Deepfakes, Trade Tariffs & Washington’s Pay-to-Play Scandal – Filtered with TJ Walker

A deep fake video of AOC shows how quickly truth can vanish. Trump's tariffs amount to one of the biggest hidden tax increases in decades. From Washington, a clear new Pay up or pay the price. Dr. Phil calls out the manufactured outrage over the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad. And AI is crushing the career dreams of America's newest computer science grads. All that today and more on filtered with T.J. walker. Hi and welcome. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me today. Let's dive in to the top stories of the day. Deepfake dangers and the myth of critical thinking as a fix. According to the New York Times, a recent viral video appeared to show Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez criticizing a Sydney Sweeney jeans ad on the House floor. The clip was a deep fake created by AI and shared by TV host Chris Cuomo. Before he deleted it, Ocasio Cortez scolded him for reposting Facebook memes and calling it journalism, urging critical thinking skills. But columnist Zeffner Tufetchi argues that critical thinking alone won't protect us. Deepfakes are getting too good too fast. While glitches once gave them away, today's tools allow creators to mass produce fakes until one looks perfect. Photos and audio have long been easy to manipulate. Now video, once a bedrock of trust, is too. The columnist warns that without robust authentication systems, we'll face chaos in courts, politics, and personal lives. And if government becomes the sole arbiter of truth, the risk to democracy could be profound. Okay, so let's dive into this a little deeper. What's the real message here? When enemies of representatives AOC just fabricate a video of her doing something that makes her look stupid, idiotic, extremist, far left, out of touch, like criticizing a Sydney Sweeney ad? They are hijacking democracy by hijacking the communications infrastructure. And they are playing people like Chris Cuomo as fools, getting them to do propaganda. Good. Evil. Hey, here's somebody out like, so she must be evil, saying stupid things. Today it's aoc, but tomorrow it's going to be Trump. It's going to be prominent Republicans. Everyone is at risk. And we got to realize just because something is on video doesn't mean it's real. Okay, let's dig a little deeper. So this whole issue, issue of Sydney Sweeney is continuing to annoy me to no end because it's not a real issue. We'll talk about that more in the next segment because another bloviating blow hard Dr. Phil is weighing in once again, piling on to a fake issue. But for right now, I'm interested in this issue of the deep fake video. So we've created this whole infrastructure, this whole gestalt where conservatives have said, okay, anyone who's a centrist, a Democrat, a moderate, is really so bizarrely extreme. They hate beautiful women, and yet the right is always using images of aoc. And AOC is popular in part because she is really good looking. There's no two ways around it. And you can't have it both ways. You can't say the left hates good looking women, and yet AOC is by most objective standards better looking than anyone on the right. So that bit of hypocrisy right there shows to me how absurd this situation is. But the bigger issue as it relates to artificial intelligence and as it relates to media and social media, is the ability now that almost anyone has to get any public person, any politician to look like they're saying or doing anything. And as I mentioned in the news read there, it can filter down to your own community, your own street. Someone in theory could smash in a neighbor's car window, key their car, and then change security video to make it look like you did it. And then what happens? So we are living in a world where basic authenticity of facts, of reality is morphing into whatever anybody wants to say it is. Whoever has the greatest ability to control AI at the moment can affect reality and therefore affect public policy, in theory, can affect whether you and I go to prison. So this is a serious, serious issue and it's bipartisan because certainly people on the so called left, not that there is much of a left in the United States, could just put out a video of Trump using the N word repeatedly at a live press conference. Now, there may actually be footage of that somewhere from his old apprentice days, but it hasn't been surfaced yet, even though there have been reports. But certainly there's no actual footage of Trump in the White House at a press conference, continually berating a black journalist using the N word. There's no video like that. But it could be created in the same way that this fake AOC video was made of her ostensibly criticizing the Sydney Sweeney ad. So this is a big, big problem. Now, we've already seen in other countries in Asia, for example, where videos have been put out stirring up unrest, and it actually led to counter attacks. So slaughter of people and death and destruction. Are we that far away from the United States where political operatives just start showing, for example, someone in another party, for worst possible case example, committing some act of pedophilia, and then saying, here's this guy's address. You got the video of him being a pedophile. Let's go get him. And before anyone actually ascertains the truth of, okay, this is a fake video. By that time, it's too late. The lynch mob has arrived with pitchforks. They've burned down the house or busted down the door, found the alleged perpetrator, who's actually innocent in my hypothetical, and they've lynched