Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/27/25: Trump Purges Gov Watchdogs, Tech Oligarch Panic Over China DeepSeek AI, Andrew Callaghan On His New Doc

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss Trump purges Gov watchdogs, tech oligarchs panic over China's DeepSeek AI, Andrew Callaghan on his new Doc.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community.

I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop.

It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better let's

talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar 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.

This story is important both in honest merits, but also in terms of what it says about Trump 2.0 and the way he's approaching this administration. Put this Washington Post tear sheet up on the screen. I think they were the first one to break this news. Trump ousted at least 15 independent inspectors general in late night purge. So every cabinet level agency has one of these inspectors general. We're supposed to be independent. They're actually supposed to have lengthy terms. So it's not just, you know, serving under one president to try to insulate them from political influence. And actually during the first Trump administration, Trump had tried to fire a bunch of these individuals and I think did fire some of them. And Congress reacted in a bipartisan manner. It's like, you know, we really need to protect the independence of these roles. So we are going to require that you give Congress 30-day notice and that you give

us ample cause for why you're letting all of these people go. So Trump says, don't care that there's a law that says that I need to give you 30 days notice. I'm just going to do it anyway. They were notified late Friday by emails from the White House personnel director that due to changing priorities, they'd been terminated immediately. The only ones who were spared were the watchdogs at Homeland Security and Justice, which is kind of interesting, actually. I'll get to that more in a moment. They go on to say the dismissals appear to violate federal law, which does require Congress to receive 30 days notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general. The legal uncertainty could create awkward encounters on Monday, that would be today, when several watchdogs who were told they were fired plan to show up in their offices to work anyway.

So there's one person who sort of oversees the entire inspector's general program, and he put on a letter saying, listen, this wasn't legal, so we don't accept it. So a bunch of these watchdogs are going to show up today anyway, because they view it, I think very clearly and accurately. So as being unlawful, one of the fire watchdogs describe it as a widespread massacre. They said, whoever Trump puts in now will be viewed as loyalist that undermines the entire system. The other thing that's interesting, weird, whatever here, Emily, is that a bunch of these people that he just fired were his own appointees, but one of the people who survived was an Obama appointee. That's Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department. And apparently he liked him because, you know, he had been critical. He had been critical of Trump, but he'd also been critical of Biden.

I mean, that's their role is to try to be even handed, regardless whether it's a Republican or Democrat who's serving. The other one that he left in place was one of his appointees at the Department of Homeland Security. That individual, Kafari, has been under investigation for years. But he had done something, and he's in charge of overseeing the crackdown on immigration. So it's important to Trump to have someone who's friendly there in particular. And he had also put out some report that Trump had appreciated. But some of these people that he fired had been really critical of different Biden actions. The inspector general at the Veterans Affair oversaw multiple investigations of how the Biden

administration handled the agency's troubled effort to build a massive electronic health record system. Another one, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department who was fired had released a lengthy investigation concluding that when the U.S. Park Police led law enforcement officers into a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters, that he actually, he sort of backed up Trump's version of events there. You guys remember the whole Lafayette Square situation? His report said that it was about a pre-planned effort to build a fence around the park to protect officers and not because Trump had like sicked them on these peaceful protesters. So you would think that would be something Trump would like, but nevertheless, that person is fired

as well. Yeah. And Chuck Grassley responded to this and said, there may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that if so, I'd like further explanation from President Trump, regardless of the 30-day detailed notice of removal, that the law demands was not provided to Congress. Jonathan Turley, by the way, agrees with that. Jonathan Turley, a professor at GW Law, somebody who has agreed with a lot of Trump's decisions. He's like a regular Fox News kind of a guy. I think he's a contributor. Yeah. He's willing to go out on a limb for some of Trump's decisions, but not this one. I think it is because with the Senate appointed positions, it is so clear. And what's interesting is that you can kind of pick up on scuttlebutt about policy priorities in the conservative world. You know, these IGs, we have to have a plan. I don't know

if this was in Project 2025. I don't remember it. Maybe it is and I'm forgetting, but I'd actually never heard that there was a plan to gut IGs. And it seems like Chuck Grassley hadn't heard that either as somebody who would have a significant interest in it because he says there may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that if so. John Barrasso, the Senate majority whip, told Fox on Saturday, quote, sometimes inspector generals, inspectors general, don't do the job that they're supposed to do. Some of them deserve to be fired. And I'm sure, by the way, that's true. But I don't know what the evidence is. I haven't heard people talking about the evidence when it comes to these particular confirmed positions. And one of the interesting

things also is from an anonymous source in The Washington Post story that actually makes a pretty good point, which is that IGs do what Trump says he wants to do, which is cut down on waste, fraud and abuse. That's right. It now, by just gutting them right off the bat without going through the formal process, you are undermining. Like whoever is confirmed in the future is going to look like a political actor in a way that they wouldn't have before. And they shouldn't look like political actors. Let's say an IG comes out with a great report on the EPA and this is somebody who's confirmed by, appointed by Trump, confirmed by the Senate.

Well, it's just going to be, they're going to lack the credibility that they otherwise would have. Yeah. Commenting on the waste, fraud, and abuse at the EPA. So this one could really come back to bite Trump. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's possible. I also think it's possible that, I mean, he's doing so many things so quickly that it's just hard to like focus on any one, you know, particular outrage. And I mean, so you're right down the line, however things unfold, it's possible that it does come back to bite him. It's also possible that like everyone just capitulates and forgets and moves on. And, you know, I think that's kind of what he's betting on and paying attention to which direction things go in

is really important. Because again, put actually C2 up on the screen. This is some of the Republican reactions. You mentioned Chuck Grassley, probably the most noteworthy because he's, you know, he's a rock star, like conservative. No one would call him, I don't think, a rhino, right?

I'm not correct about that. Yeah. He pointed out like this didn't fall, this was illegal. Senator Susan Collins expressed confusion. You're not confused. You know what's going on here. Lisa Murkowski loaded the lack of notice, expressed worry over the abrupt dismissal.

Obviously, the Democrats came out very upset about this. They could put their reactions up on the screen. Next, Chuck Schumer characterized it as a chilling purge, a preview of the lawless approach. Jerry Connolly labeled the dismissals as a Friday night coup and an assault on transparency and accountability. Elizabeth Warren called it a purge, accused Trump of dismantling constraints on his authority. So obviously they're being very aggressive. But, you know, like I said at the top, just on the merits, it's important because genuinely some of these inspectors general have done important work on behalf of the American public and on behalf of taxpayers to understand whether it was Trump or whether it was Biden or whether it was Obama before that, where there had been failures, where there had been corruption, where there had been things that had been just done improperly or unlawfully, et cetera. Am I right that Horowitz is the one who did the Hunter Biden, the Joe Biden report about the classified documents? Was that him? Or no, that was-

He did Comey. Comey, that's right. Yeah, and Trump has said that he's keeping Horowitz because he liked the Comey report. He likes the Comey report. But in any case, I mean, they have done genuinely useful work that reporters and taxpayers rely on. So it matters for the merits. But I think it is one more indication, and we already have many of these, that Trump 2.0 is taking a truly maximalist approach. Because there's not even a fig leaf here that this is legal. I mean, the 30-day period is, there's no exceptions for it. You have to give Congress 30-day notice.

And he didn't. So it sets up a showdown. What happens next? You know, do Republicans just decide, like, well, he's our guy and we're just not going to put up that much of a fight and we don't really want to cross him and we're just going to accept this? What happens when, I mean, you have to, the next, whoever's going to be next has to get confirmed if their predecessor was fired illegally. Like, what does that look like? And so we're going to see how these sort of showdowns really unfold and whether he is able to do things that are just like clearly unlawful and get away with it. Because you have this.

I mean, the birthright citizenship, the executive order ending birthright citizenship is kind of part and parcel of the same type of approach. A federal court has already smacked that down and said, like, this is preposterous. This is, like, the most preposterous thing I've ever seen effectively. But he feels like he can effectively do whatever he wants. And the Supreme Court basically told him that that was true. So is he going to abide by this court order? Or is he just going to keep moving forward and doing what he wants to do and firing who he wants to fire and all of that? This is one of, I think, the most important storylines, not just of the first week, but, I mean, this is going to be significant.

SNL, of all places, had a really funny sketch kind of poking fun at the Lin-Manuel Miranda millennial moment of Hamilton back in early Trump days. But Trump was like, yeah, maybe we need a king in the sketch. And, you know, Republicans, I came of age at a period of time when Republicans were just utterly horrified at the executive overreach of the Obama administration. And I think some of those complaints were entirely valid because there was a sort of stretching of the executive branch in a way that if you are a sort of ideological conservative, you would say these are power, you're usurping powers that belong to Congress. And it's actually fueling this vicious cycle where Congress just

becomes more and more weak because they're punting everything over to the executive branch. They know that they can't get it done through, for example, the reconciliation process, because it's not strictly related to the budget. And so, I mean, some of this is Trump rolling back powers that I don't think belong to the executive, but not all of it is at all. And actually, interestingly, this was, I was looking this up while you were going through that. There were, there was some talk about this in the Project 2025 circles, but not a lot. This was pretty low key. I think it was Public Citizen that picked up on something a couple of people that were involved in Project 2025 said about purging IGs. But genuinely, if that was a serious point, it was really low key. And that shows how significantly Trump is literally taking

the blueprints that were drafted over the course of the last four years. And a lot of people thought they'd be giving those blueprints to Ron DeSantis, for example, a strict Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, like true Chip Roy style, like limited government dude. Although what's happened at the state level is testing probably some of his old ideological allegiances. But all that is to say, Trump is like just taking the conservative movement's blueprints. And some of it, I'm like, oh, yeah, like some of this is, you know, from my perspective as a conservative, I'm supportive of it. But a lot of this is significantly testing the conservative movement's actual commitment to reigning in the power of the executive branch.

And this is a great example of that. So how many people are going to speak out and get mad about it in the same way that they would if Obama did it? Oh, imagine if Biden did that. Yeah. Imagine if this was Kamala in office right now and she had done it. I mean, or had launched a shitcoin before. I mean, it's just like unimaginable. Well, imagine if they had been. Seriously, imagine if Kamala Harris had been inaugurated with the oligarchs. Oh, I know. I thought a lot.

It would have been a populist orgasm. Right. If she was there with Zuckerberg and Bezos and Musk flanking her. Like, and then immediately doing a presser announcing basically, like, we're going to support these people spending $500 billion, these tech oligarchs, to eliminate your jobs. I mean, that's the goal of these tech AI developers is to literally eliminate all need for human labor. And Biden might as well have been flanked by them in 2020 because that's the way his administration proceeded. But this is so, so brazen. I actually don't think that's fair because the one place where Biden really broke from the neoliberal, the Obama-Clinton neoliberal consensus and the area where he was most

significantly different on economics was this approach to antitrust. Trump a little bit too. The Google suit was started under Trump. That is true. He did dabble in it. I don't think we're going to see any of that this time around. But, you know, the thing with Biden is that there was a story to tell about, you know, oligarchy and inequality and breaking up these tech giants and why it matters to you, right? Why these aren't just like theoretical highfalutin things happening in some court that really doesn't impact you, like how it connects. But first of all, I don't think that he really cared that much about this. He cared about, you know, NATO. That was like where his brain was. I think these were people under him that were more invested in this direction, number one. Number two, like he was a million

years old and couldn't articulate anything about anything. So you end up with a situation where he pissed off all of the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world. And genuinely, they felt like, oh, there could be some sort of constraint on my, you know, on my endless power and wealth. So they were pissed off. Wall Street was furious. I mean, how many Wall Street Journal op-eds were written about how terrible Lena Kahn was? Blah, blah, blah. Probably over 100.

And literally. Yeah, literally. That's not an example. Literally, Matt Stoller kept track of them. So they're furious. They hate him. They know what he's doing. But the public has no idea

and are never bought in and invested in this project. And so when it's, you know, usurped and ended with a whimper, and by the way, Kamala Harris gave some indication she wasn't going to continue in that direction either. So, you know, keep it's, I want to, you know, be fair and point that out. But, but yeah, so it made sense to them, we're going to line up behind this guy who's going to basically give us whatever we want. But, but yeah, if it was Kamala with those guys behind him, like, the freakout would be insane. And, you know, and justifiably so, like rightfully so. But Trump, because he thinks, he just thinks he can get away with anything. And he might be right. He can right now, because the, I guess the, and this is,

you know, in a weird way, connects back to what we were talking about with AFD and the other block. Yeah. There have been years, and this isn't to say that Trump is blameless, but there have been years of such terrible policymaking that Trump was able to successfully exploit that and come in. And he now has the support of the public on a lot of different things. Not everybody, but there are a lot of different, I mean, he has significant support to shake up Washington. And so when you look like you're shaking up Washington, people can't pay attention to every tiny little thing that's going on. So it looks directionally right. And so, I mean, there's just not a lot of energy or appetite to push back on Trump after Democrats. And I think we have a list here of how Democrats, we have a graphic here showing how Democrats reacted to the firing of the

inspectors general, this is D3. It just, Democrats are going to have to come up with a way to make this persuasive. Here you have Chuck Schumer saying this is a quote, chilling purge and a preview of the lawless approach that he expects Trump to take. Jerry Connolly of Virginia said the dismissals were a, quote, Friday night coup and a, quote, assault on transparency and accountability. And Elizabeth Warren called it a, quote, purge and accused Trump of dismantling constraints on his authority. Now, let's stick with the Connolly criticism there, where he says this is a, quote, assault on transparency and accountability. That covering up for Joe

Biden for years, by the way, this is not both sides-ism. It is saying that it makes it easier for Trump to get away with a quote assault on transparency and accountability when the people who are accusing him of assaulting transparency and accountability have zero credibility to do it. And that is one of the major political, two major political parties in this country. And one of them just covered up for a president who was ailing in front of your eyes, told you that your eyes were lying to you and is now wanting to be upset about transparency and accountability so it actually is not good for the entire country the democrats have so little credibility on that question because it'll make

it a lot easier for trump to then quote assault transparency by purging inspectors general yeah unlawfully by the way if he had gone and given them their notice and done it, that would be another thing. But he didn't. Yeah. And I mean, the same thing is true with regards to oligarchy. Like if you want us if you expect the country to take you seriously on these things, you can't be like Ken Martin, the guy who's likely to be the next DNC chair, being like, well, we'll take money from good billionaires. It's like, no, how about just, there are no good billionaires. How about just, it's bad when billionaires, when unelected billionaires run our parties and our government. How about that as a direction? And so in my view, that's the choice they have in front of them. They can either effectively like capitulate to Trumpism, which is the direction they're likely to go in and the direction they have been going,

going in, see, you know, supporting the Lake and Riley act, et cetera. Or they can have a real, like whose side are you on moment and decide that they're going to excise this influence of big money within their own party so that they can offer an actual different vision and direction that has some credibility. But yeah, I mean, it's just, this is the storyline to watch. Not just the moves that Trump makes that are already quite maximalist, but what's the response? Is there any check on him whatsoever? Or can he just do whatever he wants, even if it's like brazenly unlawful? And does it end up coming back on Republicans in the midterms? A lot of that will depend on how Democrats are able to claw back some measure of credibility if they are able to. But Trump is definitely making that a little bit easier on those questions.

All right, let's go and get to Arno Bertrand to talk about DeepSeek. This is a huge development, which has absolutely rocked Silicon Valley in terms of Chinese AI development. Here he is. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually

like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who did make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of

Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Very happy to be joined by Arnaud Bertrand. He described himself as an entrepreneur who tweets too much, but I have found your insights both with regards to China in general, but this AI development in particular. I even brought you up earlier, Arnaud, in the context of this fight with Colombia. So great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, as always. Very good to be here. Our pleasure. So I've teased this a couple of times in the show, but this is a huge development from a Chinese company, which was able, with a fraction of the dollar amount, to develop an AI competitor to chat GPT and all of the other sort of like big players in the space. In fact, by some

metrics, this new release of, it's called DeepSeek, is outperforming the prior competitors in the field. This has blown up all sorts of assumptions about AI development, about where Chinese companies were in terms of their technological sophistication, about the success of Biden administration policies, trying to limit high-tech development in terms of China. So Arnaud, just take us through a little bit of what happened here so people have the backstory. Sure. So what happened actually started in December when DeepSeek released a first model called V3, which already made a lot of waves because it was revealed to have been trained for only $5.5 million, which is absolutely nothing in this industry. I think OpenAI spends $5 billion a year,

so 100 times less, basically. And that one was already extremely good, already outperforming a lot of the models on the important benchmarks. And then OpenAI released a new model called O1, which is supposed to or is on par with OpenAI's top-of-the-range model on almost all benchmarks. And they released it, and that's the important bit, they released it open source, meaning that basically anyone can download it for free and use it as they please. It's really open source in an MIT-like sense, meaning that you can really use the model however you want, which is a huge difference to open AI. It's called open AI because originally the philosophy behind it was that it was meant

to be open, open source and so on. But famously, they've taken a much more closed route where they don't release their models in open source and they don't disclose much about their model. It's sort of behind sort of a black, well, it's sort of a bit hidden. And so that's why a lot of people are shifting to DeepSeek now. And now it's even the most downloaded app

in the US. As of today, it's number one. It's overtaken all the other apps, including ChatGPT. Wow. And, you know, our friend Matthew Stoller made an interesting point in his newsletter Big, where he said, when you compare what China was able to do here with what AI technologies based in the United States or AI companies based in the United States have been able to do, it almost makes the United States look Soviet. It looks like a Leviathan that is just trudging along compared to this alternative method. So do you think maybe there's something to that parallel, Arnaud? Or is there something that we can take away from the way American AI businesses

are organized in comparison here? I mean, I think the interesting irony is that maybe there was a bit too much funding in the AI industry in the US for its own good. They had a bit too much of an easy life because the reason why DeepSeek, I think, was able to

come up with such a good and efficient model is because they're very much operating under constraints, right? You had the export controls, the semiconductor export control, and so China, in many ways, doesn't have a choice if they want to compete with the U.S. And so China, in many ways, doesn't have a choice if they want to compete with the US,

given they don't have, you know, such access to funding, the latest chips and so on. They need to come up with much more efficient technology. So I wouldn't say it's exactly the same situation as the Soviet versus the West of the time.

It's almost a situation where, you know, the U.S. kind of rested on its laurels and, you know, added a bit too easy and was operating in too good an environment. And China, because of those constraints that the U.S. put on them, they actually have to come up with simply better technology if they want to compete. And I think that's largely what happened. I think another piece that you've been pointing to, Arnaud, which I find really interesting,

is China does not, our country, by and large, a lot of the smartest grads that come out with technical degrees or technical know-how, a lot of them don't go into science or research. They go into financial speculation, effectively. And the Chinese government has looked at that and said, that's not the direction we want to go in. So they crack down on salaries for the financial industry, and that creates incentives for the best and the brightest, lo and behold, to go into this sort of research and tech development. So talk about that piece a little bit, if you could. Yeah, I think it's one of the most interesting angles of DeepSeek because it was actually a side project of a hedge fund. That was released quite coincidentally about less than one year after China did crack down against the finance industry. This, you know, overly high compensation in the financial industry, capping it.

And there has been, you know, you hear in China a lot of miscontent in the finance industry professionals because, yeah, they can't make as much money and the industry is becoming less attractive for graduates. And you're seeing a bit of a brain drain from that industry. But that is very much the point, I think, that the Chinese government is aiming for because they're looking at the U.S. and they're seeing, which is a shame when you think about it, like a lot of the top graduates from Harvard and MIT and all the Ivy League schools often go in the finance industry. When, I mean, think what you want about the finance industry, but if you have pure genius, arguably their brains

would be of more use to society if they were to develop new technology like AI or working on curing cancer or things like that. And I think this angle is fascinating because, I mean, it's difficult to put a direct correction. Did they do that side project exactly because of that or not? But at least it's an interesting coincidence. Yeah. And the stock market, and we're already seeing some of the effectiveness in the stock market. Can you talk a little bit more about why it's affecting stocks in the way it is and what we could expect to see going forward as the deep-seek reckoning goes on?

Yeah, so I was looking at it. Actually, I'm at portfolio just now. It's quite depressing. So NVIDIA, I just saw, is losing 12% today. And yeah, the whole tech sector is down. And basically, because there was this assumption that AI was all about compute, like more chips, you could get better models, right? And DeepSeq kind of destroyed that assumption because they don't have a lot of compute

and they were able to come with a better model because they had better algorithms, better software. And so what's happening is simply that those assumptions around building a moat for U.S. AI company with compute, with those massive data centers like, you know, the Stargate project that Trump, OpenAI and so on just announced. Those are, you know, very much questioned right now. And that's what you're seeing, I think, in the stock market. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so much of the stock market value is built on this sort of like hype around AI. And so, I mean, it's incredibly deflating, literally, to see this company be able to, you know, build a comparable product for vastly less. I will say I've seen some theories

that they're not being straightforward about the amount of compute that they actually used here. Most notably, the Scale AI CEO, Alexander Wang, I think he was at the World Economic Forum, claimed that he thinks that they are hiding the ball on exactly how many chips, like what size of the mega cluster that they're using. Let's take a listen to that and get your reaction on the other side.

You know, the Chinese labs, they have more H100s than people think. And these are the highest powered NVIDIA chips that they were not supposed to have. Yes. My understanding is that DeepSeek has about 50,000 H100s, which they can't talk about, obviously, because it is against the export controls that the United States has put in place. And I think it is true that, you know, I think they have more chips than other people expect, but also on a go-forward basis, they are going to be limited by the chip controls and the export controls that we have in place. What do you make of that?

Well, it's difficult to say one way or the other. But the good thing about DeepSeq is that when they released the model, first of all, they released it open source, so you can see what's in the model. And they released an extremely detailed paper with it. So AI researchers can just go through the paper and try to achieve the same outcome, which is the model, based on what they're saying they did in the paper and see if that's true or not, or if the methodology that they're saying they pursued in the paper is wrong and they're lying about the number of chips.

So I can't say. Yeah, well, I did read, I read some analyses, you know, that looked at the paper and said, well, here's the key innovations that they use to achieve so much more efficiency, way beyond my technical know-how. But people who seem to know what they were talking about were like, oh, that's how they did it. I see. They used very creative and efficient

technological development here. One more I wanted to get your response to, Arno, is Sam Altman weighed in. Obviously, this is a very bad development for him because he has bet so much on, you know, now the Stargate program. I know he'd been sort of battling with Microsoft for more and more money for larger and larger data centers. And, you know, now this Stargate program, I know he'd been sort of battling with Microsoft for more and more money for larger and larger data centers. And, you know, now this sort of blows that whole direction up. Let's put this up on the screen. D3 from Sam Altman. He says, it is relatively easy to copy something that you know works.

It is extremely hard to do something new, risky, and difficult when you don't know if it will work. Individual researchers rightly get a lot of glory for that when they do it. It's the coolest thing in the world. And of course, this was largely seen as being directed at the DeepSeek development. What do you make of these comments from Sam? DeepSeek is definitely getting a lot of glory. So I'm not sure exactly what it means. I think something very interesting, I think a big sign, is what Marc Andreessen is tweeting recently. I don't know if you followed what he's tweeted,

because obviously Sam Altman is biased. I think Marc Andreessen is slightly more of a neutral party here because he's an investor. And he literally tweeted, I can't remember the exact quote, but that DeepSeek was one of the most impressive breakthroughs it's seen in its entire career. And that's Silicon Valley's most legendary investor, the guy who invented the browser. So, you know, it's quite something, right?

He said, one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I've ever seen. And just to clarify, that Altman tweet was from back in December. So presumably about the initial release of DeepSeek. Okay, yeah. The new model is also quite a bit, it's more of a breakthrough than v3, which was the one in December. Is there a legitimate reason to keep AI closed source as OpenAI has decided? Because, I mean, there are risks inherent in AI development. I mean, there's a whole field of AI safety, a lot of concerns about what it could do in terms of the labor market, especially when it's being wielded for profit by companies like Microsoft. There are also some more far-reaching concerns about AI, you know, once it's AGI and you have this level of artificial general intelligence and then super intelligence that, you know, effectively supplants human beings as the, you know, the smartest creatures on the planet. What does that mean?

Do they decide they want to keep us around or not? So there are these sort of like further reaching concerns about AI development as well. Do you see any drawbacks in the open source model that not only DeepSeek has pursued, but also the meta has gone in the direction of a more open source model as well? That's a good question. I honestly see more drawbacks with the closed model, because at the end of the day, if it's closed, it's a limited group of individuals who you don't have control over, and oligarchs, effectively, like billionaires, that take all the decisions when it comes to AI,

which, you're right, is going to be extremely disruptive. It's an extremely powerful technology. So would you rather have that being controlled by a small group of billionaires who very much can't relate to the general public? Or would you rather have the general public, anyone who can, you know, have an influence on that with the open source model? I think, I mean, anyway, that technology has risks, will have a big impact, will impact jobs and so on. Yeah.

But I feel more reassured with the idea that anyone will have a say on how AI develops, that it is open, free, anyone can come up with a startup around it, 3D on his own computer, rather than it being kind of developed secretly out of our hands. Emily, do you have anything?

No, I was just going to say what we've learned from our own private tech companies, semi-private tech companies over the last decade is that you also have similar levels of censorship and political corruption, whether they're private or public, they get co-opted, Arnaud. Yeah, yeah. On censorship, it's an extremely good point because people often, you see a lot on Twitter, people saying that the deep-seek model is censored. It's true that when you go on deepseek.com, because it is hosted in China, it is indeed censored. It's true that when you go on deepsick.com,

because it is hosted in China, it is indeed censored because you have censorship laws in China and so on. But anyone can download the model in open source, tune it however they want. If they want to turn it into a tool that even generates anti-China propaganda, they can, right?

So that's what I mean by me being more reassured that it's open source because anyone can do whatever they want with it. Whereas open AI, if it stands on, it also stands on in its own way. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Yeah, that's true. And I did see the comparison of people asking just very straightforward questions about like the Israel-Palestine conflict on ChatGPT versus DeepSeek. And I would say that the DeepSeek version was much less censored in that particular instance than the OpenAI version. Exactly. Every country has their own bias. By the end of the day, open source matters a lot because you can then download the model yourself and input your own bias. Make it your own, right? That's what I need. I need the world to reflect my personal bias. Arnaud, thank you so much. It's so helpful getting your breakdown of these developments and what it ultimately means. Great to see you. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids,

promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how

we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage

from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received

the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Andrew Callahan of Channel 5, who is out with a new documentary called Dear Kelly. Great to have you, Andrew. Welcome.

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm a big fan of Breaking Points. I appreciate you guys for the platform. It's early morning. Thanks to y'all. So thank you for having me on. Thank you for waking up for us. We appreciate that. We are likewise big fans. Let me give people a little bit a taste of the trailer here. And then on the other side, you can tell them the backstory of what inspired you to follow this one individual. Let's take a look. Why did the framework created by QAnon and Trump propaganda cause an innumerable amount of people to jump headfirst down the rabbit hole, endangering their safety, lives, and freedom. I thought I had it figured out. I pointed fingers at the fear-mongering 24-hour news cycle. There's nothing fake about CNN. And at radio hosts who sell supplements and t-shirts to paranoid libertarians. But deep down,

I didn't really know. That was until I met a man named Kelly J. Patriot at a White Lives Matter rally in Huntington Beach, California, and asked him one question. What's the most painful piece of truth that's hurt you? A guy stealing my home. His name is Bill Joyner. Financially, he wanted to destroy me. He destroyed my 25-year business, separated and devastated my family.

So that answers your question. This dude sounds like he sucks. I don't think he's a good guy in my opinion. He's a bad guy and he's hurt a lot of people. But then again, look what the Democrats are doing to others. Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the twins! I hope you fucking die, homie, straight up. So what was it that caused you to be sort of captivated by this guy

and to really follow up with him and figure out what was actually going on there? I think that it came from, like, just not being satisfied with, like, my kind of deep dives into, like, the MAGA far right for a long time. I had just followed Trump's campaign trail across the country filming for my first project on HBO. And I felt like I had sort of been able to document the craziness in a time capsule, but never really been able to understand what economic and social factors actually cause people to become radicalized, especially dudes who are later in life like Kelly. And I never really was able to actually dig deep. But in his story about

Bill Joyner and the foreclosure of his house and his family being separated, I saw a window and a chance to actually figure out the why of how people get like that in the first place. Yeah. And you're probing this like central chicken or egg question that a lot of your work is based on, which I think one of the reasons people love your work is you come to this idea that there are a lot of very good people who do a lot of crazy things and get caught up in the fringes. And you include some interesting stats about January 6th and, for example, people's debt levels, whether they were there on January 6th, if they had particular levels of debt. There's just a big proportion of people. I hadn't even realized that there were numbers attached to all of this. I mean, you could see it when you were there.

But can you tell us a little bit about how this experience with Kelly either changed, modified, added nuance to the way you see the world? That maybe there are some people who come into all of this stuff with prior difficulties, and then it changes them? Or is it just a one-way street? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, before I started documenting Kelly, and this is filmed over the course of four and a half years, I didn't realize that so many people who were so deep in that QAnon rabbit hole had just normal lives like in 2020 that were completely derailed by financial hardship and particularly how that coalesced

with like political psychosis i don't like using the word misinformation because it's not like everything they read is totally false or consumes false but it's just being locked in this echo chamber of like 24 7 outrage content for a long period of time. And definitely learned a lot about just people like that in general, but also about myself as a documentary filmmaker and how emotionally invested I want to be in the outcome of a subject or someone that I'm documenting. By the end of the film, especially after the intervention, to spoil it a bit, not too much,

I was so emotionally invested in Kelly turning over this new leaf that it became more important in my own life. And I don't think I ever want to get that involved again. Because, I mean, I had filmed 350 hours of footage in total. And I ultimately baked it down to 89 minutes. But it was like my personal expectations were tethered to his in a way that I'm not sure, was super healthy. I think for me as a democratic socialist who thinks a lot about like class analysis, the way you approach this really played into some of my sort of mental preconceptions. Because you're like, there was a material harm that happened to a lot of these people. And it sort of pushed them in this direction of radicalization.

And that's both true and not true in Kelly's case. Like, he did genuinely go through this foreclosure, which for anyone is a, you know, horrific situation. But the way he portrayed it was also not entirely accurate. And then when you're still many years past that financial hardship, and there's still, you know, and you've had these, this severing of relationship with your, your kids and you're not being there for them as, you know, as a father and they're having to have these, you know, again, I don't want to spoil too much, but they're coming to you saying this has really hurt us and you have a chance to turn over that new leaf and that's not necessarily the direction that you want to go in. It makes, it just makes the picture a little more complex, right?

It's not as simple and straightforward, a sort of math equation of, you know, financial hardship plus loss of connection. I mean, you actually have a sort of like formula you lay out in the beginning. Doesn't have to lead to this, doesn't always lead to this. There are other choices. It's not always like as clear a picture as you're telling yourself in your head. You know, did it kind of challenge some of your conceptions coming in as well? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I started when I was 22 and I finished when I was 27. Like the first shoot being the White Lives Matter rally on April 11th, 2021. And the last shoot being three and a half weeks ago with our friend uncle pill at a skate park in san diego you can see my approach like kind of morphed throughout the whole thing because midway

through like 23 24 i'm like i'm gonna be able to figure this out i've got everything diagnosed i have all the ducks in a row i'm gonna make sure that he's able to turn over a new leaf the one thing that i noticed too is that i didn't mention this in the movie very much but the whole the idea of self-narrative was also very important in his sort of inability to turn over that new leaf over time because it's a comforting self-narrative for him to have this heroic black and white good versus evil bill joiner you know screwed me over and i you know the way that morphs with the political movement in general is very two-dimensional you know what i mean the idea there's this like nebulous dark force out there that's just it exists we don't know what it was very two-dimensional. You know what I mean? The idea that there's this nebulous, dark force out there that's just – it exists.

We don't know what it is, but it's there to rob everything from the hardworking, red-blooded American patriot. And it might not be – my boogeyman might not be shared by yours. However, we're all united in our fight against the evil forces. And in a way, that's comforting to people in his position because it stops them from actually picking up the pieces right that's why i was you know he was spending 15 hours a day putting up leaflets saying bill joiner stole my home that time easily could have been used at you know maybe getting a entry-level job and trying to save up money to start from the bottom but that's a lot it takes a lot of humility to be able to bring yourself back to that level and start from scratch.

It's easier to revel in the past while simultaneously leading a hero's narrative that keeps you in a revenge-minded state. Well, and actually, I just want to jump onto that point because one of the interesting things that you touch on is how he grew up in a mobile home, and there was something I think traumatic, and I'm curious what you make of this, for him about losing his kind of upper middle class, if not upper class status. And that for him was maybe like the truth that he didn't want to grapple with. You hear his kids saying that it was like the house. He could not give up the house. And he's still driving his banged up BMW, even though it's got a big dent in the hood as your camera's caught. It seems like there was something about growing up poor that made him cling to the kind of fantasy of having made it. Yeah, definitely, because he sort of achieved the American dream, which is just class mobility in general. I mean, especially nowadays with the

cost of living, very few people can go from living in a mobile home in their lifetime to being cemented as a community member in an upper class gated community. So he hit that point. And I think the material obsessions were his way of holding on to what that meant to him, like internally. And you see this all the time. People hit the lottery. Rappers get a bunch of money. They spend it more on like material items because they have a sort of imposter syndrome in general because they didn't grow up in the same way that their peers did. Cause most people who are rich grew up rich, just very little crossover. And so I felt like, you know, he felt it was a huge blow to his ego and also, yeah, self-perception and self-narrative to be, to be foreclosed upon.

Are you, um, are you still in touch with Kelly? Is he happy? Is Guy's back in the White House now? Yeah, I mean, he's actually pretty excited about the film. A lot of people look at the end of the film and they think, oh my God, he must feel so bad about it. But at the end of the day, there is a lot of small victories that have been secured throughout the process of the film.

Him not caring so much about Bill Joyner, which is his boogeyman, evil, predatory, lymther guy that he claims ruined his life, him not caring about Bill by the end is a huge stride forward. If you consider that in the opening scene of Planned Parenthood, he's almost like passing out from anger yelling about Bill. So, I mean, it may not be that. Who he's never met.

Yeah, he's never met him. And, you know, I'm being sued by Bill right now, which sucks. But I also haven't met Bill either. Wow. So, there's more story to unfold there with you versus Bill Joyner. Maybe you'll be the next one. Like, Bill Joyner ruined my life now. Next time you're on, Andrew, it's just going to be you talking about Bill Joyner.

It would be insane. There was one other thing I wanted to ask you about, Andrew. If we could put F1 up on the screen. You put out a very, like, you know, pretty aggressive post here about Elon Musk. None of which I disagree with. But in any case, it felt like a little bit of a break from the way you normally approach things. Because a lot of times you sort of let your, you know, your work and the characters you follow speak for themselves. And I was, I just was curious what led you to take this more aggressive approach.

And after having watched the documentary, actually, it made me wonder if, if that was part of your evolution to make being more directly, personally outspoken. Well, I mean a little, just like Elon Musk has been doing like Nazi dog whistle stuff on Twitter for like five or six months now. I know this because I grew up on 4chan, like back in the day, the pre-censorship free internet, when half the people were nazis and half the people were anarchists like back in the day when it was like either you were part of anonymous or you were like a seriously like like charlottesville person and uh so i know that he's been doing these like weird not even dog whistles just like straight up following nazi accounts reposting nazi shit and then when he did

that i don't know i just got triggered i kind of felt bad when i posted it because i'm supposed to be like neutral and maintain composure but that was for sure a hitler salute and it's you know it's a hitler salute not just because of the obvious body language but because the guy has been paying homage to like nazi ideology and accounts on x for the past like six to eight months and so but the comments are crazy so many people are like going to bat for elon they're like he's just giving his heart out to the people i was like dude if you give your heart out to the people you go like this appreciate you guys thank you guys heart goes out to you you don't do this thing i'll but you know i think

we're in this era where you know he could do it and say sig heil i don't think people would care they'd find out a way to rationalize it and be like, dude, he's just so autistic. You don't know if you met an autistic person, but they're always a healing healer, I guess. Yeah. Have you considered you're just being ableist right now, Andrew? See, now the, what's it called? The sights are on me. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I was just like, that's the thing with we're all like downstream of 4chan culture now that people who are not being ironic get away with the like shield of irony. And in some fairness, it actually does make it hard to, you know, it doesn't mean that irony trolling is right, but it does make it hard to like sometimes decode. But I guess, Andrew,

having spent time on 4chan, you speak the language probably better than most. Yeah, I definitely do. And not to mention, he's not from the United States. And there's a lot to say about migrants coming here and ruining shit. Whereas this guy is from South Africa, of all places, the most racist place that ever exists in the history of the world. And he's coming here and he's manipulating information. That seems pretty treasonous and like some foreign interference to me. And it's just crazy to think that Trump ran his whole campaign on getting the deep state bureaucracy out of office. And now it appears that he has like a private, you know, council of tech oligarchs backing him entirely.

So it appears that the deep state was elected. Well, I personally appreciate the new outspoken mode of Andrew Callahan. So I hope we hear more of it. And, of course, always look forward to your work. Tell people where they can watch Dear Kelly. You guys can watch Dear Kelly at www.dearkellyfilm.com for the low rental cost of $5.55. Or if you're feeling generous, you can buy it forever for $15.55. It's worth it. And he's got some lawsuit costs against Bill Joyner. So help him out with that, guys. Shout out to Bill.

Shout out to Kelly. Shout out to Breaking Points. Thanks, Andrew. Great to talk to you. Thank you so much. Appreciate you guys. All right, really interesting. Getting to talk to Andrew, I really did.

I found the film very thought-provoking. Yeah. Yeah, you enjoyed it too, right? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, I did. And I actually, one of the things, I know you talked a little bit to Andrew about what moved you. But one of the things that really moved me was,

this isn't a spoiler, he just ends up becoming very emotionally involved in Kelly's life and weirdly close with him. Yes. It surprises you towards the end of the film. It's not a spoiler. I really recommend people watch it play out because that experience as a viewer is really compelling.

Yeah. It was interesting to hear Andrew talk about that that was something he really had to learn as a documentarian, that that took a very emotional toll. I mean, Andrew's really young, right? That was a real emotional toll on him and a learning for him through this process. But in any case, I hope you guys enjoyed the show today. Definitely check out the documentary. Sagar's supposed to be back tomorrow, so he

will be in this chair, and Emily and Ryan will be here on Wednesday, so you got all normal shows planned for the week. In any case, I hope you guys have a fantastic day, and I will see you back here tomorrow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right.

It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about,

call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is is tapping in i'm nyla simone breaking down lyrics amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives like that's what's really

important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.