 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. We'll enjoy just trying to create as much content as I can. Before I leave, I'm going to be away for almost four weeks starting tomorrow. So we will do a morning show. Other than that, I'll be gone for three and a half, almost four weeks. I'll try to do as many shows as I can from the road. But as you know, if you follow The Iran Brook Show, you know that it's a challenge. Technology is a challenge. And then, of course, my time is a challenge and time zone difference is a challenge. So shows in the next three and a half weeks are going to be all over the place in terms of time zones because I'm going to be seven hours ahead of East Coast time starting on Wednesday and then much of the rest of the trip, all of the rest of the trip, six hours ahead of East Coast time. So not going to be easy to find a good time to deliver these shows. But I will try and we will do what we can and we will keep having fun with The Iran Brook Shows. All right, so today I want to talk about China. I'm reading, I think you guys know, I read this book called Chip Wars, which I really liked and I highly recommend it. I did a whole show on the whole issue of Chip Wars, which really focus on chips and the history of microprocessors and then relating that to the conflict between the United States and China and their long-term prospects for that. Of course, the use of chips in weapon systems and the real risk of China having access, really because of the West, because they buy them from the West, the most advanced chip technology that then they just plug into their smart bombs and missiles and airplanes and everything else and we're basically facilitating their super advanced weaponry. Well, I'm just about to finish. I'm close to finishing another book called Wireless Wars. So this one is not about chip war. It's not about microchips, but it's about wireless technology and while it's true that neither the chip war nor the wireless war is really a war, a big chunk of it is related to national security. A big chunk of the competition conflict and ultimately the decision making about how governments will respond is a national security issue and I think that's the important issue. It's not just an issue of straight trade. This is not a made up national security issue like steel or other things. This is potentially at least potentially a national security issue and I talked about why it was a national security issue when it came to chip war and let me try to articulate why it's a national security issue when it comes to wireless, when it comes to 5G communication. But at the end of the day what I really want to talk about is what do you do about all this? I mean what do you do? Of course one answer to that is we need industrial policy. We need a chip back. We need the government to invest in technology. We need the government to invest in wireless companies. We need to bring back and build in America and of course I think that's nonsense. So we'll talk about what I think should be done about China, about the legitimate national security threat that is China. So put aside economics just for national security, a real objective national security threat, how do we deal with China? So first let's just set the table in terms of wireless communication. Wireless communication now is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It connects everything. It doesn't just particularly with 5G. It doesn't just connect our phones. It doesn't just connect the internet for us to browse through Google. But it connects us to all things. It connects me to my air conditioning units to set the temperature. It's connected sensors that connect it throughout. We basically live in a world that is connected through 5G wireless from product to product, sensor to sensor, phone to phone. And through the air to an expansive, ever expanding universe of smart things that are all connected wirelessly. And this is great. This is fantastic in 5G made this all possible. And it's only going to get better and it's only going to get more and there only going to be more things connected. One of the challenges of course with a network like that where everything's wireless and everything is connected, is that means that a lot of things that have national security implications, whoops, what happened there, are also connected. They are missile sites. There are a variety of different military installations all over the United States that use wireless technologies and therefore are on the network. They're connected to everybody else and everything else that is on the network. And if somebody can break into on any given one point, they potentially could have access to real national security problems. Now it's not that easy of course to break in and it's not that easy to have get access to telecommunication terminals and switches and places where you can hack and access information that has national security implications. But it would be a lot easier for you to access that information if the people who built the equipment, the people who actually built and installed the equipment all around you, actually worked potentially for a government that wanted to hack. And this is actually what has happened in telecommunication. The number one leading company in the world today in 5G communication for a variety of reasons we can get into. The number one leading telecommunication company in the world that builds 5G telecommunication equipment is Huawei. It is a Chinese company. It is a Chinese company where there are lots of reasons to believe, lots of reasons to believe. It's a Chinese company with strong ties and links to the Chinese government. There's also evidence to suggest that Huawei, when it installs telecommunication equipment all over the world and it does all over the world, provides back to access to that telecommunication equipment to the Chinese government. And Huawei today is banned. American companies are banned from doing business with Huawei and there are various restrictions on Huawei installing telecommunication equipment in the United States and in much of Western Europe because it was discovered and because it was found out that they were doing exactly that. They were using this equipment in order to provide back channels to Chinese agents. And in that sense they were facilitating, spying directly on Americans, not through some app we download that we know the Chinese own like TikTok and maybe they get some information about the cat videos that I watch. No, this is telecommunication equipment. This is the switches. This is the backbone of the telecommunication infrastructure in the United States through which a lot of sensitive top secret information travels. Now, the Chinese could just wait until 21 year olds publish a lot of the secret information online as they downloaded from secure service. But what the Chinese would really like is direct access to all that information through our telecommunication network. And it turns out that Huawei was providing them exactly that. There are various examples