The Exchanges

Q utility, and they say, I bought these as a speculative device, and the founder says their utility tokens, but let's say, 70% of the people who bought them said, I didn't buy them for that reason. They just came out right and said, I bought this to speculate on the price. What should the government do? Should they deem them a security or should they deem them a utility token?

A I think that's a complicated question, but I think that there should be an opportunity for these cryptocurrencies to establish themselves as utility tokens, because they are, they do serve a purpose. They are designed to be part of a system, right? They're not just objects of speculation. And by the way, even if they were, we don't, we don't treat baseball cards as, you know, as, as sort of as security. So it wouldn't necessarily make them a security just because They're speculated on. They actually do serve a function in a designed computer system. So I think what's important here is that there's a safe harbor where these crypto companies know what the rules are, and if they, if they can basically, um, meet the criteria, such as by paying corporate income tax when they sell the tokens and other things like that, that they won't later be deemed to be engaged in an unlawful sale of securities. I think the, I think the important thing is just that Entrepreneurs, founders know what the rules are so they can abide by them and not be surprised.

AI assessment note: “there should be an opportunity for these cryptocurrencies to establish themselves as utility tokens”

Q wanted? It seems to me there's some chance this has been a very calculated strategy to provoke the US government into doing what they just did, and this is what he wants. He has a regulatory moat now. He can keep his future models behind this. You know, give it out to Glasswing, use it to distill it for him, for themselves. Do you think this is what they wanted?

A I think that on a certain level, it is what they wanted because they've been advocating to have a federal regulator, basically a new agency. In fact, Dario posted a blog just a few weeks ago saying he wants an FAA for AI. They wanted government approval, a government approval process for AI models. And so in a sense, they've gotten exactly what they wanted. Now, that being said, I don't think they're happy About the fact that Fable has been rolled back. So in a sense, you could say that Dario got hoisted on his own petard here, or it could be a FAFO situation. But look, my view on it is we should not reward Dario by giving him exactly what he's always craved, which is some sort of labyrinthine government approval process that does reward regulatory capture. So I hope that very soon now, I do think that as long as Anthropic has resolved the jailbreak issue, then I do think they should be allowed to come back to market. And similarly for open AI, I don't think we should be delaying them unnecessarily. We do not have months to give away in this race. And let me just say one other thing, which again, it's something I've been saying for months, which is with respect to risks like cyber, it is undoubtedly a risk, but what is the response to that? The only thing you can do Is go out and find all the vulnerabilities first yourself, the White Hats. Have the White Hats find all the vulne…

AI assessment note: “I think that on a certain level, it is what they wanted because”

Q Kiev, this is, I'm not happy with the Russian strikes in Kiev. Not necessary. Very bad timing. Vladimir, stop exclamation point. 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let's get the peace deal done. How is this deal going to get done? I should also say Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly skipping a meeting on a ceasefire talk on Wednesday after Ukraine refused to recognize Russia's annexation of Kiev. Crimea.

A Well, the reason why Rubio canceled that meeting is because the Americans put forward a peace proposal, and Zelensky dismissed it out of hand. Before the Russians could do anything, Zelensky dismissed it. And recognizing Russian ownership of Crimea, if you will, should be the easiest point for Zelensky to concede, and he dismissed it out of hand. Now, why do I say that? The Russians annexed Crimea in So this was not something that happened in 2022. It happened over 10 years ago. And if you look at what the people of Crimea want, and there's been a lot of Western polling on this, there's been man on the street interviews by NBC, the people of Crimea by something like over 80% say they want to be part of Russia. They're ethnic Russians. And I'd say the final point on this is that Zelensky and Ukraine tried to get Crimea back in the summer of 2023 with the summer counteroffensive. Remember, the whole point of that summer counteroffensive was to sever the land bridge to Crimea. Destroy the Kerch Bridge, isolate Crimea, and essentially lay siege to it. This was the whole point of that, and they got nowhere with that. They didn't even break through the first Seravikian line. So my point is that it's militarily impossible to retake Crimea. The people of Crimea don't want Ukraine to retake it. They want to be part of Russia, and yet Zelensky cannot give this up.

AI assessment note: “it's militarily impossible to retake Crimea. The people of Crimea don't want Ukraine”

Q didn't, nobody else had filed, if we didn't file that lawsuit in Seek Discovery, And if the richest guy on the planet doesn't choose to buy Twitter and expose all of that, people would still be claiming that this was some conspiracy theory, right? Like we wouldn't, if you just think of the world would be a much different place right now. And so I think that's a big success.

A Well, I agree. And just to take people back, you're exactly right that conservatives were called crazy and conspiracy theorists for believing that Twitter, you know, then Twitter was shadow banning And throttling traffic. And I remember when Elon took over, you know, we had the Twitter transition, and J. Kyle and I were there, and we were just helping out the first couple of weeks, and it was mostly just getting org charts and trying to rationalize the org structure, and Elon went in and started making cuts. But then, I think I left around Thanksgiving, and we were all kind of with our families, and, you know, I think we went down to Mexico, and Elon was still there working. And I remember I got a text from him at, like, two in the morning. Like, are you up?

AI assessment note: “Well, I agree. And just to take people back, you're exactly right”

Q How troubling is that? And what are you doing to protect crafts LPs?

A Yeah. So, so look, I think there's a big difference between going into Uh, a board meeting and finding out the projections were inflated because like, frankly, we all take projections with a grain of salt, right? But versus the founder lying about the past, right? So people are always going to put the rosiest picture or they're going to puff up what the future is going to look like. And it's up to you as the investor to determine if that's true or not, but they cannot lie about the past. They cannot lie about what their revenue was last year, what contracts they signed before you invested. That is fraud, right? And that is what, that's where Elizabeth Holmes crossed the line. She wasn't just painting a rosy picture. Of, you know, what the technology would look like, you know, years from now, she was lying about their capabilities at the time people were investing. That is the line you cannot cross. Um, look, we conduct diligence. We, you know, try to look at financials. We try to make sure that the numbers are all true. Um, you know, frankly, we're not investing in things that involve a tremendous amount of technical risk, a lot of technology risks. So we always use the product before we invest. The idea That the product would be faked. I think it would be hard to perpetrate that kind of fraud with a SaaS company. But, um, so look, I mean, that's what we look at.

AI assessment note: “we conduct diligence. We, you know, try to look at financials.”

Q Saks. I mean, listen, you, you've, you, it's very interesting last episode. I felt like you were Really trying to balance your belief in freedom and people being able to make decisions themselves with, you know, the reality that we can't be close forever. How is the last week change your thinking? And what do you think of the Danny Meyer?

A I, I like what Danny Meyer did in this sense. He wants to create a certain experience for his clientele. And he knows that his clientele are more likely to go dine in his restaurants. If there's a vaccine policy at his restaurants, he's not saying a policy for the whole country. He's setting it for his establishment. He has every right to be able to do that. And, uh, he believes that will help his bottom line. And he's probably right about that. Similarly, Roger Goodell, same thing. I mean, he took a tough line because he knows that if he wants the NFL to put out a great product every week, they can't be canceling games because of COVID outbreaks. Uh, you know, they can't have the first string players out with COVID. So he made a smart business decision. I think people should have the freedom and the right to do that. Now I still have, uh, let's call it a reservation about government requiring it. Um, not because I don't see the benefit. I definitely see the health benefit, but just because I don't like giving government the power to, you know, stick a, stick a needle in your arm. Um, if you're a government employee, Uh, I do think the government has added power. Uh, we talked about this last week. They can make it a job requirement. And, um, you know, what's interesting in California, California, Said if you're a state employee, you gotta get vaccinated. But the one group they…

AI assessment note: “I like what Danny Meyer did in this sense. He wants to create a certain experience”

Q Sachs the strategist. Let me hear your strategy here. You are now CEO of Google. What do you do?

A I think there's maybe even a bigger problem before that, which is, I think the whole monetization model might change. So the reason why Google monetizes so well is it's perceived as having the best search. And then it gives you a list of links. And a bunch of those links are paid and then people click on them. Now, I think when you search an AI, you're looking for a very different kind of answer. You're not looking for a list of 10 or 20 links. You're just looking for the answer. And so where is the opportunity to advertise against that? I mean, maybe you can charge like an affiliate commission if the answer contains a link in it or something like that. But then you have to ask the question, well, does that distort Like best answer? Like, am I really getting the best answer? Or am I getting the answer that someone's willing to pay for?

AI assessment note: “I think there's maybe even a bigger problem before that”

Q we want to get people to buy this commodity. It will lower the prices. Lo and behold, the same thing is happening a little bit with groceries, uh, and we'll see what happens with travel. Homes also spectacularly falling down in price. And the inventory spiking as well. So what's your, your take here? Unpack the 75 basis point increase in the chemotherapy that you were going down that road.

A Well, let me just speak to this, this, um, this rally in the market for a second, because I think there was a really interesting chart that Philippe LaFont showed at that COTU summit that we talked about on this pod a few months ago. And I'll just put it on the screen. I put it in the chat. Uh, what it basically shows is that Uh, is that during, you know, protracted bear markets, you can still get substantial bear market rallies. And so during the 2002 1001, uh, dot com crash, you had these plus 32%, plus 41%, plus 45% rallies. Uh, but even while the market as a whole was going down. And so they ended up being sort of sucker rallies. Now, I don't know if that is what's happening here, but it is a possibility. Um,

AI assessment note: “Well, let me just speak to this, this, um, this rally in the market”

Q But, but some companies, um, because they don't have the cash right now are borrowing money, right? To, to build out the data centers. And there's also a worry that the banks will be left holding the bag for some of this, because again, the spending is, is too much. Your thoughts on that?

A Well, I think there, there is obviously that concern. I mean, you, you know, I, I think it's, it's, um, it's less, I would say the banks and more, you see Oracle making a huge investment. You see, uh, Blackstone making huge investments, real estate companies. Um, ultimately I think these are very savvy market players, very deep pocketed companies, and they're doing this because they see an ROI there at the end of the rainbow. Um, can I just make one other point about just the data center? So, um, just on electricity, Uh, I actually think that if we allow the data centers to stand up their own power generation, it will actually bring down rates. Not only will it not increase residential rates, it will bring it down, and it will do that in two ways. One is that the data centers can, can give or sell power back to the meter when they have excess. So that will help bring down rates. Second, there's a lot of fixed costs involved in power generation. It's not all variable. So when you're able to amortize those fixed costs, Over a greater supply, you bring down the meter rate for everybody, and so there's huge economies of scale. So the more scale you get in electricity, like most other things, the price comes down. That's what, so it's actually a good thing that the, uh, that we have this build out going on because it will ultimately reduce prices for consumers, but we do have to mak…

AI assessment note: “can I just make one other point about just the data center? So, um, just on electricity”

Q You know, say, where do we agree on, on different issues, uh, that, uh, where do we agree on issues? How can we work together to do it? But if you don't win, then you're not gonna be able to effectuate the things you want, and even worse, the other side's gonna be effectuating the things they want, and you look at where the world is today because of that.

A There's a lot of internecine fighting in the Republican Party. I think Trump's instincts on abortion actually have been very good. I said this a couple of months ago. There was kind of a brouhaha on the right when Trump gave an interview in which he said that That actually what DeSantis had done in Florida with the six-week ban was a mistake, and that he sort of upleveled the issue and just said, I'm going to find a compromise that makes everybody happy. And this created a lot of upset people on the right because they thought that Trump was kind of selling them out on the abortion issue. And I made this case on Megyn Kelly a couple months ago that I thought that what Trump was doing was pretty smart because he doesn't want to get pinned down on an issue that's going to hurt him in the general. And I think part of the reason why he was being a little bit cagey on that issue is because he knows it would hurt him in the general, and he's starting to think about that. And I think the results that we just had the other day are strong vindication of that. And just let me say just more generally that whenever Trump has opposed Republican group think on an issue, I think he's invariably been proven correct. If you go all the way back to 2016, You know, think about all the heresies that he committed in the Republican Party. He spoke out against the forever wars, against Bush's forever w…

AI assessment note: “he doesn't want to get pinned down on an issue that's going to hurt him”

Q degree. And so you could say, hey, we'll give loans to stem degrees at a different rate, uh, or a different number of them or a different amount of cash or a different interest rate than we would for, I don't know, You're getting a degree in philosophy or, like I did, psychology, right? Just give a different one based on the outcome. That makes total sense to you, yes?

A Yeah, I, I've said for a long time that we should be allowing Student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, just like any other type of debt, just like credit card debt, just like other types of debt. Jamal is right. That would create some risk to the underwriter so that they would have to actually assess whether this person getting that degree would be able to repay the debt. But you have to ask the question, is it a bug or a feature that they're trying to remove market forces? And I would argue that this is deliberate, that progressives in the Democratic Party don't want there to be accountability For what you learn in college. Why? Because as I mentioned, it's these colleges that are putting out the foot soldiers of the Democratic Party. I mean, listen, there's a 37 point gap in party preference just based on one variable, which is whether you are professional class or working class, meaning college degree or no college degree. And that spans across different racial groups and other party lines. So the fact of the matter is that if you Go to college and get a degree. You are much, much more likely to become progressive. Now, why is that? I think it's because a lot of these colleges have basically become re-education camps. I mean, these are the woke madrasas of, uh, of cultural.

AI assessment note: “progressives in the Democratic Party don't want there to be accountability For what you learn”

Q a great thing that, you know, people are saying, I'll stay home instead of making 12 bucks an hour. It's an unfair wage. It's not a livable wage. And then all of these companies are saying, you know what? Okay. They folded so quick, the big companies, they went to 18 to 35 dollars an hour instantly. They always had the money to pay more. They just didn't need to.

A Increasing wages in real terms is a good thing. I think you have to ask why the wages are going up. Is it going up because of increased productivity, which is a good thing, or is it going up because of inflation? If it's going up in, um, if it's going up because of inflation, then the wage gains are somewhat illusory because all the products that consumers want to buy are also going up in price. All we've done is sort of, is, uh, devalue the dollar. So we have to, we don't know yet whether these, um, but we do know that inflation is actually very high. We don't know exactly If these, uh, wage gains are, are permanent or just a function of that. Um, but let, let's go back to this inflation point for a second. I think this is actually really important. We're at something like a 5.1% inflation rate. It's just about the highest, um, since the late seventies, early eighties. Now we have this threat of a supply chain crisis. This is, you know, this is potentially.

AI assessment note: “let's go back to this inflation point for a second”

Q Um, and horrible. Do you think it's horrible as a human? Yeah, I think it's your personal position.

A Yeah, well, let's get, let me just explain the law. So the, the, the law puts the onus of enforcement on private citizens, not government officials. Okay, they do that to avoid, to make it harder To legally challenge this under Roe and Casey. Okay. So what the, what the government has done here, what Texas has done is it gives private citizens the ability to sue abortion providers or anyone who aids and abets someone to, to get an abortion. So it could be an Uber driver. It could be a friend who simply drives someone to the abortion clinic. It could be a person who provides financial assistance. It could be a secretary who works at the abortion clinic. They can all be sued now under aiding and abetting. And here's, here's really the, the, the, the, the person who had the abortion cannot be sued, but But anyone who aided and abetted can be. That's how they're getting around the right to choose. And here's the craziest part is the citizens who choose to sue don't need to show any connection to the person they're suing. And, uh, they don't even have to live in the state, right? So there's no connection to them. There's no personal injury to them, but they're basically suing under a personal injury under a civil right of action. And if they succeed, The law states that they're entitled to at least 10,000 dollars in damages in addition to their legal costs. So if they win, their leg…

AI assessment note: “let me just explain the law”

Q Oh, I think we have to. We have to. The question is, should the public get to see exactly what's been cut and what hasn't?

A Why wouldn't they? Of course. And what we really need is for Congress to now embrace all of the corruption that Elon has found and eliminate it from the budget. Because at the end of the day, in order to capture the savings here, we do need those appropriations eliminated from the budget. And my biggest concern is not something that, that Doge is going to do or not. It's not up to Doge to do that. It's up to kind of frankly, these old bulls in Congress who control the appropriations process Are they going to basically backslide and just put the spending back in because it's easier to just do that to engage in this log rolling? Or do we take advantage of this? I think incredible sacrifice that Elon has made. I mean, look, this has cost him enormously. One of the reasons why Tesla is down is because you've had crazy leftists engaging in terrorism, firebombing Tesla dealerships. In any event, he's made this enormous sacrifice in order to expose the corruption. And look at what we've learned. We've basically learned that this whole NGO thing is a giant scam where, you know, the people in government give enormous amounts of money to their friends, probably with the expectation that when they leave government, they're going to be next in line at the trough. And I think Elon's done enormous service exposing this, but you know, it's not entirely up to him in order for us to realize the…

AI assessment note: “Why wouldn't they? Of course.”

Q Have you looked at the data on export flows from the United States to China? It actually did happen at a quite substantial rate.

A But with huge trade deficits for the United States. You're arguing that they, they did not act in a discriminatory way towards our products. This idea that Americans could just do business in China the way that they could do business here is ridiculous. Anyone who tried to do business over there knows you have to create a JV. You have to get a local partner, give them. It was extraordinarily difficult. We were discriminated against Larry. It's ridiculous to try and claim that somehow this was an equal relationship. Okay. And we imported far more from them than we ever exported to them. So Bill Clinton was wrong about that. Number two, He said that signing PNTR and bringing China to the WTO would promote democracy in China, that we would export one of democracy's most cherished values, economic freedom. Did that happen? I don't think so. He said this would strengthen global trade by ensuring China adhere to international trade rules, reducing trade barriers, and resolving disputes through WTO. Did that happen? I don't think so. And then he said on national security, he said it would improve our national security To bring China to WTO and help make them rich. He said, quote, if we don't deal with China in this way, we will increase the prospect that they will turn inward. That's not what happened. We helped make China rich. We've exported millions of jobs to them. They built up t…

AI assessment note: “we imported far more from them than we ever exported to them”

Q come from a firm called the London Farm in marketing capital and credits on a venture investing platform. So anyway, there's a ton of carve outs here and other stuff. I'm going to stop there at the notes and just sacks. This is the craziest story. Sorry it took so long to get here. What are your thoughts on what we're seeing here in this drama and this Zerp valuation?

A Yeah, look, Ryan has been right before, he's been right in the past, but in this case, it looks like he's clearly over his skis, and if the reporting is correct, it looks like he's trying to drum up interest in a financing round by representing things that aren't true or haven't happened yet, saying that certain investors are important, and those investors are coming out and saying that they're not. The question, I, I think that's relevant, And that relates back to our previous topic is this founder mode. I mean, what makes this not founder mode? And I think that this is where it'd be helpful to have a little bit more substance and not just a branding exercise. Let me give you a more mundane example. I was in a board meeting the other day and I commented to the team on how they had gotten their burn down substantially since the last word meeting. And somebody joked, one of the founders said founder mode and it was kind of a joke. Okay, great. But then it got me thinking, What if in this board meeting it had gone the opposite way and the founders had taken the position, you know what? We're not going to try and cut burn. We're going to put the pedal to the metal and accelerate the business and spend a lot more because somehow it's going to get us to the next funding round faster. Founder mode.

AI assessment note: “relates back to our previous topic is this founder mode”

Q against human interest. I know it sounds like science fiction, but there is a theory that when these AIs start operating on their own, like we explained in the previous sort of segment here with Plugins and they make agents that are operating based on feedback from each other. Could they get out of control and be mischievous and then work against human interest? So what do you think, Sachs?

A I think there's a difference between what could happen in the short term and then what could happen in the long term. I think in the short term, everything we're seeing right now is very positive. And let me just give you an example. There was a really interesting tweet storm about a guy who wrote about how Chad GPT saved his dog. Did you guys see this? This is one of the really mind-blowing ones to me, uh, use cases. So his dog was sick, took him to a vet. Vet prescribed some medication. Three days later, dog's still sick. In fact, even worse. So the, the owner of the, the pet just literally copied and pasted the lab result for the blood test for the dog with all the, the lab values into chat GPT and said, what could this be? Like, what's your likely diagnosis? Chat GPT gave three Possible answers. Three illnesses. The first one was what the vet basically had diagnosed with. So that wasn't it. The second one was excluded by another test. So he then went to a second vet and said, listen, I think my dog has the third one and vet prescribed something. And sure enough, dog is cured, saved. So that's really mind blowing that even though chat GPT hasn't been specifically optimized. As far as we know, for lab results, it could figure this out. The reason I'm mentioning this is it gives you a sense of the potential here to cure disease, to, you know, like I could see major medical bre…

AI assessment note: “I think there's a difference between what could happen in the short term and”

Q well manage it? I mean, how, how, how well managed, you know, go to the Department of Motor Vehicles for your, it's so big and complex and such a, Yeah. You know, such a mess, like, you know, when, when you think, is this a surprise to you that there's all of this stuff going on all over the place in terms of inefficiency? Is that a surprise to you?

A No. Uh, but, you know, I guess the question is, are people waking up to this? Because last time we spoke, you highlighted that, uh, a piece of your portfolio was in gold. You had invested quite a bit in gold. Since we spoke, I think gold has climbed from 2900 an ounce to 5200 an ounce. What has happened with gold over the last year? Is it that markets are waking up to the point in the cycle that we're in that you've been highlighting for a number of years at this point? Or is it because China is structurally abandoning the US dollar and treasuries and moving more into gold and other central banks are moving into gold? Is it because Individual speculators and market participants are getting bubbly with gold. What's your view on what's gone on with gold and how it relates to the market's acknowledgement of the stage that we're in?

AI assessment note: “No. Uh, but, you know, I guess the question is”

Q Yeah, so what are we doing about that?

A Let me speak to this. So, first of all, I agree that that is the biggest risk of AI is let's call it the Orwellian concerns as opposed to like the James Cameron Terminator concerns. Just as an aside, I, I agree actually with the Star Trek analogy that I think the right way to think about AI, it's like the ship's computer in Star Trek where you can tell it what to do. It understands language and it can speak back to you, but it doesn't have a mind of its own. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be used by humans or governments in a oppressive way. And that's, I think, the biggest risk of it. And I think the track that we were on at the end of the Biden administration is that they were starting to require that DEI be programmed into AI. And that should be seen as an attempt to kind of infiltrate AI with ideology that then programs or brainwashes our kids and everyone who uses AI. And we were seeing that when Google rolled out the first product, you had the whole black George Washington thing and black Nazis and all that kind of stuff. History was being rewritten in real time by AI in order to serve a political agenda. And that didn't happen by accident. It's because the values, the ideology was being programmed in. Now, I think that that was the track we were on before President Trump got elected. I think it was a pretty scary track. And let me say one other thing is that that…

AI assessment note: “Let me speak to this. So, first of all, I agree that that is”

Q they are the equivalent of, let's say, Ukraine, David, to America, you've, you've brought up that comparison. Why don't we make peace with Cuba? Why can't we have a peace-based foreign policy where we're trying to build bridges God, Cuba and United States could do amazing things together, and we should be trying to win that relationship instead of living 50 years in the past over it. I'm not sure.

A There was legitimate outrage over the past week because we discovered that China was planning on, they already have an intelligence outpost in Cuba, listening outpost, but also they were thinking about doing training of troops in Cuba, and that would be a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and we should basically get our backs up over that. The Monroe Doctrine states that no distant great power can bring troops, weapons, or bases into the Western hemisphere. The United States spent over a hundred years basically enforcing the Monroe Doctrine. It would greatly diminish US security if we allowed any foreign great power to have troops in the Western hemisphere. So we deserve to have our horns out over that. The problem is that we have our horns out over everything. And so we're not really taken seriously. We've cried wolf so many times. I don't think we're really taken seriously by the Chinese on this. And this should be a teaching moment to the foreign policy establishment, because this is Russia's objection. Russia's objection is to having American troops, weapons, and bases directly on their border. This is our objection to what China is seeking to do in Cuba.

AI assessment note: “this should be a teaching moment to the foreign policy establishment, because this is Russia's objection”

Q And my question is, do, does our government know that our companies are acquiescing to these governments?

A Well, that's been a problem for a long time, actually. So there was, um, op-ed by a Microsoft executive talking about this a number of months back where the argument was, well, the government has to go get a search warrant to get your data from these companies, but these companies don't put up a fight. Like they don't, They don't challenge the warrant at all. And why? Because they don't have an interest. They have an interest in being cooperative, right? The article is basically saying that if you're the subject of a search warrant, meaning they're going to Google to get information about Jason, the government should have a duty to inform Jason so that your lawyers can go challenge it. And that was the legal change that needed to be made. We had this conversation, I think last year, That is a change that should be made because in the old days when the government would present you with a search warrant, they'd have to go to you because all of your documents were in your possession. They would be at your office, they'd be at your house. So they would come knocking on your door, give you the search warrant. You could give it to your lawyer. They could challenge it. That doesn't happen anymore. Now the government just goes and gives a search warrant to a big tech company because your data is in the cloud, but their argument is you don't own that data. The big tech company does. The…

AI assessment note: “Well, that's been a problem for a long time, actually. So there was”

Q my question for you. So we hear, you know, the president say he's talking to President Xi. We hear Scott Bestin say that he's in talks with China or that their talks are going to begin. And then you hear China say, no, no, no, we're not talking. There's no talks happening. We don't know what you're talking about. Stop saying these things. What are we all supposed to believe?

A Well, look, first of all, I need to say that when I'm on this show and I'm not talking about AI or crypto, I'm just a civilian, right? So I'm not a spokesman for the administration on anything but the two issues that I work on. So I don't want to come across as someone who has special knowledge because I'm just, I'm not part of the trade conversation. So I can't answer your question directly. But what I would say is that with respect to the China relationship, I think what's happened over the past few weeks has been a very important stress test. And it's basically flagged some serious weaknesses or dependencies that have evolved in this relationship over the past few decades. You know, I flagged this in a previous episode that we did with Larry Summers, where I said that 25 years ago it was a huge mistake to walk China into the WTO. And I think that just to build on, on that thought, One of the problems with walking them into the WTO is that they got what's called developing nation status. Yeah. So, you know, you can either be a developing nation or a developed nation in the framework of the WTO. And maybe there was something legitimate to that in. You know, when Deng Xiaoping began his reforms, the average Chinese person was making two dollars a day by the year, 2000, it was much more questionable and it certainly makes no sense. In the year of twenty-twenty-five, and still to…

AI assessment note: “I can't answer your question directly. But what I would say is”

Q Trump and I, along with others in the administration, have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made. That's exactly what I'm doing here. So if we get these agreements in place, That means less agents on the street, more agents in the jail. Matter of fact, I have staff from CBP and from ICE working on a drawdown plan. What does that look like based on the cooperation?

A Well, first, let me say the deaths of Rene Good and Alex Petty are regrettable and, and tragic. So are the deaths of Lincoln Riley, Jocelyn Nungere, Rachel Morin, Victoria Harwell, Ivory Smith, and too many others to mention who are murdered by criminal illegal aliens, and the media won't ever tell you their names. But President Trump was hired by the American people to do a job, which is to seal the border and deport criminal aliens So that more of these tragedies do not occur in the future. And this is a popular policy over 55% of the American people say they want all illegal aliens deported, and over 90% want criminal aliens removed. And by criminal aliens, I'm referring to the ones who commit additional crimes after they enter the country illegally. Now, this policy is working. Murders were down 21% last year. It's one of the best years in record. And in most states, the process is smooth and doesn't make national news. And the reason for that is because local authorities are cooperating with ICE. But Minneapolis has taken a different approach. They've engaged in a campaign of, quote, massive resistance to federal authority, so let's talk about what's actually happening there on the ground. I think the first thing to understand is that what's happening is much more than just protests, and obviously I have no problem with people peacefully protesting and making their opinion…

AI assessment note: “so let's talk about what's actually happening there on the ground.”