Doug (1:28)

Shut up, Aiden. All right, look. This episode, we're making predictions. We're gambling big. We're going to come up with 10 predictions for 2026, and we're putting money behind it. For each of these 10 predictions that we get wrong by the end of the year, we're going to donate $5,000 to charity. We have to come up with 10 by the end of the episode. Starting with Venezuela. 2026, baby. Gambling. No emotions.

Aiden (1:50)

Okay, Okay. I do think, like, I agree with you in general.

Doug (1:54)

Have you looked at the Chinese New Year calendar? It's the year of the gambler.

Aiden (1:57)

Is that true?

Doug (1:58)

Yeah. Last year was the horse.

Ludwig (1:59)

I think this year's the horse.

Aiden (2:01)

There's no way it's the year of the gambler.

Doug (2:04)

All right, I'm going to China. I think I know what I'm talking about.

Aiden (2:07)

Horse, turtle.

Doug (2:08)

There's a dragon.

Ludwig (2:11)

The classic animals.

Aiden (2:12)

I think we should agree. We should be Meaner to Aiden this year. That's what you're trying to do. If that's the message you're sending, I think that should be a key thing.

Ludwig (2:18)

I don't agree with that.

Aiden (2:19)

2026, it's going to be a big damn year. We have all these cards of. I'm sorry, did you say something? Sweetie, did you say something? Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Did you. Did someone talk over you? I'm so sorry.

Ludwig (2:30)

He's hurt. He's hurt because a lot of kept calling him fat earlier, starting my what?

Aiden (2:34)

My prediction is that your health. I'm trying to get not fat.

Doug (2:37)

Okay, that works because one of my prediction categories, you can see here, Ludwig. I predict Ludwig is going to be alive at the end of 2026.

Ludwig (2:44)

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Doug (2:46)

O, we're tossing this one. I don't trust that anymore.

Aiden (2:48)

Based on how you've been talking, maybe he's not going to be alive.

Doug (2:51)

We're going to start with Venezuela. Venezuela is the huge topic. We are going to chat about that. We will maybe, if it doesn't feel unethical, throw a prediction on what happens with Venezuela. But we'll start with this since this is a huge, huge, huge topic. Obviously.

Aiden (3:03)

What a crazy way to kick off the damn year, huh?

Ludwig (3:05)

What happened in Venezuela?

Aiden (3:07)

You know what happened Venezuela. I'll tell you one thing. So guys, Aiden's actually bringing a lot of facts today because he interviewed three Venezuelan citizens supposedly.

Doug (3:15)

Yeah, he lost all of the footage. Three and a half hours of footage which he was going to upload to Patreon and then realized he didn't record his own microphone.

Aiden (3:24)

He recorded only his own microphone. It's just him talking.

Ludwig (3:26)

It's only you to be clear.

Doug (3:28)

So there's no clear proof that there was a Venezuelan person footage exists.

Ludwig (3:31)

It's just you'll only hear my voice for the three and a half hours.

Doug (3:34)

And if you log into the lemonade stand Patreon, you can hear Aiden talking to imaginary Venezuelans for three and a half hours.

Ludwig (3:42)

I can't believe it. I removed the audio track from obs on accident. Doing a solo recording on my laptop like before this. And I just didn't.

Aiden (3:51)

I was actually legitimately excited to see this. It's just you. Yup.

Ludwig (3:57)

I think maybe just to introduce the topic quickly for those if you somehow do not know, the U.S. sent an operation into Venezuela and removed President Maduro. The dictator literally removed him from the country and his wife.

Doug (4:17)

He robbed him like an ocean's eleven movie.

Ludwig (4:19)

Yeah. Like overnight came back, did a press conference where they said that the U.S. is now, quote, running Venezuela. Initially, I would say through the press conference, expressed the common reason you'd heard over the past few months of why we were attacking Venezuelan boats, why we had this increased military presence in the ocean around Venezuela, that it's to control narco, like narco terrorism, control drug shipments. But then Trump went a bit off the beaten path of the script, I would say, and just started saying that this is also for American oil companies to regain control of Venezuelan resources. Here's the ways that we're going to become wealthy from those resources, which in its own way was kind of, it.

Aiden (5:04)

Was, it was refreshing from George Bush, right.

Ludwig (5:08)

And he just came out and said.

Aiden (5:09)

That he did the Don Row doctrine. And then Rubio came back out and said, but it's drugs, let's be clear. And then Trump came back out and said, no, but it's actually don't forget about the oil.

Ludwig (5:19)

Don't forget about the oil.

Aiden (5:20)

I mean, there was all that. I think, you know, there's a lot of ways you could take predictions on this. I think the interesting one is, you know, because I think that the Internet is in a wild debate over the morality of this or whether Venezuelans are pro it or anti, or whether he was murder, was a good guy. All the stuff that is not that interesting here because you're going to land on way. I think what's interesting is whether or not this ends up being stupid. Just is it, is it a stupid idea in that Will it, will the stated goals of Trump fail? I think that is an interesting question that I'd like to like, throw up, which is like, okay, you know, for example, right. You know, you go to Iraq, people did celebrate when the statues of Saddam were torn down. And then it ended up being a failure because it was just a long, drawn out process. And so we're, we're a week into this thing in Venezuela and, you know, it's becoming clear some of the outlines of what's actually happened, because it was kind of shock and awe. It's a new thing. So Maduro's out, but right now it's seeming like his regime is still very much in. And they actually, Trump wants them to be in. He has said he doesn't want the guy that, the girl that won the election, Machado or her party, they don't have the.

Doug (6:27)

She didn't win the election. Her team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aiden (6:31)

But because she was banned from running, so she doesn't have the respect, according to him, to be running the country. Which basically means that this faction, the Maduro faction, has control of the military and the power to keep the country running. And so it's looking like they're going to just, you know, it's like, it's like imagine if you were someone who's really against Trump and then China came in and kidnapped Trump and then left Vance in charge, kept Chinese warships off the coast and said as long as Vance is what we say, you know. You know, it's a little bit different than I think. I think people are celebrating like Maduro's gone and everything's different. But it looks like it's going to be kind of business as usual. Except if you don't allow us to start getting Chevron back in here and doing oil, then we're going to snatch someone else again. That's what's looking like to me. I could be wrong, but that, so I wonder how that plays out because it feels like it's leaving some question marks of how long.

Doug (7:22)

Let me pause it some things to you because in your big A video you said, you know, Iraq was supposed to be a quick thing in and out. We said mission accomplished. And then 20 years later it's been a complete fucking disaster.

Ludwig (7:33)

Right.

Doug (7:33)

And we spent trillions of dollars.

Aiden (7:34)

Yeah.

Doug (7:34)

So I looked into a little bit of the comparison between Iraq and Venezuel. There's a couple key differences. One, there's not as much like, I don't know, sex of different types of people. Venezuela is more homogenous of the group of people. Whereas in Iraq you have a lot of factions in the populace. The Sunnis that were right with very, very intense divides that were held together. So that's one you have less of a sort of fractured population that was only held together by a dictator. The second is there is no military invasion here. So with Iraq like we went in with 160,000 troops, it was a full on military invasion. Troops on the ground of IRA took the, the capital and we're like we did it. This is different in that we just robbed Venezuela of their leader. And then you know, the oil is another thing where oil was a sort of secondary thing of Iraq depending on who you ask. Whereas this is a very explicit like you know, to be clear, we used to get a ton of oil from Venezuela and then over the past, what is it, seven years, eight years, something like that, that completely dried up. 2013 or something, 2014, once sanctions on Maduro started, that flow stopped. So there's like a clear of what? You know, with, with Iraq the premise was weapons of mass destruction. With this one it's the premise is drugs. But there's a very clear thing that oil companies want here which is get the Venezuelan oil production going again, get it exported to America. So we have more leverage in the oil markets, you know, globally we have more leverage against Canada, things like that. And that in theory is all capable within the existing government of Venezuela. And if that government remains stable, then we as America do not need to go in and nation build. That would be the argument. What do you think?

Aiden (9:14)

Listen the weekend, right? So who knows. But my understanding is like, so they had a pretty advanced oil extraction network in Venezuela around 2013. Chavez takes control, nationalizes it. At that point they stop investing in upgrading the infrastructure so it starts to degrade and then by the time we do sanctions, we're not even buying from them. They already had degraded the amount of barrels of output they could do pretty significantly. So my understanding is that to rebuild Venezuela's oil infrastructure right now is going to cost like a trillion plus dollars to get out there and update all this shit. So they can get from 1 million barrels of oil a day for like 3 million. And that, that's going to take a long time. It's going to take some build out. At the same time there's like local pressure. Like I've never seen a country better designed for, you know, guerrilla anti Chevron efforts, you know what I'm saying? Like it, it is, it is set up to be. So it seemed like I, I'm. My biggest worry is that this is drawn into where you have to eventually send troops in. If you're going to, if this is your goal, if your goal is to extract oil, which by the way I think is amor. I'm, I'm just saying like that's the goal. You're going to get to a point where you're. This bargain deal you've made with the strongman authoritarian regime which you're keeping in power to keep going is not going to be enough. And there's going to be pressures and pushbacks and power vacuums from this material thing. You've pulled out and left no real alternative.

Doug (10:47)

Yeah.

Aiden (10:48)

And I just, I think it's going to end up being a problem. I think like from a pure, like is this smart or stupid? I think it's going to, we're going to look back on it and be like, wow, this was actually so much more of a clusterfuck than anticipated.

Doug (10:58)

Has this ever worked? Where you just go take out a leader.

Aiden (11:01)

Because I was like this. Like, am I crazy? Like, it's never worked. I feel like there's an argument to be made that Reagan. This is what I looked up. He kidnapped Noriega when he was at the Vatican or something. Like, they. They surrounded him.

Ludwig (11:16)

What?

Aiden (11:17)

Noriega was here? Let me see. I want to make sure the Vatican thing, Mike.

Doug (11:21)

Like, oh, by the way, while you're doing that, quick, just quick dates, correction. Hugo Chavez socialized oil in 2007. He died in 2013.

Aiden (11:30)

I'm sorry.

Doug (11:30)

And the major sanctions started once Maduro took over in 2013. Then the US basically stopped accepting oil and started doing sanctions and blockades. So 2016 is when the whole thing started to collapse. So. But the core. Yeah, core of that is still Noriaga.

Aiden (11:44)

Was head of Panama. And I'm trying to make sure I'm right about this, this. This Vatican thing, because it was crazy. They surrounded him.

Ludwig (11:50)

And this was Bush. Right.

Aiden (11:52)

This was Reagan.

Ludwig (11:53)

It was Reagan.

Aiden (11:55)

Anyway, he was like, in something under the protection of the Vatican. They surrounded him and played rock music until he came out. That's what I know for sure. I just don't know the exact. Anyway, my understanding is that if you were like, purely from a US pov, they. They nab Noriega, had him on trial for drug trafficking, and Panama went on to be like a pretty, you know, it went fine. Like, it didn't. They didn't. But they didn't need a lot out of Panama. So I don't know. I would say that's like a one out of the odds don't look good, but it could happen.

Ludwig (12:25)

This is one of the people that I interviewed. This was very similar to their argument. They brought up Panama as a justification for why they think this is good.

Aiden (12:34)

Right.

Ludwig (12:35)

I think my preface to these interviews is. I think I would say regardless of your political spectrum in the US Right now, it's pretty like foreign intervention is looked upon pretty poorly. Like, most people do not want foreign intervention to continue happening because we live in the shadow of things like Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya, like, these things that are very fresh in people's memories.

Doug (13:05)

We've got intervention, bad track record in our lifetimes.

Ludwig (13:08)

And. And I think that is the baseline that people approach these problems with where overall and outside of the US Too, people look at this very negatively right now, which I would. I would agree. Like, I. I felt like, oh, this is bad. Like, we should not be doing this.

