Tik Tok - with Special Guest John Eddy

Sam and his guest, former Senior Advisor to Governor Asa Hutchinson discuss the ills of social media, and specifically Tik Tok.

John walks Sam through his experience of a high level gamer in ESports teams and how those experiences shaped his views on Tik Tok, and the cultural evolution of how younger Americans consume information. 

John breaks down the social and economic control that the Chinese government gains by gathering information from Tik Tok users. 

Sam and John discuss actions that parents can take. 

Don't miss this episode that should get cowboys and eggheads thinking.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTbUeS5GTaQ

Transcript

Special Guest John Eddy Podcast
Tue, Apr 11, 2023 4:24PM • 47:48
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, kids, game, world, chinese, tik tok, platforms, china, money, hear, happening, engaged, phone, generation, esports, cowboys, person, john, blm
SPEAKERS
Intro, Sam Fischer

Intro  00:01
Welcome to cowboys, not eggsheads , home of the brave, not home of the fearful. The world needs more cowboys and fewer eggheads. We're everywhere podcasts are found. So tell your fellow cowboys, and let's keep the conversation alive on Facebook and Twitter. And now, cowboys, not eggheads with Sam Fischer.

Sam Fischer  00:32
cowboys, not eggheads. Here we are today with my friend John, Eddy. And John, Eddy and I are going to break some precedent on cowboys, not a kids. John, welcome. Thank you for thank you for being on the kind of last minute to thank you for having me. So one of the things I've always said is, I don't really talk politics on this podcast. And so I actually have two other podcasts. One is a sports podcast and other is strictly for politics. But because I've got this is my most listened to podcast and because because this is a bipartisan issue. i We haven't it was last time we had a bipartisan issue. John Eddie, were correct. It's not my living memory. Yes, exactly. So it's like it's one of those things like people have better pay attention to what's going on here. So I thought we'd talk a little bit about tick tock. Now the reason that I asked about our banning Tiktok that's what we're gonna talk about. The reason I asked John onto the podcast is because I remember sitting here one day here, this very chair, talking to you. It's been a couple of years. Yeah, but it was, I don't know how we got on the subject, John, but you by the time I got done with that conversation, I made a phone call to my brother and said, Get your kids off Tik Tok. You scared the living bejesus out of me. And so I just thought maybe we could have kind of a refresher of that conversation. I mean, I clearly don't remember the conversation. But you do have some experiences. More than mine in the sense that you are aware of what goes into gaming things and advertisings and so forth. So I'm just gonna stay from the get go. That to me, tick tock is a national. It's a Chinese national surveillance program of America. And what they are doing there's 150 million Tik Tok users in America and they're probably your kids. And they are gathering information now. We need to talk about the difference between say a Facebook because I'm on Facebook and I'm on Twitter and I'm on Instagram and I'm on all that jazz. But the difference is a it's American. They're American companies but be the information that they're gathering goes above and beyond the demographics of age or anything like that. They are actually from my understand they are actually tracking movements and they are hoovering is what another my co hosts my other podcast called it, they are hoovering others, they are sucking up all this information, everything, like keystroke habits to you know what you were, you know, what you like and music, whatever. And to me, what's happening is they are building a national profile of you there a human individual modeled Intel profile of you. And so, you know, I've got lots of 150 million people on Tik Tok. I clearly know some of those people. And most of them are younger. One of them is my guitar teacher who's been on this podcast, and he's like, I don't care. I don't care what Chinese know about me. Well, let's explain. Let's maybe explain to that crowd why he should care. Take away, John. That's where I'm at? Well, I

04:12
think the one thing I like to do is not be hyperbolic in anything that I say, you know,

Sam Fischer  04:19
hopefully I wasn't hopefully, people don't know me. I'm not hyperbolic either. But I am. There's a difference between expressing concern. And I'm not saying that I'm not saying that the world is on fire or the world is ending. But it's, we need to pay attention. So

