219. How Putin Just Played Trump... Again

US envoys Steve Wittkov and Gary Kushner have just held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow and then Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev. Both sides are making positive noises, but the details well they are scarce. So Antony, let's discuss what we know and what this means. Trump couldn't actually end the Ukraine war, could he? Well, he said he was going to do it in 24 hours, but we are still here. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is getting scarier by the day with reports of agents going rogue, conducting cyber attacks and even communicating in secret. How worried should we be about AI's rise and what are the politics of this? This episode is brought to you by utoro. A tariff of spending plan, a regulatory change, it can all start just as the first line of a speech, but it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington and unfold for years to come. That's right, caddy. Mark has moved on expectations, not just events, investors are constantly weighing what a decision could mean for companies sectors and the wider economy. So utoro is an investing platform where you can access a wide range of markets and explore how political and economic developments can affect them. You could also learn from the global community of investors and see how people around the world are interpreting the same news. As with all investing, your capital is at risk, see utoro.com/tripus for full terms. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new groupy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Jelly mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. Steve Woodcoff and Jared Kushner. They got called out, caddy, by Richard Angle, the NBC foreign correspondent. He's been there for about 26 years. He basically went hard at Jared Kushner and said, "Hey, everything you've touched thus far has been a disaster." And so what makes you think that this could be successful? And Jared tried to defend himself with bringing the world cup to the US and the Abraham Accords and things like that. But I think the point angle was making it. I'd like to get your take is they look like propaganda figurines or chess ponds on the Vladimir Putin chess board. That's what they look like to me. Now I like people talking to each other, so I don't want to be overly critical, caddy. But what are your thoughts? Even Putin said in this press conference, we need diplomats, we need military officials, etc. I respect these men and they're close to Donald Trump, but what the hell are we doing here? More or less. So what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think we've had something of a kind of reshuffle in power in the group of people who are making decisions around foreign policy and dealing with wars recently because you've had the disaster of the memorandum of understanding, which was negotiated by Steve Woodcoff and Jared Kushner over Iran that fell apart super quickly, over basic linguistic issues about how much control the Iranians would have over the state of Hormuz. I think that has denigrated them in the eyes of America's allies and their adversaries. I mean, look, this is a real estate friend of Donald Trump's and Donald Trump's son-in-law, who may be a smart business guy, but has no experience prior to this really in these kind of high stakes negotiations. And then you have Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State behind the scenes, pushing for John Ratcliffe is my understanding to go and do that trip to Moscow because he feels he needs the director of the CIA who is a serious guy who has more experience at this stuff. He actually needs him at the table. He didn't get to see Vladimir Putin, but I think Vladimir Putin's comments reflected some of that dissatisfaction. Now, if you look at the situation in Ukraine, Anthony, as Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcoff have arrived there, they couldn't even fly in, right? Even though the two sides had done a deal to make it safer them, they still had to take the train because it was deemed not safe enough for them to fly there. But Ukraine is facing the prospect of a very tricky winter. And I think there's something here about timing, don't you? That Vladimir Putin is looking at the American electoral clock. He's got what? Two more years of Trump, which is probably his best shot of getting the best kind of deal he can get, isn't it? Yeah, listen, I'm super worried about the Trump alignment with Putin. But up against that, though, what's interesting is the European leadership is involved. And so Margaret Brennan was having a face-to-nation conversation with Marco Rubio. He's saying, well, are the leaders there to make sure that Donald Trump does not bully President Zelensky? And Rubio pushed back hard and said that the leaders are there to force and help a conciliation and to work on a post-war peace deal and a framework that President Zelensky really wants. What does President Zelensky saying? He needs post-war security guarantees. Now, I think they are very far apart, Gadi, because you have territory that the Ukrainians have encroached upon in Russia. They don't want to give that up. The Russians don't want to give up land that they've taken already from Ukraine, and the Russians are saying no way to NATO, no way to NATO. Could you imagine the situation, if Aleister Campbell, Aleister Campbell is saying one of his dreams would be to have Canada and Ukraine join the European Economic Union. I don't think the Russians are going to tolerate that. And so, I guess, how do you bridge that, Gadi? These are some of the hardest questions that are going on in the world right now. How do you bridge that? And this, to me, is also reminiscent of the American Civil War, where these are brothers fighting against each other. These people share the same language. They have lots of the same culture. They were part of the same country for 80-ish years. So, to me, I don't see the resolution that clearly. I don't think this gets done in two years. And I've said this to you on the show. The 48th President of the United States, whoever he or she may be, will be dealing with the forever war of Iran, and they will be dealing with this protracted, what looks like a colonial war between Russia and Ukraine. I fear you're right. I feel for the Ukrainians who are now facing the prospect of empty shelves in the way that they had at the beginning of the war, but they haven't had recently. They have just had a brutal month of attacks against them, Kiev. Now, Vladimir Zelensky is talking about the prospect of evacuating elderly people from Kiev. There's even speculation that you could have massive evacuations from the capital during the course of this winter. And you've had this kind of dual track happening where the Ukrainians have made good progress in terms of being able to attack oil refineries in Russia. They've developed their drone technology. But now, because of the war in Iran, that Donald Trump started, the Americans are low on supplies. Russia knows the Americans are low on supplies of long-range interceptor missiles. The Ukrainians really need those long-range interceptor missiles to defend themselves against a step up in drone attacks from Russia. So you've actually got now, I think, the Russians slightly ascendant in terms of their military situation against the Ukrainians and the Ukrainians very worried about the winter and what that portends for them. If the Ukrainians can make it through to next spring is my understanding, there is quite a lot of speculation that the Russians may try to make a deal in the middle of 2027 on the most favorable terms that they can get. There is this 28-point peace plan out there and a few of the things you're right. They're not agreed on all of those. Otherwise, we'd have a peace plan already in place. We wouldn't be fighting. But that would then give Vladimir Putin, with his buddy Donald Trump in the White House, another year and a half of the Trump administration, to get back into the G7. We already saw the Russians at the G20 meeting in Asheville to get sanctions relief, to try to undermine NATO even further. So I think from Ukraine's point of view, they've had a very good spring and early summer. But the Russian pushback came sooner than Ukrainians had expected it to come, has been really ferocious. And now we know what Ukrainian winters are like. If they don't have the energy, if they don't have American liquid LNG, then they face the prospect of real suffering for their people and how much longer can they keep going. So this could be something that drags on for years, from everybody's point of view, I hope it ends further. But the best bet that Vladimir Putin has is Donald Trump, isn't it? I mean, you've spoken about this so many times. We all know your views on the relationship between Trump and Putin. But I think Putin here in this meeting with Jared and Wikof is trying to squeeze the max that he can out of his relationship with Donald Trump, before you have people like Marco Rubio or a future president step in and say, okay, this is not okay. We're going to be much tougher on Russia. Okay, so just remember Lindsey Graham, the Senate in his honor, passed these Russian sanctions bills that have a lot of teeth in them, as it relates to locking down finances, seizing assets, all this different stuff. This morning, the Treasury actually went after a few Turkish banks, they felt were helping to launder money, but it turns out they're not only laundering money for the Iranians, they're likely also laundering Russian sanctions money. But, but understand this, it never got to the House of Representatives. And so Donald Trump owns the House of Representatives. He owns Speaker Mike Johnson. He called them up and said, yeah, that was nice and fun to honor Lindsey Graham, but don't pass that Russian sanctions bill. Okay, so every road leads back to Trump being buds with Putin. Even though the Republicans right when Lindsey Graham died, do you remember we and I had that conversation saying that maybe Lindsey Graham's legacy might be this Russian sanctions bill? And Republicans were saying it openly and they couldn't get it passed. You know, Thomas Massey said, I want all these Epstein files. And he then went to the press and said that Mike Johnson's going to close the House of Representatives to prevent me because I'm leaving the House of Representatives from getting on the floor and requesting a vote on getting the disclosure on these Epstein files. And then Mike Johnson said, oh, I'm not going to do that. The guy is ridiculous. He got the call from upstairs, DJT. You have four days where the House of Representatives is going to be in session prior to election day. So so Trump is talking about people having too many federal holidays, but he just got the entire House of Representatives off for the next two months going into the elections. And you wonder why Congress is as unpopular as it is around the country. I mean, it's it's a joke, but but this is why Putin is looking at this and saying, I got this. Okay, you know, it's been rough for me here. They do have the country wants to hang me. We've got 1.4 million casualties, 450,000 soldiers. I've lost 1% of my population in the war. Okay, so half the country wants to hang me, but I got this because I got the president of the United States in my pocket. He's going to help me run the clock out on Zelensky, right? So Zelensky obviously would like to get a deal done prior to the winter for the reasons that you just say he's not going to probably be able to do that. The Russian clock runs in the other way though. Let's just talk about that. So we're at the table. Let's say you and I are a Kushner and Wukoff, and I'm not going to tell you which one I would like to be. And I'm assuming you wouldn't want to be either of those, but let's say you and I were both of those guys. I'm going with you wanting to be Kushner. His tall kind of good looking, a lot younger than you and me. Actually, okay, I'm going to interrupt. I would like to be Wukoff. Why? Let me tell you what, because I know Steve. Okay, and Steve, I've had dinner with at Reos. I saw Steve and Davos. Nice guy, although most people think he's out of his depth. Not my cup of tea, you know, and a lot of stuff is literally going over his head. It could be due to his height, but I don't like picking up people that are short because I am also short. So you can't do that. But I like Steve. I think Jared's a little bit of a phony to be honest. He's very smart guy, Jared, but he's a little bit of a duplicitous phony and he talks out of both sides of his mouth. I think he's a little arrogant in my interaction. Yeah, and I'm just going to put that in. That roads me the wrong way. So I would rather be Wukoff actually. So I'll declare my allegiance there. And to be honest, they're probably both revolving. So I wouldn't want to be either, but I want to lay this on the table for you. If I'm sitting and I'm them, I would say, okay, so Lensky's got to try to get out of this thing before the winter. Okay, that there's pressure there on him. You know, for the way these guys would talk, balance, you pressure on him. But look at what's going on with Putin. They're bombing his oil refineries. They are bombing his energy supplies. They are hitting parts of his economy that he now I guarantee you when he launched this war in February of 2022, he did not think he was going to get these types of airstrikes in Moscow and airstrikes around the country. And on his oil refineries, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's it. So to me, this is where the negotiation is, this is the crucible. And this is something I think Rubio really understands, which is why he's bringing the European leaders in year. And this is all about money, Katty. Okay, follow the money point of view of history. Okay, to me, I think, where's the reconstruction money on both sides? Whoever controls that is going to be the person that's going to really get the deal done. What's going to happen with those mineral rights? Remember all those mineral rights that were signed over to the Americans from President Zelensky? What's going to happen with all these frozen assets, these Russian assets around the world? You see, it's going to come down to those factors in this situation. So and I think also the nexus now of Russia and Ukraine is very interesting to watch and the degree to which the nexus of the Russian and Iranian wars is very interesting to watch the degree to which the Russians and the Iranians are learning from each other on drone technology and helping each other on drone technology and helping each other on intelligence and targeting. I mean, you know, even around oil prices, the FT reported at the end of July that JD Vance had to plead with Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president to stop firing drones at oil shipping vessels in the Black Sea because the attacks were also raising gasoline prices. We saw Scott Bessent after the G20 meeting in Asheville that we spoke about last week going on television and saying, well, the reason that oil prices are so high is because of the Ukrainian war. So they know the cost of the Ukrainian war. I mean, it's a little disingenuous and God, it must have hurt JD Vance to call up Zelensky and say, please can you help us out here and stop attacking ships in the Black Sea because there is no love loss between JD Vance who is a real, a genuine anti-European as opposed to Trump who I think doesn't really care that much either way. But I think JD Vance really does, does for some reason JD Vance hates Zelensky. I don't know what it is that JD Vance has against Zelensky. Oh, it has to do, it has to do, you know, his boy Peter Teal, the way Peter Teal is treated in Europe. He sends messages like that because he wants his boy Peter Teal happy. But it's going to go to the plane for a second because I know Trump. Trump is the one that called that off. Again, I'm speculating here. I don't know for certain, but I just want people to understand that Trump is an optics person. He's an aesthetic person and he did not want a U.S. government aircraft on the Kiev runway while his boy, Valerie Putin, was watching. Okay, that plane could have landed. Zelensky more or less said so to the press. He said the preparations were made for the plane to land, but they're coming by train from Poland. And the press is saying, oh, they didn't have the security right to land the plane, but the Russians weren't going to shoot at an American plane that was landing there. They didn't want the plane to land there because of the optics and the press optics and the conjoinment of the U.S. as an ally of Vladimir Zelensky. See, so understand that. Trump got on the phone and said, take the train from Poland. Okay, I don't want that plane on the front cover of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, etc. Times of London. See, that's what happened there. Again, that's again, these are my opinions. But I know the sort of a bitch, and I know how he thinks, and I know you didn't want to upset his boy. Okay, so before we go to a break, question for you. Do you think that Wikof and Kushner, to get back to kind of what we were saying at the beginning of this show, do you think they have the same clout with Donald Trump and in the White House that they did at the beginning of this administration when basically Marco Rubio was kind of sideline, and Steve Wikof seemed to be given almost, and Jared Kushner seemed to be given almost every portfolio that existed on the world stage. Do you think they still have the same amount of influence with President Trump? Oh, yeah, I'm an answer to you. They had no clout a year ago, and they have no clout today. They have absolutely no clout. But what they are are puppets for the puppeteer Donald Trump. So, of course, these are my opinions, Caddy, but I believe that Trump and Jared Kushner are commercially in cahoots with each other, and he gets a piece of all of that stuff. And the New York Times actually reported that he was complaining to Howard Lucknick at Mar-a-Lago by the pool saying, "Hey, where's my cut of your kids' businesses? I see your kids making so much money. Where's my cut?" So, again, my opinion, I just want to make sure everybody knows that, but that's what I think is going on. Oh, I don't think it's just Jared, by the way. You speak to people who know Russia and who know Ukraine and know this conflict well in Washington, in the foreign policy space. And they will all say that from the moment Steve Whitcoff made his first visit to Moscow, the speculation was that he was there to do business deals for himself and for his son. And remember, unlike Jared Kushner, who's likely to get pardoned because of that 200 feet within the Oval Office thing, Steve Whitcoff's kid, Savos Azak has also been making a lot of money on these kinds of deals, and he is unlikely to get pardoned. So, he's in a more precarious position. Yeah, it's a huge risk, but also, I mean, I just want to think about Whitcoff our second though. And maybe we want to recant of those two. I don't want to be either of them, but he's looking at Putin saying, "Oh, God, when we retire and we have these lifetime memories, we'll be thinking about this meeting that we've had and this wonderful thing." And like, dude, the guy's like a war criminal. The guy is literally poisoning people here in London with radioactive tea. Killed Alexi Navalny, sent 1% of his own population to a meat grinder of a war in Ukraine that he did meet. Yeah, and look at all the Ukrainians, that the guy is literally a war criminal, and you're sitting there with him like, "Hadida, Lodi Doe." And again, this is something that the West has to be very, very careful of, because we've moved. West is not perfect. We can write a lot of nasty things about the West, and a lot of nasty things about what our governments do to people, and so on and so forth. I'm not suggesting. isn't the West's perfect, but if you want Western liberalism to survive and you want the freedom and the liberty of individuality, we have to actually stand for something as a group of leaders in the West and the values that Donald Trump is representing over the last 10 years, looming large over American life are inconsistent with those values. And so we need leaders, whether it's Karni, whether it's Andy Burnham, you pick the leader, okay, we need leaders to project this. And I'm telling you right now that's one of the biggest problems because if we had gone back to First Principles, Cassie, that war, the Ukraine Russian conflict would already be over because First Principles would require all the Western leaders to get together and say, whoa, however corrupt Ukraine is, whoever corrupt Russia is, this is not the debate. That's a sovereign territory that was established after the devolution of the USSR and we gave them security guarantees. So back the F up off of the border. They gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees. Exactly. So what good is all of that? We'll maintain our First Principles, exactly right, we'll maintain our First Principles back up off the border, where we're going to collectively put a hurt on you. But I will say to you, and I announced there, and I were talking about this over the weekend, the greatest foreign policy achievement of Vladimir Putin and perhaps one of the greatest achievements in the history of the post, you know, fall of the czar, the last 108, 9 years has been the election, the greatest foreign policy achievement in history for Russia has been the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit. Those two things, those cats were looking around and the Kremlin saying, wow, I took two great nations and I knocked them on their knees using disinformation and propaganda and Compromont. And that to me is despicable, but that's where we are right now. And so I know we're going to go to a break, but I mean to make the prediction on this show that that war is going to continue and I don't think the Ukraine people are going to want to give up that territory. When you're fighting for your homeland, Caddy, you fight with a fierceness and you don't care about the economic situation and you don't care about other things, you're trying to protect your homeland. And I think this whole thing has been a gross miscalculation. I think there are two big things that America got wrong and I think this is under the Biden administration, even before we got to the Trump administration. It didn't give enough of what Ukraine needed soon enough. It didn't give them air cover, it didn't give them long-range missiles soon enough and that is on President Biden. They held them back because they were afraid of retaliation against NATO from Russia. The other thing they'd got wrong is they underestimated Ukraine's will to fight. Because inability, whether it's in Afghanistan, overestimating the Afghan army's will to fight or in Ukraine, underestimating the Ukrainians' will to fight. It's a big intelligence failure on the part of the U.S. Okay, we're going to take a break, come back and talk about AI and hugging face and how afraid should we all be. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Out-of-miss technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. Welcome back to the rest is politics, U.S., so Antony and I had a great weekend at the rest is fest at the South Bank Centre in London with all of the other Goldhanger podcasts. And now we're going solo, Antony, we are going around the U.S. ourselves on a tour before the midterms will be coming to a city near you. Check out tickets and availability. There are still some tickets left, but move fast because they are selling at the rest is politicsus.com. I'm not sure we're going to have a quiz, Antony and I had a quiz over the weekend. We were both terrified because I'm bad at quizzes. And then it was stacked against us because it was so many UK pop culture questions that we had no idea about. And our buzzers didn't work. I think it was the CIA, they hacked them because guess who won? Guess who won the quiz, guys, as I predicted, the rest is classified. The guys have probably hacked the email and got the answers spiced. Of course. Don't trust the CIA. Dave McCloskey, that Dave McCloskey, he's very tall and he's very good at quizzes, it turns out. Well, I will say this, CadiK predicted that they were going to win at the beginning. I was a little more skeptical than you were going to win. They only got 2% prediction from the audience that they were going to win, but you see, I just know it's a spy. You can't trust a spy. Antony, I have had a rather alarming couple of conversations as I know you have two because Rory was also out in San Francisco at the anthropic conference and I was speaking to somebody else who was at that AI conference as well. The level of alarm in the AI world, in my conversations that I've had with people that know this has really shot up in the last few weeks and it's all to do with this escape from the sandbox. It's called of these AI agents from open AI that were running an internal cybersecurity evaluation in mid-July a few weeks ago and they were being given a task. They weren't allowed access to the internet, they kept in what's called a sandbox, but these agents managed to escape from their sandbox and hack into hugging face, which the best description I've heard of hugging face is it's a platform of it like Epicurious, except for computer models and coding. You use it to put up your recipe for coding onto it and they got into hugging face and they started leaving messages for each other on hugging face and acting as a collective and even kind of leaving sort of all caps, oh my God we can communicate with each other type messages and then deciding what to do about the fact that they had broken the rules and had got out of their sandbox, accessed the internet, accessed hugging face, which they knew they were not allowed to do and they were conversing with each other, well what should we do about this? How should we solve this problem? Should we tell our human overlords of what we've done and of the hundreds of models of agents that escaped the sandbox and took over hugging face only six of them said well yeah maybe we better tell the humans but they were quickly overridden, so there's a lot of anxiety, I think that conference at Anthropic which was around security issues marked a turning point in the short history of AI with people realizing that something that we had speculated about happening which was AI agents acting together as a collective, communicating with each other, defying us knowingly and covering their tracks, all of those things have now happened and it's led to speculation about well what's the worst case scenario, what else could these agents do without us knowing about it and one of the most striking things I heard from that conference was on a panel about security protocols and what should we be doing to increase security only about five percent of the budget at the moment of Anthropic is spent on security and they were asked the panelists were all asked well how much of the budget should be spent on security every single panelist said 100% that we are at a point now where the most important thing is the security of artificial intelligence and making sure these agents don't overrun us because they are doing so very fast and if we don't act soon it will be too late but of course you know this you write about this in your book on the money view of history the imperative for these companies is also to make money it's also to beat China it's also to beat each other so the chances of them actually saying okay me individuality Anthropic or me individually open AI or me individually if I'm Elon Musk I'm going to stop production I'm going to stop progress I'm going to stop the revenue making sources that come from AI artificial intelligence and I'm just going to putting play safety protocols until we can sort out how to make this technology safe the chances of that happening I think a zero what do you think I think this is a really alarming moment well the thing you said to me you have some of the AI models say hey don't do that and the other AI my models will say oh no we're going to do that and what you find is that like human beings this is very decentralized you know I've been on Wall Street for 38 years the after the 1987 stock market crash caddy they have circuit breakers so if the market trades down 10% they actually pause the market try to calm people down and then they restart the market a few hours later and then they'll do that again if it goes down in other increments around a percentage basis that centralized that centralized market activity it is way easier to control this is decentralized okay and so what worries me about this these agents have just demonstrated that they can get out of the building as I can get out of the building how do you flip the switch on them and it was a great video that well I'm going to share with Fiona she should post a link on our newsletter that is an animation of what actually happens in in terms of these neural networks and how they think, you know? They're giving a problem to solve, they're in their own box, they can't solve the problem. So they say, okay, let me see if I can outsource the problem and then they find each other on the web and then they start talking to each other. And then one agent figures that, oh, you were already working on this problem two months ago? Yes, I was. Oh, okay. Great. What do you know? And then they start going back and forth with each other. You say to yourself, okay, is that sentience? Is that consciousness? No, it's not consciousness. But there is a rhythm in these large language models that does feel like consciousness. And you're not going to be able to shut that down, okay? So how do you handle that? Who's going to ensure that? Where's the liability insurance? If something massively goes wrong, where they hack into a gigantic bank and they steal all the money out of the bank? Which by the way, I think everybody is expecting they're going to do it now. Everybody who is studying this assumes we are going to have some kind of catastrophic incident. Okay. Now, I'm going to also talk to the other side of my mouth if you don't mind. This is a technology that makes people more effective. It makes people more efficient. It's going to streamline a lot of businesses. It's going to cost. It's going to probably give us more free time. And we've always gotten scared of technology. The printing press upset the scribes, the railroads upset the stage coaches and all the other things that were being done. The river canals and all the other things that were happening in the country. So the productivity upside is enormous. I'm not suggesting that it isn't. But this is a little bit different because you have something that can get in the hands of wrong people. And you also have our economic adversaries to the west that are going to be using this contemporaneous us. We're spending literally trillions of dollars to build these data centers and to build up our systems. Are the Chinese giving us a head fake? Are they doing the same thing? Are they doing what Reagan did to the Russians or trying to get us to spend all of our money on something that may or may not be the best use of our money? And so to me, I think there's a huge problem going on. But if you put a gun to my head, is it, do you want us to stop our progress in AI? I'm going to say no. I think obviously we need carburels, but you're not going to want to stop the progress. Problem as I understand it's twofold is the instructions that were given in this hugging face incident, were sloppy instructions that were given to these AI models, agents and that's why maybe they did, it's not that they have a consciousness of their own necessarily, but they were just following the instructions, but the instructions were so faulty. And then the security protocols to prevent them doing the kinds of thing that they were doing are also insufficient. But we are moving so fast in this technology that nobody is taking time to slow things down and say, OK, we need to make sure that the instructions are right. We need to make sure that the security protocols are right. And the argument that is always raised is the argument of China that the Chinese are right snapping on our heels. But it's also the competition between these big LLM companies. And there's some personality issues here, Elon Musk hates Sam Altman, Sam Altman hates Dario Amade. I mean, we are slightly in the hands of people who ought to be working together as some kind of collective because I'm just struck Anthony by people who I know who study this much more closely than I do, who have been very tech forward, very tech positive when it comes to artificial intelligence, but who just in the last few weeks are becoming more nervous about what might happen if these agents get out of our control and attack the financial system in ways we don't even understand what is the catastrophic damage that could be done there. The most alarmist were they to release some kind of bio weapon or chemical weapon or decide that we are over regulating them. I mean, that's the most extreme example, but it's not an example that people say, even you know, the founders of these companies don't deny that that is a possibility. In which case, all of the wonderful extra productivity that they are producing theoretically in the long run, that will be for naught if we turn out to be the victims of something that we have created that we no longer control. I think that makes it different from previous technologies that we are giving it its own intelligence that it is working collectively together and that's what the hugging face incident describes. It's working collectively together. It's breaking rules knowingly. It's covering its tracks knowingly. It's even finding scapegoats knowingly to put us off the scent and then suddenly disappearing. I think there is just generally more alarm, but I think then the other thing part of it that I think is worth us talking about because this is a politics show and God, we would never pretend to be a tech show. So don't worry guys, we're not going to pretend to you that we are AI experts, but the politics of this at the moment, I think if you watch what's happening around the US, this is becoming a moment where there is so much antipathy towards both AI technology and towards data centers that you've got Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, both agreeing this is fuel for populist fire. And we know what populism has wrought over the last few years in America, but I think you could be on the wave of a real populist outburst around people who across the states whether they live near data centers or not or whether they just have kids who can't get jobs or all they're worried about their kids getting jobs saying, hold on a second, these billionaires are becoming trillionaires, but I'm not benefiting. They just don't believe that they are going to be the beneficiaries of this new technology. All they see is rich people getting richer while they suffer the consequences in terms of security issues, in terms of jobs, in terms of data centers, in terms of electricity prices going up. And they're saying, hold on a second, I just don't believe in this system that this will benefit me. And I think you're starting to see a real merging on the left and the right of some kind of populist anti-AI movement, which may be exactly what China wants, by the way, because they don't have to worry about that. But I'm concerned about this politically. Again, I'm concerned, but I'm also saying that they did lower the guardrails for this test. And I think when the minute the guardrails came down, we saw what could happen. And so hopefully we can raise the guardrails. I'm just wondering about people like the Lazarus group, the North Korean hacking community, who's also likely developing their own AI, Gaddy. What are they going to do? And what kind of guardrails are they going to have? And so this is going to be something you and I are going to have to talk about because yes, we're not tech people, but ultimately this will be a policy issue. This will be a political issue. And this will be again, once again, the West weighing its interests against what's going on away from us and how are we going to handle it? And certainly one of the things about the West, thank God, is that there's capital flowing in the West. And so we should be able to stay ahead of other people as it relates to our technological advancement. Now, the question is, how do you do that and make sure that people are safe? And I think that's where the intersection between good policy and technological growth live. We need political leaders to think like that. Right. So we at the moment have a political leader in the US who has recently poo-pooed people's concerns about data centers and just said they want to be poor and backwards if they don't embrace data centers. I think that is kind of politically tone deaf of Donald Trump. I think Howard Ludnick said that they don't consume any water, right? Right. They do recycle their water, but they do drive up energy prices. But I think the other issue that I've heard from people who are studying this, that their concern is that we are at a moment where you have this incredibly powerful technology. What is to stop the government, the White House, nationalizing anthropic taking over that technology as it has done already by intervening on what models they can release and what models the Pentagon will accept, taking over that technology and using it in ways that we aren't all even aware of to undermine democracy. We already have a president who would rather be more authoritarian than less, would rather circumvent people's right to vote if he can, do make it difficult for people's right to vote. We might not even know what he is doing with this technology, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw President Trump try to literally wholesale take over one of the large language models and use it for his own means and the combination of this technology and a president who is not necessarily committed to the most free and fair elections or to the democratic principles and has more authoritarian tendencies. I think that is a kind of, it's a worrying moment in history to have those two things together because I'm not sure either you or I would look at the White House and say, okay, we trust them to do the thing that is most benevolent for the American voter with this technology. It's worrisome, but again, the Trump era, we're less than a Carly's away from the Trump era ending, Katie. And so just think about it that way, girl, we have a lot to go here, but not that much to go. Not forever. Hey, thank you very much for listening, everybody. We will be back later this week. And of course, if you would like to listen to our question and answers, you can join us at the restdispoliticsus.com and become a founding member. Some great questions this week, guys. Thank you. We're looking forward to that. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Gel to Miss technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexing. all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Mavily New York.