Speaker 1: The interesting divisions going on here in the United States
Speaker 1: to tell us that this was one that you picked
Speaker 1: up on, tell us what's going on here.
Speaker 2: So Axios picked up on a polling analysis from a
Speaker 2: guy on substack, which I thought was really interesting because
Speaker 2: the polls that he was colllating basically were everywhere yesterday.
Speaker 2: It was like it was almost like the Beltway didn't realize.
Speaker 2: This is from Bruce Melman on his subtect, Bruce Melman
Speaker 2: that subsec dot com. Then Axios picked up on it.
Speaker 2: It's almost like people here in the Beltway, Ryan are
Speaker 2: out of touch. He had picked up on this NBC
Speaker 2: News poll, and then Axios ran this NBC News graph
Speaker 2: from a deck that Bruce Melman reported on that's found
Speaker 2: gen Z is less than half as likely as the
Speaker 2: Baby Boomers to say patriotism, believe in God, and having
Speaker 2: children are quote very important to them. Now, I think
Speaker 2: where this is even more interesting is the massive decline.
Speaker 2: So it's not just half as likely. It's that you
Speaker 2: had Baby Boomers somewhere around sixty seventy six percent when
Speaker 2: it came to the questions of whether patriotism was quote
Speaker 2: very important, seventy six percent people between the ages of
Speaker 2: eighteen and twenty six thirty two percent, So yes, less
Speaker 2: than half is likely. That's coming down from a very
Speaker 2: high level seventy six percent. Belief in God and religion
Speaker 2: sixty five percent to twenty six percent. Huge difference there
Speaker 2: having children quote being very important fifty two percent to
Speaker 2: twenty three percent. And another really big one here America
Speaker 2: being the best place to live sixty six percent for
Speaker 2: the baby boomers, thirty three percent for gen Z. That
Speaker 2: again was from an NBC News poll that was done
Speaker 2: by Public Opinion Strategies that Bruce Melman picked up on
Speaker 2: and then actually was reported on, and people were just
Speaker 2: sending like wildfire throughout like kind of DC media circles yesterday.
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised at all by these numbers. I don't know, Brian,
Speaker 2: Are you surprised at all by these numbers?
Speaker 1: Did we cover this when it didn You flag this
Speaker 1: for us when at first we've.
Speaker 2: Covered similar ones, because it does repeatedly show up in polls.
Speaker 2: This is probably the starkest divide that I've seen generationally.
Speaker 2: It's not surprising, but when you're asking sort of big
Speaker 2: questions patriotism and America are the best place to live
Speaker 2: like very broad themes. To see it show up I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously it's interesting, but it's not surprising at all.
Speaker 2: And this reminds me of what we've talked about on
Speaker 2: college campuses, and my perspective from the right on the
Speaker 2: campus protests is washing a lot of this away as
Speaker 2: anti semitism, lumping it all together with bigotry. When we
Speaker 2: had that great conversation with Sofia Southi, one of the
Speaker 2: organizers at Columbia, it's so abundantly clear that this is
Speaker 2: not anti semitism from her and some of the other organizers.
Speaker 2: Not to say there isn't actual bigotry and anti semitism,
Speaker 2: and we had conversations about that too. It's disgusting. But
Speaker 2: from many of these students, they have an entirely different worldview.
Speaker 2: They're approaching consensus. I mean, this is a flip flop.
Speaker 2: Baby boomers have a consensus on whether America is the
Speaker 2: best place to live or that patriotism is very important,
Speaker 2: which they do. Basically, is there at seventy six percent
Speaker 2: on that gen z not being at seventy six percent
Speaker 2: on that is approaching a position of consensus on a worldview.
Speaker 2: So no kidding. You know, there was polling that found
Speaker 2: most of college students weren't protesting, they weren't in the encampments,
Speaker 2: and that, you know, maybe the represent maybe the opinions
Speaker 2: of some of the hardcore protesters weren't representative of their
Speaker 2: peers broadly. That maybe the case. But what we're seeing
Speaker 2: here is pretty clear as to why their other students weren't,
Speaker 2: you know, picking them up and throwing them out of
Speaker 2: their tents. And it's because there is this deep widespread
Speaker 2: sentiment that America is not the best place to live,
Speaker 2: that patriotism.
Speaker 1: Is not very important, and there was related there was
Speaker 1: an there's an interesting annual survey that comes out that
Speaker 1: says that asks people how democratic their country is, and
Speaker 1: then they'll say, these are the ten countries where you know,
Speaker 1: people feel like the most democratic.
Speaker 3: China was in the top ten.
Speaker 1: Like Chinese people, because when people think of democracy, they
Speaker 1: think of the ability basically of people, or I would
Speaker 1: say that the ability of the government to respond to
Speaker 1: the public's majoritarian wishes, like how What was fascinating is
Speaker 1: that in the top ten there was no correlation between
Speaker 1: the trappings of procedural democracy like midterm elections parliament, parliamentary elections,
Speaker 1: presidential elections, and whether or not somebody felt like they
Speaker 1: were in a democratic country. Like France was in the
Speaker 1: bottom top ten they have elections. The US was not
Speaker 1: in the top ten of feeling what people saying that
Speaker 1: they felt like they lived in a democratic country. So
Speaker 1: there were some that were, you know, procedurally democratic, but
Speaker 1: there were others that were not. But I don't think
Speaker 1: you can disconnect what those students are feeling from the
Speaker 1: cost of college too. Like the whole glory of the
Speaker 1: US for the post World War two era has been
Speaker 1: our college system.
Speaker 2: Take it to the middle class.