04:37
I just want to know, I want to get your nod. I just want to preface that from the beginning. Like let's just start with the baseline facts. So I got involved in eSports, which, you know, even within the intelligence community within the United States are probably fairly ignorant to what I call a cultural revolution, right? In politics in the past you would have you know, an idea would maybe Surface, right, you'd have an incredible author, you know, like marks or others. And it would sort of ruminate maybe in some high level intellectual rooms and different universities, and then that idea would possibly spread into books and people would read it. And it would maybe be translated or thought about a different way in different parts of the country or the world. And then it would you know, it, but it could take months, it could take years could take decades for that idea to sort of form itself. Well, with the ability of streaming Twitch these current platforms, you know, you and I, when we were growing up, it was a one way stream, we'd see the few channels that were coming in that were providing us information, we got to that we can see the screen a third was kind of snowy, you have to go to the YouTube channel. Right, right. And so we sort of are in this weird generation of we've experienced that to what it is now. And that's before we've even gotten to like the sort of, you know, just sort of transcendent change in what technology is today, I fail to say I got involved in eSports, I was had won seven world championships, and 150 individual titles with my esports team. We weren't a collaboration of billionaires, we are a group of people that wanted to be engaged in this. And I remember going to Los Angeles and went to the Staples Center with a friend of mine. And he said, Hey, we should, we should get involved in eSports. I'm like, I'm not even sure what this is. And I had been involved in politics, I sort of knew different media streams, and we show up in this stadium is totally full. And I mean, it's an intensity that I haven't seen, even at maybe a Texas a&m football game, or a Nebraska football game. But I hadn't seen that sort of intensity in an audience. And it was just incredible is like, wow, I was totally unaware of this, right? Just completely unaware. I'm like, Wow, it's amazing how many things out there you don't know, until you have the chance to experience it. So we invested in this I went on this journey. And I didn't know any of these things, I didn't understand what Twitch was I didn't understand how bits transacted, I didn't understand maybe the sort of the cultural norms within a generation or two generations beneath me, and what that meant. And I found a lot of positive things. But along that way in these interactions, when you start to realize that like a League of Legends World Championship, has more viewers just on stream. And there's three Chinese platforms that are larger than twitch. But if you put all those together, that's a larger audience in the Superbowl, you'd be amazed at how many senior government officials don't even understand that and don't even know what League of Legends is. Right? And that's just one platform. Why don't want League of Legends is it's a, it's sort of a it's a five on five fantasy competition game, right? We use magic, but it takes all these variables, it takes exceptional skill to do this, right. And you it's really fascinating because even some of the players have the sort of their brain elasticity is from a certain age, right? So even as they get older, just like football players are not as good. So you're young age is when you kind of have this window that you're the best that you can be as long as that platform is not changing and popularity of games change and stuff like that. So I'm sure you've heard of some people like Ninja, and all these other. So I say all that to say to get to tick tock is I was kind of sitting in the center of that as this is growing. And people thought about it

Sam Fischer  08:11
was starting to Rob was the timeframe. We're talking a couple years ago, two, three years ago, this

08:15
is like 1415

Sam Fischer  08:18
or 10 years ago. Nine Yeah. So

08:21
yeah, so now it's been quite a bit of time. But I'm sitting right at the like the burgeoning aspect of this. Now, video games have been popular. I've been playing Call of Duty different things. I've also had people that I've worked with in government when I worked at the Department of Justice. I work with Ted Elliott, who was instrumental in that you probably know worked on the bush Cheney campaign, but then he was Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, the United States Department of Justice and went on to work for Mark Zuckerberg. So initiated the IPO was General Counsel at Facebook. And then we do Cody Johnson, we worked with on the Bush campaign as well. And, you know, he had he had a very talented, very smart guy wouldn't join this, you know, video game company as a mid level manager. I'm like, why would he go work at a video game company of all the things you could go do? It's such a talent, because why would he go do that. And he worked his way up and took a $7 billion asset and turn it into a $65 billion asset at one time at Activision Blizzard. So I kind of had friends that were kind of tangentially connected to me. So I was hearing these things, but I wasn't living in it. And so when I got into eSports, I started to live in it. And it struck me very early on as being in politics. We know how to run campaigns and run ads in order to influence how someone thinks about somebody else, right? Doesn't matter what political party you're in. It's what you sort of learn. It's the information you're put out. We know why negative information works, because it affects a certain part of the brain.

Sam Fischer  09:43
And so in my career, that's gone. That's dramatically claimed me when we're first starting, you know, he targeted people based on where they live geographically, which, by the Bush campaign in 2004, which we were involved in, it was it was much more deep. held in that it was now based on behaviors and consumer lists and all this information, where we're compiling information about where we believe someone will behave based on their consuming habits or based on, you know who they are, or it's not necessarily where they live. So all these then it continues to evolve. I mean, I've been retired for two years. And it's it's evolved in the last two years. So it continues to grow. Yeah. Obviously, digital advertising is a big part of that as well. All this stuff is moving really quick.

10:32
I mean, oh, yeah. And then so I'm now sitting outside of politics, if you will, right. So I've political interests, I'm still engaged as an activist or as a donor, or whatever that might be towards things that I care about. But I have friends that are on the other side, right. I'm talking about American politics in general. But what I quickly came to see was, you know, if you're going to go out, and the reason I found it interesting from an anthropological aspect, right, which is maybe at the base of who I am, is why I went into politics, like I love learning about people, why do they act a certain way? I saw major business movements being made in order to affect what the sort of thing that person has seen, or how quickly that idea could spread. So one example before we even get to tick tock, you know, when BLM first came onto the scene, and whether you agree with BLM, or you don't call of duty, which is a large platform, was having billions of impressions a day. So I want you to think about your seven year olds, right, that are that some parent lets their child play a first first person shooter game at that age, which, trust me, there's a lot on there, because I still play and I load into a lobby, and I hear I hear him. So let's just get past the what parents shouldn't let them on thing. It's just it's a reality they're on. And that doesn't even include the mobile app, right, which also has a lot of players. But then you kind of have that, and I'm listening to, you know, and seeing that they're, I'm seeing the information that they're absorbing, and I'm looking at it through a political lens, right. And so there's messaging related to BLM. And one of the people's quotes that they put up, was a woman that was engaged in activism and violent activism against the federal government. I'm like, wow, that's really fascinating, like, take off the political aspects of whether it's right or wrong. But these are what kids are absorbing. And they're getting that in every load screen every time they're going into a new lobby. So they lose, they go into new lobby, they're getting this. So we're talking billions of impressions, not just here in America, but across the globe, right across the globe. On a scale, that's probably inconceivable to a lot of people. Imagine watching Superbowl ads, and everyone talks about that's, that's what gaming is. That's how large it isn't the impressions that you're getting. So I saw that going on. So I'm like, Wow, that's fascinating. I can see how the singular idea can quickly spread and become almost culturally accepted in a cultural norm. Because, gosh, these people are saying it, I'm hearing people talk about it. I'm kind of adopting what that is, because I'm engaged in this these things. So I saw that happening. But then what really became sort of concerning to me as I saw large global corporations starting to purchase certain gaming companies, or whatever it might be. And not that the current American companies, excuse me weren't using that data. But it really struck me that when China shut down Twitch, many years ago, and if you went and talked to most senators, congressional people, even intelligence people, they were acutely unaware. The reason I know that is because I said, Hey, do you realize this happened X period of time, I know some CIA advisors, different people, you know, we know senior people, as we get older, our friends become more senior people in these these positions. And like, I don't know what you're talking about, like what's legal legends. And I'm like, You didn't hear you know, China shut down. One of the major American platforms where kids communicate, they culture it and you have to understand, within this generation, the reason I brought up a TV is they're used to doing this, if they ask a question, and you don't respond, even from a marketing standpoint, then they're not going to believe you. You're they're not going to think you're authentic, they expect to be able to have an interaction back and forth, and any other communication. So that goes for tick tock that goes for these live streams, right? And if you're not doing those things, if it's static, they're like, hold on, like, this feels like a madman thing. I'm being marketed to buy Coca Cola, right? Like, I want to know what's in Coca Cola. Why should I be drinking that? And I think you even saw that within BLM. Right? I always say, I think this is a really exceptional generation that's coming up because they really are trying to seek truth. And it's sort of our moral responsibility to step into those things and help provide that truth, or at least what we think is a truth.

Sam Fischer  14:34
Well give them some tools to do how to discover the truth. Yeah, yeah. How do they figure it out on their own?

14:39
And so what they you know, even when it comes to like, you know, you hear a lot of people attacking the Founding Fathers, like, Wait, hold on real quick. So there's a whole bunch of white men, right? That were part of colonialism that had slaves AI. So why are we trusting these documents? So it's what every young person does, but it's at a much faster pace than would have happened in the past right? And so I had great, wonderful experiences and great conversations with people regarding this. I think you also run into people you don't like, especially being online and being engaged in these games just like you would in any normal society. But I found that most of these kids were good kids. And most of them were very interested in American culture and freedom and fighting for those things, even over in China. So what I saw with China shutting that down, is I saw them saying, This must be a risk, right to what we're trying to control. So we're gonna shut it down. The reason I bring that up is because this is before Tik Tok could even really sort of had its ascendancy in the US. And then I started to look at how that was programmed. So even recently, the CEO was very well spoken in front of Congress, you know, this last week, and I've seen both the bills that are being put forward in the title he was begging the whole hearing. No, I mean, in the sense that he's answering appropriately, he seems very kind, oh, well, we're happy to sell, you know, our company to an American company, there's no way we're sharing data. Yeah, move past all that, right, let's get rid of like the the Black Ops stuff, let's just look at how they're forward facing certain content, and the algorithms that they're putting forward, and what they're supporting. So, you know, it's kind of like your, your parents used to say, you are who you hang out with, right? If you're hanging out with all your buddies that are getting in trouble, and they're doing lots of drugs and stuff, guess what, even if you're a pretty good person, you're gonna get into a situation you probably didn't want to be in even if you're not even doing the drugs. And that's kind of the same way with some of these streams, right. And what's being targeted, specifically? Is is it exceptional violence? Is it kind of disjointed cultures that dislocating culture, right for Mike, oh, my gosh, I have this certain view of these people. And so those things can be tweaked. And they're very, very powerful, because it's the amount of images and things that are coming through that you're absorbing. That is a problem. So to say early on, well, you know, we're really not it's just I, I think that's disingenuous at best, right? It comes across very well, all these kinds of things. But there's sort of what I would consider a cultural revolution that's going on, there's an East West divide. And tick tock is a platform that they worked very hard on in order to gain popularity, they, they shot it to pretend like I can remember with my eSports guys, I go to CES right in Vegas. And I can remember, we were walking by the Yawei. Booth, and it was this gorgeous booth. And they were sort of showing some of the security measures they had, you know, facial intelligence, all this stuff. So there's sort of this escalation even within the corporate world of who's going to control that market share, because whoever controls market share controls, the sort of ideas that you're going to be putting forward. Right. And so there is a communication sort of war and a war of ideas that are happening. But when I went by that Yawei, like, I was scared, right, like they were able to pull up just me walking by a booth 100 yards away with facial recognition those years ago, who I was, what my entire social profile was, it scared the crap out

Sam Fischer  18:05
of me what kind of food you just bought at the grocery store, whatever.

18:08
And they were sitting there very kindly, right? Like, oh, look at look at this incredible stuff that we're doing. But I knew from being a government and being in some of the things I've been in, I'm like, this is a military backed sort of situation. They're just like, it would be if it was Chinese coming over here, and Raytheon had this special kind of thing, like, well, aren't you originally a Defense Intelligence Group, you know, or, or, you know, kind of related to the Defense Intelligence or defense industry. So, you know, you can see these things happen, and most people can So, I mean, it should be a concern to us. But what's really concerning is their ability to track keystrokes, these very small things of data that they're collecting, and they're saying, Hey, we haven't harvested that. It doesn't matter. Right?

Sam Fischer  18:51
So okay, fine. Okay, fine, but they have they had but they can harvest that maybe they haven't, but they have the ability to do it. And I'm not going to be so naive to say that they haven't maybe not everybody but on on people they want to influence for instance, and so let's let's strip this down. John. Let's Yeah. Why would they

19:15
poured a drink for you, Sam two tiers of tonic for you. Yeah.

Sam Fischer  19:19
Outstanding. Why would they? I guess my question is this dumbing this down for for Joe Q. Seventh grade is seven, seven year old. I mean, why would they? What What could they do with this information? What in real terms? For instance, what if they knew every little quirk of a former I'm just I'm trying to think here. Say is a Dan Quayle. Let's take Dan Quayle. Right. Everybody's favorite vice president. What if they what if they knew every little Saint thing about Dan Quayle? Every good person is a good person by the way he is. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. But what but this talk about in terms of national security? I mean, he's been off the scene for for many years. Yeah. Right. I mean, he's in the 70s. Now, I think he plays golf with Alice Cooper every day. Yeah. I mean, it's true. But what if, what if? What if the Chinese had all this information on Dan Quayle? Now, I'm sure Dan Quayle doesn't have Secret Service protection or any of that stuff anymore, right. So what if they had? So what are the implications of that John

20:34
Eddie, social and economic control? Okay. And here's what I mean by that. So when we were in these leagues, one of the top video games platforms that we competed on, and that we are one of the top of the world on, was purchased by a Chinese company, right? So now, I'm not reporting to a group of local American programmers and guys that I've known for a decade, and it's kind of the team owners and we all kind of know each other. Now we have a corporate entity that's above us, that's Chinese owned. And, you know, they might say, hey, we need to be careful about what when you've seen this within the NBA, right? You've seen the NBA players be real quiet about saying anything negative about China. Why is that because one of the largest expansion opportunities from an economic standpoint is in China, they're opening up massive amount of stadiums, you know, old players who can't even play in the NBA anymore, right, like Stefan Mayberry, and stuff have gone over there and are, are considered legends. And they're making a ton of money. And it's the same economic situation we face I went to, I hadn't worked in government 15 years. And when I got done with this, I went to work with Governor Hutchinson here in Arkansas, and I'd known him going all the way back to the Bush administration, very good governor, very good person, by the way. That contemplating and thinking about running for president, he would be someone that you would want in there, because he's very thoughtful, and he seemed damn near everything. But you know, we would have a conference call because as a senior economic adviser, we'd have conference calls with the Chinese ambassador, who's now the Chinese foreign minister. So he's kind of number two, number three. And you have, you're in this very difficult position of our economies through globalization and become so integrated, that even if there was some major conflict or break, right, it would take a company like WalMart, six years to onshore everything back here, okay. And that doesn't even indicate the amount of inflation that we'd have to go through, because you're paying a very cheap price for something because it's being developed somewhere else at a very low cost. And so you're kind of you've been playing this dancing game, and that was the same with an eSports. Right? Now you kind of have a Chinese ownership, they, they might be wanting you to say or do certain things so that economic and social control matters. Why so you can go to China, what are they doing right now? Well, they've moved to digital currencies? Well, gosh, I've seen digital currencies with bits. And that's kind of how kids transact and stuff. But what if you're taking your phone and you need to get on the subway that day? Gosh, why is my card not working? Well, I just found out my social score, says I have been saying negative things about the government. So the government is now restricting my ability to even hold my own money, which technically means you don't have your own money. And it's restricting your ability to go do what you want to do. Right. And that's not being hyperbolic, there's just what's happening. And so that's the concern, even long term, let's say, I was interested in keeping our esports team and stuff. I had a Chinese top down government saying, Well, maybe you shouldn't, and these are all things that can't get related into an ESPN article, you can't get in because you could be you have to be very careful about libel, because then they can sue you through a legal system saying, well, you're saying this about us? That's not true. I'm just putting forward all the facts of what that social control is, and the economic control. And why that matters. Why does that matter? Because just like, why we care whether the Saudis are doing oil trades in the dollar, or doing it in the WAN, totally matters, right, because that's sort of the financial backing that gives you power to determine which ways things are going. And those things matter and all that's being dislocated, you know, even as we speak right now. So it's a fight for that social and economic control. And it's a very potent tool. Because if I can get to young minds, and I can kind of control them and get them to sort of accept certain social behaviors or sort of accepts certain things, then I'm going to be able to do what I want to do especially within a totalitarian nature sort of system. So that's, that's difficult. And then if you're here in America, right, like Arkansas cares about selling rice to China, that's one of our main crops here in Arkansas, same, like with a place like Nebraska, he knows have sometimes been very good relationships in the past, but as these things are developing, and we haven't even gotten to AI, you know, it's it's there's going to be continued conflict and it's not something that we're necessarily driving. It's something that is just coming out of power and the ebb and flow of economic competition and challenge. It's happened throughout history.

Sam Fischer  24:50
For your that's a lot of Egghead information. There's a lot of 25 cent words out there but

24:58
I could go deeper

Sam Fischer  24:59
Sam that Please don't well, back back to tick tock did the to your knowledge do your you have three daughters? Right? They are they have tick tock on their phone.

25:12
Yes or No, I didn't allow them to put tick tock on their phone. Why?

Sam Fischer  25:17
Because I was concerned and you're talking to parents? Yeah, I can notice this, bring it down for us cowboys out here you're talking about because boys,

25:26
you know, there's a lot of different. This had nothing to do with even like the social aspects, right. Like they're seeing images and stuff that I don't think they're ready for all that kind of stuff that we as parents should, let's generally what we're worried about right, conversations going on, you know, sexualization, all the things that are happening within these platforms that are very powerful. Mine was I was worried, you know, we have interconnected. My Apple is connected to my Google my, you know, like, I log on to Google Chrome for this, but then have to download and download that's in my apps, and then it locks up, oh, you've been looking at these websites. So you should connect these apps, oh, here's your Apple Pay it's connected to. So all these things are connected. And what I worry about is some device or something like Hey, Dad, I need to pay for my college stuff. Well, gosh, use the same password for her college payment as she did for her email. And then they can get into your email. And they can start to scan your emails and do different things like that. It's being overly paranoid. But when I've seen a group of people do certain things within their society, it's not that paranoid, right. And so and that's a hard

Sam Fischer  26:25
thing. They have the time, the money and the labor to do all these things they have,

26:30
they have entire and I know this to be true, right? Because I've worked within the space, especially on the tech side, they have entire buildings that are full. And you can see hacking ramp up, when people come in at 9am. And it goes back down at 5pm. Just like you, you're on the clock coming from Chinatown. Same thing happens in Russia, right? And organized crime within these some of these things are state sponsored. Same with Iran. And because it's so dispersed, and there's a sort of this axis of different people that feel very differently than we do about human rights and other things. They're trying to take advantage of that. There's already a silent war, that sort of going on I do going on with this stuff. And like I said, if I can influence kids and be in that world, and I can kind of influence that, of course, I'm going to write because I'm normalizing it, and then I can control what they're seeing the algorithms that they see. And I can create, honestly, like one of my greatest fears right now is this idea that we hate each other, right? Like all you hear in America is Donald Trump versus Joe Biden. And that's this guy is the worst devil in the world. This guy's when the reality is these two guys have a lot more in common than some of our adversaries yet. We don't focus on that like at all. And that's what's really going well,

Sam Fischer  27:40
like, it's encouraging me that the it's a is it. Is it fair to say it's a bike, bipartisan effort right now to ban Tiktok? And Congress? On the Senate side? Yes. So thank you tick, tock, at least you brought us together that way. On the Senate side,

27:55
yes. But unfortunately, on the and this goes towards money and politics. And Sam and I both understand this greatly. This, McCain, to his credit, no matter what you think of him, was trying to come up with a solution to fix what he saw was this inundation of money that was just going to corrupt DC, not that it wasn't all we already have corruption. And throughout history, you're gonna have corruption. So like, I don't live in this kind of delusional world that like, everything's going to be a utopia, right, I got a conservative, because I always jokingly say, we don't really progress past anything, right? Like, I'm trying to conserve the decent values that we have that keep us strong, and that people have fought for and bled for and, and that doesn't matter if both Republicans or Democrats have done that. You know what I mean? Like, my grandmother from Grand Island, and a person who led my faithlife father, Tom Dowd, who's also from Grand Island, Nebraska, we're both staunch Democrats and Liberal Democrats, right? I love those people. Those were good people. So those aren't my enemy, right? We have different views, even on abortion, but like, generally, those are not my enemies. And that's what's been hard for me these other people, they if you were to say something like what we're seeing right now, we could be jailed tomorrow. And I think you see a lot of people that have lived under those totalitarian regimes communist regimes come here, from Cuba. They're like, whoa, y'all. I mean, I've talked to a lot of Polish friends who lived under communism that are around our age, right? So they were still under Soviet rule, you know, in the 90s, before the wall came down, and they're like, John, this, the stuff I'm seeing scares the heck out of me. And I'm worried about our government. But I'm also worried about, you know, what's coming our way, right? And this, these alliances are people that go kill reporters and do different things. And so it's hard when you work in government, because sometimes you have to go meet with these people. And you have to break bread with people you don't like Right? Because you're trying to keep a world system generally in a good spot and that like criminals are being prosecuted and different stuff and the world is becoming more and more integrated. And then you have on top of that you have aI come in and one of the things I say about AI is like forget what it is. Does it say AI is artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence for all us cowboys out there. Think about it as long as acronym high powered computers, right? But something is, it's I always jokingly say, and Elon Musk, I think is correct about this. And I've read the books that he's suggested people read, the kind of helped me understand this. Imagine a Manhattan project going on right now. And instead of being a tight core, because you realize how powerful and dangerous this is, if you, you know, harness fusion and nuclear power, and imagine, well, no, now we're just gonna let everyone be engaged in it, and have hands into it, and do whatever they want with it. Right? That's what you want most is like, hold on, we need to have a moratorium like, this is going to events and people kind of get it's like, oh, it's gonna be like a terminator is going to come get us? No, it's more like this. Imagine 254 bit encryption being taken down tomorrow by a group of people. And they totally destroy the banks overnight, right? Because they're moving money around. And that that's how powerful this is. So even the sort of structures that we need to work well, that protect all of us that work in a integrated fabric of society, can be tore down instantaneously. So it's like a nuclear bomb going off. That's why these things

Sam Fischer  31:07
are exempt. start a war, take it take away everybody's everything that they've got in the bank and take away their electricity. Yeah, I mean, even so these things are pretty, they're pretty, they're pretty easily done if you've got the technological prowess to do that. And they do.

31:26
Yeah. Right. So that's just one small snippet of a larger aspect of how, and it's why you see, I think a lot of top business people fighting with all the money that they have to try and control this thing. It's not like there's I don't believe that, like Bill Gates or anything, are trying to create some evil sort of empire, it's just, they're seeing that that's going to completely fundamentally shift how businesses work and everything. So you better figure that out. Because the first market and first to be able to figure that out, it's gonna win the game, and that's how capitalism has always worked.

Sam Fischer  31:56
Okay, so what are four things that parents can do for their kids? Or ought to be concerned about our four action items they can take that you would recommend? Like, I wouldn't buy bitcoin? I don't know if you've ever had Bitcoin, my friend, but I don't know anything about it. I wouldn't. I would not mess around with Bitcoin. Number one. Any digital currency? I wouldn't mess with it. Yeah. Number Number two, change your passwords. It's a pain in the rear end. But you should not and I'm, you know, maybe I'm guilty of this China, maybe I'm not. But you should change up your passwords for everything that you've got. The problem is we all have 150 passwords, but there are there are vaults that you can go to to blah, blah, blah. Number three, get the hell off of Tik Tok, get it off your phone, get it off your computer, whatever, are there, should we get to a disconnect from any other social media outlets?

32:57
Yeah, it's it's, I always say my

Sam Fischer  33:00
being a hypocrite by saying, Well, I'm going to keep my Facebook, it's fine. But Tiktok there's no way I'm, you know, I'm gonna disconnect that. Now.

33:07
I just I think you need to be careful about what you share. Right. The sad thing is these platforms early on, it was a wonderful way for us to stay engaged with each other humification Yeah. All right. Yeah. And it's people. I

Sam Fischer  33:19
was just thinking about that, John, you know, people years ago, I don't know do you do Christmas card? years ago, it was it was a thing. You know, you did a Christmas card. That's how you learn what people did the last year or what they've been up to or whatever. Don't need that anymore. Because it's all you know, go on Facebook, and you can catch up real quick.

33:37
Yeah, right. I think a lot of these things are helpful. I'm not a doomsday person that like, it's all going to end or whatever. But I think you have to be careful about what you post that say forever. You have to explain that to your children, especially with Snapchat, and it's hard. Like I have teenagers. I know, you know, this too. You become socially isolated. If you're not on these platforms. I can remember one time, I wouldn't even let my kids on any sort of social media site till they're at least 14. And, and even then it was very limited, right? I had all the limits on and stuff like that. But it really was pressure on me because we're like, Dad, I'm like, What are you doing this weekend, right? Where we would ride our bikes and be like, Hey, let's go meet at the movie theater. Right? These guys, this generation doesn't do that. Or if they do, that communication pattern wasn't feel like a phone like we would do, right? It's via a Snapchat or whatever it might be a freaking crank

Sam Fischer  34:26
that phone.

34:28
So the problem is, you get isolated, socially isolated, because you know, I'd be like, Hey, what are you doing? Well, I don't know because I'm not in those conversations. Right? So this huge pull to be you get pulled in whether you want to be or not because otherwise well, gosh, because not on social is not coming and then all of a sudden you're not invited to the birthday party. You're not going to the movies, you know all these kinds of things and so

Sam Fischer  34:51
on your self esteem suffers I mean what a what a what a mess. Well, here's

34:55
the thing too, right like we're we had that need to meet physically together and how have that interaction, even the dating world is different in the sense of oh my god, I can't imagine, well, I'll be like, Hey, do you want to go have a slumber party? And my daughter's like, Well, why? I'm like, because I mean, don't you want to like see just like, well, that I'm talking to everyone right here. Like, we're sending photos, right? You know, here's my snap, I've snapped this person, 15 times of my, you know, duck face or whatever it is. And so that's, I think that's hard. So the first thing I would say is, you need to visibly and socially engage with what platforms are on and understand what they are. So that's what I mean about the moral responsibility of like, you have to get on these things. You have to understand what it is working and working and be able to check and say you have an open phone policy, all those things, right. And

Sam Fischer  35:43
how do you communicate with I'm sorry to interrupt but how do you how do you communicate with your kids right now?

35:48
Usually via just text message, text, okay? Yeah.

Sam Fischer  35:53
Yeah, but I mean, I there's not Senate snaps, there's certain groups of people that I it's like, I find myself involved in all these platforms, because there are certain amount of people that I can only get on Twitter. Yeah. And there are some amount of people most of people are Facebook, we old people are Facebookers 100%. Instagram more so though, and I'm actually gravitating more and more to Instagram. I don't know why. Well, I don't know why I'd stamp. And so there's always this like, my it's it's confusing. I which vehicle do I need to use? I mean, nobody calls anybody anymore. I mean, my, my brother has a role his kids like, if I am calling you are going to answer the phone, right? Yeah. Yeah, right now. And, like that's, like unusual or something like it's like, you have nobody picks up the phone anymore. You can't call anybody. I mean, your frickin ABA textbook drives me nuts. You have to, you have to have a you have to text someone to set up a phone conversation, why you do it all the time is spent to frickin text me just call me. I mean, I'll pick it up, you know? Well,

37:00
it kind of like just from an adult perspective, it blows my mind how many interactions I have with children. When I'm playing, say Call of Duty, like I really enjoy playing Call of Duty. I've been a big fan of it. I played it for a long time. I believe you're in your what your your younger? mentors. Yeah, you're younger than me. But but you know, that's like how I kind of relaxed and it's enjoyable. And I enjoy how they programmed the game. Like there's other reasons, like I'm just really fascinated by it. But the thing is, it's mind boggling to me, the young children that I can talk to no one knows who I am. Right now, I could be anybody. And I have the ability to get their phone number to access who they are. And you know this when kids are 12 1314 they're confused about who they are. Or they're even like, Hey, you're a dummy. You always are on my Yeah, you're always on my butt. You know, they're like, here's somebody else that's gonna give me some other attention. This

Sam Fischer  37:51
is open right day for predators, man. Oh,

37:56
you couldn't you couldn't do that when we were kids, right? There's no way someone's calling on the house. When the house phone rang. Everyone picked it up, remember? So it's like, so though Hill our whole our whole neighborhood might have picked up because we're on a party line if they thought it was, you know, we were too short rings. And the neighbor thought it was one short ring.

Sam Fischer  38:12
They picked it up. I mean, it was yes, it was a different

38:14
time. Yeah. And I think some of the mental illness, some of the things that we're seeing right now is more than just video games. I think it's a social isolation. It's the dopamine reaction that we're getting constantly slide

Sam Fischer  38:26
instant dopamine hit, and I'm an adult, and I get it. Yeah, I get it. For God's sakes, I'll post some. I'll go back an hour later. I'm like, Oh, I wonder who saw that? Shit.

38:38
These these primarily?

Sam Fischer  38:39
I do, but I do. I mean, I'm hooked. So and I'm an adult. But so imagine if you're younger. what that's all about I mean, it's just I, but I don't know, I have hope. I think as you mentioned earlier, kids are trying to figure out what truth is, and they will find it. We're resilient people.

38:58
Well, I think I've said this to you before I've run into adults are like, I don't get this. So you're telling me on Twitch, a kid will just like give money to like a content creator. They don't even know like, they just donate money to him. And I'm like, yeah, like, why is that? So weird? Like, I just don't get that. Why would you just give free money to some random person? And I said, Well, let me I love analogies, right? I love analogies. And I said, Well, do you remember back in 30 years ago, when you're sitting with your parents, and you're watching that amazing line documentary on PBS, or you're watching Downton Abbey, or whatever it is, and the PBS guy comes up and says, Hey, if you give $25, you get these three CDs of the entire collection of the lion series, you know, and I call me I'm gonna, I'll call and give $25 Plus, it's helping public broadcasting, which has Sesame Street, like, that seems like a good thing. And so you donate it for content, right? So these are just different evolutions of how kids are transacting both socially and economically. But I have found you know, there are some social changes. One of the one of the main examples is the fact that kids will, especially what I can say They're like 27 and under. So really real Gen Z really 24. And under, especially now to this real Gen Z generation, they're spending more of their disposable income on those types of things. And then you have what I would consider baby millennials, not what we call the retirement age, millennials, which is closer to us. But you

Sam Fischer  40:21
know, I Regenexx Powell,

40:25
I am to Generation X, there's kind of like that large gap and millennials, right, where, you know, when I came into college was the very first time they had an email, right. So that was the very first time there's some sort of digital electronic, well, you are younger than me. Yeah. And you had to get it right. Like you couldn't register for class until you got your email. So I remember like, gosh, I gotta go to school.

Sam Fischer  40:44
I stood in line in Nebraska, Student Union ballroom for three hours to register for classes. That's right.

40:50
So I think no email. So I think just, you know, you got, they just they're spending more disposable income, you have a generation that is highly in debt, you know, because our government has spent so much and they've spent so many dollars, and we have a real debt crisis, it's making it you know, it's caused inflation. And guess what, this next generation down can't afford homes, you know, they're not making enough money in order to go put a down payment under the current current credit system that we have in order to get a loan and to buy a house. And so you know, some of the things they're, they're realizing the reason they're moving to more rental society is like, Well, gosh, I can't afford this. So what am I going to spend money on that gives me fulfillment. So they're much more attuned with spending their disposable income, towards things that they enjoy. And the things that they enjoy are the screen that they've had, that they're socially acculturated to like what that screen is and what they're using. So they're very sophisticated and much more sophisticated than you. And so there is a large learning curve. And it's so hard for me, and I've been at the center of this. And so, but I do believe in this generation, and I believe we have to engage on it, both socially and culturally and politically, because there is sort of a what I would consider an idea war that's going on already. And I think you're ignorant. If you're pretending we're going to just somehow come out of this conflict somewhere down the road. I think they're just throughout history, we've had this incredible, Lucky time of a lot of this peace dividend that we've lived in. And at no time in history, have we ever had this amount of time where people aren't going off and dying in wars, right? But unfortunately, I think conflict is going to continue to come whether we want to or not, because people can be greedy and selfish. And, you know, you have to engage on this stuff, because it's about winning minds, right? Like, it's about helping people realize freedom and being a decent person. And those things matter. And engage on otherwise you're setting the ground to people like, well, you can just be okay with the government totally controlling your movements and where you live and lock you up. And no, you can't take a bus because you said one sort of weird thing about the government. So now you're not allowed to do anything. Like that's very scary to me.

Sam Fischer  42:56
Yeah. I mean, heck, my my GPS knows where I'm gonna go every every day at 11 o'clock. It gives me directions to my gym.

43:03
Yeah, I mean,

Sam Fischer  43:05
I imagine. I mean, imagine what the Chinese are gonna do that kind of information. I mean, you're

43:10
creatures of habit. Plus, you know, there's a typical cloak and dagger stuff, right, like blackmail? You know, if I can figure out that, oh, he's going to this house or, I mean, that's getting way down in the weeds. But yeah, it's it's a total problem. And

Sam Fischer  43:25
well, it's gonna take a bunch of like I said, it's gonna take a bunch of everybody in this America, if they had their their bank account drained overnight, and electricity went off. How do you think people would react? My friend? Oh, it'd be bad. No, not? Well, not Well, none of us would

43:41
have been even in charge my phone. Or if you remember that little sort of revolution they had in Egypt, you know, everyone's like, well, it's a Muslim Brotherhood trying to take over I said, No, that's all about bread prices getting too high. Right? Like, that's your normal person. Like, I can't go buy bread, like what's going on? And, you know, I think people forget, we've been so fortunate to live in such an incredible structure we've had, generally, generally, most of our politicians, most of the people we live with be good, decent people. And you kind of see that fraying at the edges right now, which is sad to me. But you know, we've lived in this incredible world, but you know, it's very fragile. It's exceptionally fragile, very fragile. And that's why even like a January 6 and stuff, no matter how you feel about it, that's that's, you know, it's it's scary. You know,

Sam Fischer  44:27
is the day that I left all drunk. Yeah, I haven't looked. I haven't looked back. Yeah,

44:33
I think a lot of people

Sam Fischer  44:34
John, I think we're gonna stop right there. That's, that's a lot of information for people to digest, brother. I mean, Holy Toledo. It was about much more than Tik Tok. But, so what I'm hearing from you is because you're on tick tock doesn't mean that world's gonna end but might want to know what it's all about. Yeah, about a lot more than even smart people know.

44:56
Yeah. That it's and it's gonna socially adjust your budget. yours and so what are you exposing your mind to? Just like anything else? pornography, alcohol? What are you exposing your body and your mind to on a daily basis? And is it overconsumption and is it starting to affect how you feel about yourself and even how you view the world? Right? I'm very angry. Yeah, like,

Sam Fischer  45:17
get outside, man. Get outside, breathe the air, watch the sunset. Man, but I mean, my sister in law every morning, she gets up and watches the sunrise and she wouldn't. It's nice out she'll, she'll, she'll do what she calls earthing. And that is, I've totally heard their feet in the in the lawn. And Earth. It's no knock until you try it. I mean, so you got to strip all that stuff. I mean, you got to clean up some minds out there, man. Everybody's got to clear their minds. Yeah. And that

45:49
just generally your neighbors are good people. And they're not your enemy, especially here in the United States. Like, that's the biggest thing that I you know what people are?

Sam Fischer  45:56
Well, if you want to, if you want to unite us, Saudi Arabia and China, I don't know if you saw what happened yesterday, but Saudi Arabia, and China and Russia, if you want to unite us? Careful, because we're united

46:11
we can even with all of our so well,

Sam Fischer  46:15
that's not that was to say we were gonna do hypermile. That was horrible. But I actually I believe it and

46:21
I'm passionate about it. I think these kids are good kids. That's the other thing I tell adults. And actually, Governor Hudson had an ideas conference, we had Condoleezza Rice come and she kind of said something, you know, she's at Stanford down, she's, you know, in the waning aspects of her career, and even intellectual work, and she just said, you know, it's invigorating to, you know, no matter what you think, or you see all these horrible things about universities and stuff. It's like, there's really good kids there, you know, and they're just learning and they're gonna make mistakes. Yeah.

Sam Fischer  46:47
Yes, they're, they're good kids at universities, and there are good politicians still, and they're the at the end of the day there is, like Mr. Rogers said, when when you're in trouble, look for the helpers. They're there.

46:59
They're out there. And so I, I feel that way about these kids, even with all this stuff. That was that's the number one takeaway I had was how incredible these kids were and how really knowledgeable they were on multiple fronts. So it's not an end of the world situation. It's just being completely aware of sort of the global aspects of what this is. And just protecting yourself don't put things on there and don't expose yourself there's there's no reason to, you know, and that's not what companies want, right? They want as many users as possible because it drives valuation and what they can sell you. But you got you gotta get off of it. Well, rich isn't always about trying, my friend. I've learned that at this age 1,000%. John, I

Sam Fischer  47:37
appreciate your time, my friend. Yeah,

47:39
I appreciate it. Thanks, Sam.