True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 273: The Dragon Rises: Tiger's Paw
Aired: 2023-03-06
Duration: 01:11:06


=== Inside the Chinese Century (02:03) ===

[00:00:02]  Hello and welcome to the Dragon Rises Tiger's Paw, a new podcast from the Lindbergh Institute on Pacific and Semitic Affairs along with NPR Virginia and WNYC Chicago.
[00:00:15]  Hello, my name is Brace Belden.
[00:00:17]  I'm a senior China analyst at the Lindbergh Institute of Diplomacy and a Hunter Biden Fellow at the Holy Cross High School.
[00:00:24]  And I'm Liz Franczak, Director of Chinese Voices at the Rich Little Institute of Impressions and Jackie Chan scholar at Movie Phone University.
[00:00:31]  We're of course joined by our illustrious producer, young Zhou M. Ski, who runs a mysterious import-export shop where I once purchased a gremlin.
[00:00:40]  So glad to be here today.
[00:00:42]  The 20th century was widely known to be the American century due to the fact that the USA wasn't in Europe when there were two big wars there.
[00:00:50]  But is that century over?
[00:00:52]  Many experts point to the 20th century ending some 23 years ago, which, some experts think, might mean the end of America too.
[00:01:01]  It's well known that every country gets one century, and the recent chronological changes in time have many in Washington worried.
[00:01:08]  Over in China, Premier Xi Jinping has also noticed that the century has changed to a new one.
[00:01:15]  Is he wondering, like our president here, if this could be the Chinese century?
[00:01:21]  There are lots of Chinese people.
[00:01:23]  True.
[00:01:24]  And lots of years in every century.
[00:01:27]  Every year means more belts, more roads, and more little islands in the South China Sea.
[00:01:33]  We're giving you an inside look at Red China, a first-class ticket on the slow train to the inside of the Chinese Kremlin, also known as Peiking.
[00:01:43]  And look into the mysterious, inscrutable world of Xi Jinping and the Mandarin court of the Red Emperor.
[00:01:51]  Welcome to The Dragon Rises Tiger's Paw with generous funding by the Adolf Hitler Fund.

=== Fucking Balloon Mystery (17:08) ===

[00:02:06]  Just playing.
[00:02:22]  Hello, everyone.
[00:02:23]  Welcome to Truna.
[00:02:24]  Hello.
[00:02:24]  Well, we're just playing about one aspect of that.
[00:02:26]  It's not Adolf Hitler Fund.
[00:02:27]  It's not Adolf Hitler Fund.
[00:02:29]  It's the Free Uyghur fund.
[00:02:30]  It's the Free Uyghur Fund.
[00:02:31]  Because, you know, I got this note.
[00:02:33]  I, of course, got my new Nikes, right?
[00:02:35]  Well, you love your dunks.
[00:02:37]  My weekly shipment of dunks have arrived here.
[00:02:39]  You're getting those super rare Kyries that are now out of production.
[00:02:45]  Yes.
[00:02:46]  Does he have a signature shoe?
[00:02:48]  I believe he did until his, of course.
[00:02:50]  They all got those?
[00:02:50]  His statements.
[00:02:51]  MJ.
[00:02:53]  No, there's, well, not every player has a signature shoe.
[00:02:56]  Are you kidding?
[00:02:57]  I don't know.
[00:02:58]  No, it's yeah, Jordan, LeBron, obviously.
[00:03:01]  KD's Kyrie's.
[00:03:02]  Kyries are very good.
[00:03:03]  Any white boys got them?
[00:03:07]  I don't think Gordon Hayward has a shoe.
[00:03:09]  I'm trying to think of white players.
[00:03:10]  Big favorite.
[00:03:10]  Oh, no, Jokic has a shoe.
[00:03:11]  Jokic?
[00:03:12]  Never heard of the guy.
[00:03:13]  What?
[00:03:14]  I just know Larry Bird.
[00:03:15]  Oh, my God.
[00:03:15]  Well, anyways, I got my Yao Ming dunks in the other day, right?
[00:03:19]  My shitman.
[00:03:20]  And I'm looking, size four, of course, women's.
[00:03:24]  And I get a note, and it says, Brace, you got to talk to this lady, Liz.
[00:03:29]  It's a really long note.
[00:03:31]  You also got to talk to your producer, Jon Chomsky.
[00:03:33]  Oh, that's nice.
[00:03:33]  Because a lot's been going on in China.
[00:03:36]  Wait, hold on.
[00:03:38]  I'm Liz.
[00:03:39]  I'm Brace.
[00:03:40]  We're, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:03:42]  And this is, like I said, True Anon, The Dragon Rises.
[00:03:47]  Tiger's Paw.
[00:03:50]  But I got this note in my shoe, obviously from somebody.
[00:03:53]  I couldn't read it.
[00:03:54]  You know, scribbled handwriting.
[00:03:56]  Scribbled handwriting.
[00:03:56]  It's in a language you don't understand.
[00:03:58]  Well, I do speak Chinese.
[00:04:00]  But you don't read it, which was the point.
[00:04:01]  I don't read it.
[00:04:02]  Yeah, that's the thing, because it's all in pictures.
[00:04:05]  And it said, we'd love to hear an episode on China.
[00:04:09]  And I said, well, you know what?
[00:04:13]  I'll do anything for a note in a shoe.
[00:04:16]  But we're talking, the dragon is rising, Liz.
[00:04:18]  I'll say this.
[00:04:20]  Oh, great.
[00:04:23]  People can't stop talking about China.
[00:04:24]  And by people, I mean the clowns in Congress.
[00:04:27]  One thing, so in the podcasting business, one thing you got to do is you got to read the news, right?
[00:04:34]  Yeah.
[00:04:34]  We're always at that.
[00:04:35]  I don't really do that.
[00:04:35]  I got to say.
[00:04:36]  You watch it.
[00:04:37]  I don't watch.
[00:04:38]  I got to start reading the news.
[00:04:40]  I'm reading the news every day.
[00:04:41]  I'm hitting it.
[00:04:42]  You flip the pages?
[00:04:44]  No.
[00:04:44]  No.
[00:04:44]  I'm looking at it on the computer.
[00:04:46]  Okay.
[00:04:46]  But I'm looking at what's going on here.
[00:04:48]  And I feel like, am I crazy?
[00:04:50]  Call me crazy.
[00:04:52]  Okay, she won't.
[00:04:54]  You know.
[00:04:55]  I respect you too much.
[00:04:56]  Okay, well, call me crazy.
[00:04:58]  But every two weeks, it seemed like there's a new China story coming up.
[00:05:02]  Yeah, we were on tour.
[00:05:04]  We were in Boston, Massachusetts.
[00:05:07]  So fucking sick.
[00:05:09]  And you couldn't stop hacking up your not yet diagnosed pneumonia.
[00:05:16]  Yeah, I was coughing like a dog.
[00:05:18]  Yeah, little sickly lungs that you have.
[00:05:22]  He's doing much better, folks, by the way, just as a little update.
[00:05:24]  Anyway, you were like, Liz, have you been watching this stuff about the balloon?
[00:05:31]  And I know that everyone's listening to this and they're like, really?
[00:05:33]  They're talking about the balloon?
[00:05:34]  I don't want to talk about the balloon.
[00:05:35]  No one's thinking that, Liz.
[00:05:37]  Well, I think some people might be thinking about that.
[00:05:40]  I want to say this.
[00:05:41]  I don't want to talk about the balloon.
[00:05:43]  And I will, in a bit, talk about why I don't want to talk about the balloon.
[00:05:48]  We got to talk about the balloon.
[00:05:49]  F you, dude.
[00:05:50]  I hate this fucking dude.
[00:05:51]  I'll be real.
[00:05:52]  The balloon is a real story.
[00:05:56]  So Liz and I have had extremely divergent opinions about the balloon.
[00:06:00]  Which is good.
[00:06:01]  Look, we should get, you know, it's always good to have productive conflicts.
[00:06:06]  Liz was like, oh, maybe our podcast could cover like an au or something else, like anything but the balloon.
[00:06:11]  And I think your aunt is lovely.
[00:06:13]  Okay, yeah.
[00:06:14]  And she would be great to have on the show.
[00:06:16]  She'd be a great guest.
[00:06:16]  Yeah.
[00:06:17]  But I was like, we got to talk about the balloon because we got to talk about the balloon in the greater context of China.
[00:06:25]  I'm doing a Trump voice.
[00:06:26]  I'm not doing a Chinese voice.
[00:06:27]  I'm going to be clear there.
[00:06:28]  Although after I said it, I did realize.
[00:06:30]  But listen, to be clear, I'm doing a Trump voice.
[00:06:33]  It's just not a great one.
[00:06:34]  I can't do good impressions.
[00:06:35]  Especially your Trump voice sounds a little chunky.
[00:06:38]  But yeah.
[00:06:39]  Anyways, with a balloon, we're on tour.
[00:06:42]  Liz is like, I don't want to talk about the balloon.
[00:06:44]  I fucking expected it.
[00:06:45]  All I can think about is the balloon.
[00:06:47]  Are you kidding me?
[00:06:48]  Yeah, well, you caught balloon brain.
[00:06:49]  It's just funny.
[00:06:50]  All right.
[00:06:50]  So let's talk about what happened.
[00:06:52]  All right.
[00:06:53]  For those of you who didn't pay close attention to this, February 2nd, greatest day of my life, a balloon is spotted.
[00:06:59]  I believe in Montana.
[00:07:02]  The U.S. military starts leaking or leaking, giving statements saying, we're tracking a Chinese balloon over the northwestern United States.
[00:07:10]  Man, I want to balloon my brains out already.
[00:07:13]  All right, all right, all right, all right.
[00:07:15]  So first spotted over Montana, and there was, I remember I was, you know, we were on tour, so I'm watching CNN, which I don't, I don't do at home.
[00:07:23]  Right, but when you're staying in a hotel, look, I always said, the best thing to do when you're on tour or on something like that, when you're in a hotel, watch the Today Show.
[00:07:32]  You'll learn so much about America.
[00:07:34]  Yeah, that's a morning thing, though, right?
[00:07:36]  Well, yeah, no, because I always got it on 6.30, Today Show, right on.
[00:07:40]  You have the TV on at 6.30.
[00:07:42]  Well, because I get up at like 6, 6.30.
[00:07:43]  That's crazy.
[00:07:46]  Like a hotel room.
[00:07:47]  It's 4.30 to do yoga.
[00:07:49]  So anyways, the CNN's talking like, oh, there's this Chinese balloon over the northwestern United States.
[00:07:56]  And they're trying to be like, well, there's like some bases in Monte, because it's over Montana, right?
[00:08:00]  Listen.
[00:08:01]  There's where nuclear bases are there, yeah.
[00:08:03]  Yeah, there's like, but it's like not really over the nuclear base.
[00:08:06]  It's kind of like which is so funny.
[00:08:09]  Okay, sorry.
[00:08:09]  It's going to be a show of side note.
[00:08:10]  I have a side note here.
[00:08:11]  I do want to say it's always very funny to me, the kind of cell phone of the bug out people who are just like, oh, I got to get out of there.
[00:08:20]  I got to get out.
[00:08:21]  Libertarian bug out.
[00:08:22]  We got to get out to the middle of nowhere.
[00:08:23]  I'm going to Montana.
[00:08:24]  I'm going to New Mexico.
[00:08:25]  I'm going to Colorado.
[00:08:26]  It's like, hey, genius, where do you think the strategic military sites are?
[00:08:30]  Yeah, that shit's there.
[00:08:31]  That's there.
[00:08:32]  You getting blown out.
[00:08:33]  You're so ass is getting.
[00:08:34]  No, Yeah, best of luck, bug out.
[00:08:38]  Yeah, call you Alaskan, because you're getting Nanuk.
[00:08:44]  Anyways, so the, is that?
[00:08:48]  It was Nanuki.
[00:08:48]  Nanuk, not Nanuk.
[00:08:50]  So, anyways, the balloon is over the northwestern United States.
[00:08:54]  Everyone's freaking out.
[00:08:55]  The government's like, you know, they're like, should we shoot down this balloon?
[00:08:57]  We want to shoot down the balloon.
[00:08:59]  And then the CNN's talking, it's hard to shoot down the balloon.
[00:09:02]  The balloon, to be clear, is not just a tiny little balloon like you might get at your 33rd birthday party.
[00:09:08]  It's actually a pretty big fucking balloon.
[00:09:11]  This thing's like 200 feet, I think, high.
[00:09:14]  You know, I mean, it's a mass, not 200 feet high in the air.
[00:09:16]  I mean, like from the, from top to bottom, 200 feet.
[00:09:19]  Although, if you put it in context, not that big.
[00:09:22]  Well, context of the sky?
[00:09:23]  Yeah.
[00:09:24]  I mean, relatively.
[00:09:25]  It's not like it's the Hindenburg.
[00:09:27]  No, no, no.
[00:09:29]  But I mean, it's, I mean, it has to be the Hindenburg.
[00:09:32]  I'm just, well, it's a fame, that's a famous balloon-like structure.
[00:09:36]  This is a big, everyone's freaking out about it.
[00:09:39]  And people are like, well, maybe it's a weather balloon.
[00:09:41]  I'm like, well, maybe it's a weather balloon.
[00:09:42]  I'm like, is it really a Chinese balloon?
[00:09:44]  You know, like, how do you even know it's from China?
[00:09:47]  Apparently, they have been tracking this thing ever since it left China, which is something that we were talking about yesterday.
[00:09:54]  And when it crossed over into United States airspace and then over Canadian airspace, the U.S. government started to be like, you know, getting all the guys in front of the little radar things and be like, we got to take this thing down.
[00:10:06]  China says, they say the airship is from China.
[00:10:11]  It's a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes, meaning a weather balloon.
[00:10:17]  Affected by the westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.
[00:10:24]  The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure.
[00:10:32]  My favorite.
[00:10:33]  The Chinese side, great date movie, the Chinese side will continue communicating with the U.S. side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure.
[00:10:44]  So I'm going to be real with you here.
[00:10:46]  The U.S. was like, we are being bombed.
[00:10:51]  Well, you mean the Pentagon or the media or Americans?
[00:10:56]  Everybody.
[00:10:57]  Well, except Americans, I don't think really cared very much.
[00:11:00]  Everyone was watching this damn balloon.
[00:11:02]  I know, but I don't think people were like, bro, there's a balloon.
[00:11:05]  You know, like, I think it was like.
[00:11:07]  No, I think everyone was watching this balloon.
[00:11:09]  The fucking CNN had 24-hour balloon live balloon coverage.
[00:11:13]  This thing, they went full OJ on this thing.
[00:11:16]  It was crazy.
[00:11:18]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:19]  But I'm saying, like, I don't think your average man on the street was wiping his brow about the balloon.
[00:11:25]  I will say that when we were on the plane, a random person next to me literally did bring up the balloon.
[00:11:30]  That woman?
[00:11:30]  Yeah.
[00:11:31]  You did speak to that woman for a consent.
[00:11:32]  I will say, Liz and I were.
[00:11:34]  I didn't want to.
[00:11:34]  You left me.
[00:11:36]  I didn't leave you.
[00:11:37]  I sat in my seat the whole time.
[00:11:38]  I did, however, swing my legs into the aisle to speak to.
[00:11:43]  I don't know if it was Young Shops here or Shelby, whoever was sitting across the aisle from me, so that I could avoid entering the conversation you were in.
[00:11:49]  Yeah, that's called abandoning.
[00:11:50]  Once I hear you say, yeah, we do like a podcast.
[00:11:53]  She asked me.
[00:11:54]  No, and you seemed really, anyway, so the balloon.
[00:11:57]  It's floating all around.
[00:11:58]  And basically, they're saying that the balloon was blown off course due to cold fronts.
[00:12:06]  Because it was, remember, this is the polar vortex weekend.
[00:12:08]  Yeah, two cold fronts.
[00:12:09]  One, first, when it was brought up to Alaska, right?
[00:12:16]  And then as it went over Canada, as you could remember, because we got stuck in this fucking polar vortex in Boston and Montreal, not where you want to be during the polar vortex.
[00:12:28]  Oh, God.
[00:12:28]  It was literally negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, which didn't know that was a temperature.
[00:12:33]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:33]  Anyway, the, you know, the insanely cold air just immediately caused it to drop down into the United States.
[00:12:42]  Well, all the media was like, this is a spy balloon.
[00:12:45]  And, you know, spy balloons exist.
[00:12:48]  Something that I'm familiar with, but Liz hates that that's real.
[00:12:52]  No, they, well, they, okay, they exist.
[00:12:54]  They also existed in the 1700s.
[00:12:57]  But you know what else exists?
[00:12:59]  Satellites and satellite technology.
[00:13:01]  Yes, but which is much better than balloon technology.
[00:13:04]  Not for everything.
[00:13:05]  Not for everything.
[00:13:07]  Balloons excel at some kinds of spying better than satellites do because they're closer to the Earth and can intercept more signals.
[00:13:15]  I'm not saying that the Chinese balloon was a spy balloon, but I'm saying spy balloons exist for a reason.
[00:13:21]  They don't just a balloon.
[00:13:23]  Anyways, we're tracking this balloon.
[00:13:26]  Well, not we.
[00:13:26]  NORAD is tracking this balloon.
[00:13:28]  This little fucking motherfucker goes over the coast of South Carolina, which believe me, sounded like a dream, and is shot down by an F-22 using a AIM Sidewinder missile, tragically destroying the vessel.
[00:13:43]  The Sidewinder missile cost half a million dollars.
[00:13:47]  And the U.S. recovers the payload, which they say was about 30 feet long.
[00:13:53]  And now I don't think been any actual new release of information after that, but they're saying it's a spy balloon.
[00:14:02]  My thing on this is I do not really believe that the Chinese sent over a balloon to spy on Montana.
[00:14:11]  No.
[00:14:11]  I also agree that they did not do that.
[00:14:14]  I mean, people, I want to be clear here.
[00:14:18]  I don't think spying is an evil thing that countries.
[00:14:23]  It's generally understood, by the way.
[00:14:27]  Everybody spies.
[00:14:27]  No, it's not even just that.
[00:14:29]  There are Chinese satellites all over the U.S. There are Russian satellites all over the U.S. There are American satellites all over Russia, all over China.
[00:14:38]  We have a basically agreed upon, you know.
[00:14:43]  There's a lattice work.
[00:14:44]  No, but the agreement is we don't shoot down each other's satellites because we're all watching each other all the time.
[00:14:50]  Look, I don't know that much about fucking, I'm not that up to date on satellite tech.
[00:14:55]  What I do know is that civilian tech, not let alone military tech, is good enough where the Chinese could get a like 4K image of every ounce of fentanyl that is being moved in and out of Fort Bragg at any given time that they want.
[00:15:12]  You know what I mean?
[00:15:12]  Like the idea that they need to float balloons over the United States, which by the way, this is how so fucking absurd this is to me.
[00:15:21]  The amount of planning that would have to go into this like 200 foot, right?
[00:15:28]  200 foot balloon that is encountering 200 mile per hour winds to be like, well, we know exactly where it might float over at any given time, weeks in advance is the most absurd thing.
[00:15:42]  It's a fucking balloon.
[00:15:44]  It's a balloon.
[00:15:44]  It's a balloon.
[00:15:45]  It makes me so mad.
[00:15:46]  It makes me so fucking mad.
[00:15:48]  This whole thing is so dumb.
[00:15:50]  I will say this.
[00:15:52]  So like my thing is, to be clear, even if China had sent a spy balloon, which I'm not saying they did, even if they had, I don't think that's a bad thing for them to have done.
[00:16:04]  You know what I mean?
[00:16:04]  Like, I don't think that's even a crazy thing.
[00:16:07]  I mean, I think it would be a kind of stupid thing to have done because it did get shut down.
[00:16:10]  But, you know, people spy and people spy using, you know, sort of sometimes strange antiquated methods fairly often.
[00:16:18]  It's a very normal thing to do on the on the global scale.
[00:16:22]  I will say, the balloon is a lot larger than like almost any weather balloon.
[00:16:28]  Like weather balloons are generally like, I think like 10 feet tall.
[00:16:31]  Stuff like, you know, like they're not 200 feet fucking tall.
[00:16:35]  It's big.
[00:16:35]  It's a big, whatever it is, whatever it's got on it, it's got a big fucking balloon.
[00:16:40]  It's a big fucking balloon.
[00:16:41]  You know, that's basically all that we know for sure.
[00:16:44]  The U.S. government, though, is like, they declared war on balloons.
[00:16:49]  No mission.
[00:16:50]  It was so fucking stupid.
[00:16:51]  It was so fucking funny.
[00:16:53]  You have the entire country literally tilting at balloons.
[00:16:58]  It was like, I felt like, it was one of those moments where when I was catching the news in the hotel room watching this, I felt like I was living in a different, on a different world than everyone else.
[00:17:09]  I was like, this is the most absurd story.
[00:17:11]  First of all, the Pentagon at first was like, we think it's like not a big deal.
[00:17:16]  Don't worry about it.
[00:17:17]  And the media was like, no, we need to know about the balloon.
[00:17:19]  We need to know more balloon, more balloon, more balloon.
[00:17:22]  This fucking media is so stupid.
[00:17:24]  And they just fed this whole thing so much that then the military has to send a USA, USA, shoot down this fucking balloon for half a million dollars.
[00:17:33]  It's completely absurd.
[00:17:35]  It makes me so mad.
[00:17:36]  It's a fucking balloon.
[00:17:37]  It's a balloon.
[00:17:38]  There are spy balloons.
[00:17:39]  I'm just saying.
[00:17:40]  They do exist.
[00:17:42]  Caricatures of like drooling, obscenely mentally unwell Americans.
[00:17:49]  It's so dumb.
[00:17:50]  It's a fucking balloon.
[00:17:51]  So I don't understand this because you seem to be against the balloon, but you also seem to be mad that we shot it down.
[00:17:56]  No, I'm mad at that.
[00:17:58]  The spectacle is so moronic.
[00:18:00]  Well, here's me not knowing even who this balloon belongs to at first, and I'm on the balloon side.
[00:18:06]  And I'm not just on a Chinese balloon side.
[00:18:08]  I'm also on the side of the balloons that were caught in what you might call the crossfire of this.
[00:18:13]  Because in the next few days, three other balloons were tragically killed by F-22 shooting $500,000 missiles at them.
[00:18:23]  I know, those poor like kids that were like balloon hobbyists.
[00:18:26]  Yes.
[00:18:27]  Unfortunately, there were three other media and the government were gripped by a kind of balloon hysteria.
[00:18:34]  And in the ensuing days after the initial balloon was shot down, there were three more balloon shootdowns.
[00:18:41]  One happened in, I believe, Alaska, one somewhere in Canada, and then one somewhere else in the U.S. Unfortunately, one of these balloons did seem to belong to a like bottle cap balloon club that sort of were hobbyists that launched them.
[00:18:56]  It appears that the others might also have belonged to balloon hobbyists, which I'm sure you're pissed exist, Liz.
[00:19:04]  No, I don't have a no, I feel bad for that.
[00:19:06]  This is the pound of balloon flesh that the media has required for their insane balloon mania that they put us all in through.
[00:19:13]  Interesting.

=== Chip Shortage Investigation (15:39) ===

[00:19:14]  I will say, like, the actual ramifications of this, besides the like really obnoxious coverage of all of it and it driving me insane with how stupid everyone is, is Secretary Blinken.
[00:19:30]  Uh-huh.
[00:19:31]  What a crazy name.
[00:19:34]  What is it for Anthony?
[00:19:35]  Anthony.
[00:19:36]  Anthony Blinken.
[00:19:37]  That motherfucker.
[00:19:38]  He immediately cancels his trip to China.
[00:19:42]  He says, I shan't be visiting the country that sends balloons over to our country.
[00:19:47]  How could you, oh, I can't believe that I would ever have a meeting with a man that would betray us by sending balloons.
[00:19:57]  Meanwhile, the Chinese have satellites over.
[00:19:59]  The theater of all of this makes me so fucking sad.
[00:20:02]  The Chinese literally own Nancy Pelosi's office.
[00:20:04]  I mean, Feinstein's.
[00:20:06]  Remember that?
[00:20:08]  I mean, the whole thing is so stupid.
[00:20:11]  But yes, you're right.
[00:20:12]  I mean, what happened was Blinken canceled his trip to China over the balloon.
[00:20:16]  Yes.
[00:20:17]  Which I think the Chinese, to be clear about this trip, the trip, it's one of those things where it's like been reported on and like, I think both sides have spoken to the media about it, but it hadn't been officially announced yet, but everyone knew it was happening.
[00:20:29]  And so he canceled a non-existent trip to China, which was actually supposed to happen, I believe, the next week.
[00:20:37]  And I think the Chinese were pretty pissed about this.
[00:20:40]  Yeah, well, Blinken, too.
[00:20:41]  I mean, Blinken's statement said, China's decision to take this action on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.
[00:20:50]  Basically, Blinken was going over there to be like, hey, China, I think you should stop being best friends with Russia.
[00:20:56]  And we kind of want to get you to, you know, whatever, whatever.
[00:20:59]  Maybe you should just like chill.
[00:21:01]  Yeah.
[00:21:01]  Don't support them.
[00:21:02]  Don't hang out with them.
[00:21:03]  Come hang out with us.
[00:21:04]  Remember us?
[00:21:05]  Old friends, America.
[00:21:06]  Well, we'll talk about that in a little bit.
[00:21:10]  And it became very clear and obvious that that was a fool's errand.
[00:21:15]  Yes.
[00:21:15]  Which we will also talk about.
[00:21:17]  And that America trying to woo China away from a further partnership and BFF status with Russia.
[00:21:26]  It's just not going to happen.
[00:21:27]  And what we, what, I mean, what a coincidence that you have this perfect balloon excuse that the media turned into such a fucking spectacle that now no one is really going to ask, well, why are you canceling trips?
[00:21:39]  Got to be the balloon's fault, right?
[00:21:40]  Exactly.
[00:21:41]  I think like if you sort of zoom out and think like a normal person for two seconds, it's insane that Blinken canceled a fucking like planned, like pretty high-level visit over a balloon that seems pretty clearly like this balloon, to be clear, has very limited like navigational aids.
[00:22:01]  I think it's got like a one propeller on it.
[00:22:03]  And even if it could, that propeller, like, again, it's no match on 200 mile per hour winds.
[00:22:09]  Exactly.
[00:22:09]  Can you imagine the little guy like, oh, it's a balloon.
[00:22:12]  It's a balloon.
[00:22:13]  It's a balloon.
[00:22:15]  The Chinese were like, you guys are being fucking insane.
[00:22:19]  Yeah, they actually refused a call from DOD Secretary Austin after the U.S. shot down the balloon.
[00:22:27]  They were like, what the fuck is wrong with you crazy people?
[00:22:30]  Which I got to say, good question.
[00:22:33]  There was also a very funny series of articles that came out where, if there's ever a war with China, could they just send over a bunch of balloons and deplete our air defenses because we'll shoot Sidewinder missiles at them?
[00:22:45]  Yeah, maybe the U.S. should focus on the hypersonic capabilities and not the balloon capabilities.
[00:22:49]  Yeah.
[00:22:50]  But like you're saying, Liz, a lot of this has to do with China and Russia.
[00:22:56]  The bear and the dragon.
[00:22:59]  Is that yet a podcast?
[00:23:02]  The bear and the dragon, I'm sure, from like the Hoover Institute or whatever.
[00:23:06]  My original plan for doing this episode, too, was to have us go over every point that we're talking about and then rate it on a dragon rising scale from one to ten.
[00:23:31]  So like we said at the beginning of the episode, this balloon incident, which we don't have a good nickname for, really is not isolated.
[00:23:42]  No.
[00:23:42]  No.
[00:23:43]  Unlike some of China's allies.
[00:23:48]  I don't know where I was going with that.
[00:23:49]  I was trying to go back to the bottom.
[00:23:50]  Check this one out.
[00:23:50]  Check this one out.
[00:23:52]  Maybe a guy who got COVID in Shanghai.
[00:23:54]  Oh, interesting.
[00:23:55]  Yeah, you like that.
[00:23:57]  It all kind of the balloon kind of faded back into what has become the hysteric backdrop of like the constant hysteric ramblings of increasingly absurd China fear-mongering on the part of U.S. politicians and the U.S. media.
[00:24:21]  They cannot stop talking about China.
[00:24:23]  China.
[00:24:25]  Congress, they recently announced, basically because of the balloon, but also because of some other stuff, a new select committee to basically investigate China, which I think is very funny.
[00:24:37]  The strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
[00:24:41]  They don't say China.
[00:24:41]  They always say CCP because you got to separate between them and Taiwan, who we'll talk about.
[00:24:47]  It started last week.
[00:24:48]  It launched its mission statement Sunday, February 27th, which I'm just going to say it's the day after Woody Harrelson announced something else on Saturday Night Live.
[00:25:02]  This is, this is, I want to, I want to, speaking of isolated, I'm going to be real.
[00:25:06]  I believe Liz is isolated alone on this theory, but I love that she believes it.
[00:25:10]  What?
[00:25:10]  You don't think so?
[00:25:11]  I think it's a great theory.
[00:25:13]  I like the theory.
[00:25:14]  I don't think so.
[00:25:15]  So over the course of like three days, basically, all of these stories besides the balloon came out about China.
[00:25:21]  You had Congress announcing they're going to do this select committee that you had all these op-eds in the Washington, Washington, in Wall Street Journal.
[00:25:29]  You had new stories coming out in Wall Street Journal about lab leak, which they were bringing back.
[00:25:37]  It's coming back.
[00:25:38]  I do want to point out this congressional committee.
[00:25:43]  Congress can't really do anything to influence foreign policy in any way, fixed price.
[00:25:49]  But what they can do, and what it looks like they can do, is come up with a ton of recommendations to deregulate industries that are basically related to strategic industries, quote, quote, quote unquote, that China is involved with, aka computer chips.
[00:26:05]  Which means that what we're talking about is rolling back environmental regulations.
[00:26:11]  Let's go, baby.
[00:26:12]  I love it.
[00:26:13]  Yeah, this is like from an op-ed from, you know, one of the, it's like some AEI guy, you know, some terrible, horrible, foghorn Langhorn-shaped fellow.
[00:26:22]  Come on, come on over here.
[00:26:24]  Let's have a look at you.
[00:26:26]  But he wrote, the U.S. must challenge China's dominance in producing the refined rare earth minerals that both go into chips and green energy.
[00:26:35]  Can't stop hearing about those two things.
[00:26:37]  But extracting, refining, and using our domestic resources, such as the newly discovered seven-square-mile store of rare earths at Sheep Creek, Montana, maybe that's what the balloon was looking at, will require regulatory certainty and clarity, not the current more ass that fosters litigation and deters development.
[00:26:58]  I'd like less ass.
[00:27:00]  So basically what they're saying is we need to roll back regulations so we can compete with China because we can't destroy our federal land fast enough to get at the rare earth minerals that we need because China's doing it faster and better than us.
[00:27:17]  This is a big thing you hear about a lot is that we need rare earth minerals to make computer chips so that people can use the computer.
[00:27:25]  But not just the computer, every and all things that now have cars computer chips in them.
[00:27:31]  Well, cars, but also refrigerators, also microwaves, also any appliance, also now apparently light bulbs.
[00:27:38]  Everything had smartphone, everything has computer chip in it.
[00:27:40]  Yeah, right.
[00:27:41]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:42]  And increasingly, everything will have more computer chips in it.
[00:27:46]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:47]  But to give you an idea.
[00:27:50]  What?
[00:27:50]  Penis.
[00:27:52]  Like the wiener of a man.
[00:27:54]  No.
[00:27:54]  No, what?
[00:27:55]  Penis has computer chip in it.
[00:27:57]  Like wiener of the man.
[00:27:59]  Stop saying wiener of the man.
[00:28:01]  Amen?
[00:28:03]  Dick of the guy?
[00:28:06]  Penis is the wiener of the man.
[00:28:08]  So to give an idea of how much China produces of computer chips, Saudi Arabia produces 15% of the world's oil supply.
[00:28:16]  So sick.
[00:28:16]  That's a lot.
[00:28:17]  Yeah, big ups.
[00:28:19]  China, including what the United States refers to as Taiwan, produces about a third of the world's computer chips, which is a lot.
[00:28:28]  We're including Taiwan in this?
[00:28:30]  I am.
[00:28:32]  I have a one China policy with regards to computer.
[00:28:36]  Because I feel like those are two different.
[00:28:38]  Well, we'll talk about that.
[00:28:39]  Okay, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:40]  But I'm just trying to give a sense of how much they have in the market.
[00:28:44]  Interesting.
[00:28:45]  Okay.
[00:28:45]  So back in October, some people remember, the U.S. went ham on export controls, aka what we call sanctions on China's chip industry.
[00:28:56]  You remember this?
[00:28:56]  Biden passed that huge package.
[00:29:01]  It was basically.
[00:29:02]  Don't say pause.
[00:29:04]  No.
[00:29:04]  Let's keep going.
[00:29:07]  You know, it was much, oh man, it was much larger than any package that Trump had passed.
[00:29:16]  Oh, wow.
[00:29:17]  Yeah.
[00:29:18]  Which is, you know, we'll talk a little bit about.
[00:29:21]  People talk about how Trump kind of started the trade war, the tariff war, however you want to call it.
[00:29:26]  But what the Trump admin passed really pales in comparison to what the Biden administration passed past October.
[00:29:32]  Does this have to do with the CHIP alliance that the U.S. is building?
[00:29:36]  Yeah, so we should say that it's one thing to sanction or to try and sanction military technology.
[00:29:44]  I mean, you can read back on how they tried to do that during the Cold War.
[00:29:47]  It didn't really work.
[00:29:49]  It's totally a different thing to try to do it with consumer technology.
[00:29:54]  I mean, this shit is everywhere and in goods that people are trying to buy in every country on the world.
[00:30:00]  That's a big thing, too, is like a lot of it has dual use, right?
[00:30:04]  Yeah.
[00:30:04]  It has both civilian and military applications.
[00:30:07]  Well, so that's how the U.S. gets around that stuff, right?
[00:30:09]  So they go to the WTO and they say there's a national security issue.
[00:30:14]  You've got to, you know, that's why we're flagging all of these things.
[00:30:17]  But a lot of this shit is in, like I said, consumer goods.
[00:30:20]  It's everywhere.
[00:30:21]  Consumer goods that everyone wants to buy.
[00:30:23]  Yeah.
[00:30:24]  And I got to say, like, the whole American approach in general with sanctions seems completely ridiculous.
[00:30:30]  And particularly this instance, right?
[00:30:32]  Because it's like it was only like half a decade ago when we would sell the Chinese like basically anything.
[00:30:39]  Yeah.
[00:30:40]  I mean, think back to like the Clinton years, right?
[00:30:42]  And in the 90s, we were like, China, we're going to like give you whatever you want.
[00:30:47]  Yeah.
[00:30:48]  Like, you know what I mean?
[00:30:49]  Like, even stuff to build missiles, we're going to sell you.
[00:30:52]  Yeah.
[00:30:52]  And we're going to buy everything from you.
[00:30:53]  Thank you for helping us out with Afghanistan in the 80s.
[00:30:57]  And let's get you in the WTO.
[00:30:59]  Yeah.
[00:30:59]  Yeah.
[00:31:00]  You know what I mean?
[00:31:01]  And like, we go from that.
[00:31:03]  That was not that fucking long ago, right?
[00:31:05]  Up until basically the early years of the Trump admin really declaring economic war on China.
[00:31:12]  100%.
[00:31:12]  You know, and maybe it's a little less obvious than the way that we've done it with Russia or Iran, obviously, but like very clear that there's been a massive move in a very short period of time.
[00:31:26]  You know what I mean?
[00:31:27]  Yeah.
[00:31:28]  And you kind of have to ask like, you know, to what end?
[00:31:32]  We were talking about Russia and China, right?
[00:31:34]  This partnership that Blinken really like doesn't want to happen.
[00:31:39]  But, you know, China has, you know, unimaginable resources, right?
[00:31:44]  They have a huge manufacturing base.
[00:31:46]  They have money.
[00:31:47]  They can get the cheap oil from Russia.
[00:31:49]  I got to say the only thing they really don't have is oil, but luckily they are next to Russia.
[00:31:54]  Yeah, and they're getting that.
[00:31:56]  But even they have the sheer amount of engineers they have, right?
[00:32:00]  And so you think about what these sanctions are going to do.
[00:32:02]  It's like, what?
[00:32:02]  They're going to hold China back for what?
[00:32:04]  A year?
[00:32:04]  Two years?
[00:32:05]  Yeah.
[00:32:06]  It's not going to be enough to compete with anything.
[00:32:08]  I mean, it's just, it seems so short-sighted to me.
[00:32:12]  You know what I mean?
[00:32:13]  I do.
[00:32:14]  And in that way, I mean, it really reminds me of the sanctions package that was passed against Russia.
[00:32:21]  Interesting.
[00:32:22]  How so?
[00:32:23]  Well, I mean, like, it's only now a year, you know, a year since, almost a year since, or maybe a little after a year since, since the huge sanctions against Russia, that the mainstream media is kind of like admitting that this shit doesn't work.
[00:32:39]  You know, like.
[00:32:40]  Yeah, it hit Russia pretty hard at the beginning, but then they sort of bounced back in a lot of ways.
[00:32:44]  Yeah, I mean, I can't remember if we like talked about it on the podcast or just you and me privately, but like it seemed like this was like pretty obviously not going to work in the same way that, or in the long run, it wasn't going to work at all like from the start.
[00:32:57]  And you're seeing like, you know, like foreign policy or Wall Street Journal, FT, they're slowly starting to kind of admit this.
[00:33:03]  There's like, there was a piece that came out that would detail how, you know, it's like India, or I think even Morocco, they, you know, will take advantage of obviously like the arbitrage opportunities of being able to buy cheap oil from Russia and then sell it to the European market.
[00:33:19]  Yeah.
[00:33:20]  Right.
[00:33:20]  Makes sense.
[00:33:21]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:22]  You know, so it's not, and it's not like the Europeans are like, don't give us the oil.
[00:33:25]  Oh, no.
[00:33:26]  Don't give us the gas.
[00:33:27]  Yeah.
[00:33:28]  You know, I think that like the, you know, so there's similar articles coming out now about with Chinese microchips, how it doesn't work.
[00:33:35]  Yeah.
[00:33:36]  Yeah.
[00:33:36]  Because trade flows are going to find a way.
[00:33:39]  That's like how, I mean, you can't, you can't just like stop it.
[00:33:42]  And then suddenly they're going to be like, well, I guess we just don't have microchips.
[00:33:45]  Right.
[00:33:46]  Well, I think it's, it's worth getting into a little bit here about Russia and China's relationship since the start of the war, right?
[00:33:54]  I mean, famously, and we covered it on this show, they made a, there was a, there was a joint sort of like statement speech from Xi and Putin about a no limits friendship clause that that happened right before the war, you know?
[00:34:08]  And there's, there's different theories on whether Xi knew that Putin was going to invade.
[00:34:13]  You know, there's, there's, some people think he wasn't going to, some people thought he knew, some people think that he didn't know.
[00:34:20]  I think in the end, it doesn't really matter because in the end, China has taken this sort of stance of like neutrality in a way.
[00:34:27]  Kind of.
[00:34:28]  Kind of, but like, but, you know, neutral, but like on Russia's side, right?
[00:34:32]  I mean, it's smart for them, too.
[00:34:34]  Like they're, you know, they're, they're obviously have this relationship of convenience.
[00:34:40]  It doesn't seem like a very like deep-seated like political relationship, but this relationship that is very convenient for both of them to ally with each other against, you know, America and the American bloc.

=== China's Strategic Neutrality (15:20) ===

[00:34:53]  Right.
[00:34:53]  Western, yeah.
[00:34:54]  The Western European American.
[00:34:56]  NATO.
[00:34:57]  Okay.
[00:34:57]  Yeah.
[00:34:57]  NATO.
[00:34:57]  Whatever you want to call it.
[00:34:58]  It makes, it's in China's interest to do that.
[00:35:01]  You know?
[00:35:02]  And so the war started and obviously there was, and I think it's sort of been lost on a lot of people how many imports were banned from Russia.
[00:35:13]  Like how many countries banned imports to Russia, exports to Russia, right?
[00:35:17]  And so like all of a sudden, the war starts, and you actually can't get any kind of European car legally in Russia anymore because all the exports have been banned.
[00:35:26]  And so now most cars, like now there's like, I think there's like three Russian car companies that sell cars there and nine or ten Chinese car companies.
[00:35:36]  Yeah, there was just a there was just a story in the FT, I think it was FT, that was about how European airline companies were complaining because of the, you can't fly, the European countries can't fly over Russian air.
[00:35:51]  And so basically the Chinese airline companies are getting, their flights are so much cheaper and faster because they can fly over.
[00:35:59]  So if you're going from Berlin to Seoul or whatever, it's easier to take a Chinese airline because they can fly over Russia, but it's like three hours longer for anyone coming from a European airline.
[00:36:13]  And they were saying, how do we compete with this?
[00:36:15]  So they kind of, you know, these sanctions go both ways, right?
[00:36:18]  Yeah.
[00:36:18]  And just, I mean, China has just moved into a lot of Russian markets that have been left really wide open by Western countries moving out of them.
[00:36:28]  Well, the semiconductor market is like a perfect example, right?
[00:36:32]  Like, because again, the trade goes both ways.
[00:36:34]  China's basically even gifted the entire Russian semiconductor market.
[00:36:38]  Dragon rises.
[00:36:40]  Which is, you know, it's pretty crazy.
[00:36:43]  Like, you know, these sanctions against China and their semiconductors, right, coupled with the sanctions against Russia's raw materials, has allowed these two to really like strengthen their partnership on both.
[00:36:57]  Yeah.
[00:36:57]  Yeah.
[00:36:57]  Right.
[00:36:58]  So like I said, it's like, there's kind of like a feedback loop a little bit.
[00:37:01]  You know what I mean?
[00:37:02]  Like with trade.
[00:37:03]  So it's like China can buy inexpensive Russian raw materials.
[00:37:06]  They get gas.
[00:37:06]  They get oil.
[00:37:07]  That powers its massive manufacturing base, right?
[00:37:10]  That then expands its development and manufacturing capabilities and the base of its sales for semiconductors, which then just continues.
[00:37:18]  You know, if you continue to buy more raw materials from Russia, you sell back more finished goods.
[00:37:22]  You know, you can start, you start trading more and more with each other, right?
[00:37:26]  Trade kind of like, it's not all in a vacuum because you get deals on other things.
[00:37:30]  You start trading more.
[00:37:31]  There's a trust relationship there, right?
[00:37:33]  Like, so you've effectively, exactly what Blinken didn't want, allegedly, from what he said, and what everything that Biden has said, what the State Department said, what DOD, the Pentagon, everyone has said, is that you don't want to push Russia and China together.
[00:37:47]  And yet, all of these kind of political and economic packages seem to be doing just that.
[00:37:53]  100%, right?
[00:37:55]  Like, I mean, politics too.
[00:37:57]  I mean, so the Chinese foreign minister went and met with Vladimir Putin.
[00:38:00]  Yes.
[00:38:01]  Same day, Biden hits Zelensky.
[00:38:05]  He hit Zelensky's line.
[00:38:06]  He hits the Zen.
[00:38:06]  And same day, by the way, also, Trump hits Ohio.
[00:38:10]  Interesting.
[00:38:11]  Yo, he goes to East Palestine.
[00:38:13]  Yeah, But what we do sort of see is China is, I think, being viewed, or at least like, who knows how sincere this is.
[00:38:23]  But, like, you know, they've had meetings with like Germany and France about peace in Ukraine, right?
[00:38:29]  And they put out this 12-point piece or this, I don't know what you would call it, this 12-point suggestion.
[00:38:35]  It's very like Drake Notes app-esque.
[00:38:38]  I got to be honest with you.
[00:38:39]  It's literally a page long.
[00:38:41]  I'm like, are they going to, is this just a-I don't know.
[00:38:43]  We were talking about this, and I was saying, I don't know if they presented it as a peace plan or if the U.S. media presented it as a peace plan to kind of embarrass China a little bit because it's very much not a peace plan.
[00:38:53]  I got to be real.
[00:38:54]  You guys got to work on your peace plan.
[00:38:56]  Maybe you need more think tanks or something, but this thing is, it's just like respect international law.
[00:39:02]  Which fair enough, but yeah, there's not much there.
[00:39:07]  It's funny, though, to sort of see this because Ukraine has sort of made these bellicose statements, right?
[00:39:13]  Where if China starts supplying Russia with weapons, then this will turn into a world war, which is like, all right, buddy, let's not walk that back a little bit.
[00:39:22]  Like, you know, I've been, I'm not really interested in doing that.
[00:39:27]  But also have had to be like, but China has some pretty good stuff in this peace plan, which is just like, it's literally like Chat GPT could have written it.
[00:39:36]  And you think about it.
[00:39:38]  I also gotta say, I mean, if China wants to give weapons, Russia, I mean, I don't like any of this.
[00:39:43]  Yeah.
[00:39:44]  But it's hard to say they can't do that when the U.S. is giving everything, but like, you know, every single thing they've got to Ukraine.
[00:39:51]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:39:53]  But I think that this has just been the Russia-China stuff, I think, is a really important thing to pay attention to because I think the two countries are obviously going to get closer together, right?
[00:40:05]  I mean, that's the way they're being pushed by both the West and it's just both in their natural self-interest just as countries to do that, to draw their economies closer together.
[00:40:16]  But it's not just like the Oogabooga specter of Russia and the balloon and the semiconductors that is kind of like percolating around all of this like China fear stuff.
[00:40:30]  Perhaps some have heard the word Taiwan, which is Chinese for Ukraine.
[00:40:39]  Here's my thing, baby.
[00:40:41]  You know me.
[00:40:43]  I love an island, right?
[00:40:44]  I'm Mr. I got my shirt unbuttoned down to the third button.
[00:40:48]  Wait, it says Little St. James?
[00:40:50]  Well, okay, that's just, it was a souvenir sweatshirt.
[00:40:54]  So, listen, this is a podcast.
[00:40:56]  I want to remind you, I know that we have like a lot of like, I'm a left-wing guy, listeners.
[00:41:00]  I know all about the politics.
[00:41:02]  This podcast isn't for you.
[00:41:04]  This podcast is for normal people, right?
[00:41:06]  They don't know all this stuff.
[00:41:08]  So I'm going to explain a little bit about Taiwan, okay?
[00:41:12]  So you might be like, oh yeah, that country, wrong, first mistake, not a country.
[00:41:18]  Okay?
[00:41:19]  Not a fucking country.
[00:41:21]  And don't you put out some gap sweatshirt with that being a country in it, because you will have to recall that from Chinese stores.
[00:41:30]  Little background.
[00:41:32]  China, 1949.
[00:41:35]  End of decades of civil war between the KMT, the Kuomintong, led by Chiang Kai-shek and the People's Republic of China, what would be declared the People's Republic of China, but Mao, right?
[00:41:47]  The communists.
[00:41:49]  Chiang Kai-shek, unfortunately, all of his guys basically are just heroin dealers.
[00:41:54]  And so they're not really interested in winning a civil war or anything like that.
[00:41:58]  And so he loses the civil war and has to go to a little country, I believe it was called Formosa before Taiwan.
[00:42:07]  They moved the nationalists, the KMT, they moved to what will soon be called Taiwan.
[00:42:12]  They'd already had people there for a while.
[00:42:15]  They were given it by the Americans in 1946 after the Japanese split because they had been occupying it for a number of decades.
[00:42:22]  The KMT had already gotten into rare form, killed, massacred, I think, like 20,000 people a year prior to this.
[00:42:30]  And so the nationalists leave China proper and end up in Taiwan, which is a little island.
[00:42:36]  Actually, not that little now.
[00:42:37]  It's a pretty big island.
[00:42:38]  But it's right across the way from China.
[00:42:41]  It's pretty fucking close to China.
[00:42:42]  You can see China from your house.
[00:42:44]  I don't know.
[00:42:45]  Is that true?
[00:42:45]  I don't know.
[00:42:46]  I don't know.
[00:42:46]  I'm just sitting there.
[00:42:48]  You might as well, if you have a high-powered telescope, you could absolutely see it.
[00:42:52]  Or a balloon.
[00:42:53]  A balloon.
[00:42:54]  True.
[00:42:55]  So they set up a military dictatorship in Taiwan, right?
[00:42:59]  And that actually lasts until 1987.
[00:43:02]  Full military dictatorship, no elections.
[00:43:04]  I think they had their first elections in 1996.
[00:43:07]  They immediately get China's UN seat, right?
[00:43:12]  Because the UN founded, I think, in 1946.
[00:43:15]  Just after, as you might remember, the U.S. kind of decided it was in charge of the world after World War II.
[00:43:21]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:43:22]  No relation, those two events.
[00:43:24]  There's the UN Security Council, of course, and there are five permanent seats on it at that point.
[00:43:29]  We've got France, England, USA, Russia, and China.
[00:43:34]  Instead of doing the China where all the Chinese people live, which is the place you would refer to as China, because that's the People's Republic of China, they were communists.
[00:43:41]  And so America was like, actually, they're not the real China.
[00:43:43]  The real China is this tiny little island that these guys just moved onto.
[00:43:47]  Which is ruled by a military dictator.
[00:43:48]  Military dictatorship.
[00:43:49]  Classic U.S. Republic of China.
[00:43:52]  Yes.
[00:43:52]  And, you know, it's got this sort of absurd situation, right?
[00:43:55]  Where like this tiny little rump state is filled with, you know, heroin dealers and warlords and stuff like that.
[00:44:02]  That's a classic rump state situation.
[00:44:04]  Exactly.
[00:44:04]  Rump, by the way, we might as well call it what it is.
[00:44:07]  It's an ass state.
[00:44:09]  So China is in this weird situation where Republic of China, Taiwan, is in this weird situation where it's basically America's puppet hanging out right outside of real China.
[00:44:18]  And of course, we put a bunch of fucking troops there.
[00:44:20]  We put, you know, we give them a bunch of money.
[00:44:22]  You know, they're like our guy in the region.
[00:44:25]  Obviously, we also have South Korea and Japan and Australia, et cetera, Philippines.
[00:44:30]  But like, Taiwan is like, those are our Chinese guys right there.
[00:44:34]  So then a little Maoist president of the United States named Richard Nixon starts being like, actually, hey, what's up to Real China?
[00:44:43]  Like, can we hang out?
[00:44:44]  And Mao says, yes.
[00:44:47]  And that starts actually opening relations with real China, new China, PRC.
[00:44:52]  And, you know, Nixon starts this diplomacy over there.
[00:44:55]  And then I think in the early 70s, I can't remember when actually PRC gets the UN seat, but they eventually get the UN seat.
[00:45:02]  And then in 1979, Jimmy Carter, our second most Maoist president, calls up Taiwan and is like, hey, I have terrible news.
[00:45:12]  You guys are not a country anymore.
[00:45:14]  And America derecognizes Taiwan as a country.
[00:45:20]  We recognize the PRC, which has led to this strange situation of Taiwan legally not being a country.
[00:45:28]  Yes.
[00:45:29]  But you can still have a Taiwanese, it's like functionally a country, right?
[00:45:32]  Like you can still have a Taiwanese passport.
[00:45:33]  It's actually one of the best passports in the world.
[00:45:35]  You can travel wherever on it, but there's no American embassy there.
[00:45:39]  We haven't said the American Institute or something there, I think it's called.
[00:45:42]  And we still, we basically agree because the PRC's position, People's Republic of China's position, is that Taiwan is part of China, right?
[00:45:50]  That that is our shit right there.
[00:45:51]  That's our, it's kind of like our Hawaii, you know?
[00:45:54]  I don't know if that's how they think of it.
[00:45:56]  In fact, I'm sure it's not.
[00:45:57]  But they're like, listen, we're not going to invade you, but we might, but just come become part of our country again.
[00:46:06]  Taiwan is like, I want to do that.
[00:46:08]  Not going to happen.
[00:46:08]  We're a military dictator.
[00:46:10]  China puts out all these things like, listen, we'll do one country, two systems, which you might have heard about, talking about Hong Kong, stuff like that.
[00:46:16]  92, they make all these fucking like recommendations like, oh, like, hey, like, you can be part of us, but you can be a little different or whatever.
[00:46:22]  Taiwan is like, no, we're not going to do that.
[00:46:25]  Like, but maybe we will at some point, like, kind of play footsie with it.
[00:46:28]  Ironically, it's the Guam and Dong, the KMT, the nationalist, who are actually the most China-friendly of the parties.
[00:46:34]  But it's in everybody's, America's official position is this really weird thing where it's like, we acknowledge that Taiwan is part of China, but we don't recognize Taiwan as part of China.
[00:46:51]  Classic footsie by the Americans.
[00:46:53]  Exactly.
[00:46:53]  And it's in the Americans' interest, and it's in, I'll be real, the Taiwanese bourgeois' interest, kind of, to be like, we're going to keep it to the status quo.
[00:47:03]  And that's a big thing in Taiwan, is that almost everybody there, the overwhelming public opinion there is that Taiwan should just stay as it is in this weird nether region where it's not a country, where China officially claims it as their own.
[00:47:16]  And actually, Taiwan's constitution claims all of China as the Taiwanese government's country.
[00:47:22]  So it's kind of both ways.
[00:47:25]  But it's a weird situation because we agreed in the 70s to, we took all our troops out of there in 79 and we agreed to eventually stop selling Taiwan arms entirely.
[00:47:42]  Now, Liz, let me ask you a question.
[00:47:44]  Do you think that occurred?
[00:47:47]  No.
[00:47:48]  Correct the fucking moon, no, baby.
[00:47:51]  It's not only not occurred, but things are actually heating up.
[00:47:53]  So didn't, okay, Miss Nancy.
[00:47:57]  Oh, yeah.
[00:47:58]  Her funky old ass.
[00:48:00]  God, her musty old fucking freaky punky old ass.
[00:48:03]  In her flop era, as they say.
[00:48:05]  Oh, my God.
[00:48:06]  And they are flopping.
[00:48:08]  Showed up in Taiwan.
[00:48:09]  She could use a couple of Chinese balloons to hold those things out.
[00:48:12]  She has them.
[00:48:13]  Have you seen that?
[00:48:15]  I always think any picture I see of her boobies are fake.
[00:48:18]  I don't think – oh, no.
[00:48:19]  The boobs are fake.
[00:48:21]  I don't think the photos are.
[00:48:22]  It is your official position that Nancy Pelosi is fake titties listening.
[00:48:25]  Yes, a thousand brace.
[00:48:27]  Uh-huh.
[00:48:28]  A thousand times, yes.
[00:48:29]  I've just known women with naturally big breasts before.
[00:48:32]  And so I'm like, I could see that.
[00:48:33]  And their age?
[00:48:35]  100, 115.
[00:48:36]  They're like, wise and women.
[00:48:39]  I met them, you know, in China.
[00:48:42]  Yeah, that is true.
[00:48:43]  So, yeah.
[00:48:44]  And she, she was a breastfeeder, too.
[00:48:47]  What?
[00:48:47]  Yeah.
[00:48:48]  She, you know, come by and have a little sip off the spigot.
[00:48:52]  What are you talking about?
[00:48:53]  What does that have to do with anything?
[00:48:55]  Grown up in the city.
[00:48:56]  Oh, my God.
[00:48:58]  But so she goes there.
[00:48:59]  Yeah, that was a huge thing.
[00:49:01]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:02]  So that's the thing is, American officials always go over there like, oh, look how good you guys are, or whatever.
[00:49:08]  Pelosi's visit was one of the high, and this happened, I believe, last year in August.
[00:49:12]  Yeah, it was right before a bunch of the sanctions were passed.
[00:49:15]  Yeah, this was a high-profile visit.
[00:49:19]  One of the most highest profile visits.
[00:49:20]  Plus, she was still Speaker of the House.
[00:49:23]  Yes, and she was the first Speaker of the House to visit since Newt Gingrich.
[00:49:28]  Which you might remember, third in line.
[00:49:30]  Third in line.
[00:49:31]  Yeah.
[00:49:32]  So she goes over there and visits.
[00:49:34]  I think a lot of people were like, what?
[00:49:35]  Why is her funky old ass over there?
[00:49:38]  Did she get lost?
[00:49:40]  Did she make to go to Jerusalem?
[00:49:41]  She was on this big ass tour of Asia.
[00:49:44]  That's where they should open the Taiwanese embassy.
[00:49:46]  In Jerusalem?
[00:49:47]  Yeah.
[00:49:48]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:51]  There's like 12 countries that do recognize Taiwan.
[00:49:53]  I would not be surprised if Israel was for some reason.
[00:49:55]  You know what?
[00:49:55]  I don't even want to know because I know that that's correct.
[00:49:57]  You know, it might not.
[00:49:58]  China does own a port in Israel, which BDS much?
[00:50:01]  Apparently not.
[00:50:03]  But yeah, so she goes over there and everyone's like, the sort of Jack Pesobiacs of the world were like, that red China is going to shoot down her fucking plane.

=== China's Hidden Moves (08:17) ===

[00:50:14]  Did not obviously happen, but China does.
[00:50:17]  That would be crazy.
[00:50:18]  That would be so sick.
[00:50:19]  China, I will be real.
[00:50:20]  You fumbled the bag.
[00:50:22]  Fumbled the hag, really.
[00:50:24]  You should have blasted her ass out of the sky.
[00:50:28]  No, but for real, though.
[00:50:31]  You know, it was like, it was a pretty, it was a pretty big deal because tensions for the past several years had been sort of ratching up with China.
[00:50:39]  Remember, this is post-invasion of Ukraine with Russia, and this is when China was making more sort of rhetorical, public rhetorical statements, being on Russia's side.
[00:50:47]  They've since backed off of that a little bit and just like, don't really say much.
[00:50:51]  Just like, we're for peace.
[00:50:52]  But at that point, they were like still like, they were kind of gunning for with Russia, one of their shooters.
[00:50:58]  And Pelosi's visit was sort of seen as a withered middle finger to China, as Donald Trump would say, not in an accent there.
[00:51:09]  And it was sort of part of a series of moves by very, old people in the United States government that made sort of confusing statements around China.
[00:51:22]  You're talking about Joseph Robinette.
[00:51:24]  Yeah.
[00:51:25]  Biden.
[00:51:26]  Joe Biden has said like three or four times, again, the official position, and this is tricky, but the official position is that we want things to remain like we acknowledge that they're part of China, and that's basically all we'll say.
[00:51:40]  We're not for independence.
[00:51:42]  We're not for independence of Taiwan.
[00:51:45]  Joe Biden has said we're for independence of Taiwan three times and has actually said on TV that we would militarily defend them Article 5 style if China decided to invade them.
[00:51:56]  Like NATO style.
[00:51:56]  Yes, like NATO style.
[00:51:59]  So here's my question.
[00:52:00]  Yeah.
[00:52:01]  Are those demented gaffes or Freudian slips?
[00:52:07]  I don't know because you've seen the photos of like when people take over Biden's like shoulder and it's like, stand up, walk to podium.
[00:52:15]  Totally.
[00:52:15]  I got to be real.
[00:52:16]  If I'm like his minder when he's giving the interview about foreign policy, I'm like, don't say Taiwan should be independent or it's up to them.
[00:52:24]  See, the problem, what if it does say that, but he didn't read the don't part?
[00:52:27]  That's the problem.
[00:52:28]  Yeah, you always, this is true and on tip here.
[00:52:31]  You got to check the note for a don't.
[00:52:33]  Yeah.
[00:52:33]  You got to check the note for a don't because that can be the difference.
[00:52:36]  Because you might be starting in the wrong spot.
[00:52:38]  So the thing is, China and Taiwan are like pretty fucked.
[00:52:41]  I mean, they're the biggest trade.
[00:52:42]  You know, Taiwan's biggest trade partner is China.
[00:52:44]  Right there.
[00:52:44]  Foxconn.
[00:52:45]  See it from your house.
[00:52:46]  The Suicide Factory.
[00:52:47]  That's a Taiwanese company, right?
[00:52:49]  Like the economies are really enmeshed.
[00:52:52]  Like it's not, it's not like they're like mortal enemies or whatever.
[00:52:56]  But China's whole thing is, is like, we'll keep things the way they are.
[00:53:01]  You should be part of us, but we'll keep things the way they are.
[00:53:04]  But if you try to go in the other direction, we have to invade.
[00:53:09]  Like, if you're like, we're independent, like, well, we have, like, you can't do that.
[00:53:14]  I don't think they're going to do that.
[00:53:15]  I don't think they are either, but they do plan for it, right?
[00:53:18]  Like, you know, they had live-fire exercises, these big exercises.
[00:53:21]  Yeah, they got to put a big show up.
[00:53:23]  Yeah.
[00:53:24]  You know.
[00:53:24]  Exactly.
[00:53:25]  Because you can't be like, all right.
[00:53:27]  Can you imagine being a Chinese diploma?
[00:53:29]  Like, what's his name?
[00:53:30]  Weng Yi?
[00:53:31]  Being him and being like, wait, did the president of the United States really mean that?
[00:53:35]  Or is he just demented?
[00:53:39]  Like, that's crazy.
[00:53:40]  This is the third time it's happened.
[00:53:42]  You can imagine the note that China sends.
[00:53:44]  Like, dude, what, are you, are you guys for this?
[00:53:47]  Because the funny thing about this, because Biden has referenced like independence being up to Taiwan three times.
[00:53:54]  Literally, independence polls at 5% topics.
[00:53:59]  Nobody wants that because they know that something will happen.
[00:54:04]  But concurrently with Biden making these gaffes, we've also increased military support to Taiwan.
[00:54:11]  We're so annoying.
[00:54:13]  Remember when all those troops left in 1979?
[00:54:15]  No.
[00:54:17]  They're back.
[00:54:17]  Yeah.
[00:54:18]  We sent a National Guard troop over there, which from the Midwest, it's probably the first time they've seen Chinese troops.
[00:54:23]  A single troop?
[00:54:24]  A little, I don't know, a troop isn't really a battalion or whatever.
[00:54:28]  But we've also sent special forces, as was recently reported, I think reported last year.
[00:54:33]  We've been sending special forces over there.
[00:54:36]  And I could go on for at length, and I will not, about what that war would look like.
[00:54:40]  It would not look pretty.
[00:54:43]  China has really good missiles.
[00:54:46]  Yeah, they do.
[00:54:48]  They have better and bigger capabilities than we do.
[00:54:51]  I'm not saying the hypersonic, but that's legit.
[00:54:54]  They have hypersonic missiles.
[00:54:55]  We do not.
[00:54:56]  I talked to my dear old dad at length last night about this possibility.
[00:55:00]  My dad, like many old men, not your old dad, but like many older men knows a lot about naval affairs, despite having not obviously been in the Navy.
[00:55:12]  And he's like, dude, they would annihilate.
[00:55:15]  They have aircraft killer, like aircraft carrier killer missiles.
[00:55:19]  Our shit would be toes.
[00:55:21]  Which I do think, I mean, obviously the U.S. military understands that.
[00:55:25]  They're not completely stupid.
[00:55:29]  Yeah.
[00:55:31]  Because we should mention that one of the, obviously the big pushes since, of course, the famous Obama-era pivot to China has been increasing our military presence in the South China Sea, but as of recently, in the Philippines.
[00:55:48]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:55:49]  So Philippines, to go back to the 90s, U.S. troops leave the Philippines in 92.
[00:55:53]  Yeah.
[00:55:54]  After decades of rape, murder, actually, not decades, century of like rape, murder, plunder, all that stuff.
[00:55:59]  They're out of there, right?
[00:56:00]  2014 Duterte is like, maybe you come back for a little bit.
[00:56:03]  No permanent basis, but you guys can come check.
[00:56:06]  Let's play a little FTSE.
[00:56:06]  Let's play FTSE.
[00:56:08]  What's up?
[00:56:08]  Because his whole thing was he was like trying to kind of play both sides there.
[00:56:11]  Bong Bong Marcos gets in.
[00:56:13]  But also Duterte was super pro-China.
[00:56:16]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:56:17]  And Duterte was very much like, we got to like, you know, we got to increase our friendship.
[00:56:23]  He was literally kind of like, I think he is actually legitimately pretty mentally ill.
[00:56:28]  So like he did some, so he was also like anti-China sometimes.
[00:56:31]  So it didn't make a lot of sense.
[00:56:33]  But now that Bong Bong Jr. is in, totally different.
[00:56:37]  We're opening that shit back up.
[00:56:39]  Yeah.
[00:56:39]  We're not putting bases there again, but they're like, all of our bases belong to you.
[00:56:44]  And so America has access to all these Philippine, these bases in the Philippines.
[00:56:48]  China, on the other hand, has been building these reefs in the South China Sea, including Mischief Reef.
[00:56:54]  That's a great name.
[00:56:54]  I love Mischief Reef.
[00:56:56]  And so there's basically been this like front line formed, right?
[00:57:00]  With like from like the Philippines, from Australia really, to the Philippines, to Japan to Taiwan, well, Taiwan before Japan, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, where we have them sort of encircled, right?
[00:57:11]  And this is a big fucking deal.
[00:57:14]  We're reorganizing our Marines.
[00:57:16]  I got to say, the Chinese are so good at naming things.
[00:57:18]  Yeah.
[00:57:19]  Mischief Reef.
[00:57:20]  That's so good.
[00:57:20]  There's a few other reasons.
[00:57:21]  Did you see?
[00:57:21]  I told you their heavy lift rocket is called the Long March, which is so fucking sick.
[00:57:28]  That's such a fucking sick.
[00:57:29]  By the way, by the way, for you outdoorsy types out there, look up how long that Long March was.
[00:57:35]  It was so long.
[00:57:35]  Your ass could not do that.
[00:57:37]  No way.
[00:57:38]  You can carry me in a palanquin.
[00:57:40]  Palanquin?
[00:57:42]  You can carry me in a palanquin across that.
[00:57:44]  In fact, some people were.
[00:57:46]  Anyways, this is all to say, is that, does this remind you of a certain country in Eastern Europe?
[00:57:52]  Definitely not Poland.
[00:57:54]  Definitely not Poland, yeah.
[00:57:55]  No disrespect, maybe, but not a lot of high-speed music.
[00:57:59]  I got to say, you know the people that had the highest favorability of America?
[00:58:04]  It's Poland.
[00:58:06]  It's, oh my God, this is so hard.
[00:58:08]  It's Poland or South Korea.
[00:58:11]  South Korea.
[00:58:12]  Okay, I get it.
[00:58:13]  Poland?
[00:58:14]  I know.
[00:58:16]  Because it's so...
[00:58:18]  We don't want you here.
[00:58:20]  Anyway.
[00:58:21]  No, not about coming to America.
[00:58:23]  Like, we just love America.
[00:58:24]  Wow.
[00:58:25]  And it's like Kosovo, obviously, Albania.
[00:58:28]  Kosovo, yeah.
[00:58:28]  It's in direct relation to how they feel about Russia.

=== New Developments Rising (09:24) ===

[00:58:31]  Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:58:33]  Anyways, so the tension has been rising.
[00:58:36]  And things are like, listen, I'm not trying to predict whether there's going to be a war.
[00:58:40]  I don't think there are.
[00:58:41]  There's going to be in the near future.
[00:58:43]  But hopefully.
[00:58:45]  There are a lot.
[00:58:47]  There are a lot of new developments here, I should say.
[00:58:50]  And that like, yes, the Ukraine-Russia thing is happening and we're sending all this shit over there, blah, blah, blah.
[00:58:56]  But like this is really where like America's military is going to go.
[00:59:00]  Well, they're related.
[00:59:02]  Yeah, they are.
[00:59:02]  Right?
[00:59:03]  I mean, that's the whole thing.
[00:59:04]  And I know like we started this episode off and like, you know, kind of jokey, kind of corny of like the new century.
[00:59:10]  Because that's such a like, it's so many podcasts, books, like book tours, radio shows, like CIA propaganda comes out talking about that, right?
[00:59:20]  The new Chinese century.
[00:59:21]  Everyone knows.
[00:59:22]  But like it really does feel that way.
[00:59:25]  Like it feels like America is a 20th century country and China is now the 21st century country.
[00:59:32]  And there's this like I mean, I feel like it's like almost cliche, but it feels like we're on this, the precipice of these kind of like diverting paths as there seems to be a big shake-up happening in the world, right?
[00:59:48]  Like on the one hand, you know, you have the economic situation in the West and in Europe, which is really like the G7 countries, what do we want to say, which is like really bad, right?
[01:00:01]  I mean, America maybe is a little bit better.
[01:00:05]  I don't know, but like Europe at least is staring down like, you know, I don't know, a decade or more of declining growth, like declining growth.
[01:00:17]  England may be terminal, you know?
[01:00:20]  Which I got to say, maybe there won't always be an England.
[01:00:24]  I mean, it's like pretty dire, right?
[01:00:26]  But then on the other hand, you have these like massive commodity boom, right?
[01:00:33]  You have like these insane, this like insane demand and increase in prices for copper, for example, which that suggests that the other kind of half of the world, the kind of like what you will call the EM, right?
[01:00:43]  The emerging market countries are on a different path.
[01:00:46]  Yeah.
[01:00:47]  And this kind of maps directly, I mean, no pun intended, it maps directly on to this sort of like shifting, possibly perhaps, of what you're seeing in world power, right?
[01:00:58]  Whereas, you know, you have China in the last like, you know, five years, maybe even longer, they had that huge pivot of investment, right?
[01:01:07]  Of exerting more influence in emerging market countries in Africa, right?
[01:01:12]  In BRICS plus countries, like they say.
[01:01:15]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:01:15]  Which I know.
[01:01:16]  BRICS PLUS.
[01:01:18]  Yeah, it's give me a break with that.
[01:01:20]  And Africa in general, which we should do an episode on this, right?
[01:01:24]  But that's become one huge theater all across sub-Saharan Africa over the battle of the world.
[01:01:30]  There's going to be a lot of shooting there in the next couple decades.
[01:01:33]  Yeah.
[01:01:33]  I mean, and there has been over the past, you know, 100 years.
[01:01:36]  Yeah, but also 20 years with American and Eastern and Western European troops.
[01:01:41]  Anyway, but like China's recovery from the kind of like zero COVID moment and era.
[01:01:48]  Yeah, wow.
[01:01:49]  Yeah.
[01:01:50]  I mean, it looks like it's, you know, strong.
[01:01:54]  Yeah.
[01:01:55]  Like it'll be strong.
[01:01:56]  And you can imagine a scenario where China is able to kind of continue to extend capital investment into emerging markets to kind of help jumpstart their economy, similar to kind of what you're seeing with Russia, right?
[01:02:06]  Where they're able to kind of jump in and help fuel, you know, investment in other places, especially in a lot of these emerging markets where those countries are getting dragged down by this insanely strong dollar.
[01:02:22]  Yeah.
[01:02:22]  Right?
[01:02:23]  And you've seen countries like Pakistan pivot away from having their currencies even pegged to the dollar because the economies can't handle it anymore.
[01:02:31]  I mean, look at what Russia is now now.
[01:02:33]  I mean, a lot of their, they're purchasing a lot of stuff in the UN.
[01:02:38]  Yeah.
[01:02:38]  And yeah, they have been for a while.
[01:02:40]  Yeah.
[01:02:40]  I mean, because now they won't even trade in the petrodollar.
[01:02:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:02:44]  Right.
[01:02:44]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:02:44]  Which is smart for them.
[01:02:46]  I mean, you can't blame them.
[01:02:48]  So there's like, it's not hard to imagine, right?
[01:02:51]  Like what happens when, you know, countries enter recessions, right?
[01:02:55]  It's like investment goes down.
[01:02:57]  And capital is, you know, it's looking for returns.
[01:03:00]  It's not like it just disappears.
[01:03:02]  So it goes to where it can find high returns, right?
[01:03:04]  And so you can see a scenario where, you know, massive capital flight happens out of the West, out of, and when I say that, I don't mean just America, I mean Europe, right?
[01:03:14]  Out of Europe, out of the West, into where would it go?
[01:03:17]  China.
[01:03:18]  Yeah.
[01:03:18]  Maybe it goes to Brazil.
[01:03:20]  Maybe it goes to India, right?
[01:03:22]  And, you know, India, we should bring them up, right?
[01:03:24]  They're in a great position.
[01:03:25]  You know, they're, you know, like China, they didn't join the sanctions against Russia, and so they can buy the cheap oil, right?
[01:03:30]  They make, they have all those arbitrage opportunities to get it out there.
[01:03:33]  They can, you know, they have their own kind of manufacturing base.
[01:03:37]  It's not as big, but, you know, not their own high-tech sector and stuff like that, too.
[01:03:42]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:03:43]  And then, you know, what follows those kinds of capital flows?
[01:03:46]  Well, political decisions.
[01:03:48]  Yeah.
[01:03:48]  And, you know, it's not, these aren't like tides of the oceans.
[01:03:52]  Like, people will move to stop this stuff, right?
[01:03:55]  Countries like America will move.
[01:03:57]  I mean, can you imagine?
[01:03:58]  Like, what does it even mean post-World War II for America to try to impose capital controls?
[01:04:05]  It would be, I don't even understand how that would work in the era of like global trade.
[01:04:10]  But that seems to only follow from how all this could like pan out.
[01:04:15]  And so like, I know it's like kind of corny, but it really does feel like there are a lot of these kinds of shifts happening.
[01:04:23]  Yeah.
[01:04:24]  Yeah.
[01:04:24]  You know, I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be really interesting and probably pretty scary and volatile to see, you know, who steps up and where, because it's not like any of these people are going to go, you know, gently into the night.
[01:04:42]  You know that little meme where it's like the smart guy and the dumb guy are saying the same thing, but then the medium guy is like saying something stupid?
[01:04:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:54]  But the smart guy and the medium guy are the stupid guy saying, the smart guy and the stupid guy are saying that.
[01:04:58]  You're talking about on the bell curve.
[01:05:00]  The bell curve.
[01:05:01]  The smart guy and the stupid guy are saying the same thing.
[01:05:03]  And the medium guy is like saying he's like, oh, I don't know.
[01:05:08]  And he's wrong.
[01:05:09]  My thing is like, imagine Liz is the smart guy in that.
[01:05:13]  And I'm the dumb guy.
[01:05:14]  No, no, because my whole thing is this.
[01:05:17]  I like don't need to get into even the details about this stuff.
[01:05:20]  I'm like, dude, China has a hell of people.
[01:05:23]  They're fully going to win.
[01:05:24]  Yeah.
[01:05:25]  And I don't even know what they're going to win at, but like they got it.
[01:05:28]  You know what I mean?
[01:05:29]  And also, the dragon rises.
[01:05:32]  Well, it does sound good.
[01:05:34]  No, my thing is, okay, Russia, they have the bear, and the bear roars or whatever.
[01:05:39]  People were saying all these bear shit at the beginning of the Ukraine war.
[01:05:42]  The dragon, though, all it can do is rise.
[01:06:04]  We'd like to thank our sponsor Adolf Hitler Fund for his generous...
[01:06:10]  His?
[01:06:12]  I love it.
[01:06:13]  You know, it should be just a fun there.
[01:06:16]  They're fun.
[01:06:16]  It's for the, of course, keeping the memory of his evil alive.
[01:06:20]  Yes.
[01:06:22]  What evil it was?
[01:06:23]  What?
[01:06:24]  Well, actually, Liz is asking that with a hard question.
[01:06:27]  No, that's true.
[01:06:29]  She doesn't really, she's actually kind of like.
[01:06:31]  I don't like this as a running curve.
[01:06:32]  I like my new thing.
[01:06:33]  I don't like the running bit of me being a hot.
[01:06:35]  That's not.
[01:06:37]  Yeah.
[01:06:37]  Well, my people did a bit of running at a certain point.
[01:06:41]  But anyway, we don't have to get into that.
[01:06:43]  God, my family was...
[01:06:45]  That's true.
[01:06:46]  Let's be a little careful.
[01:06:48]  That is true.
[01:06:48]  My grandfather was in a camp.
[01:06:50]  Yeah.
[01:06:51]  My grandfather did looting.
[01:06:54]  That was his big thing in World War II.
[01:06:55]  But he was also in a camp.
[01:06:57]  But as sort of a visitor.
[01:06:59]  I don't mean it like that.
[01:07:00]  He was liberated in camp.
[01:07:02]  I don't mean it.
[01:07:03]  Anyways, it has been a pleasure.
[01:07:07]  Listen, we're not China hands.
[01:07:11]  So a China hand is there used to be like a kind of a guy, like a China hand, and that would be like, it would be like a journalist or like, it would be somebody, it would be like a Westerner who like made their career China, right?
[01:07:23]  And there was actually, I think, a group of OSS officers or like State Department people, but all those people from World War II who were like China hands, who were actually seen as too pro-Mao and were sort of kicked out of government in the late 1940s because they were too on the side of the PRC.
[01:07:42]  But now China Hand is sort of a short, shorthand for, I just keep saying hand.
[01:07:47]  It's like for like a dumb fucking asshole who's like always like, Yes, like G means this when he's doing this.

=== New Collar Innovations (03:10) ===

[01:07:55]  Oh, I hate those shirts.
[01:07:56]  We're not those guys.
[01:07:57]  I don't know what he's doing, you know?
[01:07:59]  I hate those shirts.
[01:08:00]  He can't help but like the guy, but it's.
[01:08:03]  They also always wear, like, Nehru collar shirts, which I just think is like, you got to stop doing that.
[01:08:09]  They got to invent a new kind of collar, is what I'm saying.
[01:08:12]  Like, have we reached peak collar?
[01:08:14]  Are there any kind of collar?
[01:08:15]  Are there any Frontier Shirts?
[01:08:16]  Salmon, you know, he tried to.
[01:08:18]  The multi-color.
[01:08:19]  But that's just layering already existing collars.
[01:08:21]  Right, but that's what I'm saying.
[01:08:22]  It's sort of like the pastiche of outfits.
[01:08:24]  He was just kind of like, it's a grab bag going.
[01:08:27]  Is there like a collar that goes – Multiplying already existing outfits.
[01:08:29]  Oh, that's a – I'm thinking of a – The collars are definitely getting bigger.
[01:08:33]  The colors are getting bigger, but I'm saying like a new, because you got the Nehru collar, and then you got the regular collar.
[01:08:38]  Sure.
[01:08:38]  Is there like a collection?
[01:08:39]  Well, there's a tuxedo shirt, right?
[01:08:41]  The tuxedo shirt.
[01:08:42]  That's different than the Nehru.
[01:08:43]  But like, how about a shirt that ends sort of like above the nipple?
[01:08:48]  Like a t-shirt?
[01:08:50]  No, well, the all-shirt, no.
[01:08:52]  Well, yeah, yeah, like the t-shirt kind of collar, like a scoop neck, but it has.
[01:08:58]  It's a deep V shirt.
[01:09:00]  What you have to wear over it is this sort of ruffled, like a series of layered ruffles that are placed on top of each other, like a layer cake.
[01:09:09]  And you place that as a separate thing around your neck.
[01:09:13]  And you sort of wear like tights, and there's sort of shoes that are curled on the toe there.
[01:09:21]  Who are you imagining in this?
[01:09:22]  Amadeus?
[01:09:23]  A fop.
[01:09:24]  Oh.
[01:09:24]  Simply a fop is what I'm imagining.
[01:09:28]  Do you know when I was a kid, Amadeus was one of my favorite movies?
[01:09:31]  You never saw that.
[01:09:31]  So about the slave ship?
[01:09:33]  No, what?
[01:09:35]  Am I wrong?
[01:09:36]  Isn't there a movie about the slave ship called Amadeus?
[01:09:39]  No.
[01:09:40]  What was it called?
[01:09:41]  What is it?
[01:09:44]  Amadeus Without Mozart.
[01:09:46]  Yeah.
[01:09:46]  Oh.
[01:09:47]  Amadeus, Amadeus.
[01:09:48]  Well.
[01:09:49]  Oh, Amadeus.
[01:09:50]  Amistad.
[01:09:51]  Amistad.
[01:09:52]  I was like, damn, Amista was your favorite movie as a kid?
[01:09:55]  No.
[01:09:57]  Wow.
[01:09:59]  Yeah.
[01:10:00]  Yeah, I've never seen this.
[01:10:01]  It's just a weird movie.
[01:10:02]  You haven't seen it?
[01:10:03]  No.
[01:10:04]  You should see it.
[01:10:05]  From the White Lotus.
[01:10:07]  The White Lotus.
[01:10:09]  Talk about something that I'll never see.
[01:10:14]  So speaking of white lotuses, China.
[01:10:20]  That's been China.
[01:10:22]  My name is the Honorable Mandarin himself.
[01:10:27]  You know him.
[01:10:28]  You love him.
[01:10:29]  He is your court eunuch.
[01:10:32]  Hello.
[01:10:32]  Brace Belden.
[01:10:34]  Okay, I'm Liz.
[01:10:35]  We are, of course, joined by Producer Young Chomsky.
[01:10:37]  And this has been The Dragon Rises.
[01:10:41]  Tiger's Paw.
[01:10:43]  Just playing true and on.
[01:10:44]  We'll see you next time.
[01:10:45]  Bye-bye.
[01:11:03]  Just Jeffrey Lexter.
[01:11:05]  Come out.
[01:11:06]  Come in.