Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Marjorie Taylor Green was laughed at
Speaker 1: by Democrats when she asked for them to observe decorum.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show today. Representatives Summerly talks
Speaker 1: to us about representing western Pennsylvania with progressive values. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to author Doug Rushkoff about AI and Ronda Santis'
Speaker 1: failure to launch. But first we have Washington Post columnist
Speaker 1: Dana Milbank. Welcome back to Fast Politics, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite guests and writers.
Speaker 2: Dana Milbank, Well, thank you very much, pleasure to be
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we started the Republican primary cycle last night Putting
Speaker 1: fingers announced discuss.
Speaker 3: Yes, and quite an announcement it was. And I think
Speaker 3: that was a bit of a metaphor the failure to
Speaker 3: launch on Twitter. But it's been a failure to launch overall.
Speaker 3: Here we are. It's twenty sixteen all over again. Got
Speaker 3: a huge field would be Republican candidates, and Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is in a perfect position to pick them off one
Speaker 3: by one. And that's what happened last time. Nobody got
Speaker 3: a clear shot at him. It looked like DeSantis might
Speaker 3: have been that guy. But then came the indictment and
Speaker 3: the rally around Trump effect. DeSantis bungled it and it's
Speaker 3: been sort of a disaster for him ever since. So
Speaker 3: I think the launch, which was sort of a you know,
Speaker 3: in microcosm, the disaster that his campaign has been. So look,
Speaker 3: I don't you know, we've learned a long time ago
Speaker 3: not to make predictions, particularly as regards anything where Trump
Speaker 3: is in the sentence. But you know, history is definitely
Speaker 3: rhyming here. I can see the path again for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is I think a really good point.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's amazing about Trump and Trumps in general
Speaker 1: is like there were never secrets in trump Ism, right
Speaker 1: or in Trump He just says what he wants. So
Speaker 1: he's like everyone should jump in, you know, And he's
Speaker 1: encouraging these people because he knows that this is the
Speaker 1: not Trump lane of the primary. And maybe if you
Speaker 1: had one candidate, you might be able to run a
Speaker 1: real challenge to Trump. But you have a gazillion candidates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you'd think that maybe the rest of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party would have learned a lesson from Jeb and
Speaker 3: Marco can Cruz and all the others back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: By the same token. You would think that some of
Speaker 3: us in the media would have learned our lesson from
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. But we're starting to cover him exactly the
Speaker 3: same way we covered him last time, with just a
Speaker 3: whole lot of credulity and free airtime. It's kind of
Speaker 3: nauseating to see it all happening again. You know, look,
Speaker 3: we don't know, you know, what other indictments await, and
Speaker 3: maybe Republicans can get wise this time. But you know,
Speaker 3: I've lost a lot of money betting on the wisdom
Speaker 3: of Republicans.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's interesting is if you'll get twenty twenty right.
Speaker 1: The primary field was messy, right, and in fact, Biden
Speaker 1: lost those first two primary contests, right and Mayor Pete.
Speaker 1: It was messy. But then there was a moment Democrats
Speaker 1: came together and they supported Biden and it wasn't like
Speaker 1: there was really it was really I've never seen Democrats
Speaker 1: do that. You know, they all got together and they
Speaker 1: were like, you know, he's maybe not my guy, but
Speaker 1: we got to get rid of Trump. And Republicans have
Speaker 1: not come into it with that same kind of steadfastness.
Speaker 3: Not so far still, Trump commands overwhelming support from the
Speaker 3: Republican base, and you know, just the tribal nature of things,
Speaker 3: you know, if it looks like he's going to be
Speaker 3: the nominee, then all of them will once again the
Speaker 3: other way and accept it. That's just the nature of
Speaker 3: our politics. It doesn't matter whether it was Trump or
Speaker 3: DeSantis or somebody else. They're going to rally around whoever
Speaker 3: it is. But just looks like we're already seeing that
Speaker 3: rallying effect this far out. I think the Democratic experience
Speaker 3: around Biden will surely. I mean, I think there's going
Speaker 3: to be a whole lot of unity around the Democrat
Speaker 3: Joe Biden in twenty twenty four. These notions of sort
Speaker 3: of dissatisfaction with his age, I think those largely vanished
Speaker 3: for the same reason that it's you know, if it's
Speaker 3: him or it's Donald Trump. It's not like people are
Speaker 3: going to be on the Democratic side are going to
Speaker 3: be holding out saying if only somebody else.
Speaker 2: Had run, right.
Speaker 1: I also think, you know, Biden versus Trump is very
Speaker 1: different than Biden versus someone else.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, I mean, you know, a younger candidate a DeSantis.
Speaker 3: May his campaign rest in peace. No, that's absolutely. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, the best thing for Biden, if not for America,
Speaker 3: is Trump as the nominee. He was made to be
Speaker 3: the anti Trump. So this, you know, this, this extinguishes
Speaker 3: a lot of the doubts that would have bubbled up
Speaker 3: from Democrats. And Democrats are very good at, you know,
Speaker 3: bubbling up doubts, as you know we're seeing with the
Speaker 3: debt limit and everything else. They're just I mean, it
Speaker 3: is a it is a doubt bubbling factory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh no, I mean that's the brand. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what it is.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The thing that I'm so struck by with Democrats is
Speaker 1: the dead ceiling. Like I do think there were a
Speaker 1: lot of Democrats who before the twenty twenty two election
Speaker 1: were saying, we probably should just fix this fucking debt
Speaker 1: ceiling bullshit. There were people who were saying it, why
Speaker 1: didn't he get done?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I mean there were, you know, some obvious reasons like
Speaker 3: Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema and the lack of ten
Speaker 3: Republicans who would go along with it. And remember it
Speaker 3: was already a very heavy lift to get there, you know,
Speaker 3: end of the year legislation through, So that may very
Speaker 3: well have sunk it. You know, I don't see that
Speaker 3: as a real possibility. And you know, I think part
Speaker 3: of the reason they were able to get their deal
Speaker 3: through at the at the end of the year is
Speaker 3: explicitly because because of that, because the Republican said, all right,
Speaker 3: we're going to have another bite at the apple after
Speaker 3: McCarthy takes over, and that's exactly what they've done. Was
Speaker 3: there really anybody out there who thought that Biden would say, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to negotiate and they're going to pass
Speaker 3: a clean debt limit. I mean, of course that's what
Speaker 3: you say. That's a negotiating tactic. But the people now
Speaker 3: who are shocked and stunned that Biden has offered up
Speaker 3: a freeze of spending. I mean, that's how this game
Speaker 3: is played. I don't think anybody should be surprised. This
Speaker 3: is just the way it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, And I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1: I mean it's true watching it is so interesting and
Speaker 1: also quite scary. I mean that's the thing is like
Speaker 1: with this debtlimit stuff. The stakes this is not like
Speaker 1: a government shutdown. This is like a catastrophe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got my column coming out for this weekend
Speaker 3: on the subject. You know, in foreign affairs, Richard Nixon
Speaker 3: pioneered the madman theory, and the idea is if the
Speaker 3: other side thinks you're just crazy enough to launch a
Speaker 3: nuclear attack, well it gives you a lot of leverage
Speaker 3: and they'll be down. And I think that's exactly what's
Speaker 3: happening here, except I don't think it's really a theory.
