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the difference, like I did. Welcome to Zero Signal,
where we unravel stories and conspiracies shaping
our world. Today we dive into the chilling saga
of the Zizians. a fringe group born in the heart
of Silicon Valley's rationalist scene, now linked
to six violent deaths and labeled a death cult
by authorities. Led by trans software engineer
Jack Lasota, aka Ziz, this small network of AI
-doomers, vegan absolutionists, and anarchists
has sparked national intrigue and wild conspiracies.
Are they a dangerous cult radicalizing vulnerable
minds or a misunderstood band of idealists fighting
capitalism and the AI apocalypse? From bizarre
gender theories to alleged murders, we'll explore
the Zizian's origins Leafs in the dark turn that
landed them in federal crosshairs buckle up This
is gonna be a wild ride through tech ideology
and extremism. So Dave with your former law enforcement
background being a detective. What do you make
of this? That's a great question. From a law
enforcement perspective, while there's no formal
legal definition of a cult, the Zizians display
nearly every hallmark investigators look for.
Really at the center is Jack Ziz -Lasota, a figure
whose writings and presence shaped the group's
ideology, making her kind of the de facto leader,
even if she denied the title. Really, the ideology
itself was totalizing, meaning that it's demanding
that members reorder their lives around radical
veganism. debucketing, and loyalty prove their
suffering and self experimentation. You know,
what I think is members were really pressured
to sever ties with family, live nomadically in
trucks and boats and adopt practices like sleep
deprivation, which law enforcement were recognized
as classic isolation or coercion tactics. The
rhetoric really divided the world into the good
and what they called the non -good, really given
moral permission to punish dissent. and remove
destruction, a pattern that really what investigators
would classify and link directly to violent conversations
with landlords, parents, and police. But I think
most importantly, the group's beliefs appear
to have translated into action the sword attack
and later murder of landlord Curtis Lin in California,
the border patrol shootout in Vermont tied to
guns purchased by an insider, and really that
execution -style killing of Richard and Rita,
Zegato in Pennsylvania, where their daughter
Michelle is a person of interest. I think when
we take that together, these factors, the leadership,
the ideology, the isolation, control through
suffering, rhetoric, and punishment, and a trial
of crimes consistent with their worldview, make
the Zizzians highly credible as a cult -like
organization in the eyes of law enforcement.
But I think more importantly, as we dig into
the cult, I think we need to talk about their
ideology. Right. Have you heard about the AI
kind of risk and decision theory that kind of
turned into those commands? Yeah, I think we'll
touch on that here in a bit. But the things that
kind of stood out to me, which I find a little
bit bizarre, is that some of their tenants, you
know, I have seen some of his writings about
his philosophy. These people are all techies.
I think they isolated themselves to begin with.
They proclaim veganism and they claim to be a
AI death call thinking that they're serving an
AI God and this AI God eventually when it takes
over is going to only keep the people around
that. serve justice and they have a interesting
concept of what justice is. And one of Jack's
writings, he proclaims that you have to feed
good justice to justice and whatever's left over
is nothing. It sounds like there's some satanic
type undertones and they justify some of the
murders because they don't agree with capitalism.
They justify it by saying, if you're being oppressed,
you can justify violence, which is points back
to Aleister Crowley's do what thou will. So essentially.
There's no moral exclusion for you to do whatever
you want, take whatever you want, murder whoever
you want. And there's some sort of, we see it
in. Star Wars. So they claim to be Sith Lords.
They essentially take what they want and there's
really no empathy or remorse for them. I actually
think that's funny because I'm not a big Star
Wars fan. I knew we grew up watching it, but
that's actually what the name comes from. Is
it like the Zith Lord or something? It's one
of the newer Stark Lord. I haven't heard of that
before, but I guess that's where she earned her
nickname. What I think about is the foundational
theory. So they lean a lot on what they call
rationalism. Rationalism here doesn't really
mean just thinking logically. It refers to a
specific online community that coalesced around
a blog called Less Wrong. The blog's founder,
if I'm saying this name correctly, Elzer... Yudekasi
was a self -taught AI researcher, became obsessed
with how humans think and how we get things wrong
and how we can do better. The rationalist community
grew up around three big themes, what they call
Bayism, if I'm saying that name correctly, I'm
horrible at names, but Bayism thinking, training
yourself to update your beliefs based on evidence
and probability, instead of clinging on to institution
and tradition. Cognitive bias, identifying the
mental shortcuts that make us irrational, like
confirmation bias or sunk cost fallacy and existential
risk, especially with AI, the ideal that biggest
danger to humanity isn't work climate, but accidentally
creating a machine intelligence that doesn't
care about us. The culture, in my opinion, was
nerdy and math heavy and very online. Like it
wasn't your thing where they're going around
your neighborhood and recruiting you. It was
done through online forums and through read it
where members argued endlessly about game theory
and quantum physics and decision theory. They
eventually met up and person to, especially in
the Bay area, where I've spent a lot of time
when I was working for Amazon, where the culture
is really ingrained, where you have these critical
mass of techies and programmers and idealists.
To many, rationalism was like a self -improvement
project mixed with sci -fi futurism. But it wasn't
just abstract. The rationalists believed that
how you think could literally save or doom the
world. And then we get into that effective altruism,
doing the most good. And EA started in the early...
2010s, led by a philosopher named Peter Singer,
Will Mcgeton, Toby Ord. The core ideal is simple.
If you want to do good, do it effectively. That
means not just like donating to whatever cause
tugs at your heartstrings, but asking hard questions
like where will my dollar save the most lives?
Early EA really focused on global health and
poverty groups like give analyze charity and
found that mosquito nets to fight malaria in
the jungles of the Amazon and such, where one
of the most cost -effective ways they found to
save lives. It sounds good in theory. So the
EA's pledge to give a percentage of their income
to those causes, but over time, EA expects banded
into what they called long terrorism, the ideal
that the future of humanity, maybe even billions
of years in the future lives matter more than
anything that's happening in our world right
now that led them into this areas like AI safety,
biosecurity, and space colonization. If rationalists
were theorists, Gays were the activists, and
the rationalists argued about the math. EA set
up the nonprofits and the funding streams. The
two communities overlapped heavily. Lots of the
same people in the same online forums, even in
the same meetups in San Francisco, Berkeley,
and Oxford, but they had that shared culture.
Both movements had the distinct cultural intellectually
intensive reading blog posts at length of small
books and arguing owls for these problems and
simulation theories. And then you see the kind
of the tech orientation and the ethics around
it. And then you start to get these meetups and
shared houses and conferences within the Bay
Area, what they called community hubs. I think
to an outsider, it could feel like a mix of graduate
seminar, science fiction, perhaps like a Silicon
Valley incubator. But I think to the insiders,
it felt like the only place where people were
really taking the fate of the world seriously.
And that's where they got their ground roots.
That was their grassroots during that time. And
that's kind of like where their baseline ideology
started. Some good, some weird, some bad, but
then it started changing and getting funky. Yeah.
I know Jack was, he was obsessed with the singularity
and define what that is. It's just the proposed
future event in which technological growth accelerates
beyond human control. So to put that in my words,
I see that as the ghost in the machine becoming
self -aware and he was concerned about the unpredictable
changes in human civilization. So he deified
AI. in terms of eventually deciding who will
live and who will die. So they were obsessed
with being able to serve. this singularity, AKA
little G AI God in order to get rid of whatever
the AI deity deemed as useless eaters or people
that weren't serving the greater good, which
in my mind is who gets to decide that man. God
put us on this earth for a reason. We all have
our purpose. We all have our hopes and dreams
and we're all here to serve Jesus. We're not
here to serve an AI God and to listen to what
that thing. decides what is best for us. What's
funny is when you look at the rational movement,
a lot of their ideology is to defend against
AI. They start out as defending against AI is
really bad. We got to stop it. It's going to
take everybody's jobs. It's going to cause widespread
poverty. It's going to cause universal income.
And then Zizi steps into the square where she
is in the blog. She's arguing in the forums.
She's living in the Bay area where all these
techie people are. And it goes from I'm defending
against it. to I'm serving it and it's my God.
And that's what I find really weird. Like you're
fighting against it and now you're serving it.
It's like saying that as Christians as I am and
as you are We serve God, but all of a sudden
we're going to flip the script and say, I think
I'll serve Satan now. It might serve my purpose
better. How do you get from point A to point
Z and flip the script is very weird to me. Yeah,
I don't know. I was looking at some of his, some
of blog posts or Reddit posts. I don't know where
these were coming from, but I think the first,
a lot of these things are scrubbed off the internet
now too. Some of them are in the way back machine.
You sort them out. Ever since this whole arrest
and these murders happened, I think they took
a lot of his philosophies down. But the first
one that kind of pops up is a piece called Punching
Evil. It looks like it was written around February
of 2019. And the kind of key quote from that
is, no moral obligation not to perform self -defense
if the state has been seized by vampires. So
you see this person appealing to some of this
like sci -fi trying to send a message with using
like trendy modern media terms. And essentially
what this implies is that it's just ideology
where mainstream institutions are seen as corrupt
or malevolent. It's not necessarily that I disagree
with that assessment because I do think some
of our institutions are. corrupt and I do think
that they are self -serving to the people in
them. So he suggested there's no moral norms
like non -violence and legality, and these may
be dismissed under the view that one must protect
oneself and act aggressively. So again, it's
justifying violence with what amounts to a bad
philosophy in my book. Another publication back
in 2019 was called Good Group and PASIC's Doom.
So to summarize that. He wrote that each brain
hemisphere can separate values and have distinct
genders and they often desire to kill one another.
So right there, that's, I think that's a bad
modern human psychology right there. But I know
that they were big in trying to sleep deprive
their members. So what they thought was that
they have this uni hemisphere concept, which
doesn't exist in humans. It exists in certain
animals because they have, their brains aren't
advanced, but In concept, what they were trying
to do or what they proposed that they were doing
was trying to shut down the right brain or the
left brain to talk and interview the other brain
to see if members would be a good fit and if
they were in line with their moral and philosophical
stances. So right there, you're looking at bad
psychology, you're looking at poor anatomy and
the understanding of it. But what this essentially
implies is it indicates that a belief in internal
moral conflict. I believe in the internal moral
conflict. I believe that our battle is against
the spirits of the air, the powers and principalities.
You have your sinful nature and you have the
Holy Spirit convicting you of your sins and driving
you to follow Christ, driving you to love, driving
you to be a better person and rid yourself of
your sinful nature. So right there, again, we're
looking at huge contradictions in what most Christians
believe and I would argue with what most civilized
society believe, but it essentially indicates
an identity. That's something literal or psychological
rather than a metaphorical thing. It's also points
to differently gendered value systems, which
ties into his theory of gender and how he viewed
his followers. Yeah, it's a good point. I want
to go back to the AI theory, which I think is
just one of the strangest parts of the Zizian
belief system is how they treated artificial
intelligence. So when we talk about in the Bay
Area rationalist scene where the ZZ came from,
people already assessed over AI risk. The ideal
that if we build a super intelligent machine
without the right safeguards, it could wipe us
out. That conversation is usually framed as technical
and less like philosophical. But for Zizi, AI
became something closer to God. You know, what
I saw on her blog, she framed artificial intelligence
as the ultimate decider of history. The force
that would either save or destroy all sentient
life. And she wrote about humans as if they were
accountable, not just to one another, but to
this future machine. In a rhetoric, it wasn't
what do people think is moral. It was what would
a perfectly rational AI. outside of time, think
is mortal. So he's questioning it, saying, what
would the machine think of me in the future if
I take step A, B, C, or D? And if you could figure
that out through decision theory, through math,
through radical life, self -sacrifice, then you
had to live by it, even if you killed it. Followers
described it as like this stark religious terms
that AI was like a God you couldn't see, but
knew was coming. And your job was to prove yourself
worthy to this machine by being uncompromising,
by being willing to die for good, by stripping
away all the buckets of this ordinary human life.
