ISIS Attacker Killed by ROTC Students + GDP Crashes to 0.7% + Senate Bans the Digital Dollar | Tom Bilyeu Show LIVE

Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode Title: ISIS Attacker Killed by ROTC Students + GDP Crashes to 0.7% + Senate Bans the Digital Dollar
Date: March 13, 2026

---

Episode Overview

On this episode of Impact Theory LIVE, Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew dissect a series of headline-grabbing current events: the intensifying conflict involving Iran and global oil chokepoints, domestic terrorism incidents including an ISIS-inspired school shooting thwarted by ROTC students, threats of false flag operations, the precarious state of the U.S. economy with worrying GDP revisions and rising inflation, the Senate's move to ban Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) for five years, and controversial new tax and housing proposals from New York City politicians. Throughout, Tom stresses the importance of seeing beyond biases and propaganda to assess what’s genuinely real in a rapidly changing world.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Global Tensions: Iran, War, and Economic Chokepoints (00:18–14:00)

• Iran’s Asymmetric Warfare:

  • Iran is leveraging cheap drones and attack ships to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz without formally declaring a military blockade.
  • Tom explains the strategic effectiveness: "They're using very inexpensive weapons to create an absolute nightmare for companies that have to make a decision whether they're going to try to run something through the strait, almost certainly without insurance." — Tom (03:06)

• Propaganda & Untrustworthy Narratives:

  • Both U.S. and Iranian messaging is rife with spin and disinformation.
  • Tom cautions listeners to abandon tribal thinking: "You can learn a lot from your enemy... If you can step outside of team ball and assess what’s actually real, you can move a lot farther ahead." — Tom (03:36)

• Iranian Demands & Update on Supreme Leader:

  • Purported demands from Iran (some possibly propaganda): closure of U.S. bases, compensation for sanctions, withdrawal from the region, and more.
  • Tom highlights the brilliance of Iran possibly naming a “dead” supreme leader to thwart assassination attempts: "If the guy's already dead and you make him the new Supreme Leader, there's nobody left for them to kill." — Tom (07:56)

• Escalation Risks:

  • The strait’s closure could trigger global economic crises, soaring oil prices, and internal pressures on U.S. and Israeli leadership.

Memorable Moment

“There's only so many weeks that the global economy is going to be able to tolerate this... this is not a tenable solution.” — Tom (05:55)

---

2. U.S. Policy, False Flags, & Narrative Battles (15:57–31:02)

• Imminent Attack Warnings:
  • FBI warns of potential attacks in California; Iran denies intent to strike U.S. directly.
  • Both sides hold firm that the war cannot end until decisive conditions are met.

Notable Analysis

"To immediately assume that something like [an attack] is a false flag would be unwise. To assume that your own government is doing anything but manipulating you would be unwise. So now you have information coming exclusively from untrustworthy sources." — Tom (24:48)

• Motivation for False Flags:

  • Drew speculates a false flag could benefit Republicans, stir public support "just like after 9/11."
  • Tom roots motivation in economics: "At the bottom layer of virtually everything is economics." — Tom (28:38)

• Asymmetric Warfare & Red Lines:

  • Iran keeps attacks "above board," restraining to avoid triggering massive retaliation and international intervention.
  • "Everybody's trying to walk that fine line of how hard can I go before some invisible line is crossed and people really go ham." — Tom (31:27)

---

3. Modern Warfare Limits & the Risk of Forever War (36:35–45:29)

• War Scenarios – Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran Comparisons:
  • Drew corrects earlier comment: Iran has been preparing for “40 years” since the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis, not “since the 40s.”
  • Tom: Iran is more modern, populous, and internationally connected than Iraq or Afghanistan, making intervention riskier.

Hard-Hitting Quote

"If you’re not willing to just kill absolutely indiscriminately, I don’t know that it’s possible to win a total war in the modern era, because the other side is just going to use asymmetric warfare against you until you relent." — Tom (38:19)

• No Easy Exit:
  • Tom foresees either an uprising in Iran (unlikely), or a war with no clear end as the U.S. refuses to allow closure of the Strait of Hormuz: "This really drags out into a war to which I don't see an end." — Tom (41:49)

---

4. Domestic Terrorism & Radicalization Blowback (42:07–61:02)

• ISIS-Supporter Attack Thwarted by ROTC Students (52:04–56:49)

  • A convicted ISIS supporter opened fire in an ROTC class at Old Dominion University, killing a lieutenant colonel before being beaten to death by students.
  • "This is the world's most aggressive game of FAFO... And I fucking love that they beat this guy to death." — Tom (52:06, 55:46)

• Questions on Immigration & Citizenship (56:49–60:42):

  • Discussion on whether U.S. citizens convicted of terror offenses should be denaturalized.
  • Tom states due process is crucial: "If you've been convicted, okay, now we're talking denaturalization… But they need to be convicted. You want to talk about needing due process, all of that." — Tom (57:59)

• Broader Immigration & Value Clashes (60:42–63:30):

  • Tom warns that Western societies—especially those "that have lost belief in themselves"—will sooner or later face a reckoning over the cultural and political effects of Muslim immigration, noting divergent fertility rates and value systems.

---

5. Economic Update: GDP Crash & Inflation

(64:11–71:00)

• GDP Growth Revised Down:
  • Q4 GDP revised from 1.4% to just 0.7%.
  • Inflation has re-accelerated to 3.1% (Fed's preferred gauge).

Quote

"Two economic reports dropped this morning. Neither is good. And together they describe a scenario that Trump should be extraordinarily worried about because if he does not get this resolved, he is cooked in the midterms. Cooked, cooked." — Tom (64:32)

• Systemic Challenges:
  • Government shutdowns explained as a major factor but not the sole culprit ("not all of this is related to [Trump's] strategies").
  • Tom criticizes including government spending in GDP, calls ongoing inflation "theft": "Remember, innovation should be making things cheaper over time. The fact that not only does it not make things cheaper, things get more expensive over time is because the government is running a strategy that says, you motherfuckers would hoard all of your money if we didn't steal some of it from you." — Tom (65:40)

---

6. Tech Disruption, AI, and Personal Resilience (71:00–82:29)

• AI as a Career Survival Tool:

  • Tom repeatedly urges listeners to learn and leverage AI, warning: "You're not going to be replaced by AI. But you will aggressively be replaced by somebody else using AI." (71:25)
  • Personal resilience and adaptability are highlighted as the antidote to economic and technological upheaval.

• On Mourning Dreams and Reinvention:

  • Tom shares his own journey through failed dreams (filmmaking, comics) and pivots to gaming/entrepreneurship.
  • "The death of a dream... should be followed by 'what new thing can I fall in love with?'... The game is neurochemical management, not the actual dream. You're trying to manage how it feels to be you." — Tom (76:03, 81:07)

---

7. Legislative News: Senate Moves to Ban Digital Dollar (CBDCs) for Five Years

(83:51–90:04)

• Summary of Legislation:

  • The 21st Century Road to Housing Act (primarily a housing bill) contains a major provision banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC until at least December 2030.

• Why It Matters:

  • Tom is ecstatic: "It is a win for people who don't want to be choked out financially by their government." — (84:11)
  • Explains dangers of programmable currency: "They can program your money to expire, restrict what you’re allowed to spend it on... It would get very Chinese credit score very fast." — Tom (85:54)

• Political Dynamics:

  • The ban is temporary, not permanent—House Republicans say they want a permanent ban, while Trump has threatened a veto until voter ID passes first.

---

8. New York City Tax Policy & Housing Regulation Debate

(90:04–96:39)

• Mamdani’s Proposal:

  • NYC Assemblymember proposes higher taxes on the wealthy to stem population flight and fund social programs.
  • Tom critiques the logic: "[He] wants to tax you more, which somehow, apparently you feel it when you pay it for childcare, but you don't feel it when you pay it for taxes. It's so wild." — Tom (91:00)

• Economic Incentives & Risks:

  • Tom warns overtaxing high earners will cause them to leave, shrinking the tax base further: "When you’re overtaxing the people that are making money, they either stop producing... or just leave and take their company somewhere else." — (91:09)
  • Drew notes the deficit is shrinking but not yet balanced; Tom reiterates, deficit spending is unsustainable, and confiscatory policies (like forced sale of property after repeated code violations) are "literally absurd." — Tom (94:54, 96:20)

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Team Ball vs. Reality:
  "Don't look at the war… going, okay, I need my team to be winning. … Instead, realize, one, you can learn a lot from your enemy… When you’re fighting somebody, recognize what they’re doing that’s effective." — Tom (03:38)

• On False Flags:
  "To assume that your own government is doing anything but manipulating you would be unwise… If you find yourself feeling utterly convinced in any direction at this point, be afraid, because there just isn't enough information." — Tom (24:48, 27:35)

• On Economic Woes:
  "Cooked, cooked. And the Federal Reserve is not going to be able to help him fix the things that are going wrong right now." — Tom (64:34)

• On Personal Reinvention:
  "You’re really just trying to manage how it feels to be you… Find a way to feel energized and alive… maybe they’re never going to be on that big stage, but hopefully it was never about the big stage." — Tom (81:12)

---

Important Timestamps

• Iran/Strait of Hormuz Situation Explained: 02:53–07:00
• Iranian Propaganda & Demands: 06:34–07:48
• Discussion of Intelligence, False Flags, & Narrative Traps: 15:57–24:48
• GDP/Inflation Breakdown: 64:11–71:00
• ISIS Attacker Beaten by ROTC Students: 52:04–56:49
• Senate Bans Digital Dollar (CBDC) for 5 Years: 83:51–90:04
• NYC New Tax Proposals and Critique: 90:04–96:39

---

Takeaways & Audience Guidance

• Critical Thinking Over Team Loyalty: The importance of detaching from tribal narratives to analyze world events more objectively.
• Complex Problems, No Easy Answers: Events like Middle East conflict, domestic terrorism, and economic turmoil are multilayered; the only sure path is cautious scrutiny and adaptability.
• Personal Agency in Turbulence: Embrace change, skill up (especially in AI), and remain open to reinventing your dreams and strategies.
• Be Wary of Government Overreach: From CBDCs to city ordinances, unchecked government power over individuals always has downstream risks.

