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Balaji details China's potential plan for disempowering the US Supposed audio of Vance badmouthing Elon sparks debate Bernie and AOC continue to draw crowds, but some accuse them of astroturfing. Special envoy Steve Witkoff says Putin's not a bad guy. Vance backs him up. The prime minister of Greenland accuses US Diplomatic trip of being an abusive demonstration of power. Hyundai pledges 20 billion in investments in the US and Michael Saylor buys even more BTC at the low, low price of 86k and change. Drew I just want to welcome Jen Alpha to a world where you're growing up in a cold war. It's good times. So fun.
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It is funny because now US in Russia are finally starting to see eye to eye. And then China's like, okay, we'll be the bad guys now we'll be in the cold ward spot. So we're just, we're angry that everybod
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the US in Russia seeing eye to eye is a big part of the debate. But we will get there.
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We got to start with this leaked audio. Over the weekend, alleged leak audio of JD Vance surfaced and it's been floating around. Some people I have disputed it as AI. Some people say they don't want to give it attention and acknowledge it. Let's let the chat and the audience decide.
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Here we go.
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He's doing is getting criticized in the media and he says that he's helping and he's not. He's making us look bad. He's making me look bad. And, and I'll tell you this and he wouldn't like it if I said it but he's not even in Berkeley. He is from South Africa and his cosmic is this great American leader in a room that has the portraits of some of the greatest men that ever led this country and he has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official. I am an important one in this situation, not him. So if he wants to take the economy and his cars, maybe that's what he deserves.
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The more I hear this, the more I become convinced that this is fake. And I really want it to be fake. I'll be really honest because having an elected official talk like that mortifies me to my absolute core. You had a really good take, which is that this is so precisely on talking points for the people that dislike the Trump administration. It just seems too fake. So anyway, I hope in the fullness of time it becomes just absolutely self evident that this is fake. But speaking to if you're going to fake something like this, it is absolutely brilliant to make it feel like the microphone is really far away so that you're all. Your brain is already going, oh, this is probably real. Because otherwise they would make it sound great. And it disguises the fact that you can tell with AI still if the voice is a little bit off. But it becomes a lot harder. The first time I listened to it, I thought it was real. And I'll be honest, my brain just said, oh, this is real. And so I was shocked, mortified, all of that, and was very excited to hear people saying that this might actually be fake. Which again, for all of us on Team Trump, against Team Trump, please don't want your own country to fail. Like, that's crazy. And this would be an internal fail state for Vance. That would be just beyond mortifying. The reason that the more I listen to it, the more I think it's fake is some of the weird emphasis that he puts on things. Doesn't feel real to me going through it. The this is making me look bad and this triggers my alarm bells from I'm being manipulated standpoint and really makes me want to see the injection of the blockchain here so that algorithms that either surface or don't surface this kind of material can say, this is exactly who posted this. This is. This originates because you would with the blockchain be able to say this piece of audio originated here. And if you either see that it's originating in a lot of places, probably fake news if you see that it originated from a very uncredible source. Also fake news. Because if this is like a whistleblower or whatever, the odds are that they're going to be able to work with an institution like take the New York Times because they're nice and controversial, some people think that they're just a propaganda arm but at the same time, they have a lot of credibility that an average person posting on X is like, I found this. That they're not going to have or even like an X account that has a reputation to protect where they're not going to want to surface this stuff. That I think is going to be increasingly important because it is going to become easier and easier to fake this stuff and be absolutely indistinguishable from reality.
C
Does it matter that it's fake though? Because I feel like for things like this, the cat is already out of the bag. People have heard this and they're already reinforcing their preconceived notions. Oh, I knew Elon isn't a light official. I knew he's causing beef. I knew J.D. vance, especially with his performance with Zelensky in the White House. This audio did match JD's energy in that meeting of. You didn't. Have you ever said thank you. You supposed to respect us. So I kind of, I'm worried personally that this audio, whether it's fake or real or not, it just kind of adds fuel to that fire already.
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It certainly will do that. But the reason, I think in the long term, you've got to be combating this stuff. You can't just say, well, it's bad and it's just going to burn everything down. And I guess is what it is. And admittedly, I had some of that energy in chat today where I was just like, God, this is so hard. You can't really sway people. But I do think that over time you are going to get people to have a stronger filtering mechanism. Some people won't. And of course shout out to Bob, who believes, or at least one point did believe, the earth is flat. So you can get people that will derange. There's no doubt about that. But I think that just as I really want to believe that flat earth is losing steam, please, for the love of God. I want to believe that as people begin to say, well, what, where's, where does this originate from? Because I know the blockchain can track stuff like that, that they'll at least start asking the right questions. But there is damage that's done. There's no doubt about that.
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On the other side of the aisle, allegedly Bernie and AOC have been faking their crowd size because Mario Nawful is a terrible last name. It's very hard to say it's a great last name. Shout out to the Nullfall family. There's been a massive Bernie, Bernie Sanders and AOC rally in Denver. Turns out it wasn't as grassroots as advertised. Despite claims with 34,000 attendees, GPS data analysis reveals the real number was closer to 20,000. Still big, but not record breaking. More revealing, a whopping 84% of those devices have shown up nine or more other protests, including Antifa BLM events, Pro Hamas and pro Palestinian demonstrations, and Kamala Harris campaign stops. Over 30% had attended 20 or more. Data analysts say the crowd was anything but organic. The majority were tied to activist networks like Disruption, Project, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, Rise and Resist and Troublemakers, all reportedly funded by ActBlue and some receiving backing via USAID. Optics over authenticity. The playbook hasn't changed, just the targets.
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Okay, so there's a lot going on here. First of all, you are always being spun and positioned. This tweet being a prime example of that. When he says data analysts say that is making it sound like, oh, all data analysts that look at this have a problem. So many a sin are hiding within that statement alone. And I'm sure if we went line by line in the tweet, we'd find other places like that. So everybody be careful. The game here is to make up your own mind, to make sure that you're seeking disconfirming evidence. Whenever you hear something, go figure out what does the opposite side say? Anytime that I hear something that I, oh man, it just feeds into what I already believe about the world, I'm headed straight to AI and asking it, the people who disagree with this thing that I agree with, what do they say? Because I want to know the best argument against the thing that I'm tempted to just auto bolt on to my own ideology. Now, the reason that I do that is because I prize utility. I want things that have high predictive validity, that when I believe this thing, am I more or less likely to be able to understand how this is going to play out in the real world?
