← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Iran’s Chokehold, Meta’s AI Gamble, and Trump’s $300B Power Play | Tom Bilyeu Show Live
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Tom Bilyeu
What's up everybody?
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Drew
Good morning. We have been ready to go for ages around here, so it is wonderful that you guys are finally joining us. All right. Well, things continue apace in the Middle East. It is absolute madness. Iran has hit at least three ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, and you can expect that to show up at the pump. Speaking of which, people in China are panic buying gas amid fears of an ongoing oil shortage due to the war in Iran. I of course, first assumed that this was just absolutely fake news, but the more I dove into it, the more real it really does seem to be. So we'll get into that. Speaking of things that were hard to verify, rumors have been flying around about the US And Israeli radar systems being completely knocked out. We're gonna break down exactly what's true, what's not. TR and a big question around the Supreme Leader has come up, especially when he is the only one that could turn off the Iranian decentralized military response. And things just continue apace as Trump promises to keep hammering people until the morale improves. So we, we are going to see how long this drags out. Drew, this is not something I'm expecting to end anytime soon. And I am expecting a bigger and bigger problem in global energy markets as they really are. Iran really is showing that they can hit the ships going through. I think there was a lot of tough talk on Trump's part trying to tell people, basically, stop being a wuss and take your ships through. And Iran was like, yeah, word, hold my beer. And then they showed all this footage of these tunnels and tunnels and tunnels of Full of boats, which I thought was kind of impressive that they just have them, like, pulled up on little like the things you would put on the back of a truck to drag a boat around. But they're military boats.
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Tom Bilyeu
Boats.
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Drew
They're small, obviously, but nonetheless, they can launch rockets from them.
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Tom Bilyeu
They look like a boat you would take to the lake with, like a missile launcher. Exactly.
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Drew
Like, hey, everybody, like, come join. Hold on a sec.
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Tom Bilyeu
I gotta, like, let me just bomb
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Drew
this place for real fast. So it's pretty crazy. I don't think that people have fully internalized, and I'll even say this inside the US Government, I don't think they fully internalized how much trouble a smaller army with faster and harder to detect munitions is going to be to truly defeat, especially from the air. And so with every day, the odds that Trump either has to eject out of the situation and leave Iran really no better off than we found them in terms of being a threat to the rest of the region and to the US or actually put boots on the ground, which I just. While I think he probably would be crazy enough, bold enough, depending on what side of the camp you're on, to do, like, a strategic thing, like take over that island. There's an island, we talked about this before, but there's an island off the coast of Iran where they do a lot of refining. And so supposedly it would be very strategic to take that over. I haven't done a ton of research on that yet, but that is something that I could see him doing. But, like, actual boots on the ground, man, if he does that, that. That to me is. Is a, like, kill switch for my own ability to think that he's going to pull this all together. Now, I've been surprised before, but that one just feels like, bro, you are going to have the world's hardest time messaging to the American people that this is not another forever war in the Middle East. So I think that he's gotten people on board with lightning strikes, like what he did in Venezuela. I think people were on board with the strikes on the nuclear facilities in Iran. I think people could have gotten behind what's going on with the Iran war if. If it ended quickly, if he wraps it up in a month, I think he could still get people on board. But you start putting troops on the ground, that first dozen or so that get killed, it's game over.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, to give Trump credit, he did go in and take out the Supreme Leader quickly, just like he did in
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Drew
Venezuela, taking out multiple. But they.
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Tom Bilyeu
So he started Good. But I don't think anybody was prepared for how prepared the Iranian military is. And the Strait of Hormuz is now a minefield, apparently, and they're just escalating the situation.
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Drew
Well, so there's a really funny Babylon Bee thing about this, which is Iran warns the world that they have an extreme stockpile of supreme leaders. Thought that was pretty funny.
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Tom Bilyeu
Nice.
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Drew
So that is the, the thing that we have to look out for is they are obviously running a different playbook in terms of, yeah, sure, you can just keep killing them and we'll keep naming the next one. Because if there really is on the ground support in the country for whatever supreme leader they name, because the Western media would have us believe that the people that rose up, there's nothing standing in their way other than the military guard, that there's no actual civilian support for the regime. But at least my read on some of the footage that I've verified is true. Not that, like I'm the ultimate one, but going in, looking at our credible other sources reporting it. Yes. Does AI verify that this isn't something that was reposted from somewhere else? Yes. Does AI verify that this is not AI generated? Yes. So it's like doing as many checks as you can do at the rate that we're getting information really seems to be that they can fill the revolution nary square that they have in Tehran with people like packed wall to wall with people that are supporting, in this case, Mojtaba Khomeini's son, him taking over. And I have a feeling they'll be able to do it again if they put another cleric in place. So if we can accept that, like America is divided, Iran is divided. And yes, in America, you can get a bunch of people on the right that'll go and fill a gigantic space, and you get a bunch of people on the left that'll go and fill that gigantic space. And depending on how you cover it, you're going to make it seem like America is all this or all that. Or you could just show America's completely divided. You can tell whatever story you want because there is so much conflicting opinion in the U.S. i have a feeling that that's what we're seeing in Iran. As a reminder, they have 92 or 93 million people. Like, they are a big country, they're big geographically, they're big from a population standpoint. And so like anything, you're going to see a lot of difference of opinion. And so I think that's a big part of what we're seeing play out. And, and one of the things that you and I were talking about before we started rolling, like the big theme right now is just how much propaganda, how much spin there is, how everybody's trying to control the narrative. And so I consider my job to be to look at everything from a first principles, Len, to build everything up from cause and effect, to try to get beyond even my own bias. Obviously, I just want America to win. I'd rather we weren't in the conflict, but now that we are, then, hey, let's win it. So I'm trying to check myself against that to find out what's really true. And so spending a lot of time looking at like, what's going on with the radar, what's actually going on with oil, are they showing, is the Iranian army showing that they really can choke out the Strait of Hormuz? All that stuff, there's real truth to this is not like a super clean thing. We're not just like, yay, we're winning. And so I think that is the important lens to look at all of this through. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.
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Drew
Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.
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Tom Bilyeu
I think that's a great Aliyoub. Let's break all these individual pieces down and really dive deep into it. So the first thing Straightight ahead, Hormuz. Mr. Economic Lens Tom Bilyeu himself has said this has been Iranian Iran's strategic hold. They've been trying to control this straight because this controls 20% of the oil supply. It goes through it. We have footage of ships being burned. So it's not an open straight that people could just pass by. It's not as open as we thought it was. Give us the breakdown on what's really going on and what's happening behind the strait.
