The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3560 - Trump Ushers in Technoligarchy; Israel Bans Aid Groups in Gaza w/ Molly White, Amed Khan

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

It's an Emmajority Report Thursday on The Majority Report On today's program: Trump posts to Truth Social, threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota. Minneapolis resident Patty O'Keefe recounts her experiences as a legal observer being arrested, abused, and detained at the Whipple Center in Minneapolis. The Twin Cities Pioneer Press publishes an article about three Native Americans who were rounded up by ICE. Another Native American speaks about his experience being detained by ICE. This attack on Natives highlights the ICE project is about ethnic cleansing and nothing else. Amed Khan, human rights advocate and political activist, joins Emma to discuss what he has witnessed over the past two years in Gaza. Through the Amed Khan Foundation, he has purchased and delivered emergency child nutrition throughout the genocide in Gaza. Molly White publisher of the Citation Needed newsletter joins Emma to talk about 2025 of having been the year of the "Technoligarchy". In the Fun Half: Brandon Sutton and Matt join the program. Candace Owens posits the theory that Charlie Kirk was a time traveler marked from birth. Makes sense. ICE blinds a 21-year-old in his left eye after shooting him with a pepper ball at point blank. Former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo speaks at a Zionist conversation in Miami where he says he wants to ensure that history books do not write about the "victims in Gaza". All that and more To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: SUNSET LAKE: and use the code NEWFLOWER—all one word—to get 30% off their new crop of hemp flower and vape carts at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. To support this show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to majority.fm. Please. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday, January 15th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Ahmed Khan will be with us to discuss Israel's aid blockade in Gaza.

And later in the show, Molly White joins us again to discuss the rise of techno-whalegarchy. I can't technolagarchy. techno oligarchy. That's better. Technologarchy. It's a great term. I just can't say it. Under Trump 2.0. Also on the program, Trump threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act after protests in Minneapolis swell following another ice shooting. This time, a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg.

Governor Tim Walls urges Minnesotans to document ice abuses for future prosecution. Maine officials warn residents that ice raids against the Somali community are coming soon in the state. Trump indefinitely suspends immigrant visas from 75 countries based on whether or not they're likely to need public assistance. You know, like the welfare queen ones, right? That's subtle. U.S. personnel are evacuated from their post-neuro Iran signaling a potential bombing campaign. The death toll from protests in Iran continues to rise, ranging from 2,000 to 3,500 killed. A Quinnipiac poll finds that 70% of Americans oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran.

Trump calls Venezuelan interim president Dessi Rodriguez a terrific person. Somebody check. on Maria Karina Machado. She is wiping her tears with that Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, we're going to meet, but we're going to keep it to basics. Basics meaning give me the award

and leave. Yeah, basics is, yeah, you're welcome. I've already done for you. The U.S. will contract private military personnel, aka mercenaries, in Venezuela, to protect the oil

instead of U.S. troops, so that's a payday for Trump's buddies. Apparently, one Eric Prince is circling. A three judge appeals court panel sides against Mahmoud Khalil, opening the door to his re-arrest. The two judges responsible Republican appointees, joccur. Germany, Sweden, Canada, other NATO countries, send troops to Greenland do the Trump's threats

and lastly David Pluff, the Harris campaign genius behind their disastrous pivot to the center writes in the New York Times that Democratic candidates should say Schumer and Jeffries should step down

all this and more on today's majority report didn't name Schumer and Jeffreys in the piece but it's over. It's over. I mean, I don't think for Jeffries it is, unfortunately. Lots of members of the House still sicken behind him.

But if David Plough is writing in the New York Times, Democrats abandon ship on this leadership, at least rhetorically, oh, buddy, nobody. I mean, why do they think that they can just proceed or, like, be, lead through failure after failure and continue leading the party. Like Primaloghaya Paul, when she came on our show, said, like, you know, I feel some sense of obligation to respond to a loss with some sense of accountability at the top. And she's like a leader of a small caucus.

The party leaders need to step down. In other countries, that's just something that happens. Parliamentary countries, if you lose an election, you have leadership changes, almost certainly often. Look at how many people have led the Tories in the past like five years. Well, I mean, and even look at the Republicans and their leadership turnover and that has not affected them electorally at all. It's good to do, actually. Yes. To get a new face in there that people don't hate.

Right. Because guess what? The political system isn't delivering for people. So longevity is a bad thing if you're leading the parties. And we're seeing a record number of people identifying as independent, fleeing both the Democratic and Republican parties. But let's turn to Minnesota. Overnight, intense protests raged in Minneapolis. There was another ice shooting.

Thankfully, it appears like he is now in stable condition, but this was a Venezuelan immigrant. There was an interaction that the traffic stop with an ice agent who shot him. The ice agent is, and the Department of Homeland Security is claiming that he was swinging a shovel. We'll see what the evidence shows. just yeah it's it's almost like you know they're going to say a lot of things because they're defending murders and uh with all of uh this kind of community uprising and people in minneapolis and minnesota standing to protect their neighbors um the trump administration is frothing at the mouth

to try to get find a reason to invoke the insurrection act fascists need to exaggerate the scale of protests and the the the the the the the the drum up the fear in order to justify their repression Trump's been doing this for years and throughout this entire second term in particular talking about how blue cities are war zones um playing up the threat so that he can crack down on these areas and um they're just begging begging begging for a pretext to be able to do this um A reminder that the Insurrection Act was last used, I think, in the early 90s by George H.W. Bush in response to the riots after the police killing or beating of Rodney King. And but it had also previously been used during the, the civil rights movement or during that era when it was Eisenhower and JFK trying to, using the Insurrection Act to enforce what the courts ordering desegregation of parts of the South,

schools in the South. So normally the U.S. military is not supposed to be used on American citizens. That's the Posse Comitatis Act. But invoking the Insurrection Act suspends that rule. And the Trump administration has been circling around this big red button to use. the military against U.S. civilians four years at this point. And once again, he truthed it out last night.

Here we go. If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don't obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ICE were only trying to do their job, I will institute the Insurrection Act, which many presidents have done before me

and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great state, thank you for your attention to this matter. Why does he keep ending his truth with thank you for your attention to this matter? Like he's sending out an email blast at some sort of startup. But anyway, they're trying to create this pretext. They're trying to make it so that the Trump administration can use Minneapolis as a testing ground for further authoritarian actions.

Because as are more progressive members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan-Han, Omar have been saying publicly, ICE is being used as an anti-civillion force by the Trump administration. Immigrants are on the front lines, but it's not just immigrants. Of course. Who just got shot in the face? Renee Good. Renee Good.

Shot in the face, murdered by ICE. And here's another example of ICE's abuses. This is a legal observer speaking about her experience. A less than a week after the killing of Renee Good, they were, she, this legal observer and another individual were observing ICE, which is a protected First Amendment action. And she held a press conference speaking about, and her name is Patty O'Keefe. What happened when she was arrested and detained by ICE? My name is Patty O'Keefe on Sunday, this past Sunday, January 11th. Myself and my good friend, Brandon Siguenza, were violently arrested and detained by ice.

During that encounter, we had an ice agent spray pepper spray into our windshield vent. They then broke our windows, dragged us out of our vehicles, handcuffed us, and put us in separate cars on the way over to the Whipple detention center. I was taunted, mocked. Also, on that same ride, one of the agents said that you guys got to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian bitch is dead. Speaking about Renee Good, I think it's important, though, that people know that this is what agents are saying. When we got to the detention center, we saw, I'm, I just want to emphasize that point. I know that it's been something I've been pushing on the show here, but it's quite immensely clear that Jonathan Ross, the agent who murdered Renee Good, was triggered

and enraged by both the women that were speaking to him being outspoken, but the fact that they were clearly in a same-sex relationship. And when you look at the characteristics of fascist movements, It's this promise of a national renewal, really, and pride in the face of humiliations that are brought by the hand of a marginalized group, usually minority groups, immigrants in this country, but also it branches off in a bunch of different directions. And fascism always, always has a misogynistic hyper-masky. undertone led by a strong man figurehead that channels that kind of energy. And you crack down on leftists, minority groups, but also women and their rights. And you see that in, this administration looks at Victor Orban's model for governance as something that they seek to emulate. And his right-wing vision very much includes a domesticated female barefoot in the kitchen,

and that is what they're talking about here. So if there was a good faith reading of this murder, it would be investigated as a hate crime, as well as manslaughter slash second-degree murder, basically. Keep going. Got to the detention center. We saw probably about 100 people in holding cells. We heard screaming, crying, just visceral agony from many of the people who are there. You know, someone saying, let me go, let me go, let me go, please, let me go, begging.

We heard a child crying. My friend Brandon was brought into another room for questioning where he was offered money or legal protection for any undocumented family members that he might have in exchange for names of other undocumented people or names of protest organizers, a bribe, essentially. And another person in his cell, a Hispanic man was offered that same deal. They both said no. I had a short conversation with a Border Patrol agent who, you know, was wondering why we were here, why we were so passionate about this.

And at the end of it, he goes, you know, I think, you kind of just think that all you guys are, we thought all you guys are crazy, right? Um, and so you have, you have people that are desensitized or okay with dehumanization. And also think that people that are out here trying to defend their neighbors are crazy. And that's a really dangerous combination. And I think that is coming across in the way that we see that ICE officers are conducting themselves with people across the city. So I'm just one example of many. I luckily got to come home from that detention center. And most of the people there did not. This is craziness, and it

needs to come to an end. Go ahead, Matt. I don't know if it was Will or Felix from Chapo Chappos, but they called ICE agents a revolt of the unemployable against the unemployed. And that's real issue there. When you hear her say that thing, we thought you were all crazy. These are scared men whose fathers failed. And the only thing that they understand how to give to the world is violence. That's a broken

man. Every one of those guys. And they're organized now by the government. There have been some data leaks that I've seen media organizations being slow to verify. I think that there's a chill here. But unverified

information here, but data leaks potentially showing that there are proud boys in these ranks, which is stuff that, of course, of course we already knew, but I'm waiting for confirmation to fully confirm that, of course. It's enough to me for Jonathan Ross to be arguing with his family about whether the proud boys were good or not. And white supremacy more broadly on Facebook. That was the nature also of that debate. Same thing.

The American Immigration Council put out a... report just to speak to what she's saying about the detentions. And I can't even imagine, I can't even imagine what the conditions are like in there. But we know that there are reports of sexual abuse. We know that last year was the deadliest year for people in ICE detention, over 50 people that we know of that have died in ICE detention. And this same report just has some of these staggering statistics here that, um, that there, the changes, in federal law here and the arrest practices

has resulted in a, per the American Immigration Council, a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention on any given day. Also, when you look at the amount of money that's being

shuttled over for ICE detention, you see that ICE has an average annual budget of around $15 billion of the next four years over the next four years for detention alone. And when you look at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, their budget for the entire federal prison system is $9 billion.

Ice detention is dwarfing the entire federal prison system from a budgetary standpoint. And we're still being like, should we call these concentration camps? That was co-signed by the Democrats last year, Chuck Schumer. thanks for passing that into law. And yeah, the logic about concentration camps is if you don't stop them soon enough, they'll become death camps. And every one of these ICE agents will absolutely staff death camps too. And if they decide we're not going after immigrants, but we're going after gay people now, they're all up for that too. We're on the same planet that had the Nazis.

We're in the same country that had Jim Crow for decades and decades and had a media that called itself free that both sides did. And the same country that committed genocide against the Native Americans. The Whipple Detention Center is on the same place of the concentration camp of the Dakota that I put on screen from 1862. Is that the Fort Snelling one of them? That was, okay, so that's relevant here because just this other horrifying facet to this story is that as ICE is terror, Minneapolis, there is, there's now, it's been confirmed by the Oglala Sioux tribe that at least three tribal members have been arrested in Minneapolis.

Apparently ICE rounded up some homeless men living under a bridge in Minneapolis, and they took three to four members of the Oglala Sioux tribe. There's around 50,000 indigenous Americans that live in Minneapolis. And to Matt's point, they're reportedly being detained at this ICE. facility set up in Fort Snelling, South Dakota, which was the site of the concentration camp for indigenous people in the 1860s, housing them there. The image that Matt has shown on screen a few times. Here it is. All right, well, we'll show it in a second, but you can see how, um, there it is, this larger image. I mean, this is the model of concentration camps around

the globe. If you've flown into Minneapolis airport and when you go over the water, that's the same. That's the Mississippi River right there. In the memoriam about this story sent to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Knotem. The president, Frank Starr, comes out, release a statement about basically the tribe members being snashed up by ice. in this memorandum, Star Comes out, said that when tribal nation reached out to the agency, DHS, it was provided with only the first names of the men. Homeland Security refused to release more information unless the tribe, quote,

entered into an immigration agreement with ICE. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. comes out said the tribe has no plans to enter an agreement with ice. They're holding or attempting to hold multiple members of the Oglala Sioux tribe hostage unless the tribe agrees to participate in ice activities. To accept that those men are or whoever's are illegal aliens despite being indigenous Americans. And, but they're indigenous. But that doesn't matter because this is not about immigration. This is not about immigration. This is a white supremacist

ethnic cleansing project. Let me repeat that. This is an ethnic cleansing project based on white supremacy. And this is abundantly clear in an experience from another indigenous American. This is a Red Lake descendant. He's 20 years old named Jose Roberto Ramirez. His mother is a Red Lake Tribes.

tribal member. And this is a short video here speaking about their experience in Native Americans being harassed and detained by ICE in and around Minneapolis. I just said we are Native, we're Native American, we are U.S. citizens, and it just didn't matter. We're a citizen. Betha, get your ID. Okay. Okay. We're out there. Stop, oh!

Okay, Betho! Can you explain what happened last week? Yeah, this was literally just the day, the day before, when I was, um, René Goody got shot. I was like, I was just freaked out. Like, I just didn't want to, they don't want to stop nowhere where nobody was seen, you know? It felt like I was getting kidnapped when, like,

they rushed me, literally rushed me out of my aunt's car and handcuffed me, threw me in their car and try to keep me down, put my hoodie up. And they don't even care if you got your identification. They'll take you. Like, they're just evil people. I didn't think I had nothing to worry about because I was U.S. citizen.

You know, half Mexican, half natives, you know. That ain't matter, though, too. How does it feel to be stopped by federal immigration agents as a Native American? We thought we were safe. You are from here. We are Native. We are the original. It's, don't be scared.

They can't do anything. Can't touch us. We are untouchable. Seeing what had happened to us and to my nephew, it's we are a nobody to these agents. About a month prior, I was driving over here. and I was coming up to a stop and I didn't know it was ice agents and they were and they started yelling and I rolled my window a little

and I said what? And he said, coming for you and I said, I'm Native American and he says, yeah, you're next. Any immigrant, I can imagine the fear that they are living currently. I just wanted to get those two quotes to be the pillars of our, like, segment on this this morning, you know, today is the gratuitous comment by the ICE agent

about Renee Good being a lesbian and then the very telling comment recounted by that woman of the ICE agent saying, you're next to Native Americans. Because I think that colors things pretty clearly. I mean, it is frankly and straightforwardly and objectively a white supremacist, white nationalist movement. And that includes all the Latino guys that are doing it too. They're Nazis as well. Look at your history of South America. Like some people seem to confused by that. Like Stephen Crowder, I think got sued over something like that. Yeah, like Latino guys that join ICE, they're Nazis too. In a moment, we'll be speaking to Ahmed Khan. A quick break and we will be right back with you. We are back and we are joined now by Ahmed Khan, human rights advocate, political

activist who through the Ahmed Khan Foundation has purchased and delivered emergency child nutrition throughout the genocide in Gaza. Ahmed, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thanks so much, Emma. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Of course. So a week or two ago, a few weeks ago, the Israeli government announced that they are banning dozens of international NGOs aid groups from operating in Gaza and the West Bank. It basically gives Israel real broad authority to ban whatever organizations they say are affiliated with terrorists or sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, what have you. Just your reaction to that because we're also continuing to see horror stories on the ground of children freezing to death, for example,

and there's still being a complete lack of aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip despite this so-called ceasefire. Yeah, I mean, the purpose. is, I obviously you've probably seen the names. I mean, it's basically the, you know, the gold standard of international NGOs, care, save the children, MSF. There are a variety of reasons for the ban. One of the main ones is they have asked all the NGOs to provide all details for all staff, which obviously is a dangerous thing given the number of humanitarian aid workers that have been killed over the last two and a half years. There are other reasons, of course, course, also, you know, the aid organizations don't advocate as they usually do. And the reason

for that is they're worried about being banned. So if one-eight organization makes a negative statement about something that is based in fact, and this is 100% true, they risk getting on the Israeli authorities' bad side and then losing the ability to operate. I mean, there's two, there's two facets to this. There's the ability to bring stuff into Israel. and then into Gaza, you know, sort of through Israel. And then the ability to operate within Gaza itself. So you can lose the ability to bring stuff in. Then you lose the ability to operate.

And then you really have, you know, it's the people are the one that suffer. Can you explain on what that process is like? Because the underlying framework here, which I just, it's amazing to me that people don't think. about this more is just like, how can Israel ban aid groups and aid from getting into Gaza and the West Bank? So perhaps people can go to that second place in their thought process and go, because Israel controls the West Bank in Gaza, right? I mean, this is just important, I think, for people to ponder. But, you know, the fact that you have to go through Israel is really important here. What is that process like? How do you even get into Gaza and

what is, I guess, the framework for negotiating with the Israeli authorities to get in? You know, so there are a variety of procedures. This, you know, first and foremost, this is wholly unprecedented in the history of humanitarian assistance. For example, in Sudan and the war in the 90s, the Sudanese government never banned NGOs, you know, even though we're operating with the PLA that we're fighting against Sudan. So, you know, this is something that no one's ever seen. And, you know, I've delivered, let's say, pediatric ventilators to the frontline hospitals in Ukraine 10 miles from the Russian border. No problem. You know, hospitals have been blown up. Now, so in Israel, it's completely different. They control all borders. They control all access.

So even if you were to purchase something in Egypt, for example, it would need to go through Israeli authority. Now, the process for getting items approved is it goes through a system called UN 2720, and that's a United Nations system. You submit your packing list, your invoice, the items, where the items are from, what the items are supposed to do, and where they are going. And where they're going is relevant with regard to the NGOs. So, for example, today, if I want to send something to MSF, it's probably not going to happen. It's not going to be approved because they were somewhere into the 60-day process for NGOs complying or being banned, right? So, you know, it's a multi-prong process.

It's a long process. You know, if you have four or five hours, I could run you through the whole process. And, you know, I tell people sometimes that if I told people all my stories, they actually would never believe me. Well, how about one? How about one that stands out to you? I mean, just to... They're all insane.

They're all insane. You know, sort of, I've told this story about medicines, you know, pediatric medicines that are for children that have been suffering for two years. And you apply, you submit the applications. This is before anything enters the country. So first you have to buy the items because the vendor generally can't prepare a pack unless without you buying it. So you've bought it, but you don't have any guarantee that it's actually

going to be approved. So you may have bought it and then you're just sitting on it. And that's a process. That's very, you know, for me it's okay because it's, you know, my money. So I don't mind that process. Of course, it's, it's horrible, but nonprofits, international nonprofits can't explain that to their donors or their board that we've purchased all these medicines and now we're sitting on, they're sitting in warehouses. It's, you know, it belies any sort of same procedure. So ultimately what we're saying is there really is no. system, like it doesn't exist. You purchase it.

If you get approval, you then arrange shipping, you enter. If you're flying, it's to Ben-Gurian in Tel Aviv. If you're shipping by ship, it's Ashdod Port in Israel. Then again, customs will come through and look through the stuff. You'll go through a scanner again.

And that could be seven days, ten days. Then you arrange transport, transport to the border, in through Karim Shalom. then you actually have to offload the truck, then you have to put it through a tunnel that gets onto the Palestinian side, then you have to unload the truck, and then you wait for a green light to move.

And obviously during the ceasefire or the so-called ceasefire, it's gotten a bit easier than when they were actually bombing the trucks, but it's still a misery. And you mentioned Egypt there. the process for getting aid through the Rafa crossing, the southern border of the Gaza Strip that borders Egypt, is that a separate process or still we're looking at Israel? Everything runs through Israel. So there's no Rafa Egypt into Gaza. That doesn't exist.

They blew that up. And, you know, there's been talk about it reopening for people on a one-way trip exiting, you know, which is ultimately since October 8th. game of this process has been the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And when I would tell people this October 15th or October 16th, they looked at me like I was from the moon. And I think maybe now they're coming around to that realization. I don't know how it's taken so long as these really basically say this on a daily basis. You know, I don't know why we wouldn't just listen to them.

Yes. It was quite clear on October 8th, to your point. And now it's in many ways too late for for so many people. Just the scale, then, if you could talk a little bit about what you saw there and what maybe isn't reported in Western news about what it even is like to see this, the toll of this, the totality of this destruction still, I believe, gets underplayed quite a bit here in the United States. Well, of course, since day one, they banned international journalists. right? Like there's not one international journalist that's been in Togazzo on their own, talking to people, talking to children, talking to the elderly, tell me about your life for the two years. They did a wonderful job of dehumanizing Palestinians. They also killed Palestinian journalists.

So they've either dehumanized the Palestinians, so no one ever believes them, even though there are thousands of hours of video of this very thing. So every aspect of it is underplate. You can't get your head around. It's actually beyond human comprehension. There are 2.2 million people that suffered like no people on earth have ever suffered. And certainly, I've seen suffering all over the world, but there is no place that has F-15s, F-16s, F-35s, Apache attack helicopters, unlimited drones, tanks, artillery, snipers, firing 24-7 in all directions. and every single person has lost an immediate family member, every single person has lost people they know for years.

And so you are living in constant fear. And that fear hasn't gone away with the ceasefire because, you know, from time to time, there will be an airstrike, and almost every day people die, innocent people, and many of them are children. So to capture that trauma, to live through that, it's really impossible to get your head around.

And I've only spent a few nights in Gaza during the genocide, but I can tell you each night, I remember every aspect of each night, because when they drop 500-pound bombs, it's called the GBU 39 or the GBU 54, the American bombs, everything shakes, including your balls. And you know another one's coming, and you're just, and you're hearing screaming in the distance, and you can sort of, I've been around this stuff a lot, and so I know the distances, and you just can't get your head around that this is what they're putting. people through. And it's overnight, generally.

They dropped the big bombs overnight. So maybe you just fell asleep. And maybe you're in that sort of like starting to dream and all of a sudden they start dropping. You know, the morning they, when they come to you, they said, did you enjoy the music last night? That's our night.

And you can't get your head around people living through that for two years with nowhere to go. No safe place. And not to mention, the weather, the rain. You're not in your home, because all your homes are destroyed. You're in a tent with how many people in a tent and the tent stinks and, you know,

no water sanitation, nothing. So every aspect of it is if you can figure out what's the worst thing a human being can go through, then that's it. You have a background in democratic politics. And I'm wondering if you could expand on that a little bit because obviously, your work and what the Biden administration engaged in in

midwifing, this genocide, being as complicit as the Trump administration. If not more. If not more. Must have been quite like a I guess an enlightening moment for you as somebody who has done

this kind of humanitarian work. Speak a bit a little bit about your process of kind of speaking out publicly against the Biden administration and distancing yourself from that, despite, you know, your past donations to the campaign? Yeah, it's obviously they were horrible. And it was very, very clear. I actually was invited to a donor meeting, I'd suppose October 16th or 17th that occurred,

you know, in the old executive office building and the bowling alley with donors. And there were senior White House officials there. And I spoke once because I'd actually just returned from Rafa. And I just said what I saw. And I said, I hope everyone will remember that there are 1.2 million children there. They didn't vote for Hamas in 2005 because they weren't alive. And they, in the process, if this, if what the Israelis are trying to do is get Hamas, what I've seen in the six days so far is not it.

and I hope someone will get some sense or bring some sense into this. And within another week or two, well, it was clear to me that day it wasn't going to happen. And, you know, so another week or two. And then I was done with them. I was just like, look, these guys are genocidal maniacs. I want to know part of it. I mean, I've never been a fan of Democratic American foreign policy. I mean, these people are all horrible failures, right?

Like the Obama administration was horrible. And all these people just, like, they don't get a new job. they don't go anywhere else. They just work for democratic foreign policy. They never bring in any new people, and they're always terrible, and they sort of fail up, and you can't figure out how these people keep getting promoted. And so, you know, that's, that was, foreign policy was never the reason that I was ever supportive of, like, any Democrats, because they're just not good at it, right?

Like, they just literally have no idea what they're doing. And did you get any reaction from certain members of the Biden team that struck you? No, it was all, you know, like talking points. You know, we care. We're doing everything we can. We're working hard to bring peace. We want peace. And it's all nonsense.

You know, they're just blowing smoke. And you knew it. I mean, I knew it. I've been around. I mean, it was obvious. I mean, I knew they weren't up to the task to begin with. But as an eternal optimist, there's always hope. But I was done within a couple weeks.

And no, it was always nonsense. And a lot of the other donors were like, you know, we still like him. I was like, I said very clearly all the fellow donors. I know, I mean, they all know that I told him this. Like, he's not going to win. My opinion is he's not going to win because of this. People, maybe they won't vote for Trump, but they're not going to vote.

And that was just my opinion. That's literally November, December of 23. And they're like, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, okay, we'll see. We unfortunately have seen. You know, the, the recent news, too, I'm wondering if you could give your perspective on this, like, the yellow line right now where Israel has basically taken control of more than 50% of the Gaza,

strip. In terms of like that, the ethnic cleansing campaign there, they're concentrating the Palestinians closer and closer to the sea in smaller and smaller parts of the land. People are, again, children are freezing to death in tents

due to the intensity of the rains in the winter. And Israel, as you mentioned, keeps bombing the tents despite the ceasefire. They violated the ceasefire. They violated the ceasefire over a thousand times since it was so implemented. They're doing the same thing, of course, in Lebanon. But just what that's like to have all of these people continue to be concentrated in smaller, smaller parcels, as somebody who's been to Gaza a few times, what does that look like?

It's a heart. Gaza is the size of Las Vegas or Philadelphia, has a very, you know, 2.2 million people. It's a serious population density. Now, if you take 50, 60%, 70% of that land out of the picture, it's just people on top of each other. People have been bought for years. Maybe, you know, there's a lot, hundreds of thousands are unaccounted for as well. So there's also that population decrease. Yeah, sadly, there are less people, you know, they're not 2.2 or 2.3 million people there anymore. That's for sure. But, you know, the reality is you see rubble all day. A striking thing to me was Ukraine is, the front line of Ukraine is 800 miles long.

It's a country that's bigger than Texas. But there's more rubble in Gaza than there is in Ukraine. Basically, you have medium-sized apartment buildings, and they're all flat. And the aspects of this are beyond belief. The toxins in the groundwater, the toxins in the air from destroyed buildings, sort of the stuff that comes out of the cement when they're blown up, the toxins from the munitions. Nobody even knows the bombs, some of these bombs that they're dropping and what happens.

There's unexploded ordinances. So you are people that are maybe 15 in a tent, maybe a bunch of kids like orphanages operate in tents. What is that? It's just absolute misery getting worse and worse. And it's literally just, it's a plan. They're very good at it. They know what they're doing, just make life as miserable or miserable as miserable as possible.

And then one day they opened the door and, you know, only the, maybe the very elderly don't want to leave. And that's fine with them because they're not going to really bother them. And they clear the place out. And that's been the plan from day one. And they've, they've had to modify. They've had to work around sometimes, like, once in a, every three or four months, the Biden administration would, like, wake up and say, we're facilitating a genocide. Maybe we shouldn't. And, you know, it was my belief that President Trump himself probably put an end to the nonstop air strikes because he didn't like the images of little kids being blown apart. And there was no stopping that.

There's no way you could stop the video of that. It was always going to come out no matter what by whatever means. So, you know, it basically was a fast genocide and now it's a slow genocide, right? So they're killing people slowly. In a real world, if you had a ceasefire, you would surge medical, you would surge building materials to get the hospitals back up and running. You would surge the medicines that are needed. There are people with cancer.

There are no cancer drugs. There are kids who need prosthetics. There are no prosthetics. On and on and on. All those things are the things that you would do day one of a ceasefire. Hasn't happen. Sure, they probably can point a non-executive. numbers that are higher than, you know, during the active genocide before the ceasefire.

But it's really a drop in the bucket. And I know what I send and I feel what I send is a drop in the bucket because I know I speak with all the hospitals, et cetera, and I know what they have and they don't have. And it's, you go to your local hospital in whatever town you live in and you walk through the hospital and you see all sorts of equipment, right? if you go to a hospital in Gaza, you literally find nothing. You find babies there and they can barely breathe because they were born into this situation. And, you know, who knows what their mother was exposed to.

And there's no pediatric ventilator. There's no pediatric monitor. There are none of the things that they had before that they need now and they need more than ever, right? And so, you know, another people involved are really care about people, I guess, when it comes down to it. like do they really care about the people? It's all like optics and maybe, you know, sort of press releases and statements and we're working. And it's really beyond belief.

Lastly, I know that you were an executive producer on the film, the voice of Hin Rajab, and you were involved in helping Hinn's mother and family evacuate from Gaza. Can you just speak a little bit about that film, how people can support it, how people can support your work. And then if you have any message, perhaps, that Hinn's family would like to relay, given, you know, how her, the murder of her has kind of been a rallying cry for Palestinian support throughout the world.

Yeah, Hins' mom, Osam is great. She's so strong. And I talk to her almost every day. Her message essentially is my daughter wasn't the only one. For me, it's very painful. We happen to have the recordings of my daughter. So many other children, the recordings aren't there.

Nobody came for Hind. What kind of world is this? It's not too late to come and be present and be there for the remaining 1 million, 1.1 million, 1.2 million children. that's what she tries and stress and I tell her to take it easy but she takes it very, very seriously that she feels that she's been given a platform.

The film itself, I thought it was important to be involved with because this is the sort of thing I do. I kind of go and try to rescue children, right? Like from dangerous places and I wasn't there then. and the people who are heroes who tried to be there were killed. So then in terms of the evacuation, a friend of mine sent me something from social media. Brad Pitt is one of the executive producers and says,

Why doesn't Brad Pitt fly his plane to Gaza and evacuate the family? And someone said to me, well, you know, you're sort of like the real life guy, so you should go evacuate them. And that was a long, very long process. These really didn't make it easy at all. And actually, we had a assist from the White House of all places. You know, so it keeps my hope alive that individuals do care about individuals. And that really, they actually helped bring it to the finish line in terms of the evacuation when we got the family out.

There were nine members of the family, including her mother. And I would just say to people, just keep engaged and keep fighting. And, you know, our representation sucks, right? Like there's almost nobody that speaks to what we need and what has to happen. And I think the only way to do that is increase our engagement with our elected representatives. And I think most of them need to go. And we need to find people willing to take up the mantle to speak to what's important. Why can't we just care about, you know, children being safe?

How is that political? like and you know what and the lies you know we we need to be we need to find people who are willing to stand up to the lies i remember somebody texted me that uh they're using children as human shields i said i don't know what you're i really don't know who sent you those talking points but i'm there there's no such thing there's no mother who's handing over her kids to stand in front of uh you know some humas rocket or something that doesn't exist there's no such thing. So you believe in this dehumanization that you think some mother would do that. So you go on and on. But I think we just have to be out there and more effective.

You know, for me, I know what I'm doing and I get the stuff done. I think people can support any of the big NGOs. They're all doing as well as they possibly can do. But it's not about the NGOs. It's really about getting the people of Gaza what they need. So whatever it takes. takes. That's really the purpose of everything all of us do. And I'm sure any of the NGOs would happily be banned if there was someone else or some other organization to deliver to the people what they need. I mean, there's so many heroes in Gaza, everybody, the truck drivers, every single truck driver, every time they get behind the wheel, they're taking their life in their own hands. But they have a mission to deliver from point A to point B and all the people that unload the trucks

and then get the thing in distributions, the doctors, nurses. It's quite amazing. It blows me away. I don't know in America how we would respond to something like this, but the people in Gaza sure are heroes. Well, Ahmed Khan, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

And we will put a link to the relevant links that you sent over to us in our episode and YouTube descriptions. Appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Emma. you soon. Bye. Quick break. And when we come back, we will be joined by Molly White of the excellent newsletter citation needed to talk about the rise of technologarchy. Getting it, getting close, figuring

it out, figuring out how to say it. Be right back. We are back and we are joined once again by a friend of the show, Molly White, software engineer, technology researcher, cryptocurrency critic, whose awesome newsletter is called citation needed. You should check. it out. Molly, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me back. Of course. It's great to see you. And I really, really enjoyed your recent piece kind of like almost like a looking back at the rise of cryptocurrency and the economy that came with it over the past four or five years. It's called the Year of Technologarchy. I just figured. I did it. I nailed it this time. which is, I mean, a great way to refer to it as.

But you go start, you kind of track from 2021 to 2025. You say the year of 2021 is the year of hype with all the NFTs and the bored apes and stuff like that. Then the collapse. You got Sam Bankman-Fried. The FTX falling apart. You got the cleanup. That's 2023. And then grievance, 2024, when they poured all this money into super PACs.

and we're trying to legitimize cryptocurrency. And then last year, technologarchy, Trump kind of cementing that. So I guess just explain your kind of thesis about this overall and how things have tracked from 2021 to the year of technologarchy 2025. Yeah. I mean, you know, around the new year, I was sort of reflecting on the time that I've been writing about cryptocurrency, which has been since 2021. one. And the fact that every year seems to be totally different, you know, at first it was a lot of writing about Web 3 and these really overblown promises and the, you know, issues with the technology and the poor coverage of it. And then the next year it was all following bankruptcy cases and,

you know, watching as these companies exploded, you know, then I was, again, you know, steeped in legal documents watching the bankruptcies play out over the next year. And I was watching criminal cases against Sam Bankman-Fried. I was watching regulatory cases against a ton of different crypto companies. And, you know, that was, I think, the year where people were like, crypto is dead. You know, we've stopped seeing all these ads. We've stopped, you know, seeing people, you know, celebrities with NFT profile pictures. There's not many people talking about crypto anymore. It's become kind of cringe, especially the NFTs. And, you know, I think that was a mistake to view crypto is dead, because what happened is they sort of retrenched during that time period,

even as crypto prices were down. And they formed this political machine, raising, you know, almost $200 million in 2024 for these crypto-focused super PACs that, you know, their only goal was to support candidates who would sign on to the crypto agenda in terms of, you know, which was really focused on deregulation, changing how crypto is regulated, which regulators are in charge, and then, you know, installing politicians who are willing to make it their focus to promote crypto and really bolster the industry. And I think 2025 was the result of that. We saw this enormous amount of pressure and influence on Congress, on the presidents, on regulators, thanks to all of this political spending and the political clout that these companies had established.

We had people like David Sachs installed at the White House, you know, these people who were very much part of this industry, investing in this industry, still invested in this industry in many cases, now writing the rules for this industry. And so, you know, I think that we've seen the U.S. government essentially become beholden to these incredibly wealthy tech oligarchs. And I think a lot of what we are watching happen now and what we saw happening last year is really directly attributable to that influence and the project that these people are really trying to advance. Yeah, the the 2024 election being dominated by crypto is that's not an exaggeration to say that. I mean, you write about how Kamala Harris added that like late last minute crypto nod to her

in her platform about what was it about creating more black wealth or something like that? Yeah, it was about supporting black men who invest in crypto, I guess. It was really bizarre. Supporting humanity, everybody would mean the elimination of this industry. But yes, it was just, I mean, I can't, we can't get back into that. But probably even more importantly than that very stupid thing was how the money was poured into all of these races. Like, you know, you saw it successfully take out Sherrod Brown in Ohio, that crypto money. And then you also saw Democrats like John Ossoff sign on to pro-crypt. legislation as a way to stave off the war chest of the cryptocurrency super PACs.

Expand a little bit about on that and how the crypto industry was able to so thoroughly corrupt our elections last cycle successfully. Yeah. I mean, I think it was sort of a double-edged approach where, first of all, they obviously had a ton of money. There was, you know, $200 million that they were sitting on, just, you know, sort of holding over people's heads saying, you know, you better get on board because we've got all of this money. We will use it to either primary you or support your opponent in the general election if you

don't get on board with our agenda. There was also this huge PR campaign that was really targeted not only at the public, but at members of Congress and their campaigns to really emphasize the power of the crypto industry in terms of, uh, you know, essentially being kingmakers in politics, but also to advance this idea that there was this huge block of American people who were essentially single issue crypto voters. And that if you were willing to embrace crypto and to sort of add a policy plank about how you were going to, you know, support innovation and, you know, there were all these ways that they were framing it, then there would be all of these people who might not otherwise vote for you who would suddenly pour in to

support you, even if maybe they were otherwise, you know, not interested in your politics or if they disagreed with you on other points or maybe even if they were a member of a different party, there was this idea that there were just so many people who cared so much about crypto that they would, you know, support any candidate who got on board. This wasn't really borne out by the data, but it was something that they were very heavily pushing. We saw, you know, all of these quotes from, for example, Coinbase claiming that millions and millions of Americans hold crypto and therefore care deeply about it from a political standpoint. They were running their own polls where even the data that didn't support their theory was

sort of massaged into these presentations that were then given to campaigns very directly saying, look at all these voters who care so much about crypto. And I think it was fairly successful in, you know, making candidates very concerned that if they were outspoken against crypto or even just didn't take a pro-crypto stance, they could be at risk in terms of re-election or election for the first time if they were a new candidate. And so we saw a lot of candidates on both sides of the aisle sign on to this crypto agenda, you know, essentially by, you know, they often tried to present it in ways that were a little bit more ambiguous about, you know, embracing technological innovation and clarifying the regulations

and things like that. But, you know, it was pretty clear what was going on, which was that these were people who were saying, okay, you know, I'm going to get on board. And, you know, they were suddenly enjoying millions of dollars in campaign support. And so I think, you know, that was a really significant factor in the elections last time around. Yeah.

And we've talked about this at length. But in part how lawmakers get hooked on money like this. And Israel money is a great, like, kind of parallel here, which is just like, especially if you're a member of the House, you're up for election every two years. Right. And the amount of calls that you have to do to fundraise from small dollar donors or even like moderately wealthy people in your district or something like that going directly to people as opposed to these big money interests, it's just if you can get that infusion of cash, it saves you a lot of time. And that's how easy it is. And you just sell yourself kind of piece by piece.

But I guess let's now turn to the year of technologarchy 2025. You connect the imperial ambitions of Donald Trump in a place like, well, I would say, when even talking about his policy towards Ukraine and being more conciliatory towards Vladimir Putin. But I'd also argue his fixation on Greenland is a part of this as well. this this crypto almost imperialism that has become embedded in the administration, this fixation on rare earth, rare earth minerals and things like that. How much of that do you see as informing Trump's foreign policy agenda? I think it's a huge factor. I mean, we have seen how much his foreign policy approach has been influenced by his ambitions. to essentially enrich his allies, whether that is oil companies in Venezuela, for example,

whether it is tech companies that need access to rare earth minerals, you know, whether it is crypto, which needs access to massive amounts of electricity. You know, in that piece, I point to a claim by Putin that, you know, Trump was essentially interested in taking over a nuclear power plant that is, you know, in Ukraine, but is controlled by Russia. And, you know, the idea is that Russia and the U.S. would jointly manage this Ukrainian power plant and the U.S. would set up crypto mining nearby. Now, of course, this is coming for Putin, so grain of salt. But, you know, that is very aligned with Trump's general goal, which seems to be to seize land, assets, territory, whatever it may be,

and then funnel them either to himself. He obviously has massive crypto interests of his own, his own, his family is involved in crypto mining, or to his very wealthy oligarch allies in, you know, oil, crypto, tech, AI, whatever sector it may be. And, you know, I think this is part of what the tech industry paid for in 2020. was to receive these benefits, you know, these sort of the imperial conquest or whether it was regulatory relief where, you know, after Trump was elected, we saw many, many, many cases

against crypto companies suddenly dropped by regulators. We saw pardons of cryptocurrency executives. I think this is all very much linked. And how linked is it to AI? When I, it seems like almost the crypto currency corruption infrastructure has become the AI corruption infrastructure too. They're basically the same players, same infrastructure. Right. I mean, a lot of the major players who funded the 2024 crypto political machine are, you know,

Andrieson Horowitz, for example, which has broad. interests across not only cryptocurrency, but AI. A lot of cryptocurrency companies have sort of expanded into AI to varying degrees. And now we're also seeing the AI sector look at what crypto did in 2024 with their very focused super PACs and directly follow that playbook. So, you know, 2024 we had Fair Shake. It was the name of this independent super PAC that was specifically supporting crypto interests, we have now going into 2006 a super PAC called Leading the Future, which it has allegedly $100 million committed to it from AI interests.

And it's the same tactic of essentially saying we're going to support candidates who are going to advocate to deregulate AI and otherwise benefit AI interests. And so I think in 26, we're going to be contending not only with the cryptocurrency super PACs, which are already as well funded as they were in 2024 and ready to deploy that money, but we're also going to be dealing with another $100 million coming from AI and probably far more as they continue to fundraise. And the parallels don't really end there in that both of these technologies

are very energy intensive. Right. And are accelerating the worst effect. of climate change. And that, I think, can't be, it needs to be emphasized more, really, because they are rapacious and not, and the, for cryptocurrency, we're talking just pure speculation. AI has value, but the value is incredibly overstated

and not matching the share of our economy, let alone what we are sacrificing from environmental standpoint to justify it. Right. And I think, you know, with AI, you're also facing the fact that we're watching an authoritarian regime take advantage of AI to advance their abuses of the American public. I mean, we see reporting after reporting after reporting about how ICE is using AI to try to target immigrant communities. We're seeing how it's being used for essentially mass surveillance. I mean, you know, these are the people who,

are benefiting from government contracts and looking to limit the degree to which there can be anyone watching over how this technology is deployed. So I think it's something we really need to care about. Yes, to your point, I had forgotten to headline this at the start of the show because there's just so much news. But NBC News had reporting from last night about how ICE was using artificial intelligence to rush to add 10,000 new officers to their force. And an AI error created some sort of issue with how the applications were processed and sent many new recruits into field offices without proper training. This is what ICE is telling to NBC News, because there was this reporting, I know I'm a little bit of field of what we'd want

to discuss, but from Slate, where a reporter was approved to be. be an ICE agent without filling out domestic violence paperwork, without filling out background checks. So like, yeah, it could be AI or they're using AI as an excuse. I'm not sure necessarily if it matters. But it is amazing how like, even when we go back and look at Doge, you wrote about that a little bit too, how we still don't even have a full accounting of how much information Elon Musk scraped personal private data from every American sensitive things like bank information, your social security number, with Doge going all and ransacking the federal government, like that was very much him trying to get ahead it appeared of his competitors in the AI race.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, that's a really important thing to highlight the extent to which AI is also being used. used as a way to sort of dodge accountability. You know, we see this very often if something goes wrong. It's, oh, it was an AI mistake. And then who do you blame? You know, you just arrest a computer. You fire a computer.

Like, that's not going to happen. And so it's a very convenient way to say, well, oops, you know, we made a mistake, but we just got, you know, have to move on. We'll fix the AI, whatever it might be. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, we're watching these AI companies, you know, funneling money, towards various Congress people, towards the president, in order to advance their interests. And then, you know, on the other hand, they are reaping the benefits, whether it's government

contracts, going to Musk, X-A-I. You know, we're seeing Palantir, obviously, very heavily connected. And, you know, they're very much using this influence that they have purchased in order to benefit themselves, their companies, you know, their bottom line. You also write a little bit about these prediction markets, so-called prediction markets. This is becoming really concerning. You have CNN entering into partnership with Kalshi to use gambling on politics and integrating that into their news coverage. On Polymarket, you can bet on the amount of people that die in.

Gaza or when the ceasefire was going to happen back in the day. I don't even know. I'm sure I could do a deep dive and find even more disgusting and brutal things that people are currently betting on. We also see insider trading. That's clearly happening. You saw somebody make hundreds of thousands of dollars after they placed a bet on when Trump was going to bomb Venezuela.

And that was obviously inside information, for example. Talk about these emerging markets who the players are behind particularly polymarket and Kalshi and what your view is of how they're getting integrated into other established businesses in this country. Yeah, I mean, this has been a huge part of what we've watched happening over 2025 is the emergence of these prediction markets and their sudden ubiquity where people are betting on elections and sports and, you know, anything you can. can imagine. You know, these used to be very tightly regulated. There were, you know, a limited number of them. They were essentially academic experiments to study whether or not, you know, market forces

essentially created more accurate predictions. But over the past couple of years, thanks to some very aggressive legal action and lobbying, certainly, they have dramatically expanded what they've been able to do. And now there's this huge retail push to bring in gamblers, essentially, to bet on these prediction markets. A lot of this was really thanks to the CFTC over the past year, which has taken a dramatically different approach to these markets. They used to essentially take the stance that these types of markets are not allowed, that you're not allowed to have gambling on elections, essentially under these regulations. That has dramatically shifted over the past year as the regulator has been dismantled, essentially.

I mean, there's currently one CFTC commissioner, the newest chair of the CFTC Mike Selig, who has very little regulatory experience and is the sole commissioner on what is supposed to be a bipartisan five-person commission. And the stance of the CFTC has essentially been, you know, they've done a completely. 180. They've said now, you know, this is innovation. We need to promote innovation by allowing these prediction markets and really furthering these prediction markets. And it really needs to be underscored that Donald Trump Jr. sits on the board of Kalshi and Polly Market. Both? Both. Yeah, you would think that would be a crazy conflict of interest. They're, they're total competitors. And yet he is, that is somehow happening. I guess they are just

so interested in having a member of the Trump family on the board that they're willing to overlook that. Molly, it's his expertise. It's his expertise, okay? Right. Right. And, you know, and his VC company is invested, you know, and there are other members of the administration who have been very closely tied to these prediction markets.

I mean, the original nominee for the CFTC chair was on the board of Cal She. And so, you know, this is. a huge push by these companies to do essentially what crypto has done and take control of the regulator in order to allow these companies to become a huge part of our day-to-day lives. And so, you know, as you mentioned, now we're seeing these predictions, quote-unquote, integrated into news reporting. We're seeing reporters really treating them as though they're not wagers, but as though they are actual odds of an event happening.

And then we're seeing all of this, you know, very likely malfeasance, which is essentially going completely unaddressed because the CFTC does not really have, I mean, first of all, they don't have resources, but second of all, they really don't police insider trading in the way that you would think they might, in the way that the SEC does on, you know, in the stock market, for example, or in the way that gambling regulators try to ensure that people who are able to influence the outcome of a wager are not allowed to bet on that market. And so, you know, not only are we seeing these things sort of infiltrating American life, but we're also seeing the actual people who are being encouraged to place bets on these markets being put at a complete disadvantage

because, you know, they're betting against people who have superior information. And so they're getting taken for a ride in that sense as well. And perhaps they think like insider trading happens all the time and like big banks get tip off tips, tipoffs before say retail investors do on, you know, certain changes or selloffs or things like that in the market. And probably the justification is like, well, that is kind of legitimized in our more formal casino. know, why can't we do it in our new casino, right? Right. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly, I think, some degree of that. But, you know, you see all of these really wild statements from these companies about how insider trading is good, actually.

You know, they've actually come out and said that you get more accurate predictions if insiders are allowed to bet on these markets. And therefore, that's a good thing. Because they know what's going to happen. Yeah, that's why it's more accurate. God damn. When it suits them, they essentially make the argument that, well, our goal is to have the most accurate predictions. And so, therefore, it doesn't matter if all of these bettors are getting totally fleeced by people who have better access to information. But then on the other hand, they're essentially marketing, you know, they sort of turn around and market these platforms as ways for people to make money, everyday people, to come in and bet on, you know, sports games or politics or whatever it may be.

they sort of want to have it both ways where, you know, on the one hand, they're like, well, it's the best source of information. On the other hand, it's a way for retail investors to make money. And, you know, both can't really be true. You know, people don't tend to want to place bets on rigged platforms, essentially. It's very much a dissuading force. Well, I mean, I'm actually curious about the mechanics about this because, say, you know, lines, if your sports betting lines can move based on how much money is placed on one side of things, right? So I don't know exactly. I know that you're not betting against the casino with polymarket cows. You're betting against your other bettors. But what would happen if, say, somebody had significant insider

information about an action? Would they be able to sway the odds in their favor so that, like, oh, there's a bunch of money on this outcome? So that would incentivize people to take the plus money, right? the less likely one if they think so, even if the insider information has it already locked down. It makes the alternative look more attractive, I would imagine, because the odds are better if you're betting against the outcome, but you don't have the insider information. Yeah, I mean, and I think that's also something that is sort of going on addressed here is the way in which the odds, you know, the so-called odds can be manipulated. You know, for one, you're right, that there is this sort of monetary and

incentive that comes into play if someone has this significant insider information. But one thing I've been thinking about a lot quite recently is these partnerships with news platforms and the fact that they are essentially in their own way moving these markets because the more they are reporting on these types of topics, you know, the more they emphasize one set of, you know, one side of the information compared to another, the more that the people watching these markets are going to take that side. I mean, people are working with the information that's in front of them. And now we have direct partnerships with news platforms that are supposedly providing information and these prediction markets where people are profiting off of public

perception. It's a crazy partnership for any outlet that is claiming to be providing high quality information, you know, accurate, unbiased news. When, you know, the incentives, now is to essentially present the side of the story that, you know, moves these markets. And so I think we're going to see a lot more of these scandals where, you know, people are manipulating public perception, where they are manipulating the markets themselves in order to make the news. That's another, I think, big factor. We saw this to some extent during the 2024 election where huge bets were being placed on polymarket and then suddenly there'd be this whole news cycle about how, oh, maybe the odds are actually different from what the polls are saying.

And, you know, maybe you should reconsider your, your political activities based on these polymarket odds that are so different. And, you know, I think that that's, you know, the public perception goes both ways, where the perception influences the markets and the markets influence perception. Yeah. Lastly, on this Molly, I guess the question is, who gives a crap if their predictions are good or not. Like, except for their investors, why is that the state? They're like, insider trading is good because it makes our prediction markets better. That's what they claim.

All right, let's take that at face value, sure. Why do I give a shit? Well, they, it's a part of the push to integrate these markets into the news. You know, the idea is that if we have really accurate predictions, we can report more accurately on what's happening, what's going to happen. But that's what reporters are supposed to ask insiders in the government to do, like, reporting about what the government's doing. That's, you know, just throwing that out there.

But let's outsource it to the casino. I mean, yeah, essentially, you know, that the idea is that the best source of, it's a very sort of, like, libertarian, free market type of thing, which is, like, the most pure source of information about the future comes from these financial markets. and therefore they have inherent value as a source of truth, a source of information. Whether or not that is really borne out by the research, I think, really remains to be seen because there has been research on the accuracy of prediction markets. Like I said, that was largely why prediction markets were even allowed to operate in the first

place was to study this kind of thing. But it was under very, very different circumstances where these were tightly limited academic projects. You could not go and bet a million dollars. You could only bet, you know, very minimal amounts of money. You were limited in who could do those bets and to what extent. And so now they're essentially extrapolating that research to these markets where now there's all of this financial maneuvering happening where public perception is being manipulated through these markets, where there are all these incentives for people to make trades that don't necessarily reflect their position on what is actually going to happen, but instead is just a way for

them to make money in the interim. And, you know, they're saying, yeah, this research still holds out. And I really don't think that is a safe thing to say. Well, I appreciate it, Molly. I just, I can't get over the circular logic and how that it's so self-serving. It's unbelievable. And all their pockets are being lined. Right. Right. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks so much. Can't recommend citation needed enough. All of your work there is free, but if people have some extra change lying around to support your work, you do accept donations and subscriptions. But just like the fact that all this is available to people, it's a great service you're doing.

Thanks so much, Molly White. Appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. All right. With that, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun half. so-called fun half where we will take your calls maybe we will read your iams for sure and we will do some clips absolutely yeah just to uh just to underline the sort of sink into dystopia that we are viewing here for my entire all of our entire lives uh the employment of journalists has been cratering

uh fewer and fewer journalists compared to like the 80s mainly because of advertising um uh and so to replace that what we're getting is cable television, TikTok, and our news programs are going to rely on betting markets to what make their predictions better. Again, for what? Like, why do I care if they're even good? What does that mean for me? That's the point is that that's what I just couldn't, that broke my brain slightly, is the circular self-serving logic of it. They're like, we need to, you need to allow us to do something that should definitely be illegal. Because if you don't let us do it, The predictions will be worse.

The predictions. Who gives the shit? Why do I care if the bookies don't know if the giants are going to beat the Jets? Like, I don't care. Right. And meanwhile, China has connected all of their major cities with high-speed rail. Yeah. Like, so they, let's look at the present instead of trying to guess the fucking future because some speculators, some parasites.

Everyone, I mean, I have this clip. I went to Kalsh. I went to our sound polls. Okay. Let's bring Brandon in here too. But I, this is this clip that Emma was referring to. And it's like, these people. People, they just need.

And I would like journalists like Molly O'Shea to like get a little bit wiser about this. And she asked a good question. So I don't want to be too much on her. But I mean just generally speaking tech journalists is these people. It's funny Molly brought up Web 3. Like remember that? Yeah. Remember how crypto was going to help like people in poor countries like blah blah blah.

They will just say shit about how this is going to make the world better because that's what you need to do while you're waiting for the money to come in. You know who did that? Tech. The entire tech industry, the entire Obama years, and then a lot of liberals fell for it. Mark Zuckerberg to help with connectivity as he's making a surveillance state. But here's this clip of this Calci guy. Just like listen to this bullshit. Again, this is just what you need to say as you're waiting for passive income to come in because you own society.

Multiple times that you think prediction markets will be bigger than the stock market. what is it going to take to become a trillion dollar asset class? It's pretty much already like a close to a hundred billion a year of asset class, right? Like it's pretty easy to imagine a 10x from here. Like we haven't even started. It's been a year. I think a very large number of people care much larger than traditional markets. And I think retail as a pie has just been growing.

Traditional markets were they're like buying and selling actual commodities, not just bets on the future. Did they mean, does he mean, though, traditional, this traditional stock market? Yeah, but at least you're buying like, well, that's the point. It's like, oh, yeah, it's like, you know, we're, we're really predatory. Okay, just want to put that out there. So, like, for people that are not necessarily, are intimidated by the stock market, we can let you bet on, like, very, uh, straightforward outcomes and you can buy in with even less oversight than the actual stock market.

And just to remind everyone, the reason we allow the stock market to have such a prominence in our society is because it's supposed to be the best way for allocating funds, but really all that's really looked at by people who invest in it is a big way to make free money. Well, I mean, also just to know, just to say, well, the only reason with the stock market exists because it's heavily regulated, because there was a huge crash where tons of people lost everything, including their lives as a result. And so for order, in order for there to be a stock market, it had to be regulated. People forgot those lessons now because they have been like, you know, propagandized to,

by, you know, by crypto types or scammers to delegitimize regulation, SEC, but those regulations like saved the stock market. And, you know, eventually if these things, they made them legitimate. And if these things are going to stick around, you know, they're going to need to be regulated. But the whole predictions market thing is so dystopian. It's like the kind of thing that if you were writing like anti-capitalist propaganda about like America, you would add in there.

You're like, oh, yeah. And in America, everything is commodified. You bet on everything. People have so few opportunities. They have to bet on, you know, every single aspect of life. Yeah. He makes this case positively here in just a second. Yeah, here's the actual bullshit we tuned in for.

To financialize everything and create a tradable asset going outside of stock market. The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. And I think if you do build a general and purpose exchange that can resolve differences of opinions on anything, like the time is quite massive. quite a bit bigger than the current TAM of the stock market. Tam is total accessible market, meaning we can get a bunch of dumb people to bet on how many people died in Gaza. I think putting aside sort of the retail trading and the institutional trading product, like there's sort of this separate product, which is like,

we are living in a world where like we have an abundance of information, but there's a lot of noise. And like, we don't really understand what's real from what's not. And prediction markets are an antidote to that. They do a very, very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth to people. And you're seeing this sort of massive shift where like people are you. It's just like the idea that we should, maybe we should regulate the, I don't know, the disinformation in tech and instead of, you know, creating a casino to to monetize the dysfunction that we've all experienced. The thing is like, hello guys.

The thing is by, you know, prediction markets, it's funny because unless there is a specific prediction you're betting on where the information is knowable by an inside. source, they aren't better at guessing anything. For example, during the New York City mayoral primary, where people actually have to vote and no one has an inside track, like they do at a company on who's going to win or what product's going to come out or something like that. The prediction markets had Cuomo in the lead for the entire time until election day, if I recall correctly, where it was clear that Mamdani was winning and then it switched before the election results were finally called because it was clear he was going to win.

And because it switched at the last minute, everyone who loves these prediction markets claim that, oh, the prediction market called it. No, it saw reality and what was going on actually, and it swapped who it was predicting it was good, like, was winning. Whoa, whoa.

The logic here is just stupid. The feedback problem is issue. issue. Caroline Levitt left the podium in the White House about 45 seconds before the bet on how long she was going to address the press was. The entire thing becomes just an

insider's game to traffic on their information and the whole retail thing that this parasite from Cal she's talking about, that's just to get more money into the pot so those insiders can collect more when they eventually use their insider information

to say like, oh, I guess what we are going to kidnap Matt Maduro. Yeah, no, I mean, a lot of people got hip to crypto as like a game, a shell game, that funnels money from outsiders to insiders. And a lot of people are already addicted to sports gambling. And so this sort of predictions market types of betting, it feels a lot more accessible than crypto. It feels a lot more like sports gambling. And for insiders, it has the, you know, the same ability to help funnel money from Roobes into your pocket. And for the news, it gets people excited about the news. Look at all of the advertisement you'll see on sports news from

the draft kings or whatever sports betting websites. This is just the regular news version of that because now you can bet on the events of the regular news too. And so there is a monetary incentive in getting people invested in like the regular news as well. It's really disgusting.

It is like beyond dystopian. Like the cryptocurrency people who, the cryptocurrency skeptics who were calling this stuff out, we're saying years ago that Web 3 and NFTs and all that is just the first moves of the tech industry to financialize everything.

Like it was being said years ago. It's just that they thought the way to financialize everything would be to make a digital version of all products. But it turns out the real way to financialize everything is to just gamify it all. People love to play games, love to bet and guess and do shit like that. Love to go to their casino. So that's the way.

go financializing. Some people don't like sports. Some people don't like sports. Some people don't understand crypto. Some people are intimidated by the stock market. Everyone can bet on whether it's going to rain tomorrow. You know, everyone gets that. So the total addressable market is a lot higher than any of those other things.

Because it's not as alienating in principle. Because it requires no special knowledge. But if you happen to have special insider knowledge, benefits you obviously. All right. Also, everyone will have gambling addictions, but let's go to the fun. Yeah, let's go to the fun half. Quickly, you guys, what's happening on your shows?

And don't speak at the same time. Okay, I wanted to see who we go first. Sorry, go. I want to play a little game. Brandon, what's happening? Put it on the betting markets. Who's going to speak first in the majority board today? Yeah, Brandon, what's going on?

Okay, I'm going to go first. Well, today, and I'll have this clip for you all, tomorrow. We took a turn on the wild side with Candace, whose newest theory posits that Charlie Kirk was a time traveler. Do we have that for today? Time, Charlie. We do. All right. A kind of time traveler, we don't know yet. So we both to find out today on the majority report as well. So there's that. And so yeah, check out the discourse Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern. We are almost at 15,000. on YouTube and we're at over 5,000 on Twitch.

We have a big crowd, big crowd. All right. Time traveler. What's happening on it? There was that movie, the Time Traveler's wife I keep thinking about from that. That's what I thought of too. Yes, it's very bad. Candice is the Time Traveler's wife in this way.

Binder, what's happening on your shows? I'm still recovering from CES last week and the holiday season before that. So this is actually the first stream I'm doing of the year so far. But I'll be doing my second stream of the year tonight, 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time at YouTube.com slash Matt Binder for leftist mafia. And Matt Leck, what's happening with you? Tomorrow morning, Jacobin's show, Nila Tabrizzi talking about Iran and maybe another guest. And yeah, so check that out 10 o'clock a.m. Eastern time. Subscribe to the Jacobin YouTube channel.

And I was just reminded, thinking about Left Reckoning, that I want to reveal, and we'll put this in the link down below, that David Griscom's book, The Myth of Red, Texas, is now available for pre-order. We'll put a link to that below. But he included my blurb, which I was very happy to see, because I was. I was like oddly, it's the first blurb I've ever written for someone's book. I was like, God, I hope I don't sound like an idiot. There it is right at the top. Yep, it's right at the top. So I'm pumped.

I'm going to be moderating his book talk and, I guess, like, opening kind of Q&A thing in late February. We've promoted that before on the show, but I'm sure we'll put a link down below to that. It'll be in New York City. I think it's February 25th, but I don't want to. late February definitely pre-order now 15% off from OR books so you can get either the

It's very good Kindle e-book or a print e-book Definitely if you know somebody in Texas Pick them up a copy for this It's very good and it's it's very You know it's It reclaims the myths Not to use from the book title

But like Of rugged individualism And like an almost like kind of kind of cowboy ethos that has papered over class struggle and racial struggle in the South, and particularly in Texas. And David kind of like painstakingly, but with beautiful writing, goes through these examples. I mean, the modern conservative control of Texas, it's a disgrace to Texas, the bootlicking sort of servility of all the people that support Abbott and Patrick and all those losers.

there's a actual like lineage there that's to be respected that is the real sort of Texas freedom representative and speaking of Texas we're getting word and maybe we'll cover this a friend of the show Greg Stoker is running for Congress in Texas is 31st. Woo! We'll check that out soon. But appreciate you all. See you in the fun half. Okay, Emma, please.

Well, I just, I feel that my. voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, whoa. Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. I think you need to take over for Sam.

That's cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a tour, sushi, and poker with the boys. Tour? Suci and poker with the boys

Who's offered to the boys? What? Twerp. Sushi and polk? Ah, that's what we call biz. Dwerp-tized. I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech.

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Dwerp? Ugh. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God.

Dwerp. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. So what's offered a twerk? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys.

Logic. Twerp. Sushi and poker with the boys. Boy, boy, boy, twer. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm a little kid. I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like,

I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. That's a real fit. That's a real fit. Bill fit. Willie Walker? Twerep.

Sam has like the way of the world on the show. Hoggers. He doesn't want to do this show anymore. We can't do it anymore. It was so much easier. Or the majority report was just you. You were happy. Let's change the subject.

Rangers and Nick's going to great. Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts of this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. The Hatchet left his best. Violet twirp. That's the old policy.

We are incredible theme song. I bumblers. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. actually not just in the game like period