Trump’s Hardball Middle East Moves, Insider Trading Scandal, and The Argentina Miracle | The Tom Bilyeu Show LIVE

Summary

Podcast Summary: Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory

Episode: Trump’s Hardball Middle East Moves, Insider Trading Scandal, and The Argentina Miracle
Date: March 25, 2026
Host: Tom Bilyeu | Panel: Drew

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Overview

This episode dives deep into current global and U.S. events with Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew as they tackle President Trump’s aggressive Middle East stances, a scandalous wave of possible insider trading tied to Trump administration actions, real-time reactions to immigration enforcement at U.S. airports, and a spotlight on Argentina’s stunning economic turnaround under libertarian president Javier Milei. The episode is rich with hard-hitting analysis, speculation about systemic trust, and sharp economic takes—always with an eye toward how these headline events relate to the underpinnings of society, prosperity, and the potential for national renewal or collapse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Middle East Military Gambit

Rapid Troop Deployment and Diplomacy-by-Force

• Pentagon Moves: U.S. deployed 2,000–3,000 elite paratroopers (potentially up to 8,000 including Marines) to the Middle East amid negotiations with Iran; 82nd Airborne, led by Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegmeyer, at the center (06:04–07:32).
  • “They’re supposed to go anywhere in the world in 18 hours...you don’t do that unless you’re very serious. So Trump is certainly, at a minimum, keeping his options open.” — Tom Bilyeu [07:07]
• Negotiation Tactics: On the same day as troop movement, Trump reportedly submitted a 15-point ceasefire plan demanding Iran abandon nuclear ambitions, while clearly threatening force (11:10–12:58).
  • “Trump negotiates with his finger on the trigger. I’m simultaneously impressed...and at the same time, I know that kind of diplomacy builds a static charge in the people you’re working with.” — Tom Bilyeu [12:42]
• Implications for Allies & Adversaries: Tom warns that Trump’s penchant for combining hard-edged military threats with diplomatic negotiation erodes trust not only with adversaries but with longstanding allies (13:32–14:32).

Notable Quote

• “If Trump is unaware of how this is impacting these...relationships with our long standing allies, then that’s full retard.” — Tom Bilyeu [15:52]

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2. U.S. Military Service Age Extension & Reaction

• Enlistment Age Increased: Army maximum enlistment age raised from 34 to 42, and waivers for certain convictions expanded (21:27–21:54).
  • “It's like terraforming, should they want to create a draft...you've extended now the number of people that you have in your poll to draw from.” — Tom Bilyeu [22:12]
• Cultural Backlash: Widespread millennial anxiety over the possibility of being drafted; memes circulate about “the millennial curse.” [22:54–23:19]

Notable Moment

• Tom and Drew joke persistently about Drew being “relieved” to be 53 and ineligible for the draft, using it as a meta-example of how repeated falsehoods become “true” in media discourse (20:47–21:14).

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3. Insider Trading Scandal: Trust in Institutions Fraying

• Unusual Market Activity:
  • Massive, well-timed bets placed in oil and S&P 500 futures minutes before Trump policy announcements; Financial Times, BBC, Axios, and U.S. senators flag as “mind-blowing corruption.” (33:52–40:18)
  • “If you want to know what I think, I think it’s insider information. I think it’s obvious.” — Tom Bilyeu [40:34]
• SEC/DOJ Shakeup: SEC enforcement director Margaret Ryan resigns after friction over investigating Trump’s family; DOJ’s Public Integrity Section at historic low staffing (36:33–37:53)
• Systemic Risk: Tom warns that breaking trust in markets will destroy the U.S.'s economic foundation, drawing comparisons to developing countries where institutional trust no longer exists (42:24–43:00).
  • “The thing that differentiates us isn’t just the economics. The thing that differentiates us is trust in institutions, trust with each other...what people call a high trust society.” — Tom Bilyeu [42:46]
• Cultural & Economic Nihilism: Tom and Drew voice concern that cascading fraud, favoritism, and unchecked elite malfeasance are feeding a sense of nihilism and system-wide rot (45:15–48:26).

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4. ICE at Airports & The Immigration Debate

• ICE Helping TSA: ICE deployment in airports results in dramatic reduction in TSA lines (52:16–53:21).
  • Debate: Is this efficiency or are “illegals” simply vanishing from the system? [53:21–53:55]
  • “We don't have enough information...but this is that little bit of the iceberg that's poking its head up above the waterline.” — Tom Bilyeu [55:50]
• Power Politics in Immigration: Tom asserts that open border policies and social benefits are currently a deliberate Democratic power move, and cautions about long-term impacts on the political system and economy [54:00–56:40].
• Delta’s Political Protest: Delta removes special service desks for Congress members until TSA is fully funded, making policymakers experience the system themselves (56:40–57:13).
  • “Please make people deal with the realities of their own policy. I love that.” — Tom Bilyeu [57:13]

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5. Argentina’s Economic Miracle: The Anti-Socialism Showcase

• Milei’s Reforms:
  • Severe government austerity, firing public employees, slashing subsidies, deregulating rents (57:33–60:00).
  • Outcomes: Poverty rate drops from 53% to 31.6% in 18 months; GDP growth hits 4.4%; inflation plunges though remains high.
  • “Milei deregulates policies...rentals in Buenos Aires surged by more than 170%. Even though prices went up, at an inflation adjusted rate, rents fell by up to 40%.” — Tom Bilyeu [60:00–61:24]
• Direct U.S. Comparison: Contrasts Argentina’s turnaround to persistent American deficit spending, stagnant middle class, and politicos on both sides hollowing out the nation (62:45–65:10).
  • “Right now, the extremes on either side are destroying the middle class together. It’s horrific. Cheers to Argentina.” — Tom Bilyeu [66:30]

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6. America’s Fiscal Position & Reserve Currency Privilege

• The Insolvency Mirage: U.S. has staggering liabilities, but is insulated from default by its status as global reserve currency—yet still at risk of inflation and loss of confidence (67:55–71:26).
  • “The reality is, the thing you need to be afraid of is that they will print more and more money...so that they can rob from everybody by stealing their purchasing power.” — Tom Bilyeu [68:34]
• Policy Prescription: Tom prescribes balancing the budget, ending deficit spending, means-testing social benefits, and reducing public sector bloat, directly paralleling Argentina’s hard-right reforms (71:22–78:28).
  • “You have to balance the budget. You can’t be deficit spending and then printing money to cover the gap.” — Tom Bilyeu [72:07]
  • “Fire government employees—a lot of them, a huge percentage.” — Tom Bilyeu [74:59]
  • “I would lower the minimum wage in the places where it’s getting ridiculous so that people who are otherwise unemployable can get a job.” — Tom Bilyeu [76:22]

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7. Cultural Musings: Hard Work, Mobility, and National Character

• Lost Upward Mobility: Discussion on America’s eroding promise of upward class mobility and what it takes for individuals—and nations—to recover that muscle (82:07–83:03).
  • “People want to be on that escalator that’s just going to automatically take them up, forgetting that...you’ve got to be hardcore. Life is competitive, man.” — Tom Bilyeu [83:06]
  • “Give me your hardcore, psychotic people that just want to work to prove something to themselves.” — Tom Bilyeu [84:26]
• Personal Anecdotes: Tom and Drew trade stories of financial hardship and personal grit, casting them as essential national virtues (78:49–80:29).

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8. AI Regulation and the Limits of Anti-Tech Backlash

• Federal Framework Announced: Trump administration issues a 7-point regulatory framework for AI, emphasizing national over state-level control and non-restriction on innovation (85:15–86:20).
  • “Whatever country or state abides by something like this is going to be where all that talent goes... You want to chase your entrepreneurs out of the country? Do that.” — Tom Bilyeu [86:20]
• Potential Headwinds:
  • Public backlash from those displaced by automation (“knocker-uppers effect”)
  • Risk of protectionist ‘nanny state’ policies stifling innovation (88:13–89:58)
  • “If that spills over into yes, we need a nanny state to protect us from this evil technology...we’ll lose.” — Tom Bilyeu [89:20]
• OpenAI’s Sora Exit: OpenAI’s closure of its video generation system is interpreted as a business pivot, not an industry downturn (92:28–94:20).
• AI’s Future Shape: Tom is bullish on the technological future but ambivalent on whether OpenAI will become the “Microsoft” of AI, warning regulatory capture, and technological moats are major factors (94:25–98:02).

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Memorable Quotes

• “You want to get out, but it’s like you’re stepping into quicksand. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s a pretty dangerous move.” — Tom Bilyeu [04:25]
• “He’s got Riz, man. That’s how he gets away with a lot of this stuff.” — Tom Bilyeu on Trump’s charisma [23:58]
• “If you look at what economists predicted...they called it economic suicide. But then—people adapted.” — Tom Bilyeu [61:42]
• “America is sliding into a nihilistic — I really need to learn the name for this — postcolonialism or something. There’s a name for this vibe...” — Tom Bilyeu [45:41]
• “People will pack up and they will go wherever they're going to be able to pursue this opportunity full stop. If you want to lose to China, then put all these crazy restrictions...” — Tom Bilyeu [86:20]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Opening/Introduction — Key Topics Outline | 00:00–02:00 | | Trump/Iran Military Moves | 02:23–16:06 | | Troop Deployments Explained | 06:04–07:32 | | The Negotiator: Trump’s Ceasefire Terms | 11:10–12:58 | | Messaging, Legacy, and Trump’s “Blind Spots” | 17:08–20:36 | | Enlistment Age & Cultural Reaction | 20:36–23:19 | | Insider Trading, Market Integrity | 33:52–43:00 | | Trust, Social Capital Crisis | 42:24–48:26 | | ICE/Immigration & Airport Chaos | 52:16–57:13 | | Argentina’s Economic Reforms | 57:22–66:30 | | U.S. Budget, Reserve Currency | 67:55–72:07 | | How to Restore Middle-Class Prosperity | 72:07–78:49 | | National Character, Upward Mobility | 82:07–84:26 | | AI Regulatory Framework, OpenAI’s Pivot | 85:15–98:02 |

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Final Thoughts

Tom Bilyeu and Drew deliver a no-nonsense, deeply analytical, and at times biting review of America’s standing in the global economic, technological, and cultural landscape. Their critique cuts both ways: skepticism toward government narratives, contempt for both lazy collectivism and crony capitalism, and a call for tough love and accountability at every level. The Argentina case is offered as both inspiration and warning, while the insider trading scandal and ICE actions serve as real-time indicators of America’s precarious trust in institutions.

