The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 48 | Anarchists Don’t Wear Antifa Masks | Tim Pool | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Date: August 24, 2019In all modern logic, Tim Pool and Glenn Beck should not get along. But after Trump’s election, this anarchist, avid environmentalist, and former Bernie-supporter saw the Democrat Party shift radical...ly before his eyes. Now the left calls him a conservative, just for holding on to American values, reality, and individual rights. In this interview, Tim joins Glenn to show how two people can disagree on politics, yet still hold the same principles, including free speech, nonviolence, and hearing people out. With this common ground, they dive in to everything from socialism, open borders, and the alt-right to Elon Musk’s NeuraLink, Facebook’s Libra, and the frightening future of AI algorithms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
So excited to talk to Tim.
We're going to get to him in a minute.
And the things we're going to talk about really, I think,
freaky might make you a little paranoid,
probably for good reason.
But there is no reason to be paranoid or worried about your safety
when you're in your own home.
SimplySafe is our sponsor.
And they have award-winning home security
that protects every door and every window
with 24-7 professional monitoring around the clock.
And unlike any other company,
SimplySafe has no.
no contract, no hidden fees, no fine print. It's $15 a month to protect your home. But if that's not
enough, here's what really makes them stand out. When you have your home security triggered and it
alerts police, police assume it's a false alarm because that's usually what it is. So it goes to the
bottom of the 911 list, but not with SimplySafe. Because SimplySafe is the only company that
offers video verification technology. This is included. This is not something that you have to pay extra,
for. They're able to visually confirm that a break-in is happening. That allows police to get to the scene
3.5 times faster, which is 45 minutes to 7 minutes. And just for you, they're giving a huge deal
away. SimplySafe.com slash Glenn Beck. You'll get a free HD security camera when you order. That's
a $100 value or more. They'll have eyes on your home 24-7 video evidence if somebody tries to get in,
and the police will be coming to your house quickly. Simply safe.
dot com slash glenbeck that's simplysafe dot com slash glenbeck as it stands today journalism is changing and it will never be the same
thank god that's a good thing except what is it going to change too we don't know at the moment the mainstream media
is toppling and a whole new cast of people is replacing the old guard today's guest is proof he first rose to attention in
2011 when he live streamed the Occupy Wall Street protests. Unlike the high-budget heavily choreographed
reporters and, you know, front of whole film crews, he wandered around inside the protests using
the new medium. He gave us a view of the inner workings of a chaotic political movement. The
reporting earned him a spot on the Time 100 list and won him a short award for best journalists in
social media. He's traveled all over the world for various stories. In 2017, he's
accepted a challenge made by Paul Joseph Watson, who offered to pay travel costs for any journalist willing to investigate the claim that there were Muslim-dominated no-go zones in Sweden.
Like many of the people who are dismantling mainstream media, he's kind of a black sheep. He has friends and millions of followers, 6 million per month on YouTube, to be exact.
He is written for The Guardian, Reuters, the New York Times, NBC, and even Al Jazeera English. He was the founding member of Vossohn.
Nice News. And in 2015, he became the Director of Media Innovation at the TV Network Fusion,
where he has been tasked with reporting new technology as live streaming aerial drones,
mobile software, and hardware, even Google Glass. He has been attacked by the people on both
the left and the right, which usually means that what you're saying is important, something
that people don't want to hear, something we all need to know. This is my conversation. This is my
conversation with Tim Poole,
Beanie and All.
Hey Tim.
How's it going?
Thanks for having me.
You bet.
You bet.
How would you describe yourself?
I had no idea.
Rogue-like,
heterodox,
anti-authoritarian.
What the hell is a heterodox?
Like,
against the orthodoxy.
Okay.
I mean, so I don't want to say contrarian,
because that's not true, you know.
Although I certainly have contrarian positions.
but I think for the most part it's just
I've often reflected on myself like
I don't even know what I am I didn't go to school
maybe that's why you know I dropped out of high school
within the first couple months
did briefly did a homeschooling thing and then just stopped
didn't get a GED didn't go to college
So did you just educate yourself?
Yeah, yeah
but I owe it to my mom I guess
she was homeschooling me and my siblings
before even started preschool so
got a head start. So you had
And because you're not a, you know, when you think of an anarchist now, you just think of somebody, well, dressed all in black.
Yeah, right.
Who's, you know, just marching in the street and usually just numskull.
It's unfortunate.
It's not an anarchist.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, some of them actually.
I have met some, I was in San Bernardino.
I met an actual anarchist with Antifa who'd announce the violence.
And I'm like, then why would you march with these guys?
He's like, a real anarchist is peaceful.
Yeah.
And it's about cooperation and things like that.
Whether your market, you know, forces or your cooperative forces, like anarchists do not hit each other, do not hit people to get their way.
You know, that's the antithesis of anarchy, you know.
But you are against the orthodoxy.
You question the orthodoxy.
Not necessarily against it, just question it.
If you find it to be true, right?
Right, right, exactly.
That's why I think contrarian is probably the wrong way to put it.
So, you know, when I was younger, I was an anarchist skateboarder very far left.
And what pushed me away from all this was violence.
Like these, I was a teenager and I saw these kids picking fights for no reason.
They wanted to fight the jocks.
I'm like, why would you start a fight with somebody?
They'd yell at people.
And I was like, keep me away from that, man.
That is not freedom and liberty and anarchy.
That is violence and that is authority.
And that's you imposing your will on others.
and so then I found myself more of this kind of like
more of a Bernie Sanders type.
This is when I was younger.
Hey, we should have more, you know, bigger government,
we should have free college, we should have all these things.
Against the orthodoxy, but...
Well, this was when I was like 17 or 18.
Okay.
And then I had this really profound moment.
So I was Catholic from kindergarten until the end of fifth grade.
And then in sixth grade we transferred to a public school.
So I went to Catholic school.
my family were great parishioners, we donated, we fundraised, we were the top selling, you know.
And put it simply, we were disrespected, as it were.
And for family economic reasons, we decided to move to public school.
And so from there, I immediately became this very atheist, man, these conservative pro-life, you know, these people are idiots, they're all insane.
And I had that very typical.
And then something happened.
I've been skateboarding my whole life.
and I met the skateboarder guy
who was prominent in Chicago
and so I was like, whoa, like
how cool I get to hang out this guy, he's like way older
and he's really good at skating
and he said, hey man, me and my friends were going to go jam
at my place later you want to come with
and now I'm all like, yeah, like how cool is this
hanging out with the cool kids, right?
Right.
And then when I get to his apartment, I walk in his room
he's got a picture of Jesus on the wall.
And I was like,
I have a picture of Jesus on the wall for you,
like Christian or something, think I'm all like tough punk rock.
And he goes, no.
And I was like, no, then why do you have Jesus on the wall?
He was like, oh, I just thought it was cool.
There's a story by a guy who traveled around helping people.
And that was like a smack in the face to me.
And I was like, maybe I'm misunderstanding people by assuming I know what they think and feel.
This guy wasn't Christian.
He just says, cool story, right?
Like, he's a cool guy.
He was like really nice to people.
And I'm like, that is a good story.
He's right.
And so that was like a big wake up for me as a young person.
And I decided.
More churches need to do that.
Right?
So I'm still, I wouldn't call myself an atheist, but that was like a moment for me where I realized I better actually start listening to people.
Right.
Because I had all these assumptions about what this meant and who these people were.
And that-
How did that change come?
What year?
Man, I was like, I think I was 18, you know, so this is 15 years ago.
And then from then on, I was more willing to like listen.
So that's the funny story.
I mentioned off podcast.
I used to work for Greenpeace very briefly.
and then I worked for some other environmental nonprofits,
but I remember Greenpeace sent us out in Chicago to go canvas.
So I'm one of those guys on the street corner, wave into people like,
hey, you want to help the environment.
Now, it's been a long time.
It's been like 13 years, so I could be getting some of the –
it's maybe a bit apocryphal at this point, but I vaguely recall them being for cap
and trade, right, government intervention.
And I remember when I was canvassing, there's a bookstore next to me with your book.
I think it's been a long time, an inconvenient.
Your truck, yeah, or yeah, Inconvenient book, yeah.
And so I remember, like, opening up and, like, reading through it.
And it was very, like, the free market solutions to or something.
And I was like, guys, guys, no, as he was talking about.
I'm 20.
I know it.
And I go back out and start telling people I have the solution.
I thought it was funny that, you know, now here I am.
Now here you are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The problem, I think, just real quickly on that is that is the, that's the attitude of too many
people. No matter what side they're on is, I just know better. I don't even need to read that.
Where, no, no, wait. That's kind of important, you know, if you really, you know, nobody has any
credibility with me if you're, if you're asking for government solutions, but you're not a vegan
and you don't agree with nuclear energy. You know, I have a friend and I made them cry because they're
far left anarchist. Real anarchists, though, not violent, denouncing violence, but very, very, very
you know, so we're having conversation, and I said basically, my issue with the policies you propose
is that you don't care about anyone outside of your community. Everything you're proposing would
just benefit you. And she was like, no, no, no, I want to make the world a better place.
And I'm like, you're using a MacBook right now. Look, I under, look, no, no, I'm not saying you
can't have it, but do you recognize that people at the Foxconn Labs were walking off the building
because the conditions are so horrifying? You've got to say no to the MacBook. You can use a
computer, but you've got to avoid the Foxcon stuff. And I said, listen, you're not making the world a better
place by giving your resources to a company that has people committing suicide. And you what they did,
they put nets up to catch the bodies. That was their response. And that conversation led to her
crying when I said, the fact that you're willing to support these horrifying circumstances,
but here's the thing. I recognize that personally. And it's just, we have to work to solve that
problem. But I do try to avoid, you know. You don't use Apple products? Oh, I hate Apple.
Yeah, I hate Apple too, but they're great products. I'm pretty sure Foxcon still does Samsung stuff
too. So do you want the tool or not? You have to recognize that Americans are wealthy,
privileged, and there are people around the world who don't have access to that. What are you going to
do about it? That was one of my funny highlights I thought of the Occupy Wall Street movement,
was that they were taking down Steve Jobs. They were taking down. That's not true.
Well, the ones I saw on video were taking them down, but they were using the products.
But actually, it's worse than that.
When Steve Jobs died, it was during Occupy, they put up a shrine for him.
There was a Steve, and I'm just like, how is that possible?
Look, it's not like Everett Occupy was marching and locked up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But some people there, that guy was a ruthless businessman.
He was really bad.
He's peak capitalism.
Yeah.
He, uh, he's, he's a, the dirty kind of capital.
Right, right, right.
You know, capitalist capitalism when it's done right, I think is a charity almost.
If you, you know, if you, if you know moral sentiments, you know that wealth of nations is just how it works.
But moral sentiments shows you what the invisible hand is going to give.
If you, if you are a society that wants to do good and you're a capitalist who wants to help people,
Right. How can I help them have an easier life? Oh, I'm going to invent this. Great.
I think we'll have some disagreements on capitalism for sure.
You and I? Yeah, but I do agree. I think, you know, the core of what capitalism is, the right to private property and to free trade for the individual.
Very simple. Makes a ton of sense. And socialism and communism will never work. So where do we disagree?
I lean more towards government regulation. Oh, I'm assuming. I don't know, actually. I just made the assumption based on
the global warming free market solutions and stuff.
I think left unchecked, like laissez-faire capitalism,
you end up with, you know, humans put their resources towards what will trigger their dopamine.
And so we have to have, I think a mixed economy makes a lot of sense.
