True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 50: Radio Free TrueAnon
Aired: 2020-03-07
Duration: 01:53:38


=== 50th Episode Silver Jubilee (01:49) ===

[00:00:00]  Okay, hello.
[00:00:01]  Special announcement, Trinon listeners.
[00:00:06]  This is our 50th episode.
[00:00:08]  Big 5-0.
[00:00:09]  The big 5-0, which is halfway to the big 100, which maybe someday we'll get there.
[00:00:16]  Yeah.
[00:00:17]  There we go.
[00:00:17]  This is our silver jubilee.
[00:00:20]  So we have extra special gift to you, our dear listeners, our little gumshoes that we love so much.
[00:00:28]  We have an insane, totally fucking insane two-hour interview right now.
[00:00:35]  Yeah, and it is not just a two-hour interview.
[00:00:37]  We're not calling some fucking guy on the phone, even though every time we've done that, it has been sick as fucking hell.
[00:00:42]  We're not doing that.
[00:00:43]  No, we actually have with us in studio.
[00:00:47]  Who do we have, Liz?
[00:00:48]  That would be like Yasha Levine.
[00:00:50]  And they, see, here's the thing.
[00:00:52]  They don't even fucking know.
[00:00:53]  They don't even fucking know.
[00:00:54]  My man is bulletproof.
[00:00:56]  They come at him.
[00:00:57]  They can't get him.
[00:00:58]  That's why, that's why he fits right in with the true and on thing.
[00:01:02]  I actually don't come at us really that often, but they will maybe someday.
[00:01:05]  Yeah.
[00:01:06]  I gotta make more mistakes.
[00:01:08]  Possibly, you know, stream games.
[00:01:10]  No, no, no.
[00:01:10]  Okay, okay.
[00:01:11]  So this is a super long episode, but as a gift to you, we decided not to split this up into two because it's, we go, you know, the True Anon way.
[00:01:21]  We go all over the place.
[00:01:23]  So this week, free episode, Patreon, bang, bam, boom, in one package for you.
[00:01:32]  Yeah.
[00:01:33]  You, you, we are putting a little bow on this bad boy and putting it under your menorah.
[00:01:39]  So did you get, did you get Hanukkah presents when you were younger?
[00:01:42]  Yeah, my mom would be like, let's see what the Hanukkah man laughs.
[00:01:45]  They fucking do Hanukkah presents.
[00:01:47]  Hanukkah man?
[00:01:48]  That's really cute.

=== Broadcasting Divisions (09:14) ===

[00:01:50]  Yeah, we stopped doing Hanukkah when my Jewish half my family all died, but Christmas, I remember, was far superior.
[00:01:58]  As a holiday?
[00:02:00]  Yeah.
[00:02:00]  Oh, yeah.
[00:02:00]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:02:01]  It's a great, great holiday.
[00:02:02]  God's reel.
[00:02:25]  Like, they're not, you know, the Soviet Union isn't really good with the soft power stuff, you know?
[00:02:29]  No.
[00:02:29]  Like, It's horrible at it.
[00:02:31]  Which is funny because so many Americans think the opposite because of American propaganda or whatever.
[00:02:36]  But they're like, oh, the Soviets used to do all this crazy stuff.
[00:02:39]  It's like, no, the Americans did all that.
[00:02:41]  Americans are really good at soft power.
[00:02:43]  No, exactly.
[00:02:44]  And I'm, you know, I'm kind of a product of that soft power, right?
[00:02:47]  So the reason I'm here in America, the reason my family's even here is because of the soft power.
[00:02:52]  Because I'm a Soviet Jew who was rescued from totality.
[00:02:55]  I was going to say Levy.
[00:02:56]  Yeah.
[00:02:56]  Lewandowski was our real name.
[00:02:59]  My dad changed it when we uh when we got to the US, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:03]  But so yeah, I mean the reason we're here is because of the software.
[00:03:05]  In fact, I was at Hoover the Hoover Institution just now.
[00:03:08]  Oh, they have some they that's like the biggest communist archive in the world.
[00:03:11]  I mean, yeah, they have communist stuff, but they have a lot of right-wingers.
[00:03:13]  I mean, Milton Friedman is there.
[00:03:14]  Oh, yeah.
[00:03:16]  It's a right-wing archive, but like they have the biggest collection of communists.
[00:03:19]  They have a lot of sh yeah, they have a lot of it's actually pretty good.
[00:03:22]  So they have a lot of Cold War stuff, and they have a lot of the like the Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty archives.
[00:03:30]  And then they have all the various people who are associated with them.
[00:03:32]  So I was looking through this guy named Gene Sausson's archive.
[00:03:36]  He was like he was like this guy who was a key, a key player in setting up Radio Liberty, which is Radio Liberty was basically broadcast into the Soviet Union and in all these different languages.
[00:03:48]  And the whole point was to weaponize nationalism.
[00:03:52]  I know all about that.
[00:03:53]  They had like in every stated goal to create, like, to create weaponized nationalism.
[00:04:00]  Yeah, break up the international nature of the Soviet Union and basically accentuate the differences and play up the differences and play people against each other.
[00:04:10]  So like this guy, you know, then there's like, it's crazy.
[00:04:12]  It's crazy shit.
[00:04:13]  Like they would, Radio Liberty was, you know, was a CIA project for its first like 20 years and then it was exposed and then it was sort of went kind of like into the open and it was still funded by Congress, but still like half of it is still CIA and even to this day.
[00:04:32]  Yeah, it's RFE slash RL.
[00:04:34]  There used to be two different ones and then they merged after the Cold War.
[00:04:36]  Radio Free Europe was just like into the Soviet sort of blocks of like Poland, you know, sort of not not and then Radio Liberty was into the Soviet Union and to all the different Soviet republics.
[00:04:47]  And so they were like, and they were even broadcasting into Cuba because they were, but not in not in Spanish, but in Russian, because they were like Russian or Soviet soldiers stationed in Cuba.
[00:04:56]  So they were broadcasting from America just for like whatever, how many thousand.
[00:05:00]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:00]  Yeah, like whoever the fuck is listening to that.
[00:05:02]  So like it was weird.
[00:05:03]  So they were, so I was just looking at these reports about, you know, the life of Soviet Jews.
[00:05:10]  And then like they do, they would do these weird things where they would do to gauge the effectiveness of their broadcast.
[00:05:15]  Because, you know, like they're run on this very commercial kind of mindset because it's an American broadcasting operation, even though it's a CIA front.
[00:05:22]  They want like, they want, what do you call it?
[00:05:25]  It was like feedback, basically audience reports.
[00:05:27]  Yes.
[00:05:28]  They want to know, they want to do audience testing, right?
[00:05:31]  Yeah, like, but how do you do that in the Soviet Union?
[00:05:34]  Yeah.
[00:05:34]  And so what they do is they send out basically spies to covertly talk to Soviet tourists in Eastern Europe.
[00:05:43]  So just like opinion pollster spies.
[00:05:45]  Yeah, like very American.
[00:05:47]  And they'd like they'd like strike up a conversation.
[00:05:49]  That's incredible.
[00:05:49]  Yeah.
[00:05:50]  And I met this dude in DC who like who was the who was a like his grandpa was a Nazi collaborator from Ukraine.
[00:05:57]  And he was doing that stuff.
[00:05:58]  And like, that's pretty interesting.
[00:06:00]  So, so there's like, so I'm like, that whole soft power stuff is so strong.
[00:06:05]  I mean, it's weird.
[00:06:06]  You go in there and there's just like boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of this stuff.
[00:06:10]  And it's like, it's like this almost academic, you know, they take an academic approach to it.
[00:06:15]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:15]  It's very dry.
[00:06:16]  They're like, they almost, you can tell they like the Soviet Union because they're like, you know, they fetishize it.
[00:06:21]  They like, they're kind of like into this shit.
[00:06:23]  Yeah.
[00:06:24]  because they study it, but then...
[00:06:26]  You're talking about the Hoover people.
[00:06:27]  Yeah, but no, just like, yeah, the Radio Liberty people, the CIA people.
[00:06:31]  They also want to destroy it.
[00:06:32]  Yes.
[00:06:32]  But they kind of fall in love with it.
[00:06:34]  Well, they know everything about it.
[00:06:35]  I mean, they have to.
[00:06:36]  They're into it.
[00:06:37]  The best books I have about the political economy of the Soviet Union stuff, I got two of them.
[00:06:41]  They're both by intelligence guys from America.
[00:06:47]  They really get to know it.
[00:06:49]  No, I mean, it's weird.
[00:06:50]  It's weird.
[00:06:50]  You're there and you're like, what the fuck are you doing, man?
[00:06:52]  Like, your whole life, you know, it's this guy that's a central character in the creation of Radio Liberty.
[00:06:57]  You know, he's got all these, like, he's like 50 boxes of material.
[00:07:00]  Yeah.
[00:07:00]  And he's like, you open up anything and you see this guy's into, he collects jokes, he collects little stories.
[00:07:07]  He's like, he keeps it, you know, abreast of all the developments in culture and literature.
[00:07:11]  Yeah.
[00:07:11]  And like, you're working to destroy that thing.
[00:07:14]  Exactly.
[00:07:14]  So you're creating like one of the greatest like kind of compilations or like the sort of views into Soviet life.
[00:07:21]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:22]  With the aim of destroying all of that.
[00:07:24]  But also, yeah, but it's also like collecting the fetishes almost.
[00:07:28]  So then you can like, you know, it's like collecting that sort of Native American headdress or something that you can then display it on your team.
[00:07:34]  Or put it in a museum.
[00:07:35]  It's fucking weird.
[00:07:36]  It's like I tiger straight from there.
[00:07:40]  And like, it's actually, it was, I couldn't even do it anymore.
[00:07:43]  I was like, it's disgusting.
[00:07:44]  Yeah.
[00:07:44]  Because you're watching, like, it's like, it's like a guy into the mind of some kind of sociopath because it's like there's no emotion in any of these documents in any of these, because there's like letters, they're talking about, you know, programs, how, you know, they're writing scripts for radio programs.
[00:07:58]  They're discussing how we can improve them.
[00:08:00]  They're like taking audience, basically polling.
[00:08:03]  What does the audience do?
[00:08:07]  Were audiences receptive to it?
[00:08:09]  I mean, yeah, yeah.
[00:08:11]  I mean, my dad listened to that stuff.
[00:08:13]  Oh, wow.
[00:08:13]  Yeah.
[00:08:13]  My dad, I don't think Radio Liberty as much, but he listened to Voice of America.
[00:08:16]  Yeah.
[00:08:17]  He listened to the Deutsche Well.
[00:08:19]  Well, it's funny because...
[00:08:21]  It had a big impact on him.
[00:08:22]  He listened to music.
[00:08:23]  The cultural programs had an impact on him.
[00:08:26]  And they weren't the only reason why he wanted to leave.
[00:08:32]  He was not a fan of the Soviet Union.
[00:08:34]  Yeah, it's not like he listened to the radio once they've been doing it.
[00:08:36]  They fucked him.
[00:08:36]  I mean, they really did stop him from entering the better universities.
[00:08:42]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  He was eligible.
[00:08:43]  He was like his, because he was Jewish, because there were quotas.
[00:08:46]  And if you're just don't have any connections, you are, you know, if you have connections, you're okay.
[00:08:52]  You don't have connections.
[00:08:53]  And so it's like if you're of the lower class, basically, you're kind of screwed because the quota system kicks in.
[00:08:58]  And so he was, he was bitter, you know, which I understand it.
[00:09:01]  And like he was, there was no, like, they kind of just, they fucked him in every different way.
[00:09:05]  But, and my mom too, but like, but but the cultural programming had a huge impact on him for sure.
[00:09:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:12]  And they had like, yeah, and they had, and they targeted, I'm not sure if he listened, I don't think he listened to the Jewish ones, but they had specific ones targeting sort of, you know, Soviet Jews and like special programs.
[00:09:23]  You know, they, and then they expanded those stuff when the movement really started gaining steam inside the Soviet Union.
[00:09:29]  So there, I mean, America is like has probably the best soft power apparatus in like the history of like it's funny because it was originally Britain that was really good at it, especially in World War II.
[00:09:39]  The British sort of like, especially with the black propaganda that you had radio stations and stuff, it was really like, I mean, they had very specific ones.
[00:09:48]  And like they did it, again, like extremely scientifically.
[00:09:51]  The Germans did it too, of course.
[00:09:52]  Like the Germans, but they were always torn because like some people, I guess like in the intelligence apparatus, wanted to exploit the Ukrainians, the local population.
[00:10:06]  And then the army and sort of the Nazi party apparatus are like, no, we can just kill them.
[00:10:12]  I mean, it's a problem.
[00:10:12]  It's hard to win people over when you say that you are the master race and you're going to genocide them.
[00:10:17]  That's kind of an issue.
[00:10:19]  Ukrainians, I will say, a lot of them did fall for it.
[00:10:22]  I went to Ukraine and they well, I mean, because they did, there was, yeah, like you said, there was a schism inside sort of the Nazi sort of command and some people wanted to use them because they realized that, you know, this is like it's a wasted opportunity.
[00:10:35]  Exactly.
[00:10:36]  But and they did use them as, especially after Stalingrad when like Soviets started winning.
[00:10:40]  I mean, Ukrainians were given a lot more power.
[00:10:43]  The heweis.
[00:10:44]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:45]  And so, and so, but no, but I mean, when you have a genocidal ideology like that, it's like, you're not going to.
[00:10:51]  But I mean, America's perfect because it's all, I mean, it's like the sort of democratic, this focus on democracy and this focus on sort of like identity politics, you know, which is the nationalism.
[00:11:02]  It was the first identity politics, really.

=== First Identity Politics (03:19) ===

[00:11:04]  You use that as a way of heightening divisions between people.
[00:11:08]  And I mean, look, the same, it's with the Soviet Jews.
[00:11:11]  I can, I can sort of understand.
[00:11:12]  It's like you were born, you know, you're the Soviet Jew.
[00:11:16]  You're born totally secular after the war.
[00:11:18]  Let's say you're this baby boomer class and you don't know what Jewish is.
[00:11:22]  Like, you don't really give a shit.
[00:11:23]  Yeah.
[00:11:23]  And then suddenly, but you're kind of anti-Soviet maybe a little bit already.
[00:11:27]  And suddenly this thing comes along and saying like, you're actually a Jew.
[00:11:30]  Yeah.
[00:11:31]  You're different.
[00:11:31]  You're not like these kind of like these Slavs around you.
[00:11:34]  Exactly.
[00:11:35]  You have this, you have this, you have this 4,000, 5,000-year history.
[00:11:37]  Yeah.
[00:11:38]  You have a homeland.
[00:11:39]  There's a country.
[00:11:39]  Yeah.
[00:11:40]  And look how cool we are.
[00:11:41]  They're winning.
[00:11:41]  They're kicking those Arabs' asses.
[00:11:43]  Exactly.
[00:11:43]  Yeah.
[00:11:44]  And they're tan and look at all the girls.
[00:11:46]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:47]  And you have a special mission and you're special.
[00:11:50]  I mean, you're special.
[00:11:50]  Your identity makes you special.
[00:11:53]  That's funny because that's like as they still say that to us.
[00:11:55]  Well, no, I mean, that's what I'm thinking because it's like, I do really think this is like a running theme on our podcast.
[00:12:01]  It's like so many Americans, particularly like who are perhaps just new to like leftist politics and leftist history or whatever, which by the way, totally fine.
[00:12:11]  But it's like there's some weird idea that like, like you say, the soft power apparatus or the state and the CIA, like all this stuff ended with the Soviet Union.
[00:12:21]  Like the kind of internalization of the end of history and like, you know, I mean, I think for decades, leftists have been trying to figure out how to push against that.
[00:12:31]  Yeah.
[00:12:31]  Like, yeah, no, it's, yeah.
[00:12:32]  But it is really weird.
[00:12:33]  And it's or that it's like something that would never be turned inward on the state that the state wouldn't use against its own people, which is just like laughable on its face.
[00:12:43]  Yeah.
[00:12:44]  Yeah.
[00:12:44]  I mean, it's obviously it's not true.
[00:12:48]  Yeah.
[00:12:48]  Yeah.
[00:12:49]  Like, also because like when you actually look at this stuff, when you look at just the propaganda apparatus, government propaganda, you actually see that there's a constant revolving door between the corporate networks and their executives.
[00:13:01]  Oh, yeah.
[00:13:01]  And I mean, even to today, I can't remember the guy's name.
[00:13:03]  I mean, if you actually look at every administration, there's always the head of the, they keep changing the names.
[00:13:08]  Today it's the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
[00:13:11]  Yes.
[00:13:11]  Which is called USAGM.
[00:13:13]  Terrible.
[00:13:14]  I hate this.
[00:13:15]  USAGAN Dave.
[00:13:17]  So before it was the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
[00:13:19]  Before that was the U.S. ID, you know, information aid, information agency.
[00:13:25]  And then, so anyway, you see that the top people appointed by the president to run those things are usually have come from like, you know, running CBS or running NBC or running some like, you know, Hollywood studio.
[00:13:39]  Right.
[00:13:39]  I mean, so like, and so the connections between them and like, I mean, for instance, you know, the guy who founded the, I can't remember his name, but the guy who founded the Columbia Journalism Review.
[00:13:49]  So, you know, it's this like very revered, you know, journalistic watchdog institution.
[00:13:54]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:54]  Like what they say is, you know, is law, right?
[00:13:57]  Yeah.
[00:13:57]  I mean, the guy who founded it used to work for, I mean, I can't remember what it was called then, but it was basically U Sagum.
[00:14:02]  So he ran, he was the head of U.S. government propaganda in the, I think it was in the 60s and 70s.
[00:14:07]  So it's like.
[00:14:08]  Well, look at all this stuff that came out about the Iowa Writers Workshop.
[00:14:12]  Exactly.
[00:14:13]  Yeah.
[00:14:14]  Yeah.
[00:14:14]  And so, but that's incredible, by the way.
[00:14:16]  It's interesting.
[00:14:18]  We're Graham.
[00:14:20]  We should just, let's just keep it going.
[00:14:22]  We should say, welcome to True Non.

=== Gun Control Debates (12:26) ===

[00:14:24]  Yes.
[00:14:24]  That was just an intro.
[00:14:25]  Yeah, I think we're just going right in.
[00:14:27]  We have special guests here.
[00:14:29]  Uh-huh.
[00:14:29]  We are joined by Masha Gesson.
[00:14:31]  Exactly.
[00:14:32]  No, we are joined by Yasha Levine.
[00:14:34]  I don't even know how to introduce you.
[00:14:36]  What do you, how do you want to, how do you want to, what's, I mean, you have a long and storied pedigree.
[00:14:40]  I mean, you know, just a guy from, you know, just a guy.
[00:14:43]  He's just a guy.
[00:14:44]  He's just a guy looking at a girl, asking her to.
[00:14:48]  No, this is no, Yash Levine of the Exile of putting out Surveillance Valley, a book that made a lot of people, I think, a little angry.
[00:15:00]  People get mad at you, which I really respect.
[00:15:02]  Yeah, people do get mad at me.
[00:15:04]  Is it because you're not a nerd?
[00:15:05]  Oh, yeah, you're kind of a nerd.
[00:15:06]  You're just an archive.
[00:15:07]  Well, but that's not, yeah, but that's like different.
[00:15:09]  Yeah, I don't go there very often.
[00:15:10]  No, no, the archives are, yeah.
[00:15:12]  Huge, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
[00:15:14]  Huge fan, I gotta say, Usagum want to keep on that.
[00:15:18]  Usagum.
[00:15:19]  Usagum.
[00:15:20]  Want to keep on you sagum.
[00:15:21]  Usagum.
[00:15:23]  All right, now I'm fucking.
[00:15:24]  You know, that's what people inside USAGM call it, actually.
[00:15:27]  That's who told me about it.
[00:15:28]  That is.
[00:15:29]  Yeah.
[00:15:29]  The people inside U Sagum call it U Sagum.
[00:15:32]  That's a Trump thing, by the way.
[00:15:34]  That's what he changed it to?
[00:15:35]  Yeah.
[00:15:35]  Well, you know, he's changing.
[00:15:36]  Yeah, that's actually Trumpian.
[00:15:37]  That's a Trumpian thing to say.
[00:15:38]  It is kind of like Usagum.
[00:15:40]  Totally.
[00:15:41]  BBG.
[00:15:41]  What the fuck is that?
[00:15:42]  It sounds like the BBC.
[00:15:43]  That's too, no.
[00:15:44]  You sag them.
[00:15:45]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:46]  So what is, so they have, your work is focused a lot on, I hate fucking nerds, so I'm really excited about this.
[00:15:53]  Cool.
[00:15:53]  Because I hate, I'm like, Oh, yeah.
[00:15:55]  I'm not a fan of technology.
[00:15:56]  Yeah, we're anti-like.
[00:15:57]  I don't get how it works, and I don't like it.
[00:16:00]  I mean, I'm basically like on the like, all this should just be destroyed too.
[00:16:04]  Yes.
[00:16:05]  There is no like making it better for humanity.
[00:16:08]  Yeah.
[00:16:09]  But people get mad at me for saying that call me a Luddite.
[00:16:11]  But people get mad at you because you point out that Tor, which I am too dumb to explain and thus cannot use.
[00:16:18]  But if I was, let me tell you this.
[00:16:20]  If I was still getting high being a doper, would absolutely buy drugs off of it.
[00:16:25]  Yeah.
[00:16:25]  100%.
[00:16:25]  A lot of people do.
[00:16:27]  A lot of people do, which I'm very surprised.
[00:16:29]  Because that seems high above.
[00:16:30]  I did not often have a cell phone.
[00:16:32]  I mean, buying off of it and selling on it are two different things, I think.
[00:16:35]  I think buying is always safer just because you're just looking at the same thing.
[00:16:39]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:40]  Because that's not who they're looking for.
[00:16:42]  Yeah.
[00:16:43]  But I mean, but although it could maybe not be very safe, you know, like, so, but yeah, it's, I mean, it's funny that we talk because Tor is funded by the very, so the U Sagum funds Tor, you know?
[00:16:55]  So can you explain that a little bit?
[00:16:57]  Well, okay, so Tor is this thing that's supposed to hide you from, make you anonymous on the internet.
[00:17:01]  So it became huge, particularly after Edward Snowden.
[00:17:06]  Yeah.
[00:17:06]  Because he made Tor like the center of his resistance, of like of his technological resistance.
[00:17:13]  He uses Tor.
[00:17:14]  He used Tor to like communicate with Glenn Greenwald and all this shit and sort of coordinate the sort of the leaks.
[00:17:24]  And he was a huge advocate of crypto and encryption technology as a way of protecting our privacy on the internet from all these bad like government agencies.
[00:17:33]  Because he, you know, he's Edward Snowden is a libertarian and he has a very hardcore libertarian worldview.
[00:17:38]  And he does not really believe in politics.
[00:17:41]  He doesn't think that politics or political action or people coming together and organizing in some kind of way will actually solve anything through a political system because he thinks politics is inherently corrupt.
[00:17:52]  It's inherently going to be skewed by the human condition.
[00:17:57]  That is like a very big sort of theme among technologists, as they call themselves.
[00:18:02]  I was going to just say also just the barrier.
[00:18:04]  What do they call themselves rationalists?
[00:18:06]  Oh, yes.
[00:18:06]  Like that whole weird community.
[00:18:08]  So yeah, so exactly.
[00:18:10]  I mean, so he's, and he was in this moment when, you know, this is still like the Obama years, right?
[00:18:15]  So like, it was a moment, it was like before Bernie Sanders when it kind of derailed that whole movement, but everybody was like kind of a libertarian curious at the time.
[00:18:23]  Yes.
[00:18:24]  Everybody believed in some kind of, you know, people were saying, oh, Ron Paul, yeah, he's KKK, but he's kind of cool though.
[00:18:29]  I know that was just an Occupy, which was like kind of decentralized kind of thing.
[00:18:36]  Exactly, but it was this urge towards decentralization that had parts that were both ostensibly left and right, but in the final analysis essentially ended up being the same thing.
[00:18:44]  Well, that's why.
[00:18:45]  Which was like grifters coming out.
[00:18:47]  Guys like Tim Poole, Mika White, total people that came out of Occupy and just became just all entrepreneurs.
[00:18:54]  All entrepreneurs.
[00:18:55]  Exactly.
[00:18:55]  Yeah, no.
[00:18:56]  And it's funny because I was actually in LA when Occupy Wall Street was happening.
[00:19:01]  So there was an Occupy LA like encampment.
[00:19:03]  It was pretty big.
[00:19:04]  And then I was reporting on the raid and I was arrested with the occupiers.
[00:19:12]  And a cop was taking a video of me shooting a video just for their files, which I then got because I went to court with him.
[00:19:20]  And I was like, actually, behind me was this giant mural of the Federal Reserve Octopus.
[00:19:24]  I'm like, okay, man, this is some Alex Jones shit right there at Occupy.
[00:19:28]  And there was a big strain of that in LA.
[00:19:30]  I mean, I'm sure it was, I don't know how it was in New York.
[00:19:32]  Yeah, audit the Fed.
[00:19:33]  Exactly, exactly.
[00:19:34]  So exactly, the Audit the Fed people, which were basically Ron Paulite.
[00:19:38]  We want to end the Fed, though.
[00:19:40]  She hasn't been able to fully explain to me what the Fed is, but I don't think I like it.
[00:19:44]  I don't like.
[00:19:45]  I'm not a big money guy.
[00:19:46]  Yeah, you're not.
[00:19:48]  I'm fake.
[00:19:48]  I don't want it.
[00:19:49]  Yeah, no, it's like, I mean, the Fed runs the banks.
[00:19:51]  The banks run the Fed.
[00:19:52]  You have to decide which one you like.
[00:19:55]  It's kind of the other way around.
[00:19:56]  Yeah, the Fed is the banking system, essentially.
[00:19:58]  Well, people who go, check out how I bring this one back.
[00:20:03]  People who also don't like the banks, Bitcoin people who use Tor.
[00:20:06]  Yeah, of course.
[00:20:06]  So Tor funded by USB.
[00:20:08]  Well, there's a whole right wing.
[00:20:09]  There was a whole right wing kind of, I mean, because the Fed is political.
[00:20:12]  I mean, this is the whole thing, I think, gets real circled out.
[00:20:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:15]  People pretend like it's not political.
[00:20:16]  You have like Alan Greenspan, you know, talking voodoo and saying like, oh, you know, whatever the fuck he says and saying like, people are like, oh, whoa, that's crazy.
[00:20:25]  It's magical, you know?
[00:20:26]  Yes, yes, yeah.
[00:20:27]  But the Fed is political.
[00:20:28]  Like, as we see now, like, we see the Fed dropping interest rates that the banks are charged because like the stock market was going down a little bit in order to inflate the stock market.
[00:20:39]  And that was a political, I mean, that was a human decision, a political decision, very much political decision.
[00:20:43]  Absolutely.
[00:20:43]  And so money and the value of money and sort of the way that money is used, I mean, it's a political decision.
[00:20:50]  Absolutely.
[00:20:51]  And so it's just that people, it sort of has a certain politics attached to it now, which is essentially corporate politics and sort of Wall Street politics.
[00:20:58]  But it can be done in a different way.
[00:21:00]  But it's still a politics control of money.
[00:21:01]  So I think that the right-wingers and like sort of libertarians and sort of this Koch libertarians and the Ron Paul libertarians, like they don't like the Fed, I mean, as an ideological thing, I think, because it sort of shows that money and this value of our labor or resources or anything, of everything is a political construct.
[00:21:19]  It's not just this neutral.
[00:21:21]  Yeah, like Bitcoin or gold or something.
[00:21:24]  I mean, like, it's impossible to sell austerity if people understand that money is political.
[00:21:29]  And that's like the big, I mean, you know, say whatever people want if they like MMT or don't like MMT.
[00:21:34]  But the biggest power it has is like explaining to people that all of this money, that money is political and that like these decisions aren't just like math that makes sense that you were taught.
[00:21:46]  Do you know what I mean?
[00:21:47]  And the Koch's like, I mean, you know, Pete Peterson, the Koch brothers rely on all of those kind of myths.
[00:21:54]  And like you say, depoliticizing these kind of institutions in order to, at the end of the day, just sell more and more austerity.
[00:22:03]  Yeah.
[00:22:03]  No, exactly.
[00:22:04]  I mean, exactly.
[00:22:06]  And so like the idea is that you can, because there are these levers that are in place to give, in theory, some political movement comes into power that could use these levers against, you know, the powerful in theory.
[00:22:17]  You know, it's very hard actually to do that.
[00:22:20]  And these institutions might actually have to be completely changed.
[00:22:23]  Exactly.
[00:22:23]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:24]  But the point is, that's the idea.
[00:22:26]  I mean, there's like the idea, there's the ideology and the movement.
[00:22:29]  And then there's a sort of like, it's the Kokes love the Federal Reserve.
[00:22:31]  I mean, the Cokes basically run their own Midwestern Wall Street.
[00:22:37]  Coke industry is like a huge, you know, it lends money.
[00:22:40]  It's like, it lends money to cities.
[00:22:42]  It lends monies to municipalities.
[00:22:44]  It's like, they have like a kind of a privatized, almost Wall Street, like in Wichita.
[00:22:50]  Right.
[00:22:51]  It's pretty insane.
[00:22:53]  And I'm sure that they borrow money from the Fed and so they profit off of it, obviously, while also selling this idea to distrust the government, to distrust any kind of politics and stuff like that.
[00:23:04]  So I mean, so Tor is connected to all that because for Snowden, he distrusted politics.
[00:23:10]  And so he said, okay, well, what do we do about surveillance?
[00:23:12]  Because surveillance is being carried out by political institutions.
[00:23:16]  I mean, by the NSA, by the government, by corporations.
[00:23:19]  These are all like, but he doesn't want to use politics to take on surveillance.
[00:23:25]  He's searching for a technological surveillance.
[00:23:27]  Yeah, like, yeah, exactly.
[00:23:28]  Like a gun.
[00:23:29]  He wants to defeat their gun with an even bigger gun.
[00:23:31]  Well, which I will say, I am sympathetic to the literal gun argument there.
[00:23:37]  Because I do often think that if one person has a smaller gun or another person has a larger gun, then the larger gun will generally win out.
[00:23:44]  But you can't build a larger gun than the NSA.
[00:23:46]  Yeah.
[00:23:47]  Right.
[00:23:47]  Yeah, I mean, it's also, I mean, yeah, exactly.
[00:23:50]  But also on top of the gun that they already have.
[00:23:52]  Yeah.
[00:23:53]  It's building, I mean, I feel like that's like one of your, you know, where you split with a lot of people is that you're like, no, because this is literally, you're building into a system that is like, you can't change that system.
[00:24:06]  This isn't like just a free, like you say, depoliticized system.
[00:24:09]  Yeah.
[00:24:10]  That's just.
[00:24:10]  Exactly.
[00:24:11]  You know, it's like it's already compromised.
[00:24:14]  It's pre-compromised.
[00:24:15]  Yeah.
[00:24:15]  Yeah, I mean, exactly.
[00:24:16]  I mean, if you're going to be, I mean, if you're going to take the NSA, it's like the idea that if you have a couple of handguns in your house, you're going to be able to hold off what the National Guard if they come to you.
[00:24:26]  I mean, it's just not going to happen.
[00:24:28]  No, you take a hostage.
[00:24:30]  Yeah, you take a hostage and your mom.
[00:24:32]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:33]  Your mom, yeah.
[00:24:35]  Just kidding, Jane will not take a hostage.
[00:24:37]  No, I mean, so it's ridiculous.
[00:24:39]  It's a fantasy again, but that becomes the politics.
[00:24:42]  The guns become the politics.
[00:24:43]  Sort of the guns become a standard for the politics.
[00:24:46]  And so, I mean, the Torah is actually just like the gun.
[00:24:49]  It's like the NRA argument, but on the internet.
[00:24:51]  Yeah, good guy with a gun.
[00:24:53]  Yeah, the good guy with a gun defeats the bad guy with the gun.
[00:24:56]  And so, you know, Edward Snowden promoted this gun as like the thing that'll save you from surveillance.
[00:25:03]  And, you know, and he would call on people to be like, you know, we must build these tools.
[00:25:07]  You know, he would do these like talks to engineers around the world with his Roomba that he does with a video Roomba thing that he lives in.
[00:25:14]  I didn't know that.
[00:25:16]  Wow.
[00:25:16]  No, it's a telepresence.
[00:25:18]  Oh, I've seen that.
[00:25:19]  They had one at the mall.
[00:25:20]  Telepresence.
[00:25:20]  I saw it.
[00:25:21]  I hate it.
[00:25:21]  There's an Israel one, too.
[00:25:22]  Israel has one.
[00:25:24]  What do you mean?
[00:25:24]  They have like an Israel robot that will yell at you at some place.
[00:25:29]  You mean like a security guard?
[00:25:32]  No, no, it's like a robot with like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like those hoverboards with like a stick and then a video screen.
[00:25:41]  Yeah.
[00:25:41]  And then there's a guy from Israel that'll tell you to like Israel on it.
[00:25:44]  Have I seen a video?
[00:25:45]  Really?
[00:25:45]  Yeah.
[00:25:45]  It's like a Paris.
[00:25:46]  Like in a mall?
[00:25:47]  In like a mall.
[00:25:48]  Or maybe it was like an AIPAC or something.
[00:25:50]  Probably was probably at a political conference.
[00:25:51]  They'd have those.
[00:25:52]  Did you see how everyone at AIPAC got coronavirus?
[00:25:55]  Did they?
[00:25:56]  That'd be pretty awesome.
[00:25:57]  No, they had to quarantine a bunch of APAs.
[00:25:59]  Like Israel's like, no, actually, we think that you were like, that you may have contracted coronavirus.
[00:26:04]  That's fantastic.
[00:26:05]  We have to quarantine you.
[00:26:07]  It's funny.
[00:26:08]  Were they all in Palestine?
[00:26:09]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:11]  They just put the, like, no, you got it.
[00:26:13]  Yeah, we got it.
[00:26:13]  We gotta get it.
[00:26:13]  We gotta do this quarantine, so they put you in the workshop.
[00:26:16]  We got a special one.
[00:26:17]  We already built one.
[00:26:18]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:19]  Yeah, we gotta build one.
[00:26:20]  They were planning for this.
[00:26:21]  Yeah.
[00:26:22]  Yeah, quarantine.
[00:26:22]  Yeah, I know.
[00:26:23]  God, dude, what if they do?
[00:26:25]  Fuck.
[00:26:25]  That is crazy.
[00:26:26]  Yeah, they just gave it to me.
[00:26:27]  I mean, you know, I don't know if anyone's been to Palestine, but it's a pretty weird place.
[00:26:33]  It's like the mashup of all my favorite movies.
[00:26:35]  Like it's like, you know, it's like total recall because they control all the resources so they can sort of cut off the power.
[00:26:41]  Turn off the water anytime.
[00:26:43]  Yeah, turn off the water, turn off the power, close all the roads.
[00:26:46]  Yeah, close the borders, you know.
[00:26:48]  Precision strike you in your living room.

