In this conversation, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss a range of topics that intersect geopolitics, privacy regulation, and marketing strategy. They begin by highlighting a Chinese effort—led by the university‑affiliated company Fudan—to scrape 171 million public X posts, build AI models of American voters, and test political messaging on synthetic Pennsylvania users, illustrating a massive, asymmetric information advantage for China. The hosts then shift to US regulatory pressure on social platforms, citing a multi‑billion‑dollar lawsuit against Facebook and tighter privacy rules aimed at protecting youth. They critique the divergent content strategies of TikTok’s US and Chinese versions, framing it as a clash of capitalist incentives versus state‑driven educational goals. Using a Paul Graham‑shared LinkedIn data set, they analyze recent trends: AI terms exploding in job titles, DEI mentions sharply falling, and remote‑work references flattening, arguing that these shifts reflect broader cultural fads. Throughout, they stress the importance of independent thinking over blindly following trends, especially in career branding and marketing. They advise marketers to evaluate platform relevance—acknowledging TikTok’s growth but noting it may not suit every business—while leveraging TikTok content to boost Google SEO. The episode concludes with a brief promo for Eric’s agency, SingleGrain, and a call for viewers to seek more case studies.
Chapters
By the way, I want to check this out. So did you, did you see that? So the CCP is— Chinese institutions are building AI models of American voters and testing political messages on them. So this is interesting to me. So this is a marketing— I think there's a marketing angle from this for sure. So Fudan, the company Fudan, used 171 million X posts to create a multi-million account voter pool. A government-linked team testing a campaign message on synthetic Pennsylvania owners. users or voters. So it inferred the race, the ideology, all these things, right? And so what's happening right now, this person Melissa Chen posted this, okay? So she's like, look, this is right out of Ender's Game, except the kids in school are Chinese state researchers, the simulations are real influence ops, and the aliens are us. So what's interesting to me, Neil, is that in China, if they're our adversary, they can pull from X, they can pull from all these open sources, right? They can't— we can't do that to them because everything's closed off, right? So they can influence our politics. We can't actually do anything back to them on that. And so the argument with this is that if Chinese institutions are already building this, they have— we're a lot more vulnerable to that. And she's like, yeah, we cannot build a million-agent model of the Chinese public. We cannot test messages on synthetic Shanghai factory workers or Chengdu nationalists. We cannot A/B test narratives about Taiwan. We live in a glass house while they live in a fortress. Every American rant, every demographic signal, every cultural fracture is harvested, modeled, and weaponized. Meanwhile, their population remains opaque, unmodeled, and unreachable. Beijing now possesses a live, continuously updated war game of the American mind. We possess nothing comparable about theirs. A whole new level of unrestricted warfare has been unlocked. We are not ready for this. Right now, aside from the whole doomerism around this, like, I'm not here to talk about that. I just think it's interesting going back to what we talked about last time. There are no solutions to anything in life. There are only trade-offs. So this is a big trade-off that we have operating how we operate, and they have trade-offs in terms of how they operate too. But isn't that interesting?
Yeah, but we're also getting more strict on how we operate just with privacy. Like you saw the Facebook lawsuit, right? They owe $11—
$16 billion?
They owe $11 billion upfront. The remainder of the money they owe if the other platforms don't conform, from my understanding, maybe I misread it. And it can get to $16 or $18 or somewhere over that billion dollars in total. But the US government is putting much more strict rules for social media. And I believe we're going to start seeing more and more of this. Right now it's for the youth. I thought it was a huge win for the US population. Just me personally, this is just my opinion. I don't have any data on it. I never thought it was so healthy for what a lot of the youth are seeing on social media. And the way I like talking about this is when TikTok was owned by ByteDance, the US version, right? One of their guys was in front of our politicians in Congress here in the US, and they were asking what type of content they show on TikTok here and what kind of content do you guys show on the same version in China? And they're like, All educational content, things that help you be better. And they were just like, so you show the US citizens stuff that rots their brain, and then you show people in China stuff that helps them be better people. And they're like, what the heck is this?
It's different ideologies, you know, not just different ideas.
I'm kidding.
It's what's implanted.
It's what's allowed. Yeah. Because showing them brain rot makes them more money than showing them educational content. Yep.
Yep. And by the way, this is the trade-off with us being a very capitalist society.
Yes.
So whatever, you look at the newspapers or you look at social, like social media, what is rewarded the most? Remember, whatever, when it bleeds, it leads typically, meaning that if the story bleeds, like the topic bleeds, it'll lead. So because we're on this topic, something similar here. So Paul Graham tweeted this. So Paul Graham said, he showed this graph. So LinkedIn users have been editing their work histories to add AI and remove DEI. Okay, so look at this. And you can see AI is being added to every, a lot more people's titles. Work from home is starting to trend downwards. Okay. DEI had a sharp drop over here. Maybe it like went up a little bit, but it's so interesting to me that—
What's the red chart?
The red chart is net share of edits, net share of edits. Oh, descriptions. So titles up here, and then these are descriptions on the bottom.
Got it.
So you want to describe what you're seeing on the chart?
Yeah. So it's job titles and the top chart is of people are changing their job title. The bottom chart is people that are taking the job description from my understanding. And the chart is broken into 3 parts. The first one is how many people are putting AI in their job title, it's climbing up and to the right. On the bottom, how many people are putting AI in their job description is climbing up and to the right. The middle is, what was the middle again?
Work from home.
Work from home. In the title, it is—
Down slightly.
It's roughly flat, right? When you look at the line in the middle, it's almost flat. In the description though, you're seeing it go down, which means I'm guessing that more people will have to come to office. The right side is DEI, way less people are putting it in their title. They're still kind of including it in the description, but it is down substantially. Yep.
So the reason I'm even showing this right now is because it's never been more powerful to think for yourself. Instead of just following the trend, like I get it, AI is a trend. I love talking about it. Don't get me wrong, but you don't see me like I don't even think I have AI in my description or my title in my LinkedIn. Definitely, I never had like anything around work from home or DEI, right? The only reason I'm saying this right now, like if you truly believe in that stuff, great. But what I noticed during 2020 is like more and more people started adding DEI because it was the trend, right? The trend du jour, right? Work from home is a trend du jour, right? And that's also when the pendulum had swung more towards employees, right? It always swings back and forth, right?
Employees and employers, right?
Now, AI is clearly trending right now. People know they can get jobs from it. Of course, they're going to take advantage of that, right? But what I would just say to this is it's more beneficial for you to think for yourself because the vast majority of people, 99% of people won't think for themselves, right? And I will say this, right? Maybe I'll get canceled for this, but like, okay, you have the DEI thing there. Like, do you like— when I ask, when I have asked people just during the interview, like, what does that mean to you? They couldn't really explain it, right? Sometimes I'll even ask, so what is the, you know, the pronouns, can you explain what they mean, right? 'Cause sometimes I'm like, I don't even know what they mean, right? But like, if I can't get a straight answer and I can't get a strong point of view, it actually means that they were just following a trend. And the Overton window has switched, has shifted where it's more okay to say this. So I'll say it. Neil doesn't have to say anything here, but I will say it openly, right? It's more powerful if you think for yourself, again, versus just following trends. And this tweet got like over a million views on it. So that's my thought. Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency. Again, www.singlegrain.com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan.
I think just in general, in life, and in marketing, specifically, Eric and I have been marketing for, call it 20 years. Typically, if you're following trends in marketing, you're not going to do as well compared to if you think for yourself. Following trends in marketing usually means you're going after very saturated channels that are expensive. It doesn't mean you should ignore the trends. You should just pick and choose wisely on what works for you. I'll talk about TikTok. I was at a conference in Laguna Beach earlier today, And that was a whole cool experience, but I quickly realized I am not a fan of the ocean.
Why?
They gave me a hotel room right on the water, which was really nice of them. Like right on the water, nothing obstructing me. You can hear the ocean, the sound. And I was like, one, I'm like, man, what is all this humidity? And I forgot how humid it gets. The second is you keep hearing the ocean and I'm like, man, I just want to go to sleep.
That's white noise.
Yeah. And then the third is, I didn't care for it. So within 5 minutes of getting into the room, and I got there in the afternoon, I closed my blackout so I didn't have to look at the ocean.
Wow. This guy.
I feel like when I see an ocean environment, I feel like it's time for me to retire and just hang up my spurs and just be done with it.
So you weren't with family? I thought you were with family.
In Laguna?
Yeah.
No, they're speaking at a conference at the hotel. Oh, okay.
So when you called yesterday, I thought you were with family. That's why.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. But what Neil's point here is that you know what you like and you stick with it.
Yes. But going back to the marketing example of this, I was getting carried away here or sidetracked. I was talking to the audience about TikTok and a lot of people believe TikTok doesn't have their audience. I agree. TikTok is not right for all businesses, even though the trend is TikTok's booming. You got to be on it, leverage it. If you're not, you're missing out on a lot of revenue. You and I would agree that a lot of our ideal customer is not on TikTok. I'm assuming you agree with that statement, right? It is what it is. There's other businesses where the ideal customer is. Just because the trend is to leverage TikTok, it doesn't mean Eric and I do because that's not where our ideal customer typically lies, but we pay attention and we pay attention to things like Google and a few other platforms have deals with TikTok for their data. So even if your ideal customer is not on there, our ideal customers for sure are on Google. So we will go and post content on TikTok because it feeds Google's algorithm, which helps with attracting our ideal customer, even though they may not be on TikTok. But posting on TikTok helps us get more visibility on Google, which is where our ideal customers do live.
So here's the last thing I'll say about this, right? So it's not about DEI or pronouns or remote work or AI. Ultimately, if you believe in something, it's easier to just believe in something that you genuinely believe in versus just following the fads, right? So I'm not saying, you know, remote work is bad or DEI is bad or pronouns are bad, but when you get pressed on it and you don't have a good response and you don't have a point of view on it, it means you don't genuinely believe in it. And so then why should I believe in you to join my company when you're not firm on your beliefs and you don't stand for something? Because if you don't stand for anything, If you stand for anything, you stand for nothing, right? If you stand for everything.
Yeah. So yeah, I'm with you.
That's my point there. So, and by the way, I'll say one more thing there. Like if you're susceptible to all these trends and you don't have a point of view on it, that means you're susceptible to everything in your life. And that means that you're just going to let trends carry you and that's not a way to live, right? And so we hope you enjoyed that one. If you want more case studies like this, let us know and we'll see you tomorrow.