him. Are they. They've found, thrown him into a fire. They've used the pitchfork. I hope this doesn't happen. But it's very clear to me that that's where we're headed. It's not at all in any way an unlikely scenario because of this ability to fabricate anything. Now, if you see a blog post of someone saying something ridiculous, it's easy to say, well, I've never seen this post before. It's not a mainstream media outlet. Maybe it's wrong if you hear a voice of someone who sounds like it. These days, most of us have heard AI voices that sound really good. You can discount that. But we're still in this kind of funny area where people are used to believing what they see. Unless it's just obviously a cartoon, like south park with a cartoon Trump doing outrageous things. If it looks like real footage, most of us are not used to that yet. So my fear is, my concern is there's going to be a lot of manipulation and it's going to stir up and foment anger and lynch mobs and hatreds, and a lot of people are going to get hurt. Stepping back a moment. There is real danger for political discourse in our country this way, because if you can easily caricaturize your opponents as always saying the most ridiculous, extreme things, then you don't have to debate real issues. And let me be bipartisan here. I gave the example of how the right is trying to discredit the centrist and center left of the Democratic Party. And you could say AOC is a part of this left center left, but you could just as easily imagine a situation where Democratic operatives get hold of this new technology and they just show footage of a secret meeting of all Republican senators or all Republican top leaders of the House saying the most outrageous, vile things of using the N word, saying they hate old Jews, saying, laughing as they are impoverishing people and saying, you know, let the poor people ate cake. It's very easy to come up with quotes you would like to see your opponent saying to further discredit them, to make them look like fools, to make them look like the absolute worst stereotype. And that's where we're going to have to have some regulation. I know regulation is a naughty word. It's not politically correct to use the word regulation, but there's so many things happening regarding artificial intelligence, large language models, deep fake videos. It's happening faster and faster and faster. And the ramifications are happening at the political level, the economic level, at the personal level. I mean, let's. You've heard stories about panic calls in the middle of the night, someone sounding just like your daughter, saying, hey, I'm in jail. You got to wire me $5,000. People are falling for that deep fake audio. But imagine if you get a video call. Imagine if you get a FaceTime video with someone who looks and sounds exactly like your daughter, saying, hey, I've been captured, I've been kidnapped. You gotta send $5,000 or they're gonna start tearing me apart. I guarantee you there are gonna be a lot of people taking advantage of when that technology happens. And it has to happen. I don't say that with relish or that I want it to, but it certainly seems like that is where there's going to be a meeting of AI and technology and criminals. And criminals are very good at using the latest technology. So if you haven't done it yet, I would urge you to come up with some kind of safe word for your family so that if you do get a call from a daughter, a spouse, a son, a grandparent, and they're saying, hey, there's this horrible panic. You've got to act right away. You got to send me money, you got to come, you got to do. You got to hop the plane to go to another country to rescue me. You need to say, hey, what's our safe word? Or what's our secret word? If they can't say it, you know it is some sort of fraudulent activity. I've done that with my own family. We have a word. No, I'm not going to tell you, but you need to have some kind of word and make sure you keep it private. It makes me think maybe I need to come up with a more obscure word or something even harder to find. So we'll be following this whole issue of fakery when it comes to video fakery, deep fakes, it's gotten a lot of attention in the past as far as celebrities putting their face on a naked body and showing them have sex. And obviously that's distasteful celebrities shouldn't have to encounter that. But we're talking about fundamentally changing votes, public policy, the very nature of our government. If citizens have no real sense of what are my elected officials actually saying, what do they stand for? Because deepfake technology is going to make it really easy to caricaturize your opponents in a way that will discredit them. And then you can basically do whatever you want once you're in office. If you know you can always discredit your opposition. There's no real check or balance anymore. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered, Filtered with TJ Walker, where every single day I come to you and try to analyze the top business news, technology news as I just did, cultural news, analyze it through the filter of communication skills, all with the goal of improving your communication skills, making you more successful in your personal life and in your professional life. That's what we're about here on this show. It's so easy to just watch the news get depressed. Doom scroll, Everything's awful. Isn't this awful? And certainly there is bad news going on, but it doesn't mean you and I can't learn from it and get better. So I try to intersperse personal development tips, communication tips so we can learn where other people make mistakes or if other people are doing, you know, tricky things that aren't, aren't really worthwhile, we can learn from that as well. So that's the premise of the show. We're in kind of a soft launch right now. The show will be launching officially September 2nd on every audio and video podcasting platform as well as on all social media. So it's going to be a fun time. I do appreciate any feedback you have. Anything you want to talk about that relates to those issues, please let me know. Indeed. Okay, we're going to move on to issue two, the hidden tax hike no one will say out loud. According to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul KRUGMAN in an Aug. 10 analysis, the new tariffs function as a massive tax increase on American consumers. Yet much of the media still avoids saying it plainly. Tariffs aren't really paid by foreign countries. Importers pay at the port and then pass the cost to shoppers. That makes tariffs sales tax in disguise, and regressive ones at that, Krugman argues. This so called trade war is really a class war because the burden falls hardest on on middle and lower income families. While the wealthiest Americans benefit from paired income tax cuts, he notes. The Court of International Trade ruled the tariffs illegal in May, but the decision is on appeal. Most observers expect the tariffs will survive, meaning high tariffs are here to stay. Prices are rising on everyday goods and even some medicines. The Yale Budget Lab estimates the poorest 10% of Americans will lose roughly 6.5% of their purchasing power. The middle class sees any small tax cut wiped out by higher prices. Meanwhile, the top 10% come out way ahead. Krugman says promises of a manufacturing revival are hollow. Tariffs on inputs like steel and aluminum raise costs for US Producers and discourage hiring. Even wiping out the manufacturing trade deficit would barely move wages. His conclusion is blunt. These tariffs are regressive tax increases, funding regressive tax cuts, upward redistribution, all sold as patriotism. Okay, so what's the real message here? These so called tariffs that we can do to get other people pay? No, it's a way for Trump and Republicans to tax the little guy, because that's what these are. Tariffs are taxes that you pay. And now there's more money to cut taxes on the wealthiest. It's an absolute scam. It's redistribution from, from poor people and middle class people to the upper class. And the media plays a role in this. Every time they talk about this big beautiful bill and the tariffs and everything involved with what's happening in Washington, that they don't call it a tax increase on poor people, they are spreading disinformation. And that's the bottom line. Let's dig a little deeper. So let's unpack this a little more. Wealthy people are not simply buying more cars and more houses. Yeah, they do that, but they're not spending most of their income on more stuff. After a while, you get one big house, two, maybe three, you get a few cars, you start spending your money going out to fancy restaurants, masseuses, professional services, butlers. Guess what? None of those are affected by tariffs. So the wealthy are not going to see their money going to pay this new tax nearly as much as someone of modest means or poor people. If you're poor, and I've been poor, let me tell you, in 1998, I think I made $5,000 the whole year. And that was living in New York City as a man in my 30s. So I've been poor as an adult. And I can tell you when you are poor and lower middle class or you have a family, every penny you're spending is on things like clothes, things like a new heater, things like basic food, all things that are going to have tariffs applied to them. So your tax is going to go up, Your tax is going to go up a lot As I mentioned in the analysis from Krugman, if you are a poor person, you essentially are losing 6.5% purchasing power. And since you spend all of your money purchasing stuff that is a giant, giant cut in your take home pay essentially. And yet it's not referred to as, as a tax increase. Tariffs are taxes. It's one of the reasons why conservative economists hate tariffs. It's also why liberal economists don't like tariffs because it's a regressive tax. So there's very few things in the world that kind of unite liberal economists, centrist economists, right wing economists, libertarian economists, but this is one of them. Tariffs are bad. They do not do the things they're supposed to do to help you. They just muck up the economy and you stick it to your own citizens. Now, have we seen massive inflation go up since these tariffs started? No, not yet. Have we seen massive employments, unemployment spike? No, not yet. But there are signs. Now, I'm not going to make an absolute prediction of the month or the quarter when we're going to see the economy stumble. I will make one prediction and this you can take to the bank. When our economy does eventually crater. Donald Trump's not going to take any responsibility. He's going to say, oh, it's Joe Biden's fault. Remember that guy who left us at the stock market at all time high and inflation low by the time Biden left when we could actually have some sense of a normality in our country? He's going to blame that guy for spiking inflation and rising unemployment, even though unemployment was extraordinarily low during Biden's last few years in office. That's the prediction I am willing to make. Hi, you're watching filtered with TJ Walker. More in a moment. Okay, let's hop into story three, this next one coming from Washington. Before we do that, let's take a quick commercial break. Back in a moment.

