Venezuela fun, and I'll blow your mind this morning. But you'll like it.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, AI Virtual Worlds, The Simulation, CA Homeless Fraud Audit, Governor Newsom, Newsom Veto Fraud Audit, Mayor Mamdani, Maduro Arrest, President Trump, Columbian President, Venezuela Government, Hands-Off Venezuela NGO, Venezuela Takeover Reasons, Global Free Speech Censorship, China Battery Development, Neuralink Potential, Optimus Law Enforcement Usage, 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.
When I lean my phone against the screen, which I do before the show, it sometimes hits the microphone button off.
The only button that you wouldn't want to turn off.
All right.
Does everybody see me?
Everybody hear me?
Sound is back.
It's back.
I was just teasing you, although you couldn't hear it, that I've got a mind-blowing thought today that I've never seen, I've never heard, but it blew my mind and it might blow your mind too.
So wait for that.
But first, how many of you would like to do a simultaneous sip?
Is it time?
Yeah, let's do that.
Because I know why you're here.
You're here for the simultaneous sip.
All you need is a copper mugger, glass of tankers, chalice, sign, a cantane, sugar, flask, 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 here of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called a simultaneous sip.
It happens now.
Oh, extraordinary.
So, so good.
Well, speaking of mind-blown, some of you know, but if you didn't know, yesterday Owen Gregorian held a spaces event.
That's the audio, that's the audio feature with an X where people can volunteer to talk.
And so audio only.
And the topic was, despite the fact that Venezuela had just been taken over, the topic was about me.
So Owen generously did an entire spaces that lasted.
And here's the amazing part.
It lasted six and a half hours.
And people wondered, Scott, did you actually listen to that?
Yes, I did.
Now, I couldn't listen to it all live.
I was dipping in and out because I had people coming in and out and nurses and a bunch of medical stuff.
But after it was done, and I had some serious pieces of my own time, I listened to the whole thing and I was blown away.
People saying very nice things.
There were tears, there were compliments.
But I want to especially call out some people I'm really proud of.
And that's the people who were terrified about public speaking.
And here's the key.
They did it anyway.
They did it anyway.
Now, I hope I may have been part of your journey to realize that embarrassment or freedom from embarrassment is a superpower.
And I saw a number of people mention that as a superpower.
And I will tell you, I was watching people who have obviously acquired that superpower do things that they were clearly uncomfortable with.
And it all worked out.
It all worked out.
So to those of you who were frightened, but did it anyway, here's to you.
Second sip.
And if you were concerned about reciprocity, another thing I talk about a lot, why did you pay it off?
Wow.
Well, anyway, Owen is planning on another different topic.
He's going to follow after the show.
He'll do it on their spaces.
And by the way, Owen was amazing.
If you want to hear somebody be a good host, if you want to see how it's done, listen to Owen.
Just amazing.
Anyway, he'll do a second one after the show, but this wouldn't be more about, not about me, it'll be about Venezuela, I think.
Probably some other things will come up, but Venezuela will be the top of mind.
All right, I'm going to start by blowing your mind.
Now, here's my challenge.
That's a pretty big claim, right?
And I'm going to add a thought to the universe that, as far as I know, has never been there before.
It goes like this.
Oh, I should also warn you, the topic I'm about to talk about, a lot of you do not like.
But I'm going to convert the people who don't like it, the topic I'm about to introduce.
I'm going to make you like it.
So that's my second challenge.
You're going to like something you didn't like before.
Ready?
All right.
So as I've been telling you, AI may have reached some kind of plateau in how well you can train it with just brute force and giving it more training material.
And I was reading in some publication, let's see, in TechCrunch, that this is the year that maybe AI people figure out that they've reached some kind of a plateau and they can't get much better just by adding more training material and more data center.
So the response to that, which is already happening, is some startups trying to create virtual digital worlds that look and act like our world so that an AI can live in it and learn to operate the way a human would and also learn general intelligence the way a human would.
Now that necessarily means that these digital worlds will include characters based on humans.
Because if you want the AI to be intelligent like a human, the thinking is that you have to train it in an environment in which it experiences the world like a human.
But because you can't unleash a bunch of stupid AIs into the real world, they'll build an AI virtual world.
And the characters within it almost certainly would have to be programmed to believe they were not characters.
So they would have to be programmed to believe they were original base reality.
Right?
So I believe this will be the year that AI and these virtual realities will make it really obvious that if we're not already a simulation, the odds are tremendously high that we probably are.
Can't know for sure.
No way to know for sure.
But the odds will be a billion to one, trillion to one, that we're not real.
Now, so my next question, I'm getting to the good part.
I haven't got to the good part.
You're going to like it.
So people say to me, but Scott, what does that imply about a creator?
You know, the obvious question is: who made the original?
And I've been saying for years that obviously there was some advanced intelligence.
Don't know what it is.
It might be your version of God.
It could be just a higher civilization.
But definitely, it would have to be an advanced civilization that was smarter than us that knew how to create this simulation.
Now, you ready for the good part?
Is it true or not true that in what we think is our base reality, we're trying to create a form of intelligence that would be smarter than us, smarter than us.
So, this actually opens up the possibility that we're a simulation created by a species or entity that's not as smart as us.
That's what I'm adding.
It's obvious that something that was more intelligent than us could create a simulation that fooled us into thinking we're real.
But since we know we're already trying to create an AI that's smarter than us, it's entirely possible that we're created by an entity that has advanced intelligence, but not as smart as us because we've already surpassed it.
I'll bet nobody said that before.
All right, it gets better.
So, if it's true that the AI experts are going to make these various training worlds, don't you think there will be lots of them?
There's not going to be one because every AI startup that wants to create its own little environment will have to do their own.
So, very quickly, you would have more simulated environments, might be two or three, but it would be more than whatever your base reality is.
Now, the other thing people ask me is, why is this not compatible with Christianity?
And I say, probably is.
There's probably nothing I said that's incompatible with Christianity.
You know, you could imagine God created it, what's the base reality and created it all, and there's nothing to rule that out whatsoever.
And other people say, What does that imply about souls?
Well, I don't think we know what a soul is, so it kind of depends how you define it.
If you define it one way, you know, it probably is real, and we have one.
If you define this some other way, maybe not so real.
What about free will?
Well, here again, it depends how you define it.
There's a definition of free will in which it definitely exists.
If you just say free will is the ability to make a choice, if you stop there, yeah, it definitely exists because we, well, the ability to make a choice and not know why, you know, not know the real mechanism of it.
So, that could easily be true that you have free will if you define it that way.
If you defined it another way, maybe you wouldn't.
And then, lastly, here's the part you're going to like: whenever I talk about this simulation, and especially when I talk about my own impending death, many of my Christian friends and Christian followers say to me, Scott, you still have time.
You should convert to Christianity.
And I usually just let that sit because that's not an argument I want to have.
I've not been a believer.
But I also have respect for any Christian who goes out of their way to try to convert me.
Because how would I believe you believe your own religion if you're not trying to convert me?
So I have great respect for people who care enough that they want me to convert and then go out of their way to try to convince me.
So you're going to hear for the first time today that it is my plan to convert.
So I still have time, but my understanding is you're never too late.
And on top of that, any skepticism I have about reality would certainly be instantly answered if I wake up in heaven.
I do believe that the dominant Christian theory is that I would wake up in heaven if I have a good life.
I don't necessarily have to state something in advance.
And so, to my Christian friends, yes, it's coming.
So you don't need to talk me into it.
I am now convinced that the risk reward is completely smart.
If it turns out that there's nothing there, I've lost nothing.
But I've respected your wishes and I like doing that.
If it turns out there is something there and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win.
So with your permission, I promise you that I will convert.
But I probably won't spend much time in that phase, so don't expect it to happen today, okay?
But argument made, argument accepted.
All right, let's talk about the news.
Is your mind blown yet?
Did I blow any minds?
I will find out about that later.
I saw a post by Shamath Palahapatiya, whose name I have trouble pronouncing.
And he was pointing out that back in September, it was a bipartisan, unanimous bill in the California legislature to require more reporting on the cost and income data for the homeless.
So the idea is that both every single Democrat and every single Republican in California agreed.
How rare is that?
Can you think of any other time that every Democrat and every Republican in California agreed?
And they agreed to do this more rigorous testing or rigorous auditing, I guess, or checking on the expenses.
And this is obviously based on all the alleged fraud.
And then, as Jamath points out, Governor Newsom vetoed it.
Now, his reason for vetoing is that he believed that there were already existing laws that would cover it.
Now, are we supposed to believe, and by the way, this is back in September, he vetoed it.
Are we supposed to believe that Newsom was the only Democrat who knew that the laws already existed?
And nobody talked to him?
They went through all that work.
The Democrats went through all that work to be behind this 100%.
And then he vetoes it.
And Shamath asked the obvious question, why?
Now, I saw a post response to this from a post on X called Problematically Non-Compliant.
And I suppose he said, this is the evolution of a Dilbert filter, complexity laundering.
So this is based on something that maybe I inspired in terms of the thinking.
He said, Gavin's pretending other complex bills that nobody will understand, much less enforce, already accomplished the same thing.
How many times have I told you that fraud always hides its complexity?
So here both the Democrats and Republicans tried to come up with this way to control expenses that would be easy to understand.
But Gavin Newsom hid behind the complexity of the other things he thought would do the job.
Is this a case of it looks exactly like what it is?
Like you don't have to wonder why he did it.
They did it obviously to cover somebody's tracks.
Well, I think we're in a phase of civilization where the smart assumption is that he's doing this to cover some kind of fraud.
Don't know.
Don't know for sure.
And the reason I don't know is that hiding things behind complexity works.
It works really well.
Yeah, can you predict the fraud?
You can.
Well, here's story, non-story.
So Mayor Momdani, the so-called communist mayor of New York City, he said he called Trump to file a complaint about the arrests of Maduro.
Who would do that?
So he called Trump and he said, he quote, I registered my opposition.
I made it clear.
We left it at that.
Now, is that just performative?
Is that purely theater?
And is it purely for the purpose of making it look like he can fight back against Trump?
There was no value in that whatsoever.
I'm kind of surprised that Trump took the call.
So you watch on one hand, you watch Trump pull off this amazing military slash legal operation, which was probably very, well, not probably.
It was very hard to pull off.
And everybody in the world's impressed.
But you've got this one communist mayor who wants to register his opposition.
I made it clear.
You did nothing.
All right, there's two quotes of the day.
I'm going to call them my quote of the day.
One from Eric Weinstein, and he posted on X.
This made me laugh this morning.
He said, I've never been entirely sure if international law actually existed.
Isn't that a great way to put it?
I've never been sure if international law actually existed.
Well, my observation is that whoever has the power gets what they want.
So, yeah, on some theatrical performative level, there's something like international law, but anybody who can ignore it does.
So if anybody who can ignore it does ignore it, is there really an international law?
It's a funny question.
And then I thought that was going to be the quote of the day, but I saw one by Bad Ombre, also on X.
And Bad Ombre posted this.
Has Kamala set up a bail fund for Maduro yet?
Has Cabo set up a bail fund for Maduro yet?
Now those are just good comments.
So I love a war that no Americans get killed and it generates a bunch of good memes and funny quotes.
These are two of my favorites today.
All right.
Here's what I keep saying is working, which is that Trump creates assets out of nothing.
And one of the assets he's creating out of nothing is the idea that he does what he says he'll do.
If you watched a press conference yesterday, you saw Rubio, he just kept hammering that one point.
We have a president who does what he says he'll do.
He does what he says he'll do.
And I thought he was maybe hitting that one point too much.
But if Rubio is learning persuasion, either by just association or whatever else from Trump, he knows that repetition is persuasion.
So he just repeated and repeated.
This president does what he says.
This president does what he says.
That's probably not because Rubio is a bad public speaker, because he's a good one.
It's probably because he understands the value of repetition.
And he's watched Trump do it a million times, a million times.
So, and then of course other people pick it up.
You know, the conservative independent media, the people who comment on stuff like me, we pick that up.
And it's just automatic because we've been persuaded that that's an important thing to think about.
So think about how this created an asset.
So Trump has already threatened Iran that if they shoot protesters, that we would get involved.
He wasn't specific, but it suggested that we'd put enough maybe military or CIA muscle into it that it would take out the regime.
Now, if Trump had not already created this asset, the asset that people believe he does what he says he's going to do, and he's really, he's done great on that, would Iran maybe think twice?
Or would Iran say, ah, it's another Joe Biden?
He created an asset out of nothing.
That's one of the things I always teach you.
Before Trump goes into any negotiation, it feels like there's this point where he always creates that asset.
If you think about the tariffs, for example, he created an asset out of nothing.
It became a tool slash weapon that just didn't exist before.
He just made it.
So that's a good persuasion.
I would guess, and I hope I'm not wrong about this, that China will not attack Taiwan as long as Trump is president.
Now, maybe it wouldn't have happened anyway, but when China watches our military take down the entire country in 10 minutes, they're going to think twice about doing something with Taiwan that Trump would be violently opposed to.
So probably this is having a big difference.
Now, he's also extending this.
New York Post is reporting that maybe you heard this already.
He's already threatened Colombia.
What did he say?
Oh, sorry.
one of the side effects of whatever I'm doing is I get burpee.
So he's talking about Colombian President Petro, who also has some kind of cartel connections.
And he says, quote, he has cocaine mills, talking about the president of Colombia.
He has cocaine mills.
He has factories where he makes cocaine.
And yeah, I think I stick by my first statement.
He's making cocaine.
And then he says, and here's the kill shot.
He says they're sending it to the United States, so he does have to wash his ass.
I tell you often that Trump is so good with swearing that he only uses it judiciously.
But when he does, it really makes you focus on that thing he said.
So instead of saying a boring thing like, yes, you know, I hope he cooperates in the future, he says he has to wash his ass.
As soon as you throw ass in the sentence, people pay attention.
And I imagine that the Colombian president is practicing his run to a safe room.
They probably got a stopwatch.
They're like, all right, president of Colombia, can you make it to the safe room in 37 seconds?
Because unfortunately, that's all the time you're going to have.
And Maduro, I guess, almost made it, but he didn't.
Then Trump says about Mexico, talking about the president of Mexico, Scheinbaum.
He goes, we're very friendly with her.
She's a good woman, Trump told, I guess, Fox and Friends.
He said, and quote, but the cartels are running Mexico.
She's not running Mexico.
Okay.
Again, would Mexican presidents be afraid of Trump if he had not created this asset of if I say I'm coming for you, I'm coming for you?
Probably not.
So now it creates the option at least.
I don't know how this would work, but at least the option that we could somehow work with Mexico to get past the fact that their leader is a cartel plant.
I don't know.
We'll see.
So I would call this, as Trump called it, the Don Rowe Doctrine.
He was trying to see if he could make that sticky.
So instead of the Monroe doctrine, which basically said the United States will dominate our hemisphere, stay out of our hemisphere, he suggested this should be called the Don Row Doctrine, which I kind of like.
Now, the big surprise to me yesterday about Venezuela is that Trump says we, meaning his military and, well, we mean the United States, let's say, are going to run Venezuela.
What?
How are we going to run Venezuela?
But if you recall, one of the biggest mistakes in Iraq, the Second Iraq War, was that we took out their entire government and then everything fell apart.
And so people say, if you had left some of the corrupt government in place, there would at least be stability, and then maybe you could work toward a better government or something.
So I don't think that if it were anybody but Trump, I don't think that they would have the assets, going back to prior conversation, I don't think they would have the assets to run the country without using the locals.
So one of the, it looks like the current vice president, who would have been Maduro's vice president, the person you could probably trust the least, is going to be under the, let's say, under threat from the U.S.
So Rubio and Hegseth and I think Raisin Kane, General Kane, I think they're going to be working with, working with the existing corrupt Venezuelan government.
Now, when I say working with, surely that means co-opting, meaning it's not an equal situation, that whatever Venezuela does, they do at the risk of the U.S. sending in more military and taking out the vice president.
Now, if you were that new vice president, or not new, but the person running the country, at least on paper, wouldn't you assume there would be a bad play to just reproduce the Maduro situation?
Because surely you would be taken out because Trump does what he says he'll do.
So by now, there have been some threats, I assume, like really, really good threats, and maybe even some bribes.
But it's probably the only way that we can get to some kind of a stable pro-American Venezuelan government.
So it seems to me that Trump has learned from the Iraq experience.
And I don't know if anybody's tried it exactly like this, where we say, yeah, we're going to work together, but really, you're going to do what we tell you to do.
It might work.
So I would say it's the best play.
We don't know if it'll work or how it will work, but I think it's the best play.
Now, the remaining question I have is, do we leave any military assets around the government buildings?
In other words, is the VP of Venezuela already under the gun?
I guess there's probably some kind of presidential palace or something.
Do we have military presence where the actual physical people of the government work?
And could we control them if we had removed all of our military, even the special forces, et cetera, would we be able to control them?
So nobody's asked this question yet.
The press is not asking the right questions.
The right question is, do we have any physical assets, as in special forces, that are now the security for the new vice president?
Now, remember, we'd been told that Maduro is being protected by Cuban military.
Am I right?
I'll take a fact check on this if I'm wrong.
But my understanding is that Maduro didn't even trust his own people enough to have them be his security.
And that he did trust Cuba because Cuba and Venezuela have a symbiotic relationship.
So could it be that the first thing the Americans did is say, Cuban, gone, Cuban, gone, Cuban, gone, until there was no security.
And then they say, we are now your security.
So if you don't do what we want, you got no security.
So I think that might be what's happening, but that's speculation.
Well, you'd not be surprised to hear that there are lefty-leaning protests about the Venezuelan action in four different states.
And as Wall Street Apes posts on X, that immediately, at least the independent journalists figured out that they were all paid and organized by the same entity because they had the same signs, different cities.
It's obviously organized protests by somebody.
And then Wall Street Apes also points out who it is.
So it didn't take long.
So apparently the hands-off Venezuela protests have been funded by an NGO, of course, funded by an NGO.
That hides the badness.
You launder it through an NGO.
But it's an NGO called the People's Forum, which has received over $20 million from one billionaire.
Now that billionaire, it turns out, lives in China.
Right.
So the money is coming from a pro-Chinese billionaire.
Do you remember when you would have thought, wow, I'm surprised a lot of people disagree with this Venezuela thing because it worked out so well?
Now we instantly know that it's a fake demonstration and that some billionaire or billionaires are behind it.
Boom.
So that didn't work, and we're a whole new world, people.
Again, thanks to the Elon Musk, the Mike Benz, and the other players who have uncovered how the NGOs work.
We can just instantly go to the answer.
Is it real?
No.
Is it being paid for by a billionaire?
Yes.
What country backs the billionaire?
In this case, China.
This takes 10 seconds.
But as I've said before, you and I are probably in a bubble where this is easier.
The average normal person or voter still probably thinks it's real.
And that's what we got to do.
We got to fix that.
You heard me speculating and wondering if there's a real reason behind the attack on Venezuela.
So the legal justification is drugs.
And I do believe that Trump is serious about stopping drugs.
But the real question is, is that the only reason?
And I don't think any of us thinks it's the only reason.
Some would say it's because of oil, etc.
But I saw an opinion by Cynical Publius on X, who I think captured my thinking.
Well, no, I'm not going to say that.
It added to my thinking.
I don't want to pretend that I had this thought as clearly as cynical publiuses.
But he said he's monitoring the Venezuelan situation, and there's so many questions, yes.
But the strategic reason for bringing down Maduro has become abundantly clear.
It wasn't abundantly clear until I read the next part of his opinion.
He said, well, we ostensibly captured Maduro based on legitimate and withstanding U.S. drug charges from 2020.
The real reason for the military operation this morning is that neutralizing Maduros of Venezuela had become a strategic imperative for the USA, meaning that Maduro and Venezuela were becoming a central hub for all the people we don't like.
So he was nurturing relationships, says Cynical Publis, with Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran, and was already going to be part of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
So if you were looking for the one reason that we went after Venezuela, you would miss, you know, be one of those missing the forests or the trees.
The forest is that we can't have somebody who's actively anti-American and actively courting our enemies while also being a presence in our hemisphere.
You don't need more reason than that.
Under the Donro doctrine, you don't need a better reason to take down Venezuela, that they've simply become a simply become too important to our enemies to let them have free reign.
But I'm seeing in the comments you're prompting me, but that was the next thing I was going to talk about.
Apparently, Rasmussen Pohl noticed this, that Trump has posted, he's posting videos of allegations of Venezuela being part of rigging our election.
And what Rasimus and Pohl points out is that's not the sort of thing he was doing before.
And it could be that the bonus on top of the bonus, beyond the strategic and oil and everything else, is that Trump can say to the new regime, hey, new regime.
Here's the deal.
If you help me prove that Venezuela was behind the rigging of our elections, you're going to have a much better time of it as America figures out who's in charge and we work with you to rebuild Venezuela.
So once again, it seems that Trump has built an asset that didn't exist.
So if you went back a year, Trump could not have asked Venezuela to help him figure out did Dominion or anybody else through some kind of connection with Venezuela, did they make any difference to our elections?
But now having taken control of the government, he can say to that government, you're going to help me find out what happened.
And they'll probably have to do it because the people who we'd be talking to would not necessarily be guilty, like personally guilty, but they would know that if they work with him, they'd be giving up something that didn't have any value to them anymore, which is some knowledge about something that may or may not have happened.
But if they give that up, things are going to go a lot better for them.
Nobody else could have done that.
He created the asset out of nothing.
I mean, not nothing.
He attacked it and overthrew the country.
But if this is a signal that Trump is going to go hard at the election integrity and he's going to go hard at it through this more control of Venezuela, that would be quite a 2026 window.
That would change everything.
and I think that's coming I saw a post today on X by Fisher King And he said, it's striking that in the realm of foreign affairs where POES has real power, big things can get done.
Meanwhile, domestically, we keep running up the debt and everything's broken.
That's a good point.
Where Trump has the most, let's say the most freedom, he gets the best results.
Where he has the least freedom, because Democrats are always on him for domestic stuff, it's hard to get anything done.
And that would work, you know, no matter who's the president.
The other team is going to stop you from being effective.
So case in point, apparently, Unusual Wales is reporting that the U.S. raid to capture Maduro was actually leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times.
But both publications decided it would be too risky to publish it because it would be dangerous to the troops.
However, somebody put very large bets on the day that Venezuela would be attacked.
And they placed them on polymarket, where I believe, I'll take a fact check on this, but I believe polymarket allows you legally, or another way to say it was there's no reason you couldn't, make an insider bet.
So somebody who had insider knowledge made a shit ton of money by picking the exact day of the attack.
That probably is related to whoever was leaking it as well.
All right.
You all know Michael Schellenberger, one of the best independent journalists in the country, an amazing writer, amazing, does amazing work.
But he's warning us, and I don't think we're watching this closely enough, that we're in an absolute free speech crisis.
So apparently the EU, Australia, and Brazil had a meeting at Stanford recently to coordinate global censorship strategies against Americans.
What?
What?
We know that they had a meeting and that the deal was trying to censor American free speech.
Well, the reason this is a big problem is that censoring free speech is probably the beginning of every anti-democratic thing you can imagine.
It's the most authoritarian thing I can imagine because everything bad comes after censoring free speech, right?
If you tried to do something bad, but free speech was still in existence, there's a good chance you could cash it and get enough people involved to stop it.
But if you stop free speech in America, you could kind of control America.
And you would have to make it look like you're trying to do the opposite.
You'd have to make it look like you're improving free speech by getting rid of the bad parts, the bad parts.
Now, the bad parts are what the free speech is for.
The bad parts are the part where people don't like it, and often it isn't true.
But if you don't have the freedom to speak, all bad will happen.
And as Michael Schellenberger points out, here are the approval ratings of some of these countries involved.
So Macron has it, Macron of France, has a 1515% approval.
What?
And he's going to, this guy with a 1.5 approval in his own country is going to come and tell us what kind of free speech we have or don't.
How about Germany's MERS?
Their leader has a 20% approval.
Britain's prime minister, 25% approval.
Now, these are the clowns that are trying to figure out a way to have European pressure.
on American platforms to the point where the American platforms have to say, all right, all right, you know, we'll go out of business if we don't deal with you.
So we'll have to start censoring our own people.
And that's like the beginning of the end.
So as Schellenberger points out accurately, we are in a free speech crisis because they might be able to pull it off.
I don't know what the response is.
I think the response is if you have Trump as a president, he will say at some point, if he hasn't already, here's the deal.
You clowns need to stay away from our free speech.
And if you don't, all bets are off.
All bets are off.
Because I would consider this one of the biggest strategic defense issues in the country.
It's a bigger risk than China attacking us.
It's a bigger risk than Russia attacking us.
Because I don't think they will.
But this is definitely happening.
So the thing you have to worry about is not the one that sounds worse on paper.
It's the one that's actually going to happen.
And it looks like they're coming after us.
So I would expect at some point Trump to use his asset, which is he does what he says he'll do, to at least postpone this.
But my God, and the weapon that these other countries have is that they can find us.
They can find an American company like X.
I think they're trying to find X $140 million or something.
So they do have a tool, but their tools are the leaders of their countries too.
In other news that I find fascinating, but you don't, China's got this gigantic effort to try to improve batteries.
So China, big country.
So they've got this massive new project.
It's government-backed, but also some big companies.
And they're trying to advance solid state electrolyte batteries.
Now, I tell you all the time that different laboratories in different countries, they're all working on better batteries.
But imagine if there was some big breakthrough, ideally from an American company.
It really changes everything.
It makes your robot last a lot longer, makes your car go farther.
But more importantly, think about the national security benefit of getting as many people as we can off the grid and onto batteries.
So if you have a battery that's good enough and economical enough, then every residential house and every business too could be off the grid, at least where the sun shines enough.
So imagine if we get into some kind of war and the first thing the enemy wants to do is turn off our power.
If enough residential entities, if enough of them have battery, then they can't turn us all off.
So maybe you don't have a battery, but maybe your neighbor does, so you don't have to freeze to death.
You know, you can still charge your phone.
So at some point, the economics of batteries are just a major, major security issue.
And then this makes me wonder.
I never really hear what Tesla is doing with their plans for next generation batteries.
I hear stories about incremental changes.
But it makes me wonder if Tesla, I assume it's true actually.
It makes me wonder if Tesla has some secret project that would leapfrog all these other battery wannabe people.
Because that would be huge.
Speaking of Tesla, it makes me think of Elon, which makes me think of this story, that apparently that Neuralink is going to enter mass production in 2026.
So apparently, the Neuralink, that's the, I'll loosely say it's a chip that they put in your brain.
That's not really the right explanation, but loosely, it will do things like respond, it will restore function to people who are disabled in a variety of ways.
So they might be paralyzed, but then they would be unparalyzed.
They might have vision or hearing problems, but that would fix it.
And I imagine there'd be a whole bunch of things that could be fixed by Neuralink, which apparently they've sort of gotten to the next level of development on.
But here's my insight.
What happens when the people who have the Neuralink chip are not just restored back to as good as the normal, I'll say the normies.
I don't want to insult anybody accidentally.
What happens if you've got the chip and you only got it for fixing one problem?
Let's say your problem was hearing.
So you get the thing and you could hear.
Now that would bring you up to what the sort of the average baseline human can do.
But once you've got the chip in you, what would stop it from adding extra powers?
Why not connect it to AI?
Why not allow you to control things at a distance just by thinking it?
Are we entering a stage where you would rather hire somebody with a chip in their head because they can do everything a normal person can do, but a whole bunch of things that normal people can't do?
If you were hiring a programmer, would you rather have one who has a chip in his head and can just think the code and the code disappears?
Or do you want to stick with somebody who has to type it in, run it by AI, test it?
That's a bad example, but it seems to me it's inevitable that the people with the Neuralink implant would be better, better, than employees who didn't have it.
Right?
What would be the counter argument to that?
And then do we get to the point where, and this wouldn't happen right away, but a point where people just optionally get a chip because they too want to get the full cyborg power.
Probably won't be legal.
You know, probably there'll be some regulation that says you can only do it if you're trying to fix a problem.
But eventually, eventually it's going to be, do you have a chip or do you not have a chip?
Oh, I wouldn't even want to marry somebody who didn't have a chip.
That's coming.
Remember, you may have heard me doubt the story that murder is at a 20-year low or went down 19% or something.
So Zero Hedge has an article that is likewise, as I did, questioning whether the real thing is bad data.
So did murder go down because Trump did a good job?
How?
Or is it the cities were manipulating the data and it's all bad?
I've been saying for some time that all data that's important is fake.
And murder rates is kind of important data.
So according to the Scott Adams rule that all data that's important is fake, I think it's just fake data.
I just don't think it's real.
So I'm glad there's at least one entity that agrees that we don't know if that's real.
All right.
Here's a couple more Tesla things.
So apparently Tesla's Optimus robot, and I think this is coming from Elon, is going to be active in law enforcement.
Now the robots would not have weapons and they would not do violence, but they would somehow assist human crime fighting.
So he doesn't say specifically how, but he says no guns, no tasers, you know, completely unarmed.
It would focus on humane containment and nonviolent intervention, designed to de-escalate, not dominate.
And it would be AI-powered patrols with zero aggression.
So it'd be a way to sort of control things.
So do you think that Optimus will be a guide, let's say, an assist in avoiding crime?
I think it would be.
Because if you look at human psychology, it seems to me there's a high likelihood that if you put a robot into a dangerous situation, that the criminals would say, uh-oh, that robot is watching us.
So if the only thing the robot did was say, go into the dangerous place and look around, that alone probably would decrease the amount of crime.
So it could be that the robot is more like a security camera that can walk.
The problem with existing security cameras is that they're in one place.
So if you needed the visibility to be behind a door or something, well, maybe it can knock down a door and just walk in and start taking that video.
So I do believe that this is a doable thing, but I want to clarify something that I said at a prior podcast.
I said I didn't think that robots were ready to be like butlers where they could learn any skill and then you just teach them what you want and they can go do it.
And somebody clarified to me, and I think that's correct, that the initial wave of robots will be single purpose and probably factory.
So the optimist robots that they're going to start building at scale is not because they're smart enough to do what robots should do if they're ideal.
They're just smart enough to do a single purpose thing, such as learn what to do in a specific warehouse or factory.
And then that would make sense with this idea that the optimus could also be good for security.
It would be closer to a single purpose than it would be to a general purpose.
Then Elon says, he said this in Expost, that Optimus will eliminate poverty and provide universal high income for all.
Now, do you think you learned to talk like that from Trump?
Right?
Because doesn't that sound more like something that Trump would say?
Because it feels like an overclaim.
It feels like a salesperson approach.
But it's also optimistic as hell.
And I think that this is an example of how Musk is learning from Trump, just as Rubio is.
So we're starting to see people pick up the Trumpian way of communicating, where it doesn't have to be, I don't know, 100% true.
It just has to make you feel a certain way and ideally act a certain way that is productive and good for the country.
And I'm all for it.
So the old me would have said, no, come on, that's too much of a claim.
Eliminate poverty?
Eliminate it?
Really?
Really?
But now I think it's just a style of communication that's very effective in making me feel right and act right.
And I'm okay with that.
It works.
All right.
As I said after the show, which is basically now, Owen Gregorian will be firing up a new spaces.
And this will be more about the news, more about Venezuela.
And you should all join.
If you don't know how to find it, go to my feed on X. I'm pretty sure I reposted it this morning.
Or just do a search for Owen Gregorian, and you'll see it at the top of his X feed.
You'll see the link to go to the Spaces.
And I remind you that Spaces is a feature on X that allows people to speak but not be seen.
And you'll see one of the best hosts you've ever seen.
Owen Gregorian does an amazing job.
All right, people, let me go back to my first talk about the simulation.
Did I accomplish my goal of blowing your mind?
Yes or no?
It'll take me a minute for your comments to catch up.
but i want to see if i accomplish my goal i think there's a delay of maybe a minute between you posting the comment and before it shows up here Only because there's so many, Anthony.
What do you think?
Mind's blown.
Yes, there we go.
Your comments just caught up.
Absolutely.
Yes, yes.
Good.
Yeah.
I got a few nopes in there.
More yeses than no.
That's the most you could hope for, right?
Well, you'll be thinking about that.
I think it's hilarious once you realize that we could be created by a less intelligent entity than us.
And that We're the AI and we're already smarter than our creator, as was intended to be.
What lower intelligence, you're watching it right now.
If we succeed, meaning the startups, in creating a virtual environment in which the AI learns to be smarter than us, and that's the whole point.
We're not creating, we're not trying to create an AI that's dumber than us.
So if we have the infrastructure, which is these virtual worlds, then we already see, like right now, we see that what we think is our base reality will be quickly less intelligent than what the outcome of the AI research is.
So you don't have to ask, could it happen?
It's happening right now.
It's happening right now.
That's the whole point.
The whole point is to build a virtual reality in which the characters within the reality, our future AI, is smarter than us in whatever this is.
Does that make sense?
But once you grok that, not literally grok, but understand it, it's kind of mind-blowing.
And again, it does not rule out God.
It doesn't rule out that we're created by a superior intellect.
It doesn't rule that out.
It's just, you know, the point of it is a less intelligent entity creating a more intelligent entity.
God is the author of the simulation.
Can't rule it out.
Yep, depends how you except that it's possible that the God is less smart than us.
Well, that would depend how you define God.
So if you do it in the traditional way, then there's nothing to prevent the God created the entire thing.
Cannot be ruled out.
All right.
I know that's all you need of that.
And I will, I'm going to go private with my beloved locals subscribers.
The rest of you, I hope you got something out of this.