The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker This "wild and utterly engaging narrative" (Melanie Mitchell) shows why Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death, building AI tyrants, and creating limitless growth—are about oligarchic power, not preparing for the future Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs. In More Everything Forever, science journalist Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow—and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass. Nevertheless, these obsessions fuel fears that overwhelm reason—for example, that a rogue AI will exterminate humanity—at the expense of essential work on solving crucial problems like climate change. What’s more, these futuristic visions cloak a hunger for power under dreams of space colonies and digital immortality. The giants of Silicon Valley claim that their ideas are based on science, but the reality is darker: they come from a jumbled mix of shallow futurism and racist pseudoscience. More Everything Forever exposes the powerful and sinister ideas that dominate Silicon Valley, challenging us to see how foolish, and dangerous, these visions of the future are.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go

on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators.

Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 16 years and 23 episodes of the Chris Voss Show. We've been doing this show so long my back hurts because I've just been carrying it this

whole time. Actually, the great guests we've been having the show has been carrying this. And you can too support the show. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss, Chris Voss won the Tik Tokity and all those crazy places. And I've been excited to have this guest come on because he's written a book that's uh has outed you know some of the crap that's been going on in Silicon Valley we've seen it's uh for those of you watching this on YouTube that we've been on for 18 years 10 years from now uh it is April 2025 and there's some weird shit going on with the new Trump administration

in and some of the Silicon Valley billionaires that helped put him there. So we're going to get into it. He's the author of the newest book out April 22nd, 2025. Adam Becker joins us on the show. The title of his new book is called More Everything Forever, AI Overlords, Space Empires and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control space empires and Silicon Valley's crusade to control the fate of humanity. So, we're gonna get into with Adam, find out more from him about what he's up to, what he's found in his research and his knowledge. Adam Becker is a science journalist with a PhD in astrophysics. He's written for the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, Scientific America,

New Scientist, Quanta, and other publications. His first book, What is Real, was a New York Times book editor, book review editor's choice, and was long listed for the PEN Pen Literary Science Writing Award. He has been a science journalist fellow at the Santa Faye Institute with a science communicator in residence at the Simons Institute for the theory of computing and he lives in California. Welcome to the show. How are you, Adam? Adam L. Oh, thanks for having me, Chris. I'm doing really well. How are you? Chris I am excellent. Good to have you. Give us a dot coms. Any place on the social media

as you want people to look you up? Adam Sure. Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky and Adam Becker and my website is freelanceastro.com. You're not posting on X then, huh? No, I used to, but then the weirdest thing happened. What was that? A horrible billionaire took it over and led a bunch of Nazis onto the platform. Wow. So Nazis are bad? Is that what you're

saying? Pete Slauson Yes. Pete Slauson If there's one message I really want listeners to take away from this interview is that Nazis are bad. Pete Slauson Yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah.

Pete Slauson Yeah. Pete Slauson It's interesting how that has, that label is now stuck to that brand, but we'll get into it. So give us a 30,000 overview in your words of what's inside your new book. Pete Slauson So, my new book, More Everything Forever, is about the horrible and implausible ideas that tech billionaires are trying to shove down our throats about the future, our future. They are trying to decide our future for us, and we shouldn't let them. Pete Slauson But, I mean, they're billionaires. our future for us and we shouldn't let them.

But, but I mean, they're billionaires. Clearly they've been doing everything right and stealing from all the right people all these years. Why shouldn't we trust them? Why shouldn't we trust them at Adam? Clearly? Yeah, I mean, you know, I've seen Hollywood movie stars, you know, just because you have money doesn't mean you ever shit together clearly. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think it's the same for billionaires. I think that, uh, you know, they think that they're the smartest people ever because they have all of the money. And if anybody else was as smart as they were, they would have as much money.

And so they don't need to listen to anybody who's not rich. But, you know, the fact is mostly they're lucky and they don't know a lot about anything other than, you know, a couple of niche things that help them run their businesses, uh, and in some cases, not even that. Oh, wow. So you're saying our new oligarchy that we're switching governments to is might be a bad thing? Yes. I think it's awful. And these people, these people just have diluted themselves into thinking that they're the smartest guys in the room when, you know, at best they're

mid. Yeah, we're thieves. I mean, Yeah, well, they are definitely somebody. I think it's attributed to several people. I think one of them is to, is to a Microsoft, uh, ex CEO and founder, but, uh, no great wealth was built without a great crime being committed. I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's right. Yeah. And, and I mean, in, in essence, something has to happen for, you know, for someone to get an edge or someone to exploit an edge, I suppose. So there are several things you talk about in the book. They're really interesting because one of them is Silicon Valley's sharp turn to the right. You know, I'm a big Sam Harris podcast fan. In fact, I think it's the number one podcast I listen to other than my own. And got to do something for 16 years. And Sam has been harping lately on

the all in podcast, the fact that the Manosphere podcast seemed to have steered the election, maybe possibly to Trump. But he talks a lot about Elon Musk, of course, that he used to be close friends with and, um, uh, the all in podcasts, which I was surprised a couple of the people on there really turned extremely right wing. Um, and now I think I, I'm really curious what their opinions are now that, you know, we're locked down in 145% Chinese things. Tell us about how we got here with the Silicon Valley supporting, you know, basically white nationalism. Yeah, I mean, it's one of these things that looks really bizarre on the surface. But one of the

things that I do in the book is, is explain that connection and make sense of it. Because it's, it is something that unfortunately does make sense. Once you dig deeper, it's not just a sudden thing that happened that I don't think it was just, you know, them aligning themselves with power nakedly. I mean, they are aligning themselves with power, but I think that it's it's actually something that's been coming for a long time, these ideas that that are really, really powerful in Silicon Valley about what the future holds

about about stuff like Singularity, this sort of technological utopia that would be created by incredibly advanced AI and going to space and living forever. And there is this idea that this vision of the future is really coming and that all problems are going to be solved with incredibly advanced technology, mostly computer technology, and that the people who understand it best are the billionaires and anybody who gets in their way is just impeding utopia. And so everyone else can just be ignored and we should give all the control to the billionaires. And this is not a new idea. It's been running around in Silicon Valley for decades. Pete Slauson Yeah. I remember listening to Anderson,