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Thanks for joining me. From Washington, a new message.

Pay up or Pay the Price. Two headlines making moves out of Washington this week are sending the same unmistakable signal. If you want something from the federal government, you better bring your checkbook first. The New York Times reports that the Trump administration has struck an unprecedented deal with Nvidia and amd. In exchange for export licenses to sell certain AI chips to China, the companies agree to just hand over 15% of their sales revenues to the US government. For Nvidia alone, that could mean a lot of money. It could mean more than $2 billion this year. Supporters call it industrial policy. Critics call it something else, a shakedown that trades national security concerns for cash. Meanwhile, CNN reports the White House is demanding a $1 billion settlement from UCLA to restore hundreds of millions in frozen federal funding. The proposed agreement goes far beyond money, imposing strict new controls on scholarships, protests, admissions data and medical care. UCLA leaders warn the payment could devastate or would devastate, the university system and get its research mission. Different sectors, one in tech, one in education. But the pattern is the same. Federal leverage used not just to set policy, but to extract massive concessions with the message, if you want to operate, you'll pay. Washington first. So what's the real message here. The Trump administration is sending a message to every chip maker, every university, every law firm in the country. You gotta pay to play. We are extorting you. We want you to give us money. The only question, I mean, the only question in my mind is when it's gonna change subtly. And individuals, corporations, universities, are gonna have to just pay Trump directly. Perhaps back up a truck full of gold to Mar a Lago. That's the bottom line. Let's dig a little deeper here. You know, for so many years, basically my entire lifetime, I heard the right wing talk about the evils of totalitarianism. I heard. I grew up listening to Jesse Helms talk about Soviet Russia. And he had a point, he had a fair point that when you've got power totally focused on government and the private sector is at the whims of an authoritarian leader, it's tyranny. It is the absence of freedom. And I've been hearing this preached my whole life, to their credit, by people who are on the political right. And it turns out they were right. America was susceptible to being taken over by an extremist. Whether you want to call this socialistic extremist, a fascist extremist, it's extreme government, where the power is in the hands of not only government, but one person. And that's when you end up with tyranny. The right has warned us about this. It turns out that they were completely accurate, that this was a problem and the United States was susceptible. The irony, of course, is they're all supporting this guy. They're all continuing to give him votes, money, cash, support. The very same people who talked about how awful our society would get when one person could dictate everything to the private sector, tell billionaire teams of professional sports what names they could use for their sports teams, which is what Trump is doing. When someone can arbitrarily take away citizenship, when someone can deport people and have secret police running around with masks, well, this is what so many on the right in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s were concerned about with the Soviet Union. They did not want this to happen to the United States. Many in the center and left kind of pooh, poohed it and said, yeah, that's not the real problem. That's unlikely to happen here. Well, it did happen here. We're seeing it every single day. And it's supported by the very same people who said this was a problem. We don't want this in our country. That's what's profoundly odd about this. Our United States Every single day is a line is being crossed, getting closer and closer to out and out. Authoritarianism, tyranny, extremist, an inch away from democracy, an inch away from a republic for that matter, and just further away from the founding ideas are our originators of our country really wanted us to have power with people. And even when they didn't want us to have complete power. Yeah, they had states deciding who could become president, electoral college. They didn't have complete trust in the masses. Okay, got that. But they certainly did not have trust in one person. The founders of this nation did not want another King George. They didn't want any king. They wanted control diffused through, at least at the time, rich white men. Okay, not a perfect beginning of a democracy, but based on the time, as good as it was going to get, they did not. They clearly did not want to have power reside with one person because they saw that's when you get tyranny. That's when you get complete, arbitrary rules. That's when complete economies are destroyed, businesses are destroyed, individual lives are destroyed. And that's exactly what we're getting here in the United States under this current regime. And yes, it is a regime. It's not an administration to call what's going on in Washington. And administration, I think, is to be guilty of sane washing, because there's clearly stuff going on that by any traditional metric is simply insane. We do not have a president of the country at the moment. We have a mob boss. And the mob boss is basically saying, I will destroy you. I will destroy your institution unless you kind of grieve my palm now. For right now, that money is mostly going to the US coffers, but who really knows? With all of his meme coins and cryptocurrencies, so much of it is secret. It's very easy for countries to bribe for not this administration, this person, Donald Trump, this dictator, Donald Trump. It's very easy for them to bribe him by just saying, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. At 2am today, we bought a billion dollars of your bitcoin. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You're going to take care of us. Right? That can happen. And really nobody would know about. Just seems bizarre that it wasn't even that long ago. It was far less than eight years ago when Richard Nixon, the Vice President of the United States, was in a scandal because his wife got a cloth coat from somebody and maybe he hadn't paid full price. And now we're in this absolute corrupt situation where everyone's got to pay everything outright. Fees, ownership percentages. You get the first 15% off the top. That really is what mob bosses do when they're controlling various blocks of Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s. Going to restaurants. It's a nice little restaurant you got here. A lot of wood here, very flammable. Sure would be awful if something happened to this. Would you like me to protect your establishment? Okay, I want 15% of your restaurant revenues every week. And I'll be here every Monday morning. Have that brown bag of cash ready for me. We're just not much different than that right now. And it is an absolute embarrassment and shame. Okay, let's move on to, I would say a better issue, but in some ways a sadder issue. Dr. Phil is involved in this manufactured outrage over Sydney Sweeney jeans ads, Believe it or not. As a follow up for earlier coverage on the fake AOC story tied to Sydney Sweeney jeans, here's another example of how the right can manufacture a cultural crisis. According to Fox News, Dr. Phil McGraw pushed back hard against the uproar, especially comparing claims the American Eagle Great jeans had to Nazi atrocities. Now Dr. Phil was on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He called that comparison an absolute insult to the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocau. For people to go crazy over that ad and say that's the equivalent of a holocaust. What an insult, McGraw said, adding he plans to buy the jeans for every woman in his family to show support. This episode follows weeks of amplified outrage on conservative media over a campaign that in reality was not being criticized by any elected Democrats. It's a textbook example of conflating a non issue into a headline grabbing web wedge issue. Okay, so what's the real message here? The right wing, including Dr. Phil, just want more. They want to feed at the trough of oh boy, we can make liberals and Democrats look bad and stupid and evil. We don't care. There's no there there. We don't care. There's no facts. We're just going to say it again and again and again and make this the next flag burning issue. Absolute nonsense. So let's dig a little deeper. So to retrace this ridiculous story, there was this video, an advertisement from Sydney Sweeney where she talks about I have good genes and I have, you know, blue hair and or blue eyes. Not blue hair, blonde hair. And apparently one or two people on social media that nobody has ever heard of who had a grand total of about five followers said, I don't know. This sounds like, you know, racial purity. It sounds a little bit like Nazi stuff. Did I take it that way? No. Did a single democratically elected official in the United States Congress have that take? No. Did any of the prominent host or contributors on msnbc, the premier liberal Democratic media outlet in the United States, have that? No. It was a handful of wildly insignificant people with no following who had criticism. But that didn't stop fox news and Dr. Phil and every political commentator on the center right from attacking. Here's another example of these crazy woke liberal Democrats. And it becomes this self perpetuating machine that smears anyone who isn't a MAGA Republican. And I'm ashamed to say someone I formally respected, Bill Maher, who has been a liberal his whole life, has supported people like Barack Obama. He falls into this. He was on his show this past weekend saying, here's another example of these, you know, stupid woke liberals. Here's what's really going on folks. It's a big world out there. There are 8 billion people on the planet. On any given day in the United States, there are hundreds of people on the far right and the far left who tweet something stupid and ridiculous. You can go out right now and if you search long enough and hard enough, there will be someone who was aligned as a conservative or as a Republican or as a Trump supporter who will be saying that they love the Holocaust and wish there'd be another one. That they wish every black person would move back to Africa. And what happens to those people? Absolutely nothing. You don't see somebody on MSNBC saying here's what all MAGA Republicans believe, that there should be another Holocaust and every black should go back to Africa. You don't hear that because there's not a built in echo machine. Yes, there are echoes media outlets that are centrist and Democratic leaning and left of center. But they don't take one tiny little stupid thing somebody said somewhere on the Internet and conflate that with what every single person in the entire Republican Party believes. And as an example of how everyone in the Republican Party is this extremist, crazy, beyond the pale zealot. But the mirror of that is what happens every single day in the mainstream media. Someone who is aligned as a non conservative. They could be a centrist, they could be a liberal, they could be a progressive, they could be a socialist, they could be a communist. You got all kinds here in the