Lemonade Stand - Economic D-Day Is Here | EP. 077 Lemonade Stand 🍋
Episode Date: August 26, 2026On this week's show... DougDoug listens to an album, Atrioc pulls up some charts, and Aiden gets attacked by a robot dog. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus ep...isodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 077 Recorded on: August 24th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Economic D-Day? 8:45 Canada Tariff Talks Breakdown 12:45 Aiden Asks His Family 17:35 America's Reputation 20:58 Trump Hates His Own Deals 25:12 Cancer Vaccine Passes Phase 3 31:41 Moderna Stock Price 36:38 Shopify Ad 37:52 Robtics Breakthroughs 42:20 Humanoid Robots 46:58 It Is Happening In China 50:38 Auckland Zoning Increases Housing 58:27 Flock Camera Update 1:05:20 Lakers Got Bought 1:11:10 Private Equity Effecting Sports 1:23:14 Data Center Issue Is Complicated 1:37:43 Corrections and Outros New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the lemonade stand.
I have three words for you, Doug and Aden.
Oh.
And they're going to change the entire reality of our world global economy.
Economic D-Day.
What does that mean?
It's provocative, right?
It gets the people going.
It gets the people going.
It's provocative.
It means we're going to show up in boats
on the shores of the banks.
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant in this video.
This is this morning, a few hours ago,
went out and said he is declaring
an economic deeday is coming for Iran.
And I thought that was an interesting phrase
because just last week,
you did a presentation on how we've basically
tried every possible economic sanction for 40 years.
Yes. And in fact, the conclusion of that was, well, if you've been doing this for 47 years,
what option is left? And the option is China, basically, because they're the one that is really
financially underpinning Iran's ability to do anything right now. So when you talk about economic
D-Day or, you know, other people have been calling it economic 9-11. He said he wants to economically
holocaust them. He's gone deep. You have to imagine that what he means by this,
is dramatic escalation with China.
I have to be so real because of the general news
about the administration all the time.
Did he actually, which ones did he actually say?
Just D-Day?
But it is called, there's the new thing that came out today
because I did read, Scott Besson wrote a piece in the FT,
I don't know if you can show it, called an economic deed
is coming from Iran.
He wrote this last night and he published it in the FD under his own name,
basically laying out why they're doing this and what's going on.
And then he followed with the speech today.
Now the speech today, he announced,
This is called Operation Economic Outcast.
The idea is, similar to what you discussed last week,
is they're going to pull every possible lever to make Iran and Tehran
an economic outcast from everyone in the world.
No one will trade with them.
And as you mentioned, if you look at the numbers,
90% of what they trade is going to China.
And he doesn't mention China's name in this.
And doesn't even willing to say their name.
And China has said they're not going to stop trading with Iran.
So I don't know what exactly.
this means, but he did. I mean, this is, I wish I had a direct quote from the video,
but he's like forcefully saying, we are going to cut you off from the US dollar system
if you trade with Iran. And if you're not talking about China, you're talking about basically
anyone with that. So I don't know, it's like a, it's like a big line in the sand to draw today.
I don't know exactly how it's going to play out if they're just talking tough.
Wait. Or are we going to try and that. That's what I understand. So we've had sanctions forever.
And then he made a big deal last week about how there's going to be, uh, there's going to be a big
announcement and then he calls it economic D-Day, but they're not, there's nothing concrete.
It's just like, we're going to be doing additional sanctions on everybody if you don't apply.
And then a quote from him, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior.
Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?
So it's like a threat.
But we're not going to do it.
And he's not saying which countries, and he's not saying the specifics.
It's just like, we're really angry.
Yeah.
That's not D-Day.
D-Day actually did stuff.
War.
People already know we're angry.
D-Day was not us giving a strongly worded letter to Hitler, okay?
It was not.
It wasn't us writing in the F-T.
Hey,
hey, you better stop it, Hitler.
Big things would be coming.
Hitler off the U.S. dollar system.
We could have saved some lives on D-Day if we just took them off the dollar system.
Well,
let's not under the value the strength of strongly worded letters.
Aren't they already cut off from the U.S. dollar system?
What am I misunderstanding?
Their lifeline is Russia and China,
and this doesn't even name them directly.
I don't know what it means,
but it seems like it's a big deal for them.
It's an important economic deeda that they're doing.
Those who tether themselves Tehran
are foreclosing any path to prosperity,
where you said to other countries.
Your confidence will collapse.
Any nation that serves as a financial artery
of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation.
Now, when you think about that,
share in its isolation means
they are not isolated.
They are together in a trading partnership,
which is what Russia and China currently are with Iran.
To become a sanctuary for terrorists
to become in the eyes of the United States
a global pariah.
The problem is, I think the problem
with all of this stuff that he's been doing lately
with the treasury market and with the yen,
is that just in the eyes of the United States
is not no longer enough.
They don't have enough economic clout
to force every single person to trade
with who they won when they want.
And the main person you need to, like, heal
in this scenario or the main country
is the country
with all the economic leverage.
Yeah, Xi Jinping would have to be on board with this.
He didn't mention his name in the speech,
so I'm not sure it's a complete alliance.
I do say it was a funny quote I heard from the former U.S. ambassador to Iran
who helped negotiate the Obama nuclear deal.
He said, when asked about what new sanctions we could really realistically roll out,
he's like, so we've tried the low-hanging fruit,
we tried the mid-hanging fruit, we tried the high-hanging fruit,
we tried the tree.
I don't think they're taking.
anything left in the tank. So he seems pretty puzzled as to what outside of like open
economic war with China, which by the way, we've kind of already done in the trade tariff
wars of last year. And they sort of hit their limit. They had the leverage on the rare earth and
they cut it off. So again, I don't. It's a lot of tough talk. And it is I guess a bigger deal than
usual. But I can't, I can't realize what's going to be different about it. He did say you talked about
digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping.
Yep.
So with China, the key things they buy Iran's oil, which is like their lifeline, right?
But they do use like crypto for tons of different things.
So trying to basically cut anybody who's doing any sort of organized crypto purchases or trading with Iran.
I mean, probably this will put real pressure.
There's probably some levers left China, but just not the big one.
Yeah.
And so to steal, man, I did.
I talked to my contact in Iran.
and he did mention the Rial has hit an unprecedented like two million to one U.S. dollar.
Oh my God.
And he's like at the worst of back when he's actually fled the country now, but back when he was
there, he was like it was 500,000, which is one fourth of what it is now.
That was the worst of when he was there.
It's now two million.
He said if basically nobody is using the currency at all, they are all shifting to gold or
dollars or crypto or just like holding their assets in anything else because holding it
in Rial is like asking to have it.
value to nothing. People that are paid wages in real are like at, you know, it's like
why more levels of Christ, it's like a bet. Like the economy of Iran is in a horrible spot. And
additionally, the, do you have any insight into public life from talking to that person? Like,
I understand that they fled. But as wars go on, life goes on in places. Yeah. In Tehran,
you can still go to a restaurant and buy food.
Yeah.
Are you not making that transaction in the local currency anymore?
I think they're using other currencies.
That's the impression that I'm getting is they've found other ways.
It's, it's, yeah, it could be R&B.
It could be dollars.
It could be crypto.
It could be gold.
But they're not like carrying their savings in real because that is not a reliable source.
That being said, the Iranian president two days ago, three days ago, did say something
that signaled a willing, like that there is some effect to this.
Because again, also data has come out that oil out of Hormuz from Iran.
has completely stopped.
The blockade is seemingly having an effect.
Now, they've already banked a lot of extra money
because of all the oil they exported earlier
that was at higher prices,
but they're not making it now,
and that is a problem.
Iranian president said,
it's time to end the war with the U.S.
from, quote, a position of strength.
But saying that does necessarily indicate
that there is a future
where you're not a position of strength.
The idea is like, we are in our maximum amount of leverage now.
People are beginning to build routes outside of Hormuz.
They're building pipelines and arcs.
economy is not like getting better. And so it'd be good to negotiate with something. You know,
the problem is it's very hard. I think this will be our next story. We're talking about Canada.
It's very hard to make a deal with Trump that is reliable. No matter who's got the position of
strength or what you agree upon, it's hard to make a deal that he's going to stick to. So we can transition
over to that. But there is some idea that it's working. I don't think it's working quick enough
for Trump's timeline, which is the midterms and what he wants to do. But it does seem to have some
effect on their economy in that they might actually want to negotiate.
But I don't know if these additional sanctions are going to add too much of that.
And I don't, again, the impacts are also being felt in America,
which is higher prices for things, fertilizer, gas, et cetera.
So, yeah, I don't know.
That's, yeah.
Why don't we skate on over to just a great situation?
Tariff D-Day with our northern neighbor and my home country.
Yeah, we have a Canadian on the podcast.
Never say we're not a diverse podcast.
And now over to our international report.
If you want an immigrant's perspective.
Let's get an authentic Canadian perspective from Aiden.
What's going on on the ground?
So I think you have already talked about this on Big A to an extent.
And I watched the press conference where Mark Carney speaks to the Canadian public about what has gone on in trade negotiations with the United States from the Canadian perspective.
and basically announces that after heavy negotiation, we have arrived at a point where the U.S.
has seemingly forfeited the old terms and the progress that was made, comes in with new terms all of a sudden that Canada is very uncomfortable with,
and Carney, instead of trying to continue to the negotiations, pulls Canada's negotiators back, and says,
we're just matching the tariffs dollar for dollar. We are no longer going through this process.
anymore. Am I missing anything there?
No, no, no, I think the one thing I'd say is, so we're under the U.S. Mexico-Canada agreement,
the U.S.MCA or whatever.
This was signed in 2020 by a certain president named Dalje Trump, who said at the time,
this is the greatest, fairest deal we've ever signed.
And now in 2026, he's saying this deal is bad, unfair, not a good deal, and that Canada is
abusing it and that we need to change the terms of the deal.
So they've gone from a 16-year renewal to a yearly renegotiated.
And while they were doing this renegotiation, like you said, they tried to add some terms last
I think the term that was really a sticking point.
I mean, I could steal me.
I didn't do this in my big egg clip.
So I want to kind of do it now is just say.
Yeah.
This is what is happening is that the USMCA is like as close to you can get to a free trade thing
between North America, America, Canada, Mexico.
America has a priority, which they are worried that if they are going to put tariffs on Chinese
cars or whatever, that Canada could end up being a backdoor.
for Chinese manufacturing.
So if we have a deal with you
and then you have a deal with China,
China can just use Canada as a way
to get into our free trade system
that we didn't want them to be in.
And Canada had just negotiated
that new deal with China
that allows EVs at least in for a set period of time
earlier this year in like February.
And Canada is allowed,
there's a sovereign nation that can make their own deals,
but America was trying to get them to base,
they didn't say which country,
but the obvious answer is that they are trying
to get them to have no deals with China.
and that was not part of this negotiation until the last minute.
They kind of threw it in.
And Carney said, no, that's, we're like,
you're basically pushing our sovereignty.
And so, yeah, I would just say that's like the setup.
The problem is, is what I want to,
I actually would love to hear what your family said
or what we were talking about in,
what Canadian perspectives.
Yeah, I think the two, so I have a broad overview.
This is before this happened, keep in mind.
This is more like during the negotiation process,
but I went to see a bunch of my family,
recently in British Columbia.
And I asked a huge spread of my relatives,
just what they think about Carney
and what is going on right now.
And the general sentiment from all of them,
even though they do have different political backgrounds
and opinions, not all of them even voted for his party.
Sure.
They said they like the way that he's standing up to Trump.
And then the worst criticism I heard was
he has yet to deliver on a lot of the things he's promising
because he just hasn't been in office that long.
Right.
But generally seems to be taking a position of strength for Canada
and has a strong, economic, intelligent background
that they all really like.
Keep in mind, this is just my family.
Sure.
So Doug had actually a handful of questions
to ask my family members,
and I texted it to a few of them.
What were you like as a kid?
Were you always the scrawny?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did they underfeed you intentionally?
Why is he's like a scarecrow?
Why does he feel like he's like a weird, like a...
Do you keep him outside in the yard?
So I asked that.
They asked,
I asked that.
And then also about the politics stuff.
Okay, I got you.
All right.
Yeah.
I don't really want to talk about this.
And the two,
the two responses I have so far,
this is from my grandfather,
uh,
who's approaching 80 years old,
is about to retire soon and has worked in Canada and the US for quite a long time now.
And from,
and Doug's questions going into this were,
does all of this rhetoric between Canada and the U.S., these ongoing issues, does it feel more like
background noise, or does it feel like something that is having a concrete effect on your life or something
that is really demanding your attention? And the second question was, has this resulted in any
tangible change in their behavior, consumption habits, what they're choosing to buy? From my grandfather's
perspective, he finds the Trump changing his mind part to be part.
particularly frustrating and chaotic. He said, I think I can survive some of the tariffs myself,
but it's the day-to-day uncertainty. It seems Trump changes his mind on a daily basis with very
little thought or rationale. I just find that really frustrating. And from him, he says he doesn't
buy a lot of things in general. He's a pretty frugal guy, but he spent his entire life trying to
buy Canadian-made goods as best he can. He doesn't feel like he is personally changing.
his consumption habits very much.
He is more sensitive to it now,
but he's pretty much just doing the same thing.
He always did.
I know from my other grandfather,
he is outright boycott,
will not visit the U.S. under any circumstances,
even to visit my immediate family
that does live in the U.S.,
won't buy American products, hates Trump.
And he's a conservative guy.
He's a Canadian that prior to all of this
was going like,
I get where Trump's coming from.
No, that's wild.
And then from my aunt, she is an interesting perspective, I think, because she's well educated.
She works in government.
She's worked in government for like 30 years.
And she's very tapped into Canadian politics because of her work, her news consumption.
And she's very tapped into American politics consumes a ton of American news.
And her, she had a much more lengthy response.
And she said in her circles, this is super top of mind.
basically every aspect, whether it be in personal consumption or just view of how it impacts
things economically. She said, these tariffs have like a tangible effect on Canadian jobs,
prosperity. She sees the way that affects people already. And then for her and her friends
like personal spending habits, they go out of their way to not buy American product. She gave an
anecdote about how her and her friend were at the grocery store and they were buying produce and
they like tried one of the grapes, I think. And she was like, this is a really, that's what,
maybe they were at a farmer's market or something. And she said, oh, I hope these aren't,
I guess it wouldn't be a farmer's market if they're, they're buying America. She's stealing graves.
They're stealing graves. So is a criminal. You've admitted on a podcast. And I feel like tariffs on that type of person is
appropriate. Let me read the quote. She said last night I was with my friend Joanna and we
stopped in the grocery store and she picked up some really, really nice grapes. Now she's going
to jail. And then, and then asked, and then asked, and then asked aloud, and then she asked aloud,
don't tell me that these are American. And then they were and she just put them back down. Oh, my God.
And she also reading them. And then she also said, she recognized.
that...
Economic war.
That's what this is.
There's a direct quote from CardiBel.
This is economic war.
She's grilling an American hamburger in the grocery aisle.
It's like, this is better not be American.
She said that she even recognizes that the grapes are from California, which from a political
stance is, you know, governor of California is Gavin Newsom.
She feels that this is a guy that is standing up to Trump from an American political perspective.
But she's like, we got to hold the line.
And even if it, and I think there is some recognition from everybody, especially when, you know,
you have family members that are American, that this isn't the whole U.S.
This isn't about U.S. citizens.
It's very focused on frustration with one particular guy who seems to be going back and forth
on the decision he's decisions he makes all the time.
I kind of have an encounter.
A couple weeks ago, I think during the Beez-or episode, I posited the question, do you feel like
America's reputation is permanently ruined.
And there were actually a lot of great responses in the YouTube comments,
like really thoughtful responses.
And a lot of them from,
you know,
countries like Canada or Australia or European countries,
were basically like maybe it was different in the past.
But this is,
it's not just what Trump is doing because I rationally know a ton of Americans hate Trump.
It's the fact that half of the country is capable and willing to elect somebody like this.
This is exactly.
So my aunt,
the direct quote,
we signed a deal many decades ago.
We trusted the U.S.
and we integrated our trade,
ideally to the benefit of both.
The fact that this is happening
is such a massive betrayal
that it has fractured trust
with Canadians for, I bet, a generation.
Dude, we are so pissed at Trump.
I'm my aunt said, dude.
And also so shocked
that 50% of the population
didn't see through this guy.
Yeah, that's a great point.
No, I want to, I want to,
my thought on it because I was trying,
you know, my clip on it was a little more like,
this is fucking terrible, whatever.
I was trying to steal man it.
And I was thinking,
and the problem I keep running into is like,
even if,
because we've talked on this show about how
the economic shock of China's growing manufacturing
is causing some problems in a lot of countries
because they're just really fucking good at it.
And if they continue on this path,
everyone is going to be economically dependent on them for manufacturing.
It's,
it's offshoring everything to them.
And there's things you could do.
And it's like,
if that was a priority, there is a way to give and take with a friendly ally to maybe like,
we want this, we have to give something to you.
Like there's a way to make this a win-win on a multi-decade long northern border sharing ally.
The fact that he turns every negotiation into a extremely contentious head-to-head
bullying match, I think is counterproductive, even if we had insane strength, even if we were
fully able to bully Canada to do it.
We don't seem to be able to do.
It is a, it's like a human thing.
Like, if you were to do that to somebody in your life,
they would resent you very quickly.
It's just not, you'd ruin all your friendships.
You would ruin all your friendships so quickly.
And it's like, it's insane that we, as a country,
but especially as a fucking negotiator and a president,
are running this strategy down mid over and over
until nobody can trust anything you sign, say,
shake hands on, agree on, or deal.
And I think that's the problem.
because I don't think there's a world where it's impossible
that you could even get Canada to agree
to change their EV tariffs with China or whatever.
But you have to be willing to,
you can't just take, take, take, take,
demand, demand, demand, threaten, threaten,
and threaten, bully, bully.
It doesn't work.
He wants to be in a perpetual Mexican standoff.
Guns pointed at everybody else,
everybody pointing guns at him.
They're not allowed to have guns.
Or they doesn't, like, if they use guns back,
it's like, no, if they agree to stop the stand down,
he wants another one.
He'll then pull the guns back.
out. He wants it to be gone going. He takes out a second gun. He's like, no, I've got you
where I want you. I think to actually connect the first, the first two stories here, I think what's really
funny is in, in the Iran scenario, he has this excuse, which I don't think is a good one, given all
the context that we've gone through on the show, that the Iran nuclear deal was made by the
Obama administration. It was made by another guy. And that deal wasn't effective.
ignore the merits of that argument
and just take it at face value.
I'm going to handle this differently.
I'm a new guy.
But with Canada, he made the last deal.
So no matter what, it doesn't matter if it was the president before.
It doesn't matter if it was him, him when it happened.
He's willing to throw everything out at any time.
Yeah, I wish I had, yeah, okay, I just got the direct quote.
I'm sorry.
In 2020, USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern,
and balanced trade agreement in history.
And it's the best agreement
the United States has ever made.
So to say that,
and then to undo it,
not but six years later,
five years later, really,
is people can't trust that, of course.
And you just undermine your ability
to do it at all going forward.
Honestly, even if new administrations come in,
I think that's the frustrating part
is the idea
that he could totally,
I mean, the Republican Party
could lose the next election,
we could have an all-democratic,
like Senate, House of Representatives.
No, it could be Mark Carney's clone
wins in America and they handshake
and they love each other and they kiss.
But it doesn't really matter who's in charge next
because there's this underlying idea
of no matter what the result,
things can just flip to another insane guy
within four years.
Yeah.
And that is the memory
that will live on for at least a few more terms, I feel like.
Yeah, yeah, I think you'd have to build a...
Trust is a lot harder to build back than just to lose.
And I think, like, you just can't make a 20-year deal.
You have to make a four-year deal max,
and then, like, re-negue...
You know, it's just, that's a...
I think that is going to have consequences for a while to come.
And it's like, it's a depressing way.
I mean, it's like...
Do you ever think about how...
We've talked about this, the idea of, like, the benevolent dictator?
It's like the benefit of, you know, tons of tradeoffs.
I hope they're very obvious.
But when you have one guy in charge for a really long time, you can make a bunch of,
you can make a bunch of progress.
I think Lee Kuan, you in Singapore is like a good example.
And even in China's case, right, you have, for all of their problems that we've discussed
at length, you have one consistent figure that's in charge and like pursuing a policy
agenda for a long period of time that,
can result in good things for that place.
You could also have an insane guy at the head.
Is this your Putin for America pitch?
Is this trying to...
I would classify him in insane guys?
No, I see what you're sharing.
But it's funny because it still depends on the person
because if you gave Trump 20 years in power
of complete control, he would still change his mind
on his own deal.
It would still go, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, if you have to be stable.
It's like any human relationship.
Whether it's the government, whether it's a person,
whether it's an autocrat,
whether it's their regards.
They have to,
they have to commit to things they say they're going to do.
He loves D-Day.
He loves D-Day.
He just wants D-Day to happen.
It's like,
if we had unlimited terms of Trump.
Yeah.
Like, say we've had Trump for the last 25 years.
We're still flip-lopping trade deals in time.
No, I mean,
and that's what's happening in Iran, too,
is that they,
they are finding,
even when we get to the negotiation table,
things change or the second,
the second,
the balance of power is in his favor.
He's like,
the old deal.
I'm,
it's like Darth Vader.
It's like,
that's what I've altered the deal.
That's the problem.
And so everyone is rationally
doing the rational thing,
which is find whatever leverage we have
and grow that out as much as possible
so that I have some counter punch.
Otherwise,
you're going to keep bullying me.
That is like just what you have to do.
And it's a,
I don't know,
it's a frustrating experience.
You know what never changes?
What never changes?
Answer sells.
I don't think famously.
It's not the problem.
Is it they're constantly?
No, I'm, hold on, I'm reading something.
That's like the worst.
I'm reading something.
Turns out they change all the time.
They all the time.
It's actually, it's actually part of what makes it really hard to address.
It's a.
So it's basically been unaddressable until Doug is about to tell us that it's been
100% cured right now.
Until now.
That's right.
Okay, major cancer breakthrough.
Now,
probably all of y'all have heard stories where somebody, I've done this on this show, right?
Where you're like big scientific breakthrough seems like this could have huge implications for cancer.
And you're like, whoa, that sounds cool. And then two years go by and you've never heard about it again.
And this goes, this happens every one, two, three years. And eventually when you're a grizzled old like man in your 50s,
well, you start to be like, okay. Is he looking at it? I don't know that I necessarily trust the next story I hear about some scientist eliminated tumors.
in mice or whatever. So Perry,
I sent you an article, but you can honestly
you can pull this up anywhere. This is a huge story this past
week. Moderna, we love
them. They injected us all with
microchips. Okay.
I'm a Moderna taker.
This. I can talk to Bill Gates. It's awesome.
You give us me advice. Yeah.
Constantly during this show, we communicate to each other the jokes.
The whole show is written by Atriac
and then we're fed the lines.
I'm getting it from Bill Gates. So if you
have anything, if you're angry about anything
we are Doug said, it's actually,
It's actually, I don't like Atrox script for that Doug joke.
Okay, but this, you know, this is not one of those stories.
This is an actual, we made a thing that is going to help cancer for real now.
So, uh, Moderna, a huge announcement last week.
Let me just back up and quickly.
You remember RNA vaccines, that cool new thing that we, I mean, not invented, but, you know, became.
That we invented.
That was a big thing about L.S.
So obviously that really kicked off during COVID-A.
era and that was how we made the COVID vaccines. And this is a really interesting and valuable
new way to be able to make vaccines. The general difference is instead of a normal vaccine where
you inject a weakened version of a virus, for example. With RNA, you're sending messengers,
which will tell the cells to make something. So the idea is we can design in a lab. We want
your cells to make a certain type of thing. Inject that. The cells make it. And then your body
learns, that's a bad thing. I'm going to look out for it. So it's very flexible and
fast and has all these advantages over traditional vaccines.
So given that,
um,
as you pointed out,
actually that was wrong.
Cancer cells do change a lot.
And this is first time I'm here.
And that's kind of trust because Aiden has a strong background in medical science.
That's true.
Well,
in podcasting,
which is downstream of all.
Upstream of all knowledge.
Yes.
It's cool.
Once you click the first upload button,
YouTube has you glance into the orb of knowledge.
And from that point,
forward you cannot be wrong. Yeah. So as we are creating this new type of vaccine that you can basically
design in a lab what you are going to tell your body to make, it opens up this idea of could you
make a personalized cancer vaccine? Part of the challenge of cancers again is like they change all the
time and it's your own body cells changing. How are you going to get your body to figure out
exactly what the cancer cells look like? And they're changing all the time anyway. So in 2017,
moderna started developing a personalized cancer vaccine for melanoma, which is skin cancer.
So here's the process that they came up with. You take a sample of somebody's cancer cells,
the actual tumor. You use their program, which will analyze via machine learning, will analyze all
the different cells, including healthy cells. And there's like thousands of different ways
mutations might show up or different proteins that can show on the surface of a cell. And they
design up to hopefully 34 of these basically markers of what a cancer
cell looks like in this person's body rather than a healthy cell.
Okay.
So they are,
they are analyzing your specific DNA and the way the DNA is showing up and
creating cancer.
Okay.
They then in their lab, design and manufacture an RNA vaccine that is custom to you.
It is specific to your specific cancer cells.
Okay.
And then they create that.
They inject it.
The immune system says, okay, I'm going to build this thing that you told me how to build.
It builds it, or I should say, the cells,
build it. The immune system goes, what are these things? What the fuck's going on here? It identifies them go, okay, I know to look out for these in the future. And then it goes on to the rest of the body realizes it's present in the cancer cells. And it kills it. So you are creating, you're basically using machine learning to understand some specific traits of tumors from your specific body. You tell the body to make that very specific thing. And now the body is trained against your specific cancer. This is a sort of like conceptual dream that people have had for a long time.
Now, in 2023, they've been working on this since 2017.
In 2020, they started phase three trials.
Phase three is basically the final test for medicine.
This is the really big one you get.
This one had 1,100 people, different countries, different hospitals, blind studies.
It's the extremely thorough.
If this passes, this is a legit drug that we can sell to people.
And last week, on Wednesday, they announced they had passed phase three trials.
Oh, shit.
They passed phase three trials.
I thought they had, I thought this was they started it, dude.
Wait, that's huge.
Last week, and this is again, this is not hypothetical.
It's not promising research.
Last week, a major pharmaceutical company cleared the trials to prove that they have a cancer vaccine that dramatically reduces the death and recurrence of melanoma.
That's insane.
That's funny.
And for all of these patients, that's a custom-made RNA for that individual person.
Nothing like that has happened before and actually gotten through phase three trials.
So this is fucking awesome.
There's one and a half million Americans, just in America, living with melanoma.
every year 110,000 new people are diagnosed.
This is from the cancer organizations.
I forget the names.
8,500 people die a year in the U.S.
from melanoma, about 60,000 globally.
And the idea now is like,
this is going to help them.
In this particular case, it's melanoma post-surgery,
but they're looking at approximately
a 50% reduction in cancer, recurrence, or death.
So it's not 100% gone,
but 50% reduction.
A couple asteris here that I can get to later,
but that's basically what we're looking at.
All this stuff about live saved and people helped.
What about Moderna's stock price?
That's what we're talking about.
That's a question.
Nobody gives a shit except for the stock, dude.
Perry, can you pull up the Moderna stock market?
So our graph is actually insane.
It's insane.
So last Wednesday, Moderna announced this.
And this had been kind of cooking for a while.
But again, phase three passing is a big deal.
And they announced this.
And the stock went from $62 and close to the day at 170% increase.
doubled? It over doubled. Wait a day. That's crazy. At its peak, it had over tripled.
This is an SMP 500 company. That's a crazy swing for a company that went up over two and a half X in a single day.
So, I mean, you guys can guess why? Well, what that says, though, is that company's entire value of all their drugs is to the market worth less than this drug
passing stage three trials or the potential of what this can mean.
There you go.
It's the potential.
Right.
There you.
Investors are reading that this company could be at the forefront of developing a
treatment for all cancers.
Yes.
Wow.
So a quote from Barclay's analysts said they expect that this particular therapy that just
got passed could generate annual sales of about $3 billion for melanoma by 2035.
That's good.
But that's not like earth-shattering numbers right there.
But again, the real signal here is this is the first time a custom RNA cancer vaccine has succeeded a phase three trial, right?
And phase three trial is like the vast, it's like 66% fail in phase three at least.
So the underlying concept of we as humanity can design customized cures for people is now proven.
So that's what this really represents.
The next day, the stock plunges 25%.
I mean, still from a high.
And so I was curious why.
well, Moderna is actually like not doing well other than this.
Moderna, this last quarter posted a net loss of 782 million on revenues of 145 million.
They have not had a hit since the COVID vaccine.
They kind of like, you know, just shoot.
Yeah, it was a hit though.
That one hit crazy.
So they're kind of a one hit wonder.
They were doing this awesome EP right in 2020.
That summer, their music just fucking took me play.
I was amazing. I listened to all three albums. I actually just did one of the, you did all three different albums. Fizer. I got the deluxe. Oh, I meant I got three shots of Moderna.
Oh, yeah. No, no, that's listening to the same album three times. My bad. By bad. So, okay, so what's next? The FDA still needs to approve this. But again, you know, this is should all go well. And phase three trials like is at a level of, let's say, scrutiny where it should go through. So we should actually.
people should be able to get this as a treatment in like a year or two.
Moderna is obviously going to try this for other cancers.
Melanoma is, so here's some of the disclaimers.
Like this isn't, you know, cancer is cured.
Melanoma is one of the easier ones for this to work on.
It's why they started with this one.
And the idea is like it mutates a lot.
So it's easier for, you know, their algorithm to analyze it because you have a lot of different
potential targets because it's such a high mutating one.
So they're basically going to start going for cancers that also are high mutating.
and slowly work towards the harder ones.
But Moderna is already trying this.
The mid-stage trials for bladder, kidney, pancreatic, stomach cancers.
There's large trials ongoing right now for certain lung cancers.
And then there's like Sam Borell, the CEO of the medical research charity Life Arc said,
this study will help build confidence that more tailored approaches to treatments for rare conditions
that are driven by unique genetic mutations, meaning it's not even just cancer.
It's anything that's genetically related.
this is proving like, holy shit, there's some real potential here.
And there's a lot of other companies that are trying this.
For example, Bio-Ntech is working on colon and pancreatic cancer, custom vaccines.
So a lot of people are doing this.
There's trials underway.
And this is this giant signal to everybody of like, holy shit, this can work.
This is awesome.
This is a fucking cool story.
It's going to be so sick because like when the AI powered drones that are getting discovered in Ukraine right now come
for us will all be cancer-free.
It is one of those things.
Run us down like dogs in the street.
I will be running. At tip-top shape.
Nothing will slow me down.
I want to have a cough.
I'm going to be on like the
the endth version of GLP ones.
My body's going to be in peak
as a condition for the drone war.
Immaculate as the AI drone war.
Burnt to a crisp around you.
We are going to be so old and so unhappy.
This week's episode.
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Okay.
Speaking of robot drones and cancer research,
I want to know what's at the forefront of robotics.
in China because I haven't seen clips.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'll pull some clips.
We had Fummi, our researcher,
bring some clips of,
you've probably seen some of these.
The World Robot,
the world humanoid robot games
has kicked off in Beijing.
You've probably seen some of these clips
of them running
Usain Bolt style.
They beat Usain Bolt's record
in the sprint.
The thing that's different this year
is that all of the robots
are required to have no remote operation.
You can't plug them in.
It has to all run autonomously on its own
when you tell what they do.
And so they, you know, there's two conferences here.
There's the robot games,
which is like basically in Olympics
where they do high jump and running
and everything else.
And there's a conference,
which is a slightly different name.
It's like the robot,
World Robot Conference.
And it's having the same time in Beijing,
and that is more of like almost a business to business,
people showing off real industrial capacity
of the robots,
what things they can do.
It's less public.
This is sort of China's like, show off to the world, see the capabilities.
Sports are a great way to see year-to-year progress.
What's happening.
And what they're noticing this year is that there's been a pretty big leap.
They're breaking a lot of records they couldn't break before.
They're going autonomous longer than they could before.
They're doing physical actions.
I mean, I don't know if I have the clip here.
What the hell?
Yeah, that's the actual conference.
Okay, if you audio listeners, we're looking on a robot cowboy riding a robot horse.
and now a robot playing ping pong pretty well.
That's the perfect one.
So same thing to switch over here.
This is a 135 shot robot rally in tennis,
humans hitting the robots.
So it's like unpredictable.
And again,
it's moving around on its own.
It's adapting to what it sees.
It's all autonomous,
no,
no remote.
And so its ability to do mechanical tasks
that were previously,
it would break down a lot quicker,
has dramatically increased.
Now,
they're still not there.
This isn't, people at the conference were saying there isn't yet what they call the
chat GPT moment for robots, as in a perfectly economic use case that makes sense and it
crushes that.
But it's, everyone is noticing that it's just a lot closer.
Like, you can do a lot more things like all these robots.
Again, there's many companies competing that are all going to do independently.
And from the Chinese side, now we've seen this economically from what they did in EVs.
Well, people are saying at this conference is they have adopted a very similar
playbook, which is there's state subsidies overall.
Like if you hit this goal, you can make a lot of money.
But there are lots of competing companies.
A lot of people are in a full industrial race to make the best robot.
And so many of them are trying to out-innovate each other certain tasks.
There's a really frenzied competition between these companies, all of which are starting
to go IPO at the same time.
So I don't know if I mentioned on this show, but in general, the Chinese stock market has
been flat for like 30 years.
They just don't, despite the economy growing, their stock market has been a bad place
to put money. This summer they've had the biggest IPOs, you know, basically ever in China,
or at least in their market's history. In their market's history. You know, like, and a lot of
them are robotics. Unitary launched and did like a 600% pop day one, bigger than SpaceX. Not a bigger
company, but a bigger pump. And so it's like a lot of interest and passion into this as a new
growing industry in China. And it is, you know, you can see the advancements in this field at the same
time as the advances in AI, they haven't yet truly merged.
But when they merge, it's a spooky thing and possibly a, I mean, it just changes the world
a dramatic way.
If used in a good way, it can mean like a massive increase in, you know, the ability
to output things from factories or whatever.
But it's like, it just changes what is possible.
And none of this is like right around the corner, it's not one year away, according to all
the interviews from the thing.
But people are just noticing that the advances starting to compound.
Like this guy's figuring this out.
This guy's figuring this out.
They're adding it together.
They're just guys doing this thing.
And it's becoming a really dense evolution.
Wait, is that?
Am I correct in looking at this?
Shanghai Composite Index has increased like 80% in the last year and a half,
something like that?
Three years.
Oh, three years.
Even still.
It's been a huge church.
Wow.
Okay.
So can I?
Yeah.
Can I be a hater for a second?
Yeah.
You can steal man it, eh?
Hey.
One thing I find funny about this,
especially after going to applied intuition,
look, I'm a simple man.
I see a video of a robot playing tennis and moving around.
I still think that's cool.
Part of me still thinks that's cool.
But I remember a point of discussion we had at Applied Intuition,
which is they had this back area that we weren't allowed to see,
that had robots that they were working on,
different form factors of robots.
And one of the ones is in the background
of the interview we do in that episode,
and it is a human form factor robot.
And I think because we're human beings
and because of media,
there is this strong, desired form factor
of can we make a robot humanoid
that does things like we do?
But looking at that running competition,
is kind of funny because you can make a faster robot.
I think they have already made faster robots than that
by just not doing a human form factor.
You put it on a wheel and it would, no, yeah.
And the idea that we need to chase this like perfected human form factor robot,
maybe it's because people think that that will be easier to accept
or integrate from like a commercial perspective.
Maybe that's the argument.
But to me, I've always thought it's a little dumb.
It's like in a world of like biological evolution
of all these different like plants and animals
that do all these insane things.
The idea that this is the form factor
you should be chasing for your perfect robot
that does a bunch of stuff
or even having like the robot humanoid games,
you could be making and chasing other things.
And I'm sure, and there are,
I've been to a company where they're working on other stuff like that.
I'm sure it's happening in the background already.
It already happens with drones.
It already happens.
But I think the obsession with the human form factor robot always feels a little silly to me.
Well, let me make a straw robot man.
Okay.
A straw robot man.
The value of a humanoid robot is not inherently in the shape of humans being better than the shape of like Ultron or whatever.
But it's that we as humanity have built our society around the human shape.
So if you want a robot to help with people around the house or whatever, human houses are meant for humans.
So most of the tasks are optimized for that rather than a big death machine that can move really fast.
That's the argument.
In my head, it's like, could you not?
I will say, does it need to run faster than you've seen Bolt?
No.
But if you want like, you know, you want it to do laundry and use the laundry machine and get under the sink to pick up things and put things up in shelves.
Like, you know, it's all built for humans right now.
Yeah, but imagine like even dream with me for a second.
I'm dreaming with you.
It's a robot that does all your chores at home.
Okay.
It's commercially affordable.
Okay.
It has four arms instead of two.
You know, it surely that one's a little better at the job.
Part of that is it's off-putting.
I think what you said about it being like a form factor
that we can anthropomorphize.
People call chat GPT like they say nice things to it.
You know what I'm saying?
I think that might be it too.
But in my head I'm like,
I think I rather,
maybe I want a little spider robot at home.
Dude, there's the chores.
You want a spider,
you don't need four arms if your arms move as fast as Hussein Bolt.
Okay.
I think really fast, Aiden.
Actually, that was, this is a silly.
That's all he can dream is.
This is perfect.
You don't need to upgrade this.
You know what?
People made fun of me for teasing the fact that I didn't love Project Hail Mary,
but I thought something cool about that movie is so many times in media,
the presentation of aliens is like so humanoid.
And because it's natural to express things in that way, right?
But in that movie,
they take an advantage, like, no, like this life form in a far off galaxy that we like meet up with,
it has no reason to be similar to us in really any way.
But it still thinks and talks like a Redditor.
That's universal.
You're being humanoidous.
I don't like this.
And would I want a little robots, if the robot spider does the dishes really fast,
I think I prefer it.
Oh, I don't know.
I think it'd still be creepier.
If it's like my friend, robot human and he's like, hey, and then a robot spider's like,
You're the marketing guy.
This makes sense.
I think it's a marketing.
But it's,
I'll just say that the reason
this is all humanoid
in this Olympics thing
is entirely marketing.
This is like a show to the world
of how good China has gotten
at robotics.
And I think the one big question
about this that I want to post to you guys
is like, if you pull this chart up,
so the, the issue is
that all of the parts
that are going into these advanced robotics
are almost entirely made in East Asia
and mostly in China,
especially the magnets,
precision bearing, the power electronics, the encoder.
All this stuff is majority made in China or if you include South Korea and Japan.
We almost have none of it in America.
Tesla, I've maligned them plenty, but there are only like robotics company even close to the scale
and size needed at the level that's going on in China.
And they're ahead.
It seems to me that they're quite ahead.
And so it does feel like one of the big questions is if this is, it could be farther away
that people think, it could be closer than people think.
But if this is like a next industrial revolution where you start merging AI and physical robotics and this is happening not here. It's happening like it's clearly not happening here. It's happening in China. And that's a big question. Like people have to start thinking about that, waking up to that and kind of figure out what because nobody wants to be in the country that where the next industrial revolution doesn't happen. As the history shows, that's a really bad. I mean, even looking at this graph, right, where Japan is represented in a pretty big portion of these different categories, right? In that,
When I was going over that article of like Japanese robots replacing farm workers from a couple
episodes ago, one of the points it made is that the Japanese robotics industry is falling behind
relative to China and South Korea. And even though they do have that industry, and it's been around
for a long time, they aren't even necessarily keeping up in innovation. Yeah. So there seems like
there's a fewer and fewer players that are capable of developing these things at a point that can align
with.
I mean, it's what we read in Breaknet,
where it's like this scale
of so many competitors
at the same time
because we had like Boston Dynamics
who was like one of the early leaders
in robotics and they had those
videos that went viral
eight years ago.
But they're not keeping pace.
There's not enough pressure
or competition or other people
compared to what's going on
with all these companies.
So it's just a,
I think it's going to become a really big story
once robotics has a chat GPT moment
where it's like,
oh, this robot can run autonomously
in a factory for three weeks
without doing anything.
and it's like a big deal.
And once that happens, it's like, wait a minute.
This is a huge, huge efficiency advantage.
I don't know.
We'll see.
It's been cleaning my clothes for three straight weeks.
Your clothes are threadbare.
I've been trying to stop it.
It only knows how to clean.
It shoves me away with two of its arms.
The other two keep cleaning.
Wait, one final quick anecdote,
which is just a funny part of this.
The cultural difference between us and China right now,
when we went to China and we went into the mall to go look at their insane cars,
while you were waiting around
until check out the new
Xiaomi SU7
I went downstairs
because there was a
humanoid robotics stall
in the mall
and I got to like
they showed off the robot dogs
that were doing dances
they didn't have the humanoids there
because they were like
oh we're doing a big show today
this is in malls
in malls they have multiple companies
doing humanoid robotics
and showing them to people right there
dude when the guy
I walked downstairs
because Doug was there
and then when the guy
made the dog like run at
from the other side of the room, I was like, oh my God.
So maybe this is different.
No.
When you see it moving at you fast, it's like, wow.
So maybe I don't want that.
Maybe I don't want it.
Feels creepier.
It feels creepier.
It does feel creepier.
I want to be dominated by humanoid looking things.
Yeah.
I want to be killed by a human robot.
I've always said that.
All right.
How do we transition this to New Zealand housing?
China.
geographically. Okay, it would take the humanoid robot, I believe, if I do the calculations here,
31 minutes to run from China to New Zealand. Yep, I think that's accurate, Doug.
And what would they find housing-wise in New Zealand when they got there? And they would find a wealth of townhomes.
The Chinese robots would have plenty of townhomes to move into. The Chinese robots are going to need a place to live.
What country has some space? And they can move to Auckland. Okay.
You've been to Auckland.
So I think, yeah, me and H. Rock have been to Auckland together.
We did a little New Zealand tour.
We gambled.
We did gamble.
I went up $1,000 New Zealand dollars.
We went in the middle of the day to, is a sad thing to do, which is a casino in the middle of the day.
It was basically empty.
Dude, we played Blackjack with a viewer.
Yeah, we sat down and gambled and then the only other person in the casino was like, are you eight?
Yeah, it was crazy.
It was, I love the yard.
It was crazy.
And then we all won and we were like hugging each other.
Like, yeah, anyway, sorry.
It was great.
It was great.
I think as someone who loosely follows New Zealand,
a lot of the economic news you hear about the country right now
is pretty negative.
Like rising cost of real estate,
unaffordable rents, brain drain of their young, educated population
to either Australian universities or the Australian workforce,
an aging population of Australian, older Australians moving there
and buying property.
and they're not really being a lot of opportunity
for like working class New Zealanders right now
as their real estate market has shot up
over the course of like the last few decades
and priced a lot of people out.
But this was a good story
that kind of told a little, you know,
a little news in the opposite direction.
Okay.
So in 2000, I think it was 2016,
it might have been a bit earlier than that.
New Zealand, or Auckland specifically, New Zealand's biggest city, changed their zoning laws.
So they rezoned 75% of the land.
And this was to allow more dense housing to be built.
They had a lot of it zoned for like single family homes.
And if you look at the reform prior or if you look prior to the reform,
96% of the land was zoned for low density housing.
And after the reform, 45% of it went to medium low, 23% went to medium,
7% went to high.
The basic idea that we need to build more buildings up,
and we are willing to relinquish the idea of large houses in exchange for smaller
properties because of the demand of people who need to live here.
And there is a limited amount of land in Auckland to even develop in the first place.
And what was pretty cool is the results have kind of come in after a decade of this policy being around.
The housing stock, there are now about 620,000 available, sorry, 620,000 total units of housing,
100,000 more than over a decade ago before the reforms.
And median house prices have fallen about a quarter in that same time,
more than the overall drop for the nation in the same time period.
And rental prices since 2016 rose 26% more in the rest of the north,
Thailand of the country, then in Auckland itself. Basically, they just built a ton of townhouses,
turning lots that would normally be one house into like four or five units of housing. And it's funny
because if you look at Auckland on this chart in the same article, it's not a particularly
dense city still. Like they could be building a lot more like towers and apartment buildings
and build further up. This is not a particularly, uh, even aggressive policy.
but this change has moved the needle in some direction.
And I'm sure that there are young New Zealanders
listening to this right now that are saying,
I'm still economically fucked, things are still expensive.
New Zealand is not free of problems.
And this is also off of the back
of a giant increase in property costs
over the past few decades that still needs to be
like rectified and reckoned with.
But it is cool to see the impact
of how a policy change on building
did have a tangible effect
on mitigating the cost of housing in the area.
And that's pretty much it.
No, it's awesome.
I mean, listen, Auckland is not going to solve the economy of Australia.
No individual city is going to solve youth unemployment, everything for the whole country.
The fact that they built...
Even for New Zealand.
Like, it's like Austin.
Austin did a similar thing, right?
And they're not...
Like, it's still hard to be trying to find a job when a young person in Austin.
But the point is that their rent prices aren't rising at the same level as other cities in the state.
Yeah.
Like, it's just cool.
It's cool to see that it worked.
it's shocking that building more housing would be...
Building housing makes the prices go down.
It really blows my mind.
Have they tried capping the price on but not building anymore?
I think if you are from New Zealand,
especially if you're a young person right now,
if you're in your 20s, early 30s,
would love to hear about what your economic experience is in the country
if this change is really that noticeable by you.
Because ultimately, rent still rose in Auckland.
It's not like rent went down overall since.
since 10 years ago.
So I'm curious if this like
seeming win
or this very relative win
feels like a win in your actual life.
But it was interesting
to read about at the very least.
That's cool.
That's really cool.
That's awesome.
I'm glad it's, I mean,
this is just a lesson that I
hope that all the world leaders
in our audience take.
It's like this is one of the easiest
wins is that rezoning has been
successful in almost every city it's been tried. It's like
it's one of the most things in politics are tradeoffs.
I mean, this one has a tradeoff in that housing prices for boomers might go down.
But like this is. It's harder to get a single family home. Yeah.
I mean, like I give a counter like a friend, I guess I don't know if he'd want to share it.
But like a friend of mine who lives in Texas of ours bought a home and the value has gone down by like 50K
over the last couple years. And that's got to feel fucking horrible.
And that's because Austin has built so much house that it is a buyer's market.
And you cannot, you know, your housing value does not just like go up in perpetuity anymore.
That's not how it works.
And rents are down.
It's great better than ever to be a renter in Austin.
It's more affordable to pay rent and live in a place in Austin than it has been in a long time.
And also owning a home is less valuable.
Yeah, it sucks.
Because I feels like the niche.
I like the tradeoff and that friend said, I like that this is happening.
It just sucks to see.
investment get fucked. Exactly. I think that's the niche pool of people that I have some sympathy for
that I think unfortunately needs that is the trade-off that we need to make. The people who have like
managed to save enough money to all in it on a house that's pretty expensive. They're getting screwed.
And then they don't have a lot of savings or assets in like anything else because they they saved
everything to just get over the hump of being able to afford a house and now somehow. Like this happens with
friends who are like relatively successful in L.A. And they, they save for years to finally get a
house here. They have two incomes. They put it all in. Yeah. And, and, and that's all they got. And
and it dips for them. I think that is the, but there's no other way. Like there has to be,
something has to give eventually in order for the problem to be solved. Yeah. 100%. God,
I hope we have mass surveillance on all those new New Zealand homeowners. Thank God, Doug,
because there's a new flock camera on every corner of Auckland. I made that up.
Is this about, there's flock in Auckland?
I have no idea.
Oh,
Flockland?
Flockland?
They're calling it Flockland.
Is this Flock camera story?
Flock camera.
What's new about Flock cameras?
We talked about it last week.
We talked about flock cameras.
Yeah, it was like two or three weeks ago.
So little flock camera update.
This is becoming an increasingly contentious issue.
And we talked about how a couple weeks ago,
various American cities are starting to say no to the flock cameras
that their police departments and HOAs and schools and all these communities
are installing. People are starting to really get some pushback.
Yeah, I saw a story of a guy who took down a flock camera. Is this part of your thing?
In Ohio? He took out a flat camera in Ohio. And then a grand jury refused to indict him.
Wow. Like he was caught doing it and they just didn't indict him. It's a sign of the times.
I mean, that's, that's a wild thing because they had 100% evidence that he.
I don't think they did have evidence because the flock camera couldn't track him after.
Once he took it down, there was no more video.
Anyway, I'm sorry to go off.
That's the trick about crime now.
Okay, so this is a minor story update,
and I'm going to give you some different perspectives
that I thought were interesting.
Flock, this is about 10 days ago now,
announced some changes in the response to this enormous
increasing backlash.
And they basically said,
we're going to change our privacy
and accountability and security.
There's a blog post about it.
You can check out.
Here are some of the takeaways.
Instead of storing license plate data for 30 days,
they're only going to store it for seven.
So we're like,
we were voluntarily kind of clamping this down with the asterisk that it can be extended via
evidence mode, which is an exceptional case where police are like, we need this data for longer
periods of time for this case.
We're going to filter the shared data.
So if you're sharing your data with another city or department, which has been one of the big
criticisms of like, this city just ends up sharing all their information with the federal
government.
That isn't on by default.
You have to pick specific categories that can be shared.
So more ability to filter.
they're going to audit automatically for abuse of their systems.
There's a Washington Post report that dozens of cops have now been arrested
because they've been personally abusing the flock systems.
There was a cop who used flock to, I believe, over 700 times track where his ex-wife was.
Jesus Christ.
So now if abuse is detected by flock,
they will automatically lock out those individuals from the police force from using flock.
You now have to have a case code to search.
and in the end, you know, they kind of hype themselves up and we're like, look, in July, we detected over 1,000 missing people and over 20,000 stolen cars. So it is their attempt to kind of do PR. A couple of interesting responses. ACLU has been very critical of flock. They said the devil's in the details. These are conceptually good, but ultimately this feels like PR move. We wanted 48 hours of data retention. Going down to seven is not enough. This evidence mode, in quote, is just like they'll just be able to store data forever if they want. The search.
filtering thing. Flock keeps saying we're going to get better about preventing other groups from
having the data. They've said that a lot, so maybe this time is different, but probably not.
A lot of left leaning commentators are obviously like pretty not convinced by this. A quote from
A. G. Delinger in G. Gsmodo. As for the actual communities affected by Flock, you'd be pretty
hard pressed to believe that a person ready to tear down a flock camera is going to have their
mind changed by shortening the recommended data retention window from 30 days to seven.
Yeah, that is, that's like the heart and soul of it, right? It's like, I don't think anyone
has ever been convinced by one of these corporate blog posts. I've never seen one of these come
out and it's been like, oh, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me give you another perspective.
Because I do think, let's, let's steal man and make sure we look at both sides. So this was a recent community
hearing. Let me make sure you can hear it.
Perry, I volume up. Let me know if you good.
Okay, this is a public safety committing in San Diego a few days ago.
The emperor is a fan of flock, and we must continue utilizing flock technologies
so that we can follow and surveil the rebels come as they move from playground to playground,
from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium,
because we all know that the flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers.
They are following children.
They are following children in parks and gymnasiums.
And we need this.
I need this so I can stock my ex-girlfriend.
So.
Okay, so Vader is Steelmandit.
I think he's got a good point.
Different cases.
Look, even the conservative commentators
in some of the articles that I saw are,
they're concerned.
I think there's not that many people
who are just stoked.
Oh, my God.
Stoked for flock.
I feel like if you're in a traditional,
past 20 years.
Yeah.
Like if you're a tea party guy
who actually...
You flock, you'd hate it.
Yeah.
If you're an anti-vaccine Facebook mom,
Vlock is like a fucking psychotic.
There's a kid on your playground with cameras.
Here's a quote from conservative Mike Fox.
This pro-surveillance narrative
relies on a fundamental misunderstanding
of the role of government
in a constitutional republic
and ignores the reality
that institutional power is inevitably abused.
It's kind of wild that conservatives
would be at all supportive of this
when this seemingly goes
so against what has traditionally been conservative.
It's like the balance of
real tough on crime
and then it's privacy.
That's the,
that's the fucking balance.
But yeah,
it just doesn't seem like this is a pretty popular movement now.
This anti-flock thing is like nationwide.
People that like people that are in government
that aren't listening are getting rolled over
by their constituents or yelling at them in,
in public forums.
Like it's becoming a big thing.
Like they just have.
to respond. The voters are seemingly against this overall. I was going to say, is this my weak
echo chamber mind? But I feel like flock sits in a very similar category as data centers,
where the pushback against it seems to be more bipartisan than you'd expect with a lot of
issues right now. Yeah. I mean, there's look, let's also be clear. There's definitely,
normal people. There are definitely plenty of people. It's hard to quantify who just like the idea
of police can solve more crime. I think, I think probably us three,
and most of our audience are not wild about what flock is doing, but that exists.
I talked to somebody who's in the Midwest kind of boomer era vibe a week or two ago,
and they were like, yeah, you know, the people against it just don't want crime to be taken
care of. But like, it's obviously good.
And we're trying to get installed in this other city and like somebody who's like kind of,
you know, involved with their local community.
So these people exist who are like, that's fine with me.
We want less crime.
But certainly the tide is going against it.
I mean, people fucking hate flock as much as they hate the Lakers.
Fuck you, first of all.
Well, actually, I don't even know.
It's tough.
I don't even know if I wanted to defend the Lakers anymore.
It's such a crazy time for me.
Well,
I was through it, Aden, because I'm, it's pissing me off.
I have,
I have an interesting question for you guys.
I think,
what do you think
the most valuable
sports franchise in the world is?
Lakers.
Sacramento Kings.
Ooh, they're on the list,
if you go down far enough.
From the list.
I think I have been just asking people this question for fun the last few weeks actually
and I think it's interesting to hear what people's responses are a lot of people will say
a really well-known basketball team like the Lakers a lot of people will try to read read the global
context of sports and they'll be like well it's probably a soccer team and then it's probably
real Madrid or like Barcelona or something like that and it is
the Dallas Cowboys
at an estimated
$15.5 billion
at the top of the
National Football League, a primarily
American sport.
And do you have a general idea
as to why
NFL teams are worth so much?
TV rights. Yeah, it's the TV rights.
And those TV rights are exploding over time.
So recently, the NFL and the NBA
both made gigantic new
11-year deal.
deals way larger than their previous ones. I think the NBA tripled their previous.
Damn. The NBA is like 77 billion dollars. That's actually worth more than curing cancer.
Dude, wait a minute. Yeah. That's crazy. It's the football. It's national football league.
Medina was 50 billion after double. That's crazy. And the NFL is 110 billion for 11 years.
And these deals just gotten negotiated, I think, a couple years ago now.
And these broadcast rights are getting insanely large
because it's the last thing really carrying network television
at the same time as you have all these streaming platforms
trying to cement their place in the market, right?
There's only, like for most people,
the way they consume TV now is they expect to watch it
at any given convenience and with minimal ads
or the ability to fast forward through things.
And the traditional network TV experience
doesn't really offer that anymore.
But what's the one thing that we all still watch live,
tolerate the ads through?
It's sports.
So these forces have kind of become juggernauts
for the leagues.
They're able to demand so much from these networks.
And in turn, because of the rev share deal
and the way that league revenue works,
this gets distributed to the rest of the league,
the rest of the owners, the rest of the players.
in things like the NFL and the NBA.
So recently, the Lakers announced the sale of their team
for the highest recorded sale of a sports franchise ever,
which is $12.5 billion,
which is also crazy because the Lakers just sold,
I think, a little over a year ago for around $10 billion.
The fact that somebody almost flipped it like a house
is kind of funny.
because normally once you get a seat at the table
within a very limited pool of owners
you stick around for a while.
The guy who was the owner of the Lakers
prior to this, also the owner of the Dodgers
is apparently in a bit of financial trouble right now
and he is being investigated by the DOJ
and the SEC
and is allegedly was trying to sell the Lakers quickly
in order to get a bunch of money
in order to help with that case.
And this reporting,
if you want to hear the longer,
story is by Pablo Torre, the same guy who did all of the investigative reporting on the
Kawhi Leonard stuff. So I really encourage you to look more into it or follow his stuff in
general if you're curious about it. But the reason why this deal is so crazy, it is led by
not Jared Kushner, I was about to say. Bob Archer? Josh. Josh. Josh Kushner? Yeah.
Yeah. It's this deal was led by Josh Kushner, Jerry Kushner's younger
brother and Bob Iger, the former two-time CEO of Disney.
But behind Josh Kushner is his private equity fund, Thrive, he is a main fund called Thrive Capital.
And this is his offshoot fund called Thrive Eternal, which recently set out a message to their investors to explain a new investment thesis that they at least have had for like the past year or so.
And the idea is in an age of uncertainty around investment, in the age of AI, when so many things
can be changed and replaced with this technology that we don't fully understand yet, how do we
evaluate the future?
What's something that we expect to be untouched by AI no matter what?
That seems like a promising industry that continuously pumps new money out of it because
of all of these other circumstances that are collided.
It's sports.
It's the ultimate, like, authentic human.
and experience, right?
And they made this acquisition
of the NBA teams.
And as we can see, like, within a year,
they turned around a $2 billion profit
on the sale of this team.
Right.
And that is crazy in itself.
But it presents this idea,
something that Pablo was talking about,
that I think is really interesting,
is private equity has only been able
to get chunks of teams
for the past
few years.
Like the change, it's starting in 2019 was when private equity was able to have any stake in any of
these major sports teams.
And, uh, the rules were changing the NBA, I think in 2019 and then the NFL in 2020.
No, sorry, it was the MLB in 2019.
What would change that allowed private equity to not be able to do that before?
Restrictions from the leagues themselves.
Okay.
So they chose to have a, I think in the past you have this like,
it's so funny to talk about, you know, owners in this way.
But God damn it, teams used to be more affordable.
They used to be cheaper.
No, it is.
It's because they got more expensive.
Yeah, the guy in your town who is rich enough could, could buy it in a sense.
Yeah, I mean, sports teams were like a billionaire luxury boy.
It was like a yacht or something.
It was like a, and when they were at a $1 billion to $5 billion valuation or whatever,
then it was like a thing they could have.
for it. But now because of what you said,
they are getting so valuable and so
expensive that a regular working class
billionaire can no longer buy one
on its own. Could we rezone to make more of
them? To make more teams or more billionaires?
Borth.
Borth.
I don't know. Look into that. Get chachapitia
on that. Yeah, so now that
they're so expensive, the only entities
that have enough money to be throwing around
billions to buy, it's like private
equity and... And Balbagger.
Beasier Bank. Well, Bobbocker's a small part of this deal.
I mean, he's like the face of it, but it's like,
Pushner's money, thrive capital.
And there's also limitations on,
uh,
in these leagues of how much sovereign wealth funds were able to buy it.
Like Norway's sovereign wealth fund couldn't buy out a sports team a long time.
Interesting.
But now these caps have been changed.
So the leagues are making changes that more and more of these like
institutional scale investors can get into sports and have a share.
And there's already a concern from sports fans.
So I think a lot of people are familiar with the idea that private equity has been ruining
youth sports in the U.S.
As private equity firms like take ownership over like hockey stadiums and hockey clubs and
like single areas, they're able to control so many facets of youth sports in a certain region
that they can up the fees for everything.
Even charging things like the, like restricting your ability to record your kids game
with your phone and then charging for the streaming.
which I thought was ridiculous until I talked to my uncle who my cousins all play hockey in
Alberta and he was saying he pays the $50 a month fee for all of the game feeds and like he
he doesn't mind because it's like it's got a nice overlay and like he wasn't going to report it
but if he did but he said technically he's not supposed to record the games which which is crazy
and now sports fans as they're beginning to interact with this I think the MLB is like the first
layer that was really getting hit by this because in 2019 when they lifted the
restriction a private equity group got a huge chunk of the red socks and a private equity group
that's interested in maximizing the team for profit and not this traditional chase of like
I'm an owner I'm a rich owner who owns the sports team and I want to win. Yeah. That is very
different than a private equity firm that's in the sport to make money. Those goals aren't necessarily
aligned. They're actually directly opposite if you really look into it because
in a sports league,
they split the TV revenue 30 ways or whatever.
And so theoretically,
whether your team is doing good or bad,
as long as the league is doing well,
you get a big cut.
So the maximized thing to do
is to pay your salaries as low as you can
the salary for, lose every game,
but get all the money on.
That's like the smartest thing to do.
Billionaires don't usually do that
because they want to win.
They want to be like the champion guy
holding up the trophy.
So it's like, yeah, it's...
I mean, the long-term fear
is you have so many of these players.
you have a market where
realistically the only parties who can afford teams anymore
are giant groups that are primarily interested
in milking the funds out of something
that is for a lot of cities like part of civic life.
It's not going to the baseball game
or supporting your team.
It's like a generational thing.
And the idea that now a group
who's trying to aggressively price tickets
and monetize food in every way,
they're, at what point do you like push away the fans that give the team value in the first play?
Supporting Thrive Capital could be like a cool thing I do with my son.
Dude, it would be so funny.
Dude, getting that, you know what we should do?
We should get Thrive Capital jerseys but with like Don Chish's name on the back and go to a game.
I just feel like that'd be a good father son bonding moment to both like help shareholder equity and Thrive Capital.
Like that's what I want him to grow up idolizing.
He's great.
thing. Yeah.
But the other thing I thought was really interesting about this is it,
sports has always been a platform for like statements and politics.
Like, you know, very simple images of like protest at the Olympics or something like that, right?
There's a, there's this soft power in sports.
It's why like Qatar, a place like Qatar really wants the World Cup.
Right.
It puts your name on this grander stage.
And it's so interesting, like even in, even outside of this private equity stuff,
you look at the way like Premier League teams
are being bought up by like the,
a royal from the UAE or Qatar or the way Saudi Arabia
has like increased their spending in sports
and over to have,
in order to have this like global presence in it.
It's all of this global money is like surging
and spiking this industry that,
you know, is very human.
Yeah.
And it's kind of the last like,
bastion of human authenticity, and it kind of makes you wonder when it's all going to break.
Like, how much longer can all this money keep getting put into it?
So people are saying that, like, if there ever is a down round in like what these,
because these TV deals every time they do, like you said, it's so much bigger.
And if they ever, like, are flat to down on the next negotiation, if no one's offering
to pay you ever more billions for your TV rights, it like collapses all the growth models
baked into these sports teams,
because they don't run them right now for a profit.
They run them kind of dead even
and they just sell the team
for a higher valuation later
because everything's growing.
So it's weird.
Well, I think depending on the league you're in,
you could be making a lot of money, right?
Like if you have an NFL team,
if you have an NFL team
because of the way the NFL is structured,
you are probably making money.
You probably have a profitable team,
from my understanding.
I think it's different in leagues
where you don't have salary caps.
I think it gets like really fucky,
in like the Premier League,
where you do,
they do have rules now,
but you have people come in,
spend all this money.
The top end teams are losing money,
I think, like Real Madrid,
Barcelona,
Manchester,
United, Manchester City.
These are all orgs that,
I think,
are technically losing money.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
But they're,
because they're pushing the salary caps
for, like,
players higher and higher.
So I think there is an aspect
of, like,
egos and owners, too.
Like you get a small piece and a very exclusive pie and your team winning is kind of the only thing money can't buy.
Yeah, if you're that rich.
If you're that rich, yeah.
I will say there's one more angle of this story, which I think is interesting and I certainly can't explain it.
So I'm going to just toss it up there.
It's that Mark Walter, the owner that sold the Lakers, is he's in financial trouble, as you mentioned.
But that financial trouble and that investigation he's under seems to be like the tip of a very
large iceberg that expands broader outside of sports.
He made his money through this hedge fund.
And it's like he has tied it in with insurance companies that he bought.
And he is taking, this is what he's alleged of doing is the illegal crime,
taking insurance premiums and using them to gamble on things with the idea that he could
pay it back later with the, he's gambling on buying sports teams.
It's like, it's like Sam Beckman-free taking customer deposits.
And so, but if you look into it, it looks like.
This may be the case that a ton of private equity and hedge funds over the past few decades
have been like slowly but surely buying insurance companies and looting them to fund their operations.
And it seems to be they also seem to know that if this all goes belly up,
the insurance companies have to get bailed out because they are the insurance, life insurance
or whatever health insurance for lots of citizens.
So it's like this could, like he's the guy getting caught,
But as he starts to unwind all of his sports empires to pay, I mean, it's crazy.
Now, it may all end investigation because, like you said, Josh Kushner bought it.
And Josh Kushner is in the Kushner family, who's just tied to Trump.
And there's a history of like, hey, you do scratch my back, I scratch yours.
Maybe he gets a pardon.
Maybe that all goes away.
It's weird.
They sold him in just a few days.
Yeah.
Apparently the deal was in less than three days.
Yeah, which is like insane.
It's like open and close that.
But also it seems like Josh Kushner and Bob Iger wanted to buy the new law.
Vegas team that's going to start.
But then the bidding price got so high.
They were like, why don't we just buy an established team?
Like the Lakers, they reached out and it worked out.
But I just want to show you this clip real quick.
Because as a Lakers fan, I'm so excited.
You know, I don't like Kushner,
but I'm so glad we have a true, authentic Lakers fan
in Bob Eager to run the team.
For the listener, a little bit of background,
Bob is a Clippers fan.
And he was sitting courtside for nearly every home game
during my four years in LA.
And so you and I have spoken on a number of occasions.
But I know you're very close friends with one of our recent guest, Chris Paul,
who was just on the podcast.
But there was a lot made of your relationship with him and your relationship with Adam Silver.
It goes back a couple decades in sort of making the bubble possible,
the NBA bubble happened this past season.
Can you just speak a little bit about your relationship with Chris?
and your involvement in helping the bubble happen.
Sure.
I am a Clippers fan,
having moved from New York to Los Angeles back in 2000
and being a big NBA.
You've got to respect that.
Do I have to respect that guy who's buying a team
just for the money is like,
I don't even like them.
I don't even like them.
I fucking hate them.
It's not in my DNA to be a Lakers fan.
This is you going to the job interview
for that Valorant.
for Valerate position and you saying that you don't even like shooters.
I did.
Which you did do that.
I was in the last two for the role.
Wow.
And we had lunch together.
And I was like,
I'll be honest with you,
I don't even like shooters.
And then they passed.
And then at least Bob,
you know,
got the gig.
It's true.
Fucking Bob added again.
I mean,
to be fair,
Aadrock did not flash $12 billion.
Yeah.
I think they would have kind of funded a couple more two XKOs.
I'll talk about that on the page around.
Uh,
Anyway, it's a cluster buck.
And I do think when Pablo Tori's reporting come out and more comes out,
it's going to be like a bigger thing than just the Lakers,
even though this is already a pretty big deal of private equity in sports.
Yeah, I think it's just a really fascinating,
really fascinating business.
I'm like, I'm so into the money behind it all right now.
You greedy Bob Eiger pig.
Yeah, what can I say?
Just want the cash.
Do one more story.
Let's hear about another fun subject.
like data centers.
Oh, okay.
Well, okay, we're close up to the end of the show,
and we did a subject last week on data centers
and the political backlash.
I kind of wanted to just follow up
because like you mentioned with flock cameras,
first of all, a lot of reporting is coming out
on what people's polls and attitudes are towards data centers.
But it is becoming one of the few truly bipartisan issues in America
and governors and state representatives
who previously had been pro-dainter
and advocated how, you know, it's like we're bringing jobs to our state,
are all abandoning ship just simply out of voter pressure.
It is becoming like a 80-20 lineup.
And what's interesting is I talk a lot of data here from some good articles
is that there's a broader backlash against the tech industry as a whole
and AI as a whole.
But if you go to individual products, like even for example,
chat GPT, people have a generally positive,
view. I mean, if you talk about Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, people are more than 50%
positive. If you talk about like Apple and chatypt, it's closer to whatever. But the only ones that
are even somewhat negative are grok and anthropic. And most of the people are the purple bar, which is they
don't even know what it is. They're not, they haven't reached mainstream appeal. But like, if you ask
you what their individual use of the products, it's okay. But data centers have become a flashpoint
for, I think, a broader anger with, I think,
Part of it is like some of the marketing that AI firms have done to what it means to the average person.
I think they've pushed the message that this will take your job.
This will, it's about to change everything.
And that is causing people to be, I don't know, upset or afraid across party lines.
And what's interesting is, so I have a, by the way, this is sort of not unique to America,
but most in America than anywhere else.
So this grab out that was really interesting, about the rise of AI and the rise of AI in daily life.
and it's a proxy for like data center support,
the U.S. is the most concerned,
or more concerned than excited,
of any country in the world,
or at least of all the major ones pulled.
So it's like this is happening more uniquely here.
People are more feeling upset about the consequences
or like angry about it.
It's just strange.
And if you look at it,
the only remaining like even solid or like undecided data center group
are MAGA Republicans.
But like Republicans who are not MAGA
who are still like,
they're like they're anti-Data Center.
The left is anti-Data Center.
The liberals are anti-Data Center.
It's like this one group was like,
Trump said he liked him a while back
and I haven't changed my thoughts.
They're still locked in.
They just haven't moved their polling.
But it is, it is like if you look at this like
like Harris voters, for example,
It's a 13 point swing.
It's just swinging drastically since January.
In the last few months, it has become way more contentious.
People asked why.
So this is a pretty good study on people's responses on why.
The largest concern seems to be environmental, which I, listen, based on the data I've
seen is like the least impactful part of a data center.
I've seen credible concerns over noise.
Like if you're close enough to a data center, the powering of it is causing.
noise. Am I crazy? Am I wrong? No, I looked at the fact that you still have Discord
notifications pop up with the text on your laptop that you use for this job. Sorry, I'm sorry.
I turned off Shurmo this morning because I had to see someone's username. That's, it's not.
Just turn off notifications on your windows. Who has notifications on Windows? We're doing a
show, and you're just like, 80s messages are popping up. Data centers, it wouldn't be pushing all these
notifications on us. Tagda, you are. Data centers or no data centers. You need a fucking calendar. Can I say
that. Can I interrupt this segment to say?
It's not even related. You should
disable that. And you're going to put that calendar in the cloud.
Where do you think the calendars are located?
In the fucking data centers. This is a protest. He's on the 80-20.
In the fucking data centers. I am. You and I are
AI cucks. I'm going to use a calendar
that's stored in some data centers somewhere.
I'm going to tell you, Kathy Hockel
of New York. That's Kevin. Greg Abbott
of Texas. They have both
pivoted from being pro
data center to anti because
of political pressure because of how
much in America, this is becoming an issue. And it's a thorny question because I don't have the answer,
but like, given that I think some level of progress in this has to be made, like, they just have
to be built in some way. It should be a way that's, you know, not environmentally damaging.
It's not close to someone, so there's noise damage. But we can't have the country be the one
that's falling behind in everything because of this. I just think it's a weird situation where I think
they've done such a horrible job of articulating what the benefit is.
Like, if there are benefits, they are diffused and the negatives are localized.
So what is the, I don't know, I'm just wondering how we can solve this issue as a country
because it's coming down the pipe.
Like, I feel like the same thing would happen with robotics or anything.
You know what I'm saying?
I feel like the simple solution because it kind of is telling that people's opinion on
AI isn't necessarily aligned with this?
Like people's use of it, rather.
Yeah, their review preferences of usage are different.
So the fact that that is the case
and the fact that environmental concerns are the highest, right?
Yeah.
It seems like if you address people's concerns
with like quality of life, noise pollution,
environmental concerns, like,
if you can show tangible ways that these don't,
like, mitigate the damage that's done around them,
I feel like you could change a lot of people's minds.
For like the layman who cares more about that
than some like broader anti-AI principle.
Yeah, I guess I'm...
And that's easier said than done, I'm sure.
Yeah.
But that feels like the simple answer.
I don't think it's irrational for people to feel this way
if they don't see the benefit.
But I just...
I'm wondering how they solve because it's down...
It's like something I think should be solved.
It should be a win-win situation.
where we are still building new things.
I think what I'm saying is that when we talked about this a while ago,
where like do the majority of people see the like benefit or impact that AI is having on their life?
And we're making the argument that for a lot of young people in the country,
especially who are maybe more tapped into the consequences,
they don't really see those benefits yet.
And the tradeoffs don't seem worth it.
But when you look at like a broadom spectrum of people,
when you think about they,
and you look at their view of AI
and their own use of it,
they already see the positive applications.
They like being able to ask chat GPT a question
and spits it back and they don't think about it much more than that.
I think that's different than data centers though.
No, but that's what I mean.
Because they have that positive effect of AI
like in their life already,
if you just address these base concerns of like,
well, a data center near you means these consequences,
then the problem feels like it,
It's solved, even if that's like a difficult problem to solve.
Do you know what I mean?
Or do you feel like the, or are you saying the image of data centers is so tainted that even
if the noise concerns, the environmental concerns, all these things are addressed, that people
will no longer go back the other way?
I think there happens to be actually an interesting Bloomberg article called why Chinese citizens
are far more optimistic about AI than Americans.
I actually don't think it's really environmental.
Like the AI hate was really rising before the environmental aspects became.
a real solid reason to hate it.
But people are just propping up the environment as like the answer.
The sense I get is that people, I mean, obviously there are real environmental concerns.
I'm not downplaying that.
But I think that that is the, that's, that fill, that fills the slot for a reason to be
angry at this in general.
And that is based on the reporting by Jasmine's son that we talked about last week,
where she went and talked to people in small towns and they're like, we like chat chadip
like we're fine with it.
It's, we're not opposed to AI conceptually.
It's we don't trust these tech companies.
And in this Bloomberg article, it was.
like the past decades defining tech stories in the U.S. were mostly damaging. Social media
harming teenagers, the carbon cost of always on delivery, the collapse of trust after Edward Snowden.
So this article makes the argument that China, I mean, it's crazy. China, people excited about
AI and China is 84%. In the United States, it is 38%. More than double the population.
And they're saying, in China, the proliferation of technology has been carefully moderated by the
government and is everybody has seen in their lifetimes this huge improvement in the quality of
their lives. And then in America, it's like, we were at the top of the food chain relatively
in terms of development two, three decades ago. And people largely feel anxious and worried and
distrusting of tech broadly. So the sense I get, and I'm sure it's different per person from
multiple reports does seem to be that it is like America doesn't really trust these companies.
The environmental concerns are the reason to make that into a concrete policy change. I think
to back that up, there's a
study that showed people are
more supportive
of having a coal plant
built next to them than a data center.
Which environmentally makes,
there's just no fucking way.
So it does feel like environment has become the catch-all
for a general anger
towards what these represent
rather than...
Is it a clean coal plant?
I mean, look, I can speak to this personally
as I started to get angry,
about the AI content I was making like at the beginning of last year the criticism and it's kind of
you know tapered off now as I've kind of changed what I've done but initially it was just we don't
like AI we don't like what it's doing and it largely is about like generative AI it feels like
it's stealing people's work it's going to take replace jobs but now the first argument when you
see when people say I just don't like that you're using AI is the environmental concern like it's
switched to that and I again it gives me this feeling of like that's just the most prominent
reason to hate it, but ultimately people are scared and feeling frustrated with the whole industry
having this much power and growth. And please, I'm sure people in the comments, like, this is
obviously extremely nuanced. Let us know if you have other feelings on this, but I, you know what
I'd love to do is go to some towns and ask people. It'd be so interesting to like interview,
because I think ultimately, I feel like my perspective is so fueled by just people in our age
range, like between, basically between the age of like early 20s and like mid 30s. And also that
inherently is a group of people that's more online. And I'd love to hear people's like just more
average people's explanations of how they feel about this topic. Yeah, I have a hard time imagining
what would, I do have a hard time imagining what would turn this around in the US. It feels like it
rides on a larger wave that is difficult to challenge.
You know what?
Honestly,
so as a certified AI hype bro,
the thing that you can always fall back on,
we talked about this yesterday.
You can always fall back on medicine,
right?
You can always fall back on like,
well,
it's going to cure cancer.
And with that Moderna thing that I mentioned earlier,
when I first saw the story,
I was like,
there was like some like tweets or something
that were like,
you see AI is doing it.
Thanks to AI,
we're starting to cure cancer.
We're going to be able to make customized drugs.
And so that was one of the things I researched for the story.
It was like, was AI a part of this?
And like, no, they started this in 2017.
It's just straight up not.
It is machine learning, which is different.
And Moderna has a partnership with Chachabit, but the idea that AI is curing
cancer right now is not true. Like, it's not.
And so they're leaning into it. Like, it's, like,
clearly there's been a wake up call among AI companies that like,
hey, the chickens are coming home to roost in a way of like what we've been saying
and like the impunity with which we've been acting.
is going to cause a serious financial harm in the ability to get this.
Like there's like a 165 billion of data centers that have already been paid for that
haven't opened.
They've been like they've stopped construction because so like they, you know.
And so they're saying a lot of like they're going back to the cancer thing.
Yeah.
They're going back.
And it's just like dude.
It's like you can't claim credit for this modern one.
I guess if you are talking about machine learning broadly, you can, I guess.
But this is well before.
But I think these are specifically like if you pull this graph,
this last thing I want to say is.
is that even if AI were to have more,
like a lot of people are using chat GPT,
it's actually almost too much for me.
It's crazy,
but it's becoming useful
for a lot of people in a lot of ways.
And that doesn't make you want to have a data center
in your neighborhood because there's still a lot of,
whether it's founded or not,
and some of it is found,
that's what I want to show.
Electricity prices are surging in the United States.
So people are seeing power go up
at the same time as they're seeing
a massive, massive, massive,
multi-trillion dollar buildout in data centers.
Now these are not one-to-one.
Some of this is happening before,
but it lines up with the chat GPT moment
when the data center built out began.
And there is more strain on the grid.
And so people are not seeing the dirt,
like they're going to say,
my cost goes up,
maybe there's noise pollution.
Maybe possibly the town gets tax benefits,
but they're being like denied that in legal proceedings.
Like it's what do I get from having it built here?
Why not NIMBY it?
Why not be a NIMBY,
which is what most people are about most things in general
when it comes to data centers?
So they have to solve that problem
them if they want to build them.
That's just, you can't expect someone to leap at the chance to help you out.
Co-opting the YIMB movement for data centers.
Yes, rezone for data centers.
Build them up.
In my backyard.
And we are going to walk the walk here, which is why we're happy to announce that big yellow
thing back there.
That's a data center now.
It's powerful.
And it fuels all of the AI we use at lemonade.
It fuels all of the scripts that have been telepathically through our cancer vaccines
sent to each of us.
I will say I did look it up because someone in my chat was like,
would you ever live next to a data center?
And I looked it up.
There's dozens of data centers in Los Angeles.
And there's one within six miles of us now and where I live as well.
So where do you live again?
You tell my exact address.
Shut up!
You prompted it.
Someone's good to read your lips.
If you enjoyed this episode and you hate me, you're in luck.
You can go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand to watch the bonus episode this week because I won't be
on it. If you, if you, if you are a person who just slogs through lemonade sand and says, I hate
every time Aden fucking speaks. Subscribe to the Patreon now for the best episode ever. Dude, you won't
hear the Nordics mention once. You won't hear what Estonia mentioned once. It would be funny
if we do the Nordic Fun Fact episode. And it's just you and me. And we're like everything
is wildly wrong. Wait, that would make up Nordic fun facts. It's all negative.
I heard in Sweden they don't even throw out their trash. They just throw it right on the ground.
You will see these two on the bonus episode this week
and me on next week's main episode.
Thank you for watching.
Thanks guys.
Wait, real quick, just a reminder,
the cancer did not,
the vaccine did not cure the cancer?
I forget,
wait,
did I emphasize that properly?
What?
Did the vaccine cure?
Did I say the vaccine cure?
I've already written my comment,
done.
You said it didn't cure it,
and you said it provided,
you provided about 50% of cases.
50% with an asterisk.
You said it, yes, yes.
Okay, perfect.
I actually forgot.
I actually do want to throw this in at the end.
There's an important correction I wanted to make about last week's episode.
I actually thought somebody made a thread and this is not, it's an important correction.
Do it.
It's good for YouTube attention.
I think in my explanation of the Sudan Civil War, I remarked that way back when the
SAF's violence in the western part of the country was a historical reason for the violence
that the RSF is causing now, I think it is important for me to say that was incorrect.
There was an older group called the Janjaweed that preceded the RSF, became the RSF as it is now, that committed those atrocities back then.
The SAF did support them.
The important thing is like, I think in the episode we're kind of guessing as to the reason for like the retribution and the terrible violence that is unfolding now.
And maybe it's because of like retaliation against this group that did something back then.
That's not the case.
I think the point of that statement was for you to pick a group and say this is the problem.
This is the responsive.
I agree with that.
I just think it's an important correction to make.
Okay.
If we're all getting dirty laundry out,
I feel bad about the time that I said I was presenting my story
to an old bald guy and a skinny bird.
And I think you don't look skinny anymore.
You put on a lot of weight.
And it's noticeable.
I would not call you that.
Correct the story.
That was a port of correct the story.
And we'll see.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
See you next week, everybody.
Correct when I said we're leaving the show.
Yeah, yeah, I want to make that correction.
We have more corrections to make.
All right, bye, bye, bye, everybody, bye.
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