#52: Joshua Steinman - TikTok Ban, Communism in America, Anti-Israel Protests

Sup nerds, welcome to the Jason Levin Show where I talk to the craziest viral marketers blowing up the internet.

Crazy.

What are you waiting for? Let's go blow up the internet. Sup nerds, today we have Joshua Steinman on the podcast. He is one of the most strategic thinkers on the internet, which makes sense. He is both a startup founder and a former White House staffer and military officer. Joshua is the founder of Galvanic, which protects factories from getting hacked, and he was formerly in the National Security Council. So Joshua is a brilliant dude and I'm very excited to share this conversation. He has helped me think more strategically and think about some of the biggest problems facing America. I hope you enjoy. All right. I want to start with a big question.

Sure.

What are the biggest threats against the United States currently and what are you doing to help?

Immigration, illegal immigration, inflation. And, you know, killing of, killing of the American spirit through mass demoralization ops through our educational institutions and, uh, and tax policies.

Yeah. Let's talk more about the protest or maybe just educational in general. Who is killing our spirits? Because I saw you tweet today. It's, people are definitely paying for some of these protests, no doubt in my mind. And it seems like you agree.

Why, why would people like, I think there are people that don't like America and I think some of them willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money to destroy the country. There's folks flooding the country with the populations of Latin American prisons happening right now and they're financing it. So it's, when you have drug cartels moving their, moving their folks over the border. Yeah, there's folks willing to pay for it.

Yeah, definitely unfortunate. And so what is Galvanic and how are you helping with security?

The problem we're solving is cybersecurity for big connected infrastructure. Big problem. Not as big as invasion, inflation, and mass demoralization. But it's a big problem and it's a problem that we can solve. Yeah, we secure big connected infrastructure against things like factories or critical infrastructure, uh, critical infrastructure sites.

How do you do that? How do, how does one secure a giant factory like that? That just blows my mind.

Yeah, you collect a bunch of data and you look for patterns in the data. It's a huge undertaking that requires a lot of ingest and processing and then discernment of what, what actually counts as bad.

Gotcha. And I know you've previously talked a little bit about some of the threats towards factories. Who is doing something bad to a factory for people who are maybe naive or uninformed? Why screw up a factory?

Yeah, so there's a bunch of different threats. You can have direct threats from other nation states that just want to degrade the capacity of American or other nations' manufacturing capacities. That can look like ransomware, it can look like just outright wiping of the systems that are managing those processes. It could also be collateral damage. We've had huge cyber incidents over the years where the affected industrial facilities were not actually the targets, but malicious software just spreads over the internet and sometimes that spreading can catch big facilities in a place where they're offline for days, weeks, or even months.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of kids, or at least Gen Z, I'm 26, so kids, I'd say. Yeah. We're almost naive. It feels like it's been very peaceful. Who's gonna attack America? Who's gonna attack? Nobody attacks factories. That's not a thing. Or power lines. I remember seeing that on Twitter, like who would attack a power line? Right?

Yeah. It happened just a few weeks ago. There's a beer bottling facility that was taken down. Duvel, if you've ever had that in a bar.

Yeah.

And then just a few days ago, announcement that I think it was Iranian state actors had gone after a bunch of water infrastructure in Texas, and those folks had rolled back to manual control in order to maintain control of that asset, keep the water going. Yeah, this stuff happens all the time, and it, I think it's going to happen at an increasing rate. Saw that in my last job where it's just never go up. Compounding.

Yeah. And you were in the White House, you were working there. You think it's easier or better to make impact from outside or inside?

It's just different. You do different things in different places. And now that I'm in the private sector, the difference that you can make is around building something that people want that does the thing that they want it to do. And then building a team that's able to go out and do that and is able to go out and build more things that people want. And so yeah, I'd just say like different things, but they're both fun.

Yeah. Shouldn't the public sector be doing that too? Building things we want in the country. That'd be amazing.

Yeah.

They don't.

