The Joe Rogan Experience - #1862 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operations officer and current CEO of Portman Square Group, a global intelligence firm. He's also the host of "Black Files Declassified" on Discovery+ and the Science Channel. www.portmansquaregroup.com

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! So Mike, how fucked are we? Oh, um, well, I'd say we're fucked. Yeah, I mean, it depends on where you want to start. There's so many interesting things, right? I will say right off the bat, I didn't have monkey pox on my bingo card. It doesn't seem to be that big of an issue. Even when people get it, they don't die. They just get

blisters and then it heals up and then they're good. Yeah. And then they're fine. It's not good, but it's not. It's not good. And it's also can be avoided if you don't have a lot of unprotected gay sex. Yeah, unfortunately, I said the other, what, a month ago, I made the mistake of saying, yeah, just don't have a lot of unprotected random sex at a rave or don't fuck monkeys. And apparently people took offense at that. I don't think anybody's fucking monkeys. I mean, they probably are. There's probably like one guy out there.

There was one guy. But I don't think that's what's causing it. Patient zero. That's just the name of it, right? Yeah, it is. But to tell you what kind of world we live in, now what they want to do is change the name because they think the name is what?

It's offensive to gay people in some strange way. They want to call it like a number, like, you know, ATX124. Yeah. Some nonsense. Just, it's already monkeypox.

It's monkeypox. Everybody's going to know it's monkeypox. Remember when it was the, when COVID was the Wuhan flu? Yeah. Yeah, for a while. No, that's not good either. It wasn't good.

No, you couldn't do that. And then, you know. Why is it okay to have chickenpox when you can't have monkeypox? Oh, yeah. What's up with that? Nobody cares about the chickens anymore. Right. Why is it okay to have chicken pox, but you can't have monkey pox? Yeah, what's up with that? Nobody cares about the chickens anymore. No, it is interesting that one of the primary concerns right now, aside obviously from dealing with the actual issue, is that we've got to change the name. And I honestly, God couldn't forget why that would be offensive to anybody but monkeys.

I don't think. It doesn't make any sense. I think it's just the name has already become synonymous with people having unprotected gay sex. And so they just want to reduce it to a disease. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair enough. I mean, it's just, it is what it is.

It's like out of all the things that we can be worried about, it's not at the top of the list, folks. You can avoid it, and if you get it, you're going to be okay. You're not going to die. I don't believe anyone has died from it, which is crazy that it gets the kind of press it gets. I guess the number of cases caught people by surprise, right? I don't know where

they are now. The last piece of news I read about it was 10,000 cases, I think, in the U.S. That's because gay dudes put in work. Yeah. Well, yeah, you got to. I know. They're prolific.

Yeah. If you don't have to convince some woman to have sex with you and you're just talking about a room full of dudes. It's amazing how much gets done. Yeah. It's like if I had a pair of tits, I'd never leave the house. So, yeah, I don't think I, okay, I should take that back. Yeah, take that back.

Yeah. Sorry about that. I think you'd still leave the house. Yeah. I think you'd Okay, I should take that back. Yeah, take that back. It's probably not appropriate. Yeah, yeah. Don't say that. I think you'd still leave the house. I think you'd get accustomed to them after a while. Yeah, you probably would. You probably would. But yeah, I didn't see monkeypox and we got... But you're right, we got other things

to deal with. We got China's lobbing missiles over Taiwan. Yeah, that was wild. So that's one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about. Like, why the fuck would Nancy Pelosi go to Taiwan and then go to the DMZ? Like, are they trying to kill

her? Yeah, I know. I think what caught a lot of people by surprise was just how public the trip became. Well, it was obviously a press stunt. Well, yes. Although there was this, we don't know who leaked it. We're not sure. I mean, from her office and from other places, we don't know who really started talking about this. Because there've been a number of delegations,

obviously, going back and forth. We just had another one in Taiwan. Got almost no press. Right. But it really doesn't matter who would leak it, because as soon as Pelosi's staff decided they're going to start talking to their Taiwanese counterparts about arranging a trip like this from the very first conversation, the Chinese intel already knows about it. Right. They've picked up on it. So they're already aware. But anyway, so whether the Chinese regime decided to leak it and make a big issue of it because they're getting very shirty about Taiwan at this point, it's anybody's guess. But I think once it became a public issue and a spectacle, she had to go. She couldn't back down. So that was inevitable. And, you know, did it accomplish much? Eh, you know, it's fine. You know, we've got an obligation. We've got the one China policy and we've got the, you know, unofficial recognition of Taiwan.

And I don't think anybody in any administration going back to the beginning of that policy ever really understood what it all means. It's very complicated. It's messy. Everybody's preferred, every administration preferred not to talk about it, really, because it's kind of like the Middle East. Nobody ever thinks it's going to sort itself out properly. But I never thought I'd say this. To Pelosi's credit, she's been hanging in there as a supporter of Taiwan for most of her time. And whether that's because she's making a lot of cash over there on deals, I don't know. Well, she brought over her son who is in the mining business. She would have brought her husband, but he was busy with that DUI charge, which is not a funny thing. Hopefully he gets help. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that.

Sympathy for Paul Pelosi. No sympathy. Yeah. It's, I mean, I guess they released a video. It showed how fucked up he was, which, you know, people were very concerned with him getting released. Like they just kind of dropped the case. And now, so apparently it's back on again. Yeah.

Yeah. It's hard to believe that there could be, you know, two standards of justice. Crazy. Yeah. I would have never believed that. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to believe that there could be two standards of justice. Crazy. Yeah. I would have never believed that. Yeah. I thought everyone was accountable. We're all treated equally under the law.

So what you're saying, though, is that the moment they started talking about doing it, China was aware of it. Yes. So is that because of moles? Is that because of spies? Is that because of spies? Is that? Chinese regime knowing about it, whether it's the Ministry of State Security or whether it's the PLA's intel operations. They know everything that's going on. They hoover up everything. And that's just on the Taiwan issue. We can talk about what they're doing lately and the rest of

the world. But the amount of resource that the Chinese regime puts into, not just under Xi, but previously, puts into monitoring, understanding what's happening in Taiwan and importantly, what the U.S. You know, China's been pretty clear about, look, by 2050, Taiwan's coming back. You know, it's going to be part of China and there's no two ways about it. But now people are talking about, well, that could be four years from now. They've accelerated the timetable and that's causing a lot of concern. There's been a very big buildup

of the Chinese military, obviously, and we've talked a little bit about that in the past. But also they're just – their aggressive behavior. So as their military has been growing, so has their sort of willingness to be aggressive about it and to put themselves out there, which didn't used to be the case. In part because I don't think they felt emboldened enough yet due to the strength of their navy in particular. They've got the largest navy in the world. So that's – there's – it's not So they're not just doing it to do it. There's a reason for it. And the reason for it is to prepare for the eventual day when they decide the time is right to bring Taiwan back into the fold.

And that's going to be a very messy day from our perspective, because what are we going to do about it? Are we going to war with China to defend Taiwan? What are the two perspectives? Is there one perspective where some advisors are saying we have to let it happen to avoid the inevitable mass bloodshed because it's going to happen no matter what? And then the other perspective is if we let them do that, we're sending the worst message possible, so we need to defeat this at all costs. Yeah, that's very eloquent, actually.

You've defined the two tracks, right? There's really nothing in between. There's no middle ground. Although you could argue, and this is what China's been watching also, is what's been happening in Russia and Ukraine. So the idea that we've drawn a red line, we're not putting boots on the ground, right? But we're going to do everything up to that to help support the Ukraine in their efforts against Russia. China looks at that and they think, okay, is that where this would go? If we send our Navy across the strait there and, you know, start dropping troops on the island, you know, where is the U.S. in all of this?

And they have to base their strategy, their forward planning on sort of the knowns, right? And one of the knowns is how we're dealing with Ukraine. We do not want to get into a shooting war with Russia. Well, China's going to have to look at that and go, well, we assume they definitely don't want to get in a shooting war with us, right? So then that's how they start to calculate what that strategy looks like and what the potential then risks and damage could be from being sanctioned further in certain areas, in having arms resupplied to Taiwan during the course of an invasion, essentially. So there's a lot that goes into it. But I mean, look, it's interesting because we miscalculated the Russia situation,

right? We figured out that Russia was building up to an invasion, but just about everybody said, yeah, it'll take them three or four days and they'll roll into Kiev and it'll be over. So we got that pretty wrong. So now we have to worry about how good are our estimates of the Chinese PLA, the People's Liberation Army, and their capabilities and the Navy, and how good are they? And then we have to worry about Taiwan and say, what's Taiwan's will to fight look like? Does it look like the Ukrainians? Two different cultures. So that was a statement of the obvious, wasn't it? Yeah, but it's a perilous time.

It's very disturbing when you're sitting here, you feel helpless, you read the news and you're trying to pay attention to what's going on and you're like, Jesus, how does this end well? Like, what's the best case scenario? Yeah. Well, look, we thought, because again, we didn't have, going back to using Russia as a case study, you know, and obviously that war is going on, and it horrific and you know there's a lot of tragedy there but using as a case study for what could happen in china and the potential there we didn't get putin's plans and intentions right at all right we didn't you know once this thing dragged on beyond what he expected then you know there was a lot of speculation okay maybe this is a negotiated settlement you know so what does that look like? But they've just come out,

the defense minister and others have just come out and said, there's no negotiation to be done here. We don't view this as a way, we're not going to settle this through negotiation. They were very clear. They made a very clear statement. So they're in it apparently to win. But what does that mean? Are they going to be happy securing that eastern side of the country in the south? And does that mean they want to take Odessa? I mean, you know, further beyond into Odessa? And, you know, again, nobody really knows. And we could talk about how, you know, what does that mean? Was that an intelligence failure? Was it just because we were focused elsewhere? We've been spending 20 plus years on the Middle East, counterterrorism.

And so does that mean that we were unable to, because we didn't have the resources focused on the area, to assess what was going to happen with a land war in Europe? And so what does that mean in terms of our ability to assess what the Chinese regime is going to do and what their military capabilities are? It is a big concern. But how it ends, again, that's all speculation. But it's going to be messy either way. Now, what do you make of the people that say that this is provoked by NATO constantly pushing the boundaries and pushing weapons up to the border of Russia? Yeah, I get that argument.

I mean, Putin has been very clear. And one thing I don't think we ever do very well is we don't really take despots or dictators at their word. So when they say something, it's kind of like with Xi in China. He's a dictator. They're going into a Congress soon where he'll probably get a third term. They've never had that happen there. So he's cementing himself as being there forever. But we've always, I guess my point is, we've never really been good at just saying, okay, that's what they're saying.

So maybe we should factor that into our analysis as to what could happen. And Putin was clear for all these years saying, you know, I want to rebuild the Soviet Union in some fashion, right? And the collapse of the Soviet Union, including losing Ukraine. And Ukraine is, they're coming up on their Independence Day. They, what is that? The 24th of August is Ukraine Independence Day. That's tomorrow. And they became independent in 91, tomorrow. And they became independent in 91, got out from the Soviet Union. So Putin's been very upfront about how he wants to rebuild the Soviet Union in some capacity. So yes, I get the argument that says, if we've been pushing NATO for years, right, and trying to strengthen NATO and trying to get them to pay their fair share and trying to do all these things to bolster NATO, particularly along the border with Russia, he's going to look at that as an existential threat in a way, right?

And we should have probably paid more attention to that. But I think that's a little bit too late for Putin. But I think what we should do is use that again and look at what Xi's been saying and look at what they say during their congresses. Look at their five-year plans and be a little bit more aware that he probably means what he says. So when they talk about Taiwan, they mean that. says. So when they talk about Taiwan, they mean that. When they talk about getting to the top of the food chain in a variety of areas, whether it's pharmaceuticals, technology, telecommunications, shipping, oil and gas, that's what they're going to do, which is why they've been so intent over the years to hoover up or steal every bit of intellectual property and intelligence they can, because that's how they're meeting those goals.

There's also some talk about them buying U.S. farmland. Someone just brought this up to me the other day. They just bought an enormous farm somewhere in the middle of America, and their number one priority is feeding China. Yeah. They've been doing all sorts of things. We could literally sit here all day long talking about what they've been up to. But you're right. The Bureau had a great report not that long ago.

It was the culmination of years of investigation. And one of the interesting things that they were doing was looking at the financial side of things. Rather than kind of thinking of individual counterintelligence operations, they started looking at Chinese companies, whether they were state-owned or whether they were just theoretically private but they had two or three cutouts between them and the state. And they were looking at their deals. And they're saying, well, why would they do this? And if it's a private company that's out there to make money and to become successful or be successful, to grow, why would they be making deals that seem not profitable? What's the point of that exercise? And so aside from just acquiring assets, and China's over the years has acquired a massive amount of property and other assets here in the U.S. and around the world, is the idea that it's a very clever part of their investigation from

a bureau perspective is to say, all right, let's look at a Chinese company like ZTE or Huawei, and let's try to understand why would they possibly be giving away their products basically at dirt cheap prices? Why would they be interested in acquiring land in a particular area? Why would they want to work with a particular regional telecoms provider here in the U.S.? And when you do that, their activity becomes pretty clear. Even to people who are skeptics, it becomes pretty obvious that, I mean, look, just Huawei alone, they've, over the years, I mean, going back to 2000 and before that, Huawei as a telecoms company started in 87. And they're now the largest producer of telecoms gear in the world.

They do all the plumbing. They do the antennas. They do the routers. They do the servers. You look at a cell tower now, anywhere in the Midwest or out west, anywhere. And it's likely got Huawei or ZTE or other Chinese components on that cell tower. anywhere in the Midwest or out west, anywhere. And it's likely got Huawei or ZTE or other Chinese components on that cell tower. And one of the reports that the Bureau came out with after a lengthy investigation is fascinating.

And I'm pretty sure you've yeah you've seen this report that did the that you look at the i-25 corridor that goes up wyoming colorado that area along the border of nebraska they did a deal with a regional telecoms provider out there vierro i think it was and they now have their over the years they've put their equipment huawei has onto these cell towers that go up and down this corridor. Well, the other thing that's up and down this corridor are a variety of military bases and an enormous number of ICBM sites for our nuke program. or a nuke program, right? So the idea that China was just, you know, willingly giving at vastly discounted prices their gear to a regional provider in part of the U.S. where we have an enormous number of ICBM sites, I don't know, it could be a coincidence. But it's a perfect example of what they do and how they're willing to invest state resources and how smart they are at long-term targeting and understanding. I want to know about this. That's where the information is.

I'm going to get access to it, and I don't care whether it takes me 10, 20, 30 years. So we're having this conversation, and you're explaining this to me. me 10, 20, 30 years. So we're having this conversation and you're explaining this to me. I would imagine that if I was a person in a position of power in government, I would want to stop this from happening. So how did it ever happen? Well, it wasn't really noticed. It wasn't. What? Yeah, it wasn't. I mean, it's been a thing for a handful of years. When you think about it, if you think about Huawei's been doing this for – I mean, look, we could talk about what they did up in Canada too, to one of the world's biggest companies up in Canada in telecoms roughly the same time. But anyway, a couple of years ago – what are we? We're in 2022 now.

So a couple of years ago, when they released this information, when they finished their investigation and they looked and they said this is bullshit, right? We've got – because one of the things about this equipment that's sitting on these cell towers is people will say, well, who cares? It's telecoms. It's my mobile phone. I don't care if the Chinese machine that hoovers up all this information that's related to our national security interests, they're not just going after commercial cell phone signals. This part of this investigation was to break down this equipment and try to understand, okay, wait a minute, could this be going after the DOD spectrum, the bandwidth that the military would use? And if so, what does that mean? Could they intercept communications? Yes, according to the investigation. And could they interfere with our communication? So not just hoover up data packets

that are going across this, but also imagine if we're trying to send communications, things get really hot. They go after Taiwan, suddenly we're going on high alert. They could either intercept or block, jam. I'm having a senior moment. Communications once the investigation came out, then people did start to pay attention. But this is how slow the U.S. government can be. Basically, what happened was, to oversimplify this, was once it became clear what was going on and what the Chinese regime was doing, using Chinese telecoms providers to do this, the U.S. government said, okay, that's it. We got to take all this gear off these cell towers. These are regional providers in these areas because what the Chinese were very smart about was looking at our military bases, seeing how many of them were out in the rural parts of America, identifying who the regional providers are and saying, we can sell you this gear for nothing. How about that? And over the years, the regional providers are like, great, fine. Because they're not thinking, you got some guy running some regional telecoms company.

He's not a counterintelligence specialist. He's just working on his bottom line. He's just working on his bottom line. He said, this is a great deal. So they load up all these towers. So anyway, the US government said, you got to take all this gear off, right? You got to remove all this shit and we're going to have to replace it with trusted gear. And by the way, Huawei is on a trade list as is ZTE and others at this point. So we can't, going forward, companies aren't using their gear, but you've got all this

stuff sitting up there anyway, right? And every time you need to do an update, right, one of the weaknesses on some of this gear is you've got to, you know, basically hit it with new software, with an update. And anytime you do that, that's a pathway, perhaps, for them to do something else. And so, they said, take all this gear off. We're going to allocate, as U.S. government, we're going to allocate just shy of $2 billion to do this. And none of the gear's moved.

This was 2020. Two years later, none of the gear's been moved because all the companies, they said, okay, shit, we'll make a list of all the stuff that's got to come off of there. And they did. And you're talking about 20 some odd thousand pieces of equipment that need to be pulled off of cell towers that are compromising or potentially compromising U.S. national interests. And they said, well, we can't do this for $1.9 billion. It's going to cost us twice that at least, which means it'll cost us probably three times that.

And so nothing's been done. None of the gear has been removed. Now the U.S. government is saying, well, okay, maybe we can partially reimburse you. We're talking about companies that, as you pointed out, are trying to improve their bottom line. They're trying to make money. So they're going to get partially reimbursed for taking this gear off, right? Because the U.S. government is so slow. Commerce Department started an investigation in 2021. They still haven't finished it, about the same issue. So I don't want to sound cynical, but A, I'm very happy that the Bureau,

But, A, I'm very happy that the Bureau, through some very good investigative efforts, has highlighted this, and it's important to be talking about this. Thank God we're getting better at talking about it. But nothing's been done. So the same problem exists. So it's kind of like when you go in and you talk. I remember 15 years ago I would go in and I would give a talk on Chinese espionage. That's how long I've been kicking this horse in the ass. And people would just roll their eyes.

