Trump's Panic Is Backfiring… While China Quietly Wins

[00:00:00] Carl Zod: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Silk and Steel podcast. I'm your host Carl Zod. Today I brought back the crowd favorite, Einar Tengen, all the way from Beijing, China. Welcome back to [00:00:15] Einar Tengen: the show, Einar. Always a pleasure, Carl. Lots to talk about, as always. So whatever you want to ask me, let's get into it because there's been a lot happening the last couple of days. [00:00:27] Carl Zod: Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely since last time we talked, you know, first Trump tackled by signing a surrender document of MOU at Versailles of all places. So we thought, and it looks like for a while that seems like, okay, maybe this is, maybe it's a wrap, right? The oil market will start to stabilize. There's some oil that's finally coming out of the Gulf. And one of a sudden, Trump just decided, you know what, that's not good enough. I'm going to restart the war. So my question is, why? Why now? I mean, like he was on the television a few weeks ago saying, Oh, if we continue to let the situation develop, it's going to develop into a world depression. You know, I don't want to be the president to, to like, to lead the world into a depression. So he's basically saying, I don't want to be Herbert Hoover, right? But now he's, he's doing a Herbert Hoover. Why? Why, Einar? [00:01:31] Speaker 3: On steroids. Well, he really doesn't feel he has a choice. I mean, Donald Trump, you know, I know I keep going back to this issue. He lives on a day-to-day basis. So he wakes up in the morning and he tries to figure out, okay, today, what do I have to do? One, I have to keep the Epstein files off the front page. I have to cover up everything that has gone wrong. You know, I made all these promises. None of them have come true, except, you know, beating on immigrants. And, you know, so he has to come up with something. So it's actually good for him on a, at least, I think he's more afraid of the Epstein files than he is, in fact, about the Iran war. I mean, the Iran war right now is, to him, he doesn't care about the death and destruction or anything like that. What he cares about is that this is going to affect the election. And, you know, yesterday you heard him going forward and saying, oh, you know, you know, it's China. Although he couldn't, he couldn't, there were no allegations. It's just like they have access. Well, why do they have access? I'm sorry, I'm getting off the point here, but I have to get this off my chest. So in 2015, there was a leak of about 91 million or a hundred and some odd million, you know, details about voter rolls. And then two years later, there's 191 million leaks. And then a few years later, there was another leak of about four and a half, 4.7 million information about voters. Well, okay. Let me explain this to people to understand. First off, this was not hacks. These were the incompetence of the, of the people who were supplying the services who accidentally let this information out. And it was free for anybody to sit down and copy. But on top of that, I used to run elections in the U.S. I used to purchase this material, which, you know, you, you, you'd pay so many dollars and they'd send you the voter rolls for any area that you defined. So if I was running a local election, I say, okay, I need the voter rolls for this thing. And I'd say, I want for the last five, 10 years, whatever. And I want to see voter patterns, people who vote more often. Now I don't get their names and addresses and things like that are the personal details, but I can get it on a ward by ward basis. And that gives me a basis to, to, to make some projections and say, okay, what, what are the big issues here? So that's all the, the little stuff. My point is he's making allegations that make no sense. This stuff has been around for a long period of time. It was not Chinese hacking. If it was hacking, why didn't he produce the smoking gun? Why? Cause there is no smoking gun. Otherwise I assure you, he would have said, here it is, here's the proof. And you know, it's just, if he really believed this, that China had interfered in the election and he has all of this, you know, secret declassified information, which is just a rehash of everything I just said. Um, why isn't he saying I'm going to put a hundred or 10,000% tariffs on Chinese goods because they interfered the election. But I want people to think about something. The only fair elections that have been had were when Democrats were in the white house, because those are the only two times that he won. The only time he lost, he was in control of the federal government. So I'm trying to get this understanding that somehow everything was rigged against him. So this is, is, is, is Donald Trump. Now let's get into your first question, which is the war. Um, I said, he reacts on a day by day basis. He's not happy about this because, um, the war means prices, uh, continue up. Uh, he's looking at global recession. He doesn't want to be remembered that way. And it's going to definitely affect his performance in midterms. And it's not him. He's not on, uh, for election, but control of the house and the Senate is, um, and he, he has this idea in his head that what I can do is who's against me right now. Well, in his last election, he was about 50% of young men under 30. Uh, now he's about 27%. So he's basically less than half. I mean, just a little bit more than half. And, um, among women, I just, you know, he's never been very popular one. Women. I don't know why. I mean, he, he seems to like women. He has 29 women who claim that he molested them. So obviously he, he feels something in that direction. And of course he likes young, young people because he used to own team in this USA. So obviously he likes women. He always declares that, uh, you know, the next wife hasn't been born yet. Um, uh, that that's always a shocker. I wonder if he's still saying that, but he's in this situation where, uh, he thinks if he can get women and young men off the voter rolls, all right, he has a chance of, of winning. Uh, and I don't know where this comes from. I, you know, if you start looking at the data of the people who, uh, he doesn't want any kind of, uh, vote by mail, although he always votes by mail, which kind of an irony, isn't it? Um, he doesn't want voting by mail. He doesn't want young men and he doesn't want women. He thinks that will be enough to get him in, but he has to remember people who do vote by mail are the elderly ones. A lot of elderly in, for instance, his home state, uh, and they almost, the vast majority of them are voting by mail because some of them are in nursing homes. It's inconvenient for them to go and wait in line and, you know, stand around, especially if they're in their seventies and eighties. It's just not something they want to do. So he might find that he's in a surprise. Also demographically, it doesn't make sense. I mean, if, um, if you're well-educated in higher income, uh, which tend to be as, as a whole, uh, groups that do not favor Donald Trump, they actually are more likely to have a passport, to have many forms of ID, uh, easily. They, you know, they own multiple houses, so they can say they definitely have some, some, some proof that, uh, they have, uh, uh, you know, a gas bill or something like that. Whereas people who are less educated, all right, are, you know, not, not as likely to have these forms of ID and a lot of them make up his base. So I think he could be, uh, very much surprised, even if he got this Save America Act through, which was the whole point of this thing. He didn't make any allegations that could stay. He didn't threaten China with, uh, retribution for interfering in the election. He didn't make any kind of sense whatsoever, but it was just literally, let's rally the base and see if they can push their senators and their congressmen to pass the Save America Act, because that's right now his only hope. So how does this tie into, um, Iran? It's all connected, uh, obviously, uh, his failures in Iran, the fact that he went in there, that's an uncontrolled situation. It's just, there's just no way out of it for him. If he, he was ridiculing, um, you know, Biden and Obama for giving, you know, uh, less than a couple of billion dollars, he's, he's proposing to give him $30 billion. And on top of that, they want more reparations and things like this. How does he explain that to people that he started a forever war, doesn't know how to get out massive miscalculation. And he is, like I said, he's just vamping it every day. He just tries to figure out how to deal with that day. And then tomorrow comes and he figures out a new strategy. So this is the way that I, I understand Donald Trump. Uh, and it's, if you look at it that way, all of a sudden, uh, all this behavior becomes very, very transparent. You know, what, what's the, what's the dead cat or the, you know, bunch of white bunnies he's going to unleash at the White House press conference to keep the press, you know, darting their eyes around and following stories that make no sense instead of sticking on the main line, which is his massive failures. Uh, they still are mentioned, but because he's throwing so much stuff out there as, as Steve Bannon, we're just, you know, we're going to throw everything, all the shit against the wall and see what sticks. We were going to overwhelm them. And this has been the strategy. And so far it has worked to some degree. Uh, but his popularity is, is waning. Um, American voters vote with their pocketbooks and it doesn't matter whether they like you or not. Um, well, you know, of course, if they, if they're part of the cult, yes, they'll vote for you. Even if he's, you know, if it doesn't even make sense, like the fellow who said, yeah, well, I used to be able to hold 25 bucks worth of gas in my car. Now it holds about 200 dollars worth, uh, not realizing that the cost of gas had gone up and, um, this kind of person. Well, yes, they, they will continue to adhere to Donald Trump. I believe he's the greatest thing. He's a savior. He's the guy, but, uh, the rest of them, those who voted for some sort of change, they thought that he could reduce prices. Like he said he would, that he wouldn't get in these forever wars, um, that he would make America great again, bring back jobs and everything like that. Um, they're not going to vote for him this time around. And you're going to see a situation very close, uh, to what happened there with Richard Nixon. I don't know who, uh, comes, uh, from the democratic side because they're hopelessly in confusion on a perpetual basis. I remember one of my good friends, he says, I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat. And he was quite proud of that, but I don't know if that's, uh, necessarily a, a model recipe for governance. If you know what I mean, we, we, we don't know what we're doing or where we're going, but you know, let's have some fun along the way. Um, so I don't know anything, but I think it's going to be a situation, uh, very much like after, uh, Nixon, uh, Gerald Ford ran, um, and unsuccessfully, he was, uh, pushed out by Jimmy Carter. What was Jimmy Carter? He was an unknown. He was a governor of Georgia. He was a very, very sincere man who, you know, it seemed, it didn't seem like he was tricky Dick. So they voted for the other. And, uh, my guess is that that is the greatest danger of Donald Trump, uh, establishment, neoliberal, uh, Democrats, uh, especially the older ones have lost their luster. And we see that in the local elections where, you know, uh, the, the rising stars are being backed by the mayor of New York, um, with a Zandani. Um, you know, this is, you know, you couldn't have said to somebody, you know, four years ago, gee whiz, you know, the next mayor of New York is going to be Muslim, non-practicing. Um, and he's, uh, going to be leading this, you know, this surge of new candidates who are actually backed by young Jews who are against, uh, the Zionist expansion, uh, in things. And people will look at you, what, what kind of science fiction is that? Okay. But let's, let's go back to one of my favorite subjects these days, which is the fact that, uh, there was never, uh, any chance, uh, that the MOU was going to work out. I mean, I, I remember going on shows and saying, well, let's hope it works out. Um, but you know, you have a problem. And the way I look at the problem, Carl, I don't know, did you ever watch, uh, the movie or read the book, [00:13:17] Carl Zod: the three body problem. I, I have not seen the movie or the book, but I'm aware of it. [00:13:24] Speaker 3: Okay. Well, it's, it's based on an actual physics problem. And that is when you have three, let's say you have three planets that are orbiting each other. Well, each one has, it has its own gravity. Now you can establish how big it is, uh, you know, the size, weight, everything like this, but you cannot predict what will happen. If you have two bodies, right? Uh, two planets orbiting each other. Yes. You can predict very, very accurately what's going to happen, but introducing a third body makes it impossible because each one has its own things and the variables increase beyond our ability, uh, to actually predict them. So what we have, uh, with Iran, Israel and the United States is a three body problem. Uh, Israel is dedicated to making sure the U S never leaves, uh, that there is a forever war against Iran until, I don't know, I don't know what they expect. They're going to invade Iran when, you know, 7 million people taking over, uh, 91 million people. I don't think that's going to happen that maybe they want to destroy it, uh, cripple it. There's certainly not ever going to be, um, a government, government, governance unit there that is favorable to Israel. So I don't know where the end game is for them, except this kind of greater Israel thing, which never seemed possible to me that a country that small could literally take over, uh, take land from the majority of its neighbors involved about six or seven different countries. Yes, they've attacked those countries and they've even been expanded it. Uh, there's been threats made against Turkey. I, I still don't understand that. I mean, Turkey has a 1 million man army. They're part of NATO. Uh, article five means that if Israel attacked them, the U S is supposed to defend, uh, Turkey, not Israel. They, I don't know. I'm going to say jury's still out, uh, but, um, you know, very aggressive country. Um, obviously the genocide in, uh, in Gaza, uh, the invasion in Lebanon right now, the fact that they have over 120 nuclear weapons, uh, it really is, you know, like I said, it has its own trajectory right now and no one can predict even what's going on within Israel. So if you consider it a planet, it is a rogue planet. You have no idea where it's going. Then you have the United States, uh, Donald Trump, uh, convinced in a moment of insanity that he should, uh, roll into Iran. That'll be just like Venezuela and, uh, it'll be great. He'll control the, uh, the oil from Iran and Venezuela. And he's, you know, already beaten down on Nigeria, you know, when bombing them. So into submission. Uh, so, you know, he, he really feels that he can go through with this plan that Eldridge Colby, who is, uh, uh, heading up war policy at the department of defense, or I think it's now the department, officially the department of war. And, uh, his belief was that the way for, uh, the U S going forward was to declare complete dominion, domination of the Western hemisphere. You know, hence, you know, we're going to take over Greenland, uh, Canada's 51st straight. When they come to Mexico and a little, little squishy there, we want to control it, but they're not going to be the 52nd straight. I don't know why. I mean, I don't know why they still make all of South America, uh, uh, part of, uh, the United States, but I guess, uh, they don't want too many senators from down there. They might not vote for Republican. So, um, uh, dominate that area. And then in terms of China, uh, don't fight directly. What you do is you use proxy situations, but more importantly, you control China's oil, uh, their energy. So you block it off. So what have we been doing as we discussed before, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iran, what do they have in common? Oh, they expect export oil to China. Surprise, surprise. And, uh, the second part of Eldridge Colby's plan, he, he wrote a book in, um, uh, 2021, uh, talking about this. So, I mean, I'm not saying, oh, you know, this is a conspiracy. He said exactly what he wants to do. And part of that is saying, look, we have to get control of all the choke points because after we, uh, can, you know, control China's oil and energy, then we, if they try to fight back, right, we will cut off all of their trade because this is an export nation, right? They import raw materials and they export value-added goods. If we can cut them off, we can reduce their economy to nothing. So this is the plan. Donald Trump is kind of vaguely following it, but not in a kind of consistent ways. It's kind of been backed into different situations, but this, this is, uh, where it's going. So, uh, and then you have Iran. Iran is now at the point where they said, you know, we've taken a massive amount of damage. Our leaders have been killed. Um, not only political, but religious leaders. And now the son of the person who got killed, who incidentally, his wife and child were killed, uh, at the same time, he's in control of the country. And funnily enough, he wants revenge. I don't know why he's taking it so personally, but obviously he is. When your father, your daughter, and your wife are killed, plus a bunch of your relatives and, um, you know, a good percentage of the people that you knew, uh, who represented what you thought was the will of a sovereign nation. Um, they were basically executed. So they, they, at this point, have nothing to lose. They're in their homeland. They're fighting a war against an invader. They have nowhere to go. They're not welcome anywhere. So they have to stay. So the hardship is immense, uh, but they're going to continue because what else can they do now? They know, and everyone has always known that the Straits of Hormuz was an ace up their sleeve. It's the reason that seven presidents consistently said, no, we're not going to go fight Iran. Not directly. We did it through Iraq, of course, but we're not going to do it directly because if they close off the Straits of Hormuz, it hurts them, but it hurts the global economy even more. It's 20% of the world's oil, right? And 25% of the world's gas and gas, as we know, is converted into fertilizer. And if you don't have fertilizer, you don't have as much crop production. Um, if you don't have, uh, oil, you don't have diesel. If you don't have diesel, you can't run your agricultural pumps or your machinery. So it has a huge impact. Uh, you know, the price of everything, plastics, all of it go back as synthetic materials, uh, go up. I mean, if you start looking at, uh, gas, uh, gasoline, uh, and energy, um, about 45% goes into the tanks of cars and then, uh, a large chunk of it goes into, uh, sedentary, um, you know, into power plants. And then, uh, I don't know, between 16 and 20% goes into products and things like this. Uh, and that could be fertilizer. It can also be plastics and, uh, materials, you know, clothing, uh, and nylon, rayon, all of these things that you, uh, take for granted in your clothes. Yes, they're all energy. They're all oil. So, um, they feel that they have an upper hand against a, in an asymmetrical war that they're, they're the ones who are doing the guerrilla fighting by being able to control the Straits of Hormuz and they intend to get their pound of flesh back. If we can't, if they say, if we can't export oil, we will collect revenues from the oil that goes through the Hormuz straight. Is it legal? Absolutely not. Okay. International convention. But when we start talking about international convention, who's violated more than anybody else? Well, US, US is in a really good position. They're not even a signatory to the UN convention of law of the seas, which they in essence started because they wanted to, you know, the US said, well, we want more territory, uh, marine territory. And who cares about the cannon shot rule? You know, 12, 13 miles. We need more. We want 200 miles. So that's what started the debate. And in the end, the US said, no, we will not join. Why? Because we don't recognize any power above our own. And the idea that somebody would come in and actually say you're in violation of something doesn't work. That's a reason why we're not part of the ICC, the International Criminal Court. It's why we didn't sign on to a lot of treaties involving, you know, protection of women and children, very controversial issues. Of course, you know, why would you want to protect those who need protection the most? But we haven't done it because we are not willing to submit to any authority above our own. And that's the mark of a empire, a group who believes that we are right, whether we're right or wrong. So this is where they are. So Iran now feels that they're empowered. And quite frankly, the IRGC is, this is a dedicated course of military fighters who are also very religious. They're recruited on that basis. You have to be a true believer to be part of the core. So they have divided in preparation for what they eventually saw coming. They created 30 different units. Now these units do not call in and they do not coordinate with each other. They might listen to the radio or television, but they know that if they make a phone call, either on a landline or through a cell phone, they very well could be targeted. And if they aren't targeted, the U.S. will blow them up. So they set up these cells, military cells throughout there. You have to remember, this is a land with three huge mountain areas on it, independent ones. And they start, it's almost impossible. It's like three Afghanistans. I mean, and it's huge. It's the 17th largest country in the world and you have 17th largest population. This is not some place where you're going to put boots on the ground. You know, we took us a million to invade Iraq. Iraq is one quarter of the size, right? And even less in terms of population. No, no, it doesn't work that way. And they don't have, they don't have, they didn't have the kind of geographical protections that Tehran has. So it's a, it's a mission impossible. So when Donald Trump says, oh, boots on the ground, Hegseth can say that. But the fact is, it'll never happen. It does happen. There's going to be a lot of body bags heading back to the United States. And that would not be very popular and even make it worse for him in terms of the elections. So you have a situation where you have three bodies who are going in completely different directions. Donald Trump wants out, but he doesn't know how to get out without, you know, literally compromising everything that he's ever said and being a laughing stock for what he's done. I mean, even, even this 60 day reprieve, which was not a peace agreement. It was just simply saying we'll have a ceasefire for 60 days so we can start talking about peace issues, but the peace issues. And that's why I said this is not going to work out because Iran is not going to give up their nuclear capabilities. Obviously, if you've been attacked, you know, twice during peace negotiations, now a third time, and somebody, you know, tore up the treaty that they had agreed to, there's no reason for trust. So the idea is that we give up everything that we have to protect ourselves and we just trust you. Well, it didn't work out so well for Saddam Hussein. It certainly didn't work out in a number of places like Syria and also in other Arab countries where, you know, they were convinced to give up their weapons. And shortly after that, they all died. So there's no way that they're going to give that up. They see the only way they can see eventually long term. And I don't care what they say. And I think this is going to apply to the rest of the Middle Eastern countries is they want to go nuclear. And the only way to prevent that is if there is an agreement that Israel have to give up their nukes and everyone else gives up their nukes. That is not likely. So we're in a situation which is escalating downwards. The three body problem, you cannot figure out what is going to happen next. And Donald Trump is not in control. Israel is not in control and Iran is not in control. All we have is uncontrolled chaos. [00:26:10] Carl Zod: Trump almost tackled. He already had to sign the MOU. That was the way out. I mean, if he just stick to the MOU, we would be much better straight right now. And I understand what you're saying about this is because due to the midterm. But that's again, it's a little bit counterintuitive because midterm is two months away. And here, what he's going to do, restarting this war, how is that going to help his [00:26:45] Speaker 4: chance with the midterm? It's not. That's why he was on TV yesterday saying, you know, [00:26:53] Speaker 3: pass this bill. It's my last chance. Okay. He doesn't want, the problem was the MOU was extremely unclear. I'm a lawyer. I mean, oh my God, I would never have my client sign something like this. It was, you know, they said that Iran was in control of the Straits of Hormuz. All right. And Iran interpreted that is we get to collect money from there and you guys stay out of it. No more attacks, no more things. But the very day after he signed the MOU, he, what did he do? [00:27:21] Speaker 4: He threatened them. He said, I'm going to blow you up unless you, you know, you do everything according [00:27:26] Speaker 3: to what we've asked. So, you know, with Donald Trump, like I said, it's day by day. It is a mistake to assume that there's some sort of long-term strategy. He is on, you know, it's, he's, he's a feral animal. It's what do I have to get through for the day? I got to feed myself. All right. I have a place to sleep. I, you know, I got to get people away from considering whether or not I'm a pedophile and, you know, whether, how much money I'm having to pay to people. I was not alleged, but convicted of raping, sexual assault, I should say. And rape would be too, too far since the judge said, well, it was rape, but it was sexual assault, but that, you know, let's quibble over it. Yeah. I mean, he's, this idea that he's in control is, is completely wrong. And that's what I'm, I keep stressing that he doesn't, there's nothing for him to gain, but he's in a no-win situation that he put himself in. The mistake was going into Iran. He just doesn't know how to get out. And, you know, the Iranians are not helping either. I mean, they, they're, they're not going to lie down. They're going to press what they think is their advantage. Now, if anybody's interested, they should take a look at Iran in terms of previous negotiations. The Iranians are very, very cagey in their negotiations. They take a long time, very methodical, and they're very detailed. These are not the kind of negotiations you have over 60 days. All right. So if you know their history and you start looking at these 14 points, you knew the, you know, six of them were complete non-starters and the, and the timeframe wasn't even possible. So you sit there and you don't want to go on TV and say, Hey, well, this is, this is, you know, it's not going to work. People say, Oh, you don't want it to work. No, I think everyone wants it to work. The issue is it doesn't. And now we're facing the reality that, you know, you have, as I said, three players and it's completely unpredictable what's going to happen. None of them feel that they can end the war, but none of them feel that they can actually win it. Except maybe Israel. [00:29:36] Carl Zod: But at the end of the day, I mean, the, the, the whole, the, the recent blow up, it's still revolved on the fundamental issue is who controls the straight or Hormuz and the, the Iranians. Iran does, yes. And Iran thought that was what the, that's not an issue. Yeah. That, that's what it says. But, but, but, but why, why, why Donald Trump is compelled to challenge that? Right. They ask those ships to direct them to go through the, the Southern route, the Omani channel, rather than going through the Iran designated Iranian channel. Why? Well, like, why does he even bother? Why can't Donald Trump just chill? You're like, [00:30:21] Speaker 3: he can just chill and do nothing. Okay. Yeah. Tell me when Donald Trump has chilled, other than on the golf course, while he's dropping another ball in lieu of the one that kind of got away or that his, his forward caddy forgot to drop for him. No, I mean, he he he's, he's reacting day by day. He's obviously extremely uncomfortable. You saw the speech yesterday. This was not the triumphant guy who used to stand on there, stand up there going on ad nauseum, you know, about stuff you couldn't even follow. He, he read from the teleprompter. You know, unfortunately he didn't have his regular teleprompter there. Why? Because that teleprompter was making bets on what was going to be said. Because he had the script. I don't know if you saw that. I thought that was hilarious. Anyway, I still, I don't know that it's a crime because it's public knowledge. I suppose if it's a secret, he could be prosecuted for that. But anyways, they put him on temporary or permanent things. But in the end, this, this was not Donald Trump's finest hour. And this is a situation where he feels very much on his back foot. And this is his last hope that he can somehow get his, his, the Senate and the House to pass this bill. Because otherwise he doesn't have anything. So this is how they're connected. Uh, there is, um, there, there was no way for him to go through, uh, with the, um, the Iranian, uh, troops, I shouldn't say troops, cease fire. Um, you know, he had derided everybody who had given the money and said, you've strengthened them and that you have to give up your, uh, nuclear, uh, materials and we get to inspect and do this and that. None of those, uh, were realistic. And, uh, as a result, you have a situation where, uh, Donald Trump, um, it, my feeling was at the time was that he was just buying time. He says on a daily basis, well, let's see if we can get, uh, the price of oil down today. I'll tell my friends, all right, that I'm going to be, uh, you know, doing something with Iran, declaring victory or, you know, saying that a truce is coming and they can buy into the market and, uh, they can profit off the swings of the market. And obviously a lot of people were doing that, uh, based on these kind of regular bets that are made 30 minutes before. And we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of bets. So I, I'm going to put it pretty certain it wasn't the teleprompter guy. If he had hundreds of millions of dollars, I doubt he would be working in media, just trying to figure out, uh, the scripts for, uh, putting on the television. So, um, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's in a very bad situation. He's trying to make the best of it. He keeps changing things. Uh, it's not gonna, I don't see it as working out. Unfortunately, um, I do see this leading to a global recession. Uh, people, uh, have to come to terms with that, um, within the next couple of months, uh, the, uh, the cushion, um, these oil reserves are going to start disappearing. Ironically though, um, China is doing very well. I mean, they, uh, they huge demand destruction. And what I mean by demand destruction is they've gone to other things. So they're taking some, um, coal and they're reducing it into, uh, materials that can be used for synthetics. Okay. It's a little bit more expensive, but so is oil right now. So is gas. So it's actually less expensive than buying on the open market, but they've been able to keep the reserves largely intact. And this isn't something I'm saying. It's an observation, uh, by the U S intelligence agency, who for some reason think that it's okay to monitor what the Chinese are doing, but they don't want the Chinese monitoring what they're doing. It's kind of a one-sided thing. We're the good guys. We should see what you do. You're bad guys. You shouldn't see the stuff we're doing. Anyways, they, they, um, it's pretty clear that China has the largest cushion so they can last longer, but at some point, all right, this, this becomes very deadly serious because China will suffer, uh, if the world economy goes, because it's China that's buying resources and, uh, exporting value added. I can export value added if people want to buy. And if there's a global recession, uh, there's going to be a real hurt felt all the way around. Now, China has not been sitting there, you know, wringing their hands and saying, what do we do? Uh, they have been doubling down. You saw more recently, uh, the, the meeting with Putin, um, and, uh, well, they had the meeting with Putin, but then you have this 25th anniversary of the, uh, neighborliness and friendship, uh, treaty, et cetera. Uh, and they just started talking about increasing their goals, doing more stuff. They still haven't resolved, uh, the power of Siberia too, which would bring, uh, 50 million or billion cubic feet or inches of gas into China, which is, uh, a step above the power of Siberia one, which brings in 35, uh, billion, uh, cubic inches, well, meters, whatever, uh, cubic centimeters. No, cubic meters probably, um, of, of, of gas, very large amount, uh, that is overpriced. Obviously, uh, Russia is saying, look, you know, if you want it long-term, you know, this is an expensive project, you know, who's going to pay for what and, uh, what is the price going to be? And that's largely a negotiation. I think China feels that this isn't the right time because, you know, obviously, uh, Russia has the upper hand because of the situation. I think they'd rather, uh, negotiate this during peacetime when, uh, gas prices are perhaps more, uh, regulated. I mean, more have come down and, um, supply is better. Uh, they're not in any hurry, obviously, uh, to get it done. Um, so you have a situation where China is in good shape in terms of its reserves, but it's in bad shape in terms of what happens to a global economy that's in recession. Uh, but it's not just bad for China. We're talking about the whole world. And this is, you know, Carl, I've told you a dozen times, you know, or every time that we've mentioned this thing is the only solution I see, uh, to the situation is if the rest of the world finally comes together and they don't have to form a group. They just, you know, get a bunch of people who go, go to these three countries individually, whatever they announce it on TV. Look, you three have to knock it off because you're affecting the rest of us. And, uh, you know, we want to sit down, we want to give this a shot. Uh, we will all sit down together and we'll try to figure out how to make this work. All right. And we'll try to put in appropriate guarantees. But if for some reason, uh, one or all of you do not want to, uh, participate, uh, or go along with what is a reasonable, uh, resolution for this, um, then we'll just stop trading with you. You know, the United States imported, uh, 4.3 trillion dollars worth of goods. Uh, that is not, you know, if, if those go away, it's, it's not like, oh, you know, we'll just spend less. No, uh, a lot of those are necessities and things like this. And, uh, that would completely ruin the U S economy. Plus if, uh, the U S cannot export, remember the, uh, U S is the number two export country, uh, in the world. Uh, and a lot of those are services. If those are all cut off, the American economy would literally crash within weeks. Uh, the stock market would be reduced to, you know, a third of its value. Um, there would be chaos in the streets, massive firings all across the board. Um, and this would not be sustainable. Uh, Israel would be in the same position. Uh, they actually export a lot of things, but it would take a lot of resolve for all these countries to say that Iran would be in the same boat. And for some reason they say, no, we won't do that. Well, fine. You do no trade. If their oil revenues are cut off and they cannot purchase anything, their economy would also rapidly decline even more than it already has. So I do think that this is the only solution. The problem is the leadership, uh, to bring that together is just not there. You have a hopelessly divided world. Um, you have groups that have basically been put in power or been empowered by Washington. And we've seen this, uh, different parts of South America and also, uh, in Africa and other places. And they're doing part, part of that is being a lot of pressure is being put on places like the South Sea islands. Remember the national endowment for democracy, which was created because of the Iran Contra oil for arms, uh, situation moved covert action of destabilizing countries into the public realm. It is still run by the CIA. It's financed and directed in theory by, uh, the Congress and, uh, that's the majority of their funds. And they're in 80 countries. There's only 195, 98, depending on how you want to count, uh, countries out there. And they're in 80 of them. And they explicitly say that they are promoting democracy, which means that they are promoting getting rid of whoever is in there. And you've seen their activities in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, anywhere they can get into, uh, and try to destabilize those countries. And it's not just there. I mean, Arab spring, that was them, uh, you know, all those shiny posters that all looked alike, you know, where do poor people get the money to start printing posters like that? Did you ever notice in Hong Kong that they had gas masks and, you know, and all these wonderfully glossy signs and materials and all of these things, you know, and, uh, how, how is it that poor students who are complaining that they have no money, they're too poor. All right. And that that's part of their grievances is are, are suddenly having all of these materials. Well, you know, and all the signs are in English that's amazing how that happens. Right. And then you have this, this, uh, Apple, um, uh, newspaper or whatever it was called. And they have unexplained $15 million in their bank. I mean, they weren't making [00:40:52] Carl Zod: money. They were losing it. They were losing money for years. The Apple daily month. All right. And yet when [00:40:59] Speaker 3: they grabbed this guy, they find $15 million in account and there's no way to figure out where that money came from. Okay. So, I mean, obviously they're outside, uh, uh, forces, uh, at work and, and this is the mess that we, uh, we now have today. I mean, you know, you think of this way, you have a hegemon in the United States that has been a, an empire builder. You know, we go out, we solve things by taking things from other people, whether it's the American Indians or the French, the British, the, uh, the Mexicans, uh, whoever is necessary. The Spanish, we, you know, we take what we need. Um, and sometimes we buy it. Uh, sometimes a little extra pressure helps. Um, and now we're at this kind of a period where that, that isn't working. You know, we threatened to take over Greenland. Well, you know, our allies, for some reason, weren't happy about it because Greenland's part of NATO. And so it was like a retrench. Well, you know, we have to establish our dominance, but we don't have a plan B. Because plan B would have to admit that we're, we are not the king of the world. All right. Uh, that we're not exceptional anymore. Uh, we're just part of the world and we need to cooperate with the world. And that might mean that we have to submit to the same rules as everybody else. Shocking that. Okay. UN, we established it, but we don't actually follow it. Very strange, uh, idea, but now we've basically withdrawn so much funding from it, especially the World Health Organization and all, all the, um, entities that are promoting any kind of, uh, culture, uh, social improvement, et cetera. Um, so, you know, you have a situation that the U.S. is going through a transition at the same time that you, we're having a transition economically. I mean, the digital revolution is, but is as consequential as industrial revolution. Uh, it is changing things. First time ever that you're starting to see white collar workers. Um, you know, that they're now on the firing line, uh, AI is going to replace anybody who, uh, was just gathering and collating and, you know, passing information off the line. You don't need that. Uh, what could be done in a week by one person can now be done in about 20 seconds by AI. So, uh, if there's issues about reliability and things like that, but you know, there are ways around that. My point is it's so much cheaper, uh, for the companies that it's almost impossible. And if you, your company doesn't do it, guess what your competitors will, and then they'll underprice you and you'll be out of business. So it's, it fast, it's turns from being, uh, something that you choose to being an absolute necessity. And that was the same thing when companies started, uh, relocating outside, uh, Europe and America, uh, and Japan. Uh, the fact is they, you know, to keep up with their competitors, they had to, to respond to, you know, the pricing pressure. Uh, and this, this, this is the market. It doesn't solve things actually. Uh, it could create problems, not that I'm against it. I think the market is really efficient at the lower level, but in terms of policy, markets are not about policy. They're about profits and you can't run a country on profits because countries don't make profits. They have people and they're responsible for them and you have to take care of them. Give them a safe place to live, work and play, give them opportunity. All right. Give, give them a sense of respect. Uh, make sure that they're wedded to the future. And unfortunately, a lot of countries are failing in that regard. And ironically, uh, most of them are the developed countries, uh, developing countries, despite the fact that they still have a lot of problems are a lot more hopeful about the future, uh, than the developed countries. And you know, that's, that's 180 degree to turn with a turn within the last 15, 20 years. And you can see it quite clearly also in the growth, uh, rates, the developed countries are about less than half of what the developing countries are in terms of growth rates. Now developing countries obviously are starting from a lower bar, uh, you know, 4% of something very small. It's not as great as, you know, 1% of something that's very large, but it just goes that year after year, you're seeing a disparity in growth rates between them. And a lot of that has to do with the belt and road initiative, uh, China's willingness to invest, um, you know, 1. I think it's 1.4 trillion dollars, uh, since 2015 has made a huge difference. I mean, uh, um, what's that's [00:45:35] Carl Zod: something? Lamban Bota, uh, port in Sri Lanka. You remember that one? Yeah, that was listed as example of China's debt trap diplomacy, you know, by some Indian think tank. And then he was- Chilani. No, no, [00:45:50] Speaker 3: no, no, not a, not a think tank. Uh, Professor Chilani, who I appear with on, on, uh, on Indian shows quite often, um, he invented the word debt trap diplomacy and he used Hamban Tota port as the prime example. Well, lo and behold, many years later, because to develop a port, if you don't open it up and it's like, you know, a shopping mall, everyone ports in, uh, uh, it's taken some years to develop, but now they're actually expanding the port because there's so much business there and they're not expanding it slightly. They're expanding it by a third. And what they did is they did not repeat the same business, uh, that Colombo, the report, uh, the port to the north was doing. They went to roll on, roll off, uh, type, um, uh, movement of, of goods. And that has done very well as buses. Uh, it's very well, uh, managed, uh, now, and they have, uh, you know, very, very good logistics in terms of getting, uh, things on and off. A lot of it is, uh, you know, robots and, uh, high, high tech. There's less people dying because it's a lot safer when you, the people are up in a nice, quiet, controlled, air conditioned room, pushing things around with their, uh, their mice, uh, as opposed to, uh, trying to manhandle, uh, large pieces of cargo. So, um, this isn't a perfect example though, of how this narrative, uh, that was, you know, created, uh, in mostly in the United States, that somehow the China was out to harm the world or there was some sort of a nefarious, um, motives in this. The only thing that was nefarious is that, you know, the U S by definition, by being an empire, uh, we, you know, we always think that we're going to take advantage of another country. So we assume any other country that's rising would do the same thing. This is that kind of guilty thing. I'm a thief, but I know everyone else is a thief. So therefore I'm just stealing from them before they steal from me. The parallel to that is I remember talking to somebody says, I said, you know, you really believe the place that the world's a horrible place. And he nodded and says, yeah, it is a horrible place. And the only way to get by is to be more horrible than everybody else. And he nodded. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way it is. You know, I felt sorry for him because, you know, here, here's somebody who's constructed a world model in his head, which he's never going to get out of. I mean, this, this is the strongest prison there is. Once I believe something, all right, I'm not, you know, if I say I can't do it, I'm not going to try. Therefore it never will happen. Right. So in this case, they build this world model where it's, you know, me against everybody. And, uh, it's very negative. Uh, it's hard for them to get along with their children or have friends or any kind of meaningful life because they think it's life is horrible and everybody's horrible. Just like me, it's just, I'm more horrible than them. Um, it's kind of giving yourself a life sentence of, uh, negativity. And I'm not saying, you know, go, go out and get a crystal and, you know, say things. I'm just saying that if you believe in, if you, you, if you want hope, have to believe in it. You can't believe that there's no hope and say, well, I'm a very, I'm a pessimistic optimist. Why? How is that possible? So, I mean, it's, it's not, it's my version of karma, uh, that, uh, we, we, in essence are, we, we create our own karma because we, we construct the worlds that we're in. And I prefer a world where I, I hope there's some hope and, uh, I believe in working towards it. Um, why not? What's the alternative? I always say. So, um, how did we get on that diatribe? I have no idea. [00:49:33] Carl Zod: Um, I, I, that was great, actually. I love it when you would just go off and I just sit here and listen, I always get a free education that way. Um, but I think you're, or you go to sleep. Well, by, by, by Axum's razor, I think your explanation of why Donald Trump is doing what he's doing right now makes perfect sense because now he's coming out with, he's just creating, instead of addressing the problem, he's just creating distractions after distractions. This is why we have ridiculous stories about Pentagon releasing like videotape of aliens, like, but I don't think that people buy that anymore though. The thing is, I don't think people buy that [00:50:18] Speaker 4: anymore because you, you, you, you look like some of those aliens. I'm not sure. You know, look, he would do anything to distract attention and he will continue to do that. This isn't over. [00:50:34] Speaker 3: I mean, every day, just watch anybody watching this, please get up in the morning and then just say, okay, [00:50:40] Speaker 4: what's Donald's latest. All right. And you'll be like, well, okay, now it makes sense. But do people still buy those distractions? Because like the alien story, right? The pest does, they, they, they, they hunt it down. They fact check everything. They know he's lying. Why are you fact checking your unknown lies? And there's 50 of them. I'd say 50 lies. How are you going to do it? [00:51:01] Carl Zod: I look on the social media, right? When the, when the alien story broke out, every, the top comment is also, okay, that's great. How about, how about, well, what about Epstein files? How about releasing the Epstein files? Because everybody kind of catching up to Donald Trump's game now. Like, okay, that is an obvious op. That's a distraction because he doesn't want to release Epstein files. And, and the same story, I mean, like for, at least for me, it's also his, uh, accusation of China, manipulating election. I mean, that, that's so, I mean, that's so obvious. Another like, thank you. Just throwing out there to create a distraction. I don't, I haven't been living in United States for, I don't know, like since the pandemic. So I don't know if people buy that, but I mean, for, for any thinking people, how can, like, just, how can you still buy that? Like, like, like you said, why would, if, if China really did that somehow affected the outcome of 2020 election, that, that, you know, unseated Trump and, and guy Biden elected, if that was the case, why didn't Donald Trump bring this, bring this up back then or back in the, in the last election, right? I mean, like, [00:52:17] Speaker 4: like that, no, no, it was, he, he said it was all covered up. I'm declassifying it now. There was [00:52:23] Speaker 3: many things happening, deep state, all of this type of stuff. Now he hasn't said who in the deep state. All right. I'm sure he's going after anybody he doesn't like, uh, calling them deep state, uh, just for doing their job. But I mean, he, he's, this is all innuendo. All right. He has no facts whatsoever. He's just throwing it out there to, uh, you know, as I said, to distract people, uh, to make a few people wonder, well, maybe there is something to this, you know, uh, how many pages? Oh, thousands of pages. Well, there's 3 million pages of Epstein files unaccounted for, uh, you know, a few hundred thousand pages of, of old material. Uh, there's nothing that I could see. Uh, I went down quickly through the list of things that they said they're declassifying. It was, uh, they, they had a list on CNN. Um, and I was just like, well, this is all old stuff. Uh, there's, there's nothing new here. Uh, where, where's the smoking gun? He's trying to make it that somehow he didn't know about this. Well, it was publicized that there were these data leaks in 2015 and 2017. So, uh, how is that China's fault that you have an incompetent, um, you know, vendor? Um, that's a real weird one. Um, and yet if the, if he really thinks that China has interfered, where was the, I'm going to put tariffs on them. I'm going to put sanctions on them. Instead, he's going to host Xi at a, you know, state visit. It doesn't sound like somebody, uh, you know, you interfered with my election. Come on over to the house. Let's have a barbecue. [00:53:57] Carl Zod: Oh, that's right. She's coming. She's coming to America in September or something. [00:54:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see. Supposedly. Supposedly. Well, the latest statement from, uh, uh, the government, they, they weren't amused by this, but basically they shrugged it off. Um, they just said, this is nonsense and things like that, but they didn't say we're, we're going to start putting, um, sanctions on somebody or blacklisting anybody or anything like that, but neither did Trump. And, you know, China has a tendency to only respond to, uh, aggressive moves by the U S as a warning that this will not go unanswered. Don't think you can, you know, basically, uh, kick us and we're just going to stand there and grin at you. Uh, that's not the way the game is going to be played. You kick us, we'll kick you. And, uh, you know, if you want to keep kicking, we'll keep kicking. And this is exactly what things, but obviously when, uh, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in, in Beijing, uh, not too long ago, you know, he was saying wonderful things about Beijing and about Xi Jinping and all of these types of things. Uh, and so was his entire crew. I mean, the whole cabinet was sticking to the same line, which is unusual because most of his cabinet absolutely detests China. They always say China's the problem, but they didn't. And that means that China figured out some way of handling him. And I, I believe firmly that it was transactional that you said, Donald, you do A and we'll do B. You do C and we'll do D. They're working their way through the alphabet. And, you know, Donald Trump, you know, if he has something he wants, he'll do that. I mean, it's very simple for him to understand. You have something I want. If, if I do this, you'll give me that. Oh, okay. Let's do that. He understands that that's not strategy. This is just, I'm getting what I want. So, um, but you know, with the Iranian war and mistakes and things like this, it's just gotten completely out of control. He's done exactly the opposite of what he promised to do. It's the exact, you know, it's what he ridiculed all the other presidents, uh, for doing and spending, you know, trillions of dollars in the Middle East and dead bodies and all this kind of stuff in a useless, stupid war where we get nothing. Now he's the guy who's waging the same war. So he can't get away from it. So, you know, we can beat this all day, but it's not going to change. But, you know, we should really talk about what are the economic, um, risks and opportunities that are coming forward by this, you know, what is, is there opportunities and what are they? And obviously the politics is pretty much set, uh, for the next two, uh, two and a half years, Donald Trump is going to be there or somebody very much like him. There's talk about, uh, maybe a 25th amendment, uh, charged by Vance, um, you know, to basically jettison Trump, maybe for good reason. He seems to be getting very, um, his health does not seem good. And mentally he seems a lot more off balance than usual. Um, but it's still be many of the same policies. So that's not going to change politics in China is not going to change. Uh, they see themselves as successful. Uh, they, uh, they have plenty of challenges, uh, as we recently talked about there, uh, no, as they recently released, I should say, uh, they had a much lower growth figure than, uh, anticipated about 4.3%. But, uh, you know, profits improved. Uh, they were sending out less, there are less trade goods, uh, going out, but at higher margins. Uh, and this is actually something that China wants. It's not about volume anymore. They're really wanting to talk about the quality of things going out. And why is quality important? When you send me out quality, there's a premium. And that means that you can pay higher wages. You can invest more into research and development and that you are taking your economy into this kind of tertiary level. So, you know, when I was talking to people here in Beijing, they were just saying, well, no, this, this is kind of par for the course. Uh, we do believe that all things being equal, if things are stable, uh, we will be all right this year, but there was a reason that they gave a sliding scale, uh, this time around because it is unknown what Trump is going to do. And obviously the Iranian war could lead to consequences we talked about in terms of global recession. So given that the politics are the same, what do companies and individuals do? You should be looking at industries that, um, uh, are either going to do very well in China, right? Uh, and those, those can be, you know, the high tech industries. Some of them are, you know, they're a little frothy. Uh, you know, companies that have huge valuations have not proved themselves. They do not have the revenues to justify it. Uh, but they're forward looking, uh, but there are many other areas, uh, where technology especially is a booming and there are opportunities. There's also supply, you know, very simple things. You know, look at the way China is managing its airline industry, right? Uh, they are building these airliners. Um, they're being very cautious. Uh, they could roll out lots of planes, but they're not. They're trying to prove them. They're putting slowly into the market. They want to make sure that they're safe and there are no accidents. They don't want to a Boeing type issue. Um, and those, you know, you can't maybe invest directly in AVIC with its own, but there are a lot of suppliers out there that are doing it. Now, the difference between the way that China manufactures and Europe and America, if you haven't figured it out by now, it's a hell of a lot more efficient. And it's estimated that planes will be about half the price to keep in the air and they'll be less expensive from the very beginning. So when you, in an airline situation, if I, my expenses are half of what your expenses are to keep a plane in the air, you're going to go out of business, literally. Okay. Uh, so it's not a question of whether you like Chinese planes or not, but if Chinese planes are able to achieve these numbers, uh, the market will do the rest. All right. Cause unless a country is willing to subsidize their airlines to, this would be a massive subsidy on a yearly basis, just to maintain these planes that are more expensive and that more expensive keep up in the air. Um, you know, it's over with, uh, it's just like EVs. You know, everyone says, Oh, we should buy American EVs or, you know, European EVs. Well, guess what? Times are tough. People are buying the EV that they like at the price that they, they can afford. Uh, and that's reality on an individual basis. Uh, they would love to perhaps buy American or buy European or whatever, but when they get in the showroom and it comes down to, uh, this is a good price, honey. And I like this car. We looked at the other one, it's more expensive and I don't like it as much. Uh, guess what? The decision is made, right? So, uh, there, there are many things, but really what you're looking here is a split supply chain. You go all over the world. I mean, you know, Malaysia, Indonesia, uh, Vietnam, uh, all these countries, uh, very part of a China plus, uh, one because many of the inputs, uh, that, you know, if, if I'm producing, uh, clothes or, or shoes, uh, in Vietnam or anywhere, well, guess what? Where there's rubber come from in China. Okay. Where the shoelaces come from China, where's the leather come from or the synthetic material China, where's it made China, uh, even shoelaces in China. Now it can be put together, uh, in that country and then it can be shipped to the U S without, you know, as much, uh, tariffs on it, et cetera. And this is, this is what a lot of countries are doing. So far from destroying, uh, globalization, what you're having now is regionalization and you, uh, RCEP, uh, this is, this is this trade grouping, which represents 40% of the world's population. Um, it's growing. All right. And it continues and it's outpacing in terms of its overall growth. It's outpacing, uh, the, uh, the developed countries and this, this is what is going to happen. So people should pay attention to this kind of dual, uh, situation. The U S can't walk away from his $4.3 trillion worth of imports. And if you start looking at the, the trade numbers and Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about it anymore, remember when he first came in the office, I'm going to get rid of the deficit, right? It's going to take me five minutes. It'll be easy. Well, last, last month they hit a record with China. So, I mean, that just, nothing he does works, but no one goes back and holds them accountable for it. Um, but the reality is that it will continue and, um, that people should be thinking about, you know, what are the most, uh, efficient, uh, and effective ways of dealing with this. Now there's going to be a sea change when Donald Trump goes, uh, obviously, uh, many of the tariffs will go away and things like that. So people have to, uh, separate, uh, their ideas between short term. All right. How do you get, you know, how do I make money over the next two and a half years? And then longterm, how do I remain flexible enough to anticipate the changes that will be coming after Donald Trump leaves? Cause there'll be a massive reaction. And quite frankly, there might be another massive reaction four years after that. Uh, the one thing we see is that as countries become, um, have more problems, they, they, the pendulum swings from one side to the other. And you see this quite clearly in, in Argentina. I mean, uh, my goodness. Um, yes, he's, he's, he has solved inflation because more than half the country is under the poverty line. Um, as they say, at what cost, right. Um, people should start looking at the world, uh, as continuing to have dual, um, dual streams. All right. And they're going to center around, uh, these global behemoths, uh, the, you know, basically Europe, America, and, uh, to a certain extent, Russia and the United States. Um, but they won't be direct. Everything will be indirect. It increases, uh, costs, doesn't decrease them, makes shippers happy because they're making a couple of stops instead of just, uh, you know, A to B. Um, but it's, it's not going to help, uh, the world, but you can bet that it probably will be the future. And talking of which, I don't know if you saw yesterday that Xi Jinping announced a new initiative to start talking about AI, AI governance as it's going forward. Uh, I, I just, uh, just before you called today, I was, uh, doing a, um, a, uh, uh, an essay on that. And I have a slightly different take on it. Uh, and it does have, uh, something to do with, you know, how the world is developed. Artificial intelligence is on everybody's mind. And, you know, obviously, as we talked about, people are concerned about their jobs. I did a debate recently where with Tsinghua and Baida students, and they, uh, one side was, you know, arguing, they said, okay, you, you don't, don't, you should regulate. A government should be involved after innovation. And then the other side was saying, no, government needs to be involved before innovation. Well, you know, a lot of debates like to present things where the switch is on or off. The fact is it's neither, um, you know, innovation and regulation is a complicated two step. And, uh, the government has to look out for the, um, you know, for, for the interests of the people and private industry is obviously interested in innovation and making money. They're not opposite, but they're just different ideas and you have to put them together in a way that makes sense. So saying that it's either one way or the other, it doesn't make any sense. But why am I talking about this? Because I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding. People talk about AI models. They talk about open versus closed, American versus Chinese, and they talk about all the capabilities. But, you know, AI doesn't mean anything if you don't have data. And I mean, clean data, there's an old saying, and everybody's heard it garbage in garbage out. And the fact is, uh, the world today, um, it's a game. There are now companies that are in essence, poisoning the well, as I call it. Uh, they're generating huge numbers of huge amounts of data. That's, it might not actually be false, but it's shaded data. Why? Because when the LLMs learn, all right, they, they cannot separate things. They kind of weigh data. They say, well, this was mentioned 20,000 times and this was mentioned 30,000 times. So I'll give it a little bit more weight. This was mentioned 30,000 times. All right. It doesn't have independent thinking. It doesn't have the ability to verify information and look for information from different sources. But at some point it just kind of weighs them because it doesn't have direct knowledge. It's not sentient. Even if it was sentient, it can't actually, it can see through CCTV cameras, but it can't touch. It doesn't have that kind of sentient, uh, understanding. People say, oh, someday it will. Well, we'll see. But the fact is you have to have data. And I think, uh, the world is taking the wrong, uh, look at this. What we need to do is have secure data that people can rely on because if you're applying, uh, if you're using that data with your AI, you're going to get better answers, obviously, and, um, how you collect that and then how you disseminate. There's, there's three interests when it comes to data. You know, Carl, you don't want your personal information out there, right? I have no secrets. I have no secrets. I've been browsing. Wait, wait a second, wait a second. Um, and obviously they're, you know, countries are interested very much in their state security and there are certain types of information they see as sensitive and it does make sense. I don't want to give that information out, but then weighed against privacy and security is utility. Uh, you know, there's a lot of information that if we have it, we can solve things in terms of health, climate change, um, so many things, traffic, all sorts of things, weather, you know, you, there's so many things that you can do with this, which would be extremely beneficial. So the question is how do you do it? And what I've proposed is that they create what I call a sandbox and all the verified information goes into the sandbox and then you can ask the sandbox questions and depending on the level of approval, you can get information up to a certain, um, to a certain level. So if I'm doing, uh, I'm doing a health things and I want to know, you know, how many people had cancer and I want to divide it into different areas. Well, it will give me that information. It won't give me the names of the people, uh, or their addresses or anything about them, but it can, it can create that information so that I can use it. All right. Uh, for my medical studies to try to solve why this is happening. Uh, we could also get DNA information, but like I said, there's no tracing it back to any individual. And the same thing is true about demographic information. Uh, more broadly, um, that might be considered sensitive, um, at a, you know, a national level, except if it is, um, you know, only released to the extent that is, is necessary or useful or allowed. Uh, obviously these would be treated more like utility. Uh, my, my, uh, thought is that data is more like water and more like electricity. It's something that is absolutely necessary. If you do not have