=== Quarantine Workshop (04:22) ===

[00:26:50]  Exactly, exactly.
[00:26:51]  Or just like bomb your.
[00:26:52]  It's totally total recall on Mars, you know?
[00:26:54]  And then there's also, I mean, it's sort of like Starship Troopers because it's a very Verhoven landscape.
[00:27:04]  Because it's all these hot young people being fascists, you know?
[00:27:09]  Yeah, and the uniform.
[00:27:11]  And it's very, like, it's a very interesting thing.
[00:27:12]  Yeah, it's also multicultural.
[00:27:13]  So you'll have like, you know, the Israelis who have like Ethiopian Jews.
[00:27:16]  Yeah, that is like.
[00:27:18]  You'll have white kind of Jews.
[00:27:19]  You'll have sort of like more darker Jews.
[00:27:20]  So it's like a total, like it's like a, you know, it's like one of those palette kind of totally multicultural fascists.
[00:27:27]  And at times.
[00:27:28]  Exactly, yes.
[00:27:29]  But they're all Jewish, you know, and fascist.
[00:27:31]  And then you have, I mean, in Time.
[00:27:33]  Or there's Russian Nazis they imported in the 90s.
[00:27:35]  Yeah, but that means white to dark.
[00:27:39]  Yeah, like, so, and then it's like, I don't know, In Time is like a, it was a movie that I like that very few people know, actually.
[00:27:46]  Time.
[00:27:47]  In Time.
[00:27:47]  Oh, In Time.
[00:27:48]  I don't think it's time.
[00:27:48]  It's, God, you know, it's by the director.
[00:27:50]  I can't remember his name.
[00:27:51]  It's the guy he made Gattaca.
[00:27:53]  Oh, I liked Gattaca.
[00:27:54]  Which Gattaca?
[00:27:55]  Old Gattaca or New Gattica?
[00:27:56]  The new one.
[00:27:57]  I like both of them.
[00:27:57]  So it's safe.
[00:27:58]  Yeah, it's cool.
[00:27:59]  The one that's in Merin County Courthouse.
[00:28:01]  Oh.
[00:28:01]  Is that where they go?
[00:28:02]  That's the Gattaca building.
[00:28:04]  Eugenics.
[00:28:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:06]  I can't remember his name.
[00:28:07]  Ethan Hawk?
[00:28:08]  Ethan Hawk is the guy.
[00:28:09]  Yeah, he's the guy who's not.
[00:28:10]  But I'm not the director.
[00:28:11]  No, Ethan Hawk is the director.
[00:28:12]  No, he's not the director.
[00:28:14]  You can't shrug, you're the only one who has access to a phone.
[00:28:17]  So In Time is actually a fucking great movie.
[00:28:19]  No one knows it.
[00:28:20]  If you watch it, Justin Timberlake plays in the main role, but he's great in it.
[00:28:24]  It's weird.
[00:28:24]  It's basically terrible.
[00:28:25]  It's like literally, they take the idea that time is money literally.
[00:28:28]  And Dr. Nickel, yes, exactly.
[00:28:31]  Time is money, literally.
[00:28:32]  So when you hit, I think, 20 or something, or 21, your clock turns on.
[00:28:38]  Oh, I remember.
[00:28:39]  I saw a trailer for that.
[00:28:41]  There's like a clock in your arm.
[00:28:42]  Yeah, there's like a clock in your arm.
[00:28:44]  Genetically, you're genetically engineered.
[00:28:46]  Everyone genetically engineered.
[00:28:48]  Once you hit like, whatever, 20, you stop aging.
[00:28:51]  Okay.
[00:28:52]  You don't age.
[00:28:53]  Okay.
[00:28:54]  So then you have like 10 years to live.
[00:28:57]  And so, but your wages are time.
[00:29:00]  So you go to the factory, they fucking pay you in time.
[00:29:03]  Oh, wait.
[00:29:03]  So like I see your life, you get to I see you.
[00:29:06]  So the richer you are, the more basically you are literally, you can live forever.
[00:29:09]  So like, so I get banked.
[00:29:12]  I get banked 10 years at 20, but I have to build on that.
[00:29:15]  So let's say you're like, yeah, they're like, let's say they're saying, oh, yeah, we're now, we're sort of, we're docking you because you were late.
[00:29:20]  Yeah.
[00:29:20]  Boom.
[00:29:20]  You're like, oh, shit, but I actually have to pay my bills.
[00:29:23]  I pay my bills.
[00:29:24]  I just, you know, just, I, I factored in that I got only like, you know, enough just to get home, you know, so that my, and you can also transfer money between people.
[00:29:32]  Okay, yeah.
[00:29:33]  And so like, I would do that.
[00:29:34]  But no, so people, so like, it's so time is money.
[00:29:37]  I mean, so, I mean, and like, your life is money.
[00:29:42]  So, but you have all these different, so in order to move through a city, so like you're like, let's say you're in the, it's also cool because you have like your, your mom and your, and your like sister could look exactly at the exactly the same age.
[00:29:52]  Like, or you're exactly.
[00:29:54]  Joe Biden, yeah, Joe Biden.
[00:29:58]  He lives, I mean, he does live in time, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:02]  It does take you out of it, but in order to move from like from the low-class neighborhoods to the, to the, to the more expensive ones, you actually really have to pay with time.
[00:30:09]  So like you, it's a fee of a certain amount of time.
[00:30:11]  And so when you go between Israel, let's say like Jerusalem, and you know, sort of the West Bank, it's like you cross that zone.
[00:30:19]  Yeah.
[00:30:19]  You cross that like that class zone because it isn't just racially, you know, so poor, much poorer.
[00:30:25]  Everything's more fucked up.
[00:30:26]  The average age is similar.
[00:30:28]  19, right?
[00:30:28]  In Gaza?
[00:30:29]  Yeah, it's been to Gaza.
[00:30:31]  I haven't been to Gaza yet.
[00:30:32]  Yeah, but just in the West Bank.
[00:30:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:34]  But it's like the average age of Palestinians is super young.
[00:30:39]  Yeah, there's a lot of young people there.
[00:30:41]  But yeah.
[00:30:42]  So it's like it actually is a very, it's a very quarantined.
[00:30:46]  It feels quarantined.
[00:30:47]  Yeah.
[00:30:47]  It feels like a quarantined area.
[00:30:49]  I mean, yeah, like it's pretty fucked up.
[00:30:51]  I know.
[00:30:51]  It's insane.
[00:30:52]  I feel like, I mean, I don't know.
[00:30:55]  When we, you know, when we were reading about a lot of the like transhumanist stuff and all that technology and all the like, yeah, but also it's like all the Ray Kerr's wheel stuff.
[00:31:05]  And it's like, you never know how much of, from people we've talked to, it's very like pie in the sky still.

=== Young Blood, Full Beards (02:45) ===

[00:31:12]  Yeah.
[00:31:13]  Like some of the gene therapy stuff and what they think they can do with like anti-aging and all that.
[00:31:19]  Yeah.
[00:31:20]  But it's like, I don't know, man.
[00:31:22]  It's like, it already feels like we live in Gattaca world.
[00:31:24]  Yeah.
[00:31:25]  And like, and it's increasingly so.
[00:31:27]  We have confirmed some body mods and some technologies.
[00:31:31]  I'll tell you, I can't say it on air, but I'll tell you afterwards because I was sworn to secrecy.
[00:31:35]  On-air secrecy.
[00:31:36]  I wasn't sworn to just personally.
[00:31:37]  Oh, exactly.
[00:31:38]  So yeah, just your fans can't eat.
[00:31:39]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:31:40]  I can't tell everybody.
[00:31:42]  But it does like, I mean, hearing about that, I'm like, fuck, that is like a dream come true.
[00:31:47]  Being always 20.
[00:31:49]  Exactly.
[00:31:49]  Yeah.
[00:31:50]  Well, but not just for people, but it's like a perfect devil's bargain for capitalists.
[00:31:56]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:57]  Well, I mean, there was that Peter Thiel, there was that story about Teal getting infusions of blood from younger people.
[00:32:02]  It was the startup that he started.
[00:32:03]  Exactly.
[00:32:03]  It was like two on the nose.
[00:32:04]  But you know, actually does that, though?
[00:32:06]  The whole thing was actually started by basically communists.
[00:32:11]  So the blood transfusions as a way of curing diseases was.
[00:32:16]  So the guy, his name is Bogdanov.
[00:32:19]  He was a sci-fi writer, but he was also kind of a pioneering information.
[00:32:23]  What era?
[00:32:24]  I mean, we're talking about the 20s.
[00:32:26]  Okay, that was a lot of people.
[00:32:28]  He died from a blood transfusion because I didn't realize that there were blood groups.
[00:32:35]  Oh, oh, yeah.
[00:32:36]  No, but it actually, but that's the whole thing.
[00:32:38]  It does work.
[00:32:38]  So if you inject young blood, basically a healthy person shares their blood with a diseased person.
[00:32:45]  Yeah.
[00:32:45]  They actually, you know, it was already back then they were finding out that you can cure diseases that oh wow yeah yeah, I mean that's key, literally just because when I have a kid, when I have, when my wife and I have a kid, that's I'm be like you know what that's your debt to me.
[00:32:58]  You know, like you got to give me an ounce a month, or or or no, inheritance.
[00:33:03]  You know yeah, there you go.
[00:33:05]  Wow, that's pretty good.
[00:33:06]  I mean why yeah, you know yeah, and they probably, you know they should want to do that.
[00:33:09]  I mean, depends on how big your hair should be.
[00:33:11]  You got to write a few more books if you're like, true that you're, I got the sub stack that I run, I can, I can, I can uh, I can sort of uh, I can give as an inheritance.
[00:33:20]  I promise my child a portion of my Patreon earnings.
[00:33:23]  Yeah, there you go.
[00:33:24]  If he'll, if he'll, give me blood and hair, I can get hair plugs as well.
[00:33:28]  No, you don't, I don't need hair plugs.
[00:33:30]  I want to make that very clear to our listeners.
[00:33:32]  I have a, really I have.
[00:33:33]  No, I'm so sorry, it's all right.
[00:33:35]  I'm bald and proud man.
[00:33:36]  Yeah, you do.
[00:33:37]  You do.
[00:33:37]  It looks good.
[00:33:38]  It's a good place if it makes you feel better.
[00:33:39]  I can't grow a beard, oh yeah, that sucks yeah yeah yeah, it's it's.
[00:33:44]  Yeah, not great, less it's it's.
[00:33:45]  Yeah, it's less of a stigma.
[00:33:46]  It's them being bald.
[00:33:48]  Yeah, I don't know.
[00:33:49]  I was spent time in the Middle East and no mustache there, not great or no.
[00:33:53]  In other areas, no beard, not great.
[00:33:55]  You're like they think you're like a eunuch or something.
[00:33:56]  They're just like what's wrong with you?

=== Free Asia Proxy (15:28) ===

[00:33:58]  Literally, people would be like, what's?
[00:33:59]  Do you have something wrong?
[00:34:00]  Because there'd be like a 14 year old with a full beard.
[00:34:02]  Be like, what's up with you man, like i'm like you haven't you've eaten meat once in your life?
[00:34:07]  Like, and you haven't.
[00:34:09]  You look like you can have a beard.
[00:34:10]  I look like it.
[00:34:11]  It's.
[00:34:11]  It goes for about three weeks and then it's like, oh, it's just really long individual strains of not not the hair that's the same color as my hair.
[00:34:19]  Really funny, really bizarre.
[00:34:21]  I look like I look like somebody who's like really excited to go to a renaissance fair as a viking, but he's like 14 and can't grow facial hair yet.
[00:34:28]  It's like long red hair.
[00:34:29]  It's awful wow, interesting.
[00:34:31]  Yeah okay, wait back to tour.
[00:34:33]  Oh yeah, tour.
[00:34:34]  So because I do want to like, uh, it's not just tour that we're talking about, it's basically all like you know broader, like encryption solutions, we'll call them so you, you know technological solutions to problems.
[00:34:47]  Signal is like one.
[00:34:49]  I know a lot of people use that.
[00:34:50]  Yeah everyone, all the all act, all the activists use it right.
[00:34:53]  Yeah, I think that's so insane, by the way, so that's a big thing.
[00:34:57]  I'm a DSA and that's a big thing.
[00:34:58]  Everyone saves people.
[00:34:59]  Everyone uses signal.
[00:35:00]  People will be like.
[00:35:01]  That's how you know they're not actually doing anything dangerous.
[00:35:03]  Well, you know, like, for instance, I'm like, I'm on this, yeah, like this list for in LA of this homeless sort of support.
[00:35:10]  Yeah, everyone's using it.
[00:35:11]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:12]  But it's just a default thing that people use.
[00:35:13]  I mean, it makes her find chat rooms or whatever.
[00:35:16]  But it's not, it's kind of a clunky.
[00:35:18]  It's pretty buggy, too.
[00:35:19]  Yeah, it's a clunky software.
[00:35:20]  I don't think it's like a great.
[00:35:22]  Well, I think the thing with so that is funded by who?
[00:35:26]  Well, it was funded by the CIA.
[00:35:28]  Okay, that's in essence.
[00:35:30]  I mean, so it was funded by this thing called the Open Technology Fund, which was, see, there's several layers to this.
[00:35:37]  So there's Open Technology Fund that was within Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Asia is within the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is now USAGM.
[00:35:46]  So in Radio Free Asia was like a CIA project.
[00:35:49]  Yeah, so Radio Free Asia are the people that are like Kazakhstan.
[00:35:53]  Who covers Kazakhstan?
[00:35:55]  I think that would probably be Radio Liberty.
[00:35:56]  Okay, so Radio Free Asia is a big thing.
[00:35:58]  So it would be like Vietnam, Tibet, China, Southeast Asia.
[00:36:03]  Yeah.
[00:36:04]  They're like China.
[00:36:05]  You should have been a good person.
[00:36:06]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:36:07]  No, they're just anti-communist.
[00:36:09]  They were set up.
[00:36:10]  I mean, there are two different iterations of that one.
[00:36:12]  The first one was, I think, went back to 1949.
[00:36:15]  And they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to send all these, we're going to broadcast radio signals in mainland China against anti-communist stuff.
[00:36:23]  Yeah.
[00:36:23]  And like those signals too for spies.
[00:36:27]  Yeah, but they realize they're like, oh shit, like no one in China has a radio.
[00:36:32]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:36:34]  Yeah, true.
[00:36:35]  I'm serious.
[00:36:35]  Like, yeah.
[00:36:36]  I mean, they just, they're like, wait, people are like peasants who live in the countryside.
[00:36:41]  That's amazing.
[00:36:42]  No fucking radios.
[00:36:44]  That's right.
[00:36:45]  That's right.
[00:36:45]  And so then they boot.
[00:36:46]  So they're like, okay, we'll airdrop a bunch of radios.
[00:36:49]  Yes, they did that in Korea too, I think.
[00:36:51]  But then the radios then like switched the air, you know, the Airstream switched directions and it like flew the other way.
[00:36:56]  So like it didn't, so they cannot work.
[00:36:58]  They cannot it pretty quickly, like for a couple of years.
[00:37:00]  Oh my god, that's amazing.
[00:37:01]  No, I know.
[00:37:02]  But then they rebooted it again.
[00:37:03]  And then like then that's the version that exists now.
[00:37:07]  Yeah.
[00:37:07]  And it's like, it's funny.
[00:37:08]  It's like a, so it's a private, it's a private non-profit corporation completely funded by the U.S. government.
[00:37:15]  So when you try to, let's say, FOIA Radio Free Asia, you're literally like, oh, we're not a government agency.
[00:37:20]  Oh, wow.
[00:37:21]  So that's a really great workaround.
[00:37:22]  Is they can just like, and that's a totally legal totally.
[00:37:25]  Well, I mean, it hasn't been tested in the courts.
[00:37:26]  Yeah.
[00:37:26]  But no, but can Clippen steal?
[00:37:30]  I actually would like, I've been trying to like, I've been trying to get people interested in it.
[00:37:34]  I mean, I myself have like sort of, I want to test that because it's like a huge thing because it's a like the government uses that in all sorts of spheres to hide accountability.
[00:37:43]  I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, they do.
[00:37:45]  I actually thought up until now.
[00:37:46]  I mean, I know what Radio Free Asia, Radio for Europe was for like a really long time.
[00:37:51]  I thought up until now that Radio Free Asia was just like part of the government.
[00:37:55]  Well, it is.
[00:37:56]  It's like the government created a corporation.
[00:37:58]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:59]  And then it's like, it's still, if you look at the organizational chart of this whole like broadcasting thing, it'd be like the you know the broadcasting board of governors and then all these different branches and then Radio Free Asia is in that organizational chart.
[00:38:11]  And then, you know, the people who head these organizations, corporations are, you know, picked by, actually, I'm not sure who picks it, probably the head of the broadcasting board of governors, head of SAGM.
[00:38:21]  So they're like government employees.
[00:38:22]  They're funded by Congress.
[00:38:23]  This whole thing is weird.
[00:38:24]  So the Open Technology Fund was created within the Radio Free Asia.
[00:38:30]  And it is its own, it's its own kind of unit, sort of unit within Radio Free Asia.
[00:38:35]  So it's like twice removed from the federal government.
[00:38:38]  And it was created inside that, particularly, I think, to hide it from oversight, but also because Radio Free Asia had the most experience with like internet, like funding various internet technologies against China to penetrate the Chinese firewall.
[00:38:54]  Yeah, is that to spread propaganda?
[00:38:56]  Because I know China can block websites on the bank.
[00:38:59]  China was the only country really that started doing like from the very beginning that the internet I remember hearing about it from the beginning.
[00:39:06]  Like yeah, they were the first ones and the only ones really other countries like you know, I mean maybe Cuba, but internet came much later to Cuba.
[00:39:13]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:39:14]  But it like China like immediately said, no, like what the fuck is this?
[00:39:18]  Like you got radio free Asia dot like whatever.
[00:39:22]  Exactly.
[00:39:22]  Not happening.
[00:39:23]  Like we're just going to block you.
[00:39:24]  Yeah.
[00:39:25]  Yeah.
[00:39:26]  You're going to do it.
[00:39:26]  And so like, and America's like, oh my God, you're blocking a website.
[00:39:30]  Exactly.
[00:39:30]  It's like, that's like, they're like, that's the craziest thing they've ever done.
[00:39:34]  That's like, no, that's an attack on freedom.
[00:39:36]  Well, it's funny because so many companies block websites from like their internet here.
[00:39:40]  I mean, I've never had a I've never worked at a company that let me use a computer at work, but I know that only because of your background.
[00:39:49]  But I know a lot of companies won't let you.
[00:39:53]  Oh, yeah, they'll be like, oh, there's no Facebook allowed on the corporate.
[00:39:56]  There's actually a reverse thing too.
[00:39:57]  Because when I was in Russia, I was trying to access some smaller newspapers and they actually block traffic from Russia.
[00:40:04]  Because they think it's like, oh, it's malicious.
[00:40:06]  Yeah.
[00:40:07]  I do want to get into that later.
[00:40:09]  We'll be talking about Russia.
[00:40:10]  Anyway, so that's why Radio Free Asia had experience.
[00:40:13]  They funded actually all these different groups.
[00:40:15]  One of the groups that was creating the earliest technology to do like anti-so basically, what do you call it?
[00:40:21]  Censorship?
[00:40:24]  Circumvention.
[00:40:24]  Yeah.
[00:40:25]  And it was actually Falun Gong that was writing the software.
[00:40:27]  So this one Falun Gong was getting like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[00:40:32]  It's like technology.
[00:40:34]  Yeah, it's exactly.
[00:40:36]  So real quick, if we may hop out of this, Falun Gong has to be the weird.
[00:40:41]  I was talking about this with Felix yesterday.
[00:40:43]  It has to be the weirdest fucking CIA project in history.
[00:40:47]  It is bizarre.
[00:40:48]  Because their other guys are like, you know, they're dealing with like whatever, like ex-Ustashi guys or like, you know, some psycho-militant folks.
[00:40:57]  MEK is a weird one too.
[00:40:59]  MEK is probably rivals it, but here's the thing.
[00:41:03]  They're crazy almost in a way, yeah.
[00:41:04]  But like they don't believe they can fly.
[00:41:06]  Yeah, Helen Gong believe they can fly.
[00:41:08]  Well, not they, but their leader.
[00:41:10]  Yeah.
[00:41:10]  Actually, they can fly too?
[00:41:12]  I don't know.
[00:41:13]  No, but I was going to say that's like a frequency.
[00:41:14]  But they believe that their organs can fly.
[00:41:17]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:18]  Oh, that's their whole thing is that they're being used for organizing.
[00:41:21]  Organ harvesting.
[00:41:22]  I mean, if you've heard the Chinese organ harvesting story, they came from them.
[00:41:26]  Yeah, right.
[00:41:27]  In fact, like, because they have this newspaper that's everywhere.
[00:41:30]  Yeah.
[00:41:31]  Oh, the Epic Times.
[00:41:32]  Well, it's big here because, you know, there's a large channel.
[00:41:34]  Yeah, and it's like, if you read it, it's like, oh, they have a movie review.
[00:41:37]  And it's like, oh, it's just all window dressing so they can put in like the organ harvesting.
[00:41:41]  Yeah, no, it really is.
[00:41:42]  It's really strong as possible.
[00:41:44]  And they're huge now because Facebook, they figured out.
[00:41:47]  And they're with Trump.
[00:41:48]  They're with Trump.
[00:41:49]  Exactly.
[00:41:49]  They figured out very early on how to game Facebook's algorithms.
[00:41:52]  So maybe they didn't figure it out.
[00:41:53]  Maybe they were told.
[00:41:54]  Who knows?
[00:41:54]  Right, right, right.
[00:41:55]  But they became like really influential.
[00:41:58]  So you have these 60-year-old ants in the Las Vegas suburbs who haven't talked to their kids in 20 days on Facebook all day, literally just obsessively reading a Falun Gong propaganda, Oregon.
[00:42:11]  And now they have young white guys in black frame glasses giving their, they're doing Warby Parker.
[00:42:17]  Exactly.
[00:42:17]  And they're like, they're hardcore pro-Trump, like super pro-Trump.
[00:42:21]  Super pro-Trump.
[00:42:21]  They're also slightly QAnoni.
[00:42:23]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:23]  They're totally QAnoni.
[00:42:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:26]  They do the Trump, the Trump conspiracy theory stuff.
[00:42:28]  So they were the original Tor.
[00:42:31]  They created the original.
[00:42:32]  It wasn't exactly Tor because Tor has actually another side to it, which we'll get into.
[00:42:37]  But they were building these things that would, you basically, I mean, you don't hit a website directly.
[00:42:43]  You hit it through this other sort of proxy.
[00:42:45]  These are these sort of proxy servers.
[00:42:46]  And so the Radio Free Asia was contracting with them to build these things.
[00:42:50]  And so when like the sort of, under Hillary Clinton, when the Internet Freedom Initiative sort of really took off, because that was her big thing as Secretary of State, was like the Internet Freedom.
[00:43:01]  Any country that blocks websites is essentially waging a war on democracy.
[00:43:07]  But it's also like a trade war because if you're blocking websites and you're blocking access to American companies, it means that you're blocking business access.
[00:43:15]  So with Yahoo and Google and other technology companies, they're being basically kept out of the market.
[00:43:21]  And so Internet Freedom became this thing.
[00:43:22]  It's about freedom of speech, but also freedom to do business, free trade.
[00:43:25]  Well, that's what they mean by freedom most of the time.
[00:43:27]  Nine markets.
[00:43:29]  And that was their whole thing.
[00:43:30]  And so when that got going, they created this unit called the Open Technology Fund.
[00:43:37]  I think it was called Freedom to Connect.
[00:43:39]  Was it two?
[00:43:40]  Yes.
[00:43:41]  Yes.
[00:43:42]  Lame.
[00:43:42]  I know.
[00:43:42]  It's very lame.
[00:43:44]  But then it's open technology is kind of cooler because it's got 8-bit kind of art.
[00:43:48]  Also, open is like naming something open something is like very in.
[00:43:53]  You're also like, oh, yeah, you're a CIA, basically.
[00:43:55]  Yeah, And I'm surprised they didn't name it like Cryptly.
[00:44:00]  Yeah, Cryptly.
[00:44:01]  Yeah.
[00:44:01]  Well, if they rename it again, it'll be it.
[00:44:03]  So the funding came from that.
[00:44:05]  For Signal, yeah.
[00:44:06]  But Signal, and it was created by this guy named actually a San Francisco guy, San Francisco, like anarchist kind of hacker guy.
[00:44:14]  Really not helping this case.
[00:44:15]  He's like, he goes by Marlon Marlin Spike or something like that.
[00:44:20]  Yeah.
[00:44:20]  Moxie Marlon.
[00:44:20]  Yeah, Moxie Marlin Spike.
[00:44:22]  Moxie Marlin Spike.
[00:44:22]  Which is a fucking that.
[00:44:24]  He's like, like he has a boat, you know?
[00:44:26]  He made his money by selling some authentication or encryption thing to Twitter.
[00:44:30]  Yeah.
[00:44:32]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:44:33]  And he was, you know, he's like one of these like, you know, liberal fucking like interventionist anarchist types, you know?
[00:44:39]  Oh, he's baptized.
[00:44:40]  An arco, an arco-interventionist type.
[00:44:44]  And so, and so he, and so he so much.
[00:44:47]  And, you know, like, I don't know if he was, he's friends with, you know, what's that guy that got lost in the mountains in Iran?
[00:44:53]  Shane.
[00:44:53]  Oh, God.
[00:44:55]  He's like part of that.
[00:44:56]  Yeah.
[00:44:56]  Yeah.
[00:44:57]  Part of that click.
[00:44:57]  Anyway, the point is he's he's part of this sort of hacker collective and he is, you know, runs with the sort of crypto people.
[00:45:04]  And he was friendly with some State Department guy.
[00:45:07]  I think I can't remember the exact details of.
[00:45:09]  I am floored right now to learn this.
[00:45:12]  I can't remember the exact details of it, but he proposed this and he got funded.
[00:45:15]  And so the seed money came from the Broadcasting Board of Governors through the Radio Free Asia through Open Technology Fund.
[00:45:25]  Those are the first grants that came there.
[00:45:27]  After it got kind of huge, especially after Edward Snowden, one of the guys, the co-creators of WhatsApp, he exited Facebook and made this big stink about, oh, Facebook is bad because it's helping misinformation or something.
[00:45:40]  And he's like, oh, I believe in privacy and all this shit.
[00:45:43]  That's why I sold my chat app to Facebook.
[00:45:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:47]  Yeah, because Facebook started encrypting their chats, right?
[00:45:49]  Yeah.
[00:45:50]  Well, no, because he wanted, because they were, no, because supposedly WhatsApp was super secure.
[00:45:54]  That's what I mean back then.
[00:45:56]  And then later they started encrypting their.
[00:45:58]  But anyway, the point is, but WhatsApp encrypts its chats with Signal's algorithm.
[00:46:04]  Oh, so it's basically the same thing.
[00:46:05]  So that was the whole, like, that was the whole thing is like, oh, we're so cool.
[00:46:08]  We're using the Signals apps, you know, encryption technology.
[00:46:11]  I see.
[00:46:12]  So, so now I think they fund, there's like a bunch of money going to Signal.
[00:46:17]  So I think that's why they have all these emojis and stuff now.
[00:46:21]  I got to say, I hate the reacting in chat thing now.
[00:46:25]  Get rid of it.
[00:46:26]  Come on, man.
[00:46:26]  You got to go with what the kids are doing.
[00:46:27]  Yeah, I guess that's true.
[00:46:28]  Did you see?
[00:46:29]  I just thought today that Twitter is like doing stories now.
[00:46:33]  I mean, Twitter, they're flailing.
[00:46:35]  This is so sad because it's like Twitter is so essential now.
[00:46:37]  Like, they can't get rid of Twitter.
[00:46:39]  Like, Twitter is so essential to the entire media apparatus.
[00:46:42]  Like literally, that's all they do is hang.
[00:46:45]  If you work in media, you have to hang out on Twitter.
[00:46:47]  And it's also where you get all your stories, apparently.
[00:46:49]  Yeah.
[00:46:49]  And also how you do press, you know, government.
[00:46:51]  Exactly.
[00:46:52]  Yeah.
[00:46:52]  No, absolutely.
[00:46:54]  But it's so funny because I swear to fucking God, no one who works at Twitter actually uses Twitter.
[00:47:00]  Because every new thing that they push, it's like, no one wants this.
[00:47:03]  No.
[00:47:04]  This isn't how any of us used it.
[00:47:06]  It should just be like a national utility and then close down.
[00:47:09]  Yeah.
[00:47:11]  And just, yeah, well, yeah, because then the government would be liable for, you know, the libel and all the stuff that happens on there.
[00:47:18]  Yes.
[00:47:19]  I could sue them.
[00:47:20]  You could sue the government into insolvency.
[00:47:22]  Also, I could look at people's chat logs if I did a FOIA request.
[00:47:26]  Yeah.
[00:47:28]  FOIA the girls' DMs.
[00:47:29]  But like why?
[00:47:30]  Yeah.
[00:47:31]  I knew you saw my text.
[00:47:33]  I knew you saw it.
[00:47:35]  But let me riddle you this.
[00:47:37]  Let me riddle you this.
[00:47:38]  What the fuck is wrong with me?
[00:47:40]  Let me ask you this.
[00:47:41]  Why would the government be interested in creating a chat app that was pushed as being super secure?
[00:47:49]  Well, I mean, I think there's a couple of different, well, yeah, there's a couple of different theories, I guess.
[00:47:55]  Or points of view.
[00:47:56]  So, I mean, so part of why they initially sold it, right, was that you provided this thing to like, you know, the Arab Spring protesters.
[00:48:05]  Yes.
[00:48:06]  So that, like, and so that they can communicate and it's all encrypted.
[00:48:10]  So like if someone's snooping on their, on their ISP, you know, their ISPs are watching them, that like, you know, they could sort of get around, you know, the sense of their government and the government doesn't know what they're doing.
[00:48:18]  So that's the whole rationale.
[00:48:20]  Now, if they're funding this thing and like you have people who are organizing against the U.S. government doing this, it's pretty clearly they wouldn't be funding something that is a danger to the government is not going to be bankroll a technology that is a danger to itself.
[00:48:31]  Especially, so there's like, there's clearly ways of getting around whatever that encryption is.
[00:48:36]  Yeah.
[00:48:37]  I mean, and so, you know, on what level that is, I think it's pretty high still.
[00:48:41]  I think if you're trying to hide from your local cops, they're not going to give access to the, you know, to the SFPD for this stuff.
[00:48:48]  Right.
[00:48:48]  I mean, but like, but the FBI.
[00:48:50]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:48:52]  Yeah.
[00:48:52]  So the federal government, again, it's like, I think there's a lot of different ways you can get around it.
[00:48:58]  So I mean, because look, because there's this, look, there's this cult of encryption.
[00:49:02]  The idea that encryption is like math and like it's like physics, like, you know, this Nika Lee from, you know, the intercept, you know, like he would be like, you know, math is like, you know, encryption is like, you know, because it's like, it's like math and math is like physics and physics is nature.
[00:49:19]  You know, so like, it's literally laws of nature, man.
[00:49:22]  Like, you can't fuck with the laws of nature.
[00:49:24]  That's how powerful encryption is.

=== Cult of Encryption (15:14) ===

[00:49:26]  I have a like.
[00:49:27]  It's like gravity.
[00:49:28]  It's like, I just want to like, how do these people not understand power?
[00:49:31]  No, but also like it's also a screen.
[00:49:34]  Here's what I thought.
[00:49:35]  I've known this for a long time.
[00:49:36]  The government can just look at what's on your screen or record your keystrokes.
[00:49:40]  Yes.
[00:49:40]  So there's like, there's no.
[00:49:41]  No, no, exactly.
[00:49:42]  Or they can just take your fucking phone and look at it.
[00:49:45]  No, exactly.
[00:49:46]  Hey, man, that's cheating.
[00:49:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:47]  That's the old school.
[00:49:48]  It's like, yeah, the cops arrested me.
[00:49:50]  That's not in the rules, man.
[00:49:51]  I've had cops force my thumbprint on a phone.
[00:49:54]  Obviously, that's why you need to have the eight digital cameras.
[00:49:56]  Obviously, they're going to do that.
[00:49:57]  I mean, it's like, again, this is a bullshit thing.
[00:50:00]  But the point is also, like, you, because I actually studied computer science.
[00:50:05]  I wanted to be a computer science.
[00:50:06]  I was partially a computer science major at Berkeley.
[00:50:09]  And like, okay, when you look at these systems, you have all these different systems.
[00:50:12]  You have the operating system.
[00:50:13]  I mean, you have actually like, you know, everything is compiled.
[00:50:15]  So you have these ones and zeros kind of running through the chip and all this shit.
[00:50:19]  Like, you have all these different complicated systems.
[00:50:21]  And each of those, all those systems have bugs in them.
[00:50:25]  Sometimes, you know, they're known, sometimes they're not known to the creators.
[00:50:29]  And so you have all these different points of entry for, you know, for these different security firms that specialize in finding these bugs and selling the exploits to intelligence agencies.
[00:50:43]  You have the intelligence agencies themselves using it.
[00:50:45]  So you have the FBI will actually probably, you know, pay basically a hacking firm to access it.
[00:50:53]  When they got the iPhone.
[00:50:54]  They just paid an Israeli company to do it.
[00:50:56]  Exactly.
[00:50:56]  And it reminds me a lot, too.
[00:50:58]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:50:59]  I can't remember who it was.
[00:51:00]  The FBI?
[00:51:01]  I think it was.
[00:51:02]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:02]  And there was like, also, if you remember, remember those, there was this couple that shot up a couple of government offices in San Bernardino?
[00:51:10]  Oh, that was.
[00:51:10]  The ISIS attack?
[00:51:12]  Yeah, like when a lone wolf.
[00:51:13]  Racism.
[00:51:14]  So it was sort of like a romantic kind of terrorist thing.
[00:51:19]  And, you know, they were planning this shit on their Apple iPhones.
[00:51:23]  And like, and so the FBI wanted access to their chats.
[00:51:27]  And Apple's like, fuck you.
[00:51:28]  Yes, they made a whole thing.
[00:51:29]  It was such a little dance they did.
[00:51:31]  If we give you this thing, if we give you, it's it.
[00:51:33]  Like, it's over for everyone.
[00:51:35]  Yeah.
[00:51:35]  You know, and then all these people came out with like really lame sort of like protests in New York and around the country with their like basically iPhones save lives.
[00:51:44]  They were like carrying these things.
[00:51:45]  But Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[00:51:47]  People are so embarrassed.
[00:51:48]  The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is also a San Francisco thing that was behind it.
[00:51:51]  It was depressing.
[00:51:53]  It was a depressing site.
[00:51:54]  Well, and it's just, and then you've got, it's like the same people that like, you know, remember all those like losers who cried when Steve Jobs died?
[00:52:00]  Oh, yeah.
[00:52:01]  But it's like the same kind of people.
[00:52:02]  And, you know, I know what you're getting at, which is that it kind of like then everyone is suddenly like, now I trust you.
[00:52:08]  Comrade Apple.
[00:52:09]  Comrade Apple stands with us in our fight for freedom against the government.
[00:52:16]  No, but it reminds me a lot of the promise software.
[00:52:20]  Oh, yeah.
[00:52:21]  That was stolen and then sold with a backdoor exploit into it.
[00:52:25]  That's like the mother load of all conspiracy theories.
[00:52:27]  Exactly.
[00:52:27]  I mean, it connects everything.
[00:52:29]  Yeah, it's a bit of a weird one.
[00:52:30]  Yeah.
[00:52:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:52:31]  But it's true.
[00:52:32]  They did steal it and they did sell it.
[00:52:34]  But it just isn't used anywhere.
[00:52:36]  That's the thing that kind of bugs me is that everyone's always like, and then using promise, and then using it for like all these different events.
[00:52:42]  Where is it?
[00:52:43]  But it's also like...
[00:52:44]  But where is it?
[00:52:45]  Is it used?
[00:52:46]  No, they look like different iterations of it.
[00:52:49]  Exactly.
[00:52:49]  I mean, that's the thing, is I feel like it was just like a momentary thing.
[00:52:53]  Just to like switch it famously.
[00:52:55]  Interesting.
[00:52:56]  Egypt used it for a bunch of different stuff, for their courts, especially.
[00:53:00]  And when Egypt used it, Israel had a back door and could see basically everything that was going on.
[00:53:07]  So it was like they sold it to a lot of, through like a, I can't remember whether it was like a cutout, to these different sort of poorer countries who weren't like capable of maybe like going through it and checking to see if there was a back door open or whatever.
[00:53:20]  Yeah, and they can't.
[00:53:21]  I mean, if you're buying, if you're buying, if you're a country buying encryption software from somewhere, you're fucked.
[00:53:27]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:28]  I mean, that's what happened.
[00:53:29]  There was just a story the other day that came out with the Crypto AG or there was this like Swedish, not Swedish, in Switzerland, like a crypto company, but it was actually created, like it was a, it was a front for the CIA and selling encryption machines to all these other people.
[00:53:42]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:43]  I read that.
[00:53:43]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:44]  But this, you know, even Bitcoin, like, I think it's insane that how many people like actually believe that it is untraceable.
[00:53:53]  Yeah.
[00:53:53]  I mean, well, the whole point of Bitcoin is to be traceable.
[00:53:56]  No, exactly.
[00:53:56]  That's why it's like, wait, but I don't understand because it has to be traceable in order to.
[00:54:00]  Tor that's what a blockchain is.
[00:54:01]  Exactly.
[00:54:02]  So, but why does everyone think that you have to like wash it?
[00:54:07]  It's only with Tor.
[00:54:07]  I mean, this is the thing is that Tor and Bitcoin, they're almost like you, in order for Bitcoin to be anonymous, you have to use Tor.
[00:54:13]  Yeah, right.
[00:54:14]  That's the whole thing.
[00:54:15]  It's like, because then you have to, or you have to believe that Tor can anonymize you.
[00:54:19]  Because if you make that transaction, so if you're doing the transaction, it's recorded.
[00:54:23]  Yeah, and you can trace it to you, then it's, then it's, you know, Bitcoin is obviously, because Bitcoin is actually meant to be totally transparent.
[00:54:30]  This whole point.
[00:54:31]  So you should be able to track every transaction.
[00:54:33]  So it's a history of every transaction that was ever made with a piece of fraction of a coin.
[00:54:39]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:39]  I do not.
[00:54:40]  No, I mean, so it's like the whole, that's the ledger, the ledger.
[00:54:42]  It's like the fucking, the history of all Bitcoin transactions that have ever taken place.
[00:54:48]  So it's not actually anonymous.
[00:54:50]  I mean, it's anonymous in the sense that if you can anonymously initiate that transaction, then it can be anonymous.
[00:54:56]  So Tor and Bitcoin, that's why the dark markets, they're like, they're like, that's the, and then of course, no one knows where fucking Bitcoin came from.
[00:55:02]  So it's like, yeah, well, the whole thing with all these sort of like safe, you know, secure, all this, this obsession with like security, security culture or whatever, is that if I was the government, a government, an intelligence agency, and I was like, hmm, you know, there's these new sort of horizons of technology opening up.
[00:55:23]  I want to be there.
[00:55:23]  This is like we were talking about.
[00:55:24]  You want to be there at the beginning.
[00:55:25]  You want to control the people who are making it.
[00:55:28]  You want to have some pull in that.
[00:55:29]  And so like when I talked about the KGB Punk magazine earlier, it's the same.
[00:55:34]  I mean, that was on such a small scale and probably seemingly ineffective.
[00:55:38]  But the way this works is like, yeah, if you create the app to do crimes on, like, if you're like, here's the secret app for your political stuff, you should write all your bad stuff you're playing on doing and like all your direct act.
[00:55:55]  I mean, sell that shit to people.
[00:55:56]  It's crazy.
[00:55:57]  Exactly.
[00:55:58]  It's in it for you.
[00:55:58]  That's exactly what happened.
[00:55:59]  It works.
[00:56:00]  It's like, it used to be that people were like.
[00:56:02]  Do all your child pornography on this guy's.
[00:56:04]  Exactly.
[00:56:04]  Hey, guys.
[00:56:05]  Hey, we have all the servers.
[00:56:08]  We'll do nothing in the fucking world's biggest child porn.
[00:56:12]  It's so, it's like, that's what drives me so insane is that like there used to be like, oh, like people were conscious of this sort of stuff and be like, yeah, don't talk around a telephone or like check, you know, for lights.
[00:56:25]  But now it's like, well, it's this weighing.
[00:56:27]  I mean, and this is an old sort of thing to complain about, but it's weighing this sort of convenience with basically any possibility of keeping something secret.
[00:56:37]  Yeah.
[00:56:37]  Look, I mean, it's interesting.
[00:56:39]  Totally.
[00:56:39]  I mean, what they did is they, in essence, created all this crypto technology and sold it to people as, you know, the CIA and the U.S. government, different, not just the CIA, but like different parts of the State Department.
[00:56:49]  It's all of, yeah.
[00:56:50]  Yeah, just the National Security State or the intelligence apparatus or the security apparatus basically created these anti-government apps and sold it to people as anti-government apps and then funded all the bankrolled all of these activists like Jacob Applebaum and like to basically go around and to sell themselves.
[00:57:08]  Also a local, by the way.
[00:57:09]  oh no there's a lot of let me tell you I have spent a lot of time he's from the North Bay I don't know.
[00:57:18]  Okay.
[00:57:19]  Yeah.
[00:57:19]  No, no, I was a rock and roller.
[00:57:22]  And then when Occupy was happening, I was on Hamilton.
[00:57:25]  So it's, I didn't run into a lot of those people.
[00:57:27]  But I have run into a lot of those kind of people and possibly that person.
[00:57:33]  Because I have like some friends that aren't, they aren't tech anarchists, but they might hang out with or know tech anarchists.
[00:57:41]  I know a lot of my friends beef with a certain large group of tech anarchists who I'm ready to fucking don't do the sound here, but you know.
[00:57:51]  And I've been like, I've witnessed sort of the culture around that.
[00:57:54]  And it is fucking, like, I don't think people not from here like understand sometimes.
[00:57:58]  The like hacktivist?
[00:57:59]  The hacktivist culture.
[00:58:01]  Even saying that makes me feel dispensed.
[00:58:03]  Depraved.
[00:58:04]  It's so dorky too.
[00:58:05]  Well, because it's like, it's these people.
[00:58:07]  You want to talk about third fucking positionism?
[00:58:10]  You know?
[00:58:11]  These are, by the way, these are the same people who like, you know, think Dugan is fucking out to get them.
[00:58:16]  These fucking people are literally like, they think of themselves as beyond left or right.
[00:58:21]  They're just like information warriors.
[00:58:23]  And like, you know, they wear, they're like, it's like if Crosspunks, you think Crosspunks are annoying.
[00:58:29]  Okay.
[00:58:30]  Imagine those times a fucking million given computers.
[00:58:33]  Exactly.
[00:58:34]  And like, and they have the same exact sort of chip on their shoulder that they're just these do-gooders who are, it's just, it's, it's almost like you can see the mindset of not like the colonizer, but the explorer in them.
[00:58:47]  It's this really arrogant sort of like, you know, I can basically like, it's, I don't know.
[00:58:52]  Well, they're like the typical protagonist in like a sci-fi novel.
[00:58:57]  Exactly.
[00:58:57]  So they, so they're out there, they, like, they, they're in, you know, for them, it's cyberspace.
[00:59:01]  It's their world.
[00:59:02]  You know, they, they go into space.
[00:59:04]  They have this adventure.
[00:59:05]  They, they're, like, they, they, they know all the, all the ninja moves.
[00:59:08]  Yeah.
[00:59:09]  They can like shoot the bad guy.
[00:59:10]  They can sort of rescue, you rescue the people and save civilization.
[00:59:14]  I mean, it's like they're the, it's like, it's a, you know, it's the Western in space.
[00:59:18]  Yeah.
[00:59:19]  Like, and, and, and, but what's what happens with all of them always is that they're always and then decide with power for some reason.
[00:59:26]  Yeah, always.
[00:59:27]  Always.
[00:59:27]  So like, for, and they get like a lot of these people, like, you know, they're like, you know, basically, you know, backed like the, you know, the war in Libya.
[00:59:35]  And like, we're like, it's a weird you're like, wait, you're like, you're, you're, you're, like, an anarcho, like, in crypto and anarchist, and you're saying like, anti-authoritarian.
[00:59:43]  Exactly.
[00:59:44]  But you're saying we must stand with the people of, you know, Syria.
[00:59:46]  Well, it was funny.
[00:59:47]  I, I, on, on the Twitter.
[00:59:49]  I get called us an Assadist all the time.
[00:59:51]  I was my new friend.
[00:59:52]  I was, I was, you know, I was probably the only podcast who's ever hung out with members of the SAA.
[00:59:56]  I think I have that mantle.
[00:59:59]  But I was tipping and tapping on the, oh, no, excuse me.
[01:00:05]  I retract that statement.
[01:00:07]  I was tipping and tapping, and also probably Ronnie, I don't know.
[01:00:10]  I was tipping and tapping on the internet the other day.
[01:00:12]  I looked at like one of those big anonymous accounts, like, you know, anonymous or whatever.
[01:00:17]  And it was literally all like, you know, we like, save Idlib.
[01:00:23]  Like, we need to, it's, yeah, that's a, it's, it's all like we need to do that.
[01:00:27]  I am anonymous, God fox.
[01:00:29]  Exactly.
[01:00:30]  I am 13 years old.
[01:00:32]  I think part of it, so part of that is organic.
[01:00:35]  I think part of that comes from people being like this narrative around the Arab Spring.
[01:00:39]  Standing with a sort of the grassroots revolution.
[01:00:41]  Exactly.
[01:00:42]  And like, you know, like Twitter.
[01:00:43]  The Arab Spring really fucked people up.
[01:00:45]  Dude, that's the Occupy.
[01:00:47]  And Tor was like a huge player.
[01:00:49]  Exactly.
[01:00:49]  Yeah.
[01:00:50]  Twitter, too.
[01:00:51]  Well, also, I mean, it's like, I don't even know how many Americans know what color revolutions are.
[01:00:56]  Yeah.
[01:00:57]  Or like, and how that was tested out and perfected over and over again.
[01:01:02]  Yeah.
[01:01:03]  And this is this cult and the decentralized uprising.
[01:01:08]  And like, it's.
[01:01:08]  Well, it's so romantic.
[01:01:09]  I mean, it's like, I don't know.
[01:01:11]  Part of me also is like, Brace and I talk about this sometimes about how there is like, I think, a deep, not to get like too psycho analyst here, but I do think there is like a, you know, deep desire for like heroism, particularly in a society that like doesn't offer anyone any meaning.
[01:01:30]  Yep.
[01:01:30]  Yeah.
[01:01:31]  And can only continue existing while sucking more and more meaning out of society.
[01:01:39]  And so you get, it's like really, you know, these people, especially a lot of people who stay at home video games on the computer, you know, not, you know, like I said, less and less social interactions.
[01:01:51]  It like feeds a really romantic idea that somewhere people are rising up.
[01:01:58]  Yeah.
[01:01:59]  And the people power and, you know, to take down, you know, and so it's like, I mean, I don't know.
[01:02:06]  I think that it comes from like, I can see why people have, why, why it's so effective.
[01:02:13]  Yeah.
[01:02:13]  You know?
[01:02:13]  Yeah.
[01:02:14]  No, and it's, and it's great.
[01:02:15]  And these people think we're making the tools to help them.
[01:02:17]  We're making the tools to help them.
[01:02:19]  Exactly.
[01:02:19]  It's like they're part of the stream.
[01:02:21]  They're going to shut down the internet.
[01:02:23]  We're going to help them route around that.
[01:02:24]  Exactly.
[01:02:25]  So I'm going to fly there, you know, fly.
[01:02:27]  I'm going to fly to Terrier Square and be like the guy who sets up a no who's going to help the revolution.
[01:02:32]  Exactly.
[01:02:32]  He's basically sort of like, you know, and he actually talked about it.
[01:02:35]  I mean, I know Jake Applebaum, he talked about actually going to Spain and fighting against the fascists.
[01:02:39]  Like, you know, like it's like he sees himself and sells that struggle, you know, the crypto struggle, the technological struggle as basically, you know, as the ultimate rebel, the ultimate exactly.
[01:02:53]  And it's weird.
[01:02:54]  It's not to get to, I don't even know what I'm getting when I say this.
[01:02:59]  But it's like this Bernstein sort of thing where it's like this, the struggle is the goal, or ways to say like the road there is the goal.
[01:03:09]  Because what does Jacob Applebaum want?
[01:03:10]  Like what do these people want?
[01:03:11]  They want us to live in decentralization.
[01:03:12]  No, they want to fight this crypto fight.
[01:03:16]  I mean, I think for him, he wants to just be the hero and wants to be adored and wants to be basically have power and live an excited and exciting life and be worshipped.
[01:03:28]  Basically, I mean, what does anybody want?
[01:03:29]  Exactly.
[01:03:29]  It's just crazy.
[01:03:31]  But he particularly, yeah.
[01:03:32]  And he was like the main guy.
[01:03:33]  You know, he was like, you know, there's like Edward Snowden, Assange, and Jacob Applebaum.
[01:03:37]  And Jacob Applebaum is the main, like, basically the face of Tor.
[01:03:40]  Yeah, right.
[01:03:41]  And so they're, you know, Assange is like in prison or whatever in the embassy.
[01:03:47]  In the embassy, you know, in prison essentially back then.
[01:03:50]  And then, you know, Edward Snowdend is in Moscow somewhere in hiding.
[01:03:53]  So like he's the only guy who can sort of like move around the world.
[01:03:56]  Yeah.
[01:03:56]  You know, he can go to all these different places.
[01:03:58]  He can speak on their behalf.
[01:03:59]  He's the guy who gets, and so he's the guy who's being paid six figures by the U.S. government.
[01:04:05]  That's insane about him.
[01:04:09]  That's the shit.
[01:04:09]  That's just like fucking six years, man.
[01:04:11]  You gloss over that.
[01:04:13]  Like, it's insane to me.
[01:04:15]  So part of it is actually coming from a CIA spin-off, the State Department, and the U.S. Navy.
[01:04:22]  Amazing.
[01:04:23]  Amazing.
[01:04:25]  The spookiest of the arms, by the way.
[01:04:27]  Yeah, well, because the US Navy is the Brutagens are the original, the original intelligence.
[01:04:30]  They were the first intelligence.
[01:04:32]  Especially signals intelligence.
[01:04:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:04:35]  So yeah.
[01:04:36]  Germany too, Britain too.
[01:04:37]  So you got to send signals between the ships and all that, bro.
[01:04:40]  Exactly.

=== Cia Spin-Off Signals Intelligence (15:21) ===

[01:04:41]  And they created Tor.
[01:04:42]  I mean, the Navy created Tor.
[01:04:43]  It's funny.
[01:04:44]  It's just like an updated version.
[01:04:45]  That's whatever platoon of the signal comes from.
[01:04:47]  Yeah, totally.
[01:04:48]  It is kind of wild.
[01:04:50]  It drives me crazy because it is by every definition a honeypot.
[01:04:55]  Yeah.
[01:04:55]  Right?
[01:04:55]  And it's like these.
[01:04:56]  But it's also, it's more than that.
[01:04:57]  It's actually, I mean, what's cool about Tor, it's a honeypot, one, but it's also, I think, functional infrastructure for espionage and for internet operations.
[01:05:08]  I mean, because you can send something to somebody else.
[01:05:10]  Because the original reason why Tor was created was to hide spies on the internet.
[01:05:15]  Yeah.
[01:05:15]  Oh, yeah.
[01:05:16]  You mentioned this earlier, but can you explain it?
[01:05:18]  I mean, well, because it's like, okay, so because the internet is inherently transparent, you kind of like, so a website needs to know where to send.
[01:05:25]  So you request some information from a website, you're sitting at your computer, you request some information from some server.
[01:05:31]  The server has to know where to send that information.
[01:05:33]  So there's the to and from address that are known publicly, right?
[01:05:37]  To whoever's watching the network.
[01:05:39]  And so if you're a CIA guy or an FBI guy and you're like, say, you're trying to log in to your CIA mail, internet mail, like from Syria, let's say, and you're like, oh, shit, well, that can't be that.
[01:05:53]  Because then they'll know I'm the CI guy.
[01:05:55]  So the idea is you create Tor, which is breaks the to and from.
[01:05:59]  Yeah.
[01:06:00]  So you log in through, you just kind of log into Tor and that hides where you're actually sending the information.
[01:06:05]  So all that anyone who was watching the network sees that you're someone is going into this other network.
[01:06:11]  And so, but if you also, but then the idea is why you can't just have government guys use it.
[01:06:15]  It's like if it's only government guys use it, then it's obvious every single government.
[01:06:19]  So the idea is you kind of have to farm it out to everybody.
[01:06:22]  And you open it up to the public and you create like what is in essence like a public square filled with people.
[01:06:28]  So two spies can meet in a public square.
[01:06:30]  The more packed it is, the easier it is for them to sort of meet and not be seen, right?
[01:06:35]  Yeah.
[01:06:35]  To make the hand up.
[01:06:36]  Yeah, yeah, it's hiding the crowd.
[01:06:37]  And so and so, and that's the idea.
[01:06:38]  So what happened is they, when they developed it, they basically created this nonprofit that was first like for the first year before it got, it actually officially got nonprofit status.
[01:06:49]  It was inside the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[01:06:52]  So the U.S. Navy, this intelligence project was inside the Electronic Frontier Foundation, funded by Pierre Omidiar.
[01:06:58]  Yeah.
[01:06:58]  Friend of the pod.
[01:07:01]  Funder of this pod.
[01:07:02]  I know we're going to go through our Patreon.
[01:07:05]  No, no, no, he's not.
[01:07:06]  No, no, no, it'd be funny if you have to break for commercial.
[01:07:08]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:07:09]  And like, hey.
[01:07:10]  PayPal.
[01:07:11]  This is, yeah, we are, we are, this is, the password is teal.
[01:07:15]  I don't know.
[01:07:15]  I'm trying to do a fake ad here, and I'm just, I'm, I'm too stupid.
[01:07:18]  Radio free brace.
[01:07:19]  Radio free brace.
[01:07:20]  Exactly.
[01:07:21]  So anyway, so, so, so, uh, so that's what, so that's what happened.
[01:07:23]  And then they got non-profit.
[01:07:25]  And what happened was they were trying to actually do the, they tried to do the legit thing, which is like, okay, well, we're going to find like, you know, private, like, don't, you know, funding for this thing.
[01:07:34]  And they couldn't get it.
[01:07:35]  No.
[01:07:36]  So no one would want to fund them.
[01:07:37]  Oh.
[01:07:37]  So they got a bit of money, but it never, so they basically had to go and like, the only source of funding was like these, I mean, aside from, you know, yeah, the only source of funding was from the government.
[01:07:48]  At least the funding that we know about, you know?
[01:07:50]  And so like they got some money in the first year, but it wasn't enough to keep them going.
[01:07:56]  And so then they started getting money from the State Department.
[01:08:00]  Then they started getting money.
[01:08:01]  The Navy kept funding them.
[01:08:02]  The Navy kept funding them because that was their original.
[01:08:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:08:05]  And then they sold it as like when the internet freedom stuff started happening in the mid-2000s.
[01:08:11]  No, actually, no, in Obama's first term.
[01:08:13]  Yeah.
[01:08:14]  After 2008, 2009, 2010, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, their funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is now USAGM, like went through the roof.
[01:08:26]  And so the idea was like, now we can use it.
[01:08:28]  Okay, so spies are using this thing for, you know, to, as, infrastructure to hide themselves, but also as a way of, other spies are using it too.
[01:08:38]  Yeah.
[01:08:38]  And so, but, like, so like spies from other countries.
[01:08:41]  Yeah, and like, so like some of the stuff that the, um, like the hacking of the DNC servers, yeah.
[01:08:46]  Like when they released the information about that, like they're, they said, oh, yeah, these are Russian addresses.
[01:08:50]  You know, these are, and you actually look at them, they're, they're Tor, their Tor addresses.
[01:08:53]  So there's no, that's the whole, yeah.
[01:08:54]  And also all the stuff that they, sorry, I'm like, so this is a great segue, too.
[01:08:59]  Well, I'm just like, no, the history has just been totally rewritten about like the DNC leaks, the protest email, like all that stuff just got like completely rewritten with all the Russiagate nonsense.
[01:09:14]  And it's like, you know, no one even saw these servers before they went to CrowdStrike.
[01:09:19]  Oh, yeah, no, that's ridiculous.
[01:09:20]  Like, Donald Trump has a point here, like, when he's talking about that stuff, not about getting Ukraine to give him the servers or whatever.
[01:09:27]  That's a weird thing.
[01:09:27]  Yeah, that was a weird thing.
[01:09:29]  I mean, he like, like everything else, he fucked it up, you know?
[01:09:32]  No, exactly.
[01:09:33]  Because this is like, it is like really, really fucked up.
[01:09:36]  Well, I mean, it's even more than who got the server.
[01:09:39]  It's like, okay, CrowdStrike had a pre-existing contract with the DNC.
[01:09:44]  And CrowdStrike is not like, okay, it's a forensic firm, but it's not like...
[01:09:50]  No, it's not actually, though.
[01:09:51]  It's not yet.
[01:09:51]  But I mean, it's a forensic firm for whoever hires it.
[01:09:53]  Yeah.
[01:09:54]  Right.
[01:09:54]  Totally.
[01:09:55]  And it's not meant to actually be like find the truth.
[01:09:57]  It's meant to find what the client wants.
[01:09:59]  Yeah.
[01:10:00]  That's the whole fucking point.
[01:10:01]  And wasn't it just like we found these Cyrillic characters that.
[01:10:04]  And you know what's funny, actually, talking about Bernie and the DNC, actually, because him getting totally screwed by them, is that the original contract that CrownStrike got with the DNC came because Bernie was accused of hacking the DNC's.
[01:10:17]  Yeah, because he got access accidentally for like 20 minutes.
[01:10:20]  There was like some fucking bug that happened, and they accused him.
[01:10:23]  I mean, it was like actually kind of a planted story, I think.
[01:10:25]  Oh, no, they did that on like I mean, I can't tell you for sure.
[01:10:30]  They weren't looking for everything.
[01:10:31]  They were scared.
[01:10:32]  It was a weird story.
[01:10:33]  Super weird.
[01:10:34]  Basically, some staffer was accused of hacking the DNC's internal.
[01:10:38]  He got fined.
[01:10:39]  Yeah, and they had to fire the staffer.
[01:10:40]  Yeah.
[01:10:41]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:10:42]  And so CrowdStrike was hired to do the forensics.
[01:10:44]  Amazing.
[01:10:45]  And so, and so, and then already they had a contract with the DNC, and then suddenly the DNC calls them in to do another forensic analysis.
[01:10:53]  They're the only ones who have access to the actual draw data, the agoriginal data.
[01:10:57]  They produce this report based on the completely bogus theory that there's this thing called Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.
[01:11:03]  Fancy Bear!
[01:11:04]  They actually come up with a name.
[01:11:05]  Yeah.
[01:11:06]  Because they're actually.
[01:11:07]  He was actually in Cozy Bear.
[01:11:08]  Yeah.
[01:11:09]  Our producer, yeah.
[01:11:09]  That's cool.
[01:11:10]  Yeah, they were big.
[01:11:12]  Yeah, he was pretty.
[01:11:14]  They did have a hit.
[01:11:17]  Yeah, and like they, but they made up those names.
[01:11:19]  I mean, they, because they, because researchers, like, they're, they're like, you know, they're these people, they use these tools.
[01:11:24]  And so if we identify this group of tools that are used to hack a server, that we, that's like, we can, yeah, we can sort of basically do this sort of inductive inductive.
[01:11:36]  No, I don't even know what that is.
[01:11:37]  I think that's inductive for you.
[01:11:38]  Yeah, inductive reasoning.
[01:11:39]  You go backwards.
[01:11:40]  Yes, that's inductive.
[01:11:40]  Inductive, yeah.
[01:11:41]  To the side that must be a we're fucking brilliant here.
[01:11:46]  Like, it's like the officer producers like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:11:49]  Is it, you probably do know.
[01:11:50]  Is it inductive?
[01:11:51]  If we're going backwards, you're like, you're like, you're like Amy Klobuchar with the president.
[01:11:55]  Yeah.
[01:11:57]  It's a stapler of me.
[01:12:00]  Oh, I was, oh, I was thinking of him throwing something at me, but that's, fair enough, yeah.
[01:12:05]  So they can work backwards.
[01:12:07]  Well, I mean, the idea is they're like, well, we've seen these tools used to hack other websites.
[01:12:12]  We've, you know, we've believed that these groups are connected, you know, our Russians based on like the type of target, you know, and their activity.
[01:12:19]  So for instance, they're like, well, you know, they're hacking computers from like what the times they're hacking computers actually coincides with Moscow's workday.
[01:12:29]  That's right.
[01:12:30]  So that was like 8 in the morning to like 5 p.m.
[01:12:32]  Oh.
[01:12:33]  Isn't that a coincidence?
[01:12:34]  Because you know these hackers, man.
[01:12:35]  Because you know, hackers love.
[01:12:37]  It's a nine to five.
[01:12:38]  Yeah, they love not drinking Mountain Dew until 4:30.
[01:12:42]  So CrowdStrike's whole thing was branding.
[01:12:44]  I mean, they're pretty good at it.
[01:12:45]  And like, it's a fellow Soviet immigrant who runs it, you know, who is running it.
[01:12:48]  Yeah, and so like, I mean, the branding is good.
[01:12:51]  They hired these great graphics artists when they put out these reports, you know, do this like sort of like sexy robot with a fur, like with a sort of a Russian fur cap, you know, red star.
[01:13:02]  Yeah.
[01:13:03]  And like, actually, look at this.
[01:13:06]  Exactly.
[01:13:07]  So they, but that's, yeah, yeah.
[01:13:08]  I don't even know how we got here at this point.
[01:13:10]  Oh, no, because my point is, it's like, oh, and this shit drives me so crazy.
[01:13:13]  It does.
[01:13:14]  I can have it.
[01:13:14]  Because, you know, there's like really a handful of people.
[01:13:19]  I could probably think of all of them, or, you know, both hands, who like fought back, including yourself, fought back against all this bullshit Russia panic crap.
[01:13:29]  And we still see it, you know, they're already warning that like, you know, you know, Putin's helping Bernie.
[01:13:35]  They kind of did drop that after like this last week, too.
[01:13:38]  I mean, they just haven't mentioned it much.
[01:13:39]  Well, yeah, because they're like, oh, we don't know.
[01:13:40]  He's helping Trump and Bernie.
[01:13:43]  But like, all of this stems, like literally this entire thing.
[01:13:47]  I mean, besides whatever theories about why the State Department and the U.S. want to push a story that's like anti-Russia, which is another story, like topic.
[01:13:56]  It's a synergy, a lot of synergy in this thing.
[01:13:59]  But it's like, it's from this one fucking contract with CrowdStrike.
[01:14:04]  And it's all bullshit.
[01:14:06]  And you've got from this dumbass report that's totally fake news, fake news report, fake CrowdStrike report, like a fucking four, five years of bullshit that included like people don't, and you've got, no, it's not even, it's like, fucking, now you've got media squishes.
[01:14:27]  Or it's like the birth certificate.
[01:14:29]  Yes.
[01:14:29]  Who are all like, well, I didn't actually really believe Russia.
[01:14:33]  And I'm like, you motherfucker.
[01:14:35]  Yes, you did, because I remember.
[01:14:37]  And like, it's a fucking flop, too.
[01:14:39]  Like, it doesn't even, like, whatever.
[01:14:41]  I mean, I know what I'm saying.
[01:14:43]  I'm already forgetting how insane it is.
[01:14:45]  I think it worked.
[01:14:45]  I don't know.
[01:14:46]  It did work.
[01:14:46]  People believe it.
[01:14:47]  Morgan did work.
[01:14:49]  I'm being stupid because I'm like, in my mind, you know, superficially, the point of it is to get Trump out of office, but that's not.
[01:14:56]  It's not to basically discredit.
[01:14:58]  Well, also, of course, you need to discredit.
[01:14:59]  Well, it does a lot of things.
[01:15:01]  To suck out all the oxygen from any, you know, when you have the discussion that you blame this thing instead of talking about what actually happened, right?
[01:15:09]  Yeah, I mean, it served a lot of functions.
[01:15:11]  Yeah.
[01:15:11]  It created ratings for the news.
[01:15:15]  That's been amazing.
[01:15:15]  I mean, that was the thing.
[01:15:16]  Like, Mad Our show went through the fucking roof.
[01:15:18]  It like, you know, it's like sort of the impeachment.
[01:15:20]  It was kind of like the impeachment thing because the impeachment was like great for ratings.
[01:15:23]  I mean, great for viewers.
[01:15:24]  Great for like, I mean, like Adam Schiff, like Adam Schiff, like, you know, broke all fundraising records.
[01:15:31]  Yeah, I mean, he rocketed to stardom from this.
[01:15:33]  Oh, and he started out as a prosecutor, as a prosecutor, actually prosecuting this weird Mormon Soviet spy.
[01:15:40]  So that was his first kind of like big public case.
[01:15:43]  This weird, like weird, like inept Mormon who got seduced by a Russian woman.
[01:15:48]  Amazing.
[01:15:48]  And who thought that he was going to infiltrate the KGB?
[01:15:51]  Yeah.
[01:15:51]  Oh, like she tricked him into all of that.
[01:15:53]  It's not even clear what was going on.
[01:15:56]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:15:57]  But that's, and that he prosecuted him.
[01:15:58]  And I think it was, in the end, he was acquitted.
[01:16:00]  Yeah.
[01:16:01]  Well, Fal is he here to hear first.
[01:16:03]  But he's a prosecutor, so that's why he was doing so well.
[01:16:04]  Yeah.
[01:16:05]  I mean, he was playing his role.
[01:16:07]  He's a cop, you know?
[01:16:07]  Yeah.
[01:16:08]  Adam Schiff is a copy.
[01:16:09]  That's why, I mean, there was that whole thing about Kamala, too, is like one of her big things is we need her in the White House so she can prosecute the previous president.
[01:16:15]  No, I also love that they're like, I mean, basically, it was like her whole campaign was like, when I get to the White House, I'm impeaching Donald Trump.
[01:16:23]  Yeah.
[01:16:23]  And you're like, it's just, it's so doesn't even.
[01:16:27]  First of all, a president doesn't impeach.
[01:16:28]  Well, that's what I'm saying.
[01:16:29]  It's like it totally was a.
[01:16:31]  You're going to be a dictator.
[01:16:32]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:16:33]  I mean, it's so.
[01:16:35]  Come on.
[01:16:36]  Yeah.
[01:16:36]  I mean, I really am like, I get so heated about this stuff because like even now people are trying to like whitewash how insane like right after 16, 17, 18 was.
[01:16:49]  Like, I fucking remember Morgan Freeman like in a YouTube ad talking about how we were at war with Russia.
[01:16:56]  We are at war.
[01:16:57]  Yeah.
[01:16:58]  Yes, in his fucking March of the Penguins voice.
[01:17:00]  Insane.
[01:17:02]  Like it was, and it still is.
[01:17:03]  And there are like so many, you know, left liberal squishes who were like selling bylines to get on the cover of the nation, get on the cover of Atlantic motherfuckers.
[01:17:12]  All these assholes who are like, well, maybe there is kind of a way you could look at this clean on or whatever his name is.
[01:17:19]  I was trying to say that.
[01:17:19]  He's like clean off.
[01:17:20]  I know I'm David crying.
[01:17:21]  Clean off.
[01:17:23]  Clean up.
[01:17:24]  Oh, this is actually about corruption.
[01:17:26]  Yeah.
[01:17:26]  It's like, no.
[01:17:27]  Fuck that.
[01:17:27]  Like, that's the thing is, you can't give them an inch on this shit.
[01:17:30]  No.
[01:17:31]  Because it's like, look at what they're doing.
[01:17:32]  The first, like, when now they're talking about your guy.
[01:17:35]  Because if Bernie does get farther or if Bernie gets to be president, you better believe there's going to be a bipartisan Russia impeachment thing about.
[01:17:43]  Oh, my God.
[01:17:44]  No, he's going to be impeached day one.
[01:17:46]  And it's crazy.
[01:17:46]  And it works so well on just like the, I mean, who knows how many of these people are real themselves, but it works so well on sort of the like the mass base of a certain type of Democratic voter, you know, 45 years.
[01:17:59]  Normies.
[01:18:00]  Normie, Campbell, suburb, whatever.
[01:18:03]  It worked really well on the moment.
[01:18:04]  But also like this entire fucking town.
[01:18:06]  Oh, like LA completely.
[01:18:08]  Like San Francisco.
[01:18:09]  California, San Francisco smaller.
[01:18:12]  You see it happen on the internet.
[01:18:13]  It's like, oh, they're totally blue pills.
[01:18:15]  But like, they'll literally just be like, you're a bot to like somebody who's like a blue check or something.
[01:18:21]  It's just like, you understand in front of your eyes.
[01:18:23]  Like, this is not a bot.
[01:18:25]  This is a literal person.
[01:18:26]  And you just like, you know, they verify it.
[01:18:29]  I mean, which is, you know, that's not a great sign usually.
[01:18:32]  You know, no dispute.
[01:18:33]  But it's unclear if blue checks are real people.
[01:18:36]  Yeah.
[01:18:36]  Well, some of them are.
[01:18:37]  Exactly what you mean.
[01:18:37]  They're media people, so they're not really Real.
[01:18:40]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:18:42]  As we all know.
[01:18:42]  It's crazy.
[01:18:43]  It allowed people to go through, and it's like, it's one of these things where it's like, it's, it's, it's, and this is, I think, what's so dangerous about the internet sometimes is it allows people to just totally embrace in, basically in totality, these alternate realities that they, they sort of create, but are so really created for them by tv or like just media in general, where it's like now they are in a spy novel and like they have to like defend Adam Shiff from like a guy being like Adam Shit, and you have to like be like, you have to out him as, like a,
[01:19:13]  as a provost guy.
[01:19:15]  Derbyaskvaya guy no, I didn't mean to rock, you got to write it almost 100 you, not you.
[01:19:22]  Well, a little bit you, because I could see you didn't want me to get it fully right.
[01:19:25]  No I I, it's exactly that's.
[01:19:27]  I mean that shit really reached a fever pitch where it was like I mean you had, oh god, what's her name?
[01:19:32]  The, you know her, the lady Crazy, Louise Mitch.
[01:19:36]  There we go.
[01:19:37]  That was oh no wait, she's still around.
[01:19:40]  But it's like she just like replies to being like right on, they were such obvious grifters, the like real Iris.
[01:19:46]  She's for the ones that are like the soft grifters yeah, where I was like, I see you all too well.
[01:19:52]  Also, like, you know, it's interesting because there used to be the Russia grifters before the, you know, before 2016, and they helped set up, like, no, like, people like Masha Gesson, for instance.

