China Is Playing Chess. America Is Playing Candyland.

You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towson. Stand-up comedians, speech writer,

“many other forms of writer, and most relevant to this current sentence podcast host.”

I'm joined as always by my panel of experts. Our expert on policy and the military

chat Scott. Thanks, Nat. I'm doing great. Thanks, good to be here. Looking good, looking tan. I got a little bit of sun and my face is telling on me. And of course our expert on all things energy, whether it be oil, renewables, energy markets, you know, Mr. Global, Matt Randolph. How you doing, Matt? Good, Nat, as far as you're face telling on you, welcome to my world. That is literally my life. I know I'm lucky I have that Italian olive undertone to protect me from my bad sunscreen

habits. Kids, use sunscreen, even if you don't get sunburned, it can still hurt you. So that brings us to today's recording, which is totally unrelated to what I just said. It is Monday, May 18th. We are recording this in the evening. So as we are recording, Trump has just had his massive summit in China. He met with President Xi Jinping, and this is probably going to be his biggest meeting of the year. A lot of anticipation led up to this. I was hoping you could explain to me chat,

what was on the table in this summit? A lot of this meeting was based around kind of it's an interesting letter framework where the Trump administration for the United States was looking for what was being called the four bees, which is the, they were looking for beans, which is soy beans. It's more of a broader agriculture scenario. They wanted to have, have China buy more aircraft, which is Boeing. So more Boeing jet sales. He wanted to have the, the boards, which is the board

of investment and a board of trade. And then also the final bee is, um, shoot. Why am I spacing on it? Beans, Boeing, boards, boats and hose. Oh, yeah. That is what I would have guessed as a joke.

Yeah, beef. Sorry. I just didn't want to cut you up, but I was shocked when you said the first one

was beans. Yeah. So it asked me what I was five years old with the four bees. Was that what would have been in there? Yeah, beef, beef. Yeah. That's my belly. Yeah, the Monday, the Monday.

“But so yeah, basically that's what Trump was going in four. He wanted to get deals on these. And to”

be honest, these were just kind of surface level headline deals. And I get why he wanted. He needed easy wins. Things are just not going great for Trump across the, the geopolitical landscape, whether just domestically or internationally. So he was not going to go in looking for these, the sweeping policy changes. And unfortunately, that's what we ended up getting is very surface level policies that don't really move the needle on the things that are meaningful. Sure, at the

meeting, we had a lot of smiles and a lot of blad handing. And it was very cordial. And they had a lot of nice things to say back and forth. But the core differences, we have the fundamental issues between the United States and China really didn't get sorted out. I'm talking things like the, the Taiwan issue. That was a huge miss for the United States. I mean, Xi Jinping came out opening his opening sentence was basically as long as the US and I'm paraphrasing.

The US stays out of the Taiwan business. Our relationship is good. As long as the US doesn't metal with Taiwan, this is going to be, we're not going to have any conflict. And a lot of people were taking that as a warning. And I'm looking at it more of as a preview of what is to come,

“unfortunately, where I think Taiwan is going to become more of a soft power target for China,”

as well as an asymmetric gray zone. And what I mean by that, soft power is they're going to leverage their larger economy. They're going to leverage the media environment with the, the pro China Party, which is called the the Quomen Tang Party that came to party and who is actually gaining popularity in Taiwan. And so I think the US missed an opportunity to counter that narrative. Xi Jinping came out, what would we have been able to achieve in that, or regarding the Taiwan

situation, like what kind of wins were there potentially? Well, when it comes to China, it's always

a rhetorical game with us. I mean, we saw that it's optics. We saw that when Xi Jinping was in that slightly taller chair than Trump. I mean, I think Trump is actually four inches taller than Xi Jinping, but in every photo, every, we don't even know Trump has not been photographed with

Trump is six to given his kids are pretty tall. I kind of assume he's, but his wife's his,

“his wife's have been tall as well. Nonetheless, I do know Xi Jinping is shorter. So he should”

by any measure be taller in photos. Right. It all, there's a lot of heel going on with both of those men probably. But it's all optics and rhetoric. And when Xi Jinping came out and said, there could be conflict if the US steps in on Taiwan and the United States did said nothing.

And basically Rubio Trump said nothing and Rubio had to come out say the status quo or main.

And that status quo is we do not support. They call it do not support Taiwan independence. It's a very neutral statement. It means that we don't pick aside. But what the Chinese want is for us to oppose it. They want us to change the furniture to say oppose that moves us fundamentally into Beijing's territory. And because Donald Trump didn't address this, it makes the Taiwanese, the Japanese very nervous because what we see now is instead of the messaging being what it should

“have been, which is we stand with our ally in Taiwan. And it doesn't even have to be that direct.”

It could have been something to the effect of we just want peace in the region. But understand that the geopolitical landscape is that when a larger country attacks a smaller country who has a

large backing from a powerful nation has a highly technical capability in defending itself.

They can win. And we can say a prime example is Russian Ukraine. It wouldn't have had to been a direct hit on China. We could have just kind of said, hey, we still support Taiwan. And if you want an example of how this is not going to go well for you, China, just look at Russian Ukraine. We're putting it on a sort of left rhetorical space by not following that out, by not confirming, but not pushing back on, essentially trying to create a change to the narrative

and the US is not pushed back on that leaving space at least rhetorically for a lack of response, like a sort of sort of, well, not promising, but leaving the community where we could potentially not respond. And yeah, exactly right. And that ambiguity, but didn't help on the way home, when Trump was asked about it. When he was asked about Taiwan, he said things like, I'm not going to fly 9,500 miles to fight a war. That may be the internal policy of the United

States, but we don't. And the irony aside of the fact that we're fighting a war that was completely unnecessary and Iran. I feel that a Taiwan war would be more necessary given the strategic requirement and necessity of what they provide, but I, we certainly don't seem to have been against fighting unnecessary wars. Yeah, exactly. I was in a miles away in the past. Well, that's the irony of what Trump said. It was like, I, I just really believe that Trump

is fond. It's the same thing with Putin. He's very fond of this notion that him and Xi Jinping

are together in the pomp and circumstance, and they're the most powerful men in the world,

“and they can, and he responds to that. And I think the Chinese leverage that idea, this, this,”

let's just play to his ego. And again, I don't know what was said in the back rooms. No one does. There was no, there's no, there was no joint statement released. The readouts were wildly different between the two. The U.S. didn't even talk about Taiwan, whereas the Chinese led with Taiwan. So along with in the press after the, yeah, after the summit, in the, in the actual readouts that come out like the diplomatic readouts that they, the government, yes, but not during the summit.

You're talking about the, the reporting coming after, or reporting to, but they can say for me. Just, just kind of, just kind of broadly, I will say this, though, and then we can kind of talk about the, each is if you want, whether it was the oil deals, the chips deals, whatever, but I, I think this was one of those meetings where it was kind of where it wasn't as bad as I had worried it was going to be, but it wasn't as good as I had expected it to be. I thought there would

be a lot more substance. I thought there would be a lot more meat and goodness to come out of it, but given the fact that Trump loves to shoot from the hip and can, can ruin things with his own ideas, the fact that he did not, that's a good thing. So it just because it was just a very surface level, meeting with, without a lot of, without a lot of meat to it, and a lot of things were missed, even if some of the headline items sound really good, like the trade deals.

I mean, Trump loves a victory that sounds good on paper. Substance is not usually the concern,

about, like you said, that the pop and circumstance, making film for a guy loves a strong man,

but also it's this, you know, easily digestible headline wins versus structural and long-term wins that are actually going to help the American people. It seems like he's pretty easily playcated. He likes to do that anyway. So if you hand him a bunch of sort of ways to say we won,

“or we got what we wanted, the guy loves to brag about getting a deal. And that's how you, that's how”

you get what you want is you give him headlines that make it look like he got to deal, for at least he thinks so. Yeah, exactly. And this is, I have a question for, for Matt on this, because I was just kind of thinking about it, leading up to this, this meeting between the two, all of the administration, whether it was Trump himself, Rubio Scott Bessent, who actually led this summit, which is very weird. Usually that doesn't happen. They all talked about Iran being the

primary focus. And there was extraordinarily little on Iran coming out of this. And I have to wonder, is it because China isn't a place right now where they don't have to worry about the energy coming out of the Middle East because they have their own, their stockpiles are so good or they have it so good. They don't really need it or are they just kind of hiding and kind of bluffing. And they're really in a place where this could get bad for them eventually. But right now,

it's not necessarily, so they were just kind of playing it off as like, oh, Iran, it's your, this is an American problem. My read is I think eventually it'll become a Chinese problem. But right now, they may not, what do you, I mean, is that my reading that right, are they just way overprepared? So what I saw was the school yard bully getting stood up to and laying down like a bitch.

“That's what I saw. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been talking shit about China for”

years. It's a huge part of their platform. China hate China's the boogey man. China's the villain. We were literally attacking Chinese people in the streets during COVID. We were supposed to hate China. We've been ordered to hate China. That's the message. You try to go through there. The people forget about too. Yeah. He was trying to hire there. Yeah. That's what he called. Trump's Chinese. He takes all of this. China. You know, like, this is the demonization of the

yeah, the entire country. Sorry. Go ahead. I just want to put it. I think not. We're just, I mean, he goes over there and in, and G.G. Ping basically says, I'm going to do whatever I want with Taiwan and there, you actually, you're going to do about it. And Trump says nothing and just lays down like the, and China knows who Trump is. And by the time Donald Trump got home, he was willing to give him all the damn farmland and everything else. Like he

completely flipped on China after what I want our meeting with their leader. He's been talking shit about their country for years. And he comes home and suddenly he's half Chinese. Like, it's, it's literally the Skoyard bully. Someone standing up to the bully and it, and you find out the bully's nothing but a giant was. I don't know how else to describe it.

As far as the oil goes, China has over a billion barrels of oil in their strategic reserves.

And they're going to be fine. They're not worried about Iran one bit. Now, they may be worried about some manufacturing and shipping delays, you know, but they're not going to help with Iran. They're just not. Do you see a problem with them possibly having the rest of the world being squeezed? Because it's not, maybe it's not just oil, but like, you know better than all of us oils and everything, like everything, plastics, cosmetics. So when a country can't sell their goods because

they're, and that means they can't buy Chinese goods, do you think they're going to be an eventual tertiary problem knock-on problem to that? Yeah, I think if you just look out a month, six weeks from now when SPRs all over the world are basically empty. And China's going to be sitting there with

over a billion barrels in theirs. I mean, it's checkmate. It's literally checkmate, like they

can charge whatever they want for their oil at that point. And just to be clear, China doesn't buy Iranian oil because they're good friends with Iran. Iranian oil is perfect for China's refineries. It doesn't have to be, well, so oil, you know, there's different types of oil, different grades, different weights, and here in the United States we can all have vegetable. Of course, that's your religion version, yeah. So here you go. So like here in the United States,

we have to blend a lot, you know, we blend our oils before we refine them. So we take our oil and we mix it with heavy oil that we import from wherever and we kind of mix up this recipe or this

“soup and that's how we refine. You don't have to do that with Iranian oil. You don't have to blend,”

you don't have to buy oil from more sources to make sure you have the right recipe, like, without Iranian oil, you run it. It's good to go. You don't have to do nothing. And that's the main reason.

perfect for our refineries too. Like if we wanted to import oil from China or from Iran, Iran may just happen to be sitting on the water. Yeah, oil is what you're saying. Yeah, you know, they have light and heavy oil. Well, Iran has this middle, you know, they call it medium grade. It's it's like if you blended the two oils we use, it would be Iranian oil. And that's the just right. I think the one path. Yeah, it's just right. It's kind of like the cool lady.

“You don't have to put sugar in, like it's just good right out of the package. That's why they buy”

so much Iranian oil. But as far as an oil deal, the only thing Donald Trump is trying to do is get them to start buying the oil they used to buy from us already. This isn't some new thing. Like every time Trump comes in office, he starts a trade war with them. They immediately stopped buying LNG. They immediately reduced their oil imports from America by like 80, 90%. He's just trying to get him to start buying what they used to buy. This isn't some groundbreaking deal. Like he's just

trying to restore what we had on January the 19th of 2020. Fascination strategy. Yeah,

the classic trend. Pretending to solve it and explain what you got to win. Yeah, it's just basically

broke. Yeah, it's the same thing he did with the Boeing thing. Yeah, like the Boeing jets. So he comes home and he has this headline 200 Boeing jets were purchased by our or promise to be

“purchased. Let's clarify that all of these deals are promises that China could easily just pull”

back on and say the geopolitical landscape, the diplomatic friendliness we have has sowered. We're not doing that. And they have done that before and to be fair, the US has done it before too. So this is a lot of words. But when it came to the Boeing thing, they promised to buy 200 jets, which is a much less than the administration. I thought originally they thought it was going to be 500. It was going to match that European deal. That was when they bought Airbus. They bought

500. This was Xi Jinping saying, we'll buy your jets, but this is us throwing you a bone. Here's

200. We'll come to find out that in the first Trump administration, he did a deal where there was

300 Boeing aircraft that were going to be that China promised to purchase. They purchased 100. And then the first, the first Trump administration, Terra 4, the trade war started and China said we're not buying any more of these Boeing aircraft. So only 100 of the 300 were purchased. So now Trump comes in term two and says, oh, I got them to buy 200 more jets. No, dude, you just, they're just buying the 200. Do you negotiated like eight years ago? Yeah. And so it wasn't even a new deal

“theoretically and assuming they actually do. Well, and here's the thing. Boeing said, well,”

these will be fulfilled in the 2030s. Who knows what happens when that comes around? And so what ends up happening is Trump comes home with a headline that says to Boeing selling 200 aircraft to China. Those 200 were already sold. They turned them off. And now Trump gave whatever concessions you give likely chips, like I said, or farm land or something as Matt was saying.