Aiden (13:27)

Quote, just what you're saying. Yeah. So in February of 2025 is direct quote from Elon Musk. Basically, America should mind its own business rather than push for regime change all over the place. This is him on stage. That quote, I mean, that would go like he is out there supporting what we're doing here, and I just feel like that is a change. So I guess I don't fully agree with you that I think.

Ludwig (13:51)

I think some people, of course, are pivoting their opinion to fall in line with, like, the team they see themselves a part of. But I think if you ask the general person about how they feel about, like, regime change or foreign intervention in the past five years, they have a generally pretty similar outlook on it. And it's that.

Aiden (14:12)

Sure.

Ludwig (14:13)

Yeah. And I, I. When this happened, my first reaction was, I feel that way about it. And I would. I don't want this sort of, like, unilateral action being taken by my country because I feel like it's a part of this, like, grander escalation of, like, three powers in the world kind of choosing to continually break the rules and kind of degrade the global structure.

Aiden (14:39)

You see, there is a viral map going around where it's the entire globe and there's a crayon, and it's drawn into three, and it says Putin G. Trump.

Ludwig (14:48)

I think I'm increasingly feeling that way. It's not that the US hasn't always done stuff like this, and it's not that the China and Russian also haven't taken, like, similar actions, but there does feel like there's an escalation of these three powers dictating the rule through force, rather than this, like, international apparatus that we all helped build a while back being the thing that sets the tone of whether or not you can go and do something like this, right? And. But I was like, I'm not Venezuelan. I don't live there right now. So I interviewed three guys that I used to play an online game with. Two of them still live in Caracas now. These three guys that I know, one of them Left Venezuela in 2018, he moved to the Dominican Republic, and two of them live in Caracas right now. And it was really interesting. I talked to all of them for. For over an hour each and asked them a bunch of questions about how they feel, like, what, you know, what led up to this, how they feel about what's happening right now. And it was interesting to see how unified they all are about a bunch of different aspects of this. So the general reaction from all of them to the US's actions is that they're happy. So one guy, he stuck out to me was. But they're all 26 years old, by the way. They just all happen to be 26 years old. So one of them, he said that night, he lives in Caracas. So there was, you know, you hear the, like, gunfire and, like, helicopters, the planes that were around. And his mom had come in to wake him up. Cause she had woken up from all the noise. And she said that, they're here. They're gonna bomb us. And he heard this. And I was like, were you scared? Like, how did you feel in that moment? He was like, honestly, I felt happy because I knew that the US Was coming. I was betting on the US Taking some sort of action. And I felt happy that this was happening. And I was like, wow, in that moment, that feels so intense. That's your initial reaction. And from one of the others, he said, for years, I've dreamed of help from the US Here in Venezuela, because Venezuelans have tried everything to get rid of the Chavista regime. We've held presidential elections, demonstrations, national strikes, dialogues, among other things, and nothing works. So they're all. And then the friend that moved to the doctor, he had a similar reaction of just feeling positively about it.

Doug (17:22)

Do you know if he moved there because of what was happening in Venezuela?

Ludwig (17:25)

Yeah, exactly. That friend who left, he fled because he. His. His family was going hungry at the time. And they all said a similar story of the 2015-2017 sort of time period was the worst time period for, like, food and economic instability. I think at a certain point, there started to be, like, an underground black market for US Dollars. And that brought some aspect of economic stability that helped out. But he. During that time, he said he, his mom, his sister, and his aunt all lived in a single room, and they all worked and could barely afford to eat. He talked about he was working at a bakery at the time, and he started stealing food at work to be able to eat because he couldn't afford anything. And then just felt so guilty about it that he went to his boss and told him. And then his boss was nice and was like, I understand. Like, these are insane times, and I understand why you had to do this. He. He let him keep his job, which was. And his uncle, who had already left Venezuela years before, was willing to give him the money that was necessary to get a passport. And he described the arduous process of getting a passport in the country in, like, the last few years. It's very difficult to get one. It's very expensive. US$400 just for your passport application. And his uncle gave that to him. And he said it's still difficult to apply for because the website is constantly down. And he was awake one night, 4am playing the game we used to play, and he had finished up a match, and then he went to the website and it happened to be up, and he raced to type in all of his info, submit the payment, and then just hoped it worked, because he said a lot of the time you would submit the money or submit the application and it wouldn't get received or it wouldn't go through and you'd get rejected for your passport. He said it was sheer luck that he was able to receive his and that his whole family that still lives in Venezuela doesn't have their passports because of how difficult it is. And he hasn't been back in seven years, and he lives. And he basically rebuilt his life in the doctor because he was the only person in his family that speaks English. And he could get a job at, like, a call center doing a bunch of. He was working for, like, helping people, like, plan and book their vacations and stuff like that. So he's been in the DRF for a long time, just talking about, like, this is what my life was like beforehand. This is what my life is like now. And he was like, very pro, very pro America. Which was, you know, a little surprising because he listed all these things about he hates Trump for all these reasons. He thinks it's really fucked up the way people are, like, treated in the U.S. like, the racism that he knows about in the U.S. the deportations in the U.S. but he says he appreciated that Trump had the balls to take this action. Sure. Did you want to jump in with something?

Aiden (20:25)

I should jump in with the fact, which is around the time you're talking about this, this 2014 period, between then and 2024 to now, basically 8 million Venezuelans left the country. Like, it was a massive, massive amount of people who, searching economic opportunity or because of strife at home, left the country. It's a massive chunk of the population.

Doug (20:46)

Like a fifth of the country.

Aiden (20:47)

Yeah, yeah. Crazy number of massive. So, you know, their stories line up with those time periods. I mean, that's what people were doing.

Doug (20:54)

Yeah. It's also worth pointing out with the Elon Musk comment that you said earlier, where in February he was saying we shouldn't do regime change. A couple months later, in May of 2025, is when elections happened again in Venezuela. Maduro lost, but then just didn't give up power and use the Military to crack down. So there was. There was a shift this past year where it was just so blatant that he had ignored all democratic process. I think that, like, kicked off a lot of people's justification of this type of thing. In the US's side. Yeah, the.

Ludwig (21:24)

The other thing that was common across the. The two that live in Venezuela especially, but they were talking about the current status of waiting and feeling nervous right now. Like, nobody is out in the streets celebrating and there's still like, a huge police presence out.

Doug (21:38)

Dude, that's the thing. It's the same regime. It just doesn't have.

Ludwig (21:42)

Nobody feels safe enough to go out and, like, be excited about anything because it's. The regime is still in charge. No one knows what the US is like, next action really is. There's a feeling of, like, insecurity. Like, people are hopeful and happy Maduro is gone.

Aiden (21:56)

Yeah.

Ludwig (21:57)

But not, like, not confident in, like, what the next steps will be. And I asked them too. Cause it's so blatantly from a U.S. perspective. Right. A large portion of this is blatantly about the oil. And I was like, how do you feel about the idea of us doing this because of a resource like us taking something that is Venezuela's or at least the narrative that we're doing that? And for the friend that lived in the doctor, he was interesting. He was pretty extreme about it where he said that is a small price to pay for, like, for freedom or the potential of freedom down the line. And also argued that he thinks the current government basically stole the oil. So there used to be, like, American companies involved in Venezuelan oil production. Right. And instead of, like, when they nationalized everything, they didn't, like, buy the companies out or something like that. They just took the oil back and, like, regained control of it. And then because of that, it created an environment where nobody wanted to provide help or investment from outside of the country down the line because they're like, well, they could just take it over again. Why would I put any investment into it? And he called Maduro a thief for doing that. And so he was pretty aggressive in his. In his stance. For the other two, they were less in the camp of, like, this is a price, and more in the camp of if they. They both said they fully. This is crazy. They both said this. The two that live in Caucasus, they both said they fully trust Trump and the US government to make the right decisions regarding the resource in the future and think that Venezuela will see the appropriate benefit, but acknowledge that that isn't a sure thing and that they are basically hoping for the best and that the trade off or the gamble of where they're at is like, it's worth the chance. That was the constant thing between all of them is like. And I asked also, was there any hope from your perspective of this changing by just the work of Venezuelans that live in the country or what you could do on their own and without foreign intervention of any kind? And they all said no. They all said no because after the last election, the last election really destroyed the last of the hope that they all had for change coming on its own. And they all mentioned, they all mentioned being like an unarmed populace against a government that have all of the power and they've not allowed them to use the electoral system to create any change. And they can't speak out the government because the. Over the past decade they've gotten increasingly hardcore about cracking down on anyone speaking out against the current regime. And that's the reason the two of them. So my friend that lives in the doctor his gamertag's knocked and he's like, you can post my interview. You can. So I'm gonna redo it with him so we can like share his perspective on everything, okay? But the other two wanted to remain completely anonymous. The two that live in the country. And it's because they like, any inkling of you getting political and speaking out against the current regime right now can mean you just get taken and jailed and you can be jailed for a maximum of 30 years for speaking out against the current regime. The other thing that I asked them was from a, from an American perspective or from a global perspective, right? It's not just about the morality of doing this, it's about the consequences. So when you look at a situation like Libya where like we removed, we killed Gaddafi and then the vacuum of power that was left in the place, like left, you could argue in many ways, left Libya in a worse situation. Gaddafi, famously shitty guy, same thing with Saddam Hussein, right? Horrific record of human rights. But the consequences of taking over or removing that person from power ended up having a lot of consequences for those people. And Nakt said he was so funny. He said he laughed and he said it fucking sucks. We're between the wall and the sword. It's like we have to get freedom at some point or maybe we end up like North Korea and would rather take any other option and have to take any window of opportunity that we get to be free from this regime.

Doug (26:23)

Yoga. This is super interesting.

Aiden (26:24)

This is very interesting, dude.

Ludwig (26:26)

It was some of the Most insane shit, man. It was the quote about Panama. So one of the guys said, the average American should consider what happened in Panama. I feel that our case is very similar to theirs. Where would Panama be today if the US hadn't intervened in that country? It would probably be another Cuba. So I prefer to take the risk and be a free country rather than continue with this type of government where there is no prosperity. That's why 8 million Venezuelans have emigrated to all parts of the world. And I wanted to ask too, how does this regime impact your life personally? How does it actually affect you? The really common things was the escalation and restrictions around free speech and expression, how that's gotten significantly worse over time. And it was a tiptoeing thing of, first they started getting rid of or attacking certain news stations. You couldn't say these types of things. And then all the way to a more recent law passed in like 2023, where they like outright outlawed criticism of the current regime, even though it says in the Constitution they're supposed to have freedom of speech. And that's the law that allows them to lock you up for like 20 or 30.

Doug (27:37)

Don't allow the Constitution to have free speech, then it doesn't count anyway.

Ludwig (27:41)

It doesn't count anyway. They figured out a loophole and they said that that has been a build where that's gotten like significantly worse over time. And then a general economic disaster where you're realistically looking at a salary of between 100, I think they said 150 and 300 US dollars a month if you have like a normal job. And then if you're, if you're lucky and you're college educated, you might be able to land a job that pays you like 500 to 1,000 US dollars a month. But you need some sort of government connection to be able to land that job. My one friend said, quote, you could be fucking Stephen Hawking, but if you don't have a connection, it doesn't matter. And I also wanted them to break down, like, what this remaining support looks like for Maduro, because from what I've heard, there's no, you know, there's no huge demonstrations in this, in the streets begging for Maduro to be given back either. Right, right. And I was like, if you can take your best guess at what the percentage breakdown is in the country right now for the two that live there, what would it be like from your, from your neighbors? And they both said between like 85 and 75%. I heard 80 people, people like want the regime gone Maduro out. And then the remaining like 15 to 25 that support Maduro are very likely to be people that work or tie or their work is tied to the government. Part of that, they like directly benefit from the current regime being in charge still. And those are the people they said that are like the. The holdouts. And I all. And then the other things or other problems. They mentioned a lot of issues with like, power going out, Internet going out, issues with like water and gas, and then very specifically gas lines. So I put this in the discord. My friend sent me the calendar for like, the days that you're allowed to fill up your car with gas. There's like a cap on the amount of gas that you can get at the front, fixed, like, national price, and it's based off of your like, license plate number. So you can only go and fill up like one day a week. And then you get your like, allotted max amount of gas that you can take. And they said there's these. Ever since COVID there's been these massive gas lines to fill your car. So my one friend said what him and his family do when they need gas or they have that day coming up is they go park the car at like 11pm in the gas line. Someone sleeps overnight in the car, and then they get filled up at between like 7 and 9am the next morning. And that's like what it takes to get gas.