=== Why It Feels Familiar (16:05) ===

[01:20:02]  Oh, yeah.
[01:20:03]  And then she actually, when the real grifters kicked in, and they basically built on a world that she helped create, she built the foundation, like, she made that respectable.
[01:20:13]  Of, like, the impenetrable FSB.
[01:20:15]  The man without a face.
[01:20:17]  Putin as his god, as his shadowy manipulator.
[01:20:21]  The, like, global puppeteer.
[01:20:21]  Yeah.
[01:20:21]  And you, and.
[01:20:23]  and so he's, you know, in the New York.
[01:20:24]  She's in the New York.
[01:20:25]  I mean, she's like the most respected um like, you know Russian like yeah, oh yeah no, she's got the NEW Yorker Cartoon ABBY.
[01:20:32]  Yeah, she's.
[01:20:32]  No, she's huge.
[01:20:34]  I mean people really, I mean people think of her.
[01:20:36]  I mean she is like you know Hana, or like of, like what in people's minds?
[01:20:40]  She fucking, she plays she yeah, she plays her.
[01:20:43]  She actually like take, takes her shtick, you know, and like the whole like totalitarianism yeah, that's her whole notion.
[01:20:49]  How old was she when she moved here?
[01:20:51]  Like 16 oh, I don't remember.
[01:20:52]  She was a teenager.
[01:20:53]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:20:54]  She wrote about Bernie Sanders too.
[01:20:56]  Yeah no, and like for lots of things, no.
[01:20:58]  And she compared uh, you know, basically Cubit in Nazi Germany yeah, oh no.
[01:21:02]  She does that whole like sort of Dual Holocaust.
[01:21:04]  She's totally.
[01:21:04]  I mean, she opens her latest book with that, how her mother says that we basically the Soviet Union is Nazi Germany.
[01:21:11]  I mean, she doesn't like condemning.
[01:21:12]  Look, she's actually a Russian, in Russia, she would be called a liberal, which means that, like, means in America to be like a libertarian.
[01:21:19]  Yeah.
[01:21:20]  So just that's like a new liberal, like a classic liberal.
[01:21:24]  Yeah.
[01:21:24]  Yeah.
[01:21:25]  And so she believes she's like super anti-communist, super anti-left.
[01:21:29]  But she's able to, in America, she couches it in these kind of, I mean, it's easy to make people in America think that you're an intellectual because people are so provincial here.
[01:21:39]  You know, I mean, no restriction.
[01:21:41]  It's totally true.
[01:21:43]  I'm literally provincial.
[01:21:45]  And I actually mean like the people who don't think they're provincial are the most provincial people.
[01:21:49]  So everyone who's IB League educated, they are the most provincial.
[01:21:53]  But no, they keep them provincial by sending them to the Ivies.
[01:21:56]  Yeah, and but it's just also like it's very easy.
[01:21:58]  You quote some, you know, you quote some, you do some quotes from Dostoevsky.
[01:22:01]  Yeah.
[01:22:01]  You do some Tolstoy.
[01:22:02]  You cite like some.
[01:22:04]  And they're like, no, she's really deep.
[01:22:07]  And so she's so she's able to.
[01:22:09]  The somber, like the sensitive Russian soul.
[01:22:13]  And she also chastise people.
[01:22:15]  And she's like, you know, liberals for like a wrong thinking.
[01:22:17]  So they're like, oh, yeah, that's right.
[01:22:18]  No, we were too simplistic in our thinking.
[01:22:20]  But her whole thing is just how Russia is basically, it's a resurgence of the Soviet Union.
[01:22:27]  The Russian people are not, we're not ready for democracy.
[01:22:31]  Nope.
[01:22:31]  They're like inner totalitarian sort of slave to the Soviet system has come back on FOIA.
[01:22:38]  And so she helped set that stage completely.
[01:22:42]  And then when all the grifters, the menshes and like the what are the other guy, the Twitter guy who goes fucking crazy?
[01:22:49]  Seth Abrams.
[01:22:50]  Seth Abrams, but the other guy too, but he kind of fell.
[01:22:52]  Oh, that guy, the game theory guy.
[01:22:54]  Yeah, game theory guy.
[01:22:55]  Oh, yeah, he was cool.
[01:22:56]  Yeah.
[01:22:56]  Eric Garland.
[01:22:58]  He was pretty cool.
[01:22:58]  He was funny.
[01:22:59]  And then he was trying to set up a private Twitter to monetize.
[01:23:03]  Oh, but those work.
[01:23:04]  Schindler did that too.
[01:23:05]  The Naval War guy.
[01:23:07]  Who got outed as like, what the hell was he doing?
[01:23:09]  I have on my telephone a picture of his penis.
[01:23:12]  I'm sorry.
[01:23:13]  If you were fucking trying to tell me about Provatskaya and you're fucking, if you're being like, they're in our, I literally have your dick in my phone and I've had it there for four years.
[01:23:23]  Fuck you.
[01:23:25]  Yeah, and those guys all have paid Twitter accounts where you have to pay $5, but for like porn stars.
[01:23:35]  Yeah.
[01:23:35]  Yeah.
[01:23:36]  Exactly.
[01:23:37]  But it's basically so that no one else can be like, this is insane.
[01:23:40]  Because the only people who are going to read it are like industry.
[01:23:45]  Yeah, so she helped like people like her, and she's the most prominent, I think, because she's, I mean, she's like, she helped that.
[01:23:51]  She helped.
[01:23:51]  Yeah, she's famous.
[01:23:52]  She helped create that world.
[01:23:53]  I mean, she helped legitimize it from the beginning.
[01:23:56]  And so they just built on her, on her, on her work, essentially.
[01:23:59]  But then they took it to another level and started disparaging her.
[01:24:02]  Because, you know, they took her grip and they went way too far.
[01:24:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:24:07]  I can't remember exactly what she wrote, but she distances herself from that.
[01:24:10]  And saying that's, you know, it's crazy.
[01:24:12]  It's a conspiracy.
[01:24:13]  So, but like, and pretending that she's like, legitimates her more.
[01:24:16]  Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.
[01:24:17]  Because she can sort of put herself up next to these crazies and be like, you know, listen, a lot of this is real, but it's not that.
[01:24:24]  It's like what we do at QAnon or QAnon.
[01:24:27]  We're like, listen, there is a global pedophile cabal, but like, come on, it's not a pizza hut.
[01:24:30]  Trump's part of it, you know?
[01:24:32]  Well, I like, I think it's interesting too, because she also is echoing basically what is being taught in like the academies in America, which I find really fascinating.
[01:24:43]  Like, the approach, like in like studying, you know, international relations.
[01:24:50]  You know, however, poly psi is political science is structured, it's like bizarre.
[01:24:55]  And it really is what you say that, like, totalitarianism as an ideology or authoritarianism.
[01:25:02]  Yeah, authoritarianism really is.
[01:25:04]  I mean, both of those.
[01:25:06]  It's never really clearly explained as well.
[01:25:08]  It's just like extreme authoritarianism.
[01:25:10]  And I guess in like more like legitimate academia, I guess like totalitarianism as a concept has been sort of discredited.
[01:25:17]  Yeah, right.
[01:25:17]  Because, I mean, authoritarianism, I mean, I guess people have authoritarian tendencies.
[01:25:21]  Yeah.
[01:25:21]  And so, but totalitarianism as like because they try to do basically it was a Cold War thing, trying to equate communism and fascism.
[01:25:28]  Exactly.
[01:25:29]  Which is funny because America, of course, was Hannah Arendt was a big part of that.
[01:25:33]  Of course, she did not have some.
[01:25:35]  If you were, if not, not to our black listeners, I apologize for Hannah Arendt's judicious use of the N-word.
[01:25:42]  That's the truth.
[01:25:43]  She has a bit of a.
[01:25:45]  Well, and you know, her lover.
[01:25:47]  Who's oh, Heidegger?
[01:25:49]  She fucked Heidegger.
[01:25:50]  Yo, I'm not taking lessons in totalitarianism from a lady who fucked Heidegger.
[01:25:54]  Holy shit.
[01:25:56]  Yes, I did that with many political figures.
[01:25:58]  I have a book that's all their letters.
[01:26:00]  It's looking fascinating.
[01:26:01]  Oh, it's weird.
[01:26:02]  Yeah, there's some weird stuff in that.
[01:26:04]  It's funny because at that same time, America was basically funding the World Anti-Communist League, which, boy, I have a book about them, and that is some shit right there.
[01:26:13]  Because that's like the Moonies, but also like the SS.
[01:26:18]  And like, you know, Kuomintong, all these fucking different people.
[01:26:21]  And this is insane CIA front that just like, I mean, those were the days for the CIA where they could have like real like auto-score zany types.
[01:26:29]  Now they just have to have fucking Falun Gong, like guys who are like, listen, we'll build a cage and we'll do a parade.
[01:26:36]  And we'll have a ballet, Chinese ballet.
[01:26:38]  Exactly.
[01:26:38]  I get it.
[01:26:39]  And we'll do a lot of direct mail.
[01:26:40]  Yeah.
[01:26:41]  A lot of direct mail.
[01:26:43]  They got the jihadists and shit like that.
[01:26:44]  Yeah, I guess.
[01:26:46]  In hindsight, they got like the terminal.
[01:26:48]  They're going to look cool at our hindsight.
[01:26:49]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:26:50]  You're too close.
[01:26:51]  Yeah.
[01:26:52]  She also, because I'm like, I think too, also of like people like Yasha Monk and that that's kind of like well, he's really taking the Rant like so.
[01:27:01]  Yes, I mean that's what I'm saying.
[01:27:02]  Well, yeah, but that's what I'm saying.
[01:27:03]  And what are the LIs?
[01:27:04]  Why do they have a lot of people?
[01:27:04]  I call my name that is very similar to mine.
[01:27:08]  Because he actually has my name.
[01:27:09]  Yeah.
[01:27:10]  But it's like all these things.
[01:27:11]  But he spells it weird.
[01:27:12]  It's wild because they, you know, yeah, it's like kind of comes from the same.
[01:27:15]  They're literally all kind of operating the same school of thought or whatever.
[01:27:19]  But repeatedly, it's always used against the United States as well.
[01:27:24]  Yasha Monk gets trotted out every, you know, so often to say, well, actually, you know, the left and the right, there's too much extremism.
[01:27:32]  Exactly.
[01:27:33]  You know, and it's, it's all these same kind of theories.
[01:27:35]  But it's, this is, you know, I mean, this is like literally what they teach in academia.
[01:27:40]  Like this is, I mean, this, and it has like the foundation knowledge of, you know, how you understand world governments, let alone not history.
[01:27:49]  No one even teaches history or studies history anymore, sadly.
[01:27:53]  Yeah.
[01:27:53]  I mean, that's the funny thing is that only governments that aren't America can be totalitarian.
[01:27:57]  I mean, you see it like, look at the election shit in Iowa.
[01:28:00]  Compare that to Bolivia.
[01:28:01]  Look at like, look at any of these.
[01:28:03]  Look at the reaction of Ferguson and sort of the murders of like protesters there.
[01:28:07]  And then compare that to like the rhetoric around Venezuela and stuff like that.
[01:28:10]  I mean, it's absurd.
[01:28:11]  Like, it's, it's, because, because the subtext there is if it's authoritarianism, it can't be, if it's authoritarian, it can't be a democracy.
[01:28:19]  Exactly.
[01:28:19]  And that's how they're authoritarian.
[01:28:21]  And this gets back to what you're saying about how America is so good at propagandizing around an idea of democracy.
[01:28:28]  Yeah.
[01:28:28]  That like, to the point where, I mean, it is, it's really an elegant system, I say.
[01:28:34]  Like, sometimes I like step back and you kind of understand how all of these things are simultaneously like legitimating and disciplining.
[01:28:43]  Yeah.
[01:28:43]  And it's just incredibly elegant.
[01:28:45]  Yeah.
[01:28:46]  Which is like a little, it can like get make you a little crazy making.
[01:28:51]  Yeah.
[01:28:51]  But like.
[01:28:52]  You're already crazy.
[01:28:53]  In a good way.
[01:28:56]  Yeah, keep talking.
[01:28:57]  But like, you know, no bullying on this program.
[01:29:01]  I'm sorry.
[01:29:01]  But it's true.
[01:29:02]  It's like, it's such an amazing way to both like, you know, simultaneously squash, you know, like any kind of, you know, critical thinking about what actually a democracy is because a democracy can only be what the United States is.
[01:29:16]  So what you're seeing is democracy, even though, do you know what I'm saying?
[01:29:19]  Yeah, and democracy and a democracy never has any, even if it acts in a totalitarian manner, it's not, it's like, it's not because any, it just happened by accident or it's, it's never corruption or because of some kind of, you know, like some kind of, some kind of bug that happened.
[01:29:36]  It was, or but, you know, by accident.
[01:29:37]  Just whatever.
[01:29:38]  It just happened.
[01:29:38]  So there's never, it's never like whatever other countries do is like speaks to some kind of deep-seated issue with that society where that people even like genetically, you know, it's like the Slavic mind.
[01:29:52]  About them and something genetic almost yeah, with America.
[01:29:55]  They said literally that kind of stuff, yeah, you kill a million Iraqis and it's like well uh yeah no, it's like yeah, I mean it's horrible, it doesn't say much about us, it's just we, we were met well, I mean, I had this crazy conversation uh, like about a year ago, with the guy, a documentary guy from from Harvard, and he was like you know, we were talking about, you know, like American exceptionalism and so, and he was saying, like you know, he thinks, still thinks yeah, America's done all these things wrong.
[01:30:19]  It's true, like you know, killed all these people.
[01:30:21]  Vietnam War was horrible.
[01:30:22]  Iraq War million people, it's horrible.
[01:30:25]  But still, you know, America at its core yes, is like has something about it that is like good.
[01:30:31]  And I said okay, all right let's, let's say it's, that's true.
[01:30:35]  Like what's the body count?
[01:30:36]  Like how many people will have to die?
[01:30:38]  Like say, is it like six million, seven million?
[01:30:41]  Yeah, for Nazi Germany was six million people, and that was like it.
[01:30:43]  That's like I mean yeah, so so what?
[01:30:46]  And and?
[01:30:46]  And he thought about it and he was honest about it.
[01:30:48]  He's like you know what?
[01:30:49]  I don't think there is exactly exactly and that.
[01:30:51]  That is like that's refreshing to hear.
[01:30:53]  No, it is, because there is.
[01:30:54]  Like the obvious answer is, there isn't a body count.
[01:30:56]  No, there's a body count high enough.
[01:30:58]  It's funny because, if you think about, just through the entire like totality, totality of the United States exist I keep saying totality the entire history of the United States right, and how many, you know millions and of people, I mean you know native Americans alone um, and then you compare it to like any America is like at this point in the terms of like extant governments that have existed uninterrupted.
[01:31:21]  Is it's fairly old?
[01:31:22]  Yeah, you know, we're older than a lot of nations, a lot of European nations whatever um, but if any like nation, you know if, if a nation throws off the sort of the shackles of colonialism, anything like that, and there's anything that doesn't resemble, like you know, a mayoral election in, not even in like a small town, like if things don't go like that, you know, if maybe some people get arrested whatever, then that is like, oh, this is, you know it's, it's.
[01:31:49]  They never get like 200 years to work things out or whatever.
[01:31:54]  It's never like only America is allowed the leeway of like millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of bodies yeah, everybody else, you know you you, you.
[01:32:02]  That's not even comprehensible.
[01:32:03]  Like I don't even know what number it would.
[01:32:05]  Like I can't even, I can't.
[01:32:07]  Weird, it's a weird, it's weird to think that way.
[01:32:08]  Right exactly, it feels like almost like sick, like I feel a little sick, thinking like what is the body count?
[01:32:13]  Huh, it's like I don't.
[01:32:15]  I literally Literally don't fucking know it about the country.
[01:32:18]  I know.
[01:32:18]  It's pretty high.
[01:32:19]  I gotta be higher than any other country in the world.
[01:32:21]  Yeah, the greatest, so me.
[01:32:24]  I wonder.
[01:32:24]  British Empire, probably pretty big.
[01:32:26]  Yeah, I guess that's been continuous too.
[01:32:28]  I mean, yeah, I wonder, yeah.
[01:32:29]  I mean, I don't know what the yeah.
[01:32:30]  I mean, look, but it's, I mean, I think this focus on body counts also is weird, you know, like, because there's also, you know, internal, I mean, there's external, internal body counts.
[01:32:37]  I mean, the worst part of it is, of course, not, I mean, okay, there's the external wars and killing, but there's the internal war and killing, you know, not just, you know, through economic means and through pollution and through all this other horrible things.
[01:32:50]  I mean, like, so, like, yeah, it's, it's, um, but it is, there's this, it's a, the American exceptionalism is a weird thing for, like, for a, for a, you know, for like a Soviet immigrant like me.
[01:33:01]  Like, I just, it's, it's weird.
[01:33:02]  Like, I mean, a lot of people, like, a lot of people who are like me who came here in America, I mean, they've, they've totally absorbed that, you know?
[01:33:10]  And, and not only people here, but also, like, in Russia, like, you'll have people in Russia like totally believing in American exceptionalism.
[01:33:16]  Oh, yeah.
[01:33:17]  And, like, and, like, also, like, weird stuff like they're like, they're like, you know, for instance, the Chernobyl show that came out reproduced.
[01:33:24]  Oh, my God.
[01:33:24]  Yeah.
[01:33:25]  I like that.
[01:33:25]  Like, they like Russia.
[01:33:26]  You know, Russians love that show.
[01:33:28]  Really?
[01:33:29]  In Russia.
[01:33:30]  Yeah.
[01:33:30]  Huh.
[01:33:31]  I mean, like, a certain class of people.
[01:33:33]  Yeah.
[01:33:34]  The kind of thing that's going to be.
[01:33:35]  I mean, the people who are going to watch the HBO show.
[01:33:37]  No, but, you know, there's its subtitle and all this stuff.
[01:33:39]  Yeah, yeah, true.
[01:33:39]  No, but it's still.
[01:33:40]  I mean, like, yeah, they'll be like, oh, my God, you know, I can't believe they did this.
[01:33:43]  We should have done something like that about ourselves.
[01:33:45]  You know, like, not is that like, we should have done it differently.
[01:33:47]  No, like, it's amazing that they captured, you know, us so well and that we weren't able to do that.
[01:33:52]  Interesting.
[01:33:52]  Yeah.
[01:33:53]  Oh, yeah.
[01:33:54]  Well, I mean, yeah, I don't know.
[01:33:55]  I don't know if they won all the awards, even though no one is going to be able to do it.
[01:33:56]  No, no, in Russia, I mean, like, that's the whole thing.
[01:33:58]  You go to these other countries, like, and even the people who might even be opposed to America, they're not like all like, you know, like even the nationalists or whatever, they're so colonialized, like colonized by American ideology.
[01:34:12]  It's like Russia, it's like, it's funny when people say me, oh, yeah, they're like attacking.
[01:34:15]  It's like, what are they attacking?
[01:34:16]  They want to beat us.
[01:34:17]  Yeah.
[01:34:18]  They are.
[01:34:18]  Exactly.
[01:34:19]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:34:20]  They're wearing blue jeans and fucking.
[01:34:21]  No, no, no, no.
[01:34:22]  They believe in like neoliberalism.
[01:34:24]  Neoliberalism to them is, you don't question that.
[01:34:27]  Like, it's not like a.
[01:34:28]  It's a force of nature.
[01:34:29]  It's like, yeah, you don't like, what do you, like, there is no alternative even possible.
[01:34:33]  Right, right.
[01:34:34]  And if you talk about it.
[01:34:35]  You hear the fish, you don't see the water.
[01:34:36]  And here people actually talk about alternatives.
[01:34:38]  I mean, not everywhere, but like there's a big chunk of the population that actually is trying to actually think about, you know, is actually not happy with it.
[01:34:44]  You know, trying to think through something different.
[01:34:46]  Maybe they're not really, not really good, you know, succeeding at it.
[01:34:50]  But the point is that you can actually talk critically about this sort of like this neoliberal way of life.
[01:34:56]  Whereas in Russia, it's like it is the way of life.
[01:34:59]  And it doesn't matter if you're a Russian Orthodox guy who believes in the Russian Orthodox Church and basically bring the country back to some kind of Sharia law, but under Russian Orthodoxy.
[01:35:12]  Or you're like a Russian liberal who wants like, you know, America to basically intervene and overthrow Putin.
[01:35:16]  Or you're like a Russian Putin kind of oligarch who believes in sort of this nationalism and kind of security state nationalism.
[01:35:23]  But you're still like what you think, your values, like what you think life is for, like what makes sense for you in the world, like what you live for.
[01:35:31]  They're all American neoliberal values.
[01:35:34]  And so it's like, it's pretty fucking weird.
[01:35:36]  It's pretty depressing going back there.
[01:35:37]  I can't imagine.
[01:35:38]  Yeah, because you can't even.
[01:35:40]  Yeah, so it's like the that's the like I mean, it's kind of fucked up with me because like America's trying to grapple with this thing here around the world.
[01:35:49]  No one even, especially in the former Soviet Soviet world.
[01:35:53]  It's like politics there are like I've I kept up on them for a while and it's like it's it's I mean I only know like about Poland.
[01:36:03]  I mean I have a lot of family in Poland and the situation in Poland is fucking wild.

=== Odessa's Mob Problem (04:20) ===

[01:36:08]  Well it's I spent a lot of time in Ukraine.
[01:36:10]  Well three weeks but I spent a lot of time.
[01:36:14]  Well not a lot of Americans have been to Ukraine.
[01:36:16]  I also haven't been to many other countries either.
[01:36:20]  I spent two weeks in Odessa.
[01:36:21]  That doesn't bolster your case about how you're not CIA, by the way, being like the only place.
[01:36:25]  Dude, my plan was, no, this is also will bolster the case is because I was like, I had this idea.
[01:36:31]  I'm going to write a novel about these people who lived in these caves.
[01:36:34]  Odessa has a catacomb system that's like 1500 kilometers long.
[01:36:37]  Where?
[01:36:38]  Odessa.
[01:36:38]  Oh, okay, yeah.
[01:36:39]  It has a catacomb system, like 1,500 kilometers long that were limestone.
[01:36:43]  When they built the city, they basically like, and it's funny.
[01:36:46]  There's actually, we went for burial areas.
[01:36:48]  Yeah, but definitely bodies down there.
[01:36:51]  But no, it's like, it was basically mines and then people lived in there.
[01:36:54]  So you'd have like, whatever, transients living in there.
[01:36:57]  And then during World War II, a lot of Jews and a lot of NKVD agents went down there too and sort of like fought this.
[01:37:04]  Because it's huge.
[01:37:05]  I mean, this is like, we went in one of the systems.
[01:37:08]  You can't go whatever legally, but like, you know, you can just go.
[01:37:12]  And we got it.
[01:37:13]  We got, my friend knew a guy who's a guide or who just goes down there, but he also takes other people.
[01:37:18]  And he took us out basically to the equivalent of like Stockton.
[01:37:21]  And we went down and he's like, you could walk to downtown Odessa from here.
[01:37:25]  That's cool.
[01:37:25]  Yeah, it was fucking amazing.
[01:37:26]  There was like, there was graffiti, or not graffiti.
[01:37:30]  There were poems and prayers written by Baptist Russians.
[01:37:34]  Interesting.
[01:37:34]  This small second.
[01:37:35]  Soviet Union?
[01:37:35]  No, no, before pre-Soviet Union.
[01:37:37]  Oh, interesting.
[01:37:38]  From like 1905.
[01:37:39]  Orthodox.
[01:37:40]  I see.
[01:37:41]  Yeah.
[01:37:42]  So it was the Russian city.
[01:37:42]  Well, it's like a really, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:37:44]  It was like a really small group of them, I guess, that all became minors.
[01:37:48]  But boy, that's weird.
[01:37:49]  I don't know.
[01:37:50]  That's what I got to talk about.
[01:37:51]  Yeah, I love Baptist.
[01:37:53]  No word on that.
[01:37:54]  There's another Northern or Southern.
[01:37:57]  From America, you know?
[01:37:59]  People were so excited that I was American.
[01:38:02]  What year was this?
[01:38:03]  This was in 2017.
[01:38:06]  Okay.
[01:38:06]  So recently.
[01:38:07]  After the whole revolution.
[01:38:08]  Yeah, okay.
[01:38:08]  Yeah.
[01:38:09]  But like there was also like, I'm Jewish, you know, and like which I'm- So you're doing the whole like everything is illuminated trip kind of thing.
[01:38:15]  What's that?
[01:38:15]  You know, the like, remember there was a book and there was a movie with Elijah Wood.
[01:38:19]  No, I know about it, but I never, I'm going to go back to my great-grandmother's like land and it's a trip of self-discovery.
[01:38:30]  No, I wanted to write like a 5,000-word book about the Holocaust or a 5,000-page book about the Holocaust.
[01:38:35]  That's cool.
[01:38:36]  But I got pretty far on it, but then I started working in the factory and I just lost all that stuff.
[01:38:42]  That's kind of cool.
[01:38:43]  I still have it.
[01:38:43]  I still tap around.
[01:38:45]  But anyway, so I spent a lot of time there, and I was hanging out with these people.
[01:38:50]  They were actually from Donbass region.
[01:38:51]  Yeah.
[01:38:52]  And they'd moved, they were kind of refugees, and they were friends with punks I know from Russia who I met out here because they were on tour or whatever.
[01:38:59]  And we were like walking around, and I was like, oh, look at all those 40 pudgy youths in all black marching.
[01:39:04]  Like, oh, yeah, those are like Nazis.
[01:39:06]  Yeah.
[01:39:06]  And like, we walked by the, you know, the place where the nationalists had burned the burn the trade unionist hall.
[01:39:12]  Yes.
[01:39:13]  And then we went to, but it was like, Odessa still has like a, not a large Jewish population, but you know, it's like a Jewish museum.
[01:39:19]  It's a reality.
[01:39:19]  It's a Jew.
[01:39:20]  I read a book about the Jews of Odessa.
[01:39:22]  No, there's a lot of, yeah, people live there.
[01:39:24]  Exactly.
[01:39:24]  And it's like a fairly.
[01:39:26]  I know a Jew from Odessa that supports the Nazis.
[01:39:29]  Exactly.
[01:39:30]  What?
[01:39:30]  Dude.
[01:39:30]  Yeah.
[01:39:31]  No, that's not weird.
[01:39:33]  I know, dude.
[01:39:34]  I know, check this out.
[01:39:36]  I know a fucking.
[01:39:37]  Because they don't, yeah.
[01:39:38]  I mean, it's because they don't really think they're.
[01:39:40]  Because they don't think that they're a real.
[01:39:42]  They think that they're just these goons.
[01:39:43]  They're not a real threat.
[01:39:44]  It's like football hooligans.
[01:39:46]  Basically, yeah, they're football hooks and they think that they actually served a good function, which is that because Odessa was like they keep the sort of the Russian, the Russian people out and the Russian sort of influence out and the Russian takeover of the US.
[01:39:56]  Odessa's like 40% Russia.
[01:39:58]  And Odessa is a mobbed up city.
[01:40:01]  It's always been mobbed.
[01:40:02]  So like, so you, the mob is super strong there even now.
[01:40:06]  And so like, it's like, so they just see them.
[01:40:10]  So I mean, it's pretty weird to have a Jew talk about how, you know, like that.
[01:40:14]  It's like, actually, he was actually like, oh, yeah, they burned up.
[01:40:17]  It's like, oh, like, it didn't really bother him that they burned all these people in that building.
[01:40:21]  He's saying this communist, they burned.
[01:40:24]  Well, when I went to Kiev, there was just like straight up, like, they look like American neo-Nazis walking around.

