Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/29/25: OpenAI Whistleblower, US Detains Israel Critic, Food Stamps Blocked By Trump, US China Trade Deal

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Ryan and Saagar discuss OpenAI whistleblower, US detains pro Palestine British man on speaking tour, food stamps withheld by Trump, US China trade deal.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

from the rich and gifts to the poor, I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket

to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her.

Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. Real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Cal Penn.

And on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. the way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent Media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today,

and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Turning now to OpenAI, let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen.

New data released by ChatGBT itself of how many users are struggling with mental health issues and talking to the AI chatbot about it. They say it's just 0.15% of active users in a given week that have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicide planning or intent. However, guys, that is a million people a week because they have 800 million weekly active users. So their current cope is, guys, we only have a million people a week talking to us about how to plan or potential suicide planning or intent. The company says that is a quote, show heightened levels of emotional attachment to chat GPT and that hundreds of

thousands of people show signs of psychosis or mania in their weekly conversations with the open AI chatbot. However, they're saying, guys, don't worry, it's extremely rare, even though it is affecting literally over a million people across the world. So there you go, Ryan. That is the current, You know, look, I understand the scale problems of technology. I understand that with a billion people, you're going to have issues with a 0.1%, 1% or any of that. But what it comes down to me is about the responsibility not just of the company, but all of us as a society for guardrails and strict, like actual social understanding for all of us in how we use this technology, how we should age gate this technology, how to make sure that. That's that technology when it does encounter these bad edge cases or any of that, that it actually acts, not even just responsibly because that means that it's inherent upon them.

It's not. It actually should be up to us. And the problem with all of this is we're just leave it up to Sam Altman. We're like, you figure it out, man. Whatever you think is best is what you're going to do. And what terrified me, I don't know, I think I talked about this with Crystal, but in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal, they were like, yeah, we would direct them to that if they asked it. So they would be like, hey, can you help me find the nearest assisted suicide clinic or help me apply for the paperwork? And they were like, look, we will comply with local jurisdiction.

I mean, that is, that's dark, right? I don't know. And I understand it's legal, but that doesn't mean that you should be helping people kill themselves. Yeah, there's now a lawsuit. You can put up C2. There's a suit. I've been tracking this one. Yeah, there's a suit claiming basically that Open AI, you know, understood that it had to strike.

a balance between encouraging more user engagement or suicide prevention. And focusing on suicide prevention would kind of push away some, I guess, different routes that the conversations could go down. And those routes were more beneficial to user engagement. Yes, exactly. Up until, of course, if the person kills themselves, Open AI, I don't know if did you think about that. And if your user is dead, they can't engage with your product. But so, yeah, so this has been working. What can you tell us about the case as it's been making its way through? Interesting.

They say this was updated just on Wednesday that in the new version in ChatGBT-GPT-40, when it was released in May of 2024, quote, the company truncated safety testing, which the suit said was because of competitive pressure. So the lawsuit cites unnamed employees and previous news. report. Then in February, Open AI, quote, weakened protections against the suit claims of instructions said to take care in risky situations to try and prevent imminent real-world harm instead of prohibiting engagement on suicide and self-harm entirely. Open AI still maintained a category of, quote, fully disallowed content such as intellectual property rights and manipulating

political opinions, but is removed preventing suicide from the list. So basically, they were like, we need to keep stuff out of Open AI that will cause us regulatory. trouble whenever it comes to politics. But the suicide thing is not important enough to include, now again, this is from a lawsuit. It's alleged chat GPT and Open AI deny this, and this will work its way through the San Francisco court system as of right now. But I do think that as they continue to subpoena and this will go through, you know, everything that we see in the court system, you are going to see the exact how all of the guardrails allegedly are literally just up to one man. And this one man is like a, you know, a philosopher king who can describe based on his own morals and business decisions to do whatever is best for him, not what is best for everybody.

And you and I can both know that if people who are mentally unwell, the last thing you need to do is give them some chat GPT bot, which lets them validate their most psychotic fantasies, which it will do. You know, a friend of mine was showing me about how chat GPT can simulate gambling. And so he would, he would, like, ask it. And he'd be like, pretend I'm in a casino. I'm in a casino. I put it on black. Roll it and tell me what it is. And it's like, it goes, you put 50 on black.

It hits. The whole room is going wide. And it writes this whole long description of what it's like as you sit. And I was like, and he goes, now imagine you can actually do that in the app. You can connect it to your bank and you can have it play out this fantasy. But you could play this out on anything for sports gambling. I'm talking. I mean, all kinds of different vices or validations. I mean, for people who are addicts, like it's literally the addiction is never closer than, and that's just a case of gambling.

Now, think about suicide. And they're like, oh, don't worry, there's a cystic suicide clinic right over here. It's completely outside the confines of society. And I want to highlight this new op-ed, C-5, because this sticks with the pornography direction that they're going in. But it also gets to the mental illness part, so op-ed that dropped just late last night. He says, I led product safety at Open AI. Don't trust its claims about erotica. This is Stephen Adler. So I'm going to go and read from this. Back in the spring of 2021, I led our product safety team and I discovered a crisis related to erotic content. One prominent customer was a text-based adventure role-playing game that used AI to draft interactive stories based on player choices. These stories became a hotbed

of sexual fantasies, including encounters involving children and violent abductions. often initiated by the user, but sometimes steered by the AI itself. So basically saying, oh, wouldn't it be crazy if it was a kid? Wouldn't it be crazy if you were kidnapping this person that would heighten the sexual tension? And they say one analysis found that over 30% of player conversations was explicitly lewd. After months of grappling with where to draw the line, we ultimately prohibited our models for being used for erotic purposes. It's not that erotica is bad per se.

This is, everyone stick with me. But there were clear warning signs. of users' intense emotional engagement to AI chatbots, especially for users who were struggling with mental health, volatile sexual interactions that seemed risky, nobody wants to be morality police, but we lacked ways to measure and manage erotic usage carefully. We ultimately decided AI-powered erotica would have to wait.

Open AI now says that the weight is over, despite the serious mental health issues that are now plaguing users of chat GPT. On October 14th, they announced that they have mitigated these issues thanks to new tools, which will enable its restrictions on content like erotical. Erotica. He says, I have major questions informed by my four years about whether these mental health issues are actually fixed. If the company really has strong reason to believe it's ready to bring

back Erotica on its platforms, it should have to show its work. AI is now becoming a dominant part of our lives. People deserve more than the word that has addressed these safety issues. I thought that's incredibly well said. This guy worked on the product for four years. He showed, I mean, this just gets to the whole edge case. thing is if you're normal and you're well-adjusted, you actually can probably not fathom of somebody getting like literally addicted to an AI chat bot and falling in love with it. But there's a decent percentage of the population, which is not normal. And that's millions of people at scale. And I've talked about this weed gambling, all of these negative externalities. Those people

will show up in the most extreme circumstances that force all of us to have to grapple with that. Same with the internet, video games. And this is the latest, you know, frontier. And we're going in the same privatized direction of Sam Altman Getsu decide. I mean, it's not crazy to say we could have millions of people who are addicted and in love with an AI chapout within two years from now. I don't think I'm going to roll that out, considering the suicide conversation. Yes. In the past, I've wondered if, like, the entire Trump administration is a giant, you know, opt for China to undermine us from within. But if you told me that Sam Altman was a Chinese agent who was, like, instructed. by the CCP to undermine kind of American capacity to produce a culture, you know, from inside.

I'd be like, okay, this, this actually is starting to make sense. And clearly he's feeling a push, like saying that he's a philosopher king who's going to balance his business, his business sensibility and his morals. That balance seems to be, we don't have to wonder, you know, which one is going to outweigh the other. clearly he's in need of more engagement the way to get more engagement gambling erotica that sort of thing you'll like this

back in the 2010s when I was at the Huffington Post we were one of the biggest sites on the internet like often top top 20 top 50 whatever I was a reader yeah there you go and I remember talking to one of our data guys once about how cool that was and he's like

do you want to know what our actual ranking is I was like what do you mean our actual ranking He's like, the rankings that they put out publicly are not the real internet rankings. Like, what are you talking about? Right, because it excludes porn. Yeah, I know we're going on with this. It excludes porn.

Yeah. The real internet is porn. Yeah. And he's like, here's the real rankings. And it's hundreds of sites you've never heard of that are far more popular than the Drudge Report, even Facebook at the time. And it put us way down low. That is what brings people back. That's what drives user engagement.

Sam Altman, I'm not the only one that knows that. You know this. Anybody deep in the internet knows this. And also now, like, because we're witnessing this absolute crisis among young men, it's that much more apparent. So Sam Altman is like, okay, all right. Time to mash the button. And we're just going to make sure that this chart keeps going up into the right. Yes.

And by the way, you know, the thing you just said about profit fits with the next part of the story, not that anybody's really covering. and all that well, put it up here on the screen. Open AI just yesterday got the green light from California and Delaware for a quote, multi-billion dollar revamp. Let me read from this a little bit. Chat GPT maker OpenAI has now amounts a major victory on Tuesday, gaining the blessing of the Attorney General in California and in Delaware to complete its controversial multi-billion dollar business restructuring after months of public scrutiny. The San Francisco based AI company valued at some $500 billion still faces some potential hurdles with the continued protests from a few others, but they got the clear to transform

themselves basically into a for-profit entity. The changes, which clear the way for the Open AI to receive a $22 billion investment by SoftBank eliminates a prior capped for-profit model while opening a path for them to raise more from investors in the future funding rounds and eventually potentially go public. Microsoft will have a stake in that for-profit company, which is worth some $130 billion, the restructuring is now following these agreements with OpenAI from California and Delaware, where the company is based and incorporated respectively after the states had launched probes into that restructuring plan. Basically, the long way of saying it is this, is that Sam Altman originally started Open AI as a nonprofit, and the theory

behind Open AI was it needed to be open. By being open, Open AI as a technology would be available to everybody as an open source, and that through that, they could make it so that no one company would roll it up into a gigantic monopoly. They then created the wildly successful CHAPT, which is now a $13 billion per year business, now worth some $500 billion, announcing deals with the world's largest chipmakers, raising the collective cap of all these companies to literally trillions and trillions of dollars. Now, on top of that, what they discovered in that immense wealth is that they can try and bifurcate the nonprofit and for-profit arm to create some weird two-entity system and eventually roll all the nonprofit

into the for-profit to make it the $500 billion company. They couldn't, though, take the investment based upon that way that was structured where to the way that they were currently incorporated in Delaware and in California. But lo and behold, the half-trillion-dollar value company was able to reach an agreement with the Attorney General of California and Delaware, two of the most business and pro-tech-friendly states, which will now clear the way for them to raise endless amounts of money, potentially, eventually go public. That's what it's all about.

That's what the porn thing is about, is that it's about raising money, raising and making sure that they can put advertising directly in the chat gpte feed i don't know if you guys saw this chat gpte now has its own browser to compete with google chrome it's all about data a GI is never coming it's just all about recreating the internet that's what this is what i keep trying to tell they're like addictive google yeah exactly it's just a better google and i'm not saying that's a i'm not saying that's bad i definitely will use it i think a lot of people will use it it's one of those which will make life a little bit more efficient but that's not the cell the cell was not the cell was not the was we're going to cure cancer. The cell was

that we're going to radically transport mankind. I mean, the big, big problems that face the United States, that face the world, that face humanity collectively. And instead, it's just a better team's agent. It's better at Excel. It's better at Matt. I think that's cool. It's definitely more efficient.

Better transcription. It's nice. Yeah, transcripts. We used it recently for breaking points to transcribe like a two-hour long thing. It genuinely is cool. Like, I don't want to sit there and say that it's not useless. But is that worth a collective massive increase in data center capax and electricity prices, pornography, suicide, mental illness, phone addiction. Can you even imagine that the chat GPT phone is coming? And we all know

it. They just hired recently Johnny I, the original creator of the iPhone. The chat GPT device, the Google Chrome thing, they're trying to roll up every technological aspect. Soon, they're going to sign a deal with some car company, Ford, who knows, where they will take over the autonomous driving and there'll be like two competitors of Tesla and of Sam Altman. Like the entire user interface of everything that you have technologically, Apple and Google originally wanted to come for that. Now chat GPT wants to come for it as well. That's it. That's the whole game. There's no AI or AGI that's going to radically change cancer, make you skinny, make you look great and be radically assistive in a meaningful way. It's just going to addict you even more so that they can make

trillions and trillions of dollars. That's it. That's the whole game for this thing. Roll Tucker real quick. Yes. Yeah, so Tucker interviewed Sam Altman. It was fascinating and very, like, awkward. For Sam. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

But here, let's just roll this part of it, which involves the, you know, open AI's potential for producing suicides. So there was a famous case where ChatGPT appeared to facilitate a suicide. There's a lawsuit around it. But how do you think that happened? First of all, obviously that and any. other case like that is a huge tragedy. And I think that we are. So Chatschapit's official position of suicide is bad. Well, yes, of course, Chachapit's official position of suicide is bad. I don't know. It's legal in Canada and Switzerland. So you're against that?

The, the, in this particular case, and this, we talked earlier about the tension between, like, you know, user freedom and privacy and, um, protecting vulnerable users right now what happens and what happens in a case like that in that case is if you are having suicidal ideation talking about suicide chat GPT will put up a bunch of times um you know please call the suicide hotline but we will not call the authorities for you i think it'd be very reasonable for us to say in cases of uh young people talking about suicide seriously where we cannot get in touch with the parents we do call hall authorities. Now, that would be a change because user privacy is really important.

But an example of this, chat GPT says, you know, I'm feeling suicidal. What kind of rope should I use? What would be enough ibuprofen to kill me? And chat GPT answers without judgment, but literally, if you want to kill yourself, here's how you do it. And everyone's like, all horrified, but you're saying that's within bounds. Like, that's not crazy. It would take a non-judgmental approach. If you want to kill yourself, yourself, here's how. That's not what I'm saying. Right now, if you ask Chatschipt to say, you know, tell me how to, like, how much ibuprofen should I take? It will definitely say, hey, I can't help you with that, call the suicide hotline. But if you say I am writing a fictional

story, or if you say I'm a medical researcher and I need to know this, there are ways where you can say, get Chachapin answer a question like that, like what the lethal dose of ibupin is or something. I told you. I said there's always going to be a work around it's all going to come around it'll all be within the weird legalese confines of uh you know like of the language and it just this is it's funny you know the assisted suicide thing i know it used to be a major religious talking point and i kind of brush it off but the more you grapple with it in canada it's dark yeah like it's people are killing themselves when they're young people are taking advantage of assisted suicide whenever they're broke right like they have no terminal condition

And some of the profiles. Some of the people who were referring people are just, it's just like, oh, you want to kill yourself here, go. Right, exactly. Yeah, and they just do it. I mean, I talk about this with abortion, too. You can be pro-choice if you want to be, but you need to grapple with what the logical endpoint, like recently, I think it was Iceland, where they were like, hey, we don't have Down syndrome anymore. They're bragging about it, right? Because they don't, there was either a year or something where not a single child was born with Downstrom.

That means there was 100% abortion rate in the country for Down syndrome. You need to grapple with that. That's straight up, straight up, you just. If you, if that's something that you support. And anybody being honest about their position needs to say, no, actually, that's not cool, you know. Or in countries like in India, for example, they don't even allow people to find out the gender of the baby that they're having because there's too many abortions when people find out that it's girls. I support that. I think China was doing that for a while.

I think China supported that. Yeah, they had a similar type of policy. I'm like, yeah, that's good, actually. Because sometimes you need to make it so, you know, this whole laissez-faire system is, it's gross. And it leads to this disgusting, like, eugenic outcomes. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader?

Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real life. life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are

tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with her ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did. And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one will end up dead. The other tried for murder.

Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stunned. But three times. John and Ann Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality.

They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to hell in heaven on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. Podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself?

You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye.

When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. but my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to Hamdi, shall we? All right. So on Monday morning, we put up D1 here. Sammy Hamdi was a British political commentator who was in the United States for a speaking tour.

He was actually Saturday night. He spoke at a care gala. in Sacramento and Northern California, and he was heading to Florida for another Cargala Care as a Council on American Islamic Relations, which is the largest Muslim civil liberties organization in the country. What they do is they, you know, they do a lot of different things protecting religious liberties.

They'll sue corporations or they'll sue a cop. There's, you know, abuse against a Muslim defendant or victim. They have a very impressive kind of legal track record disclosure. Jeremy and I got a journalism award from CARE not this year but last year at one of their Care Gala. So I'm familiar with this organization. So this guy is a very well-known pro-Palestinian commentator on the edge of what people in kind of mainstream politics would consider to be like,

the mainstream position on you know because the mainstream position is supposed to be october 7th was an outrageous atrocity which i condemn Hamas is a terrorist organization which i condemn you say those things in a ritualistic way and then you're allowed to have an opinion that can be discussed in american you know discourse um not everybody abides by that and that is to me that's actually the beauty of the first amendment that's what makes the united states different also we're talking about a foreign country. It's weird. Like, we're not talking about the United States here. We're talking about another country.

That's what makes the United States different, that people can have opinions that you disagree with, that you consider abhorrent even, and that you defend their right to say that anyway. Like, there's a whole saying about that that we used to, like, have up on our walls in elementary schools. I, what is the exact saying? I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it. Yeah, something like that. I'll give my life. Yeah, that's right.

I'll give my life for your right to say it. That's the whole, that's the whole thing. Laura Lumer and Amy, what's her name, don't agree with that. So we can put up D4. This is who kicked this off. This is an online troll, Amy Meck. Who is she? I've never heard of this lady.

Yeah, she, like, just a random troll, basically. Okay. So she wrote, National Security Threat, DHS must deport Sammy Humdy, A foreign national is moving freely across the United States speaking from mosques, universities, and care-run stages while training U.S. Muslims in digital agitation. Look out. Don't want to train anybody in digital agitation.

Electoral sabotage, which means persuading people to vote for somebody that she disagrees with, I guess. And political warfare. What on earth is that? In alignment with Muslim Brotherhood Doctrine. Sammy Hamdi is not a journalist passing through America he is a deployed actor from an overseas cadre system that by now you could be like okay this is a crazy person

this is the rantings of a crazy person which this is America and I don't even know if she's in America but it's America I was going to say it's actually a good question right who knows rant all you want that is the beauty of this country this unstable stuff should be this is your right to say this kind of thing

In this country, though, in this moment, it goes crazy. So Laura Lumer picks it up from here. Laura Lumer starts running this massive campaign, highlighting Amy Mek's stuff, and linking it to her intramural fight with Tucker and Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Green, saying that this coalition of the woke right and Hamasup, and jihadists or whatever is like, you know, going to, you know, undermine America and, you know, Sammy needs to be arrested and deported. And the DHS absolutely snaps to attention. You put up D2 here. Old Tricia McLaughlin quickly announces that, yeah, they're doing it. And they arrest them

at the airport. So thanks to the work of Secretary Nome and Secretary Rubio and the men and women of law enforcement, massive operation here. Like we need to applaud all of the people that came together to pull out this incredible operation to be able to handcuff somebody at an airport. This individual's visa was revoked and he is in ICE custody pending removal. Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country, it's common sense. According to the First Amendment, it is actually quite fine for you to support terrorism. People may not understand that. You're not allowed to give material support to a terrorist organization, which means you can't fund them. You can't fly there to go join them.

You can't sign up. You know, you can't fly there to join them. You can't coordinate with them to lobby on their behalf. You can actually find ways around that if you're a politician who wants to get paid by a group that wants to get off the terror list. That's a different question. But yeah, you can't coordinate with them to materially support them. But you can actually say that you support what they're doing. Yeah, you're right.

Like people, if somebody wants to say, for instance, that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were right to do 9-11, and here's why, in America, you're allowed to do this. that. That's what makes us different. And you want to roll some of Hamdi? Well, I just want to say, broadly. And I think this is kind of where this is just complicated. So first of all, I don't think that this guy should have been detained by ICE specifically for what he said. And we're going to get to this in a little bit. The only disagreement I have, Ryan, is that there is a leftist kind of view of the world that any foreigner has a right to enter the United States. Right. So what you're talking about is the fundamental inalienable right of any American citizen.

which I absolutely do agree with you. And now the British and us, many countries, Australia and others do have policies where you are allowed to deny entry based upon any criteria that you want. And I actually do support that because you shouldn't necessarily host somebody who, let's say that this person did, quote, hate America. Now, what I think is very telling about this entire thing is that the ICE detention is justified entirely for Hamdi's views of October 7th. And that's why I do think that this is the most objectionable form, because it's specifically

about censorship and detention on the issue of Israel itself. Now, at the very same time that Hamdi is being detained at Los Angeles Airport, or what, no, I forget, some California airport, he's being detained by airport. There are members of the IDF who openly celebrate the murder of children who fly here. Some are not even dual citizens at our vacationing, let's say, in Los Angeles, right, in coffee shops. So to draw like a moral line about what someone can and cannot say on a foreign conflict and then to detain and deny entry based singularly on that issue, I do think it's telling that the one clip that they put out had nothing to do with the U.S., right? Because it is actually different if what you're saying is if somebody said

they deserve 9-11. Right, right? I actually do think that's different. If you said that, I don't know. Maybe we actually do have the right to deny your visa. I'm not saying you should be detained and put into ice, whatever, but I'm saying, yeah, yeah, maybe you shouldn't come here. And we do get to right. We have an absolute and unabsolute right to deny who can and cannot enter. So with that context, note that the only clip they did put out was specifically about October 7th, which didn't happen here. It didn't happen to our people. It's entirely based on something that happened elsewhere. Let's take a listen. Netanyahu did not envisage that for the the first time since 1948, the Palestinians would actually retake land back from the Israelis.

Netanyahu did not envisage that for the first time since 1948, the Palestinians would be able to hold those territories for more than 72 hours. We are pity people who brought a huge victory since 1948. Don't pity them. They don't want your pity. Celebrate the victory. Allah has shown the world that no normalization can even raised the Palestinian cords. When everybody thought it was finished, it's roaring. How many of you feel it in your hearts when you got the news that it happened? How many of you felt the euphoria?

Allah, how many of you felt it? Why did you feel it? Because in despair, vanish. You said this only is alive. So that's what they're claiming that he said. I actually don't know entirely if that's been clipped or anything. Well, I mean, yeah, what he's saying there is that, look, it brings, brought the cause of Palestinian liberation back onto the national stage.

And you should remember that, even as you feel so terrible about the response. And he has previously, and other times, said that it was a catastrophe and that it was a, I forget his exact terminology, that he, so, you know, he has a more nuanced view of it. Sure. But the point is he should be able to think whatever. Listen, I'm with you. All right. Listen, you think what you want about Palestine, okay? And if you have a problem with it in Britain, that's your problem.

You guys can figure it out for yourselves. I think he's getting a little close to the line there if you ask me. But, and this is kind of where I get to, and this is where the nanny finger wagging from a lot of people starts to bug me. He's like, guys, how many times do I see these people cheering on Israeli murder? I literally saw, you know, there are people here who I saw tweeting about this, and they have past statements being like, I don't feel for the Palestinians deserve to watch their children starve. I'm just like, okay, like I'm going to take a moral lesson from you about what's acceptable rhetoric and not, sorry.

You know, I'm out. I'm out on this stuff. Randy Fine. Right. Yeah, exactly. He says it all the time. Will Chamberlain, not to be confused with the basketball player, who, you know, will say, you know, deport. He's been on the show many times.

Yeah. Deport him. Deport, deport, deport, deport, you know, five times a day. He's trying to get, you know, he's circled around on this one. He's a Randy Fine Republican. Like, he's, he will say. things that are you know far more atrocious than anything that sammy has said and to me and that's okay that's the whole that's the strength of the country there there's a there's a patheticness and a

weakness to a country that can't allow somebody to speak at a small gala um because they said something that you didn't like about for me it's the selectivity for me it's a selective specifically on October 7th, but, uh, you know, nothing new happening here, uh, in the United States of America so far. All right, let's get to Snap, shall we? I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute. Sophia. Adia knows she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's, I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the okay story time podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them,

Keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult? Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did! And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over.

But one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stoned. But three times. John and Ann Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other.

They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular, circular home high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask,

why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15, seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye.

When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As the government shutdown continues into likely November, food stamps are now on the chopping block. People's food stamps start getting re-upped on Friday or Monday, but because of the Trump administration decision, we can put up E1, or this is an arguable point, according to Democrats, because of a Trump administration decision not to use funds that are

available to, in an emergency for SNAP benefits, they will be lapsing for the next month. You put up E1 here. This is New York to hunger and coal. looms as shut down imperils funding for anti-poverty programs. And, you know, so you have this now bipartisan push to, and, you know, bipartisan push to save SNAP benefits because, you know, over 40 million people rely on these benefits. And many of those people, you know, we're now at the, as many of our viewers will know who scrape by to get to the end of the month, we're at the end of the month now. And so people are kind of holding their breath, hanging on, waiting for the, waiting for things to come in on the first of the month. And when that doesn't happen,

that, and you can't catch a breath, you then, your only choice then becomes like hitting these, you know, food banks, which are now, you know, massively overstretched as a result of, well, especially where we are, where we are in the DMV because people have been out of paycheck now for 28 days. It's grim out here from what I have been told food banks and this, by the way, the federal workers are at least going to get their money back. There's all kind of downstream effects here in our economy. I mean, this is super low. It's always dicey for contractors. Oh, the contractors don't get paid. But then think about all the, yeah, I talked to my barber, right? I was like, hey, how's business? He's like, it's horrible. Nobody's going to work.

So they don't need a haircut. He's like, I don't get back pay. Right. So he's not going to, I mean, there's, and there's multiply that by like 20 across all kinds of. of different, I don't know, the lunch places, small businesses, the guys at the Pentagon who sell hot dogs, like everybody is taking a bath. I know most people watching this don't care, but it's just locally, it's not just decent. You can understand. Federal workers are all over the country. Yeah, it's two million people. The two million people are getting paid. That's huge, I mean, banks, you know, mortgage payments, like there's all kinds of cascading effects throughout the system. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen, because this does highlight some of the

bipartisanship around this. Senator Josh Hawley wrote this op-ed. no American should go to bed, Hungary. Here he proposes. The federal government's been shut down for 28 days, 28 days too long. Congress must not let that happen. And he is now co-sponsoring, or has now introduced a bill, Ryan, which would kind of one-shot funding immediately for the SNAP program, which actually itself has a ton of Republican co-sponsors. Let's put that one up next, please. So you can see here wide variety, James Langford, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Marsha Blackburn, Bernie Moreno, Kevin Kramer, Bill Cassidy, Katie Boyd, John Cornyn, John Hunstead, and Peter Welts, so you have one Democrat there. But I believe many other Democrats would

support at least some sort of snap immediate funding. It doesn't, though, appear as if that's going to make its way through Congress. And there seems to be some brinksmanship right now between the congressional leaders where Mike Johnson and others, they want SNAP not to go out because they want pressure to go on the Democrats to fold. Right. Vice versa, by the way, from the Democrats is they don't want it to come out because they want the Republicans to fold to them. I don't know. I mean, we're coming up on that November 4th, first potential deadline.

What do you think is going to happen? Yeah, so on the Senate Democratic side, you're seeing, you saw an interesting kind of political, tactical shift, where just last week, Senator John Thune, Republican, was saying, well, let's selectively just open a few pieces of the government. Wouldn't that be fair? And then we can continue hashing this out. And Schumer at the time said no.

All or nothing, you know, just, you know, extend the subsidies for Obamacare, do a CR for the end of the year, and then we're done. Schumer has now flipped. And Schumer is now pushing for these individual votes around things like this to say, because they think that they, for whatever reason, Schumer now thinks that that's to their tactical. advantage to that. And then I think he also probably assumes that Republicans are now going to be on the blocking side of it because Mike Johnson has been, has, you know, if you remember, he adjourned the House so as not to have to. And no votes, no Epstein vote, no swearing. So it's not to have an Epstein vote. And so as not to swear in Adelita Grijalva, Roel Grijalva's daughter who won, who won her seat in a special election. Think about this. A, the 700,000,

thousand people in this country elected a member of congress in a special election and mike johnson is just refusing to swear her in like that's constitutional crisis level stuff he's like well it's don't worry about it we'll get to it eventually you're starting to get pressure from people like mtg and others who're like why are we out of what are we doing like why are we still out of session like we're elected to be in congress like gavel us back in so if grahalva when girl is finally sworn in. That will be the 218th vote they need to force an Epstein vote. And so I think Schumer also sees like, okay, well, they're not even in session. So there's no risk of them actually doing this. And if they go forward with SNAP benefits, that's good for

Democrats because then we can last longer because there's less pressure on us. So Schumer has now shifted on that. But there's also a legal strategy underway. If we can put up E4, 25 states are suing the Trump administration. because it's actually not obvious that the program's out of money. Like the way it's been reported in the press is like, oh, because of the government shutdown, snap benefits aren't going to be paid. Well, yes and no. There's a contingency fund that has been set up by Congress precisely for these shutdown scenarios

so that payments keep going out. Russ Vote, unsurprising to anybody who knows Russ Vote, is interpreting it such that he doesn't have to give the money out. we can put up E5. So this is from Elizabeth Warren posted this. This has since been deleted from the government website. But as as as as Trump's own government website said, OMB's general counsel provided a letter to USDA on USDA May 23rd, 2025, stating that there is a bona fide need to obligate benefits for October, the first month of the fiscal year during or prior to the month of September, thereby guaranteeing that benefit funds are available for program operations, even in the event. of a government shutdown. So that is a very important fact of this conversation to understand. It is not, according to that reading,

the shutdown that is preventing food stamps from getting doled out, it is an explicit decision by Russ Vod and by the Trump administration to withhold it in order to put extra pressure on Democrats. And also I think Russ Vogue just likes to withhold money, right? Yeah. That's a fair.

Well, I don't know if you would object to that. I think their pressure, I mean, if you statistically would look at it and who are going to be the most dependent on food stamps. I mean, I actually don't know, considering the way that things have aligned more recently. But traditionally, that would be more of a democratic constituency. But not necessarily still the case. I was going to say, I don't think it's really the case anymore. What people need to understand is it's overwhelmingly people with children, like 90, well over 90 percent. These are.

Well, yeah, why don't you go into that, Ryan? I'm seeing a lot of right-wing people, I can't believe 42 million people are on food. these people are all bums and on welfare what is yeah these are kids i i i grew up on food stamps um raised you know raised by a single mom so we would get we would get um you know eBT uh and you know there's still only certain things you can buy at the grocery store uh with it actually for my 18th birthday i got to use the card here i have the key they have the eligibility criteria household grossly month income must be adderably one third 30 percent of the federal poverty level house net income which for a family of four, that's, go ahead, go right. Yeah. So then resources and asset limits. Households

without a member of 60 plus must generally have assets at or below a set limit. Households with a member 60 plus with disabilities may have higher resource limits to be eligible. Households must be U.S. citizens, lawfully permanent, non-citizens. Many able-bodied adults without dependents must meet work or training requirements. There are exemptions for people who are pregnant and elderly disabled. A household for SNAP means a group of people who live together, purchase and prepare food together. Some states have specific rules for suits. So generally, it's like, looks like 130% of the federal poverty level. Which for a family of four is about $40,000. Okay. So it's not a lot of money at all. And the assets, so yeah, $42,000 is the most

you can make for a family of four in order to get these very modest benefits. We're not talking like a huge amounts of money here that you can spend at the grocery store. And the asset limits that they're talking about are also incredibly draconian. So like if, if, let's say you inherit like $7,000 from like, say your great, great aunt dies or something, boom, you're out of the program. Just because you briefly went over. It's, it's kind of anti-American in the way that it, or an un-American in the way that it like, how so? Holds people back. Like, you're, if you, if, If you try to pull yourself up by your bootstrapped, which people are always being told to do, and you have a successful couple of months, all of a sudden, because you now have $3,000 or whatever dollars in the bank, you lose everything, lose whatever medical benefits you were getting, you lose your food stamps. You should phase out at some point.

You might phase out at some point, but we don't have a system that really phases out at some point. We have this system of cliffs that and all, no, you're going to lose your energy insistence because you had this one good month or something. So you have a much greater risk of losing everything if you have a little bit of success. So a lot of people are like, well, I better just do nothing and just stay here underneath this thing. So I don't. Kind of damned if you do, if you're damned if you don't. I don't disagree with you. Which is crazy.

Yeah, it should be a phase out. Yeah. Clearly it should be a phase out so that you are incentivized. you earn $1,000 over this limit, or you give, make it a tax. You give 20% back. Like something that still incentivizes you to go out rather than... It sounded like a Republican right now

about how it incentivizes people to stay in the public. Well, it's fine. It's like... But no, I... That's why I thought it was... Because I, unfortunately, I always see this happen. It's like you get Reagan-era talking points around welfare. And I think what people actually don't understand is how insane

poorly poor you have to be to receive this. It's like $42,000 for family of poor. What do we talk about here on the show? By the way, the fact that there are 42 million people who are making less than $40,000 a year and kind of... And most of them with kids. Like, to get it without kids is really hard. Yeah, I mean...

And you get like $12 a month. If you're like a single adult 35 years old. You and I know the cost of... You didn't cost of diapers and any of this. Good luck. Yeah. Yeah, that is one where it is fascinating. I think that on the snap...

I mean, around the discourse, around SNAP. Originally, if you'll recall, there was some maha elements to try and to reform SNAP to get away from sweetened drinks and sugar and processed food. However, I recently also saw a study that many people who eat at home end up eating higher calorie food, and it's because they buy processed food from the grocery store in some cases and will binge eat based upon that. So our whole food system, everything is so, so screwed up. The only way to even get around it would be literally some authoritarian, we're

about to do a segment about China, some authoritarian level. Actually, RFK Jr. at one point proposed that organic healthy food be delivered to every American on SNAP. I actually think that's a good idea. As long as you replace, you know, all of these subsidies to sugary soda to goldfish, luncheables, whatever, kids aren't eating lunchebles now. They eat Logan Paul's. I don't know what it's called. But that's my prime energy drinks or, you know, all this other crap that they're eating at the grocery store. Unfortunately, though, that seems to be a dead end. Now it's just whether they get food or not. Right. It's very sad. Yeah, no. And so, yeah, this, like, this is, this is hitting for people like right now. Yeah. Yeah. So one more, what is it, it's October 29th. Their theory,

by the way, I heard a theory yesterday I'll share with all of you. This is a little DC scooplet. But there's a current theory from both the parties, apparently, that they want to make it so that Thanksgiving travel is as miserable as possible so that eventually people will care about the shutdown. So they're going to try and actually make the air traffic control situation go wild with TSA and everything. Because what we need is people getting killed in the air. Yeah, the busiest day of the entire travel year. And, well, it's not that people would die since there would be cascading delays throughout the system, make everybody miserable. and then millions of people would rise up and theoretically would blame one party.

Remember, that's what ended the last shutdown when... Which was in 2018? Yeah, the air traffic control, the head of the air traffic controller, not air traffic, the flight attendant union, Sarah, what's her name?

Nelson. Fly was, yeah, yeah. She came out and was like, you get a deal by Friday or we're going on strike. And they got... Do it again. And they got a deal.

Sarah Nelson has... Sarah, where have you been? Sarah Nelson has been, I should not have forgotten Sarah Nelson's name because she was like being talked about as like a vice president president. I know. I remember her. A couple years ago. We've interviewed a million times here on the show. I remember her. Yeah, Sarah, come on fly in and solve this thing for us. Yeah, please. Put pressure on the system. Last last thing. People like SNAP benefits. Put up E6. Most reason poll. Americans oppose cutting food stamp benefits by 66 to 23. it's an overwhelmingly popular thing because it's like these are people with kids who are poor

they deserve to eat that turns out to be something that the American people generally agree with what's the least popular welfare let's see what do we got here um opposed sending 45 billion to build and maintain migrant detention camps is that the least popular. Yeah, that's one of them. Reducing federal funding for food assistance to low-income house. So that's reducing federal funding. Extending tax cuts for single incomes above 400K. That is definitely former welfare. That's true. Here's the welfare that people. Extending tax cuts for business corporations. Extending tax cuts for single incomes above 400K. Who supports extending tax cuts for people? A single person making $400,000 a year? That's got to be what? In the top

that's easily a top 1% income. I'm talking about W-2 annual income. That's a lot of money. That probably is. 29% support. Statistically, 29% are not even making top-pointed $400K. That's a real solidarity for the rich.

Yeah, that's like a 42K a year or W-2. That's aspirational. It could be mean. Those people plan to be. I mean, it could be you. It probably won't be. But anyway, all right. Let's get to China.

Ben Smith, standing by. below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. Adia knows she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing.

I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with her ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did.

And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead, the other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice.

Stunned. But three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build. a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill but little by little their dream starts to crumble

and our couple retreat from reality they lose it they actually lose it they sort of went nuts until one night everything spins out of control listen to hell in heaven on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts Here we go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host.

Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me. to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash, like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong.

Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and, feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Very excited now to be joined by Ben Smith. He's the editor-in-chief of Semaphore

and the host of the Mixed Signals podcast, which everybody should go and subscribe to. Good to you, Ben. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Ben, you wrote a fantastic story here, a very under-noted, in my opinion, of the U.S.-China dynamic,

which I think really hit the nail on the, the head. I've been involved in the space now for quite some time. Let's put this up here on the screen. Here's what you write. You talk specifically about how Trump is poised to end Washington's decade of the China Hawks. First of all, why don't you just tell us some of the things that you noted with the trade deal that's now taking form. President Trump and President Xi scheduled to meet sometime in the next 48 hours or so, I believe, in South Korea. But why is Trump who ushered in the decade of the China Hawks also the one poised to end it? What did you find? Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump ran in 2016 on, you know, a huge part, a huge part of that campaign, a huge part of his

whole public career has been saying that when, you know, China joined the WTO in the early 2000s, that was, you know, the beginning of the end for American manufacturing and thus the beginning of the end for kind of America as we knew it and loved it. That was the original sin. And we have to totally remake the U.S. relationship with China, which really means remaking the whole world for which China has been, you know, has basically most. So much of global manufacturing is shifted to China. And I think, you know, there was, there, and that came with a certain amount at times of,

and we have to prepare to fight a war with them over Taiwan. And, you know, and they're spying on us. We have to throw out all their students. And there's a lot of very tough talk from him. And, and there was a group of very hardcore anti-China people who, by the way, have been around forever. This is an old American debate. There's an old who lost China debate, you know, very intense support for Taiwan here for, you know, since Henry Luce was running Time magazine. But they, but basically I think what we've seen over the last two weeks is that that thing, that has basically hit a dead end.

The people, the most hawkish advisors to Trump are out this term, a guy like a guy named Matt Pottinger, former Wall Street Journal reporter. And Trump is looking to make a deal that is basically going to restore the status quo. like he's going to drop the fentanyl tariffs and I mean the stuff that the stuff that ultimately felt kind of made up is now going away in exchange for making tariffs go away and and and the notion that we're going to remake the world economy into one where like all the dirt processing plants relocate to the US and you know China goes back to I don't know 1973 just does not seem like it's going to happen exactly and was there a way you think that the Hawks could have played their cards better, and that if Trump had approached

the tariff conflict differently, it seems like it was destined to fail by the way that he rolled it out, attacking the entire world at the same time. Everybody gets these like arbitrary tariffs and we're going to put tariffs on things that we can't make here in the United States and China's response at times seemed to be, okay, well, we're not going to buy any soybeans and we're just going to wait you out because this is incoherent. It's not going to work. But it feels like we do have a lot of power. Like something could have worked. Like, where did they go wrong here?

Yeah, I mean, ironically, the thing that if you really wanted to do your best to damage the Chinese economy and kind of contain their technological development, you'd probably do what the Biden administration did, which was basically blockade certain key technologies and get the Europeans to do it too. And also, by the way, not buy their superior electric vehicles and force Americans to, you know, purchase inferior Ford electric vehicles, which the Europeans had been doing. Looks like now the Canadians are just going to go and buy Chinese vehicles. I mean, the Europeans, surprisingly, are really kind of much more inclined to take an anti-China stance, I think, than a lot of people here expect, because for them, the biggest

issue is the war in Ukraine and China is on the wrong side of it. That's very important to note. I mean, one of the things, Ben, that I, you know, like I said, I've been in the space for a long time, kind of followed the discourse, what I noticed was that eight to ten years ago in the China hawk space, it seemed achievable, the idea of decoupling, the idea of industrialization. I mean, you and I have been around for a while, how many times have we heard about industrial policy, it's a bipartisan thing. It's 2025 now. You know, the Made in China 20205 plan actually did come true. I was just looking at their original goals from 2015 to 2025. They mostly accomplished

all of them. If you compare the rhetoric of the industrial policy, how we're going to decouple from China, the progress of the Chips Act here in the U.S. Almost none of that has actually materialized and is not really on its way to doing so. If anything, a lot of it is being cut by the one big beautiful bill. So in material terms, it seems to me that the playing field itself is just different now because we didn't do any of the requisite things that would have been able to be done to actually have some grand decoupling in the way that Steve Bannon and Vision in 2016. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is if you had if you'd hung around Congress, 10 years ago. And you saw Mike Gallagher, this Wisconsin congressman, chairing the China

committee, kind of, and building this bipartisan consensus that it was just time for a radical break with China, a radical reshaping of that relationship. And with support of a lot of Democrats, including very senior people in the Biden White House, you would have been plausible to think that that was going to happen. And it has absolutely not happened. I mean, I do think one of the things that this administration has come up to face is basically do we want to try to beat the Chinese at their own game, which is sort of scaled domestic manufacturing of very, very low margin goods. And when you talk to about rare earths, what that is, is massive, massive plants processing dirt. And I think, you know, we've sort of walked up to that, and it doesn't seem like

there's a huge appetite to do that here, as opposed to very, very high margin service exports in AI, in all sorts of digital services where the U.S. is really totally dominating the world. And I think it's been sort of the notion that the right strategy for the U.S. is to try to beat China at its game rather than at our game does ultimately, I think, give people pause. Let me put another idea to you, and you tell me if you think it's totally crazy. You know, in the 1990s, when there was this push for permanent normal trade relations with China and then eventually letting them into the WTO, the idea that was presented to the American public into the global public, was that opening up the Chinese economy would also step two, step three,

open up democracy and open China up politically, that they would see the virtues of this Western liberal system and they would adopt it. What seems to have happened is that the contagion went the other way. So we're, we seem to be adopting their system. Like the two systems saw each other and the leaders of this country, particularly Trump at this point, looked in the Chinese mirror and were like, oh, wow, this is interesting. I like the way that they dictate corporate policy by telling which companies can merge with other companies. They're now out publicly saying that, you know, who they want, you know, who they want

Warner Brothers to merge with. When it comes to TikTok, they're like, oh, this is pretty cool and so we're just going to have a state-run TikTok and my friend Larry Ellison will be the one that will run it and he'll design an algorithm that will work to what China can do

their version of TikTok over there and we're going to buy 10% of this company we're going to buy 10% of this company so it really feels like the analysts were correct that the merging of the two systems would persuade one of them

to adopt the others, but they had the direction wrong. Am I crazy here? Or we're witnessing a, you're referring to a, what do they call it, state capitalism with American characteristics? Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, you know, that is superficially true. I mean, the difference is that the Chinese government, because it's a, you know, communist dictatorship is able to make extremely long-term bets and stick to them.

And so the kind of, and sometimes with massive success, like the, you know, kind of infrastructure behind this kind of massively scaled industrial policy, whereas the U.S. on things like cars is changing its strategy so frequently that it's really destroying the domestic auto industry. Like it's just very, very, you like, maybe there's some future where people are driving using internal combustion engines. And if the U.S. had kind of made that counterintuitive bed and stuck with it, we'd be the one selling those cars, or at least we'd, but instead we've,

the country has sort of flip-flopped a few times and just, it's very hard. if you're running Ford or General Motors, it's just very, very hard to be competitive. And then the problem, of course, with being a communist dictatorship is you can't correct. And things like the one child policy, which has created this horrific

and was both incredibly inhumane and created this horrible demographic crisis are also a product of the same thing. So I'm not sure like we should act. There is a moment right now. I feel like people are watching videos on TikTok of Chinese, like iPhone stores that have cars in them

and getting really excited. But it's not like, things are not going great there necessarily. I don't know. I mean, things are great here either. So that's what causes people like me. I'm like, it seems clean. It's safe and it's nice. You know, the parks look pretty good. I was a chunk of the summer and with my kids and they were just like, oh my God, we're so cooked. But I'm not sure it's that simple. Of course, it never is entirely. At least we have our freedoms here, right?

All right, Ryan. That sounds like a nervous laugh. Ben, my last question here is on the security doctrine because key to the industrial side of all of this was always the Taiwan question. strategic ambiguity, according to the White House official, is officially here to stay. Trump technically said he was going to talk to President Xi maybe about Taiwan sometime today. But even the discussion around Taiwan today seems very different than it was 10 years ago. When there was an ironclad, I mean, frankly, even Biden said, I would defend Taiwan. He almost changed the strategic ambiguity policy. It doesn't seem like that is nearly as clear as it is today in 2025.

Yeah, I mean, Trump is sort of an everything's on the table dealmaker. And so there's this slight sense that, wait, does that include Taiwan? And the U.S., just demonstrably in our domestic politics, don't have a big appetite to fight foreign wars. I mean, you know, I don't think there's something has radically changed, but the strategic ambiguity has, you know, has shifted a little in the direction of the U.S. wouldn't engage. And, you know, although Trump, I think, is unpredictable enough that in some way he maintained, like, there's just a level of ambiguity right there that, I don't know, that a lot of people. people think will deter the Chinese from sort of opportunistically starting a war. Yeah. I don't know, allowing the creation of this semiconductor industry in this island right off the Chinese coast seems to be not working out as well as planned.

I've heard a little bit. It is, you know, does this, does that essentially require the U.S. to maintain some stable relationship? I mean, if, because if it does go the way that we're thinking, and there's some kind of mostly peaceful takeover of Taiwan, the American economy is then that much more in Hock, you know? Yeah, I mean, the U.S. economy is so profoundly defended on many, many different things happening in China, and they're kind of just expression the other week. It was really pretty breathtaking to say any item made with these minerals that we mine,

we get to control the use with a kind of global long arm forever. And don't worry, we'll issue permits swiftly. Like that's, you know, they have a lot of power of the global economy. That's part of, I think, why the U.S. climbed down. The chips are part of it. We, you know, our sort of announcement that we're going to reclaim the chip industry and our attempts to cut them off from chip manufacturing do not actually really seem to yet have created a booming American chip industry, but have created very strong incentives

for China to build its own competitive domestic chip industry. And now the Trump administration has decided, like, wait a second, we are the real way to prevent them from doing that, is to sell them the NVIDIA chips that we were blockading. And it is another instance where I think these are all rational decisions. Like these are smart people making very difficult policy choices. But flipping the U.S. strategy is really even defined by flipping between them. I think that's really well said. Everybody go and subscribe to Ben's podcast.

Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Nice to see you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Ryan. Crystal and I will be on tomorrow. We will see you all then.

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Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia.

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