WEBVTT - Jacob Silverman, Matthew O’Neill & Perri Peltz 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.160 Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.120 where we discussed the top political headlines with some of 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:10.640 today's best minds. We are on vacation, but that doesn't 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.200 mean we don't have a great show for you Today. 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.520 Bloomberg's Matthew O'Neill and Perry Pelts stop by to talk 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:22.560 about their new documentary Can't Look Away, about Tech's stranglehold 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.960 on Children. But first we have substax own Jacob Silverman 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:33.560 on Trump's weird plan to make cities deregulated dystopias. Welcome 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:36.080 to Fast Politics, Jacob. 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:37.000 Thank you. 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:40.720 I'm so excited to have you here, and also I 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:42.800 have so many things I want to talk to you about. 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:45.479 The last time you were on I don't know if 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:48.680 you remember, but we at the end of the interview, 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:52.479 I was like, so, basically bitcoin is just kind of 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.840 a scam, and you were like, yeah, since that interview, 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.200 it's probably about six months. I want you to talk 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.800 about what is happening right now with the American economy 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:09.560 and bitcoin and bitcoin's other you know, fake money, synthetic currencies. 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:10.399 Sure. 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.679 Well, for those who don't know, the crypto industry was 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:16.880 the biggest donor by industry in the twenty twenty four election. 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:20.760 This is not a very big or economically productive industry, 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.440 but they have a lot of money to punch away 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:26.920 above their weight. And the results of that has been, 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:29.200 of course, that they helped elect Trump and a lot 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.920 of pro crypto Republicans, and now they're starting to get 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:37.880 their way with policy and personnel and across the board. 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:40.039 I mean, it's all happened very quickly. We've seen a 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:44.080 lot of actions by Trump for basically remove a lot 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:48.680 of the guardrails around the financial system and to dismantle 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:52.279 all these different task forces and groups within various government 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.840 agencies that were focusing on either cryptoregulation or prime related 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.120 to cryptocurrency. And simultaneous to this, Trump up here as 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:07.000 basically the country's most prominent crypto entrepreneur and who's done 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:10.320 things that would be considered illegal under any normal regime 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:15.120 or presidency, and is also not only is he the 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.680 most prominent crypto entrepreneur, but he's really jumped in the 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.320 deep end with the industry's shadiest characters, a lot of 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.919 whom have had pardons or headed towards a pardon, or 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:29.080 have had sec investigations against them dropped. And so now 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:31.800 where we're headed is that with the Genius Act and 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.080 some of the other regulation coming down the pike, the 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.040 whole economy will kind of have to play by crypto's rules, 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:38.960 or a kind of lack of rules. And what the 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:41.640 crypto industry wants from people who are in the bitcoin 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:45.800 on down is access to more mainstream financing, to Wall Street, 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.560 to institutional money, and to be able to kind of 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:53.560 create all these complex and definitely synthetic and artificial financial 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:58.000 products on top of crypto, which itself arguably has no 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.520 inherent value. With that comes a lot instability, a lot 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.959 of risk, a lot of volatility, and I think if 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.600 we have sort of a crypto driven economic crash, it's 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:11.320 because the whole kind of economy will be forced to 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:14.720 play by crypto's very dangerous set of rules. 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.160 I laugh to keep from crying, but I also laugh 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.280 because crypto doesn't want to be regulated, just like AI. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.400 There are so many parallels in my mind between crypto 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:30.120 regulation and AI regulation, right, They're both These are both 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:33.919 sort of these lobbies that have sprung up like tobacco 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:37.880 and oil, both of which are desperate not to be 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:42.560 regulated and are trying to circumvent any regulation, like by 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:47.680 adding in that ridiculous that states cannot regulate AI for 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:51.120 ten years, like that ridiculous little thing they put in 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:55.480 the Republican BBB. But what I think is so hilarious 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.320 about all of this is that in fact it's Congress, 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:00.720 so they're not going to fucking regulate any They never 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.520 regulated Facebook. You're really worried they're going to regulate you. 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.040 All they do is not regulate discuss. 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:07.600 Yeah. 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:09.640 I think this has been actually sort of an issue 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.520 across tech for years now, is that they kind of 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:14.800 don't realize how good that they have it, and that 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:16.760 I mean, of course there's going to be lobbying and 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:19.960 influenced peddling and stuff like that, but this is an 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:25.760 industry that even under Biden did quite well, and the failures, 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.240 so to speak of some things to take off like crypto, 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.160 are kind of their own. And so that's actually one 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:33.160 thing that I found puzzling or try to explain about, 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.520 like the radicalization of a lot of tech leaders, you know, 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.000 or like whenever markets, yeah, whenever Mark and Reason throws 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:41.520 a fit, it's like, well you had it, so you 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:43.920 are as rich as ever. You own six mansions your 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:48.159 companies are flourishing. Maybe you haven't, you know, created God 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:50.840 in a computer with artificial intelligence or whatever else, but 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.640 you pretty much have all you want. But they they 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:57.920 take any sort of criticism and now anything that kind 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.880 of impedes them in any way, very personally, and I 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:03.400 mean they're pretty soft in that way. 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.640 I think tech bros Are fucking babies. I mean, I 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.599 think that's the net net, right. They were so many. 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.440 It's funny because I know one tech bro. They had 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.080 ten million dollars at Silicon Valley Bank when it went under, 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:16.840 and he was like started text me. He's like, you 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:19.640 have to talk to Biden about bailing out Silicon Valley Bank. 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:21.840 And I was like, first of all, it doesn't work 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:24.880 that way with Democrats. It's not like if you write 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.040 about politics that somehow you have a main line to 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.120 the president and he does favors for you. Like, that's 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.280 not how any of this supposed work. And also I 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.200 was like, bail out your fucking bank, so you want 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.760 to socialize the losses and privatize the games. Like I 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:42.559 feel like there's such a disconnect here with tech bros. 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.800 I mean, I think it's really important. They're fucking babies, right, 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.480 these people Mark Andresen, he was offended. They were so 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:53.200 offended by Lena Khan, by the mere existence of Lena 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:57.080 Kon Linikon wasn't even able to do a lot of 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:00.200 what she wanted to do, but the idea that there 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:04.599 would be any kind of check on capitalism in any 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:08.599 way was so offensive, And I wonder if you could 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:13.240 sort of talk through We know about Andreasen and his 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:19.920 funny shaped head and his love of fascism or of authoritarianism. 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:24.040 We know about Elon because he tweeted before he got 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.200 kicked out of the White House. We know that these 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.719 people are just pretty excited. But the thing that I've 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:33.800 been struck by is like Curtis jarviin the one sort 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:38.000 of the intellectual ringleader of this crew, right, I think 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.800 that article in The New Yorker really exposed him to 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:44.920 be just a complete broad So I wonder if you 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:47.040 could sort of talk to me about where this crew 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.360 is now, knowing that they're basically sort of glorized Fox News. 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:54.839 Well, it's interesting because a few years ago, the new 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:58.720 right or the neo reactionaryas that Curtis Jarvin represents, they 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:02.039 try to present them cells as somehow countercultural or like 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.400 the new counterculture was these right wingers who you know, 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.120 believe in eugenics and all these other bad things. 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:08.839 Wow. 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.640 But now you know, the people they talk to or 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.160 some of their friends are in power, and I think 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:17.040 that changes things a little bit. And I think they've 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:19.720 also made a lot of accommodations to sort of the 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.520 cults of Trump or just you know, we've seen this 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:24.600 even in the last couple of weeks, but people kind of 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.200 bending over backwards to justify Trump's supposedly anti war, people 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.200 on the right justifying Trump's attack on Iran. And you know, 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:34.640 and Yarvin has also done this thing where sometimes he 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:36.800 claims he doesn't have much influence, which I mean, I 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.760 think it is debatable in some ways. He kind of 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.320 he gets he certainly gets ritt about a lot. But 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.400 they can only be sort of victims or people on 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:50.200 the outside for so long because now their peers are 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:52.920 in power and doing some of the things that they 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.720 want to be done, like following out the Ministry of 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.680 State and concentrating more power in the present. I think 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:01.240 sometimes when you hear this stuff from someone like Jarvin, 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:04.800 who speaks in these kind of goofy comic book villain terms. 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.640 Almost it's hard to take seriously, but then you look 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:09.880 at what's actually happening in the presidency or in the 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.000 White House, and it's hard not to see a connection there. 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.080 Absolutely true, and there clearly is a connection there. So 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.600 Jesse really wants to talk about freedom cities. Oh, sure, 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.960 you need to explain to our listeners. Though not everyone 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.680 is as read in on freedom cities as Jesse is. 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.240 I made him explain it to me yesterday. So explain 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:35.280 what freedom cities are like, where they come from to 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:36.440 I want where they come from. 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.640 And this is probably a good example of kind of 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:43.040 right wing Silicon Valley ideology finding common cause with just 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.280 sort of maga trump Ism and finding something in common. 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.360 Trump has talked about freedom cities like creating kind of 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:51.719 cities out of whole cloth in parts of the United 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.240 States or maybe Greenland one day, that are kind of 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:59.920 supposed to be low regulation or none inherently somehow innovative. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.160 You're going to have hordes of tech companies going there 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.120 to try things or do experiments that they're not allowed 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:13.560 to do in normal law abiding communities. I mean, Trump 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.880 sort of talks about it or has did talk about 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.120 during his campaigns kind of returned to the frontier, and 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.080 the tech industry has been trying to do this in 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.480 the form of what they generally call charter cities for 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:28.520 many years. Peter Teele famously funded seasteading and which is 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:30.559 sort of these people who are going to live on 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.479 ships or on these floating communities. 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:34.720 They ever happened. 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.560 Well, there's one example of a charter city really that 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.720 I think deserves attention, and that's one in Honduras on 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.040 the island of Roatan called Prospera, and it's been pretty 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:47.000 well covered in the Times and other places. And basically 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.640 what they did was they took this is a venture 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:54.400 capitalist funded charter city that they basically made a deal 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:58.120 with at the time, the right wing Honduran government to 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:01.200 take over some land where they the basic criminal code 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.240 would still cover them, but they could kind of do 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.080 anything they wanted, and they started building a little bit 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.760 and giving out citizenship to tech entrepreneurs want to come 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.640 there to Again, it's a lot of people just awarding 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:14.800 taxes or trying or claiming that they want to do 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:18.480 medical experiments, biotech stuff that can't be done in the US. 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.559 There's not much real activity there, and then there is 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.800 a yeah, there are at least I mean, I've gotten 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.120 varying numbers from a few dozen to a few hundred. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:29.800 They do have a sizeable chunk of land, and like 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.359 real estate. They took over an old resort and there's 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:35.760 been a lot of protests from locals, and so the 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.160 National government of Honduras basically turned over, became more liberal 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:43.240 left and said, we don't like this deal that was 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:45.920 made with you guys to own this land. It's a 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.000 long term lease, like ninety nine years or something like that. 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.240 And they've now been fighting with them, and the people 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:58.320 from Prospera are suing the Honduran government for an enormous 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.080 number that's greater than the GDP of Houndurs. It's something 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:02.240 like fifty billion dollars. 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:04.320 So it's going, well, is what you're. 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.880 Right, and that's the successful one. And I've seen all 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.480 kinds of presentations and lectures from people who basically want 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:12.439 to escape the strictures of the law. I mean, the 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.120 popular term on the libertarian right is exit, but Peter 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.000 Thiel has used this many times over the years, and 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.640 the exiting society, exiting the strictures of the law. So 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:24.680 when Trump start, you know, I don't playing the Trump 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:26.800 understands with his time of when you start talking out 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.240 something called freedom cities or building new communities from scratch, 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:34.240 that is sort of a whistle for our dog whistle 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.559 for tech people who when they hear that, they think, okay, 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:40.640 no laws, no regulation, we could get land. 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.240 Cheap and do what we want. 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.600 And frankly, also some of the people behind this charter 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.679 city stuff in right wing tech circles are really excited 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:53.280 about taking over Greenland because that's they want to start 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.040 a charter city there. I mean, all this stuff strikes 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.439 me as very untenable. I think it's so they can 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:03.040 have an authoritarian dictatorship basically, or you know, be totally 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:04.839 in charge. Because it's like what you were talking on 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.520 a few minutes ago with Andreesa and others. They can't 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.120 really stand to be bound by others rules, right The 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:15.400 entitlement is overwhelming, and they do think that they are elites, 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:19.520 both genetic elites and cognitive elites who deserve to rule others. 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:22.120 What I have been so st You know, I'm married 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.760 to ed Tech VC and we've been married a long 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:27.000 long time and so for a long time I thought 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.800 that venture capitalists, because my father in law was a 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.120 venture capitalist, I always thought they were very smart because 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.840 they built all this businesses, they built, all this wealth, 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:39.640 they built you know, so much of America was not 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.160 you know, over the last fifty years, was built by 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:46.280 you know, investing in small companies and helping them grow 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:51.480 and creating these huge monopolies, which was not probably the point. 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.400 But anyway, but when I am struck by when you 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:57.480 got Elon on Twitter, what was so clear to me 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.240 was this guy's not so smart. I mean, maybe he's 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:05.640 good at building rockets, but his thinking is cooked. And 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.280 when you and and Curtis is the same way, when 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:14.320 you get Curtis going, he's just he's John pod Horz, right, 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.439 He's not some genius. He's just a person who has 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:22.800 a lot of discriminatory ideas about how the world works. 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.760 So I just don't, you know, I just wonder where 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.040 they think they're why they think they're so brilliant. 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:32.440 It's just because they're rich, That's part of it. 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.520 It's also I think because a lot of these guys 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.800 don't do much reading, and I'm not that I expect 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.040 them to be tearing through books all the time, but 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.640 they kind of think that they've reasoned, they've come to 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:47.960 first principles on their own. And you know, it's like 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:50.480 there's a joke about how every couple of years some 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.200 VC reinvents the bus by saying, like, you know, there's 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.480 gonna be an uber van that stops at at regular locations. 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.720 Like there's very low respect sort of for what comes before, 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:07.600 whether it's businesses or institutions or ideas, and so they 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:09.760 just I think you see that a lot with Musk 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:12.839 and others who kind of make up solutions as they 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:15.520 go along or propose things and you're like, well, there's 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:17.880 already something that does that, or you know, this institution 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.520 is supposed to do that, but they just don't seem 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:23.160 to get it. You know, that becomes a real problem 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:25.920 when the people acting like that, are speaking like that 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.000 are billionaires with a huge amount of power, not just 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:30.360 kind of idiots. 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.440 On X and who are running the government. And yeah, exactly, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.840 Elon is clearly out right. He is no longer running 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:40.280 the federal government. We don't really have the great details, 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.920 but clearly he has just crossed Trump one too many times. 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.760 So it seems like I know a big balls has 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.160 left the government. I said that Wired piece yesterday. 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:51.240 I mean, what is that? 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:56.040 Who sort of are these people now leaving, what are 0:14:56.080 --> 0:15:00.560 they leaving with? And how have they fucked upths in 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:01.480 federal government? 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:05.040 Yeah, Unfortunately, some of that is is sort of TBD 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:07.480 or a long term thing that we're going to find 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.920 out as we go along. But you know, I think 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:14.520 Musk and Xai probably got a tremendous amount of data. 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.160 You know, these are things I think deserve more reporting 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.320 and investigation. But when the Dose people showed up at 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.360 the SEC one day earlier the spring, I got a 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:28.640 message from a former SEC employee who said, you know, 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:31.040 they're going to get their hands on so much sensitive 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.720 market data because you know, the government, or especially agencies 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.960 like the SEC, have has really important and kind of 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:42.360 privileged and unique data about how Americans live, about the economy, 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.200 about you know, and we're not even talking classified information, 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.600 but just kind of everything around us, how our society functions. 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.520 That could be enormously valuable, whether to train in an 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:57.720 AI system like Xai's Grock, or to try to trade 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:02.560 on or you know, do something more sinister with And 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:04.640 I think the answer is that we don't really know 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:06.840 exactly what they're leaving with, but they probably did leave 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:08.640 with a lot of data. And then I think there 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.080 was a pretty revealing comment kind of confirming a lot 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.680 of us thought from Joe Lonsdale on X a few 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:18.960 days ago, where he's part of kind of the raider 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:22.800 Musk Orbit. He's adventure capitalist Peter Teal disciple, and he 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.840 said a lot of our friends are still in DOGE 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.400 and in the government pretty much paraphrasing here, and this 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:31.680 is something he said publicly like so, and we can 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.200 chart this too. Some of these people, at least a 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.560 lot of the appointees who came from a sixteen Z 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.640 or from mus crew at DOGE are still there. And 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:43.400 you know, we have the prominent people like Moscow or 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.560 nineteen year old big Balls leaving. But the things that 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:49.800 they the processes they started, some of the things they 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.400 put in place, I think are gonna be very significant, 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:56.480 especially as AI systems start getting rolled out to more 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.280 parts of government and start replacing more people, and I 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.640 think it's going to be an ongoing disaster of one 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:04.240 form or another. 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:06.960 The thing I'm the most worried about is the AI stuff, 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:12.160 because I'm just not convinced that anyone has thought this throw. 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:12.879 Yeah. 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.920 I mean I've long argued, perhaps not a long yeah, 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.600 I've argued that one of the problems with AI is 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:21.560 not that it works, but that it kind of is 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:23.960 seen as something that works or works well enough so that, 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.159 you know, the fortune of five hundred CEOs and government 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:31.000 officials say let's put this in everything because it kind 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.159 of works well enough, and it saves on human labor, 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:36.399 and it's also trendy and makes them kind of look 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:38.919 up to speed. And I think a version of that 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:41.639 is kind of happening right now in the federal government. 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:43.440 I mean there have been you know, some very well 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:47.000 meaning Democrats have written letters to DOGE and other agencies 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.960 asking what are you doing with AI? But we don't 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.400 really know. But we do know that these things don't 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:55.760 work as well as Sam Altman and others say they 0:17:55.800 --> 0:18:00.119 do or must does, and they're tremendous problems have that 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:01.520 we haven't even figured out yet. 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:05.640 But that doesn't worry may as much as it working 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.320 really well. If it doesn't work like we know what 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.200 to do, which it doesn't work right, it might cause 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:16.119 a kind of Chernobyl moment, which scary and socks. But 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.480 like we can pull back from something that terrible. The 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.280 question is what happens if it works as well as 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:23.000 they say. 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:26.200 It does, right, well, then I think you see kind 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:30.320 of AI become one of the tools or handmaidens of 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:33.240 more overt fascism, you know, like yeah, I mean we 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:36.000 haven't mentioned pounds here, but you know the US government 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.560 with pounds here, who's been being given contracts left and right, 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:44.360 is assembling kind of unified databases of personal information about 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:49.520 Americans that, for reasons legal and practical and to preserve 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:53.760 our freedoms, have been separate for even through kind of 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.720 the terrible Bush years. And so I think when you 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.640 when you see that kind of authority developing and that empowerment, 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.240 I mean that can only lead to some very dark places. 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.120 Yeah, it's really that's good. I have wasn't worried enough, 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.720 So this is good. This was so interesting. I hope 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:10.680 you will come back. 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:12.520 Oh, I would love to thank you. 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.320 Matthew O'Neil and Perry Pelts are the directors of Can't 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:23.679 Look Away, which you can watch now on Jump. 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.440 Welcome to Fast Politics. 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.040 Matt Harry, thanks for having us. We're glad to be here. 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.480 So I want to start talking about how you guys 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.399 decided to do this film. Whoever wants to start with that, 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.280 but just explain to us how you got here. 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:44.560 Sure, we've long admired the investigations that happen out of 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:47.280 the Bloomberg newsroom and specifically out of Business Week, and 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:51.640 we're talking with Bloomberg about the possibility of doing investigative 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.520 documentaries because that's what we love to do as both 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:59.120 filmmakers and journalists. And read the reporting of Olivia Carvil, 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.600 who's a a Bloomberg investigative journalist who had been looking 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:08.960 at these cases in the social media landscape, and we thought, wow, 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.240 we know that social media is sort of vaguely bad 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.199 or can be a time suck, or there's bullying, but 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:20.960 she was uncovering these cases that showed the real extremes 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:24.760 and depths of horror of what happens on TikTok and 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:29.879 Snapchat and Instagram for children, and she introduced us to 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:31.400 this incredible group of lawyers. 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:36.040 Harry tell us about the lawyers. So, Molly, the lawyers 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.800 are extraordinary. And if we just back up a second, 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.560 it feels like when we look at this issue, we 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.960 are living through what feels like the beginning of what 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.760 could be one of the great public health crises of 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:54.160 our time. And these platforms are built in a way 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:59.600 that prioritizes engagement, and most specifically engagement by kids, and 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:05.640 not safety. And that's not something that's incidental, it's actually 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:07.920 what's part of the business plan. And that's where the 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:12.240 lawyers come in because for so long and it continues 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.239 to this day, Section two thirty protects all of these 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:20.920 platforms and makes them impervious to legal action. So what's 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.040 unique about these lawyers is they said, you know what, 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.560 if Section two thirty is going to be the armor 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.560 that protects these companies, we're going to figure out a 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:33.880 way to still get at them. And that is where 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:36.240 the lawyers come in. And they took this on as 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:40.240 a matter of product liability and said, these platforms are 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:44.359 actually faulty products and they're causing harm to our kids. 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:47.679 And that's really where the legal start of this story is. 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:51.639 It's funny because I really think of tech companies as 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:55.639 sort of the same as oil company is the same 0:21:55.760 --> 0:22:00.800 as tobacco company is. These are real dangerous companies that 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:04.359