Doug (30:13)

So this calendar is saying based on your license plate number, here is the day that you get to go to the gas station. Yeah, that's wild.

Ludwig (30:21)

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Doug (30:23)

Also wild for the country with the literal most oil reserves in the entire world.

Ludwig (30:28)

Like, and then the well.

Doug (30:31)

Yeah, which to be clear, like, you have to refine the oil, which is what the US was doing before they were instrumental in that. So that's partially why the US sanctions were so destructive, is because suddenly this, you know, fountain of money that they had couldn't be used.

Ludwig (30:45)

One of the last things I asked them all because I see a lot of like, narratives about Venezuela, because I get. I think it gets turned into a very like, left, right issue within the context of American, like, young political Americans talking online. Right. And people will talk a lot about US sanctions being one of the major reasons the country is in the current place that it is in. Like, the sanctions have made things so much worse than anything the Maduro regime has done. I asked them all point blank, like, what do you, what do you guys think of that? Like, if I was to tell you Like US Sanctions are doing the majority of the damage here or significant part of this. And the one living in Caracas said this is completely false. The sanctions are directed at specific government officials, not the country as a whole. Venezuela has been selling oil to whomever it wanted for a long time, until a few months ago when the situation became critical. The rulers have the luxury of importing whatever they want anywhere in the world, from luxury cars to clothing and other luxury goods, while the people are suffering from shortages. The sanctions are a terrible excuse for the government's mismanagement.

Aiden (31:46)

Dude, I'm glad you said that. I agree. That's so hard. No other country under sanctions has found it hard to say, sell oil. They just. The oil is such a commodity worldwide.

Ludwig (31:53)

Yeah.

Aiden (31:54)

You found a way to sell it.

Doug (31:56)

China is openly partnered with them to buy your oil.

Aiden (31:59)

Yeah, yeah.

Ludwig (32:02)

And then the other knocked, living in, the doctor said, he. He almost like stopped me from answering the question. And he said, it's a complete lie, Just a lie to cover up what they're doing. It was. It's mostly to do like, the worst effects mostly have to do with inflation. It was going to explode at some point. And then he said, of course the US Sanctions didn't help.

Aiden (32:23)

Right.

Ludwig (32:23)

He's like, but. And then the last person who lives in Caracas said something similar, which is that the sanctions don't help, but are not nearly the cause nor the core reason for anything that is going on.

Aiden (32:35)

There's a deep level of corruption. Man, I saw a great story. This is from journalists in Venezuela who had to hide because they were again, under that law, about to be arrested. Maduro announced, hey, everyone who's poor is struggling. We're going to do this clap program where everybody gets Venezuelan, homegrown, delicious food delivered to your door or whatever. And so he announced that he's going to fund it with oil money. Well, he puts in charge of it, this guy named Alex Saab, who's the guy whose expertise is smuggling oil out of the country. That's the only thing he knows how to do. So that guy basically siphons off the entire clap program money to himself, takes a tiny fraction of it, doesn't grow it in Venezuela, goes to Mexico, buys the cheapest possible goods he can, many of which have, like lead in the milk poison, lumpy, you know, disgusting, then distributes that, then bans any social media posts showing how bad it is. Like that. That's the level of corruption they're doing. I 100% get it. Yeah, but I do. I mean, I saw. I Don't know if you have more you want to say on this, but I do want to like bring up the discussion. I think it's worth having because I've never disagreed that like, if you're from a Venezuelan pov, fuck Maduro, you'll take any hope you can get. But from a US pov, I still think this has all the signs of being. You look back on it and it was stupid. Like from our pov.

Ludwig (33:45)

Sure.

Aiden (33:45)

This is a smart idea. Stupid idea. And that's, that's my worry.

Ludwig (33:48)

I want to kind of round out this idea in a sec with, with that actually. So the, the, the last thing I want to mention, and this is because I didn't read this anywhere else, is my one friend in Caraca said there's internal speculation at the way the whole thing played out too. People basically like theorizing about the Rodriguez who like remains in power. She was the VP that like stepped up into the role. So people are suspecting that because she was gone, she said in Venezuela. I'd heard this as well. This part is that because she was gone in Russia at the time of the attack, that she was like the person who had intentionally coordinated for the timing or this to be the case. Like was there insider informant? He said that there's kind of an internal battle within the Maduro government that people know about between her and Dios Daro Cabello, who's the Minister of the Interior of Justice and Peace, and that he is like low key, Maduro's right hand man internally. And within the Maduro government there's sort of like two factions of people who are behind him and the influence that he has and then the people that are behind her and the influence that she has and that she was hoping. There's speculation within Venezuela that she was hoping that he would be killed in the raid and that she would have like a clearer path to like uncontested power after Maduro is gone.

Aiden (35:21)

A problem in another country. And now and you're like, we're running it. This is now your problem that you are inheriting as a nation.

Ludwig (35:26)

Yeah.

Aiden (35:26)

Like, okay, if there's power struggles and factionalism that could divide, you know what I'm saying? Like that now the pressure builds to do more intervention and do more.

Ludwig (35:34)

Right, Exactly.

Aiden (35:35)

That's what I'm saying. That's, that's my biggest worry on this.

Ludwig (35:37)

And the intervention doesn't seem that solid right now. Like even these people who are happy about it don't really understand what the next steps or The US is like next actions are. And this kind of how I wanted to tie this together, right, is I think from an American, like political perspective when people talk about these things online and they pick their political side or whatever is that they. There's this weird idea that you need to like, if you're anti, like American imperialism, that you need to like somehow get in the camp of like validating like Maduro and like saying that it wasn't that bad there. And it's like, I talk to all these guys, it's fucking bad. It's like for it to be so bad. The one thing they universally agree on is that whatever chance there is at gaining freedom, the current situation is so untenable that we need to take whatever we can get to get out of this spot and we're willing to take the risk to do so. That's what they all agree on. And I think you can. I feel like it is okay to have like a multifaceted opinion of. I don't think I'm still anti interventionist. I think there's a broader ethical problem of like, if you have the power to do well by people, like, should you use it or whatever. I, in the camp, I am still in the camp of I do not think the US should have unilaterally made this decision and taken this action because of the risks that it has represented through other similar situations and risks that we've taken in the past. Right. That's where I fall. But from a Venezuelan pov, it doesn't mean that Maduro is like a good guy and everything was like secretly CIA information as to like, why, why it's all been a cover up the entire time and Venezuela's perfectly fine. No, things are fucked up, dude. And if it's. I want people to understand that you can have like complex nuanced opinions about these things. And there doesn't just have to be a good guy on one side and a bad guy on the other side. Shit is complicated. And if you just talk. That's why I wanted to talk to people who fucking live there, man, and fucking live this shit and ask them what they think the benefits and the risks are. And you can still have a complicated feeling and opinion about all this. Do you get what I fucking mean?

Aiden (37:53)

Yeah, I get you, bro.

Doug (37:53)

Yeah.

Aiden (37:54)

No, it's happening in Iran right now where it's like there's big protests against the Ayatollah and there's people who are like not, you know, I'm talking to people who have family in Iran and the people are telling me like, well, it's probably a CIA color revolution. And I'm like, bro, the currency has evaporated. People are fucking upset. There they are. They have been deeply upset for the idea that anyone protesting there is part of a. You know, it's like when people say. On the flip side, when they're like, any protest against Trump that's funded by Soros, it's the same kind of thing. It's like you just is straw manning all.

Ludwig (38:24)

Any.

Aiden (38:25)

I don't know. It does frustrate me. I'm glad you said that. But. Okay, can we pull this article up? Because I, you know, I want to bring it back a little bit because I still think, you know, Maduro being gone does not. This is after Maduro being gone. Fear grips. Caracas is a new wave of oppressions unleashing Venezuela. There's no evidence that I'm seeing right now that Maduro being gone has changed anything about the regime's total control.

Ludwig (38:45)

Yeah.

Aiden (38:45)

Or like this person's quality of life or. I understand that.

Doug (38:49)

So counterpoint, right. The argument would be that now that we've proven we'll just sneak in there and kidnap your president, you need to align with American values, which probably the number one value is we want your oil. But even then there's. I think there's enough outrage about the idea of like this completely authoritarian dictator that, that they would have to meet somewhere in the middle between where they have been 4, 5, 10, 15 years and let's say what American democratic systems would be. That's the counterargument. Right. It's like, it's not like we did not go in, kidnap Maduro and leave. The idea is like it's a message saying, we'll do it again. It's Donald Trump in the office. Who fucking knows what happened. Right? And like, she, Rodriguez is now president going, they might kidnap me randomly, you.

Aiden (39:36)

Know, but it sounds like, can you pull this map? What it sounds like to me is that the real implicit threat is, hey, we're going to set up at these gigantic oil fields which are far from the city.

Ludwig (39:46)

Yeah.

Aiden (39:46)

We're going to get all our shit back with Exxon and Chevron and just don't get, like, don't get in the.

Doug (39:54)

Way of the oil.

Aiden (39:54)

Just keep things running, you know, keep. If you got a repressed journalist on it, fucking like. It's not. It does not feel like, hey, we're gonna really try to build this country up.

Ludwig (40:03)

That's kind of my under. That's my feeling is like, at this current time, there's nothing telling me that the stick that Trump has is gonna be used to bring in a new wave of human rights in the country. It's to get the oil access back, and you can keep doing what you want to do.

Aiden (40:23)

We just need to get in our way. And that's the vibe I get. Yeah. So I'm.

Doug (40:26)

Yeah.

Ludwig (40:26)

And that makes me feel shitty, too, because it's like even the. Even the most hopeful version of how this ends up, the hopes that these people I'm fucking interviewing have, like, that, that's not going to play out. And I want. I want them to be happy and live fruitful lives and for my one friend not to be able to go home again.

Aiden (40:48)

Right.

Ludwig (40:48)

You know, he was talking about how if you leave the country for more than a year, if you've been gone for more than a year and then come back, you're automatically under suspicion and have, like, higher likelihood to be, like, questioned or imprisoned when you attempt to return. And that's the reason that one of the reasons that he hasn't gone back is because he's fearful of being detained upon coming back. And this increases in likelihood, like, the more, like, publicly political you are, which he. He isn't. But he said he doesn't want to take the risk. He hasn't seen his family in seven years.

Doug (41:20)

Oh, my God, what an awful situation.

Ludwig (41:24)

Jesus. And it's like. Imagine that it's like this happens and you have this glimmer of hope, and then it's just nothing changes. I don't know what'll happen. Right. But it's the predictions episode and we have to put something together.

Aiden (41:36)

Yeah.

Doug (41:38)

That is.

Aiden (41:38)

I was going to hear your prediction.

Doug (41:40)

Okay. At the risk of sounding callous, how do we turn this into a. I mean, I think one that I was debating, which I think is interesting, is, does the US either force a new democratic election to say the regime has to elect somebody, or do military troops enter Venezuela? Because I think the easy thing right now is for the Trump administration to go, we're in and we're out, oil's going to flow again, and we've, you know, we've stopped the dictator, blah, blah, blah. And that. That's. That's an outcome, I guess. And another would be like, they're still not playing ball, so we're going to send in just a few troops, and then six months later, just a few more. Right.

