Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #2394. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Defense Technology Innovation, Virtual Reality Evolution, and Sovereign Manufacturing Strategies. Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan
experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by
night. All day. I haven't done the ball, but
I have done those knee chairs. Okay. They're
a little annoying. What about standing desks?
You a standing desk fan? No. Yeah, when I use
them, I usually have lower back. It gets kind
of sore just standing there. I feel like some
part of you should be relaxed. And if you're
standing, you're going to want to lean on something
to have a conversation especially. Because I
know some people do podcasts standing up, like
a standing up table. That's crazy. I have a buddy
of mine who's doing – have you ever seen the
float tanks where you float in the salt water?
Yeah, we have one here. oh no no way yeah so
i know someone who is building a rig with a waterproof
keyboard waterproof mouse and a VR headset so
that they can have a float computing rig. And
they want to just, they want to just, they want
to, they want to program while they're floating
in space. And he hasn't, he hasn't gotten all
the way there yet. The hardest part has actually
been the mouse. There's lots of waterproof keyboards
for various industrial applications. Like, you
know, so you don't get metal shavings in oil
in them, but mice, it's actually, it's actually
harder, but that makes sense. Cause there's a,
well, it's a laser. Now it used to be an actual
ball. That would have been really hard. Yeah.
At this point, I don't think it's that hard.
I think he's been screwing around with just taking
a normal one and then wrapping it in saran wrap.
But that's kind of splash -proof but not immersion
-proof. Is he actually underwater with the setup?
Yeah, because if you're taking your hands up
out of the water, one, it's uncomfortable. So
he's floating like this and the keyboard – Underwater.
Yeah, exactly. So you're floating at neutral
position basically. And just to code? He wants
to code like that? He wants to code. He must
be a super weirdo. I want to do it for VR gaming.
I think that'd be really interesting. If you
can't... If you can't simulate the experience
of your body being in the game, at least to forget
that your body exists and have the only thing
you're viewing be your vision and the sound,
I feel like would be a very interesting experience.
So I'm begging off an hour from him when he gets
it done, but I'm looking forward to that. I would
let you use ours to try it out, but we just had
a problem with one of our pumps broke. Oh, that's
a bummer. Yeah, it flooded everything with salt
water. It's weird. It's a weird experience. Have
you done it? I have actually never done it. I'm
so fascinated by it. And I've actually booked
a session at some of those like float tank companies
several times. And then every single time my
schedule has intervened and it turns out that
I've not been able to do it. You should get one
for your place. Maybe I should. Yeah. I should
probably try it first, right? Or it's just so
good I should have it. Yeah, you'll love it.
Yeah, it's very relaxing too. And it's really
good for thinking. Like if you have a thought
and you're just fucking around with it in your
head, you're like, I don't know what to do with
this. You're in there. You have zero distractions.
It's like your mind has more computational power
that's available because even though you don't
think about it, like right now we're in these
chairs, your butt's touching the chair, your
feet are on the floor, your hands on the table,
your clothes are on your body. There's all these
different things that your body is recognizing
as input. Sure. When you take those away. It's
like if you're having a conversation, there's
a bunch of people right beside you with a jackhammer.
You're like, this is too distracting. Let's go
over here. And you go to where in the park, it's
nice and peaceful. Now you can have a conversation.
It's so much easier. Well, you don't realize
that like regular everyday life, just establishing
the distance between the walls and thinking about
all the data, all that stuff is your brain is
computing this. Yep. In the silence of the float
tank, there's none of that. And you don't feel
the water because it's the same temperature as
your skin. That's right. And it's all salt -laden,
so it's isotonic. Exactly. You feel like you're
flying. That's so cool. It's really cool. I've
done a lot of reading on it, and I'm super interested
in the science of it. But I've never actually
managed to get into a float tank, which is really
embarrassing. I mean, you'd think that a billionaire
would have the resources to get into a bucket
of salt water. Yeah, you should have somebody
make you one. Have someone build you one at your
place. Oh, that'd be cool. Maybe get one made
out of wood instead of like the plastic. You
want metal. Mine looks like a giant meat locker.
That's what it looks like. But the guy who made
it for me was like a mad genius. He died, unfortunately.
He was a mad genius who also didn't believe in
medicine. Did he die of hepatitis? I don't know.
I think he died of hepatitis. Well, you'll have
to show it to me so that I can check it out.
It's dope. Yeah. But it would definitely be,
at some point in time, the best way to disconnect
from your natural environment. If they do come
up with some sort of haptic feedback, or whether
it's some sort of a neural interface that completely
changes the environment, like you drop into it,
that would be the perfect environment to do it
in salt water. Yep. Well, I mean, that was always
my dream. My first company was Oculus. And so
that was my dream was to just fully feel like
you were inside of the video game. Completely
forget about the real world. How old were you
when you started working there? So I started
building virtual reality headset. when I was
14 or 15. And then I built the first prototype
of what I call the Oculus Rift at 16. And then
I formally turned it into a company when I was
18, launched the product when I was 19, and then
sold the company a few years later to Facebook
for a few billion dollars. So it was kind of
a crazy arc for me. Wow. That was like, I was
putting myself through school. Did you work with
Carmack? Yeah, so, well, Carmack was... So John
Carmack was one of my heroes growing up. Love
that dude. And it was one of these crazy things
where the universe kind of brought us together.
I was working on my VR technology and nobody
was paying attention to VR back then. It was
kind of a crazy person thing. Nobody was paying
attention to what I was doing. But I was posting
about it on this internet forum. And then John
Carmack started. posting on that same forum asking
for help modifying his own Sony head -mounted
display that he had bought to reduce the latency.
And so I gave him a bunch of input on why he
couldn't do it, why it was an impossible project,
because I had been trying to do the same thing.
And then he ended up seeing the work I was doing
on the Oculus Rift. And he said, hey, Palmer,
can I buy one of these from you? I said, well,
I'm not really selling these yet, but I'd be
happy to lend it to you for free. And so I sent
it to him. He ended up writing a review and posting
it on his blog and said it was the best VR experience
the world has ever seen. He introduced me to
Sony. They tried to hire me to run their VR research
and development lab. I turned them down. They
doubled the offer. I turned that down. And then
so John was kind of the guy who got me like really
– he's kind of the first guy who got any public
attention for me. where everyone was like, oh,
if John Carmack says this is important, then
this must be important. And then if you can believe
it, two years later, after I started Oculus and
started selling these, he actually left id Software
and became the CTO of Oculus. Yes. Then I had
the incredible opportunity to work with one of
my childhood heroes as my CTO. That was so cool.
What year was that? That was 2012. Okay. Because
he came on the podcast, I think, 2016, and you
brought one. Yeah. So, yeah, he joined in 2000.
2013. So I think it was June of 2013. So about
a year after I started, Oculus is when he joined
as CTO. Well, he showed us and he was doing whatever
the one is where you I guess you have drumsticks
Is that what you have and you're whacking stuff
as it comes out of the sky? He showed us that
and like what a work We're probably with Beat
Saber. Yes. Yeah, he's a huge Beat Saber fan
Oh, he was going nuts and he was doing it really
fast. Oh, no, this is not it's actually it's
like it is good fitness. Yeah coordination training
Yeah, it really like Beat Saber was great because
it really busted this myth that VR was this like,
you know totally inactive, be a fat, lazy slob
thing. VR gaming, at least as it exists today,
takes a lot more caloric expenditure than any
other type of gaming. For sure. Even more than
other motion games. Remember Wii Bowling and
Wii Sports? That's one movement every once in
a while. Beat Saber is a full -body workout.
What's really impressive is the boxing games.
The boxing games are a really good workout. Did
you play, I think, one that was Creed by a company
called Servios? I don't remember what the name
was. We had a couple different ones at the old
studio in L .A., and I'd work out with it. I'd
put it on, and you do a round with these virtual
boxers. You really get a workout in. Your feet
hurt. Like, you're like, wow, I'm utilizing a
lot of movement here. Yep. You know, the company
that did a few of those boxing games is this
L .A. studio called Servios. And the two co -founders
of that were actually guys who worked with me
in the Army research lab that I worked in before
starting Oculus. So it's one of those. Teeny
tiny worlds. There were so few of us that really
believed in VR in those days. Is there a VR that
a professional boxer could use? Could you get
VR to the point where you could program it with
AI? So you could take the movement of a Sugar
Ray Leonard or something like that and actually
program it into the machine? It's not just something
you could do. It's being done. There are boxers
who are using this technology. Really? So I know
Logan Paul and Jake Paul. And I've talked with
them a lot about using virtual reality and how
they're using it to do combat training. That's
right. Wow. Well, my thought was that you could
actually emulate an opponent. So, like, say if
you were supposed to fight Canelo Alvarez. Yeah.
Well, we have this database of all Canelo Alvarez's
performances. Yep. And training footage. So you
could calculate what his normal exchanges are,
what his opening moves are, how he sets the hookup
off the jab. He feints the right. You're giving
me crazy deja vu. Let me show you the text message
that I was just doing with Logan Paul last night.
I said, it's time to have robots fighting people.
My dream is that you can have robots perfectly
tuned to match your own current physical capability
and progressively ramp up against yourself over
time or against the greats. We were talking through
– this was less VR. Well, are you even following
some of the robot fighting league stuff? Yes.
So that's controlled by VR. You put on a VR headset,
you put on a motion capture suit, you tele -operate
a robot. One of the things I've been talking
with Logan about is the idea of having where
you have one tele -operated robot versus an actual
human. But then what we were talking about is
this idea of having the robot learn from, like
you're saying, learning from footage of not just
the greats, but even yourself. So that it can
be basically, you could fight against your style,
your exact level of strength. And then, of course,
you want to fight against the greats and see
just how far you have to go and just get the
shit kicked out of you. The other thing I was
thinking about. What a robot could do if you
programmed it correctly, it would have a really
accurate sense of distance. So it would be able
to touch you instead of hurt you. It could pull
its punches. Yes. That's a really good point.
Which is the best sparring partners. So the mechanics
of it are all the same, but you don't have the
follow through. It would have more control probably
even than a person, right? So you think of the
precise movements that surgical robots are able
to do. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could
do this. The main thing that robots have is they
have just such fast reaction time. And so you
could put sensors in like a glove. You could
have it where the moment that it hits or even
a ranging sensor. I mean, it could stop a millimeter
away from you. So, yeah, you could totally do
that. Is this something that someone's working
out with? This is Robot Fightley again, San Francisco.
Oh, this is the Fightley. So actually, this is
a buddy of mine who's been working in VR for
a really, really long time. So it's, again, what
a tiny world of weird wackos. But yeah, SixLiv
has been working on, which is his real name,
by the way. He's been working on VR stuff for
the past 15 years, and he recently got into doing
this robot. Robot Combat Sports League. So that's
that. They're doing a big U .S. versus China
fight in December if you want me to get you tickets.
I can make it happen. I can pull some strings.
Where is it? Where is it taking place? I think
it's going to be in San Francisco. That's funny.
I try to stay out of San Francisco. I also don't
really want to watch robots fight. No? I don't
mind watching them on TV, but yeah. You ever
read manga or anime about fighting? No. I gotta
admit, I'm less of a fighting guy, more of an
anime manga guy. But I love some of the just
ridiculous inventions that make you think if
there might be something there. So like Fist
of the North Star, there's a move that a guy
learns. And it's like a, I forget the name of
it, but it's like a double punch. So what you
do is you fold your fingers and you punch the
guy. And then his skin recoils, it delivers the
full hit. And then you fold your fingers in.
So you hit, pull your fingers, and then punch
again. And it's like one punch, but it's a double
punch. And then one of the culmination of his
training is where his master shows him that there's
actually a final step. You can see where this
is going. It's a triple punch. So you punch him
like this, and then like this, and then like
this. And mostly that stuff is nonsense and never
going to work with a person, but it makes me
wonder if a robot could do it. Well, you would
need momentum, right? I mean, if it's generating
force, your force would be stopped with the first
blow. To be able to generate additional momentum
in a short distance would be very difficult.
For a person. What I'm thinking is a robot would
allow you to do this type of multiple. It doesn't
have muscles. It's using a different force. Exactly.
So your first one would carry all your inertia
through, and then you could get a second one.
Oh, I agree. Because you would think you would
want the most power in the first shot and concentrate
only on that. But what if you could do the most
power in the first shot? And then another follow
shot anyway. Yeah. Or like you hit him and it
throws him back of it. And then the moment, you
know, the distance it creates. Look, I'm not
a fighting expert. I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a computer
kid. The thing that bothers me about it is the
human body is inherently flawed. It's not a good
design and it's not a good design for fighting.
So if I was going to design something to fight
something, I would never design it after a human.
I would use an animal or something more destructive.
I wouldn't use something so vulnerable or something
with like shitty mechanics. Well, it ends up
looking like a battle bot probably, you know,
something heavily shielded and armored and it's
got a big spike on an arm. It would be like that.
That's what you would have for a robot to fight
because a human is just too goofy. Well, I mean,
that's why the stuff that I make for the Department
of Defense, or I guess now the Department of
War, none of it looks like a human. I mean, we're
making robots for fighting. And they all have
very hyper -specialized forms. And some of them
look a bit like sharks or a bit like birds. But
generally – yeah, you're right. The human form
is not the one that you would actually base a
Terminator off. No. It's terrible. It's a terrible
form. Although I would say one of my – I don't
think James Cameron ever really explored this
in Terminator. But my personal kind of like –
headcanon theory would be that the reason that
Skynet made the Terminators into a humanoid form
is because maybe there is really some hope in
that there's something of humanity left in it.
If it was truly a merciless killing machine with
no affiliation with humanity, why would it make
its agents so uniformly human -shaped? But that's
just something I pause from time to time. I think
it's just for deception. Well, the later ones
truly were for deception. But if you look at
a lot of the flashes into the future, they don't
have meat shielded Terminators. There's lots
of like T -series humanoid combat robots that
are just walking around as bare metal skeletons.
And so I feel like it's almost like an admission
that the AI. does see itself in the mind of –
it sees itself as a creation of man. It sees
itself in the eyes of man. That was very creepy,
right? Because that's in the Bible. God created
man in his image. That's exactly what I was thinking.
It's very much like it realizes it was created
in man's image and derives some sort of satisfaction
or value from that. I don't know if that's good
or bad, but I thought it was interesting. Maybe
it's just a giant cycle and that's how life –
eventually does create artificial life. Well,
I mean, you're familiar with all the theories
around humanity being planted here by aliens.
Oh, yeah, sure. And that's always interesting
because you could imagine a world where, yeah,
it is this cycle of things that look kind of
like humans were on top of us, and maybe eventually
there will be things that look like humans beneath
us. Wasn't there some weird discovery, a recent
discovery of an asteroid? Where they picked apart
whether it's the crucial amino acids for life
or some sort of genetic material. You're talking
about the NASA release that there were strong
biosigns that are compatible with what we would
expect from life? Yes. There was. Recently, right?
It was recently, although they walked it back
pretty quickly. Oh, did they? There was kind
of an initial. that said that we found that they're
strongly aligned with being biological signals.
And then they kind of reached back. They said,
well, maybe not. I haven't dug into that one
as deep as others. I've just been too busy really
lately. And you're right. This is like very recent
news. I always wonder if someone got overenthusiastic.
Or if someone said, hey, yeah, why don't you
shut the fuck up? You know, like we're trying
to slow this whole release of alien technology,
alien life, slow it down. Well, keep society
together. So we have a stock market. Well, the
good news, the good news in this case is I think
even even the most optimistic sense and optimistic
meaning I hope they find. life, I think it's
going to end up being some microbes. Whatever
they saw was not consistent with, oh, dude, it's
a person in the rock, which is, of course, what
we all want. We want people or little green men
or something like that. That's probably going
to be pretty far away. It probably is. My experience
on this front is largely from a military angle
and looking at a lot of the footage that's coming
out and a lot of the sensor feeds that have come
out. And the thing that what we like, what we
really need even more than discovering microbes
like these flying objects. Yeah. The problem
is that most of them, and I'm not saying all
of them, most of them, we're only capturing them
on, let's say, one sensor. Like a camera is seeing
it or a radar is seeing it. It's very rare to
get both of those totally different types of
sensors looking at it at the same time. It's
relatively easy to imagine a world where a sensor
would have an error or an artifact or even that's
being actively spoofed, right? People are actively
trying to trick it. You can make radars see things
that aren't there. You can make cameras see things
that aren't there if you're really smart about
how you interact with them. It's very hard to
make something. That makes a radar and a camera
see something that isn't there in a way that
perfectly aligns with what is there. Now, you
saw the recent one with the hellfire that was
fired at it. And it appears to have broken up
but then kept moving. Yeah. That's interesting
because now you have something that's on a camera
and you sent another thing with a seeker and
it got there and it blew up. Is that definite
real footage? I mean, I believe. It's been verified?
I am probably not in a position where I should
say if I know if it's been verified, but I'll
tell you this. I believe the footage is real.
Let's run it through perplexity and ask... What
do you mean by verified, though? Just ask if
it has been verified that this is legitimate
footage from the military of whatever they thought
it was going to be and a Hellfire missile hits
it. I do believe that one of the... one of the
members of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon
Committees in Congress introduced it into a hearing.
That's where it came from. It came from a hearing.
Who released it? It didn't just show up on Twitter.
Oh, okay. Which guy released it? You saw the
phenomenon? Yes. Fantastic. It's really good.
You know, the guy who did it is doing a follow
-up. Have you heard about this? What's he doing?
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shouldn't say too much more, but there's a follow
-up to it that's coming that's even better. Wait
a minute. Wasn't the phenomenon James Fox? Was
it James Fox? Was the phenomenon James Fox? Say
again? James Fox. Was that the phenomenon? Yeah,
but the age of disclosure? He had moment of contact.
He had the Varginia. That's the Varginia one.
And then didn't he have the phenomenon too? Somebody
did it. I saw it. Why did I think it was Fox?
It is Fox. Yeah, Fox has been on here a few times.
He's got that crazy one about the Varginia, Brazil
sighting. Do you know about that one? That one's
nuts. Like the whole town saw this thing. It
crashed in the 90s. And they have like a statue
of this thing like as you're entering the city.
And supposedly, this is the crazy story, there
was a wounded alien. One of the police officers
carried this wounded alien in the back of a car.
They brought it to a hospital. There's records
of them bringing this to the hospital. The hospital
said, we can't handle this. We have no – take
it to a different hospital. So they took it to
another hospital. Yep. Then the guy who carried
the thing gets a severe bacterial infection that's
unresponsive to antibiotics and dies. Whoa. Yeah.
Young, healthy, you know, fighting age man gets
this weird infection after handling this creature.
Multiple witnesses say they saw another one of
them. There was like a couple of them. One of
them was injured that they picked up and there
was another one that was there. And then. Many
people in the town said that they saw another
craft come by to retrieve those aliens It's a
really nice story because it's the same story
is told independently by a bunch of people You
know I've kind of got my retirement figured out
I have for a while can't just retire right now
if you wanted to I mean I could it's just what
I'm doing I think is important you know so I
got a I got to see my mission through like I'm
the government is We've been spending way too
much money on defense, not getting nearly enough
for it. So I started Andral with the goal of
saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars
a year. I need to see that through. But what
I want to get to someday is there's a handful
of these government groups that are going around
looking into things like what you're talking
about. They look into the strange phenomenon.
