Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Two Hundred Sixty Three: Digital Authoritarianism

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Episode Two Hundred Sixty Three: Digital Authoritarianism · The Death Of Journalism

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred and sixty three of the
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  Speaker 1: Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zigler. I'm
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  Speaker 1: your host on today's show. President Trump gets unprecedented and
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  Speaker 1: nearly universal praise for the peace deal between Israel and Amas,
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  Speaker 1: But is it really a great deal? RFK Junior makes
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: perhaps his craziest autism claim yet. I'll tell you something
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  Speaker 1: you did not know regarding the Katie Porter meltdown in
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  Speaker 1: the California governor's race. I'll also provide a very deep
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  Speaker 1: dive into the artificial intelligence issue that you will not
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: get anywhere else. And Penn State University makes its second
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  Speaker 1: worst football coach firing in its storied history. I have
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  Speaker 1: been promising for several weeks that I would do a
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  Speaker 1: deep dive into the entire artificial intelligence issue that I've
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  Speaker 1: been studying quite extensively, and I keep waiting for there
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  Speaker 1: to be a slow news week for it to be
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  Speaker 1: an appropriate time to spend most, if not all, of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a podcast episode on that topic, and it just never
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  Speaker 1: seems to happen. So at the risk of having another
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  Speaker 1: long episode, I'm going to do it in this week's episode,
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  Speaker 1: regardless of what other news transpired, and there has been
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  Speaker 1: a lot that has actually taken place over the last week.
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  Speaker 1: It seems to happen every single week, So I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to try to go through the biggest stories as succinctly
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  Speaker 1: and as quickly as I can so that this isn't
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  Speaker 1: some sort of four hour podcast episode. But obviously there
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  Speaker 1: is a lot to talk about in the news that
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  Speaker 1: has occurred over the last week. The biggest story by
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  Speaker 1: far is that there has been a ceasefire and an
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  Speaker 1: apparent piece deal between Israel and Hamas that was negotiated
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  Speaker 1: largely by the United States, specifically by Trump's son in
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  Speaker 1: law Jared Kushner, among others, and Donald Trump himself. The
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  Speaker 1: hostages that were taken as a result of the horrendous
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  Speaker 1: terrorist attack just over two years ago on October seventh,
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  Speaker 1: Bay Jamas were released to great fanfare, and there's obviously
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  Speaker 1: a lot of joy surrounding the release of those hostages.
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  Speaker 1: Trump has been getting an insane and truly unprecedented amount
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  Speaker 1: of praise, so much praise that Trump even thanked the media,
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  Speaker 1: which you've never seen Trump do. He thanked the media
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  Speaker 1: profusely for their overwhelming praise of what he has taking
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  Speaker 1: credit for in brokering this piece deal, this cease fire,
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  Speaker 1: this hostage release. And there's no question that both on
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  Speaker 1: the right and the left, the media coverage of this
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  Speaker 1: has been extremely positive, extremely positive, and I can understand
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  Speaker 1: why that would have a lot of impact on PP.
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  Speaker 1: In a weird way, this piece deal has been kind
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  Speaker 1: of a litmus test for Trump derangement syndrome. Right. I
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  Speaker 1: see this a lot from people on the left. They're
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  Speaker 1: actually hesitant to criticize this at all because it's so
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  Speaker 1: overwhelmingly popular. It's being praised by so many different varieties
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  Speaker 1: of people, so many different countries, that you don't want
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  Speaker 1: to look like you have TDS by standing up and saying, hey,
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  Speaker 1: wait a minute now. To me, that's not the definition
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  Speaker 1: of TDS. I get accused of having TDS all the time.
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  Speaker 1: To me, the definition of TDS is or ought to be,
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  Speaker 1: that you say something incorrect or you come to an
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  Speaker 1: incorrect conclusion about a topic because of your derangement regarding
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  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And that's something that I have tried exceedingly
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  Speaker 1: hard to do over the last ten years, and I
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  Speaker 1: think most for the most part, I've succeeded in not
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  Speaker 1: succumbing to those temptations as someone who does not like
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  Speaker 1: Donald Trump personally and has opposed him politically on most
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  Speaker 1: but not all things. To me, the standard here is,
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  Speaker 1: are you saying something inaccurate? Are you analyzing something in
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  Speaker 1: a faulty way because you're allowing your view of Trump
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  Speaker 1: to alter your ability to perceive reality. And I have
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  Speaker 1: to tell you, folks, I think there's another side of
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  Speaker 1: this story. And I think the best way to understand
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  Speaker 1: that there is another side of the story is how
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  Speaker 1: this deal got made. Right now, there's been so much
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  Speaker 1: praise over the negotiation skills of Kushner and Trump and Rubio,
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  Speaker 1: and everyone is very happy right now. And I hope
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  Speaker 1: it all turns out great. I really do. Everybody wants
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  Speaker 1: piece in the Middle East. It's fantastic that the hostages
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  Speaker 1: are returned. But somebody's like, okay, so how did this happen?
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  Speaker 1: Why did this happen? What was different about the way
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  Speaker 1: that the Trump team went about this to get this
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  Speaker 1: deal done, and for instance, the Biden team, because obviously
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  Speaker 1: this happened under Biden's watch. Well, to me, this is
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  Speaker 1: not that difficult to understand what really transpired here, and
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  Speaker 1: that is that Trump, who is a master at understanding
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  Speaker 1: leverage as a real estate guy, this has always been
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  Speaker 1: his strength. He understands leverage very very very well. And
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  Speaker 1: the traditional way of trying to broker a peace deal
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  Speaker 1: or a hostage release or a ceasefire when Israel is involved,
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  Speaker 1: Israel obviously being the ally of the United States, the
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  Speaker 1: traditional strategy would be to support Israel full throttle and
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  Speaker 1: to try to force Hamas into making a good deal
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  Speaker 1: for Israel. That would be the traditional way of doing things.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think that's the way the Trump team did
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  Speaker 1: this at all. I think they used a reverse leverage strategy.
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  Speaker 1: And I think you're gonna realize as I described this,
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  Speaker 1: that this is something Trump has already tried, either consciously
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  Speaker 1: or subconsciously when it came to ending the war with
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  Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia, which he promised he would end on
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  Speaker 1: day one and has not been able to do so.
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  Speaker 1: In the Ukraine Russia situation, he publicly castigated Zelensky, effectively
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  Speaker 1: cut his balls off, told the whole world he has
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  Speaker 1: no cards, and to the extent there was a strategy there,
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  Speaker 1: it was to force him into taking a bad deal
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  Speaker 1: with Putin. Well, Zelensky hasn't done that, and there hasn't
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  Speaker 1: been a deal yet between Russia and Ukraine. But I
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  Speaker 1: think the same basic strategy is at play when it
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  Speaker 1: came to Israel and Hamas. Trump understood that Israel is
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  Speaker 1: completely lost without the United States, maybe even more so
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  Speaker 1: than Ukraine is without the United States, and so therefore
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  Speaker 1: Trump used and those around Trump used our leverage on Israel,
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  Speaker 1: in my opinion, to force Israel into a deal that
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  Speaker 1: really is not all that great at all. And then
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  Speaker 1: they used the leverage that they haven't, specifically the relationships
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  Speaker 1: that Kushner has with the allies of Hamas, to incentivize
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  Speaker 1: them into forcing Hamas to finally be semi rational and
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  Speaker 1: agree to a cease fire and hopefully a peace deal
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  Speaker 1: that lasts. And by the way, part of this equation
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  Speaker 1: that I've been very baffled by is how is it
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  Speaker 1: that we are celebrating universally this peace deal when peace
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  Speaker 1: deals of the Middle East are notoriously difficult to enforce
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  Speaker 1: and maintain. This seems like an obvious premature celebration. Again,
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  Speaker 1: I'm as hopeful as anybody this holds that it works,
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  Speaker 1: that there's peace, people stop dying. It's great that the
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  Speaker 1: hostages are released. Nobody rational is denying any of that.
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  Speaker 1: But when you look at what actually transpired here here,
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  Speaker 1: I think this is a lousy deal for Israel. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: Israel was the one that was attacked horrendously, horrifically, and
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  Speaker 1: so what does Israel get. They get twenty civilians that
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  Speaker 1: have been held in probably horrific conditions against every moral
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  Speaker 1: and legal principle known to man for the last two years.
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  Speaker 1: They get them back. They still don't have even the
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  Speaker 1: bodies of most of the people that were killed in
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  Speaker 1: that horrendous terrorist attack. They get that. But Hamas gets
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  Speaker 1: back almost two thousand soldiers. I mean, right there, you're wondering, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: how does that equate? And then the security measures to
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  Speaker 1: maintain this thing long term don't appear to me to
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  Speaker 1: be in Israel's self interest. So how did this happen? Net?
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  Speaker 1: And Yahoo appears to be very much in favor of
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  Speaker 1: this deal, and you know, no one could ever accused
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  Speaker 1: him of being soft on Hamas well. My sense of
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  Speaker 1: what really transpired here is that over two years Israel,
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  Speaker 1: at least some elements of the political factions within Israel
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  Speaker 1: got tired of this war. Politically, it was becoming a burden.
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  Speaker 1: And then you have Trump basically placing a knife on
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  Speaker 1: Israel's balls and saying, look, I'm done with this. I
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  Speaker 1: need you to make a deal. Then what's Netanyahu gonna do?
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  Speaker 1: And he certainly wants the deal is made unless it
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  Speaker 1: until Hamas breaks the piece deal, which could be a
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  Speaker 1: very interesting scenario should that happen down the road. But
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  Speaker 1: at least for now, Netanya who has to play nice,
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  Speaker 1: He has no choice because Trump has all the leverage. Now,
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  Speaker 1: of course, everybody is praising this, and so how do
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  Speaker 1: you explain zig that everybody in the media. How could
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  Speaker 1: all the media that's so critical of Trump be wrong
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  Speaker 1: or at least somewhat wrong when it comes to universally
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  Speaker 1: praising Trump and his team for what transpired here. Well,
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  Speaker 1: to me, it's not that difficult to understand from a
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  Speaker 1: media perspective. The right wing media is going to go
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  Speaker 1: with whatever Trump says is the truth. So if Trump
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  Speaker 1: is making the deal and it's creating, at least in
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  Speaker 1: the short run, piece, then that's inherently good. So the
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  Speaker 1: entire right wing media is going to go with Trump
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  Speaker 1: no matter what. Even Ben Shapiro, who has been cheerleading
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  Speaker 1: this whole thing. He actually made the trip, like on
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  Speaker 1: the team bus to Israel to celebrate this cease fire.
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  Speaker 1: I would love to know what Ben Shapiro's true opinions
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  Speaker 1: are on this. I find it hard to believe that
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  Speaker 1: the Ben Shapiro that I've been watching for many, many
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  Speaker 1: years really thinks this is a fantastic deal. Here's what
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  Speaker 1: I am pretty darn sure of when it comes to
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  Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro and other people like him in the right
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  Speaker 1: wing media. If Joe Biden made this exact same deal,
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  Speaker 1: or Kamala Harris made this exact same deal, they would
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  Speaker 1: be furious, furious, and I'm very sure of that because
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  Speaker 1: they would be free to speak their true beliefs. But
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: because of Trump's hold over the right wing maga media,
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  Speaker 1: it's far easier for them. They are deeply incentivized to
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  Speaker 1: not only go along with this, but to cheerlead it,
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  Speaker 1: to literally be part of it. And by the way,
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  Speaker 1: when I say, you know what, if Biden made the deal,
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  Speaker 1: this deal seems like it's almost exactly the same deal
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  Speaker 1: that the Biden team tried to make. They just didn't
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  Speaker 1: go about it either as an effective or as as
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  Speaker 1: cynical a fashion. As the Trump team did, and the
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  Speaker 1: circumstances were a little bit different because I think Israel's
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  Speaker 1: gotten tired, both physically as well as politically. So the
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  Speaker 1: right wing media is completely beholden to whatever Trump wants,
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  Speaker 1: and the left wing media inherently piece is always good,
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  Speaker 1: hostage release is always good. But let's face it, not
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  Speaker 1: all but a lot of the left wing legacy media
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  Speaker 1: not a big man of Israel despite a lot of perceptions.
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  Speaker 1: Is the way you know, the New York based media
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  Speaker 1: used to be in this country. It's not that way anymore.
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  Speaker 1: So I think they see this as a fantastic development
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  Speaker 1: that they're begrudgingly giving Trump credit for. Hey, we got
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  Speaker 1: a peace steel, the hostages are released, and it looks
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  Speaker 1: like Israel didn't win here. That's my perception of why
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  Speaker 1: we have this remarkable universal nature of the reaction of
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  Speaker 1: the media coverage to this being in a positive direction.
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  Speaker 1: And I had to tell you, I was pretty confident
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  Speaker 1: of my take on this until the one major media
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  Speaker 1: member that I saw basically saying the same thing happened
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  Speaker 1: to be Chris Cuomo on News Nation, A Chris Clobo,
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  Speaker 1: who I really have a huge problem with going all
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the way back to the old Penn States things, since
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: he was the only guy to ever interview Aaron Fisher
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  Speaker 1: for a major television outlet when he was with ABC.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm not a Chris Cuomo fan, but I thought
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  Speaker 1: Chris Cuomo did a hell of a job articulating pretty
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  Speaker 1: much exactly what I just said without the analysis of
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  Speaker 1: how the strategy was different and when I'm calling the
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  Speaker 1: reverse leverage strategy, using your leverage against your ally as
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  Speaker 1: opposed to your opponent. And part of that equation is
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  Speaker 1: this unique relationship that Trump and Jared Kushner have some
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: might say not unique, but deeply financially invested relationship that
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Trump and Kushner have with the Middle East and specifically
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  Speaker 1: Cutter or Qatar. It's said both ways, I'll go with
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  Speaker 1: Katar whatever. And so we had a remarkable moment and
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  Speaker 1: a very controversial moment in the aftermath of this deal
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  Speaker 1: that I thought was very very telling, but for reasons
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  Speaker 1: that were different than the way the story ended up
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  Speaker 1: getting perceived. You're probably aware that Cutter, among with other
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  Speaker 1: Middle Eastern countries were very critical a fact, and putting
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  Speaker 1: pressure on Hamas to go along with this deal. And
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  Speaker 1: it was very clear that Secretary of War Pete Hegstath
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  Speaker 1: was connecting that cooperation that Qatar provided with a benefit,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: that Qatar was getting a benefit that when Hegseth articulated,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: it sounded off the wall bizarre because frankly, Hexseth misspoke
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  Speaker 1: and made it sound as if part of this deal
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  Speaker 1: was that Quitar was going to have its own military
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: base in the United States of America. Well, we would
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: later find out that that's not really what's going down,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: that they're just going to have some pilots trained by
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the US military ATA base in the United States. But
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: this sounded horrific. Lots of people reacted to this very
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: very strongly, and understandably so because Hegsath at best totally spoke.
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  Speaker 1: But to me, the most important part of this was
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  Speaker 1: the obvious and direct connection the quid pro quo between
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Cutter putting pressure on a moss. By the way, Qatar,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I screwed up the pronunciation again. Katar cited by Trump
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  Speaker 1: himself at twenty seventeen as a major sponsor of terrorism
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  Speaker 1: throughout the world and a bad actor. So here, all
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, Qatar is a good actor. Gee. I
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  Speaker 1: wonder if part of that's because they just signed a
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  Speaker 1: massive deal for the Trump Organization to build a golf
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: course there. And of course, Qatar is also the country
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  Speaker 1: that gave Trump a four hundred million dollar airplane to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: replace Air Force one g What an amazing coincidence. Well,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: here we have Katar playing a significant role in all
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  Speaker 1: this and being rewarded with Pete Hegstath announcing in very
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: screwed up fashion in this new deal to train the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Katari Air Force in the United States. And for the record,
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  Speaker 1: here's what it's satellite. When Pete Hegseth really screwed the poach,
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  Speaker 1: no one.
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  Speaker 2: Other than President Trump could have achieved the piece that
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  Speaker 2: what we believe will be a lasting piece in Gaza,
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  Speaker 2: and Qatar played a substantial role from the beginning working
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: with our folks to ensure that came about.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to thank you for that historic piece
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and look forward to.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Joining the President as that gets it's already been delivered,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: but as that's formally signed as well. And I'm also
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: proud that today we're announcing or signing a letter of
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: acceptance to build a Katari EMII Air Force facility at
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho location will be host.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: A contingent of Katari.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: F fifteen's and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Lethality in our operability. It's just another example of.
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  Speaker 2: Our partnership and I hope, hope, you know, your excellency
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  Speaker 2: that you can.
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  Speaker 1: Count on us. Now when you hear Hegsath say that,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: any rational person is going to go, what the fuck
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: is that? I was definitely in that camp, but it
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: was one of those things that was so crazy. I'm like,
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  Speaker 1: how can this possibly be? There's no way this is true.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And it turns out that it's not true. That Hegseeth
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: greatly exaggerated and misspoke about what the apparent reality of
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: this is. That did not stop someone like Laura Lumer,
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  Speaker 1: who has been a very close advisor to President Trump
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and has even gotten him to fire very significant people
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: in his administration. She's a MAGA influencer, and she went
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely bananas. She posted like forty times on social media
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: how outrageous this was, and even suggested that she might
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: not vote in the twenty twenty six midterm elections. Now
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  Speaker 1: I don't know whether or not she's finally come to
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  Speaker 1: her senses and realizes that this is all much ado
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: about very very little. But that was a very very
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: telling moment, but not for the reasons that it got
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: all the publicity. To me, this was an insight into
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  Speaker 1: how this deal got done. And you might be saying, zig,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: who cares the deal got done, Let's hope that it
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: sticks and let's hope for the best. I'm in that camp.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I'm fine with that idea. But to me, I think
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Amas won here. When I look at what Hamas got
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and what Israel got, I'm like, Okay, what exactly you know,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: other than having to endure two years of bombardment from Israel,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: what exactly was the negative in the long run that
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Hamas suffered because of this outrageous, horrific nine to eleven
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: style October seventh attack from two years ago? What was it?
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  Speaker 1: To me? I don't think that Israel won here, certainly,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: not to the degree. I don't think Amas lost to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the degree that they deserve to lose. But Trump wanted
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: a deal, and he was willing and able to use
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: his leverage on his ally and then use relationships with
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the allies of Hamas to pressure both sides. That doesn't
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: mean it's gonna hold. I mean, these things are notoriously
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: difficult to keep together, and you know, I think there's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: a very good chance that it does not hold. Hopefully
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: it will. I'm not I'm definitely in the camp and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: people who are like this fantastic if it holds, great.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I don't like the precedent and I get a little
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: nervous when the entire media industrial complex is praising Trump
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: for something that, Okay, maybe in the short run deserves
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: some praise. But there's another side to this. There's there's
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a reason why this deal was able to get done when,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for instance, the Biden team couldn't get it done. You
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: know the old only Nixon can go to China thing,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: which I guess is now so old that many people
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: probably listen to this don't even understand what that means.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: But that's that's an old adage in politics, that only
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Nixon had the credibility to go to China without fearing
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: being called, you know, a sell out to China. Well,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: only Trump can sell out Israel, partially because of his
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: relationship with Netan Yahoo. And I did find it interesting
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: that when Trump went to Israel, he made a plea
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: publicly to the president of Israel to pardon the Prime
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Minister Benjamin Netton Yahoo. That felt like a little bit
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of a quid pro quo too, Like, knowing what I
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: know of Trump's psychology, I don't think Trump does that
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: unless he feels like net and Yahoo deserves something a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: little extra, like, you know, a little something extra for
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the effort. That felt very much like maybe quit pro
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: quo was the wrong phrase. But knowing what I know
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of Trump's psychology, for him to publicly make a plea
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: for a part for the criminal charges that Netanya, who's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: facing in Israel, feels like, you know, you know, Benji
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: really did be a solid here. He's kind of getting
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the raw into this deal. Maybe I could help him
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: out here. That's just that's just my instinct based upon
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: what I understand of Trump's psychology. But I am I
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: am not somebody who thinks that this is an amazing
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: bit of diplomacy and a miracle situation here. It may
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: not hold, and I don't think it's all that great
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: of a deal. That again, but to be clear, this
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: is not Trump de rangement syndrome, because one, I think
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: my analysis is dead on it's factually based, and two
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping it's successful. It would be fantastic if this
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: was somehow successful. It'll be very interesting to see what
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the media reaction if it turns out that it doesn't hold,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: because a lot of the things that have been said
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: may be taken back, and you know, the intensity of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that reaction might be might be quite strong. I mean,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Trump has praised the hell out of Marco Rubio as
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the greatest Secretary of State of all time. I think
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: we ought to remember that. See how howlong that holds
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: depending on what happens with regard to the peace deal
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: between Hamas and Israel. But obviously, you know, this is
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: a story one of many that will keep an eye
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: on the Death of Journalism podcast. And I hope, I
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: hope actually we never talked about this again, because I
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: hope that means that the peace deal has somehow held.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And moving on to other topics, I've got to at
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: least mention the latest when it comes to RFK Junior,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the head of Health and Human Services, and his crusade
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: against autism and his desperate attempt to try to come
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: up with some explanation for why autism rates have exploded
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: in the last two decades. In America and around some
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of the world, although not all the world. And he's
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: really said a lot of crazy things, so it's difficult
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: to discern which is the nuttiest. But this whole idea
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that a sen of innefit or thailanol is a primary
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: cause of autism, to me is just so utterly ridiculous
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. But it doesn't to me
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: even get out of the batter's box as a theory
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: one because the studies on which that theory is based
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: are incredibly weak and not definitive of it at all.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And the number one thing you have to remember in
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: these types of situations is that correlation does not equal causation.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: This is something that apparently RFK Jr. Was never taught,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: or if he was, he's forgotten about it, because he
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: does believe, at least when it fits his agenda, the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: correlation does equal causation. And to me, the reason why
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the tail in all theory doesn't get out of the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: batter's box is one autism existed before thailand all, but
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that to me is not nearly as definitive as the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: other element of this, the other side of the timeline issue,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: which is that Thailand aw was being used widely for
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: about half a century before there was a massive spike
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: in the autism diagnosis rates in the United States of America.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So how does that make any goddamn sense. It doesn't.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: It's absurd on its face, and so you have incredibly
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: weak studies, but it doesn't even pass any logic test.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: And there was another public event where Trump was in attendance,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and our cage was posing another new theory or another
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: alleged piece of evidence to show that I guess Thailand
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: all causes autism. In this I'm playing this mostly because
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: it just shows the weakness of Argay Junior's case, as
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: well as the bizarre lens He's willing to go to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: try to prove something that is not provable because it's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: not true. And specifically, I'm referring to the idea that
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: rm K Junior, in a public event in the presence
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of the United the presence of the President of the
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: United States of America, actually tried to claim that because allegedly,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm just going to presume he's telling the truth
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: here because I don't have the data in front of me,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: but presumably autism rates among men who have been circumcised
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: are twice as high as among men who have not
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: been circumcised. And just for the record, here is what
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: RFK Junior had to say about this, a comment, by
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the way, that Donald Trump approved of in this publicly
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: televised meeting.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's also just there's many, many other confirmation studies. Oh,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: there's two studies that show children who are circumcised early
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: have doubled the rate of bolotism. That's highly likely because
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: they're given title. Oh, you know, none of this positive
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: of all of it we should be paying attention to.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you.
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: Know, there's a tremendous amount of a proof for evidence.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: I would say it's a non doctor, but I've studied
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: this a long time.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Ago, you know what I mean. All right now, The
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: idea here in theory is that because boys get part
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: of their penis chopped off during circumcision as babies, and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: therefore they're given tilot all, I guess, which is not
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: a fact, not an evidence that somehow this must be
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: must be. There's no other explanation for this other than
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the idea that uhha, a sedam in event or tilt
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: all causes uh autism. Because we have this alleged fact
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that boys that are circumcised are twice as likely to
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: later be diagnosed with autism than boys that are not. Well,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: there's so many problems with this, uh, but I'm just
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: going to go through a couple of them real quick. First,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: is that being twice as likely in this kind of
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a situation is not that much of a correlation. I mean,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: it really isn't. I mean, if it was ten times
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: or twenty times, Okay, wow, that's that's a pretty strong correlation.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Let's find out, you know, what the causation for that is.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: But twice as much, well, it sounds like a big correlation, really, isn't.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Number two, we don't even know whether or not you know,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: boys that are circumcised or given tile at all as
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a baby, you know, generally circumcision, you know, the baby's
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: over it in a very very short period of time.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: And so there's that part of the equation isn't even
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: based in any sort of data or facts. It's just
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: supposition or theory. But the biggest problem is the idea
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: that you're using circumcision, which is an inherently social phenomenon, right,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: It's a cultural phenomenon. It's there's nothing inherently, you know,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: other than the social and cultural principles and marais and
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: religious beliefs and traditions of a particular family that causes
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: people to get circumcised. So it's inherently a situation where
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: you have a group of people. The boys that are
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: circumcised are growing up in a culture that is you
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: it's not really unique because it's incredibly popular, but it's
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: different from the culture of boys who are not circumcised.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: That's just so obvious. I feel stupid even mentioning it.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So it's clearly there's a difference in culture because that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: it is a cultural phenomenon circumcision. Well, once you have
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: a group that is clearly different culturally, then inherently you've
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: lost any chance of proving the causation argument, because there
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: could be all sorts of explanations that are far more
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: logical than the fact that babies who get circumcised might
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: be given tilot off for the pain, which to me
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't even make any sense, especially since it's a one
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: shot deal. But they're all I mean, off the top
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: of my head, I can think of several far more
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: plausible scenarios to explain this rather minor causation. The first
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: one that comes to mind is, Okay, so you have
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: a culture that believes in circumcision, is it not possible
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: that that culture might also marginally be more likely to
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: want to have their boy diagnosed with autism as being
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: on the spectrum to explain odd behavior, which I think
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: is driving a huge part of the spike in autism
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: rates over the last couple of decades. It is a
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: social contagion. So you have a social construct of circumcision
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: playing into this social contagion of autism diagnosis. That makes
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. There's also an economic issue.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: You could have completely different economics among the circumcised group
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: as opposed to the uncircumcised group, but it's mostly cultural,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and to me, in a weird way, this actually proves
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: my argument that this is in fact the social contagion
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: this autism spike over the last couple of decades. To me,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: that is the only explanation that makes total sense. And
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I've explained in my own experience, both through my wife
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: who's a special ed teacher, and my own experiences with
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: older people who would have been diagnosed with autism if
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: they had been born later in life that clearly were
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: on the spectrum that weren't because we had a situation
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: that was where autism was underdiagnosed and now it's way
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: over diagnosed because it's actually become cooler. It's not just accepted,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: but something that a lot of parents want to have
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: their kids be diagnosed as having being on the spectrum
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons, some of which are economic.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: According to my wife, the special ed teacher, I've said
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: before that she's had parents begged her to help get
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: their kid be put on the autism spectrum. So if
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: you have a social construct, a cultural construct like circumcision
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: that has a correlation with autism, to me actually goes
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: against your entire theory. But RMK Jr. Is deeply invested
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in this. In fact, he even said at one point,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: now a lot of people made a lot of this,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and I understand why they did. He might have kind
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: of misspoke, but he did actually say, we don't have
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: the proof that you know aceta minifite causes autism. We're
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: doing the studies to get the proof. That's almost a
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: direct quote. Well, that doesn't sound very scientific to me.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: That sounds like you have a conclusion that you're trying
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: to come up with enough data to plausibly support and
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: you know it's not just circumcision, by the way, maybe
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: even even worse example that r F K Junior tries
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: to use all the time when it comes to aceta
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: minaphin is Cuba. Apparently, according to RFK Junior, And again
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know whether or not this is even true,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: but I'll just accept it for the sake of argument,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Apparently Cuba has a very low rate of tile and
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: all use at a very very low rate of autism. Well,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: who fucking cares. There's a million things about Cuba that
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: are completely different that could be the cause of both
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of those, including a really horrendous economy and terrible healthcare
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and and no incentive to create an autism diagnosis. So
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, just to me, that just completely destroys RFK
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Junior's credibility. And I've said from the very beginning he's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: a nut job and he's dangerous in the position that
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: he's in. Occasionally he'll say things that I like. Occasionally
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: he'll say things that it's a bit like Tucker Carlson.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Occasionally he'll say things that are really smart, and you're like, yeah,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: that's great, and I wish more people would say that
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: he did that, you know, with regard to the COVID
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: reaction in his congressional testimony recently, and I applauded that.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: But for all the good things that he occasionally says,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: he says a lot of crazy things that are not true,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and I think he further exposed that when it came
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: to his most recent comments on the issue of autism. Now,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I want to turn to a couple of developments here
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: in California that made big news over the last week.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: The first is that they have arrested a suspect in
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the Power Sades fire, the horrendous wildfire that destroyed Pacific
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Palisades at the beginning of this year. And I found
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: this to be rather remarkable on a number of levels,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: mainly from a media perspective. I'm just astonished as to
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: how relatively little news coverage this development got and how
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: little outrage I have sensed or perceived exists, not just
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: in the media coverage but among the public here in California.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a guy who, if he is
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: indeed guilty, and it appears as if he is. Although
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: I do think they're going to have some problems proving
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: the case in court, because their allegation is that he
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: set a fire on New Year's Eve or early on
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: New Year's Day, and then it's smoldered for seven days,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: it was not properly put out, and then eventually, because
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of the winds that picked up and the dry conditions,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that fire re sparked and ended up destroying Pacific Palisades.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: And you know, twelve people were died, and tens and
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: tens of not hundreds of billions of dollars in property
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: damage was created, and all sorts of lives were destroyed.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could make a very strong argument that
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: this caused way more damage than the worst serial killer
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: in American history, and yet very little outrage, even in
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the meat media coverage. We got a lot of media
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: coverage for about half a day, and even here in California,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: you hear almost nothing about this. There's there is no
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: real anger about it, and it's more of just a curiosity. Oh,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: they finally got a guy. And I don't have a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: really great explanation for it doesn't make any sense to me.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like this. It was ten year
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: years after the fact, we're still within the same calendar year.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And it's just a weird psychological phenomenon that people when
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: it comes to setting a fire. I don't think that
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: they think of it the same way as if you know,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: someone set off a nuclear bomb, but that's essentially effectively
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: what happened here, and so I just found that to
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: be incredibly odd. And of course, you know, most of
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Pacific Palisades is nowhere near even getting started in the
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: rebuilding process. Even I have been surprised by how slow
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: everything is going. I thought that with a mayoral election
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: and a gubernatorial election and Olympics coming up here in
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, that everybody would be greatly incentivized, especially Gavin
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Newsom since he's going to be running for president in
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight, and right now, unfortunately, looks like he
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: could be the leading contender for the Democratic nomination in
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight. With all those actors, I thought, even
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Democrats are going to realize it is very much in
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: their self interest to make sure they fix this goddamn
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: thing and cut some of this red tape and allow
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: them to be rebuilding, because this is this is not
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: something you can really spin. I mean, if if four
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: years from now, and we've had the Olympics and then
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the presidential elections going on, and you know, in three
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: years and nothing has been done to rebuild. That's gonna
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: look really terrible. But they don't see the give as shit.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: So I'm just I'm totally baffled by the lack of
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: democratic urgency to make sure that there's some semblance of rebuilding,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: as well as the rather muted reaction to the arrest
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: of this suspect. And I'm the first person who you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I don't like to see people railroad, and I don't
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: like to come to conclusions without evidence. I don't like
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the rush to judgment. I have some concerns about the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: nature of the evidence against this guy. But it's just
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: it's just baffling to me how it's really not been
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: much of a story at all, considering the impact of
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the Palisades fire less than a year ago now probably
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: getting more coverage nationwide than the arrest of the suspect
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and the arson By the way, it should be pointed
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: out the arsonist and it wasn't climate change or global warming.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Let's make that clear, Gavin Newsom claimed numerous times in
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: the aftermath of both the Pacific Palisades Fire and the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Altadena fire, that this was evidence of climate change, global warming, Well,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: no evidence of that. Now we now know that this
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: was even though there was environmental circumstances that allowed it
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: to happen, this was facilitated by a human being and
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a criminal arsonist. So Newsom was completely and totally wrong
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: about that. And don't let me forget to mention that
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: element of it. But with Newsom being termed out as governor,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: there's a race for governor that is starting here in
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: California that's going to be not this November. Obviously, new
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: has his Proposition fifty, the redistricting proposition, which I think
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: is going to be very very close. I'm still predicting
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: it will probably win by about fifty one forty nine,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: maybe fifty two forty eight, but it is very close
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: and it could lose. But that's this November. Next November
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: will be the next gouvenatory election to replace Gaven Neussom,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and up until this past week, the leading contender to
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: replace Gavin Neussom has unfortunately been a woman by the
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: name of Katie Porter, who's a former congresswoman who ran
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and lost for US Senate to Adam Shift here in California,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and it was always presumed, at least by me, that
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: she would be the next governorate, even as horrible as
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: she is, mainly because there was no way that she
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: could not be in the top two vote getters out
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: of the primary. And it's important to point out the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: way that California does this, which is totally screwed up
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: and is not working out as intended. Boy, there's a
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: rarity in twenty twenty five life, and especially in our
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: political realm. But the way this works in California is
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: the top two primary voters go to the general election
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: regardless of which party they're in, So there is no
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: party primary, and in a statewide race, there's a very
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: very good chance that means there's going to be two
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Democrats who will run in the general election. Now, sometimes
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work out that way. And Katie Porter learned
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: an important lesson which is going to be relevant in
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: just a second when I get to what transpired here
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: during that Senate campaign, because Adams Shift brilliantly, brilliantly used
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: his own money to promote former Los Angeles dodger Steve
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Garvey as the Republican candidate. Because he knew that if
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Garvey got in the top two vote getters, that shift
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: would not have to really run a general election campaign
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: because there's no chance for a Republican, even like Steve Garvey,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: to beat a Democrat in a general election. It's just
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: not possible in California. Regardless of what somebody might tell
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: you that's overly optimistic. I got to share you with
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: one thousand percent certitude, barring massive scandal, the likes of
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: which would be hard to even comprehend, there is no
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: chance for a even remotely credible Democrat to lose to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Republican in general election. And Schiff understood, if I help
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Garvey get into the general election, I've won. Well, that's
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: important because of what ended up transpiring with Katie Porter
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: doing an interview with a local CBS female news reporter
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles. And I have a unique take
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: on this, and I'm going to tell you something that
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I have not seen reported anywhere else, which is as
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: lead at least as baffling to me as the lack
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: of reaction to the Pacific Palisades artist being arrested by
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: the federal government, and that is that you probably have
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: heard that Katie Porter walked out on essentially walked out
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: on an interview with the CBS affiliate because she was
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: upset about questions that she was getting related to her
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: answer involving proposition fifty. That's how this all began. She
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: was asked about proposition fifty, she of course supports it,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and then began a conversation with the reporter about whether
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: or not Republican votes are needed in a general election,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: and Porter scoffed at the reporter, the questioner, the interviewer
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: for even suggesting that there's any chance that if she
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: made the general election against the Republican that she could
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: possibly lose. By the way, again, she's one hundred per
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: sent right, Porter is in that assessment. But here's where
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: things get really odd, and I don't have an explanation
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: for this. I have tried to find out why this
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: transpired the way that it did. But I'm gonna play
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: you the full clip that went viral. The important part
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: of from my perspective, this clip, which is about three
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: minutes long, is that the first minute or so was
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: already made public almost a month ago. Now I know
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: this because when I saw it, I'm like, I can't
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: believe Democrats are gonna let Katie Porter get away with
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: what she said, because she tells the reporter that essentially
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: she's gonna use the Steve Garvey strategy. She doesn't say this,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: but if you read between the lines, she's gonna use
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the Steve Garvey strategy to prevent any other Democrat from
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: making it into the general campaign, which means that she's
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: going to win, which if you're a Democrat, if I'm
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: a Democrat, that's to me outrageous because she's going to
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: run a campaign that sabotages the chance to have two
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Democrats in the general election. And she says it in
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: a very smug and arrogant fashion. And if you don't
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: know who Katie Porter is, I mean she's very heavy,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: very unattractive. I mean, this is a woman who, to
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: me is very incredibly unlikable. Even before all that's been
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: made public in the last week. She was once accused
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: by her ex husband of having poured hot potatoes over
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: his head. To me, the most remarkable part of that
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: story was one that Katie Porter was once married, and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: two that she was once married to a male. Both
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of those things were shocking to me, much more so
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: than the hot potatoes being poored on the head. But
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: if you've seen Katie Porter, you know what I'm talking about.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: But here's the from a media perspective, this is the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: part that just tries me crazy. So the first minute
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: or so of this video was out there, made public
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: by CBS and Los Angeles over about a month ago.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: I tried to give it attention. I even send it,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: sent it to Alex Michaelson, who at the time was
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the news anchor at the Fox affiliate here in Los Angeles.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: This thing has been going on so long. He's now
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: changed jobs. He's now at CNN, which will be interesting
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to see how he works out there. He's been a
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: guest on this podcast before, and he and I have
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: had many many communications over the years as I try
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: to keep him in line, and I think he is
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: at least fair enough to appreciate where I'm coming from.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: But I sent him the clip a month ago about
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: the whole issue of Porter trying to do the Steve
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Garvey thing, and I don't even think he responded. No
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: one cared. And then a week ago just that where
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: I got done taping the podcast. And to be clear,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: when I taped this podcast, especially recently since we've been
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: going along. It is exhausting. I mean, I can barely
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: spell my name at the end of almost three hours
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: of talking without a script, and I happened to see
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: that the Katie Porter interview, what I thought was the
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Katie Porter interview from three or four weeks ago, was
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: now going viral, and I was very confused. I'm like, what,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: what are you people doing this thing? I was trying
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: to focus attention on this weeks ago, what's going on?
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And it took me a while to realize that there
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: was a new portion of the very same clip that
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: had not been made public three or four weeks ago,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: that now suddenly had been made public, and that was
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: the part that was causing it to go viral. And
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: that was that after the initial exchange about Katie Porter
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: arrogantly saying she's going to win and she doesn't need
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Republican votes and that she's going to make or that
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: there's not another Democrat running against Term in the general
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: election so she can't lose. After that, she and the
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: reporter get into a tiff where Porter essentially ends the
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: interview because she doesn't like all the follow up questions,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: none of which were remotely inappropriate, and all of which
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: showed Porter to be incredibly sensitive, have incredibly thin skin,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: and come across as extremely unlikable. So here is the
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: full clip, and I'll explain you know, or at least
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: to the extent that I can, after you listen to this,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: what transpired from a media perspective. But again, the first
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: portion of this I had seen almost a month ago.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: The second portion is the part that ended up causing
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: this to go viral because it showed Katie Porter to
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: be frankly a bitch. And here's what that sounded like.
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: What do you say to the forty percent of California
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: voters who you'll need in order to win, who voted
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: for Trump?
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: How would I need them to win?
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Man?
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: Well, unless you think you're going to get sixty percent
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: of the vote, you think you'll get sixty percent? All
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: everybody who did not vote for Trump will vote for you.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: That's what you're in a general election. Yes, if it
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: is me versus a Republican, I think that I will
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: win the people who did not vote for Trump.
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: What if it's you versus another Democrat?
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: I don't intend that to be the case.
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: So how do you not intend that to be the case.
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: You do you are you going to ask them not
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: to run?
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: No, No, I'm saying I'm going to build the support.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: I have the support already in terms of name recognition,
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: and so I'm going to do the very best I
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: can to make sure that we get through this primary
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: in a really strong position.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: But let me be clear with you.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: I represented Orange County. I represented a purple area. I
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: have stood on my own two feet and one Republican
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: votes before. That's not something every candidate in this race
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: can say. If you're from a deep blue area, if
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: you're from LA or you're from Oakland, you don't have
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: an experience.
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: Is that you don't need those Trump voters?
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Well, you asked me if I needed them to win,
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: so you don't. I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: What is your question?
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: The question is the same thing I asked every that
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: this is being called the empowering voters to stop Trump's
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: power grab. Every other candidate has answered this question, this
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: is not and I said I support it. So and
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: the question is what do you say to the forty
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: percent of voters who voted for Trump.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, I'm happy to say that it's the do you
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: need them to win. Part that I don't understand. I'm
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: happy to answer the ques answer the question is you
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: haven't written, and I'll answer.
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: And we've also asked the other candidates do you think
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: you need any of those forty percent of California voters
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: to win? And you're saying no, you don't.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: No, I'm saying I'm going to try to win every
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: vote I can. And what I'm saying to you.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Is that well to those voters.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: Okay, so you I.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Don't want to keep doing this, I'm going to call it.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: You're not going to do the interview with them?
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Nope, not like this. I'm not not with seven follow
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: ups to every single question you.
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: Ask every other candidate has.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I don't care.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: I don't care. I want to have a pleasant, positive conversation,
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: which you asked me about every issue on this list.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: And if every question you're going to make up a
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: follow up question, then we're never going to get there
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: and we're just going to circle around. I had to
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: do this before ever.
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: You've never had to have an conversation. Okay, but every
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: other candidate has done this.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: What part of I'm me? I'm running for governor because
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: I'm a leader, so I am going to make so.
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: You're not going to answer questions from reporters. Okay, why
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: don't we go through? I will continue to ask follow
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: up questions because that's my job as a journalist. But
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: I will go through and ask these and if you
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: don't want to answer, you don't want to answer, so
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: nearly every legislative.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you,
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: and I don't want this all on camera.
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: I don't want to have an unhappy experience with you either.
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: I would love to continue to ask these questions so
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: that we can show our viewers what every candidate feels
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: about every one of these issues that they care about,
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: and redistrict take it's a massive issue. We're going to
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: do an entire story just on the responses to that question.
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: And I have asked everybody the same follow up questions.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Now, how is it that that second portion of the interview,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: and to be clear, after what you just heard there,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: porter essentially leaves the interview. How that portion was withheld
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: by the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles for at least
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: three weeks is to me still a mystery, maybe even
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: a bigger mystery is, how is it that I'm the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: only one that I'm aware of that's even mentioned this.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have tried everything I can. I responded
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: to the reporter who did the interview on Twitter, asking
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: her for an explanation. I got no response. I revisited
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the issue with Alex Michaelson, who then did a report.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: He was fully aware of what I was talking about,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: because I said, hey, Alex, why is no one mentioning
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: that CBS withheld this interview or this portion of the interview,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: the viral part of this for three weeks? And he
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: acknowledged that that's what happened. But even he's never mentioned
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: it on CNN or or any of the posts he's
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: made on social media. I mean, so I have not
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: followed up with Alex because I don't even understand. I
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: don't under I don't get what's going on here. To me,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: this is not difficult. There needs to be an explanation.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: This interview was done almost a month ago now, and
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: so why is it that this the juicy portion is
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: just now being released. Effectively, My question is who ordered
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the code read on Katie Porter or who was trying
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: to protect Katie Porter and that protection got revoked. I'm
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: not sure which it is, but from a media standpoint,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: this is completely inexcusable because it certainly appears as if
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles was trying to protect
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Katie Porter and then they destroyed her. Here's my guess.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: This is purely a guess. I don't have any inside
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: information on this at all. I think that they originally
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: put out the interview, deciding that the portion where Katie
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Porter and the interviewer get into this argument about questions
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: that that was somehow off the record or maybe inappropriate
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: to air, and maybe somebody at the lower level, maybe
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: the reporter herself, decided not to air it. And then
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: somehow somebody else, maybe higher up in the food chain,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: found out about that portion of the interview, and they
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: decided to come on, we got to release this. This
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: part's fantastic. I think something like that probably transpired. I'm
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: an anti conspiracy person, so unless proven otherwise, I rarely
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: ever go in the conspiracy direction. But that from a
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: media perspective I found to be really quite fascinating, very telling.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately still this moment rather mysterious because I don't
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: have a great explanation despite my efforts for what the
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: hell actually transpired here. As far as how this is
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: going to impact the race for governor, I think she's
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: toast because on the heels of this, all sorts of
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: other terrible videos about Katie Porter have come out, and
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: now basically it's a feeding frenzy, and Porter is in
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: a particularly vulnerable position because she's not in office right now. See,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: not being in office when you're in the middle of
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: a feeding frenzy is basically death, especially when you're not
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: real likable at all. You don't have a huge fan base,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: your name recognition isn't that large to begin with. You know,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: very few people are deeply invested in you. So when
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: you have no reason for people to fear you, and
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: it's very easy for your donors to flee, and no
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: one's going to rush to your protection or your defense
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: because you're not in office, I don't see how it's
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: a weird analogy. I see her as almost as dead
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: in the water as Bill Belichick is at University of
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: North Carolina. I don't see how she turns this around
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: because there's gonna be plenty of other candidates and she's
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: so unlikable yes, California is incredibly liberal to an absurd degree,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: but being that unlikable pretty much trumps everything, and I
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: think she's reached that level. I've not seen a credible
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: poll about the race. Since this transpired. In the betting markets,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: she has plummeted from being the favorite to you know,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: now barely being in contention, and I think that makes
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense. I don't know who is going
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: to emerge from the Democratic Party to be the next governor,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: but I'm glad it's not going to be Katie Porter.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: At least as of right now, it doesn't look like
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: it's going to be Katie Porter. She could still, I guess,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: in theory, make the top two and if there are
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: two Democrats in the general election, but I don't see
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: how she would win as an unemployed, you know, bitchy
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: woman who looks like a but I guess she isn't.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: You know, that's not going to appeal to a majority
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: of Californians. And you know, depending on who the other
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: candidate is, they're gonna have a very very good chance
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: to beat her, especially if they're both of the same party.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: So my guess is I had been predicting previously. In fact,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: when I posted the original portion of that interview about
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: a month ago, I said, you know, Katie Porter is
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: probably going to be the next governor. I can't believe this.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: This statement she made is not going to create any
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: controversy or something to that effect. But I no longer
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: believe she's going to be the next governor. And that's great. Now.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Of course, she might be replaced by someone even worse,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: as hard as that might be to believe, but I
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: don't think Katie Porter is going to be the next
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: governor of California based upon what we currently know. All right,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: As I have promised, for many weeks, I have been
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: studying this issue of artificial intelligence, probably far more than
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: I should have been. I know my wife is getting
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: a bit annoyed by all of the different things that
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: I have brought up regarding AI and the future. And
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: I am gonna you know, I've been promising I would
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: do a major segment on the podcast, and I'm going
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: to finally fulfill my promise here. And I'm doing this
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: for a couple of different reasons, one of which is
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: I expect that as this podcast continues, to whatever extent
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: it does, into the future, this is going to be
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: a major issue, and so I want to lay the
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: foundation for all future AI topics on the death of
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: journalism podcasts, because this thing is so large. It is
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: so huge, so expansive, so complex, so unpredictable, that I
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: feel like you can't deal with this issue in short segments.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: So I need to lay this foundation for what this
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: topic is, how I see it, and where I think
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: we might be headed in the future, so that in
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: future episodes of the Death of Journalism podcasts, I can
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: just do a short bit on AI and not have
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: it completely take over an entire episode of the podcast.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: So I hope that makes sense. That's at least my
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: philosophy here. Plus I've been promising to do this. Plus
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: I frankly don't think there's been enough deep dive analysis
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: of this topic considering how important it may be to
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: the future of the world. I mean, I really part
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: of me almost feels stupid that this isn't the only
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: thing we're talking about. That's how big it could underline
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: could be. And as I get into this topic, and
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: I've thought a lot about how in the world do
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: you tackle a topic as large as artificial intelligence. Well,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: let me start by taking a big picture view here,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: and I realize that I am perceived as a pessimist
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: at heart. I get it. I fight that. I dispute
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: it to some degree. I actually think sometimes I'm a
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: delusional optimist who ends up. You know. The only time
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: I'm usually wrong is when I'm too optimistic, and when
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I'm pessimistic. I tend to be right more often than not.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: But I get that people perceive me as a pessimist.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: I'm certainly a cynic, there's no question about that. But
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: when I look at the topic of things that are
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: going to doom us, right, I am very very much
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: aware that you need to be very very skeptical of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: any effort to claim that this new thing is going
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: to doom us to destruction one because there's an inherent
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: market for that. There always has been since the beginning
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: of humanity. Oh my god, we're all gonna die. Whatever
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the new thing is. That is a very popular reaction.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: It's human in nature, it's evolutionary in nature. Part of it,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: I think is if we react like that, we might
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: be able to prevent it from actually dooming us. But
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: there's no question that it's sometimes even a lucrative position
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: to take. And we've seen this in talk radio for many,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: many years, and I obviously come from a talk radio background.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: We saw it with Y two K, which is probably
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the most dramatic example of this, where for years, you know,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: people at talk radio made lots and lots of money
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: scaring the hell out of you that Y two K
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: was going to cause an apocalyptic reaction when we you know,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: change the clocks and the calendars to the year two
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: thousand and everything was going to melt down. I never
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: believed that. I thought it was a scar. It turned
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: out to be a bigger scam than I even perceived.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: And frankly, I don't know how anyone ever took talk
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: radio seriously after Y two K ended up being a
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: big nothing burger. But I'm saying this to give some
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: perspective and context for how I view these types of issues.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: I was a Y two K skeptic and turned out
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: to be right after Y two K, you know, the
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: next big thing that was going to destroy us all
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: was global warming climate change. I was a global warming
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: climate change skeptic, and I think I'm going to be
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: vindicated on that. As far as the thing that was
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: going to doom us or kill us all, the COVID panic.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I was a skeptic on that. You know, we were
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: told that that was going to kill us all, and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: that was going to completely change life. The Great Reset. Now,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: I was fearful that the Great Reset might actually happen,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: even if the COVID panic was not based in anywhere
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: near the reality that we were told that it was,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and I was somewhat pleasant surprised. Although I still think
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the reset has had more effect than most people think.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: I think that Trump getting elected in twenty twenty four
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: has kind of covered over a lot of the elements
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: of the Great Reset from COVID that actually are still
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: very much in play and where the left really has
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: one even though the perception is that they lost because
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Trump got reelected. That's another story for another day. But
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: by and large, I think we dodged the bullet on
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: the COVID reset. The COVID panic was not what was
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: going to kill us all. So just in the last
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: twenty five years, those are three major topics that a
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: lot of people thought, Okay, this is it, this is
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: the big one, you know, Y two K, global warming,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: the COVID panic. I was a skeptic on all of
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: them to various degrees, and I believe I've been vindicated
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: on all of them. And I have an anti panic bias.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think you've seen that in virtually every
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: story I've ever talked about, the COVID panic being a
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: great example, the Penn State Joe Paternal Jerryson Dusky story
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: being another great example. Those were both moral panics. People
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: lost their fucking minds and it caused a perfect storm
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: of really bad circumstances that created really horrendous results. Well,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I have a very strong bias against panic. I inherently
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: believe that panic is bad. And so therefore the context
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: here when it comes to artificial intelligence is that I
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: am not somebody who is prone. I don't think to
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: coming to a panic reaction that oh my god, this
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: is the big one. We're all gonna die, this is
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: gonna doom us. That being said, I'm really struggling with
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: this one. I am really really struggling with how artificial
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: intelligence is going to impact American life in the not
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: too distant future. Now, let me start with my own
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: experiences with artificial intelligence, which frankly, have had a great
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: disparity between some of them being amazing and mind blowing
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: and others not being very impressive at all. I mean,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: for instance, I spend a lot of time on Twitter
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: or X. Groc is the AI agent on X. Sometimes
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: Groc is very very good. Other times Groc is totally
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: wrong and has put out headlines that are totally false.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: They get sports results wrong all the time. I say
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: they I should say it, I guess, but GROC gets
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: sports results wrong all the time. They had one major
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: headline on X that Charlie Kirk had survived an assassination attempt.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, they are are wrong. It is wrong constantly.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, some of the things when you
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: ask Roca question or you ask chet gpt a question,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: the responses you get are quite amazing and mind blowing.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: Some of the things in the realm of video, like
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: with Sora Too just coming out, which is one of
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: the reasons why I decided to do this topic now,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: because a lot of people are having a very dramatic
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: reaction to the incredibly realistic nature of Sora Too put
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: out by open ai, where you can basically create AI
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: videos instantaneously, that they are almost impossible to discern between
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: what is real and what is fake, and some of
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: that is really remarkable, scary, mind blowing. But I want
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: to make it clear that I am not, as of
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: this moment, totally and completely sold that this is going
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: to reach the potential that the pro AI people say
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: I think it could. I'm just saying it's not there yet,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: because there are a lot of situations that I have
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: experienced with AI where I am not all that impressed.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that it's not going to end up
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: like some of the most optimistic predictions, that it's not
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: going to reach over the threshold where AI suddenly becomes
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: like magic. When you look at Sora too, you go,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, that's magical. Some of the other things
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: that I've already mentioned, I'm not very impressed by you, Like,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: for instance, I'm not a great example of this is
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: X has a feature called Imagine where you can put
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: photographs into the AI and it can bring them to life.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: And sometimes when I do that, I'll take my daughter
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: Grace's artwork and I'll put that in there because she
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: likes to see what Imagine would do with it. Because
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's amazing, sometimes it's spectacular, and other times it's
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: just really terrible and awful. Now, that could just be
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: the kinks. I mean, we were still in the infancy here,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: so I am not one hundred percent sold that this
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: thing is going to be magic, but it could be magic.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: And if it is magic, then really, frankly, this is
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: all we ought to be talking about. And I was very,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: very hesitant and frankly slow to come to the conclusion
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: that this topic was so large that this is really
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: all we ought to be talking about until a couple
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: of months ago. And it's funny to me how people
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: that are in the same sphere maybe are like minded,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: even though they don't agree on everything, but their brains
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: tend to think alike, can come to similar conclusions at
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: exactly the same time without any direct communication about this.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: And what I'm referring to is there was a kind
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: of a Shazam moment for me a couple of months ago.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: And I'm not name dropping here because there's a reason
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: why I'm going to mention this person's name, but this
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: would have been a couple of months ago, and I
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: was speaking to former NBC Today's Show host Matt Lauer
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: about something else. I don't remember what it was. I
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: think it might have been my black Swan situation that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: I've referenced several times before on this podcast. And I
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: don't even remember how we got into it, but I
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: said to Matt, you know, just recently, I have started
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: to really take a deep dive into artificial intelligence, and
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: I'm starting to get freaked out. And Matt said to me,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: almost word for word, I'm in the exact same boat, buddy,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: And we had come to almost the exact same conclusion
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: at almost exactly the same time, that this thing had
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: evolved to the point where it was no longer theoretical,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: that it was now in the realm of, if not reality,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: something that could very easily become a reality in the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: not too distant future. And we both had our own
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: analogies or metaphors for describing what we think is currently
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: happening here. And my analogy is that we have essentially
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: learned that in the middle of the Pacific Ocean there
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: was a nine point eight, you know, unprecedented earthquake somewhere,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: you know, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. And
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: of course whenever there's a massive earthquake in the Pacific,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: we are on tsunami watch, especially here on the West Coast,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: and most of the time the tsunamis do not end
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: up coming to fruition, and if they do, their you know,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: their minuscule. You know, they're a couple of inches or
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of feet whatever, and there's no damage. But
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: as we've saw, we saw, you know, in Indonesia many
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: years ago, I guess about twenty years ago. Uh, sometimes
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: it turns into a total disaster. And that we now
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: know that this earthquake, under my analogy when it comes
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: to artificial intelligence, we now know that this earthquake has happened.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: It's unprecedentedly large. We're now just waiting to find out
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: are we going to get a trickle at the shore
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: or are we just going to get completely overwhelmed and
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: is everything going to get destroyed by the result the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: resulting tsunami that occurs because of this unprecedented AI earthquake.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: And Matt said, up, yeah, I get where you're coming from,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: but I look at it a little bit differently. Matt said,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: I think we just have a new nuclear weapon. That
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: this is the nuclear weapon all over again, only in
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: this particular situation, there are basically no restrictions over who
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: can own the nuclear bomb, and I thought, oh man,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: that might actually be even better than my tsunami metaphor.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: I go, but I go back and forth over which
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: is the better analogy. But I can understand where Matt
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: was coming from when he referenced the nuclear bomb and
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: the danger here. And he didn't mention this, but I
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: think it was implied. There's a couple of different dangers here.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Not only is it far less restrictive and seemingly far
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: easier for people to get their hands on this nuclear bomb,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: but also there's much more of a financial incentive for
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: people to get the nuclear bomb. Now, of course, you
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: could always argue there's financial incentives to get a nuclear bomb,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: but by and large, we've done a pretty remarkably good job,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: at least so far. And we saw what happened with
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: the Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year. We've done a
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: pretty decent job so far of keeping the ability to
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: create nuclear weapons in a significant fashion out of the
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: hands of the worst actors. Not perfect, you know, thankfully.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: Apparently it's it's a lot more difficult than what we
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: know so far about AI because North Korea has not
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: been able to do it successfully. But there's not an
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: inherent financial incentive driving the you know, the the ability
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to create a nuclear weapon or to get a nuclear weapon.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: And also there's the whole idea of mutually assured destruction,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: which has really been at the heart of why things
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: have not gotten so far out of control when it
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: comes to nuclear weapons post Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That that
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: that that moment really kind of forever said Okay, this
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: is something that you better not fuck around with, and
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: if you do, the price is going to be extremely steep.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: And so I said, okay, Matt, all right, So if
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: you think that this is a situation where we have
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb that's being essentially obtained by all sorts
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: of different entities, you know, what are we going to
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: do about this? And you know, one of the reasons
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: why Matt is a relevant person here is he is
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: still very very well connected within the Hampton's elite. I
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: often refer to it as the Hampton's media mafia. Also,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: you know, the billionaire class. He knows a lot of
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: very elite people, and he also happens to have a
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: very prominent ranch in New Zealand. In fact, if you
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: are a tourist in New Zealand And you're taking a
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: boat ride around the coast, there's a very good chance
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: that you're going to be You're going to have his
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: ranch pointed out as a kind of a tourist attraction.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: And he indicated to me that a lot of people
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: are asking him about buying land in New Zealand because
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: of their fears about what's going to happen in the
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: not too distant future with regard to the world changing
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: thanks to AI. Now, I don't want to overstate it,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: and you know, you know, I don't speak for mad
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: and I'm just giving you this story because I think
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: it's relevant to how people are responding to this and
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: just how big a deal it is in the minds
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: of many people who have studied this and who are
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: in circles of people who have studied this. And to me,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: this is part of why I was like, Okay, my
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: instincts here that this is not a Y two K,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: This is not a global warming, this is not a
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: COVID panic, this is not a test that this could
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: underlying could really be the real deal have just been verified,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: not because of one person, but because I think you'll understand,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: you know, my reaction with someone like Matt telling me
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: that that's the reaction of people in elite circles. That's
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: concerning not that elite people are always right. Oftentimes they're wrong,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: and group thinking can be very very powerful and lead
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: people in the wrong direction. And there's definitely a phenomenon
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: that the elites, once it becomes a popular thought within
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: their group, they all think that they must be right
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: because they're all elites. The elites are inherently right, and
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: this has gotten them in trouble in a lot of
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: different ways, many of which we've talked about on this
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: podcast before, you know, Donald Trump being a great example
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: of this. So I'm not saying that they can't be wrong.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying that this had an influence over my
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: thinking that I was going down a path that wasn't crazy.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: This is not just doomsayers. This is not just the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: y two k people revisited this situation where holy shit,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: some very serious people are having the very same concerns
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: that I am. Now the way that I look at this,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this in the short run and then
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: in the longer term. And when I say longer term,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: I'm probably thinking five, fifteen, twenty years. But in the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: short run, where we are today. There are several elements
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: of the AI issue that are extremely problematic to me.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: And this is not in the realm of the apocalyptic
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: dystopian culture and universe and country that we may be
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: headed towards. That's more of a longer term issue. But
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: a more immediate concern I have is the incredibly obvious
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: economic bubble that has been created by AI stocks. Now
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: this is going to sound contradictory, right Zig, What do
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: you mean an AI stock bubble? I thought you said
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: that you think this might be the biggest thing that's
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: ever happened. If it really is the biggest thing that's
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: ever happened in human history, then how could it be
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: an economic bubble? I actually think both things could be
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: true here, and I actually think we already have an
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: example from which to learn about this. If you look
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: at the history of the Internet bubble, it, I think
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: could end up going very much along the same lines,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: only in my opinion, in a more dramatic fashion. If
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: you recall, you know, we had in the nineties this
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: massive internet boom bubble that burst, but the Internet didn't
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: go away. The Internet did, in fact end up taking
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: over our lives to a certain degree, and there were
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: several companies that survived that turned out to be humongous,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Google probably being foremost among them. So well, many, many,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: many companies did not make it, and there was a
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: stock bubble burst. It didn't throw us into complete catastrophe.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: It was frankly a fairly minor blip in retrospect. But
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I think we have a model here. We have a
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: model to where the Internet turned out to be exactly
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: as advertised pretty much, but there was an economic bubble
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: attached to it, and I think what we're seeing with
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: AI could be that on steroids, because anybody with any
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: understanding of economics has to be extremely concerned with the
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: fact that we basically have a stock market circle journe
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: going on among like basically six or seven companies that
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: are all having their stock prices increase based upon deals
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: with each other. And not to get into all the complexities,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: but basically open AI is paying for all of these
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: deals by getting stock in exchange for a chip deal,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: for instance, knowing that as soon as that is made public,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: the issue of AI is so hot that the stock
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: price for everyone is going to go up. So the
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: stock price increase is going to pay for the deal itself.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: So it's all fake money. It I mean, it's it's
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: as fake as you could possibly imagine. It's it's literally
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: the definition of a bubble. Now, if AI turns out
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: to be as powerful and as influential as they are
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: expecting or hoping for, and as economically viable as they're
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: hoping for, then you know what, maybe that bubble never bursts.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: But I actually I'm in the short run, I don't
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: even know what the root for this is. This is
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: so typical of so many elements of artificial intelligence that
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: there's a double edged sword everywhere. I don't know whether
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: or not it's better for it to be as advertised
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: and they're not to be a bursting of the bubble,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: or whether or not it turns out to not be
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: as advertised and our economy goes to complete shit, because
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: I don't think people fully understand that with at least
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: with regard to the stock market and with regard to
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: our economic growth, how much of it right now is
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: directly attached to this AI bubble. I mean, you know,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: open and video origle, all of them. It's just a
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: big fucking circle jerk, not based on anything I mean
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: anything real as far as you know, generating revenue. But
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: here's the part of this business model that is so insidious,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: and I don't think gets talked about enough. It's not
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: just that it's a circle jerk, and it's all based
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: upon the theory that this is going to be so
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: big that it drives an increase in the stock price
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: that pays for the deal itself. It's what the business
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: model of AI generally is. Throughout the history of enormous
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: advances in technology, generally, with some exceptions, generally any brand
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: new invention from an economic perspective has been about increasing revenue.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about all the major inventions and developments
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: technologically of the last you know, one hundred or so years,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: almost all of them. We have a new product that
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: people will buy, like a car, or people will fly
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: on a plane, or people will buy a phone, or
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: buy a radio, or buy a television. I mean, you
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: use your own imagination. There's hundreds of things that fit
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: into this category that creates revenue. By the way, it
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: also generally creates jobs. Now, in automation, jobs have always
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: been lost, but sometimes efficiencies are increased, and you know,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: sometimes other jobs are created. So it's not This is
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: not a universal truth I'm talking about, but this has
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: generally been the case that massive technological advances are designed
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: to increase revenue and inherently naturally also generate jobs. Not always,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: but generally. AI is fundamentally different the AI business model
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: as I understand it, having watched way more videos on
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: TikTok and acts and read way more about this than
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: I ever thought I would over the last couple of months,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: the business model for AI appears to be almost entirely
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: based on the idea that it will kill jobs. That's
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: not a bug, that's a feature. That this is the
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: opportunity for major corporations to cut massive portions of their
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: workforce and to gain enormous leverage over the the rest
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: of their workforce, so that salaries generally will have downward pressure.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: In other words, this isn't about generating revenue by and large,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: with some exceptions, this is about cutting costs. The revenue
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: generation part of this equation has essentially, you know, reached
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: its its maximum. So now we got to figure out
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: in order to you know, keep the shareholders happy and
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: to keep growth of profits going into the future, we
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: need to cut costs and employment costs are a huge
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: part of that equation. AI is inherently intended to fix
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: that problem. So you have, i mean, think about this, folks,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: from again short term economic situation. Here you have an inherent,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: obvious economic stock bubble being created by a new invention
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: whose entire purpose is to create massive unemployment. And it
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: is a humongous and not entire Some people are claiming
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: it's well over fifty percent of all the economic growth
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: that has occurred over the past year is either directly
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: or indirectly related to AI. So we have a completely
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: stagnant economy almost except for all of the money being
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: put into AI, all these data centers being created, the
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: fact that jobs haven't been completely eliminated as of yet,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: but all this innovation, everything, that's all the money that's
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: being spent on this and what the part of this
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: that makes me most nervous is that, unlike Internet version
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: one point zero, if this is going to be Internet
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: version two point zero on steroids, the Internet companies of
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: the nineties when the bubble burst, they were not too
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: big to fail. The entire economy did not ride on
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: them not failing by and large, AI with the size
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: of these companies, specifically in Vidia and the ones I've
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: already mentioned, Oracle, Open Ai, and others. They are now
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: too big to fail. If they fail, we are headed
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: for an economic catastrophe by any standard in the short run. Now,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is gonna happen. I don't know
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: that it's gonna happen. A lot some people are predicting that.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: Other people think, you know this, this giant wave of
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: AI is like the tsunami. I guess only this is
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: in their world of positive Tsunami is going to carry
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: all these stock deals to actually come to fruition by
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: making these companies more profitable, not by generating revenue, by
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: but cotting their costs, because they can now have AI
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: fulfill the jobs that used to be held by human beings.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: And we're not talking about just fringe jobs here. We're
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: talking about enormous numbers of jobs. And maybe the most
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: underrated currently part of the short term AI equation, which
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: I find to be both hilarious and telling, is the
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: amount of energy and water consumption that AI is causing
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: to happen. I mean, it's hilarious that you know most
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: of these companies are generally run by liberal and you know,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: of course, to liberals somehow, these are if a conservative
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: movement was creating this amount of energy consumption and water consumption,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: it would be an environmental catastrophe. But we've heard nothing
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: about this. This reminds me a lot of how to
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: use a second football analogy in here that's going to
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: be bizarre. It reminds me a lot of the PAC
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: twelve disbanding and having all of these liberal West Coast
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: schools joined the PAC ten and dramatically increase their carbon footprint,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: completely exposing themselves as a bunch of hypocrites, and no
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: one gives a shit because it's not a real issue.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: They don't really believe in the carbon footprint. Well, this
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: to me is way way worse because energy costs are
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: going through the roof right now. Nobody hardly is talking
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: about this, and a huge portion of why this is
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: is because of the increased energy being used by AI creation,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: not to mention massive amounts of water consumption that the
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: environmentalists are strangely silent about. And so this is to
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: me both interesting and telling. But it's also another example
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: of the double edged sword of AI, because every time
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: I think that there's Okay, this is a really bad
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: situation involving AI. This is a bad outcome. There's a
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: flip side of the coin or the sword, if you will,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Because is it possible that because AI requires so much
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: electricity and so much water consumption, and the costs are
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: on the rise, and our electrical grid is so shitty
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: to begin with and so outdated, is it possible that
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: it will actually force us because AI is too big
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: to fail to upgrade our entire electrical system and specific
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: finally pushed for what we should have been doing for decades,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: which is to properly use nuclear power. I think that's possible,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: And I think this is a really good example of
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: why the AI issue is so difficult to wrap your
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: brain around and to predict, because they're almost at every
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: turn there's two possible outcomes. The outcome where our electrical
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: grid completely collapses and we're paying insane amounts of money
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: for electricity that's no longer reliable and we have water
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: shortages and all sorts of other things if we're in
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: a drought, what have you? Or does this cause us
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: to finally get serious and fix what is a massive
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: problem with a solution that's just been sitting there for decades,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: and we've been too afraid to use it for reasons
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: that are idiotic, which is to use nuclear power. I
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: don't have an answer for that. My guess is, of
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: all the elements of AI that I'm pessimistic about, that
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: might be the one I'm most optimistic about. I do
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: think that there is. And you know, maybe I'm repeating
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: my mistake when it came to the Pacific Palisades and
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: Altadena fires, where I thought the incentive structure was there
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: for Democrats to fix the problem. It's a similar dynamic
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: here where we've got a massive electricity problem. By the way,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: it should be pointed out, we are currently all paying
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: an AI tax on our electricity rates that nobody is mentioning.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're all paying for this indirectly, not obviously
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: in full, but at least in part, because this is
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: driving a significant portion of the increase in electric electricity
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: electricity costs, and energy costs and water costs. And of
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: course you know we're not getting any of the benefit
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: of this. In fact, you could argue that we're paying
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: a tax which will eventually help get rid of a
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: lot of our jobs, which is just totally saying, but
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: I do think if I had to bet on this,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: that we're going to be forced to actually finally do
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: the right thing when it comes to our grid and
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: the use of nuclear power. So that could actually be
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: a good thing. And I want to make it clear
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: that AI as it appears to be coming to fruition,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: is going to do a lot of really good things.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: There's no question about that. It is going to make
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: life if it comes to full fruition, if it is
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: as advertised, it is going to have a lot of
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: positive influences on society. Efficiencies are going to increase dramatically. Specifically,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: I think in the realm of medicine, it could be
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: a huge game changer for the positive I can see
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: even in the short run when it comes to minor
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: medical situations and minor legal situations where you used to
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: either have to just grin and bear it or you
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: had to go through the hassle of having a doctor's
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: appointment or meeting with a lawyer. Instead of doing that,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: you can just ask chat GPT about it or GROCK
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: and you can get usually a pretty darn good answer
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: that doesn't require you going to a doctor or going
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: to a lawyer. I've done both, and so far I
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: think they're even today in its infancy that the results
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: are actually pretty good. So in that way, life is
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: going to get even easier than it currently is, maybe better,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: certainly more efficient. You know, there are other elements of
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: life where similar things are going to happen. Technical questions,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: you know, Chat, GPT and rock and other AI devices
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: are really good at giving answers to So I don't
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: want to make this sound like it's all bad. This
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: is very much a double edged sword all of this.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: It's just a matter of of which side of the
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: sword is going to end up winning. And I don't
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: have a full understanding of that yet, but I'm very
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: concerned that it's not going to be the positive one
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: in the long run. But we're still talking here about
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: the short term element of this, and so I want
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: to emphasize a lot of this. If it comes to
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: fruition as is currently expected, as is the conventional wisdom,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: is going to be very very positive, with a lot
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: of really tremendous tools to make life easier and more efficient.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: And there's all the mind boggles as to the positive
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: things that could theoretically come should AI be exactly as advertised.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: I also want to emphasize I'm not still and I've
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: already implied this once, but I'll do it again just
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: to make it clear. I'm still not one hundred percent
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: convinced AI is going to get over the magic threshold.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's possible that even though we're seeing a
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: remarkable space with which AI is improving in all elements
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: faster than I think even the experts expected. So you know,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: when the experts are being surprised by how fast things
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: are improving, the natural inclination is, oh my gosh, this
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: is going to come to fruition, just like everyone's predicting.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: If you're thinking about this as an athlete, right using
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: all sorts of sports and analogies here that I didn't
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: even intend to, but like, if you have an athlete
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: who clearly at the age of you know, twelve, why
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: that guy's an athlete, That kid's an athlete. He's going
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: to be a great basketball player or a baseball player,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: football player, and you know they're going to grow into
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: being this fantastic athlete Division IE player, maybe even pro
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: and they get even better than you expected at thirteen,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: and even better than you expected at fourteen and fifteen,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: they're even better than you thought they'd be at fifteen.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: The natural inclination is to think, oh my god, by
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the time they're a full adult to twenty two, are
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: going to be a world beater, and occasionally that is
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: the case, often though it's not. Sometimes they hit a wall,
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: whether it's in growth or this their ultimate potential, And
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: to use that analogy to AI, there's no question that
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: this is happening faster than most of the experts thought
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: was possible, and that it is remarkable in so many ways,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: mind blowing in so many ways. It could still hit
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: a wall. There are still people who are credible who
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: think that in certain areas, you know what, AI just
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: will not never be able to do the things that
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of the experts are predicting, and there's some
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: evidence to support that, like, for instance, there's reports that
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: some movie studios have been trying to dabble in in
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: making full on AI movies kind of as an experiment,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: and that they've been having a lot of problems doing
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: it for lots of different reasons. One of the reasons
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: is that it seems to be very difficult to get
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: AI to duplicate itself or to repeat the exact same process.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: This is just one of a million issues that people
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: are dealing with. So I am not yet one hundred
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: percent convinced that it's going to reach that magic threshold.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: I'll use that word magic, you know, probably a lot
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: in this discussion for the ease of understanding. I don't
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: think we're gonna know for sure that it's reached magic
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: quite yet, but my gosh, it certainly looks using that
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: athlete analogy again, it certainly looks at very early stages
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: as it could easily get there and maybe even exceed that,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: and a lot of experts believe that that's where we're heading.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: So that's where we are currently. I'm very concerned about
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: the economic bubble and the short run, I'm very concerned about,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: you know, the too big to fail element. I'm very
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: concerned about the timing of this from a political perspective,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: and the idea that we could have a president Gavin
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Newsom in twenty twenty nine, just when this whole thing
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: is coming to full fruition and we saw what he
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: did during the COVID panic. I mean that those are
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: the types of things in the very short run that
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: have me very concerned. But there's also a social, cultural
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: and interpersonal relationship aspect that I think we're already seeing
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: the impact of. And this comes in the form of
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: the idea that human beings are already starting to have
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: very strange and dysfunctional relationships with a. I thanks for
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If
• 1:39:50
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