Persuasion and war and mass narrative~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, UBI Popularity, Government Corruption, Financial Multiplier Effect, 3rd World Immigration Ban, Kash Patel, FBI Burn Bags Found, Pacific Palisades Fire, Gavin Newsom, Charlie Sheen, State-Run Media Hypnosis, Hypnosis Mentions Trend, Trump the Persuader Narrative, Persuasion Framework, WaPo Whistleblower Allegation, Anti-Trump Persuasion Ops, Narrative Shaping, Color Revolution Clues, Alan Dershowitz, Epstein Files Protected People, Ukraine Drones Success, Robot Warfare, Economic Warfare, Ukraine Peace Probability, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
We're going to hang out a little bit this morning because, well, you missed each other.
And I missed you too.
Come on and grab a seat.
So later, maybe later today, I'm going to do a separate video with some dad gift ideas.
Wouldn't that be great?
Some dad gift ideas.
Now, obviously, you know, you need to get the Dilbert calendar for any dad who's ever worked in an office.
I guarantee this is going to work for any dad who ever worked in an office.
Only available on Amazon.
Get them before they sell out.
But I've got some other great ideas that are not all my products.
You'll love them.
You guys ready for this?
Are you ready?
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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Happens now.
Uh-huh.
That was as good as I imagined it would be.
Wow.
Well, do you believe, believe it or not, by the way, I'll be doing a little bit more NPR talk today as I recover my full ability and energy, which is moving in the right direction.
But there's a story according to the cool down, which must be a publication of some sort, that scientists have achieved a breakthrough that could make batteries obsolete.
It apparently has something to do with the barrier between salt water and regular water.
And somehow they can use the difference, the chemical or electrical difference between salt water and regular water.
So as long as you have the two of them, you can create electricity.
And apparently lots of it.
Do you believe that?
It sounds exactly like an April Fool's prank that you can make infinite energy out of water.
Just self-as to be salt water.
I'm going to say feels a little optimistic.
But I remind you that there seems to be a battery-related energy breakthrough almost every day.
So sooner or later, one of them will work.
Well, in Chicago, according to Futurism, I guess there are two startups that have these little robots that are on the sidewalks delivering things.
And that's not new.
There have been startups that tried to have little robots on the sidewalks.
And I guess none of them have really worked.
But they keep trying.
But here's the funny part of the story.
The only reason I'm telling you this story is that people who don't like the robots are putting their dog poop bag on top of the robot.
So if you're out walking your dog and you don't want to carry the poop bag around and a robot goes by, you just put it on top of the robot and the robot takes your poop away.
Now, I do not recommend this.
It's kind of a messed up thing to do.
especially if it's delivering food.
You wouldn't want your food to be delivered with a poop bag on top.
But while I don't recommend it, and I discourage it, it doesn't make it less funny.
And that's the important part.
All right.
I think I've seen this before, but it's worth mentioning.
I guess Elon Musk, I think he was on Joe Rogan, maybe some other podcast.
And he said that Grok is the only AI that weighs all human lives equally.
I guess some of the other AIs value adult white males lower than the rest of society.
And that's the technology that we're letting loose on the world.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe we ought to have a look at that.
So apparently Grok's the only one.
And that's based on an actual study.
But that's pretty alarming.
It's alarming to even imagine that that's an issue.
Oh, what is this behind my shoulder?
Looks like product placement.
The Dilworth calendar is sitting right back there.
Twice as good as ever before.
Well, in Chicago, now this is a funny story, too.
According to the Post Millennial, they're covering this.
Chicago, I guess they tested UBI, Universal Basic Income, where they literally just give money to people who don't have money.
And they try to see if that'll make their life better and make the world better.
Well, they just ended up testing $500 a month in cash.
And guess what they concluded?
Well, they concluded that people really like getting $500 in cash for doing no work.
So they called it a success and said they're going to do more of it.
That's right.
The standard for judging whether it was successful was whether the people who got the free money were happy about it.
I'm not making that up.
Turns out that people are happy when you give them free money.
Who do?
Maybe you could have asked me.
All right.
Apparently the State Department is doing far fewer press briefings than before.
To which I ask, why would you do any?
What would the State Department tell you that Trump wouldn't tell you?
It seems like if you have more than one government entity that's doing important press briefings, in addition to Trump, that all it does is create an opportunity for something to look like a misinterpretation or a conflict.
So why would you ever have a press briefing from the State Department as long as Trump can cover all that same material, which he does.
Anything that matters.
So, yeah, that's the part.
Smart not to have them.
Well, apparently the Defense Department, or is it called the Department of War now?
I don't know.
They've confirmed that $11 billion, which is only a small fraction of the real number, has been stolen.
$11 billion since 2017.
And according to the GAO, it's only a small fraction of how much has been stolen of your tax money.
Just the stuff that was going to the Department of Defense.
So the Pentagon, which spends about a trillion dollars a year, has never passed an audit.
Do you think we're better than Ukraine?
You know, I've said this before, but when you look at the number of expensive homes and expensive cars, it doesn't really map to my understanding of how many legitimate jobs there are in the world that you can make that much money.
It looks like, I mean, I've been feeling this for a long time, that we're primarily a corruption economy.
Not primarily, but that maybe something like 20% of the entire GDP is criminal.
I don't know how big it is, but every time we look at any entity that has a budget, doesn't it always look the same?
Like every time there's a big budget, be it Minneapolis, be it the Department of Defense, be it the NGOs, be it the USAID, every time there's a big budget, it's being stolen.
New York City's budget, the city budgets, every time.
If we could solve one problem, which is the ability to audit where our money goes, everything would be different.
So it feels like what the Trump administration needs to do, I don't even know if it's doable, is to find some way to insist that nobody ever gets a budget for anything unless there's a really dynamic auditing feature where everybody can see where every dollar goes.
Short of that, it's just all being stolen.
It doesn't matter if it's money for Ukraine or money for poor people or money for a disease or money for COVID.
Every single time, every time it's being stolen.
As a developed country, we can't figure out how to audit our stuff.
I mean, it's crazy.
It's crazy.
Anyway, here are some examples.
A Pentagon contractor, I guess one of the ways, or maybe the main way, that this kind of money is stolen is there's kickbacks for sending money in one direction versus another.
There are all these shell companies that are like fake companies pretending to do things that you would get money for, but not really doing those things.
Well, in other news, Gateway Pundit is reporting that the U.S. Treasury, so that would be Scott the Besant, is going to start seizing remittances.
So remittances, in this context, is talking about people who are usually non-citizens.
They don't have to be non-citizens, but they're sending money back to their home country or wherever they came from.
Now, on one hand, I like freedom, and I think people should be able to do whatever they want with their money, assuming it's legally obtained.
On the other hand, there's a really good reason or argument for limiting the ability for people to make money in the U.S. and then send that money somewhere else.
That doesn't help us.
It helps wherever you're sending it, but it doesn't help us.
So, if he were to tax those remittances, you know, at least you get something out of it.
Or if you were to block them or cap them, it probably would be a good idea for the United States.
So, I don't know how big that number is, but it's a lot of money.
And if we could just, if those dollars would simply stay circulating within the U.S. economy, you know, you have a multiplier effect.
So, the dollar spent goes to another American who now has a dollar who spends it that goes to another American.
Well, if you take that and you create a leak where that dollar just leaves our system, then it never has any multiplier effect.
So, you don't lose a dollar.
You lose like, I don't know, the multiplier would probably be 10, maybe 10 to 1.
I don't know what the real number is, but it's a lot.
So, just letting a dollar leave our system to go back to the home country, that one dollar is like $10 in terms of GDP over time.
So, yeah, velocity, exactly.
Somebody took an economics course.
Yeah, velocity is what we're talking about.
And let's see.
So, I guess they're going to flag anything that's over $2,000.
That probably will go down over time.
That's a lot of money, actually, sending back to the home country.
Well, now Trump has put a pause on the U.S. immigration, a permanent pause.
Well, I don't know how permanent it is.
From third world countries.
Now, do you remember when Trump tried the so-called Muslim ban and that didn't work out?
So, he modified it and then it worked out.
Why did he never try third world ban?
It does seem like that would capture everything you didn't want.
You know, that the third world would capture kind of all kinds of situations.
And if you needed, I suppose if you needed to make an exception, it wouldn't be that hard.
But it seems kind of clean to just say we don't let people from third world countries in unless it's a special situation.
Because I don't know how much it's helping us.
Now, the other factors that are impossible to predict are the effect of decreasing population, you know, a reproduction rate is below replacement.
So, it's not like we're going to be able to get away with not importing people unless the robot revolution is so fast that we just never need to import another person.
And then we would slowly turn into a robot country.
Uh-oh, I just realized that's probably what's going to happen.
Okay, work with me here.
So let's say that we limit migration, immigration, into the country.
And let's say that our repopulation rate stays below replacement.
There would be fewer humans every day.
But because we're at the beginning of the robot revolution, there would be more robots every day.
Now, in the beginning, We're going to say humans are humans and robots are robots and they're just tools.
But as those robots become more and more human-like, which is guaranteed, it's going to happen fast, will we so easily call the robots tools and the humans the important thing when the number of robots starts surpassing the number of humans?
What happens when the United States becomes 90% humanoid robots doing all the things that humans do and 10% humans?
Are we destined to become a robot-only country?
You know that could happen, right?
In the real world, there's a possibility that sometime, maybe even in your lifetime, well, not in your lifetime probably, but there's a real possibility that the United States will be only populated by humanoid robots that can also reproduce.
What would stop that from happening?
All the trends are in that direction.
Our population will reduce, our immigration will go to zero, and the number of robots that are indistinguishable from humans, basically, will start at zero, but it's going to go to millions within just a few short years.
So, robot nation coming up.
There is a rumor this morning that I do not believe is true.
There's no confirmation for it, but I'll just tell you the rumor.
The rumor is that Venezuelan leader Maduro may have tried to escape Venezuela in an airplane that apparently is known to be his airplane.
But there is no confirmation of anything of the sort.
So the news is not treating it like that's a real story yet.
So I would say that is unlikely to be true.
I also wouldn't understand how Maduro's plane could be flying over Venezuela, which is what the rumor said, that it landed, landed somewhere near the Brazilian border.
And some people are saying, oh, that's how he can escape the country.
But didn't Trump put a, what would you call it, a total cap on airline flight above Venezuela?
Didn't Trump say that we would enforce that?
So how can it be true that the U.S. would put a flight ban over Venezuela, but also that the leader's plane could be flying around?
Because the last thing I would want to do, if I were Maduro, is get in an airplane when we've just said we'll basically shoot down planes that are in the air.
Yeah, I don't think he's on that plane.
Anyway, have you heard the update on the so-called burn bags?
So did you know that the FBI found these bags that were meant for burning documents that were sensitive and they just simply had not yet burned them?
So they put them in the burn bag.
And then I guess when the bag is full, they would burn it.
But there have been some burn bags found that were not burned.
And Kash Patel says that they involve the Trump-Russia hoax, you know, the Russia collusion hoax, and that they're found in a secret room and they will be shown to the public.
And Kash Patel says, quote, you're going to see everything we found in that room in one way or another, blah, blah, blah.
And so I saw this.
Kash Patel was on an interview for the Epic Times, and Jan Yakilik was talking to him.
And it kind of felt like Cash was suggesting there's something in there that's going to amaze us or shock us or maybe confirm something we suspected.
But I don't know when we're going to see that, but I can't wait to see the burn bags.
Burn bag.
Open them up.
Well, according to Breitbart News, Warner Todd Houston's writing about this, there's a new documentary out that shows that Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass did nothing as the LA and Pacific Palisades burned.
Now, do you believe that?
Well, I believe there's a documentary.
But you know how I always tell you that the documentary effect must be guarded against?
The documentary effect is if you make a documentary and it's entertaining and people watch it for the, let's say, the hour that it lasts or whatever, they will be convinced of whatever it is you're trying to sell or whatever narrative you're putting forward.
They will think it's true.
So if you were to watch this documentary, which clearly is designed to show the California politicians failed, do you think you would come away with it with any other opinion than, oh my God, they massively failed the state?
No.
So I would warn you, I haven't seen it, but I also plan not to see it because I already know it will convince me that the politicians are crooked or incompetent and they will not be showing the other side.
Because, you know, even if it looks super obvious that the politicians are at fault, it looks like it to me, even then, there's always another side.
You know, if you sat down with Newsom and said, all right, you know, why didn't you do X?
Why didn't you do Y?
He might have some explanation that even though you're not like a fan of Newsom, even though you're positive he could have done better, even though you're sure the state failed you, still, everybody's got a, you know, they've got their version of events.
And if you're not going to hear the other side, I don't know if you should spend too much time hypnotizing yourself on one side.
So just beware.
That said, I do think the state failed the residents.
All right.
Well, I guess Charlie Sheen did an interview with Megan Kelly.
Belize Media is writing about it.
And what was interesting is that Charlie Sheen used the word hypnotize.
And he talked about himself.
And he said that he had been, quote, hypnotized by state-run media.
And that when he realized by looking at different news outlets, he somehow un-hypnotized himself to understand that there are two sides to the story, basically, and that he wasn't as anti-Trump or anti-conservative as maybe he thought he was.
But here's why I thought this was interesting.
I went to Grok and I asked it, has the word hypnotized been used as often as it is now?
And Grok said, oh my God, you know, big difference.
The word hypnotized would rarely come up, you know, let's say 10 years ago.
I think I said 10 years.
But that in the past 10 years, when people talk about politics, they do actually use the word hypnotized.
And it is said, according to Grok, that hypnotized as a word used in politics went from being obscure to being fairly common, such that Charlie Sheen would just have that as a go-to.
I've told you before that one of the things I do is try to track my own influence on events.
And one of the ways I do it is by tracking uncommon word usage.
And hypnotized is sort of the word I introduced about 10 years ago, talking about persuasion and whatnot.
And so I asked Grok, and I've asked other AIs this, but I had not asked Grok, if I personally was the reason that hypnotized is a common word where it used to not be common.
And with a few follow-up questions, Grok did say that I'm responsible for creating a narrative of Trump being persuasive that is the common way we see him today.
And they actually credited me for that change, a change from looking at policy when you're talking about politics to looking at persuasion.
And it mentioned my book, Wynn Big Lee, and it said I had relentlessly hammered on it.
And then Grok said that what I did for the, let's say, the narrative, is that I gave people, this is Grok's wording, I gave people a vocabulary to understand Trump as a persuader.
And if you have a vocabulary for something, that's a way of saying you have a narrative or a framework for understanding things.
And then as new events happen, you can attach it to the framework.
And that would be called a narrative, a way of seeing the information as opposed to the information.
The information is attached to the narrative.
The narrative is the way you interpret it, right?
So apparently, at least according to Grok, I changed the narrative from being the common narrative of policy and character, the things we would normally talk about with politicians, to one where people understand it as a persuasion framework.
And apparently that's me.
I seem to have changed the entire way.
I seem to have changed the entire way that people look at politics.
So you can have a different opinion and believe that I was just Describing something that was there anyway.
But what was there anyway is that there was always persuasion.
I didn't invent that.
But what I invented was the narrative of seeing it through that lens.
And I think I actually did that.
And when I see Charlie Sheen using the word hypnotized, and I know that that would have been an obscure use of the word 10 years ago, which is exactly when I started talking about this and talking about persuasion and Trump, I think that's me.
I think that he would not have used the word hypnotized if he had not been, let's say, opening his eyes in a world that I had partly created.
I'm kind of curious if you're buying this at all.
Are you buying this?
I'm looking at your comments now.
How many of you believe that I made a big enough difference that it changed the entire way people look at politics all the way through to affecting Charlie Sheen's choice of words?
Do you think that's credible?
I'm looking at your comments.
Most of you think it's credible.
And I would bet that the longer you've been watching my podcast, the more credible it seems.
Now, some of that is the documentary effect.
So beware, beware.
If you're watching my content and you're not seeing anything else, that's probably not good enough.
You probably need to, you know, you need to see the other argument from stuff I do too.
So it's not just about, you know, it includes me.
Let's just say I'm part of the documentary effect.
So beware and be skeptical of everything, including me.
All right.
I'll give you some persuasion lessons as we go here today.
So are you following the story that the Washington Post has this exclusive story?
Hmm, the Washington Post, the one that is usually accused of being a CIA tool.
Hmm, maybe.
I mean, they're accused of that.
It's an allegation.
But the Washington Post has a story that allegedly, and I believe this is whistleblowers.
Let's see, the Washington Post and whistleblowers.
If you didn't even know what the story was about, would you trust it?
It's the Washington Post and it's based on whistleblowers.
That's pretty low credibility right there.
That's pretty low.
Doesn't mean it's false.
It could be true.
But if you were going to sort of handicap how likely it was, and the only thing you knew about it was that there were whistleblowers, it's not quite good enough.
But let me tell you the story, if you haven't heard it.
So the accusation is that at the very first Venezuelan drug boat that our military blew up, that there were a couple of survivors from the attack and that the order went out to kill them all, you know, quote, kill them all.
And then there was a second strike that finished them off.
Now, I believe that would be a war crime, if true.
Now, at the same time that you've got the six Democrats, the seditious six, suggesting that the military should not follow what would be illegal orders, this would probably be an illegal order if it really happened.
And if it really happened is the big part of the question.
So do you think it's a coincidence that the Washington Post, hmm, allegedly a vehicle used by the CIA and deep state for their messaging, that they have a story with whistleblowers, hmm, whistleblowers, and it happens to perfectly match the narrative that the Democrats are putting out right now, which is there might be some illegal orders.
What would you do if you got the illegal orders?
So does it make you think about illegal orders?
Yes, it does.
So is that a coincidence?
Or is it a deep state CIA persuasion play, which would look exactly like it?
Now, I don't have any confirmation or special information that would say that the Washington Post story is literally just made up to convince people that there's a big risk of illegal orders.
I don't have any proof of that.
What I do have is some pattern recognition.
And when it's the Washington Post, and it's a story that the anti-Trump world would like you to see, and it fits perfectly with the narrative, and it's based on whistleblowers.
That's a lot of pattern recognition going into that that looks like it's just part of a persuasion op from anti-Trump forces.
But I hasten to remind you, I don't have any proof of that.
It just, the pattern is a little hard to ignore.
So keep an eye on that.
Now, let's look at the front page of a publication called The Hill.
So keep in mind the context I just gave you.
The seditious sex, then coincidentally, fitting perfectly in their narrative, there's a story about allegedly Hagseth gave the order to what would be illegal orders.
Hmm.
At the same time, The Hill had a number of stories in the front page, and I wanted to see what that looked like.
And here are some of the things that were on their headlines.
All right.
So this is from The Hill Today.
One of the stories is titled Five Ways Republicans Are Breaking Up with Trump or Breaking with Trump.
Now, I didn't read the article.
This is about looking at the bigger picture, right?
So five ways Republicans are breaking with Trump.
So that would be a story to suggest that Trump's popularity is falling within his base, even though the numbers suggest he's the most popular president within his party of maybe all time.
He has like 87% support within Republicans.
But five ways Republicans are breaking.
Another headline, also on The Hill, same day, Reagan judges surface as unfiltered assessors of Trump.
Oh, so there are Republicans who are even more Republican than Trump because they're Reagan-appointed judges, and they have unfiltered assessments of Trump.
Oh, so in other words, there are some very credible Republican types, these judges, who are trying to block Trump.
So that would suggest that Republicans are not all exactly on the same side.
So that headline is at the same way, at the same time as the headline, Five Ways Republicans Are Breaking with Trump.
Let's see, there's another headline.
Trump approval rating drops to new low, according to a poll.
Okay, that is three headlines just on the hill, just today, suggesting that Trump is losing his popularity.
Now put it all together.
Washington Post, whistleblowers, right?
Seditious Six, don't follow the orders of any illegal orders, if you're in the military.
And then, oh, look at all the ways the Republicans are abandoning Trump.
In other words, making it easy to abandon Trump because you feel that other people are doing it.
What would be persuasion in this case?
Repetition.
So the more they say Trump is becoming less popular, Republicans are breaking with him.
You better not agree with him if he gives illegal orders.
They're creating a narrative, and there's that narrative word again, a framework in which you can imagine that Trump is becoming less popular.
Once that narrative is established, then anything in the news that's anti-Trump or shows somebody disagreeing with him or anything that they could stretch to make it look like it's an illegal military order, now they all fit in that same narrative, that he might give an illegal order and his popularity is shrinking within his own base, even if that's not necessarily true.
All right.
Now let's look at Politico.
One of the headlines is how Trump's base could break.
Okay.
So you can start to see that if it's true, and I don't know that it is, but if it's true that our publications, our mainstream media is at least partly just propaganda by deep state intelligence assets.
If that's true, what would it look like?
Wouldn't it look exactly like this?
And I remind you, if you don't know what a color revolution is, you need to study up on that because I'm not sure we're in one, but I know that if you were doing pattern recognition and you were saying, well, what would it look like?
A color revolution is how the U.S. intelligence and our other assets have overthrown some number, I don't know what the number is, but multiple other countries.
And the accusation is that the same technique is being used internally by some presumably anti-Trump forces to destabilize the Trump administration and put back, I suppose, a Democrat-led thing.
So a color revolution would include suspiciously funded street protests.
Do we have that?
Do we have recently suspiciously funded street protests that look sort of dangerous?
Yes.
Yeah.
They're not all dangerous looking.
The no-kings stuff is not especially dangerous.
But we do have, we're looking at the funding for Antifa, etc.
So it does look like there's some kind of sketchy funding for protests.
That's what you would expect we would do to another country if we're trying to get rid of them.
There would also be if you were suffering from an externally imposed color revolution, there would also be the press would have a pretty unified attack on the leader.
Do we see the press going after the leader, Trump?
Yes, more than we've ever seen the press go after anything.
So we got the sketchy street protests.
We've got the media maybe influenced by intelligence sources.
We don't know, but it looks like it.
And attacking the leader.
And yeah, so those would be some of the hallmarks of it.
So it looks like it, but we wouldn't know.
And then there's the part about following illegal orders.
And there's the part about trying to jail the current administration.
Because you always need some excuse to jail the person who's in charge so you can install your own person.
That's how we would do it if we were overthrowing another country.
And that's exactly what was happening to Trump.
The law fair was not trying to beat him electorally, it was trying to put him in jail.
And there was also, it looked like to me, a huge effort to put his supporters in jail and anybody who supported him, anybody who tried to be his lawyer, anybody who was a close confidant.
So all the elements are in place for what would be a color revolution that was aimed by our country at our own country.
But the part that is missing, I think, is who's in charge?
Who's in charge?
I think I saw speculation that Obama is still in charge and he's running the things from behind.
I haven't seen the proof of that.
Or that John Brennan is still in charge.
Haven't seen the proof of that.
So I think one thing that's missing from the narrative is a sense of who's in charge.
Like if we are undergoing a color revolution, is it just a bunch of people who knew what to do, but they didn't need any central coordinating?
Or is it actually centrally coordinated by who?
The CIA, all of the CIA, some corner of the CIA, some other intelligence assets?
Don't know.
So I think I would say we're short of proof that there's an organized color revolution.
But all the elements are there.
The part missing would be who the hell is doing it?
We could speculate about that, but I don't think there's any smoking gun that I'm aware of.
Now, certainly, if you looked at the Russia collusion hoax, and if you said, hey, whoever was behind that Russia collusion hoax, unless they're in jail, they'd be just doing that same stuff, more of it.
And that would suggest Obama, and it would suggest Brennan and Clapper and all the guys that we know were involved, guys and gals, that we know were involved in that hoax, because they're still operating.
I mean, nothing would stop them from doing more of it, if they were doing it.
On another topic, I am quite intrigued by what Alan Dershowitz has said.
I don't think this is new.
I think he said this for a while, that he knows exactly who's being protected by the non-release of the Epstein files.
And he promises us that it's not Trump, but that there are some number, and I don't know the number, of important people who are being protected by the non-release of the Epstein files.
Now, Dershowitz says he's not guessing, because of court cases he was involved in, he actually knows who the people are.
But what he doesn't tell us is how many of them there are.
Is it three people who are being protected?
Because the way he talks about it, it sounds like it's a lot.
I don't know what a lot would be.
Like one would be a lot in this particular context.
But how many people do you think are being protected?
And what type of people?
I think he also suggested it's all manner of important people.
They're all important, but they're not necessarily elected leaders.
They're not necessarily any specific kind of rich person.
They're just a variety of important people who are being protected.
Does that sound right to you?
I have to say that sounds completely right to me.
Can't be sure.
But it does feel like there's more than one person being protected.
It's probably several countries involved.
And I'll bet you that the U.S.'s relationship with those several countries is kind of dependent on us keeping our damn mouths shut about what their leaders were up to.
So you could do your own speculation about what countries are involved.
But I think Great Britain is at the top of my list.
Don't have any proof.
But if I had to guess who we would try so hard to protect, it feels like Great Britain, doesn't it?
Now, I know some of you are going to say Israel because that just gets thrown into every conversation.
But I don't have any specific reason to think that Israel's being protected.
You know, they may or may not have been involved in some Epstein blackmail intel thing.
That would be separate.
So separate from whether Israel had any Epstein involvement is a question of whether any prominent Israelis are being protected.
And I don't have any specific reason to think that would be the case.
But I love the fact that all of us are wondering who is being protected, but Dershowitz actually knows.
Can you imagine being him?
Can you imagine being one of the few people on earth who don't have to wonder he actually knows?
He knows the actual names of the people being protected.
And I think he's telling the truth.
So I think he does know the names.
It's kind of weird.
Anyway, Ukraine had some military success, I guess you'd call it, with their sea drones.
So that would be water-based drones, blew up two empty oil tankers that were apparently part of what they call Russia's ghost fleet.
So if you read the news, as I did, and you found out that two tankers, now there are oil tankers involved in the avoiding sanctions.
So Russia is under sanctions, but there are all these sketchy, usually rusty old tankers that have been getting around the sanctions.
Now, if I told you, as I just did, that Ukraine had blown up two of them in one day in the Black Sea, would you think that that would make a difference?
What's missing in the story?
Well, what's missing is how many tankers are there?
If they blew up two and there were only five, that's a pretty big story.
But if you had to guess, how many ghost tankers do you think Russia is using every day?
Not over time, but just every day?
How many tankers are either carrying an illegal load of Russian oil or returning empty to get a load?
If you had to guess.
So I'm looking at your numbers.
18.
Well, if Ukraine took out two of 18, that would be a lot for one day of work, right?
Somebody's saying 200.
So I went to Grok, which, by the way, I don't understand any stories in the news anymore unless I've checked with Grok.
Now, Grok could be hallucinating, right?
Could be hallucinating.
So green assault.
But according to Grok, over 1,000 tankers are part of this ghost fleet.
Don't you think that should have been right at the top of the story?
Now, go check the stories.
Is that propaganda?
Because if you said to me, oh, they took out two of a thousand, I would say, oh, so they did basically nothing and they were empty.
So barely even polluted, right?
But if you thought the number of total ghost tankers was some lower number, maybe in the low hundreds, then suddenly two of them being taken out one day starts sounding like, whoa, maybe those Ukrainians are doing well.
So ask yourself this.
Is it bad reporting that they don't give you the context of how many tankers there are total?
Is it just bad reporting?
Or is it intentionally trying to create a narrative that Ukraine has more of a chance of winning or at least pressing the war than they do?
What do you think?
Is that a coincidence?
Do you think it's just a coincidence that the most important number isn't in the story?
Or maybe they don't know.
Even if they don't know how many ghost tankers there are, shouldn't they say that?
As in, well, two of them went down, or at least they were damaged.
I don't think they went down.
They were damaged, and we don't know how many there are total.
That feels like something that story should include, right?
So, the fact that it's not in the story tells me that we're seeing a narrative we're not seeing reporting.
Then I asked Grok, and remember, again, Grok doesn't have to be right all the time, but I'll tell you what Grok said because it's interesting.
I've told you before that one of the ways you can predict the future is by looking at insurance.
And so, I wondered: are these boats privately owned?
Not boats, ships.
Are these tankers privately owned?
And if they're privately owned, are they insured?
And the answer is: you know, there are a variety of situations, but some of them, well, let me cut to the important thing.
I asked Grok how much a tanker can earn making one run of, you know, let's say a full ship of oil.
And the answer is about $3 to $5 million for one run.
And the cargo would be worth something like $15 to $30 million.
So they're transporting $15 to $30 million in a ship that itself is worth maybe $3 to $5 million.
I'm sorry, the ship would be worth something like $15 million plus.
But they would earn $3 to $5 million for just one, let's say, two-month journey there and back.
So what I'm trying to communicate is that the economics of being a ghost ship owner are so good that you don't need insurance.
In other words, if you just make several runs, you would earn so much that it would pay for the entire ship going down if it got taken out.
And since only two of a thousand ships got taken out, then the economics are: hmm, do I take this $3 million that I'll get in 30 to 60 days at the risk of, I don't know, maybe one in 500 might be the risk of losing the entire ship, but you can pay for the entire ship in maybe half a year, which would be one of the best investments you could ever have.
So the problem is that the economics of avoiding sanctions, even at the risk of losing your entire tanker, the entire tanker, is still overwhelmingly good business.
And so I think a lot of the ghost tankers are sort of rusty old, older tankers that they wouldn't care that much if it went down.
So it looks to me like, well, here's another story along those same lines.
The Wall Street Journal has an article that says Russia is winning the drone war.
So remember I've told you recently that Ukraine's only real advantage, maybe just one advantage they have, is that they seem to be ahead of Russia in building deadly drones and using them effectively.
Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, that has flipped.
And now Russia has a decided advantage in the drone war.
One of the things that caught my eye is that This is from the Wall Street Journal today.
Quote: Large-scale maneuvering remains nearly impossible on a battlefield where masses of cheap drones can see and target movement by soldiers or vehicles.
So remember, I've been telling you for a while that this would turn into a robot-only war, and it wouldn't even be about people.
That's basically what the Wall Street Journal is reporting: that you wouldn't even bother putting any vehicle into the war zone because it won't last five minutes.
So, if you can't put human-occupied, you can't do troops or a human driving a truck, it's going to be completely depopulated in the border war zone.
And it will be literally just drone on drone, robot on robot.
So, we're very close to my weird prediction that this would be our first robot-on-robot war.
It kind of already is.
Not exactly, but it's heading that way.
All right, now I'm going to let's see, I'm going to confess some stupidity, if you don't mind.
Somebody said the other day that's one of the reasons they like listening to me, is that I'm not overly wed to even my own opinions.
If the evidence shows that I've got it wrong, then I don't have any hesitation in changing my opinion.
I'm going to do that right now.
So, I think I said last few days that for the first time, I could kind of imagine there could be a Ukraine-Russia peace deal.
And until recently, I couldn't even imagine it.
And I'll reiterate what I said before I tell you how wrong it was.
Okay, so my thinking was that some things have changed recently.
There's pressure on Ukraine in the corruption stuff, and maybe that puts some pressure on Zelensky that his best friend is already being chased out of office under accusations of corruption.
And I said, well, I had a few other arguments, but my argument was that we might be closer to some kind of negotiated settlement than people realize.
I'm completely going to change that today because I spent some time trying to figure out, also using Grok for context, I wanted to see how close Russia was to economic defeat.
So, it's a war, there's sort of a two-part war.
One part of the war is killing humans and trying to be the last living humans.
So, that's you know, that's one way to look at the war.
The other way is that they're both attacking each other's economies and that the real war is economic.
So, whoever can cripple the other one economically will be the winner.
And I was trying to figure out what would be a scenario in which Putin would be willing to make peace right now.
And here's where I think I was very wrong the other day: there is no scenario in which it makes sense for him to stop the war.
If he's only losing two tankers that, by the way, were not even owned by Russia.
The tankers that get blown up are owned by wealthy individuals and different countries.
Russia doesn't even lose anything except two out of a thousand tankers.
So there is a, according to Grok, there is definitely an impact on Russian citizens.
So they've got 8 or 9% inflation.
Their GDP is kind of flat.
And people are feeling the pinch.
But it's not the end of the world.
Russia is not in any kind of a depression.
It looks like they can kind of keep going on.
And one of the things that Putin has going for him is he doesn't seem to have to satisfy his public that much because he's going to stay in power and he can control his own media.
And so if it doesn't get too much worse, he's better off just winning.
And if you factor in ego, you know, you have to factor in ego, I don't see him quitting now, because if he quit now, even if he, you know, even if he banked the gains and said, okay, we have the Donbass and we've got Crimea and we've got a few things we wanted.
If he did, it would still look like a lot of war for not a lot of gain.
I think he has to probably gain more before his legacy looks good, and he can argue that it made sense to have the war in the first place.
Because even though he doesn't need to make his population love him, you know, the way American politicians might, he still needs some kind of popular support.
So I would say that Ukraine does not look like it could take out Russia's energy infrastructure before Russia could take out Ukraine's infrastructure.
And I don't see anything changing that would make Putin want to make peace because all indications are he's slowly gaining and slowly winding down Ukraine and Ukraine is losing support.
You know, it's not going to be, won't be supported financially forever.
So the part that I think I calculated wrong is that I just assumed, without thinking about it well enough, I guess, I just assumed that everybody wants to end war.
But why would Putin?
Apparently he's not too worried about the number of Russians being killed in the war.
So if he doesn't mind that and it's sort of moving in his direction, I can't see any reason he would end the war.
And the only thing that I can imagine changing it is something that changed things economically that somehow Russia would allow to happen to them without responding in kind.
Don't you think that the United States is holding back quite a bit?
Because if we go too far with allowing Ukraine to have all the best weapons and stuff, if we go too far, some of that's going to come back on the homeland.
Russia is going to not want to put up with that without responding in kind.
So I don't see any way that as long as Putin's in charge and it looks like he'll remain in charge.
So I'm going to re-up my older prediction that there's no way we get a peace within a year.
Because there's just not enough happening that would change the balance of where we are right now.
Two out of a thousand ghost anchors?
I don't know.
That doesn't seem like enough.
All right.
So what else we got going?
Well, that, ladies and gentlemen, is my full show, and I appear to be back to full power.
I'm a little bit quiet today, but feel my full energy.
I was telling people before everybody streamed in here that I'm going to do a separate video, maybe today, of dad gift ideas for Christmas.
I've got some really good dad gift ideas.
And it's based entirely on things that I have.
And, you know, I'm especially happy about them.
Scott is wrong.
Zelensky is going to get arrested.
Well, that's not part of my prediction.
I don't have a prediction about Zelensky not getting arrested, but I also don't have one about him getting arrested.
i don't think it matters what ukraine wants or what zelensky wants i don't think they're i think it's between the united states and russia and i don't think it matters at all what zelensky wants So that's just not part of my prediction at all, either way.
Whether he gets arrested or not shouldn't affect, have any effect on whether Putin wants to keep going.
Well, you know, I wasn't going to mention the coffee warmer, but maybe I'll add that to the list.
Tankers are mostly owned by Greek companies.
I don't think that's true, that the ghost tankers are mostly owned by Greek.
I do believe that there are a lot of Greek registered tankers, but I don't think mostly.
I think it's a grab bag of basically all kinds of sketchy tanker people from around the world.
That's what Grok led me to believe.
Wow, that is so wrong.
I can tell the people I want to ignore the most.
The people who listen to my entire Ukraine prediction, and then all they have to do is they say, Scott, you should read up more.
Or, you're so wrong.
That's not an opinion.
You're so wrong.
Tell me one thing I got wrong.
Anything.
Pick the top thing you think I'm misinterpreting or missing or not calculating.
Just tell me one thing that you think I don't know or I have not included in my opinion.
And you'll get really quiet right now.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to say goodbye for most of you, and I'm going to talk to my beloved local subscribers, the best subscribers ever.
