Is Netanyahu Dead, The Socialists Are Going To Cuba, Two Attacks In One Day | Weekly Recap

Summary

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Impact Theory Weekly Recap: “Is Netanyahu Dead, The Socialists Are Going To Cuba, Two Attacks In One Day”

Host: Tom Bilyeu
Date: March 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Impact Theory dives into a turbulent week, focusing on a series of dramatic, interwoven events: terror attacks in the US, growing unrest in Cuba and the controversial trip by the Democratic Socialists of America, and the viral saga—and conspiracy theories—around rumors of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s alleged death. Tom Bilyeu and his co-host cut through headlines, memes, and online misinformation, scrutinizing the deeper causes, global consequences, and cognitive hazards of today’s media age.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Domestic Terror Attacks: A Sobering Week in the US

Timestamps: 01:00–06:05

• Michigan Synagogue Attack:

  • A man drove an explosives-laden truck into Temple Israel, West Bloomfield Township. Armed security repelled the attack, killing the suspect; the building caught fire, and dozens of law enforcement officers were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. All 140 children, teachers, and staff escaped safely.
  • Potential Motivation: Reports (unconfirmed) suggest the attacker’s children were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, raising significant questions about radicalization and war’s downstream effects.
  • Quote:

    “It serves as a powerful reminder of how war radicalizes virtually everyone that it touches… If we think we’re going to be able to go to war with Iran and get out of this without people being radicalized, that is really a miscalculation.” – Tom, (03:00)

  • FBI is treating the attack as targeted antisemitic violence.

• ODU/Virginia ROTC School Shooting:

  • A former ISIS supporter (Mohammed Baylor Jalo), previously incarcerated for attempting to support ISIS, attacked an ROTC class at Old Dominion University. He killed Lt. Col. Brandon Shaw and wounded two others. The ROTC students overwhelmed and killed the assailant.
  • Quote:

    “Challenging a room full of military hopefuls is not a smart strategy… The students made it clear that homeboy had picked the very wrong classroom.” – Tom, (06:17–07:50)

  • Jalo had lied about his repentance at sentencing and was released from prison more than a year early.

2. Cuba in Crisis & DSA Controversy

Timestamps: 13:18–23:25

• Protests in Cuba:
  • Amid ongoing food and water shortages, Cuba has seen eight straight nights of unrest. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) announced they are sending a delegation, part of the "Nuestra America Convoy" organized by Progressive International and Code Pink.
  • Debate on Motivations:
    • Co-host suggests the DSA is attempting to rally anti-Trump/anti-capitalist sentiment.
    • Tom argues that the DSA is defending a dictatorship “drenched in humanitarian abuses,” with Cuba classified as “not free” by Freedom House.
• History & Economics Lesson:
  • Pre-revolutionary Cuba was an economic powerhouse in Latin America. The revolution’s focus on centrally-planned sugar production, enforced “at gunpoint,” led to economic collapse, dependence on Soviet aid, and ongoing repression.
  • Quote:

    “Repression is required when you want to take people’s things… Eventually, somebody says no. And what do you do? In Cuba, the answer was you take out a gun and force them to plant sugar.” – Tom, (15:39)

• Capitalist vs. Socialist Downfalls:
  • The conversation turns to whether trade sanctions cause these failures or if flawed internal systems are to blame.
  • Tom highlights Singapore’s bootstrapping self-reliance, contrasting it to Cuba, and references Booker T. Washington’s creation of economic mobility post-slavery as an inspiring, underappreciated story.

3. The Viral Netanyahu Rumors: AI, Misinformation, and Reality

Timestamps: 29:13–38:06

• The Saga:
  • Viral videos and images claim Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has died or is being replaced by AI deepfakes, with “evidence” such as six fingers, coffee foam that doesn't move, and strange pocket behavior.
  • Tom methodically debunks these, emphasizing the power of video compression artifacts, the tendency for social media to amplify nonsense, and how easy it is—even for him—to be briefly fooled by isolated “smoking gun” clips.
  • Quote:

    “Nothing is provably real anymore. And that’s where all of this gets crazy.” – Tom, (32:35)

• Analysis & Warning:
  • The hosts warn of “wartime propaganda” and argue that social media wars now distract and fragment public consensus, just as the Vietnam War’s televised images once united and then divided American opinion.
  • Quote:

