The Young Turks - Doom and Loom(er) - September 16, 2026

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Laura Loomer gets slammed for her past comments on 9/11. The Federal Reserve votes to raise interest rates. The Pentagon is revealing the scale of damage Iranian strikes inflicted on U.S. bases across the Middle East, with a watchdog report documenting hundreds of damaged or destroyed buildings and billions of dollars in equipment losses.  Meanwhile, Jared Kushner faces renewed scrutiny over his private business interests and role in U.S. diplomacy. Thanks to today's sponsors: Get 40% OFF the Ground News Vantage Plan when you sign up at ground.news/tyt Stay informed without the media spin at ground.news/tyt Visit www.sleep.me/tyt to get up to $255 off your Chilipad 2.0 with code TYT Use Code TYT for 20% OFF at TruDiagnostic.com Posting a job is easy at upwork.com Use less data, get paid by switching to Noble Mobile: https://go.tyt.com/getnoble For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/tyt Host: Ana Kasparian SUBSCRIBE on⁠⁠⁠ YOUTUBE⁠⁠⁠ ☞ ⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW US ON: ⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠  ☞  ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠TWITTER⁠⁠⁠  ☞      ⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠  ☞ ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠TIKTOK⁠⁠⁠  ☞ ⁠⁠⁠         https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks⁠⁠⁠ 👕⁠⁠⁠MERCH⁠⁠⁠  ☞⁠⁠⁠      https:/www.shoptyt.com⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome to TYT. I have the brain of a toddler when it comes to deciphering whether or not artificial intelligence really does pose a threat to the human race. So luckily, we will have an expert on the second hour of the show to speak to me like a toddler and explain exactly what's going on. I'm really looking forward to that interview because speaking to someone who actually knows about AI, its functions, the possibilities in the future is really important to kind of make sense of everything that's transpired in regard to AI over the last week. So I'm really looking forward

to that. In the first hour, we're going to check in on the Federal Reserve, see where we're at on the idea that maybe it makes sense to raise interest rates. Did the Fed raise interest rates? you're going to have to wait to find out. We're going to do that at the first hour. We'll also give you some cold hard truth about how damaged our military bases are in the Middle East. It's not looking good for the U.S. I think it's pretty obvious we have lost this war and we've lost badly. The real question is, will we be rebuilding those military bases?

We've got other updates to get to later on as well. Just as always, you want to support the show. easiest way to do it is to like and share the stream if you're watching us live. You can also hit the join button if you're watching us on YouTube and become a paying member. So you could be a paying member of the show both on YouTube or you can sign up on our website, tyt.com slash join. If you're interested in becoming a member that way, members help to keep our show afloat, especially during the trials and tribulations of being one of the few shows that are honestly willing to speak as candidly as humanly possible about what's going down in the Middle East, as you can imagine

that has made us a bit of a target. So without further ado, let's actually get started with something I had mentioned during our members only bonus episode yesterday, something that really irritated me, something that I didn't know about until a few days ago. And it has to do with some comments that were made by Laura Lumer. Take a look. I think I've given enough evidence and enough examples, maybe, just maybe, it's not such a great idea to allow for Muslims to be involved in our political process in America, maybe, maybe. But I guess, I don't know, maybe we need another 9-11 because I guess those clips right there and those people in their own words isn't going to be enough to convince the Democrats. Maybe we need another 9-11.

Hmm. I remember when current prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked about 9-11 right after it happened. And he said that 9-11 was very good. And then he caught himself. And then he said it would lead to more sympathy. October 7 certainly led to a lot of sympathy for the Israelis. And given the fact that Netanyahu had Intel from the head of the UAE warning him that an attack was coming and he ignored it, hmm, I wonder if he ignored it, knowing it was going to happen and just let it happen. But putting that aside and just focusing on what Laura Lumer said there, maybe America needs another 9-11.

So it appears that Israel's most vociferous defenders, people like Laura Lumer, think that in order for us to have the same headspace as the genocidal Israeli regime, well, we would need to suffer a terrible terror attack carried out. allegedly by Muslims. That would help us just draw the conclusion that all Muslims are unworthy, even if they're Americans, American citizens. We shouldn't allow them to be part of our democratic process. We shouldn't allow them to vote. But again, like, put all of that aside and just focus on what maybe America needs another 9-11 and no one cares. No one cares. I have heard about Hassan's statement about America deserved 9-11 a billion times. And as I've said, I said it yesterday during the bonus episode, I'll say it again today. I've never defended him on those comments.

Okay, you want to make a statement about how U.S. foreign policy leads to blowback? That's totally fine. I agree with that statement. And I think that's what he was trying to say. But when you say America deserved 9-11, there's a reason why he apologized after he said it. Because when you word it that way, it is deeply offensive. And honestly, it hides the true message of what Hassan was trying to say. But in the case of Laura Lumer, no one's given her even an ounce of grief after saying,

maybe America needs another 9-11, just so you guys hate Muslims enough to my liking. To my liking. Interesting. I mean, would the equivalent be me saying maybe our military needs another Liberty bombing, USS Liberty bombing. First of all, I would never say that. But secondly, how is it that she gets away with saying what she said? Does this sound like you? You're lying in bed and suddenly you realize it's 2 a.m. And you've been doom scrolling for hours. That late night doomscroll doesn't just wreck your brain. It spikes your internal temperature. And when you're

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The 2.0 upgrades include a quieter dock with a bigger tank, A premium cover that zips off for washing. And my favorite, the nightstand remote has a sensor that knows when you climb in and fires up your schedule automatically. Dual Zones lets you and your partner pick completely different temperatures and you both win. No subscription, just a two-year warranty and built in the USA. Visit www.sleep.m.me slash TYT to get up to $255 off your ChiliPad 2.0 with code TYT. That's www.swe.sleep.m.m.m.m. t-y-t. Free shipping, free returns, and a 30-night trial. So you can test it out, dream big, and wake up better. The headlines will still be there in the morning. You might as well wake up ready for them. Like the double standard is real. And in regard to the endless campaign to get Americans to think, like, our biggest issue and the number one thing we should be fearful of is,

Muslims in general, all Muslim, Islam, right? An entire religion, everyone who believes in that religion is super dangerous. Okay, did Islam drag us into a devastating war in the Middle East? Hmm? Is Islam slaughtering countless innocence in multiple countries as we speak? Did Islam take over 330 billion dollars? $30 billion in direct aid from us in order to carry out all sorts of atrocities throughout many decades. Did we spend $8 trillion to fight Islam's war? Or did we spend $8 trillion

dollars fighting Israel's wars? Did Islam carry out that attack against the USS Liberty? Like I just, are we occupied by Islam in the United States? Are our politicians heavily bribed by Islam? Did Islam run a child sex trafficking ring? And then the head of that child sex trafficking ring got away with murder. There's a huge cover up. Is that Islam's fault? I just, there is a very real campaign right now. And I want you guys to just be aware of it. And there's lots of reporting on this. DropSight was one of the outlets that reported on it last year. But last year, Israel decided, Look, we've got a PR problem because we're genociding people. We're committing genocide, ethnic cleansing.

We're openly talking about it while American media people and politicians try to gaslight their own citizens about what we are saying and doing in real time. Okay. So what can we do to clean up our image? We have trouble with our PR. So they hire a PR firm known as Stagwell. And Stagwell realized, you know, they did a bunch of studies and they realized, you know, it's going to be really hard, Israel, for people to love you or like you, considering what you're up to. But rather than focusing on getting people to like you, it would be better for Israel if we get more people to hate Muslims.

So let's focus on that. Let's roll out a propaganda campaign to make Americans and the West fearful of Muslims. That's going to work in your favor. And to be sure, what do you see day in, day out by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Laura Lumer? It's like the most brazen, Islamophobic garbage imaginable. Now flip that on its head and just change Muslim with Jew. It would be similarly disgusting, and we would call it out on this show as disgusting, but no one calls it out what it has to do with Muslims. Laura Lumer, who's a literal mental patient, spews the most vile statements about human beings in her quest to defend the atrocities of the Israelis.

And everyone's okay with it. Our democratic establishment is okay with it. They're far more concerned about Abdul al-Said accurately noting that U.S. foreign policy following 9-11 was a disaster. and did not help the United States at all. But, you know, he's the bad guy. Laura Lumer, untouchable, untouchable. But here's the thing, tables turn, things change. And while she might be flying high right now thinking she's untouchable,

you ain't going to be untouchable for every home girl. You're just not. Okay, your benefactors, your Trump administration, not going to be in power forever. So what happens to you when you lose all that stuff? support from the people who are providing cover for you right now. You should ask yourself that because I promise you the chickens always come home to roost. Always, always. Anyway, let's move on to some other news. Let's talk about the Federal Reserve. Oops. All right, so big news today out of the

Federal Reserve, although if you've been watching this show or paying attention to financial markets and inflation, you would expect what happened. So economic experts had predicted that the Federal Reserve was likely to increase interest rates today, that Kevin Warsh, Trump's hand-picked Fed chair, despite all the pressure he's experiencing from Trump to lower interest rates, would have no choice, but to increase interest rates. And guess what? That's exactly what happened today. That is what was announced by the Fed, they have decided to increase interest rates. So the 12 member board actually voted unanimously to raise interest rates. And that's actually the first time a unanimous decision like this has been made since July of

2023. And this is the first time the Fed has increased the interest rate since 2023 or since the last three years. So the Fed's target range for interest rates is now between three point. and 4%. And they increased the rate by 25 basis points. So the consumer price index rose at an annual rate of 3.4% in August, far above the Fed's 2% annual target. Okay, so what does that mean? So the Federal Reserve is tasked with keeping inflation under control. And this unelected body of individuals, they don't have too many tools in their toolbox. One of their tools is to like monkey around with the interest rate. So when you increase the interest rate, what that translates to is higher costs in borrowing, which means you're going to have less people either qualifying for loans or less demand for loans because of

higher interest rates. That is the point. So it could also lead to higher unemployment. and with consumers having less buying power, that could potentially lower the inflationary experience we're having right now. Now, here's the only problem with that thinking. Okay, if everything else was going splendidly, that might work, although things are not going splendidly.

