Alex Epstein on why reopening the Strait of Hormuz is the only real solution — and why the US is sleeping on Canada

broken and helps them fix it fast. That's why 150,000 organizations use it to keep their apps working. And without further ado, we have Alex Epstein. He's the author of Fossil Future live in the TVPN Ultradom. Welcome to the show. Good to see you. Thank you so much for coming down on short notice. Um,

what are your what are your what have your texts been like the last 48 hours?

Is it over?

Cuz you're cuz John and I were

thinking who's our oil guy.

We had one. We had one.

Yeah. And I'm local, too. So, yeah. If I'm in town, it's great. I always like coming in person versus the

Thank you so much the other stuff. Yeah,

appreciate it. Um,

so yeah, lots I mean there's so much an energy, but I'm happy you lead the conversation however you think it should go. What are what's going on? What what what how should we even be thinking about oil prices right now, the impact of the war in Iran? Uh how do we how should we be processing this news?

Okay, so uh we did this. So there's a million things to comment on. So I'm going to try to segment what I comment on. But we did get involved militarily in Iran, which I would just say in my non-air of expertise in general that is a good idea. I think it's a better idea to have Congress involved if you can get them involved.

And I think it's a good idea to have a lot of expertise on international oil markets being brought to bear.

Sure. when you do this and um I think this administration does a lot of good stuff on energy but I think it's pretty clear at this point that there was not maximum expertise brought in on this and so the the standard issue when you're

like in indicators there would be like the strategic petroleum reserve hadn't been refilled. I mean we we can talk about that. So let's let's make sure to get back to that one. But the main thing is just you know rough numbers you know straight of hormuz which Iran has control over is 20% of the world's oil production is flowing through that

every day. And so whether you're looking backward or looking forward there is no replacement whatsoever for opening that straight and keeping it open. And one of the things we've heard from different people is oh we have a lot of options on the table. Like there's a lot of things that we can do. There are definite things that you can do, but none of them is 20 million, right? So it's just I mean that's that's more than US oil production just flowing through that one place.

So there yeah we can talk about the other things but I think the first thing people need to recognize is if you do not get that thing open then you have dramatically higher oil prices. And then the other thing to get is oil prices really matter straight for Muse dumb question. Can't you just go around?

I I mean you can you can try to some extent but there's a reason why 20 million a day are being routed through

because it actually comes out of there as well, right?

Yeah. There's just I mean all of these things are very very optimized. One of the thing about just understanding the energy industry is like things are just very optimized in terms of where the infrastructure is. You're doing all of these things. So it's there are other and we'll talk about this. I mean there are certain pipelines you can pipe more oil through. They're alternate routes, but we're talking in the millions a day, maybe. Yeah.

Uh most of our other options are sort of in the one to two million barrels a day. Sure. And just so people know, barrel is 42 gallons, so you're talking about almost 100 million gallons a day for the stuff. But

yeah, so so you don't have a lot of great options and I think that's that's very important for I'm going to give some options,

but the number one option is keep that thing open

and there are basically two ways to do that. One is you just win the war,

if you want to call it that, a lot more quickly. Like if you get some form of surrender

and you have friendly people controlling it,

then guess what? It can open. That that's one thing. So I'm not an expert on how to do that, but schematically doing that is very effective. The other thing which is a little bit

but but game game theory for Iran is they actually benefit from global markets being in turmoil because it gives them some leverage over over any type of negotiation.

I mean this is the biggest damage that they can do. I mean clearly we've seen they're not going to do

they're not going to send missiles to Israel and get rid of Israel let alone do anything to the US. But they have this incredible control of the one of the centers of the world economy

and they have a bunch of stuff going on there. So let's talk about that. So option one is you get a surrender and they don't use all of their options. But then let's talk about their options. So they have mines in this thing. So they can blow up mines.

Uh they have missiles. Maybe the worst thing they have and this is a change in recent years and I you've had Palmer on here and Ethan on here like the drone thing is just a total game changer because you can have a small vehicle you can launch one of these you know Shaw heads out of the back of a truck. They can go really far and that's a lot harder to deal with than a fixed installation.

They have something like 500 miles of range on a typical

Yeah. Depending on Yeah. Right. So

truck drives up to a beach, drone launches. As soon as it finds that cargo tanker that has a bunch of oil on it, it hits it.

Yeah. And then and then there's the you're you're worried about that.

Sure. You're not even going to go

as as you're going through. So you have you have to think about those are the kinds of threats you face. So how do you deal with that? I mean basically you need the US to lead some sort of convoy where people have sufficient security and economic assurances that it'll go through. So what's involved in that? Well, one thing is if possible you want to get allies involved and it's it's even possible you get unconventional allies like China who has well they depend on this now they have a bunch of unlike us you want to go back to SPR they've been filling up their reserves so they have more reserves relative to their imports than we do relative to ours if you think about ours we have about 400 uh in the SPR and we can release about 4 million a day

so we don't have as much but but they really care about this and a protracted thing is bad. So, but for sure Japan, South Korea, India. So, one thing is just at a high level if you're doing this convoy, can we get these countries that are aligned economically, maybe China, but definitely these others, can we get them involved? Because then it's an addition, they have military presence there. That's an additional threat to Iran if they attack one of their ships. So, but that's a macro thing is just can you do this alone or can you do it with allies? I think ideally you would do it uh with allies. Then there's a question of what you do about these these various things and I think the biggest I mean the other macro thing you can do is just in some way credibly threaten Iran and say hey if you and I can't give the details of how to do it but if you attack us if you attack in the straight of Hormuz it's going to be very very bad for you. So just at a high level can you make that threat so they understand this is going to be very very no you know we've wiped out a couple layers of leadership. So they might be taking these things

uh seriously.

After that, I think the biggest thing from what I've heard from military experts is just these drones. Like what do you do about these drones? How do you give any kinds of assurances? And as far as I can tell, we don't have any one perfect solution, but you can do a certain amount of stuff from the air.

You can do a certain amount of stuff from the ground, although it's very very expensive. And then most cost-effective where you can do it is you can take out certain stockpiles and facilities with the provisa these things are decentralized and of course I have no specific knowledge about where they are

but in theory if there's the the suicide drone the shahed that's there's a factory and you take out that factory you have reduced that

so so that's going to be it and you know I know you guys had on Ethan Thornton who I'm friends with and uh you know he talks about this a lot is just this cost asymmetry issue is you just want to be doing things even if you're way wealthier you do not want to be spend spending $3 million to take out $30,000,

which might be what happening with a Patriot missile battery or something.

This this this Yeah, that's the kind of thing that happens. So, you need you need a combination of those kinds of things. And then the other thing, so that's all the security stuff. So, you get the allies involved. You take these actions specifically against drones. I think the uh what was I going to say about the uh the other thing you can do? I'm just make sure

there's still just like the other big thing. Okay. Insurance.

Yeah, the insurance. So, and this this has been floated by the president and it's it's a reasonable idea, but my understanding is the insurance vehicle we have, the development corporation, does not have enough funding. So, you might need to go to Congress. But basically, you want to be able to say, "Hey,

you it's we're going to lead this as the United States. We're going to lead it with allies. If Iran does anything, it's big trouble for them and we can counter their specific attacks and if something goes wrong, you're insured. you're you're trying to create that confidence to get enough people going through and then you get a certain amount of stability and then you start to get closer to your 20 million barrels a day. Either that or you just defeat them really quickly or both.

So, so the other factor is just the loss of production, disruption to production, plants shutting down, plants being damages damaged. How does that factor in? Do do those do those do refineries get brought back? And I'm talking about an allied allied country.

You mean just the the trend over time or what?

Yeah, generally I mean just seeing seeing the videos coming out. You've seen places I think like Qatar, Kuwait, places like Yeah. basically just saying like, "Yeah, we're going to pause production because we don't even have a place to store this and or they're suffering damages."

Uh and it doesn't make sense to keep, you know, refineries online. Uh

this is all but this is all just downstream of do you have the route

open? Got it.

Like if if you have the route open it solves everything. If you don't the way to think of the other things so we do have some other interesting options but you have to think of them as these are temporary stop gaps. None of like if anyone says I mean you hear some crazy things. People are like oh Venezuela like we talked about this last time Venezuela's less than a million. It's just I mean it's beyond crazy. It's just impossible. We It's not like Venezuela has the ability to just increase their oil production by any significant amount in the near future. I mean, we're talking about companies considering going in harm's way to get some incremental boost. So, Venezuela's essentially useless.

So, so best case scenario in the next year, Venezuela goes from under a million to 2 million.

No, I mean 2 million would be

I mean, if we made it our entire goal in life, I don't know, but but why would you for that?

Venezuela was at like 3 million like ago. Yeah. Some years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. But but theoretically, but there's a lot that there. It's not going to happen.

It's just so Yeah. So Venezuela would not even that's just in the category of it's not even a bad idea. It's just not an idea. There's nothing there's nothing there's nothing there.

No. No. That's right.

So So the bad the bad ideas, by the way, are the worst idea imaginable is ban oil exports from the United States, which I have heard floated in in conversation.

Seems somewhat reasonable. I want the oil.

Of course, because we have oil, so we don't want to sell. So, I mean, so many different things, but one obvious one, not obvious one, but it's obvious if you know how these things work, is the refiners in the US do not match up well to the oil produced in the United States. The the refineries in the United States are based on heavier crude. Like, crude is rated in terms of weight and sourness. Okay? And so, our refineries are mostly for heavier crude. It's actually one reason why Venezuela has some appeal. Canada has a lot of appeal because they

they have heavier crude.

Yeah. And we're going to talk about Canada. We're good at refining it, but we produce a lighter crude.

Yes. Because the Shell revolution was just this dramatic shift very quickly in oil production. So our refineries are not primarily equipped. That's why when we ended the crude export oil ban, I forget it was 2014 or something like that. It was just this huge unlock because it allows the global mark. It allows us to produce for a global market.

You can't you can't look at American oil production as a monolith.

Yeah. It's not

funible. Import heavy crude and export light crude. Is that roughly correct? Yeah. So, that's one thing is it's just insane to do that. But in general, think about it. What is the value of higher prices? Is it stimulates production? We're going to talk about all these different ways where we want to unlock oil. So, you want to tell American oil producers, hey, we're going to actually totally screw you over. It's actually going to be worse for you maybe than it was before. You don't even have a market. So, you're going to strand all this oil. So, that's that's terrible. There's also this financial manipulation ideally in a way that you're selling futures short on a certain time period and then you're buying them. What you're trying to do is lower the near-term price like Fed and raise the long or treasury. Yeah.

A very American way to try to solve this world problem. A lot of people that like that.

The only solutions involve unlocking oil in one way or another. You do not want to screw up the markets so that people are less inclined to unlock oil. Nor do you want to screw up the the markets to destroy information. So again, the the main unlock is reopen that straight. There's no way around that.

But then we can talk about other things. So one one category is what you call spare or emergency capacity.

Okay.

And this this is there's some uncertainty here, but

quickly this is separate from the strategic reserve.

Yeah. Yeah. So well emergency capacity is the strategic reserve. Oh, it is. So spare means you could be you could pretty easily be producing more per day, but you're not because you're not happy with the price. And this is mainly Saudi Arabia is is considered exhibit A in terms of amount of this. Now there's debate among experts about how much they have

but you know some people estimate they have 1 2 3 million barrels a day of spare capacity. They could ramp up on some kind of

and do they know how much capacity they have and they're just not sharing it or does no one know?

I mean that's always been the story that's been the story of the Gulf, right? They're not going to if they just flooded the market with every single barrel that they could possibly produce, they would be getting a worse a much worse price.

Yeah. And there's this cartel arrangement that does I mean in a sense everyone has this on different time scales. You think about US shale producers. If if prices were sustained at $100, guess what? There's a whole bunch of shale deposits that they could produce at $75 a barrel and make a fortune on that they're not going to do four weeks ago when it was around $60

a barrel. But but in terms of the thing about the Saudi oil is it's produced at a much lower cost. So this is them saying hey we have some of this on the table and then the question is you need to be able to produce it and then you need to be able to transport it. So you have estimates around maybe you could get 1 to 2 million barrels

a day. So that's one of them. Uh in terms of emergency if you look around the world you don't have a lot of immediate spare capacity besides that. So we have what's called emergency capacity or strategic petroleum reserve. You know, it's it's Jordy mentioned that we didn't fill up our strategic petroleum reserve. I think this is unequivocally uh a mistake. I mean, if you look at the the whole thing of the strategic petroleum reserve is you want it for when you need it. And the best possible time to fill it up is when prices are low.

And is that physically a place with a bunch of barrels that we

There's a bunch of different knocks of oil.

Well, there's multiple different places, but but in you can think of it.

We basically cash the physical oil in America. we own it or can't access it and it's sitting there going unused until we're ready.

Yeah. Now, there's issues of Biden Biden definitely misused it. So, they they used it to basically have lower gasoline prices during midterm elections. Even though parenthetically their entire policy goal was get rid of fossil fuels, which means you want the price to go up so people can't afford it. It was a very cynical kind of move. They did it in a way that degraded the facilities. So, let's say we're at about 4 million barrels a day. We can get out of that thing. We have 400 million in there. We should have over 700 million. We could have easily filled it up. I mean, it was a perfect time when you're talking about $50 barrel oil, $60 barrel of oil. Now,

take and and and can I do the basic arithmetic of 4 million a day, 400 million in the reserve, a 100 days of oil, but but that's not actually if we're talking about like relieving price pressure. You could you could trickle it out over a year and have one 20 or one quarter of the effect. But just think about $100 million a day. 100 million barrels a day is roughly the global market.

Okay. Okay.

So, so 4 million is just that's its maximum capacity. It's kind of an analogy to batteries. We're talking about batteries. So, there's a certain amount like with a battery. If you hear there's a four g there's a 1 gawatt battery installation. That means that's the it usually means there's 1 gawatt for 4 hours. But if you wanted to do half a gigawatt, then you could do 8 hours. Right? It's the same deal with this. But keep in mind this is not 100 days of US oil demand. And by the way, for the refinery reasons, we can't just supply it all with our SPR. It's just the maximum output is but you know 4 million barrels a day is something we're talking that's 1/5if of what's flowing through the straight of Hormoo. So yeah, it's

it's a thing. But but yeah, you can think of Yeah, maybe we'd be willing to do 1 to 2 million barrels a day from ours. Now, interestingly, the International Energy Agency, we are part of the International Energy Agency Reserve Program. So, we have about 400, but they have about 1.4 400 million. They have 1.4 billion. So, we have allies around the world that can also release this oil. So, maybe we could get 1 to 2 million from them. Now, last at least last I checked the news, they hadn't agreed to do this because they don't think it's an emergency. Sure.

But that's what it's there for. Yeah. So, notice the pattern is

at what point would they think it's an emergency? I don't know. I mean, and we, you know, we can put pressure on them. I I think I think some of these determinations have to be made in conjunction with the military determinations. You can't make them in isolation because if you think about what's the military objective, how close are we to that? How or how close are we at least to opening this up via high security and financially backed convoys? Then you can think about the timetable here. If you think about well, the straight of Hormu is going to be closed for five years. Let's just get used to being poor.

Black bill.

No, I mean this is this is people don't get oil. Like oil is there's a reason why I focus a lot of my life on oil. Like there is nothing more there's no material in the world of energy that is more valuable than oil because oil is just so unique in terms of it has this very high energy density and portability and there there's nothing like it. I mean nuclear has high

plutonium.

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't have the same portability.

We're going to be rich. have energy too cheap to meter in 5 years. I talked to a lot of nuclear founders.

Well, look, I love nuclear as much as anyway. They don't they don't even have a portability solution though for the near future unless you're talking about aircraft carrier or an icebreaker or something like that. So, I'm just saying the world runs on mobility and oil is ideal for mobility. So,

affordability in the sense of like using nuclear to actually power trade and commerce and moving ships around. Even if you can power the grid, you will be poor because you will not be able to trade. Yeah, trade is really important. Trade

is really important.

Trade is trade and well and also it's within the country too. We don't have the nuclear trucks to move things around. Sure. Sure.

Yeah. Obviously, you want super cheap electricity and you want super

cheap transport fuel and for and and we want to see if we can electrify some of this stuff. Yeah.

If you can do it cost effectively. It's just

some people working on like electric bulldozers for example. It's very hard. And

and by the way, guess what? You need a lot of oil to even get that whole supply chain started because you need the mine. Yep. So anyway, bottom line, yes, I I meant that thing about we can all be poor very seriously.

Very seriously. So we have, if you look at the spare capacity, I think that's all of them. So we have the IE the rest of the IEA, we have ours,

and then to my knowledge, we have Saudi/UAE, them using spare capacity and them piping it

where they can. So maybe combined we're talking about 6 million a day

if you use all of those. I mean, somebody could imagine 10 million a day. And all of these have time particularly the emergency reserve things. These all like the at least the Saudi one is your sort of you have a deposit a big deposit here. It's just you have a small reserve. So you can't do this forever. And of course there's a risk of if you deplete the SPR more what if you really really need it

in the future. And then there's a bunch of nearer term stuff that you can do. And some of which I like just because it could be done anyway. So number one to piss a whole bunch of people off is let's stop using this Jones Act. Do you know what this Jones Act thing is?

I've heard of it, but explain.

So, the Jones Act is a set of restrictions that say that you can only transport things among ports in the United States if you have everything is basically American. So, it's owned by an American. It's run I don't know all the it has all basically American ship, American crew. Yes.

Yes. So it's it's it leads to all these crazy crazy things like we end up importing things from like instead of importing it from one part of the country to another you end up importing it from some really far away place. It it leads to that kind of thing.

But in this case in particular this this as Californians we should all recognize this. We don't have oil being piped into California. So we want very efficient maritime transportation. And if you suspend the Jones Act, then you can get more efficient transportation, which means we can at least have lower prices here and we can have less of a price shock.

But in general, I want people to get used to having no Jones Act because I want there to be no Jones Act. So that's that's a good thing to do. Uh my favorite idea here

and the the I imagine there's a bunch of powerful lobbies that will fight and kill for the Jones Act because there's entire industry built around uh

yeah the idea that we can only have a good ship building industry. I don't know what people think is happening with our shipping like our ship building industry is not going as well as other people.

It didn't exactly work.

Yeah. I mean it worked to protect certain people's

I'm just saying if you look at American ship building it's it certainly has allowed us to be competitive on on a global stage

the ship builders would say we're early but I take your point

early but you've seen but I'm just saying like how many decades of declines

yeah okay well

you need

I I think John's like

it's like it's like a smiling curve like churn it goes down and then goes back up

so that's the bullcase

that's that's the Uh, all right. Well, yes,

it's definitely not going to help us in your term.

So, so the can here's the most interesting thing which I is a pet issue of mine because we're we're like this administration I should say does a lot of good stuff on energy. I say that I you know I'm in a fortunate position where I get a lot of people ask for advice and stuff like that. And I feel like one of my jobs is to tell people things they're not doing. A lot of things they'll just do right on their own. But but Canada is not one of those things right now. We are just absolutely sleeping on Canada as an opportunity. So Canada has no people and infinite resources and is really friendly.

Yeah.

So you they have these oil sands. You know what these things are?

No. Explain.

So So they're just like these deposits of oil. It's like nature basically committed an oil spill is the way to think of it. So all these oil sands for years they were not very useful.

They weren't viable because it's not just you drill down, black gold comes up. It's like buried in the sands. Need to be

there are different kinds of things. So you can mine it out directly or you can do what's called insitu which is you heat it up underground.

Oh and it liquefies.

In any case we

they have just this unbelievable oil seep. They have way more oil deposits than we do. Way more oil reserves but they have on the order of a third of the production and in part because they have absolutely terrible policies which are their fault but in part we have had terrible policies including getting rid of the Keystone XL pipeline and this kind of thing. So, but if you just think of Canada, it's just we should be so they have water. I mean, they get no people, onetenth the population, infinite raw materials. They got everything. They got timber, they got as natural gas, they got oil. Like, and we're talking about Venezuela. They're a friendly country, right? They got smart people there. They're they haven't been driven out of the country because they're afraid of getting killed by Chavez or Maduro or whatever. So, this is an opportunity to say, "Hey,

Canada, let's work. Let's have a task force. you guys are at a low in terms of we don't have pipelines but we can do rail at least we can do rail maybe trucks but at least rail rail transport from Canada are really low right now so let's have an initiative where maybe you bring a couple hundred thousand uh depending on your expectations maybe we can add a couple hundred thousand barrels a day so that's one that excites me because I want to be like the US Canada superpower thing is this huge opportunity that we're sleeping on because of the idea of oh we should only be doing it in quote America But this is just, by the way, unbelievable. I think they have the best uranium in the world.

It's uh

maple syrup's out there.

Yeah. I don't have a Canadian personality, but I love that place.

No, strategically that makes sense.

Strategically, and they're very friendly.

They're very friendly.

Maybe we should be friendlier.

Yes. No, no, we should. And we have trade agreements coming up. So, there's that. The other thing is we have some, you know, we can increase capacity here, as I mentioned, depending on prices going up. So, there's that. But that might be a couple hundred thousand barrels a day.

But so high level open the straight of Hormuz. That's the only thing that really works. Then you can talk about Saudi M East spare capacity, our emergency capacity and IEA emergency capacity. And then below that you have Canada Jones Act and US.

That's great.

Uh production.

That's a really really thorough list. Thank you. I appreciate that. Anything else, Jordy?

What are you uh what are you going to be paying attention to most closely? Do you watch price chart? Is that important to you?

Well, it's important. I mean, I I'm It's weird. I work with I I run like a kind of a network of energy executives, but I'm focused on the policy side of things. So, I'm often laughably out of touch. I mean, I know in general within $10 usually what it is,

but I as a policy I don't I don't invest in energy

because you're looking at longer term five years,

but but also like I'm deliberately avoiding exposure to the commercial part of it.

You want to be independent. Yeah, I would I want to be independent. So, yeah, I'm not but

at the moment, yes, I am looking I I am looking at the prices, but but I'm I don't do predictions, but I'm just saying I think there's a service right now in just laying out the options for people cuz even in the government, I mean, you know, not everyone has a lot of expertise in oil. And this is the kind of thing where

Yeah, it's kind of why I think you texted me this morning. I mean, sometimes you need to know sometimes you need to know about oil today and sometimes you don't. But when you need to know, you need to

you know me.

You really need to know.

Yeah. Well, it seems like whether you're in the business community or just, you know, humanitarian, uh, everyone should be rooting for a swift and peaceful resolution.

Yeah. Do do you have any insight, this might be totally out of your wheelhouse, but insight into how, uh, how people running businesses that are most impacted by fluctuations in oil prices? Like, are they were they have they been actively hedging over the last couple weeks? are they doing like how how do you run your business when your input costs can go up dramatically potentially at a much higher rate than you can adjust your own prices?

I mean you just in general these guys are sophisticated I think within the bounds of of doing it. I don't think you can hedge indefinitely for this big a price

kind of differential like somebody's going to say. I mean, but it's it's also you think about there's on the consumer side, but on the production side is is even more dramatic if you just look at the margins of these guys. I mean, the oil industry is just just fascinating. I mean, I just remember anecdotally when I I came out with my first major book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels in 2014. Even I could see speaking engagements correlated to these prices because you had a big price crash around them. And then you think, wow, like

we don't need we don't need Alex.

Yeah. Variable variable. Yeah, it might be nice to keep the troops motivated, but you know, they'd probably rather be employed than, but it it's it's a hard it's a hard business. And one of these things is you just the people who survive have a very strong

constitution and and they they they can manage the risk very very uh well. Well, I was talking with a bunch of these these guys and actually people we know in common and like some of the better ones, some of the two of the young superstars in in the industry, they're just saying like like we love the chaos

cuz we can just No, we can handle it like when the prices go down.

Sure.

Cuz that that's you think about what they've been dealing with over the last year. They've increased production, prices have gone down,

and and you look at this this administration is very focused, I would say too much focused on having prices go low. Like this is this is one of the variables here is although the administration I don't think was fully was not fully prepared for this situation in general they are maniacal about prices going low like Trump in his mind has a very strong

focus on $50 a barrel which I think he feels like that's always the perfect price for oil

and the people in the oil industry say wait a second like we've had inflation of everything else why does our one product have to stay at $50 and that's part of the appeal of Venezuela rightly or wrongly because it's not going to make a big difference soon but it's like How do we keep oil prices

low? But that's that's hard to be in that industry as a consumer

as as a as a producer rather and it's hard as a consumer. So they have financial instruments but the main thing is you just you need to you need to just have the flexibility in your business in your business model and it's it's oil is again it's the most valuable material in the world of energy which is why everyone uses it but is also why it's so inelastic and you have these price fluctuations. So you just need to come to terms with that or somebody needs to figure out something better. But it's it's really hard. And of course, policy-wise, we can have better policy to make it more stable. But it's still that thing where it's so valuable that guess what? You get a little extra demand, a little less supply. Price goes up a lot. It's it's it's different than other things which you can substitute for much more rapidly.

You're out of the job when we build the Dyson sphere.

Oh man, I got I'm I'm working on this AI thought leader thing we talked about last time. So, uh I got

I got plenty to do.

We'll cross that bridge when we

I got plenty to do with my time. Thank you.

As long as we need energy, you you'll be doing just fine.

All right, guys.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. And let me also tell