I think the U.S. technically leans a little more towards the right in terms of how much taxes go towards government spending.
I probably lean a little bit to the left on a lot of, you know, some of these issues, but I'm rather centrist.
I just think, you know, how much money do we allocate towards curing things like baldness?
I get it.
You know, you have a right to do it, but baldness isn't the big concern.
It's just kind of a funny thing to poke it.
But I look at toxic waste, dead zones in the ocean and things like that.
And I absolutely think there can't be market solutions to environmental problems.
But I think, you know, look, left unchecked, humans are going to make virtual reality games where they can just, I'll try
to be crude, but, you know, pleasure themselves.
Oh, no, it's coming.
It's absolutely coming.
And I, no pun intended.
And I, you know, what are you going to do about?
What are you going to do about that?
And I, and this is the, this is the ethical conundrum that exists within me because
the media is the best example of capitalism going wrong in that we're at a point
now where these companies are in danger.
So they, they reach to the bottom of the barrel, which is outrage content and ideology.
And you know what they're lying.
And you know what their next reach.
out for is the government
protection. We have
to have government protection because
we are a valuable asset.
We need bailouts, we need all
of that. And there's already advocacy for
government funding. Correct. I mean,
wasn't there some program where
they were funding journalism? I don't want to get
into, if I don't know the facts, but I'll leave
that. But yeah, I think
my big criticism of government,
which you probably share is, it's
extremely, capitalism is effective in that
bad systems die. You can't make it
work, you're gone. The problem with
communist, command economy systems
is that they just mandate the expenditure and take
the resources from someone else by force.
And if your system is failing,
you're draining the system, right?
So, you know, I recently made this critique about Bernie
Sanders. His campaign can't
pay his own staff $15 an hour.
So what does he do? He cuts hours
to get the equivalent. Well, here's the problem.
His staff said 36K a year
wasn't enough to buy food. Did Bernie say, I'll give you more money?
No, he said, okay, then don't work Saturdays.
So do the same work you have to do in shorter time, work harder, and we're still not going to pay you more.
And let some of you go to pay for that.
Some people are quitting.
So he's not going to increase their wages.
He's just saying you better get your work done on time.
And it's really funny to come from Bernie.
But the reason I think it's a really good example of how socialism doesn't work is that Bernie doesn't have the input to make the output work.
The only thing he can do is cut hours.
Welcome to business, Bernie.
Right.
You know, his ideology just doesn't function.
And he will condemn that very act in others while doing it himself.
Yeah.
So, you know, I was a big fan of Bernie in 2015-16, but not particularly for his more far-left
approaches to, like, free college.
I think that's a terrible idea.
But it was more so about, for one, he opposed the free trade agreements.
He is for secure borders.
And he has a, he wasn't a flip-flopper.
He was for secure borders?
Oh, yeah.
In 2015, he said, open borders is.
a Koch Brothers proposal. We can't have that. And in fact, a few months ago, Bernie Sanders said,
he was asked, would you be for open borders? He said, my God, no, there's too many poor people
in this world. Bernie said that. Wow. And that's why I don't like him today, because I think he's a
hypocrite. I think when he goes on stage and says, we're going to give health care to, you know,
undocumented immigrants. Correct. And then everyone, and then you've got Julian Castro saying decriminalized
border crossings. It's tacit open borders. But it's worse than that. These people are
advocating for a permanent underclass. That to me freaks me.
You're saying you're going to have people who aren't citizens who you won't deport them.
What are they going to do?
They're going to work under the table.
They're going to get government benefits.
But I imagine it's a very ivory tower elite position to welcome that.
And it's not surprising to me.
You can't have a welfare state and open borders.
Right, right.
You have to pick one.
You want a welfare state or do you want open borders?
But once you open up and say, hey, free food for everybody, where do you think everybody in
the world who has cancer and we happen to be the best at curing cancer. Where do you think they're
going? So you know what? My conundrum and all this is, for one, love the environment. I'm very
much an environmentalist. Like I said, I worked for Greenpeace. You get Ocasio-Cortez on the scene,
and she proposes this Green New Deal. When she first did, I was like, I'm down to hear it. It
sounds great. And then what does she propose? Free college, free health care, guaranteed jobs,
income. I'm like, no, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. You're killing the environmental argument here.
So what I often say to a lot of my less liberal friends, you know, more conservative types, is if, look, if you've got people who don't believe climate change is manmade and you're coming to them and saying they're stupid or wrong, you're not arguing anything.
Yes.
If you think we need a massive overhaul to save the planet and you refuse to accept anything from conservatives, you're not making an argument.
Perhaps the argument is what can we both achieve even if we disagree.
Is there perhaps a market, you know, a tax incentive program for certain technology?
that can bolster business, make the United States more competitive internationally,
and help, you know, increase environmental awareness and protect the environment?
Can we agree on something like that?
You don't make...
So where do we...
So where do we...
Where do we go?
And let me give you...
I'm, you know, I'm a demon on global warming.
I'm the worst guy ever.
Except my farm and my ranch are 100% green.
Right.
I have insulation, over the top, new insulation that make sure that you can live in my house at 20 below zero or 100 degrees, and it's going to stay without any real air conditioning and without any fireplace.
I mean, one fireplace, 3,000 square feet, and I can keep it at 10 below zero outside, I can keep it at 65 with one fireplace.
You're flying on private jets?
Well, I was.
I'm not saying I'm an environmentalist guy.
I'm just saying I care about the environment.
I do care about things that I can do.
There are some things that I'm not going to change my ways on,
but I can afford the expensive stuff for my house.
And by putting those in my house,
I'm helping making them cheaper for other people.
I do believe that man is probably involved.
There's no way man can't.
be doing all that we're doing and it's not affecting it somehow or another.
Yeah, I agree.
I also think you can look at the thermometer and you know, is it going up or down?
It's hard to track it beyond 1900 because everything was so bad.
And I think some of it is screwy now, but we're getting better at tracking it.
Predicting it, I have no idea.
The climate is always in flux and always changing.
But I'm willing to do the things that I'm.
think we should do.
But I don't agree with the solutions to, I don't agree with.
But the Green New Deal is not a solution.
I know that.
That's the most of it's not a solution.
Right, right, right.
Most of it is about crippling the West or keeping the rising economies in poverty, which I
think is absolutely immoral.
I disagree with the first one.
I don't think there's an intention among like many people in power.
to say like we want to hurt America.
ALC?
Well, AOC is different, though.
Yeah, okay.
Right?
She's this far left socialist type
who has this identity.
I mean, look, that green new deal
was talking about like racial equity.
I'm like, what does that have to do
with the environment?
There's none of it.
And I'm deeply offended by that,
you know, not like my offense matters
to the greater picture, but no, I am.
I mean, I want greener pastures
and bluer skies and all this beauty and everything.
Like, I'm sure most people do.
But when she comes out,
All she did was make the environmental movement look ridiculous.
And then you get environmentalists just backing her for no reason.
But you know what?
I've talked to some prominent progressives.
And they asked me if I support the Green New Deal.
And I say, not hers.
And they ask me why?
And then I ask them, did you read it?
And they say no.
And there we are.
So they're under the assumption.
The Green New Deal is going to be this like government investment into solar power.
And I'm like, no, it was like free college and free health care, which
had nothing to do with the environment. In fact, if we had open borders, if, or not even,
let's, let's clarify the open borders things. I know the left is going to jump and say,
oh, they're lying, they're misconstruing. Sure. If you don't criminalize illegal border
crossings and then provide government benefits to people to come here, you're incentivizing
the behavior and the U.S. already produces too much carbon, right? So the last thing we need is
more people coming here and increasing the amount of carbon we're producing, right? Not only that,
but they're not vaccinated. So you've got all these arguments that doesn't seem to make sense.
I think, you know, ultimately, the way I reach out to people who are more conservative on the issue is, look, the government offers you a tax incentive if you buy an electric car.
Good.
Can we do more things like that?
But aren't the changes?
And I'll give you, government regulation has encouraged changes.
But haven't the changes in the combustion engine, now a brand new combustion engine is actually better for the industry.
environment than an electric car.
Is it?
I'm not...
Yeah, it is.
That's...
I can't quote it for you right now and we'll look it up, but I'm pretty sure.
Yeah.
Operate on the assumption.
That's true.
And it's, you know, it's close, but it's still getting better.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's just innovation.
And I think there's...
I go back to the case for moral sentiments, which is, you know who Adam Smith is,
who wrote the, you know, wealth of nations.
The first book is moral sentiments.
And it says, if you're a part of a society that has moral sentiments, good moral sentiments,
that can come from just everybody is just in love and everybody somehow or another has just become,
you know, Gandhi and Christ all put together.
Or there is some system that has taught them how to be moral.
that is really important because that will direct what they build and what they want.
I agree.
We are asking and needing more and more regulation and more laws because we're screwing this up.
We're not moral, decent people.
I can't say for the most part, but we're losing that.
I think we're increasingly becoming, we agree less on what is more on what is.
isn't, right?
Yes and no, I think we're, I think we're just becoming morally lazy.
Well, I look at it this way.
You go back to the 50s, what is it, most people are Christian, you know, and so there's
very common values, and it's really easy to trust someone when you know you have very,
very similar base values.
Correct.
Well, things are changing now.
I wouldn't go to Portland.
I wouldn't either, but it's not because it's Christianity.
It's because we don't agree on,
thou shall not steal,
thou shall not kill,
take out thou,
just make it Bob's safety tips,
the big 10.
Give me seven of the 10.
It doesn't matter who said them anymore.
They just don't agree.
They believe it is moral to lie.
Yes.
I say they as in the,
whatever this more vocal and dominating faction on the left is,
the Antifa types,
the aggressive,
them, they believe by any means necessary, even if it means hurting innocent people. They don't
care. And so we don't agree on what is moral now. I certainly don't agree with them. And I think
that's why, you know, there's kind of like this weird alignment between centrists, former liberals,
and conservatives today. We still agree, you know, at least we have these base rules, but this
group doesn't have it. They believe that's a majority? I don't think the majority of the left
hold these views, but I do think the majority of the left is bowing to it.
just ignoring it, backing away.
I mean, you know, I had a conversation with a boomer who is a lifelong Democrat who told me,
I'm scared by what's happening with immigration.
The Democrats aren't doing anything about it.
And I can't say anything because I'll be destroyed.
So do you think that plays into what?
Well, my friends who voted for Bernie,
felt cheated by the Democrats.
And they're not paying attention.
They don't care anymore.
They're just like, I'm done.
It's pointless.
And there are other people who are paying attention that I know that feel scared.
If they speak up, they'll be called a Nazi.
Right.
They don't.
So what are they going to do?
Nothing.
Will they vote?
Independent, probably.
So I'm talking about an anecdotal group of answers.
Right, right, yeah, I know.
You know, it's my personal sphere and my family, lifelong Democrats.
and right now they're all going, what the hell is going on?
You know, we're just, I don't see it.
I have no problem speaking up.
Of course, they call me a right wing, even though...
You're not.
I'm on a lot of issues probably around where Obama was.
Yeah.
And that's, well, that's right wing today to these people.
Look at the Democrats, the 2020 Democrats.
I mean, we had an article from New York Times saying the governors are worried because the 2020 candidates are going so far left.
Promising health care to undocumented immigrants is mind-blanky.
going to me. Obama promised universal
health care at the end of his first term. Couldn't get it done.
Yet we've jumped over that.
And now we're like, we'll just give health care to everybody.
And he promised.
He promised it won't go there.
Yeah.
It won't go there. We will never do that.
You have Nancy Pelosi saying in 2008,
and I believe this is a pretty accurate quote,
the last thing we need are more undocumented citizens.
Well, first of all, they're not citizens.
they're undocumented, but how did you get from there to hear?
You know what I think it is?
Twitter.
I really think, you know, Twitter, all these journalists have become addicted to it.
And so they're all writing the same things.
And they're listening to these extremist activists.
But you know what it is?
It's a combination of around the 2010s when Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and these other blogs started to pop up.
They were exploiting human sentiment on Facebook for shares.
Outrage generates the most traffic.
Yes.
It's a fact.
We know this to be true.
So you think about what's going to work in terms of selling content.
Orange Man, bad.
Right?
That's why we're seeing the Trump bump because scare people, shock them, make them angry.
You know, there's a website that I could be getting this wrong.
You know, I want to make sure I clarify that, but...
We've got a lot of gray zone stuff here.
Well, I mean, from me...
I say this...
I say it could be wrong specifically to avoid one lawsuits.
Yeah, okay.
And also just, it's been years since I've gone over the data,
but there was a website dedicated to nothing but police brutality on face.
that cracked like the top thousand websites in the world because people on Facebook would see this
police brutality video and click share and that was money money so they went nuts with it and it's
you know you you you see these you see sites like that you saw the problem of there was a lot of fake
news on the right as well because they were exploiting outrage with fake news and then what was left is
Vox, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post these websites that still try and maintain this fringe
identityarian ideology for rage, you know, for clicks. And that's where we're at now. And so what
happens is you take millennials who for the past 10 years have been inundated nonstop with stories
about privilege and diversity and police brutality. And now they live in this crazy world of nonsense
where they're, like, it's a delusional state, if you ask me. I'll actually give you a real
example of how this happened. So Facebook created an algorithm. That algorithm shows content based
on certain criteria. Engagement. Outrage generates engagement. So BuzzFeed staff, actually,
I'll give you a real example, Mike.com. There was an expose where I believe Tablet Magazine did an
expose talking to former employees who said, we have a formula. X does Y to X. Like basically,
we write this and it will get shares. Humans trying to cater to the algorithm, which was imperfect,
sent people into this weird world of chaos. But that's hard to parse through. But this next
story isn't. YouTube created an algorithm. Parents will give their tablet to a baby and press play
on a video. And then YouTube automatically plays videos that are similar. The first videos that people
were giving to their kids were, it was a song called Finger Family. I don't know if you've ever heard
the nursery rhyme. It's like, Finger Family, Finger Family. And so you'd see these cartoons of someone
singing, very happy, very normal, very wholesome. People in India seeing an opportunity to generate
traffic because, you know, these
views, these videos were getting watched for
30 minutes because the babies can't press buttons.
So they started making really low
quality versions that started getting twisted
and deranged. They wrote programs
to create the videos for them. They sought
out keywords in the algorithm that were hot and were
more likely to be recommended. And all
of a sudden, babies were sitting
in front of tablets where they would watch the incredible
Hulk dance with Adolf Hitler
while this creepy
muffled voice was singing this very
out-of-tune song.
And the parents didn't know their babies were watching it.
Good.
It was automatic.
So YouTube fixed this problem, right?
But that story gives you a better view of what human, like the adults are getting into and not realizing it.
Right.
When you look at a video of Hitler dancing with the Incredible Hulk while some Indian guy sings into a 1980s microphone, you're like, this is insane.
And it was like, and there were different versions of like Spider-Man and Elsa doing it.
We started seeing these really weird videos of Spider-Man and Elsa giving each other in,
injections for because it was, yep. And this got to the point where you actually had a video in Russia where a father held his daughter down and gave her an injection on camera and it got millions of views because the algorithm didn't know what was actually good content. It only knew like it gets a lot of watch time, right? So now think about what we can visibly see as insanity, delusional content where babies are watching just, it was like an acid trip. And now you have to realize the stuff that's being fed on Facebook,
by BuzzFeed, Vox, it's very, very similar in its derangement, but it's masked.
Adults can't see that they're being fed this nightmare reality.
And now here we are with the Democrats promising health care to people who aren't citizens,
which we can't afford, which makes no sense.
So where does that end?
Oh, man.
Civil War, chaos.
I mean, look, I'm worried about these babies who were inundated with this nightmarish content.
That affects them.
Oh, yeah.
It's the most impressionable years of their life.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
They're going to grow up with weird things in their heads.
These people, these millennials, who were teenagers, late teenagers,
started getting inundated with this fringe outrage content,
are now living in this nightmare realm that can't be broken out of
because they've spent, you know, 40% of their life in this world that isn't real.
Okay, so, so, before we go to the future, help me here.
It's just talking to a senator just a couple of days ago.
and very intelligent, very well read, constitutional guy.
And we were talking about Google and YouTube and Facebook and everything else.
And he said, he said, I'm really torn.
He said, because I don't want to regulate them out of business.
He said, because I believe in the free market, he said,
but then again, we have to have some safeguards so this kind of stuff doesn't happen.
And I said, well, but they are so fast and things can change so rapidly.
And it's only going to get worse with machine learning.
It'll just happen overnight.
And I said, I really believe this election could be deeply affected by just algorithms that they're designing now.
The creepy line project by the Harvard professor that is documenting just.
the way they change the recommended videos or, by the way, Google stacks the news when you go
and search for something, they can swing independence 80% in the other direction.
Oh, yeah, yeah, out of sight, out of mind, if the only thing you hear is from one side.
So, you know, I've said this before and it's meant to be a little hyperbolic, but I think
if something isn't done, there won't be Republicans as they are today will cease to exist.
By when?
I mean, I'm being hyperbolic.
Within the next couple elections, I'll give you a good example.
Donald Trump, he's the president.
A lot of predictions models say he'll win 2020.
I think that's a fair point.
But Twitter said he breaks the rules.
He's not allowed to be on the platform, but here's what we're going to do.
Twitter said, we're going to put a notice on his tweet if they break the rules.
But you know what they're really saying?
There's a line in the sand as of today.
No one, whoever speaks like the president, will be allowed to use this platform.
Well, if you can't use Twitter, which is one of the dominant, you know, spaces for public discourse,
then we will never see the rise of someone like Donald Trump ever again.
Well, that's Google's stated goal.
Facebook has said the same thing.
Internally, we can't let this, yeah, we can't let this kind of stuff happen again.
You know, they believe that they are right.
And as, no offense, but as progressives usually do, they believe they are,
the right ones. They have more information.
And so I'm going to just take
progressive steps to get you dummies
to go along. There's
two ways of looking at progressivism.
That way, okay. If it is
good and we all agree.
That's authoritarian progressivism.
Yes. I disagree with it.
And that's where they are. That's where they are.
Yep. I mean, there's a
real problem, in my opinion,
that is going to happen before
we even get up
to speed to where these
companies, and I am for the
free market, but these
companies are getting
double dealt by the
government. They're getting platform
status and they're getting
publishing status. So they get all
that's a complicated problem too.
But they've got, but
you can't be protected
on all fronts and then
start to say, you know what,
I want to do good in the world. And so I
believe this is good. And so I'm going to
steer people this way.
we're talking about companies that will not have
no one will have the protection of the Constitution
because the Constitution applies to the government, not to private companies.
The tyranny is being outsourced.
Yes.
That's that I find that I'm Irish.
So it's funny, you know, you get these woke activists.
They'll be like, here comes Tim to the defense of conservatives.
And I'm like, first of all, remember that poem first they came for?
Yeah.
Right.
I look to the conservatives in this country as doing,
what conservatives always do.
I've heard the arguments.
I disagree with a lot of them.
But, hey, we're all Americans,
and the point is we find that compromise.
The problem now is,
nothing to do with conservatives.
It's a handful of billionaires
running unaccountable corporations
with government protection.
Where's the left?
I mean, I grew up with liberals saying,
corporation bad, and I'm like, I agree.
I grew up making fun of things like Blade Runner,
going, please, I worked for the corporation.
Shut up.
I've always been there.
And for the last 10 years, I find myself with a growing number of conservatives all saying,
uh, something's really wrong here.
Yep.
Something's really wrong.
And you know, you know what really, what really annoys me is I've had a lot of conversations with inaction
conservatives, I'll call them.
Because I'm not saying regulation is necessarily, you know, what has to happen, but something
has to happen.
Yes.
And there are so many conservatives that say, no, no, no, we should let them do what they want.
I'm like, okay, great.
You'll be banned first.
I know.
Your opinions won't exist anymore.
Right.
You know, here's the thing I noticed.
I was talking to this guy who's a far left activist.
He told me he was a centrist.
He was a socialist.
Like, socialism is not the center.
Quite literally, on the political compass,
socialism is as far left as can possibly, you can go.
And L'A Faire is as far right as you can possibly go.
And I'm talking about the compass,
not like American cultural standards.
And he thought it was in the middle.
And so you realize that,
and you look at someone like, you know,
Jack Dorsey or Sundar Pichai,
and they think they think
they're in the middle when they're far left.
So then they go, okay, so Democrats are far right and communists are far left and socialists,
you know, socialist Democrats, you know, our democratic socialists are here in the middle.
We should ban everyone to the right of a Democrat.
That's literally what they're doing.
Man, I got to say, you know, it's really scaring me too.
It's might, we're going to derail a little bit, I guess, but I was talking on the Joe Rogan
podcast with Jack Dorsey.
And right away, I said, your rules are biased against.
conservatives. And the look on his face, he didn't realize it. He said, what, what rule? He was genuinely
believed his rules weren't. And I said, first of all, the misgendering policy. Like, I understand why
you want to protect the trans community. They have very high suicide rates. And I can agree with,
you know, I can respect that sentiment. But you have to realize more than half this country,
like substantial majority of this country, even liberals, do not agree with a lot of what's
happening in this argument, like transgender women competing against biological women.
I'm like, lifelong Democrats are concerned about that.
When you say you're going to ban every conservative because they hold this view
or they have to bend the knee and never express that view,
you've got a rule base that is basically threatening them at any moment.
The sword is damocles over your head.
You can be kicked off the platform.
Now what do we see?
In Canada, a trans woman has filed a human rights complaint against a Brazilian waxing salon
because the trans woman has male parts and is demanding the fee.
female make contact.
The law.
It is this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
um,
professional waxer
shut down her business.
And we've,
we've just gone insane.
That,
that's me,
we really,
we are,
we are denying reality.
Yeah.
At the same time,
we're denying an individual right to say,
I don't want to participate in that.
I don't care if you do it,
but I don't know,
want to participate.
This right here is like,
Like, when it came to the baker in Colorado, whether you should make a custom cake for a gay wedding, I've always been like, it's just a cake.
You don't have to, like my opinion was, if you're accepting public infrastructure, a taxpaying citizen who helps contribute to the pipes, to the sidewalks, to this, to your safety and fire department, then just make the cake for them, right?
But I got to admit, making a cake is simple.
You might disagree with it.
But waxing a male's privates is like state enforced.
Right.
Right.
So that's a principle.
But it doesn't...
I mean, you know, art is so sacred.
Well, my father was a cake decorator.
I grew up in a bakery and his...
That was his art.
Right, right.
And you're going to force people, their art.
And, you know, you can define that in many, many ways.
What I do, to some degree, is an art form.
You know, you're doing television, you're whatever.
It's an art form.
You can't tell people and force people to do the things that are against what they feel, truly feel.
But this has been so crazy for me because, man, even in the past few months, I made videos where I said, listen, you know, that gay couple, they're paying taxes.
Okay, you're reaping the benefits of their income in our community to turn them away because you don't want to write some words on a cake.
But the issue then becomes, actually, I've got another really great point.
on this, we're getting now to this, you know, waxing thing in Canada, and it's stressing my
view on the ethics of whether a business should have to do anything. But I thought about something
similar in that it's really easy to hold a principle when you don't challenge the line. For instance,
you're familiar with Blackstone's formulation. It is better that 10 guilty persons escape
than one innocent suffer. So I thought about that and I said, okay, would you free 10 shoplifters
if it meant one innocent person accused of shoplifting would go free.
And most people would say, oh, of course.
Would you free 10 child rapists if it meant one innocent person would go free?
And then all of a sudden people start questioning Blackstone's formulation.
Because that's 10 people did some nightmarish crime.
And so, you know, it's easy to hold a principle when your perspective is shoplifting.
But you have to.
It has to remain in place.
No matter how bad the crime.
Right.
And this is the, well, this is the ethical and moral conundrum for me, because I'm like,
am I going to be the person to tell that woman, she has to touch that man?
I don't know.
That's that line is hard.
That's hard.
But we have to respect that people have different viewpoints, different lifestyles, different, everything.
But there's, if you don't protect the individual right to be themselves and the individual
right to say, I disagree with that.
What do you have?
You have mom and dad called into the room every time brother and sister are having an argument
and then they have to decide.
Right.
They sometimes don't make the right decision.
You know what I mean?
You have to say, you know what, guys, you're going to have to work it out.
You have to get along because we're all living in the same house.
You know, what's really interesting, though, is,
the cake argument, as I understand it, is often misunderstood by liberals.
The left.
I hate saying liberals, because let's be real.
The left is not.
But the people on the left think the issue was, he said, get out of my store.
But in reality, he said, you can have any cake you want.
Correct.
You're not going to get me to draw what you want.
What's interesting about that is it's a First Amendment argument.
I can't be compelled to speak.
That's Twitter's argument for banning whoever they want.
Twitter's argument is that speech is coming from Twitter,
and we can't be forced to permit.
It's a First Amendment argument.
But then they are not a platform
and should not have platform protections.
But outside of this, right?
Yeah.
The idea is, why should a Baker be forced to speak
on behalf of the gay couple,
but Twitter not be forced to speak on behalf of the citizen?
It's great.
Arbitrary lines, right?
It's, man, you know, I think it's funny that
there are a lot of people who engage in, like,
political commentary and debate
that think you have to have an answer to everything.
and they approach everything as a debate where one either is or isn't.
And I'm like, look, I can just flat out say, honestly, I don't know where that line is.
It's a hard, it's a hard ethical.
You know, the pro-choice, pro-life thing for me is one of the hardest ethical issues I've ever, you know, had to even try and figure out.
But we can go to the platform publisher thing, you know, to move on from this.
Hang on. Let me, let me stop abortion.
Yeah.
But the problem is, the problem with this is, I am pro-life.
but the thing that I have the hardest time doing is at conception, at two weeks,
if it's rape, if it's incest, I don't want to be the dad that has to go to my daughter
who's just been raped and so you've got to carry that child.
However, for me to be consistent, that's what I have to say, but I don't like it.
And I think there's a lot of people that are there.
They're like, look, I don't want to get involved in somebody else's life.
I don't know all the facts.
And so they will be mushy there.
But we're not that.
We're not having that conversation now.
We're having the conversation of kill it at any time for any reason, even after they're born.
I mean, it's right, right.
So we'll jump into this topic.
I've grown up, Democrat, Democrat family, pro choice.
except we were always like there's a limit.
At a certain point, we can't.
Safe, safe, rare, and what was the other one?
It was like.
Available or something.
Legal, safe and rare.
Rare.
Yeah.
And now I remember seeing the segment on, I think her name's Michelle Wolf or something,
I can't remember her name.
Was that the comedian, she had a show on Netflix,
and she was yelling abortions for everyone.
You had Lena Dunham say that she wished she had an abortion.
And for me, that was kind of like,
what what's happening i saw i saw a person in seattle an abortion activist and she was giving a speech in
seattle and she said you know my first abortion was in seattle and it was my best abortion
i thought you go to a doctor you go to a vet and the vet says who putting your dog down that was
my first that was my first euthanizing an animal that was a good one you go to everybody you know and say
this person has deep issues.
This is a really good,
man, there are so many issues
to talk about how the mainstream
media supported left is losing their minds.
Polls show most Americans
believe on a limitation at a certain point.
You know, it's like after the first trimester
or something, I don't know.
The way I have always viewed it is
I grew up with very, you know,
my dad was always kind of conservative.
My mom was pretty much a hippie.
But we were a Democrat, pro-choice and all that.
And it was, you know, my dad saying something like,
look, you should never be happy.
about an abortion. You know, if you're ever with a woman and something, you know, you have to be
responsible. And there are certain circumstances where we begrudgingly accept we need the ability to have
an abortion. That was the growing up, it was like it was really bad. And if you had to do it,
you had to. And it was something to be upset about. Today, it's a joke. Oh, yeah. People like people
wearing shirts that are saying like, you know, going to go get an abortion or something. But most Americans
don't feel that way. So here I am as somebody who is always been a moderate, you know, Democrat,
leaning to the left of my family saying, yeah, right.
For me, I'm pro-choice on libertarian grounds,
and it's a very, very complicated ethical position.
I am 100% within every inch of my body opposed to the death penalty.
And that makes it really hard when it comes to pro-life.
I believe life begins at conception.
I don't see any way you can argue against that.
It is. Life exists.
But I also think there's a challenge in having the government mandate
that one person share their body with another person,
not while recognizing, sure, you can have irresponsible young kids who got themselves in that problem,
but you can't have victims of assault. We're now being forced by the government, and I don't know
whether I should be involved in the moral ethical and health-related decisions of an individual at a governmental level.
I want the cops to go on with guns and force this person to do that thing. And so all I can really do is say,
within me, the only thing I can do is lean towards the more freedom, even though I understand there are two lives at stake.
I can't compel someone to provide their body to someone else.
I just don't know the answer.
It's as best as I can do.
I would see your reasoning if it stops at rape or incest.
Well, no, not even that.
Not even that.
Because I don't blame the baby for that.
I don't blame that.
No, no, no, no.
I know that.
But you're saying the government can't compel you to have, well, okay.
But the government's not compelling you.
Those are your consequences, you know.
I stand on the railroad track.
Well, it's like, I'm going to get mowed over by a train eventually.
One of the challenges with, like, later term abortion is severe deformity or inviability.
And so it's hard for me to believe the government has the ability to know a one-size-fits-all solution.
Sure.
And here's the bigger ethical conundrum.
The data, at least I've looked up, shows that majority of abortions are for no reason at all.
And so it's like, how do you,
I don't believe there's like a good
compromise to this problem at all.
I don't know if there's a solution at all
because you either have
if you're talking about rape,
incest, horrible deformities
you can at least
make a case to all
reasonable people.
Right. To say
no abortions
you can
make the case to a
moral person but then
it breaks apart
when you start to add in the human element of,
hey, but we don't know everything that's going on.
But the abortion anytime for any reason, I don't see the argument.
Now, here's the problem, though.
When it comes to the argues of rape and incest,
how does the government determine it was or wasn't?
Is someone lying to get it?
And my problem is, is the baby isn't responsible.
Right, exactly.
This is a tough, tough problem.
It is.
And, you know, I think.
But that's, but that.
the struggle to get to an answer is just as important as the answer.
As long as we're struggling to get to the answer,
but I don't think we are,
I think we've just abandoned all good faith.
Well, whatever this left, leftism, there's not even, like,
here we are having a conversation trying to figure out the ethics of what is right and what is wrong,
like normal human beings,
and the left is basically saying at any point for any reason.
And I'm like, wait, wait, hold on, you are in the other room.
You're not even in conversation.
What's going on?
You know, for me, it comes down to, like, you have a victim of rape, incest,
and do you have to then have them present evidence?
Do they go through some ordeal?
Or is it like between you and your doctor?
I just lean towards libertarian, I guess, and I don't think I'm right or wrong.
I just, I actually think I'm wrong in a lot of ways on it, but I don't know what to do.
You know what I mean?
So it's a...
I think that's where most people are on a lot of big issues.
Right.
And they just, what they want is an end to this...
nightmare of calling people names for, you know, you look at identitarians. You've been using that
word a lot. And yeah, the identitarian of the, of Europe, um, is wildly misunderstood in my, in my view.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are those who are, you know, Nazi nationalist, blah, blah, blah. But, and it's
happening here in America, and it's one of the reasons I think Donald Trump won, not for the
Nazi reason that they keep putting out.
But maybe in one way because of the Nazi thing, if you believe in your country, if you believe
that, you know, this is a good place, you're demonized over in Sweden.
You're a racist if you won't fly the EU flag and you want to fly the Swedish flag.
That makes people automatically push back and go, you know what?
My identity is important too.
I don't think, I think, so let me clarify for those I might understand, identitarian is identity-based government, right? So identity meaning, in this instance, your race or the races of individuals. So in Europe, you have these groups that are concerned about mass migration and the displacement of the indigenous population. It's actually interesting, they call themselves indigenous rights activists because white people in France are the indigenous population. In the U.S., I don't think, just based on the people I've talked to,
that white identitarianism was a major factor to Trump's victory?
So I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about white.
Nationalism or whatever?
Nationalism.
What I'm talking about are, is this feeling?
And it's always connected to white nationalism, okay, by the press and by people who are,
I think, being insincere or just not well read.
The idea that my culture, I don't care what color you are, my culture is important.
not to the expense of other cultures.
I don't mind come in and bring the best of yours and let's blend in.
But it's underneath the umbrella of America.
Yes.
And what the problem is is that people are now saying, no, all cultures are equally great.
Well, you know what?
There's been some bad cultures that have happened.
And I don't care what color it is.
Hey, what do you think about the culture of Germany in 1930s and 40s?
It sucked.
Okay?
So everything is not equal.
There may be some great aspects of it.
There might be things that you're proud of,
but why do I have to celebrate this and this is torn down?
And that's the problem.
That's the rub that I think people are feeling.
And many politicians, many groups,
and especially the media, are exploiting it,
or they just don't understand what this problem is?
Well, first of all clarify,
that's not identitarianism, right?
So, identitarian is usually about what your identity is, things you can't control,
you know, be it male, female, white.
That's just valuing American culture.
Altruism, I don't know, you want to call it.
Right, but what is happening, and you probably will, I mean, please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
What's happening in, for instance, Brexit, I think there are some people that are part of Brexit that are white identitarian.
Totally.
Okay.
But there are also people who are so beaten up and see what's happening to their country and see what's going on.
And no one is recognizing them.
Right.
The power is putting them into this group that they just say, you know what?
Nobody is freaking talking about me.
Nobody's helping me.
Exactly.
At least these guys, you know, are not calling me names and I don't like what they stand for, but they're being pushed into that corner.
This is why I think, I do think, that.
at current course, the way the left and, you know, look, the left in this country has gone so far off the path.
And it's not my opinion.
It's the New York Times data.
It's quartz.
It's Pew.
It's Gallup.
It's the economist.
I've got the charts.
I show them all the time.
The media feels safe for whatever reason with this fringe, far left, identity-based world.
I don't understand.
You know, and that's why the center and the right are kind of, you know, more aligned.
And the left is, the media just thinks it's a safe.
They've always felt it's safe.
I have no idea.
But what do you think happens when you have Sarah Jung?
Do you know who she is?
She was on Twitter for three years.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anti-White racist posts.
Yes.
New York Times hires her.
It gives her a prominent position.
The Alt-right responded by saying,
Bless the New York Times,
I wish we had a thousand more Sarah Jones.
They didn't hate it.
They loved it.
They wanted that because they know
the kind of things she was putting out
will force white people to join the...
Well, they're hoping white people will then come to the Alt-Rite
because...
Well, if the Alt-Rite...
is the media is already saying that the right Trump supporters are part of the alt right they are not
it is a big there are some people in the all right that support Donald Trump yep but there are very
few people that support Donald Trump that support the alt right if they know what it is but because
the media says you're all alt right yep a lot of people just go well I guess it can't be that bad
I'm part of the alt right that's dangerous
Now that quote's going to take it out of context because you just said it.
So I've actually talked to some young people who told me they were.
And I was just like, I, you know, I completely disagree where America was not, it's not like, you know, look, it's not a European nation.
White people didn't come from here.
We came to here.
And there are other people they were here too.
And they're like, oh, no, I don't care about race.
And I'm like, wait, what?
Do you know what alt-right means?
Literally it's like neo-confederate white nationalism.
and they were like, oh, all they ever saw was people they thought were funny being accused of being alt-right and assumed all right meant like...
When Ben Shapiro is alt-right.
Oh, my God.
You know, sign me up, I guess.
That's not what it is.
But you've got, you know what I think?
I think a lot of people on the left are so far left, they look to the right and they...
Actually, I'll put it this way.
One of the things I describe is this event that happened in Boston.
where you had the right and the left.
On one side, on the right, you had a guy waving a Confederate flag.
On the other side, you had a guy waving a Soviet flag.
So I was talking to one of the organizers of the protest, and I said, you know, I'm sure
they would welcome you over there for conversation.
And he was like, are you kidding?
Look, they're flying a Confederate flag.
And I said, oh, that's one guy, though.
And they're like, yeah, but he's there with him.
They support him.
And I'm like, no, it doesn't mean they support him.
I'm like, you guys are flying a Soviet flag.
And he goes, no, we're not.
And then I said, look behind you.
He didn't realize the flag was behind him.
So here's what happens.
On the right side, they look over the hill and they see the big Soviet flag.
And they assume everybody over there must be a communist.
They look over on the right to see the Confederate flag.
So I think that's kind of a good way to explain what happens when the left is so far left.
They look to the right and the center.
They can see the people in the center.
But then to the far right, they see the flags and assume it's one group.
And actually, we're far away from each other.
You know, they can't tell the difference.
Let me switch subjects because I hate to have you here and not go deep on tech.
Yeah, yeah.
China, 2020, is, I think, 1984.
Oh, man.
And America, 2020, whenever, I think is brave new world.
I think we're headed the same direction.
And when Peter Thiel, who is not an extremist, says Google should be at least looked into for treason.
Wow. I have, yeah, wow. And I have a hard time not saying, I don't know about treason. It's very specific on what that is, but that's really dangerous what they're doing.
You know, I kind of feel like China has a very authoritarian system. You do what China needs.
Oh, yeah.
But that's good for them in the long run. While life may suffer for the individual, I think they're on track to just trounce the United States and worry someone.
way. We've allowed, I mean, first of all, I think we have no purpose. The United States,
millennials, the reason why we're seeing all this fringe, ridiculous activism is because
no one is, there's no mission. You know, they did a survey of the UK and the United States
about what you want to be when you grow up. Americans and Brits said, vloggers on YouTube.
Chinese had astronauts. People in China have a mission. They want to be great. They want to succeed.
They want to fly their flag. People in America, I just want people to look at them. And so what
happens. They go on Twitter and they say silly things. So that says to me, you know, if young people
today don't care about the strength of our community, why would we have one 20 years? China will
exist. It's going to be a crappy place to live in, for sure. But they're going to have a massive,
they're going to have the commanding economy. They're going to have international power.
But as somebody who watches the tech world, it says something that Google will assist China in
some of the worst things we've seen since, you know,
fascism in the 1930s,
pull pot. I mean, they're, they are brutal.
I think Google pulled out of the dragonfly.
There's like two things. There's Project Maven, which was a government,
I believe was like Chinese military in which they're like, oh, we play a small role.
Yeah, right? If any at all, why should you?
And this is really scary, actually. So I believe they did pull out of
Dragonfly, which was censored search. But I'll tell you what's really scary is that Google starts
in the United States, built off the back of the United States. They now, I believe, are headquartered
in like Dublin, right? What do you think happens if U.S. regulators come into Google and say,
we want you to stop the meddling? We want you to stop the search manipulation. Google can say,
we make more money in China. Screw you. And then they basically just do what China wants. What are we
to do? Go to Ireland, stop them? We can't. So what's scary is,
is the authoritarianism of China will force Google to take action, but Google wants the benefit,
so they'll bend the knee. In the United States, it's an issue of which is more valuable to Google.
Who is Google going to be loyal to if it's an international company at this point?
Isn't that scary? Absolutely terrifying. Think about if, you know, the conflict in the South China Sea,
which has been brewing for a long time. And then China says, listen, Google, war is bad, right?
Why don't you start weighing things down in the U.S. So U.S. interests, and then all of a sudden,
people in America are like, China's great. We love China.
China. You search for China. What do you see? It's all this really beautiful things about China.
And Google's saying it's better this way because war is bad. And then China's interests supersede
the United States. And that's not unrealistic at all. I think it's probably already happening.
I do too. I do too. Yeah. So the China 2020, what I'm concerned about is we're just accepting it
here. We're not even really standing up and saying, hey, that's a, that was an episode of the
black mirror. Yeah. And we're accepting it and it's growing bigger and bigger. Do you see a time
where the doors close, where, where these big corporations have the power and there's just no
turning back from it? Absolutely. And you know, the thing is, 100 years ago, if the door's closed,
somebody would come and knock those doors down.
Can't.
You can't anymore.
You know why?
As I explained earlier with the algorithms,
you won't even know the door is closed.
Right.
All you're going to see when you open your phone is lollipops and rainbows and you're going to beg,
life is good.
And you're not going to realize it.
So it is the Matrix.
Right, right, right.
It's, it's, I'll tell you what's scary about it.
Right.
At a certain level, we can say, you know what, if we can avoid war, that's a good thing, right?
Google has the perspective, we should stop the bad speech.
And eventually there will be no bad speech.
Oh, that sounds nice.
Right.
But here's the thing.
As we learned from the YouTube story about Hitler and the Hulk dancing, their algorithms
aren't going to lead to what they want.
Right?
So the way I can actually explain it is YouTube thought their algorithm would lead people towards
funny sitcoms.
That's what they had in their mind.
They were like, what's a good show?
Friends, right?
So let's tell the algorithm things like Friends are good.
More than 10 minutes.
People watch more than 10 minutes.
You know, it's got this amount of likes, this amount of views.
And YouTube instead directed them towards.
an Indian guy singing into an 80s microphone of Hitler dancing because they didn't know the difference.
So they're doing this now.
They think they're doing the moral good and they're going to be working.
It's going to be this big international thing where it's like, actually, I believe what Jack Dorsey said was we're a global community.
They don't view themselves as catering to the American people.
I've talked to, for years I've talked to some of the people in Silicon Valley.
There's really deep thinkers that don't think the same way I,
I do.
Yeah.
But they're fascinating to talk, talk to because they see the world that is coming,
and they're designing the world that is coming.
They think they are.
Yeah, they think they are.
Yeah.
And they have said to me for years, Glenn, you're thinking old world.
We're entering a world where borders won't matter.
It's true, though.
It is.
It is.
But not in the way that.
We have ever felt borders, you know, the way we think of borders.
They mean the corporations have no worry about borders at all.
And they are, it's a completely redesigned corporate entity.
The corporation will be, I mean, Facebook, if Facebook wanted to right now, they could be the government.
You'd never see.
Look, Elizabeth Warren came out and said she wants to.
break up big tech, right? And then what happened almost right away, Facebook took her ads down.
And then brought them back up later saying, oops, that was a mistake. Was it? Yeah, that's scary.
YouTube, I'm sorry, Google and Facebook control nearly half. I believe they control the overwhelming
majority. Maybe like, I mean each control around half of the digital ad market. They've just
monopolized the whole thing. Biggest ad agency in the world. Yep. So when it comes to the internet,
they can make you think whatever they want. You'll never hear a story again. And then, you know,
blows my mind is why these people in media just love it. Defend Google all day and night.
You know, it's crazy? A few weeks ago, a bunch of Trump supporters and conservatives had a protest
in D.C. called Stop the Bias. Something about, I don't know what was about. All I know is they were saying
these big corporations are silencing speech. Antifa shut up to protest the American citizens fighting
for their rights against corporations. The far left came out to protest not authoritarianism,
but American citizens complaining and demanding a redress of grievances.
It's like the, what is it, the internet rules that they tried to get passed and Paget changed from the FCC.
I don't know.
But I'll say this.
When it comes to the talk about like China and 1984 and how the algorithms are manipulating us,
think about the kind of content that these people, these Antifa people see all day every day.
World War II imagery, talks of parallels between Trump and Nazism.
Google is whether they're doing on a purpose or not, are manufacturing people.
Twitter is a great example.
They create block lists.
So you can never see what I have to say.
They only ever see the fringe far left.
And they are festering in this bubble where they just eventually get big and angry and then think they're morally just and then act in defense of these massive corporations.
What's the solution?
I honestly have no idea.
How do you tell a company they're not allowed to have free enterprise?
How do you tell an individual they're not allowed to have free speech?
I think perhaps there was one interesting option put forward.
I can't remember which Senator did it.
He's saying an algorithmic free mandatory option for all social networks,
meaning you can choose to see things as they are without being manipulated.
And then perhaps a guarantee of free speech on these platforms.
Now, the conversation has to be had in a very particular way.
We can't just say you have to have free speech,
but we can say publisher or platform, right?
This is an important distinction
because legally there is no publisher or platform distinction.
The law just says, you know,
a digital service will not be deemed the speaker
of something based on a third person,
which is a really interesting conundrum
in the United States specifically.
In Australia, I believe a man recently sued media organizations
because they posted to Facebook
and then someone commented defamatory information
on that post, and he said that was the media company's speech, and Australia said, you're right, it is.
Because they created the space for it. They were obligated to regulate it. In the U.S., Section 230 protects
them from this. But I ask if that's true and there's no distinction. Why can't, so you're saying
that the Wall Street Journal can write, you know, Glenn Beck is an alien and make some ridiculous
false claim that he's a bigot, racist, and here's proof. Make it all up. You can't sue him.
You can, of course. It's liable. You can. But hold on. Section 230 says, you can't.
You'd have to sue the individual author, not Wall Street Journal.
Right, because they have an editor.
And so they look at everything before it goes to press.
A lot doesn't say that, though.
Pardon me?
Section 230 doesn't clarify that.
That's the thing.
Legally, there's no distinction between platform or publisher.
So how can we be at a point now where the law accidentally meant gave the New York Times immunity?
Right.
That doesn't make sense.
Right.
So there needs to be a clarification.
And I will make this point stressing it.
too. When the left always says, you know, it's a private business, they can do what they want,
I say, that's wonderful. We create new regulations every day. End of story. Sure, today they can do
whatever they want. I'm arguing they shouldn't be able to, and now we should actually enforce something.
What form regulation takes is a bigger question, but the point is, just because they can do it now
doesn't mean they should be able to. We need to either refine Section 230 to clarify. We need to pass
laws restricting, you know, the banning of speech based on arbitraries, you know, whatever.
But, you know, I guess it is an extremely complicated problem.
It is the development of a new civic within our country that requires the conversation and
simply saying, do nothing, it's a private business, I think is the wrong approach.
Where is the line where we are not going to know if free will exists?
You might be past it already.
You know, I'll tell you something creepy.
I watch on YouTube anime videos like Dragon Ballsian One Punch Man, and I don't watch politics for the most part, even though I make political videos.
I watch skateboarding and I watch cartoons where Japanese people fight each other.
And one day, I got a video about people living in a van, van life.
And I thought, that's weird.
I've never watched anything having to do with living off the grid or living in a van.
I clicked it.
And I thought, wow, this is actually really interesting.
And then all of a sudden, all I've been getting recently, every other video is van videos.
And I started thinking, why would Google just send me this video?
Now, I'll be honest, I end up building a van.
I now have a mobile production, you know, slash live, shower in it.
Because I thought it was a great idea.
But something else happened.
This woman, her name is like Janelle Elena in,
A couple weeks with only two videos has like 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
It's one of the fastest growing channels ever for the amount of content she put out, which is a none.
And now a lot of people are saying they believe it's an industry plant.
I'm not saying that's true.
At the very least, we can say, though, whether on purpose or on accident, the algorithm is putting in the minds of young people not to buy homes and to live in vans.
And think about what that's going to do to the housing market in 10 years when millennials are like, I'd rather live in a van.
It sounds fun.
Right now, millennials aren't buying homes because you can't afford it.
So what happens then when no one can sell a home, the market bottoms out, everyone's
investments destroyed?
See, that's where people don't understand this, for instance, it's my understanding
that Amazon is really looking to the future of just being a shipping company, a prediction
and shipping company.
Once they have enough in their algorithm to predict you 95% of the time, they'll just
start shipping stuff before you even want to order it.
and it'll be there.
And if you want it, you'll keep it and pay for it.
If not, you'll ship it back.
But do I really want it?
Or did they shape me with their ads that were aligned directly to me?
Well, there are two things.
First, there's a story of a father received, he picked the mail up from his house.
And there was some coupons for his daughter for maternity items.
You know the story.
Yeah, but tell it anyway.
He got angry because he was like, why are they advertising to my young daughter?
She should be a mother.
And it turned out, they actually knew she was already pregnant.
Because of the things she was looking at online, the things she was saying, they didn't mean anything by it.
They were like, oh, she'll probably want this, not realizing.
But what's really scary is, you know, a lot of people believe that Facebook spies on them.
Because you'll be talking about something, and then you'll go on Facebook and see an ad for that very thing.
And you're thinking, like, they had to have been listening to me.
That's very naive.
The reality is scarier.
Facebook can predict your behavior so well, they knew you were going to talk about it.
And this is true.
There was an article that said, you two, I'm sorry, Facebook knows where you're going to eat lunch with a ridiculous accuracy.
They know when you use the bathroom.
They can predict all of these things about you.
And so they're not spying on you.
They don't need to.
When you said to your, you know, to your dad or whatever, man, I'm really interested in getting that new telecaster I saw at the guitar center.
And then also you see an ad for it.
It's because the behaviors before seemingly irrelevant.
I like nachos.
it's raining. Those behaviors
are associated with someone wanting to buy a guitar.
Somehow, in some way, we don't understand.
The AI does. So you think
they're listening to you? No. They're predicting
your behavior. Now, you combine that
with shaping behavior,
and it could be as simple as,
if we show you the post about nachos,
we know you'll vote for Obama, or
whoever, right? You might not think
seeing endless posts about Taco Bell
will impact you in a certain way,
so you'll never question it.
But they know those seemingly
irrelevant things
do guide your behavior.
You know, what's scary is
how they can control the stock market.
They can control, which they can, you know, it's funny.
Well, AI is most,
most of the stock market now is AI.
Right, right, right. But think of it this way.
If they really wanted to
Twitter, Google, Facebook, whatever,
combat global warming or whatever,
they could snap their fingers and
you'd only see news, you'd only
see comments, you'd only see opinions.
They could easily restrict or limit
speech, they're doing it. On Twitter, you know, people are shadow banned on YouTube. I'm sorry,
I always mix up at Google, you type in a search term won't appear. Right? So like one common thing right now
is you go on Google type in Ilhan Omar marriage, nothing comes up. You go on duck, duck go,
marriage fraud pops up first thing because that's the question people are asking.
Google is manipulating what people can see and shaping our behaviors. They call it the good
sensor. That's the document that was leaked and presented by Ted Cruz in Congress.
They know what they're doing.
And what's scary is, the example of, you know, Hitler and the Hulk, they think they're guiding you in a direction that makes sense.
They don't know.
And you're not proposing that you do know.
Oh, I don't.
You're just, yeah.
You know, it's really funny.
People always say, like, you know, YouTube's coming to get me.
I'm next.
I'm going to get censored.
And I'm like, listen, you got to understand YouTube, they could get rid of me at any moment.
They've definitely deranked independent commentary.
But my channel is doing better than ever.
So if their intention is to get rid of my voice, I don't think so. Actually, I have a theory on this, which is kind of a side step. The media calls me right wing. I'm clearly not. You know, centrist at the very least, but a lot of, you know, I'm supporting Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. But you know, they want to happen. They want the wheel to shift over. They want me to be conservative so that you, Glenn, are a fringe far-right extremist. How do they shift the full opinions of everybody? How do they control that behavior? They start telling everybody slowly Tim Poolew's.
right wing. They prop up my YouTube channel and then call it right wing. So it's the only thing people
can see. And then people get this view of a moderate liberal as conservative and it shifts the whole
wheel to the left. Wow. I'm not saying it's on purpose. It's an Overton window move. Right. So right now
I look at like Tucker Carlson, you know, he's conservative. I'm definitely to the left of him and Ben Shapiro.
But Ben Shapiro won't use the proper pronouns for a trans person. I actually do because I'm actually
a liberal. They'll now ban
Ben Shapiro eventually. He's high profile,
so they have to wait this one out. But they're going to,
they're banning all the lower, lower tiered individuals
who have less followers, who have no protection
and no chance of rectifying this for
misgendering. And they say, but you broke the rules of a
private platform. Once they're all gone,
then they say, but Tim Poole is a conservative.
Now there's nothing to the right of me,
but the extremists who are banned.
And then the whole wheel shifts over one degree.
So why
hasn't, why
hasn't anyone
done
anything to
at least build
another platform?
Why is there?
They have, they have, they have, absolutely.
And I think it requires
people to use them, right?
So I've, I used to have the Twitter logo
in my video thumbnails on YouTube
because I want people to follow me.
I now use the Mines logo, M-I-N-D-S.
Mines is kind of like
Facebook, YouTube, you can upload video. It's kind of like Facebook, but it's decentralized,
encrypted, privacy, free speech. You don't get banned for offensive content. If you post
egregiously offensive things that are like not safe for work, you get a not safe for work tag,
which means people have to turn the filter on to see it. Not a big deal, right? So they've got,
I think a couple million users. I actually, I'm working with the CEO on a separate project,
a news venture. So it's happening, right? You've got BitShoot, which is video hosting, which is
doing pretty well.
And then you've,
which is kind of like a YouTube alternative.
You've got Gab and Parley,
which are Twitter alternatives.
You have Mines.
So,
you know,
here's the thing.
If Donald Trump right now
signed up for Mines.com
and then posted something
related to Iran,
the media would be forced to cover it
and that would,
the market would just overnight.
Twitter would lose a massive portion of a share.
Stock would probably go down.
Right.
But they would also immediately be deemed
by media.
social media as a far right extreme platform.
They're already doing it.
And I think, you know, I, I'm not going to claim these people are doing it on purpose,
but I am, it is disconcerting that you have these journalists acting in defense of massive
unaccountable corporations smearing small businesses, decently small businesses.
But here's a thing.
There's another network called the Fediverse, which stands for Federated Universe.
It's an open source protocol for social media.
You're familiar with Gab, I imagine.
right? Yeah, Gab did something really brilliant in they overhauled their code and took the open source code from a group, I don't want to call it a company, but an organization called Mastodon.
Mastodon is pretty far left, right?
They have crazy rules.
They even banned Will Wheaton for being a transphobe.
And Will Wheaton is like, right, right.
We know Will Wheaton's kind of far left.
So Massadon code is open source.
Gab takes it.
Gab federates, meaning any browser that accesses this open source network can get you to gab.
Can Google ban a browser because you can go to a bad website?
No.
So now Gab can't be banned or shut down ever.
So this is a step in, you know,
the right direction. Whether you like Gab or not, it's not the point. I'm not talking about the
history of Gab. Just the idea of unbannable networks. What's really interesting about this
Fediverse option is that you can make your own social media site called glenbeck.com. And you can tell
people follow me on the Fediverse, Glenn at glenbeck.com, like email or a website,
no one can ban you because it's your server hosting your speech. The only thing can take you
down is a court order. So this is an alternative to these massive networks and censorship. What
it's going to take, though, high-profile individuals using them. So I've been promoting and using
minds because it's like, I hate Facebook. It's just, for so many reasons. But, you know,
the easiest path to changing it is if Trump right now, if Trump made a post on any one of these
platforms, be it gap, mines, bitch, whatever, the media would have no choice but to show it front
and center on every channel, on every website. And then, you know, Twitter was bleeding users for a while.
And then Trump came in. Helped to prop it back up because now there was a reason to be on the
platform. They're still kind of losing users. But until high profile people say I'm going to use
something else, well, they control everything, you know. I want to switch gears and keep it focused
on what we're facing in this election right now. For instance, I've been warning the audience of
deep fakes for a long time. Once, it's like people said in Germany, you know, in, uh,
In 1925, nobody knew what hyperinflation was.
Or 1928 by 29, that's all anyone was talking about, you know.
And I think it's going to be that way with the first deep fake, the first real deep fake.
I kind of think deepfakes are would be a really good thing for us.
And I, you know, sometimes the solution of problems are counterintuitive.
Wait, wait, wait.
I think long term you may be right.
And I want to hear your theory on that.
But I'm talking about the first real critical moment deep fake that everybody thinks is real and could change an election or could start a war.
First one.
I think it'll be a good thing.
Do you?
Why?
So, I mean, look at Covington.
Remember that, you know, Covington?
That wasn't.
That was real footage.
Right.
And so because it was real footage, there was no fact checking to determine whether or not what actually happened was real.
They said, of course, it's real.
We've seen the footage.
Now, what happens when a video comes out of true?
Trump saying something nightmarish and dangerous.
And then in three or four days, it turns out to be completely fake.
We need something to get, I guess, I don't know if journalists will ever get back on track on this one for whatever reason.
But we need to get to a point where people are less trusting of random videos they see on the internet.
So once we get that first big deep fake and the media says, oh, my, that was fake?
Whoa.
And people might take a step back for every other video following that.
So we need something to say legitimately stop believing.
everything you see. Because, you know, you can take a video and it's so easy to strip out not just the context of the sentence, but the cultural context surrounding the conversation.
So it's amazing what DARPA is trying to do. Right now, DARPA is, I'm sure you know more than I do, working on deep fakes because they want to be able to have this algorithm that can spot them and then mark them as deep fakes. Well, that, what you're talking about,
is true. I don't need, we don't need a little approved by marking. We need to have people go back
and say, wait a minute, does that make sense? Where's the original source? Give me more of that.