And because of that now, we have a deal that we basically re-litigated, re-negotiated,

that was the same deal. And we gave more to China just to get the old deal from years ago. And that's like, you're exactly right on this. So we've got quit. Do I? Because this is two rounds of negotiations because he made a deal to get those 300. And then another deal to get a new and heavy air quotes 200, which is actually still part of the original deal ahead of the bill. And even that we remain to be seen. It has not been fulfilled, of course, remains to be

to see. So he's had to acquiesce twice in order to not even get this deal. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And it's that classic Trump headline-seeking tactic. It's the surface level. Oh, look at what I did. And he can tweet about it. And it was a deal, baby. Yeah, and it's kind of this is the same thing with Iran. They're grasping so hard to this. At the very beginning, Xi Jinping said, what was the Chinese and global saddest quote for

these straight-aparmos? We wanted to be free and open for everyone. Trump took that statement and said, look, the Chinese are now saying that they wanted open just like the Americans do. They're going to help us get it open. And China's like, hold on. Whoa, we just said we wanted it open. You're now saying we're going to help. Nobody's coming to help. We're about to start fighting with them again. So yeah, it's all smoke and mirrors for Trump. It's all headlines. And this whole

summit was basically, and I think that was the plan. I think they knew they were going in with

in some other areas. So that happens every time you go to date with some strong man. Like, he loves a strong leader with a lot of pop and circumstance. I feel like every time he goes in, excited to hang out with his buddy and sits down with someone who knows that about him and uses it to exploit him. I mean, Putin being the obvious example. But I feel like that is like time and time again. Is like if you're a, if you're a head of state who Trump thinks his handsome or something,

you can get his, I mean, and I'm, by the way, I'm not being like homophobic. But I'm just saying, like, he likes these, like, you know, like, manly head of state. He's not, he's not doing this for angle of Merkel, right? Like, he's doing the, he's doing this for, for Putin for that, that type. So it feels like he loves that. He loves that kind of stuff though. He loves those guys. So if you,

“I think, and I think wants to be one of them. You know, so he keeps over and over again,”

getting into these faulty, I was going to say negotiations. But it barely feels like a negotiation. Matt, I was hoping you could explain the farmland issue for me a little bit better. What exactly did we give up there? Well, I don't know that we gave up anything. But, you know, the Republican Party has been screaming about China owning land in the United States for years, and he comes back from China and in that interview with, was it, Hannity? He's like, well, you know,

if we don't sell China farmland, it's going to hurt our farmers. Like, he, he just completely flipped on it. Literally live on air, you know? So I don't know that there's actually a land deal. It was just shocking to see him completely flip on that, you know? And he's not pandering to the sort of populist anti-globalist mega base there by doing that anymore. I mean, it used to be very much like, we're not going to do, you know, we're not going to let any of these, these international concerns,

you know, I mean, it was always bullshit. But I feel like he used to at least pander to the

“sort of like anti-globalist fears. He's kind of done with all that now, I think.”

That's very first, no, I mean, I talked about this earlier in the podcast, but that's very first Trump administration. Like he was a non-interventionist in a lot of ways that I think one of the first things we ever talked about on the show was like, what happened? The one thing you could say for him in the first administration was that he seemed to avoid military action at all cost. And, you know, my calculation was, you know, where there are people in the military resisting him

in the past who he's superseded here or whatever has changed his strategy being this sort of like, you know, catering towards the, you know, obviously anti-immigrant anti-globalist, you know, side of the far right base. That was a huge strategy of his and now he seems to have completely abandoned it. And I don't, you know, I don't know what that says about his base these days, but it's interesting to see he's really tacked in a different direction.

Yeah. I just think he doesn't think he needs him anymore. And what's he doesn't need you anymore? You, you sort of see the real Donald Trump, you know, like, we've said it before. I think I said it on find out. Yeah. He doesn't care about anyone. No, he doesn't every time he pulls the rug on

“every supporter. He never will stop. That's what I, I said today like this Thomas Massey election.”

I was like, it's wild that this guy might lose an election because he had sex with an adult. Like, if you think about it, that's like, you know, he was the guy that was exposed. Well, now I'm saying like he was exposing the absteen list. And now all they're talking about is how he might have, you know, had some sort of trist or whatever with, I don't know, bobern or somebody. And it's like, they're all outraged. I'm like, oh my God, I'm not an adult. You know, I mean,

Republicans are going to do with consenting results of that sex. That's yeah. I mean, it's crazy. Not neither one of them was sold into sex trafficking. That's unethical. I mean, no, I mean, it's not the selection. Yeah. I said, but the cognitive dissonance as Matt is saying is ridiculous.

Yeah, for them to try to pull any of the like family first morality or bullshit that they used to pull

is like, guys, we've seen the, we've seen the cute letters that they wrote each other about doing child sex crimes. It's not like it might have happened. It's like, we saw the scrapbook about it happening. Like, you're not the moral party anymore, not that they ever were. No, but that bill on that moreality that faux moralism is so weak these days. And it's really, it's really kind of frustrating because it used to be there was one area when it came to China that we would

you would see the Democrats and the Republicans come together and it was being forceful against China on human rights. And we, there was nothing other than just a blurb about the wiggers and the treatment of the wiggers in China. And I truly believe that the reason that the Trump administration

didn't bring up the human rights thing one because that's just an uncomfortable thing Trump never

talks about even when it comes to like Russia. But too, I would truly believe, given our current

China could have thrown it right back in our face and said, you're not in a position to try and

discuss with us human rights, given what you're doing to the minority populations in your own country. Now, I'll caveat that where I will say that and they are absolutely right and they could have done that. I will say that what China's doing is probably an order of magnitude worse. They're trying to complete cultural destruction with the wiggers destroying like all of their churches and and erasing them from history essentially. So I don't think it's completely morally equivalent,

but there, there's a valid point there. I think they're both above the threshold of human rights abuses, though. I agree that you're right. The absolute like, full cultural erasure genocide. Yeah, not only genocide, but like you're talking about like a

full erasure history. Like we are not at that level yet. No, in most cases, but I don't

I don't know either. Those are both beyond the threshold of human rights abuses. Yeah, I don't know that I don't think that you are defending China by any means to criticize the U.S. on human rights abuses. No, they absolutely would have been within their right to criticize what is happening in the U.S. right now with, with ICE and the detentions, and all of that, 100% that the deportations

“to Africa, things like that. And that's why I think the Trump administration and China just said,”

we're not going to talk about that. We're just both be cool with each other's collective human rights violations and not talk about it whatsoever. And that's hugely unfortunate because it is a problem. It is, it is this ooze that is crawling across the world where these massive despots are doing these things. And it used to be the U.S. what at least fain trying to stop that from happening. Whether both were public kid and Democrat, whether it was

when in the George W. Bush, who was the compassionate conservative kind of thing, or not George W. Bush, but George H. W. Bush, the compassionate conservative type, Clinton administration, Obama. Now, under Trump, it's just like, ah, you do human rights violations in Russia. You do it in China. We do it in America. Let's not talk about it. And it hurts everyone around the world. And it's just comes from Russia. I will say, I will say, Chad, we have, you know,

not the most. I agree with you. They used to at least pay lip service to it. But, yeah, you know,

“even in, I mean, I remember, you know, Clinton had a big summit with China, trade summit. And that”

was right at the heart of like the free Tibet movement. And China was marching in and destroying churches and doing a very similar thing of like, you know, imprisoning spiritual leaders and trying to erase a culture. And I remember, you know, I was young, but I was involved in that. And I remember, you know, oh, good. The Democrats are going to, the president's going to meet with China. That'll, that'll fort that out. They'll get a tell that to stop doing that. I was young and naive,

but like, I'm, I mentioned that specific issue because it was one of my first personal exposures to the idea of like, oh, there's a lot of factors at play here. Like, we got a good trade deal with China. And we didn't really turn the screws on them. I came to human rights pieces into that. And so I agree that it definitely the discourse around it used to be different. But I do think we've kind of played this game for a while of like a lot of countries that are economically,

not relevant, uh, economically essential to us, or essential to our economy, so just trying to

the Chinese labor force. We have a sort of relative way of looking at their human rights violations. But we still need their sweatshops. We're still building stuff there. So we're not like, we, we, we, we fail. So we're building some sort of human rights violations. But they were built in iPhones under Democrats, too. So, you know, I mean, I mean, I'm trying, I'm trying to get steam jobs to build about to build the iPhones domestically. But the point being, like, we kind of have

negotiated with how much we are willing to tolerate. And it's fascinating to step in the wrong direction to not bring it up at all. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's fascinating because actually it's kind of to turn everything on its head. It's not in government. That's been forcing us to been the people and corporations. It's like the, the disconnect, the, the decoupling or whatever you want to call it from China has become companies. Like, I do believe Apple has moved to like Indonesia

or India or something, which to be fair, don't necessarily have their, they have their own, but alone human rights issues. But it's, it's just, yeah, it's fascinating. And I'm just frustrated that no one brought it up. And what we all knew that Trump wasn't going to be human rights guy. What we got with these, and I wanted to ask Matt about this because maybe it would help in whatever the, the energy world of diversification when it came to EVs because China's the leader

in that, he wants to do Trump came out of this meeting with this board of creation and this

“board of trade. Do you, have you heard anything about, I think it's just a bunch of like nonsense,”

but I just kind of want to get your idea and if it's going to be anything worth the salt.

Bologna, not the good Bologna either, that really bad stuff you had when you were a kid. Not Bologna, you're talking to the other country. Yeah, I mean, because, yeah, I just, it's like everything, it's like a board of peace. It just seems like this Trump slaps his name on a building

“and there's just going to be no follow through. Because you have to have the diplomats to actually”

do those things. And when you, even if he creates the boards, so what Trump gets to decide, he's going to say, I disagree. And so yeah, I just didn't think, I heard China was thinking maybe it could be a route to get Chinese EVs into the US market, but with Elon Musk being there,

he was never going to allow that to happen. Yeah, that's how it happened. I don't never happen.

But they could broaden that a little bit, Matt, could you tell us, because I understand that China's transition to renewables and, you know, building EVs, but also building up their rail, I understand it's been pretty aggressive in recent decades. Could you talk a little bit about where we're trying to, well, we're trying to send energy development, is that right now? Yeah, and honestly, I wouldn't even call it a transition. They are just full on all energy

“in portfolio where they are building everything, right? More wind, more solar, geothermal, but also”

coal, China does not have a large reserves of oil in natural gas. I mean, they have some, but certainly not enough for the size and scope of their population and economy. So they're just all in on energy, and because they understand that how big energy is going to be in the future, you say reserves, you mean not strategic reserves, you mean like actual camp pull it out of the ground reserve. Yeah, what? Yeah, in the ground, sitting on oil, not like, yeah, and that's a reason

that they have over a billion barrels in their strategic reserves, because they don't have a ton

that they can drill for. They just don't. And even if they did, it's not the geology, isn't great. There's a lot of fault lines and seismic activity in China. You go over there and drill a well, and you might kick off the worst earthquake the countries that were seen. It's just,

“they do produce some, but not anywhere near. And that's your natural geographic features.”

Yeah, right, like this is what China is geographically. Yeah, so they have, you know, so they're just building everything that they can, right? That's sort of, I mean coal is an artificial, but you know, when solar all that stuff, just gangbusters, more than the rest of the world combined. So I wouldn't really call it a transition as much as they're just all out. They, you know, it's, it's the manufacturing epicenter of the world as Asia, like that's where

not a slow fade you're saying. Like it's a smash cut to the next shot in the movie. Like they are onto renewables now. Yeah. What Asia is 40% of the global GDP in Asia is like I said, the epicenter of manufacturing economy. And they are recognizing how much energy they're going to need in the future and they're building every kind that's that's possible. That's really what they're doing. And this is a political calculation, right? I mean, this is not only that this is not only

literal power in terms of, you know, energy, electric oils, like what however we're generation, generating electricity, but, you know, as recent months have reminded us very clearly, oil reserves, energy reserves around the world are a very complicated, interrelated network of power structures, right? So the more China does this, the more power they wield to be independent of that. And also, I mean, I don't know if this is the goal, but also to be, you know, a generator

provider of energy, I don't know if China's going to export any of this, but I don't know. I literally don't know. But I would have to imagine that being energy independent gives them a lot of global political power or, you know, moving towards generating more of their own energy in all these different ways, possessing more is a major political move. Yeah. And they're building a lot of redundancy under their system as well. So, you know, they, they, they build just, I don't even know how many

wind turbines, I knew it one time. It's just an enormous number, but like when they build a massive wind farm, they'll build a co-fired plant to back it up, and they have battery to back it up, like it's just every redundancy is in place. It's almost like they're just preparing for anything that could possibly happen. And the Iran war is a perfect example of China's energy strategy,

and why it's such a good one, right? They're sitting on over a billion barrels of oil that they can

they immediately cut off exports within, I think, two weeks of the Iran war starting, they're

they've been preparing basically for this kind of a moment for decades, and it's going to work

“out well for them. When I see people online talking about how, how much damage we're going to do”

to China with this Iran war, I'm like, you people have no idea what you're talking about. Like, there's one country in the world that is ultimately prepared for this, and it's China. China's going to be fine. And that's due to their ability to produce energy, you're saying.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's all of this energy. Well, also the billion barrel of oil,

but, you know, they look at all their renewable energy. I haven't done the math on how many million barrels of oil it takes off of their plate that they would need to burn every day, but it's an enormous amount. Like, they have all that oil, and they don't have to use near as much of it as they would be, obviously, without all the renewable energy. Like, they've, they've got it figured out. Like, they're doing energy. Like, I would do energy.

“That's how they're doing it. Like they know what they're doing. They have other,”

what's interesting is they have other levers that are incredibly powerful as well to pull. I mean, we look at another miss by the US. We came away from the G Trump summit without any discussion that was meaningful on rare earth minerals. This is a country that controls approximately 60% of the global processing capacity for everything we need in all electronics. They have roughly 85% of the global processing capacity. So not only do they have a lot of the minerals,

they're the ones that other countries ship the minerals to to turn into the things we need. And we saw this when the initial, the initial trade war took place earlier in the second Trump administration last year. When Trump started throwing that 145% tariff on Beijing, Beijing is like fine. We ain't buying your soybeans, and you don't get any more of these

rare, we don't get any rare earth minerals from us. And Trump immediately was like, nope, never mind.

