Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning from eastern South Dakota, where I'm visiting the
Rules of Engagement girls, Avery and Julia, their two sisters
and their brother. Why were there so many people protesting
Elvis this past weekend? We went to visit the King
in June and they said he died like forty years ago.
Go figure, everyone, have a great day.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
You have to admit Dragon got me. That was fairly
love me. Gave me a chuckle. Yeah, I gave me
a chuckle too.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
So let's go from that, mean to the Chinese Communist Party,
one of my favorite organizations, is currently holding its fourth
Plenary session of the twentieth Central Committee in Beijing. It
started today technically yesterday for them, it's October twentieth through
(00:50):
October twenty third. It's a closed door meeting. There'll be
about three hundred and seventy senior officials, and they're focused
on finalizing China's fifteenth five year plan for twenty twenty
six through twenty thirty, and they're going through a bunch
of realigning of key leadership posts within the party and
(01:11):
the military hierarchy. The plan of this year is especially
notable because there are a lot of in I mean
serious internal purges that are taking place. I've heard Gordon
g Chang, someone I listened to on podcasts quite a bit,
(01:31):
Gordon sheet g Kang. Gordon g Chang is a It
is a Sino expert who understands an awful lot about
how the Chinese Communist Party works. And there has been
some speculation that Hugeneping is face that he'll survive, but
(01:52):
that he is facing a huge internal battle. Let's just
think about out how what's going on in China may
relate to some things going on here. This requires a
little bit of I really don't think it's a tenfoil hat,
(02:13):
but it does require a little bit of thinking about.
You know, you hear people all the time talk about
how Trunk plays four dimensional chess. This may be a
little bit of four dimensional chess. If you look at
the China Central Military Commission, that's the subset of the
(02:36):
Chinese Communist Party, the Central Military Commission. Giging Ping is
the Chinese Communist Party General secretary. He's the State chairman,
and he's the Central Military Commission Chairman. He is surrounded
by six generals, three of whom have been removed so far,
(02:59):
who disappeared, including one of the Chinese Military Commissions Central
Military Commissions Vice chairman. The Minister of National Defense has
been removed purged. The director of the Military Commission's Political
work department has been purged. So three of the top
(03:22):
leaders have been purged. Now just follow along with me
not saying any of this is actually true. I'm saying that, Hm,
I find all of these movements very fascinating. If we've
learned nothing else about our reality in recent decades, we've
(03:47):
at least figured this out. Everything is interrelated. Nothing happens
in the world anymore without us having some sign some
signal that, oh, that was coming, or oh if we had,
in hindsight looked at those key leaves a little bit differently,
(04:09):
we would have known. Well, of course this was obvious
to us. Nowhere is that fact of life more transparent
than in the current risk to US national security presented
by just about everything happening inside China these days. I
mean everything supply chains our ability technologically to develop and
(04:39):
be the world's leader in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Who's the number one.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Chip maker that probably provides the most sophisticated computer chips
that will allow AI. I'm not gonna use artificial intelligence
has too many syllables, So we're just gonna do AI.
That allows AI to do all the things, both good
(05:05):
and bad. But I think mostly good. Is the Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation TSMC.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Why do you think that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I'm not going to give Biden credit for this, but
I will give some of his national security advisors some
credit for this, and I certainly have to give Congress
some credit for this. And that is the Chips Act
that said to in particular TSMC, who was already investing
in fabs that are going to be located near Phoenix.
(05:43):
I forget whether it's Glendale, but anyway, in the Phoenix
area building these huge fabs. There is entire Taiwanese communities
being established in the Phoenix area because they you know,
(06:03):
they're coming here from Taipei. TSMC is bringing their workers here.
And then you have the company in the Netherlands that
creates I don't know whether you're aware of this or not,
but TSMC, because of the threat of the Chinese Communist
Party and the People's Republican Army invading Taiwan, that they
(06:30):
have a company in the Netherlands that if China starts
to invade, will literally just kill off everything that TSMC
manufactures in Taiwan. That company in the Netherlands was recently
approached by the Chinese Communist Party because they needed help
(06:57):
with They claim that a chip that they were using
had broken, and I forget what industry it was in,
and so they asked the Netherlands company if they would
come in and help them fix that chip, help repair
that chip. So the Netherlands sent people over. You know,
(07:21):
if they discovered the chip wasn't broken, the chip had
been disassembled because they were trying to re engineer it.
They were taking it apart, trying to figure out exactly
how TSMC had manufactured this chip, and of course they
didn't want to go to TSMC and let TSMC know that, oh,
(07:44):
we've taken apart your chip and now we're trying to
re engineer it so that we can steal your intellectual
property from you. And when you start manufacturing these chips. Now,
fortunately this is not the highest end chips that will
be manufactured here that are used in things like ai
But nonetheless, the Netherlands company recognized what was going on,
alerted tsmcs to it, and of course now we got
(08:07):
a huge conflict going between TSMC, in fact, Taiwan and
the Chinese Communist Party, which is not any surprise. That's
an example of how dangerously over reliant on an array
of energy security and national security needs that we have
(08:30):
become reliant on China for leaving this country both economically
and militarily at risk to the whims of Eugene Ping's
communist government. That also hit home pretty hard earlier this
month when China announced boldly aggressive moves to restrict exports
(08:53):
of rare earth minerals and magnets and chips made with
them to the United States for its military needs.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Now that's insanity, utter insanity.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I don't have all the details, but I can tell
you that all of the rare earth minerals that we
need for all of our automobile manufacturing, commuter computer manufacturing,
our fighter jets, our nuclear warheads, everything that we need
in this country. Do you know that we have the
most abundant supply of rare earth minerals in this country?
(09:31):
So why aren't we using them? Because Congress and the
Green and Wienies have made it so expensive, so utterly
ridiculous in terms of mining and extracting and exploiting those
natural resources that it's become cheaper for us to rely on,
and of course we've done this to ourselves. We rely
(09:51):
on other countries for these rare earth minerals when we
could be doing it ourselves. That's one of the things
that Trump is trying to reverse, this dependency which has
been growing for at least half a century or more,
but which Trump's predecessors in office, including my old boss,
(10:14):
have chosen to basically ignore and pass the buck for
ending this reliance on the Chinese Communist Party. Just pass
it on to the next guy. Nothing happened while we
were in office, so let's just leave it to the
next guy. But now the crisis has arrived at our doorstep,
a fact that we'll force Trump to engage emergency measures
(10:35):
in order to correct that reliance. Recent days have brought
news of these military purges taking place inside the Communist regime.
As chi Jing Ping goes about reasserting his primacy over
the military establishment, he wanted to make sure that if
(10:57):
they try to purge him, that he's got control of
the military. Now, one of the reasons for that purge
in the military bearwith me, is we skip back and
forth here between rare earths and the military. And the
reason we have to do so is because what's necessary
for the Chinese Communist Party to take over TESMC or
(11:20):
to take over and invade Taiwan the People's Republic Army, well,
the People's Republic Army is the generals have generally been
opposed to overtaking Taiwan. They don't want to invade Taiwan
because they know all of the chain reaction that will
occur and they're not ready to fight that war. They're
(11:41):
not ready to fight a what would ultimately, in my belief,
explode into World War IIE. They don't want to be
the match that starts that, and nor do they believe
that they are prepared to deal with South Korea, Japan, Australia,
New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States, all who
(12:02):
will come to the defense of Taiwan. That's why Gugene
Ping is engaging in these purges. He wants to assert
his primacy over the military establishment now because of our
unwise dependency on China, whether that be for rare earth
or aspirin or antibiotics or anything else. All the crap
(12:27):
that shows up in Walmart or at Sam's club or
cospital or anywhere else. Our unwise dependency on China. This
sign of instability inside China's government increases our own geopolitical risk.
As I say, it is all interrelated over on x
(12:52):
which posts analyzes driven by AI tech. One account in
game Macro published a very good piece detailing what's happening
and why over the and why we need to be
paying attention to this.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
It sums the purge up in a.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Way that is relatable and easy to grasp, so I
want to share it. And then a second interrelated piece
which follows Here you go. Here's what endgame wrote, why
She's military purges are really happening, and why they always
happen this way?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Right, what's unfolding in China right now? The expulsion of
top generals and a sweeping military purge is part of
a recurring pattern in Chinese power politics. When the leadership
feels internal cohesion is weakening or an external confrontation is coming,
the party Hijin Ping is the chairman of the party,
(13:48):
resets the ranks. She's current crackdown fits this historical rhythm
almost perfectly. Here's the full text. I really this is
it's not technical, but it's you've got to put your
(14:09):
mindset in Si jene Ping's head, so listen closely. They
write what's unfolding in China right now. The expulsion of
top generals and a sweeping military purge is part of
a recurring pattern in Chinese power politics. When the leadership
feels internal cohesion is weakening or an external confrontation is coming,
(14:33):
the party resets the ranks. She's current crackdown fits this
historical rhythm almost perfectly. This is being advertised that it's
all about cleaning up corruption inside the People's Liberation Army,
a story that the CCP has been telling for decades,
but underneath that it's about control. Every major consolidation phase
(14:58):
in Chinese communist history has come with purges that fuse
fear with loyalty. Now did it during the nineteen fifties
and sixties to harden revolutionary discipline, dun Chalping did in
the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties when economic liberalization
threatened ideological unity. She is doing it now because his
(15:21):
version of China's modernization drive, military, technological, and geopolitical cannot
tolerate uncertainty or divided loyalties at the top. Now I
would insert here another factor that they don't write a
lot about, but they do touch on. But I think
it's equally important. The Chinese economy is virtually an underpression.
(15:49):
And no matter what I mean, the government's been throwing
money at the real estate sector. They've been throwing money
at the military industrial complex. They've been throwing it at everything.
They've been even through growing it at retail. They can't
get anything to move. People are fleeing the cities because
they can't eat, they can't pay their mortgages, they can't
do anything. It is the Chinese economy is collapsing. In
(16:14):
the parenthetical, they go on to write this, the context matters.
The People's Liberation Army is in the middle of the
most complex overhaul in its history, shifting from a man
power heavy land based army into an AI driven Hence,
that's the importance about TSMC and these chips. It is
(16:35):
shifting from a man power heavy, land based army into
an AI driven missile heavy force meant to rival the
United States and its allies. That transformation is expensive, it
is opaque, and it is rife with opportunities for corruption.
When defense procurement stalls or funds disappear. Beijing reads it
(16:57):
not as simple mismanagement, but as a national security risk
to the Chinese Communist Party. Cheese recent ouster of generals
linked to the Rocket force and defense logistics suggests he's
cleaning the chain of command ahead of potential crises in Taiwan,
(17:17):
the South China Sea, or confrontation with the West. Historically,
they say these crackdowns also serve a psychological purpose because
they remind the bureaucracy that the party's survival comes before
any individual survival. Pure unadulterated communism under mal purges like
(17:43):
the Cultural Revolution created a state of permanent But they
write as alertnists, I would have used the word fear,
a constant state of fear.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
What happens next, Michael?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Since you bring up Trump playing four dimensional chess, that
leads me to this. Perhaps the No King's protest are
because his opposition is playing checkers and they're tired of
being kinged.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Just a possibility, Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Plus they've got they What was it in one area
where one of the No King's protests I'm sorry I
don't remember the details, but in one area where one
of the no King's protests occurred, seventy percent of the
(18:42):
people in that area had voted for Donald Trump. They're
losing and they can't stand that they're losing. So back
to China. Do you know why I tell you these
stories about China, TSMS, the Taiwan, the South China Sea
(19:03):
because I do firmly believe that while Russia Ukraine could
be a tipping point, I think that could be a
war that would be confined predominantly. Now obviously, if we
got involved, I don't think that they would try to
(19:24):
invade this country, but that would be a European war,
much like the beginnings of World War Two, primarily Europe,
which I know spread. So it's I'm kind of defeating
my own argument. I do believe, however, that a war
that originates with the invasion of Taiwan or the Philippines,
(19:48):
New Zealand or Australia is going to drag in Japan,
South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It will draw US in.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Because will be required to defend Japan and North Korea,
Japan and South Korea. And of course, while we have
this ambiguity about Taiwan. We'll defend Taiwan primarily because it's
in our national security interest to do so. And what's
occurring right now with this plenary that's going on, this
(20:22):
planum that's going on in in Beijing right now is
a great example of how everything is inter related. So
we started with mal in the Cultural Revolution, trying to
create a state, a permanent state of fear. Dung Chow
Ping arrested dissidents. He wanted to keep the reformist loyal
(20:49):
while he kept the markets open. Under Shi, you have
a mix of fear and moral theater reasserts the party's
monopoly over truth and violence. So it's less about rooting
out corruption. It's really about eliminating independent power bases that
could act unpredictably if war pressure or this economic instability,
(21:14):
which both of which currently exists, begins to intensify and
boils over. In my opinions, She's Purge is a pre
mobilization discipline campaign. The leadership knows China's next phase of
slower growth, rising unemployment, capital flight, which is you know,
(21:35):
companies and investors' money is just fleeing China and frankly
coming into this country, and external containment is going to
demand extreme internal unity. So purges, as they write, purges
are a signaling mechanism because they tell the military, you
answer to me alone, and they tell foreign powers don't
(21:59):
mistake our internal moves as weakness. Instead, it is a
form of tightening prior to turbulence, which is an old
Chinese reflex that merges paranoia and preparation together. The irony
is that, here's what they write. The more the regime titans,
(22:22):
the more brittle it becomes. She is trading technical competence
for personal loyalty, the same trade off that weakens the
Soviet Union. Yet, for now, the logic makes sense from
his perspective, because a fragmented or corrupted people's liberation army
is a far greater risk than an obedient but less
(22:44):
powerful one in Beijing, and in She's calculus, purity beats
performance when the stakes are existential, and She's actions suggests
he believes that moment is close. So when when these
analysts perform, what they perform for their readers amounts to
(23:12):
pattern recognition, but on a grand scale that's driven back
by Ai.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Just hours after they published their initial piece, the account
produced a separate analysis which asserts a potential strategic objective
emerging behind Trump's deployments of the National Guard in democrat
ren cities around the country. I find that fascinating. Now, again,
(23:42):
what endgame does is they use AI to do these predictions.
So I know that this is I don't want to
call it a game, but it is the nascent deployment
of AI to kind of like in wargames. Let's play
(24:05):
the game on the computer and see where it leads. Now,
the White House, let's go back to what happened. Hours
after they publish their first analysis that I just read
to you, they produced a second analysis, again AI driven,
(24:26):
and it asserts that there is a broader strategic objective
from Trump's deployment of the National Guard in I will
just give you a little hint that just happened to
be in Democrat run cities around the country. The White
House clearly couches those deployments as strictly focused on trying
(24:48):
to tap down criminal activity in chaotic cities. But the
endgame AI platform finds a potential larger objective.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
It play you.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Know what that is keeping our transportation hubs running operative
and free of these disturbances in the event of a
national emergency. Here's what they wrote. If you map where
national Guard deployments have actually happened or been proposed, such
(25:23):
as d C LA Memphis. Now they also wanted to
do them in Chicago and Portland. The courts have paused those,
but they also want to do them in New York, Baltimore,
New Orleans, Saint Louis, San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And Oakland.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
When you map that out, I'm this is me talking,
not the AI analysis. When when you map that out,
that looks like, oh, that's our internal operating system. Why,
here's what they write. These dots fall almost perfectly on
(26:03):
top of the infrastructure and logistic hubs that government and
think tank studies repeatedly label as nationally critical. The big
coastal ports of La Long Beach, New York, New Jersey, Oakland, Baltimore,
the Lower Gulf Terminals move most of the nation's containers, vehicles,
(26:24):
and bulk cargo. The New Orleans Baton Rouge Corridor is
the choke point of the Mississippi, where barges carry much
of America's grain and petrochemical exports. Portland anchors the Columbia
Snake system the country's largest wheat export route. Chicago is
the nation's rail and intermodal nerve center. A third of
(26:47):
all freight passes through Chicago. Memphis, obviously with FedEx's superhub,
is the heartbeat of air cargo along the southern flank.
Laredo and other border crossings are now essential to US
and Mexican manufacturing supply chains. And of course, the DC
Baltimore Northern Virginia, New York Corridor houses the government, houses
(27:11):
our capital markets, and houses the digital infrastructure that DHS
calls nationally critical. Now, the next paragraph hit me pretty
hard because during my time at DHS, we actually studied
(27:33):
starting with just the interstate route system. You ever looked
at a map of the United States with nothing showing
but just the interstate routes. You know why Eisenhower developed that, right?
You know why Eisenhower wanted it not so that you
and I could drive easily from point A to point B,
but because the military could move from point A to
(27:54):
point B without having to stop.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
When federal here's what they wrote.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
When federal planners talk about continuity of flows, these are
the places that always show up. A single bridge yard
or server farm in any of those places can ripple
throughout the entire economy. We're not suggesting these deployments are
anything more than what's been publicly stated, which is for
crime prevention and immigration enforcement. But what's their rule about
(28:24):
bud pay attention to what comes next. It is worth
noting how strategically important those particular areas are. They write
the geography itself. Hence at a broader logic, a quiet
focus on securing the junctions that keep modern American life running.
(28:49):
Holding the major ports, the Mississippi Export Belt, the Chicago
Rail Nexus, the Memphis Air cargo Hub, the Key border crossings,
and the DC New York Northern Junior Communications and Finance core,
and you protect the country's ability to do what move goods, energy,
and information through almost any external shock.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Michael, you're aware that the the No King's rally in
San Antonio involved vandalism of a church and housing near
the rally. Pretty predictable, I suppose, huh.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah, and San Antonio, it's interesting, I didn't think about it.
I should do that, is dig around and find out
how many local stories I can find about some violence
or vandalism, because according to everybody on the cable channels, well,
it was just all peaceful, you know, just people like
(29:52):
in Colorado, I'm showing up with can goods and ballots.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
I'm sure they cleaned up after themselves too, So there's
no anything.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
The guy that thinks Trump's a bitch, of course he did. Yes,
he got mad at the reporter for asking him a
question he didn't know the answer to, like why you're here,
and he just got maden through a Starbucks cut down
or his Chick fil A wrapper box and threw it
down to his extra Crispy fries. He threw those away.
(30:25):
Everything's in a related That's all I want you think about.
You know, for every action, there's a reaction. One action
forces an equal and opposite reaction. China's action regarding rare
earth minerals simply highlights the need for US to react
quickly to free ourselves from Chinese dominance in that sector
(30:46):
of global trade. At the same time, chi Jing Ping's
ongoing military purge highlights the need for the Trump White
House to make very strategic moves to secure our key
infrastructure hubs in the event of a national emergency. Now
(31:08):
I'm not trying to you know, cry wolf here, I'm
not Paul Revere riding a horse down telling you that
the Chinese are coming. What I am saying is that
I'm beginning to think based on my past experiences inside
homeland security and the kind of planning we did for
things like the collapse of Cuba, the collapse of Mexico,
(31:32):
and looking at critical infrastructure, and how do we make
certain that critical infrastructure, the grid, the highways, the ports,
the airports, cargo rail everything, how that's protected Now we
started that. Now I can't I can account for what
the hell they did with it after I left, but
(31:52):
at least we started looking at it. And what I
begin to see now is huh. Because I've often wondered, now,
Imphis is a violent place. Memphis has a lot of
has a lot of crime, as does Chicago, but those
are also hubs. La Long Beach a hub, and of
(32:15):
course the Washington New York Corridor a hub. The border absolutely,
whether he you know, forget about and have to forget
about free trade, but nevertheless a place where goods and parts.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Come and go across the border all the time.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Maybe what Trump's really doing here is playing for d chess,
and he's accomplishing two things at once. I think This
is how the guy's mind works. I think he's looking
at it and going, Oh, Portland, Seattle, La, Long Beach, Chicago, Memphis,
New Orleans, the Northeast Corridor. Huh, I can kill two
(32:56):
birds with one stone here. Now, endgame on X hasn't
taken their AI to the next step, and they haven't
tried to analyze it yet. But I want you to
sit back and try to imagine just how screwed up
things would be with Kamala Harris sitting in the overlock
or Joe Biden sitting in the overlock. You ever thought
(33:19):
that maybe for every reaction, there's a reaction that a
lot of the reaction we see, like no Kings that
we see all of the Democrats, you know, just beside themselves,
is because Trump's actually doing significant things that need to
be done to protect the nation.
Good morning from eastern South Dakota, where I'm visiting the
Rules of Engagement girls, Avery and Julia, their two sisters
and their brother. Why were there so many people protesting
Elvis this past weekend? We went to visit the King
in June and they said he died like forty years ago.
Go figure, everyone, have a great day.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
You have to admit Dragon got me. That was fairly
love me. Gave me a chuckle. Yeah, I gave me
a chuckle too.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
So let's go from that, mean to the Chinese Communist Party,
one of my favorite organizations, is currently holding its fourth
Plenary session of the twentieth Central Committee in Beijing. It
started today technically yesterday for them, it's October twentieth through
(00:50):
October twenty third. It's a closed door meeting. There'll be
about three hundred and seventy senior officials, and they're focused
on finalizing China's fifteenth five year plan for twenty twenty
six through twenty thirty, and they're going through a bunch
of realigning of key leadership posts within the party and
(01:11):
the military hierarchy. The plan of this year is especially
notable because there are a lot of in I mean
serious internal purges that are taking place. I've heard Gordon
g Chang, someone I listened to on podcasts quite a bit,
(01:31):
Gordon sheet g Kang. Gordon g Chang is a It
is a Sino expert who understands an awful lot about
how the Chinese Communist Party works. And there has been
some speculation that Hugeneping is face that he'll survive, but
(01:52):
that he is facing a huge internal battle. Let's just
think about out how what's going on in China may
relate to some things going on here. This requires a
little bit of I really don't think it's a tenfoil hat,
(02:13):
but it does require a little bit of thinking about.
You know, you hear people all the time talk about
how Trunk plays four dimensional chess. This may be a
little bit of four dimensional chess. If you look at
the China Central Military Commission, that's the subset of the
(02:36):
Chinese Communist Party, the Central Military Commission. Giging Ping is
the Chinese Communist Party General secretary. He's the State chairman,
and he's the Central Military Commission Chairman. He is surrounded
by six generals, three of whom have been removed so far,
(02:59):
who disappeared, including one of the Chinese Military Commissions Central
Military Commissions Vice chairman. The Minister of National Defense has
been removed purged. The director of the Military Commission's Political
work department has been purged. So three of the top
(03:22):
leaders have been purged. Now just follow along with me
not saying any of this is actually true. I'm saying that, Hm,
I find all of these movements very fascinating. If we've
learned nothing else about our reality in recent decades, we've
(03:47):
at least figured this out. Everything is interrelated. Nothing happens
in the world anymore without us having some sign some
signal that, oh, that was coming, or oh if we had,
in hindsight looked at those key leaves a little bit differently,
(04:09):
we would have known. Well, of course this was obvious
to us. Nowhere is that fact of life more transparent
than in the current risk to US national security presented
by just about everything happening inside China these days. I
mean everything supply chains our ability technologically to develop and
(04:39):
be the world's leader in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Who's the number one.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Chip maker that probably provides the most sophisticated computer chips
that will allow AI. I'm not gonna use artificial intelligence
has too many syllables, So we're just gonna do AI.
That allows AI to do all the things, both good
(05:05):
and bad. But I think mostly good. Is the Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation TSMC.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Why do you think that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I'm not going to give Biden credit for this, but
I will give some of his national security advisors some
credit for this, and I certainly have to give Congress
some credit for this. And that is the Chips Act
that said to in particular TSMC, who was already investing
in fabs that are going to be located near Phoenix.
(05:43):
I forget whether it's Glendale, but anyway, in the Phoenix
area building these huge fabs. There is entire Taiwanese communities
being established in the Phoenix area because they you know,
(06:03):
they're coming here from Taipei. TSMC is bringing their workers here.
And then you have the company in the Netherlands that
creates I don't know whether you're aware of this or not,
but TSMC, because of the threat of the Chinese Communist
Party and the People's Republican Army invading Taiwan, that they
(06:30):
have a company in the Netherlands that if China starts
to invade, will literally just kill off everything that TSMC
manufactures in Taiwan. That company in the Netherlands was recently
approached by the Chinese Communist Party because they needed help
(06:57):
with They claim that a chip that they were using
had broken, and I forget what industry it was in,
and so they asked the Netherlands company if they would
come in and help them fix that chip, help repair
that chip. So the Netherlands sent people over. You know,
(07:21):
if they discovered the chip wasn't broken, the chip had
been disassembled because they were trying to re engineer it.
They were taking it apart, trying to figure out exactly
how TSMC had manufactured this chip, and of course they
didn't want to go to TSMC and let TSMC know that, oh,
(07:44):
we've taken apart your chip and now we're trying to
re engineer it so that we can steal your intellectual
property from you. And when you start manufacturing these chips. Now,
fortunately this is not the highest end chips that will
be manufactured here that are used in things like ai
But nonetheless, the Netherlands company recognized what was going on,
alerted tsmcs to it, and of course now we got
(08:07):
a huge conflict going between TSMC, in fact, Taiwan and
the Chinese Communist Party, which is not any surprise. That's
an example of how dangerously over reliant on an array
of energy security and national security needs that we have
(08:30):
become reliant on China for leaving this country both economically
and militarily at risk to the whims of Eugene Ping's
communist government. That also hit home pretty hard earlier this
month when China announced boldly aggressive moves to restrict exports
(08:53):
of rare earth minerals and magnets and chips made with
them to the United States for its military needs.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Now that's insanity, utter insanity.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I don't have all the details, but I can tell
you that all of the rare earth minerals that we
need for all of our automobile manufacturing, commuter computer manufacturing,
our fighter jets, our nuclear warheads, everything that we need
in this country. Do you know that we have the
most abundant supply of rare earth minerals in this country?
(09:31):
So why aren't we using them? Because Congress and the
Green and Wienies have made it so expensive, so utterly
ridiculous in terms of mining and extracting and exploiting those
natural resources that it's become cheaper for us to rely on,
and of course we've done this to ourselves. We rely
(09:51):
on other countries for these rare earth minerals when we
could be doing it ourselves. That's one of the things
that Trump is trying to reverse, this dependency which has
been growing for at least half a century or more,
but which Trump's predecessors in office, including my old boss,
(10:14):
have chosen to basically ignore and pass the buck for
ending this reliance on the Chinese Communist Party. Just pass
it on to the next guy. Nothing happened while we
were in office, so let's just leave it to the
next guy. But now the crisis has arrived at our doorstep,
a fact that we'll force Trump to engage emergency measures
(10:35):
in order to correct that reliance. Recent days have brought
news of these military purges taking place inside the Communist regime.
As chi Jing Ping goes about reasserting his primacy over
the military establishment, he wanted to make sure that if
(10:57):
they try to purge him, that he's got control of
the military. Now, one of the reasons for that purge
in the military bearwith me, is we skip back and
forth here between rare earths and the military. And the
reason we have to do so is because what's necessary
for the Chinese Communist Party to take over TESMC or
(11:20):
to take over and invade Taiwan the People's Republic Army, well,
the People's Republic Army is the generals have generally been
opposed to overtaking Taiwan. They don't want to invade Taiwan
because they know all of the chain reaction that will
occur and they're not ready to fight that war. They're
(11:41):
not ready to fight a what would ultimately, in my belief,
explode into World War IIE. They don't want to be
the match that starts that, and nor do they believe
that they are prepared to deal with South Korea, Japan, Australia,
New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States, all who
(12:02):
will come to the defense of Taiwan. That's why Gugene
Ping is engaging in these purges. He wants to assert
his primacy over the military establishment now because of our
unwise dependency on China, whether that be for rare earth
or aspirin or antibiotics or anything else. All the crap
(12:27):
that shows up in Walmart or at Sam's club or
cospital or anywhere else. Our unwise dependency on China. This
sign of instability inside China's government increases our own geopolitical risk.
As I say, it is all interrelated over on x
(12:52):
which posts analyzes driven by AI tech. One account in
game Macro published a very good piece detailing what's happening
and why over the and why we need to be
paying attention to this.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
It sums the purge up in a.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Way that is relatable and easy to grasp, so I
want to share it. And then a second interrelated piece
which follows Here you go. Here's what endgame wrote, why
She's military purges are really happening, and why they always
happen this way?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Right, what's unfolding in China right now? The expulsion of
top generals and a sweeping military purge is part of
a recurring pattern in Chinese power politics. When the leadership
feels internal cohesion is weakening or an external confrontation is coming,
the party Hijin Ping is the chairman of the party,
(13:48):
resets the ranks. She's current crackdown fits this historical rhythm
almost perfectly. Here's the full text. I really this is
it's not technical, but it's you've got to put your
(14:09):
mindset in Si jene Ping's head, so listen closely. They
write what's unfolding in China right now. The expulsion of
top generals and a sweeping military purge is part of
a recurring pattern in Chinese power politics. When the leadership
feels internal cohesion is weakening or an external confrontation is coming,
(14:33):
the party resets the ranks. She's current crackdown fits this
historical rhythm almost perfectly. This is being advertised that it's
all about cleaning up corruption inside the People's Liberation Army,
a story that the CCP has been telling for decades,
but underneath that it's about control. Every major consolidation phase
(14:58):
in Chinese communist history has come with purges that fuse
fear with loyalty. Now did it during the nineteen fifties
and sixties to harden revolutionary discipline, dun Chalping did in
the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties when economic liberalization
threatened ideological unity. She is doing it now because his
(15:21):
version of China's modernization drive, military, technological, and geopolitical cannot
tolerate uncertainty or divided loyalties at the top. Now I
would insert here another factor that they don't write a
lot about, but they do touch on. But I think
it's equally important. The Chinese economy is virtually an underpression.
(15:49):
And no matter what I mean, the government's been throwing
money at the real estate sector. They've been throwing money
at the military industrial complex. They've been throwing it at everything.
They've been even through growing it at retail. They can't
get anything to move. People are fleeing the cities because
they can't eat, they can't pay their mortgages, they can't
do anything. It is the Chinese economy is collapsing. In
(16:14):
the parenthetical, they go on to write this, the context matters.
The People's Liberation Army is in the middle of the
most complex overhaul in its history, shifting from a man
power heavy land based army into an AI driven Hence,
that's the importance about TSMC and these chips. It is
(16:35):
shifting from a man power heavy, land based army into
an AI driven missile heavy force meant to rival the
United States and its allies. That transformation is expensive, it
is opaque, and it is rife with opportunities for corruption.
When defense procurement stalls or funds disappear. Beijing reads it
(16:57):
not as simple mismanagement, but as a national security risk
to the Chinese Communist Party. Cheese recent ouster of generals
linked to the Rocket force and defense logistics suggests he's
cleaning the chain of command ahead of potential crises in Taiwan,
(17:17):
the South China Sea, or confrontation with the West. Historically,
they say these crackdowns also serve a psychological purpose because
they remind the bureaucracy that the party's survival comes before
any individual survival. Pure unadulterated communism under mal purges like
(17:43):
the Cultural Revolution created a state of permanent But they
write as alertnists, I would have used the word fear,
a constant state of fear.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
What happens next, Michael?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Since you bring up Trump playing four dimensional chess, that
leads me to this. Perhaps the No King's protest are
because his opposition is playing checkers and they're tired of
being kinged.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Just a possibility, Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Plus they've got they What was it in one area
where one of the No King's protests I'm sorry I
don't remember the details, but in one area where one
of the no King's protests occurred, seventy percent of the
(18:42):
people in that area had voted for Donald Trump. They're
losing and they can't stand that they're losing. So back
to China. Do you know why I tell you these
stories about China, TSMS, the Taiwan, the South China Sea
(19:03):
because I do firmly believe that while Russia Ukraine could
be a tipping point, I think that could be a
war that would be confined predominantly. Now obviously, if we
got involved, I don't think that they would try to
(19:24):
invade this country, but that would be a European war,
much like the beginnings of World War Two, primarily Europe,
which I know spread. So it's I'm kind of defeating
my own argument. I do believe, however, that a war
that originates with the invasion of Taiwan or the Philippines,
(19:48):
New Zealand or Australia is going to drag in Japan,
South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It will draw US in.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Because will be required to defend Japan and North Korea,
Japan and South Korea. And of course, while we have
this ambiguity about Taiwan. We'll defend Taiwan primarily because it's
in our national security interest to do so. And what's
occurring right now with this plenary that's going on, this
(20:22):
planum that's going on in in Beijing right now is
a great example of how everything is inter related. So
we started with mal in the Cultural Revolution, trying to
create a state, a permanent state of fear. Dung Chow
Ping arrested dissidents. He wanted to keep the reformist loyal
(20:49):
while he kept the markets open. Under Shi, you have
a mix of fear and moral theater reasserts the party's
monopoly over truth and violence. So it's less about rooting
out corruption. It's really about eliminating independent power bases that
could act unpredictably if war pressure or this economic instability,
(21:14):
which both of which currently exists, begins to intensify and
boils over. In my opinions, She's Purge is a pre
mobilization discipline campaign. The leadership knows China's next phase of
slower growth, rising unemployment, capital flight, which is you know,
(21:35):
companies and investors' money is just fleeing China and frankly
coming into this country, and external containment is going to
demand extreme internal unity. So purges, as they write, purges
are a signaling mechanism because they tell the military, you
answer to me alone, and they tell foreign powers don't
(21:59):
mistake our internal moves as weakness. Instead, it is a
form of tightening prior to turbulence, which is an old
Chinese reflex that merges paranoia and preparation together. The irony
is that, here's what they write. The more the regime titans,
(22:22):
the more brittle it becomes. She is trading technical competence
for personal loyalty, the same trade off that weakens the
Soviet Union. Yet, for now, the logic makes sense from
his perspective, because a fragmented or corrupted people's liberation army
is a far greater risk than an obedient but less
(22:44):
powerful one in Beijing, and in She's calculus, purity beats
performance when the stakes are existential, and She's actions suggests
he believes that moment is close. So when when these
analysts perform, what they perform for their readers amounts to
(23:12):
pattern recognition, but on a grand scale that's driven back
by Ai.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Just hours after they published their initial piece, the account
produced a separate analysis which asserts a potential strategic objective
emerging behind Trump's deployments of the National Guard in democrat
ren cities around the country. I find that fascinating. Now, again,
(23:42):
what endgame does is they use AI to do these predictions.
So I know that this is I don't want to
call it a game, but it is the nascent deployment
of AI to kind of like in wargames. Let's play
(24:05):
the game on the computer and see where it leads. Now,
the White House, let's go back to what happened. Hours
after they publish their first analysis that I just read
to you, they produced a second analysis, again AI driven,
(24:26):
and it asserts that there is a broader strategic objective
from Trump's deployment of the National Guard in I will
just give you a little hint that just happened to
be in Democrat run cities around the country. The White
House clearly couches those deployments as strictly focused on trying
(24:48):
to tap down criminal activity in chaotic cities. But the
endgame AI platform finds a potential larger objective.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
It play you.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Know what that is keeping our transportation hubs running operative
and free of these disturbances in the event of a
national emergency. Here's what they wrote. If you map where
national Guard deployments have actually happened or been proposed, such
(25:23):
as d C LA Memphis. Now they also wanted to
do them in Chicago and Portland. The courts have paused those,
but they also want to do them in New York, Baltimore,
New Orleans, Saint Louis, San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And Oakland.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
When you map that out, I'm this is me talking,
not the AI analysis. When when you map that out,
that looks like, oh, that's our internal operating system. Why,
here's what they write. These dots fall almost perfectly on
(26:03):
top of the infrastructure and logistic hubs that government and
think tank studies repeatedly label as nationally critical. The big
coastal ports of La Long Beach, New York, New Jersey, Oakland, Baltimore,
the Lower Gulf Terminals move most of the nation's containers, vehicles,
(26:24):
and bulk cargo. The New Orleans Baton Rouge Corridor is
the choke point of the Mississippi, where barges carry much
of America's grain and petrochemical exports. Portland anchors the Columbia
Snake system the country's largest wheat export route. Chicago is
the nation's rail and intermodal nerve center. A third of
(26:47):
all freight passes through Chicago. Memphis, obviously with FedEx's superhub,
is the heartbeat of air cargo along the southern flank.
Laredo and other border crossings are now essential to US
and Mexican manufacturing supply chains. And of course, the DC
Baltimore Northern Virginia, New York Corridor houses the government, houses
(27:11):
our capital markets, and houses the digital infrastructure that DHS
calls nationally critical. Now, the next paragraph hit me pretty
hard because during my time at DHS, we actually studied
(27:33):
starting with just the interstate route system. You ever looked
at a map of the United States with nothing showing
but just the interstate routes. You know why Eisenhower developed that, right?
You know why Eisenhower wanted it not so that you
and I could drive easily from point A to point B,
but because the military could move from point A to
(27:54):
point B without having to stop.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
When federal here's what they wrote.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
When federal planners talk about continuity of flows, these are
the places that always show up. A single bridge yard
or server farm in any of those places can ripple
throughout the entire economy. We're not suggesting these deployments are
anything more than what's been publicly stated, which is for
crime prevention and immigration enforcement. But what's their rule about
(28:24):
bud pay attention to what comes next. It is worth
noting how strategically important those particular areas are. They write
the geography itself. Hence at a broader logic, a quiet
focus on securing the junctions that keep modern American life running.
(28:49):
Holding the major ports, the Mississippi Export Belt, the Chicago
Rail Nexus, the Memphis Air cargo Hub, the Key border crossings,
and the DC New York Northern Junior Communications and Finance core,
and you protect the country's ability to do what move goods, energy,
and information through almost any external shock.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Michael, you're aware that the the No King's rally in
San Antonio involved vandalism of a church and housing near
the rally. Pretty predictable, I suppose, huh.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah, and San Antonio, it's interesting, I didn't think about it.
I should do that, is dig around and find out
how many local stories I can find about some violence
or vandalism, because according to everybody on the cable channels, well,
it was just all peaceful, you know, just people like
(29:52):
in Colorado, I'm showing up with can goods and ballots.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
I'm sure they cleaned up after themselves too, So there's
no anything.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
The guy that thinks Trump's a bitch, of course he did. Yes,
he got mad at the reporter for asking him a
question he didn't know the answer to, like why you're here,
and he just got maden through a Starbucks cut down
or his Chick fil A wrapper box and threw it
down to his extra Crispy fries. He threw those away.
(30:25):
Everything's in a related That's all I want you think about.
You know, for every action, there's a reaction. One action
forces an equal and opposite reaction. China's action regarding rare
earth minerals simply highlights the need for US to react
quickly to free ourselves from Chinese dominance in that sector
(30:46):
of global trade. At the same time, chi Jing Ping's
ongoing military purge highlights the need for the Trump White
House to make very strategic moves to secure our key
infrastructure hubs in the event of a national emergency. Now
(31:08):
I'm not trying to you know, cry wolf here, I'm
not Paul Revere riding a horse down telling you that
the Chinese are coming. What I am saying is that
I'm beginning to think based on my past experiences inside
homeland security and the kind of planning we did for
things like the collapse of Cuba, the collapse of Mexico,
(31:32):
and looking at critical infrastructure, and how do we make
certain that critical infrastructure, the grid, the highways, the ports,
the airports, cargo rail everything, how that's protected Now we
started that. Now I can't I can account for what
the hell they did with it after I left, but
(31:52):
at least we started looking at it. And what I
begin to see now is huh. Because I've often wondered, now,
Imphis is a violent place. Memphis has a lot of
has a lot of crime, as does Chicago, but those
are also hubs. La Long Beach a hub, and of
(32:15):
course the Washington New York Corridor a hub. The border absolutely,
whether he you know, forget about and have to forget
about free trade, but nevertheless a place where goods and parts.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Come and go across the border all the time.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Maybe what Trump's really doing here is playing for d chess,
and he's accomplishing two things at once. I think This
is how the guy's mind works. I think he's looking
at it and going, Oh, Portland, Seattle, La, Long Beach, Chicago, Memphis,
New Orleans, the Northeast Corridor. Huh, I can kill two
(32:56):
birds with one stone here. Now, endgame on X hasn't
taken their AI to the next step, and they haven't
tried to analyze it yet. But I want you to
sit back and try to imagine just how screwed up
things would be with Kamala Harris sitting in the overlock
or Joe Biden sitting in the overlock. You ever thought
(33:19):
that maybe for every reaction, there's a reaction that a
lot of the reaction we see, like no Kings that
we see all of the Democrats, you know, just beside themselves,
is because Trump's actually doing significant things that need to
be done to protect the nation.
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