The Know Show – are we imagining enough yet?

We’ve been talking about the failure of imagination in coming to terms with this moment in time geopolitically since the start of the year, so are we imagining enough now? Let’s hope so, because things are certainly getting intense, and fear is ricocheting around the world. Definitely not an easy time for any of us. 

As we’ve witnessed in recent weeks, it appears the US is now sprinting towards authoritarianism, while abandoning its allies and joining with its enemies. From the Zelensky debacle in the Whitehouse, aligning with Russia and North Korea in a key UN vote against the war in Ukraine, causing emergency meetings across Europe, with President Marcon discussing nuclear deterrence, and another French politician referring to Elon Musk as a “jester high on ketamine,” and Donald Trump as Nero. No question everything is hotting up. 

Within the US, we heard Trump’s State of the Union this week and all the shenanigans surrounding it, along with many other concerning developments within the country, as well as international impacts. This includes international tariffs and all that entails, along with China proclaiming it is ready for “any type of war” with the US, while committing to a 7.2% increase in defence spending. It’s a big discussion, covering a wide array of topics, and we’ll do our best to focus on what matters most.

To help us this week, we are delighted to welcome Michael Chua, a cybersecurity and digital technology consultant who has served banks, big tech and governments in 19 countries across four continents over the last 20 years. But even more interesting is Michael is an award-winning writer, producer, director and actor, appearing in more than 400 productions. He’s also the author of the novel "Maid in Singapore". We are looking forward to hearing what you have to say Michael!

The Livestream kicks off at 3pm Singapore time, Friday 7th February 2025. Come and join us, this is going to be a great conversation! 

The Know Show is a Livestream held every fortnight on Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Tim Wade and Joe Augustin, and at least one special guest, review the news that’s getting everyone’s attention, as well as perhaps what requires our attention. We’ll talk about what it means to us, the world and we hope to inspire great conversations on the news that matters in the world today. 

The Know Show is based on Andrea T Edwards Weekend Reads, which are published every Saturday on andreatedwards.com, and covers the planetary crisis, topical moments in the world, global politics and war, business and technology, social issues, and passion/humour/history. Join us. 

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To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

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Transcript

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Andrea, welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards, and my name is Joe Augustin. Welcome to a show that tries to make sense of the world that is increasingly not making sense. We also try to cover a lot of stuff that may not get covered. I mean, there's a lot of stuff right now in the news, but there's also some stuff that maybe that maybe isn't on the forefront, and there's a there's a greater dimension to things as well. Now, the other thing that we try to do is we try to have a diverse point of view, a diverse perspective as well. And that's why we bring on our guests. So our guest today is Michael Chua. He's a cyber security and digital technology consultant where serve banks big tech and governments in 19 countries across four continents over the last 20 years. But even more interesting is Michael is an award winning writer, producer, director and actor appearing in more than 400 productions. He's also the author of the novel made in Singapore, as in, made as in, helper, uh, summary of our last show. Okay, let's see what happened, uh, previously as well. First of all, Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so Neil Mann recommended you, so you're obviously friends with him. He was a guest late last year. He was great. You know, you know Neil, obviously, in the same sort of space, yes, yes, yes, yeah. So okay, you gotta tell us about this acting side. Well, I was talent scouted very late in my age. Actually, I was an independent cyber security consultant in those days. You have to physically travel to the client sites and live there. Actually about three months, six months, two years and so on. So overall, I did about 19 years, sorry, 19 countries, 20 years across four continents. And that was quite tiring. So I came back here to do the same thing here, but the market here is smaller, much smaller. And in the meantime, I got talent scouted to become an actor. And when I went to the audition and rehearsals, the director was very generous with her compliments about how I should pick up acting professionally because I was good, and not knowing any better. I believe her. If she had said that my acting totally sucks, please give up and die, I wouldn't have blamed her, because I didn't know what was what. Then I went on and it was, it was quite true. I was very lucky. I got a lot of gigs, and I was like busy every week acting. And in by the fifth film, it got the Best Actor, Best Film, and it went viral. The film was called key, and it resonated very well with national servicemen here. Yeah, that was the starting of getting more gigs and and more interesting stuff coming. So to date, I've done about 15 years of that and 400 over productions, yeah, and still working in cyber security, still working everything together, still teaching, still still working in cyber security. Yeah. And if anyone's looking for a movie or a TV series idea, your book made in Singapore, is also up for option, right? Yes, yes. The there's a story about impoverished Filipino escaping from a sleazy entertainment circuit by becoming a maid and working herself secretly to become an online celebrity until her cover was blown. So that that story covers a lot of of unwritten rules in Singapore between mates and everybody else, like in some places like that, mates are not allowed in a swimming pool, or security guards are not allowed to date mates, even during the weekends. If they are found out, they'll be fired, things like that. So I weave a lot of such small stories together and make it a comedy so that we can all laugh about it rather than moan about it. Oh, that sounds really interesting, because as a as an Australian moving to Singapore, the whole maid culture was obviously something that was really interesting to me, and talking to the girls as well and understanding, you know, just not being able to swim. I'm like, why not? You know, some of the crazy rules. I don't know. I don't even know if it's still the same in any more of it's changed, but yeah, some of it shocking. There have been a lot of complaints against such unfair practices, and some clubs, particularly those high class clubs, they used to forbid mates to do this and that, but they have stopped. But also, mates tend to be timid, and they will then refrain from causing any embarrassment to the employer. And they don't swim, or if they do swim, is to. Care of that little Johnny, so that he even drown or something. In my condo, there are some foreign workers, as in, Indian construction workers, and they live in the condo because the boss had has a unit there, and they cannot reuse the swimming pool as well. They don't even sit around the swimming pool. They sit at the car park on the curb, playing with their phone. So I don't understand, in a way, it is also the habit, partly their habit. I don't think my condo has a rule that work, workers or mates cannot use the pool. No, such rule, but they kind of refrain from it anyway. Strangely, I'm yet to confront any one of them to ask, why? Yeah, just in case. Right? I mean, I think the these kinds of things happen when somebody makes a complaint, somebody makes a noise, and I think when they hear about something adjacent happening, they might go like, Okay, well, let's, let's. There's no need to push it. Yeah, yeah. I think for people outside of this region, they might find the whole thing a bit weird. I still find it weird after more than 20 years living in Asia. But anyway, yeah, so Michael, it's really great to have you. We're really looking forward to hearing what, what you've got to say. And obviously, sitting in the cyber security space, that's a really important part of, you know, their overall discussion. And we had Jessica Figueres last week, who's two weeks ago, who's also cyber security expert. So that was, that was an interesting take, wasn't it? Joe, yeah, well, I mean someone, someone, someone living on the inside of the UK situation, someone who has, well, I wouldn't say had been, but actually is sort of in politics, but having a changing role over time, nice to have someone's perspective like that. Yeah, and I know Michael comes today with a little bit of apprehension as well as to what we're going to try to get him to talk about Michael. It's really quite simple. We try to bring people on who might have something to say about life in general, and people, right? So when you, when you write a book like made in Singapore, for instance, you're looking at the stories of the world. And I think, I think we can always find the stories of the greater world as well and figure out what's going on. There's a, there's a kind of a story that's unveiling. We're not looking to, you know, find out, figure out what conspiracies may lie but we're trying to look at what could be behind some of the bigger stories and some of the details as well that perhaps, I guess, the general public don't have their eye on. I mean, I know that even, even though I do this show with Andrea every two weeks. I'm not as up to date as when I'm preparing for this show. You know, I don't get to become a breast of things until I have a look at the notes as we're getting ready for the show. So this is by no means meant to be a normal sort of list of subjects. But you know, as far as reactions go, please feel free to come to speak from the heart and whatever comes to mind. You know, that's good way of describing it. Joe, yeah, all right. So we've, since we started the show back just after China's new year, we've really focused in on what's happening in the US, because, of course, it ripples out and consumes the world. So every week we've been talking about that my first weekend reads, which I did in January, was titled, we are suffering from a failure of imagination, and that's why the title today, the theme today is, are we imagining enough yet? And this is really sort of going as far as the possibilities of this moment in time can take us. And I sent a quote out from a Hungarian journalist who said that he suffered a failure of imagination as they became authoritarian state, right as a country. So failure of imagination, to me, is a really big issue at this time, and I know a lot of people don't want to confront it, or even think about, you know, where we could go. But for me, personally, I am naturally inclined to do that, because if I know that, I can prepare you know, whether it's making sure my family's safe or the community's safe, or whatever I think I need to do. So when we look back at the last couple of weeks. We're doing this every two weeks now, Joe, what was your biggest moment in the news in the last couple of weeks? What's your biggest takeaway or shock? Well, I mean, look, there's so many to choose from, right? But I was just thinking about what has been coming back to me over and over again, and it's that meeting that Zelensky had. I mean, supposed to be a photo opportunity, you know, before a press conference, and, you know, basically comments break out. You know, it's egos pushed, pushed on, and then a smart, witty guy pushes back in real time. Time and but, you know, I'm talking about, of course, the Zielinski and Trump mishap in the in the Oval Office. But the more and more I look at the at the thing, now I'm thinking to myself, it really looked like it was almost a setup, you know, in terms of who was there and who was ready to do what, and to have ridiculous things in a moment like that, where a reporter, you know, drops in the question, like, you know, why don't you wear a suit? And I'm like, I was just just, just so far out of left field. And really, in terms of writing, I love, I love what Zielinski came back with, right? He said, maybe next time I'll come back with a suit, something better than what you essentially said something he managed to drop them Sass in the reporter as well, you know, I'll come back with a suit, and maybe better than yours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that was, that was the thing, how it how it basically crumbled from a situation which was supposed to be, you know, it was Zelensky coming in to try to solve a problem, and he took the bait in a way which he'd been warned about. Actually, he that he'd been advised, I think somebody in the Trump administration actually had told him, Don't take the bait. And unfortunately he did. And there's a there's a problem when you can appear to be too smart, and he was, he was unwilling to not be too smart. Yeah, it's interesting, like, a lot of the criticism towards him, yeah. First of all, speaking third language, fourth language, whatever English is for him, but that moment of he looked stunned when it first started. He looked really, really shocked. And yeah, I think every one of us has been ambushed in our situation, in a meeting, or in within families or whatever. And you know, you can look after the fact and say, I wish I behaved in a different way. But I think, you know that that moment, I think that was when his emotions kicked in, and he sort of, you know, he's, he's so conciliatory afterwards, right? Not Trump, but he is, but, yeah, no, it was a, yeah. It was a stunning moment. I'm going to reference a couple of things, Michael, what was, what's been your moment in the last couple of weeks, the same Well, you can't run away from that meeting everybody is talking about, yeah, I don't know what to make out of it. I just wish that peace will come, because then, I'm not saying that you should take up Trump's offer or anything, but I hope peace will come, because it seems that it's quite we are dangerously moving towards World war three. That's why I'm afraid of because if, if the France and and Britain moves into Ukraine in terms of food soldiers, then I think there's a reason world war three, which I hope it wouldn't happen. It's not good for anybody. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. I felt the same that moment, really, it really, really upset me. I just felt this moment of, how dare they two men who have never, you know, been in a situation like Zelensky has been in, and, you know, we know that it sent shock waves around the world, and it's definitely a defining moment in history, and it will be talked about in the history for years to come. But there's a couple of things that have caught my attention. One was the former Polish Prime Minister, I think, or leader, he's called Lech. Well, walisa, I can't say his name, right? And he won the Nobel Prize for pro democracy efforts when, you know, in the pre dissolution of the USSR, right? And, no, it W, A, L, E, S, A, but it's got accents on two of the letters that I don't know how to pronounce. Those accents here anyway, so he first of all posted this big, long statement on Facebook, and that's where the media court caught it, and it started becoming news. So him and three other former Polish political prisoners, who were all held during the communist era, basically signed a letter that they sent to Donald Trump expressing horror and distaste at his argument with the Ukrainian president. He said Trump and his vice president's demands that Zelensky showed gratitude were insulting in the face of Ukrainians country. In Ukrainian countries fight for freedom, the atmosphere in the Oval Office reminded us of that which we remember well from interrogations by Poland's communist secret services and regime courts, the prosecutors and the judges working on behalf of the omnipotent Communist Party. Police also told us they held all the cards and we held none. We are shocked that you treated Zelensky in the same way. So you know, we're seeing lots of. Experts on interrogation, international interrogation, body language experts who are discussing this moment too. But I thought that that real sort of sort of emotional response from someone who's actually experienced interrogation and heard those same words used in that context, I thought, was very an interesting take. The other thing was, you know, we heard that the US has stopped sharing intelligence and stopped with sending weapons and any financial support. Well, apparently both of these things were decided before the White House meeting, so not everyone sort of knows that. And then, to top it off, something also that was decided before the White House meeting, but is only just coming out in the press, Trump is considering revoking all visa statuses for Ukrainians, and there's 240,000 Ukrainians in the US with temporary visas who Basically fled the conflict so that's another story that's starting to emerge. You know, across the board, US has become an authoritarian state by all by all accounts, its leaders are spewing Russian propaganda. Its friends are now enemies. I'm very impressed with Canada, although, when you look at the way Mexico is responding, because Mexico doesn't have as much power as Canada, like Mexico, will be crushed by what's going on. The foreign minister of Canada was just saying, We've got everything we need to survive as a nation. We've got we've got energy, we've got potash, we've got agriculture, you know, we've got everything we need. Whereas Mexico is in a very, very different position. But I think Claudia Steinberg is playing she's playing politics the right way for her country, and Canada is playing it the right way for their country. All of the alliances that we've known for 80 years are on the line. So it certainly makes for interesting times. Any thoughts on any of those ones? Well, I mean, the situation that that Canada is in, is it's quite amazing. But actually what I thought about was not so much what the other countries were, what the situation that those countries were in. I was actually much more concerned, if you if you like, what was happening in the US, as in, what all this would mean for the US, because the repercussions of the things that were being taxed and all the different things that come from Canada, for instance. I mean, for me, my perspective is I knew more about what was happening in Canada, because Canada had done a lot more in terms of publishing content. They're all talking about what they were doing, right, what they were doing as retaliation, in what while, while they were saying that, Oh, we want, we want to solve this problem. But while that happens, this is what we're going to do as well. And Americans are going to really, really get a terrible, terrible outcome from all of this, given what they were coming from, as in, like, you know, they voted Trump in running away from a situation that they somehow believe Biden had created, and it's about to get worse. It literally is about to get worse. Because, I mean, some of the things that they talked about, like, for instance, I think there's a even a Dodge truck. It's an American brand, right? It's a Dodge truck. Me in Canada, it's gonna go out from an $80,000 truck becomes$100,000 truck. It's it's not as it's no small thing that this is happening. And the worst thing about this is the the the other side of it just doesn't make sense, as in the as in, where it's supposed to go. Can't happen based on what the economists are doing. But the economists look at, look at, look at the ideas right, and say, like, if the tariffs do work, you're going to have either of of either situation happen, right? You're going to either get your income from the additional tariffs right, which means that the income goes up. But what it would mean if the income does go up, is that the tariffs themselves as protection for the US. You know, industry hasn't worked, because if the tariffs go up, it means that the US continued to consume all these things, and therefore the businesses were not protected, and therefore it still outflows, right? So it's either going to go one way or the other, you're going to get the outflows stemmed, in which case revenues drop, or the opposite. So it's, it's not a, it's not even a, it's not even a thing where, if you hold your position, you're going to be fine, right? It is just not tenable, as in, like, there's no, there's no win from doing that. The idea that you can, you can, you can, all you can do is have less. All you can do. Everybody in the equation has to have less because of this one thing. And the only thing that you win on is the fact that you. Your way, that's that's the problem with this particular situation. Maybe the reduced consumption is good for the environment, right? So maybe that's the win. Michael, your thoughts, well, tariffs doesn't always, usually doesn't work. In the end, things will cost more. There'll be inflation. People will also consume less. I don't know whether his his tariff will result in more factories being open in us, instead of Canada versus also Mexican factories moving to us. That's his plan. But I think factories don't move so easily. Is there's a lot of consideration. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, cost of living will go up with tariffs. That's clear. Yeah, exactly. So there was a the doge story. They interviewed a car. I think they called him an OEM Did you did you say that on Fox News? Did you see Joe or did you hear about it? Right? And went back to the Fox News host, and she started going a little bit nuts. And she was talking about which of the which of the Europeans drive Doge cars. And he just kind of want to say to her mate, have you seen European roads? They don't have roads big enough for American cars. What are you talking about? It's interesting. So another big like, we're watching the the leaders of countries being as diplomatic as they possibly can, which, of course, is what is required of this time. But there was one politician in France. His name was Claude Malu Ray. And again, I'm sure I'm saying it all wrong, and he was the one that I referenced when I said that Elon Musk was a jester high on ketamine, and compared Donald Trump to Nero. So he said Washington has become Nero's court with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and we certainly at the State of the Nation and adjust our high on ketamine, in charge of purging the civil service. So he's the leader of the center right party. It's called the independence and he said we were at war within a with a dictator, and now we are at war with a dictator backed by a traitor. So that's one of the voices that's coming out of Europe. I thought it was interesting. We're going to talk about ketamine later, if we have, if we have time, yeah. And obviously, you know, when I'm kind of watching all of this, as Jo knows, I'm always watching it through the lens of the climate, and, you know, I've often asked the question, is totalitarianism, authoritarianism inevitable in the time that we're in? Because no matter what, we're going to go through hard times, and when you look at the history of of sort of authoritarian movements. It's always when we're in hard times. So it does feel an inevitable but the big thing for me is obviously watching the continual cutbacks on climate science research meteorologists. You know, the cuts that Noah are horrific for all of us, but Donald Trump announced that they're going to expand tree cutting in national parks and state land 113 million hectares, and that's obviously because a lot of the timber comes from Canada. But in Antarctica, sea ice has fallen to near record lows, and the scientists are saying it's now gone through a structural change, so that means it's not going to come back again. You know, that's a permanent change. And then just today in the times, is an article which is very focused on the UK, and it says we've failed to stop climate change. This is what we need to do next. So I think at this time, let's be inspired by Bernie Sanders, who I said a couple of weeks ago wasn't inspiring me much, but I think he's gotten a little bit better. And he said, at this particular moment in history, Despair is not an option. Giving up is not acceptable, and none of us have the privilege of hiding under the covers, and that's another reason why we do this show. We've got David, we love you too. That's why we do this show, because we're not hiding under the covers. We're trying to get out there and just try and help people understand this time. So, yeah, it's a big time. Yeah, I like, you know, there's this thing about being able to step forward and come up and do something. This is the tough part, because I think the sense that you can't do anything is very strong, right? I mean, this is it's one of those things. When you reduce it, you go like, How can I do? How can I do anything? What can I do? And sometimes being self protective, and this is what I fear about the moment, is that we. We're in this mode where we're trying to look after ourselves, and we spend time looking after ourselves. And that is, that's what Europe went through during the Second World War, as people began to try to figure out how to deal with the big problems, and they just looked after themselves. And after a while, they had no choice. Anyway, they had to step up and do something about what was going on. So the big question, of course, is, what is the big what is the big thing you can choose to do? Right? I mean, you could, you can. You can choose to sometimes, if you look at what the French were able to do, and they're always made fun of, you know for what they what they chose to do during the during the Second World War, but at the same time, you also have that, that result of that right? The result of kind of giving in and staying out of the way and just saying, Okay, let's just, let's just play cool. French culture has had its had its its day. It survived through the Second World War. Its monuments remained in place. The art remained where it was. All those different things happened at the same time. So that, you know, to me, always, it always, always has this nagging kind of question as like, yes, the obvious answer seems to be, we have to fight back, and then we and then I think about the French, what they did, what they manage. And I go like, I don't really know the answer, but I know that what the danger is is we come out of that and say, therefore we don't do anything. You know, we have to act. We have to choose to do something, and then we have to follow that plan through. It needs to be more than just an accident. It needs to be more than just what happened. Because I wasn't in charge. This is just what happened. Are we talking about the climate, or are we talking about geopolitics? So it depends on, well, that's to me. To me, I find there's very little I can do honestly. I mean, I listen to the news or listen to social media and that's about it. What else can I do? I don't think I'm of that kind of material to set up an activism group or otherwise, I don't think so. So personally, I don't think I can do much. Yeah, so, you know, I take on the role of educator, I suppose here with what I do with my weekend reads, with what we're doing here today, speaking up, trying to help people understand, trying to the other thing I really want to help people understand is that, you know, you can't hide from this moment. It's going to impact all of us, right? And we're here in Singapore, I think in Singapore, you know that the government's going to do the right thing by its people, right? Because it will. And you know, a lot of other parts of the world who are not so I mean, in Europe and the northern hemisphere, that's where the real action is taking place right now. But, yeah, speaking up, educating activism. I think, you know, it's a very challenging thing to do in this region. You know, it's just not culturally the way to do it. But you can influence with your own families, your own communities, where your real power lies. Obviously, voting matters in in democracies around the world, the strong man is rising. You know, I think 70% of the world's governments now are not democracies, so democracy is waning. But the strong man, you know, I keep thinking, you know, there's, if I there's two paths here. We've got the strong man that we're seeing coming out of the US or Russia, or we've got the benevolent dictator as the other, as the other potential path. So I just keep thinking, we need a leak on you, on the global stage now to get everyone into line and smack him around the head and point everyone in the right direction where the majority can flourish. Right? But when we look at Ukraine. So one of the podcasts I try and listen to is called the rest is politics. Have either of you ever listened to it? Oh, yeah, no, it's a really good one, if you want to. So they did a podcast pretty quickly after the Zelensky meeting. Both of them have been in politics on both sides, so also Anthony Scaramucci and Katie Couric to also do. The rest is politics. So there's two pairs, but they did one, and they were discussing the five options that Ukraine has now. So number one is Ukraine fights alone, and if that happens, obviously they're not going to make it. Number two is European troops intervene without us backing. And that's obviously, you know, where we are at the moment. It's a high risk move, obviously could embarrass Europe if they fail. And you know, like Jess said last week, Europe is not one homogenous unit, it's 26 different countries. Is right, a US backed security guarantee, so which is obviously in in the White House, that meeting with Zelensky, that's what the US was saying. They weren't offering Trump accepts Putin's terms, and if Trump brokers the deal, that's obviously the likely scenario. So Putin gets to keep what, what it's taken, and basically Ukraine receives nothing. So that was four, not five, right? Yeah. So basically, the bottom line they're saying is supporting Ukraine now prevents a bigger war and keeps the fight away from NATO territory. So my understanding from that comment is, NATO soldiers could go into Ukraine, but it's if, if the war moves into NATO territory that the articles enacted in World War Three starts. So if Ukraine falls, Europe faces a much stronger Russia, a direct military threat, threat, and higher long term costs. So my takeaway from that is, I don't know if we're really grasping why it's important to get this under control in Ukraine and stop it there before it actually expands. What do you what do you think? I think, I think the NATO troops moving into Ukraine is the beginning of World War Three. I'm sorry. Uh, Russia is not going to wait, wait for, for things to develop further. There's that that is going to be so scary if that happens. And actually, without the US support, the European Air Force is relatively weak. The US, for example, has only about 100 F 30 3f, 35 and typhoons. I mean, just to give you a comparison, India has about 496 to 558 fighters, aircrafts. So So UK itself is already a much reduced military signs already, I haven't checked France, but I believe France isn't as big as they used to be. So together, I don't think they can defeat Russia, which has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. Yeah, right. But the French, French and British, but the French and British nuclear arsenals are a lot more modern. But then you've also got countries like Finland, Sweden, Poland, and they're they've got much, much more military, military capability, just because they've never taken their eye off their neighbor, right? Well, they are relatively small. I mean, the whole population of Norway is only 5 million. So let's be realistic. I think if NATO lands in NATO troops lands in Ukraine, I think I'll be very worried. I'll be really, really worried. I mean, you know, we were talking before the show. So one of my sort of, I mean, it's, it's a hard, it's a hard thing to talk about, right? When we go back and look at hindsight and wars, there's so many points in the build up to a war where we think, why didn't we stop then? Why didn't they do this then? And we can't. We don't have hindsight about what's going to happen next, but the feeling that whatever it takes to get this stopped, and obviously peace is the best path forward, but peace without security doesn't sound like a path forward, because I want to share just some other points that they made, and they're basically saying why the fighting has to stop in Ukraine before it spreads out to Europe, where it's going to be much worse. So the first is, they're saying that Ukraine provides a buffer zone against Russia. And if Ukraine falls, Russia would gain a direct border with NATO members like Poland, Slovakia and Romania. So that increases further risk of further regression, avoiding a risk of larger future war. So if they conquer Ukraine, it won't stop there. That's the message Putin's. He's already threatened to go into Moldova, the Baltics and Poland. Poland, sorry. So basically, if you stop them in the territory, rather before they go out onto these NATO countries, that's when it's article five of the NATO Treaty, which means world war three. Ukraine actually has massive military strength, and if, if Russia takes, takes them over, that military strength then becomes part of Russia's military strength. And it's an experienced army. It's got whatever weapons in the country that have been provided to it. But then Ukrainian troops could actually turn, turn and become, become the aggressors towards the rest of Europe. So that's obviously a risk preventing Russia's military expansion. So that sort of goes on to there. So it's not just it's not just the military, it's the industry and the economy. So it will make Russia stronger in future wars, obviously, economic and political stability in Europe are on the line, so massive refugee waves of Ukrainians getting out disruptions to European energy and food security and Russia will have more leverage. There's a lot of talk about deterring China and other authoritarian states like Iran. I'm not as bought into that a cheaper option for Europe, the more on NATO territory. So that's important, and the final one is preserving international law and European values. But when I, when I was listening to it, that that real message of it, whatever happens once it gets once it spills over Ukrainians borders into its neighbors, which are NATO countries, that's when we're in real trouble. I think what should be done now is to go back to the negotiating table and make Ukraine a neutral state, and then have a supervisory level to ensure that new Ukraine remain a neutral state. And I think that will stop Russia from crossing that buffer state. I feel that is the best situation so that the war stops, people stop dying, and we don't have the risk of walking into World War Three. If the leaders of France and Britain is foolish enough to send troops into Ukraine, I think war will start, will escalate, will expand, and then there'll be an excuse to go into Poland, right? I don't think they'll be good. Yeah, no, I'm with you, but at the moment, like Russia is weaker than it's ever been, right? It's three years of war. Actually, you see for that, we don't really know, okay, we don't really know whether what Russia is weaker as it has been, right? We don't know this is second all. These are second hand news. We don't know whether, what state they are in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in there and say, Actually, we do know. Because we do know that, essentially, this great aggressor has tried to invade a country and been repelled, yes, together with US and European weapons and all that. Without NATO, Ukraine would have been fallen in three days, two weeks. And I agree with you on that and that and that, of course, again, like I said, it should have been. It should have been a protracted war, maybe for a while. But you know, if you look at the stuff that was happening along the way, right? There were lots and lots of times when Ukraine was literally without resources and it was weak, and even in those times, Russia wasn't able to capitalize on that. So for me, that has evidence that says that, you know what, in these times of weakness, even in short weakness, that Russia was unable to capitalize on that that really tells me something about it. Now, of course, look, I'm not the geopolitical expert on things, but I, but I will say that there is, there is a, there's a, there's a, there's a When, when, when, when, when Trump said what he said, you know, gambling with World War Three. I think it's because he is privy to One essential thing, as in what he wants to do and what he doesn't want to do, right? And in all the modeling that's been done, I think it's been said that you know what? This is this? This, what you've described just now, has to happen otherwise world war three, or otherwise the the engagement of world war three. And I think he is unwilling, and he just knows he's not going to do the thing that he has to do. Because the missing thing in all of that is that first thing that the US can do, the US can intervene and really make a huge difference. So what they want to do, the desired outcome seems to be, right now, is exactly that. Let's not fight over Ukraine. Let's divide Ukraine, right? Let's, let's us take what we want, let's you take what you want, and let's not, let's not have this problem. That's the short term deal than they have, and that's why they're rushing to that. But I am with very much with Andrea on this. In terms of Russia is currently weak. It is so in the economic numbers, the economic numbers is still very healthy. That's despite the not stream being blown up and there are sanctions placed on Russian and their oligarchs. So how come, despite all this, despite the war, despite the prolonged war, the economic factors, the numbers are still good defense spending. So I think, I think we have to, we have to be more careful with assuming that Russia is weak. I My personal opinion is that we don't know and Russia. Is who to believe Russia is holding on to some very large blunt instruments, and that is completely true, as in, like nuclear weapons, and not to be, to be trifled with. I mean, that's that that is fundamentally the thing that they have, is whether or not they have the strength in other areas they have these really, really blunt objects that can make a big difference, right? So in terms of so many countries fighting against Russia, and they cannot win, and you say that Russia is weak, I think I beg to differ. This is logic, not based on second hand information or first hand information. This based on logic. So how can Russia be round of so many countries who's on the ground in the Ukraine right now for Russia, I again, I don't have first hand information. I know that Russia is fighting right with Ukrainians with with NATO equipment, and some say mercenaries from the west. But that one is hearsay, right? So it is a number of countries fighting against Russia. Otherwise Ukraine will have fallen in three days of or two weeks. So I don't think it's fair to say that Russia is weak. Now, I don't see that logic coming, but I mean, it just You're, you're at a full scale wall for for three years, you're going to be weaker than when you started. So one of the one of the estimates, is that they've lost 839,000 troops. And the way that they're proving those numbers is because they're counting graves, new graves across the country, right? So you know, you're getting up close to a million, and you're saying, Joe, the North Koreans are fighting with Russia. That's who's fighting with Russia, right? And they've, they've, they've found them, they've, they've got a couple of captives that they, you know, they know what's going on at the end of the day, peace. Peace is the goal, right? I think Russia made a strategic mistake. I think they would get they thought they could just go in there and take it and they'd have it within a couple of days, and they didn't. And here we are, three years later, we're still going right diplomacy of a level we've never seen before, a way out for Putin, where he saves face. You know, I think is, is going to be important. But here's another interesting thing that's starting to come out more and more this whole minerals deal. Yeah, there's a lot of talk about the fact that there are actually no minerals, or rare earth minerals under, under the earth in Ukraine. And it's all, it's all. There's a whole new category we're going to trump rank over raw Earth, right? Yeah, yeah. There's this one with this guy who, basically, before the war, would spend all his time in Russia doing deals and getting people to to invest in Russia. He said, I was all about making money in that part of the world. I can assure you, if I could make money, I was going to find a way to make money. There was no money to be made on these, on these minerals, so minerals and metals. So I thought that that's an interesting piece. It's sort of in the background, you, you might I've got a couple of pieces in the weekend reads coming up, but that's an interesting aspect to the conversation that's going on. But, yeah, Peace, man, yeah, could minerals be the new weapons of mass destruction that we never find? Right? Exactly right. But if Trump signs a deal and there is none, well, we know they sign a deal and there is none, then what you have is an uncomfortable situation, but at least you have peace. You know, I think that's the that's the real concern, and I know that, you know, like within, within Russia itself as well, the story within Russia is completely different from the story outside of it, right? I mean, we see a different perspective. And within Russia, they do believe that they were the ones that were wrong, that they're the ones that were, that are the victims that what is being said, you know right now, by the you by by Trump, is true. This is what they feel is is true, and what they're talking about, and what they're saying about Zelensky, for instance, it's just direct from the Russian label. I mean, it's really exactly what Russia would want you to say. If they had a hand up your ass and said, Say these words, right? He would say those words. So although, Jeffrey Sachs, he's been, he's been saying those words in a different way, but basically saying, you know, the whole NATO, Ukraine, Ukraine becoming part of NATO, all of that sort of, he's been saying the same things for a long time, you know. So I don't think it's just that, you know, it's not, it's not that they weren't any missteps along the way. I mean, NATO played the game wrongly. This is definitely, definitely did something. They destabilized the situation. They made some. And we're paying some price. We're paying a price for it, but it gave them the excuse for it, right? So you're gonna wind the clock back to go where and when the seeds were planted, right? So with Crimea, Crimea that that that was the first test. That was where, you know, Russia said, Okay, let's see what happens. And then they saw what happened. And then everyone said, Okay, everybody, cool it. Let's speak. Let's be cool about this. And Russia was waiting for the opportunity. It's like, it was, it was always on the list. They always wanted to do it. Let's have a reason. NATO gave them the reason to do it right. That that that it's like, the, it's like, the story right now about fentanyl and Canada and fentanyl and Mexico, okay? So it's, it's the, it's the political reason to do the thing that you wanted to do in the first place, right? Ukraine's always been on Russia's list. It's always been there. It's on, it's on Putin's list. Anyway, it's his, his desire to rebuild the Soviet Union. It's been there. It's a crown jewel for him. He wants that the whole the resources that go along with it, everything else that went along with it, as well. So he was just looking for the excuse, and the excuse was given to them by NATO. So there's, there's no getting away from the fact that NATO played it wrong politically. They did something that was wrong. And so, you know, had they gone with neutral, you're neutral, and we're going to be completely we're going to try to maintain that, maybe bring in peacekeepers, whatever it was to say that it's neutral from the start, that would have been fine. But as soon as the talks began to be about protecting ourselves and therefore, including including Ukraine in NATO, then there was a problem, right? I mean, if the reasons for NATO expanding were to be the reason for an invasion, Poland should have gone down a long time ago, right? But then no time. Yeah, but Poland should have gone down because, well, you know, it's a it's an aggression, all the things it should be true about no during that time, Russia was very weak. It was during the ups in reign. During that time, there's no chance, even if they try to, they couldn't Yap. Sin was a drunk. He couldn't even get his own brain together. So I think that that logic doesn't swim with me. Now, mithya, different time, different time. I think, yeah, yeah. So if you're going to start your expansion, now's the time, right? Okay, so the collapse of democracy. So we've talked about it. You know, 70% of the world's nations and world's nations are no longer democratic. And that's that's significant. I can't remember where we used to be, but it kind of feels like the world sort of shifted 180 degrees, where the the leader of the free world, has now become the leader of the axis of evil. Although they're not, they're not participating as a leader, the the participating in an inferior role, which is bizarre. So obviously China's coming into the whole conversation. How do we prepare, like as far as and I'm not saying as nations, I'm saying as individuals, because people are really struggling with this. If you guys got any thoughts, or if you want to talk about it from a nation perspective, is it just just a weird blip, and we're just going to I think technology will help. I mean technology used in the correct way will help to to keep people informed. And if you close down this particular platform, another one can pop up quite easily with today's technology getting very cheap, so that can help with with with proper usage. Leaders. I always believe that leaders always want to be the boss. They want to be the authoritarian. If they can get away with it, it's only the system and the people that stops them from doing so, and even that, they can put up a veneer of democracy, and then they go ahead with do doing what they really want underneath. So of course, the institutions help in maintaining democracy, but the new kid on the block is probably technology. We have hand phones and cameras everywhere that we can. We can use most CCTV in the public is Internet Protocol, which can be hacked as well, probably not so difficult to be hacked. And you can access a lot of images and so on and expose a lot of wrongdoings. I think technology, as a technologist, maybe I'm biased. I feel that Technologies has we are. We are the nice, honest chaps that work hard and put our head down and not care about other things other than getting the technology working. And I think it's about time that the good ones are not the not the bad ones. It's like, I get to use it for, for the democratization of the people. Yeah, yeah. Because the use of technology is also part, a massive part of the problem, whether it's information, communication, cyber warfare, warfare, it can be can be misused as well. It can be misused as well. For instance, if you think about it, most of the main data centers are owned by Americans, right? And owned by Edmonton, and just a few guys, actually, yeah. So really they can, can really have access to data if they want to. Okay, of course, there are rules and regulations, but if you own that place, you have a free hand to what you can do. Yeah, right. So it can be misused as well. It can you can end up as technology billionaire dictator you can do they can do that as well. But on the ground, because their business require consumer devices and cheap technology accessible to the masses. On the ground, people can rise up using this very cheap consumer electronics. Yeah, so, Michael, because one of the things that you know, a lot of people are talking about a lot of different types, different types of technology as being a risk, but one of the things that's being discussed more is the cloud and and basically data centers. It's the people who own the data centers who are actually the ones that are the greatest risk. And when you hear, like, the whole butterfly revolution, and why Ella musk in the middle, and Jeff Besos and all of this, Peter Thiel and all those guys, right? And it all keeps coming back to the technocrats. And they're they're actually the ones who are driving this direction in the world. But when you look at technology, what scares you the most? Ai, ai scares me the most. AI is progressing so fast it is now speaking with voice of emotions that is very hard to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Thankfully, the visuals have they have not got there yet. They are very good, but you still can kind of know that this person, this about this navata, rather than a real person. I They will never be able to close the gap 100% but it will be close enough to fool many people and do many things. And that was pretty scary. A lot a lot of jobs are good. Yeah, exactly. Well, there are people are already bamboozled by the information we have before AI. So, you know, the impact of AI, like, it's just that that bug was me, and also the jobs, right? So I just, I don't know if you saw, was it last week, China's basically has moved their entire government is now run by AI. It didn't talk about the impact on people or losing their jobs, but it was just like, within a week, AI was just everywhere in the country. Did either of you see that? Well, no, yeah, I hadn't seen I meant to be fair, yeah, to be fair, a lot of jobs to be created by AI, too, but those people that are displaced are unable to do those jobs, you know? I mean, yeah, you know, back to this thing about whether or not we get to a place where it's distinguishable, where we can see people, you know, the thing about AI is it's already here. I'm really just gonna say that. I'm going to say that you know that that line where we don't know has already been crossed, because all you need to be is as good as an awkward person, right? If you can do it, if you can be, if you can be AI and you became, you can be kind of awkward. You've crossed the line. You've just come across as awkward, you know? And and if you, if it's only, it's only people who are perhaps a little bit, you know, looking out for the differences and all that, are going to say, oh, you know, this is not quite that, or whatever it is. I can tell you that, as somebody who's got a pretty keen eye for a lot of things, I've been caught by videos. When I go like that, how did they do? And then I go, Oh, yeah, of course. Ai right, because it looked good enough, real enough. And this is right, right? So I would say where we passed the point of saying that we can't, we can't do it. They can't do it. It's it is being done as in, like, I have some tools that I've been playing around with as well where I can appear to be somebody else, because I'm driving the movements, I'm actually doing that. And there's some other things that can happen in almost real time. So it's about processing rather than it is about the technology, right? So as we, as we increase processing power, and if I have it local and on my computer, I can, I can do. This to somebody else. But if I can try and figure out something else in terms of, like something social, I can work on a way to to engineer a moment it's being done. I mean, you just look at the number of things people are getting away with right now, it has already crossed that line. So the skill that we need to build is actually this skill to not get taken by that and to be actually not AI proof, but human proof, as in, like, how do I how do I make it such that we are better at figuring out how to deal with people, whether they're fake or not. How do I get better at being an effective person versus a world that may not be completely benevolent, right, whether they're whether they're AI or whether they're real, but the fact that you almost got caught in it, the fact that you almost got caught out, Joe, sort of surprises me, right? If you get caught out, what's the hope you know? You know like it goes back to my the question I've been asking for a long time is, you know, is it, is it inevitable? Do you know? And basically, it's, it's the complete, not a failure of of our civilization. And this is all part of, part of that just, you know, we're, we're just waiting. We don't know the date. So there's an article I shared. Did you have a chance to look at the butterfly's choice Did you have a chance you might not have. It was written by Michael helped, H, A, u, p, T, South African guy, and he positions himself, I don't know him on LinkedIn as I disrupt sustainability and regeneration illusions, and I recommend the butterfly's choice I put in the weekend reads, but, yeah, but basically, he's sort of talking about the history of human evolution and the stages that we go through. And he goes back, you know, through, like, what was it 6000 years across 26 societies, and there's always a pattern. And basically, you know, phase one, you know, is mixture and stability, all the way through to phase six, which is totalitarianism and decay, which he puts at 2009 to 2024 to phase seven, invasion and emergence. And that's 2025 to 2050 so based on what he's saying, we're in the invasion and emergence stage. And we're hearing about the invasions. You know, Trump's going to take Greenland and Canada Panama Canal, you know, China's going to take Taiwan, and obviously, Russia is going to do what it wants to do. But is that where we are? You know? Is that just the pattern of human history and we're just on the road to collapse. We just don't know the date yet. Well, I think we're way past our use by date. I mean in terms of where, where something is supposed to work, right? Something has a natural path. It's supposed to go there. The US has gone past that news by date. The human race has gone by. Are you our use by date as well? In terms of, you know how we're how we've developed ourselves, but we've risen above that, again, through ingenuity, right? So that's why we live longer. That's why democracy has lasted longer than it should have, because of the natural cycle of things. And now we have a chance to do something which is different, as of like, you know, if you look at, if you look at the pattern of what's happened before, it doesn't mean it has to have, doesn't mean it has to happen again, because you can change the steps in between, right? So, like, the way the path, the path for disease and and the human race and everything else, it's supposed to go a certain way, something's going to happen, and then the rest, you know, is likely to fall as well. Like, for instance, we're looking at the eventual destruction of civilization when the big asteroid hits right? It's eventually supposed to happen because we are in space, and they are heavenly bodies hurtling around, and we're going to hit one one of these days, of course, that if, if we don't change things right, if we don't figure out how to deflect, how to sense them, how to look out in the skies and see them, how to whatever we can do something about that we can change the way the pattern usually plays out. So we have an opportunity right now, I think, for that to happen as well. So there's some things that are taking us deeper into this, which is really troublesome, as in, the huge difference is we have the thoughts of each other to hear a lot easier now. So the speed of that is happening all these other sorry, it's also a risk. Yeah, it's a huge risk. It's a huge risk, and it's a huge difference, right? So the big difference before is lack of information. I don't know what you're doing. There's no way for me to know what you're doing. There is no there is no perfect knowledge, and there's no ability for that to happen. So you can only figure out what happened once all the dust has settled. Right now, we are figuring things out along the way in real time. At the same time, there's also the heightened ability to create. That misinformation at scale, right? There's also all these things that can happen. So the pattern doesn't necessarily hold, although it does have, it's that the pressure is in that direction, and I think it's now. I mean, we have, we have an ability if the right people come together. So, Michael, that the answer to the question of, What can we do if enough of us are coming together to speak about these things, to have an opinion about these things, so that when we see something, we can maybe do something on our side and be supportive and have the right thing to say, the right kind of retort. Like, you know, you know, like, like, what we what we did just now, we'll be talking about Russia being weak, for instance, right? That kind of pushback is what we need in everyday life. We talk about it and understand something about it and go and find out about it, like for me, I'm going to go and do some more work to look at the details of what you said as well, as I'm sure you'd want to do with mine as well, and I go, that's what we need to do more of so that more of us can make a decision when the time is right that is going to be good for us, against maybe humanity's worst behavior, maybe against the environment, maybe against some heavenly body, and maybe against politicians. So that's, that's the kind of thing that we need to be able to do, kind of at scale. I just, I just went to the Singapore Discovery Center as part of my journey towards being a Singaporean. It's gonna come a surprise to many people that I'm not. And as part of the Singapore Discovery Center tour, they talked about the history of Singapore and where we were, the development and the different circumstances around it, and that made a difference to my perspective on things. As someone who has been, I think, immersed in society here and culture, it really opened my eyes to a certain perspective, right? And I think what's missing in a lot of the world is that the eyes being open to many perspectives, more perspectives than what they kind of arrive with. So yeah, we have to. We have to kind of work something out. We have to, we have to be better than we are right now. And someone has to take the lead. And it may not be the it may not be leadership in the usual sense, we don't necessarily have to have that one person that takes the lead, because a movement can happen. You know, I think we the mathematics of it. I think you were saying a long time ago. Andrea, right, it just takes 3% you know, 3% of of the of the group to to sort of get something, get an idea, and if you can figure out what it is, and it can begin the movement. And that is something that, that that, I think globally, we need to do a lot more of where we're, where we're looking at it from a perspective that is completely outside of it. I mean, I was just, I was just listening to a discussion about, you know, how, how you can, you can be, you can feel that you are worse off or not in the great situation because of just being, just having been compared to the wrong, the wrong measuring stick, right? I mean, we think about how people in in the UK can feel that their life is okay, but it's not okay once you begin to figure out the life that you're comparing it against, like, you know, like folks from the UK only begin to feel poor once they've been to the US, you know, and it's Like, that's, a strange thing, right? Or you can, you can. You can feel like, you can feel really proud about the the medical system in the UK, until you come to Singapore and you go like, well, a two year waiting list, and over here is six months. And then over here in Singapore, you can go, you can still feel upset about that as well. You have a system that is really just making you wait six months instead of two years, but it's making you pay. And so you're more upset, and you think, like, oh, people in Denmark have it happier, right? So we've got, we've got to figure ourselves out as a, as a, as a human, as a human race, to try and figure out to do, to do the work that we need to do on ourselves, to come to our higher selves, that we can be better equipped, not to be manipulated, not to be as triggered. I mean, I the one thing that I hope I thought about what we could do with was actually just a whole lot less emotion right now, with just so much burning up in emotional energy. Most of it has no bed. There is no there is no basis. I mean, there's not no basis for it. The basis for it is real, but the waste of it is that if we could somehow harness all of that emotional energy for something that. Is greater than just the emotion. Yeah, I'm with you, Joe. Michael, do you want to, do you want to say something? Okay? Well, not really. No, okay, no, I'm 100% with Joe. So I've always been of the opinion we've just got to try. We've got to try and we and we never stop. We never stop trying. We never give up. You know, David said, you know, if it is the butterfly's choice, then it doesn't matter. What did you say? If a system isn't chaotic, he meant, then it's chaotic. That doesn't mean choices don't matter. It means we can control the outcome. The difference is whether you live to be the better you or you use the world to rationalize why you don't, and it's really easy to do that right now. And I yeah, I'm like, I deal with the dark stories of our world every single day, but I remain a positive person that's trying to say, Come on, guys. Yes, I know I'm telling you ugly, hard things, but we gotta come together and we gotta change it, right? Um, so the article I was referring to before, he talks about human consciousness as as the major sort of strength of human beings, right? So, and you were talking about consciousness, I thought that would be worth sort of pulling up from this article, and he said, We've got to move to the mycelial mycelial consciousness, right? And obviously our fungal networks is where that comes from. But basically it's about seeing systems collaborating across boundaries and regenerating rather than extracting. The question isn't whether this evolution happens. The question is whether you'll participate consciously, get dragged along unconsciously, or miss the bus entirely. And that's, I thought that was a really kind of a good way of describing it, because that's where we are. But if everyone keeps pulling back, if everyone keeps drawing away, if everyone keeps saying, I just can't deal with this anymore, and I've gotta sit in fear. We've gotta, we've gotta step into this time. And you don't have to do it on an international level. You don't have to do it on a national level. You do it locally, within your own family, within your own community. You build strength there, because that's the first place you're going to you know, I'm thinking of all of these people in Queensland and New South Wales who are going to wake up tomorrow after this typhoon comes through, and before it's even hit, massive trees have been ripped out of the ground. Electricity is down already. Phones are down already. You know, it's only a category two, but men, you know, like and it's the width of it across. You know, there's 20 million homes at risk. It's a big one for Australia, right? Who's, going to come to their help, their community, you know? And that's always your community. So focus on your community when, whether it's, you know, looking at food security, community farms, you know. So David calls it social capital, right? So that's something we talk about a lot. On climate courage. It's really coming together, energy resources, protecting the elderly, taking care of people who are disabled, or taking care of people who are not flourishing, because, for whatever reason, rather than, you know, pushing them to the outside, pushing them into the streets, bring them into the community and help, you know, that's, I think, the biggest power that we've got right now. We've moved into our homes, into our screens, and we're not out there. We're not we're not part of our societies anymore, and by being disenfranchised from each other, I think we do live in we do tend to live in more fear. So that's the place I think we've got to start if we want to, if we want to deal with what's coming. You know, if you want to overcome but as what Joe says, Many people are very emotional when it comes to discussing geopolitics, especially if you are an opposite pose. Say, suppose some is pro triumph, anti Trump, pro us, anti Russia, anti China, blah, blah, blah, I think it's very laborious. I do have some conversations with such people, and it's just a little bit overly emotional and too much to take. I think. Yeah, so the to me, I'm pro Trump or against Trump, right? I personally find the man very, very distasteful. But the people who are supporting him, the 30% the Maga voters, I'm I want to understand them and why they what their problems are. I want to, I want to hear from them. I want to, I want to know. So anyone who thinks like that, I want to know why they think that's a solution, you know, and that's what we don't do because, you know, I've talked to people, the families that just don't even talk to each other. And because one they're both sides of it. I, to me, that's never, that's never the solution. It's, it's not about who they vote for, who they admire. It's about what are the concerns that they have that drives them in that direction in the first place? Because that's that's, to me, where the problem lies. We're not, we're not we're not hearing each other's concerns. We're not hearing each other's problems. We've got to get better at one factor is that a lot of Americans are not very well informed and able to reason things out. For example, the tariffs Trump say that he's going to punish China, and the American folks on the ordinary folks, they think that China is paying for the tariffs. Yeah, you see what I mean. If you have a visible population, I don't know what proportion a visible proportion, a pretty visible population like this, that cannot count, cannot logic things out, then it's easy to sway them. Whoever doesn't have to be Trump. Can be somebody else. Exactly easy to see them, because you just see it, things that appear to be sweet, but they don't know the After Effects. They are the one paying for the tariffs, right? Yeah, well, I mean, you look at what's happening in the US market, the, you know, the economic sort of, I'm sure Joe's been looking at the stock market, market and everything that's been going on, and then these Reagan videos being resurfaced. I saw it on LinkedIn talking about tariffs and the long term implications of tariffs. And, yeah, it's, I mean, you've got the short term impact and medium and impact, and then the long term, and he's talking about it, you know, it suppresses innovation and creativity and entrepreneurialism, and it destroys industries and it destroys the country. You know, that's the long term impact and and you're right, but that's an information problem, right? But it's also a structural problem, like, how do we get to the point where we've got people in power who got into power saying these sorts of things that are ultimately going to be so bad for the people who have voted for them. You know, how do we fix that problem? That's, to me, is the bigger question. Do you know what I mean? They say that if good people don't go into politics, bad people will. So maybe that's the reason, yeah, I know, but they don't think they're bad people, right? So thanks for joining us, David. We can choose to not to allow him to change what we do. So yeah, I mean, I just keep going back to the Trump. Trump's the symptom of a problem, right? He's the outcome of a problem, and we can spend all of our energy focused on him, or we can spend our time looking at the problem and how it how it happened in the first place. And social media is part of the problem, misinformation, disinformation. How the hell are we even here? You know? Why is it okay? So Wales is just basically recently making it if a politician intentionally lies or shares mis or disinformation, they there's penalties, and potentially they'll be kicked out. Why? Why is it, you know, why do we even have this MIS, disinformation reality? Because it's creating a massive problem, right? So you know that, you know those sort of problems, you know these are big problems that we need to solve, but we keep focus. I think we keep focusing on the outcome of the problems versus discussing the problems. Joe, you're noting, help me out. Well, there's a thing that always bugs me about how, how some of this might be, might be right. This might be the good thing that that is actually happening for us, right? And I had this thought the other evening about, you know, how we got out of the Great Depression, right? Because we the world was in a Great Depression, and we got out of it essentially by telling a big lie, right? It was a big lie until it wasn't the there was collusion by everyone to misinform, first America and then the rest of the world, right? Cascaded all over the place. But basically, to tell America, life is good, life is okay. Here's the good news, everything is fine. We're moving forward. Everything is good. And we got there, and I and I looked at it, and I thought, okay, sometimes it's because, you know, there is some, there is a version of life as we know it, and we go like that is absolutely what we need to do. And I thought, Is it? Is it possible that where we're going to head, or where, where we head is a new place, a new reset, where things are actually going to be okay, and that we're going through this terrible birthing process right now? Yeah, and that if we spent less time resisting and saying, Okay, let's see where this party is going. Yeah. It might work out, right? Of course, you have to put a lot of things on hold. You have to think, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that aside, but all of it aside and go, like, Okay, what's, what's a, what's a, what's a brand new story, and it's very hard to do that. You can't stop your mind from thinking, I need to worry about all these different things, right? Yeah. And I was thinking like, if you have this big calamitous thing that happens to us all, and if we think about this current moment as the same thing, are we facing something similar to an ice age? Are we entering an ice age of politics? You know, where we are, where we've had this sudden change, and everything is now New. And then we could think, and then you think about what is going to be on the other side of this. How do we get to the other side of this? Are we working too hard to say we wanted the way it was before the Ice Age? Or are we going all right, let's, let's try and figure out new ways to deal with this. Let's live better so that we're protected from this or that, or whatever it is. And the irony of it all is, is part of the answer is, what kind of is what the tech bros seem to be pushing towards, right? It's like they're trying to get us to the other side of this, which is the the network cities and network town, you know, the network, network countries, right? It's, it's, it's a utopian idea, and it is such a crazy idea, if you think about it, you know, like, like, like, let's think about the idea of democracy as it was, as it was created, right? The idea of democracy as the Greeks, some, some, some, some, some great thinkers began to think about how this whole thing is going to work, versus the kind of world it was at that time. When you go like, of course, you're going to settle this with an army. I'm going to get my army is going to crush your army. I'm going to, I'm going to take your lands, and I won't want you have so I can, I can overpower you. You become mine. That's, that's the way it was. And then you have these people who say, come let's try and do this thing, this different way, and let's try and figure this, this other stuff, out. It's mad. You think about the United Nations, and you think about the idea that we are never going to go back to war again. Why did that happen? There was this terrific pain that happened the Second World War was the ice age that happened to us and civilization as we knew it after then was a result of that. Maybe we're there right now as well. Now again, I don't think we'll look upon this in a favorable way. We won't think, Oh, what a great day. That was when Trump happened. But I think much, much the same way we have the civilization that we have currently, that we're so involved in defending right now, we have Hitler to think it was so bad. This had to happen. We had Japan in the way it was going in the Second World War. We have them to thank so that's, that's kind of the thing then that sits for me. It's about how we get over it. It's about human ingenuity. In the end, what do we do when something happens? And as you know, in the midst of all this, if all, if all the agencies get defunded, and we miss, we miss the asteroid that gets us all, I mean, that would be that that to me, as somebody who's a great fan of comedy, I would think that would be the Ultimate banana peel, right? But then on the other side of that, what happens, they will be the rest of the story. You know, it's so it's unfortunately for me, it is, it is interesting. And we are actually just caught in this world of egos, where we go like, Well, no, I'm right about this. No, we're, we're right about this. Everybody's right about it, and it's almost like we can't let somebody else be right about it. I want to just go back to the idea of emotions as well. Before that, I am not saying that it is a waste to have emotions, because I think emotions drive action. I just think we need to have, we need to do something about directing it. You know, we shouldn't. We shouldn't just have it consume us. We should take it. We it should go to action. It should create the next thing. It should create energy for action. Yeah, I always say, take the emotions out of it. So when I was in the army, my last six months, I worked for defense public relations, and I worked with this guy who used to advise the Australian Government, and he was in the defense space, right? And he made a comment, and it's never left me. He goes every recession, in every recession the world has ever been in and will ever go, go in war follows, because war gets countries out of recession, right? So that's always something. So the fact that the walls that are going on in the world. You know, the economically, we're pretty screwed, but at the same time, we've never had the environmental, the poly crisis, like the biodiversity, all that stuff around at the same time, right? And it's never been global. The risk. But I saw this quote on Twitter yesterday, and I need to find out who said it. The old world is dying. The New World struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters, and I thought that really spoke to me about this time, you know, we're seeing some really crazy stuff coming to the surface, and it's like, well, what's going on here? But Michael, I wanted to, just before we go into the next piece, anything that you wanted to add? I've just got one more thing quickly that I wanted to add about what we need to do. But what do you what are your thinking here when you're listening to this? It's a bit too big for me. I'm just a simple man. Yeah, the scary part is that if Yeah, usually end of recession, there's a war, and then, then you rebuild. I don't want to go through that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's quite but the earth can't cope with war. Like, we're on the cusp of, you know, so many, like, almost there now, yeah, exactly. I mean, potentially already crossed. I'm going to reference some just before we finish, but the article I referenced earlier, you know, so that conscious revolution evolution is what we really need to to do now. And I think if I wanted to share with everyone what we need to do and what you can do and what you have control over, is go on this conscious evolution yourself, and as you go on the journey, take your friends and family with you. And he finishes with redesign for rented sorry, redesign for regeneration instead of extraction. Distribute intelligence instead of centralizing control, build reciprocal relationships instead of exploitative ones, contribute to regional resilience instead of global fragility. I thought that was it. I'll share I'll share the article. I thought it was really well written, and there's a lot more to it. I'm going to go and check him out more. He's just popped up, but crypto has obviously been in the news long before Trump was elected, and I think the crypto crowd and the tech bros were a big part of the reason that Trump was elected, but we've seen some pretty interesting news coming out on crypto and corruption in the last couple of weeks, Joe, you've been keeping an eye on that? Well, I've been, I've been hearing the discussions around it, and a lot of the idea is, well, crypto is just going to enable all kinds of corruption to happen. Here's the news. We've had corruption before crypto. It's it's just a different tool. People have found a different way to do this and influence the way things work. But here's the reason why it is so significant, the idea, the idea is you can use what looks like a free market situation. And the challenging part about this is that it's outside of the SEC for Americans, right? So it's outside of it's not a regulated entity. So crypto can exist outside of the SEC. So it doesn't, it isn't subject to the same sort of rules that that the rest of business is subject to. And so it allows for things like it allows for bribes to be to be to be given in a different sense, in the sense that you can launch something brand new, and you can support the currency, or the new crypto that I'm creating, and therefore you can, you can pump that particular asset, and I can make money from it. And it can, it can be this thing that happens from from, from it is, in a sense, a kind of transfer of of of the of the of the wealth, and it's done digitally, and it's done in a sort of like behind the scenes sort of way, right? The thing, the thing about this is that they the if only they were trying to hide it, that you know that it seems like it is no longer a case of women trying to trying to hide that this is what is actually happening. It is actually just doing it at speed, right? It's saying, like, Okay, here's the way you can give me money, here's my Venmo number. And you say to everybody, this is my Venmo number, right? So it's actually, it's actually not as surprising to me. It's just a new a new pathway. It is just basically a new way of saying, I'm accepting your I'm accepting your money, and you can give it to me this way. Now the real danger, I guess, is the way. Now we've been getting into a point where they're trying. To move it into the next phase, which the idea of a digital, digital crypto reserve for the United States. Right now, it seems like it might be a good idea that you want to have currencies that are based on what the world might be using down the down the road. And I go like, okay, there's something in there. But even the people in the crypto space are upset about what or not. Not upset that they have different views about what is going to develop now, what it seems to be in development right then, the the the idea is the American the merit, the Americas, America's Federal Reserve will include crypto currencies, and not just the one currency. A lot of people who are quite okay. Even the crypto space was that they're quite okay. They just use Bitcoin as a as a reserve for crypto, as a kind of a replacement for gold, as a kind of reserve currency. But the fact that they've gone on to include things like, I think Solana, RXP, I can't remember, I can't remember, I can't remember the list of it, but it was a whole bunch of other lot less stable, something like, I can't remember the complete list. And that is actually exposing, I think, the US to a huge risk. Because, you know, you talk about crypto, you can, you can try and have cold wallets and all the different kind of stuff. But if you have something which is data and it's hackable, at some point, it's a question of, how do we hack right? So I'm sure this is an area that's that's much in Michael's field as well, or the idea that, yeah, it's all, it's all unhackable for now. Yeah, because we haven't unleashed we were talking. We just, we just, we just started talking, talking about quantum technology, quantum computing on the last show. You know, there's a lot of stuff that's being just, just taken on board and going, Okay, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's gather this data. Let's hang on to it right now and we can decrypt it when we have the technology that's going to make it viable or feasible to do so, but, yeah, it's but it's both a great idea and a terrible idea, right? Even for the people who know the business, for instance, like I said, they much rather, they use a standard that is designed to be inflexible so that it behaves like gold in terms of its supply. So, so Bitcoin, rather than something that is super flexible, like all the other platforms that have been that have been put up as well. Michael, have you got any thoughts? Because, I mean, the thing for me like it, I mean, at least they're being transparent in their corruption, right? So the only more transparency, but the five, the five coins, I can't remember what they have called either, because, you know, I'm not a crypto person. The guy that's in charge of one of the I can't remember body's title is he got, he has all five, or something like that, right? But regardless if it goes down and it's tied to the Federal Reserve, I mean, to me, the implications of that are just absolutely enormous. So that that was more where I was sort of sitting, but Michael was about hackability. Everything is hackable because everything has the weakest link. So basically you hack the weakest link, and usually it is on the laptops of somebody who owns the cryptocurrencies. So it and likewise, in the Federal Reserve or whichever central bank is just a slightly more or more secure system, but there's still be weakest link to and, and I think this is something not needed. I think we all take risk in life, right, but we also don't take certain risk that is not needed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I think the greatest, the greatest risk that, if I could just talk about this, this, this, this risk, right? The greatest risk really, is actually one of the features of gold, right? If you think about why, why gold inherently is quite a useful way to use this reserve, is actually one of the reasons why people talk about crypto being the great thing it is, it's really hard to move gold, and that's something that if you, if you, if you convert a lot of wealth into crypto, and this is as a as a reserve, as a country, you can technically heist a country's wealth on a thumb Drive. All right, yeah. All right, Joe, just because I'm a, I'm a still, you know, Joe, you know that I spend a lot of time trying to understand complicated stuff. To this day, I can't get my head around crypto. I just can't, and people tried to, I don't know, maybe I need to go and do a course in it or something, but it just doesn't make any sense in my head, right?