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Language: en
What's up, guys? To wrap up one of the
best years yet, I have put together some
of the most incredible advice that we
heard on Impact Theory this year. Hope
you guys have a great holiday season and
I will see you next year. Till then, be
legendary. Take care. Peace. Do you
think that Trump is um somebody who has
the elite view of like, hey, the right
people are in power. Let's make these
decisions for everybody else. or do you
believe that he actually sits outside of
that system and is actually trying to
help the everyday person uh in the way
that he presented himself while he was
campaigning?
>> Yeah. So, as far as my perspective on
Trump goes, it tends to do with the view
it tends to uh revolve around the view
that he is a businessman at heart and
that the focus of his um political
style I guess is deal making. Um, and
you know, I wrote a lot um in my book
about uh Trump's mentor uh Roy Conn, who
was um among other other things, the
general counsel to McCarthy uh during
the McCarthy hearings. He was also, you
know, a New York City lawyer uh that
represented a lot of unsavory figures,
including some uh tied to organized
crime, and also had the ear of Ronald
Reagan and top politicians in the United
States and sort of bridged um a variety
of worlds. and he uh very much uh
essentially taught Trump the art of the
deal as it were. And you know a lot of
his close cones close associates uh like
the Pope family for example uh were very
politically connected also connected to
organized crime arguably um but were
very much in the business of uh making
backroom deals uh and that that's how
you know power political power in the
United States functions. Um and so you
know fundamentally I think uh a lot of
what um Trump likes to focus on and
promote about his political style is um
around negotiations whether those are
diplomatic negotiations or negotiations
with businessmen that lead to uh big
number investments he can tout uh to the
public which is you know I think part of
the impetus behind his uh having the
project Stargate press conference you
know at the White House on his first
full
um you know at at his second term. And I
think that was all that's also kind of
consistent with what we saw from Trump
during his first term um as well. So
when you're sort of focused on those
metrics, I don't necessarily think um
that the focus is necessarily on how do
I help uh how do I help everyday Joe? Um
I'm sure that you know in his mind well
I don't really necessarily want to speak
for him. Uh but if you're, you know, of
the opinion that I'm going to tout this
big multi-million dollar investment in
US AI infrastructure for, for example,
uh perhaps he view he views that as
helpful for the American economy and
thus helpful for the American people.
And I think it is very likely that over
the next four years there certainly will
be some Americans that economically
benefit uh you know from Trump's
economic policy, but I don't necessarily
think that's going to be um everybody.
And I think you know generally um based
on what we've seen so far there's been a
lot of courting um of big tech
executives and and a lot of talk about
making the US the AI and crypto capital
um of the world. Um and how much of that
is necessarily going to translate or
trickle down to sort of refer to you
know reanite econ economic terms um you
know to the everyday American public. Um
it's really hard to know. Uh but again,
you know, I just want to go back to
someone like Eric Schmidt, for example,
who as I noted earlier had sort of an
outsized role in developing the AI
policy of the military intelligence
community. Uh he wrote a book called The
Age of AI with a with Henry Kissinger
and also I believe a professor from MIT
who I'm sorry his name escapes me um at
the moment, but basically that book
posited that essentially AI is going to
make a two-tiered society. There's going
to be the top tier of people who develop
and maintain AI and set and determine
what its objective functions are and
then sort of a a second class who uh
which we would assume is larger than the
first class. So they don't explicitly
say that uh but who AI acts upon and
eventually that that group uh will lose
the ability to un to understand and
really be able to conceive of um how how
AI is impicting their uh impacting their
lives and will develop some sort of
dependency on AI for things like
decision-m sort of leading uh to this
phenomena that they refer to in the book
as cognitive diminishment which I sort
of see as this idea of um you know we've
all heard it before if you use it, you
lose it. Sort of the idea of like mental
math. You start using a calculator or a
phone calculator or something like that
and it becomes more difficult over time
and eventually very difficult to be able
to do uh mental math in your head when
perhaps when you were in grade school it
was much easier to do that because you
were sort of you had to use that ability
regularly. And so they sort they
essentially argue that by not making
those decisions and outsourcing that uh
to AI, this particular class uh will
lose the ability to make those decisions
over time. And when you also factor in
uh that there's a lot of effort to sort
of outsource creativity, art and music
to artificial intelligence. Will that
have an impact on people's ability uh to
create? And what sort of impact will
this have on society? And you know,
these are things that I think sort of
get left out of the public discussion
and I don't think they're really on
someone like Trump's radar as a
businessman. He's focused on sort of the
bottom line, the number uh the success
of the negotiation and how successful it
it looks, frankly, whether it's to his
base or to businessmen he wants to
court, um or you know, other people,
foreign leaders, you know. Um and you
know, I I I I'll stop there, I guess.
No, that was great. Uh, so how do you
feel when you hear about AI creating
this two-tier system?
>> Oh, I certainly don't think that's
positive. I think it's sort of the
technocratic model that we discussed
earlier where you sort of have an elite
class that sort of set um, you know, the
system that will micromanage the masses
at the end of the day. I mean, they
don't explicitly say that um in the
book, but if you're familiar with
someone like Henry Kissinger, for
example, and some of his more
controversial views um on on the masses
and the public and some of his more
infamous quotes, you know, I mean, uh is
that a system that he um wants to
happen? I don't really know. He's dead
and so no one can ask him. But, um I
think it is kind of disturbing um in a
sense that
>> some of his more infamous quotes. I I'm
not I'm not super familiar with Kster. I
know who he is, but I couldn't quote
him.
>> Uh, well, he created a national security
memorandum, for example, that viewed uh
people that live in the third world
birth rates and and you know, in the
global south as national security
threats to the United States. Um, and
wanted to implement policies to reduce
uh their population size, uh, for
example, and sort of had what I would
argue was a eugenicist bent to some of
his policies. Um and he was one of the
mentors of course to people that have
become infamous in recent years like the
World Economic Forum chairman Klaus
Schwab. Um and um you know some of his
more infamous quotes that he's known for
refer to you know soldiers uh being you
know pawns of foreign policy essentially
sort of like you know people's lives are
just you know pawns on a chessboard for
the sort of the elite figures to move
around you know for for their benefit.
That's sort of the mentality as I see
it. um uh of someone like him, but
obviously he's been, you know, praised
as a model statesman and all of this
stuff and has uh mentored Trump in his
first administration, mentored Hillary
Clinton, you know, people on both sides
of the aisle. Um, and but I personally,
um, you know, I think the more you look
into someone like that and his
connections with sort of dubious
oligarchs like David Rockefeller going,
you know, significantly back in time,
um, you know, he's sort of someone that,
uh, promotes this idea of of a global
technocracy.
>> Okay. So, do you have the impulse to
want to see AI slow down or stop?
Well, I don't necessarily want to say
that I'm like a lite and we we should
all go back uh to the stone age or
things like this, but I think uh there
needs to be like an actual public
discussion on this, particularly on the
fact that our outofc control national
security state um and Silicon Valley are
have essentially been fusing over the
past few decades and what necessarily
that means um because a lot of people be
you know will say stuff well it's AI and
the private sector but when that private
sector company has multi-million dollars
there's conflicts of interest with the
national security state. I think that
should um you know be part of the
discussion uh necessarily and I think
also there needs to be a way to sort of
know um whether some of these algorithms
are hyped or whether what the company
says their accuracy is for example is
actually accurate uh before uh decisions
are made to outsource major
decision-making whether at the
government level or the local level or
really on any level you know to an
algorithm. So, you know, as an example,
uh during CO 19, uh the pre the governor
of Rhode Island, Gina Rayondo, sort of
gave a green light to this Israeli
company called Diagnostic Robotics, uh
to use, you know, the health data in the
state to predict, uh CO 19 outbreaks, uh
before they could happen, right? and
Gina Raando by the way
>> laws.
>> Well, uh I'm I'm sure a lot of those
were sort of suspended uh under the
emergency justification of CO 19, but
I'm not exactly familiar with the legal
or potential legal snafoos of that um at
the time. Or maybe they justified it by
alleged, you know, saying they d they
sort of took anonymize the data. I don't
really know. But the idea was to sort of
use that data to identify local hotspots
and predict outbreaks before they
happen. And so obviously if you know the
algorithm of this company predicts an
outbreak there would be sort of these
localized lockdowns and people would
lose their ability to uh engage in
in-person commerce and freedom of
movement etc. So you know consequences
that are pretty significant to the
people uh living there um and when I
reported on at the time as I recall but
it's been a few years but I do know that
the algorithm per the company was under
80% accurate. I think it was somewhere
in the 70s and so that's the company
right? So if it's not independently
vetted um and it this is sort of you
know company PR um at the end of the day
is that overinflated it's quite possible
right and so what if the accuracy of
that isn't really in the 70s it's in the
60s or near the 50s it's no better than
a coin toss right is it really worth
putting uh that kind of power in the
hand of an algorithm that isn't
necessarily going to be more efficient
and accurate but all this hype that's
been generated around AI as an industry
suggests that that has sort of created
this public perception that AI is
inherently um smarter than human
decision makers and more efficient and
more coste effective for example. Um, I
think these are kind of problematic
scenarios that need to be considered.
And I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer
or poo poo on on innovation, but I
think, you know, civil liberties do
matter. And I think people need to be uh
very mindful of that, especially
considering again the Silicon Valley
fusion with the national security state
and the national security state's
tendency uh to opportunistically whittle
down American civil liberties uh for
their benefit.
It's a really interesting intersection
that I clearly need to start thinking
more about. We will be right back to the
show in a second, but first I want to
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let's get back to the show. The way that
I would look at that, and this ties into
uh something you mentioned earlier, uh
during the inauguration of Donald Trump,
you had all these uh tech billionaires
there by him and it gave it certainly
gave me like, ooh, this is why people
are paranoid about oligarchy vibes. Uh
and I'm not super prone to that kind of
thinking. So, the fact that it hit me
like that, I was like, okay, definitely
it's good that people are being
paranoid. Uh but the intersection feels
like it's a very natural intersection to
me. So the reason that national security
would be fusing with technology is that
technology is going to be the front
where these battles are fought. And so
anybody that's seen, you know, the
however many thousands of drones uh that
China can launch and get to, you know,
dance like a dragon is very compelling
when you see it. It looks so cool. Uh,
and then you imagine, well, what happens
when 10,000 drones like that are able to
go over a aircraft carrier and each one
drops a uh reasonable size payload that
by itself would do next to nothing, but
you drop 10,000 of those uh little
somethings on that ship and you turn it
into Swiss cheese, you realize, ooh, the
way that we've been doing uh national
defense is not going to work in a modern
combat scenario. And so it is going to
be these tech guys that we're going to
need even if you just grant me that AI
is going to get really good at hacking
which there was a recent uh announcement
I forget if it was from Deepseek uh I
can't remember but there was a company
that was doing this where they wanted to
see um how well their AI was at hacking
and it was unbelievably good and so they
were doing it as a red team inside of a
company so they can say okay here's how
we broke our own systems now we need a
blue team that can come in and shore
these up. Uh but you're going to have to
have that. Like if you are living in a
world where one country has AI and
another does not, uh the country without
it will lose. And so to me, this feels
like an arms race we cannot afford to
not engage in. Uh and so it just becomes
a question of all right, well given the
stakes, how do we actually navigate
this? So I I would not want to pull
apart the national security apparatus
from uh the tech bros to be dismissive.
Um so what do you do? I don't know if
you want to stay in the lane of like I
just want people looking at the right
things or if you actually have an
insight there. Uh but I'd be very
curious.
>> Um you know I do prefer to stay in in my
lane as much as possible. uh frankly um
especially on sort of these uh sticky
stickier issues but I do have some
opinions. So um first of all um as I
referred to earlier with the national
submission uh commit national security
commission on artificial intelligence
and some of these foyad documents that
came out of there. There is the
promotion of the idea that essentially
the US needs to do what China has done
and and replicate this civil military
fusion model in order to win the AI arms
race. And sort of the argument inherent
in that is that in order to beat China,
we must become China even more than
China is. Um and and you know a lot of
the justifications
um you know around um China as an
adversary are related to how uh China uh
is not as um protective of civil
liberties as the as the United States at
least postures itself as being for
example and a major difference in the
value system between the China between
China and the United States and so if
you're willing to adopt exactly that
model. Civil military fusion in my
opinion is really not that different
than um fascism at the end of the day.
Um it's it's the corporatist model and I
don't think it's uh necessarily what
what Americans want. Um and yeah, there
is a trade-off and I think people should
consider it. Um, but again, I'm not um
in the business of telling people what
to think. But what happens if we go so
far out of a desperation to win an AI
arms race with China, for example, uh
that we completely surrender our the
value system that supposedly makes us a
freer, better society in the process. I
think uh that is complicated.
Um and I would also point to the fact
that uh you know transnational capital a
lot of that has enabled China's AI arms
race. There's a lot of cross-pollination
in these uh you know Chinese government
adjacent tech corporations um and the
United States uh you can look at people
like Larry Fank for example um who
definitely have a lot of eyes
to Chinese industry uh for example and
people like Steve Schwarzman um quite
similarly very much uh tied there who's
you know head of Blackstone and uh
they're both very close personal friends
of Donald Trump and also of course Fink
has ties to the Democrats um as Well,
um, and a lot of, you know, Henry
Kissinger, who I mentioned earlier, a
lot of top CCP officials have pictures
of them with Henry Kissinger in their
offices. They love the guy. Um, and
there was that effort, of course, to
open up China, uh, to to commerce and,
uh, partnerships with, uh, Western
companies, for example, um, you know,
back several decades ago. And a lot of
that involved um you know uh US capital
and and some firms like Beal for example
that were very much tied to the national
security state of Ronald Reagan for
example. A lot of top people that served
in his and top national security
positions under him were involved in
Bectal which was building a lot of the
infrastructure that helped enable China
to become uh this you know the power
that it is. And why is that not being
talked about? And I mean this is really
isn't exclusive to Democrats either,
though they often get rightly pointed
out for having some conflicts of
interest of this nature. Uh but someone
like Howard Lutnik, for example, who was
head of the transition team uh for Trump
and is his uh incoming secretary of
commerce um has the same his his company
he runs um has the same uh tie, arguably
a more direct tie uh to a Chinese
government majorityowned uh financial
entity that was a big scandal for
conservatives when Hunter Biden's
Rosemont Sena was also tied to it. But
there's been no conservative uproar over
this tie. Um, and you have to kind of
ask why that may be and why you have a
lot of um, these big tech people, Elon
Musk included, who has a major role in
the national security state of the
United States as one of the top
contractors to Space Force in the
Pentagon, for example, and Starlink
and all of these things. um had you know
through Tesla has a lot of ties to you
know Chinese commerce and and tech
giants that also have uh rather cozy
relationships with the Chinese
government as well. Why is that not
being discussed as you know a potential
national security risk if we do really
need to become China to beat China? You
see what I'm saying? like if it was
really that was really the key driver of
our issue, shouldn't we be scrutinizing
uh the ties of these oligarchs to both
China and you know some of and our own
national security state and you know
again I think
um if people are familiar with my books
and my work there is a scandal that
really uh exposed a lot of this uh that
happened uh during the Clinton
administration and was not properly
investigated at all. it's remembered as
as China gate and it was really of uh
you know sort of today is I would argue
misremembered as a campaign finance
scandal for the Clinton re-election
campaign but what was the sc what what
was the alleged bribery of the Clinton
re-election campaign meant to accomplish
and if you look at what these you know
forces gained what these what these
figures gained by sort of you know for
all intents and purposes bribing the
Clinton uh reelection campaign It was
facilitating um exports of sensitive
national security technology to China.
Um and a lot of that was done through a
company called Laurel uh which has uh
since uh become I think part of Loheed
Martin. And um the guy that that ran
Laurel at the time, Bernard Schwarz, uh
nothing ever happened to him at all
despite the fact that he uh helped pass
uh very sensitive satellites and other
military technology from the US uh you
know directly to the Chinese military.
um and nothing was done about it and he
was actually a major backer of Biden in
2020. Why was that not covered? Don't
you think conservatives should be all
over that story? And um you know, again,
this sort of um makes me concerned
because I think there's not enough talk
about um transnational capital in these
types of situations. And there's a very
urgent need to go back and reexamine a
lot of the past scandals of our national
security state China specifically
because as I note in my book uh the the
death of commerce secretary Ron Brown
and a lot of people at the ITA
department at commerce those were the
most people targeted as this bribery
scandal at China because the commerce
department oversees the export of
sensitive technology to foreign powers.
Right. And
um the fact that most of the employees
that knew about that scandal were all
essentially blown up in the same uh you
know aircraft accident and that Ron
Brown had a bullet hole in his head when
his body was discovered in the plane.
Why has that not been Well, it's true.
You can look at the evidence
>> um and it's absolutely there. And um
>> you know, why can't we examine this? And
shouldn't it be disturbing that the
incoming head of the commerce department
has a direct tie to the Chinese
government in the context of that type
of scandal of China and targeting the
commerce department specifically?
>> Is that Howard? Who are we talking
about?
>> Yes.
>> The ugly under the hood minations of the
world came up to the surface and people
are just like there's no way I'm going
to let you see how things actually work.
Um Drew, my producer who's just off
camera right now, hi Drew. uh has said
you'll never get the Epstein files. Like
he's been saying that from day one. H
what's happening? Give me the FBI angle.
>> Yeah, there's there's a um the truth is
somewhere in between the two extremes,
which is what so often turns out to be
true, right? So um
Jeffrey Epste was doing a lot of illegal
stuff on his own.
In the eyes of the justice system, a bad
guy doing bad things is useful. It's
helpful. That's so wild
>> because bad guys doing bad things are
almost always connected to other bad
guys doing other bad things.
>> And that opens up this access route,
this utility for the Justice Department
to say, "Oh, well now we have a smorgas
board of bad guys, but we only have
access to these bad guys through this
one bad guy here." So they created this
process called a CI, a covert informant
or a clandestine informant. The CI's job
is to inform and to gain and grant
access to a wider net of bad guys.
>> And this is specifically an FBI thing.
>> It's specifically a a law enforcement
thing.
>> Okay. So
>> So be CIA or FBI.
>> CIA is not law enforcement.
>> Interesting.
>> Yeah. CIA's job is is intelligence
collection. Not not
>> lawend to kill people.
>> They used to be more able to kill people
than they currently are. So law
enforcement falls under under the
judicial branch. Intelligence collection
falls under the executive branch. That's
why the president can do whatever the
hell he wants to with CIA, but the
president cannot do whatever he wants to
with the FBI.
>> Right? That's that's how it was that FBI
could could investigate the president
and how he decided to have a backlash
against the FBI. CIA, he just says no.
He just shuts off their budget and and
tells them he doesn't listen to them and
and stops using them. And that's how you
have the max the mass exodus of 2016
that you had at CIA during Trump's first
administration. So you have these two
different branches of government. One
controls CIA, the executive branch. One
controls FBI, the judicial branch. That
also means that Donald Trump can say
release the Epstein files and that
doesn't have any impact on the judicial
branch. They don't have
>> is Cash Patel that makes that decision
or someone else.
>> So they can they can be pressured into
acting when the legislative branch and
the executive branch both work together
in a checks and balance way. But like if
Pam Bondi and Cash Patel say we're
releasing it is there's nobody else,
right?
>> Not really. Yeah. They can they can
choose to do that on their own as long
as it it fits American law. American law
is dictated by the legislative branch.
So here's why I'm saying this. I'm
saying this because even if
our legislative branch votes to have the
judicial branch release the files, that
does not mean that they control what
gets released or where it's released.
So, the files might be released only to
the Senate Intelligence Committee or
only to a subcommittee in charge of law
enforcement, not to the American people.
You're not going to they're not going to
vote today and then tomorrow you're
going to have full access to every file.
They also might only release redacted
files because there's going to be lines
and details inside all of the files that
have law enforcement, intelligence, or
national security relevance. So, it's
all going to be redacted. You're already
seeing that in the emails that were
leaked recently from House members. Who
makes those redactions? The Department
of Justice makes those redactions. Why
do they make those redactions? Because
they're protecting other cases that
they're trying to close for criminal
conviction. So release the files. What
what's laughable to me is that they can
release the files and the average
American still won't see them because
they're not going to be released to the
public. They'll be released to
subcommittees. They'll be released from
the current kind of bucket of control
they're in in the justice department and
they'll be released to the legislative
department and then the legislative
department and the subcommittees there
will determine whether or not it should
be released to the public or it should
go right back to the judicial department
because we have to protect XYZ case.
Epstein as a CI was incredibly valuable
because as much as he did bad things,
the people that he had in his sphere of
influence did worse things in the eyes
of the law. This is an uncomfortable
truth that people need to understand in
the eyes of national security. A
pedophile is not that big a risk. Yo,
that sucks, but it's true. If you're
trying to protect a country, if you're
trying to protect national secrets, if
you're trying to protect our ability to
win a war against China, a guy having
sex with an underage child is not that
important. But when that pedophile is
connected to other world leaders, when
that pedophile is connected to
politicians that might be corrupt,
politicians that might be allowing
foreign influence in American policy,
now all of a sudden that person can be
granted amnesty in exchange for their
cooperation in advancing the cases for
all these other targets. That makes the
most sense in in any research I've done,
in any expert I've spoken to, in any
review of the evidence that we've gotten
so far on Epstein, that explanation
makes the most sense of any other that
the United States said, "Hey, you're
doing shitty. You're doing bad things.
Here's a whole list of things that we
can arrest you for and and convict you
for today." And he saw that list and
then they said, "Or you can cooperate
with us to bring down bigger fish." And
what's a guy like that going to say?
This isn't the mafia. He doesn't have to
worry about somebody, you know, whacking
him. He didn't think. So, he's like,
"Okay, I'll cooperate with you because
then if I cooperate with you, you bring
down some big fish. I don't ever go to
jail for the things that I have to do to
stay influential in my network." And now
I'm protected. Right? At the end of the
day, we all have two instincts that we
have to deal with. Our survival instinct
and our tribal instinct. And those those
are the two instincts that drive us.
Sometimes we're very survival based.
Sometimes we'll sacrifice our survival
to be part of a group. In that moment,
Epstein was like, I need to survive. I
need to take care of me more than I need
to take care of my friends, which are my
tribal instinct. And then life just is.
That's just how human beings are wired.
All of us have that same decision matrix
every day. And what do you think about
um was he exfilled by the FBI so they
could either protect their sources or
did somebody actually have him killed or
was this just a guy that was like I
don't want to go through the trial.
>> Yeah, I don't think he killed himself. I
I will say that
>> because of evidence.
>> What has been released to us so far when
I look at it, it just it doesn't make
biological sense to to be able to hang
yourself essentially off of a doororknob
at low at at a low distance from the
ground. It's a very difficult thing to
do. So it it just seems biologically
improbable, not impossible, but
improbable. And then even though I have
I have I have supported wealthy people
who have been convicted and are going to
prison, I I provide counseling and I
provide um training.
>> Oh [ __ ]
>> To sh to shape their mindset before they
go into prison.
>> Whoa.
>> Because they're going to come out of
prison, too, right? So I've I've helped
people in that way.
>> Okay. I've helped people in that way and
they all have that same thought that
Epstein most likely had where they're
like, "It's all over. My wealth is gone.
My reputation is gone. My family will
forever hate me. My kids are better off
without me. So, I'm just going to kill
myself in jail. I'm just going to give
up and never talk to anybody again."
They all have that moment and it's just
a mindset moment that they have to work
their way through. Without a doubt,
Jeffrey Epstein had a consultant like me
who came in and coached him on his
mindset. Without a doubt, his attorneys
would have done it for sure. He had too
much wealth behind him for someone not
to invest in that way for him. So when I
think of probability, probability is he
would not have killed himself.
Probability is even if he tried
biologically it wouldn't have been
successful. So then what did happen? Was
he killed in an organized criminal
activity or was he or was he killed as a
political martyr of some sort? But most
likely, most probable to me, he was
violently attacked. Whether they
intended to kill him or just intimidate
him, I don't know. But that seems the
more likely case. That's completely
separate from his role as a CI. If he
would have been discovered as a CI, he
would have been even more likely to be
killed. If he was not known to be a CI,
they still wouldn't want to release the
details because to release the details
of his role as a CI would be to
undermine the all the other CIS in the
world right now who are providing
information about worse bad guys than
them to the FBI. The promise the FBI
makes, the promise CIA makes to all of
their assets is we will protect you. You
will provide us information. We will
protect you to the best of our ability.
The best of their ability when they're
protecting a US citizen in the United
States is pretty high.
It is uh like this one is wild to me in
terms of um what what does it say about
the state of the government I guess or
just how dandy new that we've all been
we've all believed that we're good we've
all believed that we're on the right
side of humankind and we're a good and
decent government. Why?
>> When I watched House of Cards, it didn't
seem plausible. So, it was fun. I
enjoyed it. Very over the top. I'm like,
get out of here. And then Epstein
happened. I was like, oh my god.
>> Like, this might actually be like the
level of chicainery that's actually
going on. That That's where I'm like,
wow, this is really hard to metabolize.
Again, you have to look at those two
razors that we talked about, right?
AAM's razor and Hanland's razor. Is it
more likely that we only recently became
corrupt as a federal government? Is it
only recently that we became highly
politicized and and survival oriented?
Or have we always been that way, but the
advent of technology has made it more
transparent to the lay person? Which one
of those is more likely? Well, if you
keep if you take the most simplest
explanation, we've always been that way.
So it meets AAM's razor to believe that
we've always been this way. We've always
been this way. It's just that technology
has made it so that you and I can now
keep up with it at a faster pace. And
then if you look at Hanland's razor,
don't subscribe to conspiracy that which
can be explained through uh idiocy. Then
again, we've always been this way. It's
not that we've been able to keep a
secret. It's just that nobody's had real
time access into so much information
about what's happening in government.
We've never had so many leaks. We've
never had so much press interest. We've
never had so many channels to
communicate the information that we're
collecting. We've never had, like you
were saying before, um, podcast
journalism or social journalism or
community journalism, whatever, whatever
isms you want to call them. We've never
had that before. Everybody was too busy
working on an assembly line or trying to
scrape together two sticks to make a
light, right? We never we never had that
in the past. So, when I look through the
laws of analysis, it just confirms for
me what I learned when I was at CIA. The
average American has no concept of how
the government works. And the average
world citizen has no concept of how
their government works. And for sure
they have no concept of how the US
government works. The largest,
wealthiest, most militarily powerful
government in the world. You think that
we became that way by playing fair? You
think we became that way by by standing
on the moral high ground? That's not how
government works. That's never been how
government works. That will never be how
government works. The whole reason we
have a representative government is so
that we don't have to have blood on our
hands as the voters. We can elect
someone else to go do the dirty work.
>> Are we ever going to get transparency
into who Epstein was and what he did?
>> I don't believe we will. I don't believe
we will because it doesn't benefit our
national security infrastructure to tell
the true story. We might get answers,
but we'll never know if the answers that
were given are complete, accurate, or
truthful because every government knows
you have to give the people something to
follow. And then you that doesn't have
to be the truth. Just like what's
happening right now in the Caribbean.
Why do we have a military buildup in the
Caribbean? Because of Venezuela? Run
that through the two razors that we
talked about. It doesn't make any sense,
but that's what we're being told. And
because we're being told that, we accept
that. Nobody's questioning whether or
not our military presence in the
Caribbean is due to something else.
>> You think it's China?
>> That's what I believe.
>> We'll get to that in a minute. If you
were advising the Trump administration
right now, how do you get enough Epstein
file out there, lie or otherwise, that
people go, "Cool, got it. Check. Thanks.
We finally got the transparency that we
needed." You don't want people to say,
"Cool. I'm done." You always want to
have this red herring. This is the
definition of a red herring. A red
herring is is a useful tool that you can
use to to distract people. You want the
Epstein case to always be available as a
red herring. So, if I was advising the
Donald Trump organization, I would say
do exactly what you're doing right now.
Donald Trump, you tell the people
officially, I think that you should let
the House vote on releasing the files.
Even though the president as the leader
of the executive branch could do it
himself, he could tell the the judicial
branch to do it and and they would
arguably as commander-in-chief be
hardressed not to listen to him. But
he's not doing that. Instead, he's
making it the House's problem. He's
making it Congress's problem. So he's
like, "Hey, Congress, you do this thing
from the legislative branch and I'm
going to be the one that's the
figurehead saying the leader saying you
do the thing that's going to help the
American people." And then
simultaneously you're telling Cash
Patel, release whatever you need to
release that doesn't compromise current
investigations and anything that looks
bad on our current administration,
redact. Now Cash Patel, the leader of
the FBI, Pam Bondi, the the head of
Homeland Security, they can both go in
there and they can they can redact
anything that they that they decide
looks bad on the current administration
or is related to a current criminal
investigation and release that. And the
American people will say, "Oh, now we
have all the files, but what about all
these redactions?" And now the Justice
Department can always say those
redactions are critical for national
security because the stability of the
federal government, the survivability of
the current administration is considered
a national security priority.
>> Yeah, this is going to get weird. like
this has not been good for his
presidency and his inability to fix the
economy in a timely manner which I think
is impossible but nonetheless uh is a
double whammy. We we shall see
happening.
>> I think Donald Trump is also
>> he's a very practical personality. No
matter how you cut it, you can kind of
accept that there's a pragmatism when
you look at it through the lens of
Donald Trump protecting Donald Trump.
that survival instinct.
He's any any failure that he has in a
campaign promise
is something that he can distract from.
He also promised to not start any new
wars and he's gone back on that several
times, right? He's turning into a very
conflict-oriented president, not only
with Iran, but also with Venezuela. That
complet that goes completely against the
campaign promise. He's done an about
face on releasing JFK files. He's done
an about face on releasing Epstein
files. Those were also campaign
promises. Uh you you see him
trying to like trying to boost the
economy in traditional ways. The
traditional ways are not that different
from the way Biden or Obama tried to
boost the economy either. Even though he
tries to make it look different, he
knows that probability wise this is his
last term and coming out of this term he
wants all the benefits of being a former
president and he wants to shore up as
few risks as possible that carried over
with him into the presidency. So Donald
Trump's there to take care of Donald
Trump and the United States will be a
secondary benefit, but that's his
primary goal.
>> The election is existential now on both
sides. So, uh, Trump is obviously going
after his political rivals. If the
Republicans win, I would imagine that
whoever comes into office will pardon
Trump just to end all of that. Uh, I
believe he can't pardon himself, so
that's off the table. But if the
Democrats win, they're going to go after
him legally in a big way. So the bad
news is that becoming president is now
existential in office and out of office.
And this is why if I were advising
Trump, I would say whatever you do,
don't pursue Obama. That would be a huge
mistake because they will come after you
tfold. And then when it switches again,
they will come after them tenfold.
So anyway, we're in a super weird death
loop, but um talk to me about Venezuela.
So, China is the thing that I'm very sad
anytime people get distracted because,
uh while I would love to hold hands and
march into the future with China as an
ally, um but we not decouple, but we get
realistic about not letting anyone
control certain aspects of our way of
life. uh certainly not somebody who has
proven that they will very rapidly
become an adversary. Um what is
Venezuela all about? How does China
figure into this and what should we do?
>> I'll I'll answer your question directly
first and then I'll kind of backfill it
with why I think I think the way I think
I believe Venezuela is a red herring. I
believe that all of the Venezuela talk
and the Venezuela focus is not actually
the focus of the president, not actually
the focus of the Department of War as
it's now called. I believe that that is
all a red herring that's being given to
us as a pill that we'll accept because
we all kind of agree Venezuela's we
don't know anything about it. That's
what we all really believe. We don't
know anything about Venezuela except
Maduro bad
and we all hate drugs. So if you can
>> speak for yourself Andrew Bamante now
>> so if you can if you can affiliate
Venezuela with drugs then boom yeah of
course we're against it. Rah rah rah
let's let's blow up boats and let's show
American power off the coast of our own
country. I mean, who doesn't want to
cheer for that? I lived in Tampa. It
gives you a giant erection every time an
F-22 takes off and you're like, "Fuck
yeah, that's America, right?" Like, when
you're standing in the field and there's
Abram tanks that are driving by, the
whole world rumbles and you're like,
"Fuck yeah, that's America." Trust me, I
get it. I get it. And now we get to do
that off the coast of Florida. And of
course, Texas and of course Mississippi,
Louisiana, we're all like, "Fuck yeah,
that like we're awesome because we get
to do it here. We've been projecting
that power worldwide. We don't get to
rah rah rah when it's, you know, off the
coast of Israel.
But here it's different. So all of that
to say I believe Venezuela is a big red
herring. Now why do I believe that
that's a big red herring? When you look
at the actual evidence, the objective
realities of the claims that are being
made. We're fighting a drug war against
naroterrorisms or naroterrorists. Right?
The term narotist
has an actual definition, right? And
that definition for a terrorist has to
be the use of violence to gain a
political change. That's that is what's
required of a terrorist. They must use
violent lethal attacks in an effort to
force political change. Narotists would
just be drugfunded or drugreated
terrorists. That's the definition that's
out there for everybody to look up.
Well, the cartels aren't doing that. The
cartels aren't using violence,
particularly not violence against the
United States, to change politics.
That's where the argument comes from
recently that they're trying to say,
"Oh, no, Maduro weaponized cocaine. He
weaponized cocaine specifically to
attack Americans." Even if that was the
case, what's the political change that
he's trying to drive? Because that's the
important part about a terrorist. They
have to be driving a political agenda.
Secondly, only 15% of all the cocaine at
most only 15% of the cocaine that enters
the United States comes through
Venezuela. 100 of 100% of it almost is
created in Colombia. But then a small
fraction is sent through Venezuela and
then shipped up to um Puerto Rico where
it goes into the American postal system
and then it can be shipped all over the
United States. A small percentage
upwards of 90% of all cocaine goes
through Mexico. So why are we focused on
Venezuela? If we're trying to fight
cocaine, why wouldn't why wouldn't we
focus on Mexico? Why are we focused on
Venezuela? Doesn't make any sense in
terms of volume. Then you start to think
about other issues. What one of
Venezuela's top two military weapons
partners are Russia and China. Russia
historically, China more currently.
Venezuela also maintains one of the
largest amphibious assault forces in all
of Latin America. And guess who provided
all of their amphibious assault weapons?
>> China.
>> China. So if you really want to know
what an amphibious assault would look
like of China against Taiwan, you want
to get a look under the hood of what the
amphibious assault looks like in
Venezuela. What do their capabilities
look like? What do the weapons look
like? How would they use them? China's
number one trading partner is actually
Pakistan. So China's number one weapons
importer is Pakistan. Pakistan buys the
most Chinese weapons. But almost all of
the weapons that Pakistan buys from
China are focused on ground warfare and
airborne warfare, radar detection, uh
ballistic missiles, etc. that they're
using against India. It doesn't give us
any and Pakistan's a
we need to know about Chinese weapons
because our Pakistani partners are
probably giving us the information. But
we know very little about China's
amphibious assault capability. But
Venezuela would be our best insight into
that. Add into that mix the fact that
the Panama Canal was a major focus of
Trump during the presidential
administration because he claimed that
China controlled the Panama Canal.
That's not fully correct. The more
correct way of saying it would be that
China controlled the entrance and exit
ports of the Panama Canal. They were
predominantly owned by a Hong Kong
subsidiary. In March of this year, Trump
demanded that that Hong Kong subsidiary
sell a majority stake to US investment
company Black Rockck, I believe it was.
So then in August of this year that that
transfer actually happened. So it was
only in August, August 25th of this year
that the Panama Canal became majorly
owned by US investment firms instead of
majority owned by Chinese investment
firms. And then within two weeks after
that date, the first drug boat was blown
up off the coast of Venezuela. really.
So, I'm not saying we have smoking guns,
but I'm saying we have multiple verified
uh independent sources of information
that point to the fact that our conflict
in Venezuela actually isn't about
Venezuela.
>> So, uh the boats that we're blowing up,
are they us going, "Oh, these are narco
boats or these boats that China is
working with them to do a thing and we
want to keep sending a message to
China."
>> No, I I believe that they're actually
carrying drugs. And if you look at some
of the drug, not only the drug boats
between Mexico or between Venezuela and
United States, but even the drug boats
that are going to Europe, like they're
busted old boats. They're handmade.
They're leaky. They're they're they're
they're not
they're not um significant enough that
you would imagine they'd be worth a six
figure missile to blow them up,
>> right? But that's what we're doing.
>> Maybe it's five. Maybe it's a $50,000
missile, not a $100,000 missile that
we're using to blow up the boat. Either
way, it's a $50 boat. So, I do believe
that there really are drugs. I do
believe those drugs really are moving.
And I do believe that we really are
impacting the flow of drugs, but we're
impacting a part like a a fraction of
the 15% maximum of cocaine flow that's
actually coming into the United States.
If we really
>> I totally buy that. That's all a red
herring. But now I want to understand.
So, if this is really I think we're
already in a cold war with China. That
seems patently obvious to me. So in in
the rubric of this is a cold war with
China, why what are we doing blowing up
the boats? Is it just a reminder we have
these missiles? I mean, it seems
>> to consolidate our military in the
Caribbean
>> to justify sending them there.
>> Yeah. To justify sending our military to
the Caribbean because China not only
predominantly owned the entrance and
exit port for the Panama Canal,
>> they predominantly own mult Panama, not
Venezuela. So do you
>> It's that it's that part of the ocean.
Mhm.
>> But do you think there's a clandestine
battle that's happening that we just
aren't aware of?
>> Uh, so I think the answer to that is the
simplest answer is yes. My the book that
I wrote about my own experience with CIA
talks about the start of what we call a
shadow conflict with China, right? An
intelligence battle, an intelligence war
with China.
>> And the big difference between the Cold
War that you and I live through the tail
end of with Russia and
>> Oh, I lived through the whole thing. I'm
older than you, my friend. Not the whole
thing, I suppose, since it started at
World War II, but
>> but the big difference between the Cold
War with Russia and I don't know, we
should come up with a name for it. Let's
just call it the rice war. I'll be I'll
be racist.
>> Damn.
>> The rice war that we're dealing with now
first, everybody.
>> The rice war that we're dealing with now
is that during the Cold War, the United
States had no economic reliance on
Russia.
>> They were two completely separate
economies.
>> Yep. But now we have a major economic
reliance on our largest geopolitical
adversary. So it's not so easy to have a
standard cold war where we just turn a
cold shoulder and we put up an iron
curtain. Now we have to meet over rice.
We have to talk. We have to pretend like
we're friends even though we wonder
who's poisoning the rice, right? On both
sides. I kind of like this this