This Week in Startups - Elizabeth Holmes is guilty, Amazon wins over socialists, Biden sanctions China | E1352

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Jason and Molly cover Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes guilty verdict (1:47), how even socialists have admitted that Amazon is the best place many people have ever worked (40:08). To wrap they dig into Biden’s new sanctions against China the implications from decoupling our economies (56:16).  (00:00) Jason intros the show (01:47) Elizabeth Holmes Theranos fraud trial verdict (09:36) Vanta - Get get $1,000 off automating your SOC 2 at vanta.com/twist (10:53) How VCs vet charlatan founders (17:33) Female CEOs in tech (21:12) Masterworks - Skip the waitlist to invest in art using promo code TWIST at Masterworks.io/twist (22:25) Are Female founders held to a higher standard by the media? (31:17) Ourcrowd - Check out the deal of the week at ourcrowd.com/twist (32:34) Funny Holmes impressions (40:08) Socialist podcast "This Machine Kills" admits Amazon has been the best place many people have worked (56:16) President Biden's sanctions on China and the impact on tech FOLLOW Jason: linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: twitter.com/mollywood

Okay, everybody, it's an all-news show today with me and Molly Wood. What else are we going to cover? Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of four counts. And we're going to do a dramatic reading of some of her text messages and talk about the fraud that everybody's talking about and how many years she's going to do. And we're going to cover how even socialists are admitting that Amazon is one of the best places for people to work or they've ever worked. And we're going to discuss that balance between capitalism, socialism, and what a great job Amazon is doing and making conditions. better for employees and that balance between what socialist, democratic socialist, communists want and what capitalism is providing. Finally, we'll discuss Biden's new sanctions

against China. And the implications on decoupling our two economies, which have spent three, four, five decades now intertwining themselves. It's a great show. Let's get to work. This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC2 report fast. Twist listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com slash twist. Masterworks, the first company allowing investors exposure into the blue chip artwork asset class. Twist listeners can skip the 30,000 person waitlist by going to masterworks.io and using promo code, Twist, and Our Crowd. Our Crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies alongside

professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join Our Crowd for free at OUR-C-R-O-W-D.com slash twist. There's only one story today. Let's be honest. We got a long rundown and a lot of potential items to talk about, but I know that everybody's here for the one thing and that thing is Elizabeth Holmes. Oh, boy. Dang. So first, the facts, then the impressions. It's a lot to get to here.

There was a lot to get to get. So she was found guilty on four counts of fraud, which many people were surprised by. She could serve up to 20 years in prison. Jason, did you think this was going to happen at all? I'm actually going to jump ahead. Do you think there would be any guilty verdict? Because the deliberations took forever. The jury was.

on several of these counts, but for guilty verdict, some related to investors, were you surprised or not surprised? Okay. I was absolutely sure she was guilty. Now, that means, and I was sure she was guilty years ago, like even before the stuff broke, because, you know, the back channel in Silicon Valley from investors, I know, who met with her was they laughed her out of the room because they would say, hey, as part of diligence, can we see the technology to say, no, it's proprietary.

And they said, yeah, well, we're VCs. this is like, we're going to be on your board of directors. Like, you can, you can show us. That's how this works. She's like, no, I can't show you, but you can't invest. And so, you know, people like, I think Bill Morris, who was at Google Ventures, kind of laughed her out of the room, other people. And he's been public about that.

So we knew it was a fraud. Or at least that she was like strange and that it might not be there, there. So I knew she was guilty. So then it just became down to, can a jury convictor, is there enough evidence? And are these prosecutors good at their jobs? I would say the prosecutors are terrible at their jobs because when I talk to people who were covering the case,

none of them talked to VCs who passed on investing. They only talked to the investors who lost money. Now, the investors who lost money is why she got the four guilty of wire fraud, because she presented information that was not true and then took their money.

So she lied, she committed securities fraud, I guess, and this wire fraud is basically lying about the state of your company, the material facts of the company, and then taking people's money. So that's what I believe she's guilty of or was found guilty of. So,

and it, but it only takes a couple of people to, you know, create a hung jury, right? Or it only takes one, I guess,

technically. So I was, I think I said I was, like, 60 or 70% sure she would be guilty of something. So I think I got it exactly right. I think it's the type of guilty

I do find very interesting because that was the question all along, is like, there always seemed to be something weird. And you talk to investors, you know, I have even had the opportunity to talk to investors who passed who were like, something was not right there from the get-go. Or even if they had put in a tiny bit of money and then tried to get information later, it was like, all right, that's not normal. What is interesting, though, is that they found her guilty of conspiring to the three counts of wire fraud and then conspiring to defraud investors. But not, they were split on whether she intended to defraud investors all along, which I think. is the kind of, that was like the dinner table argument is like, did she, was it sort of an accidental Ponzi scheme where they got in over their heads? The technology wasn't working. Right. They got on the hamster wheel of trying to continue to raise money to get it working versus it being a fraud from day one, right? Which it clearly wasn't. Like there was definitely some true believer situation. She believed her bullshit. Yeah. She was delusional. And this is the fake it till you make it. Delusions of grandeur, you know, have, you.

big, crazy, audacious goals, which is, to be totally honest, a trait you're looking for in founders. You want them to be a bit delusional. You want to believe that you can change the world against all odds. So that's like a checkbox for investors. Yeah, this person's delusional. And what if they actually succeed? You want somebody who's crazy enough to try.

You crazy, audacious idea, whether it's going to Mars or creating a search engine that indexes the world's information or connects two billion people on the planet. All of those crazy ideas, Google, Facebook, SpaceX, you know, have come to fruition. You know, push a button and go from point A to point B in any city in the world, Uber, Lyft, etc. Amazon, get anything you want within two days. Like, these are crazy, audacious ideas that now we consider De Riger, you know, obvious. And she was going down that path. But the difference is, you know, she dropped out of school in, you know, the realm of biology.

where you kind of need a science degree. Like if you're making an app, do you really need a science degree? No. But if you're delivering books, do you need a science degree? No. But that was a bit of a tell. And then the fact is, I think she did get it.

I think it's probably accurate that she did get over her skis. And she was delusional and believed she could do it. But she didn't have the ethics, moral compass, or humility to learn from the mistake. So, you know, the difference between her and another person without audacious goals is a person with audacious goals who hits a roadblock says, okay, I can't get the books there in, you know, two days, but we can get the mayor in five days. And we can't have every single skew in the world.