I don't know if they should or not, but it's not what happens. Yeah. Not what happens.

Fair, fair enough. Where's your head at about the upcoming election? Who do you think will win?

I want Trump to win again, but, uh, but yeah, I don't really have an ability to predict the future. And even though it looks like she's on to win now, the other side, back in Iraq, we used to say the enemy gets a vote. I'm not trying to say who's enemy here, but the other side gets a vote. And they're going to try and do as much as they can to make sure that their coalition wins, whether it's try to create this new summer protest movement that we're seeing spin up right now, or maybe they'll try and do another disease or something like that. But we don't know. It's a long time to go. It's what, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, 7 months. It's an eternity. Think of what was happening 7 months ago. Oh, man. Yeah, it's an eternity.

It's really interesting. I feel like people, oh, there is percentage of the left, of course, a huge percentage that is moving way left, but then there are some people that are switching sides. I think among Jewish population especially are just like, peace out. This can't go on anymore. I've seen it with my friends, especially my friends' fiancées or girlfriends. Who identified as liberal and now are like, yeah, Trump wasn't that bad. Like, really? It's been wild to see. Definitely been crazy to see people who hated Trump and now are like, oh, it could be worse. So it's weird. What did you think of Biden's pause? Was that just like a badass, I'm saying a statement and then I say pause after? Or do we have a dementia-filled president?

I don't think he's got his faculties about him, but it's a lot of power. That's concentrated in, in him and in the coalition that continues to operate the levers of power. It's strange. It's a strange thing watching what could be accused of as a figurehead for 8 years. So I don't really know. People tell me things and I don't even know if they're telling facts or, you know, they suppose they're true. It's so hard to know.

Yeah. How did you end up in the White House working with President Trump and the team?

An old boss of mine asked me to come back and help with the transition. And so I left the cybersecurity startup that I was at. I just took a leave of absence for a month and a half and went out and helped with the transition team back in 2016, 2017, and then Right near the end, they asked me to stay. I thought, opportunity, interesting opportunity.

Yeah, definitely sounds like a once in a lifetime or very infrequent opportunity. Sounds very cool. I, uh, have been becoming more and more fascinated and impassioned with defense in general, seeing how important it is, seeing the El Segundo movement, people like you and Augustus Christian, I had him on my podcast recently. I know he is not there specifically, but a very big advocate and I think it's really been inspiring to make people care about it. So yeah, wondering, you're based out of El Segundo, right? Or LA or?

Yeah, we're in like, we're right by LAX. Uh, Galvanic has two offices. We have one in Seattle. Yeah, we have one. Like my LAX.

Very cool. And what is that scene like and what, what should people know about it? We've seen it all over. What's it like being in it?

Yeah, it's opt-in bullish on America, on building, and it's just a bunch of people that have realized that we don't have to accept things the way that they are, and you can just show up and start doing stuff. And sometimes people will invest in it. Other people, other times people will join you, or maybe they'll buy the product or they'll give you feedback. And so it's great. It's like a really amazing group of people that have just shown up and anyone can show up Fridays. We do the bonfires, just come say hello. And, and yeah, there's no, I wouldn't really call it anything formal. It's just a bunch of people that think the same way about, about our amazing country. America, and we love it and we wanna make it better. Wanna build cool things.

I love it, man. I want to see that in New York so bad. I don't know if it's possible, obviously, but I think it's, think it's really important right now. Like it's just not happening in New York, man. All the major protests, it's definitely been not people who wanna see America win. And disappointing. Yeah. Like I've really been disappointed seeing the victimhood mentality of people and not just, I don't know, man, people have hard lives, but there's this, there's a song line that I've always related to. It's like, never met a victim who was winning. And you gotta get out of it. Be grateful that if you're in America, you're fucked. Yeah. Get out, dude. People are just like fighting to get into this country, like a lot of people. And meanwhile, other people want to tear it down. So definitely been sad to see. Yeah. What, what other psyops or things do you think are going on in, in the US that, that most people don't realize or don't talk about?

