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Beautiful communities for the one point nine million people, will build beautiful communities. Safe community could.
Be five, six, could be two.
But we'll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is. In the meantime, I would own this, think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land with no money's turned. No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing, much better In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them, because if they have to return now, it'll be years before you could have it's not habitable,
it will be years before it could happen. I'm talking about starting to build, and I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make a deal with Egypt. You know, we give them billions and billions of dollars.
So yeah, that's where we're currently at right now. Is not only is the quote unquote right of return and all of that being thrown out the window, but they're all just willingly going to go to God, to Egypt and to Jordan.
The King of Jordan actually is here in Washington today.
Well that's right with Donald Trump around eleven thirty in the morning. I'm curious to see what happens from that right now on the White House schedule. Actually, there's no joint statement between the two, which I'm very interested in because usual, like with BEB if you remember, there was a press conference, since it's usually a declaration of a statement a policy. We agreed on these two things. There will be currently there is no ability for the press
to be able to ask any questions. I know this is getting technical, but what that means is that you remember there's those sessions. He'll be in the Oval Office with the King of Jordan and then the press will come in and shout questions. Right now, on the White House schedule that I'm looking at, both of those are closed, which means that they will not be making a declaration.
I'm thinking at the request of the King of Jordan.
But this just I can't even wrap my head around where this bullet came from. Because the crazy thing is that these statements are coming from the President of the United States. So it's not only a declaration of we're going to own Gaza and we're going to like split it up into a great international zone where no US troops will be there. These Raelis will watch it, but they're not going to have sovereignty because we're going to own it and we're going to rent it and then
we'll rebuild it. And in the meantime, people will go to Jordan into Egypt, where both of those countries said they would rather go to war than to do that. And what exactly is why did we decide to underwrite for the destruction of this place and now we have to pay for it and administer It's.
The most insane thing.
The only thing I can hang my hat on is that poll we showed yesterday, which is only thirteen percent of Americans. We're like, yeah, that's a good idea. Actually, by the way, I want to meet those people who are you who is out there, because if you stack it together with everything that is happening right now, it is clear that we are talking about one of the
most ambitious nation building projects in American history. To have to rebuild a place burned to the ground by supposedly our foreign foreign ally, we have to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of this territory, use US policy to force other countries to take that population, and then.
We have to pay for it.
I mean, I don't remember this being a significant part of the campaign, or you know, put aside the anti war stuff. Just think about at a basic level, this whole idea of make America great again. When we're talking here about a unilateral nation building program for a foreign nation, for a foreign population, it's like, on every level it is absolute madness.
And on probably the most sensitive some of the most sensitive land on the entire planet.
I genuinely I don't know where this shit comes from. What concerns me the most is, like you said, the apologia that we largely see from MAGA meeting and others who are just like because they've saw this in Afghanistan, you know, everybody just turned all of a sudden when we withdrew from Afghanistan's like, oh, well, we should have held on to Bogrum and all of this. And then you asked Trump and you're like, well, we actually should have kept troops there the whole time, Like I didn't.
Actually you never mint it.
Yeah.
Well, And the other thing is like the position that, oh, this is the open opening negotiating position.
Or are you negotiating with also for what purpose?
So what is the end negotiating position?
Like even if you buy that, which I don't particularly buy that, especially at this point. You know, he said it, very intentionally said it. He's been asked now multiple times, keeps reiterating it, making it clear that this is what we're going to do, and Palestinians world people will be allowed to go there, but Palestinians will never be allowed to return. We're going to keep it, not temporarily permanently. It's just like, I don't know what makes you think
that this is some casual first bid proposal. And also even if you think that, like, where do you think that this is ultimately going. It's absolutely one of the most destructive, immoral, and dumbest ideas I have ever heard in my entire life.
No part of it makes sense.
And to go back to the King of Jordan being here, Trump has threatened them with Tariff's number one, which I don't think would really do. I mean, it would cause them pain, but I don't think it would move them at all, because they both Egypt and Jordan see this very much as an existential issue for their.
Own power and regime.
And he has also threatened to cut off the aid, the very large dollar amounts of aid proportionally that we give to Egypt and Jordan, and seeming to not understand like the whole reason we give those countries that much aid.
It's basically like a bribe for them to be nice to Israel. That is the purpose of that.
Ye, well, yeah, it's part of the camp David Acorp, Yeah, exactly. We're like, we give them both equal amounts.
I actually don't think it's bad idea. You're like, hey, cut it out.
And actually, if you look at the policy was very successful for many years. What we're effectively saying is that now we will move away from peace and the Sinai which did Look, you can make fun of it for all you want.
It stopped.
There were two wars in the nineteen sixty the nineteen seventies that US policy largely was able to just buy off the two sides say we're not going to do this. I would say that's decent. You know, fifty years of no fighting between those two nations, especially because that's an existential threat to the Middle East, and obviously with our current political system that would have drawn us in to
the conflict. Now we're talking about leveraging and moving away from that Camp David process, specifically to facilitate the expulsion of all Gossans so that we can own it, occupy it, pay for its rebuilding to what end. That's why I reject this negotiating thing. Then negotiation only makes sense in terms of I'm going to stop the conflict. The only way to stop the conflict is to say, okay, Israel, come us we got to figure out a way that this is going to work, and now we have a
lot of leverage actually on both sides. But the reason why I'm even more concerned is that all roads currently lead to some disastrous intervention. So Donald Trump has asked yesterday about the hostage deal, and we're going to talk a little bit about there's been a breakdown in the ceasefire. I think saying that we're going to facilitate the expulsion of Godzer probably doesn't help for the people who live there.
But now he is saying that if we do not release all the hostages by Saturday at twelve two Hamas, I will cancel it. All bets are off and let hell break loose. Let's take a listener.
