10/29/25: OpenAI Whistleblower, US Detains Israel Critic, Food Stamps Blocked By Trump, US China Trade Deal

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Turning now to OpenAI. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. New data released by ChatGPT itself of how many users are struggling with mental health issues and talking to the AI chatbot about it. They say it's just 0.15% of active users in a given week that have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicide planning or intent. However, guys, that is a million people a week because they have 800 million. weekly active users. So their current cope is, guys, we only have a million people a week talking to us about how to plan or potential suicide planning or intent. The company says that is a quote, show heightened levels of emotional attachment to chat GPT and that hundreds of thousands of people show signs of psychosis or mania in their weekly conversations with the open AI chatbot. However, they're saying, guys, don't worry, it's extremely rare. even though it is affecting literally over a million people across the world. So there you go, Ryan. That is the current, you know, look, I understand the scale problems of technology. I understand that with a billion people, you're going to have issues with a 0.1%, or any of that. But... What it comes down to me is about the responsibility not just of the company, but all of us as a society for guardrails and strict like actual social understanding for all of us in how we use this technology, how we should age gate this technology, how to make sure that said technology when it does encounter these bad edge cases or any of that, that it actually acts, not even just responsibly because that means that it's inherent upon them. It's not. It's actually should. be up to us. And the problem with all of this is we're just leave it up to Sam Altman. We're like, you figure it out, man. Whatever you think is best is what you're going to do. And what terrified me, I don't know, I think I talked about this with Crystal, but in jurisdictions where assisted suicide. is legal. They were like, yeah, we would direct them to that if they asked it. So they would be like, hey, can you help me find the nearest assisted suicide by a clinic or help me apply for the paperwork? And they were like, look, we will comply with local jurisdiction. I mean, that is, that's dark, right? I don't know. Yeah. And I understand it's legal, but that doesn't mean that you should be helping people kill themselves. Yeah, there's now a lawsuit. You can put up C2. I've been tracking this one. Yeah, there's a suit claiming basically that OpenAI, you know, understood that it had to strike a balance between encouraging more user engagement or suicide prevention. And focusing on suicide prevention would kind of push away some, I guess, different routes that the conversations could go down. And those routes were more beneficial to user engagement. Yes, exactly. Up until, of course, if the person kills themselves, Open AI, I don't know if did you think about that. And if your user is dead, they can't engage with your product. But so, yeah, so this has been working. What can you tell us about the case as it's?

I'll tell you. This was the most interesting. They say this was updated just on Wednesday that in the new version in ChatGBTGBT 4O when it was released in May of 2024, quote, the company truncated safety testing, which the suit said was because of competitive pressure. So the lawsuit cites unnamed employees and previous news reports. Then in February, OpenAI, quote, weakened protections against the suit claims of instructions said to take care in risky situations to try and prevent imminent real world harm. instead of prohibiting engagement on suicide and self-harm entirely. Open AI. still maintained a category of, quote, fully disallowed content such as intellectual property rights and manipulating political opinions, but is removed preventing suicide from the list. So basically, they were like, we need to keep stuff out of open AI that will cause us regulatory trouble whenever it comes to politics. But the suicide thing is not important enough to include. Now, again, this is from a lawsuit. It's alleged chat GPT and open AI deny this. And this will work its way through the San Francisco court system as of right now. But I do think that as they continue to subpoena. and this will go through everything that we see in the court system, you are going to see the exact how all of the guardrails allegedly are literally just up to one man. And this one man is like a philosopher king who can describe based on his own morals and business decisions to do whatever is best for him, not what is best for everybody. And you and I can both know that if people who are mentally unwell, the last thing you need to do is give them some chat cheap. bot, which lets them validate their more psychotic fantasies, which it will do. You know, a friend of mine, was showing me about how chat GPT can simulate gambling. And so he would ask it. And he'd be like, pretend I'm in a casino. I'm in a casino. I put it on black. Roll it and tell me what it is. And it's like, it goes, you put 50 on black. It hits. The whole room is going wide. And it writes this whole long description of what it's like as you sit. And I was like, and he goes, now imagine you can actually do that in the app. You can connect it to your bank. and you can have it play out this fantasy, but you could play this out on anything for sports gambling. I'm talking, I mean, all kinds of different vices or validations. I mean, for people who are addicts, like it's literally the addiction is never closer than, and that's just a case of gambling. Now, think about suicide, and they're like, oh, don't worry, there's a cystic suicide clinic right over here. It's completely outside the confines of society. And I want to highlight this new op-ed, C-5, because this sticks with the pornography direction that they're going in, but it also gets to the mental illness part. So op-ed that dropped just late last night. He says, I led product safety at Open AI. Don't trust its claims about erotica. This is Stephen Adler. So I'm going to go and read for this. Back in the spring of 2021, I led our product safety team, and I discovered a crisis related to erotic content. One prominent customer was a text-based adventure role-playing game that used AI to draft interactive stories based on player choices. These stories became a hotbed.