And it still kind of happens because they'll look and they'll go, ah, that's bullshit. You're being xenophobic. Well, we do it too. That's always one of my favorite arguments. People say, well, the U.S. does it too. And what the fuck? What kind of argument is that? So it's –

So let them? So just let them, Spock. Just let them. Yeah, it'll be fine. We'll just all do it. And so anyway, that's one of the more interesting parts of this. But, I mean, they're just – the shit that they're doing. They did the same thing up in Canada back in 2000.

They infiltrated a company called Nortel. And Nortel was one of the largest companies in the world. Super successful, right? Based out of – I forget where. Ottawa, maybe, in Canada. And Nortel went bankrupt in part because they had some bullshit business decisions made, but in part because Huawei and others out of China just started hoovering up and stealing all their shit, getting everything. I mean, look, this problem – I know I sound like I'm rambling, but you can go back 10 years ago and one estimate, a legit estimate of the cost to us, right, from economic espionage and the theft of intellectual property by not just China time, 10 years ago, was $500 billion in terms of blueprints and technical information. And then you factor in lost jobs, right?

Because when they're stealing information to advance themselves, what they're also doing is kicking us in the ass and we're losing jobs, right? And we're losing and companies are shutting down or not making money. So it's a problem. I know I bang on about it a lot, but- It seems like it's worth banging on about. Yeah. This Nortel company, so what did they steal from them? They took a lot of proprietary software. Nortel at the time was doing all sorts of things that were groundbreaking, right? They were coming up with touchscreen technology before Apple did, right?

They were doing all sorts of things. And they – at a certain point, they just couldn't compete because all the information about their plans and intentions for business operations, for bids, for everything, were now in the hands of Chinese state-owned or favored companies. And how were they doing this? Were they doing this through their routers? What were they doing? They infiltrated a lot of basically malware that they laid onto their systems internally. They also had some old school kind of help, right? There's a lot of layers to espionage, right? There's a lot of layers, particularly economic espionage. So, you know, we all like to think about the cyber part of it now,

and that's true. But, you know, Chinese in particular also rely on human, on human intelligence, right? So co-optees or recruits that they can get. And they had a number of very, very highly regarded and thought of engineers and developers and innovators and working within Nortel, who were from China. And that's a prime target for Chinese intel, right? They'll always look to kind of play off of that connection to the motherland, whether it's first or second or third generation. So they basically just started, Nortel just started being unable to compete because they were just, and at the same time, oddly enough, Huawei was doing better and better and better. better and better and better and you know as nortel was getting crushed huawei was building up their uh you know uh innovation centers hiring more engineers including a bunch from nortel uh interestingly so i guess the the point to the the story there is it's been going on a long damn time and we we tend to think of it as like just something when, I mean, the previous administration, Trump administration, you know, they talked a lot about China,

China, China. And that's a good thing, right? The more we talk about this, it's not going to change their behavior. But if nothing else, maybe it makes businesses, companies more aware. I think one thing that needs to happen is that the government has to do a better job of explaining the case. Because again, I've seen this for years now where people just kind of go, yeah, okay, fine. You're talking about Chinese espionage and they're stealing our information. They don't really know what it means necessarily. Or they just don't imagine it's that big a deal. Or they don't see the evidence. And I guess maybe that's part of the biggest problem is because of what it is, because you gather some of this evidence, you

can't talk about sources and methods. You don't just throw everything out there on the table and say, look, here's the evidence that Huawei or the third department of the PLA or whoever is doing all this activity. This is what it's costing us. and this is how we know. You can't do that in intelligence operations. But I think we need to figure out a way to make an exception to that in this case because that's what will get people on side. That's what will get people to be believers in all this is if you give them more evidence. It's like UFOs.

If someone actually talked about it, gave you a piece of evidence, and you go, okay, yeah, maybe so. But it's a tough line to walk. The Bureau's getting better at it, but I think we need to be more transparent in explaining how we know some of these things to the degree that we can. And there will be limitations, but we don't do enough of it. But the more we talk about it, again, it's not going to change the Chinese regime's behavior because this is how they envision and it's worked so far, getting to the top of the food chain. But we got to do something. So has there been a company in the United States that's been infiltrated the way Nortel was? Oh, sure.

I mean, whether you talk about – well, not – I mean, Norto was an interesting case because now it's bankrupt. Interestingly enough, it went into bankruptcy. They sold all their gear as part of an effort to raise funds, right? So they sold all this gear. A lot of it, who knows? Filled with malware. Filled with malware. It's going to go to some other company.

Hey, we got a deal. Yeah, terrific. Look at this. And then all of a sudden China picks up a new signal. Oh, look. But yeah, whether it's Google, GE, I mean, recent cases, GE, whether it's... There's... There's no...

When you look at what do they go after, I guess part of it you could look at when they talk about every five-year plan and they talk about where it's most important. You could probably correlate that to then where their real collection efforts are going to be. It's going to be in oil and gas.

Is it going to be in shipping? Is it wherever it's going to be? And you can pretty much assume then you're going to see an increase in cyber shenanigans in those sectors. But they've gone after pretty much anything right they went out they all the various cases they went after a small company years ago i'm trying to remember it was in salt lake city utah uh i think it was called ibon or something something. On the face of it, it was just a company that worked in the hospitality business. And you think, well, why would they hack into a business that does hospitality work in hotel chains? Well, because what do you have at hotel chains?

You have conferences and you have gatherings of business people and everything so what they were doing was they figured out how to get through I bond and then get into the communications of you're sitting in a conference room right you're listening to some speaker up there talk about you know whatever it is you know laser technology or it doesn't really matter. And, you know, you're bored. So you say, well, shit, I forgot to call Bob. You know, I'll send him an email.

Well, they had managed to figure out if we get into Ibon and we get into the way that they had connected with the various hospitality groups to help handle communications, right, for, you know, conferences and events, so they could pick up all that email traffic. So next thing you know, you got, you know, somebody emailing their boss back home talking about, you know, something proprietary. And it sounds odd, but it's very effective. So I guess my point being is whether it's that, whether it's going after a pigment formula for creating a new type of pigment at DuPont, they don't care. They'll go after this stuff and then they'll feed it to their businesses. And people, Huawei is a good example. People say, well, I mean, because look, Huawei's,

you know, they got a lot of employees here in the States. And they've said for decades, we have no connection. We're not involved with the Chinese government. We don't do any of this. All our telecoms gear has been checked out by the FCC. If the Chinese regime goes to Huawei and says, we want your cooperation on something, they'll provide that cooperation. 100%. 100%. They have to.

Yeah. It's not like they're going to push back and go, nah, it's okay. We don't want to do that. We want to play by the book. I remember when the Huawei stuff was going on, there were some tech sites that were very dubious about it. And they were saying that Trump is overstepping and this is a terrible idea. There's nothing wrong with Huawei.

And I remember reading this and they're coming from a tech perspective. They're just saying like, this is innovative gear, and they make great stuff. But it's bizarre that they don't get informed before they make these articles, because these articles can shift public opinion, particularly amongst people who follow that stuff. They would say, well, this is an overstep. Like, why are we doing this? This is xenophobic. This is more Trump.

This is why we don't like him. Yeah. Like, why are we doing this? This is xenophobic. This is more Trump. This is why we don't like him. Yeah. And that's a big part of the pushback is, well, you're being xenophobic. And you think, no, I think people are smart enough to differentiate between the wonderful Chinese culture and the people and the regime. The regime is not about advancing the liberties and freedoms of the Chinese people. The Chinese regime is all about staying in power. That's what they care about. And so I don't understand. I mean, I guess, but I just think fuck off with that xenophobic argument because it's not. I do see that when they say it's overreaching, I think that goes back to this idea that we're not being transparent enough about explaining how we know some of this. And that's why I keep saying to the degree possible, I think that would solve part of this issue and get more companies on side. The Bureau has gotten a lot better and other parts of the government have gotten a lot better at going out to businesses and saying, these are the problems. This is what you may be seeing in the future.

This is what they're trying to accomplish and trying to help. But a lot of these companies are either just too focused on shareholder reports and they've got a good internal security system, they think, or they look at it and they say, I don't want to really go out there and report that we've been hit by ransomware or whatever. Because what's that going to do to the bottom line or the stock value? So a lot of companies, it's like crime. A lot of it's underreported. But, yeah, it's a – again, I know people listen to this and they go, oh, what the fuck? It's Mike banging on about the Chinese again.

But it's not just the Chinese. It's the Russians. But the Chinese are the major perpetrators. And what it costs this country, it's hard to quantify at times, right? You're trying to figure out because part of it's a soft science of, okay, well, how much damage did that do to a particular sector, to a company? How many jobs weren't then created? What wasn't innovated on our side that we could have? But, you know, look, they're doing everything. They've been caught in the recent past. They've been caught out in the middle of

agricultural land trying to dig up modified seeds, right? I mean, that's pretty old school. dig up modified seeds, right? I mean, that's pretty old school. Send a co-opty or, you know, some asset out to a field in Nebraska to dig up some modified seeds to send back to China so they can take a look at what's going on. Their efforts are, you know, from an intelligence perspective, you got to admire them in a way. They're very, you know, they're well-resourced. They're aggressive. They work hard at it. It's kind of fascinating because the disturbing

conclusion that one could make is that the only way for us to be able to compete with the Chinese in the way they do it is if we do it that way. So if we become, you got to flip it upside down, is if we become, you got to flip the top. Oh yeah. Look at that. Smart CIA guy. Looks like a monkey fucking a football over here. If we become... I'm going to flip the top. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Smart CIA guy. I can't figure that one out. He's like a monkey fucking a football over here. But it's this thing where they have a complete integration between their businesses and their government. So their government would never allow them, if we sent American gear over there that hoovers

up all their intellectual data, they would never allow that. Exactly. There's no level playing field. Right. There's a few realities. There's no rule of law in China. There's no level playing field. If you go over to set up a manufacturing facility, you have to assume everything's going to be compromised.

You're proprietary information. You're coding your software. And, yeah, they don't extend to us the same open society concept, right? I mean, terrorism. Terrorists have used that against us for years and years and years and years, right? That's the fact that we have a free and open society and we relish it. And we should. It's a great thing. But people who don't have our interests at heart are going to take advantage of that at some point. And they have over the years. So I think

with, you know, I mean, you look at China and, you know, something simple such as electric vehicles. By the way, I walked into a rental car place the other day, a couple of weeks ago. And the guy said, I just rented some bog standard sedan because I was only there for like two days. The guy says, hey, I give you a deal on a Tesla. Well, I've never driven a Tesla before. So I thought, okay, I guess. So it was a simple, whatever it was, a model three, I guess they call it. so it was a simple whatever it was a model three i guess they call it so he says hey there you go and uh he gave me the little thingy the you know little card or whatever it is to go out and he says it's parked out there in space 407 so i walk out there and i realize as i'm standing there with my little rollerboard bag that i don't know how to get into this car, right?

I don't know how to unlock it. And so I'm looking and I'm walking around and I'm trying to figure this out. I've got the little card. And then I look inside and that big screen in there lights up and it says tap, you know, the car. So like a fucking moron, I'm out there tapping the car with this card, right? I can't figure it out because I don't know that it's that little part by the window, right, with this little thing there. I'm being very technical.

So I stand out there for about 10 minutes trying to open the car, and I can't. So I go back into the little center there, and I said, I don't know how to do this. So the guy walks out with me, and he shows me how to open it. I get in and get the car. He walks away. Now I don't know how to start the fucker. So I sat in the car in this rental car center and I Googled how to start a Tesla and had to watch a little video, right? Like an idiot.

And my takeaway, a long story short, I've already made it long, but my takeaway from driving the Tesla for two days was I think if you're a technology person, I think it's great. You must have people love it. I'm not, clearly. But to me, there was no driving experience. There's no sound. There's no feel. It was like driving a golf cart. And so, Anna, I'm not saying I'm against electric vehicles, but, oh, I know where I was

going with this. But the Chinese, when you think about it, they control 85, 90% of the processing of minerals that go into an electric vehicle battery. And so when you think about that, it's not that they have all those within China, but they control the processing of it because they're smart and because they looked at this years ago. And because part of their five-year plan at a certain point was we're going to advance the ball in green technology. That's we're going to focus. Well, what does that mean? That means we're going to lock this down. And we're also going to steal information related to this.

But we're going to do everything we can to get ourselves further up that chain. this, but we're going to do everything we can to get ourselves further up that chain. So whether you're talking about lithium or cobalt or copper or whatever, in that battery, we are way behind the curve. We got a real problem. So we imagine somehow we're going to develop this green world where we're all driving electric vehicles. And the reality is China has already set themselves up in a very strong way to kind of dominate that industry. It's fascinating. I like it because it shows, again, it shows the targeting aspects of intelligence and the thought process that goes into gathering information, developing a strategy, working towards it, prioritizing your collection,

all these things. But yeah, anyway, I wasn't, and I'm not saying I wasn't a fan of Tesla. I like, you know, Musk and the company and all that, but I just, I like to hear a noise when I'm driving. That's just me. Yeah, well, I have cars that make a noise. That's what I drove the Tesla today. It's a fucking rocket ship. Yeah.

It's the craziest car I've ever driven in my life. What kind? Yeah. The Model S Plaid. Okay. It goes zero fucking rocket ship. Yeah. It's the craziest car I've ever driven in my life. What kind? Yeah. The Model S Plaid. Okay. It goes 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds. Yeah. The acceleration is impossible. It doesn't even make sense.

It seems like you're in another time period. Like you're around these things, they're all horses. Yeah. And you're in a fucking Corvette. Just... It doesn't even make sense how fast it is. And also how quiet it is. The quiet part bothered me. Maybe that was what it was. I just wasn't, you know, just. I mean, it doesn't even make sense how fast it is. And also how quiet it is. The quiet part bothered me. Maybe that was what it was.

I just wasn't, you know, what do I know? But, you know, it's- Listen to music. Yeah, I could've done that. They make a new Challenger. They just started releasing the promos on it. And it's a Challenger, look at Jamie on the fucking- Wow.

It's a Charger, actually. A Charger Daytona. Is that a four-door or a two-door? It's... A two-door Charger? I was going to bring it up because I just heard the sound of it yesterday. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's a fake sound.

Let's play it. Wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, it's going to hurt your feelings. Let's see. This is the sound it's gonna make. Looks fucking dope, though. Yeah.

Give it that. Goddammit, I'm gonna buy one. So it's very similar in many ways. What is that? The back. I don't know. That's the sound? I mean, that's the hum. It looks fucking great.

I thought it was going to play like the growl. Yeah, it does. There's other videos, Jamie, because I did listen to the actual growl while they were revving it. I don't know why they're not revving it that way. So it's just set up to mimic, basically, the sound of a mansion. Yeah, sort of. Is that it right there?

I'm just checking to see if there's something else that could be here. Welcome back to Tona. But they do the rules. Dodge. I do not think it's in that. But I know it's available. Each headline says it has it. They definitely have it.

I think this is it. Oh, my God. Bro. That is amazing. ROOOOOOAAA That's the sound. Hmm. That is sick.

What? Might have been that. Not sure how I feel about that. Oh, there you go. The clear roof and everything, that's insane. It's fake. Yeah. It's like a... It's fake sound.

At least Porsche, when they have the Taycan, the electric one, it makes Jetson noises. Have you heard that? No. It goes... See, I would like that. I think that would be more entertaining than trying to mimic the actual sound of an engine. Because you're lying to people. Yeah, exactly.

You're lying to people. Oh, my God. Yeah, but it is. Porsche won. But the Tesla, I am fascinated by sort of the battery composition. Tesla, I am fascinated by the battery composition. So listen to it when it takes off. No, it'll show you more.

You get to hear it from inside the car. That looks fucking sick. That car is supposed to be incredible to drive because it has like Porsche dynamics in terms of like steering and handling and everything like that but it also you hear that yeah yeah but it okay okay I could live with that yeah listen that's not bad Listen, that's not bad. That does look nice. I like that.

It's incredible. I like that. But that is, to me, indicative of what I would like an electronic futuristic car to sound like. I don't want them to pretend it's a muscle car when it's a fucking electric car. That's just horseshit. You know what? Get a muscle car. Dorks are going to buy that thing. Yeah.

Well, that's why I say, again, I guess I'm too far down the road to appreciate the technology behind it. But I am fascinated by the composition of the battery, what that means in the future if what we're trying to do is transition to all electric vehicles, where these minerals are located around the world, what that looks like in terms of who controls that process, but also just the simple stuff of, like, you know,

I know we're talking about this for environmental reasons, but you know what? If what we're going to do is control more of this here in the U.S., I don't think a lot of people are going to get behind the idea of, like, okay, let's do more mining in the U.S. Right. I mean, that's, you know, oil and gas, it looks like, you know, a clean energy process compared to the process of mining for the

most part. It gets ugly. Yeah, it gets really ugly. We got, what do we got? Cobalt. You got, I forget, I read one time that cobalt in a battery, in an EV battery, there's a few kilograms of it. And there's more cobalt in the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, than anywhere else in the world. So if, and again, China controls a lot of the processing, 80 plus percent of this. So if what we're saying is, okay, we want to do more cobalt mining, as just an example, in the US, there's a lot of cobalt mining, as just an example, in the US. There's a lot of cobalt in Idaho, believe it or not, which I don't know if you know this, but I'm in Idaho now.

And most of that's on state forest land. Ugh. Nobody's going to say, yeah, let's start digging up forest lands to get more cobalt. So I don't know that we've actually thought this through completely from an environmental perspective. We all like the idea. I do think there's a lot of people out there who think that the energy for an electric vehicle comes from the battery itself, you know, as opposed to maybe you've got to charge that son of a bitch up. Yeah, exactly. Which is unfortunate.

I mean, if we add nuclear power to power electric vehicles and we could figure out a way to mine cleanly. But those are euphemisms. That's jumbo shrimp right there. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know. That's right. Yeah. I just don't think it's, and again, I'm not against it.

