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Digital Social Hour
Joe Kent Reveals America's Biggest Threat Is Within | DSH #2072
00:36:52
What if America’s biggest threat is not Iran, Russia, or China, but its own leaders? In this Digital Social Hour episode, Sean Kelly sits down with Joe Kent to discuss the Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz, drone warfare, Trump’s foreign policy, Ukraine, Russia, China, the U.S. dollar, AI, national debt, border security, civil liberties, and the future of the Republican Party. Joe explains why he believes the Iran conflict is not truly over, even if the word “ceasefire” keeps getting used. He argues that Iran still has leverage through the Strait of Hormuz, drones, missiles, and regional pressure, while America is stuck trying to find a way out without looking like it lost. The conversation also moves into how modern wars drag on, why drones have changed the battlefield, how defense contractors benefit from endless conflict, and why the United States keeps getting pulled into fights that do not serve ordinary Americans. Later, Sean and Joe discuss Ukraine, NATO expansion, Russia’s...
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- [00:00]
Joe
China, all of our adversaries are going to get AI before us. Like, I'm less worried about that than I am all of our civil liberties being completely and totally destroyed and entire generation, primarily of young men being put out of work. We don't get very, very serious very, very quickly about ending our debt issue, ending these foreign entanglements, securing our borders and making sure we know who's in our nation. We're going to take ourselves down for the inside. We should be building houses there for young people. I mean, to buy started homes. Why aren't we worried about that? Rather than building these massive data centers that are somehow going to. I don't know what's the upside? They' to spy on us, they're going to stalk us, they're going to know exactly who we are and they're going to place us out of jobs.
- [00:37]
Host
Like, Okay, guys, have Joe on the show today. Very special guest. Joe, how you been, man?
- [00:47]
Joe
Oh, man, thanks for having me. Good to see you.
- [00:49]
Host
Life been since all the craziness?
- [00:52]
Joe
You know, it's been, it's been busy, but, you know, I can't complain. All good.
- [00:56]
Host
Still busy. You didn't, didn't take some time off,
- [00:59]
Joe
you know, not as busy as I was in the administration, so I've definitely gotten to spend more time with my family. But because the, you know, the Iran war, I think, has just been such a hot topic, you know, doing media, writing articles, etc, it's kept me, kept me gainfully employed, I guess you could
- [01:13]
Host
say, since it's July 2nd, I believe, as we're filming this. How do you feel right now about the current status of everything going on with the war?
- [01:21]
Joe
Man, you know, we go through this emotional cycle, it seems like every week where there's, know, a tease of some sort of a peace deal, mou, whatever you want to call it, and then something kicks back off. I, I think the fundamentals of the war actually really haven't changed since the initial ceasefire in April. The Iranians are doing what we kind of knew they would do all along. They would shut down and leverage the Straits of Hormuz. They've had. They've shown durability with their ballistics and their drones so they can continue to fight. And we're in a bit of a pinch because we're kind of out of military solutions that we're at least willing to apply. So we're kind of stuck in the situation where we don't want to extract ourselves, you know, just by leaving. We want some sort of a deal. To make it look like we won. But the dynamics have just changed and Iran has changed in terms of who's in charge now. They're more radicalized, they're more emboldened, and now they're realizing that they truly actually are a regional power and they're acting as such. And so we're kind of stuck in this cycle. I'm thankful that the war hasn't escalated any further, but also, at the same time, I am very concerned that it could very, very quickly, or the Iranians are just going to keep the straits, you know, in this state of flux. And economically, we're going to suffer the ramifications, you know, throughout the world, but back here at home as well, right?
- [02:35]
Host
Yeah. For me, and I feel like a lot of others, it feels like the word ceasefire has lost its meaning. It feels like it doesn't actually happen anymore. Right.
- [02:43]
Joe
I mean, one of, one of the great things about President Trump is that sometimes he just sort of says the thing that everyone else is too afraid to say, and he's like, you know, sometimes a ceasefire means you're just shooting a little bit, which that's pretty accurate, actually. I mean, we, we are shooting a little bit less, at least during the week when, when the markets are open and we save it for the weekend when it can't affect the markets as much. So, I mean, we're, we're, we're doing some pretty big gambling here with the way that we're conducting ourselves in the region, unfortunately.
- [03:10]
Host
See this war going on for a while then, huh?
- [03:14]
Joe
I do. I mean, because right now, Trump's got himself locked into a box. He really, really wants there to be some sort of a decisive military victory, which I think he knows he can't really achieve, because if he thought that he could, he just done it by now. But he does want this negotiating table win, and he's got his, his heart set on, you know, a memorandum, a deal that's signed. And the Iranians, I think that they can feel that and they know that, and they want exactly what they want. They want to be able to toll the Straits of Hormuz, they want to be able to kick Israel out of Lebanon, and they basically want to keep what they have right now, which is control of their proxies or ballistic missiles. And then they want to leverage, you know, the, the enriched uranium issue. And for Trump to come down on a lot of that, it's going to be challenging. So I think we're stuck in this, this cycle. I've been advocating for quite some Time for the President just to leave, walk away and reset that way and just tell everybody in America that he won. And his critics won't believe him, but a lot of his supporters will. And then we can kind of try to stop the bleeding a little bit on the margins, much more quietly. I don't think he's going to do that. And so I do think this war is going to go on for, for quite some time.
- [04:22]
Host
Think it's even possible to walk away at this point. Do you think we're in too deep?
- [04:26]
Joe
I mean, unfortunately, psychologically, I think the President is in too deep, because I think he's got a lot of people that are going to show him the polling and they're going to tell him all this spin about, Mr. President, if you leave now, you know, America will suffer this great humiliation, which is the same thing that every president got told over the last 20 plus years of the global war on Syria. You can't leave Afghanistan right now, you can't leave Iraq right now. Let's just try one more military campaign. And we saw what that got us. So I believe if the President, with the sheer force of his will, he would probably have to fire some key people and replace them with, with some more pragmatic folks. I think he could pick us up in, move us. I think it's doable, and I think someone like Trump could do it. Unfortunately, I don't see anything that indicates that we're swinging that way every time. I think that we're kind of moving in that direction. We kind of work against ourselves. Like the mou, it's not perfect. However, it did give us a pathway to get out of this thing. But then immediately we send the Secretary of State to Lebanon. That cuts basically a parallel side deal that negates a large portion mou. The Iranians see right through this. You know, I'm not advocating for the Iranians. I want us to win this whole thing. But the Iranians are like, okay, well, then, fine, no deal. Now we're back to our shenanigans on the Straits of Hormuz, because that's going to hurt you guys the most. So, again, I, I think because he's tied himself to wanting a deal so badly that's on paper and that he signs, it's a formal thing, and it's clear that America wins. I think he's got himself locked into this, this box that really, every way that you play the equation, the Iranians end up coming out on top of.
- [05:55]
Host
Yeah, it's a tough box. I mean, that Strait of Hormuz has done a lot of damage over here, right?
- [05:59]
Joe
Certainly has. I mean, and this is the tragedy, I think, of the whole war. At the beginning of the war, the Straits of Hormuz was open. It was a main artery for commerce and the Iranians weren't leveraging it. And this has been, you know, long standing war gaming that we had done, you know, over the years, even before I was in the military, of what would happen if we went to, if we went to large scale conventional war with Iran. And basically in every single war game, it was like the Iranians in some way, shape or form, whether it's through mining or some other, you know, military advancement, they are able to choke off the straits for moves that affects world energy. And we get what we're getting right now. So it's very frustrating for those of us who've been in the business for quite some time to see this playing out pretty much exactly like every expert for the last 30 plus years has been saying it would play out.
- [06:42]
Host
Do you call this. I think the average person would just assume the military is so much stronger. We would destroy Iran. Right?
- [06:48]
Joe
I mean, just geography, I mean there's, there's the old saying, I don't know who said it, but it's war is, war is the way that most Americans learn geography. And I think that's playing, playing out in this one. If you just look at a map, I mean, if you look how big Iran is like Iran, Persia, whatever you want to call it, is always going to be a player. But if you look at the Straits of Hormuz, how much energy flows through there, just how tight that channel is. Iran doesn't need much. They don't need advanced drones, they don't need advanced ballistics. Now they have those now. So it's much easier for them to affect the Straits of Hormuz. But even back in the day, back in the 80s, when Iran was, you know, messing around with mining the Straits of Hormuz, all they needed was a rudimentary, you know, crew of boats that could move mines throughout the Straits of Hormuz enough to make the, the insurers, the people who insure these large vessels that carry oil in, in and out of the Gulf to make them nervous enough to say that it's not worth it to us. So the, the geography has always worked out in Iran's favor. That's why this thing could last for a very, very long time. Because this is just, you know, insurgent, smaller Power 101. You don't have to win every battle. As a matter of fact, you can lose a lot of the battles as long as you just simply endure and you never fully lose. Losing a battle doesn't matter. Endure. You can beat America because we have to project power. That's basically been the post World War II lesson. I think that all of our adversaries have won.
- [08:03]
Host
Right. And now with drones and AI, I feel like it's, they can prolong these even more now. Right. Because actual lives aren't being lost on some of these battlefields most certainly.
