 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. Mine's kind of rocky a little bit, but, you know, so be it. Okay, you know, we should just get started. Before we get started though, I did want to mention one of my sponsors. That is the Fountainhead Gypsoteca, which sells reproductions of classical sculpture. These are beautiful sculptures that he sells at very reasonable prices. Any order of $100 gets free shipping in the lower 48 states. And if you use the promo code Iran, my first name, Iran, you get 10% off your order. So, you know, the link is right below, right below here. It's fountainheadcasts.com, fountainheadcast.com. And hopefully you can, you'll go browse, find some sculpture you really love. Remember, surround yourself with beauty. This is a way of surrounding yourself with beauty. And you can buy some of these casts of, you know, true masterpieces for very, very reasonable prices. So go ahead, check it out, fountainheadcasts.com. Don't forget promo code Iran for 10% off. It's the Fountainhead Gypsoteca run by a sculptor by the name of Justin Kindle. All right, let's jump in, TikTok. TikTok continues to be in the news. It continues to be threats to ban TikTok in the entire country. I think it's the state of Montana that has now banned TikTok from the state. I'm not sure how that works. I'm not sure if the network's in the state and a lot of it will carry it. If you have it on your phone, are the police going to, like, ask to search your phone and check to see if you're watching TikTok? I mean, I don't know how you ban TikTok, how that works exactly. VPN's a good way to get around any kind of ban within. I mean, the great internet wall of China hasn't actually managed to restrict the ability of the Chinese to access Google and Facebook and YouTube. But we're expected to believe that the great wall of Montana, Montana and us competing with China on censoring what its citizens can watch. I mean, it's truly astounding. And it's going to be interesting to see if this goes to the courts and what happens if it does go to court. In the meantime, Josh Hawley and others are loudly advocating for banning TikTok at the federal level, secreting the United States. Great internet wall where the U.S. government starts telling us what internet services we can and cannot listen to. All in the name of, by the way, national security, because I know that you guys, your behavior on TikTok has national security implications. What you do on TikTok can really damage and threaten the security of the United States of America. I really don't get it. I don't get how they can get away with it. Good for Rand Paul, who I think is the only senator who is vocally opposed to all this nonsense. This is unquestionably government censorship. There is no national security issue here. The issue has nothing to do with national security. This is all about, I think for people like Josh Hawley, it's all about the, quote, social impact of TikTok, the negative social impact of TikTok. They'd love to be able to regulate and control Instagram and other social media as well. This is also a slam against China, anything to go after China and guard them into reaction. TikTok, so they know what videos you watch. They know the cat videos you watch. How is this a national security threat if China has this kind of information? Now, to top all this off, the real effort right now that TikTok is making, working with Oracle. It's U.S. partner, Oracle, the big tech company run by Larry Ellison. They are calling this the Project Texas. Oracle has its server farm in Texas where TikTok hosts all of U.S. TikTok. What they're working on is for Oracle to have the ability to be able to access, to have full access to source code, algorithm and content moderation material on these servers and to be able to monitor and control the gateways where the data comes in and out and make sure that the data does not go to China. So it'll be interesting to see, this is all in the works, Oracle is working with TikTok to make this happen. It will be really interesting to see if once Oracle gets access to all of this and actually secures this network and has the ability to prevent the Chinese government from accessing this information or for the information to leave the United States, whether Senator Hawley and JD Vance and I'm sure some on the left will stop this nonsense of trying to ban TikTok from the U.S. I mean it would be interesting if Republicans spearheaded demanding of TikTok. I think TikTok has, what, 150 million customers in the U.S. I read a headline somewhere where this would guarantee that the Republican Party would lose every election from here until eternity. People don't like it when you take their toys away. Don't take people toys away. Certainly don't take people's cat videos away. So all of you who are afraid of TikTok and really worried about the Chinese government spying on your video TikTok habits. Oracle, a good old American company, run by Larry Ellison who is a committed Republican, maybe even free market guy. Oracle is going to protect you. Oracle is going to have your back and God, people are so paranoid and ridiculous. Larry Ellison just reminds me, Larry Ellison it turns out is the big backer of Senator Scott who announced the other day that he's running for president. Larry Ellison has already, I think, put $10 million into Scott's campaign. He has promised to put in much more than that in the future. He is the number one backer of Senator Scott. I think Scott is running basically for the vice president's position. I don't think there's a chance of winning. But you never know. I think I'm coming to the conclusion, even though this isn't a topic on our morning show. I'm coming to the conclusion that DeSantis is dead in the water. I don't think DeSantis goes anywhere. The more I read about his campaigning, the more the guy has no personality on the campaign trail. He can't make eye contact with donors. He has no interpersonal skills. He does okay on television, but he's just terrible with groups and with individuals on the campaign trail. And it really looks like he is gone. He's just not going to be a significant factor. So that leaves Trump, and then it's just a question of who Trump picks for his VP. I just don't see how DeSantis stands up to Trump, fights Trump, engages in Trump, or how DeSantis engages the Republican Party, gets him excited and motivated to support his candidacy. It just doesn't seem real right now. Jimbo Jones says that I'm wrong, that there are almost no CAD videos on TikTok. It's mostly dancing, singing, and weird perks. That's good to know. As somebody who's basically never been to TikTok, I don't know. I just assumed it's all CAD videos, but okay, so TikTok is not about CAD videos. I stand corrected. It's about dancing, singing, and weird pranks. So yeah, I don't want the Chinese knowing what my dancing, singing, and weird pranks habits are very, very dangerous. Not just to me, but to national security. So we better not let those pranks, national security pranks, better not let the Chinese have that information. All right, talk about Congress. So Congress had a session the other day about AI. I mean, everybody's afraid of AI. AI is very, very scary. If you watch Terminator movies, you know that AI will take over the world. It's just a question of when and how many people are going to die in the process. But AI is a scary beast, and Congress held a hearing to try to figure out what it can do about it. And shockingly, it seems like the senators were actually fairly reasonable, except for Josh Hawley, who just hates technology and just freaks out of these things. We're fairly reasonable about it. Josh Hawley would just be, you know, just flip out. We could be looking, this is Josh Hawley. We could be looking at one of the most significant technological innovations in human history. What kind of innovation is it going to be, like the printing press? Or is it going to be more like the atom bomb? Now we know exactly how what Josh Hawley thinks in terms of those two alternatives. Hawley then blames Google Search for swaying political outcomes, and AI is going to be even worse, because AI is going to have even more power. And, you know, it just, I talked yesterday about the white economic policy and how much they mimic the left. Well, there really is a strand. Are you guys, are you guys having video problems? Audio breaking up. Video breaking up. Audio problems, anybody? Not sure what's going on. Maybe it's because I'm talking about, maybe it's because I'm talking about what do you call it, AI and the AI can hear me and is coming after me. So it really is spooky that it looks like Republican Party and many people on the right and many conservatives are going to be part of the new Luddite movement. So again, learning from the left, AI is going to take our jobs. We saw that yesterday. AI Jihad, we talked about that on yesterday's show. The proposal from the right, from the new right to engage in AI Jihad. Pretty scary stuff. Anyway, the real scary thing I think in this hearing was not politicians. Now that, in and of itself, is a shock. The real scary part of this was what Sam Altman had to say. Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI. ChadGPT4, he founded OpenAI with Elon Musk. Originally it was supposed to be a non-profit. It's turned into a for-profit and, of course, got $100 million investment from Microsoft. Sam Altman basically came out and in his opening statement said, he's very positive about AI. He has to be, he's involved in doing it. But he basically says, we can use AI to end cancer, to avoid climate change, to cure the blind. We're working hard. We can do these amazing things. But please, Congress, please, Congress, regulate us. AI needs to be regulated because there's real downside here. There's real danger here. You know, you've got to be, you've got to help us out. We're not good at self-regulating. So please, Congress, come and regulate us. I mean, this is astounding. It's almost never the case that businessmen go to Congress with a new technology and say, regulate this. Like, Zuckerberg at some point said, please, regulate us. But why did he say that? He said that because it was clear, because they were harassing him and they were saying, we expect this and we expect that and we want this and we go after you on this and we go after you on that. And it was like, just tell me what the rules are. Just tell me what to expect. Here's how you could regulate us to make it clear for us. Now, I'm not supporting Zuckerberg doing that, but at least it's understandable. He saw what was happening. He saw what was going on. He anticipated that Congress was going to regulate him. He was already hated by almost everybody. And he said, okay, let me try to control the process. Let me try to be involved in the process. Let me try to contribute to this and I'll propose the regulation. Sam Altman here is, nobody's talking about regulation yet. And he's saying, no, we want to be regulated. Please do this for us. I'll give you an example of an alternative, right? So in the biotech field, CRISPR, gene editing. To a large extent, gene editing is potentially more morally problematic, challenging, mind-bending in terms of the possibilities than AI is. Gene editing basically will make it possible for us to go into, and before a child is born, alter their DNA, it'll make it possible to alter the DNA people who are alive in all kinds of ways. Who knows? We might create monsters. We might create soldiers. We might create all kinds of stuff. And so what did the biotech community do, given this reality? Also, there was a danger with the tech that some people would try to start using it on human beings before it was ready and create monsters because of that, potential for eugenics. But the real danger was that people would start using it before it was ready. So what did they do? The industry got together, sat down and drew up certain guidelines on how it should be used for now, completely leaving it open that as the technology advances, as our knowledge advances, as the applications advance, we will apply it in different ways as we move into the future and so on. So the industry did it. They didn't run to Congress and said, please regulate us because we're evil and we're likely to destroy the planet and create something that takes over the world and kills us all. There's something about, and this is from altruism, there's something about a businessman who internalized this idea that they must be evil and they must be bad because they are self-interested, because their profit-seeking. And that they need to be controlled. There's something about them that accepts that and buys into that and embraces that. And Sam, it's just pathetic. It's just pathetic. And it's not that Sam is particularly a pessimist about AI. Now there are a lot of issues that AI brings up and we'll have to talk more about these. Certainly, I think the biggest issue that AI brings up is at the end of the day, it emphasizes something. It emphasizes even more the question of who owns your data and do you own your own data? And I think it's time that we basically reach a point where we create a mechanism by which we as individuals own our own data. And then we can decide whether we want an AI to train our own data or not. Whether AI should be able to train on our song or not. Whether AI should be able to train on our painting or not for art. The internet is too much of a free fall in terms of once you give the data to a website, the presumption is it's theirs and they can do whatever they want with it or almost whatever they want with it. And the presumption is even worse because of the third party doctrine that once you give a website your data, the government can access their data. We need to regain control of our own data and part of that it should be the Supreme Court doing away with third party doctrine but part of it also has to be just a real orientation of how we think about data. I always hoped that blockchain technologies, maybe some of the crypto stuff would ultimately morph into a way for us to be able to control our own personal data as it goes on to the web. I don't exactly how that would be but that I think is crucial. And Sam Altman's credit, he did bring that up. People should be able to say, I don't want my personal data used to train AI. I think that's absolutely right but that's a much broader issue. People should be able to say, here's how I want my personal data to be used and here how I don't want my personal data to be used. Altman also argued that he would like to see a government agency issuing artificial intelligence business licenses that then can be revoked. So he wants licensing laws over AI. It's just stunning to me that these people, the trust these people have in government where they don't have that trust in private enterprise, private businesses and the reason is again the same reason I mentioned earlier. It's altruism. They trust government because they're not selfish. They trust government because they're for the public good, for the common interest. They distrust business because business is inherently self-interested. It's about profit and therefore it can be trusted. The bureaucrat can be trusted in spite of all of history, in spite of everything that's happened, in spite of all the examples of governments doing horrific things, in spite of our day-to-day experience of the inefficiencies and just the bureaucracy and just the nastiness and often evil of government policies. Government has to be trusted, regulate everything. It's those industry guides. Those are the guys you have to really be careful of. Those are the guys you have to watch. Those are the guys who are going to destroy society. All right, Brexit. So, as I said from the beginning of Brexit, Brexit was a great opportunity for the UK to basically abandon the regulatory regime of the European Union and to eliminate regulation. It could also be an opportunity to set up the UK as a free trade island and get away from the immigration restrictions that the trade restrictions that the European Union had put in place. And a lot of the supporters or some of the supporters of Brexit, those are the arguments they made that it's about getting rid of regulation. It's about increasing trade. It's about all these things. Now, Brexit has happened. Brexit has happened. And then we sit here and continue to wait for all the good stuff to happen that was promised as a result of Brexit. Getting rid of all the European regulations. Getting, you know, establishing free trade policies. And there being some movement of free trade. I mean, the UK did what I think the United States didn't do under Trump, which is join a free trade deal in the Pacific Ocean. One of the massive mistakes of the Trump administration was rejecting top. The UK has joined top or something similar to top. But generally, it still hasn't lived up to its promise of free trade island. And then on top of that, when the current Prime Minister, Sunak of UK came in, he promised, and actually the Conservatives passed a law that said that by the end of this year, by the end of 2023, about 6,000 or 8,000 regulations that had been adopted by the UK because of the European Union, right? Because of the European Union, embraced by the UK as part of the deal with the European Union, all of those would be eliminated. And the UK would draw up its own regulations, which would be supposedly a lot leaner and a lot more effective and a lot more efficient and a lot more poor business, than the European Union once. Last week, the UK government said that it was changing its mind. They would not do away with all 6,000, 4,000, however many regulations there were because it was too difficult, it was too hard. They were afraid that by eliminating all the regulations so fast they would make mistakes and bad stuff would happen and business wouldn't be ready. And yeah, bad stuff would happen, right? Because, why? Because they were getting rid of the regulations too fast. So instead, they've decided to get rid of 600 specific laws that will be revoked. Now, 600 is better than nothing, but it's not as good as 4,000. I for one have no problem in thrusting the government into a position where oh my God, all these regulations have disappeared, what are we going to do now? They cope quite well, amazingly well actually, even when they were in a position where suddenly the regulations have disappeared and they don't know what to do. So I wouldn't worry about business in that context. And so anyway, the UK is moving a little bit in that direction but nowhere near as much as it could. I'll still take the 600. One of the real aims of some of this is to, I'll put it this way, one of the things that the EU is clearly signaling through its regulatory regimes is a disinterest in innovation, technology and progress. So it is basically adopting the precautionary principle where you can't operate anything new unless you can guarantee 100% that it doesn't increase risk. That's the precautionary principle. The EU is finding big tech. The EU basically is discouraging innovation. The UK wants to take a different stance. It wants to encourage it. It wants to support it. It wants to embrace innovation and embrace tech. It still wants to break up big tech. And I think it was the UK regulatory agency that prevented Microsoft from buying that gaming company in the name of protecting competition. Just absurd and ridiculous. They're now like eight, 10 different regulatory agencies that can put a kibosh on a mojo. People accuse us of having a free market, right? And all these problems caused by a free market. What free market are we talking about? The free market where regulators can tell me whether I can mojo or not mojo with another company? God. Anyway, the UK does have a path here to become an innovative innovation center of Europe and basically separate itself from the European Union by having laws and regulations in place and tax code in place that does not discourage innovation, start-ups, technology, business. UK has always had pretty good policies with regard to biotech. And if you remember Dolly the sheep that was cloned, they did a lot of kind of cutting edge biotech stuff. Hopefully they can get back to that once now that they've left the European Union and not under the boot of European Union regulations. So there really is an opportunity here for the UK to separate itself and to become a real beacon. But it's going to have to move pretty quickly and it's going to have to do things that are pretty dramatic and significant, particularly on the regulatory front. And I just wonder if this government and the next government, which is likely to be a labor government, have what it takes to achieve that, have what it takes to be successful with it. All right. Let's see. All right. Last topic, low-income housing. This was a funny story. All right. So this guy, what's his name? Gregory something. Yeah, Michael Gregory. Michael Gregory is a builder in Portland, Oregon. And he built recently some low-income housing in Portland, Oregon. He built a three-story building with a mix of studio and one bedroom apartment, all of which have to be sold or rented to low-income tenants because Gregory got a break from city fees in order to, in building this, the units are nice. There are spaces. They have nice countertops. And basically Gregory is saying, I'll never do this again. He says, I would rather kick myself in the balls a hundred times than do this again. Why? What could it be that makes it so difficult, makes it so painful for Mr. Gregory to build in Portland, Oregon? He did what everybody wants builders to do. He built low-income housing. He did what every politician in these cities wants it to happen, build low-income housing. And he's saying, you'd rather kick yourself in the balls a hundred times? God, I can't. I mean, how painful could it be? I'm not sure how you kick yourself in the balls, but we get the idea. Basically, what he says is that the city's bureaucracy is so onerous, so ridiculous, so invasive that it was such a hassle, so painful, so destructive, so time-consuming that he'd rather kick himself in the balls a hundred times than do it again. The building itself is not a problem. The execution is not a problem. But getting the permits and the approvals and the inspectors and the Bureau of Development Services and Transportation and Parks and Bureau's Urban Forestry Division and this guy and that guy and this is a city, supposedly committed to low-income housing. This is a city that supposedly has been committed since 2021 to streamlining the process and incentivizing builders to build low-income housing. And yet, it's impossible to do. And this is, you know, he had a build for single-family houses. Builders have 7.6 permits per 10,000 residents, right? Because they don't want to build in Portland. Whereas in Austin, Texas, for example, they're doing 31.1 permits, so four times more per 100,000 because it's much easier to build in Austin, Texas. Not easy enough, though. So, if you ask why we have a homelessness problem, it's because even the people who claim they believe in low-income housing, even the cities that claim to support low-income housing and friendly to low-income housing, making it possible to build low-income housing. Make it painful. 100 times in the... 100 times, 100 kicks. So, it's on and on. So, I mean, I'll give you an example. You know, everything was ready. Pipes were on the ground. Everything was ready, and then suddenly the Portland Bureau of Transportation said, we want you to leave room so that we can widen the sidewalk in the future. To do that, he had to move the plumbing and the fire sprinkler systems, right? Submitted new plans. Wait. And he goes on and on and every little change, every little request, every little... And who pays all the costs for this? He does. So, this is low-income housing. Supposedly low-income. So, these are cheap. But they're making it expensive. Through all the regulations, demands, requests, permitting, permits, it just becomes impossible, impossible to build. I mean, you can go on and on into all the details and all the drudgery and all the harassment. It's just not worth it. It's just not worth it. Right? Let's see. I mean, there's a bunch of other stories. Oh, I just want to say something about... You probably... I don't know if you're following the story in Ukraine. These troops that entered Russia and took over two villages. The Russians now are saying they've killed them all and everything's reoccupied. The Russian... The troops that went in are challenging that. It's not clear what's going on there. It's not clear if these people were Ukrainians, were they Russians, were they Russian, Ukrainians, Ukrainian, Russians, who