E93: How Trump and Elon Could Rebuild the US Government
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You can also head determine doc co slash exclusive dash access now onto the show. Hey, upstream listeners today on upstream, where releasing a conversation I had with samudera on turn time show live players unpacking the results of the presidential election. We discuss how this election is different from previous ones, demographic shifts, how the politics of tech have changed and more. Please enjoy.

Hello, emo. Hey.

how are you doing today? I'm doing great.

Excited to excited to be chatting with you timely. First off, just the election results themselves. Was that a surprise for you where you predicting you I thought trouble was going to win, but I didn't think that would be sort of this big of a lsi de.

Well, I think that people have been consistently underestimating the number of people who basically would vote for trump, but would not say so. The social desirability bias is very strong where someone that's not a conventional politician, you know, usually their supporters and accounted harbor IT, might just be even the completely wrong lands.

To think of this in terms of election nearing in statistics are almost the super metrix approach right now. Silvers, you know, simulations, when you know iran, all those simulations, and they came perfectly fifty, fifty I don't believe that that's propaganda and that sort of admitting that he gives up on the prediction thing. Every single election, the rules of the game are renegotiated.

It's not just the same game of basketball or baseball or chess or go that displayed over, over again. The parameters, honestly, of the country changed slightly. The parameters of voice, constitutional, the premiers, what's legal promoters, what appropriate the premature can and cannot be set culturally, these all shift. So I think that you know, arguably, when this works well, this is an an aid to american dynamism, mates and opportunity for life players to sort of on practically live Green, practically live TV, renegotiate amErica social contract on the fly when IT doesn't work very well, it's just the sort of like big distraction from the more fundamental and structure issues.

So I would say the strongest you the strongest reason i'm not surprised is that while they were interesting moves coming out of the bite administration in terms of their branding or marketing or election's ing even a year ago, right? You remember this a dark grandma means like those are quite popular and I think those were basically things that broke script. They showed an internet native literacy. And then you could argue maybe that the koala thing, the bad thing, was similar. I just didn't see IT.

I didn't stick. He felt manufactured.

He felt like very classical mass media, right? IT was a synchronised course of the the original legacy mass media saying vote for hug kala IT was very strong. IT changed the via little bit for about two or three weeks.

IT seemed to come all suddenly very strong candidate. And then IT we're off. They didn't have more than that exact strong endorsement script, right? And they couldn't go off IT. And then whatever one thinks of Donald trump, clearly he's a live player. Yellow mask is a live player.

And if they're working together, that's a ignoring all the other interesting people, they were brought into the mix like ark, tulsa and you know in some a small way at the Angel rogan. Do I think I think joe rogan's role is overstated because he was very slow with his endorsement, right? The late ess of his endorsement was notable.

He was probably actually trying to get the koala inter, you would be my read from a far, and he might thought he would get IT up until the moment he didn't. So I think this is sort of like a Victory of like online media. It's like a win for x.

It's a win for the podcasting world. And I think IT is also just a demonstration that know if you if you're going up against a life player, you you need one on your side too. And the democratic party mostly selects against them. Unfortunately.

if you can sit down and for an interview because you know you worried that you want have something good to say or you'll say the wrong thing, you you can really be a live player if if you can't.

even when you comes to like exactly, I mean, if it's a hostile interviewer, you might not do IT, but you will do something else.

And know that actually proposes an interesting question, where is the where's the left wing culture? Where is progressive? You know, the progressive version of a podcast that could intrude them like the view like that stated, right? That stated by, at this point on decades, eight, fifteen years dated, ten years dated in terms format.

And I think that know perhaps the media saturation is none even the best way how we should select presidents or heads of state. But IT seems to be how we Operate. So you have to optimize for that and you have to move and change with the meal landscape.

Like there are a few politicians to do the social media game. While on the left, you know, I think aoc, yes, everyone thinks of aoc this best way. I think a aoc Gavin newsome ticket, we just win four years from now.

If gather new son uses the time to serve, clean up california a and runs as a tough on crime democrat. And to be a tough on crime democrats, you would kind of have to be a live player if you have to walk back this like a massive media Operation. That would be, you have to walk all of that back, defund the police at center and setter, right? All of that is now four years in the past.

I am not saying this is how I should be, but four years or now, the voters will have totally forgotten about bl m. And we'll see no contradiction, you know, if I was a smart democratic party Operative and I know a bit of a life player and you would say, you know, it's unamerican to see you say that he cleaned up safran cicisbeo, I cleaned up sand Francisco for the pacific meeting, and I could do IT because I have federal funding. And you know, once in present, america, we're going to have all our cities are going to be clean, where they use federal powers to clean up all our that how you can refrain stuff like that.