=== Paranoia and Privacy (09:42) ===

[01:40:28]  No, no, yeah, there's a lot of that stuff.
[01:40:30]  Yeah.
[01:40:30]  There's like, yeah, you can, yeah.
[01:40:31]  I mean, Ukraine is, it's weird.
[01:40:32]  It's like you, it's very, um, yeah.
[01:40:34]  But Odessa is like, Odessa is not like any other city in Ukraine.
[01:40:38]  That's the impression I got.
[01:40:40]  Odessa is a very, it's actually a very Russian city.
[01:40:43]  It's beautiful.
[01:40:44]  It's a, it's, because it was built, it was built by the Russian Empire as a port town.
[01:40:47]  So it's like it has a very Russian history.
[01:40:49]  Well, that's where Potemkin speaks Russian there.
[01:40:51]  Potempkin Villages came into being because I think it was Catherine Grade, I want to say, was she had that city built.
[01:40:59]  And I mean, this might be apocryphal, but I read it in a book about a history of Odessa that seemed fairly legitimate.
[01:41:05]  I don't know.
[01:41:07]  And, you know, Admiral Potemkin had on the side of the road built these like little, you know, model villages to show.
[01:41:14]  Yeah, that's the story.
[01:41:14]  Yeah.
[01:41:14]  Yeah.
[01:41:16]  And so, yeah.
[01:41:17]  We have to wrap up.
[01:41:18]  I know.
[01:41:19]  I'm going to keep going for like another hour, but.
[01:41:22]  Well, give me something positive.
[01:41:24]  Shit.
[01:41:25]  Like, how do you think?
[01:41:26]  I didn't know I had to become prepared.
[01:41:27]  I don't know, man.
[01:41:28]  I just like, well, I think about it sometimes when we talk about like, you know, like, we basically just told our entire audience that like they're being watched and listened to at all times.
[01:41:35]  I don't think they should know, but like.
[01:41:37]  I don't say give me some positive news, but like, what can someone do?
[01:41:40]  About what?
[01:41:41]  Just like, should they just throw in their phones?
[01:41:43]  I bought the tech stuff.
[01:41:45]  I bought a bunch of Faraday cases.
[01:41:46]  Because I forgot already about what they're like.
[01:41:49]  I mean, I don't know.
[01:41:50]  It doesn't bother me that much.
[01:41:52]  Yeah.
[01:41:52]  Like, I don't even, like, who the fuck cares?
[01:41:54]  Let them watch you.
[01:41:55]  I mean, like, all this paranoia about being watched.
[01:41:59]  I mean, okay, here's the thing.
[01:42:00]  Privacy, I'll just, is, is, is it an American suburban like paranoia.
[01:42:06]  I mean, the idea that privacy, it's like, go to any other part of the world and, like, like, look at what privacy means.
[01:42:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:42:13]  I mean, people don't live in the fucking suburbs, you know?
[01:42:16]  People like live in the same room.
[01:42:18]  Yeah, multiple generations in the same house, multiple generations sometimes in the same room.
[01:42:21]  My mom, you know, when she grew up most of her childhood, she grew up in a huge room with three generations, you know, it was because it was like converted aristocratic sort of apartments.
[01:42:30]  So just large rooms.
[01:42:31]  They call it communal apartments where they have, you know, subdivided in a giant, giant apartment into, I mean, in her apartment, there was like 50 people lived in it.
[01:42:39]  I mean, but it was a giant apartment.
[01:42:41]  There's the one bathroom, you know, like one kitchen.
[01:42:43]  It's like an SRO.
[01:42:45]  Yeah.
[01:42:46]  And so, and so, like, I mean, it's extreme, but, you know, like, I grew up with three generations in one apartment.
[01:42:50]  My mom, my parents, my grandparents, my brother, like, you know, people who are, you know, not like middle class or upper middle class, you know, have, don't experience privacy in the same way.
[01:43:00]  You know, people aren't like, like, so this expectation of privacy is a totally, I mean, it's not just white, but it's very, it's a very white, very middle, upper middle class.
[01:43:10]  And actually, the higher up in the wealth scale you get, the more paranoid you are about privacy.
[01:43:15]  Yeah.
[01:43:16]  So it's a very, it's actually a very tech circles a lot.
[01:43:18]  Yeah.
[01:43:19]  Well, that's the obsession with security.
[01:43:21]  So the whole thing is like, actually, we need less privacy in a way because the problem with privacy is like atomization, you know?
[01:43:27]  Yeah.
[01:43:27]  And like actually we're atomized so much that actually we like you need the opposite of privacy.
[01:43:32]  I mean, so what are we worried about?
[01:43:34]  What are we worried about them like reading?
[01:43:36]  Who are we?
[01:43:36]  Are we worried about like the NSA reading our texts?
[01:43:39]  Like what?
[01:43:39]  I kind of am.
[01:43:40]  I mean, but what?
[01:43:41]  Like, what are you doing?
[01:43:42]  What are you doing?
[01:43:43]  Yeah.
[01:43:43]  Like, what do you, you should be plattered that they're reading your text and not give a shit.
[01:43:47]  I know, yeah.
[01:43:48]  So I actually don't care.
[01:43:48]  I actually don't.
[01:43:49]  I mean, I'm worried about, I don't know, like someone stealing, I guess, your ATM pin or something.
[01:43:55]  But I mean, I don't even know.
[01:43:57]  But I'm worried about that.
[01:43:58]  I don't even, like, take out, yeah, I don't even have that.
[01:44:00]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:44:01]  I was about to say, I was like, what are you, great?
[01:44:03]  Buy yourself a PlayStation 4 and then have no money left.
[01:44:06]  So I mean, I don't, I think people should stop kind of worrying about it.
[01:44:10]  Yeah.
[01:44:10]  I mean, I mean, about tech, I'd never, I, I remember when I, wait, you're, what?
[01:44:16]  Yeah, what?
[01:44:16]  You.
[01:44:16]  You wrote a book about it.
[01:44:17]  No, but I didn't write a book about the privacy movement.
[01:44:21]  I talk shit about the privacy movement.
[01:44:22]  I criticize the privacy movement precisely because it's a movement of atomization and total, like all our interaction should be mediated through these apps and we should all sit in like encrypted bunkers.
[01:44:36]  What kind of world is that?
[01:44:37]  Well, here's the thing.
[01:44:38]  If you want to have a secret conversation with somebody, do it.
[01:44:42]  Go to a park.
[01:44:43]  Go to a fucking beach.
[01:44:45]  It's kind of cool.
[01:44:46]  If the security state clamps down on us, we'll have to spend more time together in nature.
[01:44:50]  I mean, they won't ever.
[01:44:52]  What are you planning?
[01:44:54]  What are you planning?
[01:44:56]  Okay, if you're planning the overthrow of some government, won't name the government here.
[01:45:02]  Okay, well, then you might have a problem.
[01:45:03]  But I don't think the signal is the, first of all, you're going to be talking on Signal.
[01:45:06]  Exactly.
[01:45:07]  Second of all, you're going to have a problem.
[01:45:09]  And so, like, unless you're working for the State Department or unless you're working for the direct action on a dam?
[01:45:18]  So I think it's paranoia, man.
[01:45:20]  I think it's the paranoia of the atomized.
[01:45:22]  And I think when the privacy movement was at its like, was at its peak, was at its apex, was actually like sort of the late Obama years when there was no politics at all.
[01:45:31]  Right.
[01:45:31]  And when actually, when Bernie hit in 2016, it sort of just wiped it all out.
[01:45:35]  I mean, it's pretty interesting.
[01:45:37]  Like, it just all that disappeared.
[01:45:39]  And suddenly people are like, oh, yeah, we're like, there's other people.
[01:45:41]  We kind of care about the same shit.
[01:45:42]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:45:44]  People, it just, this whole libertarian privacy moment, like it was, it had, it was a pirate party springing up everywhere.
[01:45:50]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:45:51]  But that was wiped out the moment that people started getting together a little bit.
[01:45:54]  And so, I mean, it is a politics of atomization.
[01:45:56]  And it's like, like privacy is, first of all, like a bad thing because it's like you, that means you're not talking to people, you know, like interacting with people.
[01:46:07]  And so I think like, it doesn't, I mean, my whole book was about, not about that, I mean, was about the politics of the internet, right?
[01:46:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:46:15]  It's about the politics of technology and like the ideology that, you know, of like utopian technological liberation, which these apps are a part of.
[01:46:25]  You know, they give you the false sense that you're actually doing something political just by downloading a fucking app.
[01:46:29]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:46:29]  Like, I mean, it's like politics by app.
[01:46:31]  It's very American.
[01:46:32]  Very, yeah, politics by app.
[01:46:33]  It's very, you know.
[01:46:34]  Oh, and we're exporting it everywhere.
[01:46:36]  Totally.
[01:46:37]  But again, like, you know, it's, I mean, the first, you know, Tor is used in Russia, but what's interesting about it.
[01:46:43]  Telegraph.
[01:46:43]  Telegram.
[01:46:44]  Telegram, yeah.
[01:46:45]  Telegram is used in Russia, but Tor is used to buy drugs and stuff like that.
[01:46:48]  Like, and to like pirate movies.
[01:46:50]  But the way that you get the drugs, actually, you don't get them by mail.
[01:46:55]  They'll actually hide them in the streets, you know, like a dead drop.
[01:47:00]  Yeah, my guy used to do that sometimes.
[01:47:01]  That's cute.
[01:47:02]  It is kind of cool.
[01:47:02]  I like that.
[01:47:03]  So I have people like will, like, kids will like walk around and be like, sometimes check weird stuff.
[01:47:09]  Hope they're helping to grab something.
[01:47:10]  Oh, my God.
[01:47:11]  That's cute.
[01:47:12]  It's very social, actually.
[01:47:13]  It is very social.
[01:47:14]  It's like one thing they couldn't get rid of.
[01:47:16]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:47:17]  So because there's like the postal, you're not going to use the postal system for that over there.
[01:47:22]  So like, so, so, like, and you can, so people do use it to buy stuff there, but it's, but it has like a communal aspect to it.
[01:47:29]  Well, because I remember when I was, when I was in a mountainous region in the Middle East, they took our phones and they took them far away because like they're like, there's no point.
[01:47:38]  If you use your phone, a drone will kill you.
[01:47:40]  It's like that, it's like that Four Lions scene.
[01:47:42]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:47:43]  Yeah.
[01:47:44]  Yes.
[01:47:45]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:47:46]  That movie fucking rock.
[01:47:48]  That was amazing, man.
[01:47:48]  Highly recommended.
[01:47:49]  Four Lions is incredible.
[01:47:51]  Yeah.
[01:47:51]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:47:52]  Because you're basically like a target signal.
[01:47:55]  Exactly.
[01:47:55]  And they do target drone cell phone signals.
[01:48:00]  I think they killed.
[01:48:01]  I think that my kind of theory about a guy who I don't know, I know his family, but he's from Sacramento.
[01:48:08]  It's like another DSA guy died from a Turkish airstrike out there.
[01:48:11]  And I'm almost positive.
[01:48:13]  It was just, it was one of their first airstrikes on the Kurds of the war.
[01:48:17]  And they just hit this one building that he and a couple other foreigners were in.
[01:48:22]  I think it's positive it's because of that.
[01:48:23]  Yeah, when someone flipped open their phone, basically?
[01:48:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:48:26]  Because people use their phones out there, and they're like, yeah, the Turks are looking at us, but like, what are they going to find out?
[01:48:32]  Well, there's 50,000 of us, you know?
[01:48:33]  No, but they can hit, yeah, but if they want to hit you.
[01:48:35]  Yeah, but they can hit us anyways because it's all flat and they can see it.
[01:48:38]  Yeah, I got you.
[01:48:39]  If they have reconnaissance of any kind, exactly.
[01:48:41]  Like they can, yeah, they can do it.
[01:48:42]  You know, they could literally just carpet bomb and kill all of us.
[01:48:45]  Yeah.
[01:48:46]  But so, yeah.
[01:48:47]  So that, like, I mean, yeah, I guess the moral is if you're doing something illegal, don't do it.
[01:48:52]  I mean, it's like if you're, look, I mean, encryption is always a thing of war.
[01:48:55]  And like, of, of, it's a, it's a, it's a war, it's a, it's a, it's a technology of states that states use in a time of war or like in war with each other.
[01:49:03]  Or, you know, revolutionary movements use.
[01:49:05]  Yeah, yeah, true, true.
[01:49:06]  So like, so, I mean, so to, so, okay, if you're in a war with a state, all right, well, then you're at war with the state.
[01:49:11]  Yeah.
[01:49:12]  And you're going to, like, you know, the NSA spying on you is actually part of the war.
[01:49:16]  You know, and you got to, I guess you'd have to kind of figure out to turn that to your own advantage.
[01:49:19]  But if you've got misinformation out there, whatever, you know.
[01:49:22]  If you're like staging a direct action against, you know, something like, well, first of all, you're trying to organize something politically with other people.
[01:49:28]  Like, already, already.
[01:49:31]  Humans can just rat you out.
[01:49:32]  Yeah, humans are going to rat you out.
[01:49:33]  And yeah, and like.
[01:49:35]  Brandon Darby.
[01:49:36]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:49:37]  And this stuff makes it easier because, you know, like, basically, signal is only used by activists.
[01:49:43]  Exactly.
[01:49:43]  I mean, it's like a self-selecting thing.
[01:49:45]  Yeah, totally.
[01:49:45]  So it's like saying, I am an activist.
[01:49:48]  That's the thing.
[01:49:48]  Downloading it is like, it says to the user, I am an activist, but it also says to whoever's listening to the story.
[01:49:55]  So like, okay, well, we just got to bug their phone so it's like a small subset of people.
[01:49:59]  And if they actually use it, get on WeChat then, people listening.
[01:50:03]  Just don't fucking talk on the phone to anybody.
[01:50:05]  Yeah, just yeah, just go down to the local sock hop and meet some honey's.

=== Download and Disappear (02:35) ===

[01:50:10]  Well, we gotta wrap up because this is like a two-hour episode.
[01:50:14]  Yasha, thank you so fucking much for joining us.
[01:50:16]  Thanks for having me.
[01:50:17]  I'm so this completely glad to have it again.
[01:50:19]  Yeah.
[01:50:20]  Next time you're in town, come over.
[01:50:22]  I'm moving to L.A.
[01:50:24]  So probably my family's in San Francisco.
[01:50:28]  I'll be coming up to San Francisco more often.
[01:50:29]  Cool.
[01:50:29]  Yeah.
[01:50:30]  What do you got anything to plug?
[01:50:32]  Well, you don't we didn't even talk about the fucking water shit.
[01:50:34]  Sorry, that was too long.
[01:50:35]  Oh, yeah.
[01:50:36]  We didn't even fucking talk about the whole stuff.
[01:50:38]  We're talking on water next time.
[01:50:39]  Absolutely.
[01:50:40]  But I'll plug my sub stack, you know, because everybody's got to hock their head.
[01:50:42]  Yeah.
[01:50:42]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:50:43]  The yasha.substack.com.
[01:50:45]  You know, sign up.
[01:50:46]  Sign that.
[01:50:46]  Sign up to it.
[01:50:47]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:50:48]  Intro.
[01:50:48]  Yeah, because I write about a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here.
[01:50:51]  Yeah.
[01:50:51]  Sort of the weaponizing of nationalism and national identity, the weaponizing of immigrants, the whole soft power stuff.
[01:50:57]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:50:58]  Awesome.
[01:50:59]  Well, that's your podcast, right?
[01:51:01]  It's more like a newsletter.
[01:51:03]  Well, didn't you do a podcast?
[01:51:05]  Yeah, I did it just in an interview with the guy who uncovered that, like the foreign minister of Canada, Christia Felin.
[01:51:13]  Her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator.
[01:51:16]  Yeah, it got into the weeds of, it got into the weeds of like weird Canadian, like left-wing, right-wing Nazi politics.
[01:51:22]  Well, I was.
[01:51:23]  No one knows about that.
[01:51:25]  There was like a war between the Canadian Ukrainian Nazis and basically socialists because the socialists were huge before the war.
[01:51:33]  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
[01:51:34]  And they were like multi-ethnic, multi-ethnic.
[01:51:36]  They were working class farmers, miners, all that stuff.
[01:51:40]  But then after the war, all these Nazi collaborators came.
[01:51:43]  Specifically to Canada.
[01:51:44]  Yeah, a lot of it came to Canada.
[01:51:45]  And there was essentially a war between the two communities and the right or the Nazi right or the fascist right, they were backed by power by the people.
[01:51:55]  Well, they were all in the process of being able to get it.
[01:51:56]  And they took over all of the property, like actual houses that they would, you know, so they would have like their culture houses that they would have Ukrainian culture stuff.
[01:52:06]  And they actually did like a hostile takeover of all their communal property in Canada.
[01:52:10]  Oh, not all of it, but like most of it.
[01:52:12]  A lot of it.
[01:52:13]  So there's like this weird fucking history of the left versus the right in Canada, but in the Ukrainian community.
[01:52:19]  And it's pretty interesting.
[01:52:20]  I actually want to go.
[01:52:21]  I'm trying to actually organize a Canadian Nazi road trip to go through and to hit all their, because they have monuments to the SES and all that stuff.
[01:52:31]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:52:32]  Pretty weird.
[01:52:34]  It's like the, you know, the Baltic country still.
[01:52:37]  Yeah, and they funded, and they funded all this like Nazi stuff, like cultural Nazi heritage sites for the Ukrainians with like multicultural funding.

=== Weird History of Ukrainian Nazis (00:51) ===

[01:52:46]  Amazing.
[01:52:47]  Oh, my God.
[01:52:48]  So it's like being a Nazi is like multiculturalism.
[01:52:51]  I read this book called It's like Stepan Bandera in Memory or whatever, and it's like about Stepan Bandera's sort of legacy in all these different countries.
[01:52:58]  It's like written not from a charitable perspective to him.
[01:53:02]  Oh, interesting.
[01:53:03]  I don't know.
[01:53:04]  I got my phone.
[01:53:05]  I can show it to you.
[01:53:05]  Oh, yeah, that'd be fun.
[01:53:07]  But boy, the sort of Ukrainian diaspora and like the politics in that are just absolutely totally wild.
[01:53:14]  Totally wild.
[01:53:14]  No, but we're going to go on for another fucking hour.
[01:53:16]  I know.
[01:53:17]  I'm going to squash this.
[01:53:19]  Yasha, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:53:21]  Thanks so much.
[01:53:21]  This is so fun.
[01:53:22]  Yeah, it was funny.
[01:53:23]  Thank you.
[01:53:24]  I am.
[01:53:24]  We can just do the outro here, right?
[01:53:26]  Yeah, do it.
[01:53:26]  Yeah.
[01:53:27]  My name is I'm not going to say something funny.
[01:53:32]  We have a guest.
[01:53:32]  I'm Brace Belden.
[01:53:34]  I'm Chloe.
[01:53:35]  Joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:53:36]  And thank you so much.