    “This is a new form of entertainment—world affairs as bread and circus. You can actually sway which way people are looking with rage bait.” – Tom, (36:50)

4. The Risk of Open-Source Intelligence and Propaganda

Timestamps: 38:06–40:50

• The discussion shifts to individuals posting sensitive intelligence online, like TikTokers sharing Israeli power grid locations with Iranian audiences, and how state media weaponizes clips from US influencers to feed propaganda abroad.
• Quote:

  “I’m a near free speech absolutist, but there are just things you don’t say and do during wartime.” – Tom, (39:57)

5. Wider Reflections: US Politics and Economic Literacy

Timestamps: 23:25–27:50

• Not all Democrats are socialists, and not all Republicans are MAGA; both parties spend irresponsibly. Tom urges voters to focus on candidates’ understanding of economics rather than party labels.
• Quote:

  “Inflation is theft. The easiest way to stop that is to insist on a balanced budget… Look at their level of understanding of economics, and if they have a good understanding, that’s almost certainly the right way to go.” – Tom, (24:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On war radicalizing individuals:

  “Nothing justifies what the man did. But if this is also about a guy seeking revenge because his kids were killed, you can expect more things like that.” – Tom, (03:00)

• On the new media environment:

  “We are living in a totally different dimension. Nothing is provably real anymore.” – Tom, (32:35)

• On entertainment replacing analysis:

  “World affairs as bread and circus… a new form of entertainment. Because I can influence it the way I could vote on American Idol.” – Tom, (36:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:00–06:05] Michigan synagogue attack & Old Dominion University shooting details
• [13:18–23:25] Protests in Cuba and DSA’s activism—history, trade, economics
• [24:07–27:50] US political parties, inflation, economic illiteracy in politics
• [29:13–38:06] Netanyahu AI rumors unravel; the pitfalls of viral misinformation
• [38:06–40:50] Open-source intelligence, wartime information, propaganda

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Tone & Style

Throughout, Tom delivers urgent, candid, and sometimes exasperated commentary. He combines deep dives, skepticism, and impassioned warnings—balancing dry humor with sobering realism:

• “Are people trolling? This is obviously part of his palm.”
• “Challenging a room full of military hopefuls is not a smart strategy…”
• “I cannot believe I have to take time to explain this.”

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Conclusion

This episode encapsulates how incendiary news, social unrest, and weaponized misinformation now shape our perception of reality and international affairs. Tom’s core message: In the chaos of propaganda, rage-bait, and viral absurdities, understanding core economics—and questioning what’s “real”—is more important than ever.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

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[D]

Domestically, there were some things that hit back home. A synagogue was attacked. There was a school shooting. Walk us through what happened yesterday at home.

[A]

Yeah, terror found its way into one of the largest synagogues when a man drove an explosives laden truck through the front doors of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, in what is a blatant anti semitic terrorist attack. So I know that people are going to say, say other things, but dude drove his truck like down the hallway. It's pretty wild. Male suspect steered his truck around the security bollards, the things that they put out front to block cars from doing exactly this. Drove through the front doors, drove down the hall, all the way into the building. Thankfully, the temple was expecting something like this, which is sad, but they had security guards, armed security guards. They were waiting and gunfire was exchanged between the security and the gunman. And the suspect that crashed his vehicle in was killed before he could get out of the vehicle. The car ends up catching fire. Ultimately, the whole building catches on fire as well. In fact, 30 law enforcement officers were hospitalized for smoke inhalation after clearing the building. One security guard was actually struck by the truck. He was knocked unconscious, taken to the hospital. He's expected to recover, but damn, when you get hit by a car and knocked out, it's not ideal. Thankfully, every one of the 140 kids that were inside got out safe. So did all the teachers and staff. Staff. Now, investigators found mortar type explosives loaded in the back of the vehicle. So clearly this guy had intent to go buck wild. And the question is why? Obviously targeting Jews. And it's being widely reported, though it is still unconfirmed. So I don't know that this is true. But true or not, it's a powerful reminder. So what's being widely reported is that the suspect had children. They were in Lebanon, I believe, and they were potentially, if this is all real, killed in an Israeli airstrike in the last couple of days. Now, again, that detail hasn't been officially confirmed, but if it's true, it serves as a powerful reminder of how war radicalizes virtually everyone that it touches. If we think that we're going to be able to go to war with Iran, drop bombs with good intentions or otherwise and get out of this without people with being radicalized, that is really a miscalculation. I want to be very clear. Nothing justifies what the man did. But if this is confirmed, this becomes a story that is very different than just being an anti Semitic terrorist attack. It is that. But if this is also about a guy that's seeking revenge because his kids were killed, you can expect more things like that. The FBI has taken over the investigation and is treating this as a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community. Authorities have not officially released the suspect's name, so we'll circle, circle back as more information comes out. But this is one of those. I'm not saying you should break our will to see this through or anything like that, but powerful reminder that you're not going to get out of this cleanly.