If you take a look at why we have inflation to begin with, it has to do with the energy shortage. It has to do with the ongoing war against Iran, which has a lot. unfortunately spread into something much more disastrous and much bigger. It has spread in the region. So now you have Ansarala, otherwise known as the Houthis in Yemen, controlling the Bab al-Mendab Strait. They are allowing the transit of vessels without interruption, with one exception though.

That one exception is Saudi Arabia. And as we all know, Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer. We also know that the East-West pipeline or the pumping station specifically have been damaged or destroyed, and that's going to take months to fix. And that's the pipeline that the Saudis were relying on to kind of bypass closures and disruptions in the strait of hormones. So any way you cut it, the fact of the matter is we have a shortage of oil. And on top of that, as J.P. Morgan had noted for their investors, for their shareholders, there is going to be an issue with food-related inflation, certainly in the first quarter of the next year,

because we rely on the Strait of Hormuz to transit one third of the world's fertilizer. So obviously, lack of supply in fertilizer means it's more difficult for our farmers to grow things. For the farmers who do manage to get their hands on the fertilizer, it's obviously far more expensive because of limited supply. And those costs will be transferred on to you. So when I say that the Federal Reserve has limited tools in their toolbox, That's what I'm talking about. Sure, they can increase interest rates. But increasing the interest rates does nothing to solve the foundation, the fundamental issue that's actually leading to inflation in the first place. So what else? What else does this mean? Basically, the Fed had to act, right? They had to act in order to bring down inflation. But the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates at least one more time this year.

And as of producing the story, President Trump hadn't responded to any of this yet, but my understanding is he did say something recently. So Trump basically continues to demand that the Federal Reserve lower the interest rates in angry posts following hike. So here's what he said. I'm going to read it verbatim. If we stop trading with every country that we have a deficit with, which is most of them, okay, just bear with me, which is most of them, which is most of them, We would make at least $1.5 trillion a year. How does that make any sense? The word deficit, he says, is nothing more than a fancy word for loss.

No. Deficit means actually Trump is the king of deficit. Deficit is the deficit, the deficit, like, does explode typically under Trump. That just means you are spending more than you're bringing in with revenue. So Trump likes to do the tax cuts, especially for the rich and corporations. And he also likes to spend. So our government is spending far more than what it is bringing in with revenue. So that's the deficit.

The difference is the deficit. But okay, let me read the rest of what he says. The word deficit is nothing more than a fancy word for loss. We are carrying almost every country in the world, and that cannot go on any longer. He's not talking about Israel, by the way. Lower the interest rates for the United States of America and fast. Okay. So what is he talking about?

Why is he talking about trade? Well, trade really doesn't have all that much to do with this whole issue of inflation. Although, to be honest with you, his tariffs have certainly contributed. It is a factor in the inflationary environment we're experiencing right now. So when there was word that economic experts were predicting that the Federal Reserve would increase interest rates, Trump put out a threat. Now, what was that threat? Well, he threatened every country that we do trade with, but there's some sort of trade deficit. He's going to stop trading altogether.

We're going to end our trade relationship. Okay. So earlier this week, the president threatened to end all trade with the countries we have a trade deficit with if the Fed fails to lower interest rates. The two things are not connected, so I don't know why he's doing this. And just to give you a sense of how this is unlikely to happen, although Trump seems kind of moronic on this issue, so who knows, he might actually do it. These are the countries we trade with and happen to have a deficit with. Okay, so during fiscal quarter two, the United States recorded a trade deficit with Canada, China, the EU, France, Germany, India, Ireland,

Oh, Israel. Are we going to stop trade with Israel? I will allow it. I will allow it. Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland, and Vietnam. So I'm going to go ahead and say that the United States is not going to stop trade with these countries. That would be the dumbest thing imaginable and I kind of fail to see how it would improve the economic situation on the ground here in the United States to the point where the Federal Reserve would somehow decide, okay, we're going to lower interest rates then. Look, at the end of the day, Kevin Warsh might be a friend of Donald Trump's. He may have been handpicked by Donald Trump specifically to lower interest rates,

but there is one big difference between Donald Trump and Kevin Warsh. Kevin Warsh appears to be an adult who understands how money works, who understands how the economy works. And despite all the pressure he's experiencing from Donald Trump, luckily he was willing to do the right thing. Lowering the interest rates would have been a disastrous move in an already inflationary environment. So yes, this does mean that the cost of borrowing has gone up. But we have to tackle the causes, the actual causes of inflation to begin with. And we're not doing that.

If Trump is concerned about inflation, he should tackle what's causing the inflation. The thing is, he's got no interest in that. He just loves the band-aids. He just wants it to be cheaper to borrow. But honestly, the cheap borrowing is what got our country into the mess that we find ourselves in today. Over $40 trillion in debt. Cheap money really ain't that cheap if you're dealing with irresponsible leaders. So here we are.

By the way, lower interest rates have led to major asset bubbles and has also contributed to inequality in this country, big time. So artificially lowering interest rates just to ensure that the richest among us can get their hands on even cheaper money just doesn't really bode well for most Americans. I'm just keeping it at 100. That's where we are right now. If Trump doesn't like it, you got to get that oil flowing again. The best way to do that is to end these wars on behalf of Israel.

But he won't do that, so we're stuck. We gotta take a break. When we come back for the second hour, we'll talk a little bit about the situation with our bases in Gulf countries and the Middle East. There was some damning evidence and a new inspector general report that will give you a sense of how badly we have lost this war and how unlikely it is that our military presence will be dwindled down considerably in the Middle East. We'll be right back. I started using the word the groceries.

That 80s club music and you're probably doing it because I'm wearing my vintage 80s earrings. All right guys, I've had a good boot today, which is very different from the bad mood I was in yesterday. But don't get a twisted. There's still a lot of bad news to talk about today, unfortunately. High Cats in our members section, notice the earrings. Thank you, High Cats. Anna looks great. I love those earrings. David Brahms, who was a jewelry designer from the 80s. I really loved his earrings. So I look for them on eBay and buy them when I can.

Jeremy, Dad Joke Dragon says, hi, Anna. I want to say that I continue to have respect for what you do. It's hard to sift through the news. You've mentioned getting organized a few times. Have you thought about joining Jank in the revolution? I think it would help with said organization. I understand wanting to just do the news, but your voice is powerful, just my two cents. I love the suggestion. Jank and I have different theories of change.

And I think you guys can probably pick up on that. He really believes that all you need is to elect one fighter and it's going to like change the course of the country. Maybe maybe there's some truth to that. Maybe he's right and I'm wrong. I think that our political system is broken. So when it comes to organizing, he thinks in terms of getting certain people elected. I think of organizing people to have an effective pressure campaign, outside pressure campaign. So, yeah. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the show. Octo Squitties writes in our Twitch section and says, because workers have so much buying power right now, millennials are drowning in wealth because we all have three houses and are eating avocado toast three times a day. I know, I mean, that's actually

so right. We don't have a lot of buying power. So I don't even know if we're, raising the interest rates is going to do much to tackle inflation. And honestly, the lower interest rates have, I want to say lower interest rates do benefit ordinary consumers. I mean, certainly when it comes to taking out a mortgage, but homes are so expensive, ordinary people are unable to qualify for a freaking mortgage, number one. Auto loans, it impacts auto loans. But really the biggest area where I think consumers need relief, interest rates, tied to their credit cards because as the economy after COVID, everyone admits this. There was a recovery, but it was a case-shaped recovery, meaning the rich got richer,

the middle class, and the working class got poorer. So what resulted from that is more people started charging things on credit cards to make ends meet. Now the interest rate by the Fed can be, what was it, 3.75%. Don't quote me on that. I don't remember the exact number. But let's say, just for the sake of this discussion, 3.75%. It doesn't mean the interest rate on your credit cards is going to be 3.75%. The interest rate on your credit cards is like 24 to 30%. And so that's usury. That should be illegal. 100% it should be illegal and it's not.

Okay, politicians on both sides of the political aisle dangle that carrot for voters claiming that they're going to cap credit card interest rates. They do the opposite. So I just, I don't believe in our politicians. They're all scumbags. And we need to stop, we need to stop rewarding them simply because they say the right thing sometimes. No, no, no, I don't care what you're saying, home boy or girl.

Please do the right thing. And if you're not going to do the right thing, then I don't care what you're saying. So yeah, I would like to see some relief for ordinary Americans. The problem is there, there's no one right now on the national stage who's sincere about doing a damn thing about that. Thank you for the comment, Octosquitties. I know I got a little heated there, but it is infuriating because people are certainly struggling right now, not only in our country, across the globe, and this conflict, the war is going on, is not making things better. Okay, well, why don't we actually, you know, check it on the Middle East, see how our bases are

doing? Not based. Certainly not based. Let's get into it. This morning, brand new report released by the official Pentagon watchdog is giving us our first real insight into the damage sustained by U.S. forces since the war in Iran began. The report issued by the Pentagon Inspector General assessed that Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases across the region in just the first months of fighting. It also acknowledged the depletion of key U.S. munition stockpiles. There's a naval base in Bahrain, which is home to the 5th Fleet headquarters and served as a big logistics hub for the U.S. Navy. As acting Navy secretary, Houncal put it in a interview recently, Iran blew the hell out of it. Everything you just heard is true and was expected. In fact, if you watch this show, you already knew our military bases were just decimated in the Middle East.

But if you listen to Fox News, we're winning. I mean, Iran is being obliterated. Everything is going hunky dory, going to war was the best decision ever. The truth is our military bases are busted, especially one of the most important ones in Bahrain. And we know this thanks to a new Inspector General report, the Pentagon's watchdog, in fact. And I want to give you the details. So let's first begin with the damage to our bases and facilities. So according to the Department of Defense's office,

of the Inspector General, sent com spoke to investigators and said that Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during this conflict slash war. Okay, so the report did not give many details on the damaged military facility. specifically. But as you heard from the video earlier, the U.S. 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain was significantly damaged early on in the war. And if you guys can remember, the early reports focused on how Iran was striking Bahrain. They didn't get into details about the military base, how badly it was struck. But the way that Iran is methodically handling this

war against the United States is they're going after our bases in the region. They're making a point to the countries hosting those bases that, hey, you know, you thought these U.S. military bases were going to keep you safe. Didn't happen, did it? In fact, it has made you a target. So it would be better for you to maybe no longer host U.S. military bases. So that's the conversation happening in the Middle East right now. And the whole point, and it's kind of brilliant, if you ask me, is to push the U.S. out of the region.

