Trump’s Greenland Deal, Exploding Oil Prices, and Why America’s Losing Its Edge | The Tom Bilyeu Show

What's up, guys? Today I am joined by Ryan, our channel moderator and clips editor. In this episode, Ryan and I break down what's happening behind the headlines, makes sense of the tangled alliances and global power plays, and reveals how you can position yourself strategically in the chaos. We dig into how information warfare and energy shocks could directly impact your future, why the AI revolution is at a dangerous tipping point, and what you need to know to navigate the next wave of disruption. You’ll leave this episode with an unshakeable understanding of the forces shaping the next decade and how to think two steps ahead. I'm Tom Bilyeu, and welcome to Impact Theory. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: Want my help starting a business? Join me here inside Zero To Founder https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show Sign up for my AI Masterclass: AI Masterclass https://tombilyeu.com/ai-masterclass?utm_campaign=Live%20Masterclass&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=evergreen Follow Me: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Tailor Brands: Check out Tailor Brands to get started with your business today: https://bit.ly/TailorBrandsSept Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod ElevenLabs: Book your demo at https://elevenlabs.io/impactpod Cash App: Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl#CashAppPod *Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N. A., pursuant to a license from Visa U. S. A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosure. Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order. ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at https:// https://incogni.com/impactbusiness.att.com http://business.att.com Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Quo: ​​Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impact Pipedrive: Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/impact and get started with a 30-day free trial. Netsuite: For the first time ever you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/Theory https://netsuite.ai/Theory. Butcherbox: Go to https://ButcherBox.com/IMPACT https://butcherbox.com/IMPACT to get $20 off your first box, plus your choice of free ribeye, new york strip, or filet mignon in every box for a year — with free shipping always See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby. And then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University. And the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Tailor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Tailor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Tailor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Do You Show Live. We've got a full show for you today, but real fast, you will notice unfortunately Drew is out today. He's going to be out for a while, so bear with us. He sends his love, but Ryan is going to be doing those duties today. So if you're wondering what's going on, that is the State of the Union.

• 1:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, there is plenty afoot here, just when you guys thought that it couldn't get any crazier. Things in the Middle East are threatening to escalate out of control. The State Department issued a regional warning over fears of rapid escalation. That is a direct quote. Due to increased Houthis attacks, Iranian threats and potential US retaliation. We'll get into the details there. Things may not be quite as they seem. Speaking of feared retaliation, by the way, the Russia Ukraine war has been, uh, has become a much bigger deal than most people realize. Ukraine slammed Russia with their largest wave of drone attacks ever, as well as their new flamingo cruise missiles. If you guys haven't seen those, they're insane.

• 2:14Tom Bilyeu?

  They are supposedly even more powerful than the US Tomahawk missiles. So pretty wild and everybody now is holding their breath to see what Russia is going to do in response. The situation in Greenland took a surprising turn this weekend. Trump is taking victory laps, but there's a raging debate on what exactly just happened. So we're going to get into the 1951 of it all. That'll make sense soon enough. The revenue trends in AI are shifting way harder than people understand. And if the trends continue, you guys can expect the frontier model owners to continue their panic and appeal to the government. We'll see how that one plays out. Real data, by the way, is finally coming out on the impacts of gender affirming care. It's downright shocking.

• 2:56Tom Bilyeu?

  A landmark study published in Finland is casting doubt on the current narrative. We're going to be going into all of that and more, but we've got to talk about what's going on in the Middle East. So the Houthis fired a ballistic missile barrage at Riyadh. It was the first attack on the Saudi capital since the Yemen war restarted. The Saudis say it shot down. That's a little hard to believe when the Aramco fuel depot that's by their international airport was burning. So as a PSA, remember there was propaganda all over the place at all times. So something is going on and their airport hit maximum disruption on Flight Radar 24. So basically the whole thing was on lockdown.

• 3:38Tom Bilyeu?

  So I don't buy that they were obviously able to stop everything unless they had a planned fire at the facility. Now, that night, the State Department was telling Americans to reconsider travel to the entire region. If you guys were on X this weekend, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For a hot minute yesterday, it really looked like things were going to escalate rapidly. Trump was popping off with some insane tweets. I don't think anybody's super surprised about that, but promising he was in deciding mode about what was going to happen in Iran. But then rumors started coming out that he actually was against, uh, doing more attacks. That he didn't want to spread his attention out, that his advisors were telling him, listen, man,

• 4:21Tom Bilyeu?

  the war has already put a massive strain on the military. We do not need to open another front on this. The rumors behind the scenes are that Saudis have been going to Trump nonstop. There have been three, I think, pretty confirmed reports about MBS going directly to Trump and saying, listen, we need help with this. Then there was like this floating rumor that they were moving away from a Chinese led, um, deal around crypto that would further help migrate, um, Saudi away from the US dollar. And as you guys know, the petrodollar is basically what has continued post Bretton Woods, continue to give US the role as a reserve currency.

• 5:02Tom Bilyeu?

  So that's a pretty big deal and people were trying to link the two things, but that actually the pullback there had happened months ago. Uh, and supposedly they're still dealing with it. But the rumor that was being spread was basically MBF very specifically got rejected by Trump. And so was going back to Trump and saying, hey, we'll do this thing. We're going to move away from that deal, basically re-embrace the dollar. And that gave Trump what he needed to move forward with the attacks. Now, so far the attacks haven't happened. So I think it is likely that all of that is largely BS, that Trump actually is, uh, backing off because he understands that opening yet another front would be extremely risky at this point.

• 5:44Tom Bilyeu?

  And there is a lot of nested sort of madness going on between what we have happening in Russia, Ukraine, which I think is the one that's probably most misunderstood right now in the world. There's something about the conflict in Iran that has captured people's attention far more than what's going on in Russia, Ukraine. But if you guys are watching what is coming out of Europe, that's starting to get pretty wild, uh, with people just nakedly calling, uh, for their citizens to prepare for war in the coming years. We'll get into the specifics of that, but you've got a narrative that is gaining in traction that goes something like this.

• 6:23Tom Bilyeu?

  That you've got China, Iran, Russia, North Korea in sort of a loose alliance. The idea being to keep the US bogged down in as many places as possible so that China can move on Taiwan. Russia can find out whether NATO alliances actually mean anything at this point. And then regroup in a post peace world to then make further potential incursions into Europe. And you've got European leaders indicating, and I don't want to overstate any of this

• 7:01Tom Bilyeu?

  because this stuff is sort of loosely pieced together based on, I won't say cryptic statements of people in, uh, Europe have made, but certainly statements that are not direct where they're saying this is exactly what's going to happen. But with a growing hypothesis that peace in Russia, Ukraine may be more dangerous for Europe than the current status quo. Now, how could that be? The reasoning goes like this, that what's happening in Russia right now has completely transformed the Russian economy to a wartime economy. So that the growth that's actually happening in Russia is led by the war machine.

• 7:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Plus you have people on the front lines that are essentially being radicalized and mobilized, organized. And if they come home, now they become a potentially very disruptive contingent. And you run the risk of a military coup or at least disruption caused by people returning back from the front lines. And if that's true, then you've got a massive incentive for Putin to just keep the war going as long as possible, assuming that they're not losing ground. And so if you have these two countervailing forces that both kind of like the stalemate. So you've got Europe using this opportunity to re-militarize.

• 8:21Tom Bilyeu?

  You've got Germany talking about becoming the biggest military in Europe once again. We know how that's played out before. Uh, you've got the UK directly telling its people to prepare for war in the next few years. And this growing sort of hypothesis that we might actually be better off with this stalemate keeping Putin busy than we would be in peacetime. And so you put that all together, you've got the US stretched very thin. You've got China still with that looming threat that we're going to move into, uh, Taiwan, which obviously would have massive implications for the US. You've got an incentive for China to see the US drug more into the conflict, not only in Iran, but in, uh, Russia, Ukraine.

• 9:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And so Trump showing actually a little bit of restraint here against the Houthis is probably well advised. Now we'll see if that ends up holding, uh, as landed diesel prices or landed gas prices, I think across the board, actually, are getting pretty outrageous as differentiated from just the cost of Brent crude. But meaning physically, what does it cost to actually ship something? And obviously because of the, uh, shutting of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, you've got this double whammy where now something that used to cost about $6, a little bit less, uh, per barrel to ship from West Africa over into, um, can't remember if that was for Europe or Asia.

• 9:49Tom Bilyeu?

  But that, the $6, $7 price tag is now jumped to like $23 plus dollars. And that's per barrel. So landing it, shipping it is the thing that's growing increasingly more expensive, which is going to continue to put a strain on the global economy. And so all eyes on the oil crisis, even though if you're watching it on a day to day basis, uh, the swings aren't that crazy. But all of this stuff is building up this, um, penalty that everybody is taking around the world. That's causing everybody to scatter and try to find new resources. But when you're talking limited resources, somebody somewhere isn't going to get what they were expecting to get.

• 10:29Tom Bilyeu?

  And so when you have all of these different pockets of conflict simmering and the background economic pressure is only building, uh, then stability is not in your future. And so that becomes, uh, the backdrop to this warning over the weekend that certainly on Sunday night seemed very, very serious. Now, my hope is that that's dissipated. Trump has backed off, but only the fullness of time is going to show where this settles out. Because if Saudi Arabia continues to get, um, beleaguered, the UAE is proving itself to be more aggressive as well. You're going to run into, uh, the possibility that that just continues to explode,

• 11:14Tom Bilyeu?

  especially as the Houthis get more emboldened by success. So fingers crossed, but it's certainly not trending in the right direction right now. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag. That's why everything they make runs 50 to 80% less.

• 11:57Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:41Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Try it risk-free for 30 days. That's incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I, dot com slash impact and use code IMPACT. Let's talk about your sales pipeline reviews. If your CRM is half-empty fields and notes nobody finished, every review turns into guesswork. I've seen it so many times in my own sales team, and that's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent, AI-powered sales CRM that is loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before the call, it pulls the deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes.

• 14:08Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  We're talking about it a bunch, and I see people in chat mentioning it as well. But right now, we're seeing basically a bunch of alliances kind of turning on each other, things growing and growing and growing. Now we have the prospects of potentially Taiwan being invaded. And I'm curious, do you think we are already on the path of opening up an all-out war across the world? Or do you think there's still a ways to go? And if so, what's that tipping point?

• 15:12Tom Bilyeu?

  To me, everything is so interconnected right now. Calling it World War III is too bombastic. But to say that all of these things really are connected and now you're just waiting for that spark that brings them all together. This is something I mentioned before, but it bears repeating that what made Japan strike the US in Pearl Harbor was that we cut them off from their oil. And so as the US has a blockade outside of the Strait of Hormuz and is literally stopping oil from getting to China, if that ends up becoming a problem, which is a question mark of how long this drags on. But if China finds itself in a position where it's now draining its strategic reserves again,

• 15:56Tom Bilyeu?

  then you could see China saying, okay, we have a limited window where we're going to move on Taiwan. We wanted to do it in 27 anyway. We were originally going to try to do this all diplomatically, but now let's really make a move. That then draws everything into pretty sharp relief in terms of, okay, now if I'm China, do I want to nudge North Korea to make a little bit of noise and South Korea to make sure that the US just has way too many things to focus on? It's possible. I'm not going to say that it's likely. I do think China wants to do things, avoiding military intervention wherever possible. But some of this comes down to just how seriously they feel that they're being isolated on AI. Because right now, chips are how we have slowed them down.

• 16:42Tom Bilyeu?

  If they are looking at that battle and thinking, okay, hold on a second. We've got our reunification efforts as they see it with Taiwan. We're actually falling behind in AI, their perception, in this thought experiment. The US is bogged down between what they're having to send to support Ukraine and obviously massively in the Middle East. Now could we pull them into having to deal with both Taiwan and South Korea at the same time? Also, me, China, can I convince Putin that don't take any off-ramps right now? Keep these guys distracted? And then all of a sudden, it's just blatant that this is one thing. And these are the two great powers colliding head to head.

• 17:27Tom Bilyeu?

  China using Russia as like the little bro state to try to keep the US distracted. And so at that point, do you then have to sound the alarm as the US and say, Europe, you got to get off your asses? You need to like get overt now about what you're doing in Ukraine. And so if, if everything were to sort of coalesce in that way, which is only one of the ways, by the way, that I could see this ultimately coalescing, then yes, at that point, it does sort of become officially. I don't even like to say World War III because it really does just feel like it's a bit overstated. But that, that is the fear, that there's just this like scope creep.

• 18:09Tom Bilyeu?

  There's too much opportunistic reason for China to, to keep things going with Russia, to continue to help Iran in the ways that it can, so that all of that continues to drag out. Because right now, the thing that we're being asked to believe, asked to be believed by Scott Besant, is that, all right, we've got this anaconda situation. So we're shooting everybody in Iran and we're constricting them from an economic standpoint. And that's all going to play out. There's, they're not going to have any more time. All the pre-sold oil that was going to China, that's drying up. So even that money's running out. They've got massive inflation in Iran.