of situations. For example, Huawei provided the African Union with all their telecommunication equipment in the headquarters in, I think it was in Ethiopia. And it turned out that at 5 p.m. every day they would download to a server in Beijing every piece of communication that it traveled through their equipment during the day. Now, they probably couldn't do something that explicit with the U.S. But from what I understand from wireless wars, and I'm going to read more about this because I want to be sure that this is true. From what I understand from wireless wars, it's very, very difficult to figure out if a piece of equipment, if a piece of telecommunication equipment has a back door, if a piece of telecommunication equipment can be easily accessed and can be easily hacked. That is that there are very few people in the world who have the capacity and capabilities of being able to actually guarantee that a piece of equipment. And of course, even if you buy one panel or one box and it's free of any bugs and free of any back doors, do you know that every box that you buy? You know, one of the reasons that Huawei was trying to, in the mid-20s, trying to sell SPINT on its telecommunication equipment, which at the time was the best in the world and the cheapest in the world, and SPINT turned them down to a large extent because they couldn't guarantee the network security. They couldn't guarantee that these boxes that they were going to buy, this equipment they were going to buy from Huawei, was not going to be used by the Chinese to spy on Americans. So there is good reason to ban a company that you suspect and you have evidence of. So it's not an arbitrary suspicion. It's not just because they're Chinese. But you have actual concrete reasons to believe is providing information and providing access to telecommunication networks around the world to the Chinese governments. And the U.S. did that under Trump. They banned Huawei and then they convinced many of the U.S. allies in Western Europe to do the same with their networks. Remember, Huawei has the best 5G equipment in the world and the cheapest 5G equipment in the world. And to a large extent that is a consequence of American companies getting lazy, American companies not investing, American companies making bad decisions, Western companies more broadly, but American companies included. It is also a consequence of bad management, bad investment and that is going to happen. It's a very similar story to what happened in the microchipped environment to Intel. Whereas Lucent, I don't know if you guys remember Lucent, but Lucent was Bell Labs. Bell Labs was one of the most innovative private laboratory systems in the world. They were brilliant and at some point when AT&T was broken up, Bell Labs was spun off as Lucent. Lucent then built and designed the world's leading telecommunication equipment for many, many years. And ultimately Lucent faded. It became non-competitive. It management made bad decisions and Lucent got sold I think to the French company Alcatel. And today really on the West, the companies that make telecommunication equipment are Ericsson and Nokia basically. And I think Alcatel, but that's it. But Lucent is gone. A great tragedy, I believe, given how valuable Bell Labs are. But that's what happens in competitive businesses and what you saw during the 2000s is the rise of Chinese companies, primarily Huawei, to dominate the telecommunication equipment space to the point where Western companies just couldn't compete. Now part of that was quality, part of that was government subsidies, but whatever, they couldn't compete. Now the problem here is the national security threat that this opposes. The fact that these networks, if you buy them from, Huawei again provide access to Chinese government. So the question is, what do you do? What do you do? How do you deal with this? How do you deal on the one hand, how do you deal with China, with Chinese companies? And on the other hand, how do you spur the United States to be able to compete with China? Now Huawei is a very innovative company as have been Alibaba and WeChat and other Chinese companies. I think we have less to fear from China in terms of innovation because of, in terms of fast innovation and dramatic big leaps in innovation, because the more authoritarian China becomes, the less innovative it will become. But the challenge we face is that the West has become non-innovative, particularly in telecommunications. And as a consequence, just the status quo makes the Chinese way ahead, puts the Chinese way ahead of that. Now telecommunications have a huge implications for war. Telecommunications are used in war, of course, to communicate. It's used for intelligence gathering. The fact that China has a better 5G than the United States suggests that in a war, China can communicate with its own people, with its own forces, within its own military far more effectively than the United States can. And of course, to the extent that they can hack into our networks and we can hack into theirs, they have an enormous intelligence advantage over the United States. So again, all reasons why we should care. But what do we do? I mean, the instinctual response of Democrats and many Republicans is to say, well, we need to mimic what China has done. What we need to do is subsidize our businesses. What we need to do is allow, have some, a few five-year plans in the telecommunications space, in the chip space. I mean, this is the logic behind the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS Act was passed by Congress, bipartisan with a lot of Republicans voting for it, which set aside $50 billion to subsidize chip manufacturing. It's the logic behind Biden's, what is it, something inflation act, which provides a massive subsidies for, I don't know, battery technology and other technologies and EV and all this other stuff, which is not national security related. But even on the National Security Fund, what should be done? What should we done with things like telecommunication? What should be done with things like CHIPS that have clear national securities issues? And here I think we have to understand why it is that America, what makes this country special and why is it that the United States has historically had such a massive lead over the rest of the world, particularly authoritarian states like China, when it comes to technology innovation and indeed, even in the last 20 years, almost all the innovations, both in biotech and in technology have come to the United States. A significant number, way disproportionate even to the size of American GDP. Indeed, America has been, and the question is, can it continue, the land of innovation. China's been good at copying, it's been good at making things better. It's had some innovators, particularly during the period where it left its tech companies alone, free, which happened arguably from the mid-90s into about the early 20s, into Xi's presidency, but no longer exists. How does America compete? With China throwing tens, hundreds of billions of