Episode 1660 Scott Adams: Guessing What Putin Will Do, And Lots of Other Fun Stories Today
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Democrat hesitancy to unmask
Writing style, as unique as a fingerprint
Zelensky doesn't know what Putin wants?
Putins top reason for wanting Ukraine?
Ukraine war/defense possible strategies
Does Russia fear US sanctions?
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the finest moment of your entire existence.
It's called the beginning of coffee with Scott Adams.
There's no better time and nothing could be more important.
And this is where we decide all world events.
You don't know this, but a lot of the simulation is authored right here by us.
So let's go author us up a better world.
But first, we'll need a little fortification.
A little thing we call caffeine, or possibly the beverage of your choice.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gels, a stein, a canteen drink or a glass, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine the other day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
Famous across the world, especially in South Africa, where I believe there are some people watching right now.
I think it's 5pm.
So to my South African viewers, this one's for you and also for everybody else.
Go! Ah...
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's good.
Just as good as I thought it would be.
Well, what's happening today?
Lots of things.
An MSNBC reporter was just on the air recently saying that it's going to be tough to get Democrats to unmask, even as the governors are starting to be in favor of it, the blue states, and even as the science is clearly indicating that masks have, you know, vanishingly small benefit at this point.
So... What's the problem with the Democrats, the actual voters and the citizens who don't want to give up masks?
Well, this MSNBC reporter says he thinks it has to do with the liberal identity, that once your identity gets wrapped up in mask-wearing, like the mask people are the good people, and you want to be the good people.
And I would say that this MSNBC reporter...
Probably is right.
This does look like an identity problem.
Now, do you remember how the Democrats always follow the science?
Oh, not you Republicans.
No, no, no.
Only Democrats can follow the science.
So where did they follow it?
If they were following the science, wouldn't they take their masks off?
Because science just said it's okay.
I'm pretty sure. I mean, I don't think the CDC has said it yet, but the science is pretty clear, I mean, at this point.
Omicron is 100% of the infections, which I think it is.
I think Omicron is now basically 100%, the variants within Omicron.
So I think this proves that the Democrats were never following the science.
Can I say that?
If Democrats won't take their masks off when the science changes, that's proof.
Right? That's proof that they weren't following the science from the beginning.
They were following their fear, and they were following their identity.
And it turns out their fear and their identity took them to the same place.
Surprise! Here's a mystery that was solved, that apparently was already solved.
But it's more solved than it was.
Apparently we have a pretty good idea who is behind Q now.
Now, it's the same names that have been bandied about for a long time.
So a lot of people thought that these individuals, Paul Ferber, a South African software developer, and Ron Watkins, an American tech guy also, I think...
And they were long rumored to be the ones behind Q. They both deny it.
But the New York Times has a story about a software analysis of the writing styles.
So they analyzed their writing styles of Q, compared it to the tweets that we know about from those two individuals, and they say they can even identify when one of them left and the other took over.
So I guess the fingerprint, if you will, the fingerprint of how you write is so clear that they can't even tell when the transition happened.
Now, do you believe it?
How many of you believe that, let's say, if somebody tweeted enough on their own, you could identify their writing in another context?
I'm saying almost all no's.
Interesting. A few yes's.
But on the Locals platform, almost all are saying no.
What about you, YouTubes?
YouTubers? I see probably more yeses.
Why is that? Now we're changing to more yeses on Locals.
Alright, let me give you my opinion as a professional writer.
I'll tell you one of the things that I've been doing for 30 years, I guess.
Since the dawn of email, when I first started publishing Dilbert, a few years into it, I started getting 1,000 emails a day or something from fans.
And I would read them quickly, but I'd try to read them all, actually.
And I would guess, before I saw the name, so I wouldn't know who the email was from, just some random fan, I would guess the gender, based on how the letter was written.
And I found that I could guess the gender just with uncanny accuracy.
Well over 90% of the time, you can guess the gender just by reading it.
Did you know that? Now, this is anecdotal.
I didn't go through a rigorous scientific process.
But I think it's actually pretty easy to identify gender.
Now, this is in the context of somebody voluntarily writing something in which they're not trying to heighten their gender.
So if they're voluntarily writing something, it's just easy.
You can just see it in the writing.
Now, can you take that further and identify an individual?
And I will tell you from all of my experience as a writer, yes.
Do you know why I don't have a ghostwriter for Dilbert?
Anybody? Does anybody know why, after all these years, when I could easily...
Easily hire a writer and hire another artist and then just go vacation all day and never write Dilbert again.
So why do I do it?
The reason is there's literally no one else who can do it.
Literally. If somebody else could write in my style, they would have already done it.
There would already be some other comic called Dilbert just drawn differently.
But you really can't write in the style of other people.
What about Shakespeare? Well, I guess there's some people who think that that might have been a group effort, so that's a bad example.
But take whoever's your best writer in the world, whoever you think that is.
Who wrote Harry Potter?
I can never... I blank on that author's name all the time.
The Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling.
In my humble opinion...
J.K. Rowling is one of the best writers of all time.
Not just successful, obviously, but just in terms of being able to form a sentence.
Oh, my God.
That woman can form a sentence.
Like, just crazy. Peggy Noonan...
Peggy Noonan, another great example, of somebody who's not just successful, but, oh my God, can write a sentence that you just will read over and over again.
If somebody can write a sentence that you'll read more than once, like you'll stop at the end of the sentence and say, I've got to do that one again.
And you go to the beginning of the sentence just to read it again.
Like those two writers I mentioned can do that.
George Will, another one, yeah.
So... You really can't reproduce other people's writing.
You think you can.
Because you think, oh, I'll do an impression.
Yeah, you think you could do an impression of Trump's writing.
I'll bet you can't. I'll bet you can't.
Now, I'm not going to say you couldn't in a limited case.
You definitely could write one tweet that looked exactly like a Trump tweet.
You could definitely do that.
But you couldn't do a body of work.
That looked just like Trump.
You just couldn't do it. It's not doable.
And I think it's as distinct as a fingerprint.
So while the two names of the alleged Q writers were known for a long time, this analysis seemed to confirm it.
So there you go.
Somebody says, any CIA agent?
Well, we do not know if either of these people have any connections to any intelligence agencies.
I'd say that is not in evidence.
Let's talk about Ukraine.
Do you think anybody knows anything about Ukraine?
Yesterday I got a few comments from people who knew what they were talking about, who understand world politics and Russia stuff better than I do, which is a lot of people.
They had comments along the lines of, people like me should stay out of it because boomers are stupid and we don't know what's going on and nobody understands Putin like they do, I guess.
And I realized that...
My comments on Russia are misleading.
And I feel like I need to confess something publicly.
Is anybody ready for a confession?
And it goes like this.
When I talk about a topic on these live streams and when I'm tweeting...
I like to be as honest as any human can be, because that's the business model.
Like, if I lied to you, it doesn't really work.
Like, there wouldn't be a purpose to it, because how do you make money on that?
People would know it, and then it would just be nothing.
So, as much as I like to tell the truth, when you talk about Russia at the moment, you are actually influencing the events.
And that's my problem. Now, you might say to yourself, Scott, you're not influencing any events.
To which I say, everybody who has a sizable audience is.
Because if the only people we're influencing are other people within our ecosystem, you know, the people who follow me, etc., well, they are also boosting messages, being influenced, influencing other people.
So you can't really look at the size of my audience...
To determine what impact anything I say would say.
Because I only have to influence one person, right?
A different person.
Each time, perhaps.
But let's say I influence one person who followed me who happened to be influential themselves.
Do you think anybody who follows me who is also influential?
Yeah. I mean, there's a number of members of Congress follow me on Twitter.
So at least there are people who are influential within America.
Who would hear what I say?
So here's the question.
Do I have an obligation to just tell you the cleanest version of the truth, as I say it, or is my obligation to persuade?
Because remember, this is life and death.
This is a war.
This would be the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. Do I have...
Am I cleared morally and ethically?
Can I avoid persuading in this case?
Let me put that into a direct question.
Let's say I imagined I could make some difference.
That's a stretch. I guess we'd all agree on that.
But suppose I imagined I could have some influence.
What would be more ethical?
To try to persuade against war, or to be as clear and clean and honest as I possibly can, and then let you make your decisions.
Right. Not to lie.
Not to lie. Right.
So I won't lie.
So I'm not asking you whether I should lie.
That's important. So I'm not saying lying versus not lying.
I'm saying honest in both cases, But if you use hyperbole, that's not really lying, especially if you're predicting the future.
It's more like exaggerating, and people usually know it.
All right, here's what my critics didn't understand about my opinions.
And this will come clear as I talk about some of this Russia stuff.
I guess I'm going to hold this opinion until I give you a little more context, and then we'll circle back to it.
So if we're trying to figure out what is happening in Ukraine, here's some background.
You know that Ukraine gave up its nukes at one point, but apparently they were Russia's nukes and they were just getting them back.
But you hate the precedent that a country gives up its nukes and then is vulnerable.
Right? So it kind of looks like that, although they were Russian nukes, so maybe it's a different situation.
But that's one factor.
Zelensky says he wants to meet with Putin because he doesn't know what Russia wants.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that Zelensky literally doesn't know what Putin wants?
Well, remember I said if I could meet with Putin for an hour, I could clear this all up?
I think Zelensky thinks the same thing.
If he could find out what is the number one most important thing...
Then there would be something to negotiate about.
But if you think there are several things which Russia wants, and Putin doesn't tell you which one is the big one, you can't negotiate.
There's nothing to negotiate, because you'd just be throwing things at the problem without any precision whatsoever.
But if you could get Putin to say, look, I like national defense, I like selling gas, I want strategic advantage, whatever.
If you could figure out what his top thing was, then you might find out some kind of counteroffer for the most important thing, and then you'd have something to work with.
But he's not giving us anything to work with.
So I think Zelensky's instinct to see if you could get him to give up what his top priority is...
I would do that.
I mean, who knows if it's productive?
But if you don't do it, you would feel like you'd missed a step, I think.
So I asked in a Twitter poll a bunch of mostly Americans who follow me...
What did you think was Putin's main reason for wanting Ukraine?
And I gave three choices, but maybe these are incomplete.
I said, national defense, Russian glory, or economics?
Now, of course, these are all connected, right?
You know, defense and economics are connected pretty closely.
But still, you can think of them separately.
And your answers were roughly even.
Roughly even. So last I checked, it was like 28% for national defense...
34% for Russian glory, 38% for economics.
Now, if the reason is economics, doesn't that mean that capturing Ukraine would be a positive for the GDP of Russia, right?
So I asked Ian Bremmer, who, by the way, you should be following.
Are you all following Ian Bremmer?
On the Russia stuff, the China stuff, any of these international relations stuff, you want to follow Ian Bremmer.
Now, you don't have to agree with him, but in terms of context and being connected to stuff, I would say he's a must on Twitter.
So Ian Bremmer, make sure you follow him.
So I asked him in some Twitter exchanges if he thought that Russia would come out ahead or behind economically.
What do you think? I'll ask you.
Do you think that Russia would come out ahead or behind economically if they do a full invasion?
I'm seeing mostly behind.
A few aheads, but mostly behind.
So Ian's prediction was also that they would come out behind and that they might even go into a recession based on the Well, I suppose not only the cost of war, because it's pretty expensive, but also the sanctions.
Now, do you believe that prediction?
Do you believe that Russia would suffer a recession, which is not permanent and wouldn't affect Putin much himself?
Does that sound about right?
That the worst we could do, the worst thing we could do to him is a recession, and that wouldn't probably last forever.
Everybody agree? So would that be enough to stop him?
Now, Ian Bremmer, I guess, would say no.
That he would accept that.
I think he did say that. Ian said that.
That Putin would accept a recession to gain control of Ukraine.
Now, if that's true, is it because he thinks in the long run it will be economically positive?
What do you think? I would say short-run, a recession is largely guaranteed.
Close to guaranteed. Nothing's guaranteed.
But in the long run, do you think if Putin could reduce his cost of holding Ukraine so the military cost goes down over time, finds a way around these sanctions, or maybe the sanctions drop off after 10 years or something, does he end up with a long-term gain, because Ukraine has resources, does he end up with a long-term gain that just demolishes his short-term cost?
And would Putin do that at his current age?
At Putin's current age, would he make a 20-year bet on Russia?
I don't know that he would.
A 20-year bet?
I don't know. Maybe.
Maybe. Because he could be still in charge when he's 85 or something.
Very possible. So I would say there's a little bit of a mystery...
About what's going on.
Andres Backhouse thought that if you look at Russia's history over the last 300 years, they like to conquer weaker neighbors.
And so maybe it's nothing but an impulse to conquer your weaker neighbor.
And that's all it is.
And everything else is just rationalizations and stuff like that.
Now, I don't think it's that simple.
But there might be some of that in there.
There might be a little bit of we always conquer our weaker neighbors because we can.
So it creates a little buffer zone there.
So I think that's in there too.
But here's where I get back to having an opinion versus persuading.
If Putin knows exactly the costs of attacking, I think he's likely to do it.
If he knew the costs, in other words, if he knew that the worst thing that would happen is a recession that lasted five to ten years, I think he would go ahead and attack.
What do you think? If he knew that was his only price, do you think he'd attack five to ten years of recession?
I think yes.
More likely yes than no.
Now, how can somebody like me...
Who's just a person talking on a live stream with a limited audience?
How could I change the economic equation?
Could I do it? Let me ask you.
Could I personally, personally, just me, with whatever effect I could have, could I change the cost of invasion?
The answer is yes.
Yes. Here's how.
In economic terms, uncertainty is expensive.
Uncertainty is expensive.
So the higher the uncertainty, the more expensive in terms of how you approach the decision.
And we know that Putin is a rational player, right?
Putin is super rational and smart.
So he is going to understand that the higher the risk, the higher the price.
So when I say things like I did on Twitter...
That Putin might be a week away from having North Korea's economy, people criticized me and said, Scott, Scott, Scott.
You don't know much about international relations.
Because not only does Russia have cash and gold reserves, but they have the most important thing to sell that somebody's definitely going to buy, which is energy, gas.
And... If they were to cut off gas to Europe, they would freeze Europe in the winter.
So Germany, I think half of its energy comes from Russia.
So Russia basically has a lock on stuff, and they can kind of do what they want because they've got control.
But here's how I can raise the price for Putin.
By increasing his uncertainty.
Now, I can't do it directly, because one assumes that Putin is not watching this livestream.
But I can put the idea into the public that Russia doesn't know what's coming.
They don't know what's coming militarily.
Remember when I said...
Do you remember when I said what kind of drone attacks, what kind of anti-tank weaponry does Ukraine have?
How hard will they fight?
What kind of secret technology has NATO and the United States provided to Ukraine that nobody knows about?
The reason that I talk about how many types of exotic weapons Ukraine could have is not just because it's totally clear and true.
It's not true that I know what they have.
It's true that we don't know what they have.
That is clear and true.
We don't know what they have.
And therefore, Russia doesn't know what they have.
And I like to remind them.
And if I can say that point enough, maybe other people will repeat it.
And maybe it reaches the attention of the Russians that they haven't given enough thought to the uncertainty of this particular war.
Because I think their frame of reference is fighting countries that have a lower technical capability.
Am I right? If you've only fought countries that have low technical capability, and now you go up against Ukraine, which individually doesn't have high technical capability, but they have friends who have what I call the good stuff.
In theory, every American weapons manufacturer should have already stepped up and said, can you test our new thing on the battlefield?
Can you test the new thing?
Because we need to test it in battle.
Nobody's seen it yet, and we're certainly not going to waste it in Afghanistan.
Because if you waste it in Afghanistan, people will see your weapon, and you might want to save that for a high-tech fight.
So, I would like Russia to do a little more thinking about what they don't know.
And what they don't know is what Ukraine has access to or could have access to within 24 hours of an attack.
So it might not be true that they have access to anything good right now.
But I'll bet it's nearby.
I'll bet it's staged.
I'll bet the best weapons that have ever been invented and never tested in an actual battle are somewhere near that theater.
Somewhere in the area, if you know what I mean.
You would just make sure you were ready in case somebody said, you know, maybe we need that anti-tank drone after all.
Can you fire that up and see what happens?
So, do you see the distinction?
When I'm talking about the war, I want to add uncertainty to it for the Russian side.
Without lying. Have I said anything that sounds like a lie?
No. I don't think so, because I'm not lying.
I'm just saying that they should spend more time thinking about what's under the bed, because they don't know.
Putin doesn't know what's under the bed, and let me tell you, I'm sure he didn't see it in Syria.
Right? If we have some good stuff, good stuff, And we've made it available to Ukraine.
He hasn't seen it yet.
So... One of the reasons that Biden might be calling his bluff, so to speak, is he knows that a major invasion would be a slaughter, possibly.
A slaughter of the invaders.
It's possible that the Russian army would be wiped out.
It's possible. I don't know what the odds are.
If you said, what are the odds?
I'd say low. 10%?
Would Putin take a 10% chance of losing this war?
What do you think? Maybe.
Maybe a 10% chance.
Would he take a 20% chance of losing?
Like actually just losing, flat out losing?
20% chance.
Would he take it? That's about where the risk-taking breaks down, isn't it?
For a military battle, you might take 9 to 1.
Well, you're not going to take four to one.
I don't think. I'm not a military guy, and every situation is different.
You're going to take a different risk for different opportunities.
So I would like Russia to know, through whoever wants to remind them, that they have no idea what kind of weapons are going to be thrown at them when they cross that border, and they have no way to know.
There is no way for them to know.
I don't think their intel would be that good.
Here's another factor, as also Ian Bremmer points out.
And by the way, his Twitter feed is just gold for this topic.
He points out that in 2008, Russia moved against Georgia.
In 2013, Russia moved in Syria.
Nobody stopped him.
In 2014, they moved again in Ukraine.
Nobody stopped him. In 2016, elections, according to Ian Bremmer, They meddled with those and didn't really pay a price for it.
So his point is that what you're seeing today is just an extension of that, which is Russia has realized that they can just take stuff and keep it.
And it works. So why not keep doing it?
And the answer is that the risk for each of these will be different, but apparently this is the one we care about.
You know what I mean? This is the one we care about.
I'm not sure we cared so much about the other ones.
Even the U.S. elections, the amount of meddling they did was so trivial it didn't make any difference.
I mean, if you've looked into it at all, you know that statement is true.
It didn't make any difference. It was beyond less than a high school attempt.
It didn't even look like professionals were involved at all.
Like, literally, it didn't look like any professionals were involved in meddling in the election.
Now, the hacking is different, but I think that's also unproven.
When I say unproven, I mean that I, as a citizen of the United States, don't believe what my intelligence agencies say about anything.
So, in that sense, it's unproven.
I ask this question.
How long do Russia's pipelines to anywhere, doesn't matter which direction, how long do they last if all-out war breaks down in Ukraine?
How long will the Russian pipelines last?
And then people said, Scott, Scott, Scott, you are such an idiot and possibly a boomer that you don't understand basic things about this situation.
The basic thing is that if you bombed the pipelines, Europe would freeze.
So basically you can't do it.
You can't bomb the pipelines because Russia would freeze.
What do you say? I'm sorry, that Europe would freeze.
What do you say to that?
Do you say that the pipelines are unassailable because the cost is too high?
Are the pipelines unassailable?
Okay? Point number one.
It doesn't matter if they're unassailable.
Let me put it this way.
If you're in Ukraine, and your country gets attacked by a foreign invader, and you had the capability...
Now, this is a big if. You had the capability to take out a pipeline in Russia, but, of course, the impact would be a big impact on European countries.
Like, big impact. People would die.
Lots of them. If you're a Ukrainian, and Europe had not protected you, would you take out the pipeline?
I would. I would.
Yeah, let me say that as clearly as possible.
If I were a Ukrainian, or any country, I'm American.
I'll just use America. Let's say there's a foreign invader.
Pick the country. It doesn't matter what country.
And they actually put boots on the ground in my country.
Boots on the ground in my country.
You think I'm not going to take out their pipeline?
I'll take it out the first day.
First day. You think I wouldn't freeze Europe if Europe hadn't helped me?
No, if Europe doesn't help me, I'm freezing their asses off tomorrow.
I'm going to freeze Germany's balls off if they let my country be attacked and they could have helped and they didn't.
Now, the big if is they could have helped but they didn't, right?
Could have helped but they didn't.
That's essential. Yeah.
Now, it doesn't matter...
If you and I think it would be the worst idea in the world to attack a pipeline, am I right?
It doesn't matter what we think.
I don't want them to attack a pipeline because I don't want Europe to freeze.
Europe doesn't want them to attack a pipeline.
United States doesn't want them to attack a pipeline, I don't think.
Russia doesn't. China doesn't.
There's nobody who wants the Ukrainians to attack a pipeline.
But I think the only thing that will matter is if they can...
I think that's all that matters.
If they can, they will.
I would. I mean, I would in a heartbeat.
So you just need at least one person like me in Ukraine who has the capability.
You just need one. What would it take to take out a pipeline?
Well, I think they're probably underground for the most part, so it's not easy.
But there are pumping stations.
If you take out the pumping station, the pipeline's useless.
You don't think Ukraine has the ability to drop a drone on a pumping station?
Now, presumably, there are defenses, national defenses and stuff.
But you don't think we could slip a drone into a pumping station and take it out?
Now, when I say we, I mean American technology, but not operated by Americans in this case.
If we've provided Ukraine any kind of a weapon that can travel a distance and take out a specific target...
Why wouldn't they use it? Now, it could be that we'll prevent them from using it if we have control.
But, all right, so backing up to my original point.
When I'm talking about what could happen in Russia, I'm not just trying to tell you what's clear and true.
I'm trying to influence.
And I want Russia to know, and this is very important for negotiating, listen to this part clearly.
If you're not willing to plunge Europe into ice, you might as well just get out of the way and let Russia have Ukraine.
Am I right? If you're not willing to plunge Europe into complete destruction, if you're not willing to do that, don't fight.
You're not ready. If you're not ready to fight to the death, you're not ready to fight.
You don't want to be in a fight if you're not ready to fight.
There's only one way to fight.
To the death. That's it.
There's no second way to do this.
There's no second way.
So think of my comments on this as persuasion to increase the price to Russia.
I would take out all of Europe's gas.
And trust me, I don't want Europe to suffer at all.
Like, I'm pro-Europe.
I like Europe.
I like Europe to do great.
Pro-Europe. But if you attack my country and Europe could have stopped it and didn't, well, you can all fucking freeze.
You know, that's just the way it's going to be.
War is war, right?
War is war. You're going to do what you have to do.
So, will the sanctions deter Russia?
Do they know how bad the sanctions could be?
Now, I've heard it said that they're somewhat self-sufficient and they could always sell more stuff to China.
I don't think they want to do that.
I don't think Russia wants to depend on one big customer.
That's a bad deal.
They want to sell to as many as they can so they can put their power, spread it out, and their influence, and also not be susceptible to one country wanting to turn them off.
So, I don't think Russia knows how bad a recession will be.
Now, apparently one of our weapons we have is denying them chips.
I don't know if they can get them from the black market.
But if we turn their economy into some equivalent of Iran, and I guess the sanctions wouldn't even be as bad as they are on Iran, I feel like we can make this economically unpalatable for Putin.
And I feel like he wouldn't attack if it's uneconomical.
Now I know that people smarter than I am would disagree because there's Russian glory and there's strategy and there's history and there's whatever Hillary Clinton tried to do to depose Putin and there's a million psychological reasons.
But here's my take on Russia.
Russia is basically a business with the military.
It's a gas company with nuclear weapons, right?
And I think that's exactly how they run it.
I think they run it as a business with a military.
And so in my opinion, Putin won't do something that's massively uneconomical, but he would do something that's temporarily uneconomical.
Who would agree with me there?
That he would do something temporarily uneconomical, but not in the long run, because it's a business.
So the question is, can the United States and the Allies put up a credible argument that this couldn't possibly work in the long run economically?
Could we credibly make sure he knows it's not going to pay off?
Now, you might say to yourself, but Scott, it's not about economics, it's about national defense.
Same thing. Economics and national defense are just the same thing.
Because you can't buy weapons without money, etc., etc.
So, I don't think that Biden has done as good a job as he could have done in scaring Putin.
Now, here's where we ask WWTD. What would Trump do?
If you wanted somebody to scare a leader of another country, who do you hire?
Biden or Trump?
It's Trump. It's Trump every time.
Now, you could argue that he was too, you know, too Russia-friendly, and maybe he'd be the wrong leader in some other way.
But if you just narrow it to just this one narrow question, who could scare Putin better?
Let me give you an example.
If Biden says to Putin, there will be unspecified sanctions that will make you sorry.
How scared is Putin?
Unspecified sanctions that will make you sorry.
And military aggression would be a great cost of lives.
Oh, he's scared now.
Oh, Putin's shaking in his boots.
Unspecified sanctions.
Oh! Now, imagine Trump...
Now, as we've said earlier, you can't write in Trump's style.
It's impossible. But imagine.
Imagine Trump handling this.
Number one, he would tell Russia, I'm sure of this.
I'm sure of this.
I'm sure that Trump would have said, if you invade Ukraine, you do not know what kind of hell...
is going to be unleashed on your soldiers.
You are going to be carrying so many body bags back to Russia because you don't know what's waiting for you and we're going to make sure that this never happens again.
You're going to be burying people three deep.
So you see what I'm doing?
I'm taking the general threat and I'm turning it into bodies.
I'm turning it visual and I'm making it personal.
You, Putin, are going to have to explain why you sent 50,000 dead soldiers back to your country, back to every part of the country, and they saw that you wasted your money and you buried their children.
If Biden had ever said, you're going to have to bury your children, then I would say he's doing a good job.
Trump would say that.
I mean, something like it, not that exactly.
But you don't think Trump could say, you're going to be burying your children for a decade, and we will burn them as they cross the line, or something.
I'm making it up. But the point is that when Trump threatened North Korea with fire and fury, he made a visual.
The fire and fury...
Was that the... Was it fire and fury?
Is that the quote? Yeah.
But the point is, Biden's not doing that.
Biden's treating it like it's a business meeting.
Trump wouldn't treat it like a business meeting.
He would treat it like a threat.
He would threaten him.
Wouldn't he? Am I wrong?
I think he would directly threaten him.
And say, you know, this is going to be arms and limbs and blood and guts and dead children.
And just make sure that Putin knew what he was getting into.
Or worse, didn't know what he was getting into.
Yeah. So, we'll always have to wonder what Trump would have done.
And I would say this, if you are going to negotiate with somebody, you have to be willing to be irrational.
This is really important.
Probably one of the best negotiating tricks you'll ever hear.
You have to be willing to be irrational.
That's what Putin's doing right now.
When you look at Putin, don't you say to yourself, my God, this seems so irrational.
Because couldn't you get the same benefits with negotiating?
Right? Putin has convinced you that he's irrational in the sense that he wants something so badly, he's not going to listen to economics or threats.
That is called excellent, excellent negotiating technique.
Excellent. Excellent. He's literally convinced us that reason won't work.
But of course he's a reasonable guy, so that's just an illusion.
What have we done in return?
Because we're a democratic system.
Well, in return... We've said that we should be very rational.
So Tucker Carlson is telling his people, quite reasonably, that we should not want to get involved and certainly not militarily.
Quite reasonable.
Do you win negotiations by being the most reasonable one in the room?
Never. Never.
So basically that's surrender.
So the people who are tweeting at me and saying, you know, Scott, you're overblowing how much we should care.
Okay. You know, Scott, Putin's not afraid of anything.
He's just going to do this because he can.
He doesn't care about a little recession and the sanctions.
He's just going to do it. When you talk like that, you're talking completely reasonably, very reasonable, but you've also signaled to the other side they can have whatever they want.
They just have to act irrational and you'll back down.
The only way you can deal with an irrational player is with an irrational response.
Do you know what would be irrational?
We're going to bomb your fucking pipelines.
We're going to freeze our allies in Europe and maybe next time they'll see the wisdom of being on our side.
Crazy, right? That's the point.
Totally irrational. But if you can't convince Putin that you would bomb Germany, you'd bomb Germany's end of the pipeline to stop it, if you're not willing to go that far, you're not negotiating.
You're surrendering. As long as you're willing to be the only one who acts rational, surrender is the only rational thing to do.
So let's get to it.
Let's get to it. We should either act rationally and surrender, so there are no deaths, you know, just let Russia have Ukraine, or we should finally act irrationally, which is the only rational thing to do, if you want to win.
If you want to win, you have to put it all on the line, and that means sacrificing Europe.
Now, How many of you are going to hear this and say, the cartoonist said we should sacrifice Europe?
No! No!
I'm not saying we should sacrifice Europe.
No! I'm saying we have to convince Putin we would sacrifice Europe.
It's not up to me.
It's not up to you. So we don't get a vote, right?
So it doesn't matter if I wanted to or not.
It's irrelevant. I'm saying that it's not negotiating if you convince the other side you're going to be rational.
And I think that's what Biden did.
He just convinced them we're going to be really rational here, which is basically giving them Ukraine.
All right. So, if we don't crank up the fear, I did see, was it David Petraeus?
I think Ian Bremmer was interviewing him, if I'm recalling, the two that were talking.
And I think Petraeus was saying that the amount of casualties that Russia would have to accept to get this done in Ukraine may be surprisingly high.
Those are my words, but Petraeus did think that the Ukrainian military would put up a serious fight.
So, we'll see.
Let's see, what else is going on?
Israel and its allies in the region, we don't know which allies, but some of the Arab countries, I guess, are developing a joint defense against suicide drones.
So if a country sees a suicide drone take off and they spot it before Israel does, they would alert Israel and vice versa.
So they would have a mutual alerting system.
Which does tell me that the military believes that suicide drones are basically going to be the weapon of the future.
Why wouldn't they be, really? I assume they will be.
And then I ask, does Ukraine have access to the type of drones that could take out a pipeline?
What do you think? Do you think that Ukraine currently has, or could rapidly get, the type of drones that could take out a pumping station and a pipeline?
And would the Russians have capability of shooting them down?
And what percentage could they shoot down versus what percentage could get through any defense system?
Don't I have a water leak to take care of?
Don't jinx me. They're all fixed at the moment.
70% shot down.
So you send three or four and you get a good chance.
All right. Here's an article by Jack Kelly, writing for Forbes.
And this is just more of a trend that's good, which is we're finally seeing a renaissance.
This is what Jack says.
A renaissance in creating psychedelic drugs to help treat depression, PTSD, OCD, anxiety, and other mental issues.
I'm telling you, this is big.
If only two things happened in the future, we got fusion energy and or generation four, It takes off as more economical.
If we get nuclear going and we get psychedelic treatments, some version of the psychedelics, for all of these mental anxieties, the Earth is in good shape.
Because if you can get enough clean energy...
The Earth is going to have a much better time with everything from climate change to economies to feeding people, everything.
And if you can get rid of people's inner problems, you know, the nuclear power takes care of a lot of the external problems, but the internal problems of our brain, maybe we can solve those too.
What about fentanyl?
Well, I wouldn't...
Well, it treats addiction, so...
One of the things it could do is stop addiction, maybe.
Well, the Omicron Olympics have ended, and reportedly they were a huge success within China.
So the Olympics were huge domestically.
And it looks like they even had higher viewership than before because the Chinese viewership was so high, it compensated for much lower international viewership.
So from the Chinese perspective of can they put on a major event, they managed to squash the Omicron, which I was totally wrong about.
For those of you who like me to admit when I'm wrong, I predicted that there was no way they could stop the Omicron from laying waste inside their perimeter.
And they did. They did.
There's something I don't understand in the story.
Because there's nothing I know about Omicron that tells me they could have, or anybody could have, squashed it within a perimeter no matter what you do.
Like, I feel like there's part of the story missing, like how they did that.
Now, I get that they were extreme, but all the extreme stuff they did are things we know how to do, right?
Quarantine and test and all that.
I wonder if it was the testing.
It might have been the testing.
Because this gets back to why the United States didn't have rapid testing in the beginning.
One of the biggest reasons that China did better is immediate rapid testing.
They could test a whole city in five hours.
Did you know that? They could rapid test an entire city in five hours.
That's how many tests they have and how quickly they can implement.
So we didn't do the extreme lockdowns of this country, so we would have gotten a different result.
But wow, if we could have tested everybody any time we wanted from the beginning, like China did, we probably would have saved a few hundred thousand lives.
And whoever at the FDA was the corrupt one, I'm just guessing there was somebody corrupt, allegedly, Probably killed a few hundred thousand people.
I think that really happened.
Tragically. So Canada has made protesting illegal and so has the United States.
So that's not good.
And what I mean is that the January 6th protests were basically criminalized and people are being hunted down to pay for their crimes of protesting and other things as well, of course.
And now the Ottawa police chief says that even if protesters retreat and go home, they'll be hunted and punished, basically.
So they're going to look for you even if you go home.
So protesting...
Even peacefully, you're still going to be hunted down.
Now, would you do a protest in Canada or the United States, like one you really cared about, like that really was going to get rambunctious?
You knew it was going to be a dicey protest.
You knew the trouble would happen.
Would you get involved knowing what happened to the January 6th people and now the trucker convoy?
Honestly, I wouldn't.
Well, maybe I'm a special case, because, you know, I've got to F you money, so I could survive pretty much anything.
But if I were a normal citizen, I don't think I would participate in another protest.
How many of you think the same?
For normal citizens, does it make sense to participate in a protest in Canada or the United States in the future?
I guess it depends what you're protesting.
If you're protesting racism, still good.
If you're protesting the government, apparently not.
Apparently you can't protest the government.
Well, I think this is a huge blow to freedom of speech, obviously.
Remember I told you that the least, at least I tweeted it anyway, the least secure way to communicate, the least secure way is with a secure app.
Have I ever told you that?
Here's another story to prove it.
Oathkeeper leader, this guy Stuart Rhodes, he's being held in jail for his January 6th stuff.
And I guess he was calling for something violent.
Allegedly. Allegedly he was calling for something violent.
Or let's say suggested something violent.
But the way they caught him and the way they're prosecuting him is because they have access to his messages on the encrypted app called Signal.
The Signal app is the one that people use if they're really trying to hide their stuff.
But the government has it.
How hard was it for the government to get his encrypted messages from an encrypted app?
I don't know. But they have them.
Now, they may have gotten them from the recipient of the messages.
Maybe somebody screen-printed them or something.
And maybe they threatened the recipient enough that the recipient gave them up.
But that's always the risk, right?
Even if the encrypted app did its job and encrypted it, the message still starts somewhere and ends somewhere, and you could pick it up at the start or you could pick it up at the end.
So as soon as you use an encrypted app, you're fucking yourself.
Hard. Let me say it again.
Don't say anything in an encrypted app that you wouldn't say in a regular app.
And don't say anything in a regular app that's going to get you in trouble.
Because it's all discoverable always, all the time.
Right? Do not use, you know, Silk Road technology.
Don't think that crypto is going to hide you.
And don't believe that there's any app that can keep your messages private.
Now, as you know, one of my private messages from the Signal app made it into the press.
I don't know exactly how that happened.
I can't say this strongly enough.
Don't put anything in an encrypted app.
Anything. Nothing.
At all. That you can't survive it being brought to light.
Now, that doesn't mean that we don't write private things in email and everything else, because we do.
But make sure it's not something that'll just end you.
Nothing that's going to put you in jail.
Don't put that anywhere. Be careful who you name your school after.
I forget who said this yesterday, but somebody was saying it would be smart to just not name any schools or buildings after humans because the humans turn bad after time.
Whatever those humans were doing 200 years ago doesn't look so good today.
Here is the chief case of that.
A tweet thread by Jay Perk.
And he knows something about history, Jay does, and he tells us that Thomas Jefferson was 44 years old when he began what many today refer to as a romance or affair with Sally Hemings.
A romance or an affair.
He was 44 years old, and Sally Hemings was a slave.
Here's the part I didn't know about.
It started when she was 14.
And she had lots of his babies.
So... I have to admit, I didn't see this coming.
I didn't see it coming.
I knew about the Sally Hemings thing.
But for some reason, I didn't know about the 14 thing.
Did you? Now...
Or his brother, I guess, yeah.
That's part of the rumor. And...
Now, of course, things were different back then.
People were getting married at 14, so you can't use today's filter to look at any of this stuff.
But if you had known that someday you'd be talking about 44-year-old Jefferson having sex with his 14-year-old slave, who obviously consent was not even an issue in that context, you probably would not have named your building after him.
And I'm a giant fan of Jefferson for his political stuff, but honestly, you probably would not name your school after somebody who essentially raped a 14-year-old slave repeatedly.
So, yeah, well, historically, I guess the historians think that's true.
Thank you.
And that, ladies and gentlemen...
It's the conclusion of the best livestream that has ever existed in the history of livestreams.
I did look at the Project Veritas.
I didn't listen to the video, but I saw a write-up of it.
And I didn't see anything in it.
There was nothing to talk about, really.
So it looked like an FDA insider...
Believed that the administration was making money somehow, but didn't have any evidence.
Allegations without evidence don't mean much.
If there's more to it, let me know.
Have I ever been invited to an Eyes Wide Shut style party?
Have I? No, I don't think I have.
Your overlords told you what to say about Project Veritas?
Is looking backwards and judging worth it?
Well, the reason you put a real person's name on your building is that you think the qualities of that real person are admirable.
That's why you do it, right?
And if you later find out that the qualities of that person were not admirable, then the reason for using that name disappears.
I'm not sure that it would change them at this point.
At this point, maybe it's just...
You know, just better to keep it for historical reasons.
But, you know, I could imagine, if I were a member of the black American community, I would say, you know, let's maybe not keep this.
Maybe not have this insulting, you know, stain on our republic.
Maybe not. I can see that view completely.
How are the drum lessons going, I'm asked.
I'll tell you... Is that a coincidence?
That somebody asked me on Locals about my drum lessons, and then immediately I looked over at YouTube and there was a comment about Dave Grohl, one of the most famous drummers in the world.
That was a coincidence, right?
That was weird. Or is it the same dude?
I don't know. Anyway, it looked like a coincidence.
The drumming is fascinating because one of the reasons I did it is to keep my brain active.
You reach a certain age and you want to keep challenging yourself.
So that's a big part of it.
But wow, I'm learning a lot about related things.
I always talk to you about the building a talent stack.
And if you combine talents that work well with the other talents, you come out with more than just a group of talents.
They magnify each other.
And I was looking for whatever side benefit or talent symbiosis I could get, and I wasn't sure what I would find.
But I'll tell you, drumming and persuasion are really closely linked.
Because it's the drum beat that gets you dancing, right?
So literally it makes you move.
That's persuasion. But also why it persuades is fascinating the hell out of me.
There's some thought that the drum beat matches your heartbeat.
And so it naturally just, you know, you just tune to it easily.
I don't know that that's the reason.
It might be. That might be part of it.
Um... You know what's really weird is I was just thinking yesterday that an interesting way to take this podcast, because I was thinking of building a professional studio.
You know, when I visited and was on Joe Rogan's show before he moved to Austin, I was in a professional studio that he had built, and it did make me want one, I have to say.
You know, I sat there and thought, you know, I wouldn't mind having a professional studio.
And I thought one of the things to do would be to have a surprise guest.
So I might...
I was thinking of this yesterday, which is weird that you mention Dave Grohl, because I thought to myself, you know, I could do a live stream about drumming, about learning to drum, and then I say, I've got a new drumming teacher.
And then I'd just introduce him as, you know, my friend Dave.
And then you would just have to know it's Dave Grohl, but I would just play it off like he's just my drum instructor, and it's completely normal.
And then when he started giving me lessons, I'd be, like, fighting back and telling him he doesn't know what he's doing.
You know, so you just play it like he's just an instructor, but you don't have that much respect for him.
I think it would be funny.
Now, you would have to know who he is and know he's, you know, America's maybe top drummer at the moment, even though he doesn't drum, which is the funny thing.
Considered one of the great drummers in America, so he plays the guitar.
Which is baller, and it's just by itself, the fact that you could be one of the best drummers of all time, and then just say, you know, I think I'm a guitar player now.
Okay. All right, so, I'll tell you more about drumming in some late night...
Live streams that I do for locals only.
If you would like to see my occasional late night live streams from the Man Cave, that's what the local subscribers only see.
Yes, I said baller.
You don't think he's a top drummer?
Well, everybody else does.
You know, the other thing that just happened with...
One of the things that fascinates me about drumming is how to learn.
So whenever I'm learning something, I'm always very conscious about how one learns.
And the thing that I couldn't figure out is how to get four beats in a row versus six versus eight versus three and to do it without counting.
So to hit a drum four times quickly without counting the beats, but also to be able to do six without counting is like a skill that you just have to hear it so many times that you know it's four without counting.
And I only just this week reached that point.
Just this week, for the first time, I can say to myself, I want it to be four, and then my hands go, and it was four.
And there's not a conscious counting.
And then I can play it back, and sure enough, it was four.
So until you get to that, where your brain is counting automatically, you can't do a lot of stuff.
And I didn't know...
I didn't know, should I be doing a one-eanda, two-eanda, which is the way you count when you're learning music, or should you just sort of remember the song and do it from memory, or is there some other trick, or is it the way you're beating your...
your foot, or what is it?
Okay.
And we're good.
Thank you.
And that is all I have for today.
And I think you'd agree?
This is probably the best livestream you've ever had.