Should have seaspied on me all, well, I would say this, and I'm going to let that because it's Israel's decision. But as far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages as aren't returned by Saturday at twelve o'clock, I think it's an appropriate time I would say cancel it, and all bets are off and let hell break out.
I'd say they ought to be returned by twelve o'clock on Saturday, and if they're not returned, all of them, not in drips and drafts, not two and one and three and four and two Saturday at twelve o'clock and after that, I would say, all hell is going to break out, and I don't think they're gonna do it.
So what does that mean? You know?
What hell can be unleashed that has not yet been unleashed? And actually I think I have an idea, which is Israel has not held back anything other than a nuclear weapon. Can we agree on that? So what's left America? Okay, so we're gonna bomb Gaza, great, great image to be able to see to what end? So that foreign hostages can get released, even if they're dual citizens. I don't remember us ever doing that before for what purpose?
So those hostages are in the zone that all hell will be breaking loose in as well. You know, and we know that hostages have been killed through IDF operations already.
According to the released hostages, not you know, from others. We're the ones who are saying that, so.
Exactly, we're not like making this up. This is confirmed. So it's I don't even know what to say at this point. But number one as you were horning out, Sager, like, what motivation does Hamas have to stay in a deal when you openly have the pros of the United States saying are what we're going to do is complete ethnic lens, get every Palestinian out of the gaza, strip and personally own the territory. Like that kind of strips any kind of goodwill reason why you would continue in a deal
with these people. And you know the other pieces. Of course, the way that the media frames this is AlOH Hamas is backing out of the deal, blah blah blah. But also Israel has never really technically abided by the terms of the ceasefire. They never have had a total cessation of violence. You know, Jeremy and our friends over at drop site have done an effective job of tracking a fact that they have continued to shoot and kill Palestinians
even after the ceasefire. The you know, the Hamas also says, and you know, we don't have verification of this, but this is their side of the story that some of the aid provisions, requirements for humanitarian assistance that were part of the deal have also been violated as well. So they're saying Israel is in breach and we're not going to continue to go forward. But I do think that really the governing factor here is what incentive do you
have to continue and to deal with these people? And they're openly broadcasting like number one BB is always openly broadcasted, basically like there is not going to be any Phase two. We're going to go back to bombing as soon as Phase one is over. And number two the United States of America, which really holds all the cards here, let's not pretend it's otherwise, is like, oh, we've come up
with a final solution for this territory. And anyone who thinks, like if you actually think Palestinians are just going to leave the Gaza strip and not fight and not like laid down their lives as they have for decades now to try to preserve the homes that they have there and the land that they have there, Like, you have got to be the dumbest person on the planet if you actually think that is the case, And you don't have to be an expert in you know, Middle Eastern
relations or the history of the Israel Palestine conflict to know that that is the dumbest thing you could possibly believe that people are just because Trump says, so it's going to be, oh, you're right, now, we'll give up our multi decade long resistance struggle to go and live in the desert in Egypt or Jordan or whatever.
Utterly preposterous.
Yeah, let's put B five up there on the screen, says Hamas says it will delay the release of more hostages, putting the Gaza ceasefire at risk. Now, what has happened is that we have B seven. Can we put that there on the screen in response that the IDF is saying that their quote unquote being on high alert complete violation of the ceasefire deal and a hostage deal. It just looks like it points to it looks like it
would just lead to a resumption of the war. And you know, obviously that's something that the world and all has dealt with. But with the subtext of Trump here saying the United States is going to take over Gaza, you can just imagine this is exactly what happened back in two thousand and five. What took Iraq from a intra country sectary in conflict into a global magnet for jihad was by making it into a fight against the American evil empire by drawing every global jihadist from across
the world to Syria and others. That's what turned it into this horrible civil war and war against our own soldiers. I foresee exactly the same thing happening here. There are, however, many people are alive, one point seven million.
I think we could reasonably.
Assume that hundreds of thousands will fight to stop from being expelled from the territory that they think is theirs. And you know what is the alternative that will happen for all of this? So it's none of this is good because, like I said, at the very least, even if there is no US occupation and it's just Israeli conquests of the territory and it's the United States sponsoring that,
what will that lead to in the future. And even that, like I said, I don't think it's good, but I don't think there would be huge pushback here necessarily at home. But there is no way in any way that even ten, fifteen to twenty percent of this can occur without hundreds of billions of American dollars, not to mention security guarantees. I mean, we railed against the Gaza humanitarian peer. How much construction material in all and security is going to
have to be run to facilitate some rebuilding. And you know, even if the Israelis take it over, it's not going to be easy. There's gonna be a massive insurgency across this entire place, which we have seen. I mean, you know it doesn't make the news anymore, but you have every day if you look when the war was going on, five idea of soldiers killed, eight, idea of soldiers killed, West Bank. There's stuff that's popping out. Yeah, we haven't even talked about that. So I don't know. This is
a this is a nightmare situation. He is easily could be sleepwalking us into a foreign intervention and take all of that out and just talk about politics. This is the easiest way to sink your presidency. Do not want American soldiers to die for Gaza or for Israel.
Nobody signed up for that.
And this is some scheme where he thinks that by talking tough and all of that, that he can negotiate. And what he doesn't understand is we're dealing very much with the same type of revolutionary force that we had in the past, where if their only option is to continue to fight for the existential purpose of existence. On that line, why would they ever negotiate. They will fight to the last, And I mean, I guess we can oblige them their death if we want to, But.
Why would we even want to. This is not land that's ours or that we even particularly want.
Nobody signed up for this, and then you know, even after that, to what end?
So nobody can answer that question. I don't know. I'm there.
I've said, out of everything that has happened, this is the one I'm most worried about. It's the area where he has more uniladal authority than I mean, there's no court system that's going to stop you from going into Gaza. There is no Supreme court order of that's going to be happening there. If the President can tomorrow order US military jets start bombing, or American soldiers another start running security, or this pressure on Egypt and on Jordan for this expulsion.
And you know, remember those three American service members who were killed by that Iranian drone that happened in Jordan. We have a lot of people who live in Jordan. Do you know how many Americans live in Egypt? I mean, it's got to be tens of thousands of US students. There's a green light on all those people as well. So I'm very worried about the situation. Let's get to ai. This is speaking of Elon Musk attempted coups. Well, we
have another attempted coup here by Elon. Although I got to tell you on this one, I'm actually a pretty on board, not necessarily with Elon, but against Sam Altman and the evil empire of open Ai. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. It broke out yesterday a consortium of investors led by Elon is offering ninety seven point four billion to buy the nonprofit
that controls open Ai. Okay, everybody stick with us, because this gets into complicated contract law and also law as it pertains to non government NGO's nonprofit nonprofit organization and the conversion of nonprofit to for profit. So what has happened is if we step back in the past, back in twenty fifteen, Elon and Sam Altman start open Ai
as a nonprofit. Now, after the success of chat ChiPT, what happens open Ai, the nonprofit establishes a for profit sub entity of the nonprofit which does deals with Microsoft and becomes a for profit entity that is then governed by this nonprofit institution. Led to a bunch of drama in that you know coup where Sam Altman was ousted and then he was brought back in, and there are all these questions about what the hell was going on.
What Elon and his group of investors are doing is saying, let us buy the nonprofit that oversees the for profit. The reason is because Sam Altman is currently trying to turn the company from a nonprofit that owns the sub entercy into a total for profit enterprise. I know this is extremely complicated and it's very obvious what happened here.
It started out as.
AI for the good of humanity and now it's how do we juice enterprise sales at Microsoft. So that's the subtext of everything. Put your feelings about Elon and all of that aside. The point that at least he makes here is, Hey, you solicited funds for the nonprofit and under false pretenses of it being an open hence in the name open AI open source platform that was supposed to be the good for everybody, and have turned it into a big technology company that's worth hundreds of billions
of dollars. So this unsolicited offer is to the board to try and to forestall that conversion into this. Now, sam Altman has now replied in an interview. He is currently in France at the AI summit where JD Vance, Sundhar Pachai and all these other leaders people like Neuring Gramodi and others are currently in attendance, and he responded in that interview. So guys, let's go ahead and take a listen to what sam Oman had to say.
The headlines right now, Elon Musk making a bit apparently for Open ai. Your response, you're turning him down for ninety seven billion.
I mean, look, open aiy is not for sale. The open airmission is not for sale. Elon tries all sorts of things for a long time. This is the late you know, this week's episode.
You take it seriously. It's all, what do you think he's trying to drive out with this?
I think he's probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor. It's you know, he's working hard and he's raised a lot of money for XAI and they're trying to compete with us. From a technological perspective, from you know, getting the product into the market. And I wish he would just compete by building a better product.
But I think there's been a lot of tactics, you know, many many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff now this and we'll try to just put our head down and keep working.
Does it make it more difficult to move from that nonprofit model to that profit model?
Oven Ai?
We're not moving to a for profit model. We're I mean, we're not sure we're going to do it all. But no matter what, the nonprofit will continue to be extremely important. It will drive the mission, it will continue to exist.
Do you think Musk's approach then, is from a position of insecurity about x Ai?
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy. You feel for him? I do, Actually I don't think he's like a happy person. I do feel for him.
Okay, do you worry that he has this proximity to the president and then you can influence the decision making of the US presidency and policies around this this agenda on Ali non particular?
Maybe I should, but not particularly. I mean, I try to just wake up and think about like how we're going to make our technology better.
So shots across the bow says he's an unhappy, insecure person, but just look at you know, the sliminess of him, like, oh well it'll not technically we're moving. It's like, no, dude, that's exactly what you were doing. You obviously directly violated the original spirit of the company.
But this stuff matters because.
You know what we've talked about, this is the beginning of the t compdministration. It's arguable that this will be the legacy of the next four years for AI Deep Seek. We obviously saw the impact on our stock markets here at home, but what the future of this technology and how it's governed. And this just shows you how much of it's like basically a plaything of ten different people who get to decide the fate of this entirety. That's right, the entire sector of our economy.
That's exactly right.
And my understanding was like part of Elon putting in this bid is it then puts a valuation on the nonprofit piece and then may make it more expensive and more difficult for them to be able to convert over. That was my very rudimentary understanding of the business move that was going on here ultimately. And also I mean it's just like typical Elon kind of like trollish behavior.
But you know, Sam Altman was really hardest hit in the whole deep Seek development because a bunch of the assumptions that he has really made about the way that AI will progress were really dealt a blow with deep Seak being able to you know, come on online be at least as as technically proficient as chat chpt is with much less funding. I mean, whatever the real funding
number is. You know, we have the technical papers to see that they did innovate, and they are doing things in a more efficient manner, even to the extent of like when you put in a query to chat gpt versus when you put in a query to deep seek. Deep seek uses a massively lower amount of energy than chat GPT does. So they genuinely innovated there. And Sam
was betting on two things. Number one that after an initial foray into making this all open source, they flipped and decided that the future really was in you know, closed models with partnerships from big tech giants like Microsoft. Deep Seak kind of blows some of that up being
an open source model itself. And then the other thing he bet is that the development would proceed by you know, which company had the most billions of dollars to throw at effectively, like building bigger and bigger data centers, and deep secretly sort of blows up both of those things. So he's in a kind of a difficult position right now and sort of grasping and all of those sorts
of things. Elon senses that. Elon also, you'll recall after Trump had Sam Altman at the White House announced his big five in ORed billion dollar stargate like boondoggle effectively, at this point Elon immediately chimes in to shit all over the whole thing, which was extraordinary because I mean, normally Trump would never brook something like that, and he just took it, and he got asked about and he was like, well, Elon hates the guy, and you know,
I harbor my own hatreds too, or something like that.