clean water and you drink it, you're going to get sick. Right. And the same thing is true of data and electricity. If your electricity is inconsistent, uh, not of a high quality goes up and down, uh, you know, uh, yeah, no, your, your, your factory is not going to work very well, or you have to put in extra equipment in order to make sure that the electricity is stable. So these are the types of things that I think people, uh, that governments should be looking at. How do you create systems that gather accurate knowledge? How do you put the, that information into a sort of a capsule, a virtual capsule, which no one can get into, they can have queries, but they can't have the actual information today. The information is copied and it's sent from one group to another, or they have breaches and they grab it. And all of a sudden it's, you know, very, very public or people are using it for adverse purposes. But if you, if you have something where you can only make queries and it has to be approved, um, I think it's a much better approach to making sure that AI actually does what it's supposed to do. Otherwise, you know, right now, the biggest problem, the way they'd have these hallucinations that AI does is because so much of the, of the content that's being generated today is in fact made by AI. So it's kind of stewing in its own juices right now. That's not good. And that leads to adverse consequences. And the only way you can solve it is to have a data first approach. And then once you have the data first approach, then you can have conventions about how that data could be used, you know, as I said, for utility purposes, without compromising people's personal information or state security. So I'm hoping that people will think a little bit about this, talking about what AI could do, given the fact that it's increasingly relying on dirty information, is something that we're going to have to address. And it would be better addressed if it was done on a global basis. And that's why I really respected what Xi Jinping was doing. And, you know, think about it, Carl, in the morning, we have Donald Trump saying, China stole the election, be afraid, be very afraid, you know, the commies are coming, all this type of things. And a few hours later, you have Xi Jinping talking about the future, about how important global governance is of AI. You know, that there's hope that this is a positive thing, but we have to, we have to address it as adults, we have to understand it. And to me, that kind of encapsulated the differences between the East and the West right now, is that the West, it's always about fear, you know, and, you know, be afraid and paranoia and things like this, it's negative, zero sum, a game. Whereas increasingly in the East, it's, and I'm not just talking about China, you know, Malaysia, Indonesia, all these places, you say, no, this, this is, a time of hope. We have challenges to navigate geopolitical challenges. No one wants to jump on one side or another side, because it's not about science, it's about helping your country. And helping your country, in many cases, depends on having a network. ASEAN has done well. Why? Because ASEAN is, they're a trade group. Do they have problems internally? Absolutely. But ASEAN has done better as a, as a group than they could have individually. And that is the, you know, the, the lesson of these things is that, you know, increasingly you, you, there are opportunities there and you, you have to seize them. And it's not about the old way of for you or against you. It's not about saying China's always right, or China's always wrong. It's just, how can we work together? How can we have a mutually beneficial, uh, relationship where I can help my people? All right. Hope, uh, prosperity, jobs, uh, you know, opportunity, nothing wrong with that. And, um, you know, if you're doing it in a way that says, let's, this, this can be arranged on a win-win. You can win. We can win. There's nothing wrong with that. And I'm hoping, uh, going forward, that that increasingly, uh, will be, uh, their, their response. Because right now I see, you know, we in the United States, we're up to our same old thing. We'd love to use, uh, Japan and Taiwan and the Philippines as kind of, uh, the proxies in some sort of low intensity warfare or whatever against China. Uh, and very much along the lines, uh, that have been, you know, being pushed, uh, by people like Eldridge Colby and the, and the rest of them at this kind of real politic group that says, you know, if we just destroy them, we'll do better. I don't think so. And I don't think that a lot of the people who push this stuff understand, uh, the complexity and depth of interrelations, uh, at least if China were to go away, were to go away tomorrow, you know, in chaos, what would happen to the world? 30% of the production of the world would disappear. How is it going to help America right? How's that going to help the world? And it's not just that production disappeared. China's a consumer. How is that going to affect it? So this idea that somehow I get ahead of by killing or curtailing you, I don't believe it. I do believe that the, there is a win-win situation and that cooperation far away is conflict when it comes to making a better society. [01:15:58] Carl Zod: In fact, China is actually saving the world right now. Uh, China has voluntarily curtailed its import of oil by 50 million barrels a day. That's huge. That's the only reason right now the oil price hasn't reached stratosphere right now after Trump's, uh, restarted the war because China took this drastic cut of oil import. So that created the slack in the, in the world oil market. And that was especially beneficial for countries in the global south because, you know, rich countries, United States, Europe, Japan, they can always outbid the other poorer countries to get access to the limited oil. It's the countries like Indonesia, Philippines, India, all these countries in the global south that will suffer when the oil price rise uncontrollably. So I, I, I love it when you end this, uh, on a hopeful note. So, I mean, this, this, uh, I like that. So let's, let's end on this hopeful note. [01:17:04] Speaker 3: Well, I wish everybody well, I just wish we could do better. Um, yeah, I, I, I don't know. I, I mean, being up, what's the alternative to optimism, right? Exactly. We can be realistic, uh, about it, uh, in the situations, but there's always gotta be some hope at the end of the, uh, at the road. We have to see some light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully it's not as locomotive coming at us. [01:17:27] Carl Zod: Well, on that note, uh, if people want to follow you, uh, Aynar, where would they go? Uh, Asian narratives, sub stack. [01:17:39] Speaker 3: Okay. So if it's on sub stack, uh, look up Asian narratives, dot stop, sub stack. And, um, I put, I scribble, uh, probably a couple of times a week. Uh, I put out some, uh, different things. More recently, I'm doing much more about political risk and opportunity because, uh, as I said, uh, the politics, um, I, I can say whatever I want about Donald Trump and how much I dislike what he's doing, but it's not going to change. So right now I want to concentrate as you, as you do on, on something positive. And I think the positive things are, you know, as I said, culturally, there's people to people, diplomacy, uh, the number of people that have come to Beijing who I've met and have been completely blown away. They said, this is, you know, the information we get is completely wrong. This place is great. It's wonderful. It's much better than we have. And then on the economic opportunity, I think the only glue that can hold a lot of, uh, these countries together is, uh, joint economic opportunity. And I'm really hoping, um, that there are ways, and I've been talking about the ways in which small, medium-sized business enterprises using digital tools, uh, can now, uh, start, um, getting involved in the international market. Uh, this, to me, this is the, the blue ocean. Um, you have so much, uh, creativity, um, so many specialized products and services that can be offered, uh, by smaller entities. And this helps the global south because global south doesn't have these, uh, large, uh, companies. Uh, they don't have behemoths who can continually fail, but make money. Um, they, they, you know, they, they need to find customers. They need to get the, uh, their goods to them or their services offered, and then they need to get paid. And now, uh, for the first time, uh, you have this, these opportunities to find, find customers on the internet, um, the logistics to deliver whatever it is that you have that they want. And then the payment platforms, which makes it very simple and efficient, uh, to get paid. You don't need letters of credit, uh, banks, lawyers, accountants, uh, all sorts of specialists telling you about the trade restrictions. You can get all that through an AI. Uh, and this I'm hoping will facilitate more business and trade and allow a lot of these smaller entities, especially in the global south, uh, to, um, be successful, uh, to earn good wages, uh, to kind of even out this uneven playing field that has been created by oligarchical, uh, uh, corporations [01:20:18] Carl Zod: and, uh, governments. Yeah, this is great. Um, thank you very much, Einar, for taking the time to speak to us and, uh, for the audience. Oh yeah. Always a pleasure. So for people who are watching us, uh, Einar Pengen, ladies and gentlemen, make sure you go follow him on Substack and on