Kind: captions
Language: en
Trump has just come into office do we
think or I should say do you think as we
may see this differently do you think
that Trump is um somebody who has the
elite view of like hey the right people
are in power let's make these decisions
for everybody else or do you believe he
actually sits outside of that system and
is actually trying to help the everyday
person uh in the way that he presented
himself while he was
campaigning yeah so as far as my
perspective on Trump goes it tends to do
with the view it tends to uh revolve
around the view that he is a businessman
at heart and that the focus of his um
political style I guess is deal making
um and you know I wrote a lot um in my
book about uh Trump's Mentor uh Roy con
who was um among other other things The
General Counsel to McCarthy uh during
the McCarthy hearings he was also you
know a New York City lawyer uh that repr
presented a lot of unsavory figures
including some uh tied to organized
crime and also had the ear of Ronald
Reagan and top politicians the United
States and sort of bridged um a variety
of Worlds and he uh very much
essentially taught Trump the art of the
deal as it were and you know a lot of
his close con's close Associates uh like
the pope family for example uh were very
politically connected also connected to
organized crime arguably um but we're
very much in the business of uh making
back room deals uh and that that's how
you know power political power in the
United States functions um and so you
know fundamentally I think uh a lot of
what um Trump likes to focus on and
promote about his political style is um
around negotiations whether those are
diplomatic negotiations or negotiations
with businessmen that lead to a big
number Investments he can tell
uh to the public which is you know I
think part of the impetus behind his uh
having the project Stargate press
conference you know at the White House
on his first full day uh you know at at
at his second term and I think that was
all that's also kind of consistent with
what we saw from Trump during his first
term um as well so when you're sort of
focused on those metrics I don't
necessarily think um that the focus is
necessarily on how do I help uh how do I
help everyday Joe um I'm sure that you
know in his mind well I don't really
necessarily want to speak for him uh but
if you're you know of the opinion that
I'm going to tout this big multi-million
dollar investment and US AI
infrastructure for for example uh
perhaps he view he views that as help
with the American economy and thus
helpful for the American people and I
think it is very likely that over the
next four years there certainly will be
some Americans that economically benefit
uh you know from Trump's Economic Policy
but I don't necessarily think that's
going to be um everybody and I think you
know generally um based on what we've
seen so far there's been a lot of
courting um of big Tech Executives and
and a lot of talk about making the US
the AI and crypto Capital um of the
world um and how much of that is
necessarily going to translate or
trickle down to sort of refer to you
know reaganite e economic terms um you
know to the everyday American public um
it's really hard to know uh but again
you know I just want to go back to
someone like er Schmidt for example who
as I noted earlier had sort of an
outsized role in developing the AI
policy of the military and intelligence
Community uh he wrote a book called the
age of AI with a with Henry Kissinger
and also I believe a professor from MIT
who I'm sorry His Name Escapes me um at
the moment but basically uh that book
posited that essentially AI is going to
make a two-tiered society there's going
to be the top tier of people who develop
and maintain Ai and set and determine
what its objective function are and then
sort of a a second class who uh which we
would assume is larger than the first
class so they don't explicitly say that
uh but who AI acts upon and eventually
that that group uh will lose the ability
to un to understand and really be able
to conceive of um how how AI is
impacting their uh impacting their lives
and will develop some sort of dependency
on AI for things like decision making
sort of leading uh to this phenomena
that they refer to in the book as COG
cognitive diminishment which I sort of
see as this idea of um you know we've
all heard it before if you don't use it
you lose it sort of the idea of like
Mental Math you start using a calculator
or a phone calculator or something like
that and it becomes more difficult over
time and eventually very difficult to be
able to do uh mental math in your head
when perhaps when you were in grade
school it was much easier to do that
because you were sort of you had to use
that ability regularly and so they sort
they essentially argue that by not
making those decisions and out sourcing
that uh to AI this particular class uh
will lose the ability to make those
decisions over time and when you also
factor in uh that there's a lot of
effort to sort of Outsource creativity
art and music to artificial intelligence
will that have an impact on people's
ability uh to create and what sort of
impact will this have on society and you
know these are things that I think sort
of get left out of the public discussion
and I don't think they're really on
someone like Trump's radar as a
businessman he's focused on sort of the
bottom line the number the success of
the negotiation and how successful it it
looks frankly whether it's to his base
or to businessman he wants to court um
or you know other people foreign leaders
you know um and you know I I I I'll I'll
stop there I
guess now that was great uh so how do
you feel when you hear about AI creating
this two-tier
system oh I certainly don't think that's
positive I think it's sort of the
technocratic model that we discussed
earlier where you sort of have an elite
class that sort of set um you know the
system that will micromanage the masses
at the end of the day I mean they don't
explicitly say that um in the book but
if you're familiar with someone like
Henry Kissinger for example and some of
his more controversial views um on on
the masses and the public and some of
his more Infamous quotes you know I mean
uh is that a system that he um wants to
happen I don't really know he's and so
no one can ask him but um I think it is
kind of disturbing um in a sense that
some what are some of his more Infamous
quotes I I'm not I'm not super familiar
with KRA I know who he is but I couldn't
quote him well he created a national
security memorandum for example that
viewed uh people that live in the third
world birth rates and and you know in
the global South as National Security
threats to the United States um and
wanted to implement policies to reduce
uh their population size uh for example
and sort of had what would argue as
eugenicist uh bent to some of his
policies um and he was one of the
mentors of course to people that have
become infamous in recent years like the
world economic Forum chairman CLA Schwab
um and um you know some of his more
Infamous quotes that he's known for
refer to you know soldiers uh being you
know pwns of foreign policy essentially
sort of like you know people's lives are
just you know pwns on a chessboard for
the sort of the elite figures to move
around you know for for their benef
benefit that's sort of the mentality as
I see it um of someone like him but
obviously he's been you know praised as
a model Statesman and all of this stuff
and has uh mentored Trump and his first
Administration mentored Hillary Clinton
uh you know people on both sides of the
aisle um and but I personally um you
know I think the more you look into
someone like that in his connections
with sort of dubious oligarchs like
David Rockefeller going you know
significantly back in time um you know
he's sort of someone that promotes this
idea of of a global
technocracy okay so do you have the
impulse to want to see AI slow down or
stop well I don't necessarily want to
say that I'm like a lite and we we
should all go back to the stone AG or
things like this but I think uh there
needs to be like an actual public
discussion on this particularly on the
fact that our outof control National
Security State um in Silicon Valley are
have essentially been fusing over the
past few decades and what necessarily
that means um because a lot of people be
you know will say stuff well it's Ai and
the private sector but when that private
sector company has multi-million dollar
conflicts of interest with the National
Security State I think that should um
you know be part of the discussion uh
necessarily and I think also there needs
to be a way to sort of know um whether
some of these algorithms are hyped or
whether what the company says their
accuracy is for example is actually
accurate uh before uh decisions are made
to Outsource major decision making
whether at the government level or the
local level or really on any level you
know to an algorithm so you know as an
example uh during covid-19 uh Thee the
governor of Rhode Island Gina Rondo sort
of gave a green light to this Israeli
company called diagnostic robotics uh to
use you know the health data in the
state to predict uh covid-19 outbreaks
uh before they could happen right and
Gina R Hipp laws well uh I'm sure a lot
of those were sort of suspended uh under
the emergency justification of covid-19
but I'm not exactly familiar with the
legal or potential legal snafus of that
um at the time or maybe they Justified
it by Alle you know saying they de they
sort of took anonymized the data I don't
really know but the idea was to sort of
use that data to identify local hotspots
and predict outbreaks before they happen
and so obviously if you know the
algorithm of this company predicts an
outbreak there would be sort of these
local lockdowns and people would lose
their ability to uh engage in in-person
Commerce and freedom of movement Etc so
you know consequences that are pretty
significant to the people uh living
there um and when I reported on at the
time as I recall but it's been a few
years but I do know that the algorithm
per the company was under 80% accurate I
think it was somewhere in the 70s and so
that's the company right so if it's not
independently vetted um and it this is
sort of you know company PR um at the
end of the day is that overinflated it's
quite possible right and so what if the
accuracy of that isn't really in the 70s
it's in the 60s or near the 50s it's no
better than a coin toss right is it
really worth putting uh that kind of
power in the hand of an algorithm that
isn't necessarily going to be more
efficient and accurate but all this hype
that's been generated around AI as an
industry suggests that has sort of
created this public perception that AI
is inherently um smarter than human
decision makers and more efficient and
more cost effective for
example um I think these are kind of
problematic scenarios that need to be
considered and I'm not trying to be a
Debbie Downer or poo poo on on
Innovation but I think you know civil
liberties do matter and I think people
need to be uh very mindful of that
especially considering again the Silicon
Valley fusion with the National Security
State and the National Security States
tendency uh to opportunistically whittle
down American civil liberties uh for
their benefit H it's a really
interesting intersection that I clearly
need to start thinking more about the
way that I would look at that and this
ties into uh something you mentioned
earlier uh during the inauguration of
Donald Trump you had all these uh Tech
billionaires there by him and it gave it
certainly gave me like o this is why
people are paranoid about oligarchy
Vibes uh and I'm not super prone to that
kind of thinking so the fact that it hit
me like that that I was like okay
definitely it's good that people are
being paranoid uh but the intersection
feels like it's a very natural
intersection to me so the reason that
National Security would be fusing with
technology is that technology is going
to be the front where these battles are
fought and so anybody that's seen you
know though however many thousands of
drones uh that China can launch and get
to you know dance like a dragon it's
very compelling when you see it it looks
so cool uh and then you imagine well
what happens when 10,000 drones like
that are able to go over a aircraft
carrier and each one drops a uh
reasonable size payload that by itself
would do next to nothing but you drop
10,000 of those uh little somethings on
that ship and you turn it into swiss
cheese you realize oo the way that we've
been doing uh National Defense is not
going to work in a modern combat
scenario and so it is going to be these
Tech guys that we're going to need
even if you just grant me that AI is
going to get really good at hacking
which there was a recent uh announcement
I forget if it was from Deep seek uh I
can't remember but there was a company
that was doing this where they wanted to
see um how well their AI was at hacking
and it was unbelievably good and so they
were doing it as a red team inside of a
company so they can say okay here's how
we broke our own systems now we need a
blue team that can come in and Shore
these up uh but you're going to have to
have that like if if you are living in a
world where one country has Ai and
another does not uh the country without
it will lose and so to me this feels
like an arms race we cannot afford to
not engage in uh and so it just becomes
a question of all right well given the
stakes how do we actually navigate this
so I I would not want to pull apart the
National Security apparatus from uh the
tech Bros to be dismissive um so what do
you do I don't know if you want to stay
in the lane of like I just want people
looking at the right things or if you
actually have an insight there uh but
I'd be very
curious um you know I do prefer to stay
in in my Lane as much as possible uh
frankly um especially on sort of these
uh sticky stickier issues but I do have
some opinions so um first of all um as I
referred to earlier with the national
submission uh Comm National Security
Commission on artificial intelligence
and some of these
documents that came out of there there
is the promotion of the idea that
essentially the US needs to do what
China has done and and replicate this
civil military Fusion model in order to
win the AI arms race and sort of the
argument inherent in that is that in
order to beat China we must become China
even more than China is um and and you
know a lot of the
justifications um you know around
um China as an adversary are related to
how China uh is not as um protective of
civil liberties as the as the United
States at least postures itself as being
for example and a major difference in
the value system between the China
between China and the United States and
so if you're willing to adopt exactly
that model civil military Fusion in my
opinion is really not that different
than um fascism at the end of of the day
um it's it's the corporatist model and I
don't think it's uh necessarily what
what Americans want um and yeah there is
a tradeoff and I think people should
consider it um but again I'm not um in
the business of telling people what to
think but what happens if we go so far
out of a desperation to win an AI arms
race with China for example uh that we
completely surrender our the value
system that supposedly makes us a Freer
better Society in the process I think uh
that is
complicated um and I would also point to
the fact that uh you know transnational
capital A lot of that has enabled
China's AI arms race there is a lot of
cross-pollination in these uh you know
Chinese government adjacent Tech
corporations um and the United States uh
you can look at people like Larry
thinkink for example um who definitely
have a lot of
eyes to Chinese industry uh for example
and people like Steve schwarzman um
quite similarly very much uh tied there
who's you know head of Blackstone and uh
they're both very close personal friends
of Donald Trump and also of course fank
has ties to the Democrats um as well um
and a lot of you know Henry Kissinger
who I mentioned earlier a lot of top CCP
officials have pictures of them with
Henry Kissinger in their offices they
love the guy um and there was that
effort of course to open up China uh to
to Commerce and uh Partnerships with uh
Western companies for example um you
know back several decades ago and a lot
of that involved um you know uh US
capital and and some firms like Beal for
example that were very much tied to the
National Security State of Ronald Reagan
for example a lot of top people that
served in his in top national security
positions under him were involved in
Beal which was building a lot of the
infrastructure that helped enable China
to become uh this you know the power
that it is and why is that not being
talked about and I mean this is really
isn't exclusive uh to Democrats either
though they often get rightly pointed
out for having some conflicts of
interest of this nature but someone like
Howard lutnick for example who was head
of the transition team uh for Trump and
as his uh incoming Secretary of Commerce
um has the same his his company he runs
um has the same uh tie arguably a more
direct tie uh to a Chinese government
majority owned Financial entity that was
a big Scandal for conservatives when
Hunter Biden's Rosemont Sena was also
tied to it but there's been no
conservative uproar over this tie um and
you have to kind of ask why that may be
and why you have a lot of um these big
tech people Elon Musk included who has a
major role in the National Security
State of the United States is one of the
top contractors to space force in the
Pentagon for example and
starlink and all of these things um had
you know through Tesla has a lot of ties
to you know Chinese Commerce and and
Tech Giants that also have uh rather
cozy relationships with the Chinese
government as well why is that not being
discussed as you know a potential
National Security risk if we do really
need to become China to beat China you
see what I'm saying like if it was
really that was really the key driver of
our issue shouldn't we be scrutinizing
the ties of these oligarchs to both
China and you know some in our own
National Security State and you know
again I
think um if people are familiar with my
books in my work there is a scandal that
really uh exposed a lot of this uh that
happened uh during the Clinton
Administration and was not properly
investigated at all it's remembered as
as China Gate and it was really of uh
you know sort of today is I would argue
misremembered as a campaign Finance
Scandal for the Clinton reelection
campaign but what was the SC what what
was the alleged bribery of the Clinton
re-election campaign meant to accomplish
and if you look at what these you know
forces gained what these what these
figures gained by sort of you know for
all intents and purposes bribing the
Clinton uh reelection campaign it was
facilitating um exports of sensitive
National Security technology to China um
and a lot of that was done through a
company called Laurel uh which has uh
since uh become I think part of loed
Martin and um the guy that that ran low
at the time Bernard Schwarz uh nothing
ever happened to him at all despite the
fact that he uh helped pass uh very
sensitive satellites and other military
technology from the US uh you know
directly to the Chinese military um and
nothing was done about it and he was
actually a major backer of Biden in 2020
why was that not covered don't you think
conservatives should be all over that
story and um you know again this sort of
um makes me concerned because I think
there's not enough talk about um
transnational capital in these types of
situations and there's a very urgent
need to go back and reexamine a lot of
the past scandals of Our National
Security State China Gate specifically
because as I note in my book uh the the
death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown
and a lot of people at the it ITA
department at Commerce those were the
most people targeted as this bribery
Scandal of chinagate because the
Commerce Department
oversees the export of sensitive
technology to foreign powers right
and um the fact that most of the
employees that knew about that Scandal
were all essentially blown up in the
same uh you know aircraft accident and
that Ron Brown had a bullet hole in his
head when his body was discovered in the
plane why has that not been well it's
true you can look at the evidence um and
it's absolutely there and um you know
why can't we examine this and shouldn't
it be disturbing that the incoming head
of the Commerce department has a direct
tie to the Chinese government in the
context of that type Scandal of chinate
and targeting the Commerce Department
specifically is that Howard Nick who are
we talking about
yes interesting okay so uh yet again
Whitney Webb you lay new things at my
feet that I have not yet looked at I
love this okay so what yeah oh and you
do it well what is your hypothesis on
what's going on uh very um generous
interpretation would be well this is
globalism this is people trying to uh
make sure that there are good um
relations with these incredibly
important um uh international players
and we for decades tried to make China
an ally uh open it up so that we could
invest there that they could invest here
um and it's only crazy people like me
Tom Bilu who are like yo we're in a cold
war with China and this is about to get
really weird um
what do you think if that's the naive or
overly optimistic view what do you think
it's really going on is it just personal
enrichment uh they don't care hey if if
I'm the clintons and I have to give
China our secrets but it helps me stay
in power I'm going to do it we'll get
back to the show in a moment but first
let's talk about a reality many business
owners are facing you understand the
power of social media but you're not
posting consistently because the editing
process can take Precious hours out of
your day nobody wants to spend hour
cutting up videos when they could be
running their business the solution is
to turn the things you're already doing
into social media content automatically
that's why I'm excited about Opus clip
their clip anything AI tool is changing
everything all you have to do is upload
any long form video and clip anything
automatically finds the best moments and
turns them into social ready Clips our
social team at impact theory has been
using it to streamline content creation
but this isn't just for media companies
it's for any business owner who needs to
maintain a social presence without
sacrificing hours to video editing
here's your chance to try it go to
op.cit a try for free right now that's
opus.one this whole Trend beginning of
this um sort of bleeding of National
Security State issues between countries
when it really doesn't make any sense an
example I like to bring up is a man
named Samuel pisar you may know him as
The Stepfather of Anthony blinkin he was
also um a prominent lawyer for big tech
companies and a lot of other
corporations uh also a very good friend
and and in close uh relation to uh
Robert Maxwell galain Maxwell's father
um and he uh wrote a um was very active
in uh what he said was sort of smoothing
over relationships between East and West
during the Cold War um but essentially
what he G he said in testimony to
Congress in the early 70s is that there
was the rise of what he called the trans
ideological
Corporation um where you essentially
have um the uh cap you know the
multinational corporations many of them
based in the west uh making joint
ventures with the Communist owned state
owned Enterprises in the East uh Russia
and China and that these were
essentially fusing uh to form an
economic structure that was
unaccountable to any uh government in
the world and when asked if this that he
if he thought this development was a
good thing he essentially said yes it
was and that was back in the early uh
1970s and uh nothing was really uh done
about it and you have to kind of ask why
why is that and it's kind of interesting
too for those that subscribed to um you
know the the thesis of someone like
Carol Quigley um who wrote many decades
ago about this idea of um the Roundtable
groups um and all of that um you know
sort of cile coming from cesil roads and
and Britain and efforts to sort of
remake the British Empire at a global
scale through covert means you know they
essentially that thesis essentially
argues about creating an unaccountable
econ omic entity as as the means to
doing that um a blob if if you will that
that's probably the easiest way um to
understand it um and essentially I think
what we have arrived at as a consequence
of that type of um you know
um behavior in in you know at
situation um is a situation where we
essentially have the nation states
acting as enabling environments um for
policies that are often drafted at the
at you know the international level uh
by think tanks and I'm sure the most
notorious of those are things like the
world economic Forum but there's the
Council on Foreign Relations there's
chadam house there's csis I mean there's
a lot of these entities around and you
know oftentimes Congress people aren't
really directly writing the policies
they're voting on their handed laws uh
and a lot of sometimes those are
developed from these think tanks which
are funded largely by you know
multinational corporations and sometimes
you know directly by uh big Tech
oligarchs like Bill Gates for example
and those are sort of you know uh
shopped not just you know in one country
but oftentimes um in multiple countries
and so you sort of get um multiple
countries agreeing to enact the same
policy framework for a variety of things
um you know some people have argued
that's why you know essentially globally
uh there was sort of lock step agreement
about what policies to enact in the
situation of covid-19 um and also why
you know ostensible adversaries like
Russia China the United unit States most
of the West um all agree about the you
know sustainable development goals of
the United Nations uh which if you
actually look into the SGS a lot of it
is about sort of pushing us into this
fourth Industrial Revolution where life
becomes increasingly digitized and
increasingly um
surveill and uh really I would
ultimately argue is about the creation
of of new markets at the end of the day
and a lot of the push for digital ID is
in that and that's why uh some have
argued that this is sort of a policy uh
that's being implemented uh globally and
it is true you know digital ID in
particular um sort of I think the first
time most people heard about it might
have been in covid-19 uh but in the
postco era digital ID has made um you
know has been popping up essentially in
every country around the world so has a
surveil programmable and seizable money
whether in the form of cbdc or its
private sector equivalence and I think
it's fair to say that you know in
countries like United States um where
they don't want to have a a cbdc for
example uh private sector is going to
produce it and they've done that um in
many occasions uh to make it sort of I
think more palatable um you know to a
more liberty-minded public it's not
coming from the state it's coming from
the private sector But ultimately um you
know the end result and the you know the
policy is
essentially um the same and so you know
in a sense yes I I guess some would
argue that that is um globalism in a
nutshell and technocracy which I
mentioned earlier um you know was an
actual movement and that particular
movement built around this organization
called technocracy Inc which the
Canadian branch of which was led by Elon
musk's grandfather um that argued for
the creation of all these different
unions around the world these different
techniques like a European Union an
African Union a North American Union Etc
um
and that the the goal is to sort of push
that some of our argued uh via the idea
of this multi-polar world um where you
sort of ending the unipolar model and I
think that's you know essentially what
what we uh what has happened
essentially okay whoa let me uh let me
see if I can um boil this down make sure
I understand it uh globalism uh is a
much bigger move than certainly I would
have thought started much earlier than I
would have thought that has really fused
governments together with these
transnational
corporations um that the play in this
moment as you begin thinking about what
is the endgame reasoning for all of this
um is to open new markets to concentrate
power in the hands of the elites to uh
really give people a way to control
policy at the global level but not
having it be um championed by the
governments but instead be championed by
the private sector so it feels more
palatable that it's coming from the
individuals uh but ultimately much of
this is happening out of sight that we
are not questioning many of the things
that we should have the scandals would
bubble up but they would never be um
pursued to their logical conclusion so
that we could end up connecting the dots
see who the finite group of players are
that are really moving this
forward um to that end you said
something that I saw in my research that
I found very interesting which is when
thinking about Jeffrey Epstein stop
following the sex and start following
the money and that it is far more
compelling what he did to prop up or
collapse um National currencies than the
sex stuff and that in fact the sex stuff
may be being used by the people involved
as a way to distract you from the part
that actually matters which is the
currency
manipulations uh how did I I would add
to that also since I brought up China
Gate that it appears that Epstein had
some sort of role in that as well
because a lot of his visits to the
Clinton White House in the mid1 1990s
were with a man named Mark Middleton who
was one of the key figures in the
Clinton Administration actively involved
in chinate um at that time and at the
time that was going on um Leslie Wexner
who Jeffrey Epstein uh worked for during
that time uh essentially took over
Southern Air transport which had
previously been the CIA owned Airline
and was involved in the Iran Contra
Scandal of the 1980s um had previously
been in Miami and he brought it to
Columbus Ohio um to move cargo from
Columbus Ohio to uh China and um there
were Ohio law enforcement officials at
the time that called it the mayor Lansky
run because they felt like it was tied
to some sort of organized criminal
activity and when you consider that
there's also evidence that epin would
hadn't been involved with arms
trafficking uh back in the 80s and maybe
in the 70s to an extent as well um that
certainly uh warrant's investigation I
would believe and I think it's uh that's
part of why when most people uh talk
about the Epstein Clinton relationship
they tend to avoid um
the Epstein Clinton relationship when
Clinton was in office and focused excl
almost exclusively on when uh Clinton
was out of office I uh you know post
2000 um and I think that is um
problematic and really needs to be
looked at especially um and again um you
know local Columbus Police wrote a
report uh linking Leslie Wexner to
organized crime and it was uh suppressed
at the highest levels of the Columbus PD
um but that was opinion of investigators
working on the uh murder of his tax
attorney who was shot in uh broad
daylight like shortly before he was
supposed to testify to the IRS about um
tax
evasion yeah so again there's really not
a lot of interest in looking at major
aspects of the Epstein case and so you
know that's something I focused on um in
my book obviously but I think it's a
very uh good example in part due to the
enduring public interest in that case I
think it very effectively shows that
there are certain
that despite the public interest um
There Are Places most people will not go
in terms of trying to investigate what
really happened there and get to the
truth of the matter and this takes me
back to my point earlier that people
cannot make informed decisions without
being empowered uh with knowledge and
that knowledge requires effective
unbiased reporting and it requires
transparency and unfortunately we have a
major lack of both of those two things
and I think part of that is
unfortunately because there really
aren't a lot of investigative
journalists anymore and I think a lot of
people in Independent Media which is
supposedly the New Media now um are much
more influenced by what you know gets
clicks and the algorithm than they are
in following the stories that really
matter because that's not necessarily
where the money is or where the cloud
is yeah uh there is there's certainly a
fractal to open up there um I don't
consider myself a journalist I have no
interest in becoming a journalist and I
do like uh what New Media brings but I
don't like that journalism itself uh has
been relegated to such a small piece of
the media landscape so I hear you on
that I'm not trying to dump on the New
Media Paradigm entirely but I think
there should be multiple types of
journalists working in it and that there
should be people that investigate and
dig into these inconvenient facts and
things like that and act as Watchdogs
and also people that help popularize
content and are more focused on the
algorithm and metrics because that is
the reality of content distribution
today um but I'm saying there's a
noticeable dir of one of those things
and I think it would uh the public would
be very well served by that
changing yeah no agreed uh question is
how you bring economics to it uh okay so
I'm always trying to build uh a mental
model that allows me to predict uh the
movements of the world that might be an
easy way or to at least understand how
if I do XYZ thing I'm going to get a
certain outcome for me to make sense of
all the things that you're saying I
don't see a way to make it make sense
without going oh they actually don't
they the elites which I defined earlier
same definition applies here the elites
don't want or at a minimum don't care
about a thriving middle
class
uh because if they're going to make
globalism work
in a populist moment which is [ __ ]
fascinating uh that the game really
becomes about um moving them doing a
massive wealth transfer through means
that I had never considered before uh
because my thing is always like well
hold on these guys are going to realize
that you need a thriving middle class
otherwise they come for your head uh but
they don't come for your head if you
keep them scared enough and you're
providing the protection and then you
really can continue to hollow out the
middle class and make a feudal a Neo
feudal uh social structure which seems
crazy and impossible to believe and
admittedly I'm I am more entertaining
this line of thought than I am adopting
it uh but if you
are using technology as a way to surveil
and
suppress then if you if you believe that
that's an inevitability and a necessary
way to stay safe in the new Global stage
then uh a nice added benefit is that you
can use it to create the panopticon [ __ ]
uh it's very interesting it's very scary
um but very interesting okay there's
another piece of this puzzle that I want
to put on the table right now because
when I heard you say it I was
um I was shocked isn't the right word
but it's close enough you said this is
going to be a paraphrase but it'll get
us very close salana mem coins and
tether are the new
BCCI um I always think of the the
transformation of money into the digital
realm as a uh really positive thing and
that I get why people don't like um
cbdcs but I don't understand why people
wouldn't like something like tether so
if you don't mind explain to people what
BCCI was and what you mean when you say
that uh salana memecoins and tether are
the new
BCCI yeah so um BCCI was basically this
uh bank that was set up as a de publicly
as a Development Bank it was about
essentially banking the unbanked uh in
the global South that was sort of the
framing of it um but in reality that
bank had been set up by the CIA and it
was involved in all sorts of things
including laundering profits for um arms
trafficking drag trafficking it came um
under scrutiny as part of the Iran
Contra Scandal and of course it
collapsed in 1991 and was the subject of
a senate report um that I would
encourage people to read because it is
really quite scandalous um and it also
revealed that they were uh not only
doing you know engaging in and Brazen
Financial crimes on behalf of
intelligence agencies all over the world
and also drug cartels um but they were
also um engaged in the sex trafficking
of minors specifically uh to patronize
uh the uh Elite some Elite families of
the United Arab Emirates and were taking
prepubescent children to be abused by
these people that is in the Senate
report so that's literally not a
conspiracy theory it it was written uh
it's an official Senate report based on
official evidence brought before the
Senate okay so it's a very significant
story Al almost no one remembers it
because it was essentially covered up by
William bar when he was attorney general
the first time uh and he was also of
course engaged in pardoning and sort of
washing away related scandals to BCCI
like the promised software Scandal um of
the same era and also Iran Contra all of
that essentially happening um in 1991 so
a lot of people don't uh remember that
history unfortunately so um and looking
at an entity um like tether you know I
have argued in an A series I co-wrote uh
with my colleague Mark Goodwin called
the chain that you can find on my
website unlimited hangout um that one of
the co-founders of tether and some of
the other people involved in early
tether um appear to have significant
intelligence ties some of them like
Brock Pierce um have ties to um
pedophilia scandals that happened in the
early
2000s uh tether since then um has been
sort of has come under Fire for being
not transparent um about its Reserves
among other things and uh it has also
been memory hold its a role in the FTX
Scandal uh where you had Alam research
uh being very involved with you know the
tether Supply and helping it maintain
its Peg among other things and if we of
course know now that FTX was involved in
all sorts of um Financial misconduct for
lack of a better word to put it nicely
yeah yes and uh you know salana which
has been responsible for these pump and
dump meme coins among other things um
you know was also very closely tied to
Sam bankman freed he's uh been called
one of the reasons main reasons behind
its rise and popularity um you know for
what it for what it since has uh become
and uh there's a short there's no
shortage of examples of um sort of
pumping up meme coins that have sort of
rugged people of a lot of money and what
have those what has that money
ultimately led to and who was ultimately
responsible for that pump and dump rug
pool wealth transfer arguably uh type of
operation uh it it definitely um would
facilitate um this type of bad behavior
that we know intelligence agencies have
engaged in with the past like the BCCI
example it would definitely facilitate
that and uh the fact that you have these
types of connections there um you know I
think is certainly uh worthy of
examination and tether notably has um a
lot of the same rhetoric that BCCI once
used uh the idea of you know banking the
unbanked for example um but they're very
willing to seize people's on behalf of
the US Treasury um and Palo arduo who is
the head of tether now has said that
tether is fully committed to expanding
US dollar hegemony globally and has um
you know onboarded the FBI and Secret
Service on that platform on on their
platform um and that essentially makes
it a uh digital arm You could argue of
the US government and when you take
under um when you also consider this
military manual that was published by
Wikileaks um you know well over a decade
ago you know they referred to um you
know basically uh the dollar and some of
these uh style of financial institutions
uh that help propagate it globally
particularly in the global South um as
sort of uh weapons Financial weapons of
us Empire and uh it's very possible and
I think uh you know I think an argument
can clearly be made that tether is sort
of facilitating that specifically in
economies that have become unstable or
have very unstable currencies and some
of that is partly due to us sanctions
some of it is due uh to these entities
that have been called Financial weapons
of us Empire like the IMF and the World
Bank um and then their currencies are
unstable they're they're covered in you
know they're in a in trapped in this
debt slavery model um which is a big
reason for their in many cases for a lot
of the economic instability and people
are being onboarded onto the digital
dollar onto tether um as a to be able to
preserve their wealth But ultimately
it's kind of a way um to globalize the
dollar and covertly dollarize a country
without formally dollariz it in the way
that places like Ecuador and El Salvador
were formally dollarized uh and if you
consider the outsized role including in
the digital asset space you know and and
sort of its formation and the
infrastructure for it of some of these
currency
speculators um you know and and the role
of currency speculators in the past you
know we can point to in the '90s
George Soros or arguably people like you
know Jeffrey EPS you know if you're
familiar with my work having a role in
you know crushing local currencies if
that were to happen today and there's no
reason to think that type of currency
speculation like you know storo style in
'92 for example doesn't happen today I'm
I'm sure it it it does um then the end
result could easily be people just sort
of onboarding uh to the dollar
particularly a form of the dollar that
is surveyable C feasable and and
ultimately uh programmable and those
were the same concerns that a lot of
Americans have had about Central Bank
digital currencies it's not necessarily
that the money would be issued by the
central bank because money is issued by
the central bank now right it's about
the concern that it presents to Liberty
because it's surveill
programmable and seizable and um and I
think tler checks all of those boxes
ultimately and really any sort of
digital dollar that the US ultimately
approves which is very like
in the Trump administration at his his
speech at the Bitcoin conference last
year um said no cbdcs but was very
bullish on stable coins on dollar stable
coins which are a major purchaser of us
treasuries for example and help service
the US debt um and if you combine that
with a lot of his bullishness on on
bitcoin the the talks of a strategic
Bitcoin reserve for example I think it's
very um possible that we could see this
this type of um digital dollar Paradigm
that tether really helped start um
expand and I don't think there's really
a lot of discussions about whether this
is good or what the potential origins or
intentions of it were or still are
because a lot of people that promote
tether have very rose tinted glasses
about it and parot this idea of banking
the unbanked and sort of ignore the FBI
Secret Service uh connection the fact
that they've seized people's money when
the US Treasury Department has asked
them to do that even if they're not US
citizens um and and this type of stuff
you know what does this ultimately uh
mean and I think people that are
particularly in the Bitcoin space which
has often been sort of uh flooded uh at
times with the opinion that tether is a
Bitcoin company um should consider that
especially when a lot of these um a lot
of the rhetoric and ideology around
Bitcoin was about stopping the debt
slavery system and the debt-based
monetary system uh do do people uh
really want to perpetuate that um and is
it really conducive to Financial Freedom
in banking the unbanked in a way that
good for
Liberty what do you think would happen
if the US did formalize a Bitcoin
reserve and began purchasing that would
that be good bad or indifferent for
Bitcoin well I think it depends on your
perspective um about Bitcoin I think a
lot of people um have including in the
Bitcoin space have become very um
obsessed with the number go up mentality
and are not really interested in the
ideology that helped popularize it um
among certain
demographics um and personally um I
think my interest in Bitcoin it's the
only cryptocurrency that I see as really
having any value I mean don't mean to
swear but everything else to me is
pretty much a a shitcoin um but I
um I would say that um it really depends
on where things go from here and the
extreme interest of you know the
tradition additional Financial system
and the US government which the ideology
of Bitcoin was opposed originally uh to
working with those two entities and and
sought to you know supplant them because
you know they are bad you know that kind
of is the original uh part of the
original Bitcoin ethos that is being has
been sort of shed in favor of of mass
adoption and the idea that holders of
Bitcoin will become extremely wealthy
and and the concern and you know the
idea about having Freedom money um or
privacy money and all of that has sort
of um definitely taken a back burner um
and and may disappear entirely from
discour the discourse um and I um I
personally don't see that as positive I
think um if you know we're going to move
into the digital money space and there's
you know this push to eliminate cash I
think anonymity and privacy is important
the argument is that well bad people
will use it to money launder and all of
this stuff and sure that's true even if
we go into a new digital system I really
doubt that uh the CIA and some of these
other entities that engage in that same
type of behavior will have to will be
forced to stop you know I think it'll uh
be money laundering for me and not for
thee kind of thing and also a lot of
people um that use those you know
privacy enhancing uh protocols and and
products aren't money launderers they
just don't like Mass surveillance um
which again was part of the you know
early ideology common among uh people in
the Bitcoin space and so you know the
idea that there was this uh that it was
going to challenge Fiat and bring more
financial fairness to the world and our
debt based monetary system and put us on
a hard money standard um and all of this
a lot of that has sort of gone out of
the window and the idea of um you know
Bitcoin sort of use it as a new um Petro
dollar analog you want to play with
Bitcoin uh you need dollars um to get
access to that to it essentially you
know this is sort of the theory of of my
colleague Mark Goodwin who wrote the
Bitcoin dollar that I would really
recommend for anyone that wants uh uh to
see what's happening now having been
written about like three years ago by
somebody um you know this is something
that I think is very likely to happen um
and I think you know uh people that were
that hold Bitcoin that care about that
ethos still need to think about if their
bags get pumped uh what will they do
with that money to pert uh to preserve
um Financial Freedom because I don't
think the US government or you know
black rock or some of these other
entities that have become very bullish
on bitcoin are interested in protecting
uh privacy or having Bitcoin be used for
Freedom money necessarily you know and
so I think that stuff P personally to me
matters and is one of the reasons that
I've um you know tried to speak to
people in the Bitcoin space for some
time um because I think a lot of those
people do care about the ethos but I
think there is sort of an effort uh to
to flood the Zone with if you will um
with with this idea that it doesn't
matter anymore um and that we should
sort of um you know surrender uh that
ethos in favor of um you know becoming
extremely wealthy and that is going to
be persuasive for a lot of people
especially when we're potentially facing
a debt crisis and an economic downturn
and you know historically that type of
um you know drastic wealth increase for
people uh can be very persuasive and
getting them to change their ideology
but I would argue that you know the the
direction the is going um it's important
to think about what we can do to
preserve Freedom um and you know if
you're expecting to have a major
increase um in your ability to finance
things maybe consider financing things
that help uh help ensure privacy and
help ensure um Financial Freedom and
ensure that Bitcoin could become Freedom
money and not just a strategic asset for
a few very powerful people you know
um let me ask you so wrapping this up in
a bow we've got um a lot happening in
the world at the international level
there's a lot of optimism about Trump
coming into office right now as you look
at his executive orders what do they
signal to
you yeah so as I mentioned earlier I've
been working on wrapping up a piece um
so I haven't paid Ultra close attention
to the executive orders um that he has
put out but so and I'm sorry I can't
comment on those at this time uh but
some of my reporting and the leadup to
his um inauguration and also during the
campaign as it related to you know the
Trump camp in particular um are some of
his connections to these big Tech
figures that we've talked about earlier
um whether it's Elon Musk or figures
that are uh you know also part of the
so-called PayPal Mafia uh you know David
Sachs being the crypto and aazar for
example um and someone like JD Vance
having relatively close proximity Peter
teal uh someone at a top HHS position
Jim O'Neal also very close to um Peter
teal who has I would argue wildly
different views than Robert F Kennedy
who's supposed to lead HHS um especially
in terms of deregulation biotech and
mRNA technology you know what are these
things ultimately goin