America’s $40 Trillion Debt Spiral, French Riots, and Trump’s Nuclear Gambit | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Hey everybody, Tom Bilyeu here. On today’s episode of Impact Theory, the world feels like it’s teetering on a knife’s edge—and we’re diving into the headlines shaping our future. The U. S. 10-year bond rate just hit a staggering 5.3%, making America’s $40 trillion (and growing) deficit feel less like an abstract number and more like an economic noose tightening around our necks. Meanwhile, France is literally burning, with riots escalating far beyond what’s being reported—schools torched, countless injuries, and political chaos deepening. But that’s not all. From Pete Hegseth’s controversial military shakeup and calls for a return to “warrior ethos,” to Trump’s full-throttle push on nuclear energy and AI modernization, there’s a real sense we’re living through a moment of historic transition. Is the bond market signaling a ticking time bomb for the U. S. economy? Are runaway debt and a surging AI industry putting us on a collision course with hyperinflation—or mass austerity? What can we learn from the unrest in Europe, and does America run the risk of its own unraveling from within? We’ll unpack these explosive topics, challenge ideological extremes, and get brutally honest about what it takes to survive and thrive in a world buffeted by political polarization, technological upheaval, and competing national priorities. Whether it’s the future of America’s military, the real drivers behind energy costs, or the wisdom (and the risks) of chasing innovation at all costs, we’re cutting through the noise so you can figure out how these battles will impact your life, your freedom, and your future. Stay tuned—this is an episode you do not want to miss. 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 Thank you to our sponsors: 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. Surfshark: Go to https://surfshark.com/TOMBor use code TOMB at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark! 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 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:00Tom Bilyeu?

  The 10-year bond rate is getting absolutely out of control. It hit 5.3 yesterday, and when you have a $40 trillion and growing deficit, rates that high become an economic noose around the neck of all Americans. The riots in France, man, they are getting way worse and people realize you've got hundreds of schools burned, countless injured, thousands arrested, and people being intentionally set on fire by the protesters. We're going to be talking about that. The Pete Hegseth situation is absolutely unhinged. He went full crusader as he announced a slew of military upgrades, including, but not limited to, no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos.

• 1:45Tom Bilyeu?

  That is a quote. We're going to be unpacking the whole thing because it is wild. Trump's nuclear push is spinning people out as he spins up new nuclear facilities to finally modernize America and get ready for AI and hopefully curb the Chinese threat. Now, what is happening in Iran? Trump is making some wild moves that have many saying he's planning to unleash after the midterms, after the midterms. And a new AI model I'd never heard of just did something completely insane. You guys have to see this. We're going to be diving deep today on the ferocious debate about the dangers, economic and otherwise, of AI. All of that and more on the Tom Bilyeu Show Live right now.

• 2:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's get into it. All right, first up, the 10-year bond rate, man, it is truly out of control. It hit 5.3 yesterday. It shows no signs of slowing down. And when you have a $40 trillion debt that is just growing and growing and growing because we continue to deficit spend into oblivion, you really have yourself poised to get choked out. I know I've been saying this for a while, but the clock is ticking, man. We may have had 10 years to go before this implodes, but that clock has been ticking now for over a year. Whether we're going to make it to the 10 years or not, I'm not so sure. When you start looking at where this is really going, this becomes a problem really fast. I want you to imagine a world in the very near future where you have a $50 trillion

• 3:13Tom Bilyeu?

  debt, rates up 7%, 8%. Now, all of the sudden, it is just eating up all of the dollars that you have. You're going to have to find yourself in some sort of mass austerity or just absolute socialism levels of taxation across everybody. Now, Treasuries just finished their worst quarter this century, pushing yields to two decade highs as traders brace for higher for longer rates. Everybody's looking at this, saying this isn't coming down. The 10-year rose 87.1 basis points over the September quarter. That is the sharpest quarterly rise since 1994. Now, the Fed is part of this.

• 3:57Tom Bilyeu?

  On September 16th, the FOMC voted 12 to 0 to raise rates 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4%. It was the first hike since 2023, and that was already causing everybody to reassess what is actually going to happen. People thought that rates were going to be coming down. Nobody is thinking that anymore. Even best since ever escalating Treasury buybacks have not been able to calm investors at all. And Japanese government bond yields have posted an unprecedented fifth straight quarter of double-digit gains. And the world over, you're seeing bond markets break. We're going to be talking about that as we get into the France of it all, with that place literally burning.

• 4:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Their bond market, as it burns, is having trouble. So, which by the way, should be obvious to anybody paying attention. And when you put it together, things are starting to look grim. The last time that things were this bad in the US bond market was back in the 1900s. The 10-year Treasury yield rose 87 basis points from July through September. That's the sharpest quarterly jump in three decades. So yesterday it touched 5.31. It's sort of been up and down. It's not where it finished the day, but the 30-year broke at 5.65%. So, man, unless somebody ends up pulling a rabbit out of some magical hat somewhere

• 5:22Tom Bilyeu?

  that I don't see coming, we are right now on a collision course with the debt becoming the single biggest problem that the US is facing. So, boy, oh, boy, do we have to really start getting serious about what debt means. I know that somehow, some way, we've been trying to convince people now for a very long period of time that you can rack up infinite amounts of debt and it doesn't matter. I literally heard people saying that. When I first started saying that we've got this 10-year clock ticking, people, of course, were saying, I'm being alarmist, I'm overstating the issue. But the reality is, when you have, because everybody's going to hearken back to, we've been here before, and what's the problem? If you've got inflation climbing, just think back to Volcker, he was able to break the back of inflation. But the setup was completely different back then.

• 6:05Tom Bilyeu?

  When you have a very small debt, because I think at that time we were at like 6 trillion, it's very different to have $6 trillion in debt and 5%, 6% rates than when you have 40 trillion and climbing by 2 trillion per year with no signs of letting up and 5.3% and growing. So the question becomes, where does this stop? Is the number going to keep going up? And the problem is, a lot of people are going to try to tell you that this is oil-related. But the reality is, this actually looks like the people that buy the bonds saying, no, no, no, we just expect a better, real return. So this is not just a nominal game about trying to keep up with inflation.

• 6:49Tom Bilyeu?

  This is about us saying, this is just a riskier situation. And remember, say it with me now, we've got the AI industry hoovering up capital and the Treasury is having to go up against that, which is, I think, the largest amount of debt that's ever been accumulated in the private markets ever. So I'm talking, it is outpacing even what was happening during the railroad buildout to give you a sense of the scale of the architecture buildout that is happening for AI. And so the amount of competition that there is for people buying debt is absolutely mind-boggling. And so buyers are saying, listen, I'm willing to buy, but I'm going to buy at a higher rate.

• 7:33Tom Bilyeu?

  And so this ultimately is the market doing what the market is doing, which is why the Treasury buyback program is doing nothing to stop the slide. When the market decides that they want a higher yield, that's just it. That's the game. You can't force people to buy at a rate that you want. And when I say that the Treasury is underfunded, yes, they've doubled, I think he's now tripled the buyback, it's not going to matter. In the face of the amount of debt that is coming online, the trillions of dollars of debt, the billions that he's trying to throw at this is just chump change. So, yeah, this is going to get worse before it gets better. And the only question that I have is, will something stop the escalation before it actually

• 8:16Tom Bilyeu?

  breaks the US's ability to pay the interest on its debt? And it's not obvious that that thing is coming. I'm not even sure what that thing would be at this point, other than extraordinary levels of austerity.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  So I feel like interest on debt now is, like you said, one of the biggest line items in the budget. And at 5.3%, how long until we start paying more in interest than like on the military?

• 8:39Tom Bilyeu?

  We already are.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:41Tom Bilyeu?

  We already are.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  And what does that look like going forward for us as like citizens?

• 8:45Tom Bilyeu?

  It is, so when you're talking about your payback, if, I think if you normalized the debt at whatever, 5.31%, if you normalize all of it, and you don't have to, that's not where you're at today, but if you normalized all of it, it's like 6 trillion dollars or something a year, 4 trillion maybe, but it is, it is a staggering amount of money. It's bigger than all of your entitlements. It's bigger than your, it's been bigger than your military for a while. So there's the famous quote.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  2 trillion per year.

• 9:14Tom Bilyeu?

  If you normalize it, no, no, no, that's where we're at now. If you normalize it at the rate now, which again, you don't, you wouldn't do that today, but over time, all of that debt's going to have to roll over as you roll over more and more of it. Once you hit, like if it were all normalized at 5.31%, it's something like between 4 and 6 trillion dollars. It is a massive amount of money. And so we put all of these policies in place when rates were near zero. And so then it was like, hey, we can do this forever. And that certainly seemed to be true, but anybody with a fucking abacus can tell you that you just can't keep doing that. That interest compounds, the amount that you owe just keeps getting bigger, the interest rate becomes the thing that stops you from paying down that debt.

• 9:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And so you get into this death spiral of as you make the debt bigger and bigger and bigger, then your nut, just to cover the interest, becomes all-consuming, like literally all-consuming. And so it will get to the point where your only options are hyperinflation, austerity, massive tax measures. And the honest answer is, it's probably going to be all of the above. For a long time, I was beating the drum around Ray Dalio's beautiful deleveraging about what you have to do to do that. And the reality is, I think you've exited the beautiful deleveraging and now the only thing that's left for you is absolute brutality. You will have to do something. You either hard default, which we're not going to do, literally no empire ever has taken the hard default path.

• 10:39Tom Bilyeu?

  It's the most honest path to say, listen, we just, we've been completely reckless and so we're not going to pay some of you back. But they don't do that. So instead, what they do is inflate the money away. Why? Because people don't understand it. That is, that is so infuriating. And Ryan is a young person, I would love to know what you think about this, but it is just completely immoral to me that that is the stance that every government ever has taken, which is, I know you don't get it, so I'm going to be able to get away with it.

• 11:10Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:34Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:23Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 14:27Speaker 03

  No, I mean, that's very real because I would say one of the things we don't learn growing up is finances, right? Like even now, like I would say, I know a little bit more about finances, but it's all personal finance and things like that. So there is definitely an argument that the government is using the fact that we don't have the level of knowledge on the subject to kind of just run things however they want. Because at the end of the day, all we see is, oh, here's the mortgage rate. Am I ever going to be able to afford a house, that kind of thing, you know? Or they distract us with a war and things like that.

