Is America Declining Like the Roman Empire? | Bret Weinstein - PT 1

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Is America Declining Like the Roman Empire? | Bret Weinstein – PT 1

Podcast: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Bret Weinstein
Date: September 5, 2024

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Overview

This Impact Theory episode features evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, discussing urgent questions surrounding American society, border security, migration, and the current political climate. Weinstein draws analogies to historical empires, scrutinizes mainstream narratives, and challenges listeners to separate beliefs from values to forge common ground. The episode is a deep dive into America’s vulnerabilities and possible parallels to the decline of the Roman Empire, with a particular focus on current border phenomena and the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Distinguishing Beliefs and Values (00:45–01:30)

• Tom Bilyeu sets the stage by discussing the importance of distinguishing between beliefs (what is true) and values (what is important) for finding common ground in a divided society.
• The goal: “Offer clarity, cut through the noise, and challenge assumptions about today's most important topics.” (Bilyeu)

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2. Firsthand Account: Migration at the Darien Gap (01:51–05:47)

• Weinstein describes his trip to Panama and the Darien Gap, a dangerous 60-mile jungle crossing migrants use to travel from South America to North America.
• Key observations:
  • Two distinct migrations: One predominantly South American and global (Venezuelans, Haitians, Yemenis), the other almost entirely young Chinese men.
  • Local Panamanians have little control; international organizations build camps and facilitate the northbound flow.
• Humanitarian crisis: “It’s a humanitarian disaster…Almost all had been robbed, young women routinely raped, people walk out of the jungle without their children.” (Weinstein, 06:44)

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3. The Mysterious Chinese Migration (07:00–11:34)

• Weinstein is most disturbed by the organized, separate housing and behavior of the Chinese migrants.
• Chinese migrants:
  • Housed separately from others, often in camps like San Vicente.
  • Predominantly young men of military age.
  • Reluctant or hostile to communication, unlike other migrants.
• Weinstein’s suspicion: This could be “an invasion moving in parallel and being cloaked by a migration.” (10:50)
• Suggestion: The mass movement is being “encouraged and facilitated by the international community, which appears to have the idea that migration is inherently a good thing.” (10:54)

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4. Are We Facing an Organized Infiltration? (11:34–15:00)

• Probability of hostile intent from the Chinese Communist Party:
  • Weinstein assigns a “60%” likelihood that the Chinese government is sending people with harmful intent. (11:48)
  • Clarifies this is beyond simple espionage, hinting at preparation for more direct harm.

Memorable Exchange:

Bilyeu (12:41): “This is such a high degree of certainty from somebody I consider so cautious in their thinking.”
Weinstein: “Part of the reason you find that number as high as you find it is that given what I saw, it is hard to come up with other explanations for it.” (14:17)

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5. Hostility and Deception in Migrant Camps (19:40–21:17)

• Chinese migrants showed mockery and attempted deception (one posed as Korean until exposed).
• Camp group displayed laughter and closed off when deception was discovered.
• Surveillance: “I believe he was keeping tabs on us…I don’t know why that would be.” (20:55)

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6. Broader Implications and Competitive Geopolitics (23:40–26:56)

• Tom Bilyeu challenges the “invasion” hypothesis, painting alternate stories for the Chinese migrants—but agrees the behavior is unusual and worth concern.
• Weinstein draws a stark contrast between rigorous airport security and open borders: “If you come across the border, you will be monitored. If you come home from Central America, you will be monitored. In another case, there’s no scrutiny. That is a mystery to me.” (25:24)
• On U.S. vulnerability: “We apparently spend…I don’t know how many hundreds of billions of dollars on the intelligence community…[yet] we’ve left the most obvious mechanisms wide open.” (26:56)

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7. Evolutionary Biology, Sex Ratios, and China’s “Surplus Males” (27:44–33:36)

• Weinstein introduces an evolutionary biology paradox: China’s one-child policy led to an excess of males, violating expected sex ratio logic.
• Hypothesis: “There might be a reason to produce a generation with excess males if you were preparing for war…” (29:47)
• Bilyeu is skeptical about intentionality: “Seems tough to get your whole culture…to intentionally do that.” (31:58)
• Weinstein: “To me it’s an open question…the fact that we have what looks like an invasion from what looks like one of our principal…competitors abroad.” (34:32)

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8. China’s Global Ambitions—Imperial or Economic? (35:31–37:44)

• Weinstein refers to China’s Belt and Road Initiative as resembling “a modern imperial” strategy.
• Bilyeu interprets it as economic leverage, not territorial imperialism: “I don’t want to have to rule over you guys because that shit is messy. But…do I want to control your infrastructure? Yes.” (36:14)
• Weinstein: “I’m not faulting the Chinese for advocating for their own well being…But we are being naive, not at least publicly entertaining the possibility that…our antagonists abroad would take advantage of our lack of security.” (37:21)

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9. 2024 U.S. Election Analysis: Trump, Biden, and Kennedy (37:44–43:05)

