E: So the shoulder split is simple, you know? You gotta work all three dimensions of the shoulders. You get enough front shoulder activation when you do chest presses, so I've gotten really away from specialized shoulder programs.
E: Mmm.
Kay: Hmm.
E: I mean, I don't know, I feel like I could talk about my shoulder routine for hours.
Kay: All… all day. Well, you know, that reminds me of a… of a…
Kay: That's quite… reminds me of a podcast.
Kay: That I've listened to, and the problem with this podcast is it's a business podcast, or an entrepreneurial podcast, and, you know, they too…
Kay: wax and wane on for hours about their workout routine, which I could care less about.
Kay: I want to hear about the business, and they spent an hour and a half talking about their stupid workout routines. In fact, it got to the point, actually, where one guy.
E: Pardon.
Kay: He's got type 2 diabetes, which he talks about on the show. I don't know the guy, but he's telling me, and oh, he's telling the show in one moment, he's like, I just… I don't know what to do, my blood sugar ranges anywhere from 2080 to 320, and I'm listening to this, I'm just like, what the fuck?
Kay: You… you're… and he's worried about, like, his workout routine, and I just… I literally went on his Discord, because they have a Discord for their show, and I said, dude, you are running at 280? You got to stop worrying about your stupid…
Kay: you know, whether a run is, you know, 5 miles or whatever, whatever he was talking about, I was like, you need to worry about your diet, dude. Like, you're… you're killing yourself. You're gonna lose your…
Kay: your organs, and if you don't, like, stop this, because I've heard him as a diabetic for the past 10 years. So anyway…
Kay: It's got that… it got that bad, where… and then he actually mentioned me on the show, he's like, oh, this guy, this, listener, you know, he told me I need to worry, you know, start thinking about this, and maybe I should, and I'm like, yeah.
E: That's great.
Kay: Anyway.
E: Although, you can't organ-shame someone, because that is borderline ableism.
Kay: Yeah, I'll shame… shame the shit out of… You know, it's… As a diabetic.
Kay: By the way, listeners, I am a diabetic of many years.
E: You're diabetic?
Kay: That's right.
E: Am I making that up for the podcast, or is that real?
Kay: Yeah, I'm making this up for… for drama. As a diabetic of 30 years,
Kay: I believe in shaming other diabetics for their poor quality and choices, and .
E: Yeah, and I think you'd be nice.
Kay: like God's… God's service. It's my… my contribution to their lives. I hope… I hope they listen.
Kay: Not to be mean, but just to save their organs, no big deal.
E: No big deal. Now, actually, this is interesting, you know, this Make America Healthy Again thing. A lot of people, I think.
E: liked originally. I know a lot of people who… who actually kind of like a lot of things that RFK Jr. was saying.
E: Because there are, you know, once again.
E: This is the problem of populism writ large.
E: is that… There are valid… gripes.
Kay: Exactly.
E: I have a ton of gripes about how American medicine works, not just the insurance company, business end, but doctors. Their lack of humility, their lack of open-mindedness, and I understand why. Western medicine has racked up a lot of wins, and there's a lot of things to celebrate.
E: And I… I think all medical interventions are risky, and when… I don't know, people out there, they think homeopathy has no risk, and it's like, okay, well, see Steve Jobs for the amount of risk you're running on the homeopathic front.
E: But to me.
E: there's a valid complaint, right? We can make our medical system better. Not just the business and insurance side.
E: Not the payment side, but also the actual care you received.
E: Bill Maher talks about this on his show, you know, he's like, I go to the doctor.
E: Very few times when I've been sick or have a problem, very few times does he ask me.
E: what's your diet like? What do you eat?
E: And that should be the first thing. Should be the first and last thing, because, you know… but I don't know why. There's, like, a cultural aversion in our country to not wanting to talk about that. The medical field is very happy to let us go, you know, right? I… the closest I've ever gotten, I've always been kind of overweight.
E: The closest I've ever gotten is that I go in there with the flu.
E: And then my doctor would say, you know what? This would be easier to treat if you were 15 pounds lighter.
E: And I did not like to hear it.
Kay: Oh, interesting.
E: But their job isn't for you to get them to like you, their job is to make you healthier. And so that's why this… the very legitimate gripe about the medical industry, the pharmaceutical industry, I mean, my god, right?
E: But then the solutions they reach for are the silliest, counterproductive, extreme thing there is.
E: It's like, politicians who get power have no idea how to moderate anymore, and I mean that
E: for the Biden administration, there were so many parts of the immigration, policy, if you want to even call it that. They barely had one, by the way. And I was… I was working…
E: Directly on this topic, talking to people who were involved in this.
Kay: Hmm.
E: There was barely… there's barely a policy there. People on the ground in Latin America who were shocked by pronouncements, like the temporary protected status for Venezuelans, overnight. It was not even consulted.
E: at their embassies.
E: It's just, you know, you can't have a moderated stance anymore, I don't know why. People don't want to govern, they just want to campaign forever, and…
E: health is one of those things where… what a great opportunity to change things around. You have an outsider.
E: leading on the medical front, you have an outsider being president.
E: There's so many things you could change, and health is one of these things where, like.
E: Why aren't… why aren't they doing more? I know the answer to that.
Kay: Well…
E: You're not actually interested in changing the status quo. The status quo is a lot of money and power.
Kay: Very true. I was thinking about that comment that you've said a few times now, which is the dangers of populism, and it did hit me, I don't know, I was at a grocery store thinking about this the other day, that
Kay: that, indeed, The thing about populism is that
Kay: Darn, they make a lot of sense on a number of issues.
Kay: And you…
E: Cute.
Kay: You kind of have to say.
Kay: Well, that's true, that's good, and and yet, the… and yet at the same time, what's complicated about it is that,
Kay: the way often populism works is a power grab, right? So they're grabbing and taking more power, and justifying that grabbing of power with, well, something needs to be done, and it's not going well the way it was going before.
Kay: So we need to do this. I was listening to the All In podcast today, and…
Kay: again, I… I… I'm disappointed with their…
Kay: Basically, like, the new puppets of the administration, where they kind of defend Anything they're doing.
Kay: Except for one of them. And so the…
Kay: the topic was, should we put military, you know, into the streets? You know, should we militarize every city? And yeah, they made some good points. Yeah, there are certainly… they had one really compelling, quote from a Black woman
Kay: Who had been around a long time, I think, in DC. I don't know, I didn't catch her name. She doesn't sound like she was either a politician or someone important.
Kay: And she said, you know, I can't believe that after only 9 months of Trump being in power, I've heard from so many of my community members that I feel safe for the first time. And she was like, I don't want to be the one to say it, I'm very…
Kay: I don't even like the guy kind of thing, but I have to say, why is it that suddenly our streets are safe and I actually feel comfortable? Maybe the people before didn't actually care about us, even though they said they did. And I was like, yeah, I resonate with… of course, I'm listening, I'm like, okay, I resonate with some of what she's saying, for sure.
Kay: But, and I can understand the frustration, but the problem is that if the answer is a pattern of just every time there's some problem, let's throw the military into the streets, that becomes the precedent.
Kay: And… and yes, there's a re… maybe you could justify a reason, but there's always going to be a reason. There's, you know, I'm sure every, dictator has had their very good reasons why they had to do… why they had to shut someone up, or, you know, they had to do this, or they had to do that. I mean, they… you could just… you could go to the ends of the earth justifying stuff.
Kay: to take power and to break… and to cross the line, but the whole point of the Constitution was to prevent that from happening. So it is… I think… I think it's difficult because the populism
Kay: It only works, it's only… populism is only effective when it's speaking common sense.
Kay: And the unfortunate thing is we've had
Kay: administrations on both sides that were talking out of their ass, and they were not talking common sense, and now…
E: That is cool.
Kay: blue. Yeah, exactly, as a status quo, we were all…
E: We're so excited.
E: Because that was, that was, you know, that was under, I think, a different kind of society and culture. Strong norms that governed, and so people could…
E: You know, it was just not appropriate to say certain things.
E: yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not a political scientist.
E: I write a lot about politics, but it's just one of those things where
E: I've seen it in other countries, you know, I was just… I was having dinner with these, kind of, like, international people, a lot of them were from Latin America.
E: And I said, you know…
E: what Trump is doing… this is what happens in Latin American countries, by the way. Latin American countries, the people there.
E: There is a huge amount of, there's a huge amount of…
E: what do they call it? Inequality.
E: The richest people control everything. The same families have controlled everything for the longest time in a lot of countries in Latin America.
E: And… It gets to a point where there's always something that gets people upset.
Kay: Maybe it's a depression, it's a recession…
E: They see rich people always benefiting and always on top.
E: And then the average person gets screwed all the time, and wages aren't going up.
E: And so a populace comes along.
E: And, yeah, sometimes it's from the military, but it's always a tough guy. It's always a tough guy.
Kay: Right.
E: You know? And he goes, like, I'm gonna take a hard hand to these things, and the corrupt politicians…
E: haven't done anything about it, because they're in bed with, Money Delete, or whatever it is.
E: In Mountain America, it's often gangs.
E: and cartels that they say that, you know, these politicians are in bed with, rings of corruption that steal from the people. I'm an outsider from the military, or from wherever, and I'm gonna fix it. But you gotta give me… you gotta give me the power to do it. Because these guys, you know, what I'm up against, it's pretty terrible.