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For Listeners

If you missed the episode, this summary gives you the critical insights, direct quotables, and timestamped pathways to explore specific stories or debates further. Tom’s tone alternates between urgent, skeptical, determined, and motivational—never shying away from uncomfortable truths or unpopular opinions. If you seek to understand the deeper mechanics behind today’s most heated headlines, this episode is a must-listen (or must-read).

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

Hey, Sal. Hank. What's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana, and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose, proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do, too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours with purpose, in every detail, and crafted with intention. Timberland built on craft. Visit timberland.com to shop. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. We are excited to have you guys here. There is no dearth of things to talk about going on in the world right now. The US Is sending an elite group of paratroopers to the Middle east amid negotiations with Iran, which is becoming a signature move of the Trump administration. In totally unrelated news, of course, the age of enlistment has just been extended from 34 to 42. Credible accusations of insider trading are flying as someone keeps placing massive bets right before Trump makes very consequential announcements. We're going to want to look into that. ICE is turning their reputation around one airport at a time by dramatically reducing the wait times at all of the airports that they've been deployed to. The question is, are they just more efficient, or do we have way more illegals than we thought we did? Argentina's latest report card under Javier Milei is in. And the numbers are jarring. For anyone that wants more socialism, that is. And OpenAI is fully exiting the video generation business, but it does not mean what most people think it means. We're going to be talking about all of that and more. Drew, you look ready. You're locked and loaded.

[Drew]

I'm ready.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You're good to go.

[Drew]

I know. Sign me up. I'm ready. I might have to just get my knees adjusted, but we gonna do it for somebody. It'll be a gunshot, right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

That was the best punch C ever. I love the G. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

[Drew]

Amen. For somebody who is winning the war, we're sure doing a lot of things that seem like we're still inside of a war. But let's throw it over to Trump, who spoke from the White House yesterday after he was it incorporated, inaugurated. When they bring in the new person. When you swing on the Bible.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. Swore in, swore in, swore in.

[Drew]

Yeah, yeah. The new DHS history, the new DHS secretary. He was asked about the war in Iran.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We've won this. This war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news. I mean, the New York Times. You read the New York Times, it's like we're not winning a war where they have no navy and they have no air force and they have no nothing and we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country. It's not untrue. They can't do a thing about it. For instance, if I want to take down that power plant, that very big, powerful power plant, they can't do a thing about it. I want to know if he believes all the things that he says or if he understands how much. Like if he is just trying to message to the American people. I totally get it. If you look at the polls, the number of Republicans that identify as mega are like way up. It's crazy. It's going up. My interpretation as somebody who center right is that all of that stuff is going down, but the numbers don't show that. And so you've got an increasing number of Republicans who identify as mega and then of mega people. The approval rating of Trump is insane. Like at one CNN report that it was 100% support of Donald Trump. Now, obviously margin of error, it's never going to be 100%. But that is wild. So if this really is somebody that just is so good at messaging to his base, okay, fine. But like when you're. The way that we get sucked into these wars, is that you as the supreme leader of America.

[Drew]

I hate everything about that phrase.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I had to drew. But you are able to, especially in foreign affairs, you're able to go into these military conflicts, at least in the beginning, you have a limited window, but you can be very aggressive and do a lot with the executive powers. And they don't realize how hard it is to get back out. And so that's where it's like, man, you look back on history and it is just one conflict after another where easy to get in, easy to get those initial wins. They are wins. And you really are knocking that country back. All of the things that they're saying that we're doing are true, but they never talk about the fact that the asymmetrical insurgencies that these countries can run forever will eventually boot you out of the country. If you don't have a willingness to rule by force and come in and be your own dictator and just crush dissent, then you're going to see another popular uprising to boot you out. And so for me, if you don't look at Afghanistan and go, wait, it's a bunch of dudes in sandals and AK47s trying to herd goats and kill you, and they still manage to pull it off, like, they'll get you to leave. They got Russia to leave. They got the US to leave. It's like, this is just a thing. And so for him, again, from a messaging perspective, if you want to be cocky, fine. But I need to know that he understands that putting boots on the ground is like you're stepping into quicksand. It doesn't mean it's impossible to get out, but it does mean, like, that's a pretty dangerous move, and you need to be very careful.

[Drew]

And right on cue, the Pentagon did announce that there'll be anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000. I've seen conflicting reports that we are sending troops over to the Middle East.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So in no uncertain terms.

[Drew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I mean, look, the Pentagon has ordered between 2,000 and 3,000 paratroopers. Just paratroopers. Those are the numbers that I'm hearing. The paratroopers that they're putting in are from an elite military unit. They're all being sent to the Middle East. You combine that with a Marine Expeditionary Unit multiple, I think, that are already moving towards the Persian Gulf. You've now got up to 8,000 U.S. ground troops converging on the region. That number's climbing, by the way. We already have, like, 40,000 military personnel that are there already. So this number is going up and up and up. The unit at the center of this recent deployment that's got everybody's attention is the 82nd Airborne. They're an immediate response force. They're supposed to be able to go anywhere in the world within 18 hours. So they're that rapid deployment force, and they've received written orders to head over to the Middle East. Leading the deployment is Major General Brandon Tegmeyer as the commander of the 82nd Airborne. Now, along with him, you've got the full headquarters staff of this division going over there. Now, you don't do that unless you're very serious. So Trump is certainly, at a minimum, keeping his options open. No order has been given to enter Iran at this point. At least not that we know about. Of course, there's only going to be so much that's going to make its way to the public. So at this point, there's no guarantee that there are going to be boots on the ground. But the Pentagon is now openly discussing contingency options, and those options include seizing Kharg island, which Iran is not going to take, laying down that is their main oil export hub. Obviously, Trump is banging the drum of we are going to open the Strait of Hormuz, even if we have to do it by force. And he's going to be looking at securing Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. These are the things that he's been banging the drum about from a negotiating standpoint. Now, open source intelligence is also tracking dozens of transport aircraft that are flying out of airfields used by Delta Force and SEAL Team Six Six. Now, the activity has not been officially confirmed, but people can actually see it with their own eyes. Now, just because there's a bunch of activity going on doesn't mean that it's them heading over to the Middle East. It doesn't mean that they are going to be part of raising the tensions there. But it's hard to believe that they're completely unrelated. So we'll have to wait and see what's going on. Now, regarding the 82nd Airborne, the last time that they mobilized like this was back In January of 2020, right after the US killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. That was obviously meant to be a deterrence posture. At the time, we were not looking in any way, shape or form to go in. But the question right now is, is this deployment also just offensive, or is Trump really about to take Hark island or something that nobody's even talking about yet, which is obviously possible. As I was saying before, the US already has more than 40,000 troops stationed across the Middle East. So we're ready for a pretty big fight if it comes to that. So all of this is really, when you look at the way that Trump moves, it's becoming a recurring theme in his strategies, that as he negotiates, as he's like, hey, we want to find a diplomatic solution to this, he also builds up military force so that if things are not going exactly the way that he wants, he's going to go in guns blazing. Now, I don't know that it's necessarily a bad strategy. He is showing the world that he is willing to, if you call his bluff, he will back it up. Now, I'm not saying that it's Wise, strategically. But from a tactical standpoint, yes, like, that actually works. People understand, okay, like, this guy's definitely here to play. But it has a flip side, which. And the Iranians are speaking directly to this, although I never know who I can believe out of the. Whether it's a pundit or somebody officially in the regime. But they're saying, we don't trust this guy. Like, every time we go to negotiate, then he attacks. Now, at the same time, anybody that's been paying attention to Iran for long enough knows you can't trust the Iranians, so they will try to drag things out, stall as long as they can. And so all of that stuff becomes a bit of a quagmire if you're actually trying to get to the other side of an actual peaceful negotiation. If neither side trusts the other side to do what they say they're going to do, then the odds of the talks being fruitful go, go. Way, way down. On the same day that the Pentagon issued the transit orders, the Trump administration submitted a 15 point ceasefire proposal to Tehran. So you can imagine being in that negotiation. It's like, hold on a second, you're telling me this is what you want me to do? And then over here you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go, go. Build up more troops. Give me that lightning strike special paramilitary group that can drop in and take Carg island if I need to. Now, it makes it very clear that if you don't yield to these demands that we are going to make a move. Now, the proposal that Trump put demands that Iran permanently abandon its nuclear weapons program and dismantle existing capabilities. Trump has been banging the drum, saying that they're ready to agree. They've already agreed, so we'll see if that's real. Supposedly there was some big gift given, but he won't say what the big gift is. That is the weirdest way to put that forward. He says it has something to do with the oil, so we'll see. Feels weird to call it a gift, but nonetheless, there we are. So, anyway, Trump negotiates with his finger on the trigger. I'm simultaneously impressed because you know that it is. These are not empty words. And at the same time, I know that that kind of diplomacy builds a static charge in the people that you're working with, and not just, by the way, the people you're negotiating with right now, but. But the rest of the world. And I know it is good that America has. People understand under Trump, America is strong and aggressive, but they also know that America is a bully. And will do whatever the fuck it wants regardless of what you want. And so suddenly when somebody says, hey, Greenland is looking pretty sexy this time of year, all of a sudden you go, damn. Like, you can't assume that these are just empty words where he's trying to get NATO allies to the table. And so if Trump is unaware of how this is impacting these, the relationships with our long standing allies, then that's full retard. So, yeah, we're gonna have to see what ends up happening with all of this. It's wild, man. It is wild. 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[Drew]

Yeah, and at the same time, there's been reports JD Vance is going to be part of the negotiation delegation that will talk.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, supposedly they're asking for him. I was surprised by that.

[Drew]

That's very interesting. Marco Rubio is on his way to the G7 in France to have a meeting with sit down with the European allies to see if they can help provide aid to the Strait of Her moose.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Marco Rubio for President. Man, I love that gu.