• 14:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Which, speaking of which, how much do you think the war is continuing to affect this? Do you think because the war is continued in the capacity it has, that's also led to the situation we're in in an expedited fashion?

• 15:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Of course. So it is certainly accelerating things. Anything right now that is increasing inflation is going to lean into this problem. But when you look at the math, the investors aren't saying, hey, we're expecting long-term inflation. The long end of the curve isn't pricing in a bunch of inflation. It's pricing in destruction of demand. So the reason that the levels are going up now is investors are saying that you're going to pay me a higher real return. I just want more for my money. And that shift in the mentality is the part that I think a lot of people are missing because everybody thinks that this is just an inflation story. It is an inflation story. It's not just an inflation story.

• 15:44Tom Bilyeu?

  That they're missing the real danger here, which is if you can't convince people to give you your money to service that debt or to create the new debt that you need to service your unbalanced budget, then what people do is they just print the money. And so now you're pushing inflation more and more and more. So we're in this super weird position where I think honestly, the, the answer that the Fed is putting forward is almost certainly the wrong answer. So even though people expect it to continue, if what you're really looking at is, okay, yes, we have inflationary pressures due to the cost of oil. But even as oil drops, you don't see the same immediate drop in the rates.

• 16:23Tom Bilyeu?

  So yes, we have the inflationary pressures, but the real thing that's going on is people are losing faith in the government because of the reckless spending and your international buyers aren't there anymore. So you've got Japan is going through its own crisis. Much of Europe is going through its own crisis. The US has weaponized the monetary system, first against Russia, now against Iran. So everybody looks at that and it's like, ah, this just isn't the best long-term play anymore. They're not going to be able to completely abandon it because they have to look at returns. The US remains in a world where everybody is being insane. The US still remains the best place. So it's not like people are going, you know what, instead I'm going to buy Zimbabwe debt. They're not doing that.

• 17:07Tom Bilyeu?

  But you've got all of that going on. At the same time, you have the biggest demand for non-governmental debt happening because of AI. And it's really wild, like every time I look at this, I think, okay, surely this is going to slow down. And when I stop and think about, why does it keep going up? Because nothing new has happened. But the reality is, even though it's nothing new, it is a process. And the process is more AI debt coming on board, which creates more demand, more competition. Then you've got the Fed has raised rates and the expectation is that they're going to raise rates again, though now the people's belief that they will raise in November has gone down. So that's something, but, or October, maybe I can't remember.

• 17:52Tom Bilyeu?

  But in the near term, the next FOMC meeting, they're not expecting. I think it went from like a 70% assumption that the next one was going to be a hike. It dropped down to 30 or 40%. So that's something, but nobody's saying that they're going to start reducing it. So when you have the Fed raising rates into what is not an overly exuberant economy at the spending level, I mean, sort of. So here's the thing that we have to look at. It's very possible that Kevin Warsh is looking at AI and going, listen, it's not the traditional way that an economy gets overheated, but it is very much a result of AI sucking up so much of this money. I'm going to break your guys' fucking back.

• 18:37Tom Bilyeu?

  So you guys are going to stop being able to raise money. It's just going to become so nonsensical because the rates will be so high. And that's almost certainly part of his plan. But that's where I go back to, but hold on a second. If this really is an existential infrastructure build-out where you've got the US competing against China and we can't afford to lose, we can't afford to lose on the AI infrastructure build-out. We can't afford to lose on the energy build-out. Now, all of a sudden, it may be not raised at any price, but raised at prices that will continue to become riskier and riskier. Now, when you think about these bubbles inflating, you have to ask, what are people looking around and saying, where else can I move to?

• 19:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And if they don't see anywhere else to move to, then they're going to keep leaning into the current narrative. They're going to keep pushing it. Now, at some point, the narrative breaks and that's when all hell breaks loose. But there's nothing right now that sort of shoots it in the face. If the leak of the S1 of Anthropic didn't do that, where people are really seeing just how untethered to any historical fundamental constraint that there normally is on pricing. If that didn't make people go, yeah, okay, this is probably a bad idea. Then I'm not sure what's going to be the thing that finally bursts it. Something will for sure, but I just don't know what that's going to be.

• 20:01Tom Bilyeu?

  So as I say, the markets can remain delusional a lot longer than people can remain solvent trying to bet against it. So not betting against it, but woo, am I diversifying away from that solo bet?

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Just to simplify that, are you trying to say that you think AI data centers are competing with the Treasury for the same dollars? Which is what's pushing everyone up?

• 20:20Tom Bilyeu?

  That is self-evidently true.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Okay, okay. And then on the other end of that is, so we have these two factors, the AI build-out, right? And the war itself.

• 20:28Tom Bilyeu?

  AI need for debt, the war itself in terms of causing inflation there, and then the Fed hiking. And then investors just saying, ah, in this environment, you've got to pay us a bigger real return.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Gotcha. And do you think us pulling moves like what we're doing to Germany and France with the fuel thing? Do you think part of that is to kind of relieve this pressure on Americans? Or do you think that's a whole separate issue?

• 20:48Tom Bilyeu?

  I think it's a whole separate issue in that what they're trying to do is stop. The global spiral of prices getting out of control so that it makes Trump look worse and worse because if he can get them to sort of calm their bond rates down, there's going to be less anger, less ire in terms of why did we go to war? Why exactly are we doing this? So also remember diesel is a global market. So he's thinking about doing restrictions here in the US. You've got China, Russia, all putting export restrictions on their oil and diesel. And so that starts creating real negative sentiment towards what's going

• 21:33Tom Bilyeu?

  on in Iran, which is going to certainly have blowback on him. So I imagine that's a big part of it. And then also, to be honest, given the situation that we're in, it is what they should be doing. So you are going to have to try to maintain an even keel as we go into the winter. And I don't know if people are expecting El Nino to make Europe colder, or if it's going to be more mild, that I don't know. But a brutal winter in a like fuel shock would be atrocious.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, brutal here, too.

• 22:06Tom Bilyeu?

  So yeah, fingers crossed. Well, we're going to be certainly wet. I don't know what the predictions are about cold.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  I was hearing it's going to be colder than normal, and we may reach freezing, but not crazy freezing. So it'll be

• 22:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Fingers crossed on that one.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Dangerous, but not to the extent that's like what other parts of the country.

• 22:22Tom Bilyeu?

  It's one of those, like, if you get the perfect storm from a weather perspective, and you've got people all across Europe dying because they don't have the energy to heat their homes, plus the asinine policies that they put in place on an energy perspective is really crazy. This would be interesting, because, look, there are two debates. Anybody that says that the climate isn't changing, like, that seems wild. The climate changes, that's what it does. Whether people want to debate, is this human led or not, that's like a separate thing. But the climate is changing. And so now you have the climate changing, and you've got energy policies that are making it harder on individual humans

• 23:02Tom Bilyeu?

  right now to not die of heat stroke, not freeze to death. And so how is Europe going to react? Are they going to continue to lean into the policies that have gotten them into this position? Or are we going to see more right-leaning figures take power and do what Trump is doing, which is like energy at all costs? And America has been so anti-nuclear for so long, it is very impressive that, from where I'm sitting, that he's finally doing something about it. Now, is he doing something about it because he's got the dual pressures of Iran and fuel prices and AI? That's a question. Or is this just an AI play? I don't know. But you're not going to be able to stand up to China if you don't solve your energy crisis.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Gotcha. And jumping back to America, I want to do a little hypothetical here for a second. So obviously, we're living through one of the bigger bubbles in history right now in America. And let's say you got a call, ring, ring, hello, it's Scott Beson, and he says, I can't do this anymore. Tom, I need you to take my job. What are you doing

• 24:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Everybody run for the exits, literally, immediately.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  But in this hypothetical, you want to do it, right?

• 24:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  How are we alleviating that bubble without letting it burst? Because obviously, you can let some air out, and it's a slow process, and we could pull it off without letting the whole thing burst. But is, what would your methods be?

• 24:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Jesus. There is no real method, other than what the Fed is trying to do. So if you make it more expensive to raise money, theoretically, that will make people back off. But I think the only honest answer, and certainly the only thing I would be saying is, the only way out of this is innovation. And so we've got to be doing what Trump is doing in terms of bringing on nuclear energy. Unfortunately, this does take years. And so I think people are talking about the first bits of energy are coming somewhere between 28 and 30, 2028 and 2030. So this is not going to be an immediate solve by any stretch of the imagination. I think the alliance, if we're going to be so generous to use that

• 25:00Tom Bilyeu?

  word with Venezuela, is going to come in very handy. I think focusing on the US, we may have to do more export controls for longer. So doing anything that we can to bring energy on is going to be the right thing. So driving the costs of that down so that we don't need the Fed to continue to hike into this. You can't force bondholders to say, I'll accept a lower rate. So, I mean, he can try. There are obviously, Beson is trying to do that, but I don't think he's going to be able to. So in terms of actually deflating the AI bubble, I mean, look, there are things that you could do to break it. I just think it's far more dangerous than letting this play out in a normal fashion. It is one of those

• 25:41Tom Bilyeu?

  where almost certainly, because these systems are so complicated, that if you try to intentionally deflate the bubble, you will end up breaking something somewhere else, and end up causing a far bigger problem than the one that you think you're trying to solve. So the cure becomes worse than the disease. So yeah, this is where I go to, the individual has to position themselves to be able to weather a hyperinflationary, not true hyperinflation, but a, call it recklessly inflationary environment. And that's, that's actually what's going to happen. And because I don't feel, truly, I don't feel that I understand the economy well enough to be the person pulling those levers. I think that would truly be disastrous. There might be options that I just don't know well enough to say, oh, well, there is

• 26:26Tom Bilyeu?

  this other thing over here. But I think if there was an easy way to deflate bubbles, we would have done it historically. There isn't. What you end up doing is trying to regulate. When it happens, you try to regulate and say, okay, this is how we avoid it happening the next time. But it doesn't end up working in the long run. So look at 2008. We put like historic amounts of regulation in place to protect the banks. And all it does is move that demand away from official banks into the private sector. Because when there's demand for something, people are going to find a way to do it. And that's where it's just like, this is how these systems work. And if you try to take control of those systems from the top down, you end up in China or Russia, and they all have their own problems

• 27:10Tom Bilyeu?

  up to and including concentration camps. So, and I don't say that to be cheeky, just as a reminder, in like, the last few years, I don't know how many Uighurs are still in their re-education camps. But like, this is, this is a now thing. This is not, you don't have to hearken back to Mao to be like, people just got put in concentration camps. So it is absolutely wild to me that people consider that even an option. So the real answer is, worry a lot less about the AI bubble, and don't need that debt because you've balanced your budget. And if you look at what's going on in Argentina, there are steps that you can take that include massive austerity, but there are steps that you can take to not be reckless as the government, so that there isn't all of this competition

• 27:55Tom Bilyeu?

  for your debt. And that just is the real answer. So, yeah.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  I'm curious, and this could just be a misunderstanding of the concept of a bubble. But I mean, you even bring Argentina into this. Argentina, yes, is seeing good numbers on paper, but the quality of life has substantially gone down in Argentina.

• 28:11Tom Bilyeu?

  You have to damage the quality of life. That's the, the problem is to get out of these situations, you have to say, we have to be austere. And that is the thing that people don't want to do. But when you've grown up in a system, there was an interview, I was gonna play it, but the problem is, it was all in Spanish. But anyway, there was a guy being interviewed in Argentina, and they were saying, like, you know, how do you feel? What are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm waiting in line. I forget what he was waiting in line for exactly. It was like to fill out an application for a job. And he was really pissed that he had to get a job. This is a guy that was 35, and he was applying for a job, can work perfectly, nothing wrong, not mentally ill, not physically infirm, 35 and had never had a job. And the reason he didn't have a job was, he said at 16, he

• 28:56Tom Bilyeu?

  got on to the welfare program. And so he just stayed on the welfare program. And then another way that people keep the train running is they create insane amounts of government jobs. And so now, all of that money, the money printing, the hyperinflation, it goes to employ a lot of people in the government. Now, when you cut all those people off, you're talking about tens of thousands of people that you put out of work. That is obviously going to be a massive hit. And the least popular line, I think, that a politician has maybe said ever, is when people are saying to Malay, people are going to die. And he goes, people are not going to die. People say that all the time. They're going to find

• 29:36Tom Bilyeu?

  a way to stay alive. And it's true. And so this is where I get into my whole thing, which is, we, in the modern West, what we have decided is that people don't need to be responsible for keeping themselves alive. The government is going to step in and keep everybody alive, keep everybody afloat. And so we've pushed the responsibility up instead of pushing it down. Now, I'm a big believer that you, you need to push that responsibility down to the individual, the family, the local community, the churches. Like, if you want to make sure that somebody isn't starving to death, then do a community organized thing to make sure that you protect the people around you. Because that way, the people that are making contact with you actually know whether you're trying to abuse the system

• 30:20Tom Bilyeu?

  or not. And if you don't have that, you get into the massive freeloader problem, which I know people don't want to think exists, but it's one of the most real things in all of evolution.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  But to the bubble question I was gonna ask.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  I'm to the understanding-

• 30:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Meaning the AI bubble?

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, cuz I was, I was using the Argentina as like a launch point to this question. But with the AI bubble that we have, um, you were saying, we just gotta kinda ride it out. Just let it do what it's gonna do. I'm to the understanding, though, that whenever there's a bubble in the economy in any capacity, whatever it may be, um, the only way out is for it to burst eventually, right? Like, cuz if it keeps growing, it will pop eventually. So are you saying we just gotta ride it out until it pops? But wouldn't that create more mass destruction? Or is there a misunderstanding of the concept of the bubble on my part?

• 31:04Tom Bilyeu?

  It's a question of what is the actual exit ramp? So raising rates, that's one. When you look at the Fed's ability to actually influence behavior, you have to ask, okay, what breaks if they do this? So if the Fed were to raise rates, raise rates, raise rates, who do they hurt the most? They hurt the average American citizen because what ends up happening is the government will be forced into austerity measures because it can't afford the debt. Once you understand that the largest, um, needer of debt is the government itself, then you suddenly understand, oh, the people that are gonna be pushed into austerity through the method by which you're attempting to stop the bubble

• 31:49Tom Bilyeu?

  are going to be the very people that you're trying to keep out of austerity. So it is an incredibly interconnected, complicated system. And so by trying to quote unquote, "stop the bubble from happening", you just break something somewhere else. And that's where it's like, hey, anybody that's giving warsh credit and saying, alright, this is a guy that comes in, you know, he's got his, uh, you know, boots on and his pants pulled up tight and he's gonna be like Volcker and he's gonna show these guys and he's gonna break the back of inflation. It's like, yep, but by doing what? He's gonna do a mechanism. And that mechanism that he has access to is raising rates. The government is screaming as loud as they know how to scream. If you do that, I'm not going to be able to pay the interest on this debt. We are going to be at risk of hard defaulting.

• 32:34Tom Bilyeu?

  They're not gonna say this, but they won't hard default, they'll soft default. And so guess who gets hurt again? The average American. And guess who dodges that because they know what they're doing? Wealthy investors. And so it's like, fuckwits, will you please stop? Yes, I get it. Everybody's fucking freaked out about the AI bubble. Nobody more so than me. But you gotta walk me through the mechanism by which you're actually going to stop that bubble from forming. And the reality is, what would you do? Stop, like, just, investing is no longer allowed. Or we're going to remove all debt from the system? Like, there are things that you could certainly try. And they, if this bursts, they will then again, try to regulate this shit out of existence, only to find that it moves somewhere else,

• 33:17Tom Bilyeu?

  which is why bubbles always happen. People, if there is demand for something, people are gonna find a way to get to it, even if you push them out into riskier things like private credit. So, yeah, it just becomes, at what point are you going to put in some sort of draconian system? And if you put that in, is it actually better? And I would say the answer to that is no, it's not better. What people should be rallying for is a government that has a balanced budget. And a government with a balanced budget that doesn't have $40 trillion in debt, when a crisis happens, they can actually respond in a sensible manner and then grow their way out of it. But this is really a story about if you want to solve your problems, balance your budget, grow the economy. And if you wanna grow your economy right now, we only have one solution, and that's AI.

• 33:59Tom Bilyeu?

  So, I mean, that just may be where we're at on the timeline. Because it's innovation that makes individuals more productive that actually grows the real economy. And so if somebody else has a different growth story, by all means, speak up. But it's like, people have been looking for a long ass time for that next growth story. And, um, the only people that found it was China. And the only catch is, first, you have to massively impoverish your people. Then you can have a growth story. But, uh, without that, it's really just technological innovation.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Gotcha. So we would have to run in Argentina or China in order to really recover from this? It's kinda like if-

• 34:32Tom Bilyeu?

  We would have to run in Argentina or China, I don't know-

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Make your people impoverished for the success.

• 34:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, I just wanna be very clear that that was a tongue in cheek statement of saying, yeah, sure, like if your people-

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Well, I was just simplifying your, that's why I was asking.

• 34:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So here's what we have to be careful of. What I'm saying is, anybody that says, uh, the world hasn't experienced any growth in whatever, 80 years, post-World War II. Okay, someone's gonna say, oh, well, that's not true, look at China. And I'm gonna say, yes, but if you set the bar, not even at the floor, but you dig a trench and you put the bar inside that trench, and then you just climb a, cuz, I mean, it is highly debated what percentage of their population is actually living above the poverty line. Uh, but if you pull people up just to like baseline, then it's gonna look like a magical story. And it is, and I never like to speak ill of China's growth. It is absolutely miraculous that they finally pulled their heads out of their asses

• 35:26Tom Bilyeu?

  and they made extraordinary gains in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. It's been breathtaking. And if I were Chinese, I would be celebrating it to the high heavens because we're finally doing the things that we need to take a leadership position in the world. It's been amazing. But again, you're clocking it from somebody who killed their Mao, killed 45 million of their own people, were starving them to death, doing everything stupid that you can possibly do, has an iron grip on power for absolute decades. And it's from that starting line that they end up looking like a shining beacon on the hill. But the reality is that they still have a worse, uh, number of people, even per capita of poverty than we have in the US, dramatically so.

• 36:08Tom Bilyeu?

  So it's not like, uh, the average Chinese person is as wealthy as the average American. They just aren't. So that's where you have to be a little bit careful and ask the question, okay, well, if China's a bad example, then what do we actually need to do to grow? And the answer is full stop, energy and innovation. That's it. Now, the US, now, why do I say that? If you look at the math of, it's some, I forget the exact number, but there's a certain amount of energy that you bring on that is like a direct, uh, one-to-one with growth in your economy. So when you hamper your energy, you hamper your ability to grow. Look at Europe, look at Canada, right? Canada is just absolutely in fucking freefall. Europe is not much better.

• 36:50Tom Bilyeu?

  So when you look at America starting to go down that path, you realize how we were putting ourselves in a trap, which was that we weren't gonna grow because we weren't growing our energy. And so America, so much of our growth has been on the back of financializing everything, which is in and of itself a problem. But we're at least now slowly starting to return to actually building things in the country. And that is what you have to focus on. You do have to make the gamble in AI because it is showing signs of truly being transformative, which means this is the innovation you're looking for. It's going to require you to bring on energy. But you've now got this, these two things competing for debt.

• 37:30Tom Bilyeu?

  One of them at least makes some sense, though the ratio is insane, AI. And then the other one doesn't make any sense at all, which is the government spending the exorbitant amounts of deficit spending that it doesn't. It's just absolutely insane.

• 37:46Tom Bilyeu?

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• 40:02Tom Bilyeu?

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

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Speaking of governments, France is trying to overthrow theirs again. France loves to riot, uh, with something that's really interesting, but hey, more power to them, I guess. So France, tell us about it.

• 40:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Fuck these kids. Ryan's out of his mind.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm just doing a transition. I have no clue about this story, to be honest.

• 40:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this is getting dark really fast. The riots in France are way worse than people realize. You've got hundreds of schools burned, countless injured, thousands arrested, and they are setting people on fire. I've seen multiple, one firefighter got lit on fire. Another one, if you guys have ever seen aerosolized fire where somebody takes like hairspray or whatever in a lighter and then they just like blowtorch, uh, right to a woman's face. It was crazy. Uh, they tackled a female police officer, kicked the shit out of her. I mean, it is absolutely insane. This all sparked with high schoolers blockading their schools over packed classrooms, missing teachers, crumbling buildings.

• 41:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And listen, if education in France is in dire straits, fair enough, you've got legitimate complaints to be made. But the riots and reaction have become absolutely insane. And a whole lot of people from where I'm standing need to go to jail. This is wild. And I'm not talking just be picked up that day. I'm talking go to prison. Look at this stuff. Like these videos are absolute insanity. It is so wild. They're lighting buses on fire and like sending them down the streets. I don't know. I'm assuming they're just like, uh, putting a brick or something on the accelerator. Because you've got buses that are engulfed in flames, driving down the street.

• 41:47Tom Bilyeu?

  The politicians that are allowing this to happen have absolutely got to be held accountable because kids, your country falls into anarchy like every few months at this point. It is like Europe is speedrunning. Who can end in civil war first? You've got the UK tearing itself apart. You've got France, just absolute madness. 305 cops have so far been injured. By the way, this has only been going on for like two days. You've already got 305 cops injured. And by the way, those were probably outdated numbers because I think that was before today. 170 students, 65 school staff, all among the injured. Uh, you've got a bunch of principals that have been attacked. It is absolute madness. The violence has spread across the entire country.

• 42:28Tom Bilyeu?

  So there are buses, like I said, trash fires all over the place, bus shelters being smashed, hundreds of schools. I think north of 400 schools have been shut down, public transit shut down in several cities. There was this local politician, I don't know if you can see it. It was like, uh, the governor of, uh, not governor, uh, mayor of a city. Yes, here's our man. Look at your screen. This guy is, uh, mayor of 150,000 people. This is supposedly from a no-go zone. Uh, okay. So here's where I've sort of avoided talking about it from this angle. But there's like a total migrant question, I will say at this point, because I think people are probably over indexing on the immigrant, uh, angle of this.

• 43:08Tom Bilyeu?

  But nonetheless, uh, this guy oversees an area where 90% are immigrants, second generation migrants, third generation migrants. Basically, the, um, narrative being, and look, I don't think there's no merit to the narrative. I just, people, please be a little bit careful with this one. If you're letting the culture of your country rot, it's less about immigration and more about just not knowing what you stand for, which I think is a far bigger problem. Uh, so yes, people need to integrate. Yes, immigration is a huge part of the question. But if you stop there, you're taking an emotional trigger and you're going to run down the wrong path. Anyway, you've got this guy who's in a supposed no-go zone, is the fucking mayor, and he's out there celebrating with people as they're attacking cops, lighting people on fire, burning buses. That's insane.

• 43:53Tom Bilyeu?

  You can't have this kind of shit. This is so wild. So this is, this to me is a preview of what happens when you allow your country to not be culturally aligned. You must culturally align your nation. Call stop.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  What triggered this, though?

• 44:09Tom Bilyeu?

  What triggered the no-go zone?

• 44:10Speaker 03

  No, no, what triggered the riots? Cause I don't think we've addressed, I don't even know. I'm asking you. Because I think we should separate the immigrant element from this, because what will happen is chat will start blaming all the immigrants. And we need to actually tackle what they're protesting slash rioting.

• 44:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay. So, uh, well, here's the bad news. This is where it gets weird. So there's no way this is just disgruntled students. I'm just going to tell you that right now. They're not going to be this well organized. They are not going to be this violent. So hard pass. Uh, what officially is going to be the answer? We will only see in the fullness of time, but there are rumors that are founded, that are beginning to fly, that this may have been a setup job. Ryan's gonna hate this part, from the far left group known as LFI. All right. After an emergency crisis meeting, the prime minister of France, uh, they said that their French intelligence had concluded that all of this is being orchestrated by the LFI.

• 45:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, the LFI is denying it, but the LFI has a track record of doing things like this that makes the accusation pretty easy to believe. So this week, the LFI mayor of Saint Dennis went, uh, to a blockaded school and said that at a certain point, violence can be legitimate. I think we've heard that before here in the US as well. The Paris police, uh, referred him to prosecutors. He says he stands by every word. In 2023, when France burned after police killed a 17-year-old kid, uh, Melashon refused to call for calm. So here you go. You've got your French politicians just letting this stuff burn.

• 45:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Dude, this is so reminiscent of what we saw here during the 2020, uh, summer of love. Where it was like, hey, these things are justified. Why would we tell people to calm down? This is all justified. One guy was even saying, listen, these kids are harmless. These kids are harmless. Okay? Let that ring out in the air. And the police trying to stop them from protesting is racist. It's like, Jesus Christ, guys. This is absolutely retarded. So the LFI is not trying to calm anybody down. They're calling for justice. Again, a thing that I think that we're very used to hearing. Uh, in February, you had a 23-year-old far-right activist named Quentin, uh, who was beaten to death in Lyon. Among those charged was a parliamentary aide to LFI lawmaker Raphael Arnott, uh, who co-founded the Antifa group.

• 46:25Tom Bilyeu?

  So before the government ultimately dissolved it. So we'll see if that ends up being true. Like I said, the government says that their intelligence is spot on and that they know it was the LFI. The LFI is saying it wasn't us, but the LFI has a long track record of saying this stuff is justified, violence is justified, organizing these kinds of things. So, uh, we will see where this goes. But to me, this is a symptom of a philosophy that borders on mental illness. Which is that if something is wrong, that you can riot and burn things down and there are going to be no consequences. That is perfectly fine to have no-go zones where people are building a culture not of respect towards the country, but of like fuck this country and tear it down.

• 47:06Tom Bilyeu?

  And when people don't believe in the country anymore, people don't look at your history and say that we have something to be proud of, something to unify us, then this is what you're going to get. Now, for a long time, the West really held their shit together. And obviously I'm talking post-World War II here, and we had an 80-year stretch of like awesomeness. And it is now coming to an end because we have all of this self-flagellating sense of self-guilt. It is absolutely ridiculous. And if Europe does not start to define what their identity is by country or as a European collective, if they don't start seeing the value and what their culture is, given the rate at which they are bringing in immigrants,

• 47:47Tom Bilyeu?

  whether this is being driven by immigration or not, if you're bringing in a ton of immigrants, and I think the stat in the UK was something like 96% of their growth in 2025, uh, 96 point something percent of all their growth, population growth in 2025 is due to immigration. Yo, that shit is crazy. Unless you are doing it in a way where you are unifying the people, that you're getting everybody excited to be a British citizen, to stand for British values, you are going to see increasing levels of violence. I don't know what else people think is going to happen. Humans do not get together in enclaves that are separated from each other and come together peacefully.

• 48:30Tom Bilyeu?

  It's, that's not how this game plays out. People end up fighting, especially when you have asinine socialist policies, just completely ridiculous energy policies that are making things more expensive. People get it. We're fighting over a shrinking pie. And when people fight over a shrinking pie, they go towards populism. When people go towards populism, they are reasoning by emotion. And when you have people in separated groups that each have their own sense of identity, no shared national identity, fighting over a shrinking pie, things erupt in violence. That is the mechanism. It's not like this is hard to explain. This is the mechanism. This is how it plays out. This is what humans are like. And so if they don't find... A way to grow so that people's lives, and I'm talking economically,

• 49:15Tom Bilyeu?

  if they don't grow economically, so people can see, ah, my life is going to be a little bit better next year than it is this year. My kids' lives are going to be better than my life. If you don't show that path to growth, if you don't start driving costs down, making life more affordable. If you don't lean into innovation, instead of trying to be hyper proud of we regulate everything to death. If you don't stop having an anti-human wanting to see population grow. If you don't stop with all that bullshit, then people really are fighting over a shrinking pie. And they really are going to get more and more violent. People, diversity is not a strength. Diversity creates chaos. You've got to have people that have a shared sense of national identity. And we'll get to the weird ass like that Ryan is giving me.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Well, cause you said diversity creates.

• 49:57Tom Bilyeu?

  A thousand percent.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Let me, let me give you.

• 50:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Diversity is how you end up in madness, just to be clear.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  I'm going to give context to your 2025 stat.

• 50:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Please.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Because the reason it was 96 or whatever percent, it's the number of 90% is the one you were looking for, I think. But is because in terms of natural born French citizens.

• 50:14Tom Bilyeu?

  No, no, I wasn't talking about France. I was talking about the UK.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Okay, well, but this could still give context to you. I would have to look up the UK numbers. But with France in 2025, they had 645,000 like on their like national French births. And 651,000 deaths with an immigration estimate of 176,000, which is why immigration was the sole driving factor. Because of the death to birth ratio of French citizens. I don't know what they, what the labels are. But so I guess my point I'm trying to drive here is that when you see numbers like, oh, 96% of the country's population was increased by immigration. You have to look into what that is specifically, right? Because when we look at this, 645,000 non-immigrant births happened. It's just they were canceled out by the deaths in turn, right?

• 51:00Speaker 03

  And so that's why it's 176,000 that looks like that 90%.

• 51:03Tom Bilyeu?

  But like all of the vast majority, the staggeringly overwhelming majority of net population growth is immigrants.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 51:13Tom Bilyeu?

  So.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  When you just say 96%.

• 51:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Because the thing I said is both factually true and even the brighter light that you shine on it, it doesn't change anything. So what do you think? You're putting this forward as if it changes something.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  It does. It gives you context. Because when you just simply say, and this is arguing context over something that doesn't matter. Cause this is France and you mentioned UK. But it's, it's the reality that there's more to that 96%. It's not just 96% of the people who came here immigrants. It's like, that's a, that makes it sound more like a dog whistle than it does, you know?

• 51:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So this is not a dog whistle. This is getting people to, I'm stating plainly what my complaint is. If your net population growth is immigrants, you don't have a path to them assimilating. And you have every policy that you do drives people into populism. You will get more of this violence. This is cause and effect. There, there's no mystery happening.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  You don't think, cause what, what I've been reading about these riots in France specifically, is that this is about the deteriorating conditions in secondary schools, which they call lycées? French people, correct me? Chronic teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and inadequate school funding. You think that's all immigrant led?

• 52:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Does lighting a firefighter on fire sound like a reasonable response to that?

• 52:30Speaker 03

  It doesn't, but we can't, I mean, you're trying to paint this picture that increased immigration creates that level of violence. You said diversity leads to chaos.

• 52:37Tom Bilyeu?

  When I was talking about the riots in France, I said very clearly, I've avoided framing this as an immigrant issue. I took 30 to 45 seconds to say, hey, be very careful about pegging this whole thing as an immigrant problem. The real problem is a lack of assimilation. So keep in mind, I love me some America. America is literally immigrants, baby, from top to bottom. Here's why America works. There was no social program. You might die on the boat ride over, and then when you got here, you were going to be dealing with an East Coast winner. Good luck living and at certain times in certain colonies, a lot of people would just die. And so you got a certain type of person that came to America. Now, when you collect what I'll call an entrepreneurial class of people with the Puritan work ethic,

• 53:23Tom Bilyeu?

  and overwhelmingly Christian, you start regardless of the fact that they are immigrants, regardless of the fact that they come from different places. They share an ideology. And over time that gets polished into something that becomes America as very easily defined, where people bled for it to create it. They sat down, wrote out their values, wrote out their structure, all of that and said, cool. Here's the idea that we're all going to get behind. Now, up until what, 1914 or something? We just, in fact, I think it was later than that. Anyway, for a very long time into the 1900s, we had no checks on immigration whatsoever. And so you could just roll up on fucking America. I'm from Honduras. I'm from Belgium.

• 54:05Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm from the China, the Congo, whatever, didn't matter. You were going to be led into the country and you were either going to succeed or fail on your own merits. No one was going to hold you up. Then we get the new deal. Now all of a sudden you have a problem with immigration because people aren't coming because they want a shot. They're coming because they want to hand out. That creates a very different scenario. Now, if you also have a mentality of, we do not expect you to conform. We want to be hyper respective of your own traditions. And so we want to make sure that you can come and do whatever you want. You get ghettoization. And so people now isolate themselves and it's little Somalia by itself. So think about Italians, right? Super discriminated against when they rolled up.

• 54:49Tom Bilyeu?

  The Irish, super discriminated against when they rolled up. But they end up integrating into America. They see themselves now as Americans. And if you can get a Somali population that's like, bitch, I'm here to be an American. I am a foreign born American. I want to be here to be American. I want a piece of this opportunity to come and build something. You're not going to have a problem. You run into a problem when people are self-isolating in a populist moment. They have no expectation of integrating into the American system. They're not forced to learn English. They're not taught American values, which by the way, not only do we not teach American values, we teach people that America sucks, which is fucking crazy.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Don't do that.

• 55:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep, dude. What are you talking about?

• 55:31Speaker 03

  I just went through our schooling system and I can tell you once, there was never anything that was taught that America sucks. I was never taught that. There's this idea that the education system doesn't instill American values. I mean, the fact that I'm sitting here talking, I think, shows that this is in showing our American values. Cause I'm, I'm using my freedom of speech. I'm using my freedom of expression. These are the things I've come to respect and love in my country. School has not taught me to hate my country. That is ridiculous. It's like saying whenever anyone in chat goes, oh, Ryan's only leftist because of college. Guys, it's like, I've studied this stuff since middle school. Like I read all these things. I'm into history. History, I like the whole argument of just the world, how America works. But it's this whole idea that it's like, our education system is not instilling proper American values.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  It's just, that's not true. I've said the pledge to the flag every single day. I think that's weird, right? But it's, there's, there's right there, instilling something that's American. Like it's just, you're generalizing an entire group of people.

• 56:28Tom Bilyeu?

  What group of people do you think I'm generalizing?

• 56:30Speaker 03

  I think by saying that you use Somalis, you were saying, well, they're not coming and they want to keep their language. But there's nothing wrong with them keeping their language. They just want a better life for themselves.

• 56:39Tom Bilyeu?

  There is a massive problem with them keeping their language.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Well, then maybe we just disagree on that.

• 56:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, let's make sure that we're disagreeing about the same thing. So first of all, if you don't realize that there has been a radical, in all capital letters, radical shift of America's view of itself over the last 30 or 40 years. You're missing the number of spins around the sun that this planet has done. Because bro, it is crazy. And when you look at, how does America define itself? How do we talk about ourselves? It is completely shifted from, we are a nation that has moral authority. We are the best and the brightest. We are the most powerful nation in the world.

• 57:26Tom Bilyeu?

  And now it is shifted to, um, we are settler colonizers. We are a radical evil. We've never gotten over the sins of slavery, all of that. Can you agree that that is now a massive part of public discourse?

• 57:43Speaker 03

  I think you are overgeneralizing a bit to make it sound like that's a bad thing. I will say.

• 57:48Tom Bilyeu?

  That is a horrific thing.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Do you think that should, no, because it's important to know our history. All those things you listed are things that we should know about. And I don't think schools are telling people that these things are this, so America's bad. That's not how that work, like it's, it's, our government has failed us so many times. We just had a segment with the bond market talking about how our government's failing us. I think rather it's, it's a, it's a, it's a mirror held up to us of this is what we were promised. This is not what it is. There are a lot of things here. And when we start digging into that, we realize we've been doing this forever. Here's our history. Here's how we need to make amends for these things. Here's how we fix these things. I don't think it's school systems or teachers pushing woke ideology, right? That's where I'm saying you're generalizing is when you start saying things like the institutions are teaching people to hate America.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  It's like, that's not how that works.

• 58:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so we will have to, I, as you know, I keep a bevy of receipts on this stuff. We can certainly do a segment at some point where I will show you. Video after video after video after video of people talking about how much they hate America that are Americans.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  I'm not denying that that's a thing. What I'm saying is when we start generalizing and saying that it's the education system.

• 59:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Real after real, video after video of college professors saying that America is uniquely evil. So, hold on, you've put specific arguments, so we have to start teasing these out. One of them is, Tom, you're being ridiculous. Higher education in America does not teach people to hate America.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Yes, that.

• 59:21Tom Bilyeu?

  That will be very easy to disprove in terms of the number of professors that lean left versus the number that lean right. Bear with me.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Why are you saying the left instantly hates America?

• 59:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Because if you look at the rhetoric, if you look at the books that they're assigning, if you look at the things that they're saying, if you look at what the college professors are preaching, if you look at where they donate their money, it is all going to what I will call anti-American causes.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  So I hate America because I'm left-leaning.

• 59:46Tom Bilyeu?

  I hope you don't hate America.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  No, I don't, because I think we both know that generalizing entire half of the political spectrum as America haters is a little silly.

• 59:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so first of all, I'm not saying that everybody on the left hates America.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  We're saying the ideas are.

• 59:59Tom Bilyeu?

  As evidenced by the fact that I don't think you hate America. What I'm saying is, remember where all of this started. America has to have a positive vision of itself that it reinforces in itself, and when an immigrant shows up, they need to be indoctrinated into that. And if they aren't buying into American values, America's sense of itself, then bringing that person in is going to cause chaos. Why? Because diversity of thought can be very dangerous, especially if you're in a populist moment. Now, when I say that, I like, as I hope people know, I build a team of rivals. I want people who think differently than

• 1:00:40Tom Bilyeu?

  me. I love that you're pushing back. This is gonna help me sharpen my own thinking. It's wonderful. I've no beef with that. But if I felt that you and I shared fundamentally different values, meaning that we want to see America destroyed, that it's so corrupt it needs to be burned to the ground, then I'd be like, okay, this is not going to be fruitful. If, however, we share a sense of like, hey, we need to contribute meaningfully to our country, we shouldn't be trying to take from the public dole unless we're like in a real crisis, we should be trying to get back up on our feet as quickly as possible, the government should be balancing its budget, we have an obligation to protect our citizens, we have an obligation to win on the world stage, we should be focused on innovation,

• 1:01:23Tom Bilyeu?

  right? A bunch of things that I can lay out. The individual has a spark of divinity in them, it's the right layer of analysis, we should be having private property rights, we should uphold the Constitution, all of those things. If we agree on those, and then we come at it from different angles, like you think that we should teach a different narrative in school about how we should respond to the history of slavery, cool. Like, those are where you get fresh ideas, people don't see things the same way, they sharpen each other, it's great. But when you have diversity in your fundamental values, now you have a real problem. And I'm saying, we are creating, in the West broadly, we are creating a situation where because we have, what I will say is aggressively the wrong economic setup, because

• 1:02:04Tom Bilyeu?

  people can come not to contribute but to take, that attracts a very different kind of person. So you're attracting the world over, people that want to come and take, you're allowing them to be in their own enclave, where you're not saying, you're welcome here because you agree with our core fundamental values. You're saying, eh, if you want to live life as a Bosnian, like, do it. Like, it doesn't matter that you're no longer in fucking Bosnia. And this is where I'll remind everybody, if I went to Japan and was like, I'm gonna live an American life in Japan, fuck me, I'm the asshole. Not Japan for not letting me be the brash American. I'm going to adhere to the way that they are. So for instance, you

• 1:02:46Tom Bilyeu?

  can't smoke outside in Tokyo. I'll say that again. You can't smoke outside in Tokyo. Fucking American that thinks that they can. Literally, go in your little fucking cubby hole and smoke. So that's how the Japanese get down, and a thousand other things. I'm saying, America has an identity. France had an identity. England had an identity. And if these guys want to be so suicidal that they're gonna give up their identity, they will pay this exact price because of a mechanism, which is what I think you and I are not seeing eye to eye on. I'm saying, this is just fucking mechanistic. I'm not passing a value judgment on immigrants. If I move somewhere else, I would be an immigrant. So I know immigrants are meat. It's just a person that went somewhere. And the question becomes, how do they behave when they get

• 1:03:31Tom Bilyeu?

  there? There are ways for them to behave that are awesome, and there are ways for them to behave that are absolutely ridiculous, that will cause strife in that country. And that's the part where I'm saying, that there's no arguing the mechanism. Humans are tribal. When humans are tribal, and emotionally reasoning, which we are, and the pie is actually shrinking, which it is, people will fight. And oh, guess what? The fucking world reflects back to me exactly what I'm saying. So, I'm not, there's no other way to make sense of all that.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  I think we've evolved past the point where tribalism should control our actions.

• 1:04:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Sure.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  But that being said, we probably should be moving on. So, we'll jump over to the American military with Pete Keg's breath, as he had some things to say regarding, well, which one do you want to start with? Do you want to start with the...

• 1:04:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Pete? Yeah, let's do it.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  All right. So this is what Pete had to say to our military.

• 1:04:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, I want to set this up, yeah. So, we want the longer clip, if that's a really short one. This one's a little over a minute. All right, man. If you guys didn't see this, you want to talk about a battle for the definition of what it means to be American. Pete Hakeseth is doing his best to redefine it, and boy, oh boy. Pete Hakeseth, this whole situation is getting absolutely unhinged. He went full crusader as he announced a slew of military upgrades, including, but not limited to, no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos. You're gonna hear it directly from the man. This whole thing is wild. Take a listen.

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  I just thought he was referencing his Grindr profile.

• 1:05:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Maybe.

• 1:05:08Speaker 05

  Training, readiness, accountability, discipline, and lethality. And when you pursue those things, you don't have to walk on eggshells. No more social engineering, no more weaponized IG policies. The complainers, the ideologues, and the poor performers are no longer in the driver's seat. No more silly PowerPoint trainings or drag queen shows. No more diversity quotas, no more gender pronouns, no more identity months. Only the warrior ethos. And I know you feel it, because I've been to your units and met with your troops. It has transformed entire formations as it was intended to do. But it's worth saying again, so that

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  the fake news understands it. We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation of that? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.

• 1:06:11Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, that's your man. Now, this certainly is a new era for the US military, and in fairness, we do need a radical overhaul of the US military. We are not at all prepared for modern warfare. But boy, oh boy, those were some pretty unhinged comments. So, I will be very clear. I do think that the military needs to attract the hardest core people on planet Earth, people that want to defend this nation, that are willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice. We should treat these people like the heroes that they are, which we clearly do not. So, 1,000%, I want to see people be tough, be focused on being strong, being

• 1:06:51Tom Bilyeu?

  ready, high lethality. But what I hate seeing is a swing in the exact opposite direction. So, instead of finding the ground in the middle of being proud of your nation, of being proud to defend it and stand up for it, of being prepared to become one of the most trained and lethal people on planet Earth, a person who is highly disciplined, we're creating something that's just reactionary. Where now it's, I know who I am because I'm not that. I'm not a beardo, I'm not a weirdo, I'm not a fatty or a tranny. Like, that shit is anathema to me. What I want to see is somebody who's like, take the David Goggins approach. He goes, he tries to join the military, and he is too fat, and they tell him, you can't get in the military unless you lose weight. And so that man goes on one of the

• 1:07:34Tom Bilyeu?

  most inspiring journeys any human being has ever gone on, to get himself in shape, to be able to become a proud member of our armed services. That is the kind of thing that I want to see, and I want to celebrate. I don't want to see somebody making fun of him because he wasn't ready for military service in the first place. I don't want to see them take somebody in that isn't ready. But I want to see a generation of kids that are inspired to become that kind of hard-hitting, in shape, I'm here to protect America person. But to do that, we've got to paint a picture of what America actually is, what America stands for, why it's a place that's worth protecting. That, to me, is what I want to hear. And so this is the maddening part of populism, is you just swing from one side to the other. So, you've got...

• 1:08:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Hey Seth, who I understand why people have real beef with this guy. You get him as a response to the people that we had posing in military uniform in their furry dog face costume, which was equally ridiculous. And so I don't want to see either one of these extremes. There was a vibe that the military had, call it post-World War II, where we understood the real sacrifices it takes to protect America. People had paid the ultimate price so all of us could live free. And the way that we should be honoring these people is by military readiness. And this is the part where I actually am happy to see what the Trump administration is doing. And that is Project Meridian.

• 1:09:04Tom Bilyeu?

  And so Pete Hegseth, love him or hate him, he gathered some of the most extraordinary engineering minds on planet Earth, including Elon Musk and Andrew co-founder Palmer Lucky, to basically entirely reimagine modern warfare, which is critical. And the fact that we have waited so long to do this is really distressing. I suppose this is just the way that it goes. You've got to know what that next fight is going to look like. But honestly, we should have been doing this 10 years ago. But anyway, the goal of Project Meridian is a 120-day sprint to map what war is going to look like now and for decades into the future. And what America needs to do exactly to win any conflict that might arise.

• 1:09:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I understand that talking about more military conflicts makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I think people are very right to be very skeptical of the military-industrial complex. But the reality is that if you are unable to project force, you are going to find yourself in trouble because China is working overtime to be able to project force. Russia is actively attacking a neighbor. And so the fact that war is going to happen is just a true statement. And if you buy into the argument, which I certainly do, that Russia made a move precisely because of American weakness, then you understand why you need people that are going to stand tall. Now, I am a big believer that America needs to redefine its moral stance.

• 1:10:32Tom Bilyeu?

  America needs to act moral on the world stage. We certainly have not always done that. But the way to getting back to that is not to say that America is full of a bunch of evil assholes. It's about finding those moments in history that we want to hearken back to, where we truly have been the very thing that we have stroven to be. Now, nothing is ever going to be perfect. And I think about this all the time with Winston Churchill. The very guy that saved you from the Nazis was also doing questionable things. And there is just a reality to be faced with that. I don't think that there's any way to deal with war, which is the mass slaughter of humans. There's no way to deal with that perfectly. So I think we all have to let go of that notion. But nonetheless, we need to be thinking about what do we need to do

• 1:11:17Tom Bilyeu?

  from a readiness standpoint? What are the innovations that we have to create? And the scope of Project Meridian runs through all of that, from tunnels underground all the way out to space and the things that we're going to be doing in between Earth and the moon. And I think ultimately, the moon is going to be a part of this conversation. The findings from Project Meridian are due January 28th of 2027. We're expecting a public report. So we'll see what ends up coming out of all this. But I actually, despite sort of the lunacy of the wrapping of this, when I heard what we're doing and when I heard the people that were getting involved in this, I was very excited. Now, there is rightful skepticism in terms of, hold on a second. Elon Musk and Palmer Lucky are two of the people

• 1:12:02Tom Bilyeu?

  that will stand to benefit the most from whatever the roadmap ends up being. But who else are you going to put? The people that actually are building this technology are the right people to put in these positions, for better or worse. Now, we definitely have to make sure that we create a way for up-and-comers to come and displace these guys, which is a big part of what they both had to fight through, to get their contracts. And by the way, the way that Palmer Lucky did it is absolutely brilliant. The vast majority of what they build, he builds on spec, meaning he either spends his own money or raises private capital to build things for the military, and then they either buy it or they don't. Now, that will not get you all the way. You're never going to build an aircraft carrier on spec.

• 1:12:47Tom Bilyeu?

  But I'm not sure who else you get. Elon Musk is the single most effective aggregator of engineers that quite literally the world has ever seen, the world over. It's not like there's someone hiding in Russia or China that's done better than him. He's the guy. So you've got him on your team. Palmer Lucky is creating some of the best systems for creating inexpensive military weaponry faster than anybody else. So yes, we're going to have to be careful that this doesn't just become them co-opting every dollar and then creating regulatory capture around themselves, which I'm sure they will have the pull to do. But that's where we step in and say, okay, listen, I'm glad that we got these guys on board.

• 1:13:31Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm glad that we're modernizing our military, which is an absolute must. And here are the protections that we're going to put around to make sure this doesn't just become regulatory capture. But I am very excited to see this despite Hegseth and his wild-ass comments. Now, there's another part of this, which is Hegseth is leaning into like a religious board department. I can't remember if it's a board or a department. But anyway, I think it's called Religious Affairs. So he's created this office of Religious Affairs. It's going to report directly to him, no staff in between. You've got chaplains are going to get an advocate at the very top. Within 90 days, the office owes him a report on every unfunded religious requirement in the department. So he's bringing religion back.

• 1:14:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, this one, I expect people to have a, to feel some type of way. I get it. This one is rightly going to be debated. And honestly, for me, I'm torn. I'm not religious at all. I certainly wouldn't want religion shoved down my throat. But the reality is, if you want to talk about what transmits values very rapidly, religion is the undefeated champion, man. It is just truly, it is from an evolutionary perspective, I think evolution's sort of ultimate weapon of like, oh, you guys want to get together in very large groups and cooperate flexibly and be willing to die for each other? Say less, fam. Here's religion. And I think this is why everybody has a God-shaped hole in their heart. I think this is why everybody has this impulse to kneel before something bigger than them,

• 1:14:58Tom Bilyeu?

  whether it's climate change or it's God, doesn't matter. People are going to give themselves over to something that they see as bigger than themselves. That is how the human mind is constructed. So I certainly understand how a guy that has that bent towards almost any religion, quite frankly, would rise to power in a situation like this and then want to use that as a way to rally other people behind him. It's going to be incredibly effective. But I do expect Americans to feel some type of way because when we talk about separation of church and state, people start going, hmm, I don't know that I like the idea of the military, which is the force projection that can always be aimed inward.

• 1:15:42Tom Bilyeu?

  It is the force projection of the state at its most extreme. And so to integrate the religious element with that just doesn't feel good. So, hey, I certainly welcome that debate. But I don't think anybody should be confused about why it's happening.

• 1:15:58Speaker 03

  I think you touched on earlier when you started, but the biggest problem I feel with the speech is that it's ostracizing a group of people and generalizing that they aren't strong, right? And what happens then when you take a whole group of people who, there are some strong people in these groups, right? Because strength is all in the mind, but, or building up to the strength, I mean. Like it's a, it's a mind, like you have to be in the mindset to get strong. Do you think this hurts recruiting numbers? Do you think people who otherwise would have gone to the military? Because we need more people in the military. It's been small for how long now? Like, when did the real decline start?

• 1:16:32Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm not sure, but a while.

• 1:16:33Speaker 03

  It was like post-Vietnam, I think, like.

• 1:16:35Tom Bilyeu?

  That wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know is the only honest answer.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  Okay, okay. But yeah, do you think it'll hurt recruiting numbers? Like, how do you think this puts the military as a look to the rest of the world? Or I guess in our case, the United States.

• 1:16:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I wouldn't worry about the rest of the world. So if I'm not mistaken, and fact-check me on this, but if I'm not mistaken, numbers are up under Trump. And I think they're up precisely because of this. So any marketing message, you want to make sure that you know who your intended audience is. And if you try to be something for everybody, meaning we don't want to offend anybody, we don't want to alienate anybody, we want everybody to feel like they could join the military, then your marketing message is for nobody and you're going to have weak recruiting. I think it is far better, given that the military is ultimately about defending our nation by killing other people, that there is a certain type of person that you're going to appeal to. I think you should appeal to them loud and proud. So yeah, this is not going to hurt recruiting. This is going to dial recruiting up because you now have a very specific call to arms.

• 1:17:31Tom Bilyeu?

  And the kind of person that is likely to want to carry a weapon is probably going to be a hyper responder to this kind of personal strength, discipline, all of that stuff is going to resonate with them. So from that perspective, just from a pure recruiting numbers, I think it's a smart move.

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  But I also think it's interesting, you brought up the, some people want to, I don't know what you're phrasing, but like kneel at something higher than them.

• 1:17:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:52Speaker 03

  And I do think there's something to, that's why some people join the military, right? Like, when I was in, I did Boy Scouts. And part of the reason I liked doing it is because I felt like I was part of something bigger. And it was like, there's nature and I'm helping the environment and I'm helping my fellow brother, right? So do you think?

• 1:18:10Speaker 03

  Pushing religion or is going to affect that kind of mentality of brotherhood? Or do you think it only strengthens it? Because like you said, it's bringing in more people.

• 1:18:18Tom Bilyeu?

  This is what so it is utterly fascinating when you really stop and look at what is religion? So you create some iconography, let's call it a cross. And somebody sees you wearing that cross. They've never seen you before. This is why I just really want people to understand racism is is not the thing. You see that, oh, this person shares my values. I feel an instant kinship with people. All people are trying to figure out is who are you? And this is why racism gets baked into the human condition, which is that, oh, I can look at you. I can see that you're different. You probably come from somewhere different. You probably think differently than me. You're a stranger and now I must be concerned. And so that's why there's always going to be sort of background radiation around that. As long as humans have this desire to understand, are you in group or out group?

• 1:19:04Tom Bilyeu?

  But what's hilarious to me is how instantaneously somebody can transcend that when they realize, oh, actually you are into the thing that I'm into. And so religion just carries that in a super powerful way. So if you go, hey, this is the value system that this group stands for. This is our religion, our iconography, and we all get down just like this. Then it's like, cool, I know who that message is. I know I either am that or I'm not that. And so it will galvanize those people. And it just becomes a question, how many of those people are there? And if there's a lot of those people, and I would say that there are, then now you're speaking very clearly to them. They will galvanize around each other. They will share values, be more likely to lay their life down for each other because they feel a sense that we have something shared. There's a shared brotherhood, it's a bond.

• 1:19:49Tom Bilyeu?

  And it is just hilarious to me that people can't understand. You can bond with anybody that you thought they were out group. And then you realize all of a sudden, oh, actually we're fighting on the same team. We're together or we need to rely on each other. This is why a lot of their training is about that. Like, I'm not training you to be a bunch of lone wolves. I'm training you to be a part of a larger organism. That's why you're going to listen to commands. You're going to obey the hierarchy because we want everybody operating as like one group. And so group cohesion is what they're optimized for. Now, let's bring this back to France. You've got France with all the immigrant non-conformity compared to the military,

• 1:20:29Tom Bilyeu?

  which literally enforces group identity, group cohesion, adherence to hierarchy, all of that. Which one do you think will function better together? Obviously militaries. It is what they are designed for. They are designed to polish off the like, I'm an individual. I'm like freewheeling. I'm over here doing this. It is all about getting you to conform to an identity. It's very effective. I understand why a lot of people don't want that level of conformity in their life. But if you're trying to answer the question, which one works to create unity? The one over here where we are talking, hey, we all have one goal. We are part of one thing. We are one unit. We have each other's backs. We state over and over what we stand for. We have fucking chants and calls. That's going to create unity.

• 1:21:13Tom Bilyeu?

  When you allow people to silo, creates chaos. So you're going to see more and more of this in the military, the more threats become real. And I think a lot of this is in response to seeing how much disunity there was in the military being deployed into the Middle East, where if the rumors can be believed, there was a lot of dissension among the ranks. And so if you've got dissension among the ranks, you start asking yourself as the leader, what do I got to do to get all of these guys on the same page? This is their answer.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  To answer, it was called the Office of Religious Affairs. And then here are the stats that I was able to pull for military numbers. So they started rising around May of 2024, kept increasing. October 2024, we saw a dip and then that started recovering. And now we're back in a dip for the most updated numbers.

• 1:22:02Tom Bilyeu?

  All right.

• 1:22:02Speaker 03

  And this does not include Coast Guard, by the way, which that is a distinct thing for chatters who don't know. Coast Guard is typically left out of most military stats. I don't remember the exact reason, but I only knew because a friend of mine's dad was a Coast Guard.

• 1:22:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Interesting. So, all right, well, we'll see what happens.

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:22:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Numbers are either going to go up or down. Well, then we'll know.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  With Trump's nuclear push.

• 1:22:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  Tell us about that.

• 1:22:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, man. Okay, I could not be more excited about this. Trump's nuclear push is spinning people, though, out of control. He's bringing up all these new nuclear facilities specifically to modernize America. Boys and girls, we need energy. Otherwise, in 2027, we're talking like three months from now, you're going to find that AI starts getting held back by energy. In fact, the thing that happened in New Mexico is largely the inability to get the energy they needed for that new data center. We have to be realistic. China is outstripping us from a energy perspective. And we're seeing how vulnerable we are to energy costs. Energy costs should be going down and down and down and down over time through innovation, through solar, through nuclear.

• 1:23:05Tom Bilyeu?

  There is no excuse for the absolute insane way that we've been behaving. I get it. You don't want the climate to change? Cool, I'm with you. I love that. Now let's innovate. Instead of saying we need fewer humans or we just need to live our lives in the cold or the heat, like that's retarded. That's full retard, all in capital letters. What we should be doing is innovating, which is exactly what your biggest competitor on the world stage is doing. China, China has generated more than 10,000 terawatts of electricity last year. The US generated 4,430. Okay? China's clobbering us. And AI is going to be ultimately limited by power.

• 1:23:46Tom Bilyeu?

  If we don't find a way to bring on more power, we are going to lose by default. And right now, by the way, the gap is just getting wider. In 2025 alone, China added almost 500 terawatts of new generation. Okay, that's a German sized grid built in like 12 months. So America added 120, 120. Yikes. So even if you look at capacity, by the way, it's telling a similar story in terms of China just absolutely slapping us around. They installed more than 430 gigawatts of wind and solar in 2025. The US added only 53 gigawatts. That's everything combined. Okay? And that was our biggest year since 2002. China has 33 nuclear reactors under construction and has approved at least 10 new ones every

• 1:24:30Tom Bilyeu?

  year since 2022. The US has zero large reactors under construction right now. Yo, Trump's nuclear push is very real. But we do have to be honest about when this is going to come online because the first new big American reactor isn't expected to come online until 2032. Now, we've run some tests. We've got them going critical, which is what you, what tells you that it's actually working. So it sounds bad, but that's actually a good thing. So that is very encouraging. And look, we can't go back in time. So all we can do is start doing it now. So I'm very happy to see that this is going on. But the big thing for me is we've got to make sure that Americans understand that

• 1:25:14Tom Bilyeu?

  innovation is the reason that your electricity bills are going to go down. So it isn't going to be shutting down the data center near you. You're, you should be so offended by the state of your energy grid. You should be so offended by the energy policies that have led you guys to pay more for energy than you need to. This is absolutely crazy. It should not be this expensive as it isn't as expensive in China. So we know it's possible. It's just that we have hamstrung people so much with absurd regulation all around, like these overblown concerns. Not a single person in America has died due to a nuclear accident. Not one. Okay, so we got freaked out. I get it. There was like a potential disaster. We averted it, but nuclear has gotten so much better since then.

• 1:25:58Tom Bilyeu?

  That is the part that people just, and it is hilarious that lights turned off behind me as I'm talking about our need to get power. That, that is so perfect. So listen, we can't afford our electricity here at Impact Theory, apparently, and the lights are just slowly dying. Let's make energy cheap, shall we? Shall we, boys and girls? There's no reason for this to be happening. This is, we've allowed our politicians to bamboozle us. We have allowed crazy alarmism stop us from innovating our way around real problems. Climate change, real, no need to argue that. How do we get out of it? That's where the argument should be happening. And the fact that people are trying to say we should go backwards, we should have less humans, we should have less power. That is wild.

• 1:26:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Every problem humanity has ever solved has been on the back of innovation. And so let us not lose sight of that now. We've just got to reinvigorate people with a desire to build and create and do amazing things, but we are not currently doing that, but we can. And I love seeing what Trump is doing here. This is fantastic.

• 1:26:59Speaker 03

  I just want to clarify the, the nuclear death thing because there, there was one, which I am.

• 1:27:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Nope, hard pass.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have it right here. January 3rd, 1961, at the SL1 reactor in Idaho, three military members died. Now, that being said, I'm not against.

• 1:27:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Did they get hit by a falling wrench at a nuclear facility?

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  And underwent a power surge and a steam explosion from it killed.

• 1:27:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Get the fuck out of here. That's, that's not from nuclear. They got, they were killed in an industrial accident that happened to be at a nuclear facility.

• 1:27:27Speaker 03

  It was from the react.

• 1:27:28Tom Bilyeu?

  I want to be very fucking clear. We did not have nuclear leak. There was no nuclear fallout. Nobody melted like they did in Chernobyl. Industrial accidents happened all the fucking time. So let us separate. A steam blows up and kills somebody. That kind of stuff happens all the time. That is not like a uniquely nuclear thing. So yes, I, I will happily dig deeper on this, but I have looked at this before. Nobody has died from nuclear itself. Industrial accidents, a whole different thing.

• 1:27:56Speaker 03

  That's not me being against nuclear. I was just trying to clarify. But here's a bigger question. You mentioned the 530 gigawatts of solar and wind energy that China's added. How do we then? How do we even feel about the fact that the Trump administration has spent so much time cutting solar and wind electricity?

• 1:28:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Cutting solar is absolutely moronic. And so we should immediately stop doing that. Solar, solar, solar. China is showing just how good they're getting. China, also, let's just look at the math. Everything in our universe, quite frankly, but certainly our solar system is a rounding error in terms of things that you can burn to generate electricity. So when you look at the sun, it is kicking off way more energy than you need by a long shot. And so whatever it is that we're going to try to dig up in the ground to burn, it is so infinitesimal compared to the amount of energy that's falling on the planet from the sun. If you go into space, now you don't even have, you're never facing away from the sun. There's never a cloudy day. It's just nonstop. You're getting all of this.

• 1:28:57Tom Bilyeu?

  So talking about sending data centers into space so that you constantly have the energy that you need in conjunction with solar is absolutely brilliant. So yeah, that's stupid. Anybody trying to move us away from solar, that's dumb. We should be leaning into solar aggressively. Wind, on the other hand, it just seems less obvious that it's useful. First of all, there's a lot of times where there's no wind. Second of all, the big contraptions that you have to make, I guess, are themselves like an environmental problem. So doesn't seem like the best answer, but if somehow, some way that got more efficient, then I'd be very open to it and then would say, yeah, stopping that is a bad idea. But given that solar is showing increases that dwarf everything else, as far as I know,

• 1:29:40Tom Bilyeu?

  up to and including nuclear, like ultimately you're not going to need nuclear as solar gets better and better. So call that a, an interim solution as we bring more solar onboard. But yeah, we should not be pausing, slowing down, stopping, defunding solar.

• 1:29:56Speaker 03

  I can see an argument forming that a chatter could bring up about the fact that China's grid would be state planned. Is that something that we should mimic here in America? Or do you think you lean more towards fully private for this kind of thing?

• 1:30:09Tom Bilyeu?

  I am a big believer that you want the private market to do anything that the private market will do well, and then the government should step in for things that the private market is not going to do well. So if the private market, for whatever reason, is not getting you the grid that you need, then the government should step in, create incentives, et cetera, et cetera. But anything that the government does wholly itself, you end up with NASA versus SpaceX. So NASA was trash, super expensive. They did not have any of the market forces that they need to get better over time, and so they didn't. In fact, they got worse over time. So yeah, you get everything in the hands of the private market if the private market can solve that problem well.

• 1:30:47Speaker 03

  So China's approved at least 10 reactors since, I think it was 2022. Is it because they?

• 1:30:55Tom Bilyeu?

  I think more, 33, and they've started 10 of them are actually churning.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  Gotcha. And obviously there's the state controlled element, but do you think it's because they put their scientists on studying the environment? Or do you think it's like, there's no local opposition? Or what do you think's pushing this drive in China? Or is it the push to beat America?

• 1:31:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, beating America is a huge part of it, but also just China winning, trying to pull their people out of poverty. They understand that if you want to grow your economy, you have to grow your energy. Plain and simple. You will not grow your economy if you're hampered at the energy level. Period. And so China is smart, man. I hate their governmental system, but they are chock full of brilliant people that are doing brilliant things with absolutely incredible engineers. And yeah, they have their head out of their ass in terms of energy policy. Now they're running an authoritarian style government, which I am wildly opposed to, but you can't deny the results. And on the energy front, they're just making better decisions.

• 1:31:52Speaker 03

  What, uh, what's the main bottleneck you think we face in terms of getting this done quickly? Like, is it regulation? Is it our emphasis on AI? Is it us?

• 1:32:01Tom Bilyeu?

  The thing that stops you from doing it quickly is ultimately going to be regulation. So are there regulatory things that hold you back? The reason that we aren't farther ahead is largely climate alarmism. And so you put those things together and you find yourself in a difficult spot. And so there's going to be a lot of pushback to what Trump is trying to do. That'll delay things. You'll get people that try to trip him up or say, we don't want nuclear in our state. There'll be a whole lot of that. And so those things will cause us to go slower. But at the same time, it is very complex. It is very dangerous. This is not where you want to rush it. You want to do it as fast as you can do it safely. So some of the constraints just going to be around that. How quickly can you do this when you know you have to be psychotically careful?

• 1:32:44Tom Bilyeu?

  And they're very complex pieces of equipment.

• 1:32:48Speaker 03

  Do you think if it's guaranteed that the companies themselves have to pay for the electricity cost and the burden, do you think more Americans get on board with it? It's kind of, I guess, also a data center question in that regard, but?

• 1:32:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, yeah, if people knew, hey, this data center is going to supply its own energy. And by the way, they're going to supply more than they need and kick some back to the grid whenever they can. Therefore lowering the cost of our electricity here, updating our energy grid so that it can handle what they need. Oh, that would be huge. And if people made that a part of, hey, you want to come into our town? Cool. All you have to do is this. You have to upgrade our energy infrastructure and you have to supply at least 100% of your own energy. That seems like a pretty easy solve. So yeah, I think this is, this comes down to what's your impulse? Are you looking to get the deal done? Make sure that it's something good. You believe in innovation? You want to move forward?

• 1:33:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Or are you like, fuck these kids? I hate these guys. I don't like AI. I don't want to see us move forward. I want to stay still or go backwards. And we've somehow allowed that narrative to creep in, which makes me very sad.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  Gotcha. And speaking on, you know, AI energy in these races we're basically having with China, Trump recently stated that the US government might take some ownership stakes in OpenAI Anthropic. How does that make you feel in regards to the race?

• 1:34:07Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think anybody's going to surprise, be surprised to hear that I absolutely despise the idea of Trump taking positions in these AI companies. Now thankfully, I looked into this and he, it was an offhanded comment. Somebody pushed him and said, why don't you take stake in these AI companies since you're not going to let them get regulatory capture? Why don't you do like you did with Intel? And he was like, yeah, maybe I will. So thankfully, right now, it's just him sort of pontificating off the top of his head. He has not indicated in any way that he actually plans to do this, which is good. Nobody should want him to do this because that is a surefire way to pick winners and losers, which the government is god awful at.

• 1:34:48Tom Bilyeu?

  So I love the Trump accounts for kids that let's say have an S and P 500 type allocation to American AI companies. That would be amazing. And so now obviously we want to see these American companies do well, but if we really want to see innovation, we have to be agnostic to what companies win. We've got to be agnostic as to whether the value is captured at the infrastructure layer or at the actual end consumer product layer. Like we shouldn't care about that. What we should care about is innovation and making sure that these products are getting better, more capable and cheaper over time. And that is not going to happen at the rate that it could if the US finds itself as an

• 1:35:29Tom Bilyeu?

  interested investor, which all too easily they become when handing out contracts. So no, thanks.

• 1:35:36Speaker 03

  Before we get into our react for the day, would you like to tackle some Friday funnies in Drew's honor to continue his tradition?

• 1:35:43Tom Bilyeu?

  If we've got some good ones, we'll see. Brian's about to get judged here.

• 1:35:47Speaker 03

  We're about to get Gen Z humor out in here. Okay, first up, POV throwing all my company's confidential info into Claude to respond to one email.

• 1:35:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that is pretty funny. I'll give you that one. It is wild. What's crazy is, it was funny, I forget who I was talking to. I was talking to a group of people about what we're doing at Impact Theory. And I was like, listen, you do have to worry about your, all of your company secrets getting into the models, if you have anything sufficiently, you know, that you want to keep private. I was like, we even reached out to Palantir because they make a solution for this. And it was like, you could hear people like gasp, clutch their pearls. And I'm like, listen, man, I need a product. Now, if they are also just stealing your data, that becomes a whole different issue. But their whole thing is building that intermediate layer so that nothing is leaking out. And I think ultimately that is where this is going to go.

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  Yo, bro, try my new pre-workout. Promised me 3,000 years ago. Tel Aviv's strongest warrior.

• 1:36:43Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think I have enough context for this.

• 1:36:45Speaker 03

  It's just, it's just an Israel pre-workout and the whole joke about the land being promised them 3,000 years ago. I just saw it and I was like, that's political meme.

• 1:36:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Gen Z get this, I don't get this.

• 1:36:55Speaker 03

  Gen Z chatters right now are going, hell yeah. All right, next up. If I could afford $20 shoes, wouldn't be coming to fucking Ross. Afford, that's the typo, right? And so here's what the chat came back to say. They low Kia, a scam. Honda bright side, it's still cheaper. Bugatti, be kidding me.

• 1:37:15Tom Bilyeu?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:37:16Speaker 03

  $20 shoes, get out of here.

• 1:37:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I've got to say, the shoes were $20, $19.99 or whatever?

• 1:37:21Speaker 03

  Honestly, not bad.

• 1:37:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Bro, get on Amazon.

• 1:37:24Speaker 03

  Take those shoes.

• 1:37:24Tom Bilyeu?

  I get cheaper shoes than that. Like, it's crazy. You can get cheap ass shoes on Amazon. Now, are they maybe blowing my knees out? That's entirely possible. But yeah, it's always hilarious. I think people expect me to dress expensively because I could if I wanted to. And I buy my like $9 shoes off Amazon.

• 1:37:43Speaker 03

  You've got some cool stuff, though. I mean, you have that jacket, that big fluffy jacket.

• 1:37:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, well, I do spend money on some things. I do a high-low blend, let's say. So yeah, if I see, if I'm in Japan, I'm a danger because they're like, the fashion there, I think is so fucking dope. I'll spend retarded amounts of money on my Japanese streetwear.

• 1:38:01Speaker 03

  Sometimes you gotta splurge, you know?

• 1:38:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Thank you, guys. As always, happy Friday, by the way. It's the weekend. Go enjoy yourselves. We will see you back here on Monday. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Oh, by the way, I have another free AI masterclass. In fact, it's next week. So Thursday, October 8th, 1:00 PM Pacific. Link is in the description. Sign up, join me. This is going to be an awesome one. Don't miss it. We're going to be talking about how to launch a business with AI. This is a free class, so join me. All right, guys, have a great weekend. See you on Monday. Until then, 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.

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