Jordan Schneider on China's $9K EVs, astroturfed data center opposition, DeepSeek's Liang Wenfeng, and LARP rockets

Speaker 2: Jordan, how are you doing? I'm good. Welcome back.

Speaker 1: You guys are rich now. That was a detailed deep dive into the

Speaker 2: It's like he knows a little bit too much. Hey.

Speaker 3: We were We were off. We were off during car week.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: So we missed a lot of car content.

Speaker 2: There's a ton of car news. Ton of car news. Is there any relevant car news coming out of China or is it just the relentless Yeah.

Speaker 3: There techno is. Capitalism. I want pull up this pull up this video. Want this. It's only fourteen seconds. It'll be worth your time. And I I expect you've already written like, you know, 20,000 words.

Speaker 1: Pull up

Speaker 3: pull up this video.

Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. Let's do it.

Speaker 3: This is a

Speaker 2: yeah. I know this video.

Speaker 3: This is boya, a Chinese doing the Bamarjera loop

Speaker 1: Yep. Thing? Yep. This is like a jackass

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Move. Right?

Speaker 2: This is amazing. Wow.

Speaker 3: Yeah. They did it.

Speaker 1: See, here's the here's the thing with the Bugatti guy. Okay. Right? Is like, the cars are just better. Like, it takes so much more engineering energy. Mean, like, the zero to six, this is not my thing. But like the zero

Speaker 3: You're to six the times EVs are just better?

Speaker 1: I think they just they just basically like yeah. Maybe it

Speaker 2: But So Maybe But but his point was that, yes, a digital your Apple Watch will always tell you the time more accurately. A thousand years in the future it's going to tell the time more accurately than a Rolex or a Patek Philippe. But people still buy the luxury watches because they enjoy the machinery, the craftsmanship, the heritage, the lineage, those things. So that's what he's describing, which I think he's correct about. But I I I'm not going to debate that I mean, maybe as a

Speaker 1: better the is like like your watch can't kill you. Right? And when we get to the point where it's like, okay, the most dangerous thing you're doing is driving this car where you can take a thing which will absolutely not get you killed because it's like full self driving electric whatever. I think the calculus starts to change. And then, yeah, sure. Maybe you like it's like a thing you show to your friends in the garage and you take it on the track or something. And it just super luxury good. But

Speaker 3: Yeah. I've said it on the show a bunch. I I think the the the future of being a car enthusiast is like a lot more time on the track. Track focused. Yeah. And people will just opt in to the the danger of driving this moving, you know, vehicle Yeah. That that that can kill you, but they're gonna opt into it in a more controlled environment.

Speaker 2: There was a lot of FUD around the Model s Plaid because it's not level five self driving. There is a there is a steering wheel, obviously, and pedals. You can drive it. Goes zero to 60 in two seconds. And if you're on old tires, you can really spin that thing around and they resell for 60 k now. So they're starting to get in the price point of maybe a reckless teenager type. And there was there was some fear mongering around, oh, well, we're going to have a lot of crazy Teslas wrapped around trees like Hellcats and Corvettes of of old, you know, the the classic, you know, college football player gets a fancy sports car, drives it too aggressively, crashes. But I haven't seen any data about EVs actually being more dangerous even though in theory the raw performance metrics should be somewhat endangering. But again, there are so many different electronic systems for traction control and whatnot that people just don't really turn off that you wind up with a more stable car. So I don't know. Anything else happening in China on the EV front you've been tracking?

Speaker 1: Cars? Look, they're really cheap. That's just the crazy thing. And like, yes, they're subsidized And yes, they need to export them, but like, it's just wild Yeah. To, you know, have a $9,000 car, which feels exactly like a $35,000 one.

Speaker 3: Yeah. That's crazy.

Speaker 1: And it has like the

Speaker 3: And that's the that's a price in China.

Speaker 1: And even abroad. I mean, you know, the the you're starting to see tariffs on all these on all these cars in in Europe and of course, they're like pretty much banned in The US. But for the countries that aren't, I mean, is just it's like a no brainer if you're in Malaysia or in Indonesia or, you know, any country who hasn't decided that they need to preserve their domestic car industry. It's like a huge consumer boon to have access to an automobile which is like, you know, one third of the price with the same or if not better quality. I mean, they break less too. That's the cool thing. Like, you don't have to repair them because there's not a

Speaker 2: lot of

Speaker 1: stuff in it.

Speaker 2: The EVs.

Speaker 7: You don't

Speaker 2: have to

Speaker 1: go to my like Swiss car, you know? Yeah. People were people were

Speaker 2: really worried about the easy to push.

Speaker 3: Love how little you know about cars.

Speaker 2: But We're gonna take

Speaker 3: you to the track, Jordan. We're we're taking you to the track and we're gonna force you to get in

Speaker 1: Wait. Who's this like 34 year old? Why why did they let EV guy run Bugatti? I thought this is like Who's this guy? Has he been on TBPN or are we friends with him? No. We we We'll we'll we'll hopefully get him

Speaker 3: on the show. But I but No. I think he's doing an exceptional exceptional.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No. He's been doing well.

Speaker 3: He's he's able to I I feel like he fully represents He Car enthusiasts feel very represented by his leadership and Mhmm. And the things that he's saying. And so I've been

Speaker 2: And at his previous company, he created the Rimaz Navara, which was the like the first EV hyper car. So it was like over $1,000,000 and zero to 60, even faster than a Model s Plaid and all this crazy stuff.

Speaker 1: Wait. So he's promising not to do the EV thing to Bugatti or they brought him in to bring in the batteries? No. No. No. No.

Speaker 2: He has EV lineage but he has recognized that what The error of his ways. Yeah. Just that just that the market's bifurcating and he'd say he wants to go rollback.

Speaker 3: At the time, if he wanted to break if he wanted to break breakthrough

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Into the industry, going and building an EV hypercar made sense. Yeah. I think he comes has the roots of somebody who's just a, you know Yeah. Internal combustion enthusiast. Oh, well.

Speaker 1: Okay. Let's talk about something I know maybe like a little bit about.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Data centers. So I've seen online that people don't like them, but I recently learned that that is 100% astroturfed by China. And in fact, Americans love data centers and they have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the wolf in sheep's clothing over in China. Is this true?

Speaker 1: What did Trump say today? Let data rain?

Speaker 2: It's a good good line.

Speaker 1: Is that an MLK quote?

Speaker 2: I'm just just trying to

Speaker 1: make sure. Look, it's ridiculous. I think there are completely reasonable reasons for lots of Americans to be upset about these things, which is not to say that I agree with them. Yeah. But they are a physical manifestation of companies which, you know, are talking about unemploying them Yeah. Or just like changing their lives Sure. And letting their kids cheat on their homework. Yeah. And whatever the case may be, there there was no like when when, you know, TikTok and Facebook and Instagram were like reshaping America. There was no thing you could go out to like protest and like stand in your city council and say we stand against this. So, you know, setting aside the water stuff, the the power stuff, the fact that they're ugly, the fact that they buzz, the fact that they pollute if the gas tire revises turn on, like, you don't need a foreign Intrinsic country to like do it. And by the way, the funniest thing about all of this is like the evidence that people are pointing towards is this one OpenAI report where they like caught these influencers basically, you know, using a VPN and using ChatGPT to generate images Saying data centers suck. Those things got like three likes each.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like 200

Speaker 1: attempts or something. So so there's a there's a whole lot of circumstantial evidence of like reasons why ordinary Americans might not be excited about this. A whole lot of evidence, by the way, like years and years in the making of the Chinese government being extremely bad at doing foreign social media campaigns in The US. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2: Then it's

Speaker 1: sort of like, they're just, you know, you can I wrote I wrote the thing at this is my first ever I taught myself Python to do this article, like, from 2019? Oh, wait. Chinese China sucks at influence operations because Twitter back when it was Twitter. Chat TBP only released like three tweets. Back when Twitter took down these bot networks, they would release all tweets and so you could actually see like the average likes and when they were sending out. There was this great graph I made of when they were when the tweets were going out and it lined up exactly with like Beijing work hours and there was a nap time from like one to 3PM. Nap time. Yeah. Everyone has nap time. Everyone has

Speaker 2: nap time.

Speaker 1: Even like the nine nine six companies. Learn Python in

Speaker 2: 2019. You're really like the Japanese soldier on the last island. Just like, you don't know what's coming.

Speaker 1: I thought it's what I needed to do to

Speaker 2: I get a fell for the meme, learned to

Speaker 3: code. Yeah. It is it is interesting sort of protective mechanism that like gaining real influence on social media platforms Yeah. Is very very hard. Yeah. There's very very smart founder CEOs that their entire job is to like solve problems. Yeah. And if you gave them like if you said, I will give you a $100,000,000 if you can make a viral x post in the next twenty four hours

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: They would not be able to

Speaker 2: do it. Yeah. It's hard.

Speaker 3: Because it's just like something Yeah. In in their they just Is this the post?

Speaker 2: Tweets per Is

Speaker 1: it just they just you know, big nap time. You get get your KPIs in at 9PM and then you just kind of hang out.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very very standard. I love it. The the the the Chinese media operation is pointing its sights on Dario Amade. Is that correct? Take us through this.

Speaker 1: Let me let me pick up on something that Please. That Jordan just Jordy just pointed to you about, like, it's hard to actually make things that are tripping and entertaining. There you guys are in Hollywood. Right? There is this revolution Wow. Happening in the the docks.

Speaker 3: How dare you? How dare you, Jordan? Sitting over there

Speaker 1: I like Hollywood. I love Hollywood.

Speaker 3: Sitting over there in DC, doxing

Speaker 1: Doxing New York City.

Speaker 2: Which coast he's on.

Speaker 3: Doxing data center podcasters.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: Anyways, continue.

Speaker 1: The So the the Chinese kind of media ecosystem, both short video as well as its YouTube, Billy Billy has had a flood of Chinese AI videos. And, you know, this is not what I think it it it there's an aspect of it which is dystopian, but there's an aspect of it which I think is is extremely encouraging. The because there are it's it's kind of like what happened to music, I think, in the, you know, nineties and two thousands and twenty tens, where the barrier to entry to create something has gone way down. And that means that there are more people doing it. But also like, okay, you have to distinguish yourself in other ways. Like the the videos that are getting traction have really strong scripts, have scripts that would have never been made by like the

Speaker 7: sort of

Speaker 1: broader Chinese ecosystem. You know, they they're they're more responsive to contemporary issues. They haven't quite been censored yet. You know, there are sorts of like visuals that CGI would take you, you know, $50,000,000 and like a data center in The Philippines to do Yeah. That now one person can can generate for like $5.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And the sort of this is not something I think we've seen on on YouTube yet or on kind of like Western short form, and I don't know if that's like the Chinese audience being more open to it, but engaging with this stuff in an with an open mind, it is like really cool to see a whole universe of person who would have never got, you know, a $5,000,000 thing greenlit. All of a sudden, taking the script they they've had on their hard drive for a while. The models really only in the past month being able to sort of like cross the threshold of being exciting and useful and then you you just you're watching more creators make their art and I'm kind of happy by it. I'm kind of

Speaker 2: I'm last year, Dwarkesh went to China and wrote about it and the funny piece that I took away from that was the biggest like bombshell realization was that he identified that China does not have a Joe Rogan and this is probably like a free speech thing but there's but it's funny because like he's a podcaster, I'm a podcaster and so like that's what we fixate on. But do you think there's any traction on more power law commentators? Like, the the way he formulated like what a Joe Rogan of China would look like is like someone who just, you know, free form has conversations and basically gives takes about like whatever is happening the day of. They doesn't he he was not able to like instantly identify a single person where a household name, not necessarily an authority, not necessarily loved by everyone, but at least opining on everything as it happens. And I mean, it's probably has this the Occam's razor answer is probably the correct one, but I was just wondering if there was any progress there.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the answer is no. Like, who's who gets to comment on the news of the day? The party.

Speaker 2: The party.

Speaker 1: And skate media. Look, I I think there was a real flowering of like Chinese blogging ecosystem, people with commentary accounts who are very smart, funny and engaging in the two thousands and early twenty tens. Mhmm. And all those accounts got shut down or they, you know, cooled off a lot. Mhmm. I think there are like like thought leaders of sorts, like people do talk shows, but they're kind of like philosophers. Yeah. Or you're just you're you're you're you're doing cultural mindset. Issues

Speaker 3: Yeah. Mindset influencers.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Hitting mind.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, like you need to

Speaker 3: Are there any are there any, like, you know, Joe Rogan, I think, like, you know, what is it? 60% of the content is UFOs? Has anyone kind of carved out, like, the UFO niche in China?

Speaker 1: I don't know. Back to you on that? Yeah. I think look, there there's there's there's sort of one lane of conspiracy theory which is like is allowed to exist and it's the Han supremacy conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: So there's this idea that like the Qing dynasty, which was the Manchus who came in in the sixteen hundreds, like like was illegitimate from the beginning because like Han people should never be oppressed by foreigners. You know, so that is the sort of conspiracy which is like which is like allowed to have legs on the Internet. Yeah. It isn't like totally taken down because like we can't offend our like, you know, equivalent equivalent of like MAGA bros or whatever Yeah. Yeah. For the Han race. But other than that, you know, it's just the the the thing about a Joe Rogan is you have to be like discordant. Sure. Like, you need to like tell people that something is fundamentally wrong and you kind of have an answer Mhmm. And like you gotta like part of the shtick is being like politicians are full of shit and he was sort of into Bernie back in the day. Yeah. Was into Trump when it like wasn't cool. Right?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Contrarianism. Contrarianism.

Speaker 1: Yeah. You can't you can't be like like the the I mean, what even can you be contrarian about? Like that's like Here's the thing.

Speaker 3: Okay. Mhmm.

Speaker 1: Okay. Coming back to AI. Liang Wanfeng. Right? He, super contrarian dude, he was not public about it. Or he was public about it. He did like three interviews over the course of five years. Basically, he's been quiet. This is the CEO of Deepszewski. Yeah. And then there was this

Speaker 2: Leaked transcript.

Speaker 1: Leaked transcript. Yep. Which again, he did not want to have come out

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: Where he was, you know, a very kind of global mindset, thinking about open source, helping humanity. He was really transparent about the fact that he was using stolen NVIDIA chips, but that's the sort of public voice which is extremely rare to come across in Chinese discourse. Why can he do it? By the way, he wasn't even doing it. He was speaking in what he thought was privately. Yeah. And then he was so pissed that he pulled his IPO. He's like, sorry guys, you you one of you guys leaked this and none of you are getting none of your guys are getting to be my Kevin Durant. Right? You know, he got to do it because he's a billionaire many times over. He's part of like a lead, you know, he's like part of the national team. He's creating something which is really important for the country. And even at that level, he has been conditioned to not want to sort of make his case openly and in public for the view that he has about the way society and the world should interact with technology. So if even at that level with, you know, with that much like plot armor, you're not feeling like you can do you can do this sort of thing. It's, you know, it trickles down further into the broader competitive ecosystem.

Speaker 3: What kind of status games are young people in China that might be emerging from the university system? You know, do they want to go work for big tech companies? Do they wanna work in manufacturing? Do they wanna start startups? Like, what is What kind of games are are are they playing?

Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna ask me what car they're they're buying. I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 3: Well, comes later. That

Speaker 1: that comes later. You know, there is there is polling. I mean, like people do polls about like, you know, who gets to recruit the most Ching Kwa graduates. The list is not surprising. Like the the top labs, ByteDance, Huawei pay the most. You know, they work you really hard, but I think there's sort of there was this like moment I think in the second half of the '20 twins when entrepreneurship was the cool thing. And now it's, you know, the the the pendulum has definitely swung back towards Did you? Working at big firms. Oh, one more funny thing on this. So apparently, the the PLA, so the the Chinese army, the there's they've they've been able to raise their standards over the years and they've been getting better crop of Yeah. Of talent, including someone's including some from top universities just because Yeah. Like, the job market is so rough. I mean, they stopped

Speaker 2: Oh, interesting because the job market is tough. Because I I I talked to a friend who had spent a lot of time in China and he said that like the the major difference that he saw between The US and China was that the the government is able to hire super top performers, but it's because they can force them to join. But this is because you're saying it's more of like a job market dynamic?

Speaker 1: I don't think I don't know who's getting forced into Okay. Making these I think it's still like, you know, it's Yeah. It's it's downstream of look, youth unemployment was like 25% Mhmm. Three or four years ago, and then the Chinese government stopped reporting

Speaker 2: it. Oh.

Speaker 1: So like, look, You know, people will take work where they where they can get it and I think the promise like, also, there's data on like or the the government reports how many people take the civil service exam every year. That's been rising pretty consistently over time. So to see that now like bleed into police and the military is a is a interesting I think side of the times because those are not high paying careers. Just ones that have more stability. Right?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Back to Liang Linfeng, founder of DeepSeek. His his leaked transcript, it felt like there were a lot of interesting thought provoking ideas in there that some of which I agree with. But it also felt a little bit like the 2025 AI lab leader playbook that is now facing backlash where he's talking about, you know, sort of sci fi scenarios, jobs, and all these different mechanics that run some risk. Do you think that that has do you think he's aware of the backlash in The United States to that type of rhetoric? Or do you think that he thinks that China's somehow resilient to it?

Speaker 1: Well, here's the interesting thing with Liang Wenfeng. He's kind of like Demis and DeepMind Yeah. If DeepMind never sold. Sure. So, you know, he is really rich. Yeah. He runs this like giant Jane Street. Yeah. Like quant thing quant hedge funds which is which spits off money.

Speaker 2: Mhmm.

Speaker 1: He's able to basically fund this himself. He's told his investors, I'm not here to make a profit. I'm here to make AGI. Mhmm. And like, look, I'm gonna have these weird ideas and try to just do cool science and I'm going to make this bet which is very different from the one that the Western French labs have which is that like I need to have a business to throw off cash in order to keep doing it. And I think like, you know, what was what was the striking thing in there? He's like, look, we're not going to have perverse incentives because we're going to keep our headcount really small and we're going to keep doing this we're going to do our the best we can to like keep doing fundamental breakthrough science and hope things go well. So that more than his, you know, what's going to happen in 2050 things, were were was was my takeaway. It's like he's the one player in this ecosystem who's who's prioritizing, keeping his sort of like independence and research direction and not sort of being tied to a product roadmap or to a broader AI, you know, a compute provider in China or like an Alibaba or Tencent, But he just like wants to be weird and do do his own thing. And I think that's really cool.

Speaker 2: That's interesting. Where do you think DeepSea will be getting chips in the next couple of years? Is that they're just going to keep building on NVIDIA?

Speaker 1: So importantly, there is this ratio between The US NVIDIA US NVIDIA, jalapeno, whatever broader, like TSMC ecosystem and TSMC, Samsung, Intel ecosystem

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 1: And the Chinese ecosystem. Yep. And there is capacity like 15 to one, twelve to one, and that's the thing that you can project out pretty clearly just kind of like doing a little doing some equations from like how much how much CapEx is being spent, how many how much equipment is being acquired, like yield rates, what have you. So where is he getting the chips? As much Nvidia as he can get, probably. But I the the sort of larger takeaway with the Chinese and Western ecosystems is that the Western one is way better capitalized and has way more straightforward access to chips, is basically an order of magnitude better in over the next like at least five years. So Mhmm. It's going to be rough sledding for them and look, if you I don't know how much you guys time you guys have spent with the Chinese AI IPOs, but they're making like $500,000,000 Yeah. Or like a billion dollars and it's cute. But if these are this is not 3 30 this is not 30,000,000,000,000. Right? Yeah. Or or or even if or even 10 or even $10,000,000,000. The reason of the reason the the reason that's the case is because they're not on the frontier of the technology, so they can't charge a premium and they're compute constrained.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Now, look, we we've got this interesting new model where TLM. Kimi is trying to license to its be able to sort of leverage compute in the West to make money like TBD on whether the Trump administration is going to be cool with that as a going concern going forward. But if all the Chinese firms have is access to Chinese chips, it's going to be really difficult to make a lot of money and to keep paying for more chips in the way that the western labs have been able to like really mobilize the entire global financial system to

Speaker 2: You're talking about Moonshot potentially going to Microsoft and Amazon and offering their models which are open source but served and they would want to rev share based on whatever sells, right? Got it. Exactly. Jordan, you had a question.

Speaker 3: Is there any evidence of, individuals in China that are outspoken, saying that China is not doing enough to invest or be competitive in AI. Like anyone that's saying, like, the government like, if we don't have private or, you know, if we don't have companies that can that can operate like a Jensen, right, just, sprinkling billions of dollars everywhere throughout the economy that we need the government to actually, you know, participate in that way?

Speaker 1: No. I mean, I think the government already is. So you've you've started to see more and more state money coming into these companies' cap tables. Like, you know, if you're a CEO, it's a bit of a it's a bit of a double edged sword, right? Where on the one hand, you just want to be able to run your business and not have this like guy from an SOE saying like, hey, we think you should spend your time doing this instead of that. But you know, subsidies subsidies are always nice. Like the the the Chinese government, maybe fifteen plus years ago waked up woke up to this idea that it needed to invest really substantially in the semiconductor ecosystem. And then they've done that for better, for worse. We're starting to see real results come out of the likes of CXMT and SMIK and Huawei, of course. Now on the lab side, so like the or like the demand side for those chips, that's something which has only really started to happen over the past six months or so and look, the the scale of it is going to be very different than the amount of money that Microsoft and Amazon and Google and OpenAI and Anthropic can do to sort of like pre commit to buy these chips going forward. So I don't know. Well, excited excited to continue following that story for you, Jordan.

Speaker 3: Is there any evidence that there's been a sort of deflock deflock movement in China? I

Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2: Oh, you don't know about deflock?

Speaker 3: On like on Instagram on Instagram, there's videos that will have like 200,000 likes of somebody demonstrating the most efficient ways

Speaker 2: to take out. Quickly to level set. Flock Safety is an American startup that sells essentially CCTV cameras to police forces that then go into a database, get image recognized. And so police officer can type in a license plate and see where that car has been. There's been a few instances of abuse where police officers have been checking on the movements And of their ex wives so that's caused a lot of backlash that that that kind of created the original media firestorm. But now it has really gained ground on social media and as a result there's protests and people actually going out into the real world and and destroying the cameras with like buzzsaws to to get them out of their communities because they really don't like them.

Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've sort of like emotionally surrendered to the Panopticon years ago.

Speaker 2: Very

Speaker 1: It's like, you know, they're watching me. It's okay. What am I gonna do about it? The Tyler Cowen has this take, right? Where you should be bullish on places that have a public safety problem today because the cost of dealing with petty crime is just gonna go down because there's exactly stuff like

Speaker 2: this So like New where York in the seventies and eighties. Like it became we're

Speaker 1: gonna have 10 x police officers everywhere. And you don't even need to be good at being a police officer. You just have to like show up and say, hey, I got you on I caught you on camera like doing this bad thing.

Speaker 2: So We have a picture

Speaker 7: of

Speaker 2: you doing.

Speaker 1: I mean coming back to cars at the beginning, like I don't think speeding is good. Would like people to be caught when they speed.

Speaker 2: Where's the boo?

Speaker 1: So they stop speeding.

Speaker 2: Where's the boo?

Speaker 3: No. I think I think No. I agree with you. That's generally

Speaker 1: Keep it

Speaker 2: on the track.

Speaker 1: If your car is worth more than a $150,000 and you

Speaker 2: get You're allowed to speed up for

Speaker 1: $50 a year for, you know, your speeding pass Ticket clinic. If that's the country you want

Speaker 2: to live in, John. You know that that's actually what happens. People with really nice cars, they they they get specific lawyers that get them out of every ticket so that they never need to deal with them. And then they don't get caught speeding that often. If you got caught every With single

Speaker 3: speed cameras, is there something like eleven ninety nine foundation

Speaker 2: Oh, for that where you

Speaker 3: get like a whole livery around your car that

Speaker 2: Maybe a stable coin that you could stake and get a bunch of money flowing.

Speaker 3: The thing do you are you tracking anything? You're probably not, but I'm just curious. I've I've been getting Instagram ads for like consumer eVTOL. Just basically like flying drones that you can sit in as a human. They're selling them for like a $100,000 now. It's a jet ski for the skies. Okay. See, I can't tell if I can't

Speaker 1: tell if Algorithms got you guys bad. They saw that acquisition price. They're like, let's just send Jordan some toys. Toys. Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2: my boy's been buying toys. He's got so many surfboards.

Speaker 3: I'm There was a

Speaker 1: question there. Sorry.

Speaker 3: The question the question is like, are flying cars gonna like we we just We saw the just saw saw the humanoid robot game which everyone is sort of like, you know, some people are laughing at because the robots run really fast and they explode. And other people are like, woah. That's actually like really impressive pace and these things seem pretty capable, faster than Usain Bolt.

Speaker 1: What's the market for the EV tools besides like going to the Hamptons? I mean, you just No.

Speaker 3: I mean, this is

Speaker 1: is like the only point. Right?

Speaker 3: Yeah. But that is extremely significant. Like, if If

Speaker 1: you live in Los Angeles.

Speaker 3: So I mean, there's a lot there's a lot of I mean, DC, I I I last time I was in DC, we had a two mile ish drive and it was traffic. There was so much traffic, it took like forty minutes.

Speaker 1: I was like, you live like this? But

Speaker 3: anyways, I I do think that I'm I've seen enough videos now that basically are showing that flying cars are here. They may not be safe enough.

Speaker 1: You think LeBron's gonna take it to Philadelphia? Isn't he?

Speaker 2: I thought I thought he was doing helicopter transport.

Speaker 1: Yeah. But why take an helicopter when you could take a EV toll?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean the hot take on on flying cars is that we've had them for a long time. They're just expensive. They're just called helicopters.

Speaker 3: So pull up pull up this video right now.

Speaker 2: But the idea is democratizing the

Speaker 3: You can you can just buy this for a $120,000.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Know. You can buy

Speaker 1: this this We

Speaker 2: we made commercial air travel very safe. So why not?

Speaker 3: Here we go. You can buy this right now for a $120,000.

Speaker 1: When are you guys gonna livestream from a EV toll? Can we get a show?

Speaker 2: Is this electric?

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 1: Wow. How long can it go? Can it

Speaker 2: like But really fun.

Speaker 3: They're already using them for agriculture

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: Like spraying crops.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: Why do I need a person though in it?

Speaker 3: Yeah. You Yeah. They're they're they're some of them you can most of them I think can be remembered.

Speaker 2: The only reason you need a person in there is if the person is moving like traveling from one place to another. Yeah. And people pay a lot. Opportunity costs are high. And so if they can get, you know, it would be an hour drive but it's ten minutes in the eVTOL, That's a bullish thing. Last question. Tell me about the elite Rocket Force in China. Are seeking public tips on procurement violations. I don't even know what the Rocket Force is. So break it down. Tell me what's happening.

Speaker 1: Okay. So rocket force. This is actually a Soviet invention. So, you know, air force Yeah. AV

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Army, marines. The Soviets were like, okay, rockets. Okay. Big deal. Yeah. We definitely gonna need to

Speaker 2: blow up The cavalry.

Speaker 1: Gonna need them to, you know, blow up America, so we're gonna have a rocket force.

Speaker 2: Okay. Then

Speaker 1: China made their own a few years ago. You know, we we came back with our space force. I think I'm not sure which one's cooler to have a rocket force. But basically, this is like been a debate for a while. Do you do like, you need your own the the missiles that you shoot from the ground, should they be their own force? Whatever. The Bloomberg, four years ago three, four years ago comes out with a story saying that half of the rockets in China are not filled with fuel but are filled with water. Mhmm. Then you start to see a whole lot of purges and as you guys have been Mhmm. Following closely, I'm sure the Wait. So they were LARPing rockets? They were they were absolutely LARPing rockets. Wow. You know, there's an entire it's kind of two generations of Chinese military leadership that has now been purged and they're sort of like like the nine person, you know, joint chiefs is now down to like a guy and a half. Yeah. So we've been purging That's

Speaker 2: it. I mean, The it's biggest piece of the story is just that they had to go for public whistleblowers. Like that

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So so okay.

Speaker 2: So you could purge so easily behind the scenes, check the records, just go and look and see, okay, there's water in this in this rocket instead of fuel. Like it doesn't seem that hard. So the fact they've So

Speaker 1: yeah, we're we're like seven years into the we're like three, four years into this round of purge. Yeah. And now we're opening up a tip line to the public saying, hey,

Speaker 2: you had anybody bragging at the club about stealing rocket fuel? Call this number. Very very rough.

Speaker 3: Well Speaking about

Speaker 1: former spouses wanting their revenge like, you know, it's it's not just following the cars around.

Speaker 2: That's actually a good source of whistleblowers probably. That makes sense. That's a good one. Yeah. Jordan, last question or we're No.

Speaker 3: No. I I I thought that they just wanted to put on put on the front like they had way more rockets than they actually did when they were really just like, you know, metal with some water in it.

Speaker 2: Sure. Oh,

Speaker 3: okay. I didn't realize that it was

Speaker 1: Oh, so so you think it was part of the plan actually.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Thought that's why that's why I said Like Eisenhower's Yeah. Live action role

Speaker 2: play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you see those military parades, they never open them up and show us what's inside. Who knows? Maybe it's all paper mache. Anyway, thanks so much for coming on the show, Jordan. Great to see you. Congrats. See

Speaker 1: you at the track.

Speaker 2: For China talk.

Speaker 3: See you there.

Speaker 2: We'll see you there. Have a good one. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI, their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches.