Kind: captions
Language: en
talk to me about what's going on at the
border that is uh that one's out of left
field it's pretty wild it's pretty wild
and the fact that it is simultaneously
an undeniable fact I mean you could go
visit it right and you could see it and
it's a it's a
mystery why would
anybody allow this to happen it it
violates all sorts of things that we all
thought were Beyond even needing to be
discussed right and they has to control
its borders that's part
of anyway you asked what's taking place
you want me just to describe what I saw
so um my son and I Zach went uh to
Panama and we traveled to the province
of Darion to the edge of the Darion Gap
actually we went into the Darian Gap um
but we traveled by car to the edge of
it uh the Darian Gap is a broken it's a
section of the Pan-American Highway that
has never been built the Pan-American
Highway runs from prudo Bay Alaska to
the southern tip of South America whoa
you can drive the whole way except for
the 60- Mile Stretch at the border
between Colombia and
Panama um what is there is a
Wilderness um there's a national park
and it is a extremely a famously
difficult stretch of land to
cross there are currently thousands of
people thousands a day being beckoned
across the Darian Gap largely by the
International Community which is
facilitating this massive migration MH
um some of the people who are migrating
are South Americans there's a lot of
people from Venezuela fleeing uh
economic collapse there um but there are
a lot of people coming from around the
world they fly into keto Ecuador the
reason they fly into Ecuador is that
there's no Visa requirement so they can
land in Ecuador without a Visa they can
move Overland uh into Colombia and they
can cross the Daran Gap into Panama so
what we saw was on the Panama side we
saw what I came to understand as two
distinct phenomena there's one massive
migration lots of South Americans lots
of people from elsewhere in the world
from the Middle East
uh
Yemen um people from
Haiti uh the they are housed in
encampments that
are um built in settlements that exist
in Daran already so people are walking
out of the Jungle they are walking into
these little towns that exist on the
edge of the Jungle these towns have had
refugee camps built up by the
International Community so the
panamanians aren't happy to have this
massive migration moving through uh
their habitat but they have no control
over it how's that possible well the
Panamanian border is supposed to be
controlled by the ca front which is the
Panamanian border Authority it's a is it
a separate entity yeah it's
a military police entity that is charged
with uh controlling the frontier and
they don't answer to the penem
government no they do oh they absolutely
do they're part of the Panamanian
government got it so then Panama could
stop this well see this is the thing we
as little people don't understand
international relations could Panama
technically stop it yes they could
technically stop it but what would
happen to Panama if they did presumably
explains why they don't so the
panamanians are not in a position to
override what whatever it is that wants
this migration to happen how much of
Panama's stance is public or and how are
you
inferring um that is a good question let
us put it this way the discussion of the
migration is not nearly as uh
substantial as you would
expect and in large measure what is
happening is the migrants are being
shunted North as quickly as possible
that from Panama's perspective the best
thing to do is to get these people on
their way where they don't become a
burden to Panama and so they are being
they are being shuttled through Panama
into Costa Rica and through all of the
countries up into North America all of
the Central American countries are
participating in facilitating this
migration for reasons that are not clear
um but I said that I come to understand
this two separate phenomena one of them
is this migration of people who when you
talk to them and we found many migrants
were forthcoming about both the trials
that they had suffered in the
jungle uh which are terrifying almost
all of them had been robbed uh young
women
were uh routinely
raped um people walk out of the Jungle
without their children children walk out
of the Jungle without their parents a
humanitarian disaster yeah the Darian
Gap is um a very difficult piece of
habitat to Traverse if you know what
you're
doing these people do not they've been
induced to try to cross uh the Gap with
no understanding of how to equip
themselves or what they're actually
going to face there and uh you know it's
the kind of habitat where you can SL
slide down a muddy Hill and break your
leg and that can kill you because it
prevents you from getting out um so it
it takes accidents and greatly enhances
their
lethality um but you've got this
migration all of the migrants who will
speak to us are economic migrants
they're all very clear about this which
means they're not eligible for political
asylum in the US though that is uh the
basis on which they are crossing our
Southern border but there's another
migration which is housed separately
which I found very
surprising um it is a migration that is
almost entirely
Chinese is
predominantly young men whether the fact
that they are of military age is
Meaningful or not is impossible to say
but what I can say is that unlike all of
the other migrants that we encountered
who were surprisingly open about talking
about what they were doing and where
they were headed and what had motivated
them to go the Chinese migrants who were
housed separately by the panamanians
they're housed in places that are not
towns uh interestingly they're housed
there's a camp called s vente which
secretary my orcus visited when he was
in Panama right before it was expanded
greatly um but the chines who are moving
through the San vente
Camp
are unwilling to
talk they give off a hostile
air and it's not clear to me why this
should be the case if they were for
example fleeing oppression at the hands
of the Chinese Communist party you would
expect them to be at least curious about
citizens of this country that they were
apparently going to start a new life in
that would be a natural thing and even
if they were afraid to talk because they
were afraid of what might happen uh if
word got back you would not get a
hostile sense you would get a sense that
they were uh conflicted or trapped and
couldn't couldn't talk but that was not
at all the impression they left the
impression they left was one of
hostility and
mockery and it
was decidedly
disturbing so I began to think of this
as an invasion moving in parallel and
being cloaked by a migration the
migration is real the migration is
alarming in its own right it is a
humanitarian disaster at the level of
what is happening to the people doing
the migrating and it is very definitely
being encouraged and facilitated by the
International Community which appears to
have the idea that migration is
inherently a good thing now I don't know
how anyone could possibly be that
confused but this is visible if you look
at the web pages of the organizations
that are doing the facilitating they say
this that Migra it is their mission to
induce migration they believe that
migration is
positive but that migration is cloaking
something else I can't say exactly what
that something else is but it would be
irresponsible not to consider the
possibility that it is um an
international
competitor taking advantage of our open
border uh
to arrange some kind of harm that will
be more easily orchestrated that way
than it would be on a battlefield okay I
know you tell your kids that um when
they have a hypothesis they need to
assign a percentage likelihood that it's
accurate what percentage likelihood of
accuracy do you give the invasion
hypothesis so let's be clear on what
that hypothesis is if that hypothesis is
that the Chinese Communist party is
sending people across our Southern
border with the intent to do harm to the
United States I would
say 60%
whoa okay um now there are lots of other
possibilities uh you know
does
spying fall under that hypothesis no I
don't think that is specifically to do
harm so so you think it's more than
spying so there's the 60% is like
proper
harm you know here's the thing I know
how crazy that sounds and well my my
final question will be around that like
so one of the early questions I asked
you was is there ever hypothesis so far
out that it's better not to even float
it out we've already had that
conversation um the what I want to
understand though with this is what
happened that gave you that much
confidence because I agree with you that
this is on the table as one of the
things that it very well could be and I
don't think you just said this but I've
heard you say this before which is
really powerful if you believe that
there is some element of financial
corruption in our system which I think
everybody agrees there's a lot of money
in our system whether we call it
corruption or not is almost a moot point
that there's a ton of money in our
politics money moves the needle here if
people know that from the outside would
they not leverage that to get what they
want so that could be paying a ton of
money to ensure that the migrants are
allowed in the country um but what I
want want to know is this is such a high
degree of certainty from somebody I
consider so cautious in their thinking
um but this falls into that bucket that
you're playing with more and more as you
got battered through the covid situation
it felt to me like you got I don't know
if frustrated or angry but you started
like making Bolder claims Bolder claims
and this one is the one help me
understand what are the building blocks
that make it up so we know they had
their own migration going in they didn't
act in the way that you expected them to
act they were hostile well first of all
let me say this is part of why I decided
I had to go in
person because had you already been
hearing this before you went and yeah
the the folks
who um who showed Zach and me this
migration had been sending materials for
better part of a year so I was quite
aware of what I was likely to see but it
made no sense and frankly I talked
almost not at all about it because I did
not want to find