- [08:12]
Joe
I mean thankfully we, we've, we, we've had, you know, I, people say it's only been 15 casualties. Every, every loss of life, I think especially in this regard, because it wasn't necessary, is a tragedy. But one of the reasons why the war is still going on because we haven't seen a large scale casualty event. Now I do worry that, you know, that's a gamble and you only have to be, the enemy only has to be lucky once. You have to be lucky every single time. So we could still see a mass casualty event. I hope that we don't. But you're right because of the standoff weapons, because of AI, because of drones, et cetera. You know, a lot of the times these engagements are, you know, ballistics or drones getting shot down by the counter ballistics or the counter drones. And it sort of just plays out in the sky above, above our soldiers who are, you know, in a hunkered down position. So that does, that does make it last a little bit longer.
- [09:02]
Host
See drones leveling the playing field in the future because they used, we used to be number one by far. Now it seems like other countries are catching up, right?
- [09:10]
Joe
Big time. Man, we got really spoiled I think in the war on terror where we always, you know, we were, we weren't able to find every wily insurgent and they had IEDs, but we always controlled the air in general. I mean every now and again you'd get some guys above the high ground who'd get a lucky shot with a shoulder fired missile, RPG or whatever. But we really controlled the air. We dominated. We were the only ones who had drones, especially drones that could shoot missiles, etc, but then because of the advancement in drone technology, 3D printing what's taking place on the battlefield in Ukraine, the drones have really made it really easy for the defender to have a lot of longevity that otherwise they just simply would not have had. And we are very, the Pentagon notoriously fights the last war and that's what we're doing here. And I think a lot of us who, who've been, I've been very critical of our support for the war in Ukraine. I think it's, you know, pushing towards disaster of Russia. We get into all that. But one of the arguments that people like in the defense and intelligence space made about Ukraine is they said we have to be involved in Ukraine because that's where the, that's where all the new battlefield developments are happening. But fast forward now we're in this conflict with Iran and it's like, well, guys, you know, for a while we were saying that we had to be involved in Ukraine to see how these drones and all these different technologies were going to play out. And we just kind of got our butts kicked by the exact same technologies that we've been discussing now for quite some. We not. We sent billions of dollars over there. Do we not send any note takers? Because we are basically fighting this from old locations that we've occupied now for the last 20, 30 years that supported operations in the war on terror. And of course the Iranians have been taking notes the entire time. They clearly developed an updated set of plans for this contingency.
- [10:43]
Host
Wow, so you're critical of that war too. What was the last war you could actually get behind that America has been involved in?
- [10:49]
Joe
And so, I mean, look, post 9 11, unfortunately it got squandered. 911 should have been the most cut and dry just war like basically in our history. We were attacked by a foreign terrorist group. We generally knew who the foreign terrorist group was and we generally knew where they were. So those initial operations that we did with special operations and with the CIA in Afghanistan to go after Al Qaeda, I think those were completely just where it stopped being. Just was when Bin Laden and Zawahiri walked into Pakistan and we said, no, no, we're going to stop chasing them. We're going to turn around and now we're going to like rebuild the Afghan government. And then within like less than a year, we are getting sold why we need to go into Iraq based on lies. So we took that goodwill that the American people gave our leaders and said, yeah, go to war. We were attacked. We support you USA all the way. There's, you know, people lining up around the block to join the military to enlist. It was an outpouring of unity that the country had. And within a month or two, that was all squandered for a wide variety of reasons that we can get into if you want. But I would say that that's probably the Last period, where it was a truly just war. I think the sentiment behind what we were attempting to do on the southern border, where we had fentanyl coming across the border from the Mexican drug cartels. Fentanyl is killing over 100,000Americans per year. Militarize the border, go after the guys pushing the drugs. I think that's just. I think we've kind of gotten a little bit off. Off azimuth on that. In this administration, we're. We're more focused on kind of blowing up some drug boats that may or may not have a lot to do with them now. But, yeah, so we, we. These. Unfortunately, the wars have a way of starting out with, like, the best of intentions, but then the special interests and the people who want to make money off of the wars or push a certain agenda, they end up driving the train. And the war is way off track.
- [12:34]
Host
It's very profitable, right?
- [12:36]
Joe
Incredibly, man. I mean, at the beginning of the. Of the. The. The g. What post 9, 11, we took down the Taliban and we had Al Qaeda on the run with a handful of special operators and CIA guys and some overhead air cover. Nobody in the beltway was getting rich off that. And that's one of the biggest reasons why they were like, hey, wait a second, we don't need to go chasing this bin Laden guy through some caves. We need to build a country here. You know, we need to do nation building in Afghanistan. And then Afghanistan's got a bunch of mountains. You can't drive your tanks into it, you know, and it's landlocked, so you can't pull your Navy right up to it. Well, Iraq is sure looking pretty good at that point. You know, I mean, it's more complicated than that. At the end of the day, there was a lot of other interests, the Israeli interests, but the military industrial complex definitely saw a paycheck there. So, yeah, there is. I mean, there's a big. There's a reason why the most. The richest and most wealthy zip codes in America are all around Washington, D.C. which produces basically nothing. But it's the headquarters of where all the defense contractors are.
- [13:28]
Host
And when you look at the military industrial complex, just from a business point of view, you know, they got to keep it running, right? They got to manufacture wars and all this drama to keep it going, keep the business running.
- [13:38]
Joe
And when it comes time for them to do, like, their most basic task of, like, okay, fine, if the President wants to take us off to war in Iran, I don't agree with it, but that's what he wants to do. They've, they've gotten so sluggish and so non competitive that they're like, well, we've all gotten fat and rich by selling the same products over and over again. They didn't, they obviously didn't even feel the need to update the way that we fight because again, the way that, the more agile way that we're moving in the battlefield, it's not as profitable as selling aircraft carriers or Abrams M1 battle tax. But it turns out those two tools in this last engagement that we had and to a certain extent in the war in Ukraine, like, they're not useful. Like we needed more drones, we needed more counter drones, we needed the ability to stay more agile. We didn't need to be bogged down in these big bases that ended up just being juicy targets for the Iranians. But even then, the military industrial complex, because they've gotten paid the entire time, they didn't update any of their systems.
- [14:30]
Host
There's been a lot of stories of very cheaply made drones destroying super expensive equipment, right?
- [14:35]
Joe
Oh, for sure. I mean the Shahi drones that the Iranians manufacture, I mean really, it's pennies on the dollar compared to what we're, we're having to shoot in terms of like counter what we've learned. Ukraine, what Ukraine and other conflicts. It's really just volume. If you can produce a high volume of these drones and you're the defender, you're not having to project power like America's having to project power. You're defending your own home turf and you're not worrying about as much range and as much high end systems. If you can consistently produce a large volume of fairly low tech drones and rudimentary ballistic, medium range ballistic missiles, you can endure for quite some time. And again, this is something that we should have learned from Ukraine because this was kind of our math formula in Ukraine was supporting them. But then when it came time for this big fight that we've been playing with Iran for quite some time, we attempted to fight it with mid-2000s tactics, unfortunately.
- [15:25]
Host
Yeah. What are you seeing with the Ukraine war lately? I haven't heard much about it, but I see mixed things about it online, especially on Twitter.
- [15:33]
Joe
I don't have a lot of hope there for peace. I mean, I know a lot of people are critical of President Trump for not getting peace in Ukraine. Unfortunately he kind of, when he arrived in office. I think had President Trump been in office in 2020, I truly believe that war would not have started because I think President Trump would have, you Know said to all the people that were trying to push Ukraine and NATO together, I think he would have driven a wedge between that and I think Putin would have said, okay, at least for now, Ukraine's not going to break out and join NATO. You know, Kamala Harris going to the UN, The NATO conference and saying, we want Ukraine to join NATO. I mean, that's one of the big triggers for the war. However, by the time President Trump got into office In January of 2025, the Russians were already incredibly committed. I mean, and they had already taken like, a lot of losses. And it was amazing to me watching the, the casualty counts come in almost every week and just seeing the thousands that the Russians were losing and, and us in our American mind saying, like, oh my God, how long will the Russians do this for? And then you looked at like the way Russian society was reacting to it, like not even a blip on the radar. They haven't had to lock the country down. They haven't had to start a true draft. They're still sending volunteers and criminals, etc, to the front lines to fight and die. So the Russians clear this as a worthy sacrifice. So that's why I kind of think it's hard. It would be very difficult for any president right now to go to the negotiating table and say, okay, Russia, you got to kind of back off. What we need to do if we want to end the war, and I think we should focus on keeping the war or ending the war, is we do have to tell the Ukrainians like you, you've maintained, but you're not getting all your territory back. Because in order for Ukraine to get all their territory back, we, we the west, but that means us, America would have to commit a ton more and then Russia would view that as existential. And that's how you'd see a major escal. I just think because the Ukraine lobby is so powerful here in Washington D.C. and in European capitals as well. We don't have the heart right now to truly cut off the Ukrainians and tell them that they're done. They can preserve what they have right now, but they're probably going to have to give up some territory to prevent a larger war. We don't have the heart to do that right now, which again puts us in this dangerous escalation place, because there's no way Zelensky is going to say that on his own. Because the second he does that, he's going to face probably internal strife, if not the end of his power and potentially even his life life, if that's
- [17:51]
Host
another war that you see going on for a long time, man.
