May 13, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:56
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Great War Room. | |
| Thank you so much, Eric. | ||
| Always an honor to join you. | ||
| And always an honor to join you guys, War Room Posse. | ||
| Let's bring the show in. | ||
| We have an epic cold. | ||
| It's Natalie Winters hosting today. | ||
| Let's start it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know the president spoke for nearly an hour. | |
| What are the big headlines there? | ||
| Well, he talked about a lot of issues, certainly a focus on the economics, but there are some diplomatic headlines that are coming out of his remarks as well. | ||
| He talked about the United States lifting sanctions on Syria. | ||
| You, of course, remember the former leader there, Bashar al-Assad, left the country, and there is a new leader in place. | ||
| And, of course, the past atrocities carried out by Bashar al-Assad were part of the reason that... | ||
| Those sanctions were put in place. | ||
| The president's saying he intends to lift those. | ||
| That received a rousing response here in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| That's part of it. | ||
| He also had a message for Iran. | ||
| Obviously, that is of strategic importance to Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States. | ||
| Certainly, Israel has an important interest there. | ||
| And the U.S. has been trying to get to a point where there is a non-nuclear state trying to tamp down on the ambitions within Iran to advance to having a weapon, something the U.S. says they cannot have, even though they have an active program to enrich uranium and to try to bring about the science to get them there. | ||
| And the president had a message for the people of Iran and what he calls a different path that they could take. | ||
| Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| But with that said, Iran can have a much brighter future, but we'll never allow America and its allies to be threatened with terrorism or nuclear attack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The choice is theirs to make. | |
| We really want them to be a successful country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We want them to be a wonderful, safe, great country. | |
| But they cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is an offer that will not last forever. | |
| The time is right now for them to choose. | ||
| Right now, we don't have a lot of time to wait. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The president putting pressure on the leadership in Iran. | |
| Those are the diplomatic notes we've been hearing in what for much of the early part of this day was structured and scheduled to be about economic development. | ||
| The United States having companies that would do investment here in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia buying military equipment and making investments in the United States. | ||
| Things that the president feels comfortable talking about, trying to be that deal maker. | ||
| And certainly another notable thing was outside the United States, Critical of Joe Biden. | ||
| We hear him criticize Joe Biden often, but to do it outside the United States is certainly notable. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know you don't like hearing that. | |
| I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. | ||
| Just a historic day, Tuesday, May 13th in the year of our Lord, 2025. | ||
| It's Natalie Winters hosting War Room today. | ||
| As I always say, don't go anywhere. | ||
| Luckily, with President Trump back in office, we always have a packed show. | ||
| Though actually for good reasons, not for the reasons we used to have to pack them in under Joe Biden. | ||
| No honorific title there. | ||
| You saw that cold open. | ||
| This is what it's like to be respected by the rest of the world. | ||
| Again, I guess they always say what it's better to be feared. | ||
| I think, though, the reception that President Trump has received from the Saudis is truly indicative. | ||
| A man who was, what, on trial for, like, 18 different felonies would be sitting in prison had Kamala Harris won. | ||
| He now gets a better reception, frankly, than Democrats gave him at the State of the Union. | ||
| I saw more American flags during today's procession. | ||
| I think the only time we ever saw that level of organized and well thought through reception really was from Joe Biden greeting illegal aliens at the southern border. | ||
| You guys, I'm sure, have seen the split screen images of what Joe Biden received versus what President Trump received. | ||
| From the Saudis, which are, you know, no perfect vessel, shall we say. | ||
| Obviously a lot to get into there, which we're going to get into throughout this show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| There is a small, well, I guess actually massive victory. | ||
| The first federal judge, a Trump appointee, it's funny how when it's a Trump appointee, oftentimes the outcomes seem to be a little different and actually, I don't know, this bizarre word, constitutional, but ruling that President Trump can actually invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport Trendy Aragua members. | ||
| It's a massive win. | ||
| We've seen, I think, all the sort of Democrat or more established Republican appointed. | ||
| Justices essentially rebuke that idea. | ||
| So this is quite, I think, powerful. | ||
| We'll see how it shakes out. | ||
| But you know, here in the war room, we're not about victory parties. | ||
| We are about action, action, action, and trying to upend the administrative state and I guess their new... | ||
| Strange bedfellow, the new odd couple that is the Tech Bros, which we saw, I think, on full display with their quirkiness in Saudi Arabia. | ||
| I know David Sachs has been over, I think, in the UAE for a while. | ||
| Striking a lot of, shall we say, curious deals, which I want to drill into. | ||
| Maybe it's confirmation bias, or maybe it's genuinely a... | ||
| As we call it, a NATSEC threat. | ||
| I would put my money on the ladder. | ||
| But particularly when it comes to semiconductors and chips, obviously there was, what, $600 billion plus worth of announcements of investments released today between the Saudis and the United States. | ||
| But one vertical that is particularly concerning that has a lot of China hawks, which I proudly consider myself to be, and I'm sure you guys do too, concerned is the sharing of advanced semiconductor chips, stuff in kind of that realm of the technological sphere with the Saudis and with the Emiratis, particularly with firms that have deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| Really, I think, illustrative of the military-civil fusion that you see going on in China. | ||
| How these companies are used is effectively, in some cases, just outright or sometimes more clandestinely, but as state-owned assets, whether it's intellectual property theft. | ||
| Or sometimes just outright espionage. | ||
| But these are the kind of firms that are now likely going to receive, I think in some cases, potentially hundreds of thousands of these highly sensitive chips, which like we said, there's been case after case, indictment after indictment of Chinese nationals coming overseas or trying to pull Western researchers overseas to gain access to this technology. | ||
| This is, right, what the whole Made in China 2025 initiative really is about, right? | ||
| High tech is the way that they are attempting to rule the world. | ||
| The crux of that, of course, I think, being Taiwan. | ||
| So it seems rather, I would posit, curious that all these tech bros are sort of trying to, I think, undermine what President Trump is doing in terms of, you know, whether it's the most favored nation status when it comes to China and really reasserting fair trade, not just free trade, but that we'd be working to bolster and embolden. | ||
| The Chinese Communist Party, particularly on the technological front. | ||
| And I guess we'll return to war room tradition, our roots of being, what is it? | ||
| I think conversion therapy for rhinos. | ||
| I should trademark that one. | ||
| I stand by that. | ||
| But unfortunately, congressional Republicans, we can toss the tweet up on screen, really have nothing to say about this except one three-tweet thread. | ||
| And a strongly worded letter, I guess old habits die hard, from the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the chairman of it. | ||
| I want to read you a quote. | ||
| It's not all that fire-breathing quote. | ||
| The U.S. must lead the world in AI technology, but we must do it securely. | ||
| The CCP is actively seeking indirect access to our top tech. | ||
| Okay, I agree with that. | ||
| Deals like this require scrutiny and verifiable guardrails. | ||
| We raised concerns about G42 last year, that's the Emirati firm, for this very reason. | ||
| And we need safeguards in place before more agreements. | ||
| move forward. | ||
| Now, if only I knew of people or a little body called the United States Congress that I don't know, also right now happens to be negotiating stuff that directly interplays with all of this. | ||
| If only Chairman Moulin-Yar, if you, I don't know, looked in the mirror. | ||
| I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting pretty sick and tired of the, shall we say, pandemic of passive voice with the Republican Party. | ||
| It seems to plague them. | ||
| where all they can do is tweet about these problems and put out strongly worded letters instead. | ||
| No, are you guys too busy cancelling votes on codifying the doge cuts or cancelling the hearings on the radical judges? | ||
| Maybe that's what's taking up all your time, right? | ||
| And you certainly can't say that it's because you've been sending, what is it, a bunch of legislation over President Trump to sign into law, because if I have my facts straight, you guys have sent fewer bills to President Trump than any Congress over the last 70 years. | ||
| Now, you know, we always bring the receipts, shall we say. | ||
| And I want to bring a very specific receipt. | ||
| In terms of this select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which, as far as I'm concerned, was set up by Mike Gallagher only so he could, what, use it as a stepping stone to go work at Palantir? | ||
| That doesn't quite reek of understanding the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| He bailed out. | ||
| He said, I'll go take my nice check. | ||
| So now the new chairman and a bunch of no-name backbenchers who are on this committee, though let's make one of them famous right now, Darren LaHood of Illinois. | ||
| So get this straight. | ||
| The guy who was sitting on this committee That thinks that it's okay to just put out tweets to counter the Chinese Communist Party in a bunch of weak, strongly worded letters that my reporting at 19 was probably more forceful than. | ||
| Well, this guy actually met with various Chinese Communist Party influence groups, particularly in 2022. | ||
| You guys have heard, I'm sure, about the Chinese Communist Party trying to expand control over the United States by buying up farmland. | ||
| And one of the primary conduits through which they've done this is a group called the U.S.-China Heartland Association in conjunction with two United Front Work Department groups known as the China United States Exchange Foundation and the Chinese People's Association for friendship with foreign. | ||
| Quite a mouthful, quite innocuous. | ||
| Nothing could be further from the truth. | ||
| These are hardcore Marxist organizations that work using a multi-billion dollar budget from Beijing to co-opt, subvert, neutralize Western politicians and Western elites to peddle the line of Beijing. | ||
| So, Congressman LaHood, who's supposed to be so tough on the Chinese Communist Party, he actually spoke at one of their events in 2022, helping the Chinese Communist Party and their assets strategize how they could better infiltrate American farmland, because maybe we could find some ways to collaborate. | ||
| I don't know about you, but collaboration is probably one of those words like comprehensive immigration reform, unity, Ukraine aid, where basically anytime I hear it, especially in the context of the Chinese Communist Party, I think that's called a hard no. | ||
| And this group is also intricately linked with Bill Gates. | ||
