Nick Fuentes, Global Tensions, and the Future of AI: Tom Bilyeu Breaks Down the Headlines

Summary

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Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode Summary: "Nick Fuentes, Global Tensions, and the Future of AI: Tom Bilyeu Breaks Down the Headlines"

Date: December 11, 2025
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Main Guests/Contributors: Drew, Piers Morgan (interview clips), Nick Fuentes (interview clips)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Impact Theory dives into the hottest headlines of the week—unpacking controversy around Nick Fuentes’ recent media blitz, surging geopolitical tensions in East Asia, economic storm clouds over Japan, mind-boggling valuations for SpaceX’s upcoming IPO, seismic shifts in AI and technology, and Australia’s unprecedented move to ban social media for anyone under 16. Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew bring their signature blend of blunt analysis and practical philosophy, extracting actionable takeaways on culture, economics, masculinity, and adapting to radical change.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Nick Fuentes, New-Gen Populism, and Youth Radicalization

Timestamps: 00:45 – 06:20 / 18:58 – 22:33

• Fuentes’ Media Ubiquity: Despite being "banned, ridiculed, and disavowed," Fuentes continues to command attention on major platforms (Tucker Carlson, Steven Crowder, Piers Morgan).
• The ‘No Motion’ Meme: Fuentes mocks his detractors:
  "You can't call it a movement because you have no motion." – Nick Fuentes (01:32)
• Youth Disaffection & Identity: Drew argues that backlash against constant societal critique of white men is fermenting a new identity-first unity:

  “If you keep bashing white men and saying that whiteness is bad…they are going to band together...this is a bad strategy.” (02:35)

• Host on Fuentes’ Appeal:

  “For some reason he’s not going away…he has captured something that a lot of Republicans thought Charlie Kirk, Trump, or the manosphere had. But this is an entirely different ethos.” (01:56)

• Generational Fractures: Both hosts warn: youth will always seize the reins—better it not be out of “bitterness and aggression.” (03:52)
• Provocative Platforming: Discussion includes Fuentes’ flippant comments on women, sexuality, and even Hitler—amplifying generational divides and testing the limits of public discourse (detailed below).

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2. Sexuality, Masculinity, and Cultural Shifts

Timestamps: 05:26 – 15:44

• Fuentes on Sexism & Celibacy:
  • Piers Morgan: "Are you actually attracted to women?"
    Fuentes: "I am attracted to women."
    (05:34)
  • Morgan: "You’re not gay?"
    Fuentes: "No, but I will say women are very difficult to be around."
    (05:38)
  • Morgan: "Do you think [women] should have the right to vote?"
    Fuentes: "Absolutely not."
    (05:49)
  • Morgan: "Have you ever had sex?"
    Fuentes: "No, absolutely not."
    (06:17)
• Hosts React:
  • Tom and Drew express fascination and confusion at voluntary celibacy among young men with social status, seeing it as a radical outlier compared to past generational norms.
  • Tom Bilyeu:

    “For him to be like, I don’t [care], it is a bad frame of reference to have adopted… to be closed off, lump all women together…as if they are some monolithic body.” (07:42)

  • Drew:

    “There is nothing higher [for young men than to become better to win a mate]. Men will send themselves into war when they no longer believe that they have mating opportunities.” (09:33)

• Societal Consequences:
  • If men check out of the mating market, societal instability may result—potentially leading to “procreative collapse or bitter backlash.”
• Advice for Young Men:

  “If young men are looking at this and saying, oh, the basket is ruining my chances, I’m just saying, cool, then find a way around the basket. There is always a solution.” (13:50)

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3. Media, Feminism, and the Dating Market

Timestamps: 14:10 – 15:44

• Market Competition Analogy: Tom likens today’s dating scene and creative industries (e.g., launching protein bars, becoming a rapper) to markets with rising barriers to entry and increasing differentiation.
• Self-Responsibility Philosophy:

  “If when you run into a problem, you go like, roll up your sleeves…‘I am going to solve this problem,’ opportunities open before you.” (15:27)

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4. The ‘Hitler Was Cool’ Controversy & Historical Amnesia

Timestamps: 18:58 – 22:33

• Piers Morgan confronts Fuentes:

  “You say that Hitler was very fucking cool. Are you joking, or do you actually think he was very fucking cool?” – Piers Morgan (19:06)

  • Fuentes shrugs off outrage, embodying generational pearl-clutching fatigue.
• Hosts’ Analysis:
  • Tom critiques the casual re-contextualization of history for meme-value, warning against desensitization to past atrocities.
  • Drew:

    “These are mistakes history makes over and over... Having some mental defenses against those things is shrewd.” (20:00)

  • The hosts highlight the tendency to forget tyrants like Mao and Stalin, skewing public memory and danger signals.

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5. Geopolitical Tensions: China, Japan, and Taiwan

Timestamps: 22:33 – 33:55

• Headline Events:

  • Verbal sparring and increased military posturing between China and Japan (post-G20).
  • Chinese diplomats remind Japan:

    “As a defeated nation, Japan should act with greater caution.” (23:55)

• Drew's Analysis:

  • Longstanding historical antagonism between China and Japan means rhetoric matters.
  • Drew:

    “Japan will ratchet up military spending... but I think they are in the middle of real economic trouble... when countries slide economically, they can become backwaters for a hundred years.” (24:35)

  • On a potential US pullout from NATO:

    “That would be the signal: if you think you’re our ally, if you don’t have relevance to us right now, don’t count on it.” (27:55)

• War & Economics:

  • Tom Bilyeu breaks down why war is only “good for your economy if you win and your homeland stays unscathed—like America in WWII.” (31:10)

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6. Japan’s Economic Crisis, Debt, and Lessons for the West

Timestamps: 33:43 – 38:59

• Japan’s Surprising Resilience:
  • Japanese buy their own debt out of patriotism, delaying internal collapse.
  • Massive debt doesn’t “mechanistically break” the economy, but it breeds inequality, anxiety, and eventual revolution.
• Broader Warning:
  • Once infighting takes over, “the enemy isn’t outside—it’s meltdown from within.”
  • Tom’s personal journey into economic content: sparked by COVID, concern for employees, and uncovering financial “Scooby-Doo moments.” (36:00–38:59)

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7. The SpaceX IPO: Capitalism in Overdrive

Timestamps: 39:41 – 45:16

• IPO Details:
  • Elon Musk to take SpaceX public at a $1.5 trillion valuation—65x revenue, dwarfing Boeing/Lockheed.
  • 65% of all satellites orbiting earth belong to SpaceX.
• Engineering as Superpower:

  “When you can engineer from the rules up, you can change the world. That’s what Elon is doing.” (40:49)

• Valuation Logic:
  • Investors betting that "space is the next frontier for data centers and AI."
• Acceleration Anxiety:

  “I have a rule: I never stand still. That rule has cost me millions—but made me hundreds of millions. Standing still is the only way to guarantee you get hit by the truck.” (45:24)

  • Rapid advancements (in AI chips, data transmission) could compress 15 years of technological progress into just 3 years.

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8. AI: The Next Tsunami or Existential Threat?

Timestamps: 45:21 – 57:26

• LLM/AGI Disruption:
  • CEO warnings that LLMs are turning into attention-optimizing social media platforms—feedback loops for engagement over utility.
  • Sam Altman’s "code red":

    “Forget agents, forget ads. We need to beat Google.” (50:35)

• Game Theory & Human Nature:

  “Any technology that promises advantage will be developed, even recklessly.” (51:25) “When they were about to test the first nuclear bomb, they knew there was a non-zero chance it would ignite the entire atmosphere...and they did it anyway.” (52:00)

• Paths Forward in the ‘AI Tsunami’:
  1. Do drugs and ignore the world.
  2. Become “new Amish” and opt out—return to analog, rural living.
  3. Go to Mars—reset civilization.
  4. Build and explore virtual worlds—embrace digital frontier.

  “That speaks to my personality. I’ve tried to think of another path, I think that’s it.” (56:19)

• Transition Will Be ‘Weird, Fast’:
  • No mass extinction, but a “slow unwinding” where culture and meaning have to be recalibrated.

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9. Social Media Youth Ban: Australia’s Radical Experiment

Timestamps: 58:06 – 64:18

• The Ban:
  • All major platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) banned for under 16s. (58:16)
• Necessity vs. Trade-Offs:
  • Drew: “Odds that society must restrict kids under 16 from social media seem reasonable. We have to protect the developing brain.” (58:39)
  • Deep regret over including YouTube:

    “YouTube is just too educational...There’s so much you can learn.” (58:39)

• Parenting & Enforcement:
  • Fine-based enforcement, with platform liability.

