could further regionalize the war, draw on Ethiopia, Richard, and Egypt, and worsen Sudan's humanitarian situation in a widening proxy battlefield for Gulf and regional powers. The authors say Washington understands such an escalation would undermine U.S. red Sea counterterrorism and maritime interests, but is yet to draw firm red lines. They argue the international community led by Washington should do all it can to prevent the emergence of a new Ethiopia UAE axis in Sudan's war. And you know, the latest development is apparently Washington is going to host what they're describing as a humanitarian conference in, in the coming weeks with regard to Sudan. And you know, the big criticism here is Washington's both disengagement and also, also obviously we have incredible influence over the uae, which again, is widely seen as supplying the rsf, and yet we've done nothing to pressure them to cut off the supply of weapons that continues to fuel this, you know, these horrific atrocities.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, that's why I'm such a doomer about this. And obviously people on the ground are probably feeling, well, maybe they feel some hope right now, but a new front and a new, this horrific, horrific, large scale conflict. When, by the way, Ryan and I were talking last week, who's doing business with the UAE right now, I don't think anyone will be surprised to know that it's the Trump family, obviously doing plenty of business with the uae. So their incentives on this are understandably warped given where they're coming from. So that doesn't create a lot of room for optimism over. Although, I don't know, Crystal, these conferences always seem to solve the problem. So we just need to get a bunch of bureaucrats together in a room in Washington and everything should be okay.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, someone needs to convince Trump that maybe if he ends this conflict, maybe he'll get that Nobel Peace Prize after all.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Very good point.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Although maybe he's just accepted the one that Machado gave him and is like, check that off his list, and doesn't care anymore. I mean, that's what he indicated. Right. He no longer has to think about peace because he's got that. Got that Nobel Peace Prize that, that Machado gave him. So there you go.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yep, yep, exactly. But actually, this is a good point. If anyone got into his ear and was like, hey, call up those UAE guys or have Jared talk to those UAE guys, there may be even more room in Sudan for a golf course. They can, you know, maybe help you clear the way for that. And you'll get a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. Process. Half joking. But Trump is persuadable those ways sometimes it seems.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So who knows?

[Krystal Ball]

Have to convince them there's a development opportunity. That's apparently the. The path here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. Maybe they could do another golf course in the UAE or something like that too. Who knows?

[Krystal Ball]

Indeed.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, I was going to say it's been a fun morning, Crystal, but it's been a depressing morning.

[Krystal Ball]

Yet another depressing morning indeed. But always a pleasure to spend depressing mornings with you, Emily. I will be. Yes, Tagger and I will be in tomorrow. It's gonna be from home again. It's just the ice is not something that either one of us can get around at this point. Not safely anyway. So hopefully by next week, hopefully we don't get the snowstorm that we might get over the weekend. And we'll be back in studio and back to normal next week. But tomorrow will be from home again, and we'll see what happens from there.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, and. And for all of you Midwesterners like me thinking this is like east coast baby behavior, it is DC where we film. I actually live in dc. DC is an ice rink. It's not even snow that's the problem. It's snow that has layers of ice on top of it. And so it's been hard to plow. The city's incompetent and all of that. So to just get into the studio, I don't actually think I could get my car to move, to be honest. So just to get to the studio would be too perilous. So when it's. When we're able, we'll be back.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, in spring. In the thaw in spring.

[Saagar Enjeti]

See you in March, everyone.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, guys, have a great day. I'll see you to tomorrow.

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If you're an H VAC technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Joel]

Hey, it's Joel and Matt from how to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to free finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

[Matt]

That's right. Yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.