| So these are the people who are going to be so tough, so tough on the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| Busy helping them strategize how to buy your farmland. | ||
| Right? | ||
| It's the art of the deal that's President Trump and hardliners like Peter Navarro, formerly Lighthizer, now Jameson Greer, versus the art of war. | ||
| And incumbent with that is the intense and elaborate compromise of elites like Congressman Darren LaHood, who when we actually have a national security threat where I actually think some congressional pushback probing, if not outright committee hearings, would be very, very justified. | ||
| In the case of getting ready to essentially turn over hundreds of thousands of highly sensitive chips just because David Sachs and a couple of tech bros want to make a quick buck? | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| I guess Darren's too busy helping lecture the Chinese Communist Party how they can buy up that plot of land next to your house so they can, I don't know, better grow crops. | ||
| That's the euphemistic spin in the name of collaboration. | ||
| Yet where has collaboration gotten us? | ||
| What is it, 145% tariffs? | ||
| Only because they totally reneged on the Phase 1 deal that was already a skinny deal because they refused to do anything. | ||
| Actually substantive because they wouldn't sign and agree that they wouldn't stop stealing intellectual property, devaluing the dollar, using pseudo-dormant state-owned enterprises. | ||
| I mean, good on them, I guess, compromise the guy who's serving on the committee to take you on. | ||
| You get to play judge, jury, and executioner. | ||
| And I guess speaking of judges, I would say I'm pretty curious why all of these judges, whose spouses oftentimes somehow conveniently end up on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party, too, seem to be neutering and nullifying President Trump's agenda, too. | ||
| We've got a lot to get to, whether it's the copyright law. | ||
| We're going to drill down on this with an AI expert. | ||
| It's not just the war room that's sounding the red alarms. | ||
| A lot of people are. | ||
| Though I guess congressional Republicans aren't, but I guess what's new? | ||
| They're too busy. | ||
| I don't know, increasing the deficit by like $20 trillion. | ||
| We'll be right back after this short break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In America's heart. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann. | ||
| Welcome back to the War Room. | ||
| We are going to get into the AI stuff more on the China side of things, but I want to get into something that I know we've had Mike Davis on a lot to cover, which is what's been going down at the copyright office, sort of the tussle, that's a euphemistic way to put it, that's been going on. | ||
| And like all things that maybe aren't super MAGA or maybe you just look MAGA at face value, all roads kind of always lead to the tech bros, perhaps a reductive way to put it, but I think War Room stands by that being the thesis. | ||
| I am honored to bring on Professor Jonathan Barnett, who is one of, I think, the leaders in the field when it comes to sort of the copyright stuff, how the AI all sort of interplays in that. | ||
| But I want you to kind of bring us up to speed. | ||
| Like I said, we've had Mike Davis on the show a lot talking about this. | ||
| You know, this goes back. | ||
| They, what, sort of want to be able to steal everyone's IP more or less for profit. | ||
| Then they kind of did a hostile takeover, maybe under valid circumstances. | ||
| Can you explain the threat and different factions in this fight and what our audience really needs to understand about this impending copyright fight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely, and it's great to be here today. | |
| This is an age-old tension and fight between the interests of content and tech. | ||
| And roughly since the mid-2000s all the way through the present, pretty much wherever you look, the law and the courts in Congress, whether by acting or not acting, has favored the interests of tech over content. | ||
| What we've ended up with, especially with the fair use exemption, which has grown to proportions that we haven't historically ever had in this country, is an ecosystem that systematically favors platforms that aggregate content over individuals, small firms, production companies that produce that content. | ||
| It's really hard to reconcile that state of affairs with our founders' vision of the copyright. | ||
| As set forth directly in the Constitution. | ||
| So is the big threat with this more so from a data collection perspective, where our audience could see, you know, whatever they've created or, you know, either directly or indirectly end up in the hands of corporations or just big tech firms that they probably don't want it to be in? | ||
| Or is there, you know, sort of picking up on what I was talking about in the last segment, the national security threat, where you see foreign countries, China or otherwise, sort of getting involved in this? | ||
| Is it sort of a multi-pronged threat, or is it more so just, oh, you should be able to own what you create? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there's two things happening there, and you touched on both of them. | |
| Going again right back to the founder's vision, what was the point of the copyright? | ||
| It was to invest the individual with a copyright that allows them to bargain for the fair value of their creation in a creative market. | ||
| When you weaken copyright, you take away that bargaining power. | ||
| What you're doing is what I like to call a reverse Robinhood effect. | ||
| You shift wealth away from individuals and smaller entities that are producing content. | ||
| You're transferring that over to some of the largest corporations in the world. | ||
| That's both inefficient economically and it's unfair. | ||
| On the China angle, we should keep in mind that while we have a trade deficit in goods versus the rest of the world, including China, we have a massive IP surplus versus the rest of the world. | ||
| That's our core advantage. | ||
| And therefore, it's in a U.S. national interest, U.S. geopolitical leadership to bolster our IP rights system rather than weaken it as we've been doing. | ||
