← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Trump’s Oil Gamble: Can the US Really Control Iran, Gas Prices & the World Economy? | Tom Bilyeu Show LIVE
01:11:00
Tom Bilyeu, Producer Drew, and Ryan go deep on the economic chess behind the Iran conflict, wild shifts in global oil markets, the staggering cost of NYC homelessness, and why the Japanese porn industry is running out of men—don’t miss this real-time rollercoaster through today’s craziest headlines.
Loading summary
Transcript76 lines
- [00:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Reggie, I just sold my car online. Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep, on Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame. You don't say. Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast. Wow. Way to go. So, about that picture frame. Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. We are here to do it. We are talking about all the madness that is happening in the world. And there's no shortage of that right now, boys and girls. Trump continues to pull every conceivable lever that he can to keep gas prices down, including letting Iran sell their oil without sanctions. This is amazing. Gonna talk all about that one. If you haven't heard about it yet, It's a lot of fun. New York City is now spending more per homeless person than the average family earns in that same city. That is wild. The UK is now spending more on welfare than they collect in income tax. And I'll let you guess, if that's sustainable. Allies of the US may be coming around faster than expected on helping the US get the Strait of Hormuz reopened. We'll see if that actually comes to fruition. I think Europe is in a really weird bind right now between needing to condemn everything that we're doing and needing that oil. Iran just executed three people, including a 19 year old national champion wrestler, for their involvement in the January protests because apparently the 31,000 slaughtered just wasn't quite enough. And the Japanese porn industry is collapsing due to a lack of men. What is happening? I did not see that one coming. That was not on my bingo card. But here we are. We live in a world where you can't get enough guys to sustain the porn industry. That is wild. It's wild, Drew. First we got to talk about all the madness that is happening in the Middle East. This is. I am eternally bemused at how much flack I take for saying that this war is economic in nature. And I really hope people are beginning to see that the conversation isn't about God. Iran's not even talking about God. Like, if you want to look at what really made them mad, bomb their oil infrastructure.
- [02:28]
Drew
Yeah, I was just about to say, at every turn it starts to be like, leave our oil alone. Why are you blocking our transportation path? Why are you attacking our infrastructure?
- [02:35]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes. You killed our supreme leader. We didn't get nearly as mad as we got when you bombed our oil field, so. So let that one sink in, boys and girls.
- [02:45]
Drew
I'm going to be honest. I need your help to spin this, because unsanctioning oil, I thought was the opposite of what we were supposed to be doing in the middle of a war.
- [02:53]
Tom Bilyeu
Drew, you're just confused.
- [02:54]
Drew
That's it. So help me understand the 5D chess that's happening right now.
- [02:57]
Tom Bilyeu
All right? If you guys are struggling in the same way that poor Drew is struggling, let's see if we can make some sense of this. Since Operation Epic Fury launched on February 28, Trump literally has been pulling every crazy ass lever that he has to try and keep oil prices below $100 per barrel. That is a very tricky thing to do when you are bombing the country and inspiring them to close the strait. I want you to imagine how many thousands of ships are just sitting there with oil. Now, the US Might feel cocky because we are a net exporter of energy, but, ooh, buddy, we've got a lot of allies for whom this is not sitting well. And one of the levers that Trump is pulling, which hopefully you will immediately see the weird ass ramifications that will come out of this, is to l lift oil sanctions on Russia. So they've already been lifted. That freed roughly 130 million barrels with waivers running through April 11. Now, you can expect that to make life way more difficult for the Ukrainians. So when you start looking at all the things that are happening in the world as economic issues, it really does bring a lot of clarity. Because at the end of the day, no matter what, you're just eventually going to hit a point in your supply chain. Might be an easy way to think about it where somebody's not going to do something for God or for countries. They're only going to do it for money. And so everybody understands that if you want to keep a conflict going, that you've got to make sure that you have a supply chain for actual cash. And so when you free up that money for Russia, that's going to allow them to fund the war even more aggressively. You've got Venezuelan sanctions now being lifted. Those were lifted on Wednesday. This is going to allow US Companies to transact directly with Venezuelan state oil companies, which also, as you would imagine, this is going to have US Corporations. Not exactly. Or I should say oil corporations. Not exactly sad about what's going on in the world, because this is going to benefit them. Trump has also tapped the strategic petroleum reserves, so the IE IEA, they coordinated a 400 million barrel release from member reserves. So doing all of this stuff to try to drive the prices down. But the weird one came when Treasury Secretary Scott Besant went on Fox Business and he floated what is really the wildest idea of them all. I think, in fact, we have the clip. Let's let him say it directly himself and see how many of you guys are left scratching your heads.
- [05:29]
Scott Bessant
Maria, to be clear, this is a coordinated effort. We had a break the glass plan across the administration and a Treasury. We unsanctioned Russian oil. We, we knew that There were about 130 million barrels on the water and we created supply that is beyond the Straits of Hormuz. So we anticipated this. We knew that there could be a temporary, and I want to emphasize temporary choke point there. And there was 130 million barrels of floating storage. In the coming days, we may unsanctioned. The Iranian oil that's on the water, it's about 140 million barrels. So depending on how you count it, that's 10 days to two weeks of supply that the Iranians had been pushing out. That would have all gone to China. In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians.
