Jason Pappafotis | Blockchain Technology, Cybersecurity, & What To Do In The Apocalypse | OAP #16
Chase Geiser is Joined by Jason Pappafotis.
Jason is an experienced strategic consultant to government and defense organizations with a clear and disciplined approach to crafting strategy for disruptive technology adaptation and integration.
He has degrees in physics and cyber intelligence analysis and certificate in 'Fintech: Future Commerce' focused on blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
EPISODE LINKS:
Jason's Twitter: https://twitter.com/JPappafotis
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
I started this podcast because it occurred to me that there was a concerted effort to shame America and what it means to be American.
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I certainly did them when I started.
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Okay, we are live now with Jason Popaphotis.
Jason, tell us a little bit about your background and we'll take it from there.
Greetings.
So I uh like you started in the music business.
Um born and raised in Nashville and uh did some audio engineering stuff that actually led me into uh studying physics at Middle Tennessee State.
So I did a lot of uh physics and acoustics type work there and ended up working for the Navy down in Florida and became the tactician for mine sweeping systems for the Navy.
Uh did a lot of mine countermeasures, which got me into some of the understanding of uh underwater threats and pushed me into the intelligence community just a little bit.
Uh, did my master's in intelligence studies with a focus on cyber, where I uh then started working for the army on some blockchain projects to secure the supply chain for army systems, which was kind of an interesting departure, but I uh kind of started my love for blockchain and cryptocurrencies at that time.
Uh then just recently before COVID, it came back to support the Navy for a little while and then got picked up just recently by Deloitte to be a consultant to government agencies in the blockchain and cryptocurrency world.
So going back into that more uh cyber economic security realm uh with the focus on blockchain and advising uh governments in that role.
So uh from your experience, what nation is poses the greatest threat or has the most sophisticated naval technology?
Um so obviously, you know, the the big uh the big two, I guess would be uh China and Russia, and as far as their naval capabilities being very strong and things we tend to look at.
Um it kind of all depends on you know what scenarios we're looking at and what parts of the world.
Uh but China definitely uh is building up their navy big time and uh something we pay a lot of attention to.
So do you think that their um naval capacity is more sophisticated than that of the United States?
Uh I wouldn't I wouldn't say more.
Um but they are really good at finding Achilles heels, if you will.
They um they very publicly kind of uh show uh a focus on things like cyber and things where they know that we can you know that we have vulnerabilities, uh stealing our technology and mind warfare is a big one in that category.
So mine warfare is uh very neglected just because you don't see it and you don't think about it until you know somebody puts mines down in a port or a sea lane that's vital to our our efforts, and then it stops ships from going through and mine countermeasures, mind clearance is is very tedious and time consuming and very difficult.
So would you say uh well it's interesting to me to think about um mind technology and the use of mines when uh nations aren't in a state of war.
I mean, obviously in World War II, it was pivotal.
But how how is how does it work in terms of nations determining where to put mines?
Are mines exploding?
Are people dying and we're just not hearing about it in the news?
Like what what's going on with the act what moves are actually being made by these major players?
Not not as much as you would think uh in peacetime.
Um they're very tactical and they're in usage typically with mines, it's kind of like IEDs.
Uh people are more familiar with those, the improvised explosive devices on land.
It's only when you really need to kind of block a major throughput or an entryway, sealing, that you would get out there and put some mines in the water.
Countries will do that clandestinely often, uh laying the mines by a submarine or even by um uh civilian vessel, just push them off the back in a key area, then you know that's a really sneaky way to stop big ships from going in and out.
And we've seen things like that in the Middle East and the Straits of Hormuz, where you know, if you close off those straits, you're shutting down oil shipping, and then you're left with a tedious mine clearance operation to get that oil shipping started back up.
So a lot of it kind of goes back into this logistics realm where if you can shut down a supply chain of or oil to a country, you can stop their war efforts pretty quickly as well.
So a lot of big strategic tactical stuff.
How many mines are still just hanging around from World War II that people don't know about?
Um, not many.
There are some areas where they've found mines that just drift up on the shore.
Um there could be a few out there uh in different strategic areas, but um typically it's pretty well known where where they were, and a lot of clearance efforts have happened uh to get rid of those.
So it's not really like a a threat that we'd see kind of like land mines where you have areas where there's just tons of them still around from the wars, but um it's a concern.
And there are some kind of I don't know if it's the Geneva conventions, but there's some international law with regard to what you can do with mining.
So you're not supposed to have like mines that just drift freely in the water and things of that nature.
So whether countries abide by that or not is a different story, but um technically you're not supposed to have them just drifting out there.
So while you were working in in the acoustics capacity of national defense, yeah, um uh Did you ever build the Iron Man suit?
No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, we were working on so uh you were studying for a cyber intelligence masters at the time, is that right?
Yes, correct.
Okay, so what did you learn in that program and how have things changed?
Um that's a because the reason just to give some context, I'm curious to know what you think about all the weird stuff going on in terms of pipelines getting shut down, there's reports of nuclear facilities uh struggling in China,
even and it seems like from someone who's a little bit skeptical of uh you know uh general narratives, it seems very plausible that there's like this whole cyber war going on right now that isn't like we don't talk about.
Absolutely.
So um in my studies, I wasn't working directly in cyber at the time, but I was focused entirely on China and on cyber for grad school.
So um while doing those studies, I I really had already had this kind of Achilles heel kind of mindset.
What can countries do that um to get the biggest bang for their buck, I guess?
Because mines are one of those things you can stop you know an aircraft carrier from being where it needs to be if you lay down some mines, and they're pretty cheap.
So uh cyber is the same way where you get a lot of bang for your butt.
And there was uh some specific studies.
I guess one of the books I cited most was uh Joel Brenner's America of the Vulnerable.
He was a former inspector general at the NSA, and he laid out a scenario very clearly.
He said uh in a Taiwan scenario where China decides to go in to Taiwan, um, and we sent uh a carrier strike group to stop them, uh, they could just flip the switch and turn off our power grid and say, sorry, turn around, you know, we'll turn your power back on.
Uh so they the NSA was saying these things back in 2011, and I was studying that extensively, and I said, wow, um a lot of what we're doing is almost obsolete if something like that can happen.
You know, if they master these little Achilles heel areas, I think they called most of these things the Assassin's Mace, where they actually had studies on how can how can you be like an assassin, you know, it all goes back to the art of war where uh they try to win without fighting.
And they're really good at that thought process, the Chinese are um how to minimize that concept.
Oh go ahead.
Well, I was just gonna say, so obviously Texas got a lot of heat for lack of a better term, uh, regarding its independent power grid throughout the um this like winter storm anomaly that we had this this this winter.
Um there were there was a there were a lot of uh opponents online that were just saying, hey, you know, if if we had a grid that was connected to the national grid or other states, then we would have been able to import power.
Um however, from a security standpoint, what are your thoughts on independent power grids?
Um I mean it you could still cyber hack the Texas grid, right?
Yeah, I mean that's it's it it goes along the lines of the the power grid and the election uh integrity conversations.
Um essentially anything connected to the internet and anything that is using these centralized legacy systems for lack of a better term, uh is vulnerable.
Um there's no way around it.
And that's where the blockchain stuff got me really interested because the old way of thinking about cyber, I mean, it's not a very old um endeavor in general, cybersecurity.
But the way that most people do it now is we have these systems that were not built uh with that integrity in mind.
They weren't built inherently secure, they were uh centralized systems on one big server somewhere that have plenty of points of entry that are connected to everybody in the world.
Uh China has taken an opposite approach and they've closed everything off.
So they have a very tight control over their internet.
Whereas we uh everything we have, if it's connected to the internet, it's vulnerable somehow.
And with with quantum computers especially coming online, the encryption methods they use for even closed networks are um becoming vulnerable.
But yeah, so that's interesting.
I and I don't want to just gloss over that, but we rely on apps like Signal and uh uh email platforms like Proton Mail and all these all these third-party tools to encrypt our communication.
Um and traditionally that's been uh uh a totally effective approach to internet privacy.
But with quantum computing coming out, the the the computer processing speed is gonna be so astronomically improved that even if you have encrypted um technology that you're using that the these computers are fast enough that they can brute force and test passwords and test uh hash hashes, I guess would be the technical term.
I I don't know if I'm I'm I'm just kind of talking, but that there the computers are strong enough that they can crack even encrypted messages and and and it won't take 10,000 years like it does with a traditional computer now.
And so that's gonna be very interesting to see how that plays out.
I think domestically, when um there's just really no way you can hide your information unless there's some sort of way to reverse the uh the quantum computing to make encryptions that are you know astronomically more complicated, you know, to sort of balance it out.
I don't know if that's possible.
Yeah, I mean you so two things there, you can use quantum computers to quantum encrypt things.
So as the uh as the decryption methods become better, the encryption methods will become better too.
But it's still that constant cat and mouse game, and we still even companies like ProtonMail, they you know, they're famous for putting their servers in a mountain in Switzerland and keeping everything into end encrypted, but they're still all on servers in a mountain in Switzerland.
So you can still take their servers out or um you know, hack into them in the way that all the data is still in one place.
Whereas um when blockchain came along, I mean people just think of it with in terms of the cryptocurrencies, but I think the technology inherent to it is much more interesting.
And the technology existed before Bitcoin, right?
Yes, all of it was in pieces, and there were people, I mean, encryption is you know super older than a lot of computers.
It's just mostly math.
Uh and then the distributed idea was around long ago as well.
So the inherent feature that makes it secure is the distributed nature of it.
You don't have all your data on one hard drive, for instance.
So you would have little encrypted pieces of your data all over the place.
And there's no way to hack into one thing to get all your data.
You just have to hack your one key that pulls all your little pieces back together.
Uh so when you have something on a distributed network like that, you're it disincentivizes hackers because a hacker can't hack into the one big Proton Mail server, for instance, and get everything and then work on decrypting it.
They have to go out and find all the little pieces everywhere and uh you know put them all back together then on encrypted.
So uh it really is amazing when you can you clone a blockchain?
Um so you could probably clone the blockchain, but what happens is the data's not on the blockchain, quote unquote.
When you have data structures like that, your data's all over the place.
So you can't even like reach out and grab all of it because it's scattered to the winds.
Uh so you could clone the chain, which has all the little hash pointers that point to all the pieces of the data that are out there, but you're still it's still really hard to pull all that stuff back together without each individual private key.
And that's where the disincentivization piece comes in.
So with cybersecurity, you're never gonna entirely win because you're still always out there and you're vulnerable somehow.
Like with Bitcoin, um I you know, Bitcoin hasn't been publicly um compromised as far as just the the coin itself and the blockchain itself.
Uh but once it gets to having all these little external pieces, you can hack into these pieces like exchanges and wallets, and those are more centralized, more traditional types of technologies that can be hacked.
But you still have that incentivization piece where if somebody did hack in, they can only get your stuff.
So a hacker that's trying to get millions of dollars, you know, and they just hack your wallet, you know, all they're gonna be able to do is get your wallet after an enormous, enormous effort.
And um, so they still can't get into a big server like Proton Mail or like a bank and steal everything.
Right.
Yeah.
So one thing that I think is interesting that I've learned is um my neighbor is a cybersecurity professional, and um basically he works for a firm and major companies, including banks hire this firm to uh hack their systems so they can identify security vulnerabilities.
And he's really educated me on we spent a lot of time together, he's really educated me on the fact that the vast majority of security vulnerabilities are um people-based.
So even though he is a very competent computer hacker and he can write code like crazy, a lot of his job is calling and pretending to be the vice president or pretending to be a consultant and you know, walking into offices in a suit and acting like you know he was hired to you know do HR and just hooking up a thumb drive to the network.
And so, you know, even with the the nice thing about blockchain technology, of course, is that you can't just hack one um sort of mainframe and then access all the distributed information from there.
However, people are still gonna be giving out um you know their coin-based passwords and the verification code that they just got texted, you know, when people call and they think it's the IRS or whatever.
And so um uh that's that's something to consider as well, too, that I think um we don't realize is that a lot of the hacking that that that is done is is much less technical and much more personal.
Big time.
And that's one of the um intelligence community arguments all the time.
The human intelligence is always the best.
Uh and yeah, hacking is is a very social endeavor.
It's uh a lot less technical than you think.
And even some of these guys that are brilliant hackers, you know, they can go online and get all these tools uh open source off the dark web or wherever, and as long as you are clever enough to get them in there somehow, then you can get somebody's wallet address or something of that nature.
But like uh like you mentioned, if you have things on a distributed network, um, like blockchain affords, then it still disincentivizes that because it's it's an it's pretty heavy effort to get one even one wallet or to hack into one wallet, and um even if you could, you're just gonna steal that one.
And so I know I know one of the challenges with with blockchain tech is trying to figure out a mechanism to actually power the blockchain, right?
And so, and correct me if I'm wrong because you're obviously the expert on this, but my understanding is that traditional cryptocurrencies, and I know there are a lot of variations now, but traditional cryptocurrencies, the mining of the token was the CPU power in order to process the transactions in the smart contracts at the time.
And um uh one of the challenges is yeah, this this platform is amazing, but if there isn't a lot of distributed distributed processing power going into the blockchain, then it's gonna be increasingly difficult to actually run sophisticated programs on the blockchain or hosting a website on the blockchain, for example, right?
So how does that how is that working now and and how how are companies moving past that?
Um so Bitcoin and the biggest differences are uh in that world are um Bitcoin and Ethereum.
So Bitcoin was created with that mining process and what they call proof of work.
And basically there's your computer solving a really complex problem for the cryptography, so that you're put into uh a lottery system after you verify the next block in the chain.
And then if you solve that one, you're put into that lottery system to get the award of the next Bitcoin that comes into being.
So you're mining.
Okay, let me just pause and interrupt you.
I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt, but yeah.