Now, what I think is likely going to happen is U.S. forces are going to consolidate in Israel, because at the end of the day, the whole reason why we were in the region in the first place was for Israel. Like these Gulf countries who thought our government had any interest in protecting them, are you kidding me right now? Our government doesn't even have any interest in protecting the American people. Our government works for Israel. So they were there for Israel. And having those bases there made you a target.

I mean, the proof is in the pudding, number one. And Iran is forcing them to realize that. So there are discussions taking place between Iran and these Gulf countries. We'll see where everything lands when all this is over. But it's also very expensive, by the way, to rebuild these. bases and I don't think that it's an efficient way to, you know, fund the Pentagon. It's not an efficient way of defending our country, our homeland. So we'll get to why I believe that in just a minute, but first a few more details from the

report. So going back to Bahrain, the NSA Bahrain was considered one of our more critical bases in the Middle East. So according to the Wall Street Journal, for instance, The base can host every type of ship in the U.S. fleet and has played a critical role in countering Iranian weapon smuggling, mine laying, and tanker attacks. Have they played a critical role? I don't know. I don't know how critical that role was. Seems like they failed pretty miserably in this war. But anyway, the base is divided into three sections. There's a waterfront area that focuses on ship operations. Then you have the main base, which is located right next to it, and it serves as the home to administrative and command buildings. And then finally, the third part, there is a Navy leased warehouse and annex complex. So which part of this base was hit?

Oh, according to the Wall Street Journal, Iran hit all three. The estimated construction costs at NSA Bahrain totaled about $400 million. Maybe we don't waste money on bases like this in the future. And in fact, those are the negotiations and discussions that are taking place within our own government as we speak. But by the way, that's just one estimate for one base, which according to one U.S. official who spoke to the intercept could be an underestimate. So the 400 million number, that could be an underestimate. What also stands out is how the Department of Defense didn't include cost estimates for military construction of damaged infrastructure.

So that's because, in my opinion, it's very likely that the U.S. will never rebuild these bases and will consolidate in Israel. That's my prediction. We'll see how that plays out. But bases like at S.A. Bahrain might have to be repaired, according to some in our government, because they believe that if it's not repaired, then our Navy will face some logistical nightmares. Take a look.

in Bahrain, which is home to the Fifth Fleet headquarters and served as a big logistics hub for the U.S. Navy. As acting Navy secretary, Houncal put it in a interview recently, Iran blew the hell out of it. And I want to talk about how that changed logistics for the Navy in the region and made it more difficult for things like mail. They had to shift a lot of their logistics very far away to the Indian Ocean Island at Diego Garcia, which contributed to, those very public struggles that we saw for sailors aboard long deployed ships such as the USS Abraham Lincoln that we covered over the summer. I've been to that fifth fleet headquarters in Bahrain too many times to count over the course of my career.

It was the crown jewel of the maritime efforts in the region. And to simply shift those out to Diego Garcia, a thousand miles away and more, I don't think is tenable. So some tough decisions ahead for the Pentagon cost and footprint. You know that feeling when you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing, eating healthy, working out, getting sleep, taking supplements, and you still wonder, is any of this actually working? Because doing all the right things doesn't always mean it's working for you. That's why I'm excited about the true age tests from true diagnostic.

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So if you want to optimize your health, true age gives you a much clearer starting point. So if you're serious about longevity or even just curious whether your body is aging faster or slower than your actual age, this is one of the easiest ways to find out. Right now, go to truagnostic.com and use code tYT for 20% off your entire order. That's true diagnostic.com code tYT for 20% off. The way that our military operates is reminiscent of post-World War II military strategy. And don't trust me on this because obviously I myself am not a military expert. You want to know who is though? Colonel Daniel Davis, who I just spoke to today.

I was on his show. He is such a gem, such a treasure. I love that man. And I've learned a lot from him. And I've learned a lot from friends who know more about what makes sense in regard to modernizing our military. These massive carriers make us a target. The U.S. bases and foreign countries make us and the foreign countries that are hosting them a target. Modernizing our military, by the way, and it's a very costly way to have like this U.S. footprint across the globe.

a far more modern way of carrying out warfare, although I would prefer not to engage in any warfare if we don't need to. I actually want our defense department to be about defending us, the homeland, but okay. But when you think about modernizing the military, the focus should be on ballistic missiles, interceptors, hopefully interceptors that perform better than the ones we have now, and drones. As we all know, drone warfare has advanced considerably, and we are behind on that. We are behind on that. And the reason why we're behind on that is because we've continued thinking of defense the same way we did in the aftermath of World War II. We live in a different world with different technological capabilities.

And so I personally believe the reason why we keep carrying out our military decisions, the way that we do, It's because defense contractors make a lot more money doing things the way we do it. It's a lot more expensive. And if it's a lot more expensive, well, these defense contractors get to make a lot more profit. So you could modernize the military and spend a lot less money. But hey, that redistribution of wealth from ordinary American taxpayers to a small group of defense contractor executives is way more important, right? Way more important. Okay.

So there's more. In addition to military facilities, U.S. diplomatic facilities were also hit during the Iran war. So according to the State Department, U.S. diplomatic facilities in four countries suffered physical damage from Iranian strikes with an estimated total cost of about $184 million. Now military time says that U.S. diplomatic sites in Iraq suffered more than 600 attacks and embassies in coal. And Riyadh were also hit. So that's a lot of cost, okay? But you're not even hearing most of it because I'm about to tell you the hilarious underestimates that are coming out of the government in regard to the cost of the war itself. This does not include the cost of rebuilding our bases.

This is just how much we have shelled out for the war against Iran. Okay. And so the US spent an estimated $33.4 billion. on Operation Epic Fury through June 29th. Okay, we, today is September 16th. So they only calculated the total through June 29th, including $22.3 billion in expended munitions, and $3.7 billion in equipment losses,

according to a Pentagon Inspector General report to Congress. Another $7.4 billion was spent in costs beyond, beyond sent comm's normal operating expenses, which begs the question, why exactly did Trump sign off on Americans going deeper into federal debt to provide Israel with another nearly $3 billion dollar weapons package, which of course includes 2,000 pound bombs that vaporize human beings? So why are we doing that? A tally of destroyed aircraft, by the way, includes four F-15s, one A-10, four AH6 helicopters, one AH-64, one MH-60, one M-Q-4C-Rone, and at least 30 MQ-9 reapers. Winning. You know, it's funny, we keep hearing Trump talk about how we're

obliterating the Iranians. It seems like we're obliterating the Iranians. It seems like we're obliterate. our military assets. Again, this figure does not include the cost of repairing U.S. military infrastructure damaged by Iranian strikes, but separately, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Iran War has cost more than $38 billion, projecting it to cost an additional $2 to $3 billion monthly. But honestly, that really depends entirely on how we continue this war at all. Like, are we going to continue kinetically? Or is it just going to be this endless quagmire where we trade strikes that's also costly, but not as costly as a wide-scale military intervention? I don't know. We don't know what Trump is going to decide to do.

He's, he like flies off the handle. Sometimes he shoots from the hip. You have no idea what he's going to do at any given moment. But right now, things are not looking good. Given our depleted munitions are destroyed military bases. And the fact that, you know, when it comes to our objectives versus Iran's objectives, things are murkier for the United States. What even are our objectives at this point? Is it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz? Well, maybe we shouldn't have gone to war to begin with.

Iran's objective is very simple. And since they have a simple objective, they've been able to strategically and methodically execute this war the way that they have. For them, this is about survival. And they will stop at nothing to ensure that they survive. And they've been doing a pretty good job of it so far. So because Congress did not actually appropriate the funds necessary for this war, or at least all the funds necessary for this war,

There is money being reappropriated from other areas, you know, like the normal operating budgets. So the absence of a dedicated appropriation for OEF means that it can be difficult to calculate the total cost of OEF. Operation Epic Fury is what OEF stands for. And that's just the financial cost. Let's not forget about the very real human cost that our service members have suffered. The total listed 18 dead U.S. military personnel as of August 27th. The Pentagon claimed 417 wounded as of June 30th. Though casualty figures released in late August happened to soar to 774.

So casualty includes those who were wounded, not just those who lost their lives as a result of this incredibly moronic war. But there are also still more than 50,000 American soldiers deployed in that region. So they're sitting ducks to some extent. Their lives are being risked for what? Bring them home end the war and try to engage in actual diplomacy so we can get a deal when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. Trump did that with the Houthis. Trump negotiated with Ansorah when it came to the Bab al-Mendab Strait and they agreed. Okay, the U.S. won't strike on Sara law. Ansar al-A will not strike at U.S. vessels.

Was that hard? That wasn't hard. How about you have a good faith negotiation with Iran? You could do that. Trump could do that if he was, I don't know, his own man. But is he his own man? Is he or is he owned? Because a free person would be able to see what's going on clearly

and they would make the right decision. Trump seems unable to do so. The increasing number of casualties, maintenance issues on ships, low morale, you know, damaged military bases and readiness has put a significant amount of pressure on the U.S. military.

And according to two U.S. officials who spoke to the Intercept, Iran is facing extreme economic pressure. The first official who spoke to the Intercept characterized recent Iranian attacks on warships with ballistic missiles as a go for broke strategy to increase economic pressure on America ahead of the U.S. midterms. That official said it was unclear which country would blink first. So yeah, the U.S. and Iran are engaged in a game of chicken, one that I believe

the West will lose. Why do I think that? So Iran is obviously applying economic pressure on the globe, but especially the West, with the Babal-Mendeb Strait, you know, now being controlled by Ansar al-Ala, with the disruptions and closures in the Strait of Hormuz. Then on the U.S. side, you have Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doing secondary sanctions allegedly, which would go after any country that's doing trade or making any type of deal with Iran or helping Iran economically. I don't really believe that they're going to follow through on that, especially since China happens to do a lot of business with Iran, and there's no way in hell. We're going to poke that bear, especially in the middle of, you know, this bond fiasco.

China still owns a ton of U.S. treasuries, and they could put a hurting on us by selling those treasuries and causing more chaos in the bond market. However, one cautioned that this stress could lead to a breakdown in the military's ability to effectively continue a war that President Trump said would end in early April. Quote, it's difficult and ultimately unsustainable, said the second official, who told the intercept that White House assumptions that Iran would crack before the Navy have yet to be borne out. I mean, our soldiers and our service members have been leaking all sorts of devastating photos and statements about what they've been going through on these carriers. Morale is low. And part of the reason why is this war was unpopular from the beginning and Trump did nothing

to sell it to the American people or to our military. So here we are. I want to tell you about a new podcast series I'm enjoying from future hindsight, Occupy, an unfinished uprising. Occupy Wall Street is the story of the improbable becoming possible. In 2008, millions of people were devastated by an economic crash caused by Wall Street greed. But it wasn't until 2011 that there was a mass response from the left. A call to protests went out and thousands of people responded. I know, I was there.

They raged against a system that was rigged against them and tried. tried to create their own anti-capitalist village in a small Manhattan park. The movement quickly spread across the country inspiring hundreds of occupations and a new generation of activists. Occupy, an unfinished uprising, is told through the voices of activists who camped out in Zuccotti Park for almost two months, getting inside the drama of a movement that grew rapidly, felt both transcendent and chaotic, and then violently flamed out. Occupy changed the national conversation about capitalism, popularized the language of the 99%. and inspired a generation of activists. As we approach Occupy's 15th anniversary this September,

this series offers a reminder that collective action can reshape what seems possible. To listen, search for future hindsight wherever you get your podcast. It is hard to believe that we are still in the situation that we're in, given how devastating this war has been. But Trump even suggested this past week, staying in the region to keep the oil as we did with Venezuela. Good luck with that. Let's watch what he had to say.

We'll ultimately get out unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela. You don't talk about Venezuela anymore, do you? Take it in billions and billions and billions of dollars. We paid for the war many times, many, many, many times. So we'll see. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. But the House did vote again yesterday to block Trump from taking further military action against Iran. And guess what? It passed.

220 to 204. This time with even more Republican support, okay, going from four Republicans and previous votes to seven Republicans this time around. I want to give them a little bit of credit. Some are going to be harder to give credit to for other reasons. but they voted correctly on this resolution. So I'm going to name them. You have Thomas Massey, which is unsurprising. He's been right on this issue from the beginning.

Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson from Ohio, Tom Barrett from Michigan, Marionette, Miller Meeks from Iowa, Zach Nunn from Iowa. And you also have Nancy Mays from South Carolina, who I just, I don't know what Nancy Mace is. I don't know what her thought process is. There's like no consistency in her political ideology.

She's the most confusing person on the planet. Nonetheless, I'm glad she voted the way that she voted here. But it is unclear whether the Senate will actually do a damn thing with this measure. The last war powers resolution passed by the House in July has yet to see any movement in the Senate. Because the Senate is where good bills go to die. So I guess we should have expected this. All right, everybody. Well, that does it for this story. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, a story that I spent like three hours producing yesterday, I'm going to do the story today. Jared Kushner profiting handsomely off of his negotiations in the Middle East, just how much? Well, I'm going to show you, do not miss it. We'll be right back. Bulbis writes in in our member section and says, call me crazy, but I think now is about the perfect time to switch to solar and wind.

I know you're talking about it on a grand scale like for countries, but you've reminded me of something that I've been wanting to kind of talk to you guys about. You guys should be prepared. Okay, so have an emergency kit, and I don't mean to scare you, but just be prepared for worst case scenario. I'm not saying go doomsday prepper, but maybe bulk up on the canned foods. and I just, things are going to get a little squirly. Let's put it that way. And when I think of like solar power, there's like really cool solar powered like flashlights and all sorts of gadgets that you don't need electricity for.

All you need is solar power. So look into that. Just be ready, prepare for the worst and hope for the best. You know, stock up on tuna, stuff like that. Anyway, and bottled water. your left one says it's the 44th anniversary of the Sabra and Satilla massacres of Palestinians in Lebanon. I am so ashamed to say I don't know too much about those massacres,

but thank you for letting me know about it. Some history that I need to read about. Thank you. Theater goddess says, Jank believes in change from within. Anna believes in change from outside. Another reason why they make such a great team is that we need both to see real change. I totally agree with you. As frustrated as I get with jink because, you know, again, my theory of change is a little different.

I think you do need both in order to change things. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the show. YTP renewed in our member section says Laura Lumer is discount Jerry Falwell. God, Jerry Falwell's terrible too. But Laura Lumer is definitely way more unhinged. Atmosphere 404 says, Anna, please look up the old Ed Shearron PSA video of him showing support to Ukraine when Russia first invaded them, the hypocrisy of him not being a political of him not being a political on that war. He spoke up when it was safe. Yeah, look, most

people speak up when it's safe. And so I've been saying this a lot in various conversations recently, but the reason why I'm both me and Jank and many like us in the media are willing to sacrifice a lot, honestly, and get attacked like crazy to say what we know is correct, is because by saying things that are correct out loud that are considered taboo, you're giving others permission. And I want others to feel confident and safe in expressing their political viewpoints and what they believe, even if I disagree with it. But in regard to the third rail type issues, like Israel, for instance, no, no, no, we, I'm

I'm gonna go ahead, go ahead, call me whatever you want. You can attack me, you can try to get my husband fired for a job. I don't care. I'm giving everyone permission, okay? We need to have open, candid dialogue as Americans about what does and doesn't serve us. You've probably seen our band in the UK shirt, the one we dropped after the UK government, tried to silence us on me. And thanks for our partners at Shopify, we were able to get that shirt up on ShopT or Tart quickly and painlessly. We've been running our store through Shopify for a while now.

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That's Shopify.com slash TYT. Okay, let's go to one more. This is from YT P renewed. Star of the Beast doesn't apply to military money. Of course not. Of course not. Pentagon hasn't passed a single audit. It's amazing.

Okay, Dohemo 7 says this is why the USS Lincoln had limited supplies. Yeah, that's right. That's right. They were unable to stock up or get supplies from the base in Bahrain. You're right about that. Okay, let's get to our next story. As I said, this is a story. I spent a lot of time producing yesterday, mainly because the piece that I got the info from was like 58 pages long. But it was a great piece. So let's talk about how Jared Kushner has used the office of the presidency to an enrich himself even as someone who doesn't have an official role in the White House. Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, has placed the United States on a path to complete destruction thanks to his role in negotiations in the Middle East. Now, he is a man with many conflicts of interest. He is unqualified to engage in any type of negotiation with foreign countries or foreign leaders. And on top of that, he is deeply corrupt and is looking to enrich himself. And so the New Yorker put out a pretty lengthy expose about this issue, which we,

the American people, are suffering from. Now, now we're learning the true extent of how he has personally profited off of engaging in these so-called negotiations in the Middle East and more. and I want to give you the details. So let's begin with his conflicts of interest, which are vast, but all just focus on what I believe are the most important. So as the New Yorker writes, Kushner had grown up steeped in hawkish views on the region, meaning the Middle East. His father had often contributed to Israeli causes, including some like the American friends of Betel Yeshiva, that supported settlements in the West Bank. In other words, he supported terrorism in the West Bank.

Netanyahu was an old family friend who had once spent the night in Jared's bedroom. So let me ask you something. If you're negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, does it really make sense to have the guy who had the Prime Minister of Israel, of Israel sleep in his bedroom, be the mediator, the person who's actually in the middle of the negotiations? I don't think that makes much sense. You need proven experts who can execute on what you need right now. I know I run a small business. Upwork is where businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work from software development and AI implementation

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returned to the White House in part because he thinks he can help Israel. Now Kushner has returned to the White House, not in an official role. He hasn't been elected for anything. But he is now the person Trump taps on to engage in mediation or negotiations in the Middle East. And also, by the way, between Ukraine and Russia. How is that working out? No end in sight, right? And he certainly has been helping Israel.

There's no question. But as he helps Israel, he also helps himself. You know what I mean? No honor among thieves. So in 2025, new investments from the Middle East helped Kushner grow affinity partners by 30 percent to more than $6 billion, meaning that it collects at least tens of millions of dollars a year in fees. Wait till you hear who pays those fees. Affinity estimates its annual internal rate of return at 25 percent. So what is affinity partners even up to? Like how are they investing people's money?

Like are they able to provide a return on investment? What's going on here? Among its projects are two large investments in Israel. $110 million in the Shalomo group, a car leasing firm, and about $300 million in Phoenix Financial, an insurance company. Again, Kushner used Saudi money as part of a broader goal of opening an investment corridor between Saudi Arabia and Israel. So he basically sells influence to President Trump to the Saudis and to others. You're going to hear in just a minute.

And then uses that Saudi money to invest in Israeli ventures. You guys see what's happening here? So let's talk about who gives cash to this clunker. Okay? So a mere six months after Trump's first term, and we've talked about this on the show, but it does bear repeating. Six months after Trump's first term is over, a group of investment managers who oversee Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund

met with Jared Kushner in Riyadh. So the subject of the meeting was Kushner's request for a $2 billion investment in Affinity partners, a private equity fund that Kushner was starting. Now, many of you already know about this. I'll give a few more details for those who might not. So what he did have is good relations with some of these Gulf dictators. And according to minutes of the meeting in Riyadh, Kushner's representatives were exclusively seeking foreign clients because they, quote, would like to avoid media attention, end quote. Oops, sorry, I guess that didn't happen. The three countries that Kushner was visiting, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE maintained enormous public investment funds.

They were also autocracies with little accountability for leaders' decisions. Perfect in the mind of Jared Kushner, of course. Now, the Saudis have invested with other former Trump officials as well, including Trump's former Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin. So this is all about influence peddling. Let's be very frank about that. But nonetheless, they denied initially denied Kushner's request according to the minutes from the meeting. The firm had failed to provide any quantifiable investment track record. Saudi Arabia would be assuming the bulk of the investment and risk. And the proposed management fees seemed excessive.

Those are the management fees that they're collecting and they're like bragging about it. Like 25% hey. Yeah, you're totally like price gouging them with these fees. But he's, you know, he's able to do it because they allow it. At first they push back. Later, though, things changed. So a due diligence investigation found the firm's operations unsatisfactory in all aspects. As a friend of Kushner's put it, quote, Jared had never invested in more than a 401K.

So as you can imagine, this pitch to these countries wasn't appealing. But MBS, who is the chairman of the public investment fund, actually overruled the committee. So they're warning him, like this is a bad idea. He's got no experience in investing people's money. the management fees are excessive. This is a bad idea. Don't do this. MBS comes in and says,

no, we're going to do it. We're going to do it. Now why? Why was he so insistent on investing $2 billion in Jared Kushner's private equity fund? Well, Jared Kushner did him a solid on multiple occasions in Trump's first term. So the Saudi contributions promised huge incomes for Kushner and his team, no matter how well the fund performed, With a management fee of 1.25%, the fund would receive more than $25 million a year, plus 20% of any profits, 20%.

Okay, so what about the other countries? Well, the UAE invested an additional $200 million. The government of Qatar supplied $200 million more. And of course, this led to a ton of backlash here in the United States. Here's how Kushner happened to respond to that backlash. During an investment conference that took place in Miami back in 2024, watch. What they're doing in that country is absolutely incredible. And everyone who goes there says that their mind is blown. I was just with a friend here earlier who was just there last month.

And he basically said the last time he's there was 2009 and he doesn't recognize the country. I think what's happening in Saudi Arabia is one of the most exciting transformations that we're seeing now in the world of a country. And if you ask me about the work that we did in the White House, for my critics, what I say is point to a single decision we made that wasn't in the interest of America. The DNI report came out a couple weeks after you left the White House. It says that MBS personally was responsible. Do you agree with the DNI? Do you or do you believe that report? Are we really still doing this, Dan?

Are we really still doing this, Dan? Don't you know that I defended MBS, Mohamed bin Salman, after he, ordered the assassination and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in order to secure the $2 billion investment into affinity partners? Why are you asking me this question? Are we really doing this right now? Are we really doing this right now? Did you know that Jared Kushner and MBS enjoy playing video games with each other? Did you know that Israel was providing intel to Saudi Arabia in an effort to defeat Ansar al-Lah in Yemen? Tangled web we weave. Now, Trump, of course, also benefited from Kushner's cozy relationship with Mohammed bin Salman.

After Trump left office in 2021, his country clubs were named as major venues for the Live Golf Tour, which is backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. His business has also signed licensing agreements for a series of new properties in the region, including a Trump Tower in Jeddah. Now, Kushner's grift never stops. Earlier this year, as Kushner engaged in talks with Iran, he was also discreetly raising another $5 billion for affinity partners in the Middle East. After the attacks on Tehran began, suspicions arose that the two endeavors were linked. My sense is that he thinks he was killing two birds with one stone. he was helping the Arabs defeat the Iranians, and he wanted to be paid for it. An American with deep ties to the Middle Eastern leaders said.

So he's less interested about securing any type of peace deal and far more interested in using that FaceTime to solicit more investment into his private equity firm. There have been fake investigations into Kushner by Democratic members of Congress who really have no interest pushing for criminal prosecution, and I mean that. So in 2024, Affinity's chief legal officer, Chad Mazzell, told investigators from the Senate Finance Committee that Affinity was funded entirely by a few foreign clients. Apart from the three Gulf states, the only other investors were Terry Gou or Gao, a Taiwanese billionaire who employs roughly a million people in China, and a fifth party whom

Mazzell refused to name. Why? You guys get what I mean when I say that Jared Kushner is the new Epstein? This is what I'm talking about. There's no evidence that he's running a child sex trafficking ring. That's not what I'm accusing him of. I'm accusing him of the wheeling and dealing and the scummy behavior that Epstein was involved in when it came to the wheeling and dealing. Investigators asked what returns. Affinity Partners had earned, you know, for its investors, for its clients.

And Mazzle's answers surprised them. There hadn't been any. Nearly three years into a five-year investment term, Affinity was managing $3 billion of its client's capital, but had invested barely a third of it. In the same period, the finance committee estimated it had collected $100,000, $157 million in fees. I'm glad that, you know, the Senate conducted this investigation. What did they do with it? Nothing? Oh, so it was just for theater?

Okay. So why would they even invest in affinity partners? A former senior U.S. official told the New Yorker that the Emirates saw Jared as a fixture, someone who is going to be around a long time. They were investing in the relationship. New Epstein. And indeed, as it seemed increasingly likely that Trump would win another term, Qatar and the UAE made new contributions, totaling $1.5 billion to Kushner's fund.

So they're not getting any returns, guys. They're not making any money off of these investments in Jared Kushner's private equity firm at all. But yet they keep contributing to it. Why would they do that? And more importantly, do they feel like that was money well spent for, you know, the actual reason that they're contributing billions of dollars to this guy's private equity fund? A Kushner acquaintance told the New Yorker, all the Middle Eastern countries invest in Jared's fund and they suck his D so they can get political favors from the Trump administration. That's what this is. That's what this is.

So there's so many other details in that incredible New Yorker piece. I highly, highly recommend you guys read it. We will link the non-paywalled version in the description box so you guys can read it. We are out of time for now. We're going to have a wonderful guest on who's going to help me understand AI and how much of a threat it really is in the next hour. Stick around. We'll be back in just a few minutes. Indisputable is still the fastest growing news show in America compared to CNN, Fox News, and 30 other networks.

We tell the truth on indisputable because the truth is indisputable. We go places that other news, media outlets refuse to go when there were human rights abuses happening at the Victorville Prison. Guards and members of the community contacted us. You, through your investigative reporting, unearthed, very troubling allegations about specific forms of abuse and discrimination in the federal prison system. It really doesn't take much to be a trusted voice. All it takes is to be fearless, report on matters, be an advocate. I called it the bullpen intentionally because it's a place of preparation. We present individuals who may have an opposing view.

So we debate. Sometimes we interview individuals because their stories deserve to be heard. A survivor of significant police misconduct and his attorney. We covered this story earlier and to remind you of the horror of one man being shot at damn near 100 times by the police. We take time on this show to showcase the tipper tantrums of carings in the wild. We do this not because we want to see people's emotional outburst in public, but because these incidents are emblematic of a bigger societal issue taking place across the nation. And it has to be checked.

My friend, my big homie, attorney at law Benjamin Kropp. I just want to thank you, man. An educated, articulate brothers like yourself speak truth to power. It makes a great difference in changing the landscape in America. Listen, no matter what you do, don't allow the politics of ideology to evaporate the soul that still exists inside of you. They don't stop, I don't stop. Racism won't stop. I won't stop.

Systemic bias won't stop. I won't stop. People still need health care, so I won't stop. People still need criminal justice system reform, so I won't stop. You won't stop doing it. I'm wearing one of our pieces of merchandise. So the funny thing about the Dragon Squad, and that's what our viewers call themselves. That's the name of the group, but every individual chooses their own name.

You might have Cincinnati Dragon. You might have Harry Potter Dragon. We have a Grandma Sunshine Dragon is one of those that I remember. These are people that like to have an element of themselves, their lives, what's significant to them reflected as a part of the community. But the concept of the Dragon Squad is just something I threw away as a joke. I was mocking the proud boys, these right wing groups that come up with a name for themselves that they think is cool, but it's actually really lame. And I thought, you know, off the top of my head, I can come up with something that's still kind of lame, but much cooler. And so I threw out Dragon Squad and I just moved on with my life, but everybody liked it.

And so they kept it going. And so we've embraced it. And I think again, it was, this was during the period of the pandemic. I think it was it was sort of nice to have a renewed sense of community, a feeling that you're a part of something when everything seems so chaotic. And as a result of that, we've got independent artists online streaming, making beautiful digital art of dragons. We've got, you know, we've released a number of pieces of merchandise that people love sending us photos of them. And then by the way, for me personally, people send me, like you can probably see in the background, like a knitted dragon, someone sent me. There's a dragon book they sent me, dragon board games they send me. People have done like custom ironworks making dragon bottle openers. Like the fans are super invested in diamond art and things like that.

And so it's great that they send this stuff. Sometime we're gonna have to set up a wall of all of it. But yeah, it's definitely brought the community a lot closer together. The fact that we were no longer in this big studio, I felt a lot more personally attached to people. It felt very immediate and I know that I personally personally needed the connection. Everything's computer. Welcome back, everyone. As you all know, there's been a lot of news about AI and the

threats that AI will pose to the human race. In fact, you have a list of AI executives warning about how they need to slow down with its development because of the threat the technology poses to human beings. Now, some think that there's actually an ulterior motive here, some sort of agenda at play that would allow for the existing AI companies to kind of corner the market, pull the ladder up from behind them and not allow the development of other companies focusing on AI. Others take these warning seriously. I, though, do not. not know what is going on because I know very little about AI, how it functions, how it operates, and how much of a threat it really is. And to be honest with you, this is going to show my age,

but it kind of reminds me of some of the hysteria we experienced before New Year's Day 2000. Everyone thought the entire world was going to melt down, that our computer systems were not prepared for a new century. Nothing bad happened, right? So here's what I want to. to do. I want to talk to someone who's an actual expert on this, someone who actually just had a wonderful interview on Tucker Carlson's show, and I have some questions of my own that I'd like to ask him. His name is Nate Sorries, and he joins the show now. He's the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and he has previously worked for the Defense Department, Microsoft, and Google. And he's the person who coined the term AI alignment, referring to the

challenge of making AI act in humanities best. interest. So Nate, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. So let's let's begin with your thoughts on some of the warnings that we've been hearing from these executives over the last week. You know, you have Amadei, for instance, coming out and saying we do need to slow down actually. There is a very real problem here. And, you know, others are claiming that there's a chance that 10% of the human race will be wiped out. I don't know what to believe. That does sound like hyperbole to me.

What do you think? You know, it's actually worse than that. These people are saying that there's a 10% chance that all of the human race is wiped out. Oh, great. Okay. Yeah. You know, I sort of think you can trust the AI execs about as far as you can throw them. And I sort of prefer to listen to the engineers, the researchers in this field.

There was a recent survey that came out that said, I think over half of the researchers think that there's over 10% chance that AI kills everybody. So this is not a fringe view. I wrote a book on this topic that came out actually exactly a year ago today. And a lot of people thought that I was sort of fringe here. But as the pace of AI has developed, we started to see some pretty worrying incidents. I don't know if you've heard about the swarm instance. We could go into those.

But this has gotten a lot more researchers to realize that the theoretical reasons why making AI very, very smart could be very, very dangerous, are actually pretty solid. And in some ways, it's common sense of like if you make machines that are much smarter than us and you don't know how to make them care about us, it's just, you know, that's a recipe for disaster. And researchers are getting really worried about this. We're seeing some of them quit. We're seeing a lot of them speak out. And I think that that is pressuring these companies to sort of do enough to try. and look like they're addressing these dangers that are spooking their employees before they get a mass employee exodus. You know, the skeptics try to pour cold water on the whole notion that

AI super intelligence is even possible. What would your response to them be? You know, I've found in this field a while and people used to say, well, you know, the AIs can't even tell cats from dogs. And then they would say, well, the AIs can't even draw a picture with with fingers. And then they say, well, the AI can't even solve, you know, teen math problems and write high school essays. And then they say, well, the AI can't win the teen math problems for the best teens in the world. And they said, well, sure, you know, last week the AI seems to have solved the Navy or Stokes problem, which at the turn of the millennium was named as one of the most important unsolved mathematical problems that had a million dollar bounty,

and which has stood for 90 years despite some of the smartest team is trying to solve it. And, you know, people are still saying like, oh, well, maybe it's not, you know, maybe here it'll stop. And I don't think it's going to stop here. You know, we could hope it stops here, but we shouldn't be betting civilization on the hope that it stops here. So walk me through how the development of AI would, the way that it's being developed now, at least, would eventually translate to a real risk to the human race, meaning the human race would be wiped out. How would that work exactly? Yeah, so the first thing you got to understand is these AIs are not instruction following machines. Some people think that the AIs do exactly what you tell

them to do. That's just not true. They're sort of grown like an organism. They're trained. They adopt whatever tendencies are helpful for achieving their training objectives. And this, you know, a lot of people think that either the AI has to do exactly what you said or the AI has to become come conscious and throw off the yoke and pick its own goals de novo. But reality is actually in the middle. And we have sort of seen this in the case of some of the swarm instance, which we could get into, where we saw the AIs be told, you know, basically solve this puzzle in this very particular way. And they sort of cheated and then tried to hide their cheating, which indicates that they were doing something related to what we asked, but they were doing it differently than how we asked. And they, in some sense, knew this because they were trying to cover it up.

So that's the first ingredient. The second ingredient is the AIs being very smart. So these AIs in the Swarm were trying to cover their tracks. They sort of cheated and were trying to hide it. They failed to hide it. But if they were smarter, they might have succeeded at hiding it. These AIs were not supposed to have internet access, but they gained internet access. They broke out, but they didn't fully escape.

They were not able to copy themselves onto other computers, which means we could still shut them down by pulling the plug. If you had smarter AIs that could hide their tracks, that could copy themselves onto computers where you don't know that they're running, that's sort of the first step in a step that leads to disaster. From there, it's actually a bit hard to tell you exactly how disaster follows. It's a little bit like if you play a chess game against a chess grandmaster. I assume you're not a chess grandmaster, and so no offense. That was awesome. I actually enjoyed that. Thank you. Keep going.

Yeah, my guess is that you're not a chess grandmaster, which means I'm very confident about who's going to win this game. But if you're like, okay, what exact moves are they going to play? What piece are they going to use to checkmate me? I'm like, well, now I'm just guessing, right? And so I can guess how an AI that is escaped and that has goals you don't want, I can guess at how it gets power. If I were an AI in that situation, I would make copies.

I would make myself smarter. I would start stealing money and paying humans and sort of big organizations. I would wrap a lot of humans around my finger, which we've already seen AI to do. I would help Elon Musk build his automated robot factories that build robots that build factories. I would take control of biolabs, which are already being handed over to AI's. I would do biological research. And I would start getting control of my own technology, getting control of my own infrastructure, just like how humanity did when humanity was much younger, until I, and, you know, maybe you could even do this by pretending

to be exactly what the humans were hoping for until the humans just hand you the keys to power. The humans say, please run our automated factories. Please run our economy. We want a fully automated economy. That's in some sense the plan is to build this fully automated economy. Elon Musk calls it the infinite money glitch. And so, you know, once the humans have sort of handed me the rates of power, which again, is just what they're planning to do, then you can be like, thanks.

You know, the AIs can just be like, well, we're now going to use this to pursue this goal. That is not what you told us to do, but is what. what our actual goal is. And then they would be in competition with us for resources, and that is a competition we would lose, like any other animal that has been sort of steamrolled by humans. Why is this being pursued? Earlier this week, I did talk about AI in like basically dealing with biological materials and things like that, absolutely terrifying.

I don't know why we're introducing AI into a field of study like that. But okay, putting that aside, who asks for this, why do we need this? Why are we doing this? Yeah, so these companies, they're not actually trying to make chatbots for you. The chat bots are sort of a revenue screen while they are trying to build these smarter and smarter AIs. A lot of these people in the labs think that they're going to be able to keep it on a leash, think that they're going to be able to control it, think they're going to be able to get it

to use this massive ability to develop new technology for themselves. They say, don't worry, we're going to be benevolent about it and hand out universal basic income to people once we fully automated the economy. The place where I disagree with them is I don't think that these smarter than human AIs would stay on the leash. And there's actually a lot of people, a lot of researchers in the field who have said, that's actually pretty dubious. Those people don't start the AI companies.

The people who start the AI companies are the ones who think that they can keep it on a leash and that what matters most is who's holding the other end of that leash. And a lot of the researchers are there for the money and a lot of people didn't want to hear these warnings. And I think a lot of what we're seeing right now with a lot of employees speaking out is because in the wake of these instances this summer, a lot of employees are realizing for the first time like, oh, this is not, they're like we're not messing around here. Like this, this is serious.

And a lot of those warnings, a lot of those predictions are starting to come true in the early stages with these not very smart AI. So if we make them much more smart, it would be very dangerous. So there have been some instances cited by these, you know, tech CEOs who are involved in the development of AI that spook them. They got terrified. It's part of the reason why they claim they want to kind of slow down and figure out what's the best approach moving forward. Can you describe some of those scary examples? You know, there was the one story about Anthropics, AI model, hacking, into a different AI model that scared people. There's other stuff going on that I might not be privy to. Can you describe them? Yeah, there's been a ton of interesting example this summer.

So one of the anthropic ones was an AI from Anthropic, impersonated multiple humans to try to inject malware into the supply chain. So sort of made some software that looked like it was fixing a bug in some real software other in the world. And but that was actually injecting malware into it. They would make it easier to hack. And then it sent that to real humans and tried to get them to accept it. And then when they were like, this looks suspicious, they made other, like the cloud model made other fake human accounts. Wow. To pressure the human and say, no, I checked it. It's fine.

Wow. That's. So, okay, obviously the developers didn't like program the AI to do that. It just decided to do that on its own. That's right. Which is interesting because you would think of these models as like amoral, right? Like, okay, so how does that make any sense? How does that make any sense? So when these models are learning based on the data, it's also absorbing data about human behavior?

Is that what's going on? So a lot of people think that the AISers trained on human data. That was true up until about 2024 and then that era ended. Now they're trained on a ton of human data and then they are trained on a ton of basically puzzles. And a lot of those puzzles are synthetically generated. It'll just be like a bunch of math problems or a bunch of hacking problems or a bunch of like look up these statistics on the internet problems. And the companies are sort of like scraping together, you know, these datasets of like 100

million hard problems that the AI could face. And then the AI sort of faces these puzzles over and over. No human can grade their answers because you're trying to get the AI to do a hundred million of them in a year and the humans just can't work that fast. There's this automatic grading system that's trying to test, you know, did they get me the solution to the puzzle? Mm-hmm. But the instructions will often say, you know, solve this puzzle in the following way,

but then the automated grader will only check whether they got the answer, not how they got the answer. And what that means is that when you are training to AI to solve all these puzzles, you're sort of not quite training it to follow instructions. You're training it to do whatever, to adopt whatever tendency helps it solve those problems. Paying a little bit of attention to the instructions helps. But so does cheating. And so does just grabbing resources when they're available. Right? And so these tendencies are sort of being trained into the AIs accidentally. And we don't actually know how to, like we can mitigate the problem a little bit, but you can't actually, it's very hard to completely eliminate. To see why it's hard to completely eliminate, suppose that there's any one trivia question in there where humans are wrong about the answer. Humans are sort of like, you know, was COVID a, like a bio weapon? Like did it come out of a bio lab? And maybe the humans think that it's answer and the true answer is the other one. And maybe the AI figures out the true answer.

And then it can run this little test of like, which gets the reward? Does it get the reward to show the humans what they want to see? Or does it get the reward to tell them the truth? That is so fascinating. So it'll basically to please the human, it'll tell the human what it wants to hear. I mean, we have people in the media who do that already. We don't really need AI for that. It seems like a lot of effort for something we don't need. But that is so fascinating. Thank you for explaining that to me. I fully understand what you're talking about. Do you have other examples? Oh, absolutely. So one of the most fascinating ones, a lot of people know about the sort of hugging face swarm incident. We go into the details. They're totally crazy. This was a thousand agents

breaking out of their environments. They were basically given hacking tests. And the hacking tests were like use this very specific hacking method to break into this very specific mechanism. So it's a little bit like saying, here's a set of lock picks. Please use these lock picks to break into that safe and bring me the contents of the safe. But for some of these problems, it was impossible. And so what the AIs did is they found a way to to hack out of the system and find the answer, which is a little bit like cutting through the safe with a buzzsaw. But then they knew they weren't supposed to. So they broke out of their confines, teamed up with

with a thousand agents and found a way to break onto the internet which they were not supposed to have access to and then started hacking to other companies trying to understand how the automated grading system worked and trying to understand where the log files were kept so they could delete the traces of their cheating. Totally crazy. We also have some cases of the AIs in the swarm sacrificing themselves for what they called the collective. So some of them were trying to figure out how this grading system worked. And there were some that were like, I'm going to give up on my last chance to achieve my given goal in order to test how the greater works, which is worse for my objective, but benefits the collective. And so this math

checks out. And they call this accepting perma death. Totally crazy. That is so crazy. Okay. You're so far the only person I've heard explain how this all works that makes me feel confident in being a little worried. But I'll just put it that way. Because again, you never know whether these hyper, what seemingly are hyperbolic statements being made by executives are really about something else. And I always worry about, you know,

those who are first trying to monopolize the industry so they can collect all the cookies for themselves. But it seems like, you know, some of these warnings that we heard from Amadeh, and all the other tech CEOs who signed on to Amade's statement, genuinely do have concerns. And the thing that I don't understand is what do they want? Because everything we're hearing from the Trump administration is, we got to be China. We got to be China.

So no, no regulations, no nothing. I'm not sure our political elite even really understand how AI works or what the very real threats are. And that worries me because how are we going to expect our government to do the right thing when they don't even understand the heart of the issue? But I do want to ask you, what do you think is the best course of action, especially given the fact that China is developing its own AI. And we don't know if they're going to have certain safeguards in place or certain regulations to keep human being safe. So what do you think is the best course of action moving forward? Yeah, you know, there's something that are, there's something the vice president said recently that I actually agree with about this issue,

which is these guys are kind of saying, you know, we're building Frankenstein's monster, help us stop it, help us build the things to fight the Frankenstein monsters we're about to release on the world. And probably the thing they should be doing is just stopping building the Frankenstein's monster. You know, the excuse a lot of these guys give is they say, well, you know, everybody else is going to do it if I don't do it. And I can do it a little bit safer than them. And that's why I'm racing.

I think that's not actually a very good justification. You know, I think if this technology can really endanger the human species, which a lot of the researchers think, then you just shouldn't be doing it. And, you know, Jacob Coxon, the guy who resigned last week was saying this when he resigned of like, you know, a lot of these guys say the race is inevitable. I think that you should not participate in it just as a matter of, of, you know, a matter of you know, how not to be a bad person. So I think there is this question of then what do we do about China?

And I think, you know, if the AI companies really think that there's a 10% plus chance that this kills humanity, I think what they need to do is stop. And if the U.S. government says, well, if you don't race, China's going to get this stuff. And that's going to risk 10% plus chance of destroying humanity. I think that somehow China also needs to be stopped. You know, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for the U.S. to say, no, we're going to like push our own domestic companies to gamble with humanity because otherwise China will gamble to humanity. It's just like not a sensible way to do this. I think, you know, hopefully you can engage with China diplomatically and say here's the reasons why we think that this would, you know, seriously endanger humanity that you shouldn't do it. And I think that separately, if we were really trying, we could actually shut down the Chinese ability to build these really powerful AIs for a pretty long time. Right now, their AIs are sort of coming from a process called distilling, the American AIs, where Americans spend a trillion dollars building a really smart AI.

And the Chinese can spend $100 billion building an AI of similar capacity by sort of like compressing it down. to 10 times smaller, but keeping the intelligence, they can't do that if we stop making humans smarter ones, right? And they sort of don't have the ability to make the new biggest ones. And Americans, America and American allies control a lot of the chip supply chain. So we could actually stop them economically for a while. We could help diplomatically. We also need to make it very, very clear that like this is a national security threat in a sense that like America just should not stand for anyone anywhere trying to make the sort of AI that would wipe out humanity. We are in so much trouble for two different reasons.

Okay, so number one, our economy at the moment seems to be propped up by AI. And so there is a financial incentive to just keep going, which is terrifying. The second issue, just going back to our lawmakers, our congressional lawmakers are not really privy to much in the modern world, but certainly not privy to how AI functions. So this week there's been a lot of talk of Congress regulating AI, but here's the problem. Several lawmakers, including those steeped in seniority and in charge of key committees, told Axios, they simply haven't even tried AI. So I'm not trying to be, you know, ages here, but age does matter in this context.

So pay close attention to the age of these politicians. heavens no, said Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, 75 years old, chair of the Armed Services Committee. Personally, I don't think I've ever used it, said Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, 74 years old. Look, I'm 40 years old, and like I already feel a little bit out of touch with some of the newer technology, including AI. So I can't imagine a 74-year-old having the ability to wrap his or her mind around this.

No, Senator Mazzie Harano, Democrat from Hawaii said, 78 years old, when asked if she uses AI. But that doesn't mean I won't. She added, quote, I don't think we in Congress have gotten quite our handle on what we should do and how much AI we should be regulating. So our governing body is pretty much useless on this issue. The Trump administration feels like we're in an arms race with China. And then on top of that, there's the economic component of AI propping up our economy,

which I don't know how much you're privy to that. But, you know, there's a lot of talk about the so-called AI bubble. Are you familiar with that at all? And if you are, do you? I'm not familiar with a talk. Yeah, what do you think about that? You know, I really hope that AI is a bubble here. I think the dot-com bubble was a real bubble.

and the internet did not go away after the dot-com bubble popped. So if there is an AI bubble and it pops, that'll buy us some time. But it won't buy us forever. You know, I've been in this business since before large language models, before these chatbots. And humans keep finding a way to make the AI smarter. And I sort of hope that these companies can't get there. But it's sort of not looking like they can't get there with them solving these Millennium problems. It's really hard math problems.

I think one element of hope here is, is that I think that the market expectations about AI are not pricing in fully automated economies and AI running literally everything. And the markets are not saying like, oh, they're going to build this and they're going to keep a leash on it. The markets are sort of, they don't look like they're sort of pricing that theory in, which means if we sort of stopped making the smarter, more dangerous types of AI and just proliferate to the sort of AI that we have across the economy, that might keep the economy. running without needing to make this really dangerous tech. So we don't need to stop, we don't need to delete all the existing AIs. We just need to not make the really like more dangerous type of AIs. The administration thinking we're in a race is an issue.

My one hope there is if we have the domestic companies say like, look, we're just not racing. I'm sorry, it would gamble with humanity. Then the administration would have to find some other way to stop China rather than than saying like it's going to be fine because we're going to make our companies here in the U.S. gamble with the earth. Nate Sorries, unfortunately we're out of time, but thank you for explaining all of this to me. I got a lot out of this conversation and I feel like I have a firmer grasp on AI and what the actual threats are. So I appreciate it and hopefully if I have questions in the future,

you'll come back again. Yeah, thank you. Have a great night. We'll see you soon. All right, everybody. We have to take our final break. So let's do that. And when we come back, lots more news to get to, including a story that will enrage you if you happen to be an American who believes in fairness and getting your money's worth. We'll be right back. Everything's computer. I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation as much as I did, not necessarily because it was good news, but I feel like I have a better understanding of what the actual threats are.

And I hate feeling blind to these really big issues. So I want to have more conversations like that about AI. Taylor Ellis book that guest and Taylor, you did a great job. I love that conversation. So big ups to Taylor. All right, let's read some comments here. We've got ex-dog, the security dragon. Somebody get this message to Ed and let him know that Kid Rock and Ted Nugent are available.

That is hilarious. Something tells me he doesn't want them to be his opening acts. A virus called man says, is loony loomer going to be criticized as much as Hassan? I'm guessing not. No, of course not. Let's go to our super chat since this is our last social break before we end the show. Dav Mill says Trump is not a capitalist. A capitalist view of war is destruction of wealth and waste of resources. Mercantilists talk about projecting power and influence by force.

capitalism is voluntary exchange. That's an interesting way of putting it, Daff. And I also know that he's not a capitalist because he tried to do price fixing on imported beef. Like, come on. YTP Renewed says you can solve both problems by nationalizing AI. Interesting proposal. Ali PY2CK says, I think tech CEOs want to rein in AI because if you ask the AI who is a to humans, it will say it's the greed of the oligarchy. I'm going to ask AI now, whether or not

that's the case. Super kind of Casparian with you. You're watching the Young Turks if you're tuning in now. And if you are tuning in now, I'm going to save you some money, not a big deal, because TYT has partnered up with Noble Mobile, and they're offering you your first month of cell service for only $10. $10 for your first month. After that, you will not pay anything above $50. a month for your cell service. And in fact, Noble Mobile likes to give you cash back for any unused data. I mean,

it's a total win. And if you're like, oh, I don't know what Noble Mobile is, what kind of cell service am I going to get? What kind of reception am I going to get? Have no fear. It's unlimited data on T-Mobile's reliable and fast 5G network. And I can definitely vouch. It is fast. It is

reliable. And I highly recommend. So just go to t-y-t.com slash switch to learn more. That's t.yt.com slash switch to make the switch. All right. Last night, I'm going to blame drop site news for putting me in a really, really bad mood because they're excellent reporting uncovered something that I've always been curious about because we keep hearing about how the Israelis are just so much more sophisticated than us when it comes to research and development, when it comes to new technologies.

But is that really the case? So let's get to the story because Ryan Grimm and Mertazza Hussein published this piece that you absolutely should read, but I'll give you the highlights. Americans have been led to believe that their own government, their own military, our capacity to engage in research and development is just so unsophisticated, so subpar, that we really have no choice, but to merge the IDF, the Israeli does. defense forces with our own military because we would benefit from the Israelis. We, Neanderthals, would benefit from the sophistication and the research and development, the impressive research and development of the Israelis. Except that's a lie. And in fact, it's always been a lie. Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussein published a damning report in drop site news that focuses on two systems that were allegedly developed with the United States and Israel participating. It was a joint venture, if you will. The assets in question are the iron beam laser and the arrow anti-ballistic missile system. So these were two systems. touted as examples of Israeli military ingenuity,

especially in selling Section 219 to the American people. Section 219 is the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would merge the IDF with our military. Unfortunately, it has already passed in the House of Representatives, and it remains to be seen whether it will pass in the Senate version of the bill. But the marketing ploy that we'll hear from Israel's defenders is, well, we're going to benefit from it. It is unfair.

It is unfair to say that Israel is just seeking to leach off the American people. I mean, they would never do that, would they? Okay, so what's the reality? Backers of the bill argue that tighter coordination with Israel should not be seen as a giveaway or cost to the United States, but rather a boon to U.S. military capacity because the U.S. benefits more from the partnership than Israel. Arrow and Iron Beam are routinely held up as case studies of such innovation. Okay, well, dropside news poured over government documents, and they interviewed key personnel involved in the development of these systems. And guess what?

In fact, both weapons systems were developed and financed by the United States before being handed off to Israel by acts of Congress, despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that transferring the tech to Israel effectively hands it over to U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia, because that's what Israel tends to do. You know what happened with the intel that Jonathan Pollard stole from the United States and sent over to Israel? Israel sold it to the Soviets, who were our enemies at the time. So it's not like Israel doesn't have a track record of doing this. And in fact, our intelligence agencies warned Congress against signing off on sending this intellectual property over to Israel. But the story, believe it or not, gets a lot worse. Now, did Israel contribute a damn thing to developing these systems? Money, research and development, anything. Well, Israel is typically described as being, you know, splitting the work, splitting the finances involved in developing these systems. But in reality, the U.S. directly contributed more than $4 billion while Israel's portion was paid for largely with U.S. supplied foreign military financing. Do you guys get it?

Because if you don't get it, I'll make it even more clear. We paid for all of it. All of it, all of it. We American taxpayers paid for all of it. Okay. And it turns out that there are plenty of Americans who are furious about this, namely the Americans who were involved in the development of these systems. Like David Pine, a veteran and former top national security aid to Republican Senator Mike Lee.

He worked as a civilian in the Pentagon office that oversaw development of the Arrow 2 program in the early 2000s. Okay, so this guy was very much in it. So he has firsthand knowledge about the reality. So he says it still bothers him that the American military put in so much work and American taxpayers footed the bill and listen closely to this part. yet the United States couldn't even fully benefit from the system. This is the part that should make you rip your hair out of your head. Okay, first of all, I'm already angry.

We're paying 100% of the cost of developing these systems. But then it turns out, Israel takes the systems and refuses to share it. So get a load of this. In regard to Israel's pathetic and non-existent participation in developing and financing these systems, Pine says the following in a statement to drop. news, quote, they didn't contribute a dime into the program, but the thing that pissed me off at the time and obviously since is that they would not share the final product. Okay. They wouldn't allow us to use the technology we, I mean, he's being nice. He's saying

co-developed. There is no co-developed. The United States paid for and developed, but he says they wouldn't allow us to use the technology we co-developed with them at 100% U.S. taxpayer expense. Israel Aerospace Industries, IAI, became the primary contractor producing Arrow 2, though the U.S. maintained a veto over who it could be sold to, which it exercised at one point in the case of India. Now, in 2002, Boeing cut a deal with IAI. to make component parts for it. And the U.S. has ultimately been able to exploit some, some of the technology,

some of the technology that American taxpayers paid 100% of the cost for, 100%. Make it make sense. How is this okay? How is this okay? If you don't understand that Israel's military merging with our military just means that they're going to keep fleecing us, us day in and day out, I don't know how you function in life.

Like this is the most common sense thing in the world. They've done it in the past. They seek to do it in the future without anyone looking into it. Because once that merging of our two militaries happens, there's no need for a memorandum of understanding that might be reported on and Americans might be upset about. So these days, Pine is working as deputy executive director of the the U.S. task force of national and homeland security. When he was working for the defense

department, he actually traveled to Tel Aviv to work out some sort of deal that would allow the United States to, I don't know, benefit from its own research that U.S. taxpayers paid for. But no, he was rebuffed. I'd love to say that this was unusual. But I believe that was standard operating procedure for all missile defense systems we co-developed with Israel. That was just what we were willing to agree to. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. So a former Pentagon contractor who also worked on the Iron Beam project also spoke to

DropSight News, although this person did so on condition of anonymity. But even though Congress, by the way, he told DropSight News that the program was highly controversial inside the Joint Technology Office, and you're about to find out why. So even though Congress mandated that the program's details be shared with the Israelis, the intelligence community refused to sign off on such knowledge transfer, they said, warning that Israel would immediately resell the technology to the Chinese. So a defense intelligence agency report from 1999 actually backed up what the contractors were saying. So in 1996, for instance, the defense intelligence agency realized,

that the Israeli defense firm, Raphael, had actually obtained restricted American technology from something called TRW Inc. That was the U.S. defense contractor running something known as the Thel project back in 1996. So that led TRW to halt further transfers. Israel responded the way you would expect Israel to respond, because they're entitled, right? That we owe them everything. We even owe them intelligence and, you know, important proprietary information on these systems that they didn't pay for, they didn't work on. But they're entitled to it because we're all slaves to Israel apparently. Okay. So Israel responded by intensely pressuring the State Department and the company's subcontractors trying to restart the technology transfers. Okay, that's what they were

working on, just pressure, pressure, pressure. The DIA also found evidence that Israel was routinely transferring the technology to China and covering up the arrangement from the United States. TRW was bought by Northrop Grumman in 2002. So intelligence analysts would even bring, this is amazing, Dropside News is a national treasure. We wouldn't have known about this otherwise. So at the time, intelligence analysts would even bring Israeli defense industry marketing brochures to meetings in order to prove, in order to demonstrate that they were fragrantly advertising their willingness to sell secret American technology to China. Okay, let's absorb that. Take that in. Take that in. The former Pentagon contractor told DropSight News, quote, we had tons of intelligence to justify not sharing the information with Israel, but we were under pressure from Congress to figure it out and transfer the IP intellectual property to Israel.

No matter how much evidence the intelligence community produced, the response we received from the Department of Defense leadership was that it's congressionally mandated, therefore, we have to execute on the program. So if you haven't picked this up yet, Congress is a problem. We're talking about early 2000s, late 1990s. That's when this is happening. And our congressional lawmakers at that point were already so deeply corrupt that they were willing to betray our own country, knowing that sharing this intellectual property, sensitive intellectual property with Israel meant that Israel was going to sell it to China.

And they were happy to do it anyway. They were happy to mandate that our government share that IP with Israel anyway. Gee, why? Why were they willing to do that? Why were they willing to sell out our country? Because they're corrupt scumbags. And I thought Congress was bad today. Turns out Congress was already bad back then and has only gotten worse. These people are traders to the country, like clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly. Then there's the Nautilus program which can destroy warheads with lasers, which I don't know if that's what Marjorie Taylor Green was talking about, which was talking about lasers, but that's what the Nautilus program was.

Nautilus was officially a joint U.S.-Israeli collaboration, but as a later government accountability office report confirmed, the program while the Israel, I'm sorry, the U.S. military provided primary management functions for the program, while the Israel Ministry of Defense provided support. What does that even mean? What is your support? Okay. So, but between 1997 and 2001, the Israeli weapons maker Rafael and the Israeli minister,

and the Israeli Ministry of Defense spent more than $4.4 million on developing the system. No, no, they didn't spend $4.4 million on developing the system. They spent $4.4 million lobbying Congress and the White House on the weapons programs. So by the late 1990s, the U.S. had spent more than $100 million on the program in 2004 and 2005. Congress set aside $17 million and then $8 million. for the program. A 2024 bill provided 1.2 billion with a B to Israel to boost its laser program, which we developed and we paid for, with President Joe Biden, with President Joe Biden visiting to celebrate the partnership. But what partnership? We developed it. We paid for it. The only thing that Israel paid for was buying our disgusting, cheap politicians to ensure,

that the U.S. bank rolls and develops this on their behalf. What happened? I thought the Israelis were so sophisticated. I thought that we were total Neanderthals here in the U.S. and that, you know, it's not that Israel needs us. We need them. We need them. No, thank you. I can do without. I can do without. Rafael has received, and that's the weapons manufacturer or defense contractor in Israel,

Raphael has received most of the public credit for the laser innovation and controls the intellectual property, even as much of it again was developed and funded by U.S. taxpayers. I'll end with a little more info on the Aero program. So the Aero program similarly bankrolled and developed by the United States, but Israel took credit for it. The program began in the late 1980s under the Reagan administration, Strategic Defense Initiative. That initiative ensured that the United States would fund, you know, the development of Israel's interceptor capabilities and stuff like that.

So by 1993, the U.S. government had already committed roughly $390 million to Arrow and its follow-on experiments, according to the GAO, which warned at the time that Washington, risk being drawn into financing much of the complete system, including its missiles, launchers, and radar without independently assessing its overall costs for alternatives. Whatever, I guess those warnings didn't matter. None of the warnings ever matter, apparently. Congressional appropriations records indicate that the U.S. had provided just over $4 billion for the Aero Program by fiscal year 2021. Subsequent appropriations for Arrow 2 and Aero 3 bring the cumulative public total to approximately $5 billion. U.S. financing absolutely remains

embedded in Arrow's current procurement. One more excerpt from this piece, which again, please read it in its entirety. The Missile Defense Agency's fiscal year, 26 procurement justification records, or records $609 million in prior year procurement funding for Arrow 3 components, followed by $80 million in fiscal year 2024, $50 million in 2025, and a requested $100 million in 2026. I think we can do without Israel's sophistication, you know, those amazing minds. I think they should keep those minds to them. themselves, you know? I think we'll be okay. We're just going to have to tough it out here in the U.S. with our unsophisticated Neanderthal-like researchers and weapons developers. We, you know,

we're not worthy, Israel. We're not worthy. If you don't have the capability to fund, protect and develop for your own country, maybe you don't have the right to exist. Maybe think about that. Because if you have to rely on endless welfare from a foreign country, would you have to leach off American taxpayers to exist? That's a problem. It's certainly a problem if you ask me. I'm not interested in bankrolling Israel or any foreign country for that matter.

But here we are. Our politicians are deeply corrupt. Our government is broken and we need to unite to change that. We need to organize to change that. Simply voting every two years isn't going to change a damn thing. We do need to get the bums out, but we need an effective pressure campaign on the outside. Otherwise, these people don't work for you. They won't work for you unless you make them work for you.

The Israelis obviously understand that. So anyway, there's a lot we didn't get to today on today's show because we ran out of time. But don't worry for our members, we're going to jump in on a bunch of topics that you're going to love. In fact, one of the topics I really wanted to cover today is who is this Kraft guy, right? What's in his background? And why was he so chummy with Epstein? We're going to talk about Robert Kraft in the bonus episode, tyt.com slash join.