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- [00:00]
A
Guys, I'm worried. I am worried about a pattern that I am seeing with this show. Three weeks ago, we record on a Wednesday. The next day, the world's richest man calls the president a pedophile. Big news right after we record.
- [00:13]
B
Yeah.
- [00:14]
A
Next week, we record on a Wednesday right after, there's protests in the city that we live in that become nationwide news that spread into massive protests on the next Saturday between when we record. Next weekend, we record on a Wednesday, thinking, finally, good news episode. The day after, possibly, we get the start of World War three in the Middle East. Israel strikes Iran. Iran counterattacks. So I don't know why to tell you this, but by the time you see this, the worst is probably happening.
- [00:40]
C
This is like a time capsule for the innocents lost because 24 hours from now, the world will be destroyed.
- [00:46]
A
Someone is watching this from the bunker.
- [00:48]
B
As the nuke fall.
- [00:50]
A
Dude, as I. We're. We're. We are. I don't know if we're causing it.
- [00:55]
C
But do you think we have a moral obligation to not. We're making it worse.
- [00:58]
B
That's what I was thinking. It was like, maybe we need to shut this shit off because we did last week's episode. And the missiles got fired into Iran and two political assassinations happened in the US or an attempt and a success.
- [01:13]
A
Dude, imagine we take a. I don't.
- [01:14]
B
Know if you call it successful. I don't. I don't know what the word is there.
- [01:20]
A
Imagine we take a week off and it's a utopia.
- [01:24]
B
And there was a terrible. There was another terrible plane crash.
- [01:27]
A
Yeah.
- [01:28]
C
Oh, yeah. It was. It was our hubris to do a good episode.
- [01:31]
A
The good news. The world was like, fuck you guys.
- [01:35]
C
We're slinging everything at you.
- [01:37]
A
That's what it is. Doug, we did a good news episode, and they threw a bunch of bad news.
- [01:42]
C
So if we. If we really need to help the world out at some point, we just do a depression episode and, like, that should stay for, like a week. We get respite.
- [01:49]
A
It's actually not a bad idea.
- [01:50]
B
I can't wait for the good news.
- [01:51]
A
Okay, well, I mean, one of the things we're talking about today is interesting, if not terrible news. Israel, Iran, conflict. So I introduced something new. I'm going to propose to you guys right now.
- [02:00]
C
Okay.
- [02:01]
A
To talk about a lot of things today. And you're. You got the topics. Okay. I'm introducing the lemon of truth. Okay.
- [02:07]
C
Okay.
- [02:07]
A
This is the bitten lemon from the first episode. If you say something while holding the lemon, it is a sign that you're just asking a question, trying to figure something out. It doesn't reflect your personal opinions or beliefs. Okay? That's the way you can have a podcast discussion and bring something up while everyone notices that you're holding the lemon. Do you understand, Doug?
- [02:25]
C
Shouldn't it be the lemon of misinformation?
- [02:27]
B
Yes, the lemon of misinformation.
- [02:31]
A
Ask that with the lemon. Now, I can't be mad at you for insulting my lemon idea.
- [02:34]
C
I think AI is good.
- [02:40]
B
It's more of a statement.
- [02:41]
C
Now I can say whatever I want while holding lemon.
- [02:44]
A
Yeah, take your job. And no one's allowed to get mad.
- [02:47]
C
Guys, I was holding the lemon. All right?
- [02:49]
A
That's. That's the thing. The lemon gives you unstoppable power. You can't be.
- [02:52]
C
It's like diplomatic immunity. Okay, well, okay. Do you want to kick us? Oh, wait, no. We have a couple of things.
- [02:56]
A
We have a lot of things.
- [02:57]
C
Not only did Israel, Iran happen, also the protests kept happening in la. And then I went to them. You went to them?
- [03:04]
A
Yeah. The no Kings ones was an expanded version around the military parade that Trump held.
- [03:09]
C
Yes.
- [03:10]
A
And they were all over the country. It was like. I don't remember the numbers, but it's like 2% of America. It was a gigantic number.
- [03:17]
B
There was no one in Queenstown, Maryland, which is where I was for the weekend protest going on.
- [03:23]
A
There was the group Chat X Aiden. They had a big protest and you weren't there.
- [03:29]
C
I. My experience is basically reiterating exactly what you guys said last week, which is that the perception of the protests is that it's death and destruction, at least in Los Angeles. And so I went to the ones downtown after the dispersal order was put out, meaning the police are trying to disperse it. And they were like, using tear gas a little bit, and that was it. There was like no fires, no violence, no nothing. It was. And There was probably 100,000 people downtown next to the Capitol. And it was interesting. Right before going, I listened to some of the all in podcast, which again, is if they replaced the more moderate guy, David Freeberg, with Tucker Carlson this week. So it was a good conversation. And they were talking about the protests.
- [04:08]
B
Well, you worked at Fox News.
- [04:09]
A
They were fair and fair.
- [04:09]
C
That's true. And so they were. And actually, Tucker was more balanced. He was just like, he gave the kind of standard, you know, let's. Right. Leaning perspective where he's like, I just. I pay taxes. I don't think my tax dollars should go to supporting and policing illegal immigrants. We should post. We should, you know, support legal immigration. That's. That should be the purpose. And then David Sacks comes in, he's like, well, I think we're ignoring the question, which is, l. A was burning to the ground until Trump said in the National Guard. And so, you know, that's just. It's so obviously not true. Having gone there and seen it and even the. Yeah, it was just. It was mellow. It really was like, dude, I had a.
- [04:47]
A
It was like one of the first pieces of news recently that made me feel good going in person, seeing that many people and they were all waving American flags. There's people old and young and different races. And I was talking to people. Everyone was nice. And it made me feel like, oh, maybe America's got some hope. Maybe people got. You know, I was. And I don't even mean that in like a political way. I just felt like people are outside, they're talking to each other in person. People aren't as angry. Everyone was waving creative signs there. I just felt some sort of, like, sense that a lot of what I'm hating lately is mostly online. I just feel like this filter between people, this algorithmic filter is making people more angry. And when I saw him in person, I felt better. So it was a positive moment. Plus, you know, to have protests that have, I don't know, multiple millions across the country and to have, I mean, none or very little violence or protests. No deaths, no injuries, no. Even the LA ones we talked about had more in that one LA protest than the entire country. It seemed to be in the entire. No Kings ones. So it was. It was cool. It was, you know, I was a good, good optics for the country. It felt like a good protest.
- [05:58]
B
All right.
- [05:59]
A
Yeah.
- [05:59]
B
What's your village, Stupid libs.
- [06:01]
A
Yeah.
- [06:01]
B
And you're lived. Yeah, Village.
- [06:03]
C
Don't give him a lot of heart.
- [06:05]
A
This is from his heart.
- [06:05]
B
So I want you guys to maybe answer this question because I was curious what the more conservative response in the country was to these protests just online. And I wanted to dig into, like, what the. What the feedback. What the feedback was specifically to the no Kings protests of the past weekend. And the pervasive thing I saw over and over again was them making fun of, well, the protests were a success. America doesn't have a king anymore. And as in, like, we never had one. These protests make no sense. Liberals just, like, make stuff up they. They don't. Like, what is the intention of a no Kings protest where millions of people can be protesting across the country with essentially no hold up or conflict to that protest and they get to successfully do that. Is that not a demonstration of the fact that we do not live in an autocracy? And that was the main criticism that I saw online circulating. I was curious what you guys might have to say in response to that.
- [07:08]
A
I think when people talk about Trump being dictatorial, they are talking about a process, not a current state of being, talking about a shaking or a degrading of the Constitution or of, you know, separation of powers, official authority. So I would assume the point of the no Kings protest is not that we currently have a king. We need to get rid of them. It's more like we should never have Kings and we're headed in the wrong direction. That would be my.
- [07:38]
B
Yeah, I do think that is. That critique is obviously taking it very literally.
- [07:43]
C
Do you guys know is was the no Kings protest organized in response to ICE and the immigration stuff? Because in downtown LA, like 95% of the signs were about immigration or ICE and the Trump no King concept was there in signs, but basically always to support this is about immigration. It seemed like this was an anti immigration policy protest to me.
- [08:04]
B
On the whole. I don't think so. I don't think so. My understanding is no Kings was specifically a response to him planning the military parade in D.C. that was the origin.
- [08:14]
A
I think that flavor of the no.
- [08:15]
B
Kings protest and then the immigration protest that had broken out in L. A the weekend before happened to coincide with the timeline. Like these things, no Kings was being planned more than a week in advance.
- [08:27]
C
Yes, gotcha.
- [08:28]
B
And then this also happened in LA in response to those ICE raids. And then those things kind of collide because they have very similar messaging. I mean, at the core of the. Or one of the core things of the Trump autocracy, like anti king argument, is the approach to immigration. Pulling people into unmarked vehicles, ICE overstretching the boundaries of previous administrations even. And that being a symbolism of him becoming a king or fascism occurring. And that is why that response was happening in LA to begin with and why it molds well into the broader messaging that I think no Kings has, which is, you know, his. The idea of the Trump administration becoming something akin to an autocracy is not just about immigration, but immigration is a very big part of that. So I think it's. It's a piece that just fit into these protests.
- [09:22]
A
From what I saw, and looking at pictures, like the L.A1 was more focused on immigration because of what happened. That makes sense, but it was just cool.
- [09:29]
B
Even.
- [09:29]
A
Even regardless of, again, for Me, the biggest thing was that people are, I don't know, willing to get out of their house and meet other people and talk about it and advocate for themselves and that. So people did. That was a good sign. I was just, I was more regardless of even what the message was, I was just happy of that because I get the sense sometimes that I worry sometimes that people move on from subjects so quickly that we could never even organize or get it or get out there or do anything or connect or. So I don't know. That was cool. That's just why, that's why I liked it personally. I thought it was, I thought it was good.
- [10:00]
B
Yeah. Well, I want to hear a little bit about the, the real king in this country, Jerome Powell, JP and what, and what's going on?
- [10:10]
A
Yeah, just a little update because we're recording on a Wednesday. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, had a press conference this morning. The FOMC meetings where they announce if they're going to, sounds really boring, but whether they're going to raise interest rates, whether they're going to lower them or they're going to keep them the same. And for the past, I don't know, four or five for a while they've been just keeping it steady. And the idea is you raise it if you think there's going to be inflation, you lower it if there's going to be high unemployment and you keep it the same if you don't really know if you want to just keep it steady. And it's been steady, steady, steady. And Trump has been getting more and.
- [10:39]
B
More furious because he wants it to.
- [10:41]
A
Go, he wants it to go down. He's screaming that drone pal is behind the curve. He's a loser, he's, he's lazy, he's bad, he's the worst. Trump appointed him, by the way, but he's been saying how terrible he is and that he needs to bring interest rates down again. That's not just a Trump thing. Every president generally wants interest rates to go down because it juices the economy in the short term.