Speaker 3: I think there are a lot of mad men in
Speaker 3: the House Republican Party who think, well, you know, the
Speaker 3: government is not going to default on June first, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe default isn't a real thing after all. And then
Speaker 3: you've got you know, people like Matt Gates saying, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think we should negotiate over this hostage. He's
Speaker 3: acknowledging that this is a hostage situation. And if you
Speaker 3: really don't care, you know, or in the sense that
Speaker 3: you think, well, okay, the economy tanks, and guess what,
Speaker 3: they blame the incumbent president when the economy tanks, that's
Speaker 3: somewhat rational. I mean, it's not rational to bring about
Speaker 3: economic cataclysm, but it's rational to think that the incumbent
Speaker 3: president would be blamed for it. Then the leverage really
Speaker 3: is on the Republican side, and it is one hundred
Speaker 3: percent up to the administration to avoid this economic calamity.
Speaker 1: Right you cannot assume that voters will not blame you
Speaker 1: even if you didn't do it.
Speaker 3: A lot of the Democratic handring right now is over
Speaker 3: the messaging, and Biden isn't out there countering. I don't
Speaker 3: think the messaging back and forth over the last ten
Speaker 3: days is going to matter a whole lot if we
Speaker 3: get to the point of an actual default, because then
Speaker 3: it's presumably going to be some sort of an apocalyptic situation.
Speaker 3: Right right now, we're not going to wonder what was
Speaker 3: Biden saying on Tuesday. We've got much bigger problems at
Speaker 3: that point. You know, the White House is playing this.
Speaker 3: They've decided that they're going to work the negotiation, and
Speaker 3: they're not going to be out there jawboning, you know,
Speaker 3: attacking the Republicans on this. They're actually trying to get
Speaker 3: a deal through.
Speaker 1: You Know, one of the things I was always shocked
Speaker 1: by was when you would have Trump negotiate something and
Speaker 1: he'd be out there saying stuff where you'd be like,
Speaker 1: how is this ever going to work? You know, he'd
Speaker 1: be out there blowing it up, you know. So I
Speaker 1: do respect that, Like with the Biden administration, you do
Speaker 1: feel like there's not an insane person who could come
Speaker 1: in in the last minute and blow everything up for
Speaker 1: no reason. But unfortunately that is the GOP base now, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've got Trump explicit saying don't give in
Speaker 3: unless you've got everything you possibly wanted to, including the
Speaker 3: kitchen sink, and you've got the Freedom Caucus saying don't
Speaker 3: negotiate unless it's everything that we passed as part of
Speaker 3: our budget.
Speaker 1: They can't agree on what everything is.
Speaker 3: Right cause that you keep getting things added in immigration
Speaker 3: and other things. So I do believe there'll be a deal,
Speaker 3: and whatever the deal will be will not be Biden's
Speaker 3: surrendering on five trillion dollars and essentially everything that he
Speaker 3: enacted over the last three years. But you know, people
Speaker 3: need to be rational and understand that they're going to
Speaker 3: get their freeze or something.
Speaker 1: The stakes are incredibly high here.
Speaker 3: Right, because you bring about this kind of a catastrophe,
Speaker 3: it's going to do a whole lot more damage than
Speaker 3: freezing spending at twenty twenty three levels or even slightly
Speaker 3: below that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of these ways in which the
Speaker 1: Republican Party has really taken a normal, non political you know,
Speaker 1: it's really just meant to be a kind of piece
Speaker 1: of government legislative slature, and made it into the potential
Speaker 1: for catastrophe.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean we've seen versions of this before, you know,
Speaker 3: after twenty ten and lesser one subsequently. But there was
Speaker 3: always somebody, you know, there was a John Baynor, Paul
Speaker 3: Ryan or somebody saying all right, guys, you can't actually default.
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure. I mean, you have Mitch McConnell
Speaker 3: saying we won't default. He's not actually doing anything to
Speaker 3: prevent that. So I think they've kept you know, I
Speaker 3: think it'd be giving it a little too much credit
Speaker 3: to say this has been a deliberate negotiating strategy, to
Speaker 3: say we're dangling the threat of default out there. I
Speaker 3: think that it's a genuine threat of default out there,
Speaker 3: because there are plenty of people who would be perfectly
Speaker 3: happy seeing that happen.
Speaker 1: That I think is pretty scary.
Speaker 3: That is new. That is not what you had after
Speaker 3: twenty ten. That's what has taken this fairly mundane thing.
Speaker 3: And you know, as McConnell says, yes, we have these
Speaker 3: fights all the time, but there is something different here,
Speaker 3: and that you've got significant amount of craziness in the
Speaker 3: House Republican Party and McCarthy isn't necessarily one of them himself,
Speaker 3: but he can't lose more than five of them or
Speaker 3: he's out of a job. So that's the difference here,
Speaker 3: and he cares I would venture to say more about
Speaker 3: keeping that job than whatever happens to the world economy.
Speaker 1: Oh, no question. But I also think that it does
Speaker 1: seem to me. And again, tell me if you think
Speaker 1: I'm wrong that McCarthy doesn't really have control over these people.
Speaker 3: It certainly doesn't. You know, based on his public pronouncements.
Speaker 3: You know he'll be saying things are terrific in negotiations,
Speaker 3: the Freedom Caucus says, don't negotiate, and then he comes
Speaker 3: out and says we're nowhere near a deal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to feel bad for him
Speaker 1: because he put himself in this position and he helped
Speaker 1: destroy the Republican Party and make it this weird tea
Speaker 1: party disaster. It is today. But you definitely get the
Speaker 1: sense that the guy is whistling in the dark to
Speaker 1: keep himself from being a friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a follower, not a leader. Now that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it won't work in the sense that Biden's sitting
Speaker 3: across the table from McCarthy knows what he's up against
Speaker 3: and that we will do anything to keep his job,
Speaker 3: even if that means placating the Freedom Caucus into going
Speaker 3: off the cliffs. So it gives him a whole lot
Speaker 3: of leverage. Right, whether or not that was what it
Speaker 3: was intended, that's the way it works out.
Speaker 1: I want to have two seconds with you on what
Speaker 1: you think this summer, this is like the last summer,
Speaker 1: this sort of sleepy summer before the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: armageddon where we have you know, democracy on the ticket again.
Speaker 1: Do you what do you first see happening right now?
Speaker 1: What are you watching? What is on the horizon? What
Speaker 1: is keeping you up at night?
Speaker 3: Well, I love the idea that you could think it
Speaker 3: would be a sleepy summer that when we could actually
Speaker 3: have the first ever to fall. So I'm not taking
Speaker 3: you know, I'm still holding out the possibility that that
Speaker 3: occurs if we survive if we survive the debt standoff,
Speaker 3: which also presumably reduces the threat of government shut down
Speaker 3: at you know, when the fiscal year ends in the fall,
Speaker 3: then I think we returned to status quo ante, which
Speaker 3: is basically ninety percent of the time fighting about Hunter Byte,
Speaker 3: which would be kind of you know, endearing, right, and
Speaker 3: Jim Jory can have multiple weaponization hearings with you know,
Speaker 3: featuring January sixth insurrectionists and.