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And.
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And that to me is something that will serve everybody. If you're like, okay, wait a second, I'm not trying to be on a team here. I'm first just trying to figure out how does the world actually work. Then once I figure out how the world actually works, hopefully we can all get on team humans thriving. But everything that you're being fed, intentionally or otherwise is spun to match somebody's worldview. And I think, and I think Mario's channel is a great channel. I think he surfaces a lot of stuff. However, I think that implying in any way, shape or form that 20,000 people does not represent something real unless these people are being directly paid. At which point, if you're paying people, you can completely distort things. It will go against their own beliefs. And so you'll have no sense of what is this other than people respond to financial incentives. But if this is 20,000 people that are going around the country on their own dime because they really believe in this thing, that tells you something. Now, if the data that he's putting forward is accurate and 84% of these people have shown up, I think he said at least at nine of these rallies, okay, that that is a very meaningful piece of data that you will want to take in as you try to map what is actually true. You're going to want to be aware that this is the same people over and over going to all of these riots. So they may be the very loud, very aggressive representatives of something that is ultimately fringe. You 100% need to be aware that that could be the case. But I think that a view that has high predictive validity is that whoever's in power lives and dies by their tactics and their results. Whoever's out of power gets to emotionally whip people up. Trump whipped everybody up with emotion and call it nakedly just propaganda when he wasn't in power. But now it's tactics and results. And when the left was in power, they were tactics and results, and people voted against them. And so once you begin to map out, okay, I get the political game, the person that's in power is playing a very different game than the people that are out of power. Now, both of them are going to try to manipulate me, for sure, but they're being judged on very different scorecards. So the left, if I were advising them, is playing the right game. You want to get everybody caught up in the emotional sentiment. You want to paint a picture that you're not alone. If you feel this way, there's a lot people who feel this way because people that are on the bubble, they want to fit in. They want to read the moment. Right. I cannot help but right now, and maybe I just need to get closer to it, and over time, I'll realize it's not true. But right now, I have this a sense that I'm out of step with culture right now, that my whole thing about, hey, own the results of your own life is just people are not here for that. That is not a popular message. And my thing is, like, if I'm out of step, I'm out of step. But the only way for me to get in step with, as I perceive it now, would be to get on the emotional bandwagon and do the very thing I have asked my wife never to do. If I'm ever knocked to my knees, as the average American is right now, I don't want you to get on your knees with me, put your arm around me, and tell me everything is going to be fine. What I want you to do is extend a hand, pick me up, brush my shoulders off, and remind me of what I'm capable of. That's. That's what I can offer. The American people like you are capable of the extraordinary. And even if the world is working against you and trying to hold you down, which, if you grant me only that printing money will destroy the vast majority of people's financial lives, it is working against you actively. But the only way to turn things around is to go, okay, I have to outperform that abuse. It isn't to just want somebody to tell you it's not your fault. That just it. It does not lead to human flourishing. So anyway, all of that to say you're being spun all the time. Start trying to map out what's really going on. I think there really is an AOC Bernie movement that is driven by. That is the emotion right now. Do not try to hand wave that away. Don't try to say, well, it's only 20,000. It's not 34,000. It's like, hey, there's a real going on here. Don't try to hand wave away that this is the same 20,000 people. They will have a lot of silent people that. That are getting caught up in that emotion that you can see echoing through a whole bunch of other things, not the least of which is Gary Economics, which is really capturing that vibe. Well, far more important to say, everybody's spinning me. And so now I just want to understand what is the tension between the Trump administration and the left out of power? Like what. What is that tension? What do they point to? What are the real things that each side represent?
C
It's interesting having these two articles back to back, because from one side to me, they're the same tactic, just in a different lens, where one person is trying to use manipulation on the right to show that there's dissent among the right, another using manipulation on the left to show that there's descent along the left. And to your point, 20,000 is still 20,000. That's still 20,000 people that are fighting back. And if those people did go to nine rallies, those are now a motivated 20,000, which, to me is even worse because somebody that comes, oh, yeah, I got to see Trump today and goes home and stays home until November. That's not as powerful as somebody is going from a protest to a rally, from a protest to a rally. They're out in the streets, they're engaged, they're talking to people, they're making their base hypothetically bigger. So I just, this kind of felt like a gotcha tweet, like, ah, they're lying. But 20,000 people were outside in the cold in Colorado yelling at two people who are not in office right now. They're holding a rally three years early, like there's still something there and that shouldn't be pooh, pooh to your point. So agreed.
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And now I want to put a really fine point on what I think this is. I think that the Democratic Party, whoever is responsible for what's going on with the Bernie AOC tour, they are very specifically saying Bernie is going to be, I think, 87 years old the next time he's available for office. He's not going to run.
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He.
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We need to take that juice that he has, all the goodwill that he has as the populist leader of the left, and we want to put it onto aoc. So I think what we're watching right now is the left realizing we have to give the people on the left in the Democratic Party a leader to get behind, and that person is going to be aoc. And so we're taking the next four years to really transfer all of that goodwill from Bernie to aoc. So I have a feeling that that person, that map of it all, is going to have high predictive validity over what you're about to see. We'll find out. Time will tell. Quick break. But don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.
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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.
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All right, we're back. Let's get into it.
C
Well, internally, while we're going back and forth, there has been a couple tweets over this weekend that shows our external threat being China and their latest tech innovation. I feel like this meme tweeted by Shamath really kind of highlights what's coming.
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We need to describe this for people that are just listening. So the image is of a gigantic dam with cracks in it and behind the dam is, I mean, what is that like 3,000ft of water built up and the only thing stopping it from absolutely demolishing the West. So the water's labeled as China's tech innovation. The dam is the five stages of grief and then the west is the town that is going to get absolutely obliterated when the water breaks through the dam. Now, calling it the five stages of grief is funny, but the real thing is labeling the dam Balaji's tweet thread. Because if Balaji is right about what China is about to do to break that dam apart, it is an extraordinarily extraordinary playbook that China would be wise to implement if their goal is to win against the West. And so let us read that breakdown.
C
So biology kind of breaks it down top to bottom. He labels it AI overproduction and goes step by step, a six point process of how it's going to happen. China seeks to commoditize their compliments. So over the following months I expect a complete blitz of Chinese open source AI models for everything from computer vision to robotics to image gener. Why? I'm just inferring this from public statements, but their apparent goal is to take out profit out of AI software since they have money on AI enabled hardware. Basically they want to do to US tech the last stronghold, what they already did to US manufacturing, namely copy it, optimize it, scale it, and then wreck the Western original with low prices. I don't know if they'll succeed. But here's the logic. Number one. First, China noticed that Deep Seq's release temporarily knocked $1 trillion off of US tech market caps.
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Pause for there for a second. Don't fail to understand how catastrophic a trillion dollars in value evaporating effectively instantaneously is. Now some of it will bounce back for sure, but China is paying attention. China did see that and it will update their thinking.
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Number two. Second, China's core competency is exporting physical widgets more than it is software. Third, China's other core competency is exporting things at such massive scale that all foreign producers are bankrupt and they win the market. See what they're doing to German and Japanese cars, for example. This is BYD being the number one exported car in the last two years. Fourth, China is well aware that it lacks global prestige as it's historically been a copycat. With Deepseek becoming the number one in AI is now something they can actually consider possibly achievable in a matter of national pride. Fifth, Deepseek has gone viral in China and its open source nature means that everyone can rapidly integrate it down to the level of local officials and obscure companies. And they are doing so and posting the results for praise on WeChat. 6. Finally, while Deep Seek has obscure. Number 6. Finally, while Deepseek was obscure before recent events, it's now a household name. And the founder, Liang Wang Fang, has met both with Xi and also with number two in China, Li Yang.
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I think it's Li Qiang Kiang.
C
I thought that was a wide.
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Oh, maybe it is. Maybe. I don't know, I'll just bite my tongue.
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Li Q I I A N G they likely have unlimited resources now. So if you put all that together, China thinks it has an opportunity to hit US tech companies, boost its prestige, help its internal economy, and take the margins out of AI software globally, at least at the model level.
A
This is a brilliant playbook to run. And the thing that I really want people to understand is Thucydides trap is real. There is an inevitable confrontation that is going to play out between the US and China. And that confrontation looks something like the following. We, China, are a rising power. We are going to be acknowledged as that rising power. You, the US have tried to keep us out of things like we block China. The reason that they did Deep Seat the way that they did it was that we blocked them from getting access to some of the best chips in the world. Those chips are made in Taiwan, the very place that China has said Taiwan belongs to China, it is a one state and we are going to reintegrate with Taiwan. They have said it many times that is on the agenda. So you can imagine if they can do what Balaji is saying and by mass producing this stuff, take out the financial incentive for the US to continue to build this stuff, then they can bankrupt essentially the entire AI industry and become the leaders. Here's where people have to understand the difference between training a model and inference. So training the model is for me, when I talk about AI, if it has an upper bound on intelligence, then this is all going to stall out and we never get to the post capitalist utopia. Nobody's more aware the second you say utopia, you should question yourself than I am. I'm hyper aware of that. But nonetheless, that being the idea that AI is going to make things so much better, but for that you need super intelligence. For super intelligence to happen, there has to be essentially no upper bound to how intelligent AI can get. You can get more intelligence at the level of inference, but you're not going to come to understand the laws of physics, for instance. So that model where we're just doing this through inference is what I call the capped intelligence model. Now it's entirely possible that China breaks the financial incentive for any company, quite frankly, to continue to pursue things at the level of training. I think that that would be that alone, even if it didn't cause China to win, that would be catastrophic for what AI could do. The reason is training a model, going through all that data, having all the chips that you need to go and effectively learn the rules of how the world actually works, that is extraordinarily expensive. Now, once somebody trains the model, and this is the conventional wisdom on how Deep Seek work, though nobody knows for sure, was that they basically just asked Chat GPT a whole bunch of questions. Because I think a couple of years ago if you asked Deep Seek, it may not even have been that long ago, if you asked Deep Seek, what are you? It would say I'm chatgpt. Because basically it was saying, oh cool, you guys go spend all the money on the very expensive training model and then we're just going to query that already intelligent system about how the world works. And then we distill it to far fewer parameters. Now that's great for all the builders in the world. I mean, as somebody who wants to build an AI infused toy, I'm like, oh, amazing. Like I'll just use Deep Seq or Llama. Great. They've managed to further compress all the knowledge of how the world works down to something really small. But if now all the either they basically just make it free. And so now it's about all the things that are built on the back of that. And nobody wants to fund the learning models because they know if we spend the billions and billions and billions of dollars that it takes to train this model and then other people will just come along very Quickly after the fact, query it it and now drive the cost of the, the presentable monetizable intelligence. That's the right way to think about it, that they can drive the cost of the monetizable intelligence down to effectively nothing. Why would I spend the money over here? And so it, it could end up stalling out just from that. If what biology is saying, which is that plus if they're even better at the further distillation of the intelligence now it's like if there's no money in training the model anymore, now it's just a race to who can be the best at distilling what we already know. And if they can just outpace and beat the US because they've proven over and over and over that that's what they're good at, is you get more efficient and you do this at scale. And if from a cultural standpoint the US just can't keep up with that and then China becomes the de facto standard for the monetizable level of intelligence, then we just lost the AI race. And that is not a position that we want to be in. When you remember Thucydides Trap is real and that you have a rising power and a declining power and they will collide and if you lose the technological race, you by definition lose the military race. And if we lose the military race to our Thucydides Trap dance partner, then that. I don't want to say game over because I don't want to be overly hyperbolic, but you don't want to be in that position. You don't want to be Ukraine in the Russia Ukraine analogy, you might be able to stymie them, you might be able to stop them, but oh dear God, you don't want to be in that position where you don't have the might to just absolutely beat them back. That would not be in a good position. I don't want to be in a global negotiation with other powers saying, hey, they shouldn't be allowed to keep that much of California. So that is, that is the hard reality of an adversary that you can't forestall with economic and military might.
C
It's, it's crazy because it seems like a foregone conclusion almost at this point with this six point breakdown, because with them now having unlimited resources, I'm guessing backed by the government, how do we compete? Because China is so top down where we're kind of individuals and echo chambers arguing about crowd sizes, like what is our bounce back? How do we overcome that?
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All right, this is A really brilliant point that you made during the live and I will once again encourage everybody to come to the lives when we film these. What you were saying earlier was an elongated version of that and the pitch goes something like this. Okay, we're all freedom loving people and so we're about deregulating and just let people do what they're going to do. But we're going up against China that has maximum efficiency because the government can just tell you, you now do this, the government can just give money to Deep Sea can be like you now have an unlimited pocketbook. Your sole goal in the universe is to make sure that there's no money in training these models so that we can now corner the market in being efficient at extracting the wisdom from these models. And how on earth could we possibly compete? The Biden administration's whole shtick was, yeah, we're going to out China China and we're also going to get involved in AI now and we're going to through regulatory capture. We're going to make sure there's only two or three companies, we're going to back them, we're going to make sure that they the support that they need. We're going to make sure that they're not being challenged by all these upstarts. It's like you guys are going to be the ones. We're going to make sure that we have control, make sure this doesn't get away from us, make sure that we can use it as a weapon against China and we're going to direct all the funds. Now the problem is if you try to out China China, you will lose. You want to be a maximum American version and show why we've become over the last 250 years, we become the America that is the dominant global superpower. And the way that we have gotten here is by saying innovation is a game where you incentivize individual creators to go out, get people excited, paint a vision, do crazy things that everybody else thinks is crazy that the government would otherwise try to shut down. Because like they were doing with AI they just get scared or whatever. And so they don't want to see that stuff going forward unless it's under their control. We were the exact opposite of that. And we were like the whole battle that played out from, I mean really, it's really been going on since like the late 1800s, early 1900s. Like is this going to be a socialist communist world where it's top down control? We make sure everybody's well taken care of in these uppity billionaires, as we would say today, that, that we keep them on a tight leash and we don't let them run riot because they're evil and they're just likely to take us in a negative direction. Or do we say, yo, you have to run the risk that some people really win this game of capitalism, but you want to them innovate, you want to give them as much freedom as humanly possible and let them do their thing. Up until now, doing that has been the obvious answer. Now a wrench got thrown into the last, call it, 150ish years of that debate and that was China going sometimes top down, sometimes capitalism. And we're now about to find out if the red light, green light game that they play is going to end up being better. And the honest answer is no one knows yet. And that is this cold war. This cold war is do you give people maximum freedom here in the west, specifically in the US and really deregulate and let these crazy innovators from all over the world come here on that trump gold card, pay your $5 million, get in the door, get into a very tech friendly regulatory environment, Innovate, innovate, innovate, Make a ton of money, but also like do this incredible stuff for the world. Or is China right? And it's like, hey Jack Ma, we don't like the way you're talking so we're going to disappear you for a couple years and when you come back you're going to be a very different human and we'll let people go for a bit and then we're going to clamp down on it. And this is why I really want Americans to lean into being American, lean into the ideas of freedom and liberty and build and innovate and create and do not let authoritarian top down rule. You will be a terrible version of that anyway because we've attracted over the last 250 years far too many freedom loving people. And so we'll just tear ourselves apart from the inside. And also as one extraordinarily biased human, I think it's a worse play to try to control people from the top down. I don't think it works. And in the long run I think we will be in a much better position than China. Even though right now, not going to lie, what they did in the 90s and early 2000s, pretty breathtaking.
C
It's interesting to see where this plays out because I kind of see the chess board moving a little bit right now and we're so caught in our internal divisions that we're not really seeing the rises and the, the sentiment change. Outside of the US there is the BRICS nation, they're forming their own coalition. China has been, Mr. World Ambassador, setting up on this. Yeah. Setting up partnerships and initiatives with other countries. So I think that convincing the rest of the world that they're the bad guys a LA World War II, Hitler and you guys should join us, the US so we can go fight them. I don't know if that's going to gain much theme. So I feel like if it ever turns to that point, China will probably end up being the Russia and we would end up being the Ukraine where we're on, on our heels, backpedaling, trying to defend ourselves versus being the bully and the number one superpower that we've been used to these last 150 years.
A
Yeah, I mean this is an excruciatingly important moment where the US is going to have to decide who are we and are we playing to win or do we have so much success that now we can afford to be guilty and we can pull ourselves apart from the inside. And the bad news is that when you look back at all the empires that have risen and fallen, they follow a really predictable pattern. And that is you are the hardest core around and you fight your way to the top. You build a really killer economy. You ride on the back of innovations, oftentimes wartime innovations, that then work their way through the culture. You become exceptionally powerful by generating debt. Your debt begins to balloon, which is letting you do all this amazing stuff and have this empire and go conquesting. And then you realize, oh, we're going to have to print money because if we don't, our economy is going to be in trouble. And so now you print to deal with your debt and you get to the point where you're now in a position where internally you've had so much success for so long, you start feeling guilty, you open your borders, you let people come in, you realize, oh, we have to print more money to take care of all the people that we've allowed to come into our borders. And now all of a sudden, the spiral's out of control. You hyper inflate your currency and your empire just starts piece by piece, breaking apart. You sell it off, you lose it, et cetera, et cetera, until you are a shell of your former glory. You need look no farther than less than 100 years ago to what happened to the UK and they used to be the dominant global force on planet Earth. I believe they built the largest empire geographically that had ever, in all of human history ever been built, and now they are just a tiny ass island. A little more than that, not a lot. So this, this is a thing that loops and loops and loops and loops, and I don't know if the human mind is capable of avoiding this loop. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors. All right, we're back. Let's get into it.
C
To make matters more interesting, I'm not going to say worse. For the first time, Russia and us are actually on the same page about something. For the first time in years, the White House and the Kremlin are openly demonstrating their mutual attraction. Then JD Vance response.
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By the way, if I'm not mistaken, that is Steve Rosenberg quoting a Russian newspaper. Yeah, so it was a Russian newspaper that said the US And Russia are demonstrating their mutual attraction after hearing Steve Witkoff's interview. We'll get into value sets here in a second. I know you want to talk about J.D. vance first, so let's do that.
C
J.D. vance responded this morning tweeting, steve Witkoff is a great guy doing an incredible job. The people sniping at him are mad that he's succeeding where they failed for 40 years. Turns out a lot of diplomacy boils down to a simple skill. Don't be an idiot. I just wanted to ask a simple question. Is this good for diplomacy or is this US making validating a dictator? Like, what's your take on Russia, US Relations?
A
The only way to answer that question is to ask people what their value system is, because everybody's locked inside of a frame of reference that is made up of their biology, their beliefs, and their values. If you believe, hey, I don't care if NATO comes right up to your border. If you invade a sovereign nation, bad on you. And I'm going to respond aggressively. If, on the other hand, you believe, hey, like in the Bay of Pigs, I'm not going to allow there to be nuclear weapons from Russia brought to Cuba. That is a hard line. Absolutely not. I don't care that that's not my territory. You are now in my hemisphere. You have crossed a line, and I will respond aggressively. And we got on the Cuban Missile Crisis, excuse me for calling it Bay Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis. And we walked right up to pressing the button for nuclear war, because we're like this. This is a red line, and we are not going to back down depending on which of those two stances you take. If you're like, you can't invade a sovereign nation no matter what, then that's one energy. If you're, hey, you can't invade a powers sphere of influence, that's going to be a different energy. And you're going to see people here in the US if nowhere else, respond based on that base assumption. Because some people look at Putin and they say, this guy's an evil dictator. He invaded a sovereign nation. Cool. You now know what base assumption they have or what value system they're operating under that you may not invade a sovereign nation no matter what they're doing on their land. So if they want to bring nuclear missiles right across your border, then it is what it is. If, on the other hand, you say, I can't read Putin's mind, so I don't know if he's an imperialist that just wants to expand. All I know is that we said we wouldn't move NATO any closer, and we kept doing it. And so therefore, I get why he's responding the way that he's responding now. You have their value system. Both of those people are going to be able to make compelling arguments for why they see what they see. And this is why listening to one side or one person is not going to save you. You have to look at both sides and go, what do I believe to be true? Or in this case, what do I believe ought to be true? And so people are going to try to walk that gray area of like, well, hold on, I don't think that you should be able to move, move nuclear weapons onto that border. But I don't think that Trump is imperialist. I think that he really has a reason to be afraid. And I think that this is crazy that we were moving closer. And I just believe that he is pushing back because he doesn't want to see that any closer. And so I also don't think you should be able to invade a sovereign nation. But the reality is, I don't think you should be able to invade a sovereign nation if your goal is to take over. I believe you should if you know that there's a legitimate threat to your own sovereignty. And so now we're in this gray area dance of, well, he's just trying to protect his own sovereignty. And so welcome to the reality of great power politics. It's never going to be clear. Nobody's ever going to know what's in his heart. Maybe both things are in his heart. And it's like, like, I just need an excuse. I am expansionist, but I wasn't going to expand until you gave me that reason. And so then it's like, okay, well, if he, he is doing it because he wants to be expansionist, but we did give him the reason to do it. Now, where you, where do you fall? At some point, you have to recognize that the law becomes a bright line. And you just say, either you can't invade a sovereign nation or whatever your bright line is, but you have to draw a line somewhere at some point and say, now I'm going to, to stand 10 toes down on this value system.
C
And then to make us even more of a hypocrite, I'm also seeing, thinking of the 21,001 wars in the Middle east, the war on terror, where we were in Afghanistan, we were in Iraq, we were in Pakistan chasing weapons of mass destruction that we found out wasn't necessarily there, extracting resources, doing other things where technically we're invading a sovereign nation on the hunt to get terrorists. But it's one.
A
Iraq was never that. I get what you're saying, though. Here's the thing. You're only a hypocrite if you're saying, no, no, we'd never invade a sovereign nation. And then you do it. If your thing is, if you with me, I will reign unholy hell down on you. You're not being a hypocrite. You might be being evil, but you're not being a hypocrite. If your secret value is you are going to do good deals with us in terms of access to oil, and if you with us, we will come in and we will absolutely stomp the shit out of you. You're not being a hypocrite. You might be being evil, but you're not being a hypocrite. This is where, dude, if we could get politicians to state their values, we would live in a very different world. But the reality is, the one thing they're not going to do is state their values. And thus we live in a world of spin. That's not quite true. They will sometimes state values that they know are popular, but they're not going to draw hard and fast lines and they're going to avoid it. 99 times out of 100.
C
Okay, now I'm gonna throw another thing in there. Let's talk about Greenland. Because the Prime Minister slammed the highly aggressive visit by U.S. officials, including first. Second Lady Usha Vance. So the Greenland prime minister, mute b edgy, called the US delegation trip to the island highly aggressive. Interview with a Greenlandic newspaper on Sunday. In Ray's particular objection, the Waltzes vision it what is the national security advisor doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us. Eed said his mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump's mission and their pressure will increase. Could this be kind of also in that ecos of not an invasion some people are talking about? We're bringing navy ships there. I don't think we're going to go into war to take Greenland, but it is a little dicey that we're making this pressure and we're showing up. I'm like, hey, you guys should do this.
A
Yeah, this comes down to what is your value system? And if your value system is, hey, these are sovereign nations, Greenland is, I believe, a territory of Denmark. And given that this is a its own sovereign nation that is tied to Denmark, we shouldn't be engaging with this in any way, shape or form. And whatever pressure we're going to put on them should be purely diplomatic. If we think that there's national security interests in Greenland, then we should be working with Denmark and Greenland to get the things that we need. We shouldn't be making these overtures like, hey, we're going to get this one way or the other and that's not the right way to play it. But that's a value system. If your value system is America is going to protect its interests and we will do whatever it takes, including all the way. We will pressure Greenland diplomatically first and if we're not able to get this done through diplomatic channels, we will go all the way to boots on the ground and that's just how it's going to be. And everybody has to understand that we are at war with a cold war with China that could escalate into a hot war. China and Russia are in cahoots and so hard and fast line Greenland, you are going to play ball. That's a values question. That's what do we think are going to be the second and third order consequences of that? Is it going to make America better or worse? We live in an era where there's going to be a battle between cover stories. Everybody's saying they understand what's really going on, but the reality is that the motivations are so complicated and so intertwined with a lot of things that the vast majority of humans will not know all of the variables that are at play that it just becomes a propaganda war of what can you convince the American people to get behind? And I will take us back to what you said about Iraq back was in the final analysis, if we cannot all agree that that was just all a bunch of lies. And if they weren't lies in the beginning, we very rapidly found out that they were lies and that they didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And we still did it anyway, and we stayed there for a very, very long time. And this is the nature of these games, what people are actually playing for. I think this is the belief that has the highest utility is, is attaining and maintaining power. Period. End of story, full stop. Simple as you are trying to win, like you want your team to be in the best position, you'll often give people a friendly cover story. But the reality is this is a game of power.