| And this has been sort of an ongoing debate. | ||
| You wrote a great book on it, The Big Steel, Ideology, Interest, and the Undoing of Intellectual Property. | ||
| But why is this sort of re-emerging now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's coming up now just as it came up at the dawn of the internet. | |
| Something I talk about in my book is platforms such as YouTube. | ||
| You've got a new technology makes it... | ||
| Easy to take content without paying for it. | ||
| There's pressure on courts, pressure on legislators to favor that business model. | ||
| But we should take lessons from the way the digital content markets have evolved and have matured. | ||
| If you take the streaming platforms today, they all rely on technologies that regulate access. | ||
| And that's a good thing because it allows markets to form, allows prices to be attached to content. | ||
| And it ultimately delivers remuneration back to the individuals and the smaller entities that have produced that content. | ||
| There's no reason to revisit this debate again in the AI ecosystem. | ||
| It's the same question. | ||
| And what we should be looking for is an equitable legal regime that enables markets to form licensing solutions that will deliver value to creators. | ||
| Without unduly impeding the growth of AI platforms and models and apps. | ||
| So, can you sort of flush out what a world, what the world would look like if they were, you know, they being, whatever we call them, the tech bros, maybe that's too cutesy a term, much like deep state is for the administrative state, but if they were to get what they want, or whoever within the Trump administration sort of orchestrated, you know, the removal of some people from the copyright office, which for valid reason, they were kind of far left crazy, giving Lizzo the flute, probably not a good idea, but I think there definitely were ulterior motives there, as I think both of those officials. | ||
| Fischl had sort of expressed the idea that maybe they wanted to stand up for the copyright privileges and protections of Americans. | ||
| But if they're able to sort of just steamroll over this office and continue this, what does that mean for our audience? | ||
| What does that world ultimately look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's going to be a world where the value generated by content will flow to a relatively small number of platforms, as opposed to a world in which that value is far more widely distributed among the far more numerous creators and individuals and entities that contribute to making content, promoting content, and distributing content. | |
| The AI ecosystem can thrive under a robust copyright regime with adaptations that account for the specifics of AI ecosystems. | ||
| But there's no reason to run roughshod over the property rights of creators. | ||
| Property rights in creative markets are necessary to sustain markets just as they are in any other kind of market that we're familiar with. | ||
| It sounds like kind of the digital equivalent of you'll own nothing. | ||
| And you'll be happy. | ||
| Last question before I let you go. | ||
| The Committees on Energy and Commerce, it was sort of, not leaked, but came out today and caused, I think, a bit of an outrage online. | ||
| They were debating what's called the Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative. | ||
| And I want to just read a section for you. | ||
| I'm just curious to get your sort of top-line assessment. | ||
| But one of the subsections says that, quote, In other words, it kind of sounds like they want a 10-year amnesty. | ||
| I don't like any time the word amnesty is said on Capitol Hill, but I think especially in the field of AI. | ||
| What's your sort of take on maybe, just more broadly, who exactly is pushing? | ||
| For this just sort of laissez-faire, you know, own goal, open goal shots or shots on goal for the kind of AI community. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm not specifically familiar with what transpired today, but that language is most likely reflecting the vision coming out of the White House, David Sachs in particular, which I think makes sense, which is a light-touch approach to the AI ecosystem, allowing the U.S. market to grow organically. | |
| And giving us an advantage over the approach that's been taken in the European Union in particular, which is a top-down approach, a regulation-heavy approach that's typical of the European approach. | ||
| And you can easily compare the difference between the innovation performance in Europe, which is weak, heavy regulation, and the U.S. approach, which is lighter on regulation, and we shine in terms of innovation. | ||
| And I think that's what you're seeing in that language. | ||
| is reflecting the messaging coming out of the White House. | ||
| And I think as a general matter, if we want to have an AI ecosystem that is a world leader, I think that vision coming out of the White House is the Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| If people want to follow you, stay up to date with everything you're working on. | ||
| And most importantly, get the book. | ||
| Really read up on it because it's an important kind of... | ||
| Don't sleep on it. | ||
| It's an important topic. | ||
| Where can they go to do all that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| The book is most easily available through the Amazon or Barnes& Noble websites or directly from the publisher, Oxford University. | ||
| And links are also available through my LinkedIn page. | ||
| Thanks very much to speak with you today. | ||
| Thank you, sir, for joining us. | ||
| We'll have you back on. | ||
| Warm Posse. | ||
| While you're at it, make sure you're checking out birchgold.com slash Bannon. | ||
| Texting Bannon to 989898. | ||
| Giving the guys over there a call, an email, download the books. | ||
| You know the drill. | ||
| By the way, I just have to add, you guys know I'm what the probably infamous face of the new media initiative. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| There's all this coverage now about how, you know, oh, we should have, I don't know, reported that Joe Biden was going to have to use a wheelchair. | ||
| No shade to wheelchairs. | ||
| But now the White House Correspondent Association is melting down that some of the reporters were kicked off of Air Force One or can't do the wire service. | ||
| I don't know about you guys. | ||
| I'll be able to go on without having AP or Reuters poorly written, probably propaganda written wires influencing my comments. | ||
| But one of my favorite quotes from their statement was, quote, They've reliably covered every president for decades for the millions of Americans who depend on their reporting every day. | ||
| Talk about crisis acting and stolen valor. | ||
| I think you'd be hard-pressed to find, I don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans who take anything that the AP or Reuters says seriously, but let's get to the crux of what they're doing with this Joe Biden limited hangout. | ||
| It was never about the fact that the press corps covered up for his age. | ||
| That's what they want you to think is the biggest scandal of the Biden regime. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's because if you actually had to understand what this regime did from the southern border, the invasion, the Green New Deal, Afghanistan, take your pick. | ||
| Any issue. | ||
| It's more palatable from their eyes for you to have you think that Joe Biden was out to lunch and this was all just a result really of the age-old question we've always asked here in the war room, right? | ||
| Intentional versus incompetence. | ||
| It was just incompetence. | ||
| He was dead. | ||
| I think essentially dead was what I told CNN. | ||
| But no, it was all intentional and it was all by design. | ||
| And I hope congressional Republicans would, I don't know, do something for once and hold some hearings to try to figure out who, I don't know, orchestrated the invasion of the southern border. | ||
| Is that too much to ask? | ||
| Stop tweeting about it and actually do something. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Welcome back to The War Room, where I think we have... | ||
| Always pushed back on the idea that it is akin to the first law of thermodynamics, that the Chinese Communist Party is going to rise, that there is some Thucydides-esque trap going on here. | ||
| I think that that rise of China, we always say, has not occurred in a vacuum. | ||
| It has occurred at the hands, if not outright, I think. | ||
| Sell out, although I think that's too nice a term. | ||
| It's not just elite merger or rather elite capture. | ||
| It's elite merger, I think, between the United States or the West more broadly and the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| But it's happened because they've been buttressed and really, I think, able to ascend geopolitically, financially, take your pick because American elites have sold out to them or they've just stolen the IP theft. | ||
| Take your pick. | ||
| It's all bad. | ||
| They get away with it. | ||
| But someone who is far more of an expert on me, you know I could rattle on about the United Front Work Department for days, one day I will be able to do that again, is Isaac Stonefish, who is the CEO of Strategy Risks, a kind of consulting firm that ranks companies on their exposure to China. | ||
| You're all over the media. | ||
| I think you probably won't take offense if I call you a China hawk. | ||
| But I wanted to have you on to talk about what is going on with these chips, the new deal that I think is sort of already underway. | ||
| Your overall assessment of the national security risks that could potentially be posed by sending over, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of chips, NVIDIA or otherwise, to the Saudis, to the Emiratis, and eventually maybe even the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a very worrying deal that's being discussed. | |
| Possibly even going to go through as early as this week that will send hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA cutting-edge chips to companies that have ties not only to the Saudi and Emirati governments, but also to the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| And the problems are... | ||
| Multifold. | ||
| Two that I'll point out right now. | ||
| One is the idea that when you are sending cutting-edge technology to the Saudi and Emirati government, we have very little guarantee that those two governments aren't sharing those with the Communist Party. | ||
| And then this particular entity, G42, does have problematic ties to the Communist Party. | ||
| And walk us through G42. | ||
| I think they were formerly working with Huawei. | ||
| Then they, you know, allegedly abandoned it in favor so they could deal with Microsoft, which I would argue is almost equally ardently controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| But give us just sort of a sense of the landscape within the chip space, right? | ||
| A lot of these companies are already at face value, sort of heavily exposed to the PRC. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The problem with G42 is twofold. | |
| One is the exposure that we know about. | ||
| The Wire China, an excellent publication, did a great report on that company's ties to the Communist Party. | ||
| The Select Committee has amplified those concerns. | ||
| And the ties to Huawei, to the party, possibly to the People's Liberation Army, which, as you know, is the armed wing of the Communist Party, we know some of those. | ||
| There's so much that we don't know. | ||
| The problem with this is here is this opaque corporate structure that has entities in China. | ||
| Are we comfortable giving them all of this access? | ||
| And the deal with Microsoft that you pointed out was Microsoft tried to convince the U.S. government that they would be trusted hands in working with G42. | ||
| And I got to say, politely, that raises a lot of questions. | ||
| It seems like, you know, and I think it's probably been at the forefront of everyone's mind with a debate going on about I'm curious from your perspective, | ||
| having analyzed so many companies and just sort of see deals like this play out time and time again, in your experience, what are sort of the motivating factors, whether it's from a company or even country perspective, to pursue deals? | ||