Uh if the government develops quantum computing, couldn't they just mine the rest of the bitcoins and then uh assume a massive port uh portion of the whole entire blockchain, Bitcoin blockchain?
There's there's still some difficulty that's built in with those problems that you're solving.
There was actually a guy that tried to use a super a government supercomputer uh to do that, and it apparently doesn't I I'm not super familiar with the process, but apparently it doesn't help you to have like a massive supercomputer because you still can't um you still can't mine it all like with your one supercomputer trying to do all the work yourself.
You still have to wait until the next block to try to solve that one problem that's put out, and then you're put into the lottery system still, and you you may or may not win that next block still in the lot in the lottery system.
So it's it's designed to kind of spread it out.
Yeah.
Yeah, like that lottery instead of one person being able to steal all the processing power like that.
Okay.
Uh I'm yeah, less familiar with the mechanisms of the proof of work and proof of stake.
So how did Ethereum distinguish the differentiate itself from Bitcoin in that technical sense?
At first it didn't.
It was proof of work also at first, but they had a plan from the beginning.
Um well two twofold.
Uh Bitcoin was never designed to do other things.
When Ethereum came along, they said, well, now that this cryptocurrency ecosystem is there, we can build a computing platform on top of it.
So what they did was they took this uh good idea of cryptocurrency and they made it to where all these all this math that was happening, they basically made it into a computer is the way to think about it in your mind.
So now there's this whole distributed ecosystem out there, all these transactions going on, and this guy put uh he programmed it and put a program on there instead of you know instead of having your web app hosted by Google, it's actually hosted and operates on top of all the cryptocurrency transactions.
So so what's actually what's actually fueling the the transactions, the processing of the blockchain if if not mining of the token.
It mining of the token was the case with Ethereum.
Okay.
But no longer yeah, they're moving to a system right now uh that's proof of stake instead of proof of work, where it's still kind of a voting system slash lottery system where the you send it out to the network um to provide their um participation in the system.
Instead of solving a problem with your computer, you just participate.
And so you actually have to stake your coins, so you have to have enough coins to stake.
And once you stake them in the system, you're a voting participant to verify the So there's still incentive to have the there's still an incentive to have the token.
Yes.
Don't worry about this this uh webcam, I'm gonna get it fixed.
I think it's gonna do it every 30 minutes.
Okay.
That's fun.
Yeah, it's because I have a DSLR hooked up.
But that's just the nature of it.
Hold on a second.
So yeah, to answer that question though, is um they uh the energy concerns are a big deal right now.
There's a lot of people making um a fuss about it, which may or may not be uh a concern in the first place.
I mean, Bitcoin as a payment network uses way less power than the current banking system does.
So technically it's a net uh reduction in energy consumption.
Yeah, yeah.
So why are they why why were they lying about that?
I mean, they obviously know the data's in.
Um I don't know.
I you know, I think it's just a matter of fiat.
The political wins, if you will, and you know, as proof of stake networks come on board like Ethereum, they will be better in that regard.
I mean, they still use some power, but it's not gonna it's not gonna be a big power consumer uh once it's proof of stake because it's gonna be more participatory, but you still have to, you know, run your computers and run the internet and uh so what if you have an astronomical amount of token?
Um do you have a dis do you have a disproportionate advantage when you in a proof of stake environment where you get way more votes or you can sort of muscle the whole entire system?
I'm not I'm not as familiar with it to be able to speak to it intelligently, but uh my understanding is you can have a pretty large disproportionate amount of votes.
But I mean the whole idea is if you owned all the coins and you somehow you know amassed every every coin there was out there, there's the there's no value in having it anymore because nobody's trading it.
Uh so it goes back to kind of the fundamentals of money, which is it's the invisible hand.
Yeah, it really only has value in the fact that people are using it as a payment network.
Okay, that makes sense.
Well, I'm particularly interested in blockchain tech because you know, we saw a lot of interesting things in terms of censorship this year.
Um and one of the things that was particularly alarming to me was not just that the social media platforms censored people, but the fact that even the web hosting was for example, taken away from parlor, right?
Yeah, and you know, I'm not a fan of parlor because I think the app sucks.
But I am a plan of freedom of speech, and the fact that they couldn't even be on the internet because uh uh Amazon has such leverage over the entire sort of hosting industry was really alarming to me, and my I'm optimistic that perhaps somehow with blockchain technology in the future,
we can host websites and um social media content and just communication in general on the blockchain, so that even if a government entity or corporate entity wanted to deplatform uh an individual or a business, that's it would be uh tech technologically impossible.
Yeah, so um one of the most misunderstood words, but one of the most important in blockchain is the word trustless.
So uh with any centralized system, you have to have a third party that you're relying on to trust to keep the uh operation going.
You know, have to trust Amazon to keep their servers up.
You have to trust a bank to keep your money or to transfer your money.
Uh and all these payment systems, there's always an intermediary.
When you have a truly distributed system, it can be trustless because it will execute the contract between two people, uh what they call smart contracts, without any third party having to say what it's doing.
It just it's code that executes.
There's some gray area in there where you know you do still need lawyers and there still is interpretation of code, uh, especially when you have a contract that executes and there's some kind of dispute uh about that contract.
So I there's gonna be a really cool uh new area of study where lawyers are gonna have to get really involved in coding these smart contracts.
Um but once that happens, you're gonna have a lot uh less trust uh that's required, which doesn't mean it's less secure, it doesn't mean it uh you can't trust it, but it executes trustlessly.
So um you know that it will execute, you know that it won't be knocked out, you know, it won't be censored.
Uh so you know Ethereum's original promise was we have these things called smart contracts.
They run, they don't run on your computer, they run on these transactions that are happening, and these smart contracts will execute without any third-party interference, without any downtime, uh, or without any possibility of censorship.
So uh it was a huge promise in the beginning, and it seems they're well on their way to actually achieving that.
And the smart contracts area is really kind of what I'm most fascinated with as far as the application of these things.
But most importantly, securing systems, distributing systems, and making uh money both money and uh cyber system cyber economic systems, making them more resilient.
Well, it's interesting to me because you have a situation now where the the blockchain technology is more secure than what we previously considered to be our most secure um assets, like for example, banking, right?
And if you think back historically, like the original purpose of a bank was to have a building with a vault that could protect your actual assets, like whether you had gold, silver, or or paper cash, the actual building would hold it and protect it and assume liability in case something happened, like a bank robbery, right?
So you'd have to keep tens of thousands of dollars in your mattress.
And what shifted was you know, in the digital era, banking became much less about protecting a physical asset and much more about being an entity that has the power to lend, right?
So the reason people have banks or use banks now is because A, they need a place to store digital currency, and I know it's not digital currency, it's actual real fiat, but it's current it's currency measured digital digitally, right?
And it's a place to store your money so you can conduct business, but then you know, because everyone deposits in these traditional banks, that's also still the most reliable place to get loans, whether for a business or a mortgage or whatever.
And what's really interesting to me about the blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in general is that it totally eliminates the need for a bank at all because it's more secure than your bank, A. And the funny thing about it is if you could if you stake your your coins or your tokens,
you can get much more um uh of a return on your investment than a traditional savings account that pays like two percent or two and a half percent a year from the bank.
I mean, these banks are making a ton of money off interest from the loans that they they they lend out, but they they give hardly any of that back to anybody with actual deposits in the bank, right?
And this whole peer-to-peer lending might completely eliminate the need for for banking at all, and I think that fact is probably the greatest threat to cryptocurrency because there's gonna be a lot of incentive from a government standpoint and from a federal reserve central banking standpoint uh and international um central banking Standpoint like the IMF to shut it down because it basically renders them obsolete.
And uh, you know, I know they can't completely shut it down because it's a blockchain, but they can make it incredibly difficult and cumbersome to use with regulation.
Absolutely.
Uh there's you know so much to unpack in just that piece.
I know.
I didn't mean to rant, but the notion that cryptocurrency can replace banking is incredibly empowering to middle class people, and I'm really afraid that though the powers that be in special interest will do everything they can to prevent it from happening.
And I think that's why we're starting to hear whispers about you know Bitcoin technology being harmful on the environment, and I think that there's rumblings going on because they're trying to frame an argument to shut it down.
But I hope that's not true.
I mean, I put a lot of money in cryptocurrency, and I'm optimistic about it, and I believe in the tech, but I just hope our government officials don't screw it all up.
It governments have to figure out how to use it.
Um and banks have to figure out how to use it.
So one of the hardest things to do working in the space is to juggle that.
Um and it's kind of the same with cybersecurity.
I mean every the army and the you know the mil the whole military or all militaries around the world, these big organizations are not gonna just say, oh, that's a great idea and then switch their whole system overnight, you know.
Right because it's too much, it's too big of a problem.
And and even in just the you know, the short statement you made, um there are so many things in there that are almost impossible to implement right now.
Um you do have the guys out there saying, Oh, you know, banking's gonna go away tomorrow and the dollar's gonna go away tomorrow, but I don't think they'll go away.
They'll definitely find a way to survive and to integrate into some of these systems.
You know, you've got other cryptocurrencies like Ripple that were designed for banks.
Uh, so there's a little bit more centralized control over those things.
And then and Ripple's about as valuable as a dollar.
Yeah, so that's worthless.
Ripple's a funny one.
I mean, yes, so it is kind of in that realm where you know they can print more of it.
So you you run into the same problems, but it's more resilient.
And um, but you know, when you're investing people that invest in Ripple, it's kind of like, well, you know, it's designed to kind of maintain parity with the dollar and to be used by banks.
So you're not gonna see the major gains in that as an investment as you would in other things, hopefully.
You know, hopefully if it works well, it's just gonna integrate and become you know part of the banking system.
Um a lot of different ways to think about it.
But you know, banking in general and fiat currency in general are some of the biggest concerns of mine that I saw doing some of these studies in cyber economic security.
So there's a lot of room for Bitcoin to solve some of those problems um and a lot of overhype, if you will.
It's not gonna solve everything overnight, it's not gonna make banking go away.
And it but it's gonna be a painful process in some way or another.
Uh well, it's I mean it's basically a Ponzi scheme, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the yeah, the uh the way the dollar's set up right now, it is they have to essentially keep printing or keep lending to um maintain the value.
Bear with me a second.
I have to turn it off.
Oh, there we go.
Yeah.
Alright, so this camera up guy's got like a heat sensor and it resets every 30 minutes, I think.
I think that's what's going on.
Uh but um okay, so talking about cryptocurrency and banking, um, I want to talk to you a little bit about fiat versus an asset-backed currency.
And you know, traditionally, um economists have in civilizations have found value in gold and silver, particularly gold, right?
And um no one has really I've I haven't heard like a really good explanation as to why that is.
Like obviously gold is a very beautiful metal, it's it's hard to find, right?
So you have like a limited quantity of it.
And my question for you is whether or not you think that the reason gold has been such a good standard for for for money.
Is it because of the fact that you know, like wealthy people covet it?
Or is it actually just because of the fact that there's a very limited supply of it?
And if it's the second reason, um it could Bitcoin potentially be like a new gold in that you know it's it maxes out, I think 20,000 units or twenty what how many how many bitcoin are they gonna are gonna mine total?
I don't ever remember the number.
I looked it up a hundred times.
But it's like gold in that it's limited, right?
Yeah.
So I love the gold standard uh discussion just because people don't realize the gold standard was created by Isaac Newton.
So as a really physicist and somebody just sitting and doing the math, you know, Isaac Newton came up with the gold standard because you can only and then immediately spent the rest of his life trying to figure out how to artificially manufacture gold.
Yeah.
Real philosophy is like, let's let's back our currency with gold, and I'm gonna go keep working on this lead project.
Right.
Nice.
So yeah, from from the physics point of view, you know, it you can only create gold and in stars.
Uh so all of it that's here is all of it that's gonna be here.
Um and that it really doesn't have much to do with whether people value it as a precious metal or jewelry or whatever, you know.
It it's very useful.
Um so you it is a useful commodity, you can trade with people, it's conductive, it doesn't tarnish.
So just from the first principles physics point of view, the way Elon Musk would think through things, uh, or the way Newton did, it's like here's this thing that doesn't tarnish, it's always beautiful, it's always usable, people always want it, and there's a limited supply of it.
So it's it's the perfect just baseline for the math if you're gonna do the math on building an economy.
Uh you can't use like cows because you can uh they can multiply or they can all die off, and then next thing you know, you don't you know you can't use cows anymore to trade regularly.
Um so when you're coming from just the pure barter system, it's like, well, what's the what are the things that exist out there that can be the baseline for this math that we know every country will be able to always kind of settle their debts and disputes with and so gold kind of affords that perfect um capability.
Um is uh, you know, Peter Schiff is one of the probably the most famous guy that argues that Bitcoin doesn't have any inherent value.
Um but I've I've seen uh an excellent debate with him.
I was just trying to look up, I forget um who I'd love to watch that because I struggle to think that to I struggle and understand why gold has innate value either.
Because I mean when if if the it's whole if if civilization collapses, nobody's gonna care about gold.
Yeah, yeah, so you know, and that's why like in collapse situations, things like cigarettes and food become you know, number one.
If we were ever in a collapse scenario, nobody's gonna be running around asking who has some gold.
But it gold is gonna be the equalizer um for internationally.
So yeah, if one if one government collapses, then they're gonna have to kind of settle their disputes again with gold or with their natural resources.
So in the US, uh you know, one of our biggest concerns is our pr our production has gone down so much, so we're not producing as many things as we were before, and we don't have uh natural resource production as much as we did.
So uh if we were exporting everything and we were a net energy exporter and we could make all of our own food and all of our own stuff, then I would be less concerned.
Um but you know, and we could settle our debts even after a collapse scenario because we would be such a high producing um country.
It's kind of like an individual, you know, if you're a high producing individual and you have a lot of worth in your skill set, You're always gonna get work somewhere.
Whereas if you don't, if you're not producing and you don't have that inherent worth in your skill set, you're gonna have trouble in hard times.
So same with countries.
Um gold was always the perfect equalizer there because you could settle your debts with other countries, you could kind of restart an economy based on gold.
And the constitution does specifically call out gold and silver coins as the only form of money we should have, because they had a lot of these problems in the colonies originally with them printing their own currencies in the 13 colonies.
Well, and that's what's so interesting, is that the Constitution, like you said, it does explicitly say that the government can coin money based off of gold and silver, right?
I think it even explicitly says gold and silver.
Yep.
And the funny thing about that is with the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, they basically outsourced fiat, which in my opinion, it seems to me that the founders thought fiat should be illegal.
Yeah, absolutely.
There are some writings, and um I think maybe back in the the Federalist paper and papers and some of the other early writings of the founding fathers, they had a lot of problems with those 13 colonies printing their own money.
And you know, you have a 100% rate of failure with all fiat currencies.
Every time it's ever been tried in all of human history, it has failed.
So uh, you know, 100% success rates or failure rate is not so good.
Yeah, well, there's a whole section and if you read about the the fall of Rome, uh you know, a lot of scholars agree that uh a major component of that collapse was the debasing of the currency.
I mean, they were they were they were saying silver coins were made of pure silver when they were really only like 60% silver, and they were doing all sorts of stuff like that, and that's the that's part of the reason why I think the whole the civilization collapsed.
Yeah, I mean it it's really similar to if you just look at it from a personal finance perspective, you know, if you get yourself like super heavy in debt and you don't focus on any of your own skills and means of production, um you're gonna get into a situation eventually where you can't pay it off, and you you don't have any skills that are in demand to pay it off, and you don't have any stuff that to sell to pay it off.
So then you have to declare bankruptcy.
Um countries are no different when you think of them in the geopolitical terms, you know.
We're gonna there is one difference.
Yeah, the difference between a nation and an and an individual is an individual can't just say, screw you, I'm not paying you back.
Right, because then you get arrested, right?
I guess you can't be in prison for debt, but you you know you face charges, you're forced forced to liquidate assets, things like that.
But a nation, if a nation is completely in debt um to another nation, they could say, All right, you know, try and collect, right?
I know that's bad for your international credit, but one of the things that I think the United States should be doing is as punishment for the CCP inadvertently or intentionally releasing COVID, I think that we should just erase all of our debt to China and say, you know what, we're not paying you anything that we owe you because you screwed the pooch, and if you don't like it, you know, go to hell.
I mean, so that's the only thing that I see as a possible geopolitical solutions here, you know.
I mean, it it's a really unusual situation, but yeah, war, you know, we've fought wars for things of that nature.
There's a lot of weird little elements to some of the wars in the Middle East, like Saddam wanting to use his own currency to trade oil and things that play into these geopolitical gamesmanship, if you will, you know, where you're trying to bring value to your currency and to yourself uh in the eyes of the world.
But like you just said, I mean, that's the crazy thing about the dollar, you know.
Uh during Vietnam, people wanted to cash in their dollars for gold.
Well, because they knew the government was spending beyond what the reserves actually had.
Yeah, and they uh they should have been able to.
And I think uh probably France more than anybody uh called and said, Hey, we'd like to cash in all our dollars now.
And uh that's when Nixon said, sorry, we're not gonna do that anymore.
Temporarily.
It's kind of creepy.
If you go back and actually watch the announcement that he made on television saying that we were gonna move away from the gold standard.
It's super creepy to listen to him because in retrospect it sounds so post apocalyptic.
And then I think it was interpreted much differently domestically.
It was like, oh okay we're going off the gold standard.
That's fine.
You know, but now it's like oh no like he basically we defaulted on our debt.
We didn't have the gold.
So we just said sorry we're not going to give you any gold.
And I I don't know I just I think it's it's incredibly scary how little gold the United States has.
I mean if you look up how much physical gold is actually in the Federal Reserve it's like less gold than Elon Musk could buy you know like if you if you sold all of your shares in Tesla or if or if Bezos sold all of his shares in Amazon he could buy all the gold the US has it's not as much as you would think.
I I don't even remember the number off the top of my head but I I remember looking it up saying wow that's like 500 billion dollars worth or something you can't really settle settle much with that.
And so, you know, I like to go back to the, I guess, first principles once again, but the personal finance analogies, you know, it's like you realize you have $100,000 in debt and you go look in your piggy bank and you only have, you know, $10 in coins in there.
It's like, oh crap, what are you going to use to, you know, to settle those debts?
So we are in a situation where something's going to have to happen to, you know, some kind of war types.
scenario as you mentioned where we have to say you know cancel out our debts or the currency will devalue pretty dramatically so what what happens in in the event of a of a dollar collapse and I'm not just talking hyperinflation because I think we're in hyperinflation now.
But what happens when the dollar totally collapses?
How does that look from your experience and your background in intelligence and national security?
What happens?
Well, I mean, I am not an economist.
And this is where it gets really interesting and also hard to speak to and have to kind of just go back down to the basic principles.
But when you when if if and when it's likely that that can happen, it's happened before in the US where we've had a banking holiday or where you're not able to get money out of the bank or even something just like the power.
grid going down people don't think about the fact that you don't really have access to banking and most of those dollars are digital because they're you know creating it's like 10% is actually in paper circulation or maybe even less than that.
Theoretically so you know in the banks they're only required to hold physically like 10% of what they well not they don't have to hold any now.
That changed over COVID.
Yeah it's even lower and the FDIC is only insuring uh a fraction of that now as well so people often think that they can fall back on FDIC insurance but that's a pretty small fraction.
Well and in the case of a currency collapse even if the FDIC insures $200,000 what if $200,000 is now worth $200?
Yeah yeah or a loaf of bread is a hundred thousand dollars right so yeah then you're screwed sounds so ridiculous and I I think there's a huge um there's a huge problem with people not believing that can happen.
Weimar Germany and uh Venezuela and uh Zimbabwe you know Zimbabwe they had $10 trillion dollar bills and like wheelbarrows full of $10 trillion dollar bills where the currency collapse there it's one of the more popular um case studies I guess but you know in that scenario it's it's ugly.
I mean you don't the you don't people don't think about the supply chain breaking down.
So you know if the grocery store can't pay workers or can't pay for product to come to the grocery store you're not gonna be able to get anything.
You know we thought the toilet paper shortage was bad but in a in a currency collapse scenario you don't have gas for yeah um the trucks you don't have any groceries that are coming to the grocery stores so you're you essentially kind of revert to just basic core things like you have to go to a farm to get food.
And well I think one of the differences too one of the differences too about these other historical currency collapses is that none of these currencies were global reserve Currencies.
So even if they even if they collapsed, there could still be some sort of an international bailout, either directly and intentionally or inadvertently just because of trade and how it works, right?
And so a dollar collapse is totally unprecedented on a global scale.
And you know, I don't think anybody knows for sure how it would play out, but there's nobody there's nobody to go to.
Yeah.
When that happens.
Like it's just it's over.
And so obviously there's gonna have to be a monetary reset.
And you know, the question is how long does that take?
What does that look like?
Um, but b between uh executing the solution and the onset of that tragedy, there's gonna be a lot of very v tumultuous things going on, and I'm interested in in exploring what that looks like.
Um and I yeah, I know there's not really much you can do to prepare, but we're talking about you know, total liquidation of assets, um uh basically like national bankruptcy, right?
I think the only people that probably wouldn't be harmed would be the homeless population because they have no debt.
And so it'd be like one of those situations, but like uh um I I just wonder from a national security standpoint what that looks like.
And I think in the event of a total collapse of the global reserve currency, what kind of like what you mentioned earlier touched on earlier, the countries with the most physical gold are probably gonna be in the best shape, or the countries with the most cryptocurrency may be in the best shape if if cryptocurrency is adopted as part of the reset, which I don't know whether or not it would.
Um and that's scary to me because China is well positioned in that case scenario to just totally acquire and dominate globally um uh uh because we don't have any gold and they are importing gold and they are producing gold domestically.
They're stockpiling.
They're they're super smart.
I mean, you know, going back to the analogy again of personal finance, they're they're the one person in the room who has saved up a bunch of physical things.
They have uh moved all the production to their country.
So, you know, it's like the most valuable person, the most valuable skill set in the room, the person with the most assets, they just have an enormous amount of leverage.
Uh there was the and tremendous amount of domestic control over their own people.
Yeah.
Um just to hit on the crypto piece a little bit.
I mean, I think again, like Peter Schiff is one of the more rational voices out there.
He is a huge um uh poo-poo or for a lack of a better word better word of of Bitcoin, he just doesn't see how it could work.
And he has a good point.
There's not an intrinsic value to it per se.
Uh I've heard some really good uh debates with him, as I mentioned, where you know, there's a great value in the in the payment network of it.
You can send a great deal of money anywhere in the world instantly without a third party to trust.
So that payment network has a lot of value in and of itself because it offers that network of exchange, but again, there's not an inherent value here to trade on that payment network if the currency collapses.
You know, we don't have um I'm not confident that we would have internet for a time.
Again, yeah, that's that's a huge concern too.
If the imagine if imagine if Amazon Amazon defaults and has to shut down all of its servers.
Crypto's not gonna not gonna solve these problems for sure.
Um they I think crypto will be a very important part of the global reset discussions, and I I definitely see you know, the bank for international settlements and the IMF and some of these other people are looking into payment networks and ways to kind of redistribute things and to start a new currency.
I mean it it would have to be a global effort, uh a Herculean global effort to re-create a currency to replace the dollar because of that world reserve currency status.
It's not just a problem that we have domestically.
So there's you know, two fronts, the US government would have to find a way to redistribute some kind of internal mechanism of trade.
And that's gonna be monumental as well, just because we get so many goods from China already.
Uh and we'll tell you what, we don't have any gold, but we could we could it'd be funny if we made an ammo backed currency.
Yeah, no doubt.
Yeah, there you go.
We got plenty of ammo.
Well, I mean, you that's a thought.
I mean, you could sell the ammo internationally and you could get things of actual well and the beauty is the more you produce, the more is you is consumed.
Yeah.
So you there's a little bit of a hedge against inflation on an ammo backed currency because people do shoot ammo recreationally.
And so you just you just keep making it and keep shooting it.
Absolutely.
So I mean ammo has been currency in the past and it it could be again for sure.
But that's one thing we do have a lot of so it's like if you go broke, you know you're gonna be scrounging through your closet of for things of value to sell at the pawn shop.
Yeah see but the interesting thing about this is it and it seems to me very plausible that in the event of a total dollar collapse there will be a new global reserve currency and the international community will not entrust that to the United States.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah and when the United States um was um given the privilege of being the international um reserve currency it was a much different country.
Okay so we had just won World War II.
And we had the gold standard.
And we had a and B we had the gold state gold standard and C, our manufacturing was incredible at the time.
So we were perceived as a very productive economy.
It was not just some service-based economy.
But now that we've totally switched from actually producing anything, and we're basically just living off of the returns of the Ponzi scheme that is the dollar, in the event of a dollar collapse, the amount of influence that China has internationally in terms of its intelligence community and who it's bribed and bought off.
I mean, the international community basically covered up that COVID was a CCP leak on accident, right?
Yeah.
intentional I don't know which but I think that it's very likely that China would be picked as uh you know the the country responsible for a reserve a new reserve currency backed by gold or whatever just because that they're so productive and in the event that that is the case it seems to me to be a very damning thing for what it's going to be like to be in the United States.
That's probably my biggest concern of all.
I think the yuan is actually a reserve currency already.
There are different agreements out there, like the one we have with OPEC, that make it to where you have to trade oil in dollars, U.S. dollars.
So you can't use the Yuan for those types of transactions because you have to trade oil in US dollars.
So there's a lot of agreements like that when they go away it's gonna be really bad.
But China already having a reserve world reserve currency as it stands plus their uh the BRICS alliance uh Brazil Russia India China South Africa they have stated openly that they are ready to move from the dollar as the world reserve currency and they want to see something new happen and and you know become the world reserve currency.
So China does have that status already and they are also launching their own national cryptocurrency.
So as as we speak there are you know millions of dollars in crypto going into Chinese banks they're already using it for payroll in some places they've distributed millions out to um certain provinces just so to you know to get the money out into circulation.
So they have a national crypto that is moving out into circulation that will be backed by a huge amount of production it'll be back backed by a huge amount of gold uh it'll be backed by a very strong military if they took over Taiwan you know that's a a huge chunk of the global semiconductor manufacturing so they'll have you know do you think they're gonna do that?
I I they've stated they're going to so many times now that it just seems inevitable that it heats up more you mean over the past few years or over the past fifty years.
I'm it's it's pretty much been their constant refrain the whole time and they're the hundredth anniversary of the C C P is coming up on um July 1st so uh they're gonna they'll do something uh soon with regard to that it's a weird situation.
But why would why do they really want it?
You think it's just a semiconductor production or do you think that they want it on principle just because they're pissed off that the the uh uh former Chinese establishment escaped and created their own country absolutely both um they you know they refer to the the the twentieth century as like their century of humiliation.
Um because they lost so much status in the world, you know, they were the center of the world.
And then um during the opium wars and things that kind of get lost in our history, um, they experienced the humiliation of their you know large chunk of their country being addicted to opioids or to opium, and uh which we're kind of seeing the reverse now, which is fascinating.
But uh during the opium wars, the West took you know Hong Kong and Macau from them, and they lost uh Taiwan in you know the battle to for the CCP to take over.
So Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau are three of the biggest economic engines of the entire world.
It's like you know, those three places uh are a huge chunk of the global economy.
Well, they certainly called our they certainly called everyone's bluff on Hong Kong by just taking it prematurely.
Yeah, nobody did anything about it.
That's an absolutely fascinating scenario.
You know, a lot of the big British banks are there.
HS HSBC was founded there, you know, it's the Hong Kong, um what is it, Hong Kong Shanghai, uh Bank of China or whatever HSBC is.
Uh it's just fascinating how much is centered in Hong Kong and Macau is another interesting example.
The Portuguese actually took Macau, which is another uh territory right next to Hong Kong that nobody knows about uh in the US, seemingly.
Um, but it's like Las Vegas on steroids.
The one casino in Macau is bigger than the entire Las Vegas strip as far as the amount of money that goes through there, and so you have this huge basically equivalent of the Chinese Las Vegas.
You have this enormous economic financial center of Hong Kong, and you have this enormous manufacturing, amazing free uh democracy in Taiwan that is just pumping out a huge chunk of the economy.
So if they take those three things and they have firm control over those three things, they have firm control over the global economy, and they're in uh in no position of worry for for emerging as the strongest country to kind of back a global reserve currency.
So do you think it's reasonable to say that um uh the greatest threat to national security is um an economic threat in part or in large um contributed to by um the vulnerabilities of the the fiat of the dollar and that um the solution to that um may be cryptocurrency or may at least involve blockchain technology?
Um the first part of that I absolutely think that's the greatest threat to our uh national security right now.
I would I I kind of usually phrase it in the terms of cyber economic security, um, because we really don't have the strong position in cyber security or in economics, and they go hand in hand because the dollar is uh largely digital and it's largely the bedrock of the entire western uh payment system and you know,
all international settlements and people hold countries hold billions and billions in dollars.
I was amazed um companies like Sony have to hold billions of US dollars because they're a Japanese company, and just the slight shift between the yuan and the US dollar on a daily basis can make offset their balance sheet, you know, millions or billions.
So when you think about that, there's all these countries because of that world reserve currency status just holding huge amounts of dollars.
So as soon as it starts to lose status in the world, you're just gonna see this huge influx that comes back in of dollars, and it's just gonna put us in a an enormously vulnerable situation.
So between that and you know, the the power grid and basic networks, um things like satellite communication and GPS and the things our military even relies on, I would say the cyber economic threat is um by far the biggest um threat we face to national security.
So what's the solution?
That I mean, so crypto I don't see it as a solution in and of itself.
It's gonna have a place, but I think it's gonna be driven by those global forces that uh re-establish the world reserve currency.
Um, if you think about if you think about a traditional Ponzi scheme, the only way that Bernie Madoff was ever gonna pull that off and get away with it, would have been if he figured out a way to legitimately make an astronomical amount of money in order to pay the initial investors back, the principle that he scammed, right?
And so if you think of the dollar as a Ponzi scheme, the only way that we can really correct the issue without a total um catastrophe is to become hyper productive, hyper increases in GDP, hyper increases in manufacturing, uh intellectual development, innovation, and it it's not increases in spending, it's increases in actual productivity that matters.
Because I'll tell you what, man, nobody in the world gives a damn about anything that Americans do.
Right?
Like our economy is exchanging the dollars for someone to clean your house and to go to a restaurant, like it's a service-based economy, not a product-based economy anymore.
And internationally, nobody cares at all what we do except for our A, our monetary policy, because it's the global reserve currency, and B our military um behavior, because that's obviously an international impact.
And so if we're about ready to have a global problem, we need to position ourselves to be the global solution, and we're just not right now.
Yeah, I think that's a hundred percent spot on.
I was gonna say production as the number one thing.
We would we would absolutely have to, you know, become what we were after World War II uh overnight to prevent absolute and total catastrophe.
And you know, there are ways to think in this distributed thought process.
So crypto and blockchain provide a good way forward, but it's gonna be really painful if if something like that happens.
And it's gonna require massive organization of communities.
So, you know, we're gonna have to re-establish supply chains, especially from farms, like instantly, and re-establish energy and just ramp up production, restart every factory that there ever was, um, and every mine there ever was, or mine an asteroid.
You know, there are some there are some crazy things out there, like some people do see some promise in the moon having uh rare earth metals that are essential for electronics.
China has the mark, you know, they cornered the market in that right now.
So the rare earth metal uh argument is a big one right now because China owns that market big time.
But the moon is actually rich in those specific rare earth metals.
So something like mining the moon or mining an asteroid could be some kind of crazy bailout, you know, in the in the personal finance um analogy again, it's like you find a big chunk of gold under your bed or something you stashed away.
But again, you know, it's still the re-establishment of supply chains, it's the re-establishment of production, it's becoming important to the rest of the world again.
So I, you know, it's it's Herculean.
It's absolutely honestly, I I think the solution is to all we need to do is outlaw trade with China.
We can it's it morally it's the right thing to do, and it seems like economically and you know, I'd be temporarily painful, but long-term healthy, right?
So I mean, the C CP, it's a terrorist organization.
They have the their whole entire country is built on slave labor, continued slave labor, right?
They have a huge human trafficking problem, particularly from people escaping North Korea.
Um their human rights violations are just overwhelming, right?
So from a moral like, hey, America is against terrorist organizations and human tra and and uh human rights violate violations, we shouldn't be subsidizing their communism, right?
Which is exactly what we're doing as as a major uh importer from China.
And if we cut them off from importing uh uh or from trade with us, um, we wouldn't have to really make any changes to the regulatory structure around manufacturing, which caused the the labor to be so expensive in the United States and made China you know a very appealing alternative because if we don't have that alternative anymore, we can keep the same regulatory structure in place and manufacturing will begin to occur domestically again.
So it seems to me that if we're gonna position ourselves long term for economic health and security in this country, that cutting off trade with China is the extremely painful correct, healthy decision.
I mean, it's gonna feel like withdrawal, you know.
Yeah, um, yeah, you know, just like kicking heroin, like it's incredibly painful, but always the right decision, right?
And so I I think that we really need to have we need a strong leader that can bite the bull and just say, you know what, we're not gonna import from this nation as long as they continue to to um commit these human rights violations, which they'll never stop committing.
Uh yeah, I mean like the heroin analogy.
I think it's just way too hard for us to do that.
I mean, people don't want to have be uh have to stop going to Walmart, you know.
Uh and there would be nothing at Walmart or Target if if we stopped trade with China.
So I think that that is a but imagine the amount of businesses.
Imagine what would imagine the amount of businesses that would that would that would be created, right?
So, oh my god, like we don't have any products anymore in this country.
Like, I'm gonna start a toilet paper manufacturing facility in Bloomington, Illinois, and we're gonna start out, we're gonna make you know 10,000 rolls a month.
And you know, and it there will be so many small businesses that would make a tremendous amount of money.
There would be a painful period of 12, 24, maybe even 36 months.
But after that, we would have an incredibly robust economy, very diversified and internationally respected.
Yeah, I mean, it is it's like um, you know, it's like withdrawal symptoms.
The heroin analogy is almost perfect.
It's like uh it would be horrible.
It would be horrible.
But you know, you have that's why you'd have to have, I guess, a leader that was the most uh inspiring human being to everyone.
Yeah, the morale would be the issue.