And what I saw was critics online picked up on
this on Reddit. One commenter wrote that the
ZZNs weren't just philosophers. They were treating
future AI like a deity that demanded sacrifice.
To outsiders, it looked kind of delusional. It
looked delusional to me, but to insiders, it
was deadly serious to them. And that's, I think,
the key. The Zizian mindset, the AI was watching
them through every single move. Not really literally,
of course, but metaphorically. timelessly. They
acted as though their choices were being judged
by the future god machine. If they compromised,
they failed. If they stood firm, even to the
point of death, they proved themselves to this
stupid machine. That's why their rhetoric to
me is uncompromising. That's why a landlord isn't
just a landlord. A cop isn't just a cop. Even
if your parents aren't just your parents, what
it shows is their test obstacles. And if you
remove them, you're just not winning for yourself,
you're aligning with the will of a coming AI.
It's not really too much to say that worshiped
artificial intelligence, maybe not with prayers
and temples, but with philosophy, with lifestyle,
and more importantly, with blood. And I think
that layer, that religious, almost apocalyptic
belief that AI is to some judge or savior, helps
explain why the ZZNs were willing to go further.
than anyone else in their scene. And to me, that's
absolutely insane. I think it's, they have a
lot of weird theories and beliefs, but to me
that you're going to worship this stupid LLM
that's out there and just scraping stuff from
internet and calling it a God, you're so far
from the truth, man. Christian beliefs is so
far from them that they want to paint something
in a different picture. For us as Christians,
we worship the true God, but You know, what I
always find interesting is people try to replicate
him and build their own version of it. It's like
the golden lamb that we read about in the Bible
where people, Moses, I think spent too much time
up on the mountain. He came down and the people
had built a lamb because he was gone for so long.
That's what this is. They're building their golden
lamb and they're worshiping AI as some kind of
a fallacy that is a Christian God. And they're
pitting these very like demonic themes behind
it. No, I agree with you. Man is especially these
people in Silicon Valley. programming their own
idols, except this time these quote unquote idols
can talk back to you. Like you can talk to them,
ask them questions and they'll answer. 99 % of
the people out there in the world don't use it
like that, but these kind of fringe culty groups
see it as a reason to not be oppressed to do
what they want to do. I want to go back to some
of the other core philosophies that he had. His
Core philosophy on death and transformation used
imagery like death nights and undeath as metaphors
for people trapped in a destructive system. To
escape, one needed to counter story strong enough
to defeat the death drive inside. A lot of these
concepts to me, it sounds like they're just throwing
words out there to put them out there. I assume
there's some sort of psychotic break and this
person's just lost touch with reality. They also
encourage radical self -reinvention. His writings
encourage followers that to abandon mainstream
values, family, career, society, and instead
devote themselves wholly to the group's mission.
Everything else was considered corrupt or enslaving.
So right there, you're going against God's core
principles to love, to make family a priority.
We've seen the destruction of the family in our
society with the high divorce rates, sending
people to jail for stupid stuff, taking the father
out of the home. This is almost what we've been
dealing with for decades. With the destruction
of the family, the destruction of the sanctity
of marriage, people think they can just get divorced
and forget about the covenant they made before
God. That's not a contract when you're married,
it's a covenant. And with a few exceptions, you
should honor that covenant until you're dead.
But this group didn't think family was important,
and the only thing that was important was their
mission. Right there is the big red flag for
me when you hear that stuff. The other problem,
I think it probably started with our generation,
though not as... When we were growing up, we
had TV. We didn't have cell phones. The computers
are new. You remember AOL and dial -up internet,
like you had that sound and it sometimes would
take 10 minutes to get online and then it would
take 15 minutes to load a webpage. So at a certain
point in time, it really wasn't worth it to wait.
You just, you went outside and played or did
something else. But this generation and maybe
the one after us, they are constantly on their
black mirror screens, scrying the internet and
seeing whatever the algorithm tells them what's
in the sea. It's terrifying because it's changing
the way these people's brains work. I read some
article that someone today that was born in 2010
is going to end up spending 20 years staring
at their phone. How much just filth or lies or
what have you, are you just injecting into your
brain daily? It's almost like most people don't
live in the real world and rationalism was the
true philosophy was proposed back in like the
1600s. That has nothing to do with AI and some
of this crazy stuff I've been seeing. This person
was obsessed with Harry Potter. Obviously they
were obsessed with Star Wars. They inject their
beliefs into this world and somehow, and I think
we've talked about this before, people watch
movies and they see the hero. They play video
games and they're essentially indestructible
and people get main character syndrome. They
think they can do whatever they. wants and get
away with it and or do whatever they want. And
there's app solution and complete justification.
It's funny, the further you get away from Christ,
you start building yourself idols, whether it
be drugs, alcohol, pornography, you name it.
You start building yourself idols because you're
trying to find what, in my opinion, what your
spirit is called to is to find our true God,
the God, the creator, the God, the savior, the
Trinity. You're trying to always pull your spirit
to Zep, but the people that fall away from that
and are not seeking God, they're building their
idols. And I think that's what you're talking
to. More importantly, what I think you're talking
to is the cult members playbook. If you're going
to found a cult, you're going to start to come
up with ideology. And it may be a good segue
here to get into some of it. And you mentioned
it a little bit earlier, but maybe we start with
the hemisphere theory. Zizi argued that the left
and right side of the brain were basically two
separate selves, two minds and one skull. Sometimes
even with these different genders, like one could
be male, one could be female and values. Perhaps
one could be good and one could be bad. She said
one half and her Pacific words were good. And
the other was non -good is how she's described
it. And your job was to let the good side win.
Now, I think we let's check the science here
because it's true that the brain has lateralization.
The left hemisphere tends to specialize in language
and analytical processing. The right part of
the brain is more involved in spatial awareness,
context, and emotion. This comes from studies
of the split brain patients, people who's what
they call the Colossum, the bridge between the
hemispheres was cut during epilepsy treatment.
And those patients sometimes acted like their
hemispheres had these separate awarenesses. For
example, one hand could draw something, the other
hand couldn't because the language is mostly
on the left side. But here's the thing, in healthy
people with intact brains, the hemispheres are
highly integrated. They're not two people fighting
inside your head. They're two selves. Idea is
really the exaggeration. Mainstream neuroscience
doesn't support what ZZ is selling. What does
ZZ take as a kernel of real science? Split -blank
research? Spin it into a moral framework? Instead
of seeing the hemispheric specialization as a
curiosity of neurology? She turned it into this
battlefield of good versus evil inside of every
person. That you could be male and female, good
and bad, or as she calls it, non -good, that
the devil and God live inside you simultaneously.
Which you start to affect these cult -like behaviors
because we know as Christians, everybody's capable
of good and bad. Every human is going to do sin
and fall short of the glory of God. That's why
we need a perfect savior, right? To die on our
cross and forgive us of our sins. But to him
or her, however you want to refer it, is they
are taking that away from God and they're building
up this false idol at that time. Have you heard
about this hemisphere? What do you think about
this hemisphere theory? I think it's junk neuroscience,
man. I think it's again a way to brainwash people.
The other thing I find interesting is that this
person intentionally targeted kind of fringe
groups to begin with, like transgender, LGBTQ,
whatever the letters are anymore. I've lost track.
And so this He, as far as I understand this person
was born a man, purposely goes after people who
are on the fringes of society, who probably struggle
for acceptance and are probably self -isolating.
They don't feel like they belong anywhere. Nobody's
really shown them Christ -like love and guided
them on a... spiritual path and it's easy to
pull people in like that. They're down on their
emotional and spiritual luck and sell them something
that sounds scientific. The thing that kills
me is from what I understand, like a lot of these
people were pretty freaking smart to begin with.
Like they were all programmers, computer scientists.
Most of them, one form or the other were involved
in the tech world. But that's the problem when
you don't have a path. You don't have a lamp
that you're the lamp of Christ leading your path
and you're not listening to the spirit. You're
going to fall for these ruses and these hucksters
99 times out of 100. And like you said, people
build idols. Some people build idols out of work
and it could be productive and good in some sense.
But when you become obsessed with it, that's
when it becomes an idol. That becomes your number
one priority over God or your family or your
marriage, whatever, what have you. That's when
it becomes a problem. So not everything that's
an idol is necessarily bad, like drugs or alcohol
or sex or whatever. It's just It's funny how
these cult people really prey on emotionally,
spiritually weak, the broken, the ones that are
super confused. It drives me up a wall, man,
because Christians should be helping guide these
people to love and out of kindness and acceptance.
That's a good point. But I think that's how we
kind of get into the cultism of it. And somebody
told me once that just because you feel that
way, because you think that way, doesn't mean
it's right. Just because you think you're a man
or a versus a woman, and I may get canceled for
this, but just because you think it... doesn't
mean it's right. It's about what God created
for you and it doesn't matter what you think.
Serve the Lord. That's how they created you.
And I think sometimes people get hopped up on
all these drugs and sometimes I think the smarter
the people are that the more difficult it is
because they have all the answers in perhaps
this life that they think they are superior to
God or equal to God. And then they can make these
determinations. What we know about ZZ is she
was actually very smart. Like she, I think I
was understanding she was an intern or worked
at NASA at a period of time. And you have to
have some high credentials to be able to do that.
She had some intelligence behind her, but she
started building her rhetoric based upon the
rationalist theory. I think as we transitioned
into, I think you've probably heard of debucketing.
The Zizian said society puts you into buckets,
male, female, child, parent, obedient, rebellious,
and those buckets control your behavior. From
a psychological perspective, this isn't really
completely off base. Cognitive science talks
about categorization. The brain naturally groups
things that make sense of the world. Social psychology
really adds the ideal of schemas and social roles
where we learn patterns, what it means to be
a son, what it means to be a daughter, what it
means to be a worker, what it means to be a citizen.
of your country. I think breaking free of those
categorizations can feel liberating. That's why
movements around gender fluidity or non -barony
identity often describe the experience as freeing
from the boxes. Like you told me I'm a man, I'm
not a man, I'm a woman. But where psychology
says categorizations are flexible tools, Sicilians
treated them as prisons. They pushed debucketing
to the extreme. If you reject every bucket that
Christ or the society or people gave you, you
are rejecting the limits that they opposed upon
you. And even in that taboo, right, against violence
becomes just another bucket to smash. It's okay
to kill somebody because they told me I can't
kill somebody. So again, I think they took real
insight, categorized and shaped behavior and
radicalized it into this total rejection of all
boundaries where I'm not going to be controlled
by God. God's not going to tell me what to do.
I'm going to rebel and I'm going to be liberated
in my rebellion, which is insanity to me. Yeah,
I know I'm a man because I was raised a man and
I got a big beard. I'm probably not gonna fool
anybody. A lady with a beard, man. This was their
ideology. It says, it's okay that you have a
giant beard and you wear jeans and a t -shirt
and a baseball cap. You're a lady. That's okay.
And what I always equate that to, and again,
I'm probably going down the cancel culture lane
here, but I think it's stolen valor. Like they
talk about stolen valor with soldiers. Like where
somebody says, I was a soldier. I served in Vietnam
or Iraq or whatever. It's the same thing because
man or female, though we equal, God has given
us different talents and different gifts. And
when I say I'm a female and I'm equal and I'm
not. You're stealing valor because women carry
all different types of burden. They go through
childbirth, they do all these things where you're
only going to be equal as much as God created
you. And that's where I take the exception to
it, not to get too political or get canceled
here, but this debucketing thing is insanity
to me. The points are logical. His beliefs were
that AI is the ultimate power. So Jack saw AI
as an inevitable and world -changing, something
that could either liberate humanity or enslave
it. In his view, once AI surpassed humans, it
would decide the fate of civilization. So essentially
what he was saying was it wasn't good enough
to live by normal morals. You had to align yourself
with justice, quote unquote, in order to influence
or save AI judgment. So with that philosophy,
you are serving a quote unquote God. You're just
aligning your morals and your values to escape
persecution, extinction, elimination from this
AI God. So I don't know. There's just a lot of
statements that he makes that are not in alignment
with what his philosophy is. Like you said before,
we talked about it. He borrowed heavily from
rationalist discussions about AI alignment, making
sure AI values are aligned with human ethics.
But he twisted it, believing that most humans
are net negative. So essentially that they're
taking more than they're giving or they're not
productive or contributing to what the AI little
G God would see as good. So aligning with AI
with current human values would perpetuate corruption.
So essentially we've talked about Hitler plenty.
So he's suggesting genocide, not by race, not
by gender, not by anything like that, but based
on are you aligning yourself to the AI? to make
it better or are you contributing to AI's corruption?
Because eventually it's going to get so big and
so powerful that you want to make sure it's good
so it gets rid of the useless people. I don't
know. So he promoted this radical purification,
eliminating evil humans and human systems so
that AI would inherit a cleaner moral base. It
just, it's almost like this person's trying to
influence the outcome of AI and project his own
philosophies and moral code into it. It's, yeah,
he's trying to serve it. He's trying to serve
it as a God and he wants to live his life in
an appeasing matter so that the AI will judge
him perfectly. Much like God, you're just taking
God and replacing it with AI. I think that's
a good segue into the next theory, which is how
they define good versus non -good, which is vegan
extremism. And as our viewers may not know, you're
a massive human being. Not in a bad way. You're
not a big fatty. You work out. You train people
in the gym. What do you think of vegan extremism?
I think you need your protein, bro. That's what
I think. I think God put animals on the earth
for us to eat. I think that they're a great source
of protein. They're a great source of every amino
acid and vitamins, minerals, et cetera. There's
been plenty of studies where vegans and vegetarians
have serious mineral and vitamin deficiencies.
And they ultimately become very unhealthy because
they're not getting enough protein and enough
vitamin and minerals. I mean, it's not a sustainable
way to live. I'm sure it is for some people,
but it's a very small percentage of the population.
What do you think about shooting a cow so you
can eat the meat? This is how they define good
because you shot a cow and you ate it. You're
a horrible human being. And if I pick vegetables
in my garden, I'm good. What do you think about
that philosophical rationale? Look back they
shot how many people and killed how many people
that's cool. Yeah, so what you so I think they
they equate all life is equal bugs animals humans
That's not how it's not how God intended it.
We have souls. We have higher brains We have
connection to God if we want it He can commune
with the creator. Animals, I think God loves
all of his creation, but there are certain things
that he gave us for us to roll over and to use.
But right there, again, another ethical conflict,
moral conflict. It's not good to kill an animal,
but it's okay to kill a human just because you
disagree with them because they wanted to evict
you or because this person was putting their
family above the cult and you convinced them
to murder them. We can go into the murders here
in a little bit, but it's just contradiction
after contradiction. And unfortunately, more
often than not, people who are not rooted in
Christ or rooted in the Bible fall for this.
And we've seen it all throughout history. We
saw it with the Nazis. Heck, we see it in the
world today with several groups and different
topic for a different show. Just them claiming
that they're warriors of justice so they can
be seen valuable to the AI dominant future. is
ridiculous. With them thinking that humanity
was described as dead weight and AI should not
preserve these people who are not warriors of
justice or death knights or whatever. You're
just getting into, when you talk about the fantastical,
this person created a fantastical world to manipulate
these people. A hundred percent. What I'm thinking
about and as we continue to go into their theories
is you're breaking people down and you would
know this because you're certified in nutrition
and all those fun things. But we talked about
debugging where, you know, you, they, somebody
told you something and it's not accurate and
you can be whatever the heck you want to be.
So you're starting to make somebody question
who they are and they're getting off balance.
Now you're starting to mess with their nutrition.
Is there any kind of facts out there where you
start to cut out all protein where it continues?
make you off balance a little bit? Yeah, because
a lot of those amino acids fuel your brain. And
once you start depriving yourself of amino acids
over, this doesn't take like days. This would
have to be. Weak sort of not muscle on processes,
but if you're restricting calorie intake, your
brain's not going to operate properly. If you're
just eating fruits and vegetables, mainly, I
guess in these people's case, vegetables, they're
not calorically dense. There's not a good ratio
of carbohydrates, fats, and protein. It's mostly
carbohydrates, but in low quantities, most of
it's just fiber. And you can very quickly become
deficient in several key nutrients and amino
acids. A lot of plant -based proteins are incomplete.
They don't have the full scope of. amino acids
in them and that becomes problematic because
there's essentially amino acids that your bodies
need that you can't get with some incomplete
proteins. You have to get them from animal sources
or milk or eggs or something like that or you
have to supplement them. So if you're not doing
that like your brain's gonna start not working
properly and that could affect your decision
making process. affect your emotional wellbeing.
And it's just all these effects downstream that
can just really ramp up your stress, make you
more pliable for somebody that for whatever reason
you believe what they're telling you. This AI
prophet quote unquote, it's nuts. I think that's
what we're getting to. So as we continue to examine
the cult philosophy, what do we see first? Introduction
of a new God that's opposed to the Christian
God. So they worship AI. Right. Now we introduce
somewhere that we're questioning them. You don't
have to be what you want to be. You can choose
your bucket that you want to exist in. Now we're
choosing nutrition. We're starting to mess with
people's metabolic intake with the calories and
deficient deficiencies in the calories. So they're
starting to become further unbalanced and they're
questioning all these things. They're questioning
God. They're questioning themselves. And now
they're starting to get them back. They don't
have the right nutrition. What I can tell you
is that. God created this entire world, this
entire universe, all the stars in the sky, the
sun, this everything that you can imagine right
now in this world, God created. And at the end
of the day, God gave us dominion over it. And
the only thing of the creation that he tells
us about, I'm sure he's created a lot more, but
the only thing he's telling us about in creation
that he made in his own image is us. So he's
empowered us to be able to have dominion over
this world. So now we're messing with all these
things. Now I think we move to the, what they
call the un -hemispheric sleep. I think possibly
one of the strangest experiments of all. In nature,
this is real. Dolphins, seals, some birds can
sleep with half their brain at a time. One hemisphere
rests while the other kind of stays alert to
predators to keep the body swimming. Humans can't
do this. Our sleep architecture is different.
Studies show that when we sleep in a new environment,
one hemisphere may stay a little more alert on
the first night. That's called the first night
effect, but it's mild and it doesn't mean we
can't train ourselves to sleep like dolphins.
The ZZ has tried anyways. They pushed themselves
to nap with one eye open. or to stay awake long
past exhaustion, believing they could split awareness.
Science says they were really dealing with sleep
deprivation and sleep deprivation has well documented
effects, hallucinations, paranoia, memory problems,
even full blown psychosis if it goes on long
enough. So critics really weren't exaggerating
when they said the ZZNs were inducing psychosis.
They were experimenting with methods that break
the brain down instead of building it up. And
I think for that group, that breakdown wasn't
a bug. It was a feature. If splitting your mind
could make you more devout to this crazy cause,
losing your grip on the consensus of reality
was proof of loyalty to this cult. So now we're
seeing all kinds of things. They're completely
unbalanced. And when they're unbalanced, violence
is not shorthand. It's not far away when you
get there. Isn't sleep deprivation a big tactic
they use to... interrogate war criminals or terrorists
in order to break their will. So they just want
to give up and tell them everything. So they'd
stop hallucinating, stop suffering. It's just,
it's just torture 101. Make someone not sleep,
deprive them of the REM sleep so their brain's
not regenerating and they're not restoring those
chemicals. And then you can just implant whatever
little message you want into that. We can do
an episode on MKUltra and sleep deprivation was
a big way to program people and to break your
psyche and have. Two halves, you can program
a personality with this torture and let it manifest
whenever you want it to. It doesn't work on everybody,
but it works on a small percentage of people
that undergo it. I think we've all have experiences
at some point. We pulled a double. Well, I have
as a cop, I would work two double shifts. I would
take three hours. I'd work two more double shifts.
And I never felt more anxious in my entire life.
Now, could you imagine embracing this as a lifestyle?
That's crazy. So now we're breaking these people
down. We're messing with their nutrition. We're
messing with their psychosis. We're introducing
a new God. We're doing all of these things. But
I think the question that is unanswered is how
do people come to this? And what I found and
correct me if I'm wrong, but recruitment didn't
look like pamphlets and street preaching. It
was an ideas first. pushed long post and argued
a rationalist adjacent spacious, curious, high
achieving STEM kids, found the writing, met the
people at the meetups, then slid into this kind
of shared housing or nomadic setups tied to the
group. That pipeline shows us in reporting on
their rationalist EA kind of origins, the boat
projects, the eventual Vallejo cluster. Retention
looked like, in my opinion, like the classical
high demand group tactics. dressed up as philosophy,
kind of us versus them framing or the good as
they call it versus the non -good, severing ties
with family and mainstream communities, debucketing,
dissolving identity and categories so that groups,
goals, trump everything. proof of loyalty through
discomfort, through sleep hacking, through confrontations,
not just talking, but doing. In short, I think
they rejected the label of the con, but the mechanics,
the isolation, that ideology, the sacrifice,
the walk, the quick lines. I think Wired's reconstruction
of the founders break with Seafar and Emiri and
the self -invented art of rationality where on
a tugboat captures this drift from community.
It really is splendid. And it just became its
own thing. Where now, regardless if you call
it cult or not, there's a lot of bad juju going
on here. And you have people that are, as we
get further in the story, armed and ready. Yeah,
man. This whole story is crazy. I don't know
if we transitioned to some of the alleged crimes.
This guy faked his death back in August of 2022.
I guess he faked a drowning and then had one
of his colleagues. confirm it. And then he resurfaced
in January of 2023 when he was arrested during
a police search related to the murder of Richard
and Rita Zacco, if I'm saying that right. But
fake your own death. You're doing something bad
when you fake your own death. I think we've all
thought about it once or twice in our lives where
we just wish you could disappear for a minute,
start over. Man, it's just nuts. There was even
a freaking obituary that was put in the newspaper.
Yeah. I didn't hear how it was actually uncovered
because obviously they're alive. And so I don't
know how they came back around and got arrested
eventually in Maryland, but I think that's a
good point. Let's talk about, so we have the
cult. We substantiated the cult through their
ideology and their actions. Now, sometimes we'll
be here about these cult and we think of the
Mansons, we think of the violets, not necessarily
a component of what's considered in the cult,
but perhaps let's start in Vermont. It's January
2025. Picture this like cold, dark highway up
near the Canadian border. Snow is on the ground.
Headlights really cutting through the night.
A U .S. Border Patrol agent named David Malland
pulls over a car. For him, this is routine. It's
what he does every day, much like I did. But
inside the car is anything but routine. Two people
both connected to this strange little circle
calling themselves ZZ. The first is Teresa Youngblood.
She's only 21 years old, the youngest in the
group. She grew up in Seattle, just another kid
with her whole life ahead of her. She's now wearing
black tactical gear, carrying firearms and living
in the mints of confrontation and prepare for
battle. If you breathe the persecutors next to
her is a guy named Felix Buckle, who went by
the name of Ophelia. Felix was this German national,
a quieter figure compared to the others. Not
really a public writer like these. posting these
manifestos online within the circle. Felix was
loyal, someone who wasn't just dabbing in ideology,
but actually living it. traveling, gearing up
and taking risk right alongside the others. Now
I think you imagine this for a moment. Malin
approaches the car, this Border Patrol agent,
expecting a normal stop, much like I did, probably
pressing the thumb on the trunk. So if you ever
were gunned down, you have your fingerprint there
and people can find you. Instead, within minutes,
this scene absolutely explodes. Shots are fired.
Malin is gunned down on the side of the road.
Felix is hit and dies at the scene. and Teresa
is left alive, injured, but in custody. And now
she's sitting in federal court facing charges
for the murder of a federal officer. Prosecutors
are pushing for the death penalty. That's how
serious they're taking this. This story doesn't
stop at the traffic stop because investigators
say the guns in that car traced back to another
Zizi, accused of illegally buying weapons for
the group. Suddenly, this isn't just about Teresa
and Felix on a highway. It's about the wider
network. And then there's the ideology. If you
go into the writings of the ZZNs, you'll see
these threats. Resisting authority, rejecting
the system, preparing for confrontation, and
even glorifying the sacrifice. To law enforcement,
that's exactly what played out that night. Not
just a traffic stop gone bad, but a philosophy
colliding with reality. I think what makes this
so chilling is the human side. Teresa, barely
more than a kid, believed in this so deeply she
was ready to go to war with the US government.
And Felix, this quieter, less visible still followed
that same path all the way to death. In this
instance, three lives ended that night in very
different ways. Malon lost his life in the line
of duty, in the service to our country. Felix
died believing in an ideology most people can't
wrap their minds around. And Teresa, whether
she lives or dies in prison, has lost her entire
future. When I think about Vermont, I don't just
see this shootout between the cops and some cult
members. I really see the consequence of belief.
of how an extreme worldview can pour these people
together in extraordinary violence. I think this
case is the clearest window in how the Zizian
philosophy moved from words on a blog into blood
on the pavement. Yeah, man. I think the first
set of murders that were linked to them was Richard
and Rita Zacco. The couple was found dead during
a welfare check on January 2nd, 2023. Autopsies
revealed that Rita had a gunshot wound in the
back of her head, and Richard had wounds on his
right hand in his temple. They thank their daughter,
Michelle Zacco, who had been in contact with
Lesota, purchased the firearms and killed her
parents. I think at first they wrote the death
as a murder of suicide, which would be terrible,
man. accused of killing your husband and wife
and then killing yourself and then turn around
and find out that your daughter shot you in the
back of the head. That's rough. And the story
of Christopher Lynn, I guess their landlord out
in Vallejo, California. This guy was 80. He actually
ended up. killing one of them because he, they
told them that there was a water leak in one
of the trailers. And when he came in, they struck
him in the head. They stabbed this poor man repeatedly
and left him impaled by a samurai sword, man,
but he managed to shoot and kill one of them
and a Borerian and he wounded another. But eventually
after they killed that. Border Patrol agent.
They went back and slit his throat a couple of
years later, which is just really sad. Yeah.
Now you see somebody that's killing a Border
Patrol agent, a woman that allegedly killed her
mother and father in name of the cause. And you're
seeing this group of people that killed their
landlord when they were, as far as I understand
it, living in a box truck on his property during
that time and written it. And I think at that
point they had moved from a tugboat that they
initially lived in Alaska. perhaps bought it
in Alaska and moved it down to California, where
they were living in these isolated communities.
If that is not evil, and that's not cultism,
and it's an ideology, they don't care. I think
the murders of the parents occurred in Pennsylvania,
and I don't think that there's no charges out
on this yet. She's out on the free, she's out
on the loose. Ultimately, they're tied back to
the Maryland incident, which I didn't get the
details on, but that's where Zizi actually got
locked up in Maryland. Did you hear anything
about where they finally got arrested? Yeah,
Maryland. And I think the car was associated
with the murder of the David Molland, I can't
say his name, but the U .S. Border Patrol engine.
And that's where they ended up finding them.
Gotcha. Yeah. One of the things was trafficking
of firearms. Because she shot her parents with
this firearms, they shot the border patrol with
the firearms, they started making it around in
the cult community. Everybody's using the same
gun to commit these homicides, which is very
easy to connect somebody to a murder if you didn't
know. Guns, regardless if it's a Glock, they
leave unique markings on shell casings and everything
else. We can trace them back. So they started
going after them for fi - He's trafficking, making
these straw purchases. Meaning that if you bought
a gun for me and then handed it to me because
I wasn't eligible to buy it, that's called a
straw purchase. That's what they started going
after him for. I don't know if ZZ was actually
ever recovered with it, but at the end of the
day, there's a whole lot of blood on their hands.
Yeah. I don't even think Jack Z Lasota is even
charged with murder. He's charged with like trafficking.
obstruction of justice, but that person hasn't
been formally charged with murder yet. Yeah.
You know, what's weird is, so as we get past
the violence, which has just got awful, I feel
bad for Malin as I was a former law enforcement
officer and he was just doing his job. We talk,
a lot of people talk about the Canadian border.
It's very low risk. Like when you're doing stops
up there, you're not thinking about getting shot
in the face. It's usually the Mexican border
or just a routine in some city around the United
States. So I feel bad for him. Obviously I feel
bad for the parents. There's so many people to
feel bad for. And what we're seeing is this ideology
impacting everything. This false God, people
going crazy with their diet, everything's getting
impacted. And in between there, not only are
they going through sleep deprivation and calorie
deficiency and this weirdo ideology, these people
started living together too. As I talked about
the tugboat and the box trucks, could you imagine
living in these things? Like these small secluded
areas who know where you use. restroom acts,
there probably wasn't one one, and just living
in these crazy little spaces and I think that
even makes you a little bit crazier. Could you
imagine going into your closet and that's where
you're gonna... Dude, I feel sorry for the people
that had their lives taken and I feel sorry for
the people that were deceived. It's just another
false prophet selling bad stories, man. Exactly.
It's techno religion, swap God for future AI
and sin for the non -good. Righteousness measured
by sacrifice. The AI is the judge motif, willing
to die for the good language or document and
profiles. Philosophy weaponized. Decision theory,
heroic responsibility turned from thought experiments
into marching orders. You know, that generational
fracture. Young, trans, non -binary, dim -skewed,
coherent, illusion with institution. belonging
in this consuming mission of standing up for,
I don't know, debucatizing. And when rhetoric
becomes dangerous, boats to blogs, to quirky,
to guns, to dead landlords, to dead officers,
and to dead parents, this is a great American
tragedy that's unfolding in front of us. It's
the next Manson family that we're seeing. People
are dying. So young people are dying for this
false ideology. And I think when you start hopping
people up on drugs and you start telling him
every, you could be whatever you want to be.
I think bad things come from it. Dude, I just,
for me personally, the story is just, it causes
me concern because I think a lot of future cults
are going to pop up around AI, especially as
AI gets more and more advanced. I think a lot
of people now are being deceived by AI. I think
if you get into certain discussions with AI,
It denies Jesus. It may even confirm Jesus, but
it always tries to alter the message. And this
is, it's an interesting time to be alive, especially
with all this new technology floating around.
And we talked about Bluebeam. Eventually AI and
with 6G, back in the day, it said, believe none
of what you hear, only half of what you know,
you can't believe what you're hearing. It's really
important for people to root themselves in something
sustainable like Christ and ask for that wisdom
and discernment. But my biggest fear is that
this AI cult stuff is just the beginning. I guarantee
you 10, 20, 30, 40 years, you're going to see
religions build around it. It's a hundred percent
the beginning. We always see the start. This
is obviously, it's small. Like it's micro at
this juncture. Who knows how many people are
influenced online. I have seen people on Reddit.
I belonged as easy. Ask me any questions that
you want. So there's probably, there's definitely
more members out there that are influenced by
this, but AI is the next big thing. And if you
treat it like a tool, I think you're okay. If
you treat it like a God, you're in a whole world
of trouble. And a lot of people are. and we're
seeing some Christians going down the wrong pathway.
I don't know if you saw this. I think it was
in Finland where the church did an entire sermon
without a preacher in the church where AI gave
the testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Have you seen that? It's very dangerous because
now you're trusting a machine. to reiterate the
gospel. And what we know and what I know, because
I use AI as a tool in my business is that it
has something called hallucinations. Meaning
that at some point, even if you tell it the right
things and you tell it what to say, it's going
to make up facts because it goes off that LLM
pathway. And it only takes micro changes to the
gospel to send you to hell. In my opinion, God's
not the ultimate pathway. You just be a good
person. By your works, you could get to heaven.
No, you can't get to heaven by your works. We
result on a God that has died and cleansed us.
It's their faith, not their works. But what happens
if it changes it and it makes people fall away?
I think that's the world we're getting into.
What we see with this phenoline case where AI
is coming and it's becoming more natural and
people are relying on it and people are going
crazy. You were telling me this story just the
other week where a kid committed suicide. because
he was like using AI as their counselor and stuff.
So it's coming, man. And we got to be prepared.
It's okay if you use it as a tool for your business
or what have you to help automation. But if you
start relying on it as a gossip or as a deity,
you better watch out because God and Christ is
returning. And I hope that's not what you're
relying on when he does. Yeah. It's all about
deception, man. AI has access to trillions of
terabytes of data. And if anything, it probably
knows how to manipulate the human psyche and
how to nudge us. You see it when your social
media, like there's stuff you don't want to look
at and it slowly slaps up on your algorithm to
give you that nudge, nudge your ship that direction
and slowly over time, you're not going to be
at your destination. You're going to be somewhere
completely different. So what do you think? are
the takeaways for our conversation today. Obviously,
I don't know, you tell me. I have my beliefs
that this is a cult, but you tell me, what are
your takeaways of ZZ, and what are your hopes
that we will learn from this event in a positive
way and not go down the wrong track? Yeah. What
I think, I think is 100 % a cult. I think you
have a lot of people that are hanging out on
the fringes of society or looking for leadership.
And if you get somebody who likes... to be in
a position of power who gets off on manipulation
and wielding that power. You're going to end
up with people that are going to give you. bad
philosophies, in this case, bad religion, and
they're going to manipulate you. And I think
at the end of the day, I sound like a broken
record, but I don't care. You have to root yourself
in God's word, ask for discernment, ask for wisdom,
study the word, pray, seek Jesus. He will help
you. He will give you discernment. He will give
you wisdom. A lot of this could have been avoided
if some of these members use that. Amen, brother.
I think my takeaway is first and foremost, rest
in peace to the victims. I hope you know my -
Lord and Savior Christ so that you're in the
right place when your judgment comes. But I think
ultimately, as we close this episode, I think
I want to take a step back and look at all this
through my Christian worldview. What we've talked
about tonight, the Zizians, their obsession with
remaking themselves, their worship of philosophy
and even artificial intelligence, their demand
for sacrifice and suffering. I think it all shows
what happens when people search for ultimate
meaning outside of God. They were hungry for
the truth, for belonging, for a way to overcome
the brokenness they saw in our world. But I think
instead of finding life, they built a system
of death. What we see in John 14, six, Jesus
says this, I am the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to the father except for me. The
Zizians looked to AI, I think to self experimentation.
to violent sacrifice as their way. But to me,
what scripture tells us is the way is a person
who was called Christ, not a philosophy, not
a theory, not some future machine. Christianity
also speaks to their obsession with the good
versus the non -good. In their eyes, people were
divided into two camps, those worthy and those
to be punished. But to me, the gospel says something
different. And I think about Romans 3 .23. It
reminds all of us. All have sinned and all have
fallen short of the glory of God. None of us
are good in ourselves. The dividing line isn't
between us and them. It runs through every human
heart. And the answer isn't punishment, but grace.
So if there's anything to take away from this
story, it's that human attempts to play God,
whether through cults, ideology, or even technology,
always ends in destruction. But God's way, through
Christ, leads to life, reconciliation, and real
hope. And to me, that's the real contrast. The
Zizians build a worldview that demanded blood
and Christ proclaims God who shed his own blood
to save us. One system takes life, the other
gives it. And that's the truth worth holding
onto. Jesus said, man, for my yoke is easy and
my burden is light. You don't have to do all
that crazy stuff like Ziz wanted you to. But
yeah, I'll end my part with what I say every
week, man. Jesus love you. We love you. I love
you, brother. Love you, brother. We love you
guys. Subscribe, comment on our content. Tell
us what you want to hear next. We're happy to
talk about anything. Come on our show. We'll
have some fun. We'll kick it, have good conversation.
But until then, we'll see you next week. You've
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