C
Well, we shall see. I feel like it's. It's getting interesting because so many things are happening at once. I feel like one domino in one area can topple the whole, like, puzzle.
A
The craziest thing about all of this, this. All of these things have always been happening. We just didn't have the ability to hear about them. This goes back to the. Yeah, the ability to control the narrative, which has been true up until, what, 2007. Until 2007, you really could control the narrative. And now that's just gone. There's no way. So it's now people are going to battle ideas. You've got a president who negotiates. Part of his negotiation strategy is out in the public, and that has effect. So when you call, something is about to happen to a stock position that has an impact on the actual stock position. This is the whole idea of shorting, that you can short something and the mere fact that you are shorting it makes the price go down. And so you get all these weird battles. And the one of recent memory was the Gamestop short squeeze, where people on Reddit realized, oh, my God, we can actually, through social media, we can come together and absolutely, these guys up and they did, and they destroyed. I mean, an actual hedge fund got obliterated because they never counted on a group organizing via social media to do something that economically was not in their best interest, but they did it anyway just to be like you. I think given the amount of information and how rapidly it travels, so volume and velocity of information, you create these rogue waves of cultural beliefs that will pop up so fast and dissipate so fast that it is extremely. It is impossible to accurately map how people are going to respond to what's happening. And so how all this plays out over time, I don't know. But watching Russia and the Ukraine has been utterly fascinating because right now, now, the Trump administration is trying to change the narrative. It went from, I mean, again, maybe just the bias of my own algorithm, but it went from seeming like everybody agreed that Russia was the bad guy to now it's like, well, maybe Russia's not the bad guy. Maybe Zelinsky brought this on himself. It's like, yo, so even if that's true, people should be looking at this going, then how did they trick me in the beginning to get me to believe that Russia was a bad guy guy? And if this is not true, how is it that they're making a very substantive percentage of people switch to, oh, maybe Russia's not so bad after all? It's like, whoa. So people need to be persuadable by facts. I don't want people to be unpersuadable, that is for sure. But whoa. The things that persuade us are almost always emotional in nature. And that worries me.
C
Well, some other people are doing some persuading, and that is Hyundai or, or Hyundai,
A
Hyundai or Hyundai. Which is how my very Western American mind always thinks of it when I see it.
C
They just announced a $20 billion investment in the US later today, including 5.8 billion for a steel plant in Louisiana. And this brings Trump's total proposed investments from external companies to $2 trillion.02. Like, that's a substantial amount.
A
2.02 trillion.
C
2.02 trillion between Apple, Softbank and some. And now Hyundai and some others.
A
And I think the Taiwanese manufacturing company. I always forget the call letters smc. Yeah. So, yeah, they're calling this a Trump effect. So is this going to play out in time? That's going to be the question. But it really, given how many companies are making promises to invest in the US There is something going on there. Again, I would not hand wave this one away. It is very much a game of chicken, there's no doubt about that. And I buy into Howard Lutnick's breakdown of. Tariffs do not cause inflation. Inflation is very much caused by money printing. But tariffs can cause certain goods to go up in price. And when you have something like a mango where it cannot be made in the US you would be wise to make that something that you exclude tariffs on. But things like cars, semiconductors, those are things that we can make in the US and so putting pressure on companies to come and make them here in the US to an extent, certainly to the tune of $2.02 trillion of promised investments. It's very different than investments already made. But promised investment, that's not nothing, man. That, that is A very substantive investment that if those end up being factories that create jobs, especially in manufacturing, something very positive could come out of that for the average American who is, who we should all be going to bat for. But it's a game of chicken because if it raises prices too much and takes too long, if we make it to midterms and people don't see costs going down, jobs going up, up, no bueno. Trump will lose the House lame duck Dunzo at the end of four years. Meaning Republicans. Trump better be done at the end of four years.
C
Yeah, no, no, that term three stuff. In other news, Michael Strategy's company, Strategy has did another bitcoin bid. They have acquired 6,911 bitcoins for a total of $584.1 million. At 84,000 per the total price of bitcoin today. I believe it hit 88. Yes, it hit 88,300. Up 2.75% and still kind of still rising. So Strategy now holds, what was it? 2.9% of total Bitcoin. 2.4%.
A
2.7%.
C
Yeah. 2.4% of all total bitcoin. Are you bullish? How do you feel about this strategy acquisition?
A
Nothing about what MicroStrategy is doing Influences my belief about the future of bitcoin, which is entirely predicated on my thesis that the future will be more digital than the past. And that one of the most important things to make digital is money. And the last place that I, and I should be very careful with my definitions, I need a place to store my wealth. The smartest place to store my wealth is in a digital asset that cannot be inflated, not be inflated is the most important part of that. Digital speaks to my thesis on just the future is just going to be digital, digital, digital, as far as the eye can see. So I think that Michael Saylor and Microstrategy or Strategy now they agree with that. So they're making all these investments. But the reality is that's not why I think that this is a long term wise place to park your wealth. Wealth. This is a wise place to park your wealth because of the thesis. They are simply an echo of that thesis. Now it's a volatile asset, so it's going to go up or down like that is whatever to me. Just look at the. When you zoom out on bitcoin, it is basically a hockey stick. So people need to keep their heads. Don't day trade, just invest on a thesis. As long as the thesis remains true, go for it. So yeah, that, that's what I see when I look at all of this now. Now the part about microstrategy strategy that people really should be like, yo, this is incredible is he has pulled the entire gambling apparatus of the stock market onto Bitcoin. That's the brilliance of what they're doing because bitcoin is bitcoin. What you're seeing with microstrategy is his ability to give people access to all of those mechanisms to short something, to to get a bunch of different instruments that give you different access to the level of volatility. All the things that the stock market is good at. He's now brought that to bitcoin. It'll be interesting to see what happens is stock price. As more and more companies do this, as more and more people just start holding bitcoin directly, we'll see. But right now it is just utterly brilliant when you understand what Michael Saylor is, is actually doing.
C
His company still going up and bitcoin is some estimation. See 400,000 this year. So by no means is this roller coaster stopping anytime soon.
A
So people like to gamble and they want to be able to gamble in all the fancy ways that the stock market allows you to gamble on bitcoin.
C
All right, Tom, how's your self care going?
A
My self care is top notch. I'm not going to lie. I prioritize sleep at all times. I know that that love with a human still remains my number one priority. So having loving relationships matter a lot. Meaning and purpose, these are my focuses and this is not a setup. I didn't know you were going to ask me that question. So it's sort of pat is my answer sounds that really is true.
C
No. So you don't have any Saratoga water? No banana peels.
A
Okay. I did know we were going to talk about this. Just didn't know you're going to intro it in that way. This is hilarious.
C
This broke the Internet this weekend. So we have to jump into about Ashton Hall's morning routine.
A
Can we take a second to be very impressed with this man's physique?
C
Yeah, yeah. He's Jack.
A
Holy be Jesus. I can't believe this is serious though. I thought he was kidding. There's no way with that. Was that him actually making those sounds? Cuz that sounds like someone making it squeak.
C
So we going to be serious about
A
the Lord's business now? He did we ever figure out what his relationship to Saratoga water is?
C
It was just he's an influencer. He doesn't have any.
A
So he's not the CEO. People are saying he's the CEO. Okay, so, but I mean, this is a great ad for Saratoga water. Is this marked as an ad?
C
And this is somebody retweeting it. So this had 680.687 million views over the weekend.
A
If you guys are just watching, it's literally like minute by minute showing exactly how he spends the day. That's the one people troll them the most. Is it true? I can't see it because it's like the sky's too white. But he just. The time actually change from jump to land.
C
He jumped at 7:36am Him.
A
Yeah. So, okay, there. There are some trolley. There are ways for trolls to really have fun with this. There's no doubt about that. Because he jumps at one time and four minutes later lands in the water. Whoops. But yeah, what's interesting about this. So listen, I get why the Internet is going absolutely insane. This is very similar to the Ed Mylett thing that happened on my own show that people give him laser eyes as he describes how he's got like, like 36 hours or whatever in 24 hours because he breaks his day into like these eight hour segments. I get that. I get why people think this is funny. But the reality is being efficient with your time, man, is the game. It is the game. So have fun. Troll it even. I think this is hilarious. Shout out to Mr. Beast. I actually encountered Mr. Beast's troll before I saw the actual thing. So I was like, like, wait. Because Mr. Beast is like, oh, my assistant. I overslept today and my assistant like sent me all these messages. And so it's like, did you rub the banana peel on your face and all. I was like, what? I'm like, there's no way that. Because I didn't know it was a meme going on. Like, there's no way that Mr. Beast rubs a banana peel on his face. But the man in that video that we just watched rubs a banana peel on his face. I still want to believe that he's kidding, but he really rubs banana peels and uses. Not tap water, uses bottled Saratoga water to. And here's the thing. Putting your face in ice water really does shrink your pores. So there's that. If you're gonna be on camera, do your thing.
C
There's something there.
A
But yeah, boys and girls, you should have a morning routine, even if it is not comical like this. That guy's jacked. So he's getting some results. Now I have no idea about the rest of his life. So I Don't know if there's anything to emulate there or not. Not. But if homeboy's got a gym routine, I'd listen up, cuz.
C
Damn, he's doing it.
A
He is in good ass shape. Good Lord, those lats, bro. Did you see those lats, though?
C
Crazy.
A
Woo.
C
Popping out.
A
Get that back. Get that back. Strong.
C
Last but not least. I solved it, everybody. The streets is trash. I figured it out. I solved the male long list epidemic. When I seen this video, I feel like everything came together and it made sense. Tom hasn't even seen this yet. This is a live reaction.
A
All right. Yeah. Drew hid this from all of us in the live today. He's like, no, no, you got to wait for the full episode. So here we are. Let's see it.
C
All right, the caption is.
A
Okay, I have really bad news. I did see this on my own over the weekend, but. Okay, play this. I'm very curious to see who you pick up on most here.
C
Yourself, on a scale of one to ten. Nine and a half.
A
Okay, pause.
C
Other people would agree.
A
What do you rate her at?
C
She's bad. I would rate her. I'll give. I'll give it a nine. Yeah, I'm not.
A
That seems reason. I don't think there's. There's any zone in which we should hate on her.
C
No. Yeah, she's definitely in that range. Eric and G. Yeah. Off camera. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Where do you rate this girl on a scale of one to ten? Oh, she fire, though. Ten. I love her.
A
Okay, now for people that are just watching at home. Okay. He's about to give his rating because I was going to say this guy is not quite at the same level of physical shape that our young lady was at, so. All right, let's hear him.
C
6.5. Do you think other people would agree? Hopefully.
A
What would you guys rate?
C
So he rated himself at 6.5. Yep.
A
Okay, but now for people watching the woman that they're about to speak to, what rating do you give her?
C
I think she's cute. I'm into it. I would give her like, a six or seven. So I feel like they're in the same, like, playing field.
A
Yes. And so I think this is the punchline of the whole video is that she is on par with our man.
C
Yeah. Yeah.
A
So now if you're just listening, know that that's where we're at. So our somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half, seven woman is about to rate our somewhere in the neighborhood of six, six and a half. If I'm being honest, guy, they're about to encounter each other and let's see what happens.
C
Born to 10. Oh, yeah. He's cute. Like a seven and a half. You think bro's cute? I do, yeah. You're gonna say something. So, I mean, sure, why not? Excuse me. Are you playing football?
A
I love everything about this woman I love.
C
Like, she's outgoing, she's bouncy, sweet. Yes.
A
And like, by the way, seems to have, like, she's clocked herself at the right. What I would call sexual market value. I think people tend to be very delusional about their sexual market value and. But not her, man. She's like on point.
C
And the fact that she was open minded, bubbly, she didn't take herself too seriously. Like the attitude part. And that's the hardest part. Like, she has that.
A
Yeah. Because if she had gone, oh, hell no. Like, I only go for 10.
C
Yeah. Or he has to come talk to me. Or it would have been a way different video.
A
Way different video. All right, back to our girl. Let me talk to you.
C
I think you cute.
A
Can I get you.
C
Okay.
A
I already hate his response.
C
Yep. The body language. He's over. He looks interested.
A
Yup.
C
He's trying to figure out who else is seeing him talk to her. It's weird. It's weird because they would have been a cute couple. What's your name?
A
He's not even looking.
C
Not completely. This is the first time I think he turned to her and I think he's looking at her hand. Not even her. What you here for something fun? I look here. All right. Yeah.
A
What would you rate her?
C
Game on.
A
I hate everything about that.
C
She's so sweet, so cute about it. It was again, tried to ask him engaging questions.
A
You live around here. Even though he's clearly not giving it back.
C
Let's go one to 10. She ain't really had no games. She's asking me for my number. How would you rate the interaction on skill 1 to 10? Maybe like a 6.
A
Mad shout out to that young lady who, from her perspective, I love everything about that exchange. But the guy fumbled the ball from where I'm sitting, man. I mean, listen, I. At the end of the day, if he's just not attracted to her, fair enough. But like, Like, I don't know, he. I'm old school like this, so my mom taught me that to be kind comes at no cost. Yep. And so if somebody who is. I don't find attractive, let's say I'm single. Comes up to me I'm not going to be disinterested. I'd be like, oh, my God, Like, I'm honored. That's so sweet. Of course. Now, listen, if I don't want to give her my number, I would say I like to get to know people better first. You know, whatever. Like, hit me up on Twitter if you. Something like that. I'm not just going to give anybody who asks my number, but I am going to be kind and the sort of aloof, disinterested game I'm not here for. But I want to know, why did this catch fire so much? What is the consensus? What are people saying? This has 14.2 million views. So as I have not gone through the comments, what are people picking up on here? That she's rad and he's goofy, or.
C
So the initial caption is, how do you even fumble this badly? Which means you had somebody that is actively coming to you with all the things that we mentioned.
A
Where do you see that? I don't see how you fumble this badly. Oh, there you go.
C
So it's one of those things where that's. That's the punchline is that this guy, who's presumably single since he's in this video, is going back and forth talking about, oh, that girl's fire right there. Oh, yeah, I'm a 6.5. Somebody else rated him higher. So all automatically, everybody's. Every boy mom has heard the same sentence. Make sure you get somebody that likes you more than you like them. They want to motivate you in that way. Like you. You kind of want that. I don't. I'll call it an ego boost. There's probably a better way for it, but you want a woman that's into you, not somebody that you're always chasing, not somebody that you're always trying to appease and make like you. Yeah, he has that. She's talked to him. She's genuine. She's trying to keep the conversation going. And even at the surface level, like you said, see what it is? See, like, see, get to know her. You might like her. Y' all might have shared interests. There might be something there, there. But instead, he's at the beach. He's looking at her, and I can see him looking at the first girl, trying to find her, trying to look tough and cool, trying to chase windmills as opposed to, like, looking at the person that's, like, into him and talking to him right in front of his face. Yeah, there's this whole, like, the next person that's on the other side of the fence, grass is greener, and we're missing the blessings right in front of us.
A
Drew, I don't think more words need to be said.
C
I solved it, man. Guys, look in front of you, man.
A
Let's.
C
Let's stop reaching for or, you know, there might be your Cinderella might be right there. That's it. That's all I got.
A
I like it. All right, everybody. If you haven't already, be sure wherever you get your podcast to leave us a five star review. It helps more than you know. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take Care Peace at vrbo, we understand
E
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Episode Title: America’s New Weapon: Tariffs, Sanctions & Economic Warfare
Podcast: Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory
Date: March 26, 2025
Host: Tom Bilyeu
In this episode, Tom Bilyeu and co-hosts dive deep into the evolving landscape of economic warfare, disinformation, U.S. and global politics, and the cultural clashes shaping the new "cold war" era. They unpack recent headlines featuring China’s tech ambitions, the weaponization of tariffs and sanctions, shifting geopolitical alliances, digital manipulation, and the impact of political narratives at home and abroad. The conversation blends rigorous analysis with Tom's signature call for personal responsibility and clear thinking.
Key Segment: 00:45–06:41
Key Segment: 06:41–15:41
Key Segment: 16:45–26:27
Key Segment: 26:27–32:04
Key Segment: 32:04–39:22
Key Segment: 39:22–44:07
Key Segment: 46:56–52:46
Key Segment: 53:09–63:01
On Deepfakes & Manipulation
"I really want it to be fake... having an elected official talk like that mortifies me to my absolute core."
(Tom Bilyeu, 02:46)
On Information Warfare
"You're always being spun and positioned."
(Tom Bilyeu, 07:42)
On Predictive Validity & Bias
"I prize utility. I want things that have high predictive validity..."
(Tom Bilyeu, 08:11)
On the Real Political Game
“Whoever's in power lives and dies by their tactics and their results. Whoever's out of power gets to emotionally whip people up.”
(Tom Bilyeu, 09:23)
On American (vs. Chinese) Innovation
“You want to be a maximum American version and show why we've become the America that is the dominant global superpower...”
(Tom Bilyeu, 27:36)
On the Cycle of Empire
“This is a thing that loops and loops... and I don't know if the human mind is capable of avoiding this loop.”
(Tom Bilyeu, 33:06)
On Power vs. Hypocrisy
"You're not being a hypocrite. You might be being evil, but you're not being a hypocrite."
(Tom Bilyeu, 39:47)
This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking strategic insight into economic warfare, digital manipulation, and the deep forces shaping U.S. and world affairs in 2025.