It's a very trumpy in.
Response, particularly likes one of those individuals.
He said, Hey, he has a hatred for one of them, I think is what he said. But I mean, in a certain sense, like the language was very Trumpian in another sense, it was very unusual because Trump typically when someone is outshining him, getting too big for their breeches, overstepping, undercutting him, like, he would not tolerate that. You just asked Deve Bannon, who was out of the first administration, like that. And so there's something different here going on
with Elon. I don't know if it's just the power of like Elon's mythology of being this great inventor genius that sort of captured Trump and that he's fallen into.
I don't know if it's just like they have this very mutually beneficial relationship right now where Elon sort of serves in a sense as a bit of a heat shield for Trump, and you know, brings to bear obviously Twitter and the power of that megaphone, brings to bear his nearly limitless wealth that he can use to threaten primary challenges against anyone who would challenge the Trump agenda. I'm you know, it could just be this like mutually
beneficial relationship. I'm not really sure, but it has been that part has been very out of character for Trump in terms of the way he norms operates with these personalities.
But yeah, the real point here is that all.
Of these people, Elon, Sam and all the rest of the you know dozen people who are at the forefront of AI development here and really calling the shots, et cetera, like they want to automate your jobs out of existence.
They think that, you know, the future for humanity is like transhumanism and you know humans plus as Steve Bannon put it, they have all of these almost religious notions of what AI is going to do in the way that it's going to save humanity, and it makes them very dangerous people, not only because the technology is very dangerous, but also because anytime you have someone who casts themselves in that role as like the sole savior of humanity
and they really believe that, and I mean Elon definitely believes this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Sam and some of these other guys believe that as well and have cast themselves in this hero and savior of humanity role. It starts to justify all sorts of things that are really not justifiable. And also, we didn't vote for any of these people to be our saviors and to re engineer the social contract or automate all of our jobs out of existence, or even try to do such a thing.
They have a pointed themselves in these roles and it is extraordinarily dangerous the games that they're playing.
Yeah, let's actually put can we please put C six up on the screen just to show that none of this is slowing down. It's a graph here from the Wall Street Journal the tech giants doubling down on their massive AI spending so currently the increase in the last quarter, actually there was a huge increase in the capital spend
despite all of us talk around deep seek. And I think the reason why is because it gets to the question about cutting edge of technology and training new models versus being able to execute things at a much cheaper way. And I mean this gets to some bigger questions too about how the deep Seak thing was even able to be happened.
They asked to may.
Probably cost over a billion dollars to train the model before supposedly costs six million, But it does still justify, at least in the minds of Meta, of Google, of Microsoft, and an Amazon of just like ungodly amounts of money that is being spent right now on AI. And the reason why is because all of them think that if you spend like in the case of Google, we're talking about fifty two point five billion in a single year that is just.
Spent on AI development.
All of them say, well, let's say you burn several hundred billion, but you create you know, the breakthrough AGI. Well, the enterprise value of that is trillion. So even then the capital expenditure, even though it's a ton of money in absolute terms, in a fraction.
Of what the value of what it would mean to be the.
First to the actual breakthrough of the technology. And it's it's terrifying because what they all seem to be saying behind the scenes is we're much closer than anybody seems to think. Now, there's maybe an element here of some alarmism and all of that, but we can see the rapid development and the ability to use these programs for a series of white collar tasks like that alone is already that's.
A big step change. I mean, I use it all the time.
I probably use it every single day for a variety of research tasks and others. It's it's just better in terms of you know, if I like compare the production value of BID versus TESLA. It's like, it sounds stupid, but previously you have to Google bid production value, then Google test. Then you have to manually do it together. If you use can it a wall, use archive or whatever, and just like in two seconds, I literally get the answer.
That's just an example for something that I do. I can't even imagine if I still had some spreadsheet jockey job. Like half these guys in finding described are the greatest things that's ever happened for them. They can compute and have models built in seconds that probably manually would have taken forever. So you can easily see how it's going to change right now, and so I have no idea how we'll.
Even looking for There also could be I mean to go back to that chart that we just put up on the screen. It's also possible that this is contributing to a massive stock market bubble, because yeah, well not only that, but I mean, all of these companies, their evaluation is really dependent on the idea that they're at the forefront of AI development and that that is going
to be this just like profoundly valuable development. And you know, there's questions about that, especially after deep Deep Seek, there's questions about that. I was just looking it up on Financial Times, not on JATGPT, but Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. They accounted for half of the S and
P five hundreds games last year through October. So you know, the stock market lives and dies by what happens with these handful of tech giants, and there's a lot of assumptions about AI that go into those valuations that makes
it quite quite vulnerable. The other thing that I think is worth really keeping an eye on as we watch what Elon's doing in the federal government is we know they've already unleashed AI on the Department of Education, and I think one of the goals is to use the federal workforce as kind of guinea pigs in this direction of automating a lot of jobs and automating the workforce.