[D]

There was a tweet I want to pull up that to me was like hilarious. I'm not a political expert, but if you eliminated Hamas, but killed my whole family in the process, my first move would be to start Hamas too.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Now this is of course talking to the Gaza Israel war, but there is something that we have to talk about. The blowback of this war. We are going into Iran, we're dropping bombs. We're still investigating the 175 school children bombing. If that was us, who it was, how did it start? All those things would happen. But out of 175 people, conservatively, you just created 350 more people that will hate America.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

And I know they don't hate American citizens. I know that they don't want to come to California and fight us, but they hate Trump and ipso facto, anybody that's connected to them.

[A]

Here's the thing that we have to think about, and it's fascinating in the age of infinite information for us to have to contend with the way that war actually works. So when you really start looking at, at the motivations for it, it can often feel, not feel. It is grotesque, certainly from a moral perspective. And yet the other side, the things that they're doing, are often grotesque and immoral as well. I think it is very wise for people to understand that when you do something like this that you create enemies. I also think it is very wise for people to understand that in life you're going to create enemies and you can't not do something because you're afraid that somebody is going to respond. You want to take that into your calculus. You want to make sure that you understand whether you're willing to that response or not. But at the end of the day, the person who is willing to inject the most violence into the world, if they don't meet sufficient force to push them back, they become the de facto ruler. And so if you look at Mexico, the cartels gain power because they're willing to do something that most other people aren't willing to do. Same thing with the most successful leaders of all time. They were just willing to kill more people than the next person. And they were better at it. They were more efficient military tacticians. And then they just didn't show mercy. And it works. And I get why we find that horrifying.

[D]

And then we got to jump over to Virginia in ODU where a former official ISIS supporter did a school shooting as well. That seemed like that should have been flagged or something. But you know, who am I? I'm not justice.

[A]

Before we begin, I'm just going to confess my bias. This touches something in my soul. To me, this is the world's most aggressive game of fafo. So you've got a convicted ISIS supporter already. That kid storms into an ROTC classroom in Virginia and opens fire. And by the way, like the first question out of his mouth was, is this the ROTC class? So it's where he wanted to be. And the students were like, yes, opens fire, manages to kill a retired army lieutenant colonel, and then the students promptly beat that mother to death. Now, it's unclear whether the students stabbed him to death or killed them with their bare hands, but guess what? Challenging a room full of military hopefuls is not a smart strategy. So a couple more people ended up getting wounded. This all happened in Old Dominion, the university in Norfolk, Virginia, if I didn't cover that. And the now deceased killer was 36 year old Mohammed Baylor. JLo. I don't know, Jalo. I'm not sure exactly how you pronounce that. He was originally born in Sierra Leone, but immigrated to the US and became a naturalized citizen. Unfortunately for him, obviously he went into the wrong classroom. Now, the crazy thing is he wasn't unknown to law enforcement. He was a former Virginia Army National Guard specialist who pled guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He had told a government informant that he wanted to carry out an attack modeled on the 2009 Fort Hood attack. He ends up buying an AR15. He tries to send $500 to ISIS. He's then sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. This is back in 2017, but he was released in December of 24, more than a year early. And at his sentencing, he lied and told the judge he was disgusted by ISIS and deeply regretted his actions. But clearly he was just biting his time. Now, the victim, the guy that he killed, was Lt. Col. Brandon Shaw, who's a retired army officer serving as the ROTC professor at Military Science of Military Science. He was killed at the scene. Then two other ROTC members were wounded and hospitalized. Now, the FBI's special agent in charge put it plainly. The ROTC students showed extreme bravery and courage, which I agree with. They subdued the guy, and this is in the FBI's own words, rendered him no longer alive. We've got to show this clip. Hearing watching her try to say what happened without saying what happened was hilarious. There were students that were in that room that subdued him and Crediton no longer alive. And they basically all were able to terminate the threat, rendered him no longer alive. That, that is like he was now. The weirdest way to say that ever. Now, beyond that, authorities aren't saying exactly what happened. I'm not sure why they're being coy. But the students made it clear that homeboy had picked the very wrong classroom. I'm here for that. I'm here for that. If somebody comes in with a gun, bro. 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[D]

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 likely.

[A]

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

[D]

You know, they have been without food, they have been without. 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

[A]

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.

[D]

It is the one that we're directly causing, though. So are we Drew. We cut them off?

[A]

Yes. 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, to your point?

[D]

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.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

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

[A]

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. 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. Now, they got that title for widespread abuses of political rights and civil liberties. Now, remember, repression is. Is required when you want to take people's things. 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 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? And because that's what the 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 had 20,000 political prisoners. Okay, let's look at Cuba before the communist revolution. Pre revolutionary Cuba, 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 to you, 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 gun to focus on sugar. That's what you have to do when you're not relying on market forces. You, the supposed genius, run. 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. We should want them to discover the free market the way that China discovered the free market. 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.

[D]

There is a running narrative in socialist circles 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.

[A]

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.

[D]

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

[A]

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

[D]

So do you think that countries can sustain themselves without.

[A]

Yes. Trade parties? 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.

[D]

Cappy. 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 validity is 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.

[A]

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 going to 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 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 can continues apace towards socialism, Communism. My first opposite, 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 marsh. This guy does not play around. 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. 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. 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 do we do? He was like, I'm going to teach people how to build bricks. How to make bricks, man. 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. The way that you deal with the world is go, I'm going to motivate and inspire. I'm going to 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 can 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, they can 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 going to 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. Cuba should have been like, all right, like we're going to really build this industry, but we are going to do one thing. We're going to be honest about what people are like. And we're going to understand intelligence is distributed and so we're going to reward the people that murder it. We're going to make sure that they can rise and any wit that doesn't contribute, they get little to nothing. 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. Because you're going to 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 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 they're 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 up your system. 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 evil as far as I'm concerned.

[D]

Everybody who's democrat is not marching down a long path to socialism. Everybody who's Republican is not maga. So I understand the DSA is a very specific sect on the left, so I'm not going to other them stuff like that. However, the criticism here was although Trump is more capitalist than the dsa, absolutely in the left, we can't also act like Trump is running a free market capitalism administration. There's still intel is a government owned company. We have been not seizing the means of production, but owning a portion of the means of production for certain companies that we invested in. He just gave a $800 billion tax break to India. He's flipped the switch on H2H2A visas which are for migrant farm workers.

[A]

Clapped on for that.

[D]

So. So, yeah, so. So at the same time, it's not like we're running a pure capitalist system for us to now not even close your other people like that. So is it just because we already have the Fed that's Why it's too big for us or can America closer to pure capitalism?

[A]

I'm going to put a hat on that I hope is just pure encouragement for the American people of what we need to do to reclaim this. So one having everybody get to the point of functionally understanding the rough swag of how an economy works and I will just give them the easy one. Inflation is theft and you should immediately get your government to stop stealing from you. The easiest way to do that is just insist on a balanced budget. It's not exactly that, but that's a close enough swag for the conversation. So get your government to be very clear headed about what it's going to spend money on and then yes, we need to acknowledge that both the left and the right spend completely irresponsibly. Now I would much rather see a fiscal conservative Democrat who understands the market than a fiscally irresponsible Republican who still believes in growth. So this is not me saying it's Republican or bust. I just need to get everybody behind the idea that when you're looking at a candidate, don't worry yourself at all about Republican or Democrat. Look at their level of understanding of economics and if they have a good understanding of economics then that's almost certainly the right way to go. Obviously, as always, we need to know more about the candidate, blah blah blah. But that's question number one. Do they actually understand how economies work and are they going to move us forward? We don't need to lump everybody into a bucket and say Democrats bad, Republicans good. That would be a blatant lie and will lead you down a garden path of death and destruction if you just blindly vote for either party. But yeah, that you need to insist that your candidates show a desire for growth. Growth, a desire for capitalism, an understanding of why central banks are so dangerous. They don't have to say that they plan to get rid of it, but they need to understand why it's dangerous. They need to say how they plan to address inflation. They need to say why you can't deficit spend that that is the thing that creates the K shaped economy. They need to show that a K shaped economy is not only a terrible idea, it is morally repugnant. And so getting into all of that again you have to be so careful. There is natural inequality which is not only always going to persist, it's it's desirable but toxic inequality must be manufactured into the system and is ultimately the death of every empire. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned. Let's talk about one thing your business cannot afford to get wrong. It's not your product. It's not even your marketing. It's not payroll. It's your decisions. Every wrong call starts the same way. Someone did not have the numbers. They looked at incomplete data from different systems and went with their gut and it cost them. NetSuite by Oracle fixes all of this. It's the number one AI cloud ERP trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM all into one source of truth. That connected data makes your AI smarter so it doesn't guess. It knows if your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Get NetSuite's free business guide Demystifying AI at netsuite.com theory the guide is free to you at netsuite.com theory. Again, that's netsuite.com theory let's talk about the things you use every day and just never think about your socks, your comforter, the stuff that touches your body more than anything else you own. And most people settle for whatever's cheapest or most convenient. Today's sponsor, Cozy Earth takes the exact opposite approach. They obsess over the details most brands ignore. Their comforters are made with naturally breathable temperature regulating materials that create a cloud like feel without the heaviness or overheating so you actually sleep deeper and wake up restored. Their essential socks are soft, breathable and cushioned in four styles that support you from your first step to your last. Head to cozyearth.com and use code impact for up to 20% off. And if you get a post purchase survey be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here at Impact Theory. That's Cozy Earth and use code impact.

[E]

On December 12, Disney invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docuseries.

[B]

I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect.

[A]

The only thing left is to close the book.

[E]

The end of an era and don't miss Taylor Swift the ERAS Tour, the final show featuring for the first time the Tortured Poets Department event streaming December 12th only on Disney.

[A]

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

[D]

Bibi Netanyahu posted this picture saying hey, they say I'm what? Look at me, look, I have five fingers. I took a sip of coffee. 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 things. Types of things.

[A]

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 poem. If you look at it closely. If you just, just pause the video and look at his finger, the region of his finger, even as a name, it's called the Hypothenar 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. But it seems pretty normal and was not the kind of thing that I expected the Internet to go absolutely haywire over. The video showing Netanyahu getting coffee was also just absolutely mahusive 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, which are AI generated, many are zoomed in past the point of intelligibility, 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. 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, 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 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 because 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, 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 does, 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 videos 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 bizarre, barley, 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, 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 clothes cluster. 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 direction 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, because I knew I was going to need to report on this was like this has become a far bigger story than by just volume of interaction. Then the economic impacts of this or a story we're going to 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. Nobody's paying attention to that. Like that was measured in like the hundreds of thousands of views, whereas the stuff on, on a single pocket video, coffee sip video was millions of views. Boys and girls, there is a thing happening right now. This is a new form of entertainment 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, the coffee gate, the pocket video, the zoom in on the cash register, you can actually sway which way people are looking. If you can write the next bot that enrages people and they just fall for the entertaining value of rage bait. Remember, people want to be rage baited. They love that. And this is becoming a new form of entertainment. Even I find myself, because I'm covering this stuff, I'm like, this is occupying a certain amount of my time that otherwise would have gone to insert things 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 is wild to that point.

[D]

There was that tiktoker that was giving out coordinates to certain Israel targets.

[A]

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. 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.

[D]

These are people showing it up top. These are cordates.

[A]

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, they go after the media. When a dictator comes to power, the first thing he does is take over the media to try to map out for the enemy what they should be doing. I will just tell you if the war escalates, escalates 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. 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 should 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 be going to bat for the Iranian regime. That is wild. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do? You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution process problem. One scoop 8 ounces of water and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods. Everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts with your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel pack, packs, vitamin D3 plus K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer.

[B]

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