Peter Thiel's Elite Retreat, US-Iran Deal Already Collapsed, and Russia Gets Pummeled by Ukraine

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billy Show live. We are unfortunately not joined by Drew today. Drew is dealing with some things. So, definitely sending him our love. Brother man, if you're watching the show, know that, uh, yeah, we're sending good vibes. Cannot wait for you to come back. So, um, we will miss him today. But we've got Ryan in his usual position. So, all will be taken care of.

Now, theou was signed and fell apart almost immediately. So, the Strait of Hormuz is once again closed. If you guys were paying attention to Moscow, it is burning as Ukraine is absolutely hammering them with drones, showing that they have capabilities that people did not expect. Even the EU is getting more strict on their immigration policies, passing legislation to create, uh, deportation hubs for people whose asylum claims have been rejected. So, alas, reality is going to come for us all.

The Trump admin and Bernie are starting to agree on co-opting the AI industry because, well, I guess the government is so good at managing capital. Why not? I'm terrified about that one. We're going to be talking all about it. Speaking of things that are terrifying, California is going to vote in November on whether or not to allow illegal immigrants to vote. I guess it's not a conspiracy theory anymore. Conspiracy theorists remain undefeated. 94% of all jobs went to women last year. That's startling. We're going to talk about the problems that are going to ensue from that.

In the UK, a man threw a three-year-old, not his three-year-old, a stranger's child over the fence into an alligator enclosure, presumably because he wanted him to be eaten. But he gets out on bail. But if you tweet about it, you're going to get sent to prison. That [ __ ] is wild. The UK is really lost its mind. But Rockstar Games has not, because GTA 6 pre-orders have been announced. It looks like it's actually going to happen in November. We are legitimately talking in this company like, "Hey, if you're going to take the day off, just give me a heads up," as I am expecting this place to be, uh, barren on the day that it comes out. But very exciting times.

And all the love in the world to Koshi. Thank you so much, Koshi, for continuing to support the show. We really, really appreciate it. The QR code is on the screen. Use impact to get $10 off your next trade on Koshi. And you guys know I love Koshi because it allows us to get a read on what's going on in the world, what is trending, what do people think. They are way better than the polls. So, uh, could not be more grateful to have those guys on as they're certainly a big part of what we do in terms of trying to get a lay of the land on what's going on in the world.

Now, speaking of what's going on in the world, just, just as the oil began to flow again, theou fell apart. It was a roller coaster going from the end of the show on Wednesday until today. How we're like, "Oh my god, it's actually getting signed. Holy cow, this is going. Oh my god, the Strait is open again. This is incred. Oh no, wait." Uh, it's all falling apart. And just as JD Vance was doing a tour to hit the PR beats to let everybody know why we were doing this and what a great thing this was going to be for America, it all falls to [ __ ]. Now, never have I wanted to be more wrong in my life. But this is exactly what I said was going to happen on Wednesday. Literally, I said the whole thing with Iran. They want to be in control. Time is on their side. They're going to try to drag this out until the midterms. And the very tool that they're going to use to do that is Hezbollah and Israel.

Israel made it very clear. Hey, the US is trying to make us a part of this thing, which they are doing unilaterally. We do not agree. That's totally off the table. We are going to defend ourselves. And until Hezbollah pulls out of the south of Lebanon, we are going to remain. They did not pull out of the south of Lebanon. So, Israel stayed. Lebanon struck one of their tanks, killing, uh, the crew inside. I believe it was four Israelis died in the initial strike. Uh, and then a couple of hours later, um, they ended up striking again, killing five more Israelis, I believe. And so Israel struck back. Uh, I think hitting something like 80 different sites. Uh, and so now there's 18 Lebanese dead. And that led Iran to say, "Hey, we told you guys this was all a part of this. So, uh, now the talks are off. We're not going to begin the first phase of the negotiation." So, even before the negotiation started, they ended. And JD Vance has ended up canceling his, uh, trip to Switzerland. And so the Strait is now closed once again. So, this is, I think, exactly what we can expect to happen over and over and over as all of this drags out. Is until, um, both sides actually want to see this end, this is just going to continue to drag out.

Now, the fascinating thing, of course, is that this is an economic question. And so, as these two sides go back and forth, they are both trying to play a dance that is going to be very difficult to do well. Because you've got Iran, which is advantaged by the world being put in this very precarious situation of 20% of the energy is traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, you even had Trump talking about the fact that, um, listen, the reason that I wanted to end all of this, the reason that I wanted a negotiated settlement was because we were headed towards economic catastrophe. And so, he's finally saying that out loud. Previously, obviously, not being willing to go all the way to that, that we had all the cards, uh, that he wasn't worried at all about how this was affecting Americans from an economic standpoint. We just couldn't let that into our minds. We had to think about the nuclear consequences of this, and that was all that really mattered. Uh, now, of course, changing his tune. And don't take my word for it. Let's let the man speak for himself. So, we have Trump talking about the potential economic catastrophe. Here he is.

>> So, the one thing I didn't want to see is I didn't want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship. It never went down. They didn't like it. The people, you know, the stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is, including the people on this stage, other than me, of course. Let's see.

>> He just can't help himself.

>> I don't know. What do you think, Scott? Is the stock market more brilliant than you?

>> No, sir.

>> Uh oh, that's a that's a terrible statement.

>> If you guys couldn't hear that,

>> the stock Scott Besson said, "No, sir." It's like, come on. That Scott Bessant literally helped break the back of the currency in England, boys and girls. Like, that is not a guy who's going to be like, "Yeah, it's smarter than me." Like, first of all, that's a dumbass thing to ask somebody on stage. So, Trump, who doesn't have nearly the economic wherewithal that Scott Besson has, says it's smarter than everybody up here, except me, of course, which goddamn just makes him sound ridiculous. But then to what? Try to rub like his smelly jock strap in Scott Besson's face. Like, what the [ __ ] is he thinking? Dude, it's so wild. That's so dumb.

>> Roses.

>> It's Yeah, right. Isn't that the best smell ever, Scott? So anyway, I, I think Scott Besson was right to push back on that. But there, I'm sure there is going to be some punishment, uh, coming Scott Besson's way for, uh, taking that stand, uh, there on the live broadcast. And then we've got more from Trump, uh, on that. Let me see if we can get that link quickly.

>> Speedrunning it.

>> We, we are certainly trying. Um, so this is Trump explaining why he wanted to get the negotiated settlement here.

>> I'm going to get bad press. I know that. Now, if I did the opposite, if I went out and continued to bomb them for another four, just bomb the hell out of them, I'd get bad press on that. No, there's nothing I can do. But what this does is it allows the ships to go. If we, if we keep bombing, those ships won't be going. And you're talking about 500, 600, 700 million dollars a day. It's a lot of money. A lot of money. That's why the world is okay. It's liquid. It's fine. Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks. You know, there are reserves all over the world, and we would really run out. And there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to get it. And you want to see Bedum.

>> So, for all those so-called geniuses that want to show me how smart they are, ask them, "Why didn't they blow up General Soleimani?" Ask that of the general.

>> Good lord.

>> We've got the king of deflection here. So, uh, the real thing, of course, when I have no Drew, I'm over here coughing to death. Uh, the thing that I find really interesting here and is classic Trump is that the part that people want to understand is if you didn't have the leverage, then why go in and do this? And whenever you're in a situation like this, it all comes down to something that Trump himself repeats endlessly, which is who holds the cards. The thing that I think everybody is missing, and I, um, I was live yesterday with Mario Nofl, and even in that conversation, I think he's very, very shrewd from, uh, an international politics perspective. He said something to me in the interview which was, "Okay, well, let's set aside the, the theocracy of it all." And I was like, "Well, that would be the one thing you can't do." So, when one of you is thinking purely from a rational economic standpoint, and you're talking to all your partners and your allies around the world, and you're thinking about the stock market, and you're thinking about what's good from an energy perspective, you don't want Bedum to break loose. And then the other side is perfectly happy to accept their rewards in heaven. You're going to be in a very different negotiating position. When he says, "Who wants to see Bedum?" Iran. Iran would like to see Bedum because it puts them in a better position. And so all of this, I, if you can force the issue, if you can force the Strait of Hormuz to stay open, then you can act like this. You can go in and say, "Look, we're going to get a deal done. If we don't get a deal done, we're going to blow a bunch more of their [ __ ] up. We're going to open the Strait by force and we're going to send the oil through." Cool. If you can do that, you're in control. They tried that. It didn't work. They're not in control. So now you're in a position where you don't control Israel as much as you'd like to think that you do. Uh, you certainly don't control Hezbollah. You don't control Iran. And therefore, you don't control the Strait of Hormuz. And if you don't control the Strait of Hormuz, all of the telegraphing that you just did about exactly what's going to happen if the petroleum reserves run out. Oh, and they are running out. You literally just said they're going to run out in four weeks. So, it's not that Iran didn't already know that. PS, by the way. And so they're thinking, "Yeah, we're either going to get what we want, which a big part of what we want is you're going to get your blockade out of here. You're going to stop meddling in our affairs. Uh, you're going to release a bunch of our funds, and you're going to get Israel out of Lebanon. And if you don't do any one of those things, then we're going to pull out."

Now, again, if I'm right, and the mental model of them is best understood as delay this as long as we can because what Iran wants is regime change in America. They want to see Trump out of office. And they are perfectly willing to stall and drag this out and let there be economic Bedum around the world as countries begin to truly run out of their strategic reserves so that they're in a better negotiating perspective. Now, Trump goes out of office. If the, obviously at the end of his term, he'll get impeached if the economy in the US is going down. The same thing does not apply to the Iranians. So, if the economy remains in shambles in Iran, they will kill the people that try to rise up. Okay, it is a very different ballgame. Now, that does not mean to insinuate that they don't have their own internal pressures. They do. And it's possible that those internal pressures come to bear more in a period where the US isn't attacking them than it comes to bear if we're not attacking them. So, from their perspective, they're going to be quick to play that chip that brings the mayhem back because that's more likely to keep them in power and it puts them in a stronger position because they are willing to let their people suffer. They do have the ability to go to their people and say, "Hey, to all the true believers, remember, we are doing God's will. We have already backed down the superpower on the world stage. Uh, we will continue doing it. You've just got to like tighten the belt for a little bit longer and we're going to get on the other side of this. And if you don't, worry, we'll just kill you until you're in the right position." Trump does not have that luxury. Thank God. So, we're in a totally different position than Iran is. But Trump keeps acting like they're going to act like a rational actor. It seems self-evident to me the when you read theou, which if you guys haven't read it, it's mind-numbing. It's super vague and all it says is we're gonna talk about some [ __ ] down the road. That's it. And so reading that, knowing that they were forcing Trump to take responsibility for what Israel is doing, was like, this is not a deal that is designed to get across the finish line. This is designed to be a deal that says, "You will give me everything I want, or I'm just going to throw us back into the chaos, which I can afford a lot more than you." So, yeah, this to me just seemed like it was set up for failure from the jump. So, here we are. It has failed literally before we could go from Wednesday to Friday. It went together and then fell right back apart. It's wild. So, yeah, I would not expect anything positive to come out of this anytime soon. It is going to be a whole lot of back and forth. There's going to be a ton of international pressure on the US. Uh, and we've already tried sanctioning Iran into oblivion and it hasn't worked. So, now the question becomes, as we get closer to the midterms, is Trump more or less likely to push the issue of going back to kinetic strikes on Iran? And I think that the answer is he's going to become less and less likely. So, this might be sort of the final window where if he's really going to push, uh, the advantage that he's got a bit of a shot because he could still lick his wounds and recoup if he can get something done. I just don't expect him to be able to use violence to reopen the Strait.

>> Well, sitting on that midterm thing for a second, I mean, our cows deal of the week is kind of talking about, um, you know, when is the traffic of the at the Strait of Hormuz going to actually return to normal?

>> And I think like you've said,

>> what, what do they say? What's the

>> Oh, right now the stats are looking like, uh, everything is before the midterms. So, we've got before October 1st, before September 1st, and before August 1st. Uh, you'll see the chart here in a minute. But basically, a lot of people are thinking that this deal is not going to happen up until October at the absolute latest, which, you know, makes sense. You need something to happen right before the midterms. You know, put that band-aid on the bullet hole. And I think it's like you've said from the get-go, the Strait of Hormuz is the central, I guess, I don't know if this is the right term, but like the latch key of this whole situation. I feel like

>> yeah, it's, it's the keystone, that's for sure. The the catch is that it is a very different, it's asymmetric. So, what the reason that this moment is going to go down in history is because what we're watching unfold is an awakening to the fact that the US is incapable of making good on the promise that they have made to the world. It's like the world has called our bluff. What was the promise? That the US will police the seas. That as a hegemony, we can enforce law everywhere around the world. And so, when the freedom-loving country that's focused on economics and commerce, uh, has the biggest military in the world, and everybody believes in its power. Okay, let that part sit is this gigantic thought bubble over this whole thing. Everyone believes in the power of the United States to pull this off. Then people act in accordance. Once you start losing that belief, and around the world people think, "I'm not so sure that you can do this," then people start taking shots to see like, where are we at? And so, if you're going to actually, um, get in the ring and show that you can really fight. So, think of somebody like Conor McGregor. Conor McGregor tries to win the fight before he ever gets there. So, he spends all the time trash-talking, trying to get inside the person's head, all of that. Um, so that he beats them before they step in the ring because they don't have the confidence. But then eventually, you get to the point in his career where now he gets his ass handed to him by a fighter who I cannot believe I'm blanking on his name right now. Uh, but when he got beat in such handy fashion, and by the way, Ryan, if you remember said fighter's name from

>> Eric, you must know where did Eric just fight you talking about?

>> Kabib.

>> Kabib. Thank you. So, Kabib beats Conor's ass handily. Now, all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, wait a second, he isn't unbeatable." This happened to the British Empire with the Suez Canal. It now has happened to the US with the Strait of Hormuz, where all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, [ __ ], they, it's not that they're not still powerful, but they clearly aren't, um, invincible." And so, that's going to certainly embolden the Iranians. It obviously already has. And it comes down to that ability to do it asymmetrically. They do not have to win the war in order to close the Strait of Hormuz. And as long as they can close the Strait of Hormuz, then they get the result that they want in terms of who's in control of the negotiations. Trump tipped his hand, I think, because he thought that the deal was actually going to go forward, which is insane. I don't know how he could have thought that. So, he's telling everybody basically, we're on this really limited time clock. This is going to run down. We're going to run out of strategic reserves. There would be Bedum around the world. We don't want to see that. So, uh, we've got to get a deal done. So, now the Iranians know you're desperate in a way that they're not. It, it's, yeah, not good. Not good.

>> Going off of wars. I mean, this is kind of jumping to a different front, but we look at what's happening in Russia right now. That's something I wouldn't have imagined is happening years ago when that war first started, right? I mean, like, we're seeing a lot of changing

>> that Ukraine would be able to stand up.

>> Yeah. I mean, this is the first time it feels like Russia's really gotten pummeled. Like, we're seeing now we have the Iran war. Iran basically has beat the US. I think we can kind of like frame it that way. But then looking now, we see Ukraine kind of doing a similar thing over in Russia. I feel like

>> yeah, I think these are very different topics. So, let's be careful to tease them out. So, on the one side, you've got a war that is playing out in the global economy. And so, now it becomes a question of there's just a physical logistical thing. Can I get the oil that supplies the world through this one little choke point? That we're seeing in a very simple, very asymmetric way. You can drop a few mines in, you scare the insurance companies, and now the Strait is effectively closed. Okay. In the Russia-Ukraine war, what you're seeing is Russia has shown we're not the army that we used to be. We're not able to just bowl over Ukrainians. Ukrainians now have used that time to get better and better at fighting a new style of warfare using drones. They have certainly matched the capabilities of, um, Russia. But the most interesting point for anybody that's been paying attention to this, you know that for years now, it's been like sort of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Yeah, they're like holding them, but like it's neither side is really making any progress. And it's like, how many Russia maybe could survive a lot more death than Ukraine can. Now, all of a sudden, in the last few weeks, there's been a total change in tenor. And so, the question becomes, why have has there been a change in the tenor? And the answer to that question is that, as we heard from Macron at the G7, that they have all decided that they're going to back what's happening with Ukraine, that they're going to get behind Ukraine. They have tried and tried and tried to get Russia to come to the negotiating table. Russia has shown no interest in actually making good on peace. He says he is. I mean, this is similar in many ways to what's going on with, um, the in Iran, where Iran would be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. We want to negotiate. Yeah, no, for sure. We want to see this open back up." But then their actions don't match that. Russia, same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, want peace. Want to get this done. We're ready. War's almost over. Only to then keep bombing Ukraine. Now, you're seeing that Europe is getting behind Ukraine, which is giving them the power that they need to actually drive back into Russia. And all of a sudden, in a matter of weeks, it looks like things have changed. So, this is where allies coming together and acting as one is actually getting something done. But very similar sense, but reversed. So, the little guy, Ukraine, is getting the help of the big guy, the EU, whereas the US is not getting the help of its allies as the big guy. Now, that's not me saying that you've got the allies coming to Iran's aid that you do not have. But seeing that, seeing how when you have asymmetric warfare already, a little guy could do a lot of damage with some drones, and then you've got all the muscle and money coming in from the EU to fund said little guy. So, now, not only does Ukraine only have to play from an asymmetric standpoint, they don't have to have a military the size of Russia, they don't have to have the same number of bodies as Russia, they just have to get very good at these small drones, which now they are. Um, so, it, it's interesting to watch two very different things play out. We see the weakening of a superpower that's unable to overcome asymmetric warfare. And now we see a little guy, when fueled by the might of the EU, being able to leverage asymmetric warfare to tremendous and massive effect. And it feels like there's a total shift in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

All right. So, Zelensky just straight up says, "I've got a new message for the Kremlin. Unless Putin stops the war, Moscow will burn." And this week, he's really started making good on that. We've got a bunch of footage on this. Um, so, if you guys haven't seen this yet, you got to check this out. So, let's look at this one. Um, this like montage, if you guys are looking at your screen, there are so many different sites that Ukraine has been able to target in Russia. It's really crazy. Um, just literally watching these drones come in. And if you guys have seen the footage of the, um, there's like an oil refinery that gets hit by a rocket, blows up, sends like the lid flying sky-high. That ironically was actually the Russians scoring an own goal. That was their own missile, uh, that struck it. Let me see if I can pull that footage up. This is not the best shot of it, but that is a shot of it. All right, that's just the black clouds.

>> Yeah, seeing that black cloud footage you're pulling up, um, if you had told me this was happening in 2022, I would have called you crazy just because of how underpowered at that point Ukraine was against Russians, Russia's invasion.

>> Yeah. Well, so this one, we, we need to understand that this is actually a surface-to-air missile fired by the Russians, presumably at a small drone, and it causes this massive explosion. So, uh, if you watch this here from the beginning, I'll replay it. Okay, that was that lid that you see flying in the air. That gigantic lid comes from,

>> the Russian trying to stop a drone. So, shooting one of their own anti-drone missiles, which are much larger than the drones themselves, and that's the thing that ended up sending that flying. Um, there was even these, uh, see if I, yeah. Okay. You got to see this one. So, this is two Russian guys in their car. They just pull over and watch some of this transpiring. And if you're not looking at your phone, at one point they say that this is like Call of Duty.

>> He bought some ro. Yeah, this is epic. Like, literally crazy.

>> This is Russians laughing, by the way.

>> As their own city is being attacked, which is wild. Now, there's reports coming out of Russia that the, um,

>> sentiment inside of Russia is now changing. As you can imagine, when you look out your window and you see Russia, uh, on fire, you see that Ukraine is able to strike within your own city, man, it's not going to take too many weeks of them picking things off, whether it's the oil infrastructure, which, look, it can look a lot worse than it is. You might take out 10 or 20% of a refinery. Uh, but if you're taking 10 or 20% out every time you strike it, and some very meaningful percentage of your drones are actually getting through, we're talking, I don't know, 20% of their drones. Like, it's clear that Russia is not able to stop them, just as Ukraine is not able to stop all of the drone attacks that they're getting. Uh, so, this is, to me, this is a major shift in the war between these two countries. Now, here's where it gets complicated for Russia. Russia is in a position where Putin, if the reports can be believed, he's more and more isolated. He has less and less trust. Uh, one of their generals recently slipped and fell out of a like, 10-story window. Oh, whoopsie. Crazy how many Russians slip and fall out of high windows. How wild is that? Put up security barriers, everybody. Oh, unless, of course, you're being thrown, uh, like the, what was it? The Brazilian, uh, jumper with no bungee cable. That [ __ ] was wild. I didn't want to show the footage, but holy hell, if you guys missed that one, what a treat.

>> Uh, so, yeah, you've got all kinds of

>> paranoia oozing off of Putin, who doesn't know who he can trust. He's killing members of his own military because things are not going well for him. And so, you've got a guy locked in paranoia that is now being struck day after day on his own soil. And so, at what point does his military turn on him? So, if you guys know the history of Stalin and World War II, I want you to imagine you send an unimaginable number of people to die on the front lines to fight for the homeland. And when they return from prisoner of war camps, they're then put in the gulags because you can no longer trust them. You don't know if they've been flipped by the enemy and been sent back as spies. So, your returning heroes are put in the most unimaginably horrific prison conditions by the country that sent them to fight and die. And so, there's a lot of talk now about what is Putin going to do? He's already paranoid. He's already killing members of his own military. If the war ends and not in a victory, it ends in a negotiated settlement, and those guys come back and start asking very uncomfortable questions of, "What exactly was this war for? Why the [ __ ] did we do that? You've got some delusion of you want to reunify the Soviet Union, and you're sending us out to die for something that we never needed to die for, and you've made life worse here." And if he repeats the sins of the past and actually starts locking up his military, people are going to go nuts. So, Zelensky, for one, is anticipating Putin to try to find some other war that he can send the military back out on, just so that they don't end up causing trouble within his own country. So, now the incentive structure, when you've got this very isolated, very paranoid, um, territorially acquisitive dictator who's afraid of his own military, that he's going to just point them at another target. And certainly right now, Europe is giving them reason to. So, this is one of those escalatory spirals that we have to be very careful about. Uh, if I'm Ukraine, I do the exact same thing and I tell them, "Look, come to the negotiating table, or we're going to keep striking you. There's nothing else you can do. You can't be weak in the face of this." But again, when a regime, whether it's the Iranian regime or the Russian regime, when they believe that they are a caged animal that's being backed into a corner and they don't have other options, do not expect them to be rational economic actors. They're not going to be. And as far as I can tell, Trump has a very hard time of mentally mapping anybody that doesn't act like a hyper-rational economic actor. And I think that we have wars playing out with two countries that do not have that same incentive structure because a loss in the war could mean that they get the, um, the betrayal treatment that they are dragged from their palaces by their own people and killed. So, yeah, don't expect Putin to go quietly. He is going to need a narrative of how this was a victory in a way that doesn't turn his own military against him. So, I think this is going to get weirder long before it gets better. And it is fascinating that both of these wars ended up in the conversation together at the beginning of the show, just because when you look at the similarities, I mean, we look at Putin and we look at Netanyahu. We've got two individuals looking to basically take over their entire region, and they're getting all the help they can where they can, and they're continuing that war until they achieve that goal. Like, Putin's pushing the goalposts. We have Israel trying to attack Lebanon. It's, it's almost like we have these two people or these two countries. I don't want to indict the whole country, but these two people just hungry for power, not stopping by any means.

>> You have a very different read on this than I have. Okay, so let's talk about the Greater Israel Project as compared to the reunification of the USSR. Um, so you have Trump, not Trump, sorry, you have Putin. Uh, Putin saying, okay, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the dissolution of the USSR. You can feel in his movements that he's essentially trying to bring it all back together. Um, he is the aggressor, and I think that's a place where everybody is like, that one's clean. He didn't need to go into Crimea. He didn't need to go into Ukraine, uh, Georgia. Like, he, he chose acts of aggression. Now, I think it's a very reasonable argument to say NATO [ __ ] with this guy endlessly and gave him a reason to say, "Well, I'm doing this because you guys won't back off and you keep encroaching and pushing and sanctioning, and I'm not going to tolerate it anymore. I'm going to make a move." Okay. I, I don't think that's unreasonable. It certainly wasn't unprovoked. Now, you go to Israel. Anybody that wants me to believe that Israel committed a crime, uh, when they imported a bunch of people into the region knowing that they would gain political power, economic power, and that they would then be able to displace, uh, people in the region like they did with people that we now call Palestinians. I can buy that. It's the same reason I have beef with unchecked immigration. Now, I'm like, "Hey, if you're going to be consistent and you say, 'Hey, I really don't like that Israel became a state,' uh, but then I'm totally fine with all the immigration going into Europe." Especially if you think of Islam as a state and not just a religion, right? So, the whole idea of a caliphate, right? It's this, uh, you want to make the Islamic state as big as you can. Not all Muslims. You have to be very careful to delineate secular Muslims from people who want an Islamic state. But there are plenty of people that want an Islamic state. And if you're like, "I have beef with the Israelis having done that, and I now have beef with the, um, people that are trying to push an Islamic state." Cool. You're being consistent. All right. So, that, that crime, I can get. I get why people have beef with that. That's so long ago, that ship, that ship has sailed. So, Israel is a country. In the same way that if the, uh, Cretan Greeks invaded northern Cyprus, I'd be like, "What the [ __ ] are you doing? You lost. It is now what it is." And unless you're prepared to go to total warfare and actually take on Turkey, like, "What the [ __ ] are you thinking?" That's asinine. So, anybody that's giving Israel, uh, beef over Israel, uh, that to me is like, that, that is a debate where let's abstract it. Let's talk about Cyprus. So, I can just see like, is this a thing where you're just a, you've got the Israeli mind virus, or are you actually thinking through like, a country was invaded, they lost, whether by immigration or force, they lost, and now that country exists, and how do we think people should address a country that exists? That's how I would approach that. So, I've just made my feelings clear on Cyprus, even though that literally touches my actual family who lost property in Cyprus when it happened. They are still alive. This is not something that happened forever ago.

>> I didn't know you had family from Cyprus.

>> My wife has family from Cyprus. That makes them, my family is precisely what I'm referring to. Okay. So, if I want to sit around a dinner table and see somebody burst into tears over the things that they lost, that is very easy for me to do and have done multiple times. So, it's like, that's like a living thing within my extended family. Cool. Nonetheless, from a policy perspective, it's nonsensical. That country exists. It has existed for a while. All right. Now, you've got Israel. Israel is not super clean because there is a real movement for a Greater Israel project. However, the question for me where everybody is going to break along the lines of divide is, do you think that Israel would just chill if nobody were trying to attack and bomb them? Would they chill the [ __ ] out? So, that comes down to your read on when they backed out of, uh, the situation in, um, the Gaza Strip, and they took everybody out, and they were like, "Hey, are we good now?" And then it still did not, um, yield any sort of peace. That's where all of that gets messy. That then triggers Israel to be like, "All right, well, [ __ ] you. If that's not going to get everybody to calm down, we're just going to take this whole [ __ ] over." Now, that does not, I think, represent all Israelis. I think that would be a very unfair read, but it's a real thing. So, that's where it's like, okay, how do you deal with that? Now, Ben Gvir literally last night or today posted, I don't think I grabbed it. I might have, if somebody wants to look in the dock, but, um, he said the only way to deal with the Middle East is to [ __ ] overwhelm your enemy. And so, I think, is this, this is a paraphrase, but it's going to get very close. Uh, for every one mother that weeps over a dead Israeli, 10, uh, Lebanese women need to weep over a dead, um, Hezbollah member. Something like that. That's very directionally close, if it's not exactly accurate. So, that's where this whole thing just gets so [ __ ] muddy. Is what is the right response? If people keep attacking you, at what point do you go on the offensive? And at what point did Israel, if they have, lose the right to push back? And that's where that whole debate just becomes a whole [ __ ] weird thing. It's like, some people are going to be like, "No, Israel is the total aggressor." Yeah.

>> Other people are going to be like, "Bro, if you didn't keep provoking them, they wouldn't keep pushing." Whereas Russia moved without violence. Now, you could say they were provoked in a diplomatic way, but they weren't provoked in a violence way. And that to me becomes the big differentiator between how I see Putin acting,

>> and how I see Israel acting. Though I fully acknowledge there are some people that would very much like to just be territorially inquisitive and take the whole thing over. I'm certainly not blind to that.

>> I found your quote by the way, if you want to. So, the quote he said was, "For every tear."

>> This is Ben Gvir.

>> Yes. This is Ben Gvir. Um, Israeli national security minister for chat, who doesn't know. "For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn." That's the direct quote.

>> That's

>> and

>> that's violent.

>> I guess where I fall.

>> I would not expect anybody to be like, "Yeah, word."

>> Yeah. And I guess where I fall on this with the difference between Putin and Israel or and Netanyahu, and admittedly I don't know enough about like Russian history or Putin's, you know, run as cuz he's been leader since the '90s, right? Or earlier maybe even.

>> Uh, Putin.

>> Yeah. '90s.

>> '90s.

>> Yeah. But like, when I look at Israel, Netanyahu or not, every prime minister, every PM of Israel, since 1948 with the Nakba, has had this mentality of anyone who isn't Israeli in this area, we got to control. Right. And that's kind of how I

>> But are they right or not?

>> What's up?

>> Are they right or not?

>> Not right. Not right at all. I mean,

>> are you talking morally or are you talking militarily?

>> Militarily in what way? Like winning the winning the fight or

>> the way that I look at Israel is, um, morality is not on their side.

>> But might and being able to defend yourself is on their side.

>> Would you say because I agree with that, but what, what do you think the cause of that is? Like in terms of my, because to me, I think it's the USA. Like we fund a lot of Israel's military, the IDF trains our police officers, like that kind of stuff. Where do you kind of feel they're getting their might from? Do you think it's an internal, they've created that power for themselves, or do you think it's help from allies, kind of in the way we're

>> really, that's a really big question. So, you and I are right now, we're slightly two ships passing in the night. So, let me, I'll lay all of my base assumptions down so you know which one to go after. Okay.

>> So, my base assumptions of Israel go something like this. Um,

>> hey, we're being killed the world over. And we can certainly have a debate about what do they do that bring that upon themselves. I've given my answer a thousand times. If you're wise, you're going to go after making sure that you're at the top of the heap economically, that you understand it, you can control as much of it as you can. I don't fault anybody for that. Like, that's just smart. Uh, but they have culturally reinforced something that makes them wherever they are in the world, they try to really get to the important places of power and do very well there. Then in times of economic distress, everybody turns on them. Pogroms, they, they've just been hated and persecuted the world over. Uh, so that you're in the middle of that. You obviously have World War II industrial strength, uh, murder of Jews. All right. So they're like, "All right, [ __ ] this." Like, we're going to get our own homeland, and we are going to be, um, smart and what we're going to do is we're going to use immigration, and we're going to, we're going to display weakness in the beginning. This is just, we, we have to do this. This isn't because we have grand ambitions. We just need, they need to go somewhere. We would have gone to America if you'd let us, but you wouldn't let us, which is true.

>> Yeah.

>> So, now we're going to return to the quote-unquote homeland. It's a great narrative. Many Jews from a genetic standpoint have no connection to that land whatsoever. Uh, but America owns a land to which they have no genetic connection to whatsoever. So, to me, that's not much of an argument. But they end up bringing through immigration during, you know, a time when it's, uh, it's, it's not a Palestinian state. It's the Ottoman Empire followed by the British Empire. So, you go to the British Empire for whom you have incredible political connections with.

>> This is immediately after World War II timeline.

>> Wise. Well, timeline-wise, this sort of gets muddled. Some of this is before, some of this is after.

>> It's like that five-year gap before they became Israel. Right. Well, I, it, it goes on for much longer than I think any of us are comfortable with in terms of the Rothschilds and pushing for, "We need somewhere."

>> Buttering up the British Empire with where's it going to be.

>> So, and this is where, um, I have the big swags. I do not have like the detailed timelines and things like that that a lot of people will have more data. So, I'm trying to get to big philosophical ideas because every time I drill into the like specifics of it, I never think this changes anything.

>> Yeah. It's just big swags you have. They are leveraging their connections with the British Empire in order to get this, uh, to get the immigration running.

>> They bring enough people in. They get to the point where now, okay, we've got enough economic might, enough political might that we can get a state. They get a state. Uh, and obviously at that point, all hell breaks loose. Now, what I'm trying to drive us to is you've got a state. Whether people agree should have a state, shouldn't have a state. If, if we were arguing this like immediately after World War II, I'd be like, "Okay, yeah, there's something to argue about." But this is

>> 80 years later. Like, to me, base assumption, if you want to attack, my base assumption that's a done [ __ ] deal. Like, if you need me to put a hard and fast date, 50 years.

>> Yeah.

>> Like, once you've been 50 years, shut the [ __ ] up. I don't even want to hear about it. Their estate. Move on. You're, you as the person who lost your territory, you are now making life worse for your kids because you can't just [ __ ] move on.

>> You're, you're hung up on the past.

>> Dude. Like, I will point people to Japan. Japan is one of the greatest stories of, "We lost, we got occupied, and we completely embodied the culture in ways that matter." They're still very uniquely Japanese, but they are not like they were before. So, they become

This modified version, a westernized version of the Japanese culture so effectively that they are now one of the biggest economies on planet Earth, punching way the [ __ ] above their weight. And yeah, Japan. And at the height of their power, they were um they were rivaling America to the point where America got terrified and had to just completely like [ __ ] Japan up. Not to derail on that.

>> Yeah. >> The point being they get there because they just stop looking backwards >> and they're like, "Yeah, we lost and uh we're just going to rebuild looking forward." And so they don't go America owes us reparations for blowing us up and all that [ __ ] They don't uh build a military. In fact, the US won't let them build a military. So they're just like, "All right, well, we're going to do it this way." And they do something extraordinary.

Okay, now back to Israel. >> So you've got Israel and Palestine making very different [ __ ] choices. So there's so much seething anger that it's like, "Nope, I don't care. 100 years, 200 years, doesn't matter. I'm gonna keep fighting. This is unjust. Um, one argument that I hear is, "No, no, no, but if you talk to Palestinians, you would hear how they long for their homeland." Yeah, I get it. It's still nonsensical.

So, >> wait, what's nonsensical? The >> themm being like, you have to let me back into the country. You've got to let me right of return. You >> wait into Israel. >> Yes. >> Right of a big [ __ ] thing. If you don't know about right of return, like this is a huge part of this. >> No, no, but I'm asking specifically which lands. Like, are we >> But hold on. you laid something down. Yeah. Which was um you I can't believe that they're trying to have control over everybody in the region. And I'm saying but that's smart. So I'm trying >> war-wise that is smart. Like yes from a war perspective. Yeah.

>> Part of this whole drama is why the [ __ ] is Israel so hardcore? And I would say Israel is so hardcore because if you let people leverage the right of return, they're going to run the same playbook in reverse and they will get as many Palestinians as they can in there that identify um politically with [ __ ] Israel and they'll just outvote them and they will use that system against Israel. And by the way, if I were advising the Palestinians, I'd be like, "Guys, really push this right of return thing. Make sure that you can get enough people inside the country that you can now vote them. [ __ ] those kids, right? Like that would be the advice to the Palestinians. So if you're Israeli, are you supposed to pretend that that's not a thing? So it's like, yep, what what does that equal? Apartheid. Cool. So out of a survival mechanism, you have a parttheid. Now I'm well aware of all the arguments that are like, bro, bro, it's not how it played out in uh South Africa. And so um that's not how it's going to play out here. And then I will say this is about religion. And so that makes it a totally different [ __ ] ball game. So they believe that God is saying we must have this land back. And that's where I'm like, hey, >> when somebody is like, I'm perfectly fine to get my rewards in the afterlife. They're just playing a totally different game.

>> So boy, I'm like I can only imagine what's happening in the comments right now. But >> honestly, it's not been No one's really been >> that is shocking. >> I think we're having a good conversation about this. I think it's a good dialogue of like this is how God bless everyone sees this thing. Um, but like back to my original question, if I'm putting everything you just said in a stew. Yeah.

>> Um, so you would say Israel's comeup is not of its own, but of the support of other countries. >> I didn't say that at all, but thank you for >> Well, because you mentioned the British Empire. That's I guess where my question is, saying they went to the British.

>> Well, let's paint the most nefarious version of that possible. >> Okay. >> So, um, read Neil Ferguson's book, uh, I think it's called The Rothschilds. It's about the Rothschilds, whether it's called that or not. in that book. Um, I think it's Nathan. I always forget the [ __ ] name. >> The one about the boat with >> the the dad. The boat. >> Didn't Didn't the Rosschild's like the main dad, didn't he go missing with the whole boat and it was like who killed him? Probably the Israelis. And they held the funeral like his son or something. >> Or am I thinking of a different rich person? >> Yeah. Uh, maybe a different rich person. There's all kinds of rumors around the Titanic and stuff like that where the guys going against the central banks were on the uh Titanic, which is [ __ ] crazy. But to not derail.

So, the OG Father Rothschild, who I'm sure someone in the comments remembers if it's Nathan. I think it's Nathan, but that might be the brother who goes to England. Anyway, uh, Father Rothschild, who kicks all this off, sends his five sons to the biggest cities around Europe at the time and says very explicitly, you must befriend politicians. and the relationship between banking and politicians basically give you all the control in the world. So the reason um that when Palestine actually gets the state the letter is written to the Rothschild whichever one it was in England uh is because like bro he's funding so much of what's going on in the UK. So I will certainly forgive anybody that's like get money the [ __ ] out of politics. I'm wildly desirous of the same thing. But nonetheless, it is a very wise and strategic play that I would expect everybody to run, which is uh get politically powerful, get economically powerful because you're going to be able to get the things you want.

So, this is me painting the nefarious version. So, you've got all these politicians in the pocket of the Rothschild because they've got just so much [ __ ] money and they're like, "No, no, no. I really want this state of Israel to happen." Now, there's a really great story, cover story of like they're being persecuted everywhere. They need a place to call home. This is their ancestral land. Let them go back. Yeah, cool. Like, why not? Like, these guys are, you know, they have done so much for us. Um, let's help them out to get a state. Nobody yet understands the collision between the Palestinians and the Jews. Um, and so it's like, yeah, cool. We'll just draw a line and we'll say you've got your state, they've got their state. again not understanding the theocracy of it all. They don't understand that um if I'm not mistaken there is a literal doctrine that says if a Muslim has ever owned that land it must be reclaimed. If I'm getting that wrong please by all means let me >> I think it's there. I don't know if that's original text or if it's one of those things like when Christianity added homosexuality to the Bible kind of thing if that makes sense. It does.

But in Islam, if I'm not mistaken, you've got the Quran and you've got the hadiths, which is if it basically if Muhammad didn't say it, it doesn't [ __ ] exist. And if he did say it, it's real. Uh but there are three beats in his life. One as a religious leader, which is like ironically where he's at his most tolerant. >> Then there's him as a political leader. Then there's him as a warlord. And it's like, so you can sort of pick and choose. If you want to say religion of peace, you just talk the early stuff. Uh if you want to know how to live your life, then it's like him as a politician actually trying to push policy. And if you want to kill all the infidels, then you go to the warlord section. >> It's the phases. >> Yeah. But the bad news is, I mean, this is why everybody's talking about what's going to be the reformation because Christianity just has as much crazy [ __ ] in it. It's just that we actually went through the Reformation. So the people alive today are not hitting on those beats. Instead, you've got a pope who's like, "No, we should be chill with gay people." So, it's >> if Islam was like, "No, no, no. the imams can actually contradict the book, you'd be in a much better position because then you could get people like, okay, no, what he really meant was um but anyway, so without derailing on that, okay, so going back painting nefarious version of how Israel comes into existence. You've got that big money play, political power based on money. You get it to start. Again, I understand why anybody would have real beef with that. But now you've got Israel. Israel is now under attack because people feel some type of way about the creation of that state. It feels like they stole their land. And all these years later, they're just not moving forward.

>> Read number one. Well, they're not moving forward, [ __ ] because they've created an open air prison. Uh, and how the [ __ ] are they supposed to move on? Now, I've painted my picture of how they could and should as of today move on, but nothing tells me that they're actually going to take it because that's a very western notion where I'm like, "Bro, I I need my just desserts in this lifetime." So, I get it. They're not going to take my advice. My advice will sound nonsensical. My advice will sound like an affront to God. So, I get why they're not going to do that. but nonetheless is still what I think ought to happen because I think people ought to orient themselves to how do I make sure that my kids' life is better here on earth is better than my life.

>> Okay. So, if they feel some type of way and they're never going to let it go and you know that they will run either a just I'm going to kill enough people that you guys get the [ __ ] out. Um, I'm going to run a PR strategy to make the rest of the world hate you. To your point about where do they get their power, if they're buying uh weapons from the US, if the US is um giving them money to buy those weapons, it's like, oh, I'm going to cut those off and I'm going to bang on about right of return, which has been reaffirmed by the UN like 187 times or some crazy [ __ ] number. And so, yeah, I I've got all my bases covered, but [ __ ] I'm coming for Israel. Now, if anybody thinks that if it was a one for one vote and Palestinians had the right of return that Israel would still exist in the way that we think of it now, they're crazy. Like, that's delusional. So, uh, you're living in a world that isn't real. In the same way that I accept that Palestinians are never going to take my [ __ ] advice because they see it as an affront to God, uh, the Israelis are never going to do that because you're letting people in who believe you stole the land. they're going to outvote you and boot you the [ __ ] out. So, it's like, what are we even talking about? So, now I believe Israel has a moral obligation to protect their citizens. Do I think that they go so far that they lose the moral upper hand? Yes, I do. But, nonetheless, they've got to find some way to not get outvoted. And if your best argument against that is, "But Tom, these guys are running a religious ethnostate." Yeah. and like give me the punch line. They ought not do that. They should instead run a suicide pack. Nope. That doesn't make sense. So, it's like it's an unfortunate protective mechanism, but I don't see a way around that.

>> I think, and then we probably should jump to the UK after this, but I think the for most people, and chat, let me know if I'm speaking for you guys wrong. Um, I think the for most people is not Israel shouldn't be an ethnostate. I mean, it depends where you fall on that. it. I think the ought is leave other people alone around you, right? Like when we look at Palestine, all we're seeing is Israel pummeling this population of people. >> Tell me which part is them not leaving people alone. So you're okay with the apartheid state. Meaning >> personally, no. I'm speaking on everyone else though. Like the general consensus of the public is we should have a two-state solution. Israel should be a state. Leave everyone else alone. Stop trying to take everyone over. Palestine should be a state. Palestine, I think, is universally accepted a state. It's one of the 195. So, I I guess I'm more saying the overarching consensus of the world is the two-state solution, which is leave everyone else alone.

>> Yeah. I think that that doesn't survive contact with the actual debate. The actual debate goes something like this. Um Palestine has been offered a state many, many, many times and they reject it every time. Um every now and then you'll get someone who'll be like, "No, no, no. We'll go back to like whatever 1968 borders. And again, I'm like, bro, those borders were a long time ago. So, I'm not sure that you've got any leg to stand on getting Israel, who can defend their borders, uh, to give up more land. Then the debate becomes, okay, well, when they pulled out of the Gaza Strip, why didn't everybody chill the [ __ ] out? Why did they still go on the attack? Um, and so that's where it gets messy and that's where people fall into the minutia and that's where I go. The minutiae is not the point. The minutiae is just not the point. And so the point for me becomes um, we Israel are going to keep the land we stole from you. Just like when I hear somebody in America be like, "We should give the land back to the Native Americans." I'm like, "You're retarded." So we came in, we killed them, guns, germs, and steel. And uh we won. So that ship is sailed. Now uh the reservations were sinister, but they got something. They've got now casinos, which at least I mean, Jesus, they've they can turn that economic engine into I mean, it's literally get dumb white people to come in and give us their money playing games where the house is guaranteed to win. It's it's a fascinating psychological experiment. So fine, let them run it cuz no one is forcing people to go in and do that. Now hopefully they leverage that. If they really care about like ethnic purity or whatever, making that a big part of their thing, great, do it would not be my advice. We were talking about this before we started rolling. I'm technically mostly Dutch. I don't feel any affinity to the Netherlands at all. All of my affinity is to the US. Now, if they choose to lean into their ethnicity instead of being Americans, that's totally their choice. I get it. Whatever. That's a decision they get to make. Anyway, my advice would be to integrate. You're in the greatest country on planet Earth. Fall in love. See yourself as American first. All that other [ __ ] happened a very long time in the past. Um, anyway, okay, that's fractaling hard. So, I'm going to pause there. I'm not sure that I closed that loop.

>> I got a super chat if you want to close it on this topic. Uh, so from Chaos Ballads 8582 says, "Tom's rant about Palestines reminds me of the wizard's seventh rule. Life is the future, not the past." >> The wizards. >> I don't know exactly, but I'm assuming it's referring. >> I hear wizard and I think a little like a little too KKK wizard, which I would never like to be compared. I hope you mean >> it's from Sword of Truth. >> Dungeons and Dragons or something. I don't know Sort of Truth. >> It's a fantasy series from Terry Goodkind. >> Oh [ __ ] Okay, I know who Terry Goodkind is. Um, and also I found the boat thing I was talking about, just so that I can clarify it for chat. It was Galain's Maxwell's dad. So, Robert Maxwell, very rich dude. He basically died on his boat and no one knows how he died. His doors were locked from the inside. All this stuff. And it basically comes down to he was in bed with Israel. And so, the alleged theory is that Israel killed him and then held a funeral for him in Israel just to be like, "We love him. We miss him." Even though the whole theory is that Israel killed him. It's a fascinating documentary. I think >> that is fascinating. I hadn't heard anything about that. Uh, humans kill without compunction. This is why you need sociopaths. Why the evolutionary pool didn't get rid of them. >> Yep. >> Because when you're like, you know, I know he's our friend and all, but we kind of got to kill him. You need the one guy that's like, "All right, cool." It's wild. I don't like that humans have that, but we have that.

>> And speaking of sociopaths, Kier Star. No, I'm just kidding. >> Yeah, that's a good I'm already on board. I don't even know what you're gonna say, but yes. >> I was just trying to segue to the UK thing, but >> Well, are you talking about the alligator thing? >> Uh, just UK as a whole. I mean, we've got Do we really address the censorship stuff even in that's happening in the UK right now? Because I don't think >> we we haven't really, but to me, the censorship story is all about immigration and it the immigration thing is really going to be a fascinating thing to watch play out. This to me is a fundamental question of do we all have the right to have a culture? When you talk about the US, I find that people derail. When you talk about Israel, people derail. So, let's talk about Japan. For whatever reason, people are completely comfortable with Japan being Japanese. Now, uh the Japanese have something going for them. They look Asian. And because they have a distinct look, people are like, "Oh, yeah. I guess they really are a group." But that somehow breaks down when it becomes white people. It's really fascinating. So, I believe that every country has a right to say this is our culture. This is what we believe. These are our values. And I don't care if you're Ukraine and your culture is 30 years old. Uh or you're Japan and your culture is thousands of years old or you're China and it's like really really really thousands of years old. It's like if you say here's our border, we can defend it and this is our culture and if you want to come here then you're going to adhere to these things. And I don't think people fully understand that the way that we transmit values to our kids is through culture. And because people are not being honest about the way the human mind works uh which is going to catalog us and others at all times. One of the most deeply ingrained things in the human animal is uh birds of a feather, school of fish, the things that are related will group up. Now, shockingly, the US has been this incredible experiment in can you do a melting pot where people come from all over the world and we unite them not based on the external visual but instead we bring them together on a set of values that strangely some very small percentage of people basically in every country share these values. then you allow them to come via boats and you say if you can pull it off if you don't get killed by the winter um or by the native inhabitants uh then you can be a part of this but if you die sorry you just you didn't play the game well and that ended up being what America was founded on. So whether you're the US, Japan, China, uh Israel, Sudan, um Palestine, whatever, you get to say this is our culture and we're not going to tolerate anything outside of that. The UK is playing a weird game where the set of values that they're galvanizing around are uh we'll call it leftaning liberal doesn't feel like the right progressive maybe progressive progressive values. So they're galvanizing around progressive values. Now, I would be very eager to hear them actually outline what their progressive values are because uh it used to be tolerance, which they have certainly lost. It used to be freedom of speech, which they have certainly lost. It used to be seeking truth um instead of getting lost in um identity politics and things like that. But now it's become all of that. But I'd love for them to just lay it out. So then we can look at them and say either well you say that's your value but you're not living up to it or that value deranges in this way. Um I think that would be very useful but instead what you see is it's really about underground power and um leveraging the very important human trait towards compassion and empathy. Leveraging that to get people to say who are you to say that your culture is better? your culture is not better. We want to invite everybody in from everywhere. And the honest reason why they're doing it, even if they don't know it consciously, I think they do. I think this is sinister. I don't think it's accidental, but even if they don't know it consciously, they're pulling people in based on a very simple principle, which is our economyy's in trouble. Because speaking of the EU very specifically right now, um we don't understand the power of innovation and we certainly don't understand what makes innovation possible at a mechanistic level. So the very thing that we pride ourselves on is regulation. Regulation is corruption. It is great when it's small and obesity when it's large. and they have become convinced that um as a fat person who's 600 pounds overweight that is quite literally physically melding with the fabric of their couch, they have convinced themselves that regulation unto itself is good. Uh the way that an obese person convinces themselves that the dopamine rush of consuming calories is in and of itself good. So they're regulating themselves into oblivion. they are becoming uh increasingly calcified as an economy and their solution to hide that fact from their um citizens is to import cheap labor. Now when you import cheap labor, the easiest way to do that is to have a whole lot of free things that will attract people from all over the world that are used to working for very low wages. You get them addicted to government handouts, which by the way is a trap. It is a trap. If you want to see people do well, so imagine you're raising kids, you want them to do well. Can you give them everything or do you need to make them work? Understand the importance of working hard, trying hard, persevering, being persistent, failing, getting back up, that you can't just hand everything to them. This is why people hate rich kids because oftentimes everything is just handed to them because I think we all know that it breaks them. They become [ __ ] weak [ __ ] and they just whine and complain about everything. They feel entitled to everything. It's why you can't just give people [ __ ] So they put them in this trap. It is a never-ending death spiral, but it does get them to vote for the people who give them things because they get confused as to the efficacy of the handouts. And because humans think so myopically and so short-termed, they don't realize that you giving me this thing, which feels awesome today, is actually [ __ ] me because I don't learn how to fend for myself. I don't learn how to think for myself. By the way, this why you need to be afraid of AI. Studies are already coming out. If you let AI think for you, you become stupid. >> You get mushrain. >> Thank you. So this is why you don't give things to people. So they create that trap. But it gets them votes and allows them to hide the economic stagnation in their own country. Now the real problem is as you bring people in, things get more expensive. And so now the politicians are trapped because you need a Ponzi scheme of I need more people to come in that will work for cheap to hide the fact that we're driving costs up. But this is why even now in the US you're getting this obscenely K-shaped economy because as you do that you disempower workers which for anybody that wants this you it is so often confused that entrepreneurs are taking advantage of their employees when the reality is the thing that is making things unaffordable and weakening their negotiating power is there's always somebody coming in behind them that is willing to do the job cheaper. Now, when you're bringing uneducated immigrants in, then obviously that impacts the low end, which is also under pressure from AI. Uh, but you'll see the same thing with H-1B visas. If you allow people to use an H-1B visa to bring an educated person in who's willing to work for less, you get the same derangement just at a different part of the stack. So, um, we are going to have to confront the realities of this because it is mechanistic. And so we are going to have to talk about immigration and the UK, the EU, they will all try to beat you to death with the stick of you're a racist. Uh, which is [ __ ] lunacy. And so if you just look at, by the way, doing this and then telling people that they can't talk about it will create and is creating racism. So don't be surprised when racism actually ends up at the scene. Uh, but that the racism that we see exploding now is two things. It's one the human natural tendency to birds of a feather school of fish, but al and the whole just us other thing, but also in the same way that plaque shows up in the brain uh because there's an injury and then we see people with Alzheimer's and we see that they have a ton of plaque in the brain and we say, "Oh, that must be the cause of the Alzheimer's." when in reality those are just a bunch of ambulances getting stuck at the scene of the crime because they're trying to deal with whatever the injury was. So the racism is people freaking out. Something's going wrong. They don't know how to protect themselves. They're completely emotional. It's a populist moment. They want to be on a team and if you're going to push them on to the uh black team, white team, Muslim team, whatever, they'll do it. But it's a really [ __ ] stupid way to get people to think. uh instead of being like, "Hey, you're in a country and it's all about being a part of this country. Here's our values and as long as you align with these values, all is well." Uh if you don't align with those values, [ __ ] right off. And so, we're going to have to contend with that. So, anyway, don't let people short circuit the conversation, which is economic in nature, by talking about racism. Uh get rid of racism. It is a [ __ ] distraction. It will create its own problems. don't tolerate racism in anyone uh as it is super unhelpful. But nonetheless, the real debate is about something else. Now, on those lines, there's a very specific story playing out right now, which is the EU has finally woken up to the fact that civilizations don't die from war, they die from suicide. People forget you have to protect your borders. They forget that you have an identity that's based on values that people are willing to fight and die for. Which, as a sidebar, I'd like to remind everybody, why is the immigration debate so important? Because you're bringing people into your country, not only that have an economic effect that people aren't being honest about, but the very thing that people will kill and die for are their values. Values. Okay? They'll kill for safety to protect their loved ones and they'll kill for values, man. And if you fail to understand that, then you're going to be very surprised when the pitchforks come out because you're importing people that don't share values and you're not having any expectation that newcomers conform to the values. So, if people will die and kill for the values and you're importing something that exacerbates that problem, guess what? You're going to have people killing and dying. So, uh yeah. Anyway, the EU is finally waking up to this and on June 17th in a 418 to 218 vote, they passed finally their most aggressive immigration reform bill to date. Now, the new law establishes a way for the EU to handle asylum seekers whose claims get rejected. Now, let that sit there. They've had to battle and fight for years just to have a way to remove the people whose claim got rejected. Wild. I cannot believe that was ever controversial, but apparently it was. So, they're now going to be an asylum seeker gets rejected. They're going to be returned to these what are known as return hubs that are outside the EU's borders. Member states finally also get sweeping new detention powers so they can actually hold on to people. So the moronic revolving door that has been the EU flooding itself with illegal migrants is finally starting to at least have some recourse. So before you could get somebody who would claim asylum, they would get denied, but they would still be allowed to vanish inside the continent. What? What? So finally that's being stopped. By the way, we were doing the same thing in the US. Catch and release. I'm sure you've heard of that. Now, to get the votes, the center right didn't partner with the center left, which please, please, that's what we need to do. We need both people who have an evolutionary impulse to be on the left and people who have an evolutionary impulse to be on the right. We've got to come together in the middle. But that's not what happened. That would have been lovely. But alas, no. What actually ended up happening was the center right partnered up with the far right to finally get the votes that they need. And so we we don't want to see people making friends with people at the extremes. So to my beloved partners, and I mean this this is not me being cheeky. To my beloved partners who find themselves center left, I consider myself center right. probably even more center than right, but I'll accept that even though it has such a bad reputation, which makes me very sad. I have a temperament that leans slightly right. I'm all about personal responsibility mindset. You can do it. You got this. Uh that's my stickick. But to the my friends, center left. Your party is sliding farther and farther to the far left because in a populist moment, those are far more emotionally evocative ideas. Um, just as I beg the center right to not find themselves in situations where they're having to lump up with people on the far right. I'd really like to see the left stop doing it. But anyway, that's what had to be done to actually get this across the finish line. It is a step in the right direction. So, at least there's that. Now, sensible immigration policies where we accept what the economic knock-on effect is going to be, how it impacts housing, how it impacts labor's ability to negotiate their own wages, how it um impacts housing supply, that's a big deal. If you're not if you're going to bring in 100,000 people, where's 100,000 new apartments? So, I'll give you a US stat. Over the last whatever 40 years, 50 years, something like that, houses have gone from two times the average salary to five times the average salary. Given that everybody wants a house, that creates a problem. So, people are just not being honest about what it means to bring a whole bunch of people into your state. That [ __ ] is crazy. I don't know what they're thinking. So, anyway, a step in the right direction. I'm very excited to see it. Uh, this is a very small step, so I still think that they have an insane distance to cross, but at least we're getting closer.

>> Uh, chat's not really commenting on this to be honest. Um, they're just they hear me spitting facts and they feel warm and fuzzy. >> Well, I mean, it's it's a lot of people just going deport all illegals. Illegals shouldn't own land and businesses. And it's like, first of all, you're not adding anything to the conversation. Um, >> it's interesting. Okay, fair. That's an emotional response. always better to give a little policy. Um, one thing, and I'll remind myself of this, and this is partly why I'm actually very grateful. Obviously, you and Drew both lean left. I think you guys are pretty close to the center. Neither you guys are also both lovely [ __ ] people. You're very smart. You're very well-intentioned.

>> So, like from that perspective, I like that we have that kind of friction. So, I remind myself to um not seek people who will say the things that I want them to say and to really avoid creating any sort of punishment where people push back on me. Uh I've told the story before, but we lost employees when I started talking political because they just could not be around it. That was a one-way street. I could be around them. I was perfectly fine that they thought that my opinions were crazy and they did not like them. And I was like, "Hey, if you're good at your job, that's what I care about." Um, a lot of the emotional response that you hear, whether in chat or elsewhere, for so long, it's just been like, "You're racist. Shut up. Don't talk about that." To say that you don't want immigration is to imply that you don't like people with brown skin. It's just so dumb. It It is a weapon that you use because here's the thing, we all have a guilt response. So, if you say it, and I thought Jordan Peterson, I miss [ __ ] Jordan Peterson. Jordan, please get better, man. I hope you're healing and getting well. man, do I want to see you back on the scene. He was one of the first people that like really started to understand how when you're disenfranchising people and you're not allowing them to have a voice, like this stuff really gets toxic super fast. And so I want to see people really be able to um find a way to say what they need to say to not be silenced by that cudgel that says you're a bad person. This is a thing that Jordan talked about was his guilt response was so strong that people could even get him to feel guilty and so he'd be like, "Oh [ __ ] like maybe I am doing something wrong." And so he would pull back and like really have to evaluate himself. And he's a very deaf thinker. So, I think he can get around that, but a lot of people stop at the emotion. They're like, "Oh, I don't like the way that I feel when you say that about me. I don't want to feel that again. So, [ __ ] maybe I really was being racist." Uh, and it it's a trick that worked for a long time. So, anyway, you're just seeing like a an overcorrection. We obviously shouldn't celebrate people just seal clapping for ugly [ __ ] Um, but it is true. You do have to deport You you either have to force is a hard word but it is the word force people to conform to the value system or leave or uh you have to well and you have to build build build.

>> Can I ask and this is this is just genuine um me being confused on it. Whenever you talk about adhere to the value system and assimilate, I think I get what you're saying as Tom Bill, but I think a lot of chat and a lot of people in general Oh, hey Drew. Drew's in the chat. Um, a lot of people in general tend to be like the word assimilate sounds like an alt-right thing, which to be honest, the alt-right has taken the word assimilate and been like, "Everyone's got to assimilate. >> Everyone does have to assimilate." So, I guess you explain that more. I if if if Hitler says uh you must breathe oxygen in order to survive, I don't go, "No, you don't [ __ ] You don't know what the [ __ ] you're talking about. You racist. Shut the [ __ ] up." >> He is a racist. And boy, I'm glad he's dead. >> We can all agree Hitler's a racist at >> the Yeah, >> we're not. We're not a Nick Fuentes type. Okay, >> if we can't get on board, Well, I think even Nick would say he's a racist. >> No, Nick Fuentes says he loves Hitler. He's claimed he's a neo-Nazi. Like Nick Fuentes, >> but does Nick not accept that he is racist? No. So Nick thinks that I >> Okay, we'll derail on that. That's a derail. >> That's wild. I didn't know that. Okay. >> Nick is genuinely like the worst of the worst for this kind of stuff. >> Yeah. Okay. If you're going to be racist on the racism, I guess would be my punch line. I think Hitler would realize he's racist. Anyway, >> anyway, back to >> setting that aside. Uh okay. So, assimilate. So the only way to think about the um the church, if you don't adhere to the church, then you're not one of us. You have not assimilated to our values and our beliefs. And so get out. And the 30 years war was fought over that. People will kill and die to um get people to comply with their values because the values mean so much to them. Now you cannot it the most maniacally stupid statement that people make is that diversity is our strength. Diversity always weakens you. Always. And you have to overcome your diversity in order to move forward. Now the great news.

>> Sorry. Go ahead. >> No, please. >> Well, I'm confused on the diversity weakens you because like America is the melting pot country. Like we it's like you said earlier with the Native American land thing. This is not our land, right? We we have now owned it over the years on a war paper, but like it is not our land, right? So I guess that's where I'm confused on the diversity weakens you because I feel like diversity about our land feels like a non sequator to this. We can have that debate in a second, but >> um okay, you called it the melting pot. The only reason it works is because diverse people come here and go, I'm going to give up my diversity and I'm going to melt into being an American. meaning I'm going to conform. One of us. One of us. Literally. So, the problem is we're not a melting pot anymore, and we're letting people um spiral off into their own little group and uh live here for 30 years and not learn the language. And that's a problem. You're you're going to tear yourself apart at the seams. Now, because I've spent so much time running companies, I see this firsthand where if you don't hire people that share your cultural values of the company, they'll start pulling in different directions. This has been the fascinating thing about watching um game companies go through um Gamergate and all that stuff where it was like the gamers felt like the game companies had invited the barbarians inside the gate and now they were trying to do DEI and give me realistic women instead of uh boob jiggly physics which is you know when dude if a guy is playing a female character I do not understand unless you like staring at literally the pixels of her ass in a third-p person game are so nice that you're getting a dopamine response from just watching the ass while you play. Okay, I guess. And so it's like this this is all like a neurochemical thing. And so the thing that they like getting out of a game was now being ruined by people coming in. And so they felt like, hey, this isn't what I signed up for. And so those game companies are now starting to struggle for a host of reasons, but that's a big part of it. So it's the same thing. I'm not asking you to like the culture. I'm saying when there's a divided culture, you pull against each other and you're just not moving in the same direction.

>> I ran into this with my first writer room. I was not yet aware of what we now call woke. And I just could not get the story moving in the direction that I wanted it to go because the writers had a belief about the world that I didn't know, understand, nothing. And so I would write a character and then they would pull it in a different direction. I'm like, what the [ __ ] is happening? And so anyway, that was how I learned about what woke was was, oh my god, these guys have a totally different view on how the world ought to be. They're trying to like I'm trying to tell a morality play about one idea that if you put time and energy into getting better, you will get better. But they didn't believe in that value. And so they were pulling in a different direction. The characters just kept acting in ways and I'm like, the [ __ ] is going on? And so it created like these weird spirals where we just could not get forward momentum in the story because we're pulling in different directions. The same thing happens at the level of a company. The company literally can't get momentum with the products and all that because you're just pulling against each other. You're sabotaging each other because you don't like them, don't believe in them. Same thing will happen at the state level. And so you just start pulling against each other. That's why you need conformity, why you're having to get over your diversity. You're having so take um great movie called Lincoln. Lincoln believed in what he called a team of rivals. And so he wanted to bring people on who didn't think the way that he thought. But they all had to agree that for a government to function, there was like a superseding value set of we're fighting for freedom. We want things to be good for everybody. Um we, you know, things are driven economically, that there is a type of justice that we stand for, all of that. And so they could all agree on the meta values and then disagree on like how is the right way to get there. but he would never have let somebody on that team of rivals that that disagreed at the meta value level. And so that's where people get confused. I like being surrounded by people who see things differently than me, that's great. Help them sharpen my thinking. But if we disagree at the meta level, like if you guys were in the comments trying to sabotage me and trying to convince the community that I was stupid, I would fire you [ __ ] instantly. go watch Philip DeFranco >> because that that would be you at a value level pulling against me in a way that it mechanistically breaks the value set of the company in terms of what we're trying to achieve. So anyway, when I say that diversity is always the thing that you must overcome that it weakens you, that's what I'm talking about. So the assimilation is that that meta set of values that if people aren't bought into, it really creates problems. And I think that's why I had you explain assimilation because I think traditionally when you hear blank needs to assimilate to blank, it sounds a little intense, right? It sounds like traditionally it's like we were just saying with Hitler, that's the kind of [ __ ] he would do, right? So I think it's good we clarify that. Um, but then that leads into the next question from a chatter. Oh no, I just I just had it. Oh, here we go. So the scan spark is asking uh to you which aspects of the culture do people need to assimilate to? And I guess he's uh talking about USA specifically. And then furthermore, um, without specifying that, I just don't know what you're advocating for in terms of immigrants assimilating. So now that we have the definition of assimilation, what specifically are those values we need immigrants to assimilate to?

>> Cool. One, we're an individualistic culture. Uh, we believe that there is a spark of divinity in every human and therefore the right level of analysis when you're doing policy etc. uh is at the level of the individual. the individual needs to carry their own burden and contribute. Uh we are not a collectivist society. Therefore, we don't do top-down dictatorial rule where uh I tell you how it's going to be and you enact it. There is a reason that we have the second amendment where we say because the individual is the right level of analysis, you are able to arm yourself should the government become tyrannical, you have the right and perhaps the obligation to fight back. uh and that there should be

This tension between the well-armed government and the well-armed populace. Um, also that, uh, we are predicated on freedom. Freedom top to bottom. That the Constitution has way more statements of what the government can't do than statements of what the government can do. And the Constitution is really trying to constrain the government from growing and getting bigger. So, anybody that comes in that wants a bigger and bigger state, wants a nanny state, literally, every last one of you, that is not what the, um, the founding principles of America. Uh, and freedom of speech becomes an incredibly important one. So this idea that the only way that you're going to get to the right answer is by letting people say what they believe to be true. That the very foundational idea of America is that humans are flawed, governments are flawed, and so you need a mechanism by which it can correct itself. And the only way that you're going to get there is by letting people say what they believe to be true, even if you think they're wrong. Um, the family as the, um, the sort of nucleus of all of this. So, should the government be able to hide that your kid wants to transition from the parent? Absolutely not. Hard pass. Get out of here. Do not pass go. Toasted cheese.

>> Are you talking like, cuz, cuz children can't transition without their parents' permission?

>> Dude. In California, they were, uh, teachers were not allowed to tell parents.

>> Yeah, I think that's fair. Like, are you talking the surgery or are you talking telling?

>> If your kid wants to be called Suzie but is really Timmy, you should immediately notify parents.

>> So I'm going to push back on that because I do think, and if this derails fully, take it back to your initial point. I think if a kid is trans and they don't want to tell their parents, there's probably a valid reason. There's maybe a different argument when you're like, oh, the kid's physically getting surgeries and stuff. I'm not really going into that, but just like, if, if a young child, if I'm a teacher and a young boy came up to me and said, "Hey, you know, I'm figuring myself out. I'm going to go by Susan now and I want to use she her pronouns." I think it is, I think it is immoral for the teacher to go tell the parents because there is a reason that kid's not telling his parents, right? And again, this could just be the Gen Z Ryan skew. So before chat's biting my head, I'll say this. Let's abstract it and let me ask you this question. One of two groups is going to, um, indoctrinate kids. Group number one, the parents.

>> Group number two, the government.

>> And three, religion.

>> Uh, no, cuz that's a parental choice.

>> Oh, that's fantastic.

>> So, which of those two groups would you like to control the indoctrination of the kids? Do you want it happening at the state level or at the family level?

>> I feel like that's a different question, but if, if I'm gonna answer it, I'm gonna say parents.

>> Precisely. Perfect. Then on the meta-value, you and I agree. Now we can now go down and argue about, well, what's the right way for this to play out? Fair. As long as we both agree that the state should not be the one in control of the indoctrination of the children, I'm perfectly here for it.

>> I think it also comes down to, I grew up in a red state and so there were a lot of queer kids who would come out to their friends, come out to their teachers because it was a safe place. And when they go back to their parents' house, they can't be themselves with their parents because their parents are maybe abusive. They kick them out. I had a friend.

>> We already have laws against abusive parents.

>> Well, right, but my point is it still happens, right? Like there were kids in my high school who were kicked out of their house for being gay. And I don't think a teacher telling parents, hey, your kid's gay. Hey, your child's trans is appropriate, I guess, is my argument.

>> Yeah, we, we have found the point of both clarity and extreme disagreement because what ends up happening, there are bad parents.

>> And in my motto of the parents get to decide, those kids get mulched up by the bad parents. Now, I believe it was Romania, they ran an experiment during World War II, I believe, and they said, "We don't trust parents at all. The state is going to take care of the kids." So, this is what's known as a natural experiment where we get to find out what happens when we don't trust parents because some of them really are bad. And so, we're going to take them all away and literally raise them in state-sponsored, what we would call an orphanage. And it devastated an entire generation of kids who got messed up beyond all recognition.

>> Yeah. And I think that's terrible that that happened. And that's the unfortunate part is in order to protect yourself from the small number of parents who are, let's call it, intentionally cruel, that you end up destroying everyone. And so there is no perfect model here. I wish there were, but there isn't. And one of these is not like the other. This is how I feel about the socialism and communism versus the, um, also corrupted, whatever the hell we're going to call the economy that the right wants. It certainly isn't free market capitalism, but they're both bad. But one is orders of magnitude worse. Leaving kids to be raised just by their parents means luck of the draw.

>> Yeah.

>> I got lucky. My parents were awesome. Shout out to my parents. Love you guys. Holy hell.

>> Father's Day is coming or if that Father's Day's coming up.

>> Yes. This Sunday. Thank you. Uh, but there are some people for whom their parents were legitimately evil. But on balance, it's not even close. The government is not prepared to raise children well. They're just not.

>> I agree. So, evolution has said, "Hey, we've got this mechanism where when especially a mother, when she has a child, nature goes in and hijacks her entire damn brain." And she's now like, I will literally do anything for this kid. And that's why people fear the mama bear because the mama bear is like, yeah, I will lose my life, no problem.

>> Uh, so anyway, I think that again, that's one of the values since that was the question. What, what is the value system that would be, that's apologies for derailing, was jumping on that for sure.

>> No worries. You're super respectful and it's a very interesting question. I'm sure a lot of people feel the way you do, but that's why I say I get the impulse, but it just doesn't play out well at scale. So your whole thing, just to wrap that all up since we went on a separate topic, is assimilation for migrants specifically in America looks like taking on the value of freedom, picking yourself up by your bootstraps, doing all the stuff yourself, and not asking for handouts. That would be like the one-sentence summarization.

>> That's such a funny way to resay what I said.

>> Well, I'm just trying to like, what's the succinct.

>> Yeah, the, the succinct thing is individual is the right layer of analysis. Each individual is imbued with a spark of divinity. Okay. I don't believe in God. But if you don't have that orientation, you have not assimilated to our values.

>> Yeah. Spirituality.

>> We are not a top-down society. We are a bottom-up society. That requires freedom. People should be able to say whatever the hell they want, uh, obviously within the constraints of the, um, Supreme Court.

>> And that, uh, there's one last one, freedom of speech, if I didn't already know, I just said that. Economics, that we are built on free market capitalism.

>> Um, so now to pose an interesting hypothetical to tie it back to the UK. Do you think your definition and like how you're defining assimilation in America looks the same in the UK or is it a different story given how UK's history?

>> Well, so we are very much a child of the UK. So I'm very sad at how far apart we have become. Uh, I used to recognize American culture in the UK. We've always been distinctly different. There's no doubt. Having lived in the UK for a year, it feels very different than it does here.

>> Oh, where'd you live? Oh, unless on that might be too. Okay.

>> No, not at all. I was obviously getting married to a Brit, so probably no big surprise. They had a better, um, ironically, a better immigration policy in that she could only stay here for three months. I could stay there for six months, really.

>> Prior to getting married?

>> So yeah, so and.

>> So it's a marriage law.

>> It's, uh, yeah, basically how long is the fiance visa?

>> And theirs was twice as long. So ended up going there. Anyway, I also got a job there, so it was easier for me to work there than it was for her to work here. Yada yada. Uh, so right now we are diverging at a very rapid clip, which is super sad, but, um, there are a lot more similarities than there are differences for sure, but we're far more entrepreneurial, far more entrepreneurial than the Brits. They are far more collectivist than we are. Um, but obviously far less collectivist than say, China.

>> Oh, sorry, I was replying to a chatter.

>> No worries. I thought you had more period. That's interesting. Um, so one of the things the chatters have been talking about, this is a total jump. Uh, and I think we touched on it the other day. I can't remember what you and Drew talked about. That list that came out of all the billionaires that were going to Ireland, I think it was.

>> Is that for the Peter Teal thing?

>> Uh, is that Peter Teal? I don't know the full story. I just read the list. Um, and so I'm curious your insight on like, why do you think this group of people are coming together? Because we're seeing people from both sides of the aisle coming together for this list, or I guess what is it? It's like a retreat.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I think it is true that humans love to form groups, to be a part of a group. You can call it a secret society and make it sound really weird. And in the age of Epstein, I forgive you for doing that. That's for sure. Because there are some really weird ones out there. Uh, but the reality is, I think we all seek people that are into the things that we're into, that have our frame of reference. Um, and in a time of trouble like this, I don't know why he's bringing them together, but I will just say, if you're a game developer, I am desperately trying to put my own group together. Bonus points if you're into anime and manga. Uh, hit me up on X. So, it's like, I would literally do something similar for people that are in game development, all that, cuz I want to be surrounded by people that are going through the same thing I'm going through, that might be able to help me with marketing, right? Like all those things. So, you have an agenda. There are people that can help you with that agenda. And unfortunately, I'm not wired to be good at networking at all. But networking is extraordinarily powerful. It is so powerful. This is why when people get mad at the Rothschilds, I'm like, you're just mad that they're damn good at it.

>> Yeah.

>> They were good at getting rich. Remember that guy started in a damn ghetto. Ghetto, man. Not like, oh, it was a bad neighborhood. It literally, you're in the ghetto. It is demarcated as the Jewish ghetto. You are relegated. And he managed to get his family out of that in a single generation, raise his kids up, they became just insanely wealthy. Then he's like, "Oh, you know what? We really, we got to get, we, we have to like plug ourselves into the political world." It's just damn brilliant. So anyway, he manages to go from a German pauper to his family being connected to the British aristocracy. That's impressive. And so that's why people do this. It's like, how can you help me and I like being around you, and so it's just fun. Uh, it's fun. It's effective. Now, when the thing, and this is why I always tell people, you can achieve any goal you want. Be very careful about what goal you set your mind to achieving. So when you set your mind to achieving mass, mass scale child rape, screw you and everyone around you. That shit is so wild. So, I get why people are inherently like paranoid about these groups because you get rich, you can hide a lot of shit, you can convince a lot of crazy people. Like, that shit is wild. It's real. All of that. Um, but there's also just like, uh, I need the smartest people around me to think through these problems. And so, I'm going to gather the smartest people that understand what does a hyper-wealthy person do in partisan times like these? And by the way, we're damn plugged into at this point, probably a lot of governments. I think Peter Teal, you can pretty credibly say he's plugged into the US government. That's for sure. He's plugged into the Argentinian government, apparently. I would not be surprised to find out that he was plugged into the, uh, government of New Zealand. It's like, so yeah, you get enough of these guys that are like, "All right, cool. Uh, who's got Belgium unlocked?" Yeah, I got Belgium. All right, who's got Brazil? I got Brazil. Literally, you bring them all together. Cool. This is what we're going to do? Yeah, we all agree. Cool, cool, cool. Uh, if Russia launches the nuke, where are we all going? Okay, we're going down here because it's way too far. They're not going to bomb that. It'll be some shit like that. Yeah. And these guys are just running the same kind of playbook you would expect a nation to run. And what do we do in these circumstances? I am guessing. I don't know anything about that. And unfortunately, uh, I actually have been invited to a Peter Teal event, but unfortunately, it wasn't secret. That would have been cool.

>> Tom, they're going to chip you without you knowing.

>> They already have. But, uh, I'm not the guy that gets invited to that shit. So, it's probably good. I'm so awkward at that stuff. And by the way, I refuse to change who I am. So when I get invited to these events, I talk about the shit I care about. Uh, so yeah.

>> I just think it's a reminder at the end of the day, it's like you always say, it's the political elites at the end of the day are just coming after power, right? I mean, we look at this, what humans do.

>> Yeah. It's like, what is Cory Booker and Elon Musk doing in the same room? That doesn't make sense to me, you know? Um, yeah.

>> Power is useful. People will always pursue high utility, and we've got to learn to embrace that. What is high utility?

>> Do you think with Elon Musk there to tie it to the UK immigration situation, do you think there is something of like they are tackling these topics like immigration in other countries?

>> They're trying. I mean, look, they're going to be forced to through violence. So, the reality is the, the effects of immigration are real. I get that we don't want them to be real. I get that people who are left-leaning, uh, some who are sinister, some who are just sincere, people don't want there to be negative externalities to immigration, but there are external, uh, realities to be faced, and so they're going to be dealt with. They will come to a head. Have you guys not read the history of Spain, bro? Bro, like the, um, you had Muslims come in and they take over and just kill, kill, and the Spaniards try to take their country back and they get slaughtered. Slaughtered. And so what do they do? They go hide in the mountains for generations and they have babies. Lots and lots of babies. And now they raise those kids up to be warriors who hate these kids. And so they come back and they take their country back and for a brief second, they actually try to live with them now back as the minority, let them stay, and then they're finally like, nah, screw it, they got, they all got to go, and they just kick them the hell out. And so I think people think that the, call it the West, it's a, it's a rounding thing because it's not just that, but when you look at the very long-standing history of the West or Christianity and Muslims colliding, this shit is a tale as old as time. And so when you look at this as like a new thing, screw that, boys and girls. It's been going on for a very long time. And so, uh, those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. And so you've got to pay attention. You got to pay attention. People just are not paying attention.

>> Pivoting to our super chat because it raises some cool questions. Uh, from Michael Thompson with a $30 super chat. Two things. One, I don't think I've heard you talk about data centers driving down the cost of compute much will change economic numbers. And two, both you and your guest yesterday, I'm assuming the Booamonte episode.

>> Yes.

>> Uh, seem to question teaching below the top 20%. I'm a vet running for a town council in my small town and working a business. If you both stop, guys like me have a much harder time in the heartland. We're listening and applying at the street level.

>> Oh, meaning like sometimes you feel like you're not reaching people. I do have, um, I'm constantly weighing whether I am spending my talents wisely. And if I can't, if the ideas that I put out into the universe are not moving the needle in a way that makes the world better, then I go, hm. It's a lot of aggro that you bring into your life when you start talking about this stuff. Uh, so I know there's something real there. I also think it's bad. I, I know that in the future, I may have to come up with a nom de plume to write stories. If the first game fails, and I think that any of it failed because I speak about politics, the second game will be published by a nom de plume. So it's like, I have created that problem for myself. Uh, so I feel a moral obligation to do it now because I know how beautiful and incredible life can be when people adopt my value set. I'm arrogant enough to believe I really do have the right value set. Uh, so yeah, that's a constant weigh. And if I eject it out for that reason, then it might mean that people like you are being very kind and very generous, that these ideas are helping you. And that helps me a lot, by the way, to hear that it is helping people. But that's the debate. Every one of us has to say, based on the things that I love and my talents, uh, how should I be spending those to greatest use? And some of that just comes down to what's your goal, what means something to you, meaning and purpose, etc., etc. And for a whole host of reasons that I never would have seen coming when I was younger, um, I find myself far more engaged with children's entertainment, feeling like I can have a bigger impact there. So anyway, that's a constant pull.

>> Uh, what about that first part with the data centers? Oh.

>> Uh, so what was her statement? That data centers will lower the cost of what?

>> It seems like a rhetorical question, but it basically seems like it's coming down to, do you think the cost of compute will go down with data centers coming up?

>> No, but I do think that the cost of compute will go down as the algorithms get better. So the cost of compute is going to go down dramatically. Um, one of the ways that we might actually start lowering the cost of compute is to go into outer space because then you don't have to deal with cooling. Um, but the most expensive part, I, I believe this is literally true. Uh, the most expensive part of the AI infrastructure buildout are the chips. And the chips go bad roughly every three years, meaning they become obsolete. They'll be more powerful chips. So data centers, I think, are going to remain expensive for a long time. The key is to not need as many data centers because the algorithms are getting so much better. Uh, that you're able to get much higher output without needing the compute. So if one of those gigantic data centers now, let's say, can service a hundred million people, you need a data center like that to be able to serve a billion people. Then same chips, same data center, now serving more people. The cost goes down. That's where we have to find ourselves. And so far, it seems like algorithms and just general efficiencies of the structure of the AI itself, the data centers itself, that's what's going to drive the cost down. As always, it's going to be innovation. So it's not just, excuse me, it's not just more bigger data centers, more data centers. Those unfortunately have like a freakishly short shelf life on the most expensive part.

>> So to to add to the fact check, you are correct that the chips are the most expensive part, but if we wanted to dig deeper, because these chips are used in so many different parts, the, the most expensive parts that use chips are the GPUs and the accelerators apparently. And the crazy thing, and this is just an added, this is all from Claude Chat. Uh, but there is an added thing Claude just said that Nvidia apparently has cornered the market so hard for AI that it's blocked out other competition and is making chips expensive for everyone, which I didn't realize was all the AI stuff.

>> This is why there are already so many moats that a business can get from efficiencies of scale where it was like, to do what Nvidia did is insanely difficult. Insanely difficult. That's why only Elon is basically running out and trying to replicate it. It's going to be hard. So you already have that moat to all the upstarts that are coming after them, and then they will go beg for regulation so that they can create even more moats. So, not only is the buildout insanely expensive, but they've got the government going to bat for them. And this is why it doesn't look like we're going to have a lot of time to cover it, but I'll touch on it briefly. So, one of the things I said at the top of the story is that Bernie and the Trump admin, the words came from JD Vance's mouth and made me want to headbutt him. Uh, because they're really leaning into this whole like, "Oh, it's sovereign wealth and we're doing it for the people." No, you're not, damn it. You're doing it because you want control. You want to control. Why do we not want the government taking a sovereign wealth position in AI companies? Because they will then choose which ones win and lose. And then guess who loses as a guarantee? You, because there's no competition. You should want the product to get better over time. The product will only get better over time through innovation. Innovation, it's number one like ingredient is competition. You won't get innovation unless you're competing. So having the government step in and be like, "Bro, it's Intel and Intel's such a part of our country." It's like, yeah. And now, just like you did with the damn banks, you're going to decide that they need to be supported. And you will print money to do it. And you will screw all Americans as you steal their money to make sure that Nvidia, which is running itself like an absolute bastard, if they're struggling, that you're going to let them win when somebody else might have been more inventive and only is going to come to power if they collapse. And so watching the right make these lunatic decisions makes me want to break things. It is so damn ignorant. This is what happens when people do not say, "Here's our value set. This is how we got here." This is literally JD Vance on behalf of Trump saying, "You know what? Those damn Chinese, they really know how to do it. We got to be more like China." No, dumbass. The Chinese are brilliant at being Chinese. Americans are brilliant at being American. And now let's run these two things head-to-head. And guess what? Shocker of shockers. Who's won more in the last 150 years? The damn US. So Jesus Christ. This is so stupid. This is about control. This is about I want to be the one that decides where this money goes. It's crazy. And because everybody's in, just protect me, Trump. Protect me. Save me from everybody. That they'll say yes to the dumbest shit on planet Earth. America, I have a different message for you. On your 250th birthday, remember who you are. You were the hardest core shit on this planet. Whether you came recently across the Mexican border or you came long ago and rammed your head into Plymouth Rock and you survived those crazy ass winners, man. You are the entrepreneurs. You are here for an opportunity. You are here to work to show humans have become the most dominant apex predator the world has ever seen through one thing. They put themselves in a position where it was adapt or die. Get good. Turn your latent abilities, potential into actual skill set. To get so good at something that people can't stop you. Nobody handed America shit. We got good geography and we did the rest ourselves. And we took this place over by being willing to carry our cross. Not praying for a lighter load, but instead praying for stronger shoulders. That's how the hell we became America. That's how we got dominant. And all of a sudden, everybody wants shit for free. We want to hand things out. We want daddy to take care of us. We actually refer to the president as daddy. Get the hell out of here. You don't need a daddy. You need yourself. You need to be strong. You need to be willing to fail and fall flat on your face. Learn from that failure. Get back up. Get stronger. Tear the muscle under the weight. Then heal up and be monster mode. That's what made us America, man. It wasn't wanting something for free. It was being willing to innovate our way to survive a harsh winter that killed 80% of us. And the 20% that are still here are gangster. And if somebody is a foreign-born American and they have the value system that we share and they want to come here and be a part of that shit, I welcome them all day long. But we got to be hardcore. Screw a handout. Let's get busy building. Yeah. Need the applause. Tom did the Tom.

>> Um, but speaking of handing America shit, it seems like Australia is going to hand a win.

>> To the USA today.

>> Oh, they're going to hand us the win. Okay. Like, you're, if you're voting for Australia.

>> Oh, no. I'm about to have beef.

>> Cuz the Koshi chart is showing that right now people think 62% chance America pulls out in today's World Cup game and kicks Australia's ass.

>> I think they will win. But please, to my beloved American team, who played so well in the first game, you guys were very impressive. You actually look like a World Cup team for the first time since I've been watching. I was very, very, very impressed. Remember, you must come in knowing you have to execute. If you come in cocky, thinking that you're going to win automatically, you will lose because the mind is the most powerful athletic asset that you have. So, just stay sharp, stay focused, baby, and get that win. But I will be watching.

>> Um, I also just, I know we don't read $10 super chats, but I'm going to read this one. Uh, Swirling Dragon says they just found out their friend Sonia passed away last year and her family has made a GoFundMe, um, to raise money for her memorial. I just wanted to point that out because a super chatter did it.

>> That's very kind. You have to be careful with that. Otherwise, our chats will be full. There are plenty of, uh, deserving people who will fill this.

>> Oh, really? My bad. Don't do that, guys.

>> Yeah, I love you, man. And I really hope that your friend gets everything they need. Uh, I've been on the internet long enough to know how quickly that turns into madness. So, uh, do wish you the best, but.

>> But we do have a super chat.

>> We will not be. Yeah.

>> Uh, bulletproof monk says, "Your pot is the best online. Time plus effort builds ability. Hit me hard. My thesis, time plus intention creates meaning. Thought loops create burden. Burden shapes belief. And belief shapes what feels possible."

>> At a glance, that's a good loop. I dig it.

>> I'm here for it. Well said. It's all true.

>> Um, and that's the last super chat we've got for now.

>> Amazing. All right, you guys have made this week absolutely incredible. I can't thank you guys enough. Our numbers have been up, up, up recently. Um, so I'm super, super grateful to you. Super grateful to Koshi, who, please guys, love these sponsors. They've been so good to us. To our partnership team that's put this all together. We're so grateful. Uh, the QR code on the screen right now. Use code impact. Hit that bad boy. Get $10 to trade on cowshi.com. Pay attention to Koshi. It's going to help you understand where things are going. This is what I use them for. I want to know where, where is society at? What is culture saying? It's super, super helpful. And then I've got another AI master class coming up. You do not want to sleep on this one. Thursday, July 9th at 1:00 p.m. Pacific. I'm going to teach you guys how to launch a business using AI. People are telling you that AI slop and it's bullshit. That is dumb. I'm telling you right now, we use it daily at Impact Theory to great effect. And I will show you guys exactly the kind of things that will help you if you've always wanted that side hustle, start a business, or just control your destiny inside of somebody else's company. Let me show you how to use this. It's free. Thursday, July 9th for free, 1 p.m. Pacific. Hope to see you there. All right, guys. Peace out. Much love. Have a great weekend. Later.