Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | 1.28.25

Summary

Morning Wire Podcast Summary Episode: Trump’s Military Overhaul & Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption | Released January 28, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Morning Wire, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and co-host Georgia Howe delve into two major topics shaping the national conversation: President Donald Trump's sweeping overhaul of the U.S. military and the seismic disruption in Wall Street triggered by China's emerging AI powerhouse, DeepSeek. The episode also touches on escalating tensions at the U.S. Southern border, highlighting the administration's aggressive stance on immigration enforcement.

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1. Trump’s Military Overhaul

Executive Orders and Military Readiness

President Trump has initiated a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. military through a series of executive orders aiming to restore military might and readiness. Key areas of focus include policies on transgender service members and the elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

• Transgender Military Policies:

  • Georgia Howe (00:03) introduces the topic: "President Trump is making the military mighty again, signing executive orders on everything from trans identifying service members to DEI."
  • Pete Hegseth (02:09) elaborates: "Trump signed an EO that directs the DoD to ban men from using or sharing sleeping, changing and bathing facilities that are designated for females... This EO stops taxpayer dollars from funding gender transitions, including surgeries for military members."

• DEI Initiatives:

  • Pete Hegseth (03:46) explains: "That order eliminates diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the DoD. It ends race and sex based preferences... Military recruitment goals were repeatedly missed during Biden's tenure and many critics tied that to these DEI initiatives."

Restoration of Troops Affected by COVID Vaccine Mandate

The administration is also addressing the fallout from the Biden-era COVID vaccine mandate, which led to the dismissal of approximately 8,400 active and reserve service members.

• Pete Hegseth (03:10): "Trump's executive order restores those troops' previous rank and gives them full back pay and benefits... This is a fulfillment of a Trump campaign promise and it targets the last administration's recruitment crisis."

Supporting Voices and Future Implications

• J.D. Vance (04:18) during a confirmation hearing asserts: "You have to rip root and branch the politics and divisive policies out of these institutions and then focus them on creating and preparing actual future military leadership."
• Tim Pierce (05:10) comments on Hegseth's impact: "Pete is a disruptor and a lot of people don't like that disruption. But that disruption is incredibly necessary... We need a big change."

Conclusion on Military Recruitment

The administration's aggressive policies are anticipated to reverse the ongoing recruitment challenges, with hopes for a "recruiting renaissance" under Trump's leadership.

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2. Wall Street’s DeepSeek Disruption

Emergence of DeepSeek and Market Shockwaves

A significant development in the AI industry has emerged with the introduction of DeepSeek R1 by Chinese startup DeepSeek, challenging established models like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

• Georgia Howe (00:25): "A new Chinese chatbot capable of keeping pace with bigger, higher priced models is sending shockwaves through the industry and Wall Street."
• Cabot Phillips (06:05): "DeepSeek R1 was not only on par with top models like ChatGPT, but it had been created... at a fraction of the cost."

Market Reactions and Financial Impacts

The announcement led to immediate and severe declines in tech stocks globally.

• Cabot Phillips (07:16): "Tech stocks in Europe, Asia and the US tumbled... Nvidia was down a whopping 15%, translating to over $500 billion in losses. This was the single largest one-day drop off of any stock in history."
• Amanda Presto Giacomo (08:29): "What we're seeing is the opening salvo of an AI Cold War... markets were spooked because they expect that we somehow had a lead that was not going to be easily displaced."

Expert Analysis and Future Outlook

Experts weighed in on the implications of DeepSeek's advancements, suggesting a prolonged competitive landscape between the U.S. and China in AI development.

• Amanda Presto Giacomo (09:06): "This is very much going to be a tit for tat, an arms race, and we are not going to be able to take the lead and keep the lead without some serious innovation on our part as well."

Trump’s Response and U.S. AI Strategy

In response to DeepSeek's disruption, President Trump announced a significant investment in AI infrastructure, partnering with major tech giants to bolster the U.S.'s competitive edge.

• Cabot Phillips (09:30): "President Trump just announced a collaboration... to pour up to $500 billion into AI infrastructure here in the U.S."
• Amanda Presto Giacomo (09:30): "China is going to have to try very hard to scale what they've just demonstrated... Their CEO Lian Wenfeng... needs to be taken quite seriously."

Conclusion on AI Competition

The episode underscores the urgent need for the U.S. to innovate and invest heavily in AI to maintain leadership in this critical technological frontier.

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3. Border Patrol & Immigration Crackdown

Violent Encounters at the Southern Border

A recent confrontation between Border Patrol agents and suspected cartel members highlights the escalating tensions and violence at the U.S. Southern border.

