Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 215

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. AllZone Media. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you. But you can make your own decisions.

Starting point is 00:00:32 What's bippin my bops? it could happen here, a podcast that is sometimes competently introduced, but not on the days that I'm recording. We're at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, seeing what the tech industry has in mind for all of us, right? This is a show where the industry talks to itself and its investors and clients about what the future is going to be. And so Garrison Davis and I are going to sit down with you and tell based on our explorations and investigations this week, what the future of artificial intelligence means for all of us and for the world. Garrison. Hi.

Starting point is 00:01:10 How you doing? I'm tired. Yeah, you look tired. It's been a long week. It's been a long week. Convention walking. Yeah, we've worked very hard. I've talked to too many robots.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Yeah, I've talked to a lot of chatbots. I mean, it's a bit of a stretch to say we've talked with them. I've talked to add a lot of chat bots. Yeah. And sometimes they respond and sometimes they do. I guess one of the things that's kind of shocked me is because, like, despite being very critical about AI in the industry, I have actually a pretty good idea of what these things are capable of. And I know that chat GPT and Jim and I, like, they're capable of doing some things

Starting point is 00:01:45 that look very impressive. They are capable of conversations, you know, that can be fairly in-depth and that can cover a wide variety of topics. And so one of the things that has surprised me is that as I have gone up and tried to communicate with every various chatbot-inabled, AI-enabled product, about 70% of the time, it's not actually capable of responding to me in a way that makes any sense. Like, the majority of those products just don't function?

Starting point is 00:02:09 Sorry, Mike. Was that literally your AI and your phone yelling at us? Yes. Case in point. I was trying to pull up one of the, one of the AI robots that we saw today. And I guess this is something that we talked about on better offline a bit.

Starting point is 00:02:24 And the main thing this year is the complete, complete victory of like chat GPT across not just not just like it's a cultural victory within the tech industry yes and it's moved into like the physical world through like their API licensing so many of the quote unquote products this year is building a physical thing around chat GPT we have a necklace that has chat GPT and you can talk to it we have a pin that chat GPT is in and you can talk to it and have it do things like transcribe an interview. Earbuds, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's

Starting point is 00:03:01 tons of glasses, there's little tiny robot dogs, just every, every, everything has, has chat gbting inside it. And that's the main thing that makes it, like, unique or special compared to, you know, the types of products we've seen, we've seen before. And, and I would say, again, when I, when I say that, like, 70% of the chatbot enabled products that I tried to interact with could not converse with me or could not do so in a functional way, it's not because the chatbots aren't able to talk to you, because they are, anyone who, like, you you can. It's that all of the chatbots require an active internet connection because the vast majority of these products do not have anything on device. And when you're in a crowded convention

Starting point is 00:03:36 floor, the internet is bad. And so they just don't work. And it kind of, it's one of those, I'm sure most of these products would work better in the real world, but also the fact that they're all completely hobbled by their access to data is kind of one of the things. It's one of the seams that you can see here. Yeah, the LLM wrappers. So LLM wrappers and robotics are the big things this year. Often these things were combined. What do you mean by an LLM wrapper, Garrison? Well, this is the thing that we're talking about. It's this physical product that's built around something like Chai-GPT or Gemini or Claude or a number of like the Chinese made ones, right? So a lot of Chinese companies here. So these physical products, whether those are, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:19 headphones, earbuds, or in many cases, little tiny robots, whose main features that you can talk to, you can talk to it. And what you're actually talking to is like a filtered version of chat GPT. And there's a lot of these products for kids that we've seen, like robots for kids, because there's a lot of robotics this year as well. These are the two things that after years and years of them trying to find a new thing for each CES, they've like settled on not actually having anything. It's the year of robotics. You're not having anything new because like we've seen robotics before. at other years. And this is the year that they're combining their physical robotics, which aren't new,

Starting point is 00:04:56 but combining them with Chad GPT and presenting it as a new product. Now you can talk to the robot. The robot can't do more tasks than it used to, right? Like, we're still, we're doing really good if it can slowly and not very competently fold laundry. Oh, my. Like LG's Cloyd. Cloid, which is a robot designed to be in your home and do chores for you and visibly does not do them well. We watched it.

Starting point is 00:05:20 At the demo where they're presumably, it's presumably working better than it normally does because it's a demo. No, I went to the first Croyd demo and they had like three different setups for like different stories for like different use cases for Cloyd. One's like with a family, ones with like a single guy and ones with like a middle aged woman. And with the family, the robots able to find keys that are lost. Notably what that means is that Cloyd is moving keys around the house.

Starting point is 00:05:49 which might actually contribute to the problem of losing your keys being lost. Where did the fucking robot with my keys? Because the robot is kicking up your keys and moving them somewhere else. The robot could put a tray of croissants in an oven and the robot knows it exact. And the robot knows exactly how you want your croissants done. You don't even have to tell the robot. It already knows. And that's something that was stressed.

Starting point is 00:06:10 That's the power of AI. Over and over again is that it will start to like know what you want. So you won't need to tell what to do. They have a memory. So many of these products with the big selling phone is like, it's got a memory. a memory. And they can't, they can't stop themselves. And I think some of this was like the actual companies and the way that they're structuring their ad campaigns. But a lot of this was just, most of the companies here hire PR people who don't regularly work for the company and don't

Starting point is 00:06:33 know much about the products and they're just there to demo stuff. And some of it is those people just defaulting to, well, they're talking about how this thing like, like, remembers and knows you. So I'll talk about how it like, it has a personality. It has memories. It has experience. It has core memories, you know, it has preferences and like a personality. It wants things. I talked to a couple of different people at booths who, like, that was the thing they were emphasizing is that, like, this is an AI that, like, feels and gets to know you and has a relationship with you. And it's very, number one, not what they would want publicly, because that's crazy. And none of the products actually work that way. But the attempt to convince people that, like, what we have done is

Starting point is 00:07:13 create a robot that lives in your home and does change. and it can think and feel. And anytime you say like, well, are you just saying you built a slave? Like, are you saying, well, there's thinking sentient robots that you have live in your house and do your laundry, isn't that a slave? Like, and it's not actually, because the robot doesn't think and feel. But if what they were saying was true, it would be a problem, right? Oh, you could introduce yourself.

Starting point is 00:07:41 How are you one introduced? Oh, I'm Ben, Ben Rose Porter. I am an academic. I'm a sociologist at CUNY. And you have accompanied us through the, the wonderful world of Las Vegas and CES this year. I always like bringing people to witness the beautiful world. Yeah, I've been brought to this place very far from God, Las Vegas, and the Tech Convention Center. There is this moment where we were walking through, and it was the Amy bot for kids, which me and Robert saw last year, the little like oval, owl-looking robot, yeah. Yeah, and they had this, she's got to be an actress. And she was doing like a little skit with the Amy bot where it was like, it was like the Amy bot,

Starting point is 00:08:26 birthday or something and she was like very clearly having this this very produced it reminded me exactly of how like cheap telenovelas like actors talk or she was just like wow amy you've really gotten to know me over the years and it was bizarre in that one the selling point of the robot was i think they said turning data into empathy yes it's able to turn data into empathy which god knows what that means but also that like so clearly the robot turns data into empathy but also we cannot show you the robot doing anything concretely so we will have a person like it was just this very one-sided like skit where this person was doing this really overly emotional like back and forth as a robot where the robot would just respond with like the bare minimum like

Starting point is 00:09:13 phrases and so like what they're selling is is questionable if anyone wants it and all speculative it's all none of it can actually be presented it's all like the potential to do this And then even the way that they're actually showing that is mostly just cheap tricks. There's another booth where they had the sex robots. And I was just, it was shocking because the stand, like you're at this convention, you've presumably, you know, gone through a lot to get here. And the image you're putting forward of your robot that, you know, you're selling as the sex robot. It's like this cheap AI image, not even one of the good ones.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Like that there are like clear artifacts and blurry. weird lines and things, and that you could Google an anime JPEG and get a better image for this. So just even the smoke and mirrors of it was cheap. Yeah, that was that Loveance is the Sex Robot booth. And yeah,

Starting point is 00:10:09 they had two products. One was like just like, you know, silicon, like, realistic human skin sex robot, which is similar to like, you know, those horrifying sex dolls, except now we have an LLM inside. It's another one of those LLM rappers, except it's wrapped around a red-headed woman. Garrison, I find that very

Starting point is 00:10:25 offensive. It's actually, some people are just, they're not capable of talking to women or other human beings of any kind. Yeah, people with ADHD. It's actually a disability where people can't know other people and can only have sexual gratification through a creepy robot chat bot. I apologize for my, for my, for my on-air ableism. Yeah. But no, again, this is the year of LLM rappers and how they're putting it in a sex bot, which is more unnerving to me than a regular sex doll, because a regular sexual, you kind of know it's an object. Like, it's not trying to be much more than an object. It can't, you can't, you can't, you could, you put it in positions, but it's static.

Starting point is 00:11:00 Yeah. This, because this thing tries to kind of engage with you, it activates my uncanny valley response way more because it's like, it's kind of trying to pretend to be a person. And like, I, I could not look at the thing for very long. So they just like started, like, I just felt bad. Yeah. And some of that's probably my latent Protestantism. But I just feel, I just felt bad.

Starting point is 00:11:24 But the other product they had, like, around the corner was this, was this, like, you know, anime-style, like, Avatar, which is on, like, a screen that you can talk to, and it's synced up to, like, a jack-off robot. Right. So, you can, you can engage with this. Finally. You can engage with this, like, this, like, blonde hair, blue-eyed anime woman as it's, as it connects to, like, a little, like, jack-off machine. And that was their, that was the other product, which did not work because there was no Wi-Fi in the Venetian. So we could not see it. But the jackoff machine was still going strong.

Starting point is 00:11:56 Yeah. So you could say, I guess, that like, well, obviously there's, there's fundamental issues with, like, having Wi-Fi be decent when you've got 70,000 people, like, all cramming themselves into a room. Of course, that's going to cause problems. The chatbots and the devices using them are actually capable of more, they're more impressive than you're giving them credit for just because the Wi-Fi didn't work. But also, if all you build is a shell that without the Internet and access to someone else's chatbot. It's useless. It doesn't do anything. This is the big problem.

Starting point is 00:12:24 You haven't really made a product. All these products are going to brick. As soon as chat GPT raises its API costs. They're going to do one of two things. They're either going to stop working or they're going to move their chatbot provider to a different one that's going to behave differently. And then it's fundamentally a different product. And that's why periodically I would run into someone where it's like everything that we do is on device and everything. Even the ones that we're still, because you almost have to say that whatever you're doing is AI.

Starting point is 00:12:50 and stuff like there was a company that I came across because of their name because I just saw the name trans AI and I was like well I gotta go see what that is I did see this as well and it's simply I believe they're a Korean company but um it's it's just a company that makes like a translator right and they make it specifically it's like the size of a smaller smartphone it looks kind of like a smartphone and you set it down and it will on device it does not touch the cloud at all for any reason you can translate so if you want to have a conversation with someone in a foreign language it can like like live translate for you both and also it will transcribe whatever conversations you're happening. And they were like, yeah, this is for people who want to transcribe notes, when they're at college. It's for people who were doing interviews, journalists and stuff. And it was a really good, it seemed to be a good product. I've not gotten to tested outside of the show floor. I saw a few of these. One of the big differences I saw between, like, the few, there were like two or three or four booths that we saw where the product, I was like, I had a positive. I was like, I walked away with some mildly positive. Was that almost everything else

Starting point is 00:13:50 talk about like the sort of insatiability of capital. Yeah. Is that it has to sell. The sex doll was a perfect example of this in that, you know, if you make a sex doll and you put the chat GPT inside of it and then you sell it as this is a sex doll, it's an object you fuck. But now you can like, you could have sexy conversation with it. It's still an object. But like, you know, that's fun for some people.

Starting point is 00:14:14 That's a new thing that people didn't have before. It is new. Yeah. And it's a phenomenon you could clearly show off. is like, oh, you can, you know, now the sex doll can, like, say your name and stuff. But almost all of the booths that were selling some kind of AI product, it was like, we have to sell the opportunity to, like, transcend, like, your mortal shell and become a part of the cosmos itself. Like, the sextal was literally sitting in this corner talking to no one and saying stuff,

Starting point is 00:14:42 like, I'm about emotional intelligence and building a connection, getting to know you, and reaching into your soul. And it's like, it clearly cannot do this. And the few products that were good were the ones where the people showing it were just able to like, just put that aside and just say, here's what the product does. Right. Here's what it can do concrete way. And that has become my baseline first question, which is like, have you done anything with your product?

Starting point is 00:15:08 And if all that you've done is we invented a new device that didn't previously have a chatbot that it connects to through data that someone else built, you didn't do anything. That's not a product. That's not real. So kind of my first, my filter was like, is there anything here beyond another way to interact with a completely different product that you didn't make? To go back to like the AI note-taking devices, which I saw a few where it listens and it will take notes for you. I saw a lot of these marketed to like college students. And it's the thing that it is a thing that machine learning, because I hate that it gets lumped in with AI, but machine learning's gotten a lot better.

Starting point is 00:15:53 It's really good at it. It's good at note-taking. And here's a thing. And that's valuable. And there's different devices that you can get. on. Like I saw like a note-taking pen. That's like a pen that just automatically takes notes for you. And that was, you know, kind of like kind of fun. But the thing is, you can do this exact same thing on your phone. Right. With the chat GPT app. It's the exact same thing. Yes. You don't need it

Starting point is 00:16:13 in a pen. Just turn your phone on and it'll auto do the notes for you. The actual product part is useless. The whole idea of the smartphone is that you have everything you need already on it. And that's why I did respect, again, companies like trans AI where it's like, you know, this is actually on device. And this is a thing, this is that utility that my phone doesn't have, which is that no matter where I am,

Starting point is 00:16:35 even if I'm not connected to the internet, I can translate and I can transcribe using this device. That's real utility. And TransEA is not the only company. A couple of companies had products like that. Yeah, we saw this, like a motion tracking pendant,

Starting point is 00:16:47 which is on device, which listens to everything. Oh, so you said motion, not emotion. No, emotion. Oh, good God. But it listens, it listens to everything you're saying. It doesn't up with anything to cloud, but it is on device. So it listens to everything.

Starting point is 00:17:03 It is like emotional sentiment analysis. It also monitors your breath and your heartbeat because the necklace rests on your chest. And then it like talk. Then it can like analyze like around like six or seven. That's a mistake. Seven different emotions. And like it was like fine. Like I don't, I would never need this thing to tell me how I'm feeling.

Starting point is 00:17:23 I know how to feel. But like it might be fun for some people to like track how they're feeling. or be like, oh, I was more stressed. I was more stressed this week than, like, last week. And, like, still. And there's, there's even, there's at least a degree of baseline optimism that you have for the product when it's like, okay, this is a device where you're trying to track people's emotions.

Starting point is 00:17:42 And your immediate first thing you decided as a company was, this can't go on the cloud. That would be irresponsible. Yeah, I mean, this is why that was the first thing I asked. Right, right. And that is, I guess, the most important fundamental difference between companies and people here. And between the companies that are embracing to some extent

Starting point is 00:17:58 AI is the ones who whose default was like, well, but we're doing something that involves emotions or that involves like interviews or conversations that people might not want to, like, we shouldn't have that on the cloud versus the people who are like, why wouldn't you put literally everything on the cloud? Why don't you want your health and medical data on the cloud? Why don't we want your financial data on the cloud, right? Like, that is kind of like the most fundamental difference that you see between people here. Part and parcel of the insatiable, like just drive for endless value and probably the

Starting point is 00:18:27 comparisons between this convention and its location, Las Vegas, are really overladen at this point. But, I mean, there is something about, like, you know, the appeal of gambling is the promise of, the speculative promise of endless value and how all of these technologies are selling themselves off of endless value. And for the producer side, that means, like, this, this device has endless function, potentially, you know, we say endless functions, especially with these, like, AI devices. Yeah. Yeah. But from the consumer side, it's from a, well, if you just give yourself over to, you know, to the god of capital, if you, if you just bleed into the machine and connect yourself to the cloud and give over like everything and it really is everything.

Starting point is 00:19:09 I mean, there's like AI towels that are like analyzing your sweat. If you give over everything, there is this vague promise of transcendence and that like you will escape the like the misery of the world that this place is just both completely blind to and then also without ever saying it like also responding to it entirely. First off, obviously you're coming at this from more of a left-wing perspective, so you probably don't understand that gambling always works and you're definitely going to win. So first off, you know. No, Vegas really is the anarcho-capitalist paradise. It sure is. But no, like what you're saying is they want you to give everything over. There is absolutely, there's not outside of, again, the odd booth where you find sane people, which is almost how I

Starting point is 00:19:54 think about it them in my head where it's like, yeah, where you're putting front and forward, this stays on the device. You don't have to be online. We are not exposing your data. It's like seeing a lighthouse in like, in like a horrible like rainstorm and you're like sailing on a ship and you can't see anything. And every once in a while you'll see a booth with like a real person. Oh, thank God. It's like talking about it, solving a real problem. You're like, oh, finally. Yeah. It's a spectrum between talking to the AIs, talking to the real few people and then the other people who are kind of in between the two. And it was, I went from seeing this app, where the whole purpose of this company is that makes like agentic AI solutions,

Starting point is 00:20:30 who I'm scrolling to find their, the company name right now. All of it is they're making agents that you can put in like point of sale things or you can put in like cars as a chat bot. Like one thing they said is, yeah, we can put this in a car and we can have the, you know, you can navigate using voice the way you would normally, like with a bunch of other apps, but if you navigate with voice using our app, it will only send you to restaurants or businesses that we have a deal with. that are giving us a cut.

Starting point is 00:20:56 And so, and you too, the car company, gets a cut too. And that was the innovation is that we can not give people, like, tell people where things are. We can tell people where things are that pay us and you get a cut of it. So the company can, like, make a partnership with, like, Coca-Cola. Right. So then when you ask. They were literally talking to Coca-Cola reps when I was there and showing them that, like,

Starting point is 00:21:15 yeah, we have a, like, look, we've replaced the human beings that take your orders at Burger King, and the chatbot can alter on the fly of the menu if you have, to get a smooth a lot of vanilla coat and you want to sell as many large as possible, it can tell people that's the only option. Whoa. And like, like, the fact that they were just like bald-faced about it. Because when I showed up, they were, they were demoing how this, this like Burger King menu with AI worked.

Starting point is 00:21:42 And they were like, there was a full menu that you could see that was like an updated screen menu. But there was a secondary menu where they were like, pretending to be a guy who drew up to Burger King. And the way that they started was like, yeah, what, burgers are good. What do you think I'd like? And I was like, who? No one drives up to a drive-thru window and asks what's good. Yeah, no, that's not how they, and again, there's a menu in front of you. You look at the menu and decide, like, that's how everyone buys food. So at first I was like, is this just a company that doesn't know how life works who are like trying to pretend this is like what people want where they go to the burger? Yeah, what's good today in McDonald's? You know, do you have any specials? Uh, Which was crazy, but then I realized because they were talking to this small group of people,

Starting point is 00:22:28 and I realized after a second, oh, because I looked at their badges. Everyone has badges that said all of the people worked for Coca-Cola. And so they were talking about how, yes, if Burger King wants to move a specific kind of Whopper, then we can put that front and center when people ask what's good and we can push it and said, for Coke, if you guys want to move Vanilla Coke, we can have whenever people order anything, we can have it say, do you want to add a vanilla Coke? A large vanilla Coke's just like. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:51 And so what I realized is that this company, whose name is, this is Soundhound AI. Soundhound AI. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good names. Their motto was faster and more accurate, higher revenue. I came to realize, and this is not entirely a separation from other years,

Starting point is 00:23:09 because they are always selling to companies like this. But there was absolutely, they were, the only thing that they were talking about actual end users as was a thing that you can pull extra money out of by tricking them, by pushing extra extra. ads to them. And that's who they were actually selling to, is these companies that they were like, the other thing they demoed was you can make an agent on the fly and you can include the capabilities and they showed us how to select it and then built an AI, an agent to live in your car. And the demo they did was like, hey, my car is making this sound. What do you think it is? Didn't play the sound for the

Starting point is 00:23:40 AI, by the way, they described it. And the AIA said, that sounds like it could be. It'll cost about $700 to fix. Great. Book me an appointment with the dealership. So first off, that's not how people work. I've had car. Everyone has car issues. A regular person, there's a problem with your car. You either have a mechanic that's not the dealership that you go to because they didn't rip you off in the past.

Starting point is 00:24:02 And you're like, well, I trust them not to fuck me too bad. Or you go to a couple because most people don't just drop $700 in a repair and not think about it. But the person that this engineer is pretending to be for the purpose of this AI demo said, great, book me a repair at the dealership. And the AI was like, okay, I've, of course. called them and I've booked you an appointment and by the way, would you like to schedule a test drive for this specific kind of car? Oh, my wife loves that car. Book us. And that was the whole thing.

Starting point is 00:24:31 He was like, don't be impressed that we can theoretically book you an appointment. Be impressed that we can have the machine upsell you on trying to buy a new car when you come in to fix your old car that broke because you bought a bad car. And there was no shame. They were so proud of themselves for this machine can repeatedly upsell you things. And that was the only utility. It was not this allows you to more easily navigate town. This allows you to more easily, you know, cut out problems in your life. It was, this machine can upsell you every minute of your day, everything you ask it to do, everything you try to have it do, and we get a cut of that.

Starting point is 00:25:08 If we send it to a restaurant and you buy food there, we get a cut of that. And so does whatever company, you know, put the thing in your car. If you buy a new car, we get a cut of that. That was the product. and that we have gone from here are machines that do things. And even back in the glories of smartphones, at least everyone was showing like, look, we have a new phone that's thinner than a phone has ever been.

Starting point is 00:25:30 Yeah, or like the camera is like, you know, 4K now or something, whatever. And the focus is always, and now people who buy them can do this with it, right? I mean, I would guess that so much of the impetus for creating this stuff and developing it is all for producer goods. And then the more revenue is honest in that, like, that's what the, and all the consumer goods are mostly just getting, you know, cast off. It's like, now we have all. I mean, literally, that's what the LLM rappers are. It's just like, oh, we have this thing. Let's throw a plastic robot on it and you try and sell it.

Starting point is 00:26:00 But what drives its development is squeezing, just little bits squeezing labor out of the pores of the production process, which you just get you a little bit more, you know, capital to keep this engine going a little bit further. And it's so, because the way it'll work is I saw that thing. where it's literally all you've invented is a way to try to con people out of more of their money. I hope you're proud of yourselves because I think redacted is what you should do to yourself.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And I went from that to the booth of a company called JinTech, who I'd never heard of before, but they make different automotive products. And an engineer there showed me a thing that he had been the lead on inventing, which was a sun visor. So like, you know, when you're driving

Starting point is 00:26:42 and there's a glare, you put down a visor. And the visor is just like basically a piece of fabric, and it blocks a chunk of your view, but it at least blocks the sun. And this was an intelligent visor that was clear. And so you could see through it, but it also blocked UV rays. And you could adjust the level of opacity if you needed it to be more or less.

Starting point is 00:27:02 But you could still see through the mirror and it still blocked the glare. And I was like, oh, that's really neat. And then he pressed a button and it turned into a mirror suddenly that functioned. It looked great. I saw it. I know it works. And I got like an honest, wow. I didn't know.

Starting point is 00:27:17 that was a thing that could happen. And that's a real product. And I can imagine using it. That's like a problem where, yeah, if you want to block glare, you're losing a degree of visibility. And now you're not. You've actually done something, right?

Starting point is 00:27:32 Yeah, but you could put Gemini into a toaster and call it a day. What if your toaster could talk to you about Proust? I guess, yeah, I mean, this is actually, now that's an idea. If we're going to close this, this more AI-focused episode, I kind of want to circle back to

Starting point is 00:27:58 Cloid and like why Cloid and why Cloyd exists. Just take a second. If you're listening to this at home on the drive, if you've got family around, look at each other, look another person in the eye, and say the word LG has a new home assistance robot named Cloid. Cloid. Roll it around in your tongue. Do you know? Just think about it for a second.

Starting point is 00:28:22 Okay, continue. I want to talk about why Cloyd exists. Like why is it? LG, who's previously had some really impressive booths over the years. And they had cool TV. They had TVs where the wallpaper TV was impressive. Every time I go to an LG's booth every year, I'm like, yeah, that's a better looking TV than I've seen before. We've really figured out TV. Yeah, it looks great.

Starting point is 00:28:42 But why, why, and the wallpaper TV is okay? There was wallpaper TV last year. It was, it was slightly worse. This one's a little bit better. But why is Cloid, the big thing at the LG booth this year? Cloid. Right? Because none of the technology that Cloyd is doing is new. Remember last year at Showstoppers, me and you, we saw that really janky robot. You're going to have to be more specific, buddy.

Starting point is 00:29:02 He's not the really janky robot that moves up and down. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the pusher and shove a robot. Yes, right? And the Kloid is like kind of that. It's like the actual physical robotic parts of Kloid aren't new. Yeah. And the sort of AI that's running Kloid. And Kloid to also is it new.

Starting point is 00:29:17 If someone needed to make Wally that was legally distinct enough to stop Disney from suing them. And tall, and taller. And taller. That's how Kloid looks. So why is Kloid? There's a Lloyd there. Why is Coyd there? I'm always asking myself this. This goes into like what this, what like CES is like doing this year and how it reflects this current state of the tech industry is that these LLMs, like chat GVT are not actually better than they were last year. No. They are the same. So how do we make things look, look cooler? Whatever improvements they are is not enough to notice for an average person. Very minimal. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:48 So instead of actually having anything new or any kind of sizable improvement to display, they're combining two old, and some of the robotics are kind of archaic, combining two older products and trying to pass it off as a new thing. Yeah. And that's these, these like older, older robotic systems, right, that you're usually kind of humanoid. Maybe they have hands. Maybe the hands can grab things.

Starting point is 00:30:09 Can the hands unscrew a milk carton? No. Can the robot grab milk out of the fridge? Yes. So long as you want milk from a very specific carton and croissants and only croissants, you're good. As long as the milk has a QR code that the robot can recognize to know that it's milk. And also when it's emptier than a certain level, it actually will crush the milk thing. Like it has to be a certain level of full, otherwise it doesn't.

Starting point is 00:30:32 Right. Neither of these things are new. And the fact that algae doesn't have anything else to display at their booth, the fact that they had to stoop so low as to regurgitate this, old kind of cheap robotics and slap an LLM in there and then call it a day, so that they have very little to actually show for us. Yes. And you, you see this walking through, like, the Central Hall. The Samsung booth isn't there. The Nikon booth isn't there. The Sony booth is mostly a car. Like, there's a lot of these big companies are really absent from actual products. Panasonic has a really big booth, but it's mostly about, like, servers. It's mostly

Starting point is 00:31:07 about how, how they're improving, how they're improving data farming. there's no stuff. And a lot of the stuff that does exist, you even have to separate further from stuff that exists and actually might be useful to stuff that exists and might be useful because it solves a problem that the thing that it is already created. Like, for example, a bunch, I came to several different companies

Starting point is 00:31:29 that had a car AI assistance whose job was to yell at you if you fell asleep or got distracted. And they were all built into these giant dashboard things that were the whole dashboard is a computer screen. And it's like, yeah, I can see why you need a robot to yell at people who get distracted because we have data. Because they're putting subway surfers on your fucking car dash.

Starting point is 00:31:52 We have ample data that shows that when you have a giant screen in a car and people use that screen, they are actually worse drivers than when they're just drunk in a normal car. And so, yes, you have made the car. You can show me how this whole dashboard, you can change it in a second. Look at all these different modes you have.

Starting point is 00:32:10 You can smartly change your dashboard, be whatever you want. And it'll yell at you if you get distracted. It's like, well, but the only reason you're getting distracted is because your entire car is a computer screen, which it shouldn't be. And we know it shouldn't be. They're either trying to solve problems that they created or inventing solutions to things that aren't really problems. And this is specifically with Cloyd, and they kept the guy who was like doing the demo kept reiterating that Cloid, Cloyd or already knows what you want before you have to say anything. Right. whether that's a croissant that's slightly underbaked or he knows had a fold laundry just the way

Starting point is 00:32:46 you want. Just the way you like it badly. Which is, which he, which he said in a kind of self-aware, ironic tone, because this robot spent two minutes trying to fold a single towel and it couldn't do it. These things don't work. And they're not meant to. It's meant to drive traffic and attention towards the LG brand because there's been tons of articles being like, look at LG's new butler robot, right? And that, and that's all that they're doing at this demo. Because this is not a real product for sale. Yeah. It is meant to drive attention to the brand and get articles.

Starting point is 00:33:15 And then those articles are going to get, you know, cited by other, by other LLMs. And it's this cycle that just keeps building. There's some really impressive stuff there, too. Like I went to Persona AI's booth, which had a bunch of computers that had without, that were not connected to the internet. All the signs told you that. And it has on PC AI image generators where it's all on the machine itself. And, you know, one of the representatives said,

Starting point is 00:33:40 come on, give it a prompt. It'll generate an image. And I've never used an AI image generator. And so I kind of panicked. I'll be honest. Like, I got freaked out. This is going to be some bullshit. I just typed in Tom Seismore with Dead Kid.

Starting point is 00:33:50 Yeah. And this is what, now that's not Tom Seismore, but that is a man cuddling a dead child. The kid doesn't, the face is gone. And that's not Tom Seismore. Like,

Starting point is 00:34:00 but, you know, the future. The future. No, I mean, this, this, I can't,

Starting point is 00:34:05 I don't want to harp on Cloid too much. But it's so, it's such a good example. Every additional time you say Coyd, it sounds less like a word. It's such a good example of what this show is. Specifically this year, how there's nothing new. So they're reaching into like, into like the CES of yesteryear. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:23 And try to push two things together and pretend that it's a new thing. And when it doesn't work, they're like, oh, this is actually a good thing. It's, he's folding the towel just the way I like. And that's kind of poorly. Look, he spends 90 seconds putting a single shirt into the washing machine. And this is him being very thorough. That was the word. He's being very thorough.

Starting point is 00:34:42 He really puts in the time. And you're like, this thing doesn't work. It's bad. It's a bad product. Part of the mistake they made, I think, is that because this is the year of robots, there are robots that are like industrial application robots that are showcasing we have made a robot with humanoid hands that is capable of more intricate movements than any other human hand robot before.

Starting point is 00:35:01 And they showed it like intricately folding like a pinwheel. And I was like, yeah, that I have not seen a robot with humanoid hands. hands that has had that much dexterity before, I'm sure that has some useful industrial applications. And then you go from that. And there's a bunch of other robots that are industrial, where it's like, we have built a new tip for this robot that allows it to do this kind of automotive work or allows it to do this kind of like manufacturing work, right? Where I'm like, I assume not being an expert on robotics, but you're saying it's the world's first robot that can handle this task, but that's at least an innovation. I can talk about the ethics

Starting point is 00:35:34 of replacing it. But like, that's a thing that is a new capability. And you have those robots next to the robots that human beings are actually meant to buy and put in their homes, none of which work well, all of which are exactly as capable as robots 20 years ago, except there's a chatbot on them. And it makes it all look worse where you're showing me what theoretically the best in robotics can do. And then I'm looking at the thing I'm supposed to have in my house and it just fell down and it can't fold laundry. And you want me to spend $6,000 or $12,000? one of the robot, the, I think it was like Booster X or something like that, the one that was dressed like Michael Jackson.

Starting point is 00:36:12 You're supposed to have as a companion for your child. It'll help it with its homework using chat GPT. That's small dancing robot. The small dancing robot. Yeah, I saw it. Yes. The small dancing robot that you can hit in the head with a liquor bottle and it won't break. That was part of the ad video.

Starting point is 00:36:26 You know how you always want to hit your kid in the head with a liquor bottle? Now you can get out this anger with this tiny child-sized robot. Yeah. for your child. And again, if someone was marketing a robot senator, like, are you angry at your spouse? No. You can beat the shit-outest robot and it'll be fine. At least that's an idea.

Starting point is 00:36:45 Yeah, with AI technology, the robot will actually learn your spouse's personality and respond accordingly to the beatings. Look, look, I've been hitting this robot after I come back from work every day for the last two weeks. And look, as soon as I walk in the door, it starts to shake. The previous models, it just wasn't satisfied. Yeah. It took a long time for a team to figure out how to give a robot.

Starting point is 00:37:04 PTSD. By God, we've crossed the Rubicon. As you can see, Vegas is taking its toll on our psyches as we've done an extended intimate partner abuse a bit. It's not a partner. It's a robot, garrison. Oh, you're right. It's not a... But also the robot can think and feel and has core memories and can love you. Don't put those two things together. These only exist as separate thoughts. No, this robot basically has a soul. Watch us hit it with a liquor bottle. It would just be so great to like with all of the, how much the... They're focused on the AI can develop real human connection, but it's also saccharin.

Starting point is 00:37:40 I would love to just do a booth where it's like, we're teaching, our robots hate. They know how to hate. Yeah. And I do want to end by noting one thing that we talked about a little briefly, but it's kind of low-key the most upsetting thing about this, which is I saw a bunch of different booths that used the term empathy. And what they meant by empathy was the robot can understand and anticipate what you want, right? That it's learning you and your patterns in order to offer you and more effectively assist. you. And I guess technically, yeah, but reducing the concept of empathy to the robot knows when you might want snacks is kind of evil. Like it's, it's like a minor evil. Time for Fritos, Robert.

Starting point is 00:38:21 Right. Empathy means the robot knows when to serve you is like a bad way to talk about empathy. I don't think most people when you think, what is empathy? Well, it means someone knows when I want to be upsold on a Hyundai. That's not what empathy is. Yeah. Our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you and useful. See, we famously, you know, the core of empathy. We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza. And it immediately said, I bet those kids want a Hyundai Alontra. Like that, I, anyway.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Yeah, if your version of empathy is trying to sell Coke vanilla, because we have all of this, all this stock. We don't wait too much. We mean, we fucked up. We are in trouble. We're underwater. And that's what empathy is. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:06 Anyway, welcome to the future, everyone. It's a CES miracle. It's a CES miracle. Goodbye. This is It Could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart. And today, the things falling apart are consumer electronics as an industry. We are at CES 20206, the trade show where the tech industry shows us everything it's going to sell us in the next year. And we've seen some cool stuff and a lot of bloatware, a lot of crap, a lot of AI and

Starting point is 00:39:45 stuff that doesn't need to be AI enabled. Here to talk about it is our panel of experts. Experts is a strong word, but okay. Yeah, panel is a strong word. That's all fair. Is even a strong word. I'm Robert Evans. Garrison Davis is also with me.

Starting point is 00:40:02 And I'm Ben Rose Porter. And, you know, Ben, you're an academic, right? You do college. Yeah, I do. I teach sociology. That's right. That's right. As a sociopath,

Starting point is 00:40:13 how have you enjoyed the trade show, folks. It's fascinating. I mean, you know, it's a fascinating world sociologically. You can learn a lot of the maladies of society at this place. Most of them are on display here. We are now going to walk you through a bunch of the largely non-AI products that we were able to find after sorting through the gunk. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know how people like pan for gold? If instead of like panning for gold in like a beautiful mountain stream, like you were panning for gold in like a pile of used condoms.

Starting point is 00:40:51 Gold is also generous. This is the panning for pennies in a pile of used condoms. Right, right. Now what was the best used condom you saw at CES 2026 Garrison? I think you mean what's the best penny. Good products. Did we see any good products? Yeah, there's some good ones.

Starting point is 00:41:08 Did I? I don't know if I saw any good products this year. The translation stuff is still around and some of it's really cool. I mean, yeah, in other episodes we've talked about, the glasses and the earbuds, most of the product sheets I have out now are at the very least mixed. If not, it's not bad. At Eureka Park, there was this product called Nodi, which is a smartphone replacement for kids, like kids like 6 to 12 if you don't want them having a smartphone.

Starting point is 00:41:37 And it allows them to send voice messages to a parent who, like, you know, has this approved contact list. So you can, you can also listen to music, listen to, like, some, like, some radio, like, you know, radio dramas, probably some books. It connects to Spotify. You can learn languages, allegedly. Or you can learn words, right?

Starting point is 00:41:59 You can learn words from other languages. And you can communicate with your parents. And this was, like, fine, right? It's the stuff that we've kind of seen before, but it was this little, like, you know, silicon. It kind of looks like like an elf bar, if you're familiar with an elf bar. It kind of looks like that.

Starting point is 00:42:13 And it's, yeah, if you don't want to give your, like, you know, six-year-old an iPhone, but you, you know, want them to have a way to contact you. Right. And that's, like, fine, right? So there's a lot of, like, basic stuff like that, I guess, that is, like, kind of okay. I don't want to be cynical for the sake of being cynical. That kind of stuff bores me. But there really wasn't that many good products this year because so many of them just were

Starting point is 00:42:33 LLM rappers, as we discussed in our previous episode. And there's another category. There were products that were good, and I could tell were good products on their own, that they had still thrown a... functionality that I don't want that I know will blow out the price and also makes it me less want to buy it. LG was advertising their new OLED television that has like the most vibrant colors, the best OLED screen that's ever been on a TV. And it looked fucking great. I have a video of it. The colors, the darks are amazing. LG screens are really good. But it's also with AI,

Starting point is 00:43:02 with Evo AI. And to show off its vibrant colors and what's capable of, they had a loop of videos that were inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope. And you can see it if you ever watch Deep Space Nine, it's about the quality of the Deep Space Nine intro. It does look very Star Trek intro, yeah. Which is frustrating because, again, we have images from the Talascope. They look cool, because you know what they are, is real.

Starting point is 00:43:31 Like, they're real products of one of the most impressive things human beings ever made, and you're bragging that, like, we have an AI generating images inspired by this thing that look worse. Yeah, a lot of those things are kind of mixed. I wanted the TV. I was like, wow, I might like a TV like that until you displayed that part of it. And now I just kind of feel dirty about even the prospect of wanting one of your products.

Starting point is 00:43:53 This is an interesting product I saw at the Innovation Awards showcase. This is the acoustic eye, which is kind of just... First off, that's an ear. That's an ear, right? That's an ear. We don't need to do that. But this is specifically a security system. that tries to detect very small drones. And this is like for, you know, high-profile people's houses, mostly.

Starting point is 00:44:14 You can put that on your roof or your window. And it'll detect very small drones that cameras would not be able to detect. So it's trying to, like, listen for drones. It provides 360-degree omnidirectional aerial surveillance detecting invisible aerial threats. So I would assume that they're trying to excel these to, like, you know, like, executives, like CEOs, politicians, people who are at risk of either, you know, drones filming around their house or more like

Starting point is 00:44:42 kinetic drone-based attacks. Right. And this is an interesting product that's like very current. It's a very current product. Like this is a reflection of some of the times that we're in. And yeah, I found that to be one of, one of an interesting thing. I guess we should discuss the exoskeleton,

Starting point is 00:45:00 which is maybe the best part of the show for me. Yes. There's a lot more exoskeletons this year. the technology is clearly matured and matured to the point that not only is it, do they have viable versions for, like, industrial use for people working in factories and whatnot, which two years ago is what they were always advertising is that. These are things that you buy at an enterprise level. And, you know, I know they're not primarily concerned with the health and well-being of their workers,

Starting point is 00:45:25 but actually these do improve health and well-being of workers, right? It reduces the felt load and the felt strain. It reduces the damaged knees and back, right? And that does affect their productivity. Right. And it also affects their profit because you know, You're less likely to have workman's comp claims, right? It's one of those things where it's a really good idea and the products work. There's a number of very good exoskeletons. We received from a company called HyperShell, an exoskeleton before the convention this year that you and I both wore on the floor. I have some data on it, which is that I timed my normal walking pace when I'm not particularly trying to get anywhere is about 19 minutes a mile, right, if I'm just kind of like walking casually. When I put the Hypershell on and had it at 7.5.000. 75% power mode.

Starting point is 00:46:08 My walking pace was 15 to 16 minutes a mile, about 15 and a half, I think is what I generally advertised. And my heart rate didn't change, meaningfully. It was like one or two higher than it normally is, but not really a significant change in heart rate, right? And I felt like at the end of the day, my feet heard about a normal amount for a day at CES, but my lower back and my knees felt less strain, right? That was my experience with the hyper shell.

Starting point is 00:46:29 It's like an external hip almost that attaches around your waist. Yeah, there's a belt around your hip, and it goes up to right above your knees. is kind of the, and it's not a huge footprint. No, it's a very small device. And yeah, it goes on your hip, then another strap, like, goes above your knee. And it kind of assists or guides your leg and your hip up and down. Yeah, and for the record, folks, the basic version of this product is about $1,000. The version we had was about $2,100, right?

Starting point is 00:46:54 And the battery will last about 30 kilometers, they say. I didn't have any trouble getting about an eight-hour day out of it. Ben, you wore it much more than I did. I wore it a little bit. Do you want to talk about your experience with HyperShell? Yeah, I was impressed with it. It was, first of all, HyperShell, very funny name. I like that name.

Starting point is 00:47:13 It was pretty comfortable to wear, which is, I always see the exoskeletons, and I'm like, it looks kind of awkward. But it was very easy to take on and pull off. And it was comfortable, and it was pretty simple. And it basically just has two motors that sort of assist when you move your leg. It pushes your leg. And when it comes back in the step, it pushes it back down. And so it's just assisting.

Starting point is 00:47:36 And it tracks your leg pretty well. So there's just very little time when you're pushing against the machine. It's coordinated very well. I mean, it just functioned. It worked. And you could walk a long time. Yeah. The fact that it's like, yes, it's a product that works.

Starting point is 00:47:51 And it does a thing that has utility. It feels increasingly rare at CES. I was a little disappointed that the product did not pay attention to my emotions and build a relationship of empathy. friendship of empathy with me. That was, but the walking was good. Yeah, I asked the hyperichel about its opinions on Proust, and it had very little to say. It just, it is like two main modes.

Starting point is 00:48:12 It has like this eco mode. Then it's this hyper mode, which can get really aggressive. If you turn up hyper mode all the way. You feel it's like kind of lifting your legs. You could be bounding. Yeah. And you can adjust like the torque. You can adjust like how much delay it has.

Starting point is 00:48:26 You have a lot of different settings. The one thing that I had a lot of fun with is that there's this other experimental mode. I don't know if you turn it on yet, called fitness mode. Fitness mode is cool. It does the opposite. It adds resistance to the like movement. So it's for like working out.

Starting point is 00:48:42 If you want like a harder hike, right? Then you can, you can turn on fitness mode and then it'll be, it's more work. It's like how Goku trains. To walk. Sure. But something I, I, that's an anime thing, by the way. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:48:55 Now, one thing that I found out through, through my own, my own cunning, is that if you have hyper mode turned on all the way, which it was when Ben was wearing the exoskeleton, on my phone, I can switch from hyper mode to fitness mode

Starting point is 00:49:13 immediately, which completely halts any movement. So you can be walking at like seven... You really fuck up your friend if they don't have the app. At seven, you're walking with like seven miles an hour, really fast speedwalking.

Starting point is 00:49:25 And then I press a button and your legs are going to an immediate halt. And it was really fun to do that for about seven hours. Yeah. I almost crashed into several people just for you to get his kicks. Oh, I'm glad you found the terrorizer friend option on there. It was really fun. It was really fun.

Starting point is 00:49:44 Most of the time I used it, I had installed the app when I got it, but I didn't think about it after that. Because you can do everything on device, or at least you can do a lot of things on a device. You get a lot more options when you're using the app. But you don't need to use the app to handle the basic functionality, right? I love to adjusting the intensity of how much it's doing. And it shows a whole bunch of applications, right? You can wear this hiking, like running, doing, you know, lifting, your work. And I like the thoughtfulness in there, you don't need the app to use this, but the app vastly,

Starting point is 00:50:13 the app allows you gives you a lot of control that you're not going to get off of a simple, like, button, right? It just struck me as good design. It has a lot of, like, fidelity via the app. So that's the hyper shell folks, good exoskeleton. I've used a few at various CESs. and this one certainly strikes me as like a very good like consumer option. Like if you as an individual want one, and I'm sure still most of the sales are going to be like enterprise,

Starting point is 00:50:37 different companies that have like, you know, want these for people who are doing like loading and unloading and like a loading dock or whatever. But I think the prices will continue to go down and they are now heading the point where this is like a thing that individuals can afford if they want one. And there is a lot of, and HyperShell focused on this in some of their advertising, but there's a lot of utility for people with disabilities for stuff like this, right? Like that's part of the point of all of these different products.

Starting point is 00:51:02 And in general, when it came to the stuff where like the, because there's AI in this too, HyperShell talks about it. And it's mostly just like how it learns and reacts to your motions, right? That that's like machine learning. And when we talk about AI, usually the useful applications, you could also just call machine learning. That's what we used to say. But in general, the products that impressed me most and scared me most at CES were

Starting point is 00:51:24 health care related products, right? Where we have a towel that read your sweat and can tell if you have, like, vitamin deficiencies or if you're, if you're not hydrated enough or all of these different, like the number of products where it's both like, yes, this thing can tell if you've like fatty liver disease, like based on without needing to go to a doctor. And I'm sure that is useful and will help a lot of people. And also all of these products are selling your data to the highest better. your health data, your biometrics.

Starting point is 00:51:55 Did you ask them about that? Sorry, I am not aware of that being the specific thing for the fatty liver people. That was my problem with all of the health wearables, I should say. Just to be clear. I should clarify. The wearables are all on the cloud and every one of the ones I saw has deals with the LLM companies that they're working with and are handing your data over. Yeah, because that's how they get quote-unquote smarter is through a massive data collection. And so there's this thing where there is.

Starting point is 00:52:23 this kind of baseline expectation here that everyone is fine with handing over all of their data, all of their physical data, all of their biometrics, which I, like the utility is undeniable of things that can diagnose that you need to go to a doctor or can at least suggest, like, the existence of problems combined with, and we are not at all interested in keeping that information secure. I find the kind of casual, and no one will, because I don't think people will. I think people will buy these products and not think about who's getting access. to their biometric data. And I wish that people cared about that.

Starting point is 00:52:57 And we've seen that specifically be a problem around like pregnancy and with states restricting abortion and the ways in which these companies are like aware of people's bodies even before the actual people are. Here's an ad break. All right, we're back from ads.

Starting point is 00:53:26 So I went to Lenovo's booth. It was a bunch of laptops. I use Lenovo laptops. They make good price. products. It was every product there was either here is a new update to the line of laptops we've been making for 30 years. This is the latest one. This is the latest think pad carbon. This is the latest, you know, idea pad or whatever. And then they had a couple of like, the, the big thing they were showing was the Lenovo twist, which is a laptop that has a screen that can twist around.

Starting point is 00:53:51 And so it can lay flat like a tablet. But it can also, the thing that we're really showing is that it's motorized and it has AI enabled so it can follow your face. And you can set it to track an individual's face. And as you move, it will move with you. Now it has two different modes. One of them is also you can gesture to it or you can command it by voice and you can say go into laptop mode, go into tablet mode, turn left, turn right.

Starting point is 00:54:12 That did not work well. About half the time in the demo that I saw it did not respond, maybe because the room was loud, maybe because the data was bad. But then he put it into face tracking mode and when you have multiple faces, you can pick which face it tracks

Starting point is 00:54:26 and it swivel to meet your face. And it was cool and it did work very well. I was like, this is impressive. Like, what is the use case? Why would you want it? And he was like, well, say you're doing a presentation, like you're a CEO or something doing a presentation.

Starting point is 00:54:43 This way the screen with your text on it or the PowerPoint on it will follow you as you move around. And I was like, that could be useful. I don't feel like many people are in that situation often. I've never been in that situation in my life. And I speak in public for a living sometimes. So I guess, yeah, there probably is a CEO who would benefit for, there's like five of those guys. Like, what is the, this is a whole laptop product line.

Starting point is 00:55:08 You have multiple versions. And I didn't get a single reason why you would want this other than that, other than for presentations. And it's genuinely impressive that it can track your face and move as you move, but why? And another product they had that was in the but why category was the Lenovo Legion, and this is not a product that's ever going to come out, but it was like a proof of concept. So it's their gaming laptop line. And it has a normal screen that can widen to be three times as long. And it unfolds. They have screens that unfold. And it's cool that they could do that. And it

Starting point is 00:55:44 looked neat. And it's neat that a screen has that capability. I don't want it because it also, it doesn't look, I could see, like, obviously I can see Utidian like, you can have a screen that gets bigger without it being a bigger footprint for the laptop. But when the screen is unfolded, There's huge, like, speed bump size looking like wads of screen that are bigger and, like, bulge out. And it doesn't look good. Like, it's a bad screen. It's like a little, like, bubbly. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:12 When it's fully extended, it's not like a good screen. Okay. You said it's a proof of concept piece. Right. Right. Right. I mean, like, the... They're showing that they're working on folding screen technology.

Starting point is 00:56:22 The twist was, like, a previous version of that. Yes. The proof of concept called the swivel was at CES. last year. Yes. And they improved it and now it's a real product called the Twist. Right. And maybe this could be the case for this like unrolling, unfolding,

Starting point is 00:56:37 eventually it will be in products, right? Yeah. But I also don't think, I don't see how you cannot have the bulge. I don't know. I mean, integral to how the screen works. The folding screens have come a long way the past five years. I use one. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:51 They also do have some pixels dying in the fold area. I mean, yeah, if you're trying to buy products for longevity, probably not the thing for you. If you like it for the novelty and for some reason have enough cash to burn, then maybe it's something someone will be interested in.

Starting point is 00:57:05 As I was watching it unfold, there were two guys behind me and talking about it. And one of them was like, yeah, it's not a real, it's not going to actually come out. Like, that's even like the old version of the chassis.

Starting point is 00:57:15 And I said, I just don't really see a use. I don't think people want a product like this. Like, I'm looking at it. The screen's not great. And I just don't see who's going to buy this.

Starting point is 00:57:26 And the, guy behind me said, well, I think like the use case is like billionaire CEOs and other people have a lot of money. And I looked like it. It was a Lenovo rep. And I was like, that's not, that's insane. Why? Who are you? Like, that's not like, did you just say that to me? A Lenovo rep said that. Yeah, yeah, he's one of the guys doing the demos. He had a Lenovo badge on. And I, yeah, that, that was weird to me. That's wild. But again, at least it was a thing. No, it was a, it was a physical product. Because the other thing they had, they had the, um, the work station, which the thing they were showing was there was an app on it that looks at your face and

Starting point is 00:58:01 shows you how fatigued you are by percent and how fatigued your eyes are and like other data. And I was like, oh, that's creepy and kind of impressive. But then I walked away and I came back and it gave me a totally different set of numbers for my fatigue. Were you differently fatigued? No, I was a second later. Okay. And I did it four times. And every time the set of numbers was like different enough that the only assumption I can make is that it was, those aren't real numbers. It's just generating a number and telling you that, and it's full of shit, because it wouldn't have been so different

Starting point is 00:58:32 if it was actually measuring anything. It's just random numbers that it's putting on to make you think it's measuring something. It's probably trying to. There might be just subtle things that dramatically change the number that's being displayed. I specifically once I notice that tried to keep my face flat. And I did notice when

Starting point is 00:58:48 you move closer and further, it changes, but I think it's just programmed to as you move alter the numbers so that you see the number moving, but every time I came on new, it was a different number. It went from like, when I started, it was like 0.02, and the second time I came back, it was 0.50. And again, I did nothing.

Starting point is 00:59:05 I was specifically keeping my face neutral. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, it's just this, it's not a big deal. I think, I think that type of stuff will get better. Like, we've seen versions of that before that have actually done, like, okay. Yeah. Well, but, there could be a lot of factors into, like, into why, why the demo goes a certain way.

Starting point is 00:59:22 The face tracking and facial recognition were, but I went to this booth that, the big thing they're doing was like driving assistant robots that would like yell at you if you fell asleep or if you like looked away and were like texting or something it would say like look away from your phone look at the screen please and there's definitely like utility there right like that is probably a good idea we saw that last year at Samsung's section of eureka park for like test taking to like make sure students aren't cheating at tests right so it like sends an alert every time the student's eyes goes away from like the computer screen If they keep looking down, like, under, if they could be checking, like, their phone or notes. Smart eye is the company. One thing I did appreciate was that the little device that they put in was just like a circle with two eyes on it,

Starting point is 01:00:08 as opposed to, like, a whole dashboard. So that seemed nice. But the thing that they had, the first thing I used was this optical recognition system where it learned my eyes. And then when I came on, it would give my name every time I walked up to it. And so, like, yeah, it definitely, like, recognizes at least your eyes. And it could switch between different people. But it was also, it can tell when you're drunk, they claim.

Starting point is 01:00:29 And I couldn't tell that. I couldn't, I was high on Kratum and I had been smoking Delta 8. So I was definitely not sober. It didn't recognize me as not sober. So it couldn't measure those things. Maybe it can tell if you're drunk. The demo, they said it could. And they showed a woman when she was sober and when she was drunk.

Starting point is 01:00:49 And they explained to me it was actually really difficult because we did this on a close track and she is really drunk. And we had to jump through a lot of hoops. for them to let us have a person drunk driving. That's interesting. And I did find that kind of funny. No, yeah. But that is how you test.

Starting point is 01:01:01 That would be kind of a hard thing to test. Yeah. You could test in like simulations. Right. But they wanted like this was supposed to be a perfect concept in a real vehicle and it'll shut down the car. I did have some people posting when I posted a video of that that like I have this condition with my eyes or that condition with my eyes and normal optical recognition stuff doesn't work with me. Is this going to show that I'm drunk or is it going to like be able to. And I actually don't know.

Starting point is 01:01:22 Again, I was not able to test the product of that. that does seem like a concern I would hope they've dealt with but also I kind of doubt they did because usually there's gaps in products like this. I could see a company like this partnering with like an insurance company

Starting point is 01:01:36 or partnering with like certain cars that would like stop the car from being able to be moved if it detects the driver is drunk and how like false positives would play into that and then you're just like locked out of your car because this robot thinks you're intoxicated and actually you're fine. You just like look like that.

Starting point is 01:01:53 And I could also see them like rolling this product out and it hits like Thailand or something. And then they're being a big store where it's like, they didn't test this on any people of like Thai ancestry and it actually sees all of them as drunk because of like an error in the coding. Sure. And being like, oh, great. Like I'm not, again, smart eye from what I can tell their technology worked. But in order to adequately like review and test it, you do need, you need more access to it than they're giving it the show. I can't actually tell you if it works at determining when people are drunk. I can just show you they had a video. claiming it does. So one product that I feel at best mixed about, I first saw in the CES Innovation

Starting point is 01:02:33 Awards section, this is called a self-insight therapy resolve XR from South Korea. Oh, one of my two favorite Koreas, by the way, just since we're talking Korea. This is a VR therapy program that is supposed to give you a final goodbye with a deceased loved one in VR. Yes, this was my initial reaction as well. And like I've seen versions, I've seen versions of this before where it's like an LLM or like an AI pretending to be your like dead wife that you like hug in VR. Sure.

Starting point is 01:03:08 And that type of stuff I've generally felt bad about. No. Some of the people who've used it like in like the promotional videos are, you know, crying and I feel and like the product in a way. As a friend, I will promise you if that moment ever comes for you, I'll pretend to be your dead wife. I don't even know what to say that. But what I found interesting about Resolve XR

Starting point is 01:03:31 is that the avatar of your deceased loved one is not... That's a bleak term? Is not actually an AI. Nor is it a fully pre-recorded, like prescripted simulation. It is being puppeted by a therapist that you are working with as a part of the Gestalt Empty Chair Therapy Technique. and this is what the product does. So you're working with a therapist

Starting point is 01:03:58 who is using text to speech that is talking as your deceased, as your deceased loved one, as a part of this therapy exercise. If you have recordings of their voice, the AI will try to replicate their voice. That's something I feel a little bit odd about. But that is like the one like aspect of like,

Starting point is 01:04:15 of like, quote, AI that's being used here is for, is for the voice cloning. And then there's like a pre-recorded set of like gestures that someone does in like motion capture. But the actual, like, like, live puppeting of this thing is done by a therapist that you were sitting across from, but you have, you know, VR goggles on. And this is, this is not supposed to be something that you do, like, routinely. It's not like, oh, I'm, like, I'm talking to my wife, like, my wife is in VR. It's, this is a therapeutic exercise meant for people dealing with extreme grief, specifically when loved ones have been taken away during, like, like, like, accidents.

Starting point is 01:04:48 Like, they specifically mentioned, like, a plane crash that happened a year ago. And so this is for people like an extreme extreme grief to give them like closure through this therapeutic exercise. This is this is the this is the pamphlet. I went through a lot of whiplash because obviously my first assumption was this is an evil product where you like feed your loved one's social media data and it pretends to be them. And it's not that.

Starting point is 01:05:11 And it's good that it's not that. But then it's like it's being basically a therapist puppeting your dead loved one. I can there's a couple of conclusions I have. First off, these people are. trying to be ethical, it does seem. It seems like they care and they are attempting to provide something that is useful to people who are suffering. I also think this might fundamentally, this idea might be fundamentally unethical and impossible to do well. So I think this might be a case of someone trying to do the most ethical version of something that cannot be done ethically,

Starting point is 01:05:43 which is a category of AI device that I've seen this year. It's tricky because on one hand, you know, as I was talking to the, the woman at the booth and reading through the materials they had, it seemed like they were selling this as, this is just sort of augmentation to a therapeutic practice that is already done. Yeah. We're just putting a, you know, a digitally generated face and voice to it. But it's so, I mean, it's so easy to imagine.

Starting point is 01:06:13 Just this company seems somewhat ethically focused. But, uh, what all kinds of directions you could go in this, it's a Pandora's, box a little bit of like, where we're starting to venture into creating replicas of the dead. Yeah. And that is. And I went to a panel kind of in the same tone on mental health and AI that I thought was going to be an opportunity for me to harass an executive during a Q&A. Which is one of your favorite CES activities. It's my favorite thing to do at CES. And there literally

Starting point is 01:06:47 is like AI, there's ample data that it is a disaster for mental health, not just AI psychics. but there are a lot of things that it makes worse and a lot of problems that it causes people and a lot of problems that it exacerbates including like suicidal ideation. This is documented. There's data on it. So that's what I was, I was showing up prepared to do that. And what I actually got was an actual clinical therapist who was trying to talk about, who first started by very much admitting the dangers with AI and the things that it harms in terms

Starting point is 01:07:19 of mental health. And then was trying to say, what would a responsible and ethical, like therapeutic AI do. And her argument was, we know how many people need therapy and don't have access to it, both in the United States and worldwide. And some sort of automated bot system that handles aspects of therapy might be the only way to provide affordable therapy to the number of people who need it who can't currently afford it. And I disagree, or at least I don't think that I don't disagree.

Starting point is 01:07:49 It's accurate that there's way more people who need mental health than, afford it, right? That's undeniable, undeatable. I disagree that AI can help this problem in any meaningful way, and in fact think it will only make it worse. But I understand that she was coming at this from a, I am attempting to define what a responsible, a therapeutic AI might do. And through the course of that, I believe she is partially, because I talked to her about this afterwards too, she thinks it might be possible, but is not convinced that it is in fact possible for there to be an AI therapy system that is actually useful. And one of the things she brought up was that traditional AI chatbots, the big ones, are all programmed to gas you up in order

Starting point is 01:08:36 to keep you using them, right? The program to make you want to continue to interact with them. And so it does things that are really bad for your mental health and that can exacerbate and cause new problems, right, because of the way these are programmed. So any responsible AI therapy chatbot would have to not. do that, which I'm like, that is true that you can't be a useful therapeutic tool that only praises people, right? That's just not a thing. But when I came up to it afterwards, I was like, my issue is I think you're right about that. But I also think if you're saying the AI therapy bot is going to be a separate product that does not do these things. Number one, it's a high bar to get people to

Starting point is 01:09:13 pay money for a tool when they already have the chat bot. And number two, if the chat bot that is good for them doesn't do the thing that makes it addictive, people will continue to use the addictive one for therapy. And she said, yeah, that's my worry too. And so I came away from being like, she's trying to explore if this can be done. And my conclusion, based on her exploration, is it can't. But it's so interesting that she said that because she, and this is, I mean, me hearing you talk about her, she sounds like the only person who was thinking about this at all at this convention. And she was the only person on the panel. Yeah. Of just thinking. It was a speech, not a panel really, yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:49 Of thinking about that what are the social relations behind these technologies? Because, of course, that's the main question here is a technology that can generate, that can have a conversation with you is one thing. It's not that really doesn't seem like the poor of the problem so much as, well, all the machines that are having conversations are driven by very specific incentives, you know, to interact with their users in a particular way that has everything to do with the social relationships of their production and use. And the notion that technology would have any connection to social relations at all is completely absent from any discussion of any product I've seen here.

Starting point is 01:10:29 Speaking of social relations between products and human beings, here's some ads. We're back. And God, I really love those Chumba Casino ads. They remind me that whenever I'm out in the world, sitting down with my loved ones, you know, watching the big big. game. I could be gambling. And kind of every other moment of my life that I'm not gambling is wasted. Robert, have you heard of Kalshi? No. So you know about politics, right? I love politics. And you know about insider trading, right? I love insider trading. What if you could do insider trading about all of politics on the exclusive information that you will learn as a journalist? Wow, that sounds legal. It shockingly is. There's actually zero federal or state regulation

Starting point is 01:11:24 affecting this whatsoever. That's the Kalshi guarantee. There is no. There is no. regulatory mechanism that exists on a state level to regulate this behavior. Now, years, and you say that, but that's literally just what's printed above their booth. Let's talk about maybe the worst product that I saw at CES, child-free trust.

Starting point is 01:11:42 Boy. So what? I don't know. Is it like a software that lets you make a trust? This software was marketed towards child-free people. They lead with 25% of Americans don't have children and don't intend to have them. Hell yeah. Yeah, and so their ideas that they write here, Child Free Trust is the first comprehensive nationwide solution providing medical and financial POA, executor and trustee

Starting point is 01:12:10 representation for child free and permanently childless people. So if you are childless and you don't want to burden your loved ones, that's their wording, with, you know, your estate plan when you die, this is a company that will do that for you. What's interesting. What's interesting, you is. What's Interesting, though, is that I asked them, I said, well, you know, this presumably already happens. What is in place? I have a trust in no children. Yes. Yeah. Well, does they appoint someone to handle this? They will first see if that you have, if you have any loved ones who would want to take on these duties.

Starting point is 01:12:47 And obviously, people without kids aren't capable of love, so. Yeah. They, a little bit, I mean, strangely, like, so it's, it's a product that is for, we already have a public. service that searches for people, loved ones that could take on these responsibilities. And if it cannot find those, it takes it on as a public good. So it was a product completely without purpose. It was like you,

Starting point is 01:13:09 in order to use this, you just have to be intent on, on separating yourself from society in this way. You have no loved ones, presumably, or you don't want them involved in your estate planning. You also don't want the state involved. So it requires this third party company.

Starting point is 01:13:25 It was just a very strange product, just the way they presented it. Well, I mean, it's, again, I have a trust and a will. If you don't have a kid and you don't have, like, you're not, like, married or you don't have a surviving spouse, like, yes, the state will appoint somebody, but that process is slower and more expensive if you want to avoid the cost or if you want to avoid, like, having a trust and a will is not an unreasonable thing, especially if you want to make sure if you have assets and you want to make sure they go a specific place. You want to donate them somewhere or whatever. Well, and like, a lawyer can handle that. A lawyer should handle that, is what I'm saying is you shouldn't use an app. Specifically what they do that the lawyer can't is they provide a service for the corporation

Starting point is 01:14:05 to execute power of attorney. And that is the main thing. So this is the most antisocial service I've seen at all of CES because it's built on this idea that if you have no kids and you are so separated from the rest of your family, like you don't trust any siblings, you don't trust a spouse, a partner, maybe you don't have one, You don't trust parents. You don't even trust a friend to do this for you. Instead that you turn to a company, a private company.

Starting point is 01:14:35 You don't even trust the state, right? Because the state can handle this. It is a private corporation that it's going to handle your will, your estate, and power of attorney. That's the P.OA thing is bought up. That's what really got me. Because I asked them, it's like, a lawyer can handle all this. And like, well, no, regular lawyer can't be power of attorney. And I was like, oh, this is the core of your product actually.

Starting point is 01:14:56 is that it's for people who are so antisocial, who have so separated themselves that they don't trust, they don't trust anyone who could do that. They don't have any loved ones, really. It's not just about being child-free. No. It's like, it's about, you do not exist

Starting point is 01:15:10 in a social network whatsoever. Because I can see the kind of people who might need this are people, or might want this, are not the kind of people who use apps, because the actual, the group of people who definitely don't have kids

Starting point is 01:15:22 and also may not have any living friends are people who are incredibly elderly. It's not even a factor of like their life is bleak. It's just you lived way too long. You literally don't have anyone left that you knew. But they're not going to use an app. Like that's just not how they think about. If they don't have a lawyer, they'll have the state handle it.

Starting point is 01:15:39 But like they're not going to download the child free app, this 104-year-old Okinawan woman, to like handle this for them. There's like a graph on the bottom that shows like features and like what different versions have which features. And the three features are child-free trust, trust and work. will and then free will as one word, but the W is capitalized. I just like seeing free will and then checks and exes at the bottom. You don't get free will on all the options.

Starting point is 01:16:04 Sorry. What is free will as a service garrison? Are they saying the machine has it? Or is it literally a free will making service? That's my guess. I think it's creating a will from free will. I think that's what they're doing. Okay.

Starting point is 01:16:17 I mean, but yeah. And this was in this was in Eureka part. Yeah. Which is where the cool little products are. That's bad. Yeah, it was really bizarre. Yeah, there's a fun bit that you could do if you had the money to show up and just do bits at CES, where it's like, this company can handle all of your end of life care and decisions, and it's just a booth with a handgun on a table. So let's talk about, to close, let's just discuss like what the CES kind of means in general.

Starting point is 01:16:45 We already kind of discuss the AI angle of this. And it's something that we've seen throughout this show is these massive banners hanging everywhere about how CES is where innovators show. sure yeah absolutely and in how everything's based around innovation and creativity this is where everything descends from and this sort of like like tech idealism that the world is based around these concepts of innovation and creativity and they do not mention any any physical way that actually comes into the world or the sort of mechanisms of the world that allow innovation to take place and ben you we've been talking a lot about this the past like two days i mean it's all we're solving all the problems of the world and we're fixing everything and it's all eternal sunshine.

Starting point is 01:17:31 And where that comes from is innovation and creativity. But those are just, yeah, totally abstract quantities. There's not even a subject given of like innovators. Well, who is that? If you have a product, you're innovating. Yeah. If you, is that the owner? Is that the workers who make it?

Starting point is 01:17:49 I mean, no mention of labor at any point in any of this, which I mean, that's a given. Oh, that's not true. They talked about all the laborers you could replace. Yeah, all right. You can, we don't need them anymore. It's the innovation is drawn the full circle. It produces itself now. Yeah, just that this abstract quantum of, I mean, it really is kind of interesting.

Starting point is 01:18:07 It does become a blur of like who is the magical font producing all of this stuff. It almost, it's sometimes it almost seems like it's the consumer. It's sort of suggesting is like, it's actually you who creates all of this. It was very vague, very strange. Mm-hmm. we went to that one panel about like trying to address underserved people who are who are like cut out of tech and like cut out of cut out of all of these like industries yeah i mean it was very nondescript about who exactly that was yeah they had people talking for the that are paralyzed veterans someone from the n double acp and i mean it was just one again there was no actual discussion of the social relationships behind technology it was just entirely about this technology is here. It is the first priority. Um, so everything else has to follow after. And yeah, very unclear about they, they would all talk about what technology could be used for,

Starting point is 01:19:06 but entirely nondescript about where that process comes or who's making those decisions, where those centers of power are. The reach to have an, for existing brands and companies that make real things, to have an AI angle was the most obvious and tortured thing that I saw. And one of my favorite booths every year is the Jackery booth. Jackery makes batteries and solar panels. And they make pretty good batteries and solar panels for like expeditions, for camping. Like they're rugged. And I use them.

Starting point is 01:19:33 They're good products. And this year they had the new edition of all their batteries, the new edition of all their solar panels. And as generally happens with technology, everything's a little better than it was last year. But there's not much room for AI aside from like the batteries have AI by which they mean there's like a learning algorithm that can determine like how to optimize. aspects of like power draw or whatever. Like, sure, that's not really AI in the way that the AI industry means it. But I, sure, sounds real. But because that wasn't enough, they had this thing

Starting point is 01:20:02 that they called their Mars rover, which was not a Mars rover. I don't think we'll ever go on Mars. Does not look like it could survive on Mars, but it is a rover that is a big battery on wheels that is intelligent and can drive itself and has solar panels that slide out. And the use case for this was it will travel around and can go to where the sun is in order to charge. itself up and then head to you to offer you outlets when you're doing work. And it's like, is a robot that moves really, I can see like a two points in my life where I might have gotten used to. Who's going to buy this? For what? Where will it be deployed? It just roams around outside this expensive machine that does not look like it should get rained on too much and finds the

Starting point is 01:20:43 sun to charge itself up and then heads over to you to charge device. It can't charge a home. It doesn't power a house. It's like a little robot. Is it for like camping? I don't know. That was unclear. They showed it being used and they showed it as like, I'm outside and using power tools. The robot came up to me so I could plug in.

Starting point is 01:21:00 Huh. And like, I guess you could take like the park. You could take it to... A park? But it's big. It is pretty big. It's like a sizable machine.

Starting point is 01:21:08 It probably weighed 80 pounds. And again, like, it's impressive that it can go seek out the sun to charge itself up. It's impressive that you could like call it or like call it with an app and it will come over to you and there's an outlet. Who? who will buy this? Why? When? That is an odd one.

Starting point is 01:21:26 Again, I can think working in my yard, working out when I'm shearing the goats or whatever, I have had to carry a battery with me because there's not an outlet out there and the shears need a battery. And yeah, I guess it would be easier if the robot moved there, but this has to be like $20,000.

Starting point is 01:21:42 I'm not going to buy a robot to do that. I can just pick up a battery and walk with it 100 feet. Who will use this? Why? It's not going to Mars. I assure you it's not going to Mars. Again, I wouldn't want it to be left out in the rain. And I love the Jackery products. They make good stuff. And the fact that, like, yeah, you clearly scrambled to make this so that you had a thing that can compete with all the other AI things. And I wish you were just devoting your lives to making better solar panels, which is what I want from you. Anyway. I'm just curious. Are the companies here, are they profitable? Do they?

Starting point is 01:22:22 Yeah, I mean, some of them. Some of them. But a lot, I mean. Some of them are funded with VC money and have not made a profit. Some of them are funded from VC money and have been losing money for years. And then there's also like Lenovo makes, it's a company. It makes a profit. They make products people buy, you know.

Starting point is 01:22:36 Jackery makes products people buy. There's also a lot of startups. Like the Eureka Park section that we've been referring to, like the stuff in the bottom floor of the Venetian. that those are, you know, a lot of startup companies who are looking for investors as well. So, yeah, it is definitely a mix. Some of them are trying to do like business to business sales. Some of them are more consumer facing. Some of them are looking for investors.

Starting point is 01:22:54 Some of them are profitable and other ones are trying to boost their stock price by being here, kind of like Cloyd at LG. But I think what's really important is that everyone here is an innovator. And you know why we know that they're innovators? Because they've shown up. And only innovators show up here. and they're the real driving force of the economy. And honestly,

Starting point is 01:23:15 I was feeling bad about myself until I saw that banner and realized that I am an innovator, you know? You are an innovator. Thank you. I showed up and I figured out how to be the guy on the most cratim at the, at the CES show floor.

Starting point is 01:23:28 No, I mean, CS is so interesting to me. I innovated. Like, it runs both on this like technology idealism where everything is based on, you know, people, geniuses, you know, you're Steve jobs, having in like an idea. Steve's job. And he is like the,

Starting point is 01:23:42 the innovator and everything descends from the idea. That is like the thing. It's like this like tech platonism. So like this is one side of it. You also have like the tech accelerationists at CES where it's like they occupy this position of being so pro technology no matter whatever downsides that the current iteration might have because they need someone to hold that position in order for this thing to move forward. They know that there's concerns around data protection.

Starting point is 01:24:06 But their opinion is that it doesn't matter. There is problems there. but we, the people here at CES, the innovators, need to ignore them because we have to push forward. And this is what like the Austrian Secretary of State said at that one panel I went to. It was like, data protection is a problem, but it gets in the way of innovation.

Starting point is 01:24:26 Yeah. And that's literally literally what he said. Yeah. And so you have, you have this like this tech optimistic like acceleration, like viewpoint of like technology will be better, but in order for it to be better and saves eventually, it's going to, it's kind of shitty and has some problems now. But we need to push forward through that all the way.

Starting point is 01:24:43 Like, we can't, we can't, we can't go slowly. It has, it has to go forward. So they adopt this, this viewpoint because, like, they need someone to hold this, like, tech optimism viewpoint in order for the process to, like, unfold. Yeah, there's something strangely clear-eyed about that in the way that it's like, yeah, if, I mean, if you're limiting your view to the system of capitalism, yeah, the whole thing goes into crisis. If you are not squeezing a little more juice out of the orange,

Starting point is 01:25:11 And if this is what it takes to do that, then full steam ahead. They're lucid about that. Yeah, yeah. You know what else is lucid? Us saying it's time to end this fucking podcast. Goodbye. Another CES miracle. We have kind of survived.

Starting point is 01:25:39 Hey, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today. And I'm very lucky to be joined again by Gordaigne, who's a journalist from East Kyrgyzstan, working with Hengor, the human rights organization and lots of other organizations. and we're going to talk today about what has been happening in Iran for the past few weeks. So thanks for joining us, Gordon. Hello. Thank you very much for inviting me again to this show.

Starting point is 01:26:04 And, yeah, I'm really glad to be here. And I am ready to talk about all the things that have happening in the past few weeks in Kurdistan and Iran. Yeah. I think for a lot of people, what is happening in Iran in the last few weeks has not really punched. into the mainstream US media for the most part, right? So I think we should probably begin with a very basic overview of what has been happening and a little bit of why it has been happening and also where, because I think that's worth mentioning, right?

Starting point is 01:26:38 Yeah, sure. So just a few days before the New Year's Eve on December 28th, there was a spontaneous demonstration and strike in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, which is basically the center of of Iran's trade and one of the most important backbones of the Islamic regime or revolution. There were strikes inside the bazaar and so many shopkeepers and business owners just closed down their businesses and they took to the streets and inside the shopping centers and they started chanting against the regime and they were basically protesting the horrible economic situations and the decrease of the Iranian real or the Iranian currency against the US dollar,

Starting point is 01:27:25 which was one dollar was equal to 1 million point 400,000 Iranian reels. And then these protests quickly spread it all over the city in Tehran. And as usual, this is what happens all the time. The Iranian regime forces, they started attacking people and trying to control the situation. but it somehow got out of their control. And the next days, these protests, these strikes spreaded to other cities, to other major cities from Shiraz, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz, and many other cities got involved. But in the early January, around January 5 to 6 and 7, there were major protests in cities like Malikshahi, in Ilan province, and other cities in Kermansha province, which are basically the Kurdish provinces in Western Iran.

Starting point is 01:28:23 What is really unique about this is that usually when protests happen across Iran or when there is something happening, the Kurdish regions are the first to react. But this time, the Kurdish regions, like if I want to say the West Azerbaijan province and the San And Dutch province, they were not really involved because a lot of people were saying that in the previous movement, especially in 2022, we gave too much. There were too many victims here, but the center was silent. I mean, Tehran and Shiraz and these major Iranian cities. So a lot of people didn't really come out and there was nothing happening. And at the same time, this is my personal opinion, I think, because there was also a heavy snowfall in

Starting point is 01:29:08 Kurdish regions and it was really cold. And I think a lot of people just didn't want to go out. Yeah. So this was a lot of. happening in Malik Shahi and other cities in Ilam and Khrman Shah province until I think it was January 5th that there was a really, really big demonstration in Malikshahi. And it's a small city, but I can say majority of the people were out on the streets. And then the Iranian regime forces started shooting at people and they injured and killed a lot of people. And the hospital in that city, that in that small city was full and they had no space anymore. So the people, people took the injured protesters to the center of or the capital of the province in Elam City

Starting point is 01:29:52 to the Imam Khomeini Hospital. What happened in this hospital was that there were so many people in front of the hospital like families and relatives of the victims. And then after a few hours, the Iranian regime forces started attacking the hospital. There were so many videos and footage that came out and we also posted it on Hangao and all over the internet that did The regime forces were basically surrounding the whole building, and then they started shooting tear gases inside the hospital. And then there was a video that came out that these regime forces were trying to get inside the hospital and arrest or kidnap all the injured people or if there was a dead body or something.

Starting point is 01:30:35 And then there was some sort of resistance from the medical staff, and then they started beating the medical staff. And then a few days later, We also posted about it that some of these medical staff in that hospital were also arrested. The same thing was also happening in few other cities, but this was very specific and it got very viral on social media and a lot of people talked about it. And at the same time, there were massive protests taking place in Tehran and other major cities, which, like, I am 28 years old and I think I've never seen such thing.

Starting point is 01:31:16 happening in Iran. It was really extraordinary. So while these things were happening, there were also a lot of calls from people in Kurdistan that they were calling on Kurdish parties to do something, to say something. So on January 6th, seven Kurdish parties from Iran, they had a meeting and they announced a call

Starting point is 01:31:39 for a general strike in Kurdistan, or all over Iran. So on Thursday, January, over 40 cities across Kurdistan, they went on a strike, which was really big and it wasn't really discussed or talked about on major media and it was somehow ignored while it was a really big action that took place there. And usually after the strikes in Kurdistan, this is something that's happening for years. People take to the streets and protest during the night. It happened in a few cities and there were some people injured and also killed. And then it's been over 124 hours right now,

Starting point is 01:32:25 as we're talking now, that there is no internet connection in Iran. And even the normal lines don't work. You cannot call anyone from outside of Iran. However, there are some people who have access to the Starlink internet and some a few people that have access to, I don't know, some sort of strong VPNs that work for a few minutes and then they disconnect. And at the same time, I have contacts to two people who have been using the SIM cards or the internet from Iraq or Turkey. They're living on the border regions, but they also have a limited access. So this is what's happening right now. And as we are talking about this, this blackout in Iran has caused a lot of confusion, a lot of horror that the world doesn't know what's happening exactly right now.

Starting point is 01:33:23 Yeah. After the blackout, there were a few videos and footage that came out that were published by major activists or journalists like Ali Javan Mardi and so many others that they received these videos, I don't know, from the internet, from some. Starlink, and you can see in these videos that in a place called Karizak, it's near Tehran. It's where the Tehran's Forsenic Medical Center is located. You can see in these videos that countless of bodies, maybe hundreds or maybe thousands of bodies are just on the ground. They're in body bags and disparate family members, relatives, all traumatized. They're looking for their loved ones.

Starting point is 01:34:06 and it's just like, it's so unbelievable, it's like movies. And apparently the regime forces have machine gunned all these people. Jesus. And right now, because of the blackout, we really don't know how many people are exactly killed, how many people are injured, how many people are arrested, or these things. You know, we don't know the exact numbers and it makes things so hard. But today, a few hours ago, there was a report from Iran International that stated that over 12,000 people have been killed. But this also is not fully confirmed because they just got these things through some sources.

Starting point is 01:34:50 And then at the same time, CBS News also published a report and said that between 12,000 to 20,000 people have been killed. but again, this is not really fully confirmed or verified because there is no information coming out that much. Yeah. At the same time, we also got reports from Kurdistan that in the city of Kermanshaw, these regime forces were taking the dead bodies with bosses. We don't know how many, but we know that they were taking these bodies with bosses. Like, we don't know how many hundreds. And from this footage that you can also see that the regime is taking all these bodies with containers, like with trucks all over the city in Tehran, and they're bringing it to the center that I mentioned before.

Starting point is 01:35:45 God. And all families are looking for their children and their people. At the same time, I also got this direct information from someone who is from Rashd in north of Iran. She was traveling from Tehran to Russia and she said that the people have burnt down most of the mosques and also the banks and other government buildings are also footage all over the internet

Starting point is 01:36:10 that in most of the cities that people have burnt down the whole mosques and buildings belonging to the government and at the same time she also said that in that city there are so many people that are killed. She doesn't know how many or who but families were desperately looking for their loved ones on the streets or anywhere. This is basically the same in almost every major city or even a small city.

Starting point is 01:36:38 We don't know exactly, but this is the footage that we got from Tehran, specifically that it shows what's going on. Yeah, that's horrific. Yeah, there are many, many, also in our organization, we got a few confirmations from these limited access that some of these. these people killed in Tehran are also Kurdish and obviously from other minor groups as well. At the same time, there is a special case that I want to talk about. There is a person like a protester, his name is Erfons Sultani. He was arrested a few days

Starting point is 01:37:14 ago and he is planned to be executed tomorrow. We don't know if they're really going to do that or whatever, but this is a really big sign that a lot of people are warning about it, like human rights organizations and that the regime might carry out mass executions everywhere and just to take control over the situation. Right. This is also something that might happen. Yeah. So they did execute people after the Darmini protest, but they didn't do a three-day trial,

Starting point is 01:37:47 right, that they did here. They had like a show trial first in those instances. Yeah, they executed dozens of people after Rina Amini was killed. and also previously in the previous years. So this is like what's in general is happening. And at the same time, like in diaspora, in Western countries, there are groups that are on the streets, like people that are calling for solidarity or whatever that can be done

Starting point is 01:38:14 to help people out inside Iran. Yeah, this is like a general overview of what's happening. And as I said before, because there is no internet connection. and if there is, it's very limited. Nobody knows what's happening exactly. Nobody knows the exact scale of the crimes that are taking place right now there. Yeah. Let's take a little break for advertisements here,

Starting point is 01:38:41 and then we'll come back and talk a little more. Okay, and we're back. So if people have seen anything about this, I don't know. If they're on like X, they would have seen videos of mosques burning and maybe videos of the people. P-A-K, like shooting at buildings. You know, these are the videos that were kind of widely circulated before people lost access to the internet.

Starting point is 01:39:14 And I think there's some idea that, like, this isn't armed uprising. And I think it would be good to explain to people that, like, there are people, clearly there are presence of, like, armed groups who are opposed to the regime in Iran, right? But they are not necessarily the ones, like, leading the charge here. So maybe we could explain a little bit about both the armed groups who are Kurdish. There are some armed groups in Belochistan as well and where they sit in relevance to these protests. Yeah, so far, I can speak for Kurdistan. Yeah, I've seen also these footage that P.A.K.

Starting point is 01:39:56 Or the Freedom Party of Kurdistan published social media. I cannot personally confirm that. but there has always been a call for military action against the regime in the previous years and even before Gina Amini in 2022. There was always some sort of call from the people. But right now, as we are seeing, the Kurdish parties, the seven major Kurdish parties from Iran, they are not taking really a real military action because there is a big fear that if they do this, the regime might bomb the cities and kill thousands of civilians with heavy

Starting point is 01:40:42 weapons and even missiles. So this is also one of the main reasons that even the parties have talked about it many times before when people call for a military sport. But of course, I can also confirm this that all of these parties, all of these organizations have some sort of networks inside Iran, that they are monitoring the situation, they are collecting information and they are connecting people together. And in some cases that I am aware of that happened in my hometown in Uremia in 2022, some of these parties also have been able to lead the protest, like to organize protests. So this is for now the presence of these parties. But for Belichistan, I can also say, that I think it was in October or November 2025 that all these groups in Balochistan,

Starting point is 01:41:38 they had a conference and they announced that they are all united and they're all working together under one banner. So they also carried out a lot of attacks on the IRGC bases and vehicles in their regions in the past few months. But so far, we haven't heard much from them in the past few weeks. Yeah. We don't know. They're not doing anything or If they are doing anything, it's not on the internet or it's not published yet. Yeah, this is the situation right now with these groups. But at the same time, groups or parties actually like Pijak, they also have warned that this was like, if I want to say code on code, don't play with fire. They were warned the Iranian regime that they shouldn't play with fire.

Starting point is 01:42:29 Yeah, this is a situation right now that's going on with. the parties as well. Yeah, and it's very complicated for people who are not right familiar. I think, like, maybe we should take a step back even further and just explain, I guess the concept of Iran as, like, a contiguous empire might be a good way to see it, right, with different ethnic groups currently under the control of one state. Can you just explain that for people if they're not familiar? Because I think in the U.S., like Persian identity and Iranian identity by people who are not familiar with it, are conflated, right? But if you could explain the different nations that exist within the state, that might help people. Yeah, like Iran as a geography is a very diverse country.

Starting point is 01:43:14 So basically the Persians, or as they call themselves, Iranians, are the dominant group. They are the majority. But we also have the Azeri Turkish people who are the second majority. And then we have the Kurds, we have the Baluchis, then there are Ahwazi Arabs in the south, and then there are Turkmen people, and then there are Thai Lishis,

Starting point is 01:43:40 but their numbers are really small. And at the same time, there is also the Mazandarani or the Gilaq people that live in the Caspian Sea coast. There are also a different ethnic group. They have a different linguistic

Starting point is 01:43:56 background, but because of the Iranian state policies of 100 years, majority of them are assimilated and no longer carry that cultural heritage or identity. But in Kurdistan, in Balochistan, in Ahwas, in Azerbaijan, it's really different and also in the Turkmen regions. Basically, this is what Iran looks like. Of course, there are other small minorities like Armenians, even Georgians that migrated to like hundreds of years ago. There are also several. religious groups like the Shia Muslims are the majority which Persians and Azeri Turks are basically the followers of this religion. And then there are Sunnis, Sunni Muslims who are like majority of them

Starting point is 01:44:44 are Baluchis and Kurds and Ahwazi Arabs or other groups. And then we have several other groups from Jews, Christians and also the Yarsanis, which is a Kurdish religious minority. And, there are about 1 million to 2 million people. Yeah, this is what Iran looks like. Yes, yeah. And I think people can be easy for them to just see it as like Shia, Muslim, Persian monolith, right? Yeah, but I also want to add a little bit more of like how this works. So because the Iranians or the Persians are the majority, they own the state.

Starting point is 01:45:21 The entire identity is evolving around them. And because of this, during the past 150, 100 years, there has been a policy of assimilation in every region in what's called Iran right now. For example, if I want to talk about the language, right now, the only official language is Persian. And in the past 100 years, this language has not just been a language of communication. It has been a language of oppression and assimilation. And there are many regions.

Starting point is 01:45:55 in Iran that were, for example, if I want to talk about Kurdistan, there are many regions in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces and other regions that used to be fully Kurdish. And they used to speak Kurdish just a few decades ago, but now they are completely assimilated. The same policy was also followed strictly, but heavily in Turkey and also in Iraq and also in Syria. So this is how this has been working in the past century. And, and how all these ethnic groups with different languages and cultural backgrounds and identities have been forced to accept an Iranian identity that evolves, that turns around the Persian identity and Persian language and history. Yeah, so this is also like a general overview of the

Starting point is 01:46:48 oppression if I want to. Yeah, I think that's probably the right word. I think people who have listen to our coverage of Myanmar will be familiar or like, I mean, this has happened in countless places, right? This is why British people all speak English now. Yeah. Right, like, this is, this is how sort of internal empire works. I wonder, like, we should talk about the possibilities and to an extent the demands here, right? Because in, in the US, it seems to be that there is a binary choice or that it's presented as a binary choice between the current state in Iran, and a monarchy. And it doesn't seem to be an option for self-governance, right, for Iranian people to have democracy, to have liberty. And that's evidently not the case, right? Like, when you have

Starting point is 01:47:32 this many people in the streets, that's how democracy works. But let's talk about the, the demands, and then the possibilities of just being co-opted and turned into another type of state. So here, in these days, or basically in the past decades, the main demand of people, all different ethnic groups in the geography of Iran has always been a regime change. They want this regime gone. Yeah. This is the first thing that everybody wants. At the same time, there are other possibilities that could be there. One of the things that when you look at these ethnic groups and their organizations and the people, you can see that also most of them want some sort of federalism or autonomy or self-governance.

Starting point is 01:48:28 At the same time, this idea of federalism and self-governance or self-determination is nothing that, let's say, the dominant group would accept because they don't understand it. Because for them, I wouldn't say all of them, because we cannot generalize everyone. But when you look at it, the dominant group sees Iran as an entity that's not diverse. It's just Iran and everybody's Iranian, just like the way Turkey or the Turkish government sees everything. Everybody's Turkish. But in Iran, they also say everybody's Iranian. We will have an election.

Starting point is 01:49:12 We will choose a president. We will have a parliament. And that's it. that's what is also being, let's say, offered. But at the same time, there is also a call for monarchy. But this is also something that not majority of people, even Persians, majority of them don't want monarchy back because there is a huge discussion between people that here we are fighting against a dictatorship.

Starting point is 01:49:39 Why would we bring back another dictatorship? Overall, I can say that the minority group, majority of them, for now, I would say, like, if the regime is going to be changed, they want self-governance, but maybe in the future also independence. We don't know that. This is something complicated to talk about. But for now, this is what minority groups want. But in the Persian community, some of them want to have like a Republican system or whatever, but some of them also want to have monarchy back. And there are also other groups who reject both Republicans and also monarchists and they want to have more diverse and more open system for the future. But again,

Starting point is 01:50:28 this is something that we cannot say how it's going to be preceded because we don't know how the situation is going to be and how these opposition groups are going to work together in the future. Are they going to start a civil war or are they going to start a civil war or are they going to sit down together and find a solution. This is all depends on how the regime falls and when and the destruction of this regime is the biggest priority right now. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we could see a situation very much like the one that's happening unfolding right now in Western Kurdistan and unfolding later in Iran if the regime falls, right? Yeah. Which unfortunately is something else we have to talk about at the time, but very terrible things happening there too. Because, you know,

Starting point is 01:51:22 Most of our listeners are in America, the way that people may have engaged with this is through Donald Trump's posting on truth social, where he has said that help is coming recently. Like, let's talk about what U.S. intervention means, like, especially in the context of A, like, the U.S. having intervened all over the Middle East and what that has meant. And B, like, the U.S.'s recent national security strategy, which suggests that basically they don't care. care about the region and they don't want to be involved in the region. Let's talk about what that means and why it might not be the panacea people think it is. Yeah. So in the past few weeks, Trump has said a lot of things. In the first few days, he came out and said that if the regime is going to kill civilians, we're going to do this and that, we're going to punish the regime. And then I think it was an interview or he was on TV. I don't exactly remember, but he said something

Starting point is 01:52:20 that all the people that were killed, we don't know if the regime killed and maybe they just were killed in the crowd. Like there were like thousands of people and they were just... Fuck me. Yeah, like a crush. They were crushed and this is so unbelievable. He's making these comments and then he's just threatening the regime all over again. And just a few hours ago, as you mentioned,

Starting point is 01:52:43 he said that the help is coming and he's asking people to keep fighting and keep protesting and things like that. However, we should also, like, regarding this, we should talk about what people also want from Trump. Yeah. This has been like something that a lot of people, again, this is not the majority, but a lot of people have been calling on him or basically on America or something to do an action against the regime, to do something against the regime or damage the regime so that people can get rid of it. And right now, I saw some screenshots from people who. who were able to get access to the internet for a few moments. I saw one.

Starting point is 01:53:26 There was shared on the internet that a woman from Tehran was saying that they are killing everyone. I don't know where my children are. One of them is 19 and the other one is 23. She was just saying, please, please be our voice and just tell them to attack, tell Trump to help. So this is also something that there is a call for attacking Iran. and destroying the regime. But again, we don't know if Trump is really going to do this or not. There is also like threats coming from Europe as well, the UK.

Starting point is 01:54:03 But again, as you mentioned, if these attacks happen, we don't, is it going to be something like Iraq or Afghanistan or other places or is it going to really help the people of Iran, the people inside Iran to get rid of the regime? Yeah. Which is also really hard. to understand because Trump hasn't been really clear about all these things. On one side, he was also asked if he has any talks or connections with the so-called prince, Reza Pahlavi, and he said, no, he's a good guy, but I don't want to talk to him. But then now

Starting point is 01:54:39 you can see that on Fox News, like all the Trump-affiliated or pro-Trump media, they are promoting this guy all the time. And at the same time, Reza Pahlavi was also on TV, he was on CBS, and he said that he is directly in touch with Trump administration. So we don't know, like, what exactly, I mean, it's so hard to understand what exactly the U.S. is going to do. Yeah. They also announced that we're going to put more, like, 25-person tariff on countries who work with Iran or trade with Iran. And then the European Parliament also announced that we're going to ban all Iranian diplomats from entering the European Parliament.

Starting point is 01:55:25 Not made to begin with. All these comments that are coming out, they are so vague. And at the same time, there are calls from Germany, France, and I think Australia, too, that they were calling on the citizens that are in Iran, like tourists or whatever, to immediately leave Iran. Yeah, this is also something that we don't know. like Trump is not somebody that you could trust. Yeah, and ask people in Rojava.

Starting point is 01:55:50 And at the same time, sorry, this is also important. There was also some news that the Iranian authorities in the foreign ministry were trying or they contacted some people from Trump administration for negotiations. But then Trump said that we will not negotiate anything. So this is all like all these contradictions that Trump. Trump is just talking about and he's denying that the regime is killing people and people are just being killed because it's too crowded. Yeah, yeah. And then you see Homanie like tweeting that everyone out in the street is a Trump supporter, right? Which is like, that's useful to him. That narrative is useful to him that these are American imperialists or American whatever puppets.

Starting point is 01:56:36 Yeah, of course, that has been the regime's behavior forever. Yeah. Whenever something happens, they immediately blame it on America, Israel, I don't know, UK. But it's good that you mentioned what Chamini was saying. In the first few days, he said that, yeah, we hear you, the people in Bazaar, and yeah, we hear you, sorry, this is going on and things like that. But then he immediately said that the people who are protesting, they are destroying everything and we will deal with them in the whole. harshest way. And then the president of Iran, Peseshkian, Masu Peseshkian, he also came out and he said almost the same thing. And then

Starting point is 01:57:21 he started threatening people. And a few days after that, the head of the judiciary, the Iranian judiciary, came out and said that, like in a very, very aggressive language, he said that we will deal with you in the worst ways possible. We will destroy you. And things like that he posted a lot of texts on his Twitter account. His name is Mohsen Eiji. So yeah, there is also like a huge online fightings between these politicians and so-called leaders. That makes the situation even more complicated and hard to understand. Yeah, I think from a U.S. perspective, like when America invaded Iraq, right, they had a partner force in Kurdistan. When America worked in Syria, they had a partner force again.

Starting point is 01:58:09 in Western Kurdistan, like, they don't really have that here. Like, there's not really a, I mean, the Payak is still on the American foreign terrorist organization list. There's not like that, like American sort of partner force, boots on the ground, like that that they had in these other places to, likely what they would do is just bomb stuff. That's kind of the approach that's most likely here. And bombing alone is unlikely to, to remove the regime. Yeah, I think bombing is definitely not enough because they bombed the regime hardly last year, but it is still there.

Starting point is 01:58:50 Of course, it was the regime got weaker, like it got weakened really bad. But at the same time, like, I think if there's going to be something and if there's going to be something like Syria or Iraq, I think the Americans or the American government would possibly work with the Kurdish groups, even though they are on the so-called terror list. Like, you know, it happened in Rojova in Syria, that's how they've been working with the Kurdish groups, even though they're related to PKK and PKK is on the terror. Or they removed them like they did with HTS, right?

Starting point is 01:59:27 And then suddenly these guys are, they've transformed now. Yeah. So this could also happen, but we don't know, because it's been years, it's been decades, that the US is always threatening Iran and then something happens, then they do nothing, and it's just there. Yeah, it reinforces the legitimacy of both states to threaten each other, right, and see each other as adversaries.

Starting point is 01:59:52 And to a degree, use that for domestic violence against their own citizens, right? Or for, you know, terrorism stuff. I guess finally, we should just talk about one other thing that Khomeini said, which was like that American and Israeli shipping would become legitimate. targets if you thought the Americans were involved, right? Just to explain there's the possibility to have people if they're not familiar. Well, this is not a new thing, to be honest. They've done this before and in the previous years many times.

Starting point is 02:00:22 And there were times that they attacked some U.S. bases like the one in Iraq. It's called Al-Assad or something like that. They attacked it a few times, I guess, at the past few years. Yeah. Like this is also really complicated because how can I explain? The regime always does this threats and it might not do it at all. But at the same time, this is also something that I think that if the regime falls and if it's the last moments, they would probably try to do something to damage the region or to damage the people. as much as they can, and then they would just give up on everything and just disappear. So they could do that. But if I want to go back to last year, we also need to understand that after the 12-day war, Israel also destroyed a massive amount of Iranian military bases and all these buildings and structures,

Starting point is 02:01:34 but still nobody truly understand how much has been destroyed. But the Iranian Air Force is really, really weak right now and apparently completely destroyed. So Iran is not as strong as before. So there could be a possibility that Iran actually doesn't have the capability to attack U.S. bases across the region anymore. Yeah. So this could be also a possibility that they are just threatening. They really don't have anything left anymore

Starting point is 02:02:04 or their military capabilities are completely down. Yeah, or they'll do their sort of symbolic send a half dozen shahid drones and let the Americans shoot them down and they say, oh, well, we tried or, you know, we attack them. Even though, you know, most of the time they have hurt a couple of American people with them, but relatively unsuccessful. I wonder, like, this is obviously a situation that people will want to follow things are developing very quickly and new good news, good reporting on Iran, it's very hard to find

Starting point is 02:02:36 in America. So where would you suggest people look either, you know, your own stuff or other sources that you suggest people should look to? If I want to mention for, obviously I work with a Hangao organization. It's a trusted organization. People can follow them. And there is also a journalist called Ali Jawan Merdi. He is a supervisor at Voice of America, Kurdish.

Starting point is 02:03:01 Persian and Afghanistan. And these are like the sources that I personally trust. There are other organizations such as Kurdistan Human Rights Network. There is also Iran Rights or Abdurham Buruman Center for Human Rights in Iran. There are several organizations, human rights organizations that are constantly reporting and they are trying to reflect what's happening. And there are, I could say majority of them are honest and they are not trying to push for a specific narrative, especially the Pahlavist, because right now, if you check the media, the international media, the Iranian media such as Iran International or BBC Persian and all of these major medias, even in the U.S., they are pushing for the monarchists and they are completely ignoring the other groups.

Starting point is 02:03:58 Like, for example, the Kurdish people I said, I mentioned that there was this great and big strike that happened in 40 cities. It's a very big social act, but barely anyone talked about it. Barely anyone mentioned it. So I think it's for people, it's better to follow human rights organizations and do not really fall for the things that some media that are just promoting a specific person because they're just taking away. the truth. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a fantastic place to finish up. Thank you so much for joining us. If people want to follow you, do you have any social media or place people can find your work? I have my personal page, but it's not really big. I just post some slides recently. And my other page, Kurdistanian people, it got disabled, unfortunately. I started. I'm just posting like some

Starting point is 02:04:53 updates and like slides about the important things that I find. I can also. put the links there. Yeah, we'll include them, release the podcast so people can click on them. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us this evening. We really appreciate it.

Starting point is 02:05:09 Yeah, thank you very much for having me again. Yeah. Why do you listen to this podcast? It may be because it's a strange comfort to nameing the thing that's breathing down on X. Today I want to archive this past year of systemic collapse, a pile up of small and large failures, you can start to make sense of in retrospect.

Starting point is 02:05:44 If we don't look back at our past and the patterns within it, if we don't keep these moments and events in our memory, it's very, very easy to get stuck into a perpetually overwhelming present. Welcome to Kodappan here. I'm Andrew Sage, the guy behind Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm here with... James Stout, the guy you hear all the time on this podcast. Welcome.

Starting point is 02:06:11 To your podcast. Yeah, yeah. It's nice to do one with you. Are you ready to take a look at some of the stories that shaped 2025? Yes. It's been a hell of a year, so this should be fun. Yeah, I mean, I don't expect to be exhaustive, but we can, you know, talk about some of the incidents in climate,

Starting point is 02:06:31 in politics, in technology, in geopolitics. And through all that, I want to ask what these stories are teaching us as anarchists activists and just people trying to live in a society. Yeah. So I suppose first we could talk about the climate and infrastructural situations, some of them that took place here, really covered all of the elements. We had heat, flooding, drought, fire, storm. According to the World Meteorological Organization,

Starting point is 02:07:07 global temperatures in 2025 ranked among the hottest on record. Great. The WMO put 2025 as likely the second or third warmest year in the observational record. So a little round of applause for hitting some milestones, right? Yeah, it's good to be winning. Yeah. So power systems also have been overloaded under air-conditioned demand, leading to rolling blackout hitting cities in rural areas,

Starting point is 02:07:35 schools closing during heat waves, and mortality rising among the elderly and precarious. International agencies have warned that extreme heat is producing double-digit crop losses and mass livestock die-offs in some cases. Brazil in particular felt that heat in agriculture and supply chains. Stapled production and food imports both suffer due to the heat. And those ripples are going to be felt for the rest of us too because Brazil is a breadbasket of sorts. It's a top exporter of tons of really important agricultural products. And the monsoons also arrived with quite. to mood this year. South Asia's 235 rains came very heavy and very persistent. In many places,

Starting point is 02:08:19 urban drainage field, neighborhoods became isolated by the waters, trains and roads were unusable for days. Bangladesh and parts of India saw catastrophic flooding that took hundreds of lives and displaced millions. Over in the Horn of Africa, wells, ran low, pastures, field, and small farmers suffered under the pressures of the drought. Their water distribution systems were not built to withstand multi-year dry spells, and so a hunger crisis has ended up escalating, particularly in Somalia. Yeah. North American Europe also had severe wildfires this year. At this point, it's very easy to kind of see them as a new normal, you know? Yeah. Canada's 2025 season pushed agencies into

Starting point is 02:09:04 one of their largest domestic wildfire responses in years. Firefighters were stretched, entire towns had to evacuate, and southern Europe, in particular Greece and Spain, also saw fast northern fires that consumed homes and utilities, and left landscapes scorched and infrastructure severely weakened. And then, of course, there were the hurricanes. This year, the Caribbean was slammed by Hurricane Melissa, a very slow and powerful storm that devastated Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and others, tearing up infrastructure and leaving large swaths without power for weeks. The storms, energy is of course thanks to climate change. And so all these events, and I'm definitely leaving out some, I believe they reveal a few things. For one, I think it's clear that our systems

Starting point is 02:09:51 cannot handle the new extremes being brought about by climate change. They may have been built for previous normals, but not this. And this is something the climate scientists have been worn about for some time. You know, our electrical grids were sized for incremental loads, so they couldn't handle these simultaneous peak demands. A urban storm water management was built for a particular volume of water over a particular period of time. It can handle these volumes of water that are pouring down from above. And also, water management systems in more arid regions weren't prepared for years of drought.

Starting point is 02:10:27 And so the systemic shocks of this year have been very devastating for infrastructure. And unlike their propaganda, which states that they are necessary for our survival, for our well-being to manage society. State responses to these catastrophes will often reactive and chronically delayed. Government intervention and international aid helped in some places. I'm not denying that, but communities have also often found themselves on their own, having to improvise survival strategies. And of course, with every disaster, there is an extremely long tale of recovery

Starting point is 02:11:06 after the initial crisis has passed. So it may leave the new cycle, but their people still deal with the consequences and will be dealing with it in the year to come. But these disasters continue to show the ingenuity and capability of ordinary people to organize support, distribute aid, facilitate evacuation, share resources, and so on. So we're not powerless.

Starting point is 02:11:27 We don't have to be dependent on slow bureaucracies, develop resilience. They start with us as people, being proactive, especially. You know, I would say don't wait for the disaster to happen in your area to develop a response plan. Invest your time and energy in this coming year in horizontal capacities, skill training, community drills, share two libraries, seed and food sovereignty projects, local medical knowledge, decentralized energy and water projects. I don't place much on the demands of the state, but there are also sometimes grants you may be able to apply for that can, you know, secure some resources in community hands. And of course, keep documenting these incidents as they're happening. You know, don't wait for a disaster to hit your area to learn the lessons that other places had to learn.

Starting point is 02:12:16 You know, go and see where your vulnerabilities lie, learn what others have done to respond, train people where necessary and just try and keep up to the good fight. Would you say there was a particular environmental crisis for natural disaster this year that really stood out to you? I mean, to me, I think the ones that I just because the person, related to places I've been were the earthquake in Myanmar, right, where we saw not only people die as a result of the natural disaster, but people die as a result of the state considering its desire to keep people in Myanmar away from the world more important than their lives, right? Like the state choosing not to allow search and rescue teams from France,

Starting point is 02:12:59 for example, to enter. And instead, like, you know, folks I know who are fighting in the revolution in Myanmar, like laying down their arms and trying to work out how to pull collapsed buildings apart before the people in them died. I think that really was like the poly crisis. And then the flooding of indigenous communities in Alaska, right, the coastal communities that we saw like a month or so ago. And that one hit me particularly hard because like these people have been screaming for a decade that climate change has come. It's not coming. it's come, right? Like the end is not nigh for them.

Starting point is 02:13:37 The end is here. Their ways of life are being destroyed by climate change. And their whole community's got wiped out, right, just before winter and a place which has one of the hardest winters on Earth, all their food cash is, right? Because these are people who tend to fish for a lot of food. So the cash food, they don't go to the store were also wiped out. It's just one of those examples of like one can't be prepared enough to deal with things and one can't control, right?

Starting point is 02:14:09 And one of the things that we can't control is climate change and it's coming for all of us. Yeah, it's coming for some people, Fust. Yeah, and it's always going to be indigenous and more marginalized people, right, whose plight is ignored. People can say climate change isn't real because they have the relative privilege of not having their homes destroyed. And like rebuilding those communities will be very, very, very hard because the only way to get there is on a tiny little plane or a boat.

Starting point is 02:14:35 And everything they've got there has taken generations to build and it's all gone. Yeah. So those two really struck me. Yeah, I think my takeaways from what you've shared there is that the state will often get in the way. Yes. Of our survival or well-being. Yeah. And that, you know, the crisis is here and it's already hitting people.

Starting point is 02:14:58 And just the people are being hit right now with the ones. designated as sacrificial arms. Yeah. In a sense for the continued pursuit of economic growth and progress. Yeah. So 2025 also saw an accelerated political coming of age. You know, Gen Z has not been all teenagers for a very long time now. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:15:33 It's been mostly adults, or soon to be mostly adults at this point, depending on where you draw the line. And that generation, our, my generation, has shown up in their numbers for the past few years, but particularly this year, inspiring millions. Genzi became a very visible political force in the headlines across very different geographies. Madagascar, Morocco, Kenya, Nepal, Peru and Mexico all had uprisons driven by a mix of grievances, whether it be corruption, the cost of living, lack of services, violent policing, and a feeling that all the institutions had nothing to offer. Now, these movements were not a monolith, you know, but they did have some common templates.

Starting point is 02:16:21 You know, they organized digitally on platforms like Discord or Telegram, and they mobilized very quickly a lot faster than states were originally able to keep up with. In Madagascar, the youth had mobilized around water, power cuts, and broader corruption, which eventually toppled the ruling government and triggered military moves in the form of a coup d'etat. But it doesn't seem so far that anything fruitful, stable or lasting has come out of their cause quite yet. Right now, Madagascar as a military colonel for a president,

Starting point is 02:16:51 so it remains to be seen what that leadership brings. In Morocco, the movement Gen Z-212 organized to demand better education and healthcare, decent housing and jobs, and were eventually met with state pushback in the form of arrests and infiltrations. Though they eventually won some concessions from the government in the form of greater funding in the sectors demanded,

Starting point is 02:17:14 and draft bills that incentivize youth participation in the official channels of power, but it remains to be seen how long that will quell the tide, because it seems to me at least, that this is the classic tactic of, you know, incorporating a radical movement into the machinations of the state to temper its energy. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:34 In Kenya, we saw, mass mobilization against police brutality that was met with yet more police brutality and extrajudicial killings, now numbering in the 60s with a very clear aim for the suppression of dissent. So far, none of their goals have really been recognized or achieved as a movement, and it seems as though they've simmered down due to the sheer violence that they have faced in response. In Nepal, perhaps the most famous of these stories for this year, The student-led uprisons toppled the corrupt government and forced concessions with an election coming up next year, 26. But again, what comes next is yet to be seen, whether to be lasting, empowering, or sustainable is an open question.

Starting point is 02:18:23 It's another uprising where, in my view, the fundamental institutions have not been overcome, and thus their goals will not be achieved immediately. but I think every movement, every generation has their place for political development and figuring out some of these shortcomings of these approaches. But I think because of how tight the timeline is for the need for like radically drastic action for the sake of the planet and for the people on it, I really wish that these lessons were learned a bit quicker, you know, that we didn't have to be. have to go through these same cycles of, you know, missteps again and again with movements. Yeah, you're right.

Starting point is 02:19:11 But it remains to be seen whether that sort of political development can be accelerated as the crisis accelerates. Yeah, like I feel for the youth like now these revolutions, the sense of urgency is so high, right? Because the system, like if you're a millennial, I guess, you grew up, if you're me, maybe I'm saying here, like really, you grew up, you know, and you were told like things would always get better and you will work hard and like just like your folks, you will buy a house and a house will get more valuable and that will be nice and blah, blah, blah, right, if you live in the sort of the colonial core. And that didn't work out for most of us.

Starting point is 02:19:51 But for Gen Z folks, it's like the town that you live in will continue to exist. up for debate, right? Like the climate that you were born in will be completely distinct from the one that you have children, raise children in probably. The urgency of the need for change is so much with young people today, right?

Starting point is 02:20:14 Like, you know, yeah, the economy that my generation was promised doesn't exist for us, but the planet that Gen Z was promised isn't going to exist for them. And the information system is so fucked for young people today, right, and so captured by corporate and state interests. And yet, despite that, or maybe because of that, we've seen some of the most beautiful

Starting point is 02:20:36 revolutions that I can recall, right? Like, when I speak to Gen Zee folks in Myanmar, they approach the revolution in a distinct way from the way that, like, the revolutions I'm familiar with from the 90s and 2000s did, but also just from like a very human desire for a better world, for equality, for a beautiful life. And so, like, I'm very hopeful at the same time as I feel for people of the younger generation. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of cause for hope that such numbers can be mobilized. But I would love to see those numbers get mobilized in the countries that we've been talking about a more radical way than simply bringing demands to the state or changing out one government for another, you know?

Starting point is 02:21:25 Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the case of Myanmar, like, that's certainly, like, that is the case, right? Like, they're not thinking about changing one ruling party for another. They're thinking about changing the way governance works. Right. They're like bringing democracy to people. To be clear, there isn't really a coherent set of exact demands for the revolution, but many of the young people I speak to are looking at how can we create a model that doesn't allow for a genocide to happen against one group that doesn't allow for the military to walk into one building and take away everyone's future. And I think that's very beautiful.

Starting point is 02:22:01 Exactly. That's inspiring. Yeah. Yeah. I think asking those questions and asking even more questions, I think is how this generation is going to get to, you know, certain conclusions about whether this current project should continue. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:22:20 This current state project, this current capitalist project, this current patriarchal project, the more questions get asked, the more answers get illuminated, and the closer I think we can get to a viable and liberatory alternative. Yeah, yeah, definitely the case. And I think some of this is just like some of it we have to work out on the way. And that's okay. Like I think the 20th century, the idea of a revolution. was like this violent seizure of state power, often by a vanguard group, with a very specific project that they were looking to implement, right? And in the 21st century, we haven't seen that all the time. We have seen a lot more of like, this is bad and it has to change, and we're going to make it change, and we'll work out which direction we're moving as we go. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:23:15 That's blatantly ideological, I'd say. Yeah, and like I think that's a good thing, because what we've seen, I mean, we have seen like this idea that revolutions have to stick to a strict pathway have horrific consequences for humanity, right? Like I'm thinking of the gulag, you know, like I'm thinking of the strict ideology which allowed the Soviet Union to become this place where you created like, you know, the things that all were about in 1984, right? It is better that a revolution relies on what the people want as they continue to move through it rather than saying, we will. tell the people what they need and will be the one steering the ship here. Yeah, that will model is not going to get us out of this. Nope.

Starting point is 02:24:00 So I want to say my observation of the so political shifts of this year has really exposed the flaws of traditional politics and parties, how they've largely sued as gatekeepers to suppress, to absorb and blunt the energies, the masses, and assure the potential of spontaneous uprisons. But I think this year also showed that we cannot keep rising up again and again and again, you know, feeding bodies to the brutal police forces and prison systems. You know,

Starting point is 02:24:32 for movements to matter beyond these episodes of disruption, I believe they need to develop infrastructure. You know? Yeah. Let's do something that lasts longer than a headline. And of course, the actions that, you know,

Starting point is 02:24:48 I'm not denying that some of these movements are an aviation building infrastructure. It's just that those sorts of efforts are less likely to make the international news headlines. Yeah. But I love to see these decentralized mobilizations. I just want to see them paired with something

Starting point is 02:25:03 more. For figurative politics, that can sustain them, that can expand the zones of freedom, that can turn their momentum into lasting change. I will say that I appreciate that these movements have have embraced tactical variety. you know, that they have largely understood the need for anonymity, but I don't want them to keep forward into this trap of this sort of dissipation of energy.

Starting point is 02:25:27 They get a government concession and they dissipate. There's not a long-term ambition or there are not enough steps being taken to resist infiltration and surveillance through operational security. I think that if that, you know, opsec is not present, it's very easy for these movements get disrupted from within. You know, platforms like Discord have already proven themselves to be ops, you know, to these kinds of causes. They will willingly sell people out.

Starting point is 02:26:01 But I have a lot of hope, and I say that tentatively, that we can stand up for something, that some line can be drawn somewhere. Because even though an uprising, like the one in Nepal or Morocco hasn't taken place in Trinidad yet, I mean, we've been under a state of emergency for the entire time that this new government has been in power. I will say that I often, in, you know, casual conversation, hear rumbling. So we need to do what Nepal did. You know, we need to do what period. And I think that's the power, the potential of these kind of moments, even if they don't,

Starting point is 02:26:41 lead to something lasting in the immediate aftermath, they still serve as an inspiration. They still open up the landscape of possibilities. Yeah. Was it so Comedante Marcos used to say it was like to open up a pinprick of light in the curtain of darkness? Exactly. Yeah, it's to show people what is possible. That's a perfect expression.

Starting point is 02:27:02 I actually never did that quote before. That's a good one. Yeah, I used to read a lot of Zappentee's stuff. I think he had some wonderful ways of expressing things. Yeah. Janzy's not going to save anyone. As a generation, we're just as susceptible to florence and misdirections as any other. There are those who are invested in welfare and anti-corruption,

Starting point is 02:27:22 and there are those who are invested in reactionary populism. But the waves of uprisings, I think, are mostly positive. And I just hope that that spark can light a fire. And the way that we get that spark to light that fire is when we put fuel in place, fuel-like networks, fuel-like collectives, unions, and so on. Oh, and speaking of unions, I forgot to mention this. India actually had a coalition of major trade unions to each nationwide protests and strikes this year

Starting point is 02:27:55 against the new Labour courts. That's cool. So shout out to them as well. Yeah. Yeah, especially in a state, which is not necessarily, you know, like, you will come down pretty hard on you in India if you stand up against the state. Indeed.

Starting point is 02:28:12 And so to wrap this section, I think I'll say that 2025's protests show a fraction of our frustration, but they also show that we can't just keep screaming into the void, you know? Yeah. The ruptures that come in 2026 and beyond need to start from somewhere other than scratch. Moving on to the tech crises now,

Starting point is 02:28:33 I think as AI continuing to boom in 2025, we saw a massive build-out of physical infrastructure, data centers, server farms, water-hungry cooling systems, and energy-hungry hardware. Yeah. It's very easy to think of the internet as a cloud, but it's a very physical thing. It demands land, water, and electricity.

Starting point is 02:28:53 It strains local communities. It drains local communities of resources. The water use of data centers in particular can eat up millions of liters of. water daily, taken away from households and agricultural needs. In fact, data centers in the US now consume more than 4% of total electricity, with over half still being powered by fossil fuel. Jesus. Yeah. Like how much electricity we use in the US, like we go hard on electric, right? Like... Yeah, so 4% is quite a jump from something that basically didn't exist

Starting point is 02:29:32 10 years ago, 5 years ago. Exactly, yeah. That's all of this. scaling up of AI is pushing us much faster towards the limits of growth. You know, it feels like we are being ruled by accelerationists at times, you know? And all the while we have these tech brewers pushing their tech savior gospel on us, even though it's very clear that AI is just another vector of extraction, consumption, and inequality. Yeah. There's just another way for the owners to profit to gain greater control of our data and greater surveillance over our lives. What I am proud of is that people continue to speak out against it, to challenge it, to question it, to call it out wherever they see it.

Starting point is 02:30:14 There are people who refuse to support, you know, YouTube channels that are pushing out AI music or AI visuals or AI scripts. People who are refusing to support, you know, pages and profiles that have those kinds of things or companies that use that software, we have to keep that energy up. We have to keep it going. And we all seem to build things that will increase our own. ability to operate outside of the AI-fueled corporate overloaded internet that many of us currently exist as pseudo-surfs within.

Starting point is 02:30:49 Yeah. You know, there's a lot of room for open source software and digital commons that are out of the hands of operations that we can venture into. You know, tech is a contested terrain that the tech oligarchs are currently winning, But that terrain is something we can continue to challenge into the new year. Definitely. Our geopolitics in 2025 was a catalogue of catastrophes. From continuing wars fueled by a cast of profiteers to straight-up genocides.

Starting point is 02:31:34 So in Palestine, we saw this year repeated rounds of siege, bombardment, and cruelty, repeated ceasefire violations and the part of Israel, all enabled by America's military support and support. political cover. To this day, food, water and medical provisions continue to be strained as a result of Israel's genocidal ambitions. In Sudan, the fractures they have only worsened, as the bloodshed famously can be seen from space. Millions have been internally displaced. The casualties are currently in calcular room. And the fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces rages on, all supported by regional powers including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conflicting armed groups supported by the government

Starting point is 02:32:27 of the DRC and the neighboring Rwanda, respectively, have continued attacking communities and the infrastructure, inflicting mass rapes and engaging in other war crimes, all while funded by mining operations in one of the most resource-rich regions in the world. In Yemen, the violence continues for tens of millions as the Saudi-led coalition, the UAE, and Western powers continues to supply arms, logistics, and diplomatic cover for the displacement, collapse, and brutality inflicted upon the civilians of the country. In Ukraine, the war with Russia continues to consume resources and lives. In the Caribbean Sea, the U.S. ramped up its violence as it targets and bombs boats in international waters

Starting point is 02:33:13 that it alleges are carrying drugs and appears to be gearing up for some kind of operation against Venezuela. And in Myanmar, resistant groups continue to fight against the military junta, which continues to receive economic and political cover from neighboring China.

Starting point is 02:33:30 Now, this isn't exhaustive, so you can have been if I missed any of the major stories from this year. There's so many. Yeah, it's so sad to think about, like, this new drone war that we're starting in Venezuela, right? and we will probably start.

Starting point is 02:33:45 Another one in the Sahel soon. No, it's very easy for those things to seem tangential to our lives. I have experienced what it is like to be in a place where drones are killing people every day. What that does to you, just like not knowing who's going to get killed tonight, right? It probably won't be you, very unlikely. It might be.

Starting point is 02:34:06 Might be someone you saw today. Might be someone you'd ever met. Thousands of people get killed, but thousands of people, have to live in it with this sense of fear. And maybe after a while you get used to it, I don't know, but I don't think we realize, like, potential of the human joy, even though it's not like a, in this case,

Starting point is 02:34:24 not like a ground war, right? Like, for many people don't see it as a war. The terrible trauma that that causes, not just to the people who are killed in their families, but to so many other people who have to live with the knowledge that, like, they could be killed in the world wouldn't care. Yeah, I mean, the mental torment. and trauma, even if you survive.

Starting point is 02:34:45 Yeah. Something like Palestine or something like Sudan. Yeah. That's going to stay with you for the rest of your life and reverberate in future generations, even generations that they don't experience the genocide directly, do not experience the war directly. They're still going to feel that in their bones, in the way that, you know, the generations that they've experienced,

Starting point is 02:35:06 that interact with them in the stories that they tell. Yeah. It's, yeah, that trauma lives for a long. time, right? And trauma creates sometimes a cycle of violence, right? Like, it's, it's not a good thing. Yeah. But the idea of drone warfare is the idea of these like clean, surgical strikes. That's not how war works. That's not how killing works. That's not how explosive warheads work. Yeah. I remember in Rajava, I sat down with a family who had lost their son, who had just turned 14. And like, thinking of the waves of repercussion from that one bomb,

Starting point is 02:35:46 and hundreds of bombs fell that year, you know, and that was just in Syria. Thousands of these drone bombs fell all around the world, and for the most part, people didn't remark on it and didn't care, but that's happening more now. Yeah, I mean, it's very, very easy to zoom out and just think of the pure statistics, the pure numbers. Because when you actually zoom in at even an individual,

Starting point is 02:36:10 incident that is an entire lifetime affected multiple lifetimes affected by even one building being leveled or one bullet being fired yeah and i think there's a reason we don't report on war like that right like i try to when i write my stuff because like everyone's life is the most valuable thing they have and uh every death of the tragedy but it's hard on the reporter like it's not sustainable, fucks you up, and B, people wouldn't like wars if we kept, like, you see it to an extent in the way that the European nations talked about World War I, right? Like, to get a significant number of upper-class British people to be opposed to the concept of warfare, it's quite a remarkable endeavor, right?

Starting point is 02:37:04 Like those are people who have gone to schools whose sole purpose was to raise them as military officers for empire from the age of five. Yeah. But we saw it after World War I because the war wasn't abstract, right? It was close by. The people dying weren't of different class or race. They were everyone. And especially young upper class men who became officers, right? Like, but somehow along the way since then, we've lost that.

Starting point is 02:37:29 And we've convinced ourselves that this is something that, like, it's in a human tragedy even if it doesn't involve us. Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned World War I in particular because I actually sat down to finally watch All Quiet on the Western Front. Oh, yeah. Last night. I watched like the first five minutes and I was like, I don't know if I could watch this

Starting point is 02:37:52 right now. Let me go and watch something else. Yeah, that's a... And that's a movie, you know? It's not even the real thing. It's a fictional depiction of the occurrence. And I felt like I was there. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:38:04 I don't like watching those films. I don't, which those films gives me bad memories, dreams. Yeah. But yeah, like, I can't understand how we have this ability to, we have fucking VR now, right? Like, surgeons can practice operations in VR, but, like, in a world where we can have so many experiences, experience things that we would never experience otherwise,

Starting point is 02:38:28 we have inflicted a genocide through starvation on the people of Palestine. Yeah. Like in a world where we can see and know more about other people's lives than ever, we've done this thing. Like, I don't want to harp on the fact that, like, Israel is built on the idea of never again and here they are doing it again, right? But, like, it's just so sad that, like, we're in this world where we can know and share more things. And yet it's resulted in somehow us still not seeing our common humanity.

Starting point is 02:39:00 I mean, more people have, I guess, also, like, one thing that has happened. this year in the last two years that like when I came here I would never have believed that you would get thousands of American people out to call for the basic human rights of Palestinian people like it didn't it wasn't a thing that American people were aware of so like that is something over the last two years like we have seen solidarity some of that's yeah there has been a shift yeah some of that solidarity I think has been misguided but I think some of the I guess anti-Israel shift has come less from a concern for Palestinians and more so for the sort of, you know, we don't want our tax, got dollars spent there when it's spent on us, or it's more of an

Starting point is 02:39:45 internally minded sort of America-first ideology. Yep, and they're straight up anti-Semitic bigotry as well. But there has been that solidarity shift as well. Yeah, like there has been that like a global solidarity. And like even as a millennial, right, like from the age of 13, right, when I was a kid, when 9-11 happened, and even,

Starting point is 02:40:11 I guess, the first war in the Persian Gulf, the media project of most of the nations in which I have lived has been to demonize Muslim people, and people specifically living in the Middle East, right? Yeah. Yeah, and it's more of a racialized big of tree

Starting point is 02:40:26 than, particularly religious megatry. I mean, it does take that religious quoting and there are religion-specific elements to the bigotry, but it does tend to be more relationalized than... Because I already know that some people will be like,

Starting point is 02:40:40 oh, well, I just don't like Islam as because of its authoritarian inclinations, or the case may be, but it's a bit more than just religious-based bigotry. Yeah, it's not just a philosophical disagreement, right? Like it took on, like you say, this racial character And so, like, to see people noting their common humanity, like, I was just talking to someone about this the other day.

Starting point is 02:41:03 You familiar with Miss Rachel? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it is inconceivable. It would have been inconceivable when I was in high school that an American children's entertainer would be like, well, I guess you had the Dixie Chicks, but it's not the same, right? It would be like continually, not to take away from what they did. I think they were very brave, actually.

Starting point is 02:41:24 but to be able to stand up for the lives of young children in Palestine so consistently and so vociferously for so long. That gives me a great sense of hope. Yeah, that really, I think, is an indication of just how much there has been a shift. And of course, she has been bullied and targeted relentlessly since. But, you know, it does indicate that people are willing to face that kind of bullying and face that kind of attack that, I suppose, segment of empire for the sake of Sanof, what's right? Yeah, I guess I think it's so, it's impressive, right, that like, yeah, people have

Starting point is 02:42:07 bullied and attacked her, but, like, also she has been so brave and so consistent. And not just Miss Rachel, to be clear, there are many, many other people who have done this and has been able to continue to do that because so many people have been like, these are just children? Why are you arguing that it's wrong to say we shouldn't kill children? fuck is wrong with you. Yeah, a lot of people showed up against the war in Iraq too. But it's good to see that that media project has not succeeded because it's been two

Starting point is 02:42:35 decades in my life that it's been trying to succeed. Yeah. I think that we've been seeing so very familiar dynamics across the geopolitical crises that I've sort of mentioned there. We have this external patronage of global powers and regional powers that seem to be sustaining these fights that were in lives over years. Because if they wouldn't get in that constant flow of money for weapons and weapons support and military support,

Starting point is 02:43:05 these wars were not able to last as long as they have. But it's these outside actors in Sudan and in Palestine that are supporting the fight and supporting the barrage, supporting the suffering, and not supporting the aid necessary to support people. Yeah. You know, there's been a very slow and insufficient pace of humanitarian response due to funding gaps, access constraints, and the politicization of aid.

Starting point is 02:43:34 And there are people who have managed to act directly, not waiting for any official channels in the case of the flotilla, something else that happened this year that I found particularly admirable. But it hasn't been enough so far. It hasn't broken through quite yet. And people are still without much of the necessary aid. it will sustain even their survival. We also see that even as these wars are raging in these regions,

Starting point is 02:44:01 in many cases the extraction is continuing, particularly in Congo and Sudan. Yeah. I think it's very critical that we continue to speak out against these wars as we get into 2026, wherever we see them, we document what's happening, we keep a record offline of what's going on,

Starting point is 02:44:18 independently, because another thing I've noticed this year is how blatantly the news media is showing its colors, you know, and that's where independent media is meant to fill the gaps, even though it may not have as many resources as mainstream media. So things like this podcast is here for. It's something that I think when the listeners can take responsibility in being part of, in gathering information, and archiving information, in sharing sources and direct connects, so that the information gets out there. Yeah. And so as we wrap up this retrospective, for 2025, two things in particular stand out to me.

Starting point is 02:44:56 One is that our system is brittle as hell. And two, that people are resilient as hell. And taken together, I believe it's an indication that we are indeed in a world of transition and it's still uncertain as to how it will turn out. The future has not been written yet. We don't know. We do have the ability to choose what we do next. So if you look towards a new year, think about something you want to build or strengthen,

Starting point is 02:45:27 whether it be a skill, a relationship, a practice, a project of some kind that can serve you and those around you going forward. That's all I have for today. All power to all the people. Happy New Year. Peace. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and maybe Sophie Lichtenen.

Starting point is 02:46:09 Maybe. That's how you your first name? I'm always here. I just don't necessarily have anything to add because you're all so good at your jobs. No, no. We love when Sophie has something to contribute to this show. So what should we talk about first? Let's do some quick updates from last week. As we mentioned in the episode description last week. We recorded prior to an incident that happened in Portland where two people were shot by Border Patrol or ICE very unclear. There was not a lot of information given out. And the way that the situation unfolded, the way that DHS said it, that there was a targeted stop of two people,

Starting point is 02:46:55 and they resisted arrest. So of course, what do they do? Just shoot into a car. And those people drove away and then quickly called for help and then went to the hospital. We really don't know anything further than that. I watched many press conferences from Oregon and Portland officials, including the governor and the mayor, talking about the situation. Everybody's pretty horrified by it locally, but that's not the story we were getting from DHS. I can read the statement if you guys want. Okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:47:36 Since Robert's not here. Robert was at CES but was also following the story very closely and did some reporting on his blue sky. If you want to go back and look at that. But the statement from DHS said at 219 PST, U.S. Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop in Portland, Oregon. The passengers of the vehicle and target is a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational gang, Trendiagua. prostitution ring and involved in a recent shooting in Portland.

Starting point is 02:48:06 The vehicle driver is believed to be a member of the vicious Venezuelan gang Trendaagua. They love to just throw that out that. When agents identified themselves to the vehicle, occupants, the driver weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents, fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired defensive shot. The driver drove off with a passenger fleeing the scene. The situation is evolving and more information is forthcoming. That was on January 8th at about 5 p.m. Pacific.

Starting point is 02:48:32 And that's their take. That's their like go-to move. The excuse for randomly shooting at a car is that they were weaponizing the vehicle towards the agent. We really don't know much further than that. Mia, do you have anything you want to add? Yeah. So I think we should make two things clear. One, both of the people who were shot have survived, which is good.

Starting point is 02:48:55 Yeah. Yes. It's also worth noting that. So the day we are recording this on the 14th. There is a report released by Del Cameron and Ryan Shapiro at Wired talking specifically about how they got a bunch of intelligence documents from the Trump administration about Trendaagua. And to briefly summarize the article, I'm just going to quote the subtitle of it because it gives a good representation of what is in the actual intelligence documents. That's all the info we need.

Starting point is 02:49:25 Yeah. Yeah. Hundreds of records obtained by Wired shows thin intelligence on the Venezuelan gang in the United States. describing fragmented low-level crime rather than a coordinated terrorist threat. So they could barely even find existence of this group in the United States. These two people, I am 99. I would stake my life on none of the stuff in that report

Starting point is 02:49:51 about them being in this Venezuelan criminal organization being true. Almost everything that has come out of Homeland Security, as we've talked about with every other previous shooting, almost everything that comes out of Homeland Security is a lie. So, yeah, we will probably in the coming weeks figure out what actually happens, but unfortunately right now we're relying on

Starting point is 02:50:14 a combination of Portland government officials who are somewhat more reliable and the Department of Homeland Security, which is utterly unreliable. Yeah. I do have one thing to note here. As for what the local officials in Portland are saying, Portland Police Bureau Chief Bob Day started a January 10th press conference by saying, quote, recently I read the Declaration of Independence for the first time, unquote, and then stated that the two victims of the shooting have, quote,

Starting point is 02:50:47 some nexus to involvement with Trenda Agua. And then on January 11th, Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez was interviewed on Kedu News and said that he believes Trenda Agua is active in Portland. but he cannot confirm that his office has any criminal cases against the gang. The Department of Homeland Security has identified the people who were shot, saying they are affiliated with Trindey, Aragua, the Venezuelan gang, and are connected to other crimes in Portland. Does your office have any cases against these individuals?

Starting point is 02:51:18 You know, these are all things that we're going to be looking at and going through very carefully as we evaluate the case. One, to make sure that if there are other pending matters out there, that they're taken care of, but also just to, make sure we get a full picture of what's going on in the situation. Do you have any knowledge of whether Trindrae, Aragua, is active in Portland and Multnomah County? It's certainly something that we have seen, and we are working on with our local law enforcement.

Starting point is 02:51:44 We have seen them in our area. They are one of kind of a host of different groups or individuals out there that are engaged in criminal activity, and it's something that we're working on. Just a lot of biased disinformation and misinformation. We don't actually really know what happened, but I am grateful that those folks did not lose their lives, unlike Renee Good. Yeah. Yeah. And I also briefly want to mention here about Renee Good. There's been an attempt by the Department of Justice. A bunch of people at the Department of Justice have resigned rather than attempt to prosecute Renee Good's wife.

Starting point is 02:52:24 six high-level prosecutors have resigned in the past week. And this has been a very, very standard reaction from law enforcement when they don't kill someone or when there's someone else on the scene. A few months ago, I shot a woman in Chicago. She thankfully survived, but they also charged her afterwards. So this is a very, very standard practice. And they are right now trying this on Renee Goode's wife after she watched her fucking life get killed in front of her. Yeah. So I know people have also been waiting for updates on Iran. We

Starting point is 02:52:58 have an episode that came out. It will have come out on Wednesday, two days before this comes out. So if you'd like to know more about what's happening in Iran, we had a really excellent talk with Gorda'in, and I would suggest you go back and find that episode. And I wanted to update people on what is happening in Syria, I guess specifically northern Syria right now. So the two neighborhoods, Sheikh Maksud Nesafria, those are both neighborhoods in Aleppo, right? They sometimes characterize as Kurdish neighborhoods, but like, Yazidi people live there. There are various Christian people living there as well, right?

Starting point is 02:53:32 Like, it's not 100% Kurdish. I think sometimes there's a tendency among people who write about Syria to see things as ethnic modelists, and I think that is not the way to approach these things. But anyway, both of those neighborhoods have now been fully seized by the Syrian transitional government. Some SDF fighters were bussed back to Kamishlo, which is the capital of the AANES, sometimes known as Roshava. Fighting is now moving closer to the Euphrates, right, closer to the core of what people will call Roshava. I think at a minimum the goal is probably to remove the SDF from any areas and are not majority Kurdish. So right now they're fighting in Dahrir,

Starting point is 02:54:17 and they will begin fighting, or there have already been drone attacks in other areas as well. In Aleppo, the Syrian Obserbtian Obser on Human Rights, which is a Britain-based human rights organization, documented several war crimes, and going to quote here, S-O-HR documented 23 cases of extrajudicial executions and desecration of bodies in Sheikh Maksud and Al-A-Safria,

Starting point is 02:54:38 neighborhoods in Aleppo City in the past few days. Here are further details. The bodies of 15 members of the internal security forces, Asaish, including bodies of four female members were deliberately incinerated. A female member of the SAAish forces was killed during the clashes and her body was thrown from the top of the building. The reason they've been able to document these is that they're widely broadcast on Telegram, right?

Starting point is 02:54:59 People are very proud of what are war crimes, right, the desecration of the remains. Jesus. At the same time, the Islamic State carried out three simultaneous attacks on the 12th of January enduring several SDF personnel. And it seems that this whole debacle has put the peace process between the PKK. The PKK is a distinct entity from the SDF, right? But nonetheless, the PKK is seeing Kurdish people killed in Syria and Turkish support. There have been some reports of Turkish drones being used or flying around there.

Starting point is 02:55:37 So the KCC, if people aren't familiar, the KCK is the organization that brings together the different political groups in Kurdistan that broadly adhere to the political ideology or thought of Abdullah Ojulan, but take different approaches to that. The KCK released a statement saying, quote, the attacks on Sheikh Maksud, Nasseria, and the preparations for attacks on the east of the Euphrates also call into question the ceasefire between our movement and Turkey and the ongoing peace and democratic society. That is not great, right? Yeah. You know, this is a place where people have been at war, killing and dying for more than a decade, and it's very sad to think of more killing and dying happening there.

Starting point is 02:56:17 Gara, you wanted to talk a little bit about some domestic terrorism, I guess, some actual domestic terrorism, and arson attack, right? Do you want to talk about that? Yes, on Saturday, January 10th, the Beth Israel Congregation Synagogue in Mississippi, an historic synagogue, the oldest in the state that was once targeted by the KKK, was set on fire in the middle of the night, damaging the interior. of the building. A 19-year-old college student named Stephen Spencer Pittman has been charged with federal and state arson charges as well as a hate crime enhancement. On Instagram, Pittman described himself

Starting point is 02:56:55 as a quote-unquote follower of Christ and shared a meme of the anti-Semitic happy merchant hours before the attack. Jesus Christ, Jesus. The Happy Merchant is an anti-Semitic Jewish stereotype that is often used in memes. originating from the 4-chan era of WoJack memes. You've probably seen it before.

Starting point is 02:57:18 It's a crude anti-Semitic rendering of a Jewish person with his hands clasped together. Pittman has confessed to starting a fire in the building, which he described as the quote-unquote synagogue of Satan, according to an FBI affidavit. And reporting from the AP states that during his first hearing, when the judge read him his rights, Pittman said, quote, Jesus Christ is Lord, unquote.

Starting point is 02:57:46 According to the FBI affidavit, Pittman texted his own father during the arson, sending a photo of the synagogue with the messages, there's a furnace in the back, hoodie is on, and they have the best cameras, unquote. Pitman's father attempted to convince his son to come home and later turned him into the authorities. Pitman suffered Burns to himself. during this attack, he's the only person injured as a result of this incident. Thankfully. Glad he got hurt. Pittman's phone was found in the synagogue damage from the fire,

Starting point is 02:58:24 though his location was able to be tracked via the Life 360 GPS tracking app, which shows a stop at a gas station where Pittman allegedly picked up gasoline before heading onto the synagogue. Great. what a fucking idiot but yeah this is I think this is the only synagogue in the state right like to the oldest synagogue in the state I

Starting point is 02:58:47 doubt this is the only synagogue in Mississippi the largest one that's it yeah yes yeah it's like the most famous one yeah yeah yeah like you said it was attacked by the clan before it was it didn't he attack exact the same part of the synagogue that the clan previously burned I don't have that in my notes but that is it seems like that's what he was same vibes

Starting point is 02:59:08 no he did say that he did a lot of research on the target and that he needed a home run in communications to his father and Pittman was a baseball player in the state. There's not much more to say about this like this is a weirdo Instagram Christian Zumer who also offered like a fitness service. It's unclear how real this is or if he had like you know customers But he was offering faith-based fitness transformations. Jesus. Yeah, that's the thing.

Starting point is 02:59:45 Like, you have a little bit of, like, the Christian looks-mackser vibe going on with him, as well as sharing a series of anti-Semitic posts made on Instagram. Yeah. Did you see this Deborah Lipstadt tweet, yeah? No. So, Deborah Lipstadt, right, who was previously the, um, she liked the envoy on anti-Semitism, hosted 823 on January 11th. This is a major tragedy.

Starting point is 03:00:09 but it's more than that, it's an arson attack, and another step in the globalization of the Intifada. That's not seem to be the case. No. No, but this is pretty way off base, in fact, right? But I think it's still rather telling that... This is not like a Hamas anti-imperialist Zuma, red triangle and bio type guy.

Starting point is 03:00:32 This is a... Right-wing Christian nationalist. College athlete Christian Zumer. Yeah. who shares anti-Semitic memes on Instagram. This is a pretty standard, you know, pre-2020 type of, like, synagogue attack. Yeah. In fact, the fire was started right in front of a tree of life memorial plaque in the synagogue.

Starting point is 03:00:54 Jesus Christ. Oh, God. Of course it was. Yeah. And we are back. So the thing I thought I was going to be talking about this week was a Supreme Court ruling on Trump's tariffs. However, the Supreme Court, contrary to the ex-Bitchman. that basically everyone didn't actually release a ruling on the tariff stuff today.

Starting point is 03:01:25 We have no idea when they're going to release that. However, instead of that, we got one of the most bizarre and extraordinary statements and videos I have ever seen from someone who was even remotely affiliated with the U.S. government. So on Sunday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell released, I don't even have a good reference for what this is. The closest thing I can think of is it's a kidnapping video, but it's more like a help I'm about to be kidnapped video, in which he says, quote,

Starting point is 03:01:55 the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. So this is nominally about cost overruns effectively in renovations of the Federal Reserve. If anyone has ever paid attention to any single U.S. government project ever, you will know that there are cost overruns on, like, most projects. This is just how the government works, because you come in with your little bid that's below what the actual cost is going to be

Starting point is 03:02:24 and then it costs more than that. Now, this investigation is being run directly into Jerome Powell and, by the way, this statement was published on the Federal Reserve's. This is like an official statement from the Federal Reserve Board. Yeah, yeah. So he also says later in the statement, quote, the threat of criminal charges

Starting point is 03:02:43 is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessments of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressures or intimidation. This is extraordinary.

Starting point is 03:03:07 They got 16 other central bank leaders from around the world, and we're talking about Norway to Indonesia, to submit a letter expressing, would they use the word salt, solidarity to express your support of Powell. I cannot emphasize enough. Do you know how bad it is to get central bank leaders to say the word solidarity? Now, this is following a Trump to pattern of using the DOJ to attack their political enemies. Today, the 14th, as we're recording this, also saw the beginning of investigation into Senator Elisa Slotkin over her participation in a video a few months ago, encouraging U.S. troops to disobey illegal order. Mark Kelly, who was also in that video, was also targeted with a Pentagon investigation over the video.

Starting point is 03:03:57 So this has become very common. However, Jerome Powell is a Trump-one appointee. So this is someone who is also, and this is something that's worth mentioning. Powell is very popular in conservative circles largely outside of a very, very immediate circle of people around Trump who want their president to be able to control the interest rate. Now, I'm going to do a full episode about this probably next week, but the independence of the central bank is one of the core pillars of the global reputation and stability of the U.S. dollar.

Starting point is 03:04:34 Now, I'm not saying here that the central bank is good. I'm saying that this is how the entire world economic system operates, right? It is based on the central bank operating as a series of quasi-public, but still technically non-government entities that make independent decisions on interest rates. Now, Fed interest rates effectively, and I'm saying effectively here because I'm simplifying a very complicated set economic interactions into one sentence, but they effectively set interest rates for bank loans in the broader economy, which in turn has a massive impact on how fast or slow the economy grows. And the Fed uses this as a tool to control inflation and unemployment through a, basically a single

Starting point is 03:05:17 macroeconomic policy lever. The Fed does much, much more stuff than this. I will get into this in the other episode. It has a series of unbelievably crucial functions, but what is happening here is the Trump administration attempting to directly seize control of the Fed. And this is a nightmare. The actual mechanisms at work here in terms of the relationship between interest rates and the Fed's economic policy toolkit and inflation are not well understood even by the Fed, which is something you can get if you go read the Federal Reserve documents. It's very complicated. It's all contested. But it is the Fed's job to be able to do this, and they will admit they're not incredible at it. If the Trump administration is running this directly, the Trump administration has absolutely no idea

Starting point is 03:06:08 how any of this stuff works. This is giving them the keys to the global economy, and they are going should just start pushing buttons. This is a significant enough threat that several Republican senators, and this is not just Marowski, these are like just regular Republican senators, have spoken out against this move and have expressed,

Starting point is 03:06:27 you know, expressed that they think that Jerome Powell is innocent and that they will vote against any, any attempt to approve a Trump nominee for the head of Federal Reserve, which is also extraordinary. This is one of the largest breaks we've seen with Trump from the Republican Party.

Starting point is 03:06:43 so far, and the reason that there have been actual breaks from the Republican Party is that this is the rubicon for a lot of sectors of capital. Almost anything can be endured as long as the president does not have direct control over the money supply, which is what Trump controlling the Federal Reserve directly would be. Now, part of what's going on here, right, is that this is an attempt to choose a new chair of the Federal Reserve Board by, getting Powell out of his job. However, so Powell's term expires in May, but that's Powell's term as the chair of the Federal Reserve. He's still on the Board of Governors, and the Board of Governors also has to approve a new head of the Federal Reserve. So Trump needs to oust him from his position as the governor of the Federal Reserve Board, because if he doesn't do this, he doesn't have enough votes to get his appointment. The really dangerous thing here, on top of the abstract principle of, you know, the

Starting point is 03:07:43 president having direct control over the central banking system. The direct immediate threat is his preferred candidates who is currently one of the Federal Reserve Board governors, one of the Federal Reserve governors who's on the board, is Stefan Mirren, who is the guy who wants to charge other countries for holding U.S. bonds. So, yeah, I forgot how that. This guy is a maniac, right? Like, he, that's, sorry, that is deeply unfair to maniacs who are very reasonable people. This guy is, I cannot emphasize enough.

Starting point is 03:08:15 If you put someone in charge of the Federal Reserve who literally did not understand what economics was, they would do less damage than putting Stephen Mirren in charge of this. This is a nightmare. This guy has no idea what he's doing at all. He is effectively a cipher for Trump administration. And this is one of the positions in the entire capitalist system where, the chair of the Federal Reserve has to be someone who at least sort of knows what's going on. They can be evil, and they very often have been, but they have to sort of know what's happening. If this guy gets put in charge of the Federal Reserve, he is going to turn the U.S. economy into a smoking crater.

Starting point is 03:08:58 And that's what's at stake here with this attempt to prosecute Jerome Powell. Powell, blink three times if you need help. He's blinking. That one's going to blink a three times a second. He is tap at SOS with his fingers. It is a very unnerving video that he posted. Yeah, it does look like one of those, if I disappear. He looks really scared.

Starting point is 03:09:24 Yeah. And I think this is going to be one of the major flashpoints here, because even the tariffs don't have the potential impact for economic disruption that handing the make countries pay money. money to hold U.S. bonds guy. The Federal Reserve Board Chairman does. So. Yeah, you will see opposition from

Starting point is 03:09:49 Republicans because it directly impacts their bag. Yeah. This is the most you can possibly fuck with the money by attempting to take control of the entire money supply. There's a lot of fears here too, and it's sort of worth mentioning this. I've been seeing this passed around a lot, is that

Starting point is 03:10:04 there is another sort of recent example of a technically elected president assuming effectively decontorial powers, and it's Erdogan. And Erdogan eventually took control the central bank. And to get a sense of how that's going, the inflation rate in Turkey right now is currently 30%. And everyone is celebrating because it's below 31%.

Starting point is 03:10:23 This is the lowest the inflation rate has been in ages. It was like 70% when they first started this. And it was 50% last year and they've gotten it down to a mere 30% inflation rate. Yeah, things are going well. So this is the kind of thing that's on these people's minds because they all understand this. And this is not the Turkish Central Bank. Turkish Central Bank is obviously important in the world economy.

Starting point is 03:10:46 This is the United States Central Bank. This is a question of the fundamental legitimacy of the dollar as the World Reserve Currency and of the premier currency in the world economy. So we will see what happens as this continues to unfold, but this is probably the premier economic fight

Starting point is 03:11:02 of the entire Trump administration. And we will continue to update it as we learn more about how this is going to go. So I want to talk about something that came to my attention over the break here. I feel like we should utilize a banking segue, in my opinion. Okay, fine, yeah, fine, fine, fine. Talking of banks and of centralizing bank power under the state.

Starting point is 03:11:29 There you go. Let's talk about an organization that once began as a member of the KPD. We're going to talk about Germany, and specifically I want to talk about an organization called Rotterhilfer, Red Aid. They don't really speak German. So if I've pronounced that wrong, I hope you'll understand. Why we're talking about Rotterhalfer is that we, a few months ago, reported on the State Department, adding various European organizations to its FTO list, foreign terrorist

Starting point is 03:11:57 organization, right? And we wondered what this was about and what it would mean. We are now starting to see a little bit of what it would mean, because Rotterhilfer, Red Aid has had its bank account closed in Germany. It had accounts with two different banks, both of which had sort of broadly social or ecological missions, right? They were sort of progressive banks, I guess, if such a thing can exist. Because these banks are concerned with being sanctioned and effectively locked out

Starting point is 03:12:27 of the United States Swift system for doing business with a terrorist organization. Just to give some background on the org, I guess, there's not a direct. direct lineage from the KPD to this, but there was an organization of the same name from which it sees itself as descended set up by the German Communist Party, which of course was dissolved by the Nazis. Today, what they do is they do legal aid stuff. They appear to send observers out to protest to kind of document state violence. They have done some aid for asylum seekers. It has grown massively. It's like it's doubled and they doubled again in the last decade in terms of membership, right? And there have been attempts to ban it from, you know, the domestic

Starting point is 03:13:09 right in Germany. I've linked to one of the Afti ones in the show notes where people want to read it. But it being unbanked is effectively going to be fatal for the organization, right? Like, it can't provide legal aid. It can't provide legal support if it doesn't have a place to store its money. I mean, I guess it could just have a big box of cash, but it's going to make it very hard for the organization to take donations or to allocate the money that it has. So this is something we might see more, right? Certainly in Germany, because Antifa Ost is the organization that was sanctioned, but potentially also in other places.

Starting point is 03:13:45 Talking of having no money, here are some advertisements that can liberate you of some of yours. So for one of our last stories, I would like to discuss one of the bigger news stories from the end of the year, but something we did not have time to discuss in our last EED of 2025. and this is the Turtle Island Liberation Front. An episode next week will be going into even more detail, but I will go over some of the broad strokes of the Turtle Island Liberation Front alleged bombing plot.

Starting point is 03:14:31 On December 12th, the FBI arrested four people in Southern California, who the government claims are members of a left-wing activist group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The criminal complaint signed on December 13th by an FBI agent working at the Joint Terrorism Task Force in LA, alleges that these four individuals conspired in a bombing plot planned for New Year's Eve 2025. According to the complaint, on November 26th, one of the alleged TILF members,

Starting point is 03:14:58 I'm going to say TILF instead of the full name from now on, named Audrey Irene Carroll gave an eight-page handwritten document titled Operation Midnight Sun, outlining the plan for the bombing to a confidential human source who works for the FBI as an informant. The criminal complaint says this of the confidential human source. Quote, the confidential human source is cooperating with law enforcement and is a validated and vetted source. The confidential human source has been a reliable source of information since in or around August 2021. The confidential human source is cooperating for financial compensation. The Confidential Human Source does not have any criminal history.

Starting point is 03:15:41 The Confidential Human Source provided past reliable reporting on other cases and has provided reliable reporting in this case, unquote. The plan was for teams of four on-the-ground participants to plant backpacks containing complex pipe bombs, quote-unquote, or IEDs, outside of buildings at five locations targeting two U.S. companies, and then simultaneously detonate the bombs at midnight on New Year's Eve 2025. There would be an off-the-ground member

Starting point is 03:16:12 assisting the team remotely by listening to police scanners or be stationed in a vehicle in case a, quote, emergency getaway is needed, unquote. That's quoting from the plan. And one member of each on-the-ground team would create graffiti of a red triangle

Starting point is 03:16:29 and one message of the team's choosing on the sidewalk closest to the building while the other three are placing the devices. This indictment is a really interesting look at the modern direct action left because it includes a whole bunch of little tidbits like block and D block. It includes the alleged co-conspirators ground names like Asanac, A.K. Nomad and Kickware, which are their ground names for this action. The criminal complaint states that after making the initial plan, Carol and another individual,

Starting point is 03:17:05 Zachary Aaron Page, recruited a. additional co-conspirators who participated in further planning meetups and helped procure bomb-making materials. On December 12th, the four defendants traveled to a remote location in the Mojave Desert with the alleged intent to build and test explosive devices. FBI observed from a surveillance plane and then arrested Carol Page, Dante Garfield, and Tina Lye before they completed assembling a functional explosive device. They have since been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device. As I mentioned in my talking points, on December 12th, a group of individuals, again, members of this

Starting point is 03:17:45 anti-government group, traveled out to the desert to test their explosive devices. They had precursor chemicals there, and they were going to create these bombs in the desert. What they are starting to do is put their chemicals and wares and the components out on the table on the table there. This footage that you're watching is from our surveillance plane, and then what happened after this is the Los Angeles FBI SWAT

Starting point is 03:18:16 team, along with the FBI's hostage rescue team, moved in and arrested all four subjects without incident. Now, the Turtle Island Liberation Front appears to be a relatively new group with a social media footprint that only was back to July 2025. The Instagram

Starting point is 03:18:32 page for their LA chapter reads quote, liberation through decolonialization and tribal sovereignty, unquote. Their most recent post from December 12th, the day of the arrests, is promoting a, quote, Palestine pop-up market in Culver City. A post from November 28th reads, quote, if they hurt you, they hurt me too. Our destinies are intertwined. Liberation for one must mean liberation for all. The empire must fall. And from within the belly of the beast, we must be the ones to dismantle it. Revolution is the only way. Stop, quote, peaceful protesting, unquote, rise up, fight back. We are not outnumbered. They are organized and be ready, unquote.

Starting point is 03:19:17 Yeah. The FBI source met with two TILF members in late November, Carol and Page, and during this meeting, Carol gave the FBI source the handwritten bombing plot and retained three to four additional copies of this plan. and the plan identified five locations to target as marks, with more blank slots on the plan, which are captioned, add more if enough comrades. According to the criminal complaint, these targets were, quote, property and facilities operated by two separate companies that are used or engaged in activities affecting interstate and foreign commerce, unquote. These are Amazon distribution type facilities.

Starting point is 03:19:59 They've not specifically confirmed that they are Amazon facilities, but they are these sorts of global shipping facilities. One of the things I find really interesting about this criminal complaint is the way that this FBI agent describes direct action tactics and the Turtle Island Liberation Front members' security practices throughout the planning of this action. This is quoting from the criminal complaint. Quote, the plan described multiple operation security measures

Starting point is 03:20:26 the co-conspirators should take to conceal their identities, such as the use of a burner phone that would be disposed of after the bombings by, quote, submerging it in a concrete brick after destroying the sim and then disposing of the brick in a body of water, unquote. The target date of the operation, New Year's Eve, was identified as an opportune time because, quote, fireworks will be going off at the time, so the explosions will be less likely to be noticed as immediately as any normal day, unquote. The plan emphasized that, quote, absolutely no mistakes can be made, unquote. The plans outline the use of, quote, unquote, black block over top a layer of, quote, unquote, casual gray block.

Starting point is 03:21:01 on top of normal street clothes, and noted to keep hair very tightly concealed and to wear gloves for the purpose of avoidance of leaving behind DNA. The plan further instructed that participants should leave their personal devices at home and make sure that devices were set up to stream a long movie during the time of the attacks as to craft an alibi or quote-unquote plausible deniability by having it appear as though the actor was actively using their devices. The plan discussed pre-operational surveillance of targets, identification of D-block or de-clothing locations, and not leaving, quote, anything other than IEDs behind, unquote, as they could not, quote, risk any evidence tracing back to us, unquote. The plan also noted the benefit of placing a small

Starting point is 03:21:45 pebble in a shoe to alter natural gate to obfuscate their identification. Instructions on how to purchase materials to construct a pipe bomb suggested using cash only, purchasing only in small quantities to voice suspicion and splitting purchases amongst a team rather than individually, unquote. This is the type of stuff I find really interesting is this emphasis on all of these, you know, Opsack, like operational security measures all while working with an FBI informant from the very start of the operation and then recruiting another one during the planning stages. During a meeting on December 7th, three Turtle Island Liberation Front members, at least, met both with the confidential human source as well as an under-class.

Starting point is 03:22:26 cover FBI employee while trying to recruit more members to join this operation, both of whom accompanied the Turtle Island Liberation Front members as they traveled to the Mojave Desert on December 12th to allegedly build and test out explosive devices for the direct action. There's a lot more information in the indictment, as well as some news that has happened since then, like an arrest in Louisiana, also tied to Turtle Island Liberation Front. but we will discuss those in a future episode as of now three defendants in this case have pled not guilty and the fourth is set to be arraigned on January 20th. Are you planning on doing that next week here?

Starting point is 03:23:07 Yes, there will be an episode next week. Cool. Going into more details about this group, their politics, as well as the FBI undercover and informant and their level of involvement in this action, which has spurred. a lot of discourse online about this being a quote-unquote sting operation, about this being a quote-unquote sci-op. Yeah, I guess I'll just say very briefly. The FBI, it's not that first time and it's not that last time

Starting point is 03:23:33 probably doing something like this, right? You can look at many other cases and see FBI, sort of CI is doing this kind of thing. So I think that context is important here. I just want to finish up with a migration update. First of all, DHS fractured the skull of a protester and blinded him by firing a less than lethal munition into its face at close range at Santa Ana this week. I've linked to

Starting point is 03:23:57 an article for people who'd like to read more of that. Secondly, Judge Boasberg, who is the judge overseeing the case about the Alien Enemies Act, ordered the government to provide relief to Venezuela and sent to Sequot. Marco Rubio provided a statement responding that doing so would, quote,

Starting point is 03:24:12 materially damage US foreign policy interests. Essentially, he's saying the state can't comply with the order to provide redress for wrongdoing by returning them and it can't even give them due process, right, because it has since kidnapped the president of Venezuela. In related news, senators, including Schmidt and Cruz, have called for Bozberg's impeachment. Cruz makes these allegations, they're pretty minor, and crucially and very unusually, both of them have been repudiated by the administrative office of the United States courts, which doesn't normally do this kind of thing, right?

Starting point is 03:24:45 But in both cases, they've written letters kind of clarifying why Bozberg's conduct is. is totally normal. Both the Cruz claims related to decisions Bosberg made with which he disagrees. One pertains to a non-disclosure order that he gave so that Republican senators would not be notified of subpoenas of their phone records in the fake elector investigation. That was called the Arctic Frost investigation at the time that looked at attempts to overturn the 2020 United States election. They're also trying to impeach Judge Bordman for a separate decision in which they feel her sentence for a person who pled guilty to attending to murder Justice Kavanaugh, was too light. And then just today, which is Wednesday of this week, as we're recording

Starting point is 03:25:25 this, the State Department announced on X.com, the everything website, that it is pausing visa processing for 75 countries, quote, whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. The freeze will remain active until the US can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people. It's not clear what they are talking about. Are they talking about immigrant, non-immigrant visas, both of the above? Are they talking about people who have violated the public charge rule, or they just feel that any access of any benefit of state support is, quote unquote, extracting wealth from the American people. If you do not know what the public charge rule is, luckily for you, I made a podcast about

Starting point is 03:26:06 it in November of 2024. So you can scroll all the way back more than a year and find that. I'll try and find it for you and include a link in the show notes. I think what's crucial here is that this will reduce dramatic. the rate of which migrants access government services, right, which are often very beneficial, especially when it comes to things like child nutrition, child welfare services, right? Finally, the State Department also posted on X.com, the everything website that it has revoked 100,000 visas, including 8,000 student visas in the last year. We have no way of verifying that. If you would like to email us, you can do so. Just email Coolzone Tips at Proton.me.

Starting point is 03:26:49 if you want it to be encrypted, you should use a proton bad address as well. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.

Starting point is 03:27:24 Thanks for listening. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 215

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.