← The Peter McCormack Show
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- [00:00]
Simon Dixon
The people that rule the world are not in the Epstein files. The people that rule the world are the people that control the Epstein files and strategically released it in order to purge some of their liabilities and also keep everyone on track to this transition to a multipolar world. We are in a transitional theater. And by theater, I mean the bombs are real, the deaths are real, the casualties are real. But the outcome has been scripted, subject to two factions of power trying to get more power. Humans aren't really a part of the equation. Like, if they could have no humans and just AI and robotics, they'll take it.
- [00:40]
Peter McCormack
It does feel like we're in some game. It's just a game. It feels like an. Do you remember Risk?
- [00:47]
Simon Dixon
I do, yeah.
- [00:47]
Peter McCormack
It just feels like Risk.
- [00:48]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I completely agree and I think we're all feeling that right now. The real pandemic is the psychological trauma that we're all being put through.
- [00:56]
Peter McCormack
My.
- [00:56]
Simon Dixon
My big issue is what do you do if you're not in that position, which is the large majority of the population? There'll be a bigger print than Covid. It's the only strategy. Fixed assets is the way to solve that. And we enter into a world where your government might confiscate your assets or they might tax your assets in order to stop you from leaving. And so everyone just needs to work on the sovereign side. That's solvable. And you need a 10 year plan to do that. And you need to start today.
- [01:27]
Peter McCormack
This show is brought to you by my lead sponsor, IRON the AI Cloud for the next big thing. IRON builds and operates next generation data centers and delivers cutting edge GPU infrastructure, all powered by renewable energy. Now, if you need access to scalable GPU clusters or are simply curious about who is powering the future of AI, check out iren.com to learn more, which is I R E N. Simon. Hi, how are you?
- [01:53]
Simon Dixon
All right. I'm glad to be back.
- [01:55]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, glad to have you back. We recorded back in January. It was an interesting show. I didn't quite imagine it would be as popular as it was in the top five shows we've ever made. In 10 years of podcasting, I had lots of people reach out to me, send me private messages saying this is blowing my mind. You described in that interview the global debt based financial system that ultimately extracts wealth from everybody. And since then we've had another war break out with Iran, which is having a lot of knock on effects, a lot of fears of inflation and what's going to happen with oil prices, etc. Sovereign debt continues to explode. Living standards are getting worse. We see an acceleration of AI job displacement. I saw yesterday a new website which is tracking AI job losses. So really, are we watching the end game for this financial system it's breaking or we just see another cycle and more consolidation of power and wealth?
- [03:04]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, absolutely. We're definitely not witnessing the end. We're seeing a consolidation of financial power and it is transnational in nature, as we discussed last time. And so, you know, this Iran war and what we're witnessing right now is really a refactoring of the world order. This war I think will definitely mark the decisive moment that we've actually transitioned to this multipolar world, as it were, that's dominated by transnational capital. And we're currently witnessing the reallocation of resources that is 100% engineered by the financial industrial complex that we talked about last time. So all of the trends are accelerating and particularly in the west. We had a really bad situation for the average person that we discussed in the last show. Now we've got oil prices to factor into the equation. We've got rising unemployment as a result of artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and that is all being accelerated which pushes that K shaped economy we talked about, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You have these, those that own the assets and those that are the asset, which is the people that own the debt. And unless you know or you are connected deeply to the financial system where you can take your debt and you can effectively leverage it at significantly favorable terms with the financial industrial complex, unless you can do that, then you're on the wrong side of financialization, securitization and even our tokenization. And so yeah, we're seeing an acceleration. And by breaking the financial system, we know what the end result of breaking the financial system always is. It means that you socialize the losses and privatize the gains. You engage in an asset stripping exercise where the private equity industry mops up all of the cheap assets and then you reset to a new region of the world where the growth can reset and you have massive flows of capital leave the host nation where was your original predatory operation and you flow it to other regions.
- [05:46]
Peter McCormack
So when Trump won the last election, there was a lot of hope around Trump that he was going to drain the swamp, he was going to fix the borders, he was going to ramp up the economy. And one of his key election points was no new foreign wars. He was anti war, he was the peace guy. And for a lot of people, they can't really understand why this war is happening because it's hugely unpopular with the public. It's almost going to destroy the Republicans in the midterms and almost certainly lead to the Republicans not winning the next election if it continues, if it turns out to be a chaos, which it looks like it is at the moment, to be seen, if it's long term chaos. So how do people understand why Trump has done this?
- [06:40]
Simon Dixon
Okay, so whenever I try and understand a politician's strategy, I tried to think, why was that president installed and who paid for him to be installed? And so I always default back to. Let's look at the top backers of Trump and the Trump administration. At the very top, you have Elon Musk, which represents the faction of corporate power in America called the Technical Industrial Complex. That is the weaponization of algorithms and technology and data in order to build control grids that will be represented in artificial intelligence, social credit scores, stablecoins, Programmable money X Money has just been announced. You're starting to see acceleration in Palantir border controls. You're starting to see acceleration in digital IDs. You're starting to see acceleration in civil unrest campaigns to justify a technocratic Orwellian surveillance state. So that's the primary backer. That's the future industry that Trump was paid to usher through. That's represented by genius. Act clarity act big beautiful bill. And significant funding for the military industrial complex in both AI and cybersecurity. The second person that Trump was backed by, the second largest contributor, was the Mellon banking family. So that represents the financial industrial complex. What does the financial industrial complex want at the moment? They want to utilize captured states, that is America, the collective west, let's call it. Anyone that's had mass financialization and securitization and private control in order to weaken state power over corporate financial power. And so if America gets too strong as a state, as a nationalistic entity, then financial power needs to push back and diversify. And when growth and birth rates and civil unrest are getting too disjointed to usher in this surveillance state, you diversify finances around the world. So that represents multipolarity. The financial industrial complex wants to diversify away from America, utilize America for capital markets. They've got the most liquid capital markets, but effectively the economy is a byproduct of capital markets and it wants to send capital globally. So what happened with the Trump administration is you had tariff policy. Tariff policy was he called it Dollar Liberation Day on April 2, 2025. That was to liberate the World from the dollar. And what capital markets did is they restructured currency wars and using the dollar as the dominant currency to using capital flows through exchange traded funds and ETFs to determine which countries get access to capital using western pension system and insurance premiums and various other things. And so Trump reset the world order. That meant everybody had to renegotiate. And he was an agent of chaos. His job was to quote, unquote, take on the deep state under the name of maga. What that means is the deep state backs the dollar. And so covert wars, all of those mechanisms of United nations to get away from crimes against humanity using America's vote, hosted in America, USAID, these covert mechanisms of funding black op operations, CIA, Mossad, MI6 operations, he started deconstructing those, which meant that it weakened the dollar. So ever since Dollar Liberation Day, you had a weakening of the dollar relative to gold, relative to silver and relative to foreign currencies. And also other stock markets like look how bad the UK economy is. But the UK stock market outperformed, the European stock market outperformed, the Brazilian stock market outperformed, the Asian stock market outperformed. So while America was being asset stripped so that the US stock market would go up, which was dominated by technology, which was dominated by government spending money on AI data centers. And if you take out the AI, it was very low growth in America. It was all government spending and financialized constructs to boost all this manufacturing of AI data centers. So he immediately set about for the financial industrial complex. And Trump is the most transactional president. It's so transparent because you can see all of his side deals, side investments that align with it to strategically weaken the dollar and, and push capital into a multipolar world. He was also an agent of chaos in order to make China look amazing, you know, everybody renegotiated their contracts with a rational, stable market, which is China. Now in the irony, so, so that's what he did for the financial industrial complex. His third backer was Mariam Adelston. Mariam Adelson is a big investor in Israel and Israel is a subdivision of the military industrial complex. And so you know, Israel is the mechanism for agitating war in the Middle East. And so by committing to what many people framed as an Israel first policy, while you are destroying the empire, you have a plausible deniability story, which is we're not doing this. America is ethical, but we're blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein and Israel rules us. And therefore when you see all these crimes against humanity, it's not us, it's them. And so the military industrial complex has this plausible deniability story, but it was the third lowest faction of funding for the Trump administration. So tech had the most influence, banking second and military third. So what the military wanted is effectively a series of wars that they could profit from and compensation of. If one war zone ends because the finance want to invest in stability in that region, then another war starts. And so Trump started delivering upon that, which was a continuation of a uni Party policy. This isn't an attack on Trump. Trump is a puppet for real power, which is corporate power in America and across the West. So you had a continuation of the Biden administration policy, which was flood the borders, and then you had Trump coming along and saying, close the borders. Now, that created all the Palantir technology, all the data immediately. What did he do? He created the Department of Government Efficiency that was to get all of the data consolidated into a single database, which is managed across private interest. Palantir, Elon Musk at X&. And then he put the other paper, all of them from South Africa, by the way. You had the whole PayPal mafia as part of the Trump administration, and then David Sachs as well. And he was there to get genius act, clarity act and make sure that these data centers and AI data centers were all funded. They created a bit of a Ponzi scheme through the credit markets that's having some stress right now. And it was also funded with golf, sovereign wealth money, which is why we're having stress in those markets right now. So Trump is the perfect illustration of how the power dynamics of the empire work. And so obviously all of that's going to be a disappointment because it means that the asset holder gets wealthier
- [15:04]
Peter McCormack
because
- [15:04]
Simon Dixon
finance is number one. They control the US Military. So Trump's job is to put an acceptable narrative in front of why this finance wants war. And so if finance wants to go get Venezuelan oil, Trump has to find a narrative. So he makes up some stuff around drugs and things like that. Even though the CIA drug cartels are 100% part of this deep state, they'll never, you know, you can't stop drugs unless you get the demand side. The supply side is, is built into the government.
- [15:36]
Peter McCormack
So initially on Venezuela, when I saw it, having been to Venezuela, known Venezuelan, seeing them so happy that Maduro's got gone, I had this kind of like, weak hope that this was really an opportunity to kind of restore, you know, bring some hope back to Venezuela, because it's desperate what happens there. Maduro goes the Is it the brother or the sister gets Rodriguez? Yeah, some, yeah, some relation, nothing changes. But since then we've seen a gold deal being done. And as soon as I saw the gold deal I just thought of Simon Dixon. I was like, well this explains everything. Somebody wanted the gold.
- [16:17]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. So Venezuela was part of this multipolar world. So you know what, what the big finance and the financial industrial complex want at this time? I'll just say for simplicity. Fic mic and tick, technical industrial complex, military industrial complex, financial industrial complex. Those are the three main factions of power. And obviously you've got media, which is, which serves all interest as well by creating fake narratives to make people think something else is happening. But one of the things that the FIC wants is to box America as a nationalistic state into the western hemisphere, dominate it, asset strip the entire west and also potentially prop up euro dollar through NATO spending. So you've got to create an environment where Germany, uk, France, Israel, America, those are the five captured governments that make up the military industrial complex. Those governments print money and make sure it is spent into the stock market to prop up BAE Systems, Palantir, you know, all of the different, you know, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamic, Albert Systems, Raytheon, all of these different companies. And they need a brochure because at the moment if they're going to box this military in that finance controls, they need to control all of the resources that currently the military is dependent upon China for. And so that's the rare earth minerals, that's the commodities, that's the energy, oil and all of those things. And so they needed to turn Europe into a complete subordinate dependency, which is where it is right now, just being asset stripped for American corporate interest and the stock markets in general. And then they needed to make up all the gaps between all the rare earth minerals components. But they also needed continual war because if the war's going to remove from other regions, it needs to come back home. And so the only way in a contained structure where the US military used to dominate the entire world and create terrorism around the whole world is that they can only do it at home. So that's why you had this whole open border, closed border, demographic weaponization of religion and algorithms to drive people into more radical behavior. All of the civil unrest campaigns that we've witnessed, we've seen there. And so Venezuela was not regime change, not taking on drugs, it was keep the regime that was negotiated with world leaders. And so prior to Venezuela, China moved all of its oil, prior to Venezuela, Russia was changing its interests Prior to Venezuela, Iran was changing its strategy as well. So you could see all the oil tankers knew that this was about to happen. And there was no reaction from Iran, no reaction from China and no reaction from Russia. We saw the same in Syria. When there's no reaction from world powers, it means world powers agreed. And so when world powers had agreed, we're going to give America access to all of these resources. They can dollarize the economy through some kind of stablecoin. They can destroy the Venezuelan currency, do a currency crash which was the precursor to Iran as well. And then you can just basically extract all the resources and that makes up the western hemisphere and the new order of America as the dominant force only for private corporate interests, not for the American people, not for the European people, not for the Venezuelan people, not for the Canadians, not for anyone. And so that region is fully captured. It was a very successful operation. And Maduro, my speculation is agreed to it because Maduro, if you look at what happened immediately the Venezuelan stock market went up 300%. That's controlled by a few banks and financial institutions and elites. It's not like across the Venezuelan people. So the stock market did incredibly well. Either Maduro was betrayed by his underparts and the whole structure remained, or Maduro was okay with it and allowed it to happen. We get a Hollywood movie around how amazing America is. They had to do this, you know, operation that was very sophisticated. Nobody, you know, there wasn't large deaths. And so America got its Hollywood movie brochure to give to the maga. And the MAGA started feeling great about war. We're like, hey, great, we got, we're going to make America great again. We got our oil.
- [21:32]
Peter McCormack
This was a brochure for Iran.
- [21:34]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, it was a brochure. Well, it was a brochure for Iran. So the MAGA could think maybe the same will happen again in Iran. And so they're thinking, yeah, in out very successful operation, no one had to die. And it's, you know, they got all of that, they got the control. But the only reason it was like that was because Russia, China and Iran effectively decided to forgo some of those assets and some of their region. So it was very easy. You know, while America is incredibly weak right now, you get a public display of strength. So what does Trump need? He needs, you know, he changed the it to the Department of war. Okay. He gave a display that we're not the war. We don't do the forever war. We're not the neocons like Biden and Clinton. And all those people, we're the. Let's go get our shit. America's going to dominate when really it's shrinking down and it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller in terms of its sphere of influence. And so that gives the perfect narrow. And there was nobody. Trump was perfect for the job. He'll lie about everything. And he's got a cult following. It's getting smaller and smaller because of the Epstein files and the war and various other things. But now all he does is he just tweets on Truth Social to the dumbest demographic in America. You know, his rhetoric is getting so ridiculous that, you know, he's talking to the cult following only, you know, the Q Tod, the person that believes that to trust the plan.
- [23:14]
Peter McCormack
Can we put up that chamath video? I want you to see this. So this, I saw this right after our interview and I was like, huh? Okay.
- [23:23]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Men that run the world, period, full stop, they control most of the important assets. They control the money flows. And these are not the tech entrepreneurs. Now. They. They are going to get rolled over over the next five to 10 years by the people that are really underneath pulling the strings. And when you get behind the curtain and see how that world works, what you realize is it is unfairly set up for them and their progeny. Now, I'm not going to say that that's something that we can rip apart, but first order of business is I want to break through and be at that table. That's the first order of business. And the way that I do that is by proving that I can do what they do as well as they do it, and then do it better than how they do it, because at the end of the day, they are commercial animals, okay? And they'll open the door out of curiosity and they'll let me stay because I add value. And then once I'm there, I can open the door for other people who can try to do the same thing. So my entire goal now is that is to be in a position to aggregate enough of the capital of the world to then reallocate it against my worldview. And I'm not saying my worldview is the best or right, but it is mine. And at the end of the day, there are 150 other fucking guys with their worldview, and they don't give a shit what you think about their fucking worldview. That's the truth. And so why not me? Why not? Why not one of you? Why not? And so in my life now, I'm just kind of like, why not?
- [25:00]
Peter McCormack
I mean, I've got so many thoughts on that video. I mean, firstly, he's just told us how the world runs.
- [25:06]
Connor
There's.
- [25:07]
Peter McCormack
And I believe him because he. He is close to all of the tech entrepreneurs, all the investors. He's close to the money flow. And so when he tells me 150 people around the world, he's telling me what you told me, but it's no longer conspiracy. It's one of the guys who's connected that's telling me that. So I'm like, okay, everything that sounds like a conspiracy theory, everything that you said. Well, some people are. Well, Simon's just a conspiracy theorist. Is like, no, no, this is literally how the world works. Like, this is it. So that's my first point. And then my second point is like, well, hold on a second. Like, is this just hubris from him? Or does he think, I don't like the way the world is? If I can accumulate enough capital, I can get in there and try and make the world a better place? Or is he just consumed by the idea of power and just wants to be one of the guys? I've so many thoughts on it.
- [26:01]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, this whole concept of there's a bunch of people that, you know, the governments are subordinate to that power structure. I think it's really a representation that helps us understand this is the Epstein Files. The people that rule the world are not in the Epstein files. The people that rule the world are the people that control the Epstein files and strategically released it in order to purge some of their liabilities and also keep everyone on track to this transition to a multipolar world. If you want to know who controls the Epstein files and who actually is involved in those operations, you need the financial transactions, and those exist at the bank. And so JP Morgan, bank of New York Mellon, they're currently engaged in court cases which they will win because they were the ones that settled with the victims of the Epstein files, whether it was Deutsche bank or JP Morgan. I think it was 285 million settlement and there was multiple settlements. But the financial transactions tell you the whole story. And if you were to get those financial transactions, you would find that there are certain jurisdictions that have a banking network of money laundering that will tell you the full story of how the world works. And they don't want you to know how the world works because the governments are in it as well. And so it exists pretty much as a money laundering network that profits from sex trafficking, humans trafficking, weapons trafficking, and drug Trafficking, that is a compromise network that ensures that it doesn't get exposed because everyone that tries to climb it has to be compromised. And if you, and you have to also be leveraged, your wealth has to be leveraged. So Trump's wealth, his net worth is leveraged. You know, he had to rise in New York through the Mafia cartels, you know, and therefore, if your net worth consists of borrowing against your stock, collateralized loans, equity, and it's not real cash, real hard assets, then it is connected to compliance with this power network as well. Everyone's leveraged, either financially or through compromise. And you'll find that there is a network of banks and financial institutions. JP Morgan's certainly involved in that. And you find jurisdictional arbitrage. One of the jurisdictions is the City of London, that sits within London. And that is, if the king wants to enter the City of London, he needs permission. This was left over from some of these colonial conquest historical things. There is the bank for International Settlements, which it's a building in Switzerland that has its own army, its own police, and its own law. As a building, it is the Vatican. And the Vatican is where you have the banking money laundering networks. And then you have Israel, which is a jurisdiction for many of these mafia and crimes against humanity and testing completely illegal military technologies on a Palestinian laboratory and in Africa and many of the drug testing, many of these things. And so as you rise, you're compromised. The laundering happens through the Vatican bank. And then you have different nodes in the network that prop this up at the top of that, because you can control capital, you can subordinate a country's military. So that's why I say when I think of the US military, that's not the US Military, that's acting in America's national interest, that's the US Military that the financial industrial complex can command to go get them some resources or reset relationships and trade routes and strategic choke points.
- [30:13]
Peter McCormack
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- [33:11]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, humans aren't really a part of the equation. Like if they could have no humans and just AI and robotics, they'll, they'll take it. It's a bit like a company, you know, a company if, if a company has its fantasy, right, it doesn't want to deal with hr, it doesn't want to deal with humans because their headaches, their problems, they call in sick. There's all these things. A corporate that's maximizing for its shareholders. If it could maximize profit by having no humans, it would. And the same is with these sovereign networks as well, you know, these corporate captured. And so if a country is still sovereign, they've got its own resources, it's got its own central bank, it's got its own, you know, it's able to negotiate with this network. But the network has captured the countries, they don't care about humans. Like they're the same people that are willing to take down two towers in order to create a justification and narrative for war. These are the same people that have probably killed through the British Empire, French, American, European empires and the American empire. 300 million deaths, I'd say like some studies and estimates have put out there in order to fight wars for mercantile acquisition of resources. And they have, if you need leverage then are they willing to blow up a school in Iran with 6 to 12 year old girls in order to have a narrative that justifies part of an operation? Well, one theory could be an accident, the other could be a false flag. So then you have to ask who benefits from that?