United States. In the same way you have white supremacists and Nazi lovers on the right side of things, you got all kinds. But virtually anytime somebody who is in some way identified as non Conservative non maga says something stupid. It's pounced on by the conservative media establishment and make no mistake about it, is an establishment. They don't all get together for coffee and share talking points every Monday morning and plan out the week. But they do walk in lockstep. You go from some stupid tweet that gets picked up by some blogger with a little more of audience or some somebody on Twitter with a little more audience, it goes to Rumble, it gets on Tucker Carlson, it goes to Fox News. Every broken talk show host and podcast host is talking about it. Then Bill Maher is saying here's another example of how my fellow Democrats are all crazy and extreme and the New York Times is then doing a front page story on it. So now you have every mainstream centrist Democrat running for office and they got to spend time defending their party for these extreme positions, which it's not a position of the party and they didn't say it and no one else they know said it. And it is absolutely maddening. Because meanwhile, now we have clear Runway for the big beautiful bill to pass, for insanely regressive taxes to take place, for tax cuts to go up on poor people, for Medicaid to be taken away from hundreds of thousands of Americans for aid to people around the world who would otherwise starve. We can take that away because we don't. We can't have a debate on that because we got to talk about fake phony issues like how every Democrat allegedly hates beautiful women in Sydney. Sweeney when we're talking about these fake issues, it means no one has the time and energy and effort to do what I tried to do right here earlier today. Which is to show that these tariffs are actually tax increases that are regressive. And that's just a fancy word for saying if you're not rich, you're paying for it, and if you are rich, you're getting a tax cut. That's what it's all about. More in a moment.

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AI upends tech job Dreams for New Grads According to the New York Times, the long promised golden path from computer science degree to six figure tech job is breaking down. Recent graduates like Manasseh Mishra from Purdue, which is where my parents went to school, and Zach Taylor from Oregon State have applied to hundreds, even thousands of tech positions with few or no offers. One recruiter chipotle. The shift comes as companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Meta cut staff and embrace AI coding tools that can write and debug software faster than humans, reducing demand for junior engineers. Unemployment among computer science grads ages 22 to 27 is now more than double that of recent biology majors. Applicants say they are gaslit by years of promises from industry leaders, only to face ghosting automated resume rejections and entry level roles being the first to vanish. Experts warn that without adapting to AI era skills, many aspiring coders may need to rethink their career paths. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you majored in computer science and you think, oh, I can just be the computer nerd and sit in my little computer lab and I'm going to get a six figure job right away and that Half a million and then a million? No, it's not going to happen. You're going to have to learn other skills. You're going to have to learn social skills. Rather than sending out a thousand resumes a day, maybe you send out two resumes a day and spend the rest of your time talking to real people, networking, going to professional events, calling up people you went to school with and professors. Work your Personal relationships, that's how your career will thrive. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. I certainly feel sorry for someone who went into a career thinking, okay, this is safe, this is going to be great, I'm going to make money. But you know what, that's the history of capitalism. I know a lot of people who went to law school. That was kind of a safety ticket when I was going up. And if you didn't get into a top 10 law school or top 20 law school, you might not get a job. And certainly that's the case these days. It's no longer the safe, easy way of sort of guaranteed upper middle class lifestyle. Let me step back a minute. I don't think you should major in computer science and computer programming unless you really, really want to do that. It's always problematic to say, I don't like doing this, but I'm doing it for the money. It's very hard to sustain the energy you need throughout your career to really make that work for you. So if you're doing it computer science because they, oh, my mom or dad will be happy, you got to start living your own life. I'm not saying everybody has to be a philosophy major like I was, even though it did work out for me. But you've got to constantly look at what do you do that you're good at and that you have a passion for and that you have an interest in and that is rewarded in the marketplace. You need all of those things because technology changes. That's the nature of capitalism. Careers, industries, businesses, corporations change all the time. If you doubt me, just look every decade at who makes up the Dow Jones Industrial average. Certainly after 30 years, there's virtually no company left that was there 30 years earlier, no matter where you track it. So change is inevitable in capitalism. Create a destruction, as it's called. Nobody likes to be on the receiving end of destruction, but you know that going in. If you want to be a part of the capitalistic system, you've got to prepare. Any one skill