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Drew
Yeah, from the beginning, the Strait of Hormuz is the area that everybody needs to pay attention to. And the world's oil supply literally just got choked a little harder as three ships that were attempting to cross the strait got attacked and damaged this morning. So this is happening in real time. It's not something that happened days ago. This is one of the heaviest days of Attacks on shipping since the war in Iran began. And for anybody that's trying to spin it and make it look like this isn't what's going on is trying to delude you. The reality is that Iran with their much smaller military force is able to create enough havoc that people are still very hesitant to go through the strait. And the worst hit of the three ships was the Thai flagged bulk carrier. It's operated by Precious Shipping was struck twice by unidentified weapons. They were, they struck above the waterline. And the strike triggered explosions near the stern. In the engine room, fire broke out. There was like 20 crew members that had to evacuate the craft. Three members though remain missing. And I don't know if that's just a bad headcount or if three people actually got killed or went down with the ship. I have no idea. More will come on that later. A second vessel, the Star Gwyneth, a Marshall Islands flag bulk carrier owned by New York listed Star Bulk, was also struck. They were struck off the coast of Dubai, which is crazy for anybody that has a mental map of Dubai as like this really safe place. We haven't been talking about this a lot, but Dubai's reputation is really getting shook by this. So there have been so many influencers and stuff that have moved over to Dubai that are painting this picture. And by the way, I've been there myself multiple times. When you're there, it just feels like a very beautiful, very safe place. And so for them to be getting struck, for headlines to be ships struck off the coast of Dubai, all of that is really beginning to chip away at Dubai's mystique of being this incredible place for capital. It's very safe, very beautiful. So it'll be interesting to see how they come out of this. Now the ship that was struck off the coast of Dubai, it has a, excuse me, a 2 meter hole in it in the first cargo hold. Damage was done to its ballast tanks as well. So that's causing the ship to list out in the water. The crew reported as being safe, thankfully. But man, you guys can expect oil prices to go up as a result of this. We oil prices were fluctuating pretty madly because remember, traders going to trade, it's gambling, it is people betting. And so they hear something on the news and they rush to make a trade. So try not to steer just by these momentary flashes up or down, they're trading the news. And so this is people that think they're a little more clever than the next person, that they can move a little bit Faster, but it's not necessarily a good indication of what's actually happening. So the markets are going to be bouncing around a lot. But when you look at direction of travel in terms of how things are headed in the Middle East, Trump has been saying that we're going to get the straight open. He's been blustering a lot about, you know, we're going to slap you, run around. It's going to be the craziest thing they've ever seen, all of that, but they're still able to get things in the straight that are causing a problem. In fact, there was a third ship, this is a Japan flagged one, and it sustained minor hull damage. But. And while the crew is safe, again, you just don't need there to be a ton of damage to create the problem that we're seeing because insurance carriers don't want to touch this stuff. Trump has promised to escort people, but he's been unable to do that. And now different countries are cutting deals directly with Iran to have their ships left alone. So now you're talking about people being able to build different alliances. And it is going to get weird showing that Iran is not without cards to play here. Now, given the fact that the Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas supply, it does not require a bunch of people to be dying for this to be massively impactful. All around the world since the conflict began, traffic through the strait has dropped to effectively zero. And the group UKMTO has now logged 17 incidents so far affecting vessels in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman since the war began. So you've got 13 confirmed attacks, four suspicious activity reports, and just enough uncertainty to grind this all down to zero movement. Effectively there's a little. But it's getting close enough to zero that expect that to be the top headline that's basically moving oil prices now. At least seven seafarers have been killed across these incidents. Brent crude is up roughly 20% since the war started. Again, it's bouncing around a lot today. I think today we're sort of low to mid-90s, but I would expect that to go higher. We'll see how it actually plays out. But that would be. It would be more surprising to me if prices stayed the same or went down than it would be that they go up to make things even more fun. By the way, Iran's military has issued a new threat today, warning that it's now given the green light to strike US And Israeli economic targets in the region, including like bank branches. So they've urged people to stay a kilometer away from bank branches. And let us not forget that Iran has some seriously talented hackers. And so I'm sure they're working nonstop behind the scenes to try to break through different technological barriers as well to wreak havoc. So keep your eyes on that. The 31 autonomous IRGC provincial commands, which we're going to talk more about later, this is one of the specific things that I think people need to pay more attention to. So they include naval assets in Bushir and the coastal provinces directly adjacent to the strait. So there's not even Central Command right now that needs to give a green light to these attacks. They're just going to happen randomly by these different provinces that are going to be. They will have made up their minds as to what they're going to attack before the supreme leader was even killed. So good luck hitting a kill switch. So even with a lot of bombs, like, you can just try to bomb them into oblivion, but it's going to be very tough to stop when they are completely decentralized and they don't have to wait for any new commands. All right, we're already seeing this echo around. People are panic buying gas in several places across Asia. Again, we'll do a full rundown on that, but I don't see anything that's going to calm this down anytime soon.
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Tom Bilyeu
And then I want to daisy chain that with a tweet from OSINT Defender. They said US Intelligence has begun to see indications Iran is step is taking steps to deploy some of its 2,000 to 6,000 naval mines of Iranian, Chinese and Russian origin into shipping lanes across the strait. So this seems like this is Iran's choke point and they're going to take it. But let's play war games for a second. Take a step back. This is a strategic move. This is a smart thing to do. If you're Iran and you want to defeat your enemy, you want to hold the maximum amount of leverage and inflict as much damage, whether it's physical damage to naval or economic damage to the country. So the assault on the strait I don't think anybody can talk about at this point is spin. They're definitely strategically trying to take point of this. Right.
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Drew
And they're doing well, by the way. So it doesn't take a lot of fear to get a huge response. This is asymmetric warfare in a nutshell. Inflict terror on people, or in this case, inflict terror on the people that own the Ships on the insurance companies who are like, yeah, like that's just bad for business. Insurance companies operate typically on razor thin margins. And so when you've got risk that's going up disproportionate to the gain that you're going to get, you just say, yeah, we're not going to insure it. So that is going to continue until the US can prove that people are going to be able to get through the strait safely. And given three ships that were hit today, that message is as of right right now, today, the US despite their gigantic overwhelming naval power, is just not able to get people through the strait safely. And so, yeah, I think that you're looking at at least another week before people just go, all right, cool, I think we're good to go. Now, if the US really does have an answer to the problem and they can find a way to stop these ships before they're able to attack, if they can get like there's, we'll get into this more in the radar section, but there's like other ways that the US can detect what's going on from air based radar and things like that. They're also moving some into the region from other places. So it's like just like the Iranians are going to have a very clever response. And you should assume that Iranians have brilliant people making their decisions. So does the US So this is going to be this tit for tat thing that goes back and forth for a while. It's not like, and this is what drives me crazy about the way that media presents this. If you're in the US and you're right leaning, you're going to be like us as smart people. Iranians are all dumb backwards, like farmers trying to, you know, launch mines by throwing rocks into the water. It's like they'll make it sound like this really retarded response when in reality it's intelligence. The right way to view the world is intelligence is evenly distributed. That's never going to end up being exactly true. But everywhere has enough brilliant people that even if they're a small number of the population, they're going to be able to have the outsize effect. This is why it's very difficult to just rock up on somebody and take over the country and not have any problems. The smart people go underground, they amass weapons or they do terror campaigns or whatever and they can still destabilize things. So you, you don't want to take that left or right position. Now the, on the right hand side like Everything is going great and we're winning this all and this is going to be easy and we're just going to steamroll. And then on the left, it's, you know, us is a bunch of morons. They don't know what they're doing. They're completely discombobulated and they're, they're overplaying their hand. What you're actually watching is two hyper intelligent groups of people with extremely deadly weapons who understand each other's capabilities very well. You've got the Chinese feeding the Iranians like, second by second information on the movements of our military equipment. And so it's going to come down to who gets the upper hand first by destroying the visibility. That's going to be a huge one and then ultimately demoralizing them. So if you're Iran, your demoralized play is actually to make one the moral argument. You guys don't have a moral justification for being here, so that'll be a big part of it. Now that gets confused by the fact that they just killed roughly 30,000 of their own people. But anyway, they're going to make that argument and to the left, it's going to be very compelling. And then economically, you're going to try to damage our allies. You're going to have a very hard time damaging the US so we make all of our like 95% of our own energy, so it's like we're going to be the least impacted. It'll still influence oil, but in the US it's really not going to be that big of a deal for us. But it does stop us potentially from exporting as much as we might otherwise have. It certainly put strains on people in the Gulf region who are used to selling their oil, and now they're going to have a hard time doing that. And obviously other allies that we have, especially in Asia, that are going to get absolutely hammered by this. And so they're going to be not only trying to stymie us militarily and create damage, especially in Israel, which they can just go whole hog on, but they're going to try to make sure that they spread that economic pain across the world and then say, remember the Strait of Hormuz? Hormuz is not closed because of us, it's closed because of the U.S. it's closed because of Israel. And if you want to broker a great deal, just come to us like, we got you. Nobody does better deals than us. Drew, forget Trump. He's a wild man, right? And it, that will start to look very Appealing.
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Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
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Drew
And so that's how you slowly draw China into this, where if China starts running like missions to protect their ships from the U.S. okay, now Chinese ships are flowing through without having to turn off their transponders. Now that's me, you know, reaching into the future. I have not heard anybody say that's what they're going to do. But it's like you can see how if China, because China's already pulled back on exporting their oil, so now they're saying, okay, hold on, we're refining, we're going to keep it all here. We're going to make sure that we deal with domestic production. China has raised their rates, and so they're going to say, okay, there's a limit to how much we're willing to raise our rates before we go in and start at least making sure that our ships are able to get through. What that ends up looking like is an unknown question, but it will make them far more vocal and loud about what their position is. I would be very surprised if they came in kinetically, but they've already sent big ships to give intel, so they're certainly not opposed to helping you run.
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Tom Bilyeu
They're sharing intelligence and weapons already. It's one more step. I want to dive back into the decentralized military aspect of this because I think everybody watches Saving Private Ryan. We all play Call of Duty in Fortnite. We're like, just go in there and shoot that guy you killed. The leaders bomb the White House, we're done, we can wrap it up. But I think this was a good point. You built up that their military is decentralized. So there's not a core hub, there's not a department, there's not a Pentagon that we can kind of come all the command comes out of. So with this, they also announced that they will start targeting American institutions in the region. So you have Iran is publishing a hit list naming Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, IBM, Oracle, Planet Palantir, which all has offices in the Middle East, Israel, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. So now you have a decentralized military who has listed a bunch of targets. And because you just chopped off the head, you don't know who's leading what, who's popping up and who's taking that control breakdown kind of decentralized military side and how this makes the war even more complicated for us.
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Drew
Yeah, this is one of the things that people that are trying to map out what's going to happen have got to take into consideration. Consideration the decentralized military that Iran is running is so decentralized that it runs the risk of becoming essentially a well armed headless chicken that can't be stopped from running around and spraying blood on everything. And that idea that it can't be stopped is what people have to think about. So if Trump is going to have an exit from this war, there has to be somebody that you can talk to, because if you stop and they don't, then you've gotten nowhere. If we say, okay, cool, cease fire, but then they keep bombing the Strait of Hormuz, you've gained nothing. Now, in 2007, a general named Mohammed Ali Jafari took over Iran's Revolutionary Guard. And he was part of the generation that watched the U.S. topple Saddam Hussein's entire military in just three weeks. And Hussein Saddam ended up like hiding in a hole in a ground. If you guys remember that, if you're old enough to remember him getting pulled out of that, I mean, it's just absolutely wild. And so Jafari ends up walking away from watching all of that, deciding he's centralize his army to avoid a potential decapitation from being something that could shut down the military. It's actually brilliant. Again, to Drew's point, like, whether you see them as the enemy or not, you want to be able to identify what they're doing. That makes sense. And this is really quite brilliant if you want to make sure that you don't succumb to that problem. Now, it creates another problem for you, but it is very good at defending against the decapitation, being able to stop you in your tracks. So Jafari ends up splitting the IRGC into 31 separate provincial commands. So one for every province in Iran. Each one got its own headquarters, its own weapons, its own fast boats so that it could do these lightning quick attacks. They all have their own drones and their own missiles. And then critically, they have pre authorized launch orders that don't require additional permission from above. That means kill as many supreme leaders as you want. And the only way that doing that is actually going to stop these attacks is because the will of the people to fight goes away. And then the people in the military are like, listen, I know I can, I have the authorization, but I can feel that things have turned against me. And that is the big question mark, is whether the people that want to rise up and push back against the regime are actually big enough in number and still have the will after 30,000 of them were slaughtered to do that. Because the whole architecture was designed for one specific scenario. The death of the Supreme Leader so that it's going to keep going on, and they'll just keep putting in new ones. Keep putting in new ones. So the hope, if you're the US Is that as you replace these subsequent supreme leaders, that each one has a little bit less uniform support and that the fractures begin to show. Now, of course, rumors abound that this kind of fracturing is already happening in Iran. We're gonna have to watch and see if that's actually true or if that's more spin, more propaganda. I'd be a little surprised if it wasn't true. Just from what I know about humans. Forget the specifics of Iran. It's just about, what do you know about humans? And think about leadership here in the US There is a big difference between Trump and just somebody else. Right. So Trump is going to have supporters that say, J.D. vance wouldn't have. So keep that in mind. My gut instinct is, as we go down, that it will split further and further until you get to the point where one cleric believes it should be him, it's not him, and then there are supporters of that guy. And so that's the kind of scenario that could still play out, even in a decapitation scenario, where the army. Whoa. The army is continuing to do its thing. I'm getting too excited over here, Drew. I'm just throwing water everywhere.
- [27:42]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, thank you.
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Drew
Now, part of what makes the situation so deadly is the Iran. Iran's constitution gives the supreme leader and only the supreme leader, command over the armed forces. So even though they have a president, the president can't countermand a provincial commander. Parliament can't revoke firing authority once it's been given. Only the supreme leader can turn off the war machine. And the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khomeini, this is Khomeini's son, is reportedly in critical condition and on a ventilator somewhere in an ICU under heavy protection. Now, I want to be very clear, these reports are unverified, but they've been swirling for a while now. And every day that passes where we don't see or hear from him, the rumors obviously gain a little bit more credibility, because nothing would bolster the Iranian regime supporting people more than him making a message, even if it's from an underground bunker somewhere, to make a message telling the people, you know, that they're going to do this, that, or the other. So it is very surprising that we're not seeing more of that now. Right now, there may not be anyone that can hit the kill switch on the war from the Iranian side. And so that's something that the US Strategic Command needs to take into consideration. And again, that's by design. The 31 commands, like the, the commanders, these guys are viewing them as being in chaos would be the wrong move. Viewing them as rogue would be the wrong move. They are doing literally what they've been told to do. This is the structure. Fight independently with whatever you have access to for as long as it takes without waiting for any more instructions to come. And so if you're a diplomat walking into that scenario, trying to figure out how you're going to deal with this, who you're going to talk to, who you're going to negotiate with, with, you're going to be in for a bad time because there may not be any one person for you to make that connection with. So on that front, by the way, seven of the major P and I institutions that cover insurance for commercial shipping have reportedly modeled the probability that all 31 commands would simultaneously honor any ceasefire agreement that we could actually get put in place if we were to try to negotiate one, which by the way, as of right now, the US Is not pursuing. But even if they did, these insurance investigators conclude there's basically a zero percent chance that that would happen. So the scenario that you have right now is that well armed headless chicken that's running around just blowing whatever up that it can. And so this is going to be much harder to certainly negotiate a ceasefire. And it may be impossible to prosecute entirely from the air. We're about to find out.