- [35:05]
Peter McCormack
But it's also evil. Like it's.
- [35:10]
Simon Dixon
Yes, it's evil because everyone is. Again, you can look at it as these fully sovereign autonomous people that engage in evil. Or you can look at it as a mafia in a compromised network where you either provide value to the network or you die or you're top called a pedophile. Or your photos come out about the sick things you did or you know, you don't get access to capital or they destroy your net worth, or they use the media in order to tarnish your career. So everybody that is in the network that has gone too far may, you know, and that's why they end up in drugs and doing really crazy things like where they end up so degenerate that they they, they end up with crazy pedophilia or something like that because this is not a nice place to be. These aren't happy people. You know, evil doesn't, is not a natural state of being. I believe humans are naturally good, but this is how the network works. That's how power works.
- [36:18]
Peter McCormack
So why exactly is there a war with Iran now? What is your com, what's your take on this?
- [36:23]
Simon Dixon
Okay, so once you understand this, you have to see beyond the sovereign state. Most people think that Iran, US and Israel are in a war right now. I would say we are in a transitional theater. And by theater I mean the bombs are real, the deaths are real, the casualties are real. But the outcome has been scripted, subject to two factions of power trying to get more power. And those two factions of power have a different vision for the world. One is the American Nationalistic Military Industrial Complex that is kind of location based. And then there's transnational capital. The fic. They have, I believe, negotiated an operation that is in line with this multipolar world order. So then you have to dig deep and look into what are the factions of power. So most people think of Iran as a monolith. Iran's not a monolith. You know, this is where people get things wrong. I personally believe the best way of understanding the world is through CIA declassified documents. And one of those which really helps you understand this is the Iran Contra affair.
- [37:39]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I remember.
- [37:40]
Simon Dixon
So in the Iran Contra affair, it's just a, a brief recap. You had that, that banking network which was Credit Suisse, that was laundering all of these weapon trafficking and money networks. And this was during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Prior to this, Iran was effectively a playground for British Petroleum. And 80% of the revenue of Iran's oil went to BP and 20% was left back for Iran. Now when they had a democracy and when they were thinking about nationalizing their oil, America and the British Empire, CA and Mossad created Operation Ajax. And Operation Ajax was where they engineered exactly what you just saw leading up to this protests, deaths. They were Mossad or MI6 and CIA at this time, they were just killing people. They were saying, that's you. They were doing sanctions and to try and get civil unrest, creating economic strife, destroying the currency, killing their savings. And then they replace the democracy with the Shah because the Shah, you know, is somebody that you can control. So the more dictator and authoritarian it is, the easier it is in order to control that. So they'll say that. So you had all this history and then eventually it leads to Khomeini. Khomeini, which was the previous Ayatollah, he was in exile in France. And in 1979, there was a hostage operation that led to a negotiation where effectively there was a swap for the hostages for weapons. And, and Iran being complicit in engaging in some of these weapons trafficking routes. And so we had this very theatrical creation of a new narrative which is they're doing it for religious reasons, is the Islamist terrorist. And so they come in. You had the Iranian revolution, and immediately there was a war between Iraq and Iran. Iraq, Saddam Hussein, which was a CIA puppet, effectively he was given chemical weapons to throw on Iran, and Iran was given weapons from Israel. So the irgc, the Iranian revolution, was receiving weapons from Israel. That's how this started. So America created an operation. Europeans allowed the Khomeini to come back from exile. We don't know what blackmail networks or anything happened in those things. But the Iran Contra affair was effectively America sending the money to Israel. Israel purchasing the weapons from US Military contractors, sending them over to the Revolutionary Guard, the irgc, and the Iranian, the Iranian thing. And then they would use their weapons trafficking networks to get it back to Central and South America via Nicaragua in order to fund Contra militias that were protecting drug trafficking rings for the CIA and America. So when you understand that, you realize that Israel, and again, this is a faction of power, the, that comes from that. This isn't the whole country. This isn't the government. This is a transnational structure that's set up where many people believe that they're for something else, they're working for something else, but they don't know who their boss is. You know, this, let's say it's 150 people. Most people don't know who that is. So you have this, these segregated structures that make people. Now religion is the best way of, of, of building an army. You know, if you're in an ideological war, it's a lot easier to recruit an army. It's why it's very hard for Britain to have an army right now, because everyone's looking at Keir Starmer saying, you're corrupt. I don't want to work for you. You know, I don't even see Britain as something that is doing good in the world right now. We seem to be an Epstein pedophilia ring that's bloody, you know, that seems to be creating wars around the world. So there's no ideology. There's no, like, I'm fighting for my country and God asked me to do it, you know, but there are places in the world where that still exists, right? And Iran is one of those, you know, a holy war. A holy, you know, I'm doing this to combat Western imperialism, you know, that, that, that recruit, that's an easy one to recruit. Israel is an easy one to recruit an army is. I'm doing it for the protection of the Jewish people that are in a fight for their, you know, that are in a fight for their survival after thousands of years of Christian persecution in Europe. But then you pretend it's the Muslims that were doing it, right? So then you have this whole, all right, the Jews versus the Muslims narrative. So anyway, the Iran Contra affair set up strategic tension between Israel, Iran and you realize that there's a faction of power where the us, Iran and Israel are all working together. That faction of power is again, by the way, everyone's going to be pissed off. Everyone in the comments is going to be pissed off for this because there's kind of cartoon versions of Iran and like both of them are wrong. One cartoon version of Iran is the Western version which is you've got the center of terrorism cut off the head of the snake they want to kill. Death to America, death to Israel. They're Islamist terrorists. People don't know the difference between ISIS and Hezbollah or something like that. You know, just this confused thinking that they were a part of 9 11. Just complete ignorance, like cartoon image of an evil Hitler basically, you know, a neo evil Hitler. On the other side you have the complete opposite of that. You have the cartoon image. The, the IRGC are in the last holy war against Western imperialism. And we're the defenders of the Palestinian cause and we are worthy ideologically driven in order to protect suppression from Israel and America. And so that is a cartoon image that some people have. What is reality is the IRGC is actually just an asset management company. They run certain assets. Those assets are banking assets, weapons trafficking operations and really what's called the resistance economy I like to call it. It's an economy where if you can find a cause and you can fund a militarized group in order to defend that cause, you have leverage in negotiating and trying to become a hegemon in the industry, you know, in the region rather so in the region of the Middle East. You have various groups that have done this. You have Western interests represented by Israel, Al Qaeda and ISIS that were created via co opting Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf countries in order to build terrorist factories that would then create chaos and then Iran would Build a resistance against it. So then you had, in the case of Yemen, the Houthis in the case of Gaza, Hamas, in the case of Lebanon, you had Hezbollah. And then you have this ginormous industry that profits from this strategic tension. And then you have Israel that builds out its network as well. It's all about conquest of resources. The IRGC is effectively an asset management institution and it sits above the Iranian government. And so you have this substructure that has an economy built upon continual resistance. Now, when interests align, when Israel is a node for this military industrial complex, Iran creates the counter narrative. Then it makes sense, right? Why you have death to America, death to Israel, because for 40 years you have they're about to get a nuclear bomb and they're about to kill the Jews. It never actually happens. It's all done via proxy and conquest of resources and land and territory. That gives you negotiation leverage in trying to become a hegemon. You have Saudi doing the same in Libya and UAE doing the same in Libya and in Sudan and various others. And you have this whole model that is built upon strategic tension at all times in order to acquire resources, ensure the Middle east can never unify around their resources and just profiteer from the $10 trillion that America printed on their fake war on terror that they engineered. And so when you look at what is the Iran war right now, you have what changed? And this is a key thing. There were several things that changed that. Now, why we need an Iran war? Because for 40 years, Iran and Israel were never firing at each other. But it was only in the last two years when they actually started firing at each other because they needed to end the strategic tension. Why are we now getting the end of strategic tension? Why has that operation ended now? Well, a few things changed. Firstly, the financial. The FIC put China in the equation to build its military, sorry, its manufacturing base. And so that was done via the World Trade Organization and allowing China into the World Trade Organization. What that did is it created an environment where America would become more financialized and securitized, where 70% of its whole economy was no longer a manufacturing basis. So is service based, with the largest being financial services. And that would mean that you can always push the currency up in order to get all the countries where you destroy their currencies and destroy their economies, to lend it back to the US Government via the bond market. And so you would have effectively the IMF destroying countries and servicing loans, and then those countries would have to lend it back to the U.S. government. And because you're always bidding up the dollar. The dollar is strategically overvalued at all times. That means you hollow out the manufacturing base because it's too expensive to build shit. So the military starts outsourcing a lot of its components to China because China's doing the opposite, is strategically weakening its currency so everything's getting cheaper so they can export while America imports. And so this whole globalization, which was represented by the World Economic Forum and corporate interest, effectively was about strengthening the dollar, weakening the yuan, and building a ginormous manufacturing base in China and making America just a collateralized debt obligation that's fully financialized and securitized. Eventually, you know that if you weaken that dollar, you reverse the trade.
- [49:33]
Peter McCormack
Yes.