I think the schools have gotten a lot worse. I think that we saw this happen with universities where they're getting rid of, first of all, you got like rampant grade inflation in like primary schools and then the universities have stopped taking standardized tests. And so basically everything comes down to like, how ideological can you be in your essay? And they're basically just like recruiting the folks that are gonna, that are gonna try and get into their, into these universities. And it's just crazy. And so I think there's a huge opportunity for folks that can just get out and show value, true value. I think there's a huge opportunity for new educational models. And yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest interesting things that I'm seeing right now. Universities are, many of them are just like giving up on the mission of actually educating people. And that's a problem, but it's also an opportunity.

Yeah, I am a college dropout. It was, uh, not teaching me much, man. You just learn it on the internet. Um, but it was also a lot of people who were just expecting college to hand them everything. And how can you be against capitalism and learning and be in college? I just don't get it. You're there to go. I've always seen, at least growing up, college is will help me get a job, which will help me make money, which will help me do whatever. Like, how could you be against capitalism and also be like educating and trying to get a job? Doesn't make sense in my brain. I don't get it.

There's just like a very small group of people that actually make a difference in the world. And I've seen that in various ways that I did. And so I just think that it's like a, it's a shame, right? I wish it wasn't happening because most people just go along with whatever's happening in the world. And, and by destroying the educational infrastructure of the country, Uh, you're just taking all those people and you're making their lives worse. Like all those people that would just go about their daily lives every day, making their lives worse. And then for like really driven people, like they're always gonna find a way of things and go out and, and do new stuff and meet interesting people. So like those people will be fine. It's like everybody else that like, you should want to help them make their lives better and having good foundational education in like math and like writing and basic physics and chemistry, basic economics, that would really help. And instead, people just get weird stuff pumped into their brains by strange people.

I, I, I still don't understand how teaching kids math is controversial. That's what— I don't like math, man. I was never great at it, but it's Kids should know math. Come on. I, I don't get it. Really weird, man. Dude, the whole, oh man, the Minerva tweet that some left-wing person was attacking. I think it was Minerva, right? That education startup. And then it like helped them make a lot of money. Maybe that's, I think that was the one. It's, this is a great time.

Sign, I signed up for it. Oh yeah. You can call, oh, it's wrong system. I've got an, it's not called Minerva, but it's called something else with an M, like, ah, Mandava or something like that.

But yeah. Yeah, I think now, dude, now is such a good time for people who want to start an education startup and an alternate form of education. I saw, what was it? Campus.edu, like a new community college system of some sort, founded, funded by, was it Founders Fund or A16Z? And they're trying to basically rebuild community college because it's it's like a sham. And then those, those specialized programs. Yeah, it's tempting to, not tempting, but really interesting to, to learn about that stuff. I'm curious, should we ban TikTok?

TikTok's currently owned and operated on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. I don't think that we should give foreign intelligence services the ability to run large media platforms in the United States. I have no problem with TikTok as a platform, but it shouldn't be owned by the Communist Party, nor should the algorithms that govern it be controlled by the Communist Party. And so it's a little more nuanced explanation than what people have said so far, but it'd be like allowing the KGB to own the New York Times at the height of the Cold War. We make some jokes about who owns it now though. But anyway, yeah, I don't think that the current arrangement is one that is responsible.

Yeah, I completely agree, man. I, it's really sad. I feel like people have gotten dumber because of TikTok and just crazier. And I don't have, that's just anecdotal, is just seeing that. The way that shit is getting swayed. It's not good. And yeah, I think what people might be confused about is, are, what, why is China an enemy? Like, we don't feel like we're in a Cold War. So it's, most people are just like, why are you getting rid of this app?