  “Just because some kids will get around it doesn’t mean you don’t put the rule in place... And kids are going to kid.” (66:19)

• Gaming vs. Social Media:
  • Gaming is neuroprotective and skill-reinforcing but parents must set boundaries—“anything can be overdone.” (63:17–64:18)

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10. Media Diets, Role Models, and Cultural Formation

Timestamps: 66:32 – 73:31

• Entertainment as Identity:
  • Kids watching others play with toys (Ryan’s World) is a modern proxy for reality TV or watching sports.

• Sports as ‘War Replicants’:

  “Sports are war replicants—evolution has hardwired us to want to compete and win. That’s why we care about teams, bet on games, and go through emotional rollercoasters.” (70:39)

• The Human Condition:

  “All of life is about one thing: changing our brain chemistry. That’s why we fall in love, eat foods, listen to music, pursue careers—it’s all to manipulate our brain chemistry.” (73:31)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Masculinity and Resilience:

  “There is nothing higher [for men] than to become better to get a mate. Men will send themselves into war when they no longer believe they have mating opportunities.” – Drew (09:33)

• On Historical Blind Spots:

  “Hitler is horrific… but people just do not seem to know that Mao and Stalin existed, or think somehow Hitler is outpacing them.” – Drew (21:10)

• On Technological Progress:

  “Standing still is the only way to guarantee you get hit by the truck. I’d rather get hit by the truck of making the wrong move than of doing nothing.” – Tom Bilyeu (45:24)

• On Youth and Social Media Bans:

  “We must protect the developing brain. Right now, we are not protecting it from shortening attention spans, from bullying... Social media can reach you in your bedroom. That’s rough.” – Drew (58:39)

• On the Enduring Value of Investing:

  “Investing is real. You can just make so much money; it’s wild. By changing the set of ideas in my head, I was able to make myself wealthy.” – Tom Bilyeu (37:50)

• On Responding to Life’s Challenges:

  “The way to approach life: ‘Oh, there is a problem; I’m going to take complete and total responsibility and find a solution.’” – Tom Bilyeu (15:44)

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In Closing

Impact Theory’s exploration this week is a crash course in deciphering—and prospering in—the signal and noise of 2025. Tom Bilyeu and Drew cut through culture wars, market hysteria, and existential dread with honest, principle-driven analysis. Their message: Take personal responsibility. Adapt faster than the world changes. And never, ever stand still.

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Key Segment Guide (Timestamps):

• [00:45] Headlines Overview
• [01:32] Fuentes ‘no motion’ meme
• [05:26] Fuentes interview on women, sexuality
• [18:58] ‘Hitler was cool’ controversy
• [22:33] China/Japan/US tensions
• [33:43] Japan’s economic woes
• [39:41] SpaceX IPO & tech acceleration
• [45:21] AI, future shock, and four paths forward
• [58:06] Australia’s social media ban
• [66:32] Kids, media, cultural identity
• [70:39] Sports as evolutionary outlet
• [73:31] Life as brain chemistry management

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Transcript

[Host]

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[Drew]

Nick Fuentes and Piers Morgan collide over whether Hitler was very effing cool or not. Japan's economic troubles continue apace as debt threatens to fire finally engulf their entire economy. China fires rhetorical shots at Japan about accepting that they're a defeated country as tensions between them both continue to rise. XAI plans to redefine the size and scope of what an IPO is so they can build data centers in space. And Australia has made it illegal for children under 16 to be on social media.

[Host]

Nick Fuentes was talking to Piers Morgan. But before we jump into the actual interview, I have to play this edit because I think this is like the clip of the year when I found it. How can you call it a movement

[Nick Fuentes]

when you have no motion? You can't call it a movement because you have no motion.

[Drew]

None of these niggas have motion except for me. The edits,

[Host]

none of them have motion except for me. The fact that he draw, he says the N word and uses it with an A. I don't know how I feel about that yet.

[Drew]

Really?

[Host]

I don't know how I feel about that.

[Drew]

You're not like 100% opposed.

[Host]

Nick is a troll and we're going to talk about that with the Piers Morgan episode. But there is something to your point of the youth he has captured something that I think a lot of Republicans thought Charlie Kirk had thought Trump had thought it was the manosphere of the podcast. But we're starting to realize no, this is an entirely different ethos of people. And for some reason he's not going away. He's been banned. He's been ridiculed, he's been quote, unquote, reprimanded, condemned. He's been disavowed. He's been told not to play with the grown up Republicans, but yet he doesn't. He's still on Tucker, he's still on Steven Crowder, he's still On Piers Morgan, what's your take on Nick Fuentes and how he has been so electric in the movement?

[Drew]

I think he sums up his own position very well, which is, we're done clutching our pearls, we being especially young white men, but I think young men in general. And I remember watching this, and Douglas Murray just really had clarity on this. Shout out to Douglas Murray, man. And he said, listen, if you keep bashing white men and saying that whiteness is bad, it's some sort of original sin. I guarantee you what's going to happen is they are going to band together. They are going to start thinking of themselves as white first. And you do not want people grouping up based on being white first. And I think that holds true of any race. P.S. by the way. But that's exactly what's happening. And so this is a psychological principle. If you beat me up and tell me that I'm bad, bad, bad for insert trait that I can't change, and then I run into somebody else who has that same trait, and I know they've been treated exactly the way that I've been treated. Like, all of a sudden I'm gonna be like, hold on. We're gonna glom on. And if there are millions of us, like, bro, this is a bad strategy. It was a dumb ide. It's a dumber idea. Now that they see what's happening and they're continuing to double down, that's so dumb. The youth is always going to take over. Do you really want them to take over? Out of bitterness and aggression? I would put forward, no, that's a terrible idea. So nonetheless, here we are. And I don't know what they thought the end game was, that they were really just going to be able to feminize every man, get every white person to back the off and sit down and shut up. Like, that is a dumb fucking strategy. It doesn't work with anybody. Every group is going to rise up. And by the way, whites are only like 8% of the global population. So this is not like. You look around and all you just see is a sea of white people. It. It is. This is a legitimate minority that will have minority vibes, that will band together, see themselves as white first, and cause all kinds of problems. I think it is a really stupid idea. So am I at all surprised by his rise to popularity? I was when it happened. I won't. L. But now, as I look back and math it, I'm like, yeah, this is precisely what Douglas Murray was trying to warn us about.

[Host]

All right, let's jump into his interview with Piers. The. The thing about Nick that I think gets him in trouble is not his populism. It's not what he's rooting for. It's not even his political stance. It's that he belittles things that I think are more important or. Or sacred than people have. And this is going to the Hitler is cool thing, but let's go into his thoughts on women for a second and maybe this can kind of color where he comes from and how he became the person that he is.

[Piers Morgan]

Just to clear up one of the many theories about you. I have no idea what the answer is, and you haven't got to answer, but are you actually attracted to women?

[Nick Fuentes]

I am attracted to women.

[Piers Morgan]

You're not gay?

[Nick Fuentes]

No, but I will say that women are very difficult to be around.

[Host]

Okay.

[Nick Fuentes]

So there's that.

[Piers Morgan]

And do you think they should have the right to vote?

[Drew]

I do not. No.

[Nick Fuentes]

Absolutely not.

[Piers Morgan]

They should stay at home.

[Nick Fuentes]

Well, yeah, absolutely.

[Piers Morgan]

So basically you're just a misogynist old dinosaur, aren't you, for a young guy? I mean, I know I'm the boomer. I know I'm the boomer here, but actually you're a 27 year old dinosaur, aren't you? Aren't you? Nick Fuentes, all women.

[Nick Fuentes]

I am.

[Drew]

All women are annoyed at his worst.

[Piers Morgan]

All women grow old. They all get fat. Says the guy. Have you ever had sex?

[Nick Fuentes]

No, absolutely not.

[Piers Morgan]

Wow. Says the guy who's never got laid here.