You know, because you're exactly right. You don't have to fake someone saying it. I've been taken
out of context. You've been taken out of context for over a decade. I've been to have four decades of
me, it's just as damaging. What's really interesting about context, too, is it's not just the
paragraph you said, right? Like, if you were to say something like, you know, George Washington is
quoted as saying in a sentence, they can take that sentence and then say, you said it. It's actually
the cultural context, too. So in one instance, there was a particular news story the New York Times
put out, specifically the New York Times. And then there was commentary on it from an internet figure.
I said, I don't trust the New York Times, you know, but I do trust the New York Times. You know, but I do trust
so and so. The cultural context was that that week, a story came out that was, you know,
you know, hard to believe. And I wasn't saying I just don't trust the New York Times, period.
It was in that week we were talking about one issue. And so it's not even, you know,
so it's true in that instance, I didn't trust them. But people will take that and they use it.
Here's the thing. Our society is extremely sensitive to whatever pops up on the internet at whatever
moment. You know, there's a story right now of Macy's canceling plates. Because one person complained.
Our businesses need to get to the point, corporations, marketing, and people to where they just
say, I don't care about your tweets. I don't care about your video on the internet. So that's what I
where I kind of wanted to go. I was reading a book and I can't remember what it was. I read it
over the summer. And it had, it was about how the internet, how some people not coordinated, just took
someone by association and said that person's bad, so this person must be bad.
Every day.
Every day.
So this person was being destroyed, just a regular citizen.
So somebody in the tech world decided the way to fight this is to fight it with fire hose
of fire.
Just say everything about this person from the believable to the absolutely outrageous
and just make it through algorithms, viral.
So it's everywhere.
And that way, nothing had meaning anymore.
And in some ways, I kind of feel like that's where we're headed,
not necessarily that somebody's doing it.
But because everybody's a racist, everybody's whatever,
it's going to come to a place to where it's a little boy who cried wolf.
It's not going to mean anything anymore.
But, you know, what's worrying is I already feel that way
as somebody who watches a wide, you know,
swath of different news from left to right.
Right.
But there are people on Twitter
who purposefully block dissenting opinion
and only follow people on the left.
It's a uniquely left thing to do.
And so, you know, you'll see something like,
there's an interview I did with some alt-right people.
And they prop that up as proof.
I'm secretly friends with these people.
I'm not.
I've done interviews with a former Soviet general
with refugees, but you take one photograph.
And then when you isolate yourself,
these people lose their minds.
and so it's one of the reasons why I can't go on the ground and cover things the way I used to,
and now I'm doing, you know, more political commentary and we're working on, like, documentary stuff,
because big, breaking news stories, these people believe insane things about me because they're in isolated groups,
and you'll have one or two people who know they're lying, but they don't care.
The ends justify the means by any means necessary, and that's the way they operate.
Antifa again.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's kind of crazy, you know, in 2011, the first time I got attacked.
This may have been early 2012 by, you know, black, block anarchist type.
MSNBC had me on.
And they said, wow, how could this have happened?
Today, where are they at?
They're tacitly supporting it, ignoring it at the very least,
and we're seeing high-profile individuals prop them up and praise them.
We just had the Guardian did a piece, I believe, recently on the John Brown Gun Club.
That guy who attacked the ICE facility was a member of that anti-Fal organization.
And they're getting a piece praising them.
I mean, CNN even, it was, I can't remember the guy's name, but he has a show on CNN, and he was saying you can donate to them.
I could be wrong about that, but this was before the attack.
At the very least, I'm surprised that, could you imagine, you're right from it with the Oathkeepers?
Could you imagine if CNN was like, everybody donate to the Oathkeepers?
Like, that'd be, why?
But they do it with Antifa.
You know, and how many pieces did we get?
There was a CNN piece said Antifa seeks peace through violence.
That's a, that was, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, you know what, they want to hate Trump so much.
They disagree with whatever he says, no matter what he says, even if they're going to be wrong about it in the end, just because that's what they, I, for whatever reason, that's what they're after.
And then they end up supporting extremists.
What do you, quickly, because I've got very little time, what do you think of, uh, what's happening on the ground?
Are people waking up on both sides, normal people, just waking up and going, I don't want any of this.
Or are they polarizing and just?
Polarizing.
I think a lot of people who are not conservative are moving to join conservatives.
Actually, Vox.com said in the Andy No scenario, the narrative was divided by left and the center and the right.
So here's what I see.
Conservatives and centrists and like moderates are pretty much still in agreement,
but the left has veered off in a ridiculous path.
And the data shows it. It's the New York Times. It's Gallup, Pew, Axios courts. All of these polls show the same thing. So not my opinion. The left has gone far, far left. And when media traces after them, they're going on the moderate left. Who are Democrats? Are they peeling off? Or are they going with them? I think they're going to the right. A lot of them. You know, my friends who are, you know, were Bernie supporters in 2016, count me out. They're gone. And then you have a lot of people who are now.
Now, vote of Obama, now they're calling it Walk Away.
They're saying they're with Trump now.
Back in a minute.
Let me switch to AI, A-G-I-A-S-I.
Elon Musk, I think, is it.
What's your opinion on Elon Musk?
I mean, there's a lot to criticize him for, I guess, but I think he's hilarious.
I do, too.
He's kind of like, he's like a real version of Tony Stark that's live in the life that a billionaire.
If you were a billionaire, you'd like to.
I tweeted at him.
Yeah.
Jokingly, hey, Elon Musk, why haven't you built yourself an Iron Man suit yet?
Right.
And he responded working on Starship.
That's great.
That's great.
And it went like decently viral.
Right.
People were really excited that he, you know, he's a funny guy.
He interacts, you know.
Yeah, he is.
So he was talking about, oh, shoot, I can't.
Neuronet.
Neurrelink.
Neurlink.
I was going to bring this up.
This is a potential solution.
Right.
Now.
Maybe.
This is what's amazing.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I've always got the catastrophe side for you.
So give me the hope side.
I'm going to give you the catastrophe side.
Oh, okay.
I know that one.
I'll give you both.
I'll give you both.
My daughter is currently, she's gone through a year of testing to be able to have the implants put into her brain.
For neural link?
Not for neural link.
I want to call Elon or write Elon and say, hey, can she test?
Yeah.
Um, she's got the, uh, current technology, which his is going to be 10,000 times more powerful.
Uh, but it carries with it.
Great promises.
Oh, yeah.
But also some really dark stuff.
Well, the, you know what I'm hoping for?
What?
Man, if you like VR, imagine if you could actually just link your brain to a computer and then be in the
matrix world.
Now, the Matrix is a scary movie, but what I mean is, like, imagine that fake reality of, you could be Superman.
I'm sure people would love to come home from work and just feel powerful for a few minutes flying around, shoot laser beams.
That sounds fun.
And reality, one of the hopeful things is that by being connected to the net, we won't be overtaken by the net.
Our brain computation will be in sync.
But here's the more nightmare scenario.
The first one is, I go back to the Hitler dancing with Hulk thing.
We hook our brains into that.
Who knows what our...
Imagine you think you're going to...
You're going to go into a VR world to be Superman,
and instead it's a nightmare trip of, like,
talking, you know, hammers exploding and just weird nonsense.
You ever watch Star Trek?
Mm-hmm.
You know, the Borg?
Yeah, so I could be getting it,
my lore wrong, but my understanding is the Borg started out like humans,
integrated themselves into technology,
and eventually it formed a hive mind,
where they're no longer individuals.
That's exactly how I described it to a friend over the week.
It's a, it's a, it is eventually a hive mind.
Yep.
Almost there already.
Yeah.
Twitter.
You know, we're not integrated at the speed of light, the speed of electricity, but we open up our phones and we look at that Twitter feed and we're connected to that network immediately to see their thoughts and opinions.
Correct.
What happens when it's all instant to our brains and we can hear everything?
And when it's two directions.
Maybe.
I mean, you want to talk about algorithms just nudging you.
I mean, if you read Kass Sundstein's work on Nudge, that's dinosaur stuff.
You know, it sounds bad too, but I could maybe envision it being a good thing in some ways.
You know, a lot of...
Craig, we'd be able to speak...
I mean, he talks about being able to affect language as far as...
I mean, I could go to...
I could go visit, you know, Russia and speak Russian and understand it.
And it would...
And it would somehow or another.
They'd be speaking Russian, but you'd both hear...
Correct. But I also think, you know, one of the biggest problems in politics is the inability to understand the worldview of the other person. What if we did? What if you are like, that's what you think? And so I'll put it in the, I guess, like the beneficial way to conservatives. Imagine all the liberals are stupid and wrong. And all of a sudden, one day their eyes were opened to everything you knew.
Let me use your Star Trek analogy. Yeah. Did you ever see the Vulcan mind meld work out poorly?
I mean, when he's
Yeah, I mean, he was
He was always like
Vulcan mind melden
He would come away with some great
Right.
Oh, I understand death.
I understand fear.
In reality, I think, you know,
left right, up down, religious,
a religious, whatever,
will really understand
the perspectives of people and everything
if they can truly communicate more quickly
and, you know,
when it comes to human speech,
look, I've got 15 billion ideas on my head
and I can bring them out in this tiny little string
that's really hard. So, you know, it's, it's, I can tell a liberal, think of all those dumb
conservatives and all of a sudden they know everything you know. That sounds great, doesn't it? Because then
they'll, then they'll know you're right, right? And you can say the same to conservatives.
In reality, everybody will learn from everybody and maybe stop being at each other's throats.
Although, admittedly, it's like it's the far left and the fringe wackos.
But isn't it the same thing, though, with, I mean, I don't know where you stand on,
on Libra, but.
Right? No way. Isn't this, isn't this Libra?
for the brain. Who is controlling...
Exactly.
You know, if I, if, you know, Stephen Hawking was so misunderstood at the end of his life,
I believe he was absolutely right. By 2050, there's a good chance that homo sapiens don't exist.
It doesn't mean man doesn't exist.
It means what we define as a hobosapian today does not exist because of stuff like this.
But if they can control, if they're controlling speech,
Libra can say, oh, well, you're not, you're no longer tolerable.
You're bad for the community.
Libra's scary.
Libra's scary.
First.
But isn't this the same, though, also with the brain?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Just turn you, you're a monkey now.
That's why I think NeuroLink is fun for video games and for you choosing what you connect
to, but this like constantly on system, it's kind of scary.
But so I'll tell you what Libra is terrifying.
MasterCard, depending on your source,
It's disputed a bit between Patreon and MasterCard,
but Patreon says,
MasterCard reached out.
You said you have to ban this man Robert Spencer.
I believe Robert Spencer's name.
He's an anti-jihad.
You're familiar?
Oh, yeah, he used to advise presidents.
Right.
They said ban him.
Patreon said, I'm sorry, MasterCard forced us to do it.
MasterCard, I think, denied it.
So what happens when banking institutions can tell you,
you can't use this anymore?
Now it gets worse.
One of the things they're proposing with Libra
is speeding up transactions by using Libra.
So MasterCard, when MasterCard wants to send money from the United States from their bank,
they transfer it through all these different systems and there's like regulation attached to it.
With Libra, it's a finger snap.
It's just a quick currency through Facebook.
What happens when Facebook bans you for being an extremist?
And then you take your MasterCard and you swipe it at a gas station and it says denied.