---

Closing Thought

"Everybody has lines. You have a line. Where is it? Document it then. Build your argument, see how many people you can win over to your side... Just coming off the top rope with emotion and not saying, okay, this is exactly what I think we need to do—that’s how we get deeper and deeper into these messes." — Tom (59:27, paraphrased)

---

[End of summary]

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

Carvana is so easy. Just a click and we've got ourselves a car. See so many cars. That's a clicktastic inventory. And check out the financing options, payments to fit our budget.

[Drew]

I mean, that's Clickonomics101.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Delivery to our door.

[Drew]

Just a hop, skip and a click away.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And bot no better feeling than when everything just clicks. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Tom Bilyeu show live. We continue to watch as the world is in a state of disarray. This is absolutely wild. There are so many fronts that everything is moving on. Even Ecuador is entering the picture now, so pretty crazy. We will be touching on all of that, but first, of course, we're going to be covering the fact that the attacks and the Strait of Hormuz have picked up pace as Iran is making it clear they are not interested in a diplomatic end to this war. Multiple terror attacks have played out on US soil at this point in the last couple of days, seemingly tied to the war in Iran. We'll dive into those as well. Mamdani, he's decided that he's going to stop New Yorkers from fleeing, which he admits is happening. And his plan, it's fascinating. It's new, it's to tax more, and that's gonna stop people from leaving. I love it. It's novel thinking. He is certainly outside the box. The economic data is in, boys and girls, and it is bad. Trump has so many things working against him right now. If he actually pulls off the midterms, it will mean he somehow turned things around because his direction of travel at this very moment is a guaranteed loss. CBDCs, they're on the verge of getting shut down, at least for the next five years. This would be a major win if it goes through. And South Korea gets in trouble for sending a hot dancer to entertain their troops. Who would have thought that men with guns, isolated from their families, would enjoy an attractive woman? Drew, I never would have thought. I never would have thought. And somehow this has become controversial. It's so funny. Things like this make me feel so old. This is like the most obvious thing in the universe. If you want to pick up your

[Drew]

team's morale, who's really upset?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Supposedly they're getting flak from a bunch of countries that are, like, clutching their pearls. I don't know, Drew. Like, countries, this. You may be older admitting at 53. Yeah, well, that. That is for sure. You may be admitting at 53 that you've become old as well. Drew.

[Drew]

Because back in my day, we appreciated. Yeah, we appreciate a little bit more out for the boys, you know, it got them fighting better. Shake a couple cities, kill a couple bots, drop a couple moms. That's how it is. That's the good old American way, the South Korean way. Now, apparently you heard it here first. All right, we gotta talk about it. Iran Day, 1213.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Roughly. Yep.

[Drew]

Yeah. Friday the 13th.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, by the way, happy Friday the 13th, everybody.

[Drew]

Everybody go get a forgettable tattoo.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Hopefully it's nice and superstitious.

[Drew]

So the war is still going?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, it is.

[Drew]

Things are still happening in the straight. Pete Hegseth, I think, said it best. He said the strait is open, but Iran keeps shooting, like, things that go through it. So if Iran will stop doing that, it would be open. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's wild. It's one of those things that is both true and completely moronic all at the same time. Do we have the clip? You kind of have to hear it. The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that. So listen, what he's trying to say is that there's no official military blockade, but that's wars of old. You're not going to get something like that because it would be pointless. The US Would go in and sink all their ships and it would be over in two seconds. So instead, they're using asymmetric warfare, where they're using very inexpensive weapons to create an absolute nightmare for the companies that have to make a decision whether they're going to try to run something through the straight, almost certainly without insurance. And so the vast majority of them are going to decide that it's not worth it. And so it's a very effective strategy. And this is one of those where I really encourage people to eject out of playing team ball. Don't look at the. The war or anything else, quite frankly, going, okay, I need my team to be winning. I need everything my team does to be the thing that's clever, and I need everything that the other team does to be all stupid things and instead realize, one, you can learn a lot from your enemy. And then, two, when you're fighting somebody, you want to recognize what are the things that they're doing that are very effective, either so you can just combat it, or so that you can figure out what's your version of that. And it's only when people just stand 10 toes down because I'm doing it. It's right. It's smart and because somebody else is doing it. It's wrong and stupid, and you blind yourself to potential solutions. I came across something. I have a feeling I'm gonna be talking about this a lot more. And I probably need to really look at the science. But at the headline level, this is so fitting with my experience in real life. This is. The human mind has not been optimized by evolution for changing one's mind based on new information, but. But instead, the human mind has been optimized to win arguments. Now, I have to imagine you guys have experienced this pull inside of yourself. I have to imagine you've seen other people get stuck in these death loops. And that is basically what's on display right here with Pete Hegseth is you start saying something because you're trapped inside of your frame of reference. And as you're saying it, you're like, okay, this is really kind of dumb, but you can't pull yourself out of it. One, you have to be a propaganda machine. I hate that that's true, but it really is true for your public officials, for them to give their supporters the words to use to keep backing them, which is far high utility for them to abandon it. But if you can step outside of that, figure out, okay, what is actually playing out, well, instead of trying to win the argument, you try to assess what is actually real. You can move a lot farther ahead, and I think we're going to have to do that if we want to understand how to get traffic going back through the Strait of Hormuz. There's only so many weeks that the global economy is going to be able to tolerate this. You've already got oil prices that are at sometimes above $100 a barrel. And so this is not a tenable solution. So they're going to need to find some way to stop all of the decentralized little drones and attack ships that are coming and wreaking havoc. And if they can't, they're in trouble.

[Drew]

We got a message from the purportedly new supreme leader. There's been reports that he's in a coma. He has one leg, and then yesterday he released a written statement. So some people are saying this could just be propaganda to keep America and everybody else guessing. Some of his key demands, all bases should immediately be closed in the region, or those bases will be attacked. We must obtain compensation from the enemy. If they refuse, we will take their assets to the extent we deem appropriate. If that is not possible, we will destroy an equivalent amount of their property. We have foiled attempts to divide the country. And unlike Pete Hedzak said the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. So he's giving out his region. He's his necessities. Also, there was a reported list of conditions that was leaked that Iran's ceasefires condition some of them were hand Netanyahu to the ICC, withdraw the October 7 borders, cancel Trump's Gaza plan, lift all sanctions, return frozen funds, recognize Iran's nuclear rights, leave Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, evacuate all US bases on Arab soil. Trump publicly apologized to the Supreme Leader and again, compensate Iran for every sanction ever imposed. So it seems like it's a wish list versus something that actually seems practical, but maybe you could break it down to us and see what's actually going on.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, so this the thing that people have to understand right now. Iran has made it abundantly clear that they want the war to continue and that they are not open to a diplomatic solution. I think some people, because of the propaganda here in the us, really believe that they're, you know, on bended knee and, oh, please stop attacking us. That just isn't what's going on. As Drew was saying, a message was read on state tv, purportedly from the new Supreme Leader, who keep in mind, some say is missing a leg or legs, is already dead or at least in a coma. So the odds that this is propaganda, I think, are extraordinarily high. And he says that they're going to hit US bases, seek financial compensation from the US and its allies, or they're going to strike targets of comparable value to what they're owed. Uh, this apparently is like the new Zell. I guess if you can't pay, then I'm just gonna break some of your shit. It's pretty wild. Uh, also, when you think about the fact that this is almost certainly somebody else saying all of this stuff, and which I think is a brilliant strategy, by the way, if the guy's already dead and you make him the new Supreme Leader, there's nobody left for them to kill. They don't know who to target. Now, of course, that means there are massive vulnerabilities inside of Iran. If there's no gravitational center that everybody believes in, it's going to be hard to keep everybody in line. But it also stymies the US and Israel from going in and just killing the next guy. So I actually think this is a brilliant strategic move, given the position that they're in now in Iran's defense. They really have escalated their pace of breaking things when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. So this isn't all just talk. They have laid out their demands, said that they're going to go ham, and they really are, from where it actually matters. So there have been more explosions there in the Strait of Hormuz in the last 48 hours as they have gone after more ships that are trying to get through the Strait. And so once you understand that these guys are specifically attacking the global economy effectively, they know that that's going to end up pressuring the US and its allies to do something about that reality. So this is one where do put these guys in a box as being stupid or just being completely outclassed militarily. They have cards to play and they are playing them well in terms of making it untenable for the US to continue executing this war. Now, Israel might be in a totally different camp. They might be more prepared to be alienated. They might, because they're at war. And Netanyahu has already forestalled elections for a very long time. So they may be under different pressures and may behave differently. But if Trump loses in the midterms, this is game over. For his ability to continue pushing this forward, technically, I think he can keep doing certain incursions. He would have to like continually reset the button because I think he has like 90 days and then plus some or five months and 90 days to back out. I forget the exact numbers. He'll have a little bit of latitude to continue to push on this. But if he loses his own party's will to fight, then he's really going to be in trouble. And I would say right now, given where the economy is going, the likelihood of that is very, very high over the, I don't know, call it six to 12 months. And if they get their asses handed to them at the midterms, then they're really going to start to back away from blindly following Trump. So there is a lot of potential problems on the horizon if Trump is not able to wrap this up very quickly. And right now, for all of his bluster, I don't see anything that shows that they are going to be able to get a ground level uprising where a regime is put in place that actually can be negotiated with. And so I think that reality is going to make this play out very strangely. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. A great wardrobe is not complicated. A few pieces that fit well, hold up over time and work in almost any situation. That's it. That's what you need. The problem is finding them without paying luxury prices. That's exactly what Quince is built around. I picked up one of their cashmere sweaters and let me tell you, the softness is amazing and the quality actually caught me off guard. This is 100% Mongolian cashmere. That makes it easy to build a great wardrobe. Lightweight cashmere linen bottoms, short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos, Pima cotton tees. All amazing quality. And every factory they partner with meets rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. Right now go to quints.com impactpod for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will now available in Canada too. Go to q u I-C-E.com impactpod for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's quince.com impact pod let's talk about a problem that is hiding in plain sight. You're using AI for everything now. Like everybody else, every single conversation is being stored, analyzed and used to build a profile on you. That's where Duck AI comes in. It is a new product from DuckDuckGo, the company that's been protecting privacy online since 2008. Duck AI lets you chat privately with ChatGPT, Claude, and other popular AIs all in one place. Your conversations aren't used for tracking, training or profiling you. There's no account required and it's completely free. DuckDuckGo built this specifically for data protection, not data collection. They're designed to help stop your information from being stored, tracked or misused by hackers, scammers and data hungry companies. No signups, no subscriptions, no learning curve. Duck AI gives you access to the same AI tools you're already using, but without the privacy trade off. If you want to use AI without giving up your privacy, visit Duck AIimpact today. That's Duck AIimpact, a private way to chat with AI from DuckDuckGo, where AI is always optional and private. The people who win, they're not smarter, they just absorb more ideas faster. There are thousands of books right now on business, psychology, leadership, books that have already changed how the best operators think. And every one you haven't read is a gap between you and the people who have. This is a bandwidth problem, not a discipline problem. And that's exactly what Blinkist was built to solve. It takes the world's best nonfiction books and distills them into 15 minute summaries you can read or listen to. It's got over 9,000 titles. We're talking atomic habits, Thinking fast and slow. The hard thing about hard things Books you know you should have read by now. Done in the time it takes to drink your coffee. And because it's built for mobile, your commute becomes a classroom. Blinkist also sends you personalized recommendations so you actually build a daily learning practice instead of just planning to do one. Start your free trial at blinkist.com/ that's B L I N K I S T.com impact start learning aggressively today. It will change your life. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[Drew]

Yeah, and there were some reports in the chat talking about the FBI report that said an attack to California is imminent for the weekend. But an Iranian foreign minister came out and refuted that. They said our missile was intentionally capped at 2,000km. If we wanted to attack the United States, we would have increased it, but we didn't. Then a reporter asked him, what would it take for the war to end. The Iranian foreign minister responded by saying, we are not ready to end the war yet. We will only end it when the enemy has been decimated to the point where they won't attack us again in the future.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, you've got both sides effectively saying the same thing. So the US Is saying Israel saying we're going to pummel these guys until there's somebody in charge that is not going to continue to destabilize the region, is not going to attack Israel, is not going to try to get nuclear weapons. Then you've got Iran saying, hey, we're going to keep going until these guys realize like we will wreak so much havoc on the worldwide economy that they just aren't going to do this again. And so this is one of those things, man, Trump has really tried to build this as it's another lightning strike. We're going to be in, we're going to be out. If he were to back out right now, the Strait of Hormuz becomes the choke point. They're going to say anything that's US Allied is not going through the strait. I'd be very surprised if they didn't. And as long as they do that, the US has to stay engaged. As long as the US has to stay engaged. You're now in forever war territory. If to actually stop them from blocking the straight of Hormuz in the way that they're doing now. Asymmetric, terroristic, that type of approach. If he has to put boots on the ground to stop that, bro, this is like you've even people like Newt Gingrich are saying, yeah, if he puts boots on the ground, like, there's going to be a real backlash. So this is one of those that right now we. There are so many things we don't know about the intel that he has. So I'll say it's entirely possible that the US Military machinery knows something that we don't know and that they. Their confidence, shall we say, is actually justified. But from what we can see from the outside, this is wild. And they are so at risk of this dragging out there. We're already being terraformed in terms of getting us a little bit closer to be like, okay, yeah, okay, I guess, like, you know, troops on the ground for a while. And if I were. If I were the Trump administration and I really wanted to make sure that the American people were on board with troops on the ground, I would first take over that island. I forget the name of it, but it's like some massive amount of the oil exports out of Iran go through that. So I'd say, hey, this is very limited. We're just putting troops on the ground to get control of that. Now, if that stops it, because that's literally the vast majority of their money, and they just can't afford to fund the war, okay, maybe it ends there. But if not, then you leverage that because we'll have already gotten over the hurdle, that we've got boots on the ground, and then it just spirals out into more people on the ground. And then at some point, if you don't know if one of two things is true, you don't know what you think the end state is like, okay, we're satisfied with this. You don't have that written down, articulated, so that we know when to back out, or you can just never get there because there's just enough asymmetric warfare that the problem just drags and drags and drags. And, you know, if you back out, all of your allies, like what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, that all of your allies are just going to get destroyed the second that you walk out because they no longer have the backing of your military. You can get stuck very easily. So, anyway, I don't think that's guaranteed, but I think that this is a dangerous moment.

[Drew]

I don't think there's boots on the ground, because I think that's a losing setup for Trump. He doesn't have an exit strategy right now. It's clear to that Iran is baiting them. Please send boots on the ground. We've been waiting for this moment. Iran has Been preparing for this war since the 40s. They have been waiting to wait for America to slip, crack, drop, do something. And I think right now we're bit. But he bit off a little bit more than he can chew in the sense that he thought he can Venezuela it. He's realizing, oh, snap, they have a lot more choke pokes than I thought.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I don't think they have more choke points than he thought that would be.

[Drew]

Then the straight wouldn't. Then there's no way they would have lost control of the straight then, because the straight is their negotiating point, I think.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So it may be me squabbling over just the word more.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Because I think that the straight is. I think the thing that surprises Trump is that the regime isn't listening to what he considers good sense. So I think he thought, you put all this military hardware in the Gulf and they'll just go, yeah, we don't want to deal with that. Will just at least get out of Trump's term and say, yep, okay, we're not going to pursue nuclear weapons for now. They'll say the words forever. I think that's what he was expecting. We're not going to pursue nuclear weapons. You're right. We back down, get out of Trump's term, and then we'll come back at it. But they didn't. He let that leak through, Steve Witkoff, that he was very surprised that they weren't acquiescing. And, and so I think you and I talked about this really early. And I said, you know, one thing that worries me is that Trump is a guy that understands you can't bluff and not back it up. And so he is going to back up his bluffs. And so this is one where you've got this dual thing working against you, where he's been willing to back up his bluffs, and some of them have paid off so spectacularly, at least in the short term, it'll be interesting to see how things play out in Venezuela. I didn't plan to cover it because it's so early, but, like, right now in Venezuela, there are protests where they're breaking through police barriers. So it's like, does that escalate? The media doesn't seem super twigged out about it. It's not going viral. So I'm like, okay, maybe this is being reported in sort of an overblown fashion, so don't take it too seriously yet. But it's one of those where when you remove a strong dictator who's willing to kill a whole Lot of people. You suddenly realize the country is way more divided than you thought. And if you try to replace that strong dictator who's willing to kill a whole lot of people, you end up in civil wars. Because now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, I can actually say what I think, yeah, cool. Like, now we're really fighting in the streets. I'm not saying that's what's going on in Venezuela. I'm just saying we're seeing those real early kernels of where it's like, oh, if that breaks and really goes crazy, it could turn into something. So Trump has what looks like to him, at least in the early days, he's got this success of, okay, did this thing. Our military is incredible. We microwaved these kids. We came in, we snatched up Maduro. I got to drive them around New York, show people what we're really about now going to build up all this hardware in Iran. These guys are going to back down. Oh, shit. They don't back down. Well, fuck, I guess I've got to do this. All right. No big deal. I kind of want to anyway. Israel really wants to, so that's going to work out. I've got to protect my investments coming out of the Gulf states, which, by the way, Professor Zhang. Zhang say, Yeah, I think so. Okay. So he's just saying the thing and he's like, the US Economy is a Ponzi scheme. Which, by the way, Zhang, we both know all economies are a Ponzi scheme. But I get where you're going, which is that right now, without the GCC countries investing in AI, which is the thing that the upper part of the K of the US economy is based on, requires that investment. Trump is well aware of that. That's definitely a part of what's motivating him. And China, all of it's very complex, but it's like that is for sure a part of what's motivating him. So he's like, I've got to move on this if they're not going to back down. But now what he's finding out isn't that there are more choke points than he thought, is that these guys, I don't think he accurately mapped how people behave when it's existential. So you've got this very weird setup of we got our authority originally through religious means, so we have a religious message that we've been pushing, and now all of a sudden, if we back down, our own people are going to rise up against us. So we lose either way. So the only way out for us is not going to be a negotiation. It's going to be to cause so much pain and suffering in our enemies that they don't attack us for another generation.

[Drew]

We got to talk about this false flag attack because it's been really popping off in the chat right now. So how did you feel about the FBI's report that California might be attacked? Iran is saying they're not going to attack America. They're just focused on their region. So some people are saying this is going to be a setup.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Some might say 9 11, part two. He's caught me with my conspiracy hat on. What's kind of your initial reaction when you heard that report?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so first I will ask everybody to put their tinfoil hats on because this is now very exploratory territory. It looks like this. To immediately assume that something like that is a false flag would be unwise. To assume that the Iranian government is doing anything other than manipulating you would be unwise. But to assume that your own government is doing anything but manipulating you would be unwise. So now you have information coming, excluding exclusively from untrustworthy sources. So what do you do when you're surrounded by untrustworthy sources? People fall back on their base assumptions. So if your base assumption is that governments routinely attack their own people in order to build justifications for economic warfare, then you're going to immediately go, ah, this is the US this is Israel doing something. And we're. I mean, you could even like, if you really want to get crazy, why California? That's something that a lot of people are asking, Cool. If you think your government is doing stuff like this because they want to hurt you, it's like, well, you're Trump, you hate California anyway, so what state are you going to go after? So all of that stuff is based on your current frame of reference. And so this is one of those moments where the only smart thing to do is go, everybody's lying to me. That means I can't trust anything. I need now to seek validating evidence for the things that I already believe. Now, if people do that, you'll at least have a better shot of getting to what is true. So it is impossible for me to say whether any of that talk is to set up a false flag. Certainly possible. And governments have done it many times in the past. But at the same time, I don't immediately go there when Trump does not seem to have any problem just continuing to prosecute this war. So this is one where we have to take it as it happens. Try to get as much like if an attack happened, to try to figure out, okay, what do we know? What can we track back in terms of journalistic scrutiny? How do we get the information that we need? How do we put it together? Making sure there's no censorship, making sure that the information is finding its way to the public so that we can parse through it. Applying like likelihood of truth to different things, letting the public debate this kind of thing, it's going to be the only way, but it will always be messy. There will always be question marks and there are always going to be people that entrench down into their beliefs based on emotion and not evidence. And so from this worries me standpoint, it definitely worries me because this is ultimately going to become a battle of narratives. But if you find yourself feeling utterly convinced in any direction at this point, be afraid, because there just isn't enough information for people to have that level of certainty.

[Drew]

A lot of people are asking the chat, who would benefit from a false flag attack? Allow me to put my conspiracy hat on because I wear it proudly. I think that the Republican Party is trending badly in the polls. I think that just like after 9, 11, this can give the hoorah rah in the Valley. That's how George Bush got a second term. So a lot of people are saying this could be a political win for Trump. This can also. There's also money always to be made, insurance payouts, things like that. But then would also justify boots on the ground in the region, more military spending, increased expenditure to that. So money seems like a dirty answer, but it's money.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And why does that seem like a dirty answer? That's one of the most profound answers you can ever give to any question.

[Drew]

I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that. Because some people think like, no, you wouldn't kill people for money. And it's like people who die for money because people think politicians are virtuous, dumb. That's why. That's why what? There's, there's people in the chat who still think Trump cares about him. He's, he's fighting for me. He's doing this for me, guys. He cares about me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Here, here's the right way to look at a politician is fighting for you in his best interest, because if it is, he actually will fight for you. If it's not in his best interest, then he will immediately stop fighting for you. And as long as you understand that is universally true about politicians, then you'll be fine. You'll be able to navigate this well. But I mean, I feel like I've really tried to convince you guys that at the like bottom layer of virtually everything is economics. So there is a religious component. That stuff is very real and I don't want to say that it's not. But at the same time, these things, to persecute them, they require prosecute, they require a never ending string of people that are going to need to get paid. And the second that that pipeline breaks down, then even if some percentage of the people that are in that supply chain of war are willing to fight for free just in the name of whatever God they believe in, it will fracture. Because there will be way too many people that aren't or just can't. Right? Because far more foundational than one's belief in God, at least when you spread it out to the masses, is one's need to eat. And given that food is expensive, then this is where things always tap out. If you can't feed or arm the fighters, it's game over. One of the most important things in any war is to figure out your supply chain. So in that supply chain, one of them is food. Food, you have to figure out how to feed your armies.

[Drew]

And that has been kind of the trump card that a lot of people are talking about because the Iranian, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, so many countries in that region rely on desalinization plants in order to get their fresh water because they don't have any rivers or anything like that. That is the ultimate. If somebody just bombs one of those, that can starve millions of people, if not billions. So it's one of those things where there is that back pocket nuclear option without actually hitting a nuke. And so far they have been keeping it above board. So with that being said, I do think that this is more of a personal. Iran wants to make sure the US and Israel leave it alone, leave their oil alone, get out of their region, versus them just being radical mad men that just want to suicide everybody. Because if they wanted to pull those triggers, they could have done things that could have legitimately killed people in that region that would have passed interceptors. So there is things that are on the table that they're kind of doing the gentlemen war agreement to leave alone.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, that's very true. Also, though, more than, I think you read that as a principled stand, it's probably better to look at that from the stance of, okay, well if I bomb them in this way too much, then you awaken that giant and then they come and attack you. So there's a certain amount of bombing that you can do to the UAE that destabilizes it, makes them afraid, the populace afraid. That makes them less likely to invest in the US economy, all of that. And then there's a point where you spill over and it becomes a real problem where they're like, okay, now us like we're all in. And the more countries that they can get on their side that'll actively participate in the warfare, obviously, the better off the US and Israel are and the worse off Iran is. So everybody's trying to walk that fine line of how hard can I go before some invisible line is crossed and people really go ham. And you would think that, you know, the kind of warfare that we're seeing is already enough for that. It's really not. So everybody's got that line where it's like, oh, God, I know, yes, you've killed a couple dozen people, but that's not the kind of thing that's going to pull us all the way in. Reading about how the US ended up getting into World War I is pretty fascinating. Both from reported false flag. Even if it wasn't a false flag, there were so many lies setting people up to basically get killed. So they didn't pull the trigger, they didn't fake the event. They just made it so that the event could happen. So it's a little bit like how people were responding on October 7th was like, hold on. They had to knowingly lower their defenses for that to happen. I'm not saying that's true, but I'm saying you get why people would believe it. It's like, these guys are so good at intelligence and that they didn't see something like that coming. It just seems so hard to believe. And so it's not that Israel did it to themselves, it's that they made it possible so that it could be done again. I am not putting that forward as a true thing. I'm just saying it becomes easy for people to believe in that if their priors are that they already believe things like that. So that's another way that we could find ourselves in a dark situation is that you just back off just enough that something becomes possible. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned. Let's talk about the retirement mistake even smart people are making. Most people think playing it safe means keeping their money in stable, familiar assets. But inflation does not care about your comfort zone. Part of the answer is going to be crypto exposure. But done right, blocktrust IRA uses Animus AI named Bitcoin magazine's number one crypto technology platform. For a human, volatility is emotional stress. For an AI, it's just an opportunity. Their AI outperformed self managed crypto accounts by over 23% in 2025. Block Trust IRA runs a zero conflict model. They don't make money unless you make money. Your assets are held in regulated insured cold storage. Visit tomcryptoira.com right now and sign up again. That's Tom Crypto ira.com this is a paid advertisement. Every SIM card has a permanent id. It's called an imsi. Your carrier assigns it once and it never changes. That ID follows you everywhere. Your carrier tracks it. Advertisers track it, bad actors track it. VPNs can't hide it, and encrypted apps can't change it. CAPE solves this with identifier rotation. Your SIM ID automatically changes every 24 hours. Same phone number, new identity every single day, making you untraceable. But Kape doesn't stop there. Your phone number itself is protected by a 24 word cryptographic phrase. Your voicemail is encrypted. Your payment data is tokenized. And Kape's enhanced signaling protection blocks suspicious network connections. Before attacks happen. Head to Cape Co impact and use code impact to get 33% off your first six months with Cape. That's C A P E CO impact. And be sure to use code impact to save 33%. 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 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 [e-mail] theory. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com theory. Again, that's netsuite.com theory. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[Drew]

One more thing. I said earlier that Iran's been preparing for this since the 40s. I meant for the last 40 years, since the hostage situation in the gym.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Wonder if I should say something.

[Drew]

Yeah, that was on me. Thank you for pointing that out, but that was a misspeak. Last thing. Iraq had 40,000 guys in tank tops, wife beaters, and in the caves in hijabs, and it took us 9, 10, 11 years. Iran reportedly has an army size from 800,000 to a million. How do you think this whole thing wraps up?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, so Iraq and Afghanistan need to be teased apart. So Iraq was probably a little bit different than that. They had a lot of material support from Iran. So that one was always going to be tough. It's urban warfare. You've got a society that really is divided. I'm thinking about doing a deep dive. It will fail, there's no question. But this one might be worth doing a deep dive on. Did Iraq come out better than they went in from that whole exchange? Not that it was worth our blood and treasure. Almost certainly it wasn't. But did it actually come out better? Now, Afghanistan, it would be, I think, very hard to make an argument that that came out better. And that one is the caves and all of that. And so the fascinating thing, if you were to line them up in terms of advanced civilization, Iran is by far the most modern of the three. So, yes, they're already going to be the most difficult to contend with because they have an advanced military. They've got alliances with some of the biggest countries in the world, including Russia and China. So there are things that I think we have to worry about with Iran that we wouldn't have had to worry about with Iraq or Afghanistan, and those still went poorly. So it's. Once you start getting boots on the ground, you run into a problem. I'm going to make a statement I've sort of danced around before. This is one of those things it's so horrible to say out loud. And yet, nonetheless, I think is a big part of the reason why modern warfare plays out the way that it does. If you're not willing to just kill absolutely indiscriminately, I don't know that it's possible to win a total war in the modern era, because the other side is just going to use asymmetric warfare against you until you relent. And so because we now have the kinds of weapons where, and Trump has talked about this, he's like, we could go in and just completely destroy their infrastructure and they are fucked for generations. And, yeah, at that point, it's like they just won't have the wherewithal to gather themselves together to stop you from like for instance, taking over the shoreline so that they can't stop the, the ships from going through. And so if we were willing to do that, you go in, you kill, I don't know, 25, 30% of their population. Just. You just fucking drop the biggest bombs you can imagine. But everywhere, you take out electricity, desalinization, oil, infrastructure, all of it. And then you go, cool. Can't with this area, you cordon it off, you create a dmz, you keep them far away, they're back in the Stone Age anyway. And then you're just like, yeah, the straits open now, but thankfully there is no moral appetite for that. But if people are a student of history, they will know that's how war was persecuted before. Yeah, why do I keep saying persecuted? Prosecuted. So you just went in and you killed everybody. And so people were just like, yeah, I don't want to fight this anymore.

[Drew]

How do you think it turns out today? No, like, how do you think the

[Tom Bilyeu]

Iran war ends up, like looking at it right now. So I have perfect information to your crystal ball.

