Why America Faces Its Most Dangerous Moment Yet! The Doomsday Clock Explained | Tom Bilyeu Show| The Tom Bilyeu Show

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Episode: Why America Faces Its Most Dangerous Moment Yet! The Doomsday Clock Explained
Date: January 29, 2025
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Co-host/Guest: Drew, Lisa (late segment)
Notable Clips: Donald Trump, Anthony Mackie, John (Fox News), Joseph Humeyer

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the alarming shift of the Doomsday Clock to its closest-ever point to midnight, symbolizing how near humanity is to catastrophic self-annihilation. Through spirited debate and incisive commentary between Tom Bilyeu and Drew, the discussion covers existential risks—nuclear war, AI, and climate change—current U.S. and world politics, the rapid pace of technological innovation, and contentious cultural debates. The show seeks to challenge listeners’ ability to filter bias, offer clarity on complex topics, and foster actionable insights during a pivotal time in American and global history.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Doomsday Clock: What Does It Mean Now?

[01:00 - 06:53]

• Backdrop: The Doomsday Clock is now at 89 seconds to midnight. Created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists post-nuclear era, it symbolizes existential threats to humanity.
• Modern Triggers: Beyond nuclear threat, climate change, AI, and misinformation are now considered.
  • Tom notes: “Seeing climate change and misinformation be at the top of their lips did not feel like the right way to prioritize the threats that we face.” (Tom Bilyeu, 04:07)
• Critique of Prioritization:
  • Drew feels politics drive these decisions: “It felt political just in its presentation ... it's more of a nod at Trump versus its actual, hey, humanity, we're getting worse.” (Drew, 04:16)
  • Tom urges skepticism, suggesting, “Everybody has a frame of reference. Everybody sees the world through their lens... The way people should interpret me or anybody else that puts out these very strong opinions is that I’m an AI.” (Tom, 05:41)

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2. AI Risk, Markets & National Security

[06:53 - 14:57]

• Insider Speculation:

  • Discussion on Eliezer Yudkowsky (mispronounced, corrected live) and deep skepticism about market manipulation (Nvidia price drop) and AI innovation cycles.
  • Tom defends rational economic assessments over conspiracy: “To me, it makes a lot more sense that Nvidia’s stock price is tied to people needing the chips that Nvidia makes. Deep Seek has come out and said you need a fraction of what everybody thought we were going to need ... That makes a ton of sense to me.” (Tom, 09:19)

• America's ‘Sputnik Moment’:

  • Trump’s comments frame AI competition with China as a race akin to the space race: “Should we as Americans be like, hey, we need to treat this as the Sputnik moment? ... to really ignite in us this desire to compete and to win in this space.” (Tom, 08:50)

• AI Hardware & Brain vs Compute Debate:

  • Tom discusses the possibility of superintelligence via massive compute vs human-brain-like efficiency: “The only thing that remains to be seen is if people realize, oh, no, no. The game is inference. The game is focusing all of our attention on rationality... The big data centers are about training... But I hope ... you can keep making the data centers bigger and bigger and bigger, and thusly they will become more intelligent.” (Tom, 11:19)
  • Drew is skeptical: “There’s a special sauce that separates... how the brain works so efficiently as a human versus in other animals.” (Drew, 14:36)

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3. Innovation: Supersonic Jets & the Trump 'Renegotiation Era'

[16:34 - 21:13]

• Supersonic Air Travel is Back:
  • Boom emerges as the first independently developed supersonic jet (since Concorde).
  • Tom contextualizes this moment within a wave of deregulation and renegotiation spurred by Trump’s second term:
    “...the Overton window got blown apart when Trump got reelected ... we’re able to talk about things that we weren’t talking about before.” (Tom, 17:31)
    He ties a surge in innovation (SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink) to broader cultural and economic shifts.

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4. U.S. Foreign Policy & Tariff Diplomacy

[21:13 - 29:26]

• Colombia Incident:
  • Trump’s hardline tactics (threats of tariffs, embassy closures) quickly reversed Colombia’s decision on deported immigrants.
  • Tom’s analysis: “It’s definitely a win for Trump... But if he’s using them always and forever as an aggressive posturing, I don’t know. I don’t know what the knock on effect is going to be... if you bully enough people, you’re going to get into trouble.” (Tom, 21:50)
• Negotiation Strategy:
  • Economic leverage as power: “In any negotiation, you need to understand your point of leverage ... the whole world basically wants access to our economy, wants access to China’s economy...” (Tom, 23:15)
  • Drew flags challenges to this approach with bigger states: “It works with Colombia, Guatemala ... I want to see how he applies that leverage ... when we start hitting these other countries around the world.” (Drew, 25:15)
• Thucydides Trap:
  • Tom introduces the idea that the US and China are on a collision course often found in rising-vs-established-power rivalries.
  • AI's role in this competition is critical; speed and scale of AI development may dictate the new balance.

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5. AI Arms Race & National Security

[29:26 - 32:11]

• Inside the 'Alien Enemy' Threat:

  • Joseph Humeyer (clip) suggests Venezuelan cartels are ‘weapons of warfare,’ not just criminals, with migration weaponized as asymmetric tactics.
  • Tom is cautious: “I’ll need more time to see if this is really true. It’s certainly an interesting hypothesis... That, to me, is why the open border was so terrifying...” (Tom, 32:15)
  • Discusses parallels to Cold War-era infiltration, modern “sleeper agents,” and how policy must avoid slipping into profiling and authoritarian excess.

• Elon Musk's 'Letter of Marque' Solution:

  • Wild idea to deputize vetted citizens to combat gangs. Tom: “That just strikes me as wild west, like good Lord, what could go wrong going to the, the most well armed populace in the world?” (Tom, 35:00)

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6. Cultural Reflections: Paramilitary Tactics & America's Own History

[36:55 - 41:58]

• Drew expresses skepticism about America’s innocence in covert destabilization tactics:
  “America has done this to so many other people. You’re not surprised that people are doing it to America?” (Tom, 38:43 / Drew, 38:47)

• Discussion on crime and police strategy, referencing experiences in LA and international cities overrun by gangs.

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7. Transparency & Democracy: Secret Congressional Votes

[42:07 - 43:12]

• Charlie Kirk tweets about potential secret ("SCIF") votes for Tulsi Gabbard.
  • Tom: “I could not hate this anymore if I tried. I think that Congress and the Senate should be absolutely forced to vote transparently for everything.” (Tom, 43:04)

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8. Culture War: Captain America, Patriotism & Inclusivity

[43:53 - 56:45]

• Anthony Mackie (new Captain America) Interview:
  • Mackie says the character shouldn't solely represent America, but broader ideals—honor, reliability, “slaying dragons.” (Anthony Mackie, 44:14)
  • Tom’s response: “You’ve got a movie called Captain America. You’ve got a fan base that loves what America represents... To say Captain America doesn't stand for America, like God damn, like what are you doing?” (Tom, 45:28)
  • The hosts discuss nationalism, the duality of America’s reputation, and propaganda as both empowerment and distortion.
  • Memorable Quote:
    “If you focus on the positive aspects of America ... and hold her accountable to getting better ... then we can continue to get better. But if we focus everyone’s attention on the bad part ... the impetus becomes to burn it down.” (Tom, 51:03)
  • The political-culture divide in modern entertainment is explored, with manga cited as a medium that avoids overt moralizing compared to contemporary American comics.

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9. Dating Difficulties: Modern Romance & Social Dynamics

[61:36 - End (~68:47)]

• Lisa shares a frustrating dating story (“streets are trash”).
• Tom offers nuanced, practical advice:
  • Favor real-life, slow-burn meets over apps: “When you’re in a swipe mode, there’s a sense of there’s always going to be somebody better ... I think that that is way more effective.”
  • Be yourself, find opportunities to shine where interests are aligned, and be willing to walk away: “Bringing into the real world, being aggressively yourself and saying, I have no fear of loss...that changed everything.” (Tom, 66:15)
  • “If you want to be interesting, be interested. Just like, ask them a ton of questions about themselves. It really does spark something in somebody to feel listened to, to feel seen.” (Tom, 67:40)
• Drew: “Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. We’ll see if I get any wins.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I am simply giving you a sincere, strong take that you should be aggregating a bunch of different people ... looking at this thing we call truth from a bunch of different angles, all doing our best to try to figure out, okay, what is this thing?” (Tom, 05:41)
• “If AI is able to be super intelligent, now you run into this idea of fast takeoff, slow takeoff ... If Deep Seek is proving you may not need these gigantic centers ... then now you’re back into this race.” (Tom, 27:56)
• “I hope that supersonic is the future. I hope it’s a leading indicator of a lot of incredible innovation that’s about to break through.” (Tom, 19:56)
• “But if we focus on the positive aspects of America ... we can continue to get better. But if we focus on all the things that America did wrong, the impetus becomes to burn it down.” (Tom, 51:03)
• “If you want to be interesting, be interested ... ask them a ton of questions about themselves. It really does spark something in somebody to feel listened to, to feel seen.” (Tom, 67:40)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Doomsday Clock deep dive: 01:00 – 06:53
• AI disruption, market rumors, Trump audio: 07:01 – 14:57
• Supersonic jets, deregulation wave: 16:34 – 21:13
• Colombia v. Trump; tariffs & diplomacy: 21:13 – 29:26
• AI arms race, Thucydides Trap, Altman quote: 25:45 – 32:11
• Venezuelan gangs, asymmetrical warfare segment (Fox clip): 29:26 – 32:11
• Elon Musk's Letter of Marque, crime policy: 32:11 – 36:57
• America’s interventionist history: 36:55 – 41:58
• Congressional secrecy & transparency: 42:07 – 43:12
• Anthony Mackie/Captain America controversy: 43:53 – 56:45
• Modern dating struggles & Tom’s advice: 61:36 – 68:47

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Conclusion

This multifaceted episode blends urgent global threats with skepticism toward political narratives, the accelerating turbulence of tech, hard-nosed economic and foreign policy insights, and sharp reflections on modern culture—from the definition of patriotism to the realities of digital-era dating. Tom and Drew present a conversational, critical, and sometimes lighthearted approach, encouraging listeners to think independently—“be legendary”—no matter how close to midnight the world may seem.

Transcript

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[Tom Bilyeu]

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever before. Deepseek tries to gaslight users trump force fed deportees back to Colombia by threatening President Petro with a tariff stick. People say foreign gangs are trying to destabilize America. And Elon has a wild solution for how to stop it. Air travel goes supersonic for the first time in decades, proving innovation isn't dead. But waymos are getting attacked on the streets of la. It is another busy day in a world of transition. Drew, welcome to the future. It's here. It's amazing, but there are some challenges.

[Drew]

Yeah, 89 seconds. Man, I feel like I'm on the clock. I gotta speed some things up. There's not happening right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

89 seconds to midnight for people that don't know the Doomsday Clock.

[Drew]

I was just about to say give us that breakdown. I know about the Oppenheimer days of it, but in 2025, bring us up to speed. Where are we at right now with

[Tom Bilyeu]

yeah, so when we made nuclear weapons, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was born and they decided to track how close we were to self annihilation. It's gotten a lot broader in recent years. Before it really was just nailed down to that how likely are we to experience nuclear Armageddon? They had a whole announcement press conference where they were talking about it and they listed out a bunch of the different things that they think are the things pushing us closer to midnight again than ever before. And they were global warming or climate change. I forget the word that they used. Misinformation, which I thought was a Little bit crazy. That felt a little political. Yeah, but we put down a whole list.

[Drew]

What were all the things pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, withdrawing from the who and AI was also mentioned as well as the nuclear war threat still.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, but that was the last thing that they listed, which I thought was very interesting.

[Drew]

I thought the Duke, you should have started with that one.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But yeah, yeah. So. Well, it's. Is nuclear the biggest threat that we face right now? So Eric Weinstein, who longtime listeners of this show will know I have just unending amounts of respect for, still thinks that that is the threat people are not paying attention to. At one point he said do we have to start testing these things out in the open air again so that people see just how devastating they are to get people scared of them again? So I don't want to dismiss that because it just has sort of low PR value but may still be the thing that we have to worry about the most. But seeing climate change and misinformation be at the top of their lips did not feel like the right way to prioritize the threats that we face. I believe in humanity, I don't think that we are going to self annihilate. But when I look at the things that worry me the most, it is the, the immediate term existential dread that's going to be brought on by AI I think that is going to be the most disruptive thing that we're going to face. So again, overplayed to call it doomsday, but that's the thing that people are going to pay attention to whether they want to or not. And that's why I know at some point we're going to be talking about the Waymo thing. This is that those little glimmers of the pockets of violence that I think that we're going to see coming up in the next couple of years beginning to rear its head now. But I do think it is worth talking about that the bulletin of atomic, of the atomic scientists are messing with that clock.

[Drew]

Yeah, it's, it felt political just in its presentation because to your point, if AI was number one with everything that happened in deep seat, deep seek, we're seeing a bunch of misinformation coming from is this CCP controlled all these things like that. So I would understand if they had AI technology, nuclear wars and then climate change, things like that. But kind of leading with like the two things that Trump signed in as an executive order a week ago as like oh, because he did that, we have to take the time down. It Felt kind of political and that just. We had our interview on Tuesday with Cenk released and I just love that interview because he kind of broke down that there's this over politicization of media in the sense that we want it to be left versus right so bad that in them kind of stamping their flag and putting this out here that hey, we're getting closer to midnight. But they're doing it because I think it's more of a nod at Trump versus its actual, hey, humanity. We're getting worse. Like it seems kind of weird in that way.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I agree very much that we are, that their announcement is tied more to that than say, what's going on in Russia, Ukraine, where we have an actual hot war that's escalating, or could things break out farther in the Middle East? That stuff didn't trigger them. AI and a potential fast takeoff didn't trigger them or made it way deeper into their announcement certainly says that. I think if we looked at the donation patterns of the people in the group, we might see that it leans a little blue. But I'm not mad at that. I think people really should speak up for what they believe in. But that's where I get into the whole misinformation, information thing winds me up because everybody has a frame of reference. Everybody sees the world through their lens. And when you can't see that, that's when I get troubled. So my whole thing is people should distrust themselves. If people think again, I'll repeat this one until I'm blue in the face. The way people should interpret me or anybody else that puts out these very strong opinions is that I'm an AI. I am simply giving you a sincere, strong take that you should be aggregating a bunch of different people that are looking at this thing we call truth from a bunch of different angles, all doing our best to try to figure out, okay, what is this thing? What is the thing that gives us the highest predictive validity and that I don't want. I don't even over index on my own thinking. I'm constantly looking for dis things that disprove the things that I already believe. And so something like that to list misinformation and not realize that all of us, intentionally or otherwise, are going to end up putting out something that is reflective of what we believe but does not survive an encounter with reality.

[Drew]

We shall see. We shall see. Somebody else who is kind of putting their thoughts into things is Elizar. You.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You Lizer.

[Drew]

Eliza. I was so close.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, I'm not Even sure, I'm pronouncing that 100% correct, but that. That'll get you close. Yeah. So this is interesting. And you and I debated off camera whether we put this in conspiracy corner or not. I think in his own comments, he would admit now that his initial tweet, which is as follows. I heard from many people who said an Nvidia drop, meaning drop in the stock market price makes no sense as a Deep Seek reaction, and therefore they're buying Nvidia. So those people. This is his tweet continued. So those people have now been cheated by insider counterparties with political access. At first, I was not sure what he was trying to say. And going in and reading all the different comments, what he's saying is that because this was tied to a video of Trump making an announcement about how we're going to be tariffing the chips that are coming out of Taiwan. And what he was saying was, no, no, the dip in the Nvidia price wasn't really tied to the Deep Seq announcement. The dip in Nvidia price is insider trading of people who knew that this announcement was coming and they needed the COVID story of deep seeking to dump their shares, basically. And in his comments, somebody pointed out, Trump's been talking about this since previously he talked about it on the Joe Rogan podcast and Eliza admitted that he didn't realize that. So I think he would walk that back. I don't know, we'll see over time. But I think Trump actually has a better take on the Deep Seek thing, which is, hey, look, this is genuine innovation. Now, should we as Americans be like, hey, we need to treat this as the Sputnik moment? And yes, I know Sputnik was unmanned. Thank you, everybody in the comments. To take it as that moment, to let it be a kick in the ass, to really ignite in us this desire to compete and to win in this space versus look at this and say, okay, this is an insider trading moment because we saw the drop in the Nvidia price prior to Trump's announcement. When Trump's announcement came out, I don't think they're related at all. But the price then very shortly after started going back up. I mean, this is just news cycles. And so to me, it makes a lot more sense that somebody saying, oh, Nvidia's stock price is tied to people needing the chips that Nvidia makes. Deep Seek has come out and said, you need a fraction of what everybody thought we were going to need in order to get the AI wins. That we want and therefore somebody whose price is predicated on needing just a gaggle of these chips, they're not going to be as valuable that that makes ton of sense to me. And Trump making good on something that he's been talking about for a while being cover story, I just think it's the wrong read. So as people look at the shifting sands in the technology space deep seek in particular, I think there's really two things to take away from that. One is let this be our Sputnik moment where we are really amping ourselves up to compete. And then two, understanding that ultimately this is a wonderful innovation and this is actually going to be better for us. Yeah, I think that's the read.

[Drew]

Let's jump into what Trump's comments have done.

[Donald Trump]

They went crazy. Last week I signed an order revoking Joe Biden's destructive artificial intelligence regulations so that AI companies can once again focus on being the best, not just being the most woken today. And over the last couple of days I've been reading about China and some of the companies in China, one in particular coming up with a faster method of AI and much less expensive method. And that's good because you don't have to spend this much money. I view that as a positive, as an asset. So I really think if it's fact and if it's true, and nobody really knows if it is, but I view that as a positive because you'll be doing that too, so you won't be spending as much and you'll get the same result, hopefully.

[Drew]

I think it's interesting though, because everybody's talking about the Nvidia read to me that says Stargate out of anything should be on notice that they just announced 500 billion for a million square foot data center where Deepsea kind of says we might not need that, I'll be

[Tom Bilyeu]

really interested to see. So I have a working hypothesis now that I've heard from many other people. It's not me making it up that the only difference between say, monkeys and humans is the amount of compute that the human brain is able to do. So if you simply stack neurons on neurons on neurons on neurons, that you eventually do get more intelligent. If that's true, then these gigantic centers, again, if that's true, then these gigantic centers are still going to pay off, but you're able to get these huge wins on much less. Meaning that if it's way more efficient and you're able to build these gigantic centers, then you ought to be able to push intelligence just way, way, way Way, way farther. Now, we talked about this in our last episode. The only thing that remains to be seen is if people realize, oh, no, no. The game is inference. The game is focusing all of our attention on rationality. So the training data is about meaning. The big data centers are about training. So training is studying the world and saying, this is what the world is actually like and that's incredibly expensive. And if doing that is not as beneficial as the far cheaper thing of going, well, we already have a picture of how the world works. And now let's just get really at giving you really useful insights from that picture of the world. That would be the inference part of this. Then people may not want to spend money in scaling up these data centers and trying to get more and more intelligent. They're just trying to be more and more useful in what they extract from the models that already exist. If that plays out, then okay, the gigantic data centers aren't going to matter. But I hope that it is true that you can keep making the data centers bigger and bigger and bigger, and thusly they will become more and more intelligent. And with the increases in efficiency now, with something as big as these data centers, that you can be orders of magnitude more intelligent than the human mind. That would be the ideal, right? Because there are things that the human mind currently cannot grasp we do not understand. Quantum physics is just one easy example. So one of the big things that people have always said is there's something wrong about our approach to AI because the human brain is packed in these tiny little centers that we actually carry around in our skull, and we're able to do things that AI with these gigantic data centers are unable to do. So if it is true that what Deep SEQ has really done is best thought of as a compression algorithm, it may have been a step closer to mimicking what the human brain is actually doing. Because we need far smaller in terms of physical space, we need far smaller data centers in order to produce these huge leaps in intelligence. So if you put those two together, it would be extraordinary for us to daisy chain the efficiencies with the size of compute. Again, this I'm speculating at this point. Nobody knows what the real answer there is going to be, but those are the two things on the table. So my hope is that this takes us a step closer to being as efficient as the human mind.

[Drew]

Yeah, and I'm looking forward to that. I kind of push back on the humans versus monkey brain thing, but I

[Tom Bilyeu]

think, meaning you don't think that it's just Raw stack more neurons, get more intelligent.

[Drew]

I don't think it's that like one for one, so.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But I think that's intuition, just out of clarity.

[Drew]

Yes, because I think same thing with, like, AI, there's something fundamentally different about how humans process information that, like, yes, we use tools and they use tools, and yes, we have mates and other animals have mates. And I'm not saying animals can't love or anything like that, but there is a special sauce that separates how the brain works so efficiently as a human versus in other animals and other parts of the animal kingdom.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Agreed, but so it's a twofold question. Number one is, will stacking the equivalent of neurons? Will that allow for more intelligence? Okay, that's part number one. Part number two is, are there algorithms or compression efficiency? Maybe the most simple, simple way to say that. Will the efficiencies get us to the human level, or is it a combination of efficiency and just scale? Because, honestly, the goal from where I'm sitting is a si, Artificial super intelligence. The goal shouldn't be, in my opinion, to only get as smart as humans. So I get why that would be far more comforting to people. But if we really want to have the kind of breakthroughs that get me excited, like when I talk about pushing energy costs to zero, that requires innovation. We're already seeing people go back to nuclear. Huge win. That will drive the cost of energy down. But that's nothing compared to getting to zero. Getting to zero would require innovations in things like material sciences that allow us to better capture the energy of the sun with solar panels and things like that. So when I say it will drive energy cost to zero, I'm assuming that we transcend human level intelligence and that we're able to just iterate super rapidly now. It's still wildly beneficial to have something as smart as humans and just have a whole lot more humans looking at that map of, okay, this is what the real world is and what are all the insights that we can glean from that? But I think AI's promise isn't met until we get something that is far, far, far more intelligent than humans.

[Drew]

Yeah, yeah, we're definitely seeing breakthroughs in software. We also seen a new breakthrough in hardware, where Boom. Is officially, is the officially first independently developed supersonic jet. Some people are calling this the next business class, where you'll be able to kind of fly long distances for short periods of times. It's not going to be an exorbitant new cost for these tickets. Do you think that the future of air Travel is supersonic. And this is where we're going.

[Tom Bilyeu]

More to come. We'll be back in a bit.

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[Tom Bilyeu]

We're back. Let's dive right in.

[Drew]

Do you think that the future of air travel is supersonic and this is where we're going?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, the last time they tried this, the Concorde blew up in midair. Really freaked people out, and so that curbed that really fast.

[Drew]

That's a win.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We, we are living through a really interesting moment again, Eric Weinstein. I'll, I'll quote him here. He was on the trigonometry podcast. Shout out to those guys who I have a lot of love for saying basically that Trump, and this was back in November, so I would assume Trump when they recorded it. Trump had already won the election, but obviously wasn't in office yet. But his idea was Trump 2.0 is not going to be a continuation of his first term. This is going to something totally new. And the totally new thing is basically a renegotiation of everything. Now, what does that mean? I will not say that I can speak for Eric, but I will say when I look at that, the Overton window got blown apart when Trump got reelected. And so now we're able to talk about things that we weren't talking about before. And I think we're going to see that renegotiation and everything from immigration policy to pushing deregulation to promote entrepreneurship, to really unlock innovation. And the things that we're seeing now are obviously not a response to that. Way too fast. Just like it would be a mistake to blame the cost of eggs on Trump, you know, whatever, 12 days into his term, but it would also be a mistake to give him credit for the innovation of the supersonic jets. It's not a response to him, but we are seeing just a level of innovation in the last. I don't know, we're going to stretch it out probably 15ish years in everything that we're seeing Elon do. Even if you set Tesla aside and just look at what he's doing with SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, like, it's really, really an incredible amount of innovation that pushes back against the Peter Thiel idea of we were promised flying cars and all we got was 140 characters and we're really seeing, like an outpouring of incredible innovation. And so to see jets go supersonic again is really exciting and I hope is a part of this renegotiation that if you look at Trump as a, a byproduct of culture, having come to the conclusion that all of these things need to be renegotiated and not the person who's causing the renegotiation to happen, I think you will far better understand what's actually going on right now. This was all just sort of tamped down as people were told they couldn't talk about certain things. Everything outside of the Overton window merit sort of took a back seat again. Trump as an expression of a cultural phenomenon, I think is better. And people are just like, not here for that. Definitely want to see people innovating. And you've seen these tremendous entrepreneurs pushing back on that and bubbling up despite all the regulations and all that stuff. And so I hope that supersonic is the future. I hope that it's a leading indicator of a lot of incredible innovation that's about to break through. We'll see. But it certainly is exciting to think that we're able to dramatically reduce the time spent traveling. You know, say, coast to coast would be massive. And as somebody married to a Brit who, boy, would I love it if you could get to England a lot, a lot faster.

[Drew]

Yeah, I took that trip for the first time last year. And yeah, that was a lot. That was a lot fun. You went to, like, was like the longest plane you've been on. Ever, ever, ever, ever.

[Tom Bilyeu]

When I flew to, where was I? Taipei. That was the farthest. I'm pretty sure that was the one. That was brutal. There were two that I did. One to Taipei, and these were a long time ago. So this is in coach, baby, coach. I flew to Taipei and then I also went to the Philippines. Both of those were pretty brutal. But, yeah, like actual time sitting in a seat more than 17 hours, if I remember right. Plus an eight hour layover. Yeah. Not a lot of fun.

[Drew]

Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. But going to your point about Trump's term 2.0 being the great renegotiation, we've seen that live and in person this weekend where it was Columbia v. Trump, where Colombia has sent a military plane filled with deported immigrants back to Colombia. They denied the flight. Trump just mentioned in one true social post, 25% emergency, terrorists closing the embassy and a bunch of other kind of restrictions immediately. About an hour and a half later, the President changed his mind and sent his plane back to the US to pick up the deportees. Is that a win for Trump? Is that him showing the art of the deal? Like, how do you look at this?

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's definitely a win for Trump. The only question mark that I have is how many people can you threaten with the tariff stick before people really start to create problems for you? People, just people are people, man. And if you do that to enough people, like, take Taiwan, at some point, people go, all right, brah, like, we're not going to keep being an easygoing ally of the United States. So when you already have a hostile relationship, okay, it can be useful. And I think I, I am really interested to see how tariffs can be used in a positive way. But if he's using them always and forever as an aggressive posturing, I don't know. I don't know what the knock on effect is going to be. Now, I'm as excited as anybody else to see tariffs be used in an intelligent way to be able to reduce income tax. And I love the idea of an External Revenue Service to reduce the amount of the IRS taking out of people's paychecks. But I'm also aware that, that if you bully enough people, you're going to get into trouble. Okay, setting that aside for a second, what the thing that I think people are missing, and that hasn't been a part of the political landscape, certainly not over the last four years, probably skipping Trump for a second in his first term before that either, is a real visceral understanding that Americans should have of what it means to be such a powerful economy. And what we saw in Colombia is Colombia realizing, hold on a second, maybe we make. What does Colombia make up? 1%, 2%, something like that of our economy. I'm guessing. I have no idea what the literal number is. Drew's typing it in. Thank you, Drew. We're going to not make, we're not going to repeat mistakes. So they're, they're, whatever the real number is, they're a very small part of our economy. We're a very large part of their economy. And so if we were to tariff them and essentially deny them access to our economy, certainly at the, the rates that they were getting it at, getting it before, it would be very detrimental there to their economy. And so you see somebody who understands that, they understand where their point of leverage is. And in any negotiation, you need to understand your point of leverage. So this is, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you're always saying, okay, I'm coming into this negotiation, do I actually have leverage here or not? Do they want something from me when they want something from you? Now you're in a great negotiating and if they want something from you that's more than what you want from them, you really have leverage. And if you're actually willing to walk away from the deal now, you're in an incredible position. And what Trump is showing is because of the size of our economy, that the whole world basically wants access to our economy, wants access to China's economy, the two biggest economies in the world, by a lot. And it's very effective to say no, I'm going to deny you that. But again, there's going to be some sort of cumulative effect and I don't yet know what it's going to be. Maybe it'll be fine and maybe it will just be, well, okay, I've got to put up with this from him, but I get access to this gigantic economy that's making my, the lives of the people in my country better. We'll see.

[Drew]

To me, it's, it works with Colombia, it works with Guatemala, some of these smaller South American countries that are relying on other industrial powers. I'm interested for this tough talk when he brings it to Russia, when he brings it to China, where he brings it to somebody who has economic and maybe military backing and just see if his, his noise changes. Because to your point, when you have leverage, it's easy to bully the little guy. I want to see how he applies that leverage or what leverage he thinks we have when we start kind of hitting these other states in these other place, these other countries around the world.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't think you're going to see a lot of change in rhetoric with Russia because the Russian economy is not very big. You will see it with China. China is a pure competitor. And there are ways in which China has a stronger economy than the US So that one, that's why I say this is a cold war. That matters a lot. And one thing that people need to read about is something called Thucydides trap. And Thucydides trap is when you've got a, the country on the come up China going against an established power that's on the decline. The established power that's declining just cannot allow itself to be overtaken by the up and comer. But the up and comer is like, yo, I'm not going to be treated like the redheaded stepchild anymore. Like, we're way too powerful for that. And so you're going to get this collision. And many people have said, look, America and China are on this path to Thucydides trap. We've got to back out of it because you do not, not do not want America and China in a kinetic war. So hopefully we can resolve this just amicably. Wouldn't that be nice? I don't see that happening. If we can't do it amicably, hopefully we can do it at the level of economic warfare, way better than kinetic warfare. And that's the game that we're about to watch play out. And I think AI is going to have a central role in that, because if AI is able to be super intelligent, now you run into this idea of fast takeoff, slow takeoff, which is interesting because actually we have a tweet from Sam. Actually it was from somebody else showing something that Sam Altman said. I think now would be a wonderful time to show that clip. I have never believed in the like one day or one month takeoff for a bunch of reasons, but, like, one of which is how incredibly long it takes to build new data centers, bigger data centers. Like, even if we knew how to do it right now, just like, like waiting for the concrete to dry, getting the power into the building stuff takes a while. The reason that I think that's interesting is going back to Deep Seek and what it represents is you've got the bulletin of the atomic scientists saying, hey, we're closer to midnight, but they're really pushing AI way down the level of risk. Part of the reason that I think that that might be a more immediate risk is what Deep Seek is proving is, hey, you may not need these gigantic centers for us to get something that is more intelligent than humans. And so you've got one of the number one figures in AI telling you that, well, the reason that I'm not worried about a fast takeoff, the reason I don't think that this is going to be as destructive to mankind as people think is because data centers take forever. And then Elon builds a gigantic data center, like the biggest data center ever in six weeks. And then Deep Sea comes along and says, oh, by the way, you don't even need data centers that big. So it. It is a. It is not wise to brush all of this stuff off. And if we see that China is better at these compression algorithms, better at getting efficiency out of AI and or is able to get access to the chips that they need to build these gigantic data centers, then now you're back into this race of like, yo, we really have to get AI nailed down and it is going to. If we get into a Thucydides trap moment where each of these people, each of these countries, see the other as an existential threat that has to be dealt with, then we're on a collision course. And I think it would be very easy to find very notable public intellectuals who are extremely well versed in this that will say, yeah, we're racing towards that.

[Drew]

Yeah, I agree. We don't need any more war. I'm all for the peace, guys, but we are already seeing new tactics where a Fox News correspondent brought in a crime expert and from his perspective, he's saying we're being infiltrated by the gangs with the point of destabilizing a nation. Let's take a look at this clip.

[John (Fox News Correspondent)]

Let's bring in Joseph Humeyer, the executive director at Secure Free Society. You've also written a big report about Tread Naraga published on heritage.org that the heritage Foundation. Here's what you said in part. Quote, With a documented presence in no fewer than 20 US states, the TDA is terrorizing urban and suburban communities throughout America. For the Venezuelan regime, that's the Maduro regime, the TDA is a tool of asymmetric warfare to destabilize countries while maintaining plausible deniability. So you're saying that this isn't just a bunch of people who are out there engaging in criminal activity. They're doing it at the behest of the Maduro regime to try to stay the U.S. absolutely.

[Joseph Humeyer]

John, what you're seeing today, not just with TDA, but with all the cartels is they're not working like cartels anymore. They're working like weapons of warfare, like soldiers on a battlefield to invade territory, capture territory, steal the sovereignty of countries all throughout the Western hemisphere. So TDA is the latest one that we've seen, but we also see the Mexican cartel. We also see MS.13 and what President Trump did with his executive order of designating the cartels and other TCOs as foreign terrorist organizations as he brought countertransnational organized crime to the 21st century. For the longest time, fighting terrorism was a top priority in the United States. But fighting these cartels has to be a top priority because they work with terrorists. And in that order. He mentions asymmetric warfare, he mentions crime, terror, convergence, and he mentions complex adaptive systems. These were concepts that were once only discussed within the intelligence community and the academic world. Now they're at the front of executive power. And I think we're going to use all the elements of national power to go after them.

[John (Fox News Correspondent)]

Tom Herman was sitting where you are about an hour ago, and he said to me, it was off camera. He said, that's why the president is invoking the Alien Enemies act, because gang members are acting at the behest of a foreign power.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Joseph Humeyer]

In the Alien Enemy act, they mentioned something called predatory incursion. That's basically infiltration of a foreign country sent by aliens of another country. Venezuela is basically infiltrating the United States through its TDA members, and they're spreading. There's no way a gang goes from like a couple states in one year and within a couple years goes to about 23 states in a matter of months. That's not normal. It took the Ms. 13 decades to do that. So this is something that's been put on steroids by specific governments that have basically weaponized migration to bring down the United States. And I think now we have a night and day difference because now Tom Homan and others, President Trump, are taking the fight to these cartels and they're doing it in a very smart way.

[Drew]

So how do you feel about gangs being used to destabilize nations?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Hold tight. We're going to take a quick break.

[Drew]

Break.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, let's pick up where we left off.

[Drew]

So how do you feel about gangs being used to destabilize nations?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'll need more time to see if this is really true. It's certainly an interesting hypothesis, and I think this is why people need to really be paying attention to what happened during a period of having an open border is if you are, take Colombia. You just got threatened with the tariff stick. You're probably not loving that you're being pushed around. If other governments are saying, hey, there's a way for us to go in and destabilize America, let's do it. It will release some of the hold that they have on us. A weaker America gives an opportunity for a stronger fill in the blank, whatever country they are. And now you just have your opportunity to fill that power vacuum and rise up. Now, whether that's actually what's going on or not, not, we'll see. That's going to play out in the fullness of time. But that, to me, is why the open border was so terrifying. It wasn't just that people are coming here. They want a better life. I get that. I get why people would want to do that. And anybody with compassion is like, yeah, I want to see. I get why people would want to be here. And I want to see those people have a better life. However, first of all, unchecked immigration is just a bad idea because of the need to assimilate, the need to maintain cultural consistency. I think all that stuff really matters. So when people flood in, it just. It can make it very difficult for people. Not necessarily make it difficult, but there will be a lot of people who don't assimilate. And then you begin to fragment your own culture and you can run into problems. You need look no farther than what's going on in Europe right now to see exactly what that looks like. But setting all of that aside and just looking at this was an opportunity for people to send agents of their own government that remain true to the government that they left. So maybe conspiracy theory, but there was a lot of talk that China was using the Darien Gap to send people into America to effectively be. This is my word, but like sleeper agents, much like Russia was doing back in the 80s with the cold War. We were sending spies there, they were sending spies here. That all that stuff is real. I guarantee we're still doing it to other countries. Other countries are trying to do it to us. So this idea that these gangs and these cartels are also functioning as agents of the governments that they left, and he's specifically referring to the Venezuelan gang TDA and the need to police that, the need to take that seriously, I think is really. It's something that we ignore at our own peril. Now, how we go about doing it is going to be the question, and that's what everybody's pushing back on right now is does that look like racial profiling? Does that look like going after people that are here illegally? Is it a bunch of sweeps where we're just going through and it's like Germany during World War II, where it's like, show me your papers. That kind of stuff. We certainly don't want to end up back there. But knowing that these are in some cases the equivalent of a para military group, well armed, well funded, specifically through drugs and human trafficking here inside the borders of the United States. And ferreting this stuff out is not going to be easy. That is all, I think, very real. Now, the thing that I find fun, funny, I don't know, or if I should be horrified, is something called Letters of Mark. Somebody had sent around a tweet. The tweet, if I'm not mistaken, has massive views on it, like 29 million when I saw it earlier today, 27.9, to be very specific. The idea of a Letter of Mark is a very fascinating thing that goes back. I don't think we've written a letter of marque in over 100 years. But the idea was in an age of piracy where you've got a bunch of people out there that are hijacking ships, stealing all their cargo and you as a government are having a hard time policing this, that you can write a letter of marque to private citizens and say, hey, if you're able to stop a pirate and basically be an anti pirate pirate or a sanctioned pirate, then we'll give you some of the booty that you're able to capture. And Elon tweeted that this would work very fast past now to be very clear, you'd be sanctioning, there would be rules, but you'd be sanctioning normal trained, let me be very clear, trained people that meet certain qualifications, but you'd be sanctioning private citizens that meet certain qualifications to openly combat these gangs. Now I would have to see what the rules are that they put on them before I give too much of a strong take. But I will say that just strikes me as wild west, like good Lord, what could go wrong going to the, the most well armed populace in the world? I think if we're not number one, we got to be close.

[Drew]

We are number one.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, per capita, I think there actually is like Norway or something. Oh God, people are going to light me up. But there, there is a country that is on par or more per capita. We certainly have more gun violence. Anyway, we'll look it up, we'll figure out what the answer is there. But such an armed populace as America, is it us? Okay, all right. So that just strikes me as a recipe for disaster. I think it is far wiser to make sure that we have a coordinated effort by the government to deal with that stuff. But I like the signals that are coming out by designating them terrorists that we are going to take care of it.

[Drew]

Yeah, I, I wasn't surprised when I heard this story. You can look as far as Haiti or every other developing nation in the Caribbean and Afro Americ, you'll see a lot of insurrections, coups. And then you start to realize how is the poorest country in the western hemisphere have all these guns. And you start to kind of connect the dots. And this is kind of similar to my JFK moment from last week where I was like, it came from inside the President. And you're like, yeah. And then now they're like, there's gangs that are using the destabilizing nation. I'm like, yeah, that's, that's a play that's been used since the 60s, so I'm personally sensitive to that. So when I seen this, what way

[Tom Bilyeu]

you're not surprised at all that the other governments are sending in these essentially paramilitary groups or something else?

[Drew]

Yes, because I have. This is just Andrew Saint Just thing. I have evidence or I have seen enough dots that I'm connecting and that created my frame of reference that I have seen Western countries send in people in these other poor developing nations to destabilize those nations.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Can I say that it in more direct way and see if this is what you're saying?

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

America has done this to so many other people. You're not surprised that people are doing it to America?

[Drew]

Yes. Okay, yes, but I mean, America, yes, but Britain is up there too. France is not clean of blood on their hands too. So it's a long list of countries. So that's why I'm like, oh, yeah, America's now finally getting it back to them. But to your point, we were doing this to Russia as far as two decades ago, let alone probably still.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't know that. So paramilitary groups feels like a totally different thing to me than just spies. But yeah, spies be everywhere, that is for sure.

[Drew]

Especially trained operatives might be. I guess I'm grouping them all together.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Interesting. So I read these very differently, and this could be my movie brain kicking in, but when I think about these gangs and the way that they're able to cordon off neighborhoods, stop the police from coming in there leveraging, this was something really interesting to hear. I'm almost certain that I heard it from Rick Caruso in the episode that he did recently with Sam Harris. Please forgive me if this isn't accurate, but I'm almost certain that it is. And he was talking about that he had put forward the change. I believe it was in the chief of police here in Los Angeles. I think Bratton was the guy's name, but anyway comes from, I think the nypd, they bring him to la. Very unpopular. But the reason he was doing it is what was happening in Los Angeles was the gangs understood that if you complained about a cop, that they would be put on basically administrative leave. Their career would be sidelined while they investigated that. The investigation could take a year or two years. And so these neighborhoods that were overrun by gangs, as a way to keep the police out, they would file a complaint, the police would go offline. And so people just got the message, don't even bother going into those neighborhoods. And so when I think about, these are not Dumb people. They may be violent, they may be evil, but they're not dumb. And so if you allow them to come in. And I know for at one point there was like a couple buildings that had been taken over in and so it was like what? Like that to me is crazy. That's the kind of thing that you have to nip in the bud. You've got to be very aggressive about clearing them out because they will create real problems for you. And you want to talk about what is the role of a government? It is protecting its citizens. And if you are allowing things like this to pop up, it's like little tumors all over the place. And so that one freaks me out. Not that I'm not freaked out by spies. Freaked out by spies, but nowhere near the way that I'm freaked out by people going into under policed areas, taking over entire buildings, terrorizing the citizens around them. That just. That really freaks me.

[Drew]

You just described Port au Prince the last year and a half.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Really?

[Drew]

Yeah. So it's one of those things where I'm super again, I'm super sensitive to it. So I noticed that. So when I see these things happening on the Western front, I'm like, oh, that's interesting that, that if this is true, that it's from Venezuela, South America, like these governments are plotting against it now. It's like, okay, it's coming back to America now we have to be on defense. So I'm still empathetic for. I'm not saying, oh yeah, let America burn. I'm not one of those people. But it's one of those things like, oh, the tactics are now kind of coming back home to roost in that point.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, humans gonna human. And if it's a useful tactic, people will exploit it. There's no doubt about that.

[Drew]

Yeah. Speaking of humans going human, a lot of politicians are trying to cast their vote and hide their hand. There's some noise out there. I got, I pulled up the Charlie Kirk tweet.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Rumors. Rumors. For now, let's just be clear while we're filming this. Yeah, Charlie Kirk said about. Oh God, Tulsi Gabbard. I'm told that the vote for Tulsi Gabbard might be done privately in an scif. I don't know if it's pronounced cif, but seif. With the vote tallies kept secret from the American people. I forget what seif stands for. We should probably look it up. But it's like basically something where you're allowed to cast your vote in secret is the Punchline now if this is happening stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It's a very weird way of saying in secret. So I could not hate this anymore if I tried. I think that Congress and the Senate should be absolutely forced to vote transparently for everything. Y. I don't think they should be able to hide anything that they do in an official capacity.

[Drew]

Agreed, 100%. I think if you, you are an elected official, people put you in there, you should be able to stand on your record and you have to hide your record. You shouldn't be there. So we'll see.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Where are we at with rfk?

[Drew]

He's, this is his week.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Interesting.

[Drew]

But is in the same.

[Tom Bilyeu]

He's in this. So sad if he doesn't get in which I have no doubt will be nice and controversial. But man, he won me over. I was ready to catch has to vote for rfk. I did vote for rfk, Brain worm and all.

[Drew]

But yeah, rfk Cash Patel, Tulsi is this week. So we'll see. We'll keep an eye out. We'll, we'll follow those confirmations. Trump got a lot of his other guys in. Marco Rubio, Pete, the guy did the pseth. Yeah, Pete. Hey. Seth is in there. So he. Nobody other than Matt Gates stepped down. So we'll see this week if, if he'll have any more wins. In other news, you're a Marvel guy, right? You love Captain America.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I do. Dude, I'm, I am a comic junkie in ways that I think would un. I'm admittedly now more into manga. That's a long story. I should do a treatise on that at some point. But yes, very much so.

[Drew]

Nice. Let's check in on Anthony Mackie, who's the star of the new Captain America movie coming out in February. He had some choice comments that some people didn't like.

[Anthony Mackie]

For me, Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don't think the term, you know, America should be one of those representations. Like it's about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of, this is kind of like a, an aspect of a dream coming true. You know, when I was a kid, you know, all of us as actors, I believe want to get back, back to that day before someone told you no. When you look out your door and you see a five year old kid with a stick and he's slaying dragons to save the princess in the tower. That kid really believes they're dragons out there. That stick is really a sword. And he's really trying to save that princess. And then one day somebody told him, no, there are no dragons. That's not a sword. And that princess is not there. And all of his little dreams were dad. So, you know, as an actor, I feel like our job is to get back to the day where we see that dragon and we slayed that dragon to save that princess. And that's kind of what this movie was for me.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, look, we live in an age where everybody has a voice and social media is a real thing. And so you're going to see a lot of movie stars popping off about something related to their movie and just destroying goodwill for these movies. I hate every word out of his mouth, but I have such a soft spot for him. He's in one of my favorite all time Christmas movies. I think it's called the Night Before. It's him, Seth Rogen and the kid with three names, Joseph Gordon Levitt. That movie just absolutely fucking kills me. So anyway, got a warm spot for him. Here's the thing. In a world where you're counting on a bunch of your money coming from China, I get why he is trying to make this universal, but oof. You've got a movie called Captain America. You've got a fan base that loves what America represents in their minds. If they grew up reading Captain America, man, like they're really gonna have a hard time with this because it was like it's part of that thing. Like, yeah, America. I love America. America. And as somebody who is just die hard, I love America. I hate every word out of his mouth. But you have to put it in context of this is somebody who's trying to sell a movie, who's trying to be inclusive. I get it. I know people hate that woke. But the reality is that his job is to promote the movie and to get as broad of an audience as possible. Now if I could help him out and then I'll be very curious to hear what you think about this. This, this is what I would said if he came to me and said, tom, look, I need some consultation. How do I handle this? If somebody says something about America, I would say, look, man, America is an idea. It's a country for sure. Love it. Proud to be an American, but it's also an idea. And there's a reason that we've been this beacon to the rest of the world and so many people have wanted to come here from fleeing Religious persecution when we were a nation of settlers because there was no country, there was no rule of law as well as immigrants coming all throughout the history of America post its actual founding, wanting to come here, land of opportunity. And that's the ethos that we're built on. That idea is something that I hope resonates for people, even if they don't live in America, that I would love for people to like. This is a concept that Tom Bilyeu has thought a lot about. What I call foreign born Americans, people that were born in a different country, but they just have that pull towards freedom, liberty and entrepreneurship and the drive to be great and personal responsibility and to be able to see how far they can push themselves and develop themselves. And being an individualistic society versus a collectivist society, like all of that, I love it whether you're born in America or not. So I. If you're trying to expand the people that can resonate with an idea of Captain America. You want to acknowledge that America is a place and it's a place that people want to go to for a reason. And that reason is the set of ideas that anybody the world over can embrace. And would love to see more people understand that idea and feel a sense of pride when they hear it. Because America as an idea is. And then you cut to his thing about it's somebody who stands up for what they believe in. It's somebody who has integrity, like all of those things. And that's all true. But to say Captain America doesn't stand for America, like God damn, like what are you doing? Doing?

[Drew]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I. Okay, this is. Let's go for it. I think the word America, to your point, it's a triggering word, It's a loaded word. Because I think there is an idea in about America. There is the stars and stripes and rolling hills and fireworks and star spangled banger and football and hot dogs. But there is. When other people hear the term America, they might not necessarily go to those words first. So to me, when he says it, he. I think he was saying it from his standpoint of like, this is not about America. The real actual history that's filled with bones and blood and persecution and all these other types of things. But it's about the honor and the integrity and it's the ideas that a lot of people who migrate to America change Chase. And I think that now, especially in the last couple years, we have seen this kind of weaponization of America. And I'm not one of those people that like, America's the worst, it needs to go like it's the best country in the world, comma. However, as much as I love it, just like I love my daughter, I hold her accountable when she does things wrong. I want her to be the best human to be. I'm constantly pushing her to be better than what she was yesterday. And I think that America, ourselves, we should have that same type of perception to it. So if he would have got on stage, like, yeah, this is all about America and beer and football and I love it. And like, yes, a lot of people would have high fived and that American pride would have felt good, but it would have been disingenuous to at least not acknowledge that the word America doesn't instantly transport people to those sunny, positive, like, images.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so let me. I'm consulting again for our boy Mackie. What I would say is, okay, I respect that. If you're worried that the word America falls on people in a way that, like, you've got to compensate for, then I would hit him with this. This you get what you focus on. And if you look at life and you want to look at America, you look at America and you want to see tragedy, you're going to be overwhelmed by it.

[Drew]

Yeah, there.

[Tom Bilyeu]

There are plenty of things that are there. As, as somebody who has read a lot about the. I'll use the word conquer, the conquering of America, it is a wash in blood and just heinous. Comma. However, if you focus on the way that we have become a beacon for the world, that we have built the strongest economy by focusing on the individual, by creating a space where individuals can really expand their abilities to eke out every bit of greatness in their life, to build and create and innovate in a way so spectacularly that we have built, to your own admission, the greatest country on earth. And if you look for that, you will also be overwhelmed. And what's interesting is if we tell the story over and over and over and over and over of, let's focus on all the things that America did wrong, all of a sudden the word falls in a weird way and it hits people and it feels some kind of way. But if we focus on the positive aspects of America, if we focus on the things that America has done well and hold her feels right to me. Hold her accountable to getting better and drawing more people in and making sure that prosperity is there for everybody, regardless of race, regardless of class, which I honestly think at this stage in our development is the far more troubling part, then we can continue to get better. But if we're looking, if, if we focus everybody's attention on the bad part now, all of a sudden, there is no impetus to make it better. The impetus becomes to burn it down. And when you have the impetus to burn down the greatest nation on earth, to me, you're just moving in the wrong direction. Holder accountable. Look at the things that we have done well, look at the things that we have done poorly. But if you focus everybody on optimism, if you focus everybody on when you pursue greatness, when you, because I assume this is what you're telling your daughter is. And I don't know how you break on the. We're not blank slates. I don't think we're blank slates. And I think science will back up that we're 50% hardwired and we're 50% malleable. So if I had had kids, I would have said, don't worry about the part that's hardwired, okay? There's going to be realities face we all hit our limitations, patients. But focus on the 50% that's malleable. And what makes America so great is you're going to have the opportunity to push that skill set as far as you can. Forget the education system is going to fail you. Okay, fine. You've got access to the Internet. You can learn, you can read, you can push yourself. And as Kobe Bryant said, booze don't block dunks. And so you live in a country where the government is not going to fuck you up, trip you up, up force. They, they may under serve you, but they're not going to cap you.

[Lisa]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so now it becomes a question of how far can you push it? So what? Because I've lived through both in the 80s when it was like America was the greatest thing ever and it was just on everybody's lips, oh my God, this is the best place ever. And we got to defeat Russia. They're evil and we're amazing. We embodied that. And it was like, oh my God, like, this is our shot. This is our opportunity. We can do anything we want. And so from the time I was little, I was just, just steeped and I could be anything I wanted. It wasn't just my parents saying it. It just felt like it was everywhere. And so I was just naive enough to believe them. And so we were talking before we started rolling. When I was a kid, I, I, this is going to sound misleading, but I would smoke in a pig barn. Okay, so now I was not a smoker at seven or eight or whatever, but we would collect cigarette butts on the side of the road and we would smoke them in a pig barn. Barn. And when I say that, I'm like, yeah, that's actually how I grew up. And here I am now in one of the biggest cities on planet Earth and all kinds of success because I had a distorted but positive view of the country that I lived in. So I get it's propaganda, but it's propaganda that empowers. And it's all propaganda that. There is a book called the Dao De Jing, and when I first read it when I was 15 or 16, whatever, there was a line that, like, sounded cool, but I didn't really know what it meant. And it's. The dao that can be spoken is not the eternal dao. Now, dao translates as the way. So you could read it as the path that can be explained is not the real path. Okay? Facts. Whatever I say about America is going to be a lie, because the second I articulate it, I've reduced this insane complexity down to something that is artificial. So I get that. But no matter who speaks, whether you're saying negative things or you're saying positive things, they. They are fake. Both are fake. So now the question becomes, which path leads to the elevation of the human spirit? Which one leads to your daughter having unlocked potential as much as any of us do and seeing how far she can push herself. Is it America doesn't want to see you succeed? Or is it, hey, you can do anything here in this country? I would put all my chips on if you focus her on booze. Don't block dunks. This is the country where you can find out how far you can push it. Then she's going to lean into that 100, 110.

[Drew]

No notes, nothing like that. And the fact that we had this argument on or this conversation on a political show makes the utmost sense.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Did you just call this a political show?

[Drew]

I'm sorry? On a show that talks about politics, occasionally, that makes sense.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm trying to keep it to 20%.

[Drew]

Like Anthony Mackie should have said what you just said. America is beautiful. I know it had some struggles, but hey, man, Captain America is supposed to be a symbol of hope. He's not supposed to give the. The pessimistic answer because you're in a movie. You're not running for office. You're not. You want tickets and seats. Like, that's what you're worried about. You want popcorn, you want people to like this movie. You want Harrison Ford to come back for your sequel. That's what you're chasing, facing. So I completely get what you're saying. I'm not saying that in a sense to validate what he's saying or to take the onus off of it because at the very, at the very end of the day he's trying to get more people to see his movie about Captain America. So you should have America in a positive light, like full stop, please. What he said now, Wrong place, wrong time. I do think though, I empathize with what he's saying because I've seen those people who see the other side of America. America. That's why it's like, okay, I understand. I think he's getting taken out of context and villainized. I don't think that's the right mod or that's the right mood. But at the same time you are just selling a movie, bro. Like just get excited, get more tickets in the seats like that. That's what you, that's what you're really like chasing.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No doubt. Yeah. I'll be interested to see how people respond to this. Like I said, well, some people aren't responding well. I'm very curious to see how people take, Take Snow White because when I say I know nothing about the movie, but boy oh boy, is the vibe negative. So we'll be interested to see if, if they pull it off and it's great and people love it and same here. I would love to see this succeed. I have a soft spot for Anthony Mackie as an actor. I am absolutely obsessed with comics. Comics though. And part of the reason that I'm now into manga is that the Japanese did not get the memo that you should be appropriate to political correctness in your stories. And so that, that was one of the reasons that I softened on American comics. It was just all aimed at like political issues. It was just exhausting. It was moralizing. And when you look at the way that the Japanese handle it, it is not universal. They're not a monolith. All that. All that. But, but if a comic is written for a 12 year old boy, it's going to have the bombast and the enthusiasm of something that a 12 year old boy is going to be into. And so they just told really awesome stories. And for anybody that wants an example, read My Hero Academia. Jesus, dude. If I there of all the IP I've encountered, that's the one that I wish Impact theory made. And for people that my, my life is so fragmented People don't even understand that Impact Theory has done comics because of AI. We're going to stop, but we've done comics. And when I look at my hero academia, it's just incredible. It conveys these incredible lessons without moralizing.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And I think that's really important. But anyway, I hope people will forgive Mackie. I hope people will judge the film for the film. And if the film is moralizing trash, then it will suffer as it must. But hopefully people don't just latch onto that and just want to browbeat them to death.

[Drew]

Yeah, that's not fun. And I agree. I think movies, you can tell a. Movies, comics, anything. You can have a political message. You can tell a narrative. That's fine. Every writer should have that impulse. That's what makes them, like, have to write it. But don't. Foods, don't force. Feed me. Don't spood. Feed me. Like, hide the sugar in the medicine a little bit. Like, don't. Don't necessarily kind of put it, like, in my face. Like, the. I found this out as, like, a adult. Like, Malcolm Magneto and Professor X were based off of, like, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, like, roughly. And how they, like, their approach to the civil rights movement was the same way. Have those two mutants have a different approach. Like the mutant epidemic, which is, like, an interesting concept. And then they kind of showed it in comic book terms. But it's not like Magneto was leading a Black Lives Matter march. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you had to kind of give.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You haven't read comics lately?

[Grainger Announcer]

Not.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Not that. That one. But there's a lot of that now. Oh, now it's all out on the sleeve. Force fed.

[Joseph Humeyer]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Eat this whether you want to or not. Yeah. There was a whole thing called comics gate. It. It got pretty crazy.

[Drew]

That's crazy. That's like. I don't know. Be a better writer. I'm sorry. Like, I love it. It's a hard job. I'm there, too with you guys. But, like, it should be about the feeling. It should be about exciting the reader to get excited, to get motivated, make them feel something. Not just. Just soapbox it. I don't know. It's just boring to me. Yeah, agreed. All right, last but not least, I'mma preface this by saying the streets are trash. And anybody who's dating out there, I feel your pain.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I was like, where are we going with this?

[Lisa]

I went on a date, and it's

[Drew]

like,

[Lisa]

it was good, and then yet, like, I'm just tired of, like, I don't know. The bill came. Came. The bill didn't come. He asked for the bill, and in French, he said, two bills. And then so they came, and I was like, if someone says, I want to take you out, then I want to be taken out, which means to me, to pay and whatever. So we did that. I paid, and it's fine. And then after, I was. I was honest, and I just said it like, I don't know, because I. I said, like, yeah, I thought you were going to take me out. And, like, to me, that means pay and. And then suddenly his English wasn't so good anymore when he was like, I don't understand what you mean. I was honest and like, whatever. What else do I have to lose? I just want to be honest because there's a way that I want to be treated. And, like, I might as well just tell someone, like, what else do I have to lose? I don't know. And then, like, afterwards, he was like, next time I'll pay. Like, unprompted. He said that after we were having another conversation, I said, okay. And then he said, are you free this week? And I said, yeah. And then I texted him after, and I'm like, I had a nice time, thanks. And then he read it and didn't respond. And it's like, okay, I don't know. Like, I'm just tired of. I'm happy I was honest,

[Drew]

but, like,

[Lisa]

I just, like, want a gentleman.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right?

[Donald Trump]

Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think it's very important for people to realize. She is not crying. That he asked for two bills. She is crying because the streets are trash, I believe is your quote. Yeah. Modern dating sounds brutal.

[Drew]

Okay, if you had to. Okay, I love Lisa. No, no. No disrespect. No nothing. If you had to start over, do you have a strategy of how. Have you thought about this? Like, if I had to date again now, what would I do?

[Tom Bilyeu]

So here's the real answer. I. Okay. Nothing in my life has brought me more joy than my marriage. Nothing has brought me more mental health in my marriage. Like, absolutely incredible. But I have a really strong impulse to collapse inside of myself, Meaning I get obsessed with goals and things that I'm trying to do. And so would I go out and date, given my level of financial success. I worry a lot about that, man. I worry a lot about it. Now, look, I think I'm a pretty good judge of character, but I don't know that I would date very quickly. I would have to really get profoundly lonely before I would do that again. Part of that's my obsession with my wife. So I'm. Let me, let me be. Can I be a consultant to somebody who's dating? I think that would be a far more effective approach to this.

[Drew]

Consult me. I'm dating.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, well, so, so here is the key. You want to meet them in real life. So there was a period where I think online dating was the play. And then it started to do something to the way that people think about other human beings. When you're in a swipe mode, there's a sense of there's always going to be somebody better. And so when you meet them for a date or whatever and you're in that ecosystem of how they think about, okay, am I just trying to get the faux emergency call from my girlfriend saying, I got to go. Like anybody wouldn't know. That is total bullshit these days. But, but. Or like, do I get time to actually meet this person outside of the context of dating? Give them a chance to see what I'm really about, Give me a chance to see what they're really about and let it be a bit more of a slow burn. I think that that is way more effective. So my advice would be to find an area that you love that you would want to talk about that thing. So it is not a mistake.

[John (Fox News Correspondent)]

Take.

[Tom Bilyeu]

There's twofold reason why Lisa and I ended up working. One, she saw me. I was her teacher. School for adults, nobody needs to freak out. But she, I was her teacher. So she saw me in this position of authority. So women have a tendency to date across or up. So me being in a position where all eyes in the room are on me and she's seeing me at my best. So this is, I mean, this is a very long time ago. So I'm broke. So me having an opportunity to flex in any way other than the fact that I'm highly verbal, that I have maybe insights into filmmaking that she found really interesting. And so that piqued her curiosity intellectually. So you want to put yourself in a position where you're going to shine and it's going to be a thing that you're going to want to talk about. So Lisa and I bonded over film and storytelling in the beginning. That was really where just immediately we knew we were going to have a lot of things, things to talk about and that we were able to spend time with each other. Like we had known each other for about a month before we went on our first date. So that kind of thing where it's like the old fashioned slow burn Getting to know somebody, taking time and all that. Yeah, not only that, but in the time that you have, you're able to one, be aggressively yourself. Which was the big thing that I learned because I used to show up on date one with custom written poetry. Date one one, custom written poetry and flowers. Okay, don't do that, boys and girls. Terrible play. And I realized, much like we were talking about earlier with negotiations, you have leverage if you're willing to walk away. And so I had to go into every exchange with a woman saying, I don't care how beautiful she is, I don't care how interesting, whatever, I. I am willing to walk away in this exchange. And that changed everything instantly on a dime. And so bringing into the real world being aggressively yourself and saying, I have no fear of loss with this person. They're either interested in who I am because I don't want to fake who I them or not. And I'm putting myself in a position where they're going to be able to see me at my best and we're going to be able to take our time. Like, those are the real things. But that means you've got to be. Going out into charity is just an easy way to talk about it. But what's like a charity that you really care about, where you can meet interesting people that are there for the same kind of thing that I think is the real play. And then you've got to be really deft at communication.

[Drew]

And.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And if I were really going to give you, like, assuming you do all of that stuff so that we're beyond the sort of setup of it all, it's. If you want to be interesting, be interested. Just like, ask them a ton of questions about themselves. It really does spark something in somebody. To feel listened to, to feel seen. And then if you can, this is where it starts to sound red pill, but I'm like the least red pill guy you're going to meet. Um, but if you can create a context for them to be inside of, hold frame. That's what they call it. If you can create the frame and keep them in it, it. It really is powerful. And so you have to get very good at like, I'm going to walk into this room, I'm going to create the frame that we're going to be exploring. And then I'm going to hold that with charm and wit. That's the play.

[Drew]

All right. I'm taking my notes, I'm writing, I'm writing some stuff down. Okay, I'll circle back. Valentine's Day is right around the corner. We'll see if I get any wins.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We'll see.

[Drew]

That's all I got.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary.

[Anthony Mackie]

Take care.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Peace.