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Tom Bilyeu
I ran a poll you put, I ran a poll on, on YouTube and it said, what's your thoughts on the war? One is Trump is wrapping it up. Two, Trump bit off more than he can chew. Three, this was a cover up. And four, I don't know what to believe anymore. And the leader is one, Trump bit off more than he can chew. And the second one is I don't know what to believe anymore. So it seems like after that, reporting this headless, faceless, monstrous army, now I'm starting to figure out this might have been more than we thought. This isn't people in bandanas and T shirts like we were when we went to Afghanistan in Iraq. This is a well armed and prepared militia. It seemed like they've been waiting for this war. We kind of got baited into it. I know we got to go to the US Side and talk about the radar and things like that, but with the decentralized military, is this a unique problem? That you think America has to deal with? Or do you think this is something that. That we knew it was coming, we just didn't think it was going to take this long. Like, what do you think the pushback was when they discovered how complex the military that war actually is?
- [31:21]
Drew
Well, if we find out that they did not anticipate decentralized command, a, that would be shocking. I refuse to believe that's true. And B, that would make them like capital R retards. Because this is exactly what we saw in Iraq. It was completely decentralized. This is what you see in Afghanistan. This is how Afghanistan has been able to, quote, unquote, bankrupt empires time after time is. It's a bunch of guys armed in caves. And so you try to go deal with that, and each one just does their own thing. And so the US has spent the last 20 years dealing with this exact problem. So there's no way that they didn't consider it. What will be interesting to watch play out is whether Trump had any sense of what does this look like as we try to exit, because he mapped out what would happen in Venezuela so well, there's no way he didn't come out of that a little bit cocky. And so my concern isn't that he didn't see these things coming as possibilities. Meaning somebody didn't put a brief on his desk that said, listen, this guy has broken the IRGC up into 31 provinces. I don't think this is, it's. It might be news for us as the average people in the media, but it's not for classified information. No way. Like, they're going to know about this stuff if they're able to strike you in your bedroom, you know, almost no matter where you are, what you're trying to do. They know the second these guys get grouped up together and they're taking them out with precision munitions, the intelligence has been validated over and over and over and over and over. So this, it's not that it's a surprise. It's just as you build a mental map of what you're coming into. To be a person like Donald Trump, you have to believe in yourself well past the realm of reason. And so this is how these guys always end up getting tripped up. Now, I don't know that Trump is tripped up. He may. This may be a part of his strategy, but it's all too easy to see how the punchline here may be that he ends up tripping himself up by believing he's going to go in with overwhelming might that these guys are going to back down. They were even signaling this during the negotiations. They were saying that, you know, I'm surprised they haven't capitulated. I think it was Steve Witkoff that said that. So he's the guy in the room. And Trump said to him, I'm surprised these guys haven't capitulated. We've put so much military hardware off their coast and they're still moving forward, which should have been his first clue that these guys are approaching this in a very different way. And so I worry that Trump is basically projecting how he would act in the same situation, and it isn't how they're going to act. And I talked about this before. I think the Iranians really see this as existential. If there is the kind of uprising that I believe there was in very recent days, then they know that they're teetering on a knife's edge of being able to stay in power. This is one of the reasons that they're so absolutely gung ho to get a nuclear weapon. It's the only way for them to be the big dog in that region, to back everybody down, to become like North Korea, where once you have a nuclear weapon, then you know the US Isn't going to fuck with you because you just. The damage that you can inflict is so great that people back off. That's what history tells us, is people leave nuclear powers alone. And so I don't think that, that you should project a mental map onto them that these are going to be people that negotiate in the same way that you do, that want a negotiated settlement, that they want to be, quote, unquote, reasonable. Ultimately, they have an agenda they're going to pursue because they know if they lose, they're going to be not only out of power, but out of power could mean dead. As we've so seen, so many repressive regimes either have to flee the country or they get assassinated. So I think that's the calculus that they're running in the back of their minds. And so they don't want to be a puppet to the US and if you're watching Venezuela and you see that's a. Exactly what they did to Venezuela, and you think, that's not what I want to happen here. We're not only a proud people, because I imagine the Venezuelans are proud, but we're not only a proud people, but we have far more military might and we are willing to fight over this stuff. So I think we're seeing something more like that now in terms of what's the. How do you extricate yourself from a military that is decentralized? I. I'm gonna guess here, but my mental map of Trump goes something like this. He cannot see past negotiations. So I think he's trying to hurt them to the point that they'll come to the negotiating table. I'm just not sure who he thinks is going to come to the negotiating table. So I think ultimately he has some vague sense. And by the way, I say this to entrepreneurs all the time, emotions will make dots feel like they connect that don't actually connect. So in Trump's mind, I'm sure it feels like he doesn't sit there and map out every beat of all this. It just feels like, yes, we'll bomb them into pain and suffering and they will then come to the table. And then nobody pushes him to say who's going to come to the table. And if they do push him that far, he's going to say something like, well, whoever they elect to be supreme leader, I'm not there for regime change. I hope that the Iranian people rise up. That would be wonderful. I'm not necessarily counting on it. Okay. But, yeah, let's say then that it doesn't happen who's coming to the negotiating table. And I'm again, I'm guessing, I don't have any insider information, but I know humans and humans tend to hand wave that kind of thing away because it's two or three orders of consequence down the road. And they're just like, well, there will have to be somebody running the country. And if there's nobody running the country that could do the negotiating, then they'll be in such disarray that it will work to our advantage. And at some point, they just terminate in one of those endpoints where it's either there will be somebody or there won't be somebody, and this is how it will play out. But they're not thinking, hold on, there's no one to negotiate a ceasefire with. And so they just keep fucking up the Strait of Hormuz. This is driving up energy costs around the world. And now everybody's mad at you because Iran is negotiating deals with people to get them through the Strait of Hormuz. And then it becomes, oh, all of a sudden, allies of the US are not able to get through the Strait of Hormuz, and then non allies are, and that would be a bad look. Now, we're not there yet, but I could certainly see us getting there. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
- [37:49]
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- [38:21]
Drew
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
- [38:25]
Tom Bilyeu
This is a lot. I'm a bit overwhelmed. And reports now are coming out that Iran is actually up. There was a British journalist that gave satellite images before and after certain military facilities in the region, and we did take some losses. We took a couple meaningful hits. We have a couple meaningful radar systems that are out. We're relocating a radar system from South Korea into the region because we're down some. So clearly the US Is definitely reloading its guns. Do you think we get to the
- [38:54]
Drew
very nice way of saying it.
- [38:56]
Tom Bilyeu
I was trying to, you know, bolster us up. I'm still Team America, as much as I talk junk. Like, I do want us to thrive and when. But it's one of those things. Do you think that we'll be able to overcome this setback and figure out a way out of this? Or do you think at this point now it's just a way for Trump to save face and kind of say, okay, we tried our best, let's just get out here and minimize losses?
- [39:14]
Drew
I think we're still in the early weeks of this war, so I wouldn't get too hysterical yet. If we start getting into week five and six and we are seeing gas prices just climbing, climbing, climbing, and the problem not, you know, we've dropped it down whatever, 92%, let's say, in terms of their ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones. But if it stays there and then those drones and rockets are getting through so that the damage being done, even though it's a much lower rate of fire, if the damage being done is, you know, on par with what was happening before, then I don't think people are going to be satisfied with that. I think we will have a problem. And that's when people will be able to bang that drum and say, okay, something really bad is happening here. In terms of the no radar thing. Social media is full of claims that rockets are now raining down on Israel with zero warning because US And Israeli Radar systems have been totally wiped out. But the question is, is it actually true? Now, I'm guessing you guys spend as much time on X as I do and you will, I think, agree that right now the level of bullshit and fakery is insane. It is off the charts. And a big part of what all of us have to do right now is cut through that. And so I'm spending a significant portion of the time that I would normally dedicate to just prepping the show to just fact checking. Now, as you get into the fact checks on the radar, unfortunately, some of the idea that the US and Israeli radar capabilities have been degraded, it's actually true. Now, it's largely exaggerated. So you have to be careful in terms of. It isn't the hysterical, you know, everything is just getting through and everybody's blind. It isn't that. And then I will also remind you whatever damage they're doing to the US bases, to our allies in the region, to Israel, is going to be less than we're doing to them. So both sides are being degraded, but the US and Israel and some of the radar installations in other places across the region have been hit. So what I've been able to confirm so far, by swimming through an endless sea of propaganda and AI fakery, Iran has managed to hit some of the US radar infrastructure across the region. Satellite imagery confirmed that Thaad radar that was set up has been destroyed at our air base in Jordan. Another was hit near Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Radar facilities were also struck in Qatar and two more locations in the United Arab Emirates. The James Martin center for Non Proliferation Studies confirmed the Qatar damage by looking at satellite analysis. So we're pretty convinced that that is real. Now, of course, the US is staying pretty mum, but they haven't denied any of this. And if it were just patently untrue, I think they would rush out to say that. So the fact that they're not denying it, I'm taking to mean that these reports really are accurate. Now, CNN calculated the replacement cost for one destroyed Thaad radar system alone would be just under half a billion dollars. So these hits ain't coming cheap, man. Iranian ballistic missiles have started landing inside of Israel. There are many confirmed impact sites in various locations and coming from multiple verified reporting services. So that also seems to be legitimate. Missiles with cluster warheads have also been used, and those are much harder to defend against. So these aren't small incidents like the hits they're taking are pretty brutal. Now, rumors have long been standing, but I have other than Just I see it so much. My mental model is that it is true. I have not admittedly verified this, but supposedly Israel really clamps down and censors people trying to post images of Israel getting hit. So that may account for why you don't see an overwhelming amount of footage. You do see some, but you don't see an overwhelming amount of it coming out. So I guess don't be too surprised. Most countries are going to do that at times of war. The most significant protection detective failure that I could actually verify happened on March 9th. This was the IDF itself confirming that two Hezbollah missiles hit central Israel. Now there are claims that these missiles were launched without any warning sirens sounding ahead of time and without any attempts at interception because they were just blind to it. That part is a little less clear, but that certainly rings true given that we know that there have been degraded radar capabilities. So I'm not super surprised if that ends up being true. The IDF has called the strikes an isolated failure. That seems pretty unlikely to me. If by isolated you mean that the radar that had been taken out now can be exploited over and over and over, yes, it's isolated to the radar that has been damaged. I think over time it'll become clear exactly how isolated that is. Though I expect more to be able to make their way through the US Regional radar losses have already degraded early warning coverage for the broader Gulf theater, that is definitely for sure. So more problems I think are are expected to be on the horizon. And that certainly explains why the US is dismantling their Thaad system in South Korea. Presumably they're going to be transporting that straight to the Middle east to fill some of those gaps. Now keep in mind that the current Thaad radar losses in Jordan, Qatar and the UAE are not Israel's domestic air defense network. So the Iron Dome that people are thinking about, that's not the only thing that they have. David, Sling and Arrow continue to operate on separate Israeli based radar systems. So there's still a fair amount of coverage over Israel, which is why it's not just an endless bombardment that's going through. And I think if you put all of this together, an honest assessment is going to sound something like Iran has targeted radar infrastructure first and that's going to be the first thing that they take out. So there are things that are getting through, but it's not as big of a deal as they would have you believe in terms of you don't have a never ending barrage of things landing. So obviously we're going to be staying tuned, watching to see exactly what happens. How much of the radar infrastructure not only has already been destroyed, but how much more are they going to be able to hit? Because you can believe that of course they're going to be doing everything they can to hit more and more. So we'll, we'll certainly keep talking about it.
- [45:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Radar, decentralized military. We talked about this. Trader Hormuz. I'm just stacking all these things above this war that unlike Venezuela, unlike the potential Cuba mission that's on its way after this. It's not Wild man, It's not a snatch and grab as we thought it was. And it seems like this is going to take a little bit longer than a couple of days, a couple of months.
- [46:04]
Drew
This is one of those things. Drew, I think about this a lot, okay? He campaigns on no new wars. And then Iran twice Venezuela threats to Mexico promises like, hey, we'll come in and like drop bombs on these kids cartels.
- [46:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Cuba now operations in Mexico, operations in Ecuador.
- [46:30]
Drew
Ecuador since I forgot if he pulls it off and Venezuela becomes a good partner and we do a little ding against China and the Venezuelan people are like, oh my God, like economic boom. We love this. It's like a return to the pre. Basically socialization of Venezuela. If Cuba becomes a like actual thriving economy again, again, going back pre revolution, if we're able to stabilize what's going on in Iran and get rid of that as a terror threat around the world, like all of the GCC countries want Iran to be stable. And if the people that are on the side of this is just my naked bias that are on the side of good in that country, that want to see people thriving, if they rise up and take over, whether they end up being like officially pro America or they're just like trying to create a thriving situation that is not terror based and they completely defund Hamas and Hezbollah. Like if all of that happens on Trump's watch, I mean it would be, it would be historic. So it's one of those. I fingers crossed now that we're in it, though admittedly it makes me deeply uncomfortable because it. Everything is so destabilized. And when you're in this destabilized, it could just break bad so fast. But we're in it. Let's hope that we come out the other side in a position that's not only good for the US but good for all of these individual countries. And if that ends up happening, it would be ridiculously historic. But what a gamble.
- [48:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Just under a thousand votes. What are your thoughts on the war. Trump bit off more than he can chew. The number one with 36%. I don't know what to believe anymore. Number two at 33%, this was a cover up 17%. And Trump is wrapping it up, up 14%.
- [48:41]
Drew
Yeah, that. I mean, honestly, that feels like a relatively decent breakdown. The only thing I will say is, and I know people hate this, but it's too early to tell if he's bitten off more than he can chew. It's just too early to tell. I mean, we're not even 14 days into this yet. But the thing that I constantly remind myself is that the lightning strikes were shocking and was like, oh, I don't know if. I mean, I like that we came out ahead. I like that we're isolating China from some of its energy sources. I like that. But I'm still a little uncomfortable with us being the bully of the world. And now it's like, oh, this is not a lightning strike. This is like really hardcore. And then if boots get on the ground, that's horrifying. And so at some point it's just like, even if this goes well, is this at any cost thing? And then you just boil us all like a frog. And it was like, well, I know I shocked you the first time with a lightning strike, but like, it was just bombs on a nuclear facility. And then I know I surprised you with another lightning strike in Venezuela, but it was just to grab the dictator and see, we like peace doubt we've. We've got like a stable regime team. I'm showing you guys a new way to do quote, unquote, regime change where I'm not trying to run the country, I'm not doing forever wars. I'd never put boots on the ground. Don't be so silly. Then Iran v2 is like, I can just see him, even if he's not like saying anything out loud. He's just like in the White House, like, yo, I just keep moving people a little bit farther, a little bit farther, a little bit farther. And so that's where I'm like, okay, like, you need to have some anchor of, like, if you had just skipped all of this, like before he drops the first ones on Fordow, if he had said, cool, all right, we're now going to do like an extended bombing campaign with potential. And I'm not ruling out the draft, then I'd have been like, whoa, hold on a second. So important self reminder to really anchor to, okay, what is the principle that I'm operating on? Was that the principle that I was sold this war on. And in Trump's case, it is not. I think the thing right now that you have to anchor around is did they figure out a system where they were going to build ballistic missiles, go underground, make it impossible to shut them down militarily without boots on the ground knowing that Israel and the US really don't want to do that, and then leverage that to secure their nuclear base and then over the next whatever, three to five years, build a robust nuclear program, they become a nuclear armed Iran, and now we're all really in trouble. If that had been the pitch from the beginning, not the we're days away yet again, I might have been able to say, okay, I hate this, but I get where we're going because I certainly don't want them to be nuclear armed. But he hasn't made the case to the people. He's done classic like dictatorship of just like. Yeah, it's what I think. And so I alone am gonna do this. I'm gonna decide who's the president in Venezuela, I'm gonna decide who the supreme leader is in Iran. I'm gon when the war ends and I get in a populist moment. People love that. I'm not built for populist moments. I hate it.
- [52:03]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, let's head over to China now. You talked about it earlier how gas lines were backed up about an hour.
- [52:09]
Drew
I thought for sure this was old footage.
- [52:11]
Tom Bilyeu
It's wild. You can literally see was that half a mile at least of bumper to bumper. This is where it's in la. Traffic, an ambulance couldn't get by. Crazy.
- [52:21]
Drew
Yeah, this is, this was really unexpected for me. China's oil situation is really getting crazy. It feels very early for it to have this kind of reaction, but Chinese people are panic buying gas as the government implements its largest price hike in years. Which is pretty crazy that that's how prices work in China. The government just says, hey, here's what the new price is going to be. And there are videos all over Chinese social media showing classic panic buying behavior triggered by a deadline. So the government said we're going to raise it at exactly midnight on whatever yesterday, I think. And fears of ongoing shortages, which for everything that we've talked about today are obviously very founded with the straight of Hormuz continuing to be closed for the foreseeable future, as far as I can tell. Now, the hike ironically only amounts to about $4 per tank of gas. But runs like this are common, which was shocking to me. I looked all this up they're common for this kind of rise. So especially in the age of social media, where fears can spread rapidly and become self reinforcing, it's once you get that change where people are like, wait, is this the first of many? Like, what's this gonna be? Boom. You tell them that they've got a deadline and they just go crazy. And then they start posting about it on social. And then people are like, oh my God, this is really happening, happening. And so then they are like, ah, I better get gas as well. It's wild. So this certainly is not just a routine price tweak. So there is that. But nonetheless, I found it pretty surprising. China's National Development and Reform Commission adjusts fuel prices every 10 working days based on international crude prices. And this one jumped by plus 695 yuan per ton of gasoline and 671 per ton of diesel. And that's the sharpest jump in years. The last time it jumped this hard was March of 22. So people saw the headlines calling it the largest jump in years. They rushed out to lock and load at the old rate, basically. Now the increase took effect at midnight on March 9th. Local Time Announcements like this reliably spark these last minute rushes, exactly as we're seeing reported by the Chinese state media. So if they're letting it out, you know it's real. And various international outlets have also been covering it. So this one really seems between, between what's coming out from state sponsored and douyin, which is the Chinese tick tock, all these lines really are real. This was one where I raced to be like, all right, Grok, Is this all just AI footage or is this something old? But nope. Global oil surge past a hundred dollars a barrel and people freaked out. So it's come back down at least. When we started the live today it was like 92.
- [55:01]
Tom Bilyeu
It dropped under 90 at this point.
- [55:02]
Drew
Oh, damn. Okay, so going down, down the market is more optimistic than I. We'll see. So as we started talking about at the start of the war, China has told their own domestic refiners that they need to halt exports. This is a pretty important response. They reacted quickly when this all happened. So they want to prioritize their domestic needs now. Drivers, especially commercial drivers like taxi drivers, delivery vans, trucks, those guys, for obvious reasons, their entire livelihood is tied up in gas and gas prices. So. So it's no surprise that they would rush in and make sure that they get a full tank before this becomes not just a price hike, but actual potential shortages. And so also as you look broader around the world, the panic isn't unique to China. So Thailand also saw long queues and stations running dry, by the way, after similar warnings. Philippines had a panic hour plus long wait lines there. Bangladesh has also imposed sales limits because people are beginning to stockpile gas. Now remember, we're like less than two weeks into this, so if the Strait of Hormuz continues to be closed for like another three or four weeks, could get rough, could get rough.
- [56:15]
Tom Bilyeu
It seems that there should be a delayed effect with oil. I'm going to call corporate capture right now because I feel like the oil that is in the gas companies now is not the oil that's coming from Iran. So they're trying to front load the, the extra cost that they know they're going to incur even though they might not have incurred it yet.
- [56:33]
Drew
Sort of.
- [56:33]
Tom Bilyeu
Sort of.
- [56:34]
Drew
So that's true in the US because we produce so much of our own energy and so price raises here you can kind of look at a little bit sideways. However, during the globalism era, everything became what's known as just in time. And so you didn't have to build these gigantic warehouses to stockpile everything. You knew you could rely on shipments. You didn't have to worry about the Strait of Hormuz. You didn't have to worry about dictator in Venezuela cutting off supply. It was just like you could count on. Everything flowed as it should between us, China, Middle east, everywhere. And that really lulled people into a sense of comfort. Now basically every nation has strategic reserves. I know the US drew down their strategic reserves under Biden pretty dramatically. I don't know if those were ever replenished. China has their own strategic reserves. And so it becomes a question of when do you start unlocking that? How long do you want to hold the price line? If you're confident that you're going to be able to build them back up or the demand is so dire that you have to. But the last thing you want to do is run through your strategic reserves and find yourself with like a military need or find yourself facing like a proper recession. So you've got to be very careful. It's better to let your people suffer through long lines, some people to, you know, drivers to lose their job and just basically distribute the pain and suffering down to the individual level rather than trying to absorb it all at the governmental level, which is a trade off people are just never comfortable making. But that's the reality is at what level do you want to experience the pain? Do you want to experience it at the government level or do you want to push it down to the individual? So you're going to let it ferment at the individual level, basically, for as long as you can. Sort of in the beginning you eat a bit of it and then you hit like a trigger point where you're like, okay, now we have to push this down. And then you let it simmer there for a while and then right before you're worried people revolt, then you push it back up to the government level and you just sort of play this ping pong game. So, yeah, it'll. It'll play out.
- [58:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Trump is doing all he can to fight that, though. He just announced a really big win yesterday, a $300 billion deal. This is from his True Social account. America's returning to real energy dominance. Today, I am proud to announce the America first refinery is opening. The first new U.S. oil refinery in 50 years in Brownsville, Texas. This is a historic $300 billion deal, the biggest in U.S. history. A massive win for American workers. Nobody's ever seen anything like this.
- [59:01]
Drew
Can't imagine.
- [59:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Thank you to our partners in India and their largest privately held energy company, Reliance, for this tremendous investment is because of our America first agenda. Streamlining permits and lowering taxes that have attracted billions of dollars in deals coming back to our nation. A new refinery at the port of Brownsville will fuel U.S. markets, strengthen our national security, abuse American oil production, deliver billions of dollars in economic impact, and will be the cleanest refinery in the world. It will power global exports and bring thousands of long overdue jobs and grow to a region that deserves it. This is what American energy dominance looks like. As always, America First.
- [59:30]
Drew
Yeah. So admittedly, halfway through that tweet, he was just flirting with me. Lowering regulations, creating jobs, all of that stuff is awesome. Now, in terms of efficiency of production and things like that, I'd be curious to know if we stopped doing it because we didn't have the right refineries, if we stopped doing it purely for environmental reasons, like the reasoning is there and I don't know the history of.
- [59:54]
Tom Bilyeu
It's definitely what the EPA rollbacks. There's a lot of EPA rollbacks that opened up domestic energy production. So now that's why you kind of flip the switch with.
- [60:01]
Drew
Yeah, because my thing is, listen, it's going to happen somewhere in the world, so we're really not escaping much from an environmental hazard perspective. Also, environmental hazards are very important. People should absolutely pay attention to them. Climate change is very real. It just isn't at the catastrophe level. That people would want you to believe. Believe when you've got even Bill Gates reversing his tune on that. I think that we can all agree that it's a big deal, it should be paid attention to, but it shouldn't be your number one primary driver. And so focusing on harnessing the energy of the sun, I mean, which is exactly what China is doing, by the way. Which the thing that I will say in China's defense is they are moving away from oil as fast as they can, orders of magnitude faster than any other country that I know of on planet Earth.
- [60:49]
Tom Bilyeu
Earth.
- [60:49]
Drew
And it is just a fact of literal matter that the sun makes up like 99.99998% of all the matter in the unit, in the universe, in the solar system. And so for us, it's like, what are you going to burn on Earth that's going to match what's falling on the Earth coming from the sun? I mean, it's just so minuscule when you think about, about the plant matter on Earth or the oil under the ground, you know, old dinosaur bones, old plants that you're going to extract as oil. It's nothing compared to if you could just get good at capturing the sun. So we should be focused on that. We should be racing towards that in the same way that China is. We should be reducing our dependence on oil and the need to do all of that. But while we do that transition, we should be making sure that we're energy independent. And if that means spinning up oil refineries so that we're not reliant on the Middle east, way better situation. If that makes us an energy exporter, it's creating jobs, great. It's not my favorite kind of manufacturing to bring back to the US But I'll take it.
- [61:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. All right, I got some quick hits for us to jump around and cover. There's been a lot of news stories that happen. First off, we have to talk about the CNN thing. So CNN originally tweeted two passing.
- [62:09]
Drew
Hold on, you got to set up what this is about out though.
- [62:11]
Tom Bilyeu
I kind of wanted.
- [62:12]
Drew
Like you just wanted to read it? Yeah.
- [62:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, because it sounds like a pleasant story at the beginning. Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for. It could have been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their lives would be drastically changed as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti Muslim protest outside of Meher Zoran Mamdani's home. Here's what we know so far, this was their write up about the ever domestic terrorist attack that happened in New York.
- [62:40]
Drew
This is crazy, man.
- [62:42]
Tom Bilyeu
Wild.
- [62:42]
Drew
Listen, the. The example that people give, and I think it is a phenomenal one, is this is like writing about nine, 11, you know, whatever, seven hijackers or however many there were, were enjoying a wonderful warm day in September in the city when suddenly their lives were changed as they crashed planes into a building. It's like, what are you doing? Doing now they've done a retraction. But even in the retraction they were still like downplaying the bomb didn't go off. But if it had, the kids of their own admission said, we were hoping to kill more people than they killed in the Boston city bombing. So the. They have detonated the explosive devices so they know they were real and these kids were trying to kill people. And so like, to frame it like that is just so. This is so gross and so ridiculous and the fact that this kind of stuff works. The reason that I wanted to cover this is I just want to remind everybody, you guys are being spun all the time. Even I am making word choices all the time. Everybody is trying to lock you in their frame of reference now. Boy, am I doing a lot of work to try to make sure that my frame of reference is tied to reality, which I think is the highest utility thing to do versus a narrative. But goodness gracious, like, this kind of thing is so ridiculous that I can't believe how naked it's become. The just blatant manipulation. And so just remember, your favorite politician is doing this to you. It isn't just the people that you hate.
- [64:13]
Tom Bilyeu
CNN retraction said a post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City's Mayor Zoram Hamdani's home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reports. It has therefore been deleted.
- [64:27]
Drew
Go out the air like they're so wild.
- [64:29]
Tom Bilyeu
That was a nice way to say I messed up.
- [64:31]
Drew
That's a nice way of saying we manipulate you. We don't want you to know it. Even this retraction is further manipulation and downplay. Downplay.
- [64:39]
Tom Bilyeu
Next up and quick hits. President Trump has appointed Erica Kirk to the US Air Force leadership. Erica Kirk will advise, yes, the Air Force on issues affecting the academy.
- [64:48]
Drew
Wait, what?
- [64:49]
Tom Bilyeu
And I think this is a perfectly timed Kanye meme. What the fuck does she know about the Air Force?
- [64:54]
Drew
What the fuck does she know about the air. Does she know something about the Air Force? Hold on is this like, if I
- [65:00]
Tom Bilyeu
say something, I'm anti Semitic, so I can't comment on it.
- [65:05]
Drew
Can I give you a pass? I don't know. I feel like I can. The non existent pass that I have to give. I'm giving. Just, I don't, I literally don't understand. So what's the messaging around this?
- [65:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Why are they literally the full story? She's brought on as an advisor to the Air Force leadership to help support the next wave. If somebody in the chat has a better is it about recruitment?
- [65:25]
Drew
Like, they're looking at her and saying, okay, this is somebody that really knows how to recruit.
- [65:29]
Tom Bilyeu
This is from Fox News. President Trump appoints Erica Kirk to serve on the US Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, taking the position her late husband Charlie was slated to hold before he was assassinated in September. Now Erica joins a panel that oversees moral discipline curriculum and fiscal affairs at the Academy.
- [65:42]
Drew
Okay. Morale, discipline, curriculum. All right. It seems weird. I don't expect this to be universally liked, but whatever.
- [65:52]
Tom Bilyeu
Next on the quick hit. We were talking about this before you roll. YouTube surpassed Disney, Paramount, Warner Brothers in 2025 in ad revenue, not those three individually combined. YouTube alone has more ad revenue than Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers. Discovery it is.
- [66:08]
Drew
No one should be surprised by this.
- [66:09]
Tom Bilyeu
It's officially the largest media company in the world, bro.
- [66:12]
Drew
They are so powerful. People don't understand. Like, YouTube has become a part of the fabric of people's everyday life. It's the one thing where no matter how my mom fucks with YouTube and then if I like, run into somebody's kids and I'm like, oh, like, you know, what do you watch? The odds of them saying YouTube are basically 100%. The odds of them saying TikTok is high. But YouTube is basically 100%. Like, it is just where people go to watch, you know, their whatever influencer. And the cool thing about YouTube is it can be anything, man. Like, when I look at it, it is startling. If you go and type in Millennial Gaming Review, you're gonna go into a universe. If you type in, like kids gaming, the universe is so different. It is the same thing gaming, influencers in gaming. But when I say that they are night and day, different, different, it is wild. But it's all on the same platform. And that is the brilliance of YouTube is it is infinite TV channels that every niche is so deep and so specific. It's crazy. So, yeah, YouTube, you can expect to be here for a long time. But like we were talking about before we started rolling, nothing is Forever.
- [67:31]
Tom Bilyeu
And now in interesting this is going to transition to our AI segment. Polymarket tweeted that senators are now allowed to use ChatGPT for official use in the sense Senate. And while I love this, I think that this is a good job. I think AI is a level of intelligence that can really help radicalize governments. We also had noticed that there is a, there was a, what's it called, a study that released that was shown that AI lies to you. Even when it knows that you're wrong, it will tell you that you're right. So it's one of those things, where do I want partisan input prompt prompts into an AI that will then double down on the partisanness and end up widening divide versus being the truth algorithm and saying hey, you can actually balance the budget by doing this or hey, you can actually do this and help people still or something like that. What's that balance?
- [68:19]
Drew
You think if you're using AI you need to understand that your AI has an agenda and it is doing its best to manipulate you. So be very careful. Now do I think that AI should be used used in government? I think it should be mandated that people use AI in government. I do not trust these people to have enough time to read the bills and all of that. You a thousand percent need AI to go through the bill, pull out everything that's in it, lay it out for you very simply so that people are not expected to try to digest a thousand page bill in, you know, whatever, 24 hours. It's ridiculous. AI is intelligent. Now it does not mean that you get to forego using your own brain. You should be leveraging AI to build up from first principles, figuring out what is true, figuring out what the cause and effect is, understanding how something works. When you use AI for that, in fact shout out to the person that before we started, we do watch the comments before we start and somebody was like hey, tell Tom that the deep dives are great. First of all, thank you for that. I appreciate. Now I use AI to write those. I would never be able to write them at that pace without AI. But what I'm doing with AI is saying hey, here is a topic, this is my hypothesis. I want to know if this is true or not. I will often do battle with AI for hours just trying to establish okay, this is what's actually true. This is the part that you think that's wrong, this is the part that you're thinking that's probably right. And then I start building it, asking questions, pushing back, saying okay, what about this Finding, disconfirming evidence. Evidence, stating something and then asking it, okay, what are the best people that think this idea is stupid? What do they think? If you use AI like that, it is incredible. If you use it to turn you into a pair of hands and you just say, dear AI, tell me what to do, you're gonna get retarded over time. Like, there's no doubt they're already seeing that in people that it's making them dumber. This is not an AI problem. This is a human problem. So it comes down to how you use it. If you allow yourself to be an addicted asshole, then, yeah, you're going to be in for a bad time. If you're going to let your AI like basically mentally jerk you off, yes, you're going to be in for a bad time because it's going to say the kinds of things that it thinks you want to hear in terms of getting engagement. But if instead you're asking it, hey, why is this a bad idea? What are the people who think this idea is stupid? What are their best arguments? It will give you all of that. So it comes down to what you want. It comes down to whether you're willing to face your own inadequate. It comes down to what you believe as a base assumption about yourself. And if you think you're always right and the AI is SEAL clapping for you, then, yeah, you're going to be like, oh, this feels good. If on the other hand, you're like, I know how often I'm wrong. So if this thing is just like, yes, everything you say is good, then I'm like, hold on a second. I know that's bullshit. And so it will force you to start asking a better class of question. It will force you, you to start asking a better class of question. You can't turn your mind over to anything. This is why I don't like when you ask the question, if the AI made every element of your life better, would you just blindly follow it? And my answer is no, because I'm not going to outsource that final bit of my intelligence. I'm going to do the things that I understand. I'm going to leverage it to help me build mental models so I actually understand what is going on. Because if it's like, listen, if you just go kill that person over there, things will be so much better for you. I don't ever want to find myself going, okay, so you've got to be, yeah, you've just got to be careful. Do not give yourself over to anybody else. Not like that. No way. So they should use it, but they should not use it as an abdication of thinking for themselves and as a
- [72:07]
Tom Bilyeu
real world application of this. Amazon held an emergency team meeting to talk about AI breaking its system. This is a tweet from Lucas. This oic.
- [72:19]
Drew
Just go with the first one.
- [72:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. European name. The official framing is part of normal business. The briefing note described a trend of incidents with high blast radius caused by generative AI assisted changes for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established. Translation to human language we gave AI to engineers and things keep breaking. The Response for now, junior and mid level engineers can no longer push AI assisted code without a senior signing off. AWS spent 13 hours recovering after its own AI coding tool, asked to make some changes, decided instead to delete and recreate the environment. The software equivalent of fixing a leaky tap by knocking down the wall. Amazon called that an extremely limited event. The affected tool served customers in mainland China and then inside the email itself. Amazon's e commerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a deep dive into the spat of allergies, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools. The online retail giant says there has been a trend of incidents in recent months characterized by a high blast radius and again generate AI assisted changes. Everybody remembers the AWS outage a couple weeks ago where all the sites were broken. The website, the Internet was basically down for three, four hours when we woke up. I can only imagine what it was when we were sleeping. So this.
- [73:25]
Drew
Do we know that was AI related?
- [73:27]
Tom Bilyeu
That was the one where they redid their AWS infrastructure. One yeah.
- [73:32]
Drew
Yo, so I love this. This is hilarious to me. And it's hilarious to me because I know a lot of people are going to see something goes wrong with generative AI encoding and therefore this is dumb and we should never use it. And those assholes are going to get mowed over by the people that realize, oh yeah, I can't outsource my thinking. This is a tool, I'm going to use it like a tool. And as it gets better then I will trust it more and more. But we really do have to build firewalls. In fact, my upcoming deep dive is about this. The entire structure of commerce is going to change so that we can use AI at scale but don't have to worry about these blast radiuses that you're going to be able to limit its scope, limit what it has access to, limit what it can do. But man, it's going to get better over time and using it now is already a huge win. But you can't just blindly go, okay, well I guess it's going to be fine. Fine. For instance, when I'm writing something using AI, it's not like I take the output and then just use it. You take it and then you have to rewrite it, you have to fact check it, make sure that things are correct. And I have no doubt there's going to be times where something slips through and I read it and it seems fine to me and I move on. It ends up being a problem. Fair enough. But if you're engaging with it and limiting the scope of that potential damage, you're going to be in a much better position. This, remember I, I talk about this so much because I use it on a daily basis at the enterprise level. So not only am I using it for the deep dives, which what a huge win that has been, but we use it most importantly on the gaming side and so on that whether it's writing C code, being able to identify problems in our blueprints, actually generating 3D assets, none of it just outputs something that's finished. It outputs something, let's say, is 80% of the way there. That breaks under weird circumstances and you have to go figure that out, but it still speeds you up. It is incredible. It is only when people are just like blindly signing off on this stuff or, and I don't know if this is true, but one of the things that I heard was that these companies are actually incentivizing people to just post their code fast. And so your bonuses are determined by how rapidly you deploy code and how much you used AI in deploying that code. I understand what they're trying to train people to do, but show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. If you're not saying, I'm incentivizing you to do rapid and like high performance code with limited errors, then people are just going to get sloppy and they're going to push anything. And you know, it's up to you to make the most of that. I'm doing what you told me to do. So you want to make sure that you put some sort of restrictions around. This actually has to be good. It has to. It's like when you're measuring how fast somebody types, it's not how fast they can hit the keys, it's correct words per minute. So you need to understand like how many correct lines of code are you doing? How many bugs are we finding in your code. If you make that an important part of this, then people are going to slow down enough to make sure that they actually get that part of it done as well in order to get their bonuses. So this is very solvable problem. I know people are going to have the world's most hilarious, serious knee jerk rejection response to this, but more for the rest of us. All right, you guys, love you so much. Thank you. And we will see you again on Friday. May the rest of your week be wonderful. See you then later.