The Scott Adams School - 05/15/26 Poso, Lisec & Erica. China. Data Centers, Cernovich. Trump

Yes. Okay. We're live. Oh, I see. Oh, Joshua just ran out of his car. He's running in the door. Here he comes.

I want to actually see. He has to film that.

He has to film that.

Make something happen, Joshua.

There he is. Do you want us to throw a nickel in your cup?

Oh, no.

Yes, I'm ready. I'm set here.

We're live. We're live.

Totally didn't grab my mug.

Oh, listen, that's okay. Scott Adams is going to take care of all of that for us. You guys, look who I have. These two gentlemen with me today. What a surprise, right? Marcello and Owen are working hard. So I said, oh my gosh, these two co-hosts. Yes, go work. Get your work done. They'll take care of the show for us. But before we do anything, Let's get ready.

And you know what that means. Yes, you do. It's the best part of the day. It's the thing that makes everything better. And to participate— got dope, somebody says. Good. Well, your simultaneous sip may be different than most of the rest of you. If you would like to participate in the simultaneous sip, it doesn't take much. All it takes is— A cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen, jug, or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.

Go!

Ah, better every time. Just when you think I know you're probably thinking to yourself, it can't possibly be better every time. And then you do the sip and you think, it is every time it gets better.

It's so true. And I also want to say, if anyone could tell the people on YouTube that Rumble is rumbling, and so YouTube isn't live right now, if they want to come over to Locals, Rumble, Spotify, or X, and YouTube will be uploaded right after this show. It's that kind of day. So let's turn it around. Okay, you guys, so we have so many fun things in store for you. Um, the first thing I wanted to do is we're going to talk about China first because we have the expert of all experts here in Jack.

But I—

so listen, look at this. Wait, this is my kindergarten graduation picture, right? My little yellow dress with my yellow patent leather shoes, I'll have you know. And look, I'm shaking hands with China. We have Israel behind me. There's France in between us. We were very United Nation-y over there at kindergarten. So, yay team. So I thought, okay, perfect. Jack, they're coming back.

I don't have to do the simultaneous sip in Mandarin.

You can if you can, and I think you can if you know it. I mean, he can show off Jack Dustin. Oh, wait, I better sip. I feel like that was some kind of call to action.

Um, would be like, like, start. So like, go now.

Oh, okay, I'm gonna go now while you talk. So, all right, so, oh my gosh, we have so many questions, but I'm gonna just let you riff on China up to now? And then I told you the clip I do want to play, so let me know when to cue that. Okay.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think from a high level, I guess, and Joshua, I'm sure you have your takes as well. I think this, and you know, this was persuasion theater on both sides. This was persuasion warfare from the United States, from China. and you saw two master persuaders in action. And I think that Xi Jinping gets, um, a little bit, you know, a little bit underestimated, and just the CCP in general, at how good and how strong their persuasion skills are and have always been. And you saw that on full display with the use of the children, the use of the fanfare, the military, the pageantry, Um, you know, all of the shaking the hands, going up and down the line. I mean, this is all persuasion. And, and in fact, the use of young children in Chinese Communist propaganda is something that goes back to the days of Chairman Mao himself. This is all— or by the way, uh, the Red Guards in China, which, you know, was in the exact same spot. That's Tiananmen Square, just so everybody knows. That is Tiananmen Square that they're standing in. and for all those, uh, images that went hyper-viral, that this is the spot where Chairman Mao, after he became the, uh, paramount leader of China, that he would go again with the children. But in this case, it was the use of the children as the, you know, the young pioneers to go out and, uh, assault their parents and teachers and all the rest. But, but the point is, with the, you know, the Little Red Books and all the rest, and we know the story there, but Joshua and I literally wrote the book about it, and I just mean to make the point that the use of children is very, very textbook for the Chinese Communist Party. There's no question. And in this case, sure, they were using it to be positive, but then what did they do immediately after they closed the door is they, they played the switch. And now suddenly it's, we need to, you know, the linguistic switch of the Thucydides trap, talking about the rising power and the falling power, talking about how you are the power that is fading. We are the power that is rising. And of course, Trump had to sort of respond to that. And we saw the Truth Social going back and forth, which I think a lot of people kind of missed in real time what Xi Jinping was doing when he brought up the Thucydides trap. People are saying, what's this? He's referencing the Peloponnesian Wars from 2,500 years ago. What does that have to do with anything? But the use of history, the use of a Western history reference, that's something that actually passed over, I think, a lot of the talking heads out there. Cable media, but it was an understanding that, hey, I know your history better than you do. This is referencing Athens and Sparta and a war that they had so many years ago. And recently, this book that Graham Allison had written about, you know, with Kissinger, had written about the US and China. And you see all this, you know, the use of very aggressive language on Taiwan. And of course, we can talk about that later. And then on the flip side, you see President Trump coming in and he's in full negotiation mode. And, and this is something that we know Scott Adams would be talking about, where he's, he's, he's buttering him up. He's bring— of course, the power play, right? The power play of bringing Elon Musk and Jensen Huang and the CEO of Apple and the CEO of, of Meta, uh, Dina Powell McCormick. So, you know, the huge power play of bringing all the CEOs with them. But notice how she responded to the power play. He sent them out of the room. Because if you were watching, when they were in that Great Hall of the People, the minute they closed the doors, uh, and everyone's sort of sitting there going, you know, what's going to happen? Is it— and they went long. It was supposed to be about an hour, it was 2 hours. But 20 minutes in, the doors open, and who comes out? It's all the CEOs being sent out of the room. So that's Xi Jinping saying, hey, very nice, but the merchants, get them out of here. This is about power. So he responded to the power play with his own power play. This is a one-on-one meeting, and those guys are not part of the one-on-one. So you're seeing this visual persuasion. You're seeing the labels that stick. Beautiful, historic. He referred to the Biden meetings as low energy. I really do think that you saw masterstrokes of persuasion on both sides here. And how will that shake out geopolitically? I think still kind of remains to be seen. But, you know, huge stakes here, not just for the US-China relationship, but Taiwan, Strait of Hormuz, Iran, all these things coming to bear. And it was just— I mean, we could go through it for hours, the levels of persuasion that we saw on full display here.