Andreessen Horowitz talk on, I don't know what podcast it was, but it was, it was extraordinary to listen to because I think he was arguing with some, I think he might have been arguing with Sam Harris, but he's arguing about the dangers of AI and some of the concerns of it. of AI and some of the concerns of it. And in listening to his Blue Sky sort of, what always you call it, I mean, it was just, there was nothing negative in his mind that AI could happen with AI. It was this panacea of this ideal utopia. You talk about the book where they're just like, they're promising stuff that is pretty crazy. And then of course, seeing his takedown of DEI, you kind of understand some of, I guess DEI in his opinion and a lot of the Silicon Valley folks, the DEI got out of hand and

they kind of helped fund this anti-DEI thing as well, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Marc Andreessen is, he posted this really unhinged thing called the Techno Optimist Manifesto about a year and a half ago, which is basically just, I mean, a more accurate title for it really would have been the techno fascist manifesto, um, or, you know, the techno fascist series of unhinged tweets. Uh, but it's, uh, you know, he, he really believes that anybody who gets in the way

of the progress of technology, whatever that means, is going to kill people. He even says in that manifesto that anyone who slows down the production of this super intelligent godlike AI that he thinks is inevitably coming soon is essentially committing murder because they're preventing lives from being saved. And that's just an absolutely insane position to take. There's no evidence that anything like that is going to happen and plenty of evidence that it's not. And, you know, the whole thing is just an excuse from Andreessen that I think he genuinely believes, but it is an excuse to just allow him to wield more power and influence than

he already does. Mad Fientist You talk about the arc of Silicon Valley turning to the right. Is Peter Thiel at the core of this, starting this back in his years when he was in college? And you know, back then he had a newsletter or we had the the author of the book the contrarian you might be familiar with max yeah max jayfkin yeah couple years ago and uh and he talked about the rise of peter teal is that is the source of where things have gone really right in silicon valley yeah i sort of i, Teal is definitely part of the story, but

he is not the whole story. A lot of this stuff predates Teal. And a lot of this stuff is, is like part of how Teal came to believe what he believes. I mean, you know, Teal is a hardcore right-wing libertarian. And, uh, you know, he's got that famous essay that he posted, I want to say like 15 years ago, everybody quotes it, I quoted in my book where he says, you know, that he no longer thinks freedom

and democracy are compatible, whereby freedom, he clearly just means free markets. And then he says that it was, you know, a mistake to, or implies at least that it was a mistake to let women and minorities vote, and awful stuff like that. All of that's terrible, but I actually think the most revealing part of that same essay is a different part that few people quote, where he says that he remains true to the faith of his teenage years that death is avoidable and taxes are bad. And, you know, putting aside the fact that taxes build a flourishing society and death is inevitable, I think it's not a good thing to stay true to the

faith of your teenage years. It means you didn't grow or change or learn anything. Why would you boast about that? I'd be embarrassed if that were true. Pete Slauson Yeah, yeah. It's pretty wild. And to see him in, there was something we talked about in the pre pre show, there was a car crash with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Tell us how that may be shaped where we're at today or did it? I don't know. I, it's just, it's one of these things where I just think about the universe being a strange place. They, they had just made a bunch of money. Musk got, I think it was a McLaren and yeah, exactly. Back with PayPal like 15, 20 years ago, and was showing off

to Teal took him for a ride in it. Right. And, and then, you know, they got to the top of a hill and Musk apparently said, watch this floored it and hit a tree. The two of them walked away. And I'm like, man, the world would be different if that accident had gone differently. But you know, I it's just the two of them made their first fortune together. And since then have just been going out trying to make the world look more like their science fictional ideas of how it should be. And it's not even good readings of science fiction.

It's just, you know, complete misunderstandings of what science fiction is and how the world works and how science works. Yeah. The, uh, clear thinking.org, I think this was put out this morning. It came on my radar this morning, but they put out an accuracy of Elon Musk predictions and some of the things he's been saying he's, he lies. I mean, he's like Donald Trump's stepson or something. He lies so much.

Uh, he has a 16.28% accuracy. They found with the stories he tells. That's I honestly, that sounds high to me, but that's true. They probably gave him some fudge room. Yeah, exactly. You know, and then you, and then you read, I think it was a wall street journal yesterday or the day before had the story on Ashley St. Clair and the child she had with the Elon Musk,

basically this weird, weird sort of thing that he's doing where, I, where's the me too movement. He's basically using Twitter to fucking pick up chicks and get laid and, and create this, he has some sort of weird, I don't know. Have you looked into this and all of the things? Yeah, I saw the same article. I know what you know about it, but like, yeah, he's got this weird ranch where he's trying to build a Legion of offspring. It's, it's just this, I mean,

a lot of it just seems to go back to a combination of massive ego, a disregard for anybody else. combination of massive ego, uh, disregard for anybody else. Uh, you said it, um, but, uh, not me, but, uh, uh, and also he, um, he's, he's like, a lot of this seems to go back to like this sort of really stupid and racist idea of eugenics, right? That like he wants to create a master race of little Elon clones and that's not only not gonna happen. It's not how genetics works and

Yeah Yeah, you win you brought up an interesting word eugenics because that word is aligned with white nationalism Which is really a rebranding of the KKK. That's all it really is. It is the KKK. And when people realize that we're, Nazism is live in America and in the white house, it is, um, it is again, let's put it that way actually, uh, to see Peter Thiel, you know, and Donald Trump's first, it was at the Republican Convention. Yeah. And, uh, speak was just kind of alarming to watch really.

Uh, it was, it's, it seemed like some, I don't know, ketamine, cowboy, drunken rant that, uh, and when you understand, you know, some of the things Peter Thiel's behind the scenes of so much politics over the last, well, since probably 2015 or longer. What are some of your findings there? Are these guys waking up yet to the fact that they've unleashed a monster in the White House and now they're on the hook for it? I don't know. I think they see it as a good thing. Really? You know?

Yeah. Uh, you know, I think, I think they're that both disconnected from reality and power hungry. Um, you know, uh, JD Vance is a creature of Peter Teal, right? JD Vance is, is one of Teal's proteges. And JD Vance is also, like Teal, a fan of the work of a guy named Curtis Yarvin, who unfortunately has been profiled in the New York Times, hasn't been getting a lot of attention since the election last year. Yarvin's a monarchist. He's very open about this. Yarvin wants kings. He wants there to be a king of America. He thinks that that would make things better. And Vance is a big fan of Jarvan and has said that he really likes Jarvan's ideas. was the idea to fire pretty much everybody in the federal government and replace them

with loyalists to a single leader, which is exactly what we see Musk and Doge doing now. So yeah, no, Jarvin's ideas are being implemented at the highest levels of government and it's awful. And I think JD Vance and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk think that this is a great thing. Oh, well, of course they do because they're the, they stand to benefit the most. Exactly. Yeah. That works.

I'm looking at Curtis Yarvin's picture on the, uh, the New York times. Uh, seriously, some down and out coat guy wearing a shitty leather jacket that looks like it's from, it's about 20 or 30 years old and can't afford a haircut, evidently either, uh, or a bath, maybe. I mean, that's just what I'm drawing from this picture. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's a, he's a piece of work. He's a, you know, he's also super racist and believes in these outdated,

discredited ideas about, about race science. And, and has said that, you know, the problem with the world today is a lack of kings. And I don't know about you, but I don't think that the problem in the world today is that, you know, rich, powerful people don't have enough power. I think it's quite the opposite. Yeah. So a 51 year old computer engineer that, uh, probably isn't getting laid is ruining my democracy. Basically is what you're saying. I don't know. You didn't say it. I said it. Uh, he believes that government, Jesus Christ, I didn't even read this year. You've turned me onto this. I had no idea. I'm so sorry.

Um, yeah, not in that kind of way though. Uh, but, uh, he believes the government bureaucracy should be radically gutted. Uh, he argues the American democracy place, what he calls the monarchy run. Um, basically there should be a CEO instead of a president. Yep. And he hates democracy. He sees democracy as the enemy. It looks like he hates himself. Actually. That's my opinion. That's probably true. Yeah. At least he dresses like it. He dresses like me. So I'm not throwing shade. Maybe you see my level of fashion. So I probably shouldn't be throwing shade.

What about this space thing that they're always, you know, they, you know, my mom loves to say this, you know, why are we spending this money to go to Mars when we got all these poor people here and people starving, everything's fucked up? Like, what the fuck? Yeah, your mom's. Well, yeah, but your mom's not wrong. You know, I mean, look, I think it's great to send robots out into space and explore and learn more about space. I am I'm an astrophysicist by training.

I think learning more about space is a great idea, and it's something we should be doing with robots. Sending people in the space is a bad idea for lots and lots of reasons. It's just difficult, but more importantly, dangerous. And for the kinds of things that Musk and company want to do, they don't just want to send someone to the moon to bring back moon rocks so we can do experiments on them. They want to build a space empire with space colonies. And Musk has been very, very clear about this. He says he wants

to put a million people on Mars by 2050. So there's a self-sustaining colony on Mars that can survive, even if a disaster kills everyone on earth. And this is ridiculous and impossible. You cannot do that. Mars is terrible. Every planet and every moon in the solar system other than the Earth is terrible. Mars, the radiation is too high, the gravity is too low, there's no air and the dirt is made of poison. There's nothing there for us. And if you tried to put a million people there, most of them would die. And if you did have a million people there, that's actually not even enough people to have a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. They would all die if the rockets from Earth stopped coming. So yeah, it's that and many other reasons just not going to happen. And I'm not the first one

to say this. Musk has been told this publicly over and over, and he just denies it because he's not really interested in science. He's interested in his own dreams and he's interested in being taken seriously, which is not going to happen. Pete It's really interesting the way that Americans think. We have this, and I've read that there's an issue with us about this, where we all believe in the American dream, right? Um, um, one of my favorite lines from, from fight club, the movie is we all were grown up being told we're all going to be millionaires and we're slowly finding out that we got lied to and, and it's not true. And we, you know, we're going to be rock stars and millionaires.

And there seems to be this thing about that we have this kind of dreamlike ideal, respected billionaires, actresses and actors. Basically, if you have money, you've somehow squared all the, you've squared the circle of life or something, you've fixed all the problems. And then we don't want to regulate billionaires because we might be them a billionaire someday too. And like there's this resistance to regulate these people because, well, we could strike a rich.

It's the American dream. You can wake up tomorrow and win the lottery or something. This kind of bullshit sort of mentality. And so we don't regulate these people because we figure that, you know, we could wake up one day and have the shot or something. I don't know. Yeah. Weird thing.

No, that's definitely a thing here in America. I mean, there's a quote, I think it's Steinbeck, but I'm not sure who said that in America there are no poor people, just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. I don't explain that line from, uh, from fight club. Yeah, exactly. Um, but yeah, I mean, look, you know, we, we build a society together and, and these people are parasites feeding off of the rest of us. And they are hoarding their wealth and resources in order to pursue an impossible dream that is never going to happen

and would be harmful and terrifying if it did. So, yeah. Pete Slauson And now they've just, they've just, you know, we've had people on that have talked about how, you know, going back to Richard Nixon, Betsy DeVos's father started us down this road of, with the Center for National Policy of, you know, trying to basically flip SCOTUS, which they pulled off over 40, 50, 60 years. They were, you know, they didn't really care about the abortion thing. He just ran all sorts of different experiments to turn out the vote for the Republicans because Johnson had flipped the unions and everything to the Democrats with all the legislation that he did to help poor people.

So they had to come up with new money. The great Southern Strategy was founded out of that. They created the Center for National Policy and since then they've been running their radio shows in the South and of course working with the Heritage Foundation and all that to the Federal Society to overthrow our democracy. But the overall arching plan has been for billionaires to be the Republican base, which they have been, and to slowly weed away and overthrow democracy. You've got Citizens United, Reagan's massive illiberalism that actually drove stuff.

The intent was to destroy unions, so they drove companies to China and other places. This is a product of Reagan and his liberalism and, you know, trickle down economics. I'm still waiting for my check from that. I remember I was in junior high when that was out. Um, and, and so we've been on this path where Republicans, you know, even in recent years, you've seen them dancing with Putin, you know, um, uh, going over there. And of course they love Hungary too. They've, Victor Orban, and boarding with them. And, you know, they love the oligarchy.

They love the racism of, and the xenophobia of Russia. You know, I think if you're gay over there, they'll kill you LGBTQ or they'll just put you in prison long enough to kill you. God knows there's, you know, their prisons are hell over there. And so it seems like we've been on this path marching towards it. You know, you, you saw the Citizens United ruling from SCOTUS that was part of Betsy DeVos's father's dream finally coming true. A lot of these rulings that have been, you know, and it's, it's interesting. People seem to have this fantasy that they said that they put on Hollywood people that since they're beautiful and they've got money, they have their shit together. And so

we should adore them and just follow them wherever they go. You see these acolytes, you know, I've got friends that, you know, Tim Cook of could do no wrong, Apple can do no wrong, Steve Jobs could do no wrong. When anybody who worked with them, I've been friends of mine. He was a complete monster. The people that knew him personally, not to mention the shit he pulled, one of the things capping everyone's income in Silicon Valley by doing that dirty deal that really got buried, where they locked everyone's income, they wouldn't allow employees

to switch between companies. And so we've been kind of on this march for a long time, where billionaires just, I think eventually with AI and everything, they just felt like they could seize power and they're doing it now, from what we're seeing. Yeah. No, I mean, they think that they can replace the rest of us with AI. And they also think, yeah. And they think that when the AI becomes super intelligent, AGI, which they claim is happening soon, Sam Altman says it's happening in the next four years, which they claim is happening soon. Sam Altman says it's happening in the next four years. That's not going to happen. But they think it's coming. And when it does, it's just going to be a permanent dictator that works on their behalf for all of humanity. And, you know, they're pretty

open about this stuff. If you just read what they say and listen to it and then, you know, they're pretty open about this stuff. If you just read what they say and listen to it and then, you know, read the same stuff that they're reading and see, you know, put the dots together. And that's, you know, that's what I'm doing in my book. It's like they want permanent fascism across the stars with them in charge forever. Pete Slauson What, and I see these accolades, like I have friends that they worship Elon Musk and a lot of, there's a lot of bootlicking that goes on, which is ironic because I think bootlicker comes from the Nazi term, doesn't it? Pete Slauson I think so. Pete Slauson Maybe boot kicker is the thing I want. It's

early in the morning for me still, waiting for the property. So, I can't get all the references, folks. How much do you want me to know on the show? After 16 years, but no, I've seen the worshiping of these men and Democrats really, you know, they bought into the story that Silicon Valley was this right wing or this left wing sort of operation. Elon Musk was left wing. You see the, you know, people shitting themselves to absolve themselves of their Teslas now, um, and the Nazis. Ism, you know, I mean, it's really, it's really crazy.

What's going on with the Tesla brand, but I think, yeah, I think he's destroyed it. I, I'm not sure there's a way out of, you know, when you've got a symbol that I'm not sure there's a way out of, you know, when you've got a symbol that people are posting of you doing the, the Heil Hitler, uh, Nazi thing. And you know, I see, oh, like over in Europe, they're just making billboards next to Tesla dealerships with that. Yep. I mean, there's, there's no way you can put that back in the box or live that down. I don't think so.

I think, I think the Tesla brand is permanently, I hope destroyed by this. Yeah. Yeah. Sadly, for the people who, you know, I mean, guys, don't be mean to people who bought the cars years ago. Come on. A lot of them didn't see it coming. A lot, a lot of them, I grew up, uh, you know, I was Democrat up until

this election, until after the selection. I left the democratic party in protest because it needs to wake the fuck up. Um, and, uh, but I, you know, I've never in a million years vote for Donald Trump or the Republican parties at work, I left the Republican party cause I thought George W. Bush was a moron. Yeah. Do you imagine what I would do now?

Holy shit. I looked like 2001. I was like, this guy's a, I voted for him as a bearist. I, I'm one of those people when I vote for somebody, I'm really hard on them. I was hard on Obama. I, you know, I, I, I, I'm like, I'm embarrassed. I voted for you. You've embarrassed me. And, uh, so, you know, I've been on the gamut of both parties now. I'm an independent voter and trying to get the Democrat party to wake the fuck up. Yeah. Uh, and they're still not getting it cause that's what got them there. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, to see the all in podcasts and some of these different things you talk

about, um, one thing you talk about in the book I want to get to is you call chat GPT AI is misleading. It's a marketing term that's gotten way out of hand. Talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, do you think these guys really know what they're doing? Yeah, I mean, I think AI researchers know what they're doing. You know, like the people working in academia and some of the researchers working at the AI companies know what they're doing, but the billionaires don't know what they're doing. And I do think it's misleading to call these things AI. Because, you know, when, when I was a kid, right, I'm a big science fiction fan. When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Star Trek The Next Generation, right? AI is commander data. That's AI. AI is, you know, something that actually, you know, understands what's going on and

is actually intelligent and conscious of the world around it. The stuff we have now, it's, it's, you know, like the term AI has been deflated so much that you're, that you're calling're calling like this chat interface that does not have a conception of the world outside of words and doesn't even understand words. It just, you know, has a probabilistic model of what words go with what. That's not AI. That's, you know, that's statistics and maybe you can call it machine learning, but it's not AI. But they want to call it AI, because it makes it sound more powerful. Yeah. But and of course, they want to make it

sound powerful. And it's another reason why this narrative of super powerful AI is just around the corner. It is something they genuinely believe. And it's also something that, you know, stands to make them a lot of money. It makes their products sound more powerful than they really are. Pete Yeah. You know, we've had a, I think the other thing I was getting to, my little ramble before

that was, I see this acolyte worship, this cult worship, you see that with Elon Musk. I saw that with my friends in Silicon Valley as Elon Musk really started to rise. And the worshiping is, what's that guy's name, Jones, from the, Jerry, was it Jerry Jones, the guy who had everyone killed in Africa, what, drank the Kool-Aid? Jim Jones.

Jim Jones. Yeah. Uh, like I said, I can't get all the references. So thank you for helping me there. Uh, but, uh, you know, uh, to see the worshiping of these people, uh, you know, the Donald Trump is the same way. These people that worship, well, you, he's a billionaire still must know what to do. And, you know, I was watching some farmers last night. I know that sounded like deliverance, but it sounds the same to me. And if you voted for the guy,

and you know, basically he, these people worship him and what they don't realize, you know, we've had billionaires on the show. I think there's another one coming up soon. These folks are globalists. They're not Americans per se. I mean, they may be born here, but as far as I'm concerned, they're globalists. And what they've wanted for the longest time for decades is to be able to operate in America, regulation free. You know,

they can go to Vietnam, they can go to China, they can go to all these other countries around the world that are kind of, especially third world countries. And they can go, China, they can go to all these other countries around the world that are kind of especially third world countries and they can go, Hey, you know what, we want to produce some shit in your country and pollute the fuck out of it and exploit your workers and pay them shit. And, uh, you know, maybe some people will die, whatever, they'll get over it. And maybe we'll leave a giant pollution behind, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, is that cool with you? If we just, you know, fund you some money under the table or, you know, give

you some grift or whatever, and buy your government or your leaders, you know, you see what you're doing with El Salvador this week, um, we're paying them $6 million and somehow we can't get the people were misappropriating back to them illegally, um, yeah, we're paying them. And I'm sure they would do it if we if we ask because you know we're America we're supposed to be according to these jokers but people don't realize these guys are globalists. They don't give a fuck about America. They don't give a fuck about they want no regulations. They want to be able to do whatever they want, however they want.

They want a docile, stupid, ignorant. You know, I see all these pictures, they're flooding social media now, where they're saying, you know, hey, basically, Trump wants to destroy everyone's small and medium sized business and turn us into, you know, China, where we're all working in sweatshops. That's not really far, I think, from some of the thinking they have. They want a docile, they don't want rights, they don't want DEI rights. I mean, part of the DEI attack is attack on employees' rights, rights to assemble. They've been going after unions, destroying unions. A lot of the, you know, it's like Reagan's liberalism all over again. People don't realize that opening salvo of firing the unions of the air controllers under Reagan was an opening salvo on a war on unions.

Yeah. And you know, people just kind of look at it and go, Hey, man, man, man. And you're like, that's your rights, you dumb ass. So that's not in the book, the dumb ass part, but I, yeah. No, I think, uh, I think that's, you know, that's pretty much right. I wouldn't call them globalists. I would call them oligarchs, technocrats, selfish, you know, they're, they're, they don't care about America.

They want to sell off America for parts. Yeah. They want to get all of the things that belong to all of us, you know, our manufacturing capacity, our population, our national resources, all of the public lands that we as a country collectively take care of, right, our national parks and stuff like that. They want to exploit that. They, you know, they want to mine and fish until everything's gone. And they want to make sure that we don't know about it, which is why they're going after educational institutions.

They want us to be dumb and uninformed. And they're underestimating us, I think. Well, I hope they're underestimating. You and I can be in the hope boat together. Yeah, I hope they're underestimating us, but like, but that's what they want. They want us to be, they want us to look the other way. Yeah. And, and they, I mean, they're disassembling air and pollution standards again,

they're raising fees on banking. I mean, what people don't realize is part of their destruction of the U S government is their intent to privatize that. They're basically doing what Putin did with the USSR. They're going to give different billionaires different products. They want to sell off the United Postal Service. They want to privatize Social Security. Bush tried to do that and a lot of shit for it, but I guess we were smarter back then

come to think of it. But, you're right. The Republican party has been after destroying education. They don't like college educated people because college educated people check references and double check news and actually read and educate themselves and have critical thinking developed. They don't want that. They want guys who will work in pig farms and canning factories and they can work to the bone and they can fire you at will and not have any repercussions of it. Yeah.

So I think some of the war on DEI is also a war on sexual harassment. One of the sexual harassment, in my opinion, has gotten out of control in the policing of it. And I think DI did get out of control when it first started. I was like, this is a great thing. But then, you know, some of the things that Andrew and recent horror was did outline it, it got out of control. I mean, when I started having people show up on the show with DI and talking about microaggressions, I was like, yeah, I'm not, this is too far. This

is a bridge too far. I see where you're going with this. This is a very socialist, feminine sort of thing. And this is, this is not for meritocracies. And I do believe in meritocracies, even though sadly they seem, that seems to be thrown around with the Trump administration. They are dragging us back to a meritocracy, but capitalism is built on meritocracy. It's just the way it is. So you're going to be, you're going to have socialism one way or another, I suppose. I don't know. You're not really going to have social with the Trump administration. So you can't win, but these streams have been killing us. The extremes of the left party, the extremes of the left party extremes of the right are

what's really killing us. And I used to believe there was enough same people in the middle that could hold things together like myself, but, uh, evidently not. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure. I think I'm probably to your left and I'm not sure I agree with everything you just said, but I do think that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the anger that people feel with the massive inequality that exists in this country, especially around wealth. The Democratic Party, like you said a little earlier, they fooled themselves into thinking

that Silicon Valley was on their side. And the fact is that if you are doing, like if you at least pretend to care or try to care about regulations, you try to care about giving everybody a fair shot. You try to care about fair shot. You try to care about keeping corporate power somewhat in check so that it's democratically accountable so that corporations don't just bulldoze their way over people the way that Trump and his cronies want them to. If you are a party that's trying to do that, billionaires are never going to be your friends. They don't want those things. And if you bring them into your party, they're just going to try to kill it from the inside, which is exactly what they're trying to do with the Democrats and is why they feel so feeble right now. They

think that they need the billionaire class for their connections and money and strength, but it's actually a weakness. They need to kick them out. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise we're going to have an oligarchy with Elon Musk, owns the U S postal service and runs it like, uh, X and he does such a great job. That thing, I think it wasn't working the other day again. Um, the, uh, and you just, I don't know, you'll get right wing nationalism emails or mail in your junk mail. Um, and you know, the, the US Postal Service story, you've been wrecked by that one guy last, since the first trauma

investigation is running. Uh, he had stocks and all the other competitors, so he had a interest to destroy it. Um, Social Security, they want to privatize that. They want to privatize everything. They're literally cutting up the US government to privatize everything. And if you folks think as an American public, it's going to be better that way, well, go look at Russia. I mean, the corruption at all levels of Russia are just insane in the oligarchy, kleptocracy more or less. And you see that what's

going on with the Doge thing. I mean, it was just reported by their own admittance. They're finally telling the truth. They're only gonna get about 15% of the savings that they said they were gonna get trillions or whatever. And it's just amazing to me, how many people worship this whole thing. Like, I'm sure billionaires have our best interests at heart. And you're just like, you're a fucking fool. You're an idiot

Um, yeah, these are the last people have your interests at heart Yeah, they want you to sit down shut up go to work for them and leave them alone and they don't want you to you know, the the joke of elon musk being the purveyor of the protector of everything first Uh, first amendment rights free speech is like such a joke. But to see the worship of these people that goes on in our society, the groveling of inservitude of wanting to do their thing. And then, you know, one of the things I've always been involved in that's aligned with

Silicon Valley is the kind of the things I've always been involved in that's aligned with Silicon Valley is the tech bro culture. And you see that with the Bitcoin culture too, the Bitcoin cryptocurrency culture. There's a lot of people in that industry that they will sell their mother for success and money. They have no scruples of any types whatsoever. As long as they could be seen with the richest of riches, the billionaires and hang out with them and be seen as potentially one of them through cryptocurrency. It's amazing. I mean, they have zero ethics, zero morality

and they'll sell their mom off to slavery if they can, you know, turn up at parties and win. Yeah. No, there's a line I heard the other day that I keep thinking about and I think it's just really accurate. It's someone on the internet somewhere said this. They said, you know, being a fan of a billionaire is like going to a casino and cheering every time the house wins. God, I love that quote.

Yeah. Like, you know, they're the ones who are trying to screw you. Why do you like them? Like they want your money. They want your house. They want you to live in poverty and leave them to do whatever the hell they want. They want to deny all aspects of nature. They want to like, they want to make it so that you can't even go for a walk in the park without coughing up

a lung. That's what they want. They want to make everything private. They want you to have to pay for the privilege of doing things that are your right. Wow. This is, I don't know if that the quote you had is attributed to El Ron Mexico, but he has a variation of it. Being a fan of a billionaire must feel like walking around a casino you don't own and hooting like a bad ass every time the house wins, licking the urinals, calling the trash cancer. Yes. That's calling the trash cancer.

Yes. That's where I saw it. Yes. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, yeah, it's just, you know, in this attitude though, well, I don't know, you know, I could become a billionaire too.

So I don't want regulations for billionaires just in case I hit the lottery, you know, with my 10 kids in my trailer home, my double wide, I could hit the lottery any day now of creating a business that could, I don't know, go into space or something. I don't know what the fuck it's, it's interesting. And I, you know, I'm a capitalist. I grew up starting my first company, 18. I have a big belief in entrepreneurism and stuff. I think, uh, a lot of what's we can question right now and kind of what's going on in the narrative is it almost seems like they're trying Donald Trump and others are trying to destroy small to medium sized business.

There's a lot of these medium sized businesses that are flooding Tik Tok crying and complaining. And sadly they voted for Trump as well. So they're in that, uh, the leopards ate my face cause I trusted him. And we're like, we told you not to trust them dumb ass. Yep. And they're still going on about it.

Uh, in fact, I have no empathy for any of them, but if they voted for this, uh, I'm done with the whole process of that. Um, I think, I think people need to be held responsible for shit now. This is, especially with these democracy and businesses, but it seems like they're trying to wipe out small businesses and medium sized businesses, especially with this China thing. I have a shitload of friends that they make a living in multi-million dollar businesses. There's employees they have, there's big businesses that contributes they make to our society and charity. They're losing their shirt right now. They don't even

know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's deliberate, right? You know, they want to create a crisis that will drive all of the small and medium sized businesses out of business, and then take all of their market share and all of their resources. They want to centralize corporate control, government control, make it all the same thing, make it permanent. This is fascism. Pete Yeah, fascism. And they want us to be the willing workers. I mean, them getting rid of all the immigrants that we actually need. If you understand how the work is done in this country and the costs and how your produce comes to you and stuff, we need immigrants.

We have a shortage of employees. We have a huge shortage coming down the pike and everything's going to be super expensive. I mean, already, if you're a welder, if you're someone who works in the trades of blue collar, you're getting paid more than doctors in some cases. Yeah. Cause there's no one who wants to do those jobs. And there's very few people that are skilled at it. They can do it anymore. Exactly. I mean, oh, sorry. And they just, they want us working at sweatshops. They basically want me, my business to end and go work in a sweats shop. Cause someone has to fill those shoes. You know, I mean, you see Florida is just enacted laws where, you know, they can put child labor back to work. Because they got to fill those shoes of the immigrants that are being kicked out.

So yeah, they're just, to me, it seems a little farfetched, but it seems true. I mean, believe what you see and the actions they're taking, but they just want us all to be working in slave shops and get rid of China. Pete Slauson Yeah. I mean, they think slavery is fine. Pete Liesveld Wow. Pete Slauson You know, Jarvin has said nice things about slavery and… Pete Liesveld Jesus. Pete Slauson Yeah. And look, you know, there's a bakery just a couple

blocks away from me, a really nice bakery. It's very successful. You know, when it's open, the line is out the door. Everybody loves all of their stuff. It's very good. Shortly after the pandemic, they had to reduce their hours quite seriously, and they have not been able to bring them back. And they had a sign in the window for a while saying, look, we know that you want us to be open more the way we used to be, but there just aren't enough workers. We can't do it. We cannot find enough people to work here to keep the shop open, which sucks because it means that, you know, everybody loses, right? We don't get as much stuff from the bakery as we want, and the bakery doesn't get as

much income as they want, right? The limiting process, the limiting thing for them is not that they don't have like enough, you know, money to get the stuff they need to make more baked goods. The problem is people. And yeah, if we had sane immigration policy in this country, then that would not be a problem. I mean, anybody who knows anything about American history knows that immigrants made this country, right? My grandparents are immigrants. And so is everybody else's grandparents and great grandparents here unless you're Native American. And, you know, it's, they want to shut the borders, kick out anyone who isn't white,

uh, lock up anyone who says anything against the administration and get rid of elections. They want permanent fascism. It's wrong. It's evil and it's un-American. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I was talking to this about a friend last night. Um, we were talking about, uh, elections and I go, you, I, I was talking to this about a friend last night. Um, we were talking about, uh, elections and I go, you know,

everyone's talking about how this is just get fixed in two years during the midterms that maybe the house and Senate will flip the Democrats or, you know, in four years we'll have another election. There's not going to be another election. I don't, I don't believe there's going to be an election. I really don't. Yeah. I think if there is one, they're going to try to tip the scales. So it's not fair. They just remove the security protocols for all the state things that were being done by the federal thing.

And basically the, the States are freaking the fuck out because it was, they've, they've just stood down our defense and offense with cyber wars with Russia. They've literally opened us up to do whatever. Yeah. And so we're going to get foreign interference with the elections and it's going to be awful. Yeah. In fact, there's some, there's something really disturbing in one of the recent news reports, um, that the guys went into Doge.

I think this just came out recently. The guys went into Doge. I think this is came out recently. The guys went into Doge. I think this is coming from the whistleblowers. Uh, if you've ever read their accounts, but some of the lawyers, I believe is reporting the guys came into a Doge, uh, the Doge guys came into. One of the, one of the, I don't know what department it was, but just, I mean, they've been in them all. So, um, but basically they came in, they created fake accounts, they accessed all the data and they

exported it. The whistleblowers found that they sent the data off to somewhere. They don't know where. And then they erased all the logs. They made it so they wouldn't create logs and then they erased whatever logs they had. Then they erased the accounts they had, all of it to make everything untraceable. And one of the really disturbing things was a week later, IPs from Russia started trying to ping in to access the data and they had taken off all the security protocols, the third party identification, all the different protocols that you use to create additional security layers.

They turned that all off. They literally opened the data up to where anybody could access it. And so when they got control of the data again, they started putting the protocols back in and they started noticing IP is coming from Russia. The IPs were using the login and passwords from the Doge guys. They were lot trying to log into those accounts that they had created. So someone had given Russia, someone in Russia, their logins. That's just alarming when you think about it. And they were trying to download the data. Of course.

I it's alarming. I also, to me sounds sounds like treason. Pete Slauson Yeah. Well, treason is only applicable in war. Pete Slauson Okay, well. Pete Slauson In wartime, yeah. Pete Slauson Sure. Pete Slauson Treason is. Pete Slauson Yeah, it's treasonous. Yeah, exactly. It's undermining America to try to bring down this country. And that's what Donald Trump and Elon

Musk want. Wow. To break everything. And then, you know, the part of the fascism thing is you break everything and then you say, I alone can fix it. Yep. From there. Yeah. Meanwhile, they're the ones who broke it. And Americans are stupid enough to go, okay, let's just let them fix their failures. They know what they're doing. Like I said, I was watching farmers last night and they're getting burned to the ground by these tariffs and stuff, but they're still just sitting there going,

well, he's successful billionaire. We just have to watch and see how it plays out. And you're like, holy shit, dude, you just, it's like watching someone put their hand in a blender and you're like, no, stop, wait, don't. Yeah. And they do it and they just keep doing it. You know, the, there's some guy in Tik TOK that I posted, he voted for Trump three fucking times and he's been losing money on his tariffs for all these three times.

Yeah. And now it just got worse. Now he's completely out of business and he's crying on Tik TOK. been losing money on his tariffs for all these three times. And now it just got worse. Now he's completely out of business and he's crying on Tik Tok. And you're just like, the leprosy, your face, stupid. We warned you. And then the other thing that makes me angry is project 2025 told everyone what they're up to. Yeah.

Like it, it, it, they're, they're enacting the blueprint. Yeah. Told everybody like, and not only did Democrats and people like me scream about it when I was a Democrat, warning about it, project 2025, you're like read project 2025, and just these people's dismissal of like, it won't be that bad, whatever.

They've never read a history book on fascism, authoritarianism. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. And if you want more proof that billionaires are no smarter than the rest of us, go take a look at a billionaire named Bill Ackman. What happened when the tariffs came in, right? He said, oh my God, this is awful. And then this is almost exactly what he said on Twitter. He said something like, well, you know, I was wrong, but I don't think this was

foreseeable and like, buddy, Trump said he was going to do this with the tariffs during the election over and over and over and over again, it was one of the most consistent things that he said. What do you mean it wasn't foreseeable? We've been screaming at you about this for over a year, but sure. Yeah. I'm unforgiving on Trump supporters. I am unforgiving this round.

I do not give a fuck because they were warned. I mean, project 2025 was really obvious. He said he was going to ring tariffs throughout his Trump's, uh, whatever is running for office. And, um, yeah, it, it almost seems like a really Faustian bargain. Do you, do you see our billionaires? I mean, I was just reading that, uh, one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg settled at the Trump was because, you know, the justice department, you know, my cost of half a billion dollars or something in fees, and maybe now you can knock it down to 30 million or something.

Um, it almost seems like, you know, what you've imparted in your book is their promises in this fantasy they have that they can control everything, do everything. Maybe they thought they can control president Trump. Um, you know, people that are successful have always loved him because, you know, they felt like they could steer him because he was a useful idiot, you know, for people like Putin, but now it seems like the Pandora's box is opened and the cat's out of the bag and they're like, Holy shit, we can't control him. And he's going to destroy all our investments. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right? Or in the words of, in the words of a more recent generation, fuck around and find out. Fuck around and find out the FAFO. Yeah, that's my, every other post is FAFO right now. I've just been collecting like, Lily, my Facebook has become a channel of people who, uh, are

crying on Twitter and Facebook and, and link and, and tick talk about how the leopards ate their face because they trust the leopards. And you're just like, you're fucking stupid. Everyone told you like with Donald Trump, there was the first round, there was no, you know, the whole thing was such an accident. He was surprised to win the presidency. They were in a win. And, you know, this time around, we all knew, like, I'm just, and people are just like, why is it so chaotic?

I'm like, where were you during the first presidency? Did you not understand that this is this man's pattern of abuse? Uh, malignant narcissism. But yeah, it almost seems like these billionaires, it seems like your book is really called it on these guys. Cause they have, they think they're the shit and boy, they have, they really been proven wrong. I'm like, I'm surprised the all in podcast isn't being like, uh, we fucked up,

but you know, yeah, they never have to admit them. Um, final thoughts as we go out, uh, pitch people on where to pick up the book, uh, where to get to know you better than.com, et cetera, et cetera. Oh yeah. Um, I mean, like the book is available wherever you can get books. I mean, I guess you could get it from Amazon if you want to give Jeff Bezos a little money. Uh, but you can also get it from bookshop or local independent bookstores please. Um, uh, it's called More Everything Forever again. And you can find me on Blue Sky at Adam Becker. You can find me on my website, freelanceastro.com.

And you can also find me in all sorts of newspapers and magazines. Yeah. sorts of newspapers and magazines. Yeah. Pete Slauson You know, I'm reading, I just popped up as you were saying that the New York Times article on Curtis Yavin. It's from January 18th of 2025, folks, if you want to search for it. But one of the, the top comment is this, a nation is not a business. That really tells you something. Pete Liesva Yeah. Pete Slauson And, you know, we've talked in the show, we've had authors on that have talked about

unbridled capitalism, and I'm a capitalist, but there is unbridled capitalism in this country. It needs to be constrained. It is. Yes. You know, we don't need to put dollars on everything. I mean, having a post office delivers the mail and you know, does the simple thing, having a post office delivers the mail and, you know, does the simple thing, having a social security or IRS that can pick up the phone. And definitely

right now you can't get anybody to pick up the phone anywhere. Like there's a bunch of senators or congressmen that, that dialed up the social security. You can't get them on the phone. They even tell you that like Wednesday is the best day to call and they call them Wednesday and they're not getting nothing. And so it's just mayhem. And I think of, you know, the little folks, senior citizens that are trying to deal with this thing. I think my mom said her IRS check hadn't cleared yet from the IRS rebate thing.

And I'm like, should I tell her that she might not get it anytime soon? I don't know about social security. I've heard social security checks maybe haven't been flowing like they should. It's kind of scary. And so then the quote, a nation is not a business. It's going to stick with me. And so is your book. So thank you for writing it. Thank you for calling these people out. And it looks like you, you called the ball, right? Cause you know, these guys are getting a lot of egg on their face. Sadly, they've got enough money to weather any storm. Well, the average American doesn't.

Yeah. No, that's exactly right. They're, they're going to just sit back and try to make their way through a disaster that they created while the rest of us burn. Wow. Well, I guess we're just wood for the fire. When it really comes down to it, when you study history, that's what the average person does in government, usually, you know, everyone burns for governments to

rule and do their thing. Yeah. But that's why we got to fight back. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, everyone buy's why we got to fight back. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, everyone buy your book and give it a read. We certainly appreciate you coming on the show.

Thank you for the wonderful discussion. Adam, I'm going to send this to all my Silicon Valley acolyte friends who pray to that God and see if they can't wake up. Maybe I don't know. That or over the head with the book, one of the two. Yeah, well, well, thank don't know. That or over the head with the book, one of the two. Chris Lange Well, thank you, Chris. And yeah, don't hit them over the head with the book. Adam Felsen Yeah, exactly. Chris Lange So thanks, Adam. Order of the book, folks,

forever fine books are sold. More everything forever. AI overlords, space empire, Silicon Valley crusade to control the fate of humanity out April 22nd, 2025. Guys we're all stewards of our democracy. It's up to us to raise our voices and make things happen. If you haven't checked Congress is complicit in this takeover of the oligarchy. The courts are the only thing standing between us and democracy and they're barely holding on and it's up to our voices. If we don't raise our voices and start raising hell and people start waking up from their

fever dreams of dumb Trump, this democracy is over. And I don't have children, which is maddening to me because if I did, I'd be losing my fucking mind right now on top of where I'm already losing my mind. So if you have children, you should really think about the future. Anyway, thanks everyone for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1, Tiktokkity, and all those crazy places. Be good to each other, stay safe, we'll see you next time.

That should have us out. Final button.