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April 25, 2025 - Info Warrior - Jason Bermas
52:02
The Global Control Grid An IMA Panel Part 1
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Hey everybody, Jason Bermas here.
We've got a real treat for you today.
We've got part one of the Independent Media Alliance panel on the control grid that is continuing under the Trump administration.
Now this is a long, long conversation.
We do hope you check out the entire thing.
You're not going to want to miss it.
Buckle up and get ready to make sense of the madness.
Welcome to another IMA panel, the Independent Media Alliance.
Today we are discussing a fantastic article brought out by Katherine Rosten-Fitz in regard to the coming digital control grid.
Now, we've all been doing a lot of work in a lot of different ways discussing sort of the building, you know, I mean, the Great Reset, essentially.
Every single data point around that conversation that seems to have continued under the U.S. government of today.
And so we wanted to discuss today the different points of where that's been building, what we can see, and talk about the possible solutions around each one.
So thank you all for being here today.
We want to kick this off with Catherine Austin-Fitz telling us about her article, and then we can go through the points.
So go ahead, Catherine.
Nope, you're muted, Catherine.
Still muted, Catherine.
Yep.
Okay, here we go.
Thank you, Ryan, and thank you for pulling us all together and gathering us this way.
I recently published an article called...
Let me just get back to it.
You threw me off there.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Wait a minute.
The Fast Approaching Digital Control Grid, a checklist of Trump administration actions to date.
When Trump, right after he was inaugurated, he did a press...
He did a conference with several big tech billionaires and announced initiatives, the Stargate initiative, to put together data centers all across the country and combine it with mRNA injections.
And it was clearly a major step forward in building an AI engineered control grid.
And he announced energy policies that would support it.
So I put together an article literally in the first couple weeks that showed all the different things the Trump administration was doing to build a digital control grid.
And what I discovered with that article was that many people, you know, they see the individual pieces, but they don't see how they come together in a control grid, which completely overruns the U.S. Constitution and changes our fundamental.
Government structure, including moving control of fiscal policy and taxation to the central banks.
And so ever since that article, I've been tracking and just amazed both at all the things they're doing to build the digital control grid, but also all the things they're not doing.
If you were serious about reverting the corruption in the last four or five administrations, they're not doing any of those things.
So, or I should say, they're not doing very many of those things.
They've done a few things that, in my opinion, you know, create great headlines, but they're minor.
And so I put up a new piece where I just extended the old piece, and I went sort of through my summary, and then I went through different categories.
The first, let me just describe the categories.
The first was money.
The second was the war on cash.
The third was financial disclosure, which to me is a major, major issue.
The fourth was digital IDs.
We've never seen an administration more aggressive on digital IDs, which we know is the next big step to building the control grid.
And then digital payment systems.
And then finally, let me go down, the Internet of Bodies.
And that gets into the MRNA, telecommunications systems, changes in assets and how federal assets are managed.
And finally, energy, because we know that the digital control grid is unbelievably energy consumptive.
And then finally, looking at both budget, Federal Reserve and some other minor things.
And, you know, by gathering everything together, it was funny, I kept asking, people kept asking me about why do you think they're building the digital control grid?
And Ryan, literally the list got so long that I found myself doing interviews and forgetting to mention one.
So I thought, okay, I need a checklist.
So this is Catherine's interview checklist, or that's what it started out at.
But as you can see, there is an extraordinary number of items.
And this is not an accident.
People say, well, we're sure Trump doesn't know.
Of course he knows.
This is obvious.
Anyway, so...
My hope is that because there are so many real solutions, you know, but they all require us getting out of the pendulum between what I call the political version of your food choices, McDonald's or Burger King.
You know, your political choices are not, you know, one part of the Uniparty versus the other part.
You know, we have real choices, but we have to just leave the, you know, the pendulum between the different parts of the Uniparty behind.
And my hope is that this will help people see the different parts of the digital control grid coming and understand their time is much better spent.
You know, instead of watching TV and being entertained by Donald Trump, it's much better spent stopping the real ID or working with state legislators to do things to protect financial transaction freedom.
Anyway, so that's my introduction.
I really appreciate all you guys coming together to talk about this because anything we can do to help people see how these different pieces snap together in literally a digital concentration camp.
And the more people who create friction and refuse to go along, the better off we all are.
Couldn't agree more.
And since we've got everyone here now, we can go through the quick roundabout here.
We have Jason Bermas today, Ian Davis on the top right, Steve Boykinen, Kit Knightley in the middle, Catherine Austin-Fitts, Derek Rose.
And, you know, in general today, Catherine, is there any spot that you'd like to start on in regard to the list?
Or should we just start with the top?
I would start down because we sort of go inside out.
Perfect.
Well, let's start with money and essentially destroy, you know, ending currency as we know it.