And you know, maybe you don't have a lot of like personal sympathy for quote unquote federal government bureaucrats, although I would say that you should, because many of them do very important jobs and forego higher salaries that they could be getting in the private sector in order to perform those valuable functions. But even if you don't that way, I assume absolutely absolutely so. In any case, even if you don't share that empathy and sympathy and admiration for
the civil servants working for the federal government. You know, what they unleash there is not going to stay there. So if they are able to use AI to automate a massive part of the federal workforce and use our public goods and public civil service infrastructure as effectively a science experiment to see how many human beings they can get rid of, you don't think that's going to have
spillover effect. So you don't think that that's like, you know, a model for how they're going to roll things out across the country and how companies are going to look to that and use those learnings in order to automate their own workforces. I mean, these are real things that are on the table, and I think that's certainly part of the plan here with what Elon wants to do with the federal government as well, to try to innovate in that job loss department.
Let's move now to Chinese EV maker BYD which has just made a huge announcement that could potentially change the EV industry.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
News came out of China just yesterday BYD will now offer quote God's eye self driving system on all of its models. So BYD obviously is the largest electric vehicle maker in China and in how has a quote unquote advanced self driving system. Now, every video I've watched says it's roughly equal to the Tesla full self driving. It has some important differences that the L three nerds will dig into, but let's just say it's better than what's on your Toyota, your Honda CRV assisted autopilot.
So we leave it at that.
But the extraordinary part of it is not the role fact that it's rolling out, but the fact that it is now installing it on every single model that they sell, including the Seagull budget hatchback, which it currently retails inside of China for nine thousand, six hundred dollars.
Yes, you heard me correctly. This is a.
Huge deal because it challenges the Tesla market share abroad. So in the United States, obviously you cannot buy by You can't buy any of these Chinese evs. But China, which we're about to get to, is a net exporter actually of cars. Their electric vehicles are highly desirable for many people across the world. In Europe and elsewhere, and a lot of areas, especially with cheaper cost of living. They have genuine innovation in a lot of their electric
car industry. They have a battery supply chain which is heavily relied on by Tesla and other US automakers. So they are I would put them almost fifteen twenty years ahead of us. They also they don't have no EPA telling them what they can and can't do. They're like, if you can extend the range, if you need regulation, the government is there to help you because it's an instrument of national power and it's extraordinary. You were talking in the intro how Americans currently have a real boomer
mindset around Chinese cars. I love electric vehicles. I'll be totally transparent. If these weren't from China, I would buy one in a heartbeat. They are better than any cars that we sell here in America.
No, if they if we didn't have like just a block on.
These tesh I would buy you. Yeah, this question, many other country would buy.
Our domestic ev industry would be.
Dead over.
There's only a few select people who are telling Americans and others how good these cars are. And one of these guys who I follow is a Forest He does Forest Auto reviews. I love the way that he does reviews. But he's able to get his hands on a lot of different Chinese evs. I watch like every video that this guy does, So we thought we would put together a mashup of some of the cars the Chinese EV's reviews that he's done in the past. The very last one that will show you is the actual Seagull from
BYD that we were talking about. But this is a range of luxury ev down to the most budget model, So you got to see here what we are missing out on.
What is up, guys.
Right behind me is a car from China, which is a big deal because there's currently no Chinese manufacturers in America, which is kind of a shame because this car is really cool. So obviously you can use your key, or you can leave your key at home and use NFC. This car is a plug in hybrid and on just the battery it can do about sixty miles, which is more than any plug in hybrid in America, and on a full charge and a full take of gas, it
can do well over six fifty miles. If I push the button on the side of my seat that'll fold down my armrest. My sister heated, ventilated and massaging. I have an area right down here for my phone, have built in sunscreen shades. If I push this button, my cup holder comes out and I can do this. I'm six feet tall for reference, you can be seven feet tall and still lounge back here.
But what if I want to watch a movie?
A TV can't fold up into the small space, but a projector can. Yeah, this is pretty sweet. You also get a built in fridge.
Behind me.
Is what eighty four hundred dollars can get you in China. This is the Wooling Bingo. It's a tiny four door ev It starts at eighty four hundred dollars, but even fully loaded, it's only twelve thousand dollars if you get full led lights, these tiny cute wheels, and it can do two hundred and fifty on a pool charge. You also get a lot of space in the trunk.
You guys see what I'm talking about. I mean, look, let's be honest. These cars are sick. There's other ones not even BYD I can't pronounce them, but the self driving tech the lounge, and they retail for like sixty thousand dollars.
There are several there are several.
Like Japanese similarities, not evs per se, but Lexus and Toyota models that are only available in Japan. But they're not sending their best over here. But I wanted people to understand this because the rest of the globe has access to BYD and they like it. And this is
one of the most extraordinary differences. Now because Tesla obviously is probably the most successful auto startup of all time in the United States, it is currently the crown jewel of the American EV industry, obviously Elon and all of that removed. It's one of the top sellers of cars almost every state in the United States. I believe the Tesla Model three or the Model Y was one of
the top sellers in the state of California. We've done a lot of bets through the IRA Industrial Policy on this, saying, oh, we're going to try and compete, but the truth is it's like we are getting our asses kicked at a very structural level. You can see here clearly how even just four years ago that the United States and China were roughly tied in terms of the.
Car exports to the rest of the world.
Well, in the last four years they've gone stratospheric and now they have more cars exported to the rest of the world than Japan, Mexico, Germany, South Korea, and the United States. So there has been a massive shift in the way that the Chinese car exports have become a central part of their ability to trade with the rest of the world. And this goes to the central heart of the problem between the US economy and the Chinese economy.
They build shit, and they do it well.
Their government policy is all organized around finding people like the bid CEO and being like, what do you need.
You need a supply chain, We'll build it for you.
Oh, you need expedited approval and market share and all of this industrial capacity done and five ten years ago, or actually even twenty years ago, a lot of people didn't believe. Charlie munger Our, a famous investor. He said that the bid CEO is one of the smartest people who we ever met in his entire life, and that if he could have bet more on the company, that he would have. I listened to the last interview that
he ever gave with acquired. Highly recommend it if you can, but just to give people an example of how they back their critical entrepreneurs who make stuff in the physical world, and the payoff on their technology is that by getting ten fifteen years ahead of US, they are now exponentially in just four years topping the United States even Japan in terms of the number of net exports. Without export control, it's over. It's over in terms of electric vehicles. Now,
maybe we can catch up. You know, you've got to bias ten fifteen years. But we don't control the European Union, you know, we don't control the export law of a huge number of US allies. And what are the most what is the most revealed preference of all time across the world. Consumers want what good products at cheap prices, and if you give them the option, they're going to
buy it. So this is an existential problem that we have and their ability to compete to offer full self driving for free on a ten thousand dollars car in the US, we buy a Tesla, you want full self driving, either pay have to one hundred dollars a month or eight thousand bucks up front, eight thousand bucks for the software, which is roughly what twenty percent less than the price of the car in China. So that's what we're dealing with here.
Now.
Obviously it's a tiny little hatchback, but still, I mean, what's a Toyota camera go for these days?
Twenty probably thirty thousand dollars. I'm guessing here, I'll look it up while you react.
Well, I was going to say, you know, a part of why they have so many exports of their vehicles is there's been a huge shift which has been incentivized by the federal by the government in China towards electric vehicles and plug in hybrids. So half of the new vehicles bought in China now are either evs or their plug in hybrids. So now they have all of these traditional gas powered vehicles that don't really Chinese consumers no
longer really want. And so that's a lot of what is being offloaded into Europe and other places around the world, and has been very popular in the Middle East, very popular in like Latin America because they're so like cost efficient.
But I think the piece about the differences between the economies is really important because they did fifteen years ago they identified that a particular Chinese premiere who identified evs as one of their highest priorities, and they invested a lot of money into it and they you know, also, this actually does touch on the USAID discussion as well, because China's Mountain Roade initiative, part of their effort of projecting soft power and building goodwill around the world, was
about establishing these supply chains, specifically for EV batteries, and they have done a tremendous job in locking up a lot of those mineral resources. USAID, as Senator Chris who was a Chris Murphy, I think that kind of let the cat on the bag about.
What USAID is actually about.
Like one of the things that he name checked was securing rare earth minerals around the world, and he's right about that. I mean, that is part of the goal of USAID. So you know, for example, the HIV program that pet far that has been in place since the George W.
Bush administration.
One of the countries where it has been incredibly important and been a genuine lifeline for people is Zambia. Well, Zambia had a huge problem with HIV and AIDS. It's in a much better place now because of the investments
that we made there. But also Zambia happens to have a lot of minds of things like cobalt, and we have invested a lot of money and been able to have those partnerships in Zambia of securing those rare earth materials, as Chris Murphy said, in part because of the more sort of like you know, humanitarian investments that we made in the country. So when we talk about just to give this is like a real world example of when we say soft power projection. I know that can sound
very abstract. That's the sort of thing that we're talking about. And that's what China has really accomplished with their Belt and Rote initiative very very effectively.
But because they.
Have been so much more intentional about their industrial policy and really got you know, while we were still in full on neoliberal mode and industrial policy was like and tariffs were like a dirty word, they were planning for what the industries of the future would be and where they wanted to lead. And now with BYD we see the way that that has really paid off for them.
Shocking.
I mean, you know, eight to nine percent of new car sales in the European Union as of early twenty twenty four, according to Claude, are made in China eight to nine percent. This is after a thirty nine percent increase from just the year twenty two twenty three, So in a four year period, they are gobbling up European car market share. And like I said, I mean their ability to compete in the supply chain. Compare those BYD vehicles to a Rivian look no offense.
I think Rivians look cool.
They cost like eighty thousand dollars and they go like two hundred miles and if you get into looked really, I think, though I like the look.
Of you, you have more of an affinity for these, Like futurists, I do.
I'm not a fan.
I'm the cyber truck. I think it's the I like both.
I like futuristic stuff. I really love retro stuff. So stuff like a Ford Bronco Yeah old.
Yeah, those are qu that I'm down with.
But yeah, I mean Rivian fine a it's a hot selling car. People really like them, but they're paying eighty thousand bucks for it. Okay, in China, if you pay eighty thousand dollars for ev it's gonna be like that Projector car. It's gonna have two recliners in the backseat and a nice little tray where you can.
Eat hotfrigerator with built in chopsticks.
If you want a car like that here in America, you're gonna pay two hundred grand, and you probably still won't even be able to You still won't even get half of the features that are inside of it. That's the stakes of what we're talking about. So I'm worried. I don't see any indication that we're going to get our act together. One thing the Chinese do, which I think is amazing, is they have these gas generator evs, which is just a plug in hybrid or kind of equivalent where.
They have an eight hundred mile range.
Where you have a gas generator on top of an EV battery that has a three hundred miles I mean, that would be incredibly useful. It basically makes it so that you can have hybrid systems where you can fill gas and a supercharger network.
Stuff like that doesn't even exist here. Yeah, you know, are plug in. What's the best plug in hybrid in America?
I'm trying to think probably a Toyota Rav four if I had to gas. In terms of affordability, I don't think that thing goes more than like forty miles on a range. So just think about the difference that we have in terms of what accent and we pay more than their cars.
Yeah, not to mention insurance and all this other bullshit.
Well, and I mean Trump has made it quite clear that any sort of EV support you know, that was previous provided under the Biden administration, he wants to roll back. I know they've specifically stripped the funding from the program to build out the charger network, which obviously makes it much more feasible for regular people to be able to have evs, and you know, also helps to provide a market for domestic EV producers. So it's the opposite of
a priority from the Trump administration. So I don't see any indication why we would catch up at that day.
Honestly, maybe it's the right thing to do, because like why should we even compete at this point. It's like, let's just buy gas vehicles and like that's all we're really good at. We pump a lot of gas because they have so clearly cleaned the They has so clearly gotten ahead on this that without direct investment now we wouldn't even be able to.
Compete for a decade.
I still just can't get over that chart of the four year period of their ability to an export. It's insane. So look, you know I've said it before. People think I hate China or it's like, no, I respect them. That's in terms of my criticism of a marriag. It's that we have we don't even come close in so many areas of their ability to think strategically, to think long term, to develop an industry if they want to. You know, even the deep Seek idea is what is, let's do the same.
Thing for cheaper.
You know, you can't help respect a lot of competition, even if it makes you look foolish.
I mean, I also think it was so and maybe this is a sort of overemphasize part of the Deep Seek story, but the fact that the Chinese government was like, we don't want our smart, best and brightest going into the financial sector. We don't want them to just be like financial speculators. Oh and by the way, they're like, we're not crypto, we're not doing that shit.
Well, we're not doing that shit.
That's the Indians too. They also hate.
They're smart because I mean, because yeah, we're funneling like some of our brightest talent into these just like brazen Ponzi schemes and crypto and financial engineering on Wall Street is like the war refriend version of that. We're like, you know, they were like, we're not really interested in doing that. We're going to cut the salaries for well financial type jobs and you know, push our best and brightest graduates into research and technology, whether it's AI or
whether it's eed, battery development, et cetera. And that also is an important component of this, is like you know, where do your where do your best minds, your best technical minds, where do they go? And in the US oftentimes it's Hey McKinsey, it's.
Wall Street, it's Goldman. Yeah.
Absolutely, you know who's going to fix these problems, Saga President Stephen A.
Smith. You can do worse. You can definitely told.
You he's against weed. I'm pro Stephen.
Is he really his stay off the wied It's one of the most famous clips. I don't even know about, sir, Yeah, I guess you should have. Yeah, well, thank you, Stephen.
In any case, being.
Against the dangers of the neurotoxin cannabis.
Sensing a dearth of talent on the Democratic side, Stephen A.
Smith is floating.
The idea maybe he'll take a run at the presidency the next time around. Let's take a listen to what he's had to say.
I'm trying to help.
I don't want you to see you get your ass kicked in another election.
I don't want to see you losing the mid terms.
I don't want to see you lose four years from now in advance with JD. Vance or Marco Rubio or somebody being the next president of the United States just because they're opposite you. I want the best candidate for the country to win. That cannot happen. That can't happen if you have no voice.
And what I was just trying to make a profound point, and that is that I think the Democratic Party in the city, in the state that they find themselves in, I think somebody like me.
Could actually win.
I certainly think that I could beat any of those candidates that you put on the screen. I can tell you that right now. I certainly think if I was running up against somebody like you, I would win that race too. So when you think about the candidates that you possibly go to, you, why don't you run for some sort of office?
I think you'd be great.
You'd have my vote, please answer huge fan peace of love. First of all, the only because I would ever be interested in is the presidency of the United States.
That's it.
I wouldn't be interested in being a governor, a mayor, a senator, damn sure, not a congressman. I don't want to be one of four hundred and thirty five. I don't think I would be a very good campaigner because I ain't the greatest in the world that as shaking hands and kissing babies. But I know i'd make decisions and I wouldn't hesitate. We gonna do business in the United States. Businesses ain't gonna be scared to open their doors and only let two or three people in out
of time because somebody gonna get ribbed. Oh hell no, not under my watch.
So I have consumed a lot of Stephen A. Smith over the past number of years because Kyle loves this guy. Yes, even though his politics are very centristy. Leftists are sharing a tweet that he put out years ago where it was like, listen to Bernie Sanders and he's exactly right about everything. To be like, oh maybe maybe, but I mean, we know his politics are very like nor me always
hewing to the center. He's real buddy buddy with Sean Hannity loves this, you know, loves him, loves the like the whole mantra of bipartisan sort of norms, et cetera. But he is at least charismatic. He is at least charismatic. He's at least unafraid of like he's not afraid of controversy. He's not afraid of, you know, actually saying what he thinks and stating it in.
A clear and unequivocal manner.
And I think in terms of putting aside my own like political ideological project, I think so much of the discussion, especially after this loss, about like, oh, how does this issue pull and that issue pull? And maybe they should have, you know, set a little bit more about this. They're setup a little bit more about that based on the polling,
et cetera, et cetera. I really think one of the core issues for Democrats is just a lack of someone who is compelling, who will say something brash, defend it, be unafraid, not be you know, a shrinking violet and running from every controversy, who could certainly go on any podcast Stephen A. Smith could and make his case and
be comfortable and be likable and all those sorts of things. Like, if Democrats want to win again, they do need to look for a character who is like Stephen A. Smith, and just in terms of winning again, not in terms of what I want to see ideologically happen, just in terms of winning. That is very much the direction that they need to pursue, more so than any of the like poll tested adjusting themselves on this issue or that issue.
Yeah, it gets to a vibe question. I think that's objectively true. It's like willingness to fight. Remember what was the top word that people that people associated with the first weeks of the Trump administration. Energetic, Right, that's a
real part of it. I mean people have made fun before, but I've talked about how so much of the Kennedy presidency was just described by vigor Viga, as they used to say at the time, as people were just amazed after he had the sixty year old President Eisenhower, who was like golfing all the time, as this like forty year old young guy turned out to be on meth who is currently you know, he's just everywhere, he's always appeared young and vibrant, you know, in front of the camera,
and that's really appealing to a lot of people. And that gets to the vibe of Donald Trump. I mean, there is something genuinely astounding about Trump in a certain way where you have a nearly eighty year old man who sleeps four hours a night, impervious to the shittiest diet that would put most people on in the hospital. And it's like, in a certain way he is indestructible. Something that you read a lot about in every presidential biography is some version of they were just built different.
And I think what Stephen A. Smith has similarly with Trump and others, is what does this guy obviously love. He's got plenty of money, all of us, so he likes attention, He enjoys he knows the game, and so that there's inside all these politicians to give up all your time with your family and all the bullshit that comes with this, you need a black hole that is unfilled and that never ends except where you only feel alive in the moments when you're in the midst of a controversy.
I just go it.
Apparently there's something going on with Serena Williams. Please don't even try and explain to me, but that's the top headlines excumination, so that he would divorce Serena Williams over appearing in the Kendrick Lamar halftime show, and it's everywhere, and you and I both know he feeds off of that. Trump is very similar, yeah for that, and so yeah, I think obviously he's built a huge career.
He's a household name.
You know, I previously floated people like The Rock and others. This is why, because this is part of the Trump strategy. I still think McConaughey should have run for governor of Texas. I think you would win, I really do. But you know, these guys they also see what it will cost. Eventually, he says he's not interested in anything but president, so maybe he should run.
You know, yeah, we do.
Okay, he knows he understands the attention economy and he's not afraid of it.
Yeah, and that is puts him leagues ahead of the.
You know, of so many of the Democratic contenders that you could talk about. He has, you know, made a few interesting political comments over the years. Let's take a listen to I know one of these things is. Most recently, he came out and criticized Trump on Gozen Palestine.
Which was that to me was a signal.
Because most people who aren't political, who haven't like it's a very uncomfortable topic for people because they feel like and they've been made to feel, oh, I don't understand. All the guys must be really complicated.
I'm just going to stay out of it.
And they have a sense that it is such a hot button issue with trip wires all over the place that no matter what you say, someone is going to absolutely hate you for it.
And that is one hundred percent the case.
But you know, he's unafraid of just going ahead and jumping in and saying what he thinks on the issue. So I think we have that, and I think we also have a clip for him talking about trans writes.
Let's take a listen to both those.
It hits me because and I've often said this to a lot of people. I've said this to black folks. I've said this to folks whether you're heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transit, I don't care, you know what I've said Oftentimes, when you're talking about civil rights and civil liberties for every human being out here that is a fight worth fighting for. I will fight on behalving the LGBTQ plus community any day of the week, just as much as I fight for the black community, just as much as I fight
for the heterosexual community. I don't care right is right when it comes.
To your civil liberties.
You realize the real estate property that exist like that, that's what you're gonna say, That's what you're gonna open your mouth and allude to. It ain't about money, It's about something more than that. They can bring up religion, They can bring up a lot of things. When Trump's first administration was in place, what did they do? Move to US embassy to Jerusalem? They said, this is where it's at. They took sides in a lot of people's eyes.
You really really think that the folk in the Gaza strip, the Palestinians are going to support that kind of movement, that they're going to want to be displaced. Egypt and Jordan already said absolutely not. The anticipation is that the entire average world will say absolutely not.
What are we doing.
I'm not trying to get into this issue to talk about something I really really don't know about. I'm really addressing this because of the displacement, the potential displacement of over a million people. That's why I'm bringing.
This up so interesting.
Yeah, not afraid that's been Obviously I disagree with the guy on the trans thing, but that is probably the best way you can get yourself to you know, galaxy brain about why it's good to have trans women or whatever in women's sports.
But I do think the messaging there, his instinct for it of just being like, this is civil rights, just like all fight for black rights.
You know.
It's it's that civil rights framing is actually something that people agree with, even if you put aside like the specific question of people of what league people should play.
It in terms of sports.
But he has an instinct for how to frame this as just like basic civil rights that would be appealing to a lot of nors.
I could see it work.
Yeah, it's probably the best way that you could get there. But I mean, if anything, I think Trump is doing these people a favor.
And now you don't have debated anymore.
But if you get yourself on the Gaza thing, I was like, huh, that's an interesting way how you would explain it to a normal, to anormy to somebody who has zero you know, who has h hasn't really given it much of a thought. But I genuinely I don't even think it gets to the substance of it. It's just about that approach, the need for attention and others, and that's that's what Trump ultimately was, you know, incredibly
successful at. And Stephen NG Smith, I think from as I understand it, because again I don't watch a lot of sports, and I especially don't watch sports commentary, but from what I understand of what he is so good at, it's specifically inviting controversy and like out of nothing, you know, in terms of giving the hot take not only for the sake of it, but to invite the controversy with his fellow panelists or whatever. And obviously he's been incredibly
tremendously successful. I think he's one of the major draws right at ESPN. It's like the only thing that's still keeping them afloat. Obviously has pushed a lot of people out. But being divisive, as we learn under Trump, is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's also funny, like there's another thing with us, like he's just entertaining.
He was great on Hillary too, if you remember he was going it was some time in the election. I forget exactly what he was, but just going after Hillary Clinton, which which I enjoyed.
So clearly he's got.
His eye on the h he's got his eye on where things are right now, and may yeah, maybe maybe you could be successful.
I don't know.
I would like to see it. I like to see shifts. Yeah, exactly. At the very least, it would be fun. I would enjoy it. Hi, everyone, Sorry, there's some scheduling issues that we ran into with Sorow. We're gonna have him on the show on Thursday, so just make sure we're getting the show out on time.
We love you.
A great counterpoints show for everybody tomorrow and we'll see later The Speak
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