Iran Cuts Off US Oil, No Ally Wants To Help + Tucker Under Investigation + China Surrounds Taiwan | Tom Bilyeu Show Live

Summary

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Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu — March 16, 2026

Episode: Iran Cuts Off US Oil, No Ally Wants To Help + Tucker Under Investigation + China Surrounds Taiwan

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Overview

In this episode of Impact Theory, Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew dive into a tumultuous weekend of global headlines: Iran blocks oil shipments to the US and its allies, Trump’s calls for help go unanswered, wild rumors about Netanyahu’s fate grip the internet, the DOJ investigates Tucker Carlson for alleged backchanneling with Iran, and China ramps up military activity around Taiwan. This episode scrutinizes the collision of propaganda, meme-culture, and real geopolitics—unpacking how information warfare and social media distraction are shaping global conflict, alliances, and public perception.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Iran Closes the Strait of Hormuz; US Isolated (00:14–09:33)

• Iran's Move: Iran announces the Strait of Hormuz—a vital global oil chokepoint—is now closed to the US, Israel, and their allies. Tom views this as a calculated and effective economic weapon.

  • “This is economics—it’s going to come down to the money moving through the water.” (03:33 – Tom)

• US Response: Trump appeals to America’s allies for help reopening the Strait, only to be ignored—a result, Tom suggests, of years spent bullying those allies:

  • “If you’re going to bully your allies, there are going to be consequences to this...we are finding ourselves alienated.” (04:03–04:45 – Tom)

• Potential Escalation: Tom breaks down possible next steps: Trump could stage further strikes or even put boots on the ground, but this risks catastrophic escalation with Iran.

• Broader Consequences: Iran’s hold on the Strait gives it massive leverage to disrupt the global economy. The hosts warn even friendly nations won’t risk their own stability when energy shortages spark civil unrest at home.

  • “When people start losing their modern way of life because of energy needs…This is the same pressure we apply to others, now it’s at the global level.” (08:44 – Tom)

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2. Netanyahu ‘Coffeegate’ and the Age of Distrust (10:22–21:36)

• Viral AI Rumor: Over the weekend, rumors explode that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is dead, with social media “proofs” (odd fingers, coffee sipping “anomalies”) fueling speculation that videos of him are AI-generated coverups.

  • “It all started with an Instagram account… that dropped a post claiming Netanyahu was dead because he appeared to have six fingers in a video.” (10:51 – Tom)

• Dissecting the Mania: Tom and Drew analyze the wild ‘evidence’, debunking most anomalies as palm creases or compression artifacts. They highlight how the public is unable to distinguish AI fakery from reality, and that propaganda thrives in this confusion.

  • “Nothing is provably real anymore. That’s where all this gets crazy.” (13:51 – Tom)

• Bigger Implication: This chaos serves as the bread and circus of world affairs: viral rage and meme-wars distract from critical issues, and influence which stories dominate the public conversation.

  • “This is a new form of entertainment…you can actually sway what people are looking at.” (19:02 – Tom)

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3. Online Influence Becomes a Weapon: The TikTok Incident (21:36–26:38)

• Shocking Example: A US TikToker shares coordinates and strategic advice for Iranian strikes against Israel, demonstrating the unprecedented role individuals now play in conflicts.

  • “This is the craziest shit… You have a US TikToker speaking directly to the Iranian regime via TikTok, showing them where to strike.” (21:41 – Tom)

• Dangers of Unchecked Expression: Tom highlights how social media becomes a propaganda vector for all sides and warns that in hotter wars, such behavior will have real consequences.

  • “I walk right up to the line of free speech absolutism…but damn, in wartime there are things you just don’t say.” (24:26 – Tom)

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4. Tucker Carlson Under Investigation (26:38–36:06)

• Allegations: Reports break that the DOJ is investigating Tucker Carlson for allegedly backchanneling with Iranian officials—potentially in connection to the targeting of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

• Tucker’s Position: Carlson admits communicating with Iranian contacts “as a journalist” and claims the CIA is reading his texts.

  • “What are you doing texting known terrorists? This is crazy.” (27:18 – Tom)

• Debate: Is this genuine journalism or crossing the line into aiding the enemy?

  • “Journalists talk to everyone, including adversaries—that’s the job. But if he was giving actual aid, you tread on free speech at your peril.” (33:41 – Tom)

• Divided Reactions:

  • Ted Cruz calls Tucker “the most dangerous demagogue in this country.”
  • Candace Owens: “If they arrest Tucker, we ride at dawn.”

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5. China’s Moves on Taiwan Amid Global Chaos (41:19–46:41)

• Military Buildup: China mobilizes 26 military planes and seven naval vessels around Taiwan, with some aircraft breaching the island’s air defense zone.

  • “This is the perfect time for a dress rehearsal…run sorties, get all the ducks in a row.” (41:54 – Tom)

• Strategic Timing: Tom suggests China could be leveraging US distraction in the Gulf to practice or prepare for an eventual invasion—though a full move may wait until oil supplies stabilize.

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6. Cuba & The Socialist Narrative (46:41–62:57)

• DSA Visits Cuba: Democratic Socialists of America draw controversy by visiting Cuba to support the regime during ongoing humanitarian crises and protests.

  • “Now, they are going to Cuba to defend a regime absolutely drenched in humanitarian abuses.” (48:41 – Tom)

• Cuban History Rant: Tom delivers a fact-driven teardown of Cuba’s post-revolution decline under communism:

  • Once one of the most developed Latin American economies, Castro’s forced sugar monoculture and repression led to economic ruin and dependency.
  • “When Castro forced the country to focus on sugar production…it absolutely cratered the country.” (54:03 – Tom)

• Broader Lesson: Tom and Drew debate the persistent socialist argument that capitalist “blockades” are to blame for socialist state failures, countering with the Singapore story of resilience without external support.

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7. AI Breakthrough: Dog Cancer (62:57–68:56)

• Feel-Good Story: An individual, Paul Cunningham, uses ChatGPT and AI tools to design a personalized mRNA vaccine, shrinking his dog’s tumor by 75%.

  • “A man with no previous experience…used ChatGPT to cure his dog’s cancer with a customized vaccine.” (63:24 – Tom)

• Implications: This is a harbinger for AI-driven advances in medicine—a reminder that big data and pattern recognition can transform healthcare.

• Note of Caution: Some are immediately fearful of misuse, but Tom stresses innovation requires risk and shouldn’t be stifled.

  • “This is the type of thing we should celebrate…this is the energy that should go toward [AI adoption].” (67:52 – Drew)

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8. AI Disruption and the Future of Work (73:17–76:27)

• Jobs Under Threat: Review of a now-viral chart showing that virtually every desk-based job is directly threatened by AI automation, with care work and hands-on trades among the last safe havens—for now.

  • “If your job is entirely on a screen, you are toast.” (73:43 – Tom)

• Advice: Adopt and master AI now—those who resist will be left behind.

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9. Ideological Compass & National Allegiances (76:27–81:58)

• Political Compasses: The hosts discuss survey questions about globalization, national loyalty, and justified actions, offering nuanced, nonpartisan takes.

  • “You want somewhere that’s pro-business, pro-innovation, understands the need for economic disparity but also that it becomes toxic.” (77:12 – Tom)

• Fusing Info & Entertainment: Both agree that information and entertainment are worryingly intertwined; disinformation is now spectacle and vice versa.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “If you’re going to bully your allies, there are going to be consequences to this.” (04:03)
• “Nothing is provably real anymore… This is a new form of entertainment. World affairs as bread and circus.” (13:51, 19:02)
• “You have a US TikToker…showing them where to strike. This is fucking wild.” (21:41)
• “Tucker is basically telling on himself… What are you doing texting known terrorists? This is crazy.” (27:18)
• “If they arrest Tucker, we ride at dawn.” (33:52 – paraphrased Candace Owens)
• “When Castro came up with the brilliant idea to force the country to focus on sugar… it absolutely cratered the country.” (54:03)
• “A man with no experience used ChatGPT to cure his dog’s cancer…” (63:24)
• “If your job is entirely on a screen, you are toast.” (73:43)
• “There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.” (81:58)

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Segment Timestamps

• Strait of Hormuz & Trump’s Isolation: 00:14–09:33
• Netanyahu AI Rumors & Coffeegate: 10:22–21:36
• TikToker Aiding Iran & Info Wars: 21:36–26:38
• Tucker Carlson DOJ Probe: 26:38–36:06
• China/Taiwan Tensions: 41:19–46:41
• Cuba/DSA & Socialism Discussion: 46:41–62:57
• AI Cures Dog Cancer: 62:57–68:56
• Future of Jobs in the Age of AI: 73:17–76:27
• Ideology, Nationalism, and Media: 76:27–81:58

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Tone and Style

Tom brings intense, candid, sometimes exasperated analysis, blending high-level breakdowns of geopolitics and technology with irreverent asides and relatable metaphors. The episode balances technical insight with social commentary, never shying from controversy or uncomfortable truths.

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For Listeners

If you missed the episode, this summary delivers the core analysis and dramatic moments—from the Strait of Hormuz to AI cancer cures—explained in Tom and Drew’s original vernacular. Skip the noise, catch up on the global chessboard, and stay sharp in this age of information overload.

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Transcript

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homes only 9 out of the 10 largest banks get it. They get that. VantageScore, the modern credit score, is the leader in predictive power, improving mortgage default predictions and saving lenders billions. Better predictions, better for your business with VantageScore. Good morning everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. It is wonderful to have you guys here. This is a very fun relationship. I don't know why it's hitting me so hard right now, but it is wonderful that you guys join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This is fantastic. The world is in a very weird place right now, so getting to spend this time with you guys. I think about you all the time on the weekends as I'm preparing for this stuff especially. And this weekend was incredibly bizarre if you're a perpetually online type. My apologies. This weekend was, I would say, extremely anxiety producing given all of the different things that are popping off at once. Iran confirms that the Strait of Hormuz is now open to everyone except the us, Israel and their allies. Which if I'm being honest is a brilliant move and something that I said I don't know a couple weeks ago at the beginning of this, that that would be sort of the end game for them. So we'll see how that plays out. Trump put out a call to all of our allies to help us secure the Strait of Hormuz after that announcement and get that oil flowing again. But everyone ghosted him. And that's why you don't bully your allies. Rumors have been flying this weekend that Netanyahu is dead and that the Israeli government is using AI video to cover it all up. We're going to get into that. Drew and I saw this one differently. Let you know when we get into that one which side your guys poll came up on who is right. We'll find out. Politico confirmed that China had 26 military aircraft and seven naval ships around Taiwan over the weekend. Whatever could they be doing? Tucker Carlson is reportedly being Investigated by the U.S. department of justice for back channel communications with Iran. That one's interesting. The Democratic Socialists of America are headed to Cuba and somebody on this show is not happy about it. Ah, but speaking of things that we are happy about, a man used ChatGPT to cure his dog's cancer, which is incredible. So we're going to be getting into the economics of Cuba and all of that and more. But, Drew, welcome. Man, this was a wild weekend. People were convinced that Netanyahu's dead. There have been videos going back and forth. Netanyahu and the Supreme Leader of Iran at the same coffee shop. Who would have thought?

[A]

But that was like a Sunday thing. People forgot. Friday and Saturday, California was on warning that we might get attacked. So every time a plane flew over, everybody wait, is this it?

[B]

You know, is this the one?

[A]

Is this the one? So it's. Thank God we got through it. We got through the weekend. But Larry Silverstein just took out an insurance policy on the U.S. tower building.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Especially for terrorist attacks. So if anybody's in downtown, if that

[B]

building goes down, if that building goes down, that's one of those, like, if I'm Iran, I'm like, bro, we gotta, we just, we gotta please just give me one strike. This is going to freak the Americans out. Yes. Conspiracy theorists would be up big.

[A]

Yeah. That would split to the Republic at that point. But, okay, we got to talk about Iran, your main talking point. And I'm going to give you credit for this because you called it first while everybody was playing team ball and high fiving. You saying this is economics is going to come down to the street. This will come back to the money moving through the river, through the water. And it seems like Iran is making a very political good move right now by saying the strait is open to everybody who's not shooting bombs at us.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So from my perspective, I think they're in, they're holding the cards, as Trump would say.

[B]

Yeah, they've, they've got the hand. Yeah, that, that is for sure. I think that when you're really trying to figure out what's going on in this, you have to look to what is going to be the pressure point that you have in any negotiation. You always want to figure out where your leverage is. But the leverage in Iran is very much the Strait of Hormuz. Everybody knew that coming into it. But I think that Trump may have had a read on our allies that just wasn't accurate. I think he was thinking, hey, we helped you guys out with NATO. Hey, you've got a war looming with Russia that may spread into your, like, actual Europe proper. And so you're going to want to make sure that you keep us happy. Yes, there's friction, but if we need you, you guys better come to our aid, because if you don't, we're not going to come to yours. When things really kick off in Europe and they are not coming to his aid. And they definitely, I mean, at first it was people just not really saying, being non committal. Now, more and more countries, even ones that have been historically more pro Trump, are now like, nah, we're not putting our troops into this one. So this is a very brutal lesson that if you're going to bully your allies, there are going to be consequences to this. This is something that I've been saying for a while. You have to be very careful. Just because you have the leverage doesn't mean that you want to push it, because there are going to be consequences. Remember, society is weak. Men getting together and saying, this is how we're going to develop this strength. And so a lot of what you see at, like the high society level is going to be very spite driven, very relational, very transactional. And so things can get petty, things can get ugly really fast. And so we're watching a lot of that play out. And you will find out very quickly that petty or not, when people organize together, they are very strong and they can take down even the biggest bully. So this is not a time where we want to find ourselves alienated, and this is a time where we are finding ourselves alienated. So it'll be interesting to see if we're actually able to escort ships through the strait or not. Right now, I would say the odds are very low that we're going to be able to escort troops through. So Trump's going to have to first do something to escalate, and that could be further attacks on Karga. Is it Karga Island? Is that what it's called? Something like that? It sounds roughly like that. So they, what they call it the, the diamond of oil or something. So there's a small island off the coast of Iran that processes something like 90 to 94% of their oil. And so it's one of those targets that's like, man, it is right there. Trump has not wanted to strike the oil infrastructure specifically because, one, I think that it's morally the right thing to do. If you're really trying to figure out, hey, we want to soften up this target, we want to deny them a ballistic missile capability of reaching the US we want to make sure that they don't become nuclear armed. We, I mean, if we're being honest, that is not his entire motivation. I think his motivation is largely economic. I think it's largely aimed at China. I think he's trying to damage them, which he is, by the way, and is not being talked about very much, but nonetheless you've got all that playing out. He's trying to keep the oil infrastructure safe so that if there were an uprising or at least a Venezuelan style dictator that comes into the picture and is willing to play ball with the US he wants to make sure that they're able to rebuild quickly. I think that that is wise. But he's going to keep escalating. So this will be the tell as to whether he's going to put boots on the ground or not. If he puts boots on the ground to actually take the island, then I'll say odds just skyrocketed that he's marching us ever towards accepting boots on the ground in mainland Iran. If he stays air campaign even on the island, then I think the odds are lower that he'd be willing to put boots on the ground in mainland Iran. So we shall see. But I think striking the actual oil infrastructure is going to be an action of last resort. But he is going to get that straight back open, like let there be no mistake, like this either becomes catastrophic failure or he gets the straight back open. Because right now it is. Even if Saudi Arabia that has this pipeline that runs across the desert and goes over to the other side, if I'm not mistaken, first of all, it goes to the side that the Houthis are on. But even if I'm wrong about that, the pipeline itself becomes a soft target. And so, um, that's not going to be a silver bullet fix for any of this. So Iran has massive leverage when it comes to disrupting the global economy. And if you disrupt the global economy as much as we might have quote unquote allies, they can only go so far. When their own people are watching companies close because they don't have the oil to keep them running, when people you know are dealing with intolerable levels of unemployment, when people are losing a lot of their modern way of life because energy needs, needs just become so dire all of a sudden. They hate everything that their government is doing, they hate everything that the US is doing. This is the same pressure that we apply on other countries. And so now it can be applied at the global level and you will get a very negative reaction. So we're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities,

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[A]

To your point of boots on the ground. The US has deployed 2200 Marines, some sailors to the region, as well as three tankers. They relocated them from Japan into the Middle East. So that seems like the pretense to at least a small contingent of boots on the ground.

[B]

It's certainly preparation, yeah.

[A]

We have to talk about the story of the weekend, though, because Bibi Netanyahu posted this picture from his X account saying, hey, they say I'm what? Look at me, look, I have five fingers. I took a sip of coffee. There's a bunch of people there. The coffee shop in Israel also posted on their Instagram behind the scenes photos and things like that. It set the Internet on fire. A lot of people are saying it's AI. The coffee didn't move, the sip on his lip disappeared, his zipper disappeared. People are zooming into the cash register and all these other types of things.

[B]

Yeah, among many, many other things. All right, to understand this one, you guys are going to have to start at the beginning. The weekend played out something like this. Netanyahu's dead, but probably alive with six fingers. No, wait, at seven. But this is in 2024. Or maybe it was during COVID I promise, if you just heard me say all that, I'm not having a stroke. If you were online this weekend, you know exactly what I mean. And if you weren't, you are in for a treat because it all started with an Instagram account with 13.5 million followers that dropped a post claiming Benjamin Netanyahu was dead because he appeared to have six fingers in a video. Now, I encourage you aggressively to check out the video for yourself. You'll see the supposed six finger is a part of his palm. When I first saw it, I was like, wait, what? Like, are people trolling? This is obviously part of his palm. If you look at it closely. If you just pause the video and look at his finger, the region of his finger even has a name. It's called the Hypothenor Eminence. So there you have for the nerdy kids in the crowd. Now, if you ran that original video through a deep fake detection tool, according to Grok, anyway, the rating comes back at 0.1% chance of being AI generated. And I have to say, looking at it with my own eyes and there's no doubt AI is getting very, very good. But it seems pretty normal and was not the kind of thing that I expected the Internet to go absolutely haywire over. But if you're looking at your screen, I see the video here.

[A]

Yeah, I should I take it off,

[B]

Zoom, zoom in on it. So you can see like this is one where when you look like from far away at a glance it looks like maybe there's like a six finger thing going on. But when you really zoom into it, it's like it's literally just a crease in the palm that I'm looking at my own palm. It has, you get this little puff of fat there and in a low resolution video like this, it can start to distort and look like something else. People went absolutely insane over the weekend. Now the video showing Netanyahu getting coffee was also just absolutely mahusive. So this got dubbed Coffee Gate over the weekend with a bunch of supposed smoking gun video zoom ins showing one aspect or another being obviously, quote, unquote, AI generated. Again, some of it, the takedown video, the smoking gun video is faked. And so you get all of this stuff going on where if you're just looking at the takedown videos, the smoking gun videos, some of which are AI generated, many are zoomed in past the point of intelligibility that you could easily walk away with the conclusion that this is all AI generated. But if you go back to the original source videos, because I'll admit I flip flopped this weekend when I saw the pocket video. It's so funny talking about this stuff. Like if you guys weren't online this weekend, you really did miss a treat, which I'm going to get to in a second because for me this is the bigger story, but sticking with the sort of what happened with Coffeegate. So he puts his hand in his pocket. Now, I didn't notice it in the full video, so I saw, I'd seen the full video, but now I'm watching all the smoking gun videos and I see this one smoking gun video of his pocket seeming to violate the laws of physics. And I was like, oh snap. Like this is 100% fake. Like, oh my God, he really is dead. I was like, holy shit, I can't believe it. And then I was like, hold on, hold on, go back, watch the original video again, it's not that hard. So I went back, I watched the original video again, and if I'm honest, the way his pocket reacts when you watch the full video at normal speed. When was more convincing that it's not AI because how would the AI know to the momentum of his hand stops because he hits the zipper and then he pauses cuz it's like, how hard is this going to be? And then he decides, oh, it's just a zipper, I'm going to push through. He pushes through, that releases the snag of the pocket, the zipper on his skin. And then it moves rapidly because tension had built up with his hand. I cannot believe I have to take time to explain this. This is so wild. We are living in a totally different dimension. Nothing is provably real anymore. And that's where all of this gets crazy. When you've got a video. It was posted on March 15 on Netanyahu's official X account, by the way. When you've got this 60 second clip of Netanyahu at a Jerusalem cafe where he's poking fun at the rumors of him dealing with like I'm dying to get coffee, all of that stuff and having to point out that he's got ten fingers, you just know that we have completely lost the plot. And so looking at all of this from that perspective of we can't believe if his hand going into his pocket is real, if the sip that he's taking because it doesn't disturb the foam in his drink, if that's real. People are going crazy over these details when we can't use that and the tons of subsequent videos to decide if something is real. Even if asking AI to estimate the likelihood that the video is AI generated, if none of that proves to people that this stuff is real, then we are really in trouble. And that is exactly where we're at. Whether these anomalies come from video compression, whether they come from just the coffee being bizarrely resilient in real life, or from something else. We are in a period where nobody can decide on what is real. Nobody is convinced by what they see, that something is real. Nobody's convinced by the fact that it comes from his own account that this is real. And because we're living in a world now where, believe me when I say this is wartime propaganda that is being spun to confuse people, that there are reasons why Netanyahu probably doesn't even mind that much, that some people think he's dead. Because if the Iranian people think he's dead and he's really not, yes, you take a morale, a morale hit on your side and you give them a bit of a boost. But if you're really still alive and are back channeling and keeping everything moving, then they're not going to focus as hard on trying to hit you. It's the same reason why I thought it was brilliant that the Iranians have promoted to supreme leader, somebody who is either in a coma, missing legs and or already dead. Because now it's like going on to strike that person, you know, doesn't really do you any good because they're already out of commission. And so now you've sort of defanged the opposition's approach to coming and getting that person, because it won't matter to what's really happening inside the country. So if he's alive, then they still have to worry about it and go after him. If he's dead and the country is still moving forward, yes, they have to manage the expectations of their own people, and that could be problematic. And if they're slowly unraveling because there's no longer a center of gravity, then you have a problem. But ultimately the big win is that the public is just confused. The public is paying attention to all kinds of other things, and they're not paying attention to the things that really matter. What are the economic consequences of this? Are the allies coming to our defense? Who's actually winning the war? And so if you look at this from the perspective of what happened in Vietnam. So Vietnam is the first living room war, and the American public turned against it very quickly. We no longer had the appetite to prosecute the war. It all fell apart. We end up backing out. Total clusterfuck. Now this is the first social media war. And what I'm seeing is that you can confuse the public so much that they just infight and then you go do whatever the hell you want. And so that's where this is going to get wild. Like, how do we get everybody on the same page? How do we get the American people pointed in a singular direct to either be behind the war or not behind the war, or at least have an intelligent debate. But we're not having an intelligent debate based on the merits of the outcomes of our actions. We're spinning up. I even. Cause I knew I was gonna need to report on this was like, this has become a far bigger story than by just volume of interaction than the economic impacts of this. Or a story we're gonna cover later. The fact that China is surrounding Taiwan as presumably a military drill for, hey, while the US Is distracted, let's go just snatch this bitch up. It's like nobody's paying attention to that. Like that was measured in like the hundreds of thousands of views, whereas the stuff on a single Pocket video, coffee sip video, was millions of views. And so when you step back, Drew, I'm having a very hard time putting this into words, but boys and girls, there is a thing happening right now. This is a new form of entertainment. I need to come up with a name for this. It is the. World affairs as bread and circus, because I can influence it the way that I could vote on American Idol, if you get what I'm saying. Like you can actually influence what part of all of this people are paying attention to. If you can write the viral tweet about the coffee gate, the Pocket video, the zoom in on the cash register, you can actually sway which people are looking, which way people are looking. If you can write the next bot that enrages people and they just fall for the. The. The entertaining value of rage bait. Remember, people want to be rage baited. They love that shit. They love the heightened emotion. They love snatching up their phone and typing that witty reply. And this is becoming a new form of entertainment. Even I find myself, because I'm covering this stuff because I do not find myself naturally drawn to this because I'm covering it. I'm like, this is occupying a certain amount of my time that otherwise would have gone to insert thing that I would have done instead of this. And so when you take a populace that is desperate for distraction and you give them like real life geopolitical warfare as video game, it's not quite right, but it's getting close. You interact with it, you influence it. If you say it in just the right way, your account blows up it. It is wild to that point.

[A]

There was that tick tocker that was giving out coordinates to certain Israel targets.

[B]

Bro, do we have that clip?

[A]

So I gotta see if I could pull that up in time, but this

[B]

is the craziest shit. I'll buy you some time because this one is absolutely insane to me. So you have a US TikToker speaking directly to the Iranian regime via TikTok. It's not like he's Tucker Carlson, he's got back channels, but he's talking directly to them, showing them coordinates, saying, these are the places that you should strike. Like giving them ideas, satellite footage, all that stuff. You have to watch this. This is fucking wild. And I want to know what you guys think about how should we treat this. Ron, all we need is a few missiles and we can wipe out the entire Israeli electrical grid. This is the Rotenburg power station. It's coal powered in Ashkelon, Israel. They removed this from the maps. But satellite is the power station that generates electricity for Tel Aviv. It's not like Iran's inhabitants. Petroleum and oil to Israel. All we need is one final drone.

[A]

It'll go kaboom.

[B]

Here's the thing. Pause it for a second. So, all right. Part of the reason that, like, talking about Kaizen, my video game is so meaningful is you end up getting feedback from people and it does, like, will influence your thinking. It's not typical that you go, oh, that's a great idea. I'm just going to deploy that as is, because people don't have enough context, but it does give you ideas, chains of thought that you might not have otherwise been thinking about. And so there is no doubt, and he may not be the guy, but there are people out there putting out information that will be beneficial on both sides of the equation. Iranians giving us information that we will end up using for nothing else other than propaganda, and then vice versa. So even just doing this, I know that the Iranian state media has been replaying some of our biggest influencers saying, see, look, these guys don't even like what's going on. Everybody's with us. Everybody's on our side. Dear Iran, and all of this stuff matters. This is why when a country takes over another country, the first thing they do as they go after the media, when a dictator comes to power, the first thing he does is take over the media. The great irony of Bassem Youssef, who wrote a book called Revolution for Dummies, he was a big part, like, if people don't know his backstory, he was a big part of the media resistance to the regime in, in Egypt. And it was very interesting watching him go through that only to now feel more like a propagandist than he ever did. It's really wild. Anyway, I'm sure he hates that summary, but nonetheless is what it feels like to me. So all of this stuff matters a lot. Media matters a lot. People being able to say what they think matters a lot. But damn, when you've got somebody going online to try to map out for the enemy what they should be doing, I will just tell you, if the war escalates, shit like that will not be tolerated. Boys and girls, say what you want about free speech. And I walk right up to the line of being a free speech absolutist. And even I get that, like, damn, there's just things you don't say and do during wartime. There are consequences to this shit. I'm going to be talking more about this when we, when we get on to Cuba. But kids like these things have real life consequences and they are not like a long weekend of oh, that sucked. Cuba has been struggling since the 60s, bro. In, in the late 1950s they were murdering it and like economically just an absolute powerhouse. And now I'll walk you through it. But damn, like this is wild. The Iranians slaughtered just recently 30 plus thousand of their own citizens. Think how we lost our minds. That ice killed three. Three people. Two people. Two people. 30,000. 30,000. Okay, that is insane. So yeah, this is. I'm just shocked. I get people not being for the US moving on Iran. If you're like us never have moved on Iran. Hey, totally get it. I think there is an extraordinarily valid point to be made there that is a debate well worth having. Saying that we should be going to bat for the Iranian regime. That shit is wild. That that's like somebody's completely unhinged from reality. If you're in the US and you want to see their regime be successful, yo taking a short break. But there's more impact theory after Stay tuned. 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 Granger for the ones who get it done. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[A]

This kind of queues up Tucker Carlson because allegedly and I found this thinking it was I was getting trolled. Tucker says the CIA has been reading his texts in order to frame him for a crime. There's speculation that he's tied to Iran as well. There's speculation that Trump used him to get they used him as a sleeper cell to back channel things to Iran that Trump then used in order to strike the Supreme Leader. So there's a lot going on with just this media geopolitics as content versus to your point, real world implications. If Tucker really was back channeling to Iran that led to the death of the Supreme Leader, you're not just talking on a podcast anymore. You're impacting policy on a global level.

[B]

And it's my understanding this is very early I I will update my mental model as Life tells me to, but the way I'm looking at this, Tucker is basically telling on himself, saying that his texts with the Iranian IRGC officials were being read by the CIA. What are you doing texting known terrorists? This is crazy. Now, while he says this is protected free speech. And look, maybe when we see the text, it was, but this may not be the position the doj. The DOJ takes as the IRGC are a designated terrorist organization, bro. Now again, the devil will be in the details of what was actually said, but the Foreign Agents Registration act was written in 1938 to stop Nazi propagandists from operating inside the United States. That sounds familiar. The CIA may now be using that against Tucker for texting people in Iran. Now, so far it's just Tucker saying that they may come after him. I want to be very clear. No charges have been filed. The CIA and the DOJ haven't even confirmed anything yet. So what Tucker himself is confirming is that the CIA read his private text messages, messages he exchanged with Iranian contacts before Operation Epic Fury launched back on February 28. Now he is saying that basically he was talking to them because he's a journalist. That's what journalists do. You source this information. I can't remember if he said it himself or somebody else was pointing this out, but that he may have been basically trying to de escalate this. Now there is going to be a very fine line between Tucker is talking to them and like, hey, I hope calmer heads prevail and actually giving them information about the US's posture, telling them how to play the situation, which, ooh, buddy, when you are a journalist, if you are giving that kind of information now, you've got yourself at least in the position, a very dangerous position. How it ends up getting read will be debated endlessly, that is for sure. But we'll see if they ultimately do move on. A criminal indictment from the DOJ on Tucker, we don't know yet. But Tucker saying that he found out that all of this was going on when a reporter called him who already knew what the text messages said. And then his response was to post a video on X saying he doubts that this is even going to become a case because he didn't say anything this crazy. And again, we're going to see. But man, given the stuff that came out in the Dominion lawsuit, I don't know, Tucker like has not taken $0.50 advice, which by the way, as just a gentle reminder to everybody out there doing like dodgy shit. As 50 Cent said, I try not to say nothing. The DA might want to play in court. What is with you guys? Like, this is crazy town, man. Like, boys and girls like you, if you're gonna do dodgy shit, you gotta be way more careful. This is just nuts. But yeah, be very careful. Now, Tucker said you should know what your government is doing. And in all honesty, I completely agree with him. And we are about to hit a period of very distressing friction, as if we, if this war drags on and it elevates in severity, then our government is going to clamp down on what we're allowed to talk about. This happens all the time, all throughout history and as we have become a censorious society, like actively people want it. I've seen people on the left call for censorship. And I mean the censorship industrial complex is largely a left leaning organization that we saw go absolutely just berserk during COVID But then I saw the right screaming for censorship not too long ago, it was a few months ago, and I was like, what is happening right now? So, yeah, I don't trust anybody to, at the political level, stand up for freedom of speech. So I guess it's going to be up to us, the populace. But boys and girls do know that in wartime these kinds of things are going to change. So just keep that in mind. Now, the reaction to all of this tells you more about where America is right now than the story itself. This is like my whole vibe over the weekend with watching the BB Netanyahu's alive or dead thing. I was like, this isn't really about him being alive or dead. This is about the volume and velocity of information and how it's going to be weaponized against us. And then this isn't really whether Tucker's texts are being read by the CIA. This is about how the right is really tearing itself apart right now. On the one side, you've got people calling Tucker a traitor. Ted Cruz called him the single most dangerous demagogue in this country. Laura Loomer said that she personally referred to, referred him to the FBI. And their argument, people like that, their argument is pretty simple. You don't have to lobby against an American military strike by talking directly to the enemy. So you can do it, but that's not the way, that's not journalism. On the other side, people are calling this the most dangerous press freedom case in a generation. Candace Owens said something to the effect of. And this is a paraphrase, but it's pretty close. If they arrest Tucker, we ride at dawn. Pretty close to a direct quote. The Argument there is equally simple. Journalists talk to everyone, including adversaries. That's the job. And the moment the government can charge a reporter for sourcing info is the moment the First Amendment means nothing in wartime. And another anger angle on everything that has shaken down with Tucker is that Trump actually knew this was going on with Tucker, as would actually make sense if they had been intercepting his messages for a while. Some people, by the way, think that they may have just been intercepting the messages because they were watching the known terrorist and Tucker just happened to come in the chat and they were like, okay, well, here we go. Now we've got information on him which they would obviously feed to Trump. And then Trump in the weeks leading up to the the operation Epic Fury brought Tucker into his office three times and that he knew he was communicating with Iranian officials and that he was basically feeding him misinformation. Now everything is hearsay for now. We'll have to wait and see how all of this plays out. But prevailing wisdom would be to allow a lot of latitude to the press. That would certainly be the thing that I beg the DOJ to do, boys and girls. You have to be very careful here. And look, I get it. If he was really doing something that if you believe, if we show what he said to Iranian officials to the American people, like if we show the American people that, that they're going to be unanimous in there or close to it in their condemnation, in their sense that this really is a guy offering aid to the enemy. Okay, fine, pursue it. But yo, be careful, man. Be careful because you tread on freedom of speech at your peril. That is exactly how you become the monster that you're trying to stop. So, yeah, warnings, but people forget Tucker

[A]

is the same guy that went to Russia to sit down with Putin and he was talking about how the grocery stores were stocked and the streets were clean and things like that. So I think if there's anybody that would have talked to a supreme leader or somebody close to high ranking in Iran that was an American journalist, it would be Tucker.

[B]

Tucker is saying he did it. Like, Tucker's not denying I have been talking to them. He's painting it as, bro, we should not be going into this war. I'm trying to de escalate doing my. This is me mind reading a little bit, but me doing what I can to try to stop us from ending up in this situation. I'm not trying to provide aid to them, but I don't think that America should be in that war. And as we march Closer to that, yeah, I'm going to try to back us away from the brink. I'm in talking to the President directly, lobbying him not to do it. I'm being consistent. This is me just speculating. I am being consistent in the messaging that I'm saying to the President, that I'm saying to them. Nobody is getting like, you know, classified information or anything like that. I don't want to see this war happen. I don't think this war is good for America. And therefore, yeah, we should want every person that has a direct connection with these guys to be saying the same thing. Like, what kind of maniac doesn't want to see this de escalated? And if that's what the communications back up, I'm going to be like, yeah, like you should be able to say that. So it's going to come down to what did he actually say? And if he was relaying information that the President said to him in a private meeting, even if it's not classified information.

[A]

Damn bad. Look that.

[B]

That's bad at wartime, like, bro. So we'll see, we'll see. We gotta let the details flow in.

[A]

Meanwhile, while the US Is on the straight asking for help from its allies, there's been 10 denials so far. Britain has said, we might help you with the straight, but we're not getting into the war. Trump has definitely alienated a lot of the allies. I know we were talking about Trump playing 4D chess. It seems like maybe he got his pawn and his rook confused or something like that, but, well, let's keep mine.

[B]

Just because you're playing 40 chess doesn't mean you're winning it for the chess. Especially not if the real game is 16D chess and you're only playing 4D, so. Oh, God, every life is so complicated, Drew. Like, just talking about economies is complicated now. Layer on some human pettiness and then blow some people up. Now it's like all bets are off. You never know where this is all going to go. Everyone's heard the famous Mike Tyson quote. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. There's the military equivalent. No strategy survives first contact with the enemy. It's like the enemy gets a vote. All these things get off repeated because they are so true. So, yeah, whatever plan we had going into this was guaranteed to fall apart as we, you know, went down the road. Now the question still remains, is Trump going to be able to pull this off? And I know everybody wants to say that, you know, their side is just definitive. It's obvious he's 100% going to win or he's 100% going to lose. I don't think that's true. I don't think we have the evidence to back up any of that. And anybody that thinks that the US can't apply massive leverage to a lot of countries, by the way, so take China. China gets 20% of its oil from Iran and Venezuela combined. And if the US is able to control that, dude, that's like a real blow. They're already releasing their strategic reserves. They've already got people like lining up for hours to get gas. And that's like, that was it like day 10 of the war. So you can expect that to only get worse as things go on. And so I think that it's super disingenuous for people to think that she's like, no, it doesn't really matter what happens. He cares now. He's not in some super weak position. First of all, they're transitioning to solar power faster than any country ever in human history. So if anybody really wants to get over to solar, take a page out of China's playbook, they are going ham. So they've got that diversification strategy, but also they're a gigantic military, they're a gigantic economy. So these are not the people that you want to take lightly. But at the same time, the US is a gigantic economy. The US has a far more capable military even than the Chinese. So it's like boys and girls. The US has a lot of cards that it still has left to play. It just doesn't mean that they're going to win. So you've got all kinds of things, including asymmetrical warfare. Drones are still getting through. Everybody adapts. Like, think about Iran as the Ukraine, the US as Russia, and nobody thought that Ukraine least of all Russia was going to be able to stand toe to toe for three or four years, which is exactly what's happened. So if Iran has the will to continue to fight and the US checks itself from just obliterating all of their infrastructure, then this could go on for a very, very, very long time and the warfare will adapt. We've already got drones, the US as well, and we've already got robots. So it's like, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but let's say the war drags on for a couple years. Imagine how much money will go to. Well, I said I wouldn't put troops on the ground. I'm not going to. I'm going to put Robots on the ground carrying guns. So the future of warfare looks nothing like the past. This is often, not often. This is largely going to play out in cyber capabilities. You've already got Iran striking people from a cyber perspective. They've warned American companies, we're coming after you with cyber warfare. We're going to hit American companies in the Gulf region. So there's still a lot of leverage on both sides. And how this will play out, if it drags out could get very, very ugly and very, very protracted. And I'll just set here for now that not only will they go after the oil infrastructure, they'll go after desalinization plants. And now you've got a humanitarian crisis. So, yeah, be careful. And obviously with the massive instability that we're seeing in the world, you've got China now doing what appear to be dress rehearsals of an invasion of Taiwan, which is wild. But you also have just the rising tensions across Russia, Ukraine that could spill over. And so while all of this is going on, do you end up having a European that needs the U.S. to be an ally, only to have alienated the U.S. because the U.S. alienated them first with all of the big talk and being a dickhead bully. So it is. New alliances will form because economic necessities will make it such. But this is a super destabilizing time.

[A]

Yeah, you brought up the Taiwan, the Taiwan move. I think this is big and this is largely underreported, but Taiwan reports a large scale Chinese military aircraft present near the island. Yeah, somebody broke this down. There's 26 warplanes operating nearby in the region. 16 has crossed the air defense zone, which basically like the, the line in the sand. And there's seven Navy ships near the war near the island now. So it's one of those things. The US Is on an island in the Strait. It can't, it's, you know, struggling to fight that war. Maybe this is the time Xi Jinping swipes in and grabs the island back and reunifies.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, listen, he said he was going to do it by 2027. So it's hard to know if he would really make this move while he's in a hard position with the oil. However, that certainly doesn't take it off the table because they have pretty large reserves. So he might think, nah, we'll be fine. Or he might be like, okay, this is the perfect time for the dress rehearsal. I still don't plan to move until 2027, but let me get all my ducks in a row. Let me run sorties and figure out exactly what this looks like. And then when we're ready, oil's back moving apace, or we've transitioned even more off to solar so that we can save all of our oil for military grade equipment, then we make our move. That, that is where this starts to get scary. It's just the second and third order consequences, fourth order, fifth order consequences that will be obvious to historians are going to be very hard for us to pinpoint. But when you think about like in moments of chaos, people that already had an agenda in their mind go, well, nobody's looking. And so now's the perfect time. And just the world is in absolute. Okay, let me not say anything hyperbolic. The world right now is truly destabilized. And the reason I don't want people to. I will for sure use hyperbolic speech very often because it is the way that my, my mind works. But in terms of like, okay, making sure that we lay ground posts to say, okay, what's the really grounded thing at this moment? Relationships between countries are destabilized. Energy markets are destabilized. We're suddenly realizing that there are a lot of people in the Gulf that have very delicate infrastructure for oil which essentially controls the global economy and desalinization. So this is a desert. And their population has only been able to expand as much as has been able to expand because their ability to desalinate ocean water. And if that goes away and it's only a few missile strikes away from going away, then you could see a humanitarian crisis across the Gulf, which would then further disrupt whatever oil they might otherwise be able to get out of the country. And so you put all of that together, you've got the historic relationship between the US and Europe breaking apart while Russia and Ukraine are fighting. Now it's hard to know what reports are true. Some people are saying that Ukraine is actually now starting to push Russia back. I don't know if that's actually accurate, but it could be. And so if it is, great. And if they're able to sort of re establish either all or the vast majority of their territory, write it off and say, okay, cool, here we're willing to exit ramp. Awesome. But if not, and Russia's now pushing in, and by the way, two more countries have joined NATO that border with Russia. So the very thing that they said they were pushing back against, they're moving in the wrong direction. So they're not exactly going to be sanguine about all of this. So you've got Europe is destabilized and isolated from the largest military, largest economy in the world, while having spent decade after decade after decade not investing in their own security. And having to do that, you've got the German chancellor going to China coming back and going, oh, like we can't compete with that. We become lazy and we're no longer the Germany that people have in their mind that can like mass produced, like these highly technical, you know, works of art. That's just not who we are anymore. And so you've got that and then you've got the Muslim immigration problem coming into Europe, which is destabilizing their cultures. Dude, it is just Europe is in a very precarious place. Not catastrophes, not calamity, but it's like it's not the position you would want to be in with the Russia, Ukraine war still simmering.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now if that settles cool, then they're in a much more tenable position position. Then obviously you've got ascend in China declining us, the US just doing everything it can to snap itself in half of the K shaped economy. And despite my best efforts so far, and look, maybe it plays out just over time, but so far, Drew, I've not been able to convince the world that economies run in physics and you violate the laws of physics and very knowable consequences play out. And because neither myself nor a myriad of other people banging the same drum have been able to convince people, it really does feel like only pain is going to break people of that. But that pain tends to come in 80 to 100 year time frames. So yeah, this is, this is such a wild moment, man. Such a wild moment. And that's like I'm stopping now. I have not run out of things to say in terms of what's precarious.

[A]

Headed over to Cuba, it seems that there's been eight consecutive nights of protest. There's been unrest rising in the streets, and an unlikely visitor is heading over there. The Democratic Socialists of America are getting a rally.

[B]

Are they exactly who you expect to head over to Cuba, bro? This one, as you might imagine, this one has my panties in a bunch, as my mom would say.

[A]

You know, they have been without food, they have been without water, so humanitarian aid I think is nice. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt before I'm going to think

[B]

about how many humanitarian crises there are in the world. And the one that they're going to support is the one run by a communist dictatorship that it is the one

[A]

that we're directly causing though. So That's.

[B]

Are we drew.

[A]

We cut them off.

[B]

Yes. So in the latest round of escalations, this escalation, acute thing. That is true. And I'm curious. So I'm about to do my whole spiel on this, and I would like to know before I do my whole

[A]

spiel, I have a communist next to me.

[B]

Not quite. But do you actually presume that these guys just somehow weren't aware of all the other humanitarian crises that have happened and therefore did not touch those? Or do you see them trying to campaign the American people that the DSA are the good guys and American capitalism writ large are the bad guys and they want to go help the good guys in Cuba who are the communists? Because I'm about to just lay. I'm essentially just going to walk through a bunch of facts and then people can decide if that sounds good or bad.

[A]

To your point? Yes. I think that this is a way that they can rally the American people to get more support to say, hey, Trump and Cuba are beefing right now. Trump is cutting Cuba off. We're going to help Cuba and we're going to be anti Trump.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And as the left has been, that's been their campaign strategy for the last 10 years. So perfect. I'm aligned with that.

[B]

Nothing crazy there. The DSA is headed to Cuba right now, but they are going to Cuba to defend a regime that is absolutely drenched in humanitarian abuses. Okay? And now that the DSA is doing this, can we please stop pretending that these guys aren't communists? It is so self evident what these guys want. And somehow, some way, people are watching what Mamdani's doing and not having every alarm bell in their head go off. Now, I'm not saying that Mamdani is going to Cuba, though. I'm going to poke some fun at the man while we go because he is the face of the dsa. So you will forgive me for not acting like I can't see that. Now, as a quick note, Freedom House classifies Cuba as not free and notes that Cuba is the only country in the Americas that consistently makes its list of the worst of the worst. The world's most repressive societies. Okay? That's who they're going to defend. Now, they got that title for widespread abuses of political rights and civil liberties. Okay? That's who they're going to help and defend. Consider who they stand up for the next time that you are at the ballot box. Now remember, repression is required when you want to take people's things as socialists and communists must do. I've said this many times and I will keep banging this drum. This is how the human mind works. People work hard for the things that they do. And when the government tells them that you ought not be doing that thing, you should be doing this thing, or you should be giving me the results of the proceeds from your labor. And I will decide how to give them. Eventually somebody says no. And what I want each and every one of you to answer is, what do you do when the farmer says, I don't want to plant corn, I want to plant this other thing? Do you take a gun out and tell them that they're going to make sugar? Because that's what the fuck Cuba did. We'll get to that in a minute. The DSA's trip is part of a broader international initiative called the Neustra America Convoy. It's organized primarily by progressive international, Code Pink and allied groups. The convoy is set to converge in Havana on March 21st. And the DSA's co chairs, Megan Rohmer and Ashik Sadiq have formally endorsed the mission. Now please keep in mind, Castro once bragged that Cuba. He bragged that Cuba had 20,000 political prisoners. Okay, I'll be up in arms if they inappropriately detain Tucker Carlson, who I think is largely out of his mind, but nonetheless that'd be a real problem. But bragging about 20,000 is some wild shit. They have this. This is real. They have drained prisoners of their blood, which they then sold before executing them. So they drain. It was like seven liters or something. They drain them to the point of paralysis and then shoot them. Now they often do that just days after arrest with little more than a show trial. And as Of September of 2024, the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and press registered 99 arbitrary detentions of journalists and press workers in a single year, along with 179 aggressive actions and threats, 126 physical assaults, and 36 individuals imprisoned or under house arrest specifically for exercising freedom of expression. The Cuban regime not only targets political prisoners, they prey on their family members as well. Following the July 2021 protests, 90 media workers fled the country in 2022 alone, by the way, due to fear of criminalization and imprisonment, severely crippling Cuba's independent press. And they're known for executing minors who cause problems for the regime. And a 2022 report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture by the NGO Cuban Prisoners Defenders documented patterns of torture and mistreatment. The Cuban government has operated forced labor camps filled to the Brim with prisoners convicted of hateful crimes such as get ready for it, being gay, a Jehovah's Witness, a Seventh Day Adventist, a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, or a, God forbid, intellectual or farmer. And it's not like it was one of each of those categories. It was bunches of people just for being in that category. Anybody who resisted collectivization would get snatched up. Cuba has also been credibly accused of kidnapping thousands of young people who were taken from their homes, schools, religious seminaries, you name it. Never formally charged, never tried, but in prison nonetheless. Let's look at Cuba before the communist revolution. Pre revolutionary Cuba. They weren't a basket case waiting to be rescued by Mamdani and Greta. It was one of the most developed economies in Latin America. Before the revolution. Cuba was one of the richest of the Spanish speaking societies. In 1958 they had a higher GDP per capita PPP adjusted than Ireland or Austria, and almost double that of Spain and Japan. Despite only 6.5 million inhabitants, Cuba was the 29th largest economy in the world. Then came the revolution. What happened, you ask? The productive class fled and the economy collapsed within four years. When Castro came up with the brilliant idea to force the country to focus on sugar production, to revive the economy. Now when he did that, not only did it not work, it collapsed most other major industries in the country because everyone had been forced at the end of a fucking gun to focus on sugar. That's what you have to do when you're not relying on market forces. You, the supposed genius running the country, decides, hey, I know, because our sugar industry used to be the best thing ever. We're just going to force everybody to focus on that. And it absolutely cratered the country to the point where Cuba was forced to turn to Russia for charity. And they have been stuck ever since then in a cycle of international dependency. And people look at moments like this and they say, well fuck America for putting a blockade around these guys. Well guess what? For 60, so you have 40, 30. So you've got almost 70 years, 65ish years of that country being run by a communist dictatorship. And they drove it into the fucking ground. So it started as a thriving nation and after communism, because economies work on physics, they ended up destroying the country. And so I don't want to hear a tale about America's come in and fuck these guys up. They did that to themselves because these ideas don't work when you force humans to do things they know better of. This is exactly what Mao did to his people. He forced them to plant the same crops all across China at the same time and killed anybody who said that was a bad idea. And guess what? It starved people to death. Because that's not how crops work. So looking at Cuba, we should want them to discover the free market the way that China discovered the free market post Mao. I'm not saying they have to become democratic. If that's not what they want, fine. But they need to discover an economic principle that actually works and the one that they're running now does not.

[A]

There is a running narrative in socialist circles that what how capitalism has reigned supreme is that when there is a country anywhere that becomes independent and wants to break off of the traditional capitalist structure, they get embargoed, they get sanctioned, they get tariff, they get trade restrictions.

[B]

Let me say it a real, a different way. Whenever a country decides that they're going to do that, they so weaken themselves that they end up getting slapped around by everybody around them. Yes, that is true.

[A]

But I would go the other way because I was trying to build up like first principles type thing. Like for a country to thrive, it needs trade partners. Could we start there? Do you think trade part trade is necessary for a country to thrive if

[B]

the country can't sustain itself? It is physics necessary? Yes.

[A]

So do you think that countries can sustain themselves without trade parties?

[B]

There are some. You won't have the lifestyle that you have in a globalized world, which is far better for everybody. It just doesn't last forever. But in a world where everybody was peaceful and you could just trade across borders, it would be ideal for sure.

[A]

Copy. So a lot of times the downfall of the country is then put on the backs of the system and not on the backs of the trade restrictions that then would happen. So that's what I think gives a lot of these far left communist socialist policies validities. Because every country that they have their downfall, they switch over to a different economic system. All the capitalist countries ice them out and then they fall. They just kind of spiral down below.

[B]

This is where we have to talk about Singapore. Singapore gets essentially booted out of their own country and they're like, oh, what are we going to do? He goes to the communists, I'm not joking, effectively grabs him by the lapel and is like, if you with what I'm about to do, I will kill every one of you. And then proceeds to go, okay, listen, we're gonna build an economic structure that actually works and you guys are all going to be in on it. And so I, the person giving birth to this country as the leader, my house is going to be just like your house, but I want my house to be dope. And so we're all going to build this. You guys aren't going to me up and I'm not going to isolate myself in a palace and be away from you. And we're going to build this thing from the ground fucking up. And now Singapore is the place, whatever 80 years later that the entire world goes to for capital. Like, if you want to know where, where will Tom go check out if the US fucking continues a pace towards socialism, communism. My first stop is fucking Singapore. So it has Chinese vulnerabilities. That's the only thing that scares me is full disclosure. But that is when you think about somebody that literally built a country out of the fucking marsh and he did it. There is an exact quote of what he said to the communists. It isn't, I'm gonna fucking kill every one of you. But it was something so aggressive and so violent that it was like, whoa, this guy does not fucking play around. So you have to understand how if you're being betrayed by at that time, literally their country kicked them out and said, you guys can't be a part of this. And I forget what the thing was that made them all lump up. But anyway, they were like, you're not a part of this. And he understood, we're on our own. No one is coming to save us. Oh my God. I'll give you another example, Booker T. Washington. Okay, we're around a bunch of people that want to kill us. We were just their slaves. We just got freed. They all want us dead. What the do we do? He was like, I'm going to teach people how to build bricks. How to make bricks, man. How to make bricks. Now, as you can imagine, they did not have a whole lot of friendly trading partners. So he's got to now hustle that up. He's got to figure out, I'm going to build this school, but I'm going to do it by teaching these guys how to be reliant on only themselves. They get so good at making bricks that they end up exporting it was to surrounding people in the South. But nonetheless, you can think of them as like their own little startup country and having to make a product so high quality that they could export. So you, the way that you deal, even if the world is tyrannical, the way that you deal with the world is go, I'm going to motivate and inspire. I'm gonna get rid of a K shaped economy not by telling people that they can't succeed, not by telling people that they can't pull away. I'm going to get rid of the K shaped economy by making sure people understand if you bust ass and you do a thing that matters to this group, you're going to get paid. And so then if somebody doesn't bust ass and they don't contribute to the group, then get the the out. Now you don't get a K shaped economy because everybody's going hard and they're trying to build something that matters. And you focus on the thing that nobody can take away from you. And so if people are like, you can't have a school, you and you go, no, no, no, I'm gonna teach these guys how to make bricks. Dude, this is one of the most inspiring stories ever in human history. And somehow it gets on. I just can't see that. That's crazy to me. So that is, Cuba should have been like, all right, fuck them. Like, we're gonna really build this fucking industry. But we are gonna do one thing, we're gonna be honest about what people are like and we're gonna understand intelligence is not evenly distributed, work ethic is not evenly distributed. And so we're going to reward the people that fucking murder it. We're gonna make sure that they can rise and any fuckwit that doesn't contribute, they get little to nothing. Fuck those kids. They get like extreme social pressure to contribute or get out. And we are going to get strong. And in times of like, desperation, struggle, war, whatever, dude, you better find in you that real ability to buckle down and get all Sparta on that shit. Because you're gonna have to find a way to defend yourselves, to be strong, to get your economy, your supply chain, all of that in order so that nobody can with you. But we've got this weird globalized mentality of like, we're owed everything. That is not how the world works. And so every time these countries decide to act like somebody's just going to hand them some shit, that people are going to roll up on a flotilla and that they don't have to go, I accept that I have to motivate my people, that my people are motivated by outperforming and getting their just rewards for that, that there will be inequality. And our goal is to make sure that there's no intolerable inequality which has to be engineered into the system. You don't end up with intolerable inequality unless you fuck up your system. Okay, Central banks, debt, money printing, a government that can spend into the red. That is how you engineer a system designed to steal from the people who don't understand economics, which is fucking evil as far as I'm concerned.