they were exactly and what they were. There's a lot of conflicting information. It's just a... It's a mess, but it's a massive embarrassment to the Russians. I mean, basically, you had a very small force invade Russia itself. And Russia was caught completely by surprise. None of its defenses on the border held. They had to call up forces. I mean, mainly what this is, is just an embarrassment to the Russian forces. But they have. They have taken Bakhmut after 10 months, 10 months of fighting for a little town that is worthless strategically and maybe up to 100,000 casualties. All right. Jennifer says, which will kill me first? AI or climate change? Happy birthday. Thank you, Jennifer. Which will kill you first? I suspect neither one of them, but the advocates of both... The advocates of the fearmongers might kill you first. I mean, the fear and the consequence of fear that is the most... is the thing that is damaging, not the problem itself. Neither of those problems are likely to kill you. But fearmongering, millennials, you know, we need... We need something with the left fears, climate change, we need something for the right to fear, and that's, I guess, AI now, technology. Oh my God. It's going to kill us all. Colin said, suggested for the $1,000 show, your thoughts on the article I linked below. It's an area where I think we can really make a dent and for you and Gretzo Muri to talk about it in Austin soon. I don't see the link. So Colin, can you send me the link? I can't post the link, but if you Google, how eugenics change statistics. All right, got it. Got it, thank you. Let me just copy that over. Okay, let's see what else... Not a lot of questions, guys, so this will be a short show today. All right, Chikin asks, after finishing Fountainhead some months back, I've now started with Atlas Shrugged. I just finished the money speech and it's probably the best thing I've ever read. So now I need a pause to digest. Enjoy your birthday. Yes. A lot of digesting has to happen with the money speech. I'm super happy you're reading the Atlas Shrugged and super happy you enjoyed the money speech so much. There are a lot of great speeches. The nice thing about the money speeches, it's condensed, it's to the point, it's clear as you'll see in Atlas, there are quite a few more speeches, one of them very long, but really, really good lays out the entire, Iron Man's entire philosophy in it. But yeah, enjoy Atlas Shrugged, I'm jealous. Reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time, that is always a unique once in a lifetime type pleasure, right? Okay, Frank says, can you be on Larry Kudlow's Saturday radio show on WABC? This is from yesterday. I can, the challenge is for Larry Kudlow to invite me. I can't will myself onto anybody's show. I can't will myself onto Joe Rogan, can't will myself onto Larry Kudlow. The best thing you can do to help me is let Larry Kudlow know that you think I should be on a show, encourage Larry Kudlow to invite me onto the show. Somebody saw the Atlas Shrugged movie instead of reading the book, what a travesty. God, the movies are terrible and it's a massive injustice to watch the movies and not read the book and injustice to yourself. Let's see. Roland says, happy birthday. Thank you, Roland. Catherine says, happy birthday. Thank you, Catherine. Apollo Zeus says, happy birthday. Thank you, Apollo Zeus. Apollo Zeus also asked, opinion of free ports in the UK. These are ports. These are like free trade zones, I think. They're set up next to ports in the UK and goods produced there. Don't pay certain taxes and import and export. Tariffs are waived and everything else. Yeah, I'm all forced up like that. I just wish free ports are such a good idea. Then why not make the UK one big free port? Why not make the UK a tariff-free zone? Why not make the UK a, what do you call it, a tax-free zone? Why not make the UK a regulatory-free zone? If these zones are so successful, why not make them more expansive and covering the entire economy? Wouldn't that be more meaningful and more substantive? So yeah, anytime you can provide some freedom, it's better than no freedom. But again, if some freedom makes sense in some place, why not have that some freedom everywhere? Why limit it? All right. Thank you, Apollo. Thank you, Gail, for the happy birthday. Thank you, Linda, for the happy birthday. Thank you, Walter, for the support. Walter, for the support. Let's see, Walter, I have to thank for the support scrolling down here. I think we got all those. Adam, thank you. We really appreciate the happy birthday. All right, guys. I'm done with the questions. No more questions. Thinner questions today. All right, I will see you all tomorrow for another episode of the News Roundup. I think tomorrow is going to be a little bit different time-wise, maybe an hour later. We will see. Yes, I've got it right now at 2 p.m. East Coast time. So plan on that. And I will see you all. I will see you all tomorrow.