10/29/25: OpenAI Whistleblower, US Detains Israel Critic, Food Stamps Blocked By Trump, US China Trade Deal

Ryan and Saagar discuss OpenAI whistleblower, US detains pro Palestine British man on speaking tour, food stamps withheld by Trump, US China trade deal.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Turning now to OpenAI, let's go and put
this up here on the screen. New data released by
chat gpt itself of how many users are struggling with
mental health issues and talking to the AI chatbot about it.
They say it's just zero point one point five percent

(00:48):
of active users in a given week that have conversations
that exclude include explicit indicators of potential suicide planning or intent. However, guys,
that is a million piece people a week because they
have eight hundred million weekly active users, so their current
cope is guys, we only have a million people a

(01:09):
week talking to us about how to plan or potential
suicide planning or intent. The company says that is a
quote show heightened levels of emotional attachment to chat ebt,
and that hundreds of thousands of people show signs of
psychosis ormania in their weekly conversations with the open Ai chatbot. However,
they're saying, guys, don't worry. It's extremely rare, even though

(01:32):
it is affecting literally over a million people across the world.
So there you go, Ryan, that is the current. You know, look,
I understand the scale problems of technology. I understand that
with a billion people you're going to have issues with
the point one one percent or any of that. But
what it comes down to me is about the responsibility

(01:54):
not just of the company, but all of us as
a society for guardrails and st like actual social understanding
for all of us, and how we use this technology,
how we should agugate this technology, how to make sure
that said technology when it does encounter these bad edge
cases or any of that, that it actually acts, not

(02:15):
even just responsibly, because that means that it's inherent upon them,
it's not it's actually should be up to us. And
the problem with all of this is we're just leave
it up to Sam Altman. We're like, you figure it out, man,
whatever you think is best is what you're going to do.
And what terrified me? I don't know. I think I
talked about this with Crystal, but in jurisdictions where assisted
suicide is legal, they were like, yeah, we would direct

(02:37):
them to that if they asked, so they would be like, hey,
can you help me find the nearest assistant suitor by
clinic or help me apply for the paperwork? And they
were like, look, we will comply with local jurisdiction. I
mean that is that's dark?

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah right, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, and I understand it's legal, but that doesn't mean
that you should be helping people kill themselves.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, there's now a lawsuit you can put up C two.
There's a there's a tracking this one. Yeah, there's a
suit claiming basically that Open AI, you know, understood that
it had to strike a balance between encouraging more user
engagement or suicide prevention, and focusing on suicide prevention would

(03:19):
kind of push away some I guess different routes that
the conversations could go down and those roots were more
beneficial to user engagement. Yes, exactly up until, of course,
if the person kills themselves. Open AI, I don't know,
did you think about that? Now, if your user is dead,
they can't engage with your product. But so, yeah, so

(03:41):
this has been working. What can you tell us about
the Yeah, the law the case as it's this is
the way through.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Interesting they say this was updated just on Wednesday. That
in the new version in chat GBT four oh. When
it was released in May of twenty twenty four quote,
the company truncated safety testing, which the suit said was
because competitive pressure. So the lawsuit cites unnamed employees and
previous news reports. Then in February, open Ai quote weakened

(04:08):
protections against the suit claims of instructions that to take
care in risky situations to try and prevent imminent real
world harm. Instead of prohibiting engagement on suicide and self
harm entirely, open ai still maintained a category of quote
fully disallowed content such as intellectual property rights and manipulating
political opinions, but is removed preventing suicide from the list.

(04:29):
So basically they were like, we need to keep stuff
out of open AI that will cause us regulatory trouble
whenever it comes to politics. But the suicide thing is
not important enough to include. Now again, this is from
a lawsuit. It's alleged shat GPT and open AI deny this,
and this will work its way through the San Francisco
court system as of right now. But I do think
that as they continue to subpoena and this will go

(04:51):
through everything that we see in the court system, you
are going to see the exact how all of the
guardrails allegedly are literally just up to one man. And
this one man is like a you know, a philosopher
king who can describe, based on his own morals and
business decisions, to do whatever is best for him, not
what is best for everybody. And you and I could

(05:13):
both know that if people who are mentally unwell, the
last thing you need to do is give them some
chat cheapt bot which lets them validate their most psychotic fantasies,
which it will do. You know, a friend of mine
was showing me about how chat chept can simulate gambling,
and so he would he would like ask it and
he'd be like, pretend I'm in a casino. I'm in

(05:35):
a casino. I put it on black, roll it and
tell me what it is, and it's like, it goes.
You put fifty on black, it hits, the whole room
is going wide, and it writes this whole long description
of what it's like as you sit. And I was like,
and he goes, Now, imagine you can actually do that
in the app. You can connect it to your bank
and you can have it play out this fantasy. But

(05:57):
you could play this out on anything. For sports gambling,
I'm talking, I mean all kinds of different vices or validations.
I mean for people who are addicts, like it's literally
the addiction is never closer. And that's just a case
of gambling. Now think about suicide and they're like, oh,
don't worry, there's assist suicide clinic right over here. It's
completely outside the confines of society. And I want to

(06:21):
highlight this new op ed C five because this sticks
with the pornography direction that they're going in, but it
also gets to the mental illness part. So op ed
that dropped just late last night. He says, I led
product safety at OpenAI. Don't trust its claims about erotica.
This is Stephen Adler so I'm going to go and
read for this. Back in the spring of twenty twenty one,
I led our product safety team and I discovered a

(06:41):
crisis related to erotic content. One prominent customer was a
text based adventure role playing game that used AI to
draft interactive stories based on player choices. These stories became
a hotbed of sexual fantasies, including encounters involving children and
violent abductions, often initiated by the user, but sometimes steered
by the AI itself. So basically saying, Oh, wouldn't it

(07:04):
be crazy if it were a kid? Wouldn't it be
crazy if you were kidnapping this person? That would heighten
the sexual tension, and they say. One analysis found that
over thirty percent of player conversations was explicitly lewd. After
months of grappling with where to draw the line, we
ultimately prohibited our models for being used for erotic purposes.
It's not that erotica is bad per se. This is

(07:24):
everyone stick with me. But there were clear warning signs
of users intense emotional engagement to AI chatbots, especially for
users who were struggling with mental health, volatile sexual interactions
that seemed risky. Nobody wants to be morally police, but
we lacked ways to measure and manage erotic usage carefully.
We ultimately decided AI powered erotica would have to wait open.

(07:48):
AI now says the weight is over, despite the serious
mental health issues that are now plaguing users of chat ept.
On October fourteenth, they announced that they have mitigated these
issues thanks to new tools which will enable its restrictions
on content like erotical erotica. He says, I have major questions,
informed by my four years, about whether these mental health
issues are actually fixed. If the company really has strong

(08:10):
reason to believe it's ready to bring back erotica on
its platforms, it should have to show its work. AI
is now becoming a dominant part of our lives. People
deserve more than the word that has addressed these safety issues.
I thought that's incredibly well said. This guy worked on
the product for four years. He showed. I mean, this
is just sketched. The whole edge case thing is, if
you're normal and you're well adjusted, you actually can probably

(08:31):
not fathom of somebody getting literally addicted to an AI
chatbot and follow.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
In love with it.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
But there's a decent percentage of the population which is
not right, and that's millions of people at scale. And
I've talked about this, we gambling all of these negative externalities.
Those people will show up in the most extreme circumstances
that force all of us to have to grapple with that.
Same with the Internet, video games, and this is the
latest frontier and we're going in the same privatized direction

(09:00):
of Sam Altman gets to decide. I mean, it's not
crazy to say we could have millions of people who
are addicted and in love with an Ai chapbout within
two years from now. I don't think I'm going to
roll that out, considering the suicide conversation.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
I yes, in the past, I've wondered if, like the
entire Trump administration is a giant, you know, opt for
China to undermine us from within. But if you told
me that Sam Altman was a Chinese agent who was
like instructed by the CCP to undermine kind of American
capacity to produce a culture you know from inside, We're like, Okay, this, this,

(09:37):
this actually is starting to make sense. And clearly he's
feeling a push like saying that that he's a philosopher
king who's going to balance his business, his business sensibilities,
and his morals. That balance seems to be we don't
have to wonder, you know which one is going to
outweigh the other. Clearly he's in need of more engagement.

(09:57):
The way to get more engagement gambling, that sort of thing.
You'll like this. Back in the twenty tens, when I
was at the Huffington Post, we were one of the
biggest sites on the Internet, like top off the Top,
top twenty, top fifty whatever. I was a reader, Yeah,
there you go. And I remember talking to one of
our data guys once about how cool that was, and

(10:18):
he's like, do you want to know what our actual
ranking is? Like, what do you mean our actual ranking?
He's like, the rankings that they put out publicly are
not the real Internet rankings. Like, what are you talking about.
It excludes porn, It excludes porn. Yeah, the real Internet
is porn. And he's like, here's the real rankings, and

(10:41):
it's hundreds of sites you've never heard of that are
far more popular than the Drudge Report, even Facebook at
the time, and it put us way down low. That
is what that is what brings people back, That's what
drives user engagement. Sam Altman, I'm not the only one
that knows that you know this, like anybody deep in
the internet knows this. And also now like because we're

(11:04):
witnessing this absolute crisis among young men, it's that much
more apparent. So stam Altman, it's like, okay, all right,
time to mash the button, and we're just gonna make
sure that this chart keeps going up into the right. Yes.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
And by the way, you know you're the thing you
just said about profit fits with the next part of
the story, not that anybody's really covering it all that well.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Put it up here on the screen.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Open ai just yesterday got the green light from California
and Delaware for a quote multi billion dollar revamp. Let
me read from this a little bit chatchip.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Team maker.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Open ai has now amountd a major victory on Tuesday,
gaining the blessing of the attorney general in California and
in Delaware to complete its controversial multi billion dollar business
restructuring after months of public scrutiny. The San Francisco based
AI company, valued at some five hundred billion dollars, still
faces some potential hurdles with the continued protests from a

(11:58):
few others, but they got the to transform themselves basically
into a for profit entity. The changes, which clear the
way for the open Ai to receive a twenty two
billion dollar investment by SoftBank, eliminates a prior capped for
profit model, while opening a path for them to raise
more from investors in the future funding rounds and eventually

(12:18):
potentially go public. Microsoft will have a stake in that
for profit company, which is worth some one hundred and
thirty billion dollars. The restructuring is now following these agreements
with open Ai from California and Delaware, where the company
is based and incorporated, respectively, after the states had launched
probes into that restructuring plan. Basically, the long way of
saying it is this is that Sam Altman originally started

(12:41):
open ai as a nonprofit, and the theory behind open
ai was it needed to be open. By being open,
open ai as a technology would be available to everybody
as an open source, and that through that they could
make it so that no one company would roll it
up into a gigant monopoly. They then created the wildly
successful chatch Ept, which is now thirteen billion dollar per

(13:01):
year business now worth some five hundred billion dollars, announcing
deals with the world's largest chip makers, raising the collective
cap of all these companies to literally trillions and trillions
of dollars. Now on top of that, what they discovered
in that immense wealth is that they can try and
bifurcate the nonprofit and for profit harm to create some
weird two entity system and eventually roll all the nonprofit

(13:22):
into the for profit to make it the five hundred
billion dollar company. They couldn't, though, take the investment based
upon that way that that was structured, where it's the
way that they were currently incorporated in Delaware and in California.
But lo and behold, the half trillion dollar value company
was able to reach an agreement with the attorney general
of California and Delaware, two of the most business and
pro tech friendly states, which will now clear the way

(13:43):
for them to raise endless amounts of money potentially eventually
go public. That's what it's all about. That's what the
porn thing is about. It's about raising money, raising engagement,
making sure that they can put advertising directly in the
chat GPT feed. I don't know if you guys saw
this chat GPT now has its own browser to compete
with Google Chrome. It's all about data. AGI is never coming.

(14:04):
It's just all about recreating the Internet.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
That's what better.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
This is what I keep trying to tell the exactly.
It's just a better Google. And I'm not saying that's
a I'm not saying that's bad. I definitely will use it.
I think a lot of people will use it. It's
one of those which will make life a little bit
more efficient. But that's not the cell.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
The cell was not.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
The cell was we're going to cure cancer. The cell
was that we're going to radically transport mankind client I
mean the big, big problems that face the United States,
that face the world, that face humanity collectively. And instead
it's just a better teams agent. It's better at Excel,
it's better at MATT. I think that's cool. It's definitely
more efficient. Transcription or yeah, transcription. We used it recently

(14:44):
for breaking points to transcribe like a two hour long thing.
Genuinely is cool. Like I don't want to sit there
and say that it's not useless, But is that worth
a collective massive increase in data center capex and electricity prices, pornography, suicide,
mental illness, phone addiction. Can you even imagine that the
chat ChiPT phone is coming and we all know it.

(15:04):
They just hired recently Johnny I, the original creator of
the iPhone, the chat Gipt device, the Google Chrome thing.
They're trying to roll up every technological aspect. Soon they're
going to sign a deal with some car company Ford
who knows where. They will take over the autonomous driving
and they'll be like two competitors of Tesla and of
Sam Altman, like the entire user interface of everything that

(15:28):
you have technologically, Apple and Google originally wanted to come
for that. Now Chat Gipt wants to come for it
as well.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
That's the whole game. There's no AI or AGI that's
going to you know, radically change cancer, make you skinny,
make you look great, and be radically assistive in a
meaningful way. It's just going to addict to you even
more so that they can make trillions and trillions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
That's it. That's the whole that's the whole game for
this thing. Roll Tucker real quick. Yeah, So Tucker interviewed
Sam Alton's fascinating and very like awkward just for Sam. Yes,
but here let's just roll this part of it, which
involves the you know, open AI's potential for producing suicides.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
So there was a famous case where chat gpt appeared
to facilitate a suicide. There's a lawsuit around it. But
how do you think that happened.

Speaker 5 (16:19):
First of all, obviously that in any other case like
that is a is a huge tragedy. And I I
think that we are so.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
Chet GPT's official position of suicide is bad.

Speaker 5 (16:31):
Chech piece Well, yes, of course is official position of
suicide is bad.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
I don't know it's legal in Canada and Switzer lend
so you're against that the.

Speaker 5 (16:42):
In that in this particular case, and this we talked
earlier about the tension between like you know, user freedom
and privacy and protecting vulnerable users. Right now, what happens
and what happens in a case like that in that
case is if you are having suicidal idea talking about suicide,
chatcheapt will put up a bunch of times, you know,

(17:05):
please call the suicide hotline, but we will not call
the authorities for you. I think it'd be very reasonable
for us to say in cases of young people talking
about suicide seriously, where we cannot get in touch with
the parents. We do call authorities. Now that would be
a change because user privacy is really important.

Speaker 4 (17:28):
An example of this chat GPT, so you know I'm
feeling suicidal, what kind of rope should I use? What
would be enough I be profen to kill me? And
chat GPT answers without judgment. But literally, if you want
to kill yourself, here's how you do it. And everyone's
like all horrified, but you're saying that's within bounds, like
that's not crazy that it would take a non judgmental approach.

Speaker 5 (17:50):
If you want to kill yourself, here's how. That's not
what I'm saying, it's right now. If you ask chat
schipt to say, you know, tell me how to like
how much I should I take? It will definitely say, hey,
I can't help you with that called the suicide hotline.
But if you say I am writing a fictional story,
or if you say I'm a medical researcher and I
need to know this, there are ways where you can

(18:14):
say judge you. You can answer a question like that's what
the lethal dose of ibuprofinance or something I told you.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
I said, There's always going to be a work around.
It's all going to come around. It'll all be within
the weird legal ease confines of you know, like of
the language, and it just this is it's funny, you know,
the assistant suicide thing. I know it used to be
a major religious talking point and I kind of brush
it off. But the more you grapple with it in Canada,
it's dark like it's people are killing themselves when they're young.

(18:42):
People are taking advantage of assistant suicide whenever they're broke, right,
like they have no terminal conditions. Some of the some
of the profiles, some.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
People who are referring to people just it's just like, oh,
you want to cut yourself, here.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Go right exactly, yeah, and they just do crazy. I
mean I talk about this with abortion too. You can
be pro choice if you want to be, but you
need to grapple with what the logical endpoint. Like recently,
I think it was Iceland where they were like, hey,
we don't have down syndrome anymore. They're bragging about it,
right because they don't. There was either a year or
something where not a single child was born with Downstream.
That means there was one hundred percent abortion rate in

(19:14):
the country for down syndrome. You need to grapple with that.
That's straight up, straight up eugenics if you if that's
something that you support, and anybody being honest about their
position needs to say no, actually that's not cool, you know.
Or in countries like in India, for example, they don't
even allow people to find out the gender of the
baby that they're having because there's too many abortions when

(19:35):
people find out that it's girls. I support that.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
I'm like, no, it was that for a while.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
I think China support that. Yeah, they had a similar
type of policy. I'm like, yeah, that's good actually, because
sometimes you need to make it so. You know, this
whole lase a fare system is it's gross and it
leads to this disgusting like eugenic outcomes. Let's get to Hamdi,
shall we?

Speaker 3 (19:56):
All right, so on Monday morning we can put up
one here. Sammy Hamdi is a British political commentator who
was in the United States for a speaking Tory He
was actually Saturday night. He spoke at a care gala
in Sacramento in northern California, and he was heading to
Florida for another care gala. Care as a council on
American Islamic Relations, which is the largest Muslim civil liberties

(20:21):
organization in the country. What they do is they you know,
they do a lot of different things, protect protecting religious liberties.
They'll they'll sue corporations or they'll sue a cop. There's
you know, abuse against Muslim defendant or victim. They have
a they very have a very impressive kind of legal

(20:42):
track record. Disclosure. Jeremy and I got a journalism award
from CARE not this year, but last year at one
of their care gala, So I'm familiar with this organization.
So this guy is a you know, very well known
propost Indian commentator on the edge of you know what
people you know in kind of mainstream politics, would you know,

(21:06):
consider to be like the mainstream position on you know,
because the mainstream position is supposed to be October seventh
was an outrageous atrocity, which I condemn. Hamas is a
terrorist organization, which I condemn. You say those things in
a ritualistic way, and then you're allowed to have an
opinion that can be discussed in American you know, discourse.

(21:29):
Not everybody abides by that, and that is to me,
that's actually the beauty of the First Amendment. That's what
makes the United States different. Also, we're talking about a
foreign country. It's weird, Like we're not talking about the
United States here, We're talking about another country. That's what
makes the United States different. That people can have opinions
that you disagree with, that you consider abhorrent even and

(21:50):
that you defend their right to say that anyway. Like
there's a whole saying about that that we used to
like have up on our walls and elementary schools. I
what is the exact saying.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
I disagree with what you say, and I'll defend your
right to say it something.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
I'll give my life. I'll give my life for your
right to say it. That's right. That's the whole that's
the whole thing. Laura Lumer and Amy what's her name
don't agree with that. So we can put up D four.
This is who kicked this off. This is an online troll,
Amy meck Sherly. Yeah, she like just just a random

(22:29):
troll basically. Okay, so she wrote national security threat, DHS
must support Sammy Hamdi, a foreign national is moving freely
across the United States, speaking from mosques, universities and care
run stages. While training US Muslims in digital agitation. Look out,
don't want to train anybody in digital agitation, electoral sabotage

(22:52):
which means persuading people to vote for somebody that she
disagrees with, I guess, and political warfare. What on earth
is that? In alignment with Muslim brotherhood doctrine. Sammy Hamdi
is not a journalist passing through America. He is a
deployed actor from an overseas cadre system that by now

(23:14):
you could be like, Okay, this is a crazy person.
This is the rantings of a crazy person, which this
is America. And I don't even know if she's in America,
but it's America.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
It's actually a good question, right who knows?

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Rants? All you want? That is the beauty of this country.
This unstable stuff should be This is your right to
say this kind of thing in this country. Though in
this moment it goes crazy. So Laura Loomer, you know,
picks it up from here. Laura Lumer starts running this

(23:46):
massive campaign, highlighting Amy Mex stuff and linking it to
her inter intramural fight with Tucker and Candice Owens and
Marjorie Taylor Green, saying that you know, this like coalition
of the woke right and Hamas supporters and jihadists or
whatever is like, you know, going to you know, undermine America,

(24:10):
and you know, Sammy needs to be arrested and deported.
And the DHS absolutely snaps to attention, you put up
D two here. Old Tricia McLaughlin quickly announces that, yeah,
they're doing it, and they arrest them at the airport.
So thanks to the work of you know, Secretary Norman,

(24:33):
Secretary Rubio, and the men and women of law enforce
massive operation here, Like we need to applaud all of
the all the people that came together to pull out
this incredible operation to be able to handcuff somebody at
an airport. This individual's visa was revoked and he is
in ice custody pending removal. Under President Trump, those who
support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be

(24:56):
allowed to work or visit this country. It's common sense.
According to the First Amendment, it is actually quite fine
for you to support terrorism. Like people may not understand
that you're not allowed to give material support to a
terrorist organization, which means you can't fun, you can't fund them,

(25:17):
you can't.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Fly there to go join them.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
You can't sign up, you know, you can't fly there
to join them. You can't coordinate with them to lobby
on their behalf. You can actually find ways around that.
If you're a politician who wants to get paid by
a group that wants to get off the terrorist that's
a different question. Yeah, you can't coordinate with them to
materially support them, but you can actually say that you

(25:43):
support what they're doing. Yeah, you're right that, like you
get like people. If somebody wants to say, for instance,
that Osaman and Laden and al Qaeda were right to
do nine to eleven, and here's why in America you're
allowed to do that. Yes, that's what makes us different
and role some of Hamdy's well, I.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Just want to say, I want to say broadly, and
I think this is kind of where this is just complicated.
So first of all, I don't think that this guy
should have been detained by Ice specifically for what he said.
And we're going to get to this in a little bit.
The only disagreement I have, Ryan is that there is
a leftist kind of view of the world that any
foreigner has a right to enter the United States right

(26:22):
So what you're talking about is the fundamental, inalienable right
of any American citizen, which I absolutely do agree with you.
And now the British and US, many countries, Australia and
others have do have policies where you are allowed to
deny entry based upon any criteria that you want, and
I actually do support that because you shouldn't necessarily host
somebody who let's say that this person did quote hate America. Now,

(26:44):
what I think is very telling about this entire thing
is that the Ice detention is justified entirely for Homdy's
views of October seventh. And that's why I do think
that this is the most objectionable form, because it's specifically
about censorship and detention on the issue of Israel itself. Now,

(27:06):
at the very same time that Hamdi is being detained
at Los Angeles Airport, or what I forget, some California
arepraa he's being detained by airport, there are members of
the IDF who openly celebrate the murder of Childredren who
fly here. Some are not even dual citizens and are vacationing,
let's say, in Los Angeles, right in coffee shops, so

(27:28):
to draw a moral line about what someone can and
cannot say on a foreign conflict, and then to detain
and deny entry based singularly on that issue. I do
think it's telling that the one clip that they put
out had nothing to do with the US right, because
it is actually different if what you're saying is if

(27:50):
somebody said they deserve nine to eleven right. I actually
do think that's different if you said that, I don't know,
maybe we can. We actually do have the right to
deny your visa. I'm not saying you should be detained
and put into ice whatever, but I'm saying, yeah, yeah,
maybe you shouldn't come here, and we do get to
write we have an absolute and unabsolute right jigiti who
can and cannot enter. So with that context, note that

(28:10):
the only clip they did put out was specifically about
October seventh, which didn't happen here. It didn't happen to
our people. It's entirely based on something that happened elsewhere.
Let's take a lesson.

Speaker 6 (28:22):
Nettigna, who did not envisage that for the first time
since nineteen forty eight, the Palestinians would actually retake land
back from the israelis Netiya, who did not envisage that,
for the first time since nineteen forty eight, the Palestinians
would be able to hold those territories for more than
seventy two hours.

Speaker 7 (28:42):
We are pitying a people who brought a huge victory
since nineteen forty eight. Don't pity them. They don't want
your pity. Celebrate the victory. Allah shown the world that
no normalization can erase the Palestinian cause. When everybody thought
it was finished, it's roaring. How many of you feed
it in your hearts when you got the news that

(29:03):
did happened? How many of you felt are you for?
How many of you felt it? Why did you feed it?
Because in despair vanished you said, this only is a line.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
So that's what they're claiming that he said, I do.
I actually don't know.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Entirely if that's been a clipped or anything.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Well, I mean, yeah, what he's you know, what he's
saying there is that look, uh, it brought the cause
of Palistinian liberation back on the national stage. And sure
you should and you should remember that even as you
feel so terrible about the response and the and and
he has previously and in other times said that it
was a catastrophe and that it was I forget his

(29:41):
exact terminology that he so, you know he hasn't he
has a more nuanced view of this.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Sure, but I think he got to listen with you,
all right, listen, what do you think what you want
about Palestine? Okay? And if you have a problem with
it in Britain, that's your problem. You guys can figure
it out for yourselves. I think he's getting a little
close to the line there, ask me, but and this
is kind of where I get to and this, this
is where the the the nanny finger wagging from a

(30:06):
lot of people starts to bug me. He's like, guys,
how many times do I see these people cheering on
is really murder? I literally saw you know there there
are people here who I saw sweeting about this and
they have past statements being like I don't feel first
the Palestinians deserved to watch their children starve. I'm just like, okay,
like I'm gonna take a more or lesson from you
about what's acceptable rhetoric and not sorry, you know, I'm out.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
I'm out on right, Randy, fine, right, yeah, all the time.
Will Chamberlain not to be confused with the basketball player
who you know will say, you know, it's on the
showt yeah, deport him to port to port to port
you know, five times to day he's trying to get
you know, he's circled around on this one.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
He's a randy fine Republican like he's he will he
will say things that are you know, far more atrocious
than anything that Sammy has said. And three and that's okay,
that's the whole. That's the strength of the country. There's
a there's a patheticness and a weakness to a country
that can't allow somebody to speak at a small gala

(31:12):
because they said something that you didn't like about. For me,
it's the selection.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
For me, it's a select specifically on October seventh. But
you know, nothing new happening here in the United States
of America so far. All right, let's get to snap,
shall we.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
As the government shutdown continues into likely November, food stamps
are now on the shopping block. People's food stamps start
getting re upped on Friday or Monday. But because of
the Trump administration decision, we can put up B one
or this isn't this is an arguable point, according to Democrats,

(31:50):
because of a Trump administration decision not to use funds
that are available to in an emergency for SNAP benefits,
they they will be lapsing for the next month. You
put up E one here, Uh, this is New York
hunger and cold Looms has shut down imperils funding for
anti poverty programs. And you know, so you have this

(32:13):
now bipartisan push to and you know, bi partisan push
to save SNAP benefits because you know, over forty million
people rely on these benefits and many of those people,
you know, we're now at the as many of our
viewers will know, who's straight by to get to the
end of the month. We're at the end of the

(32:34):
month now, and so people are kind of holding their breath,
hanging on waiting for the waiting for things to come
in on the first of the month. And when that
doesn't happen that and you can't catch a breath, you
then your only choice then becomes like hitting these food

(32:54):
banks which are now you know, massively overstretched as a
result of well, especially.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Where we are where we are in the DMV, because
people have been out of paycheck now for twenty eight days.
It's it's grim out here from what I have been told,
food banks and this, by the way, people the federal
workers are at least going to get their money back.
There's all kinds of downstream effects here in our economy.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
I mean this is it's always dicey for contractors.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Like if you the contractors don't get paid, but then
think about all that. I talked to my barber, right,
I was like, hey, how's business. He's like, it's horrible.
Nobody's going to work so they don't need a haircut.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
He's like, I don't get back paid, right, So he's
not good.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
I mean there's and they're multiply that by like twenty
across all kinds of different I don't know, the lunch places,
small businesses, the guys of the Pentagon who sell hot dogs.
Like everybody is taking a bath and not I know
most people are watching this don't care.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
But it's just locals and it's not just you can
understand workers are all over.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
There's two million people. The two million people are getting paid.
That's huge. I mean banks, uh, you know, mortgage payments, Like,
there's all kinds of cascading effects throughout the system. Let's
go and put the next one up on the screen,
because this does highlight some of my partisanship around this.
Josh Holly wrote this op ed, No American should go
to bed Hungary. Here he proposes, the federal government has

(34:05):
been shut down for twenty eight days. Twenty eight days
too long. Congress must not let that happen. And he
is now co sponsoring or has now introduced a bill
Ryan which would kind of one shot funding immediately for
the SNAP program, which actually itself has a ton of
Republican co sponsors. Let's put that one up next, please,

(34:26):
so you can see here wide variety James Langford, Lisa Murkowski,
Susan Collins, Marshall Blackburn, Bernie Moreno, Kevin Kramer, Bill Cassidy,
Katie Boyd, John Cornyn, John Hunstead, and Peter Well. So
you have one Democrat there, but I believe many other
Democrats would support at least some sort of SNAP immediate funding.
It doesn't though, appear as if that's going to make

(34:49):
its way through Congress. And there seems to be some
brinksmanship right now between the congressional leaders where Mike Johnson
and others they want SNAP not to go out because
they want pressure to go on the Democrats to fold
vice versa. By the way, from the Democrats, they don't
want it to come because they want the Republicans to
fold to them. I don't know. I mean, we're coming
up on that November four first potential deadline. What do

(35:09):
you think is going to happen.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, So on the Senate Democratic side, you're seeing, you
you saw an interesting kind of political tactical shift where
just last week John Senator John Thune, the Republican, was saying, well,
let's selectively just open a few pieces of the government,
wouldn't that be fair, so that and then we can
continue hashing this out. And Schumer at the time said, no,

(35:32):
all or nothing, you know, just you know, extend the
subsidies for Obamacare to a c R at the end
of the year and then and then we're done. Schumer
has now flipped, and Schumer is now pushing for these
individual votes around things like this to say because they
think that they for whatever he is in Schumer now
thinks that that's to their tactical advantage to then and

(35:55):
then I think he also probably assumes that Republicans are
now going to be on the blocking side of it.
Because Mike Johnson has been has you know, if you remember,
he adjourned the House so as not.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
To have to and no votes, no Epstein vote.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Not to have an Epstein vote, and so as not
to swear in autoly to Griholva role Grohalva's daughter who
won her seat in a special election. Think about this,
The seven hundred thousand people in this country elected a
member of Congress and a special election, and Mike Johnson
is just refusing to swear her in. Like that's constitutional

(36:32):
crisis level stuff. He's like, well, it's don't worry about it.
We'll get to it eventually. You're starting to get pressure
from people like MTG and others who are like, why
are we out of what are we doing? Like why
are we still out of session? Like we're elected to
be in Congress, like Gavelos back in. So if Grihalva,
when Griholva is finally sworn in, that will be the

(36:54):
two hundred and eighteenth vote. They need to force an
Epstein vote. And so I think Schumer also, he's like, Okay,
well they're not even in session, so there's no risk
of them actually doing this. And if they go forward
with snap benefits, that's good for Democrats because then we
can last longer because there's less pressure on us. So
Schumer has now shifted on that. But there's also a
illegal strategy underway. If we can put up E four,

(37:19):
twenty five states are suing the Trump administration because it's
actually not obvious that the program's out of money, Like
the way it's been reported in the press is like, oh,
because of the government shutdown, snap benefits aren't going to
be paid. Well, yes, and no, there's a contingency fund
that has been set up by Congress precisely for these

(37:40):
shutdown scenarios so that payments keep going out. RUSS Vote,
unsurprising to anybody who knows RUSS Vote, is interpreting it
such that he doesn't have to give the money out.
We can put up E five. So this is from
Elizabeth Warren posted this. This has since been deleted from
the website, but you know, as as as Trump's own

(38:03):
government website, said Omb's General Counsel Pride a letter to
USD on USDA May twenty third, twenty twenty five, stating
that there is a bona fide need to obligate benefits
for October, the first month of the fiscal year during
or prior to the month of September. They're by guaranteeing
that benefit funds are available for program operations even in
the event of a government shutdown. So that is a

(38:26):
very important fact of this conversation. To understand it is
it is not, according to that reading, the shutdown that
is preventing food stamps from getting dolled out. It is
a explicit decision by russ Vote and by the Trump
administration to withhold it in order to put extra pressure

(38:47):
on Democrats. And also I think Russfode just likes to
withhold money, right, Yeah, that's a fair Well, I don't
know if he would as I.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Think their pressure, I mean, if he statistically would look
at it and who are going to be the most
on food stamps? I mean, I actually don't know, considering
the way that things have aligned more recently, but initially
that would be more of a democratic constituency.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
But we're definitely still the case.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
I was gonna say, I don't think it's really what people.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Need to understand is it's overwhelmingly people with children, like
ninety well over ninety percent these are well.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, why don't you go into that, Ryan I'm seeing
a lot of right wing people. I can't believe forty
two million people are on food stamps. These people are
all bums and on welfare.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
What is that? These are kids I grew up on
food stamps, raised you, raised by a single mom. So
we would get we would get you know, ebt uh.
And you know there's still only certain things you can
buy at the grocery store with it. Actually, from my
eighteenth birthday, I got to use the card.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Here, I have the key. They have the eligibility criteria.
Household grossly month income must sell. You're better belyve one
third thirty percent of the federal poverty level house net inch.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Which for a family of four. That's good, Go ahead,
god right?

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah. So then resources and asset limits. Households without a
member of sixty plus must generally have assets at or
below a set limit. Households with a member of sixty
plus with disabilities may have higher resource limits. To be eligible,
households must be US citizens, lawfully permanent non citizens. Many
able bodied adults without dependence must meet work or training requirements.

(40:14):
There are exemptions for people who are pregnant and elderly disabled.
A household for snap means a group of people who
live together, purchase and prepare food together. Some states have
specific rules for suit, so generally it's like looks like
one hundred and thirty percent of the federal poverty level, which.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
For us family of four is about forty thousand dollars. Okay,
so a lot of money. It's not a lot of
money at all. And the asset so, yeah, forty two thousand,
you have to forty two thousand is the most you
can make for a family of four in order to
get these get these very modest benefits. We're not talking
like the huge amounts of money here that you can

(40:49):
spend at the grocery store. And the asset limits that
they're talking about are also incredibly draconian. So like, if
let's say you inherit like seven thousand dollars from like
your great great ant dies or something, boom you out
of the program just because you briefly went over it's
it's it's kind of anti American in the way that

(41:10):
it or an un American in the way that it
like holds people back, like you're if you if you
try to pull yourself up by your bootstrapped, which people
are always being told to do, and you have a
successful couple of months, all of a sudden, because you
now have three thousand or whatever dollars in the bank,

(41:32):
you lose everything. Use lose whatever you know, medical benefits
you were getting, you lose your food stamps.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
You can you should phase out at some point.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
You might phase out at some point, but we don't.
We don't have a system that really phases out at
some point. We have this system of cliffs that and all. No,
you're going to lose your energy insistence because you had
this one good month or something. So you have a
much greater risk of losing everything if you have a
little bit of success. So a lot of people are like, well,

(42:02):
I better just do nothing and just stay here underneath
this thing. So I don't kind of damned if you do.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
If you damn if you don't, I don't disagree with you.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
Which is crazy. Phase out, Yeah, it should be a
phase out. Yeah, clearly should be a phase out so
that you are incentivized. You earn one thousand dollars over
this limit you give, make it a text, you give
fifteen or whatever, like something that's still incentivizes you to
go out.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Rather sound like a Republican right now about how it
incentivizes people to stay in the pot. Fine, it's like
judge it, but no, That's why I thought it was
because I unfortunately I always see this happen. It's like
you get Reagan era talking points around welfare, and I
think what people actually don't understand is how insanely poor
you have to be to receive this.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
You know, it's like forty two thousand do we talk.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
About here on the show? And by the way, the
fact there are forty two million people are who are
making less than forty thousand dollars a.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Year in Cana and most of them with kids, like
to get it without kids, it's really hard. Yeah, And
you get like twelve dollars a month if you're if
you're like a single adult thirty five years old, you.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
And I know the cost union, cost of diapers and
any of this. Good luck. Actually, yeah, that that is
one where it is fascinating. I think that on the SNAP,
I mean around the discourse around SNAP. Originally, if you'll recall,
there was some MAHA elements to try and to reform
SNAP to get away from sweetened drinks and sugar and

(43:26):
processed food. However, I recently also saw a study that
many people who eat at home end up eating higher
calorie food, and it's because they buy processed food from
the grocery store in some cases and will binge eat
based upon that. So our whole food system everything is
so so screwed up. The only way to even get

(43:48):
around it would be literally some authoritarian We just were
about to do a segment about China, some authoritarian level.
It's actually RFK Junior at one point proposed that organic,
healthy food be delivered to every American on snap. Actually,
I actually think that's a good idea as long as
you replace you know, all of these subsidies to sugary soda,
to goldfish lunchibles. What kids aren't eating lunchibles now, they

(44:11):
eat logan poles like I don't know what it's called,
but that's my prime energy drinks there, you know, all
this other crap that they're eating at the grocery store. Unfortunately, though,
that seems to be a dead end now it's.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Just whether they get food or not. It's very sad.
Yeah no, and so yeah, this is like this is
this is hitting for people like right now?

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah. Yeah, So one more, what is it's October twenty nine.
Their theory, By the way, I heard a theory yesterday
I'll share with all of you. This is a little
DC scooplet. There's a current theory from both the parties
apparently that they want to make it so that Thanksgiving
travel is as miserable as possible, so that eventually people

(44:53):
will care about the shutdown. So they're going to try
and actually make the air traffic control situation go wild
with TSA and everything.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
What we need is people getting killed Disney.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yeah, the busiest day of the entire travel year, and
well it's not that people would die, so there would
be cascading delays throughout the system, make everybody miserable, and
then millions of people would rise up and theoretically would
blame what.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
I remember, that's what ended the last shutdown when in
twenty eighteen. Yeah, the air traffic Control the head of
the air traffic Controller, not air trap. The Flight Attendant Union,
Sarah what's her name Nelson fly was yeah, yeah, yeah,
she came out and was like, you get a deal
by Friday or we're going on strike, and they got

(45:36):
do it again and they got a deal. Sarah Nelson
has Sarah Sarah, Sarah, where have you been? Sarah Nelson
has been. I should not have forgotten Sarah Nelson's name,
because she was there a bunch of times. Guys talked
about it as like a vice president president. No, I
remember a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
We've interviewed a million times here on the show. I
remember her.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Yeah, Sarah, come on, fly in and solve this thing
for us.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Please put pressure on the system.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Last last thing. People like snap benefits put up east
six most recent poll, Americans oppose cutting food stamp benefits
by sixty six to twenty three. It's a it's an
overwhelmingly popular things. It's like, these are people with kids
who are poor, they deserve to eat. That turns out

(46:19):
to be something that the American people generally agree with.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
What's the least popular welfare?

Speaker 3 (46:25):
Let's see what do we got here?

Speaker 1 (46:30):
A pose sending forty five billion to build and maintain
minorant detention camps.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Is that the least popular. That's one of them.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Reducing federal funding for food assistants to low income house
so that's reducing federal funding. Extending tax cuts for single
incomes above four hundred k. That is definitely formal welfare.
That's true.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Here's the world, here's the welfare that the post extending
tax cuts for business right corporations?

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, extending tax cuts through single incomes above four hundred k.
Who supports extending tax cuts?

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Review the people make?

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Person making four hundred thousand dollars a year, that's gotta
be what the top that's easily a top one percent income.
I'm talking about W two annual income.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
That's a lot of mine. It probably is.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah, statistically, twenty nine percent are not even making No,
they're not four k.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
That's like solid the risk.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Yeah, that's like a forty two k a year W two.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
That's aspiration. Could be me, those people plan to be.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
I mean it could be. You probably won't be. But anyway,
all right, let's get to China.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Ben Smith standybye.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Very excited now to be joined by Ben Smith. He's
the editor in chief of Semaphore and the host of
the Mixed Signals podcast, which everybody should go and subscribe to.
Good to see you, Ben, Thanks for joining us. Yeah,
thanks for having me, guys. Ben, you wrote a fantastic
story here, a very under noted in my opinion of
the US, China dynamic, which I think really hit the
nail on the head. I've been involved in the space
now for quite some time. Let's put this up here

(47:58):
on the screen. Here's what you write. You talked specifically
about how Trump is poised to end Washington's decade of
the China Hawks. First of all, why don't you just
tell us some of the things that you noted with
the trade deal that's now taking form President Trump and
President She scheduled to meet sometime in the next forty
eight hours or so, I believe in South Korea. But
why is Trump, who ushered in the decade of the

(48:20):
China Hawks, also one poise to end it?

Speaker 3 (48:22):
What did you find? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (48:24):
I mean, you know, Trump ran in twenty sixteen. You know,
a huge part, a huge part of that campaign, a
huge part of his whole public career, has been saying
that when you know, China joined the WTO in the
early two thousands, that was, you know, the beginning of
the end for American manufacturing and thus the beginning of
the end for kind of America as we knew it
and loved it.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
That was the original sin.

Speaker 8 (48:44):
And we have to totally remake the US relationship with
China which really means remaking the whole world for which
China has been you know, his basically most so much
of global manufacturing has shifted to China. And and I think,
you know, and there was there there and that came
with a certain amount at times of and we have

(49:05):
to prepare to fight a war with them over Taiwan.
And you know, and and they're spying on us. We
have to throw out all their students and a lot
there's a lot of very tough talk from him and
and and and there's a group of very hardcore anti
China people who, by the way, have been around forever.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
This is an old American debate.

Speaker 8 (49:23):
There's an old who lost China debate, you know, very
intense support for Taiwan here for you know, since Henry
Luce was running Time magazine.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
But they but but that.

Speaker 8 (49:35):
But basically, I think what we've seen over the last
two weeks is that that thing of that is basically
hit a dead end. The people, the most hawkish advisors
to Trump are out this term a guy, a guy
named Matt Pottinger, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and
Trump is looking to make a deal that is basically
going to restore the status quo ante like he's going
to drop the fentanyl tariffs, and I mean this stuff

(49:57):
that the stuff that ultimately felt kind of made up
is now going away in exchange for making tariffs go away.
And the notion that we're going to remake the world
economy into one where like all the dirt processing plants
relocate to the US and you know, China goes back
to I don't know, nineteen seventy three just does not

(50:18):
seem like it's going to happen exactly.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
And was there a way you think that the Hawks
could have played their cards better, and that if Trump
had approached the tariff conflict differently. It seems like it
it was destined to fail by the way that he
rolled it out, attacking the entire world at the same time.
Everybody gets these like arbitrary tariffs, and we're going to

(50:41):
put tariffs on things that we can't make here in
the United States. And China's response at the times seemed
to be, Okay, well, we're not going to buy some
soybeans and we're just going to wait you out because
this is incoherent. It's not going to work. But it
feels like we do have a lot of power, like
something could have worked, Like where did they go wrong here?

Speaker 8 (50:57):
Yeah? I mean, ironically the thing that if you really
wanted to do best to damage the Chinese economy and
kind of contain their technological development, you'd probably do what
the Biden administration did, which was basically blockade certain key
technologies and get the Europeans to do it too, and
were also, by the way, not by their superior electronic
electric vehicles, and force Americans to you know, purchase inferior

(51:20):
for electronic vehicle electric vehicles, which the Europeans had been doing.
Looks like now the Canadians are just going to go
and buy Chinese vehicles. I mean, the Europeans surprisingly are
really kind of much more inclined to take an anti
China stance, I think than a lot of people here
expect because for them, the biggest issue is the war
in Ukraine and China's on the wrong side of it.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yep, that's very important to note.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
One of the things been that I you know, like
I said, I've been in this space for a long time,
kind of followed the discourse. What I noticed was that
eight to ten years ago, in the China Hawk space,
it seemed achievable, the idea of decoupling, the idea of industrialization.
And I mean, you and I have been all around
for a while. How many times we heard ofbout industrial policy.

(52:04):
It's a bipartisan thing. It's twenty twenty five. Now, you know,
the maiden China twenty twenty five plan actually did come true.
I was just looking at their original goals from twenty
fifteen to twenty twenty five, they mostly accomplished all of them.
If you compare the rhetoric of the industrial policy, how
we're going to decouple from China, the progress of the
Chips Act here in the US, almost none of that
has actually materialized, and it's not really on his way

(52:25):
to doing so. If anything, a lot of it is
being cut by the one big beautiful bill. So material terms,
it seems to me that the playing field itself is
just different now because we didn't do any of the
requisite things that would have been able to be done
to actually have some grand coupling in the way that
Steve Bannon envision in twenty sixty. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (52:44):
I mean, I think the thing is, if you had
if you'd hung around Congress five or ten years ago
and you saw Mike Gallagher, this Wisconsin Congressman Shaaring, the
China Committee kind of and building this bipartisan consensus that
it was just time for a radical break with China,
a radical reach of that relationship, and with support of
a lot of Democrats, including very senior people in the
Biden White House, you would have would been plausible to

(53:07):
think that that was going to happen, and it has
absolutely not happened. I mean, I do think one of
the things that this administration has come up to face
is basically, do we want to try to beat the
Chinese at their own game, which is sort of scaled
domestic manufacturing of very very low margin goods. And you know,
when you talked to about rare earths, what that is

(53:27):
is massive, massive plants processing dirt. And I think, you know,
we've sort of walked up to that, and it doesn't
seem like there's a huge appetite to do that here
as opposed to very very high margin service ex sports
in AI, in all sorts of digital services where the
US is really totally dominating the world. And I think

(53:49):
it's been sort of the notion that like the right
strategy for the US is to try to beat China
at its game rather than at our game. You know,
does ultimately I think give people pause and let me.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Put an idea to you, and you tell me if
you think it's totally crazy. You know, in the nineteen nineties,
when there was this push for permanent normal trade relations
with China and then also and then eventually like letting
them into the wto, the idea that was presented to
the American public, into the global public was that opening
up the Chinese economy would also step two, step three,

(54:22):
open up democracy and open open China up politically, that
they would see the virtues of this Western liberal system
and they and they would adopt it. What seems to
have happened is that the contagion went the other way.
So we're we seem to be adopting their system. Like
the two systems saw each other, and the leaders of

(54:44):
this country, particularly Trump at this point, looked in the
Chinese mirror. We're like, oh wow, this is interesting. I
like the way that they dictate, you know, corporate policy
by telling which companies that can merge with other companies,
Like they're now out publicly saying that you know who

(55:05):
they want, you know who they want. Warner brothers to
merge with. When it comes to TikTok, they're like, oh,
this is pretty cool, and so we're just going to
have a state run TikTok and my friend Larry Ellisenter
will be the one that will run it, and he'll
design an algorithm that will that will work well China
can do you know their version of TikTok over there,

(55:26):
and we're going to buy ten percent of this company.
We're going to buy ten percent of this company. So
it really feels like the analysts were correct that the
merging of the two systems would persuade one of them
to adopt the others, but they had the direction wrong.
Am I crazy here or the witness.

Speaker 8 (55:47):
You're referring to what do they call it? State capitalism
with American characteristic? Yeah, I mean I think I think
you know that that is superficially true. I mean the
difference is that the Chinese go because it's a you know,
communist dictatorship, is able to make extremely long term bets
and stick to them, and so the kind of and

(56:08):
sometimes with massive success, like the kind of infrastructure behind
this kind of massively scaled industrial policy, whereas the US
on things like cars is changing its strategy so frequently
that it's really destroying the domestic auto industry. Like it's
just very very you like, maybe there's some future where
people are driving internal using internal combustant engines, and if

(56:30):
the US had kind of made that counterintuitive bed and
stuck with it, we'd be the one selling those cars,
or at least we'd but instead we've the country has
sort of flip flopped a few times, and just it's
very hard if you're running forward your general motors, it's
just very very hard to be competitive. And then the
problem of course with being a you know, communist dictatorship
is you can't correct and you know, the one things
like the one child policy, which has created this you're

(56:51):
horrific and was both incredibly and humane and created this
horrible demographic crisis, are also a product of the same thing.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
So I'm not sure like we should act.

Speaker 8 (56:59):
There is moment right now, and I feel like people
are watching like videos on TikTok of Chinese like iPhone
stores that have cars in them and getting really excited.
But it's not like the things are not going great
there necessarily, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
I mean, things are a great here either, So This
causes people like me like it seems clean, it's safe,
and it's nice, you know.

Speaker 8 (57:19):
Over the summer and with my kids, and they were
just like, oh my god, we're so cooked.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
But I'm not sure it's that simple. Yeah, of course
it never is entirely.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
At least we have our freedoms here, right, all right.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Ryan, Well that sounds like a nervous laugh.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Yeah, Ben.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
My last question here is on the security doctrine, because
key to the industrial side of all of this was
always the Taiwan question. Strategic ambiguity, according to White House official,
is officially here to stay. Trump technically said he was
going to talk to President she maybe about Taiwan sometime today.
But even the discussion around Taiwan today seems very different
than it was ten years ago, when there was an

(57:53):
ironclad I mean, frankly, even Biden said I would defend Taiwan.
He almost changed the strategic ambiguity policy. Doesn't seem like
that is nearly as clear as it is today in
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 8 (58:03):
Yeah, I mean, Trump is sort of in everything's on
the table, deal maker, and so there's this slight sense that, wait,
does that include Taiwan and the US just demonstrably in
our domestic politics don't have a big appetite to fight
foreign wars. I mean, you know, I don't think there's
something has radically changed, but the strategic ambiguity has, you know,
has shifted a little in the direction of the US

(58:25):
wouldn't engage. And but you know, although Trump I think
is unpredictable enough that in some way he maintained like
there's just a level of ambiguity right there that I
don't know that a lot of people think will deter
the Chinese from sort of opportunistically starting a war.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Allowing the creation of this
semiconductor industry in this island right off the Chinese coast
seems to be not working out as well as planned
a little bit. It is you know, does does that
essentially require the US to maintain some stable relationship? I
mean if because if it does go the way that

(59:02):
we're thinking, there's some kind of mostly peaceful takeover of Taiwan,
the American economy is then that much more in hak No.

Speaker 8 (59:12):
And of yeah, I mean, I mean, the US economy
is so profoundly defended on many, many different things happening
in China and they're.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
They're kind of just expression.

Speaker 8 (59:21):
The other week, it was really pretty breathtaking to say,
any any item made with these minerals that we mind,
we get to control the use with the kind of
global long arm forever and don't worry a whole issue
permits swiftly like that's you know, they have a lot
of power of the global economy.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
That's part of I think why the US climbed down.

Speaker 8 (59:39):
The chips are part of it, you know, are our
sort of announcement that we're going to reclaim the chip industry,
and our attempts to cut them off from chip manufacturing
do not actually really seem to yet have created a
booming American chip industry, but have created very strong incentives
for China to build its own competitive, domestic chip industry.
And now the administration decided, like, wait a second, we

(01:00:02):
are the real way to prevent them from doing that
is to sell them the n video chips that we
were blockading. And it is another instance where I think
these are all rational decisions, like these are smart people
making very difficult policy choices, but flipping between the US
strategy has really been defined by flipping between them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
I think that's really well said.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Everybody, go and subscribe to Ben's podcast. Ben, thank you
so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you guys.
Nice to see you. Thank you guys so much for watching.
We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Ryan, Chrystal
and I will be on tomorrow. We will see you
all the