| like this, which are, you know, not advantageous to America's national security. | ||
| Is this something where it's just a difference in ideology? | ||
| Like, you know, the tech bro faction, the David Sachs of the world who are pushing this just maybe don't view the Chinese as much of a threat as maybe we do. | ||
| Or is it something more nefarious where you think a lot of people who are tied up in this deal, there's room for actual compromise or blackmail or more traditional kind of methods of PRC infiltration or espionage? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great question. | |
| One is short-term thinking that is common in boardrooms where they think, okay, how do I handle this for Q3, Q4, as opposed to thinking ahead in several years? | ||
| Second is an inability to price externalities, even within an own firm. | ||
| So thinking that, oh, great, I'm going to do this deal. | ||
| It's going to bring in $300 million, $400 million of revenue, but it's going to hurt our firm overall because it's going to give the Chinese access to cutting-edge IP. | ||
| Another one is this misguided... | ||
| It's just quixotic view that the Communist Party does not want to steal U.S. technology, is not in a competition and arguably something even more dire with the United States. | ||
| Sort of kumbaya, we can all get along and dance together happily type of view that you still see sometimes among companies. | ||
| And so my worry with many major US corporations, especially those in cutting edge technology, is the sense that If it's not banned explicitly by law, we're going to find a way to do it with China or with other governments. | ||
| And there's also this transitive property there. | ||
| Oh, maybe we can't sell directly to the People's Liberation Army, but we can sell to an entity that would give it to the People's Liberation Army. | ||
| And that, in my mind, is also quite problematic. | ||
| It also seems sort of like, for lack of a better word, like a negating, almost foil or counter to what I think TSMC did here, right, by trying to make us more reliant, independent, stop the intellectual property theft. | ||
| Can you maybe explain to our audience why these chips? | ||
| Just, you know, from the get-go are so important in sort of the dual-use technology, the military-civil fusion, how this isn't just, you know, they want it for their toasters or advanced electronics. | ||
| There's nefarious applications that the Chinese are seeking these ships for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| And there's plenty of people who have a much more sophisticated understanding of the underpinning technology. | ||
| I'll say the chips, you could see them as building blocks for AI or what companies need to build cutting-edge AI models. | ||
| And the problem with the Communist Party having that... | ||
| Again, twofold. | ||
| One is it allows for them to compete or beat the United States in the global AI race. | ||
| So many implications on that. | ||
| And the second is, as you said, the very dual-use nature of these chips and this technology. | ||
| And this is not only about human rights abuses in China, the ability to build better prisons and better monitoring systems through AI, but also all of the military implications. | ||
| And again, here's where... | ||
| The links between the Communist Party and the military are very important. | ||
| The PLA is the armed wing of the Communist Party. | ||
| It's a very different system than we have here. | ||
| So civil-military fusion where, say, companies like Tencent or Alibaba, which aren't officially state-owned, work with the military is one thing. | ||
| But every Chinese SOE is under the same family as the Communist Party. | ||
| And so it's already much more fused. | ||
| And I worry that people will say, oh, I'm worried about, say, Bank of China or ICBC or these other Chinese companies and their links to the party and the military. | ||
| Well, they're already part. | ||
| of the party in the military, and so we have to understand that from the get-go. | ||
| And just last question before we let you go. | ||
| Do you see any bright spots from a regulatory perspective or legislative perspective, or maybe even from a certain company's perspective that are refusing to collaborate or anything like that, that our audience can look to or that you think the Trump administration should replicate or sign into law if there's something coming from Congress? | ||
| Or have their influence efforts successfully, I think, prevailed through most of D.C.? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm glad that being tough on the Communist Party is bipartisan in Congress. | |
| It's long been a rare area of that. | ||
| And there are some really bright people in the Trump administration who are pushing really hard on these issues. | ||
| My worry, and it's hard to end on an optimistic note, is that corporations will not focus on national security and longer-term concerns and more focus on what's right in front of them. | ||
| Isaac, if people want to follow you, stay up to date with everything you're working on and writing and learn about your firm, where can they go to do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We're at strategyrisks.com and then I'm on Twitter, Isaac Stonefish and LinkedIn as well. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Thank you for joining us and giving me a chance to talk about the CCP. | ||
| Should we talk about more? | ||
| We'll have you back on soon. | ||
| War room posse. | ||
| It's wild times. | ||
| I wish congressional Republicans would do something about it. | ||
| So often when you hear people talk tough on China, it's a bipartisan consensus because the Uniparty thinks that they can deceive you by using it, frankly, just to justify a, what, trillion dollar defense budget? | ||
| Yet in reality, you have people working to send over the very same chips that the PLA is ultimately going to use to manufacture the weapons that they're going to use to fight us, even though they don't want to go kinetic. | ||
| Or, I don't know, the same people who are going to be probably fighting us potentially on that kinetic battlefield, or at least certainly in the economic, information, political, and other spheres. | ||
| Well, I guess we're educating 350,000 of them at the behest and outright sometimes funding. | ||
| You know, the Chinese Scholarship Council, which is responsible for funding so many foreign students here in the United States, they actually assess which Chinese people they will give scholarships to based on how allegiant they are to the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| Of course, always caveated that the Lao Beijing, the Chinese people, are the greatest victim of the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| Take down the CCP, right? | ||
| We are joined now by Secretary Chuck Gray of the great state of Wyoming, one of my personal favorites. | ||
| We got a few minutes. | ||
| I want to hold you through the break. | ||
| Let me get this straight. | ||
| Mark Elias and the lovely, crazy, lefty lawfare brigade, they're busy suing you because you want to make sure that only citizens vote in our elections. | ||
| Am I right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're back, and we predicted it, that Mark Elias and the radical leftists would be suing us on our proof of citizenship for registering to vote requirement. | |
| And this is the failed Russian hoaxer. | ||
| Who has been sanctioned by the Fifth Circuit, Mark Elias, who, as Steve Bannon notes, he does fight, though. | ||
| And so we have to take this seriously because they're clearly trying to set up a test case on proof of citizenship for registering to vote. | ||
| Because our proof of citizenship requirement is so aligned with the SAVE Act, they're trying to win in this case to throw out proof of citizenship at the federal level and across our nation. | ||
| So we have to win, and we're going to defend the law. | ||
| We're going to defend our strong proof of citizenship and proof of residency registration requirement that we put into place in the 2025 legislative session. | ||
| When you say test case, can you walk the audience through how it would sort of get worked up potentially to the federal level or why you think they're starting with Wyoming? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Elias filed in federal court, and I think that tells you something. | |
| And he talks about in the complaint how aligned this law is with documentary proof of citizenship, how strong it is and how aligned it is with a true documentary proof of citizenship requirement, which other states that have reported to do this have all these carve-outs. | ||
| We had the real thing along the lines with the SAVE Act. | ||
| And this is a common-sense measure to enforce the law. | ||
| Only citizens should be voting in elections, period. | ||
| And this is merely enforcing the law by putting in place a proof of citizenship requirement. | ||
| But by filing in federal court and by noting as it goes through the bill how aligned it is with the SAVE Act, which is proof of citizenship for registering to vote at the federal level, which passed the U.S. House, it's pretty clear what he's trying to do here. | ||
| It really is quite radical. | ||
| I want to hold you through the break. | ||
| We've got to jump, but I guess... | ||
| Maybe hat tip there, I guess, reverse hat tip. | ||
| They're exposing their plans. | ||
| The enemy is revealing that they really are keen on having non-citizens vote. | ||
| Though what, I'm pretty sure I was told, what, for months last year that, you know, oh, it's a fake, it's a misinformation threat that was created by the right wing to suppress apparently non-citizens from voting. | ||
| So thank you, Mark Elias, for delivering your own fact check and proving shows like The War Room correct. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Warren Posse, we'll be right back. | ||
| In the meantime, make sure you're checking out birchgold.com/bannon, texting Bannon to 989898, getting the latest installment of the wonderful works that Steve, Philip Patrick, and the team have all written. | ||
| We'll be right back after this short break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
More on Mark Elias. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. | ||
| Welcome back to the War Room. | ||
| Secretary Gray, we're going to have to bounce in a sec. | ||
| But obviously, Mark Elias, he's a busy guy. | ||
| He's been choosing to spend a lot of his time posing, resisting, whatever, President Trump. | ||
| So it's interesting, I think, that he would choose to spend time on you. | ||
| You should take it as a badge of honor. | ||
| Why now? | ||
| Are they nervous for the midterms? | ||
| Why are they doing this all in federal court? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think they're very concerned that we're winning on election integrity, winning. | |
| I think it's pretty clear they want to establish sort of a test case at the federal level. | ||
| If we get the SAVE Act done, we need to get that done. | ||
| Natalie, as you always point out, this do-nothing Congress needs to act. | ||
| The Senate needs to act on the SAVE Act. | ||
| They need to attach it if they can't get it done in a single piece of legislation to a must-pass piece of legislation, and we need to bring it through. | ||
| So that's why I think he wants to Wants to sort of have a volley here in Wyoming because of how strong our proof of citizenship requirement is and how in alignment it is with what they are doing at the federal level. | ||
| Secretary Gray, if people want to follow you, I'm sure they're going to want to keep an eye on this case because Mark Elias will hopefully lose. | ||
| Where can they go to do that and keep up to date with you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can follow me, Chuck for Wyoming, on X. Also on Truth Social, Facebook as well. | |
| Thank you for having me on, Natalie. | ||
| So excited to hear from Catherine in a moment. | ||
| It was a genuine meets here just last week up in Riverton. | ||
| She's doing great work. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| And endorsement from the Secretary of State. | ||
| Sir, thank you for coming on. | ||
| We'll have to have you back on when there are any important updates in the case. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I thought it would only be fitting to have Wyoming's Catherine O 'Neill Gillihan, I think, on the show in a wonderful hat. | ||
| Our last guest was saying he was just touring your facilities last week. | ||
| How's that for timing? | ||
| I hear you have a wonderful deal for us for the Warren Posse, who's your number one fan. | ||
| Hit us with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thanks so much, Natalie. | |
| And thanks to Secretary Gray, who's doing great work for Wyoming. | ||
| So our deal today, our beef sticks, it's 20% off our all-natural beef sticks with promo code WARROOM20. | ||
| You can go to our homepage, merriweatherfarms.com, and you'll see them right on the homepage. | ||
| And you can use the promo code WARROOM20. | ||
| They're a great snack or even meal on the go. | ||
| I eat them every day. | ||
| I'm a pretty active person, so they're a great snack for, you know, moms like myself or kids that are athletic or people that are into fitness. | ||
| So anyway, you'll see them right on our homepage, merriweatherfarms.com, code word, War Room 20, for 20% off our all-natural beef sticks. | ||
| Do you see that, what was it, Vanity Fair or New Yorker? | ||
| They had the big piece saying, you know, Americans are trying to eat more protein. | ||
| Blame MAGA. | ||
| Of course. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Eating protein is a wonderful thing, including your beef sticks. | |
| Your hat is a perfect way to push back, too. | ||
| Can they let the audience see it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| We are big proponents of the Maha movement, and we believe that eating healthy... | ||
| It's just good all around. | ||
| So hot girls eat beef. | ||
| It's a wonderful hat. | ||
| One more time, if people want to shop everything Merriweather Farms from the beef sticks to the hats, where can they go to do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Merriweatherfarms.com and you'll see the beef sticks right on the homepage. | ||
| War Room 20. And we always like to take care of our War Room posse because you guys are the reason that we're still in business. | ||
| Well, they appreciate it. | ||
| I think the feeling is mutual. | ||
| It's a quid pro quo. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| You were using that term accurately, not in the way that it was described between President Trump and Zelensky, however many years ago that was. | ||
| Catherine, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| We'll have you back on soon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much, Natalie. | |
| Great to see you. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Likewise. | ||
| Just a quick note for all the apoplexy that you're going to see tonight about whether what's going on in Saudi or the Qatari jet, which we can have a Should we say a partner's discussion about that one? | ||
| Were any of these people raising any concerns about what Hunter Biden was doing with the Chinese Communist Party or the Qataris or the Saudis or the Ukrainians, also the Russians or the Mexicans? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| So, just like all of your lovely coverage that you've suddenly now had your conversion therapy where you now are willing to call out Joe Biden for belonging in a wheelchair, yeah, I don't really care. | ||
| Millions of people don't read your outlets. | ||
| Sorry, White House correspondent, that's probably the funniest direct quote, actual fake news that even I would support a fact-checking, maybe even some full-blown censorship of, because I've never heard more BS come out of your mouth, and that's a pretty low bar, including calling me a state propagandist. | ||
| But I digress. | ||
| We've got Mike Lindell joining us. | ||
| Mike, you've got a few minutes. | ||
| Hit us with the latest. | ||
| All things either Mike Lindell or MyPillow. | ||
| Well, everybody, the attacks continue. | ||
| MyPillow. | ||
| By the way, this on June 2nd will be part of the lawsuit. | ||
| This is the big lawfare, everybody, where they sued over 80 companies and individuals, my pillow being one of them, and the voting machine companies. | ||
| And this one goes to trial June 2nd. | ||
| And we are the only ones that have went now all the way to jury trial. | ||
| Everybody else settled with their insurance company. | ||
| But as you know at the War Room, I will never settle until we secure our election platforms. | ||
| So we really need your help right now. | ||
| My pillow, my employees, you know, they were sued. | ||
| They did nothing. | ||
| They did nothing. | ||
| You employ your own company under attack. | ||
| We need your help, War Room Posse, and the way you can help is to get these products we have that are on sale and at prices that are below wholesale. | ||
| We have a 50% off sale for the War Room Posse, 50% or more. | ||
| These are our Giza Dream Sheets, our flagship sheets, where it all started. | ||
| The most comfortable sheets you will ever sleep on for $49.98, any size, any color. | ||
| They're over $100 a set. | ||
| You all know that. | ||
| While they last at this price, we're doing it exclusively for the War Room Posse. | ||
| Promo code WARROOM. | ||
| Go to the website, mypillow.com. | ||
| You guys scroll down until you see Steve. | ||
| Click on them, and there you have it. | ||
| You have the 50% off crosses that you can get right now. | ||
| The lowest price ever that we've ever sold them for. | ||
| Made in the USA. | ||
| There you see the Giza Dream Sheets. | ||
| All these other products from the towels to the sheets to the pillows. | ||
| Pillows are well over 50% off the MyPillow Premiums now that we've sold over $85 million. | ||
| So my employees thank all of you at the War Room Posse, Natalie. | ||
| And we're in this to win it. | ||
| Win, although you've got to add a lot more wins nowadays. | ||
| Mike Lindell, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| Warren Posse, thank you as always for hanging with me. | ||
| My parting thought, just imagine what today's Saudi experience would have looked like had it been Kamala Harris. | ||
| And I'm not just talking about the gaffes, but I don't think he would probably feel as proud to be an American if she had been over there. | ||
| Have a good one. |
Export Selection