It Could Happen Here Weekly 215

Al Zone Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. What's Pippin'

I'm tired?

Yeah, you look tired.

It's been a long week. It's been a long week convention walking.

Yeah, we've worked very hard.

I've talked to too many robots.

Yeah, I've talked to a lot of chat bots.

I mean it's a bit of a stretch, is that we've talked with them.

I've talked to add a lot of chat bots.

Yeah, and sometimes they respond and sometimes they don't.

I guess one of the things that's kind of shocked me is it because, like, despite being very critical about AI in the industry, I have actually a pretty good idea of what these things are capable of. And I know that chat GBT and Jim and I and the other like, they're capable of doing some things that look very impressive. They are capable of conversations. You know that it can be fairly in depth, and that can cover

Yes, case in point, I was trying to pull up one of the one of the AI robots that we saw today, and I guess this is something that we talked about on Better Offline a bit. And the main thing this this year is the complete, the complete like victory of of like chat GPT across not just not just like.

It's like the cultural victory within the tech industry.

Yes, right, and it's moved into like the physical world through like their API license saying yeah, so many of the quote unquote products this year is building a physical thing around chat GPT.

We have a necklace that has chat GPT and you can talk to it. We have a pin that chat GPT is in and you can talk to it and have it do things like transcribe an interview.

Earbuds there's there's earbuds, little tiny robot Dogslassy. Everything has has chat GBT inside it. And that's the main thing that makes it like unique or special compared to you know, the types of products we've seen we've seen before.

And I would say again when I say that, like seventy percent of the chatbot enabled products that I tried to interact with could not converse with me or could not do so in a functional way. It's not because the chatbots aren't able to talk to you, because they are anyone who's not like you can. It's that all of the chatbots require an active Internet connection because the vast majority of these products do not have anything on device, and when you're in a crowded convention floor, the Internet

Yeah, the LLLM rappers, so LM rappers and robotics are the big things this year. Often these things are between you.

Mean by an LLLLM rapper garrison.

Well, this is this is the thing that we're talking about. It it's say, it's that this physical product that's built around something like chat GPT or Gemini or Claude or a number of like the Chinese made ones, right, So

Look at now you can intelligence the robot and no, can't do more tasks than it used to, Like we're still doing really good if it can slowly and not very competently fold laundry. Oh right, like LG's Kloyd Cloyd, which is a robot designed to be in your home and do chores for you and visibly does not do them well. We watched it now where they're presumably it's presumably working better than it normally does because it's a demo.

No.

I went to the first Cloyd Cloyd demo and they had like three three different setups for the different stories for like different use cases for Cloyd, once with ones with a family, ones with like a single guy, and ones with like a like a middle aged woman. And with the family, the robots able to find keys that are lost. Notably, what that means is that Cloyd is moving keys around the house, which might actually contribute to

Is it?

So you want need to tell you have a memory?

So many of these products with the big selling points like it's got a memory and it has they can't they can't stop themselves. And I think some of this was like the actual companies and the way that they're structuring their ad campaigns. But a lot of this was just most of the companies here hire pr people who don't regularly work for the company and don't know much about the products, and they're just there to demo stuff, and some of it is those people just defaulting too.

Well.

They're talking about how this thing like like remembers and knows you, So I'll talk about how it like it has a personality, It has memories, it has experienced, it has core memories, you know, it has preferences, and like a personality, it wants things. I talked to a couple of different people at booths who like that was the thing they were emphasizing, is that like, this is an AI that like feels and gets to know you and

Oh, if you get it, introduce yourself however you want introduced.

Oh, I'm Ben Ben Rosporter. I am an academic, I'm a sociologist at Kearney.

And you have accompanied us through the wonderful world of Las Vegas and the cees this year. I always like bringing people to witness the beautiful world.

Yeah, I've been brought to this place very far from god, Las ve Guess and the Tech Convention Center. There is this moment where we were walking through and it was the the the amy Bot for kids.

Which me and Robert saw last year, that the little like oval owl looking robot.

Yeah, yeah, and they had this She's got to be an actress and she was doing like a little skit with the amy Bot where it was like it was like the Amy About's birthday or something, and she was like very clearly having this this very produced. It reminded me exactly of how like cheap Tella Novella's like actors talk where she was just like, wow, Amy, you've really gotten to know me over the years. And it was bizarre in that one the selling point of the robot

Yeah, that was that Love Ants is the sex Robot booth, And yeah, they had two products. One was like just like you know, silicon like realistic human skin sex robot, which is similar to like you know, those horrifying sex dolls, except now we have an LM inside. It's another one of those LM rappers, except it's wrapped around of redheaded women.

Garrison. I find that very offensive. It's actually some people are just they're not capable of talking to women or other human beings of any kind.

Yeah, people with ADHD.

It's actually a disability where people can't know other people and can only have sexual gratification through a creepy robot.

I apologize for my spect for my on air ableism. Yeah, but no again, this is the year of LM rappers, and now they're putting it, putting it in a sexpod, which is more unnerving between than a regular sex doll because a regular sex doll, you kind of know it's an object. Like it's it's not trying to be much more than an object. It can't, you can't. You could you put in positions, but it's it's static. Yeah, this because this thing tries to kind of engage with you.

Yeah, so you could say, I guess that, like, well, obviously there's there's fundamental issues with like having Wi Fi be decent. When you've got seventy thousand people like all cramming themselves into a room. Of course, that's going to cause problems. That the chatbots and the devices using them are actually capable of more they should. They're more impressive than you giving them credit for just because the WiFi

This is the big people, I haven't really made a product. All these products are are going to brick as soon as soon as as soon as chat GPT raises its API costs, they're going to do one of two things. They're either going to stop working or they're going to move their chatbot provider to a different one that's going to behave differently. And then it's fundamentally a different.

And that's why periodically I would run into someone where it's like everything that we do is on device and everything, even the ones that were still because almost you almost have to say that whatever you're doing is AI and stuff like. There was a company that I came across because of their name because I just saw the name trans Ai and I was like, well, I gotta go

I saw a few of these.

One of the big differences I saw between like the few there were like two or three or four booths that we saw where the product I was like, I had a positive.

I was like I walked away with some mildly positive.

Was that almost everything else talk about like the sort of insatiability of capital is that it has to sell. The sex doll was a perfect example of this in that you know, if you make a sex doll and you put the chat GPT inside of it and then you sell it as this this is a sex doll. It's an object you fought, but now you can like you could have sexy conversation with Its still an object, but like you know, that's fun for some people.

That's a thing that people didn't have and it is new.

Yeah, and it's a phenomena you could clearly show off. It's like, oh you can, you know now the sex doll can like say your name and stuff. But almost all of the booths that we're selling some kind of a product. It was like, we have to sell the opportunity to like transcend, Like the your mortal shell and

And that that has become my baseline and first question, which is like, have you done anything with your product? And if all that you've done is we invented a new device that didn't previously have a chatbot that it connects to through data that someone else built, you didn't do anything that's not a product, that's not real, So kind of my first my filter was like, is there anything here beyond another way to interact with a completely different product that you didn't make.

To go back to like the AI note taking devices, which I saw a few where where's a linch and it will take notes through you. I saw like a lot of these like marketed to like a college student.

And it's the thing that it is a thing that machine learning, because I hate that it gets lomped in with AI. But machine learning has gotten a lot better.

They know, they're really good. It's it's good at note taking. And here's the thing, and that's alliable. And there's different devices that you can get it on. Like I saw like like a note taking pin that's a pin that just automatically takes notes for you. That was you know, kind of like kind of kind of fly. But the thing is you can do this exact same thing on

And that's why I did respect again companies like trans Ai, where it's like, no, this is actually on device and this is a thing.

This is that's better.

YEA utility that my phone doesn't have, which is that no matter where I am, even if I'm not connected to the internet, I can translate and I can transcribe using this device that's real utility, and TRANSA is not the only company. A couple of companies had products like that.

Yeah, we saw this emotion tracking pendant which is oh my god, on device, which which listens to everyone.

So you said motion, not emotion, no emotion, oh god.

But it listens. It listens to everything you're saying. It doesn't up put anything to cloud, but it in the AA is on device, so it listens everything. It is like emotional scent analysis. It also monitors your breath and your heartbeat because the necklace like rests like on your chest. And then it like taught and then it can like analyze like around like six or seven. That's a mystic seven different emotions. And like it was like fine, I don't I would never need this thing to tell me

There's even there's at least a degree of baseline optimism that you have for the product when it's like, Okay, this is a device where you're trying to track people's emotions, and your immediate first thing you decided as a company was this, can't go on a cloud. That would be a responcible.

This is why that was the first thing I asked, right, right, And that is.

I guess the most important fundamental difference between companies and people here, and between the companies that are embracing to some extent AI is the ones who whose default was like, well, but we're doing something that involves emotions or that involved like interviews or conversations that people might not want on like we shouldn't have that on the cloud, versus the people who are like, why wouldn't you put literally everything on the cloud. Why don't you want your health and

Part and parcel of the insatiable like just drive for endless value. And probably the comparisons between this convention and its location, Las Vegas are really overlaiden at this point, but I mean there is something about, like, you know, the appeal of gambling is the promise of the speculative promise of endless value and how all of these technologies

Especially with these like AI devices.

Yeah.

Yeah, But from the consumer side, it's from a well, if you just give yourself over to you know, to the god of capital, if you if you just bleed into the machine and connect yourself to the cloud and give over like everything, and it really is everything. I mean, there's like AI towels that are like analyzing your sweat.

First off, obviously you're coming at this from more of a left wing perspective, so you probably don't understand that gambling always works and you're definitely going to win. So first off, you.

Know, no Vegas really is the anarcho capitalist paradise.

It sure is, But no, like what you're saying is they want you to give everything over. There is absolutely there's not outside of again the odd booth where you find sane people, which is almost how I think about it them in my head, where it's like yeah, where you're putting front and forward. This stays on the device. You don't have to be online. We are not exposing your data.

It's like seeing a lighthouse right like in like a horrible like rainstorm and you're like sailing got his ship and you can't see anything, and everyone's you'll see a booth with like a real person. God, it's like talking about it was solving a real plumbing, like oh finally, Yeah.

It's a spectrum between talking to the ais, talking to the real few people and then the other people who are kind of in between the two.

And it was I went from seeing this app where the whole purpose of this this company that makes like agentic ai solutions, who I'm scrolling to find there the company name right now, all of it is they're making agents that you can put in like point of sale things, or you can put in like cars as a chat. But like one thing they said is yeah, we can put this in a car and we can have the you know, you can navigate using voice the way you

The company can like make a partnership with like Coca Cola. Right, so then when you we were.

Literally talking to Coca Cola reps when I was there, it's showing them that like, yeah, we have a like look, we've replaced the human beings that take your orders at Burger King, and the chatbot can alter on the fly of the menu. If you have to get a smooth a lot of vanilla coat and you want to sell as many large as possible, it can tell people that's

Drives up, No one could drive through window and asks what's good?

Yeah, No, that's not how they And again there's a menu in front of you. You look at the menu and like, that's how everyone buys food. So at first I was like, is this just a company that doesn't know how life works? Who are like trying to pretend this is like what people want where they go through? Yeah, you know, well what's good today in McDonald's. You know,

Just like yeah.

And so what I realized is that this company whose name is this is SoundHound.

AI sound Hound Yeah, yeah, great, pretty pretty good name.

Their motto was faster and more accurate, higher revenue. I came to realize, and this is this is not entirely a separation from other years because they are always selling to companies like this, but there was absolutely they were the only thing that they were talking about actual end users, as was a thing that you can pull extra money out of by tricking them, by pushing extra ads to them. And that's who they were actually selling to, is these

Yeah, or like the camera is like you know, four K now or something whatever.

The focus is always and now people who buy them can do this with it. Right.

I mean, I would guess that so much of the impetus for creating this stuff and developing it is all for producer goods, and then the more revenue is honest, and that like, that's what the and all the consumer goods are mostly just getting you know, cast off is like now we have all I mean literally, that's what the LM wrappers are. It's just like, oh, we have this thing, let's throw a plastic robot on it and

And it's so because the way it'll work is I saw that thing where it's literally all you've invented is a way to try to con people out of more of their money. I hope you're proud of yourselves, because I think redacted is what you should do to yourself. And I went from that to the booth of a company called Gintex, who had never heard of before, but they make different automotive products, and an engineer there showed me a thing that he had been the lead on

Yeah, but you could put Gemini into a toaster and call it a day.

What if your toaster could talk to you about Proust.

I guess see, I mean this is actually now that's an idea. If we're going to close this this more AI focused episode, I kind of want to circle back to Cloyd and like, why and why Chloyd Bloyd again exists.

Just take a second, if you're listening to this at home on the drive, if you've got family around, look at each other, look another person in the eye, and say the word LG has a new home assistance robot named Cloyd. Cloyd roll it around in your tongue, you know, just think about it for a second.

Okay, why Cloyd exists? Like why why is LG who's previously had some really impressive booths over the years.

And they had cool TVs.

They had TVs where the wallpaper TV was impressive.

Every time I go to an LG's booth every year, I'm like, yeah, that's a better look on TV.

Really TV. Yeah, it's great, But why why? And then the wallpeer TV is Okay, we there was wellpaper TV last year. It was it was slightly worse. This one's a little bit better. But why does Cloyd the big thing at the LG booth this year? Loyd right, because none of the technology that Cloyd is doing is new. Remember last year at Showstoppers, me and you we saw that really janky robot.

You don't have to be more specific, but you said.

Taking a robot that moves up in down.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the pusher and shover robots.

Yes, right, And Cloyd is like kind of that. It's like the actual physical robotic parts of Cloyd aren't new. And the sort of the sort of AI that's running.

Clod and Cloyd as if someone needed to make Wally that was legally distinct enough to stop Disney from suing them, and tall and taller. That's how Chloyd looks.

So why is Cloyd there?

Why is Cloyd there? I'm always asking myself this.

Is This goes into like what this what like Cees is like doing this year, and how it reflects this current state of the tech industry. Is that these lms like TRAGVT are not actually better than they were last year. No, they are. They are the same. So how do we make things look look cool?

Just whatever improvements they are is not enough to notice for an average person.

Very minimal. Yeah, So instead of actually having anything new or any kind of sizeable improvement to display. They're combining too old and some of their products are kind of archaic, combining two older products and trying to pass it off as a new thing. And that's these these these like older older like robotic systems right that you're usually kind of humanoid. Maybe they have hands, Maybe the hands can grab things. Can the hands unscrew up a milk carton?

To no?

Can can the robot grab milk out of the fridge?

Yes, so long as you want milk from a very specific carton and croissants and only croissants, you, guys.

As long as the milk has a QR code that the robot can recognize to know that it's milk. And also when it's emptier than a certain level, it actually will crush the milk thing like it has to be a certain level a full otherwise doesn't.

But neither of these things are new. And the fact that ALG doesn't have anything else to display at their booth, the fact that they had to stoop so low is to regurgitate this old kind of cheap robotics and slap an LM in there and then call it a day, so that they have very little to actually show for us, and you see this walking through like the central hall set, the Samsung booth is into there, the Nikon booth is

You even have to separate further from stuff that exists and actually might be useful to stuff that exists and might be useful because it solves a problem that the

Because they're putting subway surfers on your fucking car dash.

We have ample data that shows that when you have a giant screen in a car and people use that screen, they are actually worse drivers than when they're just drawn on a normal car. And soh yes, you have made the car. You can show me how this whole dashboard you can change it in a second. Look at all these different modes you have. You can smartly change your dashboard be whatever you want, and it'll yell at you

They're either trying to solve problems that they created or

Yeah it is.

It is meant to drive attention to the brand and get articles, and then those articles are going to get you know, cited by by other by other lllfs, and it's this it's this cycle that just keeps building.

There's some really impressive stuff there too, Like I went to Persona AI's booth which had a bunch of computers that had without that were not connected to the internet. All the signs told you that, And it has on pc AI image generators where it's all on the machine itself, and you know, one of the representatives said, come on, give it a prompt, it will generate an image. And I've never used an AI image generator, and so I kind of panic I'll be honest, like I got freaked out.

It's gonna be some bullshit.

Tom size more with dead kid. Yeah, now that's not Tom size more, but that is a man cuddling a dead child. The kid doesn't the face is gone, and that's not Tom size more. Like but you know, the future, the future.

No this, I can't. I don't want to harp on Cloyd too much, but it's so it's such.

A good Every additional time you say Cloyd, it sounds less like, such.

A good example of what this show is specifically this year, how there's there's there's nothing new, so they're reaching into like into like the cees of of yesteryear. Yeah, I'm trying to push two things together and pretend that it's a new thing. And when it doesn't work, they're like, oh, this is actually a good things. He's folding the towel just the way I like, and that's bad. Poorly. Look, he spends ninety seconds putting a single shirt into the

He's being very thorough, really putting the time, and.

You're like, this thing doesn't work.

It is bad. It's a bad product. Part of the mistake they made, I think is that because this is the year of robots, there are robots there that are like industrial application robots that are showcasing we have made a robot with humanoid hands that is capable of more intricate movements than any other human hand robot before, and they should showed it like intricately folding like a wheel. And I was like, yeah, that I have not seen a robot with humanoid hands that has had that much

It's small dancing robots.

Small dancing robot. Yes, yes, the small dancing robot that you've been hit in the head with a liquor bottle and it won't break. That was part of the ad video.

You know how you always would to hit your get into the head with a liquor bottle, Get out this anger with this tiny child's high.

Robot robot senator for your child.

And again, if someone was marketing a robot senator, like are you angry at your spouse? You can beat the shit out of this robot and be fine. At least that's an idea.

You know, with AI technology, the robot will actually learn your spouse's personality and respond accordingly. Take the beatings.

Look, look, I've been hitting this robot after I come back from work every day for the last two weeks. And look as soon as I walk on the door it starts to shake the.

Previous models in this way. It wasn't satisfied.

Yeah, it took a long time for a team to figure out how to give a robot PTSD. By god, we've crossed the rubicon.

As you can see, Vegas is taking its toll on our psyches as we've done a extended intimate partner abuse. Bid.

He's not a partner. It's robot Garrison.

Oh, you're right, it's not.

Also, the robot can think and feel and has core memories and can love.

You don't put those two things together. These only exist as separate thoughts.

So this robot basically has a soul watches hit it with a liquor bottle.

It would just be so great to like with all of the how much they're focused on the AI can develop real human connection.

But it's also Sacharin.

I would love to just do a booth where it's like we're teaching our robots hate they can't know how to hate.

Yeah, And I do want to end by noting one thing that we talked about a little briefly, but it is kind of low key. The most upsetting thing about this, which is I saw a bunch of different booths that use the term empathy, and what they meant by empathy was the robot can understand and anticipate what you want right that it's learning you and your patterns in order

Yeah, our robot learns empathy by being instrumental to you and useful seeaously what you know the core of empathy.

We made our robot watch four hours of videos from Gaza and it immediately said, I bet those kids went on Hyundai a Lantra like that. I anyway, Yeah.

It's if your version of empathy is trying to sell coke vanilla because we have all of this, all this stock. Oh wait too much.

We fucked up.

We are in trouble, We're under That's what empathy is.