Speaker 1: A whistle blower they can't find.
Speaker 3: Can't find the whistleblower, youre the ones they can find
Speaker 3: seem to seem to be a little bit suspect of,
Speaker 3: you know, is it criminal criminal conduct? The FBI said
Speaker 3: we can have some good old fashioned fun with Jim
Speaker 3: Jordan and James Coher because the stakes are lower. But
Speaker 3: you know, I mean I say that in Jess, because
Speaker 3: the stakes aren't at all low. You see what's going
Speaker 3: on with you know, abortion restrictions around the country, Efforts
Speaker 3: to rein in the referendum process to prevent people, you know,
Speaker 3: actual voters from right.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a bill in Ohio that comes up
Speaker 1: in August. It's called Proposition eight, and it raises the
Speaker 1: so basically Republicans have decided that these ballot initiatives are
Speaker 1: too popular and they don't want people doing democracy if
Speaker 1: it doesn't work for them, and so they're raising them
Speaker 1: standard the minimum to sixty percent.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Basically, we step back from the precipice of instant
Speaker 3: worldwide destruction and go into more of the sort of steady,
Speaker 3: day to day erosion of our democracy, which is really
Speaker 3: very satisfying and relaxing by comparison.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that the stuff they're doing
Speaker 1: in Ohio. I just wrote about this in my Vatty
Speaker 1: Fair column this week. Everyone took it out. In it,
Speaker 1: I talk about how there is you know, in Ohio
Speaker 1: they have a bill, I mean, Republican legislature legislators are
Speaker 1: unbelievably stupid and like at the state level, it's like incredible,
Speaker 1: and so they have a bill that academics cannot endorse
Speaker 1: controversial ideas. Amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's excellent. That's that. That is the end
Speaker 3: of the education process.
Speaker 1: Not only are they going to get rid of tenure
Speaker 1: in Texas you had Dan Patrick is in a war
Speaker 1: with academics about tenure, but you're going to get rid
Speaker 1: of academics having controversial idea terrific right.
Speaker 3: Twenty five hundred years later, we finally banished Socrates.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you one last question. Besides the
Speaker 1: dead ceiling, what are the things keeping you up at night?
Speaker 3: It's that constant drip drip erosion of the democracy. It's
Speaker 3: the obvious return of Trump, these routine assaults on the
Speaker 3: Justice Department, on the FBI, and you know what will
Speaker 3: happen at the next stage as they start to decide
Speaker 3: who's going to bear the brunt of these funding cuts.
Speaker 3: We don't know the top line number yet, but we
Speaker 3: do know that basically all of these cuts are going
Speaker 3: to be focused on the fifteen to twenty percent of
Speaker 3: the government is non defense, you know, discretionary spending, and
Speaker 3: that's going to wipe out a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Dana. Congresswoman Summerly represents Pennsylvania's thirty fourth district.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics. Congresswoman Summerly, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: We're delighted to have you. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about your story, how you got to Congress and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of your backstory.
Speaker 4: Well, goodness, how I got to Congress.
Speaker 5: You know, I started as truly an organizer trying to
Speaker 5: find my way, and believe it or not, I was
Speaker 5: just have this idea that more people would vote, and
Speaker 5: then that line, more people would vote if they had
Speaker 5: people who look like them and responded to them and
Speaker 5: sounded like them running for offits, right. Yeah, really, really
Speaker 5: a simple notion. In western Pennsylvania, we have a lot
Speaker 5: of municipalities, you know, a lot, one hundreds even. Each
Speaker 5: of them has you know, their own school districts, their
Speaker 5: own borough councils, their own mayors, you know, their own
Speaker 5: township commissioners, and so many of these offices. And I
Speaker 5: knew so many people, or should I say I knew
Speaker 5: very few people who actually knew a single elected official,
Speaker 5: right washingn Pennsylvania had this old boys network and it
Speaker 5: worked for them, and it was almost impossible for any
Speaker 5: of us to break into this to ever, you know,
Speaker 5: just stare an agenda that actually matched with the people
Speaker 5: in any of these communities really really caring about. And
Speaker 5: we were in the midst of figuring out how can
Speaker 5: we use and how could I use the organizing skills
Speaker 5: that I just you know, encountered on my stint being
Speaker 5: an organizer, you know, in a twenty sixteen campaign, how
Speaker 5: do we translate that? And we started to, you know,
Speaker 5: talk to candidates and talk to community members and organize
Speaker 5: these communities around these races.
Speaker 4: And that's when someone came to me and said you
Speaker 4: should run.
Speaker 5: And I never thought about running for elected office before then,
Speaker 5: never not once, And that's how I ended up running
Speaker 5: in twenty eight team for the state House and the
Speaker 5: urgency that carried me there.
Speaker 4: You know, it hasn't gone away with the same issues.
Speaker 5: Right if you're black, or you're brown, or you're poor,
Speaker 5: you are more likely to live in these communities with
Speaker 5: environmental pollutants, these communities that have a dearth of jobs.
Speaker 5: We have inequitable funding schemes for our schools, so our
Speaker 5: kids are basically running through a cycle every generation that
Speaker 5: is just almost impossible to break. And we had so
Speaker 5: few politicians who were talking about it, acknowledging it, working
Speaker 5: through it. And when we couple that with the rising tide,
Speaker 5: trump Ism, of white supremacy, of anti blackness, and so
Speaker 5: many other attacks, our attacks to democracy, it was just
Speaker 5: clear to me that we deserve and we need people
Speaker 5: in office who are going to respond and be responsive
Speaker 5: to the actual electorate who's going to expand it and
Speaker 5: care about it and center it.
Speaker 4: And that's how I got here.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is so relevant and important and also
Speaker 1: important to the Biden administration in twenty four and for
Speaker 1: winning elections, but also more importantly for serving the people
Speaker 1: that Democrats, you know, say they want to serve. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of this, you know, a blue Sky tweet. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not a tweet that I saw the other day,
Speaker 1: which was that, you know, feminism that isn't intersectional is
Speaker 1: swam supremacy? Yeah it is, And so I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you about this idea. And then also, you
Speaker 1: come from a battleground state. It's not like you're from Connecticut.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're from like a state that Democrats must
Speaker 1: win and you're progressive. So explain to us a little
Speaker 1: bit about the area you come from and what it
Speaker 1: looks like and how you built a grassroots campaign there.
Speaker 5: When I first got into politics, when I first ran
Speaker 5: for office in our state house, we had one woman
Speaker 5: in a delegation.
Speaker 4: She was a tea choice.
Speaker 5: We had two black folks in a delegation, both from
Speaker 5: the city of Pittsburgh, from western Pennsylvania. We had never
Speaker 5: had a black woman serve. We had never had a
Speaker 5: black person serve from western Pennsylvania. Outside of the city limits.
Speaker 5: We had almost no people who identified explicitly as we
Speaker 5: are progressive leftists, however you want, you know, to categorize that.
Speaker 5: When I ran, I ran, you know, really closely with
Speaker 5: my good sister who just got elected to county executive,
Speaker 5: Sarah and Morado. We were two women who were like,
Speaker 5: we can't win the same way that other people do this.
Speaker 4: We have to do this together. We have to take
Speaker 4: it differently. We have to show people a different way
Speaker 4: to do politics.