myself broadcasting things that turned
out not to be what had been represented
to me I was very cautious about it and I
you know it was hard to justify going
it's not an especially safe place to
go um what was I going to see that I
couldn't deduce from a video but I was
very glad glad that I did go because the
physical relationship between these two
different
migrations and most
importantly
the
the approach that the migrants in the
Chinese C uh Camp had to us was
unmistakable it was hostile now why was
it hostile
it's hard to so part of the reason that
you find that number as high as you find
it is that given what I saw it is hard
to come up with other explanations for
it right were these people
fleeing
oppression that was inconsistent with
the way they dealt with us it did not
feel right now can I convey that to you
in a way that you would
have uh a degree of certainty about it
not really you know I don't think you
know me well enough to know what it
would take to trigger that circuit for
me um but here's the other
question we have a southern border that
is effectively open yep we are not doing
even the most basic due diligence with
respect to establishing who is crossing
that border and
why given that do you believe that our
antagonists abroad will take advantage
of that fact
I find that almost
certain yes so um I find the hypothesis
compelling but I thought you were going
to say like 7 to 10% um so let me lay
out the part where you and I agree and
then as the person that's just armchair
quarterbacking it I'll give you sort of
my take knowing I haven't been there and
so I really I'm just pulling the [ __ ]
out of my ass but uh
so I heard heard from enough analysts of
China that the Chinese diaspora is a
very meaningful thing and that some
percentage of the people in the Chinese
diaspora really view themselves still as
Chinese regardless of where they live
now this is just analysts that I've
heard speak this is not me forming a
firsthand account so I know that this is
part of my distortion on my lenses this
is not I don't trust this but in terms
of hypothesis being very unsure but it's
an interesting guess that warrants
exploration
so to your point uh governments are
going to do what they can to get a leg
up we are in a pure competitor
relationship with China uh China has
every reason to want to know more about
what we're doing as we have every reason
to want to know what China's doing
now breaking from that I will say it is
very possible that China is in a pretty
rough economic situation right now if
the housing issue there is as big as
some pundits are making it out to be
again no firsthand knowledge don't know
but certainly interesting I could see
not being of that culture missing cues
misreading cues so that they seem
hostile or whatever again they could be
throwing things you spitting I don't
know but uh that'd be pretty tough to
misread but if it were more of just a
body language refusal to interact
scowling that kind of thing um then well
well beyond that okay um give me the
craziest thing they did well I don't
know that any of it was crazy but
uh we attempted to interact with several
different groups at the San vente
Camp uh one
gentleman attempted to mislead us into
believing that he was
Korean
and uh michelon who took us to
Daran who has spent time in China um
tripped him up and revealed that this
was a deception at which point there was
laughter amongst the group
who uh had witnessed this attempted
deception and then following that there
was no willingness to talk about the
reality it wasn't that this had been a
practical joke on you know some naive
foreigners and that that broke the ice
right this was a deception that was
exposed and it led nowhere I also
believe that we
were um monitored in the camp so there
was a particular guy I was watching who
repositioned himself as we moved to
different places in order to witness
what was taking place there and I
believe he was keeping tabs on us I
don't know why that would be didn't
strike me
as uh a normal behavior for somebody who
is you know involved in a major
migration to a new Homeland it still
feels qualitative though so we have
qualitative feedback because I can so
you don't know this about me but my
background is actually writing so I
often ask myself If This Were a
character and I were writing them what
would have to be true for them to act
this way one could be I'm here as a spy
for sure or I'm here to do harm but
honestly if I'm coming to [ __ ] you up
the last thing I'm going to do is be
openly antagonistic I'm going to be
super friendly cuz I do not want you to
be queued into what I'm really doing but
if I have a dim view of Americans and
I've got some sense of I'm going to
America because I want
to bring my culture to another great
place and I want to spread the Chinese
diaspora and I have no idea what uh
inside of China they say about America
they can say lovely things I have no
idea but I know that like across Europe
it hasn't been a I came to England
because I want to embrace English values
it is in many cas cases I've come to
England and I plan to stake my values
and I'm trying to bring as many people
over as I can so that we can really have
our own at least Pockets where our
culture is the culture and given that
America hopefully still has that Vibe of
like yeah we want diaspora people we
want people to come here and make this a
cooler place now I think that we have to
reckon with that because I don't think
you can bring this many people over at
once I think we're going to have
problems but like I still like the vibe
of the Statue of Liberty give me your
tired we cuddled masses like I [ __ ]
love that Vibe anyway uh I can write a
bunch of backstories for these guys
where yes they're clowning on the idiot
Americans even though they're trying to
get to America now whether they're
fleeing China because China with my
archetype is not the kind of place I
would want to be or they're coming over
as an invasion I don't know the only
thing I would say is I can paint a lot
of scenarios where they
are probably still problematic
from a whole host of very non Sinister
nons spyy reasons but it could also be
exactly what you're saying I just would
have again I have not been there so I've
not seen the things that you see so I'm
in the DMT position again of I haven't
met the little guy uh but it feels me
with qualitative data that it
warrants a more cautious percentage well
the question is what would you think if
you had been there I and I might be way
more hardcore than you I might be 90%
don't know nobody has any trouble
accepting
that uh China's building
weaponry and so the point is it's not
beyond our thought process to imagine
that somebody might be preparing for war
with
us but for some reason this bargain hey
their southern borderers is open
can we do anything with that is it worth
sending in you know maybe maybe the
decision to utilize them hasn't been
made but the ideas it would be a shame
not to take advantage of that open
border while it's still open and who
knows how long it will be do you have an
estimate of how many Chinese have
crossed I believe it's tens of thousands
whoa It's a lot okay for a second let's
just pretend that the dark scenario is
the true scenario which you've 60% I'm
like 7% but whatever do you think that
we're going to have a reckoning like if
you send tens of thousands of people
that still have allegiance to the
Homeland and the Homeland wants to do
you dirty I don't even like thinking
like this this is interesting this is
triggering some World War II Vibes in me
uh which I'm not loving but let's finish
the thought experiment I get your friend
hates that but uh do you think we have a
reckoning coming with a
potential problem where the call came
from inside the house
I don't understand why this is
even tough because it seems self-evident
that an enemy would want to do this
given a manifestly open Southern
border you don't think anybody's going
to notice that they can send people over
it and utilize I mean how many years did
we spend taking off our shoes in
airports right I mean and the the
the absurdity of you know if you come
across the border if you come home from
Central
America you will be monitored they will
know exactly who's crossing the border
at exactly what moment you're doing it
right it's a whole different situation
you will have scrutiny exerted in your
case and in another case there's no
scrutiny that that is a mystery to me
how did that happen when I ask obvious
questions
like we have a corrupt political system
it's pay for
playay what is to have stopped our
antagonists abroad from having purchased
influence with which to get us to harm
ourselves isn't that the obvious
bargain if they can do it well in a way
where I don't realize that's what the
money is for
I think it's something
good yeah I could for sure I see a lot
of really bad ideas get a lot of energy
not saying I think this has happened but
I it certainly fits the incentive model
I I think the the thing that I don't
understand is that we apparently
spend I don't know how many hundreds of
billions of dollars
on the intelligence Community to think
way outside of the box and figure out
how a very clever enemy could possibly
get inside our system and compromise us
and we've left the most obvious
mechanisms wide open and to talk about
the what my assessment is that the most
obvious loopholes are being
utilized you know is like well do you
have the evidence for
that the evidence that we have
antagonists abroad and that we we have
people who never sleep because they're
concerned that those enemies might get
the jump on
us that evidence
exists I don't know what the reason is
that the southern border is as open as
it is I don't know why the International
Community is encouraging migrants into
the Darion I don't know why the Chinese
are housed separately I don't know why
the
Chinese appear to be facilitated in
their migration by their government oh
but there's one other thing I wanted to
mention to you and again this goes back
quite a number of years in fact this is
goes back enough years that I had in
fact forgotten it and it did not come
back up as I was looking at this Chinese
migration phenomenon in
Darion when the Chinese one child
policy was in full force I wrote a an
essay I was not a public figure I don't
know that anybody read the essay
but I wrote an essay about a
paradox there is a principle in
evolutionary biology that goes back to
Ronald fiser Ronald fiser realized
something important about sex ratios he
wasn't thinking about
humans and what he realized was that
although males and females differ
tremendously in how many offspring they
can produce in a lifetime that on
average given uh some very basic
assumptions on average they produce the
same number of Offspring and there is
therefore no advantage to producing
males over females or vice versa that is
to say a male might produce a thousand
times as many offspring as a female in a
given case but on average they produce
the same number so if there are too many
males you should produce females and if
there are too many females you should
produce males because you tend to
succeed better evolutionarily if you
produce the rare
sex now that logic should apply to
people and it should have applied to
China if you were a Chinese person and
you were going to only be able to have
one child and they were going to grow up
in a nation with an abundance of males
you should want to produce a female a
male might well not find a mate a female
would not only only be all but certain
to find a mate but she would have her
choice because females would be in high
demand so why I wondered all of these
years ago did that not cause the Embrace
of the production of females why did the
Chinese continue to produce excess males
and what I came up with was the sobering
realization that there was another
evolutionary force that might well be in
play which is that in world of lineage
versus lineage
competition that there might be a reason
to produce a generation with excess
males if you were preparing for
war that excess males actually are the
perfect substrate for lineage against
lineage violence because men who have no
reproductive prospects at home who are
sexually frustrated can be armed and
sent abroad with a desire to come back a
hero and that that would be a very
effective mechanism for picking up
territory the same process I described
you when we were talking about genocide
that if you want do that seem though
like it would be a it's the thing you do
when you find yourself a surplus males
it isn't the thing you set out to do
well I don't see I agree with you that
it would be a natural if you happened to
end up with Surplus m
but I don't see any reason that you
wouldn't have an evolutionary tendency
to especially in a culture that is as
farsighted as the Chinese have been it's
interesting I will say that there might
be
other hypotheses that don't require them
to be so calculated which seems tough to
get your whole culture like all you're
doing is applying the pressure you can
only have one child and the nation
Builds an army for you strikes me as
well not impossible strikes me as very
unlikely I also have a base assumption
that could be wrong but it's a base
assumption in my operating system that
China's not very imperialist so I think
that people will confuse their desire to
get Taiwan back with a and we want to go
get more like they're pretty like let
the world do what the world's going to
do like yes we want to be financially
invested so that everybody owes us one
but we don't want to take them over we
don't want to run their countries um but
they they want Taiwan back because
that's part of the original Vision so
anyway if you've got a nation that is
not Imperial in nature and they were
literally worried about people starving
to death which is why they said ah you
can only have one kid and so then you'll
get a brief burst of we want a mail
because the that's how you pass the
lineage on that's how you pass the cash
on like just give me a boy that's all I
want I have a feeling that if it had
kept going on they would have gone oh
that was a really dumb strategy
I now I want to have girls because this
balance is all out of whack but because
they end up nipping that in the butt I
think in the 90s so it only runs for
like 20 years so you really only have
like one generation to be like oh
terrible idea now so if it had gone on
longer and they kept like making sure
that they were only having guys then I
might be a little bit more like okay
maybe
but yeah I mean I I hear what you're
saying um
and the problem is that the current
governance of China is a departure from
the historical true uh so anyway I find
it interesting that you have a violation
of a known evolutionary principle The
Balancing of sex ratios seems to me that
this would have been obvious to an
individual um that even if the society
viewed uh male children in a particular
way that you could
calculate that for your own lineage the
chances of your child finding a mate uh
suggested that actually it would be
clever to have girls so I don't know to
me it's an open question and the fact
that we have uh what looks like an
invasion uh from what looks like one of
our principal I I don't like the term
enemy but looks like a compor competitor
antagonist abroad if you like that clip
check out the full powerful episode here
and I'll see you there