• Trump: Weinstein doesn’t see Trump as the “rational monster,” but doubts his suitability for office due to temperament and lack of team-building skills. (37:55)
• Biden: Criticizes the current president as “too mentally decrepit” and says having a figurehead “is inconsistent with our constitutional republic.” (38:36, 39:06)
• Kennedy Jr.: “There is only one rational choice left…Bobby Kennedy Jr…He could get us a proper reckoning [post-COVID], has a deep understanding of the deep state, and is willing to risk his life to disengage it from governance.” (40:15–41:40)

Notable Quote:

"It is inconsistent with our constitutional republic that we have a decrepit figurehead who is standing in for a cabal whose names we don't know. People who are unelected cannot be called in front of Congress and questioned. If we are attacked in the night, who takes the phone call and decides whether we launch the nukes? You cannot have a person as far gone as Joe Biden in that office. That is a different country."
— Bret Weinstein (39:06)

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10. Political Reform and the Need for New Leadership (43:05–48:35)

• Bilyeu shares his apolitical background and loss of faith in the system after Trump’s election; expresses affinity for candidates like Andrew Yang.
• Weinstein discusses systemic barriers preventing candidates like Yang and calls for open-minded, pragmatic leadership, suggesting “participation income” over UBI but credits Yang for innovative thinking.

Notable Quote:

"Let’s let democracy work by taking people who can afford to listen to any idea, who don’t have a dog in the fight personally who can actually speak on our behalf."
— Bret Weinstein (48:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the border crisis:
  “It’s a humanitarian disaster…Almost all had been robbed. Young women routinely raped.” (Weinstein, 06:44)
• On the Chinese migration:
  “It was hostile and mockery, and it was decidedly disturbing. So I began to think of this as an invasion moving in parallel and being cloaked by a migration.” (Weinstein, 10:50)
• On state failure:
  “We have a corrupt political system, it’s pay for play. What has stopped our antagonists abroad from having purchased influence with which to get us to harm ourselves?” (Weinstein, 26:20)
• On candidates:
  “There is only one rational choice left to us in this election… Bobby Kennedy Jr.” (Weinstein, 40:15)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:45: Introduction and episode goals
• 01:51: Weinstein describes Darien Gap migration
• 06:44: Humanitarian crisis details
• 10:50: “Invasion hypothesis” emerges
• 11:48: Assigning probability to Chinese hostile intent
• 14:17: Personal experience and rationale for high certainty
• 19:40: Hostility and deception among Chinese migrants
• 23:40: Bilyeu’s alternative interpretations
• 25:24: U.S. intelligence failures vs. open border
• 27:44: Evolutionary biology and China’s surplus males
• 35:31: Belt and Road and modern Chinese strategy
• 37:44: Presidential candidates analyzed
• 43:05: Personal stories and systemic critique
• 48:33: Vision for political reform and leadership

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Conclusion

This episode provides a thought-provoking exploration of America’s state—internally, globally, and at its borders—inviting listeners to question easy narratives while urging a return to critical thinking and honest debate. Weinstein, via firsthand observation and evolutionary biology, paints a picture of America at a crossroads, possibly echoing the late-stage Roman Empire. Both he and Bilyeu challenge themselves—and listeners—to grapple with uncomfortable possibilities and consider unconventional but necessary remedies for the nation’s future.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. In a time where understanding the difference between beliefs and values could be the key to finding common ground, it is crucial to have conversations that cut through the noise and offer clarity. To help us navigate these challenges challenging waters, I brought in a guest who is not afraid to tackle the big questions head on. An evolutionary biologist with a deep understanding of societal dynamics, he brings a grounded, thoughtful perspective on everything from the complexities of the Middle east to national security concerns. We're going to explore how to distinguish between beliefs and values, why finding common ground on factual issues is absolutely critical, and how we can respect different perspectives while still pursuing the truth. If you're ready to look beyond the surface and dig into the real challenges we we face, better understand the world we live in and recognize the steps we can take toward a more reasoned and equitable future, then this episode is for you. Please help me in welcoming Brett Weinstein. Talk to me about what's going on at the border. That is. That one's out of left field.

[A]

It's pretty wild. It's pretty wild. And the fact that it is simultaneously an undeniable fact. I mean, you could go visit it, all right, and you could see it. And it's a, it's a mystery. Why would anybody allow this to happen? It violates all sorts of things that we all thought were beyond even needing to be discussed. Right? The nation has to control its borders. That's part of. Anyway, you asked what's taking place. You want me just to describe what I saw? So my son and I, Zach, went to Panama and we traveled to the province of Darien, to the edge of the Darien Gap. Actually, we went into the Darien Gap, but we traveled by car to the edge of it. The Darien Gap is a broken. It's a section of the Pan American highway that has never been built. The Pan American highway runs from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to the southern tip of South America. Whoa. You can drive the whole way. Except for the 60 mile stretch at the border between Colombia and Panama. What is there is a wilderness. There's a national park, and it is a extremely. A famously difficult stretch of land to cross. There are currently thousands of people, thousands a day, being beckoned across the Darien Gap, largely by the international community, which is facilitating this massive migration. Some of the people who are migrating are South Americans. There's a lot of people from Venezuela fleeing economic collapse there, but there are a lot of people coming from around the world. They fly into Quito, Ecuador. The reason they fly into Ecuador is that there's no visa requirement. So they can land in Ecuador without a visa, they can move overland into Colombia, and they can cross the Darien Gap into Panama. So what we saw was on the Panama side, we saw what I came to understand as two distinct phenomena. There's one massive migration, lots of South Americans, lots of people from elsewhere in the world, from the Middle East, Yemen, people from Haiti. They are housed in encampments that are built in settlements that exist in Darien already. So people are walking out of the jungle, they are walking into these little towns that exist on the edge of the jungle. These towns have had refugee camps built up by the international community. So the Panamanians aren't happy to have this massive migration moving through their habitat, but they have no control over it.

[B]

How's that possible?

[A]

Well, the Panamanian border is supposed to be controlled by the Senna Front, which is the Panamanian Border Authority. It's a.

[B]

Is it a separate entity?

[A]

Yeah, it's a military police entity that is charged with controlling the frontier.

[B]

And they don't answer to the Panamanian government.

[A]

No, they do. Oh, they absolutely do. They're part of the Panamanian government.

[B]

Got it. So then Panama could stop this?

[A]

Well, see, this is the thing. We, as little people, don't understand international relations. Could Panama technically stop it? Yes, they could technically stop it. But what would happen to Panama if they did? Presumably explains why they don't. So the Panamanians are not in a position to override whatever it is that wants this migration to happen.

[B]

How much of Panama's stance is public or. And how are you inferring?

[A]

That is a good question. Let us put it this way. The discussion of the migration is not nearly as substantial as you would expect. And in large Measure. What is happening is the migrants are being shunted north as quickly as possible. That from Panama's perspective, the best thing to do is to get these people on their way where they don't become a burden to Panama. And so they are being shuttled through Panama into Costa Rica and through all of the countries up into North America. All of the Central American countries are participating in facilitating this migration for reasons that are not clear. But I said that I come to understand this as two separate phenomena. One of them is this migration of people who, when you talk to them, and we found many migrants, were forthcoming about both the trials that they had suffered in the jungle, which are terrifying. Almost all of them had been robbed. Young women were routinely raped. People walk out of the jungle without their children. Children. Oh, without their God. Oh. It's a humanitarian disaster. Yeah. The Darien Gap is a very difficult piece of habitat to traverse if you know what you're doing. These people do not. They've been induced to try to cross the gap with no understanding of how to equip themselves or what they're actually going to face there. And, you know, it's the kind of habitat where you can slide down a muddy hill and break your leg, and that can kill you because it prevents you from getting out. So it takes accidents and greatly enhances their lethality. But you've got this migration. All of the migrants who will speak to us are economic migrants. They're all very clear about this, which means they're not eligible for political asylum in the US Though that is the basis on which they are crossing our southern border. But there is another migration which is housed separately, which I found very surprising. It is a migration that is almost entirely Chinese, is predominantly young men. Whether the fact that they are of military age is meaningful or not is impossible to say. But what I can say is that unlike all of the other migrants that we encountered, who were surprisingly open about talking about what they were doing and where they were headed and what had motivated them to go. The Chinese migrants who are housed separately by the Panamanians, they're housed in places that are not towns. Interestingly, they're housed. There's a camp called San Vicente, which Secretary Mayorkas visited when he was in Panama right before it was expanded greatly. But the Chinese who are moving through the San Vicente camp are unwilling to talk. They give off a hostile air, and it's not clear to me why this should be the case. If they were, for example, fleeing oppression at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, you would expect them to be at least curious about citizens of this country that they were apparently going to start a new life in, that would be a natural thing. And even if they were afraid to talk because they were afraid of what might happen if word got back, you would not get a hostile sense. You would get a sense that they were conflicted or trapped and couldn't. Couldn't talk. But that was not at all the impression they left. The impression they left was one of hostility and mockery, and it was decidedly disturbing. So I began to think of this as an invasion moving in parallel and being cloaked by a migration. The migration is real. The migration is alarming in its own right. It is a humanitarian disaster at the level of what is happening to the people doing the migrating. And it is very definitely being encouraged and facilitated by the international community, which appears to have the idea that migration is inherently a good thing. Now, I don't know how anyone could possibly be that confused, but this is visible. If you look at the web pages of the organizations that are doing the facilitating, they say this, that migrate is their mission, to induce migration. They believe that migration is positive, but that migration is cloaking something else. I can't say exactly what that something else is, but it would be irresponsible not to consider the possibility that it is an international competitor taking advantage of our open border to arrange some kind of harm that will be more easily orchestrated that way than it would be on a battlefield.