- [17:53]
Joe
Personally. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I do think Russia will likely win that. How we, how we kind of temper NATO from going crazy. But NATO really can't do much without us, which is the good thing. But you do have a lot of European hawks there in NATO who will try then to attack Russia, have Russia attack us, us being NATO, and then escalate the war further, which would be catastrophically foolish. I mean, at the end of the day, whatever happens in Ukraine, in the Donbass, it doesn't affect America. And so I think. And that's another reason why we do have to cut them off. So President Trump started out, I think, on a good foot, trying to at least cut off the Ukrainians, but we couldn't quite bring ourselves to do it because I think Trump was frustrated that Putin wouldn't come to the negotiating table with him. So he said, okay, I'll give, I'll keep, I'll keep working up Zelensky, even though I know this should end. And Putin's just sitting back being like, you know, I've tried to work with, I'm not defending Putin. Putin's, whatever. He's a fan of Russia, Russian leadership anyways. But Putin's just basically like, well, I've tried to work with basically every American president, and you guys keep pushing Ukraine into NATO, and right now I'm grinding this out of the battlefield. So I just don't think Putin has very many incentives right now to listen to Trump or even, you know, if Trump's out of office in 2029, whoever the next president is, if the war is still grinding along. I, I just, unless we are much more forceful with, with NATO, kind of like we need to be with Israel and the Iran situation. I just, I don't see that the fundamentals changing. And there's a lot of potential for escalation, so I don't see any upside to us continuing to be involved, but I see it grinding on and then the potential for escalation as well.
- [19:30]
Host
Yeah, man, I would have loved to listen to some of those Trump, Putin meetings. It seemed like they were always getting along, and then I never knew what to make of it.
- [19:37]
Joe
You know, I wasn't, I wasn't around for, for any of those either. I, you know, Putin, what a lot of people fail to realize here in the west is that that Putin in Russian politics, he's like a center left. He's like, kind of a centrist. He's portrayed over here as like this, you know, the crazy Russian guy or whatever. But, I mean, if you look at how long Putin's been in power, the different roles he's held, the number of times where he said, hey, I want to have a good relationship with the west, and the west is continue NATO expansion up on his border. And then the effect that's had inside Russia where there's a lot of hardliners in Russia for. Who have long, for a long time have been saying, like, you need to just go punch these guys because they're not going to stop coming. And why are you being so weak, Putin? And so, yeah, it is a fascinating power dynamic there. But I do think Putin is a very realistic president. But he's so realistic right now that I just don't think he trusts the West. And he sees that obviously we're distracted of all these other wars. He sees the fundamentals of our economy not being very, very good. And so I think he feels like he's got the trade, he's got the space and the time right now that he needs to grind out, albeit an incredibly bloody and brutal victory, but a bloody and brutal victory that will secure what he views probably as one, as his most vulnerable flank in of of his country.
- [20:50]
Host
Right, that makes sense. Okay. So as a chess player, I like to think long term, who do you think, country wise, is the main threat to, to America long term?
- [21:01]
Joe
I think our leaders are, quite frankly, I mean, the way that we are gambling the future of our republic on these foolish wars overseas, whether it's Russia, Ukraine, like we just talked about, or whether it is what's taking place in Iran that that affects the Straits of Hormuz in terms of energy flow, that also affects the petrodollar. The petrodollar, all the different oil transactions being settled in the dollar was one of the underpinnings of the US Dollar being the reserve currency. As long is the world reserve currency holder and everyone's doing business in the dollar, then our economic system, as messed up as it is, where we just kind of print money and we don't worry about debt, it works because everybody uses the dollar. Now, in the long term, there's big problems there, but it does kind of work. The second that we start doing these massive sanctions packages or other countries start moving away from the dollar, the dollar loses its value. And then our entire system in terms of, like, how our finances work and everything that underpins our American way of life right now, that could slowly start to degrade or there could be a massive Crash. In the last couple years, we've done two major things. We kicked Russia out of the SWIFT systems. We said, russia, the world's biggest natural resources producer, you guys can't use the dollar anymore. As if that was going to be a punishment to the Russians. We shot ourselves at the foot with that. So the Russians then just went with the Chinese. The Chinese said, hey, we'll help you guys work through this. There's a way to underpin your currency. There's other ways to trade. And so they started developing this entire system around getting around the dollar and the sw same thing. Straits of horror movies. We told the Gulf countries that we would protect them from, from this war. We started this war and then it turned out we couldn't protect them. They got bombed, you know, by, because they hosted our military bases. And so now a lot of them are saying like, well, you know, I don't know if I want to settle all of our transactions in $. We're going to start looking at yam, we're start looking at crypto, et cetera. So between that and then just us having to provide basically we be the world police that's providing security guarantees for the vast majority of the world when we really came to secure our country, our own nation. And if you just look at the quality of life here in America, how that' going down consistently. The most recent ruling from the Supreme Court that says like, you know, birthright citizenship of the advocate here, then automatically they're an American citizen. The open borders policy, the Biden administration, I mean if we don't get very, very serious very, very quickly about ending our debt issue, ending these foreign entanglements, securing our borders and making sure we know who's in our nation, we're going to take ourselves down for the inside. I truly believe, you know, a famous Abraham Lincoln quote that like no foreigner can come take a sip out of the Mississippi, but we can certainly destroy ourselves. So I am much more worried about that than I am Russia. China. I mean people always talk about like China, like we're supposed to be terrified of China, but at the end of the day, China has one of the world's biggest manufacturing bases, a massive economy, but they sell things. They need access to our economy. It's almost a symbiotic relationship. I don't think we need China necessarily. We decided to outsource our manufacturing over there. But Chinese most certainly need access to the American market and the American economy to sell us things. So we're going to compete with China, but I don't believe this boogeyman theory of China that we're going to need to go fight them. For a while there it was like, oh, we're going to fight them over Taiwan or whatever. I mean, we just proved that. I don't think we have, we don't have it in us right now to fight over Taiwan. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing because that would have been the foolish fight anyways. But you know, and then the Russian myth of like, oh, we need to fight the Russians. I've never. Russia doesn't have the capability or the intent to pose a major threat to us. So again, most concerned about our leaders.
- [24:33]
Host
I actually think I agree with you. I mean, the dollar is a crazy topic. If you were a millionaire 100 years ago, it's worth $20,000 now, basically one lifetime ago. I don't see how my generation or the younger ones are going to be able to afford a house, honestly.
- [24:45]
Joe
I mean, your starter home nowadays is what, half a million dollars? I mean Even I'm, I'm 46 years old and I bought my first house when I was in my early 30s and even then it was kind of expensive, I guess, but compared to now it wasn't. I mean you could still get a decent house in the threes and there was even some of the twos depending on where you live, which at the time I was like, wow, that's, that's insane amount of money. But then you fast forward just a few years and it's like to live in, to live within driving distance of most major urban areas on, on either the coasts or in any major city, it's a half a million dollars, you know, and what job opportunities are there, the advancements of AI? Just the way that we're basically pricing anyone out of, out of the economy or even getting off the starting blocks, I think is just absolute insanity.
- [25:28]
Host
Are you pro AI or against it at the moment?
- [25:30]
Joe
Moment I'm worried about it. I do think we need to do a lot more regulating of AI. There needs to be a lot more protections for civil liberties. And the argument that you always get from the, the, the tech sector, the tech bros, whatever you want to call them, is if we don't just hit the gas on AI right now, China and all, all of our adversaries are going to get AI before us. Like, you know, that's, I, I, I'm less, again, I'm less worried about that than I am all of our civil liberties being completely and totally destroyed and an entire generation primarily of Young men being put out of, out of work and then us having this, this beast, this almost like matrix thing that's a surveillance state that priced us out of the economy all in one. And then who controls it? We don't know. Is it the machine that controls it? Like, I just, I don't see a ton of the upsides. I think if we can control it and we can use it for some advanced computing, et cetera, that's fine. But I would be much more worried about how we regulate it right now at this point than just hitting the gas and being just, let's just let AI go as fast as it possibly
- [26:35]
Host
can, even know if regulation would work because people always find loopholes to regulation. You know, I don't know.
- [26:41]
Joe
And that's, I mean it's already advancing so quickly that by the time you find something to regulate, you know, they're probably like haha. Or you know, we're late years ahead of you. The, the computer figured that out a long time ago. I'm. Yeah, I know. I, I think it's something to be, to be very, very concerned about.
- [26:56]
Host
Seems to be a lot of downsides, especially with the data centers. That's a crazy rabbit hole. I was diving down the other day to take up a lot of water and energy.
- [27:03]
Joe
Yeah. And again like pricing people out because they're buying up massive places that massive, you know, chunks of land like you said, that have water, et cetera. We should be building houses there for young people. I mean to, to buy started homes. Like why are we worried, why aren't we worried about that? Rather than building these massive data centers that are somehow going to. Well, I don't know, what's the upside? They're going to spy on us, they're going to stalk us, they're going to know exactly who we are and they're going to place us out of jobs. Like again, I'm not seeing the upsides. And so if the limiting factor is the data centers, then maybe the best thing we can do. It's not necessarily regulation, it's slow down the rate of production of the data centers.