Speaker 5: We doubled the number of women after that with a
Speaker 5: group of people we found this pack because we needed
Speaker 5: to build infrastructure so that we can get more people
Speaker 5: in right. Me and Sarah saw that we were supported,
Speaker 5: We were well resourced for fay House candidates, and we
Speaker 5: get sparked and energy that you just typically don't see
Speaker 5: around local elections.
Speaker 4: But what we know is is that it wasn't unintentional.
Speaker 5: It takes a lot for candidates to be able to
Speaker 5: start on day one with the organizing capacity, with the
Speaker 5: volunteer base, with the money, to be able to gain
Speaker 5: the traction, to even be considered viable. We lose so
Speaker 5: many good people who are more representative of our lived experiences,
Speaker 5: more representative of our of our ethnic, racial, gender backgrounds,
Speaker 5: and they never make it to the starting line because
Speaker 5: we have an outdated political system that tells us that,
Speaker 5: you know, you can't be in here unless you can
Speaker 5: raise a lot of money yourself. You can be in
Speaker 5: here unless you can go through your own rolodex and
Speaker 5: find one hundred thousand, five hundred thousand a million dollars.
Speaker 4: And those same people who have access.
Speaker 5: To that money have access to even more because of
Speaker 5: the corporate money flooding into our politics.
Speaker 4: So we had to start to address that. So we
Speaker 4: chipped away.
Speaker 5: We started to we use our pack to start to
Speaker 5: help other candidates, progressives, people color who were running not
Speaker 5: just for state House, but for our magistrates and our
Speaker 5: quar to common please DA county counts, so city council's,
Speaker 5: borough councils, school boards, and we ran Canadas every single cycle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we never were lented.
Speaker 5: And you know, the people who were accustomed to Begionaire
Speaker 5: are just every cycle they just thought we'd go away.
Speaker 4: And we never ever did. And you never found a
Speaker 4: way of get us.
Speaker 1: The thing that I can never get my head around
Speaker 1: is how few black senators there have been.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not shocked.
Speaker 1: It's so fucked up. I can say this because we're
Speaker 1: not on cable news. I can curse.
Speaker 4: We love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, oh my god, Like what did we even
Speaker 1: do it?
Speaker 4: I'm not shocked at all.
Speaker 2: How would they get in?
Speaker 5: Like when you think about like again, like going by
Speaker 5: just the western Pennsylvania, Right, you're supposed to be white male,
Speaker 5: blue collar labor, or.
Speaker 4: At least you're supposed to look like.
Speaker 5: You care about labor. Right, those are people we talk
Speaker 5: about Central Cassie. If you're black, weren't gonna get millions
Speaker 5: of dollars to listen in Pennsylvania. When I was organized
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen, we broke a rock frund in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: I think it was something like thirty four million dollars
Speaker 5: was spent on the Senate race. This year, John Fetterman
Speaker 5: and doctor Au spent two hundred and thirty million dollars.
Speaker 5: That's the difference in what six years? Two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 5: How can you if you're a block, if you're working class,
Speaker 5: if you're brown, you're coming from an immigrant background, if
Speaker 5: you're poorer trends, if you're working class in a union,
Speaker 5: where are you getting from? Where are you getting it from?
Speaker 5: And both parties rely on this flood of dark money.
Speaker 5: Both parties do because it's the way that we stop progressives,
Speaker 5: and they are just able to flood us.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't just stop progressives.
Speaker 5: It keeps us from having a representative democracy, which then
Speaker 5: keeps us from winning races. It keeps us from expanding
Speaker 5: the electorate. And it's a cycle that we cannot bring.
Speaker 1: So how did you win?
Speaker 4: We raise money? Honestly, no, you know, but it didn't
Speaker 4: come early.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 4: We won by energy, We won by momentum.
Speaker 5: We won by tapping into people that the parties had
Speaker 5: said were not worth wanting to get. So you know
Speaker 5: where typically you get the parties who say we're only
Speaker 5: going to send a mailer to super voters. I said,
Speaker 5: you know, why won't we send If you're a black
Speaker 5: voter and you voted for Obama, we're going knock on
Speaker 5: your door. If you're a woman, we're coming to find you.
Speaker 5: If you are young, if you are in college, we're
Speaker 5: coming and talking to you because I know that I
Speaker 5: can speak your language. So by doing that, we were
Speaker 5: able to bring new people into the political process who
Speaker 5: had just been discarded right, they had been ignored. We
Speaker 5: were able to double voter turnout my first race in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen. In twenty twenty, in a pandemic year, we
Speaker 5: were able to build even on that. We had almost
Speaker 5: over fifty percent voter turnout in our primary. By still
Speaker 5: being committed to going back and getting those people. We
Speaker 5: just go and talk to people about the things they
Speaker 5: care about about here and housing and racial inequity and
Speaker 5: covid or unions and workers' rights and just things that
Speaker 5: working class people care about.
Speaker 4: They believed.
Speaker 5: They believed it because they knew that I came from that,
Speaker 5: and because in my two years I never folded. And
Speaker 5: we just keep building and we keep listening, and we
Speaker 5: keep centering. That's all these folks want. They just want
Speaker 5: to know someone's fighting for them.
Speaker 1: I also think you may not realize this, but I
Speaker 1: hope you do because you are a woman, and women
Speaker 1: politicians always you know, it's there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember there's a statistic that women politicians, right they
Speaker 1: need to be asked to run, you know, numerous times
Speaker 1: multiples more than male politicians do. But also you're just
Speaker 1: a very gifted communicator.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that when I was well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you didn't start out knowing that,
Speaker 1: but you must.
Speaker 4: Know that I didn't know that that was it was truly,
Speaker 4: you know, I had heard that.
Speaker 5: I heard that statistic a lot when when when me
Speaker 5: and Sarah and Mrodo were running twenty eighteen because Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: was wearing forty ninth out of fifty states for women
Speaker 5: in elected office, forty nine. This is Pennsylvania with Pittsburgh
Speaker 5: and Philly. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 4: So we heard it a lot. I think I was
Speaker 4: ex once and I don't know. I don't know. I've
Speaker 4: taken leave of my senses when I did this.
Speaker 1: So what's next for you? I mean, I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, Pennsylvania is so important in this map. It's
Speaker 1: such an important state. I also feel like it's important
Speaker 1: a because it's a swing state, but really it's important
Speaker 1: because it's just state that is is transitioning.
Speaker 5: Yes, and that think that's precisely what we show in
Speaker 5: Allegheny County. Right, Allegheny County is this sleeper area that
Speaker 5: people when they think about Western Pennsylvania, they're still thinking
Speaker 5: about the nineteen you know, seventies, eighties or even fifties.
