From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Erik Prince On China's Influence in Mexico & the Only Phone That Won't Spy On You

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

The cartels in Mexico and dangerous players in China have long been viewed as dangerous threats to the U.S. -- but what if they've been working together? Today, former U.S. Navy SEAL, host of the 'Off Leash with Erik Prince' podcast and Blackwater founder Erik Prince discusses why he believes China has been making their influence known in Mexico and why the Chinese Communist Party likely had a hand in electing Mexico's new President, Claudia Sheinbaum. Erik also explains how the Venezuela-Guyana conflict is heating up and what implications this could have for the U.S. Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be here today, and I'm just really excited because we have with us Eric Prince. Now, Eric, I'm going to welcome you in, but I want to give everybody some background on you because your bio is just so fascinating. You're an interesting fellow. Truly one of the most interesting people that we've ever had on this podcast. You're an

entrepreneur, you're a private investor, you're a thought leader on military reform. Of course, you founded Blackwater Worldwide, which is an integrated private military corporation that you created after finishing active service as a Navy SEAL. You're also an author and host of Off the Leash with Eric Prince. I love that podcast name. And on that podcast, you analyze geopolitical issues of the day. And that is why we're so happy to have you today because Sean and I have been very concerned and talking all the time about what is happening in our own hemisphere. And when I heard you talking about the Western hemisphere and it being at the top of your concerns, I'm like, we got to get this guy on. We also want

to talk to you about your phone. I do want to talk about your phone because like I freak out about data and our government and big tech. So we'll get to that later. When Eric Prince says we should be worried about our data and our government, I get so nervous. But you have an answer to it in a phone. And we want to make sure that we get to that. I actually think a lot of our viewers are going to be extremely interested in the possibility of owning a phone that the government can't hack into and that companies aren't selling your data and so forth. So we'll get to that. Eric, you say that the number one concern, correct me if I'm wrong, I've been feeling this myself, is that it's not just the Western

Hemisphere, specifically Mexico, right? Look, the U.S. has been asleep at the switch while we've been stumbling around abroad, not finishing conflicts. The Chinese Communist Party has been running a very active subversion program in Mexico, getting their hooks in. You could look at the fentanyl crisis. The headline number is 109,000 people died from fentanyl last year that came through Mexico. The reality is the number is three to four times that high

of Americans that are being killed by a drug that is, the precursor chemicals are manufactured in China. They are smuggled and pushed into Mexico, where it is fabricated into fentanyl. And this is not normal. This is not normal behavior for a drug cartel to make a drug that kills its customers. This is organized, funded by the CCP. by the CCP. And the CCP has also been very, very active in their promotion of the presidential candidate that just was elected,

a female who is an associate of AMLO, the very leftist president already. So now you can say you must basically have a communist that has been elected as president of Mexico. She's a communist. She went to school at Berkeley. Her parents are huge. She came from a family of communist activists. You think the Chinese have something to do with that?

100%. Yes. Eric, what's the connection between, I mean, if you're the cartel in Mexico and you've got a great business, whether you're smuggling people into the U.S. or you're selling drugs into the U.S., and the theory would be you don't want to kill your customers. What power and control does China have over the cartels to get them to do their bidding to sell fentanyl into our country? Part of it is they've been paying the cartels to kneecap a lot of the other conservative opposition type political candidates one so it's money two the cartels make as much or more money in smuggling people as they do smuggling drugs

and three by promoting a uh a very very cheap substitute fentanyl is a drug you might actually be prescribed fentanyl from time to time as a painkiller, but fentanyl in its, I call it field-fabricated form, that is basically used as a cheap replacement for cocaine or lacing it with Percocet or some other drugs that someone might take with a significantly stronger dosage. I mean, a few grams of fentanyl will kill somebody. So a container full of it is enough to kill half the country, it seems.

So, Eric, let me get this straight. So what you're saying is it makes no sense to put fentanyl on a drug because you're killing your customers. And you're saying the Chinese, the CCP is, you know, who's working with the cartels to take over Mexico politically and also through these relationships with the cartels, because we know Mexico is turning into a narco state. I thought I heard you in an interview say there was something about the opium wars, that this was some sort of retribution. Can you explain that? Sure. In the 1840s, the, well, the 1840s began what was called the century of humiliation. And that was when the British then put their hooks in and was exporting opium from India,

pushing it into China, which caused a lot of societal damage inside China. And this is a Chinese version of that now as an FU back to the United States to damage our society. And by the way, just to put a point on what you said, I never heard that, but I believe you when you say that the Chinese were involved in the election of this communist, a protege of Obrador, this woman who has just won the election this week. Shinebound. Yep. And more than two dozen candidates during this campaign season have been assassinated.

Fascinating. Done by the cartels funded by the ccp so eric let's let's play president um prince you're the president how do you address this crisis in mexico what should we do look mexico has never been a democratic populist run state. It has always been one that's been run by elites. So the more economic reform to actually give people title to land and access at the bottom rungs of the ladder to capitalism fixes that. In the same way that Hernando de Soto really helped end the Marxist insurgency in Peru in the 80s of the Shining Path.

So that's one. From a policy side, actually promoting democratic reform at the ground level. They don't need the gender ideology and the other nonsense the State Department's been pushing. They need basic capitalist reforms. Two, put bounties on the cartels and let the market take care of it. And you will put them at a position of significant discomfort to do that. I would not be sending U.S. forces south of the border. We have a lousy track record of intervention. But the problems of those kind of problems

that were happening in the late 1800s were largely solved by the Pinkertons, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, working for a client or working for a bounty to solve that. It is possible to significantly degrade the powers of the cartels

without having a massive military footprint. Here's the thing. If you're a poor or just a normal worker in Mexico and you have a cartel that you're dealing with, you don't have the rule of law, or even if you're a policeman and the cartel comes to you and they say, well, we're going to pay you or we're going to kill you. And we're not just going to kill you. We're going to kill your family first. And we're going to, you're going to watch all your family members die. That is totally not fair for the average Mexican citizen to have to deal with

and I think it should be a rule of the United States to help them overcome that. But the other thing is we drive the derelicts in America that are still using illegal drugs are who are driving this problem. So, again, people can say it's just a club drug or it's just getting high. They are driving the money chain, which is making that level of suffering possible for 100 million people in Mexico. It's so complicated. I've been reading about this election, Eric, and, you know, the other parties who, you know, they coalesce together. They've been so discredited because they've stolen so much money. As you said, those are the elites.

And I think Obrador is a genuine populist. He was. He left with huge approval numbers because he kind of cared about the poor and the middle class. And they never felt that way with the other parties. It's very complicated. I mean, it's easy to say, well, you know, bring in, you know, capitalism and free enterprise. But you've got a cultural problem in Mexico of elites who have been on the take for many, many generations. And the poor people have been screwed over and over again to the point where, you know, they're embracing communism because at least these guys seem to care in their view. Yes, and Chavez had a lot of those same positions,

headline positions, but didn't really deliver a lot to the people at the end of the day. They delivered a lot more corruption. And now the people of Venezuela are running away from Venezuela as fast as their legs can take them. Yes, that's true. We'll see if it ends in that way. She's this giant. Her name is Claudia Scheinbaum, by the way, won the presidency. She seems to be more practical. I think she was. She's a scientist.

I'm not for her. I don't like communists ever. But boy, Mexico is a mess. Is it a narco state? For sure. Yeah. I'll just make a, to put a period on your point. When I was in Congress, I sat down with a bunch of deputados. Deputados? Yes.

Those are like congressmen in Mexico. I don't know how much they make. So during dinner, we got along very well, and I asked them how much they made. Well, because you notice how well, they had such nicer suits than you. They were dressed to the nines. And the response was officially or unofficially. And I was like, it took me a beat to go, huh? And then they proceeded to tell me how the higher ranking you are, the more money you make in bribes. I mean, that is, I mean, it was, they had no problem talking about it, that it's a corrupt system. Can we switch, because I know

we don't have you for a ton of time. Let's talk about Guyana. That's another hot spot you've talked about. It's right off the coast of Venezuela. Huge oil find was six years ago, eight years ago, was it? And we're seeing that Venezuela now wants a piece of that action with other allies, whether it's Iran or Russia or Cuba. Or the Chinese, maybe. Or the Chinese, that's right. Lay out what you see happening in this region and how important it is to the U.S.

So the reason I think Guyana has risen up now is largely because of the electoral politics of Venezuela. Venezuela was supposed to have an election, a free election, sometime later this year. And they agreed to that in exchange for sanctions being released or relieved off of them from the United States. And they did that. And then last fall, the opposition in Venezuela got together and hosted a primary, basically, for who would run against the Maduro regime.

And a woman named Maria Karina Machado, an engineer in her 50s, did a fantastic job. And she took like 90% of the vote. And that scared the heck out of the Maduro regime. And so immediately after that primary, they then pivot and start making noise about Guyana and how they claim it. And so it's not just they want a piece of it, they want pretty much all of it,

or at least the part that has the oil. So now they've rolled out this 125, 130-year-old territorial claim of the Essequibo area, and basically everything west of that river, which is all the area where the offshore oil and gas is found. It's the Starbrook Formation, which was discovered by Exxon. It's the largest new oil and gas deposit in the Western Hemisphere. It's the reason guyana was the fastest growing economy in the world last year and they are basically muscling in bully style saying well this is our territory it was never really properly resolved and they're reissuing maps showing that part of guyana as being part of venezuela and and they see the very feckless, very weak Biden administration as kind of letting him roll over and letting him take it.

So ever since the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba went out searching for another host to sponsor them. And they immediately pivoted to Venezuela, and they sent thousands and thousands of doctors. And so the Cuban intel service has a significant outsized influence on Venezuelan government and society. And they are also driving this to basically grab the neighbor. And doing that, making that claim would actually be a bump up in GDP for Venezuela of 30%. So I'd be surprised if they don't continue to do that and muscle that way.

And I've said it's not going to be a normal military invasion, but they'll put a bunch of special operations guys in plain clothes, flood them into the area, and they'll suddenly say, oh, now it's ours and we've had this vote and it's our property. Now it's ours and we've had this vote and it's our property. Okay. So, first of all, the opposition candidate, Maria Colina Machado, she, you know, scares the, you know, Maduro administration regime, whatever. And then they start looking at Guiana.

I mean, I'm confused about what the connection is between her and which, by the way, she's been banned from like running. They found that I think they're accusing her of like, I don't know, insurrection or something. They completely created nonsense charges. They they are doing kind of what the Biden administration is doing to charge charges to the point when Machado goes to campaign and she stays in a hotel, the next day the tax police come and close that hotel. If she eats at a restaurant, the next day the tax police come and close that restaurant. So they're literally making her persona non grata in her own country because they fear her as an opposition candidate. So they roll out this Essequibo conflict as a distraction, really as a negotiating point on the electoral process. And the other thing that Maduro did wisely is they awarded a lot of oil concessions and development deals to very Democrat-friendly hedge funds. So it's all about money.

So they turn on the oil spigot, which turns on the money pressure in Washington to keep the sanctions off of Venezuela. So it allows them more leeway to do bad things electorally and to their neighbor. So you're saying that the Venezuelans are partnering with Democrat hedge funds to do some of the oil exploration or whatever that's going on there in Guyana? No, not in Guyana? There's an in Venezuela. No, not in Guyana, in Venezuela itself. In Venezuela, got it. Okay. And so what I understand is happening in Guyana is that now there are contracts of, like, who's going to fund, you know, the exploration of all these discoveries

and that the Chinese have moved in and that the Americans aren't doing a good job in terms of just promoting our own commerce and presence there in terms of this oil discovery? Well, Exxon is the lead and Hess was the second partner in that deal in the Starbuck formation. And the third one was CNPC, the Chinese. But Hess is being sold to Chevron. And if that closes, Chevron's biggest overseas operations are in Venezuela. So you can imagine they will not be doing anything to push back and defend Guyana. Exxon, I believe, will, but I don't think Exxon really cares who they pay the royalties to. They're not there to defend Guyana territorial integrity. They're just there to collect oil.

So what would President Prince do? Give the Guyanans some asymmetric ability to defend themselves and just say, look, this is a line that's real. It was something that was regarded and settled in, I think, 1895, and it was revisited and closed again in independence in the 1960s, and give them the means to defend themselves, whether it doesn't require U.S. forces, they can rent enough capability to defend themselves and deter against some kind of invasion, or at least the bully tactics that you're going to see soon. Interesting. Wow. Can we switch gears? I want to talk about China. I think most Americans now see China as the greatest threat to the country. Some will say they're a competitor. Others,

like us, will say they're more than competitors. They're adversaries, if not enemies. They steal our intellectual property. There seems to be an invasion of Chinese at the southern border, spy balloons over our country. They're saber-rattling with Taiwan, more than saber-rattling. So again, they're getting stronger, and it seems like we're getting weaker. I don't know if that's true or not, but how do we address the rising threat of China? What action should the U.S. be taking to at least slow down their advancement or to make

sure we're, you know, jumping ahead of where the Chinese are at? Look, the Chinese were truly afraid of the trade policies that Trump started, a much more of a make in America approach with tariffs. That's what we should be doing. The NAFTA free trade agreement was a disaster for normal America because it incentivized people and capital to build anywhere in the world at the detriment of the America worker. So, A, that started, and that actually started a tsunami of work, of factory reinvestment coming back into America and into Latin America as the supply chain. Taiwan, for Taiwan to defend themselves, the best thing they should be doing is a home guard, because the downside of this era of massive precision weaponry is the

chinese have made lots and lots and lots of missiles which have pre-zeroed on any known target in taiwan the thing that they could not a chinese a ccp planner could not account for is six or seven hundred thousand armed tai armed Taiwanese that are willing to guard and defend their neighborhood like a national guard or a home guard would. And if you think about the American Revolution, there was 30% that were pro-crown loyalists, there was 40% in the middle that didn't really care, and 30% that were pro-liberty. 10% of the pro-liberty folks, 3% of the population is all that took up arms. And if 3% of the Taiwanese population had the ability to defend themselves with small arms,

with some basic drones, some anti-tank weapons, some modified FPV-type drones like you see in Ukraine, it would cause a significant difficulty in planning because if China is going to go for Taiwan by force, they have to be fast. They cannot do a one- or two-year campaign and subject themselves to the kind of international sanction and derision that they would get from their neighbors and from the rest of the trading world. We'll be right back with much more after this. I'm Ben Domenech, Fox News contributor, editor-at-large of The Spectator, and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter.

I'm inviting you to join in-depth conversations every week on the Ben Domenech Podcast. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. I was surprised when I read that there were thousands of Iranian troops in Venezuela. I didn't know that. But we're seeing Chinese military-age men crossing our border. And so my question to you is, what's happening? Are they standing up an army here? Is that a conspiracy or a crazy thought?

What's happening? Are they standing up an army here? Is that a conspiracy or a crazy thought? So the fact is there's about 40 to 50 million males in China of marriage age with no prospects of marrying a female. Because of sex selection, abortion and a one child policy that they kept in place for a long time. It made it because of their cultural preference for a son instead of a daughter, it caused that horrific distortion. So a lot of those Chinese military-age males are just coming to America looking for a better opportunity. But it doesn't mean that some percent of them are not directed by the Chinese Ministry of State Security to come here and set up whatever covert action program they may be about. Because we know amongst all the student population that's here, there is very much an organized, directed from Chinese intelligence collection program called the Thousand Talents Program. There's the United Front Work Program, where you can see that the Chinese Communist Party members placed in various industries or in universities around America that have to go back to a Chinese

consulate every six months for their Chinese Communist Party training. So there is a lot of that nonsense, even to the point of them maintaining police stations inside the United States to police dissidents that they don't like, the fact that we allow anything like that to happen is abhorrent and must be fixed. And I hope it starts getting fixed in January of 2025. Well, even the Weedly California Biolab run by Chinese. I mean, how our country has allowed this to happen is outrageous. And also the fact that they can buy farmland right next to our bases. Again, the Chinese, I think any country that loved itself or respected itself would never allow these things to happen. Why are they buying

farmland? Well, in that case, here's the thing. In most cases in America, we still think there's the rule of law, certainly better than there is in China or in Africa or the Middle East, where there's some level of contract when you buy land. So someone that's made a bunch of money in China that wants to get their money out to a safer spot, what's better than buying American land? So every case of them buying land is not a conspiracy to collect on us. It is a, I would say, a desire for them to park their money in the same place. But again, like a few of those other guys crossing the border, they could be sent for malicious purposes. And so every one of them is worthy of being properly analyzed. But it is suspect when they're starting to buy farmland right next to U.S. bases.

I mean, I get if you're buying out in the middle of nowhere. Indeed. They're probably doing that as well. But when you have the Chinese buying land near our bases, that's a head scratcher. I agree. Why there and how we allow it. I want to get to the phone in a second. Do you mind if we pivot?

I want to talk about Ukraine. Obviously, the media reported that Ukraine was going to beat Russia. The U.S. had to spend billions, tens of billions, $100 billion-plus to fund the Ukrainian defense. It seems like there's not much media attention on Ukraine. We're sending them a ton of money. But the press doesn't now seem like they want to cover what's actually happening in Ukraine. So what's happening and how does this get resolved? Ukraine is losing, as predicted. Trying to out conventional war, the Russian bear is a fool's errand. They're outmanned by three or four to one. The Russian defense industry has

definitely cranked up with the support of additional components coming from North Korea and China. And so supply-wise, they're fine. Their cost base per shell is much lower. The Russian military is definitely innovated. They've learned. If you shot at the Russians a year and a half ago with artillery, it might take them an hour and a half to shoot back accurately. Now it's down to two or three minutes. So they are innovating even with using, you know, FPV, simple suicide drones. They are building that capability, and they're very, very good at electronic warfare,

to the detriment of a lot of the very high dollar American citizens, which cost our taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, not even being asked for by the Ukrainians anymore because it doesn't work. So this should be a wake up call for our politicians and especially our horrific Pentagon leadership. But alas, I don't think they're listening and they're not paying attention because they're still awarding the same contracts to the same failed program. So Ukraine has a manpower shortage beyond anything else. If you walk through Kiev right now, it looks like a ghost town because any male that is approaching military age is immediately grabbed and press ganged into service. immediately grabbed and press ganged into service. Yeah, I read a story that they were like forcing a 30-year-old Down syndrome man to serve.

I mean, they're running out of people. And it's just terrific. This is my suggestion for Western Europe that has a big problem with illegal migrants. I would say they wrap them up, press gang them, and send them to Ukraine. That solves the illegal migrant problem, and it solves the Ukrainian manpower problem. Perfect. You are an innovator. Right. That's very innovative. You know, I had Representative Corey Mills on Fox and Friends once, and we were having a conversation about Ukraine, which, you know, divides people. You know, we have people at Fox who very much believe this is the right thing to do in fighting for Ukraine. And then there's a handful of us at Fox that are still like, don't understand why we're there and don't think it's in our national interest.

And frankly, think there might be corrupt reasons why we're there. And I asked Representative Corey Mills, I said, is this really, I can't figure out why we're there. Is this really about money laundering? And he looked at me and he said, I think so. What is your take on that? Look, the money that was blown in Afghanistan unnecessarily, the military industrial complex is looking for another thing to spend big money on and to prove those systems. And a lot of that money that's just appropriated is not going to Ukraine per

se. It's going to the big five us defense contractors to replenish the stuff that's been transferred. And so it'll be, you know, replenishing an anti-tank missile that was made 20 years ago. And now they'll probably charge four to five times what that thing cost 20 years ago.

That's the, that's the level of corruption. We have effectively a brigade's worth thousands of lawyers, of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. paid by the defense industry to convince Congress to A, support Ukraine and B, to keep the money train flowing. It's a, it's a whole pile of wrong. to keep the money train flowing. It's a whole pile of wrong. And all we're really doing now is destroying Ukraine's demographics and destroying their manpower. They should have taken a deal, frozen the lines,

and do the equivalent of a North and South Korea where an ugly peace is better than a sparkly war. And the pontificators in Washington want to have a sparkly war that they're making money on and that they're just not going to win. Yeah. And the rebuilding contract, I think, went to the Clintons, the Clinton Foundation, which I mean, this is all just it's just so gross. So last question on this. You've you've talked about the Pentagon, whether it's corrupt. They're not making great decisions with their tax dollars. If they're buying equipment that doesn't actually work, that they can't see it doesn't work and change course, a huge problem. We had Pete Hegseth on last week to talk about the woke military as well.

It seems like there's a lot of problems. I don't know if I want to call it rot, but if President Prince was in office, can we change it? How long is it going to take? Can we get it fixed in time? And what does the next president have to do to make sure that we have a military

that's ready to fight and keep us safe? Make it a killing machine again, not a social experiment like what's happening right now. We should actually focus. Look, people is policy. And we have, I think, 460 some general officers right now, far more than World War II, more than we had when we had 14 million men under arms. Now we have 1.4 million. And so you could take that number down by probably 70% and start to send a good message, have significant savings, do a simple study of what does a general officer actually cost us in direct cost of all the staff supporting them. And so start with better leadership, a massive culling of all the civilian bureaucracy in the Pentagon as well.

And start there. If you get the personnel decisions right there, a lot of other good will come from it. I would also break up a cartel that the defense industry has become. You used to have hundreds of major defense contractors. You have five now. And so they truly, they behave like a cartel where one will win this time and the next time the next guy wins. It's not anything approaching competitive bidding. And so that's why we have, we spend more than the next 18 countries combined in defense, and we don't have a lot to show for it. If Donald Trump doesn't win, win president trump does not win for whatever reason i mean maybe it's you know election integrity or some other pandemic breaks out what happens to america i mean i i think you think about these things like what happens to america if he doesn't win

well we're 34 trillion in debt and the the collapse of american credibility definitely damages our ability to be the world's reserve currency and when that credibility is shredded even farther and actually the overuse of sanctions even makes it more likely for the the people moving away from the dollar um america will have a very severe wake-up call when we can't print an extra trillion or two dollars a year to fund our overbloated social welfare programs and government and military. It's not just, we don't spend too much on military, we spend too much on everything. And we can't do that because we don't have a reserve currency, it's going to force America on a diet, and that will have some wrenching social implications.

And you look at what happened to the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Adolf Hitler was elected because he said, enough of this insanity, enough of this cultural rot, enough of this financial collapse, enough of this shame. And, you know, let's solve it at the ballot box so it doesn't get sold by a cartridge box which is why i buy crypto and gold that's been my answer because i think because i guess that's not that's not a terrible answer because look there's no guarantee that the u.s dollar uh here's another here's another one to think about when When the U.S. went off the gold standard in the 70s,

was it ever voted on? Passed by Congress? No. It was an executive order. Yeah. Which means we could go back to the gold standard with an executive order as well. So you say invest in crypto, gold, what else?

Look, I'm not going to give people investment advice. But I will say is that that gold has always been a medium of exchange for as long as people have been walking around the earth yeah well you all also um let's talk about the phone because sean and i have been fascinated by this concept we've been worried about our phones sometimes we we fight on our text messages and sometimes she'll say really do you want to do this for the fbi i mean who thought about that like 10 years ago i have a better example right i managed to really piss off my wife and she sent me a scorcher of a text on whatsapp a couple ago, and then she was getting nonstop advertising from divorce

lawyers and from match. Yeah. Yeah. That's the kind of stuff that happens. So why is your phone different? First, lay out the problem. Like, I don't think people, people feel like that our phone is being, we're being spied on, but they don't really understand exactly.

So lay the problem out and then tell us what you're offering really for the last 20 years surveillance capitalism has become the norm because as people have gotten smartphones you're used to lots of free apps on that phone and it's important to remember that if you're not paying for something you're not the customer you're the product and so the phone has the the existing google mobile services or apple model has been to interact with all those apps and so that the hardware helps to collect where you go what you buy who you call and what you browse it has an advertising id which is like a 30 digit alphanumeric code on that phone, which is unique to each of your devices. And it interacts to help turn on the microphone or the camera or the GPS to further

collect more data of the apps sitting on the phone. So we built a phone called an unplugged phone, which is similar in hardware. It's our hardware, our operating system, Similar in hardware. It's our hardware, our operating system, speed, storage, camera quality, equivalent to what you're used to. But this phone doesn't collect anything of what you're doing. And we don't have an advertising ID. And our business model is not surveillance capitalism. It's really data sovereignty so that your data belongs to you and we're not collecting and exporting any of it. And so this phone has thousands of apps.

They're Android-based apps, so most of the same apps that you're used to. But again, this operating system blocks those apps from putting their hooks in and monitoring and listening and exporting all of your whereabouts. We did a comparison of our phone versus the other guy's phones and running the same map, sending similar messages and the other guy's phones turn on, uh, and, and send a burst of about 50 megabytes every night, uh, two or 3 AM. And it's basically that phone phoning home, phoning back to the mothership, reporting all of your personal activity, messages, et cetera.

So, again, this phone has a privacy center. It's actually a firewall setting, which allows you to hard off and so that you have control of what is going to leave that phone at any time. So, again, this is our answer to the surveillance capitalism, Big Brother is listening. And the other concerning thing is um this fisa there was a debate about the fisa extension that happened a couple weeks ago and it was passed into law that's not just an extension it's a massive massive expansion because basically the federal agencies got sick of getting beaten up coming before congress because

they were buying all this consumer data that was available collected by the apps and by airlines and by banks and everything else of all of all your commercial activity of where you go everything you do they're buying that and they could without warrant basically build a pattern of life looking back on you for six to eight years. Now, under this FISA expansion, the federal agent can go to any company that has any of that data and ask them to turn it over, and they don't need a warrant. They don't need probable cause. And that company, when it turns it over, is forbidden from informing you that your data has been collected by the federal government.

So, again, this phone is the only antidote to that because we don't have an advertising ID. We'd prevent all that stuff from collecting on you and it allows you control that data. Real quick, because I, when I, in Congress, this was an issue that I worked on and I was fascinated how young people didn't care about their data privacy. They kind of were more than happy to turn it over. That's point number one. Point two, it's so frustrating that I spend $1,000 for an Apple phone, and I'm still the product. It's like, I'm giving you $1,000 so I can be your product as well?

I mean, I don't get really any privacy from them. And they're collecting and selling your data to the tune of $180 per year. That's the recurring revenue model on you and you and you and whoever's using that device. Our recurring revenue model is you pay $990 for this. And after month 13, you pay us 12 bucks a month and we collect and sell nothing of your data. Nothing. Period. So a quick question for you on this.

So if I put a VPN on my phone, a lot of times the apps won't work, right? I've got to turn it off to let the app work. Do the apps work on your phone with all the security and their inability to track me and get data from me? The apps will still work on your phone? Yes. The banking, the sports, the airlines apps, yes, that works. Now, obviously, Google Mobile Services, Google Maps does not work on this phone because it doesn't let you collect.

You can use it in a browser-based setting, but there Google is only collecting on you exactly why you're using the maps, and when you exit out of it, it's out. The fact is Google Mobile Services, sitting on your phone, collects everything you do 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but not on this phone. Not on this phone. Is it out now?

Can people buy it now, or is it launching? No, no, no. It's out. We did 500 units last fall and let that run for a beta test and then we just got 10,000 units in and we've already shipped 4,500 units. So you can order them at unplugged.com.

Unplugged.com. Order today and you'll have it in two days. I'm going to order it. I really am. I'm so sick of this. I feel like I'm living in a surveillance state. This is the way to end this. I mean, you have to do something to stop living in this surveillance state that we're now in. I am going to order it. I have to ask you one question. I know you have to go, but I have to ask you one question before we go,

because it's something I meant to ask you when we were talking about Ukraine, and I don't want to go without asking. How close are we to nuclear war? I don't think the, look, the constant escalation of now they're authorizing U.S. weapons to strike targets inside of Russia, that's annoying. I don't see them responding with nuclear weapons, That's annoying. I don't see them responding with nuclear weapons, but I wouldn't be surprised if they respond conventionally in a way that will make NATO very uncomfortable. dollar US systems are not going to defeat and they can still smash a base in Germany or the UK or any one of those peripheral countries as a as a brushback. Crazy. Unbelievable. Well, Erica, I'll just tell you that if and to our listeners, if and watchers, if you if you don't like the liberals in Silicon Valley tracking you and knowing everything about you, and you get companies that will offer you an alternative, you've got to support those alternatives. You've got to support those products that come out to go, you know what, I'm going to give your freedom.

On the website, you talk about your data is a human freedom that they're not entitled to. You're entitled to privacy. Exactly. that they're not entitled to. You're entitled to privacy. And so if you believe in that, you got to support the companies that offer you good products to protect your data.

So, and this is what you've done with this phone. And someone who has your background and credibility, I can't imagine that the phone isn't awesome. So Rachel's going to buy one. They have one more thing I want to say. And listen, and we've also tried to crowdsource security. We put out a bounty a year and a half ago at the DEF CON Hacker Conference saying, hey, this is our phone moving around the planet.

These are the phone numbers. Please try to hack us. Find a backdoor. Identify it. And the other difference is in our operating agreement, Identify it. And the other difference is in our operating agreement, we say we're not collecting, analyzing, selling, exporting any of your data. It is the opposite of the business model of the other guys. And we contract to that end. So we are serious about being different on this and we are serious about defending the first and the fourth amendments. We'll have more of this conversation after this.

Do you think people are going to jump? I mean, like, I heard you talk a little bit about numbers. Do you think people are going to make a massive move towards this? Look, it's not for everybody. If you're a 16-year-old and you posted what you had for breakfast on Instagram, probably not for them yet. But we're surprising numbers of kids in their 20s, 30s, 40s, on through adults, whether you're, it is shocking how much of your data is given off by your existing

device. And you put a bounty out to the hackers. Yes. You go hack my phone, you can hack my phone, whatever the price was, you're going to pay them a great bounty to hack you. It was $50,000, $60,000, and the bounty is going to go up soon. And did you pay the bounty yet? Oh, no.

Still got it. And you know what? If you do, it's like, listen, I want to see the back doors that we might have missed. That's great. And then you can fix them. So incredibly smart. Listen, Eric Prince, you are an American treasure, someone who speaks the truth, someone who thinks about issues that are going on in the world that affect the U.S. in very unique, creative ways.

And even to the point where we have a phone that's come from your team that kind of embodies that idea of liberty and freedom that you've been fighting for, uh, for your life. We appreciate you joining us at the kitchen table, spending your time in the car, um, taking a moment to chat with us. Very grateful. Thank you, Eric. Thanks for having me. People can find me on Twitter at, uh, real Eric D Prince.com or real Eric D Prince. And is that where they can go and get the phone or that that's on a website? If they want to find me there, but, uh, they can, they can get the phone at unplugged. Prince. And is that where they can go and get the phone, or that's on a website? If they want to find me there, they can get the phone at unplugged.com. Unplugged.com.

Thank you, Eric. Awesome stuff. Thanks, guys. Have a good day. Thanks, Eric. You got it. Bye-bye. Well, Sean, that was a fascinating conversation, the phone and everything.

But what I thought was interesting is that, you know, we talked about the dangers in Western hemisphere, which obviously you and I are very concerned about the Chinese and the Iranians and everything that's happening and the narco traffickers and the Chinese in Mexico. I mean, all of it was mind blowing. But to your point on all of this, Sean, is when I went back to what's the main concern, you know, what happens if Donald Trump doesn't win? He went right to the debt as the biggest threat to America. Which I'm a broken record in our house. You are. I know. I talk about the debt. I'm talking about the Chinese and you're talking about the debt. And the reserve currency. Yeah. Which, by the way, one of our advertisers is St. Joseph's Partners, which by the way,

I do buy gold and I only buy it from them. That's an honest statement. I sent them my money and I got the gold and the silver, which was fantastic. A great Christian company. So just a kudos on that. But that is another point that it's like somebody comes up, goes through the trouble. I mean, I can't imagine all the thought that went into getting this phone together and the people that he was networking with to make sure that this was actually going to be the reverse model of what, you know, the other guys are doing, which is capturing your data and surveilling you and treating you like a product instead of you buying a product. I can't imagine what went into it.

And then, yeah, we say we're against this surveillance system that we're in. Then let's get on board, buy it, support the people who are trying to get us out of this surveillance trap. And what really burns me is, again, I give $1,000 for a phone, and I'm the product. Again, I mentioned this in another podcast, but you can spend $40,000, $60,000, $80,000, $100,000 for a car, whatever your price point is, and you're still the product because they track you in your car.

And so at what point are you able to get out of the data trap and have some peace of mind that people are just going to leave you alone? Yeah. No one's entitled to know, unless you're a cop, how fast I'm driving or my turns or where I go or what I spend my money on. They're not entitled to that. And by the way, even if I use cash, on my phone, they can see that I've gone to, you know, Victoria's Secret. That's the only one that popped into my head. Or, you know, the grocery store the grocery store, or UPS.

They see all of that, even if I use cash and not a credit card. And that's crazy, the story he told, that his wife sent him a steaming mad text message. A WhatsApp message. WhatsApp message, he was on WhatsApp, which again, he has talked about how people thought that WhatsApp was encrypted. And it's not. I mean, like, they still can access this.

There's still a back door to it. So she sends him, you know, a mean text on WhatsApp. And then she starts getting divorce lawyer, you know, advertisements. So, yeah, I mean. That must have been a really mean text. That must have been a bad mean text that must have been a bad one that's fiery i i was i was watching um this thing on youtube about the deep state and how it you know and the way the cia operated in you know well it was it was about sort of the 50s

and 60s and when the cia and like how the cia would know, listen in on people's conversations in their bedrooms, you know, different government officials. I mean, they're doing that. Now you bring the surveillance equipment into your bedroom. You bring your you're the you're bringing you don't need the CIA. You're bringing it yourself. And again, someone might object to this statement, but if not a phone that protects my data that came from Elon Musk. And there's a lot of people have problems with Elon Musk. But if he said it was going to be, you know, protecting my data that came from Elon Musk, and there's a lot of people who have problems with Elon Musk. But if he said it was going to be protecting my data, I would believe him.

If not Elon Musk, Eric Prince is the – Yeah, listen. He's badass. He's incredibly wealthy. Yeah. He knows all the players to do all the right work to make a phone that's actually going to work. I'm buying one today. Like, it's done. I'm buying one today because I'm sick of it. So here's what I actually going to work. I'm buying one today. Like it's done. I'm buying one

today because I'm sick of it. So here's what I'm going to do. We're going to buy one, one, one phone. Yeah. We're going to see how, see how it goes. We'll report back to you about the, about the unplugged phone. I think that's a fair way to do it. And when it works so well, we're going to get a second phone, which will be mine. And so we'll let you guys know how that, how that goes. But again, we know a lot of the hot points in the world. We got a little better intel on kind of what's happening and why and how we fix these things. But I do think you have to fix things at home as well. And fixing things at home is cutting your government out of your life.

They're not entitled to it. And that's the philosophy now. It's like, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, why do you care? Because there's a separation between me and my government. They're not entitled to know everything about me. But you know what, Sean? But that's a change in the philosophy. Well, after 9-11, I bought into that philosophy.

I was like, well, we've got to get the bad guys that, you know, flew into the towers and, and, and the Pentagon. And so, yeah, like I'm not doing anything bad. If you got to look at my data in order to get the bad guys, I bought into that. Oh my God. I've done such a 360 on that. Like, I do not agree with that, that philosophy at all. Um, you know, they, they, the FBI went into those mosques and now they're going into Catholic churches. This has been a Pandora's box.

It's open. Um, all of us are being surveilled, not just by these companies, by our government. Um, they think we're, I mean, people with the ideas that you and I have pro-life Catholic, Christian, um, you know, conservative, uh, Second Amendment rights. We're considered domestic terrorists by the people in charge. By the Joe Biden regime. That's right. And so, yeah, listen, I think he's super insightful. I didn't need him to convince me we needed to, we need things to be wrapped up in Ukraine, that that is a dangerous situation and a big waste of our money, and we should be out of there. But I do think when I've heard him list on his podcast and other interviews he's done, his main concerns are Mexico, the Chinese in Latin America,

the Iranians who have an army of men in Venezuela, And then the situation in Guyana, which we're going to dig into more with our friend Joseph Humeyer, who is a national security expert for the whole Western hemisphere. We're going to dig into that because that is, we could have a huge problem. I've heard him, Joseph Humeyer say, we could have like, you know, how you have off the coast of Somalia, Joseph Humeyer say, we could have like, you know, how you have off the coast of Somalia, pirate ships and crazy, you know, stuff like that, that could be coming to Latin America, to the Caribbean. But if you believe that oil is security, because it puts gas in people's cars, it funds industry, funds your military, farms, energy is key to security. If you believe that, you care about your own energy security, but you would also care about the energy in your hemisphere. But if you're Joe Biden

and the nut jobs he has working for him in this administration, if you don't see the value of your own energy, why are you going to see the value in our hemisphere and the energy we have there, which is why I don't think the Biden administration is going to do anything about Iran's, you know, soft power move in Guyana. It's going to be interesting to follow. And, you know, hopefully they don't move too fast. We have time for another president to come in and do the right thing. That's right. Sean, can I just say on the Mexico front, like I have been following that Mexican election until Eric said that the Chinese were involved in the election, that the Chinese were paying off the cartels to kill off, which are horrible and the corruption that is generational and almost culturally embedded. And I just assumed that the people went to the communists, which started with Obrador, really, that they went and Obrador has a lot.

He has a huge approval rating when he left office, which helped his protege, Claudia Scheinbaum, you know, win this election. I just thought it was, look, the other guys effed it up and they're so corrupt and they and they and they they they stole so much money and did so little for the poor who live in terrible conditions in Mexico that that's why the communists won. That is very troubling to me that they are actually involved in the internal politics in such a destructive way in Mexico. That's why the communists won. That is very troubling to me that they are actually involved in the internal politics in such a destructive way in China. And I'm going to be digging more into that. Maybe that's something we can talk to with Joseph Humeyer as well when we have him on, I think, next week. And this is why Joe Biden is going to lose. He has ruined people's lives. And you ruin people's lives, you ruin their economics, you ruin their pocketbooks. All of a sudden, they lash out.

And they'll vote for someone who brings order to their community and to their country. So you're saying the economy in America is so bad because of his energy policies and his monetary policies. His lawfare. And his lawfare that you think is going to get. Well, let's see, Sean, because, you know, there's a lot of, you know, Donald Trump says it has to be too big to rig. There's a lot of levers Democrats can pull, and they're going to pull every single one of them. So we appreciate Eric Prince joining us at the kitchen table. Very insightful.

Incredibly smart man. We're going to get the phone. We'll let you know how it goes. I thought you were going to say, I'm going to give you a test phone. We're going to pay. I'm paying for my phone. I'm going to give you a legit answer on a phone that I actually bought. And if it works out for me, Sean's going to get one too.

And we'll fill you in because I don't say anything that I don't mean. And I've been worried about surveillance from companies and the government. And so I'm really intrigued by this idea. And we know you don't say what you mean. That's true. All right. With that, thanks for joining the kitchen table. If you like our podcast, rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. You can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com, Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. We're there. Subscribe, get a notice when we drop, we're Wednesday Thursdays and Fridays so make sure you check us out every week

love doing the podcast, thanks for joining us at the kitchen table, bye everybody listen ad free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts and Amazon, members can listen to the show ad free on the Amazon Music app.