- [27:37]
Host
Yeah, that's the technocrat black mirror timeline that a lot of people are talking about now. The mass surveillance is definitely something to keep an eye on. Right.
- [27:45]
Joe
Terrifying, man. I mean when you combine the amount that were already surveilled by just the corporate world, by social media, by everything digital, combine that with AI, combine that with flock cameras, combine that with all of our digital banking, I mean you could see a scenario really quickly here where because of everything we talked about, how the dollar is being weakened, that our economy does crash, and the next thing you know, we get told that, hey, don't worry, all your money's safe. It's just digital now. You have to log on to this digital id, this digital system, and then we're completely controlled probably at that point by like an AI algorithm or, you know, a government surveillance security state, which is basically what they have in China, you know, and then, then you're looking at some form of a social credit score, you know, and people a couple years ago would have been like, you're, you're crazy. But I think people are starting to see all these different pieces kind of come in onto the board. And so what, A couple years ago sounded crazy. It' you know, it's in the near future if we don't do something about it.
- [28:39]
Host
Absolutely. It's already in certain countries. Dubai kind of has it. My friend got a speeding ticket. He had to pay it at the airport because I got mass surveillance there. China has social credit scores. Right.
- [28:51]
Joe
And they, they can basically just. That's the, that's the, the one freedom we still kind of have is to pay cash. But if the dollar fell and, and dollars and any kind of like, you know, physical tender was, was, was worthless. Everything was digital deal, you would have to submit to basically whatever, whether it's a vaccine mandate or whether, like, they don't want you traveling too far from your homes because there's a carbon lockdown. You know, they, they can just pick and choose how we live our lives at that point. It's a complete and total control mechanism.
- [29:18]
Host
And I did want to ask about your friend Tucker. He left the Republican Party. Did you see that?
- [29:23]
Joe
Yeah.
- [29:24]
Host
Did you think about that? Were you surprised at all?
- [29:27]
Joe
Oh, not really. I mean, the, the Republican Party, I think, is going to have a hard time, and I think we'll see it here in the midterms, but I think we'll definitely see it in 2028. I think the Republican Party's gonna have a really hard time right now making the case on why people should just blindly vote R. I mean, pre Trump. That's kind of where they were at. Like, people were like, you know, I don't even. People like me who really didn't like Obama very much. I was a Ron Paul guy because I just couldn't get behind, you know, McCain or Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, these types. And then Trump came along and it was very dynamic and he brought a lot of people back to the Republican Party. He brought over a lot of first time vot, first administration. Not everything was perfect, but we knew, we felt like at least he tried to fight for us. And then there was the hero's journey of everything that happened, where they tried to take Trump off the ballot, throw him in jail, assassinate him. And here we had this massive coalition in 2024, and there's just simply been so many betrayals over the last nearly two years now that it's going to be really hard for whoever is going to carry that, like a MAGA banner to step up and say, like, no, guys, I mean it this time. It all just kind of starts to feel sort of like a grift. So I think Tucker, you know, articulated that he's sick of being in the Republican Party. He's not going to support it. I, I think that's natural. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable and it makes, I think, a lot of people who've been in partisan politics, like myself. You, you want to, your, your first reaction is to be like, no, don't say that, because then people are going to leave and we're going to lose our numbers and we've all got to stay together. But I think a time like this, it does, it does require some, some self reflection to say, like, how did we get here? And if we don't address those issues, then, yeah, 100%, we, we will lose. And that's going to be how you get a president, Gavin Newsom or whoever in 2028, really, if we don't figure these out, these issues out right now,
- [31:08]
Host
leave the country if Gavin wins in 28.
- [31:11]
Joe
No, I got nowhere to go. I'm gonna so, you know, kind of, kind of in it till it goes down.
- [31:17]
Host
Go first.
- [31:18]
Joe
Right, Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
- [31:20]
Host
That's, that's warped in so many different ways. That line itself. America First. There's so many different as.
- [31:24]
Joe
Yeah, the problem with all the, the slogans and the gimmick, it's going to be really hard for someone just to come and be like, I am maga, I am America First. You pick your slogan, because I think people are going to be like, yo, you know what, man, I fell for that before. And I mean, they're going to sit this one out or I'm going to vote for somebody different. I think they're going to need to see someone come forward that's authentic, that has a proven track record of being authentic, someone who's willing to come on and do podcasts, engage with the younger generation, engage on social media, and not everything Being a pre planned talking point or reading off the teleprompt, I, I think that's what it's going to take because I, I do think, especially the younger generation, I, I feel like they are just like post talking point which I think is fant. I, I, I like that a lot because I hate having to follow talking points or a telephone prompter or all that. And I hate everything that's, you know, major network news. You have to have everything in like a 30 second sound bite. So I think it's a good thing. But I think if we try, if Republicans try and roll that crap out again in 28, like it's, it's, it's going to be a rude awakening.