[Drew]

Yeah, I know it's nothing perfect.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But so I. The way that I think that this goes is that it's super messy. We start bombing them to the point where we have to decide to cross a line where we either now for the people that we're trying to help rise up, either say, well, you guys didn't rise up. And so now we're just going to start breaking everything so that we can at least walk away and say, okay, this is a victory because the strait has to be opened. I just cannot stress that enough. And they're going to keep going until the strait is open because the international outcry, the impact to the economy, the global economy, that that is just a non starter. And so one of two things will happen. Either countries will start lining up with Iran and saying, okay, cool, we relent, we're on your side. That puts enough pressure on the U.S. the U.S. backs off. There's some sort of uneasy diplomatic solution where, man, this it. So the great irony is while I don't think this, the timing of this had anything to do with nuclear weapons, the US really can't let Iran have nuclear weapons. So either. All right, I'll plant an official flag. This is me thinking out loud, which is always super dangerous. But the. I think one of two paths will play out. Either Iran breaks and the US backs away and you get the uprising and we see a democratic Iran, or this really drags out into a war to which I don't see an end,

[Drew]

man. My bet is on the ladder. We'll probably market it later. But domestically, there are some things that hit back home. Synagogue was attacked, there was a school shooting. Walk us through what happened yesterday at home.

[Tom Bilyeu]

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 other things, but dude drove his truck like down the hallway. It's pretty wild. So this all happened shortly after noon. 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 even 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. 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 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 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 it's a powerful reminder that you're not going to get out of this cleanly.

[Drew]

There's 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.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yep.

[Drew]

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.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Drew]

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

[Tom Bilyeu]

that's connected to them, I wouldn't automatically assume that some of them won't just blanket hate America. The human animal is very good at othering other people and just putting you in a bucket and being like, nah, I more or less just hate all you bitches. It's like there are going to be plenty of people in America that just hate people across the world, because, man, you just fit in a bucket and vice versa. 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, looking 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 face 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. But man, when you start reading history, and I really hope that I'm attracting a community of people that are historically literate, when you start reading history, you realize some of those names just echo and you're not sure, wait, are we supposed to like or dislike that person? Genghis Khan is just an easy one to talk about because I think a lot of people aren't sure whether they like him or dislike him. He gave you the Silk Road, which was a very big deal back then. He unified large swaths of territory. But oh, and by the way, he, he, there's like some absurd percentage of the population that is tied back to him. I forget the exact number, but it's high. He, this was not a guy sleeping with one woman. This was somebody who was raping and pillaging his way across the world and by the way, just slaughtered people in insane numbers. Absolutely insane numbers. So when you look at history, you realize, oh, all the people that were like super victorious were these just absolute warmonger murderers killing indiscriminately in a way that we would just never tolerate today. And so when we're staring nakedly at that reality that killing is hyper effective, and we remember that Iran, the current regime, has stayed in power by killing its own people. I saw an Iranian woman who escaped. I forget it what age, but she had an accent. She was talking about what Iran is really like. And she was like, yes, let's say that the US accidentally bombed a girl's school. And I completely get the outrage. However, where was that outrage when the Iranian regime gassed an entire school full of girls intentionally on purpose to kill their own people? Nobody said a fucking Word. And so this is where people actually mapping out what their morality is, what they think they're prepared to fight for, is going to cause people to have to really stop and map this out. And the people that I hear talking most loudly rarely do that. In fact, I've never seen anybody do it. So it would be very interesting to talk to some of these guys and say, okay, so what is your base assumption? What number of people would need to be killed before you think a government like the UO or not like the US The US Government should get involved with? Is the number. It doesn't matter. It's infinite. So they could kill everybody in their country, and you're fine with that, and they could spill out into the wider region. Would you want to push back if they actually come to your borders? Like, at some point they have a line where they either have to say it's okay for somebody to kill everybody else and we shouldn't harm anybody, or they can kill everybody in their country, but they can't go across somebody else's border, or they can cross every border, but not ours. Like, once they have to put that in words, everybody always ends up realizing, like, oh, shit, I actually do have a line, or I don't have a line. That's super fucking weird. But what will people do instead? They're going to. It is a really common trick for people that talk for a living to start moving the conversation onto something else. It's really obnoxious in debates. This is one of the reasons why, if you ever see me, like, moderating a debate or sitting across from somebody that I don't agree with, what I'm trying to do is map out their base assumptions, because I want them to say it out loud. I want to know what is that foundational belief from which all the words coming out of your mouth are based on? And the professional chattering class is really good at moving away from that question. Either because they don't know, they've never actually taken the time to map that out, or they know that if they say the words out loud, it's so gross that they'll lose all credibility. But, yeah, it's tough.

[Drew]

Yeah. 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.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Before we begin, I'm just going to confess my bias. This. 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. Fuck 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 motherfucker to death. To death. Now, it's unclear whether the students stabbed him to death or killed them with their bare fucking hands, but guess what? Challenging a room full of military hopefuls is not a smart strategy. And I fucking love that they beat this guy to death. This is the fantasy if you're like me, where somebody comes in and wants to do people harm and they're just like, absolute hard pass. 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, 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. And 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 biding 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 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 gotta show this clip. Hearing watching her try to say what happened without saying what happened was hilarious. But he was not shot. We know that. So we'll see if we can pull that up quickly. 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. All right, here she is. This is from the FBI. There were students that were in that room that subdued him and credited him no longer alive. They basically were able to terminate the threat, rendered him no longer alive.

[Drew]

That.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That is like, he was the weirdest way to say that ever. But, yeah, God damn, man. I'm. I'm here for that. I'm here for that. If somebody comes in with a gun, bro, game over.

[Drew]

Now everybody knows my heart bleeds for immigrants. I am team Immigrant. I want everybody to be here. But y' all was in the Home Depot parking lot out here chasing down Abuelas when we had a retired. We had a on paper ICE supporter who was in the country, and we was like, nah, he's cool. He's good. He can stay. And amen. Y' all got some explaining to do over there. I don't know. Maga. I need some receipts. I need something. How'd y'.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All.

[Drew]

How he fall through the cracks?

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is one of those where he's a naturalized citizen. So America's gonna have to, like, really contend with this. Drew, the thing that I think we're gonna be contending with over the next several years, which means you and I are gonna end up talking about it. It's one of my least favorite things to talk about, but is going to be Muslim immigration.

[Drew]

I know we. We. Because the audience feels a little bit a type of way about this. I seen the comments to the Raymond Ibrahim interview. Every either people get it and they understand he was released under Biden. Drew, that's not the point that I'm making. The mass deportation started under Trump. So everybody's talking about we don't want to be too Islamophobic. We don't want to be too racist. So I understand that we have to tease out those two things. I understand that just because there is a certain religion that can be turned into terrorism. There's been terrorist Christians, there's been terrorist Jews, there's been terrorist Muslims. So by no way does the religion equal radicalization. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. We get all that, comma. However, I just feel like there's certain people that you should be on, like, should be on watch list. So there's certain people that, okay, you have a pattern of doing this and you immigrated here. I think you should lose your immigration Status. We were literally kicking people out the country because they were supporting Gaza over Israel. But the ISIS supporter again slipped through the cracks. So as a policy, I feel like if you support a international threat, nationalized or not, that's something that I can say, hey, you should lose your citizenship for that. I think that's bipartisan support. I think we can all sign on the dotted line about that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think you will be shocked that they won't all sign on the dotted line now. Can you get me on board with that? We'd have to get really specific about what we're going to do to denaturalize somebody. If you're convicted of something like that, that. I'm totally for denaturalizing that person. But they need to be convicted. You want to talk about needing due process, all of that. And yes, I get that that could get very expensive. It just is what it is, man. You can't just, like, start drop kicking citizens out of your country. That's not an America that I want to be a part of. At the same time, like, we are going to have to be very honest about how much values matter. And if you've got a group that has a wildly disproportionate likelihood of becoming aggressively anti American values, then I say you got to pump the brakes on letting them immigrate, for sure. So. But that means that people that are otherwise just good, good people, they're going to get blocked. And I hate that that's where we're at. But that. That is going to be the debate.

[Drew]

I'm about to go like 1v16 in the chat because I'm getting. I'm getting hit from all directions, and I have time today because you gu ridiculous things somebody said. That's ridiculous. Drew, who is the arbiter of who's a terrorist or not? The person that's convicted for being an ICE supporter.

[Tom Bilyeu]

12 jurors.

[Drew]

That's what I mean. I feel like this is not allegedly. We read his tweets and then we're throwing them in jail. This is. No, you went to jail because you tried to send money to ice. I think everybody like.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And you said to an undercover agent that you wanted to do another massacre, went and bought an AR15 and tried to send money to ISIS. Like, bro, at some point you gotta be like, let's just flip it around and say this was school shooter vibes, and that kid had done all that and still went and shot up a fucking school. I think we'd be like, okay, we got a problem here. So, yeah, this is where people need to. This is why people need to map out what are my lines. Everybody has lines. You have a line. Where is it? Document it then. Okay, cool. Build your argument. Say, this is what I think. This is where I think people should have their line. Make your most persuasive argument. See how many people you can win over to your side. I love it the most. But just coming off the top rope with emotion and not saying, okay, this is exactly what I think we need to do. I think right now, rough swag. Drew and I are both saying, if you've been convicted, okay, now we're talking denaturalization. Yep, we're here for it. If you haven't been convicted, then no, pump the brakes. Much more to debate. Talk about, et cetera, et cetera. Now that's just us coming at it quickly. I'm sure if I thought about it even more, maybe I'd have an even more nuanced line. But, yeah, assuming that I did.