Aiden (42:15)

And that's what happened in the past. So, like.

Ludwig (42:16)

Yeah.

Doug (42:17)

So.

Ludwig (42:18)

Okay. I don't know. That's a prediction. My prediction is no troops sent in. The current government stays. They live under the stick. We get access to oil, but nothing changes. That's my, I think that's the most likely.

Aiden (42:32)

I have a similar prediction, except that the oil is much, much more difficult. They realize how expensive it is.

Ludwig (42:39)

Yeah.

Aiden (42:39)

Companies don't want to invest as much as they want. There's a risk that at any moment it could get seized again or like there's a problem where things backsliding. And I think there's going to be like guerrilla groups attacking the production of oil that make it impossible. So my prediction is going to be, I think it's a bust. That's my guess. I do. Okay, corollary prediction. I didn't want to ask you guys because in the press conference there were, Trump was asked, Rubio was asked, so what about, what about Cuba? What about Colombia? And for Colombia, Trump said, you better watch his ass. And for Cuba, Rubio said, if I was a politician in Cuba, I'd be pretty royal right now.

Doug (43:12)

Oh, my God.

Aiden (43:12)

So the idea is like, is this, is this phase one? Do you guys, is there a prediction here that. Is this phase one on a Aladdam. I mean, look, he did say Don Row doctrine.

Ludwig (43:23)

Why don't we roll this in? There's another, there's a card in here. It says Greenland on it.

Aiden (43:26)

Okay, let's bring it up.

Ludwig (43:27)

So why don't, why don't we just roll this kind of into, into one prediction?

Doug (43:31)

Do we have a prediction? Do we kidnap another?

Ludwig (43:33)

Do we think the U.S. do we think the U.S. is substantially intervenes in another country like, like this year? Like, it's something on this level where like we attempt to like take over Greenland or, or arrest like the president of Cuba or something like that. Do we think that's going to happen?

Aiden (43:51)

Yes.

Doug (43:53)

You think we will?

Aiden (43:54)

Dude, I would have said I'm right.

Ludwig (43:57)

Us.

Doug (43:58)

You have to agree. We could, we could do two thirds, see how we feel about it. Okay, go ahead.

Aiden (44:02)

I'm going to make my case.

Doug (44:02)

Ok.

Aiden (44:03)

I, you know, from, from the beginning of Trump, I said there's a, there's a risk on, on Greenland because he talks about it in a more concrete way. In recent days, Stephen Miller and Trump have both been out there saying verbatim, we have the right and the ability to use military force on Greenland to make it part of America.

Ludwig (44:24)

Stephen Miller hops on cnn, he starts slanging dick, says that we're, says that we're going to do it. His wife's making jokes about it on Twitter.

Doug (44:33)

Wait, so how do the. How does rights work? I. So you can just have the right to something. What exactly qualifies? Here's the question. I actually wasn't.

Aiden (44:40)

They asked Stephen Miller, can you rule out that US Is going to take Greenland by force? He says, quote, greenland should be part of the US by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US Is the real power of NATO. Nobody's going to fight the US Militarily over Greenland. And he goes on, and they're being so specific. And at some point, you have to be like, when someone tells you exactly what they're going to do over and over, you have to take their word at it. I am of the opinion, as crazy as it sounds, because this is the biggest thing on our list. We have a lot of things. If this happened, that is the end of NATO. That is a. Like a military kind of standoff between Europe and America. I mean, it is a crazy thing, and I think it is. It's shocking to say, but I feel like it's more than 50, which is.

Doug (45:26)

Do you mean Greenland specifically? Or any country that we sort of, like, take another leadership or.

Aiden (45:30)

If I'm saying any country, I feel like I take those odds any day.

Ludwig (45:33)

Yeah.

Aiden (45:34)

But Greenland specifically, I think is over 50. So I would take that. I'm gonna say this for this year, which is a great.

Doug (45:38)

Here's why I said, let's put that as one of our predictions, because I would love for that to be wrong. And we donate to charity. Right. Each. We're gonna come up with 10 predictions today. Each one we get wrong at the end of the year, we'll donate 5,000 to charity per each one. And I will feel great without losing this.

Ludwig (45:53)

I would love to feel great. I would love to lose.

Aiden (45:56)

I agree.

Doug (45:56)

Oh, this is.

Aiden (45:58)

I mean, you know, this is a truly crazy thing. This would be a while. Yeah, but. But I just can't. Like, they're not even being like, a. Maybe everyone in the administration is now saying, like, we deserve Greenland. We have the right to it. It is in our sphere of influence. And they're adding the, like, Russia and China national security threat. Like, they're setting all the ground to do it. So I can't be like, well, it's not. I mean, it's going to be crazy. That's. I feel like I'd be foolish.

Doug (46:23)

No, I mean, look, the legitimate. The likelihood went way up after we kidnapped the president of Venezuela. To be clear, we are not at war with Venezuela. And we sent troops in and just.

Aiden (46:33)

Took the President like so I don't know. That's my honest. This. We're doing this early, I guess.

Doug (46:40)

I'm glad.

Aiden (46:40)

But this is the scariest thing to me because you know, there's like this US NATO, Europe Friendship alliance that obviously has been a little strained under Trump, but it's like has kind of underpinned the security apparatus of the world post World War II. I feel like this is the, this happens, it's the end of that in a concrete way. I don't know. It's crazy.

Ludwig (47:00)

It's a. Yeah, I mean I kind of agree with you with this. It's not just this. It's a bunch of events over the past few years. Right. But it does. I've been having this feeling of where we're spiral, spiraling towards a new.

Aiden (47:16)

World.

Ludwig (47:17)

Order that is primarily enforced by like these three powers, like acts of aggression. And you can say that it was always that way or something. But I think there is a clear escalation in the past, like two to three.

Aiden (47:28)

I mean you can just look at how different even Iraq was to this where even if it's pretense, Right. The US went and had everyone agree except for France who stood out. But like they, they had this coalition, they had this ostensible reason which was WMDs. They had to like sell to the public. They had to go to Congress, Congress approved it. Like this time we just got rid of, we got rid of the Congress part, we got rid of the allies part and we got rid of the pretense.

Doug (47:51)

Yeah.

Ludwig (47:52)

And now Stephen Miller just swags out.

Aiden (47:53)

On cnn like just saying that, yeah, we can do it. So I don't know, I'm going to shuffle these up and go to a different one because we talked a lot about geopolitics and I want to get a different prediction. Maybe we'll get the faker one.

Ludwig (48:07)

We'd love that one.

Aiden (48:08)

Oh my God. Okay.

Doug (48:09)

Is it lighter? Is it light hearted? See counter strike two markets. Well, how we feel, boys? We want to throw down 5k.

Ludwig (48:18)

I hate to be the two time expert. I hate to be the two Time Expert. Okay, I'm going to wait. This is going to go down 100%. This is the lemonade stand official because what ended up happening, the CS market like exploded. As in down. It exploded down. And then there was a rebound also, as I predicted.

Aiden (48:41)

Yeah.

Ludwig (48:41)

But then it just, the rebound leveled out again and we're just back in this gully where it sat for like the past couple months. And I Do not think anything is going to significantly change that within the next year. I don't think this market is going to increase a bunch. I think it's basically going to stay at the bottom of this gully for the rest of the year.

Doug (49:02)

Do we want to peg it to something and just say your CSGO portfolio is down by the end of the year?

Ludwig (49:08)

Oh, like we just look.

Doug (49:09)

Which is funny because that way if it goes down, you also have to pay 5,000 in charity and we just kick you while you're down. Okay, yeah, that's great.

Ludwig (49:16)

If it goes, I'll have to pay $5,000.

Doug (49:18)

Fine.

Ludwig (49:18)

So you can sell in the knives.

Doug (49:20)

I'll sell.

Ludwig (49:22)

I'm saying it'll go down.

Aiden (49:24)

All right.

Doug (49:25)

All right. We've got three. Are we in agreement? Because I think we had two or three on Venezuela. Our prediction is US troops are not going to enter Venezuela. Boots on the ground, but the current regime does not change and we back.

Ludwig (49:35)

Out on the oil as well. Is that what you're saying?

Aiden (49:38)

I think that's the broad prediction.

Ludwig (49:39)

Okay.

Doug (49:40)

That's the broad one. Oil.

Aiden (49:41)

The oil stuff is tbd.

Ludwig (49:42)

Okay.

Aiden (49:42)

Okay.

Ludwig (49:44)

I want to posture you guys a scenario. Say you work in some large bureaucratic institution. The boss sends you an email. He sends you a bloated PDF. It's a gigantic file. And he says you got to go through this and you got to start taking out information covering bits and pieces of it in black boxes. And this is going to take hours. And it's a PDF, so it's challenging to edit.

Doug (50:08)

Right.

Ludwig (50:10)

But there's one piece of software I know of that will get the job done. Adobe Acrobat Studio. Easy to edit. PDFs make this process a breeze. Doesn't that sound great?

Aiden (50:21)

That sounds super awesome.

Ludwig (50:22)

I know, I know. I was. I've just been thinking about it and it was like if. What a daunting task it would be to. To cover up so much information.

Doug (50:31)

Don't even do it well. Right. It's like, that's a pro. Somebody else will just undo it at the end.

Ludwig (50:36)

It's to the room software to do it with.

Aiden (50:39)

Yeah.

Ludwig (50:39)

So you could learn more about editing your PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Studio at adobe.com/, do that with Acrobat.

Aiden (50:46)

Incredibly useful.

Doug (50:47)

I have an embarrassing admission. I didn't know that you had to file taxes until I was age 24. I was just working at a company out of college unironically. This is not a joke. And I did not know you had to pay taxes until somebody casually mentioned it at the water cooler. And I was like, we heard about that.

Aiden (51:02)

24 is a little late. But at 21 I had the same problem and I went to a just this random guy who called himself the tax Ninja. I had to skateboard across town. It did not go well. And so next year I used TurboTax and it actually went quite well.

Ludwig (51:15)

When I was a kid, I just went to TurboTax.

Doug (51:17)

I skipped a random guy for a couple years early.

Ludwig (51:22)

TurboTax will do your taxes for just $150 all in. If you didn't file with a TurboTax expert last year, just file by February 28th.

Doug (51:30)

You can meet in person at one of TurboTax's new State of the art locations or connect online. And let me tell you, talking to somebody in person about taxes, it's pretty comforting. It's, it's really great because I get so confused by this stuff normally.

Ludwig (51:40)

But maybe find that person at a reliable, you know, institution rather than presumably the alleyway in San Francisco.

Aiden (51:47)

He had a sword.

Doug (51:51)

So if you're ready to get taxes off your plate, visit turbotax.com local to book an appointment with a local expert who can file for you for just $150. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Aiden (52:06)

Don't know the difference between matte paint.

Ludwig (52:08)

Finish and satin or what that clunking.

Aiden (52:11)

Sound from your dryer is.

Doug (52:13)

With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one.

Ludwig (52:17)

You can hire top rated pros, see.

Aiden (52:19)

Price estimates and read reviews all on.

Doug (52:22)

The app download today.

Aiden (52:25)

Okay, next topic. Car. Right? We can some long or short? All right, just a broad topic. 2026. You got any predictions around China? Do you have anything on China or.

Doug (52:35)

They're good.

Aiden (52:36)

You think they're.

Ludwig (52:38)

I think that they make. I think they will send me a Xiaomi Su dude.

Aiden (52:43)

God willing, God will plan to visit China this year as part of our Patreon goal.

Doug (52:47)

Ooh, do we get arrested? Do we get arrested?

Ludwig (52:51)

Here's my prediction which as a reminder.

Doug (52:53)

Is in about two months we'll be going to China.

Ludwig (52:54)

When we get there, the border security is going to search Adriax phone and they're going to see all of the videos he's made about Taiwan is its own independent nation and he's never going to come back. That's what's going to happen. Put that one down.

Aiden (53:12)

Okay, yes or no? Then one question for China. It's the big one of the year. People have been saying with this Venezuela thing and with this Don Row doctrine in the new order that perhaps China will finally get off the pot. They'll move on Taiwan.

Doug (53:26)

Oh, God.

Aiden (53:27)

Is there a yes or no on this? That my prediction, I'll vote for no. I think it's probably not gonna happen this year because you can always take the bet against it. They just don't seem to be.

Ludwig (53:34)

I'm gonna go now as well, but.

Doug (53:35)

I would be no.

Aiden (53:36)

Okay, let's just say no.

Ludwig (53:37)

Let's say, let's say China will not.

Aiden (53:39)

China will not make a military move on Taiwan this year. Again, I, in my heart of hearts, you got to trust me when they say things. They're going to do something eventually because they say it every year. Ji Jinping's opening address this year was we will reunify Taiwan. But he's done that a lot of years in a row. I don't know.

Ludwig (53:54)

Feels like, it just feels like more of a 2028 thing, you know? Don't you get that?

Doug (53:58)

Yeah, he's waiting for an election year. Yeah. Okay, prediction for. I'm changing because I wrote Chinese. TSA does an Atriot cavity search. I will change it to make a two parter. Make it a two parter.

Ludwig (54:11)

If either thing happens, the prediction, either.

Aiden (54:13)

One will go to charity. Okay, here I'm. Let me do a reshuffle here because I already know the next one. I want to be random. Boom.

Doug (54:21)

Give me AI markets. I wanna talk about.

Aiden (54:23)

Oh, that was actually the next one. Let's just do that. That was actually the next one and then I moved it. AI markets.

Doug (54:28)

Okay. I'm gonna say a little counterpoint shocker. I don't think the AI bubble is gonna pop.

Aiden (54:34)

Okay. No, I'm interested.

Doug (54:35)

But here, here's some reasons why I think that. And I actually have been listening to a lot of different figures across tech talk about this.

Aiden (54:41)

Yeah.

Doug (54:42)

I think there's a general consensus that there is one. A weird monetary bubble of AI and tech companies feeding money, circle jerk type things. I think there's definitely the idea that a lot of companies are overvalued and there's a lot of VC money that's overvaluing things. For example, one of the executives, Mira Muradi from OpenAI, she leaves, she says, I'm going to start my own AI company and immediately raise $1 billion in capital or like has a billion dollar value product.

Aiden (55:06)

No. Yeah. Right.

Doug (55:07)

And so there's. There's clearly signs of a bubble. And I would argue that we are seeing the, I don't know, shimmer of a bubble around LLMs, which is that the average person listening, even if you're not technically inclined, you have seen AI chatbots jammed into fucking everything, right? Microsoft is trying to get you to use AI in, in Word or whatever.

Aiden (55:28)

Microsoft Office renamed themselves to Microsoft Copilot Assistant 365 or whatever. Yeah, that's. This just happened. They're changing the name of the Office365 to Copilot.

Doug (55:39)

It's crazy. That's like the. One of the most important pactful software of all time.

Aiden (55:44)

Desperately. Yeah.

Doug (55:46)

Microsoft Office is just an unbelievable money printer for decades now and they're so, you know, they're trying to jam it everything. Most people's experience of customer service across any company has gotten worse in general. There's just this feeling of like companies aren't making money. So a couple counterpoints to this general argument and I'll see you guys think one with large. Oh, and then a critical thing is many AI researchers and AI companies, including people like Demis Hassabis who leads DeepMind and Ilya Sutkever who are two of the most the people you really trust, right? They're not just salesmen. Both of them are like we are seeing diminishing returns. This idea of we just spend more money every year on CapEx for AI, it's not getting the same amount of return. You're not going to see exponential change or growth anymore. And we need to kind of do a couple years of fundamental research to really build intelligence. These things aren't getting smarter in the ways that we need. So all that's very valid. But in terms of like the bubble popping, the main companies that are benefiting from this right now are the Max 7 giant tech companies, right? And they are not only profitable, they're more profitable than ever. Right? This is not like the 2000 tech bubble or even the 2008 housing bubble where people were buying houses they couldn't afford. Google stock price is higher than ever and they are making more money than ever. Same with Microsoft, same with Meta. So all of the, I mean Nvidia is kind of their own thing, obviously, but. But obviously making a shit ton of money. So even if, let's say the bubble pops and the world collectively goes, the AI build out is not worth it. Those companies are fine and they've said as much. Demis did an interview like a few weeks ago where he's basically like, look, we're in a position where if the hype around LLMs dies down, we have all of the Google products, right? Like we can enhance them with AI. And if you think about all the places where people are really benefiting from AI, for example, Microsoft, I hear almost nobody talk positively about Microsoft's AI products. Even if all of those fail, they will just keep being Microsoft and make.

Ludwig (57:38)

A billion fucking dollars prediction Google will collapse in 60 days.

Doug (57:45)

No, Google is, I think they're such a strong bunch. And then a couple other very quick things. Robotics is continuing to accelerate, look really exciting. Science and medicine is accelerating and looking really, really exciting. Self driving cars is going to be a huge deal and I think we'll continue to be really, really successful. So even if you hate chatbots, and in particular I think one of the stupidest things is image generation and video generation, song generation, like Meta. Meta Instagram reels is just full of AI slop now. It's ridiculous. So I don't think anybody's stoked about that. But I think the broader ecosystem, both the company revenues and the amount of products that are still really advancing in ways that are meaningful to people, including coding, is just continuing to be fucking incredible. And even chatbots, there's an argument that the reason it feels so shitty to use these AI products that everybody's jamming on you is because right now they're just slapping them on top of their existing products. Once there's deeper integration that's more specialized for fields that's actually going to be impactful. So I'm not going to sit here and say with 100% certain that the bubble will not pop, but I actually think the odds are more that it will not pop. I think you might see certain companies fail of like VCs, stop funding individual companies that clearly didn't deserve a billion dollars or specifically Meta, who is not looking very good. I don't think in terms of their AI products are fucking slop. Like it's just, it's slop products. And so they might pop.

Aiden (59:10)

They got a 26 year old in charge that people don't seem to like.

Doug (59:13)

Yeah. And you know, LeCun just left who was like the longtime researcher and shit on the way out talk some shit. He was like the guy now in charge of meta AI is inexperienced, doesn't.

Ludwig (59:21)

Know research like, like, sorry, he's talking shit on the kid that got bought out of that.

Aiden (59:25)

He's like, he's like a. I don't know how old he is, like 50 something, 60 something. Yeah, he's like a 30 year AI researcher with deep, deep knowledge and they put him under a 26 year old with no real.

Doug (59:34)

If you pull this up, quick story because it's funny little drama. Meta for a long time had Yan Lecun, who is this phenomenally influential. He won the turing award.

Ludwig (59:43)

Yeah.

Aiden (59:44)

65 years old.

Doug (59:45)

65. And he's done all this research for AI, is one of the godfathers of AI. He's been in charge of Meta. Meta wants to accelerate, so they bring in Andrew. Oh my God, what's his last name? I'm blanking.

Aiden (59:56)

His name's not Andrew. You just threw me off. I knew his name and then you just said Andrew.

Ludwig (59:59)

Scale.

Doug (59:59)

Scale AI leader Alexander Wang. Alexander, there we go. Alexander Wang. So Alexander Wang, who leads Scale AI was acquired by Meta and the idea was like, here's this young upstart who's crushing it. Alexander Wang is going to lead everything puts Alexander Wang, this 26 year old who by the way, his entire. He didn't do research. They just labeled data.

Ludwig (60:18)

He's 29.

Aiden (60:19)

He's 29 now. I think he was. Well, he was younger. He's like 27 when they got him, I swear to God, it was like a really insane. And yeah, you're saying you didn't do research.

Doug (60:26)

His company labeled data.

Aiden (60:28)

Labeled data.

Doug (60:29)

Which is.

Aiden (60:29)

Which is useful, but not.

Doug (60:31)

Yeah, it's not. It's not foundational. So Mark Zuckerberg hired this guy for tens of what, 16 billion. I forget what they paid for scale AI and brought him in and put him above Yan Lecun, who there's criticism about Yan, to be clear, but Yan finally just left. Yeah, like a few weeks ago. People have been leaving, people have been leaving and he basically, now that he's out, is just talking shit about Alexander and saying this kid is inexperienced, he does not know what he's doing, he doesn't know the research side of things, he doesn't know how to prep things for research. So just talking tons of shit. I think Meta is not looking real good, but broadly as a market, I don't think it's going to collapse in the way that people are fantasizing about, because there's many unlikable things about AI that are really shoved in your face. What do you think?

Ludwig (61:15)

Can I pitch something here? I agree with, I think pretty much everything you said. I want to toss another variable in that assures me that I think it will not pop it. The Fed chair is going to change this year and they're going to. They're going to lower the rates. And I do not think in the first year of rock bottom interest rates are we going to experience a stock market crash. I think, I think, I think that the gravy train is going to keep going for a little bit.

Doug (61:44)

We could peg this to something. The average MAG7 stock price is higher at the end of 2026 than at the beginning.

Aiden (61:50)

Well, let me, let me talk to your points real quick because I think it's really interesting and I had a take on this too. Overall, I do agree with almost everything you said, especially a line you had in the middle about robotics and energy. One of my themes, I was going to say is like this is the year of the real in that I think we're seeing a shift from a lot of investment in the digital side to a lot of investment in the energy side.

Doug (62:11)

Yes.

Aiden (62:11)

Commodity side and the production side. Like that of course is seeing like a huge boom to support this. You mentioned things about revenues. My one concern and I don't know, nobody knows when a bubble is going to pop. I think a lot of people are noticing that this feels bubbly and there's like a little bit over excess. But we don't know. It could go on for fucking ever. I don't know. What I want to say is at the heart, the deep, disgusting, dark heart of this thing is OpenAI. The problem is OpenAI doesn't have the money. Google has the money, Nvidia has the money, Meta has the money, Microsoft has the money. OpenAI has no fucking money. And they've made trillions in promises. And so that if it were to fail, if there were to be a problem, there would be a rot that spreads and causes a short term dot com style bubble, but still a long term AI buildup which I believe it's going to come from OpenAI. I don't know if it'll happen, but I think that was one thing I didn't think was mentioned. Again, all these circular things come back like Oracle has the big build out, they're making real money, but that real money comes back to OpenAI's demand. That's giving them $500 billion to build something.

Doug (63:12)

Yeah, so that's a fair point, I think you could say. So again, the argument of Google or Microsoft making this money underneath the AI craze doesn't apply to OpenAI and Anthropic. These are the two most notable labs and that's I think an argument. But I still feel even if OpenAI ends up struggling this year, I think the broader ecosystem of AI is going to keep accelerating dramatically and that would be again a single point of failure, but not a like system wide collapse. I don't think they're underpinning the whole broader market.

Aiden (63:41)

I guess the big question I just, it just if you really look at the web of connections, a lot of things come back to open AI and the amount of money is staggering. So I don't know but that's what.

Doug (63:50)

I would have said until this year where now Google is building these massive data centers where Microsoft's building or meta's building data centers. Right. They're not I don't think the linchpin in the way they were three years ago. And I think if you just suddenly pulled OpenAI out of the market, people would flood to these other chat bots. They would FL like companies would keep building.

Ludwig (64:10)

I don't think I'm naive, but I was, I'm completely on the same page as you. I kind of got the idea that OpenAI is just not as important of a figure in the space anymore for like what they have to offer. I would say people can turn to so many. Like the infrastructure that they're building just exists under so many other companies now.

Aiden (64:28)

From a consumer pov, sure they'll switch. What I'm saying is more financially a lot. Like for example Oracle stock doubled on the announcement they're going to be building a lot of data centers. They have 500 billion new things. All that money is a promise from OpenAI. If OpenAI admits, hey we can't pay these bills, we have all a lot of these bills, then not only does their financial value plummet, but the financial value of a many, many, many other entities that have all been baked on this demand, including Nvidia, including who have all baked on this data center demand from OpenAI. I think it takes a hit. That is a hit.

Doug (65:02)

But other I don't think it's cloud.

Ludwig (65:04)

I mean if the Internet, everybody else is performing well. Like if, if a company like Google is still in good shape with all of these promises of like the AI technology that they're working on, isn't there a large incentive for one of these other players like Google to just buy open AI and it's or what it has on the way down.

Aiden (65:19)

Yeah, but for pennies on the dog that's what happened in the dot com is what I'm saying. Like yeah, I guess what we're talking about is like the Internet did not lose users or slow down at all during the document. It grew every single year. But the financial stuff got way ahead.

Ludwig (65:31)

Okay.

Aiden (65:31)

I still feel like that could have happened here with, especially with open AI. Now I don't know. Now I do. One more thing I want to say though because you mentioned data centers is like we're planning for this massive data center build out but they're already right now hitting the constraints of energy. We have two data centers in Santa Clara that they can't, they've built out or they're building out and they can't turn on. They don't have the energy for it. And so I think we're going to realize oh we, we threw a ton of money a data center building out and we have not begun the larger, slower and more difficult process of acquiring the rare earth metals and the energy to get this shit going. And that's going to take more years. And I think again Wall street prices for perfection. They price for like everything going smoothly up into the right and I think it's going to be more jagged. So I don't know, I'm not saying bubble burst but I am saying, you know, soon, I mean not this year but this stuff becomes real. Like this is like a. I think the numbers don't add up to reality and they will have to, it will have to map out.

Ludwig (66:24)

So, so what's. We have to come to a prediction here.

Aiden (66:26)

I think I'm down to go this predictable. First of all charity and it's like I think overall I agree with what you're saying but I, I just wanted to note.

Doug (66:33)

Yeah, and I would agree data center build out is probably the constraint that might hit. Right. Because if that if there is something major that stops data center growth from happening in the way people are expecting, that halts everything. Yeah, but you know, for example Microsoft was going to purchase additional data center stuff and held out. So I listened to Satya Nadella interview where he talked about like we just were happy with the amount we're building out. We're building out a crazy amount of data centers. We're still going crazy. We're just not going as crazy as some of the other folks. And I think if you pull one or two players out of this system and they're plucked out, even though that would hit Oracle and Nvidia somewhat hard because they're selling the shovels here, the other tech companies would almost certainly step in. Maybe not.

Ludwig (67:13)

We'll find out.

Aiden (67:14)

I don't know either. I think it's a fair prediction.

Doug (67:16)

I just, yeah. With the amount of leaders that I've listened to taking them at their Word. And taking the general analysis of the ecosystem, I think there is less fragility now than there was a year or two ago. And I could be totally wrong. So, MAG7 prices, if you pull this up, Perry, MAX7 prices by the end of 2026 are higher on average than they were at the beginning.

Aiden (67:37)

That's a safe bet.

Doug (67:40)

Hey, if it crashes, so be it.

Aiden (67:42)

I'm like, you gotta imagine. Even if, like I, you know, I'd be a little worried on Tesla here, but I think.

Doug (67:51)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aiden (67:52)

I think Google, these are, these are.

Doug (67:55)

Not all built equal, I don't think. But we're. That's why I'm saying average.

Aiden (67:59)

Yeah, I guess. Fair. Cool. Okay, we have, we have a two parter. You guys have any predictions on. We've done this before. Russia, Ukraine.

Ludwig (68:10)

I actually do have a prediction this time.

Aiden (68:11)

Okay, throw it at me.

Ludwig (68:12)

Okay. I think because we did. We predicted this on the test episode. We did last year. The second test episode we did.

Aiden (68:20)

So naive.

Ludwig (68:21)

And you both were so fucking stupid. And who was right but Eamon Gaiman, Ayman Gaming.

Doug (68:27)

I have to rewatch the episode.

Aiden (68:28)

I feel like you were not, you're like reframing history.

Ludwig (68:31)

No, no.

Doug (68:32)

You're also implying we were like, very confident. It was like extremely crazy, for sure.

Ludwig (68:37)

And I said you, I don't think.

Doug (68:41)

But I think you almost walked out. You said, I'm not doing this podcast.

Aiden (68:44)

Yeah.

Doug (68:44)

You guys have no idea what you're talking about with Ukraine.

Ludwig (68:47)

My, my general impression of the war in Ukraine is that we, as we have removed support from the American side, the situation grows more and more dire for the Ukrainians and Europe is in a situation where their only real piece of leverage to get Russia to negotiate on anything is their ability to actually enter the conflict and provide actual troops or military force in a way that they seem unwilling to do. And I think they will continue to be unwilling to do. And I think this means my bold prediction this year is that the war will come to an end, but with none of the territorial concessions that Ukraine, or, sorry, the opposite of concessions, Ukraine will have to concede all of the territory that Russia is asking for. That is my unfortunate prediction because I think it's going to run out of. We're entering an era where I have no faith in the US taking a stance or backing one side of the conflict anymore.

Doug (69:55)

And I don't think we'll kidnap Putin.

Ludwig (69:57)

I don't think we'll do that. And I don't think Russia will back down. And I don't Think Europe will play the one card that they need to. That seems to be necessary to get Russia to like move the needle at all. And I'm not saying that's. I'm not here to tell you aiming gaming is not here to tell you that would be worth it. I'm not. This is just what I think is going to happen. I think the war is going to come to an end and it's going to be. Ukraine is not going to get what they want.

Doug (70:24)

I would hope it's clear at this point that these are not wishes on our part. One of our predictions is US takes Greenland. So I don't think you need to preface it too hard but what do you think? I got. I got nothing on this.

Aiden (70:35)

I want to talk about Russia real quick.

Ludwig (70:37)

Yeah.

Aiden (70:37)

In that I think you might be right in that after the fucking slog and horrible aspect of this war Russia might eke out the Donbas and a few areas they taken.

Ludwig (70:48)

Yeah.

Aiden (70:48)

And they might call it there and Putin will declare it as a win and but I do want to say if you like zoom out a bit on Russia and I'm hearing this from voices inside Russia who are hosting like anonymously on telegram but you're seeing them translated including a billionaire. This is, this has been a disaster like economically, politically and because Russia has focused all of its attention and resources on this endless multi year war, all of their overseas network has slowly but surely been knocked out including Assad in Syria, including their connections in Venezuela. Again Russia just my away from the mic they this is funny. Russia just loaned a lot of money to Venezuela that is now almost certainly not getting paid back. It was like to Maduro as part of the thing or they've given weapons that is like probably might end up seized or in the hands of Ukrainians at the end of the day like this has been a bad like Russia has slowly but surely let a ton of things slip. Inflation is still high there. They've burnt through all their gold reserves in their central bank like it is. It is bad and the consequences will continue to be felt whether or not Putin can find what he calls a win here. Now I think the ideal world would be Ukraine gives no ground. This has been been unlawfully invaded. But in the reality is even if Russia gets what they call a win, it's there is no win here. Their entire overseas network is falling apart. Their connections in Iran are falling apart.

Ludwig (72:12)

Like I did it watch a really interesting video. This is from like a few weeks ago I think it was BBC did like on the street interviews in Moscow with just like normal Russian people and it was like, what do you hope for the coming year? Like what are, what's your hope for Russia and hope for yourselves? And they get a ton of people who just say they want the war to be over. And if they don't say it in explicit terms, they're like, would really love for there to be peace. And this isn't an anti people, people don't want to like dive into, dive into the details. But they all, almost every single person in the video is like, I really hope the war is just done. And I think it's a reminder. Same thing with like Venezuela. Same thing with I think the average American perspective on us removing Maduro and choosing to, to you know, intervene there. The average person perspective of anybody who lives in these places is so drastically different from like the geopolitical game that their leaders play.

Aiden (73:14)

I mean everybody wants stability and peace. Well, like every average person. So I don't know if there's a prediction there, except my long term prediction is that Russia is about to have an incredibly rough five. I mean, I think it's gonna be bad. I think they are set. They, that they've created deep, deep costs that are only beginning to feel the payment of that that are going to make life rush in Russia really bad. Now I, at the beginning of last year, I'll just fully admit I would have bet 100% the war ended by the end of the year and I was dead wrong. I don't know. This is like a real slog.

Doug (73:44)

What changed for you with that opinion? I mean, obviously it just kept going. But is there a reason that you substantially feel different about this next year? That you're like, oh, I just needed another 12 months?

Aiden (73:55)

No, that's what I'm saying is I don't know if it ends this, so I can't possibly.

Ludwig (73:59)

I need to reread the thing that somebody sent me. But they did this like little media analysis for me and then also talked a lot about like Russian sentiment behind the war and Russian outlook on like a collective Russian outlook on persisting and Russians getting through times of suffering and all this. And I'm summarizing it really poorly, but their message changed a little bit of my POV because from my understanding, I agree with the things that you're saying that the situation in Russia is also bad because of how long that they have been in this conflict and it will continue to be bad after it's over for a while also because of that. But they have the ability to just outlast the other party that is increasingly on this island. And because of our government and the governments of Europe, I feel like time is going to be out for Ukraine faster. Like that's where my feeling comes from. Yeah.

Aiden (74:57)

Ukraine's a smaller country with fewer people and less money and like. And US has pulled support and Europe is having trouble scrounging together the money because to increase their military spending requires them to cut some of the social citizen spending, which is like horror. They take on debt and it's being a problem. And Europe. And so. But you know, Europe is trying to do a defense build out. There's a world. You know, I don't know. I guess I'm saying is I don't. This one, I really feel a question mark on. I am less confident than I ever have been on whether this ends this year or not. So you guys can. We could say it ends this year. And that's the, that's the.

Ludwig (75:27)

No, we could. You could. Where. Where do you kind of land? Like if you had to tie break.

Doug (75:31)

This because I land on that, I am deeply unqualified to say, oh, I'm incredibly qualified. I know. But it's like I even compared to the lack of qualification for every subject we cover, I, I really at no point have even watched the BBC documentary. So I mean we could just for. To throw it out there for fun. We could say Ukraine war ends, but man, I don't know.

Aiden (75:55)

Well, we could do that and then if we're wrong, like money goes to charity. You know what I'm saying? What's the case?

Ludwig (75:59)

Let's, let's.

Aiden (76:00)

It would be nice for the war to end.

Doug (76:02)

But if all three of us, we have no idea on this one, that.

Ludwig (76:06)

We don't have to double up on the bad thing. Does that make sense? So we want the Ukraine war. Wait, we want it to end but on good terms?

Aiden (76:15)

Yeah.

Ludwig (76:15)

The terms matter because it's also bad if it ends in a certain way.

Doug (76:19)

Is there another maybe we are unqualified party angle that we can. That it's a little more, A little more distinct. It's now just war ending or not. Is it?

Ludwig (76:28)

What if, what if, what if one of the predictions was like Putin just chills out, Wolf.

Aiden (76:32)

Putin just gets real chill.

Doug (76:36)

Okay, war ends in 2026. We're putting it.

Aiden (76:39)

Let's do it.

Doug (76:39)

Ukraine war ends 2026. Okay, we've got six out of 10 predictions. We might need to move a little bit faster. Quick, easy one for you. Taylor Swift gets married this year, gets married this year.

Aiden (76:50)

Isn't that a yes?

Ludwig (76:51)

Oh, they're getting. They're breaking up. And.

Aiden (76:52)

Oh, yeah.

Doug (76:53)

And it's in Europe. That's my prediction.

Aiden (76:55)

I'll go with you. Fine. You get two votes, right?

Ludwig (77:00)

You heard it here first. They're breaking up.

Aiden (77:02)

There's no way she gets married in Europe. I'm sorry.

Doug (77:04)

No. They're gonna do some sort of, like.

Ludwig (77:07)

Travis, Kelsey is gonna eat a piece of chocolate and die. You watch the yard.

Aiden (77:13)

It's got to be an all American thing.

Doug (77:15)

No, because they're gonna. You're gonna. Jeff Bezos goes and gets married. He rents out Venice.

Aiden (77:19)

Right.

Doug (77:19)

I think if they're like, what's the most amazing, like, destination? They're gonna make it a thing, right? They want it to be an event. You're going to go to what, Minnesota? No, no, no. They're not going to go to Kansas City and get married.

Aiden (77:29)

They're run cells in the flag.

Doug (77:30)

They're not going to go to Los Angeles. They're going to go. They're going to rent out an entire.

Aiden (77:34)

Expert on this one.

Doug (77:35)

Yeah. Now this is where I can get 26 in Europe. Okay, cool.

Ludwig (77:41)

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Doug (78:05)

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Ludwig (78:07)

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Doug (78:13)

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Ludwig (78:14)

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Aiden (79:03)

I got one more up your alley and I want to talk to you about this because I think I have a thought on this too. Self driving predictions this year.

Doug (79:09)

So there's two angles that I thought would be interesting. Quick update on self driving cars and where we're at. There are three major players right now, at least in America. There are Chinese companies that are also doing this, but they're not being allowed outside of China right now. So hard to measure. You got Waymo, you got Tesla and you got Zoox, new player on the market. Zoox. Zoox is silly. Zoox vehicle. I can, I can show they look like a funny ladybug if you pull my screen up. Perry, look at Zoox. So Zoox is the smallest, but their whole thing is from the get go they are making driverless cars that don't have a passenger, you know, seat to take over. There's no wheel, it's just there. This is running right now live in Vegas and in San Francisco. That being said, there are 50 of them total. It is free. It is owned by Amazon and they're basically right now trying to prove like yes, we can do this. You're not going to die if you get into a Zoox mobile, right? So they're by far the smallest, but they're, they're really pushing for the like our, our, you know, vibes as driverless from the get go. The next one you got is Cyber Cab by, or Cybertaxi by Tesla. So Tesla still got people in these?

Ludwig (80:17)

Yes.

Doug (80:17)

So there's two products by Tesla, one of which we covered earlier this year. That's Robo Taxi. So Robo Taxi, if it's loads up Tesla's, I'm changing my mind about the AI bubble. Popping Tesla's website.

Aiden (80:28)

Download the website.

Ludwig (80:30)

Sorry. The two products are Cyber Taxi and Robotaxi.

Aiden (80:33)

Cyber Cab.

Doug (80:34)

Cybertack. Jesus Aiden, keep up. Aiden, don't correct me, I'm the expert on this. When we're talking about.

Ludwig (80:40)

Sorry, I'm fucking dumb.

Doug (80:42)

We're talking about Taylor Swift. Okay, so Robo Taxi is Tesla's existing cars out on the road trying to do what Waymo is doing, where the car is driving around on its own. This is currently in Austin, in San Francisco. We talked about it this year, how they launched this finally. But they still have a passenger, like a guy, a safety driver in the car driving it. So they, they need humans to supervise it. You actually have to get a permit in both of these states in order to have a car on the road without a driver. Tesla does not have this. Their big gamble, though, as we talked about earlier this year, is Cyber Cab, where that's a car that is, from the get go, meant for this. According to Elon Musk, it's going to come out in a couple months. He's never been wrong on time. That could be a funny one of whether we think Cybercab will actually launch this year. Could be. Does Cybercab serve a single customer this year, but they have twofold. So one is Robo Taxi, which is existing Teslas. Next is this new product line. They are doing okay. So, you know, they have about 1500 cars on the road, at least in California is what they've registered, is what we're aware of. They don't give a ton of data about what's going on, but again, they're sort of testing the waters. The third and by far the most successful is Waymo. And also Waymo safety stuff is incredible. Waymo is crushing. They are fully driverless. It is a, I believe, a Jaguar, right, that has been retrofitted with all this stuff. And as we talked about a bunch in the past, they're doing great. Not only are they doing great, they have a lot of data that shows just how safe their cars are. Some of the safety stuff that they have is like, it's like 10 times less crashes than a human driver. I just want to remind people that even though this is going to introduce a lot of chaos in our society about people getting laid off and all that, it's not a strict good. One of the amazing goods that is going to happen from this as it continues is a massive reduction in the amount of death and human suffering and damage from car crashes. These things are way, way better than human drivers on average. So with all that said, Waymo has a couple thousand. They're in six cities right now. They're going to expand to 12 new ones pretty soon and they're laying the groundwork for 12 more, including in Tokyo and in London. So they are starting to expand outside of the US as well. They did, I think the number off the top of my head is 14 million, I believe. Yeah, 14 million rides this year and they're trying to get to 52 million next year. A million a month. So they are doing incredibly well.

Ludwig (83:06)

Wayne. A million a week?

Doug (83:08)

Sorry, a million a week? Yes, a million a week. So that's their goal. So they tripled from 2024 to 2025, they're trying to, you know, roughly triple, again triple to 4x. So they're doing incredibly. Again, the caveat, while it's easy to just go, well, Waymo wins, that's the end of the conversation. These things are much more expensive than a Tesla. We don't know exactly how much it costs, but they're made entirely by Google. Waymo, they're made for this. They're made with way more hardware on it. So the estimation is it's like 100k plus to make one of these cars. Whereas a Tesla, you know, Tesla is making them for like 20k or whatever the actual production costs are. So Tesla is betting that if they can get out there and just get their fleet approved, instantly every Tesla on the road goes. And this thing just skyrockets instantly. Waymo can't, let's say, expand in the same way. So with all that being said, really, really interesting race to see between these three. What is gonna be particularly funny is seeing what happens with Tesla. Cause it's just very wacky and Elon says crazy things all the time.

Aiden (84:10)

Elon Musk. In 2024, Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them. In June in Austin. This is not a far off mythical situation. It's in five, six months away. Didn't happen.

Doug (84:19)

That did not happen.

Aiden (84:20)

Said we'd be on Mars in 25. I believe half the population in the US will be covered by Tesla's robotaxi by the end of the year. He said in January of last year, which is like immediately insane.

Doug (84:30)

Well, hold on. Is most of the country in Austin and San Francisco? I haven't checked recently.

Aiden (84:35)

However, that being said, I agree.

Ludwig (84:37)

I heard the liberals, I heard they're.

Doug (84:40)

Fleeing from California to Austin. Those are the two places people live. All right, I have, I have a potential, potential prediction. Do we think that Tesla actually releases Cyber Cab, the fully designed for driverless car? They release it this year and a human being is able to pay for. Come on, you got someone to believe.

Ludwig (84:59)

A mark bomb in the room. Zero.

Aiden (85:01)

I don't believe in it. However, I think the takeaway from your theme there was like, this is a year of self driving. And I fully agree with you, man. I think I heard someone describe it as, you know, in the early days of the mobile, like 3G, 4G build out, there would be some cities that had it and there was more. And then these nodes started to change consumer behavior really quickly. And it took off like, it's like a vertical hockey stuff. It feels like the mobile build out. But for self driving in that everywhere, that gets Waymo, people really like it. Yeah. Like the, the, the, the people promote these to other word of mouth. They like using them. They think the cost is worth it. In their range of wanting to do it. It's only going to get, I mean, not only going to get cheaper, but like right now it's actually more expensive than it could be at scale. And they're hitting a lot of major cities at once this year, like you said.

Doug (85:49)

Yeah.

Aiden (85:49)

I think the word of mouth spreads. I think more cities start to feel like, oh, we're behind, we have to move up on our regulations. I am with you. I have the same thing in mind. I think it's the year of self driving. I think it's going to be a massive build up. I don't know who wins, but it does feel like way more to me, like light years ahead.

Doug (86:05)

Yeah. So quick, quick counter, because I looked into this a little bit. It's hard to know how Tesla is doing because they don't release much information. They literally don't have PR of any kind. Their only PR or marketing is Elon Musk tweeting randomly. Right. So. And he just says like false things all the time. So I look though, because you have an iOS app to download for the Robo Taxi with Tesla and the reviews are actually very good. And so the general themes, people are like, this is basically as good as a Waymo. Maybe it feels like slightly, a little more shaky, but all of the reviews are like, this is better than an Uber or a Lyft. It's convenient, it's fast, it feels safer. The argument is whether it's as good as Waymo, but whether it's better than the status quo. Everybody's like, yes, there's a few bad reviews or like, it took way too long to show up and that's growing pains. I think that'll probably go away. And then one of the interesting things that I'm. Oh, it's fucking so cheap. Apparently it's like 20% of a Waymo cost. So already right now, if you try to buy a Waymo or, sorry, an Uber or a Lyft, it's whatever price. Waymo is cheaper than that. They're potentially subsidizing it somewhat is that.

Aiden (87:11)

My understanding for Tesla is they are subsidizing. It's way cheaper than the car. Like they have a human driver in there. There's like, there's no way they're making any money on.

Doug (87:18)

Correct.

Aiden (87:18)

Yeah, correct. The Tesla One, I think the Waymo one is around cost, but I thought it was in most areas a little more expensive still than the Uber. Maybe I'm wrong. I think this.

Doug (87:26)

But yeah, I guess it probably depends. The main point, though, Tesla's offering it for way cheaper. And again, the reason they might be able to do that sustainably long term is because the cars are cheaper. Right. Again, they are making a piece of hardware that just has less stuff in it. And so in theory, if they can get to market this year and get these things out driverless and expand rapidly and they can just undercut Waymo, even if people like Waymo more. But it's like, well, it's 70, only 70% of the price to go with Tesla. That is a legitimate potential strategy for them. So that's super interesting. This year Waymo is going to win for sure. You guys don't want to bet on Cyber Cab?

Aiden (88:01)

Come on, we bet on like pro self driving. I don't know, it was.

Ludwig (88:05)

What should the prediction actually be?

Doug (88:07)

All right, here's what I'm going to propose. Because none of us think cybercav is going to treat people. Oh, my God. I fucking liked. Oh. The prediction is, do we think Tesla will get the permit to do driverless vehicles in 2026? It's pretty likely.

Ludwig (88:23)

Yeah, I think they will.

Doug (88:24)

Okay.

Aiden (88:24)

I mean, we could do the Cybercap then. We all agree. We don't think it's going to do it. Cybercap does not drive by the end of the year. It's a prediction.

Ludwig (88:29)

Okay. Yeah, wait. To be clear, the thing that's driving right now is the robo taxi robotaxi.

Doug (88:34)

Which is basically their model Y. Cybercap.

Aiden (88:37)

Just the cap requires them to build the new car and make a production model. It can take too long.

Doug (88:42)

Yeah, they're slow. Okay, wait, Cyber Cab doesn't even come out at all? I guess that's the same thing.

Aiden (88:48)

I think it doesn't come out.

Ludwig (88:49)

I think it is not public, let's say. I would say Cyber Cab is not publicly available.

Doug (88:53)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aiden (88:56)

If he does one test somewhere, it's not.

Ludwig (88:58)

Yeah, okay.

Doug (88:58)

Really quick rapid fire. 1. That's related a lot of hype right now around humanoid robots. Okay. One, one company released a new humanoid robot you can actually buy. And I remember I showed this to you and the only catch, it's like in your home, operating and doing stuff, the only catch is that you have to pay for a human being on the other side to wear a VR headset and control it. So it's like A weird robot indentured.

