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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through
Friday that's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. Right now, Washington is swirling with UFO chatter
as many are eagerly awaiting an intelligence report that's supposed
to be due out sometime in June. Top senators, Pentagon insiders,
and former CIA directors have all been weighing in on
the subject. But that hasn't always been the case. UFO
(00:49):
talk usually got you in trouble or got you strange looks.
But we're seeing more leaked video and reports from pilots
who are trained to be out in the field seeing
a lot of crazy stuff that they can't explain. For
more on how UFO sightings went from jokes to national
security concern, will speak to Mike Rosenwald reporter at the
Washington Post. A lot of this really dates back to
(01:10):
sort of the mid nineteen nineties. Senate Majority leader Harry
Reid is invited by a friend to go to this
academic conference on UFOs and he's intrigued. He's from Nevada,
that's where area fifty one is, and he keeps an
interest in this going for several years. And then another
friend approaches him who has a real healthy interest in
(01:31):
UFOs and he's got a ranch in Utah, apparently where
lots of weird paranormal things happen, and he apparently gets
a letter from some kind of intelligence officials saying, Hey,
we want to check out your ranch, and then Read
finally says, you know, we should do something on this,
and so he calls in some of his colleagues to
a secure classified room at the Capitol and he says,
(01:54):
you know, he wants to get some money appropriated to
the Pentagon so they can study this. And he gets
to two million dollars, which is, you know, obviously a
drop in the bucket when it comes to Pentagon funding.
But they established this group internally to look at it,
and they begin collecting a series of reports from military
pilots about these strange objects that they are seeing, which
(02:18):
you know, in the sky and and on radar, which
have a lot more capability than they have. And eventually,
a few years ago, a few of these videos leak out,
the Pentagon confirms them, and more and more people start
to get interested in this, and and this draws the
attention of former CIA directors who come out and publicly say, hey,
(02:41):
we don't know what this stuff is. It's weird. We've
got to figure out what it is. And then, incredibly,
as part of former President Trump's Pandemic Relief Package and
Appropriations Bill, the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Democrat Mark
Warner from Virginia, gets a provision in there basically saying
that the Director of National Intelligence needs to coordinate with
(03:03):
the Pentagon and release the report in one days which
is due next month, detailing everything every intelligence agency right
down to the FBI, detailing what they have on these
unidentified flying objects. And from Mark Warner and from Marcar Rubio,
the Vife's chair of this committee, they have couched this
(03:24):
in national security terms. It's like, hey, there are these
things flying around in the sky that are doing these
incredible things. We don't know, what the heck they are.
What if it's Russia, What if it's China, What if
it's really is some of being extraterrestrial. Everybody's pinning this
now into a national security thing. What if it is
another country with some new technology, And so this is
(03:44):
where the conversation is going. So, I know, people get
hyped up about UFOs and aliens, but that's probably not
what we're gonna be hearing about when this report eventually
comes out. We're gonna be hearing about national security implications
with all of this. Yeah, that's true. Though some former
ci A directors have said some really eyebrow raising things.
John Brennan. John Brennan, who was a very obviously well
(04:07):
respected UH intelligence career intelligence official and ran the CIA,
he says that we shouldn't just assume that we're living
here in this world, whatever this world is alone. Maybe
there is something out there that needs to be explained. Yeah,
I think one of his it's a bit presumptuous and
arrogant for us to believe that there's no other form
(04:28):
of life anywhere in the universe. And he says some
of this stuff that we're looking at could come from
a different form of life. You know that right there.
Obviously he's a privy to knowledge that we don't have,
and that really starts sending people's head spinning with all
of this stuff. It really does. And and it's it's
interesting that we've had this pop cultural thing for so long.
(04:50):
But in other countries, and I'm hearing from many people
in other countries today, these things aren't treated, you know,
as a political ticket to the looney bin as as
I called it. They're taken seriously in many other countries
in ways that we haven't been taking it seriously. There's
such as UFOs settings in the United States. These these
settings are everywhere, um and then there are there are
(05:10):
things that can't be explained, you know, but other countries
treated in a different way. Are we seeing these types
of reports from military personnel in other countries because if
it was just happening here, then maybe that leads more
to saying it could be another country infiltrating our airspace.
But if it's happening everywhere, then maybe something larger could
be at play. The UK has had similar UFO task forces.
(05:34):
There have been other countries that have looked into it.
South America people are hoping that as as part of
this report that is supposed to come out from the government,
that there will also be references to perhaps other intelligence
gathered between friendly countries on this topic. So you know,
there's a lot of hope behind this, this report that's
supposed to come out, and one of those things is
(05:55):
what do other countries know and what have they shared
with our intelligence community. Michael Rosenwald, reporter at the Washington Post,
thank you very much for joining us. It was a pleasure.
Thanks so much. This past week, Florida Governor Rhonda Santis
signed a big Tech bill aimed at cracking down on
(06:16):
social media giants like Facebook and Twitter for deep platform
and conservatives. The bill makes it illegal to remove candidates
for office from their social media in the lead up
to an election. It also makes it easier for the
Florida Attorney General and individuals to sue big tech if
they feel they've been deep platformed unfairly. This bill will
most likely be challenged in court, so we'll see how
(06:37):
all that plays out. For more on this, we'll speak
to Anna Sabio's reporter at the Miami Herald. Governor Rond
Santis has been talking about this for a few months
now he started making a big deal about this issue
back in January when he was talking to a group
of conservatives that in Texas UM and then he asked
slawmaker to really cracked down on the tech companies, which
(07:01):
you know there is bipartisan support that maybe there these
companies are too big, but what there is no bipartisan
consensus or there's still questions in them joining the First
of all, can even do this? And second of all,
what is the intent in the motivation behind this proposal?
And like you said, you know that the proposal does
(07:22):
take aim at social media companies cog PLoP political candidates
for either statewide office or local offices, and it allows
these condidates if they are removed for whatever type of
content they post that violates the terms of agreement for
those companies, they can seek compensation from the company and
(07:44):
see them for up to two hundreds two thousand dollars
to day. Can they even do this? I mean this
is where a lot of the legal challenges are gonna lie. Obviously,
you're compelling speech onto private companies. You know they have
their terms of service. If you're breaking them generally, that's
that's the rule you're breaking it they can d platform you.
So there's a lot of First Amendment stuff going on there.
(08:05):
And then can they regulate these companies that operate across
state lines? Just because it applies there in Florida, what
it means that it applies somewhere else. These are where
all the legal challenges are going to be stemming from.
And then it is pretty narrow. I guess in that
sense that it is only for political candidates. It's just
doesn't open it up to free speech for everybody, which
(08:25):
is something that a lot of conservatives feel that they're
being targeted unfairly by these big tech companies. It does
offer some recourse for for everyday flurry and I guess
you could say, but the toughest penalties or toughest provisions
are in favor of candidates who are being de platformed.
But like you said, you know, there is still a
(08:46):
lot of questions whether Florida will be able to enforce this.
You know, there's language in the bill that says that
this is the intent of this state, but it can't
trump state law. And hear what this state of saying is,
you know, we deem it to not be good state
RHN de santis as you mentioned, had been talking about
it for some time now, especially after President Trump was
(09:06):
taken off some of these platforms. De Santis himself though,
was kind of taken off a little bit too. In April,
he did some type of YouTube panel discussion. They removed
that video because they said it violated some of the
misinformation policies that YouTube had, right. That was the round
table during the pandemic. It was in the heat of
the pandemic when there were all the discussions being held
(09:29):
here in the state. He would he would regularly hold
round table discussions and one of those he invited some
health experts who you know, violated YouTube, COVID medical and
misinformation policies, and to Santi's defiantly held another discussion with
the same experts a few months later, and he started
promoting some smaller tech companies, like of the likes of
(09:50):
Parlor If you Will, right, but they're more fable by conservatives,
and it's called I believe Rumble is the video platform
that is more alternative and alternative to YouTube. So we're
seeing a trend of him just trying pretty hard, not
just the policy or attempts to create new policy that
could trump sate Wall or put ENTI react, but you're
also seeing him asked and just promoting other types of
(10:13):
alternitive media that he uses, not silencing the conservative voices.
I've had on some of your colleagues from the Miami
Herald to talk about different things that the governor there
is doing. He is a rising star in the Republican Party.
A lot of people are saying he might run for
for president former President Trump doesn't. So the question is
(10:35):
what does this type of action do for the national conversation?
Are we expecting other states to pick us up? Because
as they said in the beginning, you know a lot
of conservatives field they're being targeted when it comes to
free speech, right. I mean, Florida always pecked himselves as
a leader in the nation, right he's been using the
still is uh, you know, this is the first the
(10:56):
nation and everyone's going to follow suit or among But
there are other states that happened, not quite like Florida
with sense for shure, but there are other states that
have targeted internet companies. Because Congress has been pretty flow
to act um, so we are seeing kind of you know,
state action for certain things. But I believe Florida is
(11:18):
um the first one to target censorship, um the way
that he did in this bill. And you know it's
one extra thing that he can take he keep expected
to um, you know, being good standing for reelection next year.
He's a popular government here in Florida. And you know
(11:39):
there's a lot of things that he got done during
the regular legislative session that just ended his May. It's
a sixty day session where he got this big tech bill,
and he got an anti riot bill, he got a
voting bill, he got um, you know, he's just name it.
I mean he even got a teacher but innesses for
(12:01):
for at least some um, some teachers. Uh. So there's
there's a lot of things in his legislative goody bad
if you will, you can just pretty much take it
to the road and you start promoting his agenda and say, hey,
I got these things done and these are issues are
really popular among the bays of his supporters. And so
(12:22):
you could argue that it's not only going to benefit
him here for a re election in Florida, but could
potentially put him in a national scene. And he takes
to Fox scenes all the time, and he can raise
that agenda at a national level and test the Waters
if she could potentially run for the White House. Anna
Sabio's reporter at the Miami Herald, thank you very much
(12:42):
for joining us. Thank you. We've been seeing a lot
of volatility with the cryptocurrency market lately in the past
few weeks, especially for bitcoin. China has been one of
the key factors in these ups and downs. China recently
took some actions that will likely ban all bitcoin mining
there pretty soon, about all bitcoin mining currently happens in China.
(13:08):
Last week, they also warned financial institutions not to participate
in crypto transactions. For more on just one piece of
the volatility in the crypto market, will speak to Tim Deschant,
tech policy reporter at Ours Technica. The latest news comes
out of a statement that was put forth by the
Financial Stability and Developing Committee that's part of the State
(13:28):
Council there, which is kind of like their cabinet, and
there they said basically, almost verbatim, that they were going
to crack down on bitcoin mining and trading. There are
a number of reasons for that, but the one that
Data lists first and foremost is financial stability. They kind
of view it as a commodity as opposed to a currency.
So they're worried about people gambling on that. So how
much actual bitcoin mining is done out there quite a bit.
(13:51):
So the most resinoustment that I saw pegs at about
happening within the countries. So if all that processing power
comes offline, or even a portion of it, that's going
to have a significant impact. You know, you mentioned kind
of some of the concerns from the Chinese government when
it comes to uh, the volatility of it and everything.
They also have other concerns about money laundering, trafficking, smuggling,
(14:14):
and even the energy use that it takes to do this.
I've seen videos online of people, you know, kind of
showing off their bitcoin mining things, and some of them
are huge warehouses even and they get super loud because
they're just a bunch of computers constantly running. Tell me
a little bit about that those concerns. That's a big
probably a big part of what Chinese concerned about. Two.
(14:36):
Though they didn't state at the top in the statement
that they put out from the State Council, it's something
that they've floated time and again again. Because the mining
is done within the country, especially in coal heavy regions
like Inner Mongolia, where power is cheap because it's on
cheaply mind coal. But as a result, you're seeing some
bitcoin facilities drawing down fifty megawatts, which is easily the
(14:59):
amount of production that you see from a coal fired
power plant. So I'm sure that pollution concerns are high
on their list because China has one of the most
energy intensive economies right now, and if they're gonna reach
their goal of hitting zero by having the world's bitcoin
processing happening within their borders, does not make that look
very likely. I always love the comparisons of this. Takes
(15:22):
as much energy to run a whole country, basically, and
the bitcoin network demands so much energy that it uses
as much power as the Netherlands does to maintain its
normal operations. So when you hear things like that, you think, man,
that is an outstanding output of energy that they're using.
And Tesla figures into all of this stuff with bitcoin
as well. Earlier in the year they said they were
(15:44):
going to make a big investment in bitcoin and allow
purchases of Tesla's with it. Then they took that back
and cited the energy and carbon footprint as concerns about this.
And you mentioned in your article to how the bitcoin
cost of a Model three and the carbon diox explain
that to us a little bit. So if we were
to just look at the actual production of Tesla Model three,
(16:07):
it takes just under nine tons of carbon dioxide to
produce that and operated over its lifetime assu when you're
driving about a hundred thousand miles. When Tesla announced that
you could buy a Model three with bitcoin, the amount
of energy embodied within that bitcoin purchase was about four
hundred tons, and when they canceled it, it was over
five hundred tons. So you're looking at carbon footprint that
(16:29):
is vastly more significant in the purchase of using bitcoin
than even just in the production of the car. In fact,
it's more than the lifetime carbon cost of a fossil
field powered vehicle. So from a marketing perspective, it didn't
seem to make a lot of sense for Tesla to
continue accepting bitcoin. So I should say they still hold
quite a bit of bitcoin, a's kind of a reserve
(16:52):
currency of their own. So what does all of this
due to bitcoin to the cryptocurrency market? As we start
seeing China try to back out of some of this
on multiple angles regulations, who knows of the United States
will try to put forward some type of regulations in
the future as well. I mean, what is this do
to the cryptocurrency market. As you said earlier, you bitcoin
(17:14):
kind of foreshadows what happens in the rest of the market.
You may start to see some splits. If Bitcoin gets
a lot of attention paid to it, maybe some of
the others had split off and be able to navigate
the waters a little bit differently. In terms of regulation,
You're starting to see that. In the US, the i
r S announced that any transactions over ten tho dollars
need to be reported, and several government agencies, Department of Justice,
(17:38):
Community Futures Trading Commission, and i r S are looking
into suspect transactions that went through one bitcoin exchange known
as Finance. So you are starting to see things turn
that way in terms of like the mining and stuff
like that happening within China. If that were to be
shut down, chances are you're going to see those computers
pop up somewhere else. They might appear in nearby count
(18:00):
tres like Mongolia or Kazakhs done, or they might be
shipped out and sold elsewhere, possibly popping up in the
United States. UM, the amount of money that these people
have been invested in the hardware is pretty significant, and
I'm guessing they'd want to see some return on that.
One last question on China and all this because we
had also heard that they're trying to do some type
of digital currency for themselves with their own dollar. The
(18:22):
you on, UM, how does this figure into that? Well,
it would certainly give them a window into what's happening
with that currency in a way that they don't have
right now with bitcoin. UM. You know, bitcoin isn't necessarily
of anonymous. There are ways to track flows between wallets,
and then when people go to cash at in UM
for currency like the dollar or the lawn, that's when
(18:45):
you can start to see, um, who's holding some of that.
But UM, they don't have nearly the access to it
that they would have with other payment processing systems like
alley pay within their country. So them rolling out the
digitally want the idea there is that not only are
they gonna you know, maybe limit some of the volatility
(19:06):
that they're seeing in bitcoin UM, but they're also going
to get an idea of what's happening with that money UM,
something they can't really see right now. With Bitcoin. Tim Deshont,
tech policy reporter at Ours Technica, thank you very much
for joining us. Thank you don't forget to join us
(19:26):
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and
Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment, give
us a rating, and tell us the stories that you're
interested in. Follow us on I Heard Radio, or subscribe
wherever you get your podcast. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
is the Daily Dive Weekend addition
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through
Friday that's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. Right now, Washington is swirling with UFO chatter
as many are eagerly awaiting an intelligence report that's supposed
to be due out sometime in June. Top senators, Pentagon insiders,
and former CIA directors have all been weighing in on
the subject. But that hasn't always been the case. UFO
(00:49):
talk usually got you in trouble or got you strange looks.
But we're seeing more leaked video and reports from pilots
who are trained to be out in the field seeing
a lot of crazy stuff that they can't explain. For
more on how UFO sightings went from jokes to national
security concern, will speak to Mike Rosenwald reporter at the
Washington Post. A lot of this really dates back to
(01:10):
sort of the mid nineteen nineties. Senate Majority leader Harry
Reid is invited by a friend to go to this
academic conference on UFOs and he's intrigued. He's from Nevada,
that's where area fifty one is, and he keeps an
interest in this going for several years. And then another
friend approaches him who has a real healthy interest in
(01:31):
UFOs and he's got a ranch in Utah, apparently where
lots of weird paranormal things happen, and he apparently gets
a letter from some kind of intelligence officials saying, Hey,
we want to check out your ranch, and then Read
finally says, you know, we should do something on this,
and so he calls in some of his colleagues to
a secure classified room at the Capitol and he says,
(01:54):
you know, he wants to get some money appropriated to
the Pentagon so they can study this. And he gets
to two million dollars, which is, you know, obviously a
drop in the bucket when it comes to Pentagon funding.
But they established this group internally to look at it,
and they begin collecting a series of reports from military
pilots about these strange objects that they are seeing, which
(02:18):
you know, in the sky and and on radar, which
have a lot more capability than they have. And eventually,
a few years ago, a few of these videos leak out,
the Pentagon confirms them, and more and more people start
to get interested in this, and and this draws the
attention of former CIA directors who come out and publicly say, hey,
(02:41):
we don't know what this stuff is. It's weird. We've
got to figure out what it is. And then, incredibly,
as part of former President Trump's Pandemic Relief Package and
Appropriations Bill, the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Democrat Mark
Warner from Virginia, gets a provision in there basically saying
that the Director of National Intelligence needs to coordinate with
(03:03):
the Pentagon and release the report in one days which
is due next month, detailing everything every intelligence agency right
down to the FBI, detailing what they have on these
unidentified flying objects. And from Mark Warner and from Marcar Rubio,
the Vife's chair of this committee, they have couched this
(03:24):
in national security terms. It's like, hey, there are these
things flying around in the sky that are doing these
incredible things. We don't know, what the heck they are.
What if it's Russia, What if it's China, What if
it's really is some of being extraterrestrial. Everybody's pinning this
now into a national security thing. What if it is
another country with some new technology, And so this is
(03:44):
where the conversation is going. So, I know, people get
hyped up about UFOs and aliens, but that's probably not
what we're gonna be hearing about when this report eventually
comes out. We're gonna be hearing about national security implications
with all of this. Yeah, that's true. Though some former
ci A directors have said some really eyebrow raising things.
John Brennan. John Brennan, who was a very obviously well
(04:07):
respected UH intelligence career intelligence official and ran the CIA,
he says that we shouldn't just assume that we're living
here in this world, whatever this world is alone. Maybe
there is something out there that needs to be explained. Yeah,
I think one of his it's a bit presumptuous and
arrogant for us to believe that there's no other form
(04:28):
of life anywhere in the universe. And he says some
of this stuff that we're looking at could come from
a different form of life. You know that right there.
Obviously he's a privy to knowledge that we don't have,
and that really starts sending people's head spinning with all
of this stuff. It really does. And and it's it's
interesting that we've had this pop cultural thing for so long.
(04:50):
But in other countries, and I'm hearing from many people
in other countries today, these things aren't treated, you know,
as a political ticket to the looney bin as as
I called it. They're taken seriously in many other countries
in ways that we haven't been taking it seriously. There's
such as UFOs settings in the United States. These these
settings are everywhere, um and then there are there are
(05:10):
things that can't be explained, you know, but other countries
treated in a different way. Are we seeing these types
of reports from military personnel in other countries because if
it was just happening here, then maybe that leads more
to saying it could be another country infiltrating our airspace.
But if it's happening everywhere, then maybe something larger could
be at play. The UK has had similar UFO task forces.
(05:34):
There have been other countries that have looked into it.
South America people are hoping that as as part of
this report that is supposed to come out from the government,
that there will also be references to perhaps other intelligence
gathered between friendly countries on this topic. So you know,
there's a lot of hope behind this, this report that's
supposed to come out, and one of those things is
(05:55):
what do other countries know and what have they shared
with our intelligence community. Michael Rosenwald, reporter at the Washington Post,
thank you very much for joining us. It was a pleasure.
Thanks so much. This past week, Florida Governor Rhonda Santis
signed a big Tech bill aimed at cracking down on
(06:16):
social media giants like Facebook and Twitter for deep platform
and conservatives. The bill makes it illegal to remove candidates
for office from their social media in the lead up
to an election. It also makes it easier for the
Florida Attorney General and individuals to sue big tech if
they feel they've been deep platformed unfairly. This bill will
most likely be challenged in court, so we'll see how
(06:37):
all that plays out. For more on this, we'll speak
to Anna Sabio's reporter at the Miami Herald. Governor Rond
Santis has been talking about this for a few months
now he started making a big deal about this issue
back in January when he was talking to a group
of conservatives that in Texas UM and then he asked
slawmaker to really cracked down on the tech companies, which
(07:01):
you know there is bipartisan support that maybe there these
companies are too big, but what there is no bipartisan
consensus or there's still questions in them joining the First
of all, can even do this? And second of all,
what is the intent in the motivation behind this proposal?
And like you said, you know that the proposal does
(07:22):
take aim at social media companies cog PLoP political candidates
for either statewide office or local offices, and it allows
these condidates if they are removed for whatever type of
content they post that violates the terms of agreement for
those companies, they can seek compensation from the company and
(07:44):
see them for up to two hundreds two thousand dollars
to day. Can they even do this? I mean this
is where a lot of the legal challenges are gonna lie. Obviously,
you're compelling speech onto private companies. You know they have
their terms of service. If you're breaking them generally, that's
that's the rule you're breaking it they can d platform you.
So there's a lot of First Amendment stuff going on there.
(08:05):
And then can they regulate these companies that operate across
state lines? Just because it applies there in Florida, what
it means that it applies somewhere else. These are where
all the legal challenges are going to be stemming from.
And then it is pretty narrow. I guess in that
sense that it is only for political candidates. It's just
doesn't open it up to free speech for everybody, which
(08:25):
is something that a lot of conservatives feel that they're
being targeted unfairly by these big tech companies. It does
offer some recourse for for everyday flurry and I guess
you could say, but the toughest penalties or toughest provisions
are in favor of candidates who are being de platformed.
But like you said, you know, there is still a
(08:46):
lot of questions whether Florida will be able to enforce this.
You know, there's language in the bill that says that
this is the intent of this state, but it can't
trump state law. And hear what this state of saying is,
you know, we deem it to not be good state
RHN de santis as you mentioned, had been talking about
it for some time now, especially after President Trump was
(09:06):
taken off some of these platforms. De Santis himself though,
was kind of taken off a little bit too. In April,
he did some type of YouTube panel discussion. They removed
that video because they said it violated some of the
misinformation policies that YouTube had, right. That was the round
table during the pandemic. It was in the heat of
the pandemic when there were all the discussions being held
(09:29):
here in the state. He would he would regularly hold
round table discussions and one of those he invited some
health experts who you know, violated YouTube, COVID medical and
misinformation policies, and to Santi's defiantly held another discussion with
the same experts a few months later, and he started
promoting some smaller tech companies, like of the likes of
(09:50):
Parlor If you Will, right, but they're more fable by conservatives,
and it's called I believe Rumble is the video platform
that is more alternative and alternative to YouTube. So we're
seeing a trend of him just trying pretty hard, not
just the policy or attempts to create new policy that
could trump sate Wall or put ENTI react, but you're
also seeing him asked and just promoting other types of
(10:13):
alternitive media that he uses, not silencing the conservative voices.
I've had on some of your colleagues from the Miami
Herald to talk about different things that the governor there
is doing. He is a rising star in the Republican Party.
A lot of people are saying he might run for
for president former President Trump doesn't. So the question is
(10:35):
what does this type of action do for the national conversation?
Are we expecting other states to pick us up? Because
as they said in the beginning, you know a lot
of conservatives field they're being targeted when it comes to
free speech, right. I mean, Florida always pecked himselves as
a leader in the nation, right he's been using the
still is uh, you know, this is the first the
(10:56):
nation and everyone's going to follow suit or among But
there are other states that happened, not quite like Florida
with sense for shure, but there are other states that
have targeted internet companies. Because Congress has been pretty flow
to act um, so we are seeing kind of you know,
state action for certain things. But I believe Florida is
(11:18):
um the first one to target censorship, um the way
that he did in this bill. And you know it's
one extra thing that he can take he keep expected
to um, you know, being good standing for reelection next year.
He's a popular government here in Florida. And you know
(11:39):
there's a lot of things that he got done during
the regular legislative session that just ended his May. It's
a sixty day session where he got this big tech bill,
and he got an anti riot bill, he got a
voting bill, he got um, you know, he's just name it.
I mean he even got a teacher but innesses for
(12:01):
for at least some um, some teachers. Uh. So there's
there's a lot of things in his legislative goody bad
if you will, you can just pretty much take it
to the road and you start promoting his agenda and say, hey,
I got these things done and these are issues are
really popular among the bays of his supporters. And so
(12:22):
you could argue that it's not only going to benefit
him here for a re election in Florida, but could
potentially put him in a national scene. And he takes
to Fox scenes all the time, and he can raise
that agenda at a national level and test the Waters
if she could potentially run for the White House. Anna
Sabio's reporter at the Miami Herald, thank you very much
(12:42):
for joining us. Thank you. We've been seeing a lot
of volatility with the cryptocurrency market lately in the past
few weeks, especially for bitcoin. China has been one of
the key factors in these ups and downs. China recently
took some actions that will likely ban all bitcoin mining
there pretty soon, about all bitcoin mining currently happens in China.
(13:08):
Last week, they also warned financial institutions not to participate
in crypto transactions. For more on just one piece of
the volatility in the crypto market, will speak to Tim Deschant,
tech policy reporter at Ours Technica. The latest news comes
out of a statement that was put forth by the
Financial Stability and Developing Committee that's part of the State
(13:28):
Council there, which is kind of like their cabinet, and
there they said basically, almost verbatim, that they were going
to crack down on bitcoin mining and trading. There are
a number of reasons for that, but the one that
Data lists first and foremost is financial stability. They kind
of view it as a commodity as opposed to a currency.
So they're worried about people gambling on that. So how
much actual bitcoin mining is done out there quite a bit.
(13:51):
So the most resinoustment that I saw pegs at about
happening within the countries. So if all that processing power
comes offline, or even a portion of it, that's going
to have a significant impact. You know, you mentioned kind
of some of the concerns from the Chinese government when
it comes to uh, the volatility of it and everything.
They also have other concerns about money laundering, trafficking, smuggling,
(14:14):
and even the energy use that it takes to do this.
I've seen videos online of people, you know, kind of
showing off their bitcoin mining things, and some of them
are huge warehouses even and they get super loud because
they're just a bunch of computers constantly running. Tell me
a little bit about that those concerns. That's a big
probably a big part of what Chinese concerned about. Two.
(14:36):
Though they didn't state at the top in the statement
that they put out from the State Council, it's something
that they've floated time and again again. Because the mining
is done within the country, especially in coal heavy regions
like Inner Mongolia, where power is cheap because it's on
cheaply mind coal. But as a result, you're seeing some
bitcoin facilities drawing down fifty megawatts, which is easily the
(14:59):
amount of production that you see from a coal fired
power plant. So I'm sure that pollution concerns are high
on their list because China has one of the most
energy intensive economies right now, and if they're gonna reach
their goal of hitting zero by having the world's bitcoin
processing happening within their borders, does not make that look
very likely. I always love the comparisons of this. Takes
(15:22):
as much energy to run a whole country, basically, and
the bitcoin network demands so much energy that it uses
as much power as the Netherlands does to maintain its
normal operations. So when you hear things like that, you think, man,
that is an outstanding output of energy that they're using.
And Tesla figures into all of this stuff with bitcoin
as well. Earlier in the year they said they were
(15:44):
going to make a big investment in bitcoin and allow
purchases of Tesla's with it. Then they took that back
and cited the energy and carbon footprint as concerns about this.
And you mentioned in your article to how the bitcoin
cost of a Model three and the carbon diox explain
that to us a little bit. So if we were
to just look at the actual production of Tesla Model three,
(16:07):
it takes just under nine tons of carbon dioxide to
produce that and operated over its lifetime assu when you're
driving about a hundred thousand miles. When Tesla announced that
you could buy a Model three with bitcoin, the amount
of energy embodied within that bitcoin purchase was about four
hundred tons, and when they canceled it, it was over
five hundred tons. So you're looking at carbon footprint that
(16:29):
is vastly more significant in the purchase of using bitcoin
than even just in the production of the car. In fact,
it's more than the lifetime carbon cost of a fossil
field powered vehicle. So from a marketing perspective, it didn't
seem to make a lot of sense for Tesla to
continue accepting bitcoin. So I should say they still hold
quite a bit of bitcoin, a's kind of a reserve
(16:52):
currency of their own. So what does all of this
due to bitcoin to the cryptocurrency market? As we start
seeing China try to back out of some of this
on multiple angles regulations, who knows of the United States
will try to put forward some type of regulations in
the future as well. I mean, what is this do
to the cryptocurrency market. As you said earlier, you bitcoin
(17:14):
kind of foreshadows what happens in the rest of the market.
You may start to see some splits. If Bitcoin gets
a lot of attention paid to it, maybe some of
the others had split off and be able to navigate
the waters a little bit differently. In terms of regulation,
You're starting to see that. In the US, the i
r S announced that any transactions over ten tho dollars
need to be reported, and several government agencies, Department of Justice,
(17:38):
Community Futures Trading Commission, and i r S are looking
into suspect transactions that went through one bitcoin exchange known
as Finance. So you are starting to see things turn
that way in terms of like the mining and stuff
like that happening within China. If that were to be
shut down, chances are you're going to see those computers
pop up somewhere else. They might appear in nearby count
(18:00):
tres like Mongolia or Kazakhs done, or they might be
shipped out and sold elsewhere, possibly popping up in the
United States. UM, the amount of money that these people
have been invested in the hardware is pretty significant, and
I'm guessing they'd want to see some return on that.
One last question on China and all this because we
had also heard that they're trying to do some type
of digital currency for themselves with their own dollar. The
(18:22):
you on, UM, how does this figure into that? Well,
it would certainly give them a window into what's happening
with that currency in a way that they don't have
right now with bitcoin. UM. You know, bitcoin isn't necessarily
of anonymous. There are ways to track flows between wallets,
and then when people go to cash at in UM
for currency like the dollar or the lawn, that's when
(18:45):
you can start to see, um, who's holding some of that.
But UM, they don't have nearly the access to it
that they would have with other payment processing systems like
alley pay within their country. So them rolling out the
digitally want the idea there is that not only are
they gonna you know, maybe limit some of the volatility
(19:06):
that they're seeing in bitcoin UM, but they're also going
to get an idea of what's happening with that money UM,
something they can't really see right now. With Bitcoin. Tim Deshont,
tech policy reporter at Ours Technica, thank you very much
for joining us. Thank you don't forget to join us
(19:26):
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and
Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment, give
us a rating, and tell us the stories that you're
interested in. Follow us on I Heard Radio, or subscribe
wherever you get your podcast. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
is the Daily Dive Weekend addition
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