But IT requires you to hunger some of your ideological, a sensible aliis. I'm talking here like you fight from the dam left perspective. But you know what? They're still in a vote for you.

What else they're gonna do like. This is a formula that you have seen french politics all the time, right? You have a left candidate.

And then up until the election, they go to the line of being very right. And then the left sell votes for them because the alternative has been declared to be like a fashion st. I mean, they had that going for them. They had declared trumped to be a fascist.

So why did they stay so much on that side? Why did they not go in new media strategies? Why did they pick koala and not given to some? Even now, given new sm will not be the best candidate because he, he would have too little time.

The very fact that was a power struggle in the bite administration and that the campaign became, in my opinion, less credible, less interesting, less like ideologically and ambiguous. If cama has had run a cop kala that would have really thrown a ranch, that would have really thrown a wrench in the damn campaign yeah, or had or or had and sell this foxy White guy. Would you have shark game using B R VP like Gavin ism could have probably defeated jd, like jd super.

He's a smart guy, very good at debate, has improved his media presence massively. But gambon just has so many years of experience. Has politician right? yeah. IT is .

interesting. You the critique have on the republicans are some people make left is that it's a culture personality but the critical made on the about the left is that it's it's machine, it's, you know, you can just replace, you know, come up for biden and you know .

and they think this doesn't matter, right? I think IT mattered to the voters. I think biden would have got ten more votes.

People vote. The people know we're in social media where the error of personality, but you ve got to, you know, obama was a personality, right?

exactly. But clinton was a personality exactly.

Yeah, I like superior. I thought I thought he was pretty impressive that would be able to see you berny was a personal ate like bernie really gravani zed people. And so anything to see what the democrat rebound strategy is both from a sort of personality perspective, retour c perspective, from a policy perspective?

I wonder if they go back to more protectionist and immigration like like bernie was to some degree. I I went if this is the end, you know, for a woodness, at least for a while IT feels like this is you know, a strong vote against IT. I mean, they lost basically in every single demographic or almost every deal.

I would say that on the question of immigration, this might cars them to let off on IT a little bit because IT didn't work well enough for them as strategy. The sort of observation that this is a way to import voters and skip democratic accountability like this is universal in the western world. You actually have to please your citizens.

You can just create new citizens that are already pleased with you because they got to come. And so you are free from the burden of actually need to government well. And you can rebook age any policy failures, policy success, and the new voters like to pack IT up with their votes.

And even if the new voters tired of you, that's okay. Just like an infinite supply of them, at least until we see a planet ary demographic crunch, which we will sometime lead in the twenty for a century. For now we're still reaping sort of these political consequences of the twin th century population explosion, which probably continued in much of the world until like twenty ten, twenty twelve, like the poor world, still used out lots of babies in the twenty tens.

That's changed in the twenty twenties, as we discussed on other episodes. So I think the politics of immigration are going to change fundamentally regards of what the democratic ty does now. I think that notably, the hispanic vote went much more for trump than for any us.

President, so far, like I in the last thirty years, I think much more so than for George w. Bush, right with the argument was like a compassionate conservatism, sara, twenty years ago. So the statistics at least seem to suggest that, you know, maybe the open borders staying is like not even as good as for the democratic party as they thought I was.

So so because of that thing, might go back to like a bit more restrictions ism. But honestly, I think what they are going to emphasize is just increasing the number of legal immigrants. And here's the reason why I think that despite everything, the educated and well off classes in the united states are democracy party voters.

So on the you know actually while probably getting educated people is good for the country, you know maybe it's educated voters or you know my right when friends would say the brain washed voters that the libel ones, maybe you want people who studied and add degrees, you know maybe studying in europe or studied in like prestige indian universities we're studied in in chinese universities. And you want them to come in, and you want them to come to the blue cities and to some of the other cities as well. I think the reason, the reason why I think that tough on crime democratic party approach could work is because amErica still undergoing urban ization.

So the macro trend favors whichever ver party answers questions about what to do in an urban context. And usually, you know, the republicans have some policies, they're good in this space, but they don't tend to want to make cities livable, right? They're not friends of things like public transport, city parks, investing in the cut in in the city's airport from the municipal budget at at can only deep weakness to democrats.

