 fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on unusual time of day. Thursday, January 26th, it is 4 p.m. here in Austin, Texas. I figured you missed me, and we try to sneak in a show this afternoon. I've got a talk this evening, hopefully you guys are going to catch the talk on live stream on my channel at 6.30 Austin Times, the 7.30 East Coast time. Please join that live stream. You should have gotten an announcement of it if you subscribe to the show. It should be an interesting talk. Hopefully you'll enjoy it. And don't forget that you can continue to support Iran Book Show in spite of the fact that it is being live streams, and I won't see the super chat and I won't be able to answer your questions. You will be able to still use stickers and other things to support my activities more broadly. So if you like the talk, if you enjoy the live stream, please support it at tonight. 7.30 East Coast time. Join us. All right, today we're doing one of our news updates. So we'll do one today. I'm hoping I'll be able to do one first thing in the morning tomorrow. It'll be early for some of you, but I'm going to try it. It partially depends on a bunch of stuff scheduling wise for tomorrow, but we'll definitely try to do one at tomorrow morning early. So I will let you know in the morning how that is going. All right, let's jump in. Again, let's jump in with the fact that Trump has just been reinstated on Facebook and Instagram. So Meta has reinstated Trump after they dropped him together with Twitter when Twitter did in after January 16th, 2020. They dropped him as a threat to the American system of government and he has appealed that. He avoided I think appealing for all this time, but he has appealed that as you know, he's already been reinstated by by Twitter. And originally he said, I'm not going to tweet. I'm not going to Twitter. I'm going to use my truth network. I don't need Facebook. I don't need Twitter. But the reality is that he if he is running for president, he needs a larger platform that larger platform is now being supplied to him by both Twitter and Facebook. I don't think this is a surprise. I think that Facebook, I just don't think they have they have enough of what do you call it a backbone or enough of a justification in the face of him running for president to ban him from the platform during his run for president. They did, however, say that they would scrutinize his posts, that they would be quick to pull the trigger if if he violated the terms of service, that including if he started questioning the results of future elections, if they thought he was undermining the electoral process. So it's going to be, you know, it's going to make it more interesting. It's going to be interesting to see what Facebook actually does with it, lives up to that, whether it actually monitors him if he if it does land a penalizing Trump during an election period will, you know, you know, what will happen if they do that, what kind of backlash will they face then. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out for Facebook and for Twitter. And it's interesting to see if this helps them reverse some of their financial ills Facebook is facing real financial problems, real financial problems. So it's a significant decline in advertising primarily once Apple did not allow its app, the Facebook app, on the iPhone to track you. You got to you got to determine whether you allowed Facebook to track you or not. And yeah, so Facebook, this is a way to get more attention. You know, who knows. But I think it's I think it's more than that. I think it really is. They don't want to be portrayed as a barrier to democracy. They don't want to be portrayed as limiting the speech of a major presidential candidate, the candidate for the presidency of the United States. So we will see how that evolves. That is a major breaking story. And it is it is going to be interesting. All right, I know you're probably sick of hearing about tanks. I think I'm getting to the point of being sick of talking about tanks and probably getting to the limit of my knowledge in terms of talking about tanks. But as you know, right after my last show, the US approved the sending of Abrams tanks to Germany. And there's only one reason they approved this. Because if you look at the approval, they approve the sending of Abrams tanks. But these are not going to be out of Abrams inventory that the US holds. This is not going to be out of, if you will, existing supplies of Abrams tanks that the US holds. It is it is going to be new manufactured tanks. I think they've committed to 31. These are completely new manufactured tanks. The new manufactured tanks are going to have to be manufactured. So I would be shocked if I would be shocked if Ukraine actually got these tanks before, I don't know, I don't know, September, October of this year, potentially could easily slip into next year. Basically, the Abrams tanks are not going to make a difference, certainly not in any kind of spring offensive, certainly not in any kind of defensive move during the winter. The only reason the United States approved the selling of Abrams tanks to Ukraine is that that basically allowed the Germans cover to provide Ukraine with the Leopard tanks, which they had been hesitating to provide. They kept saying, well, only they'll approve the Leopard tanks if the Americans approve the Abrams tanks. In other words, they want more cover. They don't want to be out there on a limb. They don't want to be in a position where the Russians can say, even the Americans wouldn't sell the Ukrainian tanks. And you did, you nasty Germans. Germans are cowards, and they'd much rather be followers than leaders. And in this case, they followed the Americans. And the Americans basically said, all right, to hell with it, we'll give the Ukrainian tanks just so German tanks could be provided. There'll be a lot more German tanks in Ukraine than American tanks. Who knows if the American tanks will ever be delivered. But the German tanks are going to be delivered very, very soon. They're coming from existing inventory. The Russians are going to be delivered, not just from Germany, but they're going to be now the Germanies agree to deliver the tanks. They are going to lift the restrictions so that these tanks can come from other NATO countries. You will see some of the Baltic countries and Poland and potentially other countries supplying tanks. The British have already committed to supplying challenger tanks. I think the French are going to provide some of their tanks. I can't remember the name of the French tank. But generally, I think Ukraine, certainly by the end of the year, but even by the summer, will have substantial number of new tanks. To train tank crews on new tanks, I don't know. That's probably a six-week process. I can't imagine it's much more than that, maybe eight weeks. Mainly, if they're existing tankers, if they're tankers that have worked off of Russian tanks that Ukraine still has, hundreds of them, then basically they'd need training on the new technology and how to use the technology, laser sighting, guided missiles, and probably other NAV and navigation and other very advanced technologies that exist within modern tanks, which the Russians don't have. But other than that, driving a tank, shooting a tank, navigating a tank, all of that is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take that much to figure out. It's not that long. I think training is minuscule. Training is insignificant. The real issue is getting the tanks there. The tanks are indeed already in Poland. They just need to be delivered across the border to Ukraine. They need to pick up the Ukrainian colors and they're ready to go. One of the few men says the French tank is called Lecloch. Lecloch. Lecloch. I guess that's a good name for a tank, although it sounds, I don't know, doesn't sound like a good name for a tank. It's not muscular enough. Leopard is okay. Abrams. I don't know what about it. It sounds good. We used to just call them M1 tanks and the ones that were delivered to Israel in the 80s. Tanks continue to be a saga, but I think now that Ukraine is getting them and they're going to be deployed, I think the big issue now is going to be, as it always has been really, who's going to have the momentum coming out of the winter? That is, remember that Russia launched a war in February, which I thought was a terrible time to launch a war because it was just before all the ice was going to melt. I think it's still a terrible time to launch an offensive, but now that the Russians did it in February last year, it's quite possible they or the Ukrainians will do it again this year. I do expect, though, that the majority of the fighting and majority advancement will happen later in the year, but we will see. We will see. It could very well happen sooner rather than later. I do think the Ukrainians will wait until they have these tanks deployed before moving in any significant way on the offensive, and I just don't see the Russians having the capabilities to launch a major offensive. I mean, they can chip away at the Ukrainians. They can launch some offensive, some places. The only place I could see them really launching anything substantive would be if Belarus entered the fight and attack from the north. But again, for a variety of reasons, I don't think Belarus is going to enter this fight. We will see. A lot can happen between now and tomorrow. Never mind. All right. This is going to be a true news round up in the sense that we're going to go bam, bam, bam, and we're going to go very, very fast and do this. All right. If you remember, there was a story about the Fair Tax Act, and everybody got very excited. A lot of, I guess, free market types got very excited. There was a lot in my chat. Oh, Republicans are going to abolish the IRS. This is great. It's going to come to a vote on the House floor, and they're going to pass it. They're going to pass it. And I said many, many flaws to the excitement about that. There's zero to be excited. One, even if it passed, the Senate wouldn't pass the House. But even if it passed the House, because Republicans are majority, there's no way in hell it passes the Senate. Even if it passes the Senate, Biden would veto it, even if a veto could not be overturned. But the reality is that it won't pass the House. And the reality probably is that it's not even going to come to a floor vote in the House. That is, the House of Representatives will actually not vote