[00:00.000 --> 00:09.520]  ...the financial support to this radio station by calling 516-620-3602 or go to give2wbai.org online.
[00:10.200 --> 00:13.240]  Your efforts are highly appreciated.
[00:13.540 --> 00:16.000]  Now stay tuned for Off the Hook, coming up.
[00:19.470 --> 00:22.910]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
[00:23.030 --> 00:25.930]  It's 7 o'clock time once again for Off the Hook.
[00:36.880 --> 00:38.860]  I cut myself all shaven.
[00:39.340 --> 00:41.320]  Now I can't make a call.
[00:42.300 --> 00:44.160]  We couldn't get much worse.
[00:44.900 --> 00:46.680]  But if they could, they would.
[00:46.920 --> 00:49.600]  But we live on for the best to stay for worse.
[00:50.420 --> 00:51.820]  I hope I understood.
[00:52.300 --> 00:55.200]  But we live on for
[02:10.370 --> 02:10.370]  the best to stay for worse.
[02:10.970 --> 02:12.630]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[02:12.730 --> 02:14.470]  The program is...
[02:15.010 --> 02:15.770]  Off the Hook?
[02:16.650 --> 02:17.550]  I got that right?
[02:17.650 --> 02:17.810]  Okay.
[02:18.630 --> 02:19.650]  Why are you not there?
[02:19.730 --> 02:20.150]  There you are.
[02:20.410 --> 02:20.950]  Hang on.
[02:21.170 --> 02:23.110]  I think I... No, I pressed the wrong button there.
[02:23.210 --> 02:24.030]  No, I pressed the right button.
[02:24.190 --> 02:25.310]  You're not working for some reason.
[02:25.390 --> 02:26.670]  Is your off switch on again?
[02:27.610 --> 02:27.970]  Wow.
[02:29.050 --> 02:31.270]  Give a man an off switch and he'll abuse it.
[02:31.350 --> 02:32.010]  Do you want to say hi again?
[02:32.310 --> 02:33.210]  It's self-control.
[02:34.130 --> 02:39.190]  Kyle has a Radio Shack microphone that we have plugged into this high-tech remote board here.
[02:40.550 --> 02:42.610]  And yeah, there's always a switch.
[02:42.690 --> 02:43.190]  There's always a button.
[02:43.290 --> 02:44.950]  So anyway, Emmanuel here, Kyle over there.
[02:45.610 --> 02:49.750]  And let's see if we can bring in Alex in Skypeland.
[02:50.610 --> 02:51.610]  Alex, are you there?
[02:52.650 --> 02:53.810]  Greetings from Pennsylvania.
[02:53.810 --> 02:54.330]  Good evening.
[02:54.490 --> 02:56.290]  Look at you all dressed up in a suit and tie.
[02:56.470 --> 02:57.470]  You didn't have to do that for us.
[02:58.290 --> 03:01.250]  Well, you know, every once in a while I try to class up this program.
[03:01.510 --> 03:02.090]  Somebody has to.
[03:03.250 --> 03:03.930]  Well said.
[03:04.030 --> 03:04.350]  Well said.
[03:04.370 --> 03:05.170]  We'll talk about that later.
[03:06.170 --> 03:10.750]  Yeah, so we are living under an attempted coup.
[03:11.070 --> 03:12.870]  I mean, I think that's fair to say, right?
[03:13.970 --> 03:16.790]  That's... would you say, Alex, that's a legal statement?
[03:16.790 --> 03:18.790]  As a lawyer, I could say that, and it's true?
[03:19.330 --> 03:21.770]  It sounds somewhat accurate to me.
[03:21.910 --> 03:28.890]  I mean, we're living under some, I think, misguided apprehension of victory.
[03:29.250 --> 03:30.310]  That's what a coup is.
[03:30.410 --> 03:31.890]  That's always what a coup is.
[03:33.230 --> 03:34.870]  Misguided perception of victory.
[03:35.550 --> 03:36.010]  Yeah.
[03:36.410 --> 03:37.370]  I mean, come on.
[03:37.610 --> 03:43.450]  At WBAI, we have had coups, and it's always based on a misguided perception of victory.
[03:43.630 --> 03:48.350]  Alex, are you saying this is like a soft coup or something?
[03:48.890 --> 03:49.610]  Soft coup.
[03:49.710 --> 03:50.410]  Don't give me that.
[03:50.530 --> 03:52.070]  A light coup of some kind?
[03:52.950 --> 03:55.370]  Leave it to America to not even get a coup right.
[03:55.710 --> 03:55.950]  No.
[03:56.830 --> 03:57.710]  A coup is a coup.
[03:57.990 --> 03:58.870]  I'm sorry, Alex.
[03:59.010 --> 03:59.510]  Go ahead.
[03:59.510 --> 04:08.770]  I think what we're dealing with here is a president who doesn't want to face reality and is going to hold this back as long as he possibly can.
[04:09.030 --> 04:22.610]  We'll try to make, you know, extended applications to various state courts, get them all rejected, exhaust all of his legal arguments, you know, until there's absolutely nothing left.
[04:22.610 --> 04:27.850]  And everyone has abandoned him, including all of his Republican cohorts.
[04:28.190 --> 04:30.730]  And he's got no choice but to leave.
[04:30.830 --> 04:34.710]  I mean, this is a person who may essentially be escorted out at that particular time.
[04:34.910 --> 04:54.190]  But I think he and his supporters are holding on to some last straws of hope that they are going to be able to present some kind of tangible evidence of fraud to the extent that ballots will be recounted or this will just continue to be extended for as long as possible.
[04:54.370 --> 05:02.350]  Because the longer he can extend this, the greater the uncertainty in everybody's mind about what the hell is actually happening.
[05:02.590 --> 05:03.910]  And I think that's the point.
[05:03.910 --> 05:06.850]  Well, okay, I have to take issue with a couple of things.
[05:07.050 --> 05:10.610]  You say this like it's about Trump and only Trump.
[05:10.610 --> 05:11.210]  It's not.
[05:11.590 --> 05:14.730]  It's a lot of people signing on to this crap.
[05:15.270 --> 05:18.530]  Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, to name a couple, and a lot more.
[05:19.290 --> 05:20.970]  It's not just one person.
[05:20.970 --> 05:21.750]  It's a movement.
[05:22.010 --> 05:25.350]  And it's a movement that right now has the backing of the U.S.
[05:25.430 --> 05:25.710]  government.
[05:26.150 --> 05:29.610]  And you're seeing this in almost every department.
[05:29.610 --> 05:40.970]  The yes-men, no offense to the real yes-men, but the yes-men being appointed to do Trump's bidding and to keep Biden out, the rightfully elected president.
[05:41.770 --> 05:49.850]  And this might seem kind of comical right now, but as the days go by, it's going to get more and more serious.
[05:50.090 --> 05:55.250]  Need I remind you, we had issues in 2000 with transition.
[05:55.250 --> 06:00.270]  It was a much more legitimate fight then because it came down to a few hundred votes in Florida.
[06:01.070 --> 06:03.510]  But there was difficulty with the transition.
[06:03.750 --> 06:04.430]  And what happened?
[06:04.710 --> 06:07.710]  Intelligence failures and 9-11, less than a year after that.
[06:07.810 --> 06:11.970]  What do you think is going to happen with the kind of massive screw-up going on right now?
[06:12.690 --> 06:13.390]  Sabotage, right?
[06:13.630 --> 06:15.310]  I believe it's sabotage, absolutely.
[06:15.710 --> 06:20.950]  I mean, coups usually are filled with sabotage of one sort or another.
[06:22.150 --> 06:40.730]  Yeah, and adding to that, I think, and this is where it does get particularly scary, I think, is that the Trump administration over the last couple of days have launched this really dramatic shake-up of the senior leadership of the Pentagon installing White House loyalists into those senior positions.
[06:40.950 --> 06:48.210]  That, to me, is extraordinarily scary because the people that they're replacing were serving the Department of Defense.
[06:48.210 --> 06:51.870]  These are people that are now serving the President of the United States.
[06:52.730 --> 07:00.710]  And it remains to be seen where this is going to go, and if it's going to go further than the senior leadership over the Pentagon.
[07:01.070 --> 07:12.730]  Also, for a lame duck president with only a few short months left of his presidency, it also raises the question of why this shake-up at this particular time right in the aftermath of the election.
[07:13.250 --> 07:20.250]  Well, again, it's so that people will be in key positions that will do his bidding without question, without actually looking at the facts.
[07:20.410 --> 07:25.310]  But in addition to that, we have to look at the civil unrest, which is bound to follow this.