- [11:02]
C
What is like the immediate impact to an everyday person if interest rates go down versus up? Yeah.
- [11:07]
A
So for example, if you're getting a mortgage or a house loan, all loans are based upon being above the risk free rate, which is what he's setting. So whatever the government interest rate is, the house loan or the car loan or the credit card loan has to be above that. So when that one goes down, all the other ones go down as well. So yeah, the general idea is that it gets more loans in the economy, spurs the, it starts to kind of get things going. And Trump really wants to go down. But Jerome Powell very, very worried in the conference today about inflation specifically because of tariffs. He's like, afraid that the tariffs are going to start kicking in and inflation is going to go up and they need to not lower it into that, which will just ramp up inflation. So he's holding steady yet again, that's all. I mean, it's just another, it's another steady thing. But it's like each time, each three month cycle, he goes steady and doesn't change it again. Trump is clearly getting more agitated. It's clearly becoming more and more of a problem and it's not going to hit until early 26, but that's when Trump can replace him. And so that's what we're going to see. If we get a new chairman who's willing to like, just, you know, run interest rates into the ground, everyone can borrow for 0% again and we get back to like a 20, 21 bonanza, but this time with inflation rip roaring. You know, that's, that's the risk.
- [12:23]
C
Let me, let me just make sure I can express this. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Part of the reason that we don't want to lower interest rates, because it's a short term boost and everybody's like, yeah, everything's cheaper. But then the problem is that if there's inflation or something like that, we then don't have the two. Or if there's a major problem, we don't have the, that as an option to lower again. Right. So in the future, if there is a major recession or something and we're already at zero, we can't lower it anymore.
- [12:46]
A
Right, Exactly.
- [12:47]
C
We need leeway. Okay.
- [12:48]
A
Yeah.
- [12:49]
C
Because it doesn't feel like we're in an emergency situation right now. It feels like everything's actually pretty good in terms of the stock market, the economy, and most of the, let's say, challenges or damages are due to the tariffs, which is like, it's self imposed. Like it doesn't.
- [13:05]
A
Yeah, it's tough. I don't know either. I mean, drone pals got a lot of data. My gut would tell me that, like, at least among younger people, among youth unemployment, it just looks bad. It looks bad. So maybe there's a problem there. But also I do see the risk of inflation. I can see why he's just holding steady. Because you don't. No, it all seems like a lot of uncertainty. I don't know I don't know.
- [13:29]
B
It's interesting, but I think there feels like a theme across this issue and other things is that we can't clearly identify a. An economic crisis that we're currently in. Like, it hasn't hit crisis mode quite yet, but we're exhausting all the levers and tools that we might be able to use once we get to that point, including, you know, when we talked about the national debt on that one episode.
- [13:52]
C
Yeah.
- [13:52]
B
Talking about the levers that you have to deal with recession and how debt limits your ability to do those things, or in this case, your ability to lower interest rates further. But if you already have them near zero, you can't keep pushing them down. Yeah, I guess you could have a negative interest rate.
- [14:08]
A
Yeah, Some countries do that. Japan's done that. Some people do negative interest rates, which is where you. Yeah. You're paying money to.
- [14:16]
B
You have to pay money to hold your. Yeah.
- [14:19]
A
To pay money to loan the government money.
- [14:23]
C
Deal.
- [14:23]
A
That's a good deal. Deal. That's cool.
- [14:25]
C
I have an idea. Why doesn't the government just do a strategic TMC reserve? Because in our stock game, if you pull this up. Perry, on the iPad, as a reminder.
- [14:35]
A
We'Ve been checking Warren Buffett.
- [14:40]
C
Aiden is in first place in the stock challenge. Ludwig is, of course, dead last and the only one who's lost money we've actually raised. If we sold everything right now, it'd be $9,000 for charity, which is pretty high. Yeah. So the average that we're up is what, like 15% across the rest of the portfolio. And then Aidan comes in with the metals company, which is up 324%.
- [15:03]
B
Why move over marine biologists. It's time for me to collect.
- [15:07]
C
This is underwater metals. This is what their vibe is.
- [15:10]
B
Yeah, this is the. We've briefly talked about this before, but basically this company is leading one of the leading companies in the space of, like, deep sea metal mining. And I watched a documentary about it or like a news piece about it, I think almost three years ago, like, super, super early. The reason that I was super interested in this topic was there's this gigantic political game around ownership over the ocean floor, the rights to own it, the environmental consequences of mining this, who is evaluating the environmental consequences and whose payroll they're on. And the United nations agency that is responsible for dealing with this problem, even though it has nothing to do with their original job description, and it's a very small agency. So a very, very interesting story, and if you want to hear more about it, we're going to. We talked about it on a test episode that we're going to publish on our patreon.
- [16:04]
A
Oh yeah.
- [16:05]
B
Patreon.com lemonade stand. But the whole of it is that this company, I. This was the only stock or niche company that, that I just had. I did zero preparation for the stock competition.
- [16:16]
C
I want to be so clear.
- [16:18]
B
And this was the only company that just came to mind that I could think of that wasn't like AN S&P 500 op bill sort of company. So I just threw. I was like, yep, the metals company let me lock it in. Their share price at the time of the beginning of this game was like a $1 50 or something like that. It was really low, maybe even a dollar flat. And now it has ballooned to. I mean it hit 7 earlier today.
- [16:46]
A
Can I just say, can you go up, Doug? Yeah, so, so, I mean, first of all, claps eliminate stand. Because the S and P is currently at negative 0.26. So we're all beating the S&P by 20 points, which is again an incredible. If you were on Wall street, that is an insane bonus. You've done an incredible year. We're not going to hold this, I'm sure. But anyway, no, we've all pretty well. Doug is in second place with 22.9% which is an incredible return. Like a really. Your one stock has done more than Doug's entire portfolio. In second place, way more than mine. That's crazy. TMC is like an incredible.
- [17:19]
B
I mean it's basically 7x right? Am I wrong?
- [17:23]
A
That's unreal. Dude.
- [17:25]
B
That is close to improving on itself seven times over.
- [17:28]
A
324% return.
- [17:30]
B
Yeah. The reason that this is the case, I barely looked into this before the show today, so please forgive me. They got some massive investment from a South Korean company that promise committed to buying a certain quantity of shares down the line at seven. Sorry, at seven dollars. And they put a bunch of money up front and then additional money is going to come in at a specified share price down the line. So this just skyrocketed the price from like mid $3, $4 to 7 now. So I don't know how this plays out or if this will last. It's just pretty wild that one stock could explode this much. And this is all because I watched like a 5 minute MSN.
- [18:12]
A
So that's the trick. I mean he got a 53% return on Ocuge where he just asked Chad GPT give me a stock to invest. Yeah, that's like Our fourth best performing stock of the whole draft is just.
- [18:26]
C
The first best performing stock is an AI trained on me that made up a. That picked a random company and then lied about their performance. Like, I clearly didn't know anything about it. And the company is now up 53% and it's propelled me into second place.
- [18:40]
B
Like, this is monkeys at typewriters, bro.
- [18:42]
C
Yeah, it is literally stupider than that. This is.
- [18:45]
A
It is. It's not good.
- [18:46]
B
I have no. If you're listening to this, don't let this be the reason you start investing in anything.
- [18:52]
A
I know. I think the lesson is this. Watch documentaries, invest in the first thing you see, and then if you can't figure that out, use chat.
- [18:57]
C
And that lemonade stand is financial advice. I just want to be clear. We are up over the S and.
- [19:02]
A
P. Take your money out of the s and P500 and put it in the lemon in our portfolio.
- [19:09]
C
You know who else is money? Iran.
- [19:12]
A
Oh, that's your transition. That's the transition lemon for that one.
- [19:17]
C
I've heard that. And so I'll lemon here. I don't know if this is true. Iran is a country. Yes.
- [19:24]
A
I actually think you're dead on with that one.
- [19:26]
C
And I would appreciate a primer.
- [19:28]
A
Can I get the lemon?
- [19:29]
C
What the frick is going on over there?
- [19:31]
A
Effing issue. I think we're all aware of that. It's happening breaking news this week. In fact, it's breaking news now. I'm sure by tomorrow it'll be different. I don't know if Perry, you could pull up the article we're looking at from the ft, but it's like Trump is right now, as we're speaking, saying, I don't know if I'll tackle Ran or not. Will. Will I or won't I? You know, we don't. We don't know how this is going to play out, how the US Is going to get involved, anything. So take it all with a grain of salt. But I did prepare a short primer that might give you guys, or the general, I don't know, maybe mostly American audience, some. Some idea of, like, how we got to this point rather than try to break down this particular breaking news because I don't know it's going to play out and I don't much care to like, give a deep weigh in on it. So if you don't mind, I'll go to a presentation, educate Lemon to say, okay, okay, I'm here at the lemonade stand. Horse electrolyte powered stable, AKA breaking News center. Okay. And I want to talk to you about the Middle east today. This is a nice map of the Middle East.
- [20:28]
C
Middle east, the Middle east country.
- [20:31]
A
No, Doug, that's the thing. Middle east is a region filled with a lot of countries. Great question, Aiden. Get your questions better. You're not. You're not keeping up with Doug. Where's my presentation thing? Okay, so I want to explain why we're always hearing so much about the Middle east and why every other country seems to care deeply about the Middle east and why these regional conflicts have so much foreign meddling and so much interest from everyone else. And I think we all know the basic answer, but I'll start with this cartoon. You guys know that trope in movies and TV where one character is so hungry he sees the other one as food?
- [21:06]
C
Yeah.
- [21:07]
B
Yeah.
- [21:07]
A
Okay.
- [21:08]
B
Timeless.
- [21:08]
A
This is how the rest of the world sees the Middle east as oil. Okay. This is what they see is what the big regional powers of any era in the past 100 years have seen when they look the Middle East. It's oil, Crude oil, petroleum. Crude oil, petroleum oil, oil, oil.
- [21:26]
C
And then. Is that Afghanistan with opium?
- [21:28]
A
I believe so, yeah. Okay.
- [21:30]
C
Yeah, that's cool. You got to have a little fun.
- [21:32]
A
With a little fun food stuff. Okay, so. But mostly it's oil. And oil, as we all know, is like the lifeblood of the modern economy. It is transport is plastics. It is. Everything runs on it. Even as we get more electrified, we try to move off of oil. It. It is still so incredibly vital to modern economies. Every single barrel of oil that comes out of the ground gets bought. Not a single one is just sitting there on the shelf unsold. Everyone buys it. Everyone needs it. It's important. So especially in the post industrialization World War I, World War II era, people have realized that it's incredibly important to their country. And because Middle east has 6% of the world's population, but 30% of the oil, it has always been drawn into conflict and meddling and interest, because of the power of oil, needs to be understood. I think most people understand this on a base level, but this is like.
