← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
The Future of War and The Scientific Breakthrough That Changes Everything! | The Tom Bilyeu Show
01:08:32
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- [00:00]
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Tom
With the American Express Platinum card, I can unlock experiences like no other since I'm always booking my next trip. I love that I can earn points on travel. Plus I get a resi benefit so you know I'm hitting the restaurants everyone's talking about. And you can find out your welcome offer after you apply, which could be as high as 175,000 points for experiences like no other. There's nothing like platinum. Learn more@americanexpress.com Explore Platinum supply AI to cure all diseases in the next 10 years One expert would have you believe it. A breakthrough in biology reveals a novel protein that could make long space travel possible. But Elon's latest starship launch ended in a fiery rain of debris. Trump threatens Russia with sanctions over Ukraine, but the EU comes together promising 800 billion to 1 trillion USD in aid to Ukraine, marking Europe as a potential global superpower on the rise. Bitcoin's strategic reserve is now real. A rogues gallery of guests worked the podcast circuit this week with SBF on Tucker, Ian Carroll on Rogan and Tate on pbd. People freaked out but still tuned in. And as Hollywood faces an AI apocalypse, one writer tries to wake the industry up. The world is still driving in the fast lane, Drew. Tell me about it. What do you see?
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Co-host
I'm just glad we're going to be able to travel in space now because this anti radiation treatment is going to be big but big breakthrough in AI news. And I like that we're taking the scientific approach to it because we're so used to AI breakthrough new robot AI breakthrough new LLM. But no, it's like this is what AI is really going to be used for. So starting with it. Google just released Google Scientists. It's still in like early beta. It's not fully available to the public yet, but we had a tweet from Dr. Unatamaz just like that. The mind blowing AI model that led me to the claim below was a demo of Google AI Co Science. It's still a work in progress and I hope to test in a few weeks, but its potential is already crystal clear and I believe it to be a truly game changer for scientific progress. And what he claimed two days ago was after what I've seen today related to an AI model, that I can't talk about it yet. I can confidently claim that the scientific process will never be the same again. I am now 99% certain that all diseases, including cancer, will be cured within a decade. Exponential advance in AI is real.
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Tom
This to me is extremely thrilling. To your point, this is a lot like mindset. You develop a mindset so that you can point it at the most difficult problems in your life. You develop AI so that you can point it at the most difficult problems that we are trying to solve in humanity. So so much has been made of, you know, do they end up replacing all the humans? Do they become this threat that we have to worry about? And the reality is, the reason that it's worth pursuing despite that there is some level of risk that those things do happen, is that it really is going to allow us to have the kind of innovations that we would otherwise never be able to see. Human biology is so wildly complicated. Like if you've ever seen the Krebs cycle broken down and that's just what happens in one cell to generate energy, it is insane. It is insanely complicated. And when you see the full thing mapped out, you really begin to understand why biology has stymied us for so long and why it's so hard to just to understand like basic facts about what you eat and what the impact is of what you eat. AI, however, can look at a set of data and see things that we don't see. Its ability to pattern recognition over millions, billions, trillions of parameters is absolutely insane. Like, there's one thing, we never talked about this because just not enough information is out yet. But a really fascinating thing is AI can look at, at a human eye completely isolated, like just the iris of the eye. It can tell you if they're male or female, but we don't know how, so we don't know what it's picking up on. But forever has been this thing hiding in plain sight that reveals the gender of something. And we just didn't know. But AI was like, oh, by the way, I can tell you that that's male or female. These are the kinds of things, and far deeper, far more profoundly important, the kinds of things that AI will be able to pattern recognize its way to solutions. So first of all, there's a concept in biology that people should familia familiarize themselves with, which is n of 1. So when you talk about something being at n of 1, you're saying that there's only one of the things like this. So when you're talking about diet, everything is going to be n of 1. So it's actually more important for you to test on your own body how you respond to, like, if I eat a bowl of blackberries, I get a very noticeable spike in my glucose. But there's another person here, when they eat a bowl of blackberries, it almost doesn't register. And I'm like, how is that possible? So n of 1, it has to do with your genetic ability to deal with or not deal with, as may be the case with the glucose in that. And so it's not working its way into the bloodstream. It could be, in their case, being rapidly stored as fat. Or their insulin just may be really efficient at getting it out of the bloodstream. So even before it can accumulate, it's just being pushed into the cells. So. And not to mention microbiome and how much of the glucose is actually able to pull out of the BlackBerry in this example. So who knows what's actually going on? But that's n of 1. This is why you can't just go, well, so and so fitness influencer tells me to do this, and therefore it's gonna work. Like, I have a massive inflammatory response to sugar. So people that are like, well, if it fits your macros, bro, I can stay lean as hell. But if I eat even like a bunch of strawberries, I can feel it in my hands. Strawberries, man. I'm talking like three or four strawberries. I will notice the next day in how my hand feels. So n of 1. N of 1. N of 1. And do not listen to people that tell you that that isn't true. That is for sure true. And AI is going to be able to do things in cancer like saying, hey, with your genetic makeup, with the very specific makeup of your cancer and the way that your body is responding to certain treatments, this is exactly what you should do. And I remember Steve Jobs, when he passed away, he said, I'm either going to be one of the last people to die of cancer or one of the first people to survive from these. He didn't call it n of 1, but from these n of 1 tailored treatments that are very specific to me, my type of cancer, the way that my body's responding. And unfortunately, that was many years ago and we have not seen the rate of progress that we would want to see. But what our man is replying to is that now with AI, that was the missing piece to be able to read just so much more information about all the very complex ways that things respond broken down to the N of one individual.
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Co-host
Yeah. And I think the rise of quantum computing is going to help that as well, because it's the maze illustration is what really kind of locked it in for me. Where classic computing, human thought has been, let me go through this maze. Oop. I hit a wall. Let me go back, go through over here and hit a wall. Whereas with quantum computing, there's six different legs going out and trying every possibility all at once.
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Tom
Or 10 million. Yeah, it's crazy.
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Co-host
Or the trillion, a quadrillion qubits. Like, the number is just endless scaling. So I think going through the iteration process, the scientific method is going to be done instantaneously versus now. It takes six weeks to get to a trial and then come back and try it again. So, yeah.
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Tom
Callback to our most recent episode. Drew isn't just throwing crazy numbers around. Uh, there was a recent breakthrough out of China that showed that when this thing is carried out into a computer. And it's very important to point out with quantum computing, we are not there yet. But they're having these breakthroughs, and their breakthrough showed that when stabilized and actually able to put into a computer, it would be a quadrillion times faster. Crazy Than the current supercomputers. Also, following on what you're saying, the method by which computers do the run the maze is a great way to think about it. It's very different. You wouldn't use quantum computing for the same things that you would use a traditional computer for. It's very important to understand. But whenever there's, like, branching possibilities and biology being a great example of something where it's like, okay, there are so many complex paths that these things are going to go down to be able to run a lot of different scenarios. Okay, what if this, what if that, what if this? You start getting into things like protein folding, where now you can guess at all the different ways that a protein could fold and then all the different. Because people talk about these as being lock and key, all the different lock formations and all the different key formations that it could go into, and you can run all of that simultaneously. And that's the big promise of where we go with quantum computing. Again, most people are saying this is probably still 10 years out, but you need the breakthroughs that we're starting to see are actually happening.
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Co-host
Yeah. And then there's actually some biological breakthroughs happening in the real world. So couple those up and we're on the. Onto the running off to the running a protein from teregrades can now protect human cells from radiation. So terror grades is like a slug type formation. The creature, we just threw it up on the screen.
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Tom
So how much do you know about these things?
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Co-host
Zero percent.
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Tom
Okay, so the thing that got people excited about these from a radiation perspective is you can, they can survive being on the hull of a ship, go out into space, do whatever it's going to the vacuum of space and come back and they're still fine. And so people were like what? So that I think I don't have the proof of that, but given that that was already on my radar, I have a feeling they specifically sought this out because of the fact that it's proven that it can exist with no protection from radiation whatsoever and still live. Not to mention that obscenely low temperatures. Yeah, pretty fascinating.
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Co-host
They survive by expressing a unique protein damage suppressor D sub that binds to the DNA and it physically shields it from radiation induced breaks. So now they want to pair that D sub to human cells using MRNA encapsulated in nanoparticles.
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Tom
That is the bad news.
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Co-host
It's a buzz. Yeah, it's a buzzword. But biologically it's sound. So with that being said, it would then kind of shield us from cancer treatment. Radiation, it can, like you said, space travel is also on the timeline. So there's a lot of other things. Once we can have our cells not be impacted by radiation that we can do different power sources, different things that humans can then be placed in. And I can.
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Tom
Will you alter your DNA like when that comes online, would you be like yeah, tardigrade me up.
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Co-host
Yeah. If I need, if I have a need for. Yeah, I don't know if I'm about
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Tom
to get on that spaceship and head to Mars. Yes. Otherwise probably not.
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Co-host
My mom is a nurse and she's, she's the most anti medicine person I ever know. But she works in the health field. She always says like there's no easy surgery, there's no simple surgery, there's no non invas. Like every time you're getting cut open you're exposing yourself. So save it for when you really really need it. So ever since then that was me, I was like if I'm about to die and this is going to save me, I'm not going to be like no, pray for me. But at the same time I'm not going to just volunteer like oh there's mechanical arms. Let me go arm wrestle real good now. Like it's just not.
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Tom
Yeah, it's interesting. So I was, I Went to Michael Malice shout out to Michael for having me on a show recently. Don't know when it airs, but it was a lot of fun and, and he took me out to dinner with him and some of his friends and a bunch of them have gone to a service to have their DNA altered, which I'm almost certain Michael has talked openly about. If he hasn't, I'll be sure to edit this out. But I was like, okay, I don't know if I will do it, but I won't be an early adopter. So I'm going to need to see a lot of people go through these systems to see if there are any unintended consequences because woo buddy. Altering my DNA certainly makes me very slow to activate that one because there is no free lunch man. There's no free lunch. So we'll have to see how this stuff plays out. But it is very exciting. I this is a technology that I really want to see mature. Between crisper being able to actually go in and edit the words essentially in your DNA so that you can make specific changes and again AI being able to handle the complexity of what are all the knock on effects that that thing could have by making that edit and then things like MRNA technology being able to go and inject itself into a cell. It is thrilling. I mean this is really exciting, but there's gonna need to be some safety testing. I think we learned our lesson from COVID You don't wanna do these things without the safety testing, but this, this kind of thing gets me absolutely thrilled and so I would be very sad to see people throw that baby out with the bathwater. Think of it as a technology. We didn't necessarily use it in the right way during COVID Maybe just a little too fast, not looking at the safety implications, but as a technology, the ability to actually go in and edit ourselves is going to be incredible. Now there's a lot of ethical implications, but it's something that has me peak excitement.
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Co-host
Yeah, we shall see. SpaceX did a launch yesterday and unfortunately didn't go as Elon Musk planned. This was a video of debris circling over the Bahamas and Kyle Kalinsky had a spicy take. The complete fraud. Elon Musk had another massive failure and he demands control of air traffic control for the entire country. This idiot should be in prison. He should return the 38 billion he stole from US taxpayers. I'm just going to put asterisk this tweet is giving Trump vibes and I just wanted to say that's hilarious to me.
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Tom
That's interesting. So remember, you go far enough in either direction and you just wrap back around on each other to the same people. Hey, so here's why I hate everything about that tweet. So the reality is that you have a guy that has successfully surpassed the US government in its ability to send things into space. 95% of all the tonnage of things launched into space, and I don't mean by America, I mean globally, 95% of the tonnage is done by one company, SpaceX. So they have actually figured out how to safely do things in space. We right now have astronauts stuck at the International Space Station because no, Boeing made a space shuttle that everyone just agreed it's not safe enough. We. We cannot send that back up there to get them. And so Elon is going to be the one that goes and gets them. And so in the face of all that success, like, even when you hate somebody, and we're going to. I won't parallel that even if you hate somebody, we'll leave it at that. That doesn't mean that they aren't good at something. It doesn't mean that they don't have great ideas. It doesn't mean that we can't all benefit from that. So I'd like to quote Bruce Lee, you take what works, you discard the rest. So if you hate Elon's politics, fine. But trying to make out like the starship exploding is somehow bad or catastrophic. The reality is this is the physics of progress at work. So you build starship to the best of your abilities because it's an advancement over the things that he can do reliably. And you try and you see where you fail so that you can get smarter, so that you can build it a little bit better. So when they launched this starship, they knew that there was some relatively high percentage chance that it would experience a rapid, unplanned disassembly, I think is how they refer to it. And so this is a part of that. And so when I see somebody rail against this, these are the people that make kids terrified to fail. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.
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Tom
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place. From H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. All right, we're back. Let's get into it. Failure is the most information rich data stream on planet Earth. The way that you get better at something is by doing it, by engaging with it and realize, oh, that way didn't work. But it didn't work for this exact reason. I need to make an edit and then try again. And so when we clown on somebody because we don't like their politics or whatever and say, oh, this is just a moron, he doesn't know what he's doing. It's like, what are you talking about? Nobody in human history, as far as I know. Even if you aggregate everything that came before, like the amount that he's sending up now just it certainly is at a pace that dwarfs everything else. He may have even this is admittedly a guess, but he may have even already outstripped everything that we've put up previously. I mean his satellites are visible from Earth, man. Like you can watch them go by. People report them as alien craft all the time. That's how many of these things, these massive clusters Starlink has put up using SpaceX it is, which by the way are both his companies. So it's just absolutely insane and is a non functional way of viewing the world. It gets clicks and so if you want to like clap for Kyle as somebody who's very good at generating outrage and getting people to comment on his Stuff. Hey, hey. Well played, my man. But if you're trying to figure out how to think through the world in a way that has high predictive validity, he's not your man.
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Co-host
Definitely not your man. You know what else? That's not my dog. Um, economic.
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Tom
My dog.
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Co-host
This is crazy technology. Like we've seen this already. Black Mirror already released this. We already know how this ends. I just like, we keep setting ourselves up with these robots and I keep telling you, like we going to find out. But yes, robot dogs with missiles is now a thing. We were already worried about the robot dogs with machine guns. Now these. He got a four missile pack, like
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Tom
surface to air man, that looks like
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Co-host
a one of like war machines, like wrist gauntlet type.
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Tom
Yes. Like, it's crazy, dude. This is the future of warfare. Extremely nimble, AI enabled. Weapons armed hot and ready. This for many people, this is the nightmare. And I think it sounds like you may include yourself in that. Yep, for me, this is exactly what you need to do. You are in a dangerous world where people are going to be doing this on the other side. And if you are not able to defend yourself from this, you're in trouble. The days of gigantic stationary weaponry is over. You. This is such a huge advancement. And I was listening to Karp, I forget his first name, but he said that it is very easy to make a moral argument for there are times where you have to kill the other side. And that is just true, man. And you certainly, at an absolute minimum, have to have the ability to defend yourself against somebody that's trying to kill you. And so this kind of thing for me, even though I share with you the tragedy of the human condition, which is that we fight and kill each other, but knowing that I live in that world, I am going to protect myself. And so seeing the advancements that we're making is really incredible because America after World War II got to tell itself a really incredible story about our manufacturing might and how there's the famous line from the Japanese general Admiral, I forget exactly what his rank was, but he said, I fear that we have awoken a sleeping giant by bombing Pearl Harbor. And he was right. And we just out manufactured everybody and we're not that America anymore. And so when I see somebody like Palmer Lucky, and I think this is actually Chinese, by the way, what we're looking at here. So this is technically what you have to defend against. But when I see somebody like Palmer Lucky, who gets it, like this is where we are, I want everybody to wake up to the truth of the world they live in, the truth of where, excuse me, where weapons are going and make sure that we are prepared to handle it.
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Co-host
I'm increasingly hoping for the alien invasion just because I feel like. Am like we need to partner with our humans and figure out shared camaraderie again and love each other again.
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Tom
It's never going to happen even again. Define again.
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Co-host
After we all killed the Nazis and everybody agreed that there was one good guy and one bad guy and everybody shook hands.
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Tom
That's not true. The bad guy thought he was a good guy. This is why the Berlin Wall stayed up for as long as it did. I mean it's. You want a flashback and P. S? This is all happening. Mao's China rises up not long after World War II and fucking starves his people to death, dude. 40 to 45 million people die just in the famine. Man made, by the way. So yeah, we people often think because the west had protracted peace and only a cold war, which was bad enough, but certainly better than a hot war. But Stalin was killing people as fast as he could. Mao was killing people faster than anyone would ever think possible. And so America had it great, Europe got rebuilt, had it great. Japan got rebuilt, had it great. But yo, there was more death in the 20th century, post World War II, than like I think in a pure numbers, not as a percentage, but as a pure numbers perspective, I think than any other time in history. That's why when people look at the 20th century and they're like, oh my God, this was amazing. It's like, bro, this is why people like me are freaking out when they hear people embracing socialism, communism. Read about Mao, it is crazy town. It's crazy. It does not go anywhere good. So the idea of do I wish that humans ran a different algorithm in their brain and that they felt a deep and profound sense of unity. Yes, that would be amazing. But we don't run that algorithm. I mean that's. That is an algorithm, but always running next to the US Algorithm is other algorithm. And so yeah, the whole. The reason that an alien invasion works is you focus all my desire to kill and conquest on an alien. But we're still doing the same thing to them.
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Co-host
Oh yeah, I don't know those aliens.
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Tom
Welcome to what us versus them looks like, boys and girls.
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Co-host
Well, Donald Trump is doing his. His best to keep the peace. That was facetious.
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Tom
That was not a sentence I expected
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Co-host
based on the fact that Russia is absolutely pounding Ukraine on the battlefield right now. I am strongly considering large scale banking sanctions, sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached to Russia and Ukraine. Get to the table right now before it's too late. Thank you.
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Tom
I love the thank you at the end with three exclamation points.
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Co-host
Yeah, your keyboard is running out of gas right now, bro. Like, you just, you, eventually somebody's gonna call his bluff. He gonna have to kill somebody. And I hate that I'm saying it like that. But you tweeting stuff to Hamas, you tweeting stuff to Russia, like it's not getting those results. I feel like.
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Tom
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we were talking about this in the last one. This one doesn't ring that way to me. This one feels like the kind of, this is not the kind of rhetoric that I want to see. But for Trump, this. Okay, at least now we're talking about economic warfare versus the actual escalation of hot warfare. So this one does feel to me like we're negotiating out in public. So Trump is saying the things in public that he needs to say to make sure that Putin knows that, hey, if you are not, if you are going to become the problem, I just had to do all this bullshit with Zelensky to try to get him to be prepared to make concessions. If you're not willing to make concessions, then I'm going to unleash the double barrel of the economic sanctions. Now, the problem is you have slow stepped sanctions. You being the US Government, not only Trump, but we as the US Government has slow stepped the sanctions on Russia to the point where they've been able to harden themselves against it, to find ways around it. So there's no doubt that we put some hardship on them. And there are experts that believe that their economy only has, call it a year or two years left before they're really going to be in dire straits. They that they cannot afford to keep this war going. I don't know that that's true, but that's certainly being talked about in serious circles. We'll see. So it's possible that another round, if he's really going to be aggressive, could. But here's what I think would have to be true for these sanctions to be useful. He would have to sanction the purchase of oil and natural gas from Russia, period, full stop. Because the reasons that these sanctions have been so weakened. And by the way, we did an interview with Edward Fishman, who was a former lead at the State Department, actually engaged specifically with Russia.
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Co-host
He was sanctioned by Russia himself.
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Tom
He literally was sanctioned by Russia, you are correct, and had him on the show talking about, are the tariffs going to work? Are sanctions going to work? And he was saying, like, if you do it, you have to go all the way. And if you don't, then you can put them in a position much like he likened it to antibiotics. If you use an antibiotic but stop before you kill it all the way dead, then the ones that are alive are the ones that are resistant to the antibiotic. And so what we have right now is a Russia that became immune to the antibiotics of the sanctions because the thing that drives their economy is oil and natural gas. And because Europe was like, oh, God, we can't stop buying this stuff from them because it would spike our energy costs too much. You would have to find a way either. And if I had to guess, this is what Trump is thinking, between the US And Canada, you're going to be able to, if you end the green policies, you're going to be able to create enough oil and natural gas between just what we can do and then supply that to Europe, be great for America, be good for Europe to be able to wean themselves off of Russia. And if you can get them to start doing less green policies, what I'll call more sensible policies, because I certainly get the impulse to want to go green, but it's just not there yet. From an economic standpoint, stop weakening yourself by having, having to subsidize people's energy bills. Just start leaning into nuclear, start leaning into, if they have, I don't know enough about Europe's ability to get oil and natural gas natively, but certainly us being able to export them, leaning into reverting to their policies before that, certainly leaning into nuclear. Okay, so if that, if you do that, and then you sanction the life out of Europe and tell any country that wants to buy oil and natural gas from Russia that we're an going to sanction you. So if you're Germany and you're buying oil and natural gas from Russia, when you could be buying it from us or Canada, that we're going to sanction the life out of you if you did that. I'm not saying we should, but I'm saying if we did, then that could conceivably damage Russia's economy so horrifically that they would be forced to come to the table. Now, to your point about Trump has, to your words, shoot somebody, kill somebody, whatever the exact phrase was, it doesn't necessarily, and this was one of the things that Edward Fishman goes into, is if you do economic sanctions or economic warfare well enough you can topple a government without firing a single shot, so it is possible that this one would actually work. So while it's, you know, more big talk from Trump, if what I laid out is actually what he has in mind, it could work. So we'll see. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.
- [29:38]
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Tom
All right, we're back. Let's get into it.
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Co-host
EU on the other hand, is beefing up their defense spending, committing to 800 billion to US$1 trillion. Those are us as dollar sums in defense spending to make a new global superpower. I want to say a European joint.
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EU Official
And this is why, and this is
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Co-host
the EU President committing to right now
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EU Official
the national escape clause of the stability and Growth Pact. This would allow member states to significantly increase their defence expenditures without triggering the excessive deficit procedure. So if Member states would increase the defense spending by 1.5% of GDP on average, this could create fiscal space of close to 650 billion euros over a period of four years. The second proposal will be a new instrument. It will provide 150 billion euros of loans to member states for defence investment. This is about basically spending better and spending together. And we're talking about pan European capabilities, domains like for example, air and missile defense, the artillery systems, missiles and ammunition drones and anti drone systems, but also to address other needs, from cyber to military mobility, for example. This will help member states to pool demand and to buy together. And of course, with this equipment, member states can massively step up their support to Ukraine. So immediate military equipment for Ukraine.
- [32:06]
Tom
Okay, this, this makes A lot of sense. To me, it is, it is a fascinating consequence of the way that Trump has been behaving on the world stage, that what you're seeing is Europe come together in a way that quite frankly they ought to be. Now I would love to see Europe coming together in, in a way, in a way that aligns with America. I don't love that this is being born out of them feeling like Trump is fickle, but at least they are coming together. They obviously there is a very compelling argument to be made. Jeffrey Sachs would hate it, but there's a very compelling argument to be made. Europe needs to worry much about a territorially aggressive Russia that they will be pushing into traditionally Soviet era areas and trying to reunify them. Everybody's got their eyes on Poland. I think that the right way to look at that is, look, if they've struggled this hard with getting into Ukraine, the odds of them being able to steamroll Poland are very low. But at some point you have to draw the line in the sand. And it seems like that's what Europe is leaning towards, that the line in the sand is Ukraine. And if America's backing out, then forget it. We're going to engage, we're going to come together, we're going to offer this funding in order to make sure that the Ukrainians can continue this fight. Because we absolutely cannot concede to somebody that's trying to push their will, violating the world order that you were referring to earlier as this peacetime where we just in the west said you don't get to do territorial acquisitions just because you're stronger, that all of us are going to push back on you. Now that I would love to see. I would love to see people saying, yeah, we don't do the violent overthrowing of a nation just because we can. That is definitely a world that I want to continue to live in where people do not do that. But it does become a question of at what price. And you get into the realities have to be faced. And this is a debate that really needs to rage on and should not be shut down. From a First Amendment standpoint, you need the debate of who's right about why Russia invaded Ukraine, is he imperialist and he has territory acquisition dreams that are just part of this national identity and this belief that we're stronger and we need to reunify the former ussr or was this entirely based on provocations of the west constantly moving NATO closer and closer to their borders? Because remember, NATO was put together to keep Russia in check. And so Russia's like, hey, remember the Cuban Missile crisis? That was you guys having a beef with Russia bringing nuclear capabilities to your doorstep. You didn't like that. So much so that we only narrowly avoided nuclear war. But I'm supposed to just sit here as you keep making more and more countries closer and closer to my borders. Members of NATO, like if, if Ukraine became part of NATO, we literally have a border now with a NATO country. We're not going to stand for that. There has to be some sort of buffer zone. That debate needs to rage. I'm not saying I know the answer. I'm just saying that debate needs to rage. Like we need to let people pull out as much information as possible, come up with as many testable hypotheses as possible so we can really begin to zoom in on what this is. But no matter what it is, Europe being able to protect itself, Europe allocating their own dollars to being able to protect themselves, Europe just being together in locks and step is going to be by far the greatest way for Russia to have whatever tendencies they have kept in check. Now it does bring questions back to are we now going into a tripolar world where you've got the US with its sphere of influence, you've got China with its sphere of influence, and now is Europe going to be forced into playing the hand of, I guess we now have our sphere of influence. It might, it might. And I don't have a strong take yet on whether that's a good or a bad thing. But I do know that the US Playing World cup did not have only positive consequences. So it might don't feel strongly yet. It might be better.
- [36:19]
Co-host
I would just love for them to clean up their own backyard and leave us out of it. So I'm glad that they're taking steps to do that. It's cool to make a budget though, and it's cool to form coalitions. But everybody thinks they're going to win until they're actually in the war and push come to shove, if we still have to go and then bail them out, then they just spent a whole bunch of money for us to do the same thing that we could have done from day one. So we'll see how it plays out. But it's an interesting worst case scenario there as well.
- [36:43]
Tom
Why do you say worst case scenario?
- [36:45]
Co-host
Because they're spending all this money and then if it turns out to be moot and not enough and they don't have the capabilities for war.
- [36:52]
Tom
Well, I. It.
- [36:53]
Co-host
Just because you spend a lot of money doesn't mean you're like going to
- [36:56]
Tom
win awards, meaning that they might still lose. Yeah, for sure. But if you throw a trillion dollars, even mildly, intelligently, that's another trillion dollars that Russia has to fight through. So you will, at a minimum, weaken them from a manpower standpoint, you will weaken them from an economic standpoint. And if you get the one, two punch of Europe comes together, spends a trillion dollars helping Ukraine fight, and the US Looks at that, goes, hell no, and puts all these crazy sanctions on Russia. And remember, many of those sanctions will look like us punishing European nations and other countries for buying their natural gas and oil. If you do all of that together, then you, if you meaningfully disrupt Russia's sales of oil and natural gas, they're, they're really in trouble. Like, really, really in trouble. So I don't think they would be able to survive that war. I think that really would, if America is prepared to make good on that, I think that would bring a pretty hasty end to the war.
- [38:02]
Co-host
Copy. And in other political news, President Trump officially signed the executive order to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. David Sack put out this tweet as his announcement. Just a few minutes ago, President Trump signed an executive order to establish a bitcoin strategic reserve. The reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as a part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. This means it will not cost taxpayers a dime. I know you're excited about that part.
- [38:28]
Tom
Yeah, buddy.
- [38:28]
Co-host
It is estimated that the US government owns about 200,000 Bitcoin. However, there has never been a complete audit. The EO directs a full accounting of the federal government's digital asset holdings. The US Will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the reserve. It will be kept as a store of value. The reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called digital digital gold. Premature sales of bitcoin have already caused taxpayers over 17 billion in lost value. Now the federal government will have a strategy to maximize the value of its holdings. To get to that 17, he. He brought up an example of how we, we sold off around 1330, 300 million of Bitcoin that we forfeited from civil and criminal proceedings. And if we would have held onto that, it would have bloomed up to $17 billion. Wow. Your thoughts on the strategic bitcoin reserve?
- [39:15]
Tom
Yeah, I mean, look, I. Because we didn't spend money to buy it, we just already have it and now we're just saying we're not going to foolishly sell it. That I like. Obviously, as a holder of bitcoin, I love it because it just further shows the credibility that this asset has been able to build up. I think you would be very hard pressed when the most successful government, the largest economy for the most part,
- [39:43]
Guest
has
- [39:43]
Tom
backed it and said, okay, this is a real store of value and we see enough upside future potential that we think it is an absolute mistake to sell this stuff off. That sends a very clear signal to if nobody else, to a kid right now that's 12 years old and they just live in a world where, oh, I just hear in the background this thing matters. I see it as a ticker on, you know, when my parents are watching the news. So it's just growing up in a world where we now have a strategic reserve of bitcoin, we now have bitcoin tickers that pay a attention to the price. It will become a part of what news shows talk about. So it will just be the thing. It will be the water that kids grow up in. And so given my whole thesis about bitcoin is that tomorrow will be more digital than today, and therefore that is going to continue to increase in value. This is a pretty big moment for that. And there's a reason why people have wanted it now, the reason I don't want the government necessarily spending money on it. I leave myself a bit of an out because there are certainly scenarios that I could paint where I'd be like, even though I think this is gambling, it's a reasonable way to gamble. But that would take a very specific set of things to be true. But for the most part, I don't want to see the government spending money to buy assets. I want to see them leveraging assets that we already have. So whether that's oil and natural gas, whether that's timber, whether that's bitcoin that we've already seized, things like that, Yay. But yeah, going out and acquiring assets is where I get a little bit less sure. If we can get shares from TikTok by getting the deal done, that one really lands smack dab in that gray area for me where I'm like, do I want the government getting involved in that and negotiating like that? I don't know. I don't know is the honest answer.
- [41:24]
Co-host
Only time will tell. Now hitting a podcast circuit. Sam Banker Fried was on with Tucker Carlson, and this moment kind of stood out to you. I'm gonna play the clip and then we'll talk about it.
- [41:34]
Guest
So you were famously identified with a worldview and ideology, maybe even a religion called effective altruism. And the idea was that, as I understand it, that, you know, do the greatest good for the greatest number. You make money in order to help the maximum number of people. And some have pointed out the irony that in the collapse of your company, like, a million people lost their money. So there were a lot of individuals hurt in an effort that you described as like, the greatest good for the greatest number. And I wonder if all of this has made you rethink the precepts of effective altruism. It hasn't made me rethink the precepts. Obviously, I feel terrible about what happened. It's not at all what I knew and what everyone's intentions are. I. You know, if you screw up, then the results might be different.
- [42:08]
Tom
Pause it for a second. Okay, so judge things by the fruit that they bear. That. That sums up my whole thing about. If you want to know whether you did something right or wrong, you need only look at assuming you have an honorable goal. Okay, you have an honorable goal. Did the things you do get you to that honorable goal? Yes or no? If yes, great. You did the right thing. If no, then you did not do the right thing. This obviously does not work if your goal is fundamentally grotesque. But so assuming that you have an honorable goal. So if effective altruism in reality does not bear the fruit that it should on paper, like communism, like socialism, then you've got to say, this just doesn't fucking work. Now, this situation is very complicated. Drugs were involved, hubris was involved, yada, yada. But that's the reality of the human condition. And so expecting people to make honorable decisions when they only think the final outcome matters, forgetting that they can't control the final outcome, you. You get problems. And so to me, this is a. What I hear him saying is, well, but on paper, it's still awesome. There are a lot of things that on paper are awesome, but all of us, myself very much included, have got to look at. Well, but in practice, is it awesome? And this, needless to say, was not awesome in practice.
- [43:40]
Co-host
All right, now let's keep up this Destiny clip. My man Eric. We're about to play it soon. So for context, yesterday on Destiny Stream, he reacted to his interview with Tom. You guys covered terrorists, inflation. And this was right around the election. So this is when Trump and Harris were neck to neck and we didn't know who was going to win. So just for context, how.
- [43:56]
Tom
And I have legitimately not seen.
- [43:58]
Co-host
So this is a live Reaction of Tom being reacted to live.
- [44:02]
Guest
Even when I bang on a table and say, I know this and I understand this and everybody should listen. People should merely take it as a data point that allows them to build a more cohesive worldview.
- [44:08]
Tom
Let's play it at 1x, please.
- [44:09]
Co-host
No, Destiny played it.
- [44:10]
Tom
Oh, he's playing. Yeah, that's hilarious. Got it.
- [44:13]
Guest
Don't have all the right answers. I don't want you to be. Everybody needs to think for themselves. No one's coming to save us. We want to map the world as it actually is. Okay. Only thing to talk about.
- [44:20]
Co-host
What is this?
- [44:20]
Tom
Okay, this is him clicking around inflation.
- [44:22]
Guest
The second you print money, you are fucking terrorists. Can do me. So the thing on terrorists is that most of his posturing, that he's going to do it selectively, and if he doesn't and he really doesn't cross everything, he's a fucking moron. But he did tariffs reasonably well. The only thing, though, right, just increase the cost of goods in the United States. We can actually bring anytime where you want to do that. So take the chips, for instance. If we're really trying to onshore things, or take things that are weapons manufacturing, anything that's in that chain, even if it's slightly more expensive for us to do it domestically, we need to do it. Because I think, again, I think nobody. I do not want to be a dictator very much because I think I'm very fallible, but it is. Odds are that we're moving towards conflict with China. The last thing I want are my artillery shells or bullets or whatever to be hamstrung by their ability to produce that. I think that's fair. And I think that there are national security arguments you can use for tariffs. Trump very rarely makes these. He usually makes a common spar, but the one you're talking about, they would say, you'd say, we'll probably pay a little bit more for this, but it's probably worth it. Financial security applications. And I can agree with some of that for sure.
- [44:59]
Tom
I agree.
- [45:01]
Guest
We're saying that Kamala suggesting that taxonomy realized terrorism, which I'll bet you hear now we have, you know, 5,000, $10,000 will never happen because it's such a stupid policy. All forms of wealth tax, financial transaction tax, unrealized gain. Taxes are untenable for a billion different reasons. Okay,
- [45:14]
Tom
so I again, I have not. I don't remember the rest of the conversation that we had, but that's going to go something like. Well, when she puts forward absurd policy, it's Just never going to happen. When Trump puts forward absurd policy. Well, you have to actually take that seriously. So remember, this was recorded. I had no idea what Trump was actually going to do with his tariffs. Tariffs. And I kept saying in the interview, if he doesn't across the board tariff, that's dumb. So anyway, keep playing. Okay.
- [45:41]
Guest
Even if she might have flirted with me, I don't know how she's like right now. But so we're saying that she will do that. We're generally concerned about that. But we're not generally concerned about Trump doing the only economic policy that he's given that he's basically running on that he's shown indications of it has done
- [45:49]
Tom
a little bit in the past because
- [45:51]
Guest
one, I've seen what four years under Trump looks like. It was bad for everything that you care about. It was horrible. He spent like, crazy printed money. Like, crazy.
- [45:56]
Tom
Oh, he did on that. They're both.
- [45:58]
Guest
I don't understand how people are so resistant. They'll say the things. It's not just this guy, by the way, because it was the guy that I talked to last time and the guy before Richard and the.
- [46:06]
Co-host
The.
- [46:07]
Guest
The law TikTok guy where they'll say, like, I care about this thing. It's like, okay, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. You said that you care about this thing, right? It's. The guy is like, my favorite person in all of human history is O.J. simpson. Okay, hold on. Let's go back. What are the things you care the most about again? I hate people that play sports, and I value the lives of white women more than anything else in the world. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
- [46:32]
Co-host
Hold on.
- [46:34]
Guest
And I'm racist. Wait, hold on.
- [46:35]
Tom
Wait, wait.
- [46:36]
Guest
Okay, Well, I feel like. Isn't. Okay. Wasn't he, like, a football player, though?
- [46:40]
Tom
Okay, maybe. Oh, okay.
- [46:42]
Guest
What about, like, the whole, like, murder thing?
- [46:44]
Tom
Sure. Okay.
- [46:45]
Guest
Maybe past performance is not an indicator of future behavior. Okay. And then also, isn't he black? It's like, that means a lot of things. It's like, okay, wait, so. And then the comparison is like, like to, like, Bill Gates or some, like, white nerd on athletic. I was like, okay, make this make sense for me.
- [47:02]
Tom
Here is you have two opposing worldviews. So he is looking at me as somebody who is on a team and that I'm saying, Trump can do no wrong. And when. If you. Because he said, like, this is your favorite person in the world. World, obviously. Just making an example. Trump is not my favorite person in the world. I Was sad that Trump was the only option that I considered reasonable. He was not the person that I want. I did not want to be choosing between Kamala Harris and Trump. Also with the why was I quote unquote giving Trump a pass on the money printing? I'm not. And so I've got two government, both of whom money print like fucking crazy. So those just cancel each other out. So the money printing, I'm not going to be like, yeah, you got to disqualify Trump on money printing so that I go to the other money printer. I'm saying if I had a choice between one government that was like, dude, we understand we are driving towards a fiscal cliff. We have got to back off from that. This government will never money print. There is no way we are focused on innovation. I'd be like, fuck, yes. Like, I want to go to that team. But they both print like psychopaths. So it's just that those two cancel each other out. So if you want to, like, if I'm having to go back to his example, if I'm having to choose between two people that murdered people, I'm like, fuck. It's like, okay, well, I'm not going to be able to make the decision based on that.
- [48:32]
Co-host
To Destiny's point, he did say that across the board terrorists were bad. And you were like, yeah, if he does a cross border terrorist, that'll be like fucking crazy. And Trump is doing across the board tariffs right now.
- [48:44]
Tom
Right? So do you hear me going, oh my God, these are amazing. I'm so glad he's doing across the board tariffs.
- [48:51]
Co-host
Yes.
- [48:52]
Tom
Wait, what do you mean yes? No, no, no.
- [48:53]
Co-host
You hear me saying that, ok, I heard that. You're not saying, yes, tariffs are great. I love tariffs. Let's do more tariffs.
- [49:00]
Tom
I said literally, if he does across the board tariffs, that would be fucking stupid. And do you hear me championing them now or do you hear me being very consistent with that? Because my hypothesis remains that you're going to put yourself in a position where you are now playing chicken. Now, admittedly, I don't know how it will play out. And the more I look into tariffs, the more I'm like, okay, it has one outcome, which is it will onshore manufacturing, which we need to do, but it will also piss off your trade partners. And if you're doing them, as far as I can tell, as I think Trump is driven largely by two things, the desire to onshore. He is right about that. It is. The more I research about that and more I'm like, holy fuck, we have got to onshore some of our manufacturing. And then the other is this like super weird, petty, like, it's gotta be fair. It's gotta be fair. Now, I haven't looked at it enough to know if we should be worried about like one for one. We probably shouldn't. So it's like that one is, yeah, it's probably a bad idea. And the way that he's doing it is putting us in this super weird fucking position where now we are racing towards catastrophe in terms of if he is not able to onshore enough jobs fast enough, enough, if he is not able to get other countries and companies to invest in America large enough, fast enough, it will have been an unmitigated disaster. But what I don't understand is how people think that I'm thinking through the problem in any way other than I know where I'm trying to end up. I need to be in a strong position to protect myself from a hot war with China, which people may want to pretend is not a possibility. That shit is a very real possibility.
- [50:54]
Co-host
And onshore gets us there, gets us closer, dude.
- [50:57]
Tom
Onshoring the most important elements of our modern life from modern warfare, which is going to be drones and semiconductors, which guess what China controls. Rare earth minerals for batteries and shit like that. Guess what China controls. So it's like we are in this super weakened position. And I understand that we have to get an outcome that brings that stuff home. Is across the board tariffs going to do it? As far as I can tell, across the board tariffs put you in a very precarious position. And so I do not love that this is his strategy. So will they end up coming to fruition? And let's remember, this is half time. We don't know where this is going to go yet. But, dude, I am. I'm watching the way that he's doing this. And I'm like, if I were advising you, I would not be advising you to do this.
- [51:52]
Co-host
And he's already pulled back a lot of these tariffs. The auto tariffs got pulled back. He just also pulled back some more from Canada, Mexico, because he was violating the trade agreement that you and Edward talked about, which I'm very excited about that interview to drop.
- [52:05]
Tom
Help me see something I don't see. So I will, and I hope you know, and I certainly hope the audience knows, I will give you my best, most voracious argument as a way to test whether or not my argument holds water. Because I want to see if you're still like, no, that doesn't make any fucking sense. And you've got to look at it from this angle, which will only make me more able to predict the outcome of my behaviors, which will make me able to be in the stock market better and make more fucking money. So even if you just trust me to be selfish, I just want to know like, what actually works. Because my self esteem is not based around being right. My self esteem is based around identifying the right answer faster than the next person and making that something real in my life that leads me to the places that I want to go, which include getting even wealthier, which include building the biggest video game of all time. So just trusting me to be selfish. If you understand what I build my self esteem around, you will understand why I'm like, yeah, yeah, the guy saying the bad things, go back to him. I want to hear what the bad things are you, so give it to me. I want to know, like, what do you think I'm being blind to? Where am I?
- [53:12]
Co-host
That's the thing though. I spend time with you, so I understand how you make decisions. So that's why I see the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And a lot of times when we're playing the politics game, it's, they want you to come on here and say, trump did terrorists, he's fucked up. And as soon as they hear this, they're like, yay, Tom gets it again. So it's not necessarily you have a take wrong or you have a, you are blind to something. It's they want you to disagree as feverishly as they disagree so that way you can be on there.
- [53:38]
Tom
It's fucking nonsensical.
- [53:39]
Co-host
But that's that it's emotional. Looking for emotional responses.
- [53:42]
Tom
And we may remain a small channel until the end of time because I'm that that is the game. And that unless I can give people that, they are not going to be interested. I get it. Entertainment is a drug that people take because they want to feel a certain way. And if I'm not able to make people feel the way they want to feel, this show will stall. Understood. I, I steer by the following observation. All that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. And so I have to say the things that I believe to be true because I, I have maybe erroneously built a value system inside of myself that says every word out of my mouth has to be true and it has to lead to making other people's lives better. And that's where I'm like, if people will argue with me at the level of value system, then, ooh, now we can have. Because people always want to argue at the level of beliefs.
- [54:47]
Co-host
But that's the thing. It's a headline argument. So, okay, first argument. Trump is a fascist. Trump is a Nazi. You shouldn't like Trump because he's divisive.
- [54:54]
Tom
We can play the very different statements, but the divisive part I care not about. I. Well, that's not quite true. I wish he could bring people together. That would be super powerful. I am far more drawn to characters that can bring people together for sure. But if Trump. This is why. And somebody said in the comments, well, Tom, Trump was saying that he wanted to run for a third term before. Why you're. Why are you acting surprised now? And the reason is, honestly, when he said it earlier, I was always like, ah, I don't like that. But I thought he was being funny. Then he started going for Greenland, Panama Canal, Canada and talking about running for a third term. I was like, oh, God, this is somebody revealing exactly like this little thing inside of them. And I think Trump has imperialistic impulses.
- [55:46]
Co-host
And all of these things were not as important as taxing unrealized gains to you.
- [55:55]
Tom
They were not visible to me at the time. But if you reheld the election today, I would still vote for Trump. So. But that doesn't mean that that is me choosing between two bad options. That is not me saying, oh, there's somebody perfect. But also, by the way, we're on the all things. We're talking about all the things that I don't like. There are also a lot of things that I do like about what Trump is doing. And so, yeah, if the. The nice succinct way to put it is I'm growing increasingly skeptical that Trump will be able to get a positive outcome. And at the same time, today, given those same two choices over, I would make the same decision still, for sure,
- [56:38]
Co-host
because you're in. You didn't have faith in who Kamala was as a presidential candidate because of
- [56:45]
Tom
her entire Democratic Party has a value system that will run us into the ground. It will become increasingly authoritarian. It will be economically nonsensical. They would have clamped down on AI. We would continue to be at China's mercy. From a manufacturing standpoint, they want to control the narrative, which is why they all speak with one unified voice. They are anti First Amendment. Like they. Those things are so much more dangerous than the things that I see coming out of Trump's camp. Because here's what I think is going to happen to the thing About Trump that scares me the most is not that he'll make an economic mistake. The economy is extremely difficult. It does scare me. And you will continue to hear me make noises if I think Trump is misstepping. But the thing that I worry most about with him is Bonapartism. And the Bonapartism I think will get checked at the midterms. So it takes, it takes a literal act of Congress to amend the Constitution. So I think the Constitution will protect us. But I'm not going to lie and say that it isn't becoming self evident that Trump has an imperialist impulse from the rhetoric around Gaza. I mean, it's just like that's undeniable. So again, I will seem crazy if people think I'm on a team. I am not on a team. I have an end state that I'm trying to reach. I voted for the person that I thought would get us there. That person remains, though by a decreasing margin, the person that I think is actually most likely to get us there if he continues to do shit that causes problems. Like, I mean, right now, the short term effect on the economy is horrendous on the stock market. I should be more clear. The short term impact on the stock market is ugly. And so now it becomes a question, is it a short term blip, as these often are, or is it, is he legitimately going to run us aground? Trump don't know we're gonna see that play out. But all the people that look at me or anybody else and they keep trying to take it back to he was a moron and he voted for the wrong person and he's now just trying to defend him. You're, you're, I am unable to pierce your frame of reference because that is a nonsensical way to interpret the words that I'm saying. There's no way they could repeat my stance back to me in a way that I would recognize. There's no way, because I have said over and over and over exactly how I process data. I can go point by point and explain exactly how I'm processing data. And then people are trying to cram that into their team based worldview. And this will happen in marriages. This will happen in. When working with teammates. In a company, you are literally saying one thing, but it deflects off their worldview that they are projecting onto you. And so I will say to my wife routinely, if I meant what you would have meant when I said those words, I get why you're upset. But since I didn't Mean that we have to go with, what did I actually mean? And so then you break it down. You say, okay, this is what I mean. I can say it to you in a single sentence. That's less than 35 words. Tell me my position back to me. Me in a way that I say, yes, yes, you understand my position. If then she's like, I understand your position, but I disagree with it.
- [60:06]
Co-host
Cool.
- [60:06]
Tom
Now. Now we're having an argument at the level of values and beliefs. We are not having an argument at the level of two ships passing in the night where if you said the words I said they would mean something different than when I say them.
- [60:18]
Co-host
There is one thing. There is one thing that. What would it have to take for you to say, I regret. I regret rooting for Trump?
- [60:25]
Tom
What would have to happen?
- [60:26]
Co-host
Yeah.
- [60:28]
Tom
If he hollows out the middle class even more, if he puts us on a weekend stage with China. The thing I care the most about China is scary, but the thing I care most about is thriving lower and middle class. Again, you need only trust me to be selfish. As a wealthy person you sell things to. At least the things that I make are sold to the middle class. So it's like I need them to be thriving, even just for. Even if you don't think I care about people, which I fucking do. Even if I'm just being a greedy capitalist. You cannot function as a society if you don't have a thriving middle class. It's fucking crazy. I'm also not a pull the ladder up behind me guy. So I came from middle. There's an argument to be made. I came from lower middle class. And becoming successful has been one of the great thrills of my life because it did not feel like it was an outcropping of innate talents that I had. It feels like it was an outcropping of learning a way of thinking that I was not taught as a kid and going, oh, my God, this works so much better than what I was taught as a kid. Holy shit. Like, you can teach other people to do this. Fuck. And now, long before anybody knows who I am privately in my companies, there are no cameras on me. Nobody knows who the fuck I am. I'm just a guy building a company, and I'm like, I will show up early.
- [61:54]
Guest
I will stay late.
- [61:55]
Tom
This is to drug dealers, gang members. I will show up early. I will stay late. I will teach you anything, including building a competitive company to mine, because I want you to understand how powerful these ideas are. And I can see you've Been trapped by what at that time I realized was an ideas problem. This is not a money problem. You guys can, if you can adopt these ideas, they will change your life.
- [62:20]
Co-host
What are the KPIs in. So you say hollow out the middle class. I love that term, but it sounds, it's a generic term. Like, are you saying the middle class will decline? The inflation rate will drop below this rate? You want to see average earnings increase. What does it mean to have a bolstering middle class?
- [62:39]
Tom
Love that. Okay, so there are a few key metrics you want to look at right now. What you have is more people than ever are becoming wealthy. Okay. Yay, right? No, because more people than ever are becoming poor. And so what you see is this where you're going to have these two wildly stratified contingents. Now the problem lies with the Gini coefficient. And you, you can't live in that world. So the wealthy will try to distance themselves physically, intellectually, every which way possible from the poor. And the poor will always be the far larger group and they will come to kill the rich. So again, just from a perspective of self preservation, that sounds terrible. So one of the metrics that we're going to look at is, is the middle class getting bigger? So are people going from poor to middle class? Like that is a fucking key. You want to see that happening like crazy and then mine is. One of the core things has got to be that the poor and middle class can just save their money to success, not gamble, not bet in the stock market if they want to do that. It's amazing. And I hope that they do because owning assets is very powerful even when your money's not being inflated. But you have to understand it. It is a complicated game where you can lose your money as fast as you make your money. So I want them, want everybody to have the ability to do it. I don't want anybody to be forced to do it. So those two are massively important and can be measured just on a financial scale. There will be more, but those are the easiest two to talk about that are just, they're going to be naked in the data.
- [64:28]
Co-host
And then last one, just from poor to middle class, you want to see upward mobility. So is that again, what, what is the. How do you define going from poor to middle class?
- [64:40]
Tom
Because I think it'll be a question of earnings. Real earnings per household copy, household earnings increasing. Yeah, but real like you have to understand the difference between nominal, where it's like, yeah, number go up, but it only go up because of Inflation real is like you're actually outstripping inflation.
- [65:04]
Co-host
So household earnings adjusted for inflation increasing.
- [65:07]
Tom
Yes. I man, I think Destiny is dope. Even if he wears a shirt that says Tom is a retard, like, I still think he is a. I'm so glad that he is in the public sphere. Somebody was saying, I think it was the Charlie Kirk interview with Gavin Newsom. Which man do I love? I, I am very impressed with Gavin Newsom. A sentence I never thought I would say as a Californian.
- [65:31]
Co-host
Wow. But the fact that he brought wow.
- [65:33]
Tom
Brought Charlie Kirk in.
- [65:34]
Co-host
Wow.
- [65:35]
Tom
Very impressive.
- [65:35]
Co-host
That's exactly where I was going. It worked. Gavin Newsom saw that podcasts were big. He says, I'm gonna start a podcast and let me go sit with the other side. And he's flip flopping on positions. Everything he said, everything. He was ten toes down six months ago now. Oh yeah. I never felt that way. Oh, I feel completely different.
- [65:51]
Tom
I would like you to press the James Vernon button. That is so self evident. So now you at least have somebody that's good at what he does. This is why people call Gavin Newsom slippery. He's got enough charisma, enough good looks that he can pull it off. Off. He can do it. So anyway, I, the thing that I'm impressed with is that he sat down with Charlie Kirk. Like he was willing to go 10 toes down with Charlie Kirk, who is a formidable foe for anybody on the left. I, I am impressed. And I now understand how Newsom has gotten where he's gotten.
- [66:21]
Co-host
I have a clip. We play that clip I sent you. They have a Newsom clip.
- [66:25]
Tom
Last night, trying to put my son to bed. He's like, no, Dad, I just.
- [66:29]
Guest
What time? What time's Charlie gonna be here?
- [66:31]
Tom
Here?
- [66:31]
Guest
What time?
- [66:32]
Tom
And I'm like, dude, you're in school tomorrow.
- [66:33]
Guest
He's 13.
- [66:34]
Tom
He's like, no, no, this morning.
- [66:36]
Guest
Wakes up at 6 something.
- [66:37]
Tom
He's like, I'm coming.
- [66:38]
Guest
I'm like, great.
- [66:39]
Tom
He literally would not leave the house. Did you let him take off school? No, he did.
- [66:43]
Guest
Of course not.
- [66:43]
Tom
He's not here for a good reason. But the point is you can't cancel school for like two years.
- [66:46]
Guest
Once.
- [66:46]
Co-host
One.
- [66:47]
Tom
And the point is. The point which is you are making. That's why he's good dead. Thank you. I'm kidding.
- [66:53]
Guest
When you go to these places, I
- [66:54]
Co-host
just like, that was hilarious. Like, and it was just like, hahaha, you got me.
- [66:57]
Tom
But do it how you do it, guys. The techniques are in full view. They are in full View. Yeah, look, easy charm, man. An easy laugh just blows it off. It. It defused Charlie Kirk. He didn't keep pushing. If he had argued there, if he'd gotten annoyed, if he hadn't allowed himself to be the butt of a joke, it. Then it would have become a thing. Yeah, it's very slick, man. It's very slick. Like, let's race through two things real fast. So one, just on the podcast circuit, one thing that I found very interesting was you had PBD that had on Andrew Tate and you had Ian Carroll on Rogan. Ian Carroll is known for just being way, way deep in conspiracy theories. And one question you'd asked me before is, should somebody like that, who's popping off about things that they can't prove, should they be able to talk? Same idea with Tate. Some people think that he's an absolute criminal that should be locked away and never heard from again. Should he be allowed to talk? For me, this is a first amendment question and 1000% I believe people should be able to talk. Even if they're lying. I think people should be able to talk. Why? Because I don't want anyone to get to control who they think is lying or is telling the truth. That is an absolute nightmare. The only way for us to navigate intelligently is to let people argue ideas. No matter how outside the realm of. Of acceptable discourse you think it is, people should be able to put their ideas forward and let them be debated. Now, I'm all within the confines of what the Supreme Court has ruled on, but First Amendment all day, let people talk. The second you find yourself with the impulse to tell people to shut up and sit down, you're the problem. Ipso facto. That's all I have to say about that.
- [68:40]
Co-host
Ipso facto. All right. And last but not least, Nick Terry, who's a manager and producer out in la, has tweeted this, and it kind of brings up our AI debate that we have. A lot of times, the TV writer career path as we know it is over. Shorter rooms, fewer episodes, long gaps between seasons, if they come back at all. If you're still waiting for the industry to bounce back to normal, it's time to pivot. Some key takeaways from this piece. Indiewire released a piece about the death of the TV industry. From a writer's perspective, staffing is no longer a sustainable career. Many rooms are now the norm. Not the exception, the latter. To showrunner. Broken residuals are shrinking or gone. Even big hits are getting canceled early. So what now? Writers need to stop Thinking like employees and start thinking like entrepreneurs. Create IP right across mediums. Build something you own, something that doesn't rely on a Singer streamer's green light. The future is global, independent and multi platform. Be nimble, build your brand, Tell great stories everywhere you can. If you're not already thinking this way, start today. This is a new normal. What are your thoughts on this?
- [69:37]
Tom
Yeah, I mean that's just facts. So this idea of most people in the world of AI are going to have to start thinking like an entrepreneur because you're going to be able to create so much with your own hands that fewer and fewer people will aggregate into larger companies. There is going to be a huge portion of humanity that just starts making their own thing, whether that's building a company and only need a small handful of people or whether like me, I can clearly envision a world in which at Impact Theory we pick a creator and we say, cool, this is your budget, go tell this entire feature length story. Or hey, here's your budget, go build an entire video game by yourself. And then of course, if we can do that as a company, then you're going to have a gaggle of people that are like, well why would I go to Impact Theory and ask for a budget? Let me just do this. My own self capture all the economics and so I even can imagine a world where I actively, as the owner of Impact Theory, am building these things myself. Or the thing that we're doing right now is making sure the game that we're building, Project Kaizen, is created in such a way where other creators can come and build inside of our game and monetize inside of our game. And if you don't create an opportunity for those creative minds to act like an entrepreneur within your container, you're going to be made irrelevant. Those are going to be the only things that move forward. And so we're in this sort of weird period as the streamers I think are going to start to die down, that what you're going to get is something way more like YouTube where they may say, hey, we aggregate all of these cool things. We have an awesome algorithm that makes it easy for you to find these things. But ultimately a lot of what's on Netflix or insert your platform here is created by the community. And we're, we didn't have any influence over the creation because people are able to make this stuff so rapidly for so little money. And as long as they have a monetization path for that person based on the subscribers, now you can scale content effectively infinitely. And everything more or less becomes like YouTube. That's the future.
- [71:41]
Co-host
It's crazy. Everybody thought we were going to become more like Netflix. Everybody's becoming more like YouTube.
- [71:45]
Tom
Facts crazy. This is what it is when you create that rapidly. All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe and make sure you're joining us for the lives. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 8aM if you want to shape the show, that is your chance. All right, until next time, my friends. Be legendary.
- [72:02]
Guest
Take care.
- [72:02]
Tom
Peace.