That's going to take a decade. But let's start working on it. And let's see, maybe we can get it to two-day delivery. Maybe we get it to two-day delivery in major cities. And we'll just keep grinding until we get there, right? Instead, when she hit those roadblocks, she just doubled down that, and, you know, basically that's where the lie came in. So that actually might be the jury getting it right, which is this wasn't a conspiracy for day one. Yeah. Yep. I mean, that's what I find really interesting about. I think this is a very

nuanced outcome and a nuanced verdict that is, that feels to me to be ultimately accurate because anybody who talks to founders can see how this could happen. The red flags, of course, from the beginning were, and look, I'm taking this straight from your book, right? Not only with this lady not provide monthly updates. And I believe Jason is a big fan of you don't invest if you don't provide, you know, monthly, if you're not willing to give monthly updates, her investors who had put in, you know, in one case, let's see, about a hundred million dollars from the family office of former education secretary Betsy DeVos, she wouldn't tell them anything for a period of years. This gets to, though, so let's talk about who they decided that she defrauded.

And I see a conspicuous lack of Silicon Valley venture capital firms here, despite the constant insistence that this is a Silicon Valley story. Yeah, I mean, that's a great narrative. Yeah. It's a great narrative to say, so this is what Silicon Valley creates, is this type of fraud. I think you have to pause for a second and say, this fraud is one in 10,000, right? This level of fraud, a made-off level fraud, a Theranos level fraud. And then you have things that feel like this that are in the delusional category, you know, category, which is Adam Newman from we were.

Adam Newman, exactly. that's exactly who I was thinking of. Is Adam Newman a fraud or delusional? Where does he on that spectrum? Well, I had a we work office. It was pretty fantastic. It was pretty revolutionary at the time. You didn't have to sign a long lease.

It was a product that worked and not fake boxes in Walgreens. So that's one big difference. That's the big difference. And then did he go off the rails? Was he smoking pot on private jets? Was he not a good steward of capital? Was he buying wave machines? Was he double dealing?

and reselling the IP of the trademark to his own company, buying real estate flipping. So there was all these ethical violations that he was doing, but at the core there was a real business. So there's a spectrum between somebody who is completely honest, upstanding, and then there's fraud, and then there's like this whole thing in between. Okay, SOC2 compliance is critically important.

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That's Vanta.com. slash twist to get that $1,000 off. In the whole thing in between, which now, Molly, that you're joining me on this adventure to be a managing director at launch or investment company, one of the things we have to continually vet for when we're reviewing a deck is a founder,

typically a young, naive founder, will say, here are our customers, and they'll use the word customers. So when you say the word customer, I would assume, you would assume, a normal person would assume, somebody who's paying you for a product or service and using it.

And they'll put 10 loads, Right. And that's like the logo slide. It's supposed to get induced investors into investing in a company. But what if out of those 10 logos, three are paying, four on free trials, and, you know, the other three, you know, we've had an email exchange with. And you're calling them all customers. Well, now you're lying. And is it a big lie? I would say yes. But, you know, they would say, well, you know, the people who are on the free trials are using the product and other people give you 30 days free. So yeah, they're customers. We got their credit card and we will charge them next month. So now you're getting into this like, you know, nuanced debate. Are you lying or not? And I just tell people, own your metrics, own the reality, because we all know the reality

is going to be hit or miss in the early days of a startup. So you put one slide paying customers, another slide, customers on free trials, and then pipeline. These are potential customers, customers in discussion, people we're talking to. And founders are like, okay, yeah, I can split that into it. three slides. And I'm like, don't make me a detective. Don't make me into Colombo to where I have to figure out the truth. Just tell the truth from day one. And that's something where fake it to you make it, bend the truth, present the best image. Founders get desperate to raise capital to not fail and they're acting out of fear. So I have a little bit of empathy for a founder who is scared

of failure and who does a little bit of massaging or spinning. I still don't think they should do it to be clear, but I understand what's happening. They're scared. They're scared of failure. And that is like that the way to the world. They might have employees. They have investors that they don't want to let down. Like that's all so understandable. And you can see how some of this would start to spin. And then you can see where it had to stop and where it crossed over into late, I mean, fake boxes and literally lying to consumers and lying to investors and refusing. But it was it was clear. And this is what has driven me crazy. even for, I mean, when I was covering this as a journalist, I still was like, this is not a Silicon Valley. Like, it's just this constant insistence that it was a Silicon Valley story and that it's like all about the excesses. And you see that in every single lead today. And I'm like, the first big round she got after a threshold was from Rupert Murdoch. Yeah. It's a bit of her, is Rupert Murdoch known for his incredibly savvy technology investments that he's made over the years, especially in biotech, you know, and life sciences. Like, I mean, he's a bit of. He's

He is a Silicon Valley. He's one of us. Let me tell you. I see him all the time walking up and down University Avenue at Copa Cafe or whatever. He's not like walking around Santill Road or, you know, in South Park, you know, meeting with app developers. It's just not what he's doing. He's, you know, he's in Monaco or in New York City, right? Like, it's just, it's a bit crazy. But, you know, then the other issue that becomes a bit of a lens here is she's a female founder. And so I'm curious your thoughts on that because, you know, the press, if you look at the two groups of people, and I don't want to make this beat up the press time, but, you know, we're both former journalists and we're doing random acts of journalism here on the show. But, you know, when you're a journalist and you kind of laud somebody and you put them on the cover of magazines like they did with Adam Newman and like they did with her.

Who promoted, just as a thought experiment, who promoted Elizabeth Holmes Moore? The Silicon Valley Venture Industrial Complex, and Dr. St. Horowitz, Sequoia, whoever, they had nothing to do with her. And then the press. She's on the cover of Fast Company, Inc., like every major publication. So, you know, when the press is like,

oh, it's your fault, I'm kind of like, or did you have any part in this? Is it? Is it really my fault? Because I'm pretty sure that you have helped create a celebrity obsessed culture all across America that led to like a TV guy. becoming president two times and, you know, yeah, no, 100%.

And it is amazing to see them all in lockstep now talking about how this is a Silicon Valley story. I'm like, this is a celebrity culture story and 100% related to the fact that this woman is irresistibly attractive. And you said it, not me. Absolutely knew how to market that. 100%. So she was leveraging the fact that she was. attractive, which, you know, is a tough conversation to people to have people to have. But when I was in the magazine business, but so is Adam Newman. Like, it's not just be, I want to be a hundred

percent here. America likes pretty people. Newsflash. And then, right, that is not a shock. Right. That is controversial to say. Not controversial. There's a reason why you and I are broadcasters who have big audiences. I'm just saying, you know, look at us. I mean, look at us. It's exhausting sometimes. It is, it is. But with the two of them who are like, taller, better-looking versions of us. Literally. I'm literally blushing right now. Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, yeah. There is a thing with, there is actually like studies that have been made about height and CEOs. Yes. CEOs are over, over five foot 11 or six foot, and I'm five, eight and a half on a good day.

Like, the correlation with being CEO goes up. Putting all that aside, I was in the Star Chamber, my own magazine and other magazine. and with other editors of magazines, and they would do photo shoots and then decide who gets the cover.

And I can tell you that if you were an obese person, if you were an ugly person, if you were aesthetically not pleasing, you were not getting the cover of a magazine, period, full stop. And so one time we put somebody in the cover who was large in Silicon Islander reporter, and I had this big internal debate. Somebody's like, you can't, like literally one of my editors

is like, this person is, too fat and too ugly to be on the cover of a magazine. And, you know, I was like, they said it so bluntly. I know. People were trying to outvote me. And I was like, but he's also the most successful person. We're going to put him on the cover anyway. And it was like a big internal debate. And I'm not giving myself any points for doing it. But I do think that that's like another layer on this, which I mean, when you and I came into the industry, how many female CEOs were there of note in technology? Kim Pellisi, Meg Whitman. Meg Whitman back then

That's right, totally It was like Xerox A woman from HP But that was Mary Fiorina Carly Fiorina, yes So like there was just like short list And so if you were a journalist

Or you were running a tech conference You're like, okay, got to have Marissa Mare Or you call them all, got to have exactly And now One of the great things about our industry As a girl dad I'm pretty stoked about Is we now have enough Female founders to have one

be a fraud. That's the way I interpret this. We have a large enough sample. Like, if you only have 10, you know, female CEOs or 100, like, what's the chances of a one in, I call this a one in 10,000 fraud. Your chances of a one in 10,000 fraud if there are only a hundred or a thousand female CEOs is very low. But when you start turning to 10,000, it's inevitable. Right. And this is a minor departure, but not entirely because that also led to a narrative around Elizabeth Holmes. There has been, sort of an act like I know a number of female founders who are like yeah we're basically all on a group text being like when are we going to get the takedown piece so there was also the narrative around Elizabeth Holmes initially I'm just like is she getting tougher treatment because she's a

female founder because when a female founder does something wrong double click on that do female founders get it harder from the press and social media when they make mistake? I mean, female founders get it harder from life. So that includes social media and the press, right? Like, there's no question. They rate, these are just, this is just facts. Like, they are, they get less money overall. And then when they do something wrong, they do get harsher scrutiny. I think there's no question about that. And certainly, then they just get their asses kicked on social media all the time. I think instructive for this point, and I agree with you, is the away founder, the luggage founder. That's exactly.

exactly who I was thinking of. Yeah. Corey. Um, she basically, you know, gave a stern talking to in Slack. And Slack is,

you know, not the ideal medium, but, uh, she said like, listen, your customer support, it's the holidays.

Everybody's working. Everybody's doing double shifts. This is when we make our money. If you want a job, show up for work when we need you, which is the holidays. And you better bring it. And she,

you know, kind of like admonish slash gave what she's, thought was an inspirational speech. I'm not saying I've given these in the past, but now that we work together, you may hear someday. I may see some things. You may hear some day when the standard is not being hit by our producers when I go, what the hell's going on here? I told you guys to read the stories to each other before I read them, or Molly reads them, read them out loud to each other so you find any, you know, big, you know, problems. And I looked at what she did and like they diverged us

this big take down piece. And I'm like, if a man did that, they would be inspirational. They would be holding people accountable. More importantly, it would not even be news. Because they do it all the time. Of course. I was like, wow, I've worked for a lot of editors who have sent way

meaner notes than that. And to be clear, those were not nice. Right. It does not sound like she was a great boss. That is not news, nor is that unusual in the world of business. Yeah. Unless it happens to be a woman CEO. So that was actually the most.

the moment when I got the note from the couple of female founders that I know who were just like, we're all waiting for that same piece to come out about us. We're all waiting. Oh, yes. Oh, about like Mollywood is difficult or Kara Swisher's difficult or whoever is difficult. Sure. 2021 was a huge year for IPOs. We all know that.

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slash twist. See important disclosures at Masterworks. com. You know what the thing is that's also, it's like you're picking to come work for a company.

if you pick to go work for that company, and that leader is not to your liking, like they're too hot or they're too cold. Then you can, like Goldilocks, you can pick the porridge you want. You can pick the bed you want to sleep, and the chair you want to sit in. And you find you're just right.

Bezos and the culture of Amazon is not for everybody. And the Amazon story that came out in the New York Times, I don't remember that one, where they're like, oh my God, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life, life, I was literally tortured. It was like human rights violations at Amazon. And it was like, except that everybody else is loyal to Bezos for decades.

And they leave and they come back as boomerang employees. And so it's really just a mismatch between the intensity level you want at work and, you know, the company's culture. So don't go work at Netflix if you don't want to, Netflix makes you reapply for your job basically every January. For some people, that's. panic inducing. Right.

For other people, it's super inspiring. They want to work with 18 people. I've deaf. I heard people, you know, I have a friend who worked at Uber, had a legitimately pretty awful experience there as a woman of color, ended up leaving, and has said to me many times over the years that the thing she misses most about working for Uber was working for a place where you demanded a team all the time. She's like, I loved that.

I loved that everybody I worked with was 18. And to be clear. And to be clear. And she also weirdly couldn't get a promotion there. And so also, you know, and to your point, and which I like your and, and, it's all about the ends. And that doesn't forgive sexual harassment at work or any kind of harassment or any bias. Like that's a separate issue.

There's just intensity at work. And I look at the stuff with, and I tried to get her to come, staff, Corey, if you want to come on the pod and you don't want me to interview, have Molly interview. because this is one of the reasons I was stoked about you coming here. It's like some people don't want to interview with me like because whatever, you know, my reputation, you know, my, my, my culture or whatever, my tone. But I think, Steph, if you want to do an interview with Molly, I would love to hear you guys talk about this because I think it's such a real issue. And then she got ousted and I was like, she's like the heart and soul of the company as a founder. Like, like, who is on the board of this company?

Like, if she wants to give an inspirational speech and tell people to suck it up and work twice as hard or don't. don't work at the company. It's her prerogative. You don't have to work at the company, right? And the idea that that's a leak, like that's a thing that should be, I don't know, yeah, and it's a little yucky. Yeah, and then nobody puts their name on. Let's move on. I do think we should get back to having a little more fun with the Elizabeth Holmes story, though, because despite all of the actual business facts of it, right? Which are real and very meaty and worth discussing and lots of money and whatever. I mean, this is just right up there with WeWork in terms of like, you can't get enough of this crap. And the responses that you got

to the tweet asking for the name of her auto buyout. Just lay some of those on us. Oh, okay. So I, you know, I have a device I use on Twitter. I'll give it to all the social media optimizers out there and managers, which is I like to do a contest, either a caption contest. So I did a caption contest the other day with Jeff Bezos's, he did like a 70s disco picture of himself living his best life. That got a lot of great captions. Some of them a little dank.

But I said, tell me what Elizabeth Holmes will title or, Biography's bonus for dankness. For those of you don't know what dankness is, it's kind of like darkness in the Reddit term. So user Aaron. It's really thick weed is what it is. It's just really thick, moist, meaty weed. So dank weed is like very strong. And also darkness, yeah, and then meme department.

If you're going to smoke a dank weed, yeah, don't do that before the pod, Molly. Or that could be, that could be like something we do as a device on the pot. I mean, you know, there's a lot more startups now than there used to be. in that department. Okay, anyway, stay on target. On target, on target, Rogue one. The blood sacrifice. Not bad. Okay. The blood sacrifice. See, I always like

people who have a great starting point, but I like to workshop these. The blood sacrifice, colon, you have to have the subhead here. The blood sacrifice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a good start. Blood truth. The story of an honest American worker. Getting there.

Getting there. Getting there. Got a subtitle. Not a good subtitle. But Blood Truth isn't bad. In Cold Blood. Boom. That is great. Now, see, what's great about simple and, you know, we're talking about the famous book by, Don't carry you?

No. Oh, no, you're right. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote. Which, by the way, shout out Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bennett Miller, who I knew in New York. What a great film in Cold Blood. A great book and also the great Truman Capote film. So in Cold Blood, you got to make a pun or a play on words. here in cold

blood, in bold blood, in something blood. So you got to like kind of get... You got to take it a step further. You got to punch it up, right, with the workshop. It's taken, so... It's taken, so, yeah, bold blood might be interesting.

Now we're getting to some dank here coming up next. Yeah, so anyway, so now you see how you workshop these things in the writer's room. The prick of life. Okay. I'm like a 14-year-old boy that may be laughs so hard. Go back to the beauty of them.

I'm just a child. This is good, though. Out for blood, the truth behind my time at Theranos. Okay, see, now this is a well- That's like a real one. That's like a real- Yeah, this is a person who works in editorial. That's good.

Yeah. It's got a little bit of Silicon Valley stuff that I'm not into, but. Let's see. It's just like fancy for the description. Ah, an expose, I've had the venture capital, Fakeda to you and Make a culture,

snowballed into a web of lies, deception, disappearance of the Logan Valley. This person probably works in copy editing or the publishing business. It's not bad. I mean, that's almost print ready.

Out for blood is great. What was a Sylvester Sloan movie? Rambo and something blood? I think it was like first blood. First blood. First blood. See, now you can make a good play there with first blood.

The truth behind my time at there now. So that's like the truth behind is, you know, is like a standard device. A bloody mess. Arjun. See, that's a good starting point, too. Bloody mess.

Bloody messy. This next one, I think, is very likely given that everybody is because, as soon as like they get attacked, they become the victim. Blood in the water. The persecution of an American innovator. See, that's good because blood in the water is like, you know, I didn't deserve the shark attack. Like, I had a little.

Really? And you guys all sharks came after me. That's so good. That's good. That's the victim's take, as opposed to out for blood, the truth behind my time. I love it. I love it. We considered reading some of the Balwani and Holmes.

This was like for just inside baseball. I was like, we should maybe do a dramatic reading again of Balwani and Holmes. Oh, we have some. But he took out the really, because it turns out. I just want to say, like, I didn't know that those were so racy when I suggested we do a dramatic reading. Because some of them were like, you are the sunshine of my life, my whole world. I mean, it was like cringe worthy, crazy. Yeah.

I will say my boyfriend did not think it was very funny last night. when I texted him, good night, loving you infinite. I thought it was hysterical. I'm like, this is amazing. I'm adopting all of this. I will say, just before we get to the actual tweets where they talk about their year and they're, so they introduced all these tweets between that, or I'm sorry, texts between them because one of her claims was that she was in this abusive relationship with this older man and

that he was really controlling her. And then that was a reason why some of these things happened. So all of these texts then got introduced into the record to show like, oh, it seems like you guys texted each other all the time about how you were each other's universe and God's light and you love each other infinite. But I'm not going to lie. Like I read that and I was like, this is not a healthy relation. That is not healthy. Well, also, I mean, I think he was love bombing and it was creepy. He was dating her when she was very young and he, I see 10 or 15 years older than her. So she was like 31 and he was 50 when they first started this company. Oh, really? So, you know,

listen, I don't want to make a judgment on true love and like age differences. and I don't know exactly when this started, but the Schengali defense, you know, like when you read the text and you look at the nature of the relationship, there was something in his pumping her up to do this. Yeah, but I mean, it's a very hard thing to read into somebody's relationship via text

and understand it. So I don't know. It's time for another R Crowd deal of the week. Right now you can join our crowd's investment in Blue Tree. According to the deal memo, Blue Tree has developed a process to significantly reduce the sugar in any natural liquid. That's interesting.

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And she is hilarious and super funny. And her, Elizabeth Holmes, we were going to going back and forth doing Elizabeth Holmes. And it's just extraordinary. Yeah, like literally, I hung out with Chloe when I had my little stint at SNF for a week. So before we... I try not to talk about it because it gets re-blot, but putting it outside. So before we start getting into the tweets, because we are going to do a dramatic reading. We are going to do it. Okay.

But of the less loving you infinite, please, because that can get very weird. That's not acceptable. We do, though, Chloe Feynman needs to be our level set. She's the baseline. Okay. Let's hear it. And then you're obviously going to be home. Okay.

Anytime you create something new, there should be questions. What higher purpose is there than changing the world? This is the nanotainer. I developed it on a Bunsen burner in my high school chemistry lab when I was about 14. I was on about two hours of sleep, but my chief aim is to live in a world where no one has to say goodbye too soon. First they call you crazy, then they challenge you, and then you go on and change the world. Oh my God.

I have to do my uncomfortable right. Now. Oh, my God. This is going to be hard. Get your crazy eyes on. There you go. There you go. Now we're talking.

I like the breathing. The breathing is so upsetting. I mean, it's so Hannibal Lecter. Like, I feel like Clarice, have the lambs stop crying? Seriously. Who is this man you seek, Paris? I can say cup. Clarice.

Paris. I was watching Red Dragon, by the way. So amazing. The guy from Secession played Hannibal. Lecter first in Manhunter. Brian Cox. Brian Cox played Hannibal actor. It is such a great Hannibal Lecter before the other amazing Hannibal Lecter.

But it's like a younger Hannibal actor who's like less refined. But my God, is that like that original Manhunter is a perfect film. Perfect. But creepy as I'm going to watch it. Like do not watch it alone. Lock the doors because it is demented. But it really gets into the profiler's mindset. I'll leave it at that.

But the original Manhunter, which came out decades before. Okay, here we go. So wait, we're really doing this? We'll do a few of these are, this is sort of the weird, like they're together, but like the business thing is getting a little rough. And then, oh, good. Here we go. Okay.

For context, we might not make it through all these. For context, these are from late December 2014. They're on the cusp of the new year. And they're talking about how 2015 is going to be there. This is our year. We can never forget this. Tiger. I know. I'm focused on it. We will execute this year.

I know. I'm focused on it too. And our kids never forget who we are. What does that last line even mean? And for our kids never forget who we are. I mean, the grammar is crazy. I guess this is a lot. in the age before grammarly. So I can forgive a little bit.

Our kids like stay. I mean, wow. I mean, this shows the delusion. I mean, it does show the delusion. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Which kind of like feeds into her defense that she was doing this for noble pursuit, which I think in her deranged mind, she was. Yep. She thought she was on the right side of history. By later in 2015,

it is clear in some ways that they already know is fallen. apart. Oh no. And Sunny is texting her and he's like, we need to commit to each other and get out of this hell so we can live in paradise we both have. I have literally

been meditating on this exact same. The whole time I was running was thinking that. Oh wow. So she went running and was thinking this whole thing. Just thinking, how the hell do we get out of this morass that we are and we are doomed? I just like the way they speak, shows them,

I think they should have gotten off. Now that I read these acts, I kind of feel like they should have gone for a mental illness defense. If they had gone that she was a sociopath or something, I think if she had, yeah, what's the, what's the criminal defense of,

like, you're crazy that people go for? Insanity defense? It's, it's like, that's the shorthand, but it's like a, it's a,

it's a competency phrase. I think if they're going to appeal this, they should go straight into these texts and she should go for the insanity defense. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know that they show that she was insane. But I, if I had been on that jury, these texts and the level of like love bombing contained in them would have raised some flags for me around the the relationship and the potential for manipulation. It's just that it feels sort of mutual at some point. Except there's one exchange where he's like, uh, infinity and God's light and whatever.

she writes back just a smiley face and goes, Itto. I mean, diddo. I feel like I want to hear a dramatic reading of the loved ones, not for us to do it, but I want to have Chloe, uh,

Bidman. And so, I got a DM, Chloe and ask her to do an S&L skit of, but she's definitely going to do it. She's got to do those love texts. I think they should do a dramatic reading of the love texts. And then I don't know who get,

who they get, get to do his side. But yeah, wow. I mean, it's just so great. It's something. And then before we move on, there are like at least maybe one and a half other news stories we're going to talk about for just a second today, but we are going to leave you with this really profound tweet from Twitter user Keaton Inglis who points out, you can take Elizabeth's freedom, but you will never take her Forbes 30 under 30. Oh, my Lord. God's a 30 under 30, the bane of my existence. Just hang up that. Yeah. I had somebody working. for me who's like, my dream is to get to 30 under 30.

And I was like, uh, you need bigger dreams. I said, I was like, we need to really work on your dreams. Like, right, they give that to, they literally splinter that into like 500 categories now. 30 under 30 in mobile at location apps. 30 under 30 in, you know, mobile gaming, casual gaming apps, mobile real time strategy apps. It's just a griff, folks, to get you to do an inbound link and send SEO,

juice to Forbes. I mean, it's genius on the Forbes side, but it doesn't really do anything for you. Yeah. So I like to listen to people who I disagree with. And one of the podcasts I subscribe to, and I'll listen to every third or fourth episode is this machine kills. It's like a really far left podcast. And it's a bunch of like really wacky socialists who know nothing about business. But they do feel very strongly about socialism. And, you know, they're anti-corporate. And so I learn a lot about their position. And I just happened to come up that they did a little preview of their Patreon. I think maybe they do the half shows or on Patreon, half shows are available free kind of model. So there's this machine kills and there's another publication,

another podcast that's also anti-tech. And I'll listen to these because, as I said, it's really good to understand people's position if they disagree with you. And sometimes they actually have some really good positions for me to hear. But this one I thought was particularly compelling because they had to make an admission. Jathan, I think is his name. And he is a real hardcore socialist. And they have this socialist publication, Jacobian or something that they all talk about or write for.

Anyway. Oh, Jacobin. Yeah. Jacobin, is that it? And so I'm just fascinated by socialists slash communist because there's like there's Democratic socialists like Bernie. who just want a lot of benefits. And I disagree with a lot of that stuff,

but I understand what they're coming from. Then there's like socialist, socialist. We need to make Amazon a company that's controlled by the state or the workers or something. So anyway, listen to this minute and 37 clip. This is a long clip. But I want everybody to hear it. And then, Molly, I want you to respond to it, not me. We'll see on the other side of one minute and 37 seconds.

I just want to also say that I think you were really dead on here, David, as well, where you were talking about how for like a lot of people, a job at an Amazon warehouse is a really good job. It's the best job that some people can have because they do pay, you know, a $15 minimum wage. They do provide benefits like health care, a 401K,

uh, the warehouses are air conditioned, right? Like all of, you know, things that a lot of other jobs and especially jobs in that sector don't tend to tend to have. But you're right.

Like they, they dangle that, right? They dangle that as a, as this kind of promise of lowering the floor of expectation, right? This is the best you can expect. And it calls it, it makes us as leftists, have to hold two facts in our mind at the same time. One is that Amazon is a terrible global empire of exploitation and extraction fact. Another fact, though, is that for a lot of people, especially immigrants who work in Amazon warehouses in the U.S., in Europe and Australia. This is the best job they've ever had.

And they are thankful, rightfully so, to have that job. Our project as left is to try to resolve that contradiction, to resolve that dialectic of, on one hand, criticizing Amazon ruthlessly, while on the other hand recognizing that people are not lying when they say they're very thankful for their. their job at Amazon. All right, Molly, what's your reaction to that?

Yeah, yeah. I think this is a, this is interesting because it's sort of, we talked about this a little bit with Web 3 yesterday, this idea that like, why did it have to become a religion? Because now this conversation has to be so partisan in sort of the purest, not the Democrat versus Republican, but they either like, you're only for or you're only against. And there's no and.

There's no middle ground. And this, to me, me is a conversation about exactly that. And it's funny because right after our show yesterday, I went and read the new editor-in-chief of Wired put out as sort of manifesto for what Wired should be. And it talked all about how we've gotten so binary as a culture. Everything has to be either this or this. And I was like, that's what I was saying yesterday, but I didn't think of using that smart-sounding word binary because we have like literally lost the use of the word and in our society. And so everything that this guy said on this podcast is 100% true.

And this is why extremists only destroy and never create. Because if you can't hold two ideas in your head at the same time, then you are doomed to fail. You are doomed to never hear any truth. Like both of these things are 100% true. If you came from a place where only horrific jobs were available or you live in a place where no jobs are available that pay this amount of money, working at Amazon can be the greatest job you've ever had. Absolutely. And Amazon should probably treat his workers better in warehouses.

Right. Not even should probably, right? Like, should. Like, they ran that guy out for trying to organize and then smeared him as incoherent and then basically had to admit that everything he said was true. Like, there's some bad stuff that they do from a worker perspective and have put a lot of small businesses out of business because they can't compete. and have put in warehouses and fulfillment centers

in places that have big job droughts and they pay better than anybody else. And if you put out of business, some of these small mom-and-pop stores, consumers get a better deal because it's inefficient to have like a bunch of local stores selling Amazon Basic cables or, you know,

moisturizing cream or batteries. And it would be better for society for the environment if they came from a central warehouse. and they were cheaper. And that is just the hard thing for people also to get their heads around. And Amazon takes data from its third-party sellers and uses it to create competing products, and, and, and, and, and, and they deny it, but it's probably true. Right.

Right. And all of those things can be true, and you can want things to be better without needing them to disappear from the face of the planet. Yes. And Amazon pays more than mom and pops. And they'll pay for your college education now. And because they can because they got gigantic and they didn't always start that way, right? I mean. And they're more efficient.

And they use robots. All, all, all. And what I like about this is I felt like this was a great moment for like capitalism in this negotiation between capitalism and socialism. Between, you know, entrepreneurs, you know, seeking efficiency, wealth, opportunity, et cetera, innovation and reaping those rewards. and socialists who are trying to defend, you know, people they perceive as not having agency, which I don't think is true, but putting that aside, I think their intention is correct. They want to defend people who they feel are helpless or, you know, are under the gun, even though we have record low unemployment and 11 million unfilled jobs and whatever, putting that all aside,

I thought it was like a good recognition for them because I believe what we're in the middle of is a great renegotiation. If equities drive people to become phenomenally. wealthy, well, then we should let people participate more in equities. And so one of the things we talked about on All In is this freedom dividend where what if we gave everybody $2,000 when they were born into a 401k of just an index fund, Vanguard, of the NASDAQ and the whatever, you know, just a perfect index of the stock market. And they couldn't touch it until they were in college and they could take, you know, half of it for college and then the other half was retirement. That would be unbelievable. And you know what it would do is it would put more money into

equities and we put them into American companies. So that gives us an advantage over foreign countries. So we make this American index of the best American companies. Now, the only problem with that is the Bezoses of the world and other folks would become more wealthy because you would have more automatic buying of their stocks, but at least everybody would be in on the game. And I think getting more people in on the game

and letting them get equities and getting rid of accreditation rules and just making it a test or something, or even gifting people some free shares and companies as, like, part of their being born in this great country is the great balance, because then people would learn about equities. And that's what you're seeing here. I think it's sort of a, I think fundamentally it's a false equivalency to say that we're having a conversation about unregulated capitalism or socialism and nothing in between, right? Like, we know that any organism that grows out of control kills you.

That's the fundamental. That's what, that's cancer, right? or like a small tree that gets too big, tears out your foundation. Like you can't have. Right? You can't have organisms that grow unchecked. Right.

Because they eat everything around them. Or eventually they get so big that they topple over because competition comes along. Like clearly, as I said to you when we had ramen, I believe in capitalism or I wouldn't be here. Right. But I also think you can want and I think you can want capitalism to function better to have more stakeholders who benefit from it. And to have reasonable rules so that it doesn't trample over everything in its path without being a socialist.

I also think there's a chess game going on. This is what I know from behind the scenes, just based on, you know, knowing a lot of the principles. Behind the scenes, there's like a really high-level chess match. And in poker, there's a concept called leveling. But leveling is, is you and I are playing poker. And we both know that, you know, this certain betting pattern is indicative of having a a very strong hand. So then I know you know that.

You've been playing poker a long time and you've both seen each other do it. So now I'm going to do it knowing you know that, but I'm going to do it, knowing you know that, and having a weekend. Or I'm going to do it knowing you know that, knowing that I probably have a weekend, but I in fact have a strong hand. And this leveling where you're trying to understand how the person perceives you or the rules of the game is what's happening. So I think Amazon knows Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes, Elizabeth Warren, the other Elizabeth, I'm very fond of.

You know, yeah. Anyway, they know that they're, you know, really upset about the stuff and they want a minimum wage. So if you were going to level Bernie Sanders on a $15 minimum wage federally, how would you do that? Well, you just give everybody $15 an hour before he was able to pass this legislation. Which, to be clear, is still a sub-living wage. wage in most cities of America. But not all. In some cities, it's a great wage.

And you would give people benefits. Well, I mean, listen, there has to be some entry level jobs in the world, right? Like, there's got to be some first, you know, at a college, at a high school or, you know, GED. There has to be some entry level jobs. So if these are the entry level jobs and they're $15 an hour. And they're $15 an hour. That's great. And you're absolutely.

And you have two people in a household doing it. Or maybe you have two parents and, you know, one of age child and the of age, child has no work, but they work in a factory and they can contribute a little bit. Yeah, it's not going to work in San Francisco, but it's certainly going to work in Mississippi, you know, or Atlanta or outside of Atlanta. So what's interesting about that leveling-wise is they just neutralize their whole debate. So now what is Bernie Sanders, you know, what is their next thing? They're like, well, we need free college.

Everybody should get for free education. By Bernie Sanders much better than my Elizabeth Warren. And the one percent- I like how it gets like just a little Russian once in a while, too. It gets a little Russian. Like a, you know. You don't, Jason, you don't need the board of. It don't mean, exactly.

Well, Bernie. I think Bernie spent a lot of time in Russia. I'm just saying, I'm not saying he's a communist. But I think he's closer to communism than anybody else in our government. I'll just leave it. Maybe not, maybe excluding Trump. But what was very interesting is like his next thing was college. And then all of a sudden, Amazon gave everybody college,

sort of paying for everybody's associate degrees, which is exactly what he asked. for people as the starting point, right? Like, we're not going to pay for four degrees, but we'll start with associate's degrees and city college, whatever. So that's the leveling chess match that's going on. Well, you have to give Bernie Sanders

and Elizabeth Warren credit for upping the ante and poking them and saying, like, we need a living wage because then it gave them the ability to level them and to dunk on them, which then got the mission accomplished. But also, to assume that that has like solved, answered the question also assumes that Amazon

is the only company in America, which is not yet the case. and I still have hope that we'll get to more like three competing companies in this country in the next like 50 years. Walmart still crushing them in Berlin. Right. You know, Amazon has the scale to do it. Walmart might have the scale to do it. It's this kind of remarkable thing where Amazon can do the thing that no other business can afford to do,

thereby continuing to put those businesses out of business and take their, you know, it's like Amazon wins on both ends, which doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't raise the federal minimum wage, which has one raise. which has been raised in however many years, which is politics and unrelated. What's good about it, though, is if the private sector does it on their own, that's an example of basically regulating and policing yourself, which is really what you want,

ideally, is that you don't have to have the government intervene. And really the enemy in all this is the fast food industry. Decades, they fought to keep the minimum wage low. And they use the threat of automation. You know, like if you guys, you know, raise the minimum wage, we're just going to put kiosks and you're not going to be able to order McDonald's. And that's exactly what McDonald's actually

paid through on that threat. They now are putting, I don't know what percentage of it is. Maybe one of our producers can look it up, but some amazing percentage of McDonald's orders are coming in through mobile phones now and they're lowering the number of cashiers and they're putting kiosks in.

So you can order on your phone, I understand, I don't read at McDonald's, but you can order on your phone, I understand, and you can order at the kiosk and they're just going to lower the number, of cashiers to where the line becomes so painful that the two minutes to download the app and register is less painful than being online. Totally.

Well, and the thing I always tell my son, too, who has always been experimenting with communism. And as an intellectual exercise, we've had a lot of conversations about communism at my house because that's what the kids are doing these days. But, and is always railing about Amazon is like, look, and this gets back to the celebrity culture idea. Amazon is the one that we all talk about because Jeff Bezos is like famous and Amazon is really big. But the company, you know, you know who has like way lower pay and way worse warehouse conditions than Amazon? Tyson meets, right?

Like, you don't talk about the communist kids are not talking about the meat packing industry. They're not talking about some of the most appalling jobs in America. The people who work at Fritos like went on strike because they were like, oh yeah, we have to work this thing called a suicide shift, which is like, I don't know, 60 hours in. a row. I mean, there are just like truly appalling working conditions across America that, that frankly, like, if Bernie and Elizabeth want those to change, and I think that they do, they should stop talking about Amazon and talk about those. Like, put a camera in one of those factories for a day, like have the new, what was, what's that famous book about the meatpacking industry, the, oh, yeah, the jungle. Oh, yeah. Jungle or something like that. Yeah. I mean, because that's

what we're really talking about. And the fact that in some places, those, those dominate the, I like, hit my mic. The jungle. Upton Sinclair, the jungle. Upton Sinclair, the jungle. Exactly. Like, that's all still happening. So, honestly, Amazon is a head fake. And every time that Amazon gets

Bernie and Elizabeth and you and I to talk about Amazon instead of Tyson. Yep. Or McDonald's. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or McDonald's. Exactly. All right. So anyway, I'll Anyway, shout out to the, I'll look forward to being invited to being on this machine kills when they invite me on. All right.

Speaking of terrible conditions, let's segue to China and the Biden administration has imposed sanction on Chinese companies and government entities for human rights abuses against the U.Gers. Finally, the U.S. government has said something. Xinjiang is an area that's about twice as largest Texas, has about 25 million people in it. There are many cities in China, people who don't know with. 25 million people or more, which is really crazy when you think about it. And about half of those 25 million are Uighurs, which is spelled UY, G-H-U-R-S, but pronounced U.S, which is a Muslim minority. And they, according to the China human rights defenders, 660,000 rural residents of Uighur backgrounds may have been taken away from their homes and detained in re-education camps. If you see these

re-education camps at Amnesty International or any newspaper, the videos of them, them. These are basically prison camps. These are, you know, you are, you are rare to compare anything to the Holocaust, except a lot of my friends who are Jewish compare this to the Holocaust because it is starting to hit that scale. While another 1.3 million may have been forced to attend mandatory day or evening reeducation sessions and locations in the villages and town centers, estimated 100,000 Uyghurs may be working in forced labor camps, according to Australian Strategic Policy Institute, according to NBC News, Quote, U.S. intelligence has established that Beijing has set up a high-tech surveillance system across Shijang that uses biometric facial recognition as collected DNA samples from all residents ages 12 to 65 as part of a systematic effort.

There have been reports of forced sterilization. Like the whole, it is, it is, it is being, it is an ongoing human rights abuse. Yes. There was an Atlantic cover article by a guy who had been arrested, a Uyghur man in China who had managed to escape with his family, but only after he and his family. had been arrested a couple of times. It's one of the most harrowing things you will read, and you will not be able to believe that it's happening in the world today. And it is, and all of this has led to a lot of awkward conversations because the United States government has recently imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and government entities for human rights abuses

against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Some companies have faced blowback for continuing to do work Walmart got in trouble with China because Walmart removed products from some stores that have been produced potentially with this forced labor in Xinjiang. And it's, it's, and nevertheless, right, up to and including the United States government, everybody still wants to do business with China. And everybody has looked the other way for a long time as this story has continued to get louder and louder and louder. And you see this kind of ongoing hypocrisy about the relationship with China in the government and with private companies. Yep. And if you look at, I mean, just to give people an idea, I don't know if you saw

the Uighurs being loaded into trains, but these, this series of photos, which are just pulled up here if you're watching on the YouTube video, they're basically bound, head shave, blindfolded, and getting onto trains. Oh, it's a screen wrap from a video. Okay. It's a screen wrap from the video. It doesn't look real. And these videos, you know, that got released are, you know, just more evidence. There's tons of style. videos. And this is, you know, if you think about what we've pursued as a strategy, it's been engagement. And I, having worked at Amnesty International and caring very deeply about human rights,

have always believed that like engagement is fine, but you have to make it clear where the lines are in terms of human rights and that we want to see change. So the Guardian released this footage, shout out to the Guardian for being brave to do this. Really disturbing. And the, you know, the challenges, there is a group of people who philosophically believe that if we engage with China, and this has been going off for decades, with the West, not just the United States, but the West has believed engagement will lead them towards democracy, human rights, and will keep us from going to war with each other. Well, we haven't gone to war with each other, so that's a checkbox. That's good. Yeah. But China has, since Hong Kong and now with the Uyghurs, I think, been emboldened because nobody's put their foot down.

and the same thing is true of Saudi Arabia with MBS. If the West does not say, does not condemn these issues, then autocrats, dictators, communists, whatever, are going to basically take it as far as they can. You have to put your foot down and say, this is not acceptable. And I think the Biden becomes, what does that look like, though? What does it look like for the Biden administration too? Because you know that behind the scenes, Apple, Intel,

right at Hollywood all of Hollywood the NBA like you look at how private industry has caved to China over and over and over because they need this market like you know that they're in these rooms saying to the administration like just can you can you go as far as you can with sanctions but not like too far or at a certain point we say it's not worth it and I think that's the moment we're at because if you look at it I think now the NBA has a player Ennis Cantor, who is now renamed himself Ennis Cantor Freedom, and I DM'd with him recently, and I've been retweeting his stuff. He basically said, like, listen, I'm just going to go, and he's, you know, his,

his employment by the NBA is not certain. He's not, like, a top 50 player. He's a top 200 player or 150 player. He has been very vocal, and he has not been ostracized now, whereas Daryl Morey, who did say, you know, very innocuously, I support Hong Kong. was admonished. And, you know, I'm reticent to pick out specific people to say, you know, LeBron James or Tim Cook or any other folks are supportive of human rights violations.

I think a lot of those people think engagement with China is going to lead to change. I don't agree with them. I think we have to put our foot down. And now China's basically said, you know what? We're going on our own anyway. We're not going to let you invest in these companies. All the IPOs are going to be in Hong Kong. We're not going to let Jack Ma be a national hero.

So they've become insular. So now I think actually it's reversing. Everybody is going to offshore and reduce their dependency on China, whether it's Apple, whether it's Tesla, whether it's any of these companies, you're going to see a disengagement process start. I think that's what's happening right now because it's very hard to disengage after 30 or 40 years of Apple being there or the NBA spending 20 years with Yao Ming and other folks trying to build this relationship. But if China doesn't want the relationship with the West anymore, now the great decoupling happens. And Japan is paying to, Japan is subsidizing factories leaving China or subsidizing companies to do that. And I think what we're seeing is the great uncoupling. And it's going to be messy, but I don't want to put, you know, Tim Cook under too hard of a microscope here.

I want to give him time to get out of China, basically and become less dependent on it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's still, it's going to be interesting to see. how much reputational pressure will increase on these companies because they have started to see more reputational damage. There were, of course, some angry tweets about Tesla just this week opening a factory in Xinjiang, which is not good timing, right? Not a good look. But most likely, I hate to say, like, I think that when you're talking about a global market this big, appeasement would be likely to continue had China itself, to your point, not started to take

steps to make doing business there way harder. It's like over the years, people got, people got convinced that China was just like a capitalist country, a free market that you could just go in and sell into. And then China was like, yeah, we disappeared Jack Ma for a little while. And then he came back and he said what we wanted him to say. And we hold an IPO and we will do it again. And so you may be right that we'll decouple, but I'm sorry to report, I think it'll be because of business reasons, not reputational reasons. And that is, that's a, that's shameful. Yeah, I, you know, it's, I am torn on this. I am with you that we should, you know, not do business with countries that have these extreme human rights violations. And then of course, everybody does me tooism like or what aboutism. Like, well, what about like, you know, George Floyd? And it's like, okay, that's a horrible murder. You know, and that occurred. And that occurred. There was a murder that occurred and that person's going to jail. And a million Uyghurs is a different scale. Like our government is not doing a million, George Floyd's in, you know, or then some people might say, well, we do have a million

George Floyd situations. We literally, we cannot even conceive of, of secret police coming into our homes, dragging us out of our beds, torturing us for a while, and then sending us back home to say what, I mean. It's a whole different scale. Cannot even see. You can't compare these things. But I think it's going to be like something to watch, especially with Taiwan. But I actually am very hopeful because the virtue signaling crowd, it seemed to correlate

that like some of the biggest virtue signals like the NBA and. Hollywood and Silicon Valley are now finding themselves like being called out. And I think that's actually kind of a good thing that, you know, Tim Cook, LeBron James and Hollywood, Disney changing the ending of films and not having a Chinese, you know, a bad guy in a film like because your film's not going to play in China or changing the ending of films. Like, it's crazy. Like, And what's the point of being Americans and being rich and powerful and leaders in the world if you have to bend the knee to communists? What's going on here? China literally managed to censor American movies with market pressure.

Like China was just like, we're such a big market that you will censor yourself. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Think about that level of power. Like literally Disney is bending the knee to a communist. like it's pathetic. All right, everybody. I hate to cut this short because I can talk about China all day long.

It's a great discussion. We'll be talking about it and monitoring the situation. So we will see you all next time unless we get served. Bye. Bye. Bye.