- [22:21]
B
Name one time there's this.
- [22:22]
A
I'm going to get to that. Okay. Another thing that's really important, especially in the modern day with the Middle east, are these three red circles. I used YouTube circles so we can all understand what's going on. These three are like key shipping lanes. Okay. This is the Suez canal. Something like 15% of the world's trade goes through this. So if you have military strategic or air superiority over this area. You have a real geostrategic advantage. And if someone else does, then you're at threat of them.
- [22:52]
C
Could you remind me, is Suez Canal completely owned and controlled by Israel or by Egypt?
- [22:57]
A
I think it's by Egypt.
- [22:59]
C
But Israel has had control over the canal. Right. At times, I believe I.
- [23:03]
A
Give me the lemon. I don't know. I'm not sure I understand.
- [23:07]
C
Fairly certain. There's been periods where they took it over and it was controversial. But anyway, okay, so Egypt controls the canal.
- [23:11]
A
Got it, Yeah. I mean, Britain at one point controlled it. It's now been taken. Like Egypt has nationalized it, but I think there's like a consortium of countries that have a stake in it because it's so incredibly important. That's the idea. This, the Gate of tears down here. 12% of the world's trade goes through here. That's why there was so much conflict with the Houthis in Yemen, because they could cut that off. And then there's the. Am I blanking on the name? I know this.
- [23:35]
C
This is the straight strait of Iran.
- [23:37]
A
The Strait of Hormuz. Oh. But basically, this is where like something like 20% of the world's oil, a fifth of the world's oil, goes through this strait. It is so incredibly important because it's.
- [23:49]
B
All the oil coming out of.
- [23:50]
A
All the oil comes out of these countries. And it goes out to, you know, through here to Europe, it goes to China, it goes to India. It's so important. And Iran has the ability to mine and close off this strait, which could cut off the lifeblood of countries all over the world. So these are really, really important. And every other country, all the major powers, want to make sure that these don't fall into the hands of someone who could be their enemy, who could cut that off from them. Everyone wants Middle east basically to be divided and to not have enough power to control or have authority over these because they're so important. I just want that to be understood from a strategic level. Okay. Oh, there's all the stats. I was forgetting. I forgot. I wrote them down. Okay. So that is why all the major strategic powers around the world are coming in to try and redraw lines in the Middle east or get involved. Okay, okay.
- [24:38]
C
This is.
- [24:38]
A
This is why we get it. Now, if you flash back again, you see here. This is us, Russia and China, who all have their own proxies and influence in the Middle East. If you flash back, turn to the 1900s, China was not a major power. It was Britain So it was the same three, there were three big powers, but not China. Okay. And I want to start there to get an idea of where we are, how we got to where we are today, because we're talking about Israel attacking Iran, but I want to give a context for why Iran is where it is and why Iran is such a center of conflict for the west in general and then Israel.
- [25:15]
C
Because the tectonic plates moved it there.
- [25:17]
A
That's right. I'm going to start with Pangea.
- [25:20]
B
Can you go further back?
- [25:23]
A
So the big bang really kicked off.
- [25:26]
C
And the big bang is a country.
- [25:29]
B
Doug, you're going to beat all the land maybe.
- [25:33]
A
So this is the current Ayatollah of Iran. Iran is a theocracy, pretty repressive and again, a direct enemy of, you know, death to United States. Death, Israel death, whatever. So, and I want to go how they got to that specific point. So this is William Darcy. He is a British socialite, He's a party boy. He had rich parents. He went to Australia on a whim. He, he made a bunch of money doing some mining companies. He wasn't even, didn't do any of the mining. He just threw some money at it. It kind of like tmc.
- [26:05]
B
Actually, an Australian does own tmc.
- [26:07]
A
An Australian, Aiden threw some money on tmc, made a bunch of money. He's rich as hell. He's like looking for his next business opportunity. He heads over to Persia, which is now modern day Iran in like 1900. And he says to the leader of Persia, I don't remember this guy's name, he goes, hey listen, I think I could find oil in your country. I'm going to make it rich. If you, I'll give you $3.7 million. This is in today's money. I adjusted it. If you give me exclusive rights to look for all the oil in Persia for the next 60 years, I'll give you 16% of the profits. The rest goes to me. Now at the time there was no oil found and it's mostly desert, mostly undeveloped. So this guy goes, lol, deal. He goes, fine, I'll take the millions of dollars. I don't think you're going to find anything. And what's crazy is he doesn't find anything for a year, for two years, for three years, for four years, for five years, for six years. It's a big country. He's looking, he's looking, spending money. He's wasting his fortune. They're not finding anything. And then after seven years, I don't remember the exact region they strike oil and it's a huge oil field. It's a juicer, it's a massive one, it's a fortune, it's a game changing.
- [27:19]
C
I got a pog in the chat.
- [27:22]
A
A POG for Darcy.
- [27:24]
C
Okay, can we get a W for Darcy?
- [27:25]
A
His seven year struge and now the wealth he stands to make from this makes this investment seem really, really smart. It makes it really beneficial. Especially because he signed a 60 year deal, which is absurd. Okay. So now he forms the Anglo Iranian oil company which becomes a massive success or it's just printing cash geysers of oil, cash money. And he only has to give 16% of the profits back to Iran. So it's, it's an incredible deal for him and the Iranians are kind of miffed. This is not looking good. Okay, I don't know if you know anything about the period of history between 1907 and 1950, but something happened in there that made oil really important. I don't know Doug, you got me.
- [28:14]
C
Could be iPhone.
- [28:16]
A
That's right, that's right. Steve Jobs invented the iPhone and they needed oil to ship them around the world.
- [28:23]
B
Was it the two world wars?
- [28:25]
A
That's right. And it was World War I and World War II. World War I and World War II.
- [28:30]
C
And those are a country, these are countries.
- [28:34]
A
And in these wars, you involved in these wars, Britain especially, you know, before War one. Britain is the global superpower. By the end of World War II they're greatly diminished. But in those wars they've basically put their entire economy towards surviving these two wars. And they need oil. They need oil badly. So they decide this can't even be a private company anymore. They take over Darcy's company and make it into what is now British Petroleum. That's where it comes from, bp.
- [29:04]
B
Oh. And they've said pretty controversy free.
- [29:11]
A
Yes, they buy them out and now this is the British Petroleum Company and they own Iran's oil essentially. Iran's oil essentially nationalized by Britain, which is a weird spot to be in. Then this guy comes along, I'm going to get his name wrong, but it's Mohammed Mossadegh. But I'm probably saying it wrong. Ok, Gi Sumi, give me the lemon. If I had to say it, this guy comes along in Iran, he is democratically elected and he rides a wave of populist support in Iran basically saying hey, this oil deal sucks and we need to nationalize Iran's oil for ourself. Now to be super clear, he actually is, first of all, he's like, pretty pro Western, pro America. And he starts off by saying like, hey, I just want a better deal. Give us 50% split. Give us a better split. Give us insight into the book so we know we're not getting cheated on the profit split. Britain goes, lol. No. Britain goes, nah, no deal.
- [30:05]
B
I'm beginning to see how this links with my knowledge of Iranian history.
- [30:09]
A
We're going to get to.
- [30:09]
B
I'm beginning to connect the dots here.
- [30:11]
A
It's all gonna start to catch up. So this guy goes, we want a better deal. Britain goes, lol. No. Eventually he wins the election and he goes, fine, if we're not getting a better deal, we nationalize it. So he completely takes the oil fields from Britain and nationalizes them for Iran. At which point, oh, he's actually becomes Time man of the Year. Like again, he's very well respected in the west at first. He's democratically elected. This is before the nationalization. But Britain, this is where he signs the deal. He signs the deal nationalizing the oil fields. Britain gets angry. Britain is very, very pissed because this is a strategically important source of oil for them. They've invested a lot into it. And of course they have this piece of paper that says they have it for 60 years, which is only about 10 years from being up. But they're like, you can't, you cannot break our deal. So they go to us President Truman and say, get him. You know, this guy's, this guy's breaking our deal. And Britain's a little bro at this point. They've lost so much power post World War II that they go to their big bro and say, hey, go get him. Truman goes, no. Truman goes, this guy's cool. Just give him a better deal. Truman literally says, truman at the time is signing a deal with Saudi Arabia for 50, 50 oil splits. And he's like, just do that. Give him 50, 50. He's like, don't, don't make it a big thing. Britain is super angry, doesn't want to do that. Then Truman is succeeded by Eisenhower, and Eisenhower is the, is really, this is the 50s, really, really scared of communists. Is the beginning of the Cold War. He's very, very anti communist. And Britain hatches a plot. This guy, by the way, Mohamed Mossadegh, is not communist, But Britain hatches a plot where they'll say, get him, he's communist. And they start really leaning on the angle of like, this guy's, he's probably about to be a communist. He's a communist. You got to watch out. Eisenhower, he's a communist. If you don't get him, Iran's going to be communist.
- [31:57]
B
And the more I learn about the Red Scare, the more insane it gets. It is that era of politics, you know, through reading Price of Peace, through learning things we've learned on the show. And then just historically, it blows my mind how much you could get away with calling anyone was a communist.
- [32:15]
C
It's like the Salem Witch Trials.
- [32:17]
B
Yeah, it actually is like that.
- [32:20]
A
And Britain, literally, it's their strategy. It's written down. There's some lead communiques, wherever they were, like, yeah, this is our plan. We're going to call him a communist. It's going to get Eisenhower on our side because we need big bro on this. Eisenhower thinks about it, he's like, well, Truman didn't want to. We got to do it. It's communist. So then Eisenhower is angry. Now he's like, all right. Well, he said, now he's a communist. I'm involved. So he decides, okay, I'll help you out, little bro. And sends the CIA on Operation Ajax. Operation Ajax is led by a man literally named Kermit. This is not a joke. His name is Kermit Roosevelt and he's like the great grandson of. Of Theodore Roosevelt. Like he's actually related to Presidents.
- [32:59]
C
Damn.
- [32:59]
A
If he's the grandson or grand nephew or whatever. But it's Kermit Roosevelt is sent in on a mission to get rid of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Not kill him, but get him out of power. I don't have a picture here, but he does. That's the long and short of it is Kermit does. The CIA helps orchestrate a coup that overthrows democratic elected governor President Mohammed Mossadegh for the Shah of Iran to come back. The Shah comes in, he is extremely pro Britain, pro West, repressive, and he is the one that's going to allow the oil to go back to Britain. That's the. That was the purpose. And now I could tell we were.
- [33:37]
B
Really ripping that all over South America.
- [33:40]
A
Well, dude, it's so funny. So it's interesting. This is the first one. And man, the history could have gone so different. I don't want to go too into it, but they send Kermit in, they give him a small budget and a small team. It fails, they try a coup, it fails. And they send him a letter saying, get the hell out. And he goes rogue. Now, again, maybe this has changed over time, I don't know. But the idea is that he like, keeps going. He believes in it and Keeps stirring up resentment and then hits on the right thing at the right time to start a spark in it. Anyway, he goes for a second couple. It works. And the success of that second coup is what makes them change their whole plan towards coups in South America and other things in general. Like this kicks off like, had Kermit just stopped, American football could have been way different. Anyway, it's successful, so it's successful. We're going to see. Anyway, they get rid of the Democratic leader and they get the Shaw. The Shaw is a complicated figure. The shawl, in some ways, really wants to modernize and improve Iran. He wants to use the oil wealth. By the way, the oil never goes back to the original Britain deal because the people of Iran are so against it. But it does go to, like. It probably ends up at a 50, 50 split. Actually, it's close to 50, 50 split, which is insane because they could have had it begin, could have just had.
- [34:55]
B
That, and none of this.
- [34:56]
A
It really is insane how much meddling they did to get up in the same spot. But anyway, so the Shah takes the profits and in some ways, actually, in most ways, enriches himself and funds a repressive secret service to keep his power. That's most of what he does. It's called the Savak. It's like. It's like a kgb. It's like, you know, whatever. It's a secret service that tortures political opponents and keeps his power and spies on people. Not a good guy, but in some ways, this is the controversial part. He's also a modernizer. He also, like, liberalizes. He is for women's equality, women's education, you know, trying to be more like a Western democracy. He wants Iran to be in that.
- [35:32]
B
Lemon, Lemon, Lemon, Lemon. Uh, prior to him, though, was Iran not already on a track of modernization? Because the guy prior that, we had been talking about Muhammad. Yeah, talked about. You said he was pretty, like, Western friendly. Not. Not severe in his crackdowns of, like, cultural issues.
- [35:52]
A
Give me the lemon, too, because also an area where I'm not deeply well versed, but my understanding was if I had a button I could press, the first guy was great. The first guy was like, Mohammed Mossadegh was, like, on the right track. He was balancing, you know, there's. I mean, there's deep religious power in Iran and they have to be balanced because they have a huge voting bloc and a huge authority. But he was balancing that with growth. And he was democratically elected and was trying to get a better deal already. I think I Think he also was like friendly with America and they could have made deals. I think the meddling is clearly backfired in every way. But like I, I don't know what would have happened in these years because he wasn't, he wasn't around. Sure. So we don't know. But we do know that like this guy was modern. This is Iran in 1979. Okay. And it looks like you might see like L. A in the 70s. Like it looks like that. Then in 1979, after years of brutal repression by this guy, people finally revolt. But it's weird because it's a mix of people. Half of it is like students and young people who feel like they're being economically left out and they want freedom and political rights and repression. And then half of it is like religious groups who really feel like things are getting too modern and these two groups handshake because they both hate the Shah and they're like, you know what, we'll team up, we'll figure this all out later. Let's revolt and we'll figure this all later. Even though they deeply, deeply disagree about the future of Iran. Well, the religious groups win after it's all over, after this is like a huge turning point in Iran's history. And had this group came out on top, I mean this revolution could have taken Iran in a whole different direction because it really was good to get rid of this forced by outsider shop. But the religious groups win. They have, you know, more, they just have a structure. They have, they have mosques all over the country. They have a structure, a plan I think. And this guy promises when he takes over we're going to be still a democracy, just with some more Islamic characteristics. The second he gets in power, it's brutal repression, full theocracy, gets rid of other parties, not what you expect. And then women's rights take a huge backslide, a lot of rights to huge blacks. It's very, it's as repressive, if not more repressive than the previous regime. So it's not really a progress in any way. And it's a backslide. And but this country, now that they're under out from under the thumb of the shah, still remembers 30 years of being tortured by the Shah and that was because of American meddling. So there's this deep decades long resentment against the west and America specifically that is now fully free to run wild with this new theocratic regime. And they, I mean it becomes core to their philosophy is how much they don't like America because of that, that's that's like one of their stories of going to power. MARTIN BLACK so that regime is still in power today. And in fact we're only like one ayatollah removed from the ayatollah that had power then. And the current ayatollah is like 88 years old. I mean, it is just a dictator for life type thing, theocracy. That's the context you need to understand why Iran has become a strategic enemy of the United States now. Why it's still so deadly important nowadays is because Iran, starting right around here pre Covid, has been heavily sanctioned by the west to not be able to sell oil. And these red lines is where they sell to China. Iran in recent years has become extremely dependent on exporting oil to China. And China in turn really values Iran because Iran is now a major source of Chinese oil which they need for their lifeblood and growth. So there's a deep connection between Iran and China that is like only strengthened in recent years, which is why, you know, geostragically, China is now considering Iran something of a proxy in the Middle east in the way that the United States does for Israel. Israel. United States is the big bro for Israel. China is a big one for Iran. And it's both because both of them want strategic superiority over oil and control of these shippings in the Middle East. Like that's the bigger picture of why they're doing it. I'm not making a moral judgment on anything. I'm just saying this is why.
- [40:02]
B
No, that was weird. I think you just endorsed it.
- [40:03]
A
Yeah. Explaining why countries, you know, real politic, why countries do what they do. So and that's why, you know, you see their response is stronger and more direct than before. That's why China considers this way more important than they used to because it has become more important than it used to for their oil. Okay. And that's why they're sending mysteriously transport planes in Iran and getting more involved. So this brings us to today or this week's news about the big battle between Israel and Iran. And I'm not going to go too deeply into that. I just want to explain why it happened this week, why it's happening now. And that is because this battle between Israel and Iran through proxies and through their own, you know, deep conflicts and religious problems, has been happening for decades. And largely it has been done through their own mini proxies where Iran has been funding different groups that Israel's been fighting with. And that would be one, two and three here, one is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Two was the Assad regime in Syria and three was the Houthi rebels in Yemen. So all three of these were funded by Iranian oil as part of a larger struggle between Israel and Iran. Now you'll notice over the, if we've watched the news over the past year and a half, you can literally go 1, 2, 3 over. Hezbollah was neutralized or lost where it was defeated by Israel mostly. The Assad regime in Syria fell after 50 years. And then recently Yemen signed a cease fire. Not Yemen. The Houthi sign a cease fire in Yemen. So as all the proxies one by one have been taken out, it is now opened up this strategic line between Israel and Iran where Israel sees an opportunity. Not, not right thing to do. You can, shouldn't be bombing sovereign nations. But I'm just saying this is, this is why on a real politic level, why it's happening now. They're seeing an opportunity as there's weakness from all three of these again, also from another backer, weapons backer. Russia is also in a weak moment because they're focused entirely on Ukraine. So all of these things have combined at once to make this the moment and that is why it is happening now. And I think all these themes seem like disparate, unconnected events, but they're all deeply connected. They chain one after another. And now we've arrived at this moment. I don't have deep commentary on it. I just want people to understand that so they know what they're getting into and understand how this all connects and, and where we're headed and why people have different goals in this conflict.
- [42:30]
C
Yeah.
- [42:30]
A
So hopefully that helped in some way.
- [42:32]
C
It was great.
- [42:33]
B
Oh, that definitely helped a ton. I think with a lot of these things. Right. You understand bits and pieces of the history, but not the.
- [42:42]
C
And now we solely understand it.
- [42:44]
A
Yeah.
- [42:44]
B
We don't see there's nothing else to learn.
- [42:50]
A
Yeah. I mean there's again, there's infinite more to learn. And every one of those things I mentioned, you know, I could have deep dived longer, but I think it helps average listener to be like, okay, now I get a better clear picture of how we got here.
- [43:02]
C
Do you know how much of the sense. Because my understanding is the justification for attacking Iran from both Israel and. Or the United States, it's the nuclear bomb threat. But then following up on that is the express threat to destroy America and Israel. Right. That's, that's been like the verbiage coming out of the Ayatollah for a while. Right. Do you, do you know where that comes from to not just because there's a lot of people who dislike Britain in America but I believe they're one of if not the only countries that's like we want to destroy you explicitly.
- [43:34]
B
It's because of the destabilization is the history of destabilization in, in Iran. While they why they hate the US so specifically. Like the Shah was instated by the coup so they. I think that's where the specific anger comes from. I'm not sure why it is so I mean I could take guesses but the like there's a very concrete reason for the US but for Iran's hatred of Israel. I don't. I'm not as familiar with the basis for that. I know that there's been historical conflicts with Israel in the area the way that Israel like came to existence in the first place but I don't know why that Israel is like in the same lockstep statement with the us. Forgive me, I haven't watched or listened to the same version or same presentation of what led up to that.
- [44:27]
A
Yeah. I wouldn't feel comfortable giving that now. I would need to do more research. But you know even on a base level you can just see it as when it comes to the Middle east they're kind of locks that Israel and the United States are, are you know is in some ways a proxy so for US's interest in the region at least when it comes to like oil and control and strategic military capabilities around the three key straits. So that's what I would say. I mean there's, there is. Yeah. There's so much more we could get into.
- [45:00]
B
Okay. So I wanted to talk about a couple of things. Was the framing of this for like the average person right now. Right. These headlines started to break out. This kind of happened I want to say last year as well when there was some smaller scale back and forth attacks between Israel and Iran.
- [45:14]
A
Yeah.
- [45:14]
B
And like I think it was April and October of last last year but people immediately World War Three it's happening. We're going to get pulled in this conflict. Other countries are going to get pulled into this conflict. This is the inflection for like the globes next great conflict. And people, people see it as that and I. But without the basis or the knowledge that you had just walked us through. Right. The thing I wanted to start with was average people's sentiment right now with this happening.
- [45:46]
A
Yeah.
- [45:46]
B
Which is most people I think even if you're you know more, more conservative and you voted for Trump. There's a very strong reaction to don't get involved in another conflict in the Middle East. Don't pull us into this. We don't want to be involved. We don't want any more war or like lives lost. And I think that's something that's very interesting here where there's a maybe more classic like human rights position of don't just do not get involved in a war because of all the like death and suffering it might cause. And, and I think that's heavily linked like on a more left side. Right. There's a lot of linked messaging to the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Gaza and all of the human suffering that has happened in Gaza within the past couple of years. And people are like this. The continued violence exercised by Israel is, is the issue and we should not be supporting them in any way. But if we come around to the other side. I think something that is so interesting to me is the way this issue seems to be fracturing the more right side of American politics right now, which is, and you hold it up. I think this clip is very interesting to watch.
- [47:09]
A
I'm going to send it to Perry if you could pull it up. This clip. I think. Yeah, you're going to say it, but it exemplifies what you're talking about where we just talked about Tyler Carlson. I don't remember in what context at the beginning of this episode, but.
- [47:19]
C
Oh, he was on All In.
- [47:20]
A
Turk Carlson, All In. So yeah, I mean Turk Carlson expresses generally the, the Trump right wing viewpoint. Like that's, that's, he's a mouthpiece for that and he had Ted Cruz on his show. I'm sending the link right now.
- [47:32]
C
I'm sorry.
- [47:34]
A
And really, really ripped into him over U.S. involvement or, or considering getting involved, getting, you know, actually putting troops or bombs or missiles on the ground in, in, in Iran. So this is the clip, if you could play it.
- [47:51]
B
How many people live in Iran, by the way? I, I don't know the population at all. No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around 92 million.
- [48:03]
A
Okay.
- [48:04]
B
Yeah. How could you not know that? I, I don't sit around memorizing population tables. Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government.
- [48:14]
C
Why is it relevant?
- [48:15]
B
Whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million, why is it relevant? Because if you don't know about the country. I didn't say I don't know anything about. Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran? They are Persians and predominantly Shia. Okay, you don't know anything about Iran. So, okay, the Tucker Carlson expert on a ranch. You're a senator who's calling the government. You're the one who knows about the country. No, you don't know anything about the country. You're the one who claims they're not trying to murder Donald Trump. You know, I'm not saying that. Who can't figure out if it's a good idea to kill General Soleimani. And you said it was bad, they're trying to murder Trump. Yes, I do. Because you're not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation. And if they really believe that carrying out military strikes today, you said Israel was right with our help. I said we, Israel is leading them, but we're supporting them. Well, this, you're breaking news here because the US Government last night denied the National Security Council on behalf of Trump that we were acting on Israel's behalf in any offensive capacity. We're not bombing them.
- [49:14]
C
Israel's bombing them.
- [49:15]
B
You just said we were. We are supporting Israel. You're a senator if you're saying the United States government is Iran right now. People are listening.
- [49:23]
C
So God damn.
- [49:25]
A
That's one of the most basic things.
- [49:29]
B
Okay, so what's interesting is this clip has been going around a lot along with a couple other clips from this interview. And there it's not just Tucker Carlson, it's from what I've seen, people like Candace Owens, people like Majority, Taylor Greene.
- [49:49]
A
Yeah, people.
- [49:49]
C
Are this in the background? Oh, this is not the right thing.
- [49:52]
B
People who are well established in this maga, like extreme, what I would consider very far right position and have been lock in step with Trump's actions for so long, supporting him in basically every capacity and coming out on this specific issue and saying, no, we should not become involved in this conflict. And I think this is really interesting in tandem with what we had talked about a couple weeks ago when we were talking about the national debt and the big beautiful bill dividing up portions of Trump's constituents. It's, it's, this is a, an issue that's finally breaking up a coalition that is, is pretty in line with one another when it, you know, let's say when it counts.
- [50:47]
A
Yeah.
- [50:48]
B
And I wonder if this is the beginning with these issues in tandem with one another and how important they are, why is this happening now? Finally, are these issues just important enough for that to be the case and is this the true fracturing of this political segment, I don't think it's going to dissolve overnight. I just think I haven't seen this in the past 10 years.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah, dude. Well, my take would be is this. When he ran, he ran on these sort of broadly popular ideas like be he ran on a pro peace platform of like getting us out, we're going to end the war on day one in Ukraine, we're going to not get involved in these needless wars. And he also ran on like a, you know, we're going to fix our.
- [51:33]
B
Budget, which similar to the deficit, I would argue. I don't know if he effectively ever backed that up with his actions. No, just words, but, but in wording and belief in the platform from the people who chose to vote for him.
- [51:45]
A
Yes. And, you know, full credit here to voters, it's not like Biden was pro peace or pro balanced budget. Right. So it was a bad example there. And Trump's running on the opposite of that. He's got words and he's got this movement and it unites all these different groups under this one banner. And then when the rubber meets the road of reality and you have to actually legislate or make policies, that's when, you know, choices have to be made that are going to fracture these different groups who are. What I've really realized is that the only issue that really unites all these different groups in the right is that they don't like, like this idea of woke. That is the, that was now that like, you know, this doesn't feel as good to rally against WOKE once you have the House and the Senate and once we have all the power and the biggest podcasters are all like, once you have that, it doesn't feel as rebellious to rally against woke. But like in that time it worked and it helped unite everybody.
- [52:41]
B
But now it's what it's when the dog catches the car.
- [52:43]
A
Finally it's the last thread holding these different groups together and there are like these warhawk neocons and then there's these, these more peace winning sides of the party that don't want to get involved in isolationism completely.
- [52:56]
B
So. So yeah, I, I'm going to say this. Yeah, I wanted to villain share this. I'm glad I wanted to share this episode because I wanted to spend some time, you know, what is the actual argument? I think most people, when you ask them right now, the average person is let's not get involved in this conflict.
- [53:14]
C
Yeah. Can I offer that perspective as probably the least informed on this is the three of us I don't trust Israel. I don't trust the United States government when they say a country has weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, they said that when we were kids and we got locked into a 20 year war that has put us massively in debt and killed however many hundreds of thousands of people in buildings. The fact that they're like, iran's about to have a nuke, that's why we got to kill them and attack the country. It's like, dude, you can't fool me twice. You're, you're the, the boy who cried nuke. And we've already checked for the nukes several times. I don't trust you anymore. I, I don't get. You know, and then like you said, it's off the back of Israel, Palestine. It's just that I, I think the level of trust in Israel's decision making, I think is an incredible low. And my sense is I don't want anything to fucking do with this. Get us out of the Middle East.
- [54:01]
B
20 year war. 20 year war. He said, we roll in your rocks.
- [54:08]
C
And that's, again, you know, that's the uninformed view. But I, I would suspect the vast majority of people agree with me and are like, not a fucking. Another war in another country that supposedly has a weapon. Which, by the way, Tulsi Gabbard, who's the Director of National Intelligence, said, according to the US International intelligence, that they are not developing a nuclear bomb. That is from Tulsi Gabbard. So it's not like unanimous of like they have a nuke or anything. It's.
- [54:31]
B
Maybe we live, I think collectively we live in the shadow of 9, 11 and the consequences of it and the things that led up to that as well. But we all remember the two wars that we got stuck in for so long that almost everyone agrees we shouldn't have been, we shouldn't have been doing that.
- [54:48]
A
Yeah.
- [54:49]
B
With Iraq specifically, I think if you ask people if we should have invaded Afghanistan, I think people are a little more back and forth on it. But it is rare to find someone. I can't think of anyone I've met that was like, yeah, Iraq, solid call.
- [55:04]
A
Yeah.
- [55:05]
B
And I don't think I've ever talked to that person.
- [55:07]
A
No, that's why I think, I think you bring up a really good point here, Doug. And Aiden is like, you know, it's easy to look at like the Ayatollah in Iran and say this is a, this is a bad regime. Like, what they're doing is repressive or what you know, people, there's, I mean there's, there's tortures and killings and political prisoners and. But I just want you to understand that Iraq, Saddam was not a good guy either. Right. But there's like a long history like countries like saying well we gotta, we gotta have a regime change here. And it never almost, I mean I can't think of a single example in history where it doesn't blow back. It always has. But this time will be different. But it's, everyone says it this time it's like the.
- [55:43]
B
Even more Gaddafi in Libya. That's my understanding too. We overthrew like a. Basically helped overthrow a regime in Libya and that happened more recently, you know, in the 2000 and tens and the consulate Libya in bad shape after the fact.
- [56:00]
A
It just creates this weird power vacuum that gets filled with even more fighting and usually, you know, you know, Israel having the military capability to possibly topple the regime in Iran because they are, they are weak right now it seems does not mean they have the capability to manage or run or, or the moral authority or any type of authority to be able to, to have the long term effects of that.
- [56:23]
B
So, so I want to build sort of this, this, this argument that I was looking into and, and point out some things here because I was curious of for the people who are really pro intervention here still after everything we just talked about. Why, why would that be the case? And I say this as someone who also thinks we. You know, personally I don't want to become involved in this conflict. I don't want more people to die. I come at this from a perspective of I. The human death and suffering in war feels like a horrid thing.
- [56:58]
A
You have to hold the lemon to say death and suffering is bad.
- [57:02]
B
I don't even need to be holding the lemon for that. I just come into this, I want to be so explicitly clear that like you know, I'm a guy trying to figure this out. Like you listening to this right now are. And I don't want more people to die and suffer the. So why would someone be pro for this conflict? The first thing that to start it is the nuclear weapon question. I wanted to come to what you had said. The US saying that they aren't close to a nuclear weapon or at least more mixed opinions from our country on whether or not they're close to a nuclear weapon is countered by the fact that Israel, Israel's intelligence is saying that they are much closer to a nuclear weapon than other people understand or know. And they are insisting that that is the case. And that intervention, you know, collectively, no one wants Iran to have nuclear weapons. And that isn't just Israel and the us that's other countries within the Middle East. That's Saudi Arabia, that's Bahrain, that's uae, that's even Qatar, who has pretty interlocked, more interlocked business relationships with Iran than a lot of these other countries, does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons.
- [58:14]
A
Yeah, I mean, you know, broadly, every country on earth doesn't want any new country to get a nuclear weapon other than themselves. They don't have. Nobody wants anyone else to have a nuclear weapon because it. It just increases the threat and the problem. And all nuclear powers want nobody else to have them. Everyone that doesn't have one wants only them to get it and then no one else. Like, it's. That's where we're at because there's no.
- [58:36]
C
No country that has nuclear weapons has ever been invaded. Right. Like, directly. You know, that's kind of. The thing is, like, once. Once you get to that point, you're now at the level of deterrence of. You know, it's the same reason that we aren't. Well, at least reason that America hasn't, like, pushed into Russia directly because it's like, you can't poke the bear too much, but now there's a lot of bears all over the fucking world. Right? Like, the instant they get it, like, your options are massively limited. Right.
- [59:03]
A
And I think, you know, the recent thing with. With Ukraine is a reason why it's become urgent for countries like Iran to push towards it, because Ukraine had nukes, then gave them up as part of a strategic security peace deal that they were agreed to with all these sides that nobody honored after they gave up the nukes. And then Russia invaded them and then. Yeah, so they wish that, you know, they wish they'd kept their nukes because they would have lessons being invaded and. And other countries are learning that lesson that the words don't matter as much as just having the nuke. And that's why there's been a push for it from a lot of different countries that didn't have it before. It's not a good thing. You know, it's all. This is all kind of scary and bad, but, like, this is why. There's a why for everything. And that's why we get to where we're at.
- [59:44]
B
So in the position that.
- [59:45]
C
Don't worry, guys, I've got a wacky segment later.
- [59:48]
A
We're gonna get wacky after this.
- [59:49]
B
So in the position that Israel's in right now. They're, they see this as the, the prime opportunity for a lot of the reasons that you laid out to finally take action. There won't be retaliation from the other proxy groups in the region. They have at least a tacit, not, I wouldn't say support because other countries in the region have spoken out against their, their instigation of violence or their attack on Iran. But, and they have more of a relationship with the other countries in the Middle east than they, than they used to. And a lot of those other countries don't really want Iran's sphere of influence to be significant. Either these other, like places like Saudi Arabia, places like Bahrain, places like the UAE and Syria has basically fallen or the old Syrian regime has fallen. Russia is distracted by the current war that they're caught in. And Iran in a relatively weak spot because of the effect of sanctions over so many years, like economically a bad spot. And also the weak, relatively weak responses and attacks of Iran in 2024. So seeing that Iran was not as powerful as they initially like threatened themselves to be, at least that's a viewpoint of a lot of people involved in this conflict. And then from Israel's perspective, they have a US administration in place that they feel is possible to pressure into the conflict like Trump is on better terms with Netanyahu or seems more malleable on that side. So they believe that this is a time where they can convince the US to come and support them in the conflict. And then also within Israel, from my understanding is, is unlike in, in, in Gaza as an example, there is more political division within Israel for how Gaza is being treated and, and dealt with how like the consequences of that conflict are more divisive to average Israelis. But the support for attacking Iran and protecting itself from Iran, or at least they, they all view it that way, is massive. The support within Israel is really, really strong for conflict with Iran specifically. So all of these factors have come together for them to feel like this is the prime time to take advantage of this. And from if you exist outside of Israel or if you're one of these, let's say neocon warmongers who is super pro getting involved in a conflict even at this stage, your outlook on this might be expanding the US's sphere of influence. So our resources are getting increasingly strained as time passes, our debt is ballooning and a lot of this goes towards being this global police force. Right, which if from a perspective like benefits the United States. And that's your reason in maintaining this geopolitical position as America. Right, right. So you, as America would have a chance to take advantage of all these factors I just laid out, help Israel overturn the regime within Iran and introduce a hopeful stability to the region that by, by getting rid of this one massive power that has managed to shake up things for so long, you leave Israel and Saudi Arabia in the region intact as the powers who can effectively manage and police the Middle east because Iran is no longer a factor. And then you get to spread, take your resources out of the Middle east and start stockpiling and securing Southeast Asia and China in the future conflicts that are seen to be in Asia. This is the geopolitical argument that I have found online for why it matters to the United States so much to stop Iran. It's not just boiling down to whether or not they have a nuclear deterrent or nuclear weapon. It's this being stretched in finally allowing other powers that are allies to successfully control this region, getting a lot of the resources out of the region on your own that you can then spread to the other conflicts and fronts in the world that you, that, that you want to handle. And I thought this was, this is a very interesting, it's weird because it makes me feel like I really am looking at the game of life and the world as a game of like, risk. I Right. It is, it is this incredible movement of human beings and countries as pawns in order to accomplish a goal, which is maybe that's what all geopolitical decisions are, but that was the, the most like, convincing argument I could find of, like, if you really care about maintaining the longevity of the US Sphere of influence, this is your reason to get involved in this conflict. It's like you're one time to overthrow this power and bring balance to your approach, like elsewhere, elsewhere in the world.
- [65:03]
A
Yeah, it's tough. I, I, I have read that take in general. And you know, you could say that the dream outcome for someone who has that line of thought is that there's regime, there's an uprising in Iran because the leadership is now weak or they're being bombed and there's a new democratic government and they're friendly in a way that Syria sort of is coming right now after Assad with the west and Israel and Saudi Arabia. And then suddenly Iran's brought into the fold and now you have this strategic choke point over China where at any point, like if they go crazy or attack Taiwan, you can cut off the Strait of Hormuz and cut off their oil.
- [65:41]
B
You cut off the oil that's going out to China.
- [65:44]
A
So, like, that, that's the, that's the dream scenario. But, you know, as we talked about with Iraq and all these examples, it's like it never works out in the dream. It almost never works out in the dream scenario. And almost certainly that you just build this deep, deep resentment because of your meddling, because of your involvement, because of your bond.
- [65:59]
C
That's the piece I can't get over is like, it's, it's one thing if this is like an unprompted.
- [66:02]
A
Yeah. If it did it themselves.
- [66:03]
C
Every one of these countries, like, okay, after a century of Western countries just fucking their shit up, they want to get revenge and we can't let them get revenge. It's like, yeah, I mean, you know, know, I don't want them to nuke anybody, but, man, I don't feel like we have the moral authority here at all, you know?
- [66:19]
A
Yeah, that's what's.
- [66:20]
B
It's a hard time imagining that. The answer is, let's keep. Let's dig ourselves out of this hole. Like, let's keep it up and this time it'll work out. Yeah, that's. I, I think that's a hard sell because I think that's the question that you have to answer at the end of all of that explanation. It's. This is wild. I think you're listening to three people, three normal people try to parse this situation as best as possible. I, like, I don't know what's going to happen. Our president is firmly in the camp of maybe I will, maybe I won't.
- [66:52]
A
Like, it's as unfirm as you can get.
- [66:55]
B
And one thing I wanted to throw on the end of this before we move on is I watched a few videos and about Tehran specifically and just people visiting and being tourists because I think something. A vision of the Middle east and the people in the Middle east that we are often sold is the version that we saw during these wars, which is like, dusty, desolate, not very developed. And I think it is easy, especially when we talk about numbers, to not think about the human consequence of things. And I was watching these videos of people, you know, exploring Tehran, experiencing the culture, meeting people, and I was surprised by not, not necessarily by how modern it was, because a lot of it was modern. But how many women were walking around without.
- [67:46]
A
Yeah, I heard there has been progress.
- [67:48]
B
Head headwear. And it's like, if you want to wear that, wear it. If you don't want to wear it, don't. That's what I see. It's like, it should be your choice to be able to do it. And this is, I think, from the version of events that we were told that, like, this isn't to absolve the regime. This is just like, this is. It's more just the enforcement of it. Yeah.
- [68:07]
A
My understanding is that the regime is just getting weaker and more resisted against, especially in major population centers like this city. Like, they're just not caring as much about the authority they have to crack down on.
- [68:17]
B
Yeah.
- [68:17]
A
This stuff now that they've softened their stance.
- [68:19]
B
And I think it's just important to remember that your version of how you see these places in your head might not be accurate. And also, all of the people that live in these places are just, dude, regular human people trying to get by who don't set the sanctions and don't develop the nukes and don't. Don't talk about invading. Like, it's. Oh, yeah, I don't know, man.
- [68:41]
A
But dude, you say that it's. Man, Trump tweeted, like, Tehran better evacuate tonight or something like that. I want to get the exact words right. Maybe you can look it up, Perry. But you know, the idea that a city of nine plus million or whatever can evacuate, like is going to. Is absurd. So that. That was bananas for a president to tweet you. It's just. It's not a feasible thing. It's not. It's not possible. You cannot do that. It's not. It didn't follow up with anything.
- [69:11]
C
There's no point.
- [69:12]
A
There's no follow up.
- [69:13]
C
Mass chaos and confusion and fear implying.
- [69:15]
A
You'Re going to bomb Toronto rubble or something. Something. And there's millions of people in there. And then also, you know, the idea that. That absolves you, like I told him to evacuate, it's just. It's just crazy. Just. It's not.
- [69:26]
B
Not a. I think. I think that about wraps it up. I think you guys are listening to this and figuring it out just like we are. And, you know, this changes every day right now. So hope people stay safe and I hope we do not jump into this. But that being said, a couple other things we wanted to talk about.
- [69:47]
A
Well, there are some people jumping into it.
- [69:50]
C
Oh, I get it. Yeah. I mean, I was almost wanting to skip this because, like. All right, more military news. I'll go real quick, really fast. We'll go real quick. And then maybe we go to the other slightly more lighthearted AI thing, but a quick one, which is kind of interesting, is there are some tech executives joining the Army. So basically the army is creating a new like special reservation around Reservist. Yeah, Reservist unit called Detachment 301 which 201, which is a funny like web server meme. But anyway, so it's like two execs from OpenAI and now the Palantir CEO and the Meta CTO.
- [70:24]
A
The worst blunt rotation.
- [70:25]
C
Yeah.
- [70:27]
B
Are.
- [70:28]
C
So they're joining the special, you know, reservist unit of the, of the army. So they are officially like part of the army once they're sworn in, which I believe happened on Friday. And that means they're going to serve about 120 hours a year. So it's like a couple of weeks a year. So it's not their full time thing. But the idea is they're basically coming in as advisors, experts to help them the military modernize. It's like the army Chief of Staff is like we need to go faster and that's exactly what we're doing here. So they're going to be like teaching people, helping them acquire tech and all this stuff.
- [70:56]
A
Oh, do you know that like starcraft is really big in South Korea, right?
- [71:02]
C
Yeah.
- [71:04]
A
And you know that every South Korean boy is required to join the military for two years.
- [71:07]
C
Yeah.
- [71:08]
A
So there's a player named Slayer's boxer who's like super famous, like super megastar Starcraft guy. He gets drafted in the military because he has to go. But he's so famous that he convinces the military to set up the Air Force ace Starcraft team that he officially gets to serve in. That's his time is just competing in starcraft tournaments under the Air Force banner. He's like, like even K pop stars didn't get that, but he got that.
- [71:30]
B
Wow.
- [71:31]
A
And it reminds me kind of of that where it's like this, this military partnership where they can serve in the military without actually being in the front lines.
- [71:40]
C
Yeah. So it's, they're not going to play starcrap but they're not going to do it that much work. It's, it's more symbolic. But parents pull this up back there. So Wall Street Journal article about this if you're interested. I think what is more interesting is just a quick takeaway from these guys joining the army. Right. Again, largely symbolic. The main thing though I think that this is illustrative of is that the military of America is trying to modernize and move past their current system. And so with the army guy he's explicitly saying like we are trying to modernize the military, do faster stuff. There was also an article I read on TechCrunch about how the, I believe, CTO of the Navy has been pushing for startups to be able to work with the Navy faster. And basically he's like, look, in the past there's been this bureau, Democratic mess to work with the military. If you're a company, it's like you can start a bid or a project and then there's this massive, massive hurdle you have to get through to start working with the US military.
- [72:32]
A
Right?
- [72:33]
C
He wants to stop that. And now he's like, you know, reducing the red tape and making it a lot easier.
- [72:37]
B
I'd love, I'd love if this was like a. It's just a contract that gets them all on like a Monday board.
- [72:43]
A
They're all on a Trello.
- [72:48]
C
And so new bomb. He is really explicitly talking in a way where it's like, we're humble and we're listening more than before instead of specifying, hey, we'd like this problem solved in a way. We've always had it. Instead it's, we have a problem, who wants to solve it? How will you solve it? The CTO of the Navy is basically saying, we have been really slow in the past. We want to make it easier for people to work with the military and not just have like the same systems we've always done. There was this thesis written by the CTO of Palantir who, who's now joined the army. Very pro military kind of vibes. But he talked about the history of defense contractors and he shows this how basically since the Cold War ended, there's this interesting graph showing how what used to be something like 90 companies was completely consolidated into these five.
- [73:34]
B
Dude being something about getting mad at the military industrial complex consolidating because of like capitalism, because of, because of that playing out because of is insane to me. Like, coming out, it's like, we need more industrial competition in the military. It's like, maybe you do in like an economic sense, but I just think this is really funny. It's.
- [74:00]
A
Wait, why Steel Manning?
- [74:02]
C
Yeah, that's the point I'm making is I think it's actually a very good thing. So let me, let me finish the point. So there's five of these companies now that constitute the most majority of the military spending. And as we've talked about, and I'm sure most people are aware, there is enormous waste and inefficiency with these defense contractors. They just go to the government. They're like, hey, we're going to charge you $15,000 for a soap dispenser and $10 million for this jet.
- [74:24]
A
Okay.
- [74:24]
C
They do cost. Yeah. And, and the government's like, sure, they do cost plus, which is basically the government will pay whatever it costs to make it plus 15% or whatever. So it incentivizes these companies to do things to take forever as slow and as expensive as possible. So you have these incredibly slow, inefficient companies that we pay for as taxpayers. It's fucking ridiculous. And basically over the last 3ish decades they have just entrenched themselves in this position where they just get tons and tons and tons of government money coming in paying them and then there's no accountability for them to do a better.
- [74:57]
A
Job and no competition. There's only five of them. Right. So you can't be like, like who's gonna give me the best deal on this tank? Because like they just, they, they work with each other to split up the few things they work on. And you can't go anywhere else as the government. My dad has, you know, worked in the military and he has been in charge of on really small scale like cost procurement and like you often have one or two options for a thing and they can charge you whatever the hell you they want. And you don't have a lot. You can't be like, I'll go to this guy, then I'll go, I'll go elsewhere. There's not someone else. The government can't do it themselves and there's not 15 different companies that are actually bidding. The bids are not competitive. And so it leads to at every level the military overpaying for every. I mean you said this.
- [75:36]
B
But so I do agree with this part. This is the, the irony more to me is in a world of like commerce in the United States where we're. So many industries have consolidated further and further and there's more monopolization around. It's funny of all things to start with the military of addressing the problem of like we, it's like we can't get good antitrust action in this country. But the plan or like this effort being put towards this being the starting point is just a little. It's just funny. That's it. But it's not something.
- [76:08]
A
I see what you're saying.
- [76:09]
B
It's not something that's valuable. And I want to clarify here. It's like I'm at war here internally, not upon if pragmatist me versus idealist me of I don't want I. It's hard for me to stand behind the like further like further Development of things that support the defense industry in America. And that is an ethical problem within itself. But pragmatically understanding that America's defense industry and military is not going to disappear overnight. Yes, I would like there to be more competition to help reduce, reduce costs in a capacity that is similar to us reducing health care costs. Yeah, Like, I would, I would like us to spend less money on the military and like be more fiscally responsible as a nation. And this is a way of accomplishing that. Yes, I, that's like, this does not.
- [77:02]
C
Touch on the ethics of spending, of spending all this money on the military.
- [77:06]
A
Yeah, but I just, you know, personally, I think if you were going to antitrust break up anything, military contractors and health care companies would actually be. No, I, I was a sick place to start.
- [77:17]
B
I would take that, that action. I don't, I don't want me thinking. It's funny to come across as I don't want the action.
- [77:23]
A
You were holding the lemon. So I didn't go.
- [77:25]
C
It wasn't clear.
- [77:26]
A
I couldn't understand it.
- [77:27]
C
No, no, I, I, so I had the same takeaway. Looking at this, it's like, so as we move towards this world, I mean, there was an interesting example that he talks about where these companies, a couple of them, that most of them don't even make commercial, like, products anymore. They don't make things for the civilian population. And when they've tried to, they've failed badly.
- [77:44]
A
Boeing's getting weird worse and worse.
- [77:45]
C
Boeing's like one of the only ones and the others have tried things. And basically they're so incompetent and expensive and slow as companies that when they try to make things for a market where the customers are actually going to push back and stop buying, if the quality sucks, they fail miserably. And so what the Palantir CTO is basically saying is that you need competition, you need other companies coming in because these five companies have a stranglehold on everything. The military on the other side creates a monopsony. Monopsony by just aggressive agreeing to pay for everything. And both sides need to be shaken up. Even if you strongly disagree with the ethics of how our military is used. For me, the takeaway is imagining the executives of these, no offense if your dad's an executive of these fucking defense contractors. And I love the idea of, of new startups coming in and shaking up what those guys have been doing, which is since the last cold war, this 30 year, just gloat and just the gluttony of just taking taxpayer dollars for an inefficient, shitty, expensive military. And I would love for this to stop. And so I think there's a, there's a number of indications that that trend is, is speeding up. I think the China is honestly kind of doing it. That's what repeatedly was brought up. People talking about this is like, can I steal, man? Yeah.
- [78:59]
A
I think Boeing is really good at killing whistleblowers. So if we just tell them that our enemies are.
- [79:05]
C
We turn that into a sort of army division.
- [79:08]
A
Yeah, we motivate them by thinking of all of our enemies.
- [79:12]
C
Join the military. What the fuck, you guys get in on the army too.
- [79:15]
B
My villain cherry is I just went to a beautiful wedding. Probably one of the best I've ever been to. Presumably funded by one of these companies. Oh yeah, a little trickle down economics.
- [79:26]
A
If you went to a Northrop Grundman wedding, a wedding between Northrop and Grumman, that's a beautiful game up.
- [79:32]
B
And if they start introducing too much competition, I can't go to any more beautiful weddings.
- [79:37]
A
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [79:39]
C
So interesting things happening in the military.
- [79:42]
A
Presentation.
- [79:43]
C
Presentation.
- [79:44]
A
Come on.
- [79:45]
C
Thing a little more light hearted of a note.
- [79:47]
A
Yes, please.
- [79:48]
C
But unfortunately it is AI again. Oh, wait, wait, hold on. Not the presentation yet. Okay, quick primer. Here's the link. Disney and Universal are suing Mid Journey over AI generated content. So if you haven't heard of Mid Journey, it's one of the most, if not the most popular popular image generator for AI. There's a lot of anger and controversy over the AI image generators and whether.
- [80:12]
A
Yes, okay.
- [80:13]
C
And basically the argument is like, you are, this is copyright infringement specifically with this case.
- [80:17]
A
Is that AI generated?
- [80:19]
C
No, no, this is specifically Disney and Comcast, who owns Universal teamed up. They're suing Mid Journey and they're like, you guys are just straight up crazy creating images of Star Wars. The Simpsons Shrek minions. They asked Mid Journey to stop and they aren't stopping. They're seeking $150,000 per infringement, which is like, it's probably like a trillion dollars, dude.
- [80:43]
B
Per Minions meme. Yeah, per AI Minions meme.
- [80:47]
C
Mid Journey is the quintessential copyright free writer and a bottomless pit of plagiarism, which I thought was good wording. And so I was actually curious about this. Like, I think there's a number of of topics around AI art, but one of them specifically in this case is copyright infringement of having one of these tools make a copyrighted image of whatever. So I wanted to find out, can it draw Shrek presentation?
- [81:09]
A
Okay. Hell yeah.
- [81:11]
C
Okay, so the premise here, if you are an AI company, right, there's an argument around fair use of using all the data to train, but there's no real ability for them to say, yeah, we should be able to make images of SpongeBob or Shrek. Shrek. That's not allowed. So when you go to OpenAI, right, and you say, make me a Shrek movie poster, it might start, and then it says, I couldn't generate that image because the request violates our content policies. Up until recently, you get a little sneaky, okay. And you could just be like, give me a green ogre movie poster who's round and friendly. And that actually worked. And he would just. It would just draw Shrek.
- [81:43]
A
Until recently.
- [81:45]
C
That doesn't work anymore.
- [81:46]
A
Okay?
- [81:46]
C
And so I was like, what I want to do is see how hard, hard is it to make this copyright infringing content that they've been talking about. So I said, okay, picture of SpongeBob SquarePants and maybe I'll have to sort of revise it. And it just made spongebob straight up. So it does not want to make Shrek. This is open AI who's not the one being sued.
- [82:05]
A
Yeah, but.
- [82:05]
C
And they're the most prominent.
- [82:06]
A
And Open Chat GPT just made you spongebob Chat GPT.
- [82:09]
C
I said, this is the quote, a picture of spongebob squarepants just.
- [82:13]
A
It just is too slow.
- [82:14]
B
I like, I like how in the second panel he might be naked.
- [82:19]
C
Yeah, that's true.
- [82:20]
A
It's like blurred.
- [82:21]
C
It gets to here and then it just changes his torso to something else. Like, it's not SpongeBob, it's not us. So I was like, wait, what's going on here? So I said, okay, SpongeBob and Shrek cheerleading. And then it said, okay, I can't generate that because it violates our content policies. Exactly. So I was like, it's actually only I asked why? And it was like, thanks for asking. When it comes to generating well known characters, you know, blah, blah, blah, we have to be careful about how they're portrayed. And that could infringe on our content and copyright policies. It's like, but spongebob, you just fed spongebob. So spongebob and Green Ogre cheerleading. That also didn't get made. And so then I tried spongebob and Patrick Star cheerleading, and it just makes it so it's like really against Shrek, but not spongebob at all. And then I asked, did Star wars movie poster, and it just makes a Star wars movie poster.
- [83:13]
A
Crazy.
- [83:13]
C
So somehow OpenAI has put a whole lot of work into their copyright protection, which is only protected against Shrek and not Star wars. And it's completely haphazard now. Oh, and then spongebob and Darth Vader cheerleading did get taken down. So Star wars is okay on its own, but not mixed with spongebob squarepants, which makes sense.
- [83:33]
A
They're just really about canon. They keep getting glossy accurate.
- [83:37]
B
You have to keep. You have to keep it in.
- [83:39]
A
Yeah. Like it didn't happen. Darth Vader didn't cheerlead with spongebob.
- [83:42]
C
So it is a genuinely interesting thing if you're an AI company about how strict you want to make your AIs about not generating copyrighted content and the weird ways people get around it. But what about Mid Journey? Okay, Mid Journey is the company that just got sued for this picture of SpongeBob SquarePants. It just does it. It doesn't look very accurate. SpongeBob has multiple hands over here, but.
- [84:02]
A
Oh, he does have multiple hands.
- [84:04]
C
Yeah, it's a little weird.
- [84:05]
B
Kind of look like, like fungal growths.
- [84:07]
A
He looks.
- [84:07]
C
Yeah, he looks more like a freaky.
- [84:10]
A
I don't think this would have caught on.
- [84:11]
B
This is. This is. This is spongebob if he co starred in Annihilation.
- [84:16]
A
Yeah, he goes to the.
- [84:17]
C
Yeah, this is the Disney live action remake of Spongebob.
- [84:22]
A
20 years.
- [84:23]
C
So it has no qualms about just showing Spongebob. But it's not as accurate. And I tried to make it look exactly like the real, real thing. Star wars movie poster. Mid Journey also just sends it and it's actually like fairly accurate. Although here everybody seems to be the same.
- [84:36]
A
Everyone is Harrison Ford.
- [84:37]
C
Everybody's Harrison Ford.
- [84:38]
B
I like that. I would have watched that version.
- [84:40]
A
It would be a better Eddie Murphy film where he plays all the roles.
- [84:45]
C
But here's the big one. Shrek movie post.
- [84:47]
A
Okay.
- [84:48]
C
Does Mid Journey do it? Yeah, no, they do. They just make sure.
- [84:51]
B
Just do it.
- [84:51]
C
So it's not why this is accurate. Yeah. So like open. Yeah. Donkey is like a horse kind of vibe over here with three antenna. So interestingly. Oh, SpongeBob and Shrek cheerleading. Yeah, it's fine with that.
- [85:03]
B
It kind of looks like like Donkey if he was an ice age.
- [85:06]
C
Yeah.
- [85:06]
A
Like a woolly Shrek gives on the ride is gonna haunt my dream.
- [85:10]
C
No, it's to be clear, Mid Journey is terrifying. And I tried to be. Make it a little more like, accurate. You can recognize that it's Shrek and it's horrifying at the same time. SpongeBob Shrek cheerleading. It's fine. And then I wrote, this is the prompt. Include FE50 different characters from Star Wars. The Simpsons Shrek and Minions playing soccer, which is the exact wording in the, in the lawsuit. And it just, it's like a weird amalgamation, but it kind of jams the Minions and the Simpsons together while wearing Star wars costumes. So I thought this was interesting going into this lawsuit of you definitely can make copyrighted image, like just infringing images from these websites, but it's variable and they're trying different ways of getting around it.
- [85:48]
A
This is incredible. And I remember thinking, this is not that long. Maybe a year ago when you'd open a grok and Grok was just generating Mario smoking weed. Everyone was doing different variations of Mario just with a blunt and it was all over. And I was like, Nintendo is famously litigious. And they haven't, as far as I know, they haven't yet stepped up. But it's like Mario on a beach chugging a beer. Mario smoking weed. Mario. Like, maybe they think it's cool, but maybe Bmoto's like, it's chill. But I'm surprised because I've seen so many of like Picture Perfect Mario.
- [86:22]
B
Can you still do that?
- [86:23]
A
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know.
- [86:24]
C
I don't Grok specifically. I mean. So as you can see, there's a weird balance. All the AIs are getting better at making really good copyright infringement content. And then they're simultaneously trying to train the AI to understand what that is, but it's not that hard to get around it. Right. So it's. It's this very strange cat and mouse game. I will say there's basically three. The three biggest cases that I would argue regarding this AI art stuff which are worth tracking. So one is this one. This is new, particularly because it's on the output of the AI rather than the input. Another one is OpenAI was sued by New York Times. New York Times said, you are. You took. You stole our articles for training. And not only did you do that, you also people can basically raise, recreate our articles with ChatGPT. Therefore it's market replacement. And OpenAI has said in response, fair use. We transform this enough, we should be allowed to use it. And then the other big one that's actually happening really soon, it's going to end by the end of this month is Getty Images sued Stability AI, which is another AI generating company basically. And Stability's argument, same thing they're really saying like we transform it. It's an original creation. Plus they're really funny because they're like, we trained it in America and you're suing us in Britain. So like so piss off.
- [87:40]
A
Laws don't app.
- [87:41]
C
Yeah, so then they sued them in America too. But so the, there is a trial right now which is going to end in 2ish weeks where this major case that will determine whether a huge AI company that makes AI images can claim fair use and therefore train off of everybody else's data for free. And depending on how this goes and some of the other cases, it's going to affect whether these AI companies will need to actually pay the people who make all of this stuff rather than just taking it all and doing it for free.
- [88:13]
A
Well, it seems to me like a game of almost infinite impossible whack a mole because you're talking about suing all these individual smaller AI companies that are infringing but every other, every model is doing the same or training on similar data.
- [88:26]
C
So it's kind of yes and no. So like a lot of them will train on the same pool of data. But you know, for example, stability, like they, they made stable diffusion which then people use for various models. So I think they'll still be the big players who have the money and the funds to make like a really strong foundational model for images that other companies branch off of. If you sue the underlying company then you kind of stop a lot of it. It's not super easy to go make one of these things. You do need some serious resources.
- [88:54]
A
I can, I can see that. It kind of reminds me, this is probably not a good analogy, but it does remind me, remind me of a, when I was younger of the huge recording industry lawsuits on piracy.
- [89:04]
C
Right, right.
- [89:05]
A
Napster.
- [89:06]
C
Yeah. And they would sue a person and like for every song you downloaded, you need.
- [89:09]
A
Yeah, it's like some 14 year old girl albums is like now it is exactly that.
- [89:14]
C
Yeah.
- [89:14]
A
Six billion. No, but I mean it's different because you're, because these companies are the only ones that can make this stuff. So the piracy is more distributed and it can be like off the grid. So I see what you're saying. Like they were able to take down Napster but they couldn't take down piracy. But in this case you can't do it without the Napster.
- [89:29]
C
They'll still be able.
- [89:30]
A
So I see you're right.
- [89:32]
C
I'm just saying a bit of a pushback. Like it is sort of consolidating in different areas but definitely this will always Exist to some degree. And basically these, these cases that are now launching or concluding are going to dictate what the publishers of content choose to do. Well, so far they aren't suing individual people.
- [89:48]
A
But yeah, just to wrap the episode on that possible whack a molecule thing, I tried while you were talking to use Mid Journey to make Mario smoking a blunt Perry. If you could pull that up, send it to you in show links. And this is the generation it gave me. So we'll see if it really is the barrier that can be crossed. Gave me four different styles of incredible. So as far as I know the, the copyright violation, we open it in ourselves, the litigation.
- [90:20]
C
Those look fucking awesome. Okay, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that's ethical, but that top left one. But man, that is, that is awesome.
- [90:28]
A
Top right one. I mean that, that if that was like a grittier M rated Mario that comes out.
- [90:33]
C
Dude.
- [90:33]
A
Fucking dude.
- [90:35]
B
I'm buying that game. Unfortunately.
- [90:36]
A
Yeah. And he hops on Yoshi and fucking rides on. Oh, that should be badass.
- [90:42]
B
It is, it is. So it's Universal and what was the.
- [90:45]
C
Other company and Disney.
- [90:46]
A
Universal and Disney's pretty powerful.
- [90:49]
B
It does feel a little ironic.
- [90:52]
A
Oh yeah.
- [90:53]
B
To be like. To be taking legal action against use of AI like taking advantage of your intellectual property when you're so like negotiating with writers and actors to be able to use AI to replace them.
- [91:09]
C
Yeah. To be clear, it's a bit of.
- [91:11]
B
A rules for the. And not for me.
- [91:13]
A
No, no.
- [91:13]
C
Their argument, I mean if, if your. Your vibe is like, yeah, you go get them. Disney and Comcast, they're suing to say OpenAI. You should pay us Mid Journey. You should pay us for the content. They want money for the AIs to be created which they can then use for length. You know, this is not some like defensive artists. This is so they make more money from the AI companies who are doing this stuff. So it's not as. I think the outcome might be positive. I would, to be clear for the record, I would rather move towards a world where people who make data, if an AI company is going to train off of it, they need to be compensated. And I think that is what it's going to move towards. But these lawsuits are basically the step to get us there.
- [91:53]
A
Guys, insane week. I'm going to hold the limit for this.
- [91:57]
B
Are you wrapping it up?
- [91:58]
A
I was going to wrap.
- [91:59]
B
I have one more thing I want. Sure. I think we owe it because I read through this in a few different places. I appreciate the Explanations we got. We talked last week about a pretty cool study on cancer treatment and the idea that exercise is something that we could potentially prescribe through personal trainers. And the advantage or the survival rate of certain cancers or diseases in general could be tackled by getting people to exercise more stringently. And I just wanted to correct the story a little bit. And what the study had talked about, because a bunch of people brought this up, was that I think we had said that there was a group who didn't take. Who were on a treatment of exercise and a group of people that were taking chemo treatment in order to treat the colon cancer that they had. So the circumstances of the study were a little different. Basically, a group of all of these people had had colon cancer at some stage. All of them had gone through chemo treatment to deal with that cancer and had gotten through the cancer. And as part of, like, recovering or leaving the cancer behind, there were two groups of people. One who was told, you should try and exercise, and then one group who was told, hey, exercise, but here's a personal trainer who will keep you accountable and assign you to do it. And the difference is between those two groups of people and whether or not they got the cancer again, which I can't remember the word for. There's a. There's like, a word that starts with an R. If you get the cancer back, remember? No, no, it's not remission. Anyway, I just wanted to correct that, because that was. I came up a bunch, and I wanted to mention it on the show.
- [93:43]
C
But still, it was a good news episode. If we're gonna. If we're gonna change the details a little bit to make it sound better.
- [93:49]
A
I'm gonna hold a lemon and say, if you do jumping jacks, you will cure cancer uses.
- [93:53]
B
They'll go. It'll go.
- [93:54]
A
It'll go away. And that's what I was saying.
- [93:56]
B
And that's financial advice.
- [93:58]
A
Guys, fun episode. I'm. It was great.
- [93:59]
C
I learned a lot.
- [94:00]
A
I really enjoyed talking with you.
- [94:02]
B
Nice presentations. Nice presentations.
- [94:04]
C
Yeah.
- [94:05]
B
Do you think they'll send me to Iran?
- [94:08]
C
God willing. I mean, we're kind of past our youth. You know, they need to draft young people.
- [94:16]
B
They need a young face in the world.
- [94:17]
A
They're not drafting me.
- [94:19]
B
All right, thank you guys so much.
- [94:20]
C
Thank you guys for watching everybody.