sexual fantasies, including encounters involving children and violent abductions, often initiated by the user, but sometimes steered by the AI itself. So basically saying, oh, wouldn't it be crazy if it was a kid? Wouldn't it be crazy if you were kidnapping this person that would heighten the sexual tension? And they say one analysis found that over 30% of player conversations was explicitly lewd. After months of grappling with where to draw the line, we ultimately prohibited our models for being used for erotic purposes. It's not that erotica is bad per se. This is, everyone stick with me. But there were clear warning signs of users' intense emotional engagement to AI chatbots, especially for users who were struggling with mental health, volatile sexual interactions that seemed risky. Nobody wants to be morality police, but we lacked ways to measure and manage erotic usage carefully. We ultimately decided AI-powered erotica would have to wait. Open AI now says that the weight is over, despite the serious mental health. issues that are now plaguing users of chat GPT. On October 14th, they announced that they have mitigated these issues thanks to new tools, which will enable its restrictions on content like Erotica. Erotica, he says, I have major questions informed by my four years about whether these mental health issues are actually fixed. If the company really has strong reason to believe it's ready to bring back Erotica on its platforms, it should have to show its work. AI is now becoming a dominant part of our lives. People deserve more than the word that has addressed these safety issues. I thought that's incredible. incredibly well said. This guy worked on the product for four years. He showed, I mean, this is, just gets to the whole edge case thing, is if you're normal and you're well adjusted, you actually can probably not fathom of somebody getting like literally addicted to an AI chat bot and falling in love with it. But there's a decent... percentage of the population, which is not normal. And that's millions of people at scale. And I've talked about this weed, gambling, all of these negative externalities. Those people will show up in the most extreme circumstances that force all of us to have to grapple with that. Same with the internet, video games. And this is the latest, you know, frontier. And we're going in the same privatized direction of Sam Altman Getsu decide. I mean, it's not crazy to say we could have millions of people who are addicted. in love with an AI chapout within two years from now. I don't think I'm going to roll that out considering the suicide conversation. Yes. In the past, I've wondered if like the entire Trump administration is a giant, you know, opt for China to undermine us from within. But if you told me that Sam Altman was a Chinese agent who was like instructed by the CCP to undermine kind of American. capacity to produce a culture, you know, from inside. I'd be like, okay, this, this, this actually is starting to make sense. And clearly, he's feeling a push, like saying that he's a philosopher king who's going to balance his business, uh, his business sensibilities and his morals. That balance seems to be, we don't have to wonder, you know, which one is going to outweigh the other. Clearly he's in need of more engagement. The way to get more engagement, gambling, erotica, that sort of thing. You'll like this. Back in the 2010s when I was at the Huffington Post, we were one of the biggest sites on the internet, like often top 20, top 50, whatever. I was a reader. Yeah, there you go. And I remember talking to one of our data guys once about how cool that was. And he's like, do you want to know?

what our actual ranking is like what do you mean our actual ranking he's like the rankings that they put out publicly are not the real internet rankings like what are you talking about right because it excludes porn yeah it the real internet is porn yeah and he's like here's the real rankings and it's hundreds of sites you've never heard of that are far more popular than the drudge report even facebook at the time um and it put us way down low that that is what that is what brings people back that's what drives user engagement Sam Altman uh i'm not the only one that knows that you know this like anybody deep in the internet knows this and also now like because we're witnessing this absolute crisis among young men it's it's that much more apparent so Sam Altman is like okay all right trying to time to mash the button And we're just going to make sure that this chart keeps going up into the right. Yes. And by the way, you know, the thing you just said about profit fits with the next part of the story. Not that anybody's really covering it all that well. Put it up here on the screen. Open AI just yesterday got the green light from California and Delaware. for a, quote, multi-billion dollar revamp. Let me read from this a little bit. Chat GPT Maker OpenAI has now amounts a major victory on Tuesday, gaining the blessing of the Attorney General in California and in Delaware to complete its controversial multi-billion dollar business restructuring after months of public scrutiny. The San Francisco-based AI company valued at some $500 billion still faces some potential hurdles with the continued protests from a few others, but they got the clear to transform themselves basically. into a for-profit entity. The changes, which clear the way for the OpenAI to receive a $22 billion investment. by SoftBank eliminates a prior capped for profit model while opening a path for them to raise more from investors in the future funding rounds and eventually potentially go public. Microsoft will have a stake in that for-profit company, which is worth some $130 billion. The restructuring is now following these agreements with OpenAI from California and Delaware, where the company is based and incorporated respectively after the states had launched probes into that restructuring plan. Basically, the long way of saying it is this, is that Sam Altman... originally started open AI as a nonprofit. And the theory behind open AI was it needed to be open. By being open, open AI as a technology would be available to everybody as an open source and that through that they could make it so that no one company would roll it up into a gigantic monopoly. They then created the wildly successful chat GPT, which is now a $13 billion per year business, now worth some $500 billion, announcing deals with the world's largest chip makers, raising the collective cap of all these companies to literally trillion. and trillions of dollars. Now, on top of that, what they discovered in that immense wealth is that they can try and bifurcate the nonprofit and for-profit arm to create some weird two-entity system and eventually roll all the nonprofit into the for-profit to make it the $500 billion company. They couldn't, though, take the investment based upon that way that was structured, where's the way that they were currently incorporated in Delaware and in California. But lo and behold, the half-trillion-dollar value company was able to reach an agreement with the Attorney General.

California and Delaware, two of the most business and pro-tech-friendly states, which will now clear the way for them to raise endless amounts of money, potentially, eventually go public. That's what it's all about. That's what the porn thing is about, is that it's about raising money, raising engagement, making sure that they can put advertising directly in the chat GPT feed. I don't know if you guys saw this. ChatGPT now has its own browser to compete with Google Chrome. It's all about data. AGI is never coming. It's just all about recreating the internet. A better Google. This is what I keep trying to tell. They're like, addictive Google, yeah. Exactly. It's just a better Google. And I'm not saying that's a, I'm not saying that's bad. I definitely will use it. I think a lot of people will use it. It's one of those which will make life a little bit more efficient. But that's not the cell. The cell was not. The cell was we're going to cure cancer. The cell was that we're going to radically transport mankind. I mean, the big, big problems that face the United States, that face the world, that face humanity collectively. And instead, it's just a better team's agent. It's better at Excel. It's better at Matt. I think that's cool. It's definitely more efficient. Better transcription. It's nice. Yeah, transcription. We used it recently for breaking points to transcribe like a two-hour long thing. It genuinely is cool. Like, I don't want to sit there and say that it's not useless. But is that worth a collective? massive increase in data center capax and electricity prices, pornography, suicide, mental illness, phone addiction. Can you even imagine? The chat GPT phone is coming, and we all know it. They just hired recently Johnny I, the original creator of the iPhone. The chat GPT device, the Google Chrome thing, they're trying to roll up every technological aspect. Soon, they're going to sign a deal with some car company. Ford, who knows, where they will take over the autonomous driving and there'll be like two competitors of Tesla and of Sam Altman. Like the entire user interface of everything that you have technologically, Apple and Google originally wanted to come for that. Now ChatGPT wants to come for it as well. That's it. That's the whole game. There's no AI or AGI that's going to radically change cancer, make you skinny, make you look great and be radically assistive in a meaningful way. It's just going to addict you even more so that they can make trillions and trillions of dollars. That's it. That's the whole game for this thing. Roll Tucker Carlson real quick. Yes. Yeah, so Tucker Carlson interviewed Sam Altman. It was fascinating and very, like, awkward. For Sam. Yes. Yeah. But here, let's just roll this part of it, which involves the, you know, open AI's potential for producing suicides. So there was a famous case where chat GPT appeared to facilitate a suicide. There's a lawsuit around it. But how do you think that happened? First of all, obviously that and any other case like that is a huge tragedy. And I think that we are... So Chatschapit's official position of suicide is bad? Chachapit. Well, yes, of course. Chachapit's official position of suicide is bad. I don't know. It's legal in Canada and Switzerland. So you're against that? The... In this particular case, and we talked earlier about the tension between like, you know, user freedom and privacy and...