on it. It'll get stuck in committee. It will not, because Republicans don't want to vote for it, and they don't want to vote against it. There's a lot of backlash against this tax that Democrats are making a heyday out of it. They're calling it a regressive tax, and it punishes the poor, helps the rich. They're playing into that. Republicans have no answer to that call. Yes, trickle down. The economy will do better, but they can't make a moral argument against the income tax. They can't make a moral argument against progressive taxes. So they have no way to defend this tax. They don't know what they're doing. They don't really have a clue about how to defend the fair tax act. So they're basically going to give in and I think that because they promised I'll take it to committee, it'll get stuck in committee. Even if it comes out of committee and it goes to a floor vote, it'll lose by a large margin. That is, I believe that at least 25%, if not more than that, of Republicans will vote against it. They're already on record for Republican votes against it. That would be enough to kill it, assuming all Democrats vote against it, but it's going to be a lot more than four. A lot of Republicans will vote against this. So it ain't happening. Sorry guys. I know a lot of you were very excited about the fair tax act. I mean, I wish it was possible to pass, but it's just, it's just not happening. You would have to have a true moral revolution in this country to actually get to the point of abolishing the IRS. And even then you would also, to get my support, you would also have to overturn what is it, the 14th amendment, the amendment that allows for the income tax. So we'll see. We'll see. But I'm pretty sure this is not even going to come to a vote. I think McCarthy realizes that it's a loser from the perspective of the party. You can't defend it. If you can't defend it, don't propose it. And they can't defend it. All right. Let's see. Yeah, I wonder if anyone says the Ukrainians are now also going to receive F-16s. They're at least asking for F-16s. Whether they receive F-16s or not, we'll see. F-16s are a lot more difficult to train them on. It'll take a lot longer to get them trained on F-16s. There are a number of NATO countries quite willing to give the Ukrainians F-16s. I still think it's more likely that the Ukrainians will get more MiG-29s from, I don't know, places like Slovakia and Bulgaria and Romania and maybe even Poland if Poland has any left. And that the United States ultimately will refurbish those countries with F-16s to replace the MiG-29s or the other Russian airplanes. The reality is that even MiG-16s are outdated. The F-22s and the F-35s of the U.S. Air Force and Navy far, far, far more powerful than the F-16s and the F-15s. But, and are the most powerful airplanes by far in the world, the Russians have nothing that can match up to them. And even the Chinese have nothing that can match up to them. Most of the Chinese fighter and bomber technology is built on Russian, old Russian technology, and we know how good that is. Or at least you guys should know by now how good that is. So I think F-16s would give them a huge advantage. I think the F-16 could take on pretty much any plane that the Russians could throw at it. And the United States, of course, is keeping in the background the F-22s and the F-35s for a day where there's a real conflict directly with the United States, which I think makes sense to me. All right. So the question is why about the Abrams tanks? Why don't Abrams tanks be good enough? The issue with Abrams tanks is they're very heavy. They're very difficult to maintain. They use, I don't know if you guys know this, but all the European tanks, I think all of them, use diesel fuel. And diesel fuel is plentiful in Europe. Europe runs a lot of automobiles in diesel fuel. They have a lot of diesel fuel availability. They have a lot of capacity to deal with diesel fuel. But the Abrams tanks don't run in diesel fuel. The Abrams tanks actually run on jet fuel because the Abrams tank is about 10 tons, 10 tons, heavier than a German Leopard. They need a much bigger, more powerful engine, and that kind of engine runs on jet fuel. Where are you going to get jet fuel in Ukraine? Ukraine's a massive country. How are you going to transport jet fuel? I don't think the Ukrainians have the infrastructure to move jet fuel around. The whole thing about the Abrams tanks in Ukraine is a fantasy. I don't think it's ever going to happen. Whereas diesel fuel is everywhere in Ukraine. You could go to any gas station. A tank could stop at the gas station, fill up. So, you know, the whole difference in fuel is meaningful. And then there's the issue of maintenance. Abrams tanks are much more difficult to maintain. And since Europe has very few Abrams tanks there, the capacity to maintain those tanks is very limited. You would have to fly in American crews to maintain them. You'd have to take them to Germany where America has bases to maintain them there. It's complicated. It's costly. Parts would have to come either from the U.S. or from Israel. Israel has Abrams tanks or maybe from Germany. But it's, logistically, it's much more difficult. Whereas, again, the Leopard is right there. Germany builds it, maintains it, has spare parts. Diesel fuel is everywhere. Leopard tanks are in Poland. They're in the Baltics. They're all over the Eastern Europe. So, the Eastern Europeans have clear access to it. They know the logistics thing. Anyway, it's a no brainer. I mean, the Abrams tanks is not a good tank right now for Europe. It's a much better tank. For the Gulf, it's a much better tank. For Afghanistan, it's probably a better tank. In other circumstances, but in common circumstances, not a good deal. Not a good deal. All right. That's part of, it doesn't, the Abrams does not weigh the same as the Leopard. I mean, for what I've read, the Abrams weighs 10 tons more than the Leopard. So, anyway, maybe it has multi-fuel capabilities from what I've read to actually drive it at full capacity and to optimize the Abrams. It needs to be in jet fuel. So, maybe there's a version that can run on diesel, but it doesn't run optimally. Look, the reality is that Europeans, NATO in Europe, does not have a lot of Abrams tanks. And Israel has Abrams tanks. The Middle East has Abrams tanks. The Saudis have Abrams tanks. The Americans have Abrams tanks. And American bases all over the world have Abrams tanks. But it is not a tank that is dominated dominated. You know, okay, maybe it can, it can, maybe it can burn diesel, but it's not effective burning diesel. It's, it's just that, that kind of turbine engine in order to drag that kind of size of tank is, you need the jet fuel. The diesel is just not going to cut it. At least that's my understanding. You know, maybe it's like a jet engine and it needs, it needs the best quality gas. And you put diesel in there maybe to run. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not an expert in engines, but it won't run at full capacity. It won't get to the speeds. And Abrams equals the speed of a Leopard, but is 10 tons heavier. So it has a much stronger engine, you know, much stronger engine. You don't get that with diesel. You need the jet fuel for that. Anyway, that's where we are. All right, let's do some questions and then we'll, we'll call it a day. If you want to ask a question, now's a good time. If you want to step in with some contribution for the show, now's a good time for that as well. All right. Let's see. JJ Guby says, are you familiar with the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Somewhat. He's become the subject of bad grunting impressions, but his life story is actually amazing. He embodies many of the values of self-esteem and virtue that you espouse. I mean, I mean, I think he does. I think, you know, he's obviously come from a pretty, pretty poor background. I mean, he makes himself into this world champion bodybuilder. He dominates the field for a while. He then has this acting career that is amazing. He meets a lot of people and is more regarded by a lot of people and ultimately runs for politics and becomes governor of California. Starts out the governorship with some good ideas and initially actually asks Milton Friedman to be on his board of economic advisors. But within very quickly becomes one of the most leftist Republican governors ever, which is saying a lot in California. So, you know, he became a Kennedy, which is the wife of his family and it just turned out to be a disastrous governor, which is unfortunate. Beyond that, you know, he had a child from an affair. He was so mixed on that front. But yeah, I mean, he certainly has come a long way and I'll always be favorably inclined towards him because of his performances in the Terminator movies. And it truly was a fun action movie, no particular theme, but a fun action movie. All right. Michael asks, so we're about, I don't know, $176 short if anybody wants to chime in. Well, I mean, he was a bad husband in one sense. He adopted his wife's philosophical and political ideas totally became a leftist Kennedy like his wife. On the other hand, he was having an affair with a maid, which doesn't suggest a huge, huge self-esteem having an affair with a maid. I don't know. But, you know, I don't know Schwarzenegger personally, but his life story is impressive. At least his rags to riches and, you know, Hollywood and all the way to the state house and the whole combination is pretty amazing. Michael asks, if the IRS can't be abolished without a philosophical revolution, can it at least be shackled in some way? Is the next stage of flat tax Hong Kong and Singapore are the only Western countries with a flat tax? No, that's not true. I mean, Estonia has a flat tax. That's a Western country. I think the Czech Republic, and I think Hungary, maybe, but I think a number of the Baltic states, maybe Estonia and Lithuania have flat taxes. Russia has a flat tax to its credit. Russia has a flat tax. I think Ukraine had a flat tax before the war. I don't know what it does today. There are quite a few flat tax regimes in Eastern Europe, which I would consider part of the West. Yeah, I mean, I think a flat tax is much more likely than the abolishment of the IRS. I think it's much more palatable politically. Although when a presidential candidate ran on a flat tax agenda, there was Steve Forbes in the 90s. He got demolished within the Republican parties. The Republicans didn't show support for a flat tax, so I'm not sure that such a tax would have support in their general population. It is hard to tell. But no, the IRS is not going to be abolished anytime soon, and I don't think we're going to have a flat tax anytime soon. I mean, I don't know what it would take right now. The biggest issue you have is not so much on the tax side. The biggest issue you have is on their spending side and then tell people serious about getting spending discussions about the tax code of futile. As long as we're running deficits like we are, the motivation and incentive is always going to be to raise taxes. And cutting taxes will be depicted as economic irresponsibility. And I don't think anybody can overcome those kinds of depictions. So I think the first step is to get spending under control and then dramatic simplification and flattening of the tax code. The simplification reduces the power of the IRS. The more complex the tax code, the more power the IRS has, because the more complex the tax code, the more of us, the more people violate the tax code. And that gives them the power. The power is that you're violating the tax code and gives them leverage on who to prosecute and who not and how badly to prosecute. So simplification and flattening should be the prime objective. Not lowering, simplifying and flattening. That should be what Republicans, let's say, should be after if they ever gain control of the House, Senate and White House. But of course, they'll just want to lower taxes. They won't want to actually do something that's meaningful. Josh says, check out the White House's blueprint for rent as bill of rights. God, it sounds awful. Looks like they are targeting revenue management systems, charging facility service, valet trash, and leave the door open for rent growth limits on multifamily properties. Yeah, I'm not surprised. You know, the left, particularly the more crazy left has always been after, you know, always saw it some kind of rent control. They try it in city after city after city when they when they gain control. And of course, it fails dramatically and it blows up in their face. It doesn't stop them from trying again and again. If there's one of the few things that economists, even leftist economists acknowledge is the damage that rent control does. But I wouldn't be surprised of what they want to really do is try to it's always like this with socialist right, socialist and fails, it fails, it fails, but we just need to tinker with it. We just need to just get the right. And this is them tinkering with rent control and tinkering with trying to control rent and trying to and trying to restrict the rights of owners, try to restrict property rights. This has always been kind of a big, big issue for the left for the for kind of the the more Marxist economic left animated by inequality and renters, renters are their power. They view renters as their power base where they are, they're not their power base actually is rich upper east side and upper west side New Yorkers. But you know, it's a disastrous, horrible, destructive policy where everybody suffers, there are no winners in it, except the renters who get into the rent control. But even they ultimately the buildings deteriorate the quality of the place deteriorates dramatically. So it's it's it I guess the only beneficiaries are people who rent already decrepit buildings in already decrepit buildings. So it's not they don't have anything to lose. Okay, Nick, thank you really appreciate the support. Thank you, Josh $50. That's very generous. Really appreciate that. Okay, Nathan says true or false mint chocolate chip is the best flavor ice cream. When I used to eat ice cream, which is a long, long time ago. And I used to my favorite, my favorite ice cream was mint chocolate chip. And my favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream was bluebells here in Texas in Austin. I don't eat ice cream anymore. And now if I eat bluebells, it would be way way too sweet for me. So I miss the days of eating ice cream. I have to admit that. And enjoying them. Daniel, is there some irony in that the left is complaining about how destructive the Republicans 30% sales tax would be, but not the income tax? Well, no, I mean, they're making the argument because they see they have them all high ground. So see the left always makes better more consistent. I think less ironic arguments because they're saying, look, 30% 30% sales tax will put the poor more than the rich. A 30% tax cut sales tax is clearly regressive. It really benefits the rich. Look, the rich consume as a percentage of their income. They're the people who consume the least. So they would pay as a percentage of their income the least. How can that be just? They put aside the economics. They talk about justice and fairness and what's right and inequality would increase. And it's just not fair. It's just not right. And if you're an altruist, and if you come from an altruistic framework, which 90% of people are at least partially, the framework is altruism. They don't know of any other framework that that makes complete sense. And it's very difficult to get excited by something that's going to hurt the poor and benefit the rich. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant because the Republicans wouldn't know how to explain if it wasn't true and they can't justify it if it is even a little bit true. And there's some things that are true about it. It's absolutely true that the amount of taxes the rich would pay would go down dramatically because they consumed less of their income. And the percentage of income that would be paid by the middle class would be very high. The poor would get subsidies to compensate for the regressive tax rate. But the sales tax would basically shift the tax load from the wealthy to the middle class, which is not a bad thing because then the middle class would have an incentive to drive tax rates lower. But it's never going to happen. These are all interesting hypotheticals, but not in my lifetime, probably not in your lifetime. Bonnie says, no clicks for Trump, thanks for the heads up. Yes, no likes, no shares, no clicks. Hopper, friend hopper, hopper friend, friend hopper, thanks for the thanks for the support, really appreciate it. We're getting close to target $82. We're pretty close. I think it's, you know, given that number of people on it wouldn't take much to get to the target if you guys so chose. By the way, there's this video on Twitter that's really quite interesting and we're seeing it's an exception, I guess that the king of Spain did and I guess the king and queen of Spain had an exception in a bunch of ambassadors were invited and the ambassadors come in and they shake the king's hand and then they shake the queen's hand and the ambassador from Iran. Why is an ambassador from Iran in Madrid on Washington DC or any of these civilized countries? Anyway, he comes in and he shakes the king's hand and he refuses to shake the queen's hand. I don't think she, she's not supposed to put out a hand first. He doesn't put his hand out to shake her hand. He won't shake a woman's hand, I think, and she's probably voiced support for the protesters so he might not shake hand because of that, but suddenly I think it's the Islamic thing where he won't shake the hand of the woman, but she has this great expression on her face like of a slight mocking grin which I think is perfect. So you can find that video on Twitter. You know, my talk tonight, don't forget I'm giving a talk tonight. You can watch it here. It'll be live streamed on the Iran book channel. It'll be on Iran and China and the protests there and what they mean and the whole battle for freedom over freedom means and the value of freedom and so on. So hopefully, hopefully you guys can watch it live while when I give it here in UT Austin, hopefully we'll have a good live audience as well. But feel free while you're doing that to support the Iran book show by, by, you know, doing stickers or whatever. I won't be able to answer questions, but at least you are still in a position where you can support the show. All right. Let's see. Fren Hopper says, Mark, thank you for the support. Are you aware of any objectivists who are neurobiologists? In Opa, Pikaf mentions I invent was looking into mathematics and neuro science before she passed away and was curious if anyone picked up those funds. I don't know that anyone has picked up those particular funds, but yes, there is a neurobiologist, a neuroscientist who works in Toronto, I think at the University of Toronto, but he's senior there. As you know, I have problem with names and his name has escaped me with these and objectives. I interviewed him once a few years ago on the Iran book show. So you could probably find the interview on the Iran book show. He is a neuroscientist and a really interesting guy, really, really smart off the charts. Smart. I think he, I can't really do this postdoc at Harvard or something, but he's at the University of Toronto today in a tenure track, in a tenured position, I think. I think he got his tenure. All right. Wesley asks, how would you compare Obama's first two years in office versus Biden? Who is worse, better, worse in your view? I mean, I think Obama was worse only because he was for two reasons. One is far more charismatic and popular. Biden is unpopular and I think Obama was much more popular and certainly more charismatic. Biden's a goofball. I mean, nobody takes, nobody seems to take Biden seriously. The only reason he has any chance of winning is because the Republicans will blow themselves up. It's not because anybody likes, I don't know anybody excited about Biden, follows Biden around, justifies everything he does. But Obama, Obama could walk on water. It was like Trump in that sense, the base and the media loved Obama. Just like the base loves Trump. No matter what they do, they justify it. So I think that's a big difference between the two. I think the other difference is Obamacare. I think that Biden has passed some really, really damaging stuff. The chip bill, which he passed with the help of Republicans and an infrastructure bill, the stop inflation now or whatever bill, which is incredibly destructive. But I don't think either of those are as destructive as Obamacare was, not long term, because Obamacare is long term a significant move towards socializing medicine. Of course, part of how we passed Obamacare was again, I think a Republican failing. But yeah, I mean, it was, Obama was a, was a very philosophically, in every respect, a very, very bad president in the sense that again, he was charismatic. I mean, Biden could never give a speech like that. You didn't build that speech that Obama gave. And I think that speech is unbelievably damaging long run to the U.S. because I think a lot of people take it seriously. I hear that argument all the time. They didn't build that. Therefore, it's not theirs. They don't, they don't deserve it. They don't own it. Biden could never do that. Biden doesn't have a perspective. He's a nothing and a nobody. He is, he is a middle of the world pragmatist who doesn't believe in anything. So I think long term Obama is a more damaging president than Biden could ever be. Bash Bandigan asked, will Russia ever flex their military power again? Who knows? I don't see, I doubt that this is the last time Russia will do it. I think it's, I think there's something ingrained in that mystical culture that exists there, as long as they have authoritarian, they will lash out militarily. Will this be the beginning of a real intellectual political revolution in Russia that brings about a complete shift and that, you know, that basically changes things and brings better people to power maybe. But I just don't, I just wouldn't rule it out because I don't think you could, you should ever rule out the use of force by authoritarians, even when they lose. Because it's not, it's not necessarily always about winning or losing. It's often about just the propaganda of it, the power, thrill of it, the nihilism of it. The challenge with Russia is that as long as it has natural resources, and it always will, and as long as there's a market for those natural resources, then they can probably afford to produce weapons systems. But they can't afford to produce high quality weapons systems. They can't afford to produce weapons systems that challenge the west. They can't afford to use smart weapons systems using, because they can't build chips. This is why I think second only to energy, the semiconductor industry is the most important industry in the world today. Everything runs on it. You can't build weapons, smart weapons systems without it. And Russia has no chip capability, no microprocessing capabilities. And not the advanced chip anyway. Maybe they can produce the simple chips that run your car. But to go in a guided missile or to go in the most advanced anti-aircraft stuff, they just don't have that capacity. And I don't think they ever, they're going to have that capacity unless they steal those chips. I guess they can. But stealing is not the same as producing. All right. Mr. Muffin says, will attacking Crimea result in a nuclear war? I don't think anything, almost anything will result in a nuclear war. I just don't see what Russia has to gain with buying nuclear war. I think it has a lot to lose. And I think that the people in the Kremlin have no death wish. What would they rather have? Ukraine or life? I think they would choose their own life. I hope I'm right about that one. What do you think about Adam Schiff's new Senate run announced in California? Yeah, I mean, a lot of Democrats are going to run in California to replace Feinstein. Kathy, my most hated Congresswoman, Kathy Hobbs, Dobbs, she's going to run for that Senate seat. So let's all hope that whoever Democrats pick Adam Schiff or whoever, it's not Katie Hobbs. She's the worst. She's the worst. So I don't like Schiff. I don't trust Schiff. But I'll take him over over her any day. So it's going to be interesting to see who who the Democrats go with. All right. Insama says, awesome talk at the university today, nuclear medicine developed by UBC that seems more effective, less painful than chemo at cellular level, illegal for private use here in Canada. I am both thrilled and annoyed. Wow. I mean, yeah, as I said, I have said, and we'll keep on saying, I think there's a lot of exciting stuff coming down in the health care front and the cancer front and treatment of all kinds of things, including on the including in the longevity front. I think there's a lot of advancements that's going to have been a lot of interesting things. It'll take a while before the FDA approves these things. It'll take even longer, maybe for some of these socialized medicine places to adopt these things. But the future of medicine, the future of treatment of debilitating diseases, I think is positive. I think a lot of money is going into it and a lot of new science. And I think AI is really going to help big data is really going to help. So I think I think the world's on the right track in terms of dealing with a lot of these diseases. Fenhopper says, after reading the futures faster than you think, I believe it is highly likely that you will live to see reverse aging. If you get the body of a 20 to 30 year old, will you then agree to start a revolution? I mean, it's easy for me to say yes, because it ain't happening. I appreciate the futures faster than you think. I appreciate all those super hyper optimistic books. It's fabulous. It's amazing. I am excited about it. It's slower than he thinks it is. So I just don't see it happening already, I think from from the time some of these books came out and some of these predictions came out and what's happened today, they're behind by quite a bit. Growth is not exponential the way they believe it is primarily because of government regulations. Would I start a revolution? No, because maybe at some point, if I could stay at 20, 30 for the next 50 years, then maybe in 50 years, I would start the revolution. But the reality is that there's no point in launching a revolution if you're necessarily going to be defeated. So the real work, the real effort, the real struggle, the real challenge is still an intellectual challenge is to convince people. We need, I don't know, a few million followers before we launch a revolution. We can't launch a revolution with hundreds of thousands of followers. We need millions of followers. So I would have to be bigger than Lex on YouTube and have the body of a 20, 30 year old and then we can talk. Then we can talk about a revolution. How about that? Okay, Michael H, last two questions. Michael H and thank you, we've reached our goal. So really, really appreciate your guys support. If given the chance, do you think Ukraine should march on Moscow? Do you think they will be able to? Well, I mean, I don't think no, because that's the one scenario where they will use nukes. So I think the one scenario where it could turn into nuclear war is if Ukraine enters into Russian territory and actually goes for Moscow. Because then the dead either way, so they've got very little lose. If the Russians didn't have nukes, then absolutely they should go to Moscow and they should find Putin and they should string him up from the tallest tree. But given that they have nukes, I would limit myself to kicking them out of Ukraine and building up a defense defenses to the point where Russia should never be tempted again. And joining NATO. I think they should immediately join NATO. Apollosu says, how do you view a progressive transition of objectivist ideas into the culture, the progression, not one big hit? I think it's a progression. I think it's already started. It started with the publication of Atlas Shrugged and it will continue going. So I think that it is slowly chipping away at the ideas of the culture, slowly the culture adopting more rational ideas, slowly people becoming better, not at everything all at once. The movement will, you know, you won't get rid of religion, for example, until very late, but slowly people becoming more secular, more doubting, more engaged in secular activities, more self-interested, even while holding on maybe to remnants of religion, and then maybe religion being the last thing they give up. So I just think it takes decades and decades to do this and it's going to take decades and decades to achieve what needs to be achieved. It's going to take hundreds, if not thousands of intellectuals doing the hard work of convincing and arguing and debating, but it's doable and it will happen. But it is, I do think it's gradual. I don't think people just, whoa, oh, that, yes, because we're so turning the world upside down. We're so challenging the most fundamental beliefs that the people in the culture hold. And as this happens, at least parts of the culture will become better, if not all of it, right? Because better things will be happening. Better people will be, there'll be better people, there'll be more things, there'll be a little, at the margin there'll be more freedom and things will get better slowly. They might get worse first, but even as they get worse, there'll be more and more better people. That's part of the thing that's hard to grasp. There'll be more and more good people as the culture keeps the cheer we're in. And I think that's definitely the case. It's already the case. Wesley says, can art produced by AI ever be considered real art? No, just like AI can't really be AI. It can be intelligent. It's not intelligent. So art is the selective recreation of metaphysical value judgments. Well, AI by definition has no metaphysical value judgments. Now, it can produce fakes. It can produce things that look like art and that most of us won't be able to differentiate. That is true. I think it can probably even do that today for 99% of people couldn't differentiate. But once you discover who painted it, it's not art because for the artist, at least, it didn't mean anything. And for you, it's just some imitation of stuff that's already been done. I'm not sure what it signifies. It is an interesting, the whole AI thing and art is interesting. Can you enjoy? Can you get a lot out of art produced of pseudo art produced by AI? And if that's the case, is that a new category? Do we need to reconceive the definition of art? Maybe I'm open to that. I'm open to the idea that given AI's capacity to produce art at the highest skill level possible, integrating, that almost nobody can differentiate, we might have to rethink how we formally define art. I guess that's possible. All right. Thanks, everybody. I need to run. Don't forget to watch tonight at 7.30 East Coast time. My talk about Iran and China and freedom in the world. I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to use the sticker and super chat feature to support the talk. And I will see you, I will see you soon. Hopefully, I'll see you tonight and I'll see you maybe potentially, likely, tomorrow morning. All right. Bye.