Let's make a greener, cleaner world. But let's do everything all at the same time, right? cleaner world, but let's do everything all at the same time, right? But it seems like it's greener in terms of people's impressions of what's going on, because you're not getting the exhaust fumes. But it's not necessarily greener net for the world when you think about the environmental impact and exactly what's involved in taking the stuff out of the ground and also like how you're powering it? Yeah. When we think about who leads the world in sort of the cleanest form of, you know, oil and gas exploration and drilling, for example, you know, and we say, okay, well,

we want to get away from oil and gas here and fossil fuels here in the U.S., so we're going to start making it more difficult to pursue that. But we're okay with the idea that other nations aren't going to change their habits and their practices, which are not as environmentally friendly. Right. And so, I mean, there's a lot of layers to this. Again, it doesn't mean I'm just saying we need to be a little bit more pragmatic, but I do think, yeah, I think part of the problem is people feel righteous about it. Yes.

And if those minerals are mined in Congo or you're getting lithium from Chile or Argentina or wherever, Australia, fine, because I don't have to look at it. But what is the environmental impact there? Yeah. How can we ignore that? I mean, I would hate for green energy to become an oxymoron, you know, because it seems like it's one of those things that people love to say, green energy.

But what does that really mean? And if you think about the amount of cars in this country alone that are actually electric vehicles with low emissions that are powered by coal plants, which is kind of fucking wild. Yeah. Because that's a real thing in many parts of this country. Yeah, I don't know where people think that. I mean, again, I'm not saying everybody thinks this way, but I think there are a lot of people that just somehow imagine

that battery is just self-charging. Well, I think a lot of people just like the idea of doing the right thing from their perspective. Like, how much can I do? Well, if I drive a Tesla or if I drive one of them electric Hummers, at least I'm not releasing exhaust fumes. Yeah. I got a big truck. I got a big GMC truck.

I got a Suburban. I got a 91 Wagoneer. I got a Range Rover. I got a little MGB. I'm just kicking the shit out of the fossil fuels at my house. I don't have any EVs yet. I've heard that there's potential technologies that can extract carbon from the air and that some people are looking at carbon as a potential resource,

that you could actually extract the carbon from the air and that carbon could be valuable. That's, yeah. It sounds crazy. It sounds like dilithium crystals from Star Trek, but it's a great idea. But if we're putting it out there, doesn't it make sense that we could suck it out? Yeah. It's an interesting idea. I'm nowhere near smart enough to ponder it beyond saying it's an interesting idea.

nowhere near smart enough to ponder it beyond saying it's an interesting idea. But yeah, I do think that, I mean, again, I'll wrap up the, you know, it's the bash China hour. But I do think that when we're talking about where we're five to 10 years from now, and, you know, the US government just passes Chips and Science Act, because we're aware of the fact that we don't produce enough semiconductors, enough chips here in the States. Most of it being done over in Taiwan, right? I mean, 90% basically of the sophisticated semiconductor product is produced in Taiwan. And so, yeah, okay, fine. Pass the Chips and Science Act, invest some more money in doing that here. I just don't know that we're going to be able to do anything about the minerals required for the EV part, because I just don't see,

once people realize that it means you're going to start digging up more earth, right, in these, you know, not good looking mining operations, I don't know that they're going to be on board with that. So I'm not sure where that goes in terms of U.S. independence in that industry. But there's a lot of things we, you know, fine, let's invest in. But I just think that that idea that somehow we're going to shut down fossil fuels in the very near short term in favor of this. No. How about we continue with the fossil fuels that we have? You know, natural gas. Great. We should be doing more of that. But we can do these other things as well. We can pursue all these other things at the same time.

But it's we are always in this weird argument where it's like it's all this or it's all that. Right. And just, no, just multitask and maybe eventually we'll get to that green future that everybody's banging on about. I think people need to see the horrific consequences of mining. I just don't think they quite understand it. And this is coming from someone who has an electric car who loves it. I get it. But it's just what you're talking about is not clean at all. And we're talking about doing this for every car in the country. And I don't believe we even have enough minerals to power X amount of hundreds of millions of cars.

No, I don't know what the mineral reserves are now around the world. You know, in terms of rare earth minerals, China's hit the jackpot, right, in terms of just where they're located. So they've got, when it's rare earth minerals, but I mean, you know, you can't, you don't put cobalt and lithium and copper in that category. But again, they've got the hands on the processing. But it's, yeah, it is, it is fascinating. I just think that whether we're talking about their efforts to gather intelligence, whether we're talking about their buildup of their military, whether we're talking about, you know, sort of their focus, I just think that, you know, there needs to be more of an awareness of where we are in relation to China and what that's going to look like in 5, 10, 15 years. And I don't know that we've, I'll bang on about something else that's

interesting. We spent so much time focused on the Middle East and counterterrorism that I think we legitimately degraded our ability to worry about other parts of the world and Russia and China being the two key ones. So I think we're trying to recalibrate, but that takes time. When you're talking about retooling your intelligence community to now move away from this idea that, you know, it's all counterterrorism all the time. And, you know, we got to get back to the kind of the old school Intel concerns. It takes time to do that. It takes time to recruit new officers. It takes time to find those Mandarin speakers. It takes time to get the analysts who have all that experience. A lot of them turn around on a dime. So I think it's going to be interesting where we go. But circling back, I mean, you look at Russia, and I don't know where that mess is going to end up, but I think we better be paying real close attention

to what it means for our abilities to better assess what's going to happen with China, particularly vis-a-vis Taiwan. And I just said vis-a-vis. I can't believe it. I've got to write down,, particularly vis-a-vis Taiwan. And I just said vis-a-vis. I can't believe it. I got to write down, never say vis-a-vis again. We have to be, if they're doing that, they have to also be careful that they don't degrade the intelligence on foreign extremists and terrorists and old school, the things that we've been worried about this whole time.

It's not like you want to ignore that. No, and I think that recent hit on Suwari in Afghanistan, I think that shows that we can do that. We can, you know, we can multitask again. But you're right. You don't want to take your eye off the ball. We're all tired of terrorism. We're all tired of the war on terror, which, you know on terror, but the extremists aren't. They're still pretty

energized. They're still pretty interested in, can we turn Afghanistan into a training ground again for our interests to attack the US and its allies? Yes. Extremists are still very interested in doing that. So we have to stay focused in that arena, but we can't afford to put so much of our resource in that area. We've got to understand where our primary concerns are. And certainly at the top of that list, look, it hasn't changed in years, right? I mean, you ask somebody in Washington, D.C. within the military or intel community over all these years, what are your top concerns? And it's always going to be China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. And so China's always been up there. But the reality is we took our eye off the ball and we focused elsewhere. And that degraded our ability, I'd argue, to do what we need to do. And part of

that is giving the White House, whatever administration's in charge, giving them the best intelligence you can. And to do that, you need the collection capabilities. That's the human, and we do very well on technical collection, right? Nobody does it better than we do, I'd argue. But a lot of times, your most important intelligence comes from a human, a source, right?

And that's tough to do. And then you need, like I said, you need the analysts who are capable and experienced enough to put together something that makes sense and allows the U.S. then to forward plan. But I guarantee you, it's an accelerated timeline on Taiwan, and we better understand what that means. And I don't know that we're paying a lot of attention right now. What's the best case scenario? Like, how could this play out well? They don't do anything in our lifetime, and they leave it to our kids to worry about. Because I don't know what else, you know, look, I think they're going to do something. I don't

think Xi's going to step down until he's got Taiwan back in the fold. I think what else, you know, it looked, I think they're going to do something. I don't think Xi's going to step down until he's got Taiwan back in the, in the fold. I think that's, you know, something that he probably desperately wants to accomplish on his watch. So how much more time does he have? I, you know, he set himself up as, as, you know, a president for life, basically king for life. And so I think it's an inevitable conflict that I don't know that we've really thought through, because we don't understand how they're capable of, the Chinese military is capable of integrating all their various elements. China hasn't been at war for a long time, right, in real terms. We saw, we you know, we saw Russia, you know engage in Afghanistan You know a few couple decades ago, whatever

We had a sense of what that was gonna look like We still got it wrong the assessment, you know, we got it wrong. We got their logistics capabilities wrong We got their communications capabilities wrong. We we got wrong about how they you know, what sort of information was being fed to Putin And how he was basing his assessments. So there was a lot of mistakes that we're hopefully learning from. What did we get wrong? Well, we got part of the problem we have or had and still have is, you know, Putin's increasingly small circle of key advisors. Right. And so understanding who he's paying attention to and what he's, the advice that he's being given and how that then, you know, formulates his actions.

And so I think we had a real problem in assessing his plans and intentions, his motivations. And that's always a tough lift from Intel perspective, right? Unless you've got an asset who's right next to him, you know, a key advisor, or you're just, you know, tapping into his internal communications. So that was one of the things we got wrong. And then we got, we didn't assess really very well, you know, all the, look, they got everything wrong. They couldn't figure out their supply lines, right? Their communications were awful. Their command and control was terrible, which is why they've lost so many generals.

So they've had a series of problems. It's even a harder lift to assess China's capabilities right now because, again, in part, they haven't been at war for a long time. And there's more to it, right? How are they going to integrate all their various military elements? How are they going to use cyber, you know, for this effort if they move on Taiwan? And, you know, I don't want to say we're unprepared because we're not. We always game these things out and we've got lots of scenarios. But I will say that, you know, there's a kind of a rush on to make sure that we're up to speed. And so, because again, we had our resources focused elsewhere. But, you know, again, to your most important question, which is how does it all end? Nobody really knows. Do we think the Biden administration would go to war with China? Or would they say, okay, we're going to supply Taiwan.

We're not going to put any boots on the ground. We're not going to get in direct conflict with China. And we'll sanction China. Well, that's a lot more difficult than it sounds, right? We can sanction Russia, you know, from here until Sunday because we're not really that intertwined. We're very intertwined. We're very intertwined with China right now from an economic perspective. And so there's a lot of questions here as to what could happen. And look, the Chinese, they're doing the same thing on their side of the table.

They're trying to figure out what are we going to do. That whole Make America First thing received a lot of pushback from people, particularly on the left, because they looked at it in terms of like, that's a nationalistic, xenophobic, problematic perspective. But I think a lot of people's eyes got woken up. A lot of people's eyes got opened up during the pandemic when we realized how much what we need just in terms of medication and electronics and chips, how much of it was being produced overseas and how little of what we make here is required. I mean, we don't make enough here to run the country. We don't have the manufacturing capabilities that we would need to be completely independent. We're not independent.

We need this stuff, and that can be changed. But that's going to take a long time. It's going to take a long time. It's going to take a lot of resource. It's going to have to get people on board. There's so many areas we should be investing money into instead of $80 billion into the IRS. So many areas we should be investing money into, and instead of $80 billion into the IRS. I just pulled that one out of my ass, but I thought I was thinking about money that

the US government invests, and I just remembered that they're pumping $80 billion into the IRS. 87,000 new IRS agents. And everybody who supports that thinks they're going to go after those people that aren't paying their fair share, all those rich guys. But the problem is those rich guys have top-shelf accountants that are making sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. It's middle-class Americans that they're going to go after. They're going to go after people that don't have the resources.

They're going to go after people that may have fudged a little here and there, and they're going to bring those folks down. Right. And it's interesting because when they first rolled this out, much like a lot of things that the current administration does, and again, they've done some good things. They've done some odd things. But their messaging always seems to be off, right? So they're always kind of batting cleanup. They'll do something. And the next thing you know, John Kirby or somebody's got to roll out and explain.

That's not what we meant. This is what we meant. So when they rolled out the fact that there was $80 billion in there to pump into the IRS, and there's 87,000 new agents, they had really no message, right? And so immediately people were just losing their shit. And then because of Democrats, when that happens, they are very good at then circling the wagons and coming up with a narrative, right? And disseminating that out and making sure that everybody pushes that same talking point. And then they stick to that talking point. So the talking point then became after a few days of terrible optics on this was, well, the IRS has

been underfunded for years, decades. And because of that, we haven't been able to go after the billionaires because we haven't been able to hire all those really clever agents who can do those sophisticated investigations of the billionaires. And so this is all about refunding the IRS because it's been underfunded. We're going to improve the technology and we're going to be able to go after those billionaires finally because we'll have enough people. Okay. I'm not buying that. Why do you think they did it?

Why do you think they decided to ramp up and hire 87,000 new IRS agents to tune of $80 billion. Yeah. Look, because they want to raise money. But how much can they raise? Well, they're claiming they're going to get $200 billion over a period of time out of this increased effort. So they're going to make money. Eventually, the government will make money. From who, though?

Well, they argue nobody other than wealthy people, just wealthy people. So wealthy people that have been cheating yes that's their argument is basically there's so much money sloshing around out there that the wealthy people haven't been paying their taxes and they've been they've been cheating and hiding it that we need we need all these new agents because that's where the money is is there an argument there um you know what i is there an argument that you could probably – you know, that's a good question. Not being a wealthy person, I don't know. I mean, I made an assumption earlier that I really shouldn't have that the wealthy people are paying their fair share of taxes.

I think a lot of them are. I think corporations get a bad name. Look, I mean, corporations, you know, people say, well, look, the oil and gas company, you know, this one, you know, paid no taxes. Well, the previous year they suffered a $35 billion loss, right, because they were, you know, exploring and reinvesting money into the company or whatever. So it's more complicated than just saying people aren't paying their fair share. But, look, are people with a lot of money willing to spend some of that on accountants to make sure that they don't pay any more tax than absolutely necessary? Sure. If I had a lot of money, that's exactly what I'd do.

I would pay what I'm supposed to pay, but I wouldn't pay a penny more. Right. Yeah, that's what people make arguments when they're allowed these tax loopholes. They use them because they're there. Yes, yeah. And they're legal. So are they going to go after people that have overseas accounts that are illegal? Like what is the how are they going to get all that money? Well, and I'm sure that that'll be a part of it.

Yeah. If I'm if I'm housing money offshore and I'm not doing it in a way that's allowed, then those and those investigations can be very complicated. And so, you know, asset tracing in general is a difficult process. And when you're talking about someone with a couple billion dollars and several dozen entities spread around the world, then yes, it can be a complicated process. And I have no doubt that you need auditors who are financially savvy and sophisticated enough to do that. I always thought the IRS had those people because that's what they were doing. Right. I mean, if you're a if if you're a middle class person, then theoretically you're filing your forms. Right. You're doing the thing you're supposed to do. And it's not over.

to do. And it's overly complicated. I guess what I would say is instead of hiring 87,000 new agents, spending $80 billion on this process, maybe they could have simplified the tax code and come up with something better. I'm not clever enough to figure out what that would be, but maybe that was an option that they could have thought of. But I think the optic is also good. We're going after the billionaire. That's an easy argument. That's an easy argument to make. And everyone's going, yeah, fuck the billionaire. Fuck the man. He's screwing us over. And then that helps to lead to today's environment where a lot of people are jealous or envious or can't stand the fact that someone's got a lot of money. Well, they feel like the system's rigged. They don't feel like the person has a lot of money because they had an amazing product.

And even though they paid their fair share, they did something that's extraordinary. So they receive extraordinary compensation. Yeah. That's not the narrative that people hear. You know, the narrative that people hear is, you know, you work your ass off, you work your tail to the bone, you can barely make ends meet. And the reason for that is someone's out there stealing more than they deserve. Right. Keeping you down.

Not that you provide exactly the amount of resources that are worthy of the compensation that you receive. Yeah. Nobody wants to hear that message. No. That's not satisfying. That's what scares me is that there's so many people in this country that if they said, we are going to just redistribute wealth in this country in a way that makes it equal for everyone. So there's no way that anyone is poor in this country. We're just going to take the money from other people. But who's going to do that? But people would sign up for that.

If we said that, if they said that, and they made it some sort of a way, like if they framed it in a way that's going to change the country and make it in a better place, the thing that they don't understand is these greedy fucks that are out there sucking up all that money. They're sucking up all that money because that's what they signed up for. And in the process of doing that, that's how amazing things get made. Because these people that are these greedy fucks, they are willing to work 16-hour days and put together these companies that achieve extraordinary amounts of money.

They achieve extraordinary amounts of success. They achieve extraordinary amounts of success. And they employ people and they create spinoff companies and they create inventions and patents. So, yeah, I've always been a firm believer in maybe part of it's naive because, yes, there are some people out there screwing the system. And there are some people that are undeserving of the massive wealth that they have because it just kind of fell in their lap or whatever. Who knows? But I don't really give a shit. My theory has always been, all I want to do is work as hard as I can. I'd like to do as well as I can. And that's it. I just want to provide for my kids. And I've always really held the belief that if you work a little bit harder,

I tell my three knuckleheads this all the time, if you work a little bit harder, you can do exponentially better. You can achieve success, but you gotta work harder. And that doesn't imply that people who aren't doing well aren't working hard, a lot of people are. They're working hard, but you have to think hard too. You know, I had a science teacher in high school that was a dork, but he had this one thing that stuck with me forever.

He was a really weird guy, but he said, you cannot get by in this world by just working hard. You have to think hard and thinking hard is more important because you have to choose which path that you're on and you have to think very carefully because to back up and start again is far more difficult than to choose a correct path in the first place. And there's so many people in this country that feel entitled and they feel like the government owes them something and they don't understand where resources are coming from. They don't understand this whole capitalism game that we're in.

They just think that it's rigged because they don't have it. And it's almost always particularly people that are at the beginning of this journey. You're starting off, you make $50,000 a year and you find out someone's worth 50 billion. They're like, well, that can't be fair. Yeah. But fair is not really what it's about. You're playing a game and you can choose to play the game as a waiter where you have a very limited amount of money that you're ever going to make. This is the amount of money you have good days and bad days, but this is, this is the cap. Or you can choose the CEO route where you can have a company and you will get bonuses and they'll be disgustingly extraordinary. Yeah, and you know what?

I'll tell you. I've got a business, right? It's a consulting firm. Can I say the name of it? Yeah. It's called Portman Square Group. And I've been doing this. It was under a different name and then we were able to do a management buyout.

So it's Portman Square Group, where it's an intelligence and security services firm. The point being is it's our business, right? My wife and I own it. She's got a crisis communications firm, and so we merged that with all my businesses. And so the point being, when people hear that, I've had these conversations with people. They go, oh, you got your own firm. You got your own company.