protecting vulnerable users. Right now, what happens and what happens in a case like that in that case is, if you are having suicidal ideation talking about suicide, chat GPT will put up a bunch of times, you know, please call the suicide hotline. But we will not call the authorities for you. I think it would be very reasonable for us to say in cases of young people. talking about suicide seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities. Now, that would be a change because user privacy is really important. But an example of this, chat GPT says, you know, I'm feeling suicidal. What kind of rope should I use? What would be enough ibuprofen to kill me? And chat GPT answers without judgment, but literally, if you want to kill yourself, here's how you do it. And everyone's like a horrified. But you're saying that's within bounds. Like, that's not crazy. That it would take a non-judgmental approach. If you want to kill yourself, here's how. That's not what I'm saying. Right now, if you ask Chatsypti to say, you know, tell me how to, like, how much ibuprofen should I take. It will definitely say, hey, I can't help you with that. Call the suicide hotline. But if you say I am writing a fictional story or if you say I'm a medical researcher and I need to know this, there are ways where you can. say, get Chachapy can answer a question like that, what the lethal dose of ibuprofen is or something. I told you. There's always going to be a workaround. It's all going to come around. It'll all be within the weird legalese confines of, you know, like, of the language. It just, this is, it's funny, you know, the assisted suicide thing, I know it used to be a major religious talking point. And I kind of brush it off. But the more you grapple with it in Canada, it's dark. Yeah, like it's, people are killing themselves when they're young. People are taking advantage of assisted suicide whenever they're broke, right? Like, they have no terminal condition. Some of the, some of the profiles. Some of the people who are referring to, it's just like, oh, you want to kill yourself here, go. Right. Exactly. Yeah, and they just do it. I mean, I talk about this with abortion, too. You can be pro-choice if you want to be, but you need to grapple with what the logical endpoint, like recently, I think it was Iceland, where they were like, hey, we don't have Down syndrome anymore. They're bragging about it, right? Because they don't, there was either a year or something where not a single child was born with Downstrom. That means there was 100% abortion rate in the country for Down syndrome. You need to grapple with that. That's straight up. straight up eugenics if that's something that you support. And anybody being honest about their position needs to say, no, actually, that's not cool, you know? Or in countries like in India, for example, they don't even allow people to find out the gender of the baby that they're having because there's too many abortions when people find out that it's girls. I support that. I think China was doing that for a while. I think China supported that. Yeah, they had a similar type of policy. I'm like, yeah, that's good, actually. Because sometimes you need to make it so, you know, this whole laissez-faire system. It's gross, and it leads to this disgusting, like, eugenic outcomes. Doja Cat. Mavi World Tour. Live in concert. With special guest Lotto. Doja Cat. Live across North America in 2026.

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Let's get to Hamdi, shall we? All right. So on Monday morning, we can put up D1 here. Sammy Hamdi was a British political commentator who was in the United States for a speaking tour. He was actually Saturday night. He spoke at a care gala in Sacramento and Northern California, and he was heading to Florida for another Keragala Care as a Council on American Islamic Relations, which is... The largest Muslim civil liberties organization in the country, what they do is they, you know, they do a lot of different things, protecting religious liberties. They'll sue corporations or they'll sue a cop. There's, you know, abuse against a Muslim defendant or victim. They have a very impressive kind of legal track record. Disclosure, Jeremy and I got a journalism award from care. not this year, but last year, at one of their Karegala. So I'm familiar with this organization. So this guy is a very well-known pro-Palestinian commentator on the edge of what people in kind of mainstream politics would consider to be like the mainstream position on. Because the mainstream position is supposed to be. October 7th was an outrageous atrocity, which I condemn. Hamas is a terrorist organization, which I condemn. You say those things in a ritualistic way, and then you're allowed to have an opinion that can be discussed in American discourse. Not everybody abides by that, and that is, to me, That's actually the beauty of the First Amendment. That's what makes the United States different. Also, we're talking about a foreign country. It's weird. We're not talking about the United States here. We're talking about another country. That's what makes the United States different, that people can have opinions that you disagree with, that you consider abhorrent even, and that you defend their right to say that anyway. Like, there's a whole saying about that that we used to, like, have up on our walls in elementary schools. I, what is the exact saying? I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it. Yeah. I'll give my life. Yeah, that's right. I'll give my life for your right to say it. That's right. That's the whole thing. Laura Lumer and Amy, what's her name, don't agree with that. So we can put up D4. This is who kicked this off. This is an online troll, Amy Meck. I've never heard of this lady. Yeah, she, like, just a random troll, basically. Okay. So she wrote, National Security Threat, DHS must deport Sammy Hamdi. A foreign national is moving freely across the United States, speaking from mosques, universities, and care-run stages. while training U.S. Muslims in digital agitation. Look out. Don't want to train anybody in digital agitation. Electoral sabotage, which means persuading people to vote.

For somebody that she disagrees with, I guess. And political warfare. What on earth is that? In alignment with Muslim Brotherhood doctrine. Sammy Hamdi is not a journalist passing through America. He is a deployed actor from an overseas cadre system that by now you could be like, okay, this is a crazy person. This is the rantings of a crazy person, which this is America. And I don't even know if she's in America, but it's America. I was going to say it's actually a good question. Right, who knows? Rant's all you want. That is the beauty of this country. This unstable stuff should be, this is your right to say this kind of thing. In this country, though, in this moment, it goes crazy. So Laura Lumer, you know, picks it up from here. Laura Lumer starts running this massive campaign. highlighting Amy MEC's stuff and linking it to her intramural fight with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that, you know, this like coalition of the woke right and Hamas supporters and jihadists or whatever is like, you know, going to, you know, undermine America and, you know, Sammy needs to be arrested and deported. And... The DHS absolutely snaps to attention. You put up D2 here. Old Tricia McLaughlin quickly announces that, yeah, they're doing it. And they arrest them at the airport. So thanks to the work of Secretary, Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio and the men and women of law enforcement, a massive operation here. Like we need to applaud all of the people that came together to pull out this incredible operation to be able to handcuff somebody at an airport. This individual's visa was revoked, and he is in ICE custody pending removal. Under President Trump, Those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country. It's common sense. According to the First Amendment, it is actually quite fine for you to support terrorism. People may not understand that. You're not allowed to give material support to a terrorist organization, which means you can't. You can't fund them. You can't fly there to go join them. You can't sign up. You can't fly there to join them. You can't coordinate with them to lobby on their behalf. You can actually find ways around that if you're a politician who wants to get paid by a group that wants to get off the terror list. That's a different question. But yeah, you can't coordinate with them to materially support them. But you can actually say, that you support what they're doing. Yeah, you're right. Like people, if somebody wants to say, for instance, that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were right to do 9-11, and here's why.

In America, you're allowed to do that. Yes. That's what makes us different. And you want to roll some of Hamdi? Well, I just want to say broadly. And I think this is kind of where this is just complicated. So first of all, I don't think that this guy should have been detained by ICE specifically for what he said. And we're going to get to this in a little bit. The only disagreement I have, Ryan, is that there is a leftist kind of view of the world that any foreigner has a right to enter the United States, right? So what you're talking about is the fundamental inalienable right of any American citizen, which I absolutely do agree with you. And now the British and us, many countries, Australia and others have... do have policies where you are allowed to deny entry based upon any criteria that you want. And I actually do support that because you shouldn't necessarily host somebody who, let's say that this person did quote, hate America. Now, what I think is very telling about this entire thing is that the ice... detention is justified entirely for Hamdi's views of October 7th. And that's why I do think that this is the most objectionable form because it's specifically about censorship and detention. on the issue of Israel itself. Now, at the very same time that Hamdi is being detained at Los Angeles Airport, or what, I forget, some California airport, he's being detained by airport. Sacramento. There are members of the IDF who openly celebrate the murder of children who fly here. Some are not even dual citizens and are vacationing, let's say in Los Angeles, right, in coffee shops. So. To draw like a moral line about what someone can and cannot say on a foreign conflict and then to detain and deny entry based singularly on that issue, I do think it's telling that the one clip that they put out had nothing to do with the U.S., right? Because it is actually different if what you're saying is if somebody said... They deserve 9-11. Right. Right. I actually do think that's different. If you said that, I don't know. Maybe we actually do have the right to deny your visa. I'm not saying you should be detained and put into ice or whatever, but I'm saying, yeah, yeah, maybe you shouldn't come here. And we do get to right. We have an absolute and unabsolute right to deny who can and cannot enter. So with that context, note that the only clip they did put out was specifically about October 7th, which didn't happen here. It didn't happen to our people. It's entirely based on something that happened elsewhere. Let's take a lesson. Benjamin Netanyahu did not envisage that for the first time since 1948, the Palestinians would actually retake land back from the Israelis. Benjamin Netanyahu did not envisage that for the first time since 1948, the Palestinians would be able to hold those territories for more than 72 hours. We are pity the people who brought a huge victory since 1948. Don't pity them.

They don't want your pity. Celebrate the victory. Allah has shown the world that no normalization can erase the Palestinian cause. When everybody thought it was finished, it's roaring. How many of you feel it in your hearts when you got the news that it happened? How many of you felt the euphoria? Allah, how many of you felt it? How many of you felt it? Why did you feel it? Because in despair, vanish. You said this omel is alive. So that's what they're claiming that he said. I actually don't know entirely if that's been clipped or anything. Well, I mean, yeah. What he's saying there is that, look, it brought the cause of Palestinian liberation back onto the national stage. And you should remember that even as you feel so terrible about the response. And he has previously and other times said that it was a catastrophe and that it was a, I forget his exact terminology, that he. So, you know, he has a more nuanced view of it. Sure. But the point is he should be able to think whatever. Listen, I'm with you. All right. You think what you want about Palestine, okay? And if you have a problem with it in Britain, that's your problem. You guys can figure it out for yourselves. I think he's getting a little close to the line there, if you ask me. But, and this is kind of where I get to, and this is where the nanny finger wagging from a lot of people starts to bug me. He's like, guys, how many times do I see these people cheering on is really murder? I literally saw, you know, there are people here who I saw tweeting about this, and they have past statements being like, I don't feel for the Palestinians deserve to watch their children starve. I'm just like, okay, like, I'm going to take a moral lesson from you about what's acceptable. I reckon not sorry. You know, I'm out. I'm out on this stuff. Randy Fine. Right. Yeah, exactly. He says it all the time. Will Chamberlain, not to be confused with the basketball player, who, you know, will say, you know, deport. He's been on the show many times. Yeah. Deport him. Deport, deport, deport, deport, you know, five times a day. He's trying to get, you know, he's circled around on this one. He's a Randy Fine Republican. Like, he's, he will say things that are, you know, far more atrocious. than anything that Sammy has said. And to me, and that's okay. That's the whole, that's the strength of the country. There's a, there's a patheticness and a weakness to a country that can't allow somebody to speak at a small gala because. They said something that you didn't like about October 7th. For me, it's the selectivity. For me, it's the selectivity, specifically on October 7th. But, you know, nothing new happening here in the United States of America so far. All right, let's get to Snap, shall we? Doja Cat. My V World Tour. Live in concert. With special guest, Lotto. Feel like shot it low. Left here to the pain. But she's not a talk. Doja Cat. Live across North America in 2026. Get tickets now at DojaCat.com. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real.

Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week, every week. We're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalinka. Shoutouts to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

As the government shutdown continues into likely November, food stamps are now on the chopping block. People's food stamps start getting re-upped on Friday or Monday. But because of the Trump administration decision, we can put up B1, or this is an arguable point. According to Democrats, because of a Trump administration decision not to use funds that are available to... in an emergency for SNAP benefits, they will be lapsing for the next month. You put up E1 here. This is New York to hunger and cold looms as shut down imperils funding for anti-poverty programs. And, you know, so you have this now bipartisan push to, and, you know, bipartisan push to save. snap benefits because you know over 40 million people rely on this these benefits and many of those people you know we're now at the as many of our viewers will know who who scrape by to get to the end of the month we're at the end of the month now and so people are kind of holding their breath hanging on waiting for the waiting for things to come in on the first of the month and when that doesn't happen that And you can't catch a breath. You then, your only choice then becomes like hitting these, you know, food banks, which are now, you know, massively overstretched as a result of... Well, especially where we are, where we are in the DMV because people have been out of paycheck now for 28 days. It's grim out here from what I have been told food banks and more... This, by the way, people... The federal workers are at least going to get their money back. There's all kind of downstream effects here in our economy. I mean, this is super local story. It's dicey for contractors. Oh, the contractors don't get paid. But then think about all the – I talked to my barber, right? I was like, hey, how's business? He's like, it's horrible. Nobody's going to work. So they don't need a haircut. He's like, I don't get back pay. Right. So he's not going to – I mean, there's – and they multiply that by like 20 across all kinds of different – I don't know, the lunch places, small businesses, the guys of the Pentagon who sell hot dogs. Like, everybody is taking – a bath. I know most people watching this don't care, but it just locally... And it's not just decent. You can understand. Federal workers are all over the country. Yeah, it's 2 million people. The 2 million people are getting paid. That's huge... I mean, banks, you know, mortgage payments. Like, there's all kinds of cascading effects throughout the system. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen, because this does highlight some of the white partisanship around this. Senator Josh Hawley wrote this op-ed. No American should go to bed. Hungary. Here he proposes. The federal government's been shut down for 28 days, 28 days too long. Congress must not let that happen. And he is now co-sponsoring or has now introduced a bill, Ryan, which would kind of one shot funding immediately for the SNAP program, which actually itself. has a ton of Republican co-sponsors. Let's put that one up next, please. So you can see here wide variety, James Langford, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Marsha Blackburn, Bernie Moreno, Kevin Kramer, Bill Cassidy, Katie Boyd, John Cornyn, John Hunstead, and Peter Wells. So you have one Democrat there. But I believe many other Democrats would support at least some sort of snap immediate funding. It doesn't, though, appear as if that's going to make its way through Congress. And there seems to be some...

brinksmanship right now between the congressional leaders where Mike Johnson and others, they want Snap not to go out because they want pressure to go on the Democrats to fold. Right. Vice versa, by the way, from the Democrats is they don't want it to come out because they want the Republicans to fold to them. I don't know. I mean, we're coming up on that November 4th, potential deadline. What do you think is going to happen? Yeah, so on the Senate Democratic side, you're seeing, you saw an interesting kind of political, tactical shift where just last week, Senator John Thune, the Republican, was saying, well, let's selectively just open a few pieces of the government. Wouldn't that be fair? And then we can continue hashing this out. And Chuck Schumer at the time said no. All or nothing, just extend the subsidies for Obamacare, do a CR for the end of the year, and then we're done. Chuck Schumer has now flipped. And Chuck Schumer is now pushing for these individual votes around things like this to say, Because they think that they, for whatever reason, Chuck Schumer now thinks that that's to their tactical advantage. And then I think he also probably assumes that Republicans are now going to be on the blocking side of it because Mike Johnson has been. Has, you know, if you remember, he adjourned the House so as not to have to. And no votes, no Epstein vote, no swearing. And so it's not to have an Epstein vote. And so as not to swear in Adelita Grijalva, Roald Grijalva's daughter who won her seat in a special election. Think about this. A, the 700,000 people in this country elected a member of Congress in a special election. And Mike Johnson is just refusing to swear her in. Like, that's constitutional crisis level stuff. He's like, well, it's don't worry about it. We'll get to it eventually. You're starting to get pressure from people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who are like, why are we out of, what are we doing? Like, why are we still? out of session like get we're elected to be in congress like gavel us back in so if grahalva when grahalva is finally sworn in that will be the 218th vote they need to force an epstein vote and so i think Chuck Schumer also sees like okay well they're not even in session so there's no risk of them actually doing this and if they go forward with SNAP benefits. That's good for Democrats because then we can last longer because there's less pressure on us. So Chuck Schumer has now shifted on that. But there's also a legal strategy underway. If we can put up E4, 25 states are suing. the Trump administration because it's actually not obvious that the program's out of money. Like, the way it's been reported in the press is like, oh, because of the government shutdown, snap benefits aren't going to be paid. Well, yes and no. There's a contingency fund that has been set up by Congress precisely for these shutdown scenarios so that payments keep going out. Russ Vought.

unsurprising to anybody who knows Russ Vought is interpreting it such that he doesn't have to give the money out. We can put up E5, so this is from Elizabeth Warren posted this. This has since been deleted from the government website, but as... As Trump's own government website said, OMB's general counsel provided a letter to USDA May 23, 2025, stating that there is a bona fide need to obligate benefits for October, the first month of the fiscal year, during or prior to the month of September, thereby guaranteeing that benefit funds are available for program operations even in the event of a government shutdown. So that is a very important... fact of this conversation to understand it is it is not according to that reading the shutdown that is preventing food stamps from getting doled out, it is an explicit decision by Russ Vogue and by the Trump administration to withhold it in order to put extra pressure on Democrats. And also I think Russ Vogue just likes to withhold money, right? Yeah. That's a fair. Well, I don't know if you would object to that. I think their pressure, I mean, if he statistically would look at it and who are going to be the most dependent on food stamps. I mean, I actually don't know, considering the way that things have aligned more recently. But initially, that would be more of a democratic constituency. But not necessarily still the case. I was going to say, I don't think it's really the case anymore. What people need to understand is it's overwhelmingly people with children. Like 90, well over 90 percent. These are parents. Well, yeah, why don't you go into that, Ryan? I'm seeing a lot of right-wing people. I can't believe 42 million people are on food stamps. These people are all bums and on welfare. Yeah, these are kids. I grew up on food stamps, raised by a single mom. So we would get. we would get, you know, EBT. And, you know, there's still only certain things you can buy at the grocery store with it. Actually, for my 18th birthday, I got to use the card. Here, I have the key, they have the eligibility criteria. Household grossly month income must be, utterably, one third, 30% of the federal poverty level. House net income. Which for a family of four, that's, go ahead, go ahead. Right, yeah. So then resources and asset limits. Households without a member of 60 plus must generally have assets at or below a set limit. Households with a member 60 plus with disabilities may have higher resource limits to be eligible. Households must be U.S. citizens, lawfully permanent non-citizens. Many able-bodied adults without dependent. Dependents must meet work or training requirements. There are exemptions for people who are pregnant and elderly disabled. A household for SNAP means a group of people who live together, purchase, and prepare food together. Some states have specific rules for suits. So generally, it looks like 130% of the federal poverty level. Which for a family of four is about $40,000. Okay. So that's not a lot of money. It's not a lot of money at all. And the assets, so, yeah, 42,000, you have to.

42,000 is the most you can make for a family of four in order to get these very modest benefits. We're not talking like huge amounts of money here that you can spend at the grocery store. And the asset limits that they're talking about are also incredibly draconian. So... Like, if, if, let's say you inherit like $7,000 from like, say your great, great aunt dies or something, boom, you got out of the program. Just because you briefly went over. It's, it's kind of anti-American in the way that it, or an un-American in the way that it, like, how so? Holds people back. Like, you're, if you, if you try to pull yourself up by your bootstrapped, which people are always being told to do, and you have a successful couple of months. All of a sudden, because you now have $3,000 or whatever dollars in the bank, you lose everything. Lose whatever medical benefits you were getting. You lose your food stamps. You should phase out at some point. You might phase out at some point, but we don't have a system that really phases out at some point. We have this system of cliffs. And no, you're going to lose your energy assistance because. You had this one good month or something. So you have a much greater risk of losing everything if you have a little bit of success. So a lot of people are like, well, I better just do nothing and just stay here underneath this thing. So I don't. Kind of damned if you do, if you're damned if you don't. I don't disagree with you. Which is crazy. Yeah, it should be a phase out. Clearly should be a phase out. So that you are incentivized. You earn $1,000 over this limit. All right, you give, make it a tax. You give 20% back. Like something that still incentivizes you to go out rather than. Sounding like a Republican right now about how it incentivizes people to stay in the public. Fine. It's like. But no. It is. That's why I thought it was because I, unfortunately, I always see this happen. It's like you get Reagan era talking points around welfare. And I think what people actually don't understand is how. insanely poor you have to be to receive this. It's like 42,000 for family of poor. What do we talk about here on the show? By the way, the fact that there are 42 million people who are making less than $40,000 a year and kind of... And most of them with kids. Like, to get it without kids is really hard. Yeah, I mean... And you get like $12 a month. If you're like a single adult 35 years old. You and I know the cost of... You need cost of diapers and any of this. Good luck. Actually. Yeah. Yeah, that is one where... It is fascinating. I think that on the SNAP, I mean, around the discourse, around SNAP. Originally, if you'll recall, there was some MAHA elements to try and to reform SNAP to get away from sweetened drinks and sugar and processed food. However, I recently also saw a study that many people who eat at home end up eating higher calorie food. And it's because they buy... processed food from the grocery store in some cases and will binge eat based upon that. So our whole food system, everything is so, so screwed up. The only way to even get around it would be literally some authoritarian, we just, we're about to do a segment about China, some authoritarian level. So actually, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. at one proposed that organic healthy food be delivered to every American on snap. I actually think that's a good idea. As long as you replace, you know, all of these subsidies to sugar,

soda to goldfish, luncheables, whatever. Kids aren't eating lunchebles now. They eat Logan Paul's. I don't know what it's called. But that's my prime energy drinks or, you know, all this other crap that they're eating at the grocery store. Unfortunately, though, that seems to be a dead end. Now it's just whether they get food or not. Right. It's very sad. Yeah, no. And so, yeah, this is, like, this is hitting for people like right now. Yeah. Yeah. So one more. What is it? It's October 29th. Their theory, by the way, I heard a theory yesterday I'll share with all of you. This is a little DC scooplet. There's a current theory from both the parties, apparently, that they want to make it so that Thanksgiving travel is as miserable as possible so that eventually people will care about the shutdown. So they're going to try and actually make the air traffic control situation go wild with TSA and everything. Just what we need is people getting killed in the air. Yeah, the busiest day of the entire travel year. And, well, it's not that people would die since there would be cascading delays throughout the system, make everybody miserable, and then millions of people would rise up and theoretically would blame one party. Remember, that's what ended the last shutdown when the air... Which was in 2018? Yeah, the air traffic control, the head of the air traffic controller, not air traffic, the flight attendant union. Sarah, what's her name? Nelson. Fly was, yeah, yeah. She came out and was like, you get a deal by Friday or we're going on strike. And they got it again. And they got a deal. Sarah Nelson has, Sarah, Sarah, where have you been? Sarah Nelson has been, I should not have forgotten Sarah Nelson's name. Because she was like being talked about as like a vice president president president. I know, I remember her. A couple years ago. We've interviewed a million times here on the show. I remember her. Yeah, Sarah, come on, fly in and solve this thing for us. Yeah, please. Put pressure on the system. Last, last thing. People like SNAP benefits. Put up E6. Most recent poll. Americans oppose cutting food stamp benefits by 66 to 23. It's an overwhelmingly popular thing because it's like these are people with kids who are poor. They deserve to eat. That turns out to be something that the American people generally agree with. What's the least popular welfare? Let's see. What do we got here? I'm actually curious. Oppose sending 45 billion to build and maintain migrant detention camps Is that the least popular? Yeah, that's one of them. Reducing federal funding for food assistance to low-income house. So that's reducing federal funding. Extending tax cuts for single incomes above $400K. That is definitely former welfare. That's true. Here's the welfare that you know. Extending tax cuts for business corporations. Extending tax cuts for single incomes above $400K. Who supports extending tax cuts for people? The people making over $400,000 a year?

That's got to be what? The top. That's easily a top 1% income. I'm talking about W2 annual income. That's a lot of money. That probably is. Yeah, 29% support. Statistically, 29% are not even making. No, they're not. Top 1% of 400k. That's like some... It's a real solidarity for the rich. Yeah, that's like a 42K a year or W2. That's aspirational. It could be me. Those people plan to be. I mean, it could be you. It probably won't be. But anyway, all right. Let's get to China. Ben Smith, standing by. Doja Cat, Mavi World Tour, live in concert, with special guest Lotto. Doja Cat, live across North America in 2026. Get tickets now at Doja Cat. What's up fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's Sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire time. timeline. In the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka. Naomi, show it out. She beat Sabalinka. Shoutouts to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Very excited now to be joined by Ben Smith. He's the editor-in-chief of Semaphore and the host of the Mixed Signals podcast, which everybody should go and subscribe to. Good to see you, Ben. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Ben, you wrote a fantastic story here, very under-noted, in my opinion, of the U.S.-China dynamic, which I think really hit the nail on the head. I've been involved in the space now for quite some time. Let's put this up here on the screen. Here's what you write. You talk specifically about how Trump is poised to end Washington's decade of the China Hawks. First of all, why don't you just tell us some of the things that you noted with the trade deal that's now taking form, President Trump and President Xi Jinping scheduled to meet sometime in the next 48 hours or so. I believe in South Korea. But why is Trump, who ushered in the decade of the China Hawks, also the one poised to end it? What did you find? Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump ran in 2016 on, you know, a huge part, a huge part of that campaign, a huge part of his whole public career has been saying that when, you know, China joined the WTO in the early 2000s, that was, you know, the beginning of the end for American manufacturing and thus the beginning of the end for kind of America as we knew it and loved it. That was the original sin. And we have to totally remake the U.S. relationship with China, which really means remaking the whole world for which China has been. You know, has basically most so much of global manufacturing has shifted to China. And And I think, you know, there was, there, and that came with a certain amount at times of, and we have to prepare to fight a war with them over Taiwan. And, you know, and they're spying on us. We have to throw out all their students. And there's a lot of very tough talk from him. And, and there was a group of very hardcore anti-China people, who, by the way, have been around forever. This is an old American debate. There's an old who lost China debate. you know, very intense support for Taiwan here for, you know, since Henry Luce was running Time magazine. But they, um... But basically, I think what we've seen over the last two weeks is that that thing, that has basically hit a dead end. The people, the most hawkish advisors to Trump, are out this term. Like a guy named Matt Pottinger, former Wall Street Journal reporter. And Trump is looking to make a deal that is basically going to restore the status quo ante. Like he's going to drop the fentanyl tariffs. I mean, the stuff that ultimately felt kind of made up.

is now going away in exchange for making tariffs go away. And the notion that we're going to remake the world economy into one where, like, all the dirt processing plants relocate to the U.S. And, you know, China goes back to, I don't know, 1973 just does not seem like it's going to happen. Yeah, exactly. And was there a way you think that the Hawks could have played their cards better, and that if Trump had approached the tariff? conflict differently. It seems like it was destined to fail by the way that he rolled it out, attacking the entire world at the same time. Everybody gets these like arbitrary tariffs and we're going to put tariffs on things that we can't make here in the United States. And China's response at the time seemed to be, okay, well, we're not going to buy any soybeans or we're just going to wait you out because this is incoherent. It's not going to work. But it feels like we do have a lot of power. Like something could have worked. Like where did they go wrong here? Yeah, I mean, ironically, the thing that if you really wanted to do your best to damage the Chinese economy and kind of contain their technological development, you'd probably do what the Biden administration did, which was basically blockade certain key technologies and get the Europeans to do it too. And also, by the way, not buy their superior electric vehicles and force Americans to. to, you know, purchase inferior Ford electric vehicles, which the Europeans had been doing. Looks like now the Canadians are just going to go and buy Chinese vehicles. I mean, the Europeans, surprisingly, are really kind of much more inclined to take an anti-China stance, I think, than a lot of people here expect, because for them, the biggest issue is the war in Ukraine and China's on the wrong side of it. That's very important to note. I mean, one of the things, Ben, that I, you know, like I said, I've been in this space for a long time, kind of followed the discourse. What I noticed was that eight to ten years ago in the China hawk space, it seemed achievable, the idea of decoupling, the idea of industrialization. I mean, you and I have been around for a while. How many times have we heard about industrial policy? It's a bipartisan thing. It's 2025 now. You know, the Made in China 2020 plan actually did come true. I was just looking at their original goals from 2020. 2015 to 2025. They mostly accomplished all of them. If you compare the rhetoric of the industrial policy, how we're going to decouple from China, the progress of the Chips Act here in the U.S., almost none of that has actually materialized and is not really on its way to doing so. If anything, a lot of it is being cut by the one big beautiful bill. So in material terms, it seems to me that the playing field itself is just different now because we didn't do any of the requisite things that would have been able to be done. to actually have some grand decoupling in the way that Steve Bannon envisioned in 2016. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is if you had, if you'd hung around Congress five or ten years ago, and you saw Mike Gallagher, this Wisconsin congressman chairing the China Committee, kind of building this bipartisan consensus that it was just time for a radical break with China, a radical reshaping of that relationship. And with support of a lot of Democrats, including very senior people in the Biden White House, you would have been plausible to think that that was going to happen. And it has absolutely not happened. I mean, I do think one of the things that this administration has come up to face is basically do we want to try to beat the Chinese at their own game, which is sort of scaled domestic manufacturing of very, very low margin goods. And when you talk to about rare earths, what that is is massive, massive plants processing dirt.

And I think, you know, we've sort of walked up to that, and it doesn't seem like there's a huge appetite to do that here, as opposed to very, very high margin service exports in AI, in all sorts of digital services where the U.S. is really totally dominating the world. And I think it's been sort of the notion that the right strategy for the U.S. is to try to beat China at its game rather than at our game, you know, does ultimately, I think, give people pause. And let me put another idea to you, and you tell me if you think it's totally crazy. You know, in the 1990s, when there was this push for permanent normal trade relations with China and then eventually letting them into the WTO, the idea that was presented to the American public and to the global public was that opening up the Chinese economy would also step two, step three, open up. democracy and open China up politically, that they would see the virtues of this Western liberal system and they would adopt it. What seems to have happened is that the contagion went the other way. So we're, we seem to be adopting their system. Like the two systems saw each other and the leaders of this country, particularly Trump at this point, looked in the Chinese mayor and we're like, oh, wow, this is interesting. I like the way that. They dictate, you know, corporate policy by telling which companies that can merge with other companies. Like, they're now out publicly saying that, you know, who they want, you know, who they want Warner Brothers to merge with. When it comes to TikTok, they're like, oh. This is pretty cool. And so we're just going to have a state-run TikTok, and my friend Larry Ellison will be the one that will run it. And he'll design an algorithm that will work while China can do their version of TikTok over there. And we're going to buy 10% of this company. We're going to buy 10% of this company. So it really feels like the analysts were correct that the merging of the two systems would... persuade one of them to adopt the others, but they had the direction wrong. Am I crazy here? Or are we witnessing? You're referring to a, what do they call it, state capitalism with American characteristics? Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, you know, that is superficially true. I mean, the difference is that the Chinese government, because it's a, you know, communist dictatorship, is able to make extremely long-term bets and stick to them. And so the kind of, and sometimes with massive success, like the kind of infrastructure behind this kind of massively scaled industrial policy, whereas the US on things like cars is changing its strategy so frequently that it's really destroying the domestic auto industry. Like it's just very, very, you like, maybe there's some future where people are driving internal, using internal combustion engines. And if the US had kind of made that counterintuitive bed and stuck with it, we'd be the one selling those. cars or at least we but instead we've the country has sort of flip-flopped a few times and just it's very hard if you're running for it or general motors it's just very very hard to be competitive and then the problem of course with being a you know communist dictatorship is you can't correct and you know the one things like the one child policy which has created this

You're horrific and was both incredibly inhumane and created this horrible demographic crisis or also a product of the same thing. So I'm not sure like we should act. There is a moment right now. I feel like people are watching like videos on TikTok of Chinese like iPhone stores that have cars in them and getting really excited. But it's not like, things are not going great there necessarily. I don't know. I mean, things are great here either. So that's what causes people like me. It seems clean. It's safe and it's nice. You know, the parks look pretty good. I was a chung-doo over the summer and with my kids. and they were just like, oh, my God, we're so cooked. But I'm not sure it's that simple. Of course, it never is entirely. At least we have our freedoms here, right? All right, Ryan. That sounds like a nervous laugh. Ben, my last question here is on the security doctrine, because key to the industrial side of all of this was always the Taiwan question. Strategic ambiguity, according to White House official, is officially here to stay. Trump technically said he was going to talk to President Xi Jinping maybe about Taiwan sometime today, but even the discussion around Taiwan. seems very different than it was 10 years ago when there was an ironclad. I mean, frankly, even Biden said I would defend Taiwan. He almost changed the strategic ambiguity policy. It doesn't seem like that is nearly as clear as it is today in 2025. Yeah, I mean, Trump is sort of in everything's on the table dealmaker. And so there's this slight sense that, wait, does that include Taiwan? And the U.S. just demonstrably in our domestic politics don't have a big appetite to... fight foreign wars. I mean, I don't think there's something has radically changed, but the strategic ambiguity has, you know, has shifted a little in the direction of the U.S. wouldn't engage. But, you know, although Trump, I think, is unpredictable enough that in some way he maintained, like, there's just a level of ambiguity right there that, I don't know, that a lot of people think will deter the Chinese from sort of opportunistically starting a war. Yeah, I don't know, allowing the creation of this semiconductor industry in this island right off the Chinese coast seems to be not working out as well as planned. It is, you know, does that essentially require the U.S. to maintain some stable relationship? I mean, if, because if it does go the way that we're thinking, and there's some kind of mostly peaceful takeover of Taiwan. the American economy is then that much more in Hock, no? Yeah, I mean, the U.S. economy is so profoundly defended on many, many different things happening in China. And they're kind of just expression the other week. It was really pretty breathtaking to say any item made with these minerals that we mine, we get to control the use with a kind of global long arm forever. And don't worry, we'll issue permits swiftly. Like that's, you know, they have a lot of power of the global economy. That's part of, I think, why the U.S. climbed down. The chips are part of it. Our sort of announcement that we're going to reclaim the chip industry and our attempts to cut them off from chip manufacturing do not actually really seem to yet have created a booming American chip industry, but have created very strong incentives for China to build its own competitive domestic chip industry. And now the Trump administration has decided, like, wait a second. The real way to prevent them from doing that is to sell them the Nvidia chips that we were blockading. And it is another.

instance where I think these are all rational decisions. These are smart people making very difficult policy choices, but flipping the U.S. strategy is really been defined by flipping between them. I think that's really well said. Everybody go and subscribe to Ben's podcast. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Nice to see you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Ryan. Crystal and I will be on tomorrow. We will see you all then. Big transfer news today. Who's moving? Me? To the couch. With Domino's best deal ever since they just added stuffed crust. Any pizza, any toppings now with stuffed crust for $9.99. It's a long-term contract with no release clause. Only $9.99? Yeah, that sounds like the move. I'm heading straight to Domino's. Price is higher for some locations. Excludes Excel and specialty pizzas. Select this offer from 615 through 7.26. Online only. Size availability varies by crest type, max seven topics, six for and in New York style crust. Minimum purchase required for delivery. Prices, participation, delivery area, and charges may vary. Across America, money is being abandoned. By taking a few seconds to check lift before your next ride, you can give money a better home. Inside your wallet. Save the money. Checklift. Skin care means Sephora. For makeup, same. They've got the products, expertise in the brands that fit your lifestyle. But when I talk about hair care, do you make the same connection? Well, you should. Sephora is just as trusted for hair whether you're looking to repair, strengthening, hydrate, or add shine. You'll find brands like Carastas, K-18, and Gisu. Plus, the guidance that helped you choose was right for your hair. And with free shipping and same day delivery, great hair care is easier than ever. Shop hair at Sephora today. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.