Such a good point. I mean, they are both masters of persuasion, you know. They just— they seem to mirror each other, and they both know that. And so everything that you hear coming out of China, like even, you know, things that President Trump's saying or that the, you know, anyone in that group is saying, you're just like, ah, like, I don't know. I don't know who that's meant for, for real. Um, and also I was gonna say, do you, do you, Joshua, think that— do you, do you think any part of the negotiations that they're thinking, well, Trump's out of here in 2 years anyway, so how serious do I need to take this?

Something that we want to all keep in mind is that China, for a number of decades now, has been officially following effectively a 100-year plan. And I, I hesitate to call this an advantage of a one-party authoritarian totalitarian Communist Party state.

Joshua, you're going to get in trouble again.

In, in a, in a low-intensity conflict between great powers, when the CEO of one country effectively is potentially able to change every 48 years. Meanwhile, there remains the incumbent party with power. You are correct, all they have to do is sort of wait out the competition here. Of course, having a successor like 48 being potentially, uh, JD Vance as very, very much an economic populist, uh, in the same vein of the nationalist Donald Trump, that's a very good thing from the American perspective. That would be not so much from the, from the Chinese perspective. So it very well could be that they're unsure if it makes better sense from the Chinese perspective to attempt to create additional deal-making opportunities now or kind of prolong it a little bit. There does seem to be telegraphing from President Trump that there are going to be following this summit ongoing conversation between the two countries, um, specifically because we saw on Sean Hannity, the first interview that President Trump gave, he made a number of nods that, uh, I think irked a lot of people with regard to allowing Chinese students to come to the United States and study at universities, starting businesses here, even buying farmland, which my first thought was, oh, he's not saying that to Sean Hannity, he's not speaking to the United States. He's talking to China, who's paying attention right now amid these conversations.

I have that clip actually.

I was in China. He was still in China while he was making that statement.

Now I'm going to play the clip, but I'm going to tell you beforehand that I am taking the opposite position on this. I know, like, listen, instinctively, intuitively, I know that the thought is to be like, well, he's, he's talking to Xi, not to us. I get that in negotiations, like, we know, we've seen this for years. But, you know, this was brought up to him so long ago before any of this was going on here in America. And I mean, he didn't even talk about like a drawback of the students or anything. So let's, well, let's play the clip so everyone can get caught up to speed. And, um, I'm gonna cut the clip off at like Uh, let me just see because I— it was a longer clip, uh, 3 minutes. Okay, so this is a 3-minute clip. I just want to give everyone listening the background.

I would assume I'm in Beijing, if I wanted to buy property near one of their military installations, I don't think President Xi wouldn't let you.

I don't— look, it's not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop? You want to see farmers lose a lot of money? Just take that out of the market. But they've had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it. As far as the students, it's 500,000 students. They come, good students. I could tell them I don't want any students. It's a very insulting thing to say to a country. They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China. But if you don't have those students, good students, by the way, if you don't— and we do another thing, you know, if they're good and they want to stay in America, we won't give them a green card and things like that. You know, and that's not only them, but other countries. But if you want to see a university system die, take half a million people out of it. And, you know, the ones that won't be hurt are the top schools. The top schools will do fine. But your lower schools, your lower— the ones that don't do quite as well, those two, they'll be dying all over the place. I frankly think that it's good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture, and many of them want to stay here. I think it's good. Not everybody agrees with me, and it doesn't sound like a very conservative position. And I'm as conservative. I'm a conservative guy. I'm really a common sense guy, I think, more than a conservative guy. I think MAGA is common sense. You know, people understand we want strong borders, we want strong military, we want good education, we want low interest rates. We, you know, we want— but I think people would argue they worry about do they have nefarious— sure, I know. And we worry about that. And honestly, you know, they do things to us and we do things to them. It's a very, very fine line, the whole thing with students. So they have 500,000 students and our university system does great. You know, it does great. You want to screw it up, take half a million students out and you're going to see bankruptcies at the lower end of good colleges, but they're not known or whatever. You're going to have a lot of problems. So it's something I'm always looking at. But it's a very insulting thing to tell a country, we don't want your people in our schools. I mean, it really is. Now, I'll have people say, oh, that's a terrible thing. You know, it is a very insulting thing. And it's very interesting. It's something didn't come up today, came up last time. Came up last time. But I will tell you that school systems don't want that to happen because you won't have much of a school system. All right, Mr.

All right. So, Jack, I know you have a take on this right away. You're holding your chin like, just go ahead.

So actually, funny enough, I was— I wasn't— I was doing that on purpose. No. So the thing to look at here is The fact— look, keep in mind, just, just put yourself in context of this interview. He's just spent 2 hours sitting down face to face with Xi Jinping. They've gone through a number of policy lines. And in fact, the president was just on Air Force One. I haven't had a chance to get through all of it, but he was making some of the references to things that they talked about. They did talk about, um, cybersecurity and cyber attacks. They did talk about spying. They talked about Jimmy Lai, the publisher of Apple Daily, that China has thrown as a political political prisoner thrown in prison. And one of the— obviously they talked about Taiwan, we know that from the Chinese side. They talked about the Strait of Hormuz, there's no question. They talked about Iran having a nuclear weapon. But one thing I thought was interesting was that he's selling, right? He's selling in that clip. So he's, he's selling, he's using persuasion. He's saying, well, would you want to see colleges go out of business? Would you want to see this? He's, he's using his persuasion ability through the audience back on China, but also to the American people when he's talking about the importance of keeping these schools open and having American jobs. And it strikes me that the reason he's doing that is because this may be one of the things that Xi Jinping really pressed him on and said, hey, we really need this. And if you want to get our help or get our, our leverage on, um, on Iran or a number of these other places, one of the things that Xi Jinping really came in on, impressed him on, must have been the Chinese students. And that strikes me as very interesting because it almost seems like they get more out of— like, think about it, why, why would that be such a priority to them, as well as the farmland, that China is getting more out of the Chinese students in America and the farmland in America than they are on Strait of Hormuz, that they are on Taiwan, that they are on a variety of these other things. And it goes to show what a priority that is for Xi Jinping to be the point where Trump seems to be wanting to go along with it, wants to show that he's willing to work with him on his top line items because he's looking for assistance in other areas as well. So that struck me as very interesting. And this is something that I know I don't talk about it a lot, but I spent some time at the University of Pennsylvania and worked in one of their China offices and actually helped, um, you know, you know, working on these programs for educational exchange between U.S. students and Chinese students. And you would constantly see— and you're not getting specifics— but you would always see that the Chinese students that came over would be the sons, and just almost to a point, the sons and daughters of the leadership, the sons and daughters of CCP elites. Uh, I think Jiang Zemin Xi Jinping's grandson had studied at Wharton at one point. Uh, we know that Xi Jinping's daughter, I believe, was studying at Harvard under a false name, and she's gone on to be public about that. So what— when you hear the students, you have to remember that this isn't just, just like random Chinese students. These are the sons and daughters of the connected political elite in China.

All right, so this is a weird question for you, Joshua, but Personally, how do you feel about that?

I— the word that I latched on to that President Trump used in that interview was he was speaking about how insulting it would be to say, oh, we don't want your students. East Asian cultures, unlike Western cultures, tend to be more social shame-based, whereas Western cultures were like individual guilt-based. And it just, just contrasts the religions, those that venerate ancestors versus those that venerate the saints and so forth. And so when you are— I think President Trump was, was specifically acknowledging the context and it was a way of indirectly honoring his host, which is key in a negotiation. One of the comments here that we see on Rumble from a Locals individual said something to the effect of, I always prefer to insult on a national platform the people I'm negotiating with. That always works out well for me. Something else that I did during the clip is I pulled up— Jack's gonna laugh— I pulled up Stephen Miller's timeline and I just searched China, Chinese, Chinese businesses, and the guy has been going off for 6 years about Chinese communists, this, that, and the other, from the universities to business. He's saying straight up, we're— our country is being infiltrated by hundreds of Chinese communist spies. President Trump is fully aware of the real situation. But another criticism that Stephen Miller levied was specifically during the Biden administration towards Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And this is what I appreciate about the Trump and Pence administration, is that these are professional negotiators that contain competent, American nationalist populist, meaning they have our people's best interest in mind. Lawyers and entrepreneurs, both of whom are professional negotiators who understand how to play the game. The trouble with the left-wing worldview is they tend to lack the talent stack of negotiation. And if you've— if anyone has ever tried to argue with a liberal on anything or try to create any kind of compromise, they sort of have one or two of two states of negotiation. If they feel any kind of white guilt with their negotiation partner, it's how many concessions can I grant you? And that was, according to Stephen Miller, the stance of the Biden administration, Secretary Blinken specifically. It's how much can we grant you or give away to you or make easy for you to do and not just the Biden administration, but the Democratic Party writ large, is a perpetual concession-seeking from us, surrendering opportunities, land, status, and so forth to communist China. And I do think there is unfortunately a white guilt basis to this. If anyone has ever negotiated with any type of a liberal and you've seen that dynamic before of an interracial negotiation, you will see that 100% of the time. That's also in my opinion, why we just had the breaking story from Maine about millions of dollars of fraud. Vice President Pence talked about that. All the antics in Ohio and Columbus, my capital city, of course, Minneapolis, also Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and so far part of California. There are these immense fraud rings that have been allowed to persist. And I believe one of the reasons why they've not been investigated by the Democratic Party, let's say, that rules those areas that otherwise could is because of the white guilt aspect of it, because the perpetrators are not white. The other part of the, the other sort of strategy of negotiation with liberals that you might have observed is something like if they're dealing with a conservative or person they see as like an equal in some way, then they will effectively say, I should get everything I want. You should get nothing you want. And that's fair. So in both situations they have, I get everything or I get nothing to appease my Western American guilt complex because America is terrible. The real founding was 1619, you know, and they just go off on that direction. And we have to still make reparations for Christopher Columbus and all that stuff. Excuse me, Indigenous Peoples Day. You know, they got to work that in there right along with their key date.

But Joshua, but should we really refer to it as indigenous peoples, or is there perhaps another term that would be more, more apropos?

Columbus Day?

No. Yes. So when you, when you study where the so-called native and indigenous people of the Americas are from, look at, look at their haplogroup, look at their, look at their area of origin. They're actually Siberians. So the better, the better understanding of them is to refer to the so-called native indigenous Americans. The accurate term is Siberian Americans, as they are directly descended from those. Let's, let's not, let's not have ancestral erasure, guys. Calling them indigenous is an erasure of their ancestry.

And just because Beringia is underneath the Arctic Ocean doesn't mean that it was not a real place.

Well, okay, it's too much for me.

This is a running— a kind of a running gag, clearly.

Um, yeah, and, and also I just want to remind you guys, Suicidal Empathy, Gad Saad, will be here next Thursday, so we'll talk about white guilt, um, and how useless it really is and the trouble it can get you into. Um, so, so Joshua, all that being said, in 30 seconds, how do you personally emotionally feel about it? Like, do you— the issue of having 500,000 Chinese students taking the places of potentially American students?

Another thought that I have with that is there is this— there's a separate project I'm working on right now which has to do with the symbology of numbers, and in particularly in the Old Testament, in the Bible, is that what it pertains to, and in these Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern cultures, the purpose of numbers is not to be literal. It is to be abstract, symbolic, and communicative, or as, as Scott might have said, directionally accurate, truthful hyperbole. And so the point of a number like 500,000 Chinese students from that filter is it's not literally half a million. In my understanding, with the context of persuasion, it is a whole heck of a lot of the students that you want to have here.

And?

It'll be okay over here. And?

Personally, are you okay with that?

Obviously not. I don't think that's necessarily a good idea, but I am not alone in that regard. I mean, just simply go to Stephen Miller's timeline. Look at what Vice President Pence— when you are telling the truth versus when you are negotiating with literally a great power enemy, you have to be smart. And I think generally the previous administration did not demonstrate that. It's let's Here's what we want. Oh, you're not going to give it to us? Okay, well, we'll surrender and give you everything you want. But I don't believe President Trump is stupid. And I also think, given the audience of Fox News and some of the reputation aspects of Mr. Sean Hannity, it kind of, it kind of makes sense.

So I get— I want you guys to understand, I get all of the negotiation skill things. Obviously, I could not be a student of Scott's and a friend of Scott's for so long without understanding these things. But I push you, Joshua, because I just want people to also understand on the humane, human, American, I'm not the president and I'm not negotiating with China level, that I would say the majority of Americans are not okay with that. Um, whether— I mean, that's— we're just talking, you know, hyperbolic about Chinese students, but then there's also all the other countries, right? So there are a lot of foreign students and they're from a lot of countries that are not our friends or that give a crap about our best interests. So I really just thank you for answering that because I just really wanted people to understand, like, we get it, you know.

Well, and, and by the way, like, I, I would add that, that I, I think the president understands that this is not something that is going to be popular with his voters, not popular with the base. Um, it's, it's certainly something that Joshua and I have argued against strenuously. I've many times called, I think even as recently as yesterday, called for all Chinese students to be deported from the United States and have their visas shredded and sent away. What I'm— but what I'm trying to analyze here is, okay, this is what President Trump said. He said that on Chinese soil. Why is he saying that? What is the deal that he's trying to get for right now? And I think predominantly because I even I said, uh, in— at one point, I've done a lot of— I've done a couple shows lately with all the China stuff. Um, I've even said that, you know, when he— when Xi Jinping put out that Thucydides trap reference, that, that he— Trump should have just— should have just done the first walkaway, as Scott Adams always said, and just left. Just got on the plane and walked right out. You're not going to describe us as a fading power, as a failing power. But the only reason that he wouldn't The only reason that he wouldn't is that he is seeking something in China as well. And so this is why, you know, I believe you could use the sales strategy of laying it on thick. And that's why Trump is laying it on thick when he's over there. And in fact, one of the readouts that we also saw from, from this was that he even, when I asked him about Taiwan on the, so there's this Taiwan arms deal that was signed back in December. $11.5 billion. It's the largest Taiwan military arms deal the US has ever done, but it hasn't actually started to be sent over. They haven't executed on the contract yet. And they asked the president about that, and Trump responded that, you know, well, we're going to make that determination later. So he's still in Chinese airspace when he's making that comment. So again, he's, he's still kind of holding— he's holding his cards very close to his chest. Um, he's showing willingness to sell and persuade on certain things that he knows, by the way, he knows are going to be unpopular with his voters, unpopular with the base, that certainly are not America First policies. And so the question that I have is, if he's doing so, what's the reason?

Um, I appreciate, like, you know, all the perspectives, you guys. I think, um, I think this is very useful for everybody listening. And I'm, I'm the person that likes to— I don't like to be the contrarian. I just think I tend to like maybe see things on both sides coupled with a little bit of, um, emotion and whatever. But so I appreciate that discussion, and I know that China is, you know, just determined to not let Taiwan be part of these like negotiations. But that being said, I introduced, uh, the Sippers, the debris, to Jimmy Lai and his story, and it's something I've been following for years.

I used to, when I would visit Hong Kong, I would always read Apple Daily. I mean, it was great. It was just phenomenal paper where you would go in and they would be lighting them up. I remember my favorite one. I was there in Hong Kong in 2008, and sometimes you have to do, when you were in China as an expat, you used to have to, I think you still have to do this. You could only get a visa for a certain amount of time. So they would say you have to leave China and then come back. So apply for a visa outside of China but then come back. But because of the peculiar setup of the political situation, Hong Kong counted as leaving China. So what you would do is you would fly to Hong Kong, you'd, you'd be in Hong Kong, so now you've left China, mainland China, even though you're just in Hong Kong. You'd go to an office and then you'd wait like a week or so, and then you'd, you'd fly back after that. So it's like, hey, go to, go to Hong Kong for a week, sounds great.

Which just shows you too, so Hong Kong was living such a different lifestyle than China, like it was really considered like its own little piece of paradise for these people.

It was a British colony.

It was British, yeah.

For its entire history up until 1997, Hong Kong was a rock. Before the British arrived, it, uh, the Chinese never did anything with it. Um, no dynasty in Chinese history ever built anything on Hong Kong Island. They never established anything on Hong Kong. So when, you know, even when people make that phrase or use that phrase that Hong Kong was returned to China. That's actually false. Hong Kong was given to China because it was not Chinese to begin with. It was always a British colony and never anything but a British colony. And so they have this, this thing that they say in mainland China where they call it one country, two systems, yīguó liángzhì, and that, uh, that they're trying to, you know, explain it as that, as, as thus. But anyway, so I remember I'm there in 2008 And Xi Jinping at this point was actually visiting Hong Kong. Now, he hasn't become the state chairman yet, and he was still— but he was already a member of the Politburo. And, uh, but everyone knew that he was, he was kind of going to be the guy. Everyone knew that he was sort of next in line after Hu Jintao. And, uh, what Jimmy Lai did was that he published Xi Jinping's schedule publicly on the front page of every Apple Daily in the city. So all the Hong Kong protesters showed up at every single stop that Xi Jinping was going to be at that day. And I, I I, I may have— I may, may— I can't— I cannot confirm nor deny that I may have also, uh, happened upon a few of these in, in my travels that week.

It's a small place. It's chances of ending up there.

Small city. It's, it's a small city, you know, and you just run into things.

So, um, I went to a private screening of The Hong Kongers some years back and met a lot of the people that were in the documentary about what happened to Jimmy Lai. And you guys, I have like the biggest hole in my heart for what's happened to him and others over there. But what a man. Um, any— do we know anything? Like, or— I hate to speculate, you know. I know I don't know what happened, but what do we think about the Jimmy Lai getting out possibility?

Uh, so Trump did mention this on Air Force One, and It sounded like Xi Jinping said no. It sounded like he just, he just straight up said no, that he was not interested, that that's something that's a hard no for him. He said it's very tough. And, you know, this has been something where, uh, he's, he's just totally throwing the book at them. And, and of course, you know, when, when Hong Kong was handed over back in 1997, we were promised up and down that there would be no, uh, interference. That's the one country, two systems thing. There would be no interference for 50 years, and that lasted maybe 20-ish years. And they immediately, you know, they immediately reneged on that and started throwing people in prison. Trying to think, trying to think who Jimmy Lai, you know, in the US kind of reminds me of, you know, you know, what, what sort of like freedom, you know, publisher do we have?

I've thought about that too. I'm curious to see who you think.

You know, I don't, I don't know. It's sort of like, uh, it's sort of like maybe like the publisher of it You know, I want to say Elon because Elon—

me too.

But, but it's like on a much smaller scale, like a very much smaller scale than, than what Elon does, of course. But that's what it's like. It's like, or, or like, you know, Jim Hoft or the Gateway Pundit or something like someone who's just like, or Mike Lindell, like someone who's just a thorn in the side and a truth teller and speaking truth to power, like someone who's not, you know, who's not any physical threat. He's not a violent threat, not ever a truth teller, you know, not done anything wrong other than tell the truth.

He— so you guys like, like Elon? He had all the money he could ever want in the world, Jimmy Lai. He'd already gone from rags to riches, and when I say rags, I mean nothing.

Some people in the chat are saying like James O'Keefe, you know. Yeah, Walter Kern. Yeah, those are great examples. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. He was a publisher. He's just a publisher.

But he— but he— so I'm thinking, so where I see him like Elon is, Elon has all the money in the world, he's got enough jobs and work and businesses and ideas and whatever, but then he's like, eff it, I'm gonna help this country and I'm gonna take Twitter. And he didn't need to do that, but he saw a need for it. And that was the same thing with Jimmy Lai. He's like, he didn't need another penny for the rest of his life. He'd made bajillions, but he was like, we need a free press, and he started Apple Daily. And what did he get for that? Uh, you know, and also, where, where are the British people? You know, that they're supposed to have this agreement, I think, till 2047-ish. And, uh, you know, Jimmy Lai was put in jail in 2020. He's in solitary confinement. Um, you know, No contact with anybody. No, no air on his face, no sunlight, just in a cell. Um, Joshua, I mean, do you have a take on this? I'm just so— I'm so upset. And I just know that Xi is tying Jimmy Lai to the no Taiwan negotiations. So I, I looked at it like if Xi acquiesced to this request, he would look weak in the eyes of China. So I don't know, uh, do you have any thoughts on this, Joshua?

Sadly, I think you're right in that it's a— as, as simple and straightforward as the release or some sort of exchange, something with, with one person might be, that one person symbolizes so much that would otherwise put the Chinese Communist Party to shame. And the, the geopolitical complexity of the situation is that, number one, the United States must remain supreme over China. They cannot be peers with the Chinese Communist Party. That's never going to happen. The Chinese Communist Party must always remain submissive to the United States and our will. That said, China is not going anywhere, unfortunately. Probably the Chinese Communist Party is not going anywhere either. First with the military technology, the totalitarian dictatorship, the indoctrination of all generations going forwards from the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao, and then now all the surveillance technology, the social credit scores, the ubiquity of, of, of drones and the highly advanced police state that they have become. The secret police is It's, it's so secret, it's no longer secret. Okay. The fact that every single Chinese citizen who travels internationally can be co-opted as a spy for the United States, or rather against the United States, or for the benefit of Chinese Communist Party. And if you've spoken with any citizens who have been at risk of this, they will tell you that in no uncertain terms they were ordered by the Chinese Communist Party to do this specific work in the United States or Canada or elsewhere, or the United Kingdom, or their families back in mainland China were going to suffer a Jimmy Lai kind of a fate. You, you can't be friends with that kind of a civilization.

That's— there's an example of that that we all know. Remember the N95s? Remember they were, they were buying up all the N95s before they told us about COVID And sending them back to China.

Yes. Again, go, go to Stephen Miller's timeline. For the last 6 years, he has been going off about, about the Chinese Communist Party. But the thing is that China has seen a number of systems over the years. I was showing some history to my son, uh, going back to the ancient Silk Road. There was a time, you know, we think about President Nixon being the one who opened up China, but there was a period for centuries where China was engaging with trade with as far away as the British Isles via the Silk Road, the Roman Empire. Think about ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptian trade via that, via that trade route. But then there was a period of the closing up in the Forbidden City, so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nixon, '70s, opening up China, Communist Party. China as a culture, as a, as a people, they have been around since the ancient world, and they will remain into it. Unfortunately, in order to work with the Chinese people, we have no choice but to work with their permacaptors of the technologically hyper-advanced Chinese Communist Party. We don't have any enmity with Chinese people. The problem is every single citizen of China is, as I said, co-optable as a spy for one of the most wicked regimes in human history, if not the most wicked regime in human history, that of the Communist Party of China, rivaled only by the Soviet Union, who was kind of a frenemy of theirs and a sort of a friendly rival at times, not so friendly. In any case, that's the context into which the Jimmy Lai saga finds itself, in which President Trump finds himself. And understanding that as he approaches his 80s and we have only a couple of years left during his administration, part of the Trump administration, he is not a fool, President Trump. And I believe his position and Vance's, Miller's, everyone's on the team and those of us who are allies within the Republican Party for the MAGA and the America First, whatever you want to call it, sort of economic populism and nationalism within the United States and the kind of the post-Trump right future. President Trump, I fully believe, wants the United States in the best possible position with the highest points of leverage over the Chinese Communist Party specifically. And do— am I going to say I'm a plan-truster? I trust the plan. Well, I will say that for the better part of half a century, Donald Trump has been getting what he wants out of people who didn't want to give it.

That's true, that's true.

All right, so actually I found— I think I've— so I saw some people in the chat, by the way, saying, uh, Andrew Breitbart, that's a great example, no question. Um, it'd be like Andrew Breitbart being thrown in prison, which would be completely insane. We'd all be against it. We'd be talking about it constantly. And I would just say that, you know, probably the, the best way to explain it to people is that though, that Jimmy Lai, he's a modern-day Solzhenitsyn. He is a modern-day Solzhenitsyn. He has been thrown into the Gulag, um, and he is unfortunately much older than Solzhenitsyn was when he was imprisoned. And he's someone who, you know, Erica, to your point, if, if he's not released soon, he, he probably doesn't have much time left.

Yeah, he's sick. Um, so I, I appreciate this whole conversation. I absolutely want to get to this with the two of you being here since we all know and love Mike Cernovich. Um, I, I really want to get this clip. I want to just kind of— yes, yes, I just want to, um, talk about— we talked about the data centers a little bit this week. I just, I wanted to get this clip in, and I'm going to play it. Let's react to it. And every time someone in the chat says Mike blocked me, I don't know why he blocked me, take a shot. Okay, listen.

Right now, this very video is being analyzed, photographed. How does the skin look? Are his pupils dilated? Fed into an algorithm to psychologically profile me. The square footage of the room is being calculated. It's cradle-to-grave surveillance. That's why Big Tech wants the data centers. Now, I know as a public person there's no way around it for me, so I don't try to do anything particularly cool to throw off the algo or the IA. I'm— I am what I am. I'm spied on. It's just the nature of the beast. But Big Tech, Mark Zuckerberg, vaccine mandate, funded the destruction of America, funded Black Lives Matter, funded illegal immigrants. They hire infinite H-1Bs, and now they're telling you that if we don't beat China, then the bad guy's trying to win. But Big Tech are the bad guys. Who, you know, who is this we? We were censored. We couldn't share the link to Hunter Biden laptop. We were told take the vaccine or you're gonna lose your job and your life. Livelihood. Vaccine passports, dude, that's a dream under these data centers. They will do cradle to the grave surveillance. They will suck up every picture, video you take of your kids. It will be harvested. Every movement you make will all be stored. Digital currency will be stored. This is dystopian level stuff. And that's why, because nothing I've said can be refuted, that's why Big Tech and Kevin O'Leary you know, he went on Tucker and people are mad at Tucker. I don't really care about that. They're saying, well, this is a China talking point. I'm China, dude. I'm China. Or Big Tech, which was funded by China. Big Tech, which promotes social credit scores and censorship. Big Tech, which wouldn't let us talk about COVID which originated in China. We're China now? No way. Don't fall for this stuff, man. They're using populist messaging. They're using nationalist messaging because they They want a shock collar on you. They want the mark of the beast in the literal sense to control everything you do. And that's why they need these data centers. And that's why they're trying to ape our language, our populist nationalist message. Oh, we gotta beat China.

We?

Okay, where are the checks in, big guy? Where's the money? If it's us, us, and it's not just more profiteering by big tech, where are the checks, big boys? Oh, all amongst each other. We— you're not part of the we. Don't be a slave.

So, you know, he also said Apple makes its phones in China. Zuckerberg censored you for claiming COVID was created in a laboratory in China. NVIDIA wants to sell chips to China, and now we know they will. Big Tech lobbies for infinite student visas for CCP kids. Who is at war with China? Not Big Tech. They are on China's side. Jack, I'm coming right to you.

I mean, you got to, you got to love Mike Cernovich, right? You know, people say, where's Mike been? You know, where, where is he? It's like, he's like, he's like, you know, this guy, he was batting 1,000 in 2016 and now he's at like 200. You know, he's like, he's, he's, he's off doing this thing. He's off doing that thing. But man, when he steps into the batter's box, when he steps up to the plate and playing a lot of Little League lately, if you can't tell, uh, with the boys, and, uh, and, uh, we've got 2 games tomorrow and a First Communion, actually, um, that, uh, you know, he just, he just knocks out of the park. And there's nobody who knocks out of the park like Mike Cernovich. When he's on, there's no one better. And it's just as simple as that, that, you know, when he wants to throw a punch, it's gonna land, and he's gonna get through every one of your defenses. The picture that he's able to paint— and he does, think about it, he does so at the exact moment when all of the tech leaders, as we just talked about, are over in China. And what did Brett Baier show us in China? He showed us that physical— I mean, the persuasion that Brett Baier did was phenomenal. Brett Baier has been putting on a masterclass in— and what he's been doing with the ping pong video, if you guys saw that, that was going viral. He was playing ping pong with some guy at one of the parks there in Beijing, and he's walking down, he gets the parking ticket from the cameras. So he's— we're, we're hearing about China, we're hearing about the surveillance state, but now he's giving us that visual persuasion of, we got a parking ticket within 2 minutes. Yeah, of illegally parking.

Surveillance state.

And so Mike is showing us that what these guys are doing isn't about like, oh, we're going to beat China. No, it's— we're going to become China if we go down this road. They want— and I've said this for years, They want— when I say they, I'm talking about the tech elites who are the same elites, by the way, from COVID-19. They saw that as a way to institute the Chinese system on America and on the West. I just did an interview in the UK who unfortunately are way further down this road than we are. And they— and I used to see this when I— so I worked in Shanghai. I was at the Shanghai American Chamber of Commerce. And you would have the, uh, this, this one museum there was called the Shanghai Planning Museum. And, and the backstory is that when I was there, the city chairman was Xi Jinping. So that's, that's how I, you know, have the— my background with Xi Jinping is I— because he was like— the city chairman is kind of like a mayor, right, in a sense, but more like a mob boss, uh, because that's how the CCP runs. And, uh, did I got to briefly, you know, I don't even say I met him, but I, you know, briefly was you know, in the same room as him at, uh, one of the Shanghai World Expo meetings. And, um, you know, just, just very, very up close with him. And, uh, and you could see just mob boss, total mob boss, and immense power even back then. But I remember that Western leaders, Republicans and Democrats and business leaders, would come to China and they would say, hmm, so what you're saying is you can build a maglev train and, and the Californians will, will be able to understand what we're talking about here. You can build a maglev train and it goes faster than anything else, and you get all this money to do so, and you go straight from the airport to downtown immediately without any waiting. And but, but what about all the people who live in the path of where the train needs to be built? And the Chinese communist leaders would look at them and say, what about them? He just, he just—

they're out of luck.

Just get out.

Yeah.

Get rid of them, get out of there. What about these historic, uh, Shurkumen, uh, buildings, these, you know, the courtyards and the stone buildings that were ubiquitous in, in ancient China? What about them? Just get them out of here, just get rid of them. Yeah, there's so, so there's, there's no conception of rights, there's no conception of, uh, historical protection or preservation. It's all about now, now, now, what do we want. And again, that total power, which becomes an aphrodisiac. And so when, you know, I talked about Hong Kong before, and when you look at the Hong Kong turnover, we were told that this is going to make China more like us because we will infect China with capitalism and infect China with British democracy and British rights and the Enlightenment and Jeffersonian democracy is just going to flourish in China. Why? Just the same way it did in Afghanistan and the way it will in Iran and the way it did in Iraq after all of our interventions, right? And ultimately, what's actually happened since then, and, and also allowing China around the same time frame to come into the World Trade Organization, giving them most favored nation status, what's happened has been the exact opposite, is that we have become more like China rather than China becoming more more like us, which leads me—

I, I know, like, I, I just want to like highlight this for people because it's not about making memes in AI, you know. We're doing that now without these data centers. So, um, I want to play another clip quickly, and Joshua, I'm going to ask you to react first. And this is, um, Tom Massey, and of Kentucky. And let's watch this clip also about data centers.

First version of the big bill had a provision that would let data centers ignore state laws, and not just state laws, but local zoning laws. And I think that's wrong. I think that, you know, when you— I call it sorting the smokestacks from the cul-de-sacs. That's not something the federal government can do from Washington, D.C. That has to be up to a local board and a local government. And they, in the first version of the big bill, they had a provision to overrule not just the states, but the local zoning commissions. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and I fought to get that taken out, and it was taken out, fortunately. That, that issue came up again recently in my Judiciary Committee. We were marking up 8 bills one day, in a, in a work session. And I noticed that number 6 on the list was to exempt data centers from 8 different environmental laws, that they couldn't be sued if they didn't have the permits. And, you know, even though some of those environmental laws may be onerous, I don't know why you would give an exemption to data centers but not to the farmers or not to the industry, other industries that could exist. And so I said this is wrong to give a special privilege to— an immunity to data centers. So I tweeted about it. I really right there in real time blew the whistle and they decided to take it off of the schedule that day and it's not come up since. So when people call me an obstructionist, I didn't obstruct the big beautiful bill. We made it better by being transparent. And I have obstructed things like special privileges and immunities for data centers. And most recently, in the Farm Bill, they had a provision that was going to give special privileges and immunities. I call it a get-out-of-court-free card to Monsanto Bayer, which makes glyphosate.

But okay, and he goes on from there. So, you know, Joshua, uh, I'm just gonna— we only have 5 minutes, so I'm going to just give you the floor right now to discuss what you just saw.

Yes, it glitched out there for a second, but the issue is near and dear to me because first of all, Representative Massey is correct, uh, to be very concerned about this. And the, the objective is among our big tech elite very much so to sort of follow the authoritarian path of China, because in a, in a private business or even a publicly traded business, you can effectively govern like a monarch. And when you try to govern like a monarch within the constitutional democratic republic system of the United States, you have to engage in leverage and lobbying and all of these things to try to get what you want. Look at the Zuckbucks in Wisconsin, $400 million, 2020, for, for basically getting Biden that state. Okay, that's how important it was for just one individual to get the one thing that he wanted. Um, and so Posto is correct that The objective is indeed to see what the Chinese are capable of, the Communist Chinese Party with their technology. Well, we need that technology too. We can do that. And it's worse in the United States because of, let's say, changing consumer habits and the need for something like a secret police that's not so secret at all to deal with, shall we say, mall teens and the problems we have across the United States associated with that behavior.