• 18:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I would not expect that massive inflation to break the back of the Iranians because you, in their minds, they have God on their side. That becomes a totally different war. And so if China is able to continue to somehow, some way, get funding into Iran and it just drags and drags and drags, then yeah, this escalates long before it dissipates. And so right now, there's no sign that the strategy with Iran is working other than trust me, bro, stuff that we get out of the administration. Because if the Houthis really are just a proxy for Iran, somehow, some way, they're getting what they need to be more aggressive than ever.

• 19:35Tom Bilyeu?

  So I think that they are still banking on the strategy that they can disrupt things globally by shutting down both straits and that the world will feel the crisis then as much as they're feeling the crisis. And then it becomes, who really has the will? I won't even say politically because I think of the US as political will, but in Iran, it's more.

• 20:01Tom Bilyeu?

  A theological will. Now, I do think Iran is a divided nation. I just don't know, is it 80/20 in one direction or the other, 50/50? Like, what exactly is that split? But right now, we have supposedly broken their back like 32 times, and they just keep going, and it's getting more aggressive, so.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Do you think there's any world, this is posed by Kit Obsidian Moon, where Trump uses everything going on, this potential looming threat of a World War III type scenario? Do you think he uses that to tighten his grip on power coming up through the midterms?

• 20:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Nobody's gonna let a good crisis go to waste, so Trump chief among them. This is where I just am driven absolutely bananas by his whole third term thing. So, do I think he would use it to consolidate power if it presented itself in a way where it's like, hey, guys, this is World War III, like, we're really in the middle of this. Doing an election right now would be completely nonsensical. And the bad news is, if it really had escalated to that point, it probably would make sense to postpone the election. But because you have somebody who isn't doing it for the right reasons, yikes. That one would be, that would be so psychologically detrimental to the

• 21:15Tom Bilyeu?

  US, that I really, really hope that we don't find ourselves in that situation. So, yes, I can certainly see him going, okay, I'm on the other side of my midterm elections, I lost. My only way to maintain power is on a war footing. But on that, that's where we're gonna have to rely on Congress to be that check and balance. Because assume that he loses the Senate and the House, and wants to do sustained military intervention, he's not going to have the ability to push beyond the whatever 60 days that it is. So if he's officially declaring, yo, this is World War III, then he would have to have Congress get in and say, cool, we're on board. And so, that is, again,

• 22:00Tom Bilyeu?

  where I will say, anybody that celebrates China, I think is out of their minds. You want to have the checks and balances. You want a system where you can have one group stymie the other and make it impossible for them to move forward. So, that would be the hope. And so, the, call it the psychological danger zone would be a world war that is so obvious, that it's like, okay, yeah, an election right now wouldn't be in anybody's best interest. But that would be, the divide would accelerate.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  And proving and justifying your, this is all economics, argument that we've talked about since February, taking just a look at the full global conflict right now with Russia and Ukraine, with what happened this past weekend, I've noticed they're hitting more refineries than they are the frontlines. Do you think at this point, Ukraine understands that the only way out of this war for them is an economic path, and not a path of continuing to throw numbers at it because they don't have the numbers to stand up against Russia? Or?

• 22:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Do I think that they think it's the only way? No, probably not. Because for years, they were willing to just keep, and look, I don't know how much of this is propaganda, but you see all the time, footage where it's like, look, these are Ukrainian frontline soldiers in handcuffs, being sent to the front line. Hey, these are kids, just like, walking their dog in the streets of Ukraine. They get snatched, thrown in a van, and taken to the front lines. So, they certainly have a willingness to conscript if the propaganda is accurate through pretty vicious means. So, I won't grant that they see that as the only option. But this is what happens in wartime. This is what I was talking about at the beginning of this. The thing you really have to worry about is what happens when you build a very efficient wartime

• 23:41Tom Bilyeu?

  economy. Getting out of that is far more difficult than people give credit to. Like, even in the unwinding, the aftermath of World War II, there was some ungodly number of people that were slaughtered, just in the like, okay, all the troops are going home now. And so, people understand that that is an incredibly dangerous period. So, I would not, I wouldn't look at that and think, oh, everybody is just racing to peace. It is this very uneasy thing. So, Ukraine has done a very good job of becoming a, the world leader in basically offensive modern warfare, which is wild to think, but you've got the US appealing to them to learn

• 24:26Tom Bilyeu?

  how they're doing it. So, they're getting better and better at hitting Russia in that way. So, even if it's not the only way that they see forward, it's certainly the smartest way. Like, you want to build technology that's going to give you an advantage in warfare. This is always the way of things. Now, the fact that they're hitting the energy infrastructure is smart. And this is probably the thing to best understand about what's happening in Ukraine, is they understand they have to make this war so unpopular inside of Russia, that Russia is just like, okay, we've gotta take an off-ramp. Now, listen, there are plenty of historians that will give you the following thing. Right now, I've not looked, I don't understand Russian culture well enough to know if this is a worthy thing to repeat, so I will caveat this by saying, there are historians

• 25:11Tom Bilyeu?

  of Russia that take the read of their historical actions, that they take a very eastern mindset to their own people, which is that they're all disposable. And all that matters is the survival of the state. And so, they will just continue to throw people at that. Now, the problem is, Ukraine is very much, if not directly Russian culture, they are certainly Russian culture adjacent, and so, are they gonna run a similar strategy? And so, you have these two nations that will both continue to throw people at the front line, getting better and better at a wartime economy, getting better and better at killing each other. And so, the question becomes, will there be that uprising of the populace, such that they can actually overcome

• 25:54Tom Bilyeu?

  an authoritarian dictator? That is, that is a big task. So, we will see if the economic devastation ends up being something that causes Russia to move, or if the perhaps more terrifyingly likely result is that this drags on for another year, we miss another round of fertilizer, just to give one example. Fuel costs skyrocket globally. You've now got food crises in addition to fuel crises, and so, you've got, I mean, this is all gonna come down to how bad will the winter be this year. If it's a mild winter, expected to drag on even longer. But if it's an extreme

• 26:38Tom Bilyeu?

  winter in Europe, and you've got hundreds of thousands of people dying across Europe just from freezing to death in their own homes because they can't afford to heat them, which does happen every year, by the way, same thing that happens in the summer, people dying of heat stroke. So, when you can't heat or cool your house appropriately, you're gonna find a lot of old and vulnerable people dying. So if we start seeing that kind of sweep with food scarcity, now all of a sudden, you've got Europe like, we can't do this anymore. We've got to escalate to de-escalate, as they say. And again, that's another scenario under which this becomes a breakaway problem. So, we will see. But man, this is one of those where, every time I go to do a show, I'm like, I wanna focus

• 27:21Tom Bilyeu?

  on social stuff, I wanna have a more playful, like, sort of spine to the day. And I'm just like, Jesus, like, they're, the, these conflicts are becoming so interrelated, and, most importantly, understand why all of this is happening. This is happening because the US, as the monolithic keeper of the global peace, fell apart, certainly during Biden, maybe it even started in Obama. So, you've got the weakening of the US's ability to back most people down, call it 95, 98% of

• 28:03Tom Bilyeu?

  the skirmishes are all just, we're the US, we say so, back down. We've got the military strength, we've got the reputation, we've got the financial ability, and so, everybody just backed down. And it really was a watershed moment when Russia invaded Ukraine. And at the time, I don't think a lot of people understood what it was really signaling. And what it really was signaling was, yeah, I don't give a shit. Like, I don't think that you guys, you guys being NATO, I don't think that you've got the will to fight this war, so I'm gonna do what I want. Now, I think that Putin thought that it was gonna be very easy to steamroll Ukraine, and I think he was very surprised to find out that it didn't play out like that. But nonetheless, it tells you the world's view of

• 28:44Tom Bilyeu?

  the US. Then, the US goes through all the drama that it's going through in terms of internal division, beginning to tear itself apart, and China becoming more and more economically sovereign, and in a just massive leadership position from the ability to produce. And that part is the thing that I don't think people fully understand. So now, you have a peer competitor with the US that is aligned with Russia, and now, I think the US right now is still in the middle of its Suez Canal moment, where it's gonna show an inability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz through force. And once that happens, then the world goes, oh, okay, these guys aren't gonna be able

• 29:27Tom Bilyeu?

  to back us down. And so, we go from a 98% back-down rate to, I mean, 50%, 40% back-down rate, and so now, we're actually having to fight all of these battles. And that's where the cost structure just becomes unbearable. And if we were in a good economic situation, coming into whatever this moment is gonna be known as, it might be different. But we're in a horrific economic situation. So, normally, you take on the kind of debts that we have now to prosecute the war. But if you're coming into the war already with these insane debts, now you're really in trouble. And it becomes a, an inflationary environment, and the world leaders everywhere are hyper-aware of this stuff. So, they understand the weakened position that

• 30:12Tom Bilyeu?

  the US is in, and I think a lot of people are going to make small little plays here and there. I'm not saying military incursions, but just places where, look at how Canada is being with the US, right? Oh, like, hey, we can just cozy up to China and Europe, we don't really need the US like we used to need the US. Now, that may be bluster, but nonetheless, it creates another bit of drama that the US is going to have to deal with. And so, all of that just spreads the US incredibly thin, and puts the world in a very unstable position. And so, I've been talking about this since, since I started doing a live show. It's actually one of the reasons I started doing a live show, is we're all about to live through a change in great

• 30:56Tom Bilyeu?

  power politics. Now, what does that really mean?

• 31:00Tom Bilyeu?

  I will point you guys to the Middle East. So the last time that we had this sort of like shakeup in great power politics was at the end of World War I, when the Middle East was basically arbitrarily subdivided. That has not gone well, at least from my read of things. So when you look at the prolonged instability that that's created there, I think that the world is going to feel the echoes of this destabilization for a while. Now, whether it looks like the period between World War I and World War II, or it looks more like the Cold War, that is a huge question. I would much rather it look like a nerve-wracking but stable-ish balance of power that we saw

• 31:45Tom Bilyeu?

  during the Cold War, but that remains to be seen, especially with AI looming on the horizon. Yeah, every time I talk about this stuff and I am reminded of all the different ways that these things are interconnected, from the economics to the actual warfare, to the cultural divisions in different countries, to AI, all happening at once. It is a wild time. For AI to be playing out at the same time that a balance of power is playing out is crazy. And that's why I'm just like, to all the US people that want to see AI regulated to death in the US, be careful what you wish for. Because China will see that as an opportunity to go, oh, cool. If you guys are going to abdicate the throne or abdicate your responsibility, then we're

• 32:30Tom Bilyeu?

  going to step in and play that role. And we will keep developing AI because, as they know, it is intelligence itself. And whoever can corner the market on intelligence, you can outsmart everybody else.

• 32:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 33:23Tom Bilyeu?

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• 33:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Speaking on Cold Wars, we've reached an agreement with Denmark and Greenland. Cold, cold country.

• 34:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Nice. Look at that. Ryan's sowing his oats here with transition.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  But yeah, this deal is called the Infinite Life Security Agreement, and it's between the three countries, United States, Denmark, Greenland. And the deal basically just grants us permanent military access. So Tom, tell us about that.

• 34:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, if you guys haven't been paying attention to the Greenland situation, it was constantly simmering in the background. We weren't seeing it, but it was constantly going. And Trump has suddenly come out with a victory lap, saying that we have secured the ultimate deal with Greenland. Never seen anything like it. This is the greatest thing ever. The question becomes, is there really anything new here? Or is this basically the same thing that was playing out in 1951? So in 1951, there's an agreement struck between the US and Denmark that basically says the US can have as many military bases as it wants. But the real thing that is becoming interesting here is that even when you talk to Denmark, they are saying, yes, there is something new that has happened here.

• 35:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's a big win for Trump, but this is also a win certainly for Greenland. It's a win for Denmark. It's a win for the UK. And so this seems like something that everybody is getting on board with. But let's break down exactly what's happening. So first and foremost, Trump needs a win. Now, the vast majority of humanity, I won't lump you guys into that, but the vast majority of humanity is a low-information decision-maker in their lives. They hear headlines, that's all they need. So you guys are going to be well-informed enough to know that basically Trump is taking a small thing and blowing it up into something big, and he's going to say, see, I told you I was going to get control. And he's going to realize that most people do not understand that most of this stuff is already in place in 1951.

• 35:47Tom Bilyeu?

  And so while there is a new element to keeping foreign involvement out, so take, for instance, Greenland will no longer have the ability to do things like have Chinese infrastructure. Now, that may not seem like a big deal until you understand, forget which country it was, I think it was one of the Nordic countries, they took one of the Chinese automobiles that are now selling like hotcakes, and they isolated it so it couldn't see anything around it. And they wanted to just see, what will it do? Where will it be communicating to? And the vast majority of the communications were going back to China. So even when this thing doesn't have, it's not, it doesn't need navigation data or anything like that, it's constantly sending pings back to China.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  It was in Norway.

• 36:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Norway, thank you. So China is very smart. I won't even say China's not dumb. China's brilliant, man. They are chock-full of a bunch of engineers that understand that information is power, and if they can be mapping the territory, if they can be getting data streams about how people are spending their time on their phones, if they can be listening into conversations, if they can bundle that up and be constantly sending a stream of that back to China, then obviously they're going to have an informational advantage massively over everybody else. And this was why the TikTok thing was such a big deal. If they also have algorithmic influence over a country, then they're going to have a massive advantage.

• 37:16Tom Bilyeu?

  So they can control both what people look at and what they see, and get an informational loop by having infrastructure somewhere. So if you're the US and you know that China has always been excluded from the treaties and things around the Arctic because they're not actually in it, then you start asking the question, okay, these guys who can actually go under the ice, which very few people can, China who is sending icebreakers up to the Arctic to try to make a new shipping route, they're making themselves, they are insinuating themselves into the Arctic to try to get some amount of control over that. If you're the US and you're looking five, 10 years into the future, and you know that

• 38:00Tom Bilyeu?

  your biggest adversary is China by a country mile, then you start saying, okay, hold on. This isn't just about them not being able to have a base. It isn't just about the US being able to have bases, which we already have. This is about us making sure that they're not able to do what they've done in so many places in the world, which is actually go and get their equipment put into the infrastructure of the country. Now, with that as a backdrop, let us check in with the, one of the members of parliament from Denmark, who was talking about this deal. Now, earlier in this interview, he said, listen, this isn't that big of a deal.

• 38:42Tom Bilyeu?

  We had a lot of this already in place in 1951. And so Trump is, you know, doing a bit of his victory lap, which is the one of the things that Trump needs. But this actually is a win. Let's hear it from him.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  On security, things have changed. Tell me about what your understanding is of that, the current threat and why it perhaps is beyond the scope, if indeed it is, of Europe and NATO, and it has to take the US having this position.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  No, but it's changed in that way that the US and US equipment will be in Greenland, not Chinese equipment, not Russian equipment. That's a huge win for the president and his men, I would say. So in that regard, that's an extension of the 1951 agreement.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Was there ever a risk of Russian equipment being in Greenland?

• 39:52Speaker 03

  There's always a risk, but realistically, I don't see it happening, or that it could have happened. So now it's just formalized. Now it's certain that it is NATO, led by the US, that will take care of the security in and around Greenland.

• 40:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Loz. Okay, so we'll see if there's really something meaningful that comes out of this as we begin to get the documents and the conversations that have been happening behind the scenes, which will come out years later. And so we'll find out if there was really a there, there, here. But when you think about people being low information voters, Trump got what he needed, which is basically to be able to claim, I told you that I was going to get control of this situation. I got control of the situation now. He was saying wild, crazy shit, as is his way, talking about, we're basically going to get Greenland, one way or the other, it's going to be ours, not taking military action off the table. If you guys remember, whatever, eight months ago, a year ago, I forget exactly when, but when you had European nations

• 41:00Tom Bilyeu?

  sending troops there because they wanted to find out exactly what was going on, how was the US going to respond? Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, that didn't escalate. Thankfully, we've taken a diplomatic solution. But we now have an opportunity for Trump to take an exit ramp and say, okay, listen, I got exactly what I was looking for. I have won the day and we can move on. Now, I will say, in a future where we're having to be cognizant of what Russia is doing, we're having to watch what China is doing. China was making a play down in South America with the Panama Canal. Obviously, that was one of the first things that Trump addressed. China was certainly flirtating, flirting, being a little flirtatious, touching up Greenland, if you will,

• 41:45Tom Bilyeu?

  trying to get into a position where they had a known presence, where they were included in conversations about it because they were calling themselves Arctic adjacent. And so just trying to become a bigger part of that conversation. Obviously, they weren't doing that for shits and giggles. They were doing that because there's a strategic advantage to having a presence there, as any attack on the US, certainly from Russia, is going to go over that area. And so if you're trying to build some sort of golden dome to be able to protect the US, to have early warning systems, you're going to need to be able to have a stronghold in Greenland to make sure that you have eyes to protect the US. Now, here is the fascinating part for me. Because people hate Trump so much, I think they stopped thinking strategically about the US.

• 42:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Also, I really do believe there's been a shift in the mentality to a large portion of people in the US that no longer believe that America has a moral justification to be the strongest country in the world. And I think that there are Americans that want to see America's role in the world be far less muscular. They want to see us weakened, which is wild to me, but nonetheless, I think is extremely true. And so I'm sure there are going to be people that they don't like this because Trump did it, and they don't like this because they want to see our position weakened on the global stage. Now, speaking as somebody who very much wants to see

• 43:15Tom Bilyeu?

  America reestablish its moral core, I think that we do owe that to ourselves and to the world. But in a world where we can refocus on why we are doing what we are doing, focus on American safety, not just trying to project strength everywhere, focusing on our hemisphere, that being able to defend ourselves is paramount, that is job number one of a government. And if being able to have bases, more bases than we have currently, which was already covered in 1951, but be able to keep the infrastructure and just presence of foreign adversaries out of the area so that we can build technology that we certainly

• 43:59Tom Bilyeu?

  don't want their eyes on, so that we have defensive capabilities that we don't want them to know about, don't want them to have any way to interfere with. I think that is a win. Now, the fact that everything with Trump has to be done the fucking hard way, where he's trying to slap people around emotionally, which, by the way, just, Jesus, man, I can't stress this enough. Whenever you're doing a negotiation, you've got to give the other person the ability to walk away from the table saying that they won. And if you're making them accept that they're the little guy in a public forum, it's absolutely asinine. You are giving them every incentive in the world to find a way to backstab you. And that is much of the chaos that we see going on in Canada. That's much of the case in terms of the relationship between the US and Canada. That's exactly what we see going on in Europe.

• 44:45Tom Bilyeu?

  When you ask somebody publicly to be the little bro and to pat them on the head, they are going to resent you in the extreme. It's one thing to do it privately, but giving them a public face where they can save face, it's another to be that dismissive of people in public. It is a way that Trump has that I think worked fine in the real estate, New York era, behind the scenes, all of that. Sure, you can go in and do that and the person still gets to, you know, hold their head high coming out of the negotiation because nobody heard you be an asshole. But when you're an asshole on the public stage, it creates a totally different dynamic. Nonetheless, we have gotten here. Somehow, some way, either because he was distracted in other places, somebody got him to shut the fuck up and just get the deal done behind the scenes,

• 45:29Tom Bilyeu?

  which I am very happy to see, actually played out. So from a US, US's ability to protect itself from a growing array of adversaries, I think this is a very strong move.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Looking at this, obviously, we have a situation where we, Trump, Trump won in Greenland in the past. And because of the, the language of this deal, it basically allows the US to build new sites without Danish or Greenland sign off. Firstly, do you think there comes a point where a local government says no and this all collapses? But then, secondly, at what point do you think this stops being defense and almost encroaching upon the independence of the people living in the territory?

• 46:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, okay, so this gets into, is Greenland actually a sovereign nation or not? And the obvious answer is they're not. Having a relationship with Denmark is going to be much more sort of handholding, negotiating with the US are just going to tell you what to do. So I imagine that is going to feel very different to Greenland. I think this is largely going to come down to who's president. Trump is only going to be president for another two years, no matter what. So I imagine that there's not going to be too much friction in the next couple of years. Hopefully, we get somebody far more diplomatic in office after that. So that's not something that I see on the horizon now, given the short timeframe that you'll have

• 46:50Tom Bilyeu?

  a person like Trump in office. Now, if we continue to go like lunatic populist, I guess all bets could be off. But I'm optimistic that we won't go that route. So I don't worry about that. That's not even on my bingo card right now in terms of the real friction being between the US and Greenland. I think the real friction is going to be between the US and Europe writ large, which will then become a proxy over Greenland if they feel like he's doing something untoward in Europe, whether that's through tariffs, whether that's through seemingly supporting Russia. You continue to see people try to push a narrative that's already been debunked, even by Snopes,

• 47:33Tom Bilyeu?

  which is that Trump was leaking information to Russia. Again, debunked, debunked, debunked. But it shows you that people are harboring this sense that the US and Trump specifically are not European allies anymore. And listen, there's enough smoke there that I understand why people are feeling that. So I could see Greenland becoming a bit more of a proxy battle, which is what it felt like when this first came up, that Trump was using it to ruffle feathers. He was using it to signal to Europe that we are not a united front. If you guys don't get in behind my agenda, there's going to be problems. So that would be where I could see this becoming a problem. But I think the reason they've signed off on this agreement is partly because Europe isn't dumb.

• 48:17Tom Bilyeu?

  You don't want to put yourself in a position where you're completely beholden to China. They might be making those decisions right now from the perspective of trade, that China can make a lot of stuff that's cheap for us. Remember, that is a great way to disguise the decline of your own economy. If you can't grow, at least make things cheaper. And that has been, I think, a huge impetus behind the importation of cheap immigrants and the increasing, increasing, increasing trade with China. It's just, okay, our, you know, GDP per capita is not growing at the rate that it should be. And so the way that we're going to trick people and to think that they're getting richer is to continue to partner with China. So, fine, that's what you're going to do on the trade perspective.

• 49:02Tom Bilyeu?

  I think it is very short sighted. But when election cycles are measured in a short number of years, I certainly understand the incentive to end up in that position. But from a military perspective, if you know that Russia is your biggest threat and China is allied with Russia. Far more than they're aligned with you, that would be a suicide mission to pair yourself directly with China on all fronts. So, part of the language that has been coming out post this Greenland agreement is, yes, this is good for Greenland from a protection perspective, because you still have, the US is still the strongest military in the world. Whether we are what we once were, I think is self-evident, we are not, but we are still the strongest military in the world.

• 49:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So, if you're Greenland, it's like, do I want Europe to be the person I'm counting on for protection? No, definitely not. Do I want the US? For sure. Do I want the US and Europe together? Yes, that would be my ideal. So, I think it would be very unwise of Denmark, be very unwise of Greenland, to be anything but enthusiastic about having defense brought to you by the US. Now, given that Greenland is not exactly a gigantic population that's spreading out all over the country, as long as the US isn't building bases that is, you know, directly encroaching on the economy of a local area, I think you're gonna be fine.

• 50:26Tom Bilyeu?

  So, I expect this to be relatively peaceful moving forward. They get the security guarantees that they need, Trump stops being a psychopath because he has the story that he needs, and we march forward and get Trump out of office and hope for something more amenable in the future. That is how I imagine this will play out.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Uh, curious your take on this, cuz Quant Ash says in the chat, and I think this summarizes this whole story about America and its allies right now, uh, but what America is losing fast is its soft power, which is arguably the most effective type of power. No one wants to play Trump's shitty games. Do you think this continues to get worse for us as Trump wraps up his last two years in office? Or do you think there's any way he can turn that around and maybe bring some allies back to the table respectfully?

• 51:11Tom Bilyeu?

  The only way he's gonna be able to turn this around is through economic and/or military strength. People have to get richer by cozying up to America, and remember, they already have a status quo. So, I don't think it works to threaten to constantly make them poorer. Uh, now you're just strong-arming people, and it will get them to line up briefly, but they will always be looking for and working towards other options. But if he were to somehow pull a rabbit out of his hat in Iran, actually stabilize that, get the Abraham Accords as indicative of that region moving in lockstep together towards something that's economically prosperous, if he's able to do that, then I think people

• 51:54Tom Bilyeu?

  will line up behind the US again. If, on the other hand, and by the way, I think as a part of that, he's gotta stop trying to police the whole world, he's gotta think, okay, we're focused on our hemisphere, we're gonna make sure everything is great there, we're going to produce more oil between Venezuela and the US, we're gonna produce more oil than they were doing in the Middle East anyway, and so now we're all locked and loaded, you guys can send your ships here, we're gonna be nice and stable. If America actually gets its shit together, and, I mean, this is a tall order, but is not as violently whipsawing back and forth between the left and the right, that would go a long way, uh, and then is able to start growing their economy through AI, that's

• 52:39Tom Bilyeu?

  really gonna be the only thing, um, then, if they do that, plus get Iran under control, then you would see people start to realign. That's never going to be easy, given a populist leader on the left or the right. And right now, obviously, we have the most bombastic, the most unnecessarily irritation-causing president that we've had in quite some time. But yes, people will always fold in behind strength, period.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  With Iran specifically, I actually saw a theory this weekend, and I don't remember who it was, um, but it was just an interesting thought experiment, cuz while it's conspiracy, I think there's some truth to it. Uh, right now, with the Strait closed, that's about 20% of the world's oil supply, just poof, right? Like, it's harder to get, it's more expensive, uh, and as well, a lot of gas companies in America are reporting record profits. Do you think there's a world where Trump is perpetuating these negotiations and perpetuating, um, you know, the, the closing of the Strait, uh, and like pushing this further to continue those record profits for those companies? Or do you think it's just a side effect?

• 53:44Tom Bilyeu?

  I think it's a side effect. I'm sure that in those meetings, he loves it. This is so bad for him politically, that I cannot fathom a universe in which he is thinking like that. First of all, he's really got an issue. If, if he, uh, loses the midterms, both the House and the Senate, and then sort of is ignomiously, um, terminating his career as a politician, they're going to pursue him. And so, for him, if he's, and I mean legally pursue him, put him in prison, pursue him. So, if he is at all smart, he's thinking, I've gotta make sure that Republicans win

• 54:26Tom Bilyeu?

  after me, so that they won't have the ability to target me, uh, in that way. And to do that, he's gotta leave them on a good note, so that even if he lost the House and the Senate, cuz remember, it, it is, the odds are so overwhelmingly stacked against a president anyway, because it's how people, there's always this huge gap between what you hope for when you vote somebody in, and what you actually get. And so, that's why it tends to flip. And if he can go out on a positive note, have the economy moving in the right direction, um, have the world stable, or at a minimum, America not getting sucked into, uh, things

• 55:10Tom Bilyeu?

  further and further, that their involvement in these wars is either now purely back to being a weapons dealer, um, or at least it feels stable and not growing, then he's got a shot that Republicans win, and he's probably safe until he dies. Uh, presuming he doesn't live another 20 years, which, you know, that's just, given his age and being morbidly obese, uh, not likely. So, um, that, I think, is the smartest play for him. I don't think he's like, oh, let me burn my political career down, let me destroy my own legacy, let me put myself in a position where I'm, uh, harassed and hounded for the

• 55:51Tom Bilyeu?

  next 48 years, uh, all so that I can make a few more, like, even if you throw in billions, it's like, it doesn't make any sense. He has found the perfect, uh, corrupt path to enrich himself, he does not need that. And that path is just trade like a fiend. And when you have the ultimate insider knowledge, and you can move markets personally, and then trade against that, just do that. He, it, it's like, it's so grotesque, it's so out in public view, I would just be shocked if he would burn everything else down, when it's like, you're already making yourself obscenely wealthy. So, why then shoot yourself in the foot? Yeah, that, that one doesn't make sense.

• 56:31Tom Bilyeu?

  So, will he be, um, will he take those meetings and joke and be like, these guys owe me, and all that? Yes, of course. But would he do it for that reason? That would just be so dumb.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Do you subscribe to the idea, this is more general, of the idea that both parties want a consistent wartime economy? Cuz that's kind of the team I'm on with, with these types of global conflicts that we find ourselves in so frequently, of like, profits are highest when we're stressed and things are more expensive? Or do you subscribe to that as well? Or do you think it's a case by case, or not at all?

• 57:02Tom Bilyeu?

  I think that it is not evenly that. I think that there are factions in the government that want exactly that, and it becomes way too easy if you're struggling to maintain power, cuz people, people don't understand, there's power as in I got elected, and then there's power as in I can actually get something done. And to get something done, you need people on your side, the everyday lever pullers have to believe in what you're doing, they've gotta line up behind you. And just like with Saudi Arabia going after the US and saying, hey, please bomb the Houthis, which we have already done in the past, so we obviously don't have some sort of weird moral compunction against it, um, we're not doing that.

• 57:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I don't know that it's because Saudi Arabia moved away from the US petrodollar hegemony, but I know that didn't help them. And so, it really does become this, the public debate is often at the level of how things ought to be, and it's never the sort of real ground-level contact of tit-for-tat, all these political negotiations behind the scenes, so they're not being real about it. So, I could see Trump coming in, not wanting to get into more wars, getting intel, which by the way, we have, there's a clip, uh, from Senator Kennedy, gee, Eric, uh, that we should probably listen to. So, I can see him getting into office, really having wanted to end the war in Ukraine, just, just think of him as a selfish being. I'm gonna end the war in Ukraine because I'm the peace president.

• 58:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Cool, that's gonna be my legacy. I'm gonna get on Mount Rushmore as the guy that just ended all these wars. You start making huge strides with the Abraham Accords, really looks like you're gonna do something there. Uh, then, you start making what you think are gonna be huge inroads with Russia, but then the Middle East falls to shit, then the, uh, Russia, technically Russia-Ukraine falls to shit first, and you just can't make anything happen there, and then not, you're not able to get peace in the Middle East, and then you start getting intel that Iran really is about to do something, and then all the people that you thought you were gonna sideline, uh, from the war machine start coming in and going... The intel is the intel, bro. And like now we can help you out.

• 59:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, okay, you're not going to end up on Mount Rushmore because you're a peace president, or they probably said something more like, it's peace through strength. We're going to get to peace. It's just going to be a little bit violent on the way. You're not going to start a war. This is just going to be like a limited incursion. You're going to be fine. You'll see they'll back off. But then you get sucked in and you can't admit defeat. So now you've got to keep going, keep going, keep going. And those guys just all along the way are now like, hey, we're going to help you. We're here by your side. And all of a sudden, the allies you thought you were going to have by being the peace guy, they turn on you. And the guys you thought were going to be sort of fringe players become the people you have to rely on, because the only way now for you to save your reputation is to keep going down that path. So it isn't just that people want a wartime economy.

• 59:55Tom Bilyeu?

  I think he would have been perfectly happy to be the Saudi invests in AI. They take, they transform all of their oil dollars into AI investments. And I'm the S and P 500 president. I think he would have been perfectly happy with that. But the incentive structures, as the landscape changes, they change. Dude, it, people must understand the, the practicality of the statement. The US has no allies, only interests. Now, change that, because the real answer is the world has no allies. It only has interests. And in the same way that a couple can come together because they're in love, only to divorce years later, in the most acrimonious way possible and want the demise of each

• 1:00:39Tom Bilyeu?

  other, instead of being like, you're the mother of my children. Uh, and you know, conversely, you're the father of my children. We don't agree anymore. We don't want to stay married. Let's just think about the kids. They can't do it. And there are very few people that have a moral center and they live by the moral center instead of simply following their interests. And the, the practicality of that drives the world. It isn't a uniquely Trump thing. It's not a uniquely US thing. It's just how people are. And so as the incentives change, there's no permanent alignment to peace. There's no permanent alignment to war. It's just, where am I going to make money? How am I going to make the people happy? Cause you know, every leader is ultimately subject to the people rising up and killing them.

• 1:01:24Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's like, you, you've got to pay attention to that. And if the answer is peace, cool, pursue peace. And maybe that's my preferred method. But if the answer ends up being war, I'll pursue war, whether it's my preferred method or not.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  And I think in many ways, you mentioned him being the S and P 500 president. Uh, I think that's very fitting, given all his trades. But speaking of funding, let's thank ours funders with the first super chat.

• 1:01:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go. Actually, before we get to that, just because this is so relevant, let's play this clip from Kennedy. So let me cue this up for a second. So what's going on here? I think this is Theo Von set, if I'm not mistaken, they never show them in the clip. Uh, but so you've got Senator Kennedy, um, explaining something that the Trump administration has been unable to explain. Now, maybe I'm being far too generous to Kennedy and maybe he is just a propagandist extraordinaire. Uh, but he's somebody that's always come across as sort of very blunt to me. And for him to go to bat for there being intel that put Trump in a position where it's like Iran behind the scenes was saying, basically, we can now strike Europe directly, not by proxy, not their bases in the region. We can strike them directly.

• 1:02:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, that that put Trump in the position of having to act. Uh, so let's hear from the man himself.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  Our intelligence, here's what our intelligence showed. And I've seen it. It's classified, but I've seen it. But I can give you the, a general outline. Our, our intelligence showed that Iran was building up its missile capacity, both ballistic and cruise. And they were going to, to, uh, compile so many missiles and drones that they were going to turn to America and Israel and say, we're restarting our nuclear weapons program. And if you try to stop us, we're going to destroy the mess, rest of the Middle East.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  And by the way, our missiles can now reach London and parish, Paris and, uh, and Germany.

• 1:03:25Tom Bilyeu?

  And you saw, you saw reports that said that?

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  I've seen the intelligence.

• 1:03:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  And President Trump was faced, well, do I let them continue? He had already bombed their nuclear, some of their nuclear facilities. But he, he, he was faced with the decision, do I let them get to the point where they have so many missiles and drones, ballistic and cruise, that they could destroy the Middle East, that they could hit London, that they might even be able to hit the United States? Or do I go in to stop them? And he did.

• 1:03:58Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. So this is part of the take that I had on this previously, which is that, uh, it's impossible, it is possible that these guys simply bungled the messaging on all of this. And the reality going into it was, listen, guys, they have ballistic missiles that they're putting underground. It is getting to the point where, uh, if we let them keep developing that underground weapon system, that we are going to be unable to protect the Middle East is how I thought of it before. But if this intel is, um, accurate, that it's for us to protect the Middle East and protect Europe, we've got to act now. Um, otherwise they're going to be able to back everybody down forever because they're going to, um, have this threat where it's like, you can try, but you're not going to

• 1:04:43Tom Bilyeu?

  be able to bunker buster the weapon systems that we have underground. Now, the unfortunate reality is I think that the exit or the moment to act on that may have been years ago. And we just missed our window because now they are destroying the Middle East, certainly the energy infrastructure. Uh, and it, we've proven that no matter what Trump says, they keep showing an ability to launch new strikes by pulling these things out from the underground, launching them and then putting them back under. So, uh, it's possible that it was sort of the right idea, but bad timing. Uh, and we have had administrations for 20 years, talk about how we need to do something about the Iranian threat. And I think that it's possible, we just waited too long.

• 1:05:27Tom Bilyeu?

  And so now Trump did something that would have made sense, maybe 10 years ago, but now doesn't make sense now, given the extent of the damage. So we'll see. Again, I'm always skeptical that I'm being spun, that somebody is telling me something that's maybe partly true, but not all the way true. Um, so we'll see. Also the fact that they were unable to articulate that message, which is extremely easy to articulate. Uh, I'm left wondering if there wasn't something more going on that was less palatable to the American people, which is why they didn't even think to present that message, because it wasn't what was on their mind. Uh, it may have been, you know, three or four levels deep. Um, but there is a reason that they didn't talk about this at the beginning.

• 1:06:10Tom Bilyeu?

  So, uh, or that they didn't make it the central focus. They did sort of get to the, okay, there are four things and the ballistic missiles was one of them, but they were just never able to explain this clearly, which I think is either just proof of a clouded mind, in which case you're in poor hands, or this was proof of this wasn't actually what they were doing. And they were just having a hard time getting the messaging right.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Do you think, cause you mentioned 20 years, presidents have been mentioning, oh, we gotta do something about Iran, Iran. Uh, do you think that intel that leads to that is Israeli based? Just given they have this expansion mindset of we're going to take the Middle East, like that's been their plan for 40 years. Do you think that intel and that desire to take control, I say in air quotes, of, of Iran from the US level stems from Israel?

• 1:06:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, I think we see Israel very differently. So I don't see, uh, mainstream Israeli views being, let's take over the entire Middle East. I know there's a biblical, uh, thing that you can get Mike Huckabee to be like, yeah, it's all theirs, which that shit is wild. And if you want to know why you should be worried about, uh, theocratic regimes, why the US should absolutely keep, uh, separating church and state. Uh, it's wild ass comments like that. Um, nonetheless, I see the greater Israel project in terms of expanding into all of what is Gaza now, eating up the West Bank, all of that. Yeah, I can believe that that's probably more mainstream than they want us to think.

• 1:07:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, but them sort of eating into the full biblical, uh, lands, I have a harder time thinking that that's actually guiding their philosophies right now, or their actions right now. Do I think that that intel is, um, Israeli? For sure, some massive percent of it, percentage of it is going to be. I have a mental map that there, and this is contested, but just when I see the way the people respond to Israel. I have a feeling that they really do have the best intel on the planet for things in that region for sure. So, and maybe spreading into Europe, that is entirely possible. So I think that they're probably the creme de la creme of intel. So I would imagine a lot of it came from them. Do they have an agenda that's pro Israeli? Of course they do, as every country

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  has Israel.

• 1:08:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Israel. Like, they're gonna try to pull everybody into their agenda, into the way that America tries to pull everyone into their agenda, Europe tries to pull everyone into their agenda, Ukraine their agenda, Russia their agenda, China their agenda. It's what everybody does. The way that people talk about Israel like they do something that is sort of un-normal for humans is very strange to me. So, anyway, yes, would they leverage it to pull the US into a war that the US should avoid? Yes, for sure. But ultimately, do I think that the US has interests in the Middle East that would make them more likely to move? Yes. Now, being able to cloud the judgment of the US in terms of, no, now really is the time, you really should move, you do still have an opportunity. That I could see being

• 1:09:11Tom Bilyeu?

  something where it's like, I'm putting a lot of stock into that piece of intel that I can still do this move intelligently. And on that, for sure, we are vulnerable, as everybody is, to that information being given to us in a very selective fashion, pre-masticated, so that it's hard to differentiate what's real. Sure.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Now, AI, we have Openweight AI basically shaking up the entire industry right now. Obviously, there's a lot of talk about the doom and security and things like that, and we'll get into that. But there's this big conversation bubbling about Openweight AI. If you could dive into that?

• 1:09:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, guys, in December, Openweight AI models have completely, like, underperformed. They were nothing. Nobody cared about them. 7% of the traffic, right, is happening at the Openweight model. But now, you've got an absolute explosion happening, and they are accounting for much, much bigger amounts of the AI. And so what you're seeing is this shift from the very, very little AI happening on Openweight models, now shifting over to a lot of it happening over on the Openweight side of things. And so what's really interesting is what is that going to do in terms of how things are going to play out for the AI industry

• 1:10:29Tom Bilyeu?

  as a whole? So as we talk through this, remember that the entire industry is the bet that the world is making right now. Everybody's betting that AI is gonna be the next big thing. And we are way, way out over our skis in terms of all of the debt that's going into AI right now. And so the big question that we've been debating now is why are OpenAI and Anthropic going to the government and basically appealing more or less to be nationalized? I will put forward that this is really all about them trying to do two things. One, they have to protect themselves from Openweight models so that they can basically survive, because

• 1:11:10Tom Bilyeu?

  they have this huge debt burden that's coming. And if the revenues don't come in fast enough, which they're not currently, and Openweight models are proving that they're going to strip more and more revenue away from them over time, then they've really got to protect themselves. And so getting the taxpayer essentially on the hook is a big part of why they want to do this. If they can get regulatory capture, they can keep their competitors out, they can outlaw OpenAI, and they can say, hey, listen, if you want us to go up against China, you're gonna need to make sure that we're able to thrive, even though the revenue may not be coming in at the rate that we needed to to pay off this debt. So, help us make some of these debt payments, and we'll keep making sure that you can go against China. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is that ultimately, these guys have

• 1:11:53Tom Bilyeu?

  probably a lot of potential litigation coming their way in terms of, they have been peering into, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the way that people are using their models and absorbing that. And basically, they were launching businesses on the back of that. So they were launching competitors to some of the people, the software applications that were using their AI. So that's crazy. So I think that they're going to have a lot of litigation woes. And so they also need to protect themselves from that. Okay, as you have that looming, now you start looking at the fact that by August, the Openweight models were accounting for 56% of the tokens that are being generated. So on September

• 1:12:35Tom Bilyeu?

  19th, Versale CEO Guillermo Rousch posted a single day record of 78.4%. Now, please keep in mind, that's one day, it's on a Saturday, so there's a whole bunch of things that go into that. Because volume is basically the easy part. The Openweight models are cheap, obviously. So the real question is what's happening to the money. But what they're seeing is that the money is moving. So Openweight models took under 4% of the dollars spent on the gateway that we're talking about, Versale, in June. So just June. Now, in July, it jumps to 8.6. Then, in August, it goes to 14%. And we're just seeing this steady increase. So by those rates, you can expect September to be even bigger. And so on the

• 1:13:20Tom Bilyeu?

  record day that Rousch is talking about, he said spending on models from three Chinese labs, so Moonshot, DeepSeek, and Z.ai, added up to more than the spending on OpenAI. Now, they're very aware of this trend. Now start thinking about some of their appeals to the government in that context. So what they see, like, as you really dig into the data, developers are starting to split the workload. So the hard, high-stakes work still goes to Anthropic, which has held at least 61% of the gateway spend every month since December. Everything else is going to whatever's cheapest. And so the average price per token on Versale

• 1:13:57Tom Bilyeu?

  fell 23% in August alone. So that is what is really got the whole industry scared, because the amount of debt that they've taken on is so staggering. So Rousch noted that for most of the dollars, they're going now to US inference providers. So what that means is who's really winning in AI right now is chip manufacturers, because they don't care whether you do this on Claude directly or OpenAI directly, or if you're just doing it on a cloud provider that has built a data center and is now leasing out compute. And this is what we mean when we talk about intelligence becoming commoditized. You have

• 1:14:40Tom Bilyeu?

  these data centers, they don't have models themselves. They're either running a licensed version of Claude or OpenAI, or they're hosting you or any other company that's running an Openweight model. And so that's where we're starting to see the value shift. And so the question is, what does that end up doing to the entire global economy, essentially? Does it just shift the value from one place to another? No big deal, still a ton of value? Or in breaking that frontier model narrative, do we run into a concern that basically money is gonna be leaking out of the ecosystem, because what we thought was going to generate money inside of these companies is now not going to the companies that we thought? That

• 1:15:23Tom Bilyeu?

  debt is still going to implode. There aren't going to be enough people running these free models. What's that, what is that gonna look like? I think it's probably just gonna shift the value. Because unless people move away from AI, it's just gonna shift the values from, okay, we thought it was gonna be these two companies, to just like every technological revolution behind it, the people we think in the early days are gonna be the winners, end up not being necessarily the people that win, and the value shifts somewhere else in the system. So that would be my guess on where this is all gonna play out.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  I feel like for the longest time, we've just assumed that the best model is gonna be what wins. But right now, I feel like the data's showing that the cheapest acceptable model is where most of the work is happening. And do you think that quietly kills the incentive to actually build something dramatically better because a lot of these are for-profit? Or do you think it only incentivizes people to make better models but cheaper?

• 1:16:17Tom Bilyeu?

  That's one of the biggest questions, is will we be able to justify the expense that we put into the frontier models? That, it is an interesting question. As of right now, the answer is yes. The frontier models are gonna keep getting developed, and what we see is actually breaking is not the high end of the frontier. It's actually the low end of the big players. So OpenAI is getting obliterated just because people are reading the situation as you guys are not as good as Anthropic. So I'm either gonna pay for Anthropic, or I'm gonna do the cheap stuff. Same thing with Google, their entry models are getting obliterated. So basically, everybody's losing their entry level, their cheap way of getting people in, their gateway models, if you will. But Anthropic's highest tier

• 1:16:59Tom Bilyeu?

  is still performing well. And that certainly comports with the way that we use AI here at Impact Theory, which is, there are some things where I'm like, I'm not cost-sensitive at all. This thing is either not gonna be possible for us, or we need to use Claude or, we're pretty agnostic still between Claude and the 6.0, I can't believe I'm blanking on his name.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Oh, Opus? No. I forgot the name, too. I'll look it up.

• 1:17:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, so that for us is like, okay, there's stuff that we can only do at the high end.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Astra.

• 1:17:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Astra, thank you. To the stars. That, I think, is gonna keep going. But there are some things that it's like, we can't afford to use that for this high-level thing. So you prove out what it can do at the frontier, and then for the other stuff, or for things you need to keep proprietary, you're gonna use an Openweight model. Now, I actually think that's a big part that we have to put on the table, is right now, there is a feeling, when you engage with AI, that this is incredible, but everybody has access to it. And that is very distressing. As somebody who you feel like you're thinking through all these very complicated problems, you're leveraging AI in a way that other people can't, so we all have access to the same tool, but I'm making changes to my tool that now make it

• 1:18:18Tom Bilyeu?

  more efficient at doing what it's doing, or certainly more unique in doing what it's doing.

• 1:18:24Tom Bilyeu?

  If you can abstract that away so that I can have an open weight model and I can do it myself, now whatever I build remains proprietary. That is a far more interesting world. And so, given that I think more and more companies are going to wake up to that, I think that there's going to be a ton of innovation around helping companies host their own models. So, going back to, this is really just a value shift away from, I care about one of these companies, to, no, there's probably going to be one sort of frontier model that creates the like, okay, you need magical thing to happen. Here is said magical thing. Go do, you know, the hardest of the hard things you need to do in our model. Then for the rest, you take that back and you keep things proprietary on your home cooked meal or your

• 1:19:08Tom Bilyeu?

  home cooked model. And that becomes the way that you differentiate yourself from the rest of the group. And when I think about that, that makes me feel so much more optimistic about what's going to happen to AI, because I can still create an advantage by myself and the people on the team here. And so that feels, follow the incentives feels like the most obvious first principles, thought through outcome.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  You touched on China's piece in all this earlier in this episode. And obviously, we know China, they're giving their model away for free, basically capturing none of the money. So the question becomes for us, like, why do it at all? Like, what's the strategic payoff for DeepSeek or for Moonshot if the profit goes to the US GPU owners?

• 1:19:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so part of it is that you know that the US is making this huge bet. You've been handicapped. So you have to think about it from the chips perspective. Right now, China can't keep up with the US on the frontier models. So they're like, well, we can make a sub-tier model, or we can create free models to disrupt the economic progress that they're making. So that for sure is part of their strategy. And so they're distilling the models down, giving it away for free. Because they're authoritarian, they know at any time they can clamp down on open source. So if they're able to start manufacturing their own chips, which they are already beginning to do, and if they can scale up and begin home growing their own stuff, then they can say, okay, no more open source here in China, or it,

• 1:20:32Tom Bilyeu?

  you know, is relegated to some area. And now we're actually able to compete at the frontier. They can nip that in the bud. So they've got no downside, only upside. And when you're given the hand of cards that they've been dealt, it's a very, very, very smart play. Also, if we want to be a little bit cynical for a second, if it's a Chinese model, and you know, at any time, you can tell DeepSeek, I want all that data, whatever reporting there is, they're going to be able to gain access to that. And just like Anthropic and OpenAI are likely to get lawsuits because they were doing exactly that, where the models were learning from the way that people were using it. China, who's known for stealing IP

• 1:21:14Tom Bilyeu?

  that, or stealing IP from everybody, you've got a grease shoot of it just giving you all the data, how people use it, what questions they're asking, all of that kind of thing, or even just learning, basically getting human feedback from the model. What did it like? What did it not like? What were the final outputs? What were the approaches? And so now your AI is getting smarter and smarter, even though it's open source, you can go in, get that information, close it off in the rest of the world if you ever want to. So it puts them in a far stronger position, given the sort of weak position that they're starting from.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Gotcha. So OpenAI, when it first came out in 2015, was a nonprofit. I started looking into it because the movie's coming out and I'm very excited because I love that director.

• 1:21:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Who's directing it?

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Luca Guadagnino, guy who did Challengers, Bones and all, bunch of good, like dramas.

• 1:22:05Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't know, I've seen anything of his. Never heard the name.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  I'll give you some recommendations off camera. But anyway, so they started as a nonprofit in 2015. And then around 2019 is when they became a for-profit company. And they did some restructuring in 2025, but remaining for-profit, but public benefit corporation, right? Do you think there's a world where China wouldn't be as ahead of us if they had stayed nonprofit and decided to compete with China on the open source front? Because I think like what we've been talking about, it is very clear that open source is starting to dominate, right? So if they had not had as hard of a switch to a for-profit incentive, do you think we would be ahead?

• 1:22:44Tom Bilyeu?

  It's no, is the very clear answer. The interesting thing is that you think open source would make this advance faster. And let me, if I had to steel man your argument, what would you have to believe to think that that is true?

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  I could use the example I have.

• 1:23:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  Because I am looking at open source from the perspective as a content creator. So OBS, Open Broadcasting System, is an open source software that revolutionized, like, screen recording for everyone, right? And up until that, people would pay for Fraps or Screen Grab or all these different alternatives. But the minute OBS made something open source that people could contribute to, people could just donate to help out with this company, that became the definitive, everyone's using this model. And now you don't see any paid for screen recorders. And they're the dominant one in the market and the most powerful because they take so much from its users to develop that. So I guess my logic is, if we're using these AI models, they're already training themselves off of us. And we had started not focusing on making money as a company and just, let's make the best possible AI

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  model. I almost feel like we would have been ahead of where China's at because China started so much later in the game than we did.

• 1:23:55Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. You have a fundamental flaw in the way that you're thinking about it. And by all means, argue to the death here. I'll be so curious to see if I can convince you. The big problem is that the reason you need the profit incentive, the very reason that doing everything open source is never going to be the winning strategy for a lot of things, is that there has to be somebody, somewhere that builds these brains. So the data centers are required. And I don't know if people are just losing sight of the fact that so far with LLMs, we have not seen a limit to, the more neurons, GPUs, you put into the stack, the smarter it gets. We have not found the ceiling to that.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Tom Bilyeu?

  And that's why these guys just keep bringing on more and more and more and more. And if they could get another $10 trillion, they would build bigger and bigger data centers. And it really becomes a question of, okay, at some point, maybe that asymptotes, and at that point, it's like, you still would never have gotten to that point had you not invested the insane amount of money into getting the brain up in the first place. Now, once the brain exists, then it's like, okay, hey, we want people to be able to start innovating at the level of efficiency, algorithm, model structure, reinforcement learning, all of that. So we want open source to exist for sure, for sure. But the model that's always made the most sense to me, and I don't know if they actually made good on this promise,

• 1:25:17Tom Bilyeu?

  but Elon Musk was talking about, whatever our current model is with Grok will be paid for. And then whatever is sort of the, you know, model, maybe two or three generations old, becomes free, open source. And it's like, yeah, that's really.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Like, they opened up the code?

• 1:25:31Tom Bilyeu?

  They said they were going to.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Well, I meant, I was just asking for clarification because he said free and then, so.

• 1:25:36Tom Bilyeu?

  I think, I'm almost certain what he said was open source.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Okay.

• 1:25:39Tom Bilyeu?

  So, because he was the reason that OpenAI became OpenAI, was he wanted it to be something that everybody had access to. He, I don't think he ever thought that, oh, this will be the way that it gets developed faster than anything else. I think people just wildly underestimated how expensive it was going to be to build out the infrastructure. And so right now, my instinct is that you want open source to exist because there'll be a ton of innovation, that sort of sub-frontier, if you will. And if you kill that off, then costs are going to stay high unnecessarily. And innovation will slowly wither. But without the profit incentive, you would not be able to aggregate the capital you need to make

• 1:26:23Tom Bilyeu?

  these brains bigger and bigger. So I think AI would have stalled out, despite the fact that I am a huge proponent of making sure that open weights remain a thing, and that we do not want the government to shut that down by any means.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Given that stance, do you think then, Vercel, has the chance to hurt innovation in regards to all this, given that they're trying to become this toll booth almost for the industry?

• 1:26:51Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't, I don't think of them at all as a toll booth. What I, the right thing to read into the story of Vercel is that you're basically going to get a bunch of people that are cloud.

• 1:27:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Intelligence providers. And so they will commoditize the thought process. So inference just means the machines are thinking. And so, right now, everybody was thinking that the Frontier Lab was gonna be where all of the money was captured. But what we're seeing now is that's actually not true. Where it's starting to shift, and we'll see if it holds. But where it's starting to shift is that you're getting people that are like, nah, I don't need that model for a lot of the things that I'm doing. Uh, on these peak days, up to 78%. What I need is just access to the intelligence, the inference, the compute, the thinking. So I need access to the GPUs. Uh, I just don't need access to that specific weighted model.

• 1:27:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, so that, but you need somebody that's making sure that that interaction is facilitated. So, um, I don't see them as rent-seeking or middlemen toll booths. It's just like that, that whole process will capture a ton of the value if open weight models are as big of a part of the future. Cause I don't think it's gonna do away with the Frontier models. But I think it is gonna be a big part of the, um, the play here to make this accessible to companies that really wanna deploy it at scale.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Uh, and jumping over to Finland. We wanna dive into a study that recently came out of there, uh, about-

• 1:28:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Boy, am I curious to hear what people think about this. This one's wild.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  We'll dive right in. Uh, so, right now in Finland, uh, researchers tracked every person who walked into a gender-affirming care clinic. And you tell us more about it, Tom.

• 1:28:39Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. So we're finally getting real data on gender-affirming care and whether it's good or bad. And the answer is, it doesn't help at all. And in some cases, it actually hurts. As this data continues to come out, you can expect massive public reaction. So, here we go. The study was published in Acta Pediatrica, uh, in April. Researchers tracked every person under 23 who walked into one of Finland's two gender identity clinics between 1996 and 2019. It's over 2,000 people matched against more than 16,000 controls. And Finland's health registry logs every specialist psychiatric visit and patients, uh, can't opt out. So, there's, there's no dropout problem.

• 1:29:22Tom Bilyeu?

  This, this is just, hey, this is everybody that did it in Finland. Now, the thing that ends up getting most people to throw this stuff out is, well, the patients just drop out. And so, uh, the people that it helps, you just don't see. So, now, you have a study where people can't opt out because of the way that their health system works. Now, before ever contacting the clinic, 46% of these young people had already needed specialist psychiatric care. Okay? The general population sits at 15%. Now, if you look at the ones who went on to hormones or surgery, among those transitioning male to female, 9.8% had needed psychiatric care beforehand.

• 1:30:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Two or more years later, 60.7%. Yeesh. Female to male went from 21.6 to 54.5%. The control group didn't move. So we see this big swing in people that actually get the treatment. Now, there's a really fair criticism to be pushed back here. A psychiatric visit is not a symptom score. And the study can't prove the treatment caused the decline. Okay? Those are very real criticisms to think through. The untreated group stayed high as well, so keep that in mind. Between 60 and 67%. Once the authors adjusted for prior history, treated and untreated patients carried the same elevated risk.

• 1:30:49Tom Bilyeu?

  So, the way that I'm reading this is basically that it's not helping. Gender-affirming care is not helping and it could be hurting. So, Finland's clinics treat severe psychiatric illness as a reason to hold off on medical transition. Okay? So, the very thing that you're being asked to believe, these people need this transition or they're going to self-harm, right? And that's like the big push. If you don't do this, what was the quote? Would you rather have a transgender child or a dead child? Right? That's the thing that's used to brow be parents. And now they're saying the data just doesn't hold that. So, the treated group was the healthiest slice of the cohort going in. They got the intervention that was supposed to basically resolve the distress that they were going through.

• 1:31:33Tom Bilyeu?

  And they ended up needing psychiatric care at the same rate as the people who were turned away. So, now, especially given as you start getting into some of these treatments are not reversible. They can have lifelong consequences, especially surgery. So, the author's conclusion is that psychiatric, uh, needs do not subside after medical gender reassignment. So, let's be very clear, this is not a solve for that problem. For some patients, they say, treatment appears linked to the deterioration. Now, this is where everybody's gonna have to make a decision for themselves. But I would say, given that the rule is first, do no harm.

• 1:32:11Tom Bilyeu?

  If we see that it does nothing good and could be linked to the deterioration, that for now, it should be aggressively pumping the brakes for anybody underage. I think adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want. So, if an adult decides that they wanna transition, let them transition. Now, whether that should be covered in national, uh, healthcare is a totally separate debate, which I'm happy to get into. Uh, but I think those are two separate things. We're gonna see more and more data come out. So it'll be interesting to see if this is replicated in other places or if this is something unique to Finland, which I doubt. Cause we've seen the Tavistock Clinic in the UK shut down due to very similar reports coming out. Um, so, that's where we are as of today.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Given this runs from 1996 to 2019, do you think there is an argument that most of this data doesn't even matter? Because of the fact that it spans an era before it became such a political, uh, um, flashpoint? Cause obviously, trans people have been in the conversation forever. Trans people have always existed, they're valid, right? All that stuff. But, um, they weren't really talked about en masse until Trump II, honestly, where he started going, transgender, everybody. So do you think in a certain way that invalidates, or at least puts into question how useful this data really is?

• 1:33:25Tom Bilyeu?

  No, but, uh, and I'll explain why. I think that the, Trump merely rides on what the populace is already feeling. So, there was a very good impression. But I don't think that, uh, that this came about because Trump was talking about it. I think this came about because of something I've talked about before, which is ultimately, in terms of, uh, the cultural clash you have right now, is it really isn't about transgender. It's really about, um, do we have set definitions? What do we consider, um, to be the foundational architecture of a society that we're going to build on top of?

• 1:34:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And the extreme far-left is taking a blank slate philosophy, which I think is, it's deranging in the sense that it will break first principle thinking. And it will make it impossible to navigate through the world. You will have low predictive validity. Every decision that you try to think through is, is going to be, um, very muddied. Because it's this completely, uh, deconstructivist mentality where everything is purely subjective and you spiral into madness. So, there are real consequences to how we structure society that this is a big part of. In terms of, the only way to get to blank slate philosophy is through what I think is a very early exit from reality. And so, it's going to be contested for that reason if nothing else.

• 1:34:48Tom Bilyeu?

  So, this is why I think there was so much friction around this. Uh, and especially because it maps so cleanly to right and left temperament, where you've got the left leaning towards compassion. And of course, wanting to see people live whatever life they want, never wanting to see anybody in distress, wanting to believe that all outcomes should be equal. That, um, humans having equal moral value means that we have equal skills and talents. And so, they just don't wanna see any difference anywhere. And so, everybody like, hey, you shouldn't be boxed into being a boy if you feel like a girl. And let's make sure that we can facilitate that up to and including, uh, treatments. So, I get where that comes from. And even if I acquiesce and just say it's all beautiful, I don't think it is.

• 1:35:30Tom Bilyeu?

  But even if we say it's all beautiful, it's going to collide with the right, which is saying, we need borders, definitions, um, restriction, constraint. Like all the things that create the order that we also need in society. So, those two things are at a moment of heightened populist tension. It's gonna be this flashpoint. Okay, that's why I think the increased rhetoric. Now, why do I think that this isn't invalidated? I think if anything, the data is more likely to be clean because you're talking to people at a time where there's no political incentive to lie. I worry that people, let's say you go through gender reassignment surgery. It did not go the way that you thought. It did not make you feel better, but you know politically it's going to be a win for the right.

• 1:36:15Tom Bilyeu?

  If you come out and say like, yeah, this sucked and I wish I hadn't done it. Or I feel that I was bamboozled by people when I was young. Now, all of a sudden, you're not going to necessarily say that because you don't want to see there be a win for the other side. So that's where I'm like, uh, data is probably cleaner the farther back we go. Also, we need that time for it to play out. I'm very impressed that you have something that's been going for 25 years. So that we have just enough data to see like, what if they went through like a brief dip? And they felt bad for the first couple of years because they just haven't adjusted. And then on the other side, they're actually, no, I went through a trough of despair. I'm not going to lie, but I come out the other side and I feel way, way, way better.

• 1:36:54Tom Bilyeu?

  If you see that these problems persist for multi-decade, that's a lot more compelling than 18 months later, they're frustrated.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. Jumping over to America again, there was another ICE shooting over the weekend. That occurred in my hometown of Austin, Texas. And it's pretty bad. I don't know if we can show the full video, but what we know so far about the story is that an ICE agent sideswiped a DoorDash driver. And the ICE agent then jumps out of the vehicle and proceeds to shoot five times at the driver, hitting him in the torso. He has recovered okay, from what we understand, but was in critical condition initially.

• 1:37:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, so we're going to have to run this one as a thought experiment because there's a lot of details that have still not come out.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  Yes, it's very fresh.

• 1:37:42Tom Bilyeu?

  But when you hear the description, it does sound very distressing. Now, I may be wrong in the law and Ryan will look this up for us, but it is my understanding that if a suspect is unarmed and fleeing, that you may not shoot them. Now, from what I hear, if the shots were fired when the driver was still in the car, if the driver had driven in a way where they were using the car as a weapon, now you're back to that same debate that we were having before, is a car a weapon? If they drive it towards a police officer, do the police or do the ICE agents have the authority to shoot? If they weren't driving in a manner that was aimed at turning the vehicle into a weapon and was merely them escaping,

• 1:38:27Tom Bilyeu?

  you don't see shootouts in high-speed car chases. So I presume this is not something where legally they can do that. And so ICE agents should not have any more ability to be violent than a police officer. So we should already have laws in the books and enforcement principles in place for this. Now, the thing about how bad was the shooting? He was released the same day. That's the part where I was like, what? So while he was listed, I think early in stable, I don't think they ever said critical.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  It said seriously, I saw seriously wounded and critical condition.

• 1:39:01Tom Bilyeu?

  There we go.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  I saw both.

• 1:39:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Got it. Okay. So given that he was released the same day, I would be very surprised if he went from ICU, oh God's touch and go, is he going to make it? To no psych, just kidding, bye, see you tomorrow. So I don't know if he was grazed or something like that, but he certainly was shot. And that's where I think this is all ultimately going to come down to is if this person was fleeing, what are the rules about fleeing? If they, he was shot in the back on foot, that would be a whole different scenario. If he was shot in the car while driving recklessly, that's very different than if he was shot in the car after being rammed by ICE in an unmarked vehicle, by the way, which that would certainly make me as a driver, uh, take evasive action. I'm not just going to be like, oh, this guy just rammed into me and is driving like a maniac.

• 1:39:47Tom Bilyeu?

  I'll assume that these are, uh, you know, official law enforcement. So, you know, once again, this is going to put a lot of scrutiny on ICE and whether they're doing things in a method that makes any sense whatsoever. So we're going to need to get more data on this one before we can pass judgment at anything other than the thought exercise level. But ICE was doing reasonably well there for a while, keeping their heads down, not shooting people, which was a nice change of pace. So this is a very sad return, but we'll need more details.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  I think the biggest argument, and it always comes back to this with ICE shootings, is what level of authority does this governmental sector really have? And for example, like they are allowed to pursue someone fleeing in a car, but at the same time, they must be in a marked vehicle. And if I remember correctly, in the video, uh, they were driving in an unmarked vehicle. And so to the person who is fleeing, they're fleeing someone who's chasing them down in the car and they don't know who it is.

• 1:40:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  And so the argument becomes, um, you know, at what point does ICE need to step back and let local law enforcement come in? And actually let someone who has jurisdiction over the law like that take control of a situation?

• 1:40:56Tom Bilyeu?

  So now we're just asking a law and order question. So from my perspective, for maximum law and order, we have, uh, all of the immigration policies, policing procedures in place. They should be followed to the letter. The question is, in any gray zone, what should we be doing? Should we escalate to the point where shots are fired? Or should we be like, all right, listen, this one might've gotten away today. We need to be a little bit more clever next time. That's where I'm like, you guys need to remember that people, that, um, that massive ground swell that we saw when everything was going on in Minneapolis, it, it is very indicative of a very meaningful percentage of the US. I'm not going to say that it's 50%, but it's a meaningful percentage of people that feel that this is way too draconian.

• 1:41:40Tom Bilyeu?

  And recognizing that, and this is not a populist leader's specialty, but recognizing that you represent all of your citizens. It's like you need to do things in a lawful way. You need to do things in a way that is, uh, as humane as can be done, given the circumstances. But yes, they should, I think ICE should have the ability to enforce the law. That is what that department is designed to do. You don't want suspects being shot in the back as they flee on foot. That's just like absolute madness. You don't want cars being high-speed chased by unmarked vehicles. You don't want cars being rammed by unmarked vehicles. Because there's a first principles knock on effect where you create a far more dangerous situation.

• 1:42:24Tom Bilyeu?

  And so you end up curtailing those things for a reason. You're not curtailing those things to be nice or polite or, you know, some, uh, in, in a right, you know, hard right person's mind, you know, some bleeding heart liberal. You're doing it because there are bad consequences when you start acting like a gang enforcement unit. So they need to be very careful through all of this. But yeah, I don't understand the calls to defund ICE. Well, I mean, I understand them. I think that they are foolish. I think that they are going to have terrible consequences. The reality is if you're here illegally, you need to be removed from the country. But we do need to get better at removing people in a way that does not end in shots fired as routinely as it does.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Do you think there's a world in which we return to a way that the police are the ones who handle the actual pursuit of people here illegally?

• 1:43:16Tom Bilyeu?

  So, and sorry, I should have addressed that because you did, you did float that out. And I can tell that you're representing yourself, I'm sure, and the contingent of people who believe that this should be done via law enforcement. You will end up distracting your law enforcement agencies to now just dealing in cities where this is a massive problem. That's all they're going to be dealing with. And so one of two things will happen. Either the, um, local authorities, the police commissioner, the mayor is just going to say, yeah, we're a sanctuary city. We don't do that here and you're going to get no enforcement whatsoever. Handling this at the federal level makes sense to me because border protection is a federal issue. It's not a state issue.

• 1:43:57Tom Bilyeu?

  So yeah, having a federal agency that is doing this, that will be under the direction of the executive branch, I think is the right play. I also don't want to overwhelm local law enforcement. I think it is absolute, um, let me say this in a nice way because I have you here and I really do want you to push back like as a human, like pretend for a second, it's just you and me, uh, because I want you to know that I do care about you as a person and I don't want to be flippant about your values and the things you care about. But it really does seem, um, that there will be massive negative consequences to, uh, reducing law enforcement. And I'm very curious to get your take, you're a smart, well-meaning person.

• 1:44:37Tom Bilyeu?

  When you think about things like, um, broken window policing, which to me is just like good sense policing. Or just like increased police presence. I watched what it did to New York City and took it from somewhere that was like rightly portrayed in the media as like a place you don't go by yourself in the subway as a vulnerable person. You don't walk around the streets at night, that, um, Times Square was a legitimate, like degenerate hellhole. I was there in the eighties and I remember thinking, yo, this shit is crazy. Like it was, you were so nervous that, I mean, I was 13. So part of it was just being a kid, but it was like, I remember being like, yo, this is fucking wild.

• 1:45:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And so watching that then get turned into something where you felt completely safe on the streets. There were police all over, the police were super chill, but it came at the cost of like, yo, if you fit a profile of a type of person who's likely to cause a problem, like we're going to come up, we're going to stop, we might frisk you. And it was like, yeah, that's a price I'm willing to pay. And by the way, I have had the police knock the door in to get to me wrongly. And I would still rather be in that position where I was legitimately manhandled by the police. And it's like, yeah, was it fun? No. Was it high risk? Yes. Would I rather be in that position and know that if something like that were really true?

• 1:46:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Because a supposed 911 call came from the apartment that I was in and supposedly there was a person in there that I had taken captive. All fake.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  Oh, it was like a.

• 1:46:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, they were like, we got a 911 call from this apartment.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Of somebody saying, I've been taken like captive. And so it's like.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  That's what they do to streamers. Yeah.

• 1:46:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, swatting, but it wasn't swatting. It was just two cops.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 1:46:21Tom Bilyeu?

  But nonetheless, it's like, I would rather be in that position than people be like, oh, no, no, no. We need mental health, like, uh, people. So I've seen what law and order looks like.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's wonderful.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  I think to me, um, I live, I'm a child of the post nine 11 era, right? Which is arguably when Americans lost the most freedoms in their own homes. Right? And to me, when I look at ICE-

• 1:46:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Digital surveillance or something else?

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Everything. Like they, I mean, it's all surveillance, right? Like doesn't matter what level of surveillance. I mean, we just found out LG is listening to us through TVs like a week ago, you know? Um, and I guess when I look at this, I'm like, I'm older than ICE. Right? ICE was established as a response to nine 11. It was a response to um, this terrorism threat that we had that we inevitably used to go kill 2.6 million people, right? And so when I look at this, I'm like, why don't we go back to a world where, uh, and I like broken glass policing, I have no problem with. I don't think immigration falls into that. I think immigration, given how convoluted our system is, is so complex that we need to bring um, INS back, right? Bring INS back and then allow these cities um, to, to police these types of situations themselves. As I believe-

• 1:47:35Tom Bilyeu?

  But do you agree that they won't? So take New York, they're not going to. They will expressly say, we're not going to. They have expressly said, we're not going to.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  I think it would have to be something where we get to that level. Cause the reality is the more we push- Like we would have to actually get there in order, cause-

• 1:47:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Mamdani has said expressly that we will not cooperate with ICE.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  Right, but that's because it's ICE. That's what I'm saying. If we bring back INS-

• 1:47:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Cooperate with INS?

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  I think what would happen if you bring back INS, INS is all paper. There's no going down chasing people. It's all, let's handle this at a, at a, you know, federal level legally paper. And then we let the police handle the actually arresting and all that because they have more jurisdiction than ICE anyway. And so in my mind, I think if we were to bring back INS, I do think a lot more cities would cooperate because INS had been long established before. Like the only reason ICE was made was because of nine 11, right? It was not because people were worried about INS not being a functional uh, organization. It was because we were so scared of this terroristic threat that ultimately didn't exist at the scale we thought at the time. So that's what I think, is I just think INS would bring back common sense and allow these cities to be like, no, we'll let them do their thing.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Because to me, when we deport someone with ICE, they are more likely to come back than if we put them through our own legal system, right? Like if they committed a crime on US soil, I think we need to have them tried and arrested uh, on the grounds of our law, right? Not on the law of another country, not sending them back so they have a chance to come back. And then I think there is a world where we rehabilitate them and allow them a path to citizenship in our country to where they can be contributing at a legal level, right?

• 1:49:08Tom Bilyeu?

  You've been very clear on your stance. Um, and I find it as uncompelling as I'm sure you find mine. So I, I will explain why I find it uncompelling. So the, the reality is that right now, there's an economic game being played, the world over, the, the western world over, which is we're going to turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants. We're going to import immigrants legally as fast as we can as well, all to drive the cost of labor lower. Um, and to, on the side of the left, because we know that they will end up voting for more social safety nets and that will allow us to stay in power. So you've got a voting block, you've got an economic block. And so both sides are like, yep, cool, let's just keep importing everybody.

• 1:49:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, when you occasionally get somebody who's like, I'm actually gonna do something about this, um, you return to call it um, early 2000s, common sense Democrat talking points. Uh, you had Obama say, nobody should be able to enter the country illegally. We should be um, grabbing these people and getting them out of the country. You don't have sovereignty, you don't have safety. If you don't know who's coming into your country, you're also not protecting the American worker. None of that stopped being true because of nine 11. None of that stopped being true because some people may not like the way that they're being uh, pulled out of the country. I'm empathetic to that, that people are gonna feel some type of way about like a, you know, I'll, I'll go so far as to say a paramilitary group that are coming in and like literally snatching people in front of their kids, don't give a fuck. Like, we're just gonna grab you and get you the fuck out.

• 1:50:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, I, I'm empathetic to that. The problem is we have created a real problem for ourselves where we have tens of millions of people in our country illegally. And half the, uh, half of the political establishment is trying to get them a path to citizenship, which is a massive problem because we are seeing that in not being selective about immigration, you were not importing people that share your value system. And therefore you won't have a cohesive society. And the, when people aren't being honest about the need for a cohesive like value set to move a country forward in an intelligent fashion, I think they're setting themselves up for internal strife in their own country in a way that I find deeply distressing.

• 1:51:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And we don't have to look far to see what that looks like as these battles begin to play out. So I don't want to find myself in that situation. The countries that thrive economically are always the ones that have nice, stable uh, laws because to have private property, to be able to do deals, you have to have trust. Not, everything can be about what's written down. It just has to be like you and I get along, we understand each other. I'm not gonna do you dirty, you're not gonna do me dirty. We both have a reputation to protect. Uh, we have a sense of like moral responsibility to the other uh, citizens of the nation. When people start seeing themselves of, I live in America, but I'm actually uh, more beholden to uh, Venezuela, Somalia, wherever. It's like, now you've got a problem.

• 1:52:06Tom Bilyeu?

  And so that's the kind of thing that we see. And the easy way to talk about it is if I went to Japan and started waving the American flag, people would be like, what the fuck is this guy doing here? This is not America. If you want to be in America, go to America. If you want to be in Japan, you want to take advantage of the options in Japan, which I have considered because I love Japan, Japanese culture, was trying to do business in Japan. When you're in the video game industry, it's like many roads lead back to Japan. Like there's, there's a real, uh, Tokyo is my favorite city on earth. Anyway, every time I think about it, I'm like, well, am I really prepared to go be Japanese? I'm like, I'm not. I'm the brash American. Fun place to visit, not where I'd want to live. I would want to terraform it to my sensibilities. So I don't go do that. So that's where it's like, people need to understand, America has a culture.

• 1:52:51Tom Bilyeu?

  England has a culture, uh, Norway has a culture, Somalia has a culture, Pakistan has a culture. And so it's like, everybody's got to be realistic about, are we being selective about, are you a foreign born American? And you want to come here? Are you a foreign born, um, like it's entirely possible that Felix, uh, who's real or whose gamer tag is, oh god, he was one of the biggest YouTubers ever. And uh, he ended up moving to Japan and-

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Oh, PewDiePie.

• 1:53:20Tom Bilyeu?

  PewDiePie, thank you. So it's entirely possible that PewDiePie was a foreign born Japanese kid and just always had a sensibility that lined up way more Japan. Cool, move there and, and ride off into the sunset.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, so I, I don't need somebody to, especially as an American, I don't need somebody to have been born here to become a citizen here. What I need is for somebody to fit the American culture. And that to me is critical. And when you've got tens of millions of people that there was literally just open borders and you let them come in, it's like, no, you can't do that. You, you've got to boot them out.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  I guess to bring back my favorite war mongers, Israel.

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Well, how then do we react to, and this isn't, I'm not saying this is you. I'm more looking at the broader conversation. But how then do we, why do we allow people like Congress? I think there's like 13 congresspeople who have Israeli flags outside their door. I mean, that's a flag representing another nation when primarily we should be focused on the American flag. So why is it okay when countries like Israel or like, I'm Czechoslovakia and I wave the Czech flag when uh, they were facing off against Ireland for the world, uh, before the World Cup? And it's like, when I do that, it's not really looked at as something um, that is against the American flag or against my country, right? It doesn't, it doesn't look like I'm-

• 1:54:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Hanging an Israel flag?

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  Well, I'm saying, most people look at it like that. Cause you never hear anyone- Uh, well, well, let's-

• 1:54:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Anybody that says like um, Macklemore is so brave. Macklemore is saying the dominant position right now, which is fuck Israel. The dominant position is fuck those kids with an Israeli flag. You can wave a Somali flag all day. You can be a congressperson and say, my allegiance is to Somalia and people don't sweat it. Now, right leaning people are gonna freak the fuck out.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's where I was arguing from.

• 1:55:08Tom Bilyeu?

  That's not like some, it is not a hot take.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  People don't freak out at Israel flags and uh, like when um-

• 1:55:14Tom Bilyeu?

  There are some people on the right-

• 1:55:16Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:55:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Don't have a beef with waving the Israel flag. But even on the right, that's become contentious. The uh, civil war that's playing out on the right right now is largely about Israel. So the safest take in the world is fuck Israel.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Tom Bilyeu?

  So there's no way that you're gonna say that, oh, I can wave an Israel flag. I just can't wave a Venezuelan flag or a Somali flag. Get out. Dude, people go hard in the paint waving all kinds of flags that aren't the American flag right now. And everyone gets a pass except from, I'll say like a hardcore wing on the right. Now-

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  But you think everyone should get that pass?

• 1:55:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, let me address, let me address the Israel question. If you are waving an Israel flag, get the fuck, what are you doing? That shit is crazy to me. I don't care what other nations flag. Listen, if it's the World Cup and your team is already out, or your team isn't playing that day, because like, I'll go hard in the paint for the UK and Greece, because my wife is British and she's Greek by heritage. So now I feel a super warm affinity for the UK and for Greece. But if the UK is going up against America, UK's gotta go. So you might catch me in a sporting event being like, yeah, fuck UK, let's go. But there is a very big difference between I'm a congressperson and outside my office is an Israel flag.

• 1:56:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Get the fuck out. I don't want to hear any bullshit about that. And god damn it, if that's coming from a biblical place, I'm 10 times more annoyed. That's just full fucking retard for me. I can't believe Mike Huckabee, of all people, is our ambassador to Israel, Jesus Christ. So not a fan. That gets just as hard of a pass for me. Now, the only question is, is Israel culture at like proper Israeli culture? Is it more in line with the US than Somali culture? That is a question that's like, okay, I would rather have people that have built a country that looks a lot like the West than a country that cannot get their shit together. I'll be very honest.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  But isn't that operating off of the idea that anyone from another country is going to have that country's best interest in mind over America? Because I feel the average immigrant, whether here illegally or not, I feel comes here because they want the promise of the American dream and want to take part in that.

• 1:57:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Nope.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  You do not think that. You think the majority don't.

• 1:57:35Tom Bilyeu?

  No, I didn't say that. So we have to be very careful to delineate between what I call a foreign-born American and somebody who's here for the welfare state. So if you are a foreign-born American who's like, I believe that the individual is the right level of analysis. I don't want handouts. I want to contribute. I want to come make my dream possible, which is I'm going to get educated, meaning get skills, because you don't need to go to college. That was a version. But you just need to get educated, get good at your job, climb the rank, start your own company, whatever. But economically, you make yourself more and more viable. You make yourself more and more viable in this grand competition where you get a shot. That's it. Nobody promises to catch you on the way down.

• 1:58:19Tom Bilyeu?

  You get a shot. You're not gonna have a king or an authoritarian ruler tell you you can't do something. So you come here, I just want to build a business. I want to work for somebody. I want to contribute. And I want to be able to buy my house, raise my kids. Word, man. Like if you're about freedom of speech, you're, um, the individual is the spark of divinity. You're not trying to put religion at the center of laws, like all of that. I love it. I'm here for it. And I have grown, I've lived in LA now for more than 30 years. And LA has a whole bunch of cultures represented. And the ones that have that foreign-born American vibe, I'm here for. If you don't and you hate America, yada, yada, uh, fuck off.

• 1:59:05Tom Bilyeu?

  So from a, what's the percentage of people or what's the percentage breakdown of that? That I won't comment on. I'm merely trying to get people to understand. If somebody's reinforcing American culture, which I have now articulated twice in just this live, if they're reinforcing American culture, there isn't going to be a problem. If they're here for the welfare state, which I think a huge swath of people that come illegally are here for, uh, that is going to, especially if they have an allegiance to another nation, that's going to create problems.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Well, we have a super chat to end off the show.

• 1:59:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Out of curiosity, just give me the shortest answer. Did you hate that completely uncompelled by that answer? There's some logic, but you take it too far.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  To me, when I hear that, it almost feels like a middle ground opinion of, um, well, the majority are okay, but there's a small group of people that we gotta, what's up?

• 1:59:59Tom Bilyeu?

  I didn't say that. I'm saying there's a very clear delineation.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:02Tom Bilyeu?

  If reinforce American culture, good. If here for welfare and reinforce other culture, bad.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Right. But what I said is I think the majority are here to reinforce American culture and take part in it.

• 2:00:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Didn't say that. You said that they were going for their version of the American dream. So now I need you to define, what is the American dream?

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Uh, to me, the American dream is just being able to survive. I don't think there is one really anymore.

• 2:00:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Hey, free healthcare, uh, take care of me while I'm unemployed. Those are all American dream pursuits.

• 2:00:31Speaker 01

  I don't think those really have anything to tie into this specifically. I mean,

• 2:00:34Tom Bilyeu?

  But you said just survive.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  Natural born Americans still take unemployment. We still push for, I mean, I push for universal healthcare. I want universal healthcare, right? I don't think that means that.

• 2:00:44Tom Bilyeu?

  So far field, define what it means to survive. You said the American dream was to come here and survive.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Well, I'm speaking purely from my perspective as I don't think the American dream exists as we once thought, because I mean, we can't afford things, right? I talked about this earlier. I'm not gonna be able to afford a house.

• 2:01:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Help me, help me understand you.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Your first thing was, I think the vast majority of them are just coming to live the American dream.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:01:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Then when I said, what's the American dream? You said survive.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  Then I would say.

• 2:01:09Tom Bilyeu?

  What's surviving? You said the American dream is dead. So now you can understand why your first comment to me does not make sense.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  But that's my point, how survive is so vague that it's like, there's no, to me, I would say survive means have a job, live a wage, can have some fun, do what you want, and you're not getting, uh, like pounds of debt dumped on you. I'd say that's, that's what I view the American dream as these days. Like the fact that I have a job right now is my American dream.

• 2:01:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And you want to enshrine Sharia law.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  But again, Tom, this goes back to what I said at the beginning of that. This is all about, um, what I, what I said at the upfront is that I think a majority of immigrants who come into America want to take part in America and be a part of the American culture.

• 2:01:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Right. But just thought exercise me. So that I know where your line is. I made my line very simple.

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:56Tom Bilyeu?

  So if somebody comes here, they want to have a job.

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Tom Bilyeu?

  They want to work, raise a family, not get debt piled on them and have fun, and would like to enshrine Sharia law. Does that break anything for you? Or you're like, there's no, that's not going to create a problem?

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  I feel like it's the equivalent of how I feel about conservatives going towards this alt-right Christianity over the past 10 years, right? I mean, it's the same thing. It's a religion that I don't want to take control of a government. I don't want Christianity to take over a government. I don't want theocracy, period.

• 2:02:23Tom Bilyeu?

  So problem.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  I think the bigger problem on the table is white Christian nationalism in America.

• 2:02:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Move.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  Well, I'm giving you what I think of bigger problems.

• 2:02:30Tom Bilyeu?

  But I want to, I didn't ask for bigger problem.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:32Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm trying to understand you letting people into the country.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:36Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm saying the thing, the foundational thing that creates a problem is people pulling in different cultural directions. So I'm giving you one hot button issue of people pulling, not everybody, not a majority. I just want to know.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:49Tom Bilyeu?

  This guy rolls up and he's like, I want Sharia law. Are you like, okay, that guy's a problem?

• 2:02:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:02:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's where we disagree.

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  And to me, it's like, I look at Sharia law. I mean, Sharia law is just dogma, right?

• 2:03:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Really fast, because you say that, uh, white national Christians.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:06Tom Bilyeu?

  That is a problem.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think.

• 2:03:09Tom Bilyeu?

  So pulling towards hardcore orthodox Christianity, bad, but pulling towards orthodox Islam, not bad.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  I think what we define as Sharia law are two very different things. I'm under the impression that Sharia law is dogma taught under the religion of Islam, right? And I think in a lot of ways, people are selective with it, just like, I'll take Catholicism because that's what I was raised under. But a lot of us Catholics don't follow our own dogma, right? But I mean, that's the whole thing is like Catholicism has its dogma and we pick and choose what we want to do. Sharia law has its dogma. They pick and choose what they want to do. I don't know what Judaism's version is, but they pick and choose what they want to do from their version of dogma, right? I don't know the name of it, to be honest.

• 2:03:50Tom Bilyeu?

  But why beef with Christianity and not beef with Islam?

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Because I think the reality is, is all of it is bad, but what's happening right now in America is people are weaponizing Sharia law to try and scare people about Muslims, right? There's always been this idea since 9/11 of the scary Muslim. It's why Mom Donnie wasn't, was, you know, people were pressuring him to be, um, kicked out of the 9/11 thing. It's why Fox just posted an article about Abdul talking about, oh, it's bad that he's going to have access to private documents if he wins, right? Like there's this, this association with Sharia law that I think white Christian nationalism has pushed that it's this terroristic threat to America. And it's really not. It's just another religion's dogma. And I find it really interesting that when you take the three Abrahamic religions, the one that gets the most shit is the one with people of color.

• 2:04:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, but let's get back to why is Christianity bad? And Islam, you're sort of sliding from good to just not bad.

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  I'm not saying either. What I'm saying is that both of these things are.

• 2:04:52Tom Bilyeu?

  But you said it was the bigger problem. You didn't want me interrupting you because you were getting on to the bigger problem.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  Right. And I, and I explained why I don't think Sharia should be the talking point, because right now it's being weaponized.

• 2:05:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, moving on to the white Christian nationalism bad, is it the identity group?

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  I think it's.

• 2:05:09Tom Bilyeu?

  White and their group? Is it the Christianity? Is it the dogma?

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  It's the fact that they got people like Donald Trump put in the office and this whole idea of white, it's the white power stuff, right? All these white Christian nationalists have this idea that white people are the superior race. White people know what's best and that should be America.

• 2:05:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Small number of people?

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  I think it's a vanishingly small number, yes, but at the same time, I think they are the ones who have control of our government. I mean, look at Nick Fuentes right now. Nick Fuentes has, was invited to the White House dinner when Trump got reelected, right? I mean, that right there is Trump and that administration signing off on, we're okay with this kind of thing, right? I mean, those are the people who got him elected. And there was a, in Florida recently, there was a neo-Nazi that almost won his primary, if you remember that.

• 2:05:56Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't. So I'll say this.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:59Tom Bilyeu?

  You have articulated your position. You've allowed me to pursue you. Your thoughts are out there for people to do with what they will. Um, I don't agree that white nationalists got Trump elected. He was, by your own admission, it's a vanishingly small number of people. Uh, and he won, whether people like it or not. He won with a massive percentage of the vote. So white nationalists are going to be, I'm sure, a part of that, but a very small part.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  I think given they got him elected, white nationalism.

• 2:06:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Saying that, they, they didn't get him elected. Like what math do you use to say they got him elected?

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  Proud Boys stand back and stand by, I mean.

• 2:06:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Small shit.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  But it's, but those people have a voice, right? You always talk about how the DSA is driving the Democratic Party. The DSA is a small voice of that party, right? So it's the same argument.

• 2:06:48Tom Bilyeu?

  There were white nationalists who were getting elected to Congress or, uh,

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  We almost had one in Florida.

• 2:06:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Almost, and the DSA has the energy of the Democratic Party. Our universe is apart. So also, I'm not even sure who you're talking about with neo-Nazi.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I can pull it. It's an interesting story.

• 2:07:03Tom Bilyeu?

  So far over time now, I will say, we'll have to pick this up somewhere else.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  And I have one super, by the way.

• 2:07:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, let's do the super then. We will, uh, but that is fascinating. Uh, really fast, let's put a capstone in that conversation. Remember, base assumptions control everything. Ryan and I look at the same world and see very different things. Uh, woo, what you decide to believe is so informative and so controlling of your entire belief system. It's wild. Guys are amazing. Thank you so much again on behalf of Drew. He sends his love. Uh, he will be back. It is an unknown date upon which he will be back. So, uh, he could be back on Wednesday. He might not be back this week. So we'll keep you guys updated as we go. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the super chats. The support is really felt. And if you want to support yourself, make sure you attend my next AI masterclass, Thursday, October 8th at 1:00 PM Pacific.

• 2:07:52Tom Bilyeu?

  So much has changed in AI. We're going to be talking about Grok Bot and a whole lot more. Link is in the description to sign up. It is free. And I will teach you how to launch a business or just up-level your own skillset using AI. Make sure you join us. All right, guys. We will see you Wednesday. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day.

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