Apple Just Filed the Lawsuit That Could Destroy OpenAI

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: “Apple Just Filed the Lawsuit That Could Destroy OpenAI”
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Date: July 13, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode of Impact Theory, hosted by Tom Bilyeu, delivers a fast-paced breakdown of this week’s most explosive headlines, emphasizing the high-stakes lawsuit Apple has just launched against OpenAI for alleged IP theft. Tom and his guests also tackle the death of Lindsey Graham amid a firestorm of conspiracy theories, the escalating US-Iran conflict, the US-Canada trade war, surprising movements in the oil market, future tech with Palmer Luckey’s missile innovation, and the modern realities of espionage. The show interweaves sharp commentary with humor, skepticism, and Tom’s characteristic call for clear-headed analysis.

---

Key Discussions & Insights

1. Lindsey Graham’s Death and the Conspiracy Cyclone (00:30–08:30)

• Factual Recap:
  Lindsey Graham was pronounced dead at 71 from an aortic dissection, attributed to cardiovascular disease and poor lifestyle.
• Conspiracy Theories:
  • Competitors for “who killed Lindsey Graham?” help reinforce people’s preferred narratives:
    • Russian operation due to his support for Ukraine
    • Iranian assassination (he was on Iran’s ‘hit list’)
    • Mossad involvement as a warning to Trump
  • A viral AI-generated, “Lego”-style video—suspected Iranian propaganda—claimed responsibility for the assassination.
• Tom's Analysis:
  “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence… If he was 45 and 10% body fat, I'd be like, yeah, Russia got him. But he's 71, clearly obese...” (06:08)
• Political Consequences:
  Discussion of whether Graham’s death triggers a special election: it does not.

Notable Quotes:

• Tom (06:08): “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You've got the medical examiner already saying, look, he just had a tear in one of his blood vessels and it's game over.”

---

2. On Political Transparency and AI Fakes (24:30–29:20)

• Fake Media:
  An alleged statement from Mitch McConnell is put under scrutiny for possible AI generation; the show highlights the proliferation of AI-generated misinformation.

• Advice for Spotting Fakes:
  Tom recommends: “Break it into quadrants...look box by box for weird artifacts, because that's going to be done by the sleuths on the Internet.” (26:12)

• Discussion on Age in Politics:
  The crew discusses the consequences of having so many aging politicians, suggesting the system desperately needs age and term limits.

---

3. US–Iran War: Escalation, Culture Clash & Realpolitik (30:34–54:14)

• Current State:
  • Trump ordered strikes on 140 Iranian targets, the most intense since the June ceasefire, and threatens more if assassination attempts continue.
  • The MOU (memorandum of understanding) is called out for its vagueness and lack of enforcement.
• On Negotiating with Iran:
  Tom draws cultural contrasts between negotiation outcomes in Japan post-WWII vs. the Middle East, emphasizing that Western-style diplomacy is mismatched for Iran’s values.
• Potential Outcomes:
  • The US aims to degrade Iran’s infrastructure without boots on the ground.
  • If escalation continues: economic strangulation, increased “gray zone” (non-military) targeting.
• Tom's Realism:
  “If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Again, that's not me saying that America should back down. It's too late for that…” (10:17)

Notable Quotes:

• Tom (42:46): “I really think total war is over until something so tragic happens that it absolutely forces some country to cross a line… For now, total warfare is off the table.”

---

4. On Chants, Propaganda, and Believing People’s Stated Values (50:14–54:14)

• Tim Dillon’s Comedic Take:
  Mocks US sensitivity to “Death to America” chants, likening them to soccer game chants.
• Tom's Caution:
  While it’s easy to brush off rhetoric, “when you have governments and members of the government saying, ‘this is what we should do’, you should believe them…” (50:20)

---

5. US-Canada Trade War & Global Economic Shifts (54:14–69:47)

• Backdrop:
  The Trump administration refuses to renew the USMCA, shifting the agreement to yearly review and threatening massive tariffs.
• Canada-China Relations:
  Canada forges closer trade with China, slashing tariffs on EVs and opening agricultural markets, raising US suspicions.
• Global Supply Chains:
  Tom and guests extrapolate the risks if Canada becomes a backdoor for Chinese goods, comparing it with Europe’s “green suicide” embrace of cheap Chinese renewables.
• Economic Warning: “The likelihood of a far right party continuing to gain power and influence goes up dramatically as the country gets poorer and… needs to bring in more and more cheap labor and more goods from China…” (66:43)

---

6. Oil Market Paradox: War, but No Price Spike (69:47–85:28)

• Market Dynamics: Despite the escalated conflict in Iran and attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices barely increased and then retreated.
• Key Insights:
  • China’s demand for oil is much more elastic than analysts thought, which “has been stunning” (Ken Griffin, 72:50).
  • The market’s behavior signals possible “demand destruction”—a weakening global economy.
  • Flattening oil futures curves indicate traders foresee excess supply, not scarcity.
• Tom’s Take:
  “When people don’t need energy, that is a very bad sign… If it were us transitioning to solar, I would feel very differently. But when they just need less energy… that’s where it gets weird.” (79:50)

---

7. Apple vs OpenAI: The Legal Battle that Could Reshape AI (85:28–94:05)

• Lawsuit Details:
  • Apple sues OpenAI, alleging “industrial scale” theft of hardware IP via former and current employees.
  • Accusations include candidate interviews where Apple parts were showcased, security bugs exploited for technical info, and proprietary metal finishes misused.
• High Stakes:
  • With $6.5 billion spent to acquire IO Products, OpenAI faces possible court-ordered injunctions right as they prepare an IPO.
• Insider Skirmish:
  • Public Twitter/X spat between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, as each accuses the other of hyping or scamming tech and investors.

Notable Quotes:

• Tom (87:43): “The filing calls OpenAI’s hardware business rotten to its core and notes over 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI.”

---

8. Future Tech: Palmer Luckey’s Modular Missile Factories (94:06–99:34)

• Innovation in Defense:
  • Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, demonstrates low-cost, modular cruise missiles manufacturable in auto factories.
  • Tom frames this as a renaissance for US manufacturing, comparing it to America’s WWII pivot: “When you raise our young people with an absolute hunger to build real things, you get a very different world than when everybody's going into software.” (96:30)
• Geostrategic Context:
  • The strategy: “This is designed to scare China into not taking action on Taiwan.” (98:58)
• Tech Renaissance:
  • Emphasis on the value of building physical products in addition to software.

---

9. Modern Espionage: The Nuclear Scientist Honeypot (101:16–106:44)

• Sting Operation:
  • A US Army nuclear scientist is caught divulging secrets to a young woman in a bar—she was a honeypot agent with O’Keefe Media Group.
  • Tom’s take: “It is a source of never ending amusement how easily manipulated men are with sex… When you lose sight that you're having a biological experience, you lose sight of it at your own peril.” (103:00)
• Lesson:
  • The episode underscores that old-school human intelligence and social engineering remain as relevant as cyber-warfare.

---

10. Bonus: Odyssey Movie Backstage & DEI in Hollywood (106:55–110:34)

• Behind the Scenes:
  The hosts discuss the upcoming Odyssey film, the controversy over race-swapping in casting, and Tom’s view that skill and story can eclipse identity politics—citing Morgan Freeman’s “Red” in Shawshank Redemption as an example.
• Tom’s Take:
  “I'm not weird about race swapping… If they put an unattractive woman in the role, I’d be weird… But if they do try to browbeat people with a message, I get why some people are going to eject…” (107:47)

---

Memorable Quotes

• Tom (06:08): “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
• Tom (26:12): “AI will leave the weirdest fucking artifacts that can be cleaned up in Photoshop. If you're going to lie, lie all the way…”
• Tom (42:46): “I really think total war is over until something so tragic happens that it absolutely forces some country to cross a line.”
• Tom (66:43): “The likelihood of a far right party continuing to gain power goes up dramatically as the country gets poorer.”
• Tom (79:50): “When people don’t need energy, that is a very bad sign… that’s where it gets weird.”
• Tom (87:43): “The filing calls OpenAI’s hardware business rotten to its core and notes over 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI.”
• Tom (103:00): “It is a source of never ending amusement how easily manipulated men are with sex… you gotta stay sober, gents.”

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Lindsey Graham’s death and conspiracy theories: 00:30–08:30
• Media transparency and AI hoaxes: 24:30–29:20
• US-Iran escalation and diplomacy: 30:34–54:14
• Chants/propaganda and interpreting intentions: 50:14–54:14
• Trade war with Canada/China: 54:14–69:47
• Oil markets and the global economy: 69:47–85:28
• Apple vs. OpenAI legal battle: 85:28–94:05
• Palmer Luckey’s missile tech: 94:06–99:34
• Espionage and honeypots: 101:16–106:44
• Odyssey movie and race in casting: 106:55–110:34

---

Tone and Takeaway

Tom Bilyeu approaches each topic with a blend of skepticism, blunt realism, and encouragement for deeper, critical analysis. The episode oscillates between humor and urgency, pressing listeners to look past headlines, memes, and narratives that fit their biases.
The Apple vs. OpenAI lawsuit may have front-page immediacy, but Tom’s real mission this episode is broader: warning of the erosion of trust, the instability of global systems, and the need for more innovation, clear thinking, and adaptability in a disruptive era.

---

For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is a crash course in how to critically navigate news cycles, understand the real stakes behind tech and political drama, and appreciate the unpredictable future being forged in the overlap of geopolitics, economics, and emerging technology.

Transcript

[A]

Evening.

[B]

Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.

[C]

You what?

[D]

Yeah. Great price.

[B]

I even have seven days to love it or return it.

[D]

So there's no.

[B]

No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our 7 day return [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Bilyeu Show Live. Boy, oh boy. It was certainly an eventful weekend. If you guys were online. Lindsey Graham died suddenly after visiting Ukraine and the Internet is ablaze with conspiracies. I have never seen conspiracies come in so many flavors. We're going to be diving into them all. But no matter which flavor you want, there's one for you. US strikes over the last couple of days are the most intense certainly since the MOU and I think rival even the beginning of the war. The US and Canada are on the verge of a trade war which is bizarre but but nonetheless where we're at. Oil is not moving how it should given the conflict in Iran. We're going to break down. Why? Apple is going ham suing OpenAI over industrial scale IP theft. Palmer Luckey of Anduril has created a low cost cruise missile that can be mass produced by car companies. If you guys know anything about World War II history, you will understand what that means. And a hot young woman gets a nuclear scientist to divulge classified secrets on on hidden camera. That is never going to cease to amuse me. Even when it is something that insane. Ah, man. The human mind works in fascinating ways, boys and girls. But speaking of biology, Senator Lindsey Graham is dead at 71. He was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital late Saturday night after what his office called, and I quote, a brief and sudden illness. The D.C. medical examiner performed an autopsy Sunday. It released the preliminary findings which is aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic. Yes, I think I got that right. Cardiovascular disease. Basically I'm going to chalk this up to bad Diet. So all the people that are saying like, this is 18 variations of conspiracy theory, and I will admit the timing is pretty insane given that you had him in Ukraine in a weapons facility, ends up getting struck, supposedly, I don't think that's been confirmed yet, but supposedly once he leaves, boom, the Russians hit that. Then he goes home, click dead, like right after he gets back. And this is right on the heels of Iran making him one of like a small handful of people. So they had Trump, Lindsey Graham, Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer, I think so like a really small handful of people. And so first one goes down. Somebody released an AI video that's been linked in terms of the style, has been linked to some IRGC propaganda videos where it's shown in a Lego format. So this Lego video supposedly released by Iran, taking claim for the assassination of Lindsey Graham. But again, to me, anybody looking at that man, he was not living a healthy lifestyle. And so my initial thinking was, yeah, you, when you get hardening of the arteries, that will kill you lickety split. Like if you get a tear in the right part of your vascular system, you're just going to bleed out. So this one doesn't seem super shocking to me, but it really, the number of different conspiracies that are coming out are crazy. So you've got people in the Russian camp. So clearly Russians took him out because he's putting all this support behind Ukraine. We had to get him. Then you've got the Iranian camp. I mean, they're just straight saying, or the propaganda video, I don't know if it actually came from them, but they were super eager to take credit for it because he was on their hit list. Then you've even got a Zajuz one coming out where people are saying, yo, we've got to like let Trump know that you're next, man. If you're trying to back off of this war in Iran, we've got to just let you know, don't do that. So I could not believe that even the Mossad is catching strays on this one. So it's really a question of what flavor do you want? Do you want to just take a straight look? He's 71, he had a terrible diet, like the odds were not in this man's favor. That's there for you. You've got the Putin's out to get you with the number of people that he's poisoned and killed in the sudden illness camp vein, you've got, I mean, Mossad is always going to show up because we're in a super weird time right now with all of that, but whatever camp you're in, man, you've got a champion for your conspiracy theory. It is wild, but I would say strap on your tinfoil hat if you are going into that territory right now. I think the play is assume for now that eating a bad diet is going to come for us all. If you want to know who's got your number, it is the grim reaper if you're not eating the right things. But the timing is pretty crazy, especially now. This is also going to get politically weird because you've got Weekend at Bernie's happening over in the Mitch McConnell camp, and now you've got Lindsey going down. Is Lindsey gonna have a special election? Does anybody know?

[D]

Is that gonna trigger because we're so close to the primary and everything like that somebody else can then run for their seat to then get on the ballot for the next.

[B]

So there won't be a special election. We got close enough.

[D]

We missed it. He held on the houses dozens of times in the Senate.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, that is certainly utterly fascinating. Now, the thing that I found

[A]

sort

[B]

of jarring thing was the mainstream media is not. I haven't seen, maybe it's just my algorithm, but I have not seen a single commentary on the conspiracy theory of it all from the mainstream media. But on the other side, I haven't even heard anybody credibly say, guys, come on. Like, this kind of death happens all the time from people that are not healthy. If he was 45 and, you know, 10% body fat, I'd be like, yeah, Russia got him, or whatever. But he's 71, he clearly obese. I very much doubt this is a man who's out there getting all the exercise that he needs. So extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You've got the medical examiner already saying, look, he just had a tear in one of his blood vessels and it's game over.

[D]

I like the conspiracy theory of it all, so I'm going to lean into that.

[B]

You like it or you actually think it's true?

[D]

I like it. I'll be honest with you. Lindsay had to go. I am okay with his passing. I'm not okay with anybody dying. I'm not rooting for it. I didn't.

[B]

Except for Lindsey Graham.

[D]

I don't hope that any foreign actors had a, like, participation into it. But this tweet from we the Brandon really kind of got my wheel spinning. So I'm going to read it out, see how it goes. I'm convinced Lindsey Graham was Killed in Ukraine by a Russian airstrike on a drone facility.

[B]

Like he died on the scene.

[D]

So I died on the scene. Okay. Trump is covering it up as to prevent himself from being in a position where he'll need to escalate but cannot because he's blown through all of the critical stockpiles in his stupidest Middle mid Mid east war fiasco. I can read the rest, but the rest is just like slander at this point. Hypothetically speaking, if Lindsey Graham was killed on foreign ground from a foreign power, whether it was Putin, whether it is Iran via Putin, whatever it might have be, that is a declaration of war, we are now seeing in the straight of Hormuz. This isn't the America of World War I where we have assembly lines and the women on workforce lining up in aprons making bombs. It's a different America. Do you think that there is if this is true? Disclaimer, disclaimer, all that stuff. Do you think that there is some validity in that? Like, wait a second, I don't know if I can handle two wars when we're barely leading one. And Russia has a way more. Is way more apt to just kind of going nuclear, literally. Is this something that Trump would even like consider. Would the COVID story of he died in his house actually be something to save the Republic in the grand scheme of things?

[B]

Okay, so just adopting for a second that this actually happened, which for the record is not my belief. If this were to be somebody that actually was killed by a foreign government in this exact moment, my advice to them would be certainly to buy time because you don't want to go in and have to start escalating things directly with Russia. What you would do is just behind the scenes without like making a big deal of it. You start putting more energy and effort into Ukraine. You make sure that they're getting the weapons that they need. You work with places like Anduril. We're going to be covering this story later. It's absolutely brilliant. Palmer Lucky is incredible. In fact, we should probably do a real beat when we get to that about American ingenuity. The thing that has made us the greatest ever in times of need, we've really leaned on necessity is the mother of invention. And we've been able to really turn over very rapidly. And I see him, Elon Musk, building the kind of technology that we would need. The fact that Lucky Palmer had the foresight to say these need to be missiles that we can build in an auto factory. So now you've got somebody who's looking at what are the that America has now, what could we do that would be great for the economy, would bring manufacturing back? I know I could get President Trump behind this and would allow us to take on our adversaries. There's something very, very interesting there. So I would tell my advice to the government would be, look, don't distract the public. Just keep pushing that one quietly behind the scenes so that we're not having to go in to save face and do some big thing. So if they were going to try to cover it up, I would say it' good strategy. Even if it's one of those where it's another example of how your government lies to you like it it that's just so far gone. Nothing you hear is real, nothing is true. And it really does come down to how do you get the outcome that you need. So from that perspective, that wouldn't shock me at all. That would be good strategy. You can push that one along as much as you have the tooling to do it. But you may need to buy yourself six months or even a year before you'd realistically be ready to. You need to see how things are playing out in Iran if you get some stability there, if you and Europe all acting together but more quietly behind the scenes can continue to weaken Russia because it really does look. And look, I know I'm subject to so much propaganda, it's hard to know what's really real, but it really does seem that they're having a massive impact on the energy infrastructure of Russia. If they can do that and just make the war that much more unpopular, that one may fizzle out on its own where it just becomes untenable for Putin. And but if you get bombastic, because my big fear in Russia is you back Putin into a corner where he does not have a good off ramp and so he escalates and this becomes nuclear. And so Putin certainly makes my radar as somebody who, if they felt like the barbarians were at the gates and really, truly like America's like, fuck you, we're bombing, we're going crazy that he's going to escalate. So I don't like that one as much as I despise the fact that the government lies to us all the time, I would much rather that than find ourselves in nuclear war. So, yeah, that to me, you need to buy yourself time. You need to find an off ramp for Putin. And if that means having to sort of obfuscate that direct attack to buy yourself some time, that makes sense to me, period. Now, one thing that I want to bring up that I was thinking a lot about this weekend is we're killing the shit out of Iran's leadership. And we're just like, yeah, fuck em. And we go in, we strike them, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we killed him. Trump, in his first term, was it. I forget who he hit. Big Daddy, one of them. And was just like, yeah, we did it. No apologies. If you fuck with us, like, you're going to find out. And so it really. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And so while I'll always root for America, even if I think America is making dumb decisions, like, you've got to protect your own country. And so I'm never going to be like, well, we did it to them, so we should expect it to be done to us. No, like, we did a thing, you didn't back down. If you escalate, we're going to escalate again. And so that's where all of this leads. And I will expect us to win, even if everybody can agree we just shouldn't have got into it in the first place. So on that side, though, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And so nobody should be surprised if this were real. Again, I don't think it is. But the fact that these guys are going to increasingly try to take out Trump, we've done it to them. It's obviously a strategy that's very high risk in terms of you don't know what America looks like. On the back of if we know, like, let's say that Iran takes him out and, like, let's really do the big one. He's on the Qatari jet, Air Force One. So they gift us a plane. For people that don't know they gift us a plane, it's like $400 million. Trump's just beyond himself, super excited. Gold plated, this is all real. So he takes the plane, even though everyone's like, what the fuck are you doing? Takes the plane, flies it to Turkey and everything pops back off in Iran, everyone's like, hold on, Trump, this is crazy. What are you doing? You cannot fly back on that plane. You need to go back to the old Air Force One, run a scenario where he's fly. He refuses. He didn't. He actually goes back to the old one. Thank God. But let's say that he had gotten on the new one and lo and behold, we find that it either doesn't have the defenses that it needs or that it had a weakness that Iran could exploit, and they end up crashing the plane or striking the plane or whatever and just claim it and say, we did it, we did it. Like this, fuck you guys, we're coming for you. Like, we can touch you in ways you don't understand. We've got fools in Cuba, we've got sleeper cells in the US which, by the way, is almost all certainly true. And so if that had happened, Iran should not be surprised if that ignites the base. Let's say J.D. vance comes in, but now it's an angry J.D. vance who's like, we can't have somebody attack our country. And now we've got the COVID that we need politically to go absolutely ballistic and start just completely dismantling Iran. So this is a fafo that I think we've encountered in Iran where it's like, yes, he's so proud. Trump is so proud of, I've taken out two layers of leadership. Maybe I'm about to take out the third. And it's like, well, are they getting friendlier? Are they getting, like, better at diplomacy? No, we're going in the exact opposite direction. So you're getting more and more hardliners. And I would not be surprised to see the same thing happen in the U.S. so it's like, man, all of this stuff is ill advised. This is why truly and I, I absolutely mourn for our man Ryan over here who, growing up as a gen zer, does not understand what global peace really looked like in the West. Obviously there's always going to be problem areas, but it was an unprecedented period of peace post World War II until really the early 2000s when we start having economic woes. But like, man, that stretch was just unbelievable. It's the period where China pulls 800 million people out of poverty, untold global prosperity. I mean, just the wealth of nations going up, up, up, up, up. I get it's not distributed in the way people want and all that, and we could talk about that, but that period where you had essentially a hegemon, certainly once the Cold War ended, it was you. You can hate America all you want, but globally it was awesome. And at least for this period, and maybe it's very brief, but for this period, that is not what we have. And we have escalating tensions. We've got the US And Canada on the verge of a trade war, for the love of God. You've got Canada embracing China. You've got China now saying, hey, we're going beyond the China Sea, we're going into the Pacific. And so obviously they're targeting Taiwan. Like, Jesus, man. There's just so much instability. And you're going to see the instability get worse. If we really do have, let's say China starts really asserting itself, you've got, the US is certainly not going to back down. If Iran is able to come out of this as a hegemon in the Middle East, Yikes. Like that becomes a very unstable, very violent, very economically turbulent world. That is not going to be fun. And as technology gets better and better, could you see things start showing up in Cuba? Weaponry that can hit the US and now the US feels like we've got to go hit Cuba, dude. It's like all of this can end very, very badly. So this is one of those where I just kept thinking to myself over the weekend, man, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Again, that's not me saying that America should back down. It's too late for that. But that is me saying, yo, like fafo is a multi directional thing because none of this stuff is ever going to go smoothly the way that you want. There are always going to be unintended consequences. Those could be 9, 11, those could be. Again, that's not me saying America deserved 9 11. That's just me saying that shit happens. And so if you give people enough reason to hate you, hate you, they will. Especially if they've already just come in with some either religiously animated beef or because they've got cultural and religious beef with Israel and we're the best of partners with Israel, like whatever, but like those things have knock on effects and we're now dealing with those because America has weakened itself so much over the years. So this one is on the back of your question and my theoretical answer I cannot help but come back to this is not, this is not necessarily avoidable, all the conflict because of just the dynamics globally, but it shouldn't be coveted. And so when I hear people coveting and getting like all their blood pumping, that's where I'm like, oh man, I don't think people are being realistic about how badly things break when this happens. We've had world wars before, they are devastating economically. Life, I mean, it's just unbelievable. And they'll wage for years, man. So that's not a position we want to find ourselves in. And we're getting dangerously close to it. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about why you're sweating. Summer is when bad fabric becomes too hot to ignore. That tea that felt fine in April is suddenly stiff, clingy, and practically suffocating you by July. Most guys just suffer through the hot months, but you don't have to. Quince fixes that. I've got their Pima cotton tees and I am very impressed. The fabric, the fit, the construction. You can feel it just by touching it. That's what happens when a brand actually cares about quality materials. Quince builds everyday essential like soft Pima cotton tees, breathable European linen shirts and pants, and lightweight cotton sweaters at prices 50 to 80% less than comparable brands. They work directly with ethical factories, cut out the middlemen and pass the savings on straight to you. There's no markup. It's just quality. Get the basics right and everything else gets easier. Make your summer wardrobe easy. Go to quince.com impact pod for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now also available in Canada. Quince is spelled Q U I n c e.com impactpod for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com impact podcast let's talk about leverage. Effort doesn't grow a business, at least not alone. You need leverage. The same hours that get you 10 sales somewhere else can get you 100 if you're in the right place. Whatnot is where that math works. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. Sellers on whatnot move 10 times more product than on other major marketplaces. Same inventory, same hours spent, but 10 times the output because the format is built for selling. You go live, you show what you've got, you take questions in real time, and buyers convert on the spot. If you've never seen it, Whatnot is incredible. Check it out. Buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app. They're engaged, they're loyal, and they almost never pay full price. Which is exactly why they keep coming back. The number of sellers on Whatnot making over a million dollars a year, has doubled. And live selling has crossed the line into full time work for many people. Beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies. If you have something to sell, the audience is likely already there. Search Whatnot wh a t n o t in the App Store. Download and you can start selling right away. Why does Progressive work hard for truckers? Because truckers unite the world. They unite kids with their first drum sets and parents with earplugs. But truckers can't do this if they're not on the road. That's why Progressive has over 360 heavy truck employees to help truckers stay on time and on track. Quote Truck Insurance today in as little as eight [e-mail] progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[D]

Yeah. Comment of the day. Candidate known as Dan Smith said when someone at the average lifespan age dies at the average lifespan age conspiracy. So it is, I guess a well kept old person died of overeating who frequent McDonald's with his co worker. I feel like that's not. If that was a regular headline in Arkansas somewhere, we'd be like, yeah, that makes sense. But because it's a. I'd be like,

[B]

hey, guy dies at 71. Tom, you have to tell me, is this nefarious? The first thing I'm going to ask is, is he obese? And if he's obese, what the medical report say? Oh, heart disease or circulatory disease? Look, unfortunately the most dangerous thing that people do every day is eat bad food. And it, look, it takes a long time to stack up, but stack up it does. So this one to me is not weird. I think in the fullness of time we're going to realize this was just a guy with a bad diet and bad exercise habits. And it is what it is. And so I expect all the conspiratorial stuff to mostly die down and sort of get pushed back to the corners. But this one was fast. Like the number of conspiracies, that was the one that got me. And in fact, if I can just address everybody out there when you have like a really easy answer to something, remember I do this myself all the time when it comes to the DSA and mom Donnie, because it is so emotionally satisfying for me. So I know I'm at my most at risk there. If you're like, if you just think the Jews are responsible for everything and a guy dies of heart disease and your immediate thing is the Mossad got him to send a warning to Trump. But then everybody else, if they're like a Russia hawk, they're like, Russia did it. That's when. And obviously if you're an iron Hawk and you think Iran did it, that's where you got to be like, all right, like we should probably pump the brakes here. Let's let the facts come out and then go from there. It's just we're getting into a place where everybody has their narrative and every data point fits that narrative. And nobody's like, what's the disconfirming evidence.

[D]

Well, keeping the conspiracy train going. Mitch McConnell released a statement. I'm not going to read it. I don't think it was real.

[B]

Speaking of, man.

[D]

Speaking of. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[B]

I gotta see because I haven't seen this. What's it say?

[D]

The statement is. It's like four paragraphs.

[B]

Oh, damn. Okay, we're not gonna read the whole

[D]

thing, but I'm sorry that happened to you, or good luck with that.

[B]

This is from Mitch.

[D]

Yeah. This is from supposedly. Supposedly, yeah. Release the baby elected. I'm doing okay. I me in the lane of appreciate the well wishes.

[B]

And wasn't it something like I slipped and fell and that's why I went to the hospital. That was the one thing I saw.

[D]

My doctors have confirmed that I didn't break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn't have a heart attack or stroke. I don't have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious, was taken to the hospital. While receiving excellent care over the past few weeks, I had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia.

[B]

All right, we're gonna see. We're gonna see.

[D]

People are calling it out because it seems like he's sitting there upright, holding a newspaper. And then they said, hey, let's look at the newspaper he's reading. And that's a lot of wise for and for a Yankee hat. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[B]

Is that real?

[D]

Yeah, this is. It was zoomed in and then there's a couple people under it. Wait, wait, wait.

[B]

Go click on the full photo right there and then zoom in on that.

[D]

It's pixelated. We're not gonna see that.

[B]

Okay, so.

[D]

But even you, even from here, I can see that the NY logo looks janky.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, man.

[D]

Okay, we have a resident baseball fan in the. In the. You know, anybody.

[B]

Hold on. Okay, let me. I'm just gonna die tribe for a second.

[D]

And then last day, some people, like, rocked it. Is this image GR said? Yes. When people zoomed in on it, you can still kind of see the Gronk

[B]

said it's AI or it's real.

[D]

Grog said it was AI.

[B]

Interesting.

[D]

Yes, but. Okay, we'll see.

[B]

So here it as a PSA to all the people out there that would like to bamboozle the public with fake AI imagery. Will you please do me a favor? Take your image, break it into quadrants like. Or many, many small boxes and go look box by box. Tick them off as you have looked at them to see if they're weird artifacts, because that is going to be done by the Sleuths on the Internet. And the fact that people do not do this is so crazy to me. AI will leave the weirdest fucking artifacts that can be cleaned up in Photoshop. You guys don't have to live like this. Your AI is better than that, man. It's like people trying to do this stuff way too fast. I do not understand. Go in and clean up your fucking images. Like, if you're gonna lie, lie all the way. Like, don't do this half ass weak bullshit. That's why I'm like, wait, did somebody. Doctor, is that the photo? Like that actually came from his account? That's where this is just like, do I really have to be mad? On top of the fact that you're lying, that you lie poorly? Like, that's where this gets really obnoxious. It is as if people do not understand the weaknesses of AI. I don't get it. That's so crazy. By the way, if somebody's doing well, they'll send you a video. If they're secretly doing poorly, they're going to send you a photo just to be very real with you. It's pretty easy to walk in, have one of his aides walk in and be like, senator, listen. Or Congress. Is he Senator, Congress, Senate. It says right there, senator floor. We're going to hide you back on the Senate floor.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So you've got a senator, you're important to the public. So. Hey, Mitch, real fast, I'm just going to record a video. Say the date, say what's up. Just let people know you're good. That's. It doesn't have to be anything fancy and then you release it. So the fact that they don't do that, like you're just, you're making it possible for people to run with the narrative. It's how I felt. Like, do you remember that long weekend where everybody thought Trump had died and they were like trying to hide it?

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And look, I'm sure he's busy and all that, but I was just like, bro, put out a quick video. Yes. People are going to say that it's AI, blah, blah, blah, just like they did with Netanyahu. But at least like, you give anchored people some something to go off of.

[D]

Yeah, but, and, and that's the thing we do have to disclaimer because everybody swore Netanyahu was dead and it was the four fingers on the coffee and all these other things. So it's one of those. It sounds good. It feels like there's something there. It is mysterious. How he's not having a video, he's not releasing a statement. Other people aren't commenting.

[B]

I just have a feeling he was legitimately doing poorly and he's in such frail health that they didn't want to show that he was really struggling. Thankfully, he got back on his feet. But it's. I get why people want to know what the condition of their elected officials are. So, yeah, we have routinely, like there was somebody, I forget what their exact role was in the government, but this was several years ago. But they disappeared for like, I don't know, a month or two months or something. Nobody knew where they were. They ended up being in the hospital and having some like, fairly robust surgery and it was like just crickets. So, yeah, I don't know.

[D]

Perfect time to, you know, do age limits on Senate, you know, and term limits for the. God, 80 year old judges, 70 year old politicians, they're dropping like flies.

[B]

Maybe this is a signing also, man, I hate to say this. Oh, God, am I really going to say this out loud?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

When it comes to interviewing guests, if somebody suggests somebody to me that's old, I go watch how well they speak. Because while it doesn't guarantee that you're no longer sharp, the odds are that

[D]

you're no longer sharp.

[B]

And so it's just like the fact that we let people rock that long is so crazy. Now, look, demographics are destiny. I get it. We have a ton of boomers that have just been able to keep these guys going forever. In terms of getting reelected, that's pretty wild. I would advise all people young and old, it's about sharpness. It isn't about age, but age is a flag where you need to be like, is this person still sharp? And yeah, so again, man, age comes for us all. Nobody knows that better than me, but boy, oh, boy, do we have to be honest about the fact that age comes for us all.

[D]

Yep. All right, while we're talking about international conspiracy theories and foreign actors, let's actually go to the war that we're fighting. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not a war. It was a conflict, a misunderstanding. I forgot what he. The last.

[B]

He can't call it a war 486 times and then be like, no psych, just kidding.

[D]

But yeah, whatever he called it in Iran over and over and over and over and over and over.

[E]

Epic fury.

[D]

Epic fury.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Let's get to epic fury. So round three is complete. A new round of targets, a new round of bombings. Set it up for us, Tom.

[C]

All right.

[B]

Well, Trump has stopped talking about bombing Iran back into the Stone Age, and now he's just doing it. Saturday night, U.S. central Command hit roughly 140 Iranian military targets in a single round of strikes. This is the largest since the June ceasefire was signed. Trump also put out a truce social, saying that he has 1000 more missiles locked and loaded should Iran attempt to assassinate him again. Whether they do it or not, he's ready to fight. So far, the US has hit missile sites, drone launch facilities, naval assets, ammunition storage, communication networks, coastal surveillance, all of it. Obviously trying to wrestle control away from them. As far as the strait goes, so far it's still being done from the air. They're hitting everything with precise munitions launched from like fighter jets, drones, warships. This is good news. This is exactly what we should want them to do. We certainly do not want to see troops on the ground. But also remember, Iran is not dumb. They have been planning for this kind of retaliation for a long time. They have buried things very deep. They have these tunnels that we are going to have to find some way to get inside to destroy the tunnels again, ideally without actually boots on the ground. So what's going to be that next level of innovation? I'm sure there's somebody that has been pointing out for decades that the bunker buster bombs have a weakness that can be fixed in XYZ way. And so it's about actually having the impetus to go in and actually make those things. But never underestimate engineers and what they are capable of doing. I mean, we saw with the strike on fordow that they could drop bombs into ventilation shafts to get way deeper in. And so this will be a constant cat and mouse game as Iran and other adversaries find ways to bury things deeper and deeper, finding ways to get around that. I have no idea what that's going to be, but I would not bet against people finding a way to solve that problem. So we are absolutely going to have to do that as this sort of latest round of military build outs with these countries that understand that they have an asymmetric disadvantage against the US in terms of air superiority. And so they've just gone down. They know what the weapons are that we have, they know how far they can penetrate. And so they try to get the majority of them deep enough that they can't be hit. And so that's going to have to be something that we end up cracking. It's going to need to be conventional. Obviously, dropping nukes might solve the problem, but it creates one that is much, much, much Much bigger, more devastating, more terrifying, more globally destructive. Obviously we should not be going down that path, but you can expect them to try to find some way to get in there and deal with that. So, yeah, we'll see how this ends up playing out. The US has now struck more than 300 targets across the week. The heaviest sustained bombing since the war supposedly ended back with the mou, but I think we all knew that was never going to last. I didn't hear anybody saying, yeah, this is actually going to get across the finish line. If you read the mou, it was ridiculous. It was the most vague, mealy mouth bullshit ever. I was shocked that the markets were actually like, yeah, this is cool. I was just like, this is not going to go anywhere. This is obviously going to fall apart. Remember, everybody should build a mental map of Iran for themselves. My mental map goes like this. Every diplomat that has ever interfaced with them, not just in the U.S. but all of the Western diplomats that have interfaced with them have said the same thing. These guys are extraordinarily good at negotiating because what they do is they buy themselves time. They say they're going to do one thing, then they do another, then they're like, oh my God, so sorry, I can't believe that happened. No, that wasn't what we meant to do. And so that's precisely what Trump is saying. Because the latest round of these attacks, he says, is because the IRGC attacked the GFS Galaxy, a Cyprus flag container ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This is like the playbook over and over and over. Trump said, we literally walked out of negotiations where Iran told us we were going to get everything that we were drumming on about, and then an hour later they send a drone at this Cyprus flagship. So, like, if we know that's their M.O. and we have a hyper vague MOU, and the Iranians are going on state media and saying over and over and over, we are not agreeing to those things. They're crazy. I don't know why Trump keeps saying it. It's all a lie. This is what we're really doing. And then they really go do things that are far more in line with what they're saying out loud. You can just assume that they're buying themselves time in the negotiations. So I'm seeing analysts out of the UAE saying the same thing, like, you guys are delusional if you think that you can negotiate with them. Now, as you can imagine, this brings me back to this is culture. So I grow increasingly annoyed by people that say, you cannot extrapolate anything from what happened in Japan. And I will say, unless you think that quantum randomness somehow is just way more at play with Japan than it is anywhere else. What it shows is Japan had a certain setup, a certain culture. The way that they ended the war, how fatigued they were even before Pearl Harbor. So you already had people struggling with malnutrition before Pearl Harbor. Okay, so let that sink in. America hasn't even joined the fight yet. They're already getting super fatigued. You already have the troops on the ground, hate their leadership, and they end up murdering some of them after the war ends. So it's like all of that's playing out. You nuke twice and you go in American. Most American attention is in Europe. So you have this general who's basically just running it like he is a dictator. Truly, he's impacting legislation. He's got all of the powers of a US President would have over the US plus, like, things where he can just buy, fiat, create legislation in Japan ends up working, obviously, Japan ends up being in this extraordinary story. How does that relate to what's going on in Iran? Value system matters. So if Japan is fatigued, Japan wants to let go of its imperialistic ambitions because it has not been playing out well for them. They want to move in a new direction. And then somebody comes in and says, hey, we're going to give you all these freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom to protest things that they didn't have historically. And their belief in their supreme leader, their emperor, like, who was supposedly. I can't believe people believe this. And this is World War II to me, is still the modern era. They believed that he was a God or God adjacent. So, like, imagine that. And so when he's like, hey, we got to go to war, we got to kill these people, you're like, well, God's telling us we got to do it. Like, that shit is wild. The US Was smart enough to go, ah, we're going to use that as a way to get that person to say, all these new freedoms, these are good things. This is what you should want, is really brilliant. So you've got to be honest about what the culture is. The value system is in the Middle East. And if you mismap that, you will forever ever fail to get what you want out of the Middle east because you're not aligned with the way that they are. So you can go give Japan freedoms. They take to it. You try to do it in Afghanistan, it doesn't work. You have a Different value set. It is not that Japan is some crazy outlier, it's that we actually, whether we did it on accident or not is irrelevant. The things that we tried to give them were in line with where they were psychologically from a value setup, all of that at the time that we tried to do it, we have been so out of step. Like, imagine trying to take DEI to Afghanistan. Are you out of your fucking minds? So it's like that kind of thing is just absolutely asinine because people are not being honest about values are the thing that drive what people will kill and die for. And so if you've got people willing to kill and die for a certain ideology and you're 180 degrees in the opposite direction of that, do not expect it to go well. You're not going to be able to introduce freedoms that they don't want. So that's where I think this continues to be. Us beating our heads against the wall. And people in the Middle east have been saying for years that trying to go and do Western style diplomacy with Iran is never, ever, ever going to work. And there are plenty of people saying that the way that Iran has read the Trump administration's negotiation tactics is weakness. It isn't like, oh, but he wants to get this economic deal done. They're like, fuck this kid, he's weak. He's in a super weak position. All of his concessions, like, they're all a sign that he does not have the leverage that he thinks he has. I don't know if this report can be believed, but I heard a report over the weekend that Aragachi, I believe that's how you say his name, basically the guy that we interface with, that we always see publicly speaking on behalf of Iran, that he had rocks thrown at him during Khomeini's funeral because the hardliners think that he's an appeaser. So imagine just trying to end the attacks in Iran with the world's vaguest mou. That gave them plenty of options to get out them all trying to control the Strait of Hormuz, that was considered appeasement. So when you've got people that hardcore and you're trying to come in and be diplomatic and come on, we all want a nice economic end of this. Which boy do I wish were true? But we're not getting indications that that stuff actually is true. So that's where it's like, expect this to continue to be a clown show because we're not in alignment with what they actually want. Remember, they chant Death to America. Death to Israel. Name us the big satan Israel, the little Satan that they want the state of Israel to cease to exist. Those are the. They're telling you who they are and we're negotiating as if they're not telling us who they are. Now, what that means in terms of how you actually get what we want out of this. That's a whole nother discussion that probably involves a lot of bombs, but nonetheless has to be disentangled from what we want to be true versus what actually is true. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[D]

That brings me to the chanting. I don't mean to like fractal, but Tim Dillon did a good bit on like, we can't handle people chanting Death to America on that. Before I get to that though, it's a bit more comedic. It's, it's, it's giving Quagmire. It's giving. We're kind of stuck.

[B]

We have it's giving Quagmire.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, tell me you have a 15 year old.

[D]

My house is surrounded by teenagers. I'm sorry, I'm getting indoctrinated. It's one of those things where, how you just laid it out, even the negotiation is viewed as, as like subjugate. Like they. We can't even get to the table to have the conversation and that's the issue. So like, what do you. Like, what do. Like, where do we go from here? Like, is, is it now we have to flip into that total war switch. Like, we can't negotiate with you.

[B]

I really think total war is over. Okay, what do I really think total war is over until something so tragic happens that it absolutely forces some country to cross a line. And then everybody's like, yeah, we're just really in it now. We're doing this. Hey, we're still like, you know, this is still that period of peace. We don't have to do this. The US and China don't have to end up in a kinetic war. This thing in Iran, it can settle down, we can negotiate this. Hey, Russia, like, come on, you know, chill. Like, let's restabilize. We don't invade countries anymore. Like, we're still in that. No, no, no. Things can go back to the way they were phase. And to be honest, I want it to be true so badly that you need to let it play out. Even though I don't believe it anymore, you still need to do the thing because it is so catastrophic. The other option, okay, because of that, for now, total warfare, I think, is still off the table. You would need some sort of cataclysmic breaking point. What you will end up. You have to run it as a thought experiment. Of course, what you hope is that, hey, the hardliners are losing energy, there's enough pushback in Iran, the people are rising up again. These guys understand that they have to begin softening as a way to maintain power. So they would have to believe that that is a strategy that keeps them in power for them to actually begin backing off and softening. And so that's what you want to see play out. So if you're Trump, you've got like a list of targets. You did the surgical ones. In the beginning, they were all military installations. It's all the radars, all that now, remember, unless my memory is faulty, Trump literally said, we're either out of targets or we're almost out of targets. So the fact that he's now going crazy, we've now entered into a different phase of the attacks. These are not the same style attacks that we had before. This is far less surgical. This is flirting with the we're going to just destroy your infrastructure. Now, they haven't gone all the way to that yet. So we're in sort of this gray zone of what we're hitting. I don't think the next step is total warfare, but I do think the next step is, and now even your average citizens are going to suffer because we're just going to start taking out your oil infrastructure. We're going to take out normal roads and things like that. And at that point, if you've got them in an economic chokehold and you're taking out infrastructure that's going to take them three to 10 years to rebuild, depending on how extensive the damage is. Now, all of a sudden, it's like, okay, we're really in dire straits because even in our own country, despite being as oil rich as we are, we're not able to get the energy needs in our own country that we need, then if we can degrade their technological capabilities such that if a fast boat hits the water in the strait, boom, it's hit immediately. If we see a radar installation, even if it's for civilian airports, we're going to take that out. And you just literally level anything that can ping a signal, do anything. And you just watch the exits to the tunnels like a hawk. Every time they send one out, you map back where it is and you just literally mow the grass all the time. You're just constantly striking the entrances and exits to these tunnels over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until finally these guys are so, so financially destitute that they by default aren't in power anymore. You've got a currency that's hyper inflating all that. That's how I think this will go. He'll just keep pushing the envelope in terms of the things that he strikes until the country economically is just so broken that at that point they're unable to damage their regional groups. So they're, they're not able to hit the uae, they're not able to hit Saudi Arabia, they're not able to hit Qatar and Oman and all that. Okay, so that would be one then, if they can't fund their proxies. Now, let's say you defang financially Hezbollah to the point where Lebanon can actually get them out of their country. Now, like, I'm getting way out over my skis here, but this would be incredible. So a Lebanon voices in Lebanon again. I never know if it's a 2% thing and the propaganda is just making its way into my feed or it actually represents a massive amount. But I'm seeing more people coming out of Lebanon saying, hey, we don't want Iran in our country, so we would much rather normalize things with Israel. Our beef isn't with Israel. Our beef is with Iran using our land as a way to get at Israel. And that has weakened us also. And now again, this is a hypothesis, but Lebanon used to be a Christian country. The Iranian influence coming in on the back of Islamic influence. And so now it becomes a question of what's that split. Some reports that I've seen is that Lebanon is still like 40% Christian. So is there that battle to be fought and won? As you defang Iran, are you able to start heading back towards where the Paris of the Middle East, You're a very, very long way from that right now. But if Iran is damaged to the point where they cease to be an influence. What natural flowers begin to spring up in the region, we don't know, but it will certainly be interesting to see. So that's how I see this rolling out. So first it was these really surgical military. Only now it's sort of these gray zone strikes. I think outside of this, if it continues to escalate, you get into just absolute economic infrastructure damage, and then we see what happens outside of that. Now we've got the midterms between here and there, but the crazy thing is, boys and girls, we're going to get into this. Oil is not doing what you'd expect. So Trump isn't going to necessarily have the economic headwinds caused by oil coming into the midterms. I think he's got other economic concerns, but it's probably not going to be, at least on our shores. You're not going to see a big economic impact from what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz, which is crazy. It was not on my bingo card that the markets would be so blase about the fact that we're back to ultra violence in the area. So that tells you something. We'll get into what something that tells you in a minute. But that's very interesting. Now, if that holds and that actually ends up being true, and the economy's shaky, but it's not on terrible ground. Oil isn't insane. Let's say it's hovering around 75 to $80. Right. Livable. Not great, but livable, then I still think Trump loses the midterms just because he's been a wrecking ball. And I think people are going to vote against that. But if you've got him able to do executive orders and just keep the bombings happening there, not at war, of course that will be his argument. And you are able to spend two and a half more years just kicking the shit out of Iran. Yeah, I don't think economically they get on the other side of this. And so Trump is showing that he really does have the will, at least as much as the stock market will allow, to go back to the heavy strikes.

[D]

So we'll see.

[B]

I wasn't sure that he was going to. Clearly, he does have that resolve.

[D]

Yeah, we'll monitor it. All right, let's jump over to Sim Dillon and his comments on the situation

[B]

when they chant Death to the United States. Again with the chant. No compunction about using these weapons.

[D]

Right. All right.

[B]

That's what they're going to do when they chant. They're going to chant the chemical weapons into the country, by the way, with the chanting. This is the craziest thing I've ever heard. He's like, you hear what they chant, by the way? You know what they chant at, like, soccer games? They chant all kinds of like, is this the standard of proof now is that the line that can't be crossed is chanting Death to America? What do you mean we can't handle death to America? We can't handle people chanting Death to America. I take more shit on that in comments like, this is crazy. And so does anyone who's on the Internet. This is what he. Listen, first of all, Tim Dillon is absolutely hilarious. He's also very insightful, which is a wonderful combination. He's right about the fact that we say all kinds of unhinged shit. There are plenty of people that you can find, I'm sure, going on the Senate floor or the congressional floor and talking about needing to bomb this, that or the other, whether it's Iran, whether it's Russia, just warmongering, beating that drum like crazy. But they should believe us. And when we say we're going to do it and we really do do it, you should go, oh, that really is what America is about. And that's why even in America, we've got our memes of like, oh, you found oil, you need some more freedom. And insert shot of a building getting struck. They should believe us when we say that kind of shit. And Netanyahu's point, say what you will, because Netanyahu, remember, you can find clips of Netanyahu saying, what do you do when a man is coming to kill you? And by the way, this is a Bible verse, Old Testament. What do you do when a man is coming to kill you? You rise early and kill them first. You should believe him. If they think you're coming after them, they're going to rise early and kill you first. You should believe them. When Iran chants death to America, you should believe them. So that's where I'm like, yes, it is funny. And yes, people on the Internet can be read in a totally different way. And it is unhinged, man. Once you come onto the Internet, what people say is wild. But that's a different game to me than when you have governments and members of the government saying, this is what we should do, because they are specifically saying it. Should try to get people on board with that idea. Somebody on the Internet is lashing out emotionally. But when you hear the Republican Party say, this is our, like, what was it the God, there was that document when Trump was running. Oh, somebody's going to know what this is. There was like the America 2025 Project 25. You should have believed them. They laid it out. This is like an official think tank, boys and girls putting a thing together that says some percentage of the Republican Party believes this. You should believe them. So when you have official organizations telling you who they are, dsa, I'm looking at you and they say, this is what we're about, you should believe them now. Very different than somebody who's popping off in the comments on your YouTube feeds. Very funny joke. But in terms of the reality, you probably shouldn't believe those people, but you should absolutely believe official government bodies and think tanks when they tell you this is what we think should happen. Because they're the ones behind the scenes trying to make that happen. Trying to get the right people elected, trying to get the right policies passed, trying to sway the public, manipulating the media, all of that to get everybody on board with those ideas. So you, again, funny when you liken it to soccer chants, but like the, the Iranians actually kill people, the US Actually kill people. So this is where it's like, yeah, you can probably take those chants that are happening in their version of Parliament a lot more seriously than a soccer chant or a comment online. This goes back to what I'm saying about values. If you mismap their values and you think they're just teasing, you're going to be confused when they really are pursuing that agenda.

[D]

Let's get over to Canada and this pending trade war. So I knew we got out of the deal, but I didn't know it was going to escalate this way. So I don't know if you want to start with the video or you want to set it up for us first.

[B]

So technically, we're not out of the deal, but we have now put it on like, this yearly cadence. But my real question is, are the US And Canada really about to stumble into a full blown trade war? And the answer is maybe so. This is actually starting to get bizarre. And to understand why this is playing out, you've got to understand how close Canada and China are becoming. And to understand that, you have to understand how far left Canada is going. Now, on July 1st, the Trump administration did refuse to renew the USMCA. That's a trade deal that Trump himself, by the way, used to champion. He was saying it's the best agreement ever made. Refusing to renew it, though, doesn't kill it. It just creates a totally different like time review cycle. So every year now it's going to be reviewed instead of being locked into a 16 year extension. So there, if you imagine every year it opens this window to go in and say we're not getting enough either side to try to squeeze the other or just outright blow it up. Now, Trump obviously is making his position clear. He said, and this is a quote, we don't need anything that Canada has. They have to treat us better. Now to make sense of that, you need to understand that the U.S. it's like 72% of our GDP is U.S. spending money. So not only are we either the biggest economy or tied for first or maybe slightly second on some aspects with China, but we're one of the big boys. But the reason that we're more important to the world than China is because we buy stuff. This is part of how we were able to help the world get out of the calamity of World War II was our economy was thriving so hard that all the other economies could start building themselves up trying to sell into America. Now this is also what ends up being a part of glutting our manufacturing base. So it doesn't end up just being a bonus, but it makes us systemically important to the world in a way that virtually that nobody is on the expenditure standpoint. And so we may not have the biggest population, but by far we have the wealthiest and most likely to spend money. And so the world is constantly trying to make things and sell to us. And so Canada is going to want to sell things to us. That's going to be a huge part of their economy. And Washington knows that. That's part of why we know we have leverage. We can go to China and we're in bilateral talks with them right now. In fact, round three kicks off on July 20. But with Canada, nope, we're just the formal negotiations haven't even started. So Trump knows you guys need us more than we need you, which is almost certainly true. Trump's own trade chief, Jameson Greer, told lawmakers that only two countries retaliated economically against the US Last year, China and Canada. And that's why we're putting the stick to them. So understanding that we talked about this a lot in the early days of the live was that the US is very much in late stage empire moment. The world order is changing dramatically and the US now has to play some of its cards if it wants to press the leverage that it has. If you play poker, you know, when you're a big stack, you can bully people around the table with the betting and push some people out. And if nothing else, you can take people's blinds. And so what you see now, at least with Trump, is that he can see that we're still Big Stack, but Big Stack is dwindling very rapidly. And so we've got to start using some bully tactics if we want to take advantage of being Big Stack, because it's not necessarily going to last forever, certainly not with the debt looming. And so he's really starting to push the advantage with Canada, with Europe, with China, like just trying to establish us as a. He would want to see us as a rising power, but as a more stabilized power, if nothing else. And so understanding that trade is going to continue to be an area where we really flex our muscle is important to understanding why things are getting weird with Canada, even though, you know, they've long been the neighbor that we never even had to think about. There was no problems, nothing bad coming out. But now when you've got, in January, Prime Minister Mark Carney going to Beijing, meeting with Xi, cutting Canada's tariff on China's EVs from 100% down to 6%.1%, the US is going to, like, take notice, especially when in exchange, China slashes its canola tariffs from 84% to 15, reopening a $4 billion market for Canadian farmers. Now, just keep in mind, don't eat canola oil. It's probably one of the reasons that Lindsey Graham died just throwing that out there, but I'm not kidding about that at all. But nonetheless, you see, like, a lot of exchange now going on between China. So there used to be far more standoffishness between Canada and China. Obviously the US Is saying, hey, if you start creating friction with us and reducing friction with China, we're going to feel some type of way about that. So the fact that China and Canada are the two countries that are retaliating against the U.S. yeah, that's not going to go unanswered, that's for sure. So now Trump's response is a threat to hit all Canadian goods with 100% tariff, which would be absolutely catastrophic for them, warning Carney that Canada will not become a, quote, drop off port for Chinese products entering America. Now, here's something we haven't talked about. China's economy is in a rough spot. Not saying they're in some sort of death spiral or anything like that, but just like the US Is in a rough spot, China's in a rough spot. Now, China doesn't create GDP by spending money. China's not rich like that, not like America. What China does is they export. Now as tensions rise with the US now you've got the biggest consumer economy being like, nah, we're going to take a lot less Chinese goods. Well, if you've been propping up manufacturing as Xi has, now all of a sudden those manufacturing plants have nowhere to send their goods. So they're sending them all over the world. Europe is already starting to feel it. So Europe is potentially, let's not get out over our skis. But potentially has friction now brewing between China and Europe. And so if China is not able to get goods into Europe, where else are they going to put them? Or how aggressive is China going to be against Europe? Because Europe is leaning on China for a lot of inexpensive goods. I'm sure a lot of European makers are doing manufacturing in China which they could absolutely cut them off from. And so again, just going back to this overall crazy level of instability, not that, you know, catastrophe is upon us or anything like that, but it's like you can just feel like if you've ever been in an earthquake, you have that initial feeling at the beginning where it's like, is this the beginning of something that's going to grow into something much bigger or is this a small thing that's going to peter out very quickly? That's where we don't know. But all of a sudden we're on very shaky ground. It's a very unnerving feeling. And nobody should feel like they can see the future clearly enough to know where this is going to go. But the fact that America has been beef with China or sorry, with Canada is pretty crazy. So we'll see how this plays out. But if this escalates, I assure you Canada is going to get hurt worse than the US that is for sure. But we're all going to have to watch and pay attention to see how this plays out.

[D]

What do you think is the downfall? Because somebody in the chat said the same thing. If Canada goes full China and lets a lot of its it disassociates with the US they're going to be hurt more than we are. What are the mechanisms you guys are seeing that make you so confident in that?

[B]

Oh, because they'll do exactly what they're doing to Europe already. What they had a major impact on us during the WTO days, which is they're going to come in and they're going to make EVs so cheap in Europe that Europeans are never going to pay for a Europe made car. And you're already seeing massive layoffs in the auto industry in Europe that's going to continue to escalate. Any industry. Where China goes, we're going to take this. Like imagine look at what China's doing with solar. Solar's massive. Solar is the future. Just everybody brace themselves for that. So China's way ahead of everybody, I'd say even ahead of the US and they're way, way, way ahead of Europe. So Europe has like green suicide plans. So they're like suiciding themselves from a green perspective. But if China could be like, hey, don't worry about it, you guys don't have to go back to coal, that's crazy. Let's get you hooked up with these solar panels that we're doing in batteries. And so that becomes the next, let's say five to ten year run. So now instead of building their own solar and energy industry, they just go, oh cool, China's gonna export our stuff to us, that helps us continue down our green path. But now like manufacturing is just going away and away and away. And so what ends up happening is you get this really weird race where it's like, okay, so many people are getting laid off and we have such a big social welfare state that we've got to have some way to address this. And there are two ways. You make labor cheaper, immigrants, anybody, and you make the actual items cheaper. China, send me your cheapest EVs and your solar panels and your batteries. And so China can subsidize those industries and manipulate their currency to make sure that Europe can buy the stuff cheaper. So now Europe's economy is going down, their ability to build is going down, their labor force participation is going down, but what they can buy is holding flat enough that you're disguising how poor they're really getting. And then on top of that, because they have to keep funneling cheaper labor, they're going to keep doing the immigrant influx, but that's going to break their culture. And so ultimately what ends up happening is European countries go into internal strife. They become more beholden to China because China can output such cheap stuff. They try to get elected, they try to mask that their economy is getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And now they're stuck because you either go, we're going to have to eat it, it's going to be rough for 10 years, we're going to build back industry, things are going to get more expensive, you're going to be able to afford less, you're going to be fine, you're going to be able to eat. We're going to get you on the other side of this. But we're not. We're going to have to massively reduce our welfare spend, which people will literally riot over. And that's going to be an absolute nightmare. But if they don't do that, they guarantee themselves like this slow decline into poverty and just like an absolutely decimated culture where there's no cultural stability because they brought in all these different cultural groups and it will lead to internal strife that makes it impossible for them to continue on as a wealthy western country. Listen, that's if nobody ever hits the brakes. You see, like, look at Germany. And I know people have like a very emotional response to the AfD, but they continue to rise in popularity because they can see the economic reality of this population playing out. And they're like, no, no, no. Like they're xenophobic, I'm sure. But it's like in a moment where it's like you're just trying to bring in cheap labor, unfortunately xenophobic candidates are going to have popularity. And unfortunately for all of us, that xenophobia from an outcome perspective is the same as just having sensible immigration. Now, it rides on the back of something nefarious, but it gets the job done. So that's where it's like the likelihood of a far right party continuing to gain power and influence goes up dramatically as the country gets poorer and poorer and has to bring in more and more cheap labor and more goods from China because some people, if they can't find work, it is a level of emotional distress that's massive. And so it's not like, well, as long as we can keep making things cheaper for them and keep the welfare state limping along, we're going to be fine. No, there are going to be some people that become the angry young men of it all because they want a job, they can't get one. They have no sense of meaning and purpose. They don't break left, they break right. And we know how it went the last time Germany broke right was not a good time.

[D]

I was talking about like, I'm assuming the same thing is true for Canada because you use Europe as the example. But if Canada links up with China, which they're already kind of doing, same

[B]

example, same right, same exact playout. Now the, sorry, Canada does not have the same history that Europe has. So I would expect culturally for it to play out a little bit differently. Canada has complained relatively little about getting impoverished over the last 20 years. It's crazy. When you look at Canada's decline economically on a chart, it's insane. Insane, man. They're not even going to be in. I think they already fell out of the G7. It's like if they stay in the G20 for another 20 years at this rate, I'd be surprised.

[D]

But as you were listening, some of these things, wages or labor, you need to get cheaper labor or cheaper things. Immigrant influx make prices cheaper. It's going to destroy industries. I feel like you have described a lot of the things that we're seeing in America now as well.

[B]

Well, so the WTO absolutely gutted our manufacturing. So that battle we lost unfortunately a long time ago because you can compare us to our peak like in the call it 40s through 70s where it was like we really fucking made shit. Then you see especially post 71 where we go, you know what's going to be our biggest thing? Finance. And so we financialized everything. K shaped economy starts in earnest. You start inflating the currency like mad, blah, blah, blah. Things I've talked about a gazillion times. So it's like very similar consequences but they happen for different reasons. And now we at least have a government that's in power that's like, no, hold on, we're not going to keep doing this. We're going to like with our boy Palmer Luckey, we're going to start making things here. We're going to leverage some of our historical know how automobiles being the thing that we do best. We're going to start manufacturing that. We're going to take some hits economically. Things aren't going to get as cheap as we want. We're not going to pull in the cheap labor. We're not going to do the China, just give me everything cheap that you've got. We're not going to play that game now. They have to find answers to how we keep the economy going because you have to get real wages up. Right now, unfortunately real wages are dropping. So you've got real wages up like 3.2 or something like that. But inflation is at 4.1, 4.2. So on real terms people are more than a percent behind. So not good news. You have to reverse that. Now maybe some of that comes down because we just start producing so much energy that we create a sort of energy deflation and that makes everything a little bit cheaper. And that's innovation led deflation, not crisis led deflation. So yay. But yes, people are right to say, wait a second, I see a lot of those things here. In the US it's true. It's just not. We're not as far along. We're maybe five to 15 years behind Europe. Canada. Canada seems to be declining even faster than Europe. But I haven't compared the numbers closely enough to know that that's true. But yeah, Canada is dropping much, much faster than the U.S. yeah.

[D]

And we're starting to see some of this weird macroeconomics play out on the global level, especially when we're talking about stocks, oil markets, things like that. That even with this war, we haven't seen the gas prices chop back up and stuff like that. So I know we have that queued up, kind of setting up what's going to happen. How the oil futures haven't necessarily necessarily been matched up now that we've gone full panic mode and bombing everything in Iran. The MoU's done all that stuff.

[B]

This one is very interesting to me. So we're blowing things up in Iran again, but oil futures aren't moving up the way that you would expect. So what the hell is going on? Back in March, the mere threat of a closed Hormuz sent Brent to $119. Top analysts were forecasting, yo, this is going to $200 a barrel. But now what's happening? See as far as dead as this go, baby, the US has bombed the life out of Iran for the better part of a week. Now tankers are being attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is claiming that the Strait is closed, but only. But oil has only jumped by 4.4% and then pretty much instantly gave it back within 24 hours. Okay, WTI, which is like the US based Texas oil rating, is roughly $72. So something strange is afoot at the Circle K. One thing that we have to start looking at is what are the supply and demand side of things that are going on? Because everybody thought this was going to be a supply story where, hey, you close this rate of Hormuz, you start bombing oil infrastructure, we're going to be screwed. Like there's going to be a global recession and people aren't going to be able to get what they need. It's game over. But I think people have completely misassessed the demand flexibility because people thought that oil demand, energy demand was pretty much inflexible. But Ken Griffin has a different take on what's going on. Let's take a look at this clip.

[A]

Big picture. Not only is there a war in the Middle east, there's still a raging war in Europe. And the peace that you And I grew up with, for most of our adult lives is clearly not on the table right now.

[D]

Toast.

[A]

And for anybody following the situation in Cuba, there's obviously the potential threat of would be a reasonably small skirmish in Cuba, but yet another war. And at some point, do you encourage other countries around the world to increase their use of military power?

[B]

We're going to get to that.

[A]

Okay, we'll get to that. So why are we seeing all time highs in the S and P while there's a war in the Middle East? Number one is the United States is somewhat shielded from the energy crisis that this war is creating.

[B]

That is a very important trade key

[A]

transit point for energy. We all know these details. There's a couple of things that have been, I would say, upside surprises for the world economy. Number one is for a litany of reasons, China has been able to dramatically reduce their demand for oil. Much more elasticity of demand out of China than anybody had anticipated.

[B]

You run one of the biggest commodity traders. Did you guys see that coming?

[A]

Not the degree of the elasticity of demand destruction. So yes, of course China will find ways to curtail their need for crude. But the magnitude of that curtailment has been stunning. Number two, is this strategically a decision by Iran or this just happenstance? But there has been a constant, constant, an episodic flow of oil from the region.

[B]

So this is, I think an important part of this story is I think one of the biggest things that come out of the MOU is the fact that we've been able to open the strait for a while, get all those ships. I mean, remember it was like people were talking about a humanitarian crisis. These guys aren't able to get food and water. They've been stuck on these boats forever. And you've got all the oil mou get it through. Even though we know we're both lying to each other, we know both of us know that like on the other side of this, it's all going to fall apart. But we both have our reasons for wanting to get the oil through. Iran wants to generate revenue, which I'm sure they generated tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. Also the US is like, bro, we got to get oil. Like, I can't have all my partners globally, all my allies sweating me that they're on the brink of an energy crisis. And so demand destruction is very helpful, obviously far more helpful than people thought. But just like getting the oil out has been a big deal, Trump, by the way, right now is swearing up and down the strait is not closed if you're lawful traffic, you're going to get through. Now that's pretty bold statement there. For a while it was like, well, we're going to try to escort people and we got to be very careful. He's just like, nope, go. So I don't know if that's because they really have degraded their ability to patrol the strait that much that he's really that confident or he just wants like, hey, fuck it, you're only going to get one out of, you know, whatever, 50 ships. We'll deal with that. When it happens. That I don't know. But even if you keep a trickle of oil going out, you're able to prolong this. So every ship that gets out is, you know, what, 20 more minutes that you can like push this off. So it's like if they can keep enough ships trickling out, then Trump buys himself more and more time. That's a really interesting part of the story. The core part obviously is the surprise that everybody's had that China has a lot more ability either through releasing massive amounts of reserves, which I'm sure is part of their strategy also just being like, hey, we're doing this, but we're not doing that. I think at some point they were also selling oil to other people. So they may just be like, no, we're keeping it all ourselves. And so they've been able to have a huge impact in terms of what does the world need right now. And it's my understanding that China influences the demand for oil like something like 74%. Now that's one of those I need to double check because that number seems so shocking. When I came across it, I was like, I need to go deeper on that to make sure that that's really real. But dude, if it's anywhere close to that, that one country drives global demand by that much is crazy.

[D]

Yeah. And there was also earlier reports when Iran was giving them special passes to get through the straight too before the mou. So to your point, every couple weeks there was just been like, okay, we get a little bit of oil, we get a little bit of oil.

[A]

So yup, LNG craters that will get out. With lng, you'll see the oil cargos leave. We've managed to keep oil at roughly low hundred dollar price. Yeah. Versus I would say most estimates would have put us at this point in this war. If the straits are closed, we'd be looking at almost $200 a barrel.

[B]

That was the original take is everybody thought this was going to 200 and so the fact that we can be in open warfare over the strait, the thing that originally panicked everybody and now people are like, nah, it's probably going to be fine. What markets are doing is basically pricing in. Yeah, we're going to like be in a new world order. There are going to be some ships that get struck every now and then. You can have a volley of missiles from time to time, but the US Is going to mow the grass and like, we're going to be fine. So that's where this gets very interesting, is to see how one markets trade on emotion. Never forget that. So when this was new and novel and people weren't sure what was going to happen, the swing was massive. Now that it's like, oh, yeah, okay, we sort of get where this is going. You get demand destruction. China's able to control what we thought was inelastic demand, is actually very elastic demand. And so, nah, we're going to be fine. And so now you get stabilization in the markets, which of course is what Trump wants. Now, there's another guy that's talking about this that I find very interesting. His name is Jeff Snyder. We just had him on the show. This guy is interesting. He's one of those people. Maybe he's just too technical, I don't know, but he's one of those guys. I'm like, how is this guy not bigger? His thinking is so clear. It's so different than what a lot of people are saying. He certainly has internal logic. Now, having internal logic doesn't mean that you're right, but he has consistent internal logic. He has a worldview that things map very well into. And I want to give him a chance to talk about what he sees going on, which is different than what Griffin is saying is happening today.

[C]

We've got a look at one of the most intense and surprising signals in all global markets right now. On Thursday, the oil curve went completely flat. Now, that sounds technical, but this is a huge development in a normal shortage environment, especially given the historic shock that we just went through. What we'd expect to see is near term oil prices trading at a premium to those further down into the future. Instead, in the space of just a couple weeks, we've seen these curves collapse and twist into a shape that suggests the market is now saying we're on the cusp of having too much oil.

[B]

Imagine if that actually is true. I don't know that that's quite what we see. But you are seeing some fear in terms of like, are we the world that we thought we Were are we where we thought we were if he ends up being right and people should watch the episode that's coming out. Does it come out this Thursday?

[D]

Yes, this Thursday.

[B]

So yeah, I would definitely watch that episode because he has a worldview that follows along from what he's covering here, which is that the global economy is far worse than you think. I'll let him finish saying it. But like that part right there is scandalous.

[C]

Supply has not fully normalized and the path to getting there is still fraught with difficulties and uncertainty. Yet the front of this curve is where the flattening is most dramatic. That points away from a simple supply story and straight toward demand destruction. The possibility the global economy is weakening so quickly that even constrained supply is becoming more than enough of it. Now, Steve and I have been telling you to watch both major forces.

[B]

What he's saying is that, all right, you've got supply constraints. MOU normalized things somewhat, but we're still blowing things up. This is not like this has all been settled, everything's fine. Hey, it's back to normal. Not that at all. So what the markets are telling you, where people are actually putting their money, what that's telling you is that people are like, I just don't know that we're going to need this much oil. Now when people don't need energy, that is a very bad sign. That is a screaming red alarm. Now if it were us transitioning to solar, I would feel very differently. Or if enough nuclear had come on, that it was really mattering. That's different. That's innovation led deflation or switching of a need, if you will. But when they actually just need less energy, full stop, period, end of story. I don't need this much energy because we're just not doing as much. We're not making as much, we're not traveling, we're not spending money. That's where it gets weird. So he's saying the market is placing bets every day. And given how close what he's calling the near end of the curve. So the immediate cost, given how close it is to the disruption that we're still in the middle of all this, the fact that it's dropping back down, that is hard to explain if the story that investors are trading on is a supply side shock. But it makes all the sense in the world if what they're actually trading on is fear over a demand side shock, that the whole economy is just doing worse and worse and worse and people are now betting on that. And this is one of the Things I won't go into it now because it's complex and it's worth giving it its full due. But in the episode we talk about why, despite the fact that the US Inflates. Inflates. Inflates, Inflates, inflates, people still have tremendous appetite for demand for government bonds. I mean, it is still historically very low for bonds to be sitting at whatever 4.5%. So it is very interesting. And so, yeah, getting his whole take on that fits right in with this idea of demand destruction based on a global economy that is in far worse shape than people think does.

[C]

This flat curve is the other one. And it fits with a much broader set of warning signs. The shocking deterioration in the household employment figures, the crash in labor force participation, declining real incomes, and the plunge in tips breakeven rates. So we'll break down everything that's going on in oil. Why this curve shape is so unusual in this context and really why the speed of the transformation may be the most important part of the story and of course, how it all fits together in this context. So Steve, Steve, what's your take on the oil futures curve?

[B]

That's the gist is, okay, you've got Ken Griffin saying, hey, this really is a story of elastic demand. We thought that the demand was inelastic, but the reality is, nope, China is by far the world's largest controller of that demand. And we just found out that China can really constrain their needs.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

So you have a problem play out in the Middle east or elsewhere. They've got the ability to throttle back their demand absolutely massively. I don't think anybody has yet a clear picture on exactly how they're doing it, but they're able to do it. Then you've got Jeff Snyder going, okay, sure, yeah, maybe. But you also have the flattening of this curve out into the future where people believe right now you may end up actually having too much oil. The thing that people are willing to bet their money on is that this is even after everything is completely normalized, you're not going to see the demand spike back up, which is very, very interesting. Obviously that would be horrible and we don't want that to be true. But I do think that given the amount of distress that people are raising their hand and saying that they feel, it's pretty self evident that what I'll call a stealth recession has been going for more than a year. Is it more than two years? So we've been in a place where if you weren't in the Markets, you were not loving life for an extended period of time. Now Jeff tracks it all the way back to 2008. For him, it's just like we've never recovered from that. But whether you clock it all the way back there or you just take it forward to where we're at right now and say, listen, for whatever reason, the world is pulling way back on demand. Jobs are absolutely terrible. We're getting jobs numbers for a year that we used to consider a monthly rate, which is already crazy. And so you've got all this demand destruction happening in the labor force because of recessionary, he calls them depressionary trends. You also have AI. And now it becomes a question of is AI actually reducing the number of jobs or is it being used as a cover story? Which is an interesting debate. But you have all this demand destruction then, because we're in a place certainly here in the US where we've got such a massive social safety net. You also have people just saying, I can't be bothered anymore. I'm not even trying to be in the labor force. You put those two things together and you have this horrifying labor force participation rate, which is dire. And I am shocked at how few people are talking about this. So, yeah, this is going to be one that people need to watch. This further increases my paranoia about being in risk on assets. So, yeah, be careful out there, boys and girls.

[D]

All right, we got to jump over to Sam Altman, who's. He's like about to be the biggest fumble of this generation because he went from like AI poster boy golden child to I don't even know what's going on right now. He had beef on with Elon, but the biggest news is that Apple is suing him.

[B]

Yeah, Sam Altman continues to entrench himself as the sociopath of AI basically, at least according to Apple, as they attempt to level OpenAI with a massive lawsuit for stealing their hardware IP basically at an industrial scale. So Apple filed suit against OpenAI on Friday in federal courts. They're alleging systematic trade secret theft. Complaint does not stop at OpenAI, by the way it drags in. Poor Johnny.

[A]

I've.

[B]

If you guys remember him from Apple fame. So he has a company called IO Products, which was purchased by OpenAI for $6.5 billion. There's also other individuals named in the suit. You've got Tang tan, which is OpenAI's chief hardware officer and former Apple VP of product design, as well as Chang Liu, a former Apple senior systems electrical engineer. The allegations are intense, man. Apple claims that Tan directed job candidates still working at Apple to bring actual hardware parts to their OpenAI interviews for what was being called show and tell sessions. It claims Liu exploited a security bug to download over a thousand pages of confidential technical files, including manufacturing documents for Apple's circuit boards. Then he joked about it in messages. Whoops. Boys and girls, please remember 50 cents immortal words. I try not to say nothing the DA might want to play in court. Try not to write anything down that the DA might want people to read in court. Liu also allegedly kept his Apple issued laptop after leaving and coaching another Apple or other Apple employees on which confidential materials to study before their interview with OpenAI. Wild Apple also says OpenAI misled a manufacturing partner into using a proprietary Apple metal finishing technique by implying it had Apple's permission.

[C]

Yo.

[B]

The filing calls OpenAI's hardware business rotten to its core and notes over 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI. Apple wants damages plus a court order forcing OpenAI to return its materials and stop using them. Now OpenAI's response is, we have no interest in other companies trade secrets, okay? The timing, all of this is just insane. OpenAI is trying to get their IPO going. These guys can't catch a break. I mean, they're shooting themselves in their own dick. But Apple and OpenAI, by the way, used to be partners back in 2024. Apple dropped them for Google in January, presumably because they knew that this was going on. Now I imagine that they were already building their case before they parted ways. And now the lawsuit is dropping just as OpenAI was preparing their IPO and undoubtedly was going to use a hardware device as like the lead thing to get people excited. Ooh, buddy, this one is going to be full of fireworks. So get ready for one of the wildest corporate battles in modern memory. I mean, this is, this is going to be crazy. And I really do think Apple means this as a kill shot to an already weakened OpenAI. This is going to get crazy. And by the way, Apple has more cash than God, but they really are out of ideas. And so if this is the one piece of hardware that they had hoped were going to replace the iPhone, which I don't know if I buy that they fumbled the ball so hard on AI so far, but that's what some analysts are claiming. If that really was, this is like Kill Shot v. Kill Shot. So it'll be interesting to see because if OpenAI absconds with the technology and is farther down the road and is able to integrate it with more powerful AI man, oh man, this is going to get weird. But the real fun of it all is the X exchange between Elon and what's his face.

[D]

Sam Altman.

[B]

Sam Altman.

[D]

Thank you.

[B]

Where? Scroll to the beginning of this.

[D]

Yeah, this is the beginning. So Elon tweeted scamaltman is super good at scamming. Adoge Designer account retweeted that Elon retweeted that he takes scamming to a whole new level. So then Sam Altman quote, tweeted that and said, homeboy, you're the one selling public market investors on short term space data centers.

[B]

Yeah. So before we move on, because there's one more knock after that. So what Sam is saying is, listen, Elon, you built a lot of hype around your IPO. SpaceX AI saying, oh, bro, like we're going into outer space. Like, this is going to be crazy. Like, you have no idea what the future holds between what we're doing with putting the Internet out in space and now what we're going to be doing with these data centers in space. And Sam's like, dude, that's so crazy. That's so many years off into the future. Never going to happen. Not for this first wave of investors. So basically, you've pulled this big scam where you've got retail investors super hyped and they're all going to get absolutely punished.

[D]

And then Elon says, we start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves. After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple's phone technology. Wow. What do you plan for an encore that's tough to beat?

[B]

It is so crazy to me that we live on the timeline where these absolute titans of industry are just taking potshots at each other out in public. It's crazy. This is going to be very damaging to one or both of these companies. By the way, Apple and OpenAI will spend an ungodly amount of money and time and focus on fighting this. I'll be very interested to see if they actually get the injunction that stops OpenAI from using the technology. Because if this puts that tech on hold for a year or more. Oh, my God.

[D]

Yeah. Especially with the delayed IPO and stuff like that.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Jerry rigs everything. Tweeted, kind of got caught on the side thing. He said Elon said we would have 50,000 Optimus robots in 2026. We currently have zero. For some reason, me pointing that out make a lot of people really mad. But going to Elon's Shot back at Sam Altman. We're going to have data centers in space next year. We all, we all know Elon has a timing problem where we're going to do this, and then three years later, that's when it kind of actually happened. So are you bullish on space data centers? Like, do you think that that is a thing or is this kind of a. It starts out this, but it may morph into something else. Kind of like how the AI industry is currently doing.

[B]

I think the best advice anybody can get is never bet against Elon. If Elon is saying that something is possible from an engineering perspective, then it's possible. So, yes. Will he get the timing right? Probably not. Will they actually launch data centers into space? Almost certainly, yes. Will it matter? That's a bigger question because right now there's so much news coming out that we have an overabundance of AI data centers. SpaceX AI is already leasing their basically intelligence output, the cycles on their data centers to anthropic. And so that remains a big question. Now, I am still convinced that we are in the middle of the normal cycle that plays out where you've got a revolutionary new technology with massive infrastructure costs and timing. And so, yes, you're probably going to stumble and there are going to be massive losses for investors. But the technology is real and ultimately it's going to get out there and it's going to do its thing. I think that intelligence is so important. The very thing that makes humans able to do what we've done is intelligence. So the fact that artificial intelligence is already so good, is it what we all want it to be? No. Of course we want to get better and better and better and better and better. But even if it has already hit its peak and it's never going to get any smarter, simply deploying it into more and more places is going to be utterly transformative. The Internet took 20 plus years for it to play out, for people to really show what it could do. And the same is going to be true with what's going on in AI right now. So that one to me is a timing thing. Will they get the timing right? Probably not. Will it still be this utterly transformative thing? Yes.

[D]

Yeah. So keeping up with future tech news, you would tease it up earlier in the episode. This is a video of Palmer Lucky showing kind of their missile allotment and how he plans to do it on an assembly line style.

[B]

This is incredible. This is a cruise missile.

[E]

Yeah. So this is one of three cruise missiles that Andrew has made Manufacturing. One of the key things that Anduril has done that is different from many other companies is design our cruise missiles so that they can be very easily manufactured by automotive style assembly lines, workers and manufacturing equipment. Most other companies design very exquisite missiles that are built by high end aerospace factories. But by building missiles with 90% less parts that can be built in 10% of the time using automotive style factories, it means that a country can make all of its automotive factories into part of its deterrent strategy.

[B]

The thing that I love about Palmer Luckey is he is the reward that we get for people finally waking up and saying, I'm not going to spend my time and energy making the next Twitter, which is like what everybody was doing for such a long time. There was a whole thing from Peter Thiel where he said we were promised flying cars and we got 140 characters. What he was trying to get at is the best and the brightest minds from around the world were sucked into two things. They were sucked into finance and they were sucked into basically apps. And there was a ton of money. And I understand why people pursued it. But eventually it got to the point where our best and brightest found themselves being pulled into actual physical engineering and manufacturing. And you see Elon go into hardcore, just tangible moving electrons around the physical world. And the same thing with Palmer Luckey. And when you raise our just young people with an absolute hunger to build real things, you get a very different world than when everybody's going into software. That doesn't mean don't go into software. There should be an absolute for the people that love it, go into that, build the things that you care about. But the fact that we were just telling people over and over and over, everything's in software, everything's in software, go to software. I think really delayed a lot of cool things. And now, by the way, we really are getting flying cars and we're getting, I mean, listen, we're in a moment where building weapons is an important national security priority. So seeing somebody like Palmer, if you don't know his backstory, is absolutely incredible. When he was a teenager, he starts making what ended up becoming the Quest VR goggles for Meta. Like, imagine doing that as a kid, makes a couple billion dollars off of that, turns that into Anduril and some other companies which now on their own are way bigger than what's going on with the Quest headset. So I mean, it's just absolutely astonishing what happens when you raise kids in an environment where it's like, listen, if you've got the Ability to pull this off like, there's no limit. Go pursue something great and getting them excited about being American. Building something in America for national security, like, this is so exciting to me. I really love seeing this. Manufacturing is what made America great. Being able to build, understanding that we have some of the most hardworking, innovative people on planet Earth. That that had been our ethos from time immemorial. I love seeing it come back. This is very exciting for me because we become so financialized and look, it's a modern miracle what we've built with the financial system. It's absolutely incredible. I'm not negative on it, but when everybody goes into that, you do start getting a derangement of that. You get a derangement of talent. Everybody just wants to go like into that space. Unfortunately, the kind of intelligence of somebody like a Palmer Lucky or an Elon Musk, it doesn't come around every day. And so if they end up going into just being a quant, it's like, yes, they can make a ton of money. And I wouldn't begrudge anybody that does it, but boy, do I love to see people that actually physically make something so incredible.

[D]

Yep.

[E]

World War II, for example, the United States and Japan both used their peacetime factories that were making automobiles, motorcycles, and they pivoted them to wartime use. But it took time to design weapon systems that could be made in that way. We're doing it before any potential conflict. It can be launched from the ground or from the air. Air or from sea. Actually, we recently showed it, doing a ground launch that we paid for that demonstration ourselves. But you can also launch these out of, for example, cargo aircraft. I can put them into a dispenser so that even airplanes that aren't military aircraft, I can load this in and I can push them out the side of the aircraft and then the dispenser goes. Turns your whole cargo aircraft fleet into part of your long range weapons strategy. This is designed to scare China into not taking action on Taiwan. It is a very specific purpose. It's much less expensive than a conventional missile because of everything I've just talked about. Also because they reuse a lot of components. For example, this, this, and this. Use the same actual.

[B]

Pause for a sec. I'm. I worry for his safety. I worry for Elon safety. Like, these are the guys that if you're like, oh, I don't have to take out a whole lot of people. I just need to take out these singular personalities that. I mean, what he's had to push Back against when at like the height of woke he was saying that he was building weapons for the US military. People lost their shit. Some of his political stances is what got him kicked out of Meta, which ended up being for the better. But yeah, so man, keep that man safe. Keep that man.

[D]

You saw China recreated the landable locket.

[B]

Oh, listen, Elon is always very honest about China. He's like, do not sleep on China. They have some of the most extraordinary engineers. They have a lot of very intelligent people. They are working very hard. China has a, a, like call it 1950s through 80s vision of themselves the way that America did where we're the best, we make things better than anybody else, there's nothing we can't do. We're not doing this because it is easy, we are doing it because it's hard. Like, man, say what you will, but when. Imagine being starved to death systematically by bad leadership for decades. You're watching your kids die, you're watching your friends die, you barely stay alive, but you make it to the other side. And that fucking guy that was starving everybody to death, he finally dies. And the guy that takes his place says, we're going to stop starving people to death. We're going to go to free markets. Dude, imagine like the just sense of like, no one's going to stop me. I'm never going to be in that position again. Like we're going to build and build and do great things. We were held down for so long and so there's this sense of like this pent up steam in the system that finally got unleashed and people just went crazy building. You can say they overbuilt, but it's still extraordinary. What China did is unprecedented in human history. They're a worthy adversary. And people that try to make light of them or say, oh, they just steal, whatever. Listen man, these guys are incredible. So yeah, don't sleep on them. It's very interesting to hear Palmer. It's very in keeping with his personality. But to just say out loud, this is designed specifically to scare China off of making a move on Taiwan.

[D]

Yo.

[B]

Damn, There it is.

[D]

All right. And where is gone wrong? A senior army nuclear scientist was trying to bag something and he was like, hey girl, I got these nuclear secrets from you if you want to come back to my hotel. I heard people, you know, tricking with money. I heard people offering purses and vacations and trips. I never heard people offer nuclear secrets. So that might have been his end. I don't know. That might have been his thing, bro.

[B]

With oversight of America's nuclear arsenal, has been placed on administrative leave by the Pentagon and may face criminal prosecution following a video staying operation by the o' Keeffe Media Group. Newsmax chief Washington correspondent James Rosen is joining us now with a look at the comments caught on tape that landed this official in hot water. Good afternoon, James.

[A]

Bianca, good afternoon to you. A spokesperson for War Secretary Pete Hegseth referred Newsmax to a statement that the old army issued yesterday. It confirmed that nuclear scientist Andrew Hug, the Army's branch chief for Chemical Nuclear Surety, a post focused on the safety and security of the Army's chemical and nuclear weapons components, has indeed been placed on leave pending additional investigation. In a pair of meetings in noisy restaurant settings with an unidentified woman, who, it turns out, was employed by the o' Keefe Group and who was surrobed by surreptitiously recording the encounters, Hug appears to divulge classified information in a range of areas, from ongoing use of nerve agents to war planning in Iran. Two segments of the video apparently capture Hug disclosing to his young female interlocutor at least four locations of underground nuclear missiles and critical aspects of the launch process under which they could be fired off in the event of a nuclear conflict.

[B]

It is a source of never ending amusement. How easily manipulated men are with sex. I mean, it's absolutely hysterical. This is one of those where I really try to get people to understand you're having a biological experience. And when you lose sight of that, you lose sight of it at your own peril. It is my understanding that in the CIA, they actually will just say nakedly to somebody. If a young woman comes up to you and starts flirting with you, the odds are that you're being groomed into something because you're not attractive enough for that to happen. They just say it straight to your face like, guys, please, for the love of God, do not be this easy to manipulate. It is wild. And listen, I get it. I have, especially when I was young, boy, oh boy, does an attractive woman just reach inside your brain and squeeze something. But man, you gotta stay sober, gents, you gotta stay sober. This is just wild.

[D]

Somebody in chat said the first time I went out, out of the country, they told me, be wary of hot chicks that want to talk to you randomly on the street. Like, it's the same models.

[B]

I don't understand. Like, listen, we all think well of ourselves, I'm sure, but God, in this day and age, you've got to be so paranoid. So paranoid. This is just hilarious. I Want to hear even those nuclear secrets.

[D]

It. Yeah. Sheesh.

[B]

Between. Yeah, between the briefing and the loud stuff, it's always so hard to hear these things.

[C]

You.

[B]

A message, a launch message.

[A]

She knocks on your door, goes, here you go.

[B]

She gives you a launch message on

[A]

a box of cookies.

[B]

She wrote it down, if you can.

[D]

If.

[B]

If it passes all the checks, go.

[D]

He was like, yeah, here, here, here. There's. This is the process. Wow.

[B]

I'm important, girl. That's so wild. That's hilarious.

[D]

It's one of those things, though. Like, it's. It's ironic, it's funny. We can, like, just about it. But this is a nuclear secret. If somebody was listening, this could be trapped. So to your point earlier, where sleeper agents are everywhere, who knows how many of these things aren't being recorded by James o'? Keefe, you know what I mean? How many of these conversations are happening with these sleepers and with these spies and these alleged honeypot assets and things like that around the world, not even just in America. So it's easy. This. It's interesting to see this level of warfare that doesn't take place on a battlefield or behind a computer screen.

[B]

That's a really good point, man. I think that. So when I was growing up in the 80s, everybody was hyper aware that we had spies in Russia, Russia had spies here, and that you were always playing a cat and mouse game. We were trying to find them, but you had to be, like, eternally vigilant. We've completely lost that sense, which is crazy because I think it's probably way more now than it ever was between the tensions with China, the tensions with Iran, still tensions with Russia, that people really ought to be on their guard. If you have anything to do with anything that might be useful in one of those conflicts, Jesus, man. Like, you just need to assume and that that's going to be. They're going to try to blackmail you. It's almost always something with sex. And they're going to try to send either a beautiful young woman or a beautiful young man, if that's your shtick. And that's how they're going to get you. And then, ladies, I will tell you, it's going to be companionship. It's going to be the guy that, like, hears and understands and yada, yada. So, man, everybody just needs to be super paranoid. We are at a time of massive geopolitical instability, heightened tensions. Like, if you have information that could be useful, someone somewhere is likely going to try to get it, just as we are doing in their countries. So, yeah, I don't understand why people aren't more on their guard. But here we are. These videos from James o', Keefe, shout out to James o'.

[A]

Keefe.

[B]

They just keep pouring out, whether it's about fraud, election tampering, now, apparently nuclear secrets. You can just get everybody to confess. It's crazy.

[D]

And then, last thing. This is Odyssey week. The Odyssey is dropping this weekend. There's been a lot of beef, a lot of contention around this, the production, the casting. I was just. I did the Universal tour with the girls this weekend, and I, like, went behind the set, and they showed me, like, the practical ship that they used. He actually built, like, an ocean set with the big blue backdrop. The Trojan horse was out there. Like, you know, Chris, how'd you get

[B]

the hookup that got you?

[D]

Like, it was a studio tour that they kind of drove around.

[C]

Right.

[B]

I thought you were. They just didn't go with you on that.

[D]

Oh, no, no.

[B]

That's what you're saying I went on.

[D]

Oh, yeah. Well, us.

[B]

We got a guy. Okay, I queued off the wrong word there. I was like, oh, shit. Like, you know, a guy who knows a guy.

[A]

Let's go.

[D]

I'll be right back. Stay here. Go play. No, but I say all that to say is that while he's getting a lot of backlash for the casting, I'm team. Never bet on Nolan.

[B]

Like, never bet on.

[A]

No.

[B]

Never bet against.

[D]

Never bet against.

[B]

Got it. Got it.

[D]

I must say, he made, like, half a bad movie in his career. So I don't know if your team, like, I don't know. You've been on the other side.

[B]

I'm waiting. See, man, I think people are crazy on this one. So, first of all, I'm not weird about race swapping. I get why people don't like it. If you did Black Panther three or four or whatever we're on, and all of a sudden t' Challa was white, people would lose their minds. So I get it. It's gonna be a thing for some people. It's just not a thing for me. So I'm not weird about that. If they had put an. I would be weird if they put an unattractive woman in the role. So if they do something to make her unattractive because she's supposed to be the face that launched a thousand ships. Now if you make her hot and she's like, yeah, I get why somebody would go fight for her. Tom, as a individual person, does not care whether that person is race swapped that's not going to be a popular Internet opinion. But then I've also heard that you've got not you've got. I'm in a private chat with people that are well connected, that are obsessed with films, and one of them got an early screening and he was like, dude, this movie is so, so good. Like, people are gonna lose their minds. One of Nolan's best, like, it's just gonna absolutely smash. So I was like, oh, shit. So for me, after that I was like, oh, okay, I really wanna see it. I'm optimistic it'll be interesting to see because there is so much backlash from people that think that, you know, the race swapping thing is just. You're just now in the modern message and all that. And I guess the version of the Odyssey that it's based on is a very like hyper left leaning interpretation that sees Homer's problematic and all that shit. So it's possible that there's enough like just sort of DEI signals that if you either like that or don't care, that the movie just completely blows your mind. And that if you hate that and do care, you just can't get into the, like, movie of it all. And so that'll be interesting to see. But like you, I wouldn't bet against Nolan. I think he's an extraordinary filmmaker even when he's not making sense. Like, Tenet was just confusing. I was like, the fuck am I watching? But at the same time, there was something about the rhythm and the visuals and all of that that I still was like, there's a part of this that's cool. Even though for me the narrative is an absolute train wreck. So on that I would say I want to see it, I'll be very keen to see what happens. But I am admittedly very interested to see what happens in the public backlash. Will there be enough backlash that it can actually overcome a good movie that over time people are likely to be like, if it's as good as this guy claims that people will sort of let that go. Hey, by the way, who has seen the movie Shawshank Redemption? Me, hopefully. You guys.

[D]

I can't. You guys. Whoa. Yeah. That's insane. I seen. When I was little. I don't.

[E]

It's.

[B]

So what is happening right now? I expect you guys to be like, me, me, me? Chat like, have you guys seen that movie? It is one of my all time favorites for sure. It is in contention with the Godfather. When you see like all time best lists, people are like, godfather, Shawshank, Redemption, like, they Both compete. The Morgan Freeman character is race swapped. So his name is Red because he's an Irish guy and so it's a book, but so is the Odyssey. So it's like that one. Not only did I not care even a little bit, Morgan Freeman is so good in that movie. Who would you put in that would be better? So they make a joke about it in the movie. He's like, why do they call you Red? And he goes, maybe it's because I'm Irish and it funny in the movie. In the book it's just really an answer. And yeah, I couldn't love it anymore. So listen, I get it. There's like all this agenda. People are weird. There really is an agenda. People really are trying to use entertainment as a way to browbeat people with something. And so that's a very high risk proposition. But yeah, I'm for now I default to it's going to be incredible. Can't wait to see it. As long as they showcase Nupita. Is that her name? Anyway, if they showcase her beauty because she certainly can look gorgeous, then yeah, I won't have any beef buying into that. But if they do try to browbeat people with a message, I get why some people are just going to eject out. Boys and girls, we love you the most. We have another AI masterclass coming up Wednesday, August 5th. We lied previously and said it wasn't until September.

[E]

That was a lie.

[B]

You can ignore that. It's coming up Wednesday, August 5th at 1pm Pacific. It's free. The link to sign up is in the description. This is where I walk people through how to use AI to launch a company. So definitely check it out. It's been a huge win for people that have taken is very, very useful. All right guys, we will see you on Wednesday. Have a great day. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop 8 ounces of water and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink. That takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts. With your first subscription, you get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer.