Speaker 1: Also media. All right, I'm doing the intro.
Speaker 2: What are crackers and crack ats?
Speaker 1: Is that good? Perfect?
Speaker 2: Can we say that? I think?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: Okay, do you have.
Speaker 1: A non binary cracks crack thems? I think.
Speaker 3: I think I'm definitionly not a cracker.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to use the word crack ats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand it's not appropriate.
Speaker 3: That's reasonable.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should just we should old. Sorry, James, So
Speaker 1: let's just keep doing it.
Speaker 2: Do the intro.
Speaker 1: This is it could happen.
Speaker 4: Here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what is happening
Speaker 4: in the White House, the crumbling of our world, and
Speaker 4: what this means to you. I am James Stout and
Speaker 4: I'm joined today by Robert Evans and Mia Wong and Sophie.
Speaker 1: Sophie is also here.
Speaker 4: And this episode we are covering the week of December
Speaker 4: eleventh to December seventeenth, a week before the week that
Speaker 4: is Christmas.
Speaker 1: That's right, baby. So I hope you've done your shopping.
Speaker 1: I hope you've got me a gift. Because I pay
Speaker 1: attention to which of our listeners do and do not
Speaker 1: buy me presents? Yeah, so do I you will never
Speaker 1: find me and you shouldn't try.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 5: And it's currently Honkkah, happy honkah.
Speaker 1: Happy hony, right, yes, oh yeah, happy honekah. All the
Speaker 1: holidays have a yeah, quasi Kwanza, have a solemn, dignified tet.
Speaker 1: All the holidays have a good one of them.
Speaker 5: Happy Winter Solstice, which is.
Speaker 1: Happy Solstice more unhappy Solstice. It's kind of a bittersweet holiday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: super Saturnalia. You know, it's a good one. So holidays
Speaker 1: are nice, but we're going to talk about some things
Speaker 1: that are less nice today. The government, Yes, the government,
Speaker 1: and specific parts of the Let's start with some headlines.
Speaker 1: Garthamis has obtained information about ICE being able to enter
Speaker 1: private parts of New York City shelters without a judicial
Speaker 1: warrant or being able to obtain private information about residents,
Speaker 1: despite both of these, in theory being prohibited by sanctuary
Speaker 1: city laws in New York. Right, thiss happened at least
Speaker 1: five times.
Speaker 4: The way Gothamis found this is by making a public
Speaker 4: records request for incident reports, which is a clever use
Speaker 4: of public record law nice one. The city has already
Speaker 4: aware of both jail and police officers violating these laws,
Speaker 4: and I think this is a good example of how
Speaker 4: people think of sanctuary city laws as inassailable, but in fact,
Speaker 4: sanctuary laws be the city, state, whatever jurisdiction, are very
Speaker 4: often violated, and it's good to see that being reported
Speaker 4: on more. Last week, we talked about Faustino Pablo Pablo, right,
Speaker 4: the guy who had been sent to Guatemala despite the
Speaker 4: fact that he had protections under the Convention against Torture
Speaker 4: for being returned there. The government has returned him to
Speaker 4: the US, which is good.
Speaker 1: That is a rare, good immigration story. It did really
Speaker 1: bum me out to see that, Like, there were dozens
Speaker 1: of articles on him being sent there, right, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything any reporting on him being returned, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like, we should be happy for these people.
Speaker 1: We should.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't get many wins and we should take them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should be happy that this guy is not
Speaker 1: being likely to be tortured.
Speaker 4: At least it is still possible for them to remove
Speaker 4: him to a third country, right, that is not outside
Speaker 4: the realm of possibility. But right now he's not in
Speaker 4: a place where a gidge A judicated he was likely
Speaker 4: to be tortured, and that is good.
Speaker 1: Good. And Trump has designated fentanel as a weapon of
Speaker 1: mass destruction, which is great. What are we doing here?
Speaker 6: Like, I.
Speaker 4: Am trained as a historian, and I probably should remind
Speaker 4: you that we have been down this road before with
Speaker 4: the weapons of mass destruction, and I hope this is
Speaker 4: not leading where it did last time, but I am
Speaker 4: very worried that it might.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things. I'm both We'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll know before this episode ends whether or not I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson stated recently that a source has told him
Speaker 1: the presidential announcement coming up is Trump declaring war, right that, like,
Speaker 1: we're doing a war with Venezuela full on, not just
Speaker 1: some like air strikes and stuff, just not to minimize
Speaker 1: a legal air strike in the sea or on Venezuela
Speaker 1: or soil. I don't know if I think that that's
Speaker 1: the likeliest thing. It just seems like such a huge jump.
Speaker 1: But also at this point there's a whole armada blocking
Speaker 1: off Venezuela from the rest of the world. And Trump
Speaker 1: put out a statement saying that their oil is our
Speaker 1: oil and belongs rightly to American companies. So very very
Speaker 1: very possible when we're about to go to war with them.
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not a I don't know what's gonna happen, y'all.
Speaker 1: I'm white knuckling it like everybody else. Yeah, that fucking sucks.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the thing about that oil.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I'll read the exact quote to you, James. This is
Speaker 1: from a trump a Truth social post which has twelve
Speaker 1: point four thousand retruths and forty seven thousand likes. Venezuela
Speaker 1: is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in
Speaker 1: the history of South America. It will only get bigger,
Speaker 1: and the shock to then will be like nothing they
Speaker 1: have ever seen before until such time as they returned
Speaker 1: to the United States of America all of the oil, land,
Speaker 1: and other assets that they previously stole from US. The
Speaker 1: illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil
Speaker 1: fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping.
Speaker 1: For the theft of our assets and many other reasons
Speaker 1: including terrorism, drug smuggling, and human trafficking, the Venezuelan regime
Speaker 1: has been designated a foreign terrorist organization. Therefore, today I'm
Speaker 1: ordering a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil
Speaker 1: tankers going into and out of Venezuela. The illegal aliens
Speaker 1: and criminals that the Madeira regime has sent the United
Speaker 1: States during the weekend and Biden administration are being returned
Speaker 1: to Venezuela at a rapid pace. YadA, YadA, YadA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of our oil, land and other assets have to
Speaker 1: be returned to the United States, which, like he's talking
Speaker 1: about oil that American companies have had at points like
Speaker 1: contracts to exploit. Yeah, but he's phrasing it is like
Speaker 1: their land and oil is our land and oil.
Speaker 4: Which yeah, that's a very colonial way of phrasing like
Speaker 4: a contract.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, you know, I would be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if war is the most reasonable thing
Speaker 1: to expect. When the president's posting shit like that, it's
Speaker 1: very reasonable to be like, I think we might go
Speaker 1: to war. I think he might be about to invade Venezuela.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen, but it's you're
Speaker 1: no longer being like a kooky conspiracy theorist to be like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he's about to try to take over Venezuela, and
Speaker 1: maybe that is what's coming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't understand how in that instance they would
Speaker 4: continue to get Venezuela to accept people. It's the US
Speaker 4: is removing the sticking points that I see.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's found a third country, right that they've they've
Speaker 1: been very fond of finding third countries. I guess I
Speaker 1: should explain a little bit about oil leaving Venezuela, just
Speaker 1: so like people are aware of that.
Speaker 4: So like Robert read the truth something someone says in church,
Speaker 4: doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, here we are. So they're talking
Speaker 4: about like blockading sanctioned oil tankers. Not necessarily every tanker
Speaker 4: that enters Venezuela is sanctioned, Like I believe Chevron has
Speaker 4: some contracts with Chevron.
Speaker 1: Tankers should be cruising.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of chevroll.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that shouldn't be an issue, right, they should be
Speaker 1: able to go back and forth. They're not sanctioned.
Speaker 4: It's the Venezuelan State Oil Company, which in English, I
Speaker 4: guess you would say pdvsavasavasay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what Venezuela
Speaker 4: has done previously, And this is not by any means
Speaker 4: unique to Venezuela, but this is generally how many of
Speaker 4: these regimes that are kind kind of in the ambit
Speaker 4: of Venezuela. I'm talking about Iran and Russia here have
Speaker 4: avoided sanctions and sanctioned entities so far as by using
Speaker 4: what are called ghost ships.
Speaker 1: I will link to an explainer on this.
Speaker 4: What they will do is use the names and identify
Speaker 4: as the vessels that have been scrapped. They will change
Speaker 4: the flags of vessels, often to these small island nations,
Speaker 4: for whom allowing ships to use their flag as kind
Speaker 4: of a source of income. Right, And they will often
Speaker 4: use these to go out into international waters and then
Speaker 4: offload cargo, in this case oil.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So it just happens pretty frequently with Venezuelan vessels. That
Speaker 4: was one it was one such vessel called the Skipper
Speaker 4: that the US Coast Guard boarded I think last week
Speaker 4: as we're recording this. Yeah, sure, that is how Venezuela
Speaker 4: has previously been evading these sanctions, right, And Iran does
Speaker 4: this too.
Speaker 1: Russia does this too.
Speaker 4: They also do things like spoof their location or turn
Speaker 4: off their They have like a locate to beacon the
Speaker 4: ship they're supposed to use a transponder. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 4: this is fairly common practice. But Obviously, the way to
Speaker 4: stop that is a physical blockade, right, Like, that's not
Speaker 4: going to be possible if these if the US is
Speaker 4: effectively like inspecting ships leaving Venezuela, right or sort of
Speaker 4: keeping a very close eye on them, So that will end,
Speaker 4: and with that will end a very important source of
Speaker 4: income for the Maduta regime if they keep doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, obviously one of the sort of issues we're trying
Speaker 3: to work out what is going to happen here, especially
Speaker 3: before whatever speech Trump is about to give, is that
Speaker 3: we're trying to figure out state policy from Trump posting. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of this that is enormously incoherent.
Speaker 3: So Okay, the thing about designating the government of Venezuela
Speaker 3: as a foreign terrorist organization is one of the weirdest
Speaker 3: things I've ever seen. And this was also unhinged. The
Speaker 3: closest thing we've ever really gotten to that, I guess
Speaker 3: was the IERGC. Yeah, and maybe you could go back
Speaker 3: and say the Khmer Rouge, but like, they weren't really
Speaker 3: a government by that point, so this is not This
Speaker 3: is not a designation that has ever been given to
Speaker 3: a government before. Right, it doesn't make any sense to
Speaker 3: give it to a government. It doesn't make sense to
Speaker 3: give to this government. I mean, you know, even if
Speaker 3: you're working with in the logic of counter terrorism, which
Speaker 3: is just you know, unhinged, murderous imperialism to begin with.
Speaker 3: But all of the reporting on this has been assuming
Speaker 3: that the blockade will be of you know, like of
Speaker 3: these specifically sanctioned oil tankers. However, come The thing about
Speaker 3: the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation is that it does things.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that that Foreign Terrorist Organization
Speaker 3: designation does is that if you do business with a
Speaker 3: with a foreign terrorist organization, you are now immediately on
Speaker 3: the line from material support of terrorism charges like chef run. So, yes,
Speaker 3: there are lots of countries like Facebook.
Speaker 1: Does this fine with the US military carrying out air
Speaker 1: strikes on Chevron executives and their property, Let's be clear
Speaker 1: about that. I would I would salute the red, white,
Speaker 1: and Blue if we dropped some hell fires on that
Speaker 1: C suite.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is all very weird. My understanding of the FTO
Speaker 3: designation process is that, well, how it's supposed to work
Speaker 3: is that the President proposes it and then the Secretary
Speaker 3: of State and Sectuary of the Treasurer, I think have
Speaker 3: to improve it, and then there's a seven day period
Speaker 3: where Congress has it an opportunity to say no, and
Speaker 3: then it goes up. So right now we should be
Speaker 3: theoretically in the seven day window, but it's also really
Speaker 3: unclear what the illustration has actually been doing because again
Speaker 3: we're being governed by post.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like it's so it's not announced as an executive action
Speaker 4: on White House dot gov, and I think normally it
Speaker 4: goes there and then the seven day congressional period commences.
Speaker 1: Then it's not in the federal right to either. Right now,
Speaker 1: all we have is a truth.
Speaker 3: So like, yeah, and like and this is this is
Speaker 3: the problem is that this is this is sort of
Speaker 3: the Calvin Ball War in that they're using they're using
Speaker 3: the names of actual legal categories and things that have
Speaker 3: material effects in the world, but they're just posts. And
Speaker 3: I want to be very clear about this. Even just
Speaker 3: doing a blockade on these sanctioned vessels is an active war. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like that that's an that's very deliberately an active war.
Speaker 3: It is an active imperial aggression. It is morally wrong.
Speaker 3: It is also unbelievably illegal under the War Powers Act.
Speaker 3: And this this is this has actually gotten a response
Speaker 3: from Democrats in Congress. There's been a few measures. CBS
Speaker 3: is reporting this has been if there's been a few
Speaker 3: measures to stop the president from starting a war. Here,
Speaker 3: I'm going to quote CBS. A second measure from Democratic Rep.
Speaker 3: Jim mcgovernor in Massachusetts would remove the armed forces quote
Speaker 3: from hostilities with or against Venezuela that have not been
Speaker 3: authorized by Congress. McGovern's resolution could face the best chance
Speaker 3: of potential adoption since it has three gop CO sponsors.
Speaker 3: Rep's Marjory Taylor Green of Georgia, Thomas Massey of Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and Don Bacon of Nebraska. Bacon says he would also
Speaker 3: vote and f he or Meeks his measure. Bacon's taking
Speaker 3: a very weird line here of Keen's congressional approval, and
Speaker 3: also I support him doing this.
Speaker 1: So purely a procedural objection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a I want my board, but I want
Speaker 3: Congress to have a little shred of power.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think it's alcial work. Noting what exactly is
Speaker 3: going on here. I'm someone who's on the record as
Speaker 3: talking about how political economy in Latin America and American
Speaker 3: imperialism is usually slightly more complicated than they just want
Speaker 3: to resource, but they just want a resource here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one, this one really is yeah.
Speaker 3: No, like so it's only like like like Bolivia, for example,
Speaker 3: every everyone thinks that that that the whole coup Oblivia
Speaker 3: was about lithium and it yes, I'm very mad about this,
Speaker 3: it was not. If you look at the people of
Speaker 3: you look at Camato, if you look at people who
Speaker 3: were actually running that coup, they were all Bolivian agrobarons.
Speaker 3: Because a huge part of what was going on there
Speaker 3: was a rebellion by the sort of agro business like
Speaker 3: agricultural elite who joined with parts of like a reactionary
Speaker 3: every middle class.
Speaker 2: Okay, but this is not that.
Speaker 3: Venezuela has the world's largest oil preserves, but there were
Speaker 3: significant problems extracting the oil right. Many of these problems
Speaker 3: stem from the two thousand and two to two thousand
Speaker 3: and three opposition general strike. This is back after Hugo
Speaker 3: Chaves was elected. So in two thousand and two there
Speaker 3: was a coup against Chaves that failed and was sort
Speaker 3: of overturned famously. But later that year there was also
Speaker 3: a sort of opposition general strike that lasted from late
Speaker 3: two thousand and two to early two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: and a huge part of that general strike was oil
Speaker 3: workers specifically, and it was very specifically. One of the
Speaker 3: things about the structure of oil production is that there
Speaker 3: were a bunch of very very highly paid and highly
Speaker 3: skilled technical workers who are are very very loyal to
Speaker 3: the oil companies themselves and who are very loyal to
Speaker 3: who are sort of tend to be very right wing.
Speaker 3: These people went on strike and sort of got fired
Speaker 3: on mass. Oil production requires both a huge amount of
Speaker 3: heavy capital and a bunch of highly skilled workers, and
Speaker 3: if you don't have both of those things, then you
Speaker 3: can't do oil extraction. And this has sort of been
Speaker 3: a recurring problem for the entire time both sort of
Speaker 3: fugual Srofics and Majuro has been in office, is that
Speaker 3: they haven't had the capacity to actually extract a bunch
Speaker 3: of the oil, and also they've refused to turn the
Speaker 3: oil over to more American companies that have already been contracted.
Speaker 1: And it's also worth noting there's a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about like Venezuela having the world's largest reserves, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that is like them jinking the numbers by
Speaker 1: including a lot of like tire sands, that would be
Speaker 1: that no one's going to try to get extract fuel
Speaker 1: from because it's too expensive and too much of a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass.
Speaker 2: It's just not worth it anyway.
Speaker 4: And also that claims to reserves not actually part of
Speaker 4: Venezuela at this.
Speaker 1: Time, right right, Like we're not working with exact with
Speaker 1: accurate information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's messy. And it's also worth noting that
Speaker 3: like the oil numbers, I mean, obviously all oil numbers
Speaker 3: are political, but the oil numbers here are extraordinarily political,
Speaker 3: because these are numbers that are basically used as a
Speaker 3: pitch by sort of like the opposition to try to
Speaker 3: get a US backed too. And it's also sort of
Speaker 3: word noting that the other thing that's happening here, and
Speaker 3: the reason this is all going to probably cause really
Speaker 3: significant economic problems and probably humanitarian disaster, both in Venezuela
Speaker 3: and probably also in Cuba, which extensively relies on Venezuelan
Speaker 3: oil to have their economy function, is that the Venezuelan
Speaker 3: economy has been really structured around oil in a way
Speaker 3: that they failed to transition out of multiple times. The
Speaker 3: first big one I've done in a different episode about
Speaker 3: this in the Neolipical List series a bunch of years ago.
Speaker 3: But you know, there was a whole bunch of delivery
Speaker 3: sabotage by American car companies over the attempt to build
Speaker 3: it car industry. There's a long sort of history of this.
Speaker 3: But it means that both of these countries' economies are
Speaker 3: desperately reliant on oil. And the more of this is
Speaker 3: just that is cut off, the more fucked it's going
Speaker 3: to get for just everyone in Venezuela.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And you can already see how much worse
Speaker 1: it's got from the time I went to Venezuela to
Speaker 1: to now. Like, they're very vulnerable to changes in crude
Speaker 1: oil prices, right, and that has, along with corruption in
Speaker 1: a government which doesn't really give a shit about the
Speaker 1: material welfare of these people, has already made things unsustainably
Speaker 1: hard for people in Venezuela, and that will only get worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I want to conclude, basically on a couple
Speaker 3: of things. Wonders that too, this is going to cause
Speaker 3: more waves of migration and refugees fleeing the country, both
Speaker 3: from potential realist military strikes and for the economic damage.
Speaker 3: There's been some moves in the international stage, with China
Speaker 3: and Mexico expressing support for the Venezuelan government. Shine Bomb
Speaker 3: in Mexico is offered to facilitate negotiations and media negotiations
Speaker 3: between the US and Venezuela. It's also kind of word
Speaker 3: noting that right before this whole thing, there was a
Speaker 3: giant Vanity Fair interview with Susie Wiles, who's Trump's chief
Speaker 3: of staff.
Speaker 1: Who oh boy, this.
Speaker 2: Is for Roysberry Dubbs this week Coller here.
Speaker 3: God said Trump quote wants to keep blowing up boats
Speaker 3: until Maduro Chris's uncle, which is one of the most
Speaker 3: hideous things I've ever heard. Yeah, it's gangsters, it's literally terrorism.
Speaker 2: It's it's a highway.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it is in Australia structurally, unless you resign,
Speaker 3: we are going to keep killing civilians. But it's hatless
Speaker 3: taker ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of how the
Speaker 1: regime operates.
Speaker 4: If that is the case. So because they don't care
Speaker 4: if their people kept dying.
Speaker 1: I have seen Venezuelan people die in the Darian gap,
Speaker 1: right because in part the government is incapable of providing
Speaker 1: for their material needs. They don't care like killing some
Speaker 1: other people with boats is not going to fundamentally change
Speaker 1: the way that government works, because there's any one way
Speaker 1: it can work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there's the one last thing I
Speaker 3: want to say about this before we head out slash,
Speaker 3: before whatever giant update comes after the speech.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've got one after you finish here.
Speaker 3: One of the big problems here is if people in
Speaker 3: the administration really do believe this, they actually do think
Speaker 3: that you can knock off the governments with air strikes,
Speaker 3: and no you can't, No, you can't. They thought this
Speaker 3: about the Huthies too. It's wrong, It's never been right.
Speaker 2: It's hideous.
Speaker 1: We just finished doing like a five parter on bastards
Speaker 1: about like the nuclear doom state device that also dealt
Speaker 1: heavily with the work of that Italian Air Force General Duhey,
Speaker 1: who was the first guy in nineteen twenty one to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you need are bombers. Nothing else is
Speaker 1: necessary in militaries. Now it's nothing but bombers from here.
Speaker 1: And if you have enough bombers, no one will ever
Speaker 1: attack you. And this logic has always been wrong. And
Speaker 1: it's also every new generation of like military leaders, especially
Speaker 1: in the air power field, are like all we need
Speaker 1: is air strikes. You don't need to send in ground.
Speaker 1: You can accomplish all of your goals, all of your
Speaker 1: power projection, just by bombing people or shooting missiles at them,
Speaker 1: And they're always wrong.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work. It's just not effective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, I think the Trump administration is somewhat I
Speaker 4: don't want to say high on its own supply. They
Speaker 4: had success in Syria with removing the territorial calipate, mostly
Speaker 4: using US air power. Right, it wasn't a big US
Speaker 4: that was the US part. There was still a shitload
Speaker 4: of Kurdish, yes.
Speaker 1: But it's the and yeah, eleven twelve thousand Kurdish people
Speaker 1: died to remove the Islamic extent. More have died since, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And also a shipload of Iraqi soldiers, a mix of
Speaker 1: Kurds and largely guys from in and around Baghdad.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, like a lot.
Speaker 4: Of and a bunch of Arab Syrians. And I don't
Speaker 4: feel like ethnically geeky this at all Assyrian people.
Speaker 1: No, But like a huge amount of the effort was
Speaker 1: guys I mean literally I was in bed with some
Speaker 1: of these guys a lot of Like the fighting tip
Speaker 1: was like literally dudes with fucking knives and hand grenades,
Speaker 1: clearing buildings in hand to hand comb Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: the people who faced danger, right, like, and that's what
Speaker 1: you need to Unfortunately, you can't do war with computers yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think that that might be where this
Speaker 1: this belief that and like the Marca Rubio lobby, right,
Speaker 1: the Florida Cubans who are invested in this kind of
Speaker 1: Trump corrollary to the Monroe doctrine right in the idea
Speaker 1: that they can roll back leftist regimes in uh like
Speaker 1: South and Central America.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I think that's where a lot of the pressure is
Speaker 1: coming from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of pressure, we are being pressured to go
Speaker 3: to ads.
Speaker 1: That's right, beautiful, and we're back. There's an update I
Speaker 1: just came across as we're doing this. We talked about
Speaker 1: how Tucker as an inside source saying that Trump's basically
Speaker 1: go out of Claire War. There's another article that just
Speaker 1: came out on Stitch Snitches by Gloria Shaw, citing a
Speaker 1: pro Trump host on Real America's Voice who characterized the
Speaker 1: upcoming Oval Office address as a pr thing meant basically
Speaker 1: as an acknowledgment that a lot of Trump's voters are
Speaker 1: frustrated that he keeps talking about like international issues like Venezuela,
Speaker 1: while everything is more expensive for them and they continue
Speaker 1: to lose their jobs and the economy is shit. To
Speaker 1: quote from that article, and this is them quoting a
Speaker 1: segment from that Real America's Voice podcast. The remarks came
Speaker 1: during a segment on The water Cooler with co host
Speaker 1: David Brody, who teas the nine pm Eastern address is
Speaker 1: an elevated effort to regain the narrative on affordability. The
Speaker 1: president is going to be in the Oval Office tonight
Speaker 1: nine pm Eastern, Brody said, big address to the nation.
Speaker 1: He's elevating this clearly, this is to regain the narrative
Speaker 1: and explain more about the affordability issue America and what
Speaker 1: this administration is doing. I think they're trying to seize
Speaker 1: this right off the top and make sure it doesn't
Speaker 1: get away from them. And the claims here is basically
Speaker 1: like this is Trump trying to steal a night march
Speaker 1: on the twenty twenty six election cycle and reset a
Speaker 1: lot of what people are talking about around affordability, Like
Speaker 1: this argument is that now he's basically acknowledging that it's
Speaker 1: been kind of a mistake to focus so much on
Speaker 1: his overseas policies, and he really needs to start promising
Speaker 1: that that golden age is actually going to come for
Speaker 1: his voters, which the numbers don't bear out right, Like
Speaker 1: almost no jobs have been added in the US since April.
Speaker 1: There's about seven hundred thousand more people unemployed now than
Speaker 1: there were in November of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Like things aren't yeah.
Speaker 1: Good, Inflation is still wild, Inflation is real bad food,
Speaker 1: and like the material things that we need are going
Speaker 1: up in price faster than general inflation. Like it's no good,
Speaker 1: and people like on his own side the thought. Jessica Tarlov,
Speaker 1: who's a Fox News host of The five Quote, tweeted
Speaker 1: a post about how like the hiring recession just with
Speaker 1: the golden age attached, which is like what Trump has
Speaker 1: been saying. You know, we're going to have a new
Speaker 1: golden age if you make me president. So like the
Speaker 1: fact that he hasn't done he hasn't followed through any
Speaker 1: of his promises to actually improve life for his voters
Speaker 1: or the economy is starting to hurt. And I guess
Speaker 1: I'm hopeful that that's what it is, rather than the
Speaker 1: Marines are about to be in Caracas, right, but I
Speaker 1: guess we'll see very soon. Yeah, great stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking of international stuff Trump is doing. Let's talk
Speaker 4: about the new travel ban. So this this travel band
Speaker 4: dropped yesterday was Tuesday. So it previously had this nineteen
Speaker 4: country travel band. Right, some of that was a complete
Speaker 4: bar to entry if sits into those countries or to
Speaker 4: new these entries. Some of it was a partial bar
Speaker 4: to immigrant visas, not to not to non immigrant visas.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: They have now expanded this to twenty more countries. So
Speaker 4: totally banned now from getting new visas to enter the
Speaker 4: USA a citizens of Burkina, Faso, Mahlei, Nicheere, South Sudan,
Speaker 4: and Syria, as well as a Palestinian authority. The Syria
Speaker 4: one is particularly wild because I'll share it justice to
Speaker 4: the White House. There are like individual case by case exceptions.
Speaker 1: Right. It's not that they wouldn't block al Shara, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: but like.
Speaker 4: It's interesting to look at the justifications that they use here.
Speaker 4: What they are basically saying, I'll just read a couple
Speaker 4: of them here to give you an example, right quote.
Speaker 4: At least one country lacks mechanisms in hospitals to ensure
Speaker 4: bursts are reported, and widespread corruption, combined with a general
Speaker 4: lack of vecking and poor record keeping, result in any
Speaker 4: non citizen being able to obtain any civil document from
Speaker 4: that country, particularly if that person is willing to pay
Speaker 4: a fee or engage an individual that specializes in assisting
Speaker 4: in such fraud. They go on to basically document failures
Speaker 4: in government bureaucracy that they talk about corruption.
Speaker 1: Right. They talk about places where birthy forgets are just
Speaker 1: written by hand. They talk about places where the government
Speaker 1: does not control all.
Speaker 4: The territory prevalence of crime, places which offer citizenship by
Speaker 4: investment without physical residents. They also talk about some of
Speaker 4: these countries not being willing to accept their nationals to
Speaker 4: the US deports and again visa overstair rates, right, which
Speaker 4: is what they spoke about last time. What is getting
Speaker 4: less reporting, or at least was this morning when I looked,
Speaker 4: was that they have removed exemptions which existed for the
Speaker 4: previous nineteen These include family member visas right, So that
Speaker 4: means that, for instance, someone who could themselves become a
Speaker 4: permanent resident or even a citizen, now cannot bring a
Speaker 4: family member, say a spouse, a sibling, etc. Across, even
Speaker 4: though those people were people sly vetted. And it appears
Speaker 4: some there is certain categories of SIVA exempt, but I
Speaker 4: believe not all SIVs, so that's especially immigrant visa right.
Speaker 4: The vast bulk of SIVs will be Afghan people who
Speaker 4: worked with the US military in Afghanistan. The nineteen countries
Speaker 4: who are now partially restricted are I'm just going to
Speaker 4: read them of Angola, Antigram, Barbuda, Benin, Kuttivois, Dominica, Gabon,
Speaker 4: the Gambia, Malawi, Mauritanian, Nigeria, senegauld Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Speaker 4: For some reason, the first five of these are underlined
Speaker 4: on the White House website. I don't know if some
Speaker 4: were copied and pisted them across with hyperlinks like.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm unable to work out why that they're not hyperlinked
Speaker 4: in the document, but there doesn't seem to be any
Speaker 4: explanation like this. There's no special set of sanctions for those,
Speaker 4: and they're just in alphabetical order. They actually reduced restrictions
Speaker 4: on Turkmenistan because quote suspension of entry into the United
Speaker 4: States of Nationals of Turkmenistan as non immigrants B one,
Speaker 4: B two, FM, and JVSS is lifted because some concerns remain.
Speaker 4: The entry into the United States of nationals to Turkmenistan
Speaker 4: as immigrants remain suspended. The last element of this that
Speaker 4: I want to cover is that it would appear to
Speaker 4: stop international adoptions from the listed countries, like all of
Speaker 4: those thirty nine listed countries, which is wild and like
Speaker 4: particularly unfortunate because I know, like people who who adopt
Speaker 4: children from outside the United States, like that is a
Speaker 4: process that takes years, and I can imagine it being
Speaker 4: horrifically traumatic.
Speaker 1: To have it suddenly cut off like this. But consciously, unconsciously,
Speaker 1: that is what this.
Speaker 4: UH executive action appears to do, So that is not great.
Speaker 4: It seems that the United States is using this as
Speaker 4: a kind of cudgel right to encourage those countries to
Speaker 4: It's kind of a quid pro quote they get what
Speaker 4: they want they got from Turkmenistan apparently then that they
Speaker 4: will remove some of those restrictions. Otherwise they will continue them. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's not great. So Judge Hannah Dougan's trial began this week.
Speaker 4: Do you can if you're not familiar. She's not the judge
Speaker 4: in New Mexico who was accused of providing firearms to
Speaker 4: somebody who was not a permanent resident or citizen. She
Speaker 4: is a judge who is accused of allowing a migrant
Speaker 4: man named mister Flores Luise to leave her court room
Speaker 4: from a door that is not the usual door. That
Speaker 4: door led to a private corridor. In that private corridor,
Speaker 4: there was one exit to a public area and also
Speaker 4: a door to a fire escape. Mister Flora's ruiz took
Speaker 4: the exit to the public area. He then took a
Speaker 4: lift down I think to the ground floor with an
Speaker 4: ICE officer. He then attempted to run away when Ice
Speaker 4: officers attempted to detain him when he left the lift,
Speaker 4: he was caught and detained. So we learned quite a
Speaker 4: lot in this and it's just been interesting to follow.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: First of all, we see that several of the people
Speaker 4: who were taking part in the apprehension were reassigned FBI agents.
Speaker 4: This is increasingly common, right, like all branches of the
Speaker 4: federal law enforcement have had some of their capacity redirected
Speaker 4: to doing this, right, to doing like this. This guy
Speaker 4: I believe had misdemeanors the agents for using signal to communicate.
Speaker 4: They had a group chat called frozen water. Obviously Jesus Christ. Yeah,
Speaker 4: really funny. The FBI agent conceded in crust examination that's
Speaker 4: not a NAP approved by the FBI, but according to
Speaker 4: one the DHS apparently does approve it, according to a
Speaker 4: CBP agent who has crossed damon there, which obviously creates
Speaker 4: an issue for the retention of records right because signal,
Speaker 4: if you're not familiar, auto deletes things after a period
Speaker 4: of time that users can configure. It also appears that
Speaker 4: when one of these DHS agents and to the courthouse,
Speaker 4: court security officers told him that he needed an escort,
Speaker 4: but then he appears.
Speaker 1: To have proceeded without worn. In a text of colleagues,
Speaker 1: as DHS employees said, quote, this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: pain in the dick. H So that's that. Yeah, what happens,
Speaker 1: it seems like is Judge Dougan sent them to the
Speaker 1: Chief Judge because it didn't have a judicial warrant. It's
Speaker 1: had an administrative warrant.
Speaker 4: Right, another judge testified against Judge Dugan, a judge called
Speaker 4: Judge Severa. So Judge Severa was with Judge Dugan when
Speaker 4: they confronted the agents. Judge Jugan wore her judicial robes
Speaker 4: when confronting them, which apparently is not usual. It's not
Speaker 4: usual to wear them out.
Speaker 1: Of the courtroom, and Judge Severa seemed to disapprove of that,
Speaker 1: and then she said, quote, Judge Dugan could quote have
Speaker 1: been more diplomatic, and then she said, quote judges shouldn't
Speaker 1: be helping defendants evade arrest. At the same time, Judge
Speaker 1: Dugan's defense lawyer asked her if she had warned her
Speaker 1: sister of the ice presence, which she had, and it
Speaker 1: appears to her sister had a hearing at the courthouse
Speaker 1: the next day, which Judge Severa said she was not
Speaker 1: aware of. So there's like a lot still to be
Speaker 1: unpacked here, right, this is just the first day. This
Speaker 1: could go on past Christmas and into the new year,
Speaker 1: and it probably will. But there's been some pretty good
Speaker 1: reporting on this from a substack called all Rise Media,
Speaker 1: and I will keep checking in on this and we'll
Speaker 1: report it on it again after the New Year.
Speaker 6: Hello, this is Garrison Davis reporting from Tokyo. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 6: was unable to attend the regular Executive Disorder Group recording
Speaker 6: due to being halfway around the globe, so I'm recording
Speaker 6: my section solo. This past week saw two devastating mass
Speaker 6: shootings back to back. On Saturday afternoon, a masks sho
Speaker 6: entered an economics class at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island,
Speaker 6: and opened fire with a concealed handgun, killing two people
Speaker 6: injuring nine others, all students. About thirty minutes after the
Speaker 6: shooting started, the university police announced a suspect was in custody.
Speaker 6: Twenty minutes later, they retracted that statement. Then university police
Speaker 6: reported shots fired in another section of campus, which they
Speaker 6: also later retracted. President Trump posted on truth Social quote,
Speaker 6: I've been briefed on the shooting that took place at
Speaker 6: Brown University in Rhode Island. The FBI is on the scene,
Speaker 6: the suspect is in custody. God bless the victims and
Speaker 6: the families of the victims. Quote. This too was untrue,
Speaker 6: as the university released a statement about an hour later
Speaker 6: clarifying that the shooter was not in custody and that
Speaker 6: over four hundred officers were on the scene to assist
Speaker 6: in the investigation. The next morning, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley
Speaker 6: announced that a new person of interest was detained. The
Speaker 6: Providence Police chief told NBC that they were confident that
Speaker 6: the suspect was the shooter. Major news outlets later named
Speaker 6: this individual, though later that evening this quote unquote person
Speaker 6: of interest was released, with the Rhode Island Attorney General
Speaker 6: saying that the evidence quote now points in a different
Speaker 6: direction quote. The shooter currently remains unidentified and at large.
Speaker 6: On Sunday night in Sydney, Australia, a father and son,
Speaker 6: Sajid and Navid Akram, coordinated a targeted attack against Jewish
Speaker 6: people attending a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach. Fifteen people
Speaker 6: were killed in the shooting. Victims include a ten year
Speaker 6: old girl and a Holocaust survivor. Twenty four victims remain hospitalized.
Speaker 6: A bystander named Ahmed al Ahmed, a son of Syrian refugees,
Speaker 6: charged one of the gunman and wrestled his gun away.
Speaker 6: Ahmed was later shot multiple times, but survived and has
Speaker 6: been labeled a hero by the Australian Prime Minister. Police
Speaker 6: say that a vehicle used by the gunman contained homemade
Speaker 6: Islamic state flags and improvised explosive devices. The men were
Speaker 6: not part of an official terror cell, though the Prime
Speaker 6: Minister says that they were motivated by Islamic state extremist ideology.
Speaker 6: Counter Terrorism officials believed the shooters received quote unquote military
Speaker 6: style training in the Philippines a month before the attack.
Speaker 6: On Tuesday, self styled online investigators in right wing social
Speaker 6: media content Mills falsely identified the Brown University shooter as
Speaker 6: an LGBTQ Palestinian studying at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies,
Speaker 6: citing gate analysis based on surveillance footage of the unidentified
Speaker 6: suspect released by police. The university removed this queer Palestinian
Speaker 6: student's online profile file in an effort to prevent doxing,
Speaker 6: though this itself was used by the online smerror campaign
Speaker 6: as evidence of guilt. Brown University later published this statement
Speaker 6: quote in the aftermath of the shooting, We've seen a
Speaker 6: harmful doxing activity directed towards at least one member of
Speaker 6: the Brown University community. It's important to make clear that
Speaker 6: targeting individuals could do a revocable harm. Accusations, speculation, and
Speaker 6: conspiracies were seeing on social media and in some news
Speaker 6: reports are irresponsible, harmful, and in some cases dangerous for
Speaker 6: the safety of individuals in our community. It is not
Speaker 6: unusual as a safety measure to take steps to protect
Speaker 6: an individual's safety when this kind of activity happens, including
Speaker 6: in regard to their online presence. As law enforcement officials
Speaker 6: stated clearly on Tuesday afternoon, if this individual's name had
Speaker 6: any relevance to the current investigation, they would be actively
Speaker 6: looking for this individual and providing information publicly. On a
Speaker 6: final note, after the holiday break, we will be reporting
Speaker 6: on the indictment against four alleged members of the Turtle
Speaker 6: Island Liberation Front in California regarding a New Year's Eve
Speaker 6: bombing plot.
Speaker 1: We're back and we have some news that's going to
Speaker 1: be really sad for everybody here and it could happen
Speaker 1: here and just all of you listening, which is friend
Speaker 1: of the pod. Dan Bongino is stepping down from his
Speaker 1: work as Deputy director of the FBI. I think it's
Speaker 1: been a nice vacation for him, but you know, American
Speaker 1: needs him in his much more important role. Whatever podcast
Speaker 1: he was doing before he got brought in to the
Speaker 1: deputy director of the FBI. You know, look, if he
Speaker 1: was podcasting right now, they would have caught the mass
Speaker 1: shooter at Brown.
Speaker 2: I think we can all agree.
Speaker 1: On that he to putcosting his way through it. Either
Speaker 1: that or just him not being at the FBI would
Speaker 1: have made the do their job.
Speaker 3: Look what we're learning from this is that you can
Speaker 3: never escape the podcasting minds. No matter where else you
Speaker 3: try to go, they will drag you back down.
Speaker 1: Oh look, if you make me director of the FBI,
Speaker 1: I promise to stop podcasting and start being the most
Speaker 1: corrupt director of the FBI we've ever had.
Speaker 3: That's a tough challenge.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm I think, I'm I'm in a task
Speaker 1: prepared to work at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little bit about an executive
Speaker 1: order that our beloved President put out very recently. Some
Speaker 1: of you may be aware of this, but on December eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty I mean this year, twenty twenty five, Trump released
Speaker 1: yet another executive order, this one titled Ensuring a National
Speaker 1: Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, and basically, in this and
Speaker 1: Trump stated that like, the reason he's doing this is
Speaker 1: because it's absolutely critical to the US's future that we
Speaker 1: be at the top of the game when it comes
Speaker 1: to AI, that we be global leaders in this burgeoning
Speaker 1: new field. He states in the EO, these efforts have
Speaker 1: already delivered tremendous benefits to the American people and led
Speaker 1: to trillions of dollars of investments across the country. Certainly haven't,
Speaker 1: but we were made in the earliest days of the
Speaker 1: technological revolution and in a race with adversaries for supremacy
Speaker 1: within it. Trump stated in an interview that he expects
Speaker 1: AI to be fifty to sixty percent of the US
Speaker 1: economy in the near future, which is nuts.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's just because everything else will just go to
Speaker 4: complete shit.
Speaker 1: You know. The reality is that like AI is not
Speaker 1: even close to being that value in terms of like
Speaker 1: what the economy produces, but nearly all of our growth
Speaker 1: is related and like it is tied right now to
Speaker 1: data center investments. So Trump absolutely needs AI because without
Speaker 1: it the country is very obviously in a recession. Like
Speaker 1: this is the only thing propping up the image of
Speaker 1: the as not being in the shitter. Now, what does
Speaker 1: this EO actually do well. The goal of this the
Speaker 1: statement is that it is the policy of the United
Speaker 1: States to sustain and enhance the United States is global
Speaker 1: AI dominance through a minimally burden some national policy framework
Speaker 1: for AI. This EO will establish an AI Litigation Task Force.
Speaker 1: Within thirty days of this order going out, the Attorney
Speaker 1: General is supposed to establish this task force whose responsibility
Speaker 1: is to challenge state AI laws that are inconsistent with
Speaker 1: the policy set forward above. Right that we need to
Speaker 1: be globally dominant in AI. Right, So this task force
Speaker 1: is supposed to go out and find state laws that
Speaker 1: it believes are like an onerous burden on the development
Speaker 1: of this technology. Going along with this, within ninety days
Speaker 1: of the order, the Secretary of Commerce is supposed to
Speaker 1: do an evaluation of all state AI laws in order
Speaker 1: to point out which ones this task force should go after.
Speaker 1: And then the stick that this EO establishes is that
Speaker 1: if this task force decides that like a state AI
Speaker 1: EYE law is in violation of our need to be
Speaker 1: dominant in AI, we can restrict state funding to things
Speaker 1: like the broadband Equity Access and Deployment program. Right. Basically,
Speaker 1: they'll cut off federal funding for like broadband access, in
Speaker 1: order to punish states that try to restrict or in
Speaker 1: any way shape or form, govern what people can use
Speaker 1: what companies can use AI for. And the primary thing
Speaker 1: this is all about, I know, we all think about
Speaker 1: the stuff that like most people have more direct experience with,
Speaker 1: which is like all the slop flooding the Internet, the
Speaker 1: disinformation that's continuing to cook the brains of a lot
Speaker 1: of our peers and elders, and just the fact that
Speaker 1: like it's making certain industries full of hardworking people a
Speaker 1: lot harder to exist because companies are just trying to
Speaker 1: replace quality work with absolute like slop trash. Yeah, but really,
Speaker 1: what this is about, and the primary focus of most
Speaker 1: of these state level laws regulating AI is the housing market.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's a good article in Politico about this, written by
Speaker 1: Cassandra Dumay, but she notes that per a National Conference
Speaker 1: of State Legislatures analysis in July, there were more than
Speaker 1: forty pending bills across the United States related to just
Speaker 1: AI in the housing sector, and most of these bills
Speaker 1: are attempting to stop landlords from using different AI programs
Speaker 1: to coordinate pricing. Basically, there are a couple of different programs,
Speaker 1: the most prominent, which is called Real Page, And what
Speaker 1: they do is landlords join these programs and they share
Speaker 1: information on like what their different properties cost, and then
Speaker 1: the AI knows what everybody is charging and can suggest
Speaker 1: that they charge higher prices right now. The way that
Speaker 1: this is supposed to work is that you, as a landlord,
Speaker 1: look out at what's publicly available about the prices of
Speaker 1: your competitors and look at like what your customers are
Speaker 1: currently willing to bear, and then try to set your
Speaker 1: prices and future price increases based on that. What Real
Speaker 1: Page is doing is a legal collusion, right, This is
Speaker 1: price fixing. It's just the AI is doing the actual
Speaker 1: active price fixing. The landlords are just sharing their data
Speaker 1: and paying a fee to the service. And so a
Speaker 1: bunch of states have tried to stop this because this
Speaker 1: objectively makes the housing crisis worse. I know, there's some
Speaker 1: annoying assholes who come out and be like, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: talk about anything but in increasing the supply of housing,
Speaker 1: and like that's that's idiot shit, Yes, we need to
Speaker 1: increase the supply of housing. This objectively hurts people. These
Speaker 1: programs subjectively increase the price of print, they do damage.
Speaker 1: We should be mitigating or making it impossible for businesses
Speaker 1: like this to exist. Anyone who disagrees is just being
Speaker 1: a dummy. New York passed law in October that banned
Speaker 1: the use of AI algorithms to allow landlords to do
Speaker 1: price fixing. There's a similar bill in the Massachusetts legislation's
Speaker 1: making its way forward right now. And this is fundamentally
Speaker 1: what a lot of the opposition to like state level
Speaker 1: AI regulation is about is that the landlord ward's basically uh,
Speaker 1: think that this is a great way to make a
Speaker 1: shitload of money, and tech companies like and we can continue.
Speaker 1: We got to make a shitload of money selling them
Speaker 1: the tools to do this, and states are trying to
Speaker 1: push back on this, and like, that's fundamentally what a
Speaker 1: lot of the impetus buying this executive order is is
Speaker 1: an attempt to stop people from making this even more harmful.
Speaker 1: There is some like in this that political article they
Speaker 1: quote from Kevin Donnelly, who's the executive director of the
Speaker 1: Real Estate Technology and Transformation Center, and he talks about like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: we're currently using AI to identify buildable lots and promote
Speaker 1: sustainable constructions so that we can actually like reduce some
Speaker 1: of the cost of housing. And all of these bills,
Speaker 1: could you know, undermine our ability to impure people's Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just fucking go like literally jump off a bridge, man,
Speaker 1: Fuck you. Yeah, no, we know that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: We have data on this, Yo, this isn't theoretical.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anytime a landlord, anytime a landlord says anything or
Speaker 3: to real estate developer that says anything that suggests the
Speaker 3: thing they want to do is lower rent they are lying.
Speaker 3: You can tell because they don't fucking lower rents unless
Speaker 3: like a global pandemic happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's a honey of this works. And this
Speaker 1: has been controversial. Trump, before putting out the EO, tried
Speaker 1: to encourage the passage of a bill through Congress that
Speaker 1: would have done the same thing as the EO right,
Speaker 1: and would have actually had like more force of law
Speaker 1: behind it, basically making it illegal for states to have
Speaker 1: their own laws regulating AI. That didn't pass because even
Speaker 1: Republicans don't really like that idea. For one thing, states'
Speaker 1: rights is still supposed to be a pretty big.
Speaker 2: Part of the party.
Speaker 1: But for another thing, there's like a lot of things
Speaker 1: that conservatives are really unhappy with in terms of AI.
Speaker 1: For example, it keeps exposing children to pornography and other
Speaker 1: things that kids shouldn't be exposed to. For another thing,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of American jobs that are going to
Speaker 1: be lost as a result of or potentially could be
Speaker 1: lost as a result of the AI slop automation of
Speaker 1: a bunch of industries. And so there's even a significant
Speaker 1: amount of resistance among Republicans this, which is why the
Speaker 1: bill didn't pass, right, and Trump when he announced this
Speaker 1: EO basically sat down with like a chunk of the
Speaker 1: conservatives who are more critical of this, and I think
Speaker 1: basically bullied them into getting on board and saying no,
Speaker 1: he promised us this won't restrict state levels to like
Speaker 1: improve safety for children. Right, there's absolutely like no guarantee
Speaker 1: of that, Like you just have David Sacks, it was
Speaker 1: Trump's top AI advisor saying no, no, none of this
Speaker 1: is about trying to stop state laws to make kids savor.
Speaker 1: It's just trying to stop state laws that will make
Speaker 1: rent less expensive. Yeah, there's Marjorie Taylor Green's come out
Speaker 1: against this. She's basically said that you know this is
Speaker 1: a violation of states, right, it's bullshit. Steve Bannon is
Speaker 1: in the same place he had a good quote I
Speaker 1: found in an article by The Hill. After two humiliating
Speaker 1: face plants on a must pass legis now we attempt
Speaker 1: an entirely unenforceable EO tech bros doing upmost to turn
Speaker 1: potus megabase away from him while they line their pockets,
Speaker 1: which is essentially accurate. Yeah, he's wrong, wrong about that.
Speaker 1: So all this is like pretty annoying and fucked up.
Speaker 1: We'll see what actually becomes of this. I tend to
Speaker 1: agree with Bannon that it's pretty much unenforceable. Like the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: the court battles that will come from this is just
Speaker 1: going to be expensive and time consuming. But I actually
Speaker 1: don't think this is going to work the way they want.
Speaker 1: This is this is Trump making it very clear that
Speaker 1: he has bought and paid for by the tech s
Speaker 1: end that he understands that he is hanging on by
Speaker 1: a thread in terms of popularity. One of the only
Speaker 1: things stopping it from getting stopping the situation from getting
Speaker 1: worse is that AI spending on data centers and ship
Speaker 1: is propping up the image of the economy, Right, that's
Speaker 1: what this is all about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this and this is something where he can
Speaker 3: simultaneously shore shore up is tech based and shore up
Speaker 3: his landlord base, yeah, which.
Speaker 1: Are like, yeah, it's great, two kinds of guys to
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump. Yeah, I guess there's an end here
Speaker 1: where I could. I wanted to make a note about
Speaker 1: something also related to AI, which is that there's an
Speaker 1: incredibly stupid article in Vox that came out this week.
Speaker 1: In that case, like literally the title is like, America,
Speaker 1: you've made it very clear that you hate AI, But
Speaker 1: what if it's the only way to restart the idea machine?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this this dipshit Colonnist's argument is that like, well,
Speaker 1: we're not running out of ideas and AI, like human
Speaker 1: beings can't come up with ideas enough to create growth
Speaker 1: at the level that the economy needs to be growing
Speaker 1: and in order to take humanity into the future, really,
Speaker 1: AI is the only way to generate more new ideas.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to look at, like what is this
Speaker 1: based off of? And I think I figured out what
Speaker 1: like the fundamental source of all of this shit is,
Speaker 1: which is back in twenty seventeen, there was a research
Speaker 1: which paper put out by the National Bureau of Economic
Speaker 1: Research by Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones, John Van Reenan, and
Speaker 1: Michael Webb. The kind of summary of that article reads
Speaker 1: as follows. In many growth models, economic growth arises from
Speaker 1: people creating ideas, and then the long run growth rate
Speaker 1: is the product of two terms, the effective number of
Speaker 1: researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range
Speaker 1: of evidence for various industries, products, and firms showing that
Speaker 1: research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply. Right,
Speaker 1: So basically, we're we have more people doing research, and
Speaker 1: we're spending more money on research, but that research is
Speaker 1: translating into economic gains at a lower level than ever before,
Speaker 1: right to the point where we're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to continue to make economic gains like we used
Speaker 1: to be unless something changes. And if you're kind of
Speaker 1: paying attention to this, you might notice that that study,
Speaker 1: which is the underpinning of that Vox article and all
Speaker 1: of these claims that we need AI for ideas, really
Speaker 1: is not actually making an argument that people aren't having
Speaker 1: more ideas. It's making an argument that it is harder
Speaker 1: to profit from ideas than it used to be right now.
Speaker 1: That is fundamentally different from people not having ideas for
Speaker 1: one thing, it's reducing an idea to something that delivers
Speaker 1: a return for venture capitalists. Yeah right, that's all an
Speaker 1: idea is in. This is something that makes money, and
Speaker 1: a lot of great ideas like the post office don't
Speaker 1: generate a direct profit. And obviously it's a net benefit
Speaker 1: to the economy that we have a post office, but
Speaker 1: the post office runs at a loss, right, which is
Speaker 1: why you have state funding for certain things, because they're
Speaker 1: just not going to be the kind of ideas that
Speaker 1: like a bunch of Silicon Valley investors want to throw
Speaker 1: money into.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 1: The other part of the issue here is just a
Speaker 1: very practical one, which is that a lot of the ideas,
Speaker 1: the great ideas last century that were like most correlated
Speaker 1: with massive gains and productivity, stuff like the introduction of
Speaker 1: vaccines on a wide scale, indoor plumbing and electricity on
Speaker 1: a wide scale phones. There's not ideas like that that
Speaker 1: are like that big and that much of a game
Speaker 1: changer left, right, the low hanging fruits, it's the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit has been picked. There's not another the telephone
Speaker 1: waiting out there. We already did that. It was the smartphone.
Speaker 1: There's not another indoor plumbing, right, There's not something that's
Speaker 1: going to be as much of a sea change for
Speaker 1: the economy and for the quality of human life as
Speaker 1: those ideas, because those were really big things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like like maybe maybe you could put us something
Speaker 3: like actually cleaning the air that we breathe.
Speaker 1: Yes, like, but again that's not profitable in a direct way, no, right,
Speaker 1: like you, Yeah, that's an idea that would have a
Speaker 1: change that big, but there's not a profit incentive for.
Speaker 2: It, right.
Speaker 1: We privatize the air, rob it right, Yeah, breathing fucking air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot I again, I find this, this
Speaker 1: whole discussion pattern, Like it's an example of the fact
Speaker 1: that like, people like this fucking box article who I
Speaker 1: don't feel like deserves to be named to this, have
Speaker 1: been using CHATGBT so much that they're no longer thinking.
Speaker 1: They're not really sentient in a meaning full way, right,
Speaker 1: Like when you write something like that, it's because your
Speaker 1: brain has been completely fucking cooked. I did find a
Speaker 1: good article, ironically, from twenty seventeen from Vox EU that
Speaker 1: is titled ideas aren't running out that they are getting
Speaker 1: more expensive to find, which is making a lot of
Speaker 1: the claims that like I've made, which is that, or
Speaker 1: that I've been bringing up so far in this which
Speaker 1: is that it's not that there's a lack of ideas,
Speaker 1: that it costs more money to do stuff like that
Speaker 1: now like the costs because everything's so much more complex.
Speaker 1: Idea the big ideas we're looking at, artist simple is
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing. They require a lot more computing power, they
Speaker 1: require a lot more people working on them. Right, Like
Speaker 1: we've plucked the low hanging fruit, and it ends with
Speaker 1: a paragraph I find kind of valuable here, returning to
Speaker 1: the oil metaphor, we are digging deeper into a trickier
Speaker 1: part of the rock.
Speaker 2: Of course, we could be.
Speaker 1: Wrong, and humanity may have just been shipping away to a
Speaker 1: particularly hard point that will soon give way, creating decades
Speaker 1: of cheap ideas. This is the hope of those who
Speaker 1: emphasize the revolutionary power of artificial intelligence and the singularity
Speaker 1: and accumulation of technology that triggers runaway growth at some
Speaker 1: point in the future. Although we all enjoy science fiction,
Speaker 1: history books are usually a safer guide to the future.
Speaker 1: In this case, history suggests that large increases in research
Speaker 1: effort are need to offset its declining productivity. And again,
Speaker 1: if you want to have the big ideas and the
Speaker 1: Star Trek future that all of these billionaires like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk pretend they want, what you actually have to do
Speaker 1: is be willing to put a lot of money into
Speaker 1: research and development without any promise of a profit. Your
Speaker 1: motivation can't be well, now we have to get a
Speaker 1: two hundred percent rate of return in our investments. Right,
Speaker 1: it has to be well, this would improve people's lives
Speaker 1: and make life more sustainable, right, like finding solutions to
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with climate and cleaning the air,
Speaker 1: Like dealing with lack of access to clean water, lack
Speaker 1: of access to basic basic medical care. These are not
Speaker 1: things where doing them means that your company gets an
Speaker 1: immediate profit and evaluation in the tens of billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's just not the way providing life saving aid to
Speaker 1: people works. But the net value to the global economy
Speaker 1: would be massive if, for example, kids weren't going without
Speaker 1: food and access to clean water and had better access
Speaker 1: to education, and thus we're able to go into fields
Speaker 1: where they become researchers and generate ideas that eventually turn
Speaker 1: into profit. Right, Like, these AI fucks aren't talking about ideas,
Speaker 1: They're talking about cracking the human mind, right, That's what
Speaker 1: they want to do. It's a good way to put it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that there's another thing we're saying
Speaker 3: here too. On there's a different, greater argument about this
Speaker 3: where he makes an argument that I think is also
Speaker 3: very compelling that part of the decline in the rate
Speaker 3: of technological change has been the extent to which everyone
Speaker 3: who was trying to do this stuff is just increasingly
Speaker 3: dealing with more and more layers of bureaucracy instead of
Speaker 3: actually doing the thing they're trying to do. And then,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a huge problem in academia where
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, so you have you know, you're teaching
Speaker 3: in academia, but you're also spending like a quarter of
Speaker 3: your time trying to get another job. You're spending another
Speaker 3: quarter of your time dealing with all of the unhinged
Speaker 3: whatever like accounting bullshit that your fucking supervisors have like
Speaker 3: or like like university management has like put upon you.
Speaker 3: And this is and this is something that's also true
Speaker 3: for government researchers, where there's just like this, you know,
Speaker 3: there's been this incredible increase in sort of the amount
Speaker 3: of bureaucracy they have to jomp through it like largely
Speaker 3: because of the right and because of all of the
Speaker 3: like weird shit they do, where like they hate government fundings.
Speaker 3: They're like, ah, everyone has to like justify their funding
Speaker 3: literally every ten seconds. And I think I think, like
Speaker 3: that's that's one of the other angles of this, and
Speaker 3: it's something that's only gonna get worse because this administration
Speaker 3: is just fucking annihilating the entire basis of American science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's killing it.
Speaker 3: The damage that they've done to the pipeline of people
Speaker 3: that would produce these researchers right with with ways that
Speaker 3: a suddenly like American science post docs just there's no
Speaker 3: money for it. There's no money for grad students. They're
Speaker 3: killing all of the pathways that would do this, and
Speaker 3: then they're going, oh, the only solution is the fucking
Speaker 3: tech boondoggle we've created to the problems that we created.
Speaker 3: I just annihilating the capacity to do science.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. It sucks.
Speaker 3: I hate them.
Speaker 1: If you want to email us. You can do so.
Speaker 4: It is cool Zone tips at proton dot me. If
Speaker 4: you want it to be encrypted, you should use a
Speaker 4: proton mataddress as well.
Speaker 1: They're free. All right, guys, I think that's that's the
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, haters, lovers.
Speaker 6: It's our lasted of the year.
Speaker 1: It's our last da the year. Well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll see if those pills come in, but yeah.
Speaker 6: But I hate you.
Speaker 5: Happy holidays, everybody, put a trans girl on your couch.
Speaker 6: Put a trans girl on your couch, love it?
Speaker 1: Or a bed I mean yeah, yeah, mattress one of
Speaker 1: those like chairs that leans back to where it's like
Speaker 1: basically flat. Yeah, not a lazy instance, sure, a lot
Speaker 1: of options in neutral lazy to Yeah.
Speaker 2: An inflatable mattress, why not? Yeah?
Speaker 1: When yeah? To bed a water bedded strong enough because
Speaker 1: they are heavy. Yeah, generally you're not allowed to have them.
Speaker 5: But yes, anyways, we reported the news.
Speaker 1: Arguably, we reported the news.
Speaker 5: It could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 5: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.