dollars on technologies, how do we keep up? How do we get 60? How do we get the United States to develop much better technology? How do we get the United States to become the leader in the world in 60, 70, 80, I don't know, technologies way ahead of the Chinese? How do we get the United States to be in a position to design, manufacture and create the best chips in the world? Semiconductors in the world. By the way, semiconductors that are needed for 5G telecommunications, you can. And is that, do we get that from chips bills, chips acts, and other type of government intervention, government-picking winners and losers? And the answer is of course, no. And I liked, wireless wars is not as good as the book is chip war partially, just because it's not as well written. The stories that it tells are not quite as stimulating and interesting, and it skips over a lot of stuff, and it's just not as good a good a book. But it has a conclusion section, which is quite good, I've just gotten to it now. And basically the author comes to the same conclusion I came to, and that is, what America needs to do is liberate its innovators. What America needs to do is tap in to its entrepreneurial, innovative culture. What America needs to do is be America. Our private companies could beat Chinese state-run companies any day. Our private companies could beat Chinese private companies guided by the state and subsidized by the state any day. What we need today is to get, is the government, the regulators, and in telecom there are lots of regulators, to get out of the way. What we need is to return to what economists have called, or commentators have called, a permissionless society, a permissionless innovation. We need to encourage entrepreneurs to go out and break the rules and do new stuff. One thing the U.S. could do is sell its entire wireless spectrum to private companies. Just get rid of the entire wireless spectrum, all at once. Let private companies figure it out. Let them do whatever the hell they want to do with it. Don't sell, okay, this section is for TV, and this section is for wireless, and this section is for that, and that section. No, sell it all and let the private market figure out how to use the wireless spectrum. Get rid of government mandates that dictate standards and standardization. Get rid of government dictates that you have to use something that the industry has standardized. Encourage entrepreneurs to think outside of the standards. Encourage entrepreneurs to do something completely new, to really think outside of the box. And I'd say, don't provide funding. Don't give subsidies. Subsidies and funding stifle an industry. They regiment an industry. The industry then plays to the government regulators, plays to the government people who approve the grants. And you can guarantee that if the government is involved, the grants will be given to the companies that are boring, that are doing the same old thing. And the revolutionaries, the crazies, the people who, you know, the cell phone was invented very early on. And it was, everybody thought it was crazy. It was a crazy idea. It was invented in 1970s, I think. The first trial of it at AT&T was done in 1970s. And people thought it was a crazy idea and who would want to do that? And it wasn't until the 1980s, until somebody established a network, I think McGraw Cellular was the first one, but there were others. And into the 90s when it really became effective, that anybody believed in it and invested the kind of capital necessary. Let the markets work it out. Let the markets figure out what the best technology is. God forbid government, you know, decides between VHS and beta. That's the old guys among you who remember what VHS and beta is. I mean, I don't know if you know, but the European Union is not dictated that all cables for all electronic devices have to have this as the standard. USB-C. If something better than this comes around, tough, because the government has decided what the optimal standard is. And Apple actually has to change from this connector to this connector next year, because otherwise it can't sell products in Europe. So what we need is to liberate the entrepreneur. What we need is to get rid of regimented standards. What we need is to get rid of the rules and the regulations and the constraints on innovation, on entrepreneurial creation, on ingenuity. We need ingenuity. We need people to take ideas and turn them into products and take wacky ideas and try to turn them into wacky products. And we need a liberated venture capital community that is investing in these kind of things. And my guess is that within 10 years, the telecommunication industry would look completely different than it looks today. And we'd be dominated by American companies, companies that are doing things that we couldn't even imagine today. We need innovation, and we know how to get innovation. Leave people alone. But there's one other aspect to this. There's one other aspect to this. Do you know why one of the reasons Huawei has such a big lead in 5G telecommunications? It's because 5G, the original, I guess, you know, algorithms or idea around 5G was first invented or created by a graduate student in the United States. I think he was Chinese. Maybe not. Maybe he was European. I can't remember. Anyway, he was a foreign graduate student in a U.S. university. And he developed the first idea around 5Gs, the first solution for 5G telecommunication. Yet he couldn't get hired in the United States because he couldn't get a visa. Ultimately, he ended up working for Huawei, and they got access to this technology before anybody else. So one of the things, you know, that half of the, I think, the Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. right now were founded by immigrants or sons or daughters, children of immigrants. What the United States needs to do is to liberate the innovators, to free up the entrepreneurial spirits, to eliminate regulation, to create a permissionless environment. And at the same time, bring to this country the visionaries, bring to this country the entrepreneurs. And it's not like you have to pay them to come. All you have to do is say, come. Here's the visas or stay if you're in school here. And they will want to stay. Why? Because they'll get to participate in this exciting, innovative push. What we need is to completely restructure our immigration policy. I mean, it's, to his credit, Biden looks like he's going to increase immigration significantly to the United States. But most of the immigrants Biden is inviting into the United States or allowing to stay in the United States. Or refugees, or immigrants that are coming here under some kind of asylum laws. Get rid of that. We don't need asylum seekers. What we need are people who work. Change the immigration law to a work-based system. If you can get a job, then you get a visa. If somebody offers you a job, you get a visa. Again, I don't care. And we shouldn't say in telecommunication. Because we don't know what the next great innovation, the changes telecommunication is going to come from. We want the best and the brightest in this country. We'll get the best and the brightest by making it easy for them to come here. You have capital. Somebody's willing to invest in your idea. Here's a visa. You got a graduate degree in a STEM in the United States. Here's a visa. Actually, for what it's worth. You got a STEM degree anywhere in the world. Here's a visa. Please come to the United States and start your businesses here. Please come to the United States. We won't tell you what businesses to start. Start your business, raise the capital, find the team and put it together. If America returns to its entrepreneurial essence, if America returns to the idea of freedom and free markets, if America returns to the idea of a permissionless innovation, permissionless business, i.e. with no regulations and constraints and limitations, there is no limit to what we can do. We beat the Chinese hands down. We create more wealth. We grow the economy faster and national security becomes a non-ation. We have the best chips in the world. We have the best telecommunication companies in the world and the Chinese becoming relevant. Now, in the same time, we should borrow equipment that is used for spying. We should borrow giving them chips that they use in military technologies. We should be absolutely, unequivocally self-interested and place America first in a meaningful way, not in the kind of sloganeering, nonsensical way that Donald Trump used it. But to indicate that we will pursue America's interests. And America's interest, from a national security perspective, not from a mystical, collectivist perspective. And from a national security perspective, we should not be selling weapons to our enemies, Saudi Arabia comes to mind, but certainly not advanced chips that can use those weapons to China. And we should not be allowing equipment that can be used to spy on us to be installed in our own country. So, you know, let's continue trading with China. Let's continue to get their subsidized goods. Let's continue to watch videos from TikTok. Let's continue to buy, you know, I think, well, ultimately if the gods in Washington allow, if we ever do have an electric vehicle revolution, we will be driving Chinese cars. All good. Because none of that has national security implications. When it comes to national security, let's cut them off. Let's draw a clear, bright line of what is allowed and what is not allowed. And then, much more importantly, let's fuel innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States. On the military front, America is and must be a naval superpower. It is a country with a long coast, both on the east and on the west. It is a country dedicated to economic growth, economic prosperity, and therefore to free trade. It is a country, therefore, that should commit its military to protecting the sea lanes of the world. We should rebuild our Navy and we should make it the best in the world, not by a little bit, but by so much that no other country would even dare to compete with us. We should frog leap, and I think we can, the Chinese in terms of innovation and in terms of the kind of Navy that we can build. And we should command the seas. We have no real need for a massive land army. There is no imminent war in the United States. Nobody is invading the United States with tanks. There is no need for us to send our troops to Europe. The Europeans are rich enough to be able to field a ground military by themselves to deal with whatever threat they faced. The primary threat, I think, is Russia, but that is also true of the Middle East. I don't see circumstances in which the United States will want to engage in a land war in Asia. Taiwan is too small to engage in big tank battles on Taiwan. Taiwan will ultimately be determined in the sea, will ultimately be determined in the ocean, will ultimately be determined in the straits of Taiwan. It will not primarily be a ground war, not a ground war that the United States participates in. Taiwan should invest in ground troops for their own self-defense. But the United States should dominate the oceans. The United States should dominate the sea lanes. The United States should dominate the trade routes. It doesn't require using that force. That's the beauty of having a Navy nobody else can compete with. Put it out there. Nobody is going to challenge you. And what you do is secure American prosperity, not only by internally allowing innovation, allowing technology, allowing ingenuity. But then securing the ability of Americans to trade with the rest of the world, to buy goods from other countries and to have other countries buy goods from the U.S. And even when it comes to telecommunication infrastructure chips, it's not necessary to build the chips in the U.S. It's not necessary to have a fab in the U.S. You can have the fab in Taiwan, in South Korea, as long as you have a Navy that protects the ability to get the chips to the U.S. Maybe you have a fab in Europe, maybe you have a fab in Mexico. It's economic to build those. It's economic, which means wherever there are skilled engineers and the ability to build such manufacturing plants and then to produce the stuff. Do it anyway in the world that we as Americans can secure passage doors. We don't have to do here. We don't have to have manufacturing plants in the United States. When it's sensitive to national security, make sure that the manufacturing plants in countries that are friendly. Make sure that manufacturing plants in countries that we can defend. And maybe a certain amount of supply like some of the very sophisticated chips in the world. Maybe some of those should be produced in the United States for use in the military. Just in case Taiwan gets wiped out. Now we still have today by far the best Navy in the world. Nobody comes close. But the Chinese are gaining ground. And the United States has not invested as much as it could, as much as it should in preserving its military, its lead in Navy technology. Troy, thank you. Troy just came in with 500 Australian dollars. Thank you. You've got us much, much closer to our goal. So we're now only $200 away from our 650 goal for today. And hopefully we can make it. I'm trying to make up for all the shows I didn't do in earlier in the month. Trying to make up by doing a lot of shows now. But that also creates kind of a lot of pressure financially on raising the money quickly. And I know that puts strain on some of you guys. So thank you, Troy, for making it easier. By the way, Australia is a key player when it comes to China. Because Australia obviously feels threatened by China. Australia is within reach of China. Australia is an island. Again, for Australia it is essential and necessary to have a Navy. It's why Australia joined forces with the United Kingdom and the United States to form an alliance around submarines and around naval capacity. I mean, in my view, the United States should lead an effort to combine the forces of the United States, South Korea, Japan and Australia, maybe New Zealand in a naval alliance. And combine the forces of those countries to defend free trade and to defend all of those specific countries and alliance from any kind of Chinese or North Korean aggression. I think that would be a game changer. I think it would be a game changer in the Pacific Ocean. And with combined resources, Japan probably has the second or third best Navy in the world. And again, Japan is also committed to doubling their defense spending over the next five years. So Japan is going to be a significant force in the Pacific. We want to make sure they're on our side. We want to make sure we have an alliance. The Philippines could be part of it, although the Philippine government is in the past, I mean so wacky and crazy that it's hard to rely on the Philippines. But we do have now four new bases in the Philippines for the US Navy. So the Philippines could certainly be a part of this. And ultimately you could imagine Indonesia and Malaysia joining in. And oh, I forgot Taiwan. Taiwan would be a key to this, right? So you have South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand. You basically have China surrounded without firing a bullet. The Chinese threat goes to zero. But it's all doable. That is all doable. Building the Navy, creating that alliance, encouraging our allies to build their own navies and their own military forces. Making sure we have the anti-ship laser technology to shoot down the missiles, the Chinese missiles that are targeting our ships. There's a bunch of stuff that can't be done. We've talked about much of it on the show. But there's a bunch of stuff that can't be done, should be done. And China stops being a threat because they can't compete with us. The reality is China is a relatively, on a per capita GDP basis, a relatively poor country. And the more resources it allocates to the military, the more resources it has to take from its own citizens. The poorer its own citizens become. The reality is that a free America, that a deregulated America, a innovative America, an entrepreneurial America cannot be matched by any country in the world. And it's not that difficult to do, even if you only want to restrict the permissionless society, just the technology, just the crucial technologies for national defense. I mean, this would also create, and you could also use this to create, real competition within defense contractors. Today, the three, four, five defense contractors dominate everything. Well, let's move that around. Let's make the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force far more technologically savvy and therefore far more interested in high quality technology for which you don't need to have massive big companies building stuff for you. And you can have smaller entrepreneurial companies. So again, the solution to China is more freedom for America. The solution to China is American strength, is American capacity to defend itself unequivocally. And American innovation. And American innovation comes from American liberty, American freedom, American government getting out of the way, American government leaving entrepreneurs free. Of regulations and controls and subsidies and preferences and central planning to make great products, to build great products, and then to trade with the world. Keep the sea lanes open. Massive free trade should be our mission. We should lower tariffs to zero, and then we should allow American entrepreneurs to compete with the world. And if American entrepreneurs are allowed to compete with the world without restrictions, without subsidies, without government interference, one way or the other, America wins. China becomes irrelevant. All right, that is my answer to what to do about China. Hopefully that was a value. All right, we have a few super chat questions. I would really like to be able to get us to the target today. It's, I think, pretty important before I leave that we kind of do well financially and put the show on good financial terms. So we are $169 short. Please do $20 questions. We've got a lot of $10 questions here, with one exception from Michael at $20. We did get, Troy came in with $500 Australian, and let's see, Mike came in with $50 American, and together they've really pushed us. Steven contributed, and others have contributed. So please, if everybody watching right now does $5, well no, $2 we're done. And if a few of you ask $20 questions, and a few of you do some stickers for $10, $20, $50, $100, we'll be over the $650 mark very, very quickly. All right, so let's move on to the super chat question. Let me start with questions about China, and Liam says, I don't think China is the threat to anyone. It will have a bumpy road to shake off its authoritarianism, but China will ultimately keep getting richer until it becomes First World and Western. So I hope you're right. I always thought that I always hoped that that was true, because I love China. I've visited China many times. I find it an exciting, thrilling place, and the Chinese people are very engaging and very entrepreneurial and very motivated. But over the last 10 years, Xi has slowly, slowly, not slowly, slowly, and systematically moved China in an authoritarian direction. And I'm hopeful that the Chinese people ultimately rebel against him, that the Chinese people ultimately want to liberate themselves and throw off the shackles of authoritarianism. And I agree with you completely that a free China is not a threat to anybody. But what scares me is that it's becoming less free. Now, as it becomes less free, it will also grow less fast. As it becomes less free, it will also be much less of a threat to the United States or to anybody else. So I'd like it to become more free. So it's a robust, amazing trading partner. It would be amazing if America can benefit from the entrepreneurial spirit that all of us as individuals, not America, can benefit from the entrepreneurial spirit that would be unleashed if China freed up its citizens. I mean, Chinese are amazing entrepreneurs, and they have the capacity to really change the world if they are free from the constraints placed on them by the government. Thank you, Liam. All right, Richard says, I look forward to the day China is free. I will see it in my lifetime and I believe it will happen in the next 20 years. Chinese people yearn for freedom, but there was no moral leadership by U.S. President with a moral backbone could end CCP rule. I think that might be true, but you need that one American president. And unfortunately, even that one American president, I don't know where he is. And, you know, it's not so much that we need to see in our lifetime of free China what we really need to see in our lifetime as a free America. Maybe not as free as my ideal, maybe not as capitalist, as complete separation of state from economics, but freer than it is today, free as it used to be. If America can become free again, if America can turn on and can liberate its entrepreneurs, can liberate its innovators, it's very difficult to stop the United States. And if America can open up its borders, that's super important. I