[A]

I know you're going to love this next story. I'm queuing this up now because I feel like this all connected. We've been doing this a lot lately. Meantime I've been mind synced where we go on fractals that that tied to the last story. I'm gonna throw it to you, but I just want to say give the cliff notes version of this guy has a problem, goes into chatgpt, cures his dog of cancer. Yes, that is the complete story. Tom. I know this is like this can be the zero to founder pitch. You need to get this guy in to do a class and stuff. This is awesome.

[B]

So crazy guys. A man with no previous experience in biology or medicine use ChatGPT to cure his dog's cancer with a customized vaccine that was not quite a cure. But it's so close. This story is so miraculous. Now the guy's name is Paul Cunningham. It's a very strangely spelled name, something like that. He just used off the shelf AI tools to design the world's first personalized cancer vaccine for a dog. After the injection, his dog's tumor shrank 75% in a month. Month. The dog rescue dog named Rosie, she's an 8 year old Staffordshire Shar Pei mix. She was diagnosed with mast cell cancer in 2024. Had a bunch of surgeries, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, all the stuff you'd expect, but none of it worked. The tumors just weren't shrinking. The vets gave her like one to six months to live. So not a lot. So Paul, he basically did the engineering himself and just goes in, starts asking ChatGPT a bunch of questions. Not fancy proprietary AI, just ChatGPT. Same tool right now that I'm guessing is on a bunch of your guys phones and chat pointed him towards genomic sequencing and directed him to the University of New South Wales center for Genomics and he convinced researchers there to sequence Rosie's tumor. Rosie's tumor DNA. And then he used that with AlphaFold, which is Google DeepMind search free protein folding AI to model the specific mutations that were driving the cancer. Okay so this is super customized one of one from that he designed the blueprint for a personalized MRNA vaccine, produced it in a university lab and by the way, I think he did this part of it with Grok and he then convinced Yvette to help him Administer it. Rosie's main tumor shrunk by 75%, which is freakishly rapid. And then the guy himself admitted, okay, look, this isn't a cure because one of her tumors didn't respond, but he's going to use the same technology to try to design a second vaccine to target that one. So this is absolutely just insane. Now, this is still an extraordinary story, despite the fact that it's not necessarily a cure, but it does point towards the direction of travel for AI and medicine. So expect to see this kind of thing more and more frequently in humans in the near future. And just goes to show there are a lot of patterns, especially in biology, that as humans we just cannot track all of it. But an AI can go in and find all these crazy relationships that we would otherwise miss. So these big data problems succumb to AI very rapidly. And biology has long felt like to me, a just this is a pattern problem. It's not that the body isn't operating on a deterministic system, it is. It's just that there are so many variables that it feels like it's not. And so I think what we're going to see now is all of this determinacy playing itself out as AI goes in and detects all the patterns, sequences, everything, takes the large data as more and more people report, like, okay, my, I had this kind of tumor, it's sequenced like this. This is the treatment, this is how it worked. As more and more people generously submit that information, more and more people are, more and more AIs are going to be able to find these patterns and really push medicine forward. This is one of those reasons why you're hearing so much coming out of the medical community saying, whatever you guys think AI has done to your ability to write, to finance, to warfare, it's nothing compared to what it's going to do in biology. And so this is really, really exciting. Real world case of somebody actually doing the thing and it having tremendous results. Early days, but this is very exciting.

[A]

It's interesting to me. I'm literally was typing a response to somebody in the chat because their first response was negative to this, of like, oh man, some idiot is going to try this and end up killing their dog. And it's like, what? Like he just did something beautiful. This is a story of determination. This should be a Disney movie movie. And like, I want Pixar to adopt this, but yet we're automatically going to. Well, somebody's gonna blow it and mess it up. Yes, but there's people who iron with their clothes still on. We don't talk about those people. Like, let's just.

[B]

Somebody made it necessary to write on the, like, shampoo bottle, don't eat this.

[A]

So, yeah, like, yes, there are those people in the world. I don't know. I think so often, to your point of, we want society to be this ominous bad thing that we can't control. It's gonna kill us. The government is the only thing that can save us. And we always periodically break it down that it's the individual that makes up the governments, the individuals that make up the society. And we have a story of an individual changing his circumstance directly with something that costs $20. And the first thing we say is, oh, man, somebody's gonna be killing their dog. Because it's like, no, this is the type of thing that we should celebrate. This is the type of energy that should go toward. Instead of being scared of AI, this is the thing that should get people riled up.

[B]

So, yes, welcome to the West. Betrayal of innovation, that's wild. Innovation comes at a cost, but you're either willing to pay that cost or you're not. And we are, we are unfortunately losing the appetite for that.

[A]

But I don't think, to your point earlier, China is like, if you want innovation, go to China. Yes, I think China could build cool trinkets, but I still think the go getter spirit, even if it's on life support, it's still America.

[B]

Obviously, I am Mr. America is the best. Yes, for sure.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But man, we really do need to snap out of whatever this malaise is. I mean, the malaise is easy. It's a K shaped economy. When people try and try and try and try and try, and they can't get ahead and everything's getting more expensive, you're demoralizing them. And I think we're doing it on purpose at this point by tolerating buffoonery. The reality is it's. It is a dual pronged problem. The wealthy people that understand the system are doing it on purpose because it protects them and siphons money up into their pockets. And the voters are voting for the thing that feels good, even though it's completely detached from the outcomes that they actually want. But it just feels so good, Drew. And when you're desperate, like one of my. There was a show called I Shouldn't be Alive. If you guys never saw it, you should watch it. It is extraordinary. But there was one episode where there were like four or five people stranded in a lifeboat and they were floating and Floating for God knows how many days. And of course, you start getting very thirsty. And one of the guys is like, I want to drink the sea water. And the guy who understood what will happen said, if you do that, then it's going to make things worse. You will die because you will get dehydrated. So I know it's wet, and it is very tempting to drink that water, but it will accelerate your death. And the dumbass did it anyway. He ended up having, like, these hallucinations, jumped in the water and. And immediately got eaten by sharks who had been following the boat for a long story.

[A]

But this is like a reality show. I thought this was.

[B]

Dude. Yes, it is so good. You've never seen I Shouldn't be Alive.

[A]

And they killed. He died on tv, okay?

[B]

So sorry. I got a fractal on this for a second. So they don't show him on live tv. So the way that I shouldn't be alive works is it's people retelling a story of something crazy that happened to them where it's like, here's why I shouldn't be alive. Life.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

They were, like, gonna take a quick boat trip from, like, city to city, really close to each other. They go out, hit a storm, lose sight of the shore. One of the women ends up, like, getting thrown up against a, like, thick steel cable that holds the mast up. And it lacerated her leg through the muscle all the way to the bone. She ends up getting an infection, dies. So now they're in, like, the dinghy, the little inflatable raft, and it's filling up with pus and all that from her infection. So they're like, fuck, we've got to turn this over because we're all sitting in it. We're all going to get an infection. So they turn it over, and all the juices and her dead body, basically, are now in the water. And so that's, like, chumming the water. So now the sharks start following their little dinghy. Now, the whole time this episode is playing out, only two people are talking. And when it starts, there's five people. So I'm like, why are they only interviewing two people? And then one by one, first she dies. Then one guy says, I see an island. I know I see an island because I think two of them drink the seawater. He's like, I see an island. I've got to go for it. He goes for it. Eaten by sharks. Then the other guy is like, I've got to stretch my legs. I've got to stretch My legs. And they're like, what are you talking about? You can stretch your legs in the boat. He's like, no, no, no. I got to stretch my legs. He hangs himself off the side of the boat. Sharks grab immediately and eat him alive. And they're, like, retelling the story about hearing them scream and scream as they're eating. Just like, God damn. Anyway, moral of that story is, however wet seawater is, it will still make you die of thirst faster. So be careful, boys and girls. Be careful.

[A]

That's crazy. I never did that show I'm, like, actually interested in now.

[B]

It's so good. The one that always unnerved me the most. There's a thing. I think it's here in California. You can take, like, this gondola up the side of a mountain, and people do it in the spring and summer and stuff just because it's beautiful. And they tell you, like, hey, you can walk around up here at the top. And this couple's, like, walking off, and they're like, as long as I can hear the group, I'm fine. And so they can hear the group, and they walk down, they can hear this running water, and they, like, really want to see this waterfall. They get to the waterfall, and then they hear the group calling, like, hey, everybody, come on. It's time to come back. They can't find their way back. And they end up on an episode of I Shouldn't be Alive, like, completely lost. And that one, because you're just there, like, on a field trip.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And everything seems so fine. You can hear everybody talking, but you can't find your way back to them. I was like, yo, that's one of those. That just all feels plausible. Don't like that. Oftentimes it's people making a really stupid decision, but that one was just, like, just walking around.

[A]

Sheesh. Sheesh, man. Okay. Bringing it back to the use of AI to kind of revolutionize this time. We're getting job reports every day. This company is next. This industry is next. I think there was one that we had on the sheet earlier. I didn't pull it up yet. Plumbers is the one thing that safe right now. Like, everything else has a score at least, like, six or higher. Plumbers is the only thing left.

[B]

So you got to pull that graphic up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is wild.

[A]

It's one of those things that eventually you're going to have to embrace AI it's kind of like not embracing a cell phone in 2026, even if not

[B]

embracing a computer in 2004. Like it's cra. Dude, you can't do your job. Like, this isn't even. I get it. 3 years ago when it first came out, people kind of scoffed and all that. Yeah, it was super janky. It felt like the fun thing you show your family at Christmas. It wasn't real yet. Now. No, no, no, no, no. Like on the personal level, maybe. At the enterprise level, it's still dubious. At the personal level, like this is a no brainer. Like you must, if you guys aren't looking at your screens right now. So this is the entire job market broken down by size of that industry and its exposure to AI. And there's plenty of green, but boy, oh boy, there's a lot of orange and red in some really big clusters. Basically. The easy way to sum it up is if your job is entirely on a screen, you are toast. So brace yourself. And as somebody, except for when I'm on camera, my entire job is on a screen. So nobody is more aware of how this comes home for me. I. I know I've said this many times. I feel like with Kaizen, my video game, I am in a race against AI, just making gaming completely irrelevant. So yeah, I watched it do it to film and now it's coming for me again.

[A]

Drew, as you're scrolling through this, it's pretty much care workers, child care, healthcare, nurse care, old people care, clean construction, general maintenance, bartending.

[B]

Here's all the bad news for the people in caretaking. Japan has an old people epidemic and they are solving it with robots. So you have the, what, third largest economy in the world that's like, we're gonna solve this problem. So yeah, I think that one turns yellow, orange and then red over the next 10 years for sure.

[A]

And yeah, and if you handle take caretaking, bartending and serving and all that other stuff is definitely in a wrap in that progression on your way there too.

[B]

So yeah, it's.

[A]

It's definitely getting there.

[B]

Yeah. And I mean, look, a lot of what's green now, you probably have seven to 10 years. So the good news is the world's gonna change so much in that time period. Now's not the time to panic. Now's the time to be deploying AI. A lot of this stuff is gonna get figured out. It's not like one day, I mean, barring a Terminator style takeover, it's not like this is going to happen overnight. So the people that react now, that start mastering AI now will buy themselves the most time to react. You'll be in Control the people that bury their head in the sand or try to rebel against it, which I think is going to be a distressing number of people you will get passed up.

[A]

This political compass test is like interesting. At first I was looking at it for like shits and giggles, but I think there's some questions that as a country we do need to talk about. So like for example, we're not going to take this whole test, but a couple of these I think actually stand out. So like if economic globalization is inevitable, it should primaries primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of transnational corporations. For a sentence like this it seems like the natural inclination like oh yeah, it should serve humanity. Is there something I'm missing with this

[B]

or is that no, aggressively not. But you need to understand one, globalism is not inevitable. So let's talk about that. Two, what do you mean by humanity versus transnational corporations? If you mean that we should just take care of everybody and regardless of what happens to the economy, then you're a psychopath. If what you mean is, boys and girls, these transnational corporations will like get together in these secret cabals like we finally got exposed with the Epstein files and they will steer us towards international banking and basically stealing from everybody through inflation. And now there's nowhere to go. Like you can't flee to a different place because it's just one world government. And so if they say we're going green, damn the consequences, we're going green, damn the consequences. Like that, that is, that's a nightmare. So you don't want to be on either side of that. You want to say we want to. I mean this is where. Just please know that I have biases that are very easy to map. I want somewhere that's pro business, pro innovation, understands the need for economic disparity but understands that that becomes toxic and must be avoided aggressively. You don't want there to be monopolies. You don't want there to be a one party state. You don't want there to be a whole bunch of things that like will break bad. So you have to be very careful of how you can be manipulated both by the the right and the left just really rounded to something. So yeah, yeah, beware. So the way that's worded I would put strongly agree, but that's because I am making assumptions that you actually mean humanity and not left leaning and that you actually mean transnational corporations that are working at cross purposes to the people versus just pro business copy and then

[A]

the this one, like I always support my country Whether it's right or wrong. I think this is an interesting one too because we're starting to see even support of the war be splintered. 23% of Republicans opposed the war. Iran. As soon as Trump did it, that number jumped up to 83%. Now they all supported it.

[B]

Yeah, this one's tricky.

[A]

Supports the national attention. It kind of pushed them away. So there is this line of, do you stand by your country even when there could be perceived as being in the wrong?

[B]

I would say that, yes. It's not. I'm going to stay with my country no matter what happens. Because if I felt like America had been captured by the left or the right and now it was like a one party state and we're never like getting back to normalcy, I could see tapping out. But at the same time, I do think everybody should always be on their team's team, if you see what I mean. So that doesn't mean that you like the administration. You might think the administration is doing terrible things, but I would definitely expect you to want like, let's say it's Germany, It's World War II. You despise Hitler, you want to see the Nazi regime fall, but you want to see Germany rebound and get back to glory and greatness. And that you would want to be a part of both the tear down of the German empire, the Reich, excuse me. So that you would be if, you know, I mean, look, I don't expect anybody to just go out and die, but for the people that get down like that, first of all, you're incredible. But anybody that's willing to make that ultimate sacrifice for the homeland. Yeah, I would expect you to go ham against the Nazis and then want to rebuild Germany. I don't expect you to be like Germany, these kids suck. So I certainly understood why Einstein fled and at the same time would completely understand anybody that stays or flees still wants to see their country bounce back and rise up. I don't want Iranians to be like, Iran sucks. I want them to say this regime is repressive and I want a regime that is focused on freedom, innovation, elevation of the nation. Like fuck, yeah. Like I want Iranians to be proud to be Iranian without having to back the regime. If you see what I mean.

[A]

No, I'm with you. Two more and then we'll wrap it up. Military action that defies international law, sometimes justified, I feel like that's like a strongly agree for me. But seeing what that means now in the era of TikTok, we're starting to see that defying international law does have its consequences, does have is its backlash, and not everybody has the appetite for that. So I think that's interesting.

[B]

Yeah, Justified, again, is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I would say military action that defines international law is sometimes highly useful. And utility as really distressing as people find it is a thing to focus on. You just need to make sure that your goals are honorable. But if your goals are honorable, you should be looking at utility far more than international law.

[A]

And then last, I feel like you talked about this earlier with the Tucker the Tucker Carlson thing. There is a word, there is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.

[B]

Strongly agree.

[A]

Yes. I thought that was really interesting to be worded on a political comment compass test. But yeah, whoever shot at truth, Devin, I think this was it. Whoever said this sent this over. Thank you. This was interesting.

[B]

Very interesting.

[A]

That's all I got. Happy Monday.

[B]

All right, everybody, There it is. Yet another Monday. We made it. And I cannot wait to see you guys on Wednesday. And as always, remember we've got an upcoming Impact Theory University Live masterclass and Ryan is going to drop into the chat that link so you guys can sign up. Have an amazing Tuesday, Monday and Tuesday, and we'll see you Wednesday. Peace.