And you call MasterCard, they say, well, we use Libra to do exchanges and you're banned from Libra.
So look, we have no problem with you.
You can use MasterCard all you want.
Unfortunately, Libra is our intermediary in your band.
you can't use this card anymore.
Now Facebook is in between everything you do and can choose to shut you down.
You're seeing this.
You're seeing this already being pushed by state governments with Cuomo saying to the financial
center of the world saying, hey, by the way, we have to send in our state regulators.
And we're not telling you how to do business, but we think some of these guys who are making
guns or selling guns are kind of suspicious. So it will probably extend your examination every
year. Nobody wants that hassle. Yep. And so he's saying, but you can avoid all that if you just
don't do business. And they are following that. Yeah, it's authoritarianism. It is. It's tyranny.
But again, without the government's involvement. Outsourcing the tyranny. Right. This is what's what I find
really scary about big tech and especially
whatever, you know,
what's really worrying to me are these
people who defend Google and Twitter
and Facebook. I'm like Elizabeth Warren is coming
after them. Don't you like Elizabeth
Warren? Like, for whatever
reason, you know, so. But even
I worry about that
because of
the history with
FDR. I mean, FDR
wanted regulation. So let's go to
Ford and GM
and Chrysler and ask them how we should regulate.
Well, they put all of the small people out of business.
It bothers me that Zuckerberg is saying,
hey, we need regulation.
Well, who are we going to go to?
He's trying to, right, he's steering that.
He wants to be the advisor.
One of the more terrifying things if we don't have AI is China.
So there was an interesting point made.
I think it was Sam Harris's podcast where something to the effect of,
the moment that AI defeated, I think Kasparov or whatever, the greatest chess player,
there will never be a chess player who can beat our best AI, period.
What happens if China beats us to the race and then declares war?
They declare war because, what is it?
What did Sun Tzu say?
Win before declaring war or something like to that effect?
So if they have the AI, they know our output, they know the knowns, the knowns, the unknown unknowns, et cetera.
And then the AI says you have an 87% chance of victory, declare war and follow these steps.
and the U.S. can't counter that artificial intelligence.
China takes over the world, you know.
Are you, do you believe that we will get to AGI?
What is AGI?
Okay, so AI is artificial intelligence, which what will you have?
What you're talking about is at least artificial general intelligence,
where, you know, Kasparov was beaten by AI,
but it's very narrow.
It can only do that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So AGI is something that can look at all.
All of it, and ASI is super intelligence.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, one of the things really interesting I tell people is,
what makes humans better than computers is that when you need to screw something into a piece of wood, a screw, a screwdriver.
We take it, we say the point the end goes into the hole, and then we twist until it feels right.
We do no, we do very little calculations.
But computers, when they do this, have to calculate literally every step.
So when the AI defeats Kasparov, it literally calculates.
all of the, it calculates all of these different outcomes, wasting time and energy.
If it had general intelligence, which I believe I could be in the right spaces,
they could make more assumptions and skip off the wasted time and energy and move faster
and more quickly and more directed.
So, well, when you add quantum computing, then it's, boom.
Then it's everything at once.
You know, it's really funny.
As a side note, are you familiar with Magic the Gathering?
No.
It's a strategy card game.
It's a fantasy strategy card game.
it's similar in Rome to like Dungeons and Dragons, AI can't win because it's just got so many
variables that the computer has to calculate way too much, whereas a human with general intelligence
ignores the wasted time and energy. So the game works like this. You have 60 cards in each
deck. You have a certain amount. You can only have four of each individual card. So the human thinks
I'm playing against this opponent in a professional game. I know the likelihood they'll use a certain
card. Why would they use this really bad card in their deck? They wouldn't. I'll ignore that.
The possibility doesn't exist to me. It's very simple then for the human to go up against a human.
The computer has to calculate 13,000 different cards because it doesn't understand if someone would
or wouldn't use one because it doesn't have the general understanding, the context, the games
meta. It doesn't have enough input yet. Right. So for the time being, if it's one of the most popular
card games in the world, I think in terms of physical card games, if a computer can't win that game,
I'm not super concerned about global warfare because that's infinitely more complicated.
Well, they've won Go, which is a Chinese game that they were, this is what is concerning.
It's not that they can play those games.
It's when the Go Masters in China, when they did lose to, they thought that it was cheating.
Because it was playing it in a way that no human had ever seen.
So what we're dealing with is alien thinking.
It's like alien life.
We can't predict it.
We don't know what it's going to do because it's not going to think like us.
That's another thing I tell people.
They assume a lot of people, not the experts, obviously,
but they assume a Terminator scenario where the robots decide to destroy humans.
No, no, no, no, no.
If you know what would happen before the Terminator?
The Matrix.
But what would happen before the Matrix is a bunch of happy humans,
gleefully serving their robot overlords,
thinking ignorance is, like, not realizing it.
Like, this is really great.
You know, you know,
Ogotron, the giant robot overlord loves us
and we please him, not realizing
they've been manipulated, our behaviors,
you know, at this, you know what,
I'll say this, isn't ignorance bliss, though?
Wouldn't it be great just to bow to your giant robot AI
and not be aware at all that you're a slave?
That's the way people are now.
A lot of people.
In ways.
It's being built.
It's not there, but it's being built.
but it's being built and they are, I remember in the 1990s saying,
there's no freaking way I'll ever give my fingerprints to the government.
Never.
You're like on my phone, beep.
Yeah.
Now I'm like my face.
And in 2000, I was talking about facial recognition saying,
this is really dangerous down the road.
And now we're doing it.
Isn't, weren't social security numbers like shocking to people when they came out?
Like, you want the government to number me?
Correct.
Now we're like, we get a car when we're born. It's normal.
You know, we're walking down that path towards the Borg, I guess.
Unless we blow ourselves up or something before that.
I actually think, you know, World War III type scenarios of like international nuclear war,
it's ridiculously unlikely due to the decaying nature of borders.
So what's really interesting about the idea of borders today is, you know,
you mentioned how they said there won't be any, you know, it's really, listen, 20 years ago,
30 years ago, if you went to Canada and did something to make money, you're in violation
of a tourist visa.
Today, I make money through the internet.
When I go to Canada, Americans paying me.
Americans, you know, are the ones paying me, not Canadians.
So I can buy a house in whatever country I want and do the exact same work legally.
And it's really, really weird, because it gets even weird.
I'll say this.
I have people in the UK who donate to me through like, you know, PayPal or whatever.
I used to use Patreon.
I used Patreon.
If I go to the UK and make a video about delicious UK beer or something,
and then I receive a donation from a British person,
did I just violate a tourist visa?
A British citizen paid me in exchange for producing content,
but they paid an American company which then relayed the money to me.
Right?
Things are starting to break down in terms of,
if we move off of a production-based economy for the most part,
anybody who does a job that involves information
can live wherever they want and work.
You've got American companies that hire developers, like digital coders and stuff in Romania.
And they can pay them.
It's mainly because it's not, you can't really pin down where, who you are, where you, not who you are, not who you are, but where you, where that's supposed to go and how it works, right?
You know the theory of re-hypothecation.
Rehypothication is my signal, head to the mountain.
Whenever you read the word re-hypothecation in a news story, run for your life,
there's not enough gold for all the money that everybody has.
Oh, right, right.
You know, the banks have been, you know.
Well, it's all, it's all fiat.
It's all fake.
It's all fake.
So now.
Backed by guns and oil, I guess.
Right.
So now when Germany demanded their money, their gold from the Fed, it took them five years to give it.
And the Fed was like, we're not going to do this for everyone.
Right.
Because there's not enough gold for everybody.
Right.
Okay.
You, you, we printed more.
You did more than what you have in gold.
But this goes with all of it.
When you have the bundles, the tranches, if you will, of CDOs and mortgages and everything else,
I have a mortgage with Chase Manhattan.
But Chase Manhattan has sold it to somebody else.
Yet they're keeping that.
on their balance sheets as well as an asset,
then this bank sells it today.
They've got the asset.
So this bank owns the house, this bank owns the house,
this bank owns the house, and you own the house.
Yep.
Who owns the house?
Rehypothication is crap.
We have to figure this out.
There's no figuring that out.
I don't think so.
I think it's an ever-exploitable system
where people are going to figure out how to sell one thing over another.
And this is probably derailing,
but it reminds me of what these media companies were doing
with what's called traffic assignment,
where, without naming any companies to avoid litigation,
some very prominent high-profile media companies
would buy the assignment of viewership from a clickbait website.
So you had, you know, oh my God,
There was one that was called like lucky farmer.com.
I kid you not, like some ridiculous name.
And they would put up those articles where it's like 25 celebrities who look crazy.
And every time you want to see a new photo, it's a new page.
They're farming those clicks.
Then they sell the assignment to a major network who then claims,
we got a billion views this month.
And they go to advertisers and say, we got a billion views.
Don't you want to buy ads with us when they only had a million?
So it's the media economy was being built on fake numbers and a manipulation.
and, you know, I was reminded of this just because when you're talking about all these different banks owning different things,
what I see are different companies trying to figure out how they can sell something again.
Is this valuable to you?
So the clickbait website already made money off that view.
Now they can claim the view is part of a network, and now the bigger company can say our network got X views,
and your ads will sell against those.
So they're like selling ads twice.
It's just ridiculous.
And that's another reason why these companies kind of started to fall apart.
because eventually
if someone pulls the pin
on that one bank
and then he says
okay we got to ask the next bank
we got to ask the next bank
and then eventually it comes back to you
you know and the fuse
All right
there's real quick you've already
we have run a longer podcast
than ever before
and I talk to you for another two hours
let me just do some real quick
rapid fire
2030. More free, less free. Americans.
Obliviously less free.
Press, better or worse?
2025.
That's a tough one.
I think we're going to see it.
The press is becoming more and more independent personality-based.
So I think it'll be not better or worse.
just very different.
Who is president in 2021?
Trump.
You say that with such conviction.
Look, I'm not a fan of the guy.
That's fine.
He's done some things I think are good.
He's his character, his foreign policy, I'll be very critical of.
Yeah.
But if you think there's any charismatic Democrat today who's on that stage is going to beat Trump,
I'll take that bet any day of the week.
Thing that keeps you awake at night.
Oh, man.
nothing
nothing
yeah
thing on the horizon
you most worry about
let me rephrase it
um
I'm
little things really
you know I
so freedom of speech
the loss of free speech
is not something that
keeps you awake at night
constantly they're saying
how can we figure this out
how can we figure this out
well I guess
you know
nothing keeps me awake at night
because I'm
very anarchistic
still in my personality
I am ready to
live in the mountains with a dog and go hunting for food.
So it's like you want to tear down your society, you know.
But I do think big tech is the most pressing issue right now.
The thing that you're most excited about with tech,
thing that you think nobody is really...
No link virtual reality.
I'd love to fly around a Superman for, you know,
punching bad guys and shooting laser beams.
Wouldn't that sound like fun, a good relaxing?
And, you know, there's a lot of other things that can do
like downloading, like in the Matrix, downloading Kung Fu,
becoming a master, like, think about, you know, I want to learn how to play tennis.
You just plug in and download tennis, and all of a sudden, you're champion.
You wouldn't be a champion because everybody would be good, you'd be good, right?
You'd be good.
You'd be good.
You wouldn't be that good because your muscles would still need to be, you know, but you'd know a lot.
You could learn faster.
That sounds exciting.
Last question.
Will you come back again?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Great to talk to you.
Like, yes.
Appreciate it.
Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to it.
the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.