mean, I don't think people realize how big of a headwind we face. Because over the last five or so years, we've, more than that, you know, since 2016, 17, we've restricted immigration and primarily we've restricted the best from coming to America. I mean, why are we not issuing visas to Russian engineers? Why are we not issuing visas to Chinese engineers who want to leave their countries? Imagine if we told the Chinese entrepreneurial class, yeah, you probably can't get done stuff done in China right now because it's so regulated and controlled and your government is so authoritarian. Come to the United States, here's a visa. Can you imagine the flow of people, talent, brainpower and, and capital? They bring their money with them too. All right, let's see quickly other China questions. Michael says the future economic growth from China, maybe what keeps the West alive long enough objectives, ideas to really get out there. I don't think so, because as I said, as China becomes more authoritarian, China's economy will grow slower, will grow slower. What America needs, what China needs, what any country in the world needs in order to grow in order to become wealthy is capitalism. And if you negate capitalism, you negate economic growth. You destroy the capacity to grow free markets or drive economics. You know, government attempts to regulate control, socialist attempts to regulate and control always, always end in disaster and economic failure. All right. Wow, Wes, thank you. West just came in with $100, got us over the limit. Thank you guys. Really, really appreciate it. This is super helpful. You can keep asking $20 questions. All right. Let's Richard. Let's China. Okay, let's let's take Owen. First of all, great show today. You're on. Thanks, Owen. Really appreciate the support. There was $20. Michael asks, you say objective answers are not obvious, but a con explanation and answers anymore obvious. Do cancer answers make people more comfortable while people create discomfort so impetus to evade is greater. No, I mean, look, I don't think you quite get it, right? So consensors are not easy, but consensors are compatible with the dominant way of people or thinking that is Christianity. Consents, Kant and Christianity are bedfellows. They live together really, really well. Indeed, part of why Kant was motivated to provide those answers was because he wanted to save Christianity from the Enlightenment. So it kind of didn't come across as as as much of a revolutionary as objectivism is. Objectivism is an upheaval of their ideas. And then, of course, when Kant came out with his ideas, many of the intellectuals around him were impressed, supported those ideas and embraced them and then started teaching them or modified them to suit their needs. Hegel didn't teach Kant, but Hegel's philosophy is imbued with Kant. And once you get Hegel, then you get a Marx who takes Hegel's ideas and imbues them with another dimension and turn it into Marxism. So ideas built in ideas, built in ideas, all off of this Kantian base. And those ideas were picked up by intellectuals and sped and taught and integrated into people's lives. They don't know it's Kant. They've never heard of Immanuel Kant. They don't know he existed. It doesn't matter. What they get are the final ideas, the final outcomes of those Kantian ideas presented 200 plus years ago. But then integrated by intellectual after intellectual after intellectual and reshaped and changed into a million different things. Now, Objectivism doesn't have that. We don't have the multitude of intellectuals. We weren't picked up by the culture and by its intellectual elite. And that makes it far more difficult. We have to create an intellectual elite. We have to replace the existing intellectual elite. And that is a lot more difficult. So our answers are not obvious. And they're not embraced by the intellectuals. They're not embraced by the people who then perpetuate ideas out there into the culture. Richard, on the need for US freedom, not in my backyard rules banning cell towers are so effing annoying, so many dropped calls, so much bad reception and lost activity because of this. Not to mention immigration restriction. Open borders now. Yes, no, I mean, not in my backyard. You know, cell towers are just the beginning. What about all the industry that can't be built? The refining capacity that is shrinking because you can't build new refineries and on and on and on you go. Not in my backyard. The housing that is not being built creates massive challenges and massive problems, massive challenges and massive problems for growth, for economic success, for economic prosperity. The master says, what can be done to help improve the epistemology of American people? Well, I think one, it's the model of good epistemology. It's the most arguments using good epistemology. I think you'll have less success in teaching epistemology explicitly. What you want is to model it to show people how to present arguments, how to deal with reality, how to deal with facts. What does reason look like in terms of its application? That's one. The second is, of course, you've got to improve the epistemology of the intellectual leadership of the country. You've got to make the intellectual leaders be people who model this good epistemology and who write books based on this epistemology and then find ways to simplify it and to teach it in schools, to teach a proper way of thinking, a proper way of engaging with the world to children, to high schoolers primarily and to college students. That's the revolution. So you need, again, you need hundreds of intellectuals translating all of these abstract ideas into both into the way they communicate, so modeling it and into actual tools that people can use without having to understand the deep source of every epistemological principle. Shazba, do you think that the first moon colony would be more capitalist than the U.S.? Would you move there if it was? It would be easier on your back, at least. I don't know if the first moon colony would be more capitalist than the United States. I mean, it's really hard to tell. What kind of principles would guide it? It would probably be kind of a corporate structure. It could very well be top-down. It's hard to tell. I mean, I wish it was, like, I don't know if you guys have read The Moon as a harsh mistress by Robert Henlein, the way he describes a revolution on the moon that establishes a free political system on the moon, but then even it deteriorates so the hero is then often a spaceship to the next colony. I don't know. It really depends on who establishes it. Is it the U.S.? Is it China? Is it a corporation? Is it Elon Musk? So I don't know. Would I move there? Probably not. It strikes me as quite claustrophobic to have to wear the space suit all the time. I kind of like Earth. I like gravity. It would be easy on my back, but I'm hoping that once we can build colonies on the moon, we can also replace my back or reinvigorate it with stem cells, or maybe we can have the nanoparticles that you put into the back and they fix everything. Who knows what technology is going to bring to cure problems like my back problems? I truly believe it's going to happen. I mean the last surgery I had was cleaning up in stem cells and it's been amazing. And that was done kind of on the stealth because it's not completely officially permitted by the FDA. So imagine once these things are permitted or we go to a permissionless society and you don't have to ask permission. You can ask for forgiveness afterwards. I have titanium in my spine, so it would be nice. I don't think I could ever get rid of the titanium in my spine, but it hasn't limited to be too much the titanium in the spine. I'm still in pretty good shape. But yeah, I mean I'm excited about medical innovation. Anyway, so I'm not that curious about living on the moon. Let me stay on earth. I mean imagine the latency and the internet connection problems I would have on the moon. I mean I have them in Puerto Rico, imagine on the moon. You're on the terminator. I literally have titanium in my back. I mean big screws and you know, whole structure. It's pretty cool. Bionic you're on. All right, Richard says Israeli friends of mine have spent time in China. They say Chinese idealized Jews and have books like How to Invest Like a Jew. Did you encounter these sorts of positive depictions of Jewish stereotypes in your visits? Yes, primarily Israeli stereotypes, more than Jewish stereotypes. They love Israel. They think Israel is amazing. They adore the innovation, the entrepreneurship, the technology that comes out of Israel. I think a lot of technology that China has, unfortunately a lot of technology that I think probably China uses in its military, comes from Israel. But they really do adore Israel. They think Israel is amazing. And there is something about, there is a certain really deep respect for people who describe themselves as Jews over there. So I have noticed that. I have encountered that many times in my travels in China. That is a phenomena. All right, let's see. Richard says we're losing ground to China on stem cell research. One of the most obvious problems caused by Christian stick worship. Stick shoving, lettism might, must end. Yes. I mean, look, no question. We're losing, I mean, luckily Europe is not quite as obsessed as America is with Christianity. So there's a lot of stem cell innovation going on in Europe. You know, it was the cloning of the sheep. You remember the cloning of the sheep? That happened in the UK because the UK did not have restrictions on cloning, which the United States did. There's a lot of stem cell innovation going on in Europe that is not going on in the US. A lot of research going on in Europe over stem cells and some treatments in places like Switzerland. In the Americas you see, you're starting to see real medical tourism. I know people are going to Panama, to Mexico, to Colombia to get stem cell treatments. But wouldn't it be amazing if we're unleashed the American innovators, the American entrepreneurs on stem cells and American labs on stem cells and provided them with the incentives to go full-blown on stem cells. And the incentives, of course, are to be able to make money off of it with the FDA, supporting stem cells of doing away with the FDA. Wouldn't that be amazing? So yes, we're definitely losing ground to the rest of the world. And China is innovating like crazy in biotech. They realize biotech is an important feature of technology in the future. But again, a lot of those Chinese, we could get to move to the US. We could get them to come here and do the research over here. If only we had the right visa structure, if we only had the right immigration policy. The only thing keeping them over there is one, some belief that they have, which is based on some reality, that Americans are anti-Chinese and anti, you know, in a racist way, the racist against Chinese. And the second is just the absolute unbelievable difficulty of getting an immigration visa to the US. It's one of the biggest political issues out there. We need to have more immigrants. All right, a bunch of you are asking me about Tucker Carlson and Lemon who was fired from CNN. I saw that this morning. I actually talked about it quite a bit on my morning show. So you can go back. It's called Tucker Carlson and then some other things. I talked about it back then, but let's quickly go over these questions. Michael H. says Lemon and Carlson have been let go from the media networks at roughly the same time. Thoughts? Do you think they will be replaced by people better? So I think they'll be replaced by people who are better. I think CNN has engaged over the last few months in a real effort to try to move the network to the center. I think the new CEO is trying to basically change the perception of CNN from bastion of the left and what it was when it first came out, kind of a news network for everybody, 24-7 news and centrist, balanced. So I do think they'll get somebody better than Lemon. At Fox, I think Carlson was a real problem. He was a problem with Dominion. He was a problem with the other lawsuits that Fox is still facing. He was a problem in terms of his attitude, but he was also a problem in the sense that he was feeding the worst elements on the right. I think what they will get is somebody again better, how much better I don't know, but somebody who is more, I don't know, easy to control probably from the corporate perspective, but also somebody who maybe is more to the center, maybe more balanced, but not too anti-Trump because they can't afford to piss off their audience. So it'll be interesting to see what they replace him with, but they can't afford to just cater to the worst conspiracy theory elements on the right, which is what Tucker Carlson did. Tyler says, can you believe the news about Tucker Carlson? I'm ecstatic. I'm really happy. Couldn't happen to a nicer person. I'm glad to see Tucker Carlson go. He was a bad influence on America, a bad influence on I think the right, a bad influence on the people who watched Fox News. I think he was a really, really, really corrupting influence on America. So I'm glad to see him go. I hope he's marginalized somewhere, and we don't see much of him in the future. I don't think that will happen. I said that was my hope. Let me see. There was some other Hopper Campbell asks, will Tucker Carlson fade into obscurity like Stefan Marlenu after he was canceled? I don't know all I can say is I hope so, but I really don't know. I mean, Tucker Carlson was obviously a lot bigger than Stefan Marlenu and had a much stronger base. It's hard to know where those 2.2 million people who watched one of his episodes go. And it's obviously more than 3.2 because it's not the same 3.2 every night. So I don't know where he goes. All right, some unrelated questions. This one from yesterday by Michael. I had a professor tell me Africa is poor because of capitalism and imperialism. What economic system do African countries actually operate under? Well, they operate under an autocratic, authoritarian, corrupt economic system where the government basically, the authoritarian charge basically sucks all the wealth out of the economy and puts it into a Swiss bank account where Wagner Group exploits much of those resources by enslaving, in a sense, enslaving or exploiting Africans to mine products that then they sell in the open market. It is basically an economic system based on violence and based on authoritarianism and based on central planning. The few countries in Africa that have a semblance of private property and free markets are the ones that are growing the fastest, like somewhat Rwanda, Botswana and Botswana. It was one other country that I can't remember right now. Africa needs capitalism. It needs property rights. When property rights are implemented, Africa will be rich. Michael asks, why did White Rose and other anti-Nazi movements in the 1930s in Germany prove completely impotent? It shows morality and good ideas can't overpower evil intellectuals who control academia. It's not clear that the Nazis controlled academia early on, but because the White Rose and other anti-Nazi movements didn't have a moral and real ideological argument against Nazism. They were also Kantian. They were also influenced by German philosophy. They didn't have a philosophical argument against them. They were like conservatives today who can't argue with the left because they can't challenge their altruism. So ultimately the left has to win in that context either through the right-winning and just implementing the left policies or the left-winning in the short run. So that's why the Nazis won. The Nazis won because they faced no real intellectual, philosophical opposition. There was no principled opposition to them. There was just practical, pragmatic opposition and maybe socialist communist opposition which obviously is not going to affect them. You can't fight fascism with communism or communism with fascism, which is what the right is trying to do today in America. Richard said, it gave a presentation to Department of Justice officials today about the supply chains. I was pleasantly surprised by how receptive they were to my argument to deregulation and immigration reform, essential for national security thoughts. I mean that's great. I do think there are better people out there. I do think there are people even in government who understand these ideas. I think our problem is the American people and politicians we elect. I think once we have better people, once we have better politicians, it won't be that difficult to turn things around. But we need to have better politicians. We need to have better Americans, better people to elect better politicians. So I think it's fantastic and I think the more people like you present to them, the more they hear this, the more they hear that it's important. The more likely it is that they resist the stuff coming from Washington, the more likely it is that they propose better and better policies. We elected these politicians. Robert says, Amy and I are just back from a 10-day trip to Japan. Cool. Tokyo and Kyoto. And I had a yen to hear the Iran book show. For your information, Ayumi and Yoshi of the Iron Man Center Japan send their greetings. Oh, aren't they wonderful? I mean both Ayumi and Yoshi, just amazing people. I love those guys and it's great to do stuff with them. I've had some fantastic dinners with them. I had some fantastic events that we've scheduled together. So it's really inspiring to see objectivists everywhere. It includes Japan and actively engaged and actively involved. So yes, glad you got to meet them, Robert. Alright, last question for the night. James says, you've got to be consistent with your shows even while traveling or super chat revenue and viewership will keep suffering. Consistency is key. Problem is consistency is impossible. I can't do shows at 2 a.m. on the road when I have to do stuff at 8 a.m. on the road. It's just not doable. So you're just going to have to suffer through my inconsistency. And I realize that revenue will suffer. That's just part of the deal. Luckily, most of the time when I travel, I'm also making money by giving talks and things like that. This trip, not so much because this trip is mostly vacation. Although I am going to give talks in Israel. I'm going to do quite a few things in Israel. I think I'm going to be debating somebody from the government, from the Israeli government, on the judicial reforms. So I think we're going to have a minister from the government and I'm going to debate him on the proposed judicial reforms. We'll see if that happens. But I think that's part of the plan. Daniel says, I'm writing an article on industrial base in regards to military China. You once said it takes four and a half years to build a factory because of the Clean Air Act. Do you have a source please? No luck finding this so far. Oh God. I mean, I would look for Cato. I don't know if I said four and a half years. That sounds short. But look at Cato. Look at that economist. I really like it, Cato. Lindsey Kham. Lindsey Kham has a lot of information like that and I think I probably got it from one of his articles. So I would definitely check out Scott Lindsey Kham. I think it's Scott for information like that at the Cato Institute. He has also his own sub-stack where you can find all his articles. All right, everybody. It's already late at night. Thank you for joining me for the second show. Thank you for getting us way over the target. This helps keep everything going and it compensates for the fact that we got almost nothing yesterday. So it all balances out in the end and you guys are great. Richard has one final question. I have sources in answer to the question. Google environmental impact studies taken average of four and a half years. You'll find plenty. Just Google that sentence. Hopefully, Daniel, you'll heard that. Just Google environmental impact studies taken average of four and a half years. Thank you, Richard. And Fenharpa has another question. I mentioned to you Dr. Stone before while live on AMA, a new development in the show, they introduced the greediest man alive. It's in a good way though. He wants everyone to raise so he can trade with them win-win character. That's great. And we need more of that. It reminds me of the Patrick Bendavid that I did yesterday about selfishness. I mean, there's an element that's good in there and in the way he uses selfishness. We just need to clean it up dramatically, but clean it up. All right, everybody. Thank you. I really appreciate the support. We've done phenomenally well today. And I will see you all tomorrow. I'm going to plan to do a show. I think at noon, there'll be a new show. What won't be at noon? What am I talking about? I'm going to say noon. I've got a meeting at noon. I think it'll have to be at, yeah, tomorrow at one o'clock. One o'clock, I might have to push it at two. Maybe two o'clock. Anyway, sometime tomorrow afternoon, one or two o'clock, we'll have a show and I will see you all then. Bye, everybody. And thanks again for all the superchatters. You were great today.