• Georgia Howe (10:15): "Border Patrol agents exchanged gunfire with suspected cartel members along the US Southern border on Monday."
• Stephen Miller (10:36): "It was right across the border near Front in Texas... Nobody on either side was hit in the firefight, nor did the group of aliens make it across the river."

Administration’s Aggressive Immigration Policies

The Trump administration is intensifying its crackdown on illegal immigration, leading to over 2,500 arrests and sparking significant political debate.

• Stephen Miller (11:08): "The deportations he promised are well underway, and so are the political fights around them."
• Tim Pierce (13:09): "The White House is continuing to hit on the public safety aspect to promote its immigration policies, a major concern for Americans."

Public and Political Reactions

Key figures defend the administration's approach, emphasizing public safety and the elimination of sanctuary cities.

• Tim Pierce (11:50): "If they're worried about the humanitarian costs of immigration enforcement, let them talk about the children who have been sex trafficked because of the wide open border."
• Stephen Miller (12:16): "This administration is going to investigate every instance of child trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, child smuggling, and all the attendant crimes involved in that."

Impact on Refugee Programs and Public Safety

The administration is also focusing on vetting processes to ensure national security, addressing criticisms regarding refugee intake.

• Tim Pierce (11:57): "We absolutely cannot unleash thousands of unvetted people into our country... These people are vetted."
• Stephen Miller (12:16): "Cooperate fully with Immigration and Customs Enforcement so that we can end the scourge of child trafficking and child abuse."

Conclusion on Immigration Enforcement

The episode portrays the Trump administration's decisive actions to enhance border security and immigration enforcement, framing it as a necessary measure for national safety and public order.

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Final Thoughts

Morning Wire provides a comprehensive analysis of President Trump's strategic moves to revamp the U.S. military and counter emerging global technological threats. Simultaneously, the administration's firm stance on immigration enforcement underscores its broader agenda to prioritize national security and public safety. Through insightful discussions and authoritative quotes, the episode offers listeners a detailed understanding of these pivotal issues shaping the nation's landscape.

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For more in-depth coverage and daily updates on politics, culture, education, sports, and more, wake up with Morning Wire and stay informed with the facts you need to know.

Transcript

[Georgia Howe]

President Trump is making the military mighty again, signing executive orders on everything from trans identifying service members to dei.

[John Bickley]

We will again build the strongest military.

[Georgia Howe]

The world has ever seen, inspiring the.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Awe and admiration of the entire world.

[John Bickley]

How else is the president boosting military readiness?

[Georgia Howe]

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor in Chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, January 28th, and this is Morning Wire. A new Chinese chatbot capable of keeping pace with bigger, higher priced models is sending shockwaves through the industry and Wall Street.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

I believe they have created something that needs to be paid attention to. In many ways, what we're seeing is the opening salvo of an AI Cold War. This is China, Sputnik, if you will.

[John Bickley]

Gunfire erupts between Border Patrol and suspected cartel members just days after Trump labels them terrorists.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

[Ben Carson]

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[John Bickley]

President Trump is overhauling the US Military through sweeping executive action and out of the box appointments.

[Georgia Howe]

Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presto Giacomo. So Amanda Trump signed numerous executive orders on Monday addressing the military. Let's start with this order on trans identifying military members. What does that order say?

[Pete Hegseth]

Right. So building off of past declarations on gender, Trump signed an EO that directs the DoD to ban men from using or sharing sleeping, changing and bathing facilities that are designated for females. And it also rescinds a Biden order that allowed other gender identity related accommodations, arguing that it hinders military readiness and other standards. According to a 2018 report, there are an estimated 14,000 trans identifying troops in the military now. Additionally, this EO stops taxpayer dollars from funding gender transitions, including surgeries for military members. This was actually happening under President Biden to the tune of millions of dollars. The Trump administration said that this applies to trans identifying children of service members as well. Trump's order, on the whole intends to emphasize that the military will have high fitness health and readiness standards that will ensure military members are able to deploy, fight and win.

[Georgia Howe]

Now, Trump also addressed the thousands of troops that were forced out of the military over the COVID vaccine mandate. What did the President do there?

[Pete Hegseth]

So under Biden, about 8,400 active and reserve service members were forced out of the military between 2021 and 2023 because they refused the COVID Vax. Trump's executive order restores those troops previous rank and it gives them full back pay and benefits. This is a fulfillment of a Trump campaign promise and it targets the last administration's recruitment crisis. After the Vax mandate was rescinded by Biden, those who were forced out were allowed to reapply, but only 43 service members chose to do so.

[Georgia Howe]

Now, there was also an order signed on Monday that specifically targets dei. Can you break down that order for us?

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah. That order eliminates diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the DoD. The order ends race and sex based preferences by any branch of the military, the DoD or DHS. It will also eliminate remaining DEI related bureaucracy from those departments and order a review of the curricula from military service academies. Military recruitment goals were repeatedly missed during Biden's tenure and many critics tied that to these DEI initiatives. Here's newly confirmed DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth addressing these issues during his confirmation hearing.

[J.D. Vance]

You have to rip root and branch the politics and divisive policies out of these institutions and then focus them on creating and preparing actual future military leadership. And we need more uniformed members going back into West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy as a tour to teach with their wisdom of what they've learned in uniform instead of just more civilian professors that came from the same left wing WOKE universities that they left and then try to push that into service academies. When that changes, Senator, I truly believe under Donald Trump we will have a recruiting renaissance.

[Pete Hegseth]

Hexeth himself is actually a big change on what we can expect from the military. Before he was tapped for Secretary of Defense, he wrote a book on the WOKE policies and initiatives at the Pentagon and he categorized them as a betrayal to war fighters. Here's Vice President J.D. vance discussing Hegseth during an interview on CBS.

[Tim Pierce]

Pete is a disruptor and a lot of people don't like that disruption. But Margaret, that disruption is incredibly necessary. If you think about all of those bipartisan, massive votes. We have to ask ourselves, what did they get us? They got us a country where we fought many wars over the last 40 years but haven't won a war about as long as I've been alive. They've got us a military with a major recruitment crisis. We need a big change.

[Pete Hegseth]

Pegseth said on Monday that he's working to implement Trump's orders as quickly as possible.

[Georgia Howe]

Well, as we've reported on this show, military recruitment has been suffering for many years now, so hopefully this can turn it around. Amanda, thanks for reporting.

[Pete Hegseth]

You're welcome.

[John Bickley]

Tech stocks tumbled Monday after a stunning announcement from Deepseek, an emerging AI powerhouse in China.

[Georgia Howe]

Here with more is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So, Cabot, what exactly is deepsea and why did it shake up the market so badly?

[Cabot Phillips]

Yeah, so for the last year, the general consensus has been that America is leaving the rest of the world in the dust when it comes to artificial intelligence, especially generative AI like ChatGPT. But yesterday, a new player introduced itself in a major way, stunning Silicon Valley and leaving Wall street in a frenzy. That new force is Chinese startup Deepseek, which announced Monday that their latest generative AI service, DeepSeek R1, was not only on par with top models like ChatGPT, but that it had been created, or trained, as they put it, at a fraction of the cost. Shortly after the news broke, Deepseek rocketed to the top spot on the App Store. For more, I spoke with Tom Kollopoulos, an AI expert and author of Gigatrends.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

What is causing all the uproar is that DeepSeek R1, which is their current version of their reasoning AI, has been able to achieve cost efficiencies that are just unheard of to the extent that, believe it or not, it is 93.5% less expensive to operate from what we're told than OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is pretty extraordinary.

[Georgia Howe]

And that news sparked a massive market sell off, correct?

[Cabot Phillips]

Yes, it did. Tech stocks in Europe, Asia and the US tumbled following the news. By Monday afternoon, Nvidia, which had enjoyed a record breaking 2024, was down a whopping 15%. That translated to over $500 billion in losses. That's the single largest one day drop off of any stock in history. Elsewhere, large AI companies like Micron Technology and Advanced Micro devices were down 10 and 6% respectively, while Microsoft, which backs OpenAI, fell 3%. Altogether, those dips represented over a trillion dollars in value. Now, the big reason for that sell off is that prior to Monday, the general idea was that generative AI required incredibly expensive high tech chips to operate chips manufactured by companies like Nvidia. But Deepseek appears to have upended that notion, seemingly proving that groundbreaking AI can be trained and operated at a much lower cost and with less complex chips. For context, Deepseek says they trained their latest model for just $5.6 million. Similar programs here in the US cost anywhere from $100 million to a billion dollars. So you can see why the news sent such a shockwave. Here's Kollopolis.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

I think we've overreacted, to be quite honest. I think this will be a back and forth, a game of leapfrog, certainly between the US And China for quite some time. But I think markets were spooked because they expect that, especially after the announcement we just made with the enormous investment of $500 million in AI infrastructure, that we somehow had a lead that was not going to be easily displaced. And the reality is that is not the case. This is very much going to be a tit for tat, an arms race, and we are not going to be able to take the lead and keep the lead without some serious innovation on our part as well.

[Cabot Phillips]

Now, keep in mind, this all comes as President Trump just announced a collaboration between the federal government and and tech giants OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank that will pour up to $500 billion into AI infrastructure here in the U.S. trump really has made clear that America must lead the way on AI and cannot afford to fall behind China in this new arms race. For his part, Kalopoulos views it as a cold war.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

What we have in the US Is this incredibly rich ecosystem of technology players. And that ecosystem, I think, gives us a significant leg up. China is going to have to try very hard to scale what they've just demonstrated. And while there's an element of cooperation that we can, I think, certainly exercise going forward, we also have to keep in mind there's an element of national interest and national security at play here, too. Their CEO Lian Wenfeng, is someone who needs to be taken quite seriously. I don't think that they are being hyperbolic in their claims. I think there's question as to whether or not they can scale their claims.

[Georgia Howe]

Fascinating. Well, we'll have to see if deep seek is the real deal. Kabat, thanks for reporting.

[Cabot Phillips]

Anytime.

[Georgia Howe]

Border Patrol agents exchanged gunfire with suspected cartel members along the US Southern border on Monday. The eruption of violence comes after President Trump labeled Mexican drug cartels terrorist organizations.

[John Bickley]

Here to talk about the latest news on immigration and Trump's criminal crackdown, as Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So first, where was this shootout?

[Stephen Miller]

It was right across the border near Front in Texas. Border Patrol agents responded to a group of aliens that tried to cross the river and enter the US Illegally. And then, in an incident that would seem to justify Trump's strong stance against the drug cartels, those border agents were fired at by suspected cartel gunmen. According to Fox News's Bill Malugian, the agents then fired back. Nobody on either side was hit in the firefight, nor did the group of aliens make it across the river.

[John Bickley]

Alarming development, to say the least. And this comes as the Trump crackdown on illegal immigrants is really ramping up, correct?

[Stephen Miller]

Right. The deportations he promised are well underway, and so are the political fights around them. The current count is well over 2,000 arrests. And unsurprisingly, the crackdown is sparking a lot of debate, which Trump's top lieutenants are definitely not shying away from. They've been out defending the administration's approach. Vice President J.D. vance appeared on CBS Face the Nation over the weekend. He talked about a lot of things, but he specifically addressed Criticism by the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops on exemptions Trump lifted on deporting aliens from schools and places of worship.

[Tim Pierce]

I believe the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops, if they're worried about the humanitarian costs of immigration enforcement, let them talk about the children who have been sex trafficked because of the wide open border.

[Stephen Miller]

CBS anchor Margaret Brennan also questioned Vance over the administration moving to freeze refugee programs. Here's that exchange.

[Tim Pierce]

Now that we know that we have vetting problems with a lot of these refugee programs, we absolutely cannot unleash thousands of unvetted people into our country. These people are good. These people are vetted, just like the guy who planned a terrorist attack in Oklahoma a few months ago.

[Stephen Miller]

And here's Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, talking to reporters last week.

[J]

We've seen, as you know, half a million children trafficked over a four year period in the United States. This administration is going to investigate every instance of child trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, child smuggling, and all the attendant crimes involved in that. And our message to everyone in the country is to cooperate fully with Immigration and Customs Enforcement so that we can end the scourge of child trafficking and child abuse that has been endemic these last four years.

[Stephen Miller]

So, as you heard in those clips, the White House is continuing to hit on the public safety aspect to promote its immigration policies, a major concern for Americans.

[John Bickley]

So it makes sense to do that.

[Stephen Miller]

How are deportations going so far in Trump's first week? ICE says it's arrested over 2,500 aliens. The administration has been publishing videos of some of those raids. For instance, one such documented raid featured Trump's border czar, Tom Homan and Dr. Phil. Here's some sound. After agents arrested an illegal alien from Thailand.

[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

This is an example of sanctuary cities, right? We got an illegal alien convicted of.

[Cabot Phillips]

Sex crimes involving children. He's walking the streets of Chicago.

[Stephen Miller]

So the administration is really running a full court press to show and explain its agenda to the American people.

[John Bickley]

So an aggressive media campaign that sort of matches its pace on deportations. Tim, thanks for joining us.

[Stephen Miller]

Thanks for having me.

[John Bickley]

Hey, thank you for listening this morning. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and stand with that mission, consider subscribing, giving us a five star rating and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news. You need to know.

[Ben Carson]

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[Amanda Presto Giacomo]

Com today.