I think the Chinese Communist Party describes itself as being in conflict with the United States and in conflict with the system. Of openness that the West is built on. And so I just think that if they're going to act that way, if they're going to think that way, if they're going to, you know, talk that way, that we need to take it very seriously. And if the Chinese weren't pumping chemical precursors into Mexico to get turned into fentanyl and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, if they weren't subsidizing materials in order to destroy American companies on the global marketplace, if they weren't flooding markets with subsidized consumer goods that destroy US companies, if they weren't doing all of these things, I think it'd be a different story, but it's not. This is what they're doing and they've been doing it now for 20 years. And it was irresponsible of, it was irresponsible of our leaders to allow it to happen over the past, or however many years, and then President Trump started to put a stop to it. I had a small part in helping that. And then the new admin has taken its foot off the gas. And so I just think we have to recognize reality, just look around, see what's happening. It's not a collaborative relationship.

Yeah, I think a lot of people think it is, which is naive, but why does China want to lessen the US's power?

They want to make the world safe for the Communist Party. Remember, China's not like a, the US system. There's some in the United States that want to become something similar to China, but China's run by a single political party and the Communist Party, and the Communist Party controls all of these levers of power, including the military. So You look at China, the country doesn't have a military. The Chinese Communist Party has a military called the People's Liberation Army, and they answer to the party. They don't answer to any office that can be occupied by anyone. Answer to the Communist Party. Same thing with the intelligence apparatus. And really the same thing for any company that comes out of China. Ultimately, they have to do what the party says. In fact, the party is able to and does put party officials inside companies that are in China, inside companies that are from China that are operating abroad. So the head of TikTok actually doesn't control TikTok. There's a Communist Party commissar that can walk into his office and dismiss him anytime he wants, or can tell him, hey, you're going to do X today and not Y. So the party controls all these aspects of what we see happening in China. And those people think that they're in conflict with the United States and their modus operandi, their reason for behaving is that they want to promote the stability and success of the party, of the Communist Party itself at home and abroad.

Yeah, I, there's a lot of power in words and I think Communism, uh, people, young people think it's this beautiful thing. Communes, man. Everybody's equal and people don't have to work as hard. What is communism really?

The murder of 100 million innocent people worldwide over the past 100 years. So it's a pretty good run rate. Yeah. Communists have been responsible for death, misery, destruction, uh, So many things, they take anything that's productive and they destroy it. It's terrible. It's a terrible system that has killed many, that has destroyed every country it's gotten its claws into. It's just a, it's just a dysgenic, disgusting philosophy that, that worships the deformed human soul and the deformed human body. And seeks to turn everything in its grasp into that deformed thing, disgusting, sniveling, smelly, um, nonproductive thing.

They want to remove our agency, and I think right now is the most important time to be a high-agency individual ever. And think for yourself, do for yourself. It's very important. Yeah. We, I, we, should we bring back McCarthyism? What's your thoughts on that? I've been like joking about it, but I'm not really joking when I say it. It's just a lot of fun to say to friends as like a bit, but I'm not like, it's not really know what that much.

People that know what that means and they've been taught to do this thing we call word thinking where They just associate a word with a group of like ideas or emotions. So here's what I, here's what I would say. Communism has no place in America. None. Has no place in America. And we should get it out. And the people that are advocating for it should be shunned. And they should be laughed at because they're not smart. They're not good. The thing that they're advocating for will lead to ruin. And, and they're clownish. Just. Disgusting people. It was just laugh at them. It's funny. They think that they can just, it's like that chat photo of the chats in Seattle, them trying to grow food on top of the, on top of the cardboard. Total joke. They've never interacted with anyone. It's gross. It's a deformity of the human mind. So never mind all these people in the past. The point is you just laugh them out of civil society, deny them the ability to have any say over what we do in this country. And that means we should separate them from any position they have inside government. They shouldn't have influence. They shouldn't have a say. Just get them out. Just get them out. Let them fend for themselves on the open market instead of having taxpayers. Yeah, let's get them out and, and make them live by their own philosophy. They can go to China if they want. That's fine. Good. I think go to Venezuela if they want. That's great. In fact, I'd—

the weather's nice there.

Yeah, let's do that. Let's let them live by their ideals.

Yeah.

Place under the Constitution. Yeah. Get rid of it. Let's, let's very gently and legally remove them from the places that they are. So I don't know what these words— some senator a long time ago, but the point is that, is that's not the way in which we're going to promote an amazing country. That's never going to be the way in which we have human flourishing. And I think we should have all that. So let's do it. Let's do that. Let's get them out.

That would be nice. I would, it'd be a lot more peaceful in New York if we could get rid of some communists. And same thing with the trans Palestinian fans. Yeah, let's go to Palestine or go to Gaza, have some fun. I think that you'll last a long time there. Meanwhile, Israel is one of the most LGBT-friendly places, but hey, don't tell that to them. So I think another thing that I worry about a lot is the legalization, decriminalization, whatever the word is, popularity of weed. All right. And I think one of the reasons why communism is popping up so much and why kids in college are doing crazy shit like protesting like this— protesting has always been normal, but these kind of riots is because they're just high. They're on some sort of. Drugs in general, and weed has gotten so strong. And if you can't think clearly, if you can't learn, you're obviously not going to be a well-informed person. You're not going to, there's no clarity. And seeing, man, dude, walking around New York and just seeing a dispensary every block, every few blocks, it's really, I believe that was such a big mistake by America to do this, and we're going to be regretting it. We're, I'm, I think it's a huge mistake. We're going to be regretting it in years to come because our population is just going to get dumber. That's it. And it already is. And like, think less clearly. Makes no sense.

It's a shame. Never ranked involved in that scene for legal reasons. Most of my life was inside the security industry, so not allowed to do it. Never really attracted my interest as well when I was younger. So yeah, I, I see people that are doing those types of things and I just think it's not gonna lead to the thing that they want. Just makes people unhappy, lethargic. I have a shot of espresso and it changes my perspective. Imagine what happens when someone tries to do something crazy with some screwball chemical they found on the underside of the Latin American toke.

Trust me, I, I know, man. I smoked weed from 16 to 21.

Mm-hmm.

Every, almost every day. And it ruined my life. Totally sent me on a spiral, man. And so I, I quit 5, 5 years ago coming up this August, 5 years. And so I see firsthand that the kids who I grew up with who are still getting high are going on this just parabolic path down. It's cool, like in normal in college, and then you just keep going and down. And then the ones who, dude, you, you can't think clearly on it. If you're listening to this, switch from weed to coffee, man. That'll be the best, most productive decision of your life. Like caffeine, it's a miracle drug, man. Marijuana, just gonna make you stupid. And I think our parents were right, man.

So many things that we were told when we were young turned out to be correct.

Yes. And I think it's becoming that more and more. Like I tweeted the other day, growing up is going from Eric Foreman to Red Foreman because I literally, like in a span of 5 years, I've switched to just like, everybody is a fucking dumbass and it's your fault you're a dumbass because you're probably high. Like that is, that's just my mentality now. Like I, dude, I film these street interviews in New York, uh, like across New York or whatever in Washington Square Park, which, you If you've ever been, it's just, it smells like weed all the time. Right. And just so many people just high, like lazing around, but also protesting and it's get your shit together, man. Stop being a dumbass. I'm now I'm Red Foreman at this point. I'm a 26-year-old Red Foreman. It's a problem, but it's a good thing, I guess. What excites you about America? What excites you? Why should people be hopeful?

Oh, it's a lot of good stuff. You know, come to El Segundo. It's exciting. People starting companies. I get to help my fellow founders start new businesses, go out and build cool things. And yeah, no, it's great. I think human history is filled with challenging moments and we're starting to get into one. I'm sure it'll go on for some time. And so ain't nothing better than just putting your shoulder behind the cart and pushing, and whether that's starting something or joining something that's gonna make a positive impact on things, I, I think it's a great time despite all the, despite all the—

it's definitely a time to do something meaningful. And I'm feeling that more, and maybe it's just growing up and whatnot, but I, it's time to do something meaningful more important than ever right now. Hopefully. I think. Talking about this stuff on Twitter and podcasts is meaningful. And I hope it is. What's your thoughts on Twitter? You're up to 50K followers. Curious what's been your thoughts there on, on strategy and talking about what you do because your threads are amazing. I was, yeah.