Cut that off. He backed out. He, he, he talked about the, always the talk about. But for good reason this time, it wasn't, he, he, he just really miscalculated what China has. The interesting thing, though, is the United States, we have a huge amount of reserves of rare earth minerals. We just aren't mining them. And that's a problem is if we want to catch up to China or even cut into their, their kind of their first mover advantage, and or their just global advantage,

we have to, it's going to take us years to build that capacity. But I'm sure Matt could speak more to that. I just know that when not only our, our phones and our electric vehicles, but our weapons rely on a Chinese made commodity that we pull out of the ground, that's a huge problem. And they know that. And now they watch us wasting weapons on a foolish war and Iran. And they love that. They're like, well, these guys are definitely going to need

our rare earth minerals to rebuild their smart bombs and things. And they're going to leverage that probably at the next meeting, right, before the midterms. So I don't know. You got any thoughts on that, Matt, because I do know that that rare earth thing is very spooky to me. Yeah, China has an enormous amount of competitive advantages on us that China is when I think of

China, I think of the boy scouts. There is always prepared. Like they're, they're lined up. They

have a strategy long term, looking out, 50 hundred years, and they're just doing everything exactly. Like, I feel like, often we hear people say, don't Trump is playing chess and everyone else

“is playing checkers. That's what I think China is. I think China is playing chess. And we're playing”

candy land. I don't know, but I was playing go. Trump is playing candy land. We want to get just something. Everything China does is with a purpose and with intent and part of a strategy. And everything we do is we're flying by the sea of our pants. What are we angry about today? What's in the news? Like, who can be the villain today? Like, China's lined out, man. And they're coming for us. I'm telling you economically, they're coming for us. Well, and what's interesting is,

as I think that this, this chip, a big part of this was the one way area where the U.S. still is leading by a fairly significant margin. I would say is in high-end computing, AI development, quantum computing. And that is something that the Chinese want access to. They're roughly 18 months behind us. Some say 24 months, just depends. That was a largely a policy interesting of the Biden administration. They did a great job of restricting high-end and media chips from going

to China. And now Trump left this meeting telling China, you can have the H20 chip,

That's one of their high-end, kind of like chat, GPT-ish, three nanometer chips. They can buy those.

But then he said, surprisingly, you can have the second most powerful chip that we make in this

country, the H200. And weirdly, China kind of played cool. It was like, ah, we probably won't buy it. What China's going to do is not what Trump thinks they're going to do. Trump thinks, oh, they're going to buy a bunch of Nvidia chips and we're going to get them hooked on our stuff. No, they're going to buy like 10 of them. They're going to research them reverse engineer them and try to figure out of make them. There's some problems with that because there is trade controls on the ultraviolet,

lithography machines out of the Netherlands. But nonetheless, we, where is Biden said, absolutely not, China does not get this technology because it is a national security technology. Trump left the meeting openly. It wasn't even a secret. It was just like, yep, you can have it. Go ahead and have

the second most powerful chip that we make in this country. You don't get the first most powerful

sorry, but that just kind of blew my mind to that. Yeah. Yeah, another meeting. Yeah, and that's the thing is so it's just. Well, it's like, I worried that we gave it. If there was going to be winners and losers, China came away. The strategic winner out of this meeting, unfortunately, is when it comes to the end game of what we're looking for. Now, I will say this. There is one area

“where I think China strategically made an extraordinarily improbably fatal mistake and it wasn't”

in the summit and it goes back to the, I mean, the one China policy back in the 80s, their demographics are going to kill them eventually. Yeah, they have, they're, they're, you're looking at a country that's population is going to be a half the size of what it is right now in the year 2050. I'm sorry, you mean the one child rule. Yeah, the one child, yeah, the one child, yeah, the one child, you said the one China policy. Oh, sorry. Yeah, the one child. Yeah, sorry. No,

one China policy vastly different. Not that. Yes. That's, yeah, one child policy. Thanks. So, yeah, the one child policy and then they eventually changed into two child policy, but just people just don't have children there anymore. And so their demographics will, it won't happen to shrinking generation. That's not necessarily generating wealth for the retiring generation. It's not generating wealth for retiring. They're not going to be able to support themselves. It will lead

to an economic collapse because they just are going to age out of their economic. It's not going to be this decade, but eventually, in by 2050, no country on earth ever has survived halfing your

“population ever. You know, I think the only one that you could conceivably say survived was the”

Ireland during the potato famine outside of that. That is a fatal until then China will be a very

powerful and increasing foe. But I give kind of an unpopular opinion that because of China's

crashing demographics, I don't think they'll ever pass the U.S. in nominal GDP. I think that they have one of the worst immigration models on earth. They don't allow people, they're, I mean, they're extraordinarily racist. They just don't allow people to immigrate into their country. And it a lot of it has to do with the free flow of ideas that the CCP, and I think eventually that, and feel free to push back. I'm all for the debate here, but I think that that is, it is a baked

in flaw that they created, and not only that, the preference for boys created something like for every six girls, there's only five boys in that, or sorry, yeah, or flip that. For every six boys, there's only five girls. That creates a cultural problem. They've created familial problems where they don't because you can only have one child. You don't have this familial bond where you have cousins and uncles and things like that. And that's going to be a problem. So, yeah, I just,

I don't want to paint this doom and gloom picture for United States versus China because they do have their own structural problems that are, I think, are going to eventually, in 15, 20 years going to be a catastrophic problem for them. But that also makes the chip thing that much more important. Yeah, the demographic thing makes the chip thing that much more important because the one thing that could save them would be artificial intelligence. I don't know if you know this, but

“you don't need all those workers when you're an AI powerhouse, and that's why I think the chip thing”

is magnified by their massive demographic problem, which you're completely right about. I wasn't thinking about that earlier. But yeah, that makes the chip thing even more important in my mind.

My only thought on the AI thing in Japan is doing the same thing. Big tech powerhouse, they're

trying to, Taiwan has worse demographics than China. Japan has on par. These are all countries that are

“very high functioning societies that aren't having children. The only thing that I think of,”

though, not the only thing because, but one of the things I think of is when you build robots, and you build AI, they're not consumers. That's a problem that those countries are going to run into. You may be able to replace the worker, but what does that worker do at the end of the day? He goes to the movies. He goes to the restaurant. He goes to the grocery store. He buys the cars. At the end of the day, those robots, if they get powered down, they just sit there. They don't go and buy the service goods.

And I think eventually that's going to be a problem for China, Japan, Taiwan. They will, they can kick the can down the road a decade or two by using robots in AI. But eventually, if you don't have people, that's robots don't give a crap about the devilware's product, too. Well, and you're already seeing that. For example, American-owned social media platforms, right? This sort of simulated reality wherein, look at Meta, look at Facebook. Instagram is still largely popular in some ways,

there was before Facebook has a massive number of daily active users that are bots. And the bots don't click ads. At this point, they are simulating a user base to some degree. And it's like, they're closing the loop on it because the investor numbers need to reflect a growing number of people using the platform, a growing number of clicks grow. A daily active user likes all these metrics. But that has to collapse because, again, those people aren't clicking ads. And even if they

are in some sketchy way, people in quotes, they're not clicking through to purchase. They're not going to the point of sale and purchasing anything. So, I mean, I think you see this in a number

of cases where it's like, oh, well, we can just save on the bottom line with AI. But you're right.

It doesn't create consumers. It doesn't fund consume. You know, I feel like we're so obsessed with saving costs instead of increasing wealth and wages that it's like this short term. I imagine it, oh, look, the economy's doing better because we cut costs. You know, it doesn't matter if no one can afford to buy anything. I feel like so often, we're like, what are we supposed to just give everyone money becomes the way of simplifying it and the, you know, national conversation.

But every time we do that, people go out and spend it. Like, there's a reason we do economic

“stimulus checks. You know, there's, I'm not saying that's the best way of handling it. But like,”

yeah, there's a reason we gave people a bunch of money during COVID. There's a reason George W. Bush did it when things were, I mean, it's for as approval ratings. But like, people go out and spend money and help the economy. Even if it's a temporary boost in the case of a one-time stimulus check. But it's like, we are carining and you, like you said, with China, they're not going to create consumer wealth in a shrinking generation. But neither are we, and we're funding, we're facing

a lot of our economy around that as well right now. And so let's get something about AI and energy. If it's okay, let's see, you have a follow up on that. I was just going to say real quick, the United States is not without a zone demographic problems either. And we're, but ours are self-created.

We, we are not having as many children. But our cheat code has always been immigration.

The fact that we were the most immigrated to country in the world means that we had this amazing base of population moving in, whether it was skilled or unskilled workers doesn't matter. They were always coming in. They were human beings that were wanting, were aspirational for education, jobs. They wanted to, I mean, look at the CEOs of some of the biggest companies on Earth were immigrants into the United States. That was our cheat code. And the fact that we are, we can't

pay our workers more. Let's just bring in some people who will take less money was kind of the

“worker. Well, that's a lot. And that's what it really, and, but to be fair, they likely were experiencing”

a better life here even at that suppressed wage in the U.S. and they were where they were coming from. Otherwise, which actually for sure. Yeah. I mean, also a lot of people escaping political violence. And there's all sorts of reasons that people migrate. But we are also paying people, you know, I mean, the ideal solution, the ideal situation is, wow, the country you're sending that money back to is worth so much more there. Yeah. You have a better life here. A lot of migrants and immigrants

don't actually have that experience. But like, we do rely pretty heavily on an immigrant workforce. That's willing to, you know, whether or not it's better for where they came from. They're willing to take jobs that Americans aren't. Yeah. And my concern is that Trump has shut that pipe off. He hit as much as we as much as immigration is such a lightning rod topic. Trump has actually been effective. And that for me, I don't like that effective. A lot of Magan and Republicans will say, yeah, that's

great. It's effective. Keep them out. I'm like, no, that's bad. We need people because our American families are not as big as they used to be. And that's going to be an economic problem for us.

two ways. Have more children. We ain't doing that. Bring more in from other countries. And now

“we're trying to stop that with a passion. And that's, that's kind of the, that's where I'll close”

out on that die. I'm sorry. Oh, we could just make contraception illegal. Well, that's all right. Two real. Yeah, they want to. You joke. No, no, no, no, no, no. I do not joke. I know. I mean, next time I'm making abortion illegal. There's a hundred percent they're coming for contraception neck. I want to be very clear. Yeah. I'm concerned that's the reason is demographics. They're wanting to force babies in it. So, oh, I mean, that's one of the reasons they want to control women and

everything that they do with their bodies. They want to keep people in poverty. They want to, you know, keep people from being able to afford a better life and, you know, turn women into baby factors. There's

all sorts of reasons, but they're absolutely doing that next. The question I was going to ask was

I've been told a lot recently that AI is the next industrial revolution that we if we don't go all in and invest in AI, America's going to get left behind. I have yet to see a profit model that makes that make any sense to me other than a lot of people has invested in this technology that doesn't generate a profit outside of subscription. Like, I don't see people buying AI generated media, for example. Now, in terms of like medical sequencing, you know, protein sequencing,

coding, like I see a lot of valid applications there. But this huge investment in generative AI, I have been told is like, get in or get left behind on a global scale. And now we're talking about what China's been doing over the industry. It's not a transition. It's like a, it's a night and

day. It's like a, they flip the switch on, we are all in on energy now. Kind of a maximalist approach

like you were saying. It's not like a completely clean energy. It's like let's build as much as we can simultaneously. From my perspective, that seems like the arms race that makes that's way more relevant right now. And I'm, I'm not arguing so much as I'm asking. I keep being, and it seems that a lot of people in government believe that if we don't, you know, outpace China in terms of generative AI, we're going to be completely left behind in the global economy, this to me

looks like a massive bubble. And it's not unrelated to the fact that it's a massive bubble that's burning through through energy at a faster rate than ever, which only makes energy more valuable. So the crazy thing to me, like to me, AI looks like NFTs worth three or four years ago, where I was told like this is the future and no one even remembers what I'm talking about now. Some crypto nonsense. I mean, you know, people still invest in cryptocurrency, but even that, we were told, oh,

that's going to, that's going to replace dollars. Of course, it's not, of course it's not going to replace fiat currency or whatever. You know, like all this stuff isn't sane. I'm not insane, but it's like, it's hype. And so I feel like we are seeing at such a federal level, this idea that like, oh, we have to, we have to like, you know, become an AI country. Shouldn't we become an energy generating country? Shouldn't every kind, like, I'm not shocked that the Americans are getting

tricked by this, but like, shouldn't every country be doing what China's doing right now? What am I missing? They can't afford it. Hmm. I mean, that's expensive. I've heard a lot of people wonder about this profit model for AI. I haven't heard a single thing yet that convinced me that it was profitable. Now, I will admit, I don't know that much about it, but when you talk about countries and energy, it's, it's extremely expensive, you know, it's

extreme. And so what's going to happen is the rich countries are going to go to the poor company, the countries, and they're going to build their energy for them. So they can make money on it. That's

“what's going to happen largely in Africa, right? But yeah, that's, that's how that's going to work.”

Corporations are going to take over all that all over the world. Aren't we a rich country? Shouldn't we be building, or not? I don't know why we keep saying we're so rich. We're like almost $43 a day. Because I'm willing to come from. And he told me we were rich. I'm just saying, like, where I come from, that's not rich. That's poor where I come from, just because we live on a credit card doesn't make us rich. We're keeping up with the Joneses, but there aren't any Joneses

to keep up with. I don't know why we're doing that, but we're not rich. We say we are, but we're not. But we keep refinancing to build the next. We're weighing on the mansion. Yeah, we can't get another loan. Probably get the materials at the buy here pay here, place too, but because our credit's about shot for being honest. I'm concerned that the AI, this so-called AI boom is like the dot com bubble.

Sure, the tech eventually will stabilize and be arguably a benefit. I say that not knowing the future. I mean, back when we were originally building the internet, we argued, this is going to be a

“benefit. Is it? I'm not sure. Social media is kind of ruining a lot of stuff. But I think from”

the collective, we can all say it's probably a small net benefit there over the net negative to have the internet. What I'm concerned about is when we look at things like the, the, whether

the big, the big ones. There's, there's hundreds of these AI subset companies. And it's starting to

look like the, the net scape and the Yahoo's and all of this, where if you just throw AI, the name, the word AI into your business model, you're going to get money. And it's going to just keep growing and growing. And then suddenly everyone's like, okay, so what? We've created this, this situation where we have, let's be honest, they're large language models and they're very good at what they do. But when the generative AI concept doesn't come around anytime soon, because I just don't

think, when you think of generative AI, you think of it's like a human, the touring test. It's like a human to human. We all can tell now what, when something's AI. And when that, when that promise

doesn't come to fruition in a couple of years, and people are like, the, we're like, yo, what's

going on with this generative AI? I thought I was going to be able to have everything from someone be my business partner that's a computer to, I'm a lonely Chinese male, because I, the one child policy, I was hoping I could have a virtual wife, and it's not feeling for filling it's, it's prophecy, that's when a crash comes because people are like, this isn't what we thought it would be. If an AI's here with us forever, just like the internet's here with us forever, I just think that

we have, we have exploded so high, so fast that it's like the dot com bubble, there will be a crash eventually. Yeah, exactly. Of course, the internet has a massive benefit and is here forever.

“We are just past the favorite business. I'm adding dot com to a noun was automatic investor money, right?”

And now it's, you're right. It's just a different thing. Just add AI, and that's automatic investor money. Of course, there will be a use that survives. But, you know, it's like I just said,

no, I've never seen anyone pay any money for anything AI generated. Like in terms of media,

I'm sure I'm sure in terms of code and things like that. But like no one is paying money to watch an AI generated movie, even if it gets, I mean, you're talking about artificial intelligence girlfriend for lonely men, that might be one of the only things I can imagine people paying for. We make all this stuff. You can make movies. You watch movies. The people make. Also, don't talk to an AI chatbot if you're lonely. It's going to destroy your brain. I'm saying this directly to the camera,

directed to the listener. It is bad for you. That is not real. That is not a real person. You just going to hurt you. It's agreeing with you. Anyway, um, that's not your mother. You're using AI to create a video where you don't have one. The guy, the guy who founded Reddit is losing his mind day. I know. It's driving me crazy.

“I think we should do a hard work. I'm going to respectfully get an answer to me that we can all”

spot AI because I'm feeling like I think it's getting, yeah, eventually it's going to be impossible. Well, I think the better thing is still enough people can detect it that no one is willing to purchase it. And it could I definitely know people who get tricked. I've been tricked like once or twice, you know, you're scrolling you move quick and you wait a minute. That image wasn't a video. It was a low res. You know, but like not everyone has learned to recognize that something that's taking

way too long to complete the sentence or four sentences to say one thing. I just did that. I sound like I was talking about a hard deal. Like when your mom sends you a video of a couch and put on a trampoline. So like look what they trained this cow to do. Like that's AI mom. That's that's not of course. You got to, I look again to the list. I don't want to go into the camera again. You got to talk to anyone in your life who's four seconds older than you. This is a dementia box.

“You have to talk them out of music it. The people who use chat GPT regularly to write essays can”

no longer write essays after three months. Your parents decaying brains are not as good as the college students. They did that study on you have to get them off chat GPT. It's nothing you're right much what's scarier to me is the replacement theory of AI. Like that's where one thing that concerns me is so my son he's 17. He has a phone like high schoolers have that phone obviously can tap into chat GPT, Claude, whatever there's apps. At what point does that become

my replacement where he's like I don't need to go talk to my dad about this problem. I'm just going to ask AI and that's a, I think that's a real problem we are going to have to deal with where this disassociation problem becomes even worse because the humans can be replaced not just workers not just workers like the coders that's but actual family members the actual relationships get destroyed. I don't need to go find a girl because I can watch porn and then talk to this AI

and that's a big fear of mine and you're talking about not being able to detect it. We laugh at

the old people that can't do that. It was similar to the old people back in the day when we could they couldn't figure out how to set up their direct TV and we had to go do it for them and things like that it was but now we're getting to a point where they're so good the machines are becoming so good that anyone can replace anyone and I'm very concerned about that. I'm very concerned about that. You guys in some places but you ever call customer service and you're like yeah there you go

I'm not sure if this person's real they might just sound fake they might be it's getting you know a lot of customer service a lot of chat but obviously if it's text is getting automated but it's moving into voice gen stuff now too like we say it's easy to notice but I have a couple of moments

over the phone while distracted where I said hey am I talking to a robot right now and wasn't sure

“I think we should do a longer episode on this and some of the energy implications of it”

in terms of oh yeah electro electro electric but like is this a power not just energy but power like is this is this a battle field of come years because I think we're talking about the weaponization that's a whole energy and weaponization of AI's yeah that should be an episode that'll be solid. All right well you heard it here folks folks we're going to come back and discuss AI at a future episode both its impacts on global military and power structures and also it's

impact on the energy crisis and energy generation around the world but before we do that and before we sign off I do want to go to our final segment of the show where we like to stop doom saying

or try to be a little bit more optimistic and talk about the least worst story we heard all

week. Do other you guys have a story you'd like to discuss? I go for now what was the least worst part of your week? So the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals is buying tickets for the fans who show up

“without a shirt and sit and that I believe it's the I can't remember if it's right field or left”

field but they have a section there where it's all these shirtless so if you're you know if you're saying loose up yeah like you can literally just look at that section and start counting cortisol levels I think so that gives you know people something to look forward to because there's going to be a lot more great big hairy bellies in the stands where the St. Louis Cardinals play I think it's great I think you think this is sort of like you know how they do the thunder sticks to stop

people at basketball you know just track the players it's sort of like these are pretty I'm going to go see these aren't tan men just my guess I'm just a stereotype but you know it gets cold I just say that's a big sunlight reflector right before right behind the field goal kickers eyes you know I'm saying you get those guys to go shirtless at the right moment you just get the angle of the sun there's they're missing a close field goal and that one we're talking about baseball

and that we're talking about I already forgot what we're talking about you're right

“Arizona Cardinals I was thinking the Arizona Cardinals saying that's what Michael my joke didn't”

make sense all right let's take a look okay you're going out for you're catching a fly ball you're leaning right over the edge of the section you can't quite see it you're losing it in the sun oh no 20 shirtless men glistening with sweat that's great direct glare to your eye when there's a hairy armpit and some out filters face fighting over a ball it's just over the fence that's going to be the best picture ever you're going to get the sweat you go on hold plate thanks

you bring in some green relief picture he's he's nervous out there all of a sudden there's 30 shirtless men right behind the bat are you there's no way he's finding the strikes though I wonder if that applies to women too you're going to have you also say you're going to have some progressive team out there just let me say to the plot of pants like you show up naked you're like I'm not wearing a shirt let me in technically

and he's got one bat you gotta have a cardinals hat on though I will be wearing a shirt if I go I'm just saying okay we need a lot of money no shirt this guy oh look who can afford to wear a shirt to the baseball game all right Robin in my face Chad what's your best least worst part of your week well I was pretty usual mine's not as good as mine's but it's still I think it's still a really great story um Mexico they're moving towards universal health care and that is quite surprising

because they're you would think it was that a country like Mexico would have affordability issues with trying to make universal health care work but they are figuring it out just like many European countries do just like many many countries that are much smaller unless less builders of of GDP less spenders on health care than the US and I just wonder why the US

in a way that 120 million people now will have which which is Mexico's population will have access

“to health care where where they didn't previously and I think that the all these countries”

recognizing that if you were Claudia Shinebaum the president of of Mexico who I'm a big fan of believes that that's another thing for Mexico got a woman on digress got a woman president before the US but I digress the the the the fact that we are in a place where countries that are objectively poorer than us can provide for their people better than we are that's frustrating but I'm still calling it a good news story because those 120 million Mexicans are going to

have health care in their country and that's that's I think that's a way the way of the future eventually we are all going to get have to get there because as we just talked about this would be part of the AI I love us what are we going to do when not all of us can have a job because AI takes a lot but yeah so good to do great job for the Mexican people and I'm happy that that's something

that they're working working through and can't possibly good news for 120 million people and you know

even if we have to look at through our selfish United States of America perspective the argument of it's just not possible here well we're not like here of our populations to distribute like all these things those arguments diminish the more different countries yep and and I'm literally mean more different as in the more diversity of countries that is capable of adopting you know okay well Cuba's different from France but they they can you know

well they their education rates are high for another you know all these things that we say aren't

“possible that other countries manage to do especially universal health care I think the”

broader diversity of other countries that succeed in doing so you know ultimately and primarily that's a good news because it's good for the people and it's good for people to survive

second and third order consequence it will hopefully be good for people living in North America

to survive longer as we try to chip away at this essentially just a propaganda ideology that we can't possibly you know cut out the middle man and run healthcare the way most of the most of the modern world does so if having our you know our next door neighbors who you know Americans generally look down on culturally I mean not every Americans racist against Mexico but America has a long tradition of being bigoted towards Mexico and seeing them is the like you know

the criminal country next door that we have to protect ourselves from well all of a sudden they're taking care of their people better than we are you know hopefully that helps

“us moving that direction as well yeah I believe that at my at my distant shred of optimism”

well I'm optimistic too because I believe I truly believe the more countries and the more people doing the more good for the masses of the people specifically and things like healthcare and education stuff like that it pulls the the US in that direction they're almost dragging us like we drag a lot of countries across the finish line economically they can drag us across the finish line socially so that we can we can have those those things that are like objectively we should be

doing so when Mexico can do it Americans are going to be like hey especially in Mexican Americans who have ties to Mexico they can see that and go hey why are how can they do it and we how can Canada do it how can like all these other countries do it and we can't and we have imagine in a first generation Mexican immigrant who fought for citizenship here and then Mexico gets universal health care yeah but I'm hoping that helps us out and our it should and our

attempt that like healthcare is a human right type movement type so that is my derrs do you think we'll still be able to go down there and get our our teeth and our in our titties and our tummy tucks for 20% of the cost of three keys yeah you think you'll change I got my three keys the first one the arrow and then the last one is the lowly entities yeah as being it's probably a clinic called teeth titties and tummy tucks let's be honest there's

probably a place in the rest of the result of the exchange rate probably I mean I know a lot of people go to Costa Rica because getting dental work done there is cheaper including the cost of the flight from America so it's like you might as well go chill in Costa Rica and pay less money it would have a vacation then go to the doctor hunter down the block there's a reverse immigration discussion to be had there too like the people just can't afford like if you're a chronic illness

person you might like what you need more to go down or you're younger you need consistent care but yeah I mean you do see you do see people trying to I mean this happens more but like some affluent people make the calculation of living in a you know a European social democracy would help them after a certain age because they have a chronic problem that you know they literally just look at it as an investment right and you know it's different if it's who can afford to move

well I want to tell you about what I'm excited about this week you guys want to hear about

“sure yeah so this is uh this is not a this is about a political campaign but I want to be”

clear this is not a candidate I've worked with or um because I write for politicians sometimes and I I also campaign and I volunteer my life of the private citizen but this is not someone I'm involved with but uh it's a race I've been looking at in following Claire Valdez is running for Congress in Queens New York and she last week I thought this was really cool dropped her climate policy which not all uh people running for Congress have an automatic climate versus energy policy

or have been explicit about and it's one of the most uh thought out explicit detailed policies of campaign is put out regarding the climate that I've ever seen and I wanted to point it out

“it's that Claire Valdez for Congress dot com if you want to read about it and again this isn't”

an endorsement but I was so excited to see the people are actually talking about this because one of the things that they what the things that they talk about in this policy are freezing electrical rates uh tough AI regulation and one thing that we've talked about which is a federal power utility

never we've talked about publicly owned power utilities but she proposes freezing electric rates

to develop the like deliver immediate relief and then building a federal public power authority and creating national clean energy standards and it's really I've seen a lot of that in the municipal level because I think you know ideally we can pass these things in New York state or the state level but I haven't seen a lot of people calling for these things on a federal level and I am drastically oversimplifying there are a lot about making AI data centers pay their fair share

and about building climate resilience for the future and I'm I'm naming topics but they get really into detail about specifically what that means and what percentage do these data centers have to pay and all that stuff so all of which is to say it's really I don't know refreshing to see a candidate not afraid to talk about these things but not only unafraid to talk about it but she's not doing the general hand waving of like well we we do need to preserve business but

we also need to look out for the community around the data set this sort of like fence sitting

thing that a lot of people do and then they ultimately of course favor the businesses it's interesting

to see someone and it's no surprise she's you know endorsed by Zorn Mamdoni who was a very specific in his economic policies but it's really interesting to see I don't think I've seen this specific a climate platform for especially for a congressional candidate so what she's what she's running for for Congress she's it's like a federal Congress yes she's usually state she is currently in a assembly member running for federal Congress. Maybe she does cut that up cut that up but yeah

or enter in the part where I say which shows she's going to appear on but yeah it's a really labor driven it's a really labor driven egalitarian detail oriented climate platform so again not an endorsement but it's really cool to see people even running on that and getting it into the conversation and I highly recommend just reading it if you're if that's the kind of thing that's interesting to you so that is the least worst part of my week. Go very cool and

testing good stores. Well it's great talking to you guys we are going to come back next week where we will be discussing either AI Claire Valdez's climate platform or the

“hidden sixth beef. I can't remember how we covered. Belly 7-E. The single George Martin will join us”

next week. I forgot my son. Well this has been American power we will join you all again next week for Chad Scott and Matt Randolph. I'm Nat Tausen and remember power corrupts but American power corrupts. American League.