The rat democratic party has is that the cities are just dirty and unpleasant and sometimes dangerous to live in, and that they basically, you know, directionally, i'm not talking here about the absolute crime rate, but directionally voting for them results in more crime, right? IT might be there for other reasons. The crime is dropping anyway, such as like aging or maybe you knew drops into stores on and maybe it's just like where habituating to a new equilibrium that's different than the more violent equilibrium of a few centuries ago.

And these cultural changes are baked in matter who is president. Like they're also also reasons that overall crime be dropping. But I think direction that people correctly sense that, you know, if they want store friends to not be smashed in, the democratic party will not reliably do that in a city like, well, some from esco where I live.

Yeah, what did you think about sort of the theory that alan was out of promoting that the left was trying to move illegals to swing states and then you know, grant amnesty so that they would have sort of a permanent you know, majority? Is there any question is, is this is this even plausible?

Or is this kind of I think it's very applauded and it's very plausible because we have leagued documents for britain's labour party in the early two thousands under the blair administration that have had literally documents with lines like we're now rubb the rights nose and diversity, right? And that the increase ed in immigration results in more labor voters. So this is discussed explicitly, not implicitly.

And I don't know you to remember hearing about the large number of advisers from the labor party that were brought in for the us. election. So even if we argue that the democratic party has no such document, which is really strange because it's brought up speeches, right?

The diversity and progressivism are considered almost like the same thing. It's not just because a diverse, multicultural society supposed to be the end state of a more enlightened, progressive society, also because the diversity of itself is a means to IT, right? That's we hear this like, you know anti White mail, sometimes anti White rta c pretty directly.

It's because the the view is that okay if you're a good, good progressive of any background, you know why american, espana, asia, whatever, you actually want to diversify the country because you consider that an aggregate, the White waters are problem. And I think this is you just plainly restating this, even though I said in plain language and speeches and shows and so on, I think that would have been extremely risky even eight years ago. And I think that elon did change norms back to what let's say we're probably prett two thousand and twelve norms of speech online.

I think it's a reversion to that. It's not quite as free as the internet of look the very early two thousands and one thousand nine hundred ninety because it's bigger. IT matters more, but IT seems like about us free as two thousand and thirteen.

And again, you socially IT still feels risky. IT just still feels risky. And you know, talking about politics plainly, I think they are important in a society. If I can, if if I can have ability to reflect them itself. And so far as you give that up, your kind giving up the advantages, the theoretical advantages of free society of an autocratic one yeah.

it's yet. It's fascinating. I mean, to that end, elon activity on twitter, he did. I would not just buying expert, of course, is certain activism in this election.

He presented a path where center writer, people who have right sympathies but want to be in good standing in their careers and families could support trump and say, yeah, of course, you know, I don't agree with everything trump says, or I don't, I don't think hee's the most moral person in the world, but elon has have an influence. This administration, this, this is going to be incredible, is is going to be different in the first term, signals competence, signals a latus. Signals, you know, protect optimism. And IT also forced the democrats to be sort of anti know you can come off as anti that and there I mean so many own goals or mistakes terms of their targeting a crypt um I mean partially .

the democratic party had just been attacking tech for a while even when tech was like really solidly on their side. Like twenty sixteen. Tack was very strongly on the hilary clinton side.

IT wasn't in the change side, even twenty twenty. There were only a few dissident voices like OK twenty sixteen. It's literally just Peter to o twenty twenty, just like a little bit of a podcasts like i'm not quite enthusiastic about this like like circle.

And by twenty twenty four, it's like it's just look at a big corporate hold out. It's like if you're google, if you're microsoft, if you're open up, then you tend to be or you know you tend to be more in that way. And almost everywhere else, if you look at like defense tech, I wouldn't goes so far to say that the like defauts now is something vegal republican quoted is definitely petridis m code.

And I think a world of difference through two thousand and eight, right? Google engineers would quit in resignation at the thought of doing some work for the us. us.

Defensive top of me. Yeah, no, absolutely yeah. Palmer, lucky and founder, really changed in pounder. They changed that. I remember when ander was raising money for their seat round and IT was too controversial foreign m at the time to invest many other firms and and is just crazy to think about that because I was the position as the border wall company. This is how people thought about that.

Now is important to remember that, right? It's important to remember that how the feeling of acceptable speech shifts is, I think one of the biggest ways in which we lose our own recollection, like as individuals, our own ability to navigate the political world, is that we, for the sake of fitting in, forget what we felt safe or not safe, to say. We always want to fly her.

So I was always free. I was never quiet, I was never cowardly. I never felt pressure. I certain number buckled under pressure.

But those are precisely the things that eliminate understanding of political future, because if you don't know the political past in your own life, let alone, you know, actually reading a wide variety of sources, something beyond your life historically, how in the world do you know? How in the world do you even know what can happen next? great. Think I think it's like it's important that you bring up an example, such as you just did, about what was not okay to do in the value a few short years back.

Yeah no, absolutely.

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I I do want to get into the tech right. But before so before that, I would just wanted talk about the left for a second because we didn't see the riots last night. Are these as many as I wouldn't expected? They know in twenty sixteen the resistance emerged right away.

People are losing their minds, and even in twenty twenty have felt existent. Al IT felt last night, like relative to twenty twenty, that they kind of just like conceded or just kind of like, where is that energy? The anti I trim energy that seemed existence, al, for so many people, to those people just get older and got of activism did, is IT just that the social media landscape change, so that now they are just crying alone on threads and blue skye.

I think twitter shifting and changing hands was a big deal, but also no hano. Maybe alexa, as is much less strategic. And George source was.

So I think some of the funding probably just got stolen where I used to go pretty efficiently towards Operations like this. At the end of the day, maybe maybe there are just elements of the us. Like civil service intelligence community at the end of the day decided, you know what, the previous trumpet administration wasn't that bad for U.

S. interests. I think at twenty sixteen, IT was like, oh no, this might just crash the american empire. This might just crash the world order that was just discussed in in publications. And I believe people believe this behind close dollars.

I think today it's sort of like, well, maybe trump p will like negotiate something with putin that's not quite a russian Victory in ukraine, but certainly not a russian defeat. And maybe it's good that we do a few things economically. And you know maybe we're not actually ready for war with china just yet.

So you know it's it's sort of like perhaps to serve due political establishment itself has recognized some of the limits, not to say it's not extremely strong position, but some of the limits of the U. S. positioning.

And I think the foreign policy explanations are underrated. And where do this will servant stand? Because one one of the only things you can sort of argue if you're working in government to yourself is that this is disastrous and against national interest.

And this guy sure might be the president, but we're going to do our best to get away. We're doing what's actually good for the country. And if you don't quite believe that is strongly and if feel like maybe this sort of foreign policy sensible and like to be kind of moderated IT.

And like you know, in a way our european allies seem less useful than they did in twenty sixteen, right, two thousand sixteen. Any certainty skepticism was like this is immediate, seemed an awful thing. But europe in twenty sixteen also just seem the richer and more relevant, and there seem to be stronger democratic norms.

Or something seems like decorum itself is important. But, you know, IT IT turned out there was no create from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty. So the election, in fact, is not existential.

This is not presume change. And by the way, yeah but but eric, and this goes to the other way, it's not bragin change. But I do i'm not convince ed.

It's gna be reformed either to my friends who are very optimistic. I'm just sort of like, well, you know, I have never bet the Peter til line, never bet against iron. However, you know, I think the hydra of bureaucracy for a major government requires decades of the lives of even very competent statesman.

To really clear out, amErica is not argentina, right? Argentina is basically one city in malaysia, a live player, sure in malay's, making decent progress. But in the us, like you can't actually, I don't think it's possible to split your attention between running several vast companies and clearing out more than, let's see, like a wrong government bureau, which would be a great achievement.

So if they, like elon, changed department of energy and you know, they go boldly to mars, that already is a massive political win. That's already a great political success. That's like good for the country, right?

Like if names Marks to go to mars and the higher SpaceX to do IT would be if one more cynical, you could also say that's a corporate handout, but who cares if the rockets go to mars? I don't care as long as they work, right? Like my my core problem of buying was never that it's cushy with the government. My problem is that they're planning and rockets top work like they're draining action autun lower thoroughly and flights getting delayed and flights in dangerous passengers.

So so so that's kind .

of look my skepticism. Maybe the civil services correctly pursued that elon plus trump, plus R, F, K are not an existential threat, but in two thousand sixteen they were worried they might be though back then I wasn't elon plus trump, but just trump. Ic is then was singled out as the master mind for a little bit before that collaboration over.

And so what's the failure case here that despite elon and cows best efforts, the system is just so permanent, so craic so difficult to manuvre, that they either lose interest or just can't can't get everything, not to mention just internal explosion. You know, trump is not the paragon. One of stability of reliability.

I don't know. I sort feel like I don't expect truong to like in lode. I think he's been he seems awfully rene since the sassy ation yeah right he seems like i'm not to say quieter but like da y wiser or something yeah he's .

for giving his enemies. And Megan cae mean h yeah, that is pretty fascinating.

is very different. And twenty sixteen trump.

oh yeah, totally. He does say crazy things on truth, social. But the benefit of that is that they're seen less on twitter.

So even the mistake that he is making aren't amplified as much as they. And we're also there's more used to do IT at this point. I mean.

look, I think people on the american, let's call broadly the american right, underestimate institutional power. What they want to do is to shrink government. You know, some libertarians come in power. The first thing they always do is like at least they give up all the power the position has because that moves society closer to the libertine direction. But in the long run, that means that, like, you know, every time the left wins power, IT build some institutional momentum, every time see a more libertarian option, once power IT IT best slows down the growth of the separatist.

And now maybe we can reset IT, maybe you can reset one could reset the administrative state back to, I don't know, the like twenty tense, right? But we very, very difficult in a society that already has a significantly planned economy to roll IT back to something like a preview deal society or are going a pretty ety society in one nine hundred and sixty, right? It's actually in some ways easier to do something like welfare form from the center left, like, again, the clinton era, right? At what? Immigration restriction, welfare reform at sada.

Like if I list these things today, they sound of conservative, right? So I think that the problem is you need a higher quality of staff, then what the right wing options have available. And here i'm talking about about the online dissident right and the sort of like establish top, I think they are both greatly under invest in careers of people who are capable doing a good job, right? Because it's not supposed to be clAmbers here.

You're supposed to be like, you know an entrepreneur doing something productive of you, not service service. Be no lazy bones working in government or what right? Like what you want hand out.

If IT sounds, IT sounds in a way like IT doesn't quite fit the self concept, right? You can sort of have alternatives where it's like its about national security and then it's okay to work for government and that has some respect and I has some funding. But really if you fire a thousand people in a like a significant part of the U.

S. Government, I claim you will struggle, genuinely struggle to find one hundred people you could hire. So even if you're achieving ninety percent efficiency, I mean, sorry, ninety percent reduction in personnel in employee, let's say, I don't know you're deploying software, cutting unnecessary functions, you're doing all of that.

Where are you going to find a hundred people? I bet you try if you fire a thousand government officials at a random american puo, and you try to hire hunger qualified people. Of those people, sixty of them are still gonna democrats. That they might have started pretending that the republicans, twenty of them, are going to be really incompetent gep republicans. Maybe five of them will be software engineers who have like earned a lot of money and now feel like happy enough and they want to retire and they don't feel formal over the booming crp to market or over the revolution in A I.

So isn't that actually kind of funny? Strong belief in an imminent technological revolution makes you much less likely to leave tech to go do something like government, right? And then maybe you will have like five people of those hundred that you hired who are sort of like, I don't know, like ideologically committed, strange people who have been writing on the internet.

You know, I don't know, maybe analyzing, maybe analyzing the government or or the I would know, I won't know i'm joking here, but it's like and is an extremely rare talent. And I know because I saw IT out and even when i'm doing all, and I actually try to be very impartial in my analysis, but when I try to find good sources that aren't just propaganda, they are trying to understand the world. It's like nominally democratic party affiliations, ated or democratic affiliates with more steps or university affiliated ated with more steps.

That's like ninety percent of the sources, right, is almost inevitable. And I don't know how do you overcome that talent disparity. I think that's a multiyear effort. Maybe that's an effort that begins now if I was a red wing, I give the left wing strategy, right, the democratic party strategy, folks, a republican strategist.

I'd be like, okay, we're going to have a Donald term presidency and we're going to start we're onna cut what we can, but we're going to start developing a deeper bench of talent. And by the next time we're going to have junior people who understand that it's a good career track to go into civil service and reform government. This is a good career choice.

Maybe one solutions to radially increased the salaries of the top performers, something that I think elon could argue to the american public, like that's another one, right? Like usually the assumption is that, and we talked about this in the show before, right? I made the argument that actually fire many mini employees, but maybe the remaining government empties are Better compensated, right?

That sort of of the social contract in like a place like singapore and causes top talents in singapore to go into government and then do a very good job. I think that you an could argue this to the american public. Aussie trump could argue to the american public, and I think the base would understand IT IT just goes again, contrary to some of these like defauts assumptions, where this way efficiency is not the same thing as austerity and this new ones is important.

You can be very efficient. You can buy for twelve cents, please cost a dollar. You cannot buy the same thing for one set that previously cost dollar. And knowing exactly where you are on that radical increase or a radical decrease in cost and radical increase and efficiency before you start hitting like like really terrible negative returns, right? That that super important.

And I think that the strategy should be this trump term is about developing talent and about embeds people in the civil service, not just the legal system, the civil service, and on shackling them from the ideological cliche up, right, because most of trump and most of the institutional power on the right is the sort of weird complex of dc ngos that has very little to do with either trumps agenda or elon agenda, right? Like the ideology that comes out a bit is like big deal, kindly, strange. And it's kind of this like it's kind of like stuck to A G P. That is electors as dead as the old school democratic party, I think, is now dead electorally, even if IT lives on the mind of substate pond's left and right. So I think the strategy that is like has to be for A G D eight years of gd or I don't know, maybe maybe eight years of the anka or something like that, some sort of like deeply drunk and nurse continuity because what your building is a replacement, not just for the civil service you're building or replacement for a gep that did not want trump, that did not want to elon, that did not want life players.

where the talent is going to come for the right is a faster in question. And this sort of this almost like question as to how much of IT is farmed you ort of, hey, you know, more of long game play. The university level set tried to diversity some of some of that politically. There is also this question of how many people can be converted from the existing sort of talent pool.

How do genuine is the conversion that I mean, again, if I was playing a lightning strategy would say, or actually it's a good idea to play entry ism on the trump administration because you can pull IT far more left, then you could pull a democratic party adminstration like, you know, I don't know, maybe there's some effective outrush working on that utility arian argument right now. I hear some of them very depressed yesterday at the various parties in these .

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It's interesting, you know, this same way a little bit to herd icon, which is a conference we both attended the last week. This the founder one puts on, it's a second one the'd done IT. And my read of IT was that IT sort of, you know, coincided with this broader revolution, that with the first redon was actually about radical ideas. And now the culture has moved so much that this is just the tech right, our conference for the tech right and tech right to Jason. And the some of the people that attended are not the the same die hard that we're attending the first year, the ten has expanded.

Yes, I don't even think .

everyone there was a trump support necessarily. You made IT was eighty percent, you know how majority, but I think IT is the tent expanding. And you know ilan is one of the best recruiters in the world. So it's it's and deal is pretty good to and you know, IT at this open question is what will be the actual impact or influence of the tech right on this administration?

I think one of the biggest positive developments that I think will happen just because the incentives point that way, is the replacement of the legacy dis functional large corporations that the U. S.

Government is used to doing business with with a new crop of companies, which hopefully can deliver the goods like I think that if you replaced a lot of the contracting that you boy used to do with a drone's, start up with honesty, why? Why not replace IT? What function does boeing provide the U.

S. Government that cannot be replaced by Andrew? Plus space x, exactly.

Right, right? I mean.

IT IT will change the narrative of space ex. So maybe elon wants to, like, spin off something off this space sex and say, you know, these rockets are aiming for mars. These rockets are aiming for moscow.

Totally different rockets. Look, they have a different paint shop in a different name, in a different britain. So maybe that's what he would want to do or someone in space sex is delegated to do that.

And of course, there's the problem of this conflict interest rate because if you have an official position in administration, that's hard to compete for government contracts and i'm sure they're illegal work round, but that's a problem. So I think we'll see a flourishing of defense tech because the surf tech right oes, nothing to read on, nothing to locked Martin, nothing to boeing. The Normal gep might hit this though.

So a lot of the republican lawmakers will not like this because this used to be part of their portfolio and part of their base in a very fundamental way. What's happening with the tech rate? It's a bid.

Hey, let us use this technology we've developed in civilian sector. Let's use IT for government. The government pays to do is like, look, the government probably, you know, needs websites that work right? Look, dolby, neat, right? Websites that work something like estonia's digital citizenship system.

I know we might have talked about stony or not. If not, will talk bad in the future. I said.

And I think that there is potentially both a lot of money to make there a lot of good to do because the the service the citizens have Better. And finally, from a national security standpoint, amErica is like actually underplaying its power where the U. S. Could have a twenty first century military.

But you know, as soon as you start pushing to actually hire companies like plentier Andrew or hypothetical space spinoffs or booms personally, for example, maybe maybe hit IT for our producing just planes to producing like supersonic drones, right? Or mean they'll be dozens of other defense companies. I'm sure you have like a long list.

This is kind of like a booming ing thing here in town. As soon as this happens, you're going to start having wars with pentagon careerists who are not necessarily culturally all left, not at all culture. A lot of them are conservative politically.

Some of them are democrat at democratic at the highest level because that's just how the appointments have been made over time. The military is, namely of their a political institution, but the pentagon is a great power center. And IT sort of is making plans in the same broken way that named its plans with.

The goal of a proposed space plan is to satisfy all the constituencies within nas. So you need in international space station, you need the lunar gateway, you need to loon a moon program, need mars robots, because this is all the stuff we were already working on. So we have to say that.

We have to say these teams. And the pentagon is like, well, the f thirty five is gonna the backbone of the U. S.

R. Force until twenty eighty eight, which is like, honestly, the most science fiction sounding thing I heard about the future twenty first century. But it's also just america's official air superiority strategies.

Seems like super funny to me that Harry going to do that. You can really upset all the airport skies. They really want to just be able to fly these really fast, fun things and they enjoy IT to see other Younger ben let them.

And it's like almost hobby. So I don't know what I would do. I would maybe create like a special wing of the air force was a purely ceremonial, like the the guys on horses that right next queen is the second. There should be a special squad of that thirty five just maintained to do air shows and to fly with air force wan is that can honor guard and that's going to be their role.

And other than that, we're not onna have method by twenty four you that that will be my tell me how I would do IT and you know that all the fly boys are retired and have a good time and a new generation of smaller generation with various go fly boys can do there if they in and I don't want to be dismissed, but i'm just but just point and you have to like actually offended a lot of people, right, to do some of these things that would require transitioning away from a twenty century military to a twenty first century military. And like again, you know there's actually mass growth in spaceforce, which actually a great idea by trumpet, like there's going to be so much stuff that space force can do. And in addition, this energy startups, a strong push to enable every single energy start up we can the U S.

It's not quite true that we need nuclear reactors for A I. I think that's very clever. But the attempt to redirect some of that energy, in reality, we could just burn a lot more natural gas and achieve basically the same energy results for the air training models, but narratively using new technologies to solve the problem of another new technology, I think, technologies to love this, right? So ideologically said, you know, amErica is going to, we're going to mars, and we're gonna be achieving fifty percent of our national power from nuclear, like by twenty, like emitted ambitious, say, we are going to build forty nuclear reactors over the next four years.

And then people say that impossible. nothing. And then you say nothing's impossible for amErica that china can do. Everything that china can do, we can do Better.

And then what are they going to say that was inherently more incompetent, but make IT like very completely then then, then the story is we're going nuclear. Great news. It's gona save the planet.

You don't even need Green communism for that. We're going build a lot of the eye. That's great.

We're still going to make sure it's safe, but we're going to get a lot of data centres here. And i'm gonna as many chips. You were going to make a chip fab and china is going na pay for IT.

It's going to pay for IT through the terrorists, you know can see you it's at a and then you add some space exploration and then suddenly you have a very positive narrative that's not alienating to the american public because they feel included in IT. They're not being farmed for add money anymore. That going to mars, their electricity bill is lower.

The plan is not going to be on fire if you're like someone. And a lot of people repose in modes, also believe in climate change, right? They may may not think at the end of the world, but they believe that.

So you know, I think there's just a lot that can be done here where the tech, like the tech right, can provide something that G, O, P was missing and something that can just be bolted on top of the otumba. IT has to be its kind of like newer approach to we are rethinking the systems of the U. S.

Government of U. S. Society in the us. technology. And we're doing this in the pursuit of like greatness, like not greatness in this like petty parochial sense, but it's like almost civilization sense. And I think if they nail that narrative and you can see jd vans experimenting IT with IT a little bit. Did you see is like tweet about space travel?

No, I did.

Yeah he basically tweeted is like immense national priority and its national stinted manifest stinking call IT its america's destiny to go in march. Just keep saying that. Just keep saying that.

I used to put you on down for trying go to spaces. Like do you go to spaces? Yeah, different.

The interesting thing is that people forget that the space race between the soviet union, the us, was good for the us is the soviet union spent a lot of money trying to keep up, and ultimately didn't succeed.

In a way, in a very serious sense, if the competition with china is about who goes to mars first red than who builds god, I think that's actually a way Better competition to focus the political energies of the american china, even if in the background, the AI advancing or whatever. Right, don't make the extension al race about A I we don't know whether we can have an existential race about AI without nuclear war. Fun fact, data centres are very vulnerable to amp strikes.

Therefore you can nuke them. So if you think the opponent is about to build god, that's one of the few reasons why should launch nukes right now. So let's not do that arms race.

Let's not place stupid names, win stupid prizes. Let's instead play the known game of, i'll turned out, the civil union in us could compete for going to the moon without destroyed the world. So maybe us now compete about going tomorrow. In this way, we can demonstrate, hopefully enact and show an actual, inherent, Better functioning as an actual superiority of this system that we think of as a high freedom architecture, right? We think of IT is freer than china. So let let IT actually be freer, and let IT actually work Better, and let the people actually experience growth and that i'd actually be environmentally friendly er right let's not plaster over IT with propaganda, just actually make IT true because in purely physical terms, it's not that hard. And maybe that means a what smaller government headcount.

Maybe that means elon mask is even richer and like, but I think people, people on the left can be OK is this? People on the moderate left will be very OK the on mosque or base us becoming the world's first trillion air if IT meant global warming was truly solved, right? And you know i'm to the OK with like multiple trillion, multi trillion air, if there is a human society on mars, right? Or if we if we actually like make our transition on for fossil fuels to even richer source energy and not a downward tradition which would necessarily crush your society, but either nuclear or fusion or master of thermal, i've think they'll be great.

And that an inspiring nurture thing. We also have an eluded to, by the way, is the the idea that the right IT might be a clean week, know the on all on all act. And so the right might be sitting on an opportunity to really get things done in a way that hasn't happened in a while.

And so what do do you see that happening? You know you like if trump continues to trust you on to the extent bet that he has has been implied, is IT possible that trump could do for the government anything close to what he's done for twitter? Or would you just be .

he can do coming to a portion of IT? Like, look, I think if he directed his full energies as much as he has to twitter now x for three to four years, which by us, remember, IT took several years to get twitter like a really going and to really overcome the intense opposition of the advertisers who formed a political, not an economic curl versus twitter, versus former, you know, the company formally known twitter, not not a sex, the opposition you would face.

Okay, eric, like, let's be real of this might behave and scary to say here on a podcast. Let's see, elon spins the next year try, gets top security clearance, but the next year trying to make the C A more efficient, the opposition he encountered reforming twitter like like he would see a home redux that he might still succeed if you work super hard for the next four years, and then the result will be okay. The C. I. Is reformed and work super well.

It's a really good and it's even Better intelligence age excuse me, I love my love all the intelligence community friends you're all are you doing a great job which just want you do need Better job but please, please you know no polonium in my in my soup, the none of but for real like like because I think we have seen we have seen the us. Has he has so many competent people working on the wrong problems, right? So I think IT in some ways even they're certainly parts of the U. S.

State where it's sort of like it's not even that you can just go and like fire all the incompetent people because a lot of the people are super competent, right? But you're going to go to a bureau's say this entire bureau is not needed. You should expect a severe legal, political and administrative fight from that department because even if the people there are like republican or they their democratic and they love loan or they're non partisan, they're never had an opinion in their life.

You have made yourself their extensive political enemy, right? So it's like even as twenty percent of them are like to create this department was bullshit, it's not great for me, but i'll found another good job. Eighty percent will not think that way and they will finally believe in the mission.

And you know, sometimes they'll be right and sometimes it'll be wrong just because things have been done a certain way. And government does not mean that they always have to be done that way. But where I part with my most liberal ing friends is, you know, IT doesn't mean they have to be done the same way.

But I think for a lot of things, you do actually need the government to do them. And you know, many things can be privately ized. But you know, once you privatize something too like like bowing rather on and lucky Martin n demonstrate that on long enough time scale, mere privatization is not the same as efficiency, especially if the governments are only customer a monopsony.

Is that come the opposite of monopoly, right? Is when there's only one buyer, instead just one seller? That's a not really a market, right? So so merely IT being private, it's just one of the ways to do IT.

Well, you can do IT well in government to, and I think a singapore demonstrates this. Estonian demonstrates this. Other countries demonstrates, like japan actually does, a lot of things very efficiently, including trade policy, even in some aspects of industrial planning.

Yeah, well, with that, you know, getting through the closer when we to time and he sort of last either reflections or perhaps advice to either the the tech writer, the writer, any other things you want to leave us with prepared into this .

conversation, let me let me say, with advice to the left and the right, try to compete in making this country Better, like a, let's be less bike motivated in this way, maybe trump's audio achieve the the button nature. I think maybe the left can now achieve the button nature or the jesus nature, whatever.

And you know, just because someone was at some point in existential political enemy, or what seemed existent, al, does not mean they will be that in three, four, five or six years, politics is the art of the possible. There is so much that is possible. Let's like, actually is IT.

That's great. great. And on sam was a great conversation until next time .

and I until next time.

Upstream with athon bird is a show from a turpenay, the podcast network behind moment of them and coordinate revolution. You like the episode, please leave review in the epistle.