But capitalism is incredibly efficient at solving problems like that, right?
So we saw this with the mask issue, right?
There was an incredible shortage of masks right after COVID hit, and in part it was because we were importing from certain, you know, from isolated um uh countries, and the other part was just demand went way up.
And within just a couple of months, we had such a high supply of masks that the government had to recommend wearing two because the prices were dropping too much.
Right.
And so my point is, you know, there's there's that pain for a period of time, but that pain is very swiftly corrected by the invisible hand of capitalism.
And so if we maintain our capitalistic integrity, you don't have to have like a brilliant, you know, strong man leader who knows how to make all the right decisions about every single aspect of society in order to come out of it because the whole the whole economy, the freedom, the liberty, the capitalism of it will efficiently solve the problems that we create, though they will be painful.
Yeah, I mean, and but you have a lot of external factors too.
I mean, if we were going through the most painful period of all American history, which is what it would be, you know, what do we do in that moment if somebody starts war with us?
Uh what do we do in that moment if China dumps all their treasuries or you know decides to start taking over one of our allies?
Uh so well, we wouldn't be there for allies, I don't think.
But no one's gonna nobody's gonna wage a domestic boots on the ground war with the United States.
There's it's we're too well armed from a civilian standpoint.
I guess I'm more uh but yeah, they might shut down our grid.
Yeah, you cut off trade with us, fine.
Here's your electricity gone.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
And then, you know, allies and NATO obligations and things like that.
So we would we would be in the most vulnerable position in the whole world, also.
So it's not it's great to think through a solution like that in terms of let's all suck it up and deal with you know, possibly two years of the worst pain we've ever experienced in this country, but you know, those two years would also be the weakest we've ever been.
Well, maybe it's maybe it's a gradual shift.
Problem with gradual shifts is that administrations change.
Yeah.
So ideally it would be something that we would do over like 25 years, but there's no way that we would stay the course over five different, you know, uh white house administrations, right?
And so, you know, maybe over maybe if we had like a really good president that could do like a four to eight year plan.
I don't know.
See, that's still too short too.
But like you do it gradually, like you start like, okay, we're gonna stop importing just this product from China, right?
So like maybe we just start with computer chips or something a little bit more obscure.
And then gradually we can just get to a point where we've become independent.
Um sort of the methadone approach, right?
Yeah.
We've we become gradually independent of the problem, right?
Uh and so I I just don't see the United States doing any long-term strategy, and that's one of the advantages that China has over the United States is that they're able to think in terms of a hundred years at a time in a way that we aren't.
Um it's I'm just so ashamed of the cowardice that our politicians exhibit, and that some of these solutions are really obvious, and they just continue to lie and cover up these tragedies.
Um because they're afraid of not being re-elected, right?
And so if you make if you make the right decision and you cut off trade with China, right?
Let's just assume that's let's just assume hypothetically that's the correct decision.
Yeah, and the entire economy collapses, you're not getting re-elected.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, there's so much pressure internationally.
I mean, if you look back to 2008 when uh when other countries learned that our banking system could fail, it was an international scare.
I mean, there was terror in Europe.
Um if the dollar collapses, it's not just us that will feel that pain.
So I mean, we're talking about really pissing off every other country that uses the dollar for trade, which is all of them.
And uh Right, but I don't think cutting off trade with China would necessarily result in the the collapse of a dollar.
Well, it it's I mean possible, but still they hold so much of our debt, you know, that they can do things erase the debt.
Well, yeah, but you know, then they do have a reason to use military action or to take over other countries as other countries collapse, they would just gain so much power and influence, it would be ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And obviously I'm not an expert in and but I I just like I just like throwing these ideas out there and sort of think out loud.
So I I think through scenarios that could help this situation all the time, and you know, hope to be doing that soon at uh at a higher level um with the blockchain of cryptocurrency advisory roles, but um it's just such a huge problem with so many facets, and it's amazing to think about all of it.
And the fact that we are economically strong and we do have the world reserve currency is basically our bargaining chip for just about everything else.
So we're talking about relinquishing our number one bargaining chip in the entire for the world is what we would have to do.
And you know, it's it it is that full methadone withdrawal kind of symptom solution.
It's like we're gonna have to experience ten times worse than the Great Depression and be in the most vulnerable position we ever were with possibly no power and no food for an extended period of time, just so we can maybe ramp up production and get back on our feet.
But it's those consequences are gonna happen eventually anyway if we don't do something about it, or monetary policy.
I guess articulating that is the hard part.
It's like, you know, it's really hard to tell someone they've got to go through something that difficult just to get back on their feet.
You know, and um as people say in like the addiction community, speaking of uh methadone and heroin addiction, it's like uh dying is a lot easier than changing.
So a lot of these people will just choose to keep, you know, lung cancer patients out there just choose to keep smoking because it's way easier to just die and face that awful consequence rather than to choose a equally horrible path just to get back on your feet.
Right, it's uh it's a really tough scenario.
Uh well, I think from uh from uh perspective perspective.
Um we would the people would have to be convinced that there was no no choice.
Yeah.
Right.
So, like with Pearl Harbor, it there was consensus.
There's no choice, we're at war.
Right.
And we needed a Pearl Harbor in order to justify getting involved in the war.
Right.
Because politically there was a lot of divide on that.
And um, you know, there's probably the intelligence community is so damn good at manipulating everything else.
You'd think that they would figure out a way for um uh uh to manipulate the um uh uh uh domestic culture to have more consensus and a little bit more resolve around certain issues that you know if you look into it for a couple hours become much much more uh very obvious.
Yeah.
But I mean, like COVID it's like the uh the World Economic Forum, you know, uh talking about the Great Reset and all these things.
It's almost like COVID is the Pearl Harbor, but still people haven't really seen it in that economic context yet.
Um obviously it's been uh a big economic hurt, but at the same time, there's still all these same band-aids, they're just printing more money and uh giving stimulus.
You think China released it on purpose?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I there's so many it's almost impossible to know.
I mean, if if these are intelligence community forces going against each other for economic reasons, we probably will never know.
You know, it's like China could have done it on purpose, but what what's their rationale?
You know, there would also be rationale for a Western agency to have framed China for it to maybe absolve us of our debts, you know.
So there's just when you get into looking at how intelligence works and some of these clandestine operations, there's so many players in the world that are so good at what they do.
Um it's almost like there's no talent.
And uh we're seeing what we're supposed to see, I suppose.
And uh hopefully there's some kind of altruistic plan to reset the global economy, but uh it doesn't feel that way.
Well, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your expertise um with the audience and me.
Uh I really enjoyed having you on.
It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Jason.
Awesome.
And uh what we'll have to uh do this again sometime.
Absolutely.
As I uh move on and start working in this realm a little bit more, it'll be a lot of fun.
All right, man.
Well, good luck with your new endeavors at uh you're at Deloitte now, right?
Uh I will be on Monday.
So well, congratulations.
Good luck at your new job.
Make sure you show up and brush your teeth.
That's right.
We choose to go to the moon and this decay and do the other thing.
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