[Drew]

It seems like there's a lot of different things happening. Is this just Trump hedging his bets? I'm going to have a strong offensive presence ready, but I still would like to get out of this thing while negotiating peace but also rallying the allies. Is he just trying to cover all his bases? You think?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Man, I'm going to give you my real take on this just completely naked. I think that the way that Trump views the world is there's a right way to do business and a wrong way to do business. I, Trump, am always doing things the right way. So I'm going to come to you with a good deal. It's a good deal for you, it's a good deal for us if you take the deal. Yeah, this is awesome. I would much rather do business with you, but I now, for God knows, I forget how old he is. 79 or something like that. Let's say he got into entrepreneurship at 20. So for 59 years, this guy's been doing business less, I guess, because he was president once before, but he's been doing business without being able to show up with the entire US military standing behind him. So I really think that's the way that he plays this game. I've got the perfect deal for you. Take it. If you don't, by the way, I'm gonna shoot you until you are dead. And he just is getting off on being able to do that. Like I slide the document across the table. It's a good deal. Don't worry. Just take it. This is all amazing in the fine print. You will notice, however, I am going to drop the mother of all bombs on you, literally, that's its name, if you don't agree to my terms. And that just gives him a hard on, the lice of which he's never experienced despite his time potentially in the Epstein files. And he is just like going way too ham. So, yeah, that is my mental map of him. I'm going to get my way no matter what. I try to make sure that my way is good for you by my worldview, meaning Trump. And if you agree, all is well. If you don't, all hell breaks loose.

[Drew]

Is it possible you think that. I don't want to say hubris because I feel like it has a connotation now, but is he. Does he have blind spots that could get him into something that. A bite that's too big for him to chew The.

[Tom Bilyeu]

The blind spots that he is likely to have are the size of Mount Rushmore. Like, they are gigantic. So. And I say Mount Rushmore because he is so his sights are set. So on Legacy, on being the guy that managed to pull all of this off. And the thing is, if he does it this. He really. The terrifying thing is that he actually has a shot to do something incredible. But he is so destabilized everything to rewrite all these new rules, to put America in a position of supremacy, that he's just putting everything at risk. And so this is like watching a guy. It is a game of skill, so it's not watching a guy play a game of chance, but it's like a guy betting everything on the outcome of game seven in a highly contested series. And you're just like, yes, if you pull this off and you pull it off because You're a more skilled player than anybody else. It'll be incredible, and you'll be remembered forever. But it can also be that moment. I can't believe I'm making all these sports references, but it could also be that moment where the Seahawks were in the super bowl and instead of like doing the run in, they do the

[Drew]

weird pass, hot pass at the goal line.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And it was just like, what is happening? And now it's, you're a clown forever. And if he loses all of this, the. The likelihood that he will be pursued legally for until he dies are basically 100%. So it. Oh, God, it's just this existential game. But he. He does have a chance if he can pull it off. But there's so much collateral damage in all of this, it's impossible to say whether he's going to be able to get it across the finish line.

[Drew]

We have to talk about the elephant in the room for a war that's almost over. The U.S. army did something really, really tricky here where they increased the military enlistment age from 34 to 42.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right about now. You must be so stoked that you're 53.

[Drew]

I just missed it. Just missed the cusp.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, as just to check in, because I do think it's important that we say this every now and then. That's a lie. And this is a whole thing that I did to show that you can say, I'm about to lie to you, flag it for everybody and say, this is a lie, but I'm gonna repeat it. And because I repeat it, it's gonna become true. And there are people that actually think you're 53. It is so fucking true.

[Drew]

There's so many people clutching their pearls right now. Like, what? No, you. How dare you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Keep in mind, I'm gonna keep lying about this because I want to remind you guys how easy it is if you just repeat something, people will believe it. So this is my last reminder for a while. It's all a lie.

[Drew]

Like, every hundred shows will drop another reminder that this is a lie. Yes. But the maximum enlisted age slid up from 34 to 42. And coincidentally, they're also removing. They're providing waivers for a single conviction of possession of marijuana. And they're implementing this on 420. So this is very interesting to troll us.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We don't have a puff, puff, give sound effect.

[Drew]

But yeah, so it quiet as is kept. Now, I know we were talking about this before. Now this doesn't mean this is for a draft or anything like that. But what it does mean is you can now be in the army up until the age of 42. So if you are drafted, the draft impacts people who are eligible for the Army. So by second order, you will then be eligible for a draft as long as you're up to.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's like terraforming, should they want to create a draft. And by the way, for the people that are already in the military, if you would normally be. Did they hard boot you if you

[Drew]

were at a certain rank transition?

[Tom Bilyeu]

So it basically kind of like extending the retirement age. You immediately have a bigger workforce than you otherwise would have had. And then if they were to do a draft, theoretically, you've extended now the number of people that you have in your poll to draw from. Which is why Drew is very excited that he's 53 and he's outside the window.

[Drew]

I just saw this meme because these are both very funny things, very serious things. But if I don't laugh about it, I'm going to be angry at the government.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Correct.

[Drew]

Millennials realizing they're about to be drafted. No, we just did 9, 11. We had to go through the Great Recession. Now we gotta get drafted. Shout out to millennials. We're struggling over here. Also, another funny thing from Trump's Converse. Trump's press, when Pete Hegseth was on the mic. I don't know if you've seen this.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I have. You have to look at your. Your screens now, boys and girls. This isn't gonna make any sense, but it's pretty funny. As viciously as possible from moment one. And that's why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs. You have a choice. As we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the President talked about. It takes a second to do this. The President has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees. Our job is to ensure that here it comes with. We're keeping our hand on that throttle as long as hard as is necessary to ensure that they're interested in us. Oh, God, yeah.

[Drew]

Trump is funny. Trump is funny.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Trump is funny. He legitimately has comedic timing. And that is. He. Look, he's got Riz, man. And that's how he gets away with a lot of this stuff is just. So I went to that event at Mar a Lago, whatever, a year ago, and he was legitimately funny. And the. The whole audience, like, this was at the height of his dance thing, the ymca, like when he had first done that.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And he started dancing for the crowd and everybody was like, just laughing their asses off. And I was like, whoa, this. You can say what you want, but he's got charm, he's got charisma, and that's part of how he's risen through the ranks. The way that he has is wild.

[Drew]

But with us on the cusp of winning a war, this draft age thing is interesting. Yeah, we're going to get to the tsa. The ice agents in the airport is interesting. The amount of false flags news is interesting. There is some conspiracy theorists on Twitter. I didn't want to give him, like, feedback, but it was an interesting theory that, yeah, first they're going to raise the draft age, then they're going to do a false flag attack. And then since ice ages are in the airport, we're not going to be able to leave because they could just grab you if you try to flee the country. And he was just kind of mapping all these things together. And I was like, yeah, I don't think it was that 67D chess. But at the same time, these are things that are contrary to if we're winning, winding down a war, we wouldn't really need to have these other things that are happening at the same time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, I mean, in fairness to Trump, I don't. He says that the war is won. He says that it's going to be short, but he's not exactly saying, like, we're pulling out today. So I think he's pretty consistent. Here are the things they will have to agree to. If they don't agree to them, I'm going to keep blowing shit up, up to and including their infrastructure. I hope they don't force me to do it, but I will do it if they force me. And so how you read if they force me is, you know, going to determine where you come down on whether what Trump is doing is right. Just whatever the. I'll just plant a flag again to remind everybody. The real thing to think about is how many people had Iran on their radar in a big way before he went in. And so there is a normalization of like, very few people now are still banging the drum of just full stop, we shouldn't be in Iran, certainly not on the call it mega crowd. And that's where I constantly remind myself to say, okay, if I wasn't banging the drum about the threat of Iran, I need to really check my mental map of what am I going to learn about this, as to why I didn't see this as a problem that we should be focused on I really didn't see Venezuela coming. Like that wasn't on my radar. So it's like, okay, cool. There are things from a geopolitical perspective that I don't have pre mapped out. And I think this is part of what made Professor Jiang so interesting to people was he called this almost two years ago. So he was mapping something about the interconnectedness of the us, China, oil, the Middle east in a way that other people weren't mapping. That had higher predictive validity. And so that I think is really important for people to understand that the things that they're not able to map well. And so when you become purely reactive to what's happening, that's where it gets a little bit dangerous. And so the place that I've been focused on is China economics. China economics, right. So that whole triangle I understand pretty well. But I do remind myself, when we started dropping bombs the first time on Iran, I did not see that coming. And so. And then I was super confused that he was going back into Iran. So I did not have a mental map. I understood the things that people were saying, but I did not understand sort of the real cause and effect that was going on beneath the surface. So. So, yeah, important to look at that. Okay, anyway, having said all that, now when I look at what Trump is doing, he's being very clear. He's got an agenda. He's said over and over, people will say that he doesn't. He's not being clear about what he wants, he's not being clear about what he will do to get it, and he's not being clear about what he will do to exit if he doesn't get it. But he's being very clear about what he wants to get. So on that front, it's like, I'm driving towards this. This is exactly what we're going to do. We're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age. I hope they agree. If they don't, we're going to start taking apart their infrastructure. Then Iran is saying what they're going to do. And that's where I worry is that because there's no one, he couldn't message it even if he did have it, because now you're going to queue off Iran. Like what the price is that we're willing to pay and where we're going to hard tap out. Odd reference, but that's exactly what happened to FTX when they imploded was because what's her name, Caroline? Something signaled basically, this is what we're willing to pay and so people are like, oh, cool, then we're just going to push the price beyond that and you're not going to be able to pay anymore. And that's how they collapsed it. And so you would get a similar effect if Trump was like, you know, this is like what we're going to do to exit. If we're not able to get them to do xyz, then they go, oh, cool, we're just not going to let you do xyz. And then we know what your exit plan is. So even if he has one, he's not going to be able to message it. But that's where I'm like, I don't know that there is a super easy way to get out of it. Because literally at this point, he can't leave. If the Strait of Hormuz is closed, he can't leave. You will find yourself in a position where every American will go, yeah, you need to go bomb them. Because if, if we become completely isolated from the rest of the world, if our energy costs are going up now, that part is actually something worth a deep dive because we're an energy exporter. But there, I have a feeling there's enough knock on effect and all of that that we would still run into trouble, which is why our energy prices fluctuate as well, because theoretically, if we're producing all of our oil, it wouldn't. So there are ways that, yes, we're an energy exporter, but I'm sure, as you look at it, there are going to be things where for simplicity's sake or type of crude or whatever were bringing it in. So I don't think that we would get out unscathed. And if other allies are caught up in that, they're not going to let us exit. So that would be. Yeah, there. I don't think there is an exit strategy if the Strait is still closed.

[Drew]

There is reports now that the Strait of Hormuz has opened up and Iran is charging to get ships through it. I'm trying to pull up this tweet. I don't.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What I saw was they're charging $2 million per transit, which is very expensive, and they are not letting us and Israeli tankers go through. So if that's true, from a US Perspective, it's still not open.

[Drew]

Yeah, copy. Interesting, though.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And that's. I mean, we've talked about this before, but if you're Iran, that's a smart play. You isolate them from their allies. You get everybody to go, Donald, I love you, but I need my energy. I will not be able to stay in power. My own people will revolt if I don't get this and that across Asia. Just true. Taking a short break. But there's more impact Theory after Stay tuned. Let's talk about one thing your business cannot afford to get wrong. It's not your product. It's not even your marketing. It's not payroll. It's your decisions. Every wrong call starts the same way. Someone did not have the numbers. They looked at incomplete data from different systems and went with their gut and it cost them. Netsuite by Oracle fixes all of this. It's the number one AI, cloud, ERP trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM all into one source of truth. That connected data makes your AI smarter so it doesn't guess. It knows if your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Get NetSuite's free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com theory the guide is free to you at netsuite.com theory Again, that's netsuite.com theory Spring starts at the Home Depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300 like the next grill 4 burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go to spot the patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot exclusion supply. See homedepot.com Pricematch for details. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time. New friends Gary the Snake and your last name the Snake Dream Team. Hit new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney Plus. Rated PG and right now you can get Disney plus and Hulu for just 4.99amonth for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months, Plan Auto renews at 12.99amonth.

[Drew]

Terms apply.

[Tom Bilyeu]

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

[Drew]

Spain just announced that they got approved to have their ships go through and you know the Spanish PM has been beefing with Trump so it is seem like they're chugging away and Asia is A week and a half away from total collapse over there. So we'll see a lot of the Philippines, Vietnam and those countries probably crash as well, so. Or come to the table with Iran. So interesting to see how it all plays out. In other news, there has been some speculation about insider trading because there have been some monster bets. It's one thing to do it on the poly market, Kalashi. It's another thing to do it on the stock market and the futures market in like the head of the SEC just stepped down because of it. What was her name?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't think she was the head of the sec.

[Drew]

Enforcement Director Margaret Ryan resigned last week reportedly because she got into a fight with her agency bosses about going into the investigating the Trump's family's conduct. And there has been some monster traits. Break it down for us.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. So everybody needs to be cognizant of two things. You must have trust in your markets. If you don't have trust in the markets, the one thing in your economy that's working, poof, goes away. That that is something that we really have to focus on. And then number two, that there's nothing right now that's actually linking this to Trump. I think everybody's right to be paranoid because it really just seems like there is something going on where people are getting insider information from the Trump administration and placing these bets. Because in a single one minute window on Monday morning, 14 minutes before Trump posted on True Social, someone placed a $580 million bet in oil futures and a $1.5 million bet on S&P 500 futures. These orders were four to six times larger than anything else trading at that hour. When Trump's post hit, oil dropped and equities jumped. So whoever placed those bets made a staggering fortune. Now, like I was saying, no one has been charged yet. No one has even been identified yet. The White House denies any wrongdoing, but the pattern is deeply alarming for anybody that believes these markets have to be fair, that insider trading is a thing for a reason. Similar trades appeared minutes before Trump announced a 90 day tariff pause back in April. Of 25 anonymous poly market accounts have been placed facing winning bets just before US Strikes on Venezuela and in the opening hours of the Iran war last month, six anonymous accounts reportedly made $1.2 million betting on the precise timing of US strikes on Tehran. Now listen, some people are just going to take stupid risks and they're going to win. If you look at the market, you will see people make huge bets and then just get clobbered so it happens all the time. It's entirely possible that these are not insider information. They are just people that were willing to bet, bet a lot on a gut instinct. But yo, you've got to do the investigation. The Financial Times, BBC Axios have all documented Monday's trades. Market analysts are calling them highly unusual. Senator Chris Murphy called them mind blowing corruption. We'll see in time if that's true. But he's asking the right question. Who was it? Who's making this trade? Confidence in the markets is the bedrock of that system working. Every retail investor, every pension fund, every small business owner who puts their savings to work does so trusting that no one has an unfair advantage. But when you're getting insider information, you have an unfair advantage and it just makes people throw their hands up and give up. Guys, when you have the kind of K shaped economy where we are being robbed blind by the government through inflation, you can't also have people robbing you blind on the upside because they have insider information. Like it is just crazy. We, we are rapidly becoming a society that is just like, well, it's all burning down anyway, so I'm just going to take maximum advantage on my way out. That, that is dire. That is dire. It really makes me think a lot about my own engagement in the world and like what, what is the right way to deal with all of this stuff? I think about this a lot. I do sometimes feel like there's a very, very, very, very small number of people that will ever hear the arguments that I'm putting forward. Of the small people that will ever hear the arguments that I'm putting forward, a vanishingly small number will actually update their mental model. So every now and then it does feel like the only thing that changes people is pain and suffering. But it feels like from a moral perspective, to earn my own respect, I have to at least try. So I get it. I get the desperation that people must feel. Looking at a K shaped economy, looking at insider potential, insider trading, like what we're seeing right now and the call of the hopeless abyss is very compelling. And I think all of us have to reject that. The moment that we totally give up on trust and that trust breaks, the moment that the market becomes seen by all of us is just a casino where insiders are going to cash out while everybody else is left holding the bag and we just check out and stop participating is the moment that we completely give up and the parasites in the system eat everything. And I think that the accelerant that nihilism would bring in this moment is something we absolutely cannot afford. So we've got to turn to a call for enforcement to be the backstop. It can't be something that weakens. At this moment, Axios is reporting that the DOJ's Public Integrity Section was cut from 36 lawyers to two last year. It's probably not the right time to do that. Reuters reports the SEC's top enforcement official, as Drew was just saying, resigned after being blocked from pursuing cases touching Trump's circle. You have to. You have to look at what everybody's doing, man. You can't flinch away. Even if you love the Trump admin, you've really just got a hunger for whatever is true. It's the same thing I feel about the Epstein files. It's going to be some uncomfortable stuff. Everybody's going to have somebody that they like, they don't want to see caught up in that. You just got to invite it. You've got to invite. Whatever's true is true. All right. I think it would be very unwise to ignore all of this and sweep it under the rug right now. Whoever made these trades, connected to this administration or not, they need to be identified and investigated. Right. You don't want somebody getting in trouble for making a dope bet. But look at it. Make sure that we're all good. Market integrity should not be a partisan issue. It should be the foundation that the whole system runs on. So as of right now, the SEC hasn't commented. We'll see. No charges have been filed. Just as a reminder, we don't know that anybody has done anything wrong, but boy, oh, boy, is it suspicious. So let's take a look.

[Drew]

See, you are very generous with your assessment of that, because the timing of that is unheard of. The scale of it is unheard of. The 1.5 billion on the S and P futures was a record. Like, literally a record bet. Yeah. Five minutes before Trump tweets that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

If you want to know what I think, I think it's insider information. I think it's obvious that it's insider information. But I also think that we have a judicial system for a reason. And I don't think people understand. When this stuff breaks, it breaks. Bad people die. Lots of them. They go to jail when they shouldn't, lots of them. And it's always. The system is always broken by somebody who's convinced that they're right, and then it stops working the way that you thought it would. There are second and third order consequences that you weren't expecting, but now you're overextended now you need to stay in power. And now there are people bang for your blood. And so you realize I've got to build like this shell around me to protect myself. And now all of a sudden, you are the very monster that you were trying to protect yourself from. So it's one of those men, we have to be really careful. This stuff needs to work its way through a system that's functioning. I mean, I'll fractal hard on getting God, what do they call activists getting activist judges out. Like judges should be celebrated for being impartial. Like, you want the person that's like, you can't figure out what team they're on. One of the greatest compliments I've ever been paid was by somebody that follows the show. And they were like, tom, I really tried to figure out what camp you're in. He's like, I still am not sure. Like, I'm never sure which side of an argument you're going to come down on. And I like that. That's my goal. I don't want to know ahead of time what side of an argument I'm going to come down on just because of who else supports it or hates it. I try to keep that in mind as I look at mom Donnie, like, he's the person that I most like. Be careful because that one to me is like, there's socialism porn for me where I just want to bang the table, flip it over and the outrage feels so good. And so, yeah, I know that I have to really be careful there. But I don't think people, not many people run that same algorithm.

[Drew]

Yeah, there's, I think a lot of times what we think differentiates a first world country and a developing country is roads, infrastructure, sanitation, things like that. But it's really trust in systems, trust in government.

[Tom Bilyeu]

If you God damn, that's a banger.

[Drew]

Yeah. If you don't have that trust in that, you're just as bad as those companies that you call corrupt and run down and all these other things.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'll even say if going to the first thing that you said, the thing that differentiates us isn't just the economics. The thing that differentiates us is trust and institutions, trust with each other. What people call a high trust society. And not ask people to think of it as good or bad, but think of it as effective or not effective. Like, do you want to live in a high trust society or not? And when you look at the consequences of not living in a high trust society, everybody just tries to rob the system in a low trust society. And we, when you really start looking at this stuff, you realize that the whole idea of the tragedy of the commons is a cultural thing. And part of the, part of the thing that makes Japan such a fascinating culture is they don't have a tragedy of the commons because their culture, or it's certainly not to the scale that other cultures would be. Their culture hammers at home so hard. This is why during the last World cup people were shocked that Japan was going around and cleaning up the stadium. Because like that's just in their culture. That's what you do. It's not just about picking up your own trash, it's making sure that it's dope. Anybody that's been to Tokyo, I, I was shocked. People just carry their trash around with them. There's no trash cans anywhere. And I was like, if you didn't have trash cans in America, then people would just litter. That's the tragedy of the commons, where people don't think about. And look, I'm not a collectivist, I'm an individualist. For sure, for sure, for sure. But, but when you're an individualist who believes, ah, yes, but from an evolutionary standpoint, I need to be plugged into a society and so I want to be able to do my thing. I want to be able to fight my war, I want to be able to have freedom, all of that. But in my freedom, one of the things I'm going to exercise is a self accepted responsibility to the group. And when it is self accepted and not pressed down on you from above, it's extraordinary. Think about how you feel towards your family. It's like that you want to feel that as broadly as you can so that you're creating a system that works for everybody. This is why I simultaneously want to win capitalism the most. But at the same time, I want to make sure that capitalism is set up in a way that isn't rigged against anybody. But that means I have to be willing to lose. And that's really hard for people to do. But if we can beat that into the culture, like that's worthy of respect. We want to respect the guy that's like really trying to like play this game to win, but at the same time is like, I don't want the game rigged, even if it's to my advantage. It's tough. America is more and more sliding into a nihilistic. I really need to learn the name for this. Postcolonialism or something. There's a name for this Vibe of America stole everything that it has and therefore needs to be plundered. And that's why you're seeing the level of fraud that we're seeing and people getting up in arms when you've got Doge trying to come in and say, but there's. Wait, hold on. There's waste, fraud and abuse. Can we not all agree? No, we can all agree. Motherfucker, get out. Like, you know, firebombing Teslas. That. That is a mentality that does not believe in property rights in the way that we used to, that believes that the people that have earned something have done so nefariously and therefore things need to be taken from them. That's so dark. And that will not lead anywh. Good.

[Drew]

Yeah, we'll see. I think we're in a time right now where we have a president who has lied to the American people. Whether it's been. Whether it's.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You've never lived in a time where you didn't have a president lying to the American people.

[Drew]

Absolutely. But I guess now it's. It's different when it's a lie. In order to protect the sovereignty of the nation versus something to appease my ego or my base. There's facts.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You think Trump lies in a unique way?

[Drew]

Yes, in a brazen way. In a way that it's almost like the lack of hiding something technically is a lie. So withholding information is different than making things up. And I think that there's a difference in that dishonesty. But on the flip side, we can all. It's. Trump's an easy target. We can all throw our tomatoes at him. But then when you do uproot California fraud, Minnesota fraud, anything that the Democrats can then stand on and it's tangible, there's people who actually proved it. Hey, this is a facility that just built. $3 million. It is two pizzas and a Corona inside. I think something's not. Is up with this. And for some reason, oh, that's. You're just being. They get blinded to it. They don't want to call out those lies. So it's one of those things where it's. As America, we need to. Really need to come to a reckoning. Because I do think right now, if you just look at what the government is doing, insider trading, Medicare fraud, healthcare fraud, all these other frauds, everybody's getting lobby money. The fact that we have TSA lines that are crazy, even though everybody who bought a ticket is paying for TSA through our security fee that somehow got rerouted to Congress for a slush fund. So it's like the people who are robbing us blind are the same people that are supposed to be enacting these laws and stopping it from happening. And I think that trust is now broken. That window is now transparent. Whether it's unusual Rails tracking insider trading, whether again, it's politicians saying one thing on January and then something completely different in March with no change of information. Just the tide has turned. And I need to figure out how to rile up ahead of the midterms. I think that these things are just getting worse and worse. And as we're rolling down the hill, the snowball is getting bigger and bigger. And eventually we're going to get to a point where it's past the point of no return, and then it's every man for himself pressed a button, we're going to default on our bills and people are going to lose trust in America because right now, Americans are losing trust within it. But the world is also starting to see, like, wait, America. America isn't the thing that it's been selling us for the last 250 years.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I worry we're already there. I don't want it to be true. This is what I was trying to get at with saying being cynical, being nihilistic isn't. I know that's not the right answer. Yeah, but it is. History tells us that what people need is pain and suffering. And that. And what I mean by that is, if everything is easy, then you form a mental model of the world. This is all easy, easy come, no problem. I don't have to work for this. We don't have to be disciplined. Nothing in life tells us anything bad is going to happen by being undisciplined. And it takes so long for the problem to really manifest in a really real way. So take female promiscuity, any individual woman. I want you to enjoy your life as you see fit. So that's great. But there's a consequence which is that when men don't feel like they have to rise to a certain level to gain sexual access, then all of that innovation engine begins to die. And it's one of those where then you go, okay, but what are you actually saying women should do? Are you saying that women have some responsibility to men to, like, make them earn sex when women should just be able to enjoy their lives sexually? And what I'm saying is, if they don't, you get problems that we're seeing now where men just check out, they're going and dealing with it. In their own way, pornography, video games, whatever. But they're numbing themselves out, checking out of that system. And so this isn't about moral right and wrong. This is about cause and effect. And when women don't become sexual gatekeepers and they don't make it hard to earn their affections, and there isn't a push towards monogamy where way more men have access to a woman than when all women are essentially competing for this really, really small, finite group of men, then there's a knock on effect. And so as a culture, if we don't promote certain values over others, then you're going to get a different world. And so then we, it, it is, there's something about being aware of these things that is becoming deeply problematic. When it was hidden and very few people talked about this stuff and they could just sort of move society behind the scenes, like through a religious agenda or whatever. It worked because you didn't realize that was a game being played. But now the information is just so in our faces and people have like a natural revulsion to this stuff. And I, this comes back to, you're in the age of information where there's high velocity, high volume of information. It's in everybody's face all the time. We're aware of all the underlying motives. Which is a big part of why I think you think Trump lies uniquely. I would say Trump has a different style of lying, but in terms of magnitude, no, he just, he'll make stats up, he'll say everything is the biggest and the best and all that. And so you could count those as all individual lies. But when people rack that up, like when you hear him debate and they go, he lied 134 times. And you realize that 130 of those were him saying it's the biggest ever, it's the greatest ever, whatever, which is a lie, it's not true. And at the same time is utterly pointless. So that's where I'm like, yeah, but like if you look at the way that politicians not only hide things, but they will just, just outright lie, reframe position, try to move people. It's crazy. So I don't know what happens. I don't know what the final outcome is going to be of a society that has this volume and velocity of information that we're completely aware of how all of these things work because people will start pushing back for weird ass reasons.

[Drew]

We shall see. We shall see. Let's jump over to the airport where depending on what city you're in, it's either a madhouse or what's not Too bad. I seen conflicting reports. I know personal people who've been traveling in Houston. Houston was the Met was a shit show, but yesterday it was fine. My family's in JFK right now. It was a shit show for them. My brother's flying out of Atlanta. I'm curious to see how he goes. So I'm trying. I'm curious to see what everybody's experiences are. If you've traveled recently, please drop it in the chat. But Trump announced that he is sending ICE agents to the airport to help tsa. I'm trying to move the mouse to click the chat to move tsa. And they have deployed starting Monday morning. Atlanta is showing here. Seems like it's helping. And Matt von was wall retweeted. So basically ICE deploy somewhere. TSA line plummet earlier this year. Traffic vantages d er's close out e construction sites are ghost towns F class sizes shrink and we're supposed to believe that there are only 11 million illegal aliens country do you think that the shortened lines have to do with illegals not flying anymore, or is this something else entirely?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think right now we don't have enough information to know if what we're seeing in the airports is because TSA is being helped by ice. And ICE is super efficient or at least really good at getting the TSA agents focused on only the things that they're trained to do. And then ICE is just taking care of everything else. And so now we're moving people through the system or if ISIS mere presence means that illegal aliens are like, up can't travel now. And what we're really seeing is that we have a much larger illegal population than we thought we did. It's also possible that it's a combination of both. I think it's going to be very hard for us to begin teasing these things apart. This is going to be one of the biggest things that we have to face moving forward as a nation. Right now we're so pulled. Our attention is pulled overseas. What's happening in the Middle east or what was happening in Venezuela or Cuba that we're forgetting that one of the biggest battles is going to be a cultural fight over how we're going to handle immigration. And that I think, comes down to how we think about our political power structure. Because right now, illegal aliens absolutely serves whatever party is going to give more things away for free. Right now, that is the Democratic Party. So the Democrat Party right now is wildly advantaged by having illegal aliens. And if People can abstract it away from that for a second and just understand there is a power move to play where either side can decide we're going to give a bunch of social benefits. And if you have an open border and social benefits, you are going to attract people and they are going to vote for whoever's going to continue to give them social benefits. And by the way, you're attracting a very different type of person than you would otherwise attract. I've covered this stat before, but when you bring in illegal aliens, it's actually good for the economy for a very brief period of time. And then over time, the people that come in start drawing off of the social systems far more than they contribute. So people will often point to. But look, when you bring in aliens like you get this spike in the economy, everything's great. They pay into these systems, they don't pull out. And then over time, you realize it's the exact opposite and it becomes a massive drain. So you've got that, you've got voter integrity, you've got just the sheer volume of illegals that are going to influence a whole lot of different things in the economy. Not only tax rates, but their bodies in the census, which then impact the number of seats in Congress. Plus, we're going to have to contend with, just from a pure values play, what countries are we going to let people come in from? You're going to have to contend with Muslim immigration, which I will say, of course it's never all. But they're running the Jewish strategy that was run in Israel. People get at all up in arms about that, but are they up in arms about it happening in Europe? Potentially beginning to happen in America? Same strategy, man, just two different groups of people. And so we are going to have to confront all of that stuff. And so we're getting this really weird teaser of it right now, but we don't have enough information with ICE going into the airports to know exactly what's happening. But this is that little bit of the iceberg that's poking its head up above the waterline that America is going to have to contend with full stop. This is going to be a massive issue. Issue.

[Drew]

I have to shout out Delta because this, I think is the biggest move out of all this airport nonsense that we've been talking about for the last week. Delta is suspending its special service desk for members of Congress until TSA is fully funded. Delta says members of Congress will now be treated like all other flying customers. And I think that this is a very important aspect because the People who are literally holding American people hostage in the airport because they're bickering over a bill. They get special treatment, special service desk, private flights, they don't have to deal with that. So shout out to Delta for this. Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's amazing. Yes, please make people deal with the realities of their own policy. For sure. I love that.

[Drew]

All right, let's jump over to Argentina where there has been some crazy economic breakthroughs. Javier Milei has gotten a lot of beef, but I know you like to bang this anti socialism drum, so I'm gonna let you take this story.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, this one, we're gonna check in with Argentina every so often. It really is important that we look at the realities on the ground because if it's not working, we need to know why, what's broken? My goal is to understand what economic principles actually work. But Argentina's latest report card is in and their poverty rate just hit a 10 year low. One year ago, more than half the country was poor. That number is now 31.6%. That's roughly 5 million people pulled out of poverty in just 18 months. Guys, please, we've really got to understand what to clap for and whatnot. You've got Cuba stuck forever in an endless cycle of poverty, not able to get out. People flying over there being excited, saying it's America's fault that forever they've been poor. What, now you've got Argentina that, hey, they're making hard choices, there's no doubt. But when Javier Milei took office In December of 23, Argentina was a disaster. Inflation was running above 200%, above 200% annually. The government was spending money it didn't have and nearly 20 million Argentines were living in poverty. Milei's solution, radical, hardcore difficult. For schwes, however, at least it was aligned with how economics actually work. He slashed government spending, eliminated subsidies, devalued the currency and fired thousands of government workers. Economists predicted that there was going to be mass suffering, which is crazy because economists should know this is how the economy works. The IMF was even issuing warnings. Critics called it economic suicide. I would like to line up each one of those critics. I want to know a lot more about them. I have a feeling they're going to sound a lot like the Biden senior economic advisor who could not explain modern monetary theory. Now, there was initial pain. When Javier Milane came to office. At first, poverty actually went up and you have to be honest about that. Prices surged, welfare payments dried up. People were super nervous that they had just elected a madman. That was going to drive them in the wrong direction. But then, and this is the part people do not enjoy the reality of this one, people adapted. I remember Milei said some absolutely unhinged shit. It happened to be true. Which is. I'm tired of hearing this is a paraphrase, but I'm tired of hearing that people are going to die if I institute these policies. Somehow, some way, people always find a way not to die. Now that sounds super heartless, but it's actually true. People always adapt. And as they adapted and realized they weren't going to be able to suck on the government teat anymore, inflation collapsed from triple digits to somewhere in the 30 to 70% annualized. Now that is still horrific, but it is much, much, much better now. This is the big one. Argentina's GDP grew by a staggering 4.4% in 2025. That is a massive rebound. They, they had been contracting for years. So negative growth and to swing all the way to positive 4.4%. 4.4. We would love to have 4.4 growth here in America. America. As a result, the. As the growth rate kicked up, the poverty rate began to plummet. It dropped from 53% all the way down to what we were talking about before. 31.6%. Well below where it had been before Milei was elected. This is a direct comparison to New York. So he started deregulating rent policies. Okay, deregulating rent policies. So Mamdani wants to freeze rent. He wants to regulate rent because he wants to bring prices down, which is ludicrous. It will have the exact opposite effect. That is obvious. It is knowable. So either Mamdani is a moron, completely ignorant to how economics works, or he's got a different agenda. Which I will say I think he has a different agenda. I think this is about plundering taxpayers. I don't think it has anything to do with actually thinking this is going to work. So Milei deregulates policies in rental policies. The results are insanely staggering. Landlords had been pulling their properties off the market for years because rents were so low. Kept artificially low, by the way. They couldn't afford to have tenants in them. Tenants are an expense line. And it had gotten to the point where it was better to let that sit vacant even though they were losing money, because they would lose less money than having renters in them. So now people come flooding back into the market. Rental listings in Buenos Aires surged by more than 170%. Okay, you can't build buildings that fast. So this is people just saying, nope, I'm not renting this, and then going, cool, now that I can actually charge what this is worth, I'm going to rent it. Even though prices went up because there was so much more on the market, at an inflation adjusted rate, rents fell by up to 40%. Now anybody paying attention to economics, that's exactly what they would expect. With less regulation, you get more supply and therefore lower prices. That is what economics predicts. And now obviously we're seeing reality backs it up. But nonetheless, that is not going to stop people in Cuba, people in New York from running the exact opposite strategy. It's maddening. Now there was a lot of hand wringing when the U.S. provided a $20 billion currency swap line in October of 25, obviously to help stabilize the peso. But Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said, listen, this is not, we're not giving them money, this is a loan. And this could be actually a profit center for the US and it actually ended up being a profit center. The US made money by loaning them money. So they had made 20 billion available, but Argentina only ended up drawing 2.5 billion of the available credit, meaning they didn't really have that big of a problem. They just needed a little bit of assistance. They repaid the loan ahead of schedule and with interest. So it wasn't charity, not a bailout, it was temporary, it was profitable, and it was designed to stabilize the peso for an ally who was in the middle of having to make a bunch of hard choices to reignite their economy. And so when you think about trying to help our allies plug back in to the global economy after roughly 100 years of, of just absolutely moronic, self destructive socialist policies ended up being a pretty great thing. You took somebody that had been disconnected from the global economy that was absolutely poverty stricken, a nation that was full of promise maybe, but they had been completely hampered by a dysfunctional economy and you helped them get back on their feet. Now, by way of keeping myself sober and being completely honest about where we are, Argentina is not out of the woods yet. This is a very difficult transition that requires you to get people on board inside of your own country to deal with some of the pain that has come along with this, to believe in this long term that you're actually going to find your way out of it. It would not take much for them to go spiraling back into economic lunacy because I bet there are still people in the system that are mad that they're not getting free handouts anymore. So we need to accept that this is fragile, that it could break, that it could go the wrong way. Also Malay could start doing dumb shit and making mistakes. This is very complicated, but the progress so far has been absolutely incredible. And anybody that's not willing to acknowledge that has a political agenda, not an actual economic agenda. So as a world once again seems locked into this weird tractor beam of debating whether socialism actually works or not, let's hope that people will see what's going on in, in Argentina, see what best practices look like, see that the policies that they're running yield the best results. Because right now, as I was saying at the top we are dealing with this here in New York City. And I very much think that Mamdani and the things that he stands for are the heart of the current Democratic Party. I think that this then ties directly into voter integrity. It ties directly into open borders and, and how many people we've let into the country. So we've got to be very, very thoughtful about what yields long term prosperity for as many people as possible. Because you've got the right trying to hollow out the middle class. That's a little unfair. But the psychopaths on the right are hollowing out the middle class and the psychopaths on the left are trying to go full socialist. And we need to find all the reasonable people and march them towards the middle to make sure that we have a thriving middle class. If you just look at the middle class health as like a barometer of whether what you're doing is working or not, you're going to be in pretty good shape right now. The extremes on either side are destroying the middle class together. It's horrific. Cheers to Argentina.

[Drew]

Sips tea I want to daisy chain this with a report that came out from Fortune that said the treasury, this is what happens when you use unfiltered paywall wells. The treasury, the US treasury is insolvent. We talked about this yesterday and I thought it was like a banger on the actual government treasury. And mind you guys, a lot of these government documents are free, so don't take our word for it. Go to the government treasury, you can download the budget, you can see the spreadsheet yourself. We have 47 trillion dollars in liabilities, we have 6 trillion in assets on paper. Just no nuance. Looking at hard numbers, there's no asterisks, there's no people, there's. We're not talking about budgets or illegals or Social Security, we're not talking about any categories, just top line numbers. The like. I don't even want to say the budget deficit because that's us continuing to climb into it. Our pass bills are crazy, our wealth, our worth is crazy. It's a, it's alarmingly high number. And if it was any other country, I do believe that it would be a red flag of red alarm ringing. People would flee immediately. Greece was in a quote unquote better situation and it got defaulted on for less. So what do you think is differentiating America? And then we can go into how that ties into the end of socialism.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So people don't understand what a reserve currency is. The second you understand what how a reserve currency actually functions in the market. I have a deep dive that touches on this coming up next week. And you'll understand that the US is never going to default on its debts unless it chooses to do so, because we can always print money. So the real thing that people have to worry about in the US is hyperinflation. So I don't think you guys ever have to worry about the US defaulting. So anybody that says that the US Is insolvent is trying to make a political point because it sounds scary, but the reality is, the thing you need to be afraid of is that they will print more and more money to, to avoid defaulting to make sure that they're not insolvent so that they can rob from everybody by stealing their purchasing power. And that's not just Americans, that's everybody. So there's something called the Euro dollar system. It's the world's worst name. This is so stupid. But the Euro dollar, by the way, is not a different currency. And it has nothing to do with Europe. It is about dollars that can be printed out of thin air by countries other than America, which is wild. And I don't think people realize that there is an absolutely gigantic amount of money out in the world that's created and destroyed through credit every day. And so this is the thing that made 2008 so scary was the euro dollar system froze. And that was when I was like, oh, this is like all of global trade. The way that we facilitate everything is by putting the dollar in between. Any currency that wants to swap, swap with each other. So if you're Switzerland and you want to do business with Japan, you're going to put the dollar in between your two currencies. And so that system requires debt to be loaned out sometimes just overnight, sometimes 30, 60, 90 days, but basically never more than that. And so all of these trillions of dollars are coming into and out of existence very Rapidly and it's outside of the control of the Fed. But because it's through debt yet everybody's able to do this. And it is crazy, but that's the system that you're able to extend your reach to everybody using the euro dollar system, everybody storing their money in dollars or saving their money in dollars. So central banks holding dollars, et cetera, et cetera, you're able to inflate the money supply, steal the purchasing power of all those people. But the dollar extends a lot farther than anybody realizes. And this is why when people talk about like what's the reserve currency? It's that, it's that thing that facilitates the trade across all borders. So it is, it really is an exorbitant privilege. So people need to be terrified of how the US is economically. But when somebody says that we're insolvent, and I might say it from time to time because I'm trying to get somebody's attention, but the real thing that you want to focus on is that they will just inflate, inflate, inflate the currency until somebody says, yeah, we're not going to be in the system anymore. Which obviously they're already trying to do. It's a huge part of what's going on in Iran because if they do that then we would default, then we would be insolvent because you don't have the ability to just print your way out of this.

[Drew]

So yeah, there are some so dire, man, there's politicians like Rand Paul who says he has a five point plan that could get the America out of, out of debt. Yeah, we have Javier Malay, who you are standing up right now that says this has been a tough austerity plan but in three years I was able to turn the country around.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. And it's three months by the way, I think less than three years.

[Drew]

America is doing none of that because right now we're not building up the middle class, we're extending to another war. We talked about invading another country. We have military operations in four different continents. So what should we be doing that we're not doing? Because I don't want to look at the current administration and say that they're are fighting for us to get out of debt or reduce the deficit because they haven't been doing any of that. The last administration hasn't. The last one, the last one I could keep going back until 1971 when they said that doesn't even matter, let's blow it all up. So we haven't been on this track. What Does America need to do to get on the right track in the vein of Argentina and turn things around, increase the middle class prosperity?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you remember those toys that you would pull the string on its back and it would say like a pre recorded message? Yeah, I, this question is the version of pulling the string in my back to let me say that you have to balance the budget. You can't be deficit spending and then printing money to cover the gap. Like if you stop those two things people would not recognize this country because the middle class would be able to start saving their money. And when you put people in a position where they can save their way to prosperity, you have in my opinion done the moral thing thing because it's the only thing everybody understands it quite literally if you are in your 20s or over and you don't understand that if I spend less than I make I'm in good shape, then you quite literally your IQ is so low we just can't even think about you. So this is one of those questions where do the moral thing do the thing that Everybody understands. It's a 1, 2 of let me buy a house and let me save for prosperity. You do like that. But you can't do that if you're inflating the money supply. And that's exactly what we're doing. So you have to stop giving things away for free. The government has to say we take in this much in taxes. The Laffer curve is real. We can only tax people so much. So this is how much we're going to tax people within that we're going to. I think you should let people vote on this kind of stuff, much like you would do with what are those things called a bond or whatever where they try to raise money. Like we want to have to make a school or a sporting center, whatever. And so you go vote on that shit. So making the budgets completely transparent, letting people comb through it with AI and then come up with some sort of, it's not going to be a line item voting but like come up with some sort of system where that if you want to spend something that isn't a balanced budget and people are going to be taxed additional for it because you have to get the tax to balance the budget to do this thing that they get a vote on that new thing thing. So it'll be something like Congress says, here's the balanced budget and here are four things that we want you to vote on where we want to increase taxes and do this that people go yeah, cool, I'm going to vote for that or I'm not going to vote for it, but that it needs to be done via taxes, not money printing. That way the people that are actually going to, they understand that it's going to come out of their pocket because right now it comes out of their pocket through deficit spending. They just don't understand it. And then honestly you probably have to revisit the number of people that pay taxes. Like right now it's close to 50% of Americans get public assistance. That's crazy. That's crazy. So you've got to figure that out. So yeah, that, that look, we could go on and on. You've got to bring manufacturing back, blah blah, blah. Globalism was not good for America. You've got to look at that.

[Drew]

Yes, but a lot of those things in the Argentinian model, they're not necessarily doing. I think he started with austerity, which is.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You want me to draw a very specific parallel to the things that Argentina has done that we should adopt. Yes, fire government employees. A lot of them, like a lot, a huge percentage because they don't, they're counted in gdp, but they don't actually grow anything. The government is, from a bureaucracy standpoint is growing absolutely out of control. That will also send a bunch of really intelligent people back into the private sector where they're going to be forced to compete and innovate to keep their jobs. So that's a huge win in. You've got to get all of your social services have to be means tested. So if somebody doesn't need them, they should not get them. So there was a guy recently, he's a multi millionaire but he doesn't have an income. So like I don't draw money out of impact theory, I just reinvest everything. So technically I have a small income because we have to do that for healthcare, but I would just reinvest it. So I take a very small salary. So I cover the fact that I have to, to get healthcare through impact theory and then I just then resend all my salary back into the company as an investment. So anyway, I don't take money out. So on paper I look impoverished. So I could be getting food stamps. Think about that. So that's crazy.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So anyway, this guy does it to prove this is stupid. We're not means testing this. We're trying to get people addicted to it so they'll vote for the people that give away the most free shit. We need to stop immediately doing that. You need people to work. And by the way, I would Lower. God, this one's going to be a hot take. People are not going to like this. I would lower the minimum wage in the places where it's getting ridiculous so that people that are otherwise unemployable can get a job. Because people just do not understand how business works. You look at that employee and you go, yeah, I'm not paying that person $20 or whatever. I'd rather get a robot. And not all robots are going to look humanoid, but I'd rather like get the grill thing that flips itself because I don't have to worry about any of the headaches that come with employees. And that person is just going to have a very hard time justifying $20. If they were, you know, whatever, $14, then yeah, I might hire them. So I get it. That one's going to be a hot take, whatever. But it's like the point of those early jobs is to get people into the workforce to get them some experience so that they can learn how this works, that they can get better, that they can move up. Like, I remember my cousin started at KFC and he was just like the minimum wage guy, like, running the fryer, and he just never left. And by the end was like a regional manager overseeing God knows how many stores, making a fortune. At one point, he was doing better than anyone else in the family. We were all like, God damn, like, literally from being the fry boy. And he just kept working his way up, working his way up, working his way up, working his way up. And AI is already going to crater a lot of entry level jobs. And so the fact that we put these other things, like the way people's mentality right now is every job needs to feed a family of four. That's ridiculous. So some jobs are meant to be the thing that's like, hey, I don't want to stay here for very long. And so you get kids in high school, you give them that job, and then they get some work experience. Experience. Anyway, I'll get off that hobby horse. That would be another one. Yeah. As far as parallels go to what Malay is doing, the last one I'll add is deregulate. But we're already doing that.

[Drew]

And. But to your point, that's why when Malay first came into office, poverty had that initial creep up and then it kind of regulated. Because you do have to fire a lot of people. You do have to keep people off of social services. You do have to tell people, sorry, government's not going to feed you anymore. You got to figure out it out and that's frustrating and that's very humbling. But then after you go through that range of emotions, then it comes back like, okay, bet.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, yeah, my dad, who. Thank you, Dad. I know you watch the show. I owe my dad a massive debt of gratitude. So he put me through college and the last five months before my graduation, with every check that he would send me, it said five more months, months, four more months, three more months, two more months. Because he was like, when you graduate, you get nothing. So I put you through college, I did my thing, and now good luck. And literally that was it. I never got another dime from my parents. And in fact, at one point I was helping to support my mom. And so that was hard. It left me. I was doing telemarketing at one point. I was selling insurance door to door at one point. Just is what it is. You've got to find a way to make it work. And that kept me hungry enough that I was like, okay, well, I need a job. I don't like this job, so I want to find something that's going to be even better. And so I did a bunch of job hopping in my early 20s before I finally found something that I really enjoyed doing. It paid well and there was opportunity within the company. And so, yeah, like, I had to have my dad just cut me off and be like, you know, I wish you the best. Oh, and also I ended up managing apartment complexes because I was like, I can't afford rent. So finding a way around that. Would I have ever taken on that assay? Because managing is a nightmare. You're never at home, you are always at work. And I did that through. I did that until I got married. So it was like, yeah, you just, you find a way when you've got no other way to pay for things.

[Drew]

Yeah. And I think that find a way muscle could be worked out a little bit better.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And this is what I'm talking. I'm trying to get people to understand, like, you have to. A country must distribute. The difficulty when it. When the difficulty of like getting a job and making ends meet goes up to the government, you're going to get tyranny, you're going to get total dysfunction, you're going to get socialism. It's going to collapse. When you go, listen, we're going. Because remember, the government is not some separate thing. It's just a bunch of people. People, they get together and they're like, oh, I like wielding power like this. And if I have to give out free to do it, I will but if you just remember that all of life is hard and every group, every tribe, whatever, you push the responsibility down to the individual and go do your part, man. Like, if you're the guy that's supposed to go fish, go fish, get good at fishing. If you're the person making the fishing line, get good at making the fishing line. Like, you've got to do a thing that people consider value, that is entrepreneurship, that is working, that's going, okay, cool, I get it. We are running a specialization strategy and that's allowed us to scale. Incredible. It's incredible. It's an absolute miracle. However, like once people think, oh, I don't have to specialize in anything, I don't have to get really good at anything, I'm just gonna let this system that seems to be kicking off a lot of cash, I'm just gonna let it take care of me and then it rots from the inside out. And that's the cycle.

[Drew]

Yeah. Somebody in the chat was like, tom, you're trying to get e when you're talking about lowering the minimum wage.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I know, I get it. Here's the thing. I will make you one promise. I will say what I believe to be true. I'll also update my mental model as reality forces me to. But that is the truth about the minimum wage. By the way, here's the really bad news about the minimum wage. It incentivizes people to robot up.

[Drew]

So there is something to that. When I was growing up, McDonald's, Starbucks, a lot of these entry level jobs, quote, unquote, they were young high school students and like a 25 year old overseeing all the high school students. We are in a current economy though. When you walk into a McDonald's, a Starbucks, a lot of these places, you are seeing 30 year olds, 40 year olds, 50 year olds overseeing those things. So there is something about the upward mobility that broke that I think America in general needs to fix. I think that was the one thing in America, no matter where you are, what class structure you were born into, you can then have the ability to rise. And I think in other countries, other places, if you're an elite, you're elite. If you're not, you're not, figure it out. Like that chasm is so wide it's hard to jump. And that was the one selling aspect of America. And I think now everybody just wants to be kind of a, what's it called, escalated or like they just think they could just stand on it and this I'm just supposed to like grow and rise and nobody wants to, like, actually do this.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Bangers today.

[Drew]

Hey, I'm in a good mood. I'm about to go on vacation.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Bars. Bars. I'm hurt by that. But nonetheless, Drew, that is an incredible insight. Yes. I think that you're absolutely right. People want to be on that escalator that's just going to automatically take them up, forgetting that. No, no, no. You've got to be hardcore. You've got to bust your ass. You've got to become one of the greats. And if you want to get ahead, you've got to be able to outperform other people. Even when I say that, people get super weird about life being competitive, but life is competitive, man. Like, if you want to go somewhere other people can't go, you've got to be able to do things other people can't it do do. It's just reality. And so there is something to like. As somebody who hires, man, I want to get, like, a Statue of Liberty version here at Impact Theory, but on the plaque, instead of giving me your tired, huddled, poor masses yearning to breathe free, it is going to be, give me your hardcore, psychotic people that just want to work to prove something to themselves. Like, yes, yes, give me those people, dude. I work like I'm being chased by something, and it is awesome. I love my life so much. It can be brutally difficult at times. But, man, when you see how far you can take yourself, when you're willing to just outwork people. And I love being surrounded by that. Being surrounded by people that grind and put in that work because they know they can get better, and they're doing it for their own reasons, man, that's intoxicating. So give me some people like that. Speaking of which, I know a bunch of people just got laid off from Fortnite. If you were one of the people that got laid off from Fortnite, I want to hear from you. I am looking actively for people that are animators. Animators, man. If you are. But I'm looking for doers. I don't want somebody that told other animators what to do. If you are one of the people doing keyframes, I want to talk to you. Same with 3D modelers. 3D modelers. Animators. Come on, help me make Kaizen great. Great. Let's make Kaizen great. We are on a ticking clock. We're going to early Release December of 2027. Man, that is coming fast. So we could really use some extraordinary talent. So if you're one of those people that have turned yourself into one of the best. I want to hear from you.

[Drew]

All right. The White House just told Congress how to regulate AI. Trump released a framework about what he wanted to make sure every single state, they can do their own thing. But there are seven key frameworks that they should not touch. They cover child safety, community protections, copyright, free speech, innovation, work face training, and federal preemption overriding state laws. It explicitly says that they should not be allowed to regulate AI development so you can't get in front of it. It believes training AI on copyrighted material is legal. And it calls for regulatory sandboxes, test environments where companies can experiment under relaxed rules. And they say the goal is to pass legislation this year before the end of 2027. Now this was very comprehensive, but again, this is a framework and this is just telling all the states. I know a lot of AI things are about to change in the next couple years, but this is what the government is saying. This is the, our hard lines and these are the things that the lines you can't cross. In general, I know we're racing against China and all this other stuff. How do you feel about the government kind of issuing this framework to kind of preempt all of the conversation?

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's very smart. It's absolutely necessary. The and this is really brilliant. Like you guys can have flavors and do things differently at the edges, but here's a core framework that we need people to adhere to. I will make you this promise. Whatever country or state abides by something like this is going to be where all of that talent goes. There is no way that companies are going to allow themselves to be hamstrung by a local state government. There's no way. This is the opportunity to end all opportunities. Look at how much money is flooding into AI. Look at the results AI has already delivered. And we're only like three years into like the real customer facing version of AI, boys and girls. This is going to be the single most profound technological transformation in human history. And if you think that a state is going to be able to regulate that away, you are out of your mind. People will pack up and they will go wherever they're going to be able to pursue this opportunity full stop. So if you want to chase your entrepreneurs out of the country, do that. That if you want to lose to China, then put all these crazy restrictions for shways. But this is nuts. I cannot believe that people are even contemplating this. We need that framework. We need something that happens at the national level. We need to win the race of all races. Yeah, this is if, if states don't agree to something like this, they are out of their minds.

[Drew]

What do you think is the thing that, that will stop us from really taking advantage of AI with everything that's going on now? Because I think there's argument amongst the federal and the state level of what AI regulation looks like, what it should be. There's argument among companies about what is the right way to implement AI. Some people want the Google Nvidia running to the dash. Some people want the Apple model, wait and see and then just acquire something. What do you think are some of the headwinds in the AI industry that might not be seeing or might not

[Tom Bilyeu]

be getting enough press knocker uppers getting everybody's sympathy and therefore stopping progress? Because we are now for people that don't know that reference knocker uppers were a real thing. It was a job. Back in the day before alarm clocks and electricity, they would walk around with this big long stick and they would tap on the windows to wake people up and that just went away. And that always happens in technological revolutions. And unfortunately it really does. People that are a certain age when a technological revolution happens, this has been true of the industrial revolution, the great electrification and the Internetification. You people that are say north of, it's probably mid to late 30s, if you're north of that and the technological revolution comes and you're in a field that's disrupted by that technology, you spend the rest of your life life basically in despair. And we have historically always been like, sorry, because just like we talked about pushing that responsibility down to the individual, you've got to. People could adapt, they just don't. And so if we find that in this moment, because we are so polarized, because we have so much populism, because we are already like inches away from socialism here in the US if that spills over into yes, we need a nanny state to protect us from this evil technology and forget all those rich assholes that are trying to build this technology, then we'll lose. That is the thing that I really fear is that as people roll up on a McDonald's and it's nothing but robots as far as the eye can see. They don't go, yeah, we probably should have lowered the minimum wage. Instead they go burn down OpenAI. And I think that that's the thing people need to worry about that's gonna

[Drew]

happen though, because there was that video of the dude yelling at the food delivery bot. I don't know if we pulled it. So it's like there We've seen the waymos getting attacked. So people are already at that level of frustration now.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I literally wrote a comic book about this five years ago now. That was me going, this technology is coming, people are going to freak out. The book's called Neon Future and it was me trying to think my way through in an entertaining format of what's really going to happen. And in the book, I'm sure I exaggerate the percentage of people that become anti technology. But yeah, it's a world where you get this huge like collision between government types, the politburo of it all, the bourgeoisie, like they become anti technology. And so they all go, ah, forget all that stuff. It's anti human. It's bad. Like we're reverting to basically the 90s. And huge justifications for why you'd want to do that. You don't have to point much farther than social media's impact on kids to be like, hey, going back to something more like the 90s would be a better idea. And it get in the comic book, it gets very violent. Like this is people are killed build for interacting with technology, technology. Like imagine a world where sophisticated AI GPUs are sold on the black market like drugs. So there is like a very real backlash that's coming. When I talk about, you know, there's only so many paths forward and one of them is the Neo Amish. That's what I'm getting at there. There really are going to be people that just, they shut down, they become very embittered, they become violent. Like think about the IRA back in the day with the Protestants and the Catholics killing each other endlessly over slight variations on a religion. You can imagine you're going to see similar types of violence as people's jobs are taken by a thing they can point to. It's a lot harder to be mad at electricity. It's a lot harder to be mad at the Internet.

[Drew]

Internet.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's a lot easier to be mad at the robot that you see on the street.

[Drew]

It's very true. And speaking of shutting down, OpenAI just announced that it's shutting down. The video slot making platform is crazy, but their video generation platform, Sora, OpenAI, it seems like they've been getting a couple losses lately.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. So listen, I think that people are misreading OpenAI's closing of their video generation system. Sora, this doesn't mean that video generation just took a big L. It means that OpenAI realizes that they're going to be going public and they've got to start spending their capital in ways that people that are going to buy that stock think are smart. And so this is what people often refer to as the Sharps. So the Sharps are the people that really understand the economy, they understand the stock market, they understand what's going to make something go up, what's going to make it go down. And they look at OpenAI specifically not being able to corner the market market on the video generation. And it is just computationally massively demanding. And so they want to point that compute, which is ultimately limited at things that are going to be better revenue generators per bit of compute. If you look at the move through that angle, it's like other people are going to pick up and run with the video generation that's not going anywhere. And it's just about OpenAI pivoting to something else already. I wouldn't say SORA was at the bleeding edge of what people are doing from video generation. You heard about them when they first popped off and it was a lot of fun, it was very exciting. But there are so many companies competing to be the winner in that space. So you've got one of the competitors going. Yeah. As I go into my public offering, I realize I need to spend my capital elsewhere. So that's all that you're seeing here. If you want to talk about one that's down bad, where I'm like, I'm not sure this is going to recover. That'd be the metaverse. When meta walked away from that was like, yeah, we're not really pursuing this anymore. That's when I was like, yeah, maybe that just isn't a thing. And it's not going to be a thing. They're just until we get to like true virtual worlds that people can inhabit. Like at a. You're tapped in. Like the Matrix may just not be compelling enough and that people would rather just experience it on a screen. So there you have it.

[Drew]

Do you feel optimistic about the future of OpenAI ChatGPT?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't care what company wins. So I am optimistic about the future of AI in ways that would make the Neo Amish absolutely blush. So, yeah, I think that it will transform the world completely and entirely. I think that over a period probably of 30 years that you're. That's like the now we're just totally on the other side of all the delays from people freaking out and all that, that, that it is a true age of abundance and our only fear becomes people just completely checking out from an emotional perspective and basically living Like a brave new world where they're doing some sort of numb me out drug like soma. That's my concern. But I think people will be able to have essentially whatever they want. So that's where it is.

[Drew]

I got to put your feet to the fire on, please.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Because is it more likely to become Netscape, which was the first popular browser when the Internet first launched?

[Tom Bilyeu]

OpenAI specifically.

[Drew]

OpenAI specifically. Or Microsoft, a staple in digital products for the last decade, century, half a century, whatever.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think right now they're so plugged in that they're way more likely to be like Microsoft.

[Drew]

Gotcha.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think the big players that exist right now are probably going to be the big players. There are weaknesses and things that could really come after that. The thing Americans need to be super paranoid about right now is regulatory capture. For sure. Anthropic's already running a regulatory capture playbook. I think OpenAI will start doing that the more they feel threatened. Also, when they go public, it's like there's going to be a flood of people that will have incentive for them to do well. Also, Sam Altman's been able to plug himself into the government very well. They have a huge moat in terms of the technology itself, itself. So the big question mark around this will be, will companies like DeepSeek be able to show that being the model trainers is like a gift that you give to humanity, but it's the world's worst business model and so they get shot in the face and it's all these people leveraging the outputs of those systems. Because a deep SEQ basically just goes, I'm going to run a bunch of queries through anthropic, through OpenAI, whatever. I'm going to train my model for an app an absolute fraction of the cost. I'm going to optimize it way better, and then that next generation becomes a thing. But I don't think so. I think the big models are always going to be the place where the frontier action is happening. This is one where I'm not staking my reputation on this at all. I will update my mental model. This is completely opaque to me and to everybody else. Everybody. Some people will lie. I mean, somebody like an Elon Musk or Sam Altman who are so, so close to it, might have the real insight, but they're so motivated to lie, even to themselves. I'm not going to trust what they say. So anyway, I know that on this I don't see the future clearly. It's just way too complicated and Way too new. But my gut instinct is the innovations will always need to happen at the foundational model layer, that the complexity of the data centers will continue to grow and that the very thing that makes it intelligence is both the structure and training of the underlying model and the optimization algorithms that run on top of top. So I think at deep seq, they'll probably make their, you know, bones off of optimizing better than somebody else. And so they are making things smarter, but that you'll end up in a cul de sac if you're just trying to optimize the old system. I think you need that system to get better and better and better and better. And then you optimize on top of a better and better and better system, and now you get something that starts approaching super intelligence.

[Drew]

Got you. That makes sense. Anything is possible. Anything is possible, guys.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And to all of my entrepreneurs out there that want to know how to leverage AI, we've got a free AI masterclass coming up Thursday, April 9th at 1pm Pacific. So I hope to see you guys there. This class has been insanely popular. It's free, free, free, free. And it's going to show you how to leverage AI to launch your business. So I hope to see you guys there. Thursday, April 9th at 1pm Pacific. Michael Jordan.

[Drew]

All right, I'm done. I'm done. Good night. See you later, Drew.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Coming in hot. Okay, everybody. He is going on vacation. He will not be here Friday and Monday, so I'm gonna be rocking the show solo. So show up, see what that looks like. And I cannot wait to see you guys on Friday. Have a wonderful day and I will see you then. 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 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. My dad taught me a lot, including how easy it is to forget to cancel things. So I downloaded Experian, my bff. Big Financial Friend Experian could help me cancel my unused subscriptions and lower my battery bills, saving me hundreds a year. Get started with the Experian app today. Your Big Financial friends here to help you save smarter. Results will vary. Not all bills are subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed $631 a year average savings with one plus negotiations and OnePlus cancellations paid membership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details. Experian.