You must be just, you know, rolling in dough. I worry about making payroll, right? All the time. That's my primary concern is I want to make payroll. I've had people working for me for a decade and a half or more. And those people are raising their kids, right? They're building a life and have built a life. And my responsibility is to make sure that they have that, right? And

that there have been times when I haven't taken anything, right? To make sure I can make payroll, right? And I worry about it. I wake up at two in the morning worrying about something, right? And so it never ends. To your point, you work 16-hour days. I argue you never turn off. If we go on a holiday somewhere, I'm constantly worried about something. And that's just what you do. But I did it and I left the government to do this because I wanted to have possibly unlimited possibilities. I didn't want a ceiling? I didn't want a cap. And I knew working for the government, I always knew what I was going to make no matter how well I was doing. And so, you know, I do personally kind of take exception sometimes when people,

you know, piss on, you know, people who are doing well, because I don't sometimes think they see the amount of work that particularly small, you small, medium-sized companies, what people put into that. And the amount of effort they put into it as owners and proprietors of these things. And you've got to work your ass off. But you're doing it in the hopes that maybe there isn't a cap. Maybe there isn't a ceiling. Maybe it could be this. You don't know where you're going to go.

And not knowing where you're going to go I think is pretty exciting. It's a real challenge. It's interesting. But I don't know where you're going to go. And not knowing where you're going to go, I think, is pretty exciting. It's a real challenge. It's interesting. But I don't know where I was going with that. But it's uncomfortable. You know, if you're going to start a business, the unexpected, the unknown, it looms over everything. There's a reason why those guys all have heart attacks. I've had one.

There you go. That's exactly what it is. It's not it's not fun. I mean I can't imagine running an enormous corporation I mean, I'm very fortunate that we run this podcast with kind of a skeleton group Because that's it's a quality skeleton group. It's Jamie's the fucking he's the goat If it wasn't for him, I'd have like four other people doing his fucking job and it would be annoying. Do you see what he did when he pulled up that Dodge Charger? He's always on top of it. He's psychic. Oh, let me, I'm going to try to test him on something. Jamie, there was a graphic and I saw it at one point that showed what I was talking about with Huawei, with the I-25 corridor, and it showed where the regional telecoms provider

is located that they've cornered the market on, this Chinese company has, and where our ICBM sites are. And it was, I forget who had the best... There it is. There it is. Look at that. Look at that. So everything that's in red is the regional telecoms, the U.S. regional telecoms provider.

And all their towers are outfitted with Huawei and ZTE and other Chinese telecom gear. Up and down that corridor, which connects Wyoming and Colorado and then has these arteries running off into Nebraska. And all those dots are ICBM facilities. That is wild. Nebraska and all those dots are ICBM facilities. So if you just think that there was some randomness to the fact that this Chinese company was busy working with Vero to establish this. Yeah. Anyway, I thought that was a good graphic. Yeah. Of particular concern was Huawei routinely selling cheap equipment to rural providers in cases that appeared to be unprofitable for Huawei, but which placed its equipment near military assets.

Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. I know. So there you have it. But, I mean, is there a way to circumvent this or to prevent this without the military and the United States government being completely integrated with companies? That's a really good question.

That's our fear, right? Our fear is that to beat them or to stop them, we become them. Yeah. It's a really good question. And it's important. We've got a firewall. People don't, I think they're obviously the skeptics and people who think it's the one world government or whatever. But yeah, one of our strengths and weaknesses is this sort of this firewall between the U.S. government, military, and the way that we support private business. And by that I mean the Chinese regime or Russia, even France, a lot of countries in the EU even, their remit for the intel operations there in that country is to help support their private sector. So intelligence that's collected can be disseminated to those companies, sometimes favored companies within that country to help their development, their growth, securing additional contracts, beating foreign competition, whatever it is. And we've always had this firewall. It says, well, we don't want to do

that because favoring one company over another is going to screw up the idea of the free markets and capitalism and all the rest of it. So you can argue it's a strength, you can argue it's a weakness. But you're right. I mean, how do we get around that? Well, in part, we get around it by bringing our capabilities, you know, up to speed, doing more on our own, rehousing a lot of the manufacturing back here in the US. And so these are the things that we've talked about and that, you know, this administration, previous administrations have tried to do, but it's difficult, difficult. It's tough. It's costly. It's not an easy process. It takes time.

And sometimes it seems like we're not making any progress at all. I don't know. What do you think the administration has done well? You said they've done some stupid things, but they've done some things well. Well, politically, they've played a pretty good game politically recently. I think the Chips and Science Act is not bad. I know people saying, well, why would we subsidize companies that are making money here in the US that are making lots of money? Why would we give them subsidies? Well, for the very reasons we talked about, you got to do that. That's a smart move. You could argue putting a cap on Medicare costs, out-of-pocket

costs, I think that seems like the sort of thing you can get behind. I think that's a good move. I think they've been hijacked by the climate change activists and parties, so I'd put that in the negative corner. I think, fine, you want to talk about it. You want to focus on doing some things, great. But I think the focus on that is a little bit insane at this point. I think one of the things on the negative column is the way they've dealt with the oil and gas industry.

And we've seen that. And I mean, Germany right now is trying to figure out how to get away from Russia as a gas provider. You know what? You know who could have helped them do this and helped us at the same time? It would have been us. If we hadn't layered on additional regulation as soon as Biden came in and he was very clear about going to war with the fossil fuel industry, you know what? Fine.

I can't. Haven't they walked that back, though? Well, I don't think in a meaningful way. I think they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. I think they haven't eased up on regulations for the oil and gas industry. So, no. And these companies, they don't make investments based on the next six months, right? They make investments on a fairly long timeline.

So when Biden, during his campaign a couple of years ago, talked about he's putting an end to the fossil fuel industry, they pay attention, right? And that kind of directs where they're going. And by the way, I'm not lobbying for the oil and gas industry, but I am lobbying for the idea that you can do all of these various energy initiatives at the same time. They invest a shit ton of money in new technologies, in clean energy. You look at a company like BP, and they're out there saying,

we're going to make the non-carbon part of our operations our primary revenue earner in the next whatever, 10, 15 years. So they're putting a lot of money into it because they realize that's a market. They're doing it for capitalistic reasons because they want to make money down the road. But I guess my point is they're investing in it. I think we just should be smarter. Is part of the problem this political narrative that if you want votes from people on the left, you have to say you're green, you support clean energy, and that the climate crisis is going to kill us all? Like, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Like, there's this- Yeah. There's these narratives that people will- I've talked to people that talk about like climate change and uh we had uh steve coonan steve coonan on who is a physicist who wrote a book called unsettled and uh it's all about how the climate change is settled you know the climate science is settled he's like it's not and he went over long-term graphs that show that what we're looking at is our lifetime, the

lifetime of the people before us, and this measurable increase in climate change. And he's like, but if you go 1,000 years, which is really what you're supposed to do when you're looking at the world, because there's been these ups and downs that have always existed, and they're very similar. downs that have always existed. And they're very similar. Although we are having an impact with our carbon footprint, no doubt, but these changes in terms of the temperature of the earth, they've always existed. The Sahara Desert used to be vast green. I mean, it would be a fucking tropical jungle 15,000 years ago or whatever it was. And these things are just inevitable part of the cycle of earth. We have to factor that in. We can't ignore the fact that

human beings are impacting climate in a negative way with our carbon footprint and with our particulates that we pump into the air and that in, in, you know, places like, um, what was it? What was it? Um, that we looked at? Was it South Dakota? Was it, no, Nebraska? Indiana. Indiana, right? Indiana has multiple coal plants in this one area that are so bad. Like people's cars are covered with a thin layer of soot every day.

And they're breathing in this shit. So you have a disproportionate amount of people with cardiorespiratory issues and allergies and reactions to the particulates in the area. And then people say, well, how do you fix that? Well, nuclear, clean nuclear. And to do nuclear powered plants that are far more sophisticated than the ones in Fukushima with only one step removed backup plan, that if that fails, they're fucked, which is what they are. They're fucked. backup plan that if that fails, they're fucked, which is what they are. They're fucked. But that's not... You're talking about old technology and that nuclear in general, if it's engineered correctly to modern standards, is the best version of clean energy that we're capable of producing. But everybody's terrified of it because nuclear, politically, if you say

nuclear power, everybody's like was like oh you're gonna kill us all well everybody thinks immediately of the china syndrome yes you know one of those chernobyl three mile island right fuck this so i think it's it but yeah i mean look we've been making progress think about what london looked like and you know pre-world war ii with the coal you know that was burning and the fact that you know they did literally you know that you couldn't see you know 10 feet in front of you because the air was so bad. China to this day still has this problem. You go to some of these cities in China and, I mean, nobody's building coal factory or

coal plants faster than China, right? Again, not to get back on this, but when you talk about the world and where the world's going and you talk about climate change and you talk about environmental concerns, yeah, I mean, the reality is we can do these things. We can make a change. We can try to make differences. I agree that there's no doubt we contribute to the problem. I think it's a little presumptuous to say that we're going to cool the earth in 30 years or whatever. I mean, we're going to stop this climate change from happening. Okay. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't make good faith efforts in areas that you can

from a technology perspective. But I think if China, if India aren't going to make any meaningful changes, and they're not, then overall, we just have to be pragmatic about what it means in terms of you know Global change right we're gonna do it to our part and that's great and we always do But we also have to be realistic and understand what that means in terms of our national security interests And this isn't also part of the problem is that these discussions like what we're having right now this you know We're an hour and a half 20 minutes into this conversation like these these are long Drawn out discussions where there's a lot of nuance to it. There's a lot of things to discuss. But politically, when people are getting elected, when they're discussing these things in terms of

trying to run for office and trying to push a narrative that people are going to accept and be enthusiastic about for voting, these things don't get discussed in this way. So most people don't hear these conversations unless they're listening to podcasts or unless they're listening to some long YouTube dissertation on it. So most people, they just have this narrative in their head. I've talked to so many people, particularly on the left, that are, you know, climate change is going to kill my children. You need to, we need to do something now. And they don't have all the information at their disposal. They just have a narrative. Right. We live in this soundbite culture, right? We've always got attention

deficit disorder and it's all very tough to sit and watch a documentary or watch an actual newscast that starts and puts everything in context. People just don't have the time or they don't have the interest or they don't have the ability to sit still long enough to do it. But you're right. Yeah. I mean, everyone, you've got, you know, everyone's got like a shallow sort of level of knowledge about a lot of things. And a lot of that knowledge comes from social media. I mean, I don't know how many, I mean, good God, every time you, Twitter's a great example of that. When there's an issue, when Pelosi goes to Taiwan, suddenly I had no idea we had so many experts on Taiwan and the politics of Taiwan and what that meant or monkey box, everyone's an expert on monkey box or whatever so people people don't just say their opinion anymore

Right say it as if it's fact and so Yeah, they're convinced of that, but they're convinced of it without having a body of Effort of evidence that they've got for real comprehensive review of all the pros and cons because that's takes time and everyone's busy You know putting food on the table or, you know. And there's so many issues to think about like this. It's not just that one. There's so many different things going on simultaneously. sides, you know, when the Republicans, when the Democrats, when the right, when the left, when they talk in these sort of very narrow terms, when they can motivate their base through just a very thin layer of information, when they just throw a narrative out there and people say,

yeah, that's it. That's what I believe in too. And everybody is very siloed. So I don't know how you get away from that because that would imply that you'd need to change somehow human nature. And human nature right now is just – I look at – you look at kids nowadays and including my kids and you try to engage them in a conversation about something of substance and you just see they it's hard for them to to sit still long enough right to really go through it because they're so used to you know just changing topics or changing you know uh i don't know what i don't know what it is talk mindset tick tock it's a tick tock mindset yeah they're just constantly inundated with new information, new stimulus. Yeah.

And that's what they're accustomed to. We took, this is a complete left turn. My wife and I took the three knuckleheads to Europe for July, for the month of July this summer. We thought we were going to immerse them in some history and culture and everything. And so I went through this whole thing. I planned this little trip out. And we started off in a little village in the Cotswolds in the UK.

I love the Cotswolds. I imagine someday I'm gonna retire, move there, and just investigate the occasional murder in some quaint English village. That'll be my life. That's English village. That'll be my life. That's your move? That'll be my move. You're going to be a CBS drama series?

Yeah, yeah. Me and Angela Lansbury. It's going to be great. Murder, she wrote, European edition. That's right. I'll talk like Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins. So I rented this little cottage in this little tiny little village. And I thought, you know, we'll take the boys for hikes in the countryside.

And we'll tour around. We'll look at, you know, some castles and some sites and everything. Now, mind you, all three of them like the outdoors. And so the hikes were great. They loved that part of it. But it was pretty clear after the first day or so that the quaintness of an English village wasn't really for them. They were like, all right, what the fuck? And all three of them were like, after the first couple hours, they said, the Wi-Fi sucks in this cottage.

It's no Wi-Fi. What are you talking about? And I said, let's go out and look at another church. Let's go take you for a another church. Let's go. I'll take you for a pub lunch. It'll be fun. But it was fine. So then we moved from there.

Went to London. But anyway, ended up in Paris at one point. And we marched their asses all over Paris, right, showing them all the sites. And including we took them to the Louvre to the museum for like six hours which I'm sure for these kids right what are they 15 and 13 and 11 it was kind of torture right at a certain point and um after they looked at the sort of the Egyptian antiquities the mummies and some of the you know uh medieval swords and things I think that was pretty much all they were done.

By the way, you go in to look at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. I don't know if you've ever been there. No. You walk in. It's a massive, massive room, right? It's the Mona Lisa. And there, far into this room, you can barely see it, is the Mona Lisa hanging on a wall.

How close did they let you get? This room, you can barely see it, is the Mona Lisa hanging on a wall. How close do they let you get? Well, you could probably get within maybe 10 feet of it if you could get there. But the problem is, this is what you're looking at. You've got an entire room full of all of these people. You can barely get there. And it's a crush. And every single one of those individuals is taking a picture of this, of the Mona Lisa.

And so everybody, they're holding their cameras up. So I made a point of walking the boys and said, we're going to go see the Mona Lisa. And they were like, what's up with the Mona Lisa? I said, we should be, we're here. We're going to go see it. We walked in and my oldest boy, Scooter, like he walks in, looks at it. We must have been, we were at the far end of this room. You could barely see this thing.

He held up his camera or his phone, took a picture like this and said, okay, what are we going to do now? Turn around and we walked out. So we're walking their asses down to the Notre Dame. This is when I knew that we probably, our kids had attention deficit disorder at this point. Or just didn't have the patience. They're fucking bored. They're fucking bored. Yeah.

So we're walking along and uh em and i are up up ahead and and uh we're talking to scooter and the two younger ones sluggo and mugsy are back behind us they're dragging their asses a little bit right it's hot day in paris and but i can hear them talking to each other and i hear i hearsy say, where are we going? We're walking to Notre Dame. And Sluggo says, I think it's a fucking church. And I looked at my wife and I said, well, I kind of think we're done. So the point of this story is that evening, after we finished walking around, the sun was going down, and Paris is pretty special,

but the sun's going down. We're walking back. Most people have gotten off the streets. All the tourists are gone. around the sun was going down and it is in paris is pretty special but sun's going down walking back most people have gotten off the streets they're just kind of everyone's all the tourists are gone and we walk by this place maxine's and maxine's is kind of a burlesque place old old school kind of burlesque place so again my wife and i walking up ahead three boys are back there somewhere and the oldest one tall enough to look over the curtains in the front of Maxime's, realizes it's a burlesque show. And so I got these great pictures.

I turned around and there they are down there. They stopped, right? And Scooter's got Muggsy on his shoulders because he's not tall enough to look over the thing. And Sluggo's hanging from this rail railing it's outside and they're staring and they were captivated right french titties right and then and my wife looks at me says are you gonna are you gonna stop them i said no i'm i'm gonna video this so i just took pictures and so anyway afterwards i asked i asked uh the oldest one uh after this month of travel. We finished up in Greece.

I said, what was the best part of the trip? He said, French titties. He's 15. He's 15. What do you expect? Yeah. I couldn't argue with him. And that's history.

Yeah. If somebody tried to drag me around when I was 15, I would have been just as bored. I think that's more fascinating for people with perspective and a longer life. And you get to look back and go, you know, this was thousands of years ago these people built this. This is pretty crazy that we can go walk around it today. I mean, that's how my kids felt at the Vatican. You know, I was beyond fascinated.

Yeah, yeah. But my kids were fucking bored out of their mind. Never been to the Vatican. It's insane. When did you go? We went, well, we're in Rome again this summer. We didn't go to the Vatican this time, though. But we went, I guess, before the pandemic, so it was three years ago.

Maybe four. It might have been four years ago. But the sheer amount of artwork, even for kids, it's unbelievable. It's a museum for people that have attention deficit because there's so much. It's really like they're hoarders. Are you saying the Catholic Church has money? I think the IRS should investigate those motherfuckers. That's what I think.

I think it's been a lot of thought. The idea that those fucking people don't pay taxes is bonkers to me. Oh, yeah. The idea that they've accumulated the kind of wealth they've accumulated, and then they've set up this thing called the Vatican, which is essentially a country inside of a city that's a hundred plus, it's like a hundred plus acres and they have no extradition so if someone's a you know a confirmed sex offender from another country they hoard them over there and they can do whatever they want I mean that's literally the history of the

country I mean it sounds like like horrible things to say. If you said, hey, there's this one religion that's synonymous with raping kids, and they don't pay taxes, you'd be like, what? Yeah, not only that, the people that have been the pope that are the head of this have actually moved people from other organizations where they were accused of molesting children to new places where unsuspecting kids, like Ratzinger, before he was removed. That fucking guy took one particular priest that was accused of molesting children and moved him to a new place where he molested 100 deaf kids. That's real. I mean, this is all documented stuff. Yeah, no, they spent a long time just covering up.

Covering up and moving people around and never punishing people for it. And just accepting it as part of whatever it is that the Catholic Church is about, which is madness. I mean, if it was any other organization that was synonymous with molesting kids, it would be the subject of international debate. They would close them down.

They would shut them in. They found out how much wealth they had acquired and what they're doing with it. It's pretty stunning that it's just sort of legacied in. Well, I guess it's like everything else, right? It's pretty stunning that it's just sort of legacied in. Well, I guess it's like everything else, right? It's very layered, so you have the people who are a part of the religion who are disgusted by that. And then you've got people who somehow are able to kind of look the other way and find accommodation with it in the sense of, okay, well, I'm still a devout Catholic, and despite

all the flaws in the structure of this operation, yeah, I don't get it. Yeah, that's most people. Most people that are Catholic are good people, and they subscribe to the best aspects of the religion. Be a good person, follow the good book, and go to church because it's a great structure for ethics and morals and you know and then they hear about this stuff that they don't want to hear about they get angry yeah you know that's one area we haven't you know at the end of the day not that this is apropos of absolutely anything but and i'm sure everybody was curious about my religious beliefs

um but i feel i do feel like i i kind of dropped the ball on providing some kind of religious platform, right, for the kids, right? And I think, I don't know what that would have been, but I do think that there's, in a sense, it's nice to have something bigger than yourself, whatever that is, right? And the community that that used to provide. And I think part of the problem in today's world, I think, is people don't have enough community, whether it's their neighborhood, their church, whatever it is. But having said that, Sunday would roll around,

and I'd be like, yeah, I'd go mow the lawn or something. And it never became a part of what we do. I think it's historical in terms of human beings. Human beings have always had some sort of a structure of belief system that they subscribe to. And this has always been the case with tribes, with large communities of people. There's always like a belief system that they use that's beneficial to the greater good of the community. that they use that's beneficial to the greater good of the community?

Yeah, I think if you just, maybe because I was lazy and I didn't invest time in figuring that out in terms of what to do with the kids, I think I just landed on some spot that said, look, try to do the best you can, right? Live the best way you can, right? And you're kind of playing the odds, right? Live the best way you can, right? And you're kind of playing the odds, right? If there is something bigger out there and I finish up tomorrow and get hit by a bus or whatever, then I've played the odds. I tried to be a good person. And if there is something bigger, then great, right? I don't know. It's a pretty rudimentary way of looking at life, but I would like to think there's something other than just, you know, you die and you're done.

Yeah. Well, that's the greater picture. But just in terms of like a moral scaffolding and just in terms of having some sort of structure, a way that people genuinely agree will be better for everybody. That's one of the good things that a church provides, if it's a good church and it's a good religion. It provides people with a structure. It gives people peace, it makes people feel better, and it brings people together to worship together, and they leave there, hopefully, with a better feeling of community.

Yeah, and I think for a structure for kids, too, I think there's something to be said about that, about the community of a church. And again, sort of that idea that it's,

there's a bigger something. Yeah. And I, you know, again, the problem I always had with organized religion was when people,

a religion would say, and we have a lock on it. Right? Yeah. You're thinking like, I don't know. I don't think that's actually how it should right yeah you're thinking like i don't know i don't think that's actually how it should or how it works i don't know if one religion has has a lock on the truth um well i think we have religions in this country which we have religions for

secular people and that's like i mean mark andreason had a very good rant about what woke is it that woke is is these people that believe in the progressive movement, they treat it as a religion. There's excommunication, there's punishment, there's rules that you can't question, there's things and guidelines that must be followed or you'll be punished. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, you could argue climate change is a religion.

I guess you could argue any, I mean. A lot of things. Yeah. Political ideologies. We treat them like religions in the absence of religions. I think that's almost like a default way that human beings look at things. Yeah. Not to dive into a minefield here, but I was surprised that they overturned Roe. I will say, maybe I was stupid and wasn't paying attention, but I thought we'd kind of moved on. And I don't know. I just, I was- What do you think that was about? Why do you think that took place? Well, I mean, clearly because we ended up with more conservative judges on there than not. I think they were just trying to return the issue to the states. I don't know how you have, and I'm in a state, Idaho, where the state legislature was going to put some crazy ass rules in place.

I don't know whether it was a trigger law or not, but basically saying almost no cases could be considered allowable for abortion. Again, I'm sort of that mindset that says reasonable people could have come up with a reasonable solution, which said, do you want to abort at nine months in one day? No, probably not. But do you want to leave it there to be good options for a woman to make that decision on her own? Well, yeah. So I mean, find a fucking middle ground here. But I have been surprised by the number of states. Again, I'm clearly not paying attention. Well, Texas has brought it down to six weeks, which is crazy. It's like your period's late and then it's too late. Yeah. You just don't know. Yeah. You don't know. So I don't, but I was, for a while, I always thought I was reading the tea

leaves pretty well in terms of any administration and where things were going from a policy perspective. But I mentioned it to my wife. I said, well, I didn't read that one well. I just didn't see that coming. It's also in terms of people that were on the fence that were, you know, kind of like leaning Republican because of the way the country's going economically and all the different things that have been put in place by this administration that people disagreed with that they think is damaging to the economy and damaging to the overall quality of life. And so they were like on the fence. And then that comes along and we go, oh, well, this comes with that shit.

Yeah. Well, fuck that. Right. And I think that's going to be the thing. And it's always been that topic that's kicked the Republicans and the conservatives in the ass. But they can't let it go. And I get it. Okay, you're going to have a segment.

There's a sliver there of devout religious people who just say absolutely in no circumstances. And I'm thinking, well, okay. What the fuck? But they're also – I don't know. Like I said, it's a minefield. I guess I shouldn't have brought it up, but it was surprising. I do think it's going to kick the Republicans in the ass. They'll probably take the House, but probably not as big a margin as they thought because I think it will cause people to think.

No, I think it most certainly will. And there's also talk about going after contraception. There's people that want to take it to the next level, which is really wild. There's people that want to take it to the next level, which is really wild. Yeah. In terms of preventing pregnancy and preventing pregnancy with the Plan B pill, preventing pregnancy even with condoms. There's people out there that you get far enough out. They get outlawed condoms. They think sex should be for procreation.

They think that abstinence is something you could actually teach people. Wow. Which is hilarious. Wow. That's like getting a semi-drunk person and telling them no more drinks. Yeah. Can you imagine if sex was only for procreation?

It's crazy to think. So you look at somebody that's got two kids and you think, you poor son of a bitch. What are you going to do about the porn industry? You going to outlaw that? I mean, that's the dirty little dark secret of America and most of the world. It's a giant industry that people want to pretend doesn't exist.

That is, I mean, consumed by what percentage of the population? Some enormous percentage. Either it's like a small percentage that's consuming an enormous amount of it. They're on 24-7. I don't think it's been investigated. But the sheer amount of traffic. I don't think it's ever been investigated. I don't think it's ever been investigated, but the sheer amount of traffic that's really... Okay, what is the percentage of internet traffic that is pornography?

Let's look at that. Because the actual data, I think the actual, like, when you look at the gigabytes and terabytes of data that's just porn that's on the internet, I think it's... Now, mind you, a terabyte is like- A thousand megabytes.

Yeah. A thousand gigabytes. I think it's like 70 million pages of data is a terabyte. So let's see what it says. Internet pornography by the numbers. A significant threat. How much of the internet consists of porn? Click on that one.

Website and mobile searches searches 13 to 20 percent 30 percent of internet content is porn is it true that 70% of internet traffic is good no what is that yeah okay so we seem to be about a third a third or so of internet traffic somewhere around 30% Porn sites get more visitors each month than that's 2013 though. Okay, now let's break this down by a third of it is porn. Now let's break it down by types of porn.

No, I'm kidding. Yeah, right. How much is babysitter porn? How much is stepmom and babysitter porn? Internet pornography, it says 35% there. What does it say? 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography. That is incredible. 40 million American people regularly visit porn sites. What is regular? About 200,000 Americans are classified as porn addicts.

34% of internet users have experienced unwanted exposure. Wait a minute. Every day, I got to disagree with it. That can't be an accurate number. Every day, 37 porn videos are created in the US. It can't be just, what, 37? That's it? That's it? That can't be right.

37 pornographic videos are created in the United States every day. 2.5 billion emails containing porn are sent or received. Wow. Who the hell's doing that? 68 million search queries are related to pornography. But they don't really look. I'm just curious. I'm searching.

I'm doing research. 25% of total searches is porn. 116,000 queries related to child pornography are received. These numbers are a little screwy. Can you bring it down just a little bit, Jamie? Okay, every second. Okay, every second. Wait a minute.

Every second, 28,258 users are watching pornography on the Internet. Every second, $3,000 is being spent on pornography. That's cheap. Who's spending money on porn, though, now? Only 372 people. Look at this. Every second, only 372 people are typing the word adult. That seems low.

That's a lot, though. One-third of porn viewers are women. Really? Or do they identify as women? One-third of porn viewers are women. Really? Or do they identify as women? One third. Where did he say? Oh, one third of porn viewers are women. How online pornography affects Americans. Is it one third are double X chromosome or one third? You know what I'm saying?

Because like what percentage of those people are identifying as women with male genitalia? Yeah. Yeah. It's got to be. It's got to be a number. Or looking at women with male genitalia yeah oh jesus it's uh but that you know that's the i mean if they want to outlaw contraception how far away this thing i've heard yeah it's not a small amount of people that want

that there's a lot of people that think that sex should be for procreation only. And, you know, interestingly enough, none of those people, anybody wants to fuck. No. It's kind of crazy. No, nor could they. You know, yeah, that's a crazy thought. Because if you say, okay, if you're in a state that wants to essentially ban all abortions, you know, and then they also want to ban contraception. Okay, so.

They want religion. Yeah. I mean, in terms of your responsibility for taking care of all those additional children, how does that work? I don't know. That's what jail's for. That's what cages along the border are for. Oh, God. It's weird, our way of looking at things. So blind. Yeah. Again, I don't think maybe I'm romanticizing some past era.

I guess I am because maybe there was never a time when reasonable people found common ground and you could compromise and find policies and create legislation that could take the best from both sides and there you go. So maybe that actually never happened. It's a little bit like the idea you think about, we're going to have the family over for Thanksgiving and everyone's going to get along. It's going to look like a Norman Rockwell painting and it doesn't happen. You know, everyone's pissing and moaning and arguing with each other. So I think the older you get, maybe the more you think, well, back in the day we used to compromise. You know, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would sit in the back room and have a drink and get some good piece of legislation done. I don't know. That seems like a thing of the past.

And I think part of that you could attribute to Donald Trump. The polarization in this country has never been more extreme. Yeah. I 100% agreed, but he's coming back. And I don't know if you remember this. I think it was pre-pandemic when, maybe it was pre-pandemic, when we made a bet. I think I bet you $1,000 that said Trump was not going to run again. You owe me $1,000. Well, he hasn't. He's going to run. They're trying to stop it from happening. I'm probably going to lose that.

Yeah, I think you're going to- Yeah. Why did you want to bet that? Why would you think you wouldn't run again? Because I was being optimistic and thinking that we'd move on and we'd find different candidates. I guess because I was a fucking idiot. Apparently-

There's a large swath of this country that thinks the election was stolen, which people need to understand that has always been the way a large swath of Americans, both on the left and the right, have felt about elections. There was a documentary on HBO. God, what was it called? I forget, but it was all about voting machines and how hackable voting machines were. This is the Diebold machines that disproportionately contributed to the Republican Party, this company, this corporation that did this, and they made these machines. And so Hacking Democracy was the name of the documentary. And they proved in this documentary that they can affect these machines with third-party input. So it wasn't just a matter

of one person voting, the other person collecting it, that a third person could come in and manipulate the numbers and that they had access to these machines in that way. That these machines were actually set up for third party input. And this is terrifying to me because they said, oh my God, the Republicans are going to steal the election. And that was the thought process behind it. And now it's, oh my God, the Democrats have stolen the election.

It's like they felt like John Kerry got robbed when he ran against George Bush. Al Gore. Al Gore got robbed. There's always been this section of the country that, and that's very dangerous. It's dangerous, A, if it's accurate, right? But it's also dangerous if it's a narrative. If people don't believe that we live in a democracy so when someone does win, even if they win legitimately, which, you know, would be great. That's best case scenario.

But people don't want to believe. Yeah. They're always going to say that. That was the case in 2016 when Trump won. Well, I was going to say, yeah, Hillary Clinton, that's a good example. She spent the next several years arguing that she had won. Well, I was going to say, yeah, Hillary Clinton, that's a good example. She spent the next several years arguing that she had won. But you're right. Trump, because of his demeanor, is the way that he interacts with people and his social media usage. We'd never really seen that before. Also the way he's ramped up dumb people. Yeah. Like the really dumb people that don't look

and that all they do is just like fucking rah-rah. And they don't look at this in terms of like what kind of an impact does this have? You can't just think of your side and like I want our side to win. Because it's supposed to be one side. It's supposed to be the United States of America. We're a community. We're a group of people. We're all bound together.

And we do get together in times of great conflict, like post 9-11. I would say that 9-11 was a horrible thing. But one thing that came out of it that I found inspiring was how many American flags were on people's cars immediately afterwards. It's like people on the right and on the left. It was like one of the rare times in the world where people joined together in this country and said, hey, we are faced with a threat from outside and we need to all group together because this could happen anywhere and everywhere and this is the time to be patriotic. Patriotism- We hadn't really seen that since World War II. Right.

Right? I mean, that was... I mean, with the exception of the Japanese American interns, yeah, they didn't actually probably feel the same way. But we hadn't seen that. And I think it was an interesting lesson for a lot of people, but it wasn't really learned, right? It was a moment in time. And we don't tend to, it's like a lot of things we do. We don't tend to learn from anything in any particular moment. We're impacted by it on an emotive level. We think, okay, great.

But no one's looking back and saying, okay, here's what we need to do in order to be one country, in order to be focused on what does it mean to move the needle as one people? It just doesn't happen. And I think you're right. Trump was a – because of the nature of the beast, it just was part of it. I mean you look at the reaction to the Mar-a-Lago raid and the immediate reaction of like the Department of Justice and the Bureau are fucking us over and they're doing – it's the same thing. If you lose your faith in the systems, right, whether it's law enforcement or it's justice or whatever in the country, just like with the political system, it is a very dangerous thing. And you can always argue that, okay, are they having problems? Can they do better? Do they need to adjust? Was this a mistake? Whatever. But that's different than losing faith in the system. weird things about these troll farms and these social media campaigns that they do via bots and via hired actors.

They're making people more frustrated and argue more about this by design. Yeah, because again, nobody scratches the surface. They read something. It's like what you were saying before. They read something and that's it. That's their narrative. That's what they... Yes, I believe that.

And it's a fact. It's not just something I've read and I'm not going to try to figure out who actually posted that or who put it down. And Russia is a great example of that. Russia does that better than China even. China is engaged in it and China is working hard to influence US public opinion about policies that relate to China or what they view as things in their interest. But Russia, at the end of the day, they're at the top of the heap of state-sponsored operations trying to influence what's going on here in the US. And it's effective. Very effective.

And it's interesting because Elon Musk is a fairly polarizing character as well. And his desire to figure out how many bots there are on Twitter before he purchases it was met with so much resistance from people that are somehow or another opposed to him. Whether they're opposed to him because he's a billionaire or opposed to him because of his tweets or whatever it is. It's like, hey, that's really important because these bots aren't just used by people fucking around. These bots are used by people that are trying to encourage dissent. They're trying to encourage arguments. They're trying to encourage and erode our faith in our institutions. Yeah, and they are very sophisticated. They're very to encourage arguments. They're trying to encourage and erode our faith in our institutions.

Yeah, and they are very sophisticated. They're very good at it. And, you know, whether they're trying to foment racism, oh, you know, it's a fundamentally racist country. So, you know, let's work on that. If you're, like, listing out things as a foreign nation that doesn't have our best interest at heart, if you're Russia, you're saying, here's what I want to do. Yeah, you're going to look to create dissatisfaction within the country for a variety of things, your way of life, the quality of your life, the belief in the justice system, whatever

it might be. Oh, yeah, the political system's screwed because it's all rigged. Those are the things that you do. And again, we're not very good at it. We talked about it coming out of 2016 and over the past handful of years. But again, it's not a substantive discussion. And shit that gets investigated, people, they'll get all up in arms on Capitol Hill and politicians will insist on an investigation. But, you know, Washington, D.C. is, yeah, it's a place where investigations go to die. Nothing ever happens, right? Nothing ever results from these things. What do you think of the raid? Was that justified?

Was that justified? Well, I'll caveat this by saying it's speculation because I haven't seen the affidavit. Not many people have. But then I'll start by saying it's yet another self-inflicted wound by Trump. He didn't need to end up like that. The departure from the White House was fairly chaotic, as you can imagine. That's just the nature of what they were doing. There wasn't a level of organization.

It wasn't a very buttoned-up administration, right? And it was in part because they had a lot of churn in personnel and all this. But, you know, you can argue that every administration has some back and forth with the National Archives over what is and isn't presidential record, what they can keep as their own personal material and what has to be held by the government. Why would they keep it? What would be a reason? Well, I mean, if they consider it personal correspondence or they consider it, you know, information that, you know, is not classified and is just material that, you know, one day can end up in a presidential library or they can use to write a book when they finish up and they want to, you know, make a few hundred million dollars on a book, then

fine. But there's always typically some back and forth that goes on about, okay, what is and what isn't and what can be kept. But that requires a process, right? And that requires, there's protocols involved for saying what you can take with you, right? And so if they had done that, if they'd done the right thing, they wouldn't have ended up in this situation. And what they did was they – once again, Trump is able to like suck all the oxygen out of the room, right? And it's just – it's one of those things that I think was just unnecessary. Was it – was the raid justified?

I don't know because I don't know what the specific documents were that they really had a Jones about. They were negotiating this for some time, right? They'd been talking to them and going back and forth and they discussed what they had and how is one effort and say, okay, we have more documents. Maybe it was taking the archives a while to understand what was and wasn't in the materials that were returned. So I don't know. Do you have suspicions that it was a political maneuver? That the design was to cast more bad light on Trump and eliminate him from the 2024 elections or try to figure out a way to diminish his appeal? Yeah. I mean, I think there's politics in the sense that a lot of folks up on Capitol Hill took delight in it and found it to be a really good piece of entertainment. But if you say politics from the FBI's perspective, from the Department of Justice's perspective,

I mean, I know a number of guys that work for the Bureau, and I know them to be really solid people. They're street guys. They're investigators. They do their job. They're street guys. They're investigators. They do their job. They're very, very good. I don't know anybody senior in the DOJ or at the Bureau. So I don't know how politicized they are and whether that played into it or not. But people that are actually engaged in the search, that show up at Mar-a-Lago,

they're doing their job, right? And they've been told this is what we have to do. You know, I think that it was such an extraordinary step and so unprecedented that, you know, maybe I'll be proven wrong once they release the affidavit and we all find out what was sitting there. But I can't help but think that they had a reason why they said, no, we can't just keep dragging along here because we're not

getting the responses we need. So we do need to go in. We need to knock on the door and say, look, we've got to... Now, I do suspect that they could have approached it differently and not had the presence they had and everything, but who knows? Again, this is the problem we live in in this world today. There's immediately after that took place, there were people on the left and people on the right who were absolutely sure they had exactly the information to make a decision about what this meant and why it was done or why, you know, why it shouldn't have been done. And that's part of our problem. The unsatisfying answer is you've got to wait and find out what exactly occurred

to see whether it was justified or not. But nobody wants to hear that. It's like after a terrorism incident. Everybody wants an answer immediately. It's an investigation, and things take time. All I can say is the folks I know at the Bureau are really quality people. But do people at the top of an organization, are they more politicized? Well, sure, there's a tendency for that to happen because they've been around a long time.

They're at that position because they work closely with politicos or whatever. But it doesn't really answer your question. I've just spent a lot of time talking in circles but well it's just you know it's all it's so confusing for someone like me that's like going well what is what's going on here is this all is there more than meets the eye or is this like clearly an example of him doing something that is 100 forbidden but he feels like he can do it because he's donald trump and he feels like the rules don't apply to him i mean that's the that's what the fear is right yeah yeah well i think i because he's Donald Trump and he feels like the rules don't apply to him. I mean, that's what the fear is, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think he's certainly always pushing the envelope. I don't think it's any... Nobody can really argue the fact that he's

kind of used his own playbook all along. And you can't just say... And then people... He's saying things like, well, I declassified the documents. They're all declassified. Well, you can't just click your heels and say these documents are declassified. There's a process that takes place. Otherwise, it's a complete fucking goat rope. Nobody knows what's classified, what's not. You can't just in your presidential head say, okay, I'm declassifying everything related to whatever this was. Does a president have the ability to declassify things? Sure, unilaterally. Yeah, unilaterally. So he could declassify documents and then conceivably store these documents? Yeah, but there's a process for that, right? Did he not go through the process? Based on what has been reported so far, but again, without the affidavit, without the specific details, who knows? But if there's documentation that's not cataloged

and marked as declassified, right, that's, again, you know, it has to show that. If you've got a document that's, you know, top secret, you know, code word, and you look at it and it's marked top secret, you know, code word, then, you know, you have to assume it's still classified, right? And just the mere fact of him saying, oh, no, you know, last year I declassified that, that doesn't hold water. You can't, you know, he has to follow protocol. And that's where I think he slips up is he doesn't necessarily believe that applies to him or he's just not, you know, it's just not the nature of it. He's not compliant. Yeah.

So, and then he's, isn't he suing now to get documents back? Yeah, he is. And also to have information not released. I think part of this problem, again, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before with the transparency of the US government. When they talked about this in this little conference room in DOJ, wherever they talked about it, and they said, we're thinking about conducting a raid. And the Bureau doesn't like to use the word raid or DOJ doesn't like to use the word raid. But when they said, we're talking about doing a raid on the home of the former president, they probably should have, once again, from a messaging perspective, stepped back and thought to themselves, okay, what does that mean? How are we going to justify this? Not that they have to, but they should have known what a firestorm it was going to create.

And so they should have had that completely buttoned up and ready to go the moment they were going to do it and be as transparent within the limitations of what they can do, of what they were doing and why they were doing it. Because if they don't, they create all that open space, right? And that's where everyone jumps in and starts declaring what exactly happened without knowing what the fuck happened. And then you get all this misinformation and disinformation and it's another fucking, you know, goat rope. So it's, you know, it's a process that I think the attorney general probably should have handled better because he had to authorize it. They also had to go in. If the White House says they didn't know anything about it, that's where I'm going to call bullshit. The White House saying we had no idea that the AG was authorized to search the former president's home.

Yeah, probably that's not the case. You have to assume. They've got to walk in, sit down, and say, Sir, we've got a little something we've got to talk to you about. Just let you know this is coming down the pike. So how does that play out, you think? Do you think that is it nothing? Is it all much ado about nothing and will it not impact him or will it be a significant factor?

Yeah, I think I'm going to lose that $1,000 to you because I think he's going to run again. I don't think it's going to stop him from running. I think they'll realize this. The hard left is saying, oh, he's got the world's most dangerous secrets held at Mar-a-Lago. And the right is saying, eh, he declassified it all. There's nothing there. And the truth is, like it typically is, is somewhere probably in the middle. And in the middle, they're probably going to realize they don't have anything to indict him on.

It's going to be like all these other things that they were kind of going after. And, yeah, so I'll be cutting you a check if you take a check i can venmo you or paypal yeah yeah we'll do that i do those things nowadays it's so for someone like me who's on the outside just trying to pay attention to as little as i can and still talk about it it's very confusing. Yeah, it is. It's odd. It's fucking odd, if you think about it. I mean, we could end up with Biden and Trump running again in 2024. I don't think Biden's going to run.

I don't think it's possible. I think he's so deteriorated. I think he's gotten to this point where, you know, we're only two years in and he's already completely fallen apart where he can't form sentences anymore. I can't imagine they're going to look at him as a viable candidate in 2024. I mean, a large percentage of the Democrats don't want him to run. Yeah, that seems to be the case for sure. And no one's excited about Kamala Harris. They got that lady tucked away somewhere.

Oh, God. I don't know what she's doing. I really don't know what her job is anymore. But you're right. The problem is he's going to have to make that call, right? So he's got to make that decision to say, I'm not running in 2024. Therefore, he clears the decks. And then you get this mad scramble of a couple dozen people chasing him because I think you're right.

In previous times, they would have deferred to the VP, right? I don't think they're going to do that. No. They're not going to do that. So you're going to have this free-for-all where you get people like Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, probably Bernie Sanders again. Really? Yeah. He's even older than Biden. He's entertaining.

And you're just going to get a host of characters coming in because I don't think they're going to say, fine, we'll clear the decks for Harris. So I agree with you 100% on that one. It doesn't look good. Yeah. There's no real exciting options. 330-plus million people. I forget what the population of the U.S. is nowadays,

but 330-plus million people, And these are the options we get. Nobody wants to do that job. It's a terrible job. Well, plus you also get the primaries and they vote for the hard edge. So you get that person who says, I'm all for clean energy. Climate change is the number one problem. Vote for me. And then you get the people on the far right that say, I'm all about banning abortion and contraception and porn. And so the hard right, maybe the people on the far right that say, I'm all about banning abortion and contraception and porn. And so the hard right, maybe the conservatives on the hard right vote for them. And that's what happens in the primaries. Yeah, unfortunately, because you get the registered people that are voting.

You get that self-selection that just fucks us over. You know what we haven't talked about is the fact that the Russians and the Ukrainians are lobbing missiles at each other near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Yeah. We talked about nuclear power. Yeah. But, yeah, that's a crazy situation right there. And there's just so much interesting shit happening in the world, right? I mean, it is a fascinating time, if you think about what we're living through right now. It's just people are so scared they can't be fascinated.

It would be nice if we knew how this plays out. We don't have to worry. Like, let's just watch it play out, because there's only one way it can go. But it can go so many different ways, and worst-case scenario is nuclear war. That's what people are terrified of, hypersonic weapons. People are terrified of, hypersonic weapons. People are terrified of one world government.

I mean, it's this Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum talk, and they're like, Jesus Christ, who is that guy? What the fuck is going on over there? You'll have nothing, and you'll be happy? Like, what?

Yeah, well, I mean, the hypersonics thing, you know, the Chinese military has developed a pretty capable, you know, hypersonic, you know, weapon. Do we? We have been testing, right? And it's all about glide vehicles. And it's a fascinating field. We need to be putting, I think, more resource into it. When you say glide vehicles, what do you mean by that? Well, imagine a missile carries a hypersonic. I mean, that just means over Mach 5 in terms of speed, but they have a planned trajectory, and you can predict that.

But a hypersonic glide vehicle is traveling above Mach 5 and also is maneuverable, and that's very difficult to defend against. Because you can't predict the trajectory. You can't predict its trajectory and also just the timing and the speed with which it's moving and the uncertainty of its flight path. And so, yeah, the Chinese are, you know, they've been spending an ungodly amount on their research and also efforts to, once again, steal information. We've been developing.

We've been working hard to do that. But other areas, you know, you talk about quantum computing. That's an area where we've got to get ahead of the game. Russia, China, the U.S. Yeah, those, Russia, China, the U.S. It's always a top three, are feverishly working to develop quantum computing. And that's great.

And everybody thinks, okay, yay, we'll get to that point. And that just means when you're there, it's, you know, the speed, the capabilities of quantum computers, you know, surpass sort of the classical computing thing. But the problem there is, and it's great for the future of, yeah, AI and a variety of, you know, sciences. Terrific. But what it also means is you can defeat in a very simple way, and I'm going to oversimplify this, but quantum computing, once it's developed sufficiently, once you're post-quantum, then you can defeat the cryptography that's on sort of the classical computer systems, right? That handle the cryptography that's

basically protecting our national security communications, our military communications, the financial transactions on the internet, right, that we all rely on. So part of it is, yeah, it's great for future development of science and technology, but there's this real concern over if, again, a nation that doesn't have our best interest at heart develop this and get kind of are in the lead on this, then suddenly they can defeat the cryptographic capabilities of our communication systems. And that's a real problem. So I guess what I'm saying is there's some areas that we need to be focused on putting more money into. and putting more money into. And so every time I read that we're putting $80 billion in the IRS or $370 billion into subsidies for green energy, just wondering, okay, I understand why it's appealing to some people,

but maybe it's not in our best interest. And this quantum computer thing, we have those though, right? quantum computer thing, like, we have those, though, right? Yeah, we've, we've, we, Japan, Germany, Friday, again, Russia, China, we've been developing and working on quantum computing. But, you know, it's, it's not where it needs to be yet. Right. So it's, it's still in the development stages, right? It's still in sort of the nascent stages of where it's it's still in the development stages right it's still in sort of the nascent stages of where it's going to go and and so if you think about it we could be I think they were talking about like 2030 or so right it would be sort of that moment in time when we're at whatever they call it I'm

not a obviously not a tech guy but computer or quantum supremacy or something yeah so so we're busy now the US government is actually focused on I'm obviously not a tech guy, but quantum supremacy or something. So we're busy now. The U.S. government is actually focused on this. They're trying to say, okay, we need to improve all our systems so that they are capable of defeating what that means down the road at that point. So, I guess what I'm saying in not a very eloquent way is there are a lot of areas for concern that the U.S. government needs to be focused on. And I just hope that, you know, this administration and the next one, whoever they are, maybe, understand. It just seems our timelines are accelerated, right, for concerns that we maybe had no vision on even five or 10 years ago, right? And the world, it strikes me, it's a little bit more of a dangerous place right now. And so I think we need to kind of get back to it.

I agree with what you said before, which is every time you talk about U.S. first or U.S. Patriotism. Patriotism, U.S. focus, that you get a whole segment of society that looks at that here in the U.S. and goes, oh, you're being nationalistic. So that's the wrong thing to do. But in response to what's happening in the world, It's really the only logical way to look at it Isn't it? It's how everybody else with any resource is looking at right and if we're gonna compete with them But that's what it gets scary. It's like what is the solution? Is it complete integration of the government and in businesses the way China does it is it something different and this?

With the widespread distribution of quantum computing me. What does that look like in 10 years, 15, 20 years? If cryptography no longer exists, if there's no passwords don't mean anything anymore, and all intellectual property is available to anybody and everyone, that's weird. Yeah, then it's a utopia because we'll all hold hands and it'll be a community of nations. We're all going to get along.

We're all involved in one world digital currency that's controlled by the state. Are you invested in crypto? I got a little bit. Yeah. But I'm confused about the future of that too. And I mean, this whole idea of a decentralized currency was very attractive to people. But now the government is talking about a centralized digital currency that they control. And what comes with that, of course, is some sort of social policy that regulates and distributes what access you have to it based on your social credit score. And that's terrifying.

That's what China has. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, that's what a's what a nation, you know, like China is focused on. I, you know, I I would have assumed that once they start talking about government regulation of of cryptocurrency, that the whole shift would everybody's focus would go elsewhere, right? Because it completely takes away the attractiveness of that space. And the whole value of it was, I always imagine, was essentially, I'm oversimplifying, but the lack of government regulation and dependency. So, yeah, I don't know where it's going to go. I'm an old school kind of investor. I probably should be embarrassed to say I don't have any crypto in my investment portfolio,

but I don't have much of an investment portfolio. Well, there's a lot of people that invest in crypto that lost a shit ton of money when it all kind of fell apart recently, too. That's the thing. When things get weird, people want to dump it. They get panicky and there's long haul investors in crypto that say there's ups and downs and this is just part of the process. But a lot of people say, no, they're hamstringing cryptocurrencies and they know what they're doing. And they're doing it because it is a threat. Because if the government no longer controls currency, if currency is decentralized and there's a finite amount of Bitcoin and it's valuable at this level and people can use it to buy goods and services and the government no longer controls it, that's terrifying for people. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's – the big government concern has been for all this time has been that it's, you know, used by criminal elements. Right. And and, you know, there was a yes, that was true to some degree. But it seems like the horse has left the barn. So it's it's it's more of a you know, it's gained more traction than, you know, I would have thought. You know, but I didn't get on. You i looked down i think i fine i should have bought walmart um but yeah i i don't know i i think that with the the currency the way it is china look china's been looking to uh supplant the dollar or to replace the dollar as the global currency um they've had that argument for a long time i i don't think the dollar as the global currency. They've had that argument for a long time.

I don't think the dollar is going anywhere, but I do think that the more that the government looks to control alternative currencies, the less attractive those currencies become, and the more likely it is that the focus shifts elsewhere. And there becomes then another attractive investment at the nascent level at the beginning. So who knows? But yeah. This is a bizarre push to connect climate change to heart attacks. Have you seen that? Yeah. Yeah. How dumb do they think we are? Pretty dumb. I mean, how much of an increase of climate change do you really need to get the massive jump in heart attacks that people have experienced?

I mean, it was a cover of ABC. There was an ABC article about it that was trying to connect it. And it was met with almost universal disdain. People are like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, that's not the only option. There's probably other stuff that might have went on over the last couple years. You guys remember those things? Yeah.

Half the time, I think, you know, and that's the problem with media nowadays. I mean, look, you look at, you know, at most sites, you know, that are supposedly media news-focused, and it just seems like it's just a slew of shit that's there just to get your clicks and your likes and to bait you into clicking on it. And most of the shit that's out there is just that. I mean, there's very few solid news sources anymore. Well, the good thing about that is that independent news sources are rising because of that, because people have lost all faith and trust. And, I mean, you're seeing the impact on CNN.

I mean, they fired everybody now. Yeah. They fired Stelter, supposedly Don Lemon and Jim Acosta on the chopping block as well, and they're trying to make it an objective source of journalism now. The fucking cover of CNN had a positive story on me the other day. I was like, this is hilarious. Did they? What'd they say? It was about the abortion debate that I had with Seth Dillon is the Babylon Bee guy. Yeah. Okay. Where, you know, he was saying that rape victims should be forced to carry babies. I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. And his thought was that two wrongs don't make a right. And, you know, he's an evangelical Christian.

Yeah, yeah. He has a very rigid perspective on life begins at conception. And, you know, I'm like, well, what if it's the day of conception? What if it's a rape victim day of conception? You think that child who got raped should be forced to carry that baby? And that's when things get real fucking squirrely. And he said yes. Yes. He said two wrongs don't make a right. Fucking hell. Yeah, that that's the way things get real fucking squirrely and he said yes yes he said two

wrongs don't make a right fucking hell yeah that it's murder i mean that's the hardcore evangelical perspective of conception yeah i just didn't i didn't realize i think in part i didn't realize what an effort was had been underway for years right by, by that segment of society to influence state houses in anticipation of one day having the Supreme Court return the question to the states. Right. So that was a massively coordinated and funded effort to try to get to that point. And that completely happened, at least for me, off the radar. I just didn't see it. Do you think that's a political decision, or is that a position based on their religious ideology, that life truly does begin at the point

of conception that they're doing something that's ultimately just? Well, I mean, I'm sure. Yeah, I think it's both. But I think there's a lot of people out there who firmly believe on the religious side of it. I don't know. It's one of those, there's no winning that discussion, right? Right. Again, it falls in the category of, fuck it, don't hurt people. You do what you're going to do. I'll do what I do.

You don't need to celebrate me. I don't need to celebrate you. Just get on with your fucking life. And you do what you. But that requires, I think, for it to happen. That requires, again, reasonable people making reasonable policies that people can live under. Right. And, you know, that doesn't seem to happen because, you know, one side wants it all their way and one side wants it their way. And everybody's throwing hand grenades at each other. So I don't know how you walk it back. What do you make about Fauci stepping down? It's probably about time. I didn't realize he was as old as he is. Yeah, he's 80-something years old. Yeah, I didn't realize that.

Hopefully he's put enough away for retirement. Hopefully not. What is he going to do? He's going to keep working? He's going to start an OnlyFans. That's what I'm hoping. Yeah. Well, you know, it's 35% of the internet is porn. People would pay to see Fauci in his underwear. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny because I think the CDC is going through a shakeup right now, because they're actually trying internally to understand where they made mistakes. And a lot of their mistakes were pretty evident, but they, you know, at least it seems as if they're trying to make some adjustments internally for the next time.

They probably have to for survival purposes. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But we'll have another pandemic. You know, I mean, it's not like – but I will say this. The number of people that I still see walking around outside, outside, on their own, by themselves, wearing a mask. Today, I saw it today. Some poor guy who looked like he never thought about his health for a

moment in his life, except for putting that fucking mask on. It's like having a condom and putting it on after you get AIDS. Well, you're not going to be on condoms anymore, I guess. No, we're going to be on condoms anymore, I guess. No. We won't be able to find them in a store. I don't think anybody's going to go for that. Yeah. That's a long sell.

Yeah. I mean, we would literally have to be at some sort of a fucking religious domination of our culture to accept that. Yeah. We're not giving up sex. I'll say that much. That's a red line. except that. Yeah, we're not giving up sex. I'll say that much. That's a red line. I mean, just condoms are the most innocuous of all of them.

You're literally just putting a cap on it so it feels good and sort of, and you kind of stop pregnancy. It's just the whole thing is so goddamn dumb. Yeah. I'm really surprised I hadn't heard that before. Again, because maybe I wasn't paying attention to the contraception industry. Yeah. It's a significant part of that group believes that contraception also is an issue. All right. Well, that's – see, again, you get into that part, and then you could actually see a point where the Republicans don't actually take the House in November.

Then you could actually see a point where the Republicans don't actually take the House in November. If they just keep, you know, if there's enough of that going on, because you have all the independents, you have all the, like you pointed out, the people that are inclined to vote Republican because they like policies that are there. But then they see this and they think, just stay the fuck out of my kitchen. Do the things you're supposed to do. Treaties and, you know, security and treaties and security and foreign policy and everything else. Just stay the fuck out of it. But isn't that a part of any system, that the systems always want to grow and increase their amount of power? Yeah. And that makes it easier for them if they have more power.

They can implement all of their policies and all the things they want to do that may be unpopular if they have more control. Yeah. Well, and that's how we end up where we are, right? Because we've created a system that allows politicians to stay in office, right? An existing congressperson or senator has enormous advantages over someone who's trying to challenge him for that seat. And so that's what it is. I mean, how do I stay in office for, you know, 46 fucking years? But, yeah, we'll get away from that. You know, we also didn't talk about the whacking of that oligarch's daughter. Yeah, that's... In Russia.

Yesterday? Yeah, just outside of Moscow. Yeah. Yeah, that's uh in russia yeah yesterday yeah just outside of moscow yeah yeah that's crazy and it was supposed to be the oligarch himself but he got in a different vehicle right wasn't that the yeah it was um and he's not really even oligarch i guess that's the wrong way to put it he's they call him putin's brain yeah he's a he's a ultraist, and he's more of a commentator, right? He's sort of a media face at this point. But he was attending an event. I think he was giving a speech.

His daughter was also there. And maybe the thought was they were going to get a both. Maybe the thought was they were going to get the dad. And the daughter is – she's like a commentator, right? Yeah, yeah, she is. Daria Dugan. She was a commentator. Was a commentator.

Now she's blown to bits. So she got in. They had two cars there at this event. She got in one, drove off, and then the thing detonated a dozen miles outside of Moscow, basically. a dozen miles outside of Moscow, basically. So it, and of course, you know, the Russian government immediately blamed the Ukrainians and a lot of them are calling for targeting of Ukrainian personalities now in Kyiv.

So it just ramps up an already awful situation. Do you imagine a scenario where Putin uses nukes? That's the ultimate fear, right? Yeah, it is. Well, the ultimate fear is that he takes over all of what was once the Soviet Union. Yeah. Well, I think if you had asked that question a year ago, I would have said, no, he's not going to do it. But now we've been so bad at kind of predicting his activities that, yeah, maybe he would see that he could keep it a limited

encounter, right? And we tend to think of a nuke as Hiroshima or Nagasaki and doesn't necessarily have to be like that. You could deliver, you know, a smaller payload and maybe he feels like he could keep it regionally contained. So I wouldn't say it's I wouldn't say it's off the table. It probably isn't off the table from his perspective, from his mindset. If he gets pushed into a corner. Yeah. Yeah. And if he I mean, look, if they if they if the fight is taken to Russia, right inside Russia and they've had a number of incidents already. Right. They've and there have been a number of of of incidents in Crimea. of incidents in Crimea. And before this, I guarantee you, before February,

whenever they started the invasion, February 24th, Putin probably imagined that would never happen. He imagined he was going to be in Kiev in five days. So I think the more that may happen, if the Ukrainian military decides, look, what we've got to do

is use these drone capabilities that we have and some of the other weapons we've got to start launching attacks. And the U.S. has been trying to, you know, trying to manage that ever since we got involved in this, right? And by saying, you know, these can't be used, you know, to launch attacks inside of Russia because they don't want that to expand. And that could be one of those things that could then set him off. So something like this, this assassination, whether it whether she was the intended target or it was going to be her dad, that's the sort of thing that escalates, right? And it removes the ability, if there was one,

to have any sort of negotiated settlement. But look, we're $10 billion in terms of aid that we've dropped on to Ukraine since, really legitimately since Biden's been in office. But they just approved a $775 million additional assistance package, mostly munitions and hardware. And that's the 18th or 19th package of aid that we've put into Ukraine since this started. The Congress or the Senate approved a $40 billion aid package in May. So they haven't gotten anywhere near contributing all that to it yet. But you have to ask yourself, where's this going? What are we doing? Are we just going to continue a sort of a proxy situation? What's the alternative? Do nothing?

Well, if we didn't do anything, if we hadn't been providing all this, there's no way the Ukrainians could still be in the fight. I mean, no matter how strong their will is, and everybody respects the fact that they've had this enormous courage and will for this battle. But the reality is they need the hardware, right? And look, they've lost. It depends on the estimates, but some of the estimates are they're losing 100 soldiers a day, right? And we're at the six-month mark of this. Today is like 180th day, 181st day of the invasion. And while sort of the figures are hard to pin down because both sides are, you know, in the business of not giving that information out. And they're also in the business of exaggerating how much the other side has suffered.

You know, estimates are, you know, maybe the Russians have lost 15 to 18,000. And the Ukrainians are probably somewhere, you know, around that again, if you figure 100. So it'd be 18,000 if they're losing 100 a day. if you figure 100. So that'd be 18,000 if they're losing 100 a day. So you've got this going on, and you've got the US and NATO just pushing more weapons and money in there, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, right? Russia doesn't seem inclined, and they've said they won't negotiate. Zelensky doesn't seem inclined to push for a negotiated settlement. So I don't know where that goes. Where does it go?

Yeah, exactly. And we have to be a little bit clearer about this, right? Because obviously, Afghanistan was one of those just ridiculous case studies. We kept talking about how we're creating the stable Afghan government. And the military knew the Afghan military wasn't going to... The US government knew deep down that the Afghan military couldn't stand up on its own. And yet for years and years and years and years, we kept this going. And we never really did a particularly good job of explaining to the American public why we're doing it other than, well, terrorism, terrorism.

We can't allow them to use that as a base for attacking us again like 9-11. So 20 years down the road and all those lives and everything else, we're back to where we started basically. Taliban is back in charge and nothing has really changed. And so with this Ukraine-Russia thing, you know, we don't want to get in a shooting war with Russia. Do we really want to keep just pumping endless amounts of money into Ukraine? And where's the money coming from? Well, we're printing it up. I don't know. I don't know. It's money we're not spending on other things, on shoring up our telecoms and getting Chinese gear off of cell towers. It's not money we're spending on quantum computing.

It's not money we're spending on hypersonics research and shoring up our national security interests. But, I mean, I get it, right? You want to support the Ukrainians. You want to do the right thing. I just don't – I'm confused over what our end game is here. And I'm hoping that behind the scenes, we've got some, you know, very aggressive effort to get the two sides to sit down. Do you think that's the case? Probably not. I don't think the Russians aren't willing and probably Zelensky, you know, And probably Zelensky, you know, feels, at least at this point, that he's got, you know, a lot of runway left in terms of getting aid and assistance from NATO and from the U.S.

So there, you know, but at a certain point, it starts looking like World War I, right? Little tiny, tiny incremental steps, you know, on the battlefield and very little being done and, you know, potential for famine, even though they've released some of the grain shipments. So it just looks a lot like... When we were dragging the boys through London, I took them to the Imperial War Museum. If anybody's so inclined, they should definitely go to the Imperial War Museum in London.on and i took the boys to the world war one exhibit it's fantastic it's an incredible thing but then you're standing there and you're you're reading all this about a land war in europe right and lack of progress and people being you know killed and uh you know famine being created because you know there's just there was no agriculture going on and no ability to move food and grain, you realize, well, what the fuck?

It's 100 years on and we're doing the same thing again. It was a little depressing. It was kind of a depressing moment. But with far more capability of destruction. Yes, yeah. And that's why the consequences are so much greater. That's why this is so disturbing to people because if it goes sideways, it goes sideways for the world. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that's which is yes, that's that's that's exactly it. So if it you know, we were in a world war, but it was it was in a bizarre kind of way. It was contained at the world's much smaller now.

Yeah, much smaller technology being what it is, the potential for major problems. Yeah. So but again, I guess I think it's down to maybe it's the same theme, transparency on the part of the U.S. government. We have to do a better job of explaining maybe what our point to this exercise is rather than just the immediate effect was a motive. Yeah, I stand with Ukraine, right? But what does that mean? And we all imagined that, you know, maybe there was going to be a quick end to it, one side or the other. That's clearly not happening. So I guess my point in talking about the numbers, the sheer amount of money, and it's not just the money, it's just,

it's what are we trying to accomplish here? And that's that's part of the problem I will say Putin completely miscalculated because I think part of his issue was he wanted to show cracks in in NATO and obviously he didn't do that with now we've expanded NATO and As a result of his actions, so he got just the wrong result there There's also a problem in getting to the Russian people themselves because the propaganda that they receive is so thorough and their access to the information is so limited in terms of like the Russian propaganda. Like I've talked to people who have relatives in Russia and they think that the Ukrainians are a bunch of Nazis and that, you know, we have to go over there to liberate them. Right. That's the propaganda that the surface readers of Russia are getting. Yeah. It's a complicated issue.

It's uncomfortable for people to talk about a lot of aspects of this. Ukraine was – we didn't give a shit. I'll be honest. We didn't give a shit. I'll be honest. We didn't give a shit about Ukraine, right, before this happened. We thought it was corrupt. We thought it was corrupt. I mean, New York Times. And you know what?

It was. Yeah. Yeah. And had a lot of problems. But you can't, if you say that out loud now, people are going, what the fuck? Are you unpatriotic? You don't stand with Ukraine? And it's like everything else, right?

It's like those easy fixes. There's a few Ukrainian flags outside of homes in our neighborhoods, you know, where we are. I think like, okay, you're not Ukrainian, but if it makes you feel good, great. But, you know, do you really, we're very quick to jump on things that make us feel righteous, you know? And so, yeah, it's uncomfortable to say, but Ukraine was a place that, as far as we were concerned, it was corrupt, right? And there were problems there that it wasn't going to join NATO anyway. We weren't going to admit it into NATO. Why is that? Well, in part, because there was this concern about admitting a country like Ukraine into NATO and what that impact would have on Putin's mindset in Russia.

Part of it was they hadn't met certain standards or protocols that are in place for NATO membership. What was missing? Transparency in government. Corruption was an issue. Transparency in government. Corruption was an issue. So I think if you say that now, you know, people just look at it and go, that's, well, you're not on the right side of this argument. Well, there's nothing wrong with pointing out the flaws, you know, and you can still support Ukraine in this, you know, action that the Russians have caused. You can do you can have a more complex, you know, argument than just it's either right or it's wrong. But we're again, we're in that world where it's all right or it's all wrong.

It's all this or it's all that. So bum me out, Mike. I don't mean to bum you out. I was hoping you had clear, concise solutions that the powers that be would listen to and go, hey, that Mike Baker guy, he's on to something. Yeah. Well, no, I think more transparency, I think being more realistic about what our foreign policy interests are. Those are things, but that's difficult to do, right? It's a very popular

thing to, you know, this is one of the few bipartisan issues that you've got is to grant more aid to the Ukraine. It's one of the few things that people on Capitol Hill seem to agree about. There's only a handful of voices that are saying, you know, what's it all about and where's it going? I'm not saying don't. I'm just saying, let's have a discussion about it openly that talks about what our national interests are there and what we're trying to accomplish. And much like with Afghanistan, even with Iraq and going all the way back to Vietnam and others, I mean, we've never really done it. So, again, it's wishful thinking that we would. You know, there's this narrative that's historically accurate that all empires eventually collapse.

Yeah, yeah. And that's what's terrifying to people here. Like, what does that look like? Does that mean we become under the control of another empire? Does it mean we're under the whim of China and all our ideas about freedom and what we hold dear about the United States are gone forever?

And that this experiment in self-government ultimately proved to be a failure. It lasted a few hundred years, but was overcome by all the powers that be. All the things that we've talked about so far. And the fact that be, all the things that we've talked about so far, and the fact that the very foundation that it was established under is not taken seriously or not thought of as so significant and important, whether it's freedom of speech, whether it's the Bill of Rights,

the Constitution, all these things that people want to change and erode and shift based on their own political ideology, that they don't understand that this is immensely important. Now you're bumming me out. Right? Because where does it go? If China exists right now, if we live at the same time that an entire country of over a

billion people is controlled by a totalitarian dictatorship, which is essentially what the CCP is. I mean, they have ultimate control over what's expressed. They'll lock people up for dissent. They'll take people that are billionaire heads of corporations and step out of line, and they disappear them. Yeah. Does that happen here?

Well, there's a lot of people that talk about how, you know, but they've always been, you know, a segment of society that's talked about how democracy is failing and capitalism is a failing system. Yeah. What's the alternative? Yeah. I don't think there is an alternative. I think we allowed ourselves to get soft.

We talked about this, you know, a while back, which is, you know, part of it is human nature, right? As a parent, I want life to be easier for my kids, right? My parents wanted it to be easier for me. Their parents, I'm sure, wanted it to be easier for them. And eventually, you get the diminishing returns because, you know, we're not hunting, gathering, looking for fresh water. We're just, you know, sitting, staring at our phones and nobody's doing shit, right? So it's – you could argue that and we've – you know, so we've created a soft society. We have an inability to say difficult things to each other without getting completely wound up, right? I mean words are violence. No, they're fucking not. You know, it just – but a free flow of ideas and exchange, you know, is a very difficult thing to do nowadays, right? People are afraid to say what they really think because, oh, my God. Well, they could lose their jobs, unfortunately. They could lose their jobs, yeah.

Well, my daughter went through university, and at the end of the whole process, which was not an inexpensive university, she was very honest about it. She said, you know, I just kept my mouth shut during most of the debates and conversations in class. She's sort of a center right. She's more of a centrist, but she's center right in a political scheme of things. And she just- Which is extremely unpopular with young people. Yeah. And so there was no upside for her, whether it was with students or with, you know, professors to say anything. So, but you get that, I guess the point there is, you know, anything. But you get that. I guess the point there is you get this inability to talk and to reason. And so you end up right now, it does seem like, yeah, we do. I don't know. I tend to think

that the country's very resilient. I'm not one of those people that thinks democracy's on the brink. I didn't think that January 6th is going to mean the end of democracy. I think it was a horseshit show, right? It was not good, but I don't think it meant that, oh, my God, democracy's on the brink. No, it isn't. If you think that, then I don't think you understand how resilient it is here in this country. But, you know, I don't know. Maybe we don't have enough people, you know, invested in the game. Maybe we need, you know, mandatory service, you know, for folks coming out of high school. You know, maybe you could defer that for after college, but maybe everybody needs to put some skin in the game. You know, a couple of years thought that one of the things that separates us from countries like Israel, beside the fact they're in constant actual military conflict with their neighbor,

is that they have this sort of mandatory military service, sort of like South Korea does. We don't want that in this country because we want people to have the ability to choose whatever they want. But I think because people don't exactly understand the consequences of not looking at ourselves as a sovereign state not looking at ourselves as a community of people that are all banded together that we do have this sort of ignorant denial of our role in the world or of not just our role in the world of the world in general how the other players in this game look at us right and i think also um an understanding of how the country works

or how it's how it's laid out right maybe not how it always works but how it's supposed to you know work according to the framework right and you know it's not to sound like Wilford Brimley, but, you know, in school you used to take civics courses, right? And that was mandatory. You had to know, you had a government course, right? You had to know how things were supposedly working. And I think that's, there's an element of that too. We need to, maybe we need to spend a little less time on people's, you know, feelings and following, you know following their passions in schooling and just get back to some basics. Do the things that will help kids advance, but give them a framework of understanding as to how things work. The social sciences, fine. Civics, great. Economics, right? I mean,

teach some things that really, I don't know, prepare the kids. I don't know where I was going with that other than I see a list of courses, potential courses that, you know, particularly my oldest boy can take in high school, now that he's in high school. And I go, well, you know, I mean, how about, it's all over the map, right? It's just shit that you think, I guess maybe that's entertaining, but maybe some more focus on basic instruction and education. Well, ultimately, what is school preparing people for? Is it preparing people to integrate into the world? Is it educating people? Is it just for their own edification and to expand their knowledge base?

Or is it supposed to help them become a functional part of society? Like, what is the role of education? Yeah, I think it's to become a functioning part of society. I think it's to allow you to be a provider, to take care of yourself, to be a responsible citizen. And, yeah, but now it does seem a lot of it's for, you know, sort of just self-realization and following passion and doing all these things that, you know, anyway, I disappeared down in some educational discussion rabbit hole. Are you concerned at all about the integration of technology into human

beings you know there's one of the things that's uh coming up now that a lot of people are discussing are these technologies that are rising right now like there's neural link and there's a few other ones and elon musk is actually just uh invested in some competitor to neural link they're all working towards this integration of technology and human beings. But when we're talking about the problems with technology and the problems with the fact that a lot of our technology is compromised and that if we do that to human bodies, if we really do all connect to the internet via some sort of cyborg device, like what's to stop that from being compromised? Right. That's an extension of where we are right now.

Right. Right. And so it's a great question. We actually covered some of this in, I haven't even, I got all this way down the road and I didn't plug Black Files to Classified on Discovery and Science Channel. But in the second season, we did some work on this. I went to UCLA robotics program, went to Madison, Wisconsin, looked at some of this. And I think it's fascinating. It doesn't necessarily worry me from – I know there's discussions about the morality issues of linking machine and human and all that, but I do think from a security perspective, like you pointed out, I think

there's some concern there. Research and development being what it is, you know, I've been super impressed with what, super, did I say super impressed? I've been impressed with what I've seen, anyway, from what some of the research labs are doing, right, in this field. It's an amazing area, but what they're not doing, because they're scientists, right, they're engineers, they're not counterintelligence, you know, concerns counterintelligence concerns. So you don't have that follow-on part that says, well, what does that mean? And the ethicists are out there looking at the morality issues, but I don't know that from a CI perspective that anybody's been out

there staring at this and wondering, well, if China is controlling communications, telecoms from their position right now, once this goes further, what does that enable them to do? And I don't know. But it's a fascinating area. It's just typically the security aspects or the counterintelligence aspects of anything tend to be a trailing issue. But you've got to think that other countries are looking at that in a different way. Well, China is, definitely. China is. Yeah, they've got the advantage of being a dictatorship, right? So they don't sit around and worry about the ethics of things. They don't worry about the morals of things. They don't worry about civil dictatorship, right? So they don't sit around and worry about the ethics of things. They don't worry about the morals of things. They don't worry about civil liberties, right?

And I'm glad that we do in the West. I think that's great. That's the way it should be. But we just need to be aware that they don't and what that means and why they are so focused on this. I mean, again, they're focused on artificial intelligences, similar to their focus on other, you know, key technologies that they want to control. So, yeah, we just, again, it's one of those things where you don't want to sit around and, you know, see, you know, some sort of conspiracy or a security threat behind every corner. But... That one seems like it's not a corner It's like a giant gate. Yeah, that's right in front of our face I mean if we all do integrate and you're talking about quantum compute computers and their ability to eliminate all of the

Safety nets of cryptography That what what's to stop that from happening with human beings? Yeah, no, and again, I don't think it's an area that's really been fully, or not even fully, just I don't think it's been an area that's been explored because we tend to race into things, right, from a development perspective. It's like a pharmaceutical company.

A pharmaceutical company, you know, all they want to do is have a free flow of information, to share that information within the scientific community to get where they want to go. And then you've got somebody typically in a pharma company that's the chief of security. It's like, you can't do that, right? Because this information is not only valuable to the company, but it's ours. It's proprietary information. We've spent billions of dollars on it, developing it. You can't just take your laptop home or take it on a trip to Europe with you and assume that all that information on there is secure. So you're butting up heads against all the time against

free flow of information and security. And it's never, you're always trying to find sort of that fine point on the line that gives you maximum, you know, access to information for the people that are innovating, and then locking it down to the point that you can on the security side. But it's a tough thing to do. Which inhibits the ability to have new technology. Yes. And inhibits innovation. Right. Well, that's the view from the scientific side.

That's the view from the academic side. Right? That's what happens. And going back to that same dead horse that I've been kicking, the Chinese Intel, whichever department it is there that may be out there looking around, they understand that. And they've been working in the academic community for decades because they understand they play on that. They understand that these folks don't think that way. They don't think from a security perspective. So I don't want to say they're easy pickings, but they've worked the academic environment very hard over the years in terms of getting access to information. And how have they done that?

Co-opting individuals. Maybe it could be something as simple as identifying, look, I'm interested in material science. So I see at a university here in the U.S. maybe I identify a professor who's doing some particularly interesting research. Maybe I develop a scenario where he's approached by someone. It seems very innocuous, and they're just looking to get some insight into a paper that he's written or whatever. So he provides some material. It's not classified, but he provides that material. Now, okay, now what has he done? He's kind of accepted your tasking, right? Now you kind of

co-opt him a little bit more. Maybe you offer him a grant to do some research on something. Maybe you offer him a trip to Northwestern Technical University in China to come and talk to some of their people in a seminar. You're looking to develop individuals who have access to information that you want, and it can be done in a variety of ways. And then they do a tremendous amount of just open source trolling. They're at every major scientific seminar, convention, discussion, panel session, just trolling around. They're gathering up information, but they're also looking for potential contacts. And again, it sounds old school. It doesn't sound as high tech as getting online and hacking into Raytheon or whomever.

But it's part of the what the tools that you've got in your kit bag. And so it's an important part. And it's worked very well for them over the years. So anyway, it's but again, what's been happening? We've been trying to be more proactive for the Bureau in particular has and other members of the community and the intelligence community going out to institutions and saying, these are the problems you could be facing, right? These are the things you should be aware of. If you're approached in this fashion, it would be great if you wouldn't mind telling us, right? So, again, I seem like I've spent a

lot of time banging on the subject. Seems like something to bang on. It's something to bang on. And it's an enormous cost to us and to our allies. And I think, you know, the more that again, the more that we talk about it, the better off we are, even though as a cynic is. I mean, 2015, I think it was Xi and Obama had this meeting. 2015, I think it was, Xi and Obama had this meeting, and there was this big fanfare about China agreed not to engage in cyber espionage or cyber shenanigans of any sort, not to engage in economic espionage. It was like this, and they touted it, and the media was like, wow, look at this. They've agreed to do this.

Bullshit. They haven't stopped. In fact, they've accelerated. All people have to do is Google latest Chinese espionage acts, right? And you get this long list of indictments and charges that the US has been able to make. They've got an insane number of counterintelligence investigations going on at the bureau. Bureau is stretched thin, right? And most of them are against the China target. So, you know, I don't want to sound like a one-trick pony, but I think I have. I think it's a good trick.

Well, it's certainly something that people need to think about because I don't know where this goes. If China is successful with this operation, like what does that look like? Yeah, it looks like they're firmly convinced they're going to be at the top of the food chain. And again, I know people roll their eyes when they hear talk like that and they think, well, it's a community of nations. You know, there's room for everyone up top. And that's not the way, you know, they view it, right? We tend to mirror our values on other nations. They don't, right? And so there's no misunderstanding on their part. And so if this Congress takes place and Xi is, you know, given a third term and all indications are he will, they'll just continue this march.

And they'll just continue building up their military. They look at the Pacific region as basically their rightful property. They certainly, again, we talked about Taiwan. So I think we just need to be aware of what the dangers are in the world. You know, don't sit in a foxhole worried about them. You know, that'd be silly. But if you think about what the past few years have looked like, you know, people have been just kicked in the ass constantly, whether it's the pandemic or it's the Russia-Ukraine battle, whether it's, you know, increased tensions with China, whether it's,

you know, a recession. I don't know if it's a recession or not, but if it's a recession, yeah, it's been a weird few years. But I think it'll get better. You do? I'm an optimist. Oh, boy. Every time I walk out of here, I always feel like all I did was like – That's why we bring you in here because I don't think about it as much as you do i need to know like especially with your background what what your perspective of worst case scenario is yeah i do i do think it's important to be optimistic though and uh

yeah i got kids so i have to be right exactly right so any more uh i've been meaning that i've been following your your tour tour and, uh, kept trying to figure out a way to get to one of your shows. It hasn't worked out with my schedule, but do you have any more coming up? Yeah. Yeah. I got a bunch.

I'm always somewhere. Yeah. Well, we're always somewhere. Yeah. I mean, I'm always touring. I'll,

I'll fill you in, find something. I want to get out to Idaho anyway. You got to, you did that one show. Yeah. I love it up there. They still fucking talk about it.

It's fun up there, man. Idaho's a, I mean, I don't want to talk about it too much because I don't want to ruin it. Yeah. But Boise is an amazing place. It really is. You should see the construction. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a crane.

Well, people are leaving California like it's on fire. Yeah. Parts of it are. Parts of it are. Yeah. By the way, I don't know why you'd swing a dead cat. I got two of them. I never would do that to them.

But, yeah, it's a fantastic town. I will say this. We're coming up on the best fly fishing time of year, September. Yeah. Up there in Idaho. So if you've got, you know, any time on your calendar. No, my calendar in September is filled with hunting. Okay.

That's another. I was going to say, well, you come up there, you get both things done. Yeah. It's hard to get one done. Yeah. It's hard for me to escape, you know? When you go on the road, when you do the tour, I don't mean to take over asking questions, but I'm just curious.

Please do. What's the best part of doing that? What do you enjoy the most? People laughing. Yeah. I enjoy the fact that it works, that the people can come out, have a good time, forget about their problems for a little while,

all laugh together, and all laugh together as a group. It's very, you know, that's a cliche that laughter's healing, but it really is. It's like a medicine. It's a medicine for me. I can sit in a comedy club and watch one of my friends on stage make me laugh. I love it. I still love it. It's a drug. It's a perspective enhancer. It shifts the way people think about life. You get out of there, you have a good time, and you get out of there with a big smile on your face and you have fun. And that's

what I like about it the most, is that you can provide a moment of fun. Is it more difficult to do now than it was 10 years ago? It's easier in some ways. You get more criticism, but people are excited about it more. It's like people want it. You know, it's like we've taken away all the wild, fun movies. You can't have a fun comedy movie anymore because they're controversial,

and people are terrified of controversy. They're terrified of criticism. They're terrified of being attacked and canceled and this and that. And, and also these people have these jobs that are dependent upon, you know, providing the studios with these films that don't get attacked so that they can profit off of them and they And they worry about it. And so comedy, stand-up comedy is one of the rare places that's pretty autonomous. You just need a building with a microphone and there's a lot of them out there. Do you ever come up with something, though, or write it down and think, no, I can't do that?

If it's not funny. If it's not funny, then I don't do it. But if it's funny, if it works, it makes people laugh. If it's not funny, then I don't do it. But if it's funny, if it works, it makes people laugh. There's this idea that it's supposed to, you know, we accept fiction in all sorts of forms of media, whether it's literature or film where something happens is horrible and we don't think that it's a real thing that's taking place. But when someone says something on stage, even if it's satire, even it's like there's certain subjects that they think you're not supposed to cover. There's things you're not supposed to say regardless of whether or not they make people laugh.

And that's where the rubber hits the road with stand-up. That's the big pushback. And in that sense, stand-up is very exciting right now because people are very happy that there is still an outlet where people can just say funny things just to make people laugh. These aren't statements. They're not affidavits. They're not declarations of your real true feelings on things. They're just funny things to say. And that is still alive and well. It's a very American art form.

It takes a long time to develop the skills to be able to do that. It takes a long time to gather up an audience that accepts you and knows that that's what you do and wants to come see you. And I feel very, very fortunate that I have that. Yeah. Well, you got the fucking audience, that's for sure. So I keep doing it. And there's a lot of us. You know, that's why I a club out here, that's why there's a big movement of comics that recognize the significance of this art form.

And it's kind of under attack. But, I mean, under attack is a weird way to say it. It's under criticism. But everything's under criticism. There's more of an ability to criticize now than ever before. Well, yeah, more people are self-editing, right? Yeah. I mean, at the workplace, at school.

You kind of have to, though. Yeah. No, you do. But again, it's a shame, right? Because we've gotten to that point where you can't just, you know, I mean, I've got friends that are all over the political spectrum. And we have some of the greatest conversations, and we're completely on opposite sides of things, right? And it gets a little loud sometimes. But at the end of the day, we're great friends, right? And we're all good with it. That's what's missing in this country, the ability to have differing opinions and still find common ground. Most people are good people.

Most people, the vast majority of us are good people, but we're so divided and scared. And we look at each other with differing opinions as being the enemy. And I think that's crazy. The differing opinions are something to be considered and put into your own value system and try to decide, is this person right? Are they wrong? Why do I feel the way I feel? Why do they feel the way they feel?

Why are we so divided? Like, what are our common beliefs? What's our common ground? But people aren't doing that right now. They're so polarized. Well, everything's very siloed, right? So, you know, you sit and you read. People, I talk to folks about this.

They'll say, well, you know, what should I read? Or what should I watch? Or what should I listen to? And the answer is whatever you get your hands on, right? I mean just read a wide variety of things, right? Don't just sit and read and one source of news is this or it's all in this silo. I know I'm going to agree with it. If you're not uncomfortable sometimes with things that you're watching or you're reading, then you're part of the problem as far as I'm going to agree with it. And if you're not uncomfortable sometimes with things that you're watching or you're reading, then, you know, you're part of the problem as far as I'm concerned. Because, yeah, it's, you could argue, okay, it's important. If I'm really feel strongly about

something, fine, I get it. You want to be, you know, sort of that, I feel like I'm part of a community because now I belong to this group that all feel strongly about something, right? But it's like knowing what the enemy thinks too. You should get out and understand what the other side is saying and what they think because maybe it will make your argument for your own perspective a little bit better because now you understand what the other side is thinking. If you don't, you're just going to sound like a douche nozzle.

Agreed. That's about it, Mike. Let's wrap it up. Yeah, I think we solved a lot of problems. We did. We fixed everything. We fixed everything. And you know what? You always do.

And I'm an optimist. Things are going to get better, Joe. I hope they do. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes when confronted with problems, people find solutions. Maybe that's the silver lining of all this is that people are going to be forced to look at these problems that we've created for ourselves and realize that maybe some of us are on the wrong path. And maybe, you know, maybe this attitude that we have, this polarized attitude is ultimately bad for everybody, bad for your

children, my children, the world in general, and that we all need to like try to understand each other a little bit better and find out why we have these rigid belief systems and also recognize that there's a problem with human nature that we have these tribal identities that we attach ourselves to and that many of us, we just have adopted these predetermined patterns of behavior that aren't necessarily beneficial to either or. So you're saying people might become more self-aware and- I'm hoping. Yeah. That's my hope.

It's not going to happen. Some of us, I think. I'm kidding. I think some of us are becoming more self-aware. And also, I think there's a movement where people are kind of tired of this shit. They're tired of the polarization in this country. And they do realize that most people are good people. And they have to kind of like they have to

like logically and rationally come to those conclusions and Recognize why people have their own belief systems and what you know what caused them whether it's regional or whether it's a political like what's caused them to Find these patterns they've upset accepted as their own that they've adopted. Yeah I think if that were to happen if people were to step back a little bit and think about what they're saying if they would be just again a little more self-aware but I do think it also requires it requires some change in

the narrative from on high right it requires some change in the narrative from on high, right? It requires some change in the narrative from the politicians. That's where I'm really cynical. I don't see that because there's too much self-interest, right? Right. But if everybody just would chill the fuck out a little bit and just realize that words aren't violence, differing opinions aren't violent. It doesn't hurt to hear a different opinion,

right? You can choose to accept it or not. You don't have to fucking argue about it. Then, yeah, then maybe we get to that point where there's a little bit more time spent somewhere in the middle ground. I think it should be celebrated. I think those kind of open discussions should be celebrated. I think we should recognize the value of them. It's an important part of any sort of civilization is to have open debate and discussions. And it's really simple. It's a simple solution to silence people. But ultimately, it's bad for everyone.

It's bad even when people are saying things you're diametrically opposed to. The right that they have to say that is very important to you. Oh, yeah. Because if you try to shut down that, yeah. Then they shut you down. They'll shut you down, and you're never going to be pure enough for the mob.

Exactly. So anyway, I think this has been a very good therapy session. I think we nailed it. Finishing on a positive note. Your show. Tell people about your show. Yeah. Black Files Declassified. Going into a third season. We don. Tell people about your show. Yeah, Black Files Declassified.

Going into a third season. We don't have a production date yet. We don't have a production date yet, but we're standing by waiting. It's on Discovery. Discovery, of course, merged with Warner. And so now it's Warner Discovery. And anytime something like that happens,

they then spend the next six to eight months waiting for the dust to settle before they move on and do anything. But they've been terrific about the show, and so we're hoping to get started again in the fall. There's no shortage of subjects for you to cover. Oh, my God. Yeah. And there's some good ones that they've mapped out early on until while we're waiting for the green light.

I have to ask you about UFOs before we leave. Oh, yeah. Do you know anything new? Do you ever have any thought that these things are drones, that they're either something that the United States has developed or other countries have developed, and it's some sort of a black, declassified, black file? Is that what you call them?

Yeah, black files, yeah. What we've seen so far, and we've done some episodes on AATIP, on the Advanced Threat Program, on UAPs, the Pentagon's effort to try to catalog these things. Most of them come down to fairly logical explanations, but there have been some cases, and they just, you know, they produced this report the Pentagon did last year, which was a little bit unsatisfying for most people who were hoping to see a little bit more detail. I'm not sure why they thought that would happen. But, you know, I think that,

you know, I don't deny that there's other stuff out there. There's life out there. I'm sure of that, right? Have they come here and visited? I don't know. But most of the things we've looked at, you can argue, have been Project Aurora or, you know, some other classified program around some type of air platform. Probably unmanned, right? A number of them unmanned. Yeah, some manned. Because then you don't have to worry about the biological limitations

of a human being traveling at extraordinary speeds. Which is the problem. And material science is lagging behind our desire to get a manned hypersonic vehicle, for instance. It's just not there yet. So that's why the hypersonics that are being developed are unmanned. And that makes perfect sense. Because we would turn into goo.

You'd turn into goo. We're just not there. But I think that there have been some cases, we've talked about one that stands out. There's a couple of things in this arena. One would be of things that went in this arena. One would be Commander Fravor's sightings. I have not seen any logical explanation for that yet. And multiple eyes on target, clearly something there. Insane rates of speed that are- Yes. No sign of visible propulsion. No visible propulsion. And Fravor, just an enormously experienced individual and again multiple eyes on that target so that's video evidence when people say what do you believe what do you don't believe that's one of those things that I I think is for me is one of the

really big mysteries right that's the one that I would point to of all the various sightings that have been out there the phoenix lights everything else, I think can be explained logically. And then the other thing, and this is going to sound like I'm taking a complete left turn, but if we're talking about things in this world, would be the Martin Luther King assassination. Yeah. You bring that up often. I do. I do. It is a left turn, but that one you researched and you believe that there was a conspiracy. There was definitely more to it, yeah. There's definitely something there. We haven't found that out yet.

We haven't figured it out, but I'll never shift off of that. There was something there, and it was a concerted effort. But those are the two things I think that, to me, really stand out in all the various investigations we've done over the handful of years we've been doing it anyway but thanks for asking about the show I appreciate my pleasure Mike thanks for being here it's always good to talk to you even though it bums me out for a few hours afterwards yeah I will I think I have to. All right. All right. Bye, everybody.