Aiden (89:22)

That guy trying to get the glass out of the washing or the dishwasher is so funny. It's like so inconvenient. You have a human who could just grab it.

Doug (89:30)

So it's like paying for a really, really inefficient maid that's more expensive. So that's the option was in 2025. Do we feel like a humanoid robot will be purchasable for like by a customer that isn't controlled by a human at the end?

Aiden (89:44)

Purchasable. I mean maybe, but isn't controlled by.

Doug (89:46)

A person though that somebody even puts it out there. Like a company even says zero. Okay.

Ludwig (89:52)

No, no.

Doug (89:53)

There are no humanoid robots put on sale in 2026.

Aiden (90:00)

Which is like there's some, there's some edge cases on this. But it's fine, we'll put it on.

Doug (90:03)

I think we can, we can go with the spirit of this again. Definitely no human operator. Let's say in general there isn't a human monitor the entire time that needs to be on the ready. Pretty safe prediction to be honest. But there's a lot of hype around it.

Aiden (90:17)

Okay. On the subject. Self driving and some things we're doing. Renewables. Renewables. What? Predictions for renewables around 2026. Okay.

Ludwig (90:25)

So and this is a maybe a nice positive note to end on. So renewables generated more electricity than coal for the first time ever. 2025. Yeah.

Aiden (90:36)

That's fucking.

Ludwig (90:36)

So a good sign of us on the right path. Right. Largely due to like huge advancements in wind and solar, specifically in China.

Doug (90:45)

Right.

Aiden (90:45)

What about beautiful clean.

Ludwig (90:47)

So it's actually clean coal is rolled into renewables. I don't know if you know that.

Aiden (90:52)

So it's like 80% clean coal.

Ludwig (90:57)

I'm going to be honest with you, I'm looking at the chart. If you take the clean coal out, it looks pretty. In all seriousness, renewables surpass coal worldwide for electricity generation for the first time in 2025. That is what I'm reading. And overall 50. Sorry, sorry. Overall about 40%. Like 35 to 40% depending on where you read right now. The. I think these are also early predictions because a lot of data still needs to come out. About 2025, 35 to 40% of electricity globally is being generated by renewables. So I want to take an optimistic guess and say that for 2026 it is going to be. Over 50% of all electricity is going to be generated by renewable energy. We're going to.

Aiden (91:46)

Wow.

Ludwig (91:46)

Because. Because the improvements are we're taking like really big jumps within the last, really like two to five years. And the costs of wind and solar are continuing to decrease. The cost of batteries are continuing to decrease. Batteries have gotten over 90% cheaper across the last decade. And for the first time, a lot of like climate projection reports, I think we talked about this earlier in the year. Are, are reporting that instead of expected warming over the next like, you know, 80 years being like 3.5 to 4 degrees Celsius, on average, it's dropping. They've pulled that prediction down to like 2.8% or 2.8 degrees, which to be clear, is still pretty bad. There's still like, there are still some pretty damning climate reports coming out. 2024 was the hottest year on record and likely the hottest in the last 125,000 years. From the Yale, the Yale article that I read and.

Aiden (92:53)

Okay, I want to, I want to say, I hope that you're right, but I want to consciously object.

Ludwig (93:00)

There's one. And I wonder if your objection has anything to do this. In general, the amount of investment from countries around the world going into renewable energy is substantially increasing with countries like China leading the charge. However, one large nation invested less last year, if you can take a guess.

Doug (93:23)

Hold on, hold on. Usa. I heard that we just got a giant, giant country full of renewable energy.

Ludwig (93:30)

Oh, that's the thing. They have the cleanest oil.

Aiden (93:33)

It's renewal. Because every time you run out you can go to a different country.

Doug (93:38)

Yeah. So I might, yeah, I might have agreed with you on this, except the US just went and took over the biggest oil reserve, 100%.

Ludwig (93:45)

And I'm not here to tell you that climate change is solved. I'm not telling you that there are no problems to overcome. I'm not telling you that the nation, the world is not going to continue warming. But the substantial games gains in a global sense are still happening and seem to be increasing. And I want to take a hopeful prediction and say that 50% or more of electricity around the world in 2026 will be generated by.

Doug (94:10)

It's going to be exactly 50.

Aiden (94:12)

It has to be the coin on the edge. No. Can you pull up this graph, Perry?

Doug (94:16)

I'm on board with that. I think it's, I mean, it sounds like you disagree.

Ludwig (94:19)

Unrealistic showing, but I want us to die.

Doug (94:22)

I'm putting an optimistic prediction in there because I would love for this to be true. And I think there's a, there's a good chance. Hold on. What are we basing it off of? Is there's like, you know, a Yale study or we're just going to say, not a projection.

Ludwig (94:35)

I'm just making this raw guess some from where we're at right now, depending on what you read, seems to be between like. Like we're about like 38% of electricity.

Doug (94:47)

12 is a huge jump in one year.

Ludwig (94:50)

But we've already made big leaps in the previous years. I want to be optimistic.

Aiden (94:54)

Look, pull up this grab.

Ludwig (94:55)

I need it.

Aiden (94:56)

This is China, right? China, which is the one country I think really investing in renewables. They're building out nuclear, wind, solar. They're still at like 50 coal in 2040. And America has openly announced that they're like going petro, state, state. They're like, we're going back to gas, we're going back to natural gas. Oil, American dominance. We're going to use geopolitical power. We're getting out of the ground. So while I agree the long term trade of renewables is good, a big jump in this year, I, I disagree. I'm voicing objections. Even though I'll join you for this because of charity.

Ludwig (95:31)

I'll make it a crazy leap. Okay, let's say 45. Let's say 45. I want to remain optimistic.

Aiden (95:38)

Okay.

Ludwig (95:39)

I just looked something up. Yeah, let's say 45.

Aiden (95:43)

I'm down to go with you. But I. I think it's crazy.

Ludwig (95:45)

I mean, I think the leap from 2021 to now.

Aiden (95:50)

Yeah.

Ludwig (95:50)

Is pretty insane, I will say, because it's gone from like 10% or less to the 40. Almost 40 that we're at right now. So I'd love to say 45.

Aiden (96:00)

Let's do it. Fog it.

Doug (96:02)

Full cowardly of a prediction.

Ludwig (96:04)

Fine. Let's say 50.

Aiden (96:05)

Let's say 70.

Ludwig (96:06)

Let's say 50. And pitch.

Doug (96:08)

Let's say going from 40 to 45 is not exciting.

Aiden (96:11)

Well, that would still be good. That would be a positive direction.

Doug (96:14)

Okay, world is 40% six and be.

Aiden (96:17)

A little dicey, but that is.

Ludwig (96:19)

And. And why don't we round this out with one more beautiful prediction? One more card in there and it's will Faker win Worlds in 2026? Will he do it again? And Doug, I need you to.

Doug (96:29)

I need you to something talk about. Okay, so I loved Dota in high school. I have not played legal is faker.

Aiden (96:40)

We're gonna keep our opinions to ourselves. And you're gonna make the call.

Doug (96:43)

You're gonna make the call.

Aiden (96:44)

Will Faker win Worlds in 2026? The lemonade stand. Official charity call.

Ludwig (96:48)

Do you actually not know who Faker is.

Doug (96:50)

I do know who Faker is. I don't follow League though, so not.

Aiden (96:52)

Knowing who Faker is would have ended the show.

Doug (96:55)

Yeah, it's. But I know of him in the way that I know about Sabrina Carpenter, which is. I try not to let it into my life in any way.

Ludwig (97:02)

Both world champion even.

Aiden (97:04)

Truly true. Two goats.

Doug (97:06)

Okay, two goats.

Aiden (97:07)

Just peeking now.

Doug (97:08)

11Th bonus prediction is Ludwig joins T1 and wins Worlds with Faker.

Aiden (97:13)

That's charity free money. I like that.

Doug (97:15)

That's a bonus one. That doesn't count. Sure I will. I will say Faker wins worlds.

Ludwig (97:20)

Which Juno position do you think Faker would like the most?

Doug (97:24)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our now 11 predictions for 2026. If we get any of these wrong, at the end of the year we are going to donate 5,000 to charity. US troops do not enter Venezuela, but the current regime doesn't change either. This one is maybe slightly hard to define, but we will use our honest spirit. Our honest spirit to determine. Number two, US takes Greenland. I know Aiden's excited about that. Number three, Aiden's CS2 portfolio goes down. I know Aiden's excited about that. Number four, China does not annex Taiwan.

Aiden (97:54)

Right.

Doug (97:55)

Number five, the MAG7 prices are higher on average by the end of 2026. Number six, Ukraine war ends in 2026. Seven, Taylor Swift gets married in 2026. In Europe.

Ludwig (98:04)

In Europe.

Doug (98:06)

In Europe. That one's. I'm going to get that one. And I'm going to gloat for like four months.

Aiden (98:09)

That'd be a big win.

Doug (98:10)

Eight, Cybercap is not publicly available despite again, Elon's insistence that that is launching soon. Number nine, there are no humanoid robots put on sale in 2026 again, despite many companies hyping that up as the next big AI thing. And 10, the world is 45% renewable energy by the end of 2026. 11 Faker wins Worlds. I'm excited.

Ludwig (98:32)

And hey, if you have any recommendations of where to donate that $50,000 to, you let us know in the comments.

Doug (98:41)

Hey Aiden, that is so awesome of you chatting with folks in Venezuela. And that makes this conversation really so much more interesting and fantastic. I appreciate that.

Ludwig (98:49)

I am really excited for this year. I have a self commitment that I'm gonna try to do at least one interview like that every week this year. Every week. Every week.

Doug (98:57)

Oh my God.

Ludwig (98:58)

I've already have the next two weeks scheduled out and if you want to enjoy a little more of lemonade sand, you can head over to the patreon patreon.com lemonadesand where we put out an extra hour of the show every week. We put out a book club episode once a month and I will be for those who are willing to let me post them. I will be posting some of those interviews this year.

Aiden (99:17)

So, yeah, hell yeah. I will say we didn't get to finish every single prediction here on this episode. So we'll probably do that in the Patreon if you want to check it out. Our thoughts on, like mom Donnie's first year and a couple other things. We'll probably do that on the. On bitcoin. We'll have that on the Patreon. Check it out. That was a fun episode. I mean, scary for the future, but fun and interesting. We're gonna also.

Ludwig (99:36)

Faker's not gonna win.

Aiden (99:38)

I have a faker tattoo and I kind of hope he does. He's gonna kill league. He's won so many times that people are gonna be.

Doug (99:44)

That's a good like we do you hold on. Do we want him to win or not? I can't tell what you guys want.

Ludwig (99:49)

I My genuine prediction, if we can amend it at the last second, is Faker will not win worlds this year.

Doug (99:54)

Okay, that's funnier because you want him to win. Faker will not win world. And that way every time he loses, Aiden and I are celebrating. That's a better prediction, guys.

Aiden (100:05)

Thanks for watching.

Doug (100:05)

Thanks for watching, everybody. See you next time.

Aiden (102:22)

Bro. Aiden, keep it a stack.

Doug (102:23)

Keep it a stack. Tell it. Just keep it a buck. Tell us for real. Tell us for real.

Ludwig (102:27)

Yeah, and you won't let me keep it a stack because I actually do edit PDFs at my job all the time. I have to edit PDFs and then send them to Ludwig. And I do that almost every day. And I started using Adobe Acrobat Studio to edit the PDFs and it works pretty well. And you could check that out. If you have the same problems that I do, you could learn more@adobe.com do that with Acrobat. And that's how I've kept it. I've kept it a stack.

Doug (102:54)

Keep it a buck. Yes.

Aiden (102:55)

Dude.

Ludwig (103:00)

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Doug (103:06)

Quickly about the things you actually talk.

Ludwig (103:08)

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