- [32:26]
Host
We agree. Would you support a third party if that were to happen? Get some traction?
- [32:30]
Joe
It's tough. I, I mean I think for the right, I would support the right person right now at this point regardless of what like brand name they had on that. If it's an authentic person who says like as the President I am going to focus my scope on making sure we end the endless wars, we bring back the, you know, we start bringing our folks home, we end this foolish empire, we get fiscally irresponsible and we go after the people within our own government, government who are abusing American civil liberties because that's really what those are. The things that the President can truly affect. All the different social issues and things that they like to divide our nation on, those are important, like, important like the transgender issue, abortion, these are important things but the President really can't actually affect those. But they want us to fight over those issues. So I would get behind a third party or a candidate from kind of whatever party at this point that I know is going to deliver on those issues. So I think everything's gonna be about candidate quality. I do think our two party system has done a disservice to the American like most Americans when you poll them, they, it's like, I think it's like in the 60s, 60% or so of Americans identify as an independent. Now any good pollster will be like, yeah, they identify as an independent but they always vote rd. But when you ask them, they self identify as an independent. So I think there's a case to be made for, for an independent party. It is challenging though just because the way our system is structured to like, to, to do the nuts and bolts of like how do you get ballot access in most, you know, states? Because it's different in every single state for a third party candidate. It would really, it, unfortunately it would take a lot of money and it would take a big machine to pull it off. But again, with, with the, you know, the advancements in technology and just how much popular support for it, I, I think it's possible.
- [34:08]
Host
Well, I wonder at a presidential level, is it even possible to be authentic anymore because the money has gotten so big. I think you could do it on a local level, but to get to the presidential level, you know, you're raising nine figures, sometimes over a billion dollars, and you got to answer to a lot of people.
- [34:22]
Joe
You know, I mean, to be competitive realistically in a presidential, it's like you have to raise a billion dollars. It's going to cost you about a billion to actually be competitive. And then the Democrats are really good at raising money and they always go over a billion. Trump won, I think around with a billion even being outspent. He still won, but it was still a billion. So yeah, you're right, man. And that's the problem. Like, I do think it probably won't happen in 28, maybe not even 32. But I do think the more engaged the younger generation gets that is getting their.
- [34:49]
Host
There.
- [34:49]
Joe
There's information from social media, from more grassroots research being done. I think it's going to be harder. The money will still move around because money can move and it's easy to, it's easy to obfuscate the money. But I think eventually with enough information flowing, it's going to be pretty clear, you know, who is completely getting propped up by, you know, major corporations, the military, industrial complex, apac, et cetera. There's only so long that that's going to last. I feel like that's going to pop. Now the question is, do we save our country before that pops or like does does the country have to go through a massive hardship? I hope not for that to happen, but yeah, that, that is. Money is one of the big problems
- [35:26]
Host
because there's people losing just because of money. Like Thomas Massie lost just because the other person spent more money. Right.
- [35:32]
Joe
100, man. I mean Massey had, I think when, when it's all said and done, it'll be close to 30 million. You know, for a congressional race. You know, every congressional seat represents like750,000 people. So that's, that's absolute insanity how much money they spent against him. And he still raised with small dollar donors. He still raised. So the funny thing is like there was records set for how much was spent against him, but he set records for how much was he raised on small dollar donors for just the amount of money that was dumped into there. Completely crazy.
- [36:00]
Host
I think that'll be the future. I think people are going to have to do that to compete, right?
- [36:03]
Joe
Yeah, you will.
- [36:05]
Host
Well, dude, this was amazing. What's next for you, Joe? Where can people support you and all that?
- [36:11]
Joe
So for right now, just my social medias, I think that's the best place. And then right now, next for me is I. I am doing everything I can to, to build some sort of a coalition, whether that's gonna be in the Republican Party or somewhere else that's gonna have these issues that we just talked about today, front and center so that we, we don't go backwards to the old, you know, corporate talking points, the old Republican Party. I want these to be front and center. I do want to build a coalition, a broad populist coalition going into 2028 so that we can at least hopefully have a chance of saving the Republicans public.
- [36:41]
Host
Think we'll include a link to your website and everything below. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for watching all the way to the end, guys. Means a lot. Please click here if you want to watch the next episode and please subscribe to the show. It helps us get more guests and helps grow the brand.