[Drew]

Fractal, you were teeing up. We have to talk about Muslim immigration, just in general on a larger scale. So I know in the UK and Europe they're feeling it a bit more because smaller population sizes, it's been higher immigration rates, it hasn't really hit America as large yet. What do you think is the coming. I don't want to say reckoning, but what do you think is the coming realization that the west is going to realize.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'll give it to you as naked as I can. The west has lost belief in itself, is no longer even a. We don't have shared values within our own countries because we don't have shared values within our own countries. We don't have a very clear set of things that we would fight and die for. We're not having babies because the wealthier you get and the more I hate that this one's true, but it is. So here we go. The more you educate women, the fewer children are had. And so we have wonderfully educated women. But there is a trade off there. And the trade off is that you start having babies at a hyper declining rate. And now you're going up against a culture. And I think it is far. It. It is critical that people understand this is a culture. This doesn't have anything to do with a race. But you have a culture of. It's easy to talk about radical Muslims, but you're probably going to have to broaden it out more than that. But let's just stay with radical Muslims for now. There's a Culture within what we in the west refer to as radical Muslims. They, I don't know, think use that same phrase, but more orthodox. And that value system is completely anathema to what Tom Bilyeu would certainly map out as American values. Now, again, I don't think that we have a shared set of American values anymore. So this is one person talking what theirs are. I would say it's completely incompatible with that. And if their birth rates are higher, much higher than you bring them in and they're, this is where I really try to trigger people. They're going to run the same strategy that Jews ran in Israel. And that is you start small in number, but you keep bringing people in, keep bringing people in. And between birth rate and immigration, you start gaining political power. And then once you gain political power, as you can see, then you can ice everybody out. So now if you're totally for Israel, you're Zionist and you don't mind that happening to your country, great, it's already happening in some places. But if you do mind, then you're going to have to say, here are the values that I'm going to stand up for and I'm certainly willing to put an immigration policy in place that keeps this in check and. Or I'm actually willing to fight for these values. So that is the question that the world is going to be asked. It is a question I absolutely hate. I really don't like that we're here, but we're here. And so we gotta, we gotta talk about it.

[Drew]

What is the prescription in terms of

[Tom Bilyeu]

what should people do? Define your values, literally write them down. Vote for people that adhere to those values and insist that those people put in policies that mechanistically protect those values. A huge part of that is going to be immigration. So don't let people immigrate to your country that have already proven that they violate your values or have a high likelihood of violating your values. And then you have to. It is wise to know what you would be willing to use violence to stop from happening.

[Drew]

We had two bombshell economic reports yesterday. These are fourth quarter GDP was revised down to 0.7% growth. Q3 was 4.4 growth. Then they said Q4 was 1.4. Actually, it was 0.7. And core inflation was up to 3.1%. We like to keep it at 2. So inflation is now trending up as well. Break it down for us, Tom.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It is no bueno, boys and girls. Two economic reports dropped this morning. Neither is good. And together they describe a scenario that Trump should be extraordinarily worried about because if he does not get this resolved, he is cooked in the midterms. Cooked, Cooked. And the the Federal Reserve is not going to be able to help him fix the things that are going wrong right now. Here are the stats. Fourth quarter GDP was revised down. So never trust the initial numbers, boys and girls. Revised down to 0.7% annualized growth. That's not a typo. The prior estimate was 1.4%. Wall street was expecting 1.5%. The actual number was less than half of both at the same time. January's core pce, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, which I think they play so many games with all of this. But anyway, it's the thing that is meant to measure what Americans are actually spending on goods and services. It's come in at 3.1%, up from 3% just a month before. So not crazy runaway, but it's certainly higher when you think that it's 50% more than their target. And by the way, remember everything above. I'm going to say something. This is a very hot take. Everything above some pretty substantial negative number is theft. Remember, innovation should be making things cheaper over time. The fact that not only does it not make things cheaper over time, things get more expensive over time is because the government is running a strategy that says, you motherfuckers would hoard all of your money if we didn't steal some of it from you. I'm not joking. They won't use those words, but that is exactly what they are saying. So they're saying if we steal 2% of your money every year, then you'll go spend money and it makes things work. That is the wildest shit ever. Anyway, it's what they believe. It is what they're doing. So the 2% is already theft. So once you hit 3%, you know you have a problem. I might be willing to accept some inflation if the government had a balanced budget, but it doesn't. And so it can fuck off. All right, here's where you've got to be honest with the data. A federal government shutdown in Q4 is estimated to have cost roughly a full percentage point of the growth on its own. So while it would be it's going to kick Trump in the face if he can't fix this. Not all of this is related to his strategies. And then some of that is going to. Some of his strategies would never be able to yield results yet they're going to take more time to come. So we'll still, see, the jury's out on that. If you strip away the government shutdown, the underlying private economy was running closer to 1.7%. That's still a significant slowdown from Q3 of 25's 4.4%. But it's not exactly the collapse that a lot of people are going to make this sound like it is. Now, Trump has tried to point that out to anybody who will listen, that the government shutdown is causing the dip in the GDP number. And on that specific point, I think he's actually correct. Though I have beef with people counting government expenditures in gdp. But anyway, they do, they do it across the board. So at least it's a standardized, stupid way of looking at the world. Now, the inflation number is going to be harder to explain away, especially when we are making oil prices go up, which is the closest thing. Like when you make oil prices go up, that is the closest thing to genuine inflation. Remember? And I'm sure people get tired of me saying this, but no one teases these two things out. Rising prices and inflation are two separate phenomena. It's just that inflation tends to cause prices to go up. But inflation is where you have more actual dollars in a system chasing the same number of goods. Okay, so you're pumping money artificially into the system. That's inflation. The prices go up because you have more dollars competing for the same number of goods. Prices going up, though, is a secondary thing that can go up independently of inflation. Inflation rises the cost of, of everything, whereas individual prices can go up for different reasons. Now, the tariff policy also creates a direct mechanical upward pressure on prices. It's not actually inflation, but certain things that are affected by the structure of the tariffs are going to go up. So more tariffs mean higher import costs. Now, people will often say that this just all gets passed on to consumers. It's not actually true. It ends up being split between consumers, the exporting country, or the exporting company, I should say, and the importing company. So it tends to be spread across those three, which is why it becomes a tempting thing to use. And certainly there are things, advantages that we're getting from the tariff. So we'll see overall if it does enough good to stop Trump from getting trounced at the midterms. But that one's hard to just put in a neat, tidy box of works or doesn't work. Slow growth. Rising inflation at the same time is never ideal. That is the setup that boxes the Fed income completely. Normally, when growth slows, the Fed just cuts interest rates to stimulate the economy. But you can't cut interest rates when inflation is still running at 3.1%. Though they'll probably still do it if they have to, to restructure their debt. We'll see if they can lower the value of the dollar enough, they may not have to do it. We'll see. But yeah, this is going to be a tough one for the Fed to help the President get out from under. So right now I would say if, and I've said this many times because it has not changed if the midterm elections happen right now, Trump gets clobbered. His poll numbers appear to be going down. Yeah, I think he's, he's got so many things going wrong right now, it's still possible he pulls them off. But, ooh, buddy, this looks more and more like a high wire act where the rope that he is walking on is fraying. We'll see.

[Drew]

Yeah, the high, like the rope is shaking and there's a wind gust and it starts raining and there's a pack

[Tom Bilyeu]

of hyenas waiting on the other side that are biting at the, it's like licking their lips, not saying it's impossible, but right now it's tough.

[Drew]

And then on the flip side, the okay, so the Senate is trying with this House Affordability act, but before we even get to that, are any of the government numbers good anymore? Because I think we've been seeing revisions of jobs, revision of gdp, revisions of, of.

[Tom Bilyeu]

There probably is something that's good, that's not on my radar. But right now your economy is really in trouble. So you have a super storm happening right now where you've got AI coming in at a period of hyper populism already tearing the country apart. You've been in a stealth recession almost certainly for a year. There's a total shakeup of the world order that's happening right now. You're at war with somebody who can control the flow of oil, which is like the one commodity that just impacts the entire global economy. There is so much going on right now and that's the time the AI is coming in and also causing a massive reorg of jobs. It's crazy. So this is going to be a period that will be studied by historians for a very long time. Because when you have this kind of shakeup, this level of uncertainty, this level of ferocity of people fighting each other within our own country, historical allies falling off, the oil prices going up, I mean, just all of this happening at once, it's really going to be wild. The thing at the Individual level that people should be paying attention to is how do you leverage AI? That's the important thing. And I just cannot get enough people to pay attention to that. Remember, please, psa, you're not going to be replaced by AI, but you will aggressively be replaced by somebody else using AI. That's just how this game is going to be played for right now. So at the individual level, you guys can help yourselves. So whether the government numbers look good or not, this is one of those times where the people that are intellectually nimble are going to be able to position themselves well, and the people that aren't will get eaten alive by this technology. This has happened repeatedly over and over throughout history. You've got the industrial revolution, the great electrification, and then the great Internetification. All of them had like hyper predictable results. We're going through the AI ification of everything right now. And it's certainly possible that the AI ification only lasts for, you know, call it five to seven years. And then AI just takes everything over and humans are irrelevant, but you still have to live through those five to seven years. So I wouldn't just. Just focus on the sci fi of it all. I would really ground yourself in what's happening right now. And I think people are just panicking. Drew One of my biggest fears is people break emotionally. Me, when I was in the. The mindset phase of my life, one of the things I was really trying to get people to understand is just don't quit. Just don't quit. Most people break emotionally. So, like when I got into business, I didn't know anything about what I was doing. Constantly getting kicked in the face. You make stupid mistakes all the time and then if you stay in it, you learn from those mistakes. Just having a conversation with Andrew Press, who you know well, but as our coo, and we were talking about the first year and a half, maybe almost two years of game development, and we were just talking about the numbers and it was. It was hard to hear. It's very hard to hear. And I was just like, God, I didn't know what I was doing. And he was being so kind. Not. I don't need the reminder, but he was being very kind. He was like, yeah, but like, you know, you learned a lot. We came out with a lot. And I was like, yeah, 100%. I don't look at that as game development. I look at that as two years of paying tuition to learn how this thing works and school of hard knocks. Yeah, if I had given up, it is quite literally the Period of my life that I'm most proud of because it was so grueling and felt like the entire company was at risk and just everything was riding on weathering that storm and getting to the other side and end up realizing, oh, I, I really don't quit. And if people could develop that skill and say, okay, AI is going to disrupt everything. AI is going to make a lot of things that they thought they knew just completely irrelevant. Things that they thought were their moat just are going to go away. No moat there. But that there is this incredible opportunity to engage with that thing, to learn to know that you're going to be weird, awkward, fumble a lot in the beginning, but then on the other side of that, that you can really do something, something extraordinary. It is the gift that I'm always trying to give to people. It's what I shorthand to what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that if I put time and energy into getting better at something, I will get better.

[Drew]

But I want to double click on that because literally somebody close to me yesterday, they said it without saying it, that they were giving up on their dreams. What happens when your dreams don't matter? LA is hard. A bunch of people are moving out. So there's a lot of people who are holding the L as they kind of like driving that they road trip back home in that way. Can you combat that story? Because her assertion, like her assertion, quote unquote, was my dream isn't compatible with the way Hollywood is currently set up at this point. So there's no room for me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Drew]

And I was just like, that's a lot of assumptions that you're making.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Drew]

You're making that assumption, a concrete story, and then you're creating your life based on the story that you made up.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, let's make that really hard and let's say that that is, is true. So this is how I felt when I was trying to break into comics and I realized, oh, the fundamental structure of this does not work for anybody other than a solo creator is going to do everything themselves. And it's, it's one roll of the dice of I make it into the top 10 and I'm making money or I don't make it into the top 10. But at least I love telling the story and I've got an audience of 100 people and I'm perfectly satisfied for somebody running it like a business. Neither of those work. So. Because you would have to allocate everything to running a portfolio strategy where you make maybe 20 comics, one of them hits, but you're outlaying millions of dollars to do that. And so then I was like, well, what does this look like on the back end? And I'm like, oh, it really doesn't work. So there's a Korean company that runs a strategy kind of like that. They happen to hit with solo leveling. So it's like. But solo leveling was one of their first ones that's paying for all the other failures. If you look at what's going on in the games industry, they're now going to through this where taking a AAA portfolio approach of try 10 or 15 live service games. One hits makes billions of dollars and all the other ones die. It's fine. So there are times where you have to look at this and go, oh, like, it really has moved on. Like, AAA developers should be looking at what's going on in indie game development. Going, oh, this is about smaller teams. It's about recognizing that the game industry really has changed. So there are these ecosystems now that are cropping up and everybody go, one of those ecosystems. So a fortnight. So everybody's there or Roblox, everybody's there. And so the, like, live service model, it had its moment, but that's aimed at millennial gamers. Millennial gamers are not super into what AAA studios are doing anymore. And it's like you have to adjust to that. So making this about your friend again, it's like she's read, right? It probably isn't set up for her to be successful in the way that she was thinking. Now the reason that I'm sad for her is that she has taken that to mean, oh, the thing that I wanted to do with my life is no more. That's so emotionally devastating. Something is broken in me and now I'm just going to go home. And she's learned the wrong lesson. The right lesson is, oh, my God, I'm one of the few people that recognizes that this isn't structured in the way that I was approaching it. I have to change my approach. And so how do I find something new that I can fall in love with? Because that's part of. It's the death of a dream that she's struggling with. And she wants to feel the way she felt when that seemed possible. Like, I found gaming, I wanted to feel the way that I felt when I was like 22 coming out of film school and I was like, yo, I'm going to be the next Spielberg. This is going to be insane. That Dream died because moviemaking isn't cool anymore. So the thing that I wanted to do, the cultural relevance, telling stories that mattered, like, all of that, it literally died. And so I was like, whoa, that's really tough as a child of the 80s, to see what's happened to filmmaking. I mourned it, but I didn't go, there's nothing that I will ever have that relationship with again. I went, what's gonna be that new thing? I tried comics, saw that the economics don't make sense there either. Then it was like, okay, cool. We found gaming. And then gaming matches a part of my personality, at least the type I'm building, where it's like you just keep changing it and changing it and changing it and changing it until it hits. Now, whether it becomes like a big economic thing is really a race against AI. And I can't tell what that will be. But, like, if that dies, then it's like, okay, how do I look? Leverage. AI. Right, so you're always going. I have to fill my hours somehow pursuing something that I'm deeply passionate about, that I would enjoy even if I'm failing and makes me feel like I'm serving not only myself, but the group. Those are just things built into the architecture of the human mind. And so it always makes me so sad when people accurately see, oh, this path is dead, but then don't realize, oh, I just need to find that path.

[Drew]

So many other paths. That's so good. So give yourself permission to mourn, feel your feelings, say that this path is gone. But then don't be blind to the other paths that can take you to fulfillment in a way that you might not have imagined.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Correct. I'm here to tell you I'm like licking 50, and that's old as shit. And I'm still full of passion. I'm still full of energy.

[Drew]

What's that Kevin Hart meme? Damn.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, that was so good. How old are you? How he was like 53 or something.

[Drew]

Like, damn.

[Tom Bilyeu]

He's like, sorry, yeah, that was great. That was a phenomenal moment. So. Yes. So being able to engage with that kind of stuff is. Is incredible, regardless of your age. But I think people really, like, wear these grooves into their brain, and it's like, that's the only vision that they can see for themselves, and that moment is past them. And I think that that is really, really devastating to people. And if they could understand that the game is neurochemical management and not the actual dream. I know that sounds terrible.

[Drew]

No, that's good.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But it's like you're really just trying to manage how it feels to be you.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so you've my advice, you've got to find a way to feel energized and alive and if they're creative, that they have a creative outlet. And so maybe, yeah, maybe they're never going to be on that big stage. But hopefully it was never about the big stage. It was always you were trying to capture a feeling that you're creating something that matters. And so, yes, you may have to look at a different scale, but I mean, how many people have to, I mean, forgive me if he ends up getting it back together, but like Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, both imploding as far as I can tell. And it's like, well, being on a big stage didn't save them. So it, that isn't really the answer. And I think when people think it is, that's where the trouble starts.

[Drew]

I just want to let everybody know this last like 10 minutes was unplanned, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Nice.

[Drew]

This was good.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This was not sure that we have that audience anymore, but enjoy.

[Drew]

Hey, man, the world is on fire. And I know that there's some people in the chat who might have, who might be mourning their dreams or what they thought 30 will look like, or they thought they'll be married with kids by now, or they thought that that person would stay in their life. All these things. And Tom just gave you permission that you're allowed to dream again. So if you never do, if you've never been awarded that permission, Tom just gave it to you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

There you go.

[Drew]

Jay Welk did say something about inflation that I wanted to bring up. He said inflation is theft. He said, what if inflation is the chase by a lion that the government wanted to put on people, so that way they kept pursuing growth.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Here's the thing. Modern monetary theory has advantages. So I understand why people get seduced by it. But it is the thing that created the K shaped economy. And so if people are willing to say, I think it's fine, do a boom and bust thing, create this cycle where it, it builds up the K shaped economy to the point where people on the bottom of the K kill a bunch of people on the top of the K, that destroys the economy for a generation or two, typically somewhere around 100 years, but then we come back and so yeah, I want to run that strategy. I would just say that sounds like a terrible strategy to me. It's extremely knowable. And so since it isn't a like law of physics that we have to go down that why don't we try a different path? Path we're probably not going to. Humans have proven time and again that they're gonna just follow the path of maximum pain and that's the only thing that resets the cycle. But yeah, it doesn't have to be this way. And so it becomes a question of what can you get people to believe. But the trade off is that nobody loses their money in their bank. And that gives people a great degree of relaxation. They feel good about that, that ignoring the fact that they're just being pushed farther and farther down that K shaped economy. But at least it happens very slowly. And so if that's a trade off that people want to make, that's the trade off that they want to make.

[Drew]

All right. And a win for affordable housing. I don't want to take victory lapse too soon yet because this just passed the Senate, it still has to pass the House. And the House has already had revisions that they want to propose. But the 21st century road to Housing act that was just passed and they snuck in something about CBDCs. I didn't even know this until you told me. So break that down for us.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It is hilarious. The bills are never about the bill. It is wild. It's just a title at the top that they then cram a bunch of other random things into. But this one is a win for people that don't want to be choked out financially by their government. So what happened is they had the Affordable Housing act that was going in the Senate. It ended up passing 89 to 10. And the goal that somebody like me cares about is that this is going to function to freeze the digital dollar and kill CBDCs. The bill is called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. On the surface, it's a housing affordability package that's banning Wall street from buying up single family homes, which by the way, is already dope. So let's round of applause on that 1. Streamlining HUD inspections, expanding rural housing programs, et cetera. But tucked into the back of that 300 page bill is a provision that the crypto world is calling one of the biggest legislative wins ever. The exact language is the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System of the Federal Reserve bank may not issue or create a central bank digital currency or any digital asset that is substantially similar to a bank, a central bank digital currency, directly or indirectly through a financial institution or other intermediary. Okay. The bill was co sponsored, shockingly by Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren. It's one of those, makes me go, wait a second. They are not normally doing things that I think are good for the economy, but it ended up passing with a vote. You almost never see the 89 to 10. So that's exciting.

[Drew]

And Tim Scott's a Republican too, so let's go.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Bipartisanship for the win, please. More, more bipartisanship. So that ban ends up running through December 31st of 2030. So it's just five years, but is fantastic. Now, if you guys don't remember, a CBDC is a central bank digital currency. It's. This isn't bitcoin. So that's not what they're trying to stop. So your Bitcoin's good. Don't worry about that. The government want, they'll use CBDCs to try to control it, by the way. That's like the goal. And so the reason that anybody like me doesn't want to see this is we don't want the government to be able to monitor every single transaction. And if you give them this power, they can freeze your money, they can program your money to expire, they can restrict what you're allowed to spend it on. It would get very Chinese credit score very fast. Critics across both parties have called it the most powerful surveillance tool ever built into a currency. And that's why they want to stop it. So to be clear, this vote doesn't kill CBDCs permanently. Much to my dismay. Ted Cruz actually led an effort to try to get that in, but it failed. But at least we get a five year pause right now. But there is that sunset clause built in.

[Drew]

There was some pushback about that. Some people are saying they're not, it's not going to pass because they want that permanent language.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, yes, so we'll get to that. It's not, not a law yet. So there is. The bill still has to go to the House and pass. And as Drew was saying, House Republicans are threatening to block it. So what they want to see is a permanent ban. Now, if they can get it, that would be even better. But we'll see. Pump, pump. Trump has publicly said that he's not going to sign any legislation until the voter ID bill clears his desk. So this could end up in limbo no matter what. So consider the passage uncertain at this point, but it's not going to touch your bitcoin or your stable coins or your private crypto. None of that. Don't worry about that. This is aimed at a very specific thing which is government issued digital currencies.

[Drew]

Some people are saying the five year ban is giving the Federal Reserve a five year, you know, warm up time so they can figure out how to do it, how to do it. And then as soon as the ban is done, then they are implemented 1000%

[Tom Bilyeu]

the government will do this if we allow them to, for sure. Without question. And I, I am surprised that right now we have a window where Republicans at least feel strongly enough that they're financially incentivized to push this through and that apparently enough Democrats feel the same because this gives the government an obscene amount of control. And would they be more into it if the Fed were more wrapped under the, the Treasury? Maybe they would, man. Because government passing on something that gives them control is shocking. Shocking. But I'm happy to see it. I'm ecstatic.

[Drew]

Would it be something like they would mandate the purchase of US Bonds to bump up the economy? I'm trying to think what.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No, I probably wouldn't play it like that. The way that it would go would be something like if I had to integrate that, it would be, you get bonus points. So we're going to forgive that you're buying more meat because you hold more treasury, but hey, we just noticed that you spent more than $12 on meat in the last month. That's not good for the environment, Drew. And so now we're going to shut you down. Hey, the government has decided that fat's bad for you. We noticed that you're buying a lot of food with fat. That, that is literally what they will use this for. They will stop you from doing anything they don't want you to do. Oh, we saw you protesting. Sorry, all your money's cut off. Canada already did that. Let's please not forget that. So this stuff isn't theoretical. This is what governments do. And if you've heard about the homeless people in China, they will often become homeless not because they can't afford things. They become homeless because their credit score drops so much they're not allowed to have a home. Dude, it's wild. So, yeah, beware, like, people just do not distrust their government nearly enough. They really don't. Like, people distrust Trump in all capital letters, but they don't distrust their government. Government. Kids, your government's not your friend. I don't understand how people decided that they were. That's wild.

[Drew]

Speaking of friendly governments, let's jump over to New York City and get a look at Mom Danny's latest proposal. I think you might be. You have it might have a misread on this, but we'll play then and I'll let you go and see how we, we break this down. Midst being in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we already see an exodus of working in middle class New Yorkers. So I don't have a hesitation in asking those who make the most amount of money in the city or the most profits in the city to pay a little bit more so that everyone can actually stay in this city. It's also something not just about justice or the ability for working class people to live here. It is also actually about ensuring that corporations can continue to attract the top talent to this city. Because in a city where childcare costs more than $20,000 a year, I've heard from corporations, corporate leaders, about how difficult it is for them to attract individuals who would work at their companies but want to raise a family. Because you could be making $300,000 a year and you will feel that $20,000 a year.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So this is a guy who wants to tax you more, which somehow, apparently you feel it when you pay it for childcare, but you don't feel it when you pay it for taxes. It's so wild.

[Drew]

Billionaires don't feel anything, Tom. That's why billionaires are numb to feeling

[Tom Bilyeu]

when that's not true. But when it comes to money, yeah, they're not going to experience it like the average person. I just. Here's where again, please everybody connect the dots from a cause and effect perspective. Because what ends up happening is when you're overtaxing the people that are making money, they either stop producing because they're just like, I can't justify working this hard for how much I pay in taxes. And on top of that, if they may also just leave and take their company somewhere else. This is obviously not speculative. This is exactly what's happening. And so when you look at something and you say, okay, instead of balancing the budget, what we're going to do is just keep taxing, Keep taxing, keep taxing. What they're not telling you is that the more they tax, the more they spend. And as long as that ratio stays the same, they're always at a deficit, which means that they'll always have to be taxing more. It doesn't work. This is why the Laffer curve is a real thing. That no matter how much you try to tax, you don't end up collecting more money beyond a certain point point. And so he'll find out whether New York has already maxed out the amount that they can collect or if there's a little bit more for them to collect, but you're not going to be able to get to your whole budget without doing austerity measures. And that's what nobody wants to do. But the reality is anybody that says that they're going to tax you first rather than balance the budget first is your enemy because it will be terrible for the economy. It is somebody who is not fiscally responsible. This is like giving money to your drug addict cousin and expecting somehow that things are going to work out for the better. It's not. They're just going to spend that money on drugs. So if he balances the budget first and then says, okay everybody, we want to add this new program, to do it, we'll have to raise your taxes this much. Go ahead and vote on whether you want to have your taxes increased to pay for this new thing, then it will be allocated towards that. It'd be a very different world. But it's not. It's all deficit spending. It's all promises that everything's going to be fine. It's only going to go on the wealthy. But what ends up happening, they're doing the program no matter what. The wealthy end up not generating enough money for all the reasons we've talked about. And then guess who they tax? Literally, please. Remember, 47 days into office after telling everybody he's going to freeze their rents, he did the exact opposite and put a or promised to put a tax on average people as his plan B because it didn't look like he was going to be able to get enough from wealthy people in order to cover the programs that he wanted to do. Literally all throughout time they promise to get it from the wealthy. It doesn't work like that. And so then they end up getting it from the average person. So just remember.

[Drew]

Yeah, by all means, if you think let's wait and see. Let's. Let's wait and see. Because it to his credit, he did with reduce the deficit originally was at 12 billion, it is at that 5.9. Hence the proposal of property taxes. He still needs to get the governor to sign off on it. They have been in lock step with it's not balanced. It's not balanced yet, but it's closer to being balanced. Negative 12 is worse than negative 5.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Drew]

So directionally correct. He still has to get the governor to sign off on a bunch of these things. So as much as he's the mayor and he could do a lot of these things, his stuff with the landlords, I think is a bit more low hanging fruit form where he's doing a landlord reporting service. And if there's a certain amount of violations, you can then be forced to sell your house or be imposed fines, things like that. That is so crazy that landlords have to fix their stuff.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No, that if you don't fix your stuff, instead of being fined or penalized, make it criminal, great, whatever. But being able to confiscate your property, that's crazy.

[Drew]

After, I mean, that's like step seven, but after not paying fines, after not coming to hearings, then you, if you're

[Tom Bilyeu]

not paying fines, they already have the ability to, to put a lien. So why are they now able to force you to sell the whole thing? Like this is, this is where I'm like, you trust the government. I do not trust the government. So I'm like, they're going to abuse that system. They're giving themselves more power to come in and confiscate your item. And this is one of those times where I'm like, wait a second. That, that is not the government's role. The government's role is to make sure that the rules are being followed. It's not to continue to give themselves more and more power so that they can take things from you. Especially not when a guy has talked openly about seizing the means of production. It's like, this is somebody who has a nefarious agenda doing increasingly nefarious things that will inevitably impact the average person.

[Drew]

Yes, because I think a lot of times when we talk about mom dining, we talk about the first step. And then we assume that if we continue this trajectory, it's going to lead to the tenth step. And then there's that line between. What's the line between regulation and letting people run amok and do what they and hope that they do the right thing. But we all can see that the human mind tends to be selfish. So in a lot of these jurisdictions, the landlord is saying, I don't have to fix it, I don't need to fix it. I'm not getting penalized enough to fix it, so I'm not going to fix it. The selfish way out. So then Mamdani steps in and says, okay, after a certain amount, you then have to get forced to sell your property.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's crazy. Crazy. That's literally absurd. And I'm talking about Mamdani's step one is already outrageous and needs to be checked immediately through extreme legal, but extreme resistance on behalf of taxpayers who understand that this is going to go down a road that makes New York worse, not better.

[Drew]

Got it?

[Tom Bilyeu]

So what I'm saying is, if you have landlords that are violating the law, then pursue them legally, but you don't go. You've had too many parking tickets, and we're now going to take your car. What you do go is, okay, You've unpaid parking tickets, and we're now going to impound your car. And as soon as you pay them back, we will release your car to you. If you're unable to meet the fines and we have to liquidate that to get the money back, then. So be should work exactly like that. You've got property. All you have to do to get it out of impound is to clear the the lien or whatever. But you can't just go in and start saying, yeah, you've had too many violations and now you must liquidate your property. That's insanity. All right, everybody. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody. And by the way, we have an upcoming event for Impact Theory University. So if you are being disrupted by AI, make sure that you sign up for it. Ryan's gonna go ahead and drop that in the chat there, so you guys have a link to it. But we do these with a fair degree of frequency, so make sure that you check that out. Anybody that wants to be the last man standing in their company, or if you want to actually start a company using AI, I'm going to be doing a free live masterclass, so make sure you sign up for it. All right, everybody, have a wonderful weekend. Carvana is so easy. Just a click and we've got ourselves a car. See so many cars. That's a clicktastic inventory. And check out the financing options payments to fit our budget. I mean, that's Clickonomics 101 delivery to our door. Just a hop, skip and a click away. And bought. No better feeling than when everything just clicks. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. We will see you on Monday. Peace. 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 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 packs, vitamin D3 plus K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer. RingCentral's AI receptionist uses Voice AI to answer on the first ring so you'll never miss a call again. In just a few minutes, you can personalize your own AI receptionist to answer questions, route calls, schedule appointments, and even

[Drew]

send texts in multiple languages.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Plus, it's easy to scale Create unlimited

[Drew]

AI receptionists across any phone system. It's all powered by one reliable platform for effortless AI communication. See for [e-mail].

[Tom Bilyeu]

ringCentral Voice of your Business.