Yeah. You know, people have tried to do bad things to me for many years, but when I was in the last job, and so. I just figured I was gonna speak my mind and I have friends that I have disagreements with and that's totally fine. Try and be social and be willing to have open conversations with people or disagree with them, or maybe even realize that you said, you, you said something that wasn't, wasn't an accurate depiction of reality, but get out there and have a conversation with folks. I think it's a lot of fun. It's how I blow off steam. I tend to be schlock. Yeah. So I love it. Nice little— toon sending just an insane amount of emails, helping to keep things on the rails with the company, being a good dad, young son, and being a good husband and good, good member of family. Yeah, I like it. It's cool. And the nice thing is that You, it's a nice way to get to know people. So I've made a ton of friends off Twitter and it's a place where you can also like highlight whatever it is that you wanna highlight, right? So you've got a following and you get to tell them about cool things that you see and you just get to put energy out in the world. And I think that's great.

It's a fantastic feeling. Do you feel more powerful against people who attack you? Now that you have a following? Because I sure as hell do.

I, I don't know that I've ever thought about it like that. I think from my perspective, it's about being able to communicate clearly, and you can do that with 10 followers, you can do that with 1,000 followers, you can do that with a billion followers. And that's like the amazing part about X, Twitter. And yeah, it's cool to see the number go up, right? Like more people follow. But at the same time, some of my favorite accounts are low digit and just like super sharp folks that are willing to make observations about things and just speak truth, observe reality.

Dude, my favorite thing is when I find an account with 1,000 followers just tweeting bangers and it's my secret and I'm just super happy. Or like, Even less. It's, it's so sick. Feel like an OG stan. Yeah. Solana said something interesting, which was like he got attacked a lot more before he had a following, and now because he has a following, people, the press is a little more worrisome. Sure. He gets attacked here and there. Some bullshit Rolling Stone piece was hilarious about how he likes Hitler's art. Yeah. Yeah. Lulu. If you're listening to this, look up Lulu Misurvi. Yeah. Fantastic. I should have her on the podcast and yeah. Do you see every founder that you're working with now at this point goes direct, right?

Most. Yeah. There are some folks that I know that are still using the traditional ways, but yeah, I think going direct is much better. It's more human. Let people hear from you. One of my friends who started a company out here was like, hey, what's the best way to release a, to put out a press release? Well, Twitter, just post it. All the journalists are following it. So the more, and if you go to one of these press release websites, number of impressions that you'll get, sure, you can hang it on like Business Wire or whatever. And you pay like $100 a year for that. Some low amount, but beyond that, you're going to get more eyeballs just tweeting it out if it's interesting.

Damn right. Same thing I tell every founder that I work with is don't worry about asking the journalists or anything to cover you, just cover yourself. And then the journalists end up hitting you up anyways. I've had that many times where like journalists, journalism at this point is just ripping shit from Twitter and then DMing a few people and asking questions. Like most journalists, not all of 'em, of course, not all of 'em, but a lot of it. And, uh, so you might as well be the person getting ripped from, right? So, cool, man. This was like all the main things I wanted to cover. Uh, been looking forward to this for a while. I've been like, dude, you're like a hero, what you've done. So I really appreciate it. Um, I don't know, dude, I know, but I've been just a fan for a while and have taught me to think a lot more strategically in life and. I really appreciate your time, dude.

Thanks for saying that. Thanks for doing what you do, Jason Levin. Here on Twitter.

Appreciate it.

Joshua Steinman.

Let me out.