Yeah.
Well, as you write in the basic summary, an all-digital currency and monetary system is essential to institute a digital control grid.
So different than the actual digital monetary system around it all, the specific digital currency dynamic.
And you mentioned the Genius Act, which I was looking over a second ago in regard to the...
Can I just mention one thing on the Genius Act?
So Trump has made a big deal about, you know, we're not doing CBDCs and we're canceling CBDCs, and people think that has meaning.
But if you look at the CBDC, it would have been done by the Fed.
So primarily the lead would have been the New York Fed.
And if you look at the Genius Act, it's just saying all the guys who own the Fed are going to create subsidiaries and do stablecoins, which is basically programmable money with less oversight by Congress.
So it's sort of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
It's a different version of CBDC.
Right.
But worse, as you're pointing out, there's less oversight.
So it's the same problem, but just a worse version of it, which is such a way this always goes, where they give you something everyone wants to push back on.
Usually you get a less bad version that you accept.
This seems like a worse version, but it's more of a shell game.
So anybody want to jump in on that topic?
Digital IDs, specifically back to digital currency in particular and how we see that going.
Any thoughts jump to mind for anybody?
We've seen the rise of Brock Pierce, right?
Jeffrey Epstein's good buddy in Tether.
Kind of taking a major foothold in what is going to become, not necessarily like CBDC, but the face of U.S. stablecoin going forward.
And there's been, what, $700 million invested, and then another round of several hundred million dollars invested, all the position tether, and again, Brock Pierce.
In this particular position of leverage, and we're kind of finally seeing the merger of PayPal Mafia and cryptocurrency all wrapped in with a nice tight federal bow.
And did anybody vote on this?
Was anybody asked about this?
Did anybody give an opinion to where it may be in the contrary of no, I would rather not have my entire financial system be on a blockchain where at the whim of some bureaucrat, I can have my entire life shut off.
I don't think any of this occurred, but it's still happening.
The people that are assembled here and a handful or more people are about the only ones willing to say anything at the expense of algorithmic reach or the expense of our shows or whatever else we're trying to put out.
Yeah.
Well, I'm not sure whose feedback that is, but there is some feedback.
Yeah.
I would say this.
I mean, right now, we're in the first three months of the administration.
I think it's pretty obvious, or it should be to most people, that inflation is going nowhere.
And I really don't know how it could really go anywhere after they printed all that money up during the COVID-1984 nightmare.
I think that the talking points of going into Fort Knox and the New York Federal Reserve are great.
I don't think they're ever going to come to fruition.
I also believe that most of us kind of saw the headbutting of Powell and Trump in these rates.
And all the while, what's happening right now?
Gold is exploding as a hard asset.
Silver is doing very well.
And Bitcoin is back on the rise.
And I would imagine with the right economic turmoil and headline...
We could see Bitcoin actually not go to a million.
Those people are always going high, but maybe reach a high of $120,000, $125,000.
What does that mean for the next market in crypto?
I think you see Ethereum and all these meme coins explode.
In fact, Trump, I just saw a report today, is going to be having a meeting with the top holders of his meme coin.
Remember when Trump came out and that just exploded?
So I think there's going to be a lot of exploitation.
On that level, as they move more people into the comfort of using this device on the blockchain, for instance, Venmo, PayPal, you can buy Bitcoin on there right now.
You know what I mean?
And I'm sure that's going to go into more and more crypto.
I think they will hedge their bets.
And, you know, kind of like we talked even before the administration took place, we all know that a digital currency is part of the plan.
So that's going to be pushed forward.
I mean, to imagine it would not be...
When Peter Thiel was such a huge part of the push at the very end of this administration getting in, you have Vance, etc.
I don't know what the public's going to think about it.
I mean, I think if you keep it so people can still afford things and you still have the rhetoric on television, unfortunately, I don't know how we get back to a pushback on that.
I don't believe anybody here thinks that we're going to get an honest...
I'd love to see that.
You know, there's been talks of Ron Paul.
Those talks went away very, very quickly.
So, unfortunately, you know, and in this very first part, Catherine talks about an AI and crypto czar.
You know, one of the things that wasn't really highlighted in the article that's extremely concerning to me is that, well, AI is a buzzword.
We've not taken out the government.
Fascistic aspect of AI in that the chief AI officer, artificial intelligence officer program, is still going.
And that means that our government is literally involved at the Defense Department level on every company developing both software and hardware in this regard and essentially decides how far it goes.
I mean, all these companies are being audited by the government.
And again, the only ones that are beyond this audit.
Our government agencies.
It says it right in the CAIO doctrine.
Anybody can read right now.
So that's extremely also concerning when we're talking about cryptocurrency because they are going to end up going hand in hand.
You know, I don't want to take too much more time, but unfortunately in this regard, I don't necessarily know how you slow this down.
And instead, I think that people are going to have to navigate it.
By, you know, multiple investments in multiple things and really hard assets and resources like actual physical property, like you've done, Ryan, you know, owning your own home, owning your own piece of land, knowing your neighbors, etc.,
creating your own barter-type systems, which still do exist in pockets of the United States outside of these big cities that they don't want to tell you about, even in the big cities as well.
So that's kind of my thoughts on the monetary system.
I would love to believe.
That we're going to have some kind of quote-unquote golden age and economic boom.
But I only see really that economic scale up if people start adopting the digital grid, right?
Then they'll give them a little bit of a bone to encourage other people to get on the train before they pull the rug out.
I'd like to jump in real quick if I can.
Can you guys hear me okay?
Yep.
You're good.
Yeah, Catherine, thank you for putting that together.
I was just looking over.
I hadn't had a chance to look at it before today, but I think it's a great summary of everything going on and for people to really get a grips of the role that the Trump administration is playing.
I just wanted to add two things.
One, just for a brief moment, to say, I told you so, and go back to some articles that I wrote at the last American Vagabond prior to the election.
And a lot of people didn't want to listen, pointing out...
All the connections of Peter Thiel, the connections to Elon Musk, of course, the military-industrial complex, etc., etc.
And thankfully, more and more people, I think, are listening.
Of course, there's the diehard MAGA folks who aren't going to hear anything we're saying regardless.
But I do think even those who are optimistic and skeptically voting for Trump or just didn't like Harris or whatever and felt this was the only choice they could make are now starting to see a bigger picture.
I'd also like to point to, I don't know if you already have it pulled up, Ryan, or not, but we just published a new article I wrote at the Last America Vagabond yesterday called Welcome to the Palantir World Order, which kind of picks up on the threads that you were pointing out, Catherine.
There's just one area I did want to mention just in terms of the finances.
I found a report from ProPublica talking about Peter Thiel, a Peter Thiel-funded company as well as connected to all the usual players, Andreessen Howerts and David Sachs is in there.
The company you guys may have heard of called Ramp.
Which is a financial company.
They focus on doing AI software for businesses, kind of helping them analyze their finances.
And I've seen more and more people using this company.
But ProPublica is reporting that there have been four private meetings recently with RAMP executives and the Trump administration's appointees to the General Service Administration, which obviously focuses on federal contracts.
And you look into who RAMP is.
Of course, they're funded by Peter Thiel through the Founders Fund in seven different rounds.
They also have Keith Robos, I think is how you say his name, Kozla Ventures, with also Thrive Capital, which is of course Joshua Kushner, Jared Kushner's brother, Trump's son-in-law.
And then 8VC, which is a venture capital firm funded by Joe Lonsdale, who is, of course, another co-founder of Palantir with Peter Thiel and Alex Karp.
And so the General Service Administration, which handles federal contracts, is now potentially going to partner with Ramp, which is a total Peter Thiel cabal fund company, to start handling some of their federal contracts.
It's just another piece of that puzzle of how this...
The teal acolytes and those connected in that whole universe are getting further ingratiated there.
I also want to point out, we did report at Last American Vagabond months ago, and I know we talked about it on our previous panels here, the role that Howard Lutnick is playing.
Steve mentioned Brock Pierce, but Howard Lutnick as well is a big component of this and a big piece of the puzzle.
His connections to Tether, of course, him as Commerce Secretary.
Again, I say it half-jokingly, but also, like, I told you so, we told you so, the information was all there, so no big surprises for me, but hopefully putting it together in this format that you have, Catherine, as well as the article I just put out, which similarly tried to just summarize all these different areas that we're seeing Peter Thiel connected companies,
and of course, Palantir directly.
Palantir partnering with the IRS, SpaceX and Palantir saying they're going to build the Golden Dome over America.
Palantir helping ICE find immigrants and probably more people in the future.
And then, as I mentioned, the payment platform.
Also, Peter Thiel is getting involved with nuclear energy through a company called General Matter, which is starting to partner with the Department of Energy.
Yeah, so just there's so many examples.
And of course, that doesn't even get into Israel and the connections there.
So, I mean, even going beyond just the focus of the digital aspect, which is obviously a big cornerstone of the puzzle.
We're seeing Palantir and Peter Thiel and the whole PayPal mafia all up in the federal government, various contracts in different ways.
Most definitely.
And I think there's a surveillance point where I'm going to definitely bring a lot of that in in regard to Palantir in particular.
It's a total information awareness, like obvious kind of development, and excellent points in general.
To the actual rant point you brought up, and I was curious if Catherine or anybody else, what your thoughts are on this, because I had this pulled up in the overlap to the digital currency conversation.
Now, you know, any real financial dynamic like this would be one more way they could kind of coerce you into that.
But I wondered, Catherine, anybody else would give any thoughts on this.
So I just wanted to jump in because and pick up on a couple of things that Derek said.
One, if you look at, if you and I were, if this group of people were to go into the U.S. government and say, we're going to get to the bottom of where the fraud's been going on and stop it.
We would have gone to HUD and DOD.
If we said we're going to build a social credit system to control, what we would do is we would go to the Treasury payment data, the Social Security payment data, and the IRS payment data, which is exactly where they went, like a heat-seeking missile.
And we would basically download that data and provide it to our partnership between Musk's AI company and Palantir.
And if you read the Wired reports, that's exactly what they did.
So, you know, at one point, Naomi Wolf said that's a trillion dollars worth of data.
And in fact, if you look at high quality payment data of that kind, you know, I don't think that's an unreasonable estimate.
So if you look at the data game, they are clearly building...
You know, the control grid and Palantir's role in this is critical, which is why I'm so glad you guys have published this recent piece.
I also want to mention something else.
Does everybody remember when we would send over pallets of cash to Iraq?
Okay.
Stable coins working through mobile payment systems are the new pallets of cash that are going to go global.
So this is just like one company used to tender for the stock of another company in the market.
The U.S. is planning using stablecoins, which, of course, bring more money into the dollar and the dollar market share.
They are literally, through the mobile payment system, going to try and tender for as many citizens worldwide as they can get into the system.
And if you look at some of the planning, not only do they plan to send out the stablecoins, but they're planning on issuing It looks to me like massive amounts of credit.
So literally everybody around the world can borrow money in stablecoins and then they get you on the stablecoin platform.
And they think they can get billions of people moved into the dollar channel through stablecoins.
And if you look at their sort of vision of where the dollar system is going to go.
It's absolutely critical.
So this is a completely global game.
The other thing I wanted to mention is right now, inflation was caused by the massive injection by the Fed during the going direct reset.
But the thing that is pushing inflation now and is going to continue to push it is deglobalization.
Globalization is very inflating of the real cost of goods sold, but it's happening on the real side, real asset side of the balance sheet.
And I think part of what they're hoping to do is match it with this unbelievable flood.
I mean, if you think we're in a ridiculous debt bubble now, when you see this, this is going to be something else.
I want to just jump in real quick on Thiel, just quickly, because you mentioned the nuclear aspect of the investments.
We also have to remember that Thiel was
Essential in the rise of Facebook.
Obviously, Palantir is concerning.
You mentioned Alex Karp.
Bilderberg's coming up literally, I think, within the month over in Switzerland.
I'm going to be keeping my eye on that.
But one of the things that has been downplayed is the fact that we've had Meta now announce that they're building a data center in Kentucky almost the size of Lower Manhattan.
And they'll have all the energy in the world, again, to run these AI data centers.
Well, it's Meta, it's Google, etc., that have now invested in these mini nuclear plants that they are going to have supposedly on site.
So they plan on powering these things with mini plants around these areas.
Remember what I just said.
These centers are the size.
Go watch the map overlay.
Of lower Manhattan, how big this will be.
Think about that for a moment.
That type of technology is now going to be fast-tracked, not for you and I, not for cheaper power, but for AI-driven authoritarianism.
I mean, that's a legit point that no one seems to be talking about.
And again, Thiel was essential in the come-up of Zuckerberg, Facebook, Meta.
Everything.
And just one more point on social media.
You know, we had that executive order and I was very skeptical of it in the beginning.
I think we did a forum on it where we're going to stop the censorship of social media.
Where's that?
That's not real.
Even yesterday, I posted, you know, I've got dead kids in my feed every day.
I don't know if you guys saw it, but twin girls, four years old in Gaza, dead.
I reposted it.
I said, hey.
You know, when am I going to stop seeing dead kids in my feed?
I had people.
And now, they weren't in the United States of America, but they're not allowed to even watch that video in Europe and places in South America.
It's just, they comply.
And that's X, that supposed free speech platform with his muskernuts friend.
So I'll stop my little tirade, and I will allow somebody else to comment.
Going back to what Catherine was saying there about the global nature of this, and obviously we're talking about the impact of people like Thiel and Musk and Anderson and people like that in American politics and their impact and leverage in the Trump administration.
But if you go back to, I think it was 2009, Thiel wrote an article where he spoke about his ambitions to create, and this is a direct quote, a new world currency.
It was 2010 and we just played the full text of it on the show yesterday.
So the notion of creating a new world currency with using dollar-backed stablecoins, I think that if you can look at a plan I think that was at least...
Being thought about in 2019 in terms of making it a practical plan and something that I always refer to as a speech that Mark Carney gave at the G7 symposium in Jackson Hole in 2019 where he spoke about this notion of what he called a synthetic hegemonic currency.
Now shortly following that That's when Facebook, which obviously Teal was instrumental in, and I think Zuckerberg, when Teal left the board of Meta, when it had become Meta, I think he was quoted as saying that he considered Teal to be a mentor in business,
in industry, and in life.
So Zuckerberg was obviously impressed with Teal.
This notion of this synthetic hegemonic currency, Carney said that there were options on the table.
So, you know, I mean, you know, things like central bank digital currency, but also in particular, a stable coin started by Facebook and Facebook called Libra, which then became Diem.
And that stable coin, funnily enough, Facebook itself, in an SEC filing, I keep saying Facebook, but I can't remember quite when they became Meta, but in an SEC filing,
they openly stated in that filing that they didn't think that the Libra project would work because they realized that the regulation wasn't in place to allow it to work.
Also, when you think about the people like Teal, they're very close to people that are obsessed with this notion of something called accelerationism, which is wrapped up in this notion of something called the dark enlightenment and all this.
They believe in creative destruction of markets.
They think this is an important tool to be deployed.
Well, if you look at Libra, that looks like...
An aggressive attack on the monetary system in terms, if you consider the monetary system to be a market, that was an aggressive attack on that and certainly on the traditional role of the central banks in terms of them being able to issue money.
That created the framework for the regulatory process.
And, you know, we had people like Thiel and Zuckerberg were meeting with Trump during his first administration in private, for private meetings, when Zuckerberg was being quizzed about Libra in front of the world and certainly in front of the Senate and,
you know, in front of various committees.
They were having private meetings.
And lo and behold, shortly after those meetings, The DiEM project, which it had become by then, suddenly became, initially it was going to be backed by a basket of currencies and then it was backed after these meetings,
it was suddenly going to be backed one to one, pegged to the dollar to the US dollar.
Well, when you look more closely at the notion of Interoperable currency, which is what the Bank for International Settlements has been absolutely obsessed about for many, many years.
We've already seen things like a team at Warwick University.
They've already onboarded in the US using from fiat to a stablecoin, a USDC stablecoin, so this is circles.
And then...
Off-boarded at the other end in France, directly in Euros, in real time, across borders, with very, very, very low transaction fees, with a transaction that absolutely tracked exchange rates by 0.02%.
So that 0.02% variance was more than saved.
It was more than covered by the extremely cheap transaction fees.
So they are building, I suggest, and I think that the US move towards US dollar-backed stablecoins is very much part of this.
They are building a global network of interoperable...
Digital currencies and I think when the more that you look at it when you look think about what Carney might have been talking about when he was talking about a synthetic hegemonic currency is that rather than rather than having And he was very much concerned about protecting the power of the dollar as well.
And clearly with people like Teal backing things like Paxos, which is a one-to-one US dollar custodian of its digital stablecoin, things are moving in that direction.
And it would seem that, you know, in all likelihood, US dollar denominated stablecoins are going to be the dominant kind of currency in a new model of international monetary and financial system, which is going to be wholly synthetic and therefore centrally controlled.
So, Ian, let me ask you a question.
It looks to me like they're building this parallel track with stablecoins.
So that they can bypass a lot of the national controls in the current banking system.
So you're looking, in a funny kind of way, you're doing same old, same old.
You're just skipping all the different tollbooths.
Is that fair to say?
Yeah.
I mean, I think things are still up in the air.
I think there was a notable...
The exchange between Augustine Carstens and...
I can't remember her name now.
She's an academic anyway.
Oh, no.
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
She was an academic and he was saying that, you know, if we're going to have these stablecoins that are backed by US Treasuries, why shouldn't we just, you know, UCBDC?
Wholesale CBDCs and, you know, trade assets as we normally have, but just use wholesale CBDC.
And her response to him was, well, why should we bother with this third party?
Why do we have to trust central banks with all their strange biases?
Why can't we trust Paxos?
No, so I'll tell you why.
Right now, under the law, the Fed's problem is they cannot do CBDC without authorizing legislation, and it still is under the rubric of Congress, and it's one of the reasons they're trying to get a constitutional convention.
It's one of the reasons they've been trying to wiggle out.
But right now, the Fed has too many disclosure obligations, and Congress still has jurisdiction.
And that is a real sticking point if you have to go get legislation and admit what you're really going to do.
And stablecoin is a way to do the same thing because it's the owners of the New York Fed who are going to control all the stablecoins.
And there's one layer removed between congressional oversight and you can have a lot more secrecy and wiggle out of Congress.
That's why.
Yeah, no, definitely.
I mean, if you think about the implications of what Trump was talking about in terms of freedom cities, so this notion of these deregulated anything-goes sort of free-for-all development zones where the multinational corporations can research and develop to their heart's content,
then, you know, companies like Tether...
We'll be able to do whatever they want with regard to the development of their stablecoins within those freedom zones.
Literally, literally beyond the jurisdiction.
Well, it seems like from from what they've suggested beyond the jurisdiction of the federal government, if if they establish these, quote unquote, freedom cities.
So they are they are they are trying to create a privatized, a totally privatized.
International monetary and financial system, I think.
I think you're right.
The question is whether these development zones, whether Prospera Dynamics or not, are actually just another part of that same agenda and they're just being presented that way.
Like in Prospera, using Starlink with the same...
I think it's kind of like trial balloons for the same problem.
And they're using cryptocurrency.
It's all kind of the same thing.
But I think you're right.
The way you can see this developing is clearly from a globalist perspective.
I want to point out that from Facebook and Libra, imagine if that was Iran that did that.
Would they just allow this to go?
It's clearly being allowed.
And I think it's interesting to what Catherine was bringing up in her article.
The Genius Act itself, as I think you were kind of alluding to, clearly...
Highlights that only the federal entities are the ones that are allowed to now do this, and they're just kind of taking control of the dynamic within it all.
And I think that in coupling that with the real ID national identification, I don't know why people can't see how this is developing, whether or not they want to admit that this is their plan.
It is the same agenda, which is kind of like the larger thing we're talking about today.
I don't know if, Kit, you wanted to have any comments on this.
I did.
I just was going to say that if you look at the history of the central bank digital currency issue, It explodes in 2020, and I think it was quite interesting.
We got to the point in late 2021, early 2022, where basically 150 of the 194 global nations are all developing their own.
And the stick in the mud on this issue was, weirdly enough, usually the United States.
All these countries were publishing reports saying digital currency is going to be great, and Congress would publish reports saying, yeah, but it might not be so great.
And I think there's lots of issues that go into that.
I think some of it was a fear from, like, the Empire Head Nation that it would undercut their legislative power.
And some of it is the odd position that America is in, like, economics-wise, where they use a lot more cash than a lot of Western countries do.
And so you have this sort of transition rebranding.
As Catherine said right at the beginning, basically, they're going to do a central bank digital currency.
They're just going to call it something else.
And as Ian pointed out with the interoperable issue, they're going to do a global currency, only it will be called 150 different things.
It's very much a question of linguistics and branding more than anything else.
Yes.
Well, let me also just really jump in.
I think also technology.
And what do I mean by that?
You know, if these people had their way, and Catherine talks about the Internet of Bodies pretty extensively in the article, they would love the Sam Altman WorldCoin brand, where in order to actually transact on this thing, you give up your biometrics out of the gates.
So while you're right, I do believe it's going to be, you know, 150 different things.
I think that they're going to integrate different types of technologies.
And just like you see with the consolidation of everything, they will weed out the ones that are less efficient and less surveillance and then ultimately try to get even beyond what Altman is doing with WorldCoin.
Yeah, and usually by some rationalization, by demonstrating why the ones that don't spy on you are not working as well, the efficiency dynamic, and justify it in that way.
And there's also the question of...
How do you get people to go along with it as well?
Because I know just from...
If we have something called the digital pound in this country, we don't yet, but we will.
And if we have it, and you have to give up your fingerprints or your thumbprints or your retina scans or whatever to use it, people will be much more likely to give that up for a digital pound, which is an extension of something they know, than for the global world coin, which is a brand new thing they don't.
So you sort of have to use that language to get people on board.
This is a digital dollar.
It's like the old dollar, and you need your fingerprints.
Yeah, it's the same with, they've got this notion of what they call vendor agnostic.
So with digital ID products, the United Nations, certainly in the World Bank, are likely to use this term vendor agnostic products.
So it's independent.
The creator of the product is independent.
It's not part of any kind of collected network or anything like that.
Despite the fact that they talk about everything being interoperable in terms of its Machine readable messaging exchange systems.
So already they've started talking about ISO 2022 compliant digital ID products.
So even though they're all produced by different people and they look different, somebody might be using RealID, somebody might be using a European driving license or whatever, they're all made by different companies, Idemia or whoever.
They all have an exchangeable machine-readable data so that that can be exchanged.
And the World Bank have already toyed with this ID4D idea of having a universal ledger.
For all digital ID, which would just simply gather up this data from all digital ID products.
Well, with regard to stable coins, there are already stable coins that have been issued, and I'm struggling to remember the names of them, which are using the same kind of what we might call vendor agnostic technology,
i.e.
that they're all built on platforms and on blockchains, which have...
But to an agreed standard.
And I think Swift have already spoken about the stablecoins that could adopt this interchangeable or interoperable.
Since 2023, yeah.
Yeah.
So it's another ISO or standard for machine-readable digital interchange information.
And there are stablecoins that are already compliant with that.
So this notion of a kind of global network of vendor agnostic digital currency products all working together, and if the Bank for International Settlements gets its way interchangeable across borders instantaneously,
you start moving to a situation where, you know, I mean, I question whether even what the value of things like a reserve currency would be in such a system.
The reserve currency is based on what's already been stolen, Ian.
I mean, you know that.
You know that.
It's based off of what's already been thieved.
And then going forward, anything that's described as a stablecoin just means regime approved.
It doesn't mean that there's any actual stability to it.
It just means that the overarching economic sphere that's been in control for the last many centuries is still in control.
That's all a stablecoin means.
Catherine, I know you wanted to chime in.
I just wanted to mention one of the things you see that's very interesting.
Lots of collections of short videos up at Solari, and I put a link in the chat to the Financial Transaction Freedom videos.
It's about 100 short videos, starting out with the famous one of Karsten's, basically saying we can make the rules and enforce them centrally.
But the second one is Neil Kashkari, a former Treasury official who used to be or is now president of the Minneapolis Fed.
I don't know if you...
Can you play it, Ryan?
It's only a minute.
You're muted, Ryan.
The Carson one?
No, the second one.
Okay, go ahead and keep talking.
I'll grab it.
Okay, so what you're seeing is the more and more people start realizing how this stuff really works, you're finding all sorts of people with very successful careers or wealthy in America saying, wait a minute, if we don't have our fundamental freedoms,
they can take all our assets.
And they're starting to realize that they're on the menu.
And here you have a president of one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks saying Americans should never do a CBDC.
And for the reasons, you know, the same reasons, I'm sure he would know why they should never do, you know, interoperable and programmable stablecoins.
Anyway, if you want to play it, Ryan, it's just a minute and it's very impactful.
Yeah, I just noticed in the chat, Derek, did you want to comment before if you have to get out of here?
I can wait till after Katherine.
Let's play this first.
...anybody, anybody at the Fed or outside of the Fed to explain to me what problem this is solving.
I can send anybody in this room $5 with Venmo right now.
Right?
No, seriously.
So what is it that a CBDC could do that Venmo can't do?
Is that it?
No, that's not it.
Is there any reason it stopped?
No?
It seems to be playing in the background.
Let me remove it really quickly and add it again.
I'll bring up Derek's article if you want to talk about this, Derek.
Oh, sure.
I don't want to intrude, but I wanted to go back just briefly to the point that Ian was making about the Freedom Cities.
This was reported earlier in April by Reuters.
About, of course, Ken Howery, who we pointed out months ago, is connected to Peter Thiel, and they've got him now in the position of ambassador for Denmark, which is, of course, part of their desire to make Greenland part of the U.S. as they build the tech native North America.
This report is just showing how, I think you mentioned, Ian, did you mention Praxis?
I think you did.
Okay, well, so this ties into some of the companies and some of the things you were talking about.
Praxis is one of the companies.
There's also another one called Promos, I think it is.
And Promos, Promos Capital.
And this is tied to Andreessen.
It's tied to Peter Thiel, tied to Lonsdale.
Again, the whole PayPal mafia.
But what this article is just talking about is that these discussions are already ongoing.
And that whole cabal is already one of the places they're planning to do it.
And this may be one of the reasons besides resources they're so interested in.
Greenland, apparently they're already in discussions.
According to the article, Praxis co-founder Dryden Brown told Reuters that companies have already approached them about helping them to establish a so-called freedom city in Greenland.
And yeah, this is just part of that overall move.
So whether or not it happens in the US or Trump and his team really do try to take control of Greenland in some capacity, these ideas are being discussed.
And it's the same people tied to...
Prospera in Honduras, which Ryan mentioned.
You have, what's his name?
Friedman, the grandson of Milton Friedman's involved in that.
Patty Friedman, I think.
Joe Lonsdale, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, of course.
So, yeah, these discussions are ongoing.
And I just want to insert one other thing before I do have to head out in just a couple of minutes, because I was reading some of the comments, and I know that people in all of our collective audiences maybe know some of these details, if not all the details, if not all the specifics.
And they're, I think, counting on us in some ways, maybe unnecessarily, to also think of solutions.
What are we actually going to do about this?
Because we're describing a world that each of us know there is no existing within it and still maintaining freedom and privacy, that there has to be alternatives.
This is what I've tried to focus on quite a bit.
So I just want to encourage everybody who's listening to this to take heart that the Independent Media Alliance is about trying to raise awareness and talk about things that you might not be hearing from others.
Mainstream alternative media, but we're also very much aware of the need for solutions.
I know Catherine's focused on this as well over at Solari and others have.
So, you know, we don't have the perfect answer for you and your life necessarily.
Everybody's got different resources, financial situations, desires, etc., etc.
But absolutely, we need to resist these systems as much as possible, whether that's at the airport, whether that's real ID stuff, whether that's...
You know, just checking out at an Amazon store at the airport that they want you to use, you know, touch-free everything.
You just have to resist these things in all the ways you can, big and small, including using cash, including rejecting the systems that they're trying to put before us.
And I do think local community is super key on that because I don't know if any of us can do it in isolation.
It's going to take us coming together.
I don't think there's very much hope of any sort of political solution to prevent what we can see is on the horizon.
So if we're not going to wait on that and not just trust the plan, then we need to count on ourselves, count on our communities, our churches, whatever it is you got, your own family, extended family, and really start having these hard conversations.
So find the people near you who care, who can see what's going on, and start having those conversations, and then more importantly, start coming up with an action plan.
Where's your red line in the sand?
What are you willing or unwilling to do?
If it means maintaining privacy and freedom into the long term, not just for your life, but for the coming generations.
Because if you don't know where that line is, then the next thing you're just going to accept the digital IDs when they roll out.
You're going to accept facial recognition at the airport.
And then before you knew it, all the things you've been watching podcasts about and watching documentaries about for years are going to be your reality.
And I don't think anybody wants that.
Throw that in there.
I'm glad you brought it up, Derek.
What's funny, we discussed before starting that one of the central parts of today was to discuss the solutions.
What's funny is we haven't even gotten past 0.1.
It just showed you how much information there are around so many different things.
And so we can just use that as a segue.
I'll play the rest of that clip.
Hopefully that plays for you, Catherine.
And then we can talk about the potential solution.
Okay.
Specifically for the digital currency.
So we'll see if this plays.
Anybody, anybody at the Fed or outside of the Fed to explain to me what problem this is solving.
I can send anybody in this room $5 with Venmo right now, right?
No, seriously.
So what is it that a CBDC could do that Venmo can't do?
And all I get is a bunch of hand-waving.
I get a bunch, well, maybe it's better for financial inclusion.
Maybe it's better for cross-border remittances.
Maybe.
Is there any evidence that it is?
And, you know, they say, well, what about China?
China is doing it.
Well, I can see why China would do it.
If they want to monitor every one of your transactions, you could do that with the central bank digital currency.
You can't do that with Venmo.
If you want to impose negative interest rates, you could do that with the central bank digital currency.
You can't do that with Venmo.
And if you want to directly tax customer accounts, you could do that with the central bank digital currency.
You can't do that with Venmo.
So I get why China would be interested.
Why would the American people be for that?
Okay, so here we have the president of one of the 12 federal reserve banks in 2023 at Columbia saying we should never do a central bank digital currency.
So I think one of the reasons the Fed has been slow walking this, you know, number one is they have to get legislation and they can't get legislation without telling the truth about what they're really up to and having a debate that they can't, that they wouldn't win before the election.
Throughout the institutions of the United States, they don't want their grandchildren to be slaves.
So I think the more knowledgeable people get about what's really going on, the more you're going to see real friction in the system.
And that's positive.
I'd love to jump to just solutions and to the very end of the article to kind of piggyback on what Derek was talking about.
On kind of it's going to take more than one person and many people coming together.
And then Catherine in the chat talked about states being able to change things.
So here I am in Iowa and one of the things that just visually and verbally bothers me that I actually share with my nieces, they see me physically get angry, is when I see the spraying in the skies, right?
I don't include them in much.
But when I see that, boy, that makes me angry.
As you know, I put out a film in 2013 called Shade the Motion Picture, going over the bioengineering, the geoengineering, Bill Gates, all this stuff.
And here we are.
So the reason I bring it up with solutions is kind of a frustration point as well, but people coming together.
Here in Iowa, just about two, three months ago, my state senator, a representative named Jeff Shipley, who I've had lunch with, is a very good man.
Actually brought legislation, anti-geoengineering legislation, to the House, to the state.
And people got to speak and the whole nine and they tried to ban it.
Now, my friend Todd McGreevey, he runs a print publication here called the RC Reader since 1994.
And he went, he spoke there.
The Democratic opposition came to speak.
Todd was very familiar with this gentleman.
He was kind of surprised that he was here.
He was wondering why he was there.
Well, he had his whole little canned speech ready to go.
And that canned speech goes like we've heard so many times.
There is no evidence that this is actually happening.
But if they are doing this to protect me from global warming, I want to be safe.
And folks, that was just part one of this IMA, Independent Media Alliance, discussion.
Make sure you check out part two.
As always, it's not about left or right.
It is always about right and wrong.
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