Behavior.

But data centers, there's one to be built in Clark County, Ohio. That will sound familiar to a number of viewers. Uh, what's Clark County best known for right now? Oh yeah, Springfield, the Haitian population there. When I— so I've been working on the way.

I have been trying so hard to pressure Joshua to write a book about this. Do you guys know that Joshua lives like, like what, two towns over from there? Not to dox you, but come on, man, come on. You're in the heart of it. You're in the—

yeah, I get on the state route and then I'm in Springfield. Yes. And everywhere there are no data centers, ban data centers. There is like we're collecting signatures. This is, this is a very, very, very big deal because as far as I've gathered so far, the, the Heritage Citizens of Springfield are very concerned and upset by the Haitian immigrant influx that goes back to as far as 2019, 5 years before the cats and the dogs viral memeology. that, that kind of became the story. But most recently, there's a data center that is scheduled to be built, and construction's already underway, right alongside a new neighborhood. So people have been buying homes in this new development, not realizing that there's this massive data center that's being built over there. And of course, there's the tax breaks, there's the invitation by the city and the county to have this built here, there's all sorts of of what the people deem sketchy that's happening here. I've been to city commission meetings of Springfield, and the one— the latest one that I, uh, most recent one that I went to, um, one of the heritage citizens got up and explained how upset they were by this large tract of land being sold to a commercial developer in order to build a data center there. And the mayor, Rob Rue, is his name, kind of shrugged it off and basically said Well, it's privately owned land and privately owned sellers can do whatever they want with privately owned land. So suck it up, buttercup. I'm paraphrasing what he said there, but that is the problem, in my opinion, with One Nation Under GDP, not God, which is sort of the old world Republican Party where it's—

make it a quote—

whatever it takes to make money, cash money, cash money. Keep going.

Go up, go up, go up.

Yeah. Number go up. Americans, don't forget the hyphen. And that's just not nationalist populism. That's not what America First or MAGA are about. That's not what President Trump is about. And right, right now there is a new— it's called either a task force or a committee that the Ohio legislature— let's say yes. So there's an Ohio Prohibition of Data Center Construction Amendment that is being pushed right now. Let's see. Yeah, yeah. 5C Data Centers and parent organization Hypertech, they're planning on the 75-megawatt Prime Ohio Park facility.

Yeah.

So they're, they're claiming that they're going to be able to independently fund all the things that they need. But the biggest drain is the water and county water and Springfield and Clark County infrastructure is noticeably aging. To be polite to the city itself. And the sort of the, the, the spirit is the data centers are like the Haitian migrants. You're putting them here without asking us about it.

That's right.

You get the benefit and we have to pay for it.

And, and just permission to steal one more minute from you guys. I just want to show visually, I'll even turn off Alex Jones' voice, but I just want you guys to understand, a lot of people don't even know what a data center could look like. Look at this.

It's the same. It's the size of a large town. Yeah, look at this crap. These are the smaller ones. There's a, there's a, there's a big one they're building in, in, um, out west. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, this is for a new life form. This is for a robot takeover. The 5Gs that have all the drones and robots and everything's deliverable. It's all about getting you out of your cars, making you obsolete. This is, this is absolutely hellish what is being done. And then that, and it just goes on for mile after mile after mile after mile of what they're building. Yeah, look at this one, Salt Lake City, Utah. Look at the size of that. We'll come back before our guest comes on the first 5 in play.

So I just, I, I just really appreciate these two topics today because it is like, once they're here, they're here, uh, you know, the the government doesn't undo anything, uh, they just keep marching forward. So I am so proud of the people, you know, like just one woman in New Jersey got one to, to stop. Uh, there's many more planned in New Jersey, but you know, fight this, you guys. You know, it's like, again, what is this for? Why do we need this?

Um, in space is probably the, probably the future. I think, I think Jack has to scoot right now, but yeah, it's probably gonna be hard out.

But you guys feel free to chat. Thank you having me on. Uh, always love being here. Um, always, uh, always thinking about Scott. And you know, it's funny watching some of this, this stuff with the China meeting. I just, I like, I can hear Scott in my mind just commenting as, you know, as, as certain things happen. It's just, uh, he, he rewired our minds. Yeah, and that's, that's a true gift that he gave to all of us.

Amen. Thank you. Um, we're all gonna scoot actually. We, we all have to move on to life. Um, but I would love to have you guys back on together. This was so fun. Um, and I, I just appreciate the conversation. I hope that this was useful for everybody. Uh, Scott wants us all to be useful, so I think just, um, today was great. It was great. Um, Joshua, thank you so much. Everybody here in the chat— oh, it wouldn't be a show unless I played this real quick.

You're just not performing as a tall man.

I'm obsessed. Okay, so thank you everybody in the chat for being here at the Scott Adams School. Oh, Owen's doing the after party tomorrow on Spaces on X, so he will be there, usual time. We will repost this show after. I'm so sorry, YouTube. You know, Rumble and YouTube sometimes just get cranky with each other. But we'll also be back on Monday with Marcella and Owen. We have Gad Saad on Thursday. Suicidal Empathy. So let's say our goodbyes now, and we always thank Scott and Shelley for allowing the show to continue. And, um, as you know, Scott would say, get out there and be useful. Have a great weekend, and a closing sip to our beloved Scott. To Scott, guys. Thank you, Joshua.

It's my pleasure, Erica. Thanks for having us on.

We love having you on. We're gonna grab you again soon.

You bet.

Take care.

Bye, guys.