Speaker 5: We're thinking blue collar, we're thinking large white male, we're
Speaker 5: thinking blue dog Dems. But what we shown in Western
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania is that actually a progressive movement was was not
Speaker 5: just you know, it wasn't just timely. It was able
Speaker 5: to have the impact. It was because we leaned in,
Speaker 5: because we were uniquely able to build coalitions that other
Speaker 5: cities just hadn't been able to replicate. And because of that,
Speaker 5: when we had a progressive and Congress with two progressives
Speaker 5: in Congress and our county executive seat which is our
Speaker 5: biggest office, mayor school boards, Senate, judgeships, Senate and those
Speaker 5: all came from Western Pennsylvania. And I think our organizing
Speaker 5: model is what we're going to need to apply a
Speaker 5: because in Pennsylvania we do have to run the tab
Speaker 5: some area where we're going to have to mitigate losses
Speaker 5: for our twenty twenty four candidates. You know, we just
Speaker 5: don't want to get crushed, you know, in the middle
Speaker 5: of the city. But Pittsburgh and Philly and Weshtern, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 5: we have to bring out voters. We have to bring
Speaker 5: out new voters. We got to get young people, and
Speaker 5: we in our movement, has shown that we can attract
Speaker 5: young voters, not just as voters. We can get them
Speaker 5: to volunteer, we can get them to participate, we can
Speaker 5: get them to lead. And we did that by not
Speaker 5: ignoring them, by not being condescending to them, right, by
Speaker 5: not patronizing them.
Speaker 1: What can President Biden do to make your job easier?
Speaker 5: He can continue to do the things that our base
Speaker 5: is asking him and put him in office to do.
Speaker 5: Young people came out and historic numbers around climate justice. Yes,
Speaker 5: around you know, making sure that kids are no longer
Speaker 5: being killed in their classrooms, black and brown folks, around
Speaker 5: housing justice and racial justice, students, around student loan debt.
Speaker 4: These are the issues that galvanize the nation when we pull.
Speaker 4: They are popular everywhere.
Speaker 5: They're popular in the cities and urban communities, rural communities,
Speaker 5: since exerman communities, all across the country. Right, we have
Speaker 5: to resist the urge to lean into a nostalgia that
Speaker 5: just doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4: That was a time period where it was easier to
Speaker 4: cod to work with one.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that nostalgia, I mean it
Speaker 1: seems like so stupid to me, Like it's a terrible
Speaker 1: time for everyone. I mean, I don't know, it was
Speaker 1: nostalgic for.
Speaker 5: That except for the people who wasn't a terrible time
Speaker 5: for and for those people was really good.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess. But yes, I agree, the nostalgia
Speaker 1: will kill us. I mean, that is just the stupidest American.
Speaker 5: It is a fatal mistakes. I believe it is a
Speaker 5: fatal flaw. If we don't get it together, it ain't
Speaker 5: just going to be a fatal fall for the Democrats.
Speaker 5: It's going to be a fatal fall for democracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the stakes are so incredibly high. I can't believe
Speaker 1: how the stakes have stayed so high.
Speaker 4: Well again, it's because the Republicans are up in the ante.
Speaker 5: Yeah, every cycle, every you know, every project, every bail
Speaker 5: they r in a state, every takeover they do, they
Speaker 5: empower and umvote in themselves and their bases, and now
Speaker 5: they have to and they yearn for more. When they
Speaker 5: get away with one thing, they're able to then tiptoe
Speaker 5: into the next thing. Right, they got away with stealing
Speaker 5: a Supreme Court seat, so then they can get away
Speaker 5: with it with the next thing.
Speaker 4: They got away with an insurrection.
Speaker 5: So now they can take the state of Florida and
Speaker 5: they can turn it into a fascist state. They got
Speaker 5: away with racial justice against black people, so now they
Speaker 5: can move on to our Jewish siblings and our trans siblings. Right,
Speaker 5: every time we allow them to get off with something
Speaker 5: with impunity, we give them permission to go harder, to
Speaker 5: go deeper, to go further.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. And in fact, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you read this really scary academic paper about how when
Speaker 1: police shoot black people, then in that area black people
Speaker 1: vote less.
Speaker 4: Oh I've not seen that.
Speaker 5: I haven't see that, but I would imagine it's because
Speaker 5: it's another reminder that no one is coming to save
Speaker 5: and protect us. Yeah, we're looking towards our Democratic leaders
Speaker 5: to take our side, to not throw us under the bus.
Speaker 5: But what we see is when times get tough every
Speaker 5: election cycle, the first thing that we throw away is
Speaker 5: our you know, criminal justice lens. We always throw away
Speaker 5: that racial justice lens.
Speaker 4: With policing with George Floyd, we always just go back to, oh, well.
Speaker 5: Now we have to keep walking people up, you know,
Speaker 5: we have to keep criminalizing people.
Speaker 4: We know that it's going to have an impact on
Speaker 4: black people.
Speaker 5: So when a police officer kills a black person and
Speaker 5: no one gets indicted and no one goes to jail,
Speaker 5: and no one needed gets fired, we're reminded that that
Speaker 5: is the state. The state did this to us.
Speaker 1: And the thing I'm struck by is like, the message
Speaker 1: should be these police need to be trained or they
Speaker 1: need to be fired. There are complaints against them, they
Speaker 1: need to be fired. And that can I go a.
Speaker 4: Little bit deeper?
Speaker 1: Yes? Please?
Speaker 5: Police officers are American citizens. They reflect our societal conditions.
Speaker 5: So the real thing is is that implicit biases are
Speaker 5: rampant and pervasive in American society, implicit biases against black men,
Speaker 5: especially black women, black children.
Speaker 4: It proliferates throughout every aspect of our society.
Speaker 5: Police officers get that same conditioning, They taken that same
Speaker 5: messaging as everyone else.
Speaker 4: Training that we need needs to happen from K to twelve.
Speaker 5: It needs to happen in our jobs, It needs to
Speaker 5: happen in our schools.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: We have to realize that when children are born, they
Speaker 5: learn and they internalize that black people are dangerous.
Speaker 4: Black kids are different than white kids. You learned that early.
Speaker 4: So how are you going to thenk.
Speaker 5: Get to police, to the police academy and have to
Speaker 5: unlearn that what training can help you learn something that
Speaker 5: you that you have implicitly internalized your entire li likes,
Speaker 5: not just police, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we also had a reporter on this podcast
Speaker 1: you talked about there's a policy. I'm sure you know this,
Speaker 1: but I was shocked by this that there are like
Speaker 1: police gangs in Los Angeles. They are gangs of police officers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the nineties happened.
Speaker 5: That's always said when this movement around police battalion and
Speaker 5: police bolalci. This isn't a new new movement. This movement
Speaker 5: wasn't sparked with Tamir Rice or with my Gone or
Speaker 5: none of these. This movement has been happening since black
Speaker 5: people have existed in this country. That's why it's so
Speaker 5: disheartening when people say that, oh, we just don't care
Speaker 5: about public safety, or we don't care about police, or
Speaker 5: we hate police. No, we love ourselves, we love our communities.
Speaker 5: We recognize more than anyone that when black people are
Speaker 5: in danger, so too is the entire country. That's how
Speaker 5: we got here. Now, that's why democracy is at risk.
Speaker 5: We understand this, right.
Speaker 1: Right, this is all connected to democracy, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you disenfranchise a part of your country, you are not
Speaker 1: practicing democracy. And that's how we got here. Tell me
Speaker 1: something that makes you a little bit hopeful, like Maxwell
Speaker 1: Frost makes me hopeful. I mean, you make me hopeful.
Speaker 1: Tell me what makes you hopeful.
Speaker 5: The People's movement that continues to grow right western Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: makes me hopeful. We shouldn't have won there. If conventional
Speaker 5: reason had prevailed, we would not have even run in
Speaker 5: the first place.
Speaker 4: Let alone been in the position to win.
Speaker 5: Young people who are walking out of schools for their
Speaker 5: own safety, who are protests, and environmental and climate justice
Speaker 5: reinforcements are coming. Reinforcements are on the way, and we
Speaker 5: will outnumber them, we will outlast them.
Speaker 4: Now, the problem is is what happens in the interim.
Speaker 5: We're going to fight to make sure that we mitigate
Speaker 5: as much harm and damage as we can. But those
Speaker 5: reinforcements are on the way, and it's powerful, and it's strong,
Speaker 5: and it's accountable, and it's intersectional.
Speaker 4: That's a precise movement that we need.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to cry, and I'm not allowed to cry,
Speaker 1: because I cried when I was interviewing State Senator Megan
Speaker 1: from Oklahoma. So I'm not going to cry, but I
Speaker 1: do feel like very moved by you, and just I
Speaker 1: appreciate you and thank you. You know, it gives me
Speaker 1: a lot of hope.
Speaker 4: So thank you, thank you. I appreciate that, I really do.
Speaker 5: I think that The other thing that we need to know, though,
Speaker 5: is that listen, again, these movements don't just happen. We
Speaker 5: have people who are making them happen. They are under resourced,
Speaker 5: they are undersupported, and we see black women candidates who
Speaker 5: are coming with fire and with energy. No, we are
Speaker 5: the least fundac CAUs candidates that exists, the least funded politicians,
Speaker 5: the most attacked, and we are also.
Speaker 4: The ones who lay ourselves on the line.
Speaker 5: When we see people who are trying to break into politics,
Speaker 5: we need to support them.
Speaker 4: We need to trust them. And we can't say we
Speaker 4: trust black women.
Speaker 5: We can't say we trust young candidates and then not
Speaker 5: make sure that they go into these fights well resourced.
Speaker 4: That's the same for organizers and activists.
Speaker 5: You know, those are things that can help us to
Speaker 5: continue to stay in the fight.
Speaker 4: Our biggest threat is not being able to stay in.
Speaker 1: The fight Congresswoman Summerly, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Hi. It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
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Speaker 1: Doug Rushkoff is the author of Survival of the Riches.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics fan favorite It's true, Dog Rushcoff.
Speaker 2: I'm both a fan and fan favorite. I'm glad. Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, yes exactly.
Speaker 1: Let us talk to you and I about AI. In
Speaker 1: five months, Will this entire podcast just be a bot
Speaker 1: talking to another bot discuss huh.
Speaker 2: No, First, I don't even think that there is AI.
Speaker 6: There's these sort of language models, right, and the idea
Speaker 6: of these language models someday becoming AI feels to me
Speaker 6: a bit like maybe search engines becoming AI. I mean,
Speaker 6: they looked really cool at the beginning, but they're just
Speaker 6: it's just basically Wikipedia automated.
Speaker 2: What we're looking at.
Speaker 6: This AI panic for me is just AI hype, like
Speaker 6: Crypto flopped. AI is the next thing, and put out
Speaker 6: these letters and these calls for regulation.
Speaker 2: Let's just pause here a minute.
Speaker 6: Whenever big business is asked for a big pause, it's
Speaker 6: to try to entrench their positions. It's to preserve their monopoly.
Speaker 6: Everybody's stopped right in the game. Okay, pause, time out.
Speaker 6: Concerned tech pros are in a coordinated money grab to
Speaker 6: get funding for their their either their little tech pro orgs.
Speaker 6: You know, remember Obama did that Brain Project and all.
Speaker 6: It's all these little orgs, Future of Live, Center for
Speaker 6: Humane Technology, Future of Humanity. You know, they want to
Speaker 6: make another Netflix movie like Social Dilemma and get famous.
Speaker 6: But the worst case apocalypse existential scenarios for me pale
Speaker 6: in comparison to the real problems right now that we know.
Speaker 6: Algorithmic injustice, prison sentences, police work, health insurance, mortgages, actual
Speaker 6: real world injustice, incarceration, economic disenfranchisement, it's all real, and
Speaker 6: I have a really hard time imagining these language models
Speaker 6: threatening anyone because, honestly, what they don't admit, these AI things,
Speaker 6: they are so labor intensive. They look free and profitable,
Speaker 6: but they are anything but. Machine learning involves thousands of
Speaker 6: human beings tagging all this data and preparing it. It's
Speaker 6: not machines trolling the net like Google did. There's thousands
Speaker 6: of minimum wage workers. The chips for this stuff require
Speaker 6: zillions of tons of cobalt and rare earth metals, electricity
Speaker 6: and minding. Its billions and billions of dollars of investment,
Speaker 6: and the result so far, it's not profitable. They just
Speaker 6: commodify all the businesses that use them. So we're looking
Speaker 6: at an intensive amount of capital expenditure for something that's
Speaker 6: not actually going to produce that much, right, right, It's
Speaker 6: that thing, you know. It's like, did you ever see
Speaker 6: in the streets of New York when somebody's like, hold
Speaker 6: me back, man, hold me back, right, like they're gonna fight.
Speaker 6: It's like that's what they're doing. That's sim hold me back.
Speaker 6: My AI is so big, baby, Oh hold me back,
Speaker 6: or I'm gonna unleash it.
Speaker 2: It's going to take over the finger planet.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting to me, and I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And I think we see that again with every new technology, right,
Speaker 1: there's a sort of panic. Right, Yeah, And so I
Speaker 1: get what you're saying here, and it's quite interesting. So
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about failure to launch the Rond
Speaker 1: De Santis spaces again. I love Ronda Santis because he's
Speaker 1: a terrible candidate with zero with negative charisma, who is
Speaker 1: completely not ready for time time, and yet being treated
Speaker 1: like he's going to bring down this wildly popular, if
Speaker 1: not demented. Other presidential candidate, Donald Trump discussed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is funny, isn't it. I mean, it's it
Speaker 2: is weird.
Speaker 6: It's almost like, you know, DeSantis is to Trump as
Speaker 6: like Alon Musk is to what Zuckerberg.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: In my mind, it's Jeb, except without Like with Jeb,
Speaker 1: you felt like the guy was sort of a good
Speaker 1: guy deep down. Maybe you didn't believe in what he
Speaker 1: believed in, but he seemed like he was sort of
Speaker 1: a good guy, whereas with Desanta's I have none of that.
Speaker 1: I just think he just as completely craven.
Speaker 6: Right, Jeb had some sort of romniesque something going for him.
Speaker 1: Right, at least it's in our minds.
Speaker 6: Yeah, DeSantis is like you a Roman roy or something
Speaker 6: at best.
Speaker 1: Right, But here's my question to you. You are a
Speaker 1: tech guy. You know what's going on. Did Santus's wild
Speaker 1: popularity break Twitter spaces or was the fact that Elon
Speaker 1: fired half of the people work their relative?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: Twitter spaces is the old uh what was it called
Speaker 6: periscope code? So it's code from ten or twelve years
Speaker 6: ago that was never quite finished because you know, Twitter
Speaker 6: decided not to go into video. They brought it out
Speaker 6: of the dust bin and they're running something that was
Speaker 6: written for like you know, Netscape three point six right
Speaker 6: right right, your iPhone three out of a modern thing.
Speaker 6: Of course, it doesn't work, it doesn't scale. They have
Speaker 6: no people, it turns out, And this is the thing
Speaker 6: people don't get. Technology requires lots of lots of people
Speaker 6: to make it work. The tech pro dream is to
Speaker 6: get rid of people. That's what they've wanted. Well, that's
Speaker 6: what industry has wanted since the eleventh or twelfth century. Right.
Speaker 6: The assembly lines were about getting rid of me, get
Speaker 6: rid of human laborers. You know, they need insurance, they
Speaker 6: need money, they need whatever. And the tech bro dream
Speaker 6: has always been to get rid of people.
Speaker 2: You know. The reason why the tech brows.
Speaker 6: Are panicking now is because the ais are modeled on themselves, right,
Speaker 6: And if they've spent their lives getting rid of humans
Speaker 6: and now they created these super machines, they were like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 6: they're going to try to get rid of us now.
Speaker 6: The create is something that colonizes themselves. But yeah, so
Speaker 6: when Musk goes into Twitter and gets her to half
Speaker 6: the people and then tries to take something out of
Speaker 6: a box and run it without any of the legacy
Speaker 6: people who even worked on the project and go, oh,
Speaker 6: here we're going to go and this is going to
Speaker 6: launch what this is? This what Tucker Carson Show is
Speaker 6: going to be on that scene, same platform.
Speaker 1: If you're Tucker Carlson right now and you saw that
Speaker 1: space as you're feeling pretty.
Speaker 2: Nervous, I would think so like you're like, I.
Speaker 1: Just went into business with Amateur Hour.
Speaker 6: Yeah, although in theory they have enough money to buy
Speaker 6: any of a number of other streaming streaming video is
Speaker 6: not that hard anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean back in the days of see U see Me,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So, why did the Twitter space die of streaming video?
Speaker 1: Is not that hard.
Speaker 6: Because they are utterly incompetent. I mean, they and they've
Speaker 6: got a guy who's like, you know, the what's kind
Speaker 6: of boss that musk is?
Speaker 2: I want this now? I'm sorry, Boss is not going
Speaker 2: to be possible. You're fired next. Oh we can do it.
Speaker 6: You know it's going to be like I'm sure the
Speaker 6: yes people around tossanti sir Trump. You know, it's like
Speaker 6: Trump's lawyers, you know, you keep firing them until you
Speaker 6: find one that will say that the law says what
Speaker 6: you think it does. But code doesn't work that way.
Speaker 6: It's like, you can you know, code as hard rules
Speaker 6: to it. Finally it yes, the server will crash. Sorry,
Speaker 6: I mean that is I.
Speaker 1: Think such an important point what you're talking about there
Speaker 1: that you can't bully code.
Speaker 2: You can't. And these are the guys.
Speaker 6: These are the guys that are going to make the
Speaker 6: AIS that are going to be sending you your ambulances
Speaker 6: or doing the analysis on your radiology.
Speaker 2: It's like, what possible task is? Like, the only task.
Speaker 6: I'm comfortable with AIS doing is like writing game scripts
Speaker 6: or you know, scripts for video games or something. And
Speaker 6: even then, it's like, what's the point of that like,
Speaker 6: are you would you watch the last episode to Succession
Speaker 6: if it was written by an AI? It's like I
Speaker 6: wouldn't care well that, I wonder.
Speaker 2: No, because where we care? What are they thinking?
Speaker 6: What are they wondering when you look at a van go,
Speaker 6: are you thinking what's the impact on my retina of
Speaker 6: this palette?
Speaker 2: No? You're thinking who was that crazy dude who made
Speaker 2: this thing?
Speaker 1: Right? Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point. I do want
Speaker 1: to get back to this for a second though, this idea,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of times, because a lot
Speaker 1: of us don't have like a working knowledge of code.
Speaker 1: I'm going to shock you here, a lot of times
Speaker 1: when we're talking about tech, we defer to sort of
Speaker 1: people who you know, Like one of Elon's huge advantages
Speaker 1: when he's lying about stuff is that he is lying
Speaker 1: about something that most people don't know about, so you
Speaker 1: have to sort of agree with him, right, Like he's
Speaker 1: tweeted a number of times like we're going to put
Speaker 1: our algorithm online for greater transparency. Did he actually do that? No?
Speaker 2: I don't even think.
Speaker 6: I don't think they can even find their algorithm at
Speaker 6: this point. You know, it's like running explain the dudes,
Speaker 6: the dudes that wrote it, know where it is and
Speaker 6: how to work it, or understand the code. I mean
Speaker 6: code as code doesn't really mean anything to most people.
Speaker 6: You have to document the code. You have to write
Speaker 6: notes along the code, saying here's what this line of
Speaker 6: code is trying to do. If you just look at code,
Speaker 6: it's really really hard to know kind of what it
Speaker 6: is and what it's for, because it's all mixed up.
Speaker 6: It's not in order. Things are going to other things.
Speaker 6: I mean, no single person even understands Microsoft Windows, much
Speaker 6: less you know Twitters. It's true, and half of it's
Speaker 6: written by a half of that's written by by bots anyway,
Speaker 6: so you can't really know.
Speaker 2: You have to document your code to really understand what
Speaker 2: it is. But I do.
Speaker 6: It's not necessarily a problem not to understand the layer
Speaker 6: of code beyond you, because even if you understood the
Speaker 6: code of Twitter, say, then you might not understand the
Speaker 6: code of Browser. You might not understand the operating system
Speaker 6: or the machine language under that. But what these guys
Speaker 6: don't understand is basic capitalism. They accept capitalism as this
Speaker 6: underlying operating system of humanity. They don't realize that what
Speaker 6: they're doing is coding for capitalism. They're coding to extract
Speaker 6: value from people in places and convert it into you know,
Speaker 6: share value. That's what all of their companies, that's what
Speaker 6: they're really really doing, you know. And that's that's where
Speaker 6: it's a little bit dangerous. It's like, if the tech
Speaker 6: pros are kind of like the equivalent of the of
Speaker 6: the Renaissance monarchs, then social media. Social media was like
Speaker 6: the missionaries that they sent out to South America to
Speaker 6: like learn about the people and convert them to Christianity.
Speaker 2: Ais. That's the conquistadors, right, They're.
Speaker 6: The ones who come in using everything that missionaries learn
Speaker 6: and finally take over the people. That's their intent. But
Speaker 6: I don't think I don't think it can actually do it.
Speaker 6: I really don't think it would work. You know, if
Speaker 6: it did really work, it could be great. I mean,
Speaker 6: I've got no problem with robots doing all the work
Speaker 6: if I get to do all the play, you know,
Speaker 6: But that's not the intent here. That the intent here
Speaker 6: is not to relieve human labor to make humans have
Speaker 6: a better time. The intent is to extract and monopolize resources.
Speaker 6: So when you hear the guys building these things saying, oh,
Speaker 6: everybody slow down a second, let's freeze on development and
Speaker 6: have a bunch of meetings at the White House. They
Speaker 6: want to create regulations that make it that their companies
Speaker 6: are the only ones that will be in a position
Speaker 6: to monopolize this stuff, because in truth, AI is really
Speaker 6: easy to do. The code is easy once you actually
Speaker 6: see how it is. The code is easy. The only
Speaker 6: thing that's expensive is gathering all the data. And that's
Speaker 6: why they've got to regulate. That's why they want to
Speaker 6: lock it down because they're going to lose their competitive
Speaker 6: advantage really fast, right, And that I think.
Speaker 1: Is really important. And again that there are shades of
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg going to Congress being like, please regulate us.
Speaker 1: We must be regulated, We have to be Can you
Speaker 1: regulate us? And then you know, of course, I mean,
Speaker 1: the good news is Congress cannot figure out how to
Speaker 1: do that. I did think I watched the congressional hearing
Speaker 1: about AI. I actually thought these guys are actually seem
Speaker 1: a little bit better off and seem a little bit
Speaker 1: more better briefed on what's going on than previous ones
Speaker 1: of these hearings. Can you explain to us sort of?
Speaker 1: I mean what is the hope. I mean Elon wants
Speaker 1: Congress to stop it so they that he can quietly
Speaker 1: do it on his own. I mean explain well.
Speaker 2: I mean there's two things.
Speaker 6: One, you know Elon and you know there's this crowd,
Speaker 6: the Sam Bankman freed Elon Musk. Dudes, these these effective
Speaker 6: altruists as they call themselves, really do think that they
Speaker 6: are creating a post human creature. They're building the humans
Speaker 6: or human robot AI things that are going to go
Speaker 6: off to other planets and star seed the universe with
Speaker 6: what's left of humanity as our planet goes away. You know,
Speaker 6: we the eight billion, we're the larvae, you know, the
Speaker 6: little maggots on the planet, and they're the flies that
Speaker 6: somehow spawn and get on. So that when that's their
Speaker 6: model when they're going to Congress, it's kind of I mean,
Speaker 6: they scared themselves a little bit.
Speaker 2: I think that they built something.
Speaker 6: You know, they believe in this idea that you know,
Speaker 6: if you don't do things that are friendly to AIS
Speaker 6: now that when the Ais are in charge, they're gonna
Speaker 6: make you suffer later. So they they're afraid to do
Speaker 6: anything that looks anti So it's like if they could
Speaker 6: get the government to do the stuff that's anti.
Speaker 2: Then later the oh I was good. I you know,
Speaker 2: I tried to create a.
Speaker 6: Repuschement between us in government. But you guys, come on,
Speaker 6: somebody stand up to this because we were kind of
Speaker 6: afraid to. So there's that. But it's also it's about
Speaker 6: really locking down things as they are. It was really
Speaker 6: telling that in this open letter they wrote, they said,
Speaker 6: and let's stop right now where chat GPT four is.
Speaker 2: You know, let's let's stop here.
Speaker 6: It's like you imagine Zuckerberg going, let's stop social media
Speaker 6: at the exact place that Facebook is at right now.
Speaker 6: It's like, what's that. Everybody stop teaching your AIS everybody.
Speaker 4: You know, right right?
Speaker 6: Let us get ahead, right, let us get ahead, and
Speaker 6: let these little non so called nonprofits of fallen tech
Speaker 6: pros get a ton of funding from the government to
Speaker 6: come up with nice ways of regulating AI that are
Speaker 6: still friendly to our industry.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you about where we are right now.
Speaker 1: Where are we right now?
Speaker 6: I think we're at a much much earlier stage of
Speaker 6: AI than people think.
Speaker 2: I think this stuff, this stuff is.
Speaker 6: Harder than it looks. You know, right now, we have
Speaker 6: some thing that threatens search engines. Right for people that
Speaker 6: don't really care if the results are true or not.
Speaker 6: You know, you can you can use an AI and
Speaker 6: get something digested.
Speaker 2: But it's really bad.
Speaker 6: I mean, you go to chat GPT whatever it is
Speaker 6: right now, and you type in which is heavier a
Speaker 6: pound of feathers or five pounds of lead?
Speaker 2: And it will say, oh, they weigh.
Speaker 6: The same because because it's not thinking, and you know,
Speaker 6: and so where we are now basically we're training a parrot,
Speaker 6: you know. And the parrot's listening to a whole bunch
Speaker 6: of stuff and will parrot back whenever it thinks it heard.
Speaker 6: And that's a really dumb thing, right, that's a dumb
Speaker 6: thing to depend on in any way. Where the danger
Speaker 6: is is think of it this way. If what you
Speaker 6: tell AIS doesn't matter, right, they're not doing what you're
Speaker 6: telling them. They're like kids in the backseat of the car.
Speaker 6: You could tell them they be nice to other people
Speaker 6: and then someone cuts you off and you go, hey,
Speaker 6: fuck you. The kid is watching what you actually do, right,
Speaker 6: So AIS are modeling based on what we've done online
Speaker 6: for the last ten years. That's what they're looking at.
Speaker 6: So if you're training the things that are going to
Speaker 6: make our decisions based on the aggregate behavior of human
Speaker 6: beings on the Internet for the last decade. You know,
Speaker 6: watch out.
Speaker 2: You know. This is like that the Jim Morrison thing.
Speaker 6: You know, father, I'm going to kill you, right, That's
Speaker 6: what the a That's what the AI AI guys are thinking.
Speaker 6: It's like, oh shit, these are little AI children have
Speaker 6: been trained on the worst of the worst, and they
Speaker 6: are going to come for us in our sleep.
Speaker 1: Right right right.
Speaker 2: But they're not. These are just like lava lamps. You know.
Speaker 6: They're like lava lamps, and it's like, oh, look, you know,
Speaker 6: and it's not even interesting. Do you go to someone
Speaker 6: the next day, Oh my LoVa lamp did a really
Speaker 6: interesting combination of stuff last night.
Speaker 2: I don't care about your chet Gypt results. I don't
Speaker 2: care about you.
Speaker 6: You're whatever, you're the picture that you made on whichever
Speaker 6: one that is your generated AI picture. It's like I
Speaker 6: really hearing about someone's AI generated picture that oh it's
Speaker 6: a wolf and a breast and a thing. It's like
Speaker 6: listening to someone's acid trip. It was like it was
Speaker 6: good for you, but I really couldn't care less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I think we got to
Speaker 1: end it on that. That was such a good line.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Doug Rushoff.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. I love you. I love what you're doing.
Speaker 7: The no no, Jesse Cannon, Maley, John Fast you know,
Speaker 7: seems like match Slap. Like many MAGA Republicans, the troubles
Speaker 7: catching up with them and they're acting accordingly.
Speaker 1: Matt Slap, the prominent Trump ally who led the influential
Speaker 1: conservative political Action Conference which has most recently been in Hungary,
Speaker 1: has been accused of mismanaging money and staff in a
Speaker 1: scathing resignation letter from the parent organization's treasurer. Who could
Speaker 1: have seen it coming. But everyone, you will remember that
Speaker 1: earlier this year we had a Matchlap accuser on this
Speaker 1: podcast that has been going on match Lap not a
Speaker 1: huge shock, but for that he and his many mouthfeasances
Speaker 1: are our moment of fuck Ray. That's it for this
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Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.