could become obsolete. Knowing how to put horseshoes on horses was a highly sought out skill before cars. It's not as desirable now. It's not as much in demand because there are cars. People don't need as many horseshoes. That's the nature of things. And if we live in a world where artificial intelligence does all the basic level computer programming, then you're not going to be needed. Rather than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, I would highly recommend use your own computer science skills and create your Own apps, create your own software, create your own business. Rather than spending ten hours a day sending out a thousand resumes and five hours a day complaining to your friend, there's no jobs anymore, it's there. Take that five hours a day, you would be complaining and start a business. Even if you don't make a lot of money, it's only going to make your resume look better. You will meet people starting a business that you won't meet if all you're doing is sending out resumes. Now, in looking at the story and from other evidence I see across the culture, there are so many people of all ages, not just young people, who think job hunting consist of this. Looking at a screen, hitting send. If that's what you're doing, I'm sorry, you don't deserve a job. Apologies if that seems like tough love. I want you to do well in your career and you're not going to do well unless you realize we still live in a human world. As much as everyone's talking about AI and I'm talking about AI deep fakes and I've got my own AI clone, when it comes to you actually getting a job, a good job, however you define that, a six figure or more job where you're really using your skills, a computer isn't going to make the final decision. It's an actual human being. So you're going to have to spend your time, energy and efforts getting in front of human beings, talking to them, building rapport with them. Now, I'm often asked for advice by young people, family, friends, other associates. Hey, I'm having trouble getting a job. What should I do? And I always said, walk me through what you're doing. Now it's like, well, I, you know, I go to monster.com. i go to, indeed, I go to this. I'm like, okay, do all that. Continue doing that for one hour a day. The rest of the time, I want you calling people and saying, hey, can we get together for coffee? I'd like to pick your brain about the industry. Oh yeah, no one has time for that. You're right, most people won't. But if you call 100 people on a Monday, you'll have five meetings the rest of the week. That's right. 95% of the people will be too busy for you, will reject you. Five may say yes. Call people who graduated from school a year before you and say, hey, tell me about your job and what you're doing. That's interesting and I'd love to just get advice. I know you probably don't have a job offer there, but I'd love your advice on your company and your industry. A lot of people would be happy to meet with you or talk with you or pick your brain. So that's what I really want you. Well, excuse me there. That's what I want you to really think about, is how to spend time with real human people. Go to meetups. Pick not a thousand companies to send a resume to, but pick three companies that you think would be great to work with. And then start following their top leaders on social media. Don't hound them and ask them for jobs. Comment on their social media post. Leave insightful comments. Share their comments or share their post. Ask thoughtful questions. Do that for a while. Maybe a month goes by, which is not all. Then and only then say, hey, I really admire a lot of the intellectual leadership you're putting out, the thought leadership you're putting out on this particular field in your industry. You seem very knowledgeable. Is there any way I could come take you for coffee for 10 minutes next Thursday morning? I'll be in your area, and you'd be surprised how many people will say yes if you ask. But you've got to lay the groundwork. You've got to show value. You've got to show you're truly interested at their company and then. And what they do and when they do. That's where the gold is in job hunting. That's when they say, you know, we just lost, you know, three of our top people in this division. We don't really have time to do a full job search and use our regular consultants and recruiters. Can you come in this afternoon and meet with my guy? We got to get people in there. That's what you want. That's how you get jobs. Am I saying it's all a corrupt, good old boy network? No, I'm saying you create your own network. That is a skill. The ability to connect with people through email, through social media, by actually talking on this. I realize it's not popular and a lot of young people think, oh, I couldn't possibly call some. If you want a job, you've got to go out of your comfort zone and picking up the phone and calling people, Maybe. Maybe calling 10 or 20 people a day may be exactly what you need to do to get a job. So I apologize if that seemed in any way harsh. I don't mean to be harsh. I'm on your side. The whole premise of this show is we can look around at what's going on in the news, learn from it, and improve our own lives, our personal lives and our professional lives. And that is exactly what we're all about right here on Filtered with TJ Walker. So I want to thank you for spending time with me today. I'm here for you every single day so far. We've been doing this every day for about a month and a half, so I'm having fun. I hope you're having fun. If you have any suggestions on topics you'd like me to analyze or questions about anything we've talked about, feel free to post them right here. I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks.