The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Patriot Power Hour #331 - 2026 Predictions

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Each week on Patriot Power Hour, Ben ‘The Breaker of Banksters’ and Future Dan explore the latest Liberty, Security, Economic & Natural news, providing the situational awareness needed to execute your preparedness plans. Questions, Feedback, News Tips, or want to be a Guest? Reach out!Ben “The Breaker of Banksters” @BanksterBreaker on XFuture Dan@FutureDanger6 on XGet Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Survival Bags, kits, gear www.limatangosurvival.comEMP Proof Shipping Containers www.fardaycontainers.comThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyPack Fresh USA www.packfreshusa.comSupport PBN with a Donation https://bit.ly/3SICxEq

What do you want? Statement of purpose. Should I email you? Should I put this on your action item list? Oh, look. You decide your own level of involvement. We are the Prepper Broadcasting Network. I don't know. You are now listening to the Patriot Power Hour, the newest show of the Prepper Broadcasting Network. This live episode features the situational awareness you need to practice self-reliance and independence. Introducing your hosts, Ben, the Breaker of Banksters, and Future Dan, the editor of Future Danger.com.

Patriot Power Hour, live in 2026. Yeah, it's January 1st, 2026. I've been The Breaker of Banksters here with Future Dan. What's going on, Future Dan? We are a quarter of the way through the 21st century and halfway through the 2020s. It seems like Y2K just a few seconds ago, but it's been 25 years. It's true. Crazy.

It's where we're at. Now, we've never broadcast on January 1st. This is special. Very much so. last year we did on the eighth of the ninth so we're coming straight out the gates fast trying to set an all-time record number of shows this year more than last year i think we hit 40 last year 40 out of 52 weeks not too bad mostly planned let's go for like 44 this year what do you say we got a good start what is our record in a calendar year i'm going to add that to my 2026 new year's resolutions i'm not big on new year's resolutions but i do have a couple four Patriot Power Hour and it's to really dive deeper into the transcripts and build a full checklist of every episode have a transcript for everyone going back and then I can really answer that for you like hey we had 46 on this year was our all time year I'm going to say

like 44 to 46 would be our record there was a couple of weeks where we had with COVID too 2020 probably well COVID year that 2020 had at least one special in March March of 2020. I remember doing that. So it might have been 2020 that we got up into the mid-40s, and we always take a break on a quarterly basis. So it's 48 is the top that we could have ever done. 46 might have been it. 44 was probably better than our 10-year average. There you go. So consistency is what brings us to episode 331, heading into our ninth year of Patriot Power Hour. And geez, I guess heading into our sixth year on PBN, Prepper Broadcasting Network.

That was late January of 2020. So what can we say? Time flies, but we got a lot of news currently we're going to get to in this dashboard and then predictions because the next year is going to go like the wind and before you know, it'll be December 2026 and we're going to be making some of the predictions now that we'll be reviewing next year. and also a delayed but improved analysis of silver coming out of 2025 and going into 2026 Ben lead the way all right let's hit the dashboard first although i love talking about silver and i love talking predictions i really want to focus on the news right now because this dashboard although not particularly severe or dangerous does have a lot of important information a lot of headlines and actually a couple, you know, mid-range, mid-rating, especially economically. So let's just run right through it. Starting left or right, DOJ reviewing 5.2 million more pages at Epstein files.

Last week, Christmas week, had a lot of news come out on Epstein and different files. Lots of the last couple weeks since we were last on air. a lot more being reviewed and coming out I want to see some arrests but let's continue the news president says Venezuela has been attacked says America may bomb Iran again Iran saying they're formally at war

with the West so some things heating up there China conducts war drills around Taiwan simulating a blockade of key ports we'll be talking some predictions with Taiwan later to this episode. Taiwan Armed Forces on alert as China encircles Island and launches massive live fire drills. Chinese war games encircling Taiwan, two different articles will explore

both to get more details. And California governor-candidate pledges to arrest federal agents and take away their driver's licenses. This is just a low-grade, but worth looking at after and tracking insurrection declared is the indicator we're also going to be talking about potential insurrection in 2026 coming up so that's why I want to start with this dashboard future Dan kind of going to be launching off this into the predictions economically the dollar is facing the end to its dominance drops the most in 10 years in 2025 Price is going up, dollar is dropping. Importer bankruptcies surge.

This under firms widely fail, which we've not seen much of this indicator recently, not since 2020. We're seeing some of these importers with the tariffs. Bank simultaneously collapse. Yes, just overnight, $31 billion into the banking system. largest liquidity injection since COVID. It's not just lowering interest rates that the Fed and banksters can do.

They can do a lot more, and that's what they're doing. Why is the question. We'll talk through it. We're seeing the strain of the flu come out, making older people sicker. Flu cases on the rise. Keep an eye on that. African swine flu suspected of escaping a Spanish lab. This is tied for the most dangerous headline of the night of the week.

We're always keeping track of anything like this. African swine flu suspected of escaping a Spanish lab. And Mount Etna's northeast crater erupts for the first time of 28 years. Future Dan, that's the newsblower. where you want to go from here yeah it's pretty diverse isn't it it's it's many vectors for for being threats but what we witnessed last year and if it carries through is within two to four weeks none of these indicators might be the ones we're talking about well that's where the predictions is going to come in there are certain themes that we've

we've kept on Patriot Power Hour for the full time we've been on air but certainly in the last couple years with these predictions there's always a category or a news article that comes out of left field each and every year sometimes more than that and we know we can't see the future perfectly so we won't be able to catch on to that but i know you have a couple categories that are new to 2026 we're going to run through um i might have a couple new ones as well so it's going to be a a blend of what patriot power hour and PBN's all about, prepping for financial health, right, food and water and freedom of speech, all that, kind of the basis. But then maybe some out of left field. In terms of

news, though, the dollar facing the end of its dominance dollar drops most in 10 years and this importer bankruptcy surge. I would say that's all going according to plan from Trump's point of view. He expected some importers to go bankrupt with tariffs. And, well, the dollar wants to go down so we can export more. If the dollar goes down, other countries can afford our goods to be exported and manufactured here. That's all within the Trump plan. It's just will this overshoot is the question. It is. But again, that kind of news, it's just low level. It's topical. It's not deep, dangerous trend in any regard on either of those indicators. But $31 billion repo on New Year's Eve, what's that about?

Let's take a look at it. The one and only fiddick survival in chat, dollar goes down, silver goes up. You know it. That's a big part of the silver run, but not all of it. We'll get into more of it. But looking at actually, in fact, we are here. on x zero hedge posted this these uh what we got 32 excuse me 31 billion dollars injected in the banking system not in middle of december not in early December this is literally

when everything is quiet on new year's eve this entire week everything's pretty much shut down but especially last night you know new year's eve 31st but we saw 31 billion which is easily the of the year and there has not been much of this injection going back to COVID pre-COVID we were seeing these crazy overnight crazy overnight repos if you remember future Dan and then at some point it was those reverse repos that happened but now we're back again to the repos and it's so weird you know it even throws me for a loop and I've studied this quite a lot let's just say we went from having, you know, not enough liquidity to having way too much liquidity to now, again, no liquidity. It's all drying up. And with that, we're going to need more interest rate cuts.

We're going to need more bailouts, quantitative easing, all this injections, all this crap. And just as we've talked about, that's really good for silver. That's good for physical assets. and bad for dollar-based bank accounts. How about that? Right. And for those that are new to some of this Fed speak, repo stands for repurchasing agreement. And it's basically a quasi-governmental organization like our central bank, our Federal Reserve System, just inventing money and putting it into, you know, in one's zero digits, just transferring it overnight to supposedly private, too big to fail,

systemically important banks. Question for you, Ben, do you think there's any that got to the end of 2025 with some, you know, yet to be known about major losses? One of those systemically important banks, you know, Was it on the verge of going sideways without that injection? A couple ways I want to put this first. If you've ever been living paycheck to paycheck and had to play little games with transferring monies and doing all that, you know, when you're at that stage, you're at the very last stage of bouncing checks and having problems. Luckily, I'm not in that phase anymore, but coming straight out of college had to do that.

Now imagine these two big to fail banks. that are having to get this sort of overnight injection and little games promises where it's pretty much ensuring their checks don't bounce. Now, they're implicitly guaranteed not to bounce. This is more of an interest rate game than anything, but it's pretty much the way I boil it down is what I just said. Like a poor college kid trying to not have a check bounce and you know doing cash advance here and you know all this little shell game stuff so

hang on though hang on though well i think i just heard a moment ago is that you know it's just a short-term thing they're playing games and numbers but everything just pans out that's that's not true that 31 billion hadn't been forthcoming there could have been some you know real market correction. Some real laissez-faire, let it be, let it fail, action. Could it not? So, I would say possibly, and what would happen

is the banks would not lend amongst themselves and they would stop trusting each other. Yeah. And that's where you have a real lockup and liquidity problem. So this is kind of trying to prevent that. Almost as like a lubricant to the gears of the banksters, like these are going to grind to a halt it's really bad rusty machinery it's a total fraud for so long but we can still grease the wheels for a while they've done more than this in the past and they've done it a lot you know so that's what i guess what i meant is it's not like literally the last night was the

night but well you have a lot of credence to what you were saying though about could there be something underlying this probably something's something underneath the hood is breaking it seems for this to suddenly happen, and it certainly seemed that way the last time we saw it, but we saw it last time just months before COVID, and then seven months later, all the things went sideways. So powerful interests, aligning things, get things set up, intentionally collapsing, or letting things get broken. So the lender of last resort, the United States government, and it's surrogate, the Federal

reserve can you know patch it up in a way that all of the moneyed interest benefit that's that's one way to looking at it but there's another thing i've been trying to say for a while now is if this stuff is controllable and if it can be controlled for political reasons to bring parties into and out of power for example there's a major banking crisis a systemic failure in early 2026 is that Does that help one party win in the midterms or the other lose? And what I've been trying to say is this isn't the year for that. It's too many presidential emergency powers that could be invoked if all of that collapses. And my point is, you know, Trump still has three years in his term, a little bit more, right?

So that's a long time to leave someone with that much power. And if you accept that premise, then what happened with the repos might be unplanned, might be no, there is no human control of the mechanisms of the mega financial structures in place right now. And when they start to crack and creek, you know, it's like an earthquake coming. None of them could control that. That's where I was going to go with it, and you hit it pretty much nail on the head. I know that's your, especially you're feeling mine. I don't know. I still think they, and we've talked about this, they can kick this down until 2028.

You think they absolutely will, if at all possible. So if things break before the 2028 presidential election, it's because they lost control. it's not our purpose what i'm looking at here which i think could be an undercurrent of a potential banky failure is the price of silver okay just since uh this is november 5th of 2025 so about two months ago silver was 46 dollars about a two trillion dollar market cap two trillion dollars of silver in the world since then it's nearly doubled in just two months but what you'll see is it really accelerated from really since our it did have a pretty steady march up in price from let's call it Thanksgiving when it went from 53 up until our last episode we were alive which is about 66 so that was quite a nice jump but what I'm looking at here is what happened on Christmas Eve and the first trading day after Christmas, Friday the 26th, we saw silver go from $72 to $84 in pretty much like two trading days,

and it's supposed to be the lowest volume days of the year. December 26th, December 26th. So, a couple things here. In my opinion, the banksters are way underwater, but have not realized those losses on the silver paper fraud. scheme they've been employing ever since before I was even on-air or even had my blog 12 plus years ago. So this huge run-up in silver is horrible for a lot of these banksters. But that's only one part of it. There's certainly, the yen has been destructing the whole carry trade with the yen

is over with. Japan's raising its interest rates, which I could talk about for hours, but that's just destroyed liquidity worldwide because the yen is no longer. longer able to be used and abused and borrowed into infinity the bank of the first time in like 30 years is raised interest rates and they're going to keep raising it which means free money is over so that's really putting people underwater not really people banks this uh you know anyway put that all together and there's something saying yeah red alert red alert liquidity crisis liquidity crisis yeah and they'll paper it over and pretend it's not happening until when when when do you know oh I don't know like next Wednesday or Thursday after the holiday weekend when do you know that they've lost control this is something's breaking what's the next sign that what's the next kind of headline that you'd anticipate tucking right underneath this headline under the indicator banks simultaneously fail oh man well we'll hold silver for a little bit later when I do my silver analysis

And we'll do our predictions here in a little bit. So I'll focus on the main question. Like, when do I know a bank has failed or is on the way to fail? Is that kind of a big question? Or the whole system's, yeah, it's, you know, it's starting to look fragile. It looks like things are out of control. Emergency Fed meeting kind of thing. Yeah, I've, I've written about this.

I've expected it to happen by now and it hasn't, but I still think it'll be the same thing. The bank holiday where they're like, hey, things are out of control. We're going to close a little early for the weekend. Don't worry. We'll be back on Monday. If they say that, you better go to your local Costco or whatever and stock up. If they close a day or too early in the week or whatever and say, yeah, we'll be back.

Don't worry. We're just taking a day or two holiday. You need everybody's bank. The day is just everybody's bank is shot. Ordered shot. Yeah, as a quarantine, similar to, bend the curve in 14 days is what I'm saying like hey my bank's not infected but we got to quarantine all the banks my bank's okay but we got to shut them all down to be safe that that

would be extreme if that happened next week but what would be an intermediary headline maybe maybe that is happening in mid to late january 2026 if so what do you listen for coming in between more repo just more repo news which is covered by virtually no one, right? That's something they can't really hide or cover up. So that's a great one. The fact we're seeing it at all is very noteworthy. But if we start going instead of $31 billion,

it's $100 billion plus, and it's like every single night. Thanks, stocks. Bank stocks, just the whole financial sector on Wall Street just starts to swiftly decline as a block. they can't ignore that no and i mean that's where they would might have the bank holiday and or stock market holiday where it's like hey we've had multiple limit down days it's a crisis we're gonna we're gonna take a little break but what i'm looking at right here is silver just keep watching silver it's up just in the last uh hour or so it's up another dollar back

up to 72 60 if we see silver regain 80 plus dollars and we see silver up to a hundred dollars by the spring that's going to mean huge huge problems for the banking system because they're admittedly short silver physical silver so every dollar that silver goes up they lose billions of dollars the question is is it like one billion or is it 30 billion we don't know what kind of leverage and derivatives they got yep important financial news tonight so that's what we know right now i think um very very much it's striking out as yellow official news right might might be nothing might not have another headline again and it'll be just a little blip on the radar that

doesn't have any you know sequel to it or or maybe not well let's uh run into some predictions if you're if you're ready for it we're doing that or are we doing uh you know a complete analysis of of silver. I think you cracked a door open on talking about the silver market today. Maybe fulfill that. I can do that. I mean, you don't have to twist my arm for that.

I'll try to make it relatively succinct for people. I know not everyone wants to listen to like for 10 minutes of silver, but it is I'll keep it very high level. On this note coming out what you said a moment ago, um, shorting silver certificate

paper silver something about that it makes sense when you say it but I'm still kind of disconnected from how how could just those shorts in and of themselves be large enough to destabilize

these modern mega systemically important eligible for repo loan kind of firms right tie that one together for me. I wouldn't have suspected silver had that big of influence on these modern monetary theorist institutions. Well, it's all come to, I will say this.

The silver market is not as big as real estate by any means. So I would say the unrealized losses in the commercial real estate market. are worse than the silver but that's kind of marches along in a more predictable manner this huge loss in silver just kind of happened out of nowhere in the last year rather than the steady march of maybe loss on real estate that they could sort of control and paper over more so part of it's that it was so big almost out of nowhere um it doesn't have to be okay let's see if if you know much about margin trading you can trade foreign exchange or crypto or all types of stuff at 10x 25x 100x now if you trade out 100x you better be very careful because your $1,000 loss can

instantly turn into a hundred thousand dollar loss that's what essentially the banksters have done there's more than a hundred paper contracts and shares and derivatives and all that ounces, 100 ounces of that paper for every one ounce of real physical. So even though we're only talking about a few billion dollars of silver, maybe that one bank is short, the thing is they leverage that over by 50x or 100 X, and all of a sudden it's a $100 billion potential loss on their balance sheet, and we're not done with it yet either. If silver just stopped right here at 70 or 75 bucks, man, these banks would be underwater, but it'd be hurt. But it's like logarithmic or exponential or something like that.

It's more than linear like from here on out. So if silver does go to 100 bucks or 150 bucks, I mean, it's just something will break. Some people are even thinking China's behind this in a way, kind of thinking this will be a way to, as a domino to knock over the western. in the financial system i'm not a you know i'm not on board with the chinese but maybe they have found it and i've talked quite a lot about how they're buying a lot of physical silver and gold in the last decade so maybe they are putting the pressure on here themselves wow okay that makes sense to me and i i was uh over the holidays talking to family i'm like I expected this to happen 10 or 15 years ago, but now it's happening and the fundamentals are stronger.

So let's get in real fast. Jump into the silver analysis I did. I wanted to pretty much break silver price into what it's going to be in five years and what it'll be in about 25 years. So we just talked about how, holy cow, it's been a quarter of a century since Y2K. It seems like forever ago, but also. So not that long ago. Well, 2050 sounds like science fiction, but, you know, it'll be, a lot of us will be alive in 2050, hopefully, I certainly hope to be.

And so I wanted to see what silver might be in 2030, but also in 2050. So that was the basis of this analysis feature, Dan. I'm not going to show it on the screen, but let me know if you have questions, otherwise I'm just going to go high level through this. First, I wanted to hit on silver. demand and really there's a few major thrusts of demand that are going to grow over the next five years but especially 25 years it's coming from batteries electronics AI and electric infrastructure nuclear plants pretty much that that call that the

industrial case and then the monetary case which we've just been talking about the collapse of monetary systems, fiat currencies, everyone's buying silver bars, silver jewelry, scrap silver, or of course silver, bullion, silver coins, and gold too, but we're focusing on silver, which we could talk about later. But, you know, so there's the demand side, and I spent, let's call it, many tokens of AI research, plus my own time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears, researching the demand side of things. and there's really no case to be made that silver demand's going to go down in the next five years. Definitely not go down in the next 25 years.

Unless we have thermonuclear war and everyone dies. Yeah, we only need silver. We'll put that to the side. The point is silver demand is absolutely going up. In some of the permutations and examples I went through, silver demand could go up by a factor of two in the next five years. and even maybe by a factor of four by the year of 2050. Four times more silver demanded.

That doesn't sound like a lot, but here's the thing. There's already more silver being used right now than being mined, new silver. How does that happen? Well, a lot of silver is either scrapped or sold, you know, recycled. But my point is there's major, major deficit right? now just today in 2026 January 1st 2026 a lot more silver is being used than mine we already talked about how that demand for silver is guaranteed to go up and I think it could go up you know that two or three X meanwhile even if silver prices double where it is right now based on my research

silver supply won't even be able to double by 2050 there's just just not enough silver mines out there and it takes 10 to 15 years to get these silver mines up at running so even if they wanted to open one right now it would take many many years so anyway demand is going up pretty much guaranteed supply you know is I think it's going to be constant I think I don't think supply is going to grow but as I don't think supply is going to go down either because as price goes up yeah more people will actually sell their grandma's silver plating or whatever right silverware so i think supply will be constant i think demand's going to grow crazy both from AI and from monetary fiat currency collapse and with that where's silver price

going to be well my opinion i think by 2030 very high likelihood silver will be above a hundred It doesn't sound like much right now because silver is $73. But remember, silver was only like $40 this time last year. So there could be some drop in silver, especially if there's a big global depression. But again, I think silver going up big time. And I think silver could be above $250 by 2050. Now, Chad GPT tried to put some percentages on this and some numbers. I'm not going to get dragged down in numbers because.

That's, you know, not a great format. Radio is not a great format for running through spreadsheets. But that's my high level. Demand is going to go up big time because of AI and energy, as well as monetary purposes because of all the Fiat currency collapse. Meanwhile, supply at most is going to be flat. Unless we get an asteroid that hits us and has a bunch of silver. That ain't going to happen anytime soon.

There you go, FutureDane. That's my very high level. synopsis. I think you're a little bit of a bear on supply meeting demand and especially if the warren Ukraine was

settled and Russia could reenter the public economy because that's a lot of territory with a lot of unmined silver and we have it too, right? If national parks and other forests, no not parks but forests were opened

you know, at some price point, you're talking about getting up to $100, $150, $200, $250, $250, an ounce. There's going to be a lot of money flowing into opening new mines. And maybe today they take five to ten years to start. But at some price point, it can happen faster, I'm sure, especially in South America. in Africa. So supply will lag and price will rise. I agree with that premise.

I'm not sure supply won't try, you know, there won't be a strong attempt to increase supply. Isn't it money to be made? Sitting in the ground, right? My assumption in the analysis that I put through

was $100 an ounce silver. And based on that, They said in the next five years, there essentially will be no increase in supply from the mines. But over a 25-year period, there could be some. Now, if silver goes to $200 an ounce, yeah, it might be a different story. If $1,000 an ounce, yeah, they'll be blown the hell out of anything that potentially has silver. And they'll find the supply at a high enough price, of course. I was looking more at $100.

dollars and i'd be curious how much of silver is put into jewelry and and pure silver is it would is very soft jewelry it's not made that way right it's alloyed so the the alloyed jewelry that's still you know you know many carrots it's valuable is still not pure silver at some point the you know the costume jewelry grade that melting that down and extracting the real silver from it is a hazardous process a costly process reduces a lot of fumes that have to be handled you know carefully because it's deadly right so it's not worth it right now right now even at 75 an ounce every single molecule of silver that ever becomes jewelry pretty much stays that way, right? It's not worth it to transform it back so it's ready to be bullion or it's ready to be industrial. At some point, you know, people, right now you can send in your, you can mail away your gold jewelry, right? Your low carrot gold jewelry. It's worth it for gold to melt it down. Hasn't been for silver. Wonder how soon it will be worth it for

silver. Hey, great point. That's what, uh, there's always a price pretty much for anything, but I always like to point out there's a time frame, there's a time period. Now, opening up Russia to trade, that would be a huge influx of supply. But I would suspect that would be a huge boon to the economy, which be an extra demand for silver as well.

But also remember other precious metals and rare earth minerals and metals can be used instead of silver. So if silver triples and prices and these other metals stay the same, they could be substituted. But the thing is, platinum and palladium and a lot of these others are also going up 50, 60, 100 plus percent a year in the last year. So it's not just silver and not just gold either. Here, real quick, right now recycling is about 30% of the supply. I asked if, in its estimate, if silver price went up to $250, then they think recycling or pretty much silver that's already out of the ground, that would be melted down, could rise to 50% of supply, which would be, so that'd be a lot, but that, I don't know how long that would last. That's a one-way trip as well.

So I honestly, I inherited instead of silver dining wear right silverware sitting in like boxes that are like you know from great grandparents you know handed down right just just family family heirloom right but it's at some price you know it's going to be time to send those in they're not 100% silver right they're silverware so you eat with them they're alloyed. But, you know, the prices that you're talking about, those things are coming out of the attics. Those are getting sent in and being turned into cash. Now, keep in mind, I have numbers going. So I actually analyzed silver demand and supply from the year 2000 to the year 2025. And then I did my projection go forward. silverware in the year 2000 about 300 million ounces of silver was used in silverware about 1,000 million ounces or 1 billion ounces were used in jewelry worldwide so 1 billion ounces

of silver in jewelry in that was actually over a five year period my so it'd be 200 million sorry i guess what i'm trying to say here though i'm looking at the increase in demand of electrical components from the year 2000 to the year 2025 that was up about 1.4 billion so all of all the jewelry that was uh created in the last 25 years you could just pretty much pour that all into electronics in terms of the amount of new electronics that's being made plus the jewelry will continue to be made or people just won't buy any more silver jewelry and it'll just only go to AI chips I mean that seems just as realistic funny enough though the demand for silver barges up by a factor of eight how about that from a hundred million ounces

to 800 million ounces that's probably the biggest jump right there yep anything else you want to welcome the new year in on the topic of silver bend I mean, it's been a great use and kind of use case of AI plus my own research techniques to jump into the supply and jump into the demand. I'm still very confident that silver is going up, up, up, but that doesn't mean, you know, sell the farm to buy some. We have some folks in chat right now saying they think it's going to go, you know, 60, 80, 100 plus dollars. It's already past 60. Hey, I still think if you don't have any, you might be able to scoop some up if there is a depression or some sort of bank holiday. But I also, you know, remember silver drop pretty much got cut in half during COVID.

Went down to like $12 an ounce at one point. So, yeah, get off. zero and get some physical silver in your hands as soon as possible, but on the other hand, you know, be ready. There might be, might be a sale to have, you know, be had and have some powder ready, dry powder. Yeah, well, different levels, right? If you look, if you're prepping for 30 plus day or maybe even multi-month, multi-year real collapse scenario, then what silver is worth now isn't necessarily that important. what silver can do then is what's important and I think large ounce bars in that scenario you you know a 10 ounce bar today in that scenario that that that object might be you know you might not want that such a big increment right it'd be you wouldn't be able too much with it and it'd be it would be risky to do something with it you know what I mean for sure it's uh

Wow. Hard to transport and easily found with x-rays and whatnot, especially if you have ounces and ounces of it. It'd be too valuable. It could be, you know, in a complete collapse disaster situation. That's like holding $25,000 of Fiat today, right? You can't break it. Smaller pieces of silver actually seem like a good prep to me, you know, literally a quarter ounce. like the quarter it might be a smarter piece to hold yes that junk silver i believe before 1964 90% 90% silver and it just looks you could hide it in plain sight in your house just have some crappy pennies in there and then throw your real silver in there they'll just think it's dimes and nickel you know dimes and quarters i don't think nickels but anyway uh hey a dollar 25 minimum wage so a silver dollar in a quarter back in 1964 that would be equal to like 60 bucks an hour now so should minimum wage actually be 60 bucks no i'm not saying what minimum wage should be 60 dollars but i am saying the value of the dollar sure has gone to crap since the mid 60s if uh you know a dollar 25 minimum wage had 60 dollars or more of silver and today's dollar That's kind of crazy.

So move it to contemporary news that is somewhat related, I'd say. Have you caught wind that the Trump administration is playing a $250 Trump bill? I thought I saw something else. But no, I did not see a Trump bill. $250 Trump bill. The 250 for the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. With him on one side and something's celebrating the 250th anniversary on the backside. And I don't, I'm pretty sure he can't do it without a law.

Or he'll just go ahead and do it and cause people to sue. That might be news that we're talking about this year. I was going to say, you need to do it, $100, you know, the $250 is a new $100 bill. So it does make sense from that point of view. But I don't know if it's good marketing for him. Everyone makes fun of the Zimbabwe like billion dollar bill. If we do see some bad inflation, hyperinflation, and it might have Trump's name right on it.

Everybody thinks like you and me does. Not everybody. Everybody out there and wide, you know, broader, broader public, vast majority of them don't have any idea what you're talking about with the Zimbabwe million dollar bill. They don't know what it means. They don't know why. They would, even if they explained to them,

they wouldn't necessarily even begin to understand why that would, you know, be, be a problem for them here. Now, if the Trump $250 bill someday ends up being what you need to pay for to eat at McDonald's, then everybody will know. But it's to be pretty late by that. for all of our say let's hope that's not the case uh so this is just a proposed thing or he's going to go forward with it i i don't even know i might just be kind of just trolling it out there to get get people you know upset and reacting negatively it's hard to tell these days

i'll give you that not as bad as trump coin so we're going to jump into predictions but there's also You know, just massive fraud being uncovered in Minnesota, Maine, Ohio. It's just probably the tip of the iceberg, just daycare centers that aren't even, like, real getting checks. What's your thought on, you know, what's transpired in the last week and where this ends up going? A lot of, a lot of empty buildings. and P.O. boxes getting millions and millions of dollars. Are there a few in there that didn't get the fair shake,

or maybe they really were doing something, and maybe, but not would you have like 50 of these, and multiple independent investigators find in very similar, very similar stories and really just fraud. So I just want to see people actually go to jail. You know, I want to, I want them to do it the right way through the court of law and have, you know, I don't want a witch hunt. But if no one's going to jail for 20 plus years for stealing millions of dollars, then they got away with it is how I look at it. So we'll see if there's arrests and people actually go to jail or they get off on some sort of technicality or some George Soros DA throws the case, right? some judge says actually we're just going to let him go

slap on the wrist that would be pathetic but that's kind of what I expect unfortunately that's almost inevitable in many cases but there's going to be some big enough that federal charges there'll be scapegoats for this pretty sure yeah I

I don't commit any financial fraud but I guaranteed if I tried to even steal $20,000 of charity money. My ass would be in the slamer. Let's just say that. Yep. What do you predict for this year?

Oh, man. I got a lot of predictions. You want to just start going from top to bottom? Well, why did we tell our audience, like, the main categories, and then we can just punch through each category. The goal is that we're going to call a percentage confidence level that it does happen, whatever the question is. Um, and if we're close, we're just going to take an average and if we're, we're pretty far apart, you know, a wide divergence between me and my co-host, then we're going to probably track those numbers and hold ourselves accountable at the end of, uh, the end of this year next December.

All right. Let's go ahead and make that happen in our categories, high level. Yeah. Yes. Dda-da-da-da-da-dum. Drum roll. We have. financial which you know that is kind of the mainstay of patriot power so financial related we have

precious metal and hard asset related which is similar to but separate we have geopolitics in war we have regime collapse so we name several regimes and we'll determine whether we think they'll collapse in 2026 domestic U.S. domestic whether that's Insurrection Act, National Guard, election unrest, et cetera. We have a few there. We have a couple wild cards. One surrounding a cyber attack.

You know, will it be a major cyber attack or internet outage? So we have 20. I think a few of these I might skip because they're redundant. So my guess is I have about 15 that we've, we've talked a little bit about but we're also we haven't given any of our predictions we ran through the list high level but we don't know each other's thoughts quite yet um and i know you have a few and i have a couple other that aren't on this list so i'd say there's at least 20 let's do them let's do what category we're gonna do first let's start with make it simple at the top macro economic financial the u.s enters a recession in 2026 a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth we'll call that real growth so let's just do yes or no u.s enters a recession in 2026 uh yeah for a yes what what percentage would you put that 10% yes that happens okay i'm putting it at a 15 i think a little higher but that's

pretty close i think there's still could be a chance something that comes out all right but not much so the consensus average percentage is 12 and a half for that one recession in 2026 lock it in 12.5% chance of a recession in 20206 uh do you want to expand upon your answer at all uh i feel like i should go lower but if there's a major bank collapsing tonight that we don't know about there's certainly enough time left in the year for us to get a get that kind of negative growth so got to be at least 10% probably for me that's how I looked at it too we're not on any trajectory for a negative quarter of growth at this time but uh you know a bear stern's failure like in 2007 2008 Lehman brothers or another COVID or some side

a major terror attack right if major terror attack anything like that could lead to potential it of course the banking crisis too so i 12.5 percent consensus is pretty good i think that's fair um hopefully it's lower but there you go 12.5 how about this currently the federal reserve rate is at about 3.5 percent in the next 12 months what's the chance that they cut it from 3.5% to 2.5%. Pretty much 100 basis point cut in the next 12 months. What's the chances of that? Or more.

I'm 50-50 on that. It depends on who Trump gets in as a Fed chair. Remember, we got other Fed governors under pressure and one that was fired, but still awaiting adjudication. So if Trump's able to pack that Federal Reserve Board, the voting members of the FOMAC, he could get it below two and a half this year. I think that's, I'm going to put it, you know, I think 50% is a great consensus. I was going to say maybe a little higher, but I think 50 is good.

In fact, looking at Pauley Market right now, The implied odds of Polly Market is that by April, there's a very good chance we'll be at least halfway to what we would need. You know, again, if we need a hundred basis point cut from now till December, well, Polly Market currently says there's a very good chance. We'll get half of that in only one third of the year. So, very, very strong chance there. And if there is some sort of terror attack or banking crisis or COVID 2.0 or any of that type of stuff, I really do expect massive cuts. So actually, I'm going to raise mine to 60%, which would make our consensus 55. You cool with that?

Yeah, consensus average percent chance on the cutting of the Federal Reserve rate below 2.5% is we're going to. We'll go with 55% this year. Yep, 55% consensus. A little bit better than a coin flip. We definitely think they're going to try to cut pretty aggressively, too. How about this? U.S. national debt to exceed $40 trillion. If 2026 had the exact same deficit as last year, 2025,

then the national debt will be like $40,000. point two trillion at the end of the year so we need a decent cut in spending and or decent improvement in revenue or both really or else national debt will exceed 40 trillion do you think we'll be able to slow the rate of debt or do you think national debt will exceed 40 trillion what's the chance that the debt will exceed 40 trillion well before i make that uh percentage prediction. I would say what we just talked about, right? If rates are cut below two and a half percent, that is bringing down the annual interest paid on the on the debt a bit. Maybe drops in the bucket in the long term, but on this particular question, over under on the 40, that that

numbers right in the middle, right? If we keep the same rate, we're going to, if you keep the same rate we're going to actually supersede it so we'll you know tariffs will those come in and have a massive revenue bonus to the government and then there's a lot for curve Ben right pulling back on the tax rates which they did do with the bill last year you know bringing it back over the curve that that actually could generate a lot of revenue so that's you've picked a number here 40 trillion that's really close to, you know, is it going to be over that or under that? I think it's over it. I think we're going to pass it. But I'm only about 60% confident that we will. Okay. I'm going to go with 70%. So let's just make our consensus, 66, 2 thirds, what do you say? Sounds right. All right,

two-thirds, 66.66666667. I feel like there might be a chance for tax revenue to go up from growing and just from underlying inflation, the dollar's worth less. I just don't see them cutting or even managing spending, even if they've cut out some of the corruption, which is awesome. There's just so much spending. and I just don't see the spending stopping. So I think, yeah, pretty good chance.

Our consensus, two out of three chance will end up above $40 trillion. On this note, can I throw in a bonus prediction real quick? Go for it. It's not even in this category, but it's related to what you're talking about. What's your percent chance that yes or no, the U.S. government will go unfunded and shut down this year. for more than 10 days. How many days is it go?

Was it 10 unfunded and shut in 25? It was longest ever was last fall at 40-something, 43 days. Okay. So we'd only need 10 days of what happened for 40-plus days last year. In that case, I'd say that's 80% chance. Yeah, I'm going 90%. We can go 85%. consensus on a shutdown.

I think we're going to get at least a 10 day shutdown or 10 days worth. They might fund it and have it shut down and do three more days and shut down. We're going to get 10 days of shutdownedness. And I think it's come at the end of January or February, but we'll make it for the year. I think that chance is strong. Not to derail your macroeconomic finance predictions. Let's continue. no that was a great one that would be big for the briars score and i think it's kind of contrarian so

if we hit that with that confidence we'll definitely outperform any of our peers um all right last one for macro i mean we have some precious metals and stuff but in terms of actual macro what we've talked about a lot already today will a top 10 bank either either fail or be forced to sell to another bank pretty much be acquired or merged because it was going to fail or be bailed out where it still has the name city bank or Bank or Bank of America or whatever but it takes on billions and billions or even trillions will a top 10 bank collapse or be taken over or be bailed out future Dan what's your chance on that well you know if If that repo news wasn't showing up since yesterday,

yeah, that's near-term kind of a bias, a recency bias. I'm liable to fall into it if I put this number too high. This number is already, like, on a constant basis, you know, a solid 25% every single day, right? Like any of these things could, you know, it's just a bunch of human beings and they make the wrong decisions and they collapse their bank and everything falls with it,

I mean, bare sterns, right? So it can happen again. I don't want to fall prey to the recency effect, though. So I think in this year, I'm going to stick with 25. I'm going to stick with the baseline of, that's pretty much always liable to be happening

at a 25% chance. I think in the current environment we're in, that's the right way to put it. It's the baseline floor is 25%. One out of four. four years, you know, on average, you could expect one of these huge banks to fail. Now, the question is, how come one of these has not failed? I would say that this is where it comes.

It's difficult to say, did this actually trigger the clause or did this qualify or not? But if you remember, the collapse was Silicon Valley Bank and signature bank and a few others, if those had not been all intents and purposes bailed out helped out fixed controlled failure if that had not happened then we would have had a top 10 bank fail but they nipped it at the but at the regional level so it did not get to that level so I guess to be strict that would not have been considered a top 10 bank but that's everything's so connected these days And, of course, there's been so many small and medium-sized banks that have literally been swallowed up by the big fish in the last 30 years. Well, I'm going to say 25%, and let's just stick with that as the consensus.

I think 25% chance that there's a bailout or a collapse or a failure or a forced merger of a top 10 U.S. Bank. I think that's right. I will say last year we were much lower. I think we were only 10%. I think we only said 10 or 15% last year, which is, doesn't sound normal for us to say that. But I think we had good reason to think last year it wouldn't happen. But now I think there's more and more chance every year almost. I definitely forecast this same prediction a year from today is higher.

2027, the chances of that and that, that starts to smell of a controlled demolition to me. Okay. Maybe that floor goes up a few percent. until it's almost like a 50% chance by 20, 28. Yes, you know, bring about the ultimate demise of the entire MAGA movement. Somebody who's in control of banks might be interested in that. I would think so, to say the least. Now, that's mostly what we had for regional banking, national debt.

let's head right into metals metal prices and throw some Bitcoin in there because Bitcoin rough 2025 down for the year right now Bitcoin's standing at about $89,000

it hit a high of about 125K here's the question will Bitcoin have a huge bounce back year and trade above 200k not end that 200k or higher but just reach 200k or higher in 2026 what's your chance percent chance yeah probably 30 percent chance oh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna stick with that i was actually possibly can go a little lower i was thinking about 25 but now that i think in

Bitcoin is so volatile, both good and bad. I think it's a 30% chance is a good shot. So 30% chance consensus that Bitcoin at least touches 200K. What about below 70K? That's not very far from here. Yeah, that one much higher. I would go 85. Woo.

85. I'm going. I do. expand on it you know it's if some of these dominoes start to fall together right a bank collapses it the chance of you know bitcoin going under 70 is 95 98% chance right but but then that would be temporary then also you know later rebounding and breaking past 200 i'd move it up from 30 to you know a 70% chance that's what i predict is the bank system starts to come apart as it seems the big money players have to sell their

Bitcoin to cover their losses the price plummets and then after that it bounces back and goes to the moon I see that scenario but right now it's a pretty good chance you get under 70 from where it is I think you laid that out quite well I'm gonna say 50% chance it touches 70k or lower you had 85 I think we might have to have split on that one yeah let's split that one yeah so this is not a consensus percentage confidence level we're going to split on the the boundaries of bitcoin in a big way all right I will say it's still quite a high chance that 50 I'm I am bearish on it but I for the same reason you just said that I can see it go below 70

and then skyrocketing to 200 all by the end of the year potentially or doing the opposite having a great first half and then we have a huge crisis and it drops a whole bunch so stay nimble stay on your toes sell high by low hold on your ass people precious metal prices we've talked a lot about silver let's just go with it silver in 2026 silver trades above $75 an ounce well it's at 72 86 right now it's up almost a dollar since we've been on the air him i hit 75 bucks by tonight uh but it hasn't hit 75 bucks do you think you know what's the chance it goes above 75 bucks it but it was like last week so perhaps we should lift that ceiling because that that might that might be a hundred percent chance i would say it's like a 90 plus percent so how about we go up to trade above a hundred bucks make it round okay yeah well we Will we break $100 an ounce on silver in any market, Comex? How do you want to measure that?

Oh, good question. ComX spot? I guess that's the most accepted price. I almost want to say what is American Silver Eagle worth on, like, on some bullion site. But no, we'll use just the Comax. yeah i think i think breaking a hundred is uh better than better than 50 percent chance maybe maybe 55 for me all right i would put it at about 65 so you want to do a consensus of 60 yeah yeah that sounds right all right 60 percent chance that it trades above a hundred

dollars hey that's pretty bullish uh how about gold gold's at 4300 to you want to up to 5,000 yep to get it to about 5 grand that would be you know 20 plus percent increase this year doable but holy cow it seems like 5,000 so much but what's your what's your percent chance on 5,000 for gold yeah um I think I think pretty much the same, 60, 65% chance. Yeah, I was going to go with 60 actually as well. Silver has massively outperformed, and the gold and silver ratio has come much more into line historically. Silver was so undervalued compared to gold, especially like four or five months ago when gold was above four grand, but silver was still like 40 bucks.

It was like a hundred to one ratio. We're seeing, I think, like, 80 to one right now. And if we did get $100 silver and gold at $5,000, that would narrow it even more to $50 to $1. Some people think the, well, I won't go too much on a diatri, but the natural relationship could be 10 or 15 to 1, meaning silver should be going up 3 or 4x compared to gold, or maybe, uh,

gold needs to drop in value a lot compared to where it is not sure i mean it could go either way but both you and i think there's like what we're going to say 60 percent chance that gold above five grand and 60 percent chance that silver above 100 what's what's the biggest divergence in you know either of our lifetimes right in living memory yeah like like what one to 50 is going to be historical average in that time frame or what gosh i think we were just went through one of the highest of all time but 150 is pretty low compared to what it's been in the last like last 25 years um this is a great question i need to go go look at it i i think kind of long-term average is like that 60 to 1 50 to 60 but it's been in ancient times it was like 12 to 1 because like

for a lot of reasons, but the amount of silver in the crust of the earth compared to the amount of gold is like a 12 to what ratio. So how the hell did it become 100 to 1? Because the banksters are playing games with all the paper. Or just people naturally prefer

gold more. That too. Especially for jewelry and for monetary. I mean, the central banks all have gold. They don't have silver for a reason. But silver is the people's money, not the king's money. for a reason.

I'm going to actually try to, out of all, this is what I like about Chad GPT. I've already done all the research. I got many, many sources and all the types of information. Now I can search through that very quickly, and I'm going to see if, in the data I have, plus allow it to go find more, give the long-term silver-to-gold ratio

in table and graph format. We'll try to answer that. Yeah, you keep moving. since world war two since breton woods since the modern financial order that'd be what that would that would make sense to me to look at since 45 perfect we'll look for that we'll look at that it's churning and burning in the back and i know i've seen some graphs and articles on this over the many years and past but very interesting to watch how it reacts um and how it's looking now with this huge price movement all right i think we've hit gold to silver

Bitcoin. Let's see. Do I have anything else on that? I don't think so. Where was it? Yeah, anything else you had on gold, silver, Bitcoin, or anything else? Financial, really. No, no. I think we're good there. I think geopolitical includes those regime collapses. They're a special kind of geopolitical. They'd be like real pivot points in the history of certain countries but maybe we can do the geopolitical person look at those regime collapses as that category at the end all right let's make that happen you want to get started on them yeah what do you got regime collapse we're going to start with Venezuela well do we want to define what a regime collapse is first let's build up to those yeah yeah the current government

it falls and so it's not just it's not like the second in command takes over and everything continues that's not a collapse it's a full-on regime the entire regime collapsing death yeah change of government in the cases that we're talking about you know it'd be a change to you know a republic that votes probably all right and maybe i misheard you because i was trying to multitask poorly you said you want to do the regime last yeah make that the culmination because that those are okay those are pretty serious events if they happen this year right right well i think the first part of geopolitics war etc then would be questions and predictions we've made in the past just doing it again starting with ukraine

Seasfire in Ukraine formal ceasefire in Ukraine in 2026. What do you think? Yeah, it's higher than last year only because the Russians are taking territory and eventually the regime in Kiev is going to just have to take what remains. So probably it's about 50% chance this year. Okay. maybe even a 75% chance the peace talks have been going on for a really long time there's all kinds of settlements that are you know already agreed to in principle it's the you know very specific issues and i imagine that has to do with where the you know the actual DMZ is drawn right the militaries on both sides are going to you know be be fighting to have the

the most advantageous, you know, pieces of land to defend, right? Look how, look how Korea ended, right? Lots of negotiations, lots of, you know, back and forth until finally, you know, the guns fell silent. And in that time frame, there's, you know, a lot of fierce fighting to get, you know, just control one other piece of high ground or, you know, the benefit of the defense of one other, you know, stretch of river before it actually ends. pretty high you think you're going with 80 it seems to me ukraine's bled dry 75 okay

I might uh I was thinking lower than that but you're kind of convinced me to go higher so I'm just going to tell you go with the consensus of 75 I don't hope I'm not being too too hopeful I think I was too pessimistic early on

I'm not saying I'm not going the other way around I'm not saying a ceasefire holds forever it can be broken pretty damn quickly if they get to the negotiation where both militaries are for any amount of time trying to do a ceasefire

this is a 75% chance of that if you ask me what is the chance that within a week of that the ceasefire is broken, that's greater than 50% chance, too. Okay. That's, I think that that's almost two scores. Do you think we should bifurcate that? Do you want to?

Uh, I think I just did. I take this 85% chance of a ceasefire and a 50% chance that if there's one achieved, it'll break. Nice. I'm going to go, I don't know if we needed to do a consensus or a split. say 75 and 50 so a little bit less that it happens but also the 50 50 that it breaks so that's good that's good I better than we were this time last year or certainly three or four years ago in retrospect hopefully it won't be too high and false but that's what we do this for how about China initiating kinetic action against Taiwan

5%. 5%. Hmm. They don't have what it takes to do that, and they've watched Ukraine. And they may want to, you know, keep their military satisfied, and the hardliners in the military and their population, you know, well aware that the potential exists of them trying to do it. They're not going to try to do it.

it would it would it would go to world war three it wouldn't there wouldn't be way to stop it it would snowball and they're not ready to fight world war three with us all right i'm gonna put that at 10% but i like the 5% reasoning uh but i guess i was thinking of more of uh a blockade or they you know sink a vessel and hopefully that wouldn't lead to full war maybe it would though but yeah well look at you know look at the Cuban missile crisis

look at the amount of nukes that went into Cuba look at the amount of firepower that was going to be levied against Cuba and listen to all the people that were involved back in the day saying that

none of them knew how to stop just just a you know shooting at a Soviet ship just how you stop that from or or you're bombing an airfield in Cuba or missile site in Cuba, how does that not immediately spiral into World War III, just full exchange of nuclear weapons? They didn't know how to stop it.

Nothing's changed since then. We still don't know how to stop it once it starts. That's why it's pretty much unthinkable to the continuing existence of the regime in Beijing and the regime in Moscow and the regime in Washington, D.C., how do those organizations continue to exist? They took the chance of, you know, unloading those weapons on each other. It's been a pretty stable, you know, equilibrium there since the 60s.

I don't see that breaking. If anything, we have capabilities that, you know, make our chances of being successful. in this regard even greater than ever before an amphibious invasion of Taiwan I mean everybody going there's really really badly exposed while they try yeah something like that I would put less than a couple percent chance but in terms of some sort of strike on a vessel or some sort of limited exchange I I think I'll put that at 10 percent still. In reality, maybe.

It may be even higher in reality, but the other part of that reality, because of everything else I spoke about, because there's giant domestic populations, if it happened, it's going to be absolutely classified. Every government involved is going to hide it.

We had lethal encounters with the Soviet Union in the air along the border with the Soviet Union. for that entire time. We're only beginning to learn about some of them after the, you know, 50 or 60 years later when they're declassified. That's how destabilizing an event like that would be.

No one could just, you know, we can't shoot down and kill a Russian pilot and just say, oops, and they'll be like, yeah, no problem, forget about it. It would be private. It would be very private if it happened. well in 2025 we saw strikes on iran a question here is middle east war expands to include a new state actor this is one we didn't talk about i don't know if you want to modify this or how you want to handle the middle east but sounds interesting so so you talk about a new belligerent that wasn't fighting in the middle east last year and who would that be at least at least openly right because they're You know, pretty much everybody's at war clandestinely. Saudi Arabia, right?

Okay. It could be Turkey in a war with someone that we didn't expect. But there's a lot of variables to this, so I'm not sure how you do it. Yes, no confidence vote. Right. That's what we didn't really smooth out on this one. It's a good subcategory, but we've got to turn it into something actionable and measurable. And that would be a new Mideast war.

Two sovereign states that war with each other in the region of Southwest Asia, right, to include Egypt, I guess. So what's the chances of that in 2006? Yeah. In that region, it's high. So at least 50% every single year. From my perspective, that place is going to take a very long time to settle down and not be warlike. I think it's a less than a 50% chance that that will happen in my life. I guess a new stay actor is the question,

and it would have to be public and outwardly, not clandestine type of stuff going on. Because I'm sure Saudi Arabia and Turkey's already got some stuff going on. But, you know, if they're actually doing full-on airstrikes openly, that would be new um hmm i'm going to just defer to you on this one i it's a tough one to judge yeah 50% chance there's going to be another big new war in the middle east this year that's what that's what i'm willing to say it's safe safe to say is at least a half a chance it it may or may not involve israel it may or may not involve iran

It may or may not involve Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, or it will. It's the Middle East. Always a high chance that somebody's going to need to be fighting with each other there. And that's why it's hard to kind of put a number on it because I feel like, probably every state actor already is part of the quagmire over there, but we're going to look to make it more of a distinct judgment. This will be a judgment call. at the end of the year to say if we won or not if we if we were correct or not you were correct you were the only one that made the real prediction here you want to go higher or lower than 50

with me i mean trump would argue that he's going to get it down to very low chance right he wants to bring peace to the middle east it's definitely an objective of the president i find it so hard to just define it i feel like they're already all at war at billy's every state actor almost even China but not literally dropping bombs so it's just how you define it I guess yeah it's spectrum of war there's low

intensity mid intensity high intensity and Middle East is one of those regions where low intensity warfare is the clandestine level is constant right that's like the hunter I guess we'll consider this high intensity

50% chance high intensity of a new state actor not just Israel hitting Iran again or something. Okay. So if you start to talk about high intensity conflict, now you're talking about tank armies and navies, right, full conventional warfare, right? Okay. That, you know, if you're going to define it that way, I'm not sure it's a 50%. Okay.

But, but mid intensity with special forces and air forces, then, you know, yeah, at least a 50% chance. interesting you're removing the non-state actors from the equation too the giant part about the war in the middle east is so many non-state factions right yeah exactly that that are they're not they're not in charge of any territory per se but they're bringing the war so right that's kind of what i was thinking as well exactly exactly what else we got geopolitically Now we're on the regime collapse aspect, unless you had a couple more categories. This is our inaugural prediction on certain tyrannies on Earth ending in 2026.

And the last time we saw that happen in a big, big wave was 89, 90, 91 with the fall of the, you know, the Warsaw Pact and eventually the Soviet Union itself. we see some long-term tyrannies come apart now the the ripest apple to fall from the tree is venezuela don't you think i would expect i think iraids got to be right up there but venezuela's got to be more ripe or more rotten perhaps but venezuela and iran are both up up there because of news tonight that isn't necessarily directly dangerous to us so it's not on the heat map dashboard right so it doesn't doesn't become part of that segment of the show but there are our reports tonight that the government is facing mass protests protesters overtaking you know government sites military sites across the country so the the regime in Tehran is not clearly empowered tonight now this is new Just a few days ago, you know, chance of Venezuela falling this year, especially under the pressure that it's facing now from Trump, I would have said that was higher.

But current events in Iran, at least right now, make it seem like Iran's right up there as well. Yeah, I got a feeling Venezuela and Iran both above 50% chance they collapse. What do you put in a mat? Ooh. Ooh. So, well, Well, because there's two other countries we're going to put on this, you know, in these

predictions, and that's going to be Cuba near Venezuela, and it's going to be North Korea, right? If you look at those regimes, right, those are Cold War relics, right? Those are Soviet satellite states, right? So, you know, they have an entrenched tyrannies, dictatorships for many, many, many decades, right? And it's family-based, right? So it's not pure socialist, Marxist, communist Marxists. It's kind of this feudal socialism, you know, tyranny that you got in those two states.

But as well, much newer, right? Chavez gained power in 1999. And Iran, you go back to 79, right? 20 years further back. So it's almost as though the, you know, the chances of any of these become free, cast off their dictatorships

is in direct relationship to how long those regimes have been solidifying their power. I see that on the extreme with North Korea for sure. I would say they got 5% or less

chance. I think only if China gets pissed at them would they otherwise they're protected. China's protect North Korea and as you said they're been around the longest or one of the longest. of the four yeah okay so i'm going to go 10 percent we can do a combined seven and a half percent on north korea okay regime falling in 2026 how about cuba a little bit more maybe 15 i would say it is the highest it's been since the cuban missile crisis right now

because everything on the news is talking about how the massive u.s. Navy Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Special Operations, Air Force presence in the Caribbean is locking down Venezuela, going after their drugboats, going after the sanctioned oil tankers. But in order to put that in place, that fleet, those forces, they are absolutely surrounding Cuba right now. And the Secretary of State's family fled that, tyranny. Don't make a mistake. Marco Rubio's

pointing a finger at Venezuela, but that's not the only regime. He'd like to knock off this year. That's where you put that one at. The castros are old. I'm not even studied up on, you know, is there any young leadership that's going to be

there when, you know, they're, you know, Fidel died, but Raoul and, you know, the children, how, How stable is that? I don't know. I don't know. It's a big secret right now.

I know it's talking about it, right? When it's not being talked about it, it might be in total play right now. I'm going to go with 30% chance Cuba. That regime falls this year. And how about if Venezuela falls? Is it pretty much guaranteed Cuba does too? They are almost linked or what do you think there? No, Cuba's linked to Russia.

Can Russia just show up and resupply that regime with, whatever material it needs it's a it's a russian satellite state right but can russia really afford to support cuba with with the losses it's accepted in the last few years in ukraine right you know is there any benefit from putin's point of view of having cuba as a satellite anymore i mean they they they prefer it they'll support that regime up to a certain point. I don't think Russia is strong enough. And I don't know if China would step in and make, you know, support the Cubans to the very last. But I don't predict any kind of war with Cuba that that regime might collapse from within. It's rotten to its core. It's communist regime.

It has to happen someday. I hope to live to see it. And I think there's a 30% chance this year could be it. And I don't think that Trump doesn't know this. He's old enough, right? He's old enough. He watched Reagan. He was a kid when Kennedy was dealing with this, right? Like bringing freedom to Cuba, he would gladly have that on his resume. And I do a, there's a 50-50 chance that Maduro and his regime collapses in Venezuela this year. All right.

So we got 50-50 Venezuela. You said Cuba 30? I will, yeah. Okay. And I think you said, did we say 10% on North Korea? Yeah. And he ran. Did we do Iran? Did we? Yeah. So I would have thought if that regime came apart at the seams and collapsed, it would have been last summer. But they were in shock from just, they just couldn't believe that they'd gotten bombed like that.

Right. And, and, and the Israelis just went right after the senior leadership got as many of them as they could. So it could be a fact that, you know, it takes time, right? The consolidation or the failure to consolidate power, the motivation to stay in that Islamic regime or, you know, the building pressure to become a, you know, a different kind of society. I think the chances there are higher than Cuba, but lower than Venezuela, 45. I put it at 45. 45. I think 45 is good for Iran. The Venezuela, I'll go with yours as well. I think Cuba's less. I'll put it at 20, I guess.

So our consensus on Cuba would be a 25% chance that that common regime falls in 2026. Consensus of 25 on Cuba. And Venezuela, I just essentially tailed yours with Venezuela. well and iran and actually yeah how most of the iran regime was killed how did it not collapse i guess they are reforming or has collapsed in in real time right now they the Israelis didn't get most of them got got a big chunk of them but not most of them what do you think's the critical amount that they'd have to take out they obviously weren't able to do it i guess Well, they'd always have up and rising leaders that were, if there was spirit, if there was motivation, if there was belief that continuing the Islamic regime in the form that they've done since 1979, they can get endless amount of young people to rise up in the ranks if there's, you know, a belief system behind it.

But, you know, as we saw at the end of the Soviet Union, you know, by 1991, there was no belief there anymore. it just fell apart it just stopped being that way there was just no one that would lift the finger to save a way of life that had been so miserable for the people and i think all four of these regimes at some point are coming to that fate which ones come first and how fast is i guess the question way quicker than this time last year this might have been the biggest acceleration of any category in the last year or two That'd be the Trump effect, I would expect. I don't expect this to be happening if Kamala had one, for example. All right. Turn it domestically. You ready? Let's do it.

We've got a few more, and we'll wrap up the night. It's going to be a two-hour season opener, 2026 opener. I like it. Good motivation. Good way to start the year. All right, domestically. All right. right very specific insurrection act invoked policy commentatus suspended what's the

chance of that if 2006 is higher than it's been in a long time the reason of that some one of the headlines you ran tonight swallwell the congressman that was obviously in a honey trap with a Chinese agent and was never held to account, now running for the California governor, is campaigning on arresting federal officers. The first time any state attempts at is just handing the legal basis of a, you know, declaring insurrection on a silver platter to Donald Trump. And I think he, I think you take it. So I think that's greater than 50%.

I'll say 60% ahead of these. elections this summer that that some local official does something that yes that's that we have a lower level we have a state or local official who's actually in insurrection with the united states of government and its laws that i think it's at least 60% chance this year all right i'll stick with that we can make that the consensus 60% chance all it takes is one it takes is one dummy to make it truth. And then what happens after that? Do other states try to act up and continue to be an insurrection? And do they think they can go to court and have Trump's declaration of, you know, insurrection and the emergency powers that would that would come with that, right? Now we're

talking about, you know, United States Army active units on the streets, right? They could do that in West, in the district of Columbia, it's a federal district. Without suspending posse commentatists, you can't do that everywhere else. But it just takes the decision of the president to suspend it. After that happens, where do we go from there? That could be, you know, one of the cases this year for some serious trouble in conjunction with, you know, domestic rioting. well you took the next category right out of my hands domestic rioting this could be focused on

election related or otherwise we could split them or we can just say civil unrest how do you want to quantify it though that's the key yeah that's the key it's not really binary right it's like how much rioting before we were agreeing it's it was the riots of 2026 uh i'm open to suggestions on that but it can't be one night of looting in one city right that's that that happens pretty much every year somewhere i got an idea i'm going to have to run it through the system but i want to find out how much money the 2020 summer of love riots cost I think it was like $5 billion or more

so let's use that as the minimum level let me search this how much damage monetary damage was done and should just call the 2020 BLM George Floyd riots nationwide

yeah that that isn't a way to try to quantify it but it comes of problems right what if they haven't finished measuring it by the time the year ends I think if you have

you know a non-monetary it's a legitimate way to do it it's just it will lag right knowing those numbers there will only be estimates for the longest amount of time knowing when you know you could check the box to say yes that that constituted sustained writing

it might be hard but if we did something like the amount of nights that any major city of United States has police forces that are not in control of, you know, 99% of their territory, right? Big blocks on fire. Just, just crowds running amok without any control, right? That's pretty easy to grade whether you had that. I think the chances of that on a three-night sustained basis in two and more locations in 2026s, at least a 90% chance. There's going to be rioting this summer like that, I think. And nothing like that happened in 2025, right?

Or do you think, or do you think any activity? Oh, yes, it did. Oh, yes, it did with the ice facilities. Yeah, right. You know, that's why the, and in fact, the Marine Corps was brought out to, uh, Los Angeles to protect the federal facilities, right? So was that that was expansive enough to qualify, I guess, or I guess I got lost on the 99% of the territory or jurisdiction not being able under their control.

They could not, I guess, but they could not control the crowds near those facilities, those DHS ICE detention facilities in Portland, in in LA, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the crowds were on, you know, they're rioting, right? That's when, that's, you know, every time there's a protest, at some point the police look and it, you know, you know, they're not, it's not just, you know, a coin flip. There's, there's criteria that those police commanders use at a certain point when it's dangerous to the public because the police cannot control the crowd, the protest gets

declared, you know, an unlawful assembly. It, you know, in most cases, it descends completely into a, riot from there. We're going to have that. I'd say 90% chance that we have that three consecutive nights in two or more separate cities this summer at the same time among those cities. And George Floyd riots, you know, that was for seven to ten days across dozens of sites, right?

Right. So I'm doing like just a small type of thing. Yeah, I'd say we, around those ice. you know dhs ice facilities this summer we had the same thing happened last summer anyone who lived out west or knows about forest fires they'll say hey it's 5% contained it's 0% contained it's 50% contained often it's 0% to start so or 5% maybe that's why in terms of the rioting or that crowd was 0% contained for a while I could easily say than 90% on the lower

bound of what you were saying. Three days straight, more than one location. And it's kind of declared unlawful assembly, maybe arrests and violence. I think for a George Floyd level, let's look at this. You know, it was pretty much every

major city had something, but based on the numbers here, more than one billion in insurance claims paid. Of course, there's much more damage that was not covered by insurance or only partially covered etc so more than a billion dollars in insurance payouts um and half of that happened in Minneapolis St. Paul by the way and uh that's a little little side note I would say there's

I'm going to call it a one out of three chance that we hit in terms of dollar cost insurance claims we'll use that as the gauge 30% chance we have riots equal or worse in BLM yeah i mean think about this way the last time that trump is in power last summer that trump is in power before an election that you know a federal election there was rioting now he's not on the ballot directly this summer but you know bringing a bring him forward riots is it's in the playbook for sure if we have uh i mean there's a lot of reasons we could have these bank failures a lot of reasons we could have these wars a lot of reasons we could have these riots so you know each one might

only be a few percent but they keep stacking you know they're not they're not all exclusive of one another that's why we're preppers here at pb and guess what future dan that's about it on the predictions um i i think i have one more bonus maybe two more was there anything you wanted to throw in though no i got no more bonuses what's your bonus no more bonuses this could be a tough one to quantify but let's try to do it because i think it's worth it a major cyber attack disrupts u.s financial and or energy infrastructure define major great question let's let's start with energy infrastructure i'm thinking Power outages or massive refineries put down natural gas, gasoline, diesel, oil, electricity.

And like riding, how long would the outage have to occur? And how deeply and widely is the outage to qualify as major? Yeah. That's really tough to say. I, maybe let's start with at least 10% of the U.S. population affected directly? Well, affected how? Like, you lost power for an hour? Yep.

No, no, no. Well, we might have to like extend it to longer than one hour. But yeah, 10% of the nation loses electricity or internet for 72 hours or longer. grid goes down for 72 hours for 72 hours for at least 10% of the U.S. population. From cyber attack.

From cyber attack. Yeah. Boy, that'd be tough to do without also sabotage physically. Like straight up physical sabotage in conjunction with that. Right. I would have a lot higher number.

much more dangerous situation, right? It's a lot easier to attack that stuff physically and knock it out, right? Throw off cocktails into some, you know, you know, transformer lot. It is a better chance than cyber. So just cyber alone. I got to be stuck on just cyber. We don't have to, but for this question, I mean, we could have more questions. Well, we want to focus in on the risk of cyber.

in and of itself, I think the chances of a purely cyber attack that can succeed at that is like 20% or maybe that 15%. All right. I was going to put more of a 10% so.

Yeah. And if it's only for 72 hours. It's only for 72 hours. It's not going to resemble something in the movies. And I think you know, with the quantum can be computing. That's that's coming, right? There's a lot of research going into it, which is an entirely different technology

from artificial intelligence, although the two of them together could, you know, be for a revolution in computing that, you know, is pretty historic, right? We could be looking at machines and code that could do things, you know, several order of magnitude, you know, better than today just in a decade, right?

And part of that quantum computing push is the cryptography that would make everything virtually impossible to crack, right? It's going to be good for defense. It's going to be good for security. And, you know, in the history of warfare, and this is a domain of warfare, you know, offensive weapons and defenses,

it ebbs and flows right at different times in history different i think we're moving into a phase where cyber tax you talked about y2k earlier it never happened we've never had anything like that happened i think it's more of the realm of a plot of a of a of a hollywood thriller than reality and hopefully uh the system becomes more decentralized and more resilient as time goes on. I feel like it has. Internet's definitely more widely distributed than ever. Just look at Starlink by itself, satellite.

But in terms of like the entire grid going down from a cyber attack, I think that's very low. But in terms of some sort of disruption or major, you know, major supply chain hiccups that could affect everybody to lead to shortages or some cost. but not a total grid down, that might be my cop out. Now, the chances of the financial institutions using it as an excuse for having to take bank holidays, whether in reality they should have been able to defend it or if it ever really was a problem in the first place,

that's a different matter. That one could be a scapego when in reality there's absolutely no excuse for them to have not had everything, secured. Good point. It's kind of a black box. We don't know how compromise their system was or was not or at all. We'd have to kind of rely on them. Maybe some whistleblowers could come out eventually, but good point there for sure. Yeah, I know I've spoken to people that work at firms that do sub-security for banks. And I've heard the dollar-per-hour rates of some of the cybersecurity experts that banks will pay to have that kind of capability, right? We're talking about really smart people that are paid very, very well.

So I do not think we have a technical limit, and I do not think any of our geopolitical foes or private hackers have an edge against what could be the proper defense right now, right? but if the bank chose not to do it and the bank needed a way to have an excuse to bring about a reset oh maybe not in 2006 but the year after to you know bring down you know a political dynasty and lay mega out in history as a failure yeah sure watch out for the cyber attack wink wink i'll worry about it I won't really worry about the cyber attack at that point. I'll worry about what kind of shatters the banking system is in.

I'm going to be blaming them if they can't secure themselves in a cybersecurity perspective. That's a good way to put it. Benefit of the doubt has been used up any good or marginal case. I'm not giving the banksters any benefit of doubt. I'll tell you that. there's a lot of predictions in there it was a great piece of analysis on silver did educate me

really appreciate that and we're hitting it off on New Year's Day of 2026 and every broadcast it on New Year's Day so we're laying down the path to have a great year Patriot forecasting yes sir

another great one in the book gosh 331 our goal is to get 375 by end of the year 375 that would be 44 future Dan there we go all right another goal another prediction now this is the easy part we got to actually execute hopefully all you all have some great plans predictions resolutions whatever but don't forget you actually got to make them happen so we got some irons in the fire we're going to make happen i know pbn in general does so should be a great year good show ben we'll be back uh aiming for thursdays now but might be a little bit earlier in the week and uh that means we'll talk to you next thursday 8 p.m. on 7 or 8 p.m. we'll let you know on uh

public broadcasting network thank you to our audience have a great new year hey have a great new year as well catch you guys next week at the heart of self-reliance. Our sponsor, PackFresh USA features Made in America products. I shop PackFreshUSA.com for mylar bags and oxygen absorbers for my home food storage. But they do all kinds of products.

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