E: And so, people are so desperate, after failed politician after failed politician, Promising the world
E: Then they elect someone, and they find… they look the other way, as this person amasses power.
E: Because they've done such a great job of legitimizing gripes. That's what populism is about, it's about complaints. It's never about solutions. It is never, ever, ever about solutions. It is only about…
E: gripes. It's only about complaints, right?
Kay: Yeah.
E: That's the way it works in Latin America. That's why Daniel Ortega is basically running a dictatorship in Nicaragua right now. That's why Guatemala has corrupt president after corrupt president. They finally…
E: elected someone who's democratic-minded, not part of a corrupt circle of power, because he came literally out of exile, and his father was a president who was exiled from Guatemala, grew up overseas, came back to Guatemala, and tries to fix it, but he can't, because the corruption networks are too strong.
Kay: They, at every opportunity.
E: Try to make him look corrupt.
E: Which is insane.
E: And they find every opportunity to tear him down. Oh, rumors that his wife is a lesbian, because she doesn't… her hair isn't long. Stuff like that.
Kay: So, playing to conservative…
E: Plain to divisive conservative social-cultural issues.
E: And then meanwhile, the… the people who are at the center of corruption
E: The people who take power, don't do anything about the gripes. If anything, they want the gripes to continue.
E: They want to keep pointing… they keep finding out new things!
E: there are new problems they keep on covering, right? Yeah. So…
E: You know, for the longest time, no one is fixing the immigration system.
E: Because you have to pass a law. And, you know, it's a president's job to run… when a president governs, it's a coalition, always a coalition. It's never just one person.
E: And they have to gather broad support in the Senate and the House, using political connections, using political power, to put together legislation that Congress is responsible for drafting, but the President can help set the agenda and move things forward, and make deals.
E: Right? But that has not happened. In decades, in decades, there's been nothing happening on immigration.
E: And Democrats, I do not understand why, at a national level, have not taken the problem seriously. They've…
E: they've been playing to their base and saying, we're gonna protect these noble people. Yeah. I'm sorry, man, but, like, treating the massive waves of undocumented immigration as if these people are noble, they're not all noble. I know a lot of them.
E: I've met a lot of people who are in the U.S, they're illegally, they're working really hard, work two, three jobs, a necessary contributor to the community and to the economy, and I've met people who are there, and they pretend not to be married, they have 4 kids, they're on Medicaid.
E: they're on Medicare, they're committing fraud, and they talk about it on their social media. They talk about how you can give birth to a baby for free in the US, and he's a citizen, and he can get you citizenship when he's 18, and they'll pay for all his stuff, and people have asked me, my wife, because my wife is Latina, she's an immigrant.
E: We did it the right way.
E: And we actually don't, like, talk about it a lot, because it sounds like bragging when we talk to other immigrants, but they'll tell her, like, oh, like, you know, are you on Medicaid or Medicare? And we're like, no, like, I have a job, I work, I, you know, I don't qualify. Oh, no, no, no, but that's because you say you're married. If you just say you're not married.
E: mom, supporting a couple kids, then the birth will be free, the healthcare will be free, they give you food stamps, and I'm like, Jesus Christ!
E: And I'm like, you are a huge problem, but it's one side of the issue wants to make you think all the immigrants are like that. They're not.
E: Yeah. A lot of the Venezuelan immigrants that came had a lot of social media, where once they got to New York, after being shipped there by governors in the South.
E: after they got sent there, and finally the New York mayor realized, oh wait, this isn't great. Chicago, right? They realized that
Kay: these Venezuelans were on social media saying, look at these crap… look at this crappy hotel they have us in, look at this terrible food they're serving us.
E: And meanwhile, undocumented immigrants who came here to work and had to walk all the way up here and suffered and sacrificed looked at that and they said, why do you think you get anything for free?
E: So it's such a complex picture, but no politician is willing to fix it. No politician's willing to be honest about it.
E: And so there's so much…
E: slight. You know, it's offensive for a poor working American to see people come in and expect things to be just handed to them, committing Medicare fraud, Medicare, Medicaid fraud.
E: And it's a complex picture, because it's also upsetting to see members of the community contributing economically get ripped apart by a secret police, and that's what… I mean, I'm sorry, but at this point, ICE qualifies as a secret police. There's zero accountability. They snatch people off the streets. You know, my mom grew up in a fascist country.
Kay: that was a daily occurrence. That's true. Right? And that is absolutely the biggest issue that I have with it is… which I think.
E: And that's the problem. There's no solution! It's just, it's just, like, look at all this illegal immigration, and think about it, right?
E: So, the deportations.
E: are up, not they're not… I think they're now only now beginning to touch upon historical levels, but not really. Obama deported more people, but what's happening is there are less people showing up to the border.
Kay: without papers, because they're scared to come here because of everything that's happened. That's the biggest accomplishment of this administration, is to get the illegal crossings down. But they've done it by terrorizing communities, right? So, like, there's no good solution there. Their solution was mass…
E: police, with no accountability, snatching people off the streets. That's their solution, right?
E: like.
Kay: Well, this is the problem, is that once you start doing that… Where's the legislation? Yeah, once you start making that a precedent.
Kay: Then it goes and it bleeds into other… into other topics besides immigration, and then it suddenly…
E: Absolutely. You want to send it.
Kay: Hey, this guy's a political enemy.
E: Yeah.
E: I mean, Trump says a lot of things, but that's one of the things he said. He said, well, maybe we should send our own criminals to that prison.
Kay: Yeah, exactly. Or you take a journalist that you don't like, and you can say he's a fraudster. This isn't… this isn't, like, panicking. He has said these things.
E: Yeah. Right? He said it is no Project 2025, but now he's implementing it. Russ Votts is picking apart… see, and most people don't know what the federal government does, right? They don't know that they provide a ton of services.
E: But also, the federal government has a ton of waste, and a ton of overlap.
E: So, you know, where is the political incentive to show up and tell people, hey man, listen, we need a cut from this federal budget because there's so much waste and overlap?
E: Also, the federal government does incredibly important things every day that you don't even realize.
E: no politician will say those two things. No one.
E: It's insane!
E: Right?
E: And so, people are just having to flip back and forth between voting for the two extremes, hoping that something ends up in the middle, but that's not how it's… that's not what's.
Kay: Okay.
E: So, we have an entire population with a lot of legitimate gripes, and no earnest
E: leader willing to actually meet most of the country in the middle, because you can only get power by doing extreme things. And so…
E: As how it was in the Biden administration. There's a ton of stuff they did to help reshore jobs and near-shore jobs, the IRA, the CHIPS Act.
E: You know…
Kay: With the CHIPS Act, by the way, I think we should talk about that, maybe after this, because I do think that that is…
E: Let's go, let's go right into that. Let's go right into that, because this is…
Kay: Well, I think it…
E: Most… most issues are not… most issues are not that political or polarized.
Kay: Yeah.
E: in reality.
Kay: Right. No matter how much the politicians try to divide us, this is, you know…
E: I… probably it's annoying at this point, but ideology and partisanship are the tools of the elite to divide
E: the middle of the country. 60-80% of us have a lot in common, and there are issues that are important, but not as important as how we come together as a country and solve the big things, right?
E: And so, to me, it's just shocking that so many of these things are politicized.
E: Because that's how the elites want it. They want to, you know, the 60-80% of us who agree on a lot of the important things.
E: If we get divided by partisanship and ideology, culture war, bullshit.
E: then that's it. Then we are easily dominated by people who continue to get richer, to 10%.
E: of the most wealthy own 50% of all the wealth in this country. That's a high.
E: almost as high as it was in the 1920s. We're going back to that, and that's because they've successfully divided us. They just divided us, and we're so easily divided, and the internet has only helped with this. But anyway, chips.
Kay: Well, I do think the… I do think the last administration, because maybe they still believed in
Kay: Congressional power. At least did succeed… successfully pass that.
Kay: Which was kind of a big deal, because they hadn't been able to make a case for infrastructure to that level for a long time.
Kay: Right. And, that was, you know…
Kay: To your point, if populism is just dealing with gripes, which maybe a tariff could help solve, what's actually difficult is to actually put money in… put money where your mouth is, and to.
Kay: Spend billions of dollars building up
Kay: a chip industry that's been dying out for a while, and it really has been dying out. I mean, I think when we were…
Kay: in college, I remember,
Kay: building computers with my roommates in my college dorm room, and we were all using… like, the best you could get was an Intel chip. That was like, oh man, you got the Intel…
E: Whatever they were doing at the time, Penny Emerson.
Kay: And, Pentium 3, I don't know. And I remember… it was… we would go down to, like, the computer fair, pick up these chips, and it was cool, because Intel was really ahead of the game, and then around 2000…
Kay: 10 to 12 is when you start to see the shift, and Intel lost their way, and they were suddenly overtaken by, by TSMC,
Kay: But they didn't really know it yet.
Kay: the writing was starting to get on the wall, and it was the moment that you saw Apple put
Kay: these chips into their laptops, and they were fast, that you were like, oh shit, Intel's gone, Intel's done, because they're using completely different technology. And
Kay: The reason that happened, for those who don't know.
Kay: is because Intel, who was run by a bunch of engineers until the early 2000s.
Kay: people like Andy Grove and stuff were super obsessive, and his whole book… he has a famous book called Only the Paranoid Survive.
Kay: Suddenly, they stop being paranoid, and they replace people like him, not with engineers, but with Wall Street business school types. And the moment they do that, they took their eye off the ball, they stopped worrying about the technology, they started worrying about their profits and their bonuses, and they completely let
Kay: again, took their off the ball, and suddenly they lost. And it's so difficult. I mean, that was one of the fields where, yeah, if you're running… if you're a CEO of, like, Pepsi, you're all good, and I mean? Worst that can happen is someone makes a better taste in cola, and maybe you market the shit out of them.
Kay: You can't do that with chips. If you lose your edge.
Kay: That's death. You could be one generation behind, and you might be behind for the rest of your… you know, for decades. And the fact that they let this happen is an abomination.
Kay: The fact that they could not get this turned around, and they've been late, and they've been… it's just been a disaster.
Kay: And the CHIPS Act did come in.
Kay: And thanks to it, I think…
Kay: It's interesting, because I had a guy named,
Kay: what was it? I can't remember his name, but he was… he was from the old Intel days. He had gone, he'd run, like, VMware or something like that, and he came back to run it. They didn't give him a long enough time to kind of get the company together, so they just fired him a few months ago. But I just heard the other day that they finally… that the stuff he… this turnaround CEO, who was an engineer, well-respected.
Kay: I think Pat Gelsinger is his name.
Kay: He had been working for 3 or 4 years to try to turn the company around and get ahead.
Kay: And I finally heard that they are now releasing the first chips from this, from his efforts, after they fired him, and it looks like it's actually going to be pretty good. They're AI chips, they're looking promising, and for the first time, they're actually looking like decent chips. That is… is amazing. If it's true, and they're actually competitive, it's going to be incredible.
Kay: But what I would say is that couldn't have been done without the CHIP Act, the CHIPS Act. The other thing that I'm seeing, because I live in Arizona.
Kay: is a massive amount of, factories. I mean, I'm driving past these things, they're behemoths. And I just sent you a video the other day from this YouTube channel called Asianometry, which is this…
E: Hmm,
Kay: Did you listen to that, by the way?
E: I did. Oh, good. Fascinating, very granular detail. This guy's obviously…
E: On the ground and heavily involved in the microchip industry.
E: What a great… what a great… and it's like, you know, I mean, just the information this guy has in his head about the industry is really impressive.
Kay: His channel is spectacular, by the way. He has really… if you like, kind of, history of technology, he has some really fascinating, like, videos on, like, why the Russians lost the computer race back in the 1950s. I mean, they're just fascinating, like, topics that you're like, whoa.
Kay: That's interesting. I never thought about that. Anyway, he's this… I think he's a chip engineer in Taiwan. I don't know who he works for or anything like that. Obviously, he sounds like he was also raised in the US. But anytime I listen to him on chips, like, he knows his shit.
Kay: And for him to say, wow, things are actually looking good in Arizona with results… with regard to the TSMC,
Kay: I was like, damn, okay, I believe him, because he doesn't… he doesn't really bullshit, you know? He's very… he's very, down-to-earth.
Kay: Or he's very, like, just, you know, honest about it. And so I would say that that was kind of promising to hear, and what I kind of took away with it was, like, wow, you know.
Kay: we've criticized… how many years do people say, oh, well, we're, you know, we're not gonna let the government take sides? Yes, we see China putting tons of government resources into this industry, but that's not how we do things in the U.S. In the US, we just let the companies fight it out.
E: All this nonsense.
Kay: And, well, you know, let's pretend, like.
Kay: I guess to say that statement about how the U.S. works is to ignore the fact that the military created the internet and, you know, the.
E: Subsidies of the auto and airline industries.
Kay: Exactly.
E: I mean, yeah, farming. Hello, farming? Heavily subsidized farming? Give me a break. No, I mean…
E: Yeah, I… you know, it was funny, because I was at dinner yesterday, I was talking about this, you know, this con… you know, if you've ever been to Shanghai, all the speeds are high trains… high-speed trains.
E: Zero high-speed trains in the U.S.
E: There's a narrative that the Chinese government tries to sell, which is that democracy doesn't work.
Kay: Yeah.
E: And if you go to Shanghai, and then you go to Washington, D.C. or New York.
E: That narrative seems to fit pretty well, and if you look at the chaos our democracy has produced, from a polarized electorate.
E: Yeah.
E: We are… the United States is one of the most…
E: It is becoming one of the most unstable developed countries there is.
E: But it's a false narrative, so it depends on what you value, right? So, if you value.
E: Straight, hard, economic results.
E: the Chinese Communist Party, has… produced…
E: The most… but they've started from a much lower place, right? They… a very low stage of development.
E: Brought a million people out of poverty. That's the statistic. There are still deeply poor pockets of China.
E: And if you only go to Shanghai, you wouldn't know the other parts, right? You wouldn't know the rural parts where people abandoned the cities, left their kids…
Kay: Yeah.
E: With grandparents in very vulnerable situations.
E: There's still a ton of poverty, there's a ton of unemployment, there…
E: the entire economy relies on overcapacity subsidization. It relies on people saving money, it relies on people not being too much on the consumer side.
E: But, and I'm, you know, by no means an expert at this, but…
E: The other thing is, they've created a ton of human suffering.
E: There's a ton of human suffering behind China's development and its position as the world's production facility.
E: And…
E: That's why they have to control the media. They don't want people to know. Most Chinese people don't know this. They don't, every time they've had to move a town, or burn a person's house, or kill a family, or poison an entire town to have a chemical factory.
E: with zero safeguards. Because how can you produce cheaply? How can you produce…
Kay: Exactly. You know, quickly.
E: high volumes without poisoning the ground and killing people. You can't!
E: And China has very successfully hidden this. It's not part of their narrative. So, we had this debate yesterday over dinner, and I said, like, well, it depends what you value, you know? In the United States, if they want to make a megaproject, and there is a family of five people who live on a plot of land that they own.
E: And they want to get it out of the way to make a megaproject.
E: it's gonna take time, and it's gonna be a hard issue. And if they want to build a factory to make, I don't know, to produce process critical minerals, that's one of the goals of this administration, which is a good… it's an interesting goal, I think it's a useful goal, but if you do that with zero environmental regulation, you're going to poison the people you're trying to help.
E: And so, being a democracy, having a process, having strong norms.
E: Yes, it's been harder to make these megaprojects. You cannot centrally plan a lot of these things.
E: And so, what we have is the values of
E: not wanting to displace people by force, because in the United States.
E: culture on that. But the… I feel like we did.
Kay: Yeah, one time, right?
E: Complete lack of development compared to some of the cities in China.
Kay: Yeah, I'm sorry, I… yeah, you're right. I think you're absolutely right, we have to choose what we care about. I do think that there was a time in this country, maybe I'm wrong, because I wasn't there, where,
Kay: Where… where people were able to get stuff done a lot faster.
Kay: I think about the, well, I think about my… I had a great-grandfather that…
Kay: Owned a farm.
Kay: In the Central Valley of California.
Kay: And they took an
Kay: They come in… they came in and said, hey, this is… sorry, we're gonna build… we have an infrastructure project.
Kay: we're gonna pay you market rate, which was not actually very high. He lost a lot of money on it. And he was bitter the rest of his life about this. But, I kind of also think, wow, that's amazing that they got… how could… I don't hear about that today.
Kay: Whereas at one time, that was kind of common when they built the, the highway system, They…
Kay: Used eminent domain a lot, and just kind of took over stuff.
E: Well, yeah, that…
Kay: Well, there's a clip.
Kay: Oh, go ahead, sorry.
E: No, I was gonna say, they just treated it like a national security project, right? The excuse that isn't how our administration used was that it would be a way to mobilize troops and vehicles, right? But that's an excuse.
Kay: Isn't it interesting? And so… but that also shows that that's the mindset people had at the time, is it was very different. And there's a quote… there's a… sorry, there's a clip that maybe I can put in the show notes, but I'll probably forget to, that's a real… it's a compilation reel of Newsome. Maybe I mentioned this last time.
Kay: of Newsom saying in 10 different clips from 1999 to 2025,
Kay: You know, we're… I believe, in the… the bullet train, we're gonna build this thing, it's gonna be great, and then it goes, like, 2005, and, like, they're like, okay, he's like, it's gonna be incredible! And it gets to, like, 2016, and he's like.
Kay: Alright, we're still working on it, but I know…
Kay: You know, then it gets to, like, 2018, and he's like.
Kay: he's standing in front of this train stop that they took… I guess they built a mile track from
Kay: somewhere to… they built one mile track, and then he's like, and this is almost gonna get to Bakersfield. And he literally says, I know some people are thinking, that's a train to nowhere.
Kay: And you just crack it up, because you're like, yes, everyone's thinking that, you know, I'm sorry, but… and then 2025, and he's like, yeah, I kind of give up on it. And it is.
E: It's kind of…
Kay: I'm not saying that.
E: You win.
Kay: I'm not saying it's his fault, per se, because I don't think it is his fault, but it is funny that he's sort of the punching bag. But I do think it's the fault of…
Kay: of what I would say, at one time, we were willing as a country
Kay: The citizens were willing to say, you know what? Yeah, national security, we just… we almost got… we almost didn't win this war, and they were out there fighting.
Kay: And and now, you know what, if Eisenhower says we need this highway.
Kay: I'm not gonna bitch about it, sure, they could take my property away, they'll pay me. And I think… I don't know, I'm making an assumption here, but I think…
Kay: it has not… that has not happened in a while. We're not used to that, and we have rejected that. Whereas, I think in China, they can say, hey, your house is now…
Kay: A train, you know.
Kay: Tough luck. You want some money for it, we'll give you a little dough. Tough luck.
Kay: And that's an interesting thing, because we don't have… unfortunately, we don't have the luxury now, I think.
Kay: to have the values of independence that we would like. I think we have to become more communal-minded, because we now have a very strong competitor in the world, and we will…
Kay: we do face… I would say we face, this is why I sent you the message about.
E: I thought it was interesting that in CNBC they were mentioning.
Kay: that the most spy activity that China has right now, if you look at the world, most of their spy efforts, I don't know about money or people, is in Thailand, because they are trying, and that's the one weak link that they have, they would dominate
Kay: by… incredible amounts, the chip industry. The one thing that they're weak on is the, is it lithographics?
Kay: Or the, I'm not saying it right, but ACML, L-C-M? Right.
E: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the… the… the lithography…
Kay: Photography, thank you.
E: Like, chip-making machines, yeah.
Kay: Thank you.
E: Just the fabs, right, and the…
Kay: Yeah.
E: Yeah, I mean, right, I mean, well, they're… I mean, the Chinese are engaged in a broad effort.
Kay: Seriously.
E: technology across the board, from Boeing jet planes to… you know, the… these,
E: the Dutch fabs, yeah, I mean, they're an all-out effort to just deal as much technology as they can. I mean, that's kind of known, and undermine…
E: critical infrastructure in Western countries. Salt typhoon, Volt typhoon, these are cyber attacks that are very…
Kay: Yeah.
E: popular, and they were publicized by the US, specifically to let people know that this is what the Chinese government is doing.
Kay: But, you know, we're in this mindset that that's, like, oh, that's wrong. And it's just like…
Kay: how could they do this to us? It's like, guys…
Kay: Have we forgot? Have we… are we that out of touch that we think that this new Pax American… I think what's happened is, after… after Russia fell, after the USSR, if I should say, fell.
Kay: We've been in this kind of dreamlike state where we forgot what it means to have a rival and an enem… I won't say an enemy, but a rival, at least. Adversary. Where they were doing… the Russians were doing… yeah, adversary, thank you. The Russians were doing this to us left and right. We were used to that in the 70s and 80s. We were expecting it.
Kay: And then we kind of… then it calmed down.
Kay: And we were all just like, great, everyone's… and we're in this… this La La Land mindset where we think, well, that's not nice of them. Of course we were… and we were probably stealing technology from the Russians, and the Russians were stealing from us.
Kay: I wouldn't doubt any of this was going on. Of course, it had probably lots of evidence of that. And so, yeah, they're gonna do whatever it takes to not be dependent on the US, and then once they do get these machines.
Kay: their chip industry will skyrocket, and they will be able to win the future. I do think having the chips is really the key to unlocking the future, because once you have the chips… and by the way, we have decided, as I told you in my message, I have a lot of angry messages I send you.
Kay: We have decided in our country that we're gonna poo-poo for the last 30 years on any kind of manufacturing. That's for losers.
Kay: I literally listened to a fucking obnoxious podcast by a bunch of fucking obnoxious techies less than 6 months ago, and these high-brow pieces of shit were sitting on this
Kay: this… sitting in the Bay Area, and they were criticizing the Trump administration tariffs, and they were like… and they're still singing that stupid old song of, like, well, actually, the only thing that really matters is services. It's not about…
Kay: you know, these lowly manufacturing jobs, who cares if China takes them? Dude, you can't…
Kay: You don't understand. The next wave is not fucking software. The next wave of who controls the future is robotics. And if you don't know how to make anything because you forgot how to put two pieces of metal together.
Kay: That's your problem. You're gonna lose, and we're going to lose. And if you give.
E: Yep.
Kay: Chips plus…
Kay: AI plus robots means you have the future armies, and you will win not just the economy, but you'll win the entire…
E: Whoa.
Kay: It's a game, it's a game of risk.
E: More to that point is 90% of rare earth elements, which are needed for advanced, you know, weapon systems, including those drones, is controlled by China, the processing. 70%
E: of, rare earth, elements, come out of the ground in China.
E: 90% of the processing happens there. They're not stupid. They've gone… they've been working their way into increasingly important supply chains of national security importance.
E: To include critical minerals for chips.
E: For our highly advanced chips, they…
E: They installed those rare earth element export controls, right, last week, as a way to show that they could choke off the world supply.
Kay: Yeah.
E: We would be insane if we don't find ways to bring that processing back home. And these idiots who criticize the idea of trying to maintain some sort of industrial base.
E: You know, it's just the dogma on free trade
E: For so long, has been… patronizing…
E: It's been across the Western world, too. I was talking to a Spanish guy yesterday who works for a petroleum company.
E: And he just said, like, you know.
E: All the elites and the leaders of our countries were talking about free trade, and you don't want those jobs, you don't want those jobs, you want these.
Kay: Yeah.
E: You want these advanced jobs, you want these software jobs, you want these high productivity, high-pay jobs, let China have those, you know, those dirty industry jobs, you know.
E: But here's the thing, so they've been telling us that for the last 20 years, China joined the WTO in the year 2001,
E: By the way, they are still in the WTO as a developing country. That's bullshit.
Kay: Okay.
E: Okay, fine. And that's another thing, right? The Trump administration is like, we need to do something about this. And it's like, yes! Yeah, the first Trump administration made a big deal.
E: The systematic unfairness of global trade.
Kay: Right? They were the first people to ring that bell.
E: As far as I can remember, right?
E: the Democrats would do things about it, but not loudly, and not aggressively.
Kay: Right.
E: Which is their mistake. They would almost do the stuff in secret, And all the loud.
Kay: Stuff was…
E: Bullshit culture war stuff. That was allowed stuff.
Kay: Right.
E: All this thing about, like, temporary protected status and refugees, that was the loud stuff.
E: and the, like, let's make American infrastructure great again. I mean, they did tout the infrastructure.
E: the IRA, they did tout that, though. And they made a hardcore campaign about this. It was so good, even Republicans had to try to take credit for some of these infrastructure projects in their backyard, even though they didn't vote for the act.
E: But yeah, you know… This idea of maintaining an industrial base, this idea
E: of, oh, free trade, and let's have only good jobs in this country. Okay, fine, but our leaders and our politicians did nothing.
E: To make sure that that drop transition would happen.
E: I've heard administrations talk about it since Clinton, right? In the 90s. That was a big free trade, flat earth… what I was supposed to call the… is that the flat earth thing?
E: The World is Flat, that's, like, in the early 2000s, I want to say.
Kay: Interesting.
Kay: Since Clinton, people have been talking about.
E: Oh, wow, America's gonna, like, be this highly advanced country that, you know, sells services and has these high productivity jobs.
E: The elite have made a ton of money.
E: Working wages have been stagnant for 50 years.
E: Those are… those are numbers. I mean, like, it doesn't matter what politics you have,
Kay: True.
E: You know, the rest of us have been getting royally fucked, and this transition…
E: never happened. And some politicians have eaten around the edges of this.
E: They've tried.
E: Not very hard.
E: to actually create some job transition things, eating around the edges of it. No one… no government in this world has really taken on…
E: carefully, a planned transition to that high productivity economy. Is it even possible, right? Who knows?
E: But I look at countries like Germany.
E: I mean, that's the thing we all point to, right? Just, like, a highly complex industrial base.
E: They've managed to keep a lot of blue-collar jobs. You can not go to college or university in Germany and still have a good, decent job.
Kay: There's a pathway.
E: We have so de-emphasized that, so even this Trump administration push for re-industrializing America, once again, the gripe
E: American workers have been left behind.
E: Yes, absolutely.
E: And they've been left behind in a lot of ways. What do you think mass…
E: illegal immigration is about. It's about having a huge amount of labor that is super cheap and off the books. American labor should be furious at this. Any working person should be furious at the mass illegal immigration, right?
E: Because it's… who benefits? Why… why is nothing being done about immigration? Because people are benefiting from it, that's why. And it's just not the average person.
E: And so,
E: transit… reindustrializing the U.S, putting more… forcing countries to invest here. Yeah, that goes against all the tenets of freedom.
Kay: Jay.
E: It goes all the… it goes against all the tenets of a free market economy.
E: But we need some of that, you know? We need some of that. We need… Our government to
E: protect jobs. Protectionism is always used as a dirty word amongst free traders.
E: But, okay, free traders, we've had 30 years of free trade, what the fuck?
E: We have a country, the United States, that is about to tear itself apart.
E: Over what free trade has done to this country.
Kay: And free trade was never in the Constitution. That's… that came later. What's in the Constitution is… is abiding by
Kay: the Constitution by the laws. I think it's… I don't think this country necessarily said it was ever going to be a free trading economy, but we've somehow believed that that's what the U.S. has to be by default, and…
Kay: And I think, to your point,
Kay: You know, people have made a lot of money. That's the truth, and people have made a lot of money in software and services, and so there's a belief that that's the only way to make money.
E: Just ask your question, we won'o, who has benefited from all this free trade? The statistics tell you everything you need to know.
E: Forget politics, forget ideology. Just be practical.
E: What has happened to our economy? What has happened to…
E: Life expectation. We're the only advanced country where life expectation went down.
E: You know, our health…
Kay: Crazy.
Kay: Yeah. Wages.
E: Concentration of wealth, inequality. Look at any of these numbers.
Kay: Hmm.
E: And that's what populists point to. But then their solutions are mass police in the street, warrantless arrests, arresting American citizens, arresting American citizens! How come conservatives are not losing their mind about that?
Kay: Yeah.
E: How come liberals weren't losing their minds about mass immigration
E: The threat that people on the border feel
E: about mass immigration, the idea that you can have these, like, uncontrolled mass enclaves.
E: of what are essentially poor working people from another country, speaking another language, it's completely unplanned, just like the job transition was unplanned. The free market economy.
Kay: was.
E: And people have suffered.
E: where's the outrage from all of those Democrat politicians?
E: about the damages that illegal immigration does. It's also dehumanizing to the immigrants themselves, by the way.
E: You know, where is the conservative outrage over the massive violations of free speech? Political prosecutions? I hear MAGA folks say all the time, well, you started it, right?
E: So…
E: You started it. There's only two sides to every issue. I was a person who thought that the volume
E: of criminal cases at the state and federal level brought against Trump was counterproductive, not practical, but also not very fair. The campaign laws that he broke
E: How many people have broken those same campaign laws and you haven't gone after them? How… that case against them for the campaign fraud, how is that not considered selective prosecution? I mean, really.
E: In New York.
Kay: Absolutely, yeah. The New York State Attorney can bring that?
E: I'm sorry, the New York District Attorney. Like, that is super selective, right?
Kay: you know.
E: And the actual case, the one that Jack Smith had, that's the real case. That's the one that breaks our norms. If we can't have democratic processes, none of the results matter.
E: But people are so desperate. I get it. I totally get it.
E: And we form these bands where you just never go against your tribe.
E: that's… that only benefits elites. That whole attitude.
Kay: I've not heard any…
Kay: I've rarely heard… actually, I've not heard anyone on almost either side say something in a long time, like, you know, I will… I used to have a, you know, a high school teacher that said something like, you know, I will…
Kay: I may disagree with you, but I will fight to the death to defend your ability to… or your right to say what you have to say. I haven't heard that kind of sentiment in a very long time.
Kay: From either side. I think everyone… I think they all scream fire with this whole free speech thing, unless it's them that's being… unless it's.
E: That's it. You know, Bill, I think… I love Bill Maher's show because of this exact reason, right?
Kay: Yeah.
E: Well, Bill Maher has said it. Bill Maher has said, like.
E: Like, yeah, like, you have to let people speak, and…
E: supposedly, MAGA is obsessed over free speech, right? Rightfully so, under the Biden administration, over the discourse on COVID, lab leak theory, masking, government shutdowns, right? Like, the criticism that came from… it's not even conservatives, it was…
E: the, you know, I would say there was a lot of conservatives complaining about the shutdowns and the… not the shutdowns, the closures of schools, specifically, masking laws.
E: there were a lot of far… I mean, I don't know if you call them left, I mean, people saying left and right, that doesn't mean anything anymore. These conscious, you know, hippie people in their enclaves in Southern California also hated vaccine mandates and mask mandates.
Kay: That's true.
E: But if you cannot have a conversation about vaccines, if you cannot have a conversation about the efficacy of mask mandates, if you cannot have a conversation about what is the point of closing a school, what's the… what are other damages being done here, right? I hear conservatives talk all the time about
E: Shutting down the schools, you know, kids aren't getting COVID, they can transmit it.
E: But they're not the ones dying in the hospitals. Well, they can transmit it to their grandparents. That's why you're supposed to close the schools. Also, teachers. Teachers can get COVID and die, and you want to be forced to go to work where you can die? Probably not, right?
E: But we can't have that conversation. They shut down that conversation on social media, right? Those were considered things that got blocked. If you cannot have those conversations in the open and make the good case for the smart, sensible policy, it will go underground and fester, and then the populist uprising, it becomes king!
E: And those people…
Kay: Absolutely true.
E: And those people who felt like.
E: their discourse was shut down, now I want to shut down your discourse.
E: just like with the DEI initiatives.
E: People from marginalized communities have been repressed and ignored for so long that once they had the ability to do it, they repressed and ignored other people.
Kay: Right, right.
E: Intolerance breeds intolerance. That's how it works.
E: And so, for me, you know.
E: Why… where's the outrage over these free speech issues?
E: It's because there's ideology and partisanship.
E: You pick a side, and you defend it. No one's actually thinking about their politics. There are some people, right? So, I think Bill Maher is a person who really does think about their politics.
E: Some people have managed to wiggle out of their little, like, silo that they're in. People in the MAGA sphere, who are public figures.
E: they will be… their power to actually influence and be part of the conversation will be taken away if they disagree with the president. So they don't. I get it.
Kay: Right. Just like.
E: under the, you know, under previous administrations, if you are a CEO, if you're a public figure, and you say something like, you know what, I actually do believe that biological sex
E: Should be the determinant for how we deal with each other on gender.
E: I mean, I don't agree with that statement, but you couldn't say that, and be a public figure, and continue to direct movies in Hollywood, or have a con… you know what I mean? Like, you couldn't do the thing… you're not even a political figure, but you cannot say something that's outside…
E: of the dogma, or you'd get crushed, and that's what's happening now with the MAGA movement. People who want to be reasonable are not allowed to be. Ben Shapiro goes into real time with Bill Maher and has some reasonable talking points. This whole thing with the FCC and Jimmy Kimmel, you had people
E: suddenly realized, oh wait, you know what, actually, you can't do that yet. Fucking Ted Cruz even said something.
E: That's how crazy it came, and he's super hyper-partisan…
Kay: And he's… he's one of these guys who's very…
E: political, and won't be a fair arbiter on any issue, because he's a politician.
E: But even here, man.
Kay: You're not.
E: even he managed to say something. So, to me.
E: This… this issue of reindustrializing our economy, this issue of protecting parts of our economy.
E: of helping workers through means that are not free market mechanisms. That is completely fine by.
Kay: Yeah.
E: Because I don't have an ideology about it.
Kay: I don't…
E: I'm not part of the Democratic Party, so I don't get angry when
E: Trump does something. I don't knee-jerk could go against it.
E: So, he's used tariffs to get countries to the negotiating table, right? There are 7 countries in the region where I live that have gone to the negotiating table and are establishing a bilateral trade agreement, right?
E: Malaysia's gonna sign one this coming up week, if the president comes to the region. Indonesia, Cambodia, Philippines, Thailand.
E: These are all countries that have made a huge effort to come to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement, because they have a ton of non-tariff trade barriers. For example, just one stupid example.
E: The United States makes excellent undersea cables for power and for information, for telecommunications.
E: We are one of the premier providers of this service.
Kay: And so, Undersea Cables.
E: If you want to repair an undersea cable that lands in Indonesia.
E: the Indonesian government requires you to use
E: Their cable repair boat to do it.
Kay: You can't use your own, you can't bring a repair cable.
E: boat…
Kay: Into their walls.
E: It requires… it requires a lot of maritime activity, and it takes a lot of effort and time. You're in deep… in a deep-sea environment.
E: you need a ship to find the cable, trace it, find the place where it's broken, or where you need the maintenance. You need to send a crew of machines and specialized robots down to the bottom, and you need to repair the cable.
E: And you're operating in waters of a country.
E: And the whole point of an undersea cable is to connect
E: Different countries that, that otherwise wouldn't have another good path.
E: for telecommunications, right? 97, 98%, depending on the statistic you use or how you measure it, anywhere between 89% to 97% of all internet traffic passes through energy cables.
E: So, we want to build more undersea cable connections in Indonesia, and all over this region, but if you want to repair that cable.
E: you have to use their repair boat. They have one repair boat.
E: And according to some private sources that I've talked to, like AP Telecom and other tech companies, that boat is never, never actually ready to be used.
E: So, this, you know, the protectionism that Indonesia imposes.
Kay: Yeah.
E: severely limit, their development, because U.S. companies could come in here and land more undersea cables, create a bigger bandwidth of the internet sucks here, generally speaking, in Indonesia. But they're protecting their own… they're protecting their own industries, right?
E: So, I get it, you want to protect your own industries, but then actually develop them. There is no plan, there's only protectionism.
Kay: It's interesting, as you're talking, I'm thinking how we… we have tried to make these kind of agreements before, these, like, bilateral agreements and all this stuff, and yet we did so with basically no teeth. Just like, you know, we just were like, well, we're in the U.S, of course you want to do business with us, but we never really said, hey.
Kay: you're put… you have all these tariffs on us, take them down, or else. We never… that's just not an option.
Kay: So it is interesting to hear, you know, this different approach, and I guess what I would say, now that we've kind of discussed the problems
Kay: with… The potential for losing
Kay: freedom, some free speech. I… by the way, as an aside, I met with a client this week.
Kay: who, she expressed to me her strong interest in one day coming to the U.S, legally.
Kay: And I said, why? And she…
Kay: she said, you know, in my country, I just don't have… I can't talk. I'm not allowed to talk, I'm not allowed to…
Kay: to say much. She was very frustrated by it, and I… I… I had always thought, well, maybe…
Kay: maybe she… people in her country, I won't say what country it is, maybe I thought, well, maybe people in her country don't know what they're missing out on, they don't really have anything to say anyway. There's no… like, I don't want you to hear that as a big complaint.
Kay: And I have friends that live there, and they've even said to me, like, oh, you know, people care about not having free speech here, because
Kay: what are they going to talk about anyway? They're not, you know, they don't have a lot to say. So I kind of believed that narrative, and as I talked to her, she was very honest with me and said, Noah, we do… I and a lot of my friends do do a lot of things to say, we're just scared to say it. And it was a good reaffirmation of, like, yeah, well, that makes sense, of course. Why would… why wouldn't you want the freedom to speak?
Kay: And I just said to her, well, you know, I hope… I hope that we can… that we still have it by the time you do move here, if you ever do, because I'm not sure we're gonna have it. And so, with that in mind.
Kay: What do you think will happen.
Kay: Realistically, is this just a…
Kay: stirring of the pot that we kind of needed, a refresh, maybe a forest fire to kind of, like, burn everything to the ground a little bit, and then we can grow from there, and we're bringing me back.
Kay: Back in our, you know, our free speech.
Kay: mindset and our following norms of the Constitution. Are we going to get back to the Constitution? What are your thoughts as somebody who studies history and politics?
E: Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, I heard someone much smarter than me get asked this question, and he said, we need to go to war with China.
Kay: Oh, okay.
E: I'll work with China, we'll fix it.
Kay: We'll fix it? Okay, great. Well, that's… that doesn't sound…
E: And that will unify this country and get us out of this hyper-polarized… State we're in. So…
Kay: But you.
E: But it only works if you win.
Kay: the war. Well, it kind of works if you win the war. What if you lose the war, and suddenly you really lose your freedom, because now you have, you know, one country who has different, very different values about free speech, putting their values on you.
Kay: And very likely…
E: So, that would require China to invade the US, which is not gonna happen.
E: I mean, they might try.
Kay: Well…
E: But it won't succeed.
E: I mean, if you don't believe me, just look how hard it is to govern Americans when you're an American.
E: So yeah, no, I mean…
Kay: But it's not… I mean, it doesn't seem to me…
E: If the US goes to war with China, it will be in the Pacific.
E: It won't be Red Dawn.
E: And it won't be the United States invading China either, right?
Kay: Yeah.
E: It'll be… Missiles.
E: I guess at that point…
Kay: Yes, yeah.
E: What, you know…
E: I think this was the whole point of that, that movie on Netflix. Ethan Hawke, Julie Roberts,
E: Ugh, this is famously produced by Obama.
E: what war… what our next generation of war is gonna look like. Is Ukraine, if someone gets evaded, like, Taiwan might end up looking like Ukraine.
E: But what it looks like for us.
E: So, the things I mentioned earlier, salt typhoon, salt, you know, typhoon voltage… Yeah. Salt typhoon and volt typhoon.
E: For those who are listening, if there's anyone listening, look it up!
E: They have placed…
E: sleeper threats in our critical infrastructure. What does that look like? It looks like, you know, it looks like a sanitation plant that can no longer function, so you're not getting fresh water.
Kay: Right, right.
E: It looks like you don't have electricity.
E: it looks like you don't have internet. That's what it looks like, okay? Traffic lights in your city don't work.
Kay: Sure.
E: That's what that looks like, right?
E: bridges don't operate if there are bridges on rivers that need to open to allow boats to go through. That's the kind of attack we would see happen.
E: We would see… Hacking of computer systems, both defense and in civilian hospitals.
E: you would see missiles, potentially, being launched at U.S. targets in the Pacific.
E: But then, if the war got bad enough, yeah, I mean, we would see missiles launch in American civilian areas. This is what we're talking about. We're talking about invading armies and anyone, you know.
E: We're not talking about PLA patrolling outside of Des Moines.
E: We're talking about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Kay: True.
Kay: Well, okay.
E: Which is.
Kay: But then there is a window…
Kay: There are winners of wars, and there are losers of wars, and we've seen, we've seen…
Kay: countries take over, being taken over, it's not on… it's not out of the question.
Kay: You know, again, I,
Kay: What I would say is, it's interesting, I…
Kay: I was thinking about the wars that the West has fought in Asia in the past 100 or so years. Let's think about this for a moment.
Kay: outside, whenever you've had… and this is, again, I'm not a historian, so I could be wrong about this, but whenever I've…
E: True.
Kay: heard of or seen, a Western power fighting a war against an Asian power.
Kay: The track record is…
Kay: pretty bad for the Western powers in terms of actual success. There's only one instance in which
Kay: an Asian power surrendered to a Western power that I can think of, and that would have been Japan, but after a nuclear… two nuclear weapons were used. Before that, there was no intention of surrendering, despite losing, despite
Kay: You know, despite the fact that they probably should have, and it would have been wise to, they… there's many stories about how they had zero intention of ever surrendering.
Kay: you look at Vietnam, truce. You look at Korea, truce, very hard to beat, very hard… these were very.
E: Actually, Korea has no choice right now. It has a ceasefire. That's it.
Kay: As far as what I meant.
E: There's no… there's no peace treaty.
Kay: Yeah. Mostly just it didn't work. Like, there was no… there was no taking over the country. There was no… like, we made all this progress, now we have won, we've gotten their.
E: Well, actually, the only reason South Korea exists is because we fought that war, right?
Kay: Absolutely, and I think about that because I happen to be married to a South Korean, and I often think… I often think and say to her.
Kay: You're welcome.
Kay: No, but I say, it's interesting that you were born
Kay: If you had been born 100 miles north of where you were born, you might not, you know.
Kay: 30 miles, you might not be actually a free person, and what it… it's kind of shocking. And yeah, if the U.S. had not been there.
Kay: Because we've talked about, you know, the U.S. was good with its dominance and stuff, and it's like, well, in this case, it was a very… it was thankfully a very good, in many ways, it was… it led to a lot of…
Kay: of prosper… prosperous people in a country, and on the other side, complete poverty. So, it's all complicated, but what I would say is.
Kay: my thought about… about the U.S. getting into a war with China does… I'm very,
Kay: I'm very… skeptical of an easy win, let's just say that. I would be a very difficult player.
E: I think you're absolutely right. Because you'd have to define, right, what does winning look like? The most popular, I guess the most probable scenario is China attempts to assert control over Taiwan militarily, in which the U.S. and our allies, including maybe Japan, Korea, maybe Australia, respond.
E: Yeah. And there are different scenarios that have been drafted up that are available for public consumption.
E: But what it looks like is initially a skirmish over Taiwan.
E: there is no skirmish over Taiwan that does not immediately result in China attacking U.S. military targets in the first island chain. That's the number one thing that happens, right? So…
E: you know, Guam,
E: I don't know if the… well, so we have missiles, right? We have missiles, stationed in, Japan?
E: Korea, Philippines, those were all targets?
E: We have islands, Pacific Islands, where we've put, equipment. We're placing more and more Marines and equipment in Australia.
E: So, yeah, I mean, those are all targets. There's no way China would make an aggressive military move in Taiwan without attacking these targets. The minute we respond.
E: they might try it, and then see how we respond. That's the whole point. China has this thing called these gray zone tactics, in which
E: they raise the temperature, little by little, right? So, every year, if you pay attention, there's an unprecedented move that China has done that is not outright war. Every year, they do this. So, first, if a Taiwanese president even utters any phrase that
E: goes against the one… China's one child, one… one China… Principle.
E: they do military exercises, right? So now they consider almost everything provocative. Elections are provocative. And they… the… if you look at a map of Taiwan, where they have sent their military to do drills, they train in their military drills to cut off Taiwan completely, by sea and by air.
E: And they've been more aggressive about where they do the drills, and that's how they communicate.
E: Their intentions is where they do the exercises.
E: And every year, they ratcheted it up. And the idea is that eventually, because of these gray zone tactics invading their airspace, they violated Japan's airspace.
E: Every time they do this, it is provocative, but only a little bit.
E: So, all these gray zone tactics get to the point where, by the time they're ready to actually do what they're gonna do.
E: they will have been able to assert physical control over the island and defend it before we're able to respond, because they do so many things that are on the verge of it anyway. It might look like a military exercise when they do it.
E: But then it's just a full-on cutting off of the island. They fight people on the island while they keep us away from it, right, by denying us
E: the area, by sea, using anti-ship missiles, by air, by using, drones, drone swarms, by using radar technology, by using missiles.
E: They basically deny us access to that area just long enough to get control of the island, and once they have control of the island.
E: We would have to invade… They're credited.
Kay: They've been drilled to show that they can do it.
E: Exactly, and… but they've been… they've been working their way towards that, little by little, these gray zone tactics and provocation.
Kay: Interesting question, though.
Kay: because maybe 5 years ago, my thought was, wow, China…
Kay: seems like they will need to take over Taiwan if they really want to seal their deal of the future. And my sense recently, as I've been thinking about this, is maybe it's a moot point anyway to take over Taiwan?
Kay: it might just be a little trophy for them, because the truth is two things, like, let's say they take over them right now, today. Well, without,
Kay: Without, ASL bar. Let's see if I can speak. ASML. Without ASML…
Kay: all they have are factories that can't make real chips past the ones that… basically, you freeze
Kay: Progress, because you can't get the lithography.
Kay: So what's the benefit? What's the big prize there? You get just current generation chips, and that's it. That's not a huge prize, and it's certainly not worth
Kay: The risk of a big war and all the fallout from that, just to get a locked-in technology.
E: Yeah, but you disrupt advanced chip supply for the world.
Kay: I guess so, but you do it for yourself, too. It's a big cost for, again, a frozen technology. The moment you invade, you've frozen those chips in place. They cannot progress anymore.
Kay: Now, if, on the other hand, if you put your focus, instead of trying to waste your time on Taiwan, and you put your focus on trying to replicate ASML,
Kay: you have a much better chance of the future. And you don't even have to get into war for it.
Kay: So I would say, again.
E: meals.
E: So, the, you know, the Chinese Communist Party tends to be very, practical and, kind of, like, benefit-focused for their people.
E: Not on this issue.
E: This is deeply personal. Every…
E: Chinese person who's grown up in mainland China has been taught that Taiwan is China's little sister, it is a member of their family that has been, you know, torn away by Western powers, and that they deserve to have Taiwan back under full Chinese control.
E: It is non-negotiable, it is one of their highest priorities, and it is completely nonsensical. But so many parts of national priorities are nonsensical. I mean, you look at America's priorities, you could probably find some nonsensical things.
Kay: But wouldn't you wait… from a practical point of view, yes, you may really want this, but wouldn't you wait until you had full… again, once you get those… that lithography technology as equivalent to the Dutch, you have all the pieces to basically
Kay: outpace the rest of the world in ships. And once you get that, now you can really go to town with your military, and then once you get to a certain level, that's the time to take over Taiwan. Not before that.
Kay: I would say wait until.
E: Yeah.
Kay: get all the pieces in place, maybe 10, 15 years, you can wait a little bit, you wait this long, then go after, once your military is unstoppable with amazing AI robots.
E: If they were being rational, yeah, I think that would totally be a thing. However, this is one of the areas of their policies that are completely not rational. It's… And as I've said.
Kay: Knowing how many Dutch people I've met.
Kay: are, I would say, quite blase about, China taking their amazing technology, and I don't think they even would care that much. Like, I think they're almost reluctant, as I said, to follow, because they're kind of like, yeah, the US is bossing us around, telling us, like, we can't export this to China. They were happy to do it before.
Kay: And I think the only reason they're not doing it is because they've been told not to.
Kay: But if… But do they really care? No. And do they…
Kay: would they be like, yeah, no big deal? If they saw…
E: If some IT guy saw some weird stuff going on in the network.
Kay: with some Chinese characters.
Kay: Yeah, maybe.
Kay: Maybe he'd report it, maybe he'd be like, well, yeah, they're stealing from us, who cares? I don't know, this is my uninformed mindset, but knowing
Kay: Knowing some Dutch people, and stereotyping them, I don't think they give a shit. I think they'd be like, too bad, things happen. You know, what should we do?
E: Oh, they're Italian, suddenly, from New Jersey.
E: Yeah, okay, they took the chips, okay.
Kay: Thankfully.
E: I'll be smoking the crap.
Kay: Thankfully, Italians are not the ones with the technology, otherwise it'd be way worse. They'd be like, yeah, you go!
Kay: The Dutch would be like, hey, I'm making chips over here!
E: Alright, well, I think we've reached the natural end of this discussion.
Kay: I think so, I think so. This has been, this has been good. Tell me about your workout routine, though, since you started with this. What is your,
Kay: Tell me about your personal… tell me about the personal, what's going on?
E: Absolutely, man, front Delta B.
Kay: he started…
E: We capped out by my,
E: inclined bench press, so when I do my splits…
E: I put some, cable, side raises, you know, create that full load at, full extension to…
E: to go ahead and stimulate that peak hyperpathy. It's an S-tier exercise.
Kay: Hypertrophy? You… yeah.
E: you have to get… see, you gotta… you have load at full extension, my friend. That's where the… study after study, science-based weightlifting will tell you.
Kay: Remind me of, like, the Music Man.
E: you want the muscle to be at full stretch, you know what I mean? And those side delts, man, yeah, you can hit those with front raises, and I do have plenty of those in there. I don't want anyone tweeting at us about that.
E: I do have plenty of.
Kay: Up right below, do you have the… do you have the setup?
E: Then you have upright rows, leave with the elbow.
E: Obviously, please don't write to us about that, they're in there, you know, just because I haven't mentioned it, they're in there. But, because you gotta switch it up, get the body guessing, but also to create
E: just the load applied at full stretch, you need to get that… that side, shoulder muscle. The arms gotta come down, and you need resistance. You can't do that with gravity in a dumbbell, everyone knows that.
E: And so, you need to get that cable to pull your shoulder a full extension, that way you can pull up against it with a slap.
Kay: And.
E: Outward angle, towards the front.
Kay: Free weights be a little more effective, since you seem to be such an enthusiast? Aren't free weights the way to go? Machines seem to be.
E: No, man, this is a… oh, man, how much time do we have? This is such an angry…
E: view, I don't even know where to begin to talk about this. Yes, under certain conditions, the free weights.
E: will help build up the stabilizer muscles, but then we gotta come back to basics, man. What do you want to do? This is just like how America hasn't had a fully coordinated, well-thought-out jobs transition for the 21st American century economy. You are not fully planning out a muscle transition plan
E: For muscles of the 21st century, my friend. We both got dad bods, I know that. I have a fat one, you have a skinny one. I get it.
E: But, I'm telling you right now, free weights are great for being able to build the stabilizer muscles, but you're not gonna get the maximum growth out of that. Maybe guys like you and me should focus.
Kay: You kind of look like you know what you're.
E: How are you going to get the resistance and the load applied at full stretch of the muscle, which is how you stimulate muscle growth? How are you going to get that when the position you're in and the way that gravity is pointing.
E: Does that actually lead to it. I'll give you a little example. Side raises. You put that arm down by your side, the weight pulls down towards gravity.
E: your muscle has absolutely… that shoulder or side muscle has no tension in it. You got no tension.
Kay: You remind me of that podcast I was telling you at the beginning, and…
Kay: I have to say, you're really chan- it's almost like you're channeling him. He's a total know-it-all, and he will pontificate.
E: Yeah.
Kay: 4 hours on end about such a…
E: I mean, I just pretended… I just pretended for 3 minutes, and I kind of want to take a shower. I feel disgusted.
Kay: Well, what is… but seriously, though, what is going on? Let's hear the personal… we've done… I think this is a good model, by the way. I think… I think we should always start
Kay: with a…
E: It's ending on a bullshit topic, okay?
Kay: And then zoom in on the personal…
E: Does he mean on the person?
Kay: Next one on…
E: I'm probably about 20.
Kay: Keenan.
E: 25 pounds overweight. It drives me insane.
Kay: And it doesn't have to be about your health, by the way, but I… let's go there.
E: That's fine. No, no, I want to. I want to, man. I got here, and I got a doctor to prescribe me Ozempic.
Kay: Oh, yeah.
E: Body fat percentage is technically in the obese range, it's over 30%.
E: I got a prescription.
Kay: How is that? Have you tried it?
E: I tried the… you know, you titrate up towards a higher dose, so we went from 0.25 to 5… 0.5, I'm sorry. The .5 dose was working for a little bit, but I plateaued, man. Like, I basically jumped… my weight goes up between 210 pounds down to 203.
Kay: It kind of seem to break out of that bandwidth.
E: So for me, you know, each person's health goals are separate, so for my health goal is, you know, 20% body fat.
E: when I'm just kind of hanging out and having fun. I can get it down to 17%, when I want to train up and look good.
E: That's my goal, right? I'm far from that goal, I'm at 30%. How you get that percentage to go down? You increase the amount of muscle, you decrease the amount of fat. Pretty straightforward, right? So, it's really hard.
E: You can do it. Studies have… there are studies out there now that show us that you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. We're talking about very small deltas, though. You're losing a little bit of fat over time, you're using… you're gaining a little bit of muscle over time.
Kay: True.
E: typically through what they call Zone 2 cardio, basically like fast walking. If you fast walk for 30 to 45 minutes every day.
E: You are more likely to expend fat
E: then other sources of energy that your body looks for, right? The first place your body goes for energy is glucose.
E: You know that, the second, you know, it'll go after what is easily available. If you're doing hard cardio.
E: you're probably gonna end up losing muscle, right? It'll go for muscle.
E: If you have a less intense exercise.
E: 85… was it 60% to 80% of max heart rate?
E: Then, you have more of a fat-burning… but you're always burning a little bit of everything.
Kay: You know, it's not like your body just switches automatically to just one whole energy source.
E: So, also, there's a study that showed, I recently heard about on, Hubberman's podcast, which I really like.
Kay: Oh, you're an independent, okay.
E: an exercise scientist.
E: Talked about a study that showed that whether you're fasted or not makes no difference, over the course of the day of, calories burned, and…
E: there was this, controlled study which he cited about, I can't remember if they were athletes or not,
E: But basically, they had one group doing…
Kay: Zone 2 cardio, which is, like I said, you know, fast walking.
E: For 30 to 45 minutes a day.
E: And then some, weightlifting routine.
E: And the key was that,
E: They were at a slight… this is a controversial part, they were at a slight calorie surplus.
E: But they still manage to lose fat and gain muscle.
Kay: That's cool.
E: But… I have seen…
Kay: by the way, as a diabetic, that the 30 minutes after I eat.
E: Oh, yeah.
Kay: Blood sugar drop.
E: We don'.
Kay: amazing results of just pure… like, it is incredible, the difference of not walking versus… and it's not very much time, so it is absolutely the case that you can really help your
Kay: I would guess that would have a big impact on insulin resistance.
E: Oh, I mean, that's it. So, you know, Andrew Aberman talks about this on his podcast. He says, basically.
E: You know, two ways of getting into the fasted state.
E: One is to absorb the blood sugar, and there are drugs that do that, which she did not recommend, because it's a doozy on your body.
Kay: be, like.
E: but the.
Kay: Oh, okay, like, different drugs, okay.
E: Yeah, drugs that actually extract the glucose from the blood.
Kay: Yes, I agree, that's not… not great.
E: And he said, the other way, which is really easy to do, is just walk for 30 minutes after you eat. Okay.
Kay: So Ozempic is, though, not a targeting… it's not… it's not removing the blood…
E: No, it's a GLP drug.
Kay: eating.
E: Yeah, so it, it controls, yeah, it controls… The basic human digestion process.
Kay: But that does say, you know, as you're talking about, like, the way to lose weight or, you know, or to lose fat.
Kay: being exercise, it does still say a lot about diet, because basically what Ozempic is doing is helping on the dietary side, not the exercise side, and the effects of that are pretty…
E: Absolutely.
E: Absolutely, and it's, you know, so for me, I need most help on the diet side. I love exercising, I exercise all the time. I've gotten… I've been doing…
E: This is exercise protocol that I really like, because it's easy to do. Anything that's… anything that you can stick with is the right.
Kay: Yes.
E: plan, right? Like…
Kay: Totally.
E: You can have the best plan, but if you only do it twice, then you say, fuck this.
Kay: Yeah, I agree.
E: Great plan, right?
Kay: Yeah. So, so for me, it's been.
E: it's been this Body for Life thing, it's… it's 20.
Kay: Alyssa, did my… My wife did that many years ago, and she loved it.
E: Yeah, I mean, it's all about what you can stick with, because it won't be effective if you can't stick with it, right? I mean, that's just the basics.
E: So, for me, lately it's been great at getting me to the gym and getting me exercising. I've noticed that, like, my overall, like, physical fitness has improved.
E: And it's, you know, it's lifting weights.
E: It's lifting weights 3 times a week.
E: And it's doing a circuit.
E: And, you know, 5 body parts, and then…
E: It's 5 body parts, and you do, like, a 35-minute routine. So, it's not ideal for building muscle. It'll help you maintain muscle while you're trying to lose weight, which, at this point, was all I'm hoping for. Because when I focus too much on building muscle, I notice my diet goes to hell.
E: Yeah.
Kay: Makes sense. Hold on one second. Hold on one second.
E: I'm mud!
E: Bye.
Kay: Well, that's cool. I'm glad you're, I'd like to hear how… I am curious about the Ozempic stuff, because it seems like a pretty amazing drug. I'm curious to see how it will… how you like it in the long run.
Kay: So my…
E: But my doctor told me that in Indonesia, Wegovy just became available, so now he switched me.
Kay: Oh, okay.
E: Which is…
Kay: Alright, same idea, right?
E: I think it's for diabetes, Wegovy is for… Actual weight loss, so…
Kay: Oh, cool, okay, very good. I'm… kind of to your point.
Kay: I've been doing this thing, and I've just recently restarted again, because I was feeling like a…
Kay: Gross worm a few months ago.
Kay: just, like, not exercising. I had been… I've been, like, doing hiking every… a few times a week, but what… and… and late… basically, like, rucking, I don't know if you've heard of rucking, but, like, you put.
E: Yeah, of course.
Kay: Backpack, and you walk around. And that was a kind.
E: Are you very popular.
Kay: But I wasn't doing it enough, it was a big ordeal to get out there and actually do it.
Kay: So I just took up, again, this thing called the X3 bar, I think it's called? X3?
Kay: And it is the closest thing I've gotten to the exercise that just worked for me, like you're saying. It's basically…
Kay: You get a bar, and you have 4 bands of different, you know, strengths, and you just do this four-exercise routine
Kay: Every day. And it… if you're spending more than 12 or 13 minutes doing it, you're doing it wrong. Like, you should do the entire thing in 12 minutes.
Kay: Which is perfect for me, because I hate exercise.
Kay: And… I won't do it if it's an hour. I just won't do it. But if I can do it…
Kay: What I've noticed that works for me is, if I can do this within 12 minutes.
Kay: And I basically make a rule for myself, like, I can't have a second cup of coffee that day until I get it done.
Kay: Then I found that that combination works pretty well. Like, I want the coffee, I'm tempted to go get it, and then I'm like, alright, oh, that's right, I have to do my 10-minute workout, basically.
Kay: And I have to say, I feel amazing. It's been…
Kay: 2 months now since I've been doing it every single day. I've maybe missed, like, 3 or 4 days.
Kay: But because it's so quick and easy, I've been able to just keep it going.
Kay: And at the beginning, I was, like, killer. I could barely do any of the exercises, and now it's, like, I'm just finding it to be super easy, because I guess I built the muscle now.
Kay: But anyway, that's, that's been a really easy one, and it's like, you can pick up, like, the kit on Amazon for, like, 50 bucks.
Kay: And just do it at home. So it's been… it's been nice for us. So for those who are looking for an easy…
Kay: exercise routine that they don't have to go anywhere. And also, you can throw it in your suitcase and just kind of travel with it, too, which is nice.
Kay: So…
Kay: Something to think about when you're on the road. But that's about it. I'm, we're still trying to get to Thailand. We are applying for the visa right now.
Kay: And we have to have, $32,000 at least, in our account, and not touch it for…
Kay: A few months, and so,
Kay: We're gonna be, starting that this month, and, trying to live as fugly as possible so that we don't dip into that $32K.
Kay: And then once we're… once they approve us, we can, I guess we might get, like, 5 years, which is a crazy amount of time before they actually approve it. Pretty… pretty damn good visa.
Kay: So, anyway…
E: Oh, wow. Okay. Nice.
Kay: That's impressive.
Kay: So anyway, that's the… that's the goal. We're hoping… hoping to get approved for that. Again, it's up to them. We don't know, you know, whether it's gonna be or when it's gonna be, but if we get approved sometime in January, we're…
Kay: We're gonna take off and move across the world, and I'll be, I think, in your time zone, or near there, from what I can see.
Kay: So that should be cool.
E: Nice! Yeah, man, that'd be super awesome. Yeah, let's, let's continue to…
E: keep updating us on that. Yes, I will update the group.
Kay: Yeah, I will update you.
Kay: Or the group, the people listening.
Kay: Alright, great. Well, this has been… I think that's all I got. Anything else you wanna bring up? What are you… what are you gonna be doing the rest of your day today?
E: Oh, man, we just, so we… when we moved here, we had a bunch of our stuff shipped over…
E: what do you call that? Maritime freight. Oh, yeah. And so I just arrived. So we're…
Kay: Wow, how long has it been?
E: A couple months.
Kay: Okay.
E: So we're… we're still putting stuff away, man.
E: Like, woof, we got so much stuff.
E: So, I mean, it's good, I love having stuff, I love products, You know…
Kay: I think that I would be tempted to do that, and the problem is I'll probably want to send myself a lot of junk, a lot of heavy junk that I don't need.
Kay: And, so I'm… I…
E: Hmm, maybe I have to think about this, whether I should do that or not. Yeah, man, especially.
Kay: I mean.
E: kids… It's kind of a challenge. I mean, it's not impossible, I know people who've done it.
E: But yeah, man, good luck to you.
E: Yeah, so we have all this stuff, and you know, we're trying to figure out how it works, how we put everything away. We'll give away some stuff, which is fine. Yeah.
E: The good thing is, is that my wife and I are in the same thing of, like, if we're gonna have it, let's have it organized and put away, and everything has a place.
Kay: If not, let's get rid of it. So, she's good about that. Good for you. I wish we were similar to you both, that we're more…
Kay: a little different between us on that one. Although, I think, in general, we like to be clean, but it doesn't always work out that way.
Kay: Alright, sir, well, good chatting. I think we've broken down the world pretty well, and if you, listener, enjoy this show, I know you're one of the 30 people listening per week.
Kay: If you like the shirt, please let others know.
Kay: And give us a rating, or a review, a kind review in the Apple Podcasts app, and if you would, like to drop us a note, we'll be, starting to read listener emails,
Kay: Next week, I think, right?
Kay: We talked about that? Because we're getting so many.
E: Yeah.
E: Yeah, you know, tell us, listeners, Do you want us to…
E: I don't know, make a cartoon drawing of the Prophet Muhammad, or say something about Charlie Kirk, you just let us know.
Kay: Please do that, and live a stick with you as well. Spread the word.
E: I'm joking, by the way, I live in a majority Muslim country, I cannot…
Kay: You gotta be careful.
E: Thank you, Kimball. Alright.
Kay: Alright, see you next time.
E: Yeah, take care, Kay.