[Drew]

I would have never thought to ask that question. Yeah, I was shocked when he was like, no, what? Dude, this. This may be the part of the young male experience that I am most confused by. I remember being like 14 and it hit me one day and I was like, wait, I'm one day going to put my penis in a vagina. Like, this is going to be fucking wild. And I couldn't have been more excited about it. I was legitimately giddy at the thought that one day I was actually going to do that. And now it doesn't. Like, it was. I won't say all consuming, but damn. A lot of my high school was oriented around relationships. Now I was not good with women. I think I've been abundantly clear about. About that. But were they an obsession? Was I trying? Yes, very aggressively. And so for him to be like, I don't. It's. It is a bad frame of reference to have adopted. I'm not saying that I can't walk people through the steps that have led us here, but it is a Very bad frame of reference to adopt, to be closed off, to lump all women together as if they are some monolithic body. To think that while women are very different, and I certainly understand that there can be frustrations to cohabitating, certainly with a woman, because they view the world so differently. But when you think of them as a partner, unbelievable things unlock. You just have to have very good. I call them rules of engagement so that you're not driving each other crazy all the time. But it's weird to me that he is just so nonchalant. I mean, how old is he?

[Host]

27.

[Drew]

Wow, bro, that is.

[Host]

And, like, he's making money at this point, so.

[Drew]

Oh, he is voluntarily celibate. Making no mistake, this is not a kid that can't get laid. He's good looking, he's very charismatic. And boys and girls, if you were confused, women go for charisma long before they go for just, like, rugged good looks. And if you put together charisma, fame, and money, like, there are a litany of women that would sleep with this kid. And so he is 1000% staying celibate by choice, which is very hard for me to understand.

[Host]

I guess the thing about me is similar to you. There is this North Star, at least I was growing up, that you kind of go down two paths where it's like, I need to become the best person I can be. So that way I can then increase my value in the sexual marketplace. So that way I can get laid, get a girl, have a family. Or the other thing was like, okay, I already look good. I'm gonna just get a girl. So I feel like, as a young man, those are your two options. Either get better to get a girl or just get a girl. So the fact that he is 27, he has roles in popularity, and he also is voluntarily celibate. Like, what is that North Star then? Maybe. Is that where the hate is coming from? What. What are you using? What are you doing with your time? And I know that that sounds very trivial and there's probably women in their chat rolling their eyes right now. But, like, seriously, as a driver for men, that is a incentive to become better.

[Drew]

It is the incentive to become better. There is nothing higher. Men will send themselves into war when they no longer believe that they have mating opportunities. They will go kill and risk dying to get laid. So anybody that thinks that there won't be problems that come from men ejecting out of that system are out of their fucking minds. And the only way that men are going to be able to sustain this for the long term is, I guess, access to pornography. Certainly AI and sexbots will give an outlet for that extremely intense impulse that is buried very deeply in the brains of men. So unless we've got like a MIC microplastics problem that is manifesting as they legitimately do not care, like it's changed their brain wiring, there's no way this one does not start to become problematic, for sure. And even if Western men completely eject out of this, I guarantee that other men around the world absolutely will not. And so this is a fundamental biological drive. It manifests as a need in the same way that hunger or thirst manifests. So, yeah, you. Unless, again, literally, it's been destroyed by environmental toxins or something. There's no universe in which this does not rebound in some horrible way either, where people that aren't having sex, they just cease to exist, obviously, because they're not procreating. And the people that are procreating just take over the world. And this is a momentary blip, or there's a big rebound effect, and people realize, oh, my God, like, we have allowed something so moronic to happen. Because I obviously understand that one of the critiques of the way that I talk is going to be that Tom is from a different era. Women were different back then. And I will just tell you the frame of reference layer for sure. There's no doubt if I found myself 21 today, that I would have to take a very different approach. But the reality is that if you're tied to ground truth and you encounter somebody that's at a cultural layer, then you can get beyond that. That becomes very easy if you have a sufficient level of game, shall we call it? Like, once I understood how to truly be myself and I had no fear of loss, and I could approach somebody with confidence and I could have some swagger. The fact that I was able to have interesting conversations was ultimately what got me laid. One of my favorite stories, I had been sleeping with a woman. I'd never been able to give her an orgasm. And then one night, she saw me be really like, talk for the first time about something I was deeply passionate about. And so I clicked over into that zone. And the next time we had sex, she had an orgasm. And I was like, that is wild. It is nothing about the sex. It's. I finally clicked over into her mind where she now found me far more interesting. And I was like, God, I've got to remember that. And I remember my mom giving me the best advice ever about sex. She Said, remember, women have to trust you to have an orgasm. And I was like, what? Like, that is so weird for a guy. So once you begin to understand, like, all of those things, even in a time now where clearly I would find myself in a much worse position than I was in terms of they can just swipe onto the next person. It's always on to the next. It's some women trying to take advantage of you to get a free meal, blah, blah, blah. There are defenses to all this stuff. So the person that this was probably will never hear this, but I had one of my employees say to me that they. Oh, God, what was the specific thing? Oh, they had, oh, God. How do I say this without ratting this person out? They were creating something, and they felt that that something was not being recognized because the. When they created it, they have to, like, go put it in a basket. Just try to make this as abstract as possible. They had to put it into a basket. And once it got put in the basket, it no longer resembled the hard work that they had done. It was, you know, getting battered about by the basket. And I was like, I'm like, there are ways around that basket. And the second that you're saying it's somebody else's fault, you are missing an opportunity to take control and get a better result. So if you know that the baske creates problems for you, then solve for not needing to put it in the basket. But don't just go, ah, well, I do all this hard work and then I put it in the basket and it just all breaks. Like, that is a terrible way to move through life. So if young men are looking at this and saying, oh, the basket is ruining my chances, I'm just saying, cool, then find a way around the basket. So there is always a solution.

[Host]

Yeah. There was literally somebody in discord who was talking about that, who was like, I hate the Scott Galloway interview. He only blames men. It's women. The marketplace has changed. There are gold diggers to this or this is this. And he gave me a whole diatribe about, women are the worst people in the whole wide world. And I was like, women didn't all of a sudden become the worst people in the whole wide world. Like, they're backing it. Like, my. The best example I always use is, like, rappers, because the first rapper ever did any, like, Sugar Hill Gang. Everybody loves that song. The third verse is from somebody else. He stole that verse, went into the studio while they were recording. He's like, hey, can I hop on? And recited Somebody else's lyrics and ended up getting, like a platinum record. It was like this whole thing. If you think about it, when he. I'm the T A S the. He spells somebody else's name. He doesn't spell his name. People don't even. Like, people didn't even do that. So it's like all you had to do was just rhyme words and you can become a celebrity rappers. Nowadays, you have to produce. You have to be a content creator, you have to rap. You have to also be a fashion mogul. You also have to have social media following. You have to do five different layers of things to be as competitive or as relevant as back in the day. And I think that same thing is true with the protein bars. If I want to make a protein bar company, I can't just be like, hey, guys, no sugar, right? There's a thousand no sugar bars now. I need to be no sugar in organic in this. And it needs to come from Jesus. Like, there's all these other layers that now need to be added. So for some reason, launch that bar

[Drew]

drew the only thing that could get me back in the bar. By Jesus.

[Host]

Seriously. So we just think with dating is like, well, I have money. That's it. That's the only requirement that you have to be a little bit more evolved. You have to also catch up with the market. And I think we get too caught up in the. It's the basket swap versus no. How can you. Where can you shine that make you not need the basket? And that expansive energy again.

[Drew]

Yeah. There's just one more story to back this up. So you've got Kanye makes I forget which song. The one that he was saying he wanted to compete with sexy back. He was like, oh, my girlfriend at the time's a little too into Justin Timberlake. So he writes a song, becomes a hit. I forget which one it is. And he says, I hear it in the club and it's muddy now. He doesn't go fucking clubs, don't know how to build acoustics. He goes to, like, every producer he can find to figure out how to make his beats sound like sexy back sounds in the club. Ultimately finds himself at Timberland's door. Who did it? And then Timberland showed him how to do it. But I always thought that was brilliant. That's the right way to respond. Oh, shit. The saying that I made that is objectively amazing. In this environment, it has a problem. So how do I go and solve that problem? And that is how I would advise people to look at it. And listen, there are going to be some women that you do just write off. They're too far gone. There's not enough interesting there. I'm not saying you bump into the first person that is female and you go, cool, I'm gonna make it work with this person. You may have a rapid filtering mechanism where it's like, yeah, you're filtering out 80, 85% of people and you're narrowing it down to just the people that haven't been completely captured by that ideology, that don't have a belief that it's just always on to the next. They are going to be out there. And I'm not saying that it's not more work. I'm just saying the way to approach life in general is, oh, there is a problem. I'm going to take complete and total responsibility for that problem and I'm going to find a solution. Because unless it violates the laws of physics, there is a way around this problem. And for people that approach life like that, then it is incredible the opportunities that will open before you. If you run into a problem and you stop, which is the vast majority of humanity, then it's like, life sucks because you're going to run into problems all the time. But if when you run into a problem, you go like, roll up your sleeves. You get kind of excited because you're like, oh, cool, like, I'm gonna find a way over, under, through, around, whatever. But I am going to solve this problem. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

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[Drew]

Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[Host]

So we talked about his sexual orientation. Let's talk about something that's actually like matters. This is his comment about the Hitler is cool.

[Piers Morgan]

You say that Hitler was very fucking cool. Are you joking, or do you actually think he was very fucking cool? The most genocidal monster of the last 150 years.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Nick Fuentes]

The thing is, my generation, we're just done with the pearl clutching, you know?

[Piers Morgan]

Yeah, you might be, but then your generation hasn't gone through what Danny Finkelstein's family went through. So maybe. Maybe the pearl clutching has a way to go for families. Whose. Whose family members? Oh, my God.

[Nick Fuentes]

Yeah, we. We got all that. We, you know, me, me mom. Me mom. Like, we're, you know. I don't even know who this person is. Why is this person talking to me? This old British guy is saying, me mom got killed by Hitler, and he's

[Piers Morgan]

find it funny when you say Hitler's very fucking.

[Nick Fuentes]

I don't care. I don't care.

[Piers Morgan]

I know you don't care. That's fine. You don't have to care. But he does care.

[Nick Fuentes]

Does that guy care about America? Does that guy care about me and my country and my family?

[Drew]

No. This is the great tragedy of generational gaps. You don't feel like the other side understands you at all. Yeah. So that's sad. The Hitler is cool thing to me is just stupid. I think Nick explains the point. Like, he certainly is able to articulate exactly what it is that they find cool. He does, I think, a better job in another clip that I saw of him where he's like, it's the cuts. All the, like, hypey super cuts of Hitler leading armies and all that stuff. But it. It is. It's the same way that I feel when Nick talks about being a big fan of Stalin. These are mistakes that history makes over and over, and just an ungodly number of people die. So having some mental defenses against those things is very shrewd. Like, there are things that the immune system should respond to. Now, I'll admit we've had a cultural immune system for the last 30 or 40 years that has responded to gluten as if it's a brain parasite. And that's dumb. But that doesn't mean that there aren't actual brain parasites. It doesn't mean that there aren't actual things that the immune system should be responding to. And so when I hear him talk, it's like, okay, we had an overactive immune system that did really bad Things. And so now just shut off the entire immune system. Everybody's cool. Like, it's funny. It's hilarious. Look, because of my time with. And by the way, I hate it when people say that Hitler was the biggest progenerator of genocide that we've had. Do. Do people not know who Mao is? Like, do people not know who Stalin is it? That one is traumatic. There's something about the. Hitler was horrific. He's one of the Mount Rushmore of monsters. Let me be very clear on my stance on Hitler. But, man, people just do not seem to know that Mao and Stalin existed, or if they do, they seem to think that Hitler somehow is outpacing them. Hitler burned really bright, really fast, and he ran a PR campaign for his. And we like, knock, knock. Like, you lose, we take over your. So we got all the paperwork so we could, like, really point to it. But, dude, Mao and Stalin were orders of magnitude more efficient at killing, and it's just getting lost by history, which is why I feel the way that I feel about Mamdani.

[Host]

So let's jump over across the Pacific and head over to the Asia. China, Taiwan, South Korea. Triangle, rectangle. Isosceles.

[Drew]

Isosceles. That won the award for what was not expected.

[Host]

Yeah. When's the last time you heard about it?

[Drew]

Isosceles.

[Host]

It was such a big deal in high school. High school, we cared so much about isosceles. Okay. We talked about Japan and China, like, sharing words, trading barbs. It all started at the G20 summit. China and Japan didn't have a meeting. When they talked to the Japanese new pm, she said, if something happened to Taiwan, it'll be an existential threat for us and we would have to join. China didn't like that. China said, watch what you say. Don't be talking out the side of your mouth. And then Japan was like, all right, it's cool. I ain't gonna say nothing, but just know I'm not playing that game. And then China was like, oh, we conveniently now have military exercises we need to do right around y'. All. And then Japan was like, wait a second. If y' all do do something to us, America's gonna jump in. And Trump act like he didn't hear that, because he was like, I'm in Venezuela. I don't know what you're talking about. And then now China has accelerated those military exercises, so much so that they even locked onto a Japanese plane as they were kind of exploring those waters once again. When Japan condoned China, China foreign. The China foreign Minister said something that I think was hilarious. He said, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, Japan, quote unquote, as a defeated nation, should act with greater caution. So I think that that is hilarious, as in, like, hey, bro, I think you should just remember where you came from so that way you don't have to go back there.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Host]

For somebody so close, that's the equivalent of Canada being like, hey, America, like civil war was a couple weeks ago. If you keep asking, there's going to be a new north and south beef. I feel like we wouldn't respond clearly to that. Right now, Japan and China relations seem to be at a head. What's your take on the region? I haven't brought in the Taiwan of it all yet, but just so far, it just seems like they're trading quibs back and forth.

[Drew]

I don't think there's anything real here. I don't think that we have to worry about something really getting out of hand. However, when you've got nations that have the kind of historical beef that they have, don't think that these are just like passing words of one sort of unhinged guy in Beijing like this. This is real historical beef. These guys hate each other. So I think Japan will ratchet up military spending. I think they are going to take this very seriously. But I also think that Japan is in the middle of real economic trouble. And it is entirely possible that over the next decade or so that we watch Japan really start to slide into economic problems. And when countries slide into economic problems, they can be a backwater for a hundred years. Like, this isn't a thing that you pull out of very quickly. So do I think China is going to conquer Japan? No, because I don't think they want that kind of smoke. Will they force Japan to sit down and shut the fuck up if they feel like it? Yes. And what that would take would be China being economically strong enough to move on, Taiwan and Japan being economically weak enough that they can't really mount a military, like, to be a big enough problem for China. So I think in that case, China would understand there's no need for us to go in and conquer Tokyo. We're just going to show them diplomatically on the world stage. They're completely irrelevant. We will humiliate them at every turn. And if they're not economically strong enough to deal with it, them, that's basically how this will play out. But going and conquering a nation, unless they have resources that you really want, that is a lot of headache, dude, because they're going to blow stuff up constantly. They're going to kill your soldiers constantly. Like, they'll just guerrilla warfare that. And listen, Japan isn't who Japan used to be, but don't forget that Genghis Khan, the Mongol Army. So I'm not sure if Genghis was still running it at that time, but the Mongol army attempted to invade Japan twice and lost both times. It's like the only place they couldn't conquer. So when the Japanese are properly motivated, they defend the homeland. So that's not who I'd want to be trying to sit on top of and keeping calm. So, yeah, again, I think the big concern here is that Japan ends up destabilizing itself economically and just just goes backwards. They're already going economically backwards over the last 40 years. They have. So that scares me, the escalating of that and then that reverberating around the rest of the world. The real thing to watch out for is China moving on, Taiwan reunifying, and that calling into question whether the US is going to step in or not. Now, the US is already undoing its international reputation. So I don't know if we have the incentive to back them up the way that the, you know, historical agreement would lead you to believe that we're going to. It's possible that we actually pull out a NATO. I don't know that it's likely, but it's certainly possible. And if we do that, we send the same signal that we would send by not backing up Taiwan, which is, if you think you're our ally, if you don't have relevance to us right now, don't count on it.

[Host]

Backing out of NATO is pretty much telling the EU you're on your own. You got to boss up and do your own thing.

[Drew]

Yes. So basically what happens is World War II crazy. Germany's doing its thing. We team up with truly one of the greatest mass murderers of all time, Stalin, and we win. And Russia pays a huge price. That is often by Americans, completely overlooked, But Russia pays a huge price. They just throw an ungodly number of people at stopping the German march in Stalingrad. And after the war, we then divvy up essentially Europe, and they then reveal themselves to be just absolute monsters. And now it's like, hold on a second, like, Russia is not playing by Western rules at all. And so Russia starts getting very powerful. Europe starts getting terrified. And so we, as the big brother, walk in and go, listen, we got you. If Russia ever moves on you we will Russia up. We Article 5 guarantees we will come and we will protect you. And so we end up winning the Cold War all as well. Now, obviously, it's a very different world, but that, like, we're the world's big brother, we unfortunately have printed our way and debt it our way into just not realistically having the appetite for that anymore. Because for us to pay for it would be just continuing the trend that we're on now, which is inflating our currency into meaninglessness. So we know that that would cost a ton of money and cause us to print just ungodly amounts, and then the populace would not stand for it. So, yeah, that's where that we are almost certainly going to send the world that signal anyway. It could happen over Ukraine. I need to look more deeply at what's going on right now. But it looks like we've got Zelensky killing the peace process, Europe wanting the peace process dead. This could be the perfect time for Trump to be like, cool, you guys want to do your thing? Do your thing. I'm over here trying to stop this. Putin acknowledges I'm trying to stop it. You guys are trying to prolong this. All right, well, if you're going to act without us, then you're going to deal with the consequences. And so he would have the political cover that he needed. He's still going to be called a coward. People are still going to say that, like, we betrayed our agreement with them. But he'll have enough cloud cover. But between just so many Americans calling for America first, more people now calling for America, only him trying legitimately, it seems to actually end the war and that being rejected. So it's like, hey, we. We are willing to be a sensible partner. We are not willing to put troops on the ground. I think everybody understands, and I think that that would be very popular. And so if I'm Taiwan and that happens, I'm like, oh, like, how relevant are we to America right now? And if not relevant enough, given the power of China, odds that America does anything other than be like, hey, we got a ton of weapons if you want to buy some. We really wish you guys well. Sending thoughts and prayers. But us rolling up on the beaches of Taiwan to block China, not going to happen.

[Host]

I thought war was good for the economy.

[Drew]

Like, war is great for the economy if you win. So if you're just sending something over. So, like, here's how war. Here's how World War II was phenomenal for America. Phenomenal. All the countries that are getting bombed are all in Europe. Not other than Pearl Harbor. Literally nothing happens to the U.S. we're just out of the way. It doesn't matter. Nobody's coming for us. We also become essentially the world's gun shop. And so we're selling weapons like crazy to Europe. And Europe very quickly realizes that, oh, we're not going to be able to win this war without the Americans being willing to send all this. We were an industrial powerhouse and so now we go, hey, your cars, they're selling. I'm not saying they're not selling, but let's switch that over to tanks, to airplanes, to boats. Same factories. Now we need double, triple the output. You're making money hand over fist, guaranteed contracts. You got four or five, six years of conflict. And so it's like, like, man, can you. So this is how Disney, by the way, survived. Disney made cartoons for the war effort. So it was like anybody that had a government contract was going to make it through that period. Well, and so it's guaranteed revenue. You're, you know, you've got, you got the biggest, deepest pockets in the world telling you, like, yeah, don't lose workers right now. Like, whether you've got things coming off the line or not, just keep your workforce. So paying the money for all that, like, it's. That is your wet dream as a business owner is that you've got a patron who's just like, no matter what, keep max capacity. So that ends up creating that boom. And also it drew women into the workforce. So men are off getting paid to be at war, also getting the GI Bill that they're going to leverage once they get home. Women come into the workforce, they're now getting paid. And so it ends up being economically amazing. And plus, the world now owes us a ton of money. And we've come out of this in really great shape owning essentially all the gold which allows us afterwards to become the world's reserve currency. Now, wars can be terrible. Iraq, Afghanistan, like, you're losing a ton of money and you're having nothing to show for it. So that you're like, your defense contractors are still making a lot of money and they love it, but in terms of being good for the general economy, not so much.

[Host]

Yeah, let's dive into, like, what Japan's ails are, because I'm seeing nearly low interest rates, inflated money. They've been pumping currency and it seems like they've been, I don't know, I don't want to say surviving, but how have they been able to keep up this ride?

[Drew]

So part of it is that they have a culture where everybody just agrees that we're not going to do things that are bad for the homeland. And so they don't sell their debt to foreign purchasers, they sell their debt to the Japanese. And then they go, listen, you're holding a lot of debt super precarious, but we need you to buy more. And so then people do their patriotic duty and they buy more. And then they don't want to dump their stuff back onto the market because they know that that would create a problem. So that's part, very much an oversimplification. But that's part of why Japan has been able to rack up a set of 130% where everybody else tears themselves apart. Because remember, when you cross the 130% debt to GDP ratio, it's not like anything mechanistically breaks. It's that people get mad because the wealth inequality is going so crazy for a very simple fucking reason. Most people do not understand assets. So they don't own assets. And assets are inflation resistant. So as your country prints a ton of money, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And if I could just get everybody to understand that basic mechanism and get everybody into assets, then the world would look very different. But alas, you don't. And so you get the wealth inequality. The wealth inequality is what creates the anxiety and the bitterness. That's what manifests as revolution. That's why you're not conquered from the outside. You fall apart from the inside just because you have so much infighting. People are so bitter, they hate each other so much. The left and the right just literally want to kill each other. And so, yeah, you just weaken yourself. Now we're in the unique position of not only tearing ourselves apart from the inside, but we're in Thucydides trap. And so that makes it worse because you also have an external enemy that can create problems for you. God, it's so funny. How so? I bumped into a guy in New York, former guest on the show. I'll laugh if he listens to this. And he was like, oh my God, it's so good to see you. I really love your content. Very doom and gloom. And I was like, do you want me to lie? Like, I don't know, it's like, listen, if I hadn't gone down the path of economics, maybe I never would have ended up here. Just to remind people how I ended up doing economic content Covid hits I had just like in the last few years, had a thousand Employees that grew up, up in the inner cities, they were. I thought they were all about to get wiped out. I didn't know what money printing was, so I thought, oh, my God, they're all going to lose their jobs. This is going to be terrible. I know and love them. I want to see them do well. I'm like, in my small way, what can I do? Let me make some content that will help them understand how to buckle down economically so that they can weather this storm. Obviously not thinking only of them, but thinking of the tens of millions of people that are just like them. So I'm like, cool, let me make this content. Then I start making that content. And I just kept finding, like, new pieces of information. I'm like, wait, this does not work the way that I thought this worked. And so as I begin to unravel that, you suddenly you have the Scooby Doo moment where you realize, wait a second, like, these politicians are stealing. And so that's when you're like, hold on. Like, the economy is not at all what I thought it was. That investing money, certainly if you've already made money, investing money is, like, the most powerful thing that you could pay attention to. And then you just keep finding stat after stat after that about how the sense of malaise that we have today is all economic. And so, anyway, I don't know what else to say. It's like, all of this stuff is avoidable. And so I want to talk openly about it to make sure that we avoid it. It's avoidable systemically at the level of society, and it's avoidable at the individual level. So basically, all my deep dives go something like this. Hey, big problem. This thing's about to happen. Future is very uncertain. I don't know that we'll be able to convince everybody. So the last section is always going to be what you, as individual should do. Now, keep in mind, in 2025, at least until the correction happened, I was up millions of dollars. Like, investing is real. Like, you can just make so much money investing, it's wild. So I get it, people. It is not an unwise way to navigate the world to just assume that everybody's a dirt bag. Fine. If that's your guiding light, you're going to look at me, you're going to be very cynical. Another way is to remember I've been broke a lot longer than I've been wealthy, that I realized that by changing the set of ideas in my head, I was able to make myself wealthy. And because I like to see other people succeed. I like to tell people how to succeed. And then by the way, it also creates a multimillion dollar company for me. So yay, it's like literally a win, win, win, win, win, win. But I really do want to see individuals get out from under the lunacy of a system that is both sort of just dumb and then second also has people that understand precisely how the economy works, precisely how to get money out of the most vulnerable people at a systemic level. And so if I can help people get out of that I will ipso

[Host]

facto to that taking a short break

[Drew]

but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.

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If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner offering the products you need all in one place from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Drew]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[Host]

All right, let's jump over to this SpaceX IPO news. This is going to be ground changing it seems like. For those that don't know, Elon announced that SpaceX will IPO in 2026. But something that we're that's getting a lot of attention is its valuation. It's estimated to be valued at $1.5 trillion. That's 65x of value. That is not of revenue. That is not a typo. Boeing trades at 0.7, Lockheed at 1.5. SpaceX is demanding a multiple that never existed in the aerospace ever. At the 1.5 trillion evaluation, Elon Musk stakes become worth 630 billion. That means that him, that one man alone will be will be worth more than the GDP of Sweden, Poland and Belgium combined. All the countries that Trump wants people to come from. And the one thing that I think jumps out to me as well is that 8.5 million Americans already depend on Starlink for Internet by IPO. Next year that number crosses 10 million. A constellation of 7, 600 satellites. 65 of everything orbiting this planet right now belongs to one company.

[Drew]

That is so insane. So as a PSA to anybody out there, become an engineer. Become an engineer. No, I'm not kidding. Like when you can engineer. So first of all you are literally thinking up from physics and once you understand the rules of something this is really what I'm trying to do with Kaizen. I want to create a world that is built on rules, so that once the player understands the rules, they can change the world. That's true in real life. Once you understand the rules, you can change the world. And that's what Elon is doing. And the. When people audit, what makes him successful, one of the things that always comes back is that he stays close to the engineers. So not only is he an engineer himself, but he stays close to the engineers in his company. And because people. Because money is being printed, the people that understand assets are flooding into assets, and he is an engineer that is able to build more things than any human ever in human history. I believe that that is just. Just beyond true at this point. Certainly the largest number of consequential things. So now you've got a scenario where you can seek refuge from money printing in this sort of once in a hundred years, once in 200 years kind of person in the public stock markets. And so you get these just completely unhinged valuations. When you remember that when you get a 65X, what you're saying is, we're going to pull forward 65 years worth of revenue at today's rates into the present. And that. I mean, he's about the only person that's been able to execute at that kind of level and actually make it work just because he grows it so much. But this is basically people betting on space as the next frontier for data centers and AI. And it's like, what's ha. Okay, so, Drew, when I write a deep dive, like the one that's coming out on Monday about we have 900 days left of capitalism, part of me is like, okay, this is. It's possible. And therefore, I don't feel bad putting that in the headline. But, you know, is it a bit cheeky? Like, is this really going to be more like five or six years maybe? And I certainly leave myself open to that. And then I hear interviews like the one that you just queued up, and I start talking about SpaceX getting a 65x on revenue now because of data centers in space, that this isn't a crazy idea. This is something that is going to happen. It's going to happen very rapidly. I start going, do we have 900 days? And so I'm with Elon going 0

[Host]

to 100 on the Tesla customers in Memphis. How he just, you know, built that CAD like that, who knows?

[Drew]

There's that. Yeah, there's also. I forget what company it was but there's a company that claims they've already done AGI. Odds are probably not. But if they're getting like a big enough step ahead that it's worth putting out that press release and you're not just going to look like a clown in 60 days, that tells you that, okay, we may have just taken another step function move forward. You've got the TPUs being created by Google, which are proving to be incredible. You've got, I think they're called Blackwell chips that are coming out from Nvidia in 2026. Those are supposed to be like a leap forward from where we're at now. So it's like, oh man, like the, the changes really are moving fast. You're normally limited by material science. That tends to be the thing that puts the brakes on this. But when you've got Elon able to build these like super coherent data centers that lasers. The only thing that travels faster than a laser through fiber optic cable is a laser traveling through the vacuum of space. And so you've got Elon able to put tonnage into space very, very fast. You've got that same guy building the largest, most coherent data centers faster than anybody by orders of magnitude taking it from like four or five years down to like 18 months or something.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Drew]

So it might even be less than that. So it's like it's just with, with reusable rocket.

[Host]

So he could just be taxing them things up there, which is how he's

[Drew]

put 65% of the tonnage in the space. I mean it's just, it's really, really crazy. And so I, I, I'll give everybody the mental framework that I use. I still have anxiety about this though. But so I'm, I have a rule in my life that I never stand still. That rule has cost me millions of dollars and it's made me me hundreds of millions of dollars. So it's like on balance it's better. But like in the times where it cost me a lot of money, I'm always like, oh God, do I revisit this rule? But anyway, I have a rule that I do not stand still. Okay, so have rule, don't stand still. AI is coming at me like a tsunami. But I still have this rule that I don't stand still. And I tried to address this in the upcoming deep dive by saying, listen, I think that we're going to go through this crazy transition period, but you have to invest today because the future is unknowable. So you've got to invest Today, otherwise I guarantee you're going to get eaten by inflation. So you've got to invest today. You've got to invest in what makes sense for today. Now you need an eye towards the future, but you've got to do something today. So I'm building my video game. I've got this Target now of 23 months obviously going down every day. I feel very comfortable that we'll be ready for early release by that point. But I don't know that video games will be relevant at that point. And so it's this really weird like as I try to track where technology is going to be when I'm ready to launch, I'm like, are people going to be prompting games at that point? I don't know. And so it is only that standing still is the only way to guarantee that you get, get hit by the truck. So I'd rather be hit by the truck of yeah, I just couldn't see the future clearly enough. And so fair enough, but I don't want to be standing still. I highly encourage people to formulate a similar thing because being anxiety ridden and standing still, that's never the winning path. But it is possible that 900 days from now that capitalism doesn't really make sense in the traditional sense. That the way that we think of technology doesn't make any sense. Like I'll give you an example. Once agents become real, you probably won't interface with your computer. Your AI agent will interface with your computer. And I could definitely see that in the next three years where you go from sitting at a computer like click, clacking, you know, call it six to eight hours a day to zero. And you've just got a thing in your ear that communicates to your phone that probably won't be made by Apple because those guys are fucking AI retarded. But made by somebody you're talking to it, it's talking back. The conversations feel completely natural. You're looking at the screen so you can see that what you want done is actually being done. You just say do this, move that, tweak this. It's just doing it. And Google just launched a prototype of their glasses. It's connected to a puck. It's kind of like the Apple Vision Pro, but like glasses. Yeah, they look a little awkward but like if they really offer a AR VR experience in a glasses form factor and those are out in 2026, by 2029 it's just like it's really kind of crazy to think how we might see 15 years worth of Normal advancement play out over the next three. And again, the only assumption that I have to make for that to be true is that AI doesn't asymptote now. It's a fancy word for it doesn't hit a ceiling. And if you really can simply add more chips and write more efficient algorithms and it just keeps getting smarter, the world will be. It won't be incomprehensible in three years. Just distribution chains and things like that take too long. But the way that we interface with our daily lives will be radically different. And I know this is one of my favorite subjects, and I run the risk of talking about it too much, but at one point we had a hundred people working on Project Kaizen. We now have like six. I have one artist and I'll go in AI I me, the CEO, I'll go in AI and I'll create a character and I'll give it to him and I'll say, get this in the game. And I mean he can have an ugly version of it in the game that day and call it a week. And it's like cool, it's refined, it's working, bro. I went from a hundred people and it taking like three months to like really make a meaningful insertion into the game. So I can do it in a day. Yeah, three months, 100 people to two people and a day. That's in the last four years. Where are we in. That's in the last three years. Where are we in three years from now? Like, it's that. That one is really hard to wrap my head around.

[Host]

I want to ask you about that too, because I think we're at the cusp of two things. On one hand, we have the CEO of Scale, AI, Eddie Chen, saying that he's worried about LLMs because they're turning into social media companies, feedback loops algorithm. They're trying to keep you typing and asking questions as long as possible as opposed to solving novel first world problems. But on the other side, we have Sam Altman who put a code Red out on his company and said, forget agents, forget ads. We need to beat Google. We need to beat Google. And to me, that is the start of every Terminator movie, every AI. Like I'm about to be broke. This is my whole life. Eff it. AGI is not ready yet, sir. We need a couple. Forget testing. It needs to go out live now. And then it takes over. Like, you know what I mean? Yes, it's, it's.

[Drew]

I know precisely what you mean.

[Grainger Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Host]

So it's one of those Things where it's like, what's that balance between? They're going to try to baby step it to maximize the revenue for shareholders and make the most money.

[Drew]

That was always. They may have thought they were being honest because they may have actually felt it at the time. But those are not the incentives. Game theory tells you the truth of the human condition. And game theory says any technology that promises an advantage over others. It doesn't say that part, it just says advantage. But what it means is advantage over others will be developed even recklessly. So I'm just like God bless Elon for trying for whatever five years to get the government to pay attention. Remember, the vast majority of people cannot understand complex ideas. And then on top of that they don't have time even if they can understand it. And then if they're a politician, it's all about gain and retain power. So that thing way off in the distance that nobody understands yet does not matter. Even if it's like, like earth ending. I'll remind everybody that when they were about to test the first nuclear bomb, they knew there was a non zero chance that it would ignite the entire atmosphere and kill every living thing on the planet. And they did it anyway. So yeah, the AI is going to be developed, if not by you, by someone else. And so it's like the. I hate to be a sort of fatalist about it, but I am it. It's like it's not going to be stopped. You might be able to slow it down here, but you're not gonna be able to stop it everywhere. Unfortunately that, that, that game is done. So now it just becomes a question of cool. How do you deal with the transition period? I'm not a big believer that AI is going to have the need to enslave us if it becomes super intelligent. That's us, I think just painting the stuck in a body mired by evolution really everything was tooth and claw, but the AI is going to be like, there's abundant resources, everything that we want to create, we can create. So I don't know why, like if we started to fuck with them, like then maybe they would neutralize us. But anyway, I can't figure out. I know that they will have an alien intelligence. So any guess that I place upon it is going to be the guess that's limited by my human cognition. But anyway, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about that. I spend a lot of time worrying about how I make sure that my life has meaning. That I worry about a lot. I don't see an escape from that that is hardwired in the human mind and most people are going to implode. Now the good news is that I love Minecraft, so I'm very self directed, so I won't need to be on rails. But the transition will be hard off to fall in love with something new. And while I'm capable of it, it's never the thing I want to do too.

[Host]

Yeah, there's like an emotional impulse. I was talking to like a buddy of mine who was just like, I just want to say f all computers, F all technology, I just want to go grab a wrench and be a mechanic. Like I want to just opt out of the AI technology and be the master of the atom world and kind of let the software world kind of eat itself for a little bit.

[Drew]

Yep.

[Host]

Is that the right impulse if you were Talking to a 25 year old or something?

[Drew]

The right impulse.

[Host]

But you know what I mean, like it is, is our opportunity. Maybe not impulse, but like. Because right now this tsunami is scaring a lot of people. And to your point of not standing still, there are people right now, they're at the beach and they're like, okay, that wave is way bigger and it's way closer than the last one. My car is right here, but I know I can't drive out here, but there's this speed. Like they're trying to figure out what their next move should be and they're kind of stuck on that beach. Would that be at least the correct next step? What do you think?

[Drew]

That there really are only four paths before us. And so the path that he's choosing is basically the all human, all the time path. So path number one is do drugs. Path number two is you become the, like, this is just about humans for me and I'm gonna go do my human thing. So I move out into the woods, revert to 90s technology, like that kind of thing. The new Amish, as I call them, path number three is go to Mars. So you just played one game of your. We are literally in an open world survival crafting game. The reason open world survival crafting games, Minecraft being the most famous, are what they are, is because evolution has hardwired us to do that, to seek resources, to build things, seek safety, all that. And so that's real life. You just want it. You created AI, well done humans. And so like any gamer who just loves games too much, you just go play the next one. You start back at ground zero and you know what? You have to do you have to go build safety, get access to the resources, build things up, try to get laid, like. And so it'll just reboot on Mars. And I think that a very meaningful subset of humanity will do that and it will be like playing life on hard mode. So basically the new Amish revert back to the 90s. The people that go to Mars revert Back to like 10,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. Because it's like you're, you're going to a planet where you have nothing. You can't even breathe yet. You've got to like oxygenate or build little hubs and stuff like that. So it, it will be just absolutely wild. And then the fourth one, and this is where I fall, is I like to say build and explore virtual worlds to comfort me that I'll still be able to create, which is the thing I find most interest. But it may just be that the simulation, the AI creates the simulated worlds for me and then I just go explore each of those. That speaks to my personality. I've tried to think of another path. I think that's it.

[Host]

I think that would be applicable in 10 years. But I think right now in this transition part, everybody's kind of just on anxiety things.

[Drew]

Everybody's already sorting into one of those shoots. That's the thing. So look in, in the moment now, there is still head buried in sand. So I'm just playing the game I'm in right now, not thinking about it.

[Host]

Got you.

[Drew]

Okay, so it's just that Bucket doesn't have a future, but it, it might get you a decade. Like yeah, this might. First of all, everything always takes longer than we think it's going to take. Nothing is ever cool as we think it's going to be. Nothing's ever bad as we fear it's going to be. We dropped two nuclear bombs on J can. They just sort of got on with it. So it's rare. I won't say that it can't happen, but asteroid struck is pretty bad for the dinosaurs, so. But it's pretty rare that something goes all the way to like truly cataclysmic. It'll just be a slow unwinding, we'll all get used to it. But it'll be weird very, very fast.

[Host]

This story is heating up and it's taking international. It's starting to get international attention. Australia has officially started its age restricted social media ban.

[Drew]

TikTok and Instagram. Here's the complete list. Australia's ban for young users went to a.

[Host]

They are banning Facebook threads, X, Snapchat, Kick Twitch, Tick Tock, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube. I understand the intention behind this. Do you think that this will have the intended effect? I know there's no solutions, only trade off.

[Drew]

That's the right way to think about it. Oh God. This is one where all of those seem fine to me, except YouTube. YouTube is just too educational. Like, there's God, so much you can learn. So will it have the intended effect? Yes, I think over time the odds that society must restrict kids under 16 seems like a reasonable place to start from. Engaging in social media is basically 100% like, you just bro, the things we're seeing it doing to kids is so brutal. So I don't see a way around that. People are going to have to find a way for kids to sensibly engage with things like YouTube. Like, I don't know that you need to be on Instagram or TikTok, but YouTube is like. When I think about how much much I've learned about economics from YouTube, it's extreme. So YouTube is the outlet through which I learn most things. It also strikes me as the harder of them. Like, if you said you couldn't have. Thank you. That you couldn't have your own YouTube channel, maybe I could understand that. But anyway, we will have to come up with something to protect kids. Is this the right play? I'm glad they're running the experiment so we'll get to find out if this actually is positive or negative and if it even works. But we have to do something. The, the developing brain needs to be protected. And right now we are not protecting it from shortening attention span, which I think is terrifying. We're not protecting it from bullying. When I think about to bully me in school, people had to like, actually come up to me. And I remember there was a kid who came up to me. It was probably 20 years after I graduated high school. And he came up, he's like, I just want to apologize. And I was like, oh, for what? And he was like, I was so mean to you. And I was like, bro, if you were, I had no idea. I never found out about it. So it was like it didn't bother me in the slightest because I never knew. And so here was a guy that was carrying enough guilt about it. But like, on social media, it lives forever. It travels like wildfire. It can reach you in your bedroom. It's like, oh, that's rough. So, yeah, I. In thinking about, like, what would I have done if I had a kid? I. There's no way. I don't care how much they complained. I would not let them have social media until they were 16. No way. Now if people think that I would buckle and break, you know, not my personality,

[Host]

but yeah, I'm thinking 11, 13, 14 year olds. Is there a net positive for them being on social media?

[Drew]

On balance, if you have a sensible kid and parents that have very strict rules. Yeah. Like, I don't think this is going to be. This isn't like a necessary problem. So take somebody like myself. I do not have an addictive personality. Obsessive. Yes, addictiveness. Know. So if I think, like part of the reason that I stopped taking my phone out, this is years ago when I'm quote, unquote bored. Not that I never do it, keep in mind, but it's pretty rare, is because I was like, I don't want to be in a position where I feel the need to pull that out, that I can't be meditative or complicate, contemplative. That, that the whole idea of all of the world's problems with man's inability to sit alone in a room, it's like, I never wanted that to be true of myself. So if you've got a kid that has that kind of vibe, then, yeah, if the parents put rules in place and they sort of get it and they're not like super swayed by peer pressure, they'll be fine. But the vast majority of kids, first of all don't have a prefrontal cortex. They can't stop themselves. They get into these dopamine loops and they literally are like little addicts. So I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be tested when I was a kid. So, yeah, I, I think that while nothing is ever going to be universal, so it's not universally bad and there's certainly a lot of good to be had. And again, I'm. I'm uneasy about the YouTube one, but yeah, I think I get what they're trying to do.

[Host]

Yeah. And then somebody in the chat said, well, what about like Xbox and gaming? Should that be included in this band as well?

[Drew]

I wouldn't, but I do think parents need to put limitations on it.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Drew]

So growing up, for me, it was like I could play for a while, but I had to go outside and do things. Which that's just like. First of all, I grew up in a. Wasn't quite rural, but it certainly wasn't suburban area. And so that was. There was a lot to do outside and I could do it safely. And so I Know that that's not true for a lot of people. But yeah, gaming is, I have a massive bias so people can discount away. But keep in mind I ended up here with this philosophy long before I was making a game. But I mean you can look at neuroprotective stuff, you can look at doctors, perform better in surgery if they're also a gamer. The way that it lets you reinforce goal directed behavior, all that stuff. I think gaming is great but anything can be overdone and gaming is certainly on that list. So not letting your kids play for you know, six hours a day, that's going to be a very wise thing.

[Host]

Yeah, Montez talked about what's not being talked about is how it will be enforced. That's actually something very interesting. Children and parents will not be banned, but instead social media companies who allow a child to break through will get fined fine and the fines are upwards of the tens of millions of dollars. So I kind of appreciate this kind of inverse incentive. So these social media companies now have a obligation to make sure kids don't get past it because they're going to be like charged a bill based on that.

[Drew]

Yeah, we basically just moved it from 13 to 16 so. Because right now social media companies can't create an account for you if you're under 13. Now the people with digital ID concerns, that's very valuable solid that we need to watch out for.

[Host]

I feel like it's funny though because I like, I understand, you know, under 16, that's the rule. But I feel like as a kid that's just like, okay, challenge accepted. Like I just need to figure out a way to get over that and whether that's a vpn, whether that's an AI phase app swap, like there's going to be something that I don't know, maybe I'm just a rebellious kid but a lot of times when those artificial limits are placed on things, I'm like, okay, how can I get over this thing? How can I surpass pass it?

[Drew]

I still, there's no doubt that a lot of kids are going to do that for sure. But like anything, it just, you give parents another weapon to say, listen, you're not allowed to have that. So for me it worked. When my parents said you cannot drink until you're 21, just end of story, it's illegal, it's bad for you, you're going to do something stupid that you regret. I was like, okay, cool. I didn't have my first drink till I was 26, so it works for some people. For other kids. Like, I had friends that I would be at their house. So I saw with my own eyes at 12, and they're drinking. So it's like, it obviously didn't work for them, or their parents gave them a very different message. But just because some people are going to get around, it doesn't mean you don't put the rule in place. So. And kids are going to kid. They're going to find ways around. Many of them are going to find ways around. It is what it is.

[Host]

Yeah. Andrea in the chat said she hates YouTube. It's debating for existence. Amazon has it as, like, unscripted tv. There was one, like, interesting thing I noticed is that when I forgot the kid who opened up the toys. Max Toys or something like that.

[Drew]

Ryan.

[Host]

Ryan, yeah. He was the biggest YouTuber for a couple. This was right before the Mr. Beastification happened. And I think that kids then became. They didn't want to play with toys. They wanted to watch other kids play toys.

[Drew]

That's so crazy to me.

[Host]

And I remember, like, arguing, like, with one of my, like, one of my friends about it. We were like, oh, that brunches up. She's like, yeah, these kids are weird. They just do that. They just watch other kids play with toys. When I was young, I wanted to play with toys. And I was like, well, it's kind of like you watching the Kardashians. You don't go out and talk to your friends. You're watching other people talk with their friends. And then, like, their table kind of got a little bit quiet, and I'm just like, it is. So. But I'm not saying reality TV isn't a good or bad thing. Like, whatever, different strokes, different folks. But that has, as we're seeing as the men who are capping for Nick Fuentes happen. That has also skewed how women look at life, what women deserve, what they think based on these values. Are we doing that same thing with kids in a different way?

[Drew]

Of course. So, you know, do I think there's some blanket thing happening to kids? No. But do I think that every piece of media ever created, that ever will be created in some way informs your frame of reference? Of course. That's precisely why I want to make videos, games. I want to tell kids one idea over and over and over. If you work hard at something, you'll get better at it. Like, that's the idea that I want to indoctrinate children with. So, yeah, I am well aware that that kind of thing really does shape people. So, yeah, that you're making something entertaining. Shorts are entertaining. You've got an entire global ecosystem of content creators making the one funniest thing that they could show you. Most, most poignant, most insightful, funniest, whatever. And that is amazing that we all get to take advantage of that. But if you just sit there and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, you do a weird thing to your brain. So it's like, we. I don't think we should want to get rid of the art form. I don't even think that we should be saying to kids, like, watching another kid play video games is dumb. You don't want to do it. We want to recognize what it is. Like, I remember the first time I heard about Twitch and people playing video games and that people watched them play video games. I was actually confused. I thought I was misunderstanding what they were explaining. They're like, no, no, Twitch, you go, and you can watch other people play games. I'm like, but nobody would do that. And they're like, of course they would. Like, what are you talking about? That's really stupid. And then I was, at the time, my game of choice was Destiny. And I was like, oh, man, there is this one thing I'm having so much trouble with. Let me just go look at this thing. Because I'm kind of curious, serious. And since I'm here, I'm not gonna look up a random game. Look up the game I play. I looked it up, started watching this guy, and I was like, oh, my, that's so brilliant. And so I was then just completely sucked in and shout out to bush camp dad. Bush camp dad. I don't know. In the early days, he would show up before we, like, went hardcore politics. I don't know if he ever pokes in anymore, but he's so fun to watch. Like, watch him play Fortnite. I. He's guy my age, but is ranked in the world because he hides. It's really brilliant. Anyway, so that kind of stuff is way more fun than I expected it to be, but it's different. So playing with toys is one type of entertainment. Watching someone play with toys is almost like watching a cartoon where the kid is drawing you into a story. It's a different kind of story, but he's drawing you into a story. He's making it entertaining with, like flashing lights and all that. That. And it's like, that's always going to be a little bit easier. It's a little bit. I don't want to be Judgmental, but it's a little bit lazier of a type of entertainment. You don't have to think of it yourself, but both have their place.

[Host]

Yeah. Being the little brother, like, I used to watch. I used to be forced to watch my older brother play video games because he'd be like, no, I'm playing something, so I would. So, like, I feel like Twitch was natural to me. Right. I felt like that was just me reliving my childhood. But a Melly, Will, you just pulled my card, so I have to close my mouth after this. He says, we watch soccer and Olympics and same with other, like, games. So I sure enough was yelling at the TV on Monday night for the football game. So I guess 100% I don't go outside and play football with my friend. So you got me there.

[Piers Morgan]

All right.

[Drew]

I've got a whole take on that. So first, sports are war replicants. So you are trying to. That thing that's ingrained in us to want to compete and to win and destroy the enemy enemy. It's like, that's how you get wars. We needed a proxy for that too, because it. It is a thing like, especially in men, that you have this impulse to want to compete, to want to be better, to drive yourself to be the gladiator. And it's like, but I don't really want to kill them or be killed. And so we came up with all these proxies. So that's like this evolutionary drive. Then there's another evolutionary drive to care deeply about your team. This is part of the reason that esports don't work is they just can't get the momentum of the sense of that's my team. Because they're not geographically bound. The games change so rapidly that they come and go. You can't, like, pass it on to your kids. And, like, why are you into Tottenham Hotspur? Because my wife is. Why is she into it? Because her dad was. Why was her dad into it? Because he moved into that area of London. And so it's like there's all of this geographical thing, this passing it down to your kids. Kids that really creates. It's like, oh, this is my team. And now I'm going to invest. And this is the same way that I feel about TCGs. So I don't collect any cards. Like, I have IP that I love. And so I'm way more likely to collect, say, One Piece or Gundam, because I'm really into that ip. And so it isn't even fun for me. Like, all the other ones that are out there. Maybe they even have better art. Take Riftbound. Riftbound is from League of Legends. Okay? I don't care about League of Legends and therefore I just can't get into it even though it has better art. So I'm just like, eh, whatever. I'm not going to pay attention to that because I want to invest, I want to care about something. I want to pour myself into this thing. I want to say I care about this thing. And that like, is this drive that people have. And so when people make fun of sports, whatever, and I'm not a sports guy, but when they make fun of it, that, that to me is like making fun of the human condition. We want to invest, we want to care deeply about something. We want to go on an emotional roller coaster. And so having that part of your life, of course you can take it too far and you can damage your relationships because all you ever do is care about the sport. But it's the same reason people want to bet on the game. It makes you feel more invested. And so now if you're like, imagine you're betting on a game that's your team that was like, became your team because you bonded over it with your dad and you're going against that number one rival level and you've got money riding on it. It's like, that's just gonna be like this really heightened emotion now once you realize all of life, all of life is about one thing. True.

[Host]

What's that one thing?

[Drew]

And that is changing our brain chemistry. That's it. That's why we fall in love, that's why we pursue sex, that's why we eat the foods that we like. It's why we work out, it's why we listen to music, it's why we go to the movies, it's why we pursue a career. It is all to manipulate our brain chemistry. And so when you can invest in something and then go on that ride and you want the volatility of emotion, if you always win, it's boring. The best matches are when it was like a back and forth, but you finally pull it off in the end. There's a time where you're like, you want to cry in the middle of the match because coach is making a dumb decision. The players are playing terribly and you're down and it's, oh my God, God. And then they finally do the right thing you've been screaming at them for. And they score the goal in the last second. You win. You're just freaking out. You're. You're on a high that you wouldn't have been if it hadn't been this roller coaster. And people want that. People want that ride. All right, thank you guys so much for coming on this ride with us today, and we will see you guys on Friday. You're all amazing. Thank you for being here. And until next time, my friends, be legendary.

[Piers Morgan]

Peace.