[07:25.470 --> 07:41.910]  When all these people believe what... and they always believe what Trump says, whether, you know, it's Muslims are bad, and you have to build a wall, or that masks don't do any good, and there's no such thing as COVID, people are going to believe that this election was stolen,
[07:41.910 --> 07:47.990]  and they are going to follow him into hell to fight for what they believe is right.
[07:48.150 --> 07:58.410]  And also, we have a very important election coming up in Georgia in January, and the organization for that is going to be in full swing.
[07:58.550 --> 07:59.570]  In fact, it already is.
[07:59.570 --> 08:04.630]  That determines whether or not Mitch McConnell runs the country or Joe Biden runs the country.
[08:05.170 --> 08:08.030]  Literally, that is what it is going to determine.
[08:08.290 --> 08:21.110]  And a lot of this riling up the populace on the part of Trump is so that more people will turn out in Georgia and be angry and think that they're somehow defending democracy.
[08:22.310 --> 08:22.830]  Yeah.
[08:23.090 --> 08:37.150]  I mean, like most things that the president does, and that Republicans have done for quite a long time, going back, I think, as far as the Merrick Garland debate and refusing to confirm his nomination to the Supreme Court, it's all about energizing their base.
[08:37.230 --> 08:42.770]  It's all about the lowest common denominator of the Republican Party, getting them to be as active as possible.
[08:43.230 --> 08:49.310]  And when you activate that base, you increase your probability of winning whatever the election is that's about to happen.
[08:49.990 --> 08:57.830]  And, you know, we saw that, I think, tremendously when it came to issues like, you know, the encryption debate, when it came to issues like Assange.
[08:58.410 --> 09:06.550]  And we even saw some weird rumblings from Trump over the last several weeks ahead of the election about a potential pardon of Snowden.
[09:06.830 --> 09:11.970]  Maybe that was to stick an additional thumb, maybe a third thumb in the eye of the intelligence community.
[09:12.190 --> 09:16.430]  But we also saw it as well with the proposed TikTok ban.
[09:16.490 --> 09:18.210]  And I think we'll get into that a little bit later on.
[09:18.530 --> 09:20.230]  Yes, we're definitely going to talk about that.
[09:20.410 --> 09:24.330]  But you're mentioning pardons, and we'd like to talk about strategies on this show.
[09:24.450 --> 09:35.910]  And this is a strategy that I've seen come up as a long shot, but definitely a possibility in this administration, in that Trump might resign, have Pence take over and pardon him before Biden takes over.
[09:36.050 --> 09:37.110]  What do you think about that move?
[09:39.230 --> 09:42.110]  That would be extraordinarily interesting.
[09:42.110 --> 09:42.190]  Interesting.
[09:43.890 --> 09:46.610]  The thing that, you know, and Pence could do that.
[09:46.750 --> 09:51.250]  I mean, I guess technically, that would be a rather interesting chess play there.
[09:51.750 --> 09:56.330]  I mean, Pence himself might get impeached for abusing his authority in that respect.
[09:56.610 --> 10:02.770]  But remember, Pence can only pardon the president with respect to federal crimes.
[10:02.810 --> 10:06.050]  He cannot pardon the president with regard to state crimes.
[10:06.230 --> 10:16.110]  There's still a lot of outstanding misconduct that remains to be investigated, potentially prosecuted, in Donald Trump's former home state, our state, New York.
[10:16.290 --> 10:18.170]  But the federal crimes, that's a big deal.
[10:18.230 --> 10:22.610]  And if Pence waited until the last day, there wouldn't be time to impeach him.
[10:23.230 --> 10:31.530]  So, you know, Republicans are very good at playing this game of chess and making it so that Democrats don't have much to answer.
[10:31.810 --> 10:33.830]  There's not much they can do in response.
[10:33.830 --> 10:34.590]  Pence.
[10:34.970 --> 10:36.410]  Yeah, I mean, look, that's true.
[10:36.610 --> 10:48.130]  But, you know, if you were Pence, and, you know, for all intents and purposes, he does seem to be, you know, to be floating out of the scene right now, for whatever reason, possibly taking a beat, taking a step back.
[10:48.530 --> 10:52.130]  But if you were Pence, would you want that to be your legacy?
[10:52.270 --> 10:53.890]  Would you want that to be what's going on?
[10:53.970 --> 11:01.370]  Don't ever say to me, if you were Pence, that is one of the worst things anybody in any alternative universe?
[11:01.510 --> 11:01.950]  Oh, my God.
[11:02.050 --> 11:09.430]  Now I can't get the thought out of my... If I were Pence, if I were Pence, if I were Pence, I'd wish for a high-speed train network so that I...
[11:09.430 --> 11:09.490]  No.
[11:09.970 --> 11:10.710]  Okay, never mind.
[11:12.490 --> 11:16.570]  That's... Okay, continue with your train of thought, just in a different manner.
[11:17.570 --> 11:31.830]  But, you know, look, you know, playing both sides here, you know, Mike Pence, even though I don't agree with his politics whatsoever, it is certainly the more statesman-like of the two of them, as opposed to Donald Trump.
[11:31.970 --> 11:37.490]  At least, you know, Mike Pence resembles something like a normal Republican with those sorts of views.
[11:37.670 --> 11:41.550]  Alex, a German Shepherd would be more statesman-like than Donald Trump, standing next to him.
[11:41.630 --> 11:41.950]  Come on.
[11:42.490 --> 11:44.070]  Mike Pence is a lapdog.
[11:44.270 --> 11:45.890]  I've got two dogs in one sentence.
[11:46.030 --> 11:50.950]  But he basically, he will do whatever Trump says, without question.
[11:51.030 --> 11:53.630]  And he's buying into this 100% as well.
[11:53.750 --> 11:55.430]  I think he's like the straight man.
[11:55.430 --> 11:57.690]  Well, he's a super straight man.
[11:57.790 --> 11:57.950]  Yeah.
[11:58.250 --> 11:58.250]  Right.
[11:58.510 --> 11:59.930]  That's how he likes to view himself.
[12:00.150 --> 12:03.950]  To the clown, or whatever you want to label Trump, or...
[12:03.950 --> 12:04.430]  But I don't know.
[12:04.570 --> 12:16.290]  I have trouble thinking of Mike Pence as a statesman, because I think this whole administration has done such a horrible thing to the concept of diplomacy and statesmanship and all that.
[12:17.130 --> 12:17.850]  Oh, certainly.
[12:18.170 --> 12:24.430]  I mean, there's no question in my mind that the guy has been, you know, quite a sock puppet for the president for the last four years.
[12:24.650 --> 12:30.290]  However, he does have a long record of public service that far extends the last four years.
[12:30.910 --> 12:37.030]  He was, you know, I think a contentious governor in lots of respects of him.
[12:37.530 --> 12:37.750]  Yeah.
[12:37.810 --> 12:41.150]  Conversion therapy and making aid spread a bit more.
[12:41.890 --> 12:41.970]  Yeah.
[12:41.990 --> 12:43.230]  He's got a lot under his belt.
[12:43.990 --> 12:45.470]  He certainly does.
[12:45.730 --> 12:54.250]  However, if he were to step into the shoes of the presidency solely for the purpose of pardoning Donald Trump, that's how history will remember him.
[12:54.350 --> 13:04.090]  And I think that he and anybody else who would be in that particular position would not want to be written about in social studies text as the stooge that pardoned Donald Trump.
[13:04.230 --> 13:11.010]  Yeah, but you would think none of these people would want to be written about the way that they are acting right now, yet they all just keep doing this.
[13:11.130 --> 13:15.990]  The Ted Cruz's, the Lindsey Graham's, the Mitch McConnell's, there's just so many of them.
[13:16.110 --> 13:18.890]  The Giuliani's, oh my God, the list never ends.
[13:19.650 --> 13:21.990]  Why don't any of them say what you're just saying?
[13:22.050 --> 13:23.890]  I don't want to be remembered in history that way.
[13:24.010 --> 13:26.930]  What are they so afraid of that they can't say no to this guy?
[13:27.550 --> 13:34.890]  Well, all of those players that you mentioned, and I think you forgot Devin Nunes in that group, but he, all of them, they're all minor players.
[13:35.090 --> 13:40.850]  You know, these are like the Rosencrantz and Guildensterns of the Republican Party right now.
[13:40.990 --> 13:47.550]  You know, the main event here is, and to use another Shakespearean analogy, Trump would be the Hamlet.
[13:47.730 --> 13:50.770]  All these guys are the Rosencrantz and Guildensterns.
[13:51.090 --> 13:57.330]  Most of the action with respect to Nunes, with respect to Ted Cruz and all these other guys, it all happens off scene.
[13:57.770 --> 13:59.930]  So they're not on scene too frequently.
[13:59.930 --> 14:02.470]  They're not the ones that the history is going to remember.
[14:02.610 --> 14:04.370]  They're going to remember the shakeup from Donald Trump.
[14:04.910 --> 14:15.510]  I mean, look, one thing I've been thinking about too, and to bring it back to hacker culture and security is, you know, people get angry when we talk about politics too frequently.
[14:15.890 --> 14:19.010]  Yeah, that's what gets people angry these days is us talking about politics.
[14:19.150 --> 14:19.710]  But okay, fine.
[14:19.790 --> 14:21.310]  Let's make that the number one issue.
[14:21.390 --> 14:21.630]  Go ahead.
[14:22.250 --> 14:22.930]  That's true.
[14:23.190 --> 14:26.530]  But here's something I've been thinking about for a while now.
[14:26.730 --> 14:29.950]  And eventually, I think I'll write something about this.
[14:30.390 --> 14:35.310]  We think about pen tests in the hacker community, penetration tests of a system to discover vulnerabilities.
[14:36.230 --> 14:45.350]  One way I think that we can look at the presidency of Donald Trump is to say that he was the penetration tester for our democratic institutions, right?
[14:45.670 --> 14:50.690]  He was the one... because he was in office, we know where there are vulnerabilities now.
[14:51.150 --> 14:55.830]  He has kicked the tires on the FBI, on the intelligence community, on a lot of different things.
[14:56.230 --> 14:59.350]  And sometimes these institutions started crumbling.
[14:59.950 --> 15:02.570]  And we realize we have misinformation problems.
[15:02.570 --> 15:05.090]  And we realize we have problems with social media platforms.
[15:05.190 --> 15:17.890]  And we realize we have problems across the board when it comes to the democratic ideals that we hold to be essentially, you know, the fabric of our nations, especially when it comes to voting and things like the electoral college.
[15:18.050 --> 15:28.730]  If we look at Trump as nothing more than a penetration tester for our democratic institution, for a republic, then maybe something positive can come out of this presidency.
[15:28.790 --> 15:30.550]  He's done so many terrible things.
[15:30.550 --> 15:43.690]  When you have an unchecked Senate, and a president who is out for himself, and only out to energize his base, there is almost unchecked and unfettered power, despite the checks and balances of the Constitution.
[15:43.950 --> 15:52.730]  So now it's up to us to redouble and refocus our efforts on protecting our democracy, looking at those vulnerabilities and those weaknesses that Trump found.
[15:53.230 --> 15:55.190]  Now, I don't think we should thank him for them.
[15:55.430 --> 16:02.090]  But like a penetration test of a company, or some kind of technological system, they don't last forever.
[16:02.090 --> 16:06.470]  Well, okay, on that point, first of all, I don't think Trump found them.
[16:06.630 --> 16:09.030]  I think he just took advantage of them.
[16:09.270 --> 16:19.850]  And I've had that hope, that feeling a number of times, what you're saying, as far as him just being kind of like a test of the vulnerabilities of the system.
[16:20.470 --> 16:24.730]  And at the end, he's going to give us a nice big fat report and tell us how we can do better.
[16:24.870 --> 16:27.830]  But that's where it comes down to the real issue.
[16:28.030 --> 16:29.030]  How do we do better?
[16:29.150 --> 16:35.550]  Because in order to protect something like Trump happening again, and God forbid, it happens with somebody who's actually competent.
[16:36.610 --> 16:40.610]  How do we do that without rewriting the Constitution, which I think we should do?
[16:40.710 --> 16:41.970]  Every other country has done that.
[16:42.250 --> 16:45.730]  Constitutions are not meant to be written once and forgotten.
[16:45.730 --> 16:47.290]  You have to keep updating them.
[16:47.430 --> 16:48.510]  They're living documents.
[16:48.770 --> 16:52.810]  And we're somewhat loath to do that, thinking that it's somehow a betrayal.
[16:53.670 --> 16:58.950]  But as long as we make it so difficult to make any kind of change, I think we're stuck.
[16:59.730 --> 17:01.830]  And we need to change that attitude.
[17:02.010 --> 17:03.150]  And I don't see how we're going to do that.
[17:04.290 --> 17:11.770]  Well, I think we're stuck in large part because we've become so tribal and we've become so intolerant of each other's political views.
[17:11.970 --> 17:13.570]  Everything is binary.
[17:13.890 --> 17:16.390]  It's a one or a zero or it's an us against them.
[17:16.830 --> 17:20.290]  And frankly, I think that kind of tolerance is un-American and it's artificial.
[17:20.290 --> 17:31.030]  I think that our brains have been manipulated on the basis of all these different data points that have been collected about us by platforms, by advertisers.
[17:31.250 --> 17:38.190]  And we've been manipulated on these platforms for a very long period of time, not just by state actors, but let's say by corporate influencers as well.
[17:38.810 --> 17:47.170]  And I think it's high time that we figure out that this type of intolerance is in fact un-American.
[17:47.630 --> 18:00.810]  And I do think that Joe Biden and the messaging that he has been presenting to the American people since prior to the election and certainly after his election, that he's going to be the president that represents not just the blue states, but the red states represents the American people.
[18:00.890 --> 18:01.710]  That's what we need.
[18:01.850 --> 18:07.150]  But that's really lip service unless we get all of the politicians to do that on the right and the left.
[18:07.830 --> 18:16.750]  We have to somehow come back together and realize that what we're fighting for here is America and not our own self-interest.
[18:17.050 --> 18:29.050]  And I think a lot of this also stems from the fact that our electoral college essentially nullifies a gigantic amount of the votes that are cast in any presidential election.
[18:29.430 --> 18:42.070]  And therefore, politicians on both sides of the aisle are catering to a very small minority of people that happen to live in states where there is a fertile amount of Republicans and Democrats and the state could go one way or the other.
[18:42.250 --> 18:43.970]  And so that is setting the national agenda.
[18:44.110 --> 18:58.990]  If we were to amend the Constitution in a way or amend the way states change the way states cast their electoral college ballots, I think we will we will see our country progress in a much more democratic fashion here on out.
[18:59.210 --> 19:01.190]  Yeah, that's that's the hope.
[19:01.190 --> 19:02.550]  But how do we get there?
[19:02.670 --> 19:06.930]  Because I don't see and you say we're being tribalist.
[19:07.330 --> 19:11.690]  But I have to refer to the other side because that's how it is.
[19:12.190 --> 19:25.990]  How does the other side get motivated to do this when the way it's set up right now with, you know, two senators, two senators from South Dakota and two senators from California, which are equal in power or electoral college at that?
[19:26.390 --> 19:36.010]  It I'm sorry, it it benefits the right wing time after time because of the amount of votes that come from those predominantly Republican areas.
[19:37.130 --> 19:39.910]  There's no motivation for them to change that system.
[19:40.110 --> 19:42.610]  And without their support, the system doesn't change.
[19:43.030 --> 19:44.270]  So I think we're stuck.
[19:44.390 --> 19:45.330]  How do we get past that?
[19:46.350 --> 19:54.610]  You know, I saw you commenting on Twitter a couple days ago about, you know, the issue of the disproportionate representation in the Senate.
[19:54.750 --> 19:59.070]  I mean, obviously, this is something that goes back to how the country was was framed.
[19:59.490 --> 20:03.010]  Initially, it's something like 26 states, 26 states.
[20:03.270 --> 20:06.970]  If you add up the population in those states, I might have it wrong by a couple.
[20:07.070 --> 20:11.650]  But if you add up the population, it's the same as California, one state yet.
[20:12.310 --> 20:14.730]  That's 52 senators versus two.
[20:15.030 --> 20:19.350]  And it's it makes absolutely no sense if that is not a way to govern.
[20:19.710 --> 20:21.830]  I don't think that's necessarily the case.
[20:21.950 --> 20:23.150]  I don't entirely agree with that.
[20:23.450 --> 20:32.410]  I think it does make some sense if you're trying to check the power of the majority, if you want to ensure that the smaller states are also going to have a say in the way in which they're governed.
[20:32.490 --> 20:33.290]  A say, yes.
[20:33.450 --> 20:35.950]  A say, but not the dominant say over everybody.
[20:36.130 --> 20:42.550]  Because right now, we're living under values that the smaller states embrace, and the larger states don't.
[20:42.890 --> 20:46.990]  Well, that's why we have a House of Representatives, which is based on population.
[20:46.990 --> 20:49.010]  They have no say in the Supreme Court.
[20:50.310 --> 20:50.890]  Pardon me?
[20:51.050 --> 20:52.410]  They have no say in the Supreme Court.
[20:52.590 --> 20:56.210]  The Senate is is much more powerful as far as getting legislation through.
[20:57.090 --> 21:01.250]  Yeah, look, and and this is this is certainly is an issue with democracy.
[21:01.250 --> 21:03.910]  And there there have been calls to abolish the Senate.
[21:04.070 --> 21:06.170]  But I mean, this is how the country was set up.
[21:06.230 --> 21:18.650]  And it wasn't essentially in essence, a mirror of of the system that was set up in England, or that was in place in England, where you had the House of Commons, which is, you know, very close to the people.
[21:18.950 --> 21:22.110]  And the House of Douchebags who just inherited the position.
[21:22.450 --> 21:24.290]  You know, that's that's not fair.
[21:24.390 --> 21:26.130]  That's not a system to model yourself after.
[21:26.430 --> 21:29.110]  And England is not exactly in a great place right now, either.
[21:30.350 --> 21:31.490]  Here's the point, though.
[21:31.670 --> 21:42.850]  And this is a point that actually compels your argument, OK, which is the House of Lords, you know, which is what the Senate was essentially modeled after, you know, for the United States, which is more removed.
[21:42.930 --> 21:52.790]  It's the reason why they are elected less frequently than the House of Representatives, you know, which are every two years, they begin fundraising it almost immediately after they take office, which is a big problem.
[21:53.310 --> 22:01.530]  But the Senate is supposed to have a longer term view, just like the House of Lords has a longer term view of the United Kingdom.
[22:01.950 --> 22:06.130]  But the House of Lords in the United Kingdom has become largely symbolic.
[22:06.130 --> 22:09.310]  That peerage, it really has has only symbolic power.
[22:09.550 --> 22:16.130]  They are not really a legislative body with any political power in the United Kingdom any longer.
[22:16.610 --> 22:30.030]  So if we are still following that model, which I don't think we we should, quite frankly, then perhaps, you know, the Senate should have less powers than the House of Representatives, because the House of Representatives, as you make the point, Emmanuel,
[22:30.290 --> 22:31.430]  is closer to the people.
[22:31.970 --> 22:32.890]  Yeah, it is.
[22:33.030 --> 22:33.430]  It is.
[22:33.550 --> 22:34.450]  Kyle, I think you had something.
[22:34.450 --> 22:44.170]  I just I think we're missing some of the points that we could speak to the political solutions.
[22:44.370 --> 22:46.230]  I think it's interesting, we were talking about social divisions.
[22:46.570 --> 22:50.850]  And Alex pointed out that he thinks people's brains have changed.
[22:50.970 --> 23:06.810]  And I think we should bring it back to to off the hook and really talk about and I my question I would pose as sort of a rhetorical question is, is there any culpability with the carriers?
[23:07.370 --> 23:10.770]  And and I say that because I think they're involved.
[23:10.930 --> 23:30.430]  I mean, if you look at the companies that we've alleged or that there's been some evidence of this social psycho manipulation to keep people on these platforms for carrier, it's just data like the the social media companies dovetailed in really nicely with the need for the 3G,
[23:30.550 --> 23:46.230]  then the 4G, then the LTE, incremental increases in data to have people on there doing something with their camera doing something with their data plans, thus driving that emerging technology.
[23:46.550 --> 23:51.030]  And the longer you can keep people on the more advertising you can do all of those things.
[23:51.150 --> 23:54.310]  I think we're missing trying to fix this with politics.
[23:54.510 --> 23:57.110]  These are social divisions in a lot of ways.
[23:57.230 --> 24:09.090]  And what we've we've kind of been a little bit away from in our as far as being front of view in the conversation is the tech that's that's been a really big piece of this.
[24:09.090 --> 24:19.630]  I'm not saying that the politics aren't already divided, right, our binary, you know, Republican Democrat system, Democratic and Republican systems.
[24:19.870 --> 24:24.950]  And and that aside, though, I think there's so much we should really think about.
[24:25.250 --> 24:30.310]  We have the technology companies coming to testify.
[24:30.810 --> 24:38.970]  They're even kind of blending in a little bit, being absorbed by that political system or looking for political cover.
[24:39.090 --> 24:41.430]  I almost want to say to differ.
[24:41.650 --> 24:45.710]  Well, both to defend themselves, but also perhaps rub shoulders.
[24:46.010 --> 24:48.710]  We don't you know, we know there are there is involvement.
[24:48.930 --> 24:49.970]  Governments need search.
[24:50.110 --> 24:53.030]  They need telecommunications, just like private citizens.
[24:53.190 --> 24:56.050]  So I think there's a lot there that we might be missing.
[24:56.430 --> 25:00.070]  And the the carriers aren't stopping.
[25:03.190 --> 25:04.150]  5g is coming.
[25:04.410 --> 25:07.810]  There's a lot of need for more traffic on those networks.
[25:07.810 --> 25:14.410]  That means more advertising, richer gaming, richer data collection.
[25:14.770 --> 25:16.710]  That means more for advertisers.
[25:16.950 --> 25:19.990]  And a lot of the the targets are not targets.
[25:20.270 --> 25:23.450]  Well, yeah, legal targets, targets of ire.
[25:23.630 --> 25:30.430]  I think, you know, we've talked about for years the the collection of personal information in private data brokers.
[25:31.430 --> 25:41.030]  And then now a lot of the psychosocial aspect really warping people's mind about that other side of that already divided political spectrum.
[25:41.250 --> 25:48.210]  So with that, I think that I mean, do you think there's broader culpability for some of that impact, Alex?
[25:48.570 --> 25:51.110]  And how do you see that interacting with government?
[25:51.410 --> 26:00.190]  I mean, remember, in some of the votes and some of the formal stuff of government, you can't have a phone, you can't participate in the tack, the very tack that is so manipulative.
[26:02.410 --> 26:09.710]  Yeah, I mean, you you raise so many different and I think interesting points there, Kyle, it's hard to respond to any one of them.
[26:09.790 --> 26:19.650]  But I think what you're really driving at there, and which I think is correct, is that there isn't any one cause to this tribalism that there are that there are so many.
[26:19.910 --> 26:25.810]  It's a real, it's a panoply of causes that have contributed to this over a great period of time.
[26:26.830 --> 26:31.610]  And, you know, and we do need to look at, I think, at the technology companies.
[26:31.850 --> 26:37.190]  Because, sorry, they're adding so much to it.
[26:37.270 --> 26:44.990]  And I think, you know, their carriers are handing them bandwidth, the the software companies are giving them eyeballs.
[26:45.330 --> 26:56.250]  And and kind of, the keys are kind of being handed to these unregulated or just at least really loosely run and experimental.
[26:56.530 --> 26:59.570]  Let's keep that in there, like experimental companies, right?
[27:00.670 --> 27:02.230]  No doubt experimental.
[27:02.710 --> 27:12.770]  And, you know, having been in Pennsylvania, a battleground state for the last eight, I guess, you know, eight months now, you know, on and off between New York and Pennsylvania.
[27:13.110 --> 27:28.630]  One of the things that I found extraordinarily interesting was that in the lead up, especially the last month or so up to the election, anytime I watch something on YouTube, I would see a barrage of anti Biden videos coming at me.
[27:28.790 --> 27:37.810]  And you really have to think then, you know, who are the recipients of all of this money that is being raised to fund the elections?
[27:38.130 --> 27:49.010]  You know, there are there's massive, massive campaigns to fund these elections, both at the state and the federal level and the presidential level.
[27:49.070 --> 27:49.930]  Who's getting the money?
[27:50.090 --> 27:51.790]  Google, Facebook, they're getting the money.
[27:52.290 --> 27:55.290]  Well, I think that's a lot of getting this money.
[27:55.290 --> 27:59.790]  The political action committees are the essential, like, advertisers.
[28:00.250 --> 28:12.950]  They are, they are to politics, what advertisers are to these either social media platforms or entire operating systems that you're occupying people's lives with.
[28:13.650 --> 28:14.190]  Yeah.
[28:14.390 --> 28:23.210]  I mean, and I think over the last few months, I would be rather curious to know how much money was funneled into these particular platforms by, you know, any number of candidates.
[28:23.930 --> 28:33.190]  That would be extraordinarily interesting to me, because these elections, for the same reason, why the battleground states don't want to let go of the electoral college system.
[28:34.810 --> 28:35.810]  It's about money.
[28:36.090 --> 28:37.950]  They want the money, they want the influence.
[28:38.070 --> 28:44.410]  And the social media platforms, I think, are the ones, you know, and you ask who we don't know who's benefiting, you know, follow the money type of issues.
[28:44.630 --> 28:51.550]  They are getting such a massively disproportionate amount of these advertising dollars, as opposed to, let's say, local TV stations.
[28:51.690 --> 29:02.870]  Remember, 10 years ago, you'd see, you know, these crazy, quickly thrown together political advertisements on, you know, 12 or whatever it was, that you sort of had to laugh at.
[29:03.290 --> 29:06.510]  Now, they're in front of every other YouTube video that you want to watch.
[29:06.810 --> 29:07.250]  Yeah.
[29:07.430 --> 29:13.270]  And, you know, I think all these companies, they, they need to want to be socially responsible.
[29:13.690 --> 29:15.870]  And they're not, but Facebook is not.
[29:16.010 --> 29:17.990]  There's a story that we just got about Steve Bannon.
[29:18.270 --> 29:21.710]  He caught running a network of misinformation pages on, on Facebook.
[29:22.030 --> 29:25.230]  I mean, this, this guy, you just, you just can't stamp him out.
[29:25.330 --> 29:27.670]  He has always keeps popping up the undefeated.
[29:27.790 --> 29:32.230]  We, we build the wall incorporated citizens of the American Republic, American Joe Trump at war.
[29:32.550 --> 29:36.370]  He, he gained over 2.45 million followers.
[29:36.670 --> 29:42.650]  Uh, and, and, and basically, uh, this activist network called Avaz, A-V-A-A-Z.
[29:43.010 --> 29:49.890]  Uh, they're the ones that keep finding these, these, um, uh, groups that are spreading misinformation and, and sowing unrest.
[29:50.190 --> 29:55.430]  They had to alert Facebook to the pages before they were removed for, for coordinated inauthentic behavior.
[29:55.570 --> 30:05.770]  Sounds Orwellian, but it is a threat because this is actually motivating people to do dangerous things or to, uh, to act in, in, uh, irrational ways.
[30:06.450 --> 30:12.470]  Um, uh, Avaz, uh, campaign director, uh, Fadi Curran, uh, said this to Gizmodo.
[30:12.550 --> 30:23.210]  Its team identified the Bannon ring by running an influencer analysis, keeping tabs on frequent guests on Bannon's podcasts and pages affiliated with Bannon's former, we build the wall grift.
[30:23.310 --> 30:35.230]  Uh, Avaz is comprised of 40 investigators and data analysts, 40, uh, and they have kept tabs on habitual misinformers and their coordinated sharing during, uh, uh, through custom software.
[30:35.490 --> 30:52.850]  Uh, this, you know, as opposed to, um, uh, tens of thousands of employees, uh, a multi-billion dollar company like Facebook, um, that basically is, is, uh, they should, they should be running because stop making that damn noise.
[30:53.030 --> 31:00.790]  They, they should be running Facebook for them, I think, because Facebook has, has proven over and over again that they're not able to do that.
[31:00.910 --> 31:09.150]  And I thought this is also interesting too, you know, uh, Christopher Wiley, uh, he's the guy, uh, the whistleblower, you know, Cambridge Analytica and all that and the relationship with, with Facebook.
[31:09.310 --> 31:11.870]  I know Kyle, you were talking about that quite a bit.
[31:12.170 --> 31:13.190]  Uh, yes, yes.
[31:13.190 --> 31:19.590]  I read the book and, uh, it's, it's really, really a good read and there's a lot of good information about how things may have, uh, occurred.
[31:19.710 --> 31:23.010]  Would you say this guy is a good guy, has done a public service?
[31:25.170 --> 31:34.510]  I think he learned a lot and, um, he wrote a book and, uh, he made some mistakes, learned from his mistakes and is, is atoning, I think, in the ways he knows.
[31:34.710 --> 31:35.750]  He's banned from Facebook.
[31:35.930 --> 31:40.090]  That guy is banned from Facebook, but the reason he's banned from Facebook is because he got Facebook into trouble.
[31:40.370 --> 31:43.990]  So being vindictive about it's the most childish thing I've ever seen.
[31:44.250 --> 31:47.090]  He, he posted earlier today on, on, um, on Twitter.
[31:47.270 --> 31:49.130]  Just to sum up, Facebook broke the law.
[31:49.270 --> 31:50.710]  Cambridge Analytica broke the law.
[31:51.170 --> 31:52.430]  Vote Leave broke the law.
[31:52.690 --> 31:54.170]  Leave EU broke the law.
[31:54.630 --> 31:57.490]  Brexit and Trump were both won through breaking the law.
[31:58.070 --> 32:00.370]  Facebook let it all happen and covered it up.
[32:00.830 --> 32:03.530]  And I don't think you can refute any of that.
[32:03.710 --> 32:04.210]  Alex?
[32:04.770 --> 32:05.850]  I, I don't know.
[32:05.970 --> 32:07.690]  Well, what law are they talking about?
[32:07.990 --> 32:08.970]  I, what law?
[32:09.210 --> 32:25.990]  I mean, look, I, I, to put, play devil's advocate here and defend the social media platforms for a second, you know, they are, we have to acknowledge, I think that they're in between a rock and a hard place here, because on the one hand, we don't think that they should be the arbiters of truth.
[32:26.430 --> 32:33.230]  Yet on the other hand, we want them to, to moderate all of this content to make sure that misinformation doesn't hit our brains, right?
[32:33.330 --> 32:40.710]  I mean, to a certain extent, on the other hand, I do believe that we have to take a certain measure of responsibility for thinking for ourselves.
[32:40.950 --> 32:49.230]  As I've said time and time again on this show, I don't want Facebook or TikTok or any other platform to think for me.
[32:49.590 --> 32:54.510]  I, you know, go ahead, throw a massive amount of crap disinformation at me.
[32:54.770 --> 32:57.190]  It's up to me to sort it out.
[32:57.390 --> 33:10.110]  I mean, I think, you know, blatant falsehoods, things like that, you know, should not be allowed, Holocaust denial thing, you know, inflammatory things that would maybe rise to the level of, of fighting words, uh, under the law should probably... How about,
[33:10.130 --> 33:11.490]  how about Trump won the election?
[33:11.750 --> 33:12.750]  Would you draw the line there?
[33:14.970 --> 33:18.090]  Those are fighting words and that's going to cause all kinds of issues.
[33:18.090 --> 33:20.690]  And it's, it's also demonstrably false.
[33:22.390 --> 33:22.790]  Yeah.
[33:23.270 --> 33:23.650]  Yeah.
[33:23.950 --> 33:26.910]  I mean, that, that, that's, that's definitely a tricky one.
[33:27.070 --> 33:27.490]  I don't know.
[33:28.010 --> 33:29.350]  Alex, I disagree a little bit.
[33:29.410 --> 33:33.070]  I want to push back the, um, the allegation there wasn't any law breaking.
[33:33.230 --> 33:47.810]  I mean, the original data sets that were used were, um, to, to train the sort of algorithms and stuff were, were from something that was explicitly supposed to, that data set was supposed to be used for like essentially educational purposes as far as I know.
[33:47.970 --> 33:50.350]  And it was commercialized via Facebook.
[33:50.590 --> 33:52.870]  So there's that aspect of it.
[33:52.990 --> 33:57.050]  And, and of course, Facebook didn't really, it wasn't exactly forthright about it.
[33:57.210 --> 34:12.030]  That's paraphrasing, and there's a lot of other aspects to it, but there is definitely some, um, and, and you have to keep in mind that a lot of the software technology in building up, uh, psychological profiles of people, this is the kind of stuff that's used in warfare,
[34:12.370 --> 34:36.410]  like, um, uh, psychological warfare and, um, you know, uh, things that are not exactly something you want off the shelf for just anybody who runs a pack or anybody who, um, you know, wants to wage an influence campaign, uh, however small or large, like that's not a capability that should be just out and,
[34:36.410 --> 34:58.110]  and, um, free for people to quantify and basically cheat, you know, by influencing people, not even in the ways that violate policies, like you're saying, but just enough, something, just enough doubt or just enough wrong or just enough allyship from an unlikely place so that someone is sympathetic to something that's actually a,
[34:58.210 --> 35:01.130]  uh, anti-semitic or other sort of, uh, remark.
[35:02.210 --> 35:02.650]  Yeah.
[35:02.910 --> 35:15.010]  I mean, look at your, your comments there, I think, you know, are, are sort of the source of, of my response to Emmanuel here in that, uh, yeah, I, I think you're right.
[35:15.190 --> 35:17.950]  And all of this is, is much more nuanced.
[35:17.950 --> 35:34.610]  And if we were to analyze something like Trump won the election, again, this is, I think, you know, a perfect example of, why it puts social media platforms between a rock and a hard place, because just saying Trump won the election without analyzing the various arguments for why you are saying that,
[35:35.210 --> 35:36.750]  I, I think is problematic.
[35:36.910 --> 35:43.790]  And to ask the social media platforms to engage in that kind of analysis is going beyond what we would ordinarily expect of them.
[35:44.190 --> 36:04.850]  So I would say Trump won the election should not be outright banned, but it would certainly depend on the type of data that they are presenting, whether it's an outright falsehood or whether they were presenting something a little bit more hedged or a weaker argument saying Trump didn't yet lose the election because we haven't exhausted all of our legal remedies,
[36:05.290 --> 36:05.910]  something like that.
[36:06.050 --> 36:07.150]  I would say you should be permitted.
[36:07.550 --> 36:11.830]  Trump won the election because he won the popular vote, which is demonstrably false.
[36:12.010 --> 36:12.870]  That shouldn't be allowed.
[36:13.010 --> 36:16.590]  And that's easy to identify, easy to investigate, easy to contest.
[36:16.990 --> 36:17.430]  Yeah.
[36:17.610 --> 36:21.350]  But a lot of people believe it, no matter what they're told, that's, that's the problem.
[36:21.470 --> 36:23.470]  And, uh, I think we underestimated this.
[36:23.670 --> 36:26.230]  We underestimated how easy it would be to influence people.
[36:26.410 --> 36:38.270]  And we saw it as recently as, as last Tuesday, how easy people are able to be influenced that whole, uh, socialist nonsense or, or defund the police, uh, things that no candidate was running under yet.
[36:38.710 --> 36:45.050]  Um, Republicans were able to demonize so many Democrats using these simplistic fear mongering tactics.
[36:45.090 --> 36:46.490]  It works every time.
[36:46.490 --> 36:47.970]  It definitely works every time.
[36:48.110 --> 36:54.510]  And, and Facebook is just, uh, and all these social networks are just one gigantic cesspool of fear mongering.
[36:54.970 --> 36:56.670]  Uh, so, um, I don't know.
[36:56.750 --> 36:58.490]  We have to look at things, uh, in a different way.
[36:58.610 --> 37:03.370]  We can talk about this for literally hours, as you can see, but we have other things, uh, to get to.
[37:03.730 --> 37:06.590]  Um, one of them, uh, is, is quite important.
[37:06.910 --> 37:12.170]  Uh, of course, uh, we are still living under a pandemic and, um, what's happening now.
[37:12.450 --> 37:14.210]  It's getting much, much worse.
[37:14.710 --> 37:15.890]  We knew this was coming.
[37:16.210 --> 37:18.430]  We've, uh, been told it was coming.
[37:18.830 --> 37:24.770]  And, uh, as, as science tends to know what it's talking about, yeah, it's happening exactly as predicted.
[37:25.130 --> 37:27.730]  Second wave is, um, upon us.
[37:28.130 --> 37:45.170]  And as a result, uh, there are certain changes that have to take place effective Friday, 10 PM is in, uh, in New York bars, restaurants, gyms, or fitness centers, as well as any state liquor authority licensed establishment has to close between 10 PM and 5 AM.
[37:45.310 --> 37:53.970]  Restaurants will still be allowed to provide curbside food, only pickup, uh, or delivery after 10 PM, but they won't be able to serve alcohol either to stay or to go.
[37:54.710 --> 38:00.810]  Um, state liquor authority will issue further guidance for licensees as to what sales are continued to be permitted.
[38:01.270 --> 38:10.690]  Um, indoor and outdoor gatherings at private residences will be limited to no more than 10 people, no more than 10 people.
[38:10.770 --> 38:12.190]  Now that had been 50 people.
[38:12.330 --> 38:21.910]  Uh, this, uh, limit will be implemented due to the, uh, recent prevalence of COVID spread resulting from small indoor gatherings, including, uh, Halloween parties.
[38:22.810 --> 38:26.230]  Uh, these gatherings have become a major cause of cluster activity across the state.
[38:26.910 --> 38:36.170]  And, um, also this, this, uh, brings New York into line with, uh, neighboring states, Connecticut, Massachusetts, uh, Rhode Island, which isn't really bordering, but it's nearby.
[38:36.690 --> 38:39.830]  So that starts this Friday at 10 PM.
[38:40.330 --> 38:42.030]  And, um, it's necessary.
[38:42.050 --> 38:48.910]  You know, I, I, I know that this is something that, uh, will hurt a lot of businesses and these businesses need to be taken care of.
[38:48.990 --> 38:56.550]  The discussion we need to be having is not whether or not we should be following these guidelines, but how do we help the businesses that are being affected by this?
[38:56.730 --> 39:01.310]  The ones that are being, uh, completely destroyed, they need to be bailed out.
[39:01.530 --> 39:02.950]  There's just no question about that.
[39:03.570 --> 39:13.350]  Uh, so, um, whether or not you're a fan of the mayor or the governor, that's irrelevant at this point, we're in the middle of a pandemic and it's about to get really, really bad.
[39:13.490 --> 39:16.790]  New York has, has had an uptick in cases for the most part.
[39:16.950 --> 39:21.150]  For the most part, we're, um, we're doing all right compared to other parts of the country.
[39:21.230 --> 39:22.910]  And the reason for that is because we're being smart.
[39:23.130 --> 39:24.430]  We're wearing those masks.
[39:24.770 --> 39:38.710]  And one thing we learned over the summer, which I think it cannot be, um, uh, stated enough is that, um, wearing a mask, uh, in a demonstration keeps that demonstration from becoming a super spreader event.
[39:38.870 --> 39:47.850]  The black lives matter protest over the summer, they did not become super spreader events, even though there are lots of people because most everybody was wearing masks.
[39:47.930 --> 39:53.310]  Now look at Trump rallies where people weren't wearing masks for reasons I will never understand.
[39:53.570 --> 39:55.230]  And they became super spreader events.
[39:55.330 --> 39:56.190]  Simple as that.
[39:56.530 --> 40:06.890]  Likewise, the celebrations that, uh, many of us took part in over the weekend, uh, not super spreader events in all likelihood because most people were acting intelligently and wearing masks.
[40:06.950 --> 40:07.690]  It's so simple.
[40:07.830 --> 40:11.590]  If people wear masks, they they'll be able to go outside.
[40:11.770 --> 40:13.090]  They'll be able to go inside.
[40:13.090 --> 40:21.070]  Even they'll be able to do a lot of the normal things, not everything, obviously, but so much more than if they just pretend this thing doesn't exist.
[40:21.070 --> 40:22.070]  That's when you have a lockdown.
[40:22.250 --> 40:24.750]  That's when you have a quarantine that you cannot get past.
[40:25.170 --> 40:30.410]  And that's the difference between what was happening in the spring and what's about to happen now, at least in New York.
[40:30.530 --> 40:42.610]  I just hope if you're in a state that doesn't take this seriously, that you at least do and wear a mask and just keep the social distancing going and try to live your life as, as, as normally as you can.
[40:42.710 --> 40:47.430]  We, we, we had some promising news about a, a possible, a possible vaccine.
[40:47.630 --> 40:50.410]  Uh, it's, it's, you know, through a press release right now.
[40:50.550 --> 40:54.630]  So I take it with a big grain of salt, but, um, it's possible.
[40:54.850 --> 41:02.010]  And, uh, it's at some point, at some point, there will be a vaccine for this that will be, uh, uh, given out and, and effective.
[41:02.010 --> 41:03.290]  So we will get past it.
[41:03.410 --> 41:05.610]  But for now, people have to take this seriously.
[41:05.850 --> 41:08.070]  Every single person listening right now needs to do that.
[41:08.110 --> 41:14.230]  As if you're in New York, keep in mind that 10 PM cutoff for, um, establishments starting on Friday.
[41:14.990 --> 41:15.590]  All right.
[41:15.870 --> 41:20.050]  Uh, with that said, uh, let's get into the, uh, uh, tick tock discussion.
[41:20.230 --> 41:24.250]  Uh, joining us, uh, now is, uh, Dr. Patrick Ryan.
[41:24.430 --> 41:26.950]  He's a technical program manager at tick tock.
[41:27.370 --> 41:32.650]  And, uh, he's the plaintiff in a lawsuit that Alex's law firm has filed against the Trump administration.
[41:32.750 --> 41:33.710]  Good for you, Alex.
[41:34.290 --> 41:50.190]  Now, uh, as we've talked about on our show, Alex and his firm filed the lawsuit on behalf of Patrick and tick tock employees, uh, to contest the constitutionality of Trump's executive order, which banned tick tock in the United States and to protect tick tock employees from criminal prosecution,
[41:50.450 --> 41:53.890]  uh, for doing their jobs and getting paid their, their salaries.
[41:54.350 --> 42:08.210]  Um, now it's, it's important to note that, uh, Patrick's lawsuit shouldn't be confused with, uh, tick tocks on own lawsuit against the Trump administration, uh, which by the way, there's a hilarious, um, um, um, headline today on, on the verge, or it might have been yesterday.
[42:08.330 --> 42:11.190]  Tick tock says the Trump administration has forgotten about trying to ban it.
[42:11.470 --> 42:12.630]  Would like to know what's up.
[42:13.510 --> 42:16.670]  So that's, uh, that's definitely something worth pursuing.
[42:17.010 --> 42:23.070]  Uh, so, um, Patrick obviously can speak only to, uh, specifics of his lawsuit and Patrick, welcome to off the hook.
[42:24.630 --> 42:24.970]  Thank you.
[42:25.150 --> 42:25.410]  Thank you.
[42:25.510 --> 42:42.790]  And if I may just add one, one other component here, I, I, I'm happy to talk about, uh, uh, the, you know, the specifics of the lawsuit and the representation of the employees, but I am a father and I have, uh, you know, family responsibilities and I am not here to speak for tick tock as a company on any of those things.
[42:42.970 --> 42:50.930]  And I, and I am certain after hearing, especially some of the questions you guys have about big tech that you would want to hold tick tock accountable, just like you hold all other companies accountable.
[42:51.150 --> 42:51.670]  And that's great.
[42:51.890 --> 42:55.390]  I'm just not the person to be able to kind of respond to some of those inquiries.
[42:55.490 --> 43:02.170]  And so please let's keep it so that I can keep my job focused on some of the broader policy issues if we can.
[43:02.170 --> 43:06.910]  Well, can you just outline what, uh, tick tock employees are, are, are facing right now?
[43:07.090 --> 43:20.070]  Is there a degree of uncertainty as to their future because of, of, of the, uh, action that's been taken against tick tock or has tick tock been, been, uh, um, treating them fairly or has information been flowing?
[43:21.630 --> 43:22.550]  All good questions.
[43:22.730 --> 43:31.130]  So the, the most important thing to realize is that the, the, the, the, the source of information for this and news for all of this for employees is not the company.
[43:31.770 --> 43:32.930]  It is the news.
[43:33.130 --> 43:35.310]  And that's actually the case for the company as well.
[43:35.530 --> 43:40.430]  It's finding out, you know, by hearing what, uh, you know, what president Trump has been tweeting about and talking about.
[43:40.590 --> 43:44.490]  So the communication, you know, comes to us the same way as it comes to you.
[43:44.610 --> 43:48.750]  And so as employees, we've been reading about this the same way that, that you all read about it.
[43:48.750 --> 43:56.310]  And, you know, when I speak to friends and want everybody kind of assumes that there's another story inside, but frankly, the story inside is the same as the story outside.
[43:56.770 --> 43:58.550]  We're, you know, hearing about it at the same time.
[43:58.590 --> 44:01.350]  And that's one of the hallmarks of how crazy this whole thing is.
[44:01.450 --> 44:12.930]  And, and really, I think makes the point of, of the lack of due process and constitutional problems with this is that there's no expectation that anybody has about what, what would even, you know, come from this process because it's so unusual.
[44:14.390 --> 44:25.890]  Um, the employees now, I guess to, to answer that question right now, we're in pretty good shape because Alex and, and, and the law firm did a very job of, of making the case to the government.
[44:26.010 --> 44:31.170]  The government conceded and they filed, I'll just read one, one area because this is really important.
[44:31.170 --> 44:46.670]  The government filed a concession and it says that the, uh, department of commerce can state that it does not intend to implement or enforce executive order 13 942 in a manner, which would prohibit the payment of wages and or salaries to plaintiff and or other employees or connect or,
[44:46.670 --> 44:48.070]  uh, contractors of tick tock.
[44:48.550 --> 44:49.410]  That's really good.
[44:49.590 --> 44:51.470]  That that took us out of the middle of this thing.
[44:51.610 --> 44:56.770]  And, and that's important because there's no reason to put individual employees in the middle of this fight.
[44:56.950 --> 45:02.250]  There's a fight between, you know, the company tick tock and by dance and the U S government.
[45:02.430 --> 45:09.170]  And there's obviously a fight between the U S government and China in the middle of all this or employees that have no part of that fight.
[45:09.630 --> 45:17.130]  And yet, uh, we are affected the, the, the way that this affected us initially when we received the executive order was really just one of shock and awe.
[45:17.350 --> 45:25.570]  We had no idea what was going on, but you know, I can read English and it was very clear that the executive order intended to make it illegal to pay us and to pay anybody.
[45:25.790 --> 45:26.510]  That was very clear.
[45:26.670 --> 45:26.870]  Wow.
[45:27.110 --> 45:32.790]  And you know, as a, as a recovering lawyer, I know that that's a unconstitutional to, to, to make that claim.
[45:32.790 --> 45:33.390]  Uh huh.
[45:34.510 --> 45:34.890]  Amazing.
[45:35.030 --> 45:35.410]  Alex, go ahead.
[45:36.370 --> 45:50.830]  And Patrick, you know, in terms of employees over at tick tock who were at in, in limbo, you know, there are, there are certain employees who are outside of the United States looking to come and work in the United States that can continue to be affected by this.
[45:50.930 --> 45:51.330]  Is that correct?
[45:51.810 --> 45:52.590]  Well, yes.
[45:52.670 --> 45:53.150]  And thank you.
[45:53.270 --> 46:07.190]  This is, this is where we still have a problem because even though the issue has now been solved for employees, the, the sentence that I just read also applies because it does not exclude people that have signed to join tick tock and to be paid and receive benefits from tick tock.
[46:07.390 --> 46:15.830]  And there are about 30 employees right now, whose visas are on hold by the government only because they are applying to work at tick tock.
[46:15.950 --> 46:17.430]  It's a little bit nuanced Alex.
[46:17.610 --> 46:29.190]  It's not quite that they're outside the country trying to get in this category of employees or H-1B applicants that all have eligibility for H-1B visas or had them at the time they applied.
[46:29.710 --> 46:35.970]  And the, the visas are just on, on, on hold for no reason at all, other than, other than for security.
[46:36.430 --> 46:43.010]  This, the security, this unnamed security hold that they've put on all of the different employees that are coming in.
[46:43.150 --> 46:48.450]  And that's the problem is that that particular group of employees is a very vulnerable group of employees.
[46:48.590 --> 46:49.430]  There's about 30 of them.
[46:49.430 --> 46:53.230]  And just to give you an example, there's a, there's a family that lives right next to me here.
[46:53.390 --> 46:55.390]  I live in Belmont and there's one that lives right next to me.
[46:55.570 --> 47:04.410]  A gentleman that, uh, that had an offer from three other companies, you know, from Tesla and PayPal and tick tock chose the tick tock offer filed.
[47:04.670 --> 47:08.350]  The, the, the, the H-1B offer has a newborn at home.
[47:08.470 --> 47:12.210]  And at this point still does not have an authorized visa.
[47:12.390 --> 47:15.550]  It's been more than two months and doesn't have a paycheck or benefits.
[47:15.550 --> 47:23.650]  And it's really in limbo because now he can't even apply for another job elsewhere because the whole process is stuck until the government makes a decision on this visa.
[47:23.950 --> 47:31.490]  So that's the example of somebody that's really caught in the middle of a fight that has absolutely no interest in the fight, but is really taking it in the shorts.
[47:32.130 --> 47:34.610]  Now, Alex, I think I should ask you this question.
[47:35.310 --> 47:43.530]  Um, if, um, if, um, if when, when Biden becomes president, uh, next, uh, next year, does this all go away?
[47:44.010 --> 47:45.150]  Is that the solution?
[47:45.510 --> 47:47.450]  Or, uh, is there still work to be done?
[47:48.110 --> 47:58.970]  Well, you know, we would like to think that Biden would hopefully, well, number one, this could be over and done with by the time Biden takes office, right?
[47:59.150 --> 48:20.630]  Either it will make its way through the courts and the courts of appeal, you know, to the extent that the legality of Trump's executive order is, is completely eradicated that there is no basis for there's no basis in national security law to claim that tick tock was a threat to us contractors that tick tock employees.
[48:20.990 --> 48:35.490]  I mean, these are some of the crazy allegations that were made in the executive order that Patrick had mentioned that tick tock employees had within their own minds, the intention to do insane things like blackmail us government contractors, create databases of their movements,
[48:35.610 --> 48:44.410]  things like that, that are, that are really beyond the pale conspiracy theory type of assertions with no corroborating data whatsoever.
[48:44.550 --> 48:53.630]  And when you look at the basis of the executive order, it really had to do more with telecommunications infrastructure than it had to do with social media platforms.
[48:53.830 --> 49:05.010]  The, the basis for the tick tock executive order was, uh, essentially trying to ban Huawei from telecommunications infrastructure of the United States government.
[49:05.270 --> 49:15.550]  So there is a lot of mismatch in terms of the, the evidence that could be used to support even the legality of the, of Trump's executive order.
[49:15.630 --> 49:22.250]  So that thing might go away by the time Biden takes office, but hopefully Biden did, did take office.
[49:22.570 --> 49:36.990]  There would be no animosity towards the tick tock platform for activities, let's say of, of people like Sarah Cooper, who's really trenchant videos impersonating the president himself, went viral on tick tock and then made their way to other social media platforms.
[49:37.550 --> 49:41.750]  Uh, and hopefully Biden would do something like rescind that particular executive order.
[49:41.870 --> 49:45.910]  And we might see other changes too, like, uh, like the case against the song.
[49:45.910 --> 49:48.390]  So we're down to our last two minutes, Kyle, what, what do you have?
[49:48.690 --> 50:09.430]  Oh, I just, uh, I thought that that was a really, um, interesting point that, that you made regarding the, the, um, uh, just the, the kind of grafting on of that Huawei hardware, um, uh, competition, especially with 5g rollouts and, and other kinds of things that,
[50:09.550 --> 50:21.970]  um, kind of grafting on the, the, um, political aims and, and using it just as an example, but really it was, um, sort of misdirection from, as you said, a more personal, um, animus.
[50:22.230 --> 50:35.070]  Patrick, if I could just ask you one closing question here, as a, um, a tick tock employee, have you had to face, uh, um, hostility or ignorance from people who know that you work for tick tock based on all the controversy over the past few months?
[50:36.330 --> 50:51.970]  Yeah, the, the thing I faced the most frequently, and I think this is frankly going to persist, regardless of, you know, the, the change in, in, in, in presidency is a very deep anti-China sentiment that is bipartisan and frankly penetrates our own community.
[50:52.110 --> 51:03.770]  For those of us that believe in free speech and, you know, hacker, you know, sort of culture, you know, there's a, there's a natural tendency to sort of swallow all of this anti-China rhetoric and to repeat it without even understanding any of the facts.
[51:03.950 --> 51:05.930]  And I think it includes the Huawei example.
[51:06.110 --> 51:11.530]  Then I'm not challenging anything that you're saying, but I would raise the question that I think it would be really useful for us.
[51:11.630 --> 51:23.910]  And this is a research project that I'm very interested in undertaking and really understanding what are the factual claims today of all of these, uh, you know, back doors that, that China is supposedly designing into these systems.
[51:24.070 --> 51:24.830]  I've heard it.
[51:24.970 --> 51:34.450]  And I remember, you know, in, in previous life, I've even advocated for, you know, stopping the, the quote unquote Chinese control of the international telecommunications union and the standards.
[51:34.650 --> 51:38.290]  And, and I have said a lot about that in articles I've published.
[51:38.290 --> 51:45.070]  The, uh, the point though, that's interesting to me is I'm starting to really realize that the, that the evidence for that is, is very circular.
[51:45.070 --> 51:48.610]  It's very much like a lot of what we're seeing on how to use this election example.
[51:48.750 --> 51:59.170]  It's like, you just have all these people saying that there's fraud and the evidence now is people pointing to other people saying that there's fraud, but unless there's actually fraud at the bottom of it, you don't have the solution.
[51:59.510 --> 51:59.510]  Yeah.
[51:59.510 --> 52:05.650]  Patrick, I think it fits that narrative, it, but the, um, the backdooring and stuff, that's the boogeyman.
[52:05.850 --> 52:11.330]  I think in a lot of ways, from our perspective, the aim really is an economic advantage and control.
[52:12.030 --> 52:17.010]  If everyone's buying our equipment and the five eyes equipment, it's control.
[52:18.130 --> 52:19.410]  Folks, we're gonna have to leave it there.
[52:19.510 --> 52:20.090]  I agree.
[52:20.230 --> 52:26.550]  I think that's, I think that's, I think that's an accurate statement about the motivation on some level, but it's not being presented in that way.
[52:26.650 --> 52:28.130]  It's being presented as a boogeyman.
[52:28.310 --> 52:33.330]  And that's, and that's, it's almost, you know, like it's just a question of, of, of, of fairness.
[52:33.570 --> 52:33.970]  You know what I mean?
[52:33.990 --> 52:39.210]  If you're gonna block somebody because of economic reasons, block them for economic reasons and stand up for it.
[52:39.550 --> 52:43.410]  Don't accuse them of something else and, and, and, and block them for economic reasons.
[52:43.530 --> 52:47.750]  And I think that's really important for us to get to the bottom of, because we can't let this stand.
[52:47.890 --> 52:49.750]  I don't think we can let this kind of thing stand.
[52:49.930 --> 52:59.230]  We're an executive here in the United States, which is where we basically try to talk about the importance of free speech and, you know, as important part of our constitution and our livelihoods.
[52:59.230 --> 53:05.110]  How can a single executive install, you know, the great Chinese firewall here in the United States with an executive order?
[53:05.310 --> 53:07.770]  That kind of thing is, is, is just a real problem for us.
[53:07.810 --> 53:09.250]  I think we really need to get to the bottom of.
[53:09.750 --> 53:10.170]  All right.
[53:10.250 --> 53:11.030]  We're gonna have to leave it there.
[53:11.310 --> 53:14.910]  Uh, thanks, uh, Dr. Patrick Ryan from TikTok for joining us tonight.
[53:14.910 --> 53:17.270]  And we're going to keep updated on, on that story.
[53:17.410 --> 53:19.530]  Alex, thank you so much for all the work you've done in this case.
[53:19.930 --> 53:25.950]  Uh, and thank you listeners for, uh, for listening and, and for writing to us, hopefully OTH at 2600.com.
[53:26.130 --> 53:34.890]  I'd like to close off with, uh, since we're going through a coup right now, I'd like to close, close off with, um, uh, memories of a coup in the USSR.
[53:35.510 --> 53:39.110]  Uh, if memory recalls, this was, um, August 19th, 1991.
[53:39.930 --> 53:41.730]  Here's an excerpt from Radio Moscow.
[53:41.950 --> 53:42.210]  Good night.
[53:43.210 --> 53:45.910]  This is Radio Moscow World Service.
[53:46.170 --> 53:57.070]  At 12 hours UTC, we'll continue broadcasting in the 13, 16, 19, 25, and 41 meter band short waves.
[53:57.350 --> 54:05.690]  That's Radio Moscow World Service in the 13, 16, 19, 25, and 41 meter band short waves.
[54:06.390 --> 54:12.370]  After the crumbling chimes on the hour, please stand by for the news and other features.
[56:25.490 --> 56:27.670]  This is Radio Moscow World Service.
[56:28.110 --> 56:38.450]  The State Emergency Committee has instructed all bodies of power and administration in the center and locally to see to it that the state of emergency is strictly observed.
[56:39.030 --> 56:51.790]  In the event of inability to do so, the powers of appropriate bodies of government and management government are suspended and their functions are delegated to the persons specially authorized by the committee.
[56:52.310 --> 56:55.650]  This is said in a statement that has just been published.
[56:56.250 --> 57:09.730]  According to the statement, the structures of power and management and paramilitary units acting against the USSR constitution and laws are immediately disbanded and their decisions are declared invalid.
[57:10.390 --> 57:25.530]  Activities by the parties, public organizations and mass movements obstructing the normalization of the situation are suspended and so is activity by the USSR Security Council since its functions have been taken over by the state emergency