[B]

Okay. I know you tell your kids that when they have a hypothesis, they need to assign a percentage likelihood that it's accurate. What percentage likelihood of accuracy do you give? The invasion hypothesis.

[A]

So let's be clear on what that hypothesis is. If that hypothesis is that the Chinese Communist Party is sending people across our southern border with the intent to do harm to the United States, I would say 60%. Whoa.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Now, there are lots of other possibilities. You know, does spying fall under that hypothesis? No, I don't think that is specifically to do harm. So.

[B]

So you think it's more than spying. So there's the. 60% is like proper harm.

[A]

You know, here's the thing. I know how crazy that sounds.

[B]

And my. My final question will be around that. Like. So one of the early questions I asked you was, is there ever a hypothesis that's so far out that it's better not to even float it out? We've already had that conversation. The. What I want to understand, though, with this is what happened that gave you that much confidence, because I agree with you that this is on the table. As one of the things that it very well could be. And I don't think you just said this, but I've heard you say this before, which is really powerful. And if you believe that there is some element of financial corruption in our system, which I think everybody agrees there's a lot of money in our system, Whether we call it corruption or not is almost a moot point that there's a ton of money in our politics. Money moves the needle here. If people know that from the outside, would they not leverage that to get what they want? So that could be paying a ton of money to ensure that the migrants are allowed in the country. Um, but what I want to know is this is such a high degree of certainty from somebody I consider so cautious in their thinking. Um, but this falls into that bucket that you're playing with more and more. As you got battered through the COVID situation, it felt to me like you got. I don't know if frustrated or angry, but you started, like, making bolder claims. Bolder claims. And this one is the one. Help me understand, what are the building blocks that make it up? So we know they had their own migration going in. They didn't act in the way that you expected them to act. They were hostile.

[A]

Well, first of all, let me say this is part of why I decided I had to go in person, because.

[B]

Had you already been hearing this before?

[A]

Yeah. The folks who showed Zach and me this migration had been sending materials for better part of a year. So I was quite aware of what I was likely to see, but it made no sense. And frankly, I talked almost not at all about it because I did not want to find myself broadcasting things that turned out not to be what had been represented to me. I was very cautious about it, and it was hard to justify going. It's not an especially safe place to go. What was I going to see that I couldn't deduce from a video? But I was very glad that I did go because the physical relationship between these two different migrations and most importantly, the. Approach that the migrants in the Chinese camp had to us was unmistakable. It was hostile. Now, why was it hostile? It's hard to. So part of the reason that you find that number as high as you find it is that given what I saw, it is hard to come up with other explanations for it. Right. Were these people fleeing oppression that was inconsistent with the way they dealt with us? It did not feel right. Now, can I convey that to you in a way that you would have a degree of certainty about it not really. You know, I don't think you know me well enough to know what it would take to trigger that circuit for me. But here's the other question. We have a southern border that is effectively open. Yep. We are not doing even the most basic due diligence with respect to establishing who is crossing that border and why. Given that, do you believe that our antagonists abroad will take advantage of that fact? I find that almost certain. If you work in university maintenance, Granger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[B]

Yes, so I find the hypothesis compelling, but I thought you were going to say like 7 to 10%. So let me lay out the part where you and I agree and then as the person that's just armchair quarterbacking it, I'll give you sort of my take, knowing I haven't been there and so I really, I'm just pulling the shit out of my ass. But so I have heard from enough analysts of China that the Chinese diaspora is a very meaningful thing and that some percentage of the people in the Chinese diaspora really view themselves still as Chinese regardless of where they live. Now this is just analysts that I've heard speak. This is not me forming a first hand account. So I know that this is part of my distortion on my lenses. This is not. I don't trust this. But in terms of hypothesis being very unsure. But it's an interesting guess that warrants exploration. So to your point, governments are going to do what they can to get a leg up. We are in a pure competitor relationship with China. China has every reason to want to know more about what we're doing as we have every reason to want to know what China's doing now Breaking from that, I will say it is very possible that China is in a pretty rough economic situation right now, if the housing issue there is as big as some pundits are making it out to be. Again, no firsthand knowledge, don't know, but certainly interesting. I could see not being of that culture, missing cues, misreading cues so that they seem hostile or whatever. Again, they could be throwing things at you, spitting, I don't know, but that'd be pretty tough to misread. But if it were more of just a body language, refusal to interact, scowling, that kind of thing, then, well, well, beyond that. Okay, give me the craziest thing they did.

[A]

Well, I don't know that any of it was crazy, but we attempted to interact with several different groups at the San Vicente camp. One gentleman attempted to mislead us into believing that he was Korean, and Michael Yan, who took us to Darien, who has spent time in China, tripped him up and revealed that this was a deception. At which point there was laughter amongst the group who had witnessed this attempted deception. And then following that, there was no willingness to talk about the reality. It wasn't that this had been a practical joke on some naive foreigners and that that broke the ice. Right. This was a deception that was exposed and it led nowhere. I also believe that we were monitored in the camp, so there was a particular guy I was watching who repositioned himself as we moved to different places in order to witness what was taking place there. And I believe he was keeping tabs on us. I don't know why that would be. Didn't strike me as a normal behavior for somebody who is, you know, involved in a major migration to a new homeland.