Speaker 3: Ticket, take it the middle class.
Speaker 1: Everybody will, all these old people say, it's the best
Speaker 1: four years of their life.
Speaker 2: Find your purpose, they fulfill your.
Speaker 1: Calling, find themselves like they develop intellectually and spiritually. And
Speaker 1: then they're thrown into them mall of the economy.
Speaker 3: But at least they're they're moving upwards.
Speaker 2: Well, you're accruing terrifying debt with every year, right, but
Speaker 2: now you are accruing all of this debt and you're
Speaker 2: worried that you're just downwardly mobile relative to previous generations.
Speaker 1: And so the paradox of those numbers. Is that if
Speaker 1: you compare kind of the median net worth of an
Speaker 1: American twenty five year old or twenty year old to
Speaker 1: basically anyone else in the world, the Americans are doing better.
Speaker 1: They but they sense that they're losing ground constantly. The
Speaker 1: thing is they it doesn't help to be told, well,
Speaker 1: you're ahead now, right, and it's like you're like headed downhill.
Speaker 2: But that's what. So you are ahead compared to other
Speaker 2: places in the world, you are not ahead compared to
Speaker 2: what was happening and where you could have been in
Speaker 2: a prior generation. So you see your grandparents.
Speaker 1: Compare yourself to people around the world, you compare yourself
Speaker 1: to previous generations and people here exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I look at my grandparents' you know,
Speaker 2: military career, owned a home and had seven kids on
Speaker 2: one income in the walk area. Like that's incredible and
Speaker 2: totally unattainable for anybody. Now, So when they can't do
Speaker 2: an union, when you can't do that, you're looking at
Speaker 2: sixty six percent of people and baby Bommers saying America
Speaker 2: is the best place to live to thirty three percent. Now,
Speaker 2: patriotism is going to decline, and then you see the
Speaker 2: having children things, which freaks a lot of people on
Speaker 2: the rite out only twenty three percent of gen Z
Speaker 2: saying that's very important to them. Well, how are they
Speaker 2: supposed to have kids when their ticket to the middle
Speaker 2: class has left them thrown into the mall with the rungs,
Speaker 2: having the rungs up the ladder, having been kicked out
Speaker 2: and broken. It's like, what did you think was going
Speaker 2: to happen? What did you think was going to happen?
Speaker 2: You look at decline and belief in God. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's just chaos. To your point, this, Bruce Melman substack,
Speaker 2: this one makes me the most sad in the sixth
Speaker 2: chart Sunday thing that actually has picked up on. He said,
Speaker 2: Americans under thirty rating their lives came in sixty second
Speaker 2: among nations in the World Happiness Report. Americans sixty plus
Speaker 2: ranked tenth. So if you're over sixty in America, you're
Speaker 2: about tenth in the worldwide happiness ranking. If you're under thirty,
Speaker 2: you're all the way down. It's sixty two. It's tragic.
Speaker 2: You can understand why that shows up in the other
Speaker 2: the other numbers pretty pretty easily. When you see such
Speaker 2: a stark divide.
Speaker 1: I found the top ten list here or not, maybe
Speaker 1: not the whole top ten are no but Bertron the
Speaker 1: Twitter account posted this. It's from the Alliance of Democracies
Speaker 1: dot org. You can find find their report. The countries
Speaker 1: whose citizens most perceive themselves as living in democracy are China, Switzerland, Singapore, Israel, Norway, Vietnam.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the top that's the top list. There
Speaker 1: in the Republic of Congo. For those seven countries, more
Speaker 1: than seventy five percent of people are on the seven
Speaker 1: to ten scale. Where they asked the question, think about
Speaker 1: your country today, how democratic do you think it is?
Speaker 1: We're zero, not at all democratic, very democratic. China is fascinating.
Speaker 1: China and Switzerland next to each other, it's super interesting.
Speaker 1: And then now here's the list of countries where less
Speaker 1: than half of the people say they live in democracy
Speaker 1: and which has all the trappings of procedural democracy. Pakistan,
Speaker 1: which also has the trappings they hold elections. As we've
Speaker 1: covered here, people are correct there not remotely democratic. France, Nigeria, Iran, Peru,
Speaker 1: which recently had its president impeached after the first indigenous president.
Speaker 1: Basically ever, in Peru, white people quickly impeached him. Morocco, Turkey, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: they don't even have the procedural trappings of democracy anymore.
Speaker 3: They'll get to that eventually.
Speaker 2: They say yeah, and so does Blinken, and he's like,
Speaker 2: watch this drive, but let's actually watch this solo.
Speaker 1: I'm Hungary, which has elections, but the election elections are
Speaker 1: controlled by the right wing government there. The media is
Speaker 1: completely controlled by the right wing government there. There was
Speaker 1: an effort to contest the election, it didn't have a hope.
Speaker 3: Venezuela and Greece.
Speaker 1: So these are the least the people who don't believe
Speaker 1: that they live in democracies.
Speaker 2: Anyway, speaking of oligarchy, Ryan, we have the story from
Speaker 2: Open Ai to talk about and Scarlet Johansson, and you
Speaker 2: did promise a story about Scarlet Johansson, so we'll put
Speaker 2: a pin in that to do it, to keep people
Speaker 2: watching because it's a good story. But Scarlet Johansson is
Speaker 2: locked in a battle with sam Altman and open AI,
Speaker 2: and actually I think locked in a noble battle with
Speaker 2: sam Altman and basically one right open AI. Legally, it
Speaker 2: looks like she's clearly has the law on her side,
Speaker 2: which is interesting because there's going to be a lot
Speaker 2: of novel legal battles and decisions coming out of the
Speaker 2: AI space, and then.
Speaker 1: Your term future, we're still intercepted suing them Open Ai. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting, robbing content basically for the AI with
Speaker 1: with a few other small news organizations.
Speaker 2: Sarah Silverman, I think is doing something similar. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: so let's put this tear sheet from NPR up on
Speaker 2: the screen. Scarlett johans And says she is quote shocked
Speaker 2: and angered over the new chat GPT voice, as she
Speaker 2: should be if you haven't heard the backstory here yet,
Speaker 2: it's absolutely insane, Like the level of brazenness comes from
Speaker 2: like only it could only come from Silicon Valley tech bros.
Speaker 2: Just reading from the NPR piece here. Lawyers for Scarlett
Speaker 2: Johansson are demanding that open Ai just close how it
Speaker 2: developed an AI personal assistant voice that the actress says
Speaker 2: sounds uncannily similar to her own. Johanson's legal team has
Speaker 2: sent open Ai two letters asking the company to detail
Speaker 2: the process by which it developed a voice the tech
Speaker 2: company dubbed Sky. Johansson's publicist told NPR in a revelation
Speaker 2: that has not been previously reported. After open Ai had
Speaker 2: held a live demonstration of the voice last week. Many
Speaker 2: observers compared it to Johanson's voice in the twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: Spike Jones romantic sci fi film Her, which, as you
Speaker 2: may remember, centers on a man who falls in love
Speaker 2: with the female voice of his computer eye operating system.
Speaker 2: And if we skip ahead in the elements here, I
Speaker 2: just want to go ahead and put this next, not
Speaker 2: the next one, but actually E three up on the
Speaker 2: screen because it's relevant to what we just read from NPR.
Speaker 2: Sam Altman on May thirteenth had just cryptically tweeted her
Speaker 2: lowercase her, and then the voice comes out. It sounds
Speaker 2: just like Scarlett Johansson. No, it's just like her in
Speaker 2: the Spike Jones film Her. So to test this out
Speaker 2: for yourselves, we're going to play a video that somebody
Speaker 2: else made comparing open Ai to actually Scarlett Johansson. It's
Speaker 2: not from Scarlett Johansson, right, This isn't from Scarlett Johansson,
Speaker 2: even though it's reading Scarlett Johansson's statement. She did not
Speaker 2: put this out, her team did not put this out.
Speaker 2: Someone else made it. But it's a very instructive mashup.
Speaker 2: So take a listen here.
Speaker 4: Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who
Speaker 4: wanted to hire me to voice the current Chat GPT
Speaker 4: four point zero system. He told me that he felt
Speaker 4: that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the
Speaker 4: gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to
Speaker 4: feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI.
Speaker 4: He said he felt that my voice would be comforting
Speaker 4: to people. After much consideration and for personal reasons, I
Speaker 4: declined the offer. Nine months later, my friend's family in
Speaker 4: the general public all noted how much the newest system,
Speaker 4: named Sky sounded like me. When I heard the release demo,
Speaker 4: I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that mister Altman
Speaker 4: would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to
Speaker 4: mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not
Speaker 4: tell the difference. Mister Altman even insinuated that the similarity
Speaker 4: was intentional, tweeting a single word her a reference to
Speaker 4: the film in which I voiced a chat system Samantha,
Speaker 4: who forms an intimate relationship with a human. Two days
Speaker 4: before the Chat GPT four point zero demo was released,
Speaker 4: mister Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider before
Speaker 4: we could connect. The system was out there.
Speaker 2: All right, So that was Scarlet Johansson. Not really, that
Speaker 2: was the AI voice of Scarlett Johansson reading Scarlett Johansson's statement, Ryan,
Speaker 2: what do you make of all this?
Speaker 1: Has anybody ever been more busted than Sam Altman? No,
Speaker 1: he busted himself, just completely busted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he clearly.
Speaker 2: But did he want to be busted? Is he intentionally
Speaker 2: testing the limits of the law in this case because
Speaker 2: you mentioned an intercept, I think Sarah Silverman has a
Speaker 2: similar case to some of the media outlets that you
Speaker 2: guys have joined up with to challenge legally scraping all
Speaker 2: of your guys's work and doing machine learning based on it.
Speaker 2: The fact that he tweeted her after knowing for sure
Speaker 2: that Scarlett Johnson was going to publicly say this is
Speaker 2: not consensual. I said no to this. You out used
Speaker 2: my voice. It seems to me like he's intentionally testing
Speaker 2: the limits and is doing a wink in a nod
Speaker 2: in a way that you used to see from Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley back when they felt like they were on a
Speaker 2: pirate ship in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is a very good analogy that this is
Speaker 1: the old move fast and break things, which is I
Speaker 1: think a Zuckerberg line, which meant, don't worry about the rules,
Speaker 1: don't worry about the laws. We're just just go just
Speaker 1: plow ahead. And what's meta concerning about this, No pun
Speaker 1: in Town was going.
Speaker 2: To say is that, speaking of brazen.
Speaker 1: Altman is the guy who we're supposed to rely on
Speaker 1: as the ethical mind and the ethical soul behind AI, Like,
Speaker 1: he's the one that's been promising us trust me. I
Speaker 1: have the interests of humanity at stake here, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the future in ways that the grubby
Speaker 1: capitalists are not.
Speaker 3: Never mind that he moved his thing from nonprofit to.
Speaker 2: For profit and the regulators who just don't understand this.
Speaker 1: Right, He's the one that we're going to just supposed
Speaker 1: to trust with this, and now given a very basic
Speaker 1: test of ethics, he just wildly failed. Like this, this
Speaker 1: is a test that a third grader could pass. If
Speaker 1: you ask somebody's permission for something and they tell you no,
Speaker 1: are you supposed to do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: A third grade be like no, yeah, some third graders
Speaker 1: will just plow ahead.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 1: We don't want those third graders shaping the entire future
Speaker 1: of humanity?
Speaker 2: Do you currently have a third grader?
Speaker 3: Second and fourth?
Speaker 2: It just sounded so visperal for you.
Speaker 1: So I'm leaving my kids out of this because they're
Speaker 1: in different grades. Yes, yeah, they could run over and
Speaker 1: absolutely would not run.
Speaker 2: Not even in fourth grade.
Speaker 3: No, okay.
Speaker 2: But the reason I think this resonates with so many
Speaker 2: people is because it's so brazen, but also because people
Speaker 2: can connect the dots and see how this will be
Speaker 2: used for them. They know that people because people have
Speaker 2: been dealing, by the way, with like revenge porn on
Speaker 2: individual community levels, not just celebrities. The celebrity cases are
Speaker 2: the ones that get the most attention. But you can
Speaker 2: see where this is going really quickly because people see
Speaker 2: where some of this stuff has gone already very quickly.
Speaker 2: People are dealing with this stuff in high schools. How
Speaker 2: you can use AI right now to do horrible things
Speaker 2: that are not consensual, especially young girls. But you can see,
Speaker 2: you can connect the dots between what happened here to
Speaker 2: Scarlett Johansson. It's just disgusting to treat this like and
Speaker 2: I get this is not pornographic. This isn't you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not content that's humiliating or embarrassing in any ways.
Speaker 2: It's just you know, reading as a voice that's reading.
Speaker 2: But you can the possibilities with AR absolutely endless, and
Speaker 2: the way that they can be used to target people
Speaker 2: that don't have the resources of a celebrity to release
Speaker 2: a lawyer cractice statement to NPR and have a full
Speaker 2: media blitz defending yourself. That is not going to happen
Speaker 2: to the kids who deal with this in Fort Wayne
Speaker 2: and Dana at their high school. And for Sam Altman
Speaker 2: to be so cavalier about it, it just speaks to
Speaker 2: something that is so rightfully out of fashion for the
Speaker 2: rest of the country now, which is this, although it's
Speaker 2: becoming defensible again with the sort of e act accelerationism
Speaker 2: crowd that is reacting to some excessive you know, zeal
Speaker 2: among people who just want to control everything. I understand that,
Speaker 2: but do you get why people maybe want to control
Speaker 2: everything because you're doing this. You're doing this.
Speaker 1: If a good thing that could come out of this,
Speaker 1: well A, she should see them, but B there should
Speaker 1: be a ban on producing AI products that allow you
Speaker 1: to take somebody's voice and then recreate it, because, like
Speaker 1: you said, you're gonna have middle schoolers who will take
Speaker 1: voice memos yes from a friend or who they thought
Speaker 1: was a friend, feed it into some program, and then
Speaker 1: make new voice memos and pass them around as if
Speaker 1: this is these are the real people. And Altman is
Speaker 1: showing here that AI absolutely cannot be trusted on this question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And the legal point is really interesting. One
Speaker 2: of the things that's been circulating since this happened is
Speaker 2: going back to what happened with Bette Midler and Ford.
Speaker 3: Do you remember this?
Speaker 2: I think these the yuppie commercial campaign for Ford. Bette
Speaker 2: Midler said no to having her voice used, and then
Speaker 2: they hired a Bette Midler impersonator, and Bette Midler won
Speaker 2: that battle. Right, So this is a legal framework that
Speaker 2: should give Scarlett Johansson actually a pretty good defense or
Speaker 2: a pretty good advantage in defending her rights against what
Speaker 2: Sam Altman just did. Who knows if Sam Altman, with
Speaker 2: all of the resources of Open AI, was even aware
Speaker 2: of that, if any of his legal team actually was
Speaker 2: aware of what happened with that case. My assumption is
Speaker 2: that they were and that they are still But maybe
Speaker 2: they weren't, and they're just they don't care. They're testing
Speaker 2: the waters. They have all the money in the world
Speaker 2: to do it, and you know they're ready to go
Speaker 2: have fun, move fast and break things and you know,
Speaker 2: do no evil. But their definition of evil is probably
Speaker 2: different than a whole lot of other people's. Now, Ryan
Speaker 2: the Crowd is in suspense.
Speaker 1: The my Scarlett Johannes story actually does kind of flow
Speaker 1: into the impersonation point.
Speaker 3: Also it does so back in.
Speaker 1: Back in the back in the Obama era, basically the
Speaker 1: contest among media organizations was who could get the biggest celebrities.
Speaker 2: It was pretty gross but to.
Speaker 1: Come to the White House correspondent to dinner, but fun
Speaker 1: for reporters. We were the huffing It Post. We were
Speaker 1: the cool kids in town. We were run by Arianna Huffington,
Speaker 1: who knew from La knew absolutely everybody in La. It
Speaker 1: was so it was actually a contest of like who
Speaker 1: could compete for second place.
Speaker 3: Of getting the best sotties, uh.
Speaker 1: And it would usually be Bloomberg for just because they
Speaker 1: had they had this huge party at the French Embassy
Speaker 1: and so they would be able to get like the
Speaker 1: second best celebrities. We'd always get the top A list ones.
Speaker 1: And so a couple of years we had Scarlett Johansson
Speaker 1: at our at our table. I would not get invited
Speaker 1: to these these French embassy parties. Even though I was
Speaker 1: at the kids outlet, I was still doing reporting that
Speaker 1: that made the cool kids very uncomfortable. Obama just constantly
Speaker 1: was trashing us. Yeah, like he just he's like, why
Speaker 1: won't the Huffing Post just get in line?
Speaker 2: Didn't last up? But well not that we don't.
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so we so Scarlete and hands and of
Speaker 1: course did get invited to the French embassy party.
Speaker 3: So uh she uh, he said. I think it was
Speaker 3: her brother that she that she was with.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then a couple other Huffing Post reporters. My wife
Speaker 1: and I like, go with her in this limo to
Speaker 1: the French Embassy. We're not invited, but she's like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm Scarlet, your hands and I can get you and
Speaker 1: get you guys in. So we get to the gate
Speaker 1: and she's like, these are my friends and they're like,
Speaker 1: well they're not on the list that it can't come in.
Speaker 1: And the look on her face, I've never seen anything
Speaker 1: like it, Like it was like the first time she'd
Speaker 1: been told no.
Speaker 3: I think she was a child actress, right, I don't remember.
Speaker 3: So she's just like stunned.
Speaker 2: This is Brian Graham, more.
Speaker 1: Like Scarlet Johansson. You're telling me, no, you're a security
Speaker 1: guard here. And so she recovers and she's like, who
Speaker 1: runs this? Who's your manager?
Speaker 2: You speak to the ambassador, the ambassador.
Speaker 1: Bigger people come over, and it took a while, like
Speaker 1: it was not they did not just roll over.
Speaker 3: But she fought it.
Speaker 1: But she was not. It became a matter of principle.
Speaker 1: She was not fighting for my wife and I. She
Speaker 1: was fighting for her, for the principle that if she
Speaker 1: says that these people are cool and her friends, that
Speaker 1: damn it, they're coming into this party. And so eventually
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, fine, just how many of them? She's like,
Speaker 1: she counts, all right, fine, come on, come on in.
Speaker 1: And the thing was surreal. It's like Henry Kissinger over here.
Speaker 1: It's like the really grossest place I've ever been. I
Speaker 1: think I stayed for about fifteen minutes. I think this
Speaker 1: is this is insane. But then so then later and
Speaker 1: this is where the impersonation comes in. And I won't
Speaker 1: say who we did this to, but we did in
Speaker 1: April fool's prank where we made a fake like New
Speaker 1: York phone number and texted one of our reporters saying
Speaker 1: it great, great hang out with you.
Speaker 3: It's Scarlet, I've.
Speaker 1: Got a I've got a cousin who wants an internship
Speaker 1: with the Huffing New Post and he and started a text.
Speaker 2: You pulled an Altman, You fully pulled an Alton.
Speaker 3: And started a text conversation.
Speaker 1: Had the person convinced that this and he never told
Speaker 1: anybody that he was texting with Scarlett Johansson. Eventually good
Speaker 1: for him. Well, eventually we called it off or like
Speaker 1: this could end badly? Yes, yes, I told him so. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she should sue us too, but we didn't do it publicly.
Speaker 2: Same moment. If you're watching, it takes a certain dose
Speaker 2: of wisdom to pull your chips and just go home take.
Speaker 3: The l exactly.
Speaker 1: But this is the kind of thing that people will do,
Speaker 1: these kinds of pranks, and they're not This was funny,
Speaker 1: I was going to say, but it almost could.
Speaker 3: You know it could end badly, It could.
Speaker 2: End very bad, but good for scholar giants and fighting
Speaker 2: for the free press through rebevels with Henry Kissinger coming
Speaker 2: to the Henry Kissinger part to toe Champagne with Henry
Speaker 2: Kissinger and get you know, more scoops about how great
Speaker 2: China is. I'm sure that's what he was dishing out
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 3: I wonder. I was like, oh my god, that is it's.
Speaker 2: Hard to say. It's hard to say. But all right,
Speaker 2: well that was a hell of a story.
Speaker 3: There you go. I don't know, storytime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good. It was good. All right, let's
Speaker 2: move on to the next block. We have a great interview.
Speaker 2: Super excited to have Gabriel Shipton, brother of Juliana Schlange,
Speaker 2: in the studio with us.
Speaker 1: This week, Juliana Sane noted a rare win in his
Speaker 1: legal battle against the United States, with a high court
Speaker 1: in the UK ruling that he was is able to
Speaker 1: appeal the US extradition and also dealing a blow to
Speaker 1: some of the US efforts to make assurances about.
Speaker 3: The conditions that he would be.
Speaker 1: Kept in if he were to be brought back to
Speaker 1: the United States. To talk more about this, were joined
Speaker 1: by Julian Sanger's brother, filmmaker Gabriel Shipton.
Speaker 3: Gabe, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Thanks
Speaker 3: for having me guys, So tell us, So.
Speaker 1: You were out there hearing on Monday, what were your
Speaker 1: expectations going into it, and you know, what was the
Speaker 1: what was the tone of it, what was the how'd
Speaker 1: you feel about the result?
Speaker 5: Well for us, you know, as Julian's family going into
Speaker 5: this hearing where they could have turned around and ordered
Speaker 5: his extradition, there were some people saying they were from
Speaker 5: there basically yes, yeah, there were some people saying there
Speaker 5: are US marshals in the court even ready to pounce.
Speaker 5: So going in there, there's a lot of it's very tense, too,
Speaker 5: very tense for us, and this decision obviously was a
Speaker 5: huge relief. You know that Julian liftsified another day in
Speaker 5: this ongoing extradition proceeding, the mood in the court I
Speaker 5: think was.
Speaker 3: A bit different.
Speaker 5: The judges are sort of taking on the gravity of
Speaker 5: what this means, not just for Julian, but what it
Speaker 5: means for freedom of expression in the United Kingdom, and
Speaker 5: they spoke to that when they rejected this US US
Speaker 5: assurance from the DOJ from the State Department that said
Speaker 5: that Julian could seek to rely on the First Amendment,
Speaker 5: but they wouldn't guarantee a First Amendment that would apply
Speaker 5: to Julian. And so the UK courts actually rejected that
Speaker 5: assurance and said that's not good enough because what that
Speaker 5: would mean for citizens in the United Kingdom is that
Speaker 5: these secrecy laws, these espionage laws, could be used potentially
Speaker 5: to suppress the freedom of expression of people in the
Speaker 5: United Kingdom. So that's a huge rebuke to the DOJ,
Speaker 5: to the State Department, I think quite embarrassing as well
Speaker 5: on the world stage, having a diplomatic note rejected in
Speaker 5: that fashion. They could seek he could say it again,
Speaker 5: he could seek to rely on the First Amendment defense.
Speaker 1: You can seek to rely on the First Amendment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can't have actual First Amendment protections. Yes, you
Speaker 1: seek to you can try, yeah, yeah, well you can
Speaker 1: give it a go. Well, anybody's allowed to try exactly Well.
Speaker 2: And Gab I was going to say, if we keep
Speaker 2: pulling at that thread from the position of the UK,
Speaker 2: there's a serious question about free expression in journalism, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to see if you could explain just a
Speaker 2: little bit more what Ryan was just saying. You can
Speaker 2: seek the protections of the First Amendment sort of hypothetically,
Speaker 2: but what does that what are they talking about. Practically,
Speaker 2: that would mean if you're in the UK reporting on
Speaker 2: things that the United States Security Apparatus is unhappy with,
Speaker 2: they can you know, do what they will if they
Speaker 2: become unhappy with it. Is that kind of what's going.
Speaker 5: On here, that's right, And if these judges had accepted
Speaker 5: that assurance that that's exactly what it would mean for
Speaker 5: all journalists in the United Kingdom that they wouldn't actually
Speaker 5: have free expression rights in their home country because the
Speaker 5: US could use the USDJ could use its espionagic laws
Speaker 5: to reach into the United Kingdom and go after any journalists.
Speaker 5: And the judges actually acknowledge the gravity in court they said,
Speaker 5: you know, this has a massive meaning, not just for
Speaker 5: Julian but for all the people in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 5: So I think it really frames now the next appeal
Speaker 5: as a freedom of expression case which hasn't been which
Speaker 5: haven't been really been done in Julian's case for a
Speaker 5: long time. And I think that's going to have repercussions
Speaker 5: back here in Washington, because I don't think the DOJ
Speaker 5: ever really wanted to have a freedom of an expression
Speaker 5: case going on.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point, the DOJ wanted
Speaker 1: to prosecute one of the most important publishers and journalists
Speaker 1: of the last fifteen years. But they somehow thought that
Speaker 1: they could do that without getting into a debate over
Speaker 1: freedom of expression and the free press, that they could
Speaker 1: just talk about hacking and cyber this and cyber terrorism
Speaker 1: like Mittri McConnell and Joe Biden have referred to them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was always that was always ridiculous because
Speaker 1: that's that's not what it's that's not what it's about.
Speaker 1: And so, how has the public and when I mean public,
Speaker 1: I mean public, I mean public officials that you're meeting
Speaker 1: with on a regular basis, How has their reception of
Speaker 1: the case evolved over the last year or so.
Speaker 5: Well, there's a lot more room now to hear Julian's
Speaker 5: perspective on this case. You know, the perspective that we bring.
Speaker 5: That I bring is Julian's brother to Washington, and I
Speaker 5: think I've been here every month for the last three months,
Speaker 5: for a week, you know, working away in Congress, and
Speaker 5: the amount of attention that we get, the amount of
Speaker 5: meetings we get just increasing exponentially, People very high up,
Speaker 5: you know, in the in the Congress who hold these
Speaker 5: high positions are willing to hear a different perspective now,
Speaker 5: which would never have been possible. And just last month
Speaker 5: you had President Biden. He was asked is he considering
Speaker 5: the Australian request to drop the charges, and he said, yes,
Speaker 5: we're considering it. And so even at the highest levels,
Speaker 5: you've got the Biden administration saying we're considering dropping this,
Speaker 5: but the DOJ is pushing forward. So there's this sort
Speaker 5: of a little bit of a divide between the institutions
Speaker 5: here that I think shows some movement in the case,
Speaker 5: and we're here to make sure that Julian's perspective is
Speaker 5: carried through into the Congress.
Speaker 2: Well, on that point about Biden saying yes, I'm making
Speaker 2: this consideration, I'm also curious, GiB about how geopolitical negotiations
Speaker 2: might be changing the way some people are thinking about this,
Speaker 2: ally in Australia, obviously in an ally as China, hawks
Speaker 2: are increasingly concerned about Taiwan, increasingly concerned about that whole
Speaker 2: area of the world. Is there any sense that you
Speaker 2: get as you're talking to members that they see Julian
Speaker 2: as a kind of in the way that they're looking
Speaker 2: at negotiations with this hugely powerful ally that they're concerned
Speaker 2: or that they want to be sort of a hedge
Speaker 2: in a potential conflict with China. Just trying to think
Speaker 2: of why over the course of the last year people
Speaker 2: might be more interested in having that conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 5: And I think if you look back into the reporting
Speaker 5: that's going on around the Alliance in Australia, Julian's always
Speaker 5: mentioned whenever there's an Alliance discussion and how that is
Speaker 5: a reflection of Australia's true position in the Alliance that
Speaker 5: the human rights of Australians don't actually matter within this
Speaker 5: sort of alliance structure, and carrying that through into the
Speaker 5: meetings on the Hill. Obviously members who are more concerned
Speaker 5: about foreign relations it really carries with them.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 5: And we had a group of politicians here from Australia
Speaker 5: Bipartisan Group last year and they were they made an
Speaker 5: incredible impact in terms of explaining to them, explaining to
Speaker 5: Congress people what's actually happening back in Australia and the
Speaker 5: sentiment among the Australian public, because ninety percent of the
Speaker 5: Australian public wants Julian brought back, and it's having a
Speaker 5: detrimental effect on the alliance because it's like one point
Speaker 5: of contention really in the in the alliance between the
Speaker 5: US and Australia.
Speaker 1: It's a really incredible statement about how desperately the US
Speaker 1: wants Julian Assange behind bars here in the United States,
Speaker 1: that they are willing to upend their relationship with Australia
Speaker 1: when they're they keep blaming they're doing this pivot to
Speaker 1: Asia and the Pacific and willing to upend their relationship
Speaker 1: with the UK and double down on a trump Ara
Speaker 1: prosecution and double down on a trump A prosecution. Do
Speaker 1: you have a sen and you have the President himself saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, actually, we're open to dropping this in
Speaker 1: our talks with Australia, which takes it out of the
Speaker 1: dog like. It was an unusual thing for him to say,
Speaker 1: because typically a democratic president will say, Ah, we don't
Speaker 1: get involved in expect department matters.
Speaker 3: Actually that day I asked you, and I I asked
Speaker 3: the State Department.
Speaker 1: I was that you always refer questions to the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice on Juliana Sange. But today the President said
Speaker 1: he was talking to Australia about it. You can't, so
Speaker 1: it's now diplomatic, it's now in your domain.
Speaker 3: And they did. Then they finally commented.
Speaker 1: On it and had a back and forth claimed why
Speaker 1: it was a legit prosecution because it brings it out
Speaker 1: of that realm of oh, this is just prosecutors kind
Speaker 1: of doing their work. But what is your sense of
Speaker 1: what is what is the impulse here? Like, why is
Speaker 1: it so fanatically necessary for them to pursue this in
Speaker 1: the face of all of the kind of political obstacles
Speaker 1: and problems that it's causing for them around the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I think there is. You know, there is
Speaker 5: a division. And so you've seen Bud and saying making
Speaker 5: these comments, as well as all the pros freedom organizations
Speaker 5: ruting to the president as well in the New York
Speaker 5: Times calling on the President to drop it. So I
Speaker 5: think there is a division between those who want to
Speaker 5: pursue this prosecution, the sort of Mic Pompeos of the world,
Speaker 5: the sort of hubris from these sorts of characters within
Speaker 5: the intelligence community, and those people who see it as
Speaker 5: a sort of albatross, political albatross around their next So
Speaker 5: I think there is a division forming and I think
Speaker 5: the political cost. Now we're reaching a point where the
Speaker 5: political cost of pursuing this actually outweighs the benefit of
Speaker 5: dropping it, particularly after this decision in the UK courts
Speaker 5: where the UK has actually said we're not going to
Speaker 5: accept your assurances. This is going to affect the freedom
Speaker 5: of expression of all people in the UK. I think
Speaker 5: that is a really strong rebuke and that will feed
Speaker 5: into the cost of pursuing this and hopefully shift the
Speaker 5: balance so that the DOJ can now can take another
Speaker 5: look at it and say, well, actually, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: it's not worth us pursuing this. It's incredibly embarrassing, it's
Speaker 5: affecting our relationships. Might be time to bring it.
Speaker 1: The next step is that he will fail and appeal,
Speaker 1: and then the question will be does the Department Justice
Speaker 1: respond to the appeal or what yeah were?
Speaker 5: So they'll set an appeal date now, and that appeal
Speaker 5: will be based on these freedom of expression questions. So
Speaker 5: the appeal will be I think that it's going to
Speaker 5: move quite quickly. They've got four days to submit schedules
Speaker 5: and things like that, and then the court will set
Speaker 5: an appeal date. So the lawyers, Jillian's lawyers are expecting
Speaker 5: an appeal date even before the summer, so there could
Speaker 5: be another hearing before the summer break in August. But
Speaker 5: then whether that result comes back before November, I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: And could that appeal result in his release potentially if
Speaker 5: the appeal, if it goes Julian's way and they it
Speaker 5: would block the extradition and then it would be up
Speaker 5: to the DOJ again to say, Okay, we're going to
Speaker 5: take this to the Supreme Court of the UK. So
Speaker 5: that could be a perfect neat endpoint for the DOJ
Speaker 5: just to say, oh, yeah, this is this has gone
Speaker 5: on too long, this is too hard.
Speaker 3: We lost, let's move on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's the UK's fault.
Speaker 3: We can blame the UK.
Speaker 5: We you know, we still pursued it as much as
Speaker 5: we could, but the UK courts blocked us.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned November. Do you feel like there's a
Speaker 1: race against the clerk? Are you worried that Pompeo, the
Speaker 1: Pompeos of the world are coming back to power. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard to like imagine a worst situation than the
Speaker 1: current administration, which is has been prosecuting him these years.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what Maybe there is a worse situation. I
Speaker 3: don't know where do you come down on that.
Speaker 5: Well, so I think what's happened with you know, the
Speaker 5: Australian advocacy which has been very very important in this case,
Speaker 5: and Biden saying the Presidents saying that he's considering dropping it,
Speaker 5: I think now is the time to really move and
Speaker 5: to end this right now. We don't know what's going
Speaker 5: to happen after November. You know what administration you know
Speaker 5: will be will be sworn in in January. So I
Speaker 5: think now is the time to really make the best
Speaker 5: move to end this based on President's comments, the support
Speaker 5: from Australia and the UK court decision does.
Speaker 2: Like a dive with a bone.
Speaker 3: Now, last question, how is he doing? Mental health wise?
Speaker 1: I know it's just absolute torture to be in the
Speaker 1: conditions that he's in, Like, how is he faring?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's holding up. You know, there's obviously it's a
Speaker 5: lot of relief now that he's got a sort of path, Yeah,
Speaker 5: a little bit of a glimmer of hope and a
Speaker 5: path to keep fighting, because that's what it is.
Speaker 3: He's not been extra dieded.
Speaker 5: We can keep fighting, we can keep mounting his political pressure.
Speaker 5: But you know, he's hanging in there. His health is deteriorating.
Speaker 5: You know, I'll go and see him next week after
Speaker 5: I leave here. So, yeah, he's hanging in there. And
Speaker 5: he was telling me the other day he's in prison
Speaker 5: with there's an actual cannibal who's been put into the
Speaker 5: prison with him. So these are the sorts of people
Speaker 5: that he has to deal with on a day to
Speaker 5: day basis, These extreme crimminals, the most violent criminals, predatory
Speaker 5: criminals in the United Kingdom who he's sharing a jail with.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks as always for joining us in good luck
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill today.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: All Right, Well that does it today on this edition
Speaker 2: of Counterpoints. We will be back, of course on Friday
Speaker 2: with a great debate on weed that Ryan set up.
Speaker 2: This is Ryan's pet issue. In fact, you can see
Speaker 2: his book This is a Country on Drugs right behind us.
Speaker 2: That's a great book. Is that your best selling book?
Speaker 1: Buy Them Both? We've Got People was my best selling book?
Speaker 2: Okay, but that one.
Speaker 3: The problem the problem with.
Speaker 1: That one for sales is that it really appealed to
Speaker 1: like twenty two year old men and.
Speaker 2: Not allowed to dispose bal income.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those men don't buy books by weed. They will
Speaker 1: steal it from the library, or if any of their
Speaker 1: friends do buy it, then they'll just they'll pass. Thirty
Speaker 1: people will read one copy, which is great, that's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, happy, happy with that.
Speaker 1: But yes, the published industry will tell you that like
Speaker 1: something like ninety percent of books are bought between bought
Speaker 1: by women who are like thirty and up. And even
Speaker 1: if even if the books are read by men, it's
Speaker 1: the woman in their life that buys it for them
Speaker 1: and gives it to them.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: So if you ever are wondering, like how do publishing
Speaker 1: houses make decisions, they make decisions thinking, you know, what
Speaker 1: will forty five year old woman want to read and buy?
Speaker 2: Makes sense?
Speaker 3: Actually buy. They don't care if you read it.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope they buy Counterpoints or Breaking Points premium
Speaker 2: subscriptions so they can get all of Counterpoints Friday early
Speaker 2: to their inbox. You go, because they want, you know,
Speaker 2: their husbands to watch this great wead debate that we
Speaker 2: have coming up, and you actually, with the move of
Speaker 2: the Biden administration that we talked about last week, we're
Speaker 2: going to get into that. I think we'll actually start
Speaker 2: with it. But this is really important to a lot
Speaker 2: of families. There are, you know, scientific questions that are
Speaker 2: increasingly very important to a lot of families, and I'm
Speaker 2: excited to sort of dive into the policies. Not my
Speaker 2: area of expertise, but you know, the people, you know
Speaker 2: the issue. So I'm really really excited for this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll have John lou Becky, who you guys may
Speaker 1: remember we've interviewed him before. He's a veteran who advocates
Speaker 1: for the use of kind of psychedelics and MDMA for
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress disorder. He talks about his own experience
Speaker 1: overcoming PTSD, you know, through the use of MDMA therapy,
Speaker 1: MDMA assisted therapy. And then we're gonna have Kevin Sabott,
Speaker 1: who is basically the kind of leading anti pot voice
Speaker 1: in the country. I've known him since he was an
Speaker 1: official in the Obama administration, but he he is the
Speaker 1: He is basically the man when it comes to.
Speaker 3: Like beating up on the pot crowd.
Speaker 1: Buddy of Staggers, I believe Sager like looks up to
Speaker 1: him when it comes to forming his own kind of
Speaker 1: intellectual edifice around his like anti pot thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Soccer is popping his popcorn right now. He's ready
Speaker 2: to rumble.
Speaker 3: And we actually invited Saga.
Speaker 2: It's too humble.
Speaker 1: I think he had he had something else going on,
Speaker 1: but we do. We do want him, maybe him and
Speaker 1: lou Becky like, at some point in the future, it'll
Speaker 1: be fun to have Sager as the kind of guest
Speaker 1: on one of these debates.
Speaker 2: Buy Sager a bunch of caffeine, lock him in a
Speaker 2: room for an hour before the debate, and let him
Speaker 2: loose red bulls something. Yeah. Uh, he's just so similar
Speaker 2: to his numbsis destiny? There you go, just bounding the caffine.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. We will
Speaker 2: be back here on Friday. Make sure to stay tuned
Speaker 2: for that, and then we'll be back here next Wednesday.
Speaker 3: See you later then,