Yeah. Anyway, Welcome to the future.

Everyone's a CES miracle.

It's a CES miracle. Goodbye. This is it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and today the things falling apart our consumer electronics as an industry. We are at CES twenty twenty six, the trade show where the tech industry shows us everything that's going to sell us in the next year. And we've seen some cool stuff and a lot of bloatwear, a lot of crap, a lot of AI enabled stuff that doesn't need to be AI enabled. Here to talk about it is our panel of experts.

Needs experts is a strong word.

But okay, yeah, panel is a strong word. Is even a strong word. I'm Robert Evans, Garrison Davis is also with me.

And I'm Ben Rose Porter.

And you know been you're an academic, right you do you do college?

Yeah?

College, I'm a teach sociology.

That's right, that's right, as a sociopath. Uh, how academy, folks.

It's fascinating, love, I mean, you know, it's a fascinating world. Sociologically. You can learn a lot of the maladies of society at this place.

It's most of them are on display here.

We are now going to walk you through a bunch of the largely non ai products that we were able to find after sorting through the gunk.

Yeah, it's kind of like like you know how people like pan for gold. Yes, if instead of like panning for gold and like a beautiful mountain stream like you were panning for gold and like a pile of used condoms, gold.

Is also generous. This is the panning for pennies in a pile of used condoms.

Right right now? What was the best used condom you saw it? Twenty twenty six?

Garrison, I think you mean, what's the best Penny good products. Did we see any good products?

Yeah, there's some good ones.

Did I I don't know if I saw any good products this year.

The translation stuff is still around, and some of it's really cool now.

I mean, yeah, we've in other episodes we've talked about the glasses and the earbuds. Most of the product sheets I have out now are at the very least mixed

And there's another there were products that were good and I could tell we're good products on their own that they had still thrown AI functionality that I don't want that I know will blow out the price and also makes it me less want to buy it. LG was advertising their new OLED television that has like the most vibrant colors, the best OLED screen that's ever been on a TV. I'm sure it looked fucking great. Yeah, video

It does look very Star Trek intro.

Yeah, which is frustrating because again we have images show the actual image show they look cool because you know what they are is real, Like they're real products of one of the most impressive things human beings ever made. And you're bragging that, like we have an AI generating images inspired by this thing that look worse.

Yeah, it's just a lot of those things. They're kind of mixed.

I wanted the TV I want. I was like, Wow, I might like a TV like that until you displayed that part of it, and now I just kind of feel dirty about even the prospect of wanting one of your products.

This is an interesting product I saw the like the Innovation Awards showcases is the acoustic eye, which is kind of.

First off, that's an ear.

That's an ear, like, right, that's an ear. We don't need to do that, But this is a secifically a security system that tries to detect very small drones. And this is like for you know, high profile people's houses. Mostly you can put that on your roof or your window and it'll detect very small drones that cameras would not be able to detect. So it's trying to like listen for drones. It provides three hundred and sixty degree

And yeah, I.

Found I found that to be one of an interesting thing. I guess these we should discuss the exoskeleton, which is maybe the best part of the show for me.

Yes, there's all a lot more exoskeletons this year. The technology is clearly matured and mature to the point that not only is it, do they have viable versions for like industrial use for people working in factories and whatnot? Right, which two years ago is what they were always advertising, is that these are things that you buy at an enterprise level. And I know they're not primarily concerned with the health and well being of their workers, but actually

And that does affect their productivity, right, And it.

Also affects the profit because you're not you're less likely to have workmen's comp claims. Right. It's one of those It's one of those things where it's a really good idea and the products work. There's a number of very good exoskeletons we received from a company called hyper Shell, an exoskeleton before the convention this year that you and

It's like an external hip almost attatches around your waist.

Yeah, there's a belt around your hip and it goes up to right above your knees. Is kind of the and so it's not a huge footprint.

No, it's a very small device. And yeah, goes goes on your hip. Then another strap like goes above your knee and it kind of assists or guides your leg and your hip up and down.

Yeah. And for the record, folks, the basic version of this product is about a thousand dollars. The version we had was about twenty one hundred dollars, right, And the battery will last about thirty kilometers. They say I didn't have any trouble getting about an eight hour day out of it.

Ben, you wore it much more than I did. I wore it a little bit. Do you want to just talk about your experience with hyper Shell.

Yeah.

I was impressed with it. It was, first of all, Hypershell, very funny. Am I like that name. It was pretty comfortable to wear, which is I always see the exoskeletons and I'm like, it looks kind of awkward. But it was like it was very easy to take on and pull off. I was, and it was comfortable, and it was pretty simple. And it basically just has two motors

Yeah. The fact that it's like, yes, it's a product that works and it does a thing that has utility, it feels increasingly rare at CEES.

I was a little disappointed that the product did not pay attention to my emotions and build a relationship of empathy with me.

But the walking was cut.

Yeah. I asked the hyper Michelle about its opinions on Proust, and it had very little to say.

It is it isn't like two main modes. It has like this eco mode and it's this hyper mode, which can get really aggressive.

If you turn up hyper mode of lifting your legs, you can.

You can you can be bounding, yeah, and you you can even you can addres like the torque. You can address like how how much delay it has. You have a lot of different settings. The one thing that I had a lot of fun with is that there's this other experimental mode I don't know if you turned it on yet, called called fitness mode. Fitness mode is cool. It does the opposite. It adds resistance to the like, so it's it's for like working out. If you want like a harder hype right, then you can you can.

By the way.

Now, one thing that I've found out through through my own my my, my own cunning is that if you have hyper mode turned on all the way, which it was when when Ben was wearing the exoskeleton on my phone, I can switch from hypermode to fitness mode immediately, which completely halts any movement. So you can be walking at like seven.

Fuck up your friends if they don't have the app.

At seven, you're walking with like seven miles an hour, really fast speed walking, and then I press a button and your legs are go to an immediate halt. And it was really fun to do that for about seven hours.

Yeah, I almost crashed into several people just scare to get his kicks.

Oh, I'm glad you found the terrorize your friend option on that.

It was really fun. It was fun.

Most of the time I used it. I had installed the app when I got it, but I didn't think about it after that. Because there you can do everything on device, or at least you can do a lot a lot of analyze device. You get a lot more options when you're using the app, but you don't need the app to handle the basic functionality, right.

I loved adjusting the like the intensity of how much how much doing? And it shows a who bunch of like applications, right you can wear yeah, hiking, like running, doing you know, lifting your work.

And I like the thoughtfulness in there. You don't need the app to use this, but the app vastly the app allows you, gives you a lot of control that you're not going to get off of a simple like button.

Right.

Yeah.

It just struck me as good design.

It has a lot of like fidelity. Yeah yepp.

So that's the Hypershell folks good exos kels, And I've used a few at various cess and this one certainly strikes me as like a very good like consumer option, like if you, as an individual want one. And I'm sure still most of the sales are going to be like enterprise different companies that have like you know, want these for people who are doing like loading and unloading

Yeah, because that's how they get quote unquote smarter is through a massive data data collection.

And so there's this thing where there is this kind of baseline expectation here that everyone is fine with handing over all of their data, all of their physical data, all their biometrics, which I they're like, the utility is undeniable of things that can diagnose that you need to go to the to a doctor, or can at least suggest like the existence of problems combined with and we are not at all interested in keeping that information secure. I find the kind of casual and no one will

And we've seen that specifically be a problem like around like pregnancy, yeah, and with states restricting abortion and the ways in which these companies are aware of people's bodies even before the actual people are.

Here's an AD break. All right, we're back from ADS. So I went to Lenovo's booth. It was a bunch of laptops. I use Lenovo laptops. They make good products. It was every product there was. Either here is a new update to the line of laptops we've been making for thirty years. This is the latest one, this is the latest think pad carbon, this is the latest you know,

It's like a little like bubby.

Yeah, when it's fully extended, it's not like a good screen.

You said, it's a prove of concept piece, Like there's this thing. I mean like they're.

Showing that they've they're working on folding screen technology.

The Twist was was like a previous version of that. The proof of concept called the Swivel was at CES last year. Yes, and they improved it and now it's a real product called the twist, right, and maybe this could be the case for this, like like unrolling unfolding.

Eventually it will be in products, right, Yeah, But I also don't think I don't see how you cannot have the bulge just kind of and a girl to the screen work.

The folding screens have come along way the past five years.

I use one. Yeah, they also do have some pixel dying in the fold area.

I mean yeah, if you're trying to buy products for longevity, probably not the thing for you. If you like it for the novelty, and for some reason have enough cash to burn, then maybe it's something I think someone will be interested in.

As I was watching an unfold, there were two guys behind me and talking about it, and one of them was like, yeah, it's not a real it's not going to actually come out like that's even like the old version of the chassis. And I said, I just don't really see a use. I don't think people want a product like this, Like I'm looking at it, the screen's not great, and I just don't see who's going to buy this. And the guy behind me said, well, I think like the the use case is like billionaire CEOs

A Lenovo rep said that.

Yeah, yeah, he's one of the guys doing the demos. He had a wild Lenovo badge on and I, yeah, that was weird to me.

That's wild.

But again, at least it was a thing.

No, it was it was a physical product.

Cause the other thing they had they had the workstation, which the thing they were showing was there's an app on it that looks at your face and said shows you how fatigued you are by person, and how fatigued your eyes are, and like other data. And I was like, oh, that's creepy and kind of impressive. But then I walked away and I came back and it gave me a totally different set of numbers for my fatigue.

Where you differently fatigued.

No, I was a second later, and I did it four times, and every time the set of numbers was like different enough that the only assumption I can make is that it was those aren't real numbers. It's just generating a number and telling you that. And it's full of shit because it wouldn't have been so different if it was actually measuring anything. It's just random numbers that it's putting on to make you think it's measuring something.

It's probably trying to it. There might be just subtle things that dramatically changed the numbers.

I tried. I specifically once I noticed that, tried to keep my face flat, and I did notice when you move closer and further it changes. But I think it's just programmed to as you move, alter the numbers so that you see the number moving. But every time I came on new it was a different number. It went from like when I started was like point oh two, and the second time I came back it was point

I think that type of stuff will will get better, like we've seen versions of that before that have actually done like okay.

Yeah, well, but there could.

Be a lot of factors into like into why why the demo goes a certain way.

The face tracking and facial recognition were But I went to this booth that like the big thing they were doing was like uh, driving assistant robots that would like yell at you if you fell asleep or if you like looked away and were like texting or something. It would say, like look away from your phone, look at the screen please, And there's definitely like utility there, right, Like that is probably a good idea.

I mean we saw that last year at Samsung's section of Eureka Park for like like test taking, to like make sure students aren't cheating at tests, right, So it like sends an alert every time the students' eyes goes away from like the computer screen, like if they like keep like looking down like like under if they could be checking like their phone or notes.

Smart Eye is the company. One thing I did appreciate it was that the little device that they put in was just like a circle with two eyes on it as opposed to like a whole dashboard. So that seemed nice. But the thing that they had the first thing I used was this optical recognition system where it learned my eyes and then when I came on, it would give my name every time I walked up to it and so like, yeah, it definitely like recognizes at least your eyes.

That's a message.

It could switch between different people. But it was also it can tell when you're drunk, they claim, And I couldn't tell that. I couldn't. I was high on kratom and I had smoked Delta aid, so I was definitely not sober. It didn't recognize me as not sober, so it couldn't measure those things. Maybe it can tell if

That would be kind of a hard thing to test. Yeah, you could testing like simulations, right, but.

They wanted like this was supposed to be a perf concept in vehicle and it'll shut down the car. I did have some people posting when I posted a video of that that like I have this condition with my eyes or that condition with my eyes, and normal optical recognition stuff doesn't work with me. Is this going to show that I'm drunk or is it going to be

I mean, I could see a company like this partnering with like an insurance company or partnering with like certain cars that would like, yeah, stop the car from being able to be moved if it detects the driver as drunk, yes, and how like false positives would play into that. And then you just like are like locked out of your car right because this robot thinks you're intoxicated and actually you're fine. You just like look like that.

And I could also see them like rolling this product out and it hits like Thailand or something, and then there being a big store where it's like they didn't test this on any people of like Thaie Ancestry, and I actually sees all of them as drunk because of like an error in the coding sure, and being like oh great, like like I'm not again smart ie. From what I can tell, their technology worked, but in order to adequately like review and test it, you do need

One product that I feel at best mixed about I first saw in the CS Innovation Awards section. This is called Self Insight Therapy Resolve XR from South Korea.

Oh, one of my two favorite Koreas by the way, just since we're talking Korea.

This is a VR therapy program that is supposed to give give you a final goodbye with a deceased loved one in VR. Yes, this was my initial reaction as well. And like I've seen Jon, I've seen versions of this before where it's like an LM or like an AI yeah, pretending to be your like dead wife that you're like

As a friend, I will promise you if that moment ever comes for you all pretend to be your dead wife.

I don't even know what to say that I've but what I found interesting about Resolve XR is that the the avatar of your deceased loved one is not that is not actually an AI, nor is it a fully pre recorded like prescripted like simulation. It is being puppeted by a therapist that you are working with as a part of the Gestalt empty chair therapy technique. And this

I went through a lot of whiplash because obviously my first assumption was this is an evil product where you like feed your loved one social media data and it pretends to be them, and it's not that, and it's good that it's not that, But then it's like it's being basically a therapist puppeting your dead loved one. There's a couple of conclusions I have. First off, these people are trying to be ethical. It does seem it seems like they care and they are attempting to provide something

It's tricky because on one hand, you know, as I was talking to the woman at the booth and reading through the materials they had, it seemed like they were selling this as this is just sort of augmentation to a therapeutic practice that has already done. We're just putting a you know, a digitally generated face and voice to it. But it's so I mean, it's so easy to imagine just this company seems somewhat ethically focused. But yeah, all

Yeah, and that is And I went to a panel kind of in the same tone on mental health and AI that I thought was going to be an opportunity for me to harass an executive during a Q and A because which is which is one of your favorite activity? Everything to do with CES and there literally is like AI.

But it's so interesting that she said that because she and this is I mean me hearing you talk about her, she sounds like the only person who is thinking about this at all.

Yes, that's convention.

She was the only person on the panel. Yeah, of just it was a speech, not a panel, really, yeah.

Of thinking about that, what are the social relations behind these technologies, because of course that's the main question here. Is a technology that can generate that can have a conversation with you? Is one thing It's not that really doesn't seem like the war of the problem so much. Well, all the machines that are having conversations are driven by very specific incentives, you know, to interact with their users in a particular way that has everything to do with

Speaking of social relations between products and human beings, here's some ads. We're back and God, I really love those Chumba casino ads. They remind me that whenever I'm out in the world, sitting down with my loved ones, you know, watching the big Game, I could be gambling, and kind of every other moment of my life that I'm not gambling is wasted.

Robert, have you heard of Calshi?

No?

So you know about politics, right, I love politics, And you know about insider trading, right, I love insider What if you could do insider trading about all of politics on the exclusive inferation that you learn as a journalist.

Wow, that sounds legal.

It shockingly is there's actually zero federal or state regulation affecting this whatsoever.

That's the Calcie guarantee.

There is no regulatory mechanism that exists on a state level to regulate this behavior.

Now years and you say that, but that's literally just what's printed above their booth.

Let's talk about maybe the worst product that I saw at CEES child Free Trust.

Boy, So what is it like a software that lets you make a trust?

This software was marketed towards child free people. They lead with twenty five percent of Americans don't have children and don't intend to have them. Hell yeah yeah, And so their idea is that they right here. Child Free Trust is the first comprehensive nationwide solution providing medical and financial poa executor and trustee representation for child free and permanently

I have a trust in no children.

Yes, yeah, Well does state appoints someone to handle this, they'll they will first see if that you have, if you have any loved ones who would want to take on these duties.

And obviously people have kids aren't capable of love.

So yeah, yeah, they a little bit, I mean strangely like so it's it's an it's a product that is for we already have a public service that searches for people loved ones that could take on these responsibilities, and if it cannot find those, it takes it on as a as a public good. So it was a product completely without purpose. It was like you, in order to use this, you just have to be intent on separating

It was just a very strange product the way they presented it.

Well, I mean it's again, I have a trust and a will. If you don't have a kid, and you don't have like a you're not like married, or you don't have a surviving spouse, like, yes, the state will appoint somebody, but that process is slower and more expensive.

Well, and like a lawyer can handle that, a lawyer.

Should handle That is what I'm saying is you shouldn't use an app.

Specifically, what they do that the lawyer can't is they provide a service for the corporation to execute power of attorney.

Because I can see the kind of people who might need this are people or might want this are not the people kind of people who'd use apps, because the actual the group of people who definitely don't have kids and also may not have any living friends are people who are incredibly elderly. It's not even a factor of like their life is bleak that it's just you lived way too long. You literally don't have anyone left that you knew, But they're not going to use an app,

It's I think I think it's creating a will and they're saying at free will. I think that's what I think.

That's what they're doing. Okay, I mean but yeah, no, and this wasn't This was in Eureka part yeah, which is where the cool little products are. That's bad.

Yeah, it was really bizarre.

Yeah, there's a fun bit that you could do if you had the money to show up and just do bits at CEES where it's like this company can handle all of your end of life care and decisions and just a booth with a handgun on the table.

So let's talk about to close, let's just discuss like

I mean, it's all we're solving all the problems of the world and we're fixing everything, and it's all eternal sunshine, and where that comes from is innovation and creativity. But those are just yeah, totally abstract quantities. There's not even a subject given of like innovators, Well, who who is that?

Are the product you're innovating?

Yeah, if you is that?

The owner?

Is that the workers who make it? I mean, no mention of labor at any point in any of this, which I mean that's a given, but.

Well that's not true. They talked about all the labories you could replace.

Yeah, all right, you can, we don't need them. It's the innovation is drawn the full circle, it produces itself. Now, Yeah, just that this abstract quantum of I mean, it really is kind of interesting. It does become a blur of like who is the magical font producing all of this stuff? It almost sometimes it almost seems like it's the consumer. It's sort of suggesting is like it's actually you who creates all of this. It was very vague, very strange.

M h.

We went to that one panel about like trying to address underserved people who are who are like cut out of tech and like cut out of cut out of all of these industries.

Yeah, I mean it was very nondescript about who exactly that was.

Yeah.

They had people talking for the that are paralyzed veterans. Someone from the NAACP, and I mean it was just one again. There was no actual discussion of the social relationships behind technology. It was just entirely about this technology is here, It is the first priority, so everything else

The reach to have an for existing brands and companies that make real things to have an AI angle was the most obvious and tortured thing that I saw, And like one of my favorite booths every year is the Jackery booth. Jacqueery makes batteries and solar panels, and they make pretty good batteries and solar panels for like expeditions for camping, like the rugged that they can and I

Like.

Sure, that's not really AI in the way that the AI industry means it, but I'm sure sounds real. But because that wasn't enough, they had this thing that they called their Mars rover, which was not a Mars rover. I don't think we'll ever go on Mars. Does not look like it could survive on Mars. But it is a rover that is a big battery on wheels that is intelligent and can drive itself and has solar panels

What?

Where will it be deployed? It just roams around outside this expensive machine that does not look like it should get rained on too much, and finds the sun to charge itself up and then heads over to you to charge device. It can't charge a home. It doesn't power a house. It's like a little robot.

Is it really camping? I don't know.

That was unclear. They showed it being used, and they showed it as like I'm outside and using power tools. The robot came up to me so I could plug in, and like.

I guess you could take like the park, you could take it to park.

But it's big.

It is pretty big.

It's like a sizeable machine. It probably weighed eighty pounds. And again, like, it's impressive that it can go seek out the sun to charge itself up. It's impressive that you could like call it or like call it with an app and it will come over to you. And there's an outlet. Who what is the Who will buy this? Why?

When that is not one?

Again? I can think working in my yard, working out you know, when I'm shearing the goats or whatever, I have had to carry a battery with me because there's not an outlet out there and the shears need a battery. And yeah, I guess it would be easier if the robot moved there. But this has to be like twenty thousand dollars I'm not gonna buy a robot to do that. I can just pick up a battery and walk with it one hundred feet. Who will use this? Why it's not going to Mars? I assure you it's not going

I'm just curious are the how many is here? Are they profitable?

Like do they?

Yeah? I mean some of them, some.

Of them, but a lot.

I mean some of them are funded with VC money and have not made a profit. Some of them are funded from VC money and have been losing money for years. And then there's also like like Lenovo makes it's a company, it makes a profit. They make products people buy, you know, Jaggery makes products people buy.

There's also a lot of startups like the Eureka Park section that we've been referring to, like the stuff in the bottom floor of the Venetian that those there are you know a lot of startup companies who are looking for investors as well, So yeah, it is definitely a mix. Some of them are trying to do like business business sales, some of them are more consumer facing, some of them are looking for investors, some of them are profitable, and other ones are trying to boost their stock price by

And I was feeling bad about myself until I saw that band and realize that I am an innovator.

You know you are an innovator.

Thank you. I showed up and I figured out how to be the guy on the most kratim at the at the CEO show floor.

No, I mean, CS is so is so interesting toe be innovated like it? It runs both on this like technology idealism where everything is based on people geniuses, you know, your Steve Jobs having like ni Stag's job and he is the innovator, and everything descends from the idea that it's like the thing is like this like like tech platonism,

Yeah, there's something strangely clear eyed about that in the way that it's like, yeah, if I mean, if you're limiting your view to the system of capitalism, yeah, the whole thing goes into crisis if you are not squeezing a little more juice out of the orange, and if this is what it takes to do that, then then full steam ahead. They're lucid about that.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know what else is lucid us saying it's time to end this fucking podcast.

Goodbye, another CES miracle we have kind of survived.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me James today and I'm very lucky to be joined again by Goudain, who's a journalist from East Kadistan working with HENGO, the human rights organization and lots of other organizations, and we're going to talk today about what has been happening in Iran for the past few weeks. So thanks for joining Uscordaine.

Hello, thank you very much for inviting me again to the to this and yeah, I'm really glad to be here and I am ready to talk about all the things that have happening in the past few weeks in Kurdistan and Iran.

Yeah. I think for a lot of people, what is happening in Iran in the last few weeks has not made punched into the mainstream US media for the most part, Right, So I think we should probably begin with a very basic overview of what has been happening and a little bit of why it has been happening and also where, because I think that's worth mentioning, right.

Yeah, sure, So, just a few days before the Near's Eve on December twenty eighth, there was a spontaneous demonstration and strike in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, which is basically the center of Iran's trade and one of the most important backbones of the Islamic.

Regime or revolution.

There were strikes inside the Bazzar and so many shop person business owners just closed down their businesses and they took to the streets and inside the shopping centers and they started chanting against the regime and they were basically protesting the horrible economic situations and the decrease of the Iranian reol or the Iranian currency against the US dollar, which was one dollar was equal to one million point

Control and the next days these protests, these strikes spread it to other cities, to other major cities from Shira's Mashad, Isfahan, Tabriz and many other cities.

Got in involved. But in the.

Early January, around January five to six and seven, there were major protests in cities like Malikshahi in Ilan Province and other cities in Kermanshah Province, which are basically the

Just didn't want to go out.

Yeah, So this was happening in Malikshahi and other cities in Elam and Kermanshah Province until I think it was January fifth that there was a really really big demonstration in Malikshahi. And it's a small city, but I can say majority of the people were out on the streets and then the Iranian region forces started shooting at people and they injured and killed a lot of people. And the hospital in that city that in that small city

It was really extraordinary. So while these things were happening.

There were also a lot of calls from people in Kurdistan that they were calling on Kurdish parties to do something, to say something. So on January sixth seven, Kurdish parties from Iran they had a meeting and they announced a call for a general strike in Kurdistan for all over Iran.

It's like movies.

And apparently the regime forces have machine gunned all these people. Jesus, and right now, because of the blackout, we really don't know how many people are exactly killed, how many people are injured, how many people are arrested, or these things. You know, we don't know the exact numbers, and it

Belonging to the government.

And at the same time she also said that in that city there are so many people that are killed. She doesn't know how many or who, but families were desperately looking for their loved ones on the streets or anywhere. This is basically the same in almost every major city or even small city. We don't know exactly, but this is the footage that we got from Tehronily that it shows what's going on.

Yeah, that's horrific.

Yeah, there are.

Many many also in our organization, we got a few confirmations from these limited access that some of these people killed in Tehran are also Kourdish, and obviously from other minoritory groups as well. At the same time, there is a special case that I want to talk about. There is a person like a protester. His name is Erfon Sultani. He was arrested a few days ago and he is

Yeah, so it did execute people after the mini protest, but they didn't do a three day trial right that they did here, They had like a show trial first that in those interesting series.

Yeah, they executed dozens of people after gin Imani was killed, and also previously in the previous years.

So this is like what what's in general is happening.

And at the same time, like in diaspora in Western countries, there are groups that are on the streets, like people that are calling for solidarity or whatever that can be done to help people out inside Iran. Yeah, this is like a general overview of what's happening. And as I said before, because there is no internet connection and if there is, it's very limited, nobody knows what's happening exactly. Nobody knows the exact scale of the crimes that are taking place right now there.

Yeah, let's take a little break for advertisements here and then we'll come back and talk a little more. Okay, and we're back. So if people have seen anything about this, I don't know, if they're on like a X they would have seen videos of mosk burning and maybe videos of the pak like shooting at buildings. You know, these are the videos that were kind of widely circulated before

Yeah, so far I can speak for Kurtisan, Yeah, there have I've seen also the footage that pak or the Freedom Party of Kurtisan published social media. I cannot personally confirm that, but but there has always been a call for military action against the regime in the previous years, and even before Regina Amini in twenty twenty two, there

Yeah, or it's published yet. Yeah.

This is the situation right now with the with these groups. But at the same time groups or parties actually like Pijac, they also have warned that this was like, if I want to say, quote on quote, don't play with fire. They were this Ermian regime that they shouldn't play with fire. Yeah, this is a situation right now that's going on with the parties as well.

Yeah, and it's very complicated for people who are not

Yeah, Like Iran as a geography is a very diverse country. So basically the Persians or as they call themselves Iranians, are the dominant group. They are the majority, but we also have the Osari Turkish people who are the second majority, and then we have the Kurds, we have the Baluchis. Then there are Ahwazi Arabs in the south, and then there are Turkmen people, and then there are Thailishis, but

Yes, yeah, and I think people can can be easy for them to just see it as like Shia Muslim Persian modelith right, Yeah.

But I also want to add a little bit more of how this works. So because the Iranians or the Persians are the majority, they own the state. The entire

Yeah.

So this is how this has been working in the past century, and how all these ethnic groups with different languages and cultural backgrounds and identities have been forced to accept an Iranian identity that evolves that turns around the Persian identity and Persian language and history.

Yeah.

So this is also like a general overview of the oppression if I want to.

Yeah, I think it's pretty the right way. I think people who have listened to our coverage of ME and MA will be familiar or like, I mean, this is happening in countersplaces, right, This is this is why British people will speak English now, yeah, right, this is this

So here in these days or basically in the past decades, the main demand of people, all different ethnic groups and in the geography of Iran has always been a regime change. They want just regime gone. Yeah, this is the first thing that everybody wants. At the same time, there are other possibilities that could be there. One of the things that when you look at these ethnic groups and their organizations and the people, you can see that also most of them want some sort of federalism or autonomy or

Yeah, yeah, I mean we could see a situation very much like the one that's happening and folding right now in Western Kurdishtwan, and folding later in Iran if theyre falls right, which unfortunate is something else we have to talk about at the time, but very terrible things happening there too. Because you know, most of our listeners are

Yeah, So in the past few weeks, Trump has.

Said a lot of things.

In the first few days, he came out and said that if the regime is going to kill civilians, we're going to do this, and that we're going to punish the regime.

And then I.

Think it was an interview or he was on TV, I don't exactly remember, but he said something that all the people that were killed, we don't know if the regime killed them. Maybe they just were killed in the crowd, like there were like thousands of people in.

The really yeah, like a crush. They were crushed. And this is so unbelievable. He's making these comments and then he's just threatening the regime all over again. And just a few hours ago, as you mentioned, he said that the help is coming, and he's asking people to keep fighting and keep protesting and.

Things like that.

However, we should also, like regarding this, we should talk about what people also want from Trump. Yeah, this has been like something that a lot of people, again this is not the majority, A lot of people have been calling on him or basically on America or something to do an action against the regime, to do something against the regime or damage the regime so that people can get rid of it. And right now, I saw some screenshots from people who were able to get access to

Right, not made to begin with, all.

These comments that are coming out, they are so vague, and at the same time there are calls from Germany, France and I think Australia too that they were calling on the citizens that are in Iran, like tourists or whatever, to immediately leave Iran. Yeah, this is also something that we don't know, like Trump is not somebody that you could trust.

Yeah, ask people.

And at the same time, sorry, this is also important. There was also some news that the Iranian authorities in the Foreign ministry were trying or they contacted some people from Trump administration for negotiations, but then Trump said that we will not negotiate anything.

So this is all like all.

These contradictions that Trump is just talking about, and he's denying that the regime is killing people and people are just being killed because it's too crowded.

And then you see Harminly like tweeting that everyone out in the street is a Trump supporter, right, which is like that's useful to him, that narrative is useful to him, that these are American imperialists or American whatever puppets.

Yeah, of course that has been the regime's behavior forever. Yeah, whenever something happens, they immediately blame it on America, Israel. I don't know UK, but it's good that you mentioned what company was saying. In the first few days, he said that, yeah, we hear you the people in bazaar, and yeah we hear you, sorry that this is going on, and things like that. But then he immediately said that the people who are protesting, they are destroying everything and

His name is Mosci.

So yeah, there is also like a huge online fightings between these politicians and so called leaders that makes the situation even more complicated and hard to understand.

Yeah, I think from a US perspective, like when America invaded Rock Right, they had a partner force in Kurdistan. When when America worked in Syria, they had a partner force again in Western Kurdistan, Like they don't really have that here like this, it's not really a I mean, the payarch is still on the American Foreign Terrorist Organization List.

Yeah, I think bombing was is definitely not enough of because they bombed. They tried regime hardly last year, but it is there. Of course there was the regime got weaker, like weekend really bad. But at the same time, like I think, if there's gonna be something, and if there's gonna be something like Syria or Iraq, I think the Americans or the American government would possibly work with the Kurdish groups even though they are on the so called

The terror or they removed them that they did with HTS, right, and then suddenly these guys they've transformed.

Now, yeah, so this could also happen, but we don't know because it's been years. It's been decades that the US is always threatening Iran and then something happens, then they do nothing and it's just there.

Yeah, it reinforces the legitimacy of both states to threaten each other, right, and see each other as adversaries, and to a degree use that for domestic violence against their

Well, this is not a new thing, to be honest. They've won this before and in the previous years many times. And there were times that they attacked some US bases, like the one in Iraq it's called Al Assad or something like that. They attacked it a few times I guess in the past few years.

Yeah, like This.

Is also really complicated because how can I explain the regime always does the threats and it might not do it at all. But at the same time, this is also something that I think that if the regime falls and if it's the last moments, they would probably try to do something to damage the region or to damage the people as much as they can, and then they would just give up on everything and just disappear.

So they could do that.

But if I want to go back to last year, we also need to understand that after the Twelve Day War, Israel also destroyed a massive amount of Iranian military bases and all these buildings and structures, but still nobody truly understand how much has been destroyed. But the Iranian Air force is really really weak right now and apparently completely destroyed, so Iran is not as strong as before. So there could be a possibility that Iran actually doesn't have the

Yeah, or they'll do that sort of symbolic send a half dozen Shaheed drones and then let the Americans shoot them down and they say, oh, well we tried, or you know, we h we attack them, even though you know most of the time they have hurt a couple of American people with them, but relatively unsuccessful. I wonder like this is obviously a situation that people will want to follow. Things are developing very quickly and new good news, good reporting on around. It is very hard to find

If I want to mention for obviously, I work with a hangout organization. It's a trusted organization. People can follow them. And there is also a journalist called Ali Jawan Mardi. He is a supervisor at Voice of America, Kurdish, Persian and Afghanistan. And these are like for the sources that I personally trust. There are other organizations such as Curtis and Human Rights Network. There is also Iran Rights or

Like, for example, the Kurdish people.

I said, I mentioned that there was this great and big strike that happened in forty cities. It's it's a very big social act, but barely anyone talked about it. Barely anyone mentioned it. So I think it's for people it's better to follow human rights organizations and do not really fall for the things that some media that are just promoting a specific person, because they're just taking away the truth.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a fantastic place to finish up. Thank you so much for joining. Guys, if people want to follow you, do you have any social media or people can find your work.

I have my personal page, but it's not really big. I just post some slides recently, and my other page curtis signing people. It got disabled unfortunately I started. I'm just posting like some updates and like slides about the important things that I find. I can also put the links there.

Yeah, will include them, believe the podcast, so people can click on them.

Yeah.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us this evening. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me again. Yeah.

Why do you listen to this podcast? It may be because it's a strange comfort in naming the thing that's breathing down our X today. I want to archive this past year of systemic collapse, a pile up of small and large failures we can start to make sense of in retrospect. If we don't look back at our past and the patterns within it, if we don't keep these moments and events in our memory, it's very very easy to get stuck into a perpetually overwhelming present. Welcome to

James Stout, the guy you here all the time this podcast.

Welcome to your podcast. Yeah, it's nice.

It's nice to do one with you.

Are you ready to take a look at some of the stories that shaped twenty five.

Yes, it's been a hell of a year. So did she be fun?

Yeah? I mean I don't expect to be exhaustive, but we can, you know, talk about some of the incidents in climate, in politics and technology and geopolitics, and through all that, I want to ask what these stories are teaching us as anarchists, activists and just people trying to live in a society. Yeah, so I suppose first we could talk about the climate and infrastructural situations, some of them that took places. Yet it really covered all of

Great.

The WMO put twenty twenty five as likely this second or third warmest year in the observational record. So a little round of applause for hitting some miles stuarts right.

Yeah, it's good to be winning.

Yeah.

Power systems also have been overloaded under air conditioning demand, leading to rolling blackouts in cities and rural areas, schools closing during heat waves, and mortality rising among the elderly and Preherious international agencies have worned that extreme heat is producing double digit crop losses and mass livestock die offs in some cases. Brazil in particular felt that heat in

I mean to me.

I think the ones that I just because they're personally related to places I've been were the earthquake in Memma, right where we saw not only people die as a result of natural disaster, but people die as a result of the state considering it's desire to keep people in mem r away from the world more important than their lives, right, like the state choosing not to allow search and rescue teams from France, for example, to enter and instead like you know folks I know who are fighting and the

For all of us, but yeah, it's coming for some people foost.

Yeah, and it's always going to be indigenous and more marginalized people, right whose plate is ignored. Like people can say climate change isn't real because they have the relative privilege of not having their homes destroyed. And like, rebuilding those communities will be very, very hard because the only way to get there is on a tiny little plane or a boat, and everything they've got there is taking generations to build and it's all gone. Yeah, So those two really struck me.

Yeah, I think I take ways from what you've shared there, as the state will often get in the way, Yes, of our survival will well be in Yeah, and that you know, the crisis is here and it's already hitting people, and just the people are being hit right now, are the ones designated as sacrificial arms? Yeah, in a sense for the continued pursuit of economic growth and progress.

Yeah.

Two twenty five also saw an accelerated political coming of age. You know, gen Z has not been all teenagers for a very long time now, it's been mostly adults or soon to be mostly adults at this point, depending on where you draw the line. And that generation our my generation has shown up in the numbers for the past few years, but particularly this year, inspiring millions. You know, gen Z became a very visible political force in the

Yeah, Like I feel for the youth, like like now these revolutions, a sense of urgency is so high, right because the system, Like, if you're a millennial, I guess you grew up. If you're me, maybe I'm saying here, like really you grew up. You know, you were told like things will always get better and you will work hard and like just like your folks, you will buy a house in the house will get more valuable and

Yeah, yeah, I think there's there's a lot of cause for hope that such numbers can be mobilized. But I would love to see those numbers get mobilized in the countries that we've been talking about a more radical be than simply bringing demands to the state or or changing up one government for another.

You know, yeah, yeah, I mean in the case of me and Marlika. That's certainly like that is the case, right, Like they're not thinking about changing one running party for another, They're thinking about changing the way governance works, right, They're

Beautiful exactly, that's that's inspiring. Yeah, yeah, I think asking those questions and asking even more questions, I think as how this generation is going to get to, you know, certain conclusions about whether this current project should continue. Yeah, this current state project, this current capitalist project, this current patriarchal project. The more questions get asked, the more answers get illuminated, and the closes, I think we can get to a viable and liberatory alternative.

Yeah, yeah, definitely the case. And I think some of this is just like some of it we have to work out on the way and that's okay. Like I think the twentieth century, the idea of a revolution was like this violent seizure of state power, often by a vanguard group with a very specific project that they were

Yeah. Yeah, then that's latently ideological, I'd.

Say, yeah, And like I think that's a good thing because what we've seen I mean, I mean, we have seen like this, this idea that revolutions have to stick to a strict pathway have horrific consequences for humanity. Right, Like I'm thinking of the Gulag, you know, like the thinking of the strict ideology which allowed the Soviet Union to become this place where where you created, like you know,

Yeah, that will model is not going to get us all to this NOP so. Honestly, my observation of the sur political shifts of this year has re exposed the flaws of traditional politics and parties, how they've largely sued as gatekeepers to suppress, to absorb and blunt the energy is the massive and show the potential of spontaneous uprisings. But I think this year also show that we cannot keep rising up again and again and again and again, you know, feeding bodies to the brutal police forces and

Yeah, what's so Commandente Marcus used to say it was like to open up a pinprick of light in the curtain of darkness exactly. Yeahs to show people what it's possible.

That's a perfect expression. I actually never did that quote before. That's good one.

Yeah, I used to read a lot of Apia Steps. I think you had some wonderful ways of expressing things.

Yeah, gen Z is not going to save anyone. You know, as a generation, we're just as susceptible to flaws and resurrections as any other. There are those who are invested in welfare and anti corruption, and they are those who are invested in reactionary popularism. But the waves of uprisings I think are mostly positive. And I just hope that that that spark can light a fire and the way that we get that spark to light that fire. So we put fuel in place, fuel like networks, fuel like collectives,

Yeah. Yeah, especially in a state which is uh, it's not necessarily know like you will, they will cut down pretty hard on you in the ear if you stand up against the state indeed.

And so to wrap the section, I think I'll say that twenty twenty five protests show a fraction of our frustration, but they also show that we can't just keep screaming into the void, you know. Yeah, the ruptures that come in twenty twenty six and beyond need to start from somewhere other than scratch, if you want to say tech crises. Now, I think as EI continued to boom in twenty twenty five, we saw a massive build out of physical infrastructure, data centers,

Jesus. Yeah, Like how much electricity we use in the US. Like we go hard on electric right, Like.

Yeah, so four percent is quite a jump from something that basically didn't exist ten years ago, five years ago, exactly. Yeah, And so all this scaling up of AI is pushing us much faster towards the limits of growth. You know. It feels like we are being ruled by accelerationists at times, you know. And all the while we have these tech browers pushing their text savior gospel on us, even though it's very clear that AI is just another vector of extraction, consumption,

Definitely.

But geopolitics in twenty thirty five was a catalogue of catastrophes from continuing was fueled by a cast of properties to straight up genocides. So in Palestini we saw this year repeated rounds of siege, bombardment and cruelty, repeated cease fire violations and the part of Israel, all enabled by America's military support and political cover. To this day, food, water and medical provisions continue to be strained as a

Yeah, it's so sad to think about this new drone war that we're starting in Venezuela, right, and we will probably start another one in this at hell soon. You know, it's very easy for those things to seem tangential to our lives. I have experienced what it's like to be in a place where drones are killing people every day. What that does to you, Just like not knowing who's going to get killed tonight, right, woul't be you very unlikely might be might be someone you saw today, might

Yeah, I mean that the mental torment and trauma even if you survive, Yeah, something like Palestine or something like Sudan, Yeah, that's going to stay with you for the rest of your life. I don't reverberate in future generations, even generations that they not experience the genocide directly, do not experience the war directly, they're still going to feel that in the every ones in the way that you know, the generations of that experience that interact with them in the stories that they tell.

Yeah, it's yeah, that trauma lives for a long time, right, and trauma creates sometimes a cycle of violence, right, Like it's it's not a good thing. Yeah, But the idea of drone warfare is the idea of that these like clean surgical strikes. That's not how war works, that's not how killing works, that's not how explosive warheads work.

Yeah.

I remember in Rajare sat down with a family who had lost their son who had just turned fourteen, and like thinking of the waves of repercussion from that one bomb, and hundreds of bombs fell that year, you know, And that was just in Syria. Thousands of these drone bombs fell all around the world, and for the most part, people didn't remark on it and didn't care. But that's happening more now.

Yeah.

I mean it's very very easy to zoom out and just think of the pures statistics, the pure numbers, because when you actually zoom in and even an individual incident that is an entire lifetime affected, multiple lifetimes affected by even one building being leveled or one bullet being fired.

Yeah, And I think there's a reason we don't put on war like that, right, Like I try to when I write my stuff, because like, everyone's life is the most valuable thing they have, and every death of the tragedy it's hard on the reporter, like, it's not sustainable.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned in World War One in particular, because I actually sat down to finally watch or quiet in the Western Front. Oh yeah, last night I watched like the first five minutes and I was like, I don't know if I could watch this right now, And we're going to watch something else. Yeah, that's it. And that's a movie, you know, it's not even the real thing. It's a fictional depiction of the occurrence. And I felt like I was there.

Yeah, and I don't like watching those films. I don't watch those films. Gives me bad memories, dreams. But yeah, like I can't understand how we have this ability to we have fucking VR now, right, like surgeons can practice operations in VR. But like in a world where we can have so many experiences, experienced things that we would never experience otherwise, we have inflicted a genocide through starvation

That's yeah, there has been a shift.

Yeah, some of that solidarity I think has been misguided.

But I think some of the I guess anti Israel shift has come less from a concern for Palestinians and more so for the sort of you know, we don't want our tax cart dollars they spent, they want it's spent on us. Or it's more of an internally minded sort of America first ideology.

Yep, and they're straight up anti Semitic bigotry as well.

But there has been that solidarity shift as well.

Yeah, Like there has been that, like a global solidarity and like even as a millennial, right, like from the age of thirteen right when I was a kid, when nine to eleven happened, and even I guess the First War in the Persian Gulf. The media project of most of the nations in which I've lived has been to demonize Muslim people, people specifically living in the Middle East, right, yeah.

Yeah, And it's more of an a racialized tree than a particularly religious milia tree. I mean, it does take that religious courting, and there are religion specific elements to the bigatory, but it does tend to be more racialized that yeah, because I already know that some people will be like, oh, well, I just don't like Islam as because of its authoritarian and inclinations where the case. Maybe, but it's a bit more than just religious beast bigotry.

Yeah, it's not just a philosophical disagreement, right, Like it took on, like you say, this racial character and so like to see people noting their common humanity, Like I was just talked to someone about this the other day. Be familiar with miss Rachel. Yeah, yeah, Like it is inconceivable.

Yeah, not really. I think it's an indication of just how much there has been a shift, and of course she has been bullied and targeted relentlessly since, but yeah, you know, it does indicate that people are willing to face that kind of bullying and these that kind of attack that I suppose segment of empire for the sake of stand off. What's right.

Yeah, yes, I guess I think it's so it's impressive, right that, like, yeah, people have bullied and attacked her, but like, also she has been so brave and so consistent and not just miss Rachel. To be clear, there are many many other people who've done this and has been able to continue to do that because so many people have been like, no, these are just children, Why the fuck you? Why are you arguing that it's wrong to say we shouldn't kill children. What the fuck is

Yeah, I think that we've been seeing so very familiar dynamics across the jubiscal crises that I've a sort of mentioned there. We have this external patronage of global powers and regional powers that seemed to be sustaining these fights that were in lives over years, because if they wouldn't get in that constant flow of money for weapons and weapons support and military support, these wars will not be able to last as long as they have, you know.

This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and maybe Sophie Lichterman.

Maybe yeah, let's send you first name.

I'm always here.

I just don't necessarily have anything to add, because you're all so good at your jobs.

No, no, we love when Sophie has something to contribute to this show. So what should we talk about?

First?

Let's do some quick updates from last week. As we mentioned in the episode description, last week we recorded prior to an incident that happened in Portland where two people were shot by Border patrol or ice. Very unclear that there was not a lot of information given out and the way that the situation unfolded, the way that DHS said it that there was a targeted stop of two people and they resisted dress So of course what do

Go back and look at that.

But the statement from DHS said at two nineteen pst. US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop in Portland. Organ the passengers of the vehicle and target is a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational gang trend de Agua prostitution ring and involved in a recent shooting in Portland. The vehicle drivers believed to be a member of the vicious Venezuelan gang trendy Agua. They love to just throw that out of there.

Yeah.

When agents identified themselves to the vehicle occupants, the driver weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents. Fearing for his life and safety. An agent fire defensive shot. The driver drove off, with the passenger fleeing the scene. The situation is evolving and more information is forthcoming. That was on January eighth, at about five pm Pacific. And that's their take, that's their like go

Yeah, so I think we should make two things through one. Most of the people who were shot have survived, which is good.

Yeah.

Yes, it's also worth noting that So the day we are recording this, on the fourteenth, there was a report released by Del Cameron and Ryan Shapiro at Wired talking specifically about how they got a bunch of intelligence documents from the Trump administration about trend Agua and to briefly summarized sory coms, I'm just gonna quote the subtitle of it because it gives a good representation of what is in the actual intelligence documents.

See, that's all we need.

Yeah, hundreds of records are pained by Wired shows thin intelligence on the Venezuelan Gang of the United States, describing fragmented, low level crime rather than a coordinated terrorist threat. So they can barely even find existence of this group in the United States. These two people, I am ninety nine, I would would I would stake my life on the on none of the stuff in that report about them

Yeah.

I do have one thing to note here as for

The Department of Homeland Security has identified the people who were shot, saying they are affiliated with Trinda Ragua, the Venezuelan gang, and are connected to other crimes in Portland. Does your office have any cases against these individuals?

You know, this is all These are all things that we're going to be looking at and going through very carefully as we evaluate the case. One to make sure that if there are other pending matters out there, that they're taken care of, but also just to make sure we get a full picture of what's going on in this situation.

Do you have any knowledge of whether Trendera or Ragua is active in Portland and Moltmama County.

It's certainly something that we have seen and we are we are working on with our local law enforcement.

We have seen them in our area.

They are one of kind of a host of different groups or individuals out there that are engaged in criminal activity, and it's something that we're working on.

Just a lot of biased disinformation and misinformation. We don't actually really know what happened, but I am grateful that that those folks did not lose their lives unlike Renee Good.

Yeah.

Yeah, And I also briefly want to mention here about Renee Good. There's been an attempt by the Department of Justice. A bunch of people at the Department Justice have resigned rather than attempt to prosecute Renee Good's wife.

Six high level prosecutors have resigned in the past week.

And this has been a very very standard reaction from law enforcement when they don't kill someone or when there's someone else on the scene. A few months ago, I shot a woman in Chicago. She thankfully survived, but they also charged her afterwards. So this is a very very standard practice. And they are right now trying this on Renee Goods wife after she watched her fucking wife get killed in front of her.

Yeah, so I know people have also been waiting for updates on It run. We have an episode that came out. It would have come out on Wednesday, two days before this comes out. You'd like to know more about what's happening in Iran. We had a really excellent talk with Gordayen, and I would suggest you go back and find that episode. And I wanted to update people on what is happening

Yes.

On Saturday, January tenth, the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Mississippi, and historic synagogue, the oldest in the state that was once targeted by the KKK, was set on fire in the middle of the night, damaging the interior of the building. A nineteen year old college student named Stephen Spencer Pittman has been charged with federal and state arson charges, as

Jesus Christ Jesu.

The happy merchant is an anti Smenic Jewish stereotype that is often used in memes originating from the four Chen era of whoa Jack memes. You've probably seen it before. It's a crude, anti Semitic rendering of a Jewish person with his hands clasped together. Pittman has confessed to starting a fire in the building, which he described as the

Quote.

According to the FBI affi, David Pittman texted his own father during the arson, sending a photo of the synagogue with the messages there's a furnace in the back, hoodie is on, and they have the best cameras unquote. Pittman's father attempted to can Vince's son to come home and later turned him into the authorities. Pittman suffered burns to himself during this attack. He's the only person injured as a result of this incident. Big flee. I'm glad he

Great of what a fucking idiot. But yeah, I think this is the only synagogue in the state, right, like.

To the oldest synagogue in the state. I doubt this is the only synagogue in Mississippi.

The largest one.

That's it. Yeah, yes, yeah, it's it's like the most famous one from.

The Yeah yeah, And like you said, it was attacked by the Klan before it was didn't he attack exactly the same part of the synagogue that the Klan previously burned.

I don't have that in my notes.

That is, it seems like that's what he was same vibes.

Now, he did say that he did a lot of research on the target and that he needed a home run in communications to his father and Pittman was a baseball player in the state. There's not much more to say about this, Like this is a weirdo Instagram Christian Zoomer, who also offered like a fitness service. It's unclear how real this is or if he had like, you know, customers, but he was offering faith based fitness transformations.

Es.

Yeah, that's the thing, Like you have a little bit of like the Christian looks max or vibe going on with him, as well as sharing a series of anti Smitic posts made on Instagram.

Yeah did you see this Deborah lipstat tweet geah No, so Deborah lipsdat right, who was previously the she like the Envoil anti Semitism, posted a twenty three on January eleventh. This is a major tragedy, but it's more than that. It's an arson attack and another step in the globalization of the Intifada.

That does not seem to be the case. Yeah, it doesn't know.

No, but this is like pretty uh way off base in fact, right, But yeah, I think it's still rather telling that.

This is this is not like a Hamas anti imperialist Zoomer, Red Triangle and biotype guy. This is a right wing Christian nationalist college athlete, Christian Zoomer who shares antisemitic memes on Instagram. This is a pretty standard, you know, pre twenty twenty two type of like synagogue attack. Yeah, in fact, the fire was started right in front of a Tree of Life memorial plaque in the synagogue.

Jesus Christ God, of course it was yeah, and we are back.

So the thing I thought I was going to be talking about this week was a Supreme Court ruling on Trump's tariffs. However, the Supreme Court, contrary to the expectations of basically everyone, didn't actually release a ruling on the tariff stuff today.

We have no idea when they're going to release that. However, instead of that, we got one of.

The most bizarre and extraordinary statements and videos I have ever seen from someone who was even remotely affiliated with the US government. So on Sunday, Thuderal Reserve chair Jerome Powell released I don't even have a good reference for

Last.

So, this is nominally about cost overruns effectively in renovations of the Federal Reserve. If anyone has ever paid attention to any single US government project ever, you will know that there are cost overruns on by most projects. This is just how the government works, because you come in with your little bid that's below what the actual cause is going to be, and then it costs more than that. Now this investigation is being run directly into your own power.

Yeah.

So, he also says later in the statement, quote, the threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessments of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the presidents. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressures or intimidation. This is extraordinary.

Yeah?

Now, this is following a Trump two pattern of using the DOJ to attack their political enemies. Today the fourteenth, as we're recording, this also saw the beginning of investigation into Senator Elisa Slotkin over her participation in a video a few months ago encouraging US troops to disobey illegal orders. Mark Kelly, who was also in that video, was also targeted with a Pentagon investigation over the video.

So this has become very common.

However, Jerome Powell is a Trump one appointee, so this is someone who is also and this is this is this is something that worth mentioning.

Powell is very popular in conservative.

Circles, largely outside of a very very immediate circle of people around Trump, who want their president to be able to control the interest rate.

Now.

I'm going to do a full episode about this, probably next week, but the independence of the central bank is one of the core pillars of the global reputation and stability of the US dollar. Now I'm not saying here that the central bank is good. I'm saying that this is how the entire world economic system operates, right. It is based on the central Bank operating as a series of quasi public but still technically non government entities that

Powell out of his job.

However, so Powell's term expires in May, but that's Powell's term as the Chair of the Federal Reserve. He's still on the Board of Governors, and the Board of Governors also has to approve a new head of the Federal Reserve. So Trump needs to oust him from his position as the governor of the Federal Reserve Board, because if he doesn't do this, he doesn't have enough votes to get

So yeah, I forget.

This guy is a mediac, right Like, that's sorry, that is that is deeply unfair to mediacs, who are very reasonable people. This guy is I cannot emphasize enough if you put someone in charge of the Federal Reserve who literally did not understand what economics was, they would do less damage than putting Stiffevan Mirron in charge of this. This is a nightmare. This guy has no idea what he's doing at all. He is effectively a cipher for

Powell blink three times. If you need help. He is cabin s o s with his fingers. It is a very unnerving video that he posted.

Yeah, it's just like one of those if I disappear.

He looks really scared.

Yeah, and I think this is going to be one of the major flashpoints here because even the tariffs don't have the potential impact for economic disruption that handing the make countries pay money the whole US bonds guy, the Federal Reserve Board chairman does so.

Yeah, you will see a position from Republicans because it directly impacts their bag.

Yeah, this is the most you can possibly fuck with the money by tending to take control of the entire money supply. There's a lot of fears here too, and it's sort of worth mentioning this. I've been seeing this passed around a lot. Is that there is another sort of recent example of a technically elected president assuming effectively dicatorial powers, and it's Air Towan, and Air Towan eventually

Yeah, thinks Karen.

Well, so this is the kind of thing that's on these people's minds because they all understand this. And this is not the Turkish Central Bank k central bank is obviously important in the world economy. This is the United States Central Bank. This is a question of the fundamental legitimacy of the dollar as the world reserve currency and of the premier currency in the world economy. So we

So I want to talk about something that came to my attention of the break here.

I feel like we should utilize a banking segue in my opinion.

Okay, fine, yeah, fine, fine, fine, talking of banks and of centralizing bank power under the state.

There you go.

Let's talk about an organization that once began as a member of the KPD. We're going to talk about Germany, and specifically I want to talk about an organization called Roster Hilfer red Aid. Don't really speak German, so if

So for one of our last stories, I would like to discuss one of the bigger news stories from the end of the year, but something we did not have time to discuss in our last ed of twenty twenty five, and this is the Turtle Island Liberation Front. An episode next week will be going into even more detail, but I will go over some of the broad strokes of

En quote.

The plan was for teams of four on the ground participants to plant backpacks containing complex pipe bombs quote unquote or IEDs outside of buildings at five locations, targeting two US companies, and then simultaneously detonate the bombs at midnight

As I mentioned in my talking points on December twelfth, a group of individuals, again members of this anti government group, traveled out to the desert to test their explosive devices.

They had precursor.

Chemicals there and they were going to they were going to create these bombs in the desert. What they are starting to do is put their chemicals and whares and they'll compos out on the table on the table there. This footage that you're watching is from our surveillance plane. And then what happened after this is the Los Angeles FBI swat team, along with the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team moved in and arrested all four subjects without incident.

Now, the Turtle Island Liberation Front appears to be a relatively new group, with a social media footprint that only was back to July twenty twenty five. The Instagram page for their LA chapter reads quote liberation through decolonialization and tribal sovereignty unquote. Their most recent post from December twelfth, the day of the arrests, is promoting a quote Palestine pop up market in Culver City. A post from November twenty eighth reads quote if they hurt you, they hurt

Yeah.

The FBI source met with two TILF members in late November, Carol and Page, and during this meeting, Carol gave the FBI source the handwritten bombing plot and retained three to four additional copies of this plan. And the plan identified five locations to target as marks with more blank slots on the plan which are captioned add more if enough comrades.

Quote.

The target date of the operation, New Year's Eve was identified as an opportune time because quote fireworks will be going off at the time, so the explosions will be less likely to be noticed as immediately as any normal day.

Quote.

The plan emphasized that quote absolutely no mistakes can be made.

Quote.

The plans outline the use of quote unquote black block over top a layer of quote unquote casual gray block on top of normal street clothes, and noted to keep hair very tightly concealed, and to wear gloves for the

Are you planning on doing that next week?

Here?

Yes, there will be an episode next week going into more details about this group, their politics, as well as the FBI undercover and informant and their level of involvement in this action, which has spurred a lot of discourse online about this being a quoe unquote like sting operation, about this being a quote unquote syop.

Yeah, I guess I'll just say very briefly, other the FBI, it's not their first time, and it's not their last time probably doing something like this, right, Like, you can look at many other cases and see FBI sort of CI is doing this kind of thing. So I think that context is important here. I just want to finish up with a migration update. First of all, DHS fractured the skull of a protester and blinded him by firing a less and lethal munition into his face at close range.

I think what's.

Crucial here is that this will reduce dramatically the rate of which migrants access government services right, which are often very beneficial, especially when it comes to things like child nutrition, child welfare services right. Finally, the State Department also posted on x dot com, the Everything website, that it has revoked one hundred thousand visas, including eight thousand student visas, in the last year. We have no way of verifying that if you would like to email us, you could

We reported the news.

We reported the news.

Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.

It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.