Those groups do exist, and I've tracked down
a few of them. The problem is that they're not
taken seriously. They're not well -funded. And.
They're subject to all the same normal rules
as an average government employee. Like their
problems are not finding weird things. It's stuff
like getting approval to buy plane tickets to
go somewhere and getting approval to stay there
for two nights versus versus one night. Oh, look,
it's just the it's the typical government bureaucracy
where they have to make every penny count. They
only have so much money. Anyway, one of my dreams
is I'm going to at some point when I'm retired,
I'm going to go get deputized by the government,
go get my federal badge. And I'll be the I'll
be the government's. privately funded X -Files,
and I'll just fly around. I'll fly around on
my own plane. I'll have my own team. We'll bring
our own sensors, our own computers. Oh, man,
if only we could bring in this expert, but he's
on the other side of the world. So bring him
in. Bring him in. Send the plane. Put out the
Palmer signal. Yes, sir. He'll be here in 12
hours. I feel like there's enough, and not even
just aliens. In general, there's enough weird
stuff going on that it doesn't seem like a stretch
to have. somebody or something that really stays
on top of that stuff. It seems like a very good
idea. Did you see the Age of Disclosure? Did
you see the documentary? Age of Disclosure. No,
I haven't seen that. It's a new one. And it has
a hypothesis. It has a theory of why there hasn't
been disclosure. And a lot of it has to do with
the legal implications because too many people
have been misappropriating funds if this is real.
Sure. So if this is real – Like if there's recovered
alien crash objects, if those have been parceled
out to private companies. Exactly. That's exactly
the dilemma. So say if, let's say, just – to
make up a name, Lockheed Martin gets it. Sure.
And they have this back -engineered craft that
they're working on. But then Raytheon doesn't
get it. Raytheon should be able to sue the government.
Like, why did you do that? It's an unfair competitive
advantage. Also, the people that are in charge
of the projects, there's all this money that
they have to lie to Congress about. And so in
this documentary, one of the things that they're
proposing, guys like Lou Elizondo and like, what
is the path to sanity with all this stuff? One
of the things they're proposing is amnesty. Just
give like blanket amnesty. Tell us what the fuck
you know. Let's go. go. And I assume a limited
time amnesty, and the amnesty only applies to
what is disclosed in this amnesty. It doesn't
apply beyond that. But also, if it's government,
you know there's a lot of fraud and waste. Sure.
So even if these guys are just monkeying around
with billions of dollars, a little yacht here,
a little vacation here, a little Cayman Islands
there. So stuff is probably real ugly. Right.
And they've been doing this for, if it's real,
they've been doing this for decades with no oversight.
Yep. So they probably are – they're a little
wild. They're a little feral by now. I mean it's
just across the board. Our country has been spending
so much money on what is supposed to be for national
security. But in reality, it's a lot of – it
has nothing to do with that. And so that was
why I got into – that was why I got into the
defense space. Isn't that with everything though,
right? It's like that's how it is with charities
as well. It's with everything, but it's a question
of – how you can apply targeted pressure as a
private individual, right? So yeah, like charities,
there's a lot of graft going on. But what can
I really do to stop that at each of these charities,
right? Like there's no one charity that kind
of dominates, right? It's a thousand grains of
rice. Whereas the Department of Defense is one
giant entity with a trillion dollar a year budget.
And so it's much easier, like if you wanted to...
Say $100 billion a year for taxpayers. You kind
of have to go after the big concentrated chunks.
You might be able to do that going after healthcare
problems, maybe education problems, definitely
going after Department of Defense problems. And
I know a lot more about how to build good technology
than I do about healthcare. If these were all
private companies, they would never survive the
way they're running. Correct. Well, I mean, yeah,
these government agencies. When they make mistakes,
they don't go out of business. And in fact, they
can make bad mistakes over and over and over
again and still remain in business. I do think
– I think we're turning a corner with some of
this. Did you see the new secretary of the army,
Dan Driscoll's AUSA talk yesterday? No, I did
not. Oh, man. It might be worth pulling it up.
He pulls up this piece of hardware and he's like,
hey, this little thing – It costs this insane
amount of money, and we were able to make it
in our own lab, just 3D print it for like $10.
And so that's what we're going to be doing now.
And he killed the... joint -like tactical vehicle
program. He killed this new kind of boondoggle
of a robotic tank program where it was going
to be millions of dollars for these robot tanks
that were going to get blown up by $300 drones.
There's just kind of been no rules, just going
and axing all of the dumb stuff that doesn't
make sense and then taking a knife to these companies
that have been charging way too much money, which
is very different from the past. It's very rare.
It has been a long time since you saw a secretary
level official. Being willing to publicly contraindicate
defense companies and say you're screwing over
taxpayers and it ends here. I'm actually pretty
optimistic about this across the services. I
think people are fed up. Do you think Doge sort
of started that ball moving and then – I think
it did. That direction is sort of momentum is
headed on its side right now? I think the – The
Doge thing was interesting because it wasn't
even the technique so much like the techniques
where they kind of went into the data on like
USAID and looked through all of this stuff and
like basically where the data science of it is
what allowed them to find the graft. That doesn't
really apply to finding the problems in DOD because
it's just so much more deeply buried. But it
kind of gave people permission to go look at
these things. Like it gave people permission
to even say, I believe there is billions of dollars
in waste in my department. I'm going to do something
about it. I don't think people felt like they
had. like psychic permission to do that five
years ago. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Well,
I mean, let's go to like kind of like. So you
just didn't want to rock the boat. Well, I mean,
let's go to like the height of and not even making
it political, just timeline wise. Go to the like
the middle of the Biden administration. Could
you imagine any official in that area, like secretary
or chair or anybody coming out and saying, my
department is wasting billions of dollars. We
are taking money from taxpayers and using it.
on absurd nonsense. That would never happen five
years ago. And I think the Doge stuff gave people
permission to come out and say that and for them
to be seen not as crazy, but as just being honest
about the truth. So when you see the Secretary
of the Army come out and say, we are wasting
billions of dollars on total bullshit and we
are getting screwed this, that way and the other,
I think that's a really... That's really good
development. Well, it also seems like it's a
really shitty way to compete with other countries
that operate very efficiently, like their private
companies. Correct. Like other countries, like
China, the government fully embedded in private
companies and the private companies are competing
against each other. Civil military fusion. Right.
Well, and it goes even beyond that. We're like,
you know, central planning has downsides, but
it does have upsides. And one of the interesting
things there is also like. There are some people
who are being accused of corruption because they
just want to kill them and get them out of the
way for political reasons. There's other people
who are actually corrupt and they're going in.
And when people are wasting money, they're not
going and saying, oh, well, you kind of wasted
a few billion dollars, but we're going to give
you another shot and try this again. They just
they just they just imprison them for treason
and or kill them. I'm not saying that's what
we should do exactly. But I think that there's
a scale to all of these things on scale of, you
know, give them another shot. versus shoot them
in the head for treason, we could probably move
in that direction without going all of the way.
And it would probably be healthy for our country's
national security. Would that be the like if
you ideally would it be that all this national
security stuff was handled by a private company?
Would that be like ideal in terms of efficiency,
in terms of technological innovation, implementing
ideas? I think that. I'm not suggesting that.
I'm just saying there's problems with running
a government. I've got a strong opinion here.
I think that what you want, it's not a private
company. It needs to be done by competing entities.
If it's private, and at least one of them has
to be private. I don't even really mind the government
doing something if they're not being favored.
In other words, if there's some government office
that is competing with multiple private sector
companies. Like the post office versus UPS. Exactly.
Although that's a little unfair in that, I don't
know how deep, by the way, I'm very deep on this.
Like, I don't understand why we give the USPS
a monopoly on normal mail. Are you familiar with
this whole bit? Yeah, it's a little weird. They're
the only way you can get chickens shipped, too.
I didn't know that. Yeah, if you have baby chicks,
they send them through the regular mail, but
they won't send them UPS. That's so interesting.
Well, it's the same thing with firearms. You
can only send them USPS. I don't know why we've
given a private company a monopoly. If there
was a private company that had the same monopoly
that the USPS does, and they were using it to
send... 100 pounds of junk mail to every American
every year, there's no way they would survive.
They would be regulated out of existence. What
you really want is competition. You want organizations,
private or public, that when they trip and fall,
they skin their own knees instead of getting
bailed out by taxpayers. You want them to live
in fear, be highly competitive. Make their audits,
by the way. Yeah, exactly. And they have to survive
an auditing process. They have to be accountable
to whether it's a board or to some committee.
And the problem is right now we don't have a
lot of that. I will say, though, you asked should
these national security programs be in the hands
of private companies. I think that's true for
the development of the technology. However, it
can never, ever be in the hands of private companies.
When it comes to the actual national security
policy of what we are building or who we are
building it for or where it should go. Of course.
I get people all the time who come to me, usually
people who are more skeptical of government.
And yet they say, Palmer, aren't there countries
you would commit to never building for? Would
you just build for whoever gives you money? And
I say, well, look, my job is to do what the government
tells me. They're the – They're the ones who
decide who are going to work more or not. They
say, how could you do that? How could you work
with this country or that country? How could
you build this type of system or that type of
system? And my point to them is, do you want
to live in a corporatocracy where big tech CEOs
get to decide the de facto foreign policy and
military policy of the United States? Like, you
should. If I were in a position to make those
decisions, something's gone very wrong in this
country because you can't vote me out. You can't
elect my competitor. And so a lot of people who
normally are skeptical of the government and
government power and overreach, suddenly they
look to the private sector for, oh, like the
private sector is going to regulate this. To
me, that's the most like cyberpunk dystopian
thing either. Imagine like me and a bunch of
weapons executives sitting in a room like, so
which countries are on the green list this year?
I don't know. I was thinking we could sell some
missile defense to those guys, and I think we
should sell some offensive weapons to those guys.
No, that has to be the government, unless you
just don't believe in democracy at all. If you
believe that we cannot elect officials that are
accountable, then that's a different thing. But
I'm not that black -pilled. I'm not that black
-pilled either, but I'm getting there. Look,
sometimes I see it too. I think that what it
is is inevitably when you have a pendulum, sometimes
it will swing too far. And I but I think the
good is it can correct. I mean, like, look at
a lot of our misadventures in the Middle East
is a really good example where there were a lot
of things like. The government caused a lot of
things to happen that I think never would have
happened had people really known the truth behind
a lot of those actions. But in the end, we did
have the ability to hold them accountable. Now,
the real problem is that people didn't hold them
accountable. Like there's a lot of people today
where they're not really that worked up about
some of these people in government who lied to
us. But I would say that's a fault of the American
people, not of the democratic process. It just
means people don't care about that issue as much,
which – I think they should care more. I think
they're also not that informed, like universally.
Now, is that because they don't want to be or
because they can't be? It's difficult because
most people don't have time. I think that's a
big part of it. That does make it hard. That
does make it hard. But I mean, I think that,
you know, not to butter you up, but... This is
one of the things where shows like yours have
made a huge difference, where they've been able
to take things that are pretty complex for a
person to figure out from first principles. Stories
that they would never read about in establishment
media, like, let's say, the New York Times or
Wall Street Journal, which, by the way, is dependent
on continued access to the U .S. government.
They can't just go out and burn everybody in
the government or nobody will ever talk to them.
You've taken a lot of these stories and put them
into a format where the guy who's busy, he's
in his truck, he's on his way to the work site,
can actually become informed on these issues.
And as someone who is a journalism major, I've
been so happy to see that shift because I wanted
to be a journalist because there were no good
technology journalists. And I was good at technology,
figured I was going to beat all these guys and
be a better technology journalist. Oh, that's
interesting. In the end, I ended up dropping
out of school and starting Oculus instead. That
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That's BetterHelp .com slash J -R -E. But yeah,
I think you would agree, it is getting easier
to become educated on these things. Like, 10
years, what would you have done? It is in America,
but it's a little disconcerting. Like, when you
see the way they're handling things in Europe.
Oh, sure. Like, it's getting really weird in
the UK. 12 ,000 arrests this year for social
media posts about immigration, and now they want
everybody to have a digital ID. You got a license
for that meme, mate? Yeah, it's getting really
weird. And, you know, as that... Arrests for,
uh... posting disturbing or offensive content.
Yes, or annoying. Could I share a little story
there? This has been so funny watching this in
the UK because the first thing I ever did that
anyone cared about was called Mod Retro. So it
was this internet forum for people modifying
game consoles, making portable versions of old
game consoles, upgrading modern game consoles.
Anyway, when we started the site, it was me and
a few other people who were kind of running it.
I was the founder and there were a few other
co -administrators. And one of them was this
British guy who went by the online handle of
Bacteria. And I won't say his real name because
it doesn't matter. But he was a British guy.
He worked in... very, very low level British
government. So like not a higher up at all. But
he worked in a government, government agency,
government office. And he was always, I think
of all the people on this forum, which was mostly
like teenagers and college students. He was kind
of like the older guy. And he says, oh, we need
to be kind about what we say, you know, that
we shouldn't say anything that is bad. And he
was always pushing that our rules should say
it's that it was against our rules to offend
anybody. And you shouldn't be able to say anything
that was too offensive. And we mostly just made
fun of him. Aha, he's the old British man. But
what's interesting is he ended up eventually
leaving the site because he thought people were
being too mean to each other. And he started
his own competing website. And the rule number
one was no content that may make any member feel
demeaned, uncomfortable, or insulted. We're like,
well, we're all making fun of that. We're making
our own little image macros and memes about it.
made some fake ads for his website and put them
on Facebook. And it said, come join Bacteria's
website. Nobody will say anything to you that
might offend or displease you. But what's interesting
is as all this UK stuff has come around, I remember
these kind of like long forgotten childhood memories.
I was like 13 or 14 at the time. And I think
it really is partly a cultural. reflection for
them. Like there are a lot of people in the UK
who genuinely think it's good to police this
stuff. They don't want people to be able to go
out and just cause a ruckus, you know, to to
say things that are insulting in the streets.
And of course, you have people who are protesting
against that. But I think that also their surveillance
state, you know, where there's cameras everywhere,
it's actually a reflection of different cultural
norms. And so the one good thing about what's
going on in the UK is I don't think it would
ever come over to America very easily because
culturally, you know. We're not walking around
feeling like it's – we don't feel like it's a
crime to insult people. They feel like it should
be. Maybe perhaps some of them do, but I think
it's so overwhelmingly moving towards tyranny.
I think it's the majority. That's the crazy –
Really? I think the majority of people want it
that way. I think that the majority of people
in the UK have no problem with people who post
spicy memes. getting a visit from the local constabulary.
Wow, really? That has been my experience. Now,
there are people who disagree, of course. And
I would say maybe it's a growing group. They're
a highly visible group. They're protesting. But
if I had to bet, most people don't care. Most
people in the UK just don't care about it one
way or the other. And I think the group of people
who are on the side of the control is larger
than the people who are not on the side. By the
way, similar thing in China. People talk about
Chinese censorship on things like Tiananmen Square.
That's actually the majority Chinese opinion,
too. If you talk to most Chinese people and you
say, well, what do you think about the fact that
they're censoring all this discussion? The typical
and I know lots of people in China, they say.
That's an irrelevant issue from 30 or 40 years
ago. It doesn't matter. Anyone who's trying to
make every discussion about Tiananmen Square
is just a troublemaker. And I don't care if they're
shut down. I'm glad that they're not clogging
the comments. And I'm glad those people are being
pushed out of the conversation. And that's such
a pretty normal opinion. Don't cause trouble
needlessly. Now, these same people might say,
I have strong opinions about the COVID lockdown.
of information locked down in China. Like they
might say, I don't like that the Chinese government
is locking down on, you know, locking us in our
apartments. But when it comes to discussion of
political issues, China in general, they think
that people who bring this up, like you would
just be a troublemaker. They just say, ah, that
Joe Rogan, he's a troublemaker. Why is he bringing
up all these problems from the past? It's irrelevant.
Why are we allowing this guy to take up our public
spaces? Like if you're public protesting in public
space, they're not here. You've probably seen
protesters you didn't agree with. And you said,
you know, I'm glad they're doing something they
believe in. I'm glad George Soros is sending
them checks. Maybe not those, but true grassroots.
You know, the guys who scribble their signs.
Look, it's important. But that's not a thing
in China. It's an important part of our First
Amendment. People in China see that and they
say, look at those troublemakers ruining my beautiful
public space. It's a very interesting cultural
value difference. Well, they also don't have
any perception of the ability to change the government.
That's right. That's right. There's no one's
like, I think we can do this. I think we can
push them out. I think, nope. Yep. You ain't
fixing shit. So put your nose down. Get to work.
I wonder if that really is the difference. I
mean, in Europe. It has to be. Well, in Europe,
you see. They kind of resign themselves to the
fact that they're not participating. Yep. You
know, it's not an experiment. It's a lot easier
to be apolitical when it's a futile exercise.
Yeah. It's like, what are you going to do? Stop
being a troublemaker. Of course, part of this
– it comes down to an attitude. I mean you're
probably familiar with the numbers in the American
Revolution. Only about 3 percent of America supported
the revolution. It was a really niche movement
of very dedicated, motivated people. And so the
best way to probably stop that 3 percent from
existing in China is to convince them that it's
futile and to kind of fuel that cynicism almost.
You see this in Russia too. I mean, military
dictatorships. So same deal. One of the conclusions
I've come to, you know, I work in the weapons
industry and I've seen a lot of cool stuff. I've
seen stuff that U .S. is making, that I'm making.
I'm familiar with a lot of the weapons systems
that Russia and China have in fielding or in
progress. Some of the stuff that China and Russia
are doing. I mean, it's as sci -fi as what the
United States is doing. But I've come to the
conclusion that their most powerful weapon is
not any bomb or missile or drone. It's their
ability to control people's minds through the
media, through propaganda, through kind of state
pressure. They convince them to believe things
about the world that weren't true, that aren't
true. And then they're basically making people
willing to fight for causes that don't really
exist. Like a good example, this is Ukraine.
A lot of the Russians who went to fight in Ukraine
in the early days, I think the truth is out now.
But when they were first invading, they were
told that the people of Ukraine want to be liberated.
You're going to be a hero. You're going to go
over there like they desperately want Russia
to save them and reunify them. And it's just
this, you know, Kiev led cabal funded by the
West with it as it's barely holding on to the
country and keeping and staying in power. And
people in Russia really believed that. Like the
guys who were fighting on the front lines, the
guys who were flying tanks and helicopters, they
believed it. When I went to Ukraine during the
war, one of the things that I got to see was
there was this helicopter wreck. It was an attack
helicopter that was trying to seize an airfield
of a private aerospace company. And the guys
actually shot it down themselves. Like they showed
me videos of them wearing polo shirts, shooting
down the helicopter in their parking lot. I mean,
it's like crazy shit. So the pilots, the pilots
kind of go bag, you know, this bag with all of
his emergency and survival gear in it. It had
three or four days of water, three or four days
of food, another flight uniform, his dress uniform
with dress shoes, because they were told they
were going to be they said this is going to be
a five day military operation. There's going
to be parades. So dress uniform. And then 50
condoms. This guy thought that he was going to
be, he thought the women were going to be all
over him. They were going to, he was going to
need 50 condoms for the post -war celebration.
Wow. And to me, that speaks to how brainwashed
this guy was. And remember, helicopter pilots
aren't like the dumb grunt. Right. I mean, he's
probably one of the more highly educated people.
Right. And they convinced him that the people
of Ukraine wanted him to liberate them and that
they were going to be so happy to see him that
he was getting his dress uniform and 50 condoms.
Wow. And there were similar stories. 50 is a
lot. 50 is a lot. That guy's fucking up a storm.
That's crazy. I will give him a little credit.
50 condoms doesn't take up that much space in
your bag. But it's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. Very
optimistic. Well, this wasn't the only guy. This
was actually pretty common. Everybody had 50
condoms? I don't know if everybody had 50. They
all brought condoms. Well, a lot of guys had
condoms. And a lot of people brought their dress
uniforms. They thought that they were going to
roll into Kiev, take over. The people wanted
them to be in power and that they were going
to be marching around town. People say, look,
it's our liberators, our saviors. Now, of course,
that's totally divorced from reality. Like whatever
you however you feel about the politics of Ukraine
and Russia and America, because they're all tightly
intermingled. Right. That's clearly not reality.
And so what I worry about is like the easy one
is if China invades Taiwan. they're going to
come up with a similar story. They're going to
trick their people into thinking, oh, Taiwan
wants to be reunified. You're fighting for the
better cause. But then the really spooky thing
is what happens when our media. pulls the same
stunt. I would argue that what we did in the
Middle East was driven by really not that different,
right? I mean, a lot of the justification for
going over there and doing this nation building.
I mean, we were told all these stories. Oh, they
want, they don't want, they want to get out from
under the Taliban. They don't want to have these
tribal rule. They do want democracy. And in reality,
we were kind of sold a bill of goods. It just
wasn't true. So it's easy to make fun of the
Russian with his 50 condoms, but. We're not really
that much better. Well, we also had a very distorted
sense of what war is in the 20th century and
the 21st century because of Desert Storm. Yes.
So Desert Storm, we were like, we're the fucking
shit. We're just going to roll in and kick everybody's
ass. And it happened so quickly with so minimal
casualties. And my grandpa, he wasn't military,
but he was a United Airlines pilot for 45 years.
And he was part of the civilian support element
for Desert Storm. So he actually has a letter
from the secretary of the Air Force that they
sent to all of the commercial pilots. who were
bringing troops and equipment back and forth
for a few days. I mean, they were flying like
crazy 24 -hour shifts, getting people in and
out. But I mean, like, I remember my grandpa.
He came out of that saying, man, nobody can stop
us. I mean, we are just, we are unstoppable.
If we want to go in and do something, we just
go get it done. And I mean, he was convinced.
But you're right. I think everybody was convinced
by it. That's what everybody thought in the 1990s.
They thought that the United States government
and the military was so much more powerful. And
it probably was. It was. For a while. Relatively
speaking. Relatively speaking. For a while. Technology
seems to be shifting all that stuff in a very
weird place. Yep. And this is where I get concerned
with China because they have complete compliance.
Like their government and their private corporations,
they're the same. They work together. And the
stuff that they're producing in terms of like,
if you pay attention to their electric cars.
Oh, yeah. They have a 300 mile an hour car now.
And their cars are. extremely cheap, and they
are extremely good. Extremely good. Really nice
cars. Crazy technology in terms of the ability
to absorb bumps. Have you seen how smooth they
are? They put champagne glasses on them. So one
of the... That one I will push back a little
bit. I've seen the demo you're talking about.
There are German and US cars that do that type
of thing, but they're not the cars that people
want here. So this is a whole other interesting
cultural... This is one of my... This is such
an interesting rabbit hole. So in China, people
with money don't drive cars. They're driven.
That is the culture. You don't drive. You are
driven. If you have really any money. Of course,
there's a few rich guys buying sports cars. But
in general, the wealthy in China don't buy cars
to drive themselves. That's interesting. And
so, for example, Tesla has a China exclusive
model of the Model S, which has teeny tiny little
front driver and passenger seats. And then it
has. Two seats in the rear with extremely long
legroom, not like three in a row, but like just
two giant chairs. And they kind of cram the they
cram the driver way forward to create this gigantic.
I think it doesn't even have a trunk. That's
right. They pulled the trunk out of it even or
maybe maybe just way smaller. And in China, that's
what people want. So like their best selling.
Mercedes -Benz, even American brands like Buick.
We have these cars that are made to be driven
in. So as a result, their most luxurious, most
expensive cars have suspension that is designed
to absorb all of the bumps, be extremely smooth
because, you know, riding in the back. And it
creates terrible, mushy road feel for the driver.
Like in America. Rich people, they want to drive.
And you want to feel the road. You want that
sports car. And even our SUVs, people generally
want that sports car -like feel. And so I guess
I will push back only on the champagne glass
thing because I've seen people saying this a
lot. Believe me, there are a handful. You can
buy an American Buick or even a Mercedes that
is that good. But they're just not very popular
here. In China, cars like that are much more
popular. Cars that feel like shit to drive for
the driver and are super mushy and bouncy. But
for the guy in the back, his champagne glass
doesn't fall over. That's interesting. So when
it gets to a certain price point, then it becomes
all about the passenger. Exactly. And it's not
even when it gets to a certain price point. Long
before you're buying a $100 ,000 car, you're
being driven around. Even if you're halfway there,
you're being driven around. Again, rich people
there, they don't drive. They are driven. It
is a cultural thing. It's a sign that you've
made it as well. And also remember that their
wages are so much lower that it's much more accessible.
It's kind of like how you have these countries
where like almost anybody who's middle class
in like Southeast Asia has a live -in nanny and
a live -in housekeeper. It's a little bit like
that where like if you get to a certain point.
and that happens pretty fast, you have a driver.
If you don't have a driver, people are like,
what the hell is going on? You're an eccentric
if you are a rich guy who drives himself around.
That's weird. It is weird. But they do have sports
cars over there, like the electric sports car
that goes 300 miles an hour. They do. And I would
say largely those are export -focused. The broader
markets want this. Do they sell them in America
at all? They don't, but that's largely due to
American policy being very protectionist against
Chinese cars. The reason that Chinese... manufactured
cars have not taken over the U .S. is not because
Americans don't want them. And by the way, that
seems kind of crazy because Japanese cars are
ubiquitous. Japanese cars are ubiquitous from
Japanese brands. But many or most of them are
actually exactly like the most American car you
can buy. I think right now it's either a Nissan
or a Toyota outside of Tesla. Like Teslas are
made in the U .S. But I think the most. I can't
remember. It's either a Nissan or a Toyota is
the most American pickup you can buy right now.
Wow. And it's because we have a lot of our parts,
even for our U .S.-made cars, made in Mexico,
made in Canada, or made in Japan. That's such
a dirty trick for someone who wants to drive
a Chevy because they feel like it's an American
brand. I'm buying American. I agree. I'm helping
American jobs. But here's the – well, this is
the point I was trying to get to is here's the
problem. Let's say you said we're going to make
an all -American version of the Chevy, and it's
10 % more. People wouldn't buy it. Like that's
when I say that, like people, I think, unfortunately,
would buy these Chinese cars if they were for
sale in the United States. People can say they
want to support the U .S., but at the end of
the day, they want to provide the best quality
of life for their family. They have a fiduciary
duty to do so. And so if they need to buy, like
if they have a choice between an American truck
or. A Chinese truck, a Chinese new TV and a Chinese
new computer and a Chinese new HVAC system to
replace one and their phone. How can I blame
them for choosing the Chinese one? The only way
we can solve this is for the United States to
become competitive with China again, which means
we need to get our energy costs down. We need
to get our resource extraction costs down. Like,
you know why these cars in China are cheap? It's
not magic. It's because the cost of resource
extraction is lower. The cost of making steel
and aluminum is lower. The cost of building a
factory is lower. And that's why you're able
to buy an awesome car for $10 ,000 in China.
cheapest thing you can buy is a shitbox for $17
,000 or $18 ,000. And I mean, it's bad. Have
you ever driven a $17 ,000 car? What do they
have that's $17 ,000? What can you buy? I think
you can buy a Nissan. Like a Chevy Volt or something?
I think you can buy a Chevy Spark, which is actually
not an electric car. The Bolt was an electric
platform. I think you can buy a Chevy Spark.
I think you can buy a Nissan Versa. Those are
the two cheapest cars in America right now, I
think. Both of them, I believe you can get them.
out the door for less than $20 ,000. And look,
I'm sorry, Chevy. I'm sorry, Nissan. I like those
brands, but these cars are not the stewards of
the brand. They're the college student ship boxes.
Just transportation. And you can buy a car like
that in China for $3 ,000 or $4 ,000. $3 ,000
or $4 ,000 will get you a car that here is almost
$20 ,000. And again, it's not magic. They're
not genius. And people also, they kind of have
this... there's this current attempt to kind
of mythologize like, oh, well, they're geniuses.
Like, they're just so good at it. If we would
just do the basics right, we can be competitive.
But we aren't doing the basics right. We've made
energy so competitive and materials fabrication
so expensive. I mean, how could we compete? I
was watching an interview where I believe it
was someone from Ford. One of the engineers from
Ford made a visit to China. It was the CEO of
Ford even. Even better. And he went with his
whole engineering team. Yeah. And was humbled.
That's right. Just like, oh, no. Well, I think
he said when he came back, he said, I wanted
to take the SUV I was driving back home with
me. I mean, that's like he said, it's that good.
I didn't want to stop driving it. That seems
kind of fucked. I mean, that's very anti -competitive
of us. You mean that we're locking the Chinese
out? It's kind of a bitch ass move. Look, so
like I lean libertarian and in general, I'm a
fan of free markets. But there is something that
makes us tricky, though. You tank the economy.
Well, there's tanking the economy and there's
also it isn't actually free. So we do need to
do a better job on the basics. But China is also
subsidizing these. Right. So they're actually
putting money from other industries. to prop
up these other industries. And so even if you
let them freely compete, like if you let them
go toe to toe, China would be thrilled if they
could subsidize their way into destroying the
American automotive apparatus, partly for economic
reasons. But there's another reason that I don't
know if you've thought of. How did the United
States win World War II? I know that's a big
picture question. A lot of it was manufacturing.
Exactly. And that manufacturing. Some of it was
new factories, but most of it was taking over
old factories. So we took all of our farm implement
factories, like John Deere and Caterpillar. They
were building tanks and guns. We took all our
automotive factories. We had them building aircraft.
We had them building weapons. We had them building
missiles. In fact, we even designed those weapons
so they could be manufactured by those plants.
But like to literally the specifics of how thick
of a gauge of metal you could bend to a certain
radius. We were limited by the automotive manufacturing
machines as to what we could do in aircraft.
And so we won because we had all of this automotive
and other industrial capacity. China would love
to wipe out the American automotive industry,
partly for economic reasons, because it also
means we will never be able to fight a war against
them. Imagine an America with... We've lost a
lot of manufacturing. You're probably familiar
with that. We don't make nearly as much as we
used to. But we still make a few things. We still
have some things that we do. And cars is one
of them. And we even export those cars. We're
doing okay on cars. If China could wipe out our
industrial capacity entirely, they never need
to worry about fighting a war with the U .S.
again because they know that we wouldn't be able
to get back in the game fast enough to matter.
And so that's China's aim there. And it gets
back to what you talked about earlier. It's the
civil -military fusion. So this is a – there's
the economic war and the kinetic war that they
could win with one move, which is out -competing
our automotive industry. That's interesting.
I never did think of that. Well, and like Andros
has to think about this all the time because
… Unlike a lot of these other defense companies
that are designing weapons that can only be made
by really fancy high -end bespoke factories,
we're designing weapons that can be made in existing
American industrial capacity. So like we make
this line of cruise missiles, the Barracuda.
We make three different Barracuda missiles. It
has 90 % fewer parts than legacy cruise missiles.
It can be made with 10 tools that all exist in
every automotive plant. So you could make this
missile at mass scale in any GM. facility in
any Ford facility. And that's really important
for us, because if you if you can only make your
missiles in this specialized factory that took
you 10 years to set up, well, what do you what
in the world do you do when you need 100 times
more of those missiles made every day? You're
just kind of screwed. And so the United States
has been doing better at this. I think like the
Air Force is doing better. The Navy is doing
better. The army has a whole transformation initiative
where they want all of their new weapon systems
to be highly manufacturable at scale using real
industrial capacity. And working with private
companies from the beginning to make sure that
any – they want to make sure that any new system
that they are building can be built by the American
industrial economy. Not only these specialized
aerospace technicians of which there are just
not that many. That's very smart. And China does
this, by the way. Have you seen the automated
cruise missile factories that China has? I haven't.
Oh, man. You've got to look this up at some point.
There's some videos that they put out there,
and they have this totally robotic line just
churning out cruise missiles. I've seen their
shipping ports. It's bananas. So China has 300
times more naval shipbuilding capacity than the
United States. The time that it takes us to build...
one aircraft carrier, they could build 300. Now,
they're not building a bunch of aircraft carriers.
They're mostly focusing on other things that
are more relevant to what they want to do, which
is invade Taiwan. So amphibious landing craft
primarily. But another thing China does is they
actually require many of their commercial vessels
that have nothing to do with the military to
build to military standards for two reasons.
One, because it means that all the shipyards
are being built to handle military standards.
Two, they plan on basically press all of these
civilian vessels into service. So they're saying,
hey, you have this roll -on, roll -off car ferry
that's used for moving cars around, for delivering
cars to the United States. You have to build
it to deck plate pressures that allow us to roll
a bunch of tanks onto it so that we can then
use it to deliver tanks to Taiwan from the Chinese
mainland. And they're just requiring people to
do that. And so even their civilian shipping
fleet is actually this kind of military ghost
fleet just sitting in the open, pretending to
be civilian. But the moment the shit hits the
fan, it becomes part of the war machine. And
so they've done a great job integrating in a
way the United States has not. Do you think that
an invasion of Taiwan is imminent? It's not imminent,
but it's coming. So Andrew has an internal policy
called China 27. The idea is that anything we're
working on, anything that we're investing in
needs to be built with the assumption. that sometime
in 2027, China is going to move on Taiwan. And
I might be wrong on this, right? It might be
never. It might be a longer term thing. But in
general, imagine how stupid I'll feel if I spend.
Hundreds of millions of dollars building some
new weapon system that I know is not going to
come into service until the 2030s, which is what
most experts say is outside of the window of
when this invasion would happen. Wouldn't I feel
pretty stupid if there's a gigantic fight and
I've spent all my money on something that wasn't
ready in time? I think that it is very likely
that China moves on Taiwan for a variety of political
reasons. So so like Xi Jinping has this window
politically where he can show that he's reunified
China. He's got a lot of demographic problems
that are going to go out of control as he waits
and people age. He's got a lot of economic problems
where they're propping up their. their economy
with a lot of kind of fake GDP, fake growth,
fake demand, fake construction. And he's doing
that, I think, to help build up his war machine.
But it's not sustainable in the long run. So
I think there's a window where they can do this.
If you had to ask me, it's more likely that they
don't do a full scale invasion to start. It's
much more likely that they do something like
a blockade. So they'll come up with some pretense.
They'll say, oh, Taiwan is exporting. goods that
say made in Taiwan. And our position is that
Taiwan is part of China and therefore they need
to pay Chinese taxes on those made in China goods.
So we're going to blockade their port and not
let them export anything until they resolve this.
And I worry, I worry about them kind of boiling
the frog. You know, they blockade one port and
then two ports and then the airports and then
the people of Taiwan are running out of money,
running out of food. But you've boiled the frog
enough where there's never a point where. Taiwan
really wants to fire the first shot and actually
start a war. And certainly, I think you and I
would agree here, the U .S. probably should not
start World War III over a blockade of a port,
right? Boiling the frog is a great analogy. Boiling
the frog, I think, is what China will do. And
so what we need to do, and this is just my opinion,
which is definitely biased. So to be clear, just
so people know, nobody's going to dig in and
say, but Palmer. Palmer's obviously only saying
this because he's got money in the game. I will
first say I have plenty of money. I sold my first
company for billions of dollars. I don't need
to work. I could retire. I'm not doing any of
this for the money. Defense, you make a lot less
money for each hour of work you put in than you
can make in tech or media or elsewhere. But I
do a lot of work with Taiwan. I just went to
Taiwan a few weeks ago to personally deliver
a bunch of missiles and weapon systems that are
specifically to counter a Chinese invasion. My
opinion is that the United States, we don't want
to get into a shooting war ourselves, right?
Like we want to avoid that. The United States
needs to stop being the world police, stop sending
our people overseas to die for other countries.
And instead, we need to become the world's gun
store. We need to say, hey. Look, and what do
you need to do to be a good gun store, right?
You got to keep stuff in stock. You got to keep
things on the shelves. You need to be reasonably
priced. You need to not arbitrarily cut off allies.
And could you imagine if you went to a gun store
and they told you, Joe, we're going to sell you
this gun, but you can't use it over in that county.
You can only use it in this one. And we're going
to tell you exactly how you can use it. We're
going to be micromanaging you. And we're going
to be taking responsibility for how you use your
gun. I mean, that would never work. You would
never want to work with them. You'd say, I'm
going to go to a different store. I'm going to
go buy something. And that's what some nations
are doing. Like they're going to Russia. They're
going to China. They're going to India and buying
systems because we're going in and telling them
our weapons are expensive. They're never in stock.
We never deliver them to you. And also we're
going to tell you what to do with them if we
ever do give you to them. Did you know that Taiwan
is $20 billion behind on arms deliveries from
the United States? They have $20 billion in orders
that have not been delivered. These are not things
they would maybe like to have. They need these
yesterday. China could move in tomorrow. And
the thing is, even a blockade, the best way to
deter that is for Taiwan to have the things that
make them a very prickly porcupine. Right. You
want to have things like sea mining capabilities
that make a blockade basically impossible to
affect without destroying the entire fleet. You
want things like missiles and counter missile
systems that make it impossible to lock in the
country. But we're 20 billion dollars behind.
And I mean, you've seen what's happened with
with Ukraine, where I mean, like there's an argument
as to how we should arm them. Separate from that
argument, you've probably seen, I mean, we can't
even give them what they're asking for, even
if we want to give it to them, because we don't
have enough to even cover ourselves, right? Like
we can't just give them all of our Patriot missiles.
We can't give them even purely defensive tools
to protect their capital because we don't make
enough of them. We don't have enough of them.
They're too expensive. That's crazy to me. That
is crazy. It is crazy. So I think the best way
for the United States to contribute to world
stability, again, stop being the world police,
start being the world gun store and get serious
about it. Instead of saying, well, it's OK that
we kind of are a crappy gun store because we're
going to come and save your ass when shit hits
the fan. We need to say, no, no, no, we're going
to give everything you need to fight for your
own freedom. Look, you're our friend. You're
our ally. We'll give you everything you need.
We'll give you support. We'll give you intelligence.
But we're not going to fight your wars for you
because I don't think the American people have.
We don't have it in us to go do another two decades
of adventures in the Middle East or adventures
in Europe or adventures in Asia. We don't have
it in us. Well, we're too informed now, too.
There's that, too. The internet fucked all that
game up. Oh, I mean, arguably Vietnam, right?
Yes. Vietnam, I think, was the war that changed
everything there because you had war on TV. You
could see what was really happening. We now know
with the benefit of hindsight that it was all
a false flag that got us into it in the first
place. That's right. I don't trust you anymore.
Well, you remember what George Bush said. He
said, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice,
can't get fooled again. I remember that. Yeah,
that was a good – that's one of my favorite George
Bush -isms. I hear the – the theory I've heard
is that he realized he was about to say shame
on me on camera and then the press would have
obviously said George Bush. admits he got fooled.
Quote, shame on me. I think he just forgot it.
Maybe there's that one. I think Bush was a pretty,
I think he was a sharper guy. I think he was
maybe not well -spoken, but I think he's actually
pretty sharp. I think he just stumbled on his
words. Well, what's stunning is, you ever see
his speeches when he was running for governor
of Texas? I have not actually gone back and looked
at those, no. Smooth as butter. Really? Smooth
as butter. Super articulate, you know, different
guy. It's weird. I think it gets to a certain
point with the pressure and the chaos and being
the president and all the madness of the cameras
in your face. The magnitude of it all wears on
people, which is why they get so old. Well, I
mean, even the pictures of Obama, you've seen
them. I mean, he looks like a college student
on his first inauguration. And then eight years
later, he looks like he's 50 years older. It's
nuts. It's just the pressure. The only one who's
ever handled it is Trump. Trump looks younger.
It really is astounding how that's worked out.
He's a freak. He's a genuine freak. Like there's
no one like that guy, which is the only reason
why he survived all the shit they tried to put
him through. It's the same reason why he can
go through being president and it doesn't freak
him out. Oh, yeah. I think he's – it's like the
Bruce Banner Hulk thing. That's my secret. I'm
always angry. Right, right, right. I think what
– that's how it was for Trump. Trump was already
living at the red line. Non -stop, you know,
getting like, what, like four hours of sleep?
Yeah. One of the funny things about the sleep
thing is that I have it personally on good authority
from a lot of people that it is true. And nobody
really disputes it, except from time to time.
People say the same thing about like Kim Jong
-un. They're like, oh, the glorious leader doesn't
even need to sleep. But with Trump's case, it
seems to somehow actually be the case. He got
that old man, no sleep power without getting.
all of the downsides. Well, some people just
don't need, like Jocko, you know Jocko Willing?
Yeah. He sleeps four hours a night. Really? Yeah.
So same thing. And he works out like an animal.
That's so interesting. It's just genetic, I think.
I think there's, I think actually Huberman has
identified what is the actual genetic component
of it, but there's some... particular type of
people that don't need i'm not one of them man
i'm not i need seven i like six if i could tolerate
six eight is oh i'm so good today but if i can
if i get less than six i'm a mess yeah i i need
i need my sleep significantly dumber like if
you've ever listened to a podcast and i'm stumbling
guaranteed i'm working on four oh yeah yeah I'm
working on less than I wanted to because I got
to bed at around 2 and then I was up at 6 .30.
But I can do that. Today? Today. It was just,
there's a lot going on. You seem fine. I'm not
worried at all. The good news is it's the first
day. The first day you miss sleep, you're okay.
You're pulling on your reserves. And then the
second and the third day, then you start to get
destroyed, at least for me. Me too. But then
when I get behind, my wife gives me a hard time
because I'll do what I call a mega sleep. And
I will sleep. If I get way behind, I'll sleep
for 10, 11 hours straight. Perfect. And then
that usually recharges me. It's a renewable resource.
That's the beautiful thing about sleep. I wonder
what would happen if Trump slept for 11 hours.
Would it be like the most incredible version
of Trump we've ever seen? or would it throw him
off? I mean, he said in his ways, you're not
going to change anything about that guy now,
especially at 80 years old. That's probably true.
I don't know if you know this, but I was actually
one of the true Trump OGs. I wrote a letter to
Donald Trump when I was 15 telling him that he
should run for president. This was when he was
considering running against Obama. Really? How
old are you now? I'm 33, just turned 33. Wow.
So this was a long time ago. And actually, I
not only – luckily I sent a letter and I posted
about it on Facebook, which I'm really happy
about. No, this wasn't – no, it wasn't 2015.
No, this was when I was 15. I'm sorry. I meant
to say when I was 15. So, I mean, this is way
back. This is like back in like 2009, 2010. So
way before anyone else. And the best part is
I posted about it on Facebook and I said, I think
Donald Trump would be a better – choice for president
than any of these other guys. I want to see a
businessman who's signed both sides of a check
before. And you look at the people who are running
kind of the modern parties, arguably the uniparty,
and he's clearly not part of that. And it's so
wild when people later, they're like, oh, Palmer.
Palmer was an early Trump supporter. He supported
him in 2016 probably because he loved Trump's
extremist rhetoric. I'm like, oh, no, you don't
even know. I loved his extremist rhetoric going
back to 2009. But it wasn't even that extremist
then. It wasn't then. That was the key. You've
probably seen these interviews from the 80s where
he says, we're getting riffed off on trade. It's
ridiculous. When he was talking to Oprah back
when everybody loved him. That's right. Exactly.
He's saying the exact same words. And today they
say, oh, it's it. You remember when he was running
and he was saying we were going to have over
3 % GDP growth. And Obama said, there's no magic
wand. There's no magic wand. You can wave. That
gets you to 3%. And then Trump said in one of
his speeches, he said, they told me not to say
this. And they told me I can't. He said, it's
going to be 3%. And they told me not to say this,
but it's actually going to be a more, a lot more.
And, of course, it ended up being far in excess
of three. I think it was like four and a half
percent GDP increase that year. What year was
this? I think this was his first year in office,
so 2017. Yeah, that was 2017, right? Yeah, when
he was inaugurated. And it's one of those things
where the easiest argument for Trump in those
days was just, look, you don't have to agree
with the guy on everything. But the real question
is, do you believe that either party outside
of Trump is going to like, are they going to
do well? Like you have you have the Democrats
saying there's no magic wand to get growth and
you have everyone else attacking Trump and saying,
oh, we're just going to do everything the same
way the Republicans have always done it. But
the strongest argument for Trump is that anybody
would have been better than what the establishment
was pushing. I think that's the best argument.
Yeah. For me, one of the big ones was. I mean,
I got in a lot of shit for this. I gave $9 ,000
to a pro -Trump group that ran a single anti
-Clinton billboard. It was a picture of her face
that said, too big to jail. And this was right
after it had come out that she had been mishandling
classified information, running an email server
out of her own home. You probably remember the
famous phrase where they asked her. Were you
aware that your staff was directed to wipe that
server? And she said, like with a cloth. Do you
remember like with a cloth? I mean, it was just
it was it was so it was so absurd. But for me,
one of the red lines was when Hillary and it's
not really Hillary. It's it's kind of the political
machine of which she is just the face said that
she would enforce a strict no fly zone in Syria.
And it's easy to say, oh, yeah, I would enforce
a no -fly zone. And that sounds, oh, yeah, yeah,
keep these bombers out of the air, keep these
fighters out of the air. But what does that really
mean? That means that you're saying you're going
to shoot down Russian aircraft if they cross
into airspace that doesn't even belong in the
United States. I mean, that's practically an
announcement that you're starting a world war
to say I am going to shoot. That is what enforcement
of no fly zone is. And it was crazy to me. Everyone
says, oh, you know, it's Hillary. You know, Trump
is an isolationist and Hillary is the only one
who has a who understands what we need to do
in Syria. Are you kidding me? Like, I'm not without
even taking a position on what we are doing in
Syria or we're doing in Syria. I know better
than to. commit that we are going to shoot down
Russian aircraft because they decide to fly in
Syrian airspace. We should not care about almost
anything that much. And by the way, if we didn't
do it, that's almost as bad because now we've
drawn a red line in the sand and we've let them
cross it and we've shown that we're not actually
serious. You shouldn't say that. You shouldn't
act on it. And you shouldn't not act on it. It's
a lose, lose, lose every step of the way. And
it's just... Politics is normal. That's right.
And so, I mean, I would explain this to friends
of mine and say, guys, I mean, they say, oh,
my God, Trump's a warmonger. But Trump, you know,
because I care about this national security stuff
pretty deeply then. This was right when I was
starting Andral eight years ago. And so I was
like dedicating my career to these national security
problems. Guys, how can Trump be the warmonger
when he's the guy saying we need to stop fighting
these wars, get out of these other countries,
get our boots back in the U .S. and not get in
a fight with. Russia, China or any other country
that we don't have to get into. And how can you
say Trump's a warmonger and then support someone
who says we're going to enforce a no fly zone
in Syria? And I think a lot of people, it was
just really emotional. It was it was you can't
reason people out of an opinion they didn't reason
themselves into. Well, one of the things. rocks
people's world is you show them past videos of
Hillary from 2008. You remember that video where
she was more MAGA than MAGA? She's talking about
the border, enforcing the border. I think one
of the phrases was, we have to send them back.
Yes. Can you imagine that day? We have to send
them back. I mean, imagine it was her. I mean,
this was her position. And she sounds like a
hard -line Republican now. Well, I mean, another
one to bring up is... is also like gay marriage.
I mean, I'll tell you my personal view is that
the state shouldn't be involved in marriage at
all. It's actually a very recent invention. I
don't know if you've ever dug into this. No.
So state marriage licensure is a very recent
development. There are people alive today who
got married when you were not required of a marriage
license. It was primarily a kind of a race driven
thing. States didn't want black. to marry white
women. And they got terrified of that in the
civil rights era. And so they all passed these
rules about marriage licensure, many of them
prohibiting interracial marriage. So basically
marriage licenses were a way to enforce. against
interracial marriage. Because if marriage was
a purely religious thing where you could just
go to a pastor, get married, sign it in a Bible,
the state had no power over it. And so they wanted
to enforce their will on people. So marriage
licensure is very recent. My personal opinion
is the state has no legitimate authority, constitutional
or otherwise, to regulate marriage at all. Gay
marriage is not even a question. This is a religious...
cultural, social ceremony witnessed before your
friends and your family. It is not something
the state should be... They shouldn't have the
right to give you a marriage license, nor to
deny you one. When did I give the state the ability
to say it's illegal for me to get married without
their permission? That's crazy to me. Anyway...
So Hillary, you might remember, I mean, even
in 2008, she was against gay marriage and she
was out there. She says, I believe that marriage
is between a man and a woman. So here's someone
who I was on the state shouldn't be involved
in it at all side. Hillary's on the no, we should
use state power to enforce what marriage is between
a man and a woman. And then you have Donald Trump,
who he's asked about. He said, do you remember
his quote on this? So, I mean, he had been to
gay weddings. He had gay friends and he was asked
about it. And he said, well, look. Marriage,
okay, it's like a restaurant. You've got steak,
you've got burgers, and different people like
different things, and that's okay. I mean, it
was actually the most progressive view you could
ever have. Obama, by the way, same thing. Obama
was against gay marriage. Hillary was against
gay marriage. And then you fast forward just
three short years, and you have people like Brendan
Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, getting... Fired by
his board of directors because he supported Prop
8, which said that marriage is between a man
and a woman in California, which, by the way,
even then passed in California. So the majority
of Californians agreed with him. But I mean,
you're right. Like Hillary was Hillary was the
thing, the views she had when she was running
for president. You're right. Today, she would
be a hard line. Hard line. Certainly. She'd be
certainly on the cultural side alone. She'd be
on the right of Marjorie Taylor Greene. No, that's
a great point. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right.
She's very pro. LGBT. She certainly is not for
intervention in the Middle East. Yodi, you're
right. I never thought about it that way. Marjorie
Taylor Greene would be far, far left of a Hillary
Clinton running again today. I want to tell a
story that I've never told publicly. Enough time
has passed. We're bringing it up since we're
talking about Hillary. When I was in Silicon
Valley – this is after Facebook bought Oculus.
And so I'm up there and I was actually pro -immigration
more – even more then than I am now. So I was
thinking about supporting this group called Forward
.US, which was trying to lead to immigration
reform in the United States. And I've since evolved
on this issue. I think that immigration can help
depress US wages in ways I didn't understand
then. I hadn't observed a lot of the H -1B. visa
abuse that I have now observed having spent years
in the Valley. So cut me a little slack if anyone
thinks I shouldn't have worked with Forward .us.
But I ended up with this invitation to go to
an event, a Hillary Clinton event in Silicon
Valley. It was very, very hush -hush. No media.
Nobody was saying anything. And this was before
she had officially announced she was running.
So you know when a politician is going to run
and everybody knows, but technically they haven't
announced it. So Hillary was going to come out
and she was there with her John Podesta was her
CTO at the time, or was it chief of staff? Something
like that. One of those. Yeah. So it was going
to be her and Podesta. At the last second, Hillary
ends up bailing. But I ended up going anyway,
and I had a couple of prepared questions for
Hillary. And so it was me and about 15 other
billionaires in Silicon Valley who went to this
kind of real, really, really intimate gathering.
And they wanted to sell us on why we should support
Hillary in this upcoming run when she ran. And
first of all, I thought it was kind of shitty
that she just didn't show up at the last second
and didn't say basically until we were already
on the way. Like, whatever. She had some legitimate
health issues, right? And still does. She might
have in general, but I don't think that was the
problem at this point. And so there were two
issues that I brought up to Podesta. I said,
hey, I wanted to ask these of Hillary. By the
way, I don't. Note that in this story, I hadn't
decided who I was going to support. So a lot
of people think I'm like this hard political
guy. I was a VR guy. I was a computer kid. Politics
was something I cared about, but I was reasonable.
I had not yet been, what do they call it? Radicalized.
I had not yet been radicalized. It was after
they fired me for giving $9 ,000 to Trump that
I got radicalized. Pre -radicalized Palmer. OK.
So I go to this meeting and I had two questions
for Hillary. I said, one, in the past, Hillary,
you've supported a 55 mile per hour federal speed
limit. You were one of the original proponents.
You were one of the people who supported it in
the Senate. You wrote an open letter with a lot
of other wives of politicians saying that the
blood would run red with the streets would run
red with the blood of children if we got rid
of this of this of the speed limit. And then
in 2008, when you last ran for president, you
said on I think it was The View, actually, which
is it's so funny because The View has turned
into like almost a parody of itself. But you
said on The View that when you were asked about
the speed limit. You said that whenever and however
we can make it happen, we should have a 55 mile
per hour speed limit. Now, given that you've
never driven a car in the last 20 years, have
you reconsidered this rule or would you be supporting
this campaign? And Podesta said, oh, we don't
really have a position on that issue. I said,
but like, could you make up one right now? Like,
like most Americans don't want a 55 mile per
hour speed limit. I think that was really dumb
of Hillary to say she supported one last time.
I think it might be why she lost. Can you? would
you agree that probably it's not a winning issue?
And he said, oh, we can't, we can't take a position
on that at this time, which was crazy to me.
Shouldn't that be just so easy to be like, yeah,
like this is clearly like a thing. It's a, it's
a fight she lost, you know, half a century ago
and she still worked up about it. Just give up.
People don't want to drive 55. Um, you've, you
remember when Tommy Hager wrote a song about
it? Well, you know, you know, Tom Cruise had
a can't drive 55 decal on them, his motorcycle
and top gun. And I mean like, it's like, I mean,
it's, it, the cultural battle has been, My second
question was, hey, we're a bunch of techno bros
up here in the Valley. We all believe in battery
electric hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles
in general. But Hillary's been a huge supporter.
Oh, no, it was the other way. I'm sorry. This
has been so long. I haven't thought about this.
No, I said Hillary actually was against corn
subsidies at one point. She called them at one
point, you know, like the ethanol blending mandates.
They were making corn at a loss, paid for with
taxpayer dollars, and then mandating that it
go into gasoline, which hurts car performance.
It's got lots of fuel storage problems, and it's
just a waste of money. And there's less energy
in it, too. So you get actually worse mileage.
Anyway. I said, hey, in the past, Hillary has
come out and she wrote this open letter that
called ethanol blending mandates the, quote,
most astonishingly anti -consumer mandate in
the history of the American government. Is she?
Does she still believe that? Does she want money
to go away from biofuels and more towards actual
cutting edge technology? Or is she going to support
corn subsidies to win votes in Iowa? And Fidesz
says, oh, well, we don't have a position on that
at this time. I said, I just got to press you
there. You don't have a position or you don't
want to tell us the answer because. None of us
here think that the future is biofuels. It's
a failed experiment. It's a failed mandate. Hillary
used to agree. Is she going to flip on us? He
said, I'm honestly, genuinely telling you, we
do not have a position on this at this time.
Not that bad, right? That's not bad. And so three
days later. Hillary announces officially she's
running. Her first ads start running. And what
do you think the first series of ads are? It's
Hillary in a cornfield talking about how she's
going to boost corn subsidies and she's going
to lead a clean energy revolution and she's going
to give them so much corn money. And like setting
aside the fact that I think biofuel subsidies
are dumb, she lost so much trust of people in
that room because her answer wasn't, here's why
I support them and deal with it. And it wasn't,
I don't support it technologically, but I support
it politically, which I think people could have
respected. It was, oh, we don't have a position.
But she did. They had already paid for the ads.
They'd already made the ads. They were probably
sitting on a tape in the TV studio ready to run
as we're meeting with her chief of staff. And
honestly, I know I said that like the Syria thing
was a red line. That was actually the moment
where I decided that I couldn't vote for Hillary.
It wasn't about any particular issue. I was like.
It's just how can you vote for someone who's
willing to just lie that way to manipulate –
and she was trying to manipulate me and a bunch
of other rich guys. And there were a bunch of
other guys in that room who said the same thing.
We all were in a group chat. We're like, we're
not going to – by the way, my questions weren't
the only ones like this. There were like another
– Dozen questions. Did Podesta answer any of
them with like meaningful? He did. There were
some that they answered meaningful. Like I'd
say actually on the immigration side, there were
some real ones. There were questions about policy
for dreamers in particular. And like he had,
he had his talking points. He didn't expect anyone
to come out of, you know, to come off the top
rope with 55 mile per hour speed limits. But
there were a few other things. I'm trying to
remember. What were the other ones that I think
he misled people on? There was something in there
around, there was something around there around
content. like for social media platforms. In
Silicon Valley, people care about this stuff.
It was like, hey, do you agree that the government
shouldn't be moderating content, that they shouldn't
be censoring it? Because this was kind of the
very early days of the government interfering
with this stuff. When did the government first
start interfering with social media content?
Do you know what the initial issues were? So
I don't know the initial issues, but let's look
at this from first principles. Ignoring the social
media part. When did the government start intervening
in media? From the beginning. From the beginning.
You know, one of the reasons... Everyone loves
Alexander Hamilton. He's a really popular founding
father. I have to admit, he's actually my least
favorite founding father, partly because he supported
central banking. I'm just not really a gigantic
fan of it and how it's turned out. But interesting...
By the way, he was also very anti -immigrant,
which is so funny because... And look up the
interview with the directors of Hamilton the
musical when they were asked, why did you make
Hamilton the musical super pro -immigrant when
in reality he was very, I mean, very anti -immigrant.
I mean, he literally said immigrants are a poison
to our nation. I mean, he was really against
it, which is funny because he was himself an
immigrant. And I mean, he was like, you know,
blood and soil all the way. I mean, he was. He
was really into it. And their answer was, we
wanted to represent Hamilton as we think he would
have existed in the climate of today, not with
the information he had at the time. Anyway, it
made a fake person. But one of the other things
about Hamilton is that he did not support the
First Amendment. He actually thought that the
government should be able to criminalize speech
that lied about the government. in a critical
way now to be clear he didn't think you should
be able to regulate everything but his point
was if someone's lying about the government or
what it's doing or its authority we have to be
able to stop that you actually had a counterpoint
in people like benjamin franklin who of course
had done like letters pretending to be the king
of prussia and lots of satirical stuff pretending
to be the king of england he said no you can't
you because if you say that we can't make up
lies about the government then the government
just needs to make anything that's critical about
them Because if it's a so -called lie, now they
can stop it. And so he said, we can't give the
government the power to do this. So Alexander
Hamilton was not a fan. And I think that that
thread has been there through the history of
our government. There's always been people from
literally before the founding who believed that
the state should have a role in influencing the
media. I mean, you're familiar with all of the
stuff that came out post -JFK about the media
influence operations. What was it, like 55 or
60 different media assets were activated for
the JFK messaging campaign in national media?
And so I guess getting back to your question
of when did they get into social media? I think
it was probably continuous the whole time. The
moment that it was of any importance, the moment
that it was being paid attention to, I'm certain
that the people who were running these media
influence operations immediately jumped into
that new sphere. I can't prove it. That's just
my. I think before social media, though, like
I wonder if they were preparing for something
like that or if it started to happen and they
didn't recognize what an impact it was going
to happen. I think they under I think they understood
the impact of the Internet before social media.
So even before social media, you had people writing
blogs. You had people doing these bulletin board
systems. And it's well known that the CIA was
active on early bulletin board systems. pushing
the government perspective. Of course. And so
I think they've been continuously involved in
every internet platform, even before social media,
as we call it today now, was popular. I was watching
a particular political debate on YouTube. And
occasionally when I see something that's very
contentious, I'm like, let me go to the comments
and see what it is. And it was all bots. It was
wild. You know, the real obvious bunch of zeros
and numbers after a name, John, six zeros, 92.
No profile picture or some ridiculous AI generated
thing. And then like a very hard line stance
one way or the other, very inflammatory, causing
arguments. I was like, this is wild. This is
all bots. Well, you're familiar with dead internet
theory, right? Yes. Explain that to people. So
dead internet theory has been around for quite
a long time. Probably. long before the Internet
was actually dead. And it's this theory that
over time there will be increasing amounts of
literal robotic content and then also kind of
like astroturfed fake content, you know, like
one guy running 100 accounts. And the theory
is that eventually there will be almost no real
human back and forth on the Internet, that it's
actually kind of just propaganda. And counter
propaganda playing out on a stage for our benefit
by moneyed interests, whether it's corporations,
the government, foreign adversaries. And, you
know, there might be a few people in the mix,
but it's primarily going to be just robots arguing
with each other. And I think that more and more
it's becoming true. Well, it's getting close.
Like that FBI analyst that when Elon was in the
middle of buying Twitter, who looked at all the
different. bots and you know they were trying
to say it was five percent he said no i think
it's 80 yep 80 so when you're on twitter and
you see people arguing and making points and
even posting things yep well and there was you
might remember there was the time where uh A
bunch of the stats for Wikipedia editors came
out and it was some like enormous fraction of
edits coming out of one location in Arlington,
Virginia. Oh, wow. Arlington, Virginia, famously
the center of academic rigor and excellence.
There's supposed to be a lot of people living
there who they just really care about making
sure Wikipedia is accurate. How odd. How odd.
Could I take a quick break and get a little bit
of water? Yeah. Well, there's water right there
in front of you. There we go. Thank you. I missed
that. That's all you need? Yeah. We have filtered
water in that jug. I need to... Pause, ladies
and gentlemen. We'll be right back. I need to
take off my jacket, too. It's good when you're
walking around and there's air moving on it because
the copper conducts heat away really well. But
just sitting in here... Is this actually copper?
Yeah, here. Check it out. Wait, I want to do
this on camera. Are we still rolling? That's
a copper jacket? It's from this company called
Volebox. It's actually made out of copper? It's
actually made out of copper. Oh my god, it's
so heavy. Yeah, it weighs like four and a half
pounds. This is nuts. It's something like 3 ,000
miles of copper, of ultra -fine copper thread.
Does this protect you from EMF or maybe some
Russian signals? If you put your phones into
that pocket, then no signals go out whatsoever.
Oh, so it's like a Faraday cage. Yeah, it's a
little wearable Faraday cage. So it's actually
got some use beyond being cool. A company makes
these? Yeah, so the company Volabox is really
interesting. Volabox. Can I try this on? Yeah,
of course. They make a bunch of really cool clothes
out of very novel materials, some of them very
futuristic. They make a jacket out of the material
that the... Mars rover parachute was made. So
it's like a supersonic parachute material made
out of Kevlar. It is pretty weird. This would
make me feel very restricted. Well, you're also
a lot bigger than me. So I'm a little skinny.
But it seems to fit. But it just seems heavy
and restrictive. You do have to make sure you
size it where there's plenty of room to move
around inside of it because it does not stretch
at all. What's the benefit? So there's a few
benefits. The first is that it looks sweet. Jamie's
ordering one right now. Look at him. The other
is that copper is an antimicrobial material,
so you never get mildew on it. You never get
mold. It magically kills all of that stuff. Also,
I mentioned earlier, the pockets are basically
a Faraday cage. So if I want my phone to get
calls, I keep it in my pants pocket. If I want
to disappear, I put it in my jacket pocket. If
there was a jacket that Palmer Luckey was wearing,
I would hope it would be this. Like when you
showed up in this crazy jacket, I'm like, that's
what I would hope. They've got a new one. That's
a t -shirt that's made out of carbon nanotubes.
So you should check, you should check that out.
They're working on, they're working on some wild
next gen stuff. Whoa. Um, sorry. Give me just
a second. I just got to take it. I actually just
need to take a mental, a mental, a mental break.
Is that okay? Yeah. Take a break. I'll take a
leak. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it.
So there's a place called Commando Store? You
were talking about these pants that I have. Well,
yeah, we were just talking about your Tiger Stripe
Ranger panties. And Commando Store is doing these
reproductions of vintage gear, like Vietnam -era
U .S. gear, Russian gear, using modern materials,
but old camo prints, and they're super authentic.
But the problem is a lot of this actual gear,
it's all mildewed, it's destroyed, the thread
is all crusty and busting apart. And so if you
actually want to be authentic, like the guys
in the Vietnamese jungle, Did not look like they
were wearing old, crappy, busted apart gear.
Their gear was fresh. And so if you want to look
just like they did, you actually have to buy
newly manufactured gear. But I'll send you some
links. They have a lot of really cool tiger stripe
stuff that's very, very cool and authentic. Nice.
When you were a kid, did you ever imagine you'd
be selling weapons? Does that ever seem surreal
to you that you go from being this guy who's
really into VR to weapons manufacturing? It seems
a little bit surreal, but only a little bit.
Growing up, I always would be the guy who identified
with the guy in the story who was making the
tools. So when I would watch James Bond, I never
thought, I'm James Bond. It was like, oh, I want
to be Q. I want to be the guy making the tools.
Or Tony Stark. Exactly. And Tony did it all.
I have to admit, it's certainly a thought that
occurred to me. One of my favorite anime characters
was an anti -hero named Seto Kaiba who ran a
weapons company that was also a virtual reality
company. They built virtual reality gaming simulator
pods and also weapons. And so it's really weird.
You start to ponder. are you really making decisions
with free will or are you actually just like
enacting the programming of when you're a kid?
Like, like I, like I, it's, it's hard to really
know, but like when people like, Oh, but you
know, Palmer, how'd you get into this stuff?
It's like, I mean, I remember being like seven
years old and, and, and thinking about the stuff
or like you watch a, you watch like. I grew up
watching Power Rangers when I was a really little
kid, reruns of the first season of Power Rangers.
And the character I most identified was like
the techno wizard of the group Billy, who was
building like flying cars and upgrading their
robot suits. And I don't know, it's really weird
when you end up as an adult just doing exactly
what you were fascinated with when you're a kid.
Because what you're fascinated with when you're
a kid is really it's a function of what's put
in front of you. Right. Like, like what if I
would have had different things? What if you
lived in Montana? Yeah. What if I lived in Montana?
What if, you know, what if I, you know, what
if, what if, what if, like, is there a world
where, is there a world like I grew up in Nashville
and I would have inevitably been a musician and
like almost without even being able to choose
it. Even if I went in one direction, what I've
ended up coming back to it. Probably. Look, all
those things are interesting. And you're a guy
who's into interesting things. It's just finding
whatever the path is. That you think is interesting
and just going in that direction. Your direction
was kind of established by your interest when
you were younger. So it probably seems surreal
just in the fact that you've gone so far with
it to the point where you're actually making
weapons to defend other countries. Well, that's
the crazy thing is I think part of the reason
it's so wild, my progression, is it only happens
if it's successful continuously. Right. So like
a world where I don't. basically figure out how
to build good virtual reality technology is one
where Oculus doesn't exist. If Oculus doesn't
exist, I don't get bought by Facebook. I don't
go to Silicon Valley. I don't become kind of
one of the leading tech figures in that industry
up there. You have to hit every green light.
You have to hit every green light. And like,
you know who funded Anderle when I started it?
Like, yes, me. I put a lot of my money into it,
but it was all of these same investors who had
invested in Oculus. I mean, literally the same
people. It's like Brian Singerman is a good example.
He was a partner at Founders Fund, which was
Peter Thiel's investment fund. They decided to
put $1 million into Oculus before any other fund
was willing to give us money. So they were the
first institutional money into Oculus VR. And
then he ended up being our first investor also
in Anduril. So you're talking about the same
people, even. These relationships come back around.
And then that turns into running a weapons company.
And then that turns into... Building more efficient
weapons. And then like one of our recent wins,
we were competing, Andrew, with Boeing and Lockheed
Martin and Northrop Grumman to build the Air
Force's first AI powered fighter jet. So the
first fighter jet with no human pilot, not limited
by human ability, instead limited by the ability
of this robot brain making the whole thing go.
And we beat them. I mean, how crazy is that?
That's what's crazy to me. It's not sitting here
crazy like, oh, is it crazy I'm building weapons?
For me, it's crazy. It's not that hard to imagine
you end up building guns for the Marines. But
what's really nothing against the Marines or
the people who build guns for them. I love those
guys. The crazy part to me is that all these
things have gone right over and over to the point
where I can literally have billions of dollars
at my disposal from my investors. to build multi
-million square foot factories, to build, act
like the Air Force's first AI fighter jet, which
is the official designation they just gave it
is the FQ -44. F for fighter, Q for unmanned,
and then 44 is the number designation. Whoa.
Yeah. That's the crazy thing. When I lay awake
at night, that's what I'm thinking about. It's
not so much that I am building weapons, it's
that we're actually pulling off things that make
a difference. And by the way, AI fighter jets
- There it is. There it is. So that was - wind
tunnel test and you'll notice there's no Protrusion
for a cockpit the whole it's it's a stealth aircraft
low signature Uses the same weapon systems that
are real fighter jet uses. That's what it looks
like in the front Yep, so this was that was that
was a very early very very early propulsion system
test and One of the crazy things what's the is
that what they look like yep? Yeah. So one of
the crazy things about this is that the United
States. So the idea is you have a bunch of these
for every manned fighter because they're cheaper.
They are more expendable. You can take more risk
with them. So imagine this. I've got an F -35
flying with five of these things. The original
name of the program was Loyal Wingman. The idea
is that I have a loyal wingman, does whatever
I tell him. I can talk to it like I would any
human. you know, co -worker, and it's going to
go in and do what I tell it. But it's never going
to question my orders. It's never going to try
to save itself if it means ruining the mission.
And one of the craziest things about autonomous
aircraft is that the United States has spent
basically a century figuring out what works in
air combat. I mean, you've seen Top Gun, right?
You know, they have this book of tactics that
they need to learn to stay alive, how you measure,
how you manage your energy and your altitude
and your position so that you destroy the enemy
and you don't get destroyed yourself. There's
another book of tactics that will allow you to
destroy the enemy, but will probably get you
killed in the process. We don't teach those generally,
or if we do, it's in the context of don't do
this. All of those tactics are on the table when
it comes to AI. powered fighter jets. I can now
have it doing things that are so risky that a
human pilot would never even try the maneuver.
Because let's say it's a coin flip. It's a 50
-50 chance that you're going to die, but a 100
% chance that I'm going to be able to take out
the enemy target. Imagine going after something
where I know I'm probably going to get shot down
at the end of that maneuver, but I definitely
take out all the surface -to -air missile launchers
on the shore, which then allow everything else
to come in through the gap that you just cleared.
You'll make that trade every day. You'll trade
a cheap AI fighter jet to blow up a bunch of
really expensive manned or autonomous systems
in the air or on the ground every time if it
allows you to accomplish that mission. And so
autonomy, it really changes the game on this
stuff. It's not an incremental change in tactics.
It's a complete revolution. What do you think
that New Jersey shit was all about? Like the
unidentified aerial phenomenon? What was that
all about? What's so interesting about the New
Jersey stuff, and you're probably tracking this
as well or better than me, but it is so perfectly
aligned with things that we've seen in the past.
Like you're familiar with all the overflights
and hovering over nuclear facilities and military
bases in the past. Here's what I think happened.
I think that there was something really weird
that was going on. I think briefly there was
something that was really unexplained. And then
what happened, unfortunately, is everyone found
out about it online. Everybody got their drones,
put them in their cars, drove out there to go
out and try and fly it. And then I think that
the next three weeks were a bunch of idiots with
drones flying in circles, looking at each other.
I've seen all these videos, 99 % of them. It's
pretty obvious that the thing they're looking
at is. another DJI drone that is also looking
at them and saying, oh, dude, oh, shit, there
it is. It was kind of this crazy media circus.
I think there was something that was real. And
then very, very quickly it evolved into being
just kind of a flash mob social media circus.
I think that's probably accurate because a lot
of it was in Austin as well. It was like these
enthusiasts were getting their drones out everywhere.
That's right. And it was like, it's drone time.
Have you heard the, what do they call it? There's
a theory that someone's come up with. I forget
what it is. It's like proliferation masking or
something. Have you heard the theory that modern
drone technology was seeded by aliens so that
we would create a bunch of things that would
be up in the sky that look kind of like their
aircraft so that they would basically act as
cover for the real activity? Have you heard this
theory? I don't really believe it because I actually
have met with the people who kind of invented
modern quadcopters and flight controllers. But
the idea is very interesting, and it makes me
wonder if there might be some truth to it elsewhere
in the world. It sure is convenient. Imagine
that you're an alien. You're regularly operating
around military bases, nuclear infrastructure.
Wouldn't it be convenient if there was something
else that people could explain away? Wouldn't
it be great if there was something that also
darted around and hovered in place and was very
quiet and just little tiny flashing lights? Wouldn't
that be really convenient as a cover for what
you are doing? These same activities in, like,
the 50s and the 60s, there was nothing like that,
right? Like, back then, if you said, oh, yeah,
I saw 100 red lights orbiting around that nuclear
facility, all you could say was, holy shit, what
in the world could that be? And today, it's so
easy to say, oh, it's just some drones. Right.
And so, unfortunately, it's a lot harder to know
what's real. And I wish I could travel back in
time, even just, you know, 10 or 20 years to...
Do the Mulder and Scully thing I talked about
earlier. Be the billionaire James Bond X -Files
guy with a badge and a checkbook. I feel like
you could really find some interesting stuff.
When you say that something weird was happening
in New Jersey, what are you saying? Something
that was observable by some sensors and not by
other sensors. And that's really the common thread
between a lot of these things. Like it'll show
up on visual. Like a guy sees it with his eyes
and he sees it with a thermal sensor, but it
isn't showing up on radar. Or something where
they'll see it on radar, but they can't. pick
it up on other sensors. And of course there are
some things where it's multi -sensor, but in
general, I say something weird. It's not obviously
just drawn or weird. And then it's acting in
ways we don't expect. Like how does something
move so quickly and not have any skin heating?
Why isn't it white hot? If it's moving that fast
to the air, how can it change direction so quickly
without the airframe tearing apart? That's what
I mean by weird. And I look, I don't know what
this stuff is. When you say, but weird, like
what was observed? So the weird thing that was
observed was. was primarily that there was something
there in an area that it shouldn't have been
and that there shouldn't have been anything.
There should not have been anything that was
able to endure for that long in that area with
those characteristics, like little tiny drones
that cannot show up on radar and that can kind
of hide in place like that. They don't have hours
and hours and hours of endurance, right? They
fly for 25, 30 minutes tops. And then also they
typically would need to be launched by something,
you know, right close to there. And the particular
area it was in. It would have been really hard
to launch from one of the nearby areas, get over
the water, get to there, and then stay there
as long as it did. It's not the weirdest thing
that people have seen, though. Like the Hellfire
thing recently with the missile. That was some
of the weirdest stuff that I've seen. That's
so weird because it got hit and it just shook
it off and kept moving. And it looks almost like
there were like pieces. It's like something reconstituted.
Right. Like it took pieces of it. So one of...
I don't know if you've done – everyone wants
to believe that it's aliens. And, like, that's
what I want to believe. Of course. I don't think
that it is a foreign adversary. Like, I don't
buy into the idea that the Chinese or the Russians
have secretly figured this out. But then the
question is, OK, well, what does that leave?
And I feel like my gut is that it's something
that is weirder than anything that anyone has
made popular. Like, just as an example. It's
literally bleeding in from some parallel dimension.
It's an energy signature, and it's co -aligned
by accident rather than intent. It's there because
there's something in its parallel universe that
is similar to what we're doing, and that's why
they're co -aligned. I know this sounds like
weirdo mumbo jumbo, but it seems like something
like that even would be more likely. Did you
ever read Michael Critchin's novel? The Sphere?
Or was it just Sphere? No. All right. You mind
if I spoil Sphere for you? Yeah, please. So there
was a movie. It was not nearly as good as the
book. So in Sphere, without spoiling the ending,
the very beginning of it is you have this researcher
who is brought out to this secret naval research
facility in the Pacific Ocean because the Navy
has discovered a massive object, multiple kilometers
long, lying on top of a shallow coral reef on
some atoll covered in coral. that appears to
be a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. And they
figured out that when it crashed thousands of
years ago there, it probably crashed onto an
island, which then sea levels rose, and then
it became covered. So by this, they basically
figure out it must have been there for about
3 ,000 or 4 ,000 years, this spaceship. And so
the Navy is going and they're trying to figure
out what it is. They're scraping coral off this
ship. They bring in this researcher. And as the
researcher is being brought to the site, they
discover for the first time what they've been
looking for, a door into the air. They were scraping
the coral off, looking for some way in through
this ultra tough metallic alloy that had never
been observed ever in nature or science. And
then the big reveal of like the first arc of
the book is they scrape off the coral. They look
at the door. Incredible. It's a door. But then
they look next to the door and there's a marking.
And what does the marking say on this 3 ,000
-year -old spaceship? United States Navy and
an American flag. And what's interesting is they
never actually fully explain it. But the implication
is, and what they believe happened, is that this
was a time -traveling craft that somehow went
back in time. Or alternately, that it's actually
from some distant past civilization that traveled
forward in time, like maybe went to space, did
some exploring and came back. Maybe the United
States is actually a purpose reconstitution of
the branding and social structures of some long
lost society from 500 million years ago. I'm
not saying that's necessarily what's happening,
but I think that that's actually more likely
than it being. aliens from another galaxy coming
to where we are. It's just, that is actually
harder for me to believe than something that
is of our own little local solar sphere and just
really, truly bizarre and not being taken seriously.
Why is that harder to believe? Why is space travel
harder to believe than time travel? It's mostly
all of the... Or dimension travel. So dimensional
travel, that's totally believable. Specifically,
the thing I think is least likely is... That
using normal conventional physics that we understand,
it's people coming from another place that's
many light years away coming to where we are.
It's just, it's a matter of. We haven't observed
anything that could do that. We haven't seen
any synthetic material that could do that. We
haven't seen any natural phenomena that could
do that. Right, but if you just go back 200 years
ago, a cell phone is impossible. But the difference
here is that we're able to see millions of years
of history of the universe coming into us, right?
We're observing things that happened hundreds
of years ago, thousands of years ago, millions
of years ago from all over our galaxy and other
galaxies. And there's a lot of markers that you
would expect to see that would line up with how
we understand intelligent life. And we're just
not seeing them. And you're familiar with like
dark forest theory. Maybe the civilizations that
emanate those signals get whacked down before
they become a threat to the dominant powers.
Maybe everyone's hiding, right? There are these
theories as to why. this is the case. And maybe
we're being, you've heard probably the theory
about us being idiots for transmitting. Like
Stephen Hawking was of this opinion. He thought
it was really stupid for us to try and make first
contact. His point was not just that it's probably
a bad idea in general. His point was the fact
that we haven't observed it from anyone else
suggests a lot of danger in doing so. Like it
could mean that nobody's doing it. It could mean
that anyone who does it gets wiped out. If you
stand up, you get knocked down. And so it's just
– I have a hard time believing that it's a conventional
thing on another planet that comes to see us.
That's not to say there isn't life out there
in the universe. I think it's out there. But
for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be life
that's capable of inter -solar system or intergalactic
travel. But what do you think of people that
talk about some sort of a potential – science
that eventually gets cracked where it's a gravity
drive like something that folds space -time in
that case and so what this is one of my favorite
favorite favorite theories about this like people
talk about about that there's a question like
if you're actually folding space -time or breaking
space -time uh there's a question as to are you
going to see visitors from another part of your
plane of existence that are just using that technology
to jump a few miles over to you? Or are you more
likely that that level of technology is one that
allows people to come from completely different
planes of existence, different dimensions, different
types of universes we don't even begin to understand?
If we can prove that we can manipulate space
-time like that, to me, that's an indicator that
you can do even more than that. Again, I'm not
saying it's impossible. I'm putting my chips
on the table as the things that I've seen, I'm
more likely to believe that it is time travelers,
unknown residents of Earth, people from another
dimension, energy signals from another dimension
bleed through of our own past, present and future.
I put all those at a higher likelihood than they
came from Andromeda. And now they're flying around
our military bases. Did you see that guy representative
was his name, Tim Burchett? Is that his name?
Who was talking about there's five specific areas
where these things seem to be emanating from
the ocean. I'm generally familiar. I don't remember
what those areas are. It was a weird conversation.
One of them is very near me. It's the Channel
Islands corridor. Right. I tracked down this
book that's out of print now called The Unidentified
UFOs and USOs, Unidentified Submersible Objects
of the Santa Catalina Channel. This guy went
around. How is that common? Well, in this one
area, tons of bizarre activity. This guy went
around. And he interviewed everybody who had
a weird story. And he just basically compiled
them. He said, what do you see? Describe it in
detail. And he went back like these are like
fishermen had stories from the 80s. And he talked
to naval aviators and he talked to, you know,
local yachtsmen. And he talked to all these people.
And he points out in his prologue, these are
all just the stories I've collected. I have not
edited these stories. I have not modified these
stories. And the people have verified that they
are correct. And they are all on the record.
This is their name. He didn't include anybody
who was anonymous because his point was if it's
anonymous, you could just claim I made it up.
It has to be a real person who stands behind
it. And he said, you'll notice that across about
50 years of stories I've collected. that there's
extraordinary commonality between these stories.
People who have never met, have no reason to
work together, have no reason to have a common
story, and yet they all observe very similar
things. And when you see a one -off, it's hard
to draw a conclusion. When you see a pattern,
it becomes a lot more interesting. What are they
observing specifically? So specifically... The
Santa Catalina Channel, so you have basically
Catalina Island off the coast of California,
and you have a few more channel islands that
are stretched out on either end of it. The things
that they were seeing were vehicles that were
in the sky and then going into the water at high
speed and appearing to, like not hitting them
and slamming and exploding like you'd expect,
but instead still a huge flash, but just seamlessly
transitioning into the water. Lots of noise,
lots of splash, but not like destroying themselves.
And then similarly, objects coming out of the
water in the same way. And so they all describe
these very, very steep approach paths. So like
not coming in like an aircraft landing on the
water, but almost like coming out of the sky
at these very steep angles and then just smashing
into the water in a way you would expect would
destroy anything. But then instead, the vehicles
are apparently fine and the water just parts
around them as they rocket in. Really, really
bizarre stuff. And it makes you wonder, could
that be related? The same technology or process
that allows the air. You see these systems, they're
not creating sonic booms. Right. You don't see
shockwaves coming off of them. And they're not
heated by the movement through the air. They're
not really, really hot. I mean, you've heard
the stories about the SR -71. I mean, it would
get literally red hot on its leading edges, glowing
titanium. But these things are cold. And so is
there some technology that can displace air around
you that can also displace water around you is
kind of the interesting theory there. But yeah,
that particular I've dug into because it's only
about 20 miles away from my house. The weird
one is the breakaway civilization thing. Yes.
That's the weird one. Because that's the most
ridiculous until you start thinking about it.
And then you start looking back at past civilizations
like ancient Egypt and some of the monolithic
construction around the world. You've read Chariots
of the Gods? Mm -hmm. I talked to Von Daniken
once. Oh, really? He went to Peter Thiel's house.
And Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein brought me
over for lunch. Oh, that must have been so cool.
It was so cool to just question him about stuff.
I read Chariots of the Gods when I was, I don't
know, probably like seven or eight. It was a
fun movie, too. Oh, I haven't seen the movie.
I didn't even know. It's an old ass movie. It's
an old ass book. It was in the movie theaters.
So the interesting thing about it is like I've
dug into a lot of that as I've gotten older.
And yes, there are things in there where like
we've now learned that they weren't true. But
some of it holds up. There's still really bizarre
stuff that was happening in ancient civilizations.
There's common between civilizations. And it
doesn't really make sense. It doesn't really
make sense when you think about it conventionally.
Well, Ben Van Kirkwick, who runs Uncharted X,
he was on the podcast recently and he was describing
how there's specific hieroglyphs that indicate
some sort of a star portal. Yep. That that's
what the hieroglyphs are saying. Like this is
a star gate and it shows stars. It shows this
portal and gate. And this is it's. written multiple
times. And they're trying to figure out, well,
what is this trying to say? Like, what is this?
What do you think about the theory that there's
other sentient, that the other sentient species
of Earth might have better lore on this than
us? Have you heard of this theory? No. I don't
want to, so. This is going to make me sound a
little bit like a nutter, but we're pretty deep
down the rabbit hole. Yeah, we're on nutter territory
right now. So people have oral traditions that
have passed down pretty well. We've also observed
that stories can pass down in other sentient
species like whales, like dolphins. They have
these whale calls that have been constant for
a long time. They communicate with each other.
One of the theories, and by the way, this was
explored in like some of the old Star Trek movies.
They explored this idea that the whales actually
had better and more stable oral history than
humanity. And it's not that crazy of an idea.
And so you wonder, for example, if we could understand
them, what would they have to say about any of
this stuff? Maybe they're not smart enough to
have anything to say, but do they have anything
to say about, it may not be obvious, it may not
be, we know about star people who are going through
stargates, but for example, what if there's oral
tradition or even genetic programming around,
oh, we never go to this area, never go to this
place, or never eat the food from this place.
Could there be interesting leads that are buried
in cultures that are not human? We were talking
about that before, that you're working on interspecies
communication. That's right. So this hasn't actually
officially launched yet. Hopefully they won't
mind me talking about it. Are you familiar with
the XPRIZE Foundation? Yes, we were just talking
about it. So if people aren't familiar, XPRIZE
is basically this group that makes these... big,
significant monetary prizes for teams to compete
against each other to do things that seem crazy.
So, like, there was an X Prize for going to space
on a reusable rocket. John Carmack was competing
for that. Did you know that? Yes, I did. So,
like, you inspired him. They're doing some Cancer
X Prizes. There's one that's going on right now
called the Wildfire X Prize, which is basically...
challenging companies to build a system that
can detect wildfires anywhere on the planet in
less than a minute from space and then deploy
autonomous drones to extinguish them before they
get large enough that they turn into a real wildfire.
Instead of responding to fires once they're too
big to control, you're able to stop them in their
tracks. I mean, just like the Palisades fire
created $20 billion in damage. It's actually
very cheap to do this relative to the damage
that wildfires cause. Anyway, the XPRIZE guys
came to me a while back, and we were jamming
on a few ideas for their next XPRIZE. And hopefully
they don't mind me saying this, but initially
I said you guys should do an Uplift XPRIZE. Have
you seen Uplift, the science fiction concept?
No. It's fallen out of favor. It was really popular
for a while. There was an Uplift trilogy written
by, I can't remember the guy's name, but he wrote
a whole book about non -human consciousnesses.
In his book, there's plasma consciousnesses in
the sun. You've probably heard these crazy ideas
of intelligent beings that live in the sun. But
one of it, the main thrust of Uplift is taking
species that are not sentient and lifting them
up to the level of sentience and beyond. So can
you take a dog? and teach it to talk by genetically
modifying it to make it smarter? Can you take
whales and pass them up? And by the way, the
Uplift trilogy, they also explored this idea,
like Star Trek, of the whales having an oral
tradition that was more stable than humanity's
and actually having a lot of information that
was concealed from man until they uplifted those
species. And I've always thought that was really
interesting. And so I went to the XPRIZE and
said, I want you guys to do an Uplift XPRIZE.
First person. to modify an animal to be smarter
than a person. And they actually said, that's
too crazy. That's XPRIZE is trying to push the
future, but for a variety of, honestly, quite
good reasons. They said, this is not quite our
jam. But one we are working towards is an interspecies
communication XPRIZE. And it's a prize to, I
think that with... modern AI advances, this is
going to be a lot more possible to gather large
amounts of data, reason about it, and figure
out the vocabulary and grammar of these species.
The idea is it's the first team that can meet
species where they are and communicate with them
in a repeatable, verifiable way. This isn't teaching
a dog to say yes when you say go. Do you want
to eat? Exactly. No, this is bidirectional communication,
objective, verifiable, deterministic, predictable.
It's a really hard one, but I think a good XPRIZE
should be. You shouldn't be picking things that
are easy. You're picking things that seem like
they're just out of reach and you just need to
stretch for it. But there's been talk of doing
that with dolphins. And if we do that, I'm going
to be asking the whales. Whales and dolphins,
they have a language, but we don't know what
it is. That's right. So the idea is the using
of AI. If you get to super general intelligence
and AI can run all the patterns through some
sort of... program and determine what is being
expressed. We've learned some things. We've learned
how a lot of citations can call names and very,
very unique IDs. They have dialects. Yep, they
do. But we are so far away from cracking the
code. Isn't it crazy that we can crack Basically
any cipher, any crypto code. We can translate
languages basically from scratch if we get a
few words. Rosetta Stone. Exactly. And we have
no idea how it works. And I don't mean like we
don't know the words, but we know there are words.
It's like there's weird things where they're
like. communicating via ultrasound with each
other. And we think that like one is emitting
and another is receiving and emitting. And then
maybe there's information in the phase difference
between those two, right? Like they might be
in, this is where the theory of, of acoustic
holograms as a primary means of cetacean community
came from. I don't believe in that anymore. I
think that wasn't quite right, but like. differences
in phase between simultaneous transmit and receive
ultrasonic communication, it seems to be that's
part of it. So you can't just like listen for
words. You're actually looking for differences
in how these waves are interacting. And those
are distance dependent, direction dependent.
We've got a lot of work cut out for us to understand
animals. That is so wild. You're familiar with
Alex, the African gray parrot? No. Oh, you've
got to look into this. I mean, maybe you could
even get one of... his trainers on the show.
So Alex, the African gray parrots are probably
the smartest bird. Definitely one of the smartest
animals. Right up there with crows or ravens?
Smarter. They're very, very smart. They can talk.
They can reason. Alex the parrot was, so Alex
the parrot was a uniquely smart African gray
parrot. By the way, African greys are usually
not kept in captivity just because they're such
a handful. There we go. There's Alex. They're
a handful because they're so intelligent? It's
like dogs that need to be exercised. They need
to be intellectually stimulated. And most people
just don't have the time to keep an African grey
properly stimulated. So they get depressed. They
self -harm. They're not recommended as a beginner
parrot by any means. Now, Alex was interesting.
Because he had a vocabulary, he understood grammar,
and he is one of the only, I think the only animal
who asked an existential question and he actually
did it right before he died. If I remember correctly,
like he wasn't just saying, give me food. He
could say like, tomorrow I want this food. He
could be, but the existential question he asked
was, what's happening? And where am I going?
Which is, and he had never asked those questions
before. They were brand new formulated questions
that he asked very shortly before he passed.
And so there's a lot of, now here's the other
cool part. He's got a bird brain. He has a tiny
little brain and yet it has all that capacity.
You've probably heard of people who have lost
huge chunks of their brain and they reprogram
and they seem to get by. parrots like Alex suggest
that you can get by with very little brain if
it's oriented correctly. So imagine if I took
a species like an African gray and I modified
certain elements of genetic code to cause its
brain to be somewhat larger, somewhat more glucose
consuming. So it has more energy and then also
to have more folds. They're very smooth brain.
What if I could have, we know that folded brain
tissue and the high density that it creates on
the neuronal surface is very good for intelligence.
Could you make an African gray that is able to
have a normal human level conversation? I think
it's actually very close to that. Wow. So this
is one of those. How many? Come on. Can you tell
me how many? Two. Very good. What? Two. We keep
going. Can you tell me what's different? What's
different? Color. Come on. What number is gray?
Don't want to tell them? Well, tell me, what
number is gray? What number is gray? Very good.
Holy shit, man. Right. And I mean, you're looking
at intelligence that's on par by all of the traditional
metrics with a human toddler. But with radically
less brain tissue. But also radically less body
to control. That's true. And also a lot of semi
-autonomy. You know how some animals have more
of their nervous system distributed? Octopuses
have autonomy in their muscles. It's actually
similar for a lot of animals. And so one of the
reasons I've always found AI so interesting is
not just what we can do with AI, but learning
how... Like building a thinking system from scratch,
I'm thinking will help us understand how other
systems think. Like there's never been an economic
motive to really dig into how to understand how
the brain fundamentally works. I know there's
people who are listening who probably think that's
crazy. They say, Palmer, people want to cure
brain cancer. They want to help with Alzheimer's.
There's a difference between preserving brain
function. and truly understanding how the brain
works. And yes, there's research labs here and
there, but Google's never been funding them to
the tune of tens of billions, right? Meta's never
been funding them to the tune of hundreds of
billions. AI is the first time that humanity
has ever dedicated a huge amount of resources
to understanding what thought is, how to make
it synthetically, and how to make it better.
And we're going to make a lot of mistakes along
the way, but I think... I think that understanding
how to make synthetic brains via AI is going
to teach us how to make parrots like Alex a lot
smarter, too. Well, when you start talking about
stuff like this and you start talking about genetically
engineering an animal to be as intelligent or
more intelligent than a human, it brings me to
the weirder theory about human evolution. Sure.
That we're a product of accelerated evolution
and that some superior intelligence would do
exactly what you're doing. That's my favorite
part about Uplift is that if you can prove that
it works, you open up a whole pot, a whole avenue
of theories that have been treated as crazy.
Like right now, if you like what you just said
about, you know, augmented evolution of humans.
It's a crazy person thing. Right. Right. But
if we are literally sitting there talking to
our dogs. And they're like, like, isn't it going
to be like who could who could think that's a
crazy theory to say, well, I mean, we did it.
The moment that we had technology that was capable,
we did it. Wouldn't probably any species do that?
Like, doesn't that suggest that when you get
smart enough, you want to make things somewhat
in your own image? It gets back to Skynet earlier.
Like if we make animals more into our own image,
is it really crazy to think that we are the result
of something like that? And actually, so I'm
a religious person. I'm a Christian. And I feel
like what you see where God was created or man
was created in God's image, I feel like it's
reflected in our desire to create things in our
own image. And so I think there's a certain beautiful
symmetry there. If we're doing it, it's actually
easier for people to believe, I think, that it
happened to us. It's easier for people to believe
that we have a creator who wanted to create something
in his own image. When we are doing the same.
Well, also just the sentiment that you were discussing
of taking an animal and making it more intelligent.
If we found a planet, if let's say we get to,
you know, a couple thousand years of technological
evolution past where we're at now, we can travel
to other galaxies and we find primates. Yeah.
And we're like, well, they're on the way. They're
on the way, but they need like 300 million years
before they get to where we are. We wouldn't
want to wait. Why would we wait? Maybe that's
just a seeding process. Maybe that's something
that happens all throughout the universe where
these, you know, intelligence farmers just drop
seeds. in various areas, just take animals, manipulate
them, turn them into something that's superior
and that has a lust for innovation, which is
one of the weirder things about us. We were talking
about this last night at the mothership. We were
on the green room. We were talking about one
thing that human beings share in common with
everything we do. Everyone's trying to make the
best version of everything and better versions,
whether it's sports. The athletes of today are
better than the athletes of 20 years ago, whether
it's computers, whether it's televisions, any
kind of technology, music. Everything wants to
be better than anything before. So we're constantly
trying to make better stuff. I would even go
beyond. I think it's not even better. It's that
we seek novel things. Yes. And humans are programmed
to seek novelty. And I think it's clearly been
an evolutionarily advantageous trait. Societies
that foster seeking of novel experiences build
stronger cultures, stronger technologies. And
then, by the way, the groups that don't seek
novelty end up becoming stagnant. Yes. You could
even argue that many of the cultures that remain
stagnant, like you kind of saw plateauing happen
with, for example, a lot of Native American tribes.
I think that it was a loss of drive for novelty.
And that's not to say that there are lesser culture,
but certainly they were not. focused on seeking
novel experiences. What's really fascinating
when you think about human beings in particular
is that people that lived in those tribes did
not want to civilize and that the people that
were even captured by Indians, a lot of them
wanted to stay because they found that to resonate
more with being a human being because we had
lived so many... thousands of years as hunter
-gatherers, that that resonated with your being.
It seemed more spiritually in tune with being
a human being than living in a city and wearing
a suit and getting food from a store. Anyone
who's ever been on a camping trip. understands
what you're talking about. But imagine that's
your whole life. You can feel it. People were
not meant to live in urban jungles. There's a
great Vice piece back when Vice was really interesting.
It's called Heinmo's Arctic Adventure. And it's
this guy who, he lives north of the Arctic Circle
or near the Arctic Circle. And he... Has a cabin
up there, and he's grandfathered in, and he's
been there forever. I think he started working
there in the 1970s. This guy, he didn't even
know about 9 -11 until way later. Someone showed
him a picture of what happened. He has a television
and VHS tapes and a log cabin powered by a generator,
and all he does is hunt caribou and fish, and
he's very intelligent. And so this nerdy reporter
from fucking Williamsburg is hanging out with
this guy or wherever he's from. And this guy's
explaining how this resonates with being a human
being. Yeah. Like this is a much more satisfying
way of living. And I think that this is how people
are supposed to live. That's so interesting.
On the one hand, I agree. But then I love like
I mean, I love that human the human race is doing
a pretty good job of seeking novelty because
that's if we all if we all I mean, maybe it's
that maybe it's that, you know. Maybe hunting
caribou is what makes us happy, but you still
need the guy who wants to go for something else.
But you also need a singer. You also need a guy
who likes to be a carpenter. You need all types
of different human beings and different personality
traits and different interests to make this whole
experiment of civilization work. What do you
think about nostalgia? Because I've been thinking
about this a lot for a variety of reasons, and
it's kind of the opposite of what we're talking
about. We're talking about novel experiences,
new things. like driving towards the future.
There's some people who I feel like look down
on nostalgia, like, oh, you're obsessed with
the past kind of needlessly. It's feel good.
I feel like obsessing over the past, I think
is healthy in a lot of ways. And I think it's
even good to look at the past with rose tinted
glasses because there's so much that we could
learn from the past and should learn from the
past. If we didn't look at things with rose tinted
glasses, my theory is that. Imagine you look
at the future possibilities and the past teachings
identically with no favoring. It feels like you're
naturally going to prefer the new thing that
hasn't really shown all the downfalls yet. I
guess I'm a big fan of nostalgia. I'm a big fan
of looking at the parts of the past that worked
and then lionizing those and reminding people
why they worked. There's a lot of people who
actually say this is fascist now. Have you heard
of this? Nostalgia is fascist? Nostalgia is fascist.
If you Google it, you look up nostalgia is fascist.
This is like a cutting edge theory of the last
year. They're saying, oh, all. this appeal to
the 90s, it's pro -fascist because they're trying
to make you believe that there was a better time,
to believe that going backwards in society is
a good thing, as if the 1990s were like some
like hotbed of injustice and oppression. That's
interesting. I think nostalgia is fun, but I
don't spend a lot of time thinking about the
past. I do when it comes to art. I do when it
comes to music, and particularly the role of
psychedelics in the influence of culture that
happened in the 1960s, which I think is the greatest
cultural shift of change in recorded history.
The difference in the 50s and the 60s, just this
radical change in the way people saw life and
how many people were just exiting normal society.
And then how they threw water on that with the
passing of the Psychedelics Act in 1970. But
I think that— Well, it seems like things are
going in a different direction. So just so you
know, I'm straight edge. I don't use any drugs.
I didn't drink alcohol until very recently. I
just had my first kid. He's a year old. And you
started drinking as soon as you had a kid? Yeah.
It was like my whole life. No drinking, no nicotine,
no caffeine, no alcohol, no drugs. Yeah, I had
a kid, and I decided it was time to start drinking.
Why is that? Why is that? You have enough hard
nights and hard days taking care of the kid,
and you say, you know, I totally get it, man.
I totally understand why everyone's having beers
on the weekend. There's certainly a place for
it. There's certainly a place for all those things.
But I'm curious, why nostalgia in art? I'm not
disagreeing, actually. I think I showed you earlier.
Well, I'm completely fascinated with the 1960s
in terms of I'm a huge fan of 1960s automobiles.
What year were you born? 67. Okay, interesting.
When I was a kid in high school, which is really,
I was in high school in the 1980s. So I went
to high school, first year was 81, which is not
that far away from 1970, right? That's 11 years.
Like an 11 -year -old car, if you had a 2016
Toyota, it looks exactly like a 2025 Toyota.
There's not much difference at all. You would
have to be like a car nut to notice the difference.
When I was a kid in 1981, if someone drove by
in a 1970 Chevelle, everybody stopped and stared
at it like, whoa. It was like that nostalgia
was real because we recognized that something
had happened to American manufacturing, particularly
in automobile manufacturing, where they just
lost the magic. They had magic in the 1960s.
The Corvette, the Camaro. Well, cars were art.
Yes. They were engineering. They were art. They
were an expression of American culture. And it
went away. It went away in the 1970s. They turned
it into dog shit. Well, see, this is kind of
what I'm talking about where I talk about the
importance of nostalgia because you want to look
back at the things that worked. And I think a
lot of these companies, they would have you just
forget that it ever was works of art that these
cars could be this way. I think we need to learn
from. Yeah, and not let them because like now
cars are turning into like subscriber based appliances
That's kind of gross I've heard that there's
some cars that charge you money if you want to
use Apple CarPlay. That's right Well, there's
some that are also charging you to use all of
your your heating and cooling functionality.
There's ones they're adding like you can just
fucking charge me more for your car and don't
fuck me. Well, some of them you're paying more.
It's paying more to unlock more horsepower. It's
like, wait, you're making the car. It has the
parts and you're not crazy. You know, a lot of
these and then a lot of these. Business approaches
are actually coming, I think, not from the car
industry. They're stealing them from the tech
and also the gaming industry. Like there was
a time when these things – people were making
video games. They would make a game. You'd buy
it. You owned a video game and that was it. And
they made the best game they could to sell you
at a store. And these days they're making games
and also a lot of apps into like the subscription
experience. You have to keep – paying money they're
making content that's just farmed to keep you
hooked on the drip continuously you don't see
these masterpieces the way that you used to and
that's something I've been I've been super passionate
about. It is gross that they do that. They just
hook you in because they know you're hooked already.
That's right. And so you want the new BMW or
whatever the car is. And, you know, like, oh,
I'll just pay the monthly. Who gives a fuck?
Just one more subscription that comes out of
my auto pay. Yeah. I feel like there needs to
be a bit of a concerted pushback from people
who remember before. We're gone. Yes. Like, like
one of the things that's crazy to me, like, you
know, like for you, it's cars. Cause you know,
that's, that's, uh, you, you, you grew up, you
grew up during that shift as well. The industry
kind of, to your point, lost something. Um, But
I grew up with the Nintendo Game Boy and a lot
of these things where it was kind of like the
early days of gaming where it was all these passionate
people doing things because they really desperately
wanted to. It was before all the bean counters
got in. It was before all the regulators got
in. It was before the people figured out how
to turn it into this. You used to be able to
make a game with a dozen people. And, of course,
you could still do that today. I don't want to
romanticize it too much. But you could make a
best -selling game back then. With, you know,
a dozen people. And these were all crazy people
who could be making more money working in, let's
say, like farming or industrial manufacturing.
And instead they decided to be game programmers.
Today you'll have game teams that are thousands
of people and it's all, you know, it's become
a very high paying, high prestige job. It's just
a, it's a, it's a, it's a totally, it's a totally
different universe. And it's also a giant business
now, right? It's been proven that it's a huge
moneymaker. It's purely, it's totally financialized
now. Like it's, it's optimized by the bean counters.
How are we going to make $5 billion in profit
this year? And the video game industry is bigger
than the movie industry, right? It is. And actually,
and it has been even for a while. I think that
happened like, I want to say it was like six
or seven years ago that the games industry. I
showed you before we came on, I have this knockoff
of the Nintendo Game Boy that I made. I remember
I talked about that web forum. Oh, it's like
a superior Game Boy. Exactly. You could feel
it just holding onto it. Actually, this one is
even nicer than the ones that we normally sell.
This is my personal. Andoril Edition 1. So this
is made with the same alloys we use in our attack
drones, and the coating on it is a wear -proof
Cerakote ceramic. It feels very sturdy. Also,
the screen lens, instead of plastic like on the
original Game Boy, it's actually lab -grown sapphire
crystal. It's the largest piece of sapphire crystal
in any product ever in history. So it's like
a fine watch. Exactly. But then we made a new
version of Tetris for it. That's incredible.
Whoops. But the thing that's interesting about
this, I turn it on, the game is instantly going.
There's no ads. There's no subscriptions. It
doesn't say, log in and download the updates.
Let us show you the pre -roll ads. Now you need
to make a user account and put in all your user
preferences and give us access to your email
and give us access to your social media if you
want to have the extra booster packs. It's just
– Access to your social media. Oh, that's a very
common thing now. A lot of games, they are heavily
incentivizing linking your social media accounts
to your game accounts and letting them see your
contacts, your friends list. Well, because they
want all that data. They want to know who they
can market to. They want to see what your demographics
are. They want to say, what is this customer
like? Can you opt out? So there are some games
that require you to have social media integration.
What? Do you have people with dark patterns?
No. So like there are these patterns that exist
in social media design and app design that steer
you down a particular direction. And so they
don't force you to do it. But the average user,
unless they're trying to fight their way out
of it, is going to do it. So, for example, I'll
be logging into a game. I've just downloaded
Overwatch 2 and it says you need to log in. You
can either go through this extremely convoluted
process of creating a new only Overwatch 2 Blizzard
account or you can click the button that says.
Log in with Google or log in with Facebook. What
are 99? And then you click it and it says, to
do this, you have to give us permission to see
this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this,
this, this. And look, you and I care about this
stuff because I think we're relics who remember
when privacy was a thing and when some things
are for yourself. A lot of these kids, they just
don't care. They just click it. You talk to the
Gen Z kids and it's like, well, why do you want?
Are you going to give that away? They say, well.
Like they don't see value in it. And they grew
up with that as the norm. And that's why I say
it's important to remember when it wasn't the
norm. Do people get dummy accounts so that they
can give a dummy account just to that? There
are people who do it. But most people don't.
And also the thing is they make it where there's
even reasons where you want it to be tied to
your social media. So they want to gather lots
of information and get you plugged into their
marketing ecosystem. And they say, oh, if you
log in with this social media account, then we
can automatically add all of your friends to
your in -game friends list. So you don't have
to go and manually invite them. So it is a convenience
feature. But the thing is they could do that.
without storing all that data and giving them
persistent access to all your social media accounts
and seeing everything that you're posting. Some
of these apps, even you give them permission
to post on your behalf. And what they do is like,
this was a, this was innovated kind of like the
Farmville stuff. Do you remember Farmville? And
you had to say, the reason it was so viral is
when you would do stuff in Farmville, it would
literally post on your wall and say, oh, Palmer
just did this. Palmer just visited Joe's farm
and helped him do this. Those tactics have evolved.
It's way beyond to make these things very sticky,
very addictive. So look, you can make a fake
account. You can make a burner account. And there's
like 1 % of people who will ever think of doing
something like that. And so for them, it's just
about mass. And I wouldn't mind so much if it
was just about making money. Like making money
is fine. Like I'm a believer in the free market
generally. I'm a believer in capitalism strongly.
But then the problem is you have this combination
of capitalism -driven capture efforts combined
with people who don't care about making money
nearly so much as pushing their particular social
ideals. You've probably seen this in Hollywood.
You certainly see it in the games industry where
you have people who are joining the industry
not because they want to make great games, not
even because they want to make money. And I'd
say making great games is the best reason. Making
money is an acceptable reason. It's because they
want to bring about greater equity and representation
of people that look like them. And that's fine
to have as a thing in the back of your mind.
But there's people who are joining where that
is what they want to do. And anyone who's against
it, they're going to berate them. Anyone in the
company who says, I actually think we should
make games for our customers, not the people
you wish were our customers. Let's make games
for the guys who buy our games, not... The moms
you wish were buying our games. And people like
that are being ejected out of companies. I mean,
it's very politically incorrect. There's a question.
Well, that's the Bud Light dilemma, right? Exactly.
They tried to make Bud Light for people who don't
want Bud Light and make fun of the Bud Light
people. It's the mythical audience. It's a mystical
mainstream audience. And, you know, it's even
worse in gaming because they'll say things like,
oh, you know, 50 % of gamers are. are stay -at
-home moms. And you're like, what? That obviously
isn't true. And what it is, is it's something
like there's a lot of stay -at -home moms who've
played Candy Crush a few times. And there's a
lot of them. And they're like, therefore, we
need to build to that market. Okay. I don't want
to get into a fight over what a gamer is, but
what do you think sounds like a better business
plan? To go after the young men, primarily, who
buy a dozen $50 games a year? Or the mom who
once spent $5 on Candy Crush. And if you say
that, if you put it the way I just put it, they're
like, that's so sexist of you. Why don't you
want to bring in new audiences? I saw this when
I was in Silicon Valley. What I called it was
– I said there's too many people who drink Starbucks
and not enough who drink Mountain Dew. And you
know exactly what I mean when I say that. It's
just – It's been a really bizarre thing to watch
in all of these different industries. Yeah, it's
a mind virus. It's captured universities and
then it bled out into corporations. One of my
favorite questions to ask people is starting
a company is hard. You can't – you'll fail most
of the time even when you don't constrain yourself
to trying to change the social system. Look,
if you could make it where there's – If you can
make it where there's all those moms all get
into games and it was free, that would be great.
But it's not. It's a tradeoff. You have to take
resources you would have put on your real customers
and put it towards them. One question I ask people
is just ideologically is, okay, imagine your
job is to build a corporate building for a company.
And the company, you know exactly who they are.
You know how many men there are? You know how
many women there are? We don't have to say how
many there are. Don't make it about one gender
versus another. It's just there are lots of men.
There's lots of women. I won't pick a number.
When you're designing this building, should you
have the number of bathrooms that would best
serve the actual gender makeup of the company
that would allow them to use the bathroom and
get back to their desk without waiting in line?
Or would you do anything else? Like, would you
pursue a different strategy? And if it's different,
what would your strategy be? And many people
say, well, I would build it, you know, perfect
50 -50. And if they say, well, I'm doing that
because it's, you know, the easiest way to do
it. I'm like, OK, that's fine. But if they say,
well, I would, you know, I would I would hope
that I would I want to create an environment
where. It will – it should eventually be 50 percent
men and 50 percent women. I say, OK, so wait.
You're going to – you have a company, 90 percent
men, 10 percent women. You think the men should
have to wait in line five times as long at the
bathroom because someday that might make more
women want to work at this company? It's one
of those really interesting dividing questions
where it's basically do you want to solve the
problem that allows your business to succeed
or are you trying to – achieve totally parallel
social aims at the expense of the business. And
companies are hiring a lot of people who think
about it that way. They don't see their role
as to come in and make the company better or
to make a better product for their customer.
They see it as to come in and affect that change,
even if it tanks the company in the process.
Have you seen? How did that happen? Dude, I don't
know. Where that's common. I think that probably
you let, I mean, there's a lot of theories. I
can give you mine. It was the zero interest rate
phenomenon theory. Are you familiar with this?
The zero interest rate phenomenon, ZERP, they
call it. Some people call it the zero interest
rate period. So ZERP was this period of time
that we've really seen over the last 15 years
up until very recently where money was basically
free to borrow. That's where you've seen so much
economic growth. You've seen a lot of it artificially
propped up in the tech and the media industry.
I think a lot of like these streaming plays have
been propped up by Zerp. When interest rates
are extremely low and money is very cheap to
borrow, people will spend tons and tons of tons
of money. The economy appears to be doing very
well. You have the growth that looks good on
the stock market. And so companies don't need
to ever tighten their belts. They can hire and
hire and hire. They can become grossly inefficient.
They can pursue things that don't make money
and they're still doing OK. And so a lot of these
companies, they're. Their employees were kind
of out of control. You had people coming out
of college who believed their job was to change
the world by using the money of these corporations.
And the corporations didn't push back on it because
they would be accused of being bigots and committing
hate crimes. And they said, you know what? The
stock is going up. Everything's going well. We
can just keep doing this. My theory is actually
that interest rates going up have been very good
for solving this problem. You've seen a lot of
layoffs in the tech industry. You've seen a lot
of layoffs in the media industry. I think that
a lot of those are driven by interest rates rising,
money's not free, and now companies have to actually
make what people want. Did you see – you probably
didn't, but did you happen to see the first quarterly
earnings call by the new CEO of Warner Brothers
who came in a year or two? He came in a year
or two ago, and it was incredible. He had this
speech that was exactly what fans wanted to hear
and what investors wanted to hear, but his employees
were furious. He came on and said, in my tenure,
I'm going to pursue something that's a bit novel
for Warner Brothers. Instead of making movies
that people don't want to see, I'm going to make
movies that people do want to see. Instead of
making movies that don't make money, instead,
we will make movies that do make money. And to
do that, we are going to make products that people
want, like Batman and Lord of the Rings and Harry
Potter. And that is going to be the core of our
market success. And that's what fans want. They're
like, oh, my God, this is great. They're going
to stop making these kind of social justice pieces
and make us the things that we actually want.
The investors love it because he says they're
going to make money. But the people who are angry
were all of the college students who joined thinking
that they were going to use billions of dollars
from Warner Brothers to make their pet art film
projects about various oppressed groups. And
I think that that is happening across the industry.
I think that's a good thing. It's a good adjustment.
That makes sense. So speaking of making things.
Oh, yeah. Bust out the helmet, son. All right.
So I'm going to take this off. Okay. So I've
been working on head -mounted displays for a
long time. I created the Oculus Rift when I was
19 years old, living in a camper trailer in my
garage. And that was really the virtual reality
headset that changed the industry, sold that
company for billions of dollars. And now that
I'm working in the national security space, I've
continued to believe that virtual reality, augmented
reality is going to be a critical part of our
military. So the ability to have night vision,
thermal vision, but also the ability to see where
all the bad guys are, see where all the good
guys are by fusing everyone's view together.
Think of it almost like a hive mind. If I'm able
to see something, you should be able to see it.
If a drone can see it, you should be able to
see it. Even if it's on the other side of a building,
you should be able to see it and effectively
have x -ray vision. And I should be able to command
and control all these other systems using this
heads -up display interface. None of what I'm
saying sounds that crazy, right? It just sounds
like any science fiction film. These are ideas
that have been around for 100 years, but only
very recently has it become possible. So this
is a new product. that we just announced at the
Army's conference yesterday. We've been working
on it for years, using our own money, no taxpayer
dollars were used to create it. It's called Eagle
Eye. And it is an integrated ballistics shell.
So you've got a helmet. You've got hearing protection.
You've got thermal sensors, night sensors, signals,
intelligent sensors that allow you to detect
where cell phones are, where radios are. See
that in your view. It even detects where gunshots
are, shows them exactly where they're placed
and how far they are. So this is the this is
a recreation of it. So this is like, yeah, this
is a video feed of what it is like to use the
system. So I've got the helmet on here. And then
what I have is this pair of. augmented reality
glasses um so basically i can take these glasses
and i put them on these sync with the helmet
and with these sensors so i can for example see
where my gun is pointing i can see where every
enemy is i can see where all of my buddies are
i can see so like there's a there's a view that's
coming up here where you're going to notice a
drone picks up a guy behind that container over
there And what's going to happen is when he walks
behind that container, I'm able to continue to
see where he is and what he's doing. So here's
Ghost X is the drone that's watching. So just
watch for a moment. So the blue force is my friendlies.
So see that little right -hand corner where it
sees behind the containers? They're tracking
where the bad guy is. They're tracking where
my guys are. And then watch when they go behind
the container. So I can actually see through
it and watch. Now they're engaging the guy over
there and he's down. Wow. Imagine a guy's coming
over a hill and I want to engage him. So actually
I'm going to put on the mission shield. There
we go. So this is a system that allows everybody
to basically be operating as one combined hive
mind where you can all share a view of the world.
And by the way, this view that I have, it's shared
now. With all of the robots as well. So anything
I see, like let's say I see someone inside of
a building. Every drone and every person now
sees that person where he is. It's so crazy that
I was born at the right time to actually get
to build all this stuff. Because you know Robert
Heinlein, the science fiction author who did
Starship Troopers? Okay. He was literally writing
about these ideas of mobile infantry that's wearing
mech suits and ballistics prediction, like helmets
that show you the bad guys, give you radar feeds,
give you night vision, give you thermal vision,
the ability to do ballistics targeting, where
it calculates where the wind is going to blow
you around and where it's going to go. He was
literally writing about this in the 1940s. I
mean, we're talking about almost 100 years ago.
Wow. And we happen to be born in the right time.
So, you know, too late to explore the seas, too
early to explore the stars, but just in time
to build Eagle Eye. You're in the right timeline.
I am in the right timeline. Do you ever feel
like it's a simulation because of that? Do you
ever feel like you're living in some sort of
bizarre simulation? Because otherwise, like,
why you? Why do you have such a unique existence?
Why are you so fortunate? Why are all these cool
things happening for you? It's like I'm reliving
my nights here in the room with you. Now, I ponder
it a lot because, I mean, look, we talked earlier
about how I would only be able to pull off these
things I pulled off if I continuously succeeded
over and over and over again. And it does make
you think, like, what are the odds of that? Is
it more likely that the world is a simulation?
And I think actually it just comes down to –
it comes down to I'm a spiritual person. I believe
in the existence of a higher creator, of a higher
power. And I feel like there's actually a lot
of similarities between that and believing in
simulation theory. I mean like when people say,
oh, it's all a simulation. Is that really so
different from having a universe that was created
by an all -powerful being? Right. normal religion
wrapped up in a package that a person who claims
to be a religious can can partake in. They're
like, no, I would never believe in, you know,
a sky daddy. I just believe that we live in a
world created by a higher being and that he's
watching our every move and learning from it
and helping us along the way. I don't know, man.
You're hitting on a lot of the tenets of major
world religions. What were they trying to write
down when they were writing the initial religious
texts? Like what were they actually describing?
When you're talking about something that's an
oral tradition. Let me pop up the – there we
go. I can pop out this. Can I put that on? Yes,
absolutely. What are you seeing right now? So
right now, nothing. Unfortunately, if I'm going
to give you a good demo, we need to go to an
area where it's synced up to all the other helmets.
Oh, okay. I want to show you the night vision.
I like how the ears pop out, though. Yeah, this
is my doing. So I'm a huge weapons enthusiast.
I own about 450 guns. Huge number of, you know,
I own basically everything that anyone's ever
fought in. So ballistic vests, uniforms, boots,
gloves, helmets. I collect that stuff. And so
one of the cool parts about EagleEye is I got
to bring all my opinions on what things should
be, and I can just jam them into the product.
So the cool thing about this is if you've ever
used earring protection, normally it pops up
like this, and it's kind of dangling away. Notice
how it's really tightly integrated. It's not
flopping around, but I can pop it open, and now
I can hear you directly with my own two ears.
I can pop that and clip it back in, and I'm able
to hear with electronic pass -through, and it
actually... enhances my hearing so I can hear
certain things better. And you'll notice this
is ballistic ear protection. So have you ever
seen like a high cut helmet where you can have
low cut helmets where they protect your ears
more, high cut helmets where there's no ballistic
protection over your hearing protection? This
is ballistic hearing protection. So when I put
this on, everything is protected with armor.
even over the soft tissue in my ears and around
my upper neck. Is there any concern about the
hinge or that during combat it would pop open?
No, no. It's a super robust system. So here,
I'll actually show you. Let me pull off. So these
are modular sensor pods at the top. They call
them wolf ears. But I can basically swap these
even in the field. So I could carry, for example.
But that seemed too easy to take off. Magnets,
buddy. Right. But I'm saying if you're in the
middle of a scramble and you're – Here, check
this one out. This one has no connector on it.
This one is – these are not actually real modules.
These are based – this is a tricky one where
we have real modules and show modules. The real
modules, in general, the Army doesn't want to
have them passed around and people taking pictures
of them. Like at AUSA, there's people walking
up, taking pictures of everything in the booth.
They don't want you to show off, for example,
the size of the aperture of the thermal imager
you're using because then they can back -reverse.
how far you can see, what level of thermal radiation
you can see. So yeah, these are fake. So these
are dummies. Yeah, normally you actually, when
it has a connector in there, you got to actually
jam it in there and it's retained. And so have
you done tests where people fall down off hills
and go for a tumble? So this technology, the
last revision of it is already with the Army.
They're doing trials and tests of this literally
right now. But if you look here. It's basically
a spring steel mechanism there. And so it's not
just strong, it's also flexible. So basically
it can bend and then snap back. And so it's very,
very hard to overbend this, overextend this.
Got it. And if you did, like it's very hard,
but if you did, you grab some pliers and you
bend it back. And notice how that's a replaceable
module there. I can just unscrew this and replace
it with a new part. Everything on here. I can
repair in the field with a field repair kit as
well. And does it have the same functionality
as like walker game ears where you can amplify
outside noises, but then when a loud boom comes
off, your ear is protected? Exactly. But it's
even better. We're using an array of... So those
ones, they have two microphones. The walkers,
they typically have one here, one here. What
we're doing is a phased array of microphones
so that I can actually steer the amplification
beam. Like I could say... I hear footsteps over
in this left direction. Let's point in that.
Or even crazier. Imagine that I'm looking at
a target with this, and I look at that target.
It can cancel out all of the other sound that
it knows is coming out of phase with that direction
and distance, and it can give me just the sound
there coming from that as best it can. So it
can give me not just enhanced hearing, but directional
enhanced hearing. I can say, I want to listen
to what that guy 100 yards over there is saying.
I'm not promising you'll be able to hear. But
you'll be able to hear it a lot better than you
would without it. So it's worth noting, like,
the way this came together is crazy. There was
a contract to do this, to build an infantry combat
heads of display in 2017 and 2018 that was awarded
to Microsoft by the United States Army. It was
$22 billion. $22 billion to develop this technology.
And I actually wanted to compete in that competition
back then. But at the time, Andral was only about
two dozen people. And so it was a competition.
Do you remember Magic Leap? Yes. It was a competition
between Magic Leap and Microsoft. Microsoft ended
up winning. I think that's probably good because
the guy who was running Magic Leap was not really
a fan of the military. And I think it's dangerous
to have. Even if you don't, it's fine to not
like the military, but you shouldn't have people
who don't like the military running the military,
right? And I think you shouldn't have people
who are in love with the military regulating
the military, right? Everyone has their role.
Anyway, I was very skeptical of their technology.
You remember HoloLens? That was Microsoft's consumer
virtual reality, augmented reality effort. Their
AR project was adapting that. to the military
into this product called IVAS. And to make a
very, very long story short, it had a lot of
problems. Their early hardware was making people
sick. It had lag. The night vision wasn't working
well. There were soldier evaluation touch points
that came out where they were saying, hey, I'll
get killed if I wear this. Microsoft invested
a lot of money trying to make it better. But
eventually they ended up killing even their consumer
hall lens division. They just shut everything
down. And so the crazy part of this whole story
is starting a few years ago, I started going
to Microsoft and saying, hey, will you guys just.
Give me the iVAS program. Like, will you just
let me take over? You guys can keep building,
you know, Microsoft applications, cloud computing,
the stuff you're good at. Let me build the tactical
heads -up display hardware. And when I first
talked to them years ago, they thought I was
nuts. Like, they was almost like insulted. It
was like when Microsoft tried to buy Nintendo
and they got literally laughed out of the room.
And then as time went on, they started to laugh
less and less. And eventually they said, hey,
remember how you said you wanted to take over
iVAS? We would actually love to partner with
you on this and let you bring your magic to bear
on this problem. And I try to be a humble guy.
I don't usually succeed, but I am not humble
in this one regard. I believe that I am the world's
best head -mounted display designer, bar none.
I took the crown with the Oculus Rift. I think
I still hold it. And so I was able to kick the
program into shape. We built our own hardware,
and we've built Eagle Eye over the last couple
of years. And it is... It basically solves all
the problems that the program had. It is the
thing that I think is actually going to end up
on the heads of every soldier. Here, try taking
these on and you'll feel they're a bit heavier
than normal glasses. But the other thing about
them is that they're also ballistic -rated glasses.
So you see in the front and then also on the
sides. Yeah, so these can take pieces of frag.
So if someone's attacking you with a drone and
it blows up, this is going to keep those from
going into your orbitals, which is a pretty important
function for glasses. Yeah, I would say so. What
is this outside piece for? So yeah, try putting
the glass back on. See if you can pop that off.
You'll notice that one is actually... Yeah, there
we go. Perfect. So that's a mission shield. I
like that you asked about it because actually
nobody's even noticed really that it's two pieces.
So the mission shield is a piece that allows
you to reconfigure the glasses for different
use cases. If you're using this, for example,
to like give you automated instructions on how
to repair your Humvee, for example, I don't need
to have that ballistic cover on the front because
I don't need that extra. Like I don't expect
that I'm going to have an explosion happen and
protect my eyes. But you can also do things like
have different types of protection. For example.
That's just a normal ballistic mission shield.
We have another mission shield that protects
you from laser energy weapons. So it's actually
tuned where now it makes your vision. I probably
shouldn't talk about exactly what color because
it allows people to figure out what frequencies
we're blocking. But there are mission shields
that you can put on that will protect you from
weapons that we know China has. China has a bunch
of directed energy laser weapons, some of them
for taking out drones, others designed to blind
human troops. Whoa. And so we're designing mission
shields that protect you from those types of
emissions. They're designed to blind human troops?
Are they employed from drones? I don't want to
be too aggressive here because I'll tell you
the United States has weapons that are designed
to temporarily blind people as well. Now, the
thing is temporary blinding is very close to
permanent blinding, and it's a thin line. It's
dependent on the range. It's dependent on the
power level. Any system that can temporarily
blind people at long range is capable of blinding.
people permanently at long range. It's just that
that's the line you walk. Like if you want it
to work in any fog, you need more power. If you
want it to work at long ranges, you need more
power. But like, for example, imagine we deployed
a bunch of these glasses and they had the laser
filters built in from the start. Now imagine
that China shifts their laser frequencies 10
nanometers so that it bypasses that filter. Imagine
if I had to just replace all my AR glasses. That's
not acceptable, right? Right. So everything on
this system is totally modular. So what would
happen is if they shifted their laser weapons,
we would just give people a new mission shield.
Now they're all set. That mission shield comes
off very easy, though. So this comes – look,
I got to admit. These are primarily for showing
off to the army. Got it. So it'll somehow or
another secure into place. It's actually still
going to be magnets. It's just going to be a
lot more force to remove. I'm wondering how much
I should get into the movie magic here. So look,
I'll get a little bit into it. I'm mostly an
engineer. I mostly build stuff. But a big part
of what I do is understanding what magicians
think. when they are drawing attention to things,
when they have patter, when you're going through
a demo of something to somebody. Like, I used
to demo the Oculus Rift to thousands of people
a year. High -powered executives, government.
CEOs of major game companies, people we were
trying to hire. And you have to develop a pattern
of how you talk about stuff. And you need to
be able to go in any direction. If somebody says,
well, what about this? You need to be able to
show them that feature. You need to be ready
for how you show the feature. I need to be intimately
familiar with every part of it. The reason that
the magnets are so weak on this is because we
show this to people who are weak. I'm not kidding.
Because you're not swapping this as you're running
around, right? So in the real one, you can have
where you're like, and it busts off. But imagine
this. Imagine we're sitting in a demo room, and
then you hand this to either a member of the
press or even, let's say, a member of the armed
forces. And I say, here you go. And your name
is Ashley. Take that, Ashley. Pull it off. And
you're, uh, uh, uh, uh. That's the problem like
because you need some decent fake you see those
tabs on the end. Yeah, like the protrusions Yeah,
that's to make it easier for your fingers to
grab when you have way more force There are people
who have really weak fingers. They don't really
know how to grab stuff and then It's actually
the same thing with I understand So I'm showing
you a little bit of the the movie the movie magic
behind behind how I think these if you want to
take This you can put it on. This is an actual
weighted helmet. We've developed a bunch of novel
technology makes work here Oh, yeah, it actually
fits on you. Oh, here, your little wrap, your
chin straps are wrapped around. Yeah, just, sorry,
I wrapped it around before you even had it. Yep,
there you go. But, yeah, if you're familiar with
walkers, very, very similar to what we do on
the hearing enhancement side. It's just a world
even beyond that. Is it too tight or you got
it? And then this snaps. Oh, yeah. How's the
snap? So here, I might have to come around. There's
a little bit of a trick that you learn it. What
it does is it goes in and then you're going to
push it up and back diagonally. Oh, you did it.
There you go. I figured it out. I'm so glad.
See, that's just how intuitive it is. Yeah. Very.
And the cool thing about this is you don't have
these like mounts now that are snagging you.
Here, well, you got to put on the glasses too.
Oh, yeah. There you go. You don't have the mounts
that are snagging you. You don't like, have you
ever, you've used night vision? I have. I mean,
it's just. You have this big, giant unicorn horn,
this thing pounding on your face. Also, it's
very unbalanced. Weight that's out here is torquing
your neck continuously. And it's annoying when
you're standing in place. But if you, let's say,
hit a pothole in a Humvee with a big weight on
the end of a lever, you destroy your neck. I
think it's 20. Oh, my God. That can't even be
right. I want to say, I want, I need to look
this up. It might be. Is it $200 million for
the Air Force? I want to say it's $20 billion
that the DoD spends on neck injuries. Whoa. Primarily
through the VA, right? There's so many neck injuries
that occur from spinal compression, people getting
their heads whipped around. That's why helmets
need to be extremely lightweight, tightly integrated,
no snag hazards. It's important that you not
have a big, giant, bulky thing where I'm going
through a doorway and it gets on there and all
of a sudden I go, ah! at a weird angle and I'm
trying to run through a room. Or like someone's
turning and part of their rifle, they're right
up on me and it snags on my helmet and pulls
me. You've probably seen a lot of people put
like big battery packs for their night vision
back here. Same thing. It creates a huge snag
as you're sliding down something or sliding over
an edge. You clear it and then the back of your
head hits that fence and you go boom. What's
the battery power of something like that? Okay.
So this has a tiny battery pack on it. This has
30 minutes of battery life. So what is the lithium
ion capacity? Is it lithium ion? Is it like a
cell phone battery? So the battery on here is
actually, the battery that is in here is basically
an emergency reserve. It is not intended to power
it most of the time. It is a primary cell chemistry
that won't burst into flames. It's basically
one time use. So think of it like an emergency
battery that runs it when your helmet is disconnected
from the main battery. The main battery. Is this.
So, you ever used ballistic plates before? Yes.
So, this is a standard geometry, sappy geometry
plate. This is good for rucking. Exactly. So,
the cool thing about this is it's a combination
battery, computer, and ballistic plate. And so,
here's the craziest part about this. Normally,
you would wear a plate. And then you would have
to wear a battery and a computer. That's how
everyone's always done heads -up displays before.
And I realize that's crazy because you need that
space for other stuff, right? You want to be
carrying ammo. You want to be carrying equipment.
You want to be carrying grenades or admin stuff.
You can't use your most valuable real estate
to just carry a battery brick. So what's in here
is a battery technology that is an electrolyte
-free, solid -state ceramic battery. ceramic
batteries are not as high energy density as in
terms of like they don't have they don't have
as much energy per pound as the very very best
like let's say car electric batteries but they're
pretty good ballistic material and so what i
realized is that you instead of having the weight
of a ballistic plate and then the weight of a
battery on top you should combine those two functions
you should make your battery part of your ballistic
material stack up so that Like, is it the best
ballistic material in the world? No. Is it the
best battery material in the world? No. But you
can have enough of it that it's better than either
of those things working separately. If I were
to try to make a system that was a normal armor
plate and then also this much battery. So like,
you notice we actually got all the power actually
labeled right here. So this is 900 watt hour
battery. If we were to have a plate and then
a battery, it would be like a plate this big
and then like another big battery on top. By
combining the two, I've made it where I've eliminated
something like 10 pounds from the soldier's ruck,
which is a huge deal because that's weight I
can either keep out of his ruck or I can... Or
I could just put more shit into it. Of course,
what all my buddies in the army tell me is, Palmer,
don't let them take those 10 pounds and give
me 10 pounds more shit. These guys are already
carrying an insane amount of stuff. This is only
the start. We're building a bunch of other augments
that combine multiple systems into one thing.
In fact, this has also got a bunch of radio hardware
in it as well. So if you can replace a radio
and your batteries and your ballistics and your
onboard computer all in one thing. That's pretty
cool. But I want to keep doing that. Dude, this
is all so cool. In general, I would recommend
using this as your rear plate, not your front
plate. So if you've got a rear and a front, the
rear is probably the one that you want to put
this in. Because if you do get shot in the plate,
you're more likely to get shot in the front than
the back. And you don't want to get shot, and
then you lose all of your energy to run all of
your sensors and everything else. And if you
get shot with a plate, it's possible to... take
that plate and swap it with a fresh one. I mean,
look, you're the world's biggest badass if you're
able to do that in a firefight. I don't think
most people are bad enough to, you know, take
a hit right in the chest and then pull out their
plate and slap another one in, but it does happen.
And so we're generally recommending that people
use this as the rear plate to make it less likely
to get shot, but fully capable of operating.
in front plate service. This is amazing stuff,
man. Dude, I love my job. I get to work with
just the coolest technology on the bleeding edge
of all this. And the best part is that the gains,
it's not so much in... Some people, they see
these gains and they get to make money off of
it. But I do this and I get to have end users
telling me, Palmer, this is how you saved our
unit's life. Palmer, this is how your technology
protected our base. Palmer... People would be
dead in this particular building if you had not
developed the technology that you did. That is
the most rewarding thing that you can do. At
least the most rewarding thing that I've ever
done. It's a really cool set of problems. And
I highly encourage people who are really smart
to look at doing this stuff because some people,
they say, oh, I don't want to work on weapons.
You know, it's ethically fraught. And the point
I make to them is that this is, whether you like
it or not, we need some formal weapons, right?
We're not going to disarm the entire world. There
are bad guys out there. We need to have something.
And if you are worried about the ethics of weapons,
it's actually even more important that you work
on them because there's no moral high ground
in outsourcing that work to people who are less
ethical and less competent than you. If you think
you're a competent person and you think you're
an ethical person, you almost have a responsibility
to care about these and arguably to work on them.
So that's the way that I look at it. It's cool
as fuck. I'm glad you're making it, man. And
I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm really
glad we did this. This is a lot of fun. So much
fun. I've got to get you out sometime. I would
love to. To the range, because we've got a test
range. We'll hook that up. We'll give you a rifle.
You'll be able to mark targets. Let's fucking
go. Let's do it. Let's do it. Thank you very
much. Thank you. It was really fun. Thanks for
being here. All right. Bye, everybody.