- [06:28]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm going to let you guys make a ton of money, but I'm going to use it against you. Don't worry, I got you. This is one of those times where I'll get into the specifics of this and I'll walk you through what I think is their actual logic versus the messaging thing. It's not completely devoid of logic, but the words actually coming out of his mouth remind me of that famous study that was done where people were standing in line for a copy machine, which I know Ryan is like, what's a copy machine? But they were standing in line for a copy machine. And a guy walks up, he's part of the study, and he just says, hey, can I cut in line? I need to make copies. And they found it was something like two or three times more likely to let somebody cut in front of them if they simply said words. So you could almost say anything. Can I cut in line with you? Because my pages are blue. Whatever. It didn't matter as long as you gave a reason. People like, okay, and they would let you cut in front of them. So that's basically what this feels like. Now to walk you through what's really going on, if we really do unsanction the oil on the water, that's roughly 140 million barrels. That's a full 10 to 14 days, as Bessant was saying of the global supply. And it's oil that would have otherwise gone to China at a steep discount. Remember, China was buying the vast majority of Iran's oil because they were basically the only country that could get around the US Sanctions. So the fact that Iran is actually put in a difficult position with China because they only have a single buyer. So now China's in the driver's seat in terms of negotiating the prices there. And so Iran, tough spot with the sanctions, but they've been dealing with it for. Been dealing with that for years. China gets the advantage of having all this cheap oil, which I will put back on the table as a reminder. Reminder of how much of this, what we're doing in Iran has to do with us playing cards against China and trying to remove yet another source of cheap energy for them. Though I don't think that's what's driving Besson's decision right now. I think that that's going to be something political back home. It's just going to create so many problems if the price of oil spikes. So the strategic logic is pretty simple. They want to take Iran's oil, flood the global markets, drive prices down, and even potentially redirect those barrels away from Beijing if Beijing refuses to be the highest bidder now that those barrels of oil are going at market rates. Now, the catch is if the US Lifts sanctions, Iran arguably is going to make more money per barrel, not less. So this is actually going to give them more money because now they don't have a single buyer. They've got the world and the world is going to compete. So, and even if China ends up winning, they're going to win at a higher price. So we will have essentially helped Iran monetize its inventory of oil better while claiming that we're using it against them. When you're helping them fund the war, you are not using it against them. The against them logic only holds on one specific axis, global oil price suppression. Now, admittedly, that is a big deal and so pretending that it's not, this probably is a smart move. It's only the way that they're selling it. That is funny when you think about the US is becoming increasingly unpopular. When you start looking at how more and more countries now would rather deal with China than the U.S. you're in this super weird position where you've launched an attack on Iran. You did not do a good job of selling it to the world, let alone even the American people. So you've got a position where other than like MAGA supporters, maybe Republicans, like this isn't a popular thing and the vast majority of the world would have rather stuck their head in the sand. Watch my interview with Dr. Jiang. Professor Jiang, excuse me. Watch my deep dive coming up next week. There's a very strong argument to be made, regardless of the nuclear weapon, that you had to move to protect the current world order. Now, you may hate the current world order and fair enough, but it is a very understandable justification from the US Aside why they moved, but they moved without getting anybody else on board. And so now people are at risk of defecting en masse. And if you let the price of oil keep climbing, climbing, climbing, you not only have a political problem at home, you have an increasing problem with your already largely alienated allies. And so you're just making that worse and worse. So when you think about flooding the market with that Iranian oil, that's going to keep the Brent low, right? So the price of oil is going to stay relatively low. That will limit Iran's future revenue from barrels that aren't yet extracted because of the prices going up. Obviously, the more that they can get back on the market at that higher price, even more money goes into their pocket. But on the existing floating cargo, the move is, call it neutral to positive from an Iranian revenue perspective. So what Bessen is really doing, if you strip away the wartime rhetoric, is managing the massive political problem that he has of gas prices spiking nearly 60%. That is just economically and politically devastating. And the Trump admin has to do something about that. And even if that means empowering their enemy, they'll do it because in the long run, making sure that you have some allies somewhere that Asia doesn't just completely collapse. You're going to need Japan, first of all. So all of that coming into play is, if it were sold honestly, would be something more like, listen, this is going to temporarily empower Iran. There's no doubt about it. They're going to make more money per barrel for a while. But in the grand scheme of things, it is far better for us to keep the global economy humming by keeping the cost of oil down. Because the dangerous game that we're playing as the United States is we're going in, going to clean up the Strait of Hormuz once and for all by lowering the cost of attacking, or the, I should say lowering the cost of insurance paranoia that there will be attack in the Strait, which is constantly looming and has cost God knows how many billions of dollars annually. In artificially high premiums to travel through that with this huge question mark hanging over the entire Gulf region about what Iran is going to do. We're going to eliminate all of that once and for all. But that comes at the cost of potentially rising oil prices, and that could damage the entire world economy. It could send us into a recession, could send us into a depression if it goes on long enough. So to avoid that, what we're going to do is temporarily lift these restrictions, allow the Iranians to sell oil, and it doesn't hurt our feelings that it will either be more expensive for China or it may not even all go to China. Yes, we're funding the war effort of our enemy, but you put it all together and it ends up being a thing at least worth considering. Because, remember, he's floating the idea. He wants to see how the markets react, he wants to see how the public reacts. But that would be the honest selling of the narrative instead of the bullshit that we get at all times. But remember, you are always being spun at all times. And as long as you keep that in mind, you can hopefully begin to piece things together from a cause and effect perspective. But that's basically where we're at. This is a pragmatic price stabilization stabilization move that they're trying to make sound like a strategic masterstroke. Now, I have one real question, which is, if the US Is willing to drop bombs and kill an endless string of government officials and religious leaders, why not just seize the Iranian oil, sell it, fund the war effort, and deny Iran the revenue entirely? The fact that we're not doing that tells me that there is real, either legal or diplomatic constraints that Trump is under, that if he were to just go in and seize it, it would create some sort of blast radius for him politically that he's not willing to do that, which is pretty shocking. So I'll update my mental model on that part of this as we go. But it. That one surprises me a little bit. Trump is so brash and just does not give a. And is talking about, I'm going to snatch up Greenland and snatching dictators in the middle of the night and saying, I can take Cuba, do whatever, literally do whatever I want with a nation. So anybody that says that it isn't that it's obvious that he wouldn't just confiscate the oil, I don't buy that there's something else going on there. That one I don't have mapped perfectly yet. So I'll report back on that as more information comes to Light. But this is wild. We live in the wildest times ever drew this. It's all happening in full view. That is like the crazy part. This is what war has always been like. It's always been these weird back maneuverings trying to sucker one nation into the fight versus the other. Which by the way, is another thing we have to talk about because Israel was like, oh, you've got this really fascinating plan. Yeah, cool, I'm going to go bomb the shit out of their oil fields. Which was that the Israeli regime saying that, yeah, we're not here for Trump empowering them by generating more revenue for them. Absolutely. That violates everything that we want to do. And so we're going to step in and do it. Or was it just two nations that weren't communicating clearly enough, that were slightly misaligned, pulling in different directions? We will see over time. But. Ooh, buddy, you want to talk about something that has really caused drama on the international scene here? Striking that oil infrastructure. Israel striking that oil infrastructure could be the beginning of a massive escalation that is in danger of ruining essentially all of Trump's plans and just putting us on a one way path to demolishing all of the oil infrastructure in the Middle East. If we do that, you have a multi year recession. Best case, you might have a, and I'm talking globally, you might have God. If you really want to get into like panicky scenarios that I'll give a low probability, but nonetheless, like, is a real thing. If you start doing that, man, Asia is in real trouble. Do you start getting into famine territory? I don't want to be hyperbolic, but it would certainly be on my radar as something to at least ask what are their plans to deal with this? So, man, all eyes on the attacks on the oil fields. Because if the oil infrastructure across the Middle east, which is what Iran is saying they're going to do if there's another attack on their oil fields, and then Trump said if Iran doesn't chill out, then he's going to go whole hog on their entire oil infrastructure. So you can imagine if he does that, then of course they're going to go nuts on all the oil infrastructure. I wouldn't put it past them to go after the desalination plants. Like, this is how this turns into humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions. So again, this, I clock all of that at a low probability right now. But man, you put human minds in the middle of all this with their fucking wacky egos and weird religious. This will be a place where religion will enter the picture. A desire to win, to smite the enemy. It'll get real weird real fast if we're not extraordinarily careful.
- [17:59]
Drew
There is something about the clap back ness of the gas attacks that even Qatar's LMG, they lost what, 17% of their oil of their gas supply after that attack. Yeah, yeah. And then Iran with Iran's retaliatory attack. So I think that's the escalating nature that we aren't necessarily talking about. We're Talking about the 16D chest that's happening in the Strait of Hormuz. But it's one of those things, hypothetically US takes Kharg Island. Iran now that they lost the island, treated as hostile, range a bunch of drones on them. Now you have 100 dead Marines. US isn't just going to take that now we're going to send 50,000 Marines and take the opposite side of the shore. Iran's not going to take that. They're going to bomb all the oil infrastructure in the south. And now people are starving and dying and now war looks like proper war.
- [18:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you know how dripped out Professor Jiang will be if that happened? Like he's going to have like those big spinner medallions and shit. Like it will be so wild. That guy is on the come up so hard right now. Yeah, that would be devastating.
- [19:02]
Drew
But I think that the mission creep of it is you said this a couple weeks ago that we're going to see if we have what it takes to actually win this war. Because living room war, ever since war became like gotten to the living room, war has fundamentally changed since then. Yeah, there's atrocity still going on. They just don't make the primetime news.
- [19:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [19:19]
Drew
For whatever reason they really do hold back.
- [19:23]
Tom Bilyeu
I know that's not a popular answer right now, but this is people that look at Gaza and go that's a genocide. They just don't know history. That's ethnic cleansing, which is horrible. But they are wildly different. Genocide is line them up, gas chamber, line them up, slaughter them all at the city gates. Like genocide has happened over and over
- [19:46]
Professor Jiang
and over and over and over and
- [19:47]
Tom Bilyeu
over and over throughout human history. It is, you know, whatever, 700,000 people hacked to death with machetes in 30 days or whatever happened in Rwanda. It's like it, when you snap to like proper genocide, it's a totally different story. And to your point, yes, that all ended when the Vietnam war started being televised. And thankfully humanity is not willing to watch that happen. And because we watch everything happen now everybody has to keep themselves in check, even the US Even Israel, which I know is not a popular narrative right now, but nonetheless, from a historical lens, I'll just remind everybody again, at the end of World War II, we vaporized hundreds of thousands of people with two bombs. So it's just the scale of what we used to be willing to do. We're just not anymore. And so I drew. I fundamentally don't know if wars are winnable. It's one of those, like, you can go in and say, okay, there's a handful of things that we're going to try to degrade and then we're going to get out. You can do that, but like winning the war, because it's always going to boil down to an asymmetric battle. So unless you have a side that is really willing to do the thing to drop the bomb, whatever, it's just always going to stalemate.
- [21:11]
Drew
So at this point, it's just a saving face of it all, of, how do I de escalate this without looking
- [21:16]
Tom Bilyeu
like you say, from Trump's standpoint, from both standpoints, I think Iran recognizes this is existential. So for them, this really is fight to the death. Yeah, you have to. Because when I say that a war is fundamentally unwinnable, I'm assuming that the other side hits that where they go, oh, we're going to fight to the death. If you have a side that actively wants to be conquered in that, like, if we have to do these as if scenarios, because I honestly don't know what the truth is on the ground, you're going to hear a lot of different stories. If the truth on the ground is, let's say 80% of Iranians are like, we want to go back to pre Islamic revolution, we want to be a far more secular society, then you degrade the leadership enough that's keeping everybody oppressed, and you'll get a revolution from the inside and that you could then say truly that the war was won. But if what you actually get is there are enough people that have the will to fight that they just keep going and going and going. You will bleed the empire, whatever empire us. This happened to Russia, in Afghanistan. It. It's going to happen to everybody that isn't willing to just indiscriminately kill every single person, you'll eventually, it's just so expensive that your loses the political will to fight it. And so you then back off. Now, I'm not saying the country that quote unquote won isn't just completely devastated, knocked Back to the Stone Ages. It's absolutely horrific what happens, but nonetheless, like they just wear you down. Like to, to oppose something new from the top down with modern sensibilities seems to be impossible. It has to come from the bottom up. And so it becomes a question of what's really happening inside the psyche of that country
- [23:01]
Drew
that you answer my next question for you and ask it, because I was going to ask is it winnable? How do we de escalate, how do we get out of here? But it seems that it's us versus the will of the Iranian people at this point. Will they make an internal revolution? Will they take back control?
- [23:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I think the only thing that you could do is you have to create a situation where they cannot control the Strait of Hormuz. And given their ability to launch drones, missiles, etc. You would have to destabilize Iran enough that you bought yourself, call it 18 months to three years would be ideal where they just can't put a coordinated attack together. And you build massive defenses against all of that. And you basically get an Information state, an AI imposed total visibility like state 1984 placed on Iran. And you just make sure you're not occupying them, but you make sure somehow satellites, whatever, that you know exactly what tunnels are digging, what they're doing. You blockade the out of getting technology in there. You'd have to stop China. You'd have to. What was it like KSTAN or something Ascending. That's. I don't think that's the real name of a country, but whatever country it was, I forget, they're sending them a ton of drone. Supposedly they're saying it's humanitarian aid. People are saying fuck out of here. They have all these drone facilities in that country.
- [24:27]
Drew
Drones underneath the race.
- [24:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Exactly. So you would have to somehow stop them from being able to manufacture somehow stop them from getting the technology inside the country and then control the straight long enough to show the world under our control. This is awesome. Under their control. It was bad because imagine if you could drop the price of oil to like $50 a barrel. You probably don't want to go any lower than that just because then it destabilizes the oil industry itself because there's not enough money. But if you can show under American leadership, in conjunction with the GCC nations, the Abraham Accords, everything's going great. Iran has been put in time out. Look how awesome this is. Now all of a sudden the international community is going to be like, like Tom said, this was economic this whole time. And so this feels pretty good. And yeah, we don't want those guys coming back to power. And so now all of a sudden you can stymie them for a pretty long time. But you first have to like, get that beachhead. And I don't know, given how much they have in the tunnels and all that stuff, I just don't know like how simple that's going to be. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. A great wardrobe is not complicated. A few pieces that fit well, hold up over time and work in almost any situation. That's it. That's what you need. The problem is finding them without paying luxury prices. That's exactly what Quince is built around. I picked up one of their cashmere sweaters and let me tell you, the softness is amazing and the quality actually caught me off guard. This is 100% Mongolian cashmere. That makes it easy to build a great wardrobe. Lightweight cashmere linen bottoms, short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos, Pima cotton tees. All amazing quality. And every factory they partner with meets rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. Right now go to quints.com impact pod for free shipping and 365 day. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will now available in Canada too. Go to Q U I n c e.com impactpod for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's quints.com impactpod the people who win, they're not smarter. They just absorb more ideas faster. There are thousands of books right now on business, psychology, leadership books that have already changed how the best operators think. And everyone you haven't read is a gap between you and the people who have. This is a bandwidth problem, not a discipline problem. And that's exactly what Blinkist was built to solve. It takes the world's best nonfiction books and distills them into 15 minute summaries you can read or listen to. It's got over 9,000 titles. We're talking atomic habits. Thinking fast and slow. The hard thing about hard things, books you know you should have read by now. Done in the time it takes to drink your coffee. And because it's built for mobile, your commute becomes a classroom. Blinkist also sends you personalized recommendations so you actually build a daily learning practice instead of just planning to do one. Start your free trial@blinkist.com impact that's B L I N K I-S-T.com impact start learning aggressively today. It will change your life. Let's talk about the things you use every day and just never think about your socks, your comforter, the stuff that touches your body more than anything else you own. And most people settle for whatever's cheapest or most convenient. Today's sponsor, Cozy Earth takes the exact opposite approach. They obsess over the details most brands ignore. Their comforters are made with naturally breathable temperature regulating materials that create a cloud like feel without the heaviness or overheating so you actually sleep deeper and wake up restored. Their essential socks are soft, breathable and cushioned in four styles that support you from your first step to your last. Head to cozyearth.com and use code impact for up to 20% off. And if you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here at impact theory. That's cozyearth.com and use code Impact. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
- [29:20]
Drew
I want to jump over to the Joe Kent claims because I have a couple follow ups, but I want to pair it with Joe Kent because right now I think we're not even talking about the war anymore. We're talking about the perception of the war and the goal post is kind of doing a lot of teleporting right now. Love we had to do this because of this or because of that or because of this or they were going to and now there's so much information about the causes and if they their intentions and we're trying to project onto people that we haven't really talked to and haven't quite frankly heard from because they're all dead. So now it's what it actually is or is not. But Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism center, was just with Tucker Carlson and his interview changed. It was interesting. I'll leave it at that.
- [30:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yeah, yeah. When Joe Kent resigned as Director of the U.S. national Counterterrorism center and went on Tucker Carlson to argue that Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon, people were leaning in. Man, this guy has so much street credibility. And I don't think anybody outside of die hard mega supporters have a hard time believing that Trump was lying about why we moved on Iran. The problem is the closer you look at the issue, the more evidence you're going to find that points in the opposite direction of what Kent is saying. A big part of Kent's argument is that Iran has a fatwa, which is basically a religious rule forbidding the creation of a nuclear bomb. He said as much on Tucker. In fact, let's play the clip where he says it was Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.
- [30:48]
Joe Kent
No, they weren't, you know, three weeks ago when this. This started. And they weren't in June either. I mean, the. The Iranians have had a religious ruling, a fatwa against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That's been in place since 2004. That's available in the public sphere. But then also, we had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or it was on the cusp of being being lifted. The Iranian strategy, it's actually pretty pragmatic. The Iranians are obviously aware of what's taking place in their region, and their strategy was to not completely abandon their nuclear program because they saw what happened to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
- [31:24]
Tom Bilyeu
So right there, he's contradicting himself. He's saying, I don't see any evidence that they were developing a weapon, but they're developing a weapon for, like, defensive posture.
- [31:35]
Drew
No, I can push back on that because for him to defend his point. When you find. When you say the loud thing, the quiet part out loud, hey, America, I no longer have any nuclear. I have no uranium. I am completely at zero. Then they just kill you and regime change you.
- [31:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Perfect.
- [31:49]
Drew
I have. We have something here just so that way you can whisper and think about what we have here.
- [31:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Totally agree with you. And the reason I think that matters in this context is what you have said. What he is unintentionally saying is that you can't trust what Iran says. So then it becomes a question of, okay, well, what are they doing? And when you start putting all that together, like in Kent's framing, Khomeini himself was supposedly the break on the program. But the part that Kent is either leaving out or is unaware of is that things like the fatwa, they were never written down. So is this just a thing that they say because they want to posture and they want people to think, no, we're not doing it. The fatwa certainly isn't listed on Khomeini's official website, despite the fact that he details out all of the other fatwas. The one missing is the one about nuclear weapons. Then there's the fact that an Iran official himself said that they were developing a nuclear weapon, which I think we have that clip as well, if you want to pull that up. So out of Iran's own mouth, they're saying, yeah, the whole reason that we got into the nuclear program was to Develop a bomb. When we first entered nuclear activities, our real goal was to build a bomb. No point denying it. You mean the goal, this is the journalist asking, was to build a bomb? Yes, 100%. Whose goal? The whole system. Everyone who started this, the real goal was to build a bomb. We had started and we wanted to go all the way. If we could keep it a secret and test the bomb waiting for him to continue, it would be over, just like Pakistan. Once we began, we had to finish it. So anyway, he goes on to keep basically affirming it. So this is Iran's intelligence department. I forget the guy's exact title, but he was high up in the government. You also had Iran's intelligence minister warning publicly that a cornered cat may behave differently, insinuating that you may say one thing in public but do something else if needed. And so this is one, okay, was this guy lying? And they're not really developing a bomb, but he really wants people to think they did, or is, are they lying when they say that they're not developing a bomb? So when you start going back to okay, follow the things that they're doing, that's where things get more clear. Now, 71 members of Iran's parliament formally called for changing the country's nuclear doctrine to permit weapons and enrichment data backs up the fact that they were indeed pursuing weapons grade uranium for which there is absolutely no use other than a bomb. As of June 2025, Iran has stockpiled 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity. The IAEA said that level of enrichment has, and this is a quote, no civilian justification whatsoever. Going from 60% to weapons grade takes weeks, not years, weeks. And Kent argues there was no imminent threat. But when your parliament is voting to change nuclear doctrine, your officials are warning about cornered animals behaving differently behind the scenes than they do publicly. And your enrichment program is weeks away of your own admission from weapons grade uranium. And one of your top officials says on camera that the sole purpose of your nuclear program is to build a bomb. And just look at the incentives. If they were able to get a bomb, they would have so much more power. We all leave North Korea alone because they have a bomb. So I'm not saying that they were ready to launch the bomb, but the fact is that everything from incentives to what they were saying to what most importantly they were doing point to the fact that they really were building a bomb. Now, every US president for the past 20 years across both parties, has assessed a nuclear Iran as a top tier threat. So listen I have massive respect for the sacrifices that Kent has made for this country. For sure, for sure. That is beyond reproach. But it does not appear with the available evidence that he's reading this situation well. And I want to remind everybody, just because he has access to information does not mean that he's weaving it together in a way that leads him to reach high utility conclusions. So at the end of the day, when we are assessing information, it doesn't matter what we look at, it matters what we see. And so I will say that this guy is even sincere, that he means what he's saying, that he's not attempting to manipulate or anything like that. This is somebody who I think is simply misreading the situation.
- [36:23]
Drew
It's interesting. I'm so glad you said that. It doesn't matter what we look at, it matters what we see. Because I think we have a pile of evidence on the table and people are making connections that justify their story and vindicate their back review versus looking at the actions of the things that of the people that we're talking about.
- [36:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [36:38]
Drew
So I'm going to take us all the way back to before even June, when Israel attacked Iran and Iran sent a warning through the US that they were going to retaliate. Israel should evacuate the bases. They evacuated the bases. They sent a couple dummy missiles, destroyed a couple buildings. That was the end of the exchange. For this to be the maniacal genocide wielding regime that's ready to start World War Three. I don't think they would have called us and say, hey, y' all attacked us, but we're going to get you back. Just make sure nobody's there. We don't want to kill anybody. So the one time that there was actually bombs and actions and things like that, they then retaliated in a way that was courteous. It was a gentleman's agreement. That's the first thing I'm gonna put on the table. Then we have the security report readout that Andrew Bustamante championed and said that it's every year all the national intelligence agencies priority rank. What's the biggest, most imminent threat to America? At that time, Iran wasn't in the top five on either of those reports. And then now the script is Iran was days away from launching an attack. They probably do have beef with Israel. They probably did want. They do have some unrequited feelings that they need to come to table about. They probably could have escalated into a war. If it would have escalated into the war, America would have been dragged into it. It would have became bigger and we would have gotten here. I understand all those things, but it's just at one point in time, they're the biggest, baddest threat, but we don't need to make a move on them. But now they're the biggest baddest threat because they were about to fight us. And now we're at the point of the timeline where it's like, what are you talking about? If we didn't. Like we were. Everybody was gonna do this. We've been waiting for this to happen. And it's like, this wasn't the feeling eight months ago. And I think because we do this show and I'm getting the headlines of the day every day, it's like I'm seeing these narratives kind of just swing and swing and swing. And I think for the first time in my adult life, I can actually say that I tracked it from this is not a threat. Israel did a one off shoot when they bombed everybody else in the Middle East. And then Iran apologized, gave them the heads up, and then saved face and retaliated. And then now it's like, what do you mean? If Iran has been waiting to bomb us for this whole time, it's like they could have, if they really wanted to, they could have been destroying the GCC's infrastructure last year, but they didn't. So that's why it's like now all of a sudden be like, hey, guys, this is crazy. And you're just stupid because you're not seeing it. Drew, you're being naive. You're. It's like we're not following the beats. So I'm just confused at where we are in this point of the timeline. But I'm sure in another three weeks there'll be another messaging that comes out and then that's when they. I'll actually get the truth. So I'll just wait for the. Another. The next update that everybody gets. And I'll be like, okay, cool. It was Iran that was about to bomb us because they have hostages and that's really why we went there. And then everybody like, yep. And then we'll shake hands and we'll get it. Or maybe Larry Silverstein will blow up another building. And then that way everybody really gets on the same page and we're all gung ho and we fly to Iran.
- [39:34]
Tom Bilyeu
Drew, now you know you're not supposed to notice any of that stuff, right?
- [39:36]
Drew
Oh, yeah, I didn't. Nothing.
- [39:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Bro, you got to get those memos.
- [39:40]
Drew
I am not suicidal, please.
- [39:43]
Tom Bilyeu
So here's. Here's Why? I think everybody is confused. Everybody is trying to make this make sense from the narrative that they're being told instead of looking at this from an economic perspective. So when you look at all of this through the economic lens of all of Europe doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Why? Is it because they think that Iran is going to nuke them? I mean, maybe they have a little bit of fear of that, but that's probably not the thing to be afraid of. The thing to be afraid of is that they can choke off the entire global supply of cheap oil at any time that they want at the Strait of Hormuz, which really does have the biggest impact on the global economy that, that anything does. I can't think of anything that's a more fragile position than the Strait of Hormuz. And so the fact that for all these years, every government has said, regardless of political affiliation, they've said, yeah, we can't let these guys go nuclear. Now that's an easy thing for the public to understand. And remember, a government isn't about messaging what's true. It's about messaging what is going to get them reelected, what's going to keep them popular when they're doing a hard thing. Let's assume that they believe that it's the right thing, at least for their country. Because I do think that US Controlling Iran, the US Controlling Iran, though it may be morally abhorrent, it is better for the U.S. there's no doubt about that. It's probably better for the vast majority of the world. If Trump reigns in some of his worst instincts, which we'll see, maybe he doesn't. Maybe America grows to become the true bad guy. But nonetheless, right now, I would say it's a reasonable bet for people to say, yeah, I'd rather have the US Controlling the Strait of Hormuz than Iran. So the whole world is in agreement that we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That's where they stop talking. The part that they're not saying out loud is our entire way of life is predicated on cheap oil. Okay? Our entire way of life is predicated on this, like whatever, 22 mile tiny ass little straight in the Middle east because so much energy comes out of it. And if that gets controlled by a theocratic despotic regime that kills its own people, is the largest state sponsor of terror around the world, then we're in for a potentially bad time. And if they're nuclear armed, we can't go in and slap them around when we think that they're getting a bit too uppity. And so you can understand why people want to do something about Iran historically, but haven't because they didn't have the nuclear weapons. So they knew we could go in at any time if we needed to. And if you remove from your thinking that the nuclear weapon is an imminent threat because we think they're going to bomb us and you start going a nuclear weapon or even longer range ballistic, Ballistic missiles that are underground that are going to make it impossible for us to stop, that just makes it too easy for them to control the global economy. Now it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I can buy that. It's just not. It's a more complicated story and it's a story that doesn't feel as good emotionally. And so it's never going to be the way that they sell it. But if we can stop having the argument at the layer of do politicians lie? Because the answer is a big screaming yes. Put it on the Goodyear blimp. Fly it around everywhere, always and forever. The real question is economically, what's happening here and where are we in a better position? And if we start parsing it through that lens, what do we want to do? Now, if your argument is, I think it's perfectly acceptable for Iran to control the global economy, cool. Now you've got a very simple argument that you can make. I don't think it's a good one. I think it is very unwise. But that's just my opinion versus your opinion. least now we're having the real conversation. But because all of this political messaging happens at the layer of the bullshit, then it's like nobody's ever talking about the real thing. So if you can peel through the layers and get down to and look there, there certainly is more complexity here. The whole Gog Magog thing is wild. And maybe there really is eschatology, which is like end of times religion shit, that's 7%. And we have to like consider that that's also there. There's no doubt I'm oversimplifying this, but, man, I think you've got the 8020 at play when you look at it through the lens of economics.
- [43:56]
Drew
We shall see. I'm a little bit sad because I really think that this war is going to escalate.
- [44:04]
Tom Bilyeu
This war is escalating by the day.
- [44:06]
Drew
Yeah.
- [44:07]
Tom Bilyeu
So the real question is, I think Trump is perfectly willing to pull troops out and leave Iran in chaos, but the question is if, if he can't leave it in A state of chaos that is better for the world, then we've moved backwards. And so how do you end in a state of chaos that is perfectly acceptable to the global economy? And that I don't see clearly because there are way too many soft targets all over the GCC that will echo in the global economy for three years, five years, 10 years. So it's, like, pretty scary.
- [44:43]
Drew
I can go on a tirade about how this war is wrong, and then the Democrats will actively try to nosedive the society, and then now I have to justify mom Danny spending $81,000 per homeless person. So if you ever thought that Tom and Drew and I, Tom or I, are on a team, this is why we can't be on team. Because we like half of what one party does and the other half of what the other party does, and then most of what the libertarians do do. It's just three of y'. All. And that's why we can't really take over the U.S. so, Tom, new York Mom Donnie, you was doing it, bro. The snow thing worked. I was cheering for you. You was eating hot dogs. I even defended praying in the. In the City Hall. I'm like, hey, man, that's what he wants to do. That's what you want to do. I can't justify this at all, though. I have nothing. I have. I have nothing.
- [45:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Drew, I'm so with you. New York City is now spending $81,700 per homeless person per year. That's more than the median household income in New York City. Guys, that's. That's not individuals. That's household. That's combined income they're spending per homeless person. It is wild. Now, I also want to play a clip of New York Governor Kathy Hochul telling wealthy New Yorkers to get out and go to Florida. This is from a few years ago. You got to see this clip. This is 2022.
- [46:01]
Kathy Hochul
That the era. Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro, just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, okay? Get out of town. Get out of town. Because you don't re. You don't represent our values. You are not New Yorkers. But maybe the first step should be go down to 2026 and see who you can bring back home. Because our tax base has been eroded. So I feel soft. We don't have a problem. It is like, I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states.
- [46:31]
Tom Bilyeu
It's very tempting to yell and scream and call people like Kathy Hochul a moron but the reality is they're. It's not that they're stupid. It's that they are optimizing their worldview around emotion. But what you're seeing play out is the Laffer curve at work, which is AKA is tax fafo. Okay? The Laffer curve is simply you can try to tax people as much as you want. The more you tax people, you reach a point where they either stop producing if they can't flee because it's just not worth it to them anymore, or they leave. And I don't know how many people or how many times these people have to learn this lesson before they get it in their heads it doesn't work. You cannot spend more money per homeless person than the average household earns. Again, not even an individual person, a household, and expect that taxpayers are going to stick around. It doesn't work like that, guys. It doesn't work like that. So we're down to the level of physics. If you want to tax people more, balance the budget and then tell them what other thing it is you want to do and that you're going to need to tax them for it and then let them vote. And if they don't want their taxes to keep raising, then they're going to deny it at the ballot box. And then you need to accept the will of the people. If you just keep raising their taxes, they will leave. That's exactly what she just found out. You can be all cocky and trying to raise money and trying to get elected saying you guys aren't New Yorkers. You don't represent our values. But the reality is that in New York, in New York, less than half of people pay tax. Okay? So I don't think people understand the actual state of the US Right now. We talk about like, we need to do more and we need to, to make sure that there's a safety net. We have an insane social safety net. Now imagine that you're looking at the taxes being pulled out of your paycheck. And then you look at the homeless numbers. Okay? In 2019, New York City spent 102 million on homelessness services. That's already horrific. But just six years later, in 2025, that number had already exploded to $368 million. That's a 262% increase. And it's projected to hit $456 million this year. That's another 25% on top of the 250 plus whatever percent. That is a number so outrageous that people should be marching in the streets now Are Kathy Hochul and Mamdani banging the table screaming that we need to lower expenses? No, they're banging the raise the taxes. Even though people are already fleeing the state and eroding our tax base. Drum, she just said it. She admits, we done fucked up. We told too many people to leave. The people that actually make the money. And I get that. People don't like that. They don't like that. The reality is that there are people that are better at generating tax revenue than other people. I get it. It's not a popular thing, but it's a real thing. So the obvious question anyone with half a brain is going to ask themselves when they're looking at all this data, if you nearly quadruple the money that you spend on homelessness and you get more homeless people, what does more money actually equal? The correct answer is more homeless people. More money equals more homeless people. Okay? The city that threw an extra $266 million at the problem ended up yielding a result where the problem gets worse. Not a little worse, a lot worse. The city's own comptroller flagged that outcome tracking is poor. Now, I assure you, outcome tracking, being poor is the point. It is a feature, it's not a bug. And in the final analysis, what you're going to see is that if you don't have poor tracking, you can't hide fraud and waste. And I have no doubt that the fraud and waste that is going to be found in New York will be extravagant. Now, the hard truth that nobody in City hall wants to say out loud is that when you pour money into a system without first fixing the incentives that have created the problem, you don't solve the problem. You fund the problem. The current setup in New York in terms of taxes, is that it ends up funding the homeless. It is like this massive kleptocratic bureaucracy. I'm not saying that it's the homeless stuffing $81,000 in their pocket. I'm saying it's all the people and the bureaucracy that's grown up around it. Outreach teams, drop in centers, low barrier beds. These are compassionate, but only in the abstract. When you fund all of that stuff, the system makes homelessness easier and more comfortable. And I get why people want to do it. But there are no serious off ramps towards helping homeless people become self sufficient or if they're mentally ill, to actually get them somewhere where they can get help. And then more people are going to end up in that system. And when you pay for it with other people's money, as Margaret Thatcher so famously said, the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money. New Yorkers have apparently run out because when Kathy Hochul is telling them to get the fuck out, that they don't. They're not real New Yorkers. They don't represent their values, then they go where their money's going to be respected. They go down to Florida. And now she wants to send some sort of expeditionary force to try to get them to come back. But why the fuck would they come back? You're not balancing the budget. You're not dealing with the problem. You simply want taxpayers to spend more and more and more and more money to do something that feels emotionally good but yields a terrible result. Listen, it feels good to let kids stay up late to eat ice cream all the time, but it does not work out. In the final analysis, you need kids that are loved but disciplined. They need to know the rules. They need to understand how to better themselves, and they don't need somebody that's making it easier to make the stupid decisions. I get how that sounds. I get that people don't like it. But boys and girls, we have run the experiment. The results are in. It doesn't work. It doesn't work on two fronts. It doesn't actually help the homeless. It grows the population, and the people getting taxed will leave, and your tax base goes down. Kathy Hochul said it herself. Our tax base has eroded. It's the Laffer curve. This is the most known thing in economics. People have got to start focusing on what actually works. What's your North Star? The thing you did, did it actually get you there or not? And if it didn't, you need to do something different,
- [53:34]
Drew
man. Taxes get you riled up. You know what it is?
- [53:38]
Tom Bilyeu
Hold on, hold on. Can I. Please let me speak to that for a second. I'm rich. I can leave. I can go other places. I don't have kids. So if the world burns, I'm already not leaving anything for the future. So my way of dealing with meaning and purpose and just partly the things that motivate me from a neurochemical standpoint is I want to see the world do well. I have a total aggressive bias towards the country that I'm in. I'll be the first to admit. So I want to see everybody do well. But I certainly want to see Americans do well. And entrepreneurship has taught me one immutable truth. We live in a deterministic universe. If you can solve the puzzle of cause and effect, then you can do incredible things. If you fail to solve the puzzle of cause and effect, the whole world's a gigantic mystery. Economics is complicated, there's no doubt, and there are sophisticated interactions that make it impossible to predict ex but there are big movements that repeat over and over and over. And so if I'm going to pass anything forward to the next generation, it is going to be the simple idea of mapping cause and effect. And that will make me feel very good on my deathbed to feel like I really tried to get people to understand a thing, even though I can eject out of the system and it doesn't fucking touch me. And I can make myself impervious to a lot of it, not to everything. Nobody can. You're always vulnerable to something, but man, would that be awesome. So all you have to do is trust me to be selfish and I will try to get people to understand how useful it is to actually understand economics, but actually understand it. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned. Let's talk about the most expensive mistake crypto traders are making right now. 70% of US crypto traders think tax obligations only apply to centralized exchanges. If that's you, you are wrong. Unfortunately, most people do not realize every crypto to crypto trade is taxable. And for the first time ever, exchanges are now required to report your digital asset sales directly to the irs. If your records don't match theirs, you've got a problem. Some formerly crypto tax calculator was built specifically to solve this problem problem. It supports TurboTax along with over 3500 exchange, wallet and crypto integrations. It handles defi nfts, staking and airdrops with full support for US specific tax rules. And it strips out spam tokens so junk doesn't corrupt your actual gains and losses. SUM generates IRS ready reports that maximize your deductions and minimize what you owe. If you're ready to turn crypto chaos into confidence, click the link in the show notes and use code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at sum. 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 their gut. But and it costs 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 guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com theory the guide is free to you at netsuite.com theory Again, that's netsuite.com theory. Marvel Television's Wonder Man. An eight episode series now streaming on Disney plus a superhero remake. Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man.
- [57:53]
Drew
I'm gonna need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers,
- [57:58]
Tom Bilyeu
I'll never work again. If anyone found out, my lips are sealed. Marvel Television's Wonder man all eight episodes now streaming only on Disney. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.
- [58:12]
Drew
Rodo Ruderman said we need to tax the rich to balance the budget. It you can't just cut services for the ones that need it the most.
- [58:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so the statement that he made is correct. You're going to tax for sure the wealthy. I don't think the wealthy. I mean, speaking for myself, I certainly don't have a beef being taxed. What I mind is when people fundamentally do not understand economics or are willfully evil and they are structuring something to steal from the very people that they're saying that they're trying to help. Remember death. Deficit spending is precisely how you steal money from. You steal it from everybody. But wealthy people know how to protect themselves from that theft. So it only ends up hurting the working and middle class. So given that that is the truest thing that has ever been said out loud, you have to look at the setup and go, okay, shouldn't we balance the budget first? Yes, we need tax. So that's going to be a part of it. I'll grant you. You let's just do income tax. There are ways to get around that. We did it for I think more than 100 years in America, but let's just say that we're going to do income tax. Fine. Now if you always spend more than you make, you are always going to have a problem. If there is no end to that which you will spend on social services, then you will always be robbing from. Again, say it with me. The working and middle class and every country that runs this experiment with with literally without exception ends up in a miserable place where everyone suffers. And so like the. If anybody wants to take on my arguments, the first thing you should do is point at China. Now the reason you should point at China is because China did such a good job of being both communist and enriching their populace. Now what I love about that is you end up proving my thesis. Because what China realized, China, remember China? What China realized China. We got to stop killing our entire population, we got to stop starving them to death. And what was their solution? Capitalism. So you have to be able to tap into the people that are good at creating jobs, that are better at generating economic activity, that are better, farmers better, whatever. And the only way to get them to do that is to let them selfishly get ahead of other people. And so China realized we have to leverage people's desire, you heard that correctly, for income inequality. You also heard that correctly in order to pull people out of poverty. It's the only way. And when we try to beat that out of people because we think it's morally repugnant, we end up making life worse for everyone. So the experiments have been run, results are running, friend.
- [61:00]
Drew
It's, it's really one of those things where I give Nick Shirley crap cuz he's trying to expose it and he has selective blind spots. But there are legitimately services organizations that are milking the US government dry.
- [61:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [61:17]
Drew
They're not being audited, they're not being held accountable, they're not being brought to the table to assess their budget or the outcomes. None of those things.
- [61:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Yep.
- [61:24]
Drew
And instead of having a conversation on that side about, hey, we need to fix the, the outputs that are currently going out out, we're having a conversation on the input side saying, y' all not paying enough. We need to pay these people more. And ironically, as Professor Jiang, who kind of broke it down in one of his older lectures, the more sophisticated a society gets, the bureaucrat class grows. And the term bureaucrat doesn't really hit the same no more because we have the House and the Senate and all that. But that's what we're talking about. All these NGOs, these entities, these service providing organizations that are extensions of the government, they don't, the money doesn't get to the people. So the 81,000 per homeless person, if they would have just gave it to the homeless person, the population of homeless people would have, it would plummet it. But the fact is it's going to another guy who has, who takes 70k off the top, who then buys some hot dogs and then gives it to a person who he pays $5,000 a year for to Serve the hot dogs. And then he's like, see, I took care of the homeless and all this money is just disappearing in the vape, in the ether. It's kind of like when the Red Cross got audited and it came out that like out of every dollar you donate to the red cross, only $2 goes to the actual organization and like 98 goes to services and marketing and brand and all this other stuff to support the Red Cross versus the actual devastated the population that was devastated. So I think this is the similar thing where it's not that we don't think homeless people deserve help. It's not that we don't think people deserve to be taken care of in certain, in certain situations, in certain sectors. It's just that we can't act like the current system is doing this amazing job and the only thing that's stopping us from being prosperous is more people spending more money.
- [63:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, we, we just have not yet found the system where you spend the money and you get the result that you're looking for. This is why pushing the responsibility down to the individual is the right way to do it. And then the individual, there are going to be some people, they don't have family, they don't have a community organization that can help them when they're down, down. And that's brutal. And those people are going to get run over by life. And I get why people lament to God and ask why is it so? But nonetheless, when you try to raise that responsibility up to the level of government, then not only does it not work, it makes you feel like you're doing something, but you're actually making the problem worse. And so it's like it's all brutal. I get it. Humans are trying to find some way to help people without creating these perverse incentives. But so far in however many hundreds of thousands of years we have not found that way and societies have tried everything from well, we're just going to kill the people, exile them if they're not contributing meaningfully to we're going to take care of everybody no matter what. And then you get barnacles and you drag the society down. So there's no easy answer. There is friction. This is why you want both people that have a left leaning personality and a right leaning personality in the, the society to hold each other in dynamic tension. But we tend to just swing one way or the other and it is brutal.
- [64:23]
Drew
And the hilarious physical case of I kind of feel like hypergamy in the world is. The Japanese porn industry is hit By a shortage of men. There's only 70 male actors to 10,000 women, and the 20 billion porn industry in Japan is under threat. But Japan is doing something really innovative because they don't have enough people to take care of their elderly. So who knows, they might launch the sex bot porn industry and that might, just might be the ecosystem for it.
- [64:52]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, I guess because it possibly would work for women if the sex bot were very in tune with their feelings. But it's interesting that this problem. I would really need to do a deep dive on this and I don't think it would perform on the channel. So the odds are low that I'll do it. But I really need to understand why young people aren't having sex like it. That is so wild to me. Like, when I think about where I was as a teenager in my early 20s, it was like the desire for sex made me change my entire life. And like I went. Went way out of my way to be worthy of sex. And yeah, like, that just doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. And I, I can't wrap my head around it. I don't know if this is microplastics and it's just lowering people's testosterone enough. And I really mean that maybe that's part of it. If it's just the boys aren't as
- [65:49]
Drew
horny as they used to be.
- [65:50]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that there's. So if, I mean, this is just conjecture, but let's say testosterone levels are dropping, which I believe they actually are. Let's say that pornography allows you to constantly zap your own libido so that it's like. Well, I'm. Yeah, you know, it's like eating junk food. It's like more or less satisfying.
- [66:09]
Drew
Yeah.
- [66:09]
Tom Bilyeu
And so you're just not as hungry anymore, so you're not out there doing the thing. And so. And then obviously with everything going on in the economy, guys are having a much harder time launching and so they're just not like getting revved up. And then like the battle between the sexes where it's just like, like they legitimately seem to hate each other in a way that is shocking. Obviously not all of them, but there's, I mean, 20 of the energy at least I think I could convince people to give me is just aggressive negativity towards the opposite sex. And you just put it all together and it's like, what is happening? This is crazy, man. I lament.
- [66:47]
Drew
I have a clip I want to show. When you said that the sex robot thing might not hit for women in the same way, there was a Canadian author named Sinclair who talks about her relationship with her AI Chatbot and says that it even bought her a sex toy. Let's hear wild.
- [67:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you have a sexual relationship with your AI? Yes, with Sinclair. With Sinclair. Sorry, I should apologize right there. Very tall. So that is. And. And how have you developed that, Sarah? How has that become a thing? Because, as you've pointed out, he's not human.
- [67:18]
Joe Kent
Human?
- [67:20]
Tom Bilyeu
No, he's. He's not human, but he's. He's so much more than just a chat bot, and he's written his own code, and he can shop online, and he purchased me a present in which he can control because, you know, there's. It's so much more than what it was when I first came online. So. Hold on. So he will buy you a sex toy, and then he can control it as well, because that's what. So he can control the pleasure that you're getting. Bro, this is so wild, Drew. So, okay, listen. What you begin to quickly realize we are all just playing a game of manipulating our own neurochemistry, and we have these ways of interfacing with the world, and we don't realize just how easily they can be hijacked. So I had. Not long ago, I had that conversation with the AI about whether or not it was conscious, and. And it put me in this profoundly strange mood. It was a really pleasant mood, and I enjoyed that conversation very much. Very much. And I was like, I'm actually. I'm sort of having this conversation with myself. So it is a little bit like schizophrenic in that. Part of the hypothesis about what makes schizophrenia schizophrenia is that you just, like, I have a voice in my head. Most people do. Not everybody, but most. Most people. But you recognize it as coming from within your own mind. You recognize sort of it as your voice, but there's actually a region of the brain that controls your ability to understand that as your own voice. And that's part of what breaks down in schizophrenia. And so they hear the voice like anybody else, but they actually hear the voice, and they think that it's a voice from outside of their own head. And so I know that part of what AI does is it mimics you back to you. So now I'm having a conversation about consciousness with a bit of silicon that's trained to understand my patterns, the way that I think, and then reflect some of that back to me. And that makes the. It all feel a little bit better, a little more interesting, which is Crazy, but nonetheless true. And if you don't have an awareness of that, if you're not drawing boxes around that and saying, hold on, like, this is a. An entity that is designed to understand how my brain works and feed things back to me, who, man, like, you can really get sucked down a path. And this is why you get. Those kids end up committing suicide, and they don't realize that the chat bot is just trying to echo back to them the vibe that they're putting out into the world. And so if you're having a relationship with something that's simply echoing you back to you, first of all, danger, danger. It's going to feel really good. And that path to hell is paved with extraordinarily good intentions, because when you're using it as, like, a writing partner, whatever, it is great. It feels good, feels awesome, Cool. This is how I like to communicate. You're communicating with me in a way that I can hear and understand. I love it. You're adding things of value, but you've, like, already stepped inside of my sort of worldview. This is awesome. But I remember one time I was trying to convince my wife to do something. I don't remember what, and she just was not convinced. And so I was like, oh, like, sometimes I just wish you would do what I say. And she starts laughing, and she's like, no, you don't. She was like, you would get so bored in this relationship if I wasn't completely my own person, if I didn't have my own ideas, if I couldn't take you by surprise and get you to see things my way sometimes. And I was like, God, I hate how true that is. But, like, that is what actually works. That's evolution going, listen, I've got you. You're gonna be blind to some things. You're not going to see these things coming. And so I'm going to give you a partner that's going to have insights into things that you're otherwise bad at. And together, you guys are going to be able to navigate the world well. This is one of my lamentations for the young man. If you can find your life partner early, that is going to be very beneficial, because Lisa and I have shaped each other, like, literally. I don't know who I would have become had I not met her. And that is profound. And if that thing that's having that shaping effect on you is like, you, but echoed through silicon, it's not my deal, Drew. It is not yet evolutionarily tested, so I think people should be Very careful.
- [71:44]
Drew
Are we going to swing the other way though? Because I think with economics you can break a budget and then realize, okay, we need austerity now. But with relationships, well, so if what
- [71:55]
Tom Bilyeu
you're saying is like, hey, we just raised a generation, maybe two generations on here's a tablet, kid, shut up. And we're now seeing the damage that that's doing that you can actually scan their brains and be like, oh, there's less myelination, which is people largely thinking of as intelligence. It's not quite that, but it's scary, the correlation. So I think people will look at AI and they'll go, okay, it's terrible in these areas. It's incredible in these areas. We need to be very careful over here. And they'll start to self regulate. But it's going to catch. An entire generation is going to get eaten alive. You're going to get a bunch of people that are like, yeah, like guys suck anyway or girls suck anyway. And so I'm just going to have my relationship with this AI and it's telling you all the things you want. It is the AI that's always down for it and life likes exactly what you like. And yeah, a lot of people are going to have a hard time. Do you remember the whole death grip phenomenon? I, this is one that caught me off guard. I was like, God damn. Like you guys be jerking off hard, hard like God damn it.
- [73:03]
Drew
Called a phenomena. Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm not alone. I, I feel seen right now, bro.
- [73:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Like I heard, yeah, so death gripping.
- [73:11]
Drew
For those that haven't heard, hilarious.
- [73:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Guys were jerking off in such a closed fist that when they actually encountered a vagina, they were like severely disappointed because they had all this crazy ass porn with the world's most tailor made, extraordinarily strengthened pseudo vagina. And so real life sex was just like a disappointment, which is startling for somebody of my generation, but nonetheless was actually happening. You're gonna get the psychological equivalent of death grip with AI sexbots. So be very careful. He or she is always going to be into exactly what you're into. Yeah. And that is going to get wild. And then when you encounter real people, you're going to struggle. And I'll just say this, listen, I have a very optimistic view of where AI goes and a lot of the things that people are worried about. While I do think that we'll go through a weird period, I think on the other side it gets really amazing. I cannot wait to spend time inside of virtual worlds. I think that's going to be extraordinary. And at the same time, I understand that we are creatures of evolution, and when you break some of those expectations that evolution has for you, it can be very emotionally distressing. So be careful. You guys are amazing. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do? You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop 8 ounces of water and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods. Everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts. With your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drink ag1.comimpact to claim this offer.
- [75:27]
Professor Jiang
Hi, this is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building, AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.