- [49:35]
Simon Dixon
And if China strengthens the yuan, then it becomes less competitive, so you're able to recolliborate. And now we're at those extremes where the US Military, this is how you know everything's fake. This is, well, again, real but theatrical. America's nuclear program imports highly enriched uranium from Russia. The US military industrial complex cannot produce an F35 fighter jet or anything without China. So the American military and nuclear program is 100% reliant upon China and Russia. So are we really going to World War iii? I don't think so. Because if there was real nation states fighting each other, China could kill the US Military in a second just by stopping the exports immediately gone. And if you've put them in a war with Ukraine and put them in a war with Iran and put them in a war everywhere, the military companies have made loads of sales, but the national security of America is compromised. What does that mean? You are now subordinate to corporate interests, so you're hollowing out an asset stripping. So when you look about this, what is the Iran war? I believe that because America got so controlled by the FIC and China became the manufacturing base, America did something in the Trump administration, which is it became energy independent. So remember, many of the wars in the Middle east were about propping up this petrodollar. If you price oil in dollars, you create artificial demand for dollars. And then Saudi pegs its currency to the dollar, and so you have to buy treasuries and lend it to the US Government. And then they use that influence to build military bases across and say, we're protecting the oil. But, you know, and they get to say, well, America protects us because we effectively cooperate with America and propping up the petrodollar. So you have that relationship there. Now, if that, if that, what if America becomes energy independent now what the petrodollar breaks and the currency pegs break. And now America is competing with the Gulf countries. So what's that military base for? Why do you need that military base? And why is the price of gold going up like crazy right now? Oh, because they're selling their dollars, stopping lending it to the US government and buying gold because they're not going to buy their own currency. They can print their own currency, so they buy gold. And so the gold price, basically we're breaking the petrodollar. The bank of Japan comes out and starts increasing rates. That breaks the Japan carry trade. The NATO comes along and America starts saying we're no longer, we don't want war, you want war. That breaks the euro dollar and all these things. And so if you put all this together, you've ended up in a situation where, okay, so what did the Gulf countries do? They're saying, right, we're now competing with America for our energy, we're competing with Russia for our energy. Where are we getting our wealth from right now? Oh well, we're selling our oil to the country that doesn't have oil, China. And so China's buying all of this energy from Russia, from Iran, from the Gulf countries, from Venezuela, from anyone because it's got the world's manufacturing base. It needs every type of energy. It needs solar panels, it needs wind farms, it needs renewable energy. And you know that whole ESG thing that destroyed the European manufacturing base, that was BlackRock's ESG to sell Chinese windmills to Europe to turn off their nuclear energy, cut off, blow up Nord Stream pipeline, stop the gas getting in and destroy Europe so they can acquire it on the cheap. And so America's now energy and energy exporter, it competes with the Gulf. The Gulf are looking at this saying we've got US bases, we're not propping up the petrodollar. In fact we're now having to sell our gold to prop up the dollar peg because the dollar's weakening. We don't want to sell our gold in order to prop up the dollar, prop up our currency. Everything's breaking. And so what did transnational capital, what did the FIC do? Well it co opted the sovereign wealth funds of the world and it said every deal we invest in, you can also invest in. When we buy XAI, when we buy ChatGPT, when we fund all these things, you can be involved in every single deal. And we'll kill Nord Stream pipeline and in Qatar you can get all the liquefied natural gas contracts. We'll Take some of them, America will take some of them. Qatar, you'll get some of them. Okay, so now you've got a Middle east that effectively Iran depends upon China, America depends upon China, Russia depends upon China, the Gulf countries depend upon China. The world depends upon China. And so now what are you going to do? Well, China is influencing the sovereign wealth funds because those sovereign wealth funds get their money from selling oil to China. So they're saying, I want this, I want a de dollarized world in the Middle East. I want peace in the Middle East, I want people to buy our product. I don't want war, I don't want militias, I don't want all of this stuff. So I'll fund Iran and influence Iranian politics. I'll fund the Gulf sovereign wealth funds and influence Middle Eastern politics. I'll fund Russia and influence Russian politics. And together we'll build a belt and road initiative where we invest in Africa, we invest in the Middle east, we invest across Asia, and we undo the IMF and the Western colonialism not because we're competing with America, but because the financial industrial complex want the same thing and they own America. And so this transition to a multipolar world is those regional, all regional powers. There is no resistance against it. But there is one faction of resistance. So you've got this financial industrial complex, transnational capital. There is one faction of resistance against that. That's an ideological narrative that they built up to justify war. What's that represented in? It's represented in nationalistic neocon narrative in America where America is the best, America's the greatest, the dollar is the strength, we win, we kick ass, let's go get war. You do it or not, you need to destroy that narrative and that faction of power or you need to compensate the military companies somehow. Then you've got the other factions of power, the Zionists in Israel, you know, that justified all that war. And then there's one more narrative, the IRGC at the top, the top level and the resistance economy. So you need to take out all the militia groups, isis, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, all of them, all of the ones that are done. You need to also get rid of the US military bases from the Gulf countries. You also need to have an Iran that is run as a government aligned with China, but not an IRGC that profits from war. Now that faction of power is part of those mafia networks as well, you know, all those mafia networks. So now what is this war? This war is the agreed outcome between the military industrial complex and the financial industrial complex. Because China is now wants regional stability and Trump wants to take credit for it. That's what this is. What. Yeah. So what has happened since the war's gone on? So let's have a look at his.
- [58:08]
Peter McCormack
Hold on, hold on. So, right, can you re summarize that in one paragraph?
- [58:17]
Simon Dixon
Yes. You have the military industrial complex, the MIC that is aligned with hardliners in the IRGC in Iran, the Zionist hardliners in Israel, and they profit from the forever war model. Okay, Then you have the financial industrial complex, the FIC that wants regional stability. They partner with Gulf sovereign wealth funds, they partner with China, and they partner with the reformist pragmatic government in Iran. The reformist pragmatic government in Iran was sat at a table negotiating with America. Aman was mediating the talks one day prior to the American strikes on Saturday. On Friday, Oman made an announcement. It said, Iran has agreed, the IRGC has agreed zero nuclear enrichment, highly enriched uranium will be guaranteed with Russia. China will provide security guarantees for the removal of certain ballistic missiles that set the framework. And who was sat around the table? The Iranian, you know, the Iranian government and the more modest parts of the irgc. I believe the negotiation continued. And part of the negotiation was America strike on Saturday, take out these people. Iran, you blow up the US Military bases and then we'll close the Strait of Hamus. And when we close the Strait of Hormuz, we'll create a crisis in oil that sets a time frame and a deadline. And who benefited from the closure of Hormuz? Who benefited? American oil tycoons. The FIC that have now said, hey, guess what? We blew up Nord Stream pipeline. Europe, you don't have any liquefied natural gas and you've got high oil costs. It just so happens that there was tax policy that cut off, that created windfall tax on the North Sea oil in the U.K. all right, so now coincidentally, all the oil industries in carnage. So the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is filling in the gap. And then what happened? Europe negotiated with Qatar. So Qatar said, here's your liquefied natural gas. What was the first target they hit? They hit the production of liquefied natural gas in Qatar. They did. The US Military bases and the liquefied natural gas production in Qatar. Europe's in disaster. America comes along and says, right, they know what the timeframe of how long the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed. The financial industrial complex. Why? Because it was the insurers that did it. Insurance said 75% premium on all shipments. So the insurers with the factions of power in Iran shot the Strait of Hormuz. America comes along and says we're going to sign a 20, probably negotiating right now a 20 year fixed term agreement to provide liquefied natural gas to Europe, to UK and we'll take that contract. Qatar, screw you, Russia, screw you. This is ours. What did Russia do? Russia said, oh, by the way, we can get liquefied natural gas and oil everywhere. Who wants it? So China gets it, India gets it. All the Asian countries that went into crisis because Japan needs to import all of this oil. South Korea, so you had a crash of the South Korean stock market, the Japanese stock market. The American stock market was kind of okay because it was propped up by energy companies and military stocks. But you effectively. Who was won from the closure of Strait to Moose? Russia, Russia and America. And American oil interests now because they've
- [62:26]
Peter McCormack
said they're going to remove the sanctions on Russian exports as well. Right.
- [62:29]
Simon Dixon
What else did you get to do? Oh, right. You know, those military bases in the Gulf countries, blow them up. So Iran blew them up and targeted them. They didn't touch the Gulf countries, they touched the US bases. And all of the diplomacy was around Iran saying, we are not attacking you, we are expelling us from the region. They also said anybody that wants to get their shipment through to the Strait of Hormuz, you just need to do two things. You need to remove your Israeli embassy and your U.S. embassy. And the Hormuz is open for you. And so they are effectively expelling the US from the region for China. And so now you get the US Military bases. What are those Gulf countries going to do? What did they immediately do in reaction? They didn't bomb Iran, they didn't retaliate militarily. They said, you know, we will protect ourself. And so they're depleting their interceptors that they bought from American military. So now Iran is depleting, Israel is depleting, is targeting Israel. Israel's having to blow up all of its defense, all of its defense. Every bomb makes a shit ton of money. All of this makes, you know, this is billions of billions and billions of dollars. So Israel gets weaker and weaker and gets burdened with debt. The stock market in Israel does really well because it's military based. Then you have the weakening of the US bases in the military and effectively what have you done? What is the end result of this going to be? The end result is that the Strait will open oil prices, reset the world order. You have a bound, you Have a series of mechanisms that are being announced. And what was the main mechanism when the price of oil, by the way, $115 kills, that's global financial crisis. If you have $115 oil for a sustained period of time, what was the mechanism to push the price of oil down? Sanctions relief for Russia. So they announced sanction relief for Russia and the price of oil crashes.
- [64:51]
Peter McCormack
Kills me.
- [64:52]
Simon Dixon
The G7, they say we're going to release our strategic petroleum reserves.
- [64:56]
Peter McCormack
400 million barrels, right?
- [64:58]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. That's 3.7 days of global oil trade. So it's insignificant. But you drain the G7 of their strategic petroleum reserves. Most of it will come from America. So you drain the strategic petroleum reserves. You have to replenish all your military, you have to replenish all your oil and your strategic reserves and your, your bank. You know, this is a, this is it. Now what is the, the end result is that effectively, if you think of where did the term Middle east come from? The term Middle east came from the British colonial empires where Britain was looking eastwards and saying this is the middle of the world and they've got and we need their oil. So the Middle east was a colonial term, but it was originally West Asia. The Middle east is now becoming West Asia again. And so you've built the Western hemisphere dominated by American corporate interest. Transnational capital can rent the American military whenever they need an operation. You've destroyed all the proxy networks in the Middle East. Strategic tension ends by the end of this irgc. If any of those hardliners wanted weren't on board with China's plan, they're the ones that would be derailing the plan. Any of those hardliners in Israel may be trying to derail the plan. Any of those hardliners in America, the neocons may be trying to derail the plan. You push them all out, they try and derail the plan. They kill schools, you know, children in schools, they blow up. They try and get Saudi Arabia to retaliate, they start doing false flags all across and say that's Iran, that's Iran. And so now you're having the dismantling of all the false flag operations and decapitation campaigns of anyone that wouldn't been on board the plan. You replace Khomeini with Khomeini and Khomeini who was cooperating I believe, and negotiating, probably agrees to a regime change. I don't know the details of that, but it's not a regime change because you can't destroy Iran. If you literally did a Real regime change. The region would be in chaos. This is Syria with 90 million people at one of the most extensive military mights in the world. You can't do that. All of the protests were 100% manufactured. You don't have a revolution where the people uprise and then take over one of the largest militaries in the world. That only happens if you have an alternative military and the military goes with the revolutionaries. And then you have a coup. There was no coup, There was no army. It was just literally kill the currency, which Scott percent admitted to. Lindsey Graham said Mossad were on the streets. You create economic circumstances which is a disaster. So destroy all their savings, get an Internet blackout. And what do I think IRGC were doing? They were probably arresting and taking out the hardliners in their own internal system that were not on board with the plan. And so then you outsource to Israel and America decapitation campaigns, take out the people that are not on board the plan, destroy, you know, destroy. Have real bad damage on Israel. And then you have a three way narrative at the end of it. So oil puts a time frame. You can tell this is fake. Because right now, if this was real, if this was real, not only would you have an increase in the price of oil, but gold would be soaring as well. Gold's not soaring right now. Gold's been flat, if not down, while oil is rising. That means the insiders in the market know that there's a timeframe on this war and it's not a forever war. If this was going to blow up the Middle east, gold would be going through the roof and oil would be going through the roof in sync. It's not. So there's going to be an off board and everyone needs a three way narrative. Israel needs to say, we did the decapitation campaigns, we chopped off the head of the snake. Meanwhile, it's burdened with debt and it's got less military or degraded. The Gulf countries will renegotiate those contracts with some American, some China, most Russia and China in terms of those bases probably won't be rebuilt for American interest. America is now an energy exporter. It gets Europe, it gets Central and South America. And then what did the Gulf countries do in their retaliation? They said, we're reconsidering our investments in the U.S. trump said, We've got 18 trillion investment. 18 trillion foreign direct investment means you're acquiring the assets of America so you can leverage America. And so they said we're going to rethink those. What were those? The Ones they're going to rethink, those were mainly defense and artificial intelligence. That's what all the investment was. They said we're going to rethink it. That creates a problem with the AI trade in America. You get a correction of the market, you get the private credit market blowing up.
- [70:11]
Peter McCormack
What's the timescale on all this?
- [70:13]
Simon Dixon
Exactly. What, what is happening in April? In April is the China summit, which is a meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping. It will be done by April is my prediction.
- [70:26]
Peter McCormack
April, yeah.
- [70:27]
Simon Dixon
So in, in that meeting will be the official. You'll probably need a theatrical. You'll need a Hollywood movie from Trump. Trump needs a Hollywood movie. So he will probably do something similar to the 12 Day War where he had Operation Midnight Hammer. He came in with the B52 bomber. America, looking like the king of the world comes along, strategically takes out some of the highly enriched uranium. If you remember the bitcoin mining crash by like 25% when it happened. And then you get the theater, you get the movie and we retreated, we took out Khomeini. You know, he'll have his narrative of maga. MAGA will be happy because they're like, yeah, you're not the neocon, you're not doing the forever War, you're not doing Afghanistan, you're not doing Iraq, you're not doing that anymore. Israel will have we decapitated. Netanyahu will be regime change this year. He'll be gone. It will be, you know, a GCC and Turkey aligned puppet government in Israel that's no longer funded by US military. Okay. And Iran will be fully in line with China's plan. I guarantee you in the next few years there will be gas pipelines between the Gulf countries in Iran. Iran won't have sanctions and Iran will open up its economy to. And probably what they're negotiating over now is the fic, probably in a new multipolar world, wants some private corporate interest in the Strait of Hormuz so that IRGC don't have full autonomy to close it again. And they'll try and get some strategic ports. Blackrock will end up with some kind of deal from that and we'll end up where the massive, massive, massive amount of money that can be made from deals in Iran, deals in Syria, deals in Lebanon, deals in the Gulf countries, deals across Saudi. It will be the highest growing, highest growth opportunity in the world. And they will sit between a falling US empire, which is increasingly vassalized, and a rising China that's building out Africa. And why do they need Africa. It's the only one that's still having children right now. They need the birth rates. So you put everyone else in AI robotics and, and, and police state so you can deal with all the civil unrest that comes from it. So if you are now losing your primary source of profit, which was war in the Middle east, you need region, you need. You need a. You need civil unrest within Europe, but not where it affects the stock market, just where it extracts wealth and extracts more resources. But we can't have absolute chaos. So we need Palantir, we need a police and surveillance state, we need digital id, we need central bank, digital currencies. What else did happen? Taiwan. This is interesting. What happened during this war? They said in order to preserve energy, because. Not Taiwan, Thailand, sorry. In order to preserve energy, everyone needs to stay at home, work from home. The pandemic narrative ain't going to work again. So now they've created another one in order to preserve energy costs. Please, everyone stay at home. We need to save energy while we deal with this crisis.
- [74:01]
Peter McCormack
Do you know simulation theory?
- [74:04]
Simon Dixon
I haven't looked into it too much, but I'm aware of it. Yeah.
- [74:07]
Peter McCormack
The premise that we've gone since the invention of computers to now over really decades, really, that you've gone from a computer that can do basic math to be able to create worlds like Fortnite. Give it another hundred years, you'll be able to probably recreate human existence. The world that we live in as a simulation. That's the thesis that if you can do it, you do it thousands and millions of times. So we're probably in a simulation. It does feel like we're in some game. It's just a game. It feels like an art. Do you remember Risk?
- [74:45]
Simon Dixon
I do, yeah.
- [74:45]
Peter McCormack
It just feels like Risk.
- [74:47]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree and I think we're all feeling that right now. So on the psychological level, you know, getting down to the micro, the humanitarian cost of this is an absolute pandemic. The real pandemic is the psychological trauma that we're all being put through. Are you feel it in. Oh, 100% like I am. My, my. My world is not the same world that I understood or knew and, you
- [75:12]
Peter McCormack
know, how certain are you in your thesis?
- [75:17]
Simon Dixon
I'm not certain on the detail. I could get lots of details wrong in that. But I'm certain on how the world is governed now. Sorry, Simon.
- [75:27]
Connor
It.
- [75:28]
Simon Dixon
For me, at my age, it seems like I don't. I'm trying to make sense of it. Is it bad timing for me or has it always been like this? It's always been like this. You're just. But is it collapsing now? You're just in the wrong region of the world because what you're experiencing right now is 1% of what people experienced on the wrong side of these bombs. You're getting the tame down version. And we're all going crazy, right? We're all like becoming absolute nuts and we can't have children and we're all going crazy, right? The rest of the world has been on the wrong side of these bombs. We're only getting 10% of what they got and they survived and they were strong at the end of it, and they're still here.
- [76:14]
Peter McCormack
Up until about a year ago, I spent my entire adult life as a hardcore entrepreneur creating businesses and creating the podcast and the football club. Over the last six, seven, eight months, I've lost all my motivation to do any of it. I love doing this and I love my football club. I've sold my bar. And there was part of me that was kind of like politically revolutionary. I can get involved in politics and fix the problems of the country. And I go through waves of feeling like a revolutionary and other waves of thinking, what's the point? But during that period, I had like blood tests and yeah, I went to the doctors. There's nothing wrong with me. And I kind. And I've noticed it around me as well. I think there's a deep psychological trauma in this country that is coming, Coming to fruition now. And I think the country itself is depressed and I'm trying to make sense of it. Yeah, what to do, what to think about it. It's a really tough thing, but it is. There's a. I think there is a deep psychological trauma in the Western world at the moment.
- [77:28]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I completely agree and I feel the same. So, I mean, you know, over the last decade, I sold my business because, you know, I was thinking, where is this artificial intelligence stuff going? You know, I figured out my financial strategy, which involved bitcoin, gold, hard assets. I knew that I could weather the storm. I knew how to beat it financially. And running a business wasn't part of that. Immediately, I was like, well, what do I do in this world now? Finances aren't going to be a problem for me. I think I've contingency planned for every scenario I could. I moved to an island, built the highest security structure I could build, you know, look for countries that were not burdened by debt, look for community, look for how to live a more human life, you know, Touch grass.
- [78:27]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [78:28]
Simon Dixon
You know, that type of stuff. Explored more spiritual and religious beliefs. Started to try and strengthen what are my beliefs around that. Around that. But the only thing I could find myself doing was what I'm doing here right now.
- [78:45]
Peter McCormack
You want to tell other people?
- [78:46]
Simon Dixon
I just want to share what I think I know and maybe other people can contribute into furthering my understanding and maybe I can help people. I don't, you know, I don't need any money. I don't need you to buy anything. I don't need anything. And I'm blessed. And I don't think many people are in that situation. And it was bitcoin that got me there.
- [79:10]
Peter McCormack
So I think I'm in similar position.
- [79:12]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [79:12]
Peter McCormack
So I found myself going more analog.
- [79:14]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [79:16]
Peter McCormack
Cooking meals. I go to the gym in the mornings. We play some tennis. I've started going back to physical books from audiobooks.
- [79:23]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [79:23]
Peter McCormack
I'm finding that draw to the analog world.
- [79:25]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [79:26]
Peter McCormack
Which I think it's really good. I like it.
- [79:28]
Simon Dixon
Yes. My big issue is what do you do if you're not in that position which is the large majority of the population. Yeah. That's my fear. And that's where I think again, I'm quite black pilled as well. So I used to be very optimistic like when I was running a business. You've got to be deluded. You can't even survive in business unless you're deluded. You got to believe that you can achieve way more than you can actually achieve and that's what makes your business successful. But what do you do when you lose that? Because I feel like there is an amazing opportunity in terms of all this AI stuff. But I don't know how you monetize anymore. I feel like everything's moving to free. And when everything's moving to free, that's incredibly disruptive. So I spend my time doing free stuff and. And I'm able to do that. But what do you do if you're not there yet? Well, firstly, regardless, you still need a 10 year plan to figure out how to beat inflation and survive in a multipolar world. And the only thing I know about that is hard assets, physical assets. The next crisis is a self custody play. Definitely custodians versus self custody. That's what goes wrong. There's many different theories on that. The only strategy is the big print in the West. Larry Leopard wrote a book on that. There'll be a bigger print than Covid. It's the only strategy. There's no other thing. There's no way around that. And everyone needs to just understand the fixed assets is the way to solve that. And we enter into a world where your government might confiscate your assets or they might tax your assets in order to stop you from leaving. And so everyone just needs to work on the sovereign side. That's solvable. And you need a 10 year plan to do that. And you need to start today. Don't say it's too late. It's not too late. You need 10 years to really plan for that. I ended up selling all of my investments that involved other people because I just stopped trusting people. Every investment, you know, as a. I was a shareholder in about 100 different Bitcoin companies. Every single one of them let me down. You know, I got. I got scammed everywhere. You know, everything that could go wrong went wrong. But many of those investments did well. So I just started saying I don't. I don't trust people.
- [82:01]
Peter McCormack
So you don't invest in other people's companies, Say as an angel. But would you invest in equities?
- [82:06]
Simon Dixon
I don't do it anymore.
- [82:07]
Peter McCormack
You don't do that anymore.
- [82:08]
Simon Dixon
Don't touch it.
- [82:09]
Peter McCormack
So everything should be in hard assets, like some form of money.
- [82:13]
Simon Dixon
I've got to separate. I'm an ideological investor. So I may make wrong decisions, but I want to do it for ideological reasons. Which is a bad way of being an investor, by the way. The best way is to be like them. Like the fic.
- [82:28]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, but hold on. I think you are investing, but you're investing in time.
- [82:34]
Simon Dixon
Invest. Absolutely, that's correct. So I'm investing time in sharing information with.
- [82:40]
Peter McCormack
No, sorry. So I think you're investing in protecting your future time. That's what I think you're doing. Because I think about this a lot now. I'm 47. So at 20, it's like, how can I make as much money as possible and have a cool career at 47 with less time? I'm like, how do I ensure I don't ever have to get in that position where I need a fucking job? Yeah, like. And it's investing in protecting time. Not just mine, my kids. I think about long longevity. How can I survive in this system? I think that's what you're investing in.
- [83:16]
Simon Dixon
It's from what we're going through a very similar journey. So I'm trying to get back to a more humane state of being which involves caring about family. It involves not work, life balance. It involves actually remembering what we're brought on this earth to do. And that's the journey I'm going through at the moment. And so yeah, it's, it's buying back time. Now every private equity investment I have steals my time because I got to deal with the board issue, I got to sign agreements and contracts. I got to deal with someone that might go rogue. I've got to deal with regulations, money laundering, like you know, all of those things that still stole my time when I thought I was just making an investment. When you have counterparty risk, you have a theft of your time. Because I get back to, I could give you, I could invest in your company or I could just have some bitcoin in self custody or some gold bars and gold bars don't give me grief. Bitcoin in self custody doesn't give me grief. You give me lots of shit and make me attend board meetings and, and do stuff that steals my time. So I, so I immediately said about it. Now do I want to then invest in stocks? Well, no, I don't want to invest in mcfic and tick. That's terrorism.
- [84:43]
Peter McCormack
So that's a different point. Yeah, that's an exit the system thing.
- [84:47]
Simon Dixon
Exit the system, yeah. So then I don't want to, I don't want to help BlackRock manage my assets. I don't want to invest in the S&P 500 so that the fit can get wealthy with my money.
- [84:59]
Peter McCormack
Are you fully withdrawing?
- [85:01]
Simon Dixon
Fully withdrawing.
- [85:02]
Peter McCormack
Fully withdrawing because. Interesting, because I still hold some equity positions. Not many, but you're part of the system. If you do, you're supporting make fic and tick.
- [85:17]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. And if I receive yield, then I'm part of the problem. And so again I, I don't judge anyone that does this because you've got to look after yourself and reality kicks in. Right.
- [85:29]
Peter McCormack
But the. Nah, but the Nazis were just doing their job.
- [85:32]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [85:33]
Peter McCormack
If you understand it and you know it's evil, yet you hold on to those equities, you're complicit.
- [85:40]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. So I don't trade, I don't invest in financial weapons of mass destruction. I don't invest in index, I don't invest in stocks, bonds. If I'm going to invest, it's because somebody came to me and said, hey, I want to, you know, I want an opportunity to create a fish and chip shop.
- [86:03]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [86:03]
Simon Dixon
And I want to do it and I want to help the community.
- [86:06]
Peter McCormack
I want to build a farm. Yeah. And put food in the community. I want to create a new school system which is outside of the government schools. You're on about real Stuff.
- [86:18]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [86:19]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [86:21]
Simon Dixon
I want to help people build communities because that's, that's where the real. That's how everyone survives. They survive in the real world. So the real world is you, your family and your neighbors.
- [86:30]
Peter McCormack
It's a place of privilege that becomes a burden.
- [86:32]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, yeah, I understand it.
- [86:34]
Peter McCormack
Talk to me about. Because I'm feeling a draw, real draw to religion at the moment. Hmm. I'm real draw. I haven't read the Bible. I am a Catholic, but I'm not practicing. But I keep seeing these little signals that draw me to it. So the other day I just, I had Netflix. I was flicking and up pop Noah, the Darren Aronofsky film. Have you seen it? No. So it's really interesting because it starts with the story of Cain and Abel and how Cain killed Abel. And it talks about Cain created the city and the city created industry. And it started growing really quickly. And then obviously all the Borgia that comes with that and it was, you know, there's like a darkness that came on the world because of all the incentives based on this. And I was like. And I was watching that. And then obviously the. Noah's the son of the. The other brother of Cain and Abel and he goes to build the ark because God's going to flood the earth to teach us all a lesson. But I would. But when it shows this industry growing around the world, I was like, oh, this is just, it's just telling us the story now. And it blows my mind how many of the stories of the Bible are telling you what is happening now? But these were written thousands of years ago. How did they know? Where's the foresight come from? And not that I feel a connection to God or Jesus. I just, I'm just, I'm amazed by these stories and what they're telling us. And I feel a real draw to it. And if I ignore it, I'm being complicit in the problems of this world. I'm. Yeah. Biting the apple.
- [88:10]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. I do see a, like people going in two directions. They're either saying everything's a lie and therefore all of that was a lie. Which all religions and all religious scriptures like, you know, from my opinion, with the exception of one, was doctored. And what's the exception? The Quran is the only one that's preserved. If you believe that it was a divine message, because it was not the human written books like the Hadiths, but the, the actual one that was preserved from the moment it was actually, you know, revealed to Prophet Muhammad. That's the Only every religion agrees that that's the only one that was preserved. And everything else was doctored for political reasons, including all the scripture that sits around institutional Islam, institutional Christianity and institutional Judaism.
- [89:10]
Peter McCormack
What's your interpretation of that then.
- [89:16]
Simon Dixon
When you. I believe that everyone. Again, I don't want to, I don't want to preach here, but when I read the Quran from the perspective of trying to. The first time I read it was because I wanted to understand Islamic finance from first principles. I saw a book where everything makes sense. Everything makes sense. And I saw some. So many lies told about things because they took other scriptures and said it's in the Quran when it's not. And so I was very curious around why it's the most lied about book in the world. And so that sparked my curiosity. So then I read it not from the perspective of trying to understand first principles of sustainable finance and Islamic finance. I read it from the perspective of believing there is a creator and was this preserved divine guidance. And even if you believe that or not, if you read it from that perspective, I think you'll find the most sustainable guidance for humankind that exists in the world today in Islam, in not institutional Islam, in the Quran.
- [90:33]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [90:33]
Simon Dixon
The Quran is preserved scripture. Islam has thousands of scriptures, like hadiths that were later documented scriptures, you know, from those that were around the prophets and various other things. The Quran as one book. I personally recommend everyone read it from the perspective of thinking about everything that's happening today. Forget about all the perceptions. Read it from the perspective is this a sustainable map for the world? And if I did this, would it, would it, would it work? When I read it from that, I decided that the Quran is a truthful scripture.
- [91:15]
Peter McCormack
Wow. Yeah.
- [91:18]
Simon Dixon
And it's. There's a reason why many people want to obfuscate it with mistruths and other other things like saying that what they're doing in Iran is Islam. No, these are political. This is institutional. That's got nothing to do with believing there's a creator. And was this message from that creator and was it preserved? I think everyone should read it from that perspective and then you understand. It's really easy to understand the Bible and the Torah when you've read the Quran. But most people never go there because they've been told it's something that it's not.
- [92:01]
Peter McCormack
Huh, huh.
- [92:05]
Simon Dixon
That was my journey. I respect all religions. Anything that makes you more spiritual, anything that brings you closer to a creator. But I do think that humans need guidance. I don't think we come to it's like, I respect governance. The reason that I tried to figure out how power works in the world and how ward works is because I wanted to understand governance. The reason I like Bitcoin is because I understood it was governed within a trustless network. When I tried to understand banking governance when I was a business, it was chaos until there was governance. Once we were regulated, there's accountability in governance. When I tried to understand how money works, you look at, where's the accountability? How's it governed? Oh, right. People borrow it and it creates new money. And then that's why I was very drawn to Bitcoin because it was a governance structure, structure that no one could change. And it's accountable to node operators, miners and code, maths and code. And that made sense to me. I personally believe as humans we need guidance. Because if I were left to my own devices because I run a regulated financial institution, left to my own devices, I would have made the decisions that you're not allowed to do by being. Because you're regulated. And so I think everyone needs accountability. Everyone needs to know what wrong and right is. And it's not like you need to know the boundaries of acceptable human behavior. I've been through a phase where I was doing very unacceptable human behavior, and now I think I understand the rules of what acceptable human behavior is. And I think that came from following rules and being accountable to it.
- [93:55]
Peter McCormack
So do you. Do you believe there is a creator?
- [93:57]
Simon Dixon
Yes.
- [93:58]
Peter McCormack
You do?
- [93:58]
Simon Dixon
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't. I do today.
- [94:02]
Peter McCormack
Do you define it around some kind of religion or is it just your own personal.
- [94:07]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I follow the Quran.
- [94:09]
Chamath Palihapitiya
Okay.
- [94:11]
Simon Dixon
I don't. I have big problems with institutional Islamic and the scriptures around it, but I do believe that there is a creator and the Quran was divine and it gives you the outline. There's also mistranslations of the Quran. Like, so when you go into the Arabic to English, you realize all the games that were played as well. You realize that it actually, you know, I studied from somebody that actually looked at the original ancient Arabic language and what it meant at the time versus the English translations we have today. And you realize it's actually, there are some errors in the English translation understanding that is mainstream today. So I spent several years on that journey and it gives me a lot of guidance, a lot of help, and I think it makes me a better human.
- [95:13]
Peter McCormack
Well, what version is that that you can. How does somebody else.
- [95:17]
Simon Dixon
I. I study like various scholars and like, I started supporting projects of people that were going back to the original translations and Creating new, you know, new different types of translations based upon like the 10, 15 things which are debatable in English translation. And so that's the type of thing I invest in. I invested in somebody that wanted to do that because I want to see that project come to life. That's what I invest in today.
- [95:46]
Peter McCormack
Interesting. Okay. So do you consider yourself a Muslim?
- [95:50]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I'd call myself a Muslim, yeah.
- [95:51]
Peter McCormack
Interesting.
- [95:52]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, yeah. There's many misperceptions about what being a Muslim actually means as well. Being a Muslim based upon translations of ancient Arabic was actually a peacemaker. And being imam was about being a protector and a security to peace. Now, institutional Islam has told you many different things. Why? Because they became connected to power struggles and political movements and follow the money. And then you find out how these different types of beliefs came to be. But there was a lot of work done by Sufi Muslims which, you know, which is the more. Taking the Quran and figuring out the more spiritual aspect of your connection to God and more of the. The Sufi work.
- [96:48]
Peter McCormack
I was going to say. So where do you connect with Muslims who have a similar interpretation?
- [96:56]
Simon Dixon
Actually online. I don't like. I don't.
- [96:58]
Peter McCormack
There's no nation state. That is no.
- [97:01]
Simon Dixon
No nation. As soon as you get involved in nation state, you are involved in geopolitics and negotiating with the fit make and tick and any. You know. Yeah. To me, nation state is a complete obfuscation between you and God. And so I'm not patriotic to a country. I want my country to be a great place for people to do. I don't want to generate gamblers. I don't want people addicted to pornography. I don't want people on drug addictions and alcohol addictions. I want people that actually care about each other, that contribute to each other. All of that guidance is there and it's all sustainable, you know, intercourses within the realms of a protected marriage. These types of things, these are all sustainable things. These all make a lot of sense. But once you add nation state, once you add corporate, once you add the need for funding in order to fund a temple or a mosque, or you then end up in politics. And politics is when. That's the challenge for me, the spiritual battle is seeing through the politics. And life is a test. And our job is to and continually seek knowledge so that we can, you know, like life is a test. And that's why I stopped being addicted to. The world has to be fixed. I realized actually the world doesn't have to be fixed. The world is broken by design. Because bad Shit happens. And you go down two paths. You either do more bad shit or you actually do better stuff. And that's what life is about. Do you in those moments take the easy bad path or do you take the better part? And there's no perfection? Perfection is a false thing. We will meet our Creator and you will look at all the actions that you did when you were faced with really bad things. Did you make more bad decisions or more good decisions? And that's my accountability.
- [99:21]
Peter McCormack
I didn't think we would get here. I know today really didn't. But I'm so open minded to religion. Like I said, I was raised a Catholic, but I don't feel a connection to the Catholic Church.
- [99:36]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [99:37]
Peter McCormack
But I definitely feel a draw. I've been feeling the draw to Christianity, but I think it's more of a draw to religion and guidance.
- [99:45]
Simon Dixon
Like principles.
- [99:47]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, principles. We talk about this a lot. It's, it's like even if you just look at the, even as you as a Muslim, but if you look at the Christian teachings, how many times each day does each human within the UK who is a Christian, how many times do they essentially sin? And what is the compound interest of that to the psyche, the, the happiness of the country, to the success of the country? And I think we're so far away from this now as a, as a nation, as a, as a planet, as a group of people. I feel like we're entering, I don't know, these dark times because of this, because we don't have that guidance, that guiding light, that thing that grounds us every day. And that's what I like about what I think are like really spiritual religious people. Not your clerics and your priests and your, your theatrical religious people. It's just the people who are deeply connected spiritually. I think, I think we just need more of this. Yeah.
- [101:03]
Simon Dixon
I believe there's many paths and I do think you're right. So for me the journey was understanding usury. And then that took me to monetary reform, bitcoin, Islamic finance. And then I found my journey of what's the problem in the world? Well, it's usury, degeneracy and all of these things. And it took me back to, you know, that type of scripture. I do think in terms of nation state level, GDP is an incredibly damaging marker for a country. The kingdom of Bhutan did the gross Happiness Index and it looked at, are people happy? Are people committing suicide? Are people having addictions? Are they engaging in antisocial behavior? Are people, what's wealth inequality, What's Their level of happiness in general. And I think the biggest problem is that GDP obfuscates the reality of wealth inequality. And so GDP with a debt based Ponzi scheme that we've covered where usury is embedded into the monetary system and you can't avoid it. That leads to an environment where the majority are unhappy and a few are very unhappy because they own everything and they realize that they have to engage in activities that are so inhumane in order to maintain their power. And those at the top of the
- [102:45]
Peter McCormack
cycle,
- [102:49]
Simon Dixon
I don't believe they're happy. I don't, I don't know how you can watch children in Iran and the genocide in Gaza and October 7th and, and know that you're making money from that and not have a severe bankruptcy and coping mechanism that you've developed inside you that's made you seriously, seriously.
- [103:12]
Peter McCormack
Or you're a psychopath.
- [103:13]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, yeah.
- [103:14]
Peter McCormack
No, I don't understand it at all. Yeah, I don't understand a lot. The older I get, less I understand. But I think one thing I've come to understand is that happiness is quite simple once you stop chasing that false God of money. And maybe that comes from a place of privilege, but I think simple things can keep you happy.
- [103:38]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I think we were brainwashed a lot. And I think the depression that we're experiencing as a society is that we
- [103:46]
Peter McCormack
thought,
- [103:48]
Simon Dixon
we thought we were doing everything to a very high ethical standard, that we were helping civilize the world, that we, there was an element of supremacy, I think, in our ideology and now we're finding out that it was all a lie and we were doing the opposite of what we thought we were doing. And I think that creates a problem. And I think it's also being weaponized deliberately because they're trying to build a control grid. And what does, what do you need in a control grid? You need weak people that are psychologically disengaged from the system, that are stuck in their house and don't want to leave their house, that are doom scrolling on technology all day and their full dependencies financially. And they're worshiping idols or of. What does Tucker Carlson say in order to figure out what their thoughts are, you know, and they're subordinate to a user, a system that has put them in such a financial position where they can't even maintain a marriage right now because they feel like such a loser. And the fabric of the role of the man and the woman is just hitting a point where women and men hate each other.
- [105:08]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, we, we've scaled technology Faster than we scaled Wisdom. And I think this is a grave danger to society. We're not. And there's so many, so many of the books I'm reading right now are books that were written over a century ago. You know, there's a lot of wisdom in these books and we're not teaching it.
- [105:29]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, absolutely.
- [105:31]
Peter McCormack
You know, I, I consider the person the kid. Doom scroll. I saw a thing on Twitter the other day, it was great. Some young kid, he was about 16 and can't even remember the book he'd read. But let's just say it was something like I know the Odyssey. And he's, he's gone online to talk about this book he's read. And, and there's apparently a movement behind that. And I thought, this is amazing. We've got kids doom scrolling on TikTok and Instagram. I wish they were reading, I don't know, Adam Smith or, or reading the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Aeneid, or even Adam Smith.
- [106:06]
Simon Dixon
That was a lie.
- [106:07]
Peter McCormack
Well, he stole a lot of his ideas, didn't he?
- [106:09]
Simon Dixon
Well, you had the golden age of Islam and the dark ages in Europe. It was the, in, you know, the Islam was taking all of the, the Greek literature, like the philosophy it was preserving and it was documenting everything. It created economics, which was free trade, hard money and ethics was the part that they took out, say free trade, hard money and a concept of what ethics are, what's good and bad trade. And what did they do? And then Adam Smith wrote the invisible hand to portray the market. But that was originally divine. That was a concept of good and bad in trade. And so he said the market is the God. And so everyone started worshiping the markets rather than a concept of free trade and hard money. And what else? What was the very first thing that that was done? Well, Adam Smith was on the 20 pound notes at the bank of England. His face. Because this was part of the justification for worshiping markets in a debt based Ponzi scheme.
- [107:31]
Peter McCormack
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- [108:55]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, that.
- [108:56]
Peter McCormack
That is a thing you have faced.
- [108:58]
Simon Dixon
Oh, absolutely. Being a Muslim in the west as a white British guy is incredibly unpopular, you know, but I am who I am and I don't care.
- [109:07]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [109:07]
Simon Dixon
You know, yeah, but everything you just said is because you hate the west and you're a rat. You know, it. The propaganda campaign that was put on top of Islam was, you know, it was unbelievable in order to take down those towers and blow up Muslims in the Middle East. And that was a very powerful campaign. And it was only until the genocide happened that people started to question that, that narrative. And now they're realizing that we're ruled by the Epstein class.
- [109:46]
Peter McCormack
I mean, I hate everyone like you and I like Hayden and Connor, but I pretty much hate everyone and don't trust anyone anymore.
- [109:53]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. But, yeah, I don't. I don't care. I just. I'm at a stage in life where I can talk truth as I see it, and probably most of it's wrong, you know, but I think I've been pretty accurate at trying to get things right and I think I've navigated life quite well and I've made every mistake under the sun. I've done everything. I've. I've. I've messed up so many things that I know quite a lot about how to not mess things up. And I did a lot, you know, I did the corporate career, I did the university thing.
- [110:30]
Peter McCormack
Everything you're told you meant to do.
- [110:31]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I did the charity thing, I did the not for profit thing. I Did the business thing, I did the investing thing, I did the. You know, I've been through that whole journey, and now I'm at a stage in life where I don't optimize based upon money because I was. I was given a gift.
- [110:49]
Peter McCormack
You've controlled your adhd.
- [110:52]
Simon Dixon
But I am different as a human. Like, the technology is definitely changing my brain. I wake up. I wake up in the morning. Often with real life, I'm not quite sure what I'm meant to be doing today.
- [111:03]
Peter McCormack
I think that's a privilege.
- [111:05]
Simon Dixon
Well, I never had that before. Every day I woke up and I knew that I was chasing something and I was working towards something.
- [111:13]
Peter McCormack
Is that true, though?
- [111:15]
Simon Dixon
Maybe.
- [111:15]
Peter McCormack
Because I think. I think when you're chasing something, you're actually. You're running away from something.
- [111:22]
Simon Dixon
That's true because I was the obsessed business person that neglected my family, neglected everything, neglected my health.
- [111:30]
Peter McCormack
Yep, same, same.
- [111:31]
Simon Dixon
And now I'm not that person. Well, I still have. I still have a tendency to just obsess. And now my whole thing is trying to figure out how the world works. And that leads me to study obsessively. The same way I used to act in business.
- [111:47]
Peter McCormack
Or we're a similar age. Don't say your age. Yeah, but I'm late 70s born. So you're similar age, I think.
- [111:57]
Simon Dixon
Yeah, I'm 80s. You're okay, right? 1980.
- [112:02]
Peter McCormack
You're not late 80s, so I'm a couple of years older.
- [112:06]
Simon Dixon
1980, is that. That's right. Between X or something.
- [112:09]
Peter McCormack
I think you're. You're ex. Yeah, I'm. I'm. I'm X. But close to the boomers. But it's basically saying everything I've been saying recently. Right. Maybe this is the Gen X midlife crisis.
- [112:24]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. Well, we remember what it's like to write on pen and paper at school. And then we knew what it was like to print slides from a computer and put them in a binder. And then we knew what it was like when everything was a computer. And now we know what it's like when everything's a phone. And now AI is doing everything for us. Like, we've been through all of that.
- [112:44]
Peter McCormack
Well, so we used to know what it's like when you had to go and meet someone. You had to turn up on time because you couldn't phone them.
- [112:49]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [112:49]
Peter McCormack
If you weren't there, like, there'd be a problem. And yeah, we remember encyclopedias. And I saw a. Watch this. I think you say, I think it's like kind of AI Slop. But I saw this thing this morning. Did I send it to you? Con?
- [113:03]
Simon Dixon
I remember when I was able to manage my emails, my inbox, I sent it.
- [113:07]
Peter McCormack
I sent this thing to me and my kids have got a WhatsApp group. I sent him this video. I think it's AI, but just. It's kind of interesting. You don't need to play the whole thing, Con, but just play the start.
- [113:19]
Simon Dixon
Because it.
- [113:20]
Peter McCormack
It made me feel sad. But I know with Connor, he is drawn to what this stuff is telling. He always says he's jealous of what we had.
- [113:29]
Connor
Wait, so you're telling me in the future people just stare at a little box all day? In, inside and outside. And in the future you don't even own the music. You just pay every month to borrow it. Like if you stop paying, the music just disappears. Wait, so before people eat, they take a picture of the food and show strangers and the strangers like and comment on it. So in the future everyone has their own phone and they use it to type messages instead of call. And if someone calls you without typing it first, it's considered rude. So you're telling me in the future people just post their diary for everyone to see? Some people get paid for it. For their diary.
- [114:15]
Peter McCormack
Keep going. There's one more. There's a really important one.
- [114:17]
Connor
And in the future, a little box just tells you where to go, turn by turn. And people still get lost. If you want food from a restaurant, you just tap the box and a stranger brings it to your door and you pay extra for that and then you rate the stranger. Our moms always say don't talk to strangers. But in the future everyone just talks to strangers all day on the little box and shows them their house and their kids. So in the future nobody ever just sits with the quiet. Like ever. That sounds really exhausting. In the future, Everyone's connected to everything and people are still lonely. Okay, but do we at least still stay outside until the street lights come on?
- [115:12]
Peter McCormack
I know it's probably AI, but it kind of hit hard man, when I saw this. Because my childhood was brilliant. I remember like 15 years old, every weekend I couldn't wait to finish school, had my skateboard. It's a car partner called Lurk Street. My friends would go and would skateboard for two, three hours. But I remember before that I'd run around my mate's house, we get the football and go and play. Everything was like outside when we could. And now everything's kind of inside. It's really sad. Like I wish I was ballsy enough to just get rid of this.
- [115:43]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [115:43]
Peter McCormack
And get our families get rid of this. I'm. I'm so close to it. Yeah, but how do you function? Well, it's not that. It's not that I actually don't fucking care anymore, Simon. But it's just a bit like. All this technology is great. We can sit on a flying chair 500 miles an hour, and I can FaceTime somebody else on a flying chair. What incredible technology.
- [116:06]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [116:08]
Peter McCormack
But the human experience is about connection to other people, community. Yeah. I love working with my son. It's the biggest gift in the world. Yeah. We wind each other up, but when we drive to London, we just talk for a couple hours sometimes about the show. Like, we will talk about this tonight. And I just think, what.
- [116:31]
Simon Dixon
When.
- [116:31]
Peter McCormack
When you're chasing something, what are you running away from? And I. I think it's. I think it's your ego telling you you're meant to go and get this thing whilst, you know, internally what you're happy with is the connections you have and the people around you. Yeah.
- [116:50]
Simon Dixon
And I think the other thing that's really happening right now is I'm losing the concept of time.
- [116:55]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [116:56]
Simon Dixon
Like, things are just speeding up and I don't really know what time it is. Like, I don't know whether it's morning, day, night. I. The last two weeks, I actually didn't
- [117:06]
Peter McCormack
leave the house, so I've had a different experience from that. Yeah. I felt like when I was chasing business, time was just flew by. Yeah. Now I started to switch off. I'm actually finding it slowing down a bit. Okay.
- [117:17]
Simon Dixon
Yeah. Yeah.
- [117:18]
Peter McCormack
And I'm like. I'm okay with that.
- [117:20]
Simon Dixon
I mean, We've already done Q1 of 2026.
- [117:24]
Peter McCormack
Well, we've already done 26 years of.
- [117:28]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [117:28]
Peter McCormack
The century. And I remember exactly where I was at the millennium. I was at a rave, but I. Yeah, Millennium.
- [117:37]
Simon Dixon
I was in Chicago and somebody put a gun to my head.
- [117:40]
Peter McCormack
What? Yeah. Jesus Christ.
- [117:42]
Simon Dixon
New Year's Eve in Chicago. Yeah. I don't forget that one. I was actually. It was my friend, it wasn't me. But we were together and they put a gun to his head. And it was a real reality check.
- [117:53]
Peter McCormack
Damn. I was at a rave in East London somewhere doing cocaine.
- [118:02]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [118:02]
Peter McCormack
Thinking I was the.
- [118:04]
Simon Dixon
Yeah,
- [118:07]
Peter McCormack
I was a degenerate. Yeah.
- [118:09]
Simon Dixon
Look, I was into the. The whole jungle drum and bass thing. Yeah. Going to One Nation.
- [118:16]
Peter McCormack
One Nation type of stuff. Do you ever go to Junglers?
- [118:19]
Simon Dixon
No.
- [118:19]
Peter McCormack
King's Cross? Is that King's Cross? Junglers was wicked. And the one they had in Milton Keynes. Yeah, I remember the first one I went to and listened to Turbulence.
- [118:29]
Simon Dixon
I was like, yeah.
- [118:30]
Peter McCormack
Oh, man. Well, listen, I think you're right. The community thing, I think you're right. I think that's what, that's what we've got to get back to.
- [118:37]
Simon Dixon
Yeah.
- [118:37]
Peter McCormack
And disconnecting. I want to get rid of that. Oh, another profound two hours with Simon Dixon.
- [118:47]
Simon Dixon
Where are we going to be in three months?
- [118:49]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah, I have no idea. But look, it sounds to me like the west is over.
- [118:57]
Simon Dixon
Well, I think if you're staying in the west, you want to go a bit more rural. I do think you should consciously decide where you want to live. I think if you can, if you're privileged to be able to do that. And I think have, have a 10 year plan. Really, everyone, everyone needs a 10 year plan, like to. How to navigate this and yeah, decide where you want to be. But yeah, I do believe that if you are incredibly wealthy in the west and you own assets, you'll probably be fine. But there's fewer and fewer people and then you got to figure out what's going to happen to everyone else. I think that's ubi.
- [119:38]
Peter McCormack
I think you're right, man. I'm going to go think about this one. Expect some texts from me over the next few days as I come to some profound realizations and I'm sure we'll sit down in a few months and do this again.
- [119:53]
Simon Dixon
Okay, well, thanks for having me, Peter.
- [119:55]
Peter McCormack
No, anytime. I far more enjoy this the second half of the conversation, the more philosophical side. Yeah. All right, man. Well, listen, look, keep doing your thing. Stay safe and you know we love you and we want you here whenever you want to come in.
- [120:11]
Simon Dixon
Okay? Thanks.
- [120:12]
Peter McCormack
Thank you, man. Thank you, everyone. Be safe. Sam.