390: The Return of Austin Brawner

Speaker A: Hello, my friends and longtime listeners. This is Austin Bronner, and I have a special announcement today because I have a new podcast. It's called the Adventure Capitalist. And if you like the ecommerce, uh, influence podcast over the last eight years that it was produced, you are going to love my new show. Every Thursday, with my co host, Cody Shirk, we cover the latest stories in the world of business, investing and geopolitics that slide under the radar. Our goal is to tell stories that inspire you to think and invest differently in a rapidly changing world. Sometimes we bring in investors, entrepreneurs and other adventurers on the show to join us. Now, I cannot promise that your life will instantly change if you start listening to the Adventure Capitalist, but I can guarantee that you will find it always interesting, always useful, and you'll go to sleep knowing that you've got an edge. I'm going to go ahead and play one of the episodes for you right now, and then you can decide if you want to listen in again. The name of the new podcast is the Adventure Capitalist, and you can find it on YouTube, on Spotify, and on itunes anywhere you typically listen to podcasts. I hope you enjoy.

Speaker B: Holy smokes. It looks fake. It does not look real. Are we watching something unfold before our eyes that's going to significantly impact the future of humanity?

Speaker A: The biggest risk at Tesla, in my opinion, is just Elon not being the CEO or Elon dying or Elon being in jail or whatever lawfare that is brought up against him, depending on next administration.

Speaker B: The chairman of the California Coastal Commission is preventing space SpaceX from doing any future rocket launches because they don't like the tweets that Musk is making. To think that someone's getting offended on a platform that doesn't even relate to SpaceX. They're going to prevent the progress of probably future humanity. It's just such a backwards way of looking at everything.

Speaker A: What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Adventure Capitalist podcast. My name is Austin Bronner and I'm here with my co host, Cody Shirk. I am. I'm rocked right now. This is my podcast flu game here.

Speaker B: Are you going to show your eyes? Are you going to keep them behind the windows?

Speaker A: I'm double pink eyed right now. Uh, these are not going onto the Internet. I want this getting screenshotted.

Speaker B: Yeah, you gave me a sneak peek before he hopped on and, uh, let's just say it's X rated. You are not to go out in public with those eyes.

Speaker A: Dude, I got fully Louisiana. That's the, that's the reality of going, uh, to Louisiana. You have.

Speaker B: Oh, I didn't even think about that. So you were fishing in Louisiana on your past couple days. But I thought it was from your, your, your kid that he, he, you know, little kids, pink eye.

Speaker A: It's a conversation.

Speaker B: Because Louisiana plus little kid, that's the, that's the double.

Speaker A: Yeah. What happens is you go to Louisiana, right? And if your body's not prepared for Louisiana, you just, in four days, right? The amount of seed oil, fried foods and alcohol combined in that whole cocktail just wipes out your immune system. So I was there with, with uh, three other friends and one of them left with like an ankle injury because of getting bit by sand, uh, fleas. And then that they just swollen up, just completely swollen. So we just, and then my other friend had some stomach issues. We just left. Like, it's just Louisiana working through the only one who's from Louisiana. No issues. Totally fine.

Speaker B: So you went fishing in Louisiana. You guys are out in the, in the swamp or out off.

Speaker A: So Grand Isle is like one of the best fishing spots in, uh, I think in the entire world. Definitely in North America. And it's way out right on the coast. You can go inshore offshore fishing. This time we went inshore fishing, caught like, I think we caught like 65, uh, trout and redfish. Crazy day, like electric. Every cast, you're catching something. That place is one of my favorite places to fish. Because if you go inshore, you're catching fish non stop. If you go offshore. I went offshore a couple years ago. We caught, I want to say 500 pounds of fish in a, uh, four hour period. It is so, so good. We caught all these wahoo, we caught our uh, bonita, we caught amberjack. It's some of the best fishing. The guy we went out with, he has like six world records and they're all, all his world records. He's got him taxidermied up inside his lodge. And, and so you just, you go there, you just see these fish that are like the 200 pound grouper, um, insane stuff. He, he's, he's actually well known for being the only person who does deep sea fishing at 900ft. So he's catching fish they've never even seen before. So in some ways he's a marine biologist.

Speaker B: So I want to go back to your pink eye. Did you get it from the fish or.

Speaker A: I got it from my son. But I think my immune system was so wiped out that I got home and it was Just like, bam.

Speaker B: Okay. And not to take away from your fishing trip. I just, uh, you know, watching you with these glasses on, it looks like you should be at a piano playing, you know, I don't know.

Speaker A: I know, I know. Band. Uh, so how are you?

Speaker B: I'm good, man, I'm good. Uh, we had, uh, the hurricane that we're still kind of recovering from locally. Uh, I'm good here, but give us

Speaker A: an on the ground report because last week we said, you know, know, Milton's going to basically remove Florida from the map. And then it didn't, it didn't, uh,

Speaker B: hit the areas that people expected, but there was definitely a lot of damage. And as you know, the news likes to stick to some things and under report other things. So there's definitely a lot of damage here. And the, the forecast that we made, which was that the hurricane is going to impact the housing market. I still think that's going to happen. We can dive into that a little later on. But locally for me, I'm about 100 miles away from the hurricane actually made landfall or, sorry, I'm on the opposite coast. And when the hurricane went across Florida, I'm about 100 miles south of where the hurricane went into the Atlantic Ocean. But what we had was tornadoes. So the outer bands of a hurricane can spawn all these tornadoes. And we had something like, I don't know, over 50 tornadoes in the area in Palm Beach County. And of those tornadoes, a couple were EF threes, which is like a pretty, pretty big tornado. Big one, yeah. And so we had several communities get, get rocked, you know, like cars flipped over and the big dumpsters, you know, the big construction dumpers. Dumpsters on top of homes. And actually several people were killed also a little bit north of me. So we lucked out. No, no tornado, uh, damage directly where I am at. But in the area for sure there was damage. My kids school was shut for several days because of power issues and um, yeah, man, we're good though. I'm survived to live another day and selfishly I got some good surf, got some really good waves one of the days. Yeah. However, now it's nasty water. You got crazy amount of debris in the ocean. The water's brown. It cooled off because when there's big winds it blows the top layer of ocean away and there's upwellings and upwelling. Like deep ocean water's cold. So the water's cold. It's really nasty right now. Um, but, uh, I will say that I think we survived another hurricane year

Speaker A: Here with touch and, and further eroded the trust of Floridians in the uh, weather forecasters and will just lead to a future of people hunkering down because I think that guy who rode, who was in the boat, I think he survived.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So the local Floridians that prepared by getting beer and wine and chips and dip, they uh, their strategy was reinforced, meaning they prepared correctly. Just a party.

Speaker A: Well, let's dive into it because there's a lot of stuff that went on this last week and a lot of stuff to talk about today. Um, I want to start with the fact that Elon just continues to win and it's a winning streak that we'll look back on and it'll be written about for hundreds of years, I think. Um, let's talk about what happened, uh, with SpaceX because we've got $2 billion companies, two massive wins. Uh, SpaceX, the Mechzilla, Mechazilla caught the first super heavy booster. So why don't you dive in here? What happened and why is this, I mean one, if you haven't watched the video, we'll roll the video here so you can see it. It's absolutely incredible.

Speaker B: Yeah, roll the video while I'm talking. But yeah, the booster that pushes, you know, the spaceship into the sky, I'm talking very layman terms here, used to just fall back down, right? Like before SpaceX.

Speaker A: And there was one use.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, one use, one hit wonder. And so SpaceX has figured out how to land the booster. We've seen those, that video footage of the boosters landing with the little tripod legs. And now they caught the booster on this tower with, and they're calling it Chopsticks. And the reason why they did that is because they wanted to take the tripod legs off because it reduced the amount of weight for the booster, which makes the whole process more effective. But I'm not a space nerd. Like I'm not really into space. And uh, it kind of actually scares the out of me because I think of space being endless and it just makes my brain almost explode. But I gotta say, watching this video, it almost brought tears to my eyes. I know that sounds really cheesy, but it was just like, holy smokes, look at, like it looks fake. It does not look real. And then you start thinking about why is SpaceX doing this and why is it important to humanity and are we watching something unfold before our eyes that's going to significantly impact the future of humanity? And the answer to all those questions for Me is yes, absolutely, yes. And to see this happening in real time, it was like almost overwhelmingly emotional for me.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker B: So, yeah. So basically, to summarize, he landed a booster on this tower to reuse the booster so we can shoot up more uh, spaceships up into the sky, into space to explore the galaxies and we're well on our way, which is mind blowing.

Speaker A: Uh, it's incredible. The video is like m. Like watching it, it's, it's more exciting than watching a sporting event, especially live. And yeah, it's, it's incredible. And you know, you see that happening and it's one, it's, it's in such stark contrast to a lot of the like news reports about Elon as he's kind of like villain number one right now. But you can tell from all the people that work at SpaceX, this was a, an incredible achievement for them. People were clapping, screaming, celebrating. It's, it's so impressive.

Speaker B: And um, for me also it made me think how stupid all of the conflicts going on globally are right now. Like the wars. And I'm not saying that, you know, obviously people are losing their lives. It's a very serious thing going on globally. But then you look at a video like that and you think like, how, how are we as humanity so stupid to be doing these things that are so, um, you know, backwards just driving us in the wrong direction. And then you see this other thing which is landing this rocket on the tower and you're like, it's just such a stark contrast and it, it's like almost like, whoa, where should I be paying attention to? And like, what should I be doing in life? Like, what's most important right now? So it was really like, kind of shook me to my core.

Speaker A: Really, really impressive. And then also at the same time, so Elon's winning with SpaceX. Then on Thursday, there's a California Coastal Commission decision by the chairman who cited his posts on X about the elections, transgender issues and other issues as the reason for denying applications in California to increase launches. So what, what happened there? Gave.

Speaker B: So California Coastal Commission, if you're from California like I am, you know, California Coastal Commission basically regulates the development along the coast of California. And my parents tried to build a home about 20 years ago. It's, it's a racket. And I know the intention of the California Coastal Commission is to protect the coastline from over development and keep California beautiful, but what it's turned into is this uh, very corrupt organization that uh, certain people get to build if you pay them off. And I could go down a rabbit hole there. But the point is, is that it's, it's this entity in California that regulates the development along the coastline. Fast forward. The chairman of the California Coastal Commission is preventing SpaceX from doing any future rocket launches because they don't like the tweets that Musk is making. I mean, that's just highlighting the, just absurdity of California. And I know to think that someone's getting offended about what Elon's saying. On a platform that doesn't even relate to SpaceX. They're going to prevent the progress of launching spaceships into space that will directly affect the United States and probably the world and probably future humanity. It's just such a backwards way of looking at everything. So I'm going to stop because I'm going to start going off on some tangent with a lot of F. So we're stop, we're going to.

Speaker A: Elon scores one point, California loses a point. And then for the second in the same week, Tesla unveils the Robo Taxi, the Cyber Cab unveils the Robovan and Optimus. And it's interesting because I've been in, you know, I've got some, another group thread where we just talk about investments and we're always chatting about stuff. And earlier in the week, one of my friends is like, I'm thinking about going just all in Tesla before the, um, for the event. And I was like, that's actually in our minds, like that's a good idea. On the flip side, shares dumped. They dumped like what was almost 5%,

Speaker B: 6%, like almost 10%. I don't know. It was, it was down a lot.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was down a lot. It's, it's kind of changed, recovered. But what. First of all, talk a little bit about the. I would love to hear your thoughts on the taxi Robovan. I was in Louisiana, so not as plugged in this last week, um, I saw the Cyber Taxi, the Robovan and the Optimus. What were you most impressed by?

Speaker B: Yeah, so really, uh, quickly, uh, the, the Cyber Taxi is this car that is an autonomous taxi. And the idea is that someone can purchase one of these taxis, throw it into a pool of, of other taxis, other cyber taxis, and you'll be out there making money with Tesla's network, autonomously operating this car and picking up people and taking them from point A to point B. That's super like very high level way to look at it.

Speaker A: And was it today, was it connected to Uber at this point or. That's kind of the. Is that what people. That's what people. If you're kind of like putting your brain forward, it's like Uber's. It makes sense to be most connected to Uber.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so from an investing case on that side, actually Uber and um, Lyft shares and the valuations of those companies actually spiked after this Tesla presentation and Tesla dumped after this presentation. So the general thought from the investor side is uh, Tesla is making this announcement about autonomous cars. But just like many things that Musk has said in the past, this probably won't be online for years. Yeah, he's made a lot of claims of things that are going to be next year and then it takes like the Cybertruck is a perfect example. He's kept being delayed and delayed, delayed. So meanwhile Uber and um, all the ride sharing apps, uh, their valuations spiked like big time after the presentation. So I think investors are saying cool technology Elon, but it's not ready yet. What is ready, ah, are the platforms that already have the users that already have the customers and if they're able to implement those customers to this autonomous world of vehicles just driving around, they're going to see the biggest gains which are again, Uber, Lyft, those types of ride sharing companies. Um, I personally think there's probably some blend in the middle there. The software matters, the customer acquisition matters, but the hardware matters a lot too. And everyone have seen the Waymo videos of the cars getting stuck here and there or hitting people or whatever it is. I'm not going to make an argument that Waymo or these other autonomous cars are better than Tesla. I would just say that Tesla in general probably has a much larger potential. I personally think that. And so that's where investors are going to battle it out right now. So that, that was a cyber taxi. That's the bigger picture with the Cyber Taxi. And I think everyone's question is when is this going to be launched? When are these cyber taxis going to be ready? And that's, that's why Tesla shares dumped, because nobody knows and they probably think it's going to be longer than, than

Speaker A: uh, than Tesla is announcing on the Robovan. Right. Interesting. Different rollout. Also it's cool because all three of these rolling out one at a time is impressive, but rolling out three. So talk about the Robovan. Robovan, first of all, very different looking, uh, car than we've seen. Kind of back art deco style. Um, yeah. What are your thoughts on the Robovan and who is this for?

Speaker B: It's a great question because I think a lot of people are scratching their head, what is this for? It will throw an image up. A lot of people are saying it looks like a stapler or a toaster on wheels. And then there's some people saying, oh, this is from the movie iRobot. It looks exactly like some futuristic vehicle. So it's a van. I think it can hold up to 20 people and it's autonomous. All the things that you would expect coming from Tesla. It's very futuristic. And I don't, I mean I think people in cities are very metropolitan areas can see how this would work, which is basically a like small scale subway type thing that is, doesn't require tracks and can use existing infrastructure. So I think that's a really simple way to look at it. I think someone in a more rural area has a harder time like putting this into context of how this is going to affect my life. Um, I think in general it probably is going to fit somewhere in between there. Meaning it's not going to directly disrupt subways like New York City, but maybe the ride from New Jersey into uh, New York or something like that. I think that's where that this uh, van is going to uh, eventually be implemented. But I think this is another one of those Elon Musk uh, dreams that will eventually probably disrupt things enormously. But in the short term it's going to have a really hard time getting market penetration and getting people to buy into what's going on here. I don't know. What do you think about the whole van?

Speaker A: I mean I think that in the US trains and train travel lost a long time ago. Right. And, and in a sense public transit lost as well. And when I say that it doesn't mean that oh, there's going to be no public transit. It's just what we consensus think of as public transit that actually is pretty effective in countries like in, in, in, in Europe and um, also in Asia. It's just, it didn't win in the US and we're still in this position. Like the cyber taxi and the Robovan, all these things are the future of what public transit is going to look like in the US which is again more individual. It's more individual than it is in some of these other countries because were not building large railways outside of Florida and even then. Right. Like I think at the end of the day Americans would rather have small individual vehicles that drive autonomously and take them from point A to point B than these large scale infrastructure projects that require building Bullet trains, all these different things. So I think at the core it's, it's a push in the direction that I think has happened for a long time, which is just trains lost, buses, um, in their current form are losing. And the future looks more like individual pods that pick you up and take you places. And maybe there's just like Uber today you can get in an individual one, you can get in a larger one and they take you on to, to your final destination. Um, um, and that given the fact that we've invested so much in our freeways and our um, you know, car, cars have won in the U.S. we'll continue that path.

Speaker B: I think also cars in the US are, it's so hard to compare Asia and Europe with the US People have always seen those memes where they show the rail network in Europe and then they show the US and like, oh, us, you're so stupid. And if you just look at the map it looks like, oh my God, the US is stupid. But there's, there's some key things that are really different. And it's an apples and oranges comparison. Number one, the US Is just big. It's much bigger than people really understand. Until you get here. Because I have European friends or you know, out of towners that come from outside and they go, oh, I'm going to visit Vegas, Louisiana, San Francisco and then I might go like hike in Utah for a couple of days and I'm like, oh, how long's your trip? Like I'll be there for a week. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like you're not going to cover that much ground. People assume that going to the U.S. you're just hopping from city to city, but the U.S. is just so big. And then we have some geographical um, you know, like components, uh, like the Rocky Mountains or these huge expanses of desert that just don't really make sense to have a train going across. Not to say that the US hasn't under invested in public transportation because that's certainly true, but it's just not an exact comparison. Uh, also just the fact that the US is much more freedom oriented. People literally left Europe hundreds of years ago to come to the US to be freedom, uh, seekers. So there's, there's a core personality within the US culture that's different than other parts of the world. All of that said, all of that said, Gen Z and younger are looking at vehicles much differently because uh, they're viewing vehicles more as a liability versus an asset. Say like 20 years ago, vehicles are more like an asset. It was almost like your house is like a second asset that enabled you freedom. Now, younger people look at vehicles as just this commodity that you use for transportation. So I think that's where, uh, a lot of Musk's thoughts on this autonomous driving and these shared transportation solutions are. A lot of the market's resistant to it because it's an older demographic that just can't relate to what he's trying to push. And so that's probably one of the reasons also take a little bit longer to adopt and come to market is because that younger generation understands it more and they're going to be the consumers. But in 5, 10, 15 years from now, totally.

Speaker A: And the only thing I'll push back on is US isn't that much larger than Europe as a whole. But the difference is that you can't really go more than 30 minutes, 40 minutes out across all of Europe without going from one relevant city to another. Well, that's just not true here. Right. Just look at Texas and it's like you can drive 13 hours in Texas and still not be out of Texas. And in that time, uh, you, you'll run into like one, maybe two. Um, let's, let's just say I'm not, not m. In a negative way, but like relevant cities that would be important to have a connection between. Let's go dive into the last one, which is Optimus, which is really interesting because it's pitched as Optimus as your. As a personal R2D2C3PO, but better. Uh, I enjoy the salesmanship there. It's also going to transform physical labor in industrial settings. Uh, weird looking robot that kind of like walks, but in a weird hunched over way. What's your take on Optimus? Is this going to move Tesla forward?

Speaker B: Before I have my take, I just want to put the elephant in the room, which is this pushback, uh, that the market's having and people are thinking or saying that. So, so during the demonstration, Musk had these robots out there and they were interacting with the people, the guests of this event. And the robots are serving coffee and they were playing rock paper, scissors and they were doing all these interactions with the crowd there. Uh, there is a lot of talk that these robots will be actually being operated by people in another room. So yes, the robots can walk, yes, they can move, yes, they can do basic movements. But the ability for them to interact seamlessly with an actual biological human being, uh, is being questioned right now. And people think that there is people in another room. Operating the robots like with virtual reality goggles or not. So I don't know the truth there. I, um, wouldn't be surprised if that's the reality. But I just wanted to mention that because that's part of the reason why Tesla's shares sank. Because a lot of people questioned the validity of what actually was happening. Because, because the release was very heavy on marketing and wow factor, but very light on the technical aspects of how the stuff was going to work. So I just wanted to say that, uh, my personal take on will this disrupt things? I mean, hell yeah. If you have a robot in your house folding laundry, scrubbing floors, making meals, uh, doing the stuff that bogs you down all day and that you don't want to do, like, of course it's going to be a huge disruptor. It's going to be a disruptor in ways that I don't even think I can comprehend. And the amount of productivity that we will have as human beings if everybody has their own personal assistant. It's kind of like hard to believe. Maybe we'll just be these fat people like in Mediocrity or Idiocracy where uh, we don't even do anything anymore. Robots are just doing all this stuff for us. So yeah, I think it could be a huge disruptor. And uh, it's hard to even imagine where this will go last. Uh, thing. I think a lot of people just like the cars are creeped out by this. I think especially the older demographic is like, what this human looking robot's going to be in my house? What's going to happen when AI takes it over and starts to, it starts to kill me or it starts to rip my, I mean, I think, I

Speaker A: think that's a very fair point. I, I, it's, first thing I thought, it's like, do I want one of these things in my house while I'm sleeping? Right. And um, it's a real fear. You're like, okay, especially which we'll get into in a little bit about what's was kind of cyber war and cyber attacks and you know, these things potentially being taken over.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, Musk was saying, oh yeah, this would be a great babysitter. And you know, you and I have kids. I don't want a robot babysitting my kid right now.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable with it. I really don't know.

Speaker A: I don't want a robot. I don't want Elon Musk babysitting my kid. Uh, you know what I mean it's like, yeah, it's interesting. I think for me, my big takeaway on this is that even though shares, like shares dropped, like long term, it's so exciting and compelling what they're doing at Tesla and what they're doing. Like the biggest risk at Tesla in my opinion is just Elon not being the CEO or Elon, Elon being in jail or whatever, you know, Lawfare that is brought up against him and depending on next administration and, but, but long term, like there's really nobody, no other country, no other companies that are pushing the envelope in such a public way that has an impact on the, the mainstream.

Speaker B: There's a quote by Naval he said in 2017, he recently reposted. He said that Elon Musk makes himself question how big and how, you know, future forward he thinks. And the scale at which Musk thinks and then executes is beyond anybody in our society that is at his scale and wealth.

Speaker A: So anybody on the planet.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a tremendous key man risk with Musk for Tesla, for SpaceX, for the boring company, for Twitter, for Xai, for whatever project he's going on. Like, tremendous key man risk. I will say though, I have never invested in any of his companies. I've been pitched in secondary markets, his shares all the time. I, I bought a hundred shares of Tesla, uh, the day that the, the stock crashed. After that release, you know, I said, you know what? I'm not really viewing this as an investment. I'm viewing this for me personally, I just love what he's doing at this point. We have to have risk takers. We have to have people pushing the envelopes and the governments around the world are going backwards. We need somebody to fight against this backwardness. And if he's the guy, I at least want to be along for the ride and say that, hey, I'm, I'm owning some part of his company, however small it is. Just to say that like I'm along for this ride and I support what he's doing.

Speaker A: I, uh, I agree with that. I agree with that and I actually think long term it's going to be a great investment, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah, who knows? I'm along for the ride.

Speaker A: The worst trade you can make was just betting against Elon for the last decade.

Speaker B: Yeah, truly. Right, right. When I jump in, it's going to go the other way, but I don't even care. I said, right. When I jump into the investment, it's going to go the other way, but I don't even care. Honestly, this is my smart little token of just saying, hey, you know what? Uh, like, we need people like him. We need risk takers, we need people moving humanity forward. And he's doing it.

Speaker A: I, I agree. So I want to move to different topic here, which we've kind of been going back and forth on, really. Uh, like the big, big question we've discussed this the last, well on a few episodes is one, are we already in World War iii? Right. Are we already at war, let's just say with China, with Russia. And I want to go through some of the, some of the stuff that happened this week and then go through kind of a larger, a larger topic, uh, because it's very interesting and I have some, some thoughts on what's happening. So first of all, big. The big news from the week was that China hacked some of the US telecom networks. So I'll give kind of a little breakdown on what happened and then we'll dive into, um, what happened, why it matters, and why it's, how to frame it in kind of a larger perspective of US versus China and what it means for all of us. So federal authorities and cybersecurity investigators are probing the breaches of Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technologies. Uh, a hacking group known as Salt Typhoon that's tied to Chinese intelligence is believed to be responsible. And the idea is that the compromises may have allowed them to get access information from systems the federal government uses for court authorized network, uh, wiretapping results. So basically the, the, the fear is that they were able to get information about the U.S. government's efforts to surveil Chinese threats, including stuff the FBI is doing.

Speaker B: Yeah. So the wiretapping that we're doing, they were able to see the wiretapping that we're doing on them. It's like this meta wiretapping circle. I just want to make clear about that

Speaker A: it is an insane wiretapping circle. It's like, hey, in uh, a way,

Speaker B: I know what you're thinking. Do you know what? I know what. You know what? I know what you're thinking, and that's literally what's going on.

Speaker A: Exactly. Um, so there's this, there's also other hacks they talk about that they've been more quiet about, but have been focusing on infrastructure, uh, ranging from US airports, energy, energy providers, water treatment systems. And um, I'll just read this quote because it's interesting because in the wiretapping circle it says if Chinese intelligence OPERA operatives were able to get access to the government's foreign Intelligence surveillance systems, either with the ability to identify all or a significant portion of the targets under collection. It would be a counterintelligence. Counterintelligence failure of the highest order. So, and this is a former, um, White House national security official. Very interesting, right? We've got our own espionage efforts going on. They're countering our espionage efforts. And the reason why I think it's, it's very interesting is because back to what we've talked about in previous episodes is this idea of the difference between war and so I, I brought this up a little bit on a previous podcast. While I'll dive into it a little bit more. This. There's one thing that's very interesting, which is the Chinese follow something called the three warfare strategy and the three warf strategy. At the core of this, it's to maintain a position of non war war. And so for people in the west, there's a, this, this idea that war prevails when peace fails. And for China it's the opposite. China, their three warfare strategy succeeds because it's war disguised as peace. And the whole goal of the Chinese, um, doctrine is to keep the US war switch off. And it's obvious when you think about kind of how we think of it in the US you're either at war, are we at war with China? We're even having this question right now which is, are we at war? Are we not at war? Did World War 3 start or did it not start? And for them, their whole goal is to maintain the US thinking about that question. Are we at war? Are we not not at war? And there's really three main, main, um, components of this. And I want to talk about this because there's psychological warfare, media warfare and legal warfare. These are the three kind of warfare strategies to maintain non war war and psychological warfare. Good example. Cyber espionage. What's happening when they, this is a perfect example of how they're, how they're using it. So they're doing counter espionage. And are we, what are we thinking? We're like, well, what did they steal? Do they have information? Now we're getting nervous, we're second guessing, thinking about what did they get other, other examples of psychological warfare that, that um, they're doing in the South China Sea, for example. They are very, very aggressive with their ships, with their on the edge brinksmanship of, let's say there's ships down there and they will either ram ships, they'll do flybys, all this stuff that is kind of meant to intimidate and the Other side of psychological warfare. The last part that they're very, very commonly doing and we're going to dive into because they're doing it with the Belt and Road initiative is they're getting smaller countries in debt and then manipulating them and changing uh, their opinions or their votes based on the amount of debt that they're in. Then we all know media warfare. There's lots of stuff going on in the media. They got their own, you know, CCTV and then they've got um, the, the fact that they've bought Hollywood and you can't have Chinese villains in any, in any movies. Really, really effective stuff. So, um, the reason I bring that up is we ask this question, are we already at World War three? Are we already at war? And from my opinion, right, we're just fully down the path of being in non war war with China. And everything they're doing is, in my opinion, it's winning the way that they want to win. I'm interested from your perspective, do you have any takes on um, the Chinese intelligence operate operation here and the impact for where things are going?

Speaker B: So I think there's a temptation to want to label everything. Is this World War III or is this Cold War 2.0 or is something different or is this something different? And I don't think anybody can accurately label it because it is different. It's a different variety of what we've seen in the past, but it's certainly got new aspects that people are unsure on how to label the situation that we're in right now. But just for clarity, the Cold War, a little bit of history there was mostly the, the U.S. versus Russia and to a lesser extent China via some other smaller wars, Korea, Vietnam, etc, where you have these east and west supporting different sides of wars. So as you think of history in those terms, you, your brain immediately goes to Ukraine, right? We're supporting Ukraine, yeah, is fighting Russia, but it's a little bit more direct, right, because in, in Vietnam, for example, you had, you know, the north and south fighting each other. We were supporting one side of Vietnam and Russia and China was supporting the other side with weapons and money and etc. And, and the same with Korea. The same exact thing happened with Korea. You had the Chinese supporting a lot of, of North Korea's efforts in the war. And then the US came and pushed back a lot of those efforts. And I could go on and on with other countries that this has happened with more on a lower scale, but that, that's history. And what we're seeing, right now is almost identical. The only difference, I'd say, is Russia with Ukraine. I mean, they're directly involved in it right now. So that's, that's a pretty big difference. It's less of a proxy war for Russia, It's a direct war for them. So I think in those terms, it's very tempting to want to say, uh, oh, we're in World War three because of those things. However, World War two, just for clarity, the reason why it was labeled World War II, it's because more than half of all the countries in the world had officially declared war on one another. And once you have that scenario, you're. You're literally in a world war. We don't have that right now. We don't have countries that are, or, uh, that are overtly declaring war on one another. Yes, we have smaller little things, but not more than half of the countries around the world have declared war that has not happened. So it's pretty tough to say this is World War 3. Conversely, it's pretty tough to say this is just Cold War, because it's certainly more than a Cold war of what's going on. And so I'm not answering your question directly, but I do think we're in a situation where we have crossed the Rubicon. And, uh, you know, in many senses of not being able to go back on a lot of, uh, situations we're in.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: But we're not quite to the scale of a World War three kinetic. We're going to end, by the way, uh, I'm going to end this tirade by just making one comment. There's a book out by Ann Jacobson about nuclear war. And don't read it if you are afraid of nuclear war, because it's like,

Speaker A: who's not afraid of nuclear war?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, but the book is even more terrifying because I'll just, uh, spoiler alert. Nuclear war ends in the end of humanity. Uh, or at least we, uh, go back to the Stone Age. There's basically no scenario where we have a limited nuclear war. It's just not possible. It would accelerate beyond your wildest imagination. So the reason I bring that up, though, is because the idea that we're going to have a global kinetic war is almost pretty low because you have so many superpowers and even smaller powers that have nuclear, uh, capacity now that the idea that we would go to that level is unthinkable because the world would be done. So what are we in right now? I don't know. World War 3, Cold War II hybrid. Ah, hard to say.

Speaker A: I think, I think it's, we're in non war war and we, it will continue to progress. But to your point, nobody's going to. There's no incentive to declare war because everybody knows if there's a war declared against the US, a direct one on one war, then all of uh, the US's force will be deployed against that country. So there's much less incentive given the fact that the US has insane capability, military capability. The whole goal is to be in war without ever declaring war. Undermine change, public sentiment. I think one of the, if you look at it from the perspective of what the Chinese perspective of trying to. One of their goals is to change the public sentiment about um, global conflict. And an argument made by a lot of neocons is that we're actually falling prey to the Chinese changing public sentiment in our own country to try to pull us back from being more globally involved and more aggressive foreign policy. And at the end of the day, I don't know, I think I, I would agree that's happening. I don't know if it's because the Chinese are influencing us or it's just because we're sick of being at war, but that is happening. And um, and that's, you know, that's one of the components of this three war warfare strategy which is very interesting. One of the one other thing that's happening right now and uh, it's. So take it to it to this. Last week there was the Asian Summit, ASEAN Summit, right? And so this was in, this is in Lao. And this happens once a year. Lao is very interesting because it's a flash, I'm not gonna say a flashpoint. It's a, it's an area on the edge that the Chinese are very, very, very involved um, with. Right. They have actually built a massive train system there. So you, it's now connected from southern China all the way down through Lao. And I think it actually goes to Bangkok or it's being completed about this time. Put Lao into a ton of debt. So they're in $13.8 billion worth of debt. Roughly half of that is owed to China. China has put them in debt in exchange for building this incredibly. Um, let's just say it's, it's a beautiful, well it's a beautiful cutting edge railway that is designed to connect Lao to all the other countries because they're landlocked and they really haven't been able to. If you've ever, um. I was there like 10, 15 years ago, there's one road. It's changed, I'm sure it's changed the game, but at the end of the day they still are a very poor country. So China on one hand was, is releasing press releases all week about how they want to continue to um, be involved with Lao and take the next step monetarily. And at the same time Justin Trudeau flew down to the Asian summit, Blinken flew to Lao to talk about protection and development assistance. So you've got this conflict going on in a country much like what we're talking about with Vietnam very far away. That is also some, in my opinion, another level of this non war war where you're exuding influence. And at the end of the day, one, uh, one, one component of these Chinese loans is very interesting is that apparently if you get World bank loans, they're under 1%. If you get them from Japan, the US, they're 1%. These Chinese loans are 4% and they're crippling this country. And, and it's not necessarily just China's fault, but it's putting in a position where they're having to make a choice on um, who to ally themselves with going forward.

Speaker B: Absolutely, that's, I mean you explain it pretty well. It's this economic hitman model that if anybody is reading the, or listening to us, you've probably read the book where a foreign country goes into another country, gives all kinds of aid, builds infrastructure projects with the uh, agreement of saddling that country that received all the aid with some sort of debt. And the agreement is basically that that country is going to be aligned with that bigger power and do what they say.

Speaker A: And the US has done this all over.

Speaker B: Oh, all. I mean the US is the king of this. And I would say that China more or less is copying the US's strategy, which the US has successfully executed. I'm not going to say it's been clean because there's been all kinds of failures. You can go to, um, Iran, almost every single, uh, country in Central America, uh, throughout the Caribbean, I mean everywhere. The US has as a whole successfully executed this in the best interest of the us, but it's been a dirty process. And China has been doing this for the past about decade or two. And this is, Lao is a perfect example of how China has gone in, saddled them with debt, built a lot of these projects. But China's not as good as the US has been. And there are many countries that are kind of like not sure what to do here because China's been pretty rough on the terms. And now there's this time period where these countries either have to pay China back or they need to give China something, usually resources. Lao does not have the money. They're almost bankrupt as it is, and they owe billions of dollars to China. What's going to happen here? And I think that's, uh, happening in many countries, especially throughout Africa, where China has saddled a lot of countries with debt. And the end result here, if you're wondering what's going to happen here, it's going to be bad for a lot of countries. This is where conflict breaks out, where, uh, people, countries can't pay back other countries, and then the country that owns that debt is going to go in and take something. So it's pretty scary.

Speaker A: I was reading Laos at 20. I think it was almost 25% inflation this year, which, you know, we think inflation is bad in our country. Um, it's been like 25 year over year. Gnarly, gnarly, gnarly stuff. And that at the end of the day, inflation creates a lot of local disruptions because people just start getting frustrated. Right. And at the end of the day, like, you can do whatever you want and try to control your country, but when the people aren't happy, uh, often that leads to some sort of a change. And I find it interesting because Trudeau went down there, they announced a $128 million package that of funding for, for Lao.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: With the majority of the money going towards environmental protection and combating climate change. I really wonder how impactful that is. Right. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, it's a big number, 120. It's not even that big of a number, but in Canada's perspective, it probably is a pretty big number. But one of the things I worry about is that we're making decisions that are based on a perception at home versus what's more valuable on the ground to the people that you're trying to provide funding for. And, um, my take is that it's probably not the most effective way to curry favor with people in Southeast Asia to provide them environmental protection and combating climate change. They've got other challenges going on. If their inflation rates at 25% and they, you know, people aren't feeling their, their life progressing.

Speaker B: I agree, and I will make somewhat of a pushback on that a little bit, because the US Right now is going around to different countries to push the green revolution, uh, agenda, which is, hey, you need to develop, uh, processes within your country to Lower the greenhouse emissions that are coming from your vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. But below that strategy, the US Is also creating these relationships with countries to gain access to certain minerals. For example, as the US Is going to Argentina or Chile, they are saying all of these great things about lithium because lithium is used in batteries and is part of this green revolution. And it sounds nice in press releases that the US has this uh, great agenda to clean up the earth, but the US Is also getting access to resources that is going to enable the American, the United States, American empire to be prosperous for the next century because there's going to be access to key minerals and metals that are going to literally energize the economy of the United States.

Speaker A: So your basic take is like on the face of it, it's actually self serving. Well on the face of it it doesn't seem self serving, but it's actually self serving because by going and pushing environmental protection, combating climate change and getting these other countries to commit to using green revolution type vehicles and then the US either is producing them, buying the, buying the minerals, using those minerals, then create finished products. Back to what we started at the beginning. I mean, Tesla.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Tesla is um, a US Company.

Speaker B: US Company, exactly. And you go back in time, let's go back a century ago, this exact same scenario was happening with, with oil. And you know, you look at Iran, the Brits were in Iran, basically ruling that country. Uh, eventually Iran gained back some of its power, but then the US came in and overthrew the Iranian government and put their own puppet into Iran. And this is in the 40s, 50s and 60s that this all transpired and had to do with Iran having an enormous amount of, of oil. And the reason why the Brits cared about oil in the early 1900s is because the Brits access to the Iranian oil during World War I is really why the Brits were so successful. They were fueling their ships for free on the backs of access to Iranian oil. And you fast forward several decades and it was the same for the US Getting access to oil in Iran. And, and then I could replicate that story with many other, um, Middle Eastern countries over the past, you know, 50 years, up until now, 20, 20, 24, we've seen this story over and over again. The difference now looking forward is that we're probably going to be using renewable resources. That's not to say we're not going to generate electricity, but instead of burning oil in our cars, we're going to be storing energy in our cars with, with batteries. And electronics are going to be consuming all these rare earth metals and lithium and cobalt and graphite and all these things. So that's what the US is doing right now to secure all these, these materials that they're, that the US empire is going to need for the next century and beyond.

Speaker A: It's interesting. So basically, I mean we could see your project prediction is we can see some people getting swapped out who aren't pro environment.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I could. And that not just people, but countries and traders.

Speaker A: Exactly. Like presidents. Presidents get swapped.

Speaker B: Yeah. And for investors, if you're listening to this, this sounds scary, but this is an enormous opportunity. Um, imagine a supermarket that's been. Every single item has been on the shelf in the same exact spot for 50 years. And then you just went to the supermarket one night and you switched everything around, but you didn't change the price tags. All of a sudden all kinds of shit is mispriced. There's stuff that's on sale that shouldn't be on sale. There's stuff that's way too expensive, that shouldn't be expensive. There's stuff missing, there's stuff that needs to be supplied. It's a total cluster f. And for investors looking in the world right now, that's what's happening. There's this reshuffle and there's going to be a lot of people that get screwed over, but there's going to be a lot of people that land into these opportunities that are once in a lifetime opportunities. And I think that's where we're going to be looking. I mean personally, that's what I'm doing right now. I'm looking for these opportunities.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean you've been talking a lot about different, um, minerals and metals and the fact that they're just mispriced compared to historical levels. And it's interesting. It's interesting. I mean it just goes to show like there's a lot, I think, riding on the upcoming election and it'll be interested to see how the foreign policy evolves, um, and changes. You can kind of see the plan. Blinkin's all over the place. He's all over the place all the time on the road, meeting with people, talking to them about protection, talking to them about assistance, and uh, we'll see what happens going forward. But um, interesting.

Speaker B: Lincoln was just. Ah, well, the U.S. state Department just released this announcement a day ago that we now are starting annual discussions with Papua New Guinea. The US has never had annual discussions with this country. This country is basically not mattered at all to the US but you know why it matters right now? Because Papua New guinea has a ton of gold and metals and they're the one of the largest LNG producers in the world. So the US is strategically getting things in line for whatever's to come next. And what's coming next is, like I said, reshuffle of all of these metals and accesses to energy. But it's also these other adversaries, China and Russia, doing the same thing for their needs. And uh, yeah, that's where, that's where the general population, I would say, is completely missing the story. And a lot of people are going to get run over by this change that they don't see happening.

Speaker A: In a way, it's like, don't fight the Fed. Right? There's always don't fight the Fed. Don't fight, don't fight the US Government and where things are going. Because if that's their plan prices, they're

Speaker B: spending billions of dollars in, in real money and in man hour efforts to go around the world and do things right now. Is the US Wrong? It could be wrong, but it doesn't matter if it's wrong because the economy and, and um, and finances will follow a lot of this trend. And when I say wrong, I mean like, is it morally, ethically wrong? It doesn't matter. Uh, uh, you may disagree with it, but this is the way, this is the direction things are going right now for sure.

Speaker A: Well, another good episode. Lots of stuff going on in the world right now. Lots of interesting things happening. Um, I'm fully, I'm fully landed here in, in Oregon. Feels great. As you can tell, I'm wearing my, my Pacific Northwest, uh, your flannel.

Speaker B: My west coast, uh, hipster vibe going on, even with the glasses. I know, I know you're trying to protect your eyes, but I feel like you could do every episode of this glass.

Speaker A: I'm not trying to protect my eyes. I'm trying to protect your eyes.

Speaker B: That's true.

Speaker A: From my eyes. Uh, all right, well, we'll see you in the next episode. Uh, thank you guys for joining us. We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker B: See ya.