[B]

It still feels qualitative, though. So we have qualitative feedback because I can. So you don't know this about me, but my background's actually writing. So I often ask myself, if this were a character and I were writing them, what would have to be true for them to act this way? One could be, I'm here as a spy, for sure, or I'm here to do harm. But honestly, if I'm coming to you up, the last thing I'm going to do is be openly antagonistic. I'm going to be super friendly because I do not want you to be queued into what I'm really doing. But if I have a dim view of Americans and I've got some sense of I'm going to America because I want to bring my culture to another great place and I want to spread the Chinese Diaspora. And I have no idea what inside of China they say about America, they say lovely things, I have no idea. But I know that like across Europe, it hasn't been a. I came to England because I want to embrace English values. It is in many cases I've come to England and I plan to stake my values and I'm trying to bring as many people over as I can so that we can really have our own at least pockets where our culture is the culture. And given that America hopefully still has that vibe of like, yeah, we want diaspora people, we want people to come here and make this a cooler place. Now I think that we have to reckon with that because I don't think you can bring this many people over at once. I think we're gonna have problems. But like, I still like the vibe of the Statue of Liberty. Give me your tired, we cuddled masses. Like I love that vibe. Anyway, I can write a bunch of backstories for these guys where, yes, they're clowning on the idiot Americans even though they're trying to get to America. Now, whether they're fleeing China because China, with my archetype is not the kind of place I would want to be, or they're coming over as an invasion, I don't know. The only thing I would say is I can paint a lot of scenarios where they are probably still problematic from a whole host of very non sinister, non spy reasons. But it could also be exactly what you're saying. I just would have. Again, I have not been there, so I've not seen the things that you see. So I'm in the DMT position again of I haven't met the little guy, but it feels to me with qualitative data that it warrants a more cautious percentage.

[A]

Well, the question is, what would you think if you had been there?

[B]

And I might be way more hardcore than you. I might be 90%, don't know.

[A]

Nobody has any trouble accepting that China's building weaponry. And so the point is, it's not beyond our thought process to imagine that somebody might be preparing for war with us. But for some reason, this bargain, hey, their southern border is open. Can we do anything with that? Is it worth sending in? You know, maybe, maybe the decision to utilize them hasn't been made. But the idea is it would be a shame not to take advantage of that open border while it's still open. And who knows how long it will be.

[B]

Do you have an estimate of how many Chinese have crossed?

[A]

I believe it's tens of thousands. Whoa, it's a lot.

[B]

Okay, for a second, let's just pretend that the dark scenario is the true scenario, which you've 60%, I'm like 7%, but whatever. Do you think that we're going to have a reckoning? Like if you send tens of thousands of people that still have allegiance to the homeland and the homeland wants to do you dirty? I don't even like thinking like this. This is interesting. This is triggering some World War II vibes in me, which I'm not loving. But let's finish the thought experiment. I get your friend hates that. But do you think we have a reckoning coming with a potential problem where the call came from inside the house?

[A]

I don't understand why this is even tough.

[B]

Because it seems self evident that an enemy would want to do this.

[A]

Given a manifestly open southern border, you don't think anybody's gonna notice that they can send people over it and utilize. I mean, how many years did we spend taking off our shoes in air? I mean, and the absurdity of if you come across the border, if you come home from Central America, you will be monitored. They will know exactly who's crossing the border at exactly what moment you're doing it. It's a whole different situation. You will have scrutiny exerted in your case and in another case there's no scrutiny. That, that is a mystery to me. How did that happen? When I ask obvious questions like we have a corrupt political system, it's pay for play. What is to have stopped our antagonists abroad from having purchased influence with which to get us to harm ourselves? Isn't that the obvious bargain?

[B]

If they can do it? Well, in a way where I don't realize that's what the money's for. I think it's something good. Yeah, I could for sure. I see a lot of really bad ideas get a lot of energy so saying I think this has happened. But I. It certainly fits the incentive model.

[A]

I think that the thing that I don't understand is that we apparently spend I don't know how many hundreds of billions of dollars on the intelligence community to think way outside of the box and figure out how a very clever enemy could possibly get inside our system and compromise us. And we've left the most obvious mechanisms wide open. And to talk about what my assessment is that the most obvious loopholes are being utilized, you know, is like, well, do you have the evidence for that? The evidence that we have antagonists abroad and that we have people who never sleep because they're concerned that those enemies might get the jump on us that evidence exists. I don't know what the reason is that the southern border is as open as it is. I don't know why the international community is encouraging migrants into the Darien. I don't know why the Chinese are housed separately. I don't know why the Chinese appear to be facilitated in their migration by their government. Oh, but there's one other thing I wanted to mention to you. And again, this goes back quite a number of years. In fact, this goes back enough years that I had in fact, forgotten it, and it did not come back up. As I was looking at this Chinese migration phenomenon in Darien, when the Chinese one child policy was in full force, I wrote an essay. I was not a public figure. I don't know that anybody read the essay, but I wrote an essay about a paradox. There is a principle in evolutionary biology that goes back to Ronald Fisher. Ronald Fisher realized something important about sex ratios. He wasn't thinking about humans. And what he realized was that although males and females difference tremendously in how many offspring they can produce in a lifetime, that on average, given some very basic assumptions, on average, they produce the same number of offspring. And there is therefore no advantage to producing males over females or vice versa. That is to say, a male might produce a thousand times as many offspring as a female in a given case, but on average, they produce the same number. So if there are too many males, you should produce females, and if there are too many females, you should produce males, because you tend to succeed better evolutionarily if you produce the rare sex. Now, that logic should apply to people, and it should have applied to China. If you were a Chinese person and you were going to only be able to have one child, and they were going to grow up in a nation with an abundance of males, you should want to produce a female. A male might well not find a mate. A female would not only be all but certain to find a mate, but she would have her choice because females would be in high demand. So why, I wondered all of these years ago, did that not cause the embrace of the production of females? Why did the Chinese continue to produce excess males? And what I came up with was the sobering realization that there was another evolutionary force that might well be in play, which is that in a world of lineage versus lineage competition, that there might be a reason to produce a generation with excess males if you were preparing for war, that excess males actually are the perfect substrate for lineage against lineage violence. Because men who have no reproductive prospects at home, who are sexually frustrated can be armed and sent abroad with a desire to come back a hero. And that would be a very effective mechanism for picking up territory. The same process I described to you when we were talking about genocide, that if you wanted that seem though like

[B]

it would be a. It's the thing you do when you find yourself a surplus males. It isn't the thing you set out to do.

[A]

Well, I don't see. I agree with you that it would be a natural if you happen to end up with surplus males. But I don't see any reason that you wouldn't have an evolutionary tendency to. Especially in a culture that is as far sighted as the Chinese have been.

[B]

It's interesting, I will say that there might be other hypotheses that don't require them to be so calculated, which seems tough to get your whole culture like all you're doing is applying the pressure. You can only have one child and the nation builds an army for you. Strikes me as well, not impossible. Strikes me as very unlikely. I also have a base assumption that could be wrong, but it's a base assumption in my operating system that China's not very imperialist. So I think that people will confuse their desire to get Taiwan back with a. And we want to go get more. Like they're pretty. Like let the world do what the world's going to do. Like yes, we want to be financially invested so that everybody owes us one, but we don't want to take them over, we don't want to run their countries. But they, they want Taiwan back because that's part of the original vision. So anyway, if you've got a nation that is not imperial in nature and they were literally worried about people starving to death, which is why they said, ah, you can only have one kid. And so then you'll get a brief burst of we want a male. Because the, that's how you pass the lineage on. That's how you pass the cash on. Like, just give me a boy, that's all I want. I have a feeling that if it had kept going on they would have gone, oh, that was a really dumb strategy. Now I want to have girls because this balance is all out of whack. But because they end up nipping that in the bud I think in the 90s, so it only runs for like 20 years. So you really only have like one generation to be like, oh, terrible idea now. So if it had gone on longer and they kept like making sure that they were only having guys, then I might be a little bit more like, okay, Maybe, but yeah, I mean I,

[A]

I hear what you're saying and the problem is that the current governance of China is a departure from the historical true. So anyway, I find it interesting that you have a violation of a known evolutionary principle, the balancing of sex ratios. Seems to me that this would have been obvious to an individual that even if the society viewed male children in a particular way, that you could calculate that for your own lineage, the chances of your child finding a mate suggested that actually it would be clever to have girls. So I don't know. To me it's an open question. And the fact that we have what looks like an invasion from what looks like one of our principal. I don't like the term enemy, but looks like competitor. Competitor antagonists abroad.

[B]

Well, one thing that could be interesting again hypothesis that I have no real reason to believe is actually happening but is worthy of exploration would be that this is more of a Viking model where oh, I find myself with excess males intentionally or otherwise. And oh, my primary rival has an open southern border and the Chinese diaspora is real. So I know they will still feel a pretty strong allegiance to the homeland. Let me send them over. Which probably isn't a hateful idea. Oh man, I can't remember there was a guy that was made a spy and he from Russia, he was actually East German but anyway gets recruited to be a spy in the west and he was like, oh, the thought of like living in America, he's like they didn't have to convince me I was totally here for it. So I could see them being like no authoritarian rule, no social credit score. I'm here for it. Let's go.

[A]

Well, I will say the scenario you laid out does fit. If the scenario you laid out was right, then my 60% estimate is includes it right, an opportunistic invasion. But I also wanted to point out that the Chinese, as much as they have a multi millennium history of effectively being insular, is engaged in what is called the Belt and Road initiative, which is an expansive plan that looks, you know, like a modern imperial.

[B]

You think that looks imperial? I think it looks like I want you to owe me one. I don't want to be imperial. I do not want to have to rule over you guys because that shit is messy. But boy, oh boy, do I want to control your infrastructure, do I want you to have relationships with me.

[A]

Trade dealers want to control the flow of resources and labor to facilitate a Sino centric future. I'm not faulting all the good with the Chinese having to govern you right? I'M not faulting the Chinese for advocating for their own well being. I do view, much as I view our government as not synonymous with our population. I see our government is in large measure hostile to the well being of the citizens and I feel the same way about the relationship of the Chinese government to the Chinese people. But nonetheless, if there is any, I don't fault the Chinese for viewing the world in competitive terms. That's, that's the adult way to, to recognize how things work. But I do think we are being naive, not at least publicly entertaining the possibility that our antagonists abroad would take advantage of our lack of security. Our famous lack of security on our southern border and the international community's facilit of massive migration would be the perfect cover for something that was not collaborative.

[B]

All right, I have a nasty question I want to ask about the 2024 election. Many people think Trump is the rational monster. Is he?

[A]

I don't think so. I, I don't, I don't want him to be president because I don't think he has the, the time, the temperament or the team building skills to do the job that is necessary. But I do believe he is at least a departure from the ruling cabal, which is clearly hostile to the well being of average people. That said, I believe there is only one rational choice left to us in this election and it is Bobby Kennedy

[B]

Jr. You don't think that'll split the vote?

[A]

I don't even know what to think about that question. The Democratic Party appears to be fielding a candidate who was too mentally decrepit four years ago to be elected to the presidency. Running him again is so preposterous that it's not obvious to me how any American can in good conscience vote for Biden. It is inconsistent with our constitutional republic that we have a decrepit figurehead who is standing in for a cabal whose names we don't know. People who are unelected cannot be called in front of Congress and questioned. If we are attacked in the night, who takes the phone call and decides whether we launch the nukes? You cannot have a person as far gone as Joe Biden in that office. That is a different country. So my feeling is the Democratic Party has an obligation to field a reasonable candidate before there is any vote to split. In the absence of that, every single rational American should be fleeing the Democratic Party in favor of whatever makes the most sense. And again, in my opinion, there's really

[B]

only one

[A]

plausible candidate for the job running for the office. How the one plausible candidate running for the office is a long shot I have not figured out. But here you have a guy who has an encyclopedic knowledge of what has just happened to us over the course of the COVID crisis. He's the one guy who's in a position to sort out the implications of what took place so that we can get a proper reckoning and make sure that doesn't happen again. What's more, you have a guy who has a deep understanding of the deep state and is obviously willing to risk his life over the question of how to disengage it from governance so that we can go back to being a Democratic Republican. I also, I personally know him. I like him a great deal. I trust him. And I believe that his legal knowledge and his wisdom, the fact that this is somebody in his personal familial story is tied up in the exact trauma that our nation has lived under since 1963. Right? To have the possibility of putting him in that office, to finally move us past that chapter into some renewed phase of American strength, to restore the consent of the governed, seems to me like the obvious thing to do. We are lucky that we have that option on the table. And I can't believe that we would, in the face of that, be embracing tired tropes like spoiler and the lesser of two evils. Right? Those tropes make no sense in an era where the DNC is fielding Joe Biden in his state of disrepair. It just, it's inconsistent with it. This is an emergency, and we have somebody that we can vote for who makes perfect sense, could inhabit the office, has the skills, has the temperament, would likely have eight years in which to get the job done. All of those things are powerful arguments in favor of this person. And I really hope people will rethink their reflexive embrace of what amounts to a jersey color over reason.

[B]

I've been apolitical my entire life. The system has worked well for me. So I've never had a problem. I've just always been like, I'm going to outwork everybody. I don't give a fuck what you try to do to slow me down. Like, I'm going to keep going. And because it has worked well for me, I don't immediately find myself gravitating towards the problems. Now Andrew Yang comes onto the scene, and I'm looking at. I remember telling my employees the night before the Trump election, guys, he cannot get elected. Like, he. He is on tape. He said, I grabbed them in the pussy. It's done. Like, I. I Was so. I was literally laughing. I'm like, you guys are panicking. He is fundamentally unelectable. It can't happen. And so I was like, go to bed. Rest. Everything's going to be fine. And so the next morning, when I say that, I was like, what? I was so caught off guard and taken by surprise. Anyway, a very surprising moment. So that was the first time where I thought, whoa, man, maybe votes really do count. Like, you know, that I. I should have voted. I didn't vote. Never even really thought. I'm like, I live in California. It's like, it's a default state. It's going to go blue. So never thought about the need to vote. Never even took inventory of, am I conservative or am I liberal? None of it. Just didn't think about it. As this all starts happening and the Trump thing is kicking off, and I start with just default assumptions that he's a psychopath and he is, like, literally ruining this country.

[A]

And.

[B]

And then Yang comes around because I'm like, who am I going to vote for in the next election? Because now I realize I really do need to vote. And Yang came along, and I'm like, yo, this dude. And I was really into him, and obviously he gets sort of railroaded off. But then I had him on my podcast, and I was way opposed to LBi. Ubi, Ubi. And when I had him on the podcast, I'm talking to him and I'm like, you know, man, I'm still not sure if I agree with UBI or not, but, like, I really believe in this dude. Like, and if this dude has looked at this problem that closely and is like, yeah, we really have to take this into consideration. I'm just willing to say either I need to go figure it out for myself and do all the hardcore research, or I need to find a proxy that I can trust. And I felt so good about him. So when you came out with UNITY and off camera, I told him, dude, you better fucking run again next cycle, because, one, you look super prescient now, because this was right after Covid hit. And I just really think people are going to get used to your way and there could be a real shot for you. And so when you started talking Unity 2020, and the people that you were putting forth that he happened to be one, I was like, ah, there's. He gave me the clearer sense of what you meant by a patriot. And. Okay, so that's the framework with which I'm now stepping in. The first time I hear about Unity 2020, and I think, ooh, this is interesting, but my first problem is TikTok, man, we are running up against it.

[A]

Don't know.

[B]

So how are you not worried about and forget it. I know you're going to pull the plug if we can't, but I'm just saying I really want it to happen. So how do we get enough done in the really small amount of time that we have? Like, can you even get on the ballot everywhere?

[A]

Well, see, that's the thing. Everybody asks this question. You have to realize something. You probably hadn't heard a plan like Unity 2020 before. In other words, you've probably heard the lesser evil thing a dozen times, right? You've heard why you can't engage in this. And then the answer is, oh, there's actually a very simple solution to that puzzle. Ballot access has this element. If you think, well, ballot access is a matter of collecting signatures. There's a date in every state and that's it. It, then we're cooked. That's true. We are cooked. You can't do it that way. It's not the only way. So the question is, is there something that you are not seeing? And I can promise you there is. Can I promise you that we're going to get there? Oh, I absolutely can't. What we need is a groundswell in order to find out. Right? Everything depends on people realizing what I think. Even in what you just said I think is missing, which is I don't think there's any guarantee that something recognizable makes it to 2024 for Andrew Y run again. I think Andrew Yang is thinking that it does. Right. In fact, I saw an interview in which he ominously said that he had signed something that said he was going to step out of the race this time and not do anything that might interfere with it. Who is asking him to sign what? This is a democracy. Who knows what the future holds? Why would any honorable person ask somebody who is clearly capable, qualified for the job, why would you take anybody off the map with their signature? Shouldn't a handshake do it and say, look, under foreseeable circumstances, I'm not planning to run. Shouldn't that be good enough for just about anybody? So anyway, something ominous is afoot in our system that wishes to take Andrew out of circulation. We saw it act during the primaries, right? We saw all sorts of shenanigans played in order to limit his influence. I think it's very clear why, you know, again, the Democratic Party does not want to represent the public because it has other Priorities. Andrew Yang would clearly represent the public. So he's a non starter. Frankly, I think he'll be a non starter in 2024, 2028, you know, whatever it is, right.

[B]

The problem is within the current system.

[A]

Well, let's put it this way. Why is he behaving like a good soldier in the current system if the current system cannot allow Andrew Yang to be Andrew Yang? I mean, there's something just seriously off. So in any case, the. The thing about Andrew Yang that I really like and the reason that I named him as a member the, the left leaning member of the, the prototypical ticket is that he is very insightful. He's clearly motivated by the right things. To be honest with you, I'm not sure I believe in UBI as presented. But my sense is there. It's a problem that needs to be addressed. UBI is a proposal. It proves that Andrew is interested in the right things. He's focused in the right place. Personally, I would argue that something like participation income might be a better instantiation. But here's the thing. I know for sure. Let's say that Andrew Yang found himself in the White House. There's no problem saying, look, UBI was a cool idea. Here's why it doesn't work. Here's an idea that fixes the problem with UBI and addresses the same thing that it addresses. Andrew Yang would look at it and if he thought actually that does work better, there's no obstacle to it, right? He would accept it. Or if he understood something about participation income that wasn't as effective at ubi, he'd throw back that argument and we'd find out, right, there's nothing in the system. There's no reason he'd be committed to it. There's no constituency that is favoring UBI that is actually driving his claim to believe in it. So again, it's just a simple matter of let's let democracy work by taking people who can afford to listen to any idea, who don't have a dog in the fight personally who can actually speak on our behalf. So yeah